When is the last time your work was praised by your boss or someone above them?
Our reader poll today asks: When is the last time your work was praised by your boss or someone above them? Very recently. Within the last couple of days: 22% Recently. Within the last week or two: 22% A while ago. Sometime last month: 16% A long time ago. Several months ago: 18% Praise? What’s that?: 21% Starved for praise. The easiest and least expensive form of reward is a simple “Thank you. Great job.” It’s disappointing that more than half of you haven’t heard praise since last month. It’s challenging to give your best at an employer and not get any recognition whatsoever for your efforts. Let’s flip this poll on its head — when is the last time you praised someone on your team? Would they answer this poll the same way? Take a moment of time to offer a genuine thank you for something they’ve done. It doesn’t have to be big. It can be as simple as recognizing their consistency of effort and that you appreciate them always delivering their work on time and to standard. We all need validation in some form. Make sure you’re providing it to your people as often as you’d like to receive it from your manager. For those who are delivering regular praise, good job — keep up the good work and your focus on motivating your team! Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below! – Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!
Developing Your Team Members
It’s never a great idea to work in a silo, but you also have make sure you’re working with a strong team. Learn about how you can strengthen your team and your leadership. Today’s post is by Mike Figliuolo, Managing Director of thoughtLEADERS. Personalizing Your Leadership Approach Do you feel like you’re investing a ton of time in your people and not getting the results you expect? Do you have team members who are performing well, but you just can’t get them to improve? Are some of your team members disengaged and you worry about them leaving your organization? I’ve dealt with all of these situations, and I’ve taught countless leaders how to overcome these challenges. As a result, I developed a framework called the Leadership Matrix to help deal with these issues. I’ve also written a book that explains this matrix in depth. Here, I’ll cover how to assess how you’re spending your time and energy. How to reward and inspire your high performers. How to get results out of team members who aren’t contributing. How to train and motivate your low performers. And how to reclaim your time from team members who tend to waste it. By using this approach, you can generate better results by being more efficient in how you lead your team members.
Communication Happens: You Might As Well Do It Right
Communication is part of every organization, making sure you do it right is the biggest thing that makes a difference. Today’s post is by Charles Morgan, author of Now, What? (CLICK HERE to get your copy). When you’re the leader of a company, or even the leader of a team within a company, you’re communicating all the time – whether you know it or not. Step back a moment and put yourself in the shoes of one of your new hires on his first day of work. After parking his car, he notices that the parking space closest to the elevator is “Reserved for CEO.” What does that tell him? Then he gets upstairs and finds that the CEO has an obscenely large corner office and all the senior executives have big offices too. Everyone else is slaving away in cubicles. And what if all the executives’ office doors are closed? What does all of that tell him?
What is the biggest challenge you face when it comes to managing your time?
Our reader poll today asks: What is the biggest challenge you face when it comes to managing your time? Too many meetings: 18% Too many emails: 22% Too many interruptions: 40% Poor calendar planning: 2% Difficulty estimating task length: 10% Something else: 7% Pardon the interruption. The clear winner in time management challenges is the dreaded interruption. Once someone breaks your concentration, it takes 5 to 15 minutes to get back on track. Find ways to minimize the interruptions. Close your door. Work in a conference room outside your normal work area. Work from home. If an interruption does happen, try telling the person “It sounds like this is an important issue. I want to give it the attention it deserves. I’m focused on something else right now. Can we set a time to reconnect later today to discuss?” It acknowledges their issue and tells them they’re important. It allows you to get back to your task. And a lot of times by the time that meeting has rolled around, the person has resolved the issue without your help. Everyone wins. If you don’t protect your time, no one else will do it for you. Be proactive about it if you want to actually get things done. Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below! – Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!
Five Practices for Evolving Your Leadership
Advice from a millennial leadership strategist and author. Today’s post is by Hilary Jane Grosskopf, author of Awake Leadership (CLICK HERE to get your copy). Successful leaders align and motivate a team in order to guide a vision forward. Leadership involves continuously improving processes and updating your vision and approach. However, leaders often lack tangible techniques and practices for aligning and motivating their team. Without the right practices for cultivating individual and collective progress, teams stagnate and the vision suffers. Use these five essential practices to reinvigorate your leadership and make sure you are leading your team forward effectively and efficiently. Regularly align with your team members. Leaders help the team to evolve and progress by developing a clear vision, adapting, and responding to change. Without a big-picture vision, clear delegation, and timelines, teams often find themselves working in all different directions. The energy put in doesn’t collectively add up to any real progress. Team members find people are doing redundant work. Team members get frustrated and burn out. What does alignment really mean? How do you align with your team members? In dynamic business environments, it is essential to continuously connect as a team to discuss team goals and review how priorities have changed. True team alignment means that each individual on the team is on the same page about what current team objectives are and what each individual is responsible for. Hold a regular weekly team meeting to align with your team members. In your team meeting, reconnect to the big-picture mission and team vision. Review your collective goals and break down the goals into actionable tasks that have clear delegation and timelines. When team members are clear about responsibilities and see how their work connects to the big-picture vision, they work with more efficiency and enthusiasm.
How comfortable are you asking others for help when you’re struggling with work tasks?
Our reader poll today asks: How comfortable are you asking others for help when you’re struggling with work tasks? Very. I ask for help anytime I need it: 27% Mostly. I’ll ask for help when I’m really stuck: 41% Somewhat. I’ll only ask for help in tough situations: 19% Not very. I have a hard time asking for help: 8% Not at all. I rarely ask others for help: 3% Don’t wait until it’s too late. It’s great to see a large portion of you (68%) willing to ask for help when needed. For those who have trouble requesting assistance, remember it’s easier to fix a small problem sooner than a big problem later. Things can get out of control fast. You have colleagues for a reason. Taking on too much can also affect your stress levels, performance and even your health. You don’t have to ask for help all the time and there is a balance of not being overly reliant on others. That said, doing everything by yourself is stressful, risky and lonely. As long as you’re being reasonable with your requests in terms of size and frequency, you’ll find the vast majority of coworkers or friends are more than willing to pitch in when asked. Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below! – Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!
Components of High-Performing Cultures
Driving a strong business starts with the people who work for your business and those people align on the business through the company culture. How are you shaping yours? A high performing culture is one where people drive performance because of the right behaviors. They’ve embedded these behaviors in their everyday life. People in high performing cultures require less supervision. They’re empowered to achieve goals that are consistent with the organization’s direction. As a leader, you need to understand how to build a high performing culture and your responsibilities for making it happen. I found that there are six components to building a high performing culture. First, you have to define the culture. What is a high performance? What are the desired behaviors? How will you know when you’ve achieved a high performing culture? Second, set direction. What’s the vision for the organization? What’s the organization’s purpose? You have to be able to articulate this to the team. Third is communicating the culture. What are the communication vehicles and techniques you’re going to use to reinforce culture ever day?
How to Harness Your Greatest Resource: Yourself
To be successful requires shedding the negative thoughts that get carried over from childhood and replacing them with a positive self-image. Today’s post is by Raymond Houser, author of The Winning Advantage (CLICK HERE to get your copy). Why don’t people live up to their full potential? I believe it is because they had no road map to guide them along with instructions on how to best use those resources. The result is that so many men and women end up disappointing themselves because they don’t find their way. And it isn’t just themselves that they disappoint: add in their friends and family and the society in which they live. I believe that people can achieve their true potential, if they realize what is holding them back and then learn how to forge ahead. They must take the initiative. It will not come without efforts or beliefs.