Leadership Skills for All
What do you define as a “leadership skill?”
Is it being a good communicator?
Or helping other people to increase their skills and capabilities by being a coach?
Is it understanding strategy and your company’s business goals?
Or is it working collaboratively across departments and divisions to achieve the best outcomes?
Here’s another question to ponder: Why do we label ANY of those things “leadership skills?”
It’s much easier to learn leadership skills as a young working professional than it is for someone who has been on the job for 10 or 15 or 20 years. At that point in someone’s career, you’re actually working harder to UNdo behaviors they’ve been practicing for a decade or more. Yet companies typically wait until someone is promoted to leadership and then start developing their “leadership skills.”
Here’s a list of things we typically label leadership skills:
Critical thinking Decision making Risk assessment Continuous improvement Strategy Forecasting Influencing others Behaving Ethically Understanding Finance Project management Workflow planning Ethics
NEW Question!!
What makes those “leadership skills” and not general business skills and how hard is it to teach those skills to everyone?
Here are the answers….
They ARE general business skills, but for some reason we don’t teach them UNTIL someone is promoted to a leadership position. And THAT’s why we label them “leadership skills.”
Are companies afraid to make their employees more capable? Would they rather have someone with limited knowledge and skill - who can only perform a finite task?
There’s a famous quote by Zig Ziglar in which he asks: What’s worse? training your employees and losing them? Or not training them and keeping them?
Perhaps companies are afraid of investing in their employees for fear of the employee going elsewhere…But here’s the kicker – if you DON’T invest in them – they WILL go elsewhere. There have been numerous studies conducted by SHRM and Deloitte and others, that all come to the same conclusion: Millennials and Gen Z workers – those workers under the age of 40 right now – want the same things
- A job that they believe is purposeful and fulfilling, and
- Professional development
Above all else. Above promotions, above pay raises, above titles… So if you AREN’T providing skills development, they WILL leave your company to find it.
It isn’t hard to teach leadership skills to everyone in your organization. There are small, organic things that you can do every day to instill leadership ability.
By teaching leadership skills to all of your employees, you’ll be raising the capability of the whole organization.
More capable people means more productivity; more productivity means more profitability.
So – from this point going forward – let’s all embrace the concept: Leadership skills for all – leadership from day one.
No Time to Prepare for This Leadership Crisis
In a recent TV interview I watched, with the president of Delta Airlines, he was talking about how the airline has managed to not lay off any workers in this economic downturn. And the “solution” was that 20% of employees have taken early retirement throughout the summer.
So who are those 20%? Clearly older generations. Who's eligible for early retirement, but Boomers and maybe some Gen X, depending on how long they've been with the company. This is a serious problem for organizations. I know they have to downsize. I know they have to conserve funds right now, but this is going to have an incredible boomerang effect when they need to ramp up again, when the economy turns. When the business climate turns and companies start to ramp up their offerings again, there are going to be so few leaders left in organizations.
It's a real concern. It's a real concern for business owners, managers, the people who were left in the ranks at organizations, because the question is “who is left to run the companies?”
If the Boomers are gone, if the older generation Gen Xers are gone, the people who have the history of the company, the culture of the company, years of experience and knowledge within that company... if those folks are gone, who is left to run the organization?
Now clearly there are younger generations, younger people in the organization. But do they have the knowledge and the skills the older generations do? Will they have the same leadership abilities as the folks who are leaving the organization? This is something that keeps me up at night. I worry for the state of American businesses. This is something that was supposed to happen in 2030 - according to the US Census - all the Boomers would be out of the workforce by 2030.
It worried me then when it was a 2030 deadline, but at least companies had time to prepare. There's no time. The Boomers and some older Gen Xers are leaving organizations - voluntarily or not - and there's a much younger cadre of individuals left in organizations who will have to step up, into leadership positions, whether they have leadership skills or not.
Mentoring - Now More Than Ever
Note: This article was originally published on Forbes.com
The workplace has changed drastically in the last few months; I don’t have to tell you that. People are figuring out how to manage their time, maintain personal connection and remain productive, all while working remotely. One crucial item that has fallen by the wayside is professional development – especially the development of future leaders.
Leadership skills development is most successful when it is an immersive and visceral experience. Therefore, most leadership development programs are dependent on in-person meetings and collaborative activities with others in the organization. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to teach the soft skills required of a leader via an impersonal online learning experience.
Some organizations are beginning to grapple with how to have the same success via an online format, since, for the foreseeable future that is all that is available to us. Other organizations would rather take a “gap year” in leadership development and wait for the return to their normal development activities.
An immediate solution
One thing that can be done immediately, and with great success, is to embrace mentoring.
Mentoring is the cheapest and most effective method for developing future leaders. It has always surprised me how few organizations employ it. All it takes is time and a little bit of structure.
One benefit of most business professionals working from home is that it is easier to schedule time to work together and to work with others across the organization. You don’t have to find an open conference room, or even be in the same building or state to work with a mentor who can help you to develop your career.
With all meetings conducted online these days, the playing field has been leveled. A younger colleague can be invited to sit in on a management meeting, a sales call, or a performance review to listen and learn with less scrutiny about why they are there. “I’ve invited Shonda to sit in today,” is less concerning and more comfortable than a clearly junior person showing up to an in-person meeting. After the meeting, the mentor and mentee can discuss what occurred, why the mentor made the decisions that they did, or took control of the conversation when they did, and what might happen next with pros and cons.
Mentoring: is a system of semi-structured guidance whereby one person shares their knowledge, skills and experience to assist others to progress in their own lives and careers
Because of the convenience of meeting remotely, there are more opportunities for mentoring and learning conversations. Again, all it takes is time and a bit of structure. Here are some suggested steps to start mentoring in your organization if it’s unlikely the workplace will reopen soon:
Assign all leaders the responsibility for mentoring 1 – 3 younger colleagues. Managers might be required to mentor one individual while senior leaders such as directors or VP’s could accommodate up to three.
Require at least two meetings a week. One meeting is a 1:1 between mentor and mentee to ask questions and receive coaching, and the other is a meeting to which the mentee is invited to listen and learn. The 1:1 meetings can be as short as 15-minutes. What’s important is to have a consistent dialogue based on what is currently happening in the wider organization.
The mentor must be tasked with asking open-ended questions more than giving advice and guidance. What do you think should be our next move? Is more instructional than What I’d do next is…
Each individual – mentor and mentee – needs to keep a journal so that they can see the progress made over time. This is also a place for the mentee to reflect on what they’ve learned (because the best growth comes from reflection and introspection) and jot down questions for their next 1:1 meeting.
If Needed, Start with Training
If your organization has never utilized mentoring, the best place to start is with training to define the role of a mentor. Most individuals in leadership positions are comfortable with assessing situations and giving answers, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what you want a mentor to do. A mentor’s role is to listen, facilitate, and gently guide an up-and-coming colleague. So, it is important to learn the role’s expectations and how to tamp one’s natural instincts as a manager / leader. This is a little easier when the mentor and mentee are in different disciplines such as finance and research; when the two are from different disciplines the conversation stays at a higher level of business knowledge as opposed to the brass tacks of the work being done.
If your organization DOES have a mentoring process in place, this HBR article offers excellent advice on how to shift the mentor’s role from in-person to online meetings, how to validate feelings of uncertainty and overwhelm, and how to authentically share one’s own experiences.
Until professional development as we know it is able to resume in-person, purposeful mentoring relationships are the best approach for developing future leaders. An added bonus is that the mentees will form stronger bonds with the organization, have higher job satisfaction, and perceive greater support from the organization[1], which are all vitally important when one is working from home, alone.
If you would like help developing leadership pipelines in your organization, please get in touch with us, at The Training Doctor. We can help to future-proof your organization. 843.647.6304
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20401322/
One Critical Leadership Skill
Many young business people aspire to become future managersand leaders but there is often a lack of leadership development available until one is promoted to a leadershipposition. Of the myriad of skills that leaders need to master such as criticalthinking, problem solving, and working collaboratively with others, one skillcan be learned independent of a formal learning process. This skill is not onlyused daily, as a leader, but mastering it early in one’s career helps to mark oneas “leadership material.”
That is the skill of asking good questions.
If you aspire to leadership you’ll want to purposefullythink about (and practice) the way you ask questions. When most people ask aquestion they are asking for facts or details such as What happened next? Whatare my options? What would you like me to do? But a leader needs to gather critical insight through his / herquestions in order to make decisions that move the business forward. There arethree types of questions you can practice, this week, that will help you togather critical information and to be viewed as a thoughtful up-and-comingleader.
Open ended questions
Open ended questions require the other person to respondwith their thoughts or beliefs. it is a personal response rather than a factualone. A common mistake of new managers is to give an instruction or directionand then ask “Have you got that?” which only requires a short yes or noresponse and doesn’t help the manager to assess if the instructions really wereunderstood. If instead the manager were to ask “What are your thoughts onthat?” or “How can I help you with this assignment?” he / she then elicits moreinformation from the other person and learns if they are confident, concerned,or confused.
These kinds of questions can move the whole organizationforward by forestalling miscommunication and failed actions based onassumptions.
Clarifying questions
Too few individuals take the time to ensure that they trulyunderstand a speaker. I have always found that anytime I ask someone “Did youmeans this, or this?” what I hadoriginally assumed the answer to be was wrong. Clarifying questions are important for leadersto master because they can save an organization from disastrous results.
Example: Shelby, a salesperson for a media company, wasreviewing a proposal with her manager before presenting it to a new client. Atthe end of the conversation her manager said it would be OK to cut the cost ofthe proposal by 5-10%. Shelby asked, “Do you mean you want me to cut the costnow? Or to use that as a negotiation strategy?” Her manager replied, “I’m glad you clarified that! I mean to use it as anegotiation tactic, if you need to. Good luck!”
High gain questions
High gain questions are used rather rarely as they tend tostop a conversation while the respondent considers their response; however,high gain questions are the mark of a true leader in conversation. High gainquestions require the respondent(s) to apply critical thought beforeresponding.
Consider the difference between
What are the obstacles you foresee? (open ended) and
What are our two best options going forward? (high gain)
While the open ended question is good for gathering more information,the high gain question returns a carefully considered response.
Being able to utilize each of these types of questions – open ended, clarifying, and high gain – is a skill that can be practiced early in one’s career in preparation for moving into a leadership role.
Note: This article was originally published by Forbes.com