Leadership & Management: The Ultimate Masterclass

1. Introduction: Hi, my name is George J. Barnes and welcome to this leadership and management masterclass. I'm excited today because this class will be pivotal to anyone looking to take their leadership or management skills to the next level. I've had a lot of experience in my life and spent over 15 years as the Chief Executive Officer. This course is for Chief Executive Officers or liters, but also for individuals who may be leading and community organizations, politicians, community activists, executive directors, even individuals who lead in their houses of worship. Supervisors, team leads, principals, superintendents, etcetera. Whatever you may be doing or whenever you find yourself needing to lead, needing to manage. This is a resource that I suggest you should have. You may be wondering what students will learn. Well, let me give you a little taste. We're gonna be talking about how to become a stronger leader and a better manager. How to build trust and credibility with others. How to effectively influence people, how to communicate as a leader. Time management techniques of successful leaders. How to delegate with confidence, how to develop people to their full potential. How to assemble, lead, and manage teams, how to retain world-class talent, and how to implement organizational strategy. Those are some of the key things we're going to learn. And I'm sure you'll be able to grab so much more from this course. 2. What is Leadership: So in this first section, Let's start with leadership. Leadership is about encouraging, inspiring, and motivating others to act. There's a quote from Winston Churchill, who was a historical figure, a Prime Minister of Britain, any lead that country through World War II. He has a quote that says, success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. I like that quote because it helps us to realize that one of the main jobs of a leader is to inspire and encourage others. And even in this quote, When people go through failures in difficult times, if we can or someone can lead them through that where they're still enthusiastic, they still have hope, they still can move forward to a goal or a plan or a better future. That right there is the idea of leadership. Now, as we dive into this course and as you look at the title, we have named this course the leadership and management masterclass. Now, sometimes you'll see some books or authors will talk about the differences between leadership and management. And there are differences and we're going to talk about that in just a moment. But the first I want to make is that although leadership and management is different, This course will seek to help you to understand that they both are important. In my years as leading organizations, there was a lot of responsibility for leadership, but there was also a lot of responsibility for management. And in today's organization and in today's execution of being someone who is in charge, you'll have to display skills of both leadership and management. So how are they different, a manager and a leader? Well, let's first talk about managing. Management really is the ability to organize a team and coordinate resources to meet an objective. When we think about organizing resources, when we think about making sure things work well, making sure that certain things are in the right place. That right there is essentially management. As we think about leadership though, leadership is about providing direction, vision, inspiration, and even interpretation. Leadership is about having an understanding that why are we doing what we're doing, or where are we going? There was a quote that I remember learning about where someone said, the individual who steers a ship is like a manager, but the person who charts the course is a leader. And the other words that making sure that things are running well and doing what they're supposed to be doing. That really is some of the essential elements of management. Leadership is about knowing where we're going, why we're going, and helping us with a greater understanding of what's going on in the greater world, environment or organization. Leadership is about moving us forward and taking us to our next phase, next environment, or our next product, or whatever we are doing as an organization. So my idea, my thought process to you first and foremost is that leadership and management are both important. 3. Common Leadership Traits: In this section, I want to focus a little bit on leadership. And I want to begin to talk about some of the common traits of leaders. What I wanna do is kind of organizes them in three main categories. In that first category of common traits is the intellectual traits. Now, first and foremost, what I mean by this is some intellectual traits that we see in liters are very common. And one of those intellectual traits is individuals who stay informed. And form simply means that they are knowledgeable about key information, key things about their organization and even their industry. It's really difficult for a leader to try to chart a course into what's next or where we're going, so to speak. If they're not informed about the environment in which we live at. Another aspect of the intellectual tree is people who are future focused. Future focus helps us to realize that our tasks and our thinking guide it not just by where we are now, but where we will be their future based. It helps us to think a little bit more long-term. Leadership is just not about understanding where we are, where we are, but having the thought process to think about where we need to be tomorrow. Another aspect when we think about some intellectual traits of leaders is an individual who is decisive. This is the ability to make difficult decisions and essentially keep things moving. One of the problems that we see and research has shown us is that when leaders are not decisive, things tend to slow down. Progress slows down. One of the things that is a mark of a good leader is that the organization or the people or their constituents, or the situation that they're leading in must continue to make progress. 4. Social-emotional Traits: In this section, I want to talk about another common leadership category as it relates to their traits is what is often called a social emotional traits. What that means is that these are individuals who display certain traits that tie back to their social, emotional, or psychological state. One is that they are self aware. Now we're going to talk much more in depth about self-awareness a little later in this course. But this is the ability that people have to pay attention to their own behavior and how it affects others. The next trait within this category is an individual who is of course, engaged, engaged with their environment, engage with the people around them so much so that they can be empathetic to what people are feeling. And also an individual who is trustworthy. Their actions are consistent with their values. Their actions are consistent with their words. 5. Leadership Traits in Organizations: In this category, let us look at some of the necessary traits that research has shown us is a part of effective leaders. The first one I want to talk about is collaborative. This is when individuals know how to work well with others and produce results. We're going to spend some time diving a little bit deeper into this idea later in the course. But collaboration is important. Next, within an organization, a leader should be influential. And this is the idea that they are good at listening. They're good at finding common ground, and they good at being effective communicators. Next, even in an organization, common leadership traits include individuals who are politically astute. They understand perhaps the hierarchies in the organization, power structures and key stakeholders. All these things, we're going to dive a little bit deeper into this course as we uncover what does it mean to be an effective leader? 6. What the Best Leaders have in Common: In this lesson, we're gonna go a little bit deeper into what the best leaders have in common. Now, as leadership has been something that has been researched for years. If we think about the beginning of time and all of our historical texts, even some of the religious texts and everything that we've seen in world history to American history. All of us have had I on the story of great leaders. And so a lot of research has been done on what things are in common of these great leaders. One of the things that research has uncovered is that many of the best leaders have what's called a high degree of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is really pivotal and continues to be seen in effective leaders. One of the things that research shows about emotional intelligence is that it is twice as important as technical skills or IQ, or just pure intellect. Now, although technical skills and IQ or raw intellect is important. But what research has shown us is that emotional intelligence is much more predictive of a successful leader. Not emotional intelligence, or EQ, is the ability to recognize, understand, and manage our own emotions, and recognize, understand and influence the emotions of others. In his book, working with emotional intelligence, Daniel Goldman sites, the Harvard Business School Research at determined that emotional intelligence counts for twice as much as i2 and technical skills combined in determining who will be successful. 7. 5 Components of Emotional Intelligence: In this lesson, I want to dive a little bit deeper into emotional intelligence. And what we've found is that emotional intelligence can be organized in five major components. Of the five major components, we have self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. Let's take a look at each one. 8. Self-awareness: Self-awareness, as it sounds, is an individual's ability to be aware of their own emotions, their own behaviors, and their own actions. Now, one of the things that research has shown us that is important for someone to have when displaying self-awareness is a realistic self assessment. That's the ability to be able to look at yourself and to assess how well you're doing, how well you're not doing and be realistic about it. Sometimes I've seen it where people are so focused on looking good on the outside that they miss the opportunity to be realistic with how they're feeling on the inside. And if you're not realistic about your feelings on the inside in which you're experiencing. You're causing yourself to display a low level of self-awareness. Now one way that research has shown that people display self-awareness is their ability to be self-deprecating. Or in other words, having a good sense of humor about their own lack of ability, their own mistakes, and sometimes their own shortcomings. One thing that you have to realize that if you're not able to look at yourself and realize your shortcomings and at some point have a good sense of humor about it. You may not have the ability to exercise high levels of emotional intelligence and self-awareness. A self-deprecating sense of humor helps you to understand that as a leader, you don't have to be perfect. This next component of self-awareness is called reflection. Reflection is the ability to be able to look back over your recent behaviors, thoughts, and even actions. Not only recent behaviors, but also the ability to look back over the long term thoughts, behaviors, and actions. Sometimes we may not be self-aware in the moment, but if we pause and reflect, we may be able to see our own emotions in some unique patterns and our behavior when we look back over a longer-term period, leaders who see themselves clearly, also able to see their organizations clearly. What this quote, you can imagine, why people who have a high degree of self-awareness and emotional intelligence, often associated with successful organizations. 9. Self-regulation: In this lesson, we're going to talk about the second component of emotional intelligence, and that is self-regulation. Now, self-regulation is also self-explanatory in that it is an individual's ability to regulate their actions, their thoughts, and their emotions. One of the key components of self-regulation is this ability to have delayed gratification. Delayed gratification says that, hey, there's something that I want to participate in and I want to reap the reward from it, but that reward may not come. Now, oftentimes when people try to speed up that ratification process, that leads them to not regulating their own behaviors. Another component of self-regulation is being comfortable with ambiguity. Sometimes it'll be in circumstances or situations where we don't have all the answers and we are required to steal, regulate our actions, still make good decisions and not essentially go overboard. Liters will control their feelings, create an atmosphere of fairness and trust. Later on in this course, we're going to dive a little bit deeper into this concept of creating an atmosphere of trust. Self-regulation is a major key component of that. 10. Motivation: In this lesson, we're going to talk about the third aspect of emotional intelligence, and that's motivation. Research has shown that motivation is a key aspect of displaying emotional intelligence. Motivation says that an individual is passionate about their work. They're motivated to do well in their organization. They're motivated that tomorrow will look better than today. And today we'll look better than yesterday. There's a motivation to be optimistic. There's a motivation to, when, there's a motivation to expand and to grow. When a leader is motivated, they have a natural drive to excel. And that drive to Excel is contagious. You can imagine that successful leaders display high emotional intelligence and high motivation because individuals and their teams and our organizations and their surroundings feel their passion. And that passion spreads to other people. If the leader isn't passionate, if the leader isn't motivated, if the leader is an excited to do things in the organization, how can we expect other people in the organization to become excited? 11. Empathy: In this lesson, I want to touch on the fourth component of emotional intelligence. That is empathy. Empathy is the ability to feel what other people are feeling. One component of empathy, especially in the context of emotional intelligence. This is the ability to read between the lines. A lot of times in organizations, and especially when you're a leader, sometimes people may not feel comfortable saying what they actually feel. I spent many years as the Chief Executive Officer and it was my goal to create an environment where people could share their thoughts and ideas. But one thing I realized is that just by the mere fact of me being in a high position in an organization. Sometimes people were a little intimidated to say what they actually wanted to say. And it was really important for me to be able to read between the lines. Successful leaders who display emotional intelligence can see not only what people say, but things they don't say. As it relates to empathy. The research is clear. Leaders who manage with empathy, increased satisfaction, and reduce turnover. Sometimes organizations and leaders may think that if we have a turnover problem, that's too many people leaving and our organization, too many staff or volunteers leading. Sometimes we think we can just provide more money or more perks and that will be the solution. But research has shown that unless those things are the specific reason why one of the main things that will reduce turnover and increase satisfaction is leaders who have empathy, being able to feel what other people are feeling. Because as we'll find out later in this course, sometimes it's not always money that reduces satisfaction in an organization. 12. Social Skills: In this lesson, let's talk about the fifth component of emotional intelligence, and that is social scale. Now, social skill is the ability to know how to work and talk and communicate with people. First, an individual who displays social skills knows how to be non-confrontational. Now, yeah, sure There are moments in times when confrontation is important, but oftentimes, even if we have conflict, wisdom tells us that we should start that discussion off in a non-confrontational way. And eventually we'll be able to lead to a resolution. Individuals who know how to be non-confrontational and still get to a solution, display a high level of social scale. Another aspect of social skills is being persuasive. Knowing how to communicate with people to get them to see things on new and different way. And then final aspect I want to share really quickly, the ability to collaborate. Collaboration is key when it relates to having good social skills and displaying high levels of emotional intelligence. And for a leader to be able to help the organization succeed. If you're able to be non-confrontational, persuasive, and help people collaborate. This displays a strong degree of social skills and helps you to show that you're able to operate in high levels of emotional intelligence. 13. Building Credability: In this lesson, as we talk about leadership, it's important to know that one thing that leaders must do is that they must be able to build trust and credibility. Specifically for those who are new leaders or for those who have new followers. It's important that a leader be trustworthy and credible. I wanted to share this example of trust and credibility. I wanted to make the point that trust and credibility can even last through challenging times. In 1985, even though he co-founded the company, Apple's board of directors fired Steve Jobs, That's right. The famous Steve Jobs, after the company almost went bankrupt without them. There was one person the company leaders trusted to turn things around. And so in 1996, Apple rehired Steve Jobs. And of course we all know the history that's set the company on a trajectory where would be the most valuable company in the world? This example is powerful because it shows that although Steve Jobs was fired and although they went through those tumultuous times, when push came to shove, as they say, they only trusted one person to really be passionate and to come back to the company with care and turn things around. That shows me that credibility and trust can even less through difficulty, challenges, and even disagreements, that people still had trust in him. 14. Character: In this lesson, I want to talk about two main categories where people build credibility and trust. Specifically new leaders or when you have new followers and how they're looking to see if an individual is trustworthy. Those two categories are through character and competence. Let's dive a little bit deeper into each one. Let's first start with character. Character is about who you are. But how would you build trust and credibility by showing who you are displaying your character? I want to share with you a few ways that you can build that trust and credibility. First, is you need to strive for consistency. When you're a new leader, when you have new followers and you're trying to build that credibility, people are looking at your character and one of the things are going to judge your character by is consistency. Are you consistent? If you decided to do something, are you consistent with it? If you decided to apply or create a rule or something with the team, are you consistent in the way you apply that rule or you apply that standard to the team. Consistency is really important because it shows people who you are. Another way people are judging your character is seeing how you regulate your emotions. And we talked a little bit about self-regulation before. But in this context, people are looking specifically to judge your character through how you regulate your emotions. Are you a person that can hold back major emotions? Are you a person who can maintain yourself? Are you a person who can be professional, even though you may feel a certain way about some kind of events. These are things that people are gonna be looking to when they're judging your character. Another aspect is simply your manners. I like to make sure that people often don't forget. Sometimes it's important just to have manners. Sometimes we can become so passionate and our teams and organizations, but we forget that being rude is just not professional. Not only is it not professional, but it's not productive. Oftentimes we don't realize that when we lack manners and our route with people, it degrades our credibility and it erodes trust that people may have in us. This next component where people are looking to judge your character is determining if you ask appropriate questions. In my experience, as a leader, I've seen a lot of people who just were not appropriate. And oftentimes when you ask things that are not appropriate, people will tie that to your character. Yes, there are sometimes difficult things we have to find out or difficult things we have to determine. But we still can do them in an appropriate way and ask people appropriate things. If we find ourselves continually not being able to do that, we have to be warned that this will potentially cause erosion and our credibility and cause people not to trust us in the way that they could. Another aspect that people are looking to judge or character by is how often and likely are you to invite them for feedback. When you invite people to provide feedback, you're helping people to understand that their point of view, their experience is important. When you're constantly pushing people away and you're rejecting their feedback, what you're telling people is that they don't matter. And finally, another way people are looking to judge your character as they want to see. Do you give other people the opportunity and the ability to shine? Give people a chance to do their best. One thing that I've seen before as I've counseled and mentored by the liters, is that sometimes they may have so much pressure to produce that they don't give other team members the opportunity to shine. And when people see that you take the limelight or you don't give them an opportunity to show their talents or abilities or skills. It erodes credibility. Make sure you give other people the opportunity to do their best. Yeah, there are times where people may not have all the skill and experience that you have. But if it's your team and if they're looking to you for leadership, it's important that they learn. It's important that at some point they stretch their wings and fly. 15. Competance: In this lesson, I want to talk now a little bit about competence. Competence is another category when we're seeking to build credibility and trust as a leader, as you're seeking to show your competence. The first thing you want to make sure you do is plan. Now not only do you want to plan the events and activities that you do as a team, of course, but you also want to plan to make sure that you accomplish quick wins. One thing that's important is that people want to see what you can do, especially if you're a new leader or their newly following you. It's no point that your first task be something that is so difficult that your team can accomplish or your team can't win. Next, you want to be able to confront tough issues. You want to be able to show your team members that you're willing to confront the things that perhaps other people won't come from. They're looking for your competence and they're looking to see, are you a credible leader? Are you competent? Can we trust you? How do you handle the things that others perhaps mishandled? And so you wanna be able not only to plan, of course those wins and plan the activities and things, but you want to be able to plan to confront those tough issues. Next is just showing your competence in your building credibility. You want to be able to research your ideas. When you bring something to the table with your team, you want them to realize that you didn't just bring this off of a whim. I've had a lot of experience with pitching ideas and bringing new thoughts and initiatives and programs to boards, teams and organizations. And I've always saw that the better I was able to do my research and then articulate those ideas. The better those ideas not only were adopted, but the better those ideas manifested good results. Another aspect in showing people that you're competent and building credibility is to explain your decisions. Sometimes as a leader, you will have to make decisions that are controversial. And sometimes your decisions may not be controversial. But one thing that can always build your credibility and show people that you know what you're talking about is to explain your thinking and reasoning behind your decisions. It'll show your team that you didn't just make your decision randomly, but that you hadn't legitimate thought comprehension behind it. That there's a reason why you did what you did. Not only that, it's an opportunity to show even some of your experience, you'll be able to share that, Hey, I've went through this before, I've seen this happen. And that has helped me to look at something in a particular way. And that has helped me to make this decision. And this is why. Finally, one component of building credibility is to be honest. To be honest about things around you. To be honest about where you are, your organization. Also, to be honest about what you don't know. I know sometimes we're thinking I gotta build credibility. I got to show them that I'm competent. So let me try to make them believe that I know everything. Well, let me stop you right there. That right there is a mistake. First and foremost, people don't expect you to know everything. That's number one. Number two, people can see when you don't know something and you tried to come off as you do. Sometimes you didn't realize that trying to present yourself in trying to say something based on something you don't know actually reduces your credibility. Because people then Noun wonder, if I can see that you're not being honest about this. Maybe you're not being honest about something else. It actually has the opposite effect. And so what you have to remember is that as you build credibility as a leader with new followers or if you're a new leader on the scene, be honest about your experience. Be honest about what you know, but definitely be honest about what you don't know. 16. How to Build Trust with your Team: We talked about building credibility. We talked about displaying your competence and your character. But let's talk even more specifically noun in this lesson about building trust with your team. What can you do to establish trust? Here's a couple of things I want to share with you. Number one, assume responsibility for the tough calls. We talked about making the tough decisions. But being very explicit that you are responsible for those tough calls, that if anything were to come from the decision that would have a backlash, that you as the leader will assume the responsibility that helps the team know that they can trust you, trust you and tough times trust you during the tough calls and know that you won't leave them and walk away from them when things get heated, they want to know, well, you have their back when the situation gets difficult. Next, you want to examine your own decisions for bias. Again, a lot of times people are seeing and trying to determine can they trust you? Why are you doing what you're doing? And sometimes people will believe that you're doing what you're doing because of bias. There's a lot of bias out there. And I would dare to say that not all bias is bad. But what I do recommend is that you explain your decision to people and make sure they know why you do what you do. We've talked about before explaining your decision and how that shows your competence. But it also builds trust because sometimes you'll display something what I call positive bias. Now. But as of course, that we often think of as a negative thing. We think about bias and how people don't give people a chance, et cetera. There are definitely a lot of application of negative bias. But I submit that there's something called positive bias. And what positive biases is that you've been through an experience and it helped you to learn something, or you're taking that bias that you now have from an experience. Now I'm applying that to something you're going through. Now, you may say, Hey, I've dealt with this particular product before or I've dealt with this type of situation before. And yeah, I have a positive bias toward it, but that's why I'm making a decision. I am because I've seen this circumstance before, its experience and its bias. Now, as you communicate that and you share that publicly, Perhaps people can see, and even if people don't agree with you, it's more likely for them to respect you because you've shared it with them honestly, then to wonder why you did what you did. Next. If you're building trust with your team, you want to demonstrate genuine concern for all groups in your organization as you are seeking to build trust with others. Demonstrating genuine concern for other groups in your organization helps people see that you're not just focused on yourself. Essentially, what this shows is that you have the ability to not be selfish. And at the end of the day, if you're not selfish, it shows people that you can be trustworthy. Another aspect of building trust with your team is to ensure the ethics of your followers. A lot of time we can spin, making sure that our actions are ethical. But people really are looking to see, especially as you're a leader, do you hold others in your purview to those same level of ethics? I've been a part of a lot of organizations where people didn't trust the leadership because they didn't believe there were holding ethical standards for everybody. That certain people got away with certain things and other people got punished. If you want to build trust with your team and show that you're a person of great credibility. Make sure that you hold all of your followers to the ethical standards that you hold yourself to. 17. Basic Leadership Influence: In this section, now we're going to talk about influence. Did you realize that as a leader and a manager, it's important that you are influential with your team members or your followers. Then I submit, it's important that leaders and managers must be influencers. Now influences one's ability to persuade others, decisions, plans, and even results. And I want to submit to you that influence essentially comes from two main categories, are two main powers. Now the first one is called positional power, and the second one is called personal power. These are the powers, if you will, that influence people or why people are influence. Now first, let's talk about this positional power or positional influence. And this is when influence comes from a power. That is from a job description, a title, or position in an organization. How it sounds. Think of it as a individual who is a general manager in a retail store. The individuals are influenced by that person simply because of their title. If you are an employee at that retail store, you influence because that's the general manager. And so I'm going to do what that individual says simply because of their title. Now, as we dive a little bit deeper into this positional power, I want to talk about some of the aspects of it that you need to know. First is the most initial and basic level of leading. This positional power is the first level that people will be influenced by you simply because of your title. Second, the position and title. Hello people to follow you write. It's because of the hierarchy, it's because of the organizational chart. They have to follow you. They're the positional power of influence, create bosses, but it doesn't necessarily create liters. This is where we get a little bit into the distinction between a manager and a leader. Oftentimes, organizations don't call people the leader of something. They usually call them a manager or a director. They can be a boss by virtue of their title, but leadership is something that is different. So this positional power of influence may make you a boss, but it doesn't make you a leader. And finally, people will be influenced only within the confines of a person's position. So let's take, for example, that general manager at a retail store, that person may have influence over the employees there. But typically, they're influenced only is in the realm of the jaw or what is compelled to be influenced by that person's position. So they may have influence on how they greet customers are what they wear to work. They may have influence on what they do in their particular tasks. But typically, if that influence is based on the position, it only lives there. Now for individuals who operate at this level, there are a couple of things that you have to watch for when you have your influence only based on the position or a title. First, you have to make sure you don't just value the position and not the act of leading. As we talked about before, you can have influenced based on your title or your position, but that doesn't make you a leader. You want to make sure that you don't get so focused on the position that you actually don't leave. We have to realize that our position in holding our position does not actually make us a leader. Next, we have to watch out for being consumed with organizational politics. I've been a part of many organizations where of course they are led in, driven by positions and titles. But sometimes people can get so consumed with the politics in the organization and operating and trying to become a part of a particular position or title that they actually don't lead well or they actually don't manage well. And all they are really focused on is the organizational politics. Next is focusing on your rights and responsibilities. Sometimes when people are so focused with obtaining a position or having a title, they can think about all the rights and things that come with it. The rights that they have, where should they park? Who should report to them? Who should be telling them things now? And they can boss around this person and that person. But the reality of it is, is that they're missing out on their responsibilities. What should they do? And so you have to make sure that you don't get so focused on who should do for you that you miss out on what you should be doing for other people. Finally, you have to watch out for segregating yourself based on hierarchy and where you fall in the political landscape of the organization. I've been a part of a lot of organizations where people get so focused on their title and get so focused on the position that they separate themselves from people that aren't at their quote, unquote level. This is of course a mistake and a massive limitation because you're so focused on the position that you forgot about leadership. You forgot about leading people. And you forgot about the goal of getting things done when you separate yourself or give the perception that you are better than other people, because now you have a title, you'll soon find out that you may be all alone and that isn't productive or getting you to a level of success. 18. Fostering Influence as a Leader: In this lesson, we want to now talk about the personal power or the personal level of influence as we understand why people are influenced by others, we talked about the position. People are influenced because of a particular position. But now, what about some of the personal aspects? Now, this power comes from relationships, reciprocity, and even what we sometimes call social capital. This is about who you are, not what position you hold. Now let's dive a little bit into this. How do you build this personal influence of power? First, you want to be a team player. You want to realize that to get anything done in any organization, you're going to have to work through people. And people will always work best when they can work as a team. If you've got a whole bunch of people working individually but not collectively, it's gonna be hard to reach collective goals. And even though you may be a leader, even though you may be somebody who was higher in an organizational chart. If you want to build personal Influence, People must be able to see that you're a team player. Next, you'll want to make sure you help other people succeed. If you're wondering why some people aren't influenced by you, sometimes they may see that you only care about yourself and you only need them when you need something done for yourself. In that case, people of course, will not be influenced by you. And so you wanna make sure, am I helping other people to succeed? Am I really pouring into other people, or am I always taking from other people? I've been in many organizations and sometimes when I mentor and counsel other leaders, I'll help them to think about and to reflect how much are you actually helping others to succeed? Next, do you respect others? If you're wondering and asking yourself why people uninfluenced by you. Sometimes it's that you may not actually respect them. I've been a part of organizations and people were wondering and asking, why do we have low morale? And sometimes they would bring me in or bring others in and try to determine the question. One of the quick answers that would often come up around the boardroom table is, well, we need to pay more money. What do we have in the budget to give people more money? Well, research has shown that oftentimes job satisfaction isn't just limited to money. A lot of times what I've found when we communicate with people and we look at the research, is that people aren't satisfied when they don't feel respected. And when they're not respected, they're not satisfied, then they're not influenced by the leaders that are supposed to be leading them. And so I suggest that as you want to build your influence, you want to build your personal power. Makes sure you're respecting other people. Another thing that you have to make sure is that you're inviting other people to participate. Sometimes we can get so focused on doing things ourselves or doing things that we think that only we can do that we miss the opportunity to bring others in. Another way to build personal influence with people is to take action and solve problems. We talked about this idea of taking action in an earlier lesson. But it is truthful that the more you actually take action and help people solve problems or even participate in our collective problems in a team, the more people will trust you personally. And finally, if you want to build personal influence, always demonstrate integrity. It's hard for people to be influenced by those who are operating in integrity. 19. Building Influence Through Networking: In this lesson, I want to now talk about how to build influence. But doing it through building a network. Sometimes we have to realize that no individual is an island. And there are moments when some of us may feel that networking isn't necessary. But the reality of it is, is that if you want to influence people and influence and organization, you're going to have to engage with it. So here are a couple of keys of building influence to a network. First, networking isn't just for politicking and self-promotion. We're going to talk about some of the keys to networking and some of the benefits to networking. But realizing it's not just for simply trying to politic or promote oneself. Next, networking is a way to obtain and provide information more easily. If you want to influence people and especially you want to lead an effectively manage an organization, you're going to need information. One of the things I've realized as a chief executive is that the information you receive from an end an organization will not simply come from the formal meetings that you have. I've sat around with staff and employees and individuals who led departments. And of course, we have formal meetings and we request for more information. But a lot of times some of the key things that I really needed to know didn't come from what I learned at the boardroom table. It came from what I learned at the water cooler. In other words, there's information that you really need to find out. And sometimes people don't want to share those in formal settings, but you'll get it from informal settings. That's when networking comes in. Networking is also important because it helps you to better understand the people in your organization. The reality is, is that you're not going to gain all the understanding from just the formal means or the official communications. You're not going to gain the understanding just by reading everyone's bio. Oftentimes when I'm leading in a non-profit organization, a lot of times there are a lot of leaders and people where they won't necessarily have official employee records are biographical articles that you can read. And it's important even in that setting, no, the background and what people have experienced. But I realized that the only way I've found out key information about people, not necessarily gossip or negative things, but even just appropriate experiences is through networking. Oftentimes, even talking directly to those individuals, taking the time to hear their histories, taking the time to hear their experiences. The best way to understand people is to talk and deal directly with them. And the best way to do that is through network. And another important aspect of networking is to get feedback on your ideas. Sometimes you may wonder, Well, I don't need networking. What's the point? But if you're going to lead and if you're going to seek to take your organization to new and higher heights, you're going to have to offer new ideas. And let me tell you through my experience and research, you don't want the boardroom or the formal meetings to be the first place you introduce those ideas. Networking is important because it allows you to pitch those ideas to people in an informal setting. I've been a part of a lot of organizations, and that was one time I was invited to join a board of a non-profit. And when I sat on the board and I would hear some of the things that happened around the boardroom table. I quickly realized that most of the board members weren't comfortable with sharing their real thoughts and ideas because of the dynamic with the chairperson. And I realized that if you want it to launch something new, particularly in that organization, you had to pre-launch your ideas with people outside of the board meeting. Another thing I realized is that in a lot of formal board meetings, people don't necessarily want to provide feedback because they don't want to seem like a person who's rocking the boat or stifling progress. But the reality of it is, is that, that feedback maybe something that may be pivotal and important. I remember reading a lot of stories about organizations and companies that would launch new products and new initiatives. And when they brought those new products and initiatives to the boardroom table, everybody just said yes, that the important feedback that was necessary didn't make it there. And that's because a lot of times people didn't want to have fights in the boardroom and go back and forth. But if you really want to bring an idea and get legitimate feedback and give honest feedback. Networking is one of the best ways to do that. 20. How to Build Your Network: In this lesson, I want to talk about how to effectively build your network. You may say, alright, I hear you, it's good to network, but how do I find people? How do I make sure that I'm not the creepy person going around asking people a bunch of questions and I'm becoming an annoying person. Well, here's a couple of tips that you want to use when you're trying to build your network. Number one, make sure you introduce yourself. It's important that you realize that not everyone knows you. And sometimes we get so comfortable with not talking to people that we put the responsibility of introducing ourselves to some one else. Next, as you're building your network, seek out people who you have a positive rapport with. There's sometimes people you have a natural positive rapport with whether you met them in a coffee shop before you went to the organization, whether you had a conversation with them at a another outside of him. But if you have a positive rapport with someone, that's a strong key, that this person may be someone who I can expand my network with. Next, you want to find people who you have common interests with. A lot of times when you're looking to network and build and expand your base of people in partnerships. It's a good idea to start with people who you have common interests with. One of the things that often hinders networking and just basic communication is that you may have an opportunity to spend time with somebody, but you have nothing to talk about. Those niceties and things that you kinda talk about that are really just filling up time, run out really quickly. So net working with someone who you have common interests with is a great way to keep the conversation going. The next thing I want you to remember is to keep it light. Sometimes you may have a great common interests with somebody, but even if you don't, you want to make sure you keep your compensation light. So in this case, maybe religion and politics, we can keep off the table. Another key and building your network is to provide value to other people. We talked about this before in another lesson. But you want to make sure that you're not only finding yourself in places where you're just seeking things from other people. Are you contributing to them? Are you valuable to someone else? Networking really works, not when it's a one-way relationship, but really when it's a two-way relationship, when both people feel like they're getting value from the interaction. And another way to build your network is to celebrate when other people, when, when someone else in your team or in your department, or even in your organization winds be one of the celebrated. A lot of times when people, when, especially when they have a public, when sometimes we think that there's so many people who see there when they're gonna get so much praise and iteration. And I don't just want to be another person in the chorus. But the truth is, having been in that position and having seen it a lot of times, you'll be surprised at how much actual celebration and adoration you get. Aob, a couple of the obligatory ones. But the truth is, a lot of people around you actually won't celebrate you. Another way to build your network. And this is important, and that's sticking to your word. I can't tell you how many times I've had conversations with people. And it seemed like we were going to build our network and build our relationship. But the individual didn't stick to their word. They said that they were call or that we would meet or that we would be in a place where they would send something to me in it just never happened. You realize that there's so many networking opportunities that fall through the cracks simply because we didn't stick to our word and we didn't follow through. If you meet somebody at an event, at a conference or somewhere outside of your office, or you end up talking to somebody in your office and you say, I'm going to send you something or I'm gonna meet you here. Make sure you stick to it. You'll be surprised at sticking to your word will greatly influence your network and greatly expand the people who you're connected with. 21. Leadership Communication: In this lesson, I want to talk about communication. And first, I want to talk about some keys to verbal communication. There are many times that you'll have to communicate in front of a team, a group, and even maybe a large audience. And it's important that as you grow as a leader and as you grow as a manager, you feel comfortable and know how to do it effectively. First, as you're communicating as a leader, make sure you communicate with an animated voice. What that means is that spend the time to make sure your voice is variable. In other words, make sure your communication isn't monotone. If you hear the way I'm speaking now, I'm speaking with a variable in animated voice. That means sometimes I'm talking higher, sometimes I'm talking lower, sometimes I'm moving quickly, sometimes I go slow. It's the variability that animation in your voice. Now let me give an example of what a monotone voice sounds like. That if I were talking like this and I didn't have any animation or variability in my voice. Notice how that wasn't as interesting. Notice even how it could be a bit annoying when you're communicating as a leader, it's important to know that your communication matters. One way you can make your communication more effective is with animated voice. Another aspect that's important for communication is facial expressions. Did you realize that research shows us that communication, even when we're talking to somebody, is 60% body language, not simply what we say. And a lot of times we perceive that body language by our facial expressions. Realize that your facial expressions are important when you're talking to people, when you're encouraging them or inspiring them. But even when you're correcting them, It's important that you realize that as a leader, I have to take account of my facial expressions. One of the ways that you can make sure you do this is try looking at yourself in the mirror. Have a conversation with yourself about something that perhaps is important. And think about what is it that you're trying to convey. If you're trying to convey, maybe that people would be inspired or feel better about the future. Look at how your face is conveying that. Are you smiling? Are you giving an opportunity for people to feel you and see what you're thinking. Maybe you're trying to share something where your goal is correction. Then look at yourself when you say that in the mirror. Realizing that communication is majority nonverbal cues, gestures are very important. Imagine if you're talking to somebody open, are you using your hands? Are you leaning into war them? Are you stepping back away from them? Your hands folded? Are you sitting there with your hands on your hips looking at them in a particular way. All those gestures matter. Now whatever you're going for in your communication, the idea is to know that you are intentional. You are standing there with your arms folded. Make sure you are making that decision because you realize what type of communication you're giving with it. If you're standing there with your arms and your hips, make sure that, hey, I'm doing this on purpose. And finally, Azure communicating. One of the things that research has shown is highly effective in getting across a message is to communicate in threes. We tend to think of things in threes as complete. Start, middle, finish, right? Green, yellow, red. So if you're communicating in threes, make sure that you maybe start with an introduction, have a body, and have a conclusion. 3's help people to process what you're saying. Remember it, understand it, and hopefully take it with them after they finished the communication with you. 22. Mastering the Written Word: In this lesson, we're going to talk about communication, but specifically communication through variety. As a Chief Executive Officer and as a leader of many non-profits. Most of my leadership begins with something that I have to put on paper, whether it's a letter of support or a letter of an update kinda report that I have to write. Maybe it's an email that I have to send out to the whole company. Writing is important. And as a leader, as a manager, you want to make sure that you are writing your best work. Here's a couple of things that I want you to grab as you're thinking about writing and to make your writing better. First, you want to prepare. Preparation is key. Taking a moment to prepare will help you be clear about your purpose and clear about your audience. You want to start with a draft. One of the things that helps me to write is to know that when I get my ideas on paper, that those ideas written aren't my final presentation. It's important first to let your mind thing and get your ideas that you can see what you're writing. Next, even after you have your draft, then take a moment to edit it. I can tell you right now that there has never been a form of written communication that I've put out there to followers, stakeholders, or team members that wasn't. Editing. Editing is important. It's important because the process of writing in the process of editing should be two different things. How you see things, when you're thinking about them and when you're writing them on paper is totally different When, when you're just reading it and trying to digest what's on the paper. It's important that you build in not only an opportunity to get out a draft, but building an opportunity to edit. Another key aspect in mastering your communication as a leader and a manager is to keep sentences short. I can remember as a leader, I would want to get these wonderful and complex ideas out on paper. But the reality is that people didn't understand them. And I would think that I was trying to show them my competence or show them migrate ability by writing things that were overly complex and overly long. Let me tell you, it's better for people to comprehend what you're saying and to remember what you're saying. Then to be impressed by your exaggeration in words or impressed by your extravagance and vocabulary. Keep your sentences short. Keep your communication. Simple. People want to know what you're thinking and people want to be able to read and digest, which are saying, as you keep your communication short, make sure you avoid repetition. One of the ways that you can quickly disengage your audience is to say the same thing over and over and over again. When you continue to repeat the same information, people will figure, it's no point for me to stay engaged with this material. Let me start reading this. And finally, you'll want to make sure not only you, but have somebody else proofread your work. I can't tell you how many times I've put something out there. I thought that I was saying something, but when I looked at it, it wasn't what I thought was on the paper. Did you realize your brain sees things that sometimes aren't there, that you think are there when other people read it and look at it, it's totally different to them. Can I tell you it's important that as you're mastering your written work, make sure you have somebody who can proofread it. It's no point in you sending your work out there to a bunch of people when all it took was one person to point out a mistake and it would save you a lot of headache later. 23. How to Conduct Effective Meeting: In this lesson, I want to talk about communication, but how to communicate and conduct effective meetings. As a leader and a manager, you're going to have to be the leader and preside over meetings. And it's important that those meetings were unwell because a good meeting can have a major impact in an organization. First, you want to prepare for your meeting. Never come to a meeting where you just want to see how things go. Make sure you have an idea and agenda and at least you're prepared for a particular direction. Yeah, that'd be meetings where you'll let things maybe naturally take their course, but you always want to be prepared that if certain things happen, you have a way for them to continue and you have a way to make sure the meeting is productive. Next, you want to make sure you're ready to conduct the meeting. Make sure that if you need to speak to a large meeting or large group of people, that you are comfortable and you're able to share everything that you need to share. Finally, after you conduct your meetings, you want to follow up. A lot of times I've been in places and situations where we've had wonderful meetings, covered wonderful things, but there was no follow-up and we missed potential opportunities. Make sure that not only do you prepare for your meetings, not only do you knock them out of the park, but make sure there's a process for follow-up. 24. Conducting Virtual Meetings: As we think about meetings, many of us have realized how virtual meetings have become a part of every day organizational life. So I want to cover a couple of tips when you're running your virtual meetings as a leader and a manager. First, you want to make sure that you use video when possible. Although virtual meetings in some organizations and some industries are perpetual, it's important that we still see who we're talking to, especially as a leader. People need to see you. As we talked about before. Communication is mostly nonverbal. So if you're just talking and you're coming from a pitcher, people can't see you. And when people are able to see you, they're able to be more engaged in what they're saying and they're able to put more of themselves in the meeting. Additionally, when you are establishing an environment where video is used, it sets a standard and it helps people to know that just as they can see you. Then if they rise to the occasion to the meeting, we should be able to see them. The next tip for virtual meetings is to send out updates to participants in advance. Not only do you want to send out your agenda and send out things that people should be prepared for. But if there's any updates to the meeting, make sure you send them out in advance. The more people are able to know what's happening in the meeting. And B will prepare for it. The more they're able to stay engaged during the virtual meeting. The next tip in a virtual meeting is to keep my x hat. Not I know you may be wondering and thinking like me, hey, I've been to virtual meetings before. And people end up saying all sorts of things. And it's a good idea to mute out everybody. I get that sometimes you may have to. But if you're trying to increase engagement and you're trying to ensure that everybody is in the meeting. If you said an atmosphere that the mikes are always hot, then people will make sure that they're in places and environments. That is conducive for the meeting. One of the things I've realized, having done a lot of virtual meetings is that you don't want people to try to think that they can be a part of your virtual meeting and do something else at the same time. There'll be distracted. They won't be fully engaged. And you won't be able to get everything out of them from the meeting. And so people need to realize, I can't do this particular virtual meeting and do grocery shopping at the same time. You want people to respect the meeting, respect to time. And sometimes keeping the mix hot shows that we're only going to be focused on this meeting at this time. The next step in virtual meetings is to have a backup plan. Now, many of us have experienced virtual meetings, know that sometimes we have technical issues. It's important to note that when those technical issues arise, that it doesn't stop the whole show. And finally, when you're having a virtual meeting and especially if you're leading or conducting that meeting, make sure you assign a host to host the meeting. I've been a part of a lot of virtual meetings and I've tried to lead the meeting as it relates to the agenda and the content, and host the meeting as it relates to making sure people are in the right place. They're able to login. We're watching the chat box, et cetera. It's hard to do that effectively at the same time. And if you're only one person. So if you want to conduct the best meeting possible, assign somebody to host the meeting who won't have the same responsibility of conducting the agenda for the meeting. 25. Managing Individuals: In this section, we're now going to talk about how to manage individuals. As a leader in a course, as a manager, you will have a lot of opportunities and responsibilities to manage other people. But sometimes, if we don't manage people effectively, we'll realize that we find ourselves in a situation not getting the most effective results. So let's talk about managing individuals. First thing that we have to cover is effective delegation. One of the key things that when we start managing other people, we need to know how to delegate, how to give people tasks. And let's talk about the best way to do that. 26. How to Delegate Tasks: In this lesson, let's talk about how to delegate. First, you need to decide what you're going to delegate. That may seem kind of obvious and it may seem simple. But it's a good practice to prepare and to think through what you want to delegate. Sometimes you'll realize that there are certain things that you actually don't want to delegate. And you realized that there are certain things that you thought you were going to do yourself, but that you actually do need to delegate. So the first aspect of good delegation is thinking through what you're delegating. The next aspect of effective delegation, to know why you're delegating, clarify the purpose. When you operate with a clear purpose, then it's gonna be very apparent if you meet that purpose or if you miss that purpose. And that all begins with knowing why. The next aspect of effective delegation is the what, what are you actually delegating? Defining the work, defining the parameters, defining the actual outcomes and the actual things that people need to do. Number four, choose the right person to who, who are you going to delegate this to? It's important to know that sometimes we can know why we're delegating, sometimes we can know what we're delegating, but if we give it to the wrong person, it can cause us to miss a whole bunch of opportunities and even possibly get the wrong results. And finally, if you want to effectively delegate, you need to know when to delegate determined the timeline. Not only do you know when to delegate this particular task to someone, but also think through the timeline. Is it a particular time that you need something done? If you think about the timeline and you think about the win, then you may wonder, am I giving this person enough time to get it done, MI rushing the delegation? Or are we in the case where this may be something that doesn't need to be delegated to an individual because of the timeline. Maybe we need to outsource this to someone else. 27. Sharing a Delegation Dlan: In this lesson, I want to talk about sharing the delegation plan. Now we may have spent time figuring out what we're going to delegate, determining when and who and what. Not. It comes time for us as a leader or a manager to share that delegation plan. So now I want to tell you a good way to share your delegation plan. First, explain the assignment. Sometimes people assume that people know what the delegation assignment is because they just think you ought to know what it is, but they don't spend time explaining it. Going back to our communication tips, you want to keep the message clear. You want to keep your sentences short, but make sure you explain it. Don't assume that people know what you're talking about. Sometimes people don't bring back the correct results because we haven't spend time explaining what the assignment is. It is your job as a leader and a manager to explain the task at hand. Next, you want to agree on a plan. Make sure that the individual knows what the assignment is, but to agree on the plan of getting it done. Sometimes you want to ensure that people actually provide feedback. Make sure Did you understand what I was saying? Are there any questions? Is it clear what I was trying to convey? Make sure they agree? Yes. I want to make sure that I get this done. Can I tell you it's very important to make sure you get a confirmation from people when you're giving them a delegation assignments. Because what will sometimes happen is when people don't do things or get them done, they'll come back and say, Oh, I didn't know you wanted it this time. I didn't know you meant this or I didn't know you needed it by this date. Make sure you agree on a plan, make sure it's clear. And finally, when you're giving someone a delegation assignment document, that agreement, it doesn't have to be a long contract of course, but maybe an email, maybe a text message, maybe regurgitating or summarizing what it is and make sure you have it documented. Because when you find yourself, if you find yourself in a position where what you delegate, it wasn't done, you want to be able to go back and say, Hey, we wrote this down and we agree to x. 28. Delegation Principles: In this lesson, I want to give you some advice that I've learned over the years of delegating assignments to people that will help your delegation go much better. Here's a couple of things. Number one, make sure you provide support. It's important that when you're delegating to other people that they don't feel like they are by themselves. As a leader, as a manager, it is your job to make sure they have the necessary resources and tools they need to accomplish the task. Make sure you create an environment in a relationship with those who you delegate with that, if they need support, they can come to you or any of the specific places that they need to go to get that support. Make sure that feel comfortable. You don't want somebody to feel like they're stuck out there with an assignment with no support. Next, don't micromanage. The point of delegation is to put it in somebody else's hands. You want them to feel comfortable and build skills in managing the tasks that are given to them. Another piece of advice I want to share with you is learn how to be a coach. A coach is a person who helped somebody accomplish the task that is given to them. A coach is there to lift up somebody else, to help guide them and help push individuals along. As you are a leader or manager, you're delegating tasks to others. Make sure you learn not how to micromanage and take over the task, but learning how to coach others, that they feel better equipped to do the things that are given to. The next piece of advice in delegating to others is learn how to remove roadblocks. Your job as a leader and as a manager is to try to make things simple and try to help others to be able to do what was presented before them. Sometimes people can't do their task because there's so much roadblocks ahead of them. Or some people say in certain larger organizations, a bunch of red tape. Sometimes there's red tape and you can't do anything about it. If you're a leader or a manager and you have the authority to reduce roadblocks, reduce restrictions, it's your job to do so. Here's my final tip and giving you some delegation advice and that is avoid reverse delegation. I can remember early on that I would be delegating tasks that people. And I will quickly find myself in a position of reverse delegation. What is that? I would give a task to somebody else would obviously the purpose of taking things off my plate and giving it to them. But find myself would more work because I'd given them something. And what they did was reverse it around and give it back to me. Makes sure you avoid reverse delegation. Make sure you don't always try to jump in and save the day or jump in and do some things. Let people do and make decisions based on the delegation assignment that you've given to them. Sometimes people will try to reverse it and give it back to you, but make sure that you don't accept it and say, Hey, I'm going to put this in your hands. Let me let you tackle it for awhile and see what you can come up with. 29. How to Provide Feedback: In this lesson, I want to talk about providing feedback as you're managing individuals and as you're helping other people to do tasks, it's important that you know how to provide feedback. Feedback is pivotal. Feedback is important that people can see and know how you respond to what they're doing. Here's something I want to tell you about feedback. The best time to give feedback is in the moment. Sometimes we have a way of looking at what other people have done. And we want to provide feedback. We wait days or weeks or even sometimes months to give feedback on an assignment. It's important that if you have vital feedback on someone's work, something that you delegated to them, Give it to them in the moment. People will be able to respect it more. And also people will be able to apply that feedback to the work that they're doing at that time. 30. How to Give Difficult Feedback: In this lesson, as we talk about giving feedback, I want to talk about how to give difficult feedback. Sometimes we don't give feedback because it may be something that we think is going to be difficult for someone to swallow. Sometimes it is. So as a leader, as a manager, you're going to need to know how to give difficult feedback. Here's a couple of things that you have to learn. First, be objective. You need to be objective when you're giving difficult feedback. Sometimes there are some subjective measures in some of the things that we're talking about. But it's important that we leave the subjective stuff to the side. If you have a idea or a response to somebody's work, make sure you take away opinions. Make sure you take away things that aren't tied to objective facts or objective actual production. The more your objective, the more people can respect what you're trying to say. Next, you want to plan that conversation. It's important that you put some time and thought to when you want to give that difficult feedback, make sure you're not walking in the hallway and you all of a sudden stop somebody and say, Oh, let me tell you this, Nolan, that let me tell you why that's not good. Because what you have to realize is that you don't really know the other things that may come in the way. One of the reasons why you don't want to stop somebody in the hallway is because a lot of times you may stop and talk with somebody not realizing that something else is in the way of your conversation. Let me give you an example. There was one time I was walking in the hallway trying to talk to somebody and we were talking about something happening in their life. And the conversation turned pretty serious. But of course we were walking in already on our way to something else. Although the conversation turns serious, it became awkward because there was something else happening in the office that took our attention away and we couldn't really talk about the serious nature of what was just presented. So I found myself actually having to leave hastily because I already had something planned that had to happen in that moment. And it seemed like I was kind of insensitive to the major thing that was presented there. Those major conversations or difficult things that you want to discuss, make sure you plan. The next thing you want to make sure when you're giving difficult feedback is to leave the meeting. Not only do you want to plan the conversation, but make sure you take leadership in the meeting. If you're a leader or manager and you have to give difficult feedback, guy the meeting, make sure that the meeting stays productive. Make sure that the meeting stays objective, and makes sure that the meeting stays focused on the feedback that you're trying to give. Next, you want to be honest in the meeting. If you're going to plan a meeting and you're going to take a moment to sit and have a conversation about some difficult feedback. Be honest about it. It's better to be honest during the conversation then for somebody to find out what you really think after the conversation, I'd like to think about it. If we're going to sit down and have them meeting, make sure we cover what needs to be covered during the meeting. When you're having these difficult conversations or giving this difficult feedback, make sure you focus on behaviors. Focus on actions. You don't want someone to feel like you're making a personal attack toward them. You want to focus on actual outcomes, actual objective behaviors that will help a person to realize that making the change that you as a leader want to see is possible when you make things personal, it's kind of difficult for somebody to hear a personal attack and walk away thinking, well, I need to change my personality. I need to change my innate thought process. I need to change something about me. That's why you don't want to make it personal. Focus on behaviors. And someone will be able to take your feedback and hopefully apply it to specific actions. And going along with that thought, you want to be action oriented. You want to focus on actual outcomes, not just simply thoughts or abstract ideas, but help somebody to be very clear about the feedback you're giving and think about the actual action steps they need to take. 31. Developing Other People: In this lesson, I want to talk about how to develop other people. When you're developing other people, first, you want to make sure you communicate. It's important to communicate to people when you're trying to develop them. A lot of times I've had the privilege of developing people and to helping them grow and helping they themselves become leaders. But I made sure we had to start with communication. Sometimes we can become so task-focused, simply doing what we're doing that we actually don't spend time communicating with our team members, are communicating with our followers. Make sure if your goal is to develop other people, to grow them. Make sure you communicate that to them, communicate to them that you're trying to grow them, communicate to them that you want to see them. Do better, communicate to them that you see potential in them becoming a leader. Next, if your goal is to develop somebody else, take the time to understand their interests and their skills. Sometimes we can think that we want to see a certain person, perhaps in a certain division or a certain department, or even in a certain position. But if we haven't taken the time to understand their interests and their skills, we may not understand that that might not be a good fit. The best way to develop others is to develop them based on their own interests, based on their own passion, and based on their own skills. The next piece and developing others is to try to provide them with training and mentoring opportunities. Try to give them an opportunity to be trained in the area in which you want to develop them. And so if you want them to be developed in a particular place or a particular area, let's say leadership. Provide some options for leadership training for them, give them some resources. And maybe also if you want them to become a leader that maybe suggest some actual people that they can follow who could be their mentor? Maybe you yourself can mentor them. But if you want to develop people, you have to provide them with some means of growth. Next, maybe you're their manager or you're leading them and you want to see them develop. Well, one way you can do that is to refresh their responsibilities. Sometimes people have been doing the same thing, the same way for a very long time. And you're maybe wondering, Hey, I want to develop them, I want them to grow. One of the ways to do that is to maybe refresh their responsibilities, give them something new, give them a new thing to do, a project, a new division, or a new way of working with people, maybe have them partner with somebody else. If you want to help people develop, you'll have to give them an opportunity to do new things and work with new people. Another way, even as you're giving them new and refresh responsibilities is to give them also some stretch assignments. Stretch assignments are assignments that aren't easy for somebody to do. Sometimes you'll refresh responsibility with things that are pretty easy and pretty light. But you'll also want to give them the ability to grow. Sometimes people grow by being challenged. Give them some stretch assignments that may seem or be difficult for them. It's not that you're trying to have them fail. You don't want to give them something too outrageous. But you want to give them some assignments that will stretch their abilities, caused them to do something different, caused them to maybe even put themselves in some uncomfortable, appropriate positions, but uncomfortable to the point that they will grow. Make sure you provide stretch opportunities. And ultimately, people will appreciate the ability for them to do new things, to challenge their presence skills, and to grow new ones. 32. Time Management Principles: In this section, I want to talk a little bit about time management. Did you realize that as a leader, as a manager, as you grow as a leader and manager, it's gonna be really important for you to manage your time. Time management is important because as you or your organization grows, you'll have more responsibilities and your time will become more precious. As a leader and manager, it's important for you to realize that your time is valuable. Your time is valuable because not only are you leading or managing a group of other people, but how you spend your time can have an exponential impact on your organization or your team. Here are a couple of centrals I want you to grab as it relates to time management. Number one, understand how you spend your time. It's really important to note that even as we talk about the importance of time management and we can plan all day about what you should be doing with your time or how to do this, how to do that. One thing is for sure, if you don't understand how you presently spend your time, it's gonna be difficult to make adjustments and to do time management better. And so the first thing you wanna do is look at how are you spending your time. Maybe reflect on your day, maybe look back over what you've done and maybe take a moment to think, what did I do yesterday? Sometimes some of us have actual well-documented days, meaning that we know Two O'clock, we did this at three o'clock. We did that. If you have that, let that be your first place that you'll look look at what did I do last week? How did they spend my time. But if you don't have a well-documented time, maybe you use other resources and other means to determine what you did. Look at your emails, maybe look at some of the meetings you've attended, maybe look at some of the things that you've done, but try to determine how am I actually spending my time throughout my day. Another thing you need to understand as you look at your time and look at how you spend it. Try to determine your patterns. Look for patterns in what you've done. If you could determine that the first part of your days are very in efficient. In the second part of your days are very efficient. You want to be able to understand and document that. Maybe it's vice versa for you, maybe after two PM in your day, you tend to just waste a bunch of time. It's important for you to know that because those patterns are going to show you how you can make adjustments. How you can make changes to be even more efficient with your time. Next, you want to make a goal driven schedule. You have to understand not only how you're spending your time in the patterns in your time, but what are your goals and make your scheduled based on what you're trying to accomplish. Sometimes, when we talk about making schedules, we make schedules just to crunch as much as we can in the day. And if that is your goal, then let that be your goal. But I submit that most of us as predictive leaders and productive managers, it's not just about the quantity of what we do every day. It's about the quality. And so having a schedule based on actual goals, based on actual outcomes helps us to be much more effective and much more efficient. The next thing I want you to do is to execute your goal based schedule, execute your plan. Now, a lot of times we have to realize that it's good to have things in theory. But if we don't do them in practice, they will miss out on all that great planning and all those great ideas. But we have to realize in order to use our time better, we're going to have to execute the plan. There's no way around it. Let's do what we put out to do. And finally, after we spent all that time to determine what we're going to do and actually doing it. We want to make sure we don't create the same possible mistake we had earlier. And that's not being able to review what we've done. And so now we want to make sure that we review our actual execution of our plan. If we set a goal based schedule, if we actually done it, or maybe we haven't done it, but we want to take the time now until you look back over our day, did we actually do what we set out to do? That we actually accomplish the things that we had on our list. We have to review what we've done. If we do, then we're able to see that the adjustments we made were productive. Can I tell you something? You have to have an agenda, you have to have a calendar because your time is valuable. 33. How to Stay Focused: In this lesson, as we talk about managing our time, It's important that we know how to get in stay focused. Did you realize that a lot of times we don't get things done because of distractions. Distractions that come before us throughout our day. Distractions that come via texts and emails and news and people popping up in our office. And so it's important to realize we have to get in stay focus. So how do we do that? In this lesson, I'm going to talk about how to get focused and how to stay focus. The first thing we have to do when we're trying to stay focused is number one, remove distractions. Distractions are a parent and they're all around us. And we realize in today's society, so many things going on that happened so quickly and so rapidly that if we're not careful, we can find ourself in the stream of never ending distractions from news to personal things, to even things that happened in our organization are on our team. We can get consumed with distractions. Next, we have to have time, tasks, and timed checks. In other words, we have to predetermine what are the times that we're supposed to do things? And when are we going to check to make sure we're doing the things that we do. We gotta time those tasks and we have to time when we're checking on those tasks, we have to be, of course, discipline to make sure that we're doing the things that need to get done. Sometimes we think that we're doing things, but we actually aren't really doing them. We think that we're doing things or we think that we're focused. But the truth is we haven't actually got things done and we haven't actually been productive. We haven't actually been able to do what we need to do as a chief executive and as a leader, sometimes we can do things and become so consumed with things that we didn't realize how much time has passed. Sometimes we have to realize that hour has passed, two hours have passed, and we didn't realize it. Those timed tasks or those timed check-ins help us to stay focused and make sure that our data doesn't run away from us. Next, we have to eliminate the clutter. If we're trying to remain focused. A lot of times we are distracted not just by the things that happen, but sometimes we're distracted by our environment. We're distracted by clutter. Now, a lot of times clutter may feel comfortable because there are a lot of things around us, but sometimes we don't realize that clutter actually slows us down. Clutter actually causes micro distractions, even though it may not be a big distraction, but just the fact that we can't find the pencil is a distraction in that clutter actually slows us down and it causes us to lose our focus. So when you eliminate clutter, we are causing ourselves to be focused on the task at hand. Next, even though you're in a place with reduced clutter, you want to make sure you're comfortable. Because sometimes being uncomfortable in itself can be a distraction. Being uncomfortable in things around you, maybe how you're sitting or the place that you're actually working at. You don't want that to become a distraction and lose focus. Many times as an executive, although I would wear particular things in the office and work in professional dress clothes. But sometimes if I knew that I would be standing a lot more teaching a lot, I would have to add some comfortable shoes, right? And so making sure that you're comfortable actually will help you to maintain focus. This next tip, instinct focus. I had to learn as a chief executive and I had to learn particularly in the non-profit sector. And that was, I had to know when to say no. A lot of times as a leader and especially as a new leader in a sector where you're trying to build trust, you often say yes to a lot of things. You don't want to say no. Somebody asked for a meeting, somebody asked for your time. You don't want to be the person that says, Hey, I'm too busy. So you say Yes. But one of the things that you have to realize that as a leader and as a manager, especially as you're trying to grow. And especially as you're trying to stay focus, sometimes you will have to say no. One of the things I did that was really productive is I actually wrote a template letter when I had to decline meetings or invitations. I spent the time to write it, but I ended up using that letter in a lot of situations and a lot of circumstances. And when people receive that letter, they understood that I wasn't trying to be rude. I wasn't trying to be dismissive, but I legitimately had other things to do in this particular moment. I didn't have the time to meet. So I would actually encourage you to invest in a means or mechanism to say no. Whether that's a really good written email or even a formal letter or training with your staff around you to decline invitations and meetings. Invest in a good and productive way to say no, it helps you to stay focus, then help you to remain productive. And yes, my final tip is to turn off notifications. We talked about this before, but yes. Sometimes you just need to turn them off. Sometimes we think that we can kind of ignore notifications and now we won't let them distract us. But let me tell you when it's time for you to be focused, is time for you to be productive. As a leader, as a manager, as an executive, sometimes you're just going to have to turn off notifications. And maybe if you have an assistant or someone else around you, maybe they will be the point of contact that if an emergency happens, people know to contact them and they will have the authority to bust in my room or bust and my place or wherever I am, or to get my attention. But sometimes you gotta realize I have to just turn off the notifications to stay focus. 34. How to Manage a Team: In this section, I want to talk about managing Teams. As a leader or manager. You won't always simply be managing individual. Sometimes you'll be managing teams. First, let's talk about what it means to manage a team. Or leading a team means managing multiple people who come together to achieve a shared goal. This is different from just managing multiple individuals that work separately. This is when you have the task, when you are trying to manage individuals who are working together to accomplish one thing, there's some unique skills and strategies to manage a team effectively. First, you want to assemble the right people. I can remember when I read a book called Good to Great by Jim Collins. And one of the things he talks about in his book, when he evaluated a lot of productive and successful organizations, he shared this principle of getting the right people on the bus. Well, first you want to make sure when you're managing a team that you assemble the right people, get the right people on the bus, so to speak. And what that means is that making sure that individuals on your team not only can be effective at their potential tasks, also that they complement one another. If you know, you have two people who have declared that they are arch enemies, maybe they might not be the right people to be on a team together. Yeah, there'll be some people with some unique strategies for putting arch enemies on the same team and hoping that they create some great result. But generally speaking, as my experience as a chief executive, both leading paid individuals and employees and volunteers, it's a good idea to think through who should be on the team in the first place. The next thing you want to make sure you have is a clear purpose. When you bring a team together, you want to make sure that you have a clear purpose so that you can articulate the clear purpose. But also that purpose should drive who comes on the team. That purpose should drive the objective. That purpose should drive the tasks, that purpose should drive the people coming together. One of the things that I've always seen work very well is that the more I'm able to articulate a clear purpose, the better people stick to that purpose. I've been a part of teams. I've led teams. And one thing that can sometimes happen is that teams veer off into territory that isn't productive and quite frankly isn't necessary. The more the team leader can articulate a clear purpose, the better people are able to stick to that purpose. Not only do you want to have a clear purpose, but you want to be clear about the goals of that purpose. What are we trying to accomplish as a team? What are the outcomes we are seeking? The more you're able to make sure that goal is very clear and in front of the team. Then people will be able to kinda stay goal oriented. And people will make sure that some of the other things that are involved in working together on a team, like politics or feelings, or emotions, etc. Those things perhaps may happen, but at least people can be clear. What is the end result that we're trying to get? You wanna make sure that as a leader, you establish goals and you stay goal oriented. This next point I want to make is another point regarding effective team leadership. As a team leader, it's important for you to define the group norms and culture when people come together on this team with a shared goal and a shared purpose, people are looking to determine what is the culture, what are the norms? Because once those norms and culture is started is established, people tend to stick to it. And one of the things I've realized and I've seen as a chief executive in both for-profit and non-profit world, is once you establish a culture, people are good at department analyzing their team. So maybe in one team the culture as this. But in this team the culture is that. And don't assume that just because people operate in the culture and another team, that, that culture will be automatically assumed an established in this team, people can departmentalize. In this culture, people participate. And in this culture people don't. People will not participate if you allow that to be the norm in the culture of your team. So as a leader, be explicit, established that culture realized that everything you're doing is reinforcing or pushing that culture and you want to make sure your purposeful about it. The next thing that's important as a leader of a team is to make sure that you build relationships in that team. Early on in my years as a leader, I was so focused on the task or the goal or the purpose that I thought all those other extracurricular things were just not necessary. But as I began to put some experience in years on leading teams, I quickly saw that the relationships within the team is important, that the time people can spend together and the better they're able to relate to one another, the more productive, cohesive, and effective the team will be. And so as a team leader, don't shy away from relationships amongst the team. I'm not just talking about romantic relationships of course, but I'm talking about time and opportunity for people to relate to one another. And so as a team lead established that, built that into your culture, even sometimes, it might be required to put that as an agenda item for your team. Because the better people are able to relate to one another, the better they can work with each other and guess what? The better they can get to their shared goal or purpose. Another thing that I've found was very important when leading a team is very simple, but that is to meet regularly. That's right. A lot of times when people have a shared goal or purpose, they'll come together maybe once and say, Hey, we are a part of such and such team or a part of such and such board or group or working task force. And the reality of it is, is that we kinda put ideas out there, may be loosely put some tasks and assignments out there. And we say we're going to meet next quarter or next year in some cases and find out that, you know what, We didn't really work that well as a team, it's important that as you or the team lead makes sure that you meet regularly. Now, sometimes due to distance or other obligations, it may not be possible or feasible to meet in-person regularly, but that doesn't mean you can't maybe meet virtually or even meet via conference call. But the idea of those touch points coming together as a team, it creates momentum. It creates an opportunity for cohesiveness and relationship, and also it creates an opportunity for feedback. Make sure that you build in the time for people to engage with one another and to meet regularly. 35. Resolving Disruptive Conflict: If you've ever worked on a team before or if he ever lead a team. You note that sometimes teams can have conflict. Even more specifically, people on the team can have conflict. Now, conflict by itself isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes it's actually good when people are comfortable enough to bring contrary ideas to the table. And those contrary ideas may produce conflict. Maybe someone doesn't agree with someone else. And it is always good that when you have a team that people are honest and that you can get to the best possible result. But there are other times when conflict can be what I call disruptive group conflict. And when you have disruptive group conflict, that conflict isn't productive. It is obviously disruptive. And as a leader, it's important that you know how to resolve disruptive group conflict. So in this lesson, I'm going to talk about how to resolve conflict when it is disruptive, when it is unproductive, and when it is an appropriate. Number one, as a leader, it's important to find the root cause. A lot of times I was a leader and I saw that there was disruptive conflict amongst two individuals. And I thought it was one thing. And I said, You know what, All right. We're just going to address that one thing. Put it on the table. We came to a resolution and I thought the disruptive con flip was done. But what I soon found out is that that was just a symptom that wasn't the cause. And so it's important as a leader that you be keen that you'd be aware that she'd be attentive to see that maybe one of the things that's on the table isn't the root cause. And if you're going to actually resolve it, you got to find that root cause so you can address it. Next when you find the root cause and you understand what's really at the source of the conflict. You want to facilitate a resolution. You want to be a facilitator. You wanna be the individual who helps come in-between the conflict so that you can actually provide a resolution. It's important that as the leader of the team, you're the arbiter of reason that you can be the person that people on the team can trust to be objective, to be fair, to be just. And it's your job to facilitate that. It's important that if you see a conflict in your team, that you don't abdicate your responsibility. Don't simply say, well, you know what, I hope they'll just figure it out or maybe you know what, I'm not going to touch that. If you're leading the team and it's causing a disruption on the team than it is in your responsibility. It's your job to address it. Next when you're leading a team and you're trying to resolve conflict, It's important that you realize that we all have to get back to work. Sometimes with disruptive conflict can actually cause a pause in work. Sometimes it can be so distracted that we actually cannot do anything else. I've been a part of groups in, and I've been a part of teams when there was so much disruptive conflict that we had to go home, we had to stop, we had to just take a break. We had to cease operations. And sometimes that's the wise thing to do. But as a leader, it's important to know that as they say, in Hollywood in the United States, the show must go on. The idea is the same when you're leading a team, don't let the disruption stop the work. The work must go on. It's your job as the team leader, as the manager to make sure we get back to work, Let's transition back to our clear purpose. Are clear goal, are clear assignment, clear timeline. Yes, we had a disruption, but let's get moving. 36. Fostering Creativity: Alright, in this lesson, let's bring it down to a lighter note. One of the things that you'll often be required to do or foster as a team leader is creativity. Sometimes you'll come together as a team with a shared goal because you're trying to create some new idea, some new approach, and it's your job to foster that creativity. In this lesson, we're going to talk about some things that I've learned and that research shows will help foster creativity amongst your team when you're trying to build a creative culture. Let's talk about some of the things that you can do that can foster that creativity. Number one, you want to plan a creative session. You want to make sure that you carve out a time and actually plan that this session, this meeting will be for creative purposes. It's important to do that because one of the things that I saw that wasn't as productive and being creative is trying to stuff a creative session in a meeting that has such power packed agenda that we wonder why we can't be creative because we spent our energy on figuring out all this other stuff. So one of the things you wanna do is actually plan a creative session. Realized that you know what, we may have a meeting where we're going to accomplish these other things and figure out all this other stuff. But you know what, we're also going to take the time to actually take another session and planet just to be creative. Next, we want to set the scene. The reason why we're setting up this separate creative session is that we can actually try to foster creativity in the environment that we're in. So if we're bringing people together in an actual in-person meeting to foster creativity. Guess what, set that scene. Let's, let's actually let the environment help him to set the scene. May mean that if you have to meet in a predetermined boardroom or conference room that you often meet in, then bringing some things that will actually foster creativity. Maybe if you have a whiteboard, makes sure the whiteboard is clear, or if you don't bring in a lot of easels with a lot of blank pages in places for people to actually have and write down ideas. Maybe that means that you bring a lot of blank pads and pencils and yes, even crayons to foster that creativity. You want to set the scene and be in a place that will help be conducive for people to be. The next, as you're trying to foster their creativity and build that creative culture, you want to set the rules for your conduct you want to establish, okay? This is what it means, and this is the rules we're going to follow. I'll give you an example. When I was trying to establish a creative session amongst people, we were trying to foster ideas. I quickly established rules of conduct. One of the first rules I said was, there are no bad ideas. There's no crazy ideas. Now, yes, we may come to the realization that an idea is just simply not feasible. It's not workable. It's just not something that we can do. But at this level of creativity, in this session, our goal is not to shoot down ideas. Our goal is to get as many ideas on the table. So one of the rules of conduct I said was, Hey, at this point we're not going to provide feedback on anybody's idea. The goal of this session is quantity over quality. We'll come back later and we can noun, come back and determine what won't work or what isn't a good idea or what may not be feasible. But at this point, our code of conduct is just, let's get it out on the table. Once you establish this code of conduct, you're setting the atmosphere for people to feel comfortable to bring their ideas to the table. You may even have different ideas and other rules, but it's important as a leader that you establish them. 37. How to Generate Ideas: As we're seeking to foster creativity, I want it to now share with you some tools for generating ideas. When you're in a session and you're trying to be creative. One of the things that you are seeking to do is to create new ideas. Well, here's some ways you can do it. Number one is the classic brainstorming. That's right. Having people come around and think and brainstorm and come up with options. Usually you have a question or a topic and you'll say, give me all the ideas as it relate to this. What are your thoughts? Everybody to the table. This is time and tested in something that's great for generating new ideas. This next tool for generating ideas is a very specific thing that you can do with your group. And that is assumption challenging. Now an assumption challenging is just what it sounds like. It's when you go around the room and you ask your team, what assumptions do we have? And can we challenge it? A lot of times, we have assumptions in there, things that we think are stable or not changing. But assumption challenging says, Well, let's throw that out the window. What assumptions can we actually challenge? Maybe there are things that we think are true or things that we think are not going to change. Maybe they aren't true, maybe they will change. Let's take the assumptions and throw them on the table, and now let's challenge them. This is a productive way with generating new and fresh ideas. Another tool for generating new ideas is experimenting. That's right, having the opportunity for people to kind of just simply experiment. Experimenting is when we can sort of take things and put them together that sometimes might not go together. I don't know about you, but when I was a little kid, I would love to experiment. I would love to sort of experiment first and foremost with food. And so I would take one thing and mix it with something else and mix it with something else and try to find something that tastes good. Well, my experimenting skills weren't that great because I don't recall creating a wonderful and tasteful concoction. But the idea of putting things together that may not go together with the hopes of creating something new is the experiment in principle that we can take to our teams and used to generate new ideas. So sometimes when you're struggling to find ideas, have people mix and match and put things together, and hopefully you'll come out with something tasteful. Another tool that we can use to generate ideas, something called catch ball, no, catch ball. Maybe something you may have seen on TV or in movies, or maybe in other forums where groups are together. And people need to only have one person talking at a time. Catch ball simply says, hey, I'm going to throw this ball to somebody. And that person will either have the opportunity to talk or say whatever comes to mind. And the ability for the group to be able to send that ball two different people at different times creates an environment where we'll be able to see new ideas, new thinking. And it will cause people not only to say new things, but it'll give us the ability to react to the things that people are saying. Now here's another idea that is mind-mapping. My mapping is when we try to make connection with things and try to find relationships. And so another way of generating fresh ideas, sometimes, maybe try mind-mapping. And if you find yourself really still trying to generate some new ideas, well, maybe a location change is what you need. A location change really just says, you know what, we're going to get up and go somewhere else. Maybe a museum, a free museum, maybe a new environment, or maybe a neighborhood that nobody lives and nobody has seen. Sometimes a location change is of course, new stimulation. And it causes us to see things and see them analogous to the task at hand. Sometimes looking at one thing and finding principles in a certain location and environment will cause us to take those principles and apply it to what we're trying to create new ideas with whatever we use. Realize that there are many tools out there that you can use as a leader to foster creativity and foster new ideas in your group. 38. How to Keep Meetings Productive: Now when you're leading a group and when you're trying to foster creativity and new ideas, you may find yourself hitting a brick wall or a roadblock. In this lesson, I'm going to share some things that you can do to keep your creative sessions very productive. Number one, break up. Large groups. Sometimes people aren't as engaged, are active when they're just too many people trying to communicate with one another. One of the things I've found is that when people are in smaller groups, more people are likely to participate and be engaged. If you have a large group of 30 people, for example, and you find that only a handful of them are being engaged. That's because a lot of people may simply feel that it's just too many people for them to contribute. So what you wanna do if you want to generate more ideas and make sure it stays productive, is to break people up in smaller groups. People will be more likely to say something, share their thoughts, and you'll have more ideas on the table. Another way that you can foster productivity and make sure people are engaged is to actually call on people. And of course, you don't want to be to the point where people are feeling overly exposed or maybe they're extremely shy, or maybe they feel anxious. But you wanna make sure that you get people involved. And so sometimes if you're calling on people, maybe spread easy questions around the world. People don't like to be put on the spot on something that's difficult. Make sure you don't do a couple of gotcha questions or things that are sort of trick questions. But maybe just to get people participating, just to get them engaged, column quiet people and have them give an answer that can't be wrong. And that may foster them feeling more comfortable and ultimately becoming more productive and being more engaged in your group. Next, make sure you watch the body language of people around you. Sometimes people are tired or people may not be agreeing with the direction that the group is going in. And sometimes people won't tell you that in the group, you'll have to discern it. You have to watch the body language. So if there's a topic that just maybe hitting a brick wall and isn't productive. It's not that people may not have nothing to say. Maybe they're frustrated with it. Maybe they are discouraged by that topic. You can find that out by looking at their body language, seeing how they're shifting, seeing how they're stepping back, seeing how there may be frustrated. It might be your job as a leader to watch the body language and say, Hey, it's time to switch topics. Let's move on and talk about something else. Here's another one. If you find yourself in a meeting and you're trying to maintain productivity and things are seeming to stop. Maybe it's your job to push for what we call second thoughts. Maybe if people have come up with answers or something and come up with even sometimes solutions, putting it back to the table and say, hey, let's go back to something that we thought we already had an answer to. Anybody has any second thoughts on this. Pushing for those second thoughts may actually take you into a new level of production, a new level of discussion, in a new level of creating ideas. I can remember pushing for a second thoughts. And there are times where we thought we had something on the table. But pushing for those second thoughts lead us into a whole new discussion. What brought us into a whole new realm of productivity? Everybody left that meeting so satisfied, so motivated and so excited. Because we push a second thoughts into something that we thought was over, but it wasn't. And it just helped us to be all the more productive. And finally, if things are actually not being productive or seemingly not productive, make sure you're giving your group time to think. There are moments when I'm leading a group and sometimes I can be so excited, I'll start to dispense so many ideas and so much information. Then say, all right guys, Now give me a bunch of feedback. Tell me what you think. Let's go, go now. And then I realize people don't really have a lot to say. And I'm sitting there like, why doesn't anybody have a lot of feedback? Well, because I didn't realize that I've put so much information out there. And I did it so fast that I didn't give people time to process it. And so sometimes you may see that your group is not productive. Maybe you need to give more time for people to think. Realize that if you want people to be engaged, you don't have to rush it. 39. Overcoming Resistance to Your Vision: Azure leading, a team. Azure leading or managing a group of people. Sometimes you'll have new ideas and new thoughts and you're ready to roll, but you find yourself dealing with a lot of resistance. In this lesson, I want to talk about some techniques for overcoming resistance. Overcoming people, just being against some of the progress you're trying to make. So here's a couple of things you need to do. First, you need to practice persuasion. Sometimes you'll need to work at trying to persuade people that yes, you may be resistant to these new ideas or to this new initiative. But let me try to persuade you with some thoughts, some facts, and some reasons why you should get on board. Next. If you're trying to overcome resistance and you're finding that a lot of people are actually feeling disengaged, then you might want to actually try participation. Sometimes people are resistant to something because they don't feel a part of it. Another technique for overcoming resistance is facilitation. Now, facilitation simply means that you come to the table and seek to facilitate people in understanding what they are resistant to. Maybe facilitation means that hey, we're going to facilitate a dialogue about it or I want to facilitate a discussion. So maybe it after you've tried to persuade them or have them participate, now you want to facilitate a greater discussion about it. Next, you can try negotiation. Negotiation is really just going back-and-forth. And negotiation says, Hey, I know you're resistant to this, but let me put this on the table. Let me give you this for that. Sometimes you'll have to negotiate with people to come to a resolution, and sometimes there's some back-and-forth in it. But negotiation is another strategy that you can use to overcome people's resistance. Another one is direction. And sometimes you're just going to have to direct people to either fax, direct people to information, or direct people to protocols to help them to understand that resisting this is not helpful in this is why make sure you know your facts and your information when you're trying to help people to overcome resistance to something that is about to happen. 40. Organizational Leadership and Stretagy: In this section, we're now going to talk about leadership and managing. But understanding that leadership and management often happens within the context of an organization. We're gonna be talking about organizational leadership. When you're in an organization, it's important to know how to be effective in that organization, how to lead, how to manage, so that you can propelled the goals of your team, the goals of your group, and stay a part of a greater organization. Although we talked about managing individuals and managing groups, of course, most likely in an organization. I now want to talk about a little bit of strategy or what I like to call strategic leadership. We're going to discuss what does it mean to operate with a strategy? How do you operate through strategic leadership? And how can you use this to be a better leader, a better manager, and accomplish your goals? First, what is strategy? Now, strategy is a deliberate plan to create comparative advantage and growth. One of the things that I learned about strategy is strategy isn't simply defined by what you do. Strategy is defined by what you choose not to do. Strategy says, Hey, we can't do everything. So we have to choose strategically choose to do something. I love the example of a target, right? When you think about a target and when you are maybe aiming for a particular target, a target actually focuses on one place intentionally. In other words, it chooses not to focus on everything else. A target is about taking your attention and focusing on a particular area. Strategy is really about having a target, focusing on that target, being deliberate to hit that target. One of the things I like to understand about strategy is that strategy isn't always just determined in a vacuum, but that it is determined in context to other people, other organizations, and your greater environment. So strategy gives us the ability to create comparative advantage. In other words, crafting an advantage compared to something else. So if your organization is seeking to have a strategy, let's say in the retail space, you want to have a strategic focus to grow as a retail organization. The question is, how can you grow? How can you strategically grow? But definitely, how can you grow compared to other retail organizations? That's how strategy is performed. Let's take a deeper dive into it. 41. Creative Competitive Strategy: Now when we talk about this comparative or competitive positioning or contexts, when we think about strategy, I want to help us to understand how we as an organization are compared or how we compete with other organizations in our context, in our environment, in our industry. This will help us to become better leaders and managers when we understand what needs do we meet as an organization compared to other organizations that are in our same industry. For example, Let's use our retail analogy or example as we did before. If you have a retail store, understanding your competitive or comparative positioning means you understand how you are positioned compared to other retail stores. So what we're going to do is we're going to see the ways that an organization can be positioned against other organizations that can give IT strategic advantage. The first competitive organization or positioning, is what is called convenience base positioning. Now, let's use this retail store again to help us understand what we're talking about. If you're a retail store and you're serving a particular group of customers, you may have a competitive position because you are convenient or you using the convenience based positioning, what that means is that you compete or compared to your competitors by having a better advantage in convenience. I'll give you an example. There are a whole category of retail stores, literally called convenience stores. And they are literally called convenience stores because their competitive position based on them, focused on convenience. Convenience means that they're trying to be as close as they can to their customer base. Not only are they simply trying to be as close as they can to their customer base? But they're trying to make their retail experience as convenient as they can. So let's give an example. If you think about a store that's focused on convenience, or that's their comparative position or their competitive position, then guess what? They're focused on, making sure that they're easily accessible to their customers. So when you see these literal convenience stores literally built to be in multiple places, the next competitive position I want to talk about is cost-based. Your organization, particularly those who focused on selling things, products, or services to customers, may have a cost base positioning. And what that means is that you're trying to be strategically different by having the best cost, which for most of us means the lowest cost. So there are stores, organizations that simply focused on presenting the lowest cost in their industry and their environment? Yes, there are many places you can go. They are focused on the best cost. Let's take the retail store as an example. Some retail stores, as we said, focused on convenience, but I can almost always assure you that those retail stores that focus on convenience don't necessarily have the best costs. If you don't believe me, try going to a local convenience store and buying milk. And then realizing that, that milk is not the cheapest milk you can buy. Because there are other places that are focused on cost base and they have the better priced milk. So places that have a cost-based strategic positioning are simply trying to have the lowest cost. Now, as we all imagine, to have an organization with the lowest cost, that means oftentimes you can't be the most convenient. And a lot of times when we see, particularly those in the retail space that have the lowest cost, maybe they'll have a location that is literally not convenient or maybe not the closest place that you can go to. Cost-based positioning. Retail places are focused on efficiency, meaning we want to create a place where we can sell the most stuff because we're trying to have the lowest cost. And what that means, we need the most amount of transactions and the most amount of people. So what you will typically find in a cost-based positioning, particularly in the retail space, is that they tend to have bigger and larger stores. Because they're trying to foster more transactions that are going to have bigger and larger parking lots, which means they can't have a bunch of these stores close to people's locations. They tend to be spread out. But the focus or their strategic positioning is all about costs. It's important that as a leader or manager, you're clear about your organization strategic positioning. Here's the next strategic positioning and that is quality base positioning. Now, you may be able to see very clear convenience base positioning is all about being very convenient to the customer. Costs is the lowest cost. But now when we come to quality base, It's all about giving you the highest quality. Let's take the retail store as an example. There are some places that are focused on cost, but almost always, if you're trying to have the lowest cost, most likely you're not going to have the highest quality. These organizations are locations say, Hey, quality comes first. And that means we might not be that convenient and we might not have the best cost, but we're going to add the best quality. Now, I want to talk about some advanced competitive organizational positioning. The next one is exclusive base positioning. Non-exclusive based positioning is all about having a strategic position that we give our stakeholders, our customers, our clients, something that is exclusive, something that they cannot get anywhere else. It isn't just the best quality, but we're seeking to be very exclusive. When you think about super high-end luxury retail places, they are focused on exclusive base positioning. So an exclusive based positioning says, Hey, we're not trying to be the most convenient. We're not just focused on the most quality, but we're focused on presenting the best and most exclusive products to our customers. Why would you say there's an exclusive base positioning? Because a lot of times we associate value with scarcity. Scarcity means that something is valuable because it's just not a lot of it around. And so in exclusive base positioning says, Hey, we're creating our strategic advantage in our environment and our marketplace. Because it's not a lot of it available. This type of competitive or comparative organizational positioning next is called experienced base positioning. This is where your organization strategic comparative advantage is about delivering a unique experience for your customer base, your client base, or your stakeholders. A lot of times people realize that there are things that they want to be a part of because of the unique experience, meaning they want to feel something, they want to be somewhere. They want to be in a particular environment. You may be a part of an organization that has this type of experience-based positioning. And one of the questions that people will ask when they are part of organizations is, how can we create an experience that our stakeholders, our clients, our customers will enjoy? Let's take the retail example here and talk about the experience-based positioning. This type of retail establishment focuses on the customer experience. They want to come the door. They want to be in the environment. If you think about some of the coffee shops and some of the coffees chains that have been popular in the last few decades. Some of them have gotten popular not simply based on convenience cost, or even quality, but they've become popular because of experience. People want it to come into the shop, hear the music, being able to jump on the WiFi, get work done, engage with people, et cetera. It's all about the experience. It's clear that if you want to be a successful leader and you want to make sure you focus on productive strategic advantage. Know that, hey, my organization is experience based. This final comparative organizational positioning I want to share is for those organizations that may say, Hey, I don't see my organization in any of these. I may be a charity or maybe a house of worship. I'm not really focused on convenience. Definitely not cost because they're not selling anything. Yeah, we care about quality. We're not trying to be exclusive. Maybe we haven't experienced, but it doesn't quite fit. How is it that I, as a leader, determiner strategic positioning? Well, this last one is for you, and that is compassion, base positioning. So if you think about a charity or some non-profits or organizations that are focused on delivering altruistic outcomes for other people. This organization also has a comparative organization position, and that is compassion. People are engaged with this organization, their stakeholders, their clients, even sometimes they're volunteers, they're a part of it because of the compassion. Today's positioning, every organization has goals, has missions, and most, if not, all organizations, have to raise funds. Sometimes your strategic positioning isn't to adopt customers, but maybe it's to adopt stakeholders and donors in there still a reason why those individuals choose u. And it may be compassion, base, positioning people who are a part of you because of your organizations compassion, because of their compassion to be a part of your organization. But it's clear that it still has a comparative positioning. If you think about some retail stores, for example, goodwill, their inventory doesn't come from big distributors or people purchasing exclusive items. It comes from people donating to that organization. They have a compassion base, positioning. And so even if you're a charity, even if you're a non-profit organization, still having strategic positioning. And as a leader, it's important to know that so that you can guide your organization, be a more effective manager, and be a productive and transformational leader. 42. Organizational Positioning: In this lesson, I want to just share 1 about organizational positioning, whether you call it competitive or comparative. At the end of the day, your organization is positioned in the environment in which you serve. Here's a fact about it. Number one is you can only have one primary organizational positioning. So if your organization is convenience, or if it's experience-based, or if it's exclusive based or compassion based. Most people will perceive that organization through one of those lenses. One of the ways that you can make your tenure as a leader more challenging is to try to have multiple primary organizational positionings. Let me put it this way. An organization can only have one primary organizational positioning, but maybe have an optional secondary. Now, some organizations have perhaps brands that serve different situations and that's possible. But there's no way that you can have a particular brand that serves multiple organizational positionings. As a matter of fact, there are some organizations that attempt to have brands that are all over the place. And for the most part, history has shown us that organizations that try to operate in three or four or perhaps all six of the organizational positionings typically don't last. Sometimes they'll try to have subsidiaries that cover this position and that position in that position. But at the end of the day, they ultimately end up still breaking up because organizations have to live their organizational positioning through and through. They have to adapt them. And that's when you are, as a leader have to realize that culture matters. You can't simply tried to enact multiple cultures in an organization. It creates confusion, it creates inefficiencies. And people often don't know how to operate in a place where there's multiple directions going on at the same time. So as you develop as a leader and as you want to become more strategic, make sure that you have one primary organizational positioning and maybe one optional secondary organizational positioning. But be clear about what you're about so that you can lead more effectively and manage for better results. 43. How to Develop Dtrategy: In this lesson, I want to talk about how to develop strategy. Now we heard about the importance of strategy. What strategy is, how to position your organization comparative to other entities in your environment or in your marketplace. But how is it that you ought to develop strategy? Well, here I want to share some points when as a leader and a manager, how to be effective in developing strategy. Number one, you need to look outside at threats and opportunities. Strategy is all about understanding what's happening outside your organization. Strategy is all about understanding your stakeholders, your customers, your donors, your volunteers, your clients. And it's important that you cannot develop strategy in a vacuum. You can't simply say, Hey, I'm going to be who I am and I'm going to just do what I do. Yes, you need to understand who you are, maybe as an individual and even as an organization. But you still have to realize that yourself, individually and organizationally still has to connect with people outside. Next, you want to look inside at your resources, capabilities, and your practices. As you look at the things that are good and bad on the outside, think about what is it that we can actually do? What resources inside our organization do we actually have? What capabilities do we have? What are we good at? What do we not so well at doing? What practices have we become experts in as an organization? That right there will help you to determine and develop an effective strategy. Next, you want to consider your feasibility and consider what it would look like to change as you're thinking about what you can do and the strategic opportunities out there as you're factoring in the threats. What is it that you actually can do? Sometimes as organizations, we have great ideas and we have great thoughts in there, maybe wonderful opportunities, but we never consider the feasibility of executing something. I remember as a Chief Executive, not only in the for profit world, but in the non-profit world, it wouldn't necessarily be hard to come up with ideas, right? It wouldn't necessarily be hard to look at opportunities. But what we would always have to cross our t's and dot our eyes is when it came down to feasibility. Is that feasible? Do we have the ability to actually execute that? And perhaps it may be feasible and it may require change. Are we willing to change? Are we ready to change? Are we able to change? As we start to develop strategy, we have to consider this. Then as we're developing strategy, we have to realize that in order to do it, we'll have to cast vision and generate support. When you're a leader and when you come on the scene and maybe you've gone through so many processes and you've seen so many things that, hey, we've got great opportunities in this particular area, in this particular vision, in this particular place, It's important that you learn how to cast that vision in gain and generate support. It doesn't matter if you add the best ideas in the world and your organization. If you're not able to cast the vision, sell it, and generate support, you may find yourself in a graveyard of dead ideas. You don't want to be the person or the leader where good ideas come to die. It's not just the good idea, but you wanna make sure you cast a vision and you generate support for. And finally, create alignment. One of the wives things that you can do as a leader is, even as you generate support internally, create alignment, externally aligned with other organizations that may be in your industry, or organizations that are outside of your industry aligned with maybe governments and municipalities and cities that are moving in particular directions. If you can foster alignment with things that are happening outside your organization. It's smart strategy because it puts you a part of the momentum of your marketplace, of your environment. And it helps you to propel forward to reach your goals and accomplish your mission. 44. How to Cast a Vision: In this lesson, I want to talk about something I mentioned earlier in a former lesson and that was casting vision. How to cast vision? Now, as a chief executive officer, I took my organization from one particular part of the industry to another part of the industry. And I found myself having to cast vision to a lot of staff members and department heads. Also, as I worked in the non-profit sector, specifically as leading a house of worship, a church. I found myself also having to cast the vision. Number one, be future focused. Casting vision is often about telling people, showing them and inspiring them about a brighter tomorrow or something that will take place in the future. Make sure as you're casting vision that you don't spend so much time just in where you are or spend too much time analyzing the past. But you want to be future-focused. You want to help people to understand what could be, what we can do, eggs and organization. And if we come together, what we can accomplish. Next when you cast vision, you want to focus on people. One of the lessons I learned early on when casting vision is to try to cast vision focused on data and statistics. Yes, data and statistics are appropriate, are important, are needed and we have to factor those things in. But when you're casting vision and you're trying to generate support, make sure you take the conversation back to people. People can understand people better than they can understand data. And that's not a condescending point about people can't understand science and data. But going back to this idea that we talked about earlier about being empathetic. People can empathize with other people, but often don't empathize with data. So when you're casting vision and you're maybe coming to a roadblock and wondering why people aren't engaged with your vision or not adopting it or supporting it. Ask yourself, am I bringing this vision back to people, back to our employees, back to staff, back to stakeholders, back to customers, back to donors, back to worshipers. Am I bringing it back to people? Sometimes our visions don't stick because we haven't shown people how the vision will impact people. And finally, when you're casting vision, even though your future focused, even though you're thinking about tomorrow, Make sure your vision connects back to the foundation of the organization. The foundation of why the organization is there. The foundation that people can relate to, the foundation perhaps of its history. One of the things that I've also learned early on when I tried to cast vision and it didn't stick, is because I didn't connect it back to the Foundation. One of the ways, if you want to keep people engaged with a new vision, show them how it connects to an old foundation. The old mission showed them that although the organization is expanding, it still has roots in its past that will help people to create a continuity. A continuity from what they've experienced, what they're used to in a continuity into where the organization can go. So if you find yourself in a place where you're casting vision and it's not working and you're wondering, why aren't people getting this? Why aren't people excited? Maybe you need to rethink about casting that vision and making it connected to the history and foundation of your organization. 45. How to Generate Support: In this lesson, I want to take casting vision a little bit further. I want to now talk about how to generate support, specific support for your vision. You have a great idea. You've now taken that idea immediate future-focused. You made sure that you had the resources and the data to back it up. You made sure that it connected with the foundation, but now you're trying to generate support. So here are a couple of things that you need to know when you're trying to generate support for a vision that you're casting. Number one, you need to precast division. I mentioned this early on in one of our lessons, but it's very important. If you want to cast division, makes sure you don't cast that vision for the first time in a formal setting, you want a precast. And then what that means is that at their key stakeholders, key team members, key volunteers or donors, make sure you cast that vision to them in an informal setting first, not only will it help them to be able to process it, but what it's also going to do is that whenever you do cast that vision to the greater community, when you do cast that vision to your greater organization, they will feel like they weren't blindsided. So if you want to generate support, pre cashier vision, when you're precast in your vision and your generating support, ask people what their thoughts are. Asked them to provide feedback. Ask them what are they thinking about the vision. This will help people to not only feel like you thought that they were valuable, in their opinion was valuable. But what's going to happen is as they begin to think through division and maybe if they provide feedback, they'll begin to adopt ownership of it. So make sure you always invite people to provide feedback. If you think your vision is so tested and perfect cannot change, you may be missing out on great opportunities. Next, as I alluded to again before, share the ownership with people. If you cast vision where people believe it only came from you and it's only your idea. It's gonna be difficult to have people to generate support. You wanna be able as your pre casting that vision as you're inviting feedback, that you allow them to feel that they are a part of the vision. So when the vision is finally cast it to the world, people can feel like they were a part of it. Maybe adopt some ideas that they had, maybe adopt some feedback. But that will help people to feel like they are a part of it. Can I tell you something? People will support something that they feel a part of more than just the best idea in the world. I remember being a leader and trying to cast some vision and some ideas. And every time I tried to cast ideas that came just from me, it always had a limited amount of support. But when I cast it those ideas and visions that came from the group or definitely had a strong contribution from the group. People supported it all. The more. So make sure you share ownership. Additionally, when you're trying to generate support, find the right allies. Makes sure that you go to the right people and find the right stakeholders that really are excited about your vision and really want to partner with you in our live with you. And also what you wanna do when you're trying to generate support is the uncommitted. So there may be some people that aren't committed to your vision just yet. Don't just allow them to receive it in the formal casting of your vision. Maybe spend some time and try to court, then people will feel like you're taking your vision seriously and that you're concerned about their concerns, and that you take them seriously. So when you find that as your pre casting your vision and maybe some people are uncommitted or not sure, spend time to talk to them and say, Hey, I'm here to address any of your issues, any of your concerns or questions, trust me, it'll go a long way. And finally, sometimes you just come up to roadblocks and people just don't want to support the vision and they don't want to receive it. And even after the vision has been vetted, it's been shared by many people. Sometimes people don't want to adopt the vision because they have a unrealistic view about where the organization is. I can remember trying to cast vision to an organization and some people not wanting to adopt it. And that's because they thought the organization was beyond. It really was. Sometimes you have to share the organization's reality with people and say, Hey, this is where we really are. And if we want to survive for tomorrow, we have to do something different. This vision is something that we all came up with. We all are a part of and it helps us to keep the organization moving. Sometimes you just have to be honest with people. 46. Conclusion: Well, we accomplished a lot. In this course. We covered leadership and management all the way from who it is for to how to be a better leader, how to communicate, how to manage individuals and groups, all the way to strategy and everything in between. I hope you really got a lot out of this course. I'm excited because I realized this course is pivotal. If I had this course when I first became a leader, it would have caused me to not have to go through a lot of pitfalls and things I had to learn. So I hope this prevents a lot of things that you will not have to go through that are negative. But you know what? I'm excited because I do believe that with this course and all the things that you learned, if you believe in yourself, do you implement the things we've talked about and you keep an open mind. I believe that every thing in your heart's desire, everything that you seek to accomplish is possible. So I hope that you're able to be able to reach all your goals, reach all your desires, and do everything that you set out to do. Remember, I'm George J. Barnes and I, thank you for taking the time to participate in this course. Visit my website George J. Barnes.com to find more courses, materials, educational information. I look forward to seeing you in our next course. Take care.