Lolly Daskal's Blog, page 115

The Best Free Leadership Advice You’ll Ever Get

If you’re like most leaders, you’re always looking for ways to improve your leadership.

People are constantly asking me what they can do to make their leadership exceptional. They usually expect the answer to involve costly coaching sessions, or expensive training programs. But the best advice I can give is a simple technique that will improve your leadership immediately without costing a penny.

Here it is: Get out of the office.

The leader who is always in the office behind closed doors is not the kind of leader people want to follow.

Get up and get out.

Talk to your team, connect with your advisors, speak to your people.

While you’re there, make sure you try out these leadership practices:

Smile with sincerity. Smiling is a powerful tool. It helps people relax around you; it draws people closer and allows you to connect easily with others.

Engage wholeheartedly. A recent study found that 70 percent of employees are miserable at work and most people feel their boss or leader doesn’t engage with them. You can do better. Connect with your team and find ways to let your people know they are important to you.

Listen carefully. Keep your ears open. Too often leaders think they have to do all the talking, but the best thing you can do is smile and genuinely listen. People have a lot on their minds, and they need someone who is available to listen to what they have to say.

Question with curiosity. The best leaders are always asking questions—not only to elicit information but also to help others better understand the issues.

Answer earnestly. Most people on your team probably have questions they want to ask, but they may feel too intimidated to ask or they’re concerned about disturbing you. Make it easy for people to find you and speak to you—keep yourself available and accessible. You may want to schedule a listening session or another time when people are specifically encouraged to ask what is on their mind so they can be as productive and effective as possible.

Get feedback. Most leaders don’t really want honest feedback, so they don’t ask for it—and as a result they receive it only in rare cases when it’s forced on them. The best leaders know that feedback is the most reliable path to improvement, and it’s an important part of their efforts to be better and lead better. But it’s not all about criticism and improvement—feedback is also the best way to discover your strengths.

Give feedback. Leaders need an open channel of communication with their people. Learning to give feedback well opens the dialogue and leads to more candor in both directions, enhancing credibility and competencies on both sides.

Show that you care. There is this big misconception that leadership is all about power and influence, and that showing care and compassion is a sign of weak leadership. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The best leaders are remembered not for their power but for how they made people feel. Let people know you care, be there for them, and show that you appreciate and value them.

It’s easy to get bogged down in everyday responsibilities and accountability, but in the end it’s the small, simple things that end up mattering the most.

Lead from within: When was the last time you left your office and engaged with those you value the most?

Additional Reading:

Leadership Has To Be Earned
How Ordinary People Can Become Extraordinary Leaders
Lead From Where You Are And With All That You Have
10 Tests Every Great Leader Must Pass

For coaching, consulting, workshops and speaking. Please feel free to contact us.

Photo Credit: Getty Images

The post The Best Free Leadership Advice You’ll Ever Get appeared first on Lolly Daskal.

How to Tell If Your Leadership is Failing

Just because you’re a leader, there’s no guarantee that you are leading. Sometimes your leadership is failing and you don’t even know it.

Holding the position and the title of leader doesn’t mean much if you’re not taking the right actions.

Leadership is active—it’s forever developing and improving, based not on who you are or where you appear on an org chart but the things you do every day.

What about your leadership?

Is it progressing or stagnant?

Are you moving ahead or treading water?

Have you stopped leading and are just going through the motions?

Here are 10 top symptoms to look out for:

1. Lack of vision. Leaders are the ones with a compelling vision to share. It’s your vision that sets the direction for everything you and your team do. If you don’t know where you’re going, it leaves people confused and uncertain. People need to know where they’re going; they need their leader to set the direction and make it compelling enough that they want to follow it.

2. Pretending to know it all. Leaders who think they know it all aren’t really leading. The path of leadership is one of questioning, listening and learning, and the best leaders are on a constant journey of discovery. But you can’t learn if you can’t admit you don’t know everything.

3. Failing to challenge the status quo. The best leaders are uncomfortable with being comfortable. They’re constantly and consistently challenging themselves to think bigger, do more and improve on what they see around them. If you’re not challenging the status quo, not pushing back against the paradigms, you’re not leading.

4. Lack of conversation. Where there’s no communication, disconnection is happening. When you’re not connected and engaged with the people who are most valuable to you, you have stopped having influence and you’re no longer leading. A true leader knows the importance of communication and staying engaged.

5. Absence of trust. Trust is the foundation of leadership; when there is no trust there is no loyalty, no respect, no credibility—and it’s a sure indication that you have stopped leading, because leadership cannot happen in the absence of trust.

6. Absence of change. Leadership is about creating new things and moving forward in new ways. If nothing is changing, you’re not leading.

7. Death of confidence. No one wants to follow an insecure, unsure, self-conscious None of those traits will promote assurances that you can be trusted to lead and guide.

8. Silenced complaints. A negative workplace is damaging, but some degree of complaint is healthy. The bottom line is this: if no one is complaining, people are settling, and they’re scared to speak up.

9. Consistent lateness. If you don’t show respect for other people, they will not respect your leadership. Period. if you are frequently late for meetings or calls or just constantly moving the schedule around, your leadership isn’t going to be taken seriously.

10. Trying to please everyone. If your goal is to make everyone happy, you are never going to be an effective leader. Your team’s best accomplishments will come when you are stretching them past their comfort zone. If you seek everyone’s approval, that stretch won’t happen—and you still won’t have pleased them all.

Lead from Within: If any of these traits sound familiar, do something before you find that your leadership is failing.

Additional Reading:

12 of The Most Common Lies Leaders Tell Themselves
Lead By Example Others Will Follow
Leadership Has To Be Earned
Reputation Matters But Character Leads The Way



For coaching, consulting, workshops and speaking. Please feel free to contact us .

Photo Credit: Getty Images

The post How to Tell If Your Leadership is Failing appeared first on Lolly Daskal.

7 Effective Skills You Need to Survive the Critical Leader

We have all been there before: Working under a leader who is constantly criticizing, a boss who is quick to accuse and blame, a manager who is constantly disparaging the staff.

It’s extremely hard to work with someone who’s always critical, finding fault and spooning out judgment. It creates a tense, untrusting environment and an adverse working culture.

The first impulse is to walk away and move on to better things. But quitting isn’t always the best option—or an option at all.

In those situations, there are still strategies you can employ to survive a critical leader.

1. Decide that you won’t allow anyone to treat you in a way you wouldn’t treat yourself, or others. You don’t have to endure being humiliated, belittled, or otherwise emotionally abused. Recognize such behavior for what it is and make a commitment to yourself that you will not allow it.

2. Draw a line. All healthy relationships have boundaries, but abusers are experts at crossing those lines. When you feel that someone has overstepped your boundaries, stand up for yourself boldly but respectfully. The moment you are uncomfortable is the moment to say something. It may be as simple as “I need to go now.” Don’t let things get out of hand, because that is how you set a precedent for acceptance and turn a one-time event into a chronic challenge.

3. Propose a better plan. Trying to make sense of crazy will drive you insane. Instead have a plan for action that changes the circumstances. Alone or with others, you can schedule a time to sit down and let your leader know that your team needs a better form of communication. Try to work with them to develop a plan that treats accountability and responsibility as a two-way street.

4. Remember that some people come into your life as blessings and others as lessons. Everything that happens to you, for good or for ill, carries a lesson. Even watching what others do wrong from a distance can teach you a lot. When you see and hear things you don’t like, look for the lessons you can learn from them.

5. Let the things that irritate you about others lead you to a better understanding of yourself. You can also learn about yourself by watching those around you. Sometimes it’s the things we ourselves are guilty of that annoy us the most in others. And if you are in a position to lead or manage, ask yourself if your own behavior reflects how you’d like to see your team act.

6. Be the change you want to see. You can’t control anyone else’s behavior, but you can always model what you’d like to see. Be mindful of how you react, respond, and reply, and make sure you don’t let yourself be influenced by the bad leadership you’re working under. Swim against the current with commitment and tenacity, and maybe your behavior will influence others.

7. Respect yourself enough to walk away. If you have seriously given a bad situation every chance to improve—if you have done everything in your power to make it work, if you have talked, made a plan, became the change you want to see—there is one last thing you must decide.

You may be past the point of trying to be honest and respectful with an emotional manipulator when everything you try to do is turned against you. If you’re doing yourself more harm than good, it’s time to respect yourself and walk away. There’s one kind of strength in surviving an emotionally abusive person, and another kind that comes from removing yourself from a toxic environment. The answer varies depending on the situation and how long you’ve been trying. Sometimes you have to ask yourself what will you allow to continue and what will you not.

Lead from within: We must never make excuses for critical people, but we can learn to be better people in their presence.

Additional Reading:

How Does EGO Edge Greatness Out
The Wisdom Of Whole Hearted Leading
Codes Of Conduct To Lead
Leadership Has To Be Earned

For coaching, consulting, workshops and speaking. Please feel free to contact us .

Photo Credit: Getty Images

The post 7 Effective Skills You Need to Survive the Critical Leader appeared first on Lolly Daskal.

How Ordinary People Can Become Extraordinary Leaders

If you want to lead like an extraordinary leader, you first have to know how to be a leader.

When it comes to leadership, most people concentrate on what you need to do.

But that’s not the whole story.

Who you are as leader, is just as important as what you do

Whatever you’re doing, it’s who you are being while you are doing that can take you from good to great, to from ordinary to extraordinary.

Here are a few of the best ways to fuel your leadership with a blend of being and doing:

Remember that everything starts with character: Character fundamentally shapes how we engage the world around us, —what we notice, what we reinforce, who we interact, what we value, what we choose to act on, how we decide. If you want to go from ordinary to extraordinary leadership, it’s your character, not your circumstances, that will take you there. Character is the real foundation of all everything worthwhile.

Constantly display confidence: A leader with great skills and competence is good; a leader with good competence plus great confidence is great. Truly successful leaders can may be smart, analytical thinkers. They can may be ten steps ahead of everybody else, the kind who always knows exactly what to do, where to go and how to get there, but without the confidence to communicate and lead, all all their thinking won’t get them far. The bottom line: where there is no confidence, there is usually no leadership.

Actively seek challenges: To go from ordinary to extraordinary you must grow and develop as a leader, and to do that, you need to get comfortable with discomfort. It’s the key foundational element to success. Extraordinary leaders actively seek challenging assignments for growth and development.

Embrace risk: No extraordinary leader has made the it big by wavering and waffling. Being bold and brash is not necessarily the key to great leadership, but taking chances and embracing the notion of risk is. Nobody looks up to those who shy off life’s challenges and are complacent with being just good enough. Good is not great and great is not extraordinary. Extraordinary leaders know that to succeed, you have to take risks to get what you want.

Build on your capacity to take action. The leaders who stand apart from the rest all have the capacity to act—not rashly, but quickly and decisively. A leader who has to be convinced to do something is not a person of action. The best of the best jump in and lead to get the job done. It’s unrealistic to think that you can achieve leadership success on the basis of only your competencies or capabilities—you also need to be extraordinary at taking action.

Develop an appetite for change. Introducing change into an organization can be challenging. People are often hesitant to accept change and argue to retain the status quo even if it’s not what it should be. Even though we all know change is inevitable, in the midst of transformation too many leaders abdicate. The extraordinary ones, however, are strong and take charge.

The best kind of leader envisions, defines, and facilitates change, transforming their organizations and igniting growth. Develop your ability and appetite for being an agent of change.

Engage to acknowledge: To create a high energy and commitment throughout an organization, you need to understand that to engage is to acknowledge and appreciate. A great leader values people’s happiness; an extraordinary leader values the employee engagement that creates happiness. Engagement and leadership are linked together more closely than most people imagine. With engagement, you can change an organization’s culture, people and success.

Motivate and inspire: An ordinary leader may rally people together; an extraordinary leader lifts them up and inspires them to perform at their best. Motivation gets people going and inspiration leads them to do great work. Human beings all deeply want to be able to believe in something—it’s basic human nature. If you want to motivate and inspire, you must understand the core needs of your people and nurture them, develop them and support them.

Give trust, earn trust, build trust:. With trust you can truly change the world. Trust is the heart of leadership. It leads to faster results, deeper relationships and stronger connections. It develops extraordinary leaders at every level whose actions and words are consistent with their principles and values. These are the elements that typically produce consistently high performance almost any way you can measure it—gross sales, profits, talent retention, company reputation, customer satisfaction. The accumulation of trust is a measure of the legitimacy of leadership. It cannot be mandated or purchased; it must be given, earned and built.

Shape and strengthen through experiences: Extraordinary leaders know that you shape people by shaping their experiences. They don’t tend to be the ones who stand out in a crowd; they don’t mesmerize audiences with their eloquence. What distinguishes them is the clarity and persuasiveness of their ideas, the depth of their commitment, and their openness to continually learning more and creating experiences for people. They know how to shape you so you can shape the world.

Lead from within: Anyone can become an extraordinary leader. All you have to do is perform ordinary feats with excellence.

Additional Reading:

Leadership: Challenges Can Help Us Learn And Grow
How to Become the Leader That People Want to Follow
Lead From Where You Are And With All That You Have
What to Do When You Exceed Your Leadership Limits

For coaching, consulting, workshops and speaking. Please feel free to contact us .

Photo Credit: Getty Images

The post How Ordinary People Can Become Extraordinary Leaders appeared first on Lolly Daskal.

What to Do When You Exceed Your Leadership Limits

Sooner or later, we all hit a wall. Do you know what you need to know to get through when you run up against the limits of your leadership?

As leaders, we know what we know. We have skills that we’ve mastered, talents we’ve cultivated, wisdom we’ve accumulated.

But what happens when the issues you face exceed the capacity of your skills, talent and wisdom? When you don’t know enough to know what to do, or even what your options are?

Do you hide it? Fake it till you make it? Wing it and hope for the best? Plenty of people make those choices—but there’s a better way, especially if you’re in a leadership position.

Here are some positive, realistic, helpful things you can do when you’ve reached your limits and you’re over your head.

1. Admit the truth. The first thing to do is actually something not to do: don’t hide your situation. Once you know the truth of it, admit. No one is perfect, and everyone reaches this point—but there’s a big difference between those who hide and those who don’t. Those who hide never grow; those who are unafraid to admit it are the ones who develop and grow. We fail to succeed. We lose to win. We learn to grow.

2. Rethink and reassess. Think about why and how you got to this point. What’s working? What’s not working? Where do you need the most help? What do you need to learn? What do you need to let go of, and what do you need to let in? If you can rethink and reassess your leadership, you can gain an opportunity for growth from even the worst situation. As you develop as a leader, don’t work to limit your challenges  but to challenge your limits.

3. Stop doing too much. If you think you need to know everything and do everything, then you are not delegating enough—you’re taking on too much responsibility, and most likely those you are leading wish you’d let them do their job so you can go on doing yours. Learn what it means to delegate more and know when to step in and when to step out. You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.

4. Seek out help and accept it. Even the most brilliant and clever people among us need help sometimes, and we can all benefit from having another set of ears and eyes to help us through difficult and challenging situations. Ask yourself who you can bring in as a coach, who would be an effective mentor, who you can include in your inner circle so you can easily seek help when you need support.

5. Stay human and humble. Allow those you lead to see that you are human. Lead with humility and grace. When you find things challenging, never stop looking for solutions. Leaders who act like they know it all are never impressive, but humanity and humility bring great benefits for you and those you lead. When we push ourselves past our limits, that is how we expand—and you will never know your limits until you push yourself to them.

Lead from within: For leaders there are no limits. There are no plateaus, and there is never a reason to be stagnant. Leaders are always moving forward. They must work on going beyond their limits, even when they think they have nothing left to give. As a leader it’s part of your role to be constantly working to know your limits—not so you can accept them but so you can surpass them.

Additional Reading:

Leadership: Challenges Can Help Us Learn And Grow

How to Become the Leader That People Want to Follow

Lead From Where You Are And With All That You Have

10 Tests Every Great Leader Must Pass

For coaching, consulting, workshops and speaking. Please feel free to contact us .

Photo Credit: Getty Images

The post What to Do When You Exceed Your Leadership Limits appeared first on Lolly Daskal.

The Most Overlooked Habits of Great Leaders

There are a few habits that are frequently overlooked but that can make a difference between a good leader and a great one.

All leaders want to do better than just being good at what they do. They tend to share a passionate desire to be great.

To be a great leader, you have to be able to lead others purposefully, communicate effectively, deliver results successfully, and measure progress efficiently.

But there is more to great leadership than external success. From what I’ve seen, the secret lies not with particular actions or methodologies, but with internal habits that are often completely overlooked.

Here are the five of the most important.

1. Great leaders admit mistakes. No one wants to stand in front of people who look up to you and admit that you made a mistake or experienced an epic failure—when you know people trust you and count on you, it’s hard to say things that you know will let them down. That’s why so many leaders will do everything they can to cover up their failures. But great leaders do swallow their pride and admit their mistakes. They know the importance of taking responsibility  and they understand that the best way to salvage value from a disaster is to model integrity and face the consequences of their actions. The best leaders are humble enough to admit their mistakes and honorable enough to learn from them.

2. Great leaders give credit. It’s the flip side of taking responsibility for what goes wrong—giving credit for the things that go well. Egotistic leaders are quick to take credit for their team’s achievements, but when people stop feeling appreciated and recognized, their personal investment and care in their work begin to decline. Great leaders are quick to take the spotlight off themselves to express gratitude and appreciation to those around them whose hard work led to success.

3. Great leaders tell the truth. It’s always tempting to gloss over the differences that can lead to conflict or challenges, but great leaders understand that the experience of resolving those conflicts gives their team better communication skills and deeper connections. It also means that no one has to feel their concerns are off limits, leading to more transparency that benefits everyone. At the same time, great leaders know that honesty doesn’t have to be brutal or blunt, and they show their teams how to express honest thoughts in a spirit of respect and kindness.

4. Great leaders inspire. Being a leader means constantly having to solve problems, stave off challenges, develop compromises and find solutions. It can be easy to lose the forest of leadership for the trees of the day-to-day challenges. But finding the energy and time to inspire those around you is at the heart of great leadership. Leadership is about making other people better as a result of your presence in a way that continues to inspire them in your absence. At its best, it’s based not on domination but cooperation, not intimidation but inspiration.

5. Great leaders lead from within. Great leaders understand that their leadership begins with themselves. if you want to be a better leader, you need to first learn who you are. When you can understand yourself, you can understand others. Once you become a leader your focus naturally moves from developing yourself to developing others—but they are two sides of the same thing. When you lead from within, you improve yourself and your way of being, and in doing so you reach a new level of great leadership.

These five habits may not be on the top of anyone’s leadership list, but following them will bring you a leadership that’s genuine and authentic.

Lead From Within: Sometimes we get so busy with trying to be good that we forget we can be great.

For coaching, consulting, workshops and speaking. Please feel free to contact us .

Additional Reading:

Great Leaders Serve With Great Returns

Leadership Has To Be Earned

Leadership Rituals That Make Each Day Count

Leadership: Claim Your Calling

6 Lessons Every Great Leader Learns on the Job

Photo Credit: Getty Images

The post The Most Overlooked Habits of Great Leaders appeared first on Lolly Daskal.

We Are All Called to Serve

We know that life shouldn’t be just about making more money, buying a bigger home, or having a selection of cars in the garage. It may include those things, but it has to be about more. But what? I believe life is about a calling—a calling to serve.

People think that to be a leader you have to be promoted upward and have a high-level title. But it’s not about that, either. The only place to find your calling is to find it within. If you have a desire to serve, you are a leader.

Leaders are called to serve in these distinctive ways:

To serve our families. Make sure those you love know you’re there for them, even when they’re not there for you. If you are called to serve you show up with best of what you have to offer—and when it comes to serving our family, there’s no such thing as going too far.

To serve our communities. Do you volunteer, give back, pay it forward? Does your community know who you are and what you are willing to do for them? Many people, even leaders, are so busy with their own lives that they forget that leadership is a calling to serve those around you and beyond you. A significant part of your call to lead might be with your community, whether that means serving on city council or informally scheduling neighbors to check on an elderly neighbor who lives alone.

To serve our customers. Build a relationship with your customers and clients and serve them well. Work to understand their needs and then work to meet those needs. Treat them like family; care for them and serve them well. Customer loyalty is always priceless, so make your customers partners in your mission, and always give them more than they expect.

To serve our employees. Changing minds, moving hearts and inspiring lives require a deep commitment. Being called to serve as a boss or director isn’t an easy vocation. It asks you to be fully responsible for others, to consistently and continually demonstrate the highest commitment. Your interests lie in the interests of others, so serve the people who help you make an impact.

To serve from inside out. It’s an old-fashioned concept, a calling, but when you’re called, it really is something you feel inside. And when you’re called to serve in leadership you must under all circumstances and challenges hold yourself accountable for your own actions, making sure you follow through on your promises and your actions are consistent with your words. You either lead by example or not at all—and that means that what you practice on the outside comes from the inside. it comes from inside that is being practiced on the outside.

To serve up change. To have an impact, sometimes you have to initiate change and shake things up. At other times change is imposed from outside and it’s your role to take charge of change and help others navigate through it. Facing change as a leader in service requires a strong commitment and a belief that what you are doing is meaningful.

To serve the world. You don’t have to look to history to have an impact on the world—look within. What can you do, how will you influence, where will you make a difference? Those who are called to serve work to sustain hope for others. That’s a tall order in times like these, when our country and world are experiencing low levels of trust and high levels of cynicism. But don’t despair or be intimated by the challenges. All of us who are called to serve must keep hope alive; the antidote to the increasing cynicism and stresses of our times will come from the faith and hope we have in others as we serve them.

Leadership comes from inside of all of us but we each choose the quality and form of that service.

The choices you make and how you enlist your relationships with others will make the difference. If you are called to serve, embrace the opportunities and the responsibility that come with that calling, because it will make a profound difference in your own life and in the lives of others.

LEAD FROM WITHIN: The call to serve can come anytime, anywhere. Are you ready to lead and serve with all that you have from within?

Additional Reading:

Let Your Leadership Speak For Itself
Spend Your Time Feeding Your Soul
Be Distinct: Find The Hero Within
How to Become A Leader You Admire

For coaching, consulting, workshops and speaking. Please feel free to contact us.

Photo Credit: Getty Images

 

The post We Are All Called to Serve appeared first on Lolly Daskal.

The One Thing You’re Sure to Struggle With as a Leader

Leaders face a lot of issues but one thing they will struggle with is sometimes staying positive.

Being a leader is all about balance. You have to be mindful and quick, slow and steady, take risks, have vision, listen but speak, know but question—and do it all with grace.

It goes without saying that challenges come with the territory. One of the most overwhelming, for many leaders, is the struggle to stay positive in the face of a demanding position. Fighting negativity is a distraction that keeps lots of leaders from their best work.

How can you stay positive in a negative world?

Here are some strategies that have worked for others:

Let go of perfectionism. The worst thing you can do for yourself is get stuck in the mindset that things need to be perfect. The best leaders, those who are most successful, know that nothing is every perfect, and if we expect perfection we’re setting ourselves up for failure. Focus on being positive instead of being perfect.

Create an inner circle of positive people. Leadership can mean being in a lonely position, but having good people around you—trusted souls you can talk to and lean in to, people who will help you find positive solutions—is one of the best gifts you can give yourself.

Healthy body, happy mind, happier heart. The best way to keep yourself from drowning when everything around you seems to be sinking is to keep your body healthy and your thoughts happy. It’s easy to be become bogged down when you’re surrounded by negativity; it takes energy and good health to keep on top of mind, body, and spirit.

Give more to stay positive. No one remains unhappy by giving. Challenging yourself to give more may seem like the last thing you would think to do when things are tough, but the more you give, the happier you will be—whether it’s the worst of times or the best of times. Giving has a way of canceling out the worst days, the biggest challenges, and the most arduous circumstances.

Make a plan and set goals. The worst thing you can do when everything around you is overwhelming is to flail around and respond to circumstances as they happen without a governing strategy. Instead, create a plan and start setting goals. Simply having a goal to work toward can create positive energy. Start small and keep a steady focus on moving forward and accomplishing great things.

Encourage others to get through the tough stuff. Studies show that making other people happy is a significant source of happiness. If you can stay focused on empowering and motivating others, you can feel good about yourself and be strong when things are not going so well. It’s a win-win.

Don’t sweat the small stuff. What’s big today can be small tomorrow; what’s urgent today may find a way of working itself out. When everything around you is falling apart and it’s hard to stay positive, remind yourself how the big stuff can become small stuff and small stuff can become insignificant.

Remember that this too shall pass. As we know, everything changes—nothing is ever the same, everything is always evolving and changing. So when times are really tough and you find yourself being pulled down into negativity, remind yourself that this too shall pass. Keep your wits about you and try to stay positive, because the solution you need may be right around the corner.

You don’t have to do it alone. Get the help and support you need by sharing your issues with someone who’s been there or who has the skills to help you navigate through the tough times. Things quickly become overwhelming when you feel you have to do everything yourself and keep things bottled up inside. But if you can share your hardships and challenges and find someone to support you, that simple change can shift your thinking and help bring solutions within reach.

Lead From Within:  To find the balance, the stamina, the solutions you need, remember that the first step is always the same: Stay positive.

Additional Reading:

The Wisdom Of Whole Hearted Leading

Leadership Rituals That Make Each Day Count

12 Habits for Building Leadership Presence

The Art Of Leadership Is Not Without Struggle

For coaching, consulting, workshops and speaking. Please feel free to contact us.

Photo Credit: Getty Images

 

The post The One Thing You’re Sure to Struggle With as a Leader appeared first on Lolly Daskal.

The Test Every Great Leader Must Pass

Are you a good leader? A great leader? How can you even know? You can take the test……..

Most leaders are too busy to spend much time reflecting on that question, but it really is important to check in once in a while—especially if results, achievement and excellence are important to you. Whether you’re a CEO, a vice president, director, team leader, neighborhood association leader, or parent, you can become a much more effective leader if you keep yourself on track. Take the test:

Do you have concise and compelling vision?

A great leader has the capacity to create a compelling vision and translate it into reality. When your vision is clear and understandable, it inspires others to help make it happen. Is your vision clear? Do others understand it? Have you inspired them to help you transform it into reality?

Have you identified your role and responsibilities?

Leadership isn’t earned by a title or position, but great leaders need to understand the scope and boundaries of their responsibilities. Too many roles are ill-defined, leading to confusion, but it’s a clearly defined role and responsibilities that allow you to take effective action and be held accountable for results.

Do you have strategies and goals?

Having a vision and taking responsibility are important to leadership, but not much can get accomplished without a strategy or goals. Goals define results and let everyone know in concrete terms what they’re working toward—and when they’ve successfully achieved it.

Are you decisive in solving critical challenges?

You don’t always have the time to make a perfect decision; in today’s fast-paced world, lengthy deliberation and debate are luxuries. In the middle of a situation, you have to be confident enough to quickly evaluate the situation and take an action that has a high probability of success. Great leaders know how to make decisions of all types. They know when to take the time to use analytical and thorough decision-making processes. They know when to engage the whole team, and when to make decisions on their own.

Do you communicate often and with clarity?

At its heart, communication is the real work of leadership. Because everyone hears things in different ways, it is up to leader to communicate frequently and honestly, with openness and a commitment to listening as well as being heard. Your words have great power, so use them to inspire and support others.

Do you lead with positivity and enthusiasm?

A leader’s attitude, negative or positive, is contagious. The best leaders go out of their way to stay positive even in negative and challenging times—and that positivity, spread among the entire team, has the power to create better outcomes. Are you as positive and enthusiastic as you would like it to be?

Do you work on developing others?

Once you become a leader, your focus moves from your own development to helping others grow. When you do, you not only build a stronger team, but you communicate to members how much you value them. True leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders.

Do you treat failure as a teacher?

We all make mistakes, and we all have failures. But it’s when you can turn those failures into learning experiences that you move closer to success. Failure in leadership doesn’t mean the game is over—it means it’s time to try again, with more experience. Remember, failure is not the opposite of success; it’s part of success.

Do you show appreciation to others?

Appreciation is the best way of bringing out excellence in others. It builds loyalty and creates momentum for the entire team. Those who feel appreciated will always outperform those who don’t.

Do you lead by example?

When you’re a leader, your words, your actions, your behavior are all being watched. People may doubt what you say but they will always believe what you do, so make sure your actions follow your words. Are you leading by example? People have to be motivated to follow you before they will care about your vision.

How did you score? There are no winners and losers here, but look at each point that tripped you up and begin

Lead From Within: We don’t know who we are until we see what we can do.

Additional Reading:

Lead By Example Others Will Follow

Let Your Leadership Speak For Itself

The Wisdom Of Whole Hearted Leading

Codes Of Conduct To Lead

Photo Credit: Lolly Daskal

 

 

Save

Save

Save

The post The Test Every Great Leader Must Pass appeared first on Lolly Daskal.

How to Watch Out for Blind Spots in Your Leadership

It’s the tricky thing about blind spots: Everybody has them, but often we don’t even know they exist until they cause a problem.

All of us have blind spots, and most of us at some point have made a bad decision because of them. But when a leader has a blind spot, the repercussions spread to include the entire organization—and sometimes even its stakeholders and customers.

In essence, a blind spot is not knowing what you don’t see. Blind spots can take many forms, from refusing to accommodate new workplace realities or technologies to, at their worst, racial and ethnic prejudice. The most dangerous blind spots are the ones we aren’t even aware of.

Many leaders also have internalized blind spots, in which the view of who you are doesn’t align with what others experience from you. Good leaders are always working to improve their self-awareness, but unfortunately many are better at managing strategy than at looking inward.

Here are six of the most common internalized blind spots to check yourself against.

1. Inflated ego. The greatest enemy of any leader—or anyone, for that matter—is thinking they can never make a mistake, that they know better than anyone else, that their title and achievements set them apart. Leaders with inflated egos make everything they do about themselves, and at the extreme they surround themselves with synchopants who agree with every misperception and validate their ego every day. An overgrown ego makes it impossible to maintain the kind of relationships that are at the core of leadership. It eventually leads to its own downfall, sometimes taking the entire organization with it.

2. Lack of character. Leadership cannot exist in the absence of character. Leaders need to constantly check and, if needed, realign themselves with the values and beliefs that form the foundation of who they are. Issues of character affect your choices and actions, leading to unethical or unsustainable decisions, and a refusal to own or repair mistakes.

3. Scarcity of confidence. When leaders aren’t able to perceive their own value and abilities, it keeps them and their organizations from achieving all that they’re capable of. The blind spot of self-doubt persuades leaders to avoid bold decisions and focus on less important issues or even to spend their time chasing distractions. The side effects are difficult and damaging.

4. Low accountability. Leaders must be perceived as reliable and steady, and any unwillingness to be accountable costs their leadership credibility. The root of the word credibility is credere, which means “believe” in Latin. Put plainly, credibility is the feeling of trust and loyalty that leaders inspire in others, and without that credibility there can be no leadership.

LEAD FROM WITHIN: Your blind spots may be entirely different—the important thing is to watch for them with vigilance and keep your thinking as flexible and open as possible.

 

Articles you might be interested in:

Let Your Leadership Speak For Itself

How to Become A Leader You Admire

Lead By Example Others Will Follow

Your Leadership Motivation Starts Within

Photo: Getty Images

Save

Save

The post How to Watch Out for Blind Spots in Your Leadership appeared first on Lolly Daskal.