Deeper Communication Skills
This two-part series on deeper communication skills is designed to help you build a workplace environment where people interact positively and get more done with less effort.
Many workplace conflicts arise because of disparate values, goals, objectives, strategies and points of view. Well-meaning, intelligent leaders and employees can genuinely want to get along but not know how to communicate meaningfully and productively. When I work with groups in active conflict, I often help the participants learn and practice skills to help them connect on a deeper level, interact positively and generate positive results in the workplace.
We sometimes forget to build relationships before jumping into problem-solving and we don’t consistently create environments where people are encouraged to work together to find solutions. The most common communication model is people talking at each other instead of with each other. I’ve found that individuals have an amazing capability to work collaboratively when they take the time to build a strong foundation first. Here is a practical approach to help you create a workplace environment where people reach mutually beneficial solutions. This process works best with groups of twenty people or less.
- Agree on a place and time to meet. Make it comfortable, interruption-free and conducive to conversation.
- Have a skilled, welcoming, neutral facilitator run the meeting.
- Have the facilitator welcome everyone and present the ground rules: One person talks at a time and, when that person is talking, everyone listens. All opinions and ideas are valid.
- Have the facilitator pick a single topic of interest.
- Have each person in the room talk about his or her perspective on the topic for up to two minutes. Encourage people to talk from the heart and not from the head. Also mention that they don’t have to talk about anything they don’t feel comfortable sharing.
- Ask the group to listen to the person speaking without interruptions, comments, editorializing, rebuttals, reactions or any other kind of distraction. Ask people to simply listen and remind them that everyone else will do the same for them when it’s their turn.
- When everyone is done speaking ask the participants to share their impressions of what just happened. Go around the room and allow each person up to a minute to share.
- Take a break.
- Have the neutral facilitator pick another topic of interest.
Repeat the process three times.
Once you’ve repeated this process three times the group will be ready to move on to the next phase which is working together. Stay tuned for part two of this series where we’ll talk about how to help people collaborate to solve problems. Until next time, what will you do to practice deeper communication skills in your workplace?
Take care,
Guy
Effective Communication and Team Building
Leadership Training Carnival March 2012
Welcome to the March 2012 edition of the Leadership Training carnival. Thank you to the wonderful experts who have taken the time to share their leadership wisdom. Here are their thoughtful articles.
Neal Burgis PhD presents Impact of Your Extraordinary Leadership posted at Practical Solutions.
Terrence Seamon presents Leaders, Honor Thy People posted at About Leaders.
Michelle L. Cramer presents How Does Your Personality Affect the Way You Do Business? Part One: The Sanguine Personality posted at Commonfig Community. Your personality affects the way you do business. The key is learning how it strengthens your business savvy, and how to cope with the weaknesses. This four part series will give you more insight into the four main personality types and what to expect for how they effect your approach to business.
Joanne Morrison presents MinacsBlogs | Getting Ahead for the First Time Leader posted at Minacs News.
Mike King presents Individual Innovation and Experimentation posted at Learn This. Becoming a leader requires training that leads us to take risks, find innovation and be creative.
Liz Shaw presents How to Prevent Emotional Hijacking posted at The Writing Reader. Help your nervous employee get past the fear of presenting with these easy tips.
Chase Dumont presents What is Leadership? The Definitive Answer posted at Chase Dumont, Rainmaker. People have been trying to define leadership for millennia. In this ambitious post, Chase calls on quotes from a number of great leaders – as well as his own experience – and takes his own stab at defining the undefinable.
Charles Chua C K presents All About Living With Life: Leadership – 7 Effective Tips posted at All About Living with Life.
Katie Sorene presents 10 Volunteer Programs to Improve Your Leadership Skills posted at Travel Blog – Tripbase. A selection of volunteer programs to improve your leadership skills including teaching orphans in Sri Lanka, elephant conservation in Thailand and coaching soccer in Cameroon.
I look forward to hearing from you for the next edition, submit your blog article using the carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on my blog carnival index page.
Technorati tags: leadership training, blog carnival.
Are You Ready for Change?
Change is a word that strikes fear into many leaders’ hearts and causes distress in many workplaces. Others welcome it and use it as an opportunity to move forward rather than declaring that the sky is falling. It’s up to you how you deal with change and you get to decide whether it’s an opportunity or a roadblock. I prefer an approach that welcomes change and uses it to improve the functioning of the organization.
Signs that you or your organization may not be quite ready for change:
- Leaders and employees emphasize how things have always been done.
- It takes a long time for any new idea to be considered.
- Leadership doesn’t listen to suggestions or a variety of perspectives.
- Decisions have always been made by the same individuals or group.
- Leaders view change as admitting failure or as a threat to their authority.
- Leadership is happy with the culture of the company but nobody else is.
- The prevailing leadership style is reactive and focused on the past.
- Change is only discussed as a negative or something to be avoided.
Signs that you’re ready for change:
- Leaders and employees are open to doing things differently.
- New ideas are entertained and considered promptly.
- Leadership is open to suggestions and varying perspectives.
- Independent decision-making is encouraged at every level.
- Leaders see change as an opportunity to grow and lead more effectively.
- People work together to build a culture that benefits everyone.
- The preferred leadership style is proactive and forward-looking.
- Change is openly talked about and used as a tool for progress.
Is your approach to change more like the first list or the second? You get to decide what kind of organization you design. When you resist change, you’ll likely find yourself dreading anything that’s different and scrambling to put out fires and stifling progress. If you invite change, you’ll enjoy dealing with the challenges that come your way and building a workplaces that’s flexible and agile. What will you do to welcome change into your organization?
Take care,
Guy
Leadership Training and Team Building
10 Practical Team Building Tips
Many leaders and organizations try to implement team building in one or two sessions only to find that their employees quickly revert to old behaviors. It takes time and commitment for team building to take root and grow in any organization. It’s nearly impossible to move away from the behaviors you’ve built up over time and replace them with new, more effective ones without sustained effort. Here are ten practical tips to help you get the most out of your team building program.
- Make sure leadership is fully involved and sets a positive tone.
- Team building is offered to employees at every level.
- A one-hour time block per week is set aside for team building activities.
- Refrain from changing the team building schedule or combining it with other meetings.
- No interruptions during sessions, including people using phones, texting or being called out of the activities.
- Leave egos and agendas at the door, everyone is treated equally.
- Use an experienced, positive and neutral facilitator for activities.
- Focus on activities that build deeper interactions and relationships.
- Practice new behaviors over time.
- Evaluate how you’re doing after six months and make adjustments if necessary.
The key to successful team building is to participate in activities that bring people together on a deeper level and help them acquire skills to keep moving forward. Practice team building over time so that everyone gets used to doing it. Once people are comfortable with your new approach, it becomes second nature and your workplace shifts to one where collaboration and shared purpose are the norm. How will you promote long-term team building in your organization?
Take care,
Guy
Team Building and Leadership Training
20 Characteristics of Enlightened Leadership
Enlightened leadership means being deeply aware of your strengths and areas for improvement, as well as your personal issues, and using that knowledge to create a healthy, functional and productive workplace. It’s also understanding how your behaviors affect you and others. Here are twenty characteristics of enlightened leaders:
- Your ego doesn’t run things.
- You don’t depend on power and control to feel important.
- You trust your employees.
- Hierarchy doesn’t matter because you’re part of a team.
- Everyone’s ideas have value.
- You consistently treat people kindly.
- Your own life is balanced.
- You’ve worked out your own personal issues.
- You don’t use your staff as punching bags.
- You listen actively and often to your employees.
- You encourage employees to think and act independently.
- You praise people all the time.
- You don’t look for what’s in it for you.
- Personal glory is less important than group success.
- You give people opportunities to shine and grow.
- You don’t have to win and you know how to lose.
- You welcome change.
- You value other people’s ideas.
- You encourage people to motivate themselves.
- Your employees admire, not fear, you.
Enlightened leaders practice these behaviors on a regular basis and they create happier organizations. If you’ve ever worked for someone like this, you know how great it feels and what kind of atmosphere it creates. If you haven’t experienced this type of leadership, you’re in for a treat. How will you encourage enlightened leadership in your workplace?
Take care,
Guy
Leadership Training and Team Building
Effective Communication – Talking Versus Listening
Many leaders think that effective communication means talking a lot. Perhaps you’ve worked with someone who is in love with the sound of his or her voice and rarely lets people join the conversation or share their ideas. All you hear is the sound of one person talking.
Communication is over 90% non-verbal, which suggests that talking is just a small part of what we’re supposed to be doing, yet many people continue to talk until everyone’s exhausted. It’s as if they wake up each day ready to talk at everyone instead of learning about others. They spend their time telling everyone about themselves and their perspective rather than learning about others.
Think about your own communication style: Do you talk or listen more? Effective communicators understand that interacting with people is as much about understanding someone else’s point of view as it is putting their own ideas into the mix. The key is to understand when you’re talking too much and might benefit from adding some listening.
Here are some practical tips to help you practice effective workplace communication:
- Listen more than you talk.
- Ask open-ended questions when you don’t understand something the other person is saying, not to interject your thoughts.
- Focus on the other person rather than thinking of the next thing you want to say.
- Stay away from trying to rebut or contradict the other person.
- Avoid asking questions that lead to a yes or no answer or steer the conversation in a pre-determined direction.
- Allow people the time and space to say what they want to say.
- Listen actively by paying close attention to the other person and trying to understand what he or she is saying without adding your point of view.
- Did I mention listening?
Listening is so frequently ignored in the workplace that leaders can spend their entire careers talking over people. What they may not realize is that they can lead more effectively when they take the time to really listen to others. Listening offers them an opportunity to understand people better and make decisions based on deeper information. They avoid misunderstandings and connect with people on a more meaningful level.
Listening improves your work life because it allows you to breathe. You don’t have to talk all the time and work hard to fill up space. You don’t have to think of the next brilliant thing you want to say. You get to sit back, relax and encourage others to share their ideas. You’ll build trust and encourage people to participate in the conversation. What will you do to listen more in your workplace?
Take care,
Guy
Effective Communication and Workplace Communication Advice
Leadership Idea – Take a Look at Yourself
I was facilitating a leadership training recently and it became apparent that several people had no idea how they were viewed by their employees or what kind of workplace environment they were creating. I had staff members confide in me during breaks that the way these leaders were portraying themselves was very different from how other people perceived their actions.
The ability to look at oneself is important because it allows the person to make positive adjustments and become an even better leader. Here are some practical ideas to help you take a look at yourself:
- Think about your behavior. What works, what doesn’t and what might you do differently?
- How do your employees view you? If you don’t know, then ask them?
- What type of work environment does your leadership create?
- What situations keep coming up in your workplace and how does your leadership style affect them?
- What type of results do you get and at what cost?
Think about questions like these and you’ll begin the process of taking a look at yourself. Leaders who take a look at themselves are able to grow and adapt because they’re open to changing their behaviors. They have the ability to deal with change and improve their skills. They also get to be happier because they can let go of the things that don’t work and focus on approaches that do.
Self-reflection doesn’t mean tearing yourself down or being a failure, it’s a tool you can use to become stronger and more proactive. What will you do to take a look at yourself?
Take care,
Guy
Leadership Training and Team Building
How do your employees view you? If you don’t know, then ask them?
