Giving feedback is part of being a leader, but sometimes recipients don’t recognize feedback as the gift it is intended to be. What can you do to help the recipient move past resistance and into understanding?
Gut check
Before responding to the individual, take a moment to consider your motivations in giving the feedback. Do you really want what’s best for the recipient, or do you have a bone to pick? If your goal is to be helpful, keep going! If you’re motivated by your own self-interest, move on.
Redirect
When you come up against a wall of resistance, don’t keep hammering your point home. Instead, ask these questions and listen to their answers.
What’s going on for you right now?
Go through the senses. What are you thinking? What are you feeling? What are you hearing? What are you seeing? Hitting their preferred way of thinking may help them open up.
Imagine, if this feedback was true, what would you say next?
Imagine, if this feedback was true, what would you ask?
Explore intent vs. impact. What did you intend? What is the impact?
When someone is resistant, what do they do?
What’s at stake for you right now?
From: The Leadership Freak
“Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots.” – Frank A Clark
Workplace conflict is inevitable. It’s tempting to avoid these uncomfortable situations altogether, but there’s a much more effective solution!
With Everything DiSC® Productive Conflict assessment profile, learners will discover how to curb destructive behaviors so that conflict can become more productive. This is not your average conflict resolution program. Everything DiSC Productive Conflict offers highly personalized content that helps learners increase self-awareness around conflict behaviors and effectively respond to conflict situations, which ultimately improves workplace results and relationships. You can take individually or as team (in tact teams or cross-company).
Your learners will:
Explore the destructive and productive conflict behaviors of each personality DiSC® styles
Understand how to manage your response to conflict situations
Discover communication strategies when engaging in productive conflict with colleagues
In today’s world of constant access and fast-paced lives, everyone struggles with finding the best way to manage their energy and time. Here are five secrets to maintain a healthy work/life balance, and get the most out of every day:
Identify what’s not working for you: Spend a week tracking how you spend your time, and then goals for how you want your time to be spent. Compare the two, and see what changes you can make!
Establish boundaries: Making changes means setting boundaries. If you want to spend more time on creative pursuits, then carve out time and space for creativity.
Set goals: Some boundaries take time to get in place. Be patient, and set long term goals that you work towards. It may be a while before your new morning ritual is in place, take steps each morning that bring you closer to success.
Get support: Everyone needs support to achieve their goals, especially goals that change how you manage your relationships and time. Support can come in the form of emotional, cognitive, political, or physical support. Individuals, groups, classes, and other resources can help you connect with the support you need.
Track your progress: Celebrate your successes, and recognize and learn from your mistakes. As you move towards a more balanced approach to productivity you will see the impact of your changes.
“You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it.”– Charles Buxton
The challenge of leadership is to inspire teams to come together to accomplish a shared goal. Leaders who focus on celebrating their team over celebrating themselves can inspire teams to work together, resulting in higher performing teams, and better outcomes.
Do you have the 7 characteristics of leaders who embrace humility?
Are you real? Leaders who understand and share the true balance of their strengths and weaknesses do a better job of connecting with their teams. When leaders pretend to be perfect they’re often seen as inaccessible and distant.
Do you strike a balance between influence and authority? Egotistical leaders use shame, threats and intimidation to get the results. Humble leaders use their influence to encourage others, reserving their position of authority to set direction for team members.
Do you support and promote others? Humble leaders push their team members’ accomplishments to the forefront; often to the benefit of the team member’s career advancement. Their first priority is supporting the accomplishments of the individuals they lead.
Do you build others up? Those who do believe in their team’s ability to succeed, and they communicate that belief early and often. When something goes wrong, a humble leader coaches their team through figuring out what happened, and coming up with a plan for next time.
Do you reframe failure as learning? When being lead with humility, team members know that losing a battle is a learning opportunity and that the team will continue to work through the challenge together.
Do you lead with integrity? This integrity provides clarity of role and expectation for everyone on the team. The team understands the importance of following through on their promises.
Are you grateful? Grateful leaders value what each person brings to the table, and are thankful for the diversity each voice contributes to the conversation.
“Great leaders don’t need to act tough. Their confidence and humility serve to underscore their toughness” – Simon Sinek
Great leaders inspire others to be part of something bigger than themselves. One of the most powerful tools in a leader’s toolbox is effective presentations. Powerful presentations inspire audiences to do amazing things.
As a leader, you need to know how to avoid the doldrums of run-of-the-mill presentation to inspire your audience to be part of your vision. Here are three common pitfalls that lead to lackluster presentations… and how you can avoid them!
Pitfall #1: Letting the content drive. Presentations defined by content leave audiences feeling lost and confused. A presentation without a purpose is a lot like a song without a melody; things just won’t flow and the audience won’t stay tuned in for very long.
How to avoid it: Let the objective take the wheel.
Ask yourself: What do you want your audience to take away from this experience? From there, select content to present that supports the objective.
Pitfall #2: Ignoring emotions. Audiences are left unmoved and uninspired when presenters only focus on teaching them information while neglecting the audience’s emotional experience.
How to avoid it: Begin with the emotional journey you are asking your audience to take. Are you asking them to go from “this isn’t possible” to “this is possible and I should be part of it”? What will it take to get them from point A to B? How can you change their minds and their hearts?
Pitfall #3:Omitting their role: Audiences feel disinterested and disconnected when they can’t see their role in the vision you are presenting.
How to avoid it: Provide a narrative that your audience can see themselves in. Personal stories or illustrative analogies help audiences recognize their role in carrying out your vision.
“Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools speak because they have to say something.” – Plato
Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the commitment to overcome it. Courage doesn’t mean you’re not afraid; it means you battle against your fear and confront it. Courage pushes you to resist the impulse to shy away from the things that stir up your innermost anxieties. Courage is required and must be a constant. It’s tiny pieces of fear all glued together.
Here are some helpful tips for building a culture of courage in your organization:
Set scary standards. Your level of excellence and expectation for your product or service or experience should almost be something that is nearly unattainable. Safe goals are set by safe leaders with safe visions. Give your people a goal that scares them, and you’ll produce leaders who know what it means to overcome fear.
Allow for failure. The road to success is many times put together through multiple failures. Allow for and even encourage your team to fail as they attempt to succeed.
Reward innovation. Innovation requires taking risks. And bold risks create bold team members. Rewarding innovation will challenge your team to grow in their roles.
Pursue the right opportunities. Not every risk is a good one. Be disciplined. Aggressively pursue a few things that make sense. Say no often.
Learn to delegate. This is one of the most courageous things a leader can do. Entrusting others with important tasks requires letting go and relinquishing control. Liberally pass responsibility and authority to your team. If you want your team to be courageous, give them the chance to lead.
Source: Catalyst Leadership
“One isn’t born with courage. One develops it. And you develop it by doing small, courageous things.” – Maya Angelou
