Blog

How do your voice and touch connect with your employees and community? Find and share your voice. Do you round on employees and the community? Do you write? Whether you use your voice or not, your behavior expresses your values and beliefs and reveals who you are. Leadership is a job that calls for serious meddling in people’s lives, and while you must have a voice, your work is not just words; you must act.

Leaders need the ability to look at issues the same way as their employees or community. Problems that arise should create a new reality, one of failure, unfairness, and experience. What perceived boundaries occur, and can you pull out the best of individuals and their gifts? How do you have the right action with well thought out thinking?

Integrity is essential as leaders are out in the open for all to see. As a leader, you are accountable for others, and using your voice and touch makes you personally vulnerable. It’s all leadership.

Have you ever felt assaulted with information and lacked the wisdom to handle the input? Knowledge is where mentoring or coaching places a role in assisting growth as a leader. Mentoring is a two-way street. Two-way street because each can discern what the other cannot as your backgrounds are different. As a leader, you can be a mentor. Leadership Jazz articulates that mentoring is a process of becoming, not an unimpeded march to perfection. There are unlimited possibilities if you are open to gaining wisdom.

Have you noticed that good relationships are rooted in gratitude? We have discussed how critical relationships are in life, at home, work, and within a community—practice good relationships at home where mistakes are forgiven quickly. Your work and community give leaders a golden opportunity to learn and grow relationships while gaining new meaning into what you believe and the voice you choose to use.

Through behavior, gratitude is expressed. As a leader, does your behavior show gratitude?

Emotional intelligence and relationships are the real power to getting things done within any organization.

The capacity to handle emotions and build relationships drive success more than task or positions. Emotional intelligence gives the ability to make immediate rapport and is critical when facing a tense situation or having difficult conversations. People who have the gift of empathy and concern are the opposite people who only want to argue their position without regard for others. Spotting people with low emotional intelligence is easy: defensive when receiving feedback, judgmental, arrogant, insensitive to other, bully, and poor management of time.

You will see people who understand the importance of relationships are eager to interact with others in the organization and community. They are grabbing coffee or lunch with colleagues. Daniel Goldman states that intelligence puts emotions at the center of aptitudes for living, and these abilities can preserve our most prize relationship, people. After all, our feelings guide us in facing predicaments and tasks too important to leave to the intellect alone. Emotions in the workplace are more valuable than IQ.

Have you been around people who seemed to have no control over their emotions? One of the reasons people lack emotionally controlled is the understanding that their feelings are one part of their beings and are not their boss. Self-control is something that can be learned as an adult if not learned as a child. Feeling needs no permission to show up or go away, and they ebb and flow like waves on an ocean floor. Now, it would be nice if they would ask permission to show up, but they don’t. They do their own thing and without warning. As leaders, learning how to take care and manage emotions can change reactions and feelings. Managing reactions and feelings is emotional intelligence. Next, we will cover topics around emotional intelligence.

Coping with the loss is one of life’s biggest challenges, and there is no “normal” timetable for grieving. Today, in California, people have lost homes due to fires; people are losing jobs due to Coronavirus. The pain of any loss is individualized. If you have had a loss, face your grief, and actively deal with it. Find family or friends that you can share and show your real feeling. If you are someone who cries, then cry. If not, that is OK. If you hear that there is a timeframe for grieving, ignore it; your timeline will be different. As you move on with your life, keep the memories close, let the loss define who you are in a good way.

Lessons I have learned during loss; take care of yourself physically and mentally as you move to the acceptance stage of grief. Kübler-Ross herself never intended for the five stages of grief to be a rigid framework that applies to everyone who mourns; after all, emotions are messy, and there is no typical loss. Remember aspects of living and loss are unique to each person.

If you are a leader who has experienced loss, you will be able to be the shoulder that one of your staff may need to lean on.

How is your leadership and questioning skills? You need both to be an effective leader. At no time is this more important than defining performance issues and identifying the underlying causes. Is there clarity when giving direction and support? Do you adjust how you lead others based on their level of readiness?

The Center for Leadership Studies has defined four situational leadership readiness principles. The interventions are different based on where the individual is on the journey to be a leader. Put perceptions aside and time spent preparing, assessing, prescribing, developing, reinforcing, and following up to develop a leader.

There are many gifts you can give your leaders or employees. Watching a leader grow and develop is one of the rewards you receive back.

A question asked multiple times in my career is, how do you become a successful CEO? While this has many answers, an outstanding determinant is to continue to replicate your best leadership behaviors in those around you and bring people in the fold versus setting them apart. Your people want to absorb, as well as propagate, exemplary behaviors.

No matter how flat your organization, you will always need to interact with all employees. If you need a foundation for dialogue, ask for help. The conversation is vital; employees are free agents who can go wherever they choose. Employees typically respect positional power, and you have the opportunity to use dialogue as a legitimate motivator.

As an executive, have you been lulled in believing that you were filling your purpose by repeating the tried and true leadership formula? Repetition is no longer a guarantee for success in today’s economy. It is time for a new leadership style, a shift from management to leadership based on outlook and attitude. Management is about rigidity, and leadership is flexibility allowing for adoption in a shifting environment. Leadership is taking responsibility, initiative, doing the right thing, and excelling during these shifting times.

Leadership is creating value; it is available to all who treat their people as responsible adults and encourages all to act in the interest of mutual success. Leaders are promoting a sense of individual worth and community and diligently directing activity towards an agreed-upon outcome. Managers motivate, whereas leaders inspire. Inspired companies are winners. In business, there is a need for fewer managers and more leaders.

What is your route to leadership? Who is your coach?

Gone should be the days when a single prescribed answer in the world of executives suffices. The paint by numbers world where “this is the way we do things” should be part of your dim past. As leaders, and especially executives, embrace self-development and learning. At a time when there is no longer a guaranteed work for life, embrace learning for life. Cycles of business are shorter than ever before, and competition greater. Now is the time to learn and apply gained knowledge at work. Leaders need knowledge and skills to cope with situations as they arise, such as; troublesome colleagues, starting a new venture, becoming more visible, and communicating more effectively. Take the opportunity to learn on the job while keeping up with the pace of demands.