Category: Leadership

How to Lead From a Distance

Taylor Stauffer Leave a comment

How do you provide a sense of purpose to your team when face to face interaction isn’t an option?

 

The importance of having regular meetings with team members can’t be overstated. Whether it’s to give feedback (positive and negative) or just to ‘check in’, much has been written about why this is important for overall team health, as well as individual job satisfaction and effectiveness.

Depending on the nature of the business, you could have staff that are working at a distance, or even a team scattered over a large geographic area, making connecting in person very difficult, if not impossible. So how can you authentically empower your team members from a distance and not have them roll their eyes at you?

 

1. Be clear on your purpose, as a team

If everyone is clear about what you are working towards and what the values are of the organization, it’s easier to motivate people, even from far away. When people are scattered, they need to feel that unifying purpose and they can’t do that if they don’t understand what the team is all about.

If everyone is clear about their roles and responsibilities, to each other, to the project and to you / the organization, they can get on with their work with a sense of confidence that they’re on the right track. Then it’s up to you to make sure they retain that feeling.

 

2. Keep in touch

Out of sight, out of mind: you might be tempted to push off the effort to keep in touch with each individual team member simply because you don’t see them every day. It’s easy to say that you don’t have the time and that you’ll do it next week. However, leading by example is essential to distance teamwork being effective. Reaching out regularly to each person individually also needs to be a part of your routine, as it would be in an office environment. It shows respect, commitment, interest in your team members, and enhances their trust of you. Hopefully, they will appreciate and even replicate the behavior with others.

More often than not, this will require a formal communication strategy, at least at first. Processes by which team members check in with you and you check in with them. Everyone works differently and so work with your team members in a way that is authentic to them. If a daily meeting is too much, drop it to weekly. Not everyone ‘needs’ to check in daily to feel included and empowered to get the job done. Others may need that support at least at first.

 

3. Don’t skip the small talk

Conference calls and video conference meetings are the norms for teams that don’t work in the same space, but often, they’re fairly regimented in the aim of not wasting anyone’s time. Fair enough, but there is a lot of ‘team building’ and morale-boosting that goes on during water cooler chats. It’s in these more informal interactions that you, and others, can learn each other’s non-verbal cues and idiosyncrasies. Replicating that in a Skype call isn’t necessarily easy but the person leading the meeting sets the tone for it and should make time for a little small talk at the beginning or end of the meeting. After all, you know what they say about all work and no play!

Another aspect is celebrations! Yes, celebrating a birthday, milestone, or project success at a distance can be tough but technology is there to make it easier. Such as? Send a package to each team member in advance that contains a treat, with instructions not to open it until the video conference scheduled for the celebration day. Then you can all open them together and celebrate! It may seem silly but it’s in these little ways that you can build a solid community, even miles and miles apart!

 

4. Open door policy

Make sure that your team knows when they can reach you freely, in the same way as they would in an office environment. If you were in the same space, they’d be able to see whether your office door was open or closed or have a sense of whether you are in the middle of a crisis issue and can’t break.

At a distance, those cues are gone, so creating a calendar with blocks of time when you’re available makes sense. Like a professor who has posted office hours, you can let your team know that they can always reach you but that X, Y and Z time slots are the best!

 

5. Focus on the outcomes and the effort

Unlike an employee whose desk is right outside your office, you can’t really observe or track how much effort a remote employee is making. Frankly, you shouldn’t be micromanaging an employee right in front of you that way either, but that’s another blog post!

Instead, focus on the outcomes. Are they delivering their projects/work on time? Is the work well done or does it seem rushed and incomplete? If they’re doing good work and they’re doing it on time, that’s what matters! If not, that needs to be dealt with too, so that other team members aren’t left feeling like that person isn’t pulling their weight.

 

Key to all of these efforts is authenticity. You have to believe in what you’re doing, and your team, in order to reach them. Going through the motions isn’t enough. Trust in the people you work with, show them what you expect and walk with them along the path. Even at a distance, thanks to technology, you can do all of these things and do them well.

 

 

4 Ways to Display Generosity at Work

Shannon Cassidy Leave a comment

When we talk about generosity in leadership, we’re not referring to money. This isn’t about bonuses or increases. It’s about an enduring generosity of spirit, which infuses how a leader will affect their team members.

How can a leader display generosity? So many ways!

Being generous with time

A leader who will not share their time, a notably precious commodity, cannot possibly be effective. If every point of access is blocked and no one can score an ‘audience’, there’s no effective leadership going on. Yes, a leader will be busy but making time available for those that need it is a cornerstone of good leadership.

Being generous with knowledge and information

Many companies, through their leaders, breed a culture of competition. While knowledge IS power, knowledge shared can be even better. People will not improve their skills by competition and fear. They will get there through collaboration.

It’s vital for leaders to encourage information sharing among their staff. Success comes from the growing of one idea with the contributions of others, not by working in a silo. Sharing, teaching and supporting your team is how you can be generous with your knowledge.

Being generous with encouragement and empowerment

Encouraging team members to work together, empowering them to make decisions, creating a safe environment for collaboration and teamwork. These are all vital aspects of being an effective leader. It’s not about micromanaging tasks: it’s about getting team members to take initiative and contribute.

Communication suffers if team members are working to get attention instead of working for the good of the team. If co-workers are prone to blame one another, this can be traced back to generosity, or a lack of it.

Being generous also shows confidence

Being confident is another notable leadership quality and being generous is the natural result. If you’re confident in your abilities and leadership, you will be naturally generous. If you’re not, you’ll tend towards being competitive and disruptive. The two qualities go hand in hand. Generous actions show your team that you are confident in your skills.

Generosity is catching too. If others see you behaving in a generous way, they will model your attitude. As with all aspects of leadership, modeling the behavior you want to see from your team is ideal.

Generosity is essential to strong, effective leadership. Cultivate it in yourself, in your team and you’ll see your bottom line improving, however you measure it.

Do You Want Your Team to Love or Fear You?

Shannon Cassidy Leave a comment

It’s possible to maintain control and be friendly with your team!

Do you want your team to love or fear you? There’s a school of thought that says that you can’t lead a team and be friendly with its members.

It’s the same thought that states that you can’t be friends with your kids. The power position makes it impossible, as one will always have power over the other, so true friendship is not in the cards.

There is SOME truth to the notion that you probably can’t be best friends with the members of your team. Still, there is no reason why you can’t be friendly. Being nice doesn’t undermine your effectiveness as a leader; if anything, it improves it!

So how can you do your job as a leader and still have your team members like you?

Watch your reactions

When something goes right, or when your team experiences success, everyone expects a positive reaction. When something goes wrong, it’s normal to not throw a party BUT how you react to a negative is vital.

If your team is cowering, afraid of your reaction to a failure, that’s a bad situation. You position yourself as being inflexible and unable to roll with the punches, which isn’t a trait most people look for in a leader. Realizing that most leaders have a lot of pressure on them to perform, negativity can take over without your even realizing it.

If instead, you maintain an ‘every cloud has a silver lining’ attitude that reflects the desire to find the good in a bad situation — or to, at the very least, take a positive step forward from a failure — your team will love you more than ever before. Embracing failure as a teachable moment and moving on, rather than laying blame and being negative, will put you on a high road.

Moreover, your team is likely to follow your lead: if you’re positive, they’ll be able to find the good in a situation too. If you’re chronically negative, you will see that reflected in their behavior too.

The rules apply to you, too

Deadlines, documentation standards, processes… there are a lot of rules that need to be observed in the course of the workday, in getting things done. The leader who is beloved is one who does not think him or herself above the rules.

If you expect your team to behave a certain way, follow certain processes and adhere to specific standards, you need to behave that way, follow that process and adhere to those standards too. While you’re their leader, you are ALL a team and the whole works better if you set the example and behave that way.

Give people time and attention

Yes, your schedule is probably booked up. But, if you want to build and maintain strong relationships, you need to make time for your team. One-on-one and as a group, team building is an ongoing process. It’s not something that happens on a one-off trip to a mountain resort for a weekend of trust building exercises.

Trust comes over time. Your team will appreciate that you are interested in each of them as individuals —  not as ‘performers’; not as a number; not as a cog who will get the job done. Caring about your team members, both in terms of their personal and professional well being, will get you the team that cares about you and the projects you are entrusted with.

Share helpful feedback

Feedback also is an important part of sharing your time. You need to provide useful and constructive feedback on performance in a timely manner.

Waiting for annual reviews to pile on the information is neither useful nor helpful. Feedback, even when it is something to work on rather than straight up praise is important because team members will see that you appreciate the effort, that you’ve noticed their work.

It’s an important way of giving them your time and attention that will pay back in dividends over time!

Be kind

If nothing else, being kind is valuable. That means no gossiping. No sniping mean things about other teams or leaders. No rolling your eyes when one of your team members is late because their child is sick. The list of examples is endless, but the bottom line is the same. Kindness pays.

“Whatever possession we gain by our sword cannot be sure or lasting, but the love gained by kindness and moderation is certain and durable.” ~ Alexander the Great

Working with your team with generosity and kindness comes from a place of gratitude. You can foster that within yourself and your leadership style by paying attention to being grateful. For that, our Grounded in Gratitude Journal can help you on your way with 384 pages of inspiration to remind you daily about what’s important.

4 Steps to Improve Your Speech | BridgeBetween.com

4 Steps to Improve Your Speech to Make an Impact Through Speaking

Shannon Cassidy Leave a comment

Do you need to improve your speech? As a thought leader, or a team leader, the technical aspects of your speech make a big difference in terms of the impact your speaking has on your team, the C-Suite or an auditorium full of people.

Even when you’re not giving a speech to hundreds of people, the way you speak every day thoroughly impacts how much people hear.

4 Steps to Improve Your Speech

Step 1 – Hear yourself

You will never know what you sound like to other people until you record yourself and listen. Record yourself speaking in different contexts. At a meeting, at a presentation, on a conference call, in chatting with others.

Then listen to the recordings carefully. You’ll hear all the things that make your speaking pattern less impactful.

Here are some issues that tend to crop up for many people:

  • The speed of your speech – too fast and no one follows; too slow and they’re asleep.
  • The enunciation of your words – do you tend to mumble or are you clear?
  • The tone of your speech – are you monotone or do you squeak like a mouse? Neither is desirable!
  • The verbal tics of filler words – using ‘um’ or ‘ah’ with astonishing regularity.
  • The tendency to avoid punctuation – when you’re speaking, it’s best to pause as you would if you were punctuating your speech. It makes it clearer and easier to hear.
  • The tendency to finish sentences in an upward tone, as if you are always asking a question – this tends to make it sound as if you aren’t confident in what you are saying, that you are seeking the approval of the listener.

Step 2 – Watch your speed

Speed of speech is one of the most difficult issues to get a handle on. We each tend to have a rhythm of speech that doesn’t necessarily change, depending on circumstances. But it should!

What’s an appropriate speed? For a conversational level of speech, it should take you about a minute to read 160 words. Write something out that is that long and then read it out loud, while you record and time yourself.

If you’re in the zone of about 150-170 words a minute, you’re okay for conversational speaking. If you’re speaking on a technical subject, however, you might want to slow it down a little.

Step 3 – Banish filler words

“Like”, “Um”, “Ahhh”… We all use them but they have the tendency, when you used a lot, to make the speaker sound unsure of themselves at best. When leaders pepper their speeches with these filler words, the reaction of listeners tends to be that they find that leader to be less effective, or are concerned about their level of knowledge and ability.

Of course, these words are no reflection on knowledge and ability but perception is reality, so if you know you tend towards a verbal filler like ‘Um’, you have to get out of the habit.

Listen to yourself speaking and figure out why it is you are using that filler word. Is it to give yourself time to pull together your thoughts or turn a page on your notes and refocus?

You can give yourself that pause without using a verbal filler but instead employing something more elegant like: “Another important point is…” or some other transition from one thought to the next.

Another reason for excessive fillers is if you haven’t prepared what you want to say. For general conversation, this is, of course, unnecessary! But when you’re speaking to an audience, even if it’s a team in a conference room, knowing what you want to say in roughly the order you want to say it will make your speech more effective and you will find less need for transitional fillers.

Step 4 – Enunciate

There is no less effective to communicate than mumbling. In fact, mumblers are not only impossible to hear and understand, but there is a tendency to view mumbling as laziness or lack of interest in the subject matter. Nothing will lose you an audience faster than your seeming to be totally uninterested in the topic at hand.

Practice enunciating all your syllables, even if it is exaggerated at first, to get to a point where you eliminate any mumbling. Even non-mumblers can get caught doing it at the end of a sentence, their voices trailing off. Instead, stay strong and enunciate right up to the end!

If you’re not sure of your speech patterns, watch and listen to others — TEDx speakers are usually great examples of people who speak well and captivate listeners. Your speaking must radiate confidence in order to be perceived as knowledgeable.

And smile when you speak. There is a lot of truth to the fact that you can hear a smile in someone’s speech. Try it. Say something with a smile and then say the same thing without a smile, and record both. You’ll hear the difference immediately!

It takes practice and a little perseverance but you can alter your speech patterns and, in so doing, improve the impact you make when you speak.

 

business woman in meeting brainstorm teamwork plan strategy

What’s In a Strong Leader?

Shannon Cassidy 1 Comment

There are many ways that a strong leader distinguishes themselves from a weak one, or worse, a truly negative one. Often, when you look at leaders around you, their flaws seem obvious but their positive traits are harder to discern. All you really know when you see a leader who is truly strong is that you are willing to hear them and follow them.

There are a couple of ways that a strong leader differentiates themselves from weak ones that are easily identifiable however; it’s these traits that are in stark contrast when compared to a leader who does not have them.

Strong leaders don’t need to weaken others

A little gossip around the water cooler can be a very bad thing for leaders. A frank and honest discussion about issues and how to move forward is a good thing for leaders. Do these two types of chatter seem like one and the same? They’re not.

A good leader won’t disparage others publicly or otherwise, whether peers or those who work for them. A weak leader lacks confidence and thinks they are gaining some by denigrating those around them or ignoring bad behavior rather than dealing with it.

A strong leader would not only not belittle others but would not stand for others being belittled. They would have the confidence to deal with a conflict situation directly, calling out any elephants in the room. It’s not always a comfortable position but it’s vital to their leadership status.

 

Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish. —Sam Walton (Source)

 

Strong leaders trust

A good leader will always deal with their team from a position of trust. A weak leader will come from a place of fear, which often results in bullying. You’ve all heard of leaders who yell and scream, all in the name of intimidation, to get what they want done but in the end, they aren’t effective, the team has no morale and it’s easy to see why they don’t last for the long term.

Along with that trust comes teamwork. A strong leader will influence others to act appropriately, support one another, and work together, to find the common path. A weak one will create division and competition within the team, believing that this is the best way of maintaining their own power.

Strong leaders live their power

Power doesn’t come from dividing people and it certainly doesn’t come from a title. Anyone can call themselves the CEO of XYZ or have that title given to them, but if they don’t truly and totally embody the role, it will only ever be a title.

A leader that inspires is one that believes in him or herself and, by extension, those around them. It’s a very motivating thing to be close to power and even more so when it is wielded by someone who knows how.

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. —John Maxwell (Source)