LeaderFactor

A new episode of The Leader Factor is live! Check it out: https://lnkd.in/gVSuvASR

Your emotional intelligence (EQ) determines your ability to interact effectively with other humans. Throughout my career, I have discovered that many organizations promote leaders and managers based on their technical skills alone. Then they are confused when their leaders lack the interpersonal skills needed to contribute effectively while contributing indirectly. So, let me ask you: How do you feel about leading through other people? At the beginning of your career, you are the contribution. You contribute directly to the outcomes and successes of your team, and you can see your direct impact. If you find yourself in a management position, the nature of your contribution becomes less direct, and your interpersonal skill requirement increases. You have to learn to coach your team, guide them, and empower them to perform the work themselves. What have we learned? You cannot approach a management role with an individual contributor mindset. This lack of interpersonal skill is the biggest bottleneck we see across the entire leadership population. No amount of technical skill will compensate for a deficit in interpersonal skill. And yet, too many organizations fail to develop the interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence of their leaders, despite their enthusiastic willingness to invest in technical skill development. It’s a 3:1 failure rate, interpersonal to technical. #emotionalintelligence #leadershipdevelopment #EQ

When a misaligned project team succeeds, it’s an accident. Without alignment — that is, a shared understanding and commitment — team members work at cross-purposes and doom projects to failure. Unfortunately, it’s an easy trap to fall into. When project managers simply assume their team is aligned, or when they accept head-nodding and verbal confirmations as proxies for actual alignment, the risk of failure increases dramatically. When I served as a manufacturing plant manager, I put a project team together to figure out how to increase throughput on a production line. Not long after, throughput had increased by nearly 9%, but yield had decreased by nearly 4%, increasing our costs and canceling out all the gains. The words “I thought that’s what you wanted” still ring in my ears. The fact that the team had decreased overall performance was my fault. I didn’t clarify objectives to ensure a thorough understanding of acceptable trade-offs. I learned that ambiguity was always my fault and could quickly compound into further misalignment. In a world in which projects have become more emergent, project managers need to ensure alignment — not wait for a lagging indicator to reveal that the team doesn’t actually have a shared commitment and understanding. Here are five questions every project manager should periodically ask their teams to create and maintain alignment: 1. What is your understanding of the project? When you achieve shared understanding, or cognitive alignment, you reduce the unit costs of making decisions, accelerate execution, and remove unforced human error. 2. What concerns do you have? To keep the team aligned, you need to pay close attention to every form of data. Never assume that concerns will find you. Go find them. 3. How do you see your role? When team members don’t have a clear understanding of how their role contributes to the project, they get off track or disengage. Don’t assume role clarity — verify it. 4. What do you need? This question requires the individual to think through the personal, tactical, cultural, and strategic implications of any change in project requirements. 5. How would you describe your current commitment to the project? This last question gives the individual an opportunity to share their commitment as a snapshot in time, including caveats, contingencies, dependencies, concerns, and limitations.

Psychological safety as a culture of rewarded vulnerability. But it also has four progressive stages that make its definition practical and actionable. (1) Inclusion Safety (2) Learner Safety (3) Contributor Safety (4) Challenger Safety Teams progress through these stages as they intentionally reward the acts of vulnerability of their colleagues. Psychological safety is the key to mending broken interactions and creating cultures of rewarded vulnerability in every social setting. When you respect your teams' innate humanity and give them permission to engage across psychological safety's four stages, you create sanctuaries of inclusion and incubators of innovation. People will feel safe to be their authentic selves and create value exponentially. New to the concept of psychological safety? Start here: https://hubs.li/Q02CbngM0

“This is not just a book; it’s an urgent invitation to the kind of rigorous self-examination that will lead to breakthroughs in every relationship of your life. Clark offers us a case for and path to creating the healthy social systems we crave and modern corporate flourishing demands.” —Joseph Grenny, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Crucial Conversations “As a person responsible for the development of employees in 65 countries, I can tell you that this book outlines a must-have culture. A safe space is table stakes for any organization looking to attract and retain talent and innovate from every chair. A powerful call to action.” —Simone Ciafardini, Vice President, Clinique Global Education “The 4 stages framework is exceptionally insightful and perfectly logical. With the ongoing diversification of the workplace, Clark’s defined path to inclusion and innovation can’t be ignored. This book showed me how to improve my performance as both a team member and leader. The analysis and recommendations are insightful and inspiring." —Martin Shell, Vice president and chief external relations officer, Stanford University Get your copy of The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety by Timothy R. Clark here: https://hubs.li/Q02Cbkq70

Interested in 120 ways to immediately improve the psychological safety of your team? Here's the link to the free ebook: https://hubs.li/Q02CbbYm0

Discover why mainstream EQ has missed the mark on belief and intent, and learn how true leadership is rooted in the power of influence. Explore the essential ingredients of influence, the pitfalls of manipulation and coercion, and the emotional skills every leader needs. Register for the premiere of this episode and get a link to the episode resources.

Building psychological safety doesn’t happen at the theoretical level. It happens at the behavioral level. Creating a culture of rewarded vulnerability requires both modeling and rewarding acts of vulnerability. It’s not enough for you to reward acts of vulnerability that your colleagues are willing to commit, you actually have to be vulnerable yourself. Engaging in acts of vulnerability will help others see that they’re safe to follow suit. You’ll feel the difference in energy when you start rewarding, instead of punishing or ignoring, people’s vulnerabilities. In this guide, we share twelve practical suggestions to do just that, each based on one of The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety™. Download your free copy here: https://hubs.li/Q02Cbq2W0 #psychologicalsafety #4stages

Can you be candid about change at work? Challenger safety satisfies the basic human need to make things better. It allows us to feel safe to challenge the status quo without retaliation or the risk of damaging our personal standing or reputation. As the highest level of psychological safety, it matches the increased vulnerability and personal risk associated with speaking up at work. Listen in as hosts Tim and Junior discuss how to build Stage 4: Challenger Safety individually, within a team, and throughout an organization. For the full learning experience, watch the episode on YouTube: https://hubs.li/Q02Cb9Pv0 Or download the episode resources: https://hubs.li/Q02Cbj4X0

It's Monday, which means a new episode of The Leader Factor is live and available for download!