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“Your ability to work on cross-functional teams, in matrix organizations, or across organizational boundaries is enhanced by knowing lots of people. Part of working in an organization demands that you find time to create and maintain the relationships you need to be successful.

With today’s hurry-up pace, we’ve lost the notion of making time for other people. Events designed to get employees together after work no longer hold the same interest. We eat at our desk, decline invitations for coffee, and rush to get off work.

There is something about an invitation to have coffee that signals genuine interest in connecting with the other person. And those connections forged over coffee, tea, or lunch impact your ability to get things done in the organization.

I’m not talking about a huge time investment here. Thirty minutes, once a week, and you could make new connections or deepen your relationship with fifty colleagues in a year’s time (p. 57-58).”

From: Axtell, P. (2015, 2020). Make virtual meetings matter: how to turn virtual meetings from status updates to remarkable conversations. (eBook) Naperville, IL: Simple Truths.

Questions for reflection:

  • How can you make more time for others in your daily life?
  • Why is maintaining these connections important for personal success?
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“For years now, groups have sought to forge culture by filling offices with ping-pong tables, beanbag chairs, and happy hours. Despite this, engagement levels in these places barely budge. But there’s a better way, and it’s built on a simple distinction: Fun comes in two varieties, shallow and deep.

Shallow fun is the sugary, amusement-park enjoyment of doing pleasurable things together: games, laughter, and music. It affects groups like an adrenaline shot: It adds energy, then quickly wears off.

Deep fun, on the other hand, happens when people share ownership over the experience of group life. That is, they have power, make decisions, and hold responsibility. 

Deep fun happens when you design your own workspaces, when you get involved in rethinking your group’s onboarding process. It happens when your project team organizes its own off-site retreat, and when team members are given the freedom (and the funds) to give colleagues $25 gift certificates in appreciation for a job well done. And deep fun pays off: One study found that organizations that commit to deep-fun methods achieve more than four times the average profit and more than two times the average revenue of companies that focus merely on shallow engagement (p. 66-67).”

From: Coyle, D. (2022). The culture playbook: 60 highly effective actions to help your group succeed. (e-book) New York: Bantam Books.

Questions for reflection:

  • Have you seen shallow fun in your career?
  • How have you seen deep fun represented in your career?
  • Why is deep fun important for building teams?
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  • “What distinguishes the best-performing teams from the poorest-performing teams is a climate in which people feel safe in being open.
  • Creating more openness on your team starts with you opening up to your team.
  • When you are willing to admit mistakes, you are often seen as more capable, intelligent, and even more credible. People relate to and are more connected to people who seem more human.
  • Admitting mistakes, saying you are sorry, asking for help, asking for input, and asking for feedback not only improves your relationships with those you lead but also gives permission for others to humbly do the same.
  • Team norms give those you lead permission to take risks and respectfully express how they feel; to passionately disagree, to provide bold, direct, and honest feedback; and to courageously contribute ideas.
  • Supporting, encouraging, and mining ensure that openness is embraced and adopted by those you lead (p. 125-126).”

From: Rogers, M. G. (2020). Do you care enough to lead? a 5-part formula for creating loyal and results-focused teams and organizations. (e-book). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Questions for reflection:

  • What can you do as a leader to create a space in which your team feels safe in being open?
  • How can being open improve your reputation as a leader?
  • How could more support and encouragement improve your overall team dynamic?
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“What is character? Character is most clearly exhibited in people who have a strong sense of right and wrong. They do not take the unethical shortcut and are conscientious to ensure that no one is being cheated, including the company. Character is morality or uprightness; a person of character lives by ethics he or she embraces.

Another element of character is represented in a person’s compassion for others and concern with the meaningful areas of life, such as faith, family, country, community service, and caring for others. Lastly, a person who has character is someone whose life is marked with virtues (p. 84-85).”

From: Causey, C. (2021). Candor: the secret to succeeding at tough conversations. (e-book edition). Chicago: Northfield Publishing. 

Questions for reflection:

  • How do you define charater?
  • Why does character matter in leadership?
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  1. “Developed leaders help you carry the leadership load.
  2. Developed leaders multiply your resources.
  3. Developed leaders help you create momentum.
  4. Developed leaders expand your influence.
  5. Developed leaders keep you on your toes.
  6. Developed leaders ensure a better future for your organization.
  7. Developed leaders multiply whatever investment you make in them (p. 361-374).”

From: Maxwell, J.C. (2020). The leader’s greatest return: attracting, developing, and multiplying leaders. (e-book) Nashville: HarperCollins Leadership.

Questions for reflection:

  • How can you expand your influence?
  • What steps can you take to enhance your development as a leader?
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“How can you achieve stellar 1:1s? The answer is preparation. It’s rare that an amazing conversation springs forth when nobody has a plan for what to talk about. I tell my reports that I want our time together to be valuable, so we should focus on what’s important for them. Here are some ideas to get started:

  • Discuss top priorities: What are the one, two, or three most critical outcomes for your report and how can you help her tackle these challenges?
  • Calibrate what ‘great’ looks like: Do you have a shared vision of what you’re working toward? Are you in sync about goals or expectations?
  • Share feedback: What feedback can you give that will help your report, and what can your report tell you that will make you more effective as a manager?
  • Reflect on how things are going: Once is a while, it’s useful to zoom out and talk about your report’s general state of mind – how is he feeling on the whole? What’s making him satisfied or dissatisfied? Have any of his goals changed? What has he learned recently and what does he want to learn going forward (p. 115-116).”

From: Zhuo, J. (2019). The making of a manager: what to do when everyone looks to you. (eBook) London: Portfolio Penguin.

Questions for reflection:

  • Have you had any stellar 1:1s? What made them stellar?
  • Why is it important to have these conversations?
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“Before you can inspire others to follow, you must make it clear to those you lead that you have their best interest at heart. And before you can have their best interest at heart, you have to know them deeply. You have to know their joys and dreams. You have to know their passions, strengths, and interests. You have to know their challenges and struggles. You have to be familiar with those forces outside of the work environment that impact the work experience. Do you know their families? Do you understand their backgrounds? Do you consider their hopes and aspirations for the future? The better you know them, the better you can lead them. To put it another way, you cannot lead those you do not love. And you cannot truly love people until you know them deeply and are ready to respond to them personally. When you know people deeply, you can inspire them and tap into their passions and strengths to help them find meaning and fulfillment in their work. The art of leadership is to connect each person’s unique giftedness to corporate objectives in a meaningful way (p. 86-87).”

From: Ross, R. (2019). Relationomics: business powered by relationships. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.

Questions for Reflection:

  • How do you connect with others on your team?
  • What do you do to get to know someone deeply?
  • How can you use a connection that you've made in the workplace to be a better leader?
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“There’s a great cultural and technological divide between younger and older workers, but both can benefit from each other’s knowledge and skills in important ways.

What Younger Workers Can Teach Older Workers

  • New technologies that will impact internal collaboration and their profession and industry and how to use them.
  • The importance of diversity and how it can benefit the team, since younger employees are the most diverse in history.
  • How change is inevitable, why the skills of today may not be as valuable in the future, and how to learn new skills.
  • Why they shouldn’t give up on their dreams. Research shows that younger workers are more optimistic and can use that to inspire older workers.
  • The collaborative mind-set that will help older workers best interact with them, brainstorm, and come up with new ideas.

 

What Older Workers Can Teach Younger Ones

  • The struggles and setbacks of building a career and the importance of having years of experience.
  • The soft skills that have helped them build the relationships that have made them successful.
  • The loyalty that makes others on your team want to invest in your learning and development.
  • The regrets they might have had in their career and how to not make the same mistakes.
  • How to manage corporate politics that naturally occur in any corporation, especially larger ones.
  • The skill to handle conflicts in the workplace and the wisdom to use those conflicts to actually solve problems and form stronger relationships in the aftermath (p. 133-135).”

From: Schawbel, D. (2018). Back to human: how great leaders create connection in the age of isolation. (e-book edition). New York: Hachette Book Group.

Questions for Reflection:

  • What is something that you have learned from a younger worker?
  • What is something that you have learned from an older worker?
  • Why is it important for all generations to interact in the workplace?
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“Imagine you’re in an important meeting. You feel comfortable, well-informed, creative and collaborative. Suddenly someone across the table from you says something, and for no apparent reason a strong electrical shock surges up through the table and right into your body. It sends such a jolt through your body that you lose your train of thought and start sweating. Then, as you start to get angry, you realize that nobody else at the table seemed to feel this jolt of electricity.

You don’t say anything about it, but just when you start to regain your composure, someone raises the same subject that caused the earlier jolt, and, sure enough, you get another jolt of electricity. Now you’re not just shocked, you’re really mad. You may even start yelling at the other people, accusing them of shocking you. Now, of course, the other people at the table, who have no idea about the jolt of electricity, are all looking at you as if you’re from another planet. They may not say it out loud, but everyone is probably thinking that you’ve gone a little crazy and that you’re overreacting to what was said.

You don’t feel that you’re overreacting, however, because through their words, ideas, tone of voice, or maybe body language, someone is shocking your system just as though they had their hand on a button with your name on it. That person has said or done something pushes a tender and vulnerable spot deep inside you. It’s a spot that can cause you pain or fear or other uncomfortable feelings whenever it’s touched or exposed. It typically also triggers a strong defensive reaction from when you’re reminded of that spot. That is what we mean by the phrase getting your hot button pushed.

One of the tricky things, is that you’re probably not even conscious that a button is being pushed or that you’re having a reaction that may seem unreasonable or out of proportion to others. People are often not aware of their own hot buttons, so they act unconsciously and sometimes irrationally when those buttons get pushed. Getting their hot buttons pushed makes people horribly ineffective in relationships or in problem solving (p. 158-159).”

From: Tamm, J.W., & Luyet, R.J. (2019). Radical collaboration: five essential skills to overcome defensiveness and build successful relationships. 2nd edition (e-book). New York: Harper Business.

Questions for reflection:

  • Do you know of any of your own hot buttons?

  • What's your first reaction to having your hot button pushed? What can you do change it?

  • How can understanding hot buttons help you when working with a team?

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“Have you ever had a boss you believed really cared about you? How did it make you feel? Didn’t you work harder for that person?

  • Demonstrating authentic caring does not mean a leader isn’t tough or demanding – just that they really care. And from your own experiences, you can see how that authenticity tends to inspire loyalty and investment. So now how can you as a leader show you care?
  • Listen. Leverage an empathetic strategy by listening more and talking less.
  • Recognize. Give employees a thank-you in front of their coworkers or give them a small token or gift card to provide recognition of their hard work.
  • Remember. Ask about individuals’ personal lives and remember what they say in order to follow up again later.
  • Be real. Provide kind but honest feedback to employees.
  • Be transparent. People can tell when they are not receiving the whole picture. Trust the team and help them understand the bigger picture (p. 122-123).”

From: Kuhn, T. & Frick, N. (2023). The e suite: empathetic leadership for the next generation of executives. (e-book). Austin: Greenleaf Book Group Press.

Questions for reflection:

  • What additional ways can you show your team that you care? 
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