Emotions are normal human reactions. We are all confronted with situations that we want to avoid, that make us angry or that discourage us. What do we need when we are confronted with these reactions in ourselves or in our employees? How can we best react to these situations?
Every leader is different. Each leader carries with him or her his or her own dynamics, personality and behaviors. With all this baggage, which leader does he or she want to become? To do so, are there behaviors he must abandon? Are there others that he must put in place to influence, guide and develop his teams?
Each individual develops automatic behaviors that have enabled or allow him to adapt to the situations he encounters. At some point, for example when one becomes a manager-leader, these behaviors are no longer adapted to carry out one’s mission successfully. These are behaviors that must be modified or stopped if they are a source of self-sabotage (maneuvering towards failure rather than success).
“Natural born leader” or are we learning how to become a leader? At Becoming Leader, we defend the idea that leadership is learned simply because guiding oneself, teams or organizations cannot be improvised. All the tools we put in your toolbox increase confidence in your leadership exponentially.
Giving feedback of any kind is an integral part of being a manager, let alone a leader. Feedback is a very powerful tool that, when used properly, allows everyone to know where they are in the progress of their work. More precisely, this tool allows you to communicate to your employees what they are doing well and what they could improve. And every human being needs to know that what they are doing makes sense. Even more so, every employee needs to know if what they are doing is going in the right direction and if not, how to correct their work to get there. However, few managers and leaders give feedback. The benefits of giving feedback are enormous.
Delegation is an integral part of managing tasks and projects within a team and managing its agenda. It is often a crucial step in the development of his leadership and for which the leader hesitates or does not dare.
And yet, when the leader knows the cycle of a team, its different stages, and the skills needed to manage each of these stages, delegation goes without saying. And delegating proves to be a very easy process to put in place.
How is performance managed on a daily basis? Who is responsible for these tools? Who is involved in day-to-day performance management? What is it ultimately used for? So many questions to which we provide answers in our programs.
Performance cannot be decreed. Performance is built day after day and is managed on a daily basis as a team. The primary objective of performance management is to help track organizational ambitions and cascade them to the various players in the organization. Knowing the ins and outs of this management is essential to bring a project to a successful conclusion.
All organizations, whatever their goals, need to be profitable to be sustainable. Performance is often associated with process improvement. Performance management also involves a change in employee behavior, with the realization that an unreached indicator is an alert, that a mistake is a learning experience to be shared, and that continuous improvement is the driving force. It is therefore just as critical to work on team dynamics, on the culture of the group, and not just on the processes themselves.
The difficulty we all face as human beings is not change itself, but the way we manage it, the way we approach it. And if we all face it as individuals, then the challenges for a team leader seem incredibly complex and even insurmountable. Not only will he have to deal with his own reactions to change, his self-sabotage behaviors, his reactions in stressful situations, but he is also asked to manage change for his employees.
So what are the keys to successful change management?
Defining objectives and performance indicators are of no added value if we don’t then come up with a clear, well-organized action plan, with a definition of roles and responsibilities, a plan set in time, with an adequate rhythm that gives meaning to the path we have decided to take.
Taking the time to create this plan, validate it with stakeholders, adjust it and also define the governance for its follow-up are steps that ensure a more linear “execution” afterwards. The alignment of the teams and the organization is often at stake at this pivotal stage, which is unfortunately often forgotten or inadequately managed.