by Judy Rathwell | Jan 28, 2022 | Continuous Learning, Decision-making, Executive Leadership, Respectful Workplace
What if you’re unintentionally hurting the people you lead?
Here are some ways that may be harmful, even if they seem helpful:
1. Not giving employees a chance to show what they’re capable of. Allow people to show you why they were hired and how much they can do. One of your most important abilities as a leader is to let people shine.
2. Telling people what to do instead of letting them show you what they can do. Telling people what to do isn’t leadership, it’s direction. Leadership means creating a space for others to accomplish their best.
3. Constantly speaking and not allowing others to express their opinion. Listening only to your own voice harms your credibility and disempowers your leadership. Power doesn’t come to those who speak the most but to those who listen best.
4. Providing solutions to problems other people should be solving. You should not be the fixer of all problems.. Allow your people to develop solutions—their abilities will grow and they’ll come up with things you might not have thought of.
5. Complicating simple business processes. Keep things as simple and uncomplicated as possible. People have enough to do without the bother of unnecessary bureaucracy and complicated processes.
6. Saying things like “I know best.” Even if you know you’re right, it’s far more effective to guide people into the answer through dialogue and communication. People want to know they’re contributing, not just following orders.
7. Giving rewards where there hasn’t been effort. In many companies where I coach, it’s common practice to give bonuses regardless of the effort people put in. This approach only creates a culture of mediocrity.
8. Playing favorites with your team. For any leader, fairness builds trust and trust is everything. Treat everyone with the same respect and be equitable in providing opportunities.
9. Saying you’re going to do something but you don’t. Any time you don’t keep your word, your leadership loses respect and credibility.
10. Shaming, criticizing or blaming others publicly in meetings. As the saying goes, appreciate in public and criticize in private.
Lead from within: Most leaders have good intentions, but those intentions sometimes lead to bad results. Try to keep your eye on the consequences of everything you do as a leader and ask yourself whether it’s helping or hurting.
Source: Lolly Daskal
by Judy Rathwell | Jun 28, 2021 | Decision-making, Habits, Newsletter, Productivity
Your days are full, and it can be hard to get
everything on your list done. You were finally making progress on a task when
your focus is disrupted yet again with a meeting reminder. You don’t know how
you’ll finish what you need to do today, and it’s probably going to be yet
another waste of time. Is this just the way things are, or is there a better
way?
According to The HR Digest,
professionals lose an average of 31 hours a month on meetings–which adds up to
approximately four workdays, or a total of two months per year. That’s a lot of
disruption, particularly if those meetings aren’t actually yielding much. The
problem isn’t just an overabundance of meetings; it’s that so many of them turn
out to be bad meetings. But you don’t have to settle for bad meetings that
disrupt your work and kill productivity. Great meetings are possible with a
little bit of forethought. Let’s look at one of the first steps in that
direction: determining the necessity and nature of a meeting.
Here are five filtering questions you can use
to coordinate essential meetings:
- Is
this meeting necessary? There’s
a well-known piece of literary advice for writers: “kill your darlings.” That
is, don’t get too attached to the storyline, especially if it doesn’t serve the
bigger picture. The same is true for meetings. It’s too easy to get caught up
in a series of meetings that don’t matter. Keep the high-leverage ones that
support important goals. Eliminate the rest, and your team will thank you.
- Are
you sure you’re necessary? Too often, we blindly accept the never-ending barrage of
meeting invites. It’s natural to think our presence in a meeting is always
necessary, especially if we were invited. But that’s not always true. Guard
your schedule, and only say yes when you truly need to be there.
- Who
else should be involved? If
you’re organizing a meeting, think through who absolutely needs to
attend. Remember, smaller groups can align more quickly to drive a decision.
Relevant information can be shared with the masses later through an email or
project-management update.
- What
type of meeting do you want? Consider ahead of time the type of meeting that will help
you accomplish your goals. Establishing this early on will keep the
purpose clear and the conversation from meandering, so your time will be
productive.
- What’s
the right format? Historically,
in-person meetings have been the norm across businesses. But nowadays, we’re
all meeting virtually in some capacity, and in-person meetings are no longer
the default. It takes intentional thought to determine what’s best for your
team, and what format will work best for what you’re trying to achieve. If
that’s in-person, great. Otherwise, your preferred video-conferencing app works
great too.
Take control of your meeting habits. Routinely ask yourself, Is this meeting necessary? If not, be decisive and eliminate the meetings that don’t matter or that inhibit your productivity. Make the best use of your team’s time and resources by focusing on the high-leverage stuff, and you’ll start seeing less frustration and better results.
Source: Michael Hyatt & Co. Blog
by Judy Rathwell | May 4, 2020 | Decision-making, Leadership Aha!, Leadership Development, Newsletter
As a leader your team must understand what you want to be done – it is just as important for them to understand why you’re making the decision you are, which means occasionally having ‘why’ chats about the decisions that are being made.
Your role as a leader is to develop the team to be able to tackle new and more challenging work, which means you don’t want them to know just what you expect of them but also the why you’re making the decisions you are so that they can learn how to think about the work, not just what to think about the work.
Practice
sharing how to think about the work. The goal
is to develop each member of your team to be able to make similar decisions
when the context changes. If you teach them what to do, you’re only teaching
them something very contextual. In this specific circumstance, here’s the
decision you should make. However, when you teach them how you think about it
and why you’re making the decisions you are, you’re equipping them to be able
to make decisions for themselves in other circumstances when the context is
changed.
Action Steps – How to walk others through your thought process on a key decision.
- Frame up the decision that needs to be made.
- Share which variables you considered.
- Talk through the key reasons that made the decision you made. The key is explaining how and why each variable is critical in this situation.
Ultimately your goal is to teach
your team how to think vs. tell them what to do. This takes time and the
payback is magical!
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together” – African Proverb
