Archive for Leadership
Managing Change
Posted by: | CommentsManaging change in the workplace is a constant job function for a supervisor. The change might be as simple as a new customer service
policy, or it might be as impactful as merging with another company where job layoffs are inevitable.
What makes change easy or difficult to deal with is how your team adapts to it. And how your team adapts to it has a lot to do with how you as a supervisor manages the change.
Some people are exhilarated by change, and even need regular changes in their job duties to be happy, but many others hate change, and are even terrified by it. Rolling out a big change might even turn your best team member in to a difficult employee due to their fears. You’re not just managing the change itself, but helping everyone adjust to it and, ideally, even embrace it.
There are a couple things that you absolutely need to do in order for it all to work…….
- Be consistent….. Sounds simple but often overlooked. Keep your message and behavior consistent.
- Keep is simple…. The more complicated you make something the more your people will resist it.
- Communicate….. Often and clearly!
- Be optimistic….. Look at the positives for anything, it’s you JOB and responsibility to sell the program, that’s what your company pays you for! The trick is to listen to your team, be sincere, and keep it positive.
- Lead by Example! Do NOT let yourself breath a word of negativity about the change, not even to your support staff!
Communicate Frequently
The biggest key to effectively managing change in the workplace is communication. Just as you want to know what changes are coming and what they mean for you, so does your team.
With changes come rumors. One way to stop, or at least reduce rumors, is to keep information flowing both ways. As soon as it’s feasible to start communicating the changes, do so, even if you don’t have all the information yet. Give information to your team and take viable team concerns to your supervisors.
Communicate Honestly
People appreciate honesty, even if it’s bad news they’re receiving. For instance, if jobs will be lost during the change, let them know some jobs will be eliminated and why. Let them know when this will happen so every day they’re not wondering “is today the day.”
One thing that can hurt your credibility is if you give them a “sales job” and they can tell. You need to focus on the positives. If there are some negatives it’s okay to acknowledge them, a good way to move the conversation forward is to have a brainstorming session as a group some effective ways to overcome whatever negatives.
This doesn’t mean there will be no hard feelings. But it will go smoother.
Engage Others
Some on your team may embrace the changes coming. Use them to help allay fears with the others on your team.
Empower those on your team to help with the changes if possible. Even better, engage them in the decision making process if at all possible – even if it’s a small part of it. When people have a say in the change, they will embrace it quicker.
If you have group meetings use a dry erase board or maybe a giant piece of paper. Brainstorm benefits and difficulties, everything anyone can think of. Then systematically go through each item and ask the group which things they control. Most things on the list are usually controllable and as a group it helps eliminate mental road blocks.
Plan, plan, then plan some more.
Good planning before the change is essential to a smooth change transition. Make sure your plan includes in-depth communication to the employees, has contingencies for issues that might arise during the change, and is clear on who is responsible for which parts of a change.
Even the smoothest change may still ruffle feathers. A change that is undeniably for the best is likely to meet with resistance, as odd as it may sound. Some people just hate change. You’re more likely to see this among the older generations and among employees who have been around a long time, doing the same thing year after year. They tend to like the predictability. They do what they do, how they do it, because “that’s what we’ve always done”.
The key with that group is make sure you don’t minimize them, if you do you risk alienating them. Some of the most tenured employees can be your strongest allies, you can’t afford undermining your leadership by mishandling them. I always had to be aware of this tendancy in myself because I love change and new things, but I learned to always be aware of political capital and use it. Use it or lose it.
If you have a group meeting you can also use it as a productive way to do some planning. Involve the group, get some ideas, you will usually be happy you did and it will make your job easier.
But you, armed with a plan and strong communication, can win them over.
Management Topics
Posted by: | CommentsAhhhh…………. Being a manager………….. 
I can’t count how many times over the years I’ve had managers tell me they are “tired of baby-sitting”, “why should I have to tell them over and over”, and add your own……..
But managing is essential and doing well can be a more rewarding experience than you can imagine, from “thank you” cards, seeing subordinates get promoted and be successful, to getting your own promotions.
I can remember a couple years ago telling an Assistant Manager how impressed I was with him and I bet he would go far. He said, “You know, you are to thank for where I am.” I looked at him, not knowing what he meant, so I asked him what he meant. “You interviewed me a couple years ago, you were leaving that building the next day because you were promoted and you told me I could go as far as I wanted with this company”, he said, “Don’t you remember that?”
Sadly, no I didn’t….. Why? Because I did hundreds of interviews and in almost every one I could see potential in those people.
The same thing happened with another manager, I had worked with her when she was a department supervisor, she was promoted and in passing one day I congratulated her for her promotion. She said, “It’s all thanks to you because you always told me I could be anything I wanted.” Of course I didn’t remember because I said that to many people over the years, but I smiled to myself, glad I had taken the time back when I did to encourage her.
The power of words….. The power to help people move up and move on…..
How will you use your power?
I can tell you there is NOTHING more rewarding than helping others be successful.
Management Topics is such a large clump of topics that don’t really fit in my other categories, but I want you to know, they are all related.
What kind of influence are you going to be? You have complete power over the answer to that question.
Good Leadership Skills
Posted by: | CommentsMany people consider themselves to have good leadership skills when in reality they’re better at discouraging than encouraging. They’re better at scattering people than gathering people around them. Just being in a leadership position does not turn a person into a leader any more than sitting in a garage turns a person into a car.
Leadership seems to be innate in a few people, but most of us have to learn how to be a good, effective leader.
What are Good Leadership Skills?
Good leadership skills encompass so many aspects, they are rather intangible.
Yes, a leader leads in the most basic definition, but how do they gain the trust of those following them? How do they make people feel safe in their situation, even if it’s a dangerous situation? What do they do that makes people say, even years later, “She was such a great person to work for” or, “If he hadn’t been my boss, I wouldn’t be as successful as I am today.”
There is nothing more rewarding than helping others to be more successful. If you help others to improve their abilities and they are able to better provide for themselves and their family, what is better than that?
Good Leaders Care
Good leaders care about those they lead and seek to provide for their well-being. A military commander tries to keep his troops alive and win their battles. Parents work to provide a house and food. Supervisors look for opportunities to better their employees, perhaps through additional training and responsibilities that prepare them for promotions.
It’s important to care about your people, there isn’t a way to shortcut this. If you don’t care there are several books that can help you care and understand caring. You can get training and coaching on Emotional Intelligence and it will help. (It helped me!)
Good Leaders Listen
Good leaders listen. They assimilate information and process it against the big picture goal. They listen to people who work above them to understand the big picture and company goals. They listen to team members working for them to understand their concerns and ideas.
Good leadership skills
The best information you can get is from your people. Your people have vital information, perspectives, understanding, even tidbits they hear from other departments or competitors. Your people have good ideas, if you are fair and manage them well they will do their best to help the team succeed. Build the team. Follow the steps, use the tools.
Good Leaders Change
Because change in life and business is inevitable, a leader has to be able to adapt well to change. More than just adapting, good leaders continually look for ways to improve a situation and, where possible, initiate positive changes themselves.
One saying you can be assured is accurate “The only constant is change.” Don’t fight it, it’s useless. Embrace it. Use the change to build your team and help them grow from it. There’s no point making a negative if you can turn something into a positive. Every chance you can turn negatives (or spin them) into positives is a win for you and your team.
Good Leaders Share
Leaders are all about teamwork, not dictatorship. Now, your position may have you working in a bureaucratic type of environment where “the rules are the rules” and there’s not much room for creativity. You can still be an effective leader to your team. You can still encourage, listen, create goals for their personal and professional growth, and develop them into the best team in the company. It just takes adapting to your situation.
You can create motivational fun things with potlucks, movie tickets. Find leadership development material and have a mini-series of classes for them, they will appreciate it and become better managers themselves. Volunteer as a group to paint a children’s center or volunteer as a group somewhere, have a cause that matters. If the company is stifling you should try to find outlets for creativity of your team.
These are only a few good leadership skills. Do you recognize any in yourself? If you don’t already you can if you want to.
Leadership Theories
Posted by: | CommentsGreat Leaders are born, not bred.
Perhaps you’ve heard this statement. Perhaps it’s even discouraged you because, although you want to be a leader, or have even been promoted into a position of leadership, you doubt your own leadership skills and abilities.
Don’t give up. The “leaders are born” statement and others like it are leadership theories, not necessarily leadership facts.
Actually, there are other leadership theories that favor those of us born to regular parents, rather than being 
descendants of great historical leaders like George Washington or Martin Luther King, Jr.
Great Man Theory
To be more specific, the “leaders are born” theory is formally called the Great Man Theory. It also purports that when there is a need for a leader, a leader will arise.
You’ve seen the Great Man leadership theory in practice. Some of the reality shows like Survivor and Big Brother cast groups together from which leaders emerge. Leaders, even if informal, arise in military boot camps. They’re the ones encouraging others who struggle to complete the physical challenges or to motivate those ready to quit boot camp.
Trait Theory
Similar to the Great Man Theory is the Trait Theory. The Trait Theory suggests people are born with specific, inherited traits, and that the right combination of inherited traits makes a person suitable for leadership.
An example would be the child that takes charge of the neighborhood to organize a game of hide and seek, that introduces others to a group and ensures everyone plays together.
Behavioral Theory
For those who are genetically challenged in the leadership DNA department, the Behavioral Theory says leaders can be made. Part determination, part training, and voila! A leader emerges.
The reality?
All three have merit. Why is it among a group of young kids, one emerges as a “natural born leader”? Is it genetics? Is it because they are raised in a way that unleashes leadership traits?
Leadership theories
Why is it in the face of disaster, a normally quiet, unassuming, even shy person suddenly gets a surge of something deep inside, stands up among the group and says, “C’mon… this is what we’ve got to do to get through this…” and they start delegating tasks to ensure the survival of the group?
Perhaps you’ve felt this very feeling yourself. A tough or dangerous situation faces you. You look around. Everyone else is looking around, too. Nobody takes charge. You feel a stirring in your gut, an inner voice that says, “Stand up! Take charge! You know what needs to be done. Do it!”
You’ve seen possible Trait Theory leaders when sons and daughters take over a family business generation after generation. Did the children inherit the right combination of traits from their parents to make them the next generation of company leader? Or, as the Behavior Theory suggests, could it be that the children of great leaders become leaders simply because that is what they are trained for by their parents, even unconsciously?
A good author who is an easy read
An amazing author who has written exhaustively about leadership is Malcolm Gladwell. In his book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You, on page 245 he talks about leadership. In the beginning he understood leadership development as primarily a process of personal development. That’s still part of his leadership theories, but he’s added understanding of the importance of leadership in a team, and, especially, the importance of developing other leaders.
The book is practical. Leadership is a skill that you continually develop. You learn most of it on the job, by trying things out, observing how you do, and adjusting how you do things in the future based on results and feedback.
The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership gives you a great starting point for learning. At the end of each chapter there’s a section on applying this lesson to your life. There’s also a law called “The Law of Process” that reminds you that “Leadership develops daily, not in a day.”
There’s no promise of magic here. But you can count on improved results if you use the book to guide your actions.
If you like to read another great book that has good, real life examples is It’s Your Ship, by Captain D. Michael Abrashoff. Excellent book! I read it a few years ago and then reread it!
A must read if you run teams, especially more complex teams with higher level personnel is The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. If you have staff that is knowledgeable you also end up with issues regarding egos, trust, hierarchy, and more. This book was fantastic at explaining some of those problems.
EQ Definition
Posted by: | CommentsThe Hudson River airplane landing by Captain Sullenberger is a great demonstration of well-developed emotional intelligence. Once the audio recordings of Captain “Sully” were made public, listeners have been stunned and amazed at the immense calm Sully demonstrated and the resoluteness with which he told air traffic control, “We’re going to be in the Hudson.”
Why was Captain Sullenberger so calm when other people in a life-or-death situation would be hysterical?
Emotional Intelligence has everything to do with how you handle your everyday life. Think about your responses to some of these questions.
Do you feel outraged when someone cuts in front of you in line?
Do you scream at the road when you are driving?
Do you have arguments with a lot of other people?
Do you cut people off when they are talking?
Do you get tense when you have to ask someone a question about something that may not go your way?
If you answered “yes” to more than one of those then you are probably weak in some area of emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence
While a concrete emotional intelligence (called EQ and sometimes EI) definition is under debate, the emotional intelligence theory can be summed up very succinctly as a combination of common sense and maturity.
Emotional intelligence is different than the traditional intelligence quotient (IQ), which basically measures how smart a person is. IQ and emotional intelligence do not necessarily go hand in hand.
You might know someone who is very smart, never needed to study in school, and can build a radio from a tin can, a paintbrush, and some duct tape. But put that person in a social situation or in a leadership position and you’ll wonder where the IQ went. A person can be very smart (high IQ) and have low emotional intelligence, making them seem immature or weak under tough circumstances.
Then you may know someone that barely finished school, doesn’t like to read books and is super successful. They have a lot of friends, are highly regarded in the community and no one knows they didn’t go to college. They thrived, with some finesse, hard work and their ability to read and negotiate with people.
An overview of Emotional Intelligence
The Emotional Intelligence Quick Book by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves is an excellent quick read. This book also comes with a free assessment as long as the book is new and someone hasn’t used it.
The book describes the difference of IQ from EQ. Your IQ never changes and stays the same. They have done studies and found that two people with the same IQ can have completely different levels of success. Also your IQ is your ability to learn and it does not change over time. On the other hand EQ can be developed even if you are not born with it.
Your senses enter your brain through your spinal cord and must travel through the limbic system before you can think rationally about your experience. Emotional intelligence requires smooth communication between the rational and emotional centers of the brain. When you practice emotional intelligence, the traffic flows smoothly in both directions.
The four emotional skills they identify are: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management. Understanding how they work and how they interact is important at gaining EQ.
When did EQ become popular?
Daniel Goleman is the person most responsible for the current interest in Emotional Intelligence. His research showed that emotional intelligence is twice as important as IQ and technical skill combined when accounting for outstanding performance. “And the higher up you go in an organization, the more important these qualities are for success,” Goleman says. “When it comes to leadership, they are almost everything.”
Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace
The importance of emotional intelligence in the workplace is clearly seen in the examples set by not only Captain Sullenberger, but also the air traffic controller who remained calm and highly efficient as he quickly located several other clear runways for the plane, then quickly summoned police, helicopters, and other rescue personnel to the Hudson, not knowing what kind of disaster might have happened.
Other examples of emotional intelligence are seen in people who work well under pressure, those who are good team players, and who set high examples for themselves and their team. The emotional competencies seen with the best leaders are:
- Initiative, achievement drive and adaptability
- Influence, team leadership and political awareness
- Empathy, self-confidence and developing others
Having a well developed emotional intelligence is as important as other leadership skills when it comes to being a supervisor, not to mention that it benefits you in all areas of your life.
