The Myth of Multitasking: Why Focus is Key for Leadership Excellence

In our complex, distraction-filled world, leaders often pride themselves on being able to “multitask.” However, research reveals multitasking is a myth - our brains simply cannot focus on more than one thing at a time. What we call multitasking is really rapid task switching, and this constant context shifting comes at a major cost in terms of productivity, creativity, and wellbeing. As a leader, avoiding the multitasking illusion and mastering the art of focus is essential for your own cognitive performance and for modeling good behaviors for your team.

Why We Can’t Actually Multitask

Although it may seem we can multitask, our brains are wired for focusing on one task at a time. When we try to juggle multiple things simultaneously:

• We experience lag time as our brain switches between tasks. This creates inefficiencies as our attention is fractured.

• We are more prone to mistakes as we attempt to hold too many things in our working memory. Things start to slip through the cracks.

• We become distracted and overwhelmed as we try processing multiple streams of information. We end up shallowly attending to everything.

• We increase stress and fatigue because rapid task switching requires a lot of mental energy. Our cognitive resources deplete faster.

The Benefits of Focused Attention

While single-tasking may seem slower, research confirms its benefits include:

• Increased efficiency on cognitively demanding tasks. You get more done with less effort when you're able to focus deeply.

• Higher quality thinking and creativity. Complex cognitive processes require sustained concentration to make new connections and insights.

• Reduced fatigue and burnout. Focused work allows your brain to fully relax during breaks. Multitasking blurs the lines between rest and work.

• Greater career fulfillment. People experience their work as more meaningful and engaging when they can truly focus on tasks.

• Enhanced wellbeing. Focus cultivates a sense of calm and enjoyment. Multitasking creates feelings of anxiety and being overwhelmed.

Focus Tips for Leaders

As a leader, avoiding multitasking and honing your ability to focus deeply will make you more effective while also setting the right tone for your team. Here are some best practices:

• Reduce distractions during focused work by closing apps, muting notifications, and working from a quiet space.

• Prioritize the most cognitively demanding tasks for when you have long stretches of uninterrupted time.

• Build in buffer time between meetings and calls so you can fully recharge your attention and cognition.

• Model single-tasking during meetings. Don’t check emails or texts - give your full attention.

• Encourage focus time for your team. Emphasize quality thinking over constant busyness.

• Celebrate deep work. Recognize employees who consistently demonstrate diligent focus.

The bottom line is our brains need focus to perform at their best. Leaders who embrace this and avoid faux-multitasking will see their productivity, creativity, and serenity benefit immensely. They will also set a powerful example for their teams. Focus is the currency of excellence in today's economy. Make it one of your top priorities as a leader, and coach others to do the same.

If you need help personally mastering focus or establishing it as a cultural value on your team, don't hesitate to reach out. I offer science-based coaching tailored to enhancing leadership effectiveness by improving focus. Let's connect to discuss how I can help you and your organization thrive!

Finding The Right Balance: Responsiveness vs. Focus as a Leader

In today's constantly connected world, it can be tempting as a leader to be overly responsive - checking email and messages constantly, never letting yourself fully focus on the task at hand. However, while responsiveness is important, there are also downsides to being too available and reactive. Leaders need to find the right balance between being responsive while also protecting their ability to focus.

The Dangers of Constant Connectivity

Technology today allows us to be more connected than ever before. Email, messaging apps, calendar notifications - they make it possible to respond in an instant. However, research shows this constant reactivity can be detrimental:

• Interrupting focus: Every time you context switch to respond to a message, you lose focus. This reduces productivity, creative thinking, and decision making.

• Increased stress: The pressure to respond immediately can be stressful, leading to burnout over time.

• Less strategic thinking: Reacting in the moment prevents leaders from stepping back and thinking long-term.

• Poor signal to others: Being instantly responsive reinforces others’ expectations for instant replies, which isn’t sustainable.

The Benefits of Focus

While responsiveness matters, research shows leaders also need time for deep focus:

• Improved thinking: Focus allows complex cognitive processes to occur, leading to more strategic thought.

• Greater efficiency: Longer periods of uninterrupted work increase productivity.

• Reduced stress: The ability to focus calms the mind and reduces anxiety.

• Increased innovation: New ideas flourish with space for reflection.

• Better example for others: Modeling focus over reactivity sets the tone for your team.

Best Practices for Balance

So how can leaders find the right balance? Here are some best practices:

• Set expectations: Be clear with your team on when you are generally available, and when you will be offline.

• Designate focus time: Block off chunks of time for focused work. Turn off notifications. Let others know this is sacred time.

• Schedule responsiveness: Set specific times you will check messages and communicate updates. Don't do it constantly.

• Prioritize connections: Respond quickly to the most important relationships and tasks. Let others know if delayed.

• Model behaviors: Demonstrate focus time yourself. Encourage it on your team. Lead by example.

• Use auto-replies: When offline, set an away message letting people know when you will respond next.

The Key Takeaway

The key for leaders is finding a rhythm that works - being responsive in a timely way while also protecting focus time. This balance enables you to be truly present and strategic, without neglecting important communications. The benefits are less stress, greater efficiency, and modeling effective behaviors for your team.

As you work on finding this balance, don't hesitate to seek help. Consider working with an executive coach who can provide strategies tailored to your leadership needs. I offer coaching to leaders looking to maximize their effectiveness through increased focus and responsiveness. Reach out anytime to learn more about how I can help.

Do You Make This Common "Respect" Mistake That Destroys Company Culture?

Respect Does Not Mean Treating People Like Authority Figures

There is a quote that eloquently captures an important distinction when it comes to respect:

"Sometimes people use 'respect' to mean 'treating someone like a person' and sometimes they use 'respect' to mean 'treating someone like an authority.' And sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say 'if you won't respect me I won't respect you' and they mean 'if you won't treat me like an authority I won't treat you like a person.' They think they're being fair but they aren't, and it's not okay."

This quote deeply resonates with me as a coach who works with leaders and executives. I have seen many leaders who feel they inherently deserve respect simply because of their position or authority. They believe that respect means treating them like an unquestionable authority figure and following their directives without hesitation.

However, true respect first and foremost means treating people like human beings. It means showing care, empathy and consideration for their wellbeing. As a leader, you earn genuine respect by exhibiting integrity, listening intently to others, valuing diverse perspectives, and cultivating an environment of psychological safety where people feel comfortable expressing themselves.

Unfortunately, some leaders have an overly authoritative mindset where they view employees merely as resources to control rather than complex humans to engage. These leaders care more about preserving their status and power than uplifting others. When their authority is challenged or questioned in any way, they retaliate by pulling the "respect" card.

In essence, these leaders knowingly or unknowingly stop respecting individuals who don't defer to their authority. They may ostracize, undermine, or even ultimately fire people who stand up to them. This authoritarian approach is entirely unfair and counterproductive. It breeds fear, stifles innovation, and leads to disengaged, demotivated teams who follow directives out of compliance rather than commitment.

Adopting a "Respect for People" Mindset

The most successful leaders I've worked with take a completely different "respect for people" approach. They:

• Seek to deeply understand before being understood

• Encourage candid feedback and diverse opinions without retaliation

• Admit when they're wrong and sincerely apologize for mistakes

• Empower others through coaching and mentorship

• Show humility rather than expecting deference from others

• Value growth, learning and excellence over status and power

• Lead with compassion, elevating others over self

This "respect for people" mindset is essential for building a culture of trust, engagement and high performance. If you want your team to bring their best selves to work each day, you must reconsider what respect really means in your own leadership style.Here are some tangible steps you can take:

• Listen without judgment: Give your full attention when others speak up. Don't interrupt or let your mind wander. Reflect back what you heard without inserting your own biases.

• Adopt a growth mindset: Believe that abilities and intelligence can be developed with effort. Praise the process, not just the outcomes.

• Encourage challenges: Invite alternative perspectives. Don't just surround yourself with "yes" people. Ask "What am I missing?"

• Appreciate unique skills: Recognize that each person brings value through their distinct talents, backgrounds, and experiences.

• Give up control: Enable others to take ownership of projects and decisions. Guide the mission, but let your team determine how to get there.

• Admit imperfections: Be vulnerable and authentic about your limitations. Your humanity will empower others.

The Bottom Line

If you want to earn genuine respect as a leader, let go of commanding authority and focus on elevating others. Lead with compassion, not control. Value each person as a complex human, not just a role. By adopting this "respect for people" mindset, you will build trust, engagement and excellence.

If you recognize areas where you need to grow in showing true respect as a leader, don't hesitate to seek help. Consider working with an executive coach who can provide an outside perspective and tailored guidance. I'd be happy to have a free introductory consultation to discuss your leadership goals. Please reach out if you would like to learn more about how I can help you develop your strengths while letting go of unproductive authority mindsets. The first step is acknowledging the need for change, and you have the power to become a more respected, inspiring leader.

Company Vision Just Profit and Growth? Your Leadership Sucks

Rethinking Business Vision and Mission

Many companies default to generic visions and missions focused on growth, profits, and being the best. But these strategies ring hollow. Real vision stems from purpose and values. Pursuing generic business goals reflects a lack of leadership and imagination.

The Problem with Default Business Thinking

Leaders often rely on tired tropes about growth, profits, and dominance when defining their company's vision and mission. But these table stakes goals fail to capture what makes a business unique and meaningful.

Prioritizing growth above all else is shortsighted. There are always limits to growth. What happens when you hit them? Likewise, every company wants to maximize profits and be the industry leader. But these generic aims do not differentiate you.

Defaulting to profit and dominance demonstrates a lack of creativity from leadership. It suggests the leaders do not fully understand the company's real purpose and reason for being.

Symptoms of Poor Leadership

Leaders who spout generic goals like growth and profitability as the vision and mission show their failure to think deeply about the business. They have not articulated what unique value their company brings to the world.

This lack of vision flows from poor leadership. Leaders are responsible for defining and communicating a compelling vision and purpose. Failure to do so suggests they do not understand the business, customers, and their role.

The downstream effects of poor vision are dire. Employees do not understand the strategy and lose motivation. Customers are not inspired by the muddled purpose. The organization spirals as no one can effectively execute the leader's non-existent vision.

Vision Flows from Purpose

Vision is the dream of the future your company helps create. It captures the change you make in the world. The most inspiring visions describe how you improve people's lives.

Vision grounded in purpose differentiates you and draws others to your cause. People want to be part of something bigger than themselves. A compelling vision stirs passion and fosters loyalty.

Crafting a Purpose-Driven Vision

To develop a purpose-driven vision, leaders must deeply understand the company's "why." Why does your business exist? What customer needs do you address? How do you improve lives?

With clarity of purpose, leaders can define a vision for change. Describe how the world will be different thanks to your company's work. Outline the positive impact on customers' lives.

An inspiring vision rallies people to a cause. It focuses efforts and drives meaningful progress versus simply chasing profits.

Values Guide the Path

While vision focuses on the destination, values define the journey. Your values reflect what behaviors and principles you uphold along the way.

Values-driven companies earn trust and goodwill. Customers and employees want to associate with businesses exhibiting integrity and corporate responsibility. Shared values create cultural cohesion.

Values-Based Leadership

Leaders must embody the values they espouse. Their actions and decisions should reflect the company's declared values.

When leaders walk the talk on values, they earn credibility and respect. Their example gives employees permission to act on shared values versus purely pursuing growth and profits.

Leaders must infuse values throughout the organization's culture. Hiring, promotions, policies and incentives should align with values. This consistency strengthens the company's moral fiber.

Leadership Calls for Courage

Developing vision and values requires moving beyond platitudes. It demands courage to define audacious goals for change and live by higher standards.

Visionary leaders imagine a better future and enlist others in its pursuit. They embody the values they espouse and inspire teams to align. This clarity of purpose propels companies forward.

Generic business goals demonstrate lack of vision. True leaders define an aspirational vision and lead with moral courage. They motivate teams to reach for more than mere profits. Purpose-driven companies make a real difference.

A Call to Action for Leaders

If your company vision consists of vague aspirations like growth and profits, it's time for introspection. Generic goals expose lack of leadership and imagination. As a leader, have the courage to clearly define your purpose and values. Outline how you uniquely improve lives and make a difference. Articulate the future you are building and principles that guide you. Share your purpose-driven vision and lead by example. Hire, promote and reward based on values alignment. Infuse your culture and motivate your team towards meaningful goals beyond profits.

Seek Help from a Coach

Self-reflection is difficult. An outside expert can provide perspective and advice to help you develop vision and values. Consider working with a leadership coach to unlock your full potential. As an executive coach with decades of experience, I can guide you on this journey. My coaching helps leaders discover their purpose, clarify their vision, and lead with authenticity. Please [reach out] to learn more about how I can help you grow as a purpose-driven leader. Small investments yield great rewards. Generic business goals demonstrate lack of vision. You have the power to define an inspiring vision focused on creating positive change. Purpose-driven leaders transform organizations and lives.

The Journey of Growth Starts Within

Growth is a journey that starts from within. As coaches, our role is to guide others on their path of self-discovery and development. However, we must first walk the walk ourselves.

My Personal Journey

My own journey towards growth began when I was at a crossroads in my career. I was climbing the corporate ladder successfully, but felt unfulfilled. I realized that my work was not aligned with my values and passions. This discord led me to closely examine my purpose. What did I really want to achieve with my life? How could I use my talents to make a difference?

After much reflection, I discovered my calling was to empower others to grow and develop their full potential. This led me to pivot my career and train as a coach. My personal struggles enabled me to understand the challenges others faced. I learned to leverage my experiences to help clients overcome obstacles and achieve breakthroughs.

The Universal Search for Meaning

The search for meaning and self-actualization is universal. We all seek to understand our purpose and contribute positively to the world. However, the path is often unclear. Distractions and societal pressures can cloud our self-awareness. As coaches, we guide others to cut through the noise and align with their authentic selves.

My own journey has taught me that the answers we seek are usually within us. We all have an inner wisdom that can illuminate our path, if we learn to tune in. Coaching helps create the space for self-discovery. Through powerful questions and deep listening, we help reveal the truths that already exist within our clients.

The Shared Human Experience

While each person's path is unique, the human experience contains many common threads. We all experience fear, self-doubt, heartbreak and adversity. However, we also share the capacity for resilience, love, courage and growth. Recognizing these shared truths builds empathy and connection.

My personal and professional experiences have reinforced that we are all fellow travelers on this journey of life. As coaches, we walk alongside others with compassion. We understand the ups and downs, and can help clients see the light even in the darkest moments.

The journey of growth starts from within. My own twists and turns have shaped my purpose - to spark positive change by helping others discover their gifts. I feel privileged to share my experiences and lend a hand to those seeking their path. When we light up others, we illuminate the world.

Call to Action

I welcome the opportunity to connect with those interested in exploring coaching. Please reach out if you seek a guide along your journey of growth and self-discovery. I look forward to helping you unlock your full potential.

Overcoming Insecurity as a Leader

Insecurity can completely undermine even the most competent and experienced leaders. As a leader, your insecurities are often far more obvious to your team than you realize. Left unchecked, insecurity can corrode trust, provoke doubt, and limit your effectiveness.This post explores common insecure behaviors, why insecurity backfires, and how to overcome insecurity as a leader.

Insecure Behaviors to Avoid

Insecurity manifests in many subtle behaviors and communication patterns. Here are some of the most common to be aware of:

• Rambling or over-explaining: When insecure, leaders often ramble on to fill silence or over-explain simple concepts. This causes others to tune out.

• Controlling conversations: Insecure leaders often dominate conversations, interrupt frequently, or neglect to solicit input from others. This stifles healthy dialogue.

• Asserting authority unnecessarily: Saying things like "I'm the boss!" or emphasizing your authority in situations where it's already clear comes across as posturing.

• Repeating yourself: Repeating the same point multiple times screams self-doubt. It makes employees doubt your confidence.

• Acting like you know everything: No one knows everything. Refusing to admit knowledge gaps or limitations makes you seem arrogant and discourages questions.

• Not listening to feedback: Constructive feedback is invaluable for growth and self-awareness. Leaders who get defensive or refuse to listen to feedback appear insecure.

• Needing to be the hero: Insecure leaders often swoop in to solve problems personally that should be delegated. This suggests you need to be the hero.

• Taking credit: Insecure leaders take credit for successes that should be attributed to their team. This screams self-validation.

Why Insecurity Backfires

The root of insecurity is self-doubt. As a leader, any behavior that conveys self-doubt can undermine your credibility and make employees uneasy. People want confidence, vision, and decisiveness from their leaders. When you act insecure as a leader, common consequences include:

• Employees lose trust in your judgment: Self-doubt breeds distrust. Employees wonder if you have the judgment needed to make big calls.

• Employees doubt your competence: Insecurity makes you appear less capable in your role. Employees may question if you're qualified to lead.

• Employees feel you are not fit to lead: Overall, insecurity creates an impression that you lack the poise, confidence, and vision required in a leader.

• Employees get frustrated: Behaviors like repetition, rambling, and controlling dialogue frustrate employees and make them tune out.

• Employees hesitate to bring concerns: Insecure leaders who get defensive about feedback train employees not to bring concerns to them. This impedes communication.

• Insecurity perpetuates imposter syndrome: Struggling with self-doubt yourself makes employees doubt their own abilities and contributions.

In the end, the very doubts and undermining insecure leaders fear become self-fulfilling prophecies. Employees pick up on the cues and begin to doubt in turn.

Overcoming Insecurity as a Leader

The first step is acknowledging when your own insecurity gets triggered. Common triggers include new challenges, criticism, or situations that make you feel inexperienced. Once you notice insecurity arising, you can consciously choose more constructive responses.Here are some tips for overcoming insecurity as a leader:

• Accept that you'll never know everything. No leader is an expert across all domains. Admitting knowledge gaps shows maturity and humility. Employees respect transparency about limitations.

• Focus outward, not inward. Insecure thoughts often run in loops like "Do they like me? What if I'm not qualified?" Practice redirecting your focus outward to your team's needs and goals.

• Don't take feedback personally. Feedback is about improving, not about you as a person. Let go of ego and listen openly.

• Surround yourself with trusted advisors. Bounce ideas off mentors and peers you trust. They can reality test you when insecurity warps perspective.

• Work on emotional intelligence (EQ). Insecurity often stems from poor EQ. Self-awareness, empathy, vulnerability, and relationship skills help immensely.

• Get a leadership coach. Coaches provide unbiased support to identify blindspots and overcome insecurity triggers as a leader.

• Remember employees look to you. Focus on modeling the confidence, poise, and vision you expect from leaders. Employees take cues from you.

With self-reflection and conscious effort, leaders can keep insecurity in check. The first step is noticing when insecurity arises. From there, redirect your focus to leading effectively by seeking input, playing to your strengths, and developing self-awareness. Model the mindset and behaviors you expect from your team.

Conclusion

Insecurity is common among leaders, but it can sabotage you when unchecked. Through self-awareness and focusing outward on your team's needs, leaders can overcome insecurity. The right support and a commitment to growth helps leaders cultivate the confidence and poise that inspires others to follow.

As a leader, take time to reflect on when you feel insecure and how it impacts your leadership. Identify 1-2 specific insecure behaviors you want to work on. Share these insights with a trusted mentor or coach and create an action plan to practice responding constructively when insecurity arises. Small mindset shifts go a long way.

If insecurity is holding you back as a leader, a professional coach can provide unbiased guidance tailored to your needs. Coaching helps leaders gain self-awareness, improve emotional intelligence, and develop new leadership skills. Reach out to learn more about how coaching can accelerate your leadership growth. What steps will you take today to become the leader your team deserves? Don't let insecurity fester - you owe it to your team to proactively strengthen your leadership.

Do You Frequently Interrupt and Demand Quick Replies? The Monumental Cost to Productivity

In our permanently "always on" digital work culture, it's incredibly tempting to constantly interrupt people without warning through calls or messages and expect instant responses. But this short-term compulsive communication style directly sabotages productivity, creativity, decision quality and job satisfaction. As a leader, you have an obligation to model patience, presence and respect for people's time.

The Profound Perils of Interruption Culture Run Amok

When you interrupt people unexpectedly through digital channels or calls, several severe consequences inevitably ensue:

• You completely break their state of focused flow and impede their ability to do thoughtful, concentrated work. Achieving a flow state requires deep immersion that interruptions rupture. It takes significant time post-interruption to re-achieve that peak state of engagement. Time squandered.

• You force an unplanned, disruptive, mentally fatiguing context switch onto their priorities and tasks. They must shift gears to your topic before circling back. This fractures their work, hampers innovative thinking that builds over time, and delays difficult tasks that require commitment.

• You directly eat into their overall capacity for planned work by consuming time and mental energy around the interruptions and the added context switching time required after your discussion to try getting back on track. Focus lost is gone forever.

• Through frequent interruptions you contribute to substantially diminished morale, frustration, burnout and muted engagement when you disrupt workflows repeatedly. Death by a thousand cuts.

• You signal through your actions that your own needs and urgency of timeline matter most, superseding their priorities. This disempowers people and compromises autonomy and focus required for mastery.

In aggregate, constant unexpected interruptions fundamentally sabotage productivity, creativity, decision quality, psychological safety and job satisfaction. Leaders undermine the very outcomes they seek through this reflexive communication compulsion. Patience produces results.

Practical Tactics to Improve Your Availability Practices and Respect People's Time

Here are some pragmatic ideas and tactics to help you become radically more thoughtful and respectful of people's precious time, attention and mental energy:

• When possible, briefly ask if now represents a good time to talk or jump on a quick call before interrupting unannounced. This demonstrates courtesy.

• For non-urgent discussions or questions, proactively schedule time on people's calendars in advance rather than interrupting workflow unexpectedly. This honors their priorities.

• If an interruption is truly unavoidable due to urgency, politely apologize up front for interrupting them unexpectedly and acknowledge you recognize the inconvenience.

• If they seem crunched for time, offer to pick back up any conversation you interrupted later at a time that better suits their schedule. Make it easy to refocus.

• Empathize with their unique priorities and timelines, not just your own impulse to get quick answers. Their work deserves equal respect.

With care, patience and discipline, you demonstrate through your availability practices that you recognize your team's precious time deserves utmost respect and protection. Your communication culture directly shapes productivity. Model the mindset and rhythms you aim to see your organization embody.

Executive Coaching to Develop Self-Aware, Empowering Leadership

As an executive coach, I'm happy to advise on leading effectively and intentionally in an increasingly digital-first asynchronous world. Please don't hesitate to reach out anytime if you'd like to work together toward raising collective productivity, satisfaction, and innovation on your team. You deserve to become your best self, and your people deserve that person.

What Does Constantly Filling Silence Reveal About You as a Leader?

Many well-intentioned leaders feel an almost compulsive need to constantly fill any momentary silence or gaps in conversations and meetings, reflexively jumping in the instant no voice is heard. But this common tendency inadvertently reveals far more about you and your emotional intelligence than you intend.

The deep-seated fear of allowing silence exposes confidence gaps and insecurity. Executives and managers who impulsively fill any quiet moment signal to their teams:

• Impatience - An apparent inability to patiently wait, listen fully, and allow others to collect their thoughts before responding reflects poorly on your temperament, self-control and respect for others.

• Arrogance - Filling every gap quickly with your own voice conveys an inflated sense that your views and solutions matter most, crowding out other perspectives.

• Condescension - Consistently jumping in rapidly assumes that others need your guidance and wisdom to constructively proceed with discussions or decisions. This suggests you see your team as dependent on you always leading the way.

• Anxiety - Feeling discomfort with even brief moments of silence and constantly filling them shows you lack confidence in your presence and cannot stand stillness. Silence unnerves you.

• Micromanagement - When you immediately fill gaps, it hints that you fail to trust your team and feel the need to tightly orchestrate all interactions. This prevents empowerment.

• Interruption - Frequently talking over people or cutting them off mid-sentence demonstrates a lack of active listening and inherent respect for others' diverse viewpoints. You signal that your voice matters most.

• Narcissism - The apparent need to make every discussion center around your opinions and commentary inherently crowds out space for others' voices to contribute meaningfully. This marginalizes teammates.

• Reactivity - The urge to instantaneously respond or redirect each conversation shows a lack of discipline and self-control. It depicts you thinking and reacting intermittently rather than operating with focus and intention.

The more leaders feel the urge to constantly fill silence out of anxiety and ego, the weaker their ultimate influence, presence and impact become. The most inspiring leaders understand the immense communicative power that harnessing silence strategically provides when used judiciously.

How to Recognize Discomfort with Silence

Pay attention to your stress levels during natural conversational pauses. Do you feel rising tension or anxiety? Do you rush to speak just to ease this discomfort? If so, you likely have underdeveloped confidence with silence.

How to Identify Your Own Voice Filling Gaps

Record meetings and listen back for patterns. Are you consistently the first to speak after every gap? Do you interrupt or talk over others frequently? If so, you likely over-rely on your voice due to silence aversion.

Techniques to Get Comfortable with Silence

Start practicing silence meditations to enhance self-awareness. Take pauses during conversations before responding. Go for walks without headphones to embrace natural quiet. Initiate one-to-one silent moments to normalize silence.

Tactics to Build Silence Muscles in Meetings

In meetings, allow others to speak first after gaps. Count to 7 in your head before filling silence yourself. Ask questions but don’t immediately reply. Thank participants who allow space for reflection.

The more leaders feel the urge to constantly fill silence out of anxiety and ego, the weaker their ultimate influence, presence and impact become. The most inspiring leaders understand the immense communicative power that harnessing silence strategically provides when used judiciously.

Executive Coaching to Develop Composure and Confident Presence

If you recognize yourself over-relying on your own voice to fill space and dominate interactions due to discomfort with silence, executive coaching can provide the ideal outside support to develop greater emotional intelligence, executive presence, active listening skills and communication excellence.

Please don't hesitate to reach out anytime if you see opportunity to grow your comfort with silence to empower yourself and your team. True poise and personal influence start with self-awareness - I'm happy to help. With practice, silence speaks louder than words.

Are You Truly Comfortable with Silence as a Leader?

In our increasingly busy, rushed, and distraction-filled digital work world, periods of silence can sometimes feel painfully awkward. We anxiously rush to fill any momentary conversational void or lag during meetings. But the most influential and emotionally intelligent leaders understand and embrace the unique power of deploying strategic silence to listen, project confidence, and empower others.

Common Causes of Discomfort with Silence

Many well-intentioned leaders and managers see silence as:

• Unproductive, representing zero active progress or forward momentum, wasting precious time. Silence makes them antsy.

• Intimidating, with mounting pressure to chime in or speak up building as gaps go unfilled. Silence spurs stage fright.

• Risky, as extended silence might cause others to disengage, get bored, or deem you as lacking ideas. Silence seems dangerous.

This instinctive aversion fuels nervous, constant chatter - speaking simply to fill space, lest anyone become bored or impatient in the absence of a voice. But silence breeds anxiety and undermines influence only when misused passively. Wielded strategically, silence conveys confidence.

The Multitude of Benefits Strategically Leveraging Silence Provides Leaders

When used with purpose at appropriate moments, embracing silence opens up space for magic to happen:

• Silence enables active, engaged listening - you hear people fully without interruption or distraction, absorbing their messages.

• Silence provides time for careful, thoughtful processing before thoughtfully responding - pausing allows insights to crystallize.

• Silence grabs attention and builds eager anticipation and engagement from groups - pausing intrigues.

• Silence empowers and emboldens others to confidently fill communication gaps themselves - people rise to trust.

Silence amplifies the resonance and impact of spoken messages when deliberately incorporated. With practice, silence truly speaks volumes.

Leadership Tactics to Start Effectively Leveraging the Power of Silence

Here are some impactful yet simple ways busy leaders can learn to utilize silence more effectively:

• Get comfortable allowing some silence to manifest during meetings - resist the urge to immediately fill every momentary gap in conversations. Learn to savor silence.

• After asking an insightful open-ended question, make it a point to slowly count to at least 5 in your head before even considering jumping back in to fill dead air.

• When others go silent during exchanges, learn to appreciate these gaps as productive thinking time where they are processing and formulating responses, rather than cueing you to speak.

• After making an important point, consciously let your words fully land with people before immediately moving on or redirecting the conversation. Reflection requires space.

Wielding silence with skill and confidence demonstrates you lead on your own terms, not out of reflexive fear. Reflection requires space. With consistent practice, silence gains gravitas to amplify your messages when deployed judiciously at the right moments.

Coaching to Develop Confident, Composed Communication

Need help becoming more comfortable leveraging the unique power of silence to communicate vision, lead meetings, and relate to your team as an executive? I offer focused coaching for leaders seeking to master critical emotional intelligence, executive presence, and communication skills. Please don't hesitate to reach out anytime if you would like to discuss working together. Wielding silence and space opens up new frontiers for your leadership impact. Let's connect.

What are You Saying? Listen to Yourself for Self-Awareness

When's the last time you really actively listened to a recording of your own voice, communication style and behaviors? If you’re like most people, it may have been a while, if ever.

Many of us instinctively cringe at the idea of hearing recordings of our own interactions at meetings, public speaking, client calls, and so on. The sound of our own voice often makes us painfully self-conscious, bringing out our inner critic. But if we can learn to listen to ourselves with openness, empathy and the intent to learn, reviewing recordings can massively expand self-awareness and emotional intelligence.

Our Natural Discomfort with the Sound of Our Own Voice

Most of us experience immediate discomfort when initially hearing audio or video of our own voice played back during recordings of interactions. We tend to pick up on every pause, diction imperfection, awkward phrase, and nervous tic. We judge ourselves far more harshly than we typically judge others.

This ingrained discomfort and self-criticism often causes many leaders to avoid listening to recordings of themselves altogether after an initial unpleasant experience, robbing them of invaluable opportunities for growth.

The key mindset shift is to learn to listen to yourself with the same self-compassion you would extend to a peer, direct report or friend, not the amplified self-judgement your inner critic projects. This takes mindfulness but allows you to extract lessons.

The Wealth of Insights Recordings Can Provide When Reviewed With Balance

If analyzed objectively, recordings of your communication and leadership presence provide unique insights you cannot easily gain elsewhere:

• You may pick up on subtle but important unintended tones that wrongly imply emotions, indifference or judgement you aren't actually feeling internally. These inadvertent slip ups can undermine trust.

• You can spot unproductive patterns such as frequently interrupting people, not letting others fully finish thoughts before interjecting, failing to ask real open-ended questions, etc.

• You can assess effectiveness and impact of different aspects of your communication style based on how others in the recording react and respond in real-time.

• You can analyze whether you tend to over-explain concepts or points repeatedly. Self-listening surfaces blind spots.

• You can determine from air time whether you share the conversational space appropriately or dominate discussions. Silences speak volumes.

Without listening to yourself, it remains almost impossible to accurately gauge the holistic impact of your presence, words and behaviors on others. Listening courageously lets you be your own mirror for growth.

NOTE: Before recording anything make sure you know the law about recording for where you live. Remember these recordings are for private use only.

Healthy Ways Leaders Can Build Self-Listening to Boost Self-Awareness

Here are some best practices and tactics to guide productive self-listening for maximizing learning:

• Occasionally record short snippets of 1-on-1 meetings, virtual team meetings, webinars or conference presentations. But notify participants politely in advance and ask their permission.

• Analyze patterns and themes vs. over-criticizing one-off mistakes when reviewing. Look for trends and consistency. Remember that everyone mispeaks.

• Balance taking notes on both effective areas of strength as well as opportunities for improvement. Strive for a constructive ratio.

• Remind yourself frequently to focus commentary on specific fact-based behaviors you can change, not imagined traits about who you are as a person. Avoid faulty self-assessments.

• Note 1-2 concrete things you would recommend to someone else if you were coaching them to address similar patterns witnessed in the recording. This objectivity fuels progress.

With consistency and the right constructive mindset, regularly scheduling time to listen to yourself fuels dramatic positive growth by increasing self-awareness and emotional intelligence. All leaders have room for improvement when it comes to mastering high-impact communication. Be your own trusted mentor.

An Outside Listening Ear: Coaching for Communication Excellence

Need a neutral, experienced executive coach to lend an objective outside ear to share candid observations on your communication style and leadership presence based on recordings? I’m happy to listen collaboratively and provide entirely constructive feedback tailored to your growth goals.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you would like to discuss how we could potentially partner. You keep expanding as a leader when you stay curious about yourself and keep dedicating time to active self-improvement. Personal growth never stops when we commit to lifelong learning. My door is always open.

Do You Talk Too Much? The Critical Importance of Listening as a Leader

The most effective leaders view communication as a two-way street, listening at least as much as they speak. But in our ego-driven business culture that rewards and even idolizes extroversion, many default to talking too much and listening too little. Here’s how to spot this tendency in yourself and cultivate deeper, more mindful listening skills.

There’s an old adage stating that we as humans have two ears and only one mouth. The inherent implication is that we should aim to listen twice as much as we talk. This wisdom rings even more true for leaders and executives responsible for building trust, spurring innovation, developing talent, and unlocking others’ potential.

Warning Signs You May Be Talking Too Much and Listening Too Little

If you find yourself exhibiting some of the following patterns, it likely indicates areas where you can stand to improve your communication ratios by reducing excessive talking and increasing thoughtful listening:

• You frequently jump in quickly when others are already speaking, sometimes even interrupting people outright before they can complete their thought.

• You often catch yourself barely listening, but rather waiting and looking for the next possible break to interject whatever you want to say, rather than truly absorbing what the other person is expressing.

• You finish people’s sentences for them, assuming you already know exactly what they will say based on the few words you heard.

• If you were to review detailed notes after meetings, you’d observe that you personally dominated well over 50% of the overall airtime, talking over peers.

• You feel impatient, distracted, and tempted to redirect the conversation when discussion centers on topics that do not particularly interest you.

• You find yourself repeatedly reiterating the same points multiple times to try to ensure your perspectives land and sink in with others.

These types of patterns clearly reveal you have ample areas for improvement when it comes to exhibiting openness, curiosity and presence through more mindful listening rather than simply waiting for your next turn to promote your own views.

The Multitude of Benefits More Active Listening Provides Leaders

Making a concerted effort to increase listening while reducing excessive talking yields profound benefits:

• You build far deeper and more trusting relationships when others feel heard and respected.

• You surface more diverse insights, perspectives, concerns and opportunities through uninterrupted conversations.

• You quickly identify emerging needs, grievances, roadblocks and disconnects early before they escalate.

• You powerfully model openness and interest in others that everyone else you lead will then emulate.

• You defuse unnecessary conflicts and tensions before they metastasize by hearing people out.

When leaders consciously listen first with presence and care before speaking, their words hold exponentially greater weight and influence. Talk less, accomplish more.

Actionable Ways Leaders Can Start to Improve Their Listening Ratios:

Here are some tactical steps you can take to become a better listener by redistributing conversational airtime from excessive talking to deeper listening:

• Set an initial goal to listen 70-80% of the time during most meetings rather than defaulting to a 50/50 split. This means talking 20-30% or less.

• Ask more thoughtful, open-ended questions during discussions then make sure to pause and truly listen to the full responses before replying.

• After important meetings, review your notes objectively – is the balance of documented viewpoints heavily weighted toward your own perspectives versus a diversity of stakeholders?

• Make a point to thank other participants for their unique insights and explicitly mention something valuable you learned from what they shared, even if you disagree.

• Reflect on why you felt compelled to interrupt someone else - what insecurity or need is driving that impulse? Then consciously resist the temptation the next time the urge arises.

The more leaders intentionally embody patience and curiosity through their listening, the richer insights they will gain. While becoming a better listener requires awareness and practice, active listening builds all relationships and pays dividends for life.

Executive Coaching to Develop Active Listening and Communication Excellence

Need additional support and guidance improving your listening abilities and ratios as a leader? I offer executive coaching engagements tailored to leaders seeking to hone emotional intelligence skills like mindful communication, empathy and self-awareness. Please don't hesitate to reach out anytime if you'd like to discuss how we could potentially collaborate. Listening forms the very foundation for impactful leadership and human relationships. My door is always open.

Learn from Others’ Mistakes as Much as Your Own

We’ve all heard that you learn the most from mistakes and failures. Picking yourself up after setbacks builds grit and character. Overcoming challenges expands your limits.

But while failures undoubtedly provide invaluable learning opportunities, preventing major mistakes in the first place is obviously ideal. An overlooked truth exists – you can learn just as much, if not more, from others’ mistakes and failures before making the same errors yourself.

The Inherent Paradox of Learning from Mistakes

Mistakes and failures provide essential chances to analyze what went wrong, why it occurred, and how to improve systems and behaviors to prevent recurrence. This commitment to continuous improvement is key to growth at both individual and organizational levels.

But significant mistakes and failures also often incur real damage – to budgets, schedules, capabilities, relationships, reputation, morale, and more. As leaders, we want to minimize mistakes and failures where reasonably possible.

Herein lies an inherent paradox – to maximize growth, we need sufficient learning experiences that test our limits. Yet we want to avoid the pain, disruption, and consequences of major mistakes and failures, especially when repeated frequently.

Learn Without Pain Through Empathetic Listening

An elegant solution to this paradox exists – learn from others’ mistakes first through empathetic listening, before making the same errors yourself.

By taking time to truly understand someone else’s missteps, errors, and oversights from their perspective, you gain many benefits:

• Insight into the nuanced root causes of complex failures from an inside view, not just superficial speculation

• Increased psychological safety for people to share mistakes, be vulnerable, and ask for help without fear of punishment

• Increased awareness of subtle unintended consequences that can emerge in hindsight after the fact

• More nuanced appreciation of how good intentions can sometimes lead down an incorrect path despite best efforts

• The opportunity to ask thoughtful questions free of defensiveness to unpack lessons learned

• Increased humility regarding our shared human fallibility and tendency for oversights

• Greater compassion and emotional intelligence about the feelings evoked by failures

In short, by opening our hearts and minds to learn from each other’s missteps, we turn painful individual mistakes into collectively owned wisdom.

Practical Tips for Learning from Others’ Failures

Here are some practical tips to maximize learning from others’ failures and mistakes:

• Ask open-ended, thoughtful questions without judgment to understand their experience

• Listen first to understand, not simply react or provide your own solutions

• Share your own relevant mistakes and lessons learned to reassure them and create openness

• Discuss what, in hindsight, could have been done differently or improved

• Unpack the influence emotions and mindsets played on perceptions and decisions

• Analyze the organizational context and external factors at play that enabled the failure

• Maintain compassion – “but for the grace of God go I” - we all make mistakes

• Follow up on how insights will alter your own approach going forward

The more we can share our falls, the more we all rise together. Nobody wants to see colleagues and teammates suffer. But mistakes, while often painful in the moment, provide fertile soil for collective learning and growth.

An empathetic culture focused on learning transforms painful missteps into powerful shared wisdom for the future. We all move forward.

Coaching to Develop Empathetic Leadership Skills

Effectively applying empathy to unpack others’ failures and extract lessons requires strategic listening abilities, emotional intelligence, communication skills, and systems thinking.

If you want support developing yourself or your team’s capacities in these areas to create a culture of psychological safety where people help each other learn from setbacks, executive coaching services can help unlock these critical skills.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you see opportunity for our shared humanity to enable collective growth. The road ahead comes into focus when we look back together.

Leveraging the Power of Rituals

The Ubiquity and Importance of Rituals

Our lives are steeped in rituals, though we often take them for granted. Rituals are sets of repetitive processes or sequences that create shared meaning and purpose over time. Though the term ritual may conjure mystical images of ceremonial robes, rituals pervade our lives in both obvious and subtle ways. Understanding and optimizing rituals can profoundly transform teams, organizations, and even our personal lives.

This post explores the omnipresent nature of rituals, where we encounter them in business and life, and how leaders can institute them deliberately to drive growth, execution, and alignment. While the concept sounds mystical, the impact of thoughtfully designed rituals is highly practical.

What Are Rituals?

At their essence, rituals represent sets of actions performed in a specific predetermined order and style, often at regular intervals or dates. Rituals take many forms:

Common Personal Rituals

• Morning routines - wake up, meditation, exercise, breakfast, journaling

• Evening wind-down routines - family dinner, reading stories, powering down devices

• Weekly habits - grocery shopping, meal prep, lawn care

• Milestone traditions - anniversaries, birthdays, holidays

These personal rituals provide comfort, stability, and work-life balance through habitual behaviors. They demarcate the shift into different mindsets.

Common Organizational Rituals

• Start of day - morning huddle, daily planning, setting intentions

• Start of week - prioritization, goal setting, problem solving meetings

• Start of month/quarter - business reviews, retrospectives, pre-mortems

• Project cadences - standups, grooming sessions, retrospectives, demos

• Culture building - offsites, town halls, team events, celebrations

• Performance rituals - quarterly/annual planning processes, development planning, performance calibration and reviews

Organizational rituals aim to unite teams, provide strategic focus, foster culture, and facilitate alignment. At their best, they become ingrained habits.

The Power and Purpose of Rituals

When designed and facilitated skillfully, rituals confer many benefits:

• Foster a sense of community, belonging, and shared culture by regularly revisiting meaningful symbols, stories, and practices

• Build familiarity and psychological safety through positive consistency and predictability

• Reduce uncertainty and anxiety by clearly establishing expected routines and cadences

• Increase collective focus by eliminating mundane decision fatigue; no need to continually redecide rituals

• Establish coherence and meaning amidst chaos by demarcating sacred time for what matters most

• Codify and transmit important cultural values and principles across generations

• Facilitate incremental improvements through repetition and iteration over time

• Provide satisfaction through visible progress and predictable accomplishment

• Create useful boundaries between periods focused on execution versus strategic thinking

• Support work-life balance by separating personal time from professional time

Rituals serve many purposes, but ultimately coalesce teams around shared pursuits larger than themselves.

Optimizing Team Rituals

Leaders can evolve rituals to maximize their strategic impact by:

• Reviewing existing rituals and paring down or modifying low value activities

• Institutionalizing already beneficial patterns and processes into formal standardized rituals

• Introducing new rituals intentionally designed to address gaps or needs

• Ensuring rituals and their elements embody and convey core cultural values and principles

• Providing clear meaning and context around rituals to increase engagement and purpose

• Codifying important rituals into documented protocols, training programs, and onboarding

• Inspecting and thoughtfully adapting rituals based on feedback and measured outcomes

With care and intention, teams can harness the power of rituals to drive productivity, innovation, connection, and sustainable performance.

Applying Rituals to Strengthen Your Team

Consider where your team stands to benefit most from introducing or optimizing rituals:

• Are start of day or week rituals energizing and aligning people?

• Are milestone rituals reinforcing values and culture?

• Do project rituals maintain cadence and keep efforts on track?

• Do people feel connected to company purpose and community?

Rituals both stabilize chaotic environments and fuel improvement. Take time to consciously design and elevate your team’s rituals.

Coaching to Optimize Rituals

If you need guidance strengthening your team’s rituals for alignment, connection, and performance, coaching can provide immense value. Please feel free to reach out to explore how we can collaborate. Thoughtful rituals promote productivity, innovation, and belonging.

The Power of a Repeated One-on-One Ritual

As leaders, we often obsess over trying to make each one-on-one meeting special, unique, and unpredictable. But real power stems from small, simple consistencies over time, not cleverness in every instance. Start each one-on-one the exact same ritualistic way to lay the groundwork for deeper understanding.

In this series, I’m exploring one-on-one best practices, many inspired by the Manager Tools podcast. Their wisdom has profoundly shaped my perspective, though I synthesize insights from many sources into my own coaching philosophy.

Single one-off meetings can be impactful. But over months and years, the cumulative effects of repetitive actions are what builds trust, insight, and retainment of top talent. Don’t get distracted trying to reinvent the wheel or show off your wit every time. Thoughtful, predictable rituals create fertile ground for sustained growth.

Why Ritual Outperforms Cleverness

It’s tempting to want each one-on-one to feel fresh, organic and completely unique. But this mindset misses the power of pattern recognition over time. A repeated simple ritual may seem boring, but it pays dividends.

Benefits include:

- You learn how different personalities express themselves based on their response style. Quiet employees may offer short vague answers. Big picture thinkers may not recite details. Over time, the pattern recognition ability you develop is invaluable.

- You start noticing subtle trends and changes in mood, energy, body language or tone that can signal emerging issues or opportunities worth digging into. Abrupt terseness from someone usually verbose quickly raises flags something is amiss.

- It reduces the mental effort of trying to conjure a novel, organic opening line every time, allowing you to funnel that brain power into focused listening instead. Energy goes into the conversation rather than the gimmick.

- The predictable rhythm comforts employees and eliminates uncertainties. One less thing to worry about puts them at ease and primes them for candor.

Rituals Build the Foundation, Insights Follow

Resist the urge as a leader to approach each encounter as a chance to impress. Put the emphasis instead on long-term pattern recognition and meaning derived through consistency over time. Establish a simple ritual, then work to discern insights within the comfortable structure it provides.

Optimal Opening Questions

Choose a standard opening question and use it start every one-on-one, every time, with every employee. For example:

- How are you?

- What's been going on this week?

- How are things?

- What's top of mind right now?

Don’t feel pressure to conjure something new or contemporary. The power is in the pattern itself, not the poetry of the words.

Capture Responses for Reflection

Write down or otherwise record your team members’ answers each week. Taking this small step allows you to:

- Easily refer back to check on progress of issues week-to-week. One-off problems become trends.

- See insightful patterns over months that you certainly would have missed in the moment.

- Not rely solely on memory, which fades quickly when managing a team.

- Quiz people about inconsistencies between their own responses that they may not recall offhand.

Don’t view it as imposing tedious structure. You’re laying the groundwork for enhanced recall and insight over the long run.

The Big Picture Role of Management

It’s easy as a leader to slip into thinking your job is to “win” each individual one-on-one. But your real duty is noticing subtle trends over time, coaching others’ development, and ultimately retaining your best talent over months and years. A repeated simple ritual feeds that bigger picture focus on continuity.

Of course, eventually rituals can become rote. So periodically change the question, while still keeping it consistent for a sustained period to allow insights to emerge. Just don’t fall into the trap of trying to impress people with your wit and ingenuity each time. The power is in the pattern.

Invest in Your Growth as a Leader

Like all management skills, consistently practicing one-on-ones will boost your ability to cultivate trust, have meaningful exchanges, and strengthen connections over time. If you want additional support on your journey to management excellence, I offer executive coaching focused explicitly on upleveling leadership abilities like emotional intelligence and communication.

Please feel free to reach out if you would like to explore coaching for yourself or your team. We all get better together. Consistency compounds, in leadership and in life.

Why Skip-Level One-on-Ones Undermine Rather Than Strengthen Connection

As managers rise through the ranks, it’s tempting to want direct, firsthand relationships with all employees, even well down the org chart. But conducting one-on-one meetings with direct reports of your direct reports—known as skip level employees—often proves to be an ineffective use of time that actually weakens critical connections.

I’m synthesizing the wisdom of the Manager Tools podcast, which has profoundly shaped my own coaching philosophy. I’ve experienced the dysfunction of skip-level one-on-ones personally during my career. When one-on-ones flow properly up and down the management chain, critical information bubbles up through trusted relationships. Attempting to short-circuit this chain through skip-level meetings then becomes redundant rather than value-adding.

Why Managers Are Tempted By Skip Level One-On-Ones

It’s understandable why managers are intrigued by the idea of skip-level one-on-ones. Some common motivations include:

- A desire for firsthand exposure to what’s happening on the frontlines to gain unfiltered perspectives.

- Suspicion that direct reports might not provide complete transparency, so wanting to verify stories.

- Belief that more access and visibility will improve skip-level employees’ engagement and connection to leadership.

- Feeling like informal, personality-driven connections are crucial for talent retention and development.

- Wanting to signal an open door policy and outlet for raising concerns.

- Curiosity about how policies and strategies are being implemented.

- Identifying high-potential employees who might not be visible through current processes.

These motivations are well-intentioned. But skip-level one-on-ones often fail to achieve the desired goals while creating unintended consequences.

The Pitfalls of Skip Level One-on-Ones

In practice, skip-level one-on-ones between managers and indirect reports frequently fall flat:

- They undermine the primary relationship between managers and their own direct reports, sowing confusion on where employees should devote time and attention.

- They tend to rehash much of the same ground already covered in other one-on-ones, wasting time without surfacing new insights.

- Employees can feel uncomfortable being fully candid with a more senior leader they don’t know well, impairing psychological safety.

- Even if issues are surfaced, subsequent follow-up is diffused across multiple parties rather than clear accountability.

- They signal a lack of full trust and confidence in the transparency and integrity of data flowing properly up through management channels. This reflects poorly on your team’s managers.

- As an employee, I’ve personally found them unproductive. The skip-level leader gains little meaningful new context about my work. And I leave unsure if my input sparked any substantive change or action plans.

- Conducting meaningful one-on-ones with indirect reports takes significant time. The opportunity cost of investing hours this way detracts from developing your direct reports.

In essence, skip-level one-on-ones disempower managers from building strong connections with their own employees. They also rarely provide meaningful new understanding for senior leaders. The juice is rarely worth the squeeze.

Strengthening Bonds Indirectly But Effectively

None of this means you must resign to distant, impersonal relationships with skip-level employees. But the most effective connections come indirectly by working through proper channels.

- Coach your managers to have excellent one-on-ones with their own direct reports. This cascades transparency and accountability up the chain.

- Conduct skip-level team meetings to hear collective, high-level perspectives without undermining individual managers.

- Maintain an open door policy so employees know they can surface unresolved issues.

- Make time during site visits for informal conversations and rapport-building across the organization.

- Celebrate successes publicly to indirectly fuel engagement at every level.

- Debrief regularly with managers on employee feedback themes so you know the pulse and culture.

The truth is, the relationship health of your skip-level team depends almost entirely on the relationship health between each manager and their direct reports. This means investing in your direct reports’ leadership abilities rather than circumventing them.

Why The Links In Your Chain of Trust Matter Most

Organizational relationships function like a chain. They are only as strong as the trust between each link. When you try to short-circuit the chain through skip-level one-on-ones, you implicitly signal a lack of confidence in its strength.

Instead, focus on fortifying each link:

- Coach your managers on having rich one-on-one dialogues with their people.

- Help them grow skills in building trust, providing feedback, delegating, and developing team members.

- Require and monitor the consistency of their one-on-ones.

- Role model transparent leadership yourself in your meetings with them.

- Work collaboratively on aligning priorities across levels.

- Celebrate, appreciate, and reward collaborative, empowering leadership.

The more you invest in nurturing the links closest to each employee, the greater the returns in engagement, innovation, and execution throughout the organization. Skip-level one-on-ones often nip these buds before they can bloom.

Invest in the Chain, Invest in the Organization

If you want additional support strengthening your chain of trust, I offer executive coaching focused explicitly on this management system connectivity. Feel free to reach out to explore how I can help you and your team develop the leadership abilities that translate to broad organizational health.

Empowered people empower people. With consistency and care, you can build an organization that actualizes this virtuous cycle at every level.

How to Make Your One-on-Ones More Conversational

One-on-ones are most effective when the conversation flows naturally in both directions. But transforming them from reporting sessions into genuine dialogue takes some finesse. Follow these tips to foster engaging, productive exchanges.

As always, I’m sharing guidance that has shaped my own coaching approach, and this topic again comes inspired by the Manager Tools podcast. Their wisdom on one-on-ones has proven invaluable time and again.

While structure provides consistency, the real magic of one-on-ones happens through candid, unscripted connection. When you and your employees can share openly without judgement, trust deepens on both sides.

Don’t Worry if Early One-on-Ones Feel Stiff

If you’re just launching one-on-ones, expect some initial awkwardness as you and your team adjust to the new format. Allow time for guards to fall as relationships strengthen through repetition.

Resist the temptation to force casual interaction. As long as critical information is flowing, view early discomfort as a necessary stage of establishing new habits.

Ask Questions to Spark Conversation

Don’t just listen silently during your employee’s portion. Jump in with clarifying questions and additional perspectives. Make it a dynamic exchange.

Interruptions and back-and-forth happen in most meetings. Apply that same principle to one-on-ones. Just take care not to dominate the conversation.

Address Shared Topics Together

If you and your employee plan to discuss the same issue, don’t wait your turn. Dive in when it arises and have a fluid discussion.

Still prioritize their concerns first, but take the opportunity to share, probe and gain alignment.

Add Time as Needed When Agendas Overlap

If you end up covering some of your topics while your employee is speaking, grant them extra time so you don’t cut them off early.

The goal is allowing enough space for both of you to get needs met, not rigid time splits.

Encourage Questions During Your Portion Too

Tell your employees up front that you welcome their questions and interruptions while you’re speaking. A conversation goes two ways.

Reinforce that it’s not a presentation - it’s a dialogue to gain mutual understanding.

Schedule Time to Build Rapport

Consider scheduling rapport-building time before diving into agendas. Those first unstructured minutes allow you both to shift gears into a conversational mindset.

With practice, you can transform one-on-ones into relaxed yet productive sessions where you both contribute fully. The openness will yield dividends.

Invest in Yourself as a Leader

As with all management skills, consistently practicing one-on-ones will boost your ability to connect. If you want additional support, executive coaching provides immense value in augmenting emotional intelligence.

Please feel free to reach out if you would like to explore coaching for yourself or your leadership team. Fostering growth and trust ultimately serves your whole organization.

How to Schedule One-on-Ones for Maximum Impact

One-on-one meetings are a cornerstone of great management. But with packed calendars, it can be challenging to find time for meaningful connections. Proper scheduling is key to making one-on-ones work. Follow these strategies to set up a cadence that demonstrates your team is a top priority.

I learned the importance of dedicated one-on-ones from an influential mentor of mine who followed the wisdom of Manager Tools, an invaluable resource for leaders. Now I pass on their guidance to help managers develop critical relationship-building skills.

While demands press in, one-on-ones create essential space to guide employees, exchange feedback, and foster growth. Done right, they boost trust, morale, and performance.

A 4-Step Process for One-on-One Scheduling

Scan your calendar first. Block off times for standing meetings and other commitments. One-on-ones take precedence as your most important meetings.

Offer at least 1.5 times slots as you have direct reports. Don’t just provide the exact number of slots - you need wiggle room.

Allow employees to choose the best time for them from your provided options. This demonstrates you value their needs.

It’s okay to request 1-2 time changes if certain slots end up overbooked. But overall, defer to employee preferences.

This balanced approach enables you to steer the ship while empowering your team to find optimal timing.

Key Considerations For One-on-One Scheduling

While there’s no single perfect way to schedule one-on-ones, keep these factors in mind:

Avoid Monday mornings and Friday afternoons due to common conflicts.

Earlier in the week allows more flexibility to reschedule if needed.

Standard meeting times tend to work better than off-times.

Morning, mid-day or afternoon slots have pros and cons - choose based on your and your team’s preferences.

Scheduling them all in one day provides focus, while spreading them out increases flexibility.

Some like back-to-back scheduling for efficiency while others prefer breaks between.

The priority is establishing consistent touchpoints, not finding an elusive ideal time. Test different approaches to see what works best.

The #1 Rule: One-on-Ones Are Sacred

Above all, once you commit to scheduling one-on-ones, make them a firm calendar commitment. Never cancel without immediately rescheduling. Defy attempts by others to schedule over this sacred time with your team.

Making one-on-ones a consistent presence demonstrates their immense value to your employees. It also reflects clear priorities on your part as a manager and enables the trust-building relationships that motivate great work.

Invest in Your People and Your Leadership

By dedicating time for one-on-one meetings and actively listening during them, you develop your team and strengthen your own emotional intelligence and coaching abilities.

If you want additional support for your management journey, executive coaching provides immense value. We can work together to refine your one-on-one approach and other leadership practices. Please feel free to reach out if you would like to explore coaching for yourself or your team. Developing leaders develop their people.

The Power of One-on-One Meetings: A Key Tool for People Leaders

As a manager, few things are more important than building strong relationships and trust with your team. But it’s easy to get caught up in the endless cycle of tasks and meetings, with little time left to connect. That’s why the most effective leaders consistently make one-on-one meetings a priority.

I first learned the power of dedicated one-on-ones from a director I worked for years ago. He structured our meetings based on guidance from the invaluable Manager Tools podcast, which has shaped my approach as a coach. Now I pass this wisdom on to help other leaders develop critical management skills.

While meetings proliferate and time disappears, one-on-ones provide consistent space to listen, exchange feedback, provide guidance, and demonstrate each employee’s value. Done right, they transform relationships and results.

Why One-on-Ones Are Essential

It’s tempting to view one-on-one meetings as just another item on your endless to-do list. But they offer immense benefits that impact your team’s performance and morale:

- Develops trust and stronger connections from quality focused time together

- AllowsSurfacing concerns early before they become major problems

- Provides a regular forum for delivery of praise and constructive feedback

- Keeps you closely in touch with the status of projects and any roadblocks

- Creates a space for brainstorming solutions and providing coaching

- Demonstrates the employee’s importance by giving them your undivided attention

Without regular one-on-ones, you miss critical opportunities to provide clarity, resolve issues early, and guide your employees’ growth and development. Don’t let the urgent undermine time dedicated to understanding your team.

How to Structure Effective One-on-One Meetings

To maximize the impact of one-on-ones, Manager Tools recommends this simple but powerful structure:

- Schedule them for 30 minutes once a week with each direct report

- Block them on your calendar to preserve the sacred time

- Give employees the first 10 minutes to talk about anything on their mind

- Use the next 10 minutes to address your agenda and questions

- Spend the final 10 minutes on coaching and discussing future goals

- Hold them in your office or a neutral space with no distractions

- Never cancel without rescheduling that same week – they are a top priority

This format enables your team to share ideas and concerns freely, knowing they have your full attention and support. This transparencybreeds loyalty and innovation.

Making One-on-Ones More Natural

At first, one-on-one meetings may feel awkward as you develop rapport. Here are some tips to help the conversations flow:

- Ask thoughtful, open-ended questions and listen deeply

- Focus on understanding, not immediately solving problems

- Share your own relevant experiences to find common ground

- Follow up on action items week-to-week to provide continuity

- Note key points and summarize conversations to show you were listening

- Find informal spaces like coffee shops to vary the scenery

As you learn about your employees’ needs and build understanding, the meetings will become more relaxed and valuable.

Why Investing in One-on-Ones Pays Off

Consistent one-on-ones clearly demonstrate that developing team members is a top priority for any great leader. The benefits include:

- Employees feel valued, heard, and invested in

- You gain critical insights into morale, challenges, and goals

- It keeps you connected to the team’s real experience day-to-day

- You strengthen coaching skills through practice and repetition

- Trust increases as people know they have direct access to you

- You quickly address frustrations before they become problems

- It allows recognition of achievements that might otherwise go unnoticed

- Your whole team gains confidence in your leadership and concern for them

By spending time in one-on-ones listening, learning, and connecting, you empower your staff to grow and do their best work. You also build vital management and communication abilities that make you a stronger leader.

Taking Your Leadership Development to the Next Level

While I firmly believe one-on-ones are a foundational management practice, executive coaching can provide immense value in augmenting your skills. Coaches work with leaders to:

- Set up scheduling systems and one-on-one best practices

- Develop strong listening and empowering feedback skills

- Learn to provide guidance while maintaining autonomy

- Improve executive presence and leadership communication

- Implement ongoing methods for relationship-building and mentorship

Everything rises and falls on leadership. Developing yourself is the highest-yield investment you can make, both for your own growth and to inspire your team to bring their best.

I encourage you to check out the Manager Tools podcast and community for more wisdom that has shaped my approach to management excellence. And please feel free to reach out if you would like to explore executive coaching for yourself or your leadership team. Helping leaders grow and serve their people well is my passion.

The Power of One-on-Ones: Building Trust and Encouraging Professional Relationships

In our quest to become more effective leaders, we often overlook the basic building blocks that form the foundation of great management. One of these basic but extremely powerful tools is the practice of one-on-one meetings. This practice is part of the Manager Tools Trinity, a set of core principles recommended to every manager looking to enhance their leadership skills.

The Aim of One-on-Ones

The primary purpose of one-on-one meetings is to cultivate professional relationships with your team members. Many managers might argue they already communicate with their team members regularly, but drop-in chats or brief updates don’t necessarily encourage professional relationships.

What is required is deliberate, regular communication that gives the team member a sense of predictability and trust. This trust is the cornerstone of a great team. A high degree of trust within a team can lead to improved performance and better results.

How One-on-Ones Foster Trust

Conducting one-on-ones might seem simple, but it’s surprising how many managers overlook this crucial practice. If you strive for a high-performing team, you must cultivate trust. Trust comes from relationships, and relationships are built and sustained through regular communication.

Human beings measure communication based on two criteria: quantity and quality. To foster trust, a manager needs to communicate frequently and meaningfully with their team members. That’s where one-on-ones come into play.

One-on-ones provide the quantity by ensuring weekly communication between the manager and each team member. But what about the quality? The key to high-quality communication is talking about things that are important to the other person. Hence, effective one-on-ones should always start with the direct — it’s their meeting.

The Impact of One-on-Ones

You might hesitate at the idea of spending half an hour every week with each of your team members, but consider this: it equates to only three days a year spent in deliberate, direct time with each person on your team.

One-on-ones are not just regular check-ins; they are an investment in building trust and fostering professional relationships. They are a way to understand your team members better, gauge their motivations and concerns, and ultimately lead them more effectively.

Remember, effective management isn’t necessarily about being the smartest person in the room or having in-depth industry knowledge. It’s about having great professional relationships with your direct reports. And one-on-ones are the simplest, most measurable way to foster these relationships.

If there’s one thing you can do today to enhance your management skills and effectiveness, start conducting regular one-on-ones. It’s a small step that can have a significant impact on your team’s performance and trust levels.

The Power of Praise: How to Motivate and Appreciate Your Team

As a leader, motivating your team is one of your most vital responsibilities. While compensation and rewards have a role, truly engaged teams are driven by intrinsic motivation – the inner desire to learn, grow, and make an impact. Through understanding individuals’ motivations, providing autonomy, and giving generous praise and appreciation, you can cultivate this intrinsic drive and inspire exceptional performance.

Intrinsic Motivation Fuels Passion and Purpose

Intrinsic motivation stems from within each person, based on their values, interests, and need for growth. It manifests as:

- A drive to keep developing skills and taking on challenges
- Curiosity to learn new things and gain knowledge
- A sense of purpose in making a meaningful contribution  
- Passion for the work itself and interest in tasks
- Desire for more responsibility and autonomy
- Creativity and innovation to solve problems

This intrinsic motivation is far more powerful than extrinsic motivators like compensation, perks and accolades. While extrinsic rewards can temporarily boost results, they often undermine passion over time.

The Pitfalls of Overemphasizing Extrinsic Rewards

Extrinsic motivators are the external things you do to incentivize the desired behavior and outcomes. This includes:

- Monetary compensation – salary, commissions, bonuses
- Benefits – health insurance, retirement plans, perks
- Recognition – awards, promotions, media coverage 
- Social reinforcement – praise, applause, admiration

Initially, these rewards encourage effort and performance. But the boost is usually short-lived. Here’s why extrinsic motivators often backfire:

- People get used to the rewards over time, so you have to constantly up the ante to get the same response. This can get expensive.

- Rewards start to become expected as entitlements, rather than something earned through great work.  

- People become dependent on the reward and lose interest when it’s removed. The work itself is no longer inspiring.

- Rewards for routine expectations feel patronizing. “Pizza for showing up on time?”

- Social reinforcement can seem inauthentic, forced and condescending if not done thoughtfully.

While extrinsic motivators should not be avoided, they work best as intermittent fuel on top of a sustaining base of intrinsic drive.

Using Rewards and Reinforcement Wisely

Extrinsic motivators are not universally bad. Used judiciously, they can celebrate achievements, show appreciation, and symbolize job well done. The key is maintaining perspective and balance.

Here are some best practices for rewards and recognition:

- Tie rewards to specific accomplishments, not just general expectations. Surprise people.

- Consider non-financial rewards like days off, flexible schedules, and training opportunities. 

- Make rewards meaningful to each person. Discover their individual interests.

- Celebrate intrinsic rewards like having an impact, learning something new, or completing a challenge. 

- Avoid excessive gamification with points, badges and leaderboards. Don’t make work feel trivial.

- Focus social recognition on progress and effort, not just achievement. Appreciate the journey.

- Ensure recognition comes across as sincere, not automatic. Personalize it.

- Remember rewards should supplement positive culture, not replace it.

Ultimately, overemphasizing rewards reflects poorly on leadership. It implies you don’t expect great work without bribes and need to manipulate behaviors through simplistic carrots and sticks. People want to do good work for its own sake, not just for trinkets. Facilitate that intrinsic motivation.

Cultivating Intrinsic Motivation for Sustainable Passion

Here are some best practices for tapping into intrinsic motivation: 

- Help people find purpose in their roles. Ensure they understand how their work fits into big-picture goals and makes a difference.

- Facilitate mastery by allowing time for learning, providing training opportunities, and offering projects that build new skills. Mastery fuels confidence.

- Let people work autonomously when possible. Don’t micromanage. Empower teams to determine how to achieve outcomes.

- Incorporate opportunities for creativity and problem solving. Don’t stick to rigid processes. 

- Develop competency models that encourage growth. Outline progression pathways.

- Be flexible on hours and location when feasible. Offer discretion based on achieving outcomes.

- Ask for suggestions to improve processes and try them. Don’t dismiss ideas out of hand.

- Praise efforts, not just results. Recognize initiative, experimentation and learning.  

- Thank people for collaborating and supporting each other, not just individual achievements.

By meeting needs for autonomy, mastery and purpose, you tap into the intrinsic motivations that create workplace passion.

Understanding The Team’s Working Styles and Motivations

Of course, different people have different working styles and motivational triggers. Start by understanding the general archetypes:

Working Genius Types Defined by Patrick Lencioni:

- Wonder – Sees possibilities and the big picture
- Invention – Creates new ideas and solutions
- Discernment – Evaluates ideas for flaws  
- Galvanizing – Builds excitement and united action
- Enablement – Supports and assists implementation
- Tenacity – Provides needed follow-through 

Then use simple exercises like the Moving Motivators from Management 3.0 to uncover individual motivations:

- Curiosity - Loves learning, exploring possibilities
- Honor - Driven by reflecting values in their work
- Acceptance - Motivated by team approval and praise  
- Mastery - Passionate about developing competence   
- Power - Fueled by being able to influence outcomes
- Freedom – Loves autonomy and independence
- Relatedness – Energized by positive workplace relationships
- Order – Motivated by structure and clarity
- Goal – Inspired by aligning work with life purpose
- Status – Driven by prestige and demonstrating success

When you understand what drives each person, you can set goals, design roles, provide feedback, and recognize achievements in a way that motivates them intrinsically. Help them see how they can satisfy their deeper needs through their work.

Author Gary Chapman identified 5 main ways people feel valued and appreciated at work. He calls these the 5 Languages of Appreciation:

• Words of Affirmation - Compliment achievements, abilities, character

• Quality Time - Listen attentively in one-on-ones

• Acts of Service - Help out by removing barriers

• Tangible Gifts - Small treats like gift cards

• Appropriate Touch - A high five or pat on the back

The key is using multiple languages tailored to individual team members. Discover what resonates with each person.

By expanding your appreciation vocabulary, you meet people’s motivational needs in the right way.

The Critical Importance of Positivity and Praise

While compensation, perks and advancement have a limited motivational effect, interpersonal positivity and praise can have a profound impact.

Creating a supportive, approving environment meets core emotional needs:

- Feeling valued as a person, beyond what you produce
- Gaining confidence by having abilities recognized  
- Experiencing belonging and acceptance through shared successes
- Believing your contributions matter and are appreciated

Skimping on praise and appreciation is one of the biggest mistakes leaders make. According to experts, it takes 3 to 5 positive interactions to overcome the motivational damage of a single negative interaction.

Some best practices on positive reinforcement:

- Be extremely generous with genuine, specific praise. Outnumber negative feedback by 10:1 or 20:1. Look for opportunities to recognize progress.

- Tailor praise to what matters to each person, based on their working style and motivators. Leverage the languages of appreciation.

- Thank people for collaborating, listening, and supporting each other. Make it about team, not just individual achievement.  

- Express pride in the team’s problem solving, creativity, resilience and determination. Recognize the journey, not just the result.

- Let people know you appreciate their passion, work ethic, flexibility, integrity and commitment. Value them as people.

- Praise efforts to learn and improve, not just achievement. Recognize personal growth and mastery.

Celebrate intrinsic rewards like accomplishing something challenging, delivering value to customers, and gaining new skills. Recognize purpose, autonomy and progress.

When you provide enough recognition and appreciation, you demonstrate the ultimate intrinsic reward - your respect and admiration. This cultivates lifelong passion.

Coaching for Motivational Leadership

If you want to build on your motivational leadership skills, executive coaching can help immensely. Coaches work with leaders to:

- Better understand employees’ working styles, intrinsic motivations and engagement barriers

- Set the right balance between extrinsic motivators and intrinsic reward

- Facilitate needs for autonomy, mastery and purpose

- Improve positivity and dramatically expand praise and recognition

- Measure and monitor team engagement and morale

- Implement ongoing strategies and systems for motivation and appreciation

Developing yourself develops your team. Invest in becoming an inspiring motivational leader. Feel free to reach out anytime to explore how coaching can help you and your organization thrive.

Q: What is the importance of praising employees in the workplace?

A: Praising employees in the workplace is essential for boosting their morale, motivation, and productivity. It helps acknowledge their hard work and achievements, leading to higher job satisfaction and employee engagement.

Q: How does praise contribute to employee motivation?

A: Praise is a powerful tool for motivating employees. When employees receive recognition or praise for doing good work, they feel valued and appreciated. This recognition boosts their confidence and encourages them to continue performing at their best.

Q: How can praising employees make a difference in the work environment?

A: Praising employees can significantly improve the work environment. When employees are regularly praised and acknowledged, they feel more motivated and engaged. This positive atmosphere can enhance teamwork, collaboration, and overall job satisfaction.

Q: What are some effective ways to praise employees?

A: There are several effective ways to praise employees. One way is to publicly praise them during team meetings or company-wide announcements. Another way is to personally compliment them for their specific achievements or efforts. Additionally, acknowledging their hard work through written notes or emails can also make a positive impact.

Q: Does praise really have the power to make a difference?

A: Absolutely! Praise has been proven to have a significant impact on employee motivation and productivity. According to Gallup, employees who receive regular praise are more likely to be engaged in their work, which leads to higher performance and better outcomes.

Q: How can I make praise more effective?

A: To make praise more effective, be specific and genuine. Instead of just saying "Good job," highlight the employee's specific achievements or efforts. Also, make sure your praise is sincere and heartfelt, as insincere praise can be easily recognized by employees.

Q: What if employees don't feel motivated by praise alone?

A: While praise is a powerful motivator, it may not work for everyone. In such cases, it's important to understand the individual needs and preferences of your employees. Some employees may benefit from additional forms of recognition, such as rewards or opportunities for growth and development.

Q: Can praising employees go a long way in improving productivity?

A: Yes, praising employees can have a significant impact on productivity. When employees feel valued and appreciated, they are more likely to put in extra effort and take pride in their work. This increased motivation can lead to improved productivity and better overall results.

Q: How often should I praise my employees?

A: Praise should be given regularly and consistently. While it's important to recognize major achievements, it's equally important to acknowledge the everyday efforts and small victories. By incorporating praise into your regular interactions with employees, you can create a culture of appreciation and motivation.

Q: How can I make praise a part of my team's culture?

A: To make praise a part of your team's culture, lead by example. Start by actively giving praise to your employees for their hard work and achievements. Encourage your team members to give praise to one another and create opportunities for public recognition. By making praise a regular practice, you can foster a positive and motivating work environment.