As a Leader, You Are CONSTANTLY Teaching, Whether You Intend to or Not!

Whether you realize it or not, you are CONSTANTLY communicating about yourself, writes Robert Quinn in his book, Building the Bridge As You Walk On It. Specifically, everything you post, everything you say, how you treat others, what you consume in terms of media and entertainment, everything you do, etc. speaks volumes about who you really are and what you really value. This got me thinking out loud that in a very similar way, as leaders we are constantly teaching others whether we intend to or not!

When you dwell on that sleep depriving thought, it makes perfect sense. As leaders, whether we realize it or not, the very fact that we hold a leadership role or position attracts the notice and scrutiny of others. In that light, we have the opportunity, not to mention the responsibility to teach others the attitudes, qualities, and behaviors that lead to both organizational and personal success. Granted we can do this in a very casual or exemplary manner or we can do so in very intentional, mentoring ways. The best leaders do both by the way. With that in mind, what can be the daily curriculum we teach? Here are some things to think about that I bet you never even realized.

When you ask someone about their day and really listen and respond – you are teaching them about empathy and that you care about them as an individual 

When you ask someone about an idea they have – you are teaching them you value their opinion and contributions. 

When inquire about a mistake or error that was made but do not harshly penalize them – you are teaching how to fail forward and it is OK to do so. 

When you reward and/or recognize someone for a job well done – you are teaching what is important to you. 

When you congratulate someone for a personal or family success they recently experience – you are teaching that you are and how to pay attention to others. 

When you mentor or coach someone – you are teaching how to invest in others. 

When you clearly define expectations, you have for others – you are teaching them how to be accountable.

I think you get the idea. Of course, being a usually positive person, I listed affirmative lessons above but think about how the converse of these can be true. For instance, if you just ask someone about their day but do not hang around to hear their answer, what lesson did you just teach in that instance?

As a leadership educator, I have a predisposition for curriculums and instructional design, but do you see how you can be an outstanding leadership educator without a book or powerpoint presentation? Do you understand the platform you have been given to impact the trajectory of others? So, as you start the next work week, what is that ONE leadership lesson you want to teach? You might as well be intentional about it because they are looking and listening anyway! So, while you have their attention . . ..

As always if I can help you and the people you associate with Get Better, Be Ready and LEAD OUT LOUD, I would invite you to email me or to visit my website below and see if any of the training or coaching experiences I offer can provide an impact. I am also pleased to announce the launch of my first book, Leading Out Loud: Strategies for Raising Your Leadership Voice! available on Amazon.com. It may just help you develop the leadership lessons that are important to you! Also, as a bonus, if you go to my Out Loud Strategies website (www.outloudinc.com) and enter your contact information, I will send you a FREE guide to establishing a mentoring initiative program in your organization! Such an initiative would be critical to add value to your organization!

Yours in Leadership,

Bill Faulkner

Principal Consultant – Out Loud Strategies

Independent Coach, Speaker, and Trainer with the John Maxwell Team ^TM

Email = bill@outloudinc.com

Visit our website at: www.outloudinc.com

For more information on the John Maxwell Team, please visit

http://www.johncmaxwellgroup.com/williamfaulkner/

Feel free to “LIKE” our FB Page www.facebook.com/outloudinc

When You Disengage, You Forfeit You Ability to Influence!

We are certainly living in contentious times. For a variety of reasons, some very legitimate and some imagined, we as a society are in a swirling process of joining camps and causes, drawing lines and demanding limits, picking issues as we pick sides. As a result, a common strategy is to disengage from those people and policies of which we disagree through boycotts, protests, and “us versus them” social media campaigns. Whereas such actions are legitimate it does cause me to think out loud is it the best strategy to produce the societal changes desired? You see, when we choose to disengage and cut off dialogue, then what happens to our ability to influence outcomes?

I think it is human nature to sometimes pick sides. It makes us feel good to think WE are better than THEM. We hold the moral high ground and they are just wrong! The problem as I see it is while we are so busy getting even, nothing is getting done! I know this is hard to read for some of us who are so rightfully outraged over organizational, local, national, or world events but you have to ask yourself what is most important? What do you really want to see happen?

This is where courageous leadership begins. This is where you have to decide what is more important, your position on an issue or progress on an issue? I know it is a tough choice to make but your answer will reflect how important lasting change on an issue that is important to you really is. With that being said, I would propose that when bad things happen around you that trouble you, you have to get closer to the people, groups, and situations that caused it or can influence outcomes, not further away. You have got to let them know you are willing to engage with them to resolve problems if they are willing to do so well. That truly is the claiming the moral high ground! So, let’s say you are willing to give it a try, here are three strategies that may help you:

Get Proximate – Bryan Stevenson is an author and activist who heads up the Equal Justice Initiative which focuses on criminal justice reform, especially when it comes to youth offenders. He is also the author of the compelling book, Just Mercy. During a presentation at the Global Leadership Summit simulcast, Bryan stressed the importance of becoming proximate to people and groups we disagree with or don’t understand. His advice is when there are disagreements, we need to engage more not less. When we do so, we can influence, gain perspective, and, most importantly, make progress!

Focus More on the PROBLEM and Less on the PEOPLE – Jared Cohen is the CEO of the Google offshoot, Jigsaw. Jigsaw is a social media influencer that directs attention to a variety important issues such as ISIS and its use of social media to recruit new members or combatting intentionally misleading content on the web. His list of contacts extends on both sides of the political spectrum and his reach is international. In a recent article in Fast Company magazine, members of his team discuss the importance of focusing more on the PROBLEM versus the ACTORS involved. In other words, if you focus on solely on the personalities involved you miss the opportunity to make progress on what matters most. People will come and go but the problems or issues we wish to address can still be there long after they are gone.

Avoid the Either/Or Trap – This is the tough one for many of us. When we become so convinced of the “rightness” of our position or opinion that it leaves no room for compromise or progress, then we create either/or scenarios that essentially state, “either you comply with my position or I will no longer engage with you.” Once that happens, there is no room for negotiation or compromise. Further, problems that impact organizations and certainly societies are too complex for either/or thinking. Such issues are what leadership author Ron Heifetz calls in his book, Leadership Without Easy Answers, “Type III Problems." Essentially Type III problems are those that are difficult to define, and possible solutions are equally unclear. When a problem has those characteristics, we must commit to what he calls “adaptive work” in creating lasting solutions to vexing problems.

Trust me, I get it. Sometimes we get so fed up. We are sick and tired of being sick and tired! We just want the issue and those associated with it to just go away. These are legitimate feelings, but the problem is the issue and the people rarely do go away. They are still present even if we disengage thus the issue or situation repeats itself and the destructive cycle starts all over again.

But here’s the thing. If Dr. King never engaged with President Johnson, the civil rights movement may not have gained as much momentum as quickly as it did. If elected officials did not engage with business leaders as much as they did in the early 1970s, environmental protections may never have existed.

When a negative situation arises in your organization, community, and beyond, I am not asking you to compromise your principles and passions. I am simply asking to consider the most effective leadership strategy to affect change. You probably have no idea how influential you really are. Your passion will be an impact multiplier. Just let others see it. Allow them to show you theirs. Find agreements and common ground when and where you can. Respect the thoughts of others but make sure they respect yours. At the end of the day, it is not about you or me. It is about safer schools. It’s about healthy and safe workplaces free of harassment. It’s about finding lasting solutions versus quick fixes.

As always if I can help you and the people you associate with Get Better, Be Ready and LEAD OUT LOUD, I would invite you to email me or to visit my website below and see if any of the training or coaching experiences I offer can provide an impact. I am also pleased to announce the launch of my first book, Leading Out Loud: Strategies for Raising Your Leadership Voice! available on Amazon.com. It may just help you develop your leadership platform around issues that are important to you! Also, as a bonus, if you go to my Out Loud Strategies website (www.outloudinc.com) and enter your contact information, I will send you a FREE guide to establishing a mentoring initiative program in your organization! Such an initiative would be critical to add value to your organization!

Yours in Leadership,

Bill Faulkner

Principal Consultant – Out Loud Strategies

Independent Coach, Speaker, and Trainer with the John Maxwell Team ^TM

Email = bill@outloudinc.com

Visit our website at: www.outloudinc.com

For more information on the John Maxwell Team, please visit

http://www.johncmaxwellgroup.com/williamfaulkner/

Feel free to “LIKE” our FB Page www.facebook.com/outloudinc

As a Leader, are you making Toast-a-Phones or are you making sense?

In our wondrous technological age, it appears we can do almost anything. In fact, I bet if someone was so inclined, they could manufacture a toaster with cell phone functionality built in. After all, they make refrigerators with TVs on the door, don’t they? This has me thinking out loud that, yes, you can make a toast-a-phone, but why would you? In other words, when making important leadership decisions about future products and services, just because you can do a thing does that mean you should?

Obviously, I am still thinking a lot about how important clarity is on a personal, team, and organizational level. Now don’t get me wrong, I am totally for innovation and pushing boundaries. In fact, I was so impressed by what Elon Musk and his SpaceX team did recently, that I looked on their website do see if they had any leadership development positions available (and they did!). If you do not know what I am talking about, just check out the YouTube link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbSwFU6tY1c

The point being is that SpaceX has the intellectual and creative horsepower to do almost anything, but they focus on ONE THING – the reinvigoration of space exploration and the commercial, technological, and human benefits such endeavors produce. The problem, however, is that too many industries and organizations dilute their efforts by chasing products and services that lack clarity or just do not make sense.

For instance, in my primary industry of higher education, I have personally witnessed the struggle of smaller colleges as they try to be all things to all people in the hopes they will grow or even survive. What usually happens is that staff, faculty, and resources get stretched so thin or the original mission creeps so far that the institution becomes unrecognizable. There are countless examples in business as well. A great case in point is the computer manufacturer that goes out of business because they produced a dizzying array of machines and unsustainable product lines that became confusing thus unattractive to the consumer. Compare that to Apple which will only bring enough products to market that can fit on a single six-foot table. At one time, however, that was not always the case. Apple learned that focusing on a few products and doing them well made more sense that producing too many products of poorer quality and capability.

So, how do we avoid the toast-a-phone trap? When faced with the opportunity or inclination to produce a new product or service or branch off a new subsidiary or acclimation, evaluate the pros/cons of doing so by the following criteria of whether or not the new endeavor is:

ON MISSION – does this new effort align with your core mission and values? Does it represent a dramatic departure of what you made you successful in the first place? Would it require you to compromise your core values? Would it conflict with or have a negative impact on a healthy workplace culture?

ON POINT – does the product or service even make sense coming from your organization or would people be scratching their heads and wonder why are you or your organization is even doing that? To this day I still cannot figure out why a stick and ball sports equipment company thought they could make motorcycles. Luckily, Harley Davidson still exists but the AMF Sports Equipment company that at one-time owned Harley Davidson no longer does. You have to understand that if you are known as an industry leader for creating and delivering a quality product or service, then why would you jeopardize your brand promise, brand identity, and brand ambassadors?

ON DEMAND – is there even a demand for this new product or service? Does it truly meet a need or are you trying to create one? Have you done due diligence to determine if there is someone or some entity out there that is already doing it better and faster than you could ever do?

ON SCHEDULE – is this new endeavor timely in terms of its introduction or are you just playing catch-up? Challenger brands can be successful, but the learning and resource curve is significant. Is the demand sustainable or will it fade; thus, is it worth tooling up to meet what could be only a temporary demand or marketplace fad. Just look in your closets and cupboards and see how many things are there that you just had to have but now would be embarrassed to let people know you spent good money on them. I am thinking parachute pants here! What was I thinking? Not that I could ever fit in them, but I am hoping they come back in style just for the EBAY opportunity!

Recently I have been trying out a new Here to There Mapping tool that I have used with several different types of organizations that helps organizations and teams obtain clarity in their status and aspirations. The results and feedback I am getting is that it has been very helpful. You can find it in my workbook publication called Do Out Loud: Mapping Your Leadership Platform, available on Amazon.com. I would also love to talk to you more about leading your organization through this interactive and team engaging process on-site.

The quickest path to obscurity is to attempt to become all things to all people.

It is my belief that the quickest path to obscurity is to attempt to become all things to all people. There is just one of you and that is what the world needs most. We do not a bunch of carbon copies of someone or something else. What you make, do, or provide is unique and there are more than enough clients or customers out there that will value what you do and how you do it. Just like Elon Musk and SpaceX taught us recently, when you focus on what you truly want to do and want to be the best at it, the sky is no longer the limit!

As always if I can help you and the people you associate with Get Better, Be Ready and LEAD OUT LOUD, I would invite you to email me or to visit my website below and see if any of the training or coaching experiences I offer can provide an impact. Also, as a bonus, if you go to my Out Loud Strategies website (www.outloudinc.com) and enter your contact information, I will send you a FREE guide to establishing a mentoring initiative program in your organization! Such an initiative would be critical to add value to your organization!

Yours in Leadership,

Bill Faulkner

Principal Consultant – Out Loud Strategies

Independent Coach, Speaker, and Trainer with the John Maxwell Team ^TM

Email = bill@outloudinc.com

Visit our website at: www.outloudinc.com

For more information on the John Maxwell Team, please visit

http://www.johncmaxwellgroup.com/williamfaulkner/

Feel free to “LIKE” our FB Page www.facebook.com/outloudinc

In Leading Teams, Sometimes We Have to Unsaddle that Unicorn We’ve Been Riding!

I am generally a positive person. I also believe that positivity is a desirable attribute of effective leaders. But every once in awhile, it can just be annoying for our team members or those we lead! This has me thinking out loud that leaders need to discern when we need to be more empathetic and less enthusiastic. In other words, sometimes we need to unsaddle that Unicorn we’ve been riding through Rainbow Candy Land and respond to the real difficulties are team members may be facing!

Again, it is important to point out that effective leadership requires us to be hopeful and encouraging to those we lead. There is nothing worse than being lead by a negative person. Kouzes and Posner, authors of the Leadership Challenge, share that one of the most important roles of a leader is to keep hope alive. Hope is the impact multiplier that helps survivors, teams, and entire nations endure incredible hardships and disappointments.

The point I am trying to make, however, is that team members sometimes need authentic leadership that recognizes that things are not always OK, at least at the moment. As a leader with perhaps a few more years of experience with such things, you know that in your heart of hears that things will eventually work out but that may not be what a team member needs to hear when they suffer a huge disappointment, lose a big account, or could not make a patient better. When this happens, they need your support and empathy more so than just simple platitudes.

I have experienced this in my own leadership practice in that as a leader who was a level or two removed from a negative situation that a staff member was facing, that I would not feel the sting of such situations or incidents the front-line staff member may have experienced. This could involve anything from a particularly ugly encounter with a dissatisfied customer or when an event fell apart because a vendor or vendors did not meet their obligations. What to me was just a hiccup compared to the big picture was at that time professionally and personally devastating to my team member. Eventually I learned that they did not want to hear a “just walk it off” or “it will all work out” response. They needed more from me. And if this sounds familiar to you, your own team members will need more from you.

To help your team members when things go wrong for them, I recommend the following:

Listen Actively – if the situation is not immediately dire and does not require your direct intervention, I found the best thing to do is to actively and deeply listen to the team member as they describe the situation to you. Of course, this requires you to have already created culture of trust and safety where the team member knows they can share such information without fear of censure or over reaction on your part. Just listen to the staff person and encourage them to talk it out in terms of what happened.

Demonstrate Empathy – when a team member has experienced a setback, it is important for them to know they are not the first one to have experienced problems. If you have experienced a similar negative situation before, share that you felt much the same way when it happened to you as they do now since it has happened to them. Recognize that bad things sometimes happen outside of our control. It does not mean that the team member should not feel disappointment, but they may start to feel better if they are not alone in their reactions to what happened. There is no such thing as a perfect leader but if you try to present yourself as one who never experienced a setback or made a mistake, then I believe it will limit your capacity to connect with that team member on an authentic level.

Deconstruct Quickly – as you and the team member continue to discuss what is troubling them, I highly recommend you use the situation as a teaching tool that will aid in their development. If the situation was due to some ineffective actions or inactions on their part, then deconstruct the incident as to what they did well or what they could have done better to prevent the situation from occurring again. Such a discussion will also allow you to determine severity of the issue and whether or not the team member in question is salvageable. If the situation the team member experienced was not of their making and could not have been foreseen, then the vector of your conversation should be more on how they can better respond when things come off the rails and build up their resilience and better coping/response strategies in the future.

Limit the Scope – Dr. Paul Seligman, one of the purveyors of Positive Psychology, proposed how a person’s views the world and their ability to control what happens to them will impact their responses to when bad things happen. Accordingly, the goal is to develop what he calls a more internal locus of control. Essentially, as an authentic leader, it is important that you let the team member know the following:

• This Setback is not Permanent – this will pass, and the sting of the disappointment or setback will wear off. I often share the 24-Hour Rule proposed by leadership expert John Maxwell. He shares that when he experiences a loss or setback, he gives himself only 24 hours to moan and groan about it but then gets back on track!
• The Setback is not Everything – sometimes we believe that is something is not going well in one part of our life, then it extends to all areas of our life. Encourage your team member to compartmentalize the negative situation to just that aspect of that work and life and not to extend its impact to others.
• The Setback is not You – just because something bad happened or you made an error, it does not reflect on your overall competence and character. I know this will sound weird but to be honest, I much rather have a team member who was personally struggling with a professional disappointment versus one who simply did not care. In fact, I would often share that very observation with them. I would tell them it demonstrated they cared deeply about their work and those that they served.

Problem Solve Responsively – when a bad situation or setback has occurred with a team member, it is important that you work with them to determine the scope of the situation or damaged caused and determine how they will repair the damage or minimize negative impacts on others. Whether fully or partially their fault or not, it is important to make sure the team member does not “walk away” from the issue and let those higher up the leadership food chain deal with the fallout. The team member involved will have key insights as to how to prevent such situations from occurring again as well as they need to develop their own capacities to respond effectively to challenging situations.

At the end of the day, our responsibility as leaders is to multiply other leaders. Eventually, your direct reports will have to help one of their own team members recover from disappointments and setbacks. As I would often tell my student leaders, I wish every day is a great day, but the reality is that every now and then one day is really going to stink. How they respond when that day happens will speak volumes about their character and commitment to becoming a leader of integrity.

Again, I still believe that as leaders, we should be positive and hopeful. Such a perspective comes a little easier for those of us who have “been there and done that” more times than we care to think about! It does, however, provide us with perspective and a maturity in our leadership that allows us to be resilient and strong in both good and bad times. When working with younger and emerging influencers, however, it is important to keep in mind that setbacks can appear so much more acute due to their lack of life experience. They need you to understand and to respond to the reality of their situation. When that happens, what they really want from us to get off that mythical horse and just walk alongside them for awhile!

As always if I can help you and the people you associate with Get Better, Be Ready and LEAD OUT LOUD, I would invite you to email me or to visit my website below and see if any of the training or coaching experiences I offer can provide an impact. I am also pleased to announce the launch of my first book, Leading Out Loud: Strategies for Raising Your Leadership Voice! available on Amazon.com. Also, as a bonus, if you go to my Out Loud Strategies website (www.outloudinc.com) and enter your contact information, I will send you a FREE guide to establishing a mentoring initiative program in your organization! Such an initiative would be critical to add value to your organization!

Yours in Leadership,

Bill Faulkner

Principal Consultant – Out Loud Strategies

Independent Coach, Speaker, and Trainer with the John Maxwell Team ^TM

Email = bill@outloudinc.com

Visit our website at: www.outloudinc.com

For more information on the John Maxwell Team, please visit

http://www.johncmaxwellgroup.com/williamfaulkner/

Feel free to “LIKE” our FB Page www.facebook.com/outloudinc

Establish Personal Clarity in 3 Sentences.

I am on a “Clarity Kick” these days. I have become convinced that the primary reason why organizations, businesses, universities, communities, etc. struggle is due to lack of clarity on purpose and intention. I also believe the reason individuals struggle is due to lack of clarity in their own lives in terms of their life mission, purpose, and aspiration. This has got me thinking out loud about how we, as individuals, can get clear on why we are here and what we are intended to do!

Obviously, it is my belief that the reason we are walking around on the planet is for a specific reason. As humans, we were designed for a specific role and purpose. When we stray from that purpose, we experience confusion and misalignment with the universe (pretty dramatic, huh?). Seriously, when we struggle to become what we think we should be as opposed to what we were meant to be, we as leaders and individuals lack focus and fulfillment. We waste time pursuing roles and things that we think will make us happy only to learn that is not the case.

When viewed from the leadership lens, this lack of focus and clarity not only impacts us personally, but those we lead corporately. There is nothing more frustrating than to follow someone who is inconsistent in their beliefs, decision making, values, and intentions. When we do not have clarity, we are susceptible to the “cause or priority of the month club”! Instead of being clear on what our intentions are, we just bandwagon on every new topic and pop culture trend. Granted, some new issues do deserve our attention but when doing so, we need to make sure they align with our consistent and clear values and purpose.

So how can we gain more clarity on what we are here to do? I suggest creating three short sentences that answer the following questions:

What are you best at?

This captures your strengths. Leadership experts constantly remind us that we should work to our strengths versus our weaknesses. Your strengths are your areas of giftedness and trust me, you have been given many gifts and talents. If you are not sure what those are, focus on what you like to do and have had the most success doing. Ask colleagues to share with you what they see as your greatest gifts. I bet they will tell you things that you never expected.

What do you value?

This captures who and what you are on a foundational level. Sincerely ask yourself what is that you truly value in life, your work, your relationships, etc. It is impossible to live into your purpose in life if the way you are living your life is contrary to what you truly believe is important. Break free of what the trap of caring what the people around you think you should value, you do you in terms of what you really care about.

What do you want to be known for?

Finally, this question provides clarity on your aspirations. It does not speak to fame or notoriety; however, it speaks to what you want others to say, think, or believe about you. In other words, if your life was made into a movie, what do you want it to portray about you? How would it capture how you treat others? What personal accomplishments would it document?

I have been thinking a lot about these questions and here where is landed. In short, I was placed on this planet to:

1. Solve worthy problems.
2. Learn to teach valuable lessons.
3. Insure the success of others.

Listen, I know such reflection is not part of our daily routine and there is no Siri or Alexa App that will do this for you (yet!). All I can say is that when you focus on what you ARE versus what you DO, it changes your entire perspective. It makes your work more meaningful. It makes your conversations richer. It makes your relationships more intentional. If helps your life make sense!

You were designed to make an impact in this world and you were created to make things better. I encourage you to capture personal clarity in 3 sentences. I would love to hear from you in terms of where this reflection leads you. Please send me a short email at bill@outloudinc.com and let me know how this goes. Once you do create clarity, then ACT upon your thoughts on a daily basis!

As always if I can help you and the people you associate with Get Better, Be Ready and LEAD OUT LOUD, I would invite you to email me or to visit my website below and see if any of the training or coaching experiences I offer can provide an impact. I am also pleased to announce the launch of my first book, Leading Out Loud: Strategies for Raising Your Leadership Voice! available on Amazon.com. Also, as a bonus, if you go to my Out Loud Strategies website (www.outloudinc.com) and enter your contact information, I will send you a FREE guide to establishing a mentoring initiative program in your organization! Such an initiative would be critical to add value to your organization!

Yours in Leadership,

Bill Faulkner

Principal Consultant – Out Loud Strategies

Independent Coach, Speaker, and Trainer with the John Maxwell Team ^TM

Email = bill@outloudinc.com

Visit our website at: www.outloudinc.com

For more information on the John Maxwell Team, please visit

http://www.johncmaxwellgroup.com/williamfaulkner/

Feel free to “LIKE” our FB Page www.facebook.com/outloudinc

Don’t Let Your Team Down. A Plea to College Bound Student Athletes.

I love college sports and this is an especially exiting time of year where young men and women are making their final decisions as to where they will continue their athletic careers. From field hockey to football, swimming to soccer, the anticipation is growing. This has me thinking out loud that even though they are signing letters of commitment, they are really just making a choice. The real commitment is about to begin.

The commitment I refer is not whether they will join a team, but will they commit to become part of a team. Specifically, will they support their teammates? Will they focus more on the success of the team more than their own? Most importantly, will they be there when their team really needs them?

Obviously, these are worthy questions to answer for anyone who is joining any kind of team, whether as a new member of a hospital staff, a new hire at a business, or a new teacher at a school. But specific to the student athlete, that last question is especially important. You see, it speaks to their level of intention to DO the things that will ensure they will be there when the team needs them and NOT DO the things that will threaten their team presence. Clearly, there were cases this year during the college football season where the absence of key players for reasons other than injury definitely impacted the team’s ability to compete and win.

When a student athlete fails to keep their grades up or they fail a drug test, they let down their teammates, coaches, and the institution. It becomes even more serious when student athletes find themselves in situations where they run afoul of institutional policies or break laws within the local community. Do people make mistakes? Yes, but these behaviors are intentional acts not accidents. When a student athlete finds themselves in difficulty, it all started with an intentional decision to do so. They chose to think of themselves or some short-term gain versus to choose the welfare of the team. It is just so incredibly sad to me that a young person who started the next phase of their life with so much promise and opportunity would choose to throw all that away.

It is my belief, that it does not have to be that way. Before a student athlete ever hits the water, court, or field to refine the fundamentals of their sport, the first thing they should be taught are the fundamentals of morally courageous leadership. Legendary UCLA coach, John Wooden, was famous for starting out the season by teaching players the right way to put on their socks and tie their shoes. Isn’t that amazing? Before they could leave the locker room and head to the court, they had to master this basic skill first. Morally courageous leadership is to me, is that fundamental skill that should be taught first before any scrimmage or practice. In their defense, college athletes, especially marquee ones, are faced with all sorts of temptations and distractions not of their own making. Boosters, fans, peers, and disreputable sports agents often offer these young people a dizzying array of perks and advantages. It stands to reason that the strongest defense against such temptations is focused trainings and discussions on what they will face but also provide them the encouragement and tools to avoid the negative outcomes we read and hear about every season. It all comes down to taking a good hard look at the expectations of their families and new teammates and deciding that not letting them down is more important than giving themselves some undue advantage.

When I do leadership training focused on ethical issues, I often employ the use of guided imagery. Essentially, I ask participants to close their eyes and imaging a series of scenarios. So, if you are a newly committed college athlete, I want to take you on a Guided Experience.

First, I want to highlight the positive reality you are experiencing right now.

• How gratified you were to receive those recruiter visits and calls.
• How the world seemed to open up with new possibilities.
• Nervousness with meeting new teammates.
• Commitment to justify their selecting you and giving more effort than you ever thought possible.
• How excited you were when you started to receive offers.
• How proud your family and friends were the day you signed your letter.
• How happy you will be when you suit up that first day of practice.

But, there is an alternative reality that happens all too often. A reality when you break a team rule or get in trouble so that it caused your dismissal from the team. This is the reality where:

• Your residence hall room or at least your half of it is now bare.
• Packed suitcases and boxes waiting for a ride home.
• The look of disappointment on the faces of your family.
• The awkward interactions with teammates.
• The hole you left that the team now has to try to fill.
• When everything was great and now it’s not.
• Dreading going back home and figuring out what to do next.
• The plane or car ride home and the “If only’s” start to slam into your thoughts
• If only I hadn’t . . .
• If only I had . . .
• If only I listened . . .
• If only I stopped . . .
• If only I thought it through . . .
• If only I was brave . . .
• If only I could have that one moment back . . .
• If only I thought of my team first and myself second . . .

Don’t live your life with “if only’s”! Live your life expecting success both on and off the field. Having worked with many student athletes, I understand the sacrifice, hard work, physical pain, and emotional toil that is involved. Try to remember, however, that no matter what division of play you are in, there are hundreds of young people that would have loved to be where you are right now but for some reason could not be. Honor them by being the best competitor and team member you can be.

As always if I can help you and the people you associate with Get Better, Be Ready and LEAD OUT LOUD, I would invite you to email me or to visit my website below and see if any of the training or coaching experiences I offer can provide an impact, especially when it comes to creating better teams! I am also pleased to announce the launch of my first book, Leading Out Loud: Strategies for Raising Your Leadership Voice! available on Amazon.com. Also, as a bonus, if you go to my Out Loud Strategies website (www.outloudinc.com) and enter your contact information, I will send you a FREE guide to establishing a mentoring initiative program in your organization! Such an initiative would be critical to add value to your organization!

Yours in Leadership,

Bill Faulkner

Principal Consultant – Out Loud Strategies

Independent Coach, Speaker, and Trainer with the John Maxwell Team ^TM

Email = bill@outloudinc.com

Visit our website at: www.outloudinc.com

For more information on the John Maxwell Team, please visit

http://www.johncmaxwellgroup.com/williamfaulkner/

Feel free to “LIKE” our FB Page www.facebook.com/outloudinc

How to ASK vs TELL your way to increased team performance!

Entrepreneur and author Scott Fay shares that the quality of answers we get in life depends on the quality of questions we ask! This sage advice comes from a leader who knows how to lead diverse work teams and turn struggling business around to ones that focus as much on people as they do profits. Such advice has me thinking out loud about what would happen if we change our approach to leading teams from telling to asking?

If you are like me, I often had to conduct the annual performance evaluations with direct reports year after year. Granted, I would implement the “good news/bad news” method of pinpointing areas of performance where I believed the team member was excelling as well as areas for development. It finally occurred to me that whereas such methods may be effective in justifying annual raises, it did little to increase their actual performance or increase their potential for development since such feedback only occurred once a year.  

Further, such evaluations addressed only their current job performance. The trick, I decided, was to provide on-going feedback and discussion. Launching pads for such discussion was usually when the staff member had a significant win or when they experienced a challenging situation. We would deconstruct both to determine what we could learn from either scenario. Here’s the thing, instead of me just stating my observations, I would ask questions similar to what a performance or executive coach would ask in order to bring important learning and needed course corrections to light.

Such an approach, often described as a coaching style of supervision has gained a great deal of attention and traction in the private sector. Such a style has been demonstrated as particularly effective with millennial staff members according the 2015 Gallup Report on how Millennials want to live and work. Specifically, millennial workers who experienced a leadership style that focused on them as both individuals and employees reported higher levels of workplace engagement and retention. This is especially important in light of the fact that Millennials now compose the largest generational cohort in the workplace.

So, if such an approach is unknown or unfamiliar to you, what types of questions could you apply to your own supervisory practice? Below are some general categories but I encourage you to expand upon my own ideas and customize to your industry and the type of people you supervise.

Mattering Questions – Perhaps the most important work of leadership is helping people know that they matter! These are questions that let a team member know you are interested and care for them as a person. Listening to their answers as well as sharing your own is guaranteed to strengthen the working relationship and, often, proactively address any potential misunderstandings that so often permeate the work place. Mark Cole, CEO of the John Maxwell Company, offers the following to get you started. At minimum, you should ask and understand the following for each member of your team:

• What are the present contexts of their work in terms of what they do and the physical, social, and organizational environment they do it in?
• What is their background in terms history, education, where they grew up, career path, etc.?
• What is their temperament in regard to dealing with clients, co-workers, vendors etc.? Are they a morning person? What “pushes their buttons” or pet peeves? Do you like social chit-chat, or do you prefer to get right down to business when we meet?
• What are their abilities in terms of job skills, competencies, communication skills, talents, etc.?
• What are their dreams in terms of what matters to them now and in their future?
• What are their hurts in terms of things going on in their life that may distract them or impact how they come to work?
• What are their joys in terms of hobbies, community involvement, or what they do for fun?
• What are their priorities in both their work and personal lives?
• Who are the significant people in their lives in terms of children, pets, significant others, mentors, etc.

Obviously, some of these questions are more personal than others so you may need to gauge if the working relationship has developed to the level of trust where they would feel comfortable answering. Also, you need to assure the staff member of the confidentiality of their responses. Going first and sharing your responses will go a long way in establishing a level of comfort with such questions.

Performance Questions – This category of questions relates to their performance in the workplace. Again, your first priority is to have them share their own thoughts and ideas before offering your own.

• What is working well?
• Tell me about a recent accomplishment that you are proud of? Why was that a “win” to you? What did you learn that you can replicate in all aspects of your job?
• Tell me about a loss or challenging situation that you have recently experienced. Why do you think it turned out that way and what could you do to avoid such an outcome in the future?
• What are their Maintenance Goals (i.e. projections for certain day to day or incremental goals or benchmarks to achieve)?
• What are their Innovative Goals (i.e. projections, accomplishments, improvements, and/or aspirations tied to new projects, initiatives, etc.)?
• What do you contribute to the organization that rarely gets noticed?
• What aspect of your current job do you find tedious or unrewarding?
• Are there any co-workers or their own team members that they are struggling with? What can be done to help improve that situation?
• What resources do they need to do their job better?
• What do they think would make the organization better, more efficient, healthier, etc.?
• How can I help you in your work?
• What do you need me (as supervisor) to do more of, less of, start doing, or stop doing?

Development Questions – This category of questions has a specific focus on professional development and eventual career trajectory. As per the Gallup Report referenced earlier, professional development and growth opportunities are especially important to Millennial workers. In fact, the presence or lack of such opportunities is a major element of whether or not they will be retained by the organization. In my own practice, I often shared that I considered it part of my job to prepare a team member for their next job if they so wanted such advancement.

• What are you learning right now?
• What are some of the present skill and knowledge gaps do you want to fill sooner than later?
• What professional development opportunities have you taken advantage of and what else would you like to experience?
• What would you like to improve upon in terms of knowledge-base or skill areas?
• What additional responsibilities would you like to be offered and when?
• Is there an organizational committee you would like to join or, at least, observe?
• Have you sought out a mentor in this organization or elsewhere? Do you want me to broker that relationship with someone?
• Is there someone you would like to “shadow” in the organization?
• What self-development activities are you currently or could implement? Are there some authors, topics, videos, etc. that you would like me to recommend?
• How are your current professional development opportunities and efforts aligning with your career goals?

Again, the ONLY way this will work is if you ACT upon what you learn. If they want more responsibilities, give it to them. If they want to serve on a committee so that they can meet other members of the organization, find an opportunity that will help them do just that. Also, do not feel you have to ask ALL the questions in one meeting. During one-on -one meetings I would space out such questions so that after the business was discussed, I would ask about holiday plans with parents, further education goals and timelines, a conference they attended and what their biggest “takeaways” were, or inquire if they had the resources or cooperation they needed for a certain project. There will be natural entry points to ask these questions as time in your role increases.

The point of all of this is that leaders need to lead in an authentic and sincere manner. You can still get work done but you can also do so in a way that pulls people toward you versus pushes them further from you. Dianna Kokoska, is a senior leader with Keller Williams, one of the nations leading real estate companies. She shares that people grow into the conversations you have around them. Having rich conversations based upon carefully crafted and intentional questions will help any leader who is responsible for others mine the gold that others have within them! The additional benefit is that you are demonstrating and modeling how a team member can adopt this asking vs telling approach with their own teams. When we get to know our people as people first and employees second, it opens the doors of trust and creates emotionally safer work places.

I challenge you this week to pick one question from the categories above and ask each of your direct reports one of them. Believe me, there is nothing more inspiring than to work with someone who is interested in you and your success!

As always if I can help you and the people you associate with Get Better, Be Ready and LEAD OUT LOUD, I would invite you to email me or to visit my website below and see if any of the training or coaching experiences I offer can provide an impact, especially when it comes to creating better teams! I am also pleased to announce the launch of my first book, Leading Out Loud: Strategies for Raising Your Leadership Voice! available on Amazon.com. Also, as a bonus, if you go to my Out Loud Strategies website (www.outloudinc.com) and enter your contact information, I will send you a FREE guide to establishing a mentoring initiative program in your organization! Such an initiative would be critical to add value to your organization!

Yours in Leadership,

Bill Faulkner

Principal Consultant – Out Loud Strategies

Independent Coach, Speaker, and Trainer with the John Maxwell Team ^TM

Email = bill@outloudinc.com

Visit our website at: www.outloudinc.com

For more information on the John Maxwell Team, please visit

http://www.johncmaxwellgroup.com/williamfaulkner/

Feel free to “LIKE” our FB Page www.facebook.com/outloudinc