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Six Habits of Great Leaders

10/22/2022

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Being a successful leader is tricky business. “You can't have results at the expense of people. And serving your people well without getting results sets you up for failure,” notes Marcel Schwantes, contributing editor for Inc Magazine, and founder of Leadership from the Core. In a recent article, Schwantes describes six strategies that help leaders strike the right balance and actually make people want to work for them. 
  1. Give feedback. Feedback, a core principle of great leadership, can address performance issues, celebrate outstanding performers, clarify direction, and set expectations. When giving feedback, keep it simple, be specific, and use examples. If there's a performance issue, focus on the issue, not the person.
  2. Discuss your priorities as well as theirs. Let your employees know what you expect from them, but also share what you are working on so their efforts can be in alignment. “This strengthens bonds, helps boost engagement, and gets you more focused results.”
  3. Hold “stay” interviews.  Unlike an exit interview, you'll get fresh insight about what you can do to improve and retain valued employees -- today, not after they have emotionally disconnected. 
  4. Recognize your people. Employees who work for companies with formal recognition programs report a more satisfying experience.
  5. Let your people make decisions.  Give employees the freedom to decide, participate in, and determine how work is best accomplished. Employees thrive in entrepreneurial settings, which make them more invested in the company. 
  6. Expand their knowledge. Stretch employees with assignments that sharpen their skills. Give top employees the opportunity to learn something new.

How many of these habits do you notice in your organization, and how many have you personally mastered? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

Create lifetime communication mastery online, with our virtual programs, awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022.


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You Shared, or Maybe Overshared…Now What?

10/18/2022

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Being vulnerable can build trust and closeness, but self-disclosure can also make us fear judgment or rejection. If you’re nervous after having divulged something personal, you might be experiencing what Brené Brown, research professor at the University of Houston, calls a “vulnerability hangover.” You might wonder:  “Did I display a weakness?” or “Am I safe?”
As Holly Burns writes in The New York Times, “A vulnerability hangover might be uncomfortable, but it doesn’t have to be debilitating — and it can even be helpful.” If you are “hung over” here’s what to consider:
  • Put it into perspective:  Other people probably aren’t thinking about your disclosure as much as you are (just the way they are not as aware of that pimple on your nose). Besides, we generally view our own displays of vulnerability more negatively than those of others.
  • Know you might have helped someone:  Studies show that vulnerability can build trust. People may be more comfortable around you and experience you as  “more human.” 
  • Reframe it as a learning experience:  One way to remove judgment you feel toward yourself is to turn it into something constructive. Reframe it as, ‘What can I learn from this?’ Even if what you learn is ‘Wow, that was not the right thing to say to that person in that moment,’ it can help you in the future.
  • Make a plan for next time: Despite the potential benefits of revealing something personal, there are still times you may want to keep your cards closer. It never hurts to examine your motivations and be intentional about when and with whom to be vulnerable.
The aftermath of vulnerability might be surprising or even unpleasant, but it’s frequently worth it, says Emma Seppala, science director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University. Being comfortable with vulnerability’s aftereffects “requires courage initially, but then it’s like this muscle you build.”
When is the last time you shared something quite personal, and how did you feel after? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.  We would love to hear about your experiences!

Create lifetime communication mastery online, with our virtual programs, awarded International Gold for
Best Hybrid Learning of 2022.



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Ask for Help: People are Likely to Give it

10/11/2022

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Asking for help can be daunting: We don't want to impose, and we don't want to be rejected.  But new research reported in The New York Times suggests “many of us underestimate how willing — even happy! — others are to lend a helping hand.”

The study, published in the journal Psychological Science this month, included six small experiments involving more than 2,000 participants — all designed to compare the perspectives of those asking for help with the perspectives of helpers. The bottom line:  Across all of the experiments, those asking for help consistently underestimated how willing friends and strangers were to assist, as well as how good the helpers felt afterward. The researchers believe those incorrect calibrations might stand in the way of people’s asking for help in ways big and small. 

What is the most effective way to ask for help? Researchers are looking at that dynamic as well. Dr. Wayne Baker, a professor with the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and author of All You Have to Do Is Ask: How to Master the Most Important Skill for Success, encourages people to be deliberate about making a thoughtful request.  Dr. Baker promotes what he calls the “SMART” system for asking for help. Although it was initially designed for workplace settings, he believes it is applicable across contexts. As much as possible, requests should be:
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  • Specific
  • Meaningful (all parties know why you are asking)
  • Action oriented
  • Realistic
  • Time-bound

Afterward be sure to communicate your heartfelt gratitude!

When was the last time you asked for help, and how did you do it? Was help given? And what experience have you had when people asked you for help? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.  We would like to hear about your experiences.

Create lifetime communication mastery online, with our virtual programs, awarded International Gold for
Best Hybrid Learning of 2022.

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Why Criticism Lasts Longer Than Praise

10/4/2022

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It's inevitable that at some point we will all be the targets of insults, admonishments, or negative feedback. We may be advised to “shake it off” but that’s not so easy. We tend to remember criticism more than we recall praise — due to a phenomenon called the “negativity bias.”  This universal tendency for negative emotions to affect us more strongly than positive ones is evolutionary, in that it causes us to pay special attention to anything that might be a threat or put us in danger.

According to Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist at the University of Queensland and co-author of The Power of Bad: And How to Overcome It, "Our ancestors who had that [negative] bias were more likely to survive.”  However this tendency does not serve us very well on a daily basis.  Baumeister believes that until we learn how to override the disproportionate impact of the negative, it distorts our view of the world.

Of course, the impact of being criticized varies from person to person. But receiving and internalizing negative comments can increase stress, anxiety, frustration and worry, says Lucia Macchia, a behavioral scientist and visiting fellow at the London School of Economics. "Dealing with these negative emotions has a great impact on our body as they can even create and exacerbate physical pain," she adds. 

The good news: Scores of studies have shown that people tend to look on the bright side as they become older. Scientists refer to this effect as the "positivity bias" and they think we start to remember positive details more than negative information from middle age. Baumeister believes this is because we need to learn from failures and criticism in our younger years, but that need diminishes as we age.

To reduce our negativity bias sooner, it helps to remember that our genetic programming could be at the root of our ruminating about criticism. Simply recognizing this negativity effect can help us override undesirable responses — and it can also be useful to remember that some criticism says more about the giver than the receiver. 

Have you ever given more credence to a criticism than it probably warranted? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. We would really like to hear about your experiences.

Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our 
online learning programs. 


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