Imagine walking into a workspace where every dialogue ignites change, where conversations resonate deeply, and where every word exchanged pushes the company towards its goals. Sounds like a dream scenario, right? But what if this isn’t just a far-off aspiration but a tangible reality?

Reflect on your company’s daily interactions. Do they feel genuine? Are they impactful? Or do they merely touch the surface? It’s a sobering thought, but it’s a challenge many face. Coast Capital Savings Credit Union, offers invaluable lessons for any organization. Their journey of cultural transformation, driven by tailored leadership programs, resulted in tangible business benefits and a more engaged workforce. 

Intrigued to discover how Coast Capital achieved this? Join me as we delve into their story uncovering insights and, who knows, maybe finding the blueprint for a similar transformation in your own organization.

The Power of Authentic Conversations

Ever sat through a conversation that felt like it was on autopilot? Words flowing, but nothing truly resonating? It’s a common scenario, but what if the key to unlocking a company’s potential lies in those very conversations?

This isn’t about the casual water cooler chats or the routine team meetings. This is about genuine, transformative dialogues that push boundaries and inspire change. A tall order? Perhaps. But not impossible.

Coast Capital Savings Credit Union was built on relationships. For over 75 years they served the province of British Columbia with over 500,000 and 50 branches,  but they needed to rewrite its success story. Instead of pouring funds into the latest tech or bringing in a parade of consultants, they zeroed in on the essence of their organization: their culture and their conversations. And the transformation? Nothing short of groundbreaking.

Perhaps it’s time to shift our gaze from the endless metrics and analytics. Maybe the real magic happens in the heart-to-heart exchanges, the genuine interactions, the authentic conversations. If Coast Capital could harness the power of conversation to redefine its trajectory, what’s stopping other businesses from doing the same? 

Investing in Leadership: Not Just for the Big Players

There’s a common misconception floating around: structured leadership programs are the exclusive domain of large corporations. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. Leadership, with its transformative potential, isn’t bound by the size of an organization. It’s about vision, drive, and the will to make a difference.

Coast Capital serves as a testament to this belief. They didn’t just invest in leadership; they made it a cornerstone of their organizational strategy. Over two years, 125 managers underwent intensive training, proving that you don’t need to be a corporate behemoth to prioritize and benefit from leadership development.

The results? A ripple effect of positive change throughout the organization. And here’s something that might surprise you: the focus wasn’t on traditional leadership metrics. Instead, it was about igniting conversations, fostering genuine connections, and building a culture of authenticity.

So, if there’s one insight to take away, it’s this: leadership development isn’t a luxury reserved for the big leagues. It’s a necessity, a catalyst for change, and it’s within reach for businesses of all sizes. After all, if Coast Capital can harness the power of leadership to redefine its trajectory, the possibilities are endless for others willing to take the leap.

Tools that Transcend the Workplace

Business tools and techniques often come and go, fading into obscurity as quickly as they rise to prominence. But every once in a while, something truly transformative emerges, leaving an indelible mark not just on the workplace, but on the very fabric of our lives.

Enter the unique tools introduced by Fierce at Coast Capital. The Decision Tree and Mineral Rights weren’t just another set of corporate strategies; they became catalysts for profound change. These tools didn’t just boost business results; they permeated the personal lives of those who wielded them.

Take Heather’s story, for instance. Using the Fierce Mineral Rights model, she navigated a personal challenge with her child, turning a moment of distress into an empowering lesson. It’s a vivid reminder that the tools we adopt in our professional lives can have far-reaching implications, touching corners of our existence we never anticipated.

But here’s an insight that might catch you off guard: It’s not the complexity of a tool that determines its impact. It’s the authenticity with which it’s employed. Coast Capital’s experience underscores the potential of simple, genuine tools to drive both professional and personal growth.

In essence, the right tools don’t just shape businesses; they shape lives. And in the hands of a committed team, they can redefine the boundaries of what’s possible, both within the office walls and beyond.

Measurable Success Beyond Revenue

Success is often distilled down to numbers on a balance sheet. Revenue, profit margins, growth rates – these become the yardsticks by which achievements are gauged. But what if true success is more multifaceted than mere figures suggest?

Coast Capital’s journey with Fierce paints a vivid picture of this broader perspective on success. Yes, the bottom line matters, but the institution’s transformation went beyond mere financial metrics. They delved into realms often overlooked: employee engagement, operational efficiency, and the overall member experience.

For instance, while revenue spikes are undoubtedly impressive, the rise in employee engagement at Coast Capital was a testament to a deeper, more sustainable transformation. Engaged employees aren’t just more productive; they’re more invested, more passionate, and more likely to drive long-term growth.

Similarly, operational efficiency isn’t just about streamlining processes. At Coast Capital, it translated into more meaningful interactions, reduced redundancies, and a smoother, more cohesive workflow.

And here’s a slightly counterintuitive nugget: sometimes, focusing on aspects other than revenue can lead to even greater financial success in the long run. When a company prioritizes its people, its processes, and its patrons, the financial rewards often follow.

In the web of business success, Coast Capital serves as a poignant reminder: true achievement is holistic, encompassing not just the tangible but the intangible, not just the immediate but the enduring.

The Ripple Effect of Effective Leadership Training

Change, especially in the realm of business, often starts as a tiny ripple, an almost imperceptible shift. But with the right catalyst, that ripple can transform into a tidal wave of positive transformation. Leadership training, when done right, can be that catalyst.

Coast Capital’s experience stands as a beacon of this transformative power. Post their collaboration with Fierce, the institution didn’t just witness isolated pockets of improvement. Instead, they observed a sweeping change, a ripple effect that touched every facet of their organization.

Within just four months of their leadership training, there was a 14% surge in effective behaviors. This wasn’t a mere statistical blip; it was a tangible shift in the way leaders interacted, made decisions, and drove their teams forward. 

But here’s something that might raise eyebrows: it wasn’t just about adopting new behaviors. It was about unlearning old ones, challenging entrenched norms, and embracing a fresh, more dynamic leadership ethos.

The most profound changes often stem from the simplest of actions. In Coast Capital’s case, it was the decision to invest in leadership training. That single choice set off a cascade of positive outcomes, reshaping the institution’s trajectory and setting it on a path to sustained excellence.

In the end, it’s evident that leadership training isn’t just a box to be ticked off. It’s a powerful tool, a catalyst, and perhaps the starting point of a company’s next big success story.

The Transformative Power of Authenticity and Leadership

As we journey through business objectives and challenges, it’s easy to get lost in the maze of metrics, strategies, and bottom lines. But Coast Capital’s story serves as a compelling reminder of the profound impact of genuine interactions and visionary leadership.

Their transformation wasn’t just about adopting new tools or strategies. It was a holistic shift, rooted in authenticity, driven by effective leadership, and fueled by genuine conversations. It’s a testament to the idea that true transformation isn’t just about change; it’s about evolution, growth, and reaching new pinnacles of success.

In the end, the path to cultural transformation might be challenging, filled with twists and turns, but as Coast Capital has shown, with authenticity and visionary leadership, it’s a journey worth embarking on.

The post The Path to Cultural Transformation within Your Company appeared first on Fierce.

In the fast-paced world of business, finding effective strategies to optimize productivity and maintain work-life balance is essential for both business leaders and managers.

One innovative approach gaining popularity is “Bare Minimum Monday.”  

Looking at recent employee data says changing our approach at the start of the work week may be needed. In a survey conducted by LinkedIn, 75 percent of working adults admit to experiencing the “Sunday Scaries,” which refers to a sense of anxiety or apprehension about the approaching week.

While it may feel like a stripped-down version of “quiet quitting”, this concept does have the potential to bring back balance into your work and help you focus on what matters. You can begin to incorporate Bare Minimum Monday into your work life for increased efficiency, reduced stress, and improved overall well-being.

What is Bare Minimum Monday

The term “Bare Minimum Monday” was popularized by self-employed TikToker, Marisa Jo Mayes.  Mayes felt overwhelmed at the start of the week and began shifting her priorities to only what was essential and would keep her work-life balanced. Rather than crafting a long list of to-dos at the beginning of the week, only to stare at the unfinished items in despair. 

On Mondays, Mayes doesn’t take meetings for the first two hours of the day. Those first two hours are spent reading and journaling to focus on the essential tasks of the week and what she needs to accomplish. The one thing she avoids in those two hours is technology and especially email. By 10 AM she is ready for creative work and then a focus on main work tasks in the afternoon.

Since the term was popularized, many, especially remote workers and the self-employed have embraced the concept  Yet, Bare Minimum Mondays can have a place in corporate life and larger organizations. The ultimate goal of this strategy is to shed the overwhelming workload mindset. You have one day to focus on the essential tasks of your job and professional development.  

Why This Approach Works

1. You Start the Week with Clarity

Utilizing Bare Minimum Monday allows business leaders and managers to hit the reset button, gaining clarity on priorities and setting achievable goals for the week ahead. By identifying and focusing on the most critical tasks, professionals can eliminate distractions and reduce stress levels, enabling them to work more efficiently.

2. Cultivating Work-Life Balance

Bare Minimum Monday encourages individuals to incorporate self-care activities into their routines, such as exercise, meditation, or quality time with loved ones. A balanced work-life approach enhances productivity and prevents burnout. Leaders can use Bare Minimum Monday as an opportunity to promote work-life balance within their teams, leading to a more engaged and motivated workforce.

3. Increasing Efficiency and Productivity

We tend to underestimate the power of focused work. By limiting distractions and narrowing the focus to essential tasks, Bare Minimum Monday helps accomplish critical objectives more efficiently, resulting in increased productivity. When paired with time-blocking strategies you allocate specific periods for focused work and uninterrupted concentration, yielding higher-quality outputs.

4. Creating a Positive Work Culture

Leaders who adopt concepts from Bare Minimum Monday and openly communicate its benefits create a positive work culture that encourages balance and improved employee well-being. With reduced stress and improved work-life balance, team members are more likely to experience enhanced creativity and innovation, bringing fresh perspectives to problem-solving and driving business growth.

How To Implement Bare Minimum Mondays 

The key concept in this approach is to avoid hitting the ground running at the start of the week. Don’t immediately jump into emails or meetings or intensive work. Take some time to center yourself and your priorities and give space to think through what is critical in your tasks and responsibilities. 

If you exercise, you understand the concept of warming up. Runners don’t jump straight into sprint work without first warming up and stretching to get ready for high-energy output. Weightlifters don’t come in cold, load up the bar near their max, and begin working. They warm up slowly to get the blood flowing, the joints warm, and the muscles loose.

Think of Bare Minimum Mondays as your warmup to the work week. These ideas will help your teams begin to implement this strategy.

1. Review Time

Encourage one or two hours at the beginning of the week to focus and reflect on their week and what needs to be accomplished. As part of this focus time, capture loose ends and clarify any new commitments or tasks that emerged in the previous weeks. Process and organize any accumulated notes, papers, or digital files. Reflect on the previous week’s accomplishments and challenges, identifying any lessons learned or areas for improvement. Plan and preview the upcoming week by identifying priority tasks and appointments, and ensuring that the calendar and to-do lists are up to date.

2. Prioritizing Essential Tasks

Managers can help their team members identify and prioritize the most critical tasks for the week. This involves focusing on key projects, deadlines, or deliverables that need immediate attention and setting them as the primary goals for “Bare Minimum Monday.”

3. Time Blocking

Encourage your team to dedicate specific time blocks on Monday for important tasks or projects. By blocking out distractions and creating uninterrupted work periods, employees can focus on completing essential work.

4. Agile or Scrum Approach

Some teams may find it beneficial to adopt Agile or Scrum methodologies. In this context, Monday can be dedicated to planning, organizing tasks, and setting priorities for the upcoming week. This can help streamline workflow and improve productivity.

5. Team Huddles or Check-ins

Managers can schedule brief team meetings on Monday mornings to discuss priorities, share updates, and ensure everyone is aligned on the week’s goals. This promotes accountability and provides an opportunity to address any questions or concerns.

Summary

Bare Minimum Monday offers a refreshing and innovative approach to work-life balance and productivity optimization. By starting the week with clarity, cultivating work-life balance, increasing efficiency and productivity, and creating a positive work culture, professionals can experience a significant positive impact on their overall well-being and job satisfaction. Embracing this concept can lead to a more focused, balanced, and fulfilling work experience.

So, why not give it a try? Incorporate Bare Minimum Monday into your routine and unlock the potential for a more productive work life. 

The post Revolutionize Your Workweek: Unleash the Power of Bare Minimum Mondays appeared first on Fierce.

High Performing teams know how to call timeout and reset when momentum turns.

Good coaches call timeouts. Especially during playoff and tournament play when a high-performing team begins losing momentum. Everyone can feel it. Perceptive coaches stop play, call timeout, and regroup the team to reset and create a plan to shift the advantage back in their direction.

During a game, momentum can shift quickly based on a variety of factors, such as a series of successful plays by the opposing team a string of mistakes made by the coach’s team, or a change in strategy by the other team. When momentum shifts against a team, it can lead to a loss of confidence, increased stress and frustration, and a sense of helplessness among players.

By calling a timeout, the coach can stop the game and regroup with their team. During the timeout, the coach may use the opportunity to make adjustments to their team’s strategy, motivate players, or make substitutions. The timeout also allows players to catch their breath, refocus, and regroup mentally.

Yes, calling a timeout and resetting is an essential skill for high-performing teams 

But how often in a work environment do we hold up the time-out and call for a reset?

Just like in athletics, timeouts provide an opportunity for teams to pause, reflect, and adjust their strategies to address challenges and obstacles that arise during their work. They allow team members to step back, re-assess the situation, and make informed decisions that can help them achieve their goals.

Timeouts also give team members a chance to regroup and communicate more effectively. When a team is facing a difficult problem or challenge, emotions can run high, and it can be hard to stay focused and productive. A well-timed timeout can help team members calm down, re-focus, and get back on track.

In addition to calling timeouts, high-performing teams also know how to reset. Resetting means taking a step back and re-evaluating the team’s goals, strategies, and processes. It’s an opportunity to reflect on what’s working and what’s not and make adjustments accordingly. Resetting can help teams stay aligned, improve their performance, and continue to work together effectively over the long term.

Overall, calling timeouts and resetting are essential skills for high-performing teams. They enable teams to stay focused, productive, and effective in the face of challenges and obstacles and ensure that they continue to work together cohesively and achieve their goals.

How to know when to call a timeout?

If you are an intuitive leader, you probably feel it. Things aren’t going well. Deadlines are being missed. Morale is beginning to bottom out, and you sense grumbling and complaining among team members. If you wait too long, it may become more apparent with true emotional conflict erupting among teammates. 

Sometimes we don’t communicate enough with our teams and have opportunities for feedback. This makes us blind to what is happening under the service. Establishing regular feedback conversations allows you to monitor the pulse of your team’s performance and the attitudes that underlie their action.  

How to Implement an Effective Team Time-Out

In the military, they perform something called an After Action Review (AAR). Typically these are used to evaluate the success or failure of a mission, analyze the performance of the troops and identify opportunities for improvement. While the context and objectives of military missions are quite different from those of business teams, the AAR process can still be applied in a meaningful way especially when you need a time-out.

Spend time in reflection

AARs encourage a culture of continuous improvement, where team members are encouraged to reflect on their performance and identify areas for improvement. This same mentality can be applied to business teams, where employees are encouraged to reflect on their work and identify ways to improve their processes, communication, and teamwork.

Encourage honest feedback

AARs encourage troops to provide honest feedback on their performance and the performance of their team. In business, this same level of honesty can be applied to encourage team members to provide constructive feedback to each other, identify areas where they need support or improvement, and work collaboratively to solve problems.

Focus on the objective

AARs in the military focus on the mission objective and how the team performed in achieving that objective. Similarly, high-performing business teams should focus on the objectives of their projects, products, or services, and assess how well they are achieving them. By keeping the focus on the objective, the team can identify areas where they need to improve and set goals for the future.

Take action

AARs are not just a retrospective exercise, they are also designed to identify actionable insights that can be used to improve performance. Similarly, high-performing business teams can use AARs to identify actionable insights that can be used to improve their processes, communication, and teamwork.

Have fun

This probably isn’t part of the military’s AAR process, however taking time away from the office for a much-needed break is a good way to reset your team. They need time to enjoy being a team again. This could be planned team-building activities or merely a day doing something enjoyable together. A small break together can be enough to get momentum and energy back on the team.

Summary

Just like athletics, calling timeouts and resetting are crucial skills for high-performing teams in the workplace. They provide an opportunity for teams to pause, reflect, and adjust their strategies to overcome challenges and obstacles. Knowing when to call a timeout is essential, and regular feedback conversations can help leaders monitor their team’s performance and attitudes. 

Take time for team reflection, embrace honest feedback, and don’t lose sight of the ultimate objectives. Take action, and don’t forget to have some fun. By incorporating these strategies, teams will stay focused, productive, and effective in achieving their goals.

The post How to Call Timeout, Regroup and Communicate More Effectively appeared first on Fierce.

Year of Resilience Tip #11: Think Positive

Positive thinking is not avoiding negative reality, but reframing it so you have the power to make productive change.

This week’s tip is to turn positive thinking into a method for reframing obstacles.

There is a well-established psychological principle that our thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes have a significant impact on our behavior and our perception of reality. This principle is often referred to as the “self-fulfilling prophecy,” which suggests that if we believe something to be true, we are more likely to act in ways that make that belief a reality.

You’ve seen this play out in the lives of friends and co-workers. Some seem to always be falling into opportunity and others into constant chaos. While we can’t promise a life of ease and financial abundance from this week’s tip. We can promise that shifting your mindset toward a positive direction and learning to reframe negative situations will improve your resilience and even impact those around you.

Benefits of Positive Thinking

Over the last several decades much research has been done on happiness. This has been an interesting shift for many psychologists and sociologists.  Rather than focusing on the negative and disturbing parts of human nature, groups of psychologists embarked on finding ways to improve happiness and well-being. 

The results of the research have proven to be beneficial. In studying happy and positive people several major benefits for the modern workplace have risen to the surface.

More productive

According to a study by the University of Warwick, happy employees are 12% more productive than their unhappy counterparts.

This shouldn’t be too surprising. When you are overwhelmed and allow yourself to sink into negativity about challenges it drains your energy and often leads to procrastination.

It doesn’t only apply to project work or daily tasks but has a direct impact on how effective your salespeople are. 

A study by the University of Pennsylvania found that optimistic salespeople outsell their pessimistic counterparts by 56%.

No one wants to buy from grouchy unhappy people. A key component of the sales process is the initial rapport with a prospect. Positive people immediately are more engaging and connect faster, especially on new sales relationships. 

Deeper engagement at work

With issues of employee retention and engagement at critical levels in workplaces. Anything we can do to move the needle in a positive direction will have a massive impact on bottom-line profits. A Gallup survey found that employees who receive regular recognition and praise have 34% higher engagement levels than those who don’t.

Also, in a study by the University of California, researchers found that positive feedback can lead to increased motivation and better performance among employees.

As a leader, expressing yourself to your teams in a positive language not only increases your work engagement but ripples out into greater productivity for everyone you connect with. 

According to a report by the Society for Human Resource Management, companies with a positive corporate culture have lower turnover rates and higher employee retention rates.

Learning to think and act positively is a critical quality of leadership that not only supports the growth of your people but improves company metrics as well.

Creative and innovative

Creativity and innovation among leaders and employees allow all of us to solve problems effectively and efficiently. In a study by Harvard Business Review, researchers found that positive emotions lead to more creative and innovative thinking in the workplace.

Every organization needs innovation to succeed and win in the marketplace. Your ability to be innovative is a key element in setting yourself apart from competitors. 

How Does Positive Thinking Work

There is a well-established psychological principle that our thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes have a significant impact on our behavior and our perception of reality. This principle is often referred to as the “self-fulfilling prophecy,” which suggests that if we believe something to be true, we are more likely to act in ways that make that belief a reality.

For example, if you believe that you are capable of achieving your goals and that you have the skills and resources necessary to succeed, you are more likely to take proactive steps toward achieving those goals. On the other hand, if you believe that you are destined to fail or that you lack the necessary skills or resources to succeed, you are more likely to give up or not even try in the first place.

In this way, our thoughts and beliefs create a kind of feedback loop, where our beliefs shape our behavior, which in turn reinforces those beliefs. This lead to a self-reinforcing cycle where our thoughts and beliefs become increasingly entrenched over time.

Myths about Positive Thinking

Before we jump into practical ways for becoming more positive, let’s talk about significant misunderstandings about positive thinking. Positive thinking has been a buzzword in the self-help industry for decades. It’s the idea that if we simply focus on the positive, we can manifest our dreams and create a happy life. However, this popular way of thinking is a pitfall to our progress. It’s not about avoiding negative reality, but rather reframing it so we have the power to make productive change. This is not beneficial positive thinking but rather – toxic positivity.

Toxic positivity is the excessive and ineffective overgeneralization of a happy, optimistic attitude. It is the belief that one should always focus on the positive and suppress any negative thoughts or emotions. This is harmful because it ignores the reality of difficult situations and prevents individuals from processing and coping with negative emotions.

To combat this misunderstanding of positive thinking it’s important to acknowledge negative emotions when they arise. It’s okay to feel sad, angry, or frustrated. These emotions are a natural part of the human experience. Instead of trying to avoid them, we use them to our advantage.

How to Think Positively

Acknowledge Obstacles 

In any job, it is essential to acknowledge that encountering obstacles and negative circumstances is a typical occurrence. These manifest in many forms, such as an uncooperative coworker, a complex project, or a career setback, and they lead to stress and demotivation. By acknowledging reality, you identify ways to learn and improve from these experiences.

One crucial step is accepting mistakes. It is only human to make errors, and it is essential not to dwell on them. Every mistake presents an opportunity to learn and develop. Rather than fixating on the mistake itself, it is more productive to analyze it objectively and determine what can be done differently in the future. By doing so, mistakes are transformed into opportunities for improvement and help you grow both personally and professionally.

Learn to Reframe

Reframing negative situations by focusing on solutions instead of problems transforms your thinking. By shifting your mindset, you find creative solutions to overcome obstacles. To practice reframing, analyze how you process information and retrain your thinking habits to be more positive. Reframing questions help you and your employees see things through a different lens and improve problem-solving skills.

Reframing negative emotions means taking a step back and looking at them from a different perspective. It helps us see them as an opportunity to learn and grow instead of a roadblock. Positive thinking and reframing go hand in hand, as they both involve consciously choosing to focus on the positive aspects of a situation, rather than the negative. Reframing reduces negative emotions, increases feelings of optimism and hope, and improves overall mood and outlook on life.

Combine with Gratitude

Practicing gratitude and positive thinking helps to shift your mindset towards positivity, enabling you to navigate even the most difficult situations. Seek out positive things happening around you, such as the love of your family and friends, the support of your colleagues, and the beauty of nature. By focusing on these positive aspects, you maintain a positive outlook and carry this mindset into the workplace.

While you cannot control everything in life, it is important to focus on the things that you can control. Rather than feeling helpless when things go wrong, become a problem solver and search for ways to improve your situation. If you cannot find a solution, try to learn from the experience and comfort yourself with the knowledge that things can always get better. By focusing on what you can control, you regain a sense of agency and increase your resilience in the face of adversity.

Network Positively

When facing difficult situations, seeking support and feedback from others is crucial to finding effective solutions. Many people are hesitant to ask for help or advice, fearing that it may make them appear weak or incompetent. However, recognizing when you need help and reaching out to others is a sign of strength, not weakness. Seeking guidance from others provides fresh perspectives on the situation, and working together with others leads to creative and innovative solutions that you may not have thought of on your own. Whether it’s seeking feedback from a mentor, brainstorming with colleagues, or asking for assistance from a friend, remember that you do not have to face challenging situations alone.

Surrounding yourself with positive people also has a significant impact on your overall well-being. Positive people help elevate your mood and inspire you to be your best self. They provide you with encouragement, support, and motivation during difficult times. In contrast, negative people drain your energy, bring you down, and make it challenging to stay focused and motivated. Try to cultivate relationships with positive coworkers or friends who share your values and help you achieve your goals. Surrounding yourself with people who uplift and inspire you to navigate through challenges with a more positive outlook and a greater sense of resilience.

Summary

We can learn to navigate the intricate interplay between our thoughts, behavior, and the world around us by fostering self-awareness and critical thinking. As a manager, leader, or team member, negative situations and obstacles are inevitable. Nevertheless, it’s crucial to approach these challenges positively and view them as opportunities for growth and development. 

Leaders, especially, must possess the essential skill of healthy positive thinking. By concentrating on solutions, cultivating gratitude, reframing negativity, and seeking support from others, leaders can surmount even the toughest challenges and emerge more resilient and stronger than before. So, the next time you encounter an obstacle, take a deep breath, change your thinking, and prepare to tackle it head-on.

The post Turn Positive Thinking into a Method for Reframing Obstacles appeared first on Fierce.

What organizations need now more than ever are resilient leaders willing to be bold and lead their people through change. Times are disruptive. Employee morale may be at its lowest level in years. We are all still recovering from the effects of the pandemic. 

Unfortunately, the burden rests on the shoulders of leaders. But you can lead your people through these unprecedented times by developing and displaying the qualities of resilient leaders throughout the ages. 

Harvard Business School Professor Nancy Koehn states:

“Resilience is the capacity to not only endure great challenges but get stronger in the midst of them. This is such an extraordinarily important capability because we live in a world that’s one nonstop crisis—one calamity, one emergency, one unexpected, often difficult surprise—after another, like waves breaking on the shore.”

By becoming resilient you communicate power and commitment to your people and enable them to do more than they could on their own. Let’s look at the qualities you need to become a bold and resilient leader. 

Characteristics of Bold & Resilient Leaders

Self-Awareness

Everyone is watching you. Are you watching yourself? One of the most difficult tasks of leaders is to be self-aware. When surveyed, people think they have high levels of self-awareness, but when tested, the percentage of people with true self-awareness is low. 

Self-awareness makes you an observer of your actions and emotional responses. You take back a measure of control over how you respond to the events that happen in your life. The most interesting outcome of self-awareness is that it actually makes you more open and empathic to others, allowing you to communicate with them more effectively.

Self-awareness is a key trait in becoming more resilient because you understand how you respond to stress and recognize the stressors in your life. Knowing your stressors allows you to build systems to manage their impact on your performance. 

Delegates to Develop

In order to accomplish great outcomes and inspire the people around you, you must focus on your strengths and what the organization really needs from you. This will require you to delegate those tasks to keep you from doing those high-priority-focused actions. 

Delegation is difficult because we are fearful others won’t do the tasks up to our standards. Guess what? They won’t be. In fact, it may be better, and it will always be different. Don’t despair over this. Rather than delegating to remove work from your plate, view delegation with a second purpose — team development. You allow your people to develop new and deeper skills when they take on your tasks. Yes, they may not do it perfectly the first time, but you can coach them through the task and have conversations on how to improve. 

Once your people develop the skills to tackle tasks that once distracted you, you’ve increased your own workload capacity and the teams.

Confronts with Compassion

Confrontation is a necessary part of leadership. While there may be a handful of leaders who relish the opportunity to prove themselves right and put others in their place, the majority of us dread those difficult conversations. In fact, the leader who finds joy in “toxic” confrontation creates a culture of fear and easily diminishes morale throughout the organization.

Rather than going into a difficult conversation without preparation, it is helpful to have frameworks that you can practice and role-play. When we work with clients in confrontation training, having a framework you can fall back onto when having a discussion creates confidence, and immediately empowers the conversation. Also, remember to make confrontation a conversation where you hold accountable but seek to understand. The goal is to change behavior and hold responsible but due so with respect and honor, so the relationship stays intact.

Continuous Learner

When you read biographies on great leaders throughout history, you rarely find one who isn’t a reader and continuous learner. Building on the other competency of self-awareness, part of focused learning should always be to enhance areas of weaknesses. Being curious and willing to expand your knowledge base even outside your industry and areas of expertise. Often the best ideas related to innovation come from interacting with spheres outside our normal work. 

Being a continuous learner also means having a growth mindset. Rather than living in a fixed world where no improvement can occur, you deeply believe change is possible in yourself and others. This motivation is what drives you to explore and continue to learn.

Learn to see every challenge and obstacle as the ability to grow and become stronger, more resilient, and bold in action.

Risk Taker

It may be an urban legend, but Albert Einstein is reported to have said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” This accurately describes why leaders are willing to change and take risks. Even the best plans and operational strategies miss the mark. Everyone may be working productively and following plans at a high level, but metrics don’t seem to move. You aren’t getting closer to your objectives.

This is where leadership is needed. Leaders must step in and make the best decisions to shift course. This is often seen by those inside the organization as risky, but staying put and doing the same unproductive action is a greater risk.

Taking risks and communicating those changes clearly to your team is the hallmark of a great leader. Sharing a vision of where the new changes will take them and how it will improve their own performance will garner support and build motivation.

Optimistic

Resilient leaders are optimistic regarding their people and the future of the organization. This is not pollyanna positive thinking where you ignore reality with fake smiles. That type of positive thinking can easily be labeled as “toxic positive”. You place a veneer of optimism on a bad situation without taking action to make things better.

The true optimist has a vision of a better tomorrow, recognizes the challenges, and makes the necessary changes to get to that vision. Communicating this type of optimism is magnetic and encourages people to follow your lead because you are supporting them to reach their goals regardless of the obstacles they may encounter.

Communicates with Clarity

In a recent Interact/Harris poll, 91% of 1000 employees believe their leaders lack good communication skills. The biggest problem with communication is we all tend to make it one way. For communication to have the clarity it needs to persuade, inspire, or instruct it must be part of a conversation. You have to understand to be understood.

Most of us know this but in the rush to distribute instructions or deliver information we often communicate with the assumption that we are being understood. To communicate with clarity, we must always check to see if our message is being heard. This can only happen through conversation. 

Relationship Focused

People are your number one asset in your organization. Just like any asset, it can grow or possibly become a liability. A resilient leader builds a resilient team by deepening the skills and talents of the team.

Relationships can drive progress toward objectives. You bring others along your resilient journey by building trust and being open to differences. When you deepen the relationship with your people, they will be willing to make dramatic changes and accomplish outcomes they could never have done on their own.

The Fierce Summary

Becoming a resilient leader can dramatically improve the quality of your employees and team members. You become the example they mirror. Your resilience and boldness begin to rub off and create a culture that becomes stress-proof and focused on achieving growth and objectives.

As we researched the qualities of the resilient leader, we noticed something and if you followed Fierce you might have noticed as well.  Many of those qualities embody the Fierce leader that is the focus of all Fierce programming and the Leader’s Journey we help organizations build. 

If you are looking to build resilience in yourself and your team, check out the resources inside our Leader’s Journey.

The post How to Be a Bold and Resilient Leader Who Leads Change appeared first on Fierce.

When was the last time you took a ski trip with a group of friends and developed a completely new leadership methodology?  Not only did it impact your business, but rippled throughout organizations throughout the globe. 

That’s the mythology behind the creation of agile leadership. Beyond a new trend in leadership styles, agile leadership has proved an effective method of generating results.

Why does agile leadership work and why is it necessary to embrace the methodology? At the heart of agile leadership is being adaptive and resilient in the face of great change. Because of many dynamics in the modern world such as technology, global change, and rapidly moving economic conditions, nothing stays stable for long.  

In fact, you hope that your own organization contributes to disruption in your industry. This means you are on the cutting edge, creating innovation and advancing above your competition. To continue to move forward and grow, you must learn to move your teams and organization to an environment of constant change.  

Unfortunately, change is uncomfortable for many people. There’s always the fear of job security or changing job descriptions in a changing environment. But being an agile leader means you are instilling your people with the ability to adapt and grow, ready to meet any challenges that lead to growth.

Agile Leadership makes bold claims and promises such as:

• Advancements in employee autonomy driving toward problem-solving rather than waiting for leadership to solve everything for them
• Continuous improvement among every team and department generating more efficient business practices with less waste and greater productivity
• Greater creativity, innovation, and problem-solving ability throughout the organization
• Collaboration within teams and across organizational silos to share information and provide valuable insights that normally would be missed
• Motivated employees who find value in the work they do and the contribution they add to the larger organization
• An open culture of idea sharing regardless of level within the organization leading to greater leadership development
• A human-centered approach to work rather than a slave to rigid processes and tools
• The Ability to respond to change even when the script calls for something different

Every leader wants to embrace these potential advantages. Imagine the progress your organization could make toward growth if only several of the promises materialized inside a fraction of your cubicles.

What are the principles of Agile Leadership?

 Agile leadership at its core is in contrast to previous top-down management styles manipulating and managing every possible action and metric. As an agile leader, you create the environment for success. Within that environment you allow room for failure because you move fast, and allow small experiments that generate feedback for better action.  

Remember the origin myth of Agile at the ski lodge. There’s more truth than myth to the story. Seventeen software development leaders were at a ski retreat, but a snowstorm prevented them from hitting the slopes. Being stuck in the lodge for several days provided an opportunity to brainstorm about creating a more effective and efficient way of bringing software to the market. 

Like all good stories, the truth may have expanded over time. However, they developed 4 values of Agile leadership with 12 basic principles. Software companies embraced those principles and other industries took notice and began embracing them as well to great success.  

Inside the software world, the former method of managing projects was through a top-down approach to management. Scope, budget, and timelines were mapped and planned before a project began. The problem with such detailed planning is it gives no room for volatile changing environments. 

Out of this discussion, Four Values emerged:

1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
2. Working software over comprehensive documentation
3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
4. Responding to change over following a plan

Days after the creation of those initial Four Values, they wrote:

12 principles creating the Agile Manifesto

1. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
4. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
7. Working software is the primary measure of progress.
8. Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
10. Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential.
11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

Do you notice any key commonalities among these 12 principles? While designed for the software industry, the principles apply to any organizational endeavor where you are developing products and services for an ever-changing marketplace.

Conversation, feedback, and creating an environment of growth are at the core. If you are familiar with any of the Fierce methodologies, you know this is at the heart of Fierce. Learning and developing the skills to have effective conversations that move people forward. Creating environments of transparency and trust where people can bring their best to the workplace so they will take risks in generating new ideas.

The Agile Leadership Mindset

Applying the Agile Leadership principles in your organization requires you to adopt a new mindset.  

Do you remember learning about the scientific method back in your school days? In many ways, Agile Leadership is the scientific method in action. You have a goal then create a hypothesis to get there. You test to determine whether the hypothesis is verifying initial assumptions. Then you adjust. 

It’s an iterative approach to work rather than concrete plans and strategies that don’t examine results until much later in the process, when, unfortunately, change may be difficult or too late. Or, as they say in the military, “no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.”

Agile is similar to the OODA Loop developed inside the military as a decision-making methodology.  You observe, orient, decide, then act. The results of the action provide feedback to once again observe, orient, decide, and act. The loop continues until you hit your destination.

It takes brave leadership to allow the freedom for teams to live in an agile world, but doing so leads to greater outcomes. 

While the concepts of Agile Leadership are easy to embrace, implementing them in an organization can be difficult. How can your free form of leadership with the potential for continual change create the security and stability that so many workers crave?

Implementing Agile Leadership

Becoming an Agile Leader may require a deep cultural transformation. It is human-focused where you instill an entrepreneurial drive in every employee. Managers and team members must take ownership of their team goals, decision-making, and performance. Teams need to collaborate, come to alignment, and develop effective feedback frameworks.

As a leader, you are responsible for creating this environment and you must connect people to their purpose at work. Good ideas will arise when you encourage learning and development as a cultural touchstone. Encourage diversity to enable new ways of thinking about strategies to accomplish goals and overcome challenges.

For more information about how Fierce brings Agile Leadership to life in an organization, learn about: Fierce Team Program, Fierce Feedback Program, and Fierce Delegate Program.

The post What is Agile Leadership and Why is it Important? appeared first on Fierce.

“He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened.” – Lao Tzu was right, self-knowledge is truly liberating.

The wisest amongst have always known this truth. Socrates is famous for his aphorism – “Know Thyself”. Ancient historians tell us that it was inscribed atop the entrance of the famous Temple at Delphi.

Beyond the philosophical discussion, self-awareness is an essential meta-skill for the modern workplace. Without it, you run the risks of alienating co-workers, sabotaging leadership, and setting yourself up for burnout.

What is it?

Self-awareness as a psychological concept was first theorized in 1972 by Duval and Wickland in their book A Theory of Objective Self-Awareness.

According to Duval & Wickland, self-awareness is “The ability to focus on yourself and how your actions, thoughts, or emotions do or don’t align with your internal standards. If you’re highly self-aware, you can objectively evaluate yourself, manage your emotions, align your behavior with your values, and understand correctly how others perceive you.”

You may be thinking, “I know myself. I know my hot buttons. My likes and dislikes.” 

Unfortunately, study after study on self-awareness demonstrates that while 95% of people think they are self-aware, only 10-15% truly are. 

Being aware of your own emotions, desires, abilities, reactions, and goals puts you and your team on a path to success. It’s not only the key to a meaningful life but a meaningful work life.

Why is it important in the workplace?

Organizational psychologist and author of Insight, Tasha Eurich, says, “Research suggests that when we see ourselves clearly, we are more confident and more creative. We make sounder decisions, build stronger relationships, and communicate more effectively”

Doesn’t that sound like the type of environment where you and your team would thrive?

At Fierce, we’ve found self-awareness drives growth in three major components of work-life – Leadership, Team Dynamics, & Resilience.

Workplace Leadership

You can’t be an effective leader without self-awareness.

We can all think of leaders who aren’t self-aware. The TV hit show, “The Office”, parodied the leader without self-awareness. In each episode, Michael Scott launches into speeches causing eye-rolls among employees or moments of intense cringe.

How do you know you haven’t committed the same sins? 

Self-awareness among leaders provides the base for a strong character. It allows you to lead with purpose, trust, and authenticity. You are able to see clearly the reason behind both successes and failures. You understand who you are and what you need most from other people.

More importantly, you begin to see gaps in your management skills, but also understand where you are most effective. You become fully aware of those around you and their motivations and needs.

Team Dynamics

Self-awareness among teams and employees is something everyone should strive for. 

A self-aware team can handle conflict, embrace empathy, and make stronger decisions.  In the Harvard Business Review study on self-awareness, they found that Un-self-aware colleagues aren’t just frustrating; they can cut a team’s chances of success in half. 

The consequences of working with unaware colleagues include increased stress, decreased motivation, and a greater likelihood of leaving one’s job.

It is imperative that organizations do more to build this meta-skill to provide greater cohesion and collaboration among teams. One un-self-aware team member can poison the whole group creating a toxic culture that spirals downward quickly.  

A self-aware team is confident in its strengths and weaknesses and works together to become greater than the sum of the parts. They understand the impact that emotions have on others. Delivering and receiving feedback becomes more effective because self-awareness allows openness to constructive criticism. Feedback is also another developmental tool for growing self-awareness.

There are other benefits as well. According to organizational psychologists, self-awareness:

• Leads to better decision making 
• Builds empathy and enhances self-control
• Increases productivity and communication in the workplace
• Make us more proactive and encourage positive self-development

Resilience

Self-awareness is the key to resilience. In a world full of stress, burnout, and resignations, building resilience is critical to survival as an organization.

The problem with resilience is we aren’t often aware of those triggers that raise our stress hormones. We don’t notice when we’ve entered that state where we can’t make good decisions and respond correctly to our colleagues.

Because each individual is unique and brings a completely different life experience, the same triggers for you may not be the same for someone else. We don’t often notice those small stressors that eventually cascade into severe anxiety, burnout, or depression. 

Part of self-awareness is knowing what triggers you to feel stressed. Knowing your triggers means you can respond to them more calmly when they come up.

Tools for Self-Awareness

No one is born with self-awareness. It is a skill that needs to be learned, refined, and strengthened over time. Here are 3 tools Fierce has used to help organizations build self-awareness.

Feedback

Learn how to give and receive feedback at work successfully. Feedback should be built into the culture of an organization to go both up and down the organizational chart. Not only do direct reports need regular feedback to build the necessary skills to reach goals, but managers need feedback from reports to build out their own leadership skills.  

Even outside of the workplace, ask friends and families to provide feedback on how they perceive you. Make sure you create space for honest feedback with the intent of understanding yourself deeply so you are able to make changes and grow.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is important for all of us to remember that we are not our thoughts. Inside each of us is an observer who can easily become entangled with internal thoughts and external circumstances. Falling prey unconsciously to our own thoughts and outside events devolves us into victims who merely react to life rather than directing it. 

Mindfulness can take many forms such as meditation, breathing exercises, or frequent journaling. Whatever method you choose, take time to calm down your mind and reflect on yourself and the world around you.

Technology

With the advent of wearable technology, each of us has the ability to understand our biological responses to our inner world. Tracking and monitoring our response to life can have a massive impact on our ability to build greater self-awareness.  

At Fierce, we saw how powerful biometrics were at monitoring stress and developed our Pulse app to merge a person’s calendar data with biometrics to identify stressful events in their life. After testing the technology, we saw not only a decrease in stress but an improvement in self-awareness.

Recently one participant using Pulse noticed a particular meeting she attended regularly registered at the highest level of stress. This didn’t make any sense to her. This was a participation-only meeting. She rarely contributed. She never had to prepare or speak openly in the meeting. After reflecting on why it was creating great stress for her, she realized that apathy and boredom were massive stress triggers for her. This self-awareness led her to action. She contacted her boss and asked for her to be removed from the meeting or allowed a greater level of participation. They changed her role in the meeting, and she saw a decrease in biometric stress and an increase in workplace productivity.

Technology like Pulse can give us insight into our inner world and create greater self-awareness.

Summary

Self-awareness is a critical skill that is the foundation for all skill development. Without awareness of your lack of skills, weaknesses, strengths, and responses you can’t set a direction for growth. Without self-awareness, you are unable to track progress.  

At the end of the day, we all want self-awareness. Remember, it is a journey and a life-long effort but will pay dividends for our own development and the productivity of the organizations we lead. 

The post Self-Awareness: What is it and Why is it Important in the Workplace? appeared first on Fierce.

Moving an organization into the future is the job of the leader. With vision and execution comes change. Unfortunately, most leaders are not prepared with the skills that change demands. How will you become a successful change leader?

When employees across various industries were surveyed on leadership readiness, 71% felt that if change was needed, their leaders were not prepared or skilled to guide them into the future. This statistic rippled across businesses around world. Many organizations have been forced to reevaluate leadership training and systems to assist with change management. 

At Fierce, we’ve seen organizations enter this crisis point where change is needed but the tools to lead and manage change are outside their grasp. As we have worked with both small and large organizations, the initial starting point must begin with the leadership. Organizational culture always flows from leadership where, oftentimes, culture creation is unconscious on the part of leaders and their intentions are not expressed clearly enough to direct the culture they intend. 

To begin the process of effective change:

These 3 Tips will begin to build the process of aligning your team and effectively communicating your vision.

1. Increase Transparency

Transparency builds trust, but it can be demanding as you work with your team. Many leaders feel that being too transparent about their decision-making, will show cracks in their ability to lead. You may know where the organization needs to go but not always have the answers to understand how to get there. 

Open communication with leadership, begins with being honest about what you see about the future therefore being open to feedback needed to accomplish that vision. As important conversations develop, transparency can spread outward into the organization building consensus and execution. 

Susan Scott, Fierce Founder, and CEO discussed trust and radical transparency in a podcast interview with TalentGrow. She explained that “trust is built one conversation at a time, and it’s also lost one conversation at a time. Trust requires persistent identity, [which] means me showing up as myself completely, consistently, all the time, every day so that I’m not different depending on who I’m with.”

Articulating this poorly can actually lose trust — a leader’s worst nightmare is that they are seen by their team and clients as inept. Being transparent isn’t a display of incompetence, it is being vulnerable enough to look strategically at the help you need from others. As a leader, it is impossible to see all the differing viewpoints and potential solutions. You can rest in this fact and be open to the potential insight you can gain when being transparent about the direction and your limitations for crafting the strategies to move forward. 

Transparency isn’t solely about putting what you don’t know on display to your team. Transparency makes intentions known, so your team understands, exactly, what must be accomplished to move into the future.The most successful leaders we’ve seen realize that learning to be transparent is a skill that can be gained. 

Successful leaders communicate the “what” and the “why” of change. Explaining the purpose of change and connecting it to the values of the organization along with the future benefits creates stronger adoption and urgency for change to be implemented. 

2. Learn to Confront Unproductive Behavior

One of the greatest barriers to change management inside an organization is a toxic culture. A culture of backbiting, gossip, and complaint is contagious and can spread quickly throughout the ranks. Many times leaders are blind to what is under the surface of their employee’s attitudes about work. 

Toxic culture often manifests in unproductive behavior. Here are several markers to look for inside your organization to examine whether toxic culture must be mitigated before moving forward successfully into the future.

Markers of Toxic Culture:

• High rates of absenteeism
• Not meeting deadlines
• Criticism of others
• Unhealthy competition
• Aggression to leadership and their team

To get everyone’s best in the organization, as a leader you must make it clear that unproductive and undermining behaviors will not be tolerated. 

Sound uncomfortable or daunting? Yes, but like any leadership skill, confrontation skills can be learned using successful models and templates leading to positive behavior. One of the best places to begin is looking into your feedback culture. Implementing effective feedback systems for employees will reduce the need for difficult confrontation conversations by 70% or more. 

When managers engage in regular feedback to employees, engagement increases mitigating the seeds of toxic culture. Gallup’s Global Workplace reports that 98% of employees will fail to be engaged when managers give little or no feedback. 69% of employees say they would work harder if they felt their efforts were better recognized.

3. Foster a Culture of Collaboration

To move forward into change, you need the ideas and intentions of your people. A large startup clinical research firm was committed to tripling in size in 10 years. Emerging as a startup, the leadership within the organization was full of independent lone wolves comfortable with acting quickly without input from other colleagues. This worked early in the growth of the business, subsequently they needed to scale to meet growth challenges in their next decade they were forced to collaborate.

As the leadership team gathered in a meeting to discuss strategy for future action, it was apparent there was little consensus on the way forward however, many opinions were in direct conflict. To solve this stalemate, collaboration was needed. Each leader put forward their ideas among the group who were committed to fully understanding each person’s point of view. Clarity around terms and language began to emerge until they had a common language that could be used to describe what needed to be done.

The vision born from collaboration allowed them to communicate a shared strategy allowing each team to accomplish as they grew into the future. 

Your organization has the seeds of collaboration built in. You only need to harness them.

The more diverse your workplace, the more innovative your organization can be. Different perspectives and backgrounds provide different ways of approaching problems therefore creating solutions. Open discussion allows solutions to be weighed and evaluated so the best options rise to the top.

Effective leaders build collaboration and encourage feedback among their team members and colleagues by keeping lines of communication open.  Embrace differing and conflicting opinions because that is where the best ideas and innovation can take place.

Significant change rarely involves individual accomplishments. It requires synergy, for example, new ideas, new processes, and greater efficiencies are needed for growth, and that demands collaboration.  As a leader, it is your job to bring key knowledge holders to the table and keep the idea funnel flowing until positive change happens.

The Bonus Tip

Did you notice a common thread among all the top 3 skills? Each one is reliant on the ability to clearly communicate your ideas. The words you say are important however the images and emotions you build in the minds of the listener are critical.

As a leader, identify the conversations needed to take place in your organization. You don’t need to fear transparency, confronting toxic culture, and building structures for shared ideas. Not only will the organization grow but individuals will thrive both personally and professionally through change.

The post 3 Tips to Becoming a Successful Change Leader appeared first on Fierce.

You’ve probably been part of an organization where you were blindsided by change. One day you entered the office, an email hit your inbox and work life suddenly became very different. You immediately saw co-workers begin to grumble and question the wisdom of leadership. Some may have begun brushing up their resume to find different employment. Toxic culture began breeding. 

Even if the ultimate change was positive, the emotions surrounding the change damaged the organization. Had events been handled differently even difficult change could have had a more positive effect on the organization.

Change is part of life, and in today’s fast paced global environment, it can take one news story to impact your organization. When an organization plans for growth, it is impossible for life to stay at status quo. While we may expect change, actually leading your organization during these times can be hard.

Basic Structure of Change

When change is necessary, there are 3 basic stages where leaders must lead: 

1. The Need for Change
2. The Implementation of Change
3. The Evaluation of Change

Leaders must communicate through each step. Once the need for change is recognized, this is the time to communicate clearly, build consensus, and create plans. Eventually, you move into change implementation. Even though the focus is on action, communication is still critical. Plans must adapt as you continually monitor progress and pull feedback from your team. Even though it may feel change never ends (and it doesn’t), your current iteration of change will settle out. During this time, you should take time to debrief and see what you learned for the next change on the horizon.

Change is rarely mechanical with sequential steps leading to utopian outcomes. There is struggle and development and usually the unexpected happens when leading a team. In spite of these facts, we have learned several principles that help organizations and leaders manage themselves and people through both external and internal change.

Principles for Effective Change

1. Have conversations

We are Fierce. Of course we are going to mention conversation as an important element for leading a team through change. Honest conversations using structured systems allow both transparency and honesty providing feedback on needed change. New innovation may arise. Blind spots in new directions can be spotted. Motivation and enthusiasm are more likely to occur when deep conversation is allowed.  

2. Provide outlets for discussion

Not only must leadership communicate, but space must be allowed for teams to discuss during times of change. Open, honest discussion among contributors can alert leaders to potential problems, but also signal areas where they need to communicate differently. Communication can be hard, and you need tools to be understood. Don’t forget the context where the message is being heard. Allowing outlets for team discussion will help understand how your direction is being framed.

3. Don’t forget the metrics

Change is about people, but metrics keep you on track. Have metrics in place to determine how change is progressing. Share those metrics throughout the organization as guideposts to where you are going. Explain how those metrics will not only impact the company but each individual contributor.

4. Stay Transparent

Especially in times of difficult decision making, being transparent builds trust. Share as much as possible and explain what is happening externally and internally that elicited change. Leaders will lower the anxiety level of the organization as they listen and make room for questions.

5. Paint images of a positive future

Consider the frame of change. Continually paint the picture of the ultimate future state where the organization is heading at the end of change. Focusing on the end goal creates hope inside of teams and pulls them through the hard days.

6. Lead with confidence

As a leader, you often need to make hard decisions. Even with feedback from other leaders, eventually you have to drive the change. Do so with confidence, knowing you listened and considered every option. Leading with confidence will build confidence in your team members

7. Provide a clear plan

When communicating changes inside an organization or team, deliver a clear roadmap of not only where you are heading but what the steps along the way look like. Your people need to know how to navigate the challenges ahead, and not providing clear plans and direction through the process will only build anxiety and decrease confidence in the organization.

8. Mitigate conflict

In times of change, conflict will arise. You can’t bury your head in the sand and expect each decision to be embraced by everyone. Stress may be high at times. Brush off your conflict resolution skills and have the tools ready to move people through difficult decision making. Conflict may occur between team members and managers or even between individual contributors. Train your people to work through conflict and come to resolution through open conversations.

9. Applaud and praise

Take time throughout the process to find people doing good work. Praise and applaud those moving the company toward its desired end. Positive reinforcement will breed more positive action. You demonstrate actions and attitudes that others can emulate to keep morale high and work productive.

10. Build a future game plan

Each day throughout a change, look at what went well, what you learned, and where you need to take action. Keeping track of these events will not only help you manage change among your team, but provide a clear game plan for future scenarios. Don’t lose the wisdom you gained as you move your people through transition. 

Change can be difficult, but you can prepare your people for change and prime them for success. Knowing how to communicate clearly and listen well, make the job of change much easier. Not only will reaching the goal become smoother, but your team will have new skills and resilience for a productive future.

The post How to Lead a Team Through Change appeared first on Fierce.

Life in the workplace has become complicated. Rapidly changing economic challenges force quicker decision-making to remain productive. Couple this with the rise of workplace flexibility for employees, leaders struggle to create positive culture leading to desirable outcomes. Learn how to handle confrontation in the workplace like a pro.

Unprecedented, is the way of the future and companies need leaders who can lead and thrive during times of change. Successful leaders are transparent about opportunities and challenges during rapid change. They address the stress of change with productive conversations, so the culture doesn’t get toxic. But there is a problem:

Conflict Avoidance

Most leaders are not prepared to have this level of conversation. Rarely are these soft people skills taught in management training. Hard skills, such as operations, project planning, and finance are much easier to teach. Business schools hope that these soft skills are absorbed during a career.

But most leaders lack the skill and emotional intelligence to have productive conversations about tough topics. Transparency makes most people uncomfortable. When you are placed in a leadership position, displaying transparency feels like a threat to competency.

Many leaders will develop a victim mindset themselves versus an accountable one. A victim mindset often leads to conflict avoidance because of fears of inadequacy. They hope that needed change and the potential conflict it can bring will magically disappear. Unfortunately, this avoidance of problems causes toxicity in an organization to fester. Good employees sense the negative environment and leave, creating a deeper negative environment.

Misplaced Solutions

Organizations recognize this problem of change management and will invest in costly change management frameworks and communications strategies. Yet, these are often band-aid solutions, because they don’t address the critical skill of leaders working on a 1:1 or team interpersonal level.

A report written by Scott Keller and Carolyn Aiken at McKinsey & Company suggests that 80 percent of what leaders care about when trying to enlist support for change does not matter to 80 percent of the workforce.

The top-down approach to organizational change frustrates employees leading to a simmering state of disconnect. Without instilling these interpersonal skills and learning to listen to the ideas of their teams, employees begin to view leadership as distant and out of touch. They aren’t addressing the right conversations that are taking place among teams and individual contributors.

One only needs to listen in on conversations among employees after large meetings where leadership speaks to see this play out. A quiet grumble emerges in side conversations among participants demonstrating that leadership didn’t address real concerns about needed change.

If companies do not build skills among leadership to lead difficult conversations during change the impact can be detrimental to the future of their organizations. Productivity and engagement decline. Stress and anxiety build resulting in toxic cultures. Toxic cultures ultimately produce poor business outcomes with a loss of revenue and profits.

The picture doesn’t have to continue to be bleak. There are several steps an organization can take to positively handle confrontation and change management.

Tips for Positive Confrontation

1. Identify Toughest Challenges – Leadership often has insight into the metrics that create the biggest challenges to a business. However, they might not understand all the internal root causes or know the perspectives of contributors that might lead to the solution.

Open conversations about the challenges and opportunities an organization faces are necessary to reveal where the biggest pain points are located. Only when issues are named and agreed upon can true change begin to take place.

2. Tackle the Issue Through Conversation – Once an issue has been named, you can move forward through conversation with your teams. This process may be painful because honesty and openness require vulnerability. It’s at this step many leaders will back away. They don’t have the tools to have difficult conversations. One key to successful conversations when dealing with challenges is to remember you aren’t confronting people but issues. Reframing the problem as something objective lowers the emotion in conversations and allows for innovation and true solutions to emerge.

3. Increase Transparency and Reduce Toxicity – The reason transparency is so important is that it goes hand in hand with trust. You can’t have one without the other. And without them, your workplace culture and relationships will suffer. Lies and secrets break trust, while honesty and transparency build trust. And when trust is created, it leads to a heightened sense of security and better employee performance.

When someone is honest with us and willing to overcome the discomfort of confronting the issue, we learn to trust that they’ll tell us the truth. When leaders and employees know how to confront skillfully, it influences not only the one-on-one relationship but the health of the company culture as well. Keep each other’s best interest at heart while also addressing and resolving the issue at hand.

Case Study in Confrontation

Christus Health came to Fierce because they were feeling the stress of rapid change and needed the skills to transform while maintaining a positive culture.

Like many organizations, Christus defined itself as having a Culture of Nice. Unfortunately, this tends to be passive and surface-level behavior while discontent lies beneath. There were no real open conversations taking place leading to a lack of engagement and frustrated manager effectiveness.

Lisa Reynolds, VP of Talent Management said, “We needed Fierce in our organization because we needed to be better at all types of conversations, especially those awkward conversations that were important, yet they were about difficult issues.”

After understanding the challenges Christus faced, the Fierce team designed a program using our Coaching, Team, Delegation, and Confrontation conversations trainings.

Through the ongoing training, Christus instilled tools in their leadership to have difficult conversations about the challenges they were facing while also giving constructive feedback leading to greater productivity.

What were the results?

Christus saw a 36% promotion rate among employees and 81% retention rate in an industry that is continually facing staffing challenges. 

Previously, direct reports made requests to management to be coached by someone other than their direct manager. This was an indication that communication with teams was not ideal. After the training, these requests were reduced by 80%. Engagement among employees also increased from the third quartile to the top quartile.

Today, over 1500 associates at Christus have completed Fierce training. They were also awarded the North Texas Prism Award for internal training and leadership programming. 

Beyond workplace improvements, participants saw the training impact life beyond work. One participant commented: “This transformed my life, not just at work but at home.”

Handling the tough challenges in today’s work climate can be overcome by learning to be transparent with teams and addressing hard issues without fear.

The post How to Handle Confrontation in the Workplace Like a Pro appeared first on Fierce.