“R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Find out what it means to me!” Every employee, regardless of their place in corporate hierarchy, desires respect. In this article, we have gathered the top six ways to earn respect in the workplace.
The employee should never overlook their title. Titles are important, even when associates claim that titles are insignificant. Regardless, your job title is how other associates determine your value to the organization, internally and externally. Never overlook your title.
The employee should be fully aware of their responsibilities in the workplace. Having your job description in writing is an intelligent move in the workplace. Your current role should be crystal clear to you, so that you will know when you are primed and ready to make an upward move.
The employee should be able to easily identify what their next career move. To advance in any role, you must have clearly defined goals and objectives. This type of career plan projects organizational abilities, strategic planning, and loyalty.
Always keep it together. Your appearance, your energy, your confidence, and your emotions should always be kept in check. When one of these characteristics appears out of whack, people may assume your entire life is in a state of chaos.
When someone confides in you, they are exhibiting trust. Do not throw away the precious gift of trust. Keep things confidential regardless if it is corporate information or personal information. Practice discretion of information, and you will gain exponential amounts of respect.
Patience is a virtue, but persistence to the point of success is a blessing. This is the perfect balance between patience while not becoming complacent. By demonstrating patience, you are letting the workplace know that you are willing to wait it out until bigger opportunities come your way. Time and effort is priceless in the game of patience.
]]>
“Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.” John C. Maxwell
Leaders strive for excellent performance, but there are always potential fails that could wreck a leaders path. Typical concerns of leaders are strengths/weaknesses or abilities/limits, but the following characteristics can be devastating:
Failure to model
People become disenchanted with leaders that are not genuine, and do not model the behavior they are teaching. The leader is the starting point.
Leading Blind
Leaders can communicate easily and clearly, but without a clear sense of direction others will be lost.
Keep the interpersonal skills in check
Keep your interpersonal skills polished and ready. Emotions that can easily surface, or awkwardness with the truth can build stress and doubt among your followers.
Keeping all the work to yourself
When leaders try to do everything without the help of others, it can slow progress. This will create frustration and stress. Delegate appropriately, and consider the opportunities to lead by example.
Hating Change
Be open to new ideas, and you will be ready for new opportunities coming your way.
http://www.inc.com/lolly-daskal/12-fatal-flaws-that-derail-leaders.html
]]>
The way that leaders run business has changed substantially over the past few decades. One of the biggest changes is the fact that they no longer lead with authority, they use influence and persuasion, or should be using these methods. It has become obvious in todays’ world that power and control do not have the same impact as the art, or science of persuasion, and there is a body of expert scientific work available in support of this change.
Fundamentally, a rapidly changing world as well as workforce has ordered a revolution in management styles. Management styles are therefore evolving continually to accommodate changes in technology, as well as the way people think. The days where autocratic, command and control management was the order of the day have long gone the way of the dinosaur, and best practice now uses the “team” approach in order to lead effectively.
The point of persuasion and influence in leadership is to empower the workforce, and involves effective communication, amongst other skills. Workers are being encouraged to operate independently, and question “why?”, while leaders are learning quickly how to become more influential. The sooner a leader learns the art of being more persuasive, the more likely a business’ goals will be met with far less frustration and resistance internally, or externally.
The word “persuasion” in Merriam-Webster is described as follows: “per·sua·sion noun pər-ˈswā-zhən: the act of causing people to do or believe something”.. And despite popular belief – this is not an immoral act. People sometimes mix meanings, and believe the word is the same as “manipulation”, when nothing could be further from the truth. The major difference between these two words is the objective behind the action. Manipulation is generally self-serving, and harbors serious ill-intent.
On the flip side of the coin, and in terms of the use influence and persuasion for organisational success, the principle skill used by leaders is as we said earlier – communication. This means either verbal or non-verbal communication, or both, used to powerfully connect with the workforce to achieve a mutually beneficial result. The main focus is placed on activating reciprocity to master fellowship.
There is a ton of psychological evidence available that has proven good leaders to be more effective when they influence with positive effect. For example the transparent sharing of information within an organisation! This keeps workers at all levels in the loop, as opposed to the old way of treating them like mushrooms – fed s*@t, and kept in the dark. Other positive means of persuasion include focussing on the strengths of a workforce, rather than looking for negative attributes, and picking them out. This kind of positive intent keeps workers moving forward, helps to engender trust, and inspires motivation to reach for the stars.
Business success depends a great deal on our ability to influence and persuade people; the teams who work within the organization, and the customers who support its products or services. Leaders therefore need to learn how to use their influence up, down, and across the entire landscape of the organisational scope, even where they have no direct authority. Have we persuaded you of that yet?
]]>
Today we’d like to share some great tips on becoming a better leader. They’re all very simple ways to work better with the people you serve. However, they’re also very powerful ways to achieve your objective of being the best leader you can be.
- Let information flow. Understand how powerful information can be in helping others do their jobs and making them feel valued.
- Serve don’t bully. You became a leader to serve people not to exert power over them. You want them to succeed and you’re committed to helping them do so.
- Appreciate others. Leadership can sometimes be a lonely role but you understand that the job isn’t about being appreciated, it’s about appreciating the contributions of others. You take time out to make your people feel special because they are special.
- Respect others. Respect is an act of caring, and it’s because you care that you are in a leadership position. People work harder for people who care for them. They like people who care for them and most of all they give respect back to those who respect them.
- Concentrate on the things that matter. Leadership isn’t about the trivial. Micro-management isn’t something that anyone enjoys. It takes away from your ability to communicate your vision and to inspire others to achieve. Your every word and action should show what’s really important. Don’t get bogged down in the details, trust others to do so.
- Be Driven. It is important to succeed. Be responsible and accountable for success. Enable others to be the same. You should be able to share a clear picture of what your success will look like and be able to facilitate that picture for your people. Everyone wants to be a part of something great and you know how to achieve that.
- Reflect on your actions. Take the time to understand what impact you are having on others and how you can adjust your behavior for better results. Admit your mistakes and commit to putting them right. Be seen to be responsible for the things you do.
- Don’t neglect your body. A healthy body enables a healthy mind. Take time out each day to exercise and keep your body in shape so that you can be on top of your game.
- Learn, learn and learn some more. You know how important it is to be the best and you know the only way to get there is to develop. You inspire a learning culture in your organization and involve others in coaching, mentoring, training and more.
- Show humility. It’s OK to not have all the answers. Give yourself permission to seek help and assistance when you need it and encourage others to be the same.
- Commit to your people. Show them how motivated you are by their success. Be passionate about them.
- Set an example. People follow you because you’re someone they aspire to be. Try not to forget that everything you do matters in this context and strive to be the best you can be all the time.
]]>
Leadership Is A Way of Behaving
Many people are given a chance to manage or lead a situation at work, in their recreation time or at home. However, to get the best from the experience and achieve the best possible outcomes, it helps to consider the difference between simply managing or controlling the situation and really leading it. Leadership is neither a secret recipe, given only to a privileged few, nor an inherited right from a powerful and influential family. Leadership is a way of behaving which inspires people to follow your vision and help you achieve your aims. The important thing to remember is that the skills needed for leadership can be learned, practiced and honed over time to enable anyone, from any background, to achieve great things.
Anyone can become a leader
Some people believe that you need to be born with certain characteristics to become a leader. However this is simply not true. While extrovert, confident people may seem at first glance to be “leadership material” they are not always very good at reflecting, listening and learning. These are all skills which can be developed, as can confidence and the ability to speak to people in a way which engages and influences them. Anyone who chooses to open their mind, take a positive approach and be prepared to work, learn and grow can become an excellent leader. It can help to practice these skills through recreational activities or personal interests. However many people find they need to develop these skills in the workplace and often “learn on the job”. One of the first things to remember is not to fear failure but to learn from both negative and positive experiences. Try things out and apply new techniques but do not be afraid of or hurt by feedback. Ensure you reflect on your experience and performance in order to learn from it to continually improve.
Positivity and motivation
One of the key characteristics that people give when describing good leaders is positivity. Finding the best in every situation and identifying each person’s positive attributes is a great motivating tool. When you highlight the positives to a team of people striving towards a common goal they are more likely to work with you than against you. Identify what works well and what you want to continue before suggesting improvements which may be made. Use a positive approach to build confidence and trust then listen and work with others to find ways to make improvements. By motivating people and harnessing their enthusiasm you are likely to tap into the energy that brings innovation, imagination and extra impetus to a situation or project.
Inspire and Develop
By building trust and a positive working culture it is possible to inspire the people around you to become more skilled, committed and open to change. Developing the people who contribute to achieving your goals can bring enormous loyalty and focus from those you rely on to deliver your targets. By giving people the training, skills and confidence they need to complete their tasks you can develop a highly effective team with valued skills and experience. This does not always mean sending people on expensive training courses. Often simply sharing the skills available from the people around you can help develop everyone on the team. By taking time to share experience and encourage development you can inspire those directly involved in your achievements and also those observing or benefiting from the outcomes.
]]>
The McKinsey Quarterly identified the top most neglected skill for senior managers this month. That skill? Listening. The report suggested that this can be a major organizational issue, with vital data and information getting lost. It can also have a negative impact on staff morale. It’s easy to become a better listener if you want to be, and it doesn’t have to take an enormous amount of your time. So we’ve put together a quick list of three tips to help you listen to your people, that you can implement right now
Be Respectful
Big organizations are complex machines, and if you want to maximize their efficiency – you’ll want to take advice from all parts of the operation. An “open door” policy may have become a management cliché but enabling people to approach you and share their views and concerns is an essential part of respecting not just them but your company too.
Make sure that information can flow freely around the workplace and don’t hide from tough questions or viewpoints. If you encourage people to share, then you’ll find out all the things you need to know – even if sometimes you’d rather not know. It’s empowering to have the facts at hand to inform decision making. It’s even better when you can head disaster off at the pass because people bring your problems early, rather than too late.
Shut Up
Not completely of course, but when you’re listening. Listen. Senior executives tend to be naturally garrulous people who are used to voicing their opinions and having others listen to them. When you’re taking the role of listener – you should be talking much less. In fact a good rule of thumb is to let the person speaking to you have about 80% of the air time.
When you are talking you should be reflecting back the content, letting the speaker know that you’ve understood what they have to say.
Ask Questions
Don’t ask questions for the sake of them, but do challenge assumptions and find out what the underlying causes for concern are. It’s important to ask questions because it also demonstrates that you are focused on the message being delivered. After all if you aren’t listening you won’t be able to add anything of value to the conversation will you?
If you’re concerned that your listening skills aren’t 100% and you’d like to improve on them further, it’s a good idea to engage with a communications coach. A coach can help you focus on the problem in hand and offer a range of mechanisms to improve your listening techniques. Senior managers who are great listeners find themselves trusted and respected throughout their organization. They also find themselves better informed to make the right decisions more often.
]]>
In the recent economic collapse we’ve had the misfortune to witness leader after leader fall from grace. It’s easy to watch this and assume it can never happen to us, but of course it can. Being a leader means a sustained commitment to leadership, and it’s easy to miss the warning signs when we’re too focused on the details. We’ve put together a brief list of those signs, so you can take action now if your attention is slipping.
Forgetting What’s Important
Can you sum up what your single most important focus is, right now, in a line or two? If not there’s a chance you’ve started to forget what’s important and started to concentrate on what’s not.
If you’ve started to become all about the “doing” and less about “the journey”, or you find yourself micro-managing and obsessed with tiny details – then you’re not leading effectively any more.
When this happens you need to take some time out to reassess your priorities and then effectively engage with them again.
Failure to Communicate
If you have forgotten what’s important it’s highly likely that you aren’t communicating effectively with your team. You have to know what you mean before you can “say what you mean, and mean what you say”.
Leaders can find themselves becoming overly ambiguous in their messages when they lack clarity themselves. Worse, they can start to believe that their teams possess special psychic powers to “know what they mean” for them.
Avoiding or Postponing Risk
If you’ve been a successful leader for a period of time, it’s quite natural that you’ll want to protect that image. Sadly, that is often expressed as an unwillingness to deviate from tried and tested methods and a refusal to to innovate. That’s because these are perceived as “safe strategies”.
You might want to think back and remember that one of the reasons you were able to assume a leadership position in the first place was your willingness to accept risk and profit from it. That doesn’t mean starting to take crazy gambles, it does mean reviewing your patterns of success and thinking outside of the box again.
Failing to Respect Yourself
Leadership can be a wonderful exciting journey, but like all journeys it can also become fatiguing. You have to keep a close eye on your health (physically, emotionally, spiritually and psychologically) because those around you (unless you are extremely fortunate) won’t notice when you’re flagging.
You may need to take some time out to re-energize yourself and find enthusiasm for the task of leadership again. If you don’t respect your own needs, it’s likely that over time you’ll start losing respect for the needs of others too.
Losing Motivation
Sometimes we lose our motivation along the way. We start leading because we love leading. We’re passionate about people and our projects. Then something causes us to lose sight of this and we begin to drift rudderless for a while. If you feel you’ve lost your motivation, it’s time to go back to basics and either reconnect with that passion you felt in the first place or perhaps take a break from leading for a while if you can’t.
Working with a leadership coach can help you identify these warning signs and take action early. Being a great leader is always hard work, but it’s really rewarding when you’re getting it right too.
]]>
It’s a bad time for trust in business. Research demonstrates that nearly half the workforce has lost faith in senior managers, and only about a quarter of employees are developing trust to their CEOs.
The Cost of Low Trust
The reason that trust is so important is because a lack of it, takes away from the bottom line. It’s not an intangible “nice to have” benefit. It’s a genuine business imperative. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners reports that businesses in America lose 6% of their revenue – thanks to fraud. It costs the United States over $1 trillion dollars to check compliance with regulations each year – that’s a tax on the whole nation due to a lack of trust.
If your organization isn’t built around trust – you’re essentially taxing every relationship and transaction within your business. A lack of trust increases project completion times, drags out decision making, and delivers poor communication.
So How Do You Build Trust?
You build trust through leadership. In fact the primary goal of a leader is to enable their team to trust. This comes through two facets; competence and character. That means you need competence – a solid skill set, a proven track record of delivering results and to be demonstrably capable. And you need real character, which means acting with integrity and honesty, having clear (and beneficial) motives and the right intent for your people.
This is obvious – we can’t trust someone who behaves with integrity but never delivers. In the same way we can’t trust someone who over achieves but does so dishonestly.
Great leaders put an emphasis on creating trust, in fact they make it a clear and explicit objective. They choose to measure levels of trust and to work on improving it. They communicate their objective clearly to their own management, and express the reasoning in business terms. They create a baseline, and then demonstrate improvement in the course of time.
Behaviours of Leaders Who Enable Trust
- Respect – It all starts with respect for the people around you, if you don’t respect someone – they cannot trust you.
- Committed to Straightforward and Transparent Working – No secrets, no hiding things. If you want a team to trust you, they have to see the way things will move forward.
- Loyalty – You have to be prepared to stand by your people in the bad times. People trust people who are there when the going gets rough.
- Deliver Tangible Results – You have to deliver the things you’ll say you’ll deliver. People trust you when you do.
- Personally Accountable – The ability to take responsibility for your actions, and to make amends when things go wrong, is vital to the people around you.
- Constantly Improving – It’s not good enough to try and be better, you have to get better. People trust you if they can see you’re a little better today than yesterday.
- Listen and Clarify – People trust you if they can talk to you and you can show you understand their feelings.
- Give Trust – Most importantly of all, you have to give trust to receive it.
Great leaders facilitate trust at all levels of an organization. They understand that trust is not an “airy fairy” concept but one with real bottom line benefits. They measure trust and promote successes in increasing trust – and they highlight the advantages it brings.
]]>