Five Leadership Practices to Make Work Transitions Easier

Contributed by CEO Coach Henna Inam

Are you going through a work transition or contemplating it? Unhappy in your current role but feel stuck or unsure about what to do next? The economy has many people going through transitions right now.

True story. A senior level sales leader came to me 12 months ago very clear that her work situation was not working for her. Her company, under pressure to increase profits, had raised prices dramatically. As customers quickly shifted to competitors, she was being held accountable for lost sales. As the primary bread earner in her family she couldn’t just quit her job, yet the pressure was untenable. She felt stuck. She approached me for executive coaching to transition to a company that had a more sustainable business strategy and would be a better fit. Soon after we started working together she ended up losing her job due to layoffs at her company.

Here are five leadership practices that helped her get to a job that was a much better fit for her.

Read more

/by

What if We Gave Ourselves Permission to Fail?

Contributed by CEO Coach Henna Inam

Like the rest of us this week, I was shocked at the recent high level resignations of CIA Chief General Petraeus and President and Chief Operating Officer (and once-presumed CEO) of Lockheed Martin Chris Kubasik, due to sex scandals. How could these intelligent and rational men put their reputations and careers at risk? How could they let themselves fail so publicly? Then an interesting incident happened to me yesterday and it gave me greater perspective on failure. It made me realize that giving ourselves (and others, even leaders and heroes) permission to fail is an important leadership practice.

As an executive coach it’s always interesting to notice when I don’t practice what I preach. Here’s what happened yesterday. I was talking with a friend about a project I am working on. I mentioned how I had hired someone to help me with this project and he suddenly got quite angry. Why hadn’t I considered hiring him? This was yet another example of how I was disloyal as a friend. You see, this had happened one time before and he had had the same reaction.

The truth of the matter was that I had assumed he wouldn’t even be interested.

How did I react? An emotionally intelligent executive coach who preaches this all day would have put into action the 3-step process: 1.) Listened for the underlying emotion he was feeling, 2.) Acknowledged the emotion “I get that you’re feeling frustrated and betrayed,” 3.) Let him know: “My intention was not to hurt you. I may have made the wrong assumption. How can I make this up to you?” As people’s emotions are acknowledged and addressed they are able to get back more quickly into their “reasoning” brain to allow for a good solution to emerge.

Instead I launched into a 3-step (these three steps were quite spontaneous and not pre-meditated, I might add) counter-attack: 1.) I took his words quite personally, 2.) I responded with blaming him: “Why are you always seeing yourself as a victim and blaming everyone else for what happens?” 3.) “You always take everything so personally” (I get the irony of this in retrospect). Needless to say it didn’t end well.

Read more

/by

Five Easy Steps to Market Your Personal Brand

Contributed by CEO Coach Henna Inam

In these times when each of us is a knowledge worker and global economies are in turmoil, if we want to have greater control over our careers it’s critical that we define our personal brands.  I often work with my executive coaching clients to help them create their personal leadership brand.  They identify purpose, the strengths they bring, and their core values. The stumbling block that we come to often is “You mean I have to actually promote myself? That just feels so fake!”

For a lot of us, it’s easy to brag about others or fight for a cause we believe in.  Promoting ourselves is tougher, so we don’t do it.  Yet, having a great personal brand without marketing it is sort of like if Apple designed a great product and no one knew about it. Like product brands, personal brands create great value for us when we market them well.  So here are five steps to market your personal brand, applying some of the principles I used as a former chief marketing officer.

Read more

/by

Women and Power: Do We Get It?

Contributed by CEO Coach Henna Inam

There is a large space between having power and being powerful. Women have historically had a love hate relationship with power. Personally, I am one of them. In some situations in my corporate career, I was in positions of great power but had a hard time exercising it. As women, we have fought throughout history for our rights to be empowered. Why then can we be so ambivalent about power when we get it?

Here’s a personal story that illustrates the point. A few years ago, my company asked me to move to Mexico to turn the business around from our rapid market share declines. I had P&L responsibility, leadership for all functions (including a manufacturing plant and R&D), in total an organization of about 600 people. I felt energized by the challenge. Our turnaround strategy included rapid new product introductions and our team came together to make this happen.

Here was the challenge: our local plant manager, who also had a reporting relationship into the global supply chain head, was hyper-focused on lowering costs. New products would increase plant costs so he was resisting the launch plan. Who had the power to make the call? Technically, me, as I was the P&L leader. Did I exercise that power? Not really. Not the way most men would. Make the call. Move on. Instead of asserting, I found myself negotiating, cajoling, bridge-building. It was a longer and frankly much more painful process, and I didn’t necessarily feel very powerful through it.

Sound familiar?

The story ends well. We tripled our rate of innovation, regained market share and profit. However, the experience taught me important lessons about power. Here’s what I learned about what keeps women from exercising power as men do.

Read more

/by

Career Coaching for Your Inner Critic

Contributed by CEO Coach Henna Inam

We all have an inner critic. She’s usually telling us:

  • “You’re not really going to ask for that raise are you? They’ll laugh you out of the office.”
  • “C’mon you don’t actually think you deserve that corner office, do you?”
  • “Don’t be bragging now. Just do the work and hope they don’t fire you.”
  • “You were never really good at convincing people, so just shut up now while you’re ahead.”
  • “Wow, you look really fat in that outfit”…right before you enter the boardroom for your presentation.

Our inner critic pops up without notice to give us unsolicited advice. Her constant whispers keep us from reaching our potential. She saps our energy, kills our creativity, fans our fears, and squelches our spirit. What to do? Here are five steps to work with our inner critic.

Read more

/by

Leadership Practices for Work Life Sanity

Contributed by CEO Coach Henna Inam

Want to take the 24 out of 24/7? I was at lunch the other day with a friend who is a senior leader at her company.  She was talking about how many junior women “opt out” as they think about having families. This, despite all the work her company, a leader in work-life flexibility options, has done to improve the situation for working families.  In fact, a McKinsey study [PDF] reports that C-suite executives believe the top two barriers to the advancement of women are women’s “double-burden” (work and family responsibilities) and our 24/7 “always on” work environments.

The recent debate about “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” has thrown fuel into the fire. The article is written by Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former state department official who gave up her position to spend time with her family. On one side of the debate are those who feel we’ve made tremendous sacrifices to pave the way for others, and want the next generation to believe that women can have it all. On the other side of the debate are those who want to acknowledge that there is still a lot of work to be done in society, our workplaces, cultural expectations that prevent women from having it all. They don’t want to set women up for disappointment and self-blame if they discover that they cannot have it all.

I’m not sure what the right answer is. But I do wonder if we’re asking the right questions. Asking the questions, even if I don’t have all the answers, creates a new perspective on the debate.

  • What do I (emphasis being on I) want in my work and in my life?
  • What is my definition of “having it all” and how is it different from “having enough”?
  • What are the trade-offs I am willing to make that are right for me?
  • What are my standards of success? Do they prevent me in attaining happiness and fulfillment?

We tend to blame society, our workplaces, our bosses for putting us on the 24/7 treadmill and preventing us from “having it all.” And yes, I am a strong proponent of the many changes still to be made in our work cultures that demand us being “on” 24/7. However, my challenge to myself and others is to look inside first and see what needs to be changed within ourselves. How can I claim my own power to make the choices that are right for me?

Here are seven leadership practices that help me and I’d like to share with you.

Read more

/by

Bring Your Soul To Work Day

Contributed by CEO Coach Henna Inam

I have recently talked with many women who are looking for ways their work can, as they say, “feed their soul.” Our work drains us. Many of us are looking to transition to other jobs, start businesses on the side, or work for non-profits in order to find work that fulfills us.

On the other hand there are many of us that are stuck. We either fear giving up the steady paycheck and benefits or we just can’t seem to find the next job, business, or career that would feed the soul. So we go to work every day trying to make the best of a situation where we are not engaged. We express our passions (the very best we have to give) outside of work. Consider that according to a Gallup study only 29% of people in the U.S. are fully engaged in the work that we do. The personal and organizational impact of this is tremendous in terms of the lost productivity, creativity and sense of wellbeing.

So how do we bring soul back to our work? How about we declare a “Bring your Soul to Work Day”? How about we challenge ourselves as individuals and leaders to seek the soul in the work that we do and the environments we create for our people. How do we do that?

In my opinion it is through work that engages us. It inspires us. It stretches us. It connects us to a bigger sense of ourselves and something bigger than ourselves. It takes daily practice to find this kind of soul and joy in the work that we do. Here are five ways to do that.

Read more

/by

Great Coaching Conversations: The Five C’s

 

Great Coaching Conversations In my 20 years of managing people, there have been some good coaching conversations, some not-so-good, and some that didn’t happen at all, so I stepped back to distill what worked well and also what I learned from the ones that I failed on pretty badly. Here are five C’s of great coaching conversations whether we are giving the feedback or receiving it.

Here’s a situation. A direct report of yours just gave a presentation to senior management.

The presentation went okay but frankly could have gone a lot better. The direct report knew her material but didn’t demonstrate self-confidence in her body language, didn’t dress appropriately, and didn’t think fast on her feet in addressing some of the questions. You noticed your boss start to lose confidence in your direct report in the meeting. You secretly wonder if she’s losing confidence in your judgment to have the direct report present in the first place. What do you do?

Well, if you’re like most managers, you do nothing. That’s right. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Feedback, particularly developmental feedback, is often hard to give, so most of us avoid giving it. Here are some good excuses I’ve used: “Gosh, I’ve got five other things I’ve got to do immediately.”  “I’ll find a more appropriate time, ummm…in six months when the mid-year review comes around.” “Well, it wasn’t that bad.” “I’m sure she knew she didn’t do her best. She’s a grown-up, she’ll figure it out.”

Sometimes even if we give feedback, we deliver it in such a “sugar-coated way” that the coachee misses it altogether. It’s like exchanging pleasantries at a tea party. Everyone feels good but no one can quite recall what was discussed. Or, we race through feedback like we’re going for a root canal, wanting to get it over with as quickly as possible, without any consideration for the pain or numbness of the person on the receiving end.

Here are the five C’s:

Read more

/by

The Most Important Tool for Emotional Intelligence

Contributed by CEO Coach Henna Inam

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is a key driver of success in the workplace, perhaps the most important driver. Studies show that those at the high levels of emotional intelligence earn $29,000 more per year than those at lower levels, and 90% of high performers have high EQ. The good news is that emotional intelligence, unlike IQ, can be learned.

Emotional intelligence, according to a book and assessment tool Emotional Intelligence 2.0 is our ability to recognize and understand emotions in ourselves and others and our ability to use this awareness to manage our relationships. One tool that continues to be transformational for me in practicing emotional intelligence is what I fondly refer to as “the Pregnant Pause.” I see this as the gateway tool for emotional intelligence.

Imagine this scenario. You have a major presentation to senior management at your company.

You’ve been working on the 50-page power point for a month. If you’d kept track of all the versions you’d be at version 89. All the nits the management two levels above you pointed out have been corrected. It is show-time. You’ve had barely three hours of sleep and your nerves are on edge. You make what you believe to be a stellar presentation and are waiting for the standing ovation when Dave, a peer you’re not exactly fond of, asks a stupid question on slide 45 in the footnotes. Clearly, he’s just trying to make you look bad so you snap back with a sarcastic, “Well, if you’d read the pre-read deck, it’s all explained in detail there!” Ouch. Did that actually come out of your mouth?

This is what is called the emotional highjack. The emotions in your brain highjack the rational part of your brain that would have responded “Great question, Dave. Let me address that.” The Pregnant Pause is a leadership practice that causes us to notice when our emotions run high and to make a conscious choice to slow down and let our rational brain catch up. When we allow that, we discover what is really happening with a clearer lens, we truly listen to what others are saying, and are able to make better decisions. We can then give birth to the right solutions.

Here are five practices to make the Pregnant Pause part of your everyday life.

Read more

/by

Listen to How You Listen

Contributed by CEO Coach Henna Inam

Want to make better decisions? Want to achieve your goals? Want to make deeper connections with others? Listening is the key to each of these. But, have you ever stopped to listen to how you listen? Read the movie script below and you’ll never listen the same way again.

Legal Disclaimer: This is a purely fictitious situation. Any resemblance of the characters or story to past or current events or people you may know is purely coincidental.

The characters are an employee and her boss. The situation is a mid-year review meeting. The location is the brightly lit boss’s office.

Employee Thought Balloon: Really looking forward to this mid-year review with the boss! Not!
Employee: “Hi Sarah! Are you ready for our 3:30 meeting to go over my review?”
Boss: “Sure, Michelle. Come in. I’ve been looking forward to connecting with you on your review.”
Employee Thought Balloon: Ms. Perky as usual. Let’s see what zingers she’s got for me today.
Boss:  “How are you doing? How’s the day been for you?”
Employee Thought Balloon: Much more hectic than yours. I seem to be the only one doing work around here.
Employee: “Great. I’ve been busy with our launch initiative plans.”
Boss: “Great. I’d love to discuss those with you when you’re ready.”
Employee Thought Balloon: I’ll bet. You’re looking for something to shred to pieces. It’s been a while.
Employee: “I’ll set up a meeting.”
Boss: “Well let’s go over your review. I read your self-assessment and agree with most of it.  I want to take you through my comments.”
Employee Thought Balloon: I knew she’d find something to disagree with!
Boss: “Michelle, overall I find you to be a really strong performer. You have really good analytical skills. You have a strong drive to get things completed and on time. And you seem to get along well with your peers based on the feedback we got from them. They value how well you collaborate with them.”
Employee Thought Balloon: Enough with the blah, blah. Let’s get on with the stuff I’m really here for.
Boss: “Here are some of the developmental opportunities I have noticed.”
Employee Thought Balloon: Yeah, let’s go for the kill!
Boss: “I’d like you to work on a couple of areas of development. One is to develop your verbal communication skills.”
Employee Thought Balloon: Really? I’m not sure you’d be so happy with me verbalizing what I’m thinking. LOL.
Boss: “And second, I’d like you to be better at listening and probing to better understand where people are coming from.”
Employee Thought Balloon: Hey, I’m listening pretty well. Have I interrupted you so far? I’m getting the complete picture of how you really don’t want me here and are looking for all kinds of ways to get me fired…

Fade out. Before we move on to the rest of the movie do you see what’s happening? There are two movies going on. One in real time and the other in the employee’s thought balloon. While the situation is a bit extreme for dramatic effect,  how well is the employee listening to the boss?

The problem arises when we are not even aware of the movie playing in our heads. We just assume that movie is reality. The fact is that the stories we have in our heads prevent us from listening clearly. And the purpose of this blog post is to help each of us listen more closely to how we listen.

In this situation the employee comes in believing that her boss doesn’t support her. Her beliefs cause her to hear only the statements that are consistent with her beliefs. This is a well-researched phenomenon called “cognitive dissonance.” It is hard for the brain, especially under stress, to process any information that is inconsistent with its previous understanding, so it tends to disregard it.

Awareness of our “filters” (the way in which we listen to others) reduces the static in the connections we have with others. When we start to see a situation more objectively it allows us to be more emotionally intelligent in the situation, make better decisions, act from greater objectivity, and establish more genuine connections with others. Listening to how you listen is truly a transformational tool.

Read more

/by