How to Level Up Your Leadership Skills in 2019

 

As we gear up for a new year, now is the time to strengthen your leadership skills for 2019 and ensure that you are effectively leading your organization toward achieving its goals. Here are three things you can do now to prepare for the future.

1. Hire an Executive Coach

An executive coach’s goal is to help you become the best version of yourself. Executive coaches become trusted thought partners and are just as invested in you reaching your goals as you are.

Many executive coaches serve as accountability partners for their clients by encouraging them to work toward their professional goals and holding them accountable for any actions that don’t help them move toward those goals. Additionally, an executive coach can help you unlock hidden talents and realize your potential, ensuring that you are aware of your capabilities as a leader and are consciously working toward developing those talents.

An executive coach serves as a non-biased resource to develop new ways to implement the information you’ve learned. Executive coaches can also help you build more productive relationships with your colleagues and staff and learn how to improve your interaction with people from different cultures and backgrounds.  In addition, an executive coach can also help you identify talent within and outside of your organization. As companies continue to make strides toward added diversity within their organizations, it is important that leaders are able to adapt to those changes.

One way to do adapt to those changes in a positive way is by enhancing your communication skills. Why? Because learning to listen to your colleagues and staff is just as important as the instructions you give them. Executive coaches can also help you strengthen your active listening skills and teach you ways to respond to challenging situations for the best possible outcome.

Anything you share with your coach is kept confidential; usually, executive coaching is conducted face to face, on the phone or via Skype and other video communication applications.

2. Take professional development classes

Professional development is a must for all business leaders. Business leaders who consistently seek ways to improve themselves can positively affect the internal climate of an organization.

Professional development classes can benefit you by helping you learn new methods of leadership and refine some of the traits you already have. Additionally, professional development can also serve as a way for you to teach others within your organization and field.

When it comes to professional development, you don’t always have to be the one taking the class. You can also be the person leading a class on leadership and other industry related trends that you’ve mastered as a professional.

3. Engage via social media

As we advance further into the digital age, more business leaders are stepping out from behind the scenes and making their presence known on social media. Taking some time to engage with your organization’s digital audience via social media helps establish you as an expert; it also adds a personal component to your organization’s online interactions.

Engaging with your organization’s customers and potential customers is a great way to add a human element to your company’s brand identity.  It helps you to appear personable and gives customers the idea that they know you and what you value.

Engaging with customers or clients can be as simple as commenting on trending topics on social media. Though these topics may not necessarily relate to your company’s brand, they may be important to your organization’s online audience. Personally delivering news to your organization’s online followers about new products, services, and or initiatives is another way for the public to put a face with the brand they love. Also, if you enjoy writing, publishing a blog on industry related topics and sharing those blog posts on social media is another way to connect with customers.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, being a leader requires continuous focus and intentionality, so be sure that you use all the tools at your disposal to become the best leader for your organization. Your reputation as a professional relies on your ability to relate to those around you and gain respect from your supervisors, peers, and direct reports.

Leadership consists of many different traits, but one of the most important characteristics is the ability to be led.  Gathering insight from your customers by engaging on social media, learning through professional development, and hiring an executive coach are all ways to be influenced and aid you in your efforts to become more effective.

As Q4 comes to a close, assess where you were last year at this time and ensure that you are continuing to work toward your year end-goals. Ask yourself questions such as:  Have I taken the necessary steps to be the leader I aimed to be this year?  Am I on target to meet my year end professional and organizational goals? What part of this year was challenging for me?  What changes am I planning to make in order for it to be less challenging in the future? Then,  take that information from your assessment and use it as a plan to close out Q4 on a positive note and bring in a strong 2019.

Let’s share experiences. Leave a comment below, send me an email, or find me on Twitter.

 

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Unhappy At Work? 5 Ways To Coach Yourself Out Of It

 

“It doesn’t matter to me,” Jack said hostilely.

That was the fourth time I’d heard that reply while reviewing his 360. A 360 is a process where feedback is gathered from an employee’s subordinates, colleagues, and supervisor(s), and also includes a self-evaluation.

No matter what I said, he had an angry reply, always reminding me that it didn’t matter to him what his staff thought of him.

The Problem Child

I gave up on the 360 and shifted the conversation. “What does matter to you?” I asked. “Why are you here?”

Jack’s response astounded me. He started to explain, still in an angry tone, why he did the line of work he did—leading a team of international relief workers—then stopped himself abruptly. He hesitated to elaborate—but his emotions got the best of him. As he started to speak, he went from angry to tears in the blink of an eye. “I do this for the children who are ripped apart from their families and left without love or access to education,” he explained in a highly emotional state.

Blaming the Boss

Okay, so it does matter to him, I thought. But the conversation quickly shifted. Jack started berating his boss, blaming him for making his life miserable. This same shift in topic happened multiple times. Jack would blame his boss for his lack of engagement, I’d bring him back to focusing on why he does what he does, and then he’d go back to speaking angrily about his boss. He even told me he hated his work.

Trying to Care

After a lot of back and forth, I asked Jack what his key takeaway was from our conversation. He replied that he’d try to look at what mattered to his colleagues. Ok, I thought—I’ll take that as a win!

While Jack is an extreme example of someone unhappy in their workplace and unable to take responsibility for their actions, this scenario is quite common. In fact, many of us have found ourselves in the same situation: We hate our jobs. Our bosses make us crazy. We behave poorly as a result of that hate and craziness. But we can’t see through our anger to understand that we can improve our situations with a little effort. Organizations often provide workplace coaching training from time to time to its employees.

Five Action Steps to Take When You Find Yourself Angry and Stuck in Your Work

So what can a person do when they find themselves in this uncomfortable predicament? I recommend you hire a coach. But if that’s not possible, start with these five action steps:

1. Self Coach

If you are not working with a coach, you can be your own coach. How do you do this? You ask yourself questions and journal your answers. I recommend the following questions:

·         What is in my control?

·         What is out of my control?

·         What is my role in this situation?

·         What does success look like? 

2. List 10-15 ways to get to your idea of success, no matter how silly they may be.

For example, let’s use Jack’s goal to see what mattered to his colleagues.

He could:

·         Ask his colleagues why they do the work they do

·         Share why he does this work

·         Host a lunch where people share why their work matters to them

·         Ask his boss to talk about why his work matters to him

·         Gather information on the impact they’re having on families

·         Make a video of the team’s most impactful work

3. Commit to an action step no matter how small. And define it clearly.

For example, in the case of Jack, he might ask himself: What does “looking at what matters to his colleagues” look like? Does it look like engaging employees by initiating check-in meetings/conversations? Does it look like showing up on time? Does it look like attending work functions?

These behaviors must be specific—and things that you can measure daily or weekly. Jack may see that he had zero check-in meetings with team members one week, and two the next. He can then identify that he’s making progress.

4. Find an accountability partner for your commitment.

Accountability (link) is a key element to following through with commitments. Let someone know what you are working on. Then set meetings weekly or every other week to check in. Ask your partner to hold you accountable for what you said you were going to do.

5. Celebrate every small win, no matter how small.

Celebrating small wins really does matter. And the findings of a multi-year research project, conducted by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, prove it. They asked 238 people to send a confidential electronic “diary” at the end of each day. In the diary, they ranked their inner work life—their stream of perceptions, motivations, and emotions throughout the day. Also, they were to describe one event that stood out for the day, related to work. The analysis of 12,000 daily diaries showed that the best days included a simple event: making progress on meaningful work. They called this The Progress Principle.

They write:

This pattern became increasingly obvious as the diaries came in from all the teams in our study. People’s inner work lives seemed to lift or drag depending on whether or not their projects moved forward, even by small increments. Small wins often had a surprisingly strong positive effect, and small losses a surprisingly strong negative one.

Those small wins are important and you should celebrate them—even if they are tiny! What does celebrating wins look like? Here are some ideas:

·         Bring yourself a special lunch

·         Take a walk in your favorite nearby park during a work break

·         Meet a friend for a quick coffee and catch up (be sure to share your progress!)

If you care about your job but find yourself in a negativity loop that is impeding your performance and/or relationships, don’t give up. There are actionable steps you can take to improve your situation. If you can hire a coach (link), you’ll be giving yourself the best chance for success. In the meantime, try using the steps above to self-coach. And good luck!

Have you been in Jack’s situation before? Were you able to come out of it? I’d love to hear about it.

Let’s share experiences. Leave a comment below, send me an email, or find me on Twitter.

 

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The Critical Role Coaching Plays in Developing Your Employees

 

Each day, leaders spanning the globe are discovering the positive impact that coaching employees can have on their organization (and bottom line). Managers are discarding outdated notions of being ‘the boss’ and instead, they are creating an increasingly nurturing environment by offering support and regular feedback to their employees.

 

Not only is this an approach that employees want (dare say desire), it is also proven to be one of the best ways to improve individual and collective performance (Entrepreneur).

 

Read on to find out more about the role coaching plays in developing your employees and improving your organization’s performance, and learn how you can incorporate coaching into your day-to-day operations.

 

What is coaching?

A coach is someone who helps another person (or group of people) improve, grow and enhance their level of effectiveness in their personal life, professional life, or both.

 

This is largely done by creating a dialogue that leads to awareness, assessment, and action steps. Coaching in the workplace is the practice of equipping your workforce with the tools, knowledge, and opportunities they need to be the best version of their professional selves.

 

An effective coach is someone who assists an individual on their path to improvement, usually with regards to a specific work function or responsibility, by listening, supporting, motivating, encouraging and teaching them (Forbes). The goal of coaching employees is to help the employee to discover for themselves the ways that their attitude or approach may be limiting their success. Identification of these things will enable the employee to take action to move the needle in the right direction.

Coaching for managers and leaders works in much the same way. And if you think that as a manager or leader you don’t need a coach or coaching, you need to chisel that chip off of your shoulders. After all, even the best athletes, actors, and CEOs have coaches and continually work on self-improvement.

Managers are critical to the success of any business, yet often managers are not equipped with the skills they need to get the best results from their team. Coaching can help managers in areas such as developing self-awareness, whilst also encouraging knowledge transfer and enabling them to support their own workforce.

 

The benefits of coaching employees

There are many benefits to coaching your employees. Coaching can lead to improved learning, increasingly efficient work output, a positive shift in culture, improved morale, increased creativity greater adaptability to change and improving employee retention (Forbes).

 

Coaching employees could also help you retain your workforce by improving their overall work experience. Coaching employees can improve factors such as employee performance, productivity, job satisfaction and general happiness. Combined, these factors lead to better employee retention.

 

Empower employees to become more self-reliant

Coaching your employees is a great way to encourage them to look for the answers to their questions before reaching out to a senior team member. Empowering your employees to become more self-reliant will boost their confidence and initiative, leading to a more self-sufficient way of working (Kent State University). This will save you valuable time that could be spent more productively.

 

Communicate more openly and effectively

In taking the time to open up a one-on-one dialogue with your employees, you are giving them the opportunity to express themselves. This can require dedication and patience, but a good coach can gain useful insight through communicating with their employees. By opening up a dialogue, coaches can break down barriers, enabling employees to communicate more effectively and honestly (Wright State University College of Business).

 

Value and Confidence Lead to Greater Contributions

Coaching your employees often helps them feel valued and more confident. When employees feel this way, they are more likely to offer a contribution to the rest of the team. This results in a more proactive, productive and positive working environment for everyone.

 

Enhanced Productivity and Focus

A productive workplace is built on the foundations of teamwork, combined with a shared vision of what the organization is striving to achieve. Coaching can help employees feel a more robust sense of this shared vision. When employees and leaders feel this way, they are inclined to give more of themselves to the role.

 

Support and Encouragement

Coaching your employees is a great way to show care and support for them. Supported employees are more likely to feel happy and secure in their role, reducing the likelihood of them looking elsewhere for work.

 

Improved Confidence Shines Through in Deliverables

No matter how skilled your employees are, if they lack confidence, chances are they aren’t performing as well as they could be. Employees who are lacking in confidence can also require more of your attention. Building confidence can take time and energy but the benefits are worth it. Confident employees are more likely to deliver a long-term impact for you, your team and for themselves.

 

Bolstered Job Satisfaction, Retention and Quality

 

When your employees are feeling more confident, empowered and supported, they are more likely to feel greater satisfaction in both their job and their personal life. Employees who are satisfied in their role are more likely to stay there longer (Institute of Coaching).

 

Coaching employees to prevent major performance issues

Coaching employees can also help to navigate major performance issues before they arise. By speaking to and learning more about your employees, you can identify potential issues before they become a problem. By helping employees to learn skills such as self-awareness and self-analysis, you are also giving them the tools to identify potential performance issues themselves and take steps to rectify them. This can avoid costly and time-consuming issues later on.

 

The importance of coaching for managers

Many companies make the mistake of reserving coaching for their most senior staff members and forget to coach mid-level managers and potential future leaders. Coaching mid-level managers or potential future leaders in the organization can help companies retain their top talent and meet business objectives well into the future. Coaching skills don’t come naturally to every manager and this skill gap can quickly impact team morale when a team member is promoted. By identifying and coaching the employees who are most likely to become leaders, you are paving the way for a more satisfied and collaborative future workforce (Harvard Business Review).

Your employees want a coach, not a manager!

Many companies are embracing an employee-orientated approach to working with their people and recognizing the benefits of shifting towards this model. They are focusing on coaching and supporting their employees to improve their performance. Coaching for managers can be the difference between gaining compliance from your employees and gaining real commitment.

It is important to remember that employee coaching doesn’t just benefit the individual. Moving towards a more employee-oriented approach can benefit the whole organization, making coaching one of the best investments you can make for your business. For more information on how coaching can help you to develop your employees, please get in touch.

Let’s share experiences. Leave a comment below, send me an email, or find me on Twitter.

 

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