Many people say that great leaders are simply born, but in our opinion they must be grown. While someone can start out with the capability for great leadership, they will not achieve greatness without the skill set and willingness to move forward. Here, we have compiled some expert tips on what it takes to become a great leader. Use this as part of your educational component, and start to grow your leadership abilities.
“On this week’s question and answer episode, Bonni and I responded to questions on stepping into leadership, handling insubordination, influencing without authority, and sticking to strategy. Here are the most useful links from this episode: Full audio and show notes Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play* by Mahan Khalsa, Randy Illig, and Stephen R. […]” https://coachingforleaders.com/stepping-into-leadership/
Treat all of your employees well and never get involved in office gossip. Employees are usually happier in an environment where their work is appreciated and valued on the same level as any other employee. Spend time working with all of your employees so that you understand each person’s contribution.
“Conflict is a basic and inevitable part of the human experience. Workplace conflicts have been around as long as workplaces have. Sometimes we even experience conflict within ourselves that we must resolve. Most of the time, we think about conflict as between two or more people, between two groups, or in existing in multiple directions […] The post Your Definitive Guide to Leadership and Conflict Resolution appeared first on John Mattone. ” https://johnmattone.com/your-definitive-guide-to-leadership-and-conflict-resolution/
Hire a diverse group of people to help build your business. Diversity will enable you to have many different perspectives within your company. Do not just hire people that are like you. This stifles innovation within your team. It also risks failure based on compounding your personal weaknesses.
“One of the hardest challenges to overcome as a leader is something many people don’t even consider: yourself. Often, it’s not resources, desire or incentives that hold us back. It’s something deeper. As a coach, I discovered that ‘limiting beliefs’ are extremely common place in the workplace. Even if you set out to embrace failure as an inevitable part of building products, managing people, and growing businesses, that plan rarely survives contact with the real world.
Here are limiting beliefs that you might find at your company: ‘I don’t belong here’; ‘They don’t belong here’ ‘I can’t do it’; ‘They can’t do it’ ‘I’m not worthy’; ‘They aren’t worthy’ ‘I don’t matter’; ‘They don’t matter’ But in reality, things are rarely as clear cut. Limiting beliefs are wrapped up in the questions we ask and the excuses we give, and where we focus our time and energy. They often manifest themselves as a persistent worrying, around questions such as, ‘Am I good enough?’ Do you recognise these patterns in your company? While much of the research focuses on social issues, the underlying techniques can be applied, with care, to your company. Try these four techniques to create wise interventions that will help your team to flourish.
1) Harness the power of positive labels We all have a need to belong. Positively labelling the group of which we are a part — and any ambiguous or challenging situations that our group faces — can nudge us in the right direction. One study found that asking citizens, ‘How important is it to be a voter?’ increased voting rates more than an alternative question, ‘How important is it to vote?’ It turns out our need to belong to a group is often a stronger motivator than our need to act in a certain way. In another study, disciplinary letters sent to struggling college students were adapted to describe the grounds for the discipline as ‘reasonable challenges facing students’ — a more inclusive and less stigmatizing wording than the college’s standard disciplinary letter. By de-personalising the issues, those students receiving the reworded letter demonstrated higher rates of re-engagement at school, compared to those who received the standard letter. How to apply this to your team: Create a positive-sounding label to describe the people at your company and use it to foster a sense of belonging. Be clear that the challenges facing your team are common and reasonable to anyone that wants to achieve something difficult.
2) Prompt new interpretations (without giving any answers) It’s not enough simply to tell someone what their new beliefs are. Participants need to own their beliefs, and the best way of achieving this is for them to come up with an adaptive interpretation by themselves. A carefully-crafted leading question can cause people to reinterpret information that otherwise reinforces a fixed mindset. For example, social workers have noticed that abusive parents often view abuse as evidence that either ‘I’m a bad parent’ or ‘they are bad kids’. By asking variants of, ‘What else might it be?’ social workers encouraged the parents to come up with a more adaptive interpretation by themselves — ‘Maybe they just need some more sleep,’ for example. This small intervention was shown to radically reduce further abuse compared to other interventions. Another technique is to provide specific information that supports a new interpretation. In another study, students were taught that physiological arousal during tests (i.e., stress) means that the body is getting ready to accomplish something important. Simply altering the interpretation of stress raised GRE performance months later. How to apply this to your team: If you catch a fixed mindset, ask the question: ‘What other ways are there to interpret this?’ Use Thomas Edison’s famous reframe: ’I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.’
3. Leverage ‘saying is believing’ Finding out that we hold conflicting beliefs feels uncomfortable. Psychologists call this ‘cognitive dissonance’. To avoid this discomfort, we all have a motivation to see our own behaviours and attitudes as consistent. Some of the most effective wise interventions leverage this by getting us to say something out loud. One approach is called ‘pre-commitment’. In a classic study, when a random selection of beach goers were asked to watch another person’s belongings, 94% of them chased down an accomplice who attempted to steal a radio, compared to 20% of those who weren’t asked. Agreeing to a behaviour in advance increases the likelihood of following through. An even more powerful technique is to ask participants to teach others about a particular idea. In another experiment, asking college students to advise struggling middle school students about a growth mindset raised the college students’ semester grades. When we say something out loud, we’re more likely to internalise it. How to apply this to your team: Ask new employees to commit to giving constructive feedback quickly rather than holding back and letting it build up. Get existing employees to teach new recruits about your company’s cultural values, rather than presenting those values yourself.
4. Encourage active reflection Researchers have shown that just answering certain questions, without any other information, is enough to change how meaning is made. You can lead people to develop a more adaptive view on their own by setting open-ended writing exercises that actively reflect upon personal values, existing conflicts, and future challenges. In another study, married couples were asked to identify a conflict in their marriage.
Then, they spent seven minutes writing answers to three questions (paraphrased): What would a neutral third party who wants the best for all think about the conflict? In your relationship, what obstacles do you face in trying to take this third party perspective? How might you be most successful in taking this perspective in your interactions with your partner in the future? By repeating this process three times over the course of a year, the couples’ marriages were positively impacted, as compared to a control group, leading the media to dub the study, ‘The 21-Minute Marriage Cure.’ How to apply this to your team: Ask open questions in performance reviews that allow employees to reflect on how they live your cultural values. In a challenging situation, try the question: ‘What would a neutral third-party who wants the best for all say here?’ Magic Bullets? Wise interventions themselves aren’t enough to generate positive outcomes. The setting must also offer opportunities to learn. However, if psychological obstacles go unremedied, improving opportunities to learn will not be fully effective. While the results of wise interventions can be statistically significant, interventions won’t work for all the people, all the time.
However, their potential to help participants foster new mindsets that lead to better results — and the short amount of time they take to set up — mean it’s worth asking how you can use them in your company. As Henry Ford said, ‘Whether you believe you can, or you can’t — you’re right!’” https://www.dave-bailey.com/blog/how-to-remove-limiting-beliefs-from-your-team
Always listen to feedback. The opinions of your employees are important and can be helpful. Some criticism might be hard to take, but try to be receptive to it. Make sure your workers know they can come to you with any feedback they might have. Point of views that differ from your own are valuable.
