Questions are Our Best Friends

Contributed by John Keyser, Founder and Principal of Common Sense Leadership

Have you heard this quotation from Rudyard Kipling? “My six best friends’ names are Who, What, Where, When and Why.”

As a leadership consultant and coach who emphasizes the value of purposeful questions, I’d like to change the quotation. In business, it’s more apt to say, “My three best friends’ names are What, Why, and How.”

Sure, there are times when we need to specify the who, when, and where. No question about that. But think about these fundamentals in our business lives, and how critically important they are:

  • Knowing what our success looks like, by asking our clients, our board, our stakeholders, our boss.
  • Asking our clients and team members what good communication looks like to them.
  • Asking our team members and our clients how we can help them.
  • Asking our team why we do things the way we do. Is there a better way?

Remember, we cannot assume, we must ask, and we must ask each person. As a leader, we serve our constituents, our external and our internal clients.

In fact, as a leader, it is essential to realize that we are here to guide and help others. We must recognize what our teams want and need from us as their leader. Each may have differences, but we do know from studies that our team members want to feel appreciated, and that they are an important member of a team. They want to be heard and to feel their ideas matter. And they want to feel supported, that they are being helped to succeed.

Feedback is the lifeblood of teamwork. Setting a positive, constructive tone is true leadership at its best. It takes inner confidence to ask such questions as, “What do you think?” “What’s your opinion?” “How can we be better?” and, especially, “How do you think I can be better?” When we humbly strive to improve our own core competencies, we show others how important this is, and how to begin this essential process.

If we don’t have inner confidence, it is important to develop it. Without it, it is difficult to grow and improve.

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The Real You: Advice on Authenticity

BeateCheletteContributed by Beate Chelette

No matter where I go these days, I read and hear the word “authenticity.” It’s one of the big keywords circulating everywhere. But what’s it all about and how can it help your business?

It’s hardly news that the world is changing, but there is an element of that change that we should take a closer look at. Trends and beliefs identify entire generations. For the Baby Boomers and most of Generation X, it has been about making it to the top. Much of our drive has been about money and success. Media and movies celebrated consumption and told how to get to the top fast, get the corner office, drive big cars, and buy even bigger houses. The more you had, the better. Remember the iconic film Wall Street, featuring ruthless stockbrokers and expensive interior decorators? There was no such thing as too much. Your only worth was how much you made and what you had been able to amass in terms of career status and money.

These ideas no longer drive most people. Wall Street itself has changed as this article points out. Our taste in cars has also changed. Once a symbol of toughness, the gas-guzzling Hummer is now passé and we favor environmentally and cost-conscious models like the Prius. There has been a major shift changing the way we act and how we see the world and do business with each other. Let’s look at what that shift is and how it affects the way you need to communicate, work and portray who you are to your clients.

Who you really are, and what you care about in life, is the crux of authenticity. In business today, clients want to get a sense of you and know what makes you tick so they can assess whether they can trust you as a person. They don’t want to see a video that features just pretty things, or a brochure of yet another consultant who promises increased revenue. Clients these days want to do business with someone who shares the same core values that they have. This is what you need to show and it is how you find your clients.

Clients want to know that you are real—and authentic. Social media allows us to show the core of who we are and make it transparent for everyone who follows us on Facebook and Twitter. Remember to watch your language and what you post, because I assure you, people check up on you.

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Yes…Extroverts and Introverts Can Lead Brilliantly!

DevoraZackContributed by Devora Zack

There is not one single way to lead. Don’t get me started. Nothing irritates me more than hearing from so-called experts that, in their boundless benevolence, they are bestowing on us mere mortals the five laws of management or seven rules of success or three indisputable truisms of leadership.

In reality, as you have already recognized, everyone is unique. Given this basic fact of human nature, how could there possibly be one set of rules on how to manage effectively? There can’t and there isn’t.

The singular method towards being a stellar manager is by channeling yourself.

Yet, many of us expend much time and energy telling ourselves what we should do to be a successful manager. The root of this buzz-kill is the false, damaging belief that we inherently lack some secret management juice that enables ‘real’ leaders to charismatically inspire the masses to do their bidding. Do yourself a favor. Notice when you think to yourself that you ‘should’ engage in some behavior to lead effectively. Replace the ‘should’ with a ‘shouldn’t.’ Because when you work too hard to convince yourself you should do something to succeed, it almost always means you shouldn’t. The key to being the best manager you can possibly be working with – rather than fighting against – your natural strengths.

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Amplifying Autonomy: How Flex-Work Can Motivate Your Team

lisaloehrContributed by Lisa Loehr

Work/life balance is a significant issue that usually centers on women with children. While most women applaud employers for family-centric programs, there are many men and women who approach management wondering why more isn’t being done to create enhanced flexibility for all workers. Indeed, an unintended consequence of implementing family-specific programs is the resentment from male and female colleagues who do not benefit from these programs because they are not affected by child-related issues. Paradoxically, employers are also challenged by data that seems to indicate that female-sensitive programs are not improving retention or advancement for this demographic.

A strong school of research indicates that employers are playing small ball when it comes to addressing women-centric work/life balance issues. In fact, recent research seems to imply that employers should elevate their game and focus more on employee motivation, and think less on gender. Career analyst Daniel Pink, in his book Drive, highlights three factors that are scientifically proven to motivate, but are generally ignored by business leaders (you can view Pink’s TED Talk about autonomy here). Those factors are:

  • Autonomy: that people feel an urge to direct their own lives.
  • Mastery: that people feel driven to get better at something that matters
  • Purpose: that people feel an innate need to be part of something larger than themselves

Creating a flexible work environment aligns directly with autonomy – and is something valued by both women and men. Studies have shown that offering increased autonomy retains workers because employees feel they have more professional choices to impact their current situation – they stay and change from within rather than acting on the natural impulse to leave. At the same time, creating autonomy allows employees the flexibility they need to manage their personal life.

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What Does ‘Having It All’ Mean to You?

laurabergerContributed by Laura Berger

Do you have it all? Or perhaps you feel trapped in a cycle of your own doing that could lead to your undoing? I am extremely thankful for my clients, but not for the state in which they come to me, as it is often the latter.

Helping women “have it all” is my professional passion, and I discuss and research the topic whenever I can. Recently I facilitated a top discussion called “What do you define as having it all?” for Forbes Women, and the insights were quite compelling.

1. Do we really know what having it all means to us? Perhaps the title of the discussion needed rephrasing for an online forum. Without the benefit of previous context from a conversation, many of the answers sounded much like the Hollywood dream. And who can be blamed for it, with the most celebrated TV shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad having the theme of living out a life adorned with all life’s toys proximate to their core themes. Even Modern Family, a masterful show that has two fundamental purposes—to have us examine our relationships with ourselves and others and have us laugh in the meantime—shows families with big houses and all the modern toys, with one spouse stay-at-home. I quickly suspected that if the question were asked a different way, the answers would be less Hollywood and more real. We quickly reframed the question to “what do you think determines your success?” We began to receive what one responder called varied “snowflakes.” We then added one word: “what do you think determines your life’s success?” Then, the answers then became even more compelling and personal, as respondents quickly shifted to what was truly important to them, in a less cliché frame.

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The Power of a Transformational Intent

Contributed by CEO Coach Henna Inam

Ever been part of a dysfunctional meeting? They waste time, sap energy, and kill employee engagement. An executive coaching client and I were preparing for a meeting she was going to in two hours. It was a high stakes meeting and she expected it to be politically charged. Each functional group had their “wants” and the battle lines were drawn. Sound familiar?

What if there was a tool that helped us not just survive but actually transform these types of situations into productive dialogues? Read on for coaching on how to do that. I call the tool that works “Transformational Intent” and it has the power to change our experience of any dysfunctional situation, not just meetings. “Transformational Intent” is the act of simply setting the highest, most positive intention prior to any action or situation.

When heading to a contentious meeting we can create a conscious intention of who we are in the meeting and what outcomes we are looking for. When faced with a situation, we let go of the need to control the situation to fit our needs and embrace the opportunity to set a clear, positive intent for the best outcome.

Why does intent work? First, setting an intent helps us to consciously direct our focus. What we focus on shapes our expectations, what we move toward, and what we experience. Second, quantum physics is teaching us that any object that is observed is changed by the very act of observation. Could it be possible then, that the expectations with which we observe others changes them? It explains why in experiments, teachers’ expectations of students actually changes their performance. Third, our own intent matters because of what neuroscience research describes as emotional contagion. This is our ability to read others’ emotions and mirror them, even unconsciously. In layman’s terms it’s called empathy. We all have mirror neurons in our brains, a fancy way of explaining why when one person yawns, the rest of us are triggered to yawn as well. When we are inspired we have the ability to inspire others. Our emotions and intent are read and contagious. Imagine the personal power we each have to be transformational leaders, if we take 100% accountability for our intent.

Back to the battle lines of our favorite meeting.  Here are three intentions and questions we can ask ourselves on the way to a meeting or in any situation.

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Five Steps to Your Personal Board of Directors

Contributed by CEO Coach Henna Inam

Are you stuck in a career rut? Do you wish for more coaching and feedback but don’t get it in your work environment? Do you want to learn to better integrate work and life? Do you wish you could tap into others who have complementary skill sets to you for advice? A personal board of directors may be just what each of us needs to help us with perspective and keep us on track with our goals.

As I did my Personal Leadership Review, one of the conclusions I came to is that I am a rather independent person and don’t always seek others’ advice. I like to have a challenge and figure it out on my own (as many a frustrated former boss would attest to).

As much as I love to help others, I have a really hard time asking others for help. To address this, I decided to go about recruiting a Personal Board of Directors for myself. With this goal in mind, I did something highly uncharacteristic of me. I asked some people who know about having a personal board to help. Here’s what I have learned from them.

Here are five steps to consider to create your Personal Board of Directors.

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Just How Much Does Emotional Intelligence Matter?

JohnKeyserContributed by John Keyser, Founder and Principal of Common Sense Leadership

It is widely accepted that soft skills make an important difference in how people feel and respond to their boss and senior management. If they feel they are valued, appreciated and heard, they are engaged and motivated to achieve goals set out by leadership.

An indicator of how well we use our soft skills is our level of emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is that “something” within us, that something that helps us to sense how we feel and enables us to sympathize with others.  Emotional intelligence gives us the ability to be present and listen to someone when they most need it. It is that part of us encouraging us to make good decisions and communicate effectively despite negative emotions and stress.

The four main skills of emotional intelligence are:

  • Self-awareness – our ability to perceive our emotions and understand our tendencies to act in certain ways in given situations
  • Social awareness – our ability to understand the emotions of other people, what they are thinking and feeling>
  • Self-management – our ability to use awareness of our emotions to stay flexible and direct our behavior positively
  • Relationship management – our ability to use our awareness of our own emotions and those of others to manage interactions successfully

Some of us are born with a great deal of emotional intelligence; others are not. Most of us are not aware of how our emotions may be adversely affecting our thinking and our reactions. The good news is that we can learn to increase our emotional intelligence. We can take a simple test to determine our EQ, our level of emotional intelligence. I recommend doing this, as the skills we can measure are the ones we can best improve.

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Why Forgiveness is an Essential Leadership Practice

Contributed by CEO Coach Henna Inam

I was with a good friend and former colleague this week and she was sharing about her family ritual of Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement). Yom Kippur is the day when Jews try to amend their “behavior and seek forgiveness for wrongs done against God and against other human beings.” In her family tradition, my friend and her husband talk with their two young kids and ask for forgiveness for hurts. I mentioned to her how fantastic it was that the Jewish faith teaches kids and reminds adults how to take responsibility for their actions and how everyone both learns to ask for forgiveness and also give forgiveness.  In my executive coaching work with clients, I’ve discovered that forgiveness is a great leadership practice for our work lives as well.

Have you ever felt slighted by others at work? Do you think you’ve ever hurt a work colleague by your actions? I know I probably thoughtlessly hurt people (and there are definitely a few I am sure I thoughtfully hurt!). My biggest challenge in forgiveness happened when a former boss of mine wanted to transfer me to a different assignment prematurely. She had someone else she wanted to bring in and didn’t even have the courtesy to talk with me herself about her plans. Instead she sent the HR person in. I wasn’t ready to change assignments and she certainly hadn’t consulted me about the change. I was confronted by a sense of failure at leaving a job half-completed and a sense of shame associated with the failure. I carried that hurt and anger for a long time. Then, I saw a Buddhist saying that resonated with me “You are not punished for your anger. You are punished by your anger.” I decided to just let it go.

My anger had definitely impacted my ability to work with her and also my engagement in the work. The lack of trust between us impacted the business and impacted my team. What finally enabled me to let it go was when I acknowledged the emotions in the stages of grief and realized the blessings of that hard experience. The experience had helped me learn about forgiveness. It helped me be humble in the face of failure, learn resilience, and certainly put me on the path to doing what I do now.

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Owning the Business Leadership Style That Is Right For You

BeateCheletteContributed by Beate Chelette

Many women in business struggle to find their own leadership style that feels right, natural, and based on “women-centric” qualities instead of “male” attributes.

I hear from women all the time who want something new, a leadership style that reflects more fully what their values are and who they are as individuals. Instead of mimicking male and often outdated models, as women, we must begin to identify what leadership is for us.

The new model I propose must utilize our intuition as well as intellectual abilities.

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