Women often complain that, ” Men Don’t Listen”. They may be correct, some men and for that matter, some women don’t listen. What is perhaps closer to the truth is that men ‘listen’ for the things that are important to them that are phrased in a way that they understand.
I live by the maxim, “The meaning of communication is the response you get”, which puts the onus on the communicator to be flexible in their communication style to get their meaning across.
Today I spoke on this topic at the Women’s Leadership Forum 2011, “Gender Diversity for Success” on November 3, 2012 in Singapore. If you attended please give feedback in the comments section and you can view the slide deck here.
A friend of mine is an Asia Pacific Managing Director for a global firm. We were chatting over lunch and I was sharing the need for a longer term approach to developing leaders; “I agree”, he said, “but my company would never sign up for something like that.” When I inquired as to why not, he explained that any commitment to learning and development would be viewed by quarter, because, with the uncertain future in 2012 they would want to be able to cut back on any non-essential expenditure!
This conversation highlights the dangerous lack of preparedness that many leadership teams are in. If 2012 is going to be uncertain or tough, then shouldn’t we get ready for it? Shouldn’t we put the best leadership team in place and make sure they have the competencies required? Or is this a non-essential expense?
Consider that, post the Global Financial Crisis, many leadership teams were decimated by cut backs and organizations are talking about growth when they don’t have the bench strength of talent to achieve it. It is frightening that less than 10% of executives have a plan to develop their strengths and the more senior they get; the less likely they are to receive constructive performance and strategic feedback. Continue Reading »
…the practice of intentionally influencing your thinking, feeling and behaviors to achieve your objective.
Self-leaders have a drive for autonomy, can make decisions, are more creative and persist, even in the face of adversity.
Some of the intentional behaviours that characterise Self-leadership are; self-awareness, self-goal setting, self-motivation, positive self-talk, assertive communication and the ability to receive and act on feedback.
Becoming a Self-leader and maintaining Self-leadership is a self-development activity; but organizations that encourage Self-leadership reap the benefit.
Mac Davis sang, “Oh Lord it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way,” and whilst the song is tongue-in-cheek it speaks to a challenge faced by today’s leaders. To get to the top you have to be very good at what you do and let the right people see and hear about your competency; you have to have healthy self-esteem to handle the knocks and the naysayers and this leads to a healthy dose of self-belief. So by the time you get to a leadership position you view of the world is likely to be that you are better than those who have not yet made it and this is seen as arrogance (an attitude of superiority or an overbearing manner) and arrogance can be the kiss of death for a leader as it generates resentment and enemies.
So how can a leader be humble when he/she has to be so good?
Research (Tangney 2002) identifies a number of key features of humility: Continue Reading »
I just had a conversation with an American who had visited London and he said, “The people there were great”. How often have you heard this or said this about people from somewhere else? Lots of times I think. So why is it so surprising that when we visit somewhere else, a difference country or culture, we discover that the people there are great?
I think it has to do with our tribal mentality, it somehow serves us to think of “The Others” as different and therefore inferior to our tribe. And yet when we meet people one-to-one we discover that, whether they live in a high-rise in Manhattan or a yurt in Outer Mongolia, people are interesting and generous and have a sense of humour. Continue Reading »
Modern organisations strive to develop their leaders to gain a competitive advantage; and smart companies are changing from the traditional management style of command-and-control to a model of self-leadership and shared-leadership. This is particularly important with knowledge workers in virtual teams or in flatter, matrix organisations.
Self-leaders have a drive for autonomy, are more creative and persist, even in the face of adversity. Shared-leadership allows team members to influence peers, superiors and sub-ordinates with the objective to lead one another to innovation and the achievement of high performance objectives.
In this video, inspirational speaker, Andrew Bryant shares a contingent model for developing leaders with self-leadership.
Mentoring is a developmental partnership between a Mentor, a leader with expertise in one or more areas, and a Mentee, an individual seeking learning and growth in these areas.
The ideal Mentee is:
High potential, commmited to their career, hungry to learn and disciplined enough to execute what they have learned.
Although I have been a coaching for 10+ years, last year I decided to align myself with the International Coach Federation’s (ICF) competencies and ethics. My reasons were simple, executive coaching is coming of age and yet the coaching industry is a ‘wild west’ of different schools, methodologies, approaches and standards; through this confusion the ICF has emerged as a unifying force for defining professional coaching. Continue Reading »
As a leadership consultant and executive coach living in Singapore and working across Asia, I am often asked; “is there is a difference between Western and Asian Leaders?”
The answer is “yes” and “no”. Leaders worldwide need to ask the same questions:
Where are we going?
What is our strategy? (how do we get there?)
How do we execute?
Is our team ready? (learning and development)
Do we have enough bench strength for growth and sustainability (succession planning)
In addition leaders must be able to engender trust and effectively communicate their messages. Continue Reading »
Do you know your strengths?
Do you operate from your strengths?
Research has shown that only about one-third of people are aware of their strengths and the management guru, Peter Drucker said that we can only lead from strengths.
A common approach in management and leadership development has been to measure the gap between a person’s behaviour and the desired corporate competencies; whilst this approach is valid it can downplay the application of a person’s strengths.
My top strengths are; love of learning, humor, zest, perseverance, honest, open-mindedness and perspective. I know this because I have taken a test based on the research of Dr Martin Seligman and Dr Christopher Peterson.
Seligman and Peterson’s research has found six broad categories of the best of human behaviours (virtues) that are intrinsically valued across time and cultures. Seligman and Peterson suggest that these virtues may even be biologically linked in terms of survival of the species. Within each virtue category are strengths that we all demonstrate to a greater or lesser extent.
The list is as follows:
There is a natural tendency to consider those strengths that you don’t score highly on as weaknesses but, unlike talents, strengths can be built up.
My lowest scoring strength is modesty ( for those of you who know me this is no surprise) and yet this does not mean I am not modest in some circumstances and with the awareness of this I can build it as a strength.
Positive Psychology researchers are now validating interventions to build strengths and the work is ongoing. This has major ramifications for the field of leadership development as we can know with certainty as to how to build up individuals and teams.
At Self Leadership International we have already started to build this research into our coaching and programs. A popular activity is a partner exercise in which each party listens to a success story told by the other and reflects back the strengths that they heard. The result of this exercise are profound in that colleagues who have known each other for some time get a deeper understanding of each other and managers learn to better delegate and build up their teams rather than jump to criticism.
Women often complain that, ” Men Don’t Listen”. They may be correct, some men and for that matter, some women don’t listen. What is perhaps closer to the truth is that men ‘listen’ for the things that are important to them that are phrased in a way that they understand.
