Today... is the start of your
"New Year" of Leadership Growth!
What's your resolution for developing your leadership skills?
Every year you have two opportunities.
Evolve or repeat.
Which have you decided to do?
If it is repeat, then you may want to get back to what you were doing, because this training has nothing for you!
If it is evolve ... if you are dedicated to developing your leadership skills then, I hope this provides you with some tips and tactics you can take forward during the next 12 months of your leadership career.
Our mission is to help you live, love, and lead remarkably, so that you and your team become known as superstars in your industry.
To be remarkable, you have to do things differently. If being a high-performance individual and organisation were easy everyone would be doing it!
By being complacent with their performance
These Superstars of our world aren't complacent with their current performance. They don't just practice occasionally.
Each of these remarkable individual's stretched their capability consistently, regularly and with the intent of being remarkable at what they do.
Are you up for that? Are you up for being the rockstar of your company? The superstar of your industry?
Why is Evolving Critical to Your Success?
Do you want to make a significant dent in the universe?
Do you want the rewards that come with that?
If that's what you want ... then evolve ... don't repeat!
So, with that in mind, and thinking about where I consistently see leaders need help with developing their leadership skills, here are five recommendations to help you evolve during the next year into being a remarkable leader:
6 Ways to Evolve into a Rockstar Leader
- 1Build your EQ
- 2Shift your people's mindset from 'employee' to 'business partner'
- 3Improve your capability as a coach
- 4Enhance your delegation skills
- 5Run better meetings
- 6Schedule a meeting with self
Before we dig deeper into each of these -- here's a sidebar:
New Years Resolutions, Generally, Don't Work
So, you might be reading this article in the middle of July ... but it is still your New Year!
Therefore, don't just passively read this. Get your diary out and schedule your 'evolve' activities and actions into it. Look for opportunities where you can develop your leadership skills.
Then make a meeting with self to spend time thinking about how you can and will show up differently. Where you can evolve your capability and potential.
For example, if you've got a meeting coming up - how will you 'flex' your style during the meeting? How will you make the meeting a more productive use of your time?
When you prepare, and ask yourself better questions, you'll get better results. When you schedule it into your diary as a part of the meeting preparation, you're setting yourself up to apply your skillset deliberately.
1. Build Your Emotional Intelligence
The research is unequivocal. Your emotional intelligence (EQ) predicts your performance, in every arena of your life. That's why this one is the top of the list.
A leader's emotional intelligence leaks through the entire organization (family or business)
Whether it's your home life or your work life, your EQ has a direct impact on the people around you. It has an undeniable effect on the quality of relationships and life that you lead.
So, what do you want for your family and professional life? How would you like it to look and feel?
On a daily basis - who would you prefer to work for?
Putting politics aside - who would you prefer to work with on a daily basis? Trump or Obama?
Without doubt, Obama isn't perfect. You've only got to read his staffer's biographies to see that. Nonetheless, on the whole, he's much more emotionally intelligent than Trump. Which means he would be the leader that is most likely to get the best performance from you. He's the leader most likely to enable you to live, love, and lead remarkably.
So, take a leaf out of Obama's book. He's fairly well acknowledged as having pretty high EQ and you EQ is made up of six key components. Developing your leadership skills, so you can deliver superior performance and decision-making, means evolving in all six areas.
You can take a free EQ test here. Be Warned before your take the Free Test! It is just that free. It's not a validated instrument that will provide you with real feedback and an action plan. It will give you a baseline for you to measure yourself, however, not a full picture of your EQ.
My recommendation is that you take the fully validated Emotional Intelligence assessment. This report helps you understand where you need to focus on and build your EQ in the 6 key areas, along with an Action Plan.
If you're keen to find out more about getting your personal EQ report, then drop me an email, and I will send you through costings and the process.
And, you can even access the first couple of lessons in the course Performing Under Pressure
2. Shift Your People's Focus
What sort of business do you want?
A company filled with workers?
If you’re competing against other groups, do you want a company where your people come to work each day, do their job and go home.
They don’t think about how they can help the business make and save money? They don’t care that much.
A company filled with business partners?
Or, do you want a business where every one of your team members is acting like a business partner?
They have great business acumen, and every decision they make, right down to the pencil they buy, they understand how that impacts the bottom-line.
Which of these two groups will win in any competition? Hands down it is the second group.
Business is a game! You are in competition.
Do you want a whole series of skilled business partners who are thinking at the elite level? Or, are you willing to live with people who come, do their job and go home? I certainly know which team I'd rather lead!
When you and your people have the skills and capability to shift to business-owner thinking you transform your world. There are two parts to business-owner thinking.
Firstly, mindset. It's about shifting from the "I'm employed to do a job mindset," to a "I'm the master of my destiny" In the free My Career, My Choice training, I teach you exactly how to do this.
As well, if you're deadly serious, then you'll follow that up with Thought Patterns for High-Performance. In effect, you are developing leadership skills at every level in your business when you implement this mindset into your team. This transformational program has run in most Fortune 100 companies.
You develop business partners when you ...
1. Shift mindsets AND
2. Build business acumen.
You MUST do both!
Secondly, business acumen. I searched high and low to find a program that is fun, yet transforms people's capability to understand the numbers in the game of business. Zodiak is that program. In this fast-paced, high energy program we switch on the lights in your team members. We've been helping teams identify hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings and revenue generating ideas.
Whether you use any, all, or none of these recommendations, my recommendation to you is that you get your people as high up the continuum of thinking like a business owner as you can. If you haven't done it already take the free High-Performance Audit, to see where your team rates in terms of high-performance.
3. Improve Your Capability as a Coach
Okay, so I'm a little biased on this one ... seeing as I am a high-performance leadership coach! However, remarkable leadership is founded upon the bedrocks of coaching and role-modeling.
You should always be coaching yourself and your team members up. Even though I first trained as a coach almost 20 years ago, I still learn and grow my capability in this arena.
Use the appropriate model for the situation at hand
Some would have you believe that coaching is all about sitting back and letting the coachee discover their answers through their own inner brilliance. And, there is undoubtedly a place for that in coaching.
However, to be a highly remarkable coach you need to be more than a one-trick pony.
Sometimes you direct (but not all the time).
Sometimes you listen and ask great questions.
Sometimes you use the Solutions Focused Coaching model.
Sometimes you use the GROWTH model.
Sometimes you use the KASH model.
Sometimes you use Strengths Focused Coaching.
It' all about knowing which tool to use and when.
But there's a caveat to coaching that I must underscore, because coaching isn't one-dimensional. To be a remarkable coaching leader, you need high Emotional Intelligence. So, if you're going to work on improving your coaching capability, make sure you are working on your EQ. (Seriously, for most of us EQ, will always be an ongoing improvement project!)
To be a remarkable leadership coach you must have multiple coaching tools to hand and you must build strong Emotional Intelligence
4. Enhance Your Delegation Skills
Can't recommend this one enough. At some point, when your company has been developing leadership skills, you've likely been to training on how to delegate. However, I can almost guarantee, if I came in and watched you delegate there'd be things we could fine tune to improve your capability in this area.
Every day ask yourself this question
Could someone on a lower wage be making this decision or performing this activity?
Here's a key distinction, between 'regular' and high-performing leaders that I want you to think about, and take action on, each day this year.
Could someone, who is on a lower wage, being doing this task or making this decision? If the answer is yes, then you need to stop right now doing that task or decision.
Because if you keep doing that you are stealing from your company. Plain and Simple!
Access the "How to Delegate to Get It Done, Done Well and Done On Time" ebook to fine-tune your skills in this all-important career-enhancing skill.
5. Run Better Meetings
I wonder how many hours a year you spend in meetings. Bet it is up in the hundreds.
Here's the thing, if your team members are regularly attending boring meetings, run by boring people, about boring subjects, they can't help but think to themselves this must be a boring company. (you could change 'boring' to frustrating, useless, wasteful etc).
Poorly run meetings send a message to people that we are a business that isn't high-performing.
Poorly run meetings send a message to people that we are a business that isn't high-performing
One of my clients was guilty of this. We changed up how they prepared for their meetings, how they facilitated and documented the meetings and it has transformed their productivity.
If you are a member, login and grab the ebook "Holding Effective Meetings" if you need to fine-tune your skills in this area.
Boring meetings, run by boring leaders about boring subjects induces people to feel they must be working for a boring company
6. Schedule a Meeting With Self!
I said it at the start, and I'll repeat it - because it is so important! Don't just read this and think yes, I'll get on to that.
Be remarkable!
Be different!
Be at the leading-edge!
Be a rockstar!
Schedule a 'meeting with self', to spend time thinking about how you can and will show up differently. Where you can evolve your capability and potential.
Imagine you are a member of a football team. What do you do each week, between games? You go to training. You get coaching. Why don't you do that in your daily work? Why don't you take improving your leadership capability as important playing football?
Imagine you are a rockstar about to go on a world-tour, performing to thousands. How many hours would you spend in rehearsal with your band?
Yet, why don't we take our performance as seriously? Why don't we rehearse meetings, plan conversations, plan delegations, think about using our emotional intelligence.
If you want to be the 'rockstar' of your industry, you need to build rehearsal into your day.
Take your leadership as serious as a rockstar does their performance.
If you want to put yourself into elite levels of performance, you must schedule self-coaching time into your daily planner.
Schedule your development activities into your diary. Make it part of your preparation for whatever you are doing.
For example, let's say next week you have a meeting with "Jane." You know that generally, your Self-Regulation (an EQ element) with her is low.
So, in your diary schedule an 'appointment with self' 10 minutes before the meeting with Jane. During this 10-minute appointment with self, think about how you want to lead and engage with Jane. Think about what tools you are going to use to be at your best. (If you contacted me and grabbed your complete EQ report, you'll have an Action Plan on how to improve your capability at self-regulation).
As I said,
Be remarkable!
Be different!
Be at the leading-edge!
Be a rockstar!
Go out and do this! Don't just think about it!
If you're interested in being coached by me this year, then feel free to contact me, using the form below for a 30-minute strategy session, where we can discuss your goals and whether I'm the right person to help you achieve them.
BTW: Let's be clear here. Coaching with me is not cheap, so please ensure you have budget when you contact me.
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