A Leader's Kryptonite

We manage processes, numbers, and resources, but people are meant to be led. Great leaders recognize our humanity, our free will, and our uniqueness. The true form of leading is accomplished through influence. The purpose of influencing others is what separates the role of a leader from other roles. Why is this an important distinction? Here are two reasons:

It’s How Big Change Happens

In most contexts, a leader will be responsible for handling a certain number of tasks directly, and the leader then influences the rest of what must be accomplished through other individuals. A leader marshals the collective passion, talents, and grit of others toward a certain end. Many visions and objectives simply cannot be accomplished without many hands involved, so it becomes critical to the mission to tighten up our leadership game. As John C. Maxwell puts it, “If you want to do a few small things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things and make a big impact, learn to delegate.”

“If you want to do a few small things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things and make a big impact, learn to delegate.”

— John C. Maxwell

Leading is About Serving

Leaders are meant to provide certain aspects of mentorship. Mentorship involves walking alongside someone else as they navigate their journey to an end. Even though it might be quicker to do the “doing” in some circumstances, it wouldn’t make for a stronger and more diversified team in the long run. If you believe your team isn’t able to safeguard the processes they are responsible for, they also start to believe it. Allowing space for your team to take ownership and responsibility in a direct capacity is critical not only for buy-in, but for growth of the individual employee and the organization.

Do you want to reap the benefits of influence? Monday Momentum, our weekly Leadership Lessons are a fantastic tool for helping you up your leadership game. 

Leadership Starts with You

Iconic basketball coach John Wooden said, “First be best, then be first.” This line gives the imperative to earn our place as leaders. Some might think leaders are merely appointed, and that appointment is sufficient to claim authority, but understanding leadership as merely positional misses the nature of leadership altogether. More tragically, understanding leadership in this singular way omits the secret to effective leadership. Appointments are meant to reflect a deeper dynamic, an authority not based on position, but integrity.

“First be Best, then be first.” - Coach John Wooden

Integrity Matters

But wait a minute, isn’t integrity just about being reliable and trustworthy? Yes, it is about those things, but in a leadership capacity, these traits translate to reliably embodying the skills, determination, know-how, and vision to reach the goals for the team. It’s about being the type of person your team can trust to take them to where you’re being called upon to go.

And being that person is not just about your team. When you are the best, when you are the person that can reliably take your team to where they need to go in a trustworthy, competent manner, they will respect you. But even more importantly, you will respect yourself, which will mean your manner will be in alignment with your leadership actions. At the end of the day, knowing you have given yourself and others your best helps you earn not just personal confidence but the confidence of those you seek to influence.

It Changes Others

People experience hope and garner inspiration when someone demonstrates how to overcome an obstacle or meet a desired goal. The greatest throughout history is regarded as the greatest because they not only cast a vision, they worked tirelessly to gain the knowledge and pathways to achieving it. They showed people what was truly possible in new and exciting ways. All effective leaders, through their own example, give people hope.

Do you want to reap the benefits of self-leadership for your team? Our weekly Leadership Lessons are a fantastic tool for helping you up your leadership game.

Self-Awareness Equals Better Relationships

The ancient Greeks enjoined us to “Know thyself,” and with good reason. A critical aspect of self-awareness is the understanding of how our behaviors, traits, and communication affect the people in our lives, which has a direct bearing on the quality of our relationships, both personal and professional.

And the key to self-awareness is emotional intelligence because emotional intelligence allows us to identify and manage our own emotions. This understanding of our own emotional states, moods, and motivations in turn allows us to better empathize with others, which is a critical leadership quality. Here are three ways to begin to enhance self-awareness:

Make an Appointment with Yourself and/or a Trusted Mentor

Self-awareness is the product of intentional self-examination. Sometimes we are surrounded by such noise that it takes an intentional appointment to make room for the stillness needed for contemplation and getting in touch with ourselves. The insight of other people who you trust and respect can also be invaluable as well. Be sure to make time for contemplation and conversations with key mentors.

Take an Inventory of Your Motivations

We can be motivated by many things: praise, fear, validation, security, purpose, competition, love, truth, beauty, goodness to name a few. And people can frequently sense our motivations and respond to them. Take a minute to think about what motivates you in life? At work? At home? In recreation? Why are these motivating you? How do these motivations interact with and affect the motivations of others around you?

Actively Notice How You Feel

Consider writing down how you feel in various situations, especially those associated with positive feelings. By understanding what gives you feelings of well-being and positivity you can more readily translate these same effects into the lives of others.

Because self-awareness is a decision, we can begin to authentically and intentionally gain a deeper understanding of ourselves in service of our team today. Our weekly Leadership Lessons are a fantastic tool to guide you.

One Ridiculously Simple Secret to Higher Team Productivity

While metrics and mantras are important tools in a team’s effort to meet objectives, research repeatedly shows that the most effective and endearing leaders are encouragers first and foremost.

Encouragement is a specific type of praise focused on behavior regardless of the outcome. It sees the person and the decisions made that are laudable and imports hope into any situation based on that which is praiseworthy or positive.

For example, you see a team member put effort into acquiring a new skill set that served the team well in the acquisition of a new account and say to her, “That skill took tremendous dedication to learn and it made a big difference in us landing that account, thank you for your hard work!”

Now imagine your team didn’t get the account, but you still praise her for the positive character she exhibited and bring hope into the situation based on her contribution by saying, “That took tremendous dedication to learn, and even though we didn’t land this particular account, your efforts have positioned us to gain other new accounts in the future, let’s stay focused!”

Why is encouragement such a game-changer?

1.)   Encouragement raises productivity.

Gallup research has found that 67% of employees whose managers communicated their strengths were fully engaged in their work, while only 31% of employees whose managers only communicated their weaknesses were engaged in their work. As leaders we frequently spend untold hours procuring trainings and seminars to improve metrics, but as the German poet and critic Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said, “Instruction does much, but encouragement everything."

Great leaders inspire their people by injecting a picture of hope into every challenge. When the focus is on what is praiseworthy in the situation, not particular outcomes, the result is more of what is praiseworthy, which leads to outstanding outcomes overall.

2.)   Encouragement forms authentic human connection.

Alfred Lord Tennyson once said, “Come friends, it's not too late to seek a newer world.”

The emphasis here is on the word “friends.” While a leader’s role is different from that of a friend, there nonetheless exists a measure of overlap between the two because authentic human connection is required for both types of relationship. Friends inspire hope by seeing the good in us and bringing it out. So do great leaders.

Do you want to reap the benefits of becoming a more consistent and creative encourager for your team? Our weekly Leadership Lessons are a fantastic tool for helping you up your encouragement game.

Newsflash: No One Likes Your eLearning Modules

When people ask what I do for a living and I say, “I’m an instructional designer,” they inevitably look at me puzzled. So I explain, “I design training programs for companies. Have you ever done an eLearning course?” And, because instinct is hard to suppress, their eyes roll all the way to the back of their heads. The self-aware people say, “Our company could probably really use you because ours are so boring!” 

Although I can tell they don’t actually believe anything could make eLearning less boring, at least I know that’s not true. And after reading this post, so will you.

Current E-Learning

90% of companies in the world use eLearning in some capacity. It’s no surprise that, if we weren’t already there, 2020 has catapulted us headfirst into the world of online learning. We’ve transitioned in-classroom learning to virtual instructor-led training, self-paced online modules, or a mixture of both. We’ve watched even our kids transition into this realm of learning. Although many of us were not traveling or working outside our own living rooms, the industry still saw an increase in mobile learning of 23% year over year. 

If so many of our organizations are using this technology, with billions of dollars invested in the industry globally, why are our employees so turned off by it?

It’s Always About Behavior

“Training is about behavior change. People are doing something one way, and we want them to do it another way. Alternatively, they don’t know how to do something at all, and we need them to do it well. But changing behavior is more than just informing people of the right way to do something and hoping for the best. We have to understand the environment in which the behavior occurs.”

What’s preventing them from doing it correctly? 

What kinds of things will they have to look out for once they start doing it right? 

What’s in it for them if they do it correctly? 

Any barriers to correct behavior in the environment should first be eliminated. We can’t set our people up for failure. And nothing turns off an employee in training faster than thinking, “Sure, but that won’t work in real life.” As soon as some of your content is discredited by a clear lack of understanding about what really goes on at work, all of your content becomes discredited. 

Once you understand the environment, it’s time to really determine the behavior, and by behavior, I mean something you can see. This is the hard part. If you find yourself saying things like, “Know…,” or “Understand…,” something has gone wrong.  

Don’t misunderstand, there is a place for knowledge-based training, but make sure that employees know what they should be doing differently because of this new knowledge. 

Lastly, ensure correct behavior is rewarded. I don’t mean pizza parties and gift cards (although those never hurt when achieving a goal or going above and beyond!), but find opportunities to encourage, praise, and reinforce when you see correct behavior. 

It’s Not a PowerPoint

You can’t just throw words on a screen and expect it to be engaging. You wouldn’t put a facilitator in front of a group doing the same thing and expect good results, so why should your online modules be any different? Online learning should be even more engaging than in-classroom training. There are a million distractions in someone’s working environment, and with no one in front of them, there’s no guilty feeling about answering emails while the course plays in the background. 

Keep your screen text to a minimum, only capturing the most important pieces of your slide’s voiceover, and keep the length to something you think will engage your learner. This will of course be specific to your industry and your employees and you may need to do a little research on what works best for them. See, it’s not a simple copy and paste job! 

Blend

When your content deserves more conversation and opportunity for questions, be open to blending your learning. By this, I mean having your eLearning content be a part of the greater “puzzle” that is your overall learning strategy. Maybe your eLearning modules are pre-work to virtual instructor-led learning or maybe your online modules are the main event and you meet with your team virtually to discuss as a group afterward. Whatever you decide, your content drives your delivery system. In other words, don’t try to shove your content into the eLearning box because it’s convenient or theoretically exciting. 

Conclusion

I know your content and capabilities are better than an eye roll response! If you implement the tips provided here, your learners will do more than just be impressed, they’ll actually learn what you wanted them to learn! As Maya Angelou once said, “When you know better, do better.” It’s never too late! If you have access to your source files, carve out the time and attention over the course of the next month to devote 10 hours to upgrade your previous courses with the tips you learned today. Let’s change the reputation of eLearning for the better together!

This content was written and shared by Blayne Gregory, Director of Learning, Leader Momentum

Blayne Gregory is an instructional designer with a focus on behavior analysis who takes a full-circle approach to learn from analyzing the need to designing and developing the instruction, all with a user-centered approach. She first seeks to understand her learner, not putting content on the page until she completely understands what it is they're being asked to do, and why that matters to them. As the Director of Learning for Leader Momentum, she has dedicated her career to making servant leadership available, absorbable, and immediately usable for everyone.

The Power of a Smile: A Secret Ingredient to Employee Engagement

Today, I was asked to sit in on an employee relations situation with a team leader and her employee. When arrived, the angst was high, many emotions and concerns were thrown out at once that I cannot even hear clearly. (thinking to myself, how am I going to be able to help, yikes!) So they took turns to talk and hear the other one with respect (they vowed me with this). My job was to listen, not to "listen to understand" or "listen to solve" BUT LISTEN WITH PRESENCE, trusting the Spirit will show me the next step.

We distilled it down to this very quickly: we needed the employee to stay because production is busy and have high demands to meet in order to serve the customers, not because the team leader was being difficult (she herself has sacrificed much of her family time to serve) so we asked kindly: will you please help out the company, and he said absolutely. Then next up, he has been dealing with a lot in his personal life and therefore admitted he has been daydreaming a bit while he's on the line and could not catch everything. The team leader is extraordinarily accountable and always points out to make sure he is doing his job well. Still, she cares very much about him and admits that he usually does a good job; only recently, there have been more errors. So, we explained that accountability is the form of love; she corrects him because she wants him to succeed, BUT while we are overworked and under pressure, we could still have some fun and lightheartedness, so I challenged the team leader to catch him doing something great every day. Finally, I challenged them to high-five each other every day, and they immediately fist-bumped each other on the spot and smiled. I am so amazed at their receptiveness.

We crave to understand and be understood, and we yearn to care about each other. Humanity is created to love. I don't ever underestimate the power of a touch or the power of a smile. People can hear your smile over the phone, and people can feel your smile down the road and around the corner before they even see you. KEEP SMILING! Lift other's spirits. Sometimes it is not as hard as we make it out to be! :)

-an average gal who gets to work with incredible souls

Keep Growing

Guest Post by Brittany Kirk, Gibson Insurance

This year has been wrought with challenges…that’s quite an understatement, isn’t it? But, ever the optimist, I’ve recently found myself thinking about how each challenge has presented an incredible opportunity for growth.

I’ve found myself repeating the mantra: with great challenge comes great opportunity.

Shelter-in-place required businesses to rethink their business models. Layoffs and furloughs required employees to rethink their careers. E-Learning required families to rethink their normal interactions and schedules. Remote work has required us to rethink how we collaborate with teams and how we serve clients. The list goes on. Each of these challenges has presented an opportunity to shed the old and embrace the new. We have been forced outside of our comfort zones, outside of the familiar, and into unknown territory. But it’s in the unfamiliar where we experience the most growth.

There are two ways that we respond to hardship – we can wish it away, hoping that the pain will go away as quickly as possible, or we can embrace the challenge and grow through the struggle.

Our world is still being turned upside-down every single day. We have no idea how long this pandemic will last, but you can bet that we’re going to continue to face new and different challenges every step of the way. And each of those challenges will present a new and different opportunity. The question is, how will you make the most of those opportunities?

No one wishes for pain. No one wanted a pandemic or e-learning, or to close their business, or to lose their job. And yet, the way we respond will determine how we come out on the other side.

We are weary, yet we are finding strength we never knew we had. We are tired, yet we face each day knowing that there are people counting on us to show up. We long for the “old normal,” yet we stay hopeful for the future.

It’s okay to be tired. It’s okay to be weary, but we must not give up.

We must keep going. We must keep growing.

In the Time of Uncertainty, I Offer You Little, Yet My Best

In the last few weeks, our fight against COVID-19 has taken our country and our world by storm and thrust us into a sea of uncertainty. In the midst of this storm, I appreciate my LinkedIn network community as a source of advice, encouragement, motivation, positivity and leadership lessons. 

It has taken me a while to write since our last post because I honestly struggled with what I could possibly share that our network and media have not already shared. 

If you are a leader and/or business owner, know that I admire you for the sheer responsibilities that you are carrying on your shoulders right now. The tough decisions that demand your attention that impact people’s livelihood, health, and safety far exceeded our normal day to day conversations about employee engagement and fulfillment. In this tough time, we are called to leadership qualities such as vulnerability, courage, transparency, and authenticity.  

“Our hard times produce in us perseverance, perseverance, character, and character, hope. ”

While you are in the midst of this journey, what little I can offer, is indeed the best I can offer: consider where the source of your strengths and wisdom are coming from. Remember that while we are afflicted in every way, we’re not crushed; perplexed but not driven to despair (2 Corinthians 4:8); but to know with full confidence that our hard times produce perseverance, perseverance, character, and character, hope (Romans 5:3-4); and character is the substance that great leadership is made of. 

In an environment where the uncontrollable is mounting, I dare to let go and know that God is faithful. Be blessed and be well, my friends. Please know that I am praying for you, your business, and your family.

Controlling vs. Leading: Are You a Bottleneck?

I was new on a team one time and found myself partnering with a truly talented individual. Over time, she and I shared our thoughts on how the team had some inefficiencies. Soon after, I got curious and asked why she was not speaking up about the ineffectiveness. It turned out that she did not feel as though she could; she was never once asked for ideas and input, and additionally, her manager appeared to be very attached to the current process. Over time, this created a feeling for her that no one was interested in her opinion. Maybe you’ve felt that way before too? Perhaps you may have caused others to feel that way unintentionally?

Do you remember the last time you wanted to be controlled and monitored? Managing for results is an essential function, but managing by controlling can stifle creativity, the individual’s willingness to commit, and their drive to deliver exceptional results.

To lead is to focus on people first, mission always. Leaders who manage this way know that to deliver results, it’s about the people. Understanding their people’s motivation, heart (purpose and passion), and talent, they seek to drive a team’s motivation, knowing that at the end of the day, it’s a motivated team that accomplishes a mission.

At a basic level, people crave a sense of purpose and want to build trusting relationships; therefore, servant leaders focus on leading and inspiring. They know their responsibility is to take care of their people, and their people will then take care of the mission. When we lead, we should first engage the heart of those we’re leading, and then we can leverage the passions and talents of our people to get things done. This approach becomes empowering to all involved—our people deliver excellent outcomes, and the company thrives.

To quickly check and evaluate if you are managing or leading, download our free guide “Manager vs. Leader.” Join the Leader Momentum movement to learn more about servant leadership. Learn more at www.leader-momentum.com.

Be a Superhero. Be a Leader.

Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to learn from the Cultural Intelligence Center by attending their Cultural Competency Training. The most profound experience for me was an activity where we had to start by describing a significant challenge our world face today and then consider what would happen if we left that challenge as is (not do anything about it). Lastly, we had to consider what would happen if that challenge overcame the world. Once we'd done that, we built a "superhero," equipping that superhero with special powers to overcome that challenge.

Be a Superhero. Be a Leader.

Our group had decided to make our superhero a powerful fairy (stay with me here). Our fairy has a bag of fairy dust that contains vulnerability, openness, understanding, appreciation, recognition, empathy, humility, and so on (it has everything because our fairy is a superhero).

In a world where we are diverse, be it race, culture, gender, age, education, or knowledge level, etc., what if we focus on being open and understanding from where others are coming? What if we considered the experiences that shape who others are? What would the world look like? Under stress, we tend to default to familiarity, to that comfort zone that makes us feel safe. But this isn't where change happens. To enact change, either in others or ourselves, avoid creating stressful experiences. Be considerate in your words and communication style. Be open, be a good listener, try to understand, be appreciative, and know that each person is valuable. Let that overcome the world instead.

Leading Others: 5 Disciplines to Multiply the Genius Around You and Avoid Becoming a Diminisher!

Liz Wiseman, the author of the insightful book Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, says that there are two types of leaders. The first type drains intelligence, energy, and capability from the people around them. They always need to be the smartest person in the room. Then there is the second type of leader: the multiplier. Multipliers lead by using their intelligence to amplify the capabilities of the people around them. When these leaders walk into a room, light bulbs go off over people’s heads, ideas flow, and problems get solved.

Multiplier vs. Diminisher

When we become a leader, we are motivated and hoped to be a multiplier. However, we can unintentionally become a diminisher if we’re not intentional about our drivers. When I heard Wiseman speaking at a conference ten years ago, I had an “aha” moment when I realized that I was an accidental diminisher. I was leading an employee who was capable and smart, but I tried to protect and save her from challenging situations. When I rescued her, she didn’t get the opportunity to solve problems herself and learn from her experiences. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, my job as a leader was to be a coach and a supporter. Since that realization, I learned to invest in her growth instead of jumping to rescue her from situations, and she began to thrive, and today she's a great leader in her profession.

It takes intentionality to be an effective leader. Sometimes, that intentionality is about knowing our blind spots and making sure we don't become that accidental diminisher. Use the below checklist, illustrating the five disciplines of a multiplier to do a self-check.

Are you a multiplier or a diminisher? Join the Leader Momentum movement to learn more about how servant leadership is the ultimate way to multiply! Learn more at www.leader-momentum.com.

If you are not on our mailing list yet, sign up to join the Leader Momentum movement with us: