Tag: Relational Intelligence

Book Reviews, Faith-Based

Find Your People By Jennie Allen

by journeytoleadershipblogLeave a Comment on Find Your People By Jennie Allen

We stay stuck in the routines of our lives.

We don’t connect with others, we seclude ourselves for self-protection and stay within the social circles we are comfortable with.

Yet we remain unsatisfied with our lives and wonder whether or not life is supposed to be this way.

Yet we wonder how to find our community, our people, the ones who will fight for us and who are worth fighting for.

Find Your People By Jennie Allen #relationships #books #bookreviews #journeytoleadership journeytoleadershipblog.com

What is a Community?

Community is more then friendships.

Community is a way of life and is essential to living a fulfilled life.

In addition, the sense of community is based on the truths that people are the best and most painful part of our lives.

Your Community is made of non toxic people who see you, know you and who are willing to be seen and known by you.

Principles for Community

Community is necessay.

Needing other people is not a weakness but a strength.

There are 5 principles to building a healthy Community.

1. Proximity

The principle of Proximity relates to a need for intimacy and physical closeness.

To create Proximity, you can start noticing people in your vecinity and initiating the friendship even if you get frustrated.

2. Transparency

Closeness leads to Transparency.

However, you will only be as close as you are transparent and vulnerable.

3. Accountability

When we are left alone, we tend to become the worst versions of ourselves.

That is why Community has the potential to make us better and keep us accountable.

Indeed, Community makes us more effective, challenges us to aim higher, sharpens the mind and speaks truth.

4. Shared purpose

Most communities are built around a bigger and common mission.

Communities give the opportunity to do something meaningful and exciting.

5. Consistency

Communities provides healthy and consistent relationships.

Usually, people aren’t because they don’t want to deal with conflicts.

Nevertheless, conflicts are an inherent part of life.

That is why the people from your Community have to be consistent, choose to stay and be willing to be inconvenienced by your relationship.

To stay consistent, one must:

  • Assume the best because so many offenses are misunderstandings.
  • Seek peace and address a problem directly before it grows.
  • Be quick to apologize and make amends.

Review

Find Your People by Jennie Allen is a faith-based self-help book about building deep community.

Find Your People is destined mostly for extroverts, for people who are hardwired for relationships, for people who are afraid of being alone and of being lonely.

It is also written for those who hope to make deep connection and build an authentic community.

Allen uses her own life experiences and as an example of moving from a space of lack and fear to one of finding the right community.

Indeed, Allen transforms her initial neediness for relationship into a personal strength.

Furthermore, she demonstrates through biblical references that Deep Community is a social necessity and a path to greater success, hope and faith.

It seems like building and keeping that Community requires hardwork but is worth it.

Finally, Allen stressed that there are no perfect people but only the right people for you.

So, go out there and find your people!

Let me know below what you think about this book!

Favorite quote(s)

But community is bigger than two or three friends. Community should be the way we live.

We live guarded because we fear someone will use our weakness against us.

No one can be your everything, but everyone has something to say, something to teach you, and something to bring to your life.

Conflict isn’t the enemy to our friendships; conflict is fodder to make them grow. Conflict is inevitable in the kind of deep community we are talking about here.

If we’re going to deal with an offense, it needs to be a real offense. This is my rule on when to address something: don’t react too quickly. So many hurts are just misunderstandings.

Ratings 3/5

Author

Jennie Allen

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Author

Jennie Allen

by journeytoleadershipblogLeave a Comment on Jennie Allen

Author Biography #bookreviews #books #bio #biography #author #journeytoleadership journeytoleadershipblog.com

Jennie Allen is the founder of IF: Gathering. Jennie Allen is also the author of Find Your People.

Book Reviews

Radical Candor: How to Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean By Kim Scott

by journeytoleadershipblog2 Comments on Radical Candor: How to Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean By Kim Scott

Being a boss is a full-time job and is not as easy as it seems.

The truth is, being the boss can be an emotional rollercoaster.

It requires maturity, focus and emotional discipline, especially when dealing with people.

That is why Kim Scott has established a few principles that can help bosses create a culture of candor, build stable relationships and evolve into great bosses.

According to Kim Scott, managers, leaders or bosses:

  1. Achieve results.
  2. Deal with people.
  3. Express what they think.
  4. Build and guide cohesive teams.
  5. Accept and give fair and candid feedback.

As you can see, Kim Scott makes no distinction between a boss, a leader and a manager because eventually, they have to assume different roles and master different skills at different moments.

They all have to find out a way to get what they want by saying what they mean.

Radical Candor: How to Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean

Radical Candor_ Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott (2)

Why and how to build relationships?

The relationships you have with your team determine your level of success, company culture, and performance.

To build great relationships that will help your business:

  • Take care of yourself first.
  • Stay centered and create a healthy work life balance.
  • Find out what works best for you and apply it.
  • Care personally about people.
  • Respect boundaries and people physical space. It is detrimental to find a balance between creating personal yet professional bonds.
  • Spend time alone with your team members.
  • Stay true to your values and share them if possible.
  • Be transparent and aware of your emotions.
  • Discipline your reactions. Learn to respond and not react.

Why and how to build a great team?

People’s motivations are personal.

Every team member can be exceptional, they just have to find the right fit and the right motivations.

Needless to say, work life is better when your team loves what they do.

To build a great team:

  • Get to know the people on your team. Focus more on them than on results.
  • Understand people’s strength and weaknesses, identify how they tick and how their job fits into their life plan.
  • Avoid micromanaging or ignoring your team members.
  • Allocate as much time to those who are struggling as the top performers.
  • Listen to your team members, learn to incorporate their thinking into yours, and give them the opportunity to complain, share ideas, and raise issues. This way, you will create a culture of innovation.

Why and how to accept/give feedback?

Feedback is an uncomfortable process. To accept and give proper feedback:

  • Earn your team’s trust.
  • Listen more than you speak.
  • Understand what motivates your team and help them avoid burnout or boredom.
  • Understand your audience and adapt to it.
  • See feedback as an act of guidance and don’t make it personal.
  • Solicit feedback especially in private conversations and outside of meetings.
  • Voice your own disagreements. Speak up when things are not going well.
  • Take responsibility fo your actions and admit when you have made a mistake
  • Discern the truth from a lie when it comes to feedback.
  • Be humble in your delivery and state that you want to help.

Why and how to achieve results?

Every boss wants results. To achieve results:

  • Have frequent one on one conversation with your team and with a positive mindset. Have a one on one conversation with your team members to get to know them, to solve problems effectively and to help you understand what is working and what is not.
  • Create key metrics to measure progress. Write down any possible updates.
  • Create meetings where you can debate, encourage new ideas and make big decisions.
  • Test out the feasibility of the ideas you have received.

Review

Radical Candor: How to Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean By Kim Scott is a step by step guide on how to be a candid boss.

It is about building candid relationships with the people you work with and about using your humanity as a leadership tool.

Radical Candor: How to Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean By Kim Scott essentially takes the pressure off leaders.

The principles shared expose candor as a management tool, put bosses at ease and help them understand that there is more to being a boss than giving orders.

In addition, the principles shared remove fear, self-doubt and anxiety, then create an understanding regarding the role of a boss.

Furthermore, Kim Scott uses her own experiences at Google and Adsense to drive the conversation and to illustrate her ideas about radical candor.

She provides amazing tools and techniques to implement in order to be a great boss and to have a healthy relationship with your direct reports.

Her tools and techniques are detailed and are not exclusive to bosses.

Finally, the best thing about this book is that you can tell that Kim Scott cares about the career advancement and the emotional health of every boss.

Through radical candor, she demonstrates how to improve all aspects of your work life.

You don’t have to implement every tool or technique right away.

Let me know below what you think about this book!

Favorite quote(s)

In order to build a great team, you need to understand how each person’s job fits into their life goals

The way you treat people determines whether you’ll get their best effort, a perfunctory effort, or an effort to sabotage you.

Ratings 3/5

Author

Kim Scott

Journey To Leadership

10 Things Every New Leader Should Do

by journeytoleadershipblogLeave a Comment on 10 Things Every New Leader Should Do

When you are a leader, people will be watching your every moves like a hawk.

So, there are a couple of things to do and not to do in order to be unimpeachable and to represent your true self well.

Sometimes, the novelty of the job, the number of people you meet, the quantity of information transiting in your direction, the new type of pressure tend to make you forget your role as a leader.

The truth is that you do during your first few days as a leader will mark memories in the long run.

10 Things Every New Leader Should Do

10 Things Every New Leader Should Do

#1. Create work-life balance

Congratulations on your new position!

  1. Take a moment to drain it all in and celebrate success. When you access a new position, you are either frightened or excited.
  2. Take some time to assess your new role and the advancement in your career, on your success.
  3. Get your personal life together. Have hobbies and a strong support system in place.
  4. Prepare your transition to your new position.

#2. Mind your character

When you meet someone for the first time, they will have a tendency to test you, your principles, character, core values and boundaries.

For example, from your boss to the cleaning lady, they will all check if you get angry easily or his much patience you have.

It is important to always be developing yourself as a leader.

#3. Check your attitude

A positive attitude is everything and will determine your heights to success. During the first few months, it is detrimental to:

  1. Stay visible.
  2. Adopt a winning strategy.
  3. Be aware of your actions. You are now a role model.
  4. Keep a positive attitude and body language, even when you don’t feel like it.

#4. Be approachable

Sometimes, it’s important to seem approachable:

  1. Introduce yourself to people even if you don’t know them or are not introduced. Don’t wait too long before introducing yourself or else it will quickly get awkward.
  2. Remember names when you are being introduced.
  3. Try to get along with people for the first few days.
  4. Help others find their motivation.

#5. Groom yourself and dress like a leader

No matter what people say, first impressions matter unfortunately. Dressing like a leader will help you feel confident and will in consequence increase your ability to lead.

Even though you know that clothes don’t define your character, most people make snap judgments.

Also, observe the company’s dress code and dress accordingly.

#6. Keep learning

Learning is a humbling process. Even though new leaders think that they can handle their position with their old skills and their old knowledge, most of them don’t have the necessary skills to be a leader.

  1. Make sure that you study and learn the corporate culture.
  2. Evaluate what you have learned from your previous jobs and from the previous one in your position.
  3. Ask questions even if they make you look or feel incompetent.
  4. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to perform.
  5. Don’t stop learning. Not because you have reached a leadership position that you have to stop learning and stop asking questions.

#7. Build relationships

Building the right relationships is a cultural key to success.

To quickly build relationships and to grow your network, put your interpersonal skills to the test and make a positive first impression.

#8. Watch out for office politics

Office politics in the first few days is risky.

  1. Be mindful of office politics and the cliques that already exist.
  2. Choose your clicks wisely you want to belong to. Do not try to belong to a group in particular or try to be friends with their former colleagues.
  3. Keep your opinion about your colleagues and your work to yourself. There is nothing more disgraceful than a gossiping leader that nobody can trust.
  4. Find out how your new team operated in the past.

#9. Assess your strengths and weaknesses 

You do not want to reach these heights and find out that the positions is not made for you, that you are not capable of achieving success, job fulfillment, job satisfaction.

  1. Understand that different skills will be demanded in your new role. What got you here won’t get you there.
  2. Make sure that you really want this position and that it’s right for you.
  3. Get a hold on your purpose. You will know if you are walking in your purpose by the amount of joy you experience while executing your purpose.

#10. Earn your respect

In your first few months:

  1. Do not try to be liked but to be respected. This is an advice for mostly women who have to annoyingly smile and forcefully be polite.
  2. Don’t be too quick to use your new authority or power.
  3. Start taking responsibility for your actions.
  4. Share your core values and set high expectations for performance, results, conduct, alignment and engagement.
  5. Give respect. Find out where your role starts and ends. There is no need to step on anybody’s toes.

Last Words Of Advice!

The first months are the right time to set right habits.

  1. Don’t stop growing and expect discomfort.
  2. Remember that you are the one who makes the decision.

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.

Journey To Leadership

Are You Feeling Like An Outsider At Work? — 17 Simple Tips To Turn Your Situation Around

by journeytoleadershipblog1 Comment on Are You Feeling Like An Outsider At Work? — 17 Simple Tips To Turn Your Situation Around

On my last 9 to 5 job, I remember my manager complaining to me that I would no longer be part of the team because I am too different, I asked too many questions and I don’t act like them or watch the same TV shows that they do.

Now at the time, I thought I wasn’t getting it and that I was failing at adulting.

Clearly, if I wanted to be successful in life and in my career, I either had to fake it and drain myself, or I needed to find another path and distance myself from “them”.

The point is that most organizations want their employees to be different and have original skills.

However, the reality is that most workplaces adhere to group-thinking, and create outsiders by forcing them to suppress their individuality for conformity.

Wondering what are the benefits of being an outsider and how you can overcome that feeling?

Are You Feeling Like An Outsider At Work? — 17 Simple Tips To Turn Your Situation Around

What is an outsider?

An outsider is a person who doesn’t feel like they belong. At work, that feeling translates itself into:

  • Feeling unsuccessful. According to society, being a successful adult at work means being great at your job, understanding and applying social norms.
  • Being unable to join a group or to find someone who matches your values and principles to some extent.
  • Being unable to express yourself freely in meetings and around a group of people.
  • Being excluded out of meetings or out of group conversations. If you are perpetually being excluded and are subject to other workplace harassment, your workplace is toxic and you must consider your mental health first.

Why are you feeling the way you do?

We are social creatures. We crave that feeling of belonging to a group that will take care of us and that will cooperate for better chances of survival.

Therefore, to get things done, we feel like we must fit in, preserve our well-being and be liked. Furthermore, feeling like an outsider can stem from:

  • A lack of cultural sensitivity. It is easy to feel excluded when we don’t understand a culture or when we don’t feel understood because of the cultural barrier.
  • A lack of social skills, a lack of confidence, a shy, introverted or lone wolf personality. Basically, feeling like an outsider is a social conditioning.
  • Your negative thoughts. If you believe certain things about yourself then they will most likely come through.
  • Differences in core values. For example, if most of your workplace like to gossip and you don’t, then you will start to feel excluded.
  • Gender gap. 
  • Generational gap. Each generation perceives the world differently and challenges the previous one. 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.

What are the benefits of being an outsider?

I was brought up with the conviction that different is good. I believe that there are several ways of doing one thing.

So, I would never be thrown off if someone would go about life in an unconventional way. If you’re feeling like an outsider, chances are you:

  • Possess untapped talents and unused skills. Your feeling of being an outsider disappears when you find a place where you can exercise your gifts.
  • Are aware that you are not maximizing your potential and you are not walking in your purpose.
  • Are creative, innovative, are a trailblazer and a leader. Indeed, most leaders are outsiders. They have unique gifts and a unique perception of the world.
  • Can monetize what makes you different.

How to handle being an outsider?

Feeling included at work leads to better health, stronger work performance and brides a positive work environment. However, if you feel like an outsider, you are not alone.

Indeed, the feeling of being an outsider is very common and is not something to be ashamed of. Some people hide it, others don’t front. What is the best approach?

To claim your difference and get the best out of work:

  1. Accept yourself and take pride in your difference.
  2. Be compassionate with yourself. Not because you don’t fit in that there is something wrong with you.
  3. Strengthen your own identity and find out more about your core values.
  4. Identify your strengths and weaknesses so you can better apply them.
  5. Figure out your goals, build a vision board and remain focus on your goals.
  6. Understand that you don’t need to fit in to be successful and don’t need to be one-dimensional to exist.
  7. Acknowledge that feeling like an outsider is not a permanent nor unique situation. You can be the most wonderful person on this planet and still feel like an outsider.
  8. Stop trying hard to fit in. The more you try, the more you feel drained, the more you will end up with the wrong crowd. You just have to be prepared for when the right opportunities and people come your way.
  9. Assess your behavior and your thoughts towards your situation. Then, document your situation. Are you new to the company? Are people enjoying your company? Are people including you? Are you reserved or standoffish? Do you like, respect or understand the people you work with?
  10. Give yourself the time and space to explore what works for you, what you like and what you don’t like. There is no right place for you. You have to create your own space and not settle for less.
  11. Express who you truly are from time to time and observe what happens next. You will either create or shut off opportunities.
  12. Fill your days with activities that you enjoy.
  13. Build a strong support system with people who accept you for who you are.
  14. Support people who think and act outside the box. People who think outside the box are usually creative and innovative.
  15. Don’t pay attention to what people say about you. Don’t let external circumstances define you.
  16. Stop people pleasing and seeking outside validation. Avoid adjusting your personality and your core values to please people. Instead, observe the social norms at work, see if you want to acquire these norms, and then adjust your communication style, your work style accordingly.
  17. Otherwise, prepare an exit strategy.

Last words of Advice!

Sometimes, we have acquired all the diploma, all the skills for a job and still feel like an outsider.

Remember that there are benefits in not fitting in, that you are not failing, that you can be a leader and create your own path, that if you are not liked or included then you can be respected.

I have found that becoming an expert in your field will help you feel like you belong and will help you gain in credibility.

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.

Journey To Leadership

The Importance Of Effectively Improving Your Communication Skills

by journeytoleadershipblog14 Comments on The Importance Of Effectively Improving Your Communication Skills

Leaders receive a multitude of information on a daily basis. They make hard decisions every day and expect that their employees will directly understand and precisely apply them.

Decisions become erroneous when leader fail to listen. The execution process falls short when leaders fail to communicate and clarify their vision. Subsequently, they also fail to solve problems and reach their goals.

Wondering how to hone your communication skills and create a better working environment? 

The Importance Of Effectively Improving Your Communication Skills

What is communication?

Communication is a complex and dynamic process, used to collect information. It is also a form of human interaction that always involves at least 2 people, that depends on the character of the people involved and that relies on trust.

While communicating, we receive and/or emit information through silence, facial expressions, writing, reading, talking or listening. We use these skills practically everywhere at work, for every situations.

In addition, a noisy environment, stereotypes, cultural differences, lexical differences, company culture are barriers to communication. These barriers distort what is being said and what is being received. However, being aware if them is the first step to reprogramming communication.

Why is it important?

Communication skill is the ability to effectively interact with people to influence, to convince, to mobilize people towards one goal, to unify teams.

Developing communication skills will bring success at every level, help convey a better understanding of your standards and requirements, build positive healthy relationships, avoid or work through conflicts.

Great communication skills will improve your leadership credibility, your self-confidence, your relationships with others, your feelings of belonging and will decrease your stress level. They will also drive change and increase team motivation.

Furthermore, poor communication skills can prevent you from understanding your coworkers, getting hired or getting promoted, saving time or sharing request in meetings. communication failure leads to resentment.

How to improve your communication skills?

At work, some people struggle to share their thoughts, ideas. To improve your communication skills and get ahead at work:

  1. Be self-aware and stay authentic to your principles.
  2. Demonstrate empathy. Empathy will allow you to reach people, to perceive their feelings and perspectives, to build a team that you understand. For example, start by learning your employee’s name to show that you care.
  3. Demonstrate that you can be trusted by keeping secrets, by following through on promises and commitments, by being consistent, and by not withholding useful information
  4. Even though you don’t believe it, you are a brand and must treat yourself as such. You must learn to present, to market yourself, to quantify and value your assets.
  5. Find a purpose for every interaction. Your purpose gives your communication direction.
  6. Remember that everyone is different and won’t communicate the way you do.
  7. Always think win-win. According to Stephen Covey in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, it is better to seek mutual benefits in all human interactions, believe that life is a cooperation and not a competition.
  8. Understand the corporate culture to adapt your communication style. Your communication style will influence the way others react to you. Numerous communication styles have been developed throughout the years and most often, have been equated to leadership style. Needless to say, everyone doesn’t communicate the same way.
  9. Bear in mind that appearances are important, even detrimental to success. Maintain professional decorum at all times, dress appropriately, groom yourself, be hygienic, keep your composure according to the company’s culture.
  10. Take care of your own body language by standing straight, by eliminating over the top behavior, standing still, staying focused on your interlocutor, maintaining eye contact and restraining your facial expression.
  11. Actively listen and speak less. While listening, monitor body language, evaluate the emotional intensity of the conversation, stay open-minded, and choose your words carefully not to offend. This also means that you don’t need to emit judgement during the process, that you must avoid listening to reply or to seek ulterior motives in someone, and that you must allow people to talk without interruption, even if I disagree with them.
  12. When writing and speaking, keep it succinct, specific, clear, coherent and compelling for others. Avoid using ambiguous words.
  13. Treat people as you want to be treated. Stay polite and treat people with the respect that they deserve and with regards to their culture.
  14. Have an open door policy and be approachable.
  15. Analyze your audience. Take time and analyze the full situation and pay attention to non verbal communication.
  16. When in conversation, observe what is being said and paraphrase to confirm that you have properly understood, ask probing questions to get all the information and avoid daydreaming, tuning out or jumping to conclusions. If nervous, introverted or shy, practice your conversations before.
  17. Avoid using stereotypes to categorize someone or the info that they share.
  18. Use humor to defuse negative situations to elevate any subject, to put your audience at ease. Using humor is risky but is worth-while.
  19. Reward positive behavior and hold people accountable for negative behavior.

Last Words Of Advice!

To effectively improve communication, there are also a few unspoken rules to follow. One must avoid:

  • Discounting information on the account of discrediting the source.
  • Comparing the information you are getting with your own experience.
  • Calling attention to yourself or your situation.
  • Gossiping, openly criticizing or making fun of others and their interests. Find solutions and help resolve problem instead of creating them.
  • Noisy environment to have conversations.
  • Respect silence. Silence is golden in some cultures.
  1. Finally, don’t take anything personal.

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.

Journey To Leadership

Dealing With Cultural Sensitivity In The Workplace

by journeytoleadershipblog6 Comments on Dealing With Cultural Sensitivity In The Workplace

In the world we live in, with a supremacist leader as the leader of the free world, it seems that culturally ignorant people feel free to demonstrate their ignorance. Lately, cultural ignorance and overtly offending people have been maximized, and this behavior is slowly becoming the norm.

At work and in life, leaders are the ones to demonstrate exemplary behavior when dealing with people from different backgrounds. They have to be emotionally and culturally intelligent.

Wondering how to adjust yourself with different cultures, to become more culturally sensitive and create a healthy workplace?

Cultural Sensitivity Workplace

What is culture?

Culture is a dynamic and complex system of shared values, norms and symbols that distinguishes groups of people from others and that bound them together. It is demonstrated most often in literature, art, religion, language, traditions.

Furthermore, culture is learnt, and shapes one’s personal behavior, values, thoughts, experiences. for example, it defines one’s reaction to conflict or our problem solving skills.

Culture lays the basis for purpose, a higher calling and meaning in life. It is built on morals and a set of unspoken rules. It also conditions our perception for failure and success.

What is cultural sensitivity?

Cultural sensitivity is being aware that everyone is not the same. It means being able to learn from different people, to understand their backgrounds, to collaborate and cooperate with them, without being judgmental.

Cultural sensitivity means viewing everyone as a unique individual. It promotes unity and has become a skill that is most useful in the world of today.

Why is cultural sensitivity important?

Cultural sensitivity is detrimental because it introduces the concept of identity, of cultural appreciation, of cultural differences. It consequently increase the feeling of belonging and of safety. It improves communication, the quality of work in multinationals or when dealing with coworkers from different backgrounds. In addition, it removes the idea of cultural superiority.

Contrasting cultures bring a diverse set of knowledge, competencies, perspectives and ideas. If positively and purposefully harnessed, culture differences can trigger innovation, creativity and improve job satisfaction.

How to become a culturally sensitive leader?

Work is a part of an individual social identity. Corporate has its own culture, with its norm, its rules, its own values and own systems of beliefs. If the culture is healthy and positive, people easily feel empowered, valued and give better results.

In the corporate culture, managing people with different backgrounds is complex and full of challenges. Regardless of the laws in place, there are a lot of micro aggression towards diversity.

To create culturally sensitive environment, and subsequently a healthy workplace:

  1. Encourage self-awareness and self-development. Change is an internal process that requires self-analysis and self-respect beforehand.
  2. Stay authentic and don’t try to appropriate or claim someone else’s culture.
  3. Be mindful, be open to new experiences and don’t hesitate to explore and learn new things.
  4. Remember, with every interaction, that every person from a different culture is a human-being.
  5. Embrace people who are different from yourself. Get to know the person’s background to understand their behavior, how they operate in society and how they experience life.
  6. Listen actively and respectfully to people and when speaking, choose your words carefully.
  7. Avoid imposing your ideas on people and forcing them into a box of stereotypes.
  8. Take the initiative and learn other people’s dynamics through personal experience or prolonged exposure.
  9. Identify some idioms and sayings. Also, pronounce their name correctly and accept silence as an act of communication. Learning their language will consequently improve communication.
  10. Show appreciation for someone else’s culture. On one hand, demonstrate empathy and avoid judging them. On the other hand, don’t pander too much to someone else’s culture.
  11. Ask probing open-ended questions. Avoid asking too many questions as not to overwhelm your interlocutor.
  12. Help your employees to understand the company’s culture, expectations, goals and code of conduct.
  13. Work on your social skills. Focus on building healthy relationships.
  14. Effectively navigate conflicts brought by cultural differences.
  15. Pick up on emotional and non verbal cues during conversations.
  16. Take and provide diversity trainings.
  17. If you are part of the majority, seek understanding before seeking to be understood. opening up to minorities will help them accept yours faster, to face challenges better and will increase their work performance.
  18. Respect that other people won’t want to integrate your culture. 
  19. Allow people to express freely their values. This will increase their interactions with others, their work performance and their well-being.
  20. Learn to compromise.
  21. Encourage your team to travel more and to approach diverse group of people outside of work.

Adjusting or understanding a culture is a long process. Learning and adjusting to someone else’s culture doesn’t mean that you have to deny your own. It just means that you are able to work and collaborate with people from diverse culture.

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.

Book Reviews, Faith-Based

Confidence Plan — How To Build A Stronger You, Mastering The Practical Skills Of Winning by Tim Ursiny

by journeytoleadershipblog12 Comments on Confidence Plan — How To Build A Stronger You, Mastering The Practical Skills Of Winning by Tim Ursiny

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.

Confidence Plan

Recognizing the importance of confidence

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:

  • Learn from adversity. Through resilience, “quality that allows us to pick ourselves back up after experiencing hardship or trauma”, you grow your confidence despite failure.
  • Embrace your past, enjoy your success, get over past failures and learn from your mistakes. People who hide or don’t observe their past tend to repeat the same mistakes and miss out on opportunities.
  • Assess your current abilities, behaviors, habits, blind spots, strengths and weaknesses. Welcome feedback from trusted people around you and make the needed changes.
  • Stay focused on your vision and be optimistic that you are going to get there.
  • Work on your attitude. Attitudes are composed of what we think, how we feel and what we do. And, when all these aspects are aligned, we are more peaceful and more confident. Therefore, to constantly adjust your attitude:
    • Watch your self talk, reward positive thinking and remind yourself of your own competencies.
    • Take time off for yourself, enjoy the company of your friends and family.
    • Practise future behaviors in fictional situations.
  • Identify the motivations for reaching your goals and take the steps to grow.

Challenging personal comfort zones

The way we perceive ourselves or a situation can seriously impact our confidence. To challenge your personal comfort zones:

  • Use different techniques to control your thoughts and to remain present. Some turn to meditation, some to God and others to religion to instill peace of mind.
  • Avoid making snap judgements that create insecurities and that easily lead us into error.
  • Avoid self-fulfilling prophecies and remain optimistic. Sometimes, when we believe that we can achieve something, our subconscious will arrange our actions and behaviors to match that expectation. Believing that good things will come to you will help you live a happier life.
  • Don’t be your own self-critic. Use words of affirmations to motivate you and to reach higher grounds of success.
  • Identify the embarrassing thoughts and seek new ones.
  • Stop negative thoughts from taking root in your mind. For example, use the highly effective rubber band technique:
    • Put a rubber band around your wrist.
    • When negative thoughts come in, snap the rubber band.
    • Tell yourself to stop the thought pattern.
    • Replace the negative thought with a positive one.

Building confidence in failure

Most often, our behavior and emotional response are illogical. To gauge your emotional level of confidence and to gain sight into your emotional core:

  • Evaluate your behavior in stressful situations and your relationship with compliments.
  •  Start journaling.
  • Take responsibility for your feelings about yourself and about how others make you feel, for your successes and failures.
  • Avoid  negative opinions and hypothesis about people and yourself. You will end up attributing negative connotations to every single one of their behaviors and only confirming what you already belive.
  • Don’t allow past hurts to define your future.
  • Use visualization techniques and your 5 senses to deepen your confidence, your emotional core, to increase self-control and resilience.

Understanding the limits of self-confidence

Fears have a knack for decreasing our confidence. To understand the limits of self-confidence:

  • Act more confidently so you can become more confident.
  • Identify what drains you and what fills you up with energy. We usually feel stressed when there are elements out of our control because we feel less powerful than we think we are. To feel better, shift your focus on things that you can control.
  • Identify the goal to grow your already existing confidence. Then, stop and measure your progress.
  • Identify your fears then face your fears by gradually desensitizing and exposing yourself to them. “Confidence is not the absence of fear” but means that “fear has no control over you”.
  • Avoid procrastination. Procrastination tends to intensify our fears.
  • Expose yourself to embarrassment more often.

Building confidence through the 5 approaches

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:

  • Identify people who drain your confidence, that judge your abilities and capabilities. Assess their actions, learn to deal with them effectively or learn to repair the relationships.
  • Find out whether or not you are draining someone else.
  • Create and increase your support system that defines your social identity. In this support system, we feel more comfortable being ourselves.
  • Consider how conflicts impact your confidence. Conflicts are born from prejudices, stereotypes and differences in opinion. Firstly, center yourself around your own opinion in order not to be threatened by someone else’s or to become defensive. Secondly, build relationships that promotes trust and loyalty.
  • Forgive and give back to your community to help you grow.
  • Invite feedback from people you trust and respect.

Transcending self-confidence

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:

  • Identify your purpose and higher calling. This way, you won’t accept environments and position that don’t satisfy you or that don’t play to your strengths and weaknesses.
  • Examine how you can bring significance to your work, what you want to be remembered for, that mark you want to leave on earth.
  • Practise what you preach.
  • Develop a deeper relationship with God.
  • Build a personal mission statement.

Review

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.

Favorite quote(s)

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.

Ratings 3/5

Author

Tim Ursiny

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Tim Ursiny

by journeytoleadershipblog1 Comment on Tim Ursiny

authorTim Ursiny, PhD, is the president and founder of Advantage Coaching & Training. Tim Ursiny is also the Author of the Confidence Plan — How To Build A Stronger You, Mastering The Practical Skills Of Winning.

Journey To Leadership

Building And Maintaining Healthy Relationships In The Workplace

by journeytoleadershipblog35 Comments on Building And Maintaining Healthy Relationships In The Workplace

Deep long-lasting work relationships in corporate can take your career to the next level.

In a world where technology has taken over, where interactions are made behind our computer, where misunderstandings often foster and loyalty is a luxury, building relationships is challenging but can make the difference.

Wondering how leaders build and maintain long-lasting relationships in the workplace?

relationships workplace

The benefits of healthy relationships in the workplace

Building work relationships is difficult in itself. Mostly, because we don’t have the luxury of choosing who we hang out with.

In addition, highly skilled, smart people easily lose their jobs because of their low social skills, of their poor behavior and their lack of emotional intelligence.

The quality of the work relationships has direct impact on the quality of our lives. Indeed, healthy relationships have a tendency to reduce the effects of stress, to improve job satisfaction, quality of life, to keep us motivated and enthusiastic. They are a great indicator of whether or not we love our job.

Build and maintain deeper relationships

Thinking that work relationships are not worthy is a mistake. Leaders and employees have to make quick decisions while getting along with everyone, in multicultural contexts, with people from various backgrounds.

  1. Be authentic and comfortable with yourself first.
  2. Believe that you are worthy of relationships.
  3. Believe that you are trustworthy, that people are trustworthy even though you are aware of snakes in the grass. You can demonstrate trust by soliciting people’s opinion in one on ones.
  4. Believe that relationships are important to your career and to your self-development.
  5. Be reasonable. Monitor your behavior and what you say to people on a daily basis.
  6. Be patient and wait for an opportunity to present itself. Prepare yourself in the meanwhile by taking training and becoming an expert in your field.
  7. Get to know your audience, the decision makers and the influencers in the workplace. This means that you have t identify and anticipate their triggers, their motivations, their challenges, their needs. For example, ask specific questions to discover what someone cares about. Furthermore, discreetly get their attention and align yourself with them.
  8. Treat others the way you want to be treated. Respect yourself and the people around you even though they don’t reciprocate. Also, respect their time and opinion, accept them for who they are.
  9. Expect the best behavior from people even if you don’t like them and even though their behavior is not the best.
  10. Stay positive and develop your emotional intelligence to understand your emotions, those of others and to sustain your work relationships.
  11. Increase self-awareness. Assess your people skills and seek to develop them.
  12. Be assertive and clearly set boundaries to your relationships.
  13. Stay on top of corporate opinions and make sure you align yourself with them.
  14. Work on being more approachable. For example, if you are serious, smile a little more often. If you are very private, reveal a little bit about yourself to your coworkers.
  15. Identify and adapt the corporate communication style in order to express yourself. For instance, learn how to cordially disagree with your coworkers.
  16. Avoid destructive conflicts and avoid making enemies uselessly.
  17. Keep networking and making your new-found contacts your most valuable allies.
  18. Invest time and energy into your employees. Create a sense of unity and openness and show team spirit. Don’t allow people to feel excluded or disconnected and promote collaboration.
  19. Increase your team’s self-esteem. Make people, mostly your younger workers, feel good about themselves. You can do this by giving out meaningful assignments and validating the contributions of your employees. If your employees are not able to fulfill their duties, coach them or send them to a training instead of taking away their responsibilities.
  20. Help others in their work and help them to succeed.
  21. Share purpose to gather everyone around your vision.
  22. Address important issues in the room during meetings and don’t allow them to grow.
  23. Involve your employees in the decision-making process.
  24. Listen actively to understand your teams deepest needs, to build trust and loyalty before trying to influence and persuade them.
  25. Avoid gossip and spreading negativity. Gossiping will not dissipate misunderstandings but will only exacerbate them.
  26. When a situation turns sour, identify the reasons why. Look at yourself beforehand, own a piece of a problem, avoid shifting blame and see how you could have positioned yourself differently. Also, to maintain relationships, quietly make amends, repair past damages, be accountable for your actions, without needing to ask for forgiveness or without begging.
  27. At work, we connect differently with our coworkers and sometimes take that connection outside of the workplace. With some coworkers, we are comfortable enough to talk about our private lives, families and are able to take the relationship beyond the workplace. We either think that our coworkers are out friends and families or we either don’t care to be liked by them. It is therefore necessary to learn how to discern personal and professional connections in the workplace.
  28. Show appreciation by publicly and privately congratulating your team for their great work.

Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!

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