Have you ever had (what you thought was) a great performance coaching conversation—your employee commits to behavior change—but fifteen minutes later they’re back to their old habits?

So you give them more performance coaching, this time “louder” literally or through progressive discipline. But even so, nothing changes.

Most employees don’t come to work hoping to screw up. They want to improve. So why does so much performance coaching not work?

5 Reasons Your Employee Isn’t Acting on Your Coaching

When we ask employees in our training programs why it’s hard to hear their manager’s feedback, here’s what they tell us.

1. They’re overwhelmed.

“I’m trying to do better. But it’s all just too much. Every time we meet, my boss gives me something else to work on. No matter what I do, I can’t get it right. So, I ignore his long list of recommendations and do the best I can.”

What to do instead:

If you want real change, focus on one behavior at a time. Isolate a specific habit to work on and give them the training and support they need. Be sure they master that before moving on to the next development priority.

2. You’re not modeling the way.

“My boss keeps telling me my customer courtesy credits are too high—that I’m costing the business too much money. So I stopped giving credits. But when my customers get mad, they escalate to my supervisor.  And guess, what? She ALWAYS gives them the credit! She’s the hero, and the credit goes against my numbers and I still end up on progressive action. I can’t win. So now I’m back to giving them the credit.”

What to do instead:

If you want your employees to hear your coaching, follow your standards. Your team will pay closer attention to what you do than what you say.

3. They’re not sure exactly what to do.

“My manager says I need to be more strategic. That sounds awesome. I’m all for that. But what does that mean? How do I do that?”

What to do instead:

Be sure your coaching is specific and actionable. Explain what success looks like in terms of behaviors and habits.

See Also: Beyond Magical Thinking: How to Ensure Your Team Gets It

4. They disagree.

“My supervisor keeps asking me to enforce a particular policy, but I just don’t think it’s right. It will harm MY customers and I’m sure it’s going to cause them to leave. I’ve tried to explain my concerns, but she tells me to stop thinking so much and just do what I’m told.”

What to do instead:

Explain the “why” behind what you’re asking them to do. Listen to their concerns. If possible look for alternative approaches. If you’ve done what you can to explain why and listened to their concerns, and they still won’t follow the policy, explain the consequences and ask for a commitment. 

5. They’re confused.

“I’m not sure what’s important, because everything seems to be. I feel like I’m being pulled in a million directions.”

What to do instead:

Help your employees sort through the noise and competing priorities.

Be sure they know what matters most and why. 

Most importantly, stay curious.

If your performance coaching is not yielding results, get curious and involve them in finding solutions.  An I.N.S.P.I.R.E. conversation works well here.

Connect to your intention for the conversation and to the employee at a human level. Notice the behavior that’s not changing. Then show up curious about what’s going on and their ideas for solving your concern.

“I’ve noticed, that even though we’ve talked about this before, you’re continuing to ______ (insert behavior here.) I care about you and want you to be successful. I’m curious how this looks from your perspective. Why do you think this is still happening?” Be curious, and invite them to come up with solutions. Then move the conversation to commitment by scheduling time to talk about how their solution is working.

See Also: How to Provide More Meaningful Performance Feedback.

The post Be a Better Coach: 5 Reasons Your Performance Coaching Is Being Ignored appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

“Will you be my mentor?”

“Sure.”

“Um. Hmmm. Now what do we do?”

“What should we talk about?”

“Where do we start?”

It’s great when mentoring relationships evolve organically. The chemistry is just perfect and the conversation flows.

We’ve been on both sides of great mentoring relationships. Sometimes the conversation is all you need. And sometimes, it can be helpful to have some specific activities to structure your interaction.

If you are a mentor (or mentee) looking for ideas to jump-start or re-ignite your work together, here are a few proven mentoring activities to get you started.

7 Proven Mentoring Activities

You could start by sharing this list with your mentor (or mentee) and decide together which mentoring activities would have the biggest impact. That’s a little meta:  A mentoring activity about mentoring activities 😉

1. Create a mentoring charter

If you’ve been following us for a while, you know how much we believe in clarity as foundational to teamwork. This clarity applies to mentoring too.

Many mentoring experts advocate for a formal written charter. If that feels like a lot for you, don’t sweat. What’s important is to talk about expectations, and not to assume you’re on the same page.

For example:

• What does success look like?
  • One way to do this is to ask,  “Imagine it’s six months from now. What’s different because of our work together?
  • How will we measure our progress?
• Define your roles
  • Start with logistics– who will set up the meetings, and take notes?
  • Is there a reverse mentoring component to your relationship? How will you both benefit from your work together?
• Establish norms or commitments to one another
  •  “We will show up on time,” or “We promise to keep our conversations confidential.”
  • How frequently will you meet? For how long? How long do you anticipate the formal relationship to go?

2. Career Discussions

It probably won’t take long before the  “What do you want to do next? conversation comes up in your mentoring conversations. And, and when it does, we’ve got you. Our Developmental Discussion Planner frames the conversation for you.

If you’re the mentor, ask your mentee to fill this out, before you have the conversation. If you’re the mentee looking for career advice from your mentor, take the initiative to prepare.

The  Discussion Planner provides prompts to consider your current role, and desired future roles. It’s a great way to jump start and focus your conversation.

Our new SynergyStack System also offers activities that help you identify your strengths and opportunities, as well as habits to build on as you grow your career.

3. Speed Skills Exchange

Identify one competency or skill you admire in the other person and hold a mini-tutoring session.

I (Karin) have a reciprocal “mentoring” relationship with a thought leader and author about twenty-five years my senior. We love our jam sessions where I offer tips and tricks on social media marketing and AI. She helps me consider broader distribution strategies and makes introductions to other gurus in our field.

4. Book Club

Every time we write a book, we carefully consider mentoring activities and discussions to go with it.

If you’re looking for ways to de-stress your workday and build better collaboration, you might read our new book, Powerful Phrases for Dealing with Workplace Conflict. We’ve made this easy to read together with FREE activities in our Workplace Conflict and Collaboration Center.

If you’re interested in building great cultures where people speak up and share their ideas, this article gives you many options to make the most of reading Courageous Cultures together.

5. Networking Practice

Help your mentee develop their networking skills by attending industry events together, whether in-person or virtual. Before the event, practice elevator pitches and discuss strategies for starting conversations. Afterward, debrief on the experience, discussing what went well and what could be improved.

6. DIY 360, Or Listening Tour

A popular applied learning assignment in our leadership development programs is a Do It Yourself 360. This works great as a mentoring activity as well. The gist is to have specific, structured conversations to gather feedback and then align on one change to work on.

More on exactly how to do a DIY 360 here.

7. Project Collaboration

There’s no better way to get to know someone’s strengths and opportunities than to work on real work together. Collaborating on a project helps your mentee develop practical skills, and you have natural opportunities to observe and coach. Bonus. You get help doing important work that matters.

P.S. The header image of this article captures the joy of a mentor and mentee celebrating a major project collaboration. Sebastian, our son, and his wonderful high-school mentor.

The best mentoring activities help you connect and grow. Each relationship is different.  Pick one or two that excite you and go from there.

A few of our great mentor stories

Brainwaves Anthology (One of Karin’s mentors Dr. Henry Sims)

Brainwaves Anthology (One of David’s mentors Eva Horan)

The post Mentoring Activities: Powerful Ways to Make Mentoring More Meaningful appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

How to Embed Leadership Training into Your Workplace Culture

First, I’m so impressed with all you’ve done already. Your recent experience with leader-led Challenge and Support groups indicates you’re already ahead of the curve in terms of transitioning your newfound leadership training knowledge into action.

These groups are, in essence, a ‘living lab,’ a place to test, refine, and validate the theories and practices absorbed during your leadership development program.

While the groups provide immediate feedback and peer accountability, what will drive the long-term sustainability of your skills is embedding them in your organizational culture and personal behavior. So how do you convert that initial leadership training surge into a constant stream of progress?

Practical, Proven Approaches to Sustain Leadership Training Momentum

1. Teach what you’ve learned

One of the best ways to become a rock star at a skill is to teach it. Consider sharing some of the leadership training tools you’ve learned and teaching them to others.

2. Celebrate success

When you see people using the tools and techniques, celebrate the effort and the outcomes.

3. Integrate the tools into the way your work processes

Many of our clients integrate the tools and techniques into the forms they use every day (e.g. their collaboration systems, one-on-one forms etc, and meeting agenda templates). 

4. Focus on one behavior change at a time

When you learn game-changing leadership techniques, it’s tempting to try everything all at once. After all, if these techniques produce results, you owe it to your team to use them. Right? Perhaps. But not all at the same time.

Pick one specific behavior or approach from your leadership training that you know will make an impact and integrate it into your leadership approach. Practice it consistently. Tweak it. Make it your own. Ask for feedback. Once you feel confident and competent in that behavior, the timing might be right to add in another technique. Too much change all at once will overwhelm both you and your team.

6. Find an accountability partner

Change is hard, and it can be lonely. It’s much easier to give up when no one’s looking. Find someone you trust who understands what you’ve just learned (someone else in your training class is a great choice). Share the behavior you’re working on and make a commitment to check in with one another once a week to see how things are going, discuss challenges, and brainstorm the next steps.

7. Invite your team on the journey

Tell your team what you’ve learned and what you’ve chosen to work on and why. Invite them to notice when it’s working and offer suggestions as to what you can do better. Your team already knows you’re not perfect, and they’ll be delighted to know you’re working on becoming a more effective manager.

8. Ask for feedback

Make it a point to ask for feedback on the impact your new approach is having on the people you’re leading. Ask open-ended questions about what you can do to improve.

9. When you screw up, apologize and try again

New habits don’t come easy. If you slip back into old behaviors, apologize and try again. Your team knows you’re not perfect. They just want to know you’re trying. Leadership training is important, but what matters most is what you do when you get back to your team. With just a bit of focus, you can ensure the strongest ROI for you and your team.

See Also: 10 Questions to Ask Before Launching a Leadership Development Program

The post Leadership Training ROI: How to Translate Leadership Training into Behaviors that Last appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

The post How Do I Ensure My Leadership Program is Successful? [VIDEO] appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

What a tricky and important question. Because for your leadership training to be successful, it’s SO IMPORTANT that your leaders want to be there, with open minds, ready to learn, and most importantly APPLY what they’re learning with their teams.

How to Help Leaders Get Past Their Resistance to Learning

In today’s Asking for a Friend, I share a few of my thoughts including how to avoid SASRNT syndrome (So and So Really Needs This) and involving your leaders as teachers.

What is SASRNT Syndrome?

When you hear a concept, tool, or new idea, it’s tempting to say. Ahhhh, you know who really needs this? My boss. My wife. Or, my teenage son.

In this case, you might not be actually resistant to learning, BUT, you could miss it.

Of course, we would like nothing better than for you to share our books and resources with everyone you know. But the tricky part here is, that when you do that you run the risk of missing the learning for yourself.

So when you hear an interesting leadership concept or tool, I recommend you apply it to your own team first. Then, you will have much more credibility when you share it. “Oh, I’ve seen you do that! It does work. Maybe I SHOULD try it too.

Leaders as Teachers

And if a manager is resistant to learning, another way to help them engage is to involve them as a leader-teacher, teaching what they’ve learned to others. We share a lot more detail on that here.

What would you add?

How do YOU encourage managers who really need leadership training to engage learn and grow?

The post “I’ve Got This” How to Help Resistant Leaders Embrace New Learning appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

In this episode, Goldsmith shares a wealth of insights about how to live with purpose, joy, and freedom now while working for the difference you want to make in the world. We talk about how to overcome common barriers that keep us from being our full selves, how to build trust and credibility with other people as we grow and change, why being happy now is one of the most important choices you can make, and much more.

The Earned Life

02:30 Three key elements to having a great life:

• Our higher-level aspiration or purpose
• Our ambition, which is goal achievement
• Our day-to-day actions, our immediate activities now.

  The key to having a great life is the alignment of these.

04:09 The great Western disease is “I’ll be happy when.”

05:45  We’re not who we used to be. We’re constantly changing as we go through life. The “me” at the end of our conversation is not the same me that was at the beginning of our conversation.

07:12  How do you recommend leaders and people navigate the change from the previous versions of ourselves?

09:12  In leadership, it doesn’t matter what we think we said, all that matters is what they heard.

09:44  Barriers to becoming our best self – how inertia gets in our way.

11:21 We’ve all been programmed to believe we are a certain person. And if we’re not careful, we just live out these programs in life.

13:10  Know when to leave. The reality is it’s your life and you need to make a choice.

18:04  What are the YCBM moments? (You Can Be More moments.)

20:03  Marshall’s practical advice for the younger generation to set themselves up for living an earned life.

21:08  Our mission in life is to make a positive difference, not to prove we’re smart and not to prove we’re right.

22:07  When is promoting myself the right thing to do? And when is promoting myself the wrong or dysfunctional thing to do?

27:35  Marshall’s final advice: Number one, three words. Be happy now, not next month, not next year.

28:48  We don’t regret the risk we take and fail. We regret the risk we fail to take.

Connect with Marshall

LinkedIn

Website

Get the Book

The post The Earned Life with Marshall Goldsmith appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

The Power of Leaders as Coaches

If your Sales SVP thinks your leadership development program is a distraction, your sales managers will show up late and multi-task.

But what if that same sales SVP showed up as an active coach in the process? Imagine they were to kick off the training with a powerful story, then stay and engage with the team? After the training, what if they check for understanding to ensure their team understands the new techniques and why they matter? What if they celebrate when they see the behaviors in action?

We bet you’d give that leadership development program a high probability of igniting real culture change.

Now, imagine if you had leaders at every level doing that with their teams.

How to Create a More Sustainable Leadership Development Program

When you involve leaders as coaches, your leaders have a structured way to go back and role model what they’ve learned. And, they have an easy way to cultivate those competencies in their teams. Leaders coach, and reinforce, the skills they’re learning. They facilitate practical conversations about how the team can take performance to the next level.

Wait, What? Who Has Time for That?

You might be thinking, “It’s hard enough to get my managers to attend a leadership development program. Now you want them to be leadership coaches too? That all seems a bit much.”

We get it. No one has time for meetings that don’t impact learning outcomes and business results. And, we’ve seen busy leaders embrace their role as coaches because they are high-ROI engagements that achieve multiple business outcomes.

First, managers practice skills that directly apply to their daily leadership: asking great questions; drawing reluctant team members into the conversation; listening without bias; reflecting on what they’ve heard; running a great meeting.

Second, these leadership coaching conversations focus on real business priorities and outcomes. They’re practical. They make work smoother, improve team dynamics, and increase productivity.

Your leadership development ROI compounds significantly as managers coach what they learn. If you have ten managers attend a leadership program supplemented by a leader coaching program, you trained them and everyone on their teams.

Your training for ten just turned into impact for one hundred.

Two Approaches to Help Leaders Engage as Coaches

Here are two leaders-as-coaches models you can use to create sustainability in your leadership development programs.

Challenger Groups: Senior Leaders as Cross-Functional Leader Coaches

We love to incorporate leaders as coaches in our long-term leadership development and culture change programs through what we call challenger groups.

Challenger groups leverage senior-level leaders to mentor and support participants, helping them apply what they’ve learned.

One or two senior managers who have taken (or are taking) the course lead a challenger group of 7-10 participants to discuss what everyone is learning and applying from the formal, instructor-led training.

Conversations focus on applications to their day-to-day work. Ideally, these participants come from different regions, departments, or areas of the business.

We support the challenger group leader coaches through mastermind sessions and an easy-to-follow facilitation guide. These informal sessions help create psychological safety for the team and build your leaders’ confidence in facilitating these sessions.

Challenger groups create sustained culture change in four ways.

• First, there’s no better way to reinforce a skill than to teach it.
• Second, challenger-group participants learn from one another about how the leadership techniques work in different contexts.
• Third, participants see senior leaders modeling tools and using what they learned.
• Finally, everyone develops a network of trusted strategic peer relationships.

Get a glimpse of some of the outcomes here:

Team Accelerator Programs: Video-Based Guided Learning for Managers to Accelerate Culture

In this team accelerator model, managers actively guide their teams through a co-learning and application process.

In this model, the managers take an hour each month with their team to watch a short video, learn a new concept or skill, then use a provided discussion guide to help their team apply the concept to their work.

The team ends each meeting by creating a mutual behavioral commitment based on the topic. By the end of the program, they have a robust, co-created team agreement.

Between sessions, the manager and team members watch for opportunities to celebrate when they follow through on their commitments and call each other back to their agreement when they don’t fulfill it.

For example, some of our clients use a 7-10 month team accelerator program to supplement our instructor-led leadership development program.

Topics include aligning on key priorities and behaviors, holding accountability conversations, taking appropriate risks, developing deeper connections, and helping the team share their ideas.

As leaders facilitate conversations on these topics with their teams, everyone develops the skills (not just the manager).

As in the challenger group model, your managers continue to hone their own leadership and facilitation skills while they work as leadership coaches.

And, your teams learn practical skills to become more productive team members and prepare them for continued responsibility and leadership. Your teams work on practical, tactical ways to improve their performance, while managers become more accountable for the leadership skills they learned.

Learn more about bringing a Team Accelerator Program to Your Team.

Join us at ATD in Orlando to Learn More About Leadership Development Programs that Stick

If you want to ensure your leadership development program creates real culture change, help leaders become culture accelerators. If you’re interested in learning more, or have best practices of your own to share, we hope you will join us at ATD in Orlando on May 18th at 10:30 EST where we’ll be leading a highly interactive program and sharing a high-ROI case study.

Related Articles:

9 Questions to Help Your Team Solve Problems on Their Own

The post Leaders Coaching Leaders: One Secret to Sustainable Leadership Development appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

If you’ve ever had a great mentor, you know the power of honest and meaningful mentoring conversations.

It’s amazing what can happen when a mentor asks you courageous questions that make you think differently or help you to reframe problems. A great mentoring conversation can be just what you need to view yourself, your capabilities, or your career in new ways.

A good mentoring conversation leaves you feeling uplifted, refreshed, appropriately challenged, and maybe even the good kind of confused.

In an ideal world, you’d have time on your calendar each week for sustained mentoring relationships. And you’d have a mentor yourself. But those relationships take time—time you probably don’t have right now.

But what if you could still make a meaningful contribution one focused mentoring conversation at a time?

The Fifteen Minute Mentoring Conversation that Changed My Game

I was a Verizon HR Director in my early thirties when Ray, who was an SVP of Customer Service, approached me casually after a merger integration planning meeting we had both attended.

We had been working together on this project for several months, so he had gotten more than a passing glance at my leadership style. But he was not my boss. Nor was he my mentor. He certainly wasn’t obliged to dig into an impromptu mentoring conversation.

“Karin, what are you going to do next in your career?”

Without skipping a beat, I responded,

“I’m hoping to be VP of HR here soon.” After all, I know where I was on the succession planning grid (as the HR director, those grids were locked in my desk, along with the designated “next steps” for all “hi-potential” candidates, so I was familiar and comfortable with the plan).

Also, without missing a beat, Ray responded. “Yeah, that could make sense … I suppose.”

And then he just kept quiet.

Note: “I suppose …” followed by quiet silence is quite the informal mentoring conversations ninja move.

The kind of quiet that makes you look up and say, “What?”

“It’s just that if you move into an HR VP role now, you’re pretty much committing to be in human resources for the rest of your career.

BUT, if you make a lateral move to lead a large team, you open all kinds of possibilities for your career.

PLUS, I’d much rather work with an HR VP with some tried and true field experience under their belt. Go carry a bag (meaning take up a sales leadership role) or lead one of our large call centers.”

“Wait what? Who would put me in charge of a five hundred person call center with no call center experience?”

Ray continued, “Well, I would. But don’t take my word for it. Why don’t you ask my VPs?

Go tell them I asked you to get a few minutes on their calendars and see if they would put you in a call center director opening if it came up.

See if THEY think your HR skills are transferable.”

So, I did.

I spoke with all four Vice Presidents of Customer Service. Three out of four said they’d put me in a call center leadership role in a heartbeat. One said, “Nope, I think you should stay in HR.”

The other three were ready to give me a chance.

Six months later, a call center opening came up, and Maureen, one of Ray’s VPs put me in charge.

That fifteen-minute impromptu mentoring conversation completely opened my mind to what my career could become.

Once I realized I loved leading large teams, the new challenges kept coming.

I moved from customer service to sales (turns out, I like to “carry a bag,” to marketing, to transforming our strategic partnership channel, my favorite role of all, working with 10,000 human beings in our BPO call center partners in seven different companies).

And, if it hadn’t been for that mentoring conversation, there’s no way I would have the depth and breadth of experience to write the books or grow leaders across so many disciplines or lead a human-centered leadership training firm.

The most impactful mentoring conversations need not be all that long, or part of a long-term mentoring relationship, to change the game.

What impact could you make with a few 15-to-30-minute mentoring conversations?

Here are a few ways to get started.

• Notice a behavior that’s really making an impact, and tell them why it matters.
• Invite them to share their best practice at your next staff meeting.
• Ask them to bring you their best idea about how to improve a process, policy, or customer experience.
• Have them complete our developmental discussion planner, and come prepared to talk about what they might like to do next.
• Invite them to consider what brings them joy in their work.
• Use the “Nine What’s” Coaching Process to help them solve a problem on their own.
• Ask about their MIT (Most Important Thing) and the biggest roadblocks they are facing.
• Invite them to shadow you in a meeting or event.
• Talk about their strategic career network (this tool can help) and encourage them to invest more deeply in a relationship or two (in addition to you.)

Of course, a sustained series of mentoring conversations is even better as you build trust and connection over time. But don’t let limited time hold you back from contributing what you can and making an impact.

I’m so grateful for Ray and his fifteen minutes of transformation. To whom could you offer that gift?

Your turn. Your best thoughts for better mentoring conversations?

What would you add? What are some great topics for short mentoring conversations?

See Also:

How to Be a Better Mentee (includes video)

6 Secrets to a Successful Mentoring Program

The post Mentoring Conversations: How to Be Remarkably Helpful with Limited Time appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

As a human-centered leader, you truly care about your team and their career growth. But what if promotional opportunities are limited, or you have team members who are just not interested in taking on more?

In this “Asking for a Friend”, I talk with Julie Winkle Giulioni, author of Promotions are So Yesterday, about the multiple dimensions of career growth.

Alternative Career Growth Options: Beyond the Climb

Navigating the Career Growth Conversation (with timestamps)

Source of Inspiration

1:30 What has been one source of inspiration/strength for you?
Family, friends, frontline workers – the grace I’ve seen extended among human beings.

Three Questions

2:45 How do you build careers and develop employees when promotions and opportunities are limited? Three questions Julie used in her research:
What does career growth mean to employees?
How do people want to grow?
What’s available in organizations to help people grow?

Eight Dimensions

4:15 While “climb” is one way employees want to develop, Julie discovered seven other dimensions to career growth.

• Contribution
• Competence
• Connection
• Confidence
• Challenge
• Contentment
• Choice

In aggregate, all seven of the dimensions other than climb were more interesting to people, with
contribution and competence consistently at the top. “Climb” is consistently at the bottom.

Helping Your Organization See the Value of Other Dimensions of Development

6:08 How do you help an organization to see and appreciate the other elements as ways to encourage growth?
These dimensions lead to a more abundant mindset. Encourage leaders to expand their definition of career development. Emphasize that these other dimensions are things that CAN be done whereas a promotion may not be available. Use the information to empower.

Is “Climb” is Losing Its Luster?

8:30 Why is “climb” losing its luster?
It may be more that it was the only thing on the menu. Having other dimensions creates an expanded vocabulary for career development.
Employees are savvy and often see that the life of a manager is not always pleasant and is often challenging or even daunting.
People are reprioritizing the relationship they want with work. They may not want additional stress, but tend to still want to grow.

Confidence / Meaning / Timing

10:25 Is confidence regarding the role or outside the role?
Both. Managers will do well to personalize this to the particular employee.

12:50 It’s never worth the extra money/prestige if you don’t love the work itself.
People are looking for meaning.

16:30 What if you have a “climber” who is not ready to move up?
Our default setting is to climb. With the expanded menu, managers can have a deeper conversation to find out what’s animating the desire to climb, and find other ways to boost and develop the person on the road to a new role.

13:44 How do managers help their team consider these other dimensions?
Use self-assessments to jumpstart the conversation
Link to Julie’s assessment: https://www.juliewinklegiulioni.com/book/promotions/assessment/

19:00 A quick look at Let’s Grow Leaders’ Confidence/Competent Model

Connection and Networking

19:37 Connection
Facilitate connection through the work people are doing.
Invite people to create and learn together.
Be strategic about how you organize the work to build connection. (It builds development organically.)
Encourage people to share their growth goals with one another.

23:52 Strategic Networking
Think about peers: Do you have an encourager? Do you have a challenger?
Develop a collaborative rather than competitive environment.

Measuring: A New Way of Gathering Numbers

25:07 What strategies do you recommend for internal measurements where metrics traditionally defined success?
Redefine the metrics. i.e. the number of people who have expressed interest in other dimensions, the quality of conversations between managers and team, etc.
Shift from meaningless numbers to meaningful, qualitative, and reflective numbers that look at the quality of relationships.

Contentment? Really?

27:34 Contentment
Contentment is not synonymous with complacency.
Contentment includes acknowledging that we will be working for a long time. We can’t climb constantly.
How can I do things with great joy, ease, meaning?

Last Piece of Advice

30:35 Last piece of advice
Start by taking the free self-assessment to reveal more about yourself and how you may want to grow.

Related Asking for a Friend Episodes on Career Growth

If you enjoy this Asking for a Friend video, you might also enjoy this article which includes an interview with Julie “How to Develop People When You Don’t Have the Time.”

And this conversation with April Rinne about building a “portfolio career.”

And you may also find our Developmental Discussion Planner handy as you help your team have deeper development conversations. 

The post Career Growth: How to Be More Creative as You Develop Your Team (Video) appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

It’s no exaggeration to say that if you’re done learning, you’re done leading. The world changes. People grow. And your influence will grow too if you invest in your leadership growth. But that growth is a choice – and one that not every leader will make.

I recently spoke with a senior executive who surprised me with her vehemence. “At my level, you’ve either got the skills or you don’t. I don’t believe I can learn anything by asking my team esoteric questions about where I can improve.”

Wow. I left the conversation saddened for her–and for her team. Sad for her because she lived in a self-limited world where she couldn’t grow her influence. And sad for her team because she wasn’t open to the feedback they could offer. Everyone would suffer.

Another time, we were working with an organization’s managers and having them rate the leadership behavior where they felt the most need to improve. As the managers moved around the room and sorted themselves into groups based on their perceived needs, we asked the senior executive which behavior he would choose.

“Oh, I’m good at all of these,” he replied.

We looked up and 90% of the managers had clustered around “prioritizing what matters most.” We suggested that if 90% of his managers felt that was an issue for them, it might be an issue for him.

Both leaders shared a lack of humility and resistance to feedback. These characteristics will stunt their leadership if they don’t change. In contrast, many leaders we work with who achieve spectacular results and occupy top-tier positions have an insatiable appetite to learn, grow, and constantly ask for input that will help them improve.

Unsolicited Feedback Saved My Life

I’m a big fan of coaching, feedback, and getting all the wisdom I can–from wherever I can find it. It’s no exaggeration to say that feedback saved my life – and I hadn’t asked for it.

During the summer before I started college, I worked at a gas station in a rougher part of town. Bullet-proof glass completely enclosed the cashier’s booth.

One week in July, it was my turn to work the graveyard shift. During the overnight shifts we were only supposed to exit the bullet-proof glass enclosure once all the customers left the store, and we had flipped a switch that locked the front door.

On my first overnight shift, I followed the procedures. But by the second night, I got sloppy. I waited until all the customers left the store (or so I thought) and left the enclosure to prepare hotdog buns.

Midway through my third bun, a scraggly man in stained coveralls surprised me, shoved his finger in my chest, and yelled at me. “Don’t you ever leave that glass without locking the door. My brother was shot and killed in a gas station just like this one! Don’t ever leave that glass.”

Then he turned around and walked out, got in his truck, and drove away.

He’d scared me, and I was angry. “I’m sorry about his brother, but who does he think he is?” I vented to the empty store. But he had scared me…and so the rest of the night, I locked the front door when I left the enclosure.

But then…

Two hours later I was wiping down counters when I heard someone rattling the front door, wanting to get inside. Assuming it was a customer, I went back into the enclosure, locked the door behind me, then flipped the switch to let the customer into the store. But when I looked up, there was no one at the door. I supposed they got impatient and left.

Just then, three police cars pulled into the lot and turned their spotlights on the dumpster beside the station.

They’d been chasing a man who’d committed armed robbery half a mile down the road. A man who, as he fled the police, had come upon a 24-hour gas station with a kid in the lobby whose back was turned to the doors.

Doors that, until 2 hours earlier, had been unlocked.

The next morning as I pedaled my bike home, I trembled. I’d realized what my arrogance could have cost me. At the very least, that scraggly man had kept me from being held hostage by an armed robber. It’s very possible he saved my life.

And that’s just one moment of feedback. There are countless more times where feedback has made me a better leader, a better father, and a better husband.

So yeah, I’m a fan of feedback.

Invest in Your Leadership Growth

The great thing about feedback is that you don’t have to wait for someone to surprise you with it in the middle of the night. Effective leaders stay coachable and invest in their leadership growth by asking for insights that will help their growth.

Invite Feedback

One of the easiest ways to get meaningful feedback is with a Do-It-Yourself 360 Listening Tour. Choose a focused topic like running a more productive meeting, efficient communication, or helping your team be productive.

Now, write two questions. One that focuses on strength and one that looks at your opportunities. For example:
1) What’s the one most effective part of our team meetings?
2) If you had one recommendation for me to run a more effective meeting, what would that be?

Next, choose a diverse group of people to ask these questions. Choose people who you know to have different perspectives from one another (not just your fans, favorites, or foes).

REAP the Benefit of Feedback

Feedback is a gift and to reap the full benefit of its value, follow these steps. Click here to download a PDF of this leadership growth tool.

R—Reflect to Connect.

As you listen, acknowledge the emotions you’re picking up from the other person. Reflect to connect and ensure that you’ve seen them. For example: “Sounds like you’re frustrated by the…” or “I’m hearing that you really appreciate it when we…”

E—Engage in Dialogue.

When you ask for feedback, listen to understand what you’re hearing (not to respond immediately). Check for understanding and ask clarifying questions to verify that you’re clear about their suggestions. At this stage, more conversation might be appropriate, but avoid the temptation to become defensive or try to change their mind. If you do, you’re sending the message that you weren’t really interested in their feedback.

A—Acknowledge Their Gift.

As you conclude the conversation, thank the other person for taking the time and thinking about how you can be more effective. You’re not saying you agree with everything they offered. You’re affirming that they gave you something to work with.

P—Prepare Your Response

As you ask for feedback, let people know your next steps and how you’ll use their feedback. For example, “I’m asking several people these questions. I’m going to summarize everything I learn and choose one habit to cultivate over the next month. I’ll get back with you and everyone else about what I learned at our meeting on the 30th.”

Your Turn

Asking for feedback and responding to what you learn helps you grow. It will help you address blind spots and opportunities you might have missed as the world changes. Moreover, you’re building a culture of growth. When you ask and people can see you actively invest in your development, it makes it safe for them to do the same.

I’d love to hear from you: what is one of the best ways you’ve seen a leader invest in their leadership growth?

You Might Be Interested In:
• Staying Coachable with Sean Glaze (podcast)
• 7 Reasons Your Feedback is Being Ignored
• How to Show You’re a High-Potential Leader (Before You’ve Led a Team)

The post Leadership Growth – Are You Coachable? appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.