by Jane Perdue | Be your best you
Wow, it’s amazing that half a year has whizzed by!
Now is a great time for leaders to look back over those six months looking for personal lessons learned and for wisdom gained, with a special emphasis on 7C leadership skills: cognition, connection, communication, capability, compassion, confidence, and character.
7C leaders embrace possibility with childlike wonder, practice inclusion without judgment, turns dreams into reality, and inspires others to do the same.
After you’ve done your checkup on how well you did in the first half of the year, take your insights and put them to good use in the second half of the year.
Remember: 7C leaders focus on using their head to manage and their heart to lead!
The 7 C’s: A Mid-Year Leadership Checkup
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The 7 C’s
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Yes
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No
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| Cognition |
| Have I established my goals, both what I want to do and what I want to be? |
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| Am I aware of my strengths, and do I put them to good use? |
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| Am I tuned in to how I come across to others take that into account in how I interact and communicate with them? |
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| Connection |
| Have I identified my purpose and passions? |
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| Do I take and make the time to fuel my purpose and passions in my daily living, either in doses large or small? |
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| Do I make it a priority to make the time to connect with others so I understand their point of view? |
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| Communicate |
| Do I regularly engage in two-way dialogue? |
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| Do I share freely what I know to keep others in the loop? |
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| Do I actively listen with my both my head and heart to what others have to say? |
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| Capability |
| Do I stretch myself to the limits of my potential? |
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| Do I inspire those around me to do the same? |
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| Compassion |
| Do I practice tough empathy on myself and those around me? |
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| Do I regularly smile and laugh and have fun both at work and at play? |
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| Do I frequently recognize the accomplishments and contributions of others? |
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| Confidence |
| Have I mastered how much control I give to my inner critic? |
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| Have I learned to constructively work with ambiguity? |
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| Do I give myself, and those around me, permission to learn through failing? |
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| Character |
| Have I chosen to be a person of integrity, never afraid to be found out? |
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| Do I treat those without power with the same respect I accord to the powerful? |
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| Do take the stand for what’s good and what’s right, even if doing so is unpopular? |
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| Commitment |
| Have I dedicated myself to finding connection, communicating, reaching for my potential, celebrating, and being courageous, sincere, caring and authentic? |
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How did you do? Brag on yourself…or go public with what you will do better going forward!
Image source before quote: morgueFile
by Jane Perdue | Power
When you hear the words power and office politics do you shudder and say “ewwwww”?
Lots of people do.
That’s both unfortunate and sad.
These words have picked up negative connotations because of the actions of self-centered workplace schmoozers interested only in their own careers.
Work with anyone like that? I know I have. Seeing people play office politics and throw colleagues under the bus only to advance their careers is super off-putting. However, choosing not to play office politics can be a contributing factor in us getting a pink slip or in not receiving a promotion.
How can that be? Because playing office politics in a good way is a good thing. First, the bad news. No matter how much we may want office politics to go way, they aren’t.
Office politics is a workplace reality. Here’s a simple rule of thumb to see if office politics exist where you work.
First, count the number of employees at your organization. If that number is greater than two, then office politics is a factor.
Dismayed? Don’t be. Any time there’s scarce resources, competing interests, and ambiguity, office politics will exist. Scarce resources, competing interests, and ambiguity are darn near a given in every place I worked. Other people say the same thing.
Now for the good news. Office politics doesn’t have to be a bad thing. it’s a bit like “The Force” from the Star Wars movies in that there’s a light (positive) side and a dark (negative) side to it.
Office politics gets its bad name from the manipulators, backstabbers, and “I win, you lose” competitors. When you peel back the unsavory people and take a look at the actions that are happening when we say office politics are going on, what’s happening is people working to sell an idea, gain influence, or persuade others to join in.
What distinguishes good office politics from the bad one is motivation. Are people persuading because they me-focused or we-focused?
However, when executed from a we-focused, win-win perspective, office politics relies on collaboration, sharing, relationships, and networking.
Competent people do politics so competently that it looks like being nice. If you have political skill, you appear to not have it. ~Gerald Ferris, psychology and management professor at Florida State University
Opting out of office politics doesn’t serve your career well. Being an effective leader requires you to champion your agenda, be it getting assigned to a special project or getting a bigger budget, and that requires practicing above board–not serving–collaboration, sharing, relationships and networking).
People are hired for what they know and fired for who they are. ~Penelope Trunk, author of “The Brazen Careerist”
Using a win-win approach is a make-or-break skill for doing well at work. Research from the Chartered Management Institute found that 88 percent of managers claimed to have honed their knowledge of politics through workplace mistakes.
Avoiding making me-focused blunders can be easy if you keep six simple practices in mind.
6 ways to play “win-win” office politics
- Be open to hearing other points of view even if you disagree.
Allowing someone to voice their opinion and really listening to what they have to say strengthens a relationship. Working from a win-win viewpoint also helps to build allies.
- Be a broker of ideas and information.
Willingly share what you know. Giving (without focusing on what you may get in return) bolsters your reputation and facilitates building your network.
Understand who the informal leaders in your organization are — those individuals whose opinion is sought by others because it is so respected and not necessarily because of their job title. Tap into their knowledge and their circle of influence.
- Always credit “we” not “me.”
When a group of people have been involved in a work project, give them the recognition and credit they deserve.
Having a strong, strategic network goes beyond passing out and collecting business cards. Build and maintain relationships that are mutually beneficial. Staying in touch can be simple: share articles or send congratulatory e-mails.
- Be sincere and authentic.
People like to work with those whom they genuinely like. Those are the ones who are playing the “light” side of office politics.
What say you?
Image source before quote: morgueFile.com
by Jane Perdue | Character
Betsy was credibly confused. She wanted to give her boss, Florence, the benefit of the doubt, but it was so hard to do!
In nearly every monthly staff meeting as well as in their infrequent one-on-one sessions, Florence had assured everyone on the team that she valued them both as individuals and for their work contributions.
Florence’s words sounded so good, and she sounded so re-assuring and caring when she said them.
Betsy wanted—with all her heart—to believe Florence’s words were true.
Yet, as much as she was loathe to admit it, it was becoming harder and harder for her to ignore the small but persistent voice in her head that whispered, “Florence says all the right things, but her actions contradict her words. There seems to be a gap between what she says and what she does.”
Betsy’s concern had gone into hyper-drive earlier in the day when a colleague forwarded an email Florence had sent to the department head.
In that email, Florence detailed her plan for setting up the conference the department head had requested. Not once in the message was anyone else named. Anyone reading the email could easily conclude that Florence had created the entire plan herself. In reality, Florence had done very little work in preparing for the conference. Betsy and two co-workers had done nearly all of the heavy lifting.
Betsy had lost count of the number of times Florence had passed off work done by a direct report as her own. When Betsy or someone else in the department had asked Florence about it, her answer was always that “she had been in boss mode when she wrote the email and forgot to mention other names, but, hey you folks know how much I value you. I tell you all the time.”
Betsy just wasn’t sure Florence’s professed care was there anymore—or if it had ever been there at all.
Do you have a say/do gap?
Are you a boss? Worried that your team might view you like Betsy views Florence? If so, take a moment of “say/do” self-reflection time and ask yourself a few questions:
- Am I certain there’s complete and total alignment between my words, my actions, and my values, each and every single time I speak and/or act?
- Do I sometimes parse my words and behaviors to be politically expedient?
- Has anyone on my team, a peer, or my boss challenged me for behaving differently than I spoke?
- If I have been called out, did I deny their claim? Offer an excuse? Valiantly accept their censure?
- Do I regularly call out people on my team when there’s a disconnect between what they say and what they do?
- Have I ever questioned my own boss about a real or perceived say/do gap on their behalf?
- Do I hang around with leaders who are known for their upstanding character or those who are comfortable talking about reducing expenses over lunch at the most expensive restaurant in town?
- Am I known for being credible? Sleazy? A straight shooter? Or one who bends in the breeze?
As Bill George writes in True North,
Leadership is not exerting power over others or exhorting them to follow you. Rather, it results from your example of empowering others to step up and lead. Leaders do that by learning to lead themselves, becoming self-aware and behaving authentically.
As leaders, we’re often rewarded for being doers; so it’s occasionally good, no, great, to hit the personal pause button and re-assess if we’re really on the right track or just telling ourselves that.
What say you?
Image source: morgueFile
by Jane Perdue | Be your best you
Do you aspire to be the kind of leader who uses their head to manage and their heart to lead?
If so, getting your interactions with others right depends on several things.
First, you have to get yourself right.
You have to be self-aware.
Getting yourself right is hard work that requires both introspection—casting a caring yet clinically objective eye on your interests, skills, qualities and values—and self-awareness—a non-judgmental understanding of how you respond, react, engage and interact.
(more…)
by Jane Perdue | Inspiration
Wondering which life path you should feed? Some simple wisdom from The Impeccable Warrior of Light, p16, by Peace Mother Geeta Sacred Song to start your week.
Enjoy!
An elderly Cherokee Native American was teaching his grandchildren about life.
He said to them,
“A fight is going on inside me, it is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. (more…)
