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Category: Leadership
Respected leaders walk the high road
We all know the value of emotional intelligence in leadership. Knowing it is one thing, but applying it can be more challenging.
About a year ago, I was coaching a client who owns highly successful business with a sterling reputation. Linda was working with her biggest client and ran into a tough situation: The company had hired a new person to lead the department that Linda interacted with. When Linda met the director, Megan she immediately sensed resistance and hostility. It quickly became apparent that Megan wanted no part of Linda, and was poised to undermine and distort all the Linda did.
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Leaders know how to read…people
One of my clients had an “Aha” moment yesterday. These are what coaches live for. It is that point in time when our thinking makes a shift, and from that moment on, we feel ourselves moving with a renewed sense of clarity, confidence, and purpose. My client (Ken) was talking about his top technician, and how this person always seems to find fault. I looked at Ken and said, “He’s a technician. You pay him to find things wrong!” Ken stopped, his eyes twinkled and he said, “I never thought of it that way. All this makes total sense to me now”
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Are you a leader? Check your blind spots
Have you ever met a friendly person who for some reason wasn’t friendly to you? Puzzling, isn’t it? It is true: We can’t please everyone. We also wonder if there is some way we are coming across that is turning people off.
Almost all of us have “blind spots”. These are areas about ourselves that need improvement – we just aren’t aware of them. Those who know us and like us usually don’t say anything about these. Sometimes they don’t even notice the flaws.
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Good listeners know their filters
Remember the game of telephone? Most of us played it at birthday parties when we were of grade school age. We all gathered in a circle as the leader or host whispered some silly phrase in the first person’s ear. The first person whispered the message to the one on his right and the pattern continued until the message had gotten all around the circle. The only rule was that the message could not be repeated. You heard it once, and that was it. When the last person to hear the phrase was asked to identify the message, there were always plenty of laughs. The message was usually quite different from the original.
In teamwork, just like the game of telephone, communication can get distorted as it is passed along.
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Blessed are the Nitpickers
I would like to put the spotlight on who I believe are the most persecuted group of people on earth – the “nitpickers”. You know who I am talking about. These are the folks who take your marvelous idea or plan and start poking holes in it. They say things like, “What about this?”…”What could happen if?”…”Have you ever considered these possible consequences? All of a sudden, we creative people get defensive and even irritated. When this happens the communication wall goes up, and the quality of the collaboration goes down.
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