young leadership Archives - Susan Goldberg Leadership Consulting

Build Me Up, Buttercup

“Building people up” (being supportive and offering knowledge) is how people are able to reach their potential. Everyone needs the caring, focus, and teaching during those times of self-doubt, loss of direction, confusion or inexperience, we all have. Support and education are essential for you to fully blossom. Have you experienced training that was helpful to your work and maybe even the way you view the world? Berry Gordy, founder of Motown, used training skillfully within the Motown organization. He knew how to balance rules with growth offering people freedom to change and develop, grooming them to become even better, and giving them a chance to be heard.

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What Are the Key Qualities?

What are the key qualities of a great mentor? Berry Gordy is one. With the young leaders and the leaders who work with me and want to grow, I apply a Berry Gordy similar mix of ingredients: listening, encouraging, asking questions with compassion to arrive at the right strategies and plans specifically for them. I’ve had many mentors over the years and I learned the ones that worked with me the best understood my goals, personality and habits. Of course, I was ready to do the work and open to suggestions and change. You have to be open to change to achieve better results. Gordy’s team of employees at Motown were open to learning or they left the organization because they didn’t fit the culture.
Are you ready to work with a mentor or coach?

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Like Music To Your Ears

“As a manager, you had to be honest with them, but you had to build them too. Even when they didn’t know they had to be built.” ~ Berry Gordy. Berry Gordy’s desire was to bring out the best in people. Then he could reach his potential in some way. Berry’s why is the spark in my why. Wouldn’t you want to work with someone who recognizes your uniqueness and wants you to reach your potential?

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Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood

As Americans, we are known to be plain-speaking and to the point, compared to many cultures. However, that doesn’t mean we are always effective in our communication. Times when our communication can be seen as “speaking in riddles” could include purposefully murky or innocently confusing. How to avoid misunderstandings.

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Does It Matter To Me and Other People?

Can specific habits be keeping you from the recognition you deserve? A promotion, raise, public relations attention, or more responsibility? You may be super organized, your ideas have solved a myriad of problems, and you’ve saved or made the business many dollars. These wonderful results may not be what people are paying attention to. It may be something completely different.

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Hey, I Want To Speak

Conflicts and disagreements were quick to happen with some younger professionals I’ve worked with, not through their wanting to be rude, but in their attempts to jump to connect dots. They wanted to move quickly; on to the next thing and press ahead. In doing that, however, they weren’t realizing they were missing full conversations with people. Instead of waiting, listening and asking questions, they were making assumptions around a conversation. Wanting things to move quickly, they were cutting people off from fully expressing their views. A satisfying conversation never actually happened then. How we worked through this? And, a tip from Tom Hanks.

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A Response To Care About

What is a satisfying and beneficial response? It’s a response which lets you know you’ve been heard, viewed and treated with respect. This means both sides are heard and treated with respect. Here are three examples that would have closed the cycle of on-going requests and been satisfying to both people.

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Wanting To Get Ahead

If you want to establish a great working relationship with your boss, knowing whatever you can do to make your boss’s job easier is good. Being a young professional, Millennial or Gen Z, guidelines to do this may not be so obvious. Here is the first of three blog posts on how to manage up. This first one focuses on laying the ground work for good communication.

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How To Appreciate A Growing Market

When differentiators are obvious to people, they focus on what makes the other people different rather than what makes them similar. It happens with races, cultures, generations, sexes. Those differences in recent times are criticized. What about if they were celebrated? What if those differences were actually talents? Seasoned people have experience and wisdom. Young professionals have a long list of skills.

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Leading Through A Better Understanding

There’s a lot of shaming about young professionals. You can think it is coming from their Baby Boomer or Gen X bosses who have a lot more life and work experience. That would be the obvious choice. They are not the only ones, however. People born in the Millennial years undervalue themselves and their colleagues just as much as senior professionals. Why? How do you stop this from continuing?

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