8 Avoidable Mistakes That New Leaders Make

Your hard work has been noticed, you have been promote and you have been rewarded with the position you have been coveting (or not)…

Now, it’s time to get to work because with your new role comes new responsibilities and with these new responsibilities come new people, new concepts, new ideas and also new opportunities for mistakes…

Wondering what are the critical mistakes to avoid as a new leader?

1. New leaders wait to be sollicited

A new leader who goes and checks in with the team is relatable, creates a bond and a sense of security.

Even if he or she has nothing special to say, expressing the basic requirements to the team is a good start.

2. New leaders nurture an imposter syndrom

It is quite normal to lack confidence when you first start out.

However, it is unhealthy and unproductive to openly and inwardly nurture an imposter syndrom for long periods of time.

After a while, your team will surely pick up on it and will start to question your leadership.

So, stop doubting yourself and take confidence in your leadership.

3. New leaders struggle with their leadership style

Befriend an employee or discipline a friend? That is the question…

Most new leaders, especially if they are unexpectedly thrown into a leadership position, have a hard time determining their leadership style.

It’s all about understanding your team members, learning to delegate, keeping your role and responsibilities in mind, finding the right balance between relatable, approachable and authoritative.

4. New leaders lead everyone the same way

Some people are quiet, others are loud.

Some introverted and others extroverted.

Some are all over the place and others don’t require discipline.

Some rather competition and others choose collaboration.

Some enjoy confrontation, some a conversation and others avoid conflict altogether.

Some are just somewhere in that spectrum.

The point is that not everyone is the same or require the same treatment. Therefore, the same leadership style cannot be used with everyone all the time.

5. New leaders tend to power trip and ego trip

That new found power can be elating to new leaders.

It will have them thinking that they can treat people anyway they want to or do whatever they please.

Someone else was in line for the job but you got it and it’s now an opportunity to belittle them?

There is no need to play or keep playing dirty because you have already made it and tomorrow is never guaranteed.

There are people on your team that you don’t like and you want to demonstrate your dislike and your authority?

They may technically be worked for you but the truth is that you are working for them.

If you abuse your power, everyone around you will lose respect for you and your behavior will slowly degrade productivity and team performance.

6. New leaders maintain their old responsibilities

Your responsibilities have changed or have increased?

It can be tempting and reassuring to want to handle every single details and to maintain your old activities in addition to your new ones.

It’s now time to accept the change, to fully take on your new role and to learn how to delegate.

7. New leaders tend to openly criticize

Whether it’s bad talking the person who previously held your position or critiquing the way things were done before you were here, critiquing tend to leave a bad taste in the mouth of your new team.

There is nothing wrong with wanting change and reorganizing things to your liking but you can do this without degrading your predecessors.

8. New leaders are afraid of appearing incompetent

Because of their fear of appearing incompetent, new leaders don’t clarify objectives, speak when they should really be listening, take credit for other’s ideas and don’t ask questions to higher ups.

Last Words Of Advice!

Before fully jumping in your new role and responsibilities, take a few moments to observe your new environment, comprehend the company culture and understand the people you will be working with.
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!

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5 Essential Skills For Effective Teamwork

For the past few years, we’ve been told that Teamwork is the most effective way to achieve success…

Teamwork requires many essential skills.

Teamwork is more than just contributing or getting along with other people.

It consists in a group collaborating in an effort to achieve a common goal such as company growth and success.

5 Essential Skills For Effective Teamwork #teamwork #skills #leadershipskills #leadershipdevelopment #leadership #journeytoleadership journeytoleadershipblog.com

Need support or want to land a leadership position? Check out our website or join our weekly training program!

We host training programs all year round in Paris, France.

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

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6 Famous Principles For Effective Task Management

In our daily rush and in a constant desire to produce, we often find ourselves multitasking, overworked, stressed out, pretending to be busy but not completing any task.

Below are six principles of task management to help you finish what you started.

Wondering which Principles to use in order to manage your tasks effectively?

6 Famous Principles For Effective Task Management #management #productivity #taskmanagement #timemanagement #leadership #journeytoleadership journeytoleadershipblog.com

1. The Pareto Principle

In 1906, Pareto realized that 20% of the population made up 80% of the revenue.
Then, he also noticed that these statistics also applied to work productivity. Indeed, in the workplace, 20% of the work produced generates 80% of the desired results.

That is why the Pareto Principle, better known as the 80/20 Principle or the Law of the Vital Few, encourages you to focus on essentials tasks, prioritize your activities, avoid those that are not beneficial to you and learn how to say no.

2. The Parkinson Principle

In 1958, Professor Cyril North-Cote Parkinson understood that a task will take up all the attributed time for it’s realization.

In ther words, the Parkinson Principle or the Dilatation Principle affirms that even if we have the ample time to achieve a task, we will use up all that given time.

That is why it is necessary to break up tasks into smaller ones and create your own deadlines.

3. The Law Of Murphy

According to Murphy, a US Air Force Engineer, a task always takes up more time than expected and that whatever could go wrong will go wrong.

Consequently, you must expect the unexpected, anticipate problems, add buffers between meetings, and overestimate the time needed on any task you take on even if you are good at it.

4. The Laborit Principle

If we listened to ourselves, there is no doubt in my mind that we would always do what makes us happy and complete the easiest tasks first.

We would therefore tackle the ones who require the least effort and neglect the hard and stressful ones.

However, handling the most difficult tasks first require extreme self-discipline but is the most rewarding task management strategy.

5. The Carlson Principle

In the 1950s, Professor Sune Carlson measured the number of time managers were being interrupted in average on a daily basis.

It turns out that they were interrupted every 20 minutes and were not able to effectively tend to their tasks because it took them time to focus back on their task at hand.

Carlson concluded that a task handled without interruptions or distractions is done faster than when it is done otherwise.

If you have an opening door policy, you may want to create strong boundaries to make time for your activities and reduce interruptions.

6. The Illich Principle

Ivan Illich, an ecologist thinker, states that beyond a certain amount of time spent on a task, our effectiveness and focus tend to diminish.

Due to that fact, it becomes vital to know and accept our own limitations, and to take regular breaks in order to recharge ourselves.

Last Words Of Advice!

The clutter on your desk also takes up mental space, create a sense of being busy and overwhelmed without you actually being productive.

It then becomes important to unclutter as much as possible and set things at their place.

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

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6 Reasons Why You Should Use Monday.com

Monday.comMonday.com is a centralized team management tool based in the clouds, founded in 2012 and launched as an independent startup in 2014.

Monday.com is one of the best communication and collaboration app available right now.

Through its visuals and features, it promotes transparency and boosts productivity.

Overview

Monday.com is a platform containing key information about a project.

You can remotely add members, assign tasks, customize workflow, track team progress, update your individual progress, monitor team performance, manage time, set deadlines, comment on project, add links and upload files.

You can use Monday.com for

  • Project management
  • Tasks management
  • Client management
  • Marketing & PR campaigns
  • Recruitment processes
  • Progress tracking
  • Product roadmaps
  • Agile development processes
  • Sales & business processes
  • Design planning
  • Bug tracking
  • Event management
  • Venture Capital Portfolio management
  • Construction planning

… etc.

It is currently used by more than 80,000 teams in diverse industries around the world.

6 Reasons Why You Should Use Monday.com

Features

  • Simple & intuitive. With this app, you have a clear overview of projects, tasks and team progress in only one glance. You can start managing your projects as soon as possible without a training session.

  • Customizable & adaptable. Every user can create a brand specific board. This tool can be used to manage any type of project in process the way you want it. It fits every needs and every use case.

  • Easy communication and collaboration. There is no need for paperwork, long meetings or emails. You keep conversations, files and other data in one place. You can make your team and clients feel involved, leave live comments on a shared board, get automatic email notifications whenever a task is completed.

  • Accessible wherever and whenever you want. Stay on top of everything, manage your work in one place from your desktop or from your phone (iOS & Android).

  • Integrations. Monday.com has its own search engine and integrates different external platforms such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Pipe drive, or Zapier.

  • Reasonable prices. You can sign up without a credit card for a free 14 day trial to see if it works for you. After 14 days, you have the choice between 4 different plans. You can upgrade, downgrade or cancel your plan anytime you want to.

 

Test Monday.com for Free

 

Journey To Leadership curates the best apps available on the market to satisfy the needs of our readers and leaders.

You’ve got a great app and want to promote it on our website, make sure to check out our prices and to contact us.

 

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Four Red Flags Wrecking Team Success and Cohesion

Four Red Flags Wrecking Team Success and CohesionBuilding an ideal team is one of the most complex but also one of the most rewarding and advantageous responsibility of a leader.

The leader has to select the team to ultimately create the best results for the organization, in light of the company’s culture and of the personality, motivation, commitment, values, performance, integrity level of his or her potential team members, with respect to his or her leadership style.

When the team is built, the leader has to look out for red flags that can destroy the synergy of his or her team and easily create a lasting toxic climate.

Wondering how to detect these red flags, avoid toxicity on your team, how to extract the best results from your team members and to become the best team member you can?

A few years ago, I worked on a year-long project, under a boss who used demotions and other measures to punish some of his employees when mistakes occurred. For example, he would quickly and sadistically withdraw work responsibilities from someone he did not favor to give to someone else.

Four Red Flags Wrecking Team Success and CohesionAs a result, the team was a unsalvable shipwreck: every man for himself, searching for a flotation device, fighting to get on land. My former boss manipulative behavior created a toxic climate where people were continually in flight or fight mode, were mistrustful towards one another, would turn on each other, retain information and sabotage every other person efforts to succeed, were obliged to seek his “affections” and to continually prove their loyalty to him in order to feel safe in their position, were more focused on office politics than on their work, were always on the lookout of a scapegoat, were afraid of speaking up and being transparent.

The lack of trust, commitment, performance was noticeable on a daily basis. By trust, I mean the ability of the team members to admit their mistakes, acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses, stay open, transparent with one another without any repercussion on themselves or their career.

RED FLAG #1: Lack of Transparency

In Speaking Truth to Power, James O’Toole states that “In essence, trust is hard to earn, easy to lose, and, once lost, nearly impossible to regain”.

Teams must be able to understand each other, to interpret their respective behavior and to be candid with one another.

To enable transparency, leaders have to:

  • Ask their team to reveal something personal and relevant about themselves. It can relate to their failures or successes, to their worst or most embarrassing experiences at work.
  • Encourage team building to better understand one another and enable bonds.
  • Assess and apply their team strengths and weaknesses by using profiling tools to get more insights into their behavior such as the DISC assessment, Social Style model, Right Path Profiles, Insights, MBTI).
  • Define a clear purpose for the team.
  • Explain major decisions from the organization to their team and include them in the flow of relevant information.
  • Maintain trust overtime and create unanimity.
  • Consistently tell the truth to their followers, be comfortable with it and practice integrity.
  • Value openness, empower those who tell the truth and must not reward those who do otherwise.

RED FLAG #2: Fear of conflict

In teams, conflicts do exist, are raw and real, are to be expected, and shouldn’t be avoided. In addition, they occur because we were born into different generations, backgrounds, with different personalities, values and morals.

Furthermore, conflict is always seen in a negative light or as a destructive process.
However, conflicts can be healthy and productive too. And even though conflicts are uncomfortable and make you feel under attack, they are necessary for personal and organizational progress, are used to generate the best decisions for the organization and to make team meetings mire engaging. In order to establish a conflict culture, it is imperative that leaders:

  • Create a structure where it is safe for their team members to express themselves without feeling the need to attack.
  • Hold their team accountable to the conflict system established.
  • Focus the conflict on the issue at hand to avoid personal attacks.
  • Assess each team member conflict capabilities/profiles with MBTI to develop the appropriate approach.
  • Ask their team members directly how they deal with conflicts.
  • Define conflict resolution, ease anxious team members in the face of conflict and find courage to speak truth to power.

RED FLAG #3: Lack of Commitment

Commitment is the willingness to achieve common goals as a team, the ability of team members to align themselves with the organization purpose, values and strategies even in disagreement with the decision taken.

To enhance team commitment, leaders must:

  • Embrace conflicts, divergent opinions, ideas and perspectives.
  • Among conflicting ideas, make wise decisions and be unafraid to displease some team members.
  • Before making a decision, understand and consider all ideas.
  • Clarify their decisions with the team and write down them down to avoid ulterior assumptions and ambiguities.

RED FLAG #4: Lack of accountability

Team members must keep each other accountable for their behavior, their mistakes and lack of performance. If no one is held accountable, team members gradually lose respect for each other and moral decreases. Leaders must:

  • Lead by example, call out mishaps, low results and misconduct.
  • Make every team member aware of each other contributions and functions on the team.
  • Track everyone’s progress and accurately measure performance.
  • Measure team success using objective and liable means.
  • Measure progress with timelines.
  • Focus on areas of productivity.
  • Make sure that the collective interest in results exceeds the individual needs of the team.

How to be an effective team member?

  • Develop your communication skills.

  • Make sure that you are understood and are open to clarifying misunderstandings.

  • Monitor your non verbal communication. Keep your body language positive and opened.

  • Look at the person you’re exchanging with.

  • If a problem occurs between you and someone else, fix it before the problem festers by talking to that person as soon as possible. This shows that you are willing to work through issues, that you are a problem solver instead of being inappropriate and ineffective.

  • Give sincere and appropriate positive feedback to your team members.

  • Develop your listening skills.

 

To demonstrate your interest in learning new skills, to better understand the other person, you have to:

  • be willing to listen more that you speak and voice your opinion in due time.
  • Implement the conversation with probing question.
  • Request other people opinion before giving yours.
  • Avoid planning your responses during the conversation.
  • Encourage the conversation with nods, smiles and eye contact.
  • Manage your tasks and time.
  • Put your understanding of the team task into writing in order to clarify immediate issues and to have a reference for time and deadlines measurement.
  • Own up to your actions.

 

Failing to follow through on your team assignments is synonym to letting your team down. To stay accountable for your part:

  • Keep your promises.
  • Offer to help coworkers in time of need.
  • Avoid procrastination and do not hesitate yo ask for help.
  • Avoid blaming others for your mistakes take the blame if you have done something wrong.
  • Find solutions to issues instead if creating them.
  • Learn from each and very situations and move on group them.
  • Avoid repeating past mistakes.
  • Work on interrelationship skills.

 

Last Words Of Advice!

In the team, you have to cooperate with your coworkers and work well with your supervisor. To do so:

  • Treat everyone with respect.
  • Avoid stereotypes and jumping to conclusions.
  • Avoid gossip and keep confidences.
  • Share your knowledge with your team.

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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Empowering Your Team & Retaining Talent

Keeping a job for a lifetime at the same company is no longer a concern for employees. Nowadays, most employees are looking to explore, to evolve professionally, to grow personally and do not depend on one company to do so. 

With the amount of layoffs in the last generation, employees have learnt to mistrust leaders and corporations. They no longer feel empowered, committed, engaged, aligned with their organization or no longer think that leaders have their best interest at heart.

However, good employees are needed to reach company goals. Leaders should be concerned when several good employees leave in a matter of weeks, when employees start performing poorly, act disengaged, take too many sick leaves, skip meetings, arrive late, are unmotivated, are overworked, unproductive or underpaid.

Wondering what are the strategies and tactics to empower your team, to maintain a trust climate, increase employee alignment and retain talent?

Empowering Your Team & Retaining Talent

What is employee empowerment?

Employee empowerment is a loosely used term.

It mostly designates the way people feel about themselves at work, the ease with which they are able to use their strengths, to freely demonstrate their talents, to achieve their purpose, to find meaning and satisfaction in their jobs.

It also stems from their ability to feel productive, confident and in control in the workplace.

Furthermore, employee empowerment is a leadership style. Leaders must feel empowered in order to empower. Indeed, they must be able to maintain self-confidence, to manage their time, to gain influence, to effectively communicate, to listen, to reach their goals and to be open to learn.

In addition, an empowered employee doesn’t need permission to do his or her work, to create an appropriate process, to control the outcomes of his or her work, to develop a personal scope.

On the other hand, employees who are disempowered don’t openly critique the organization, don’t make open suggestions, don’t challenge the status quo, don’t know what is expected of them, and are often blindsided. When employees don’t feel empowered, they tend to leave.

What are the challenges of employee empowerment?

Deciding to quit is a long process that can be triggered by various traumatic, memorable and emotional events:

  • Lack of empowerment, of recognition, validation or compensation.
  • Lack of career opportunities and possibilities of growth.
  • Lack of challenge. This creates boredom, a need for a career change and a need for more responsibility.
  • Lack of purpose. In this case, employees feel like they are not operating at their maximum potential, that their strengths are not properly used, that their jobs don’t have meaning and don’t bring them satisfaction. Work constitutes an important part of your life. Therefore, making it meaningful and empowering is necessary.
  • Career disillusionment. Employees feel like their career path is not as they believed it to be.
  • Workplace toxicity and leader’s unethical behavior. Workplace toxicity comes from the fact that core values and trust have not been instilled. This can result in being influenced, in spreading toxic behavior, in feelings of being marginalized or harassed.
  • Aggressive office politics.
  • Poor communication with higher-ups.
  • Work-life imbalance and lack of flexible hours.
  • Change in personal situation (health, family, …).
  • New sudden career opportunities.

Should you hold back employees who want to leave?

Retaining young employees is the most difficult because they need more care, more validation and more training.

To increase employee engagement and to compete for talents, most organizations resort to quick fixes that provide short them results. It is essential to:

  • Accept that employees are going to leave no matter what.
  • Accept that employees who are leaving are sure about their decision.
  • Accept that the decision to leave is potentially connected to your behavior, to the company’s policy and culture.
  • Hire appropriate employees for the job in the first place by directly asking them about their needs.
  • Conduct an employee exit interview and ask your employees why they want to leave. Doing so will help you fix recurring problems within the organization and reduce employee turnover.

How to empower employees and prevent them from leaving?

To decrease employee turnover, leaders must change their mindset and rethink the company culture. Empowerment can lead to higher levels of commitment, innovation, motivation, more productivity and better relationships.

  • Determine your core values. Have enough integrity to share and demonstrate your values.
  • Be an example, demonstrate the benefits of empowerment, act ethically and a teacher to your team.
  • Assess and improve your communication style.
  • Be fair at all times and don’t pick favorites.
  • Learn to cope with change. Don’t expect immediate change and the change you envisioned.
  • Build an environment that promotes inclusiveness and unity. For example, remove the traditional organizational structures to improve communication among workers.
  • Value your employees and their expertise.
  • Listen to your employees. Ask them for advice, let them speak freely and truly consider their responses.
  • Share your vision and your story with your team in order to motivate them towards a unique goal and to check if they align with it.
  • Set high but achievable expectations for your team. Let them know about it.
  • Clearly define everyone’s activities so they don’t step on other people’s toes.
  • Help your employees identify their purpose, even if their calling is not in the organization. It would be more rewarding for them and more effective for you to remove them from the team and give them some indication of an ideal career path.
  • Increase your employees awareness. Share information about organizational policies, processes, structures, standards, decisions.
  • Involve your employees in the decision-making process. 
  • Learn to delegate. There is nothing more frustrating than a leader who micromanages, who needs to approve every stage of the process, who doesn’t think that their team can have the workload without them.
  • Encourage people to take initiative and to solve their own problems.
  • Give your employees autonomy and more ownership of their work. Give them the freedom to reach the company’s objectives.
  • Allow people to take risks and to make mistakes.
  • Increase accountability and avoid the blame game at all cost, especially when something goes wrong.
  • Recognize, reward your employees and show appreciation for the work that your team puts in. Help them understand that their contributions at work have a real impact.
  • Request and provide feedback often. Give credit when it is due, provide coaching and training.
  • Have an open door policy, if possible.
  • Help your employees grow professionally and personally. Allow them to succeed and be the best. Make them look good and they will reward you with good work
  • Increase benefits, avoid overwork, allow flexible hours and leaves of absence.

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

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Boosting Your Leadership Self-esteem

At work, leaders are constantly being challenged by coworkers, by the need to conform to the organization culture, to resist to the opinion of others and to work through other external pressure.

Because leadership comes most often from within and requires great energy, self-discipline, strong purpose, maintaining self-esteem is critical to maintaining leadership.

Wondering how to get a bulletproof self-esteem?Boosting Your Leadership Self-esteem

What is self-esteem?

Self-esteem corresponds to our self-image and to the opinion that we have of ourselves. It is made of the differences between the way we perceive ourselves, the way we want to be perceived and the way we are actually being perceived.

It is also a feeling of competency, worthiness, efficiency, performance, self-respect. It delimits our sense of identity, self-worth, well-being and constant satisfaction no matter the circumstances.

Self-esteem is the ability to cope with life challenges. It is the belief in our abilities, our values, our potential to confidently demonstrate our abilities and values. Therefore, self-esteem is an important component of leadership.

Self-esteem is an internal quality, is not a constant and can rise or fall throughout life, throughout challenges.

Why is it important?

With a proper amount of self-esteem, you are able to trust your skills, your knowledge, your decisions and your thoughts. Low self-esteem leads to poor relationships, depression, anxiety and anger. Increasing self-esteem amounts to better health and a stronger ability to cope with stressful situations.

As a leader, having a solid self-esteem is necessary to make decisions without fear or hesitation, to think clearly, to trust his or her opinion, to remain optimistic under pressure, to help others feel good about themselves, to build relationships, and to gracefully welcome change.

Furthermore, building self-esteem in your team will help them take pride in their work and make them commit to goals.

How to boost your leadership self-esteem?

Building self-esteem is not an overnight process and requires patience. To boost your leadership self-esteem:

  1. Rewire your thinking process and remember that you are not alone if you are suffering with low self-esteem.
  2. Recall that you cannot please everyone and the first person to please is yourself.
  3. Remember that you cannot be a master at everything and that you must focus on the vital few.
  4. Accept that you cannot control everything, that suffering and joy are part of life and that no one is perfect.
  5. Assess your strengths and weaknesses. Everyone has a different combination of experiences, of strengths and weaknesses that they must accept. This will help you build on the skills that you are good at and operate through your weaknesses.
  6. Accept yourself: learn to spend time alone and to enjoy your own company. Find activities that are fun and that you do well outside of work. Treat yourself kindly and take time off to do things that are pleasurable to you.
  7. Avoid reasoning with your emotions, dwelling on the negative, complaining, self-pity, shifting blame or blowing an issue out of proportion. You can remove the power that emotions and past negative experiences holds over you by writing down on paper or by speaking it out loud.
  8. Always maintain your integrity, treat people fairly and do the right thing, even if it puts you in a difficult situation. This will also help you maintain your self-respect and the respect that people have for you.
  9. Stay authentic. Being fake or hypocritical is not sustainable on the long run and your real self will slowly suffer the consequences.
  10. Be resilient and believe that you can overcome challenges and that you can find solutions to your problems.
  11. Learn to be grateful and stay grounded in reality but learn to appreciate and celebrate success, to recognize your achievements and position in life.
  12. Don’t be afraid of failure and learn from your past mistakes. If you have wronged someone, admit it and apologize.
  13. List your life achievements and list what you wish to achieve. Understanding what you have accomplished will increase your positivity and strengthen your belief that you can see things through.
  14. Avoid seeking only status and playing aggressive politics at work to get ahead.
  15. Stop comparing yourself to others and compare yourself to your past self instead.
  16. Create good habits and be self-disciplined enough to stick to a routine.
  17. Set boundaries. This is a complex task because most people don’t know how to, some confuse standing up for themselves and setting boundaries with being blatantly mean.
  18. Be compassionate towards yourself and others. Forgive yourself and others. This doesn’t mean that you have forgotten or that you now start back trusting or working with the same people.
  19. Experience life with an open-mind. Don’t take life too seriously and acknowledge that you don’t know everything.
  20. Eat well and regularly. Use meditation and exercise to stay healthy mentally and physically, to stay in control of your thoughts and to evacuate negative emotions.
  21. Don’t deprive yourself of sleep. Sleep affects your mood, your thoughts, your body and your resilience towards adversity.
  22. Don’t rely on people or other external factors to restore your self-esteem. Compliments only stroke your ego and will have no effect on your self-esteem for long. On the same length, belittling people won’t do the trick either.
  23. As a leader, it is important that you share your knowledge with your team. Retaining information is a sign of weakness, of a desire for control, power and will not lead you to success. On the other hand, your team skills, loyalty and respect will unequivocally be increased.
  24. Take responsibility for your actions, seek solutions instead of creating problems.
  25. Seek positive qualities in your employees, give positive feedback and build a positive work environment. Giving positive feedback doesn’t mean dismissing or sugarcoating negative feedback but it means that you give constructive criticism and make people feel good about their work performance.
  26. Know your team’s strengths and weaknesses. Place them on tasks that employ their strengths, and don’t hesitate to stretch their abilities and responsibilities.
  27. Remove doubt from your employees so they can perform better.
  28. Teach your team to see problems as challenges or opportunities in disguise. Do not punish mistakes and show that it is OK to disagree, to share a dissenting opinion, or to say “I don’t know”.
  29. Mitigate bad behavior within your team and maintain composure no matter the circumstances.
  30. Include playful time in the workplace. This will increase productivity. Contrary to popular bureaucratic and corporate belief, be playful is not a sign of immaturity to carelessness. Instead, it is a way to release painful experiences.
  31. Seek external professional help to sort through bad experiences and memories if necessary.

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 Importance Of Resilience In Leadership

Adversity comes from various sources at work: people, change, rumors, lies, conflicts, differences in values or beliefs, decisions taken beyond your control.

When feeling challenged or blocked, people react in different manner (passivity, hopelessness, anger, blame shifting, avoidance, etc …).

Hoping that life or work is made of only happy, positive moments is an illusion. If you are submerged with setbacks, learn to discreetly deal with them and with the emotions that they bring.

Wondering how to build up your resilience and face adversity head on?

Resilience In Leadership

What is resilience?

Resilience is the ability to function under pressure, to skillfully master stressful situations.

In addition, resilience is a mindset that focuses on the essentials and your personal growth. In fact, it changes your perspective on a tough situations, shifts the focus from our self to a goal or a purpose, and removes the pressures of running after success.

That being said, resilient leaders demonstrate similar behaviors, beliefs and values in challenging times. Resilient leaders:

  • Find opportunity in failure. Resilient leaders are unafraid to fail or to succeed. Furthermore, they don’t stay down when they have been put down.
  • Are able to draw strength from within and to survive ridicule, undermining, alienation, manipulation and what people say and think about you. They have a deep understanding of self and belive that they cannot be moved no matter the circumstances.
  • Face obstacles head on because they understand that pain is inevitable in life. They are pioneers, the firsts tp experience everything and to face obstacles before everyone.
  • Have faith that there is always a solution and that they will find a way. They remain optimistic in adversity, believe that it is just a phase of life and that they can create a positive outcome out of any situation.
  • Are accountable for their actions, don’t shift blame, don’t complain uselessly or make excuses for themselves. 
  • Are able to respond to the demands placed upon them.
  • Effectively manage time.
  • Set high standards for themselves.
  • Are willing to go through uncomfortable situations to get where they are going and understand that these situations are part of life.
  • Are selective of the people they surround themselves with and the people they look up to.
  • Have strong coping mechanisms.
  • Know that you are not the only one facing adversity.
  • Welcome change.

What are the benefits of resilience in leadership?

Moreover, resilience will determine how far you will go in your career or in life. On the long run, in the workplace, it helps you grow as a person, it increases job satisfaction, job performance, success and moral.

It is notorious that during challenging times, you become stronger, that you build up your character and discover your authentic self. Furthermore, you learn from your failures, you learn to do the right thing in wrong situations, even when nobody is looking.

How to build and boost personal resilience?

To measure resilience, it is important to look at a leader’s behavior, emotional response during challenging times. To build up your resilience and the resilience of your team:

  1. Recognize that you are only human and that you will make mistakes. Being human is not an excuse for purposefully making mistakes or for creating setbacks for yourself or for others.
  2. Be self-aware, self-efficient, and adaptable to any situations. This step is detrimental to identify your stressors and anticipate your reaction.
  3. Realize that everyone faces adversity and that behind every obstacle lies an opportunity.
  4. Change your perspective and see adversity as a challenge.
  5. Share positive experiences and values with people around you.
  6. Discern the essential from the rest. Then, commit to these essentials. If you haven’t committed to your essentials, trials will seem insurmountable.
  7. Invest your time and energy rightfully and purposefully. Make sure you persist and put your energy behind the right goals.
  8. Discipline yourself and your emotions to be able to work under pressure.
  9. Accept that there will be things that you cannot control.
  10. Take care of your mental health and find ways to evacuate the effect of negativity.
  11. Avoid taking setbacks or failures personally.
  12. Reinforce your coping mechanisms, find strong people to support you and seek a sounding board who can bring new perspectives on an issue.
  13. If all fails, turn over a new leaf.

How to build and boost resilience in your team?

Team members are always looking for reassurance. When they don’t have it, they monitor leaders behavior and can possibly start false rumors. To reassure them:

  1. Remember that your team observe you and rely on you the most. Therefore, demonstrate the behavior required for success and for overcoming adversity.
  2. Deal with employees that have made mistakes quickly, before they seem acceptable, and with a cool head. When emotions are high, it becomes difficult to think straight, to make the right decisions, and to behave professionally.
  3. Help your team identify the origin of the issue, different strategies for improvement, for the problem-solving process.
  4. Be as transparent as possible and let them understand the difficulty of the situations.
  5. Treat people with respect and not as commodities. For example, try listening to their concerns without emitting judgement.
  6. Provide trainings to your team and allow them t learn skills such as goal-setting, conflict resolution or decision-making and apply them with confidence.
  7. Provide tools to measure progress and to control the damage done to ensure that what brought up the problem does not recur.
  8. Congratulate them, reward them on successes.
  9. Avoid punishing or reminding people of their past mistakes.

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

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The Importance Of Celebrating Success

In the workplace, as leaders, we mostly focus on results, performance and profits. We jump from project to project without taking the time to appreciate our achievements and the efforts provided by our teams.

However, even though we haven’t met our milestones, it is also important to build relationships and keep our team satisfied with their jobs, content with their lives.

Wondering how to celebrate success in the workplace?

The Importance Of Celebrating Success

Acknowledging personal and organizational success allows leaders to concentrate on the positive instead of the negative, to break the routine, to renew their mindset. Employees well-being is subsequently increased, company culture and values are reinforced.

Furthermore, praising employees from time to time allows leaders to give positive or negative feedback without followers feeling offended, criticized or taken for granted.

Finally, celebrating success brings team closer together. Celebrating success unifies the team and reminds them that the company they are working for is in fact successful.

How to effectively celebrate success?

Recognition brings job satisfaction and inner fulfillment. In order to focus on the positive and celebrate success, you must:

  • Practice gratitude early in the morning when they wake up. An attitude of gratitude will help you create a reserve of positive energy, resist challenging situations and run across the finish line. Above all, practicing gratitude allows you to show gratitude towards someone else.
  • Be empathetic, reinforce and build a sense of achievement within yourself to increase your own self-confidence before instilling it in others. Leaders have to focus more on successes than failures.
  • Build strong relationships with your employees. Appreciate your employees and recognize the hard work. Appreciating success means increasing employees morale, dedication, self-esteem, self-respect, values, alignment, engagement, and reduce employee turnover.
  • Take pride in your team’s success and don’t take them for granted. That will certainly boost your team confidence and value.
  • Know your employee cultural background, behaviors, personalities, preferences so you can congratulate them accordingly and Adapt your incentives and rewards. For example, don’t offer alcoholic beverages to someone who doesn’t drink.
  • Share success stories. Success stories are impactful, inspirational and motivational, helps you make important decisions on similar issues, set goals for other people, and create an exemplary roadmap.
  • Let your achievements sink in. Then, take a moment to pat yourself on the back and keep it moving. Don’t allow celebrating success to sabotage your results.
  • Write down your achievements (in a journal for example) and display it where you can see it.
  • Call your closest friends and family. Share your success with people who genuinely care about you and who are happy to see you progress in life.
  • Decide the milestone to which you want to celebrate. Set personal goals, define a mission statement, measure and promote progress, celebrate milestones and landmarks. This will help you know what to celebrate to and when to celebrate.
  • Create success boards to keep your achievements in mind and to keep pushing through.
  • Order food, sweets and display them in the office kitchen for example.
  • Treat yourself by buying yourself a gift.
  • Give out bonuses and raises.
  • Reward innovative ideas and reward your team with fun activities, extra holidays and adapt them to the crowd.
  • Send out handwritten thank you notes and thank you emails. You can also directly thank your employees. The way you proceed will depend on their personalities and preferences.
  • Give positive and informal feedback and give credit where credit is due.
  • Observe the energy employee put into their work, pay attention to their talents and passions, don’t only look at performance and results and place them in the right positions.

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 Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni

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.

What is a team?

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.”

Why build a team?

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).

Five dysfunctions of a team Patrick Lencioni.

Overcoming Dysfunction #1

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:

  • Building trust takes time but is not impossible.
  • Team members take various personality assessment tests, like the Myers Briggs test, before sharing their story.
  • Team members open up so that everyone can judge them fairer, understand the person that they are today, not expecting that they reveal their darkest secrets or that they get emotional.
  • Leaders create a safe space for their team to speak. Team members generally look to their leaders to show them how to build trust. Leaders have to first put themselves out there without knowing that their behavior will be reciprocated, respected or rewarded.
  • Maintain the bounding experience and pursue the relationships built.

Overcoming Dysfunction #2

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:

  • Assess each and everyone conflict profile before hand. Indeed, everybody handles conflict differently. Therefore, it is essential that everybody knows the way they react and interact during conflict, in order to adjust their behavior in the future.
  • Establish a conflict norm for the team. Conflict norming requires laying down rules of engagement, depicting how to team members should engage with one another, and which behaviors are acceptable.
  • The leader that sets the tone by applying the rules, adapting them to the team members and holding them accountable to the rules.
  • The leader has to moderate conflict, especially in meetings, push the quiet ones out of their comfort zone and temper the aggressive ones. Lack of conflict leads to boring meetings, bad decisions, lack of clarity.

Overcoming Dysfunction #3

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:

  • Leaders must extract every unapologetic ideas from their team. Knowing that all aspects of a situation have been studied, that all opinions have been expressed and considered, team members are more likely to commit to the leader’s decision.
  • Leaders must share their principles, missions, values, goals, purpose and their behavioral expectations, generate consistent business policies.

Overcoming Dysfunction #4

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:

  • identify the most important behavioral characteristics that contributes to the strength of the team and the ones that weakens it of everyone.
  • know everyone’s area of expertise.
  • in meetings, everyone should verbalize their list of priorities and measure their progress.

Overcoming Dysfunction #5

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.

Reviews

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:

  • More vulnerable with each other, without being touchy-feely or emotional, in order to be successful and to understand each other. It is always difficult to share information about yourself in the workplace because there is always room for manipulation and personal attacks. However, if the exercise succeeds the team is fit to understand the decisions made and actions taken.
  • Masterful at conflicts. This requires that team members assess their strengths and weaknesses, be disciplined enough to control their emotions, be active listeners and seek understanding of others.
  • Committed to the task and to the organization. Creating employee alignment and engagement depends on the leader’s vision and mission statement.
  • Accountable for their actions and behaviors.
  • Focused on results.

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.

Ratings 4/5

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Patrick Lencioni

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Patrick Lencioni

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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.