Team Building – Leadership Simplified

Goals, Humility, Investing, Potential, Team Building, teams, Uncategorized

True Leadership

True leadership is sacrifice, doing the right thing when you are tired, worn out and just ready to go home. That is true leadership and I saw it today! This lovely face is Z zora1

She joined our family 2 weeks ago. She is a rescue 15/16/17 (her age is up for grabs) OTTB. Which means she’s been mistreated was bred to go fast and isn’t sure who she is. So yea we adopted her because that is what we do. I’ve been teaching her manners on the ground. Today she decided that she didn’t like something, a smell a sound, pressure, you name it. She backed all the way down the stalls until she had backed into a corner where finally stopped. I yelled for help from our trainer who promptly came running along with one of the guys who takes horses in and out. (Side note you can tell they don’t like this horse because of her issues)

My trainer (who is amazing) was at a show for the last 4 days. Showing horses, sleeping in a hotel, etc. She had just gotten back when we pulled in and I am sure she was tired, hot, dirty and really ready to go home. Instead she spent 15 minutes with my crazy horse helping her get her brain back. Did she have to do this? Nope she could of said put her back in her stall I will work with her. Instead she got into the arena with us and worked with Zora. She helped me navigate that moment and several after.

You see leaders know that their leadership isn’t on a clock, that even if they are tired, or hot or sick or just not into it that they still have to lead. And in that moment they don’t stop to think about it they just do!

Leaders do where others wait, or think or stop. Super loud shoutout to my trainer who just did today and who made me feel like I wasn’t alone or stupid or anything else…

And to those of you who lead, we see you! You aren’t alone! And thank you!!

Goals, Humility, Investing, Leadership, Potential, Team Building, teams, Uncategorized

Leader to Follower … Leaders Perspective

Leaders, we’ve all had that person on our team who was once a leader and is now a follower on our team. They may have changed industries, jobs or intentionally taken a step back. Anyway it happened they are now on our team and we know that they were leaders in their previous jobs.

How do we handle this? It can often seem a bit scary because we may question our own leadership when confronted with someone who was a previous leader especially if they are high energy leaders!

First, acknowledge that they are a leader! Don’t ignore it, or try to ‘put them in their place’. Next get them on your side! Seek their input, get them involved in leadership of the team and other team members!

Essentially USE THEM to your advantage. Trying to ignore it, or making them feel small will only demean your own leadership!

There maybe times when you have to provide them with negative feedback. This can be scary if you are not confident in your own leadership. Seek feedback from other leaders prior to speaking with them and then talk with them as another leader. Leaders should always be seeking feedback both negative and positive!

Provide the feedback by letting them know the issue and then asking them for their input. Don’t talk at them, instead of saying “you messed up and the client is mad” ask for their feedback. Let them know you received feedback that the client isn’t happy with a current situation. Ask how they would handle this in the future. My guess is that they know they messed up and they have already beat themselves up over it.

Asking them how they would handle it in the future will allow them to know that you trust them and will not undermine them as leaders.

It is never easy when leading other leaders, but you can do it! And it will make you a better leader!

Leadership, Potential, Team Building, teams, Uncategorized

Learned Helplessness

Reading social media today I came across an article on Learned Helplessness. You need to google it to get a full understanding however it really struck me how this might happen to our teams.

The article I read was about horses and how they often begin to ignore pain and other stressors simply because they can’t get away.

As leaders we often want our teams to work a certain way. We want to push them into a behavior that makes sense to us, the leader! We either can’t or don’t want to deal with behavior that seems outside of our norm.

We punish, belittle, even use sarcasm to get behavior we want. By doing this we often make our team become numb to their own pain. Now there are behaviors that do not go well when working with a team, however by using punishment we often get to our results faster and with little work on our part!

Take the horse for example, Duke doesn’t like pressure. (Pressure for horses means bad things and they react to that pressure). Horses also don’t like things they can’t process. Noises, shifts in their vision all cause them to spook. It is our job to get the horse to trust us to keep them safe. We do this by exposing them to these pressures and noises and by showing them that we are keeping them safe. We want them to trust us! However, some people use other methods to train their horses. They punish them, they leave them tied tightly to force the spook out of them. Horses who are trained this way learn they can’t escape and eventually become really good horses on the outside but they are no longer horses on the inside!

As leaders are we doing this to our teams? Are we tying them down to simply get behavior we want instead of teaching them to trust us. Teaching our team to trust us means we have to make difficult decisions, we have to stand up to our leadership for our teams. We then often have to go back to our teams and tell them we failed. We have to show that we aren’t perfect and that is a hard thing to do!

Think about this as you lead your teams, what if you were honest with them! What if you told them the truth that you spoke up at the last meeting but you were turned down. Or that you feel that the decision is a good one for the organization and that you support it even if it means something bad for the team?

When someone on your team works in a way that is different or in a way that maybe needs improvement, try understanding why they work that way and getting them to trust you that your way might be better?

Being a good leader isn’t about forcing people into a mold it’s about getting them to trust you and know that you have their best interest at heart!!

Leadership, Team Building, teams, Uncategorized

Be a Beginner!

beginner tuskey dressage

(Photo cred to Tuskey Dressage)

Why is it we always want to jump to the end of everything! We don’t allow ourselves OR our teams to learn. This is something that has been causing quite a bit of conversation in our family lately. We are meeting with alot of young people who are struggling because they don’t know what they want to be an so many companies are requiring them to be an expert before they start!

Most of us who are in our 40’s and older started at companies and were taught the skills we needed to do the jobs. We didn’t ‘know’ everything when we started, fewer and fewer organizations are allowing people to grow into jobs. This can be both good and bad as it often means that you are missing out on someone who might be really good at the job if you gave them a few months to learn!

As leaders we often follow this mentality as well with our teams, we expect people to be instantly good leaders and forget that we didn’t start off knowing what we know. We had to learn and grow into our positions!

What IF (stay with me here), what if we found someone who seemed to have some skills and we invested in them? Taught them how to be a good leader, how to lead a team, how to handle conflicts? Taught them the skills they needed to be good leaders and then allowed them to expand their leadership skills in small but impact-full ways? Mentoring another member of the team or leading a small project? Not only could we guide but they would have the chance to learn!

Today your exercise is to find someone on your team who you think might make a good leader. Setup a meeting with them and then help them find small ways they can lead within your organization. Allow them to fail, allow them to succeed and guide them along the way! I promise you, you won’t be disappointed!

Leadership, Team Building, teams, Uncategorized

Vision Casting

Most of us middle to low level managers feel that vision casting is something that those higher on the food chain should be managing. We don’t feel like we have a vision to cast and we couldn’t be more wrong!

Often those of us in this role actually get the vision being cast from our upper level managers AND we understand how it impacts our teams. It is our job to make sure our teams get it. Most of the time our teams don’t understand how what they do has any effect on the bottom line of the organization. They may feel that their contributions can’t have any real impact, however they have a huge impact on the bottom line!

Yesterday at volleyball a parent came up to me to say how thankful she was that I was coaching. My energy really impacted her daughter and she wanted to say thank you for what I was doing. I am an assistant on a 5th/6th team. I am not a coach, I am not directly impacting the program but my leadership is making a difference on that 1 child whose parent will share that impact with other parents. My actions impact the bottom line.

It is our job as leaders to make sure our teams know how their actions impact everyone. It doesn’t matter if their job is to bring the team lunch or interact with the customers directly what they do matters and as leaders it is our job to make sure they know that!

You maybe wondering how bringing the team lunch impacts the client, well anyone whose seen an angry, hungry co-worker knows that feeding them helps! However what if you thought of it this way, the lunch that you are providing to that team allows them to spend more time working out a serious customer facing issue. Because they had lunch together they were able to solve a problem that is costing the company money. The lunch you brought solved that problem!

Leaders, we need to be able to cast that vision for our team and continue to cast it. There is an old saying that vision leaks. It’s like carrying our a heavy bucket of water. Every step we take some water falls out. If we won’t refill the bucket eventually it’s going to be empty. When our teams run out of vision they may start to lack focus and wonder why do they have to bring people lunch!

Sometimes others bump the bucket and cause water to fall out. People say things in the heat of the moment that causes the water to spill out. It is our job to refill that bucket! Reminding our team that what they are doing not only matters but has a positive impact on the organizations bottom line ensures that they see the importance in their jobs!

Today, think about the impact your team as on the organization! You may have to be creative in thinking about it. Write down 3 or 4 ways what your team does makes the organization better and then share those ways with your team!