Career Strategy, Coaching, Culture, emotional intelligence, Leadership, Other

Perception is powerful. Have you got it under control?

Janine
23/07/2019

Leadership is defined as ‘a process of social influence which maximizes the efforts of others toward the achievement of a greater good’.

Notice the key elements of this definition: Leadership stems from social influence, not authority or power. Gone are the days of leadership being about power and control. Those leaders are thankfully, retiring, or realising the new way and making the shift.

So if leadership is about influence, is the way you influence others working for you or against you?

The challenge of leadership is to know the impact of your influence. This insight comes from perception – how you are perceived. How you are perceived colours the thinking of everyone around you and remember perception is reality and it is their reality not yours.

Fortunately, you have the ability to ensure that how you are perceived, is actually how you want to be perceived. If you know how you want to be perceived, you can make the necessary changes in the way you communicate, and behave, to shift perception in the minds of those around you. If we loosely play with McTighe and Wiggins’ model of Understanding by Design; if you know how you want to be perceived, you can design your leadership model to suit.

But you have to know first how you want to be perceived.

You need to know what sort of a leader you want to be, how you want to relate to others and work with them, the types of relationships you want around you and the communication you want in order to achieve that.

It is from here that it is incredibly helpful to know how are you currently perceived as your starting point. So how do you find out?

Well you could conduct a survey. Pick 10 people that you work with, not all your favourites because that would be too biased. The 10 people are mixed up between people you get along well with, as well as those where things are not so great. Design some questions and try your luck with them telling you honestly how they perceive you.

Or, given that surveys are not everyone’s favourite thing to do and your 10 selected people are unlikely to give you an honest response, mainly because your survey wasn’t anonymous, you could get smarter and look at psychology; behavioural psychology.

In the world of leadership development, we have tools that allow us to evaluate your style. The tool reports back to us, clearly mapping how you behave, how you communicate and how you are perceived all from a 15 minute questionnaire, and it is incredibly accurate. I haven’t had one person say they have been evaluated inaccurately yet!

Now you know, you can move forward.

So armed with this knowledge, you can now move forward. You have the information you need to look at how you are perceived and you can ask yourself: “Do I like it?” You have the information that reports on how you behave, how you communicate, and again, if it is impacting how you are perceived, you can work on identifying the changes that need to be made, to change the way you operate, and ultimately change how you are perceived in the minds of those around you. It puts you back in control.

It is only once you are here, in the driver’s seat of how you are perceived, that you can move your leadership forward. Perception matters. Don’t think it doesn’t. Leadership comes from good relationships and if you are perceived as not caring about others, this will negatively impact any chance of good working relationships. If you are thinking relationships are not important, then you are back to the old ‘command and control’ style and I mentioned earlier, those days have gone.

Knowing how you behave and communicate and how you are perceived allows you to find your true leadership style. I call this having clarity, being clear about your leadership and who are as a leader. From here, your authentic leadership begins to shine. It is from here that you can progress, not only in your leadership but in your career.

Now you have clarity! From here you can progress in your leadership and in your career.

Module 1: Clear of the Elevating Leadership Program is a full day workshop focused on being clear about who you are, your leadership style and how you behave and communicate. We use the psychometric profile, the DISC which is backed up with research, is easy to understand, and is incredibly accurate. At the end of the workshop, you will know how you behave and communicate, and how you are perceived. With this knowledge, you can now identify what you want to work on to improve the way you interact with others to improve relationships, communication and ultimately team functioning.

This program is being held on Wednesday 30 October in Melbourne.

More details can be found here: https://coachingfocus.com.au/event/leadership101-t4/

____________________________________

Janine Stratford, is a Leadership Coach and Career Strategist, working with teachers and leaders in schools across Australia and New Zealand. A former teacher and school leader, she is passionate about developing great leaders as role models for their schools and their students. You can find out more about Janine at www.coachingfocus.com.au

Career Strategy, Coaching, Culture, emotional intelligence, Leadership

So whose problem is it really?

Janine
21/07/2019

“Leave it with me. I’ll deal with it.”

And there it is. The fatal mistake. Plus you’ve done it in record time. Well done. The transfer was clean and effortless.

You have just taken on someone else’s problem.

This is perfect, to escalate, or even just maintain, your hero status. Or perhaps you felt they were already busy and you didn’t want them to be taking on more. Maybe you were unsure of whether that area was in their job description. Or, you thought you would do it quicker, or better, or whatever.

The bottom line result is:

You have taken on another matter to deal with, adding more to your load.
You have removed the opportunity for someone else to be challenged, to learn and to grow.

Congratulations, but it’s hardly a win-win.

As a leader it is so easy to take on someone else’s problem. Any member of your team can come to you with a problem and, because you’re the leader, you feel compelled to be there to solve the problem for them. And so after they explain to you the problem you say ‘Leave it with me. I’ll deal with it’. How often have you said those words? They can sneak out so quickly! And you might be thinking you are being so helpful. Perhaps not.

So there is one side of your brain saying I’m the hero here I’m going to fix the problem for them. I’m making their life easier. They’re busy I don’t really want to overload them, and after all, I’m the leader, so maybe I should be the one solving the problem, it’s my responsibility.

It may be your responsibility in the long run, but that doesn’t mean you are leading well by dealing with it yourself.

But what you’ve done is taken the problem away from them, leaving them without the opportunity to either utilise their skills or learn new skills to solve that problem.

Your leadership might have been more focused on the immediate situation and not the long-term plan of developing each member in your team. Yes you might be right, that it’s quicker to do it yourself. But that is short-sighted thinking.

Then there is the perspective of your team member to consider, and also what they are telling the rest of the team, as a result of your action. Some may respond to your approach with a viewpoint that, you’re not helping them by taking the problem from them and that you are, in effect, controlling the situation and ensuring that you remain holding the power, not allowing them to have the opportunity to step up and solve the problem and learn and grow in the process. They will feel disempowered, not valued, and definitely feel they are not trusted enough to be left with these problems. There are others in the team who have strategically come to you with a problem, knowing full well that they could solve it, but also knowing that it’s your style to take the problem on, make it your own, and that you do this to ensure your hero status continues. They are the clever ones here, not you. They have worked you out.

We shouldn’t be thinking that any problem is a ‘yours’ or ‘mine’ dichotomy. This is not how a great leader operates. A great leader is consistent. This is key. They have a particular mindset that regards every member of their team as being full of potential and capable and just need the resources necessary for the solution. The great leader’s role then is simply, to help them identify the resources they need and help make those resources more accessible. The problem remains with the team member, but they know they have your support to help find the way forward.

This is coaching and it happens through following a framework and asking great questions. It’s not about advice-giving. It’s not about having all the answers. It’s supportive, collaborative and it’s empowering. According to Deloitte, “organisations with senior leaders who coach effectively improve their business results by 21%.” Add to this, Google undertook an important piece of research and found that the “single most important managerial competency that separates highly effective managers from average ones was coaching.” Coaching is consistent and it’s was great leaders do every day.

The coaching mindset is one where you hold great belief in the individual and their ability and your role is to help them realise that ability and grow. A coaching leader is constantly growing the people around them, not taking things from them from which they could grow, but allowing them to sit with the problems, explore, ruminate, find options, and work through a resulting choice of solution.

So whose problem is it really? If your team member comes to you with a problem, it is incumbent on you, as the leader, to help them deal with that problem, but not for you to solve it, not for you to take it on as yours. Instead provide the support, be a partner, a solution-facilitator, and work with them to find a way through this problem and the resulting solution choice. A great leader will make sure they remain accessible if more discussion and support is needed as the team member moves further through the process. They provide the safe space to explore, be the sounding board to unpack thinking, be the provocateur, challenge thinking with great questions that explore the benefits and obstacles of each option.

By being the support person, you are helping a solution to be found but you’re not taking it on yourself, you’re not adding to your own workload and in the process de-skilling and disempowering the members of your team. You will be providing them a safe space to stay with a problem and pull it apart. You’re setting them up for a better level of success in the future, because you’re teaching them thinking frameworks to work through decisions and to work through challenges. The time initially might be a bit longer but that time invested is worth it. During this time together not only will it upskill them, not only will it expand their thinking, not only will it empower them to be more in control of the situation, not only will it ensure they are accountable for the result, but you are also ensuring a far stronger, more collaborative, more trusting relationship develops in the process.

Now you have a true win-win!

If I have convinced you that coaching is something you need in order to improve the way you lead, please explore Module 3 of the Elevating Leadership Program. We hold the program once a semester. It’s a 20 hour program that involves 2 workshop days, some professional reading and a written self-reflection, plus feedback about your coaching style and progress.

emotional intelligence, Leadership

What is the most important thing to hold on to at this time of year?

admin
26/06/2018
educational leaders, emotional intelligence, future of work, leadership development, wellbeing

We are now half way through the year, congratulations, and the term break feels like it’s only minutes away. This is a busy time of year in schools with mid-year assessments, reports, marks and setting up the LMS for the next semester. There are also the strategic decisions such as staffing changes, possibly interviews internally as well as those you might be applying for, and financial reporting. This all means stress and being very busy.

During periods of stress and busyness, we often forget how to behave and what we should and shouldn’t say to others. We can lose control of our thoughts and let our judgements run wild. We get tired, become short tempered and intolerant. Imagine a whole group of people like this working together and I hear you saying, ‘welcome to my staff room’. Yes, the end of Term 2 can turn the best of us into short-sentenced, judgemental, impatient, sleep-deprived zombies. I often think the end of Term 2 morphs a whole group of normally level-headed, wise individuals to ‘tightly wound-up springs’, and it then doesn’t take much for anyone to ‘unravel’.

Our emotional intelligence has effectively gone ‘out the window’.

Emotional intelligence – the capacity for recognising our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well, in ourselves and in our relationships. (Daniel Goleman, 1997)

It actually does not take very much for a person to slip into a lower state of emotional intelligence brought on by things like reduced sleep, pressure, time challenges, or relationship changes (both positive and negative). Emotional intelligence is in fact a skill, a learnable skill, that needs to be continually built upon and practised in order to be strengthened. The best leaders have high emotional intelligence and it is the skills necessary to identify the mood state we, and others, are in and regulate for it that are the most sought after in leaders of today. The World Economic Forum lists emotional intelligence in the top 10 skills needed for the future of work. Emotional intelligence is the most important thing to hold on to at this time of year because it can so easily be forgotten.

Developing higher levels of emotional intelligence have been shown to positively impact:

Stress
Absenteeism
Quality of relationships
Work performance
Teamwork effectiveness
Trust among colleagues
Organisational commitment
Job satisfaction
Innovation and creativity

So what actions can you take to get it back?

Daniel Goleman notes that people best able to handle stress have developed a stress management repertoire that they draw upon as needed. These techniques might include mindfulness practices, exercise such as walking or swimming, a long bath or other relaxation favourite. Having these techniques incorporated into our daily way of operating doesn’t mean that you won’t feel the impact of stress from time to time, but the regular daily practice seems to reset the trigger point for the amygdala (the part in the brain responsible for the flight-fight response), making it less easily provoked. This neural resetting gives us the ability to recover more quickly from stressful situations while also making you less prone to them at the outset.

Teachers who have more developed skills in emotional intelligence

have more positive feelings about teaching
greater feelings of satisfaction about their work
are better able to manage stress associated with teaching
are less likely to suffer from burnout
have higher degrees of warmth and connectedness between teachers and students
show more autonomy and leadership
have teachers who focus more on students interests and motivations

(Rivers, Brackett, Reyes, Elbertson, Salovey, 2012, Yale University)

Your mood will influence those around you. The phenomenon called ‘emotional contagion’ tells us that your mood can be felt by those around you and your mood will change their mood. If you are in a positive mood, your influence on others will be positive. The opposite is also true.

Remember too, that as the leader of a group, you are setting the tone that you want the team to adopt.

The leader’s mood is the reference point for the rest of the organisation. 50-70% of how employees perceive their organisation’s climate can be traced to the moods and actions of one person… the leader.

Ensuring your emotional intelligence stays high means finding ways to self-regulate. By this I mean, finding ways that can return your mood and your thoughts to their usual state of calm, rational and well-paced. Self- regulation is done actively. You make it happen.

Between now and the end of the term, I encourage you to find something that will take your focus away from the day to day tasks for a short time each day. It can be a simple thing. A favourite of mine is to solve the daily challenge quiz in the newspaper and this can be done with others, and the laughter is a bonus. Other times a short walk does it.

I also encourage you to take yourself to bed at a reasonable hour and to get at least 7 hours sleep. You want to start your break healthy rather than exhausted.

The most important thing to hold on to at this time of year is your emotional intelligence. Having high emotional intelligence requires you to self-regulate. This requires taking some action and doing this regularly; and be kind to yourself. Yes, you are tired. Admit it and accept it. Now regulate yourself for it. Realise that you are likely to think and respond differently at this time. Pause before speaking and make sure you are thinking of others with compassion and positive belief in their ability. If your patience is tested, count to 10 before you speak. This allows the emotional reaction to pass and logical thought to begin to form.

Enjoy your holidays ahead. See you in Term 3.

Janine Stratford, is a Leadership Development Coach and Career Strategist, working with teachers and leaders in schools across Australia and New Zealand. A former teacher and school leader, she is passionate about developing great leaders as role models for their schools and their students. You can find out more about Janine at www.coachingfocus.com.au

Category : emotional intelligence

Perception is powerful. Have you got it under control?

So whose problem is it really?

What is the most important thing to hold on to at this time of year?

Our emotional intelligence has effectively gone ‘out the window’.

So what actions can you take to get it back?

Remember too, that as the leader of a group, you are setting the tone that you want the team to adopt.

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