Making the Leap – 4 Opportunities for New Managers, Part 2
Last month we began a journey of helping individuals advance into management and leadership roles, examining how successful organizations and leaders define and measure success in a way that best serves their goals. You can catch up on that article here: https://mms.remarketingalliance.com/news_archive_headlines.php?org_id=IARA#36963957
For our second installment, we’re exploring quick and long-lasting wins available when we give some intention to:
Building Core Leadership Skills
Not sure about you, but I’m tired of hearing: “Great leaders are born, not made.”
Maybe some people come out of the womb with a way of being that helps them connect, communicate, and influence those around them. I can guarantee there aren’t enough of those folks to run our companies.
Good news: Whether you are trying to build leadership bench strength in your organization, or you are an aspiring leader yourself, you can unearth latent leadership potential, building foundational capabilities while rising through the ranks of management. Here’s three focus areas where everyone can level up, becoming a better people leader along the way:
Directing and Empowering Others
Have you ever heard (or given) the feedback: “You need to delegate more?”
Is anything more easily said than done? What might be more helpful is to remember our people need different leadership styles at different phases. Some employees need a great deal of direction; some need a great deal of support. Helping newer leaders examine where their people are on this continuum will give them an immediate lift in their effectiveness.
The same thing goes for decision-making. For too many years have I heard either, “He’s a dictator,” or “the inmates are running the asylum.” How important decisions are made in the organization will dictate how successful those decisions become. Helping newer leaders understand and work through decision-making frameworks offers more low-hanging fruit.
In Crucial Conversations (Grenney, et al.), the authors suggest using one of 4 decision-making methods: Command, Consult, Vote, Consensus. They go on to offer an easy yet powerful framework for determining which method to use in a situation. Why aren’t we teaching this to new managers?
Coaching and Feedback Conversations
Our hard-wiring doesn’t set us up for great success in delivering feedback. How often have you seen a manager throw their hands up in the air – these people just won’t listen! Guess what? We have too much data, brain science, and proven methods for managing performance to believe that the problem is just their employees. If the managers were up to the task, those employees would either be performing or no longer employed.
Getting trained on the basic framework of a true coaching approach is the first gift I would give new or rising managers. Learning to establish trust and safety, evoke awareness, and facilitate growth in our employees comes with understanding how to listen, ask great questions, and hold others accountable. All trainable skills that yield powerful results.
Yet too often, egos prevail and the advice monster rears its ugly head. Our intentions become corrupted when we are confused about responsibilities and capabilities. One resource I treasure is The Coaching Habit, in which author Michael Stanier offers a simple coaching framework which lets you, “…more easily break out of three vicious circles that plague our workplaces: creating overdependence, getting overwhelmed, and becoming disconnected.”
Emotional Intelligence, Communication, & Influence
There are few things more frustrating than not being able to articulate what it is that’s preventing success for someone. It’s time for emotional intelligence to graduate from ‘soft skill’ to ‘needed skill.’ Building our vocabulary, identifying how our environment impacts our behavior, and mastering our stories all yield tangible positive results for the business and the people in it.
When we are willing to trust ourselves and our leadership with this type of education, difficult conversations become easier, authentic confidence grows, relationships deepen, and the business results follow. Ps. People live longer, happier lives, too.
In his capstone book Triggers, the famous executive coach Marshall Goldsmith offers the reader a series of actionable frameworks that lead to a better understanding and relationship with ourselves, so that we can be better leaders and humans. In my work with coaching clients, we often find ourselves investigating crucial, eye-blink moments and self-limiting stories in a confidential, compassionate setting that simply isn’t available in most workplaces.
All that to say, there are tools available today to help level-up our management and leadership skills, and they are vastly underused. This begs questions: What results are possible for you if new managers and leaders in your company become more effective more quickly? What do you perceive to be in the way of offering the tools and training to help them get there? What small step can you take today to close that gap?
Want to learn more about the opportunities to support new managers and shore up the next generation of leadership in your organization? Ask Joe about Making the Leap, a custom coaching progression tailored to your organization.
Want to learn more about the books or frameworks mentioned above? Ask Joe about the workshops he offers.
Joe Miller is the Founder of Awareness to Action Coaching where he empowers our industry and the community with coaching and content for current and future leaders. After 15 years in the heart of our industry as an executive at AutoIMS, Joe brings a unique understanding of the remarketing industry and a passion for helping leaders reach their potential. You can see more of Joe’s content on LinkedIn or schedule time with him directly or contact Joe with questions.