What we can expect to see / Future leadership trends:

Flexibility & Agility-responsive to an ever changing environment and business challenges. Developing an ability to adapt while being ok with uncertainty. Keeping one foot in the present state while creating the future state (and not knowing if that will be successful).

Collective leadership-a style of leadership where it is an entire team instead of an individual leading the effort. Will take root once more Millennials are in leadership positions. Their expectation is for effective leadership development within an organization or employer who shares their purpose and values.

Need for leadership at all levels of an organization– This provides the pool for future leaders. Talent will need to be identified and fed into the institutional pipeline.

New approaches– Games and simulations have been shown to increase employee engagement and produce powerful results significantly ahead of classroom completion times. Also, since everyone learns in their own way, it will be up to the individual to determine what is needed or lacking.

What are you or your organizations doing to prepare for your future as a leader?

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1. Frame your challenge succinctly

What problem or need are we solving? As you gather data on the problem bring as many diverse perspectives as possible without allowing the process to get stuck in paralysis.

Your role: encouraging all perspectives without fear.

2. Idea creation

What is the sea of possibilities? While focusing on the original problem or need comprise a list of everything without prematurely tossing out what failed or was too risky in the past. Do not allow tactical or granular issues to prevent putting something on the list.

Your role: This is a time for courage and humility. Your team may know more than you do on how to solve the challenge.

3. Develop your plan

Include needed timing, tools, technology, training, budget, organizational shifts and impacts that will need to occur, approval points, disruptions internally and externally.

Your role: Stay open, adaptive, and supportive of all changes or refinements. Seek to understand the why behind the changes before making them to your plan.

4. Pilot Execution

Pilot your plan in a small controlled environment.

Your role: Keep the team focused on solving the original challenge without getting stuck on tangents. Stay on plan. Over communicate to the organization what the pilot is and is not and its progress. Engage the team to track what comes up-the pros and the cons. Build both back into your plan.

5. Celebrate

What was learned? What you would do differently the next time? Who were the heroes?

Your role: Setting the team for the next innovation without fear of failure.

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Empowering others

All decisions do not emanate from the highest positions. When leaders learn to trust those around them it empowers their team to go to a higher level.

Listening

Giving others the time and space to express themselves is the greatest gift to fully engage with your staff. Often great ideas come from having the freedom to speak or brainstorm. Learn to fully hear others before you speak.

Empathy

Having empathy comes from understanding others and discovering who they are. When you lead with empathy you are more human and trustworthy. It captures their hearts since it shows you truly understand them.

Honesty / Authenticity

This is the foundation of all of your skills. It builds trust, openness, and sets the stage for successful or difficult conversations.

Vulnerability

As a leader you will not always have the answer. Having vulnerability is the practice of being OK with not knowing. It demonstrates you are human and allows for others to own the potential solution. It also creates a safe place for others on your team to express their vulnerability.

Leadership is a social process that you will likely work at during your entire career. It is a journey of many different situations, teams, projects, and individuals that will constantly challenge you as build your toolbox. If you feel like any of these skills are difficult for you to cultivate or demonstrate, a few coaching sessions could easily unblock whatever is getting in your way. Let’s set up a complimentary 30 minute session to formulate your roadmap.

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1. Get Used to Managing Remotely

While this may require you to develop your management skills differently, it can be extremely rewarding for your workforce and a great retention tool. The key will be how to ensure production. Keep in mind the following when making remote working your new normal:

1. Create self-accountability by inspiring your staff to own their production.
2. Establish clear expectations and tasks and reevaluate them regularly.
3. Set up open channels of communication with regular get togethers.

2. Being comfortable with being uncomfortable and uncertain.

Accept that change is regularly occurring due to someone somewhere disrupting your market. Develop your agility muscle and look for ways to lead regardless of what is tossed your way.

3. Keeping up with the latest trends, forecasts and technology in your industry.

This is the time for continuous learning. Build it into your calendar.

4. Embracing flex time by investing in technology that allows for production wherever and whenever your staff is working.

Be honest with yourself. Are you looking for hours worked or results?

5. Develop your staff for the future with regular training.

This leads to differentiation and a true competitive edge.

6. Integrating your executive role into your remote capabilities.

Hold your executive presence the same as if you were in person. This applies to dress, work-space, and all communication. Become a zoom expert by attending one of their training sessions. Continue to develop your team and reach out to those you are forming or have significant relationships with. This is not a time to be out of sight or out of mind.

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Most leaders have all the technical excellence, knowledge and resources to be successful which is why they rose to the positions they are in. But yet they get to a point where they are unable to make the difference they need or want. Additional training is usually not the answer since they are already the technical experts in their field. The missing piece is something more personal. Often it is how they are interacting with others and /or how they are perceived. The key is how they can be more effective by connecting with others. Human behavior is not what most leaders focus on. Their focus is on results. Yet, a leader’s ability to connect with others determines their ultimate effectiveness. Enter the leadership coach.

Leadership coaching is a developmental process for leaders that combines human interaction with the strength of their technical skills. The coach’s role is to help leaders identify and remove the obstacles that are getting in their way. This is achieved through meaningful questions and intense listening. The coach revisits the world of the leader with compassion and honesty to identify where they get stuck, where history repeats itself, and where pivoting would make the difference to unlock old patterns. Through this process new patterns can emerge clearing the way to a more successful world.

Coaches don’t solve leadership problems. Instead they guide the leader to find the right solution for them in an authentic, honest way. The result is clarity of the change they have determined, and a new path lined with positive reinforcement and renewed excitement for their leadership style and capabilities. 

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Over communicate. The truth is that people generally listen less than they should. Over communicating ensures that your message has been heard and enables questions to be asked about the fine points.

Think first, speak second, and always filter what you are about to say. This ensures that your first unfiltered and potentially misunderstood thought does not come out in an insulting way.

Listen intently with a sharp focus on what is being said. Forget about what is going on in your head or the next question you would like to ask. Good listening requires a blank mind with a full presence and focus on whoever is speaking. This is not the time to dual task or send an email.

Know your audience before you use acronyms or abbreviations. Will they know what you are saying or will the abbreviations be too informal? Too often we take for granted that those external to our organization know what our internal abbreviations mean. Most of the time they have no idea or think it has a different meaning. Good communicators know their audience and craft their message specific to that audience even if it means using different language.

Body language is part of your overall communication when you are in face to face meetings. Your words tell one story but what does your body language say? Keeping your arms open and maintaining eye contact signifies to the other person(s) that you are present and listening to them.

Reread your email to ensure that your language is appropriate (and not offensive) before hitting send. Sometimes due to time pressures (or an angry moment), we prematurely let an email go that in retrospect we know we should not have sent. My rule of thumb is to review each email from the point of view of how it would be perceived if it was forwarded to my boss or client. Once you look at it from this point of view you are more likely to stay out of trouble and be more concise.

Always be concise and specific enough so the other person has the best idea of what you are saying. It is usually a balance between saying enough to convey your idea and not saying too much to lose the audience altogether. The key is to speak clearly and concisely. The best communicators are humorous in an appropriate way and have perfected the art of storytelling which results in the best recall by others.

Consider picking up the phone instead of sending a long convoluted email. Sometimes the most complicated of situations are better explained live over the phone which also gives the other person an opportunity to ask questions.

Take notes on what is being said in a meeting. While we want to believe we can remember everything, the truth is we are lucky to recall only a portion of what was discussed. Taking notes ensures you will not forget key points and reminds you of any follow ups you committed to.

Leadership skills

Leadership qualities

It requires work life balance, courage, and surrounding yourself with other inspirational people. Fitness, nutrition, sleep, and sex are the keys to life balance. Courage is the ability to follow your passion/beliefs and stay the course regardless of what comes your way because you believe in yourself. It is a matter of being authentic, true to yourself, willing to explore what/why crosses your path, and staying the course because you deserve to achieve your dreams and none of them are impossible.

Communication skills

It requires losing the fear to regain the power you once had (when you were younger) to truly choose the professional life you desire. Finding the balance (or calibrating the imbalance among the pillars of life), aligning your passion/purpose to determine if corporate life is right for you or perhaps an entrepreneurial one. Regardless of your choice, how can you become the best possible mindful leader with a good Leadership qualities that others will want to work for or do business with. Power is becoming that mindful leader. And it also overlaps into your personal and family life.

Improve your Communication & Leadership skills to become the best mindful leader. The quick way to success depends on you!

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Business Coaching

The best business coaches come from the executive levels for several reasons. An executive coach has come from the same trenches where they have learned from their successes as well as their failures. An executive coach understands leadership, how decisions are made, and where the power resides in an organization. As a business coach, the advantages of knowing best practices, how to motivate teams, and how to grow a bottom line are priceless to the business CEO. The CEO of a business also benefits by an energetic shift that results in greater organizational focus on the right priorities, effective strategies, accountability of the CEO and the team, and better decisions around staffing.

Executive coach

You need a business coach if the following sounds familiar to you:

1. My business has plateaued or stagnated and it is becoming impossible to take it to the next level.
2. I have a hard time determining if I have the right staff doing the right things to grow my profitability.
3. I have a strategy that I am pursuing, but I am not sure if it is the right strategy to capture the market or client segment to truly drive profitable growth.
4. My business does not really have metrics to measure whether we are being as effective as we should be or want to be.

Business Coach

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