
Barbara Stanny is financial therapist and wealth coach.
Barbara Stanny is also the author of Secrets Of Six-Figure Women : Up Your Earnings and Change Your Life.
With Character, On Your Way To Leadership!
Barbara Stanny is financial therapist and wealth coach.
Barbara Stanny is also the author of Secrets Of Six-Figure Women : Up Your Earnings and Change Your Life.
Building a coaching habit, as difficult as it is, is an “essential leadership behavior” that should be adopted by most managers in order to:
Leaders and managers often admit that they don’t get or give effective coaching.
Most often, coaching is too theoretical, too boring, unpractical and not empowering enough. The greatest reason why coaching doesn’t seem to work is because it is difficult to shake off old habits.
There are seven questions that you can pose, one at a time, to coach someone in seven minutes or less. These seven questions will assist you in leading a full conversation and successfully coaching yourself and your team.
The Kickstart question breaks the ice and helps you start an opened and focused conversation.
It allows people to easily talk about the things that matter to them the most.
The advice that leaders and managers gives is not always the best.
The AWE question restrains the need to give advice and instead helps you to stay quiet, curious and genuine.
It stops you from offering up advice in the form of a question.
Leaders may want to always have the solution and be able to fix the problem without identifying it or having their team fix the problem.
The Focus questions helps you help your team identify the challenge that needs sorting out
It takes courage to ask for what you want knowing that the answer can be possible be no, that your question can be misinterpreted.
The Foundation question is a direct question that gives people the “responsibility for their own freedom” which is difficult to do.
Leaders and managers love to step in, be helpful and feel needed. However, this need to help gradually becomes the root of their frustration.
With the Lazy question, you get a clear and direct request. Then, you stop helping for no reason and you save up on time.
Leaders have to be clear about their boundaries which means they have to know how and when to say yes or no.
The Strategic question allows you to be clear about what you want, to be committed to your “yes” and definitive to your “no”.
Leaders need to create learning spaces for their teams.
The Learning question is a great way for you to finish the conversation and leave people with a sense of empowerment.
The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier is easy and fast book to read, with great tips for managers who are looking to improve their leadership and communication skills.
The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier is written for on the clock managers who have no time for long-winded trainings.
The seven questions are direct and allow leaders to minimize their stress and to improve the interaction with their team.
Furthermore, The Coaching Habit presents several tips and scenarii to help managers specifically identify their emotional, situational or locational triggers. With The Coaching Habit, managers are able to pick up some new skills and define different habits in less than 10 minutes.
Tell less and ask more.
Your advice is not as good
As you think it is.
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Annual Performance Reviews are often dreaded by most employees.
It is the time of the year where we often get offended, where leaders realize that they don’t really understand what is going on in their organization.
In addition, most employees believe that their performance review is inaccurate and biased. It has been shown that it doesn’t help employees improve their performance reach their greatest potential, or grow personally.
That is because, performance reviews:
Wondering how to adequately give and receive feedback?
The ability to give and to receive feedback is essential to success and to being a great leader. It is a personal development tool and a skill that can be learnt.
Feedback is the general way you perceive people, is a shared appreciation of a person and of a situation.
Furthermore, feedback is constructive criticism, challenges the way you think about yourself and aims to see people improve and become their best selves. It is the desire for employees to perform well and to find satisfaction in their job.
In fact, giving feedback is similar to coaching, mentoring or teaching.
Feedback is different from micromanagement, negative criticism or emitting judgement. It can be wrong but it is unfortunately necessary for our growth.
We perpetually need evaluation to assess our current situation, our ego and our work performance.
The feedback process, if done the right way, will:
However, giving or receiving feedback is difficult: it relies on false assumptions, it consumes time and energy, is often met with avoidance or with resistance.
Nevertheless, being closed off from feedback unequivocally leads to conflicts, to setbacks, to communication issues, to an inability to find a solution.
Receiving feedback as a leader will set the example and encourage people to listen to what you have to say.
Receiving feedback doesn’t mean automatically acting on the advice or immediately starting the changing process. It means that you must:
Leaders who are able to effectively receive feedback are able to give them as well, must exhibit exemplary behavior. To give effective feedback:
Human beings are very sensitive and most people are not confrontational. So, treat people like you would like to be treated. Don’t seek to offend or to blame, and don’t talk down to them.
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.
Leadership style refers to the way that the leader interacts with his or her subordinates, influences their behavior, motivates them, makes decisions for them and for the organization. A specific leadership style can deeply influence the quality of work, the commitment, the work satisfaction of both leader and subordinates.
Throughout their career, to be successful, leaders need to continually assess and improve their leadership style, identify its strengths and weaknesses, adapt it to their environment, their organization and to their followers, and even combine them into one suitable and adaptable leadership style.
For leaders to adapt their leadership style to the context, they must get to know themselves and be authentic to their values and beliefs beforehand, get to understand their team members working style and expectations from a leader, get to acknowledge the company culture.
Wondering what leadership styles you have developed across the years or would like to acquire and which one is suitable to your work environment?
In order to determine the best leadership style, the leaders have to contextualize, consider the situations and the people that they face on a daily basis.
There are many leadership styles that are common to most workplaces, that most leaders identify with the most, that are more or less efficient depending on their personal background, their employees personalities and background, and on the organization culture. These leadership styles are to possibly be combined into one and modulated to different situations.
Democratic or participative leaders listen to their followers and consider their opinions, are generally high performers and high achievers. Even though they have the final say, they gather information from their employees before making a decision.
The democratic leadership style is appropriate when the leader:
The democratic leadership style is ineffective when:
Visionary leaders share their dreams and purpose with their employees, possess an ability to inspire people, and develop drive and purpose.
The visionary leadership style is appropriate in innovative and complex situations.
Coaching leaders align their employees’ aspirations with the organization goals and values.
The coaching leadership style is appropriate when :
The coaching leadership style is inefficient when:
Affiliative leaders bring themselves and their employees into association and create a sense of belonging. Affiliative leaders help in solving conflicts and in building teams up.
The affiliative leadership style is appropriate when:
The affiliative leadership style is inefficient when:
Pacesetting leaders are task-oriented and directive, plan and execute assignments, make followers meet deadlines, accomplish challenging projects and reach goals, are concerned with the general effectiveness of their team. They are by the book and enforces the rules and regulations of the company.
Pacesetting Leadership style is most appropriate when the leader has to:
Pacesetting leadership style is ineffective when:
Commanding leaders create a fearful environment to instill respect and get quick results from followers, rely on threats and punishments as incentives, lack trust in their employees and make decisions without employees input and without giving any explanation. Commanding leaders tend to retain power and demand immediate compliance.
The commanding leadership style is appropriate when:
The commanding leadership style is ineffective when:
Relationship building leaders are generally supportive and accepting of subordinates, use communication skills to create synergy and motivation among their subordinates, foster a climate of trust, transparency and confidence, promote collaboration and inclusion.
Appropriate context
The relationship building leadership is appropriate when:
The laissez-faire or hands-off leader gives his employees as much as freedom, authority and power as possible. Little or no directions is given to their subordinates that are able to determine their goals, plan and execute their tasks unsupervised.
The laissez-faire leader does not manage his or her subordinates nor use his or her influence. The laissez-faire leader interfere the least possible with employees savoir-faire and jobs to increase employees pride and motivation.
The laissez-faire leadership style is appropriate when the leader has:
The laissez-faire leadership style is ineffective when:
Charismatic leaders influence through their personality, share vision, captivate and persuade an audience, are self-confident, eloquent, have high energy and are emotionally intelligent. Charismatic leaders use their charisma to achieve their own goals and ambitions.
The charismatic leadership style is appropriate when:
The charismatic leadership style is inefficient when:
Analytic leaders analyze figures, hard data to solve problems, to make better decisions, to increase in productivity. Analytic leaders are also good at controlling their emotions.
Appropriate context
The analytical leadership style is appropriate when the organization needs facts and data to advance and make a decision.
The analytical leadership style is inefficient when:
Reflective leaders are introspective and often quiet or reserved, trust their insights and intuition, are emotionally intelligent, are self-aware, promote self-awareness, reflect on the impacts of decisions before taking them, and seek opportunity in failure. Reflective leaders decode observations about their organization and coworkers and excel in analyzing the behavior, body language, tone of voice of themselves and others.
Reflective leaders influence their subordinates by:
The reflective leadership styles is appropriate when:
Corrective leaders identify the past mistakes of the organization, find solutions and apply corrective actions to set it back on an ideal track, facilitate collaboration and synergy with their team.
Corrective leaders influence their subordinates by:
The corrective leadership style is appropriate when:
The corrective leadership style is inefficient when:
Change leaders embrace innovation, system alterations, problem solving. Change leaders are determined, persistent, resistant and eager to make change happen.
Change leaders influence their subordinates by:
The change leadership style is appropriate to most types of situations and organizations that have plateaued because change is nowadays detrimental to any organization’s success.
Multicultural leaders enjoy ambiguous situations and see problems as opportunities, gain energy and motivation through cross-cultural interactions, encourage innovation by taking into account their subordinates multicultural differences, advocate for understanding and mutual respect, render their subordinates effective.
Multicultural leaders influence their subordinates by:
The multicultural leadership style is appropriate for multicultural or multinational corporations.
Servant leaders lead by example and choose to serve their subordinates highest needs first and lead afterwards.
Servant leaders influence their team by:
The servant leadership style is appropriate when:
The servant leadership styles is uncommon and inefficient in:
Transactional leaders gain compliance by offering rewards for good performance and severe punishments for lack of performance or of compliance.
The transactional leadership styles is common in large administrative organizations, in urgent and conflictual situations.
Transformation Leaders share visions and goals with their subordinates, create intense emotions in them, align them with core values, unify them with a purpose and involve them in the decision process, encourage change in others and themselves. Transformational leaders wholeheartedly embrace change, challenge the status quo and invest in the development of their employees.
The transformational leadership style is appropriate when:
There are several leadership styles to choose from or that you have already identified with. No leadership style is the absolute best but is relative to a given situation.
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.
Wondering what leadership you have developed across the years or would like to acquire? Find below the different existing styles of leadership.
Leadership style refers to the behavior of a leader and to the manner he or she engages and motivates their followers.
There are six main styles of leadership:
This article has been inspired by Developing Multicultural Leaders.
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.