Are you prepared for fire? You’re a business leader. So, some of your fires, in addition to actual flames with heat, could include threats of violence or harassment within or outside the business, cybersecurity breaches or product defects. These could possibly happen any time so while you may not 100% prepared, you can be ready. As you will read, like me, you can do this. Here are some tips.
Perhaps like me, you’ve had people who have tried to discourage you in your career. Or, you have had second thoughts about your career path. Despite that, if you are reading this, you persevered. The depth of coverage on the recent passing of monumental females left me feeling particularly curious about the timing behind a current Elle magazine article shaming women who dare to have ambition and dreams. The Elle article invited me to write a response; a piece that challenges this fashionable trend and celebrates ambition and dreams. Does groundbreaker describe your dream?
When you hear or read, do you spend more energy on how to understand or how to label the content? One way of determining if you are a leader is whether you listen more to learn or to judge. When your mind is trying to understand, it is open to all kinds of possibilities. You are trying to make connections with the new information to the information you already hold in your brain. This allows for many new pathways for the information to go. It’s the route of knowledge. If you are labeling, you are making a decision, often quickly, to dismiss new information or hold onto it. You are not processing for further use. While one is an open-door approach, the other is a closed-door approach. Which would you rather be – a leader or a judge?
Although not an exclusive issue among young leaders, I’ve noticed a growing trend among younger professionals who make a conscious choice when reading, watching or hearing, to limit their view of information to a single moment, an emoji, or a phrase which forms a self-contained bubble. Skimming the surface, they then rush to make a judgement about it. Good, bad, right or wrong. And it becomes personal. Whoever said, wrote or did are good, bad, right or wrong. These young professionals are missing the big picture, perspective, and details. It is an incomplete view which potentially hurts their decision making, their team/department, and themselves. Does this sound familiar? Has this been impacting you, your company or team?
Do you see a thread here? A thread of opportunities, like mine, where you were elected, promoted, or saw a chance to inspire a group of people around a goal or cause. It was obvious to everyone else that you had definite leadership qualities and the presence of a leader, yet you may not have seen it or felt it for a long time. You never laid claim to having leadership skills. It was just something you did.
Surprised when those you share so much with disagree with your point? People you work with may not always be on your same wavelength. If you can apply your curiosity skills, you can ask and listen to their views about why your vision or opinion is not shared. And if you discover, they’re uncertain, you can be comfortable with uncertainty which is a great outcome because it means they are not stuck in an opinion.
Manners matter in a workplace that favors respect for everyone. Manners convey recognition and consideration. When certain manners are practiced in an organization and you follow them, you fit with the company culture. And, whether you accept it or not, you are communicating a lot about yourself and how you view yourself in the organization when you use manners or don’t use them with the people you work with. Yet, manners can be tricky because they are not the same from country to country or region to region even within the U.S. and they are constantly evolving and updating according to general practice of the times. With all these differences, how can you possibly figure out how to act in a respectful way in a workplace? Here are some tips…
Have you ever felt you like you were giving your all to the organization and you were being appreciated for that?
You understand how motivating that is.
Colleagues of mine who are career and leadership coaches were having conversations with African-American clients about African-American women not receiving recognition in leadership and therefore making a pivotal decision: leave their jobs and organizations mid-career or at least consider leaving. My mentor, who helped launch my leadership business, thought this was such a common experience she encouraged me to write about it.
I took her suggestion to heart and wondered – how common is this self-conversation and pivotal choice? Was it different from the conversations other women were having with themselves at the same point in their career?
Would you like to work for a place that champions respect for everyone? That respect would include an everyday practice of good manners. Good manners? Are good manners relevant or even possible in today’s workplace? Yes, they are! Here’s some examples and why they matter more than ever in creating a healthy respectful culture for everyone. And, here’s how they can work for you.
There’s great reason to appreciate the child in all of us, and not just at the holidays. While we may be struggling with that notion because of how difficult life can be, even the exercise of trying to see from an inner innocence is a good thing. The joy, wonder, and the awe. That inner innocence can be a wonderful tool for our professional and personal lives. And, it’s becoming a trend.
