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Welcome to a deeper look into the Remarkable Leadership Series. This series is designed to help leaders reach their potential, strengthen their leadership talents, achieve goals, and inspire others.

The first topic is about Building Relationships.

Remarkable leaders know how to build and leverage relationships in an impactful way. They need to establish strong working relationships with a variety of people, so that they can get their job done with support and advocacy. You need to develop and deliver upon the interpersonal skills that help advance your ideas, create effective solutions, and get the job done.

Here are ten simple things that you can do to build better relationships as a leader.

1. Be inspirational. Employees want to follow people with those who inspire. Find your passion and share it with others. Help others to see and understand the bigger picture on what you find to be motivational. Help them tune into the “What’s In It for Me?” message.
   Learn to be a generous listener. There is very little listening in our society anymore. It has become talking not listening. Having a better story or “one-upping” the other person so that you can feel bigger and better. My suggestion is that you will indeed fill bigger and better by giving the gift of your attention, concern, and honoring the other person with allowing them to share what is important to them… then truly listening.
2. Be aware of your non-verbal messages. These non-verbals (like eye contact, tone of voice, hand gestures) can impact and influence your relationships with others. Many are not even aware of the significance that these non-speaking messages have. Your words may be saying one thing and yet, your body is telling a different story. Learn to read other people’s body language and non-verbal clues, as they will not lie. These clues can share with you whether or not they are connected to you, doubt you, or agree with you. When in doubt… check it out. If you are not sure whether someone is, for example in agreement with you, go ahead and ask them.  It is better to know then guess.
3. Become a mentor. Relationships are an important part of any career, but all too often, it is about taking and receiving from others to advance oneself. Instead…. Make the choice to take someone under your wing and teach them what you have learned as a leader. You will find that it reinforces the positive qualities of your effective leadership, but it will also bring satisfaction to you, knowing that you have made a difference in someone’s career.
4. Come from a place of curiosity (not judgment) Let’s face it… no one likes to feel or be judged.  When you criticize or are skeptical, you will not build effective relationships. Seek to understand, so that you can strengthen relationships from the ability to see things from another’s perspective. Be neutral and simply ask them to share their viewpoint. When you come from a place of sincerity and authenticity, you will build strong relationships.
5. Provide honest feedback to build relationships and improve your ability to lead. Ask for feedback from a committee or other group you help lead. Give members an opportunity to express their thoughts. Create the environment where you and others can reflect on what was spoken and simply say… “Thank you for sharing that with me.”
6. Learn from others. Make it a habit to look at other leaders and learn from them. Study great leaders. Learn from their mistakes. Repeat the elements that were successful. Identify a role model and model their behavior. Use your (imaginary) role model to help you make decisions and guide you to effective problem solving. Take time to build relationships through listening to their story and by asking poignant questions that demonstrates your admiration and interest in learning from them.
7. Make it right. While we like to think that leaders get along with everyone… This is not true.  What effective leaders do is identify those leaders who are different and leverage their differences by turning them into strengths. Leaders also know how and when to apologize when a mistake was made and how to repair damaged relationships. Look at your not-so-great relationships and identify what needs to be done to right them.
8. Provide positive reinforcement. Let others know when they are doing well. Catch them in the right and doing the behavior that you want to see repeated. We remember those times when someone in our life took the time to let us know we did a great job. Too often we don’t deliver positive praise for fear of discomfort, or not wanting to embarrass the other person, or even feeling like you should not have to… “they were just doing their job.” When you are the deliverer of good news, your relationship strengthens.

Be yourself. To build good relationships with others, you need to lead from a place of authenticity. Achievers in history share one thing in common – they knew themselves well and they leveraged their strengths. Bring your full self to work and allow people to see and be led by a leader who is confident, natural, and genuine.

Building A Strong Team is Both Possible and Remarkably Simple.

Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team™ is the official training program based on the bestselling book, Five Dysfunctions of a Team and has a simple goal: To facilitate a learning experience that helps professionals and their organizations discover what it takes to build a truly cohesive and effective team. The central element of the training program is the DiSC-powered Five Behaviors personal profile, which guides teams towards better engagement and higher performance. The Five Behaviors profile, which provides both individual and team feedback, is grounded in the model described in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, the internationally best-selling leadership fable by Patrick Lencioni. With this program, participants will learn how, as a team, they score on the key components of the model: trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, and results. Additionally, the program is powered by Everything DiSC®, a model that helps individuals to understand themselves and others better. Using these results, participants will be able to create a better, stronger team.

Who is the program designed for?

The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team assessment and accompanying material is designed for an intact team. Before choosing this program, consider the questions: Is the team really a TEAM? A team is a relatively small number of people (from three to twelve) who meet on a regular basis and are collectively responsible for results. The team members share common goals as well as the rewards and responsibilities for achieving them. Not every group is a team. For example, a group that appears to be a team might simply be a collection of people who report to the same manager, but who have relatively little interdependence and mutual accountability. If a group does not meet the criteria of a true team, this process is unlikely to produce the results they expect.

Benefits of our Team Facilitation Programs

This program is highly personalized as your team applies the Five Dysfunctions framework to their own real, demonstrated patterns of behavior. We adapt our approach to fit your team size, timeline, and progress over the course of the engagement to provide the greatest flexibility for your environment. Plus it is cost-effective as a customized, in-house program delivers more value than external, off-the-shelf training.

Available resources include:   Research Report

Sales managers know that sales coaching is important, yet it is often the very last thing on our list.

I often observe one common challenge among leaders with the way they attempt to coach others.  Sales coaches think the same approach works for all representatives.  They fail to bring generational differences into play.  They lack know-how and understanding of how to apply the Platinum Rule (Coach others how they want to be coached … not how you would want to be coached.)  And unfortunately, sales leaders do not know what is important to each generation and how to apply that in their sales coaching.

Did you know that Generation X’s sales professionals are not usually facing a competency issue, but rather a capacity issue?  If you were to coach a Gen Xer, you need to focus on wit and speed (not depth and abundance), so that they can achieve greater work/life balance.  They know what to do.  Gen Xers’ need support of how to do it efficiently.

Millennials?  That’s a whole different story (and generation).  This generation will make up approximately fifty percent of the 2020 US Workforce and seventy-five percent in 2030.  Sales managers need to rethink their approach and management style to poise and ready themselves.   With “helicopter parents” as the millennials’ influence, this generation needs more guidance and telling.  They value knowledge and experience over power and position.  So, even though you may have Vice President of Sales next to your name, it doesn’t mean very much to them.  Millennials have a need for instant access to you and for instant information that will help them sell better.  What do you mean that you can’t speak to them until tomorrow?  This won’t fly very well with the millennials, so you need to create mutual understanding and agreements for how to work together.  Strange but true.

The secrets above are just scratching the surface of understanding what it means to be a successful sales coach in today’s marketplace.  We’d love to share more with you, if you are committed to learning how to manage and coach the multi-generations.  We have programs, services, and coaching just right for you.

Click Here if you would like more information regarding this program.

I could start off by giving you a definition of Collaboration and what it is but by now that would be foolish. If your employees or teams are not collaborating, you’ve got some deeper issues than understanding what it is. The fact of the matter is that effective collaboration is essential for today’s workplace. Whether it is because we are playing in a global market or having to be bigger and better than our competition, collaboration is essential to your organization’s survival and being able to thrive. All work is dependent upon the ability to work jointly with others.

The question that I’d like to explore is what is the true value of collaboration? Are two heads really better than one? Isn’t it best to simply direct individuals to do good work and stay focused to bang out a result?

When I ask my clients if they think collaboration is a good thing to do – they immediately say “yes!” Then the answer isn’t as strong when I ask them “why?” Because the value of collaboration is complex and unique to each organization, to truly answer the question of value requires a stop and think moment. The value proposition should be relevant to the potential impact for that particular organization, division, team, and even at the individual level. At the root, the common answer is to produce amazing results. But again I ask, what does that really mean? What specific areas does your organization want (and need) to produce great results?

Most common areas would be:

1. The Customer – When collaboration works well, the customer wins. They receive a better product, or service, or experience.
2. Effectiveness and Efficiency – Your organization will be the recipient of better use of resources, which results in saving time and money. Better problem solving, decision making and improved processes also occur. The impact here can be huge!
3. Employee Engagement – Employees that are deeply engaged significantly outperform those who are not. Employees are feel valued and appreciated will tirelessly work for the cause and do what it takes to make a difference.
4. Innovation – Collaboration brings about creativity and innovation. When business units are committed to collaboration new ideas and products emerge. There are endless examples of how a small individual idea became grand by collaborating with others.

In today’s economy, collaboration is not just a “nice to have.”  It is a matter of being an essential need.

Now knowing what you know, how good are you at creating effective collaboration around you?  What could you be doing better or differently to achieve the greatest collaboration results?