Tag Archive for: leadership

How to Demonstrate Caring in the Workplace

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I care a lot about caring. So much so I wrote about it: Caring Is Everything: Getting To The Heart Of Humanity, Leadership, and Life. When people feel cared for, appreciated and valued, the workplace becomes a happier and more productive place. Here are five ways to help your team feel cared for:

  1. Look in the mirror. Honestly ask, “Do I care about the people on my team and what matters to them? Do I care about their success? Am I truly serving them or am I expecting them to serve me?” You can’t fake caring. People will see right through you. People will grant you a lot of grace if they know you care, but won’t give you much if they know you don’t. If you truly don’t care, do yourself and your organization a favor and get out of management.
  2. Listen. Listen. Listen. Take an honest inventory of the amount of time you spend listening to your people versus the amount of time you spend talking. Ideally, it’s good to spend at least twice as much time listening as talking. Listen to what matters to them. Get their input on how to make the workplace better. Get feedback on your leadership. It may start with complaints, then move to problem solving, but what matters is to keep the conversations going.
  3. Get to know – and respond to – people’s appreciation language. Gary Chapman and Paul White’s book, “The Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace,” explains that everyone has a unique way of feeling appreciated. Some need words of affirmation while others respond best to tangible gifts. Some need quality time and may not need praise and recognition. Others intrinsically enjoy working and seeing tasks completed. Some need to be left alone while others need hugs and handshakes. Care enough to get to know their unique nature and preferences and how to best respond to people uniquely. Don’t assume that your style is what everyone needs.
  4. Practice flexibility. Caring leadership is not the same as pleasing leadership. Leading doesn’t mean trying to make people happy. Caring means a commitment to serve, to help people get the resources they need to get their job done, not necessarily what they want. One thing the pandemic taught us is the importance of flexibility. While some positions require being in the office, others can be done remotely. To care about people, you need to be flexible in negotiating a win-win relationship.
  5. Be honest. Tell people what you know; tell them what you don’t know; and tell them why sometimes you need to withhold some information for the greater good. Set high standards. No one takes pride in doing something easy. While support statements need to accompany expectations, let people know when they aren’t meeting your expectations. Have a process for ongoing honest and mutual developmental feedback. Don’t be a “seagull manager,” where you fly around and crap on people.

CREATING A SATISFYING CAREER: How To Reclaim Your Mojo Through the Strength of Authenticity

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When my daughters were planning their careers, I referred them to a quote from American philosopher and civil rights leader, Howard Thurman: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask instead, what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs is for you to come alive.”
There lies within every person a place where, when connected to it, we feel deeply and intensely alive. When we are in this place, there is a quiet voice inside that says, “This is the real me.” Where we lose all track of time. Where we don’t tire or need anyone to motivate us. In that place we are calm, creative, compassionate, committed, and capable. We’re accountable because we know that what we are doing matters and makes a difference. This is the place you find your mojo.
When we discover this place of authenticity in our work, it is called a vocation. When our life’s calling lies outside of our paid work, we call it an avocation. Both have validity and energy.
As leaders committed to creating authentic workplaces where people are engaged, loyal, committed, and accountable, we can help people discover their “real me.” Start by asking:
  • What makes you come alive?
  • What matters to you?
  • What is your own personal why, and how is this organization supporting you to realize that why?
  • How can we together create a place where you love to work?
  • What do we need from each other to take care of each other?
One of the primary barriers to finding our authentic voice is the reactive structuring of our lives. Allowing our to-do lists and the demands in our inbox to drive our activities ensures that the expectations of others will crowd out authentic discovery and expression. Combine this with the noise of a distracted world and you’ll eventually realize, in the light of time’s perspective, the vital task we’ve pushed aside – the task of leading a life aligned with our heart.
As we emerge from a summer of rest and fresh perspectives, there is an opportunity to reset the compass of our lives, develop a new structure for staying on track with our authenticity, and recreating a workplace aligned with our true nature.
Here are a few actions to consider:
  • Set aside time to ask the questions (outlined above) of yourself. You must be intentional and deliberate about discovering your authenticity. You can’t leave it to chance.
  • Shift from the list/reactive method to a boundaried focused approach to your work. While you may have parts of your day checking off your to-do list and responding to the expectations of others, block out time each day for uninterrupted focus on what truly is important to you and to those you love and serve.
  • Assess your mental fitness plan. Many of us have a physical fitness plan, but few have a strategy and accountability plan for strengthening our mental fitness.
  • Create a community of support and inspiration. Whether in the form of guides, coaches, confidants, or accountability partners, we all need to know we aren’t alone. Authenticity is a lonely journey, and it can’t be done alone.

Learning About Leadership vs Leadership Development

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What’s the difference between learning about leadership and leadership development?
Being in the leadership development field for many years has taught me that there’s a difference between learning about leadership and leadership development.
It’s like the difference between reading a recipe and cooking the meal. Learning about something is very different than rolling up your sleeves and immersing yourself in the experience. In this case, the difference is the growth experience gained from leadership development versus simply the knowledge that there is such a thing.
Learning About Leadership
  • Listening to a podcast or audio book on an aspect of leadership that interests you.
  • Watching an inspiring TED Talk or YouTube video.
  • Reading a thought-provoking book on leadership.
  • Hearing a good speaker on leadership.
  • Attending a seminar that comes up on your social media feed.
Leadership Development
  • Making a conscious decision to grow as a person and leader.
  • Taking time to get honest feedback on your leadership.
  • Clarifying the gaps between your current reality and your desired future.
  • Defining your goals as a leader.
  • Determining the biggest source of growth in your life.
  • Mapping a plan for your development to help close the gap(s) you identify. This plan could include coaching, a leadership course, and some support and accountability to keep you on track.
We’ve never had more access to information on leadership, but what have you done lately to invest in your own leadership development?
This past month I facilitated our eighth Authentic Leadership Academy, a transformational leadership development experience.
The Academy is built around three fundamental principles:
  1. Inner harmony precedes outer harmony. Everything flows from inner well-being.
  2. There’s a difference between secondary and primary success. Secondary success has to do with position, popularity, public image, and profit. Primary success is about the person you become on the journey. It’s important not to confuse the two.
  3. Connecting with your true nature and expressing it consciously in your life and work requires the greatest amount of change and makes the greatest amount of impact.
The recent Academy was a manifestation of these principles. We created a community of incredible difference makers who were deeply connected to their humanity. Being with these leaders for three days reinforced my belief that being a good leader is, first and foremost, about being a good person.
What was particularly inspiring was observing the growth of participants who came with their teams, knowing that they can take the learnings back to their organizations.

5 signs that you are not showing up as your authentic self.

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My purpose is to help people connect with their true nature and express it consciously in their life and work. It is my belief that we are naturally creative, compassionate, calm, committed, and capable. If you don’t experience these qualities, there’s nothing wrong with you; you are simply disconnected from your true nature.

Indicators that you’re not showing up as your authentic self:

  1. Overaccommodation. (Pleasing, permissive or indulgent.) While generosity is an obvious strength, when you’re nice all the time, you can bury a lot of feelings. Resentments, depression, irritation, impatience, irritability, insecurity, and psychosomatic illnesses can result from suppressed emotions.
  2. Disengagement. (Blaming, complaining, resisting, shutting down, passive resistance, gossiping, quit and stay.) This occurs when lacking the courage to bring yourself whole-heartedly to your work or relationships.
  3. Transaction tyranny. (Allowing the urgent demands of others to crowd out what matters most.) A close relative to overaccommodation, transaction tyranny means saying yes to everyone and everything, losing yourself in the demands of your inbox, and forgetting to attend to your most important contribution. No one wants written on their headstone, “They got all their emails returned.”
  4. Dishonesty. (Unwilling to face the truth about their life.) Unhappy with their life and hating their job, they unload their misery on people around them. Dishonesty isn’t just about stealing, lying, or fraud. It’s also about being dishonest with yourself.
  5. “Bad” Tired. (Inauthentic exhaustion.) There are two kinds of tired: “good” tired, and “bad” tired. Good tired comes from working hard and getting fulfillment from your contribution. “Bad” tired means you are depleted from taking care of the needs of others at the expense of your true self. You never fully recover from “bad” tired until you live in closer alignment with your true nature – a place that fills you rather than depletes you.

For those interested in discovering your authentic leadership, we still have a few seats available at our academy. I hope you will join us. Check us out at: https://lnkd.in/gMi2euzp

RAISING ACCOUNTABLE KIDS: It’s About Principles, Not Perfection

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You can observe a lot by watching. – Yogi Berra
When grandparenting you aren’t in the thick of the responsibilities that come with raising kids, so you have a bit of time to observe. So, as a grandparent, here’s three observations I have about the state of child raising these days:
  • There’s no more important leadership responsibility than within the walls of our home. The greatest success lies in building strong character in our young people that will enable them to be contributing citizens of the world.
  • We’ve never been more aware of the needs of our children because we have access to extensive information on child development, the impacts of trauma on brain functioning, mental health, the importance of attachment, emotional regulation, and self-esteem and well-being.
  • We are now extremely anxious about how we’re doing as a parent and how our kids are going to turn out. And all the anxiety is spilling over onto our children. Paradoxically, the more we worry about our kids, the more anxious they become. Anxious parents raise anxious kids. They have enough of their own anxiety without us contributing to it.
For those who have assumed the vital and arduous work of leading young people, here are four strategies to consider:
  1. Don’t make life too easy for your kids. On the wall of my daughter’s high school English class was a quote by Van Jones, the political commentator: I don’t want you to be safe, ideologically. I don’t want you to be safe, emotionally. I want you to be strong. That’s different. I’m not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots and learn how to deal with adversity. I’m not going to take all the weights out of the gym; that’s the whole point of the gym. This is the gym. In other words, making the space within the walls of our homes and our schools safe doesn’t mean rescuing our children from the challenges of life. Just as the struggle to break through the cocoon builds the strength of the butterfly’s wings, if we want our children to fly one day, they must struggle and develop strong wings. Don’t raise your children to be happy. Raise your children to be strong. Strength comes when our kids know they are not alone. We are right beside them, in their corner. Loving without rescuing. Being there without doing for them what they can do for themselves. With strength, happiness will follow.
  2. Don’t be afraid to parent. Saying no is not abuse. Our children do not need us to be their friend. Their friends are their peer group. What our children need is a parent. There’s a big difference between pleasing your kids and loving your kids. Pleasing is about giving them what they want so they will be happy and like you. Pleasing comes from insecurity. Loving them is giving them what they need – and what they need may very well be different than what they think they need or what their friends have. Children are not born with accountability – the ability to be counted on; they have to learn it. And they learn it, in part, when they can count on the caregivers in their life. If you are a parent, your kids are counting on you to be one. Let’s work at being secure enough with ourselves that we don’t depend on our kids for our self-worth. It’s not their job.
  3. Set clear boundaries around digital media. Digital media was originally developed for two reasons: information and communication. When it exceeds its function and is used, like any product or substance, to meet our emotional needs or to escape from our life it becomes addictive. Monitoring our own use and consciously and carefully supervising the use of devices with our kids is now an integral part of parenting. You can’t leave it to chance.
  4. Relax. You don’t have to get it perfectly. I remember a time when our youngest daughter wanted to change her curfew to go to a friend’s party. The easy road would have been a quick “yes” or a quick “no.” Instead, we spent the better part of a week negotiating with her and struggling to do the right thing. I don’t know, to this day, if we did the right thing. What I do know is that my daughter knows she was loved. She knows she was loved because she knows that we invested in the relationship. As parents and caregivers of children, we never really know what “right” is. There’s no formula. The goal is not necessarily to be a better parent. The goal is to find joy on the journey. And finding the joy will make us a better parent.
In Blackfoot culture, turtles are considered to be a symbol of creation and motherhood and embody the concept that is similar to “Mother Earth” in English. To the Blackfoot, the turtle is patient, wise, knowledgeable, and long-lived. The Blackfoot saying Iikakimat mookakiit means be wise and preserve and can be used to describe the turtle’s characteristics. And these characteristics fit well into my own approach and philosophy of raising accountable kids: be patient, wise, a good role model and the kids will be alright.

The best leaders are the ones who have the courage to face the demands of reality.

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When Jesper Brodin, CEO of Ingka Group/IKEA, was asked to take over management of IKEA China, the operation required significant change to be successful and sustainable. He would have to close offices and support many employees to find new employment. Before accepting such a difficult restructuring, he asked himself an important question: “Do I have the courage and stamina to do this?”

An interminable conundrum for leaders is how to do the hard things that come with the responsibility of leadership while remaining a good human being. Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter, in a recent HBR article https://lnkd.in/gvztwTKT argued that the binary choice between being a good person or being a tough, effective leader was a false dichotomy. Their thoughtful article builds a good case for managing the conundrum through the development of two key leadership ingredients – wisdom and compassion.

While being human and making hard leadership decisions may not be mutually exclusive, it is naïve to think that you can avoid the struggle. The best leaders are the ones who have the courage to face the demands of reality. They wrestle with the tough decisions, determined to integrate humanity into their leadership and their commitment to ensuring results. And they do it imperfectly.

Like life itself, leadership is an imperfect journey. We don’t always get it right. Sometimes we miss the mark. Our commitment to results can override our compassion. Alternatively, our honest concern for individuals can compromise the tough decisions we have to make for the long-term greater good. And then, at those rare times, we discover that doing the hard things becomes the most human thing to do.

If we stay with the struggle and accept our imperfection as our leadership journey unfolds, we can stay real and earn the credibility it takes to build a great organization and make a difference in the world.