How To Effectively Develop Leadership Resilience

Leadership resilience revolves around effectively dealing with work related problems, pressure and stress in a professional and positive manner.

All leaders at every level face stress, frustration, criticism or rejection from time to time.

In short, it comes with the job!

Nevertheless, being able to persevere when things do not go as planned, to remain positive under stressful circumstances, or to accept criticism from others and use it to make things better, are often what differentiates highly effective leaders from their peers.

In our executive coaching work with hundreds of leaders across most industry verticals, two domains emerge that are key distinguishing traits between being effective and ineffective in this foundational leadership competency.

Let’s look at each and provide specific actionable strategies on how you can be better within each one. …Continue Reading »

5 Ways To Vastly Improve Your Strategic Visioning and Leadership

Dynamic and strategic leaders possess certain traits that allow them to be successful at leading others.

They also work hard to hone their craft and become better at what they do.

In a recent article we covered the 4 critical behaviors that strategic leaders usually possess that can predict how effective they will be in this area.

We now wanted to cover exactly HOW leaders of all stripes, can vastly improve their own strategic visioning.

From our experience coaching hundreds of leaders on how to develop a vision and a related long-term strategy, we have found there needs to be a combination of talent, timing, and innovative thinking.

Further, fostering a strategic vision requires laying the proper groundwork so that the vision and strategy are embraced by the key stakeholders/shareholders and therefore marshal support rather than create resistance.

What follows are five key steps that our most successful clients have utilized to create their own strategic vision while getting buy-in from the entire organization, business unit or function, in order to convey that vision in a form that leads to effective performance. …Continue Reading »

Looking for Strategic Leaders? It’s All About How They Behave!

With more frequency, organizations are looking for leadership candidates who have “strategic vision.”

And why not.

Running the day-to-day nuts and bolts of an organization is one thing, but having the vision to see beyond the here and now and set the direction for what’s next is quite another.

With that being said, most organizations are not confident in their ability to assess if their job candidates for critical leadership roles are strategic in their orientation.

After all, this is a way of being and thinking that simply can’t be taught – so how do you even assess whether a candidate possesses such skills or not?

From our 25 years of assessing executive leadership on this competency there are a handful of behaviors that if demonstrated, will more often then not predict effectiveness in this area. 

Note: It’s about the behavior a leader exhibits and not how they verbally express their strategic orientation.  …Continue Reading »

6 Critical Domains To Managing Others Successfully

Assigning work to others and telling them what to do is not the same as effectively managing them.

Rather, managing others requires a set of people skills that, when combined with a strong sense of integrity and professionalism, allows you to work through other people to accomplish important objectives.

As a manager you must encourage performance through motivation and feedback and also hold people accountable.

While this topic can be extremely comprehensive and notoriously difficult to master, we’ve narrowed success in this area down to six key domains of mastery – based on our years of successful client engagements – that if achieved, lead to a consistent and repeatable process for managing others successfully.

We also follow each of the six domains with a link for further reading on that domain that will expand and enhance your ability to manage others. …Continue Reading »

Top 4 Characteristics That Make Individual Contributors Indispensable

With more and more frequency, companies have adopted a “flat” organizational structure as a way not only to reduce costs but also to become more agile.

In recent years we have seen the availability of management positions decrease and as a result, numerous professionals are electing to make careers through individual contributor roles that allow more influence and accountability, without cumbersome titles or management duties.

Given this trend, rd&partners examined 360-degree performance appraisal data on over 300 individual contributors surveyed over the last several years.

Some quick background on the respondents:

• This group was made up largely of “for profit” organizations with revenues between $200M to over $2B annually
• Most of these organizations were in the manufacturing and financial/insurance industry sectors
• Those surveyed represented a 65% female 35% male demographic …Continue Reading »

Stakeholder Centered Coaching: A Formula For Measurable Change

 Neither the person being coached nor the coach determines improvement.

 Rather the degree of improvement is determined by the stakeholders/raters of the Leader over the course of the engagement.

At the end of the day, a true definitive leader and the organization that has hired them wants to see continued improvement in both their leadership and results within the organization.

When you can tie direct business results and objectives to focused, stakeholder driven changes in behavior, a virtuous loop is created whereby the organization and the individual all drive towards the same goal – and get there faster.

While you may never have heard of Stakeholder Centered Executive Coaching, the methodologies and processes behind this style of behavioral modification elicit lasting change because of its tight focus.

By highlighting singular aspects of a leader’s behavior that will garner the most significant impact on the organization – while at the same time directly involving stakeholders – a cohesive and feedback-driven criteria ensures change is outlined, measured and actuated.

…Continue Reading »

3 Critical and Effective Peer Relationship Strategies for Sustained Success

Effective cross-boundary (peer) relationships are among the toughest to build within an organization.

It’s not surprising because of the strong “not created here” mentality between work units, and the natural competition between groups which are often fueled by pay systems that pit groups against one another.

The ability to bridge this discord and build and sustain effective peer relationships is a “game-changer” for most leaders.

It is a true selection differentiator when it comes to consideration and success at the most senior levels.

That is, those who do this well usually go on to senior executive roles where they execute these roles successfully.

Those that don’t…simply don’t.

Their careers are often derailed at one level below.

Possible derailment factors, culled in studies done by V.J.Benz (1967) who did a 30 year study on the subject, concluded that one major reason for leader incompetence was their inability to form effective relationships.

Another study performed by Lombardo & McCall who were inspired by Bentz to conduct similar research in 1983, concluded that the most frequent reason for leadership derailment was insensitivity to others (read as peers)

Why is this?

…Continue Reading »

As A Leader, Political Savvy Is NOT About Being Political

The concept of “organizational politics” often conveys behavior that, at its best, is unsavory and, at it’s worst, is unprincipled, unethical and lacking trust.

…Continue Reading »

Two Key Actions for Delivering Results on Time

Do you continually deliver results within your organization?

Are the results you deliver on time?

If you do deliver results on time, are they completed without sacrificing other factors like quality, or alienating your peers/co-workers?

Without a doubt, it’s not only important to produce results, BUT to be able to produce results “on time.”

However, everyone’s work is a link in a bigger chain of events within an organization.

If the initiative you are responsible for is late or lacks the necessary quality, your key stakeholders are directly impacted. It’s not just you that has to account for these issues, so too does the entire system.

No leader works in a vacuum and no leader achieves results by themselves.

Here’s quick checklist to see how you are doing as it relates to getting things done. …Continue Reading »

How to Effectively Address Employee Performance Issues

In a recent blog entitled The Paralyzing Effects of Poor Performance I discussed the psychological drivers behind why many Leaders become paralyzed in the face of taking action when faced with employee performance issues.

In this post I wanted to share 6 proven steps that if followed,will effectively address any and all employee performance issues a Leader will face while affecting change within your organization in a straightforward and non-biased manner. …Continue Reading »