Thanks for all of your positive feedback on the Leadership Conversation Columns this year! Here is a “Lucky 7” list of the key lessons from each column with a link back to the original article. To share these with your organization in even greater detail – along with hundreds of other leadership tips and techniques, we suggest you provide each person on your team – and your boss and peers – with a copy of LEADERSHIP CONVERSATIONS; Challenging High-Potential Managers to Become Great Leaders to get 2014 off to a great start. Let me know if I can be of service to your organization in the upcoming year as a speaker or executive coach.
1) When We Miss Their Message: Think of a question, not a response when listening and remember that being ‘open’ means you are willing to change your mind!
2) Mastering Relationship Building: Relationships must evolve from ‘transactional’ to ‘trusted’ and you need more of them internally and externally as you rise up in an organization. Remember, when you need a relationship, it is too late to form one.
3) When Time is of the Essence: Proactively and continually develop the people in your organization. That way, when the next ‘crunch’ happens your team can effectively take on more of the workload.
4) Promoting Your High Potentials: Promotions are available even when a formal new position is not. Recognizing ‘expert potential’ and ‘growth potential’ can go a long way toward recognizing and rewarding the efforts of your team members and will increase their job satisfaction.
5) When You and Your Team Must Succeed: Make sure that everyone on your team is at least 80 percemt confident that the agreed-upon goals can be achieved. This process will also improve the quality of your decision making.
6) Make Decisions With Confidence: How do you make decisions? Learning how to balance ‘intuition’ with ‘weighing the pros and cons’ will lead to a better decision every time.
7) When Your Best People Leave Your Team: Conduct ‘stay interviews’ regularly so you don’t get stuck doing an ‘exit interview’. Make sure you are fulfilling the needs of others at the same time they fulfill your needs and the needs of your organization.
One overriding thought for those of you who are working diligently to become great leaders: be learners, be curious, ask great questions and then listen to the answers with an open mind. This will go a long way to ensuring that you connect and create alignment with everyone critical to your success. Let’s all have a great 2014 and look for a new column in WashingtonExec every two weeks!
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Alan Berson is an author, keynote speaker, executive coach, Learning Director at Wharton Executive Education and the CEO of Leadership Conversation LLC based in Potomac, MD. His recent book, LEADERSHIP CONVERSATIONS: Challenging High-Potential Managers to Become Great Leaders, was released by Jossey-Bass in March of this year and was named as one of the top 10 management/leadership books by Amazon.com. An extensive review can be found at Knowledge@Wharton.
