With Character, On Your Way To Leadership!
Dealing with difficult people is part of leadership.
Below are five essentials skills to acquire.
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Being a great leader depends on how well they know themselves. Leaders must make sure that they are self-aware, clearly communicate their goals and expectations, reach their goals, set high standards, expect quality work and meet deadlines, demonstrate that all their team members matter, show gratitude, don’t settle and spend time with their team.
Needless to say, a little introspection is required from time to time.
Wondering how do you become the best version of yourself?Â
Sometimes, we end up in or go after leadership positions but don’t understand why or how we got there.
It is always important to assess our goals, values and purpose every step of the way.
Leadership encapsulates different concepts and key competencies.
For most, leadership is the ability to wheel power, to influence people positively in order to be successful, to bring like-minded individuals together towards a common goal or vision and to translate that vision into reality.
In order to be effective you must figure out what leadership means to you.
Most people want to lead because they see themselves in power, in control, with status and doing whatever they want.
However, leaders are always held accountable for their actions, have to serve as models and have to exhibit exemplary behavior.
Without an ethical purpose in mind, they will not be able to sustain their role very long.
If you weren’t a leader, what would you do? What career would you pursue?
Do you have sufficient resources to achieve your goals and yourself?
Leaders must find at least one field in which they excel. This will develop their credibility, their confidence and will help you be of assistance to people in need.
If your leadership roles don’t correspond to your values, it is time to rethink your career.
Learning to center yourself, to choose peace of mind requires that you acquire new healthy habits and that you question your thoughts that most often are an illusion or distorted memories.
Figure out how to preserve your time and energy, how to ensure your growth, how to continually improve as a person, and how to boost your leadership self-esteem?
Some people get into positions to please their families, impress their friends or flatter their own egos.
A job or a role in which you feel boxed in is frustrating, leaves little space for you to develop your skills or maximize your strengths.
As a leader, you must project yourself in the future and visualize the legacy that you want to leave.
Integrity is currently a rare character trait and most sought after leadership attribute that can help you succeed in the workplace as much as in life.
It actually goes a long way and projects more authority and credibility than a title or a position would.
Furthermore, the team you lead, the environment that you work in is a direct reflection of you. If you want a trusting workplace, be trustworthy.
Being open to learn and to explore is detrimental to success.
To start the learning process, you can read books, take trainings and classes, and talk to people who are in positions that you aspire to.
Furthermore, you must understand that if you seek knowledge, you will never fully be an expert.
Creating work-life balance is not giving equal attention to both work and life.
But, it means that you are satisfied with your contributions to your life and work, that you are able to create a sustainable synergy between both so that you are fueled by them on a daily basis.
To do so, you must focus on the vital few and not let your career affect your personal life and vice versa.
We choose a certain career because our ever-changing needs and desires align with that particular career but not necessarily with the collective good.
In the leadership position, there is a huge discrepancy between hiring the right person with the right competencies for the job, between hiring someone with lesser competencies to feel unthreatened, between hiring someone to serve you and caress your ego.
There is also a difference between wanting the organization to succeed, wanting the team and the project to shine, and taking all the credit for someone else’s work.
Leadership style refers to the way that the leader interacts with his or her employees, influences their behavior, motivates them, make decisions for them and for the organization.
A specific leadership style can deeply influence the quality of work, the levels of commitment, the work satisfaction of both leader and employees.
We cannot control everything in our life.
However, we can control how we react to different situations, how we see ourselves and who we aspire to be.
Leaders must be able to anticipate problems and implement solutions for the future. What strategies do you apply? How do you handle bad news? How do you set boundaries? Do you encourage dissension?
There are several components to leadership. One of them is building and maintaining healthy relationships.
Leaders are responsible for the people they hire and the people that they lead. How do you build your team?
Cultural sensitivity is being aware that everyone is different.
It means being able to learn from different people, to understand their backgrounds, to collaborate and cooperate with them, without being judgmental.
Failures don’t directly lead to success but it can show you the way. It is best when your mistakes come to light rather than going unnoticed.
It is important to recall the time you have succeeded and demonstrated great leadership.
The memory of past success will serve you right when you face challenges. If you did it once, then you can do it again.
Mentorship is usually the realization of leadership.
It is similar to tutorship, to parenthood, to partnership, or to an alliance.
Delegating increases employee empowerment and talent engagement, leads to higher levels of commitment, innovation, motivation, and better relationships..
As a leader, your behavior in pressure moments impacts those around you and can predict their performance.
The ability to anticipate, to solve problems, to make quick and sound decisions will determine the success of a leader.
Effective communication skills will improve your leadership credibility, your self-confidence, your relationships with others, your feelings of belonging and will decrease your stress level.
Your communication skills will also drive change and increase team motivation.
Using those skills, leaders should be pushing a vision for their life, for their family or their organization and it shouldn’t matter whether they have the right relationships, enough money, enough favors, or have hired people with the desired skill set.
Leaders don’t have the luxury to procrastinate because it is similar to self-sabotage. However, they are all subject to it to some extent.
Being organized, methodical, pragmatic will help you gain a sense of satisfaction and will increase your chances of success.
It is critical to have a role model who will help you improve, achieve your goals and will show you your life purpose.
Your role model is authentic, relatable and can be a family member, a friend in your entourage or someone you barely know.
Change is a part of life, is a constant and is inevitable. Change shakes things up, disrupts old habits, breathes new life into the workplace and into any project.
Leaders must visibly act out the change, must be ready to do things differently and to think otherwise.
You can’t always find out what you like but life has a funny way of putting you in front of the things that you hate the most.
Accepting criticism implies that you are able to listen, accept people point of view and give feedback as well.
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.
Leaders are often faced with recurring issues in their personal and in their professional lives.
On a daily basis, they fight to retain talent, to keep their businesses alive, to keep up with the market, to increase their return on investment, to deal with clients, to evolve and to encourage growth.
Problems arise when there is a discrepancy between reality and expectations, when leaders are unable to successfully reach their goals.
Their ability to anticipate and to solve problems will determine their success and will increase their chances for promotion.
Wondering how to acquire problem-solving skills?
Problem-solving is a cognitive skill that is useful in challenging, problematic and uncertain situations that require resolution.
Problem-solving is uncomfortable, takes time, requires practice and need constant monitoring. This intuitive skill is also sharpened by mistakes and failures.
Furthermore, problems encourage growth and change in us. That is why problem-solving requires facing inner demons.
It also helps us acquire innovative skills, people skills, communication skills, data gathering, conflict management and analytical skills.
Problem-solving gives leaders the opportunity to deal with change, to handle conflict, to delegate, to humbly ask for help.
Leaders who are unable to effectively solve problems lack knowledge in their respective fields, don’t establish practical methods, don’t commit to one solution, fail to implement their vision or to understand the problem all together.
You cannot control most of the situations that you will face in life. However, you can control how you react to them. It is therefore necessary to work on your character and to:
Problems are synonymous with difficulty, issue, trouble, worry, complication, obstacle or setback. Problems trigger fight or flight response when handling a problematic situations.
There is no need to immediately appear decisive or to impress people. You must first define and understand the problem:
Anticipating problems is the best option. But, the key is to staying focused or finding a solution. You must be able to study all the possible solutions of the problem:
When you have evaluated all the solutions, it’s time to make a decision. One decision is better than none.
After finding the perfect solution and making your decision, start implementing it:
Unfortunately, problems don’t solve themselves and can grow as time passes by. If the roots of the problem still persist:
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.
In today’s workplace, leaders of organizations must hire millennials and boomers to keep business running. For the sake of their organization, leaders must have them collaborating, handling constructive conflicts and effectively dealing with change.
However, conflicts in the workplace, involving different generations, are old as time, are common, are inevitable and ought to be handled quickly before they get out of hand.
Conflicts usually arise when one generation is leading or managing another. These days, boomers are passed over for promotions, millennials are put in leadership roles and tend to manage boomers because they have a researched set of skills that are beneficial to the company.
Bridging the generational gap helps in making better decisions, reducing employee turnover, strengthening team cohesion and in building innovative products.
Wondering how to bridge the generation gap and build a more collaborative workplace?
A generation is a period of time when people perceived the world differently. In one generation, people are shaped by social trends, are programmed with thoughts, values, moral ethics, models, examples of success and the guidelines to succeed.
Three generations rub shoulders in corporate: the baby-boomers (1946-1964), the generation X (1965-1980) and the millennials (1980-2000). Needless to say, each generation has their own set of strengths, weaknesses and of requirements in order to give their best at work.
Boomers are the most famous generation and have a different set of values. They trust the system, understand hierarchy, follow rules and obey orders.
They believe in seniority and meritocracy. Indeed, they stay at a job for the longest time and wait for an opportunity for advancement.
Employees from the baby-boomer generation:
Employees from the baby-boomer generation:
To perform to the best of their abilities, employees from the baby-boomer generation require:
This generation no longer trust the system and believe that corporations don’t have their best interest at heart.
Employees from the generation X:
Employees from the generation X:
To perform to the best of their abilities, employees from the generation X require:
Millennials are idealist and have a more democratic way of viewing the world. They intend to make work fun and purposeful, to innovate and to invest themselves.
They have high expectations for their jobs, are now able to blow the whistle easily, seek fairness and integrity in their leaders.
Millennial employees:
Millennial employees:
To perform to the best of their abilities, millennial employees require:
The collaboration of generations is essential to develop any organization. To bridge the generational gap and to retain more employees:
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.
The consequences of distrust are significant. It increases employees turnover and employees don’t volunteer ideas like they should, question every single move of the leader, undermine his or her decisions.
Nobody wants to go to work where they constantly have to look behind their shoulder, where they cannot share knowledge freely, where they cannot speak up in meetings, where they have to watch their every single word.
We end up losing confidence in yourself, not wanting to contribute at work, preserving ourselves, acting against our core values, lacking energy, refusing to invest in people, felling alone and always on the look out.
Wondering how to build or repair trust in leadership and in the workplace?
Trust is an emotional bond, a connection between two people who is developed through repeated interactions and that provides comfort and stability. It is the foundation of all relationships and according to Patrick Lencioni, in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team it is the most important factor in team cohesion.
Furthermore, trust is reciprocal, subjective, takes time to build but can be destroyed in a matter of seconds. It is not granted by a title nor by a position but is necessary to work and to share knowledge. Trust is empowering, improves overall employees motivation, productivity, wellbeing in the workplace and corporate culture.
Trust is detrimental to leadership because leaders have the power to make decisions that can impact their team and their livelihood.
Trustworthy leaders drive success, put employees at ease, have their employees best interest at heart. Trustworthy leaders care about their own contributions, about the impact of their decision, about their people and regularly show appreciation. They are fair and respectful, are credible and communicate openly.
Nevertheless, some leaders exhibit negative behaviors that make them seem untrustworthy. Because, trust is subjective and because followers model these behavior, it is compulsory that leaders identify what they are doing wrong and immediately correct themselves.
Below are different scenarios where leaders are perceived to be untrustworthy and the respective explanation to their behavior.
Some leaders are naturally reserved and secretive. Unfortunately, they come off as being snobs, defensive, or as having a personal agenda. People generally think the worst when they don’t know what their leader is thinking.
Some leaders are introverts and minimize social interactions. To their team, they are perceived to either be standoffish, weirdos. This can open the door to a lot of misunderstandings and conflicts.
Some leaders speak very little because they either believe that the topic doesn’t deserve much conversation, don’t enjoy speaking, don’t feel the need to explain themselves or they are unable to put their thoughts into words.
Some leaders adapt their response to their audience and come off as being disingenuous. For example, they would talk frankly in front of their team and sugarcoat things in front of the hierarchy.
Some leaders are self-serving and don’t care about their employees. They don’t demonstrate respect for their team and can easily step over them.
Some leaders are arrogant. They feel superior to others all while being insecure, they lack humility and self-awareness, they are unwilling to learn and to grow.
Some leaders blatantly lie. In some toxic companies, lying is seen as a strength. But this strength is short-termed and create distrust amongst employees.
Some leaders gossip about their own employees and their own organization. Because most employees are attempting to preserve their jobs, employees tend to fake their true feelings. However, leaders have difficulties noticing the impact of their negative behavior.
Some leaders are able to shift blame too easily and don’t take responsibility for their action. This leader is afraid of confronting themselves. This makes employees unwilling to take risks and to involve themselves in their job.
Some leaders play favorites, treat their employees unfairly, take credit for their work, disrespect them, isolate and scapegoat some employees and sabotage others.
Some leaders underperform or don’t come through on promises. People tend to dismiss those who overpromise and underperform, even if they are talented or competent.
Some leaders overreact to challenges and under high pressured situations, they give in too easily to their emotions.
Placing trust in someone makes us vulnerable to that person who can use this vulnerability to their advantage. However, to create a healthy workplace, it is necessary for leaders to build trust within their team. To do so, you will have to:
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.
In Confidence Plan — How To Build A Stronger You, Mastering The Practical Skills Of Winning, Tim Ursiny believes that building self-confidence does not only rely on positive self-talk, on words of affirmation, on changing our thought patterns or other mental strategies.
To build long-term confidence, Ursiny believes that we also have to develop emotional, behavioral, relational and spiritual strategies.
For Ursiny, confidence is an important factor to fulfilling our dreams, for achieving real success at work and at home, for building and maintaining healthy relationships, for understanding and communicating with others.
Struggling with confidence either means that you suffer from low self-esteem or that you are living, working, breathing in the wrong place. If you have never suffered from lack of confidence, then you have never left your comfort zone.
Needless to say, confidence is the opposite of humility. It is the belief in our abilities to perform, to get results from our performance, in our worth and in our opinion of ourselves.
In addition, we all internal regulator that measures our level of confidence, depending on our successes and failures, that forces us to take action and that can be explained by different factors. We have a level to which we will not allow ourselves to fall or to rise. It is important to identify those levels in order to rewire our expectations and reset our internal regulator.
To recognize the importance of confidence:
The way we perceive ourselves or a situation can seriously impact our confidence. To challenge your personal comfort zones:
Most often, our behavior and emotional response are illogical. To gauge your emotional level of confidence and to gain sight into your emotional core:
Fears have a knack for decreasing our confidence. To understand the limits of self-confidence:
The culture and the people we surround ourselves with have a huge impact on our self-confidence. To grow your confidence through mental, emotional, behavioral, relational and spiritual strategies:
To find our higher levels of confidence, we must believe that there is something bigger that us and we must tap into our spiritual being. To transcend your self-confidence:
Confidence Plan — How To Build A Stronger You, Mastering The Practical Skills Of Winning, by Tim Ursiny, is written for those who want a better life for themselves, a more positive vision of life, or to assess their level of confidence. It is also written for those with low self-esteem and for those who struggle with self-confidence.
Confidence Plan — How To Build A Stronger You, Mastering The Practical Skills Of Winning is transformational and can be used in our professional life as much as our personal life. Through his book, through immediate practical exercises, Tim Ursiny seeks to impact people long-term.
Tim Ursiny provides us with timely, implementable exercises that you can work on, on a daily basis. You can work on the exercises in six weeks or you can work at our own pace. It is therefore necessary for you to select the techniques and sections of the book that speak the most to you.
In any situation where two people are competing with relatively similar skills, the more confident person will always succeed at a greater level.
The way we view a situation can have serious ramifications. Our perceptions will often dictate what we do, how we feel, and how we interact with others.
Our minds are capable of processing a huge amount of information. This is both a plus and a minus concerning whether this information aids us or hurts us.What goes on in our minds has a powerful impact on our confidence and our behavior. Having the wrong stuff in our heads is dangerous to our success.
We cannot control what others say to us, but we definitely can impact and change what we say to ourselves.
One form of conflict is a result of prejudice and stereotypes
No matter how confident we are, no matter how successful we become, no matter how powerful we feel, there is something bigger than us.
Overcoming The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni defines the five dysfunctions of a team to avoid in order to be successful. He teaches us how to build a team as a leader and how to effectively be part of one.
For Lencioni, a team is a “relatively small number of people (anywhere from three to twelve) that shares common goals as well as the rewards and responsibilities for achieving them. Team members readily set aside their individual or personal needs for the greater good of the group.”
Patrick Lencioni believes in team work and that it is the ultimate competitive advantage in a company. Effective team work being easy to attain but hard to measure, he judges effective team work by measuring its performance, its results, by its capacity to overcome obstacles and the five dysfunctions model (seen below).
Trust is an uncommon trait in life, is the most important factor in team survivals, is rare and is generally hard to instill. Being a trustful and trustworthy designates a person unafraid to be open, candid, transparent, willing to expose their weaknesses, and admit their failures.
Because of human preservation instincts, because people wear masks to protect themselves and their true feelings, being vulnerable is uncommon and unnatural. People don’t find rewarding to take such risks, to put themselves in harm’s way for other people, for an organization.
Furthermore, lack of trust is a destroyer of team work, multiplies hypocrisy, causes the team to watch their every move, monitor their every word. To overcome this dysfunction, Lencioni suggests that:
In addition to overcoming trust issues, teams must learn to handle conflicts. Conflicts don’t necessarily have to be feuds, quarrels or arguments. Conflicts can also be healthy debates that lead the team to a solution, discussions where people are listening and seriously considering other people points of view. Needless to say, without trust, the debate will easily become a contest.
Conflict is inevitable but must not be avoided. It is either constructive or destructive, and anywhere along that spectrum. It has the benefit to push people out of their emotional comfort zone.
To overcome dysfunction #2, Lencioni proposes to:
A lack of commitment is the third dysfunction to be overcome by teams. Commitment lies in fact that the team buys in a decision whether or not they agree with it. To create clarity and alignment, to avoid assumptions:
All members of the team, including the team leader, must remain accountable for their actions. They must remind each other of their respectful responsibility, of their behaviors, standards, results and performance. Otherwise, they gradually lose respect for each other, lose morale.
Leaders have to be able to receive critical feedback around their behavior and performance in order to give feedback. To encourage a culture of peer-to-peer accountability, Lencioni suggests that teams must openly:
Self-orientated distractions, individualization are also destroyers of teams. To address this last dysfunction, there is no need to have completely overcome the four previous dysfunctions.
Focusing on collective results implies that team members are not self-interested and not only looking out for number one.
Results are what measure team success and keeps people focused on the priorities. Teams must commit early and openly to their expected results, keep a scoreboard and measure the progress at all times.
In Overcoming The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni shows leaders how to build and optimize their team through practical examples, gradual exercises and valid assessments such as the Myers Briggs assessment tests.
Overcoming The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is very insightful and dedicated to toxic environments, to self-disciplined, thoughtful leaders. In order for them to be successful, Lencioni recommends that team members become:
Each characteristic can be worked on simultaneously. Of course, the leader has to be the facilitator as well and all expected behaviors have to be modeled on the leader.
After analyzing the 5 different dysfunctions that destroys teams, Lencioni answers additional questions that he received from clients, consultants and executives, replies to the objections of some participants, demonstrates the obstacles to avoid, the ways to convince skeptical leaders, engage uncomfortable people.
At last, Lencioni provides us with tools, questionnaires, team building exercises, road maps, steps to take in order to start and maintain the team building process.
Patrick Lencioni is a speaker, consultant, founder and president of The Table Group. Patrick Lencioni is also the author of Overcoming The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
Conflicts happen in all workplaces, are inevitable, generally dramatic, are stereotypically painful, are often the road to failure if you don’t know how to manage them.
However, contrary to common belief, they are most of the times milestones to success.
Wondering how to constructively manage or disengage workplace conflicts and how to remain disciplined and self-aware during conflicts as a leader?
Conflicts are incompatibilities and interference between two different parties ideas, desires, goals, interests, values and principles, events and activities.
Conflict management or conflict competence is a learnable skill that should be developed by all leaders throughout their career. Conflicts are consequential, frequent and inevitable but are necessary. They occur whether an employee is expressing a dissenting view, resisting change, or whether the leader is correcting an existing problem, fighting complacency and group-thinking.
Leaders that poorly manage conflict are faced with unfortunate lawsuits, grievances, violence, employee absenteeism, employee defection, poor performance, ineffective decisions, deteriorated working relationships, distrust and other negative behaviors, attacks on reputation and careers, a toxic company culture.
As a result, poorly managed conflicts are costly for organizations that have to sometimes hire new employees, take time to train new members, bring in paid third-party to mediate disagreements.
However, the benefits of appropriate conflict management are endless. In order to approach conflict in a productive manner, it is necessary to understand that:
In the workplace, conflicts generally stems from differences of control, power and influence between the leader and his or her employees. Conflicts also come from discrepancies in culture, background, monetary.
There are several steps, that you can take to understand and manage conflicts constructively, you must:
Furthermore, detecting a conflict early will allow to resolve them faster.
There are generally two known responses to conflict: “fight or flight” and “retaliatory cycle”.
On on hand, the fight or flight response is a natural response to threats where one either flee from danger or fight it. The choice between fight or flight depends on how someone has been conditioned.
On the other hand, the retaliatory cycle leads to escalation, leads to destructive behaviors that fuel and trigger negative behaviors in each party. In the retaliatory cycle, someone is first triggered by a behavior, then generates in that person an emotional response to this behavior. This emotional response is perceived by others as a threat to their ideas, opinions that in return generate an emotional response. And so on and so forth, the retaliatory cycle is created.
Leaders have to acquire a model behavior during conflicts in the workplace. Leaders encourage positive outcomes by:
Conflict competence requires that the leader:
Dealing with conflict can leave you feeling like you are in a hostile territory but practice makes perfect, and managing conflicts effectively becomes easy with experience.
Also, create a zen space and learn to leave your conflicts at work.
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.
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