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Marketing Personal Development

A Celebration Cocktail Each Executive Should Know How to Mix!

A Celebration Cocktail Each Executive Should Know How to Mix! 

By Judith E. Glaser

Great leaders identify, measure, recognize, and reward meaningful efforts and achievements—and celebrate often with the people involved.

Why should managers and leaders celebrate more?

Creating a feeling of celebration helps meet people’s needs for inclusion, innovation, appreciation, and collaboration. Our brains are designed to be social – and the need for human contact is greater than the need for safety. The research by Matt Lieberman and Naomi Eisenberger, scientists at UCLA, has shown that feeling socially excluded activates some of the same neural regions that are activated in response to physical pain, suggesting that social rejection may indeed be “painful.”

Those companies practicing celebrations as part of their conversational rituals open up their employees to make them feel part of the company’s common success, enable them to have the confidence to challenge the status quo, take ambitious initiatives, and share their creative ideas with others.

How might the disciplined practice of celebration change the culture of a company?

From my study of The Neuroscience of WE™, and my work with executives, I know that celebration has a big impact on individuals, teams and companies.   It literally works wonders in the brain.

Scientists are learning that our brain is more changeable than we ever imagined—our brains exhibit neuroplasticity.  Our brain neurons can change their physiological properties in response to outside factors.  That is how babies develop and learn.  As we grow older we do not lose that ability to learn and modify our responses to things that happen.  In fact, we now know that a percentage of our genes, can be impacted by the environment – these changes, called epigenetic changes, are part of neuroplasticity as well – however they open up a whole new set of insights about the power of conversations to change fundamental and long lasting changes to our character – yes nurture is as or more powerful than nature!

The Ingredients of Healthy Celebration Cocktails
Neuroscience explains what impact you as a leader can have on healthy physical and emotional changes of your team by having positive celebrations and intelligent conversations.

  • Celebration Conversations elevate the level of such “feel good” chemicals as oxytocin and the endorphins – neuropeptides produced in the central nervous system. Their release into our system gives us a sense of well being, creating a safety space that enables us to experiment, take risks, learn and handle the challenges of growing the business.
  • Serotonin that is boosted by cheering and pleasant conversations is widely known for transforming lazy people into enterpriser, low performer into go-getters, and skeptics into supporters. For individuals or teams, serotonin adds focus, support innovative or disruptive solutions, increases motivation and can even transform stress into success. 
  • Researchers found that by having positive conversations during celebration time you trigger basal ganglia system that releases the neurotransmitter dopamine. This chemical communicates with the brain areas in the prefrontal cortex to allow people to pay attention to critical tasks, ignore distracting information, and update only the most relevant task information in working memory during problem-solving tasks.

What Makes Us Feel So Good?
Recent studies by numerous researchers show that the basal ganglia facilitate learning, with dopamine important to the process. One way that these behavioral routines are encoded is by the processing of reward information.

Wolfram Schultz, a principal research fellow at the University of Cambridge in England, studies how the brain processes reward information. “When something is really good, you go back for it again,” he says. “ Thus, by praising the accomplishments a leader, we are contributing to creating healthy behavioral patterns that will be repeated more often.  Celebration and dopamine is a reward to our brains like treats are to animals.

  • While elevating the level of “feel good” hormones with positive conversations, the level of cortisol is significantly lowered. Cortisol has been shown to damage and kill cells in the hippocampus (the brain area responsible for your episodic memory) and there is robust evidence that excessive cortisol shuts down learning, creates anxiety attacks, can cause depression, and premature brain aging.
  • The words of acknowledgement, encouragement and support, especially when granted to a person under much stress, calms her amygdala mediated response – of fight-flight-freeze – allowing her to move into a more thoughtful and calm state.

When we converse openly with others, we are sharing our inner world, our sense of reality, to validate our reality with others.  We are measuring the levels of trust in our relationship to determine whether we can partner with others. The quality of our conversations depends on how open or closed we feel at the moment of contact. The neurochemical reactions in our brains drive our states of mind, and these affect the way we communicate, how we shape our relationships, and how we build trusting relationships with others.

When we receive public praise and support, we unlock these powerful set of neurochemical patterns that cascade positive chemistry throughout the brain. Highly motivated employees describe the feeling of performing well as an almost drug-like state.

When this state of positive arousal comes with appropriate, honest, and well-deserved (sincere) praise, employees feel they are trusted and supported by their boss. They will take more risks, speak up more, push back when they have things to say, and be more confident in their dealings with their peers.

Judith E. Glaser is CEO of Benchmark Communications, Inc. and Chairman of The Creating WE Institute. She is an Organizational Anthropologist, and consults to Fortune 500 Companies. Judith is the author of 4 best selling business books, including her newest Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust and Get Extraordinary Results (Bibliomotion, 2013) Visit www.conversationalintelligence.com; www.creatingwe.com; jeglaser@creatingwe.com or call 212-307-4386.

Categories
Marketing Personal Development

A Celebration Cocktail Each Executive Should Know How to Mix!

A Celebration Cocktail Each Executive Should Know How to Mix! 

By Judith E. Glaser

Great leaders identify, measure, recognize, and reward meaningful efforts and achievements—and celebrate often with the people involved.

Why should managers and leaders celebrate more?

Creating a feeling of celebration helps meet people’s needs for inclusion, innovation, appreciation, and collaboration. Our brains are designed to be social – and the need for human contact is greater than the need for safety. The research by Matt Lieberman and Naomi Eisenberger, scientists at UCLA, has shown that feeling socially excluded activates some of the same neural regions that are activated in response to physical pain, suggesting that social rejection may indeed be “painful.”

Those companies practicing celebrations as part of their conversational rituals open up their employees to make them feel part of the company’s common success, enable them to have the confidence to challenge the status quo, take ambitious initiatives, and share their creative ideas with others.

How might the disciplined practice of celebration change the culture of a company?

From my study of The Neuroscience of WE™, and my work with executives, I know that celebration has a big impact on individuals, teams and companies.   It literally works wonders in the brain.

Scientists are learning that our brain is more changeable than we ever imagined—our brains exhibit neuroplasticity.  Our brain neurons can change their physiological properties in response to outside factors.  That is how babies develop and learn.  As we grow older we do not lose that ability to learn and modify our responses to things that happen.  In fact, we now know that a percentage of our genes, can be impacted by the environment – these changes, called epigenetic changes, are part of neuroplasticity as well – however they open up a whole new set of insights about the power of conversations to change fundamental and long lasting changes to our character – yes nurture is as or more powerful than nature!

The Ingredients of Healthy Celebration Cocktails
Neuroscience explains what impact you as a leader can have on healthy physical and emotional changes of your team by having positive celebrations and intelligent conversations.

  • Celebration Conversations elevate the level of such “feel good” chemicals as oxytocin and the endorphins – neuropeptides produced in the central nervous system. Their release into our system gives us a sense of well being, creating a safety space that enables us to experiment, take risks, learn and handle the challenges of growing the business.
  • Serotonin that is boosted by cheering and pleasant conversations is widely known for transforming lazy people into enterpriser, low performer into go-getters, and skeptics into supporters. For individuals or teams, serotonin adds focus, support innovative or disruptive solutions, increases motivation and can even transform stress into success. 
  • Researchers found that by having positive conversations during celebration time you trigger basal ganglia system that releases the neurotransmitter dopamine. This chemical communicates with the brain areas in the prefrontal cortex to allow people to pay attention to critical tasks, ignore distracting information, and update only the most relevant task information in working memory during problem-solving tasks.

What Makes Us Feel So Good?
Recent studies by numerous researchers show that the basal ganglia facilitate learning, with dopamine important to the process. One way that these behavioral routines are encoded is by the processing of reward information.

Wolfram Schultz, a principal research fellow at the University of Cambridge in England, studies how the brain processes reward information. “When something is really good, you go back for it again,” he says. “ Thus, by praising the accomplishments a leader, we are contributing to creating healthy behavioral patterns that will be repeated more often.  Celebration and dopamine is a reward to our brains like treats are to animals.

  • While elevating the level of “feel good” hormones with positive conversations, the level of cortisol is significantly lowered. Cortisol has been shown to damage and kill cells in the hippocampus (the brain area responsible for your episodic memory) and there is robust evidence that excessive cortisol shuts down learning, creates anxiety attacks, can cause depression, and premature brain aging.
  • The words of acknowledgement, encouragement and support, especially when granted to a person under much stress, calms her amygdala mediated response – of fight-flight-freeze – allowing her to move into a more thoughtful and calm state.

When we converse openly with others, we are sharing our inner world, our sense of reality, to validate our reality with others.  We are measuring the levels of trust in our relationship to determine whether we can partner with others. The quality of our conversations depends on how open or closed we feel at the moment of contact. The neurochemical reactions in our brains drive our states of mind, and these affect the way we communicate, how we shape our relationships, and how we build trusting relationships with others.

When we receive public praise and support, we unlock these powerful set of neurochemical patterns that cascade positive chemistry throughout the brain. Highly motivated employees describe the feeling of performing well as an almost drug-like state.

When this state of positive arousal comes with appropriate, honest, and well-deserved (sincere) praise, employees feel they are trusted and supported by their boss. They will take more risks, speak up more, push back when they have things to say, and be more confident in their dealings with their peers.

Judith E. Glaser is CEO of Benchmark Communications, Inc. and Chairman of The Creating WE Institute. She is an Organizational Anthropologist, and consults to Fortune 500 Companies. Judith is the author of 4 best selling business books, including her newest Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust and Get Extraordinary Results (Bibliomotion, 2013) Visit www.conversationalintelligence.com; www.creatingwe.com; jeglaser@creatingwe.com or call 212-307-4386.

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

Finding the Lions Within Your Organization

When we talk about the challenges of remote work, the first thing that comes to mind is those that employees experience. However, employers have their fair share of challenges too – ensuring productivity, making sure employees feel connected to the organization. Employers have to solve the problems for the organization to survive.

Another particular area of concern is the lack of opportunity for teamwork and collaboration. The physical separation of employees and the continued reliance on remote teams can often lead to issues with collaboration. Remote work has, in some ways, caused employees to miss out on getting “chance” encounters, which is often the catalyst that births new ideas.

When employees are in the same office, it is “easier” to make people understand the tasks assigned to them. If and when an employee has a question, a quick walk to a colleague’s or manager’s booth can easily get answers. Remote work hinders this.

Remote work presents several issues, however, many of the challenges of working remotely that affect both the employees and employer can be resolved by effective leadership. A leader who can prioritize regular communication, provide the right equipment, and adopt a degree of flexibility in working arrangements when possible is indispensable to organizations.

But the question now is how do you find Lions who are up to the task within your organization?

Internal Leadership Development

This is where internal leadership development comes into the picture. This is a program that provides training to individuals so that they can become effective leaders and players within an organization. Most programs focus on developing and polishing a prospective leader’s abilities to handle crucial responsibilities in an organization by teaching them the dos’ and don’ts’ of a successful leader.

Why is this important? We submit there are two main factors why it’s beneficial for organizations to “build from within.” First, there’s no better place to look for employees who understand your business than those who are already in it. Second, it gives the employees a tremendous boost in morale to see one of them take on a more active role in running the business. It gives them an idea that as long as they are loyal and provide results, they can also be part of the leadership.

Starting an Internal Leadership Development Program

Your internal leadership development program does not have to be complicated. In fact, the simpler it is, the more effective it will be. What’s important is that, first, you have to define the leadership roles of your organization. Leaders function better and more efficiently if they have complete knowledge and understanding of the leadership goals set by the organization.

Second, focus on development versus training. Leadership is a culmination of various skills acting in unison – charisma, the skill of persuasion, the ability to negotiate, and the ability to see the bigger picture. Thus, instead of teaching people how to do this, pick people who have shown results AND already possess these skills and develop them.

This will help participants acquire skills that can help them become efficient leaders.

Bottomline

There are numerous benefits of leadership development programs. Thus, you must come up with a development program that reflects your work culture while aiming to fill the leadership gaps within an organization.

The responsibility for creating the leaders of the future lies with the leaders of today. If you want to learn more about the intricacies of leadership development programs and enter the business sphere, you can visit MarketAtomy.com to know more.

 

Danna Olivo is a Growth Strategist, Author, and Public Speaker. As CEO of MarketAtomy LLC, her passion is working with first-stage business owners to ensure that they are prepared and equipped to launch and grow a successful small business. She understands the intricacies involved early on in business formation and as such the challenges that come with it. A graduate of the University of Central Florida’s College of Business, Danna brings more than 40 years of experience strategically working with small and medium businesses, helping them reach their growth goals. danna.olivo@marketatomy.com

Categories
Growth Leadership Personal Development

What an Orchestra Can Teach Your Company About High-Performance Teams

Do you ever feel like you’re conducting an orchestra? It’s hard to get all the people and parts moving harmoniously, isn’t it?

On a recent episode of Talking Business Now, I talked with Maestro Roger Nierenberg, the founder of The Music Paradigm. Nierenberg believes organizations can learn many critical lessons from orchestras, including insights into team collaboration and how to be more productive.

The Music Paradigm is an immersive learning experience Nierenberg created for business leaders, using actual orchestras. Company participants discover how the orchestra mirrors their company’s own culture.

Nierenberg made his New York conducting debut at Avery Fisher with the Pro Arte Chorale and Orchestra. He’s conducted numerous American orchestras as well as several abroad, including recording with the London Philharmonic and conducting at the Prague Spring Festival and the Beijing Festival. While he was with the Jacksonville Symphony, he made an astute observation after listening to many business and civic leaders: the challenges and opportunities organizations face during times of rapid change could be demonstrated with an orchestra. The Music Paradigm was born.

The format itself is simple enough: customized two-hour sessions consisting of a pre-meeting, the session with the orchestra and follow-up discussions. Nierenberg meets with the leadership team to explore their challenges and goals. He then creates interactive exercises for the orchestra designed to bring the company’s issues to life.

Next, the organization’s participants are seated within the orchestra. As participants observe the musicians, they focus on the dynamics at play. Because the orchestra is mirroring the actual dynamics of the company , participants discover some surprising and fascinating lessons about dysfunction, diversity and leadership.

“I’m asking them to adopt certain behaviors that are very much like the kinds of behaviors that either they want to bring about in their own organization, or else, they don’t want to admit that it’s holding them back,” Nierenberg said. “And so the orchestra becomes kind of a mirror for them to look at themselves and see themselves more clearly than they can in real life.”

Afterwards, Nierenberg conducts a discussion with participants about what they have just experiences and the key lessons that can be drawn.

If you’re interested in more details about The Music Paradigm and what your organization can learn from it, click here to listen to the full podcast.

Categories
Best Practices Culture Growth Management Personal Development Technology

Changes in Manufacturing: How Will Different Generations Adapt?

We categorize everything, from sub-genres of music to which foods are the healthiest. But most categorization occurs between generational differences in the workforce and what success means to both, especially in manufacturing.

The Change Curve of Manufacturing

In recent years, the change curve of manufacturing has gone from a static line to an extreme slope. In the past, we all knew what manufacturing was, and safely assumed we knew where it was headed. But ongoing technological advancements are uprooting that sedentary perspective, and the change curve of manufacturing is now an upward climb. What the industry and job market of manufacturing were isn’t where manufacturing is today, or where it’s headed.

That change curve also has an effect on what manufacturing jobs will be in the future, and how they will differ from what they were in the past. That Hard Trend changes how we categorize success, and to us as employees in manufacturing, the word is taking on a whole new meaning. Much as we once “knew” where jobs were headed, we used to have a polarized view of what success meant. For many Baby Boomers in manufacturing, it meant working at a company until you retired, doing the repetitive and often dirty jobs to make ends meet. The paycheck you got at the end of the week meant you were successful.

But the younger generations entering the workforce have an entirely different view of life, success, and jobs in general, let alone jobs in manufacturing. Digital technology, additive manufacturing (i.e., 3D printing) and the internet of things (IoT) are already here and — in most cases — making our lives easier. Everyday tasks that used to take some time to accomplish are now shortened through the use of ever higher-tech devices, which are a constant in the lives of members of younger generations who grew up with them.

Take, for example, telecommunications. Baby Boomers grew up viewing landlines and cordless phones as appliances. Millennials see laptops and smartphones with instant messaging as appliances. Now, the next generation already sees its mobile devices and wearables as appliances. We all categorize, but that categorization changes with the times.

Different generations adapt to technology and define success quite differently.

Different generations’ adapt to technology and define of success quite differently. Also, the fact that many Baby Boomers remain in the workforce as younger generations enter the same industries is increasing the generational divide. The younger generations’ outlook challenges the past definitions of success; to millennials, for example, “success” has much to do with how much they love what they do. The Baby Boomer generation measured success differently; however, if they plan on staying in their jobs, they must open their minds to these trends and let go of the categorizations that further the generational divide.

All generations must rely on one another more than ever before, as more generations will be working together than ever before. While young generations may learn about “the old-school work ethic” from older generations, older generations can and should learn from younger generations about how to apply new tools to old tasks and reinvent the industries they are in.

For example, automation is becoming more capable and widespread, whether we like it or not. Those back-breaking, repetitive jobs discussed earlier are increasingly being taken over by machines. This shouldn’t be viewed as a bad thing; however, many members of the older generation worry about losing their jobs to robots, or believe that dependence on technology makes us weak or lazy. The younger generation can teach the older generation not to fear radically new ideas, but embrace them as progress and learn how to work alongside them.

Job Mentoring and Automation

The same can be said for older generations teaching younger generations about their work ethic and the importance of integrity, trust, and earning those things in the workforce. Forty years of experience can’t be taught via YouTube, but it can be taught in on-the-job mentoring of a younger worker who’s just starting out in manufacturing. Some things, automation will not replace, and all generations can learn to thrive in the future from one another.

We will spend the rest of our lives in the future, so perhaps we should spend some time identifying the Hard Trends that are shaping that future. You should be asking yourself questions about how your career is evolving, how people are evolving, how you can embrace new technology like you embraced past technology, and how to keep your mind open and learn from members of other generations instead of shutting yourself off from new ideas by categorizing everything. Embracing new technology can change the dynamic of the manufacturing workforce while learning from the past to foresee potential problems of the future and pre-solving them before they happen.

Are you anticipating the future of your career? If you want to learn more about the changes that are ahead and how to turn them into an advantage by becoming anticipatory, pick up a copy of my latest book, The Anticipatory Organization.

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

8 Tips to Clear Out the Leadership Clutter Before 2019

As we wind down the year, we’re told as executive leaders to start thinking about goals and resolutions for the New Year. But before you rush off willy-nilly into what new projects and initiatives you’re going to tackle in the next twelve months, you might need to think about what you’ll let go of so that you can make room for the new stuff.

For instance, I was in a Sunrise Yoga class the day after Thanksgiving, sweating my you-know-what off, and our instructor encouraged us to check our thoughts about the past and our worries about the future at the door.  “Because, you see,” he went on, “you need to get rid of all of the toxins and all of that ‘crap’ to make space for what’s possible right now.”

I began to think about how true this is, not only in yoga class, but in life in general. Now don’t get me wrong, we all have days when we feel like the “hot mess express,” and I’ve certainly had my share of those days. Please don’t hit delete and move on to your next email or pressing item, but hang with me for a moment. I promise I won’t get all soft and new agey on you.

My family can tell you I love to do some purging of stuff around the house and office. I’m like the anti-hoarder (I think that at times my kids have been afraid that I was going to haul them out to the curb, too!). But I just love the clean, light feeling of making space in my physical environment. My mantra has long been “outer clutter = inner chaos.”

This runs true in organizations as well. We all have to clear out the clutter in our leadership practices, as well, so that we can have room for new, improved, and exciting ways of doing things.

8 tips for clearing out your leadership and organizational clutter:

1. Kick the status quo to the curb. Similar to cleaning out your closets, just because it’s familiar, doesn’t mean it’s your best look. Get out of your comfort zone. Often we hold onto shoes, habits, and ways of doing things because they’re familiar, and “that’s the way we’ve always done it.” (Or those are the shoes we usually wear with those pants/that dress.) Shake things up a bit.

2. Reassess and ditch processes and systems that have become inefficient. Tom Peters said “Over time, even a beautiful system tends to get elaborated and elaborated. We end up serving the system instead of having the system serve us.”

3. Sweep out those snarky thoughts about people. “Assume the best, and confirm the rest.” Assume positive intent.

4. Stop spending time with those soul-sucking people who drain the life out of you. This will create space for you to be able to invest in the people who add value to your life.

5. Clear your calendar of meaningless meetings. Or find a way to make them meaningful. Ask yourself if each meeting is a productive use of your time. If it’s not, could the information be shared via email? Save the meetings for the things that need to be batted around, cussed, and discussed, eyeball to eyeball.

6. Get rid of those habits that aren’t serving you. Addicted to your phone? (BTW, NO one ever admits this.) Try setting some boundaries for yourself. Put them away during more of your interactions so that you can really be present to your team.

7. Banish bureaucracy. Organization expert Cynthia Kyriazis said, “Clutter is symptomatic of delayed decision making.” Same is true in organizations. When “the boss” has to make each and every little cotton-pickin’ decision, he or she usually become the bottleneck. Bureaucracy is the clutter of many organizations today, and it slows everything down and creates resentment and frustration.

8. Dispose of the stuff and focus on creating experiences.  For the past few years, my husband and I decided that instead of buying a bunch of stuff for our kids for Christmas, we instead wanted to create experiences and make memories with them. We invested in family vacations, gone to Jazz Fest, and spent a lot of time fishing and beaching together. How could you replicate this in your work? Could you be more intentional about how you want people to experience you?

Of course I’m not telling you to be a neat freak, nor do I want to insinuate that I am a neat freak, because I most definitely am not! But, just like we need to clear out the physical clutter in our homes and offices, we need to regularly clean up and clear out the metaphorical clutter in our leadership and organizations.

CHIME IN:

  • How will you make this “purging” a regular practice going forward?
  • What habits or practices will you get rid of to make space for new and improved ways of doing things?

To receive solutions to your people problems in your inbox every month, and to receive our report: “7 of Your Biggest People Problems…Solved,” click here.

You might also like:

Leadership Team Accelerated Results Program

Why Your Employees Should Stop Thinking Like Employees

Stay Home From Your Next Leadership Conference

Jennifer Ledet, CSP, is a leadership consultant and professional speaker (with a hint of Cajun flavor) who equips leaders from the boardroom to the mailroom to improve employee engagement, teamwork, and communication.  In her customized programs, leadership retreats, keynote presentations, and breakout sessions, she cuts through the BS and talks through the tough stuff to solve your people problems

Photo

 

 

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

The Step Executive Leaders CAN’T Skip Before the New Year

Year after year, the holidays coincide with the end of the year and all that entails. I feel your pain, truly I do. Back in the day, I would get caught up with the holidays and all that they entail, (which I still do, of course), and then jump into planning, goal setting, and resolution making for the New Year.

But I’d skipped a valuable step. I’d neglected to reflect on the past year. While it’s easy to fast forward to future visioning, I’ve come to realize that it’s important to take the time to take inventory on the past 12 months.

Reflecting on the year past is not some soft, fluffy, airy, fairy activity, but rather, can have hard-core, bottom-line business impact. Whether you’re a leader, manager, supervisor, a wannabe, or a dog or a cat person, trust me, this stuff works. Whatever your current role or your aspirations, if you want to advance your career and certainly if you want to become a better executive leader, you have got to commit to learning and growing. And that’s precisely why you need to make sure you thoroughly process and digest your experiences.

Socrates said,

“An unexamined life is not worth living.”

Maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but I do think there is value in taking time to pause and reflect.  One way to do this is to celebrate the wins and digest the lessons. Incorporate the best and eliminate the worst.

Think in terms of MOLO – More Of, Less Of.

What do you want to create more of in your life and what do you want to have less of in your life?

I aim to take time during the last week of the year to conduct my own year-end review. This has actually become a ritual that I look forward to and plan for. You can conduct your own review any way you like. My suggestion is to set aside some time (anywhere from an hour to a full day or more), grab a notebook and pen, disconnect from all, uh, distractions, (namely your texts, email, etc.), and go to a place where you won’t be disturbed.

Ponder these executive leadership questions as you sip your beverage of choice:

1. What gave you the feeling of great accomplishment? Think in terms of what you did really well and how you might replicate that. What do you want more of in 2019?

2. What, or who, are you most grateful for? Feel free to go crazy on this one.

3. What would you do differently if you’d known then what you know now? What do you want less of in 2019?

4. What did you learn? What skills, knowledge, or awareness did you develop?  How are you different this year from last year?

5. What relationships did you nurture or develop?

6. Jim Rohn said that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Who did you spend time with?

7. Who did you look to as a mentor? Who did you mentor/teach/coach?

8. How did you increase your value to your organization? To your direct reports? To your clients or customers?

So before popping the 2019 New Year’s champagne and jumping right into goal setting and resolution making, take time to reflect. I hope these six questions have sparked your thinking and prompted you to take stock of the past year.

WHAT’S YOUR TAKE?:

  • What reflective questions would you add to this list?
  • How do you conduct your year-end review?
  • Pop a comment below and share your practices, ideas, and suggestions with our community.

For more resources on leadership and employee engagement, be sure to sign up for our monthly Ezine and you will receive our report: “7 of Your Biggest People Problems…Solved.”

You might also like:

8 of the Best Kept Leadership Communication Secrets

Serve as the Work Culture Thermostat, Not a Thermometer

Ten Tactics for Leading Through Tough Times

Jennifer Ledet, CSP, is a leadership consultant and professional speaker (with a hint of Cajun flavor) who equips leaders from the boardroom to the mailroom to improve employee engagement, teamwork, and communication.  In her customized programs, leadership retreats, keynote presentations, and breakout sessions, she cuts through the BS and talks through the tough stuff to solve your people problems.

Photo

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

Executive Leaders: Give a Different Kind of Gift this Holiday

As I considered what I wanted to write about this month, I read through the feedback cards from the leaders in a recent program I’ve been doing for an organization in Mississippi. What’s cool about this organization is that they really connect the dots between leadership development, employee engagement, customer engagement, and ultimately, the bottom line. Not to brag, but I’m happy to say that we received consistently positive, glowing feedback. Okay, I guess that was a bit braggy, I digress. The comments that I received over and over from this and from many of my programs, is that I helped leaders to see what they may not have seen or struggled to see about themselves, and this will help them to be better leaders.

As I was walking through the airport recently I saw a service dog walking with a gentleman who was blind. As I walked along, lost in my own thoughts, I realized that we are all a bit blind in one way or another.

Before you can lead others, you must be able to lead yourself. So self-awareness, or intra-personal info is necessary before you can build inter-personal relationships. We always work on self-awareness first in my coaching and leadership development programs, and we do this by having everyone complete a self-assessment. Heck, this is our starting point regardless of what kind of program I’m facilitating, and regardless of the participants’ roles within the organization.

And we don’t stop there. We pay it forward. We give the gift of this self-awareness to team members, so that everyone in the organization is speaking the same language.

But, back to my guide dog analogy. As a leader, your job most often involves serving as a coach for your team members. Your role is to help them to see what they can’t see about themselves. You guide them around potholes and missteps, and help them to learn from every experience.

If you would like reveal the blind spots in your leadership and your team members and give the gift of self-awareness this Christmas, here are a few quick tips:

Understand that every team member has a preferred way of doing things and accept that your preferred way isn’t the only way. Have everyone on your team take a self-assessment. But for the love of all that is holy, don’t stop there. Get some good coaching to help everyone interpret and understand their results. Just handing someone a report and expecting them to read and interpret it on their own is a complete waste of time and money (or as my Mama would say, “That and a dollar will get you on the St. Charles streetcar!”).

Ask open-ended questions. Influential leaders don’t necessarily have all of the answers, but they do ask great questions.

Use stories, analogies, and examples to give context to what you want your team members to really get. Remember, people would rather use Tabasco for eye drops than listen to someone lecture! Tony Robbins says it a little differently: “Information that is not attached to emotion is not retained.” Stories evoke emotions. Use em’.

To be a good coach, you need to have a good coach. Hire one. I did. Professional athletes do. It’s pretty hard to see the label when you’re inside the wine bottle… er, or as my coaching client said recently, “ I don’t know what I don’t know, Jen. That’s why I need you to help guide me along this leadership path.” A good coach helps you to not only see your own blind spots, but to identify and leverage your strengths.

Invest in team and leadership development. Notice I said invest. You should be able to expect ROI, such as improved communication, amped up employee engagement, enhanced customer service, and ultimately, a beefed-up bottom line. And don’t forget to measure the results.

As a coach, your role isn’t so much to teach people WHAT to think, but rather to teach them HOW to think – for themselves. It’s a fine distinction, but you don’t want to create order takers who need to be spoon fed and told what to do. By asking for their ideas, opinions, and suggestions, you’ll help them to think in terms of solutions and options.

Be a lifelong learner. You can’t give to others what you haven’t first learned. ‘Nuff said.

In my experience, most people need a guide on the side, a coach to help them along the way, because we’re all a bit blind in one way or another. What a way to spread your love and appreciation to your team members! Just remember that this is an ongoing process, a journey, and it’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Jennifer Ledet, CSP, is a leadership consultant and professional speaker (with a hint of Cajun flavor) who equips leaders from the boardroom to the mailroom to improve employee engagement, teamwork, and communication.  In her customized programs, leadership retreats, keynote presentations, and breakout sessions, she cuts through the BS and talks through the tough stuff to solve your people problems.

To receive solutions to your people problems in your inbox every month, and to receive our report: “7 of Your Biggest People Problems…Solved,” click here.

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9 Ways Leaders Can Prepare Key Players for the Unexpected

What if one of your key players:

  • got a once-in-a-lifetime job opportunity and left your organization?
  • was in an accident?
  • had a family emergency and was out for an extended period?
  • God forbid, died suddenly?
  • got sick and was in the hospital?
  • won the lottery and said adios amigos?

This week has been a bit challenging, but nowhere near the catastrophe it could have been. My computer hard drive unexpectedly crashed. Since a majority of my work and business are contained on that hard drive, it truly could have been devastating. Fortunately, though, I was prepared with backups to a local external drive and to an online/cloud service. So, yes, it has been inconvenient, but I didn’t lose data thanks to my backup plans.

This experience got me to thinking about how, as leaders, we need to make sure that we have backups for our people, not just our data. Would you be prepared if some unforeseen event happened?

I know no one wants to think about such things, but as an executive leader, you have a responsibility to ensure that your business operations could continue if some unforeseen event like this happened. Pulling the covers over your head, burying your head in the sand, or sticking your fingers in your ears won’t help you if one of the above events occurs. (I know. I’ve tried.) Author Ryan Holliday says that we should literally engage in negative thinking. For you leaders, that might mean thinking about worst case scenarios so that you can set up contingency plans to deal with the unexpected challenges that might crop up.

Organizing a contingency plan for your people is just good business. While many think that succession planning is just the HR Director putting names in boxes on an organizational chart, it’s actually about thinking ahead and being prepared, and yes, even thinking about the worst case scenario. And BTW, succession planning isn’t just for the CEO. If you’re a leader of a division, department, or a small business, you still need to think about this and be proactive. And repeat after me: It doesn’t have to be complicated.

Steps that you can take to jump-start your succession planning:

1. Start today. There’s an old Chinese proverb that says: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” Identifying and prepping someone to step into a leadership role can take some time, but you’ll be so glad you did if the unexpected happens. Just do it.

2. Don’t go it alone.  Get your leadership team, your board, and any other stakeholders involved. You’ll want their input and perspective on this.

3. Discover the skills and strengths of team members. If you’ve never taken the time to do this, the whole process will be beneficial for everyone involved. You may unearth a latent talent or strength that a team member has never put to work for your organization. Ideally, you want to have everyone working in their areas of strength so that they’re making their maximum contribution to the organization and they’ll feel engaged and dialed into their work. (If you’d like some help with this, give me a call. We’ll work with you to determine the best tools to help you tap into the strengths of ALL of your team members.)

4. Identify high potential leaders. Regardless of their current role, look for people who exhibit the characteristics and strengths needed to be successful in the leadership position.

5. Include high potential leaders in strategy discussions. Show him the big picture so that he has context and a broader perspective of the organization.

6. Assess your high potential leaders’ interest, willingness, and enthusiasm for taking the reins one day. No matter how good you think he might be, if he says he never, ever wants to be in a leadership role, you may need to look for someone else.

7. Offer coaching and training to top performers. How will you need to invest in her today, so that she’ll be ready tomorrow? While she may have the technical skills necessary for her current role, she’ll likely need some help with things like communication, delegation, coaching, and performance management.

8. Identify talent gaps. As you go through the process of identifying high-potential leaders within your organization, make note of where you may be lacking talent or skills.  Keep your succession plan in mind when hiring and recruiting and see if you can fill those gaps.

9. Refresh, revise, update. Your succession plan doesn’t have to be complicated, but it should be a living document that you update regularly as people, circumstances, and the business environment change.

Working through this process may open your eyes to the strengths and talents of the folks you’ve already got on your bench. And from my experience, helping your employees to recognize their strengths and putting them to work will cause them to be more engaged and eager to contribute their best.

Succession planning, like backing up the data on your computer, may seem like a task you can put off to another day. I encourage you to view it as insurance against a business-busting catastrophe. Just do it. You’ll be glad you did.

Jennifer Ledet, CSP, is a leadership consultant and professional speaker (with a hint of Cajun flavor) who equips leaders from the boardroom to the mailroom to improve employee engagement, teamwork, and communication.  In her customized programs, leadership retreats, keynote presentations, and breakout sessions, she cuts through the BS and talks through the tough stuff to solve your people problems.

For more resources on leadership and employee engagement, be sure to sign up for our monthly Ezine and you will receive our report: “7 of Your Biggest People Problems…Solved.”

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Growth Management Personal Development

The ONE Program Your Company is Missing

I see young business professionals entering the workforce, and they’ve got all the technical training out the wazoo (now, that’s a technical term for ya!) and often they’ve got degrees to the point that it looks like alphabet soup behind their names, but they are far from having what it takes to be successful in today’s work environment.

They really need a guiding hand, tips, strategies, and techniques for how to APPLY their training and education in the real world of their job. What they need in short, mon ami, is mentoring.

“What exactly is a mentor?”

A mentor is someone who commands a certain degree of respect, either by virtue of holding a higher-level position, or because of experience doing the job. Mentoring is most often defined as a professional relationship in which an experienced person (the mentor) assists another (the mentoree, mentee, or protégé) in developing skills and knowledge that will enhance the less-experienced person’s professional growth. A mentor takes a special interest in a person, and in teaching that person skills and attitudes to help him succeed. Think Mr. Miyagi and Daniel-San from the movie The Kirate Kid. 

A term that you often hear in Cajun country is comme ca`, which translates literally to “like this/like that”. As a kid when a parent or grandparent was teaching us something, they would say, “Comme ca” as they demonstrated the task. In a similar way, a mentor is someone that a less experienced employee can go to and ask questions, have a task demonstrated, and generally bounce around ideas.

Companies who are on the right track are creating structured mentoring programs to help less experienced team members get acclimated quickly and start progression in their career.

Here is what you are missing out on if you don’t have a mentoring program:

1. Orienting the new employee to the organization’s culture. Knowing the culture is almost as important as doing the job well. Job satisfaction comes not only from good performance evaluations but also from feeling that she fits in, has friends at work and can be herself.

2. Talent Development. A mentor can help the new employee learn the skills particular to this position, apply their education or training on the job, and most importantly, develop the confidence to perform the job well.

3. Knowledge sharing. With baby boomers retiring at record rates today, organizations are suffering major “brain drain” as retirees take all of their knowledge, experience, and wisdom with them as they head for Margaritaville. Mentoring partnerships offer opportunities for knowledge sharing and tapping into knowledge capital within the organization.

When I took one of my first real “big girl” jobs, I was so fortunate to have an executive leader take me under her wing. Her advice and counsel were invaluable to me. Whether or not your organization has a mentoring program, you can become a mentor.

Suggest the creation of a mentoring program within your organization. If that doesn’t fly, there’s nothing to prevent you from taking on a protégé on your own in an informal capacity. Sure, I know you’re busy, but just think how much knowledge you have and how much you could help an uncertain, insecure young team member find his way in the wild world of your organization!

How to be an effective informal mentor:

  • Be the guide on the side, not the sage on the stage. Remain on the sidelines and let her make her own mistakes. Just be there to help her up after she falls. Provide guidance and suggestions when asked, but don’t take it personally if she doesn’t go with your suggestions.

 

  • Give generously.  Just like Zig Ziglar said, “You can have anything you want if you just help others get what they want.” If you give unselfishly of your time and knowledge, you will get so much back in return! Besides, the lagniappe (added bonus) that you get is that you become known as the trusted go-to guy/gal, which only increases your value within the organization.

 

  • Been there, done that? Share insider secrets. With your experience, surely you’ve made some mistakes in your day. Share with your mentee any landmines – and shortcuts – that you may have discovered along the way.

Mentors are good for the mentee, good for the mentor, and absolutely good for the organization. If you were fortunate and blessed to have someone who took you under their wing, the best way you can honor that person is by taking a mentee under your wing. Don’t pay them back, but rather, pay it forward.

Comment below:

What great experiences have you had with a mentor?

Who is in your life that could learn from you?

Jennifer Ledet, CSP, is a leadership consultant and professional speaker (with a hint of Cajun flavor) who equips leaders from the boardroom to the mailroom to improve employee engagement, teamwork, and communication.  In her customized programs, leadership retreats, keynote presentations, and breakout sessions, she cuts through the BS and talks through the tough stuff to solve your people problems.

For more resources on leadership and employee engagement, be sure to sign up for our monthly Ezine and you will receive our report: “7 of Your Biggest People Problems…Solved.”

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Why You Shouldn’t Bother with Strategic Planning Until You First Do This

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