It’s uncomfortable, isn’t it? No one wants to hear about their flaws. The (not so) good news for leaders is that they are often shielded from this because people stay silent. Speaking truth to power is often perceived as too risky.
It’s often less about how safe people feel and more about how clear the team are on what is acceptable. If the team feel very safe in telling sexist jokes – we don’t need them to feel less safe, instead we need the bar raised on what is OK and what isn’t.
I achieve a lot in my business and in life without SMART goals. I know, right. I’m a coach – I should be the number one goal setter in all the lands. But I find traditional methods make me feel crap by March because they don’t dig deep enough.
I was working towards my Ju Jitsu black belt and started teaching self-protection classes.
I talked about self-awareness and that if they were going to fight back, they should never punch with their fist (think punching a brick wall). So they slammed their open hands & elbows into the pads and channelled their inner warrior.
2 years ago Steve decided enough was enough.
His bonsai trees needed attention, he wanted to climb more, and frankly, if Covid taught us anything, it’s that life is too short. So we planned how he could shift from hands-on MD to behind the scenes Chairman.
Natural born leaders. This month I met one.
It’s like he had leadership in his bones. You know the type; they might not even manage many people, but you can tell they have the X factor.
What colour comes to mind when I say Coca-Cola?
Nobody admits on their LinkedIn profile to being an over-controlling micro-manager and there’s only a small percentage of (misguided) managers who actively choose this style.
Imagine two people in your team, let’s call them Frank and Lucy. Frank is a serial interrupter and knows he needs to button it and listen better. And Lucy blurts out solutions instead of taking a coaching approach with her team.
He fearlessly ate her croissant crumbs, before finding another unsuspecting tourist to bother. He’d decided that she was unlikely to be a bird-eating predator and so it was worth risking hopping onto the table next to her.