workplace

Can You Lead with Heart and Get Results?

February 14, 2018 By Patti Cotton 1 Comment

A business can’t exist without meeting its bottom line.

But neither can a business exist without its people.

You’ve probably been in the room when budget is discussed, and someone diagrams the tension between dollars and people to get to an answer. The thought there is, too low on dollars, and we aren’t investing enough in infrastructure; too low on people and they won’t be engaged and produce.

But this is the wrong question.

What if I told you that in order to make your business perform at higher levels and meet the future more successfully, that you invest in people first, every time?

Can you really lead with heart first and get results?

Many misunderstand and think that leading with heart means taking on a maternal approach to leadership and offering a shoulder to cry on. Not so.

Leading with heart means leading with authenticity and service. It means putting people first. It’s having the ability to build trust and followership through influence and a genuine sense of service (and not because of position or power).

When you lead with heart, you get results.

Why?

Putting people first, building bonds, fostering their growth, and supporting their interests results in greater motivation. Your people become more highly engaged, and take more initiative. And this means more productivity. It means your workplace will experience a culture of creativity and fun.
All of this leads to a healthier and happier bottom line.

Instead of leading your decision-making with the dollar sign in front, keep your people as first priority.

What are the characteristics of leading with heart? Here is a short list to help you reconnect head and heart:

1. Lead with authenticity.

If you are attempting to emulate someone else’s style of leadership, or you haven’t taken the time to explore and discover your “inner leader” – your strengths, values, and personal mission – then you aren’t operating at your most powerful and best. Your natural gifts allow you to contribute at highest levels. Don’t play the comparison game – do the work to discover who you are as leader so that you are genuine in your approach to life, work, and relationships.

2. Serve with a sense of purpose.

Develop your why. Why do you do what you do? Why does the business exist? How do you and the business change things for the world? If you haven’t taken the time to answer these questions, then you don’t possess the drive that comes with purpose. Serving with purpose allows you to step outside yourself to connect and see how you can serve others. And that’s heart.

3. Develop capacity for love and caring in the workplace.

This may sound counter-intuitive. Yet, we are talking about the ability to build deep bonds and trust with others. This may sound rather esoteric, but stop to think for a moment: when human beings carry wounds and personal agendas fueled by a disconnect in character or poor experience, they step back, reticent to connect with others at a deep and personal level. This keeps others from trusting them, and staff will serve their leader out of fear and not out of love. If this is the case, motivation and engagement will take a deep dive – and so will your bottom line.

4. Foster growth and empowerment in others.

This may seem to be a given, but stop and think: are you someone who directs others and tells them what to do, or do you practice active listening and asking careful questions so that they can develop their personal growth? Are you someone who finds it difficult to trust others to get the job done, or do you take safe risks that allow others to flex their skills and learn to acquire greater tools?

5. Model and teach collaboration.

It’s easy to get the job done; it’s more challenging to allow others to participate and bring them along in the process. Do you find yourself saying, “Oh, I’ll just do this right now and we can move on,” or do you recognize the value in teaching collaboration? What else might get in your way of modeling collaboration? You’ll want to break through this so that you can create a powerful culture of team.

6. Confront courageously and in love.

Learn to love conflict, and to seek reconciling it wherever possible. Modeling this for your business will allow others to support reconciliation instead of forming silos and carrying the stress of unresolved conflict. Poor communication and conflict account for 87% of all productivity loss in the workplace. Learn to confront with courage and by being tough on issues and tender on people.

7. Celebrate creativity, fun, and initiative.

Are you having fun yet? Do your employees show they are enjoying what they do? If not, you will want to look at fostering a spirit of creativity and allowing more brainstorming and collaboration on areas you have considered closed. Cultivate the ability in yourself and your people to consider various perspectives outside the norm. Remember – the most amazing inventions have been born out of thinking outside the box. And thinking outside the box means stepping outside of it.

If you can master these seven steps, you will truly be on a strong path to leading with the heart. And in a world where technology continues to grow and impact our ability to lift each other up, cultivating the human spirit in love is more important than ever before.

Patti Cotton

Patti Cotton reenergizes talented leaders and their teams to achieve fulfillment and extraordinary results. For more information on how Patti Cotton can help you and your organization, click here.

Coaching Your New Manager

June 21, 2017 By Patti Cotton Leave a Comment

5 Paradigm Shifts to Help Them Win

Onboarding and training a first-time manager requires time, money, and energy. Some of you have sent your new hire to “first-time manager training” or boot camps, and others have thrown this budding talent into the deep end, figuring they are smart enough to swim.

But what happens when the initial onboarding and training have taken place? Now it is up to you. You as leader must help them to step into management-level thinking and execution so that they can begin to excel in the job to which you have promoted them.

Why should you do this? You hired this person because of their talent, and you simply need them to apply it in this new job. But the skills that helped them excel in their former role are not what will make them successful now.

Managing people and an area of responsibility is much different than simply performing one’s own work.

So stakes are high. And if you ignore this, it will cost you 6-9 months of the new first-time manager’s salary to replace him or her.

How do you help your first-time manager succeed quickly?

How do you show the company that you have a reputation for selecting great talent and that you are not simply adding to the budget burden?

Some leaders ignore the period after the “hire honeymoon,” moving on to other priorities. They are happy they have this new talent to help out in the department – to lift and shift some responsibilities so that the team operates at greater levels. A leader that does this has hopefully clarified the new role with their new hire, and they have even given the first-time manager a set of goals to meet.

Such a leader figures that if there is a problem in the future, the new manager should either figure it out, or seek advice.

This is short-sighted.

Not only do 60% of new managers fail in the first 12-18 months, most of the time it is not their fault. It is due, most times, to a lack of clarity, direction, resources, and coaching to help them develop management skills. And that’s something over which you have control.

Yes, after the “honeymoon period” of onboarding and initial training is over, it’s time for you to start coaching the first-time manager.

Where do you start?

You can actually help this new hire to speed-dial their management-level thinking to help them make the shift from a narrow, task-oriented world to a broader one of overseeing an area of responsibility and managing people.

You see, thinking governs the way we make decisions and take actions. It dictates the way we see our external world and how we will then approach it. And moving from being responsible for a set of assigned tasks and projects to supporting a team and holding these team members accountable for doing the same is very different!

So how do you help them begin to develop management-level thinking? You can begin by helping them shift some common, self-limiting language patterns to supportive new ones.

Here are the top 5 negative language patterns heard just this week, and how you can gently correct them.

1. From “We can’t because…” to “How can we…?”

A first-time manager cannot necessarily see a larger picture because they have operated within their own former role’s confines and have not been exposed to more. Encourage them to think about possibilities. Ask them the following: “If we could do that thing you are talking about, what are 2-3 ways we might handle it?” Encourage your new hire to be curious by asking how something might be possible, instead of prematurely pronouncing quick judgment.

2. From “I have a problem – what should I do?” to “I’ve identified a problem and have a couple of suggestions as to what we might do…”

A first-time hire wants to look competent by avoiding making mistakes, so they may run to you for answers when they should be thinking about possible solutions, first. Tell your new hire that as a human, they are sure to make mistakes – that everyone does. Tell them it’s more important to you that they begin to bring possible solutions to you so that the two of you can think through best strategy. This relieves you of having to think for two people, and develops their critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

3. From “They’re just that way…” to “This is what I’d like to see…”

Teach your first-time manager to fight bias where other employees are concerned. Instead of allowing them to vilify the employee under discussion, ask your new hire to describe the desired behavior or action they would like to see, instead. Then talk about how they might hold the employee accountable for that. By doing this, you are coaching your first-time manager to take a coaching approach, as well.

4. From “I know I don’t know much, but…” to “One way to approach this is if we…”

In an effort to remain humble or not to appear arrogant or smug, your first-time manager may self-deprecate when offering an opinion. Self-deprecating language is undermining and can actually appear as false modesty. Encourage your new hire to drop all apologetic language and to offer opinions as possibilities. “One way to approach this is if we explore XYZ – what do you think?” is a safe means of offering an opinion while your first-time hire is developing confidence.

5. From “I” to “We.”

This is perhaps one of the most important shifts your first-time manager will need to make. Instead of seeking affirmation for their individual efforts, they need to begin seeing success as a collective effort and acknowledging the team. This point is so important that you may want to have a dedicated conversation around it. Share your own experience. Did you once fall on your face when in that same new position, by trying to “show your stuff with “I” language?” Tell them. Let them know that we all have to learn this at one point – it’s part of growth.

When you coach your first-time manager into management-level thinking, eliminating self-limiting language patterns will help them to replace self-imposed limitations and to model a forward-thinking approach for the entire team.

By the way, if you take these tips and put them to work, not only are you coaching management-level thinking, but you are also helping your first-time manager to reshape their entire approach to work and life. Coaching someone to widen their perspectives and to develop the ability to vision beyond the present is a great gift.

Have you ever had a first-time manager that exhibited defeating language? What would you have liked to hear, instead?

What impact are you having in life and business?
Click below to take the complimentary Impact Assessment.

http://inspireinfluenceimpactquiz.com/

Patti Cotton helps executives optimize their effectiveness in leading self, others, and the enterprise. Her areas of focus include confidence, leadership style, executive presence, effective communication, succession planning, and masterful execution. With over 25 years of leadership experience, both stateside and abroad, Patti works with individuals, teams, and organizations across industries, providing executive coaching, leadership development, succession planning, change, and conflict management. She is also a Fortune 500 speaker. For more information on how Patti Cotton can help you and your organization, click here.

Patti Cotton

Patti Cotton reenergizes talented leaders and their teams to achieve fulfillment and extraordinary results. For more information on how Patti Cotton can help you and your organization, click here.

How to Navigate Office Politics

May 1, 2017 By Patti Cotton Leave a Comment

Are you a victim or perpetrator of bad office politics?

Sooner or later, you will find that you play both roles – unless you know how to navigate the waters.

What are office politics, and why are they hated?

Office politics get a bad rap, when they actually should be embraced as part of business expertise.

The problem arises when we don’t know how to work with office politics, or worse, we use them to seek advantage at the expense of others or the greater good. This is when things can turn ugly, personal, and damaging.

If you think you can simply avoid becoming involved, think again. When two or more people are gathered together, there will be politics. Politics are strategies people use in order to gain advantage. As human beings, we do this naturally, in order to get what we want, or to advocate for a larger cause.

At best, we call it “influence.” And since reputations, relationships, and careers are made or broken because of office politics, we should learn to master them so that results turn out to be “win-win.”

We often find it difficult to deal with office politics effectively because we don’t know how to approach them. Because of this, we may unwittingly be promoting them, despite our insistence that we don’t play.

When we realize that office politics are here to stay, we can come out on top and make them work for us.

How?

By following these 3 rules:

1. Strengthen your own circle of influence.

Instead of approaching office politics as damage control, see them as useful dynamics to help everyone get ahead. Focus on the positive by strengthening key relationships on a continual basis to expand your influence. When things get hot, you will be well-positioned to emerge victorious. On the other hand, if you are someone who doesn’t have the advantage of guidance or a support network, and you are constantly trying to prove yourself, you are in a vulnerable position and can be shot down easily, whether you are in the room or not.

2. Avoid dysfunctional patterns.

Don’t take sides. When you do this, you polarize people and cloud the issues. Ask yourself – and others – what the issues are, and avoid disparaging remarks about personalities. Make sure that if things get personal, you are the one who pulls the conversation back to the issues. Don’t climb into the pit with others who want to hurt or discredit.

3. Shift the larger culture.

Select a few key colleagues of integrity, and agree that you will be positive PR for each other. I have worked with many groups of professionals, both in the business world and in international government relations. This one strategy has worked to turn entire company cultures around. Are you in the room when an absent colleague is being discussed? Put in a good word for this colleague. Talk about their latest success with a project, initiative, or the way they approach their work.

I challenge you to see office politics as a way to influence a win-win situation!

Patti Cotton

Patti Cotton reenergizes talented leaders and their teams to achieve fulfillment and extraordinary results. For more information on how Patti Cotton can help you and your organization, click here.