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Author: Neal Burgis

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

Psychological Safety as a Leadership Tool

With a different way of using thinking style and learning to help your employees create, innovate and produce greater than they have been, implementing psychological safety as a strategy gives leaders a way to create high-performing teams.

Leaders of a company want employees to get along and be productive in the work they are given. Too many times though leaders know that a conflict or two- many appear and that employees should be able to work out the difficulty. When it comes to resolving this issue, as a strategy to both improve employee interactions and to increase productivity using psychological safety helps you do both.

In creating, generating, producing creativity, you need the powerhouse employees you hired who are skilled and talented in these areas. The problem is that their skills and talent is squelched by the circle of a team within the team who put others down.

Get to know your work team employees. Set up either a breakfast, lunch or dinner where everyone from the team attends and brings a pot luck item. Let everyone talk about something other people don’t know about them that they want their team to know. It could be what skills they have and hope to bring with them on each project they work on.

Psychological safety can do great things for team performance. And why not? If team members feel safe and it’s easier to build trust — that helps elevate performance. Psychological safety is more important you may think. The advantages to implementing this concept helps you and your organization move forward and allows you, the leader, to stand out in your business.

Develop an Open Mindset

“Increased psychological safety is linked to everything from higher engagement and well-being to improved ideation and implementation.” –

In order to break free of judgment and strengthen the relationship between team members, it’s important to have an open mindset. Often you may look at things from your own lens, but approaching them from a different angle can help bring perspective. In order to develop an open mindset at the workplace:

Rather than criticism, encourage teams and individuals to see feedback as a way to strengthen and build upon their ideas and processes. Be open to opinions that differ from your own.

Ask Encourage Questions

“Increased psychological safety is linked to everything from higher engagement and well-being to improved ideation and implementation.

Create a safe place for feedback

As a team leader, and as a member of a larger leadership team yourself, start thinking about psychological safety with reflective questions. Ask relevant questions to your team members. Also have your team members ask questions of understanding, curiosity and of how specific things will work.

People don’t get good though unless they are given an opportunity. An opportunity to make mistakes, to express thoughts, ideas, and opinions, or feel comfortable in the group/team they work in without consequences helps you and they be more productive. An open exchange of ideas, thoughts and opinions helps stimulate team members to think of other questions to ask.

Admitting to Making Mistakes

The most successful teams were those who, ironically, make the most errors. How successful are your work teams or organization with admitting to errors or mistakes while producing great results? Acknowledging your mistakes can help you and your team members to produce better results.

Frame Failures as Learning Opportunities

Keep in Mind All the Benefits of Psychological Safety. There are more benefits that help move your organization forward than you may think.

Encourages Speaking Up- Giving and receiving feedback without consequences

Create a Safe Place for Feedback- Clarify why speaking up is valued and reinforce that through ongoing messages and behaviors.

Employees using the skills and talent they were hired for- You may even find that your disengaged employees will start to become engaged again.

High self-esteem

Greater breakthrough results

Higher revenue for the organization

When people don’t feel safe, they are less inclined to take risks. Fear prevents employees from speaking up, providing honest feedback, or sharing their ideas.

The Cost of Silence is Deceiving

Companies waste millions of dollars. That’s the price they pay because their employees don’t speak up. Organizations have a silence problem, but most don’t realize it. It’s hard to detect when employees are not being honest. Silence can encourage group-think and default consensus — people keep their ideas to themselves.

Psychological safety is the foundation of high-performing teams

Psychological safety is the foundation of high-performing teams. It’s one of the most important components of a great business, but you don’t hear much about it. Psychological safety may even get your disengaged employees engaged again. Great leaders make fostering psychological safety a top priority. Create a safe place for feedback as your employees have been held back from expressing themselves due to consequences they expect yet not test.

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development Women In Business

Admitting to Mistakes Leads to Greater Productivity

Be a Leader Who Can Admit Mistakes 

We all make mistakes. When someone makes a mistake, the ego can prevent him from admitting that. All leaders make mistakes as well. Making mistakes is a part of a leadership journey. It’s easy to call someone else out when they make a mistake at work. It’s not always as simple to admit to your team or yourself when you are the one at fault.

One of the most powerful opportunities for any leader in building trust is to admit mistakes publicly. The source of that power is that it is so rare for leaders to stand up in front of a group and say something like this: “I called you here today to admit that I made a serious blunder yesterday. It was not intentional, as I will explain.”  – Bob Whipple, MBA, CPLP

When mistakes or errors occur how do you handle it. There is a school of thought that leaders should not admit when they have made mistakes, presumably because there is a belief that by doing so, they lose credibility and power.

Dwelling upon mistakes will diminish your self-confidence and your creative self-expression.

When you dwell on mistakes you trigger the habits of procrastination and perfectionism, as well as a plethora of emotions such as anger, stress, worry, fear, and frustration.

You can only learn from a mistake after you admit you’ve made it. As soon as you start blaming other people you distance yourself from any possible lesson.

Blaming Someone Else

By blaming others for your mistakes doesn’t help you learn from them. It also gives the other people a negative reputation. Blaming always starts with: “You…”, “They…”, “If only…”.  It only starts with an “I” statement when the “I” is followed with a “but…” , as in “Yes, I… but they…” (Paul White)

Obviously, a leader who makes many mistakes on an almost daily basis has a serious problem but it has little to do with admitting mistakes, and everything to do with their competence levels and judgment.

The reality is that leaders should be able to admit their mistakes to their followers. In fact, this increases trust and loyalty by making the leader a human being in the eyes of followers. More importantly, by admitting mistakes, employees learn that you are serious about being honest, open, responsible and accountable, and this is fundamental to creating trust and loyalty.

In the long run, employees who listen to their leaders admit their mistakes and accept them will be in a more relaxed position to admit to their own mistakes and errors. With this in mind, these employees will be more open to performing better in their jobs.

By Not Admitting Mistakes or Errors

“If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything. I’m positive that a doer makes mistakes.” – John Wooden

People’s inability to admit mistakes is sometimes born out of a defensive measure brought about by anxiety. Because of fear, some people will always be inclined to seek a haven in deception, to preserve their ego.

Shift Your Perspective About Mistakes

Most likely as a child when you made mistakes, you either hid them or were embarrassed by making them. This was a conditioned response because of the consequences that went with them.

Respected leaders are not afraid to challenge the status quo and take bold initiatives.

Resilience is something that will help you to keep pushing forward despite the obstacles and setbacks in your way. The more mistakes you make, the more resilient you become.

Start a Journal

Start documenting all of your mistakes. Keep track of where these are happening: at work.

Keep a detailed account of what happened so you can start to see patterns in where you’re making mistakes and which ones you’re repeating too often.

Admitting a mistake helps both businesses and individuals to learn and grow. This is because by admitting the mistake isolates the problem and allows leaders to pool resources so that they can set about resolving the issue.

“Admitting and correcting mistakes does not make you look weak; it actually makes you look stronger.” –Bruce Rhoades

According to research, admitting to mistakes leads to higher productivity whether you are the leader of an organization or you are an employee.

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

Is Success a Breeding Ground for Leadership Complacency?

What’s Your Breeding Ground for Complacency?

There’s nothing like that feeling of success. On the opposite side to success, is a dangerous shadow called complacency.  And complacency, unlike other dangers, is quiet. The saying goes – success breeds success.   But success is never overnight. There’s an eagerness to push the boundaries and to look for different ways to do things. Living on the edge or outside of your comfort zone is normal.  Comfort is a sign of complacency.

The “To-Do” of Achieving Your Goal is Checked Off

“Complacency is the last hurdle standing between any team and its potential greatness.” -Pat Riley

Great leaders understand complacency can impact their success. Enjoy your success as you keep an eye out for any difficulties that may arise. The actions you take when you view success can be seen as a final resting place for your results-or is it? Remember that success is not a location, it is about the journey. Complacency is a feeling that everything is good often while unaware of some potential danger. It can be a crisis that threatens the company. Complacency can have a leader begin to follow more than lead.

Complacency Can Lurk Behind Benchmarks.

“A leader’s greatest enemy to success is often previous success.  You become satisfied.  Complacency can set in.” – Brian Dodd

Basking in the accolades of accomplishing great results, complacency lurks through and you are often unaware of the success can lead to complacency. Complacency can impose significant problems even though you may recognize some and ignore them. Others you may not recognize as they can cause more severe damage to your organization anyway.

Be aware of when you react and when to be proactive while completing the work you do. Complacency can lead you to “settle” for mediocrity. Successful individuals and organizations typically are not complacent because of striving for continuous improvement.

Success Makes You Overconfident

“The Number one threat is us. We must not let success breed complacency. A company is never more vulnerable to complacency than when it’s at the height of its success” – Herb Kelleher

Set goals every year, quarter, month and day so that you are always looking to achieve new goals and see new views. Don’t make excuses for failures or setbacks.  See them as learning opportunities. Being blind to your own weaknesses, or worse, blind to the reality that you have weaknesses makes you overconfident. Be aware of how you put yourself or your organization out to others by checking that everything you do is ready without any problems of yourself or your organization.

Success Can Lull You into Complacency

“Watch the little things; a small leak will sink a great ship.” -Benjamin Franklin

Success can make you overconfident but it doesn’t have to. As a leader, it’s important to avoid certain dangers as it relates to complacency. Be aware of what you can do to avoid complacency by using your creative thinking for seeing things differently.

Challenge the status quo as your success can lull you into complacency. Realize that confidence is about believing the things you do will yield positive results. Feeling uncomfortable can be your key to success. Confidence is about believing the things you do will yield positive results.

Routines may make you feel at ease and in control, yet you need to get out of your comfort zone to try other things that won’t keep you stagnant. This type of behavior dulls your thinking to do things that are easy as you’ve been doing for some time.

What drives complacency in you? Is it: (Michelle Gibbings)

  • Fear of the unknown
  • Fear of failure
  • Fear of success
  • Fear of hard work

Don’t let the fear hold you back.  Harness how it makes you feel.  In your efforts to propel action, exercise your psychological safety to ask questions.

A Final Word

“Change before you have to.” – Jack Welch

Change happens every day. A leader’s greatest enemy to success is often previous success.  You become satisfied.  Complacency can be conquered if you are willing to improve what you already have on a consistent basis. With every project you begin, look at what you currently have and see what you can adjust or change for that project. Every project has its own problems you can overcome. These are just a few of the key ways to fight off complacency, so enjoy the journey of success.

What’s your breeding ground for complacency? The world is moving and changing quickly.  Do you keep pace with the change, stride ahead or are you left behind?

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ is the slogan of the complacent, the arrogant or the scared. It’s an excuse for inaction, a call to non-arms.” – Colin Powell

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

Ego of Your Leadership

Is Your Ego Helping or Hurting Your Leadership?

Your ego is a powerful tool and if used right will help you have the level of confidence you need. Ego is a Latin word that means “I myself. All mindsets feed the ego. recognizes how to play to their strengths and identify the gaps to help you close them for greater effectiveness & confidence. Ego refers to a person’s sense of self-esteem or self-importance. For the small business owner, a certain amount of ego is good. It’s when the ego gets overinflated that problems occur.

You don’t always have to be right on everything you do and or say. In reality, you need a certain amount of ego as a leader to achieve, to innovate, and to have the courage to try something new. Ego-driven leaders are toxic to the organization you lead. The ego a leader has can bring down business just like when there is a lack of customers. The difference is when the reputation of the business an ego-driven leader leads can have many or most people not applying for a job there. Nothing can be more debilitating in an organization than a leader with an ego. They are entitled and important simply because they want to be. Egotists regard themselves as superior, set apart from everyone else.

Don’t Let Your Ego Hijack Your Leadership Effectiveness

“Always remember: Too much ego will kill your talent.” – Unknown Author

Ego is one of the biggest problems that humanity faces. Being egoless is impossible.

Overactive ego gives people a distorted image of your importance. When this happens, you see yourself as the center of the world around you. You begin to put your own agenda, status, and gratification ahead of anyone else around you.

Characteristics of Ego-Driven Leaders

Ego-driven leaders tend to…

  • Measure success by how much others notice your success.
  • Often feel better about yourself when others around you don’t achieve their goals.
  • Undermine others so you can appear smarter, more competent and more knowledgeable than they.
  • Drive others away over time.
  • Destroy trust and attempt to control others through any way possible.
  • Are always looking for praise to be in the spotlight
  • Does not reflect on personal shortcomings because it would interfere with their need to feel superior. Their blind spots go unaddressed, and eventually people stop bringing them up.
  • Not listen to other points of view.
  • Takes on daunting tasks without preparation or the ability to solve them, because they see them as less threatening than they really are.
  • Be motivated by status, not service (leadership)
  • Have a desire to always be right every single time.
  • Be easily offended and quick to defend yourself sometimes using any excuse you think works for you.
  • Rarely, if at all, admit your fault without rationalizing or blaming others. Using such statements as “It’s my way or the highway”, “I don’t need to adjust to people, they need to adjust to me”, or “No one else can fix this but me”, and or “I know more than anyone else in how to solve the situation.”

You are Losing Business Clients and Customers and Not Knowing Why

“When your ego may be in charge, everything becomes a little bit more about “you” and a little bit less about others.” – Christopher Pinckley

Can you admit to making a bad decision? You make decisions every day about everything you do, yet you have to live with them. You can change them. Typically, people do not like people with huge egos. Knowing that ego-driven people won’t listen to them and thinking you are always right. Clients and customers believe ego-driven people are not customer-focused especially on their needs but on the needs of the ego-driven person.

Blaming others for your decisions does not bode well with your employees. Admitting to making a bad decision is not in the nature of an ego-driven person. Business owners or leaders usually don’t think you need help. The problem is that you may know your business well, yet the way specific things work within your business you may not be totally aware of. This is when asking employees how they see things working help you in generating thoughts and ideas that can re-work the business for up-to-date trends.

You Have a Lot of Employee Turnover

You think you just need to hire the right talent instead of throwing more money at your employees to motivate them or to hire people who question things you do. Employees and prospective employees stay away from your organization because they want to work in an open-culture environment.

You are Never Satisfied with the Work of Others

You have difficulty praising employees or other executives. Putting people down as in blaming them for things you created does not sit well for most people, so they leave. Instead of looking for mistake’s employees make you place blame on them as specific ideas were not yours.

Practice Humility

Recalibrate your ego since humility means recognizing that the work is not all about you. Recognizing how well your employees complete a project can be praised. Few ego-driven leaders will do this as you expect employees to be doing their work and nothing more.

The leader that is acting out of self-doubt looks for reassurance from others in a more powerful position. They rarely make decisions on their own. They are not helpful to turn to in times of need and will generally avoid conflict of any kind.

The leader that is acting out of false pride is afraid to lose control. They tend to micromanage everything and everyone and their ideas are always the right ones. When they are wrong, they are usually the first to lay the blame on others.

Recognize Your Own Strengths and Limitations.

“When you allow your ego to control your thoughts, everything you believe becomes an illusion.” – Rusty Eric

Your leadership effectiveness is primarily based on how you see yourself. Having high self-esteem or self-confidence is great. Going beyond this to think of yourself as always winning and never seeing yourself failing or losing under any circumstance needs you to come back to earth. Being so high and mighty when things around you are in a crisis, your ego will be in control Lashing out at people and blaming them for things they did not cause can suddenly leave in in the lurch to fill their vacant positions.

Dana Ardi, Ph.D., -“If you ask most people to describe how a great leader looks and acts, you’ll often get answers that refer to generals and military commanders, or presidents and heads of state. In other words, we tend to think of leaders as those who rise to the top of the hierarchical pyramid — those who display charisma, a “take charge” attitude, and the self-confidence to issue commands from above.”

Egotism in Leadership Can Be Countered

It takes a deliberate effort on the part of leaders to refocus and see things from a wider view. A key practice is to recognize the viewpoints of others.  Many time’s one’s weaknesses are just the flip-side of your strengths.

Find a conscious balance between:

  • Strengths and weaknesses
  • Ambition and caution
  • Confidence and doubt
  • Foresight and hindsight
  • Boldness and accountability
  • Inspiration and being grounded
  • Personal needs and the needs of others

“Don’t let your ego get too close to your position so that if your position gets shot down, your ego doesn’t go with it.” – Colin Powell

 

 

Categories
Best Practices Growth Leadership Personal Development

Motivating Leaders to Complete Difficult Tasks

Doing the Tasks that Need to Get Done

Just like eating vegetables you don’t like to eat, you have tasks and responsibilities as a leader that you really don’t like to do either. What can you do about them besides delegating them? We all have to do things that we don’t like doing.

Leadership is not just leading your employees. It also involves solving problems, challenges, and difficulties. This means you alone have some specific tasks that really only you can do.

I bet when you accepted the job as leader you didn’t expect to work on specific tasks you really hate or dislike! Well, here you are doing the things you need to do even though you would prefer to give them away to others-but can’t. As the leader of your company, how difficult do you see the tasks you perform? Some tasks are easier than others and some not so much.

 “When you come upon a difficult task…start.”
-Harbhajan Singh Yogi

Completing the Tasks on Your Plate

Completing the tasks you don’t like to do is not a new concept. Working on easy tasks requires a smaller mental commitment than if you tackled difficult tasks first. Most people believe this works best as you then have more time to spend on difficult tasks.

Successful leadership holds you accountable to the work you need to do just like with your employees. The best-performing companies have leaders instill confidence in their employees in doing the work they believe is difficult to them. Getting people to actually want to do the tasks you need them to do can be a challenge. People who have not fully committed to their tasks need the motivation to help move them forward. Many leaders need to be motivated to complete their tasks as well. This shows employees you have difficult tasks also that you have to do as well.

In order to be productive you need to accomplish things that may not be as fun as you would like, yet to get to the “fun” part of the job, the things you like to do, there are always things people don’t like to do as well. Prioritize what you have and start from there.

Procrastination or Delegating your Tasks onto Others

 

“It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.”
-William James

Procrastinating what you don’t like or want to do actually keeps the task sitting right in front of you. Maybe the easiest thing to do is to complete the task so you don’t have to think about it and it will be done. Sometimes simple tasks get put off when you find it not to be to your liking. It may be an easy task, but if you don’t like doing it, it will be the same as trying to avoid the plague.

The work you have to do as the leader is not the same as what your employees do. In pushing off your tasks and responsibilities you are not just avoiding the task but you tell others you can’t do the job. Most likely you prefer doing things your own way because you know how to get the task done by your own standards. Every task has your own unique touch that is yours. Underneath it all, you take responsibility for the work that is considered as yours.

Break Down Your Task into Small Pieces

 

“A little bit of something beats a lot of nothing. Break the largest of difficult tasks into the smallest of steps and it can be done.”
-Dan Millman

Getting started is where things get difficult. We generally like to avoid tasks we hate for as long as possible. When we finally get started, we might get stuck for ages. Focus on only performing “the next step.”

Identify and take that all-important first step. Take small steps to make the task more enjoyable and always look for smart ways to optimize it.

“When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself.”
-Karen Blixen

Inspire Others

 

“Approach difficult tasks with a positive attitude – you’ll inspire others and feel better about what’s ahead.”
-Denise Austin

Give me an example of a time when you had to motivate someone else who also dislikes doing the difficult tasks of their job.

When you love or hate a task that gets you down, that is your perception of the task. When you complete a task you like to do it tends to be because the experience is easy to complete. It gives you a sense of satisfaction. With this in mind, there are many different ways to achieve the same thing. Encourage yourself to do something you hate doing. Then change the task to make it more enjoyable. Essentially motivate yourself to complete the task by thinking of more effective and efficient ways to get the job done. After you complete your own task, give yourself a small reward.

Give It Meaning

 

“Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.”
-Theodore Isaac Rubin

Start with a task you repel and turn it into a task you are compelled to do by asking yourself an important question: “In completing this task what does it mean in the grand scheme of what I do as a leader?” You dread doing them and then don’t which leads you to procrastination. The only problem is that the task(s) still need to get done. The longer you wait, the harder it will be to get them out of the way. Don’t create any more stress on yourself than you already created to hated these tasks.

Make the Most Out of Your Time

 

“If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what’s most important and then give it all you’ve got.”
– Lee Iacocca

Know that the tasks you hate are essential to your overall success. You wouldn’t do them if they weren’t. Sometimes the most boring tasks are those you repeat over and over again. How can you best complete the task(s) you dislike or hate? You can give yourself a small reward when you complete them.

 “Remember that the most difficult tasks are consummated, not by a single explosive burst of energy or effort, but by the constant daily application of the best you have within you.”
-Og Mandino

Categories
Growth Leadership Personal Development

The Power of Trust in Your Leadership

Trust as a Leadership Tool

“Trust is like a paper once it’s crumpled it can’t be perfect again.”– Unknown Author

Grading your leadership trust by you is one thing, yet do your employees grade you the same way? You already have trust in your own leadership, and you need to earn the trust of your employees. If you don’t have trust in your leadership then how can your employees trust you?

“The trust of the people in the leaders reflects the confidence of the leaders in the people.” -Paulo Freire

Trust is one of the most powerful tools you have. How you use it can either make or break you as a leader. The question “Can I trust you?” is always there each time you interact with other people. This gets carried over as you expect specific things the other person says and does.

 “We can build our leadership upon fear, obligation, or trust. However, only a foundation of trust results in the collaboration and goodwill necessary to achieve our peak performance.” – Roger Allen, Organizational Design Expert

For many, trust is the centerpiece of leadership. Knowing that trust is the key or cornerstone of your leadership

Your Attitude

“Research shows that only 49% of employees trust senior management, and only 28% believe CEOs are a credible source of information.” – Stephen M.R. Covey

Too many leaders don’t realize that when you talk negatively to an employee, this negatively impacts their work. Sometimes this leads to a fear-based work culture that makes everyone on edge & productivity slows down. Fearful employees are rarely able to work at their best.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, discussing issues positively with your employees needs to give them the opportunity to express themselves and give feedback that will not have consequences. Look at the words you use that match the actions talked about. How comfortable are your employees to approach you with concerns or even ideas?

“It doesn’t matter how competent you are as a leader, you won’t get very far if your team doesn’t trust you.” -Heidi Grant Halvorson

The more leaders trust employees, the more responsibilities leaders give to them. The more trust employees have with their leaders, the more productive they are for them. Both statements have merit. It just depends on how you believe trust works for you.

Leaders Inspire Trust

Inspiring trust is critical. People are not willing to recognize someone as their leader unless they trust them most likely never had trust returned to them as they had it not take place when someone said they would do something for them.

Trust is confidence born of two dimensions: character and competence.

“Trust happens when leaders are transparent.” – Jack Welch

Competence – Trust is difficult in scenarios where there are significant mismatches in the combination of skills and experiences each individual brings to an endeavor.

A trusted leader maintains a calm and collected demeanor, even under fire.

“Trust starts with trustworthy leadership. It must be built into the corporate culture.” – Barbara Brooks Kimmel

Trust as a Leadership Style

Inspiring trust is critical. People are not willing to recognize someone as their leader unless they trust them. When you are the leader, it’s easy to lose sight of why people trust you to lead them. The opposite can occur depending on the specific circumstance. When leaders say one thing and then do the opposite, employees may think twice about trusting you again.

The Importance of Trust: The main questions to ask are: – Do you trust yourself? Do you trust others?

A lack of leadership development undermines a key aspect of culture that drives high-performance: trust. By first establishing the basis of trust, leaders can give responsibilities to employees. The more productive employees are with these responsibilities, leaders can trust employees to generate, create, and produce the results leaders look for. Sometimes employees go beyond as they follow you.

If your team trusts you in good times, they are even more likely to stand with you during the challenging times. Actions drive how others perceive and react to leaders.

Act With Integrity and Courage

“Trust is the lubrication that makes it possible for organizations to work.” -Warren Bemis

The commitment to act from a place of integrity.

Embracing courage requires you to be more confident in what you do. Leadership grows from courage and integrity.  Integrity builds valuable trust between people Integrity involves your moral judgment, charisma, honesty and leadership values.

Treating others the way you want to be treated demonstrates to your employees that you have the integrity to inspire them to follow you. Supporting your vision and ideas allows leaders to work with employees who can give feedback and generate ideas for greater results.

Building and Sustaining Trust

“You become a leader when people trust you… Being trustworthy is the biggest quality of a leader.” -Anant Dev Asheesh

Taking the risk in building and sustaining trust with your employees is a big task. You need to know your employees and how you can motivate and inspire them to complete the goals set out for them. Trusting your employees by empowering them to take responsibility for what they produce can extend letting go of control and not micromanage them has employees trust in their leaders. When trust is high, communication is easier and more effective.

Being apprehensive, afraid of making a mistake needs you to gain confidence as a leader. At the same time, you need to experience trust and be able to have trust in others. How well you establish trust with your employees can benefit your leadership. The more trust you have of your employees, employees can see the value of trusting you as their leader. Drawing on your skills and talent to accomplish your goals, you need to have trust in your employees and they trust in you navigating the right direction to take the organization.

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

Einstein’s Window of Opportunity

Develop Your Open-Mindedness as a Leader

Let’s take a few minutes and think about opportunities. How many opportunities come your way and you take advantage of them? On the opposite side of the spectrum, how many opportunities pass in front of you and you either miss them or decide to wait for a better one to take advantage of? If you wait for the right opportunity, you may have a long wait. Many entrepreneurs and professionals that don’t get the results they deserve often suffer from a poor opportunity mindset. Do you?

Most people don’t like to take risks, yet leading an organization is a risk as you choose which direction to take the company and what decisions you make to grow the company. Moving forward is taking a risk. In order to take advantage of any window of opportunity, you are taking a risk.

“Risk is all around us. Life is a series of calculated risks. Everything you decide to do has a margin of risk. No outcome is ever 100 percent certain but it pays to calculated risks.”

– Thomas  Oppong

Opportunity Insights

 “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” – Albert Einstein

Crisis vs. Opportunity sometimes weighs the difference and yet a crisis can turn into an opportunity as you become more aware of what happened to make things into a crisis. Putting your attention onto what lies in front of you is a telling tale of how you can shift things into an opportunity to move your company forward. Problem-solving is concerned with what is going on now, or in the very near future.

Expand Your Unique Leadership Patterns

What you need is to think about your differentiators with regard to choosing the specific opportunity that will help you move forward? Your leadership style needs to expand to look beyond where you’ve been. With creative and innovative as today’s business trend, leaders need to take advantage of what you have and what’s needed to thrive from where you were. If you don’t take advantage of these you may find yourself either being passed by losing clients and customers, or a competitor may take you over.

As you learn new things, develop different perspectives about yourself and the world around you. Look for new and fresh experiences to discover new strategies for coping with stress at work and problem-solving.

Embrace the Opportunity Mindset

“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” – Milton Berle

Where others see problems, you see potential. When others are bogged down in endless details, you see the big picture. Be open to looking at different perspective to determine what you can take advantage of. Being open to what’s out there to grow your company requires you to be aware of everything and anything whether you take advantage of it or not.

Leadership Opportunity to Grow

“If a window of opportunity appears, don’t pull down the shade.” -Tom Peters

One of the most important opportunities leaders have is to grow personally and professionally. Here are a few ways you can grow within your company as a leader.

  • By changing your habits you need to put the time and effort into implementing them. Like everyone else you have certain habits that you do Monday through Friday that differ from your weekend habits.
  • Motivating your disengaged employees needs you to get them interested in the work your company is involved in. If you first find out what these employees are interested in giving them the opportunity to be creative and innovative instead of the traditional work they have been doing. This can turn them around as they may have been great employees who need something different to work on.
  • Watch for a trend that can help you move your company forward.

People often wait for opportunities, but is it worth waiting for opportunities? Many people say “No”. The reasons are noted above, plus the fact that many executives don’t want to change what you are currently doing. What makes you comfortable can ruin you. What makes you uncomfortable allows you to grow.

“There is a window of opportunity. Whether we, I mean all of us, use it or not, well it’s another question.” –Andrei Denisov

Opportunities are out there. Too many leaders prefer to stick with what you know that are similar to what you already do. In order to thrive, you need to take chances on new ideas that can help you move forward beyond your current expectation.

“If you cannot find the distinctive opportunities you want, you can create the distinctive opportunities you want but you can’t find!” ― Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Categories
Best Practices Growth Management Personal Development

Focus on What Matters Most

Whatever You Focus on Expands

Just as a photographer focuses on taking the shot of their subject, leaders need to focus on.  Seeing things as a photographer sometimes has its advantages to a leader. You need to look from every direction to see what’s working and what’s not. Solving problems, challenges, and difficulties allow you to visualize better for what you are looking for. Imagine what your sense of accomplishment will feel like when you are able to focus and get done what you need to complete. You can actually create habits to help you focus without distractions to get things done.

“Life is like a camera…focus on what’s important, capture the good times, develop from negatives, and if things don’t work out, take another shot.” – Unknown Author

Focus means paying attention. Essentially, if you want to develop focus, develop the skill of paying attention to a particular thought, task, or goal for a specified amount of time – without allowing distractions to break your concentration. Don’t expect it to take place overnight. Be patient and pay attention each time you are about to do and say things that pull you back to your old habits and patterns.

There are so many ways where your attention gets distracted. If you want to try this out, start working on something and your phone will ring, you want to look at your emails, and then again you have someone who wants your attention to ask you something or …You get the idea. So it is very easy to focus on something you don’t need to really focus in on. Your mind wonders and your attention drifts off somewhere else.

Is Your Leadership as Focused as You’ll like it to be? 

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” — Steve Jobs

Everyone has a different meaning for the word “Focus”. The word focus means the concentration of attention or energy on something. Focus means paying attention. So if you want to develop focus, develop the skill of paying attention to a particular thought, task, or goal for a specified amount of time – without allowing distractions to break your concentration. The more you focus your attention, the more you get accomplished.

It’s easy to focus when you have a clear goal. How do you maintain your focus when you don’t have a well-defined goal, or when your mind is confused with many thoughts? Choosing what matters is incredibly hard because no one can do it for you. Staying focused on the task, clarifying the goals, articulating the vision, and encouraging others to stay the course are characteristics of determined leaders.

Prioritizing tasks is the First Step toward Working Easier

“If you focus on results, you will never change. If you focus on change, you will get results.” -Jack Dixon

The smallest things can make the biggest difference. Take a few minutes to think about how focused you are as a leader. No matter what you do your thoughts, ideas and opinions distract you from focusing on what you need to do is key to getting things done. How you manage to focus on what matters most needs you to constantly stop and re-focus to work on what’s in front of you. Focusing on where you’ve been slowing your progress.

Keeping the Focus on What Matters Most

“My key to dealing with stress is simple: just stay cool and stay focused.” -Ashton Eaton

Are your best efforts where you should place your focus? Often that focus isn’t the best direction for the company. How distracted do you get while working on a project or task? What do you do to get back on track?

“Don’t dwell on what went wrong. Instead, focus on what to do next. Spend your energies on moving forward toward finding the answer.”

– Denis Waitley

Sometimes when you focus on negative situations they can paralyze you by making you stuck. Where You Look Is Where You Go. It is very easy to lose sight of what you need to do as so much information overload comes at you every second of every day. How you keep things straight and knowing what to focus on takes skills and training.

Where You Put Your Efforts

“Focus is a matter of deciding what things you’re not going to do.” – John Carmack

Moving yourself or your organization forward requires you to focus on what you want to accomplish and where you want to go. If you continue the way you are going, most likely everything and anything will distract you. Phones rings, having to look at emails, having others asking you questions or just wanting to chat, and so on are just a few examples of distractions you need to close off.

“How can I focus on positive stuff when all I have in my life is negative stuff?” By making a choice to create a new habit and find something positive to focus on. Where you focus is your choice. What will you focus on today? When you focus on things do you notice the detail or are you oblivious to the specifics around you?

Shift Your Priorities

If you’re stuck in a rut you are unable to go anywhere. By shifting your priorities you get to think better in order to uncover valuable insights to help move you and your organization forward. You then can see other things that are more important to focus on. You are blinded by one thing that is not what matters most. The problem, challenge or difficulty may not go away, yet it does not need to be the centerpiece you focus on.

“The one thing you can always control is how you REACT to the uncontrollable.” -Dr. Alan Goldberg

Have you figured out what matters to you and your business?

In the end, Focus on What Matters Most for greater productivity and the results you work towards. You choose where to put your focus. Be aware of what you are doing to accomplish your goals.

Categories
Growth Management Skills

Transitioning From Reactive to Proactive Leadership

Are you reactive or proactive in your leadership?

As a leader you will have to respond to crisis. How will you respond?  The broad difference between the reactive and proactive leader needs to be understood in order for you to realize how you can succeed far better than you think. Proactive leaders lead by example. Leaders who plan ahead are in a better position to tackle problems before they occur instead of reactively when they pop up unexpectedly.

Requiring Change Management

Leaders who want to make a lasting impact on their organization should strive for proactive, rather than reactive, leadership. Reactive leaders wait for problems to arise before addressing them, are often running from crisis to crisis, without taking away lessons to improve the organizations and processes in which they operate. Reactive leaders have actions determined by external situations. Juggling day-to-day crises can keep you away from the things that matter most in your organization. You can’t keep your focus and concentration on the specific situations you need to.

Proactive leaders, on the other hand, take responsibility for their organization by engaging and cooperating with their team, leading by example, and always looking for ways to improve.

When you are reactive typically you make decisions as if you were in a panic or crisis mode. You may not yell, scream, pound your fists on your desk or throw things yet you make quick decisions that you may regret later. Your thinking is not focused on generating the best solution to the problem or challenge of the moment and you sometimes have to revisit the problem to rework a better solution that was not thought of initially.

Being Proactive in Your Leadership

“Opportunities will come and go, but if you do nothing about them, so will you.”

― Richie Norton

Do not procrastinate or postpone decisions. Weigh each issue as to the advantages and disadvantages of what will work within your organization. Don’t just put a temporary fix on something you may forget about. See what works and what does as you ask questions and challenge traditional assumptions and beliefs.

Maintain Your Perspective

“Proactive people focus their efforts on things they can do something about. The nature of their energy is positive.” – Stephen Covey

When you look upon the crisis as a challenge, what is your frame of mind? Instead of responding by reacting, think first to understand what is in front of you. Then think of what you can do to solve the situation. This is being proactive.

When people react, it seems to be defensive. Having a calm demeanor helps you focus and concentrate on decisions that align with the strategy of your business. Being more open to solving situations and not putting a band aid on a temporary fix requires you to get to the root of the problem.  A response is more active, and it can change the direction of an interaction or situation. Able to step back from the day-to-day details and see the big picture proactive leaders can anticipate situations and plan ahead of time for any situations that may get in the way of productivity.

Inspiring Others

“Great leadership does not mean running away from reality. Sometimes the hard truths might just demoralize the company, but at times sharing difficulties can inspire people to take action that will make the situation better.”

-John Kotter

By working with employees, teams and or in brainstorm sessions, employees can listen and give feedback to leaders for the specific assignments given to them. Listening carefully without jumping to any conclusions, proactive leaders are able to see another perspective than that of their own. In doing so, working with your employees and getting their feedback and opinions demonstrates how well leaders can take criticism.

Employees work better when they respect their leader. Not knowing how the leader will respond to situations can have employees on edge. If the leader reacts to situations, most employees will try to avoid being where the leader is at. On the other hand, if an employee works with a leader who inspires the employee, then the employee will respect the leader and want to do a better job for the leader.

Every Leader Has the Power of Choice

Recognize the choices you have instead of automatically reacting to situations. Reacting happens when you don’t know what to do or don’t automatically think of any options or action steps to take to reduce or resolve the situation. When you realize you have choices you need to start doing so with other situations you encounter all the time. You will make better decisions that way.

By focusing on the positives and learning from the negatives concentrating and focusing on the things you can control is where you can start to move forward. Proactivity or proactive behavior needs anticipatory change on a consistent basis. This is aligned with today’s business creativity that helps your business thrive. Choose how to act as to the type of leader you want to be. Which one will help you succeed as a leader?

What specific actions could you take today that would make a difference no matter how small that may be?

“Stop waiting for things to happen. Go out and make them happen.” – Jane W. Lee

Categories
Growth Leadership Personal Development

Importance of Humility in Your Leadership

What comes to mind when you picture a leader with humility? Most people typically think of a leader as someone who has charisma, possibly a big ego or even someone who is an influencer. On top of this there are many leaders who think a leader takes charge, has authority or a position to tell others what to do or to win influence over others because of self-accomplishment. That isn’t leadership, it is power and they are two very different things. If you want to be seen as a leader, stand out or emerge as a leader in your work or life, then likely that stems more from the desire of power than it does from leadership. Leadership is nothing about you, it’s about others.

Humility might not be the first quality that comes to mind when you think of leadership skills, but studies are showing that it is one of the most vital characteristics of successful leaders.

“The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don’t mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.” -John Ruskin

One important component is often overlooked: humility. Humility is not cited as often as some other character traits in leadership literature. Since not all leaders read or go by the same leadership guide book, you need to look to your values and see what makes the most important way to lead and to motivate employees for greater productivity. Humble leaders may fly under the radar and be passed over for hiring or promoting. Humility might not be the first quality that comes to mind when you think of leadership skills, but studies are showing that it is one of the most vital characteristics of successful leaders.

In its broadest sense humility is defined as “1) self-awareness, 2) appreciating others’ strengths and contribution, and 3) openness to new ideas and feedback regarding one’s performance. Leaders who are humble have a better grasp on organizational needs and make better informed decisions about task performance.” – Dr. Robert Hogan, the creator of the Hogan Assessment.

Contrary to popular opinion, humility is not a sign of weakness – it’s a sign of strength. Great leaders know who they are; they know what they want; and they believe in their ability to achieve their goals. At the same time, great leaders understand that they cannot achieve their goals on their own – that they rely on others to accomplish what they cannot do themselves.

Research confirms that humble leaders are more effective.  Admitting you don’t have all the answers creates opportunities for learning and builds trust, establishes credibility and provides an example of how to deal with uncertainty.

 “Two things define you:  Your patience when you have nothing and your attitude when you have everything.” – Kristin K Pmanny

How you interact with people is important especially in a business relationship. Some believe that humility in leadership feeds your overall effectiveness. Humility I is too easily dismissed as a leadership quality because people associate it with weakness. Yet managers who exhibit traits of humility–such as seeking feedback and focusing on the needs of others–resulted in better employee engagement and job performance.

Humble Leadership Empowers Others

“Humility does not mean you think less of yourself. It means you think of yourself less.”

-Unknown as many are credited for this quote.

True humility also requires courage and trust that stem from the leaders’ confidence in themselves and their abilities. Humble leaders help employees gain new skills and become more proficient at their jobs.

Being Open to the Opinions of Others

Seek input from others to ensure you understand all the facts before making decisions. No one has all the answers. Humble leaders value the opinions of others rather than ignore or dismiss them.

Admit to Making Mistakes

Sometimes, it’s important to admit that you don’t know the best answer, and wait until you have the best information to make a decision or change. True humility requires courage and trust that stem from the leaders’ confidence in themselves and their abilities.

Self-Reflect

Like many leadership skills, humility may not come easy to everyone. One of the most powerful tools is to write in a journal. By journaling, humble leaders can go back and see how you can better handle situations. There’s always room for improvement.

Let Their People Do Their Jobs

Micromanaging kills morale. Allowing your employees do their work may need you to check with them from time-to-time. Sometimes sitting in on their brainstorm sessions gives you the opportunity to understand how they do what they do. Acknowledging others’ opinions and ideas shows strength and competence, and that you’re not threatened by others’ valuable contributions. When people feel valued, they’re more productive, which creates a positive atmosphere.

“Pride is concerned with who is right. Humility is concerned with what is right.”

-Ezra Taft Benson

Let me know how this fits within your leadership and how I can help you.