Speaking

Doors closing, people protecting rather than engaging, and opportunities diminishing for both men and women: these are a few of the unintended consequences the “Me Too” movement is having on business.

There is a divide between men and women growing. Conversations go underground; silently allowing mistrust to undermine results as well as leadership and team members’ relationships.

The only way to cultivate a culture where all people, of all genders, operate on the same side is to create understanding, agreements, and structures that provide a safe environment for authentic partnership.

Conversations where things are left unsaid or are unclear make it hard to act. Conversations where both parties assume agreement makes it hard to cultivate accountability, which ultimately impacts the bottom line.

A “missing” conversation is one we’ve been carrying around in our head as we drag our feet and procrastinate talking it through. A “failed” conversation produces results that are less than satisfactory. This causes tension, leaving people burdened with a list of concerns that don’t get addressed.

The ability to talk through the tough issues is a core skill for any leader. If you can talk through difficult conversations, you enable others to solve their own problems, reveal their best ideas and take action. You improve results, increase personal satisfaction in work and authenticity in relationships.

Most people avoid conflict; especially when they aren’t clear on what is at stake.

It is common to react emotionally to conflict, which, creates more reaction. There is no “quality” communication when emotional reaction is driving what people say and do. People are unlikely to think clearly or listen to understand when emotions are running high.

Being effective in the face of conflict requires leaders to be shift reaction to“response-able”.In other words, being able to respond with clarity. This increases accountability and resolves the real issues. Being able to confront issues, rather than people is what allows colleagues to enrich relationships, and build trust and respect.

Do you hold yourself back when facing tough and or sensitive issues, minimizing the impact you have? OR do you charge in furiously to say exactly what is on your mind, with no concern for the impact you have?

This kind of careful or careless communication leaves all parties disempowered.

When we are too concerned about expressing ourselves poorly or making it worse, we get in our own way. When we are infuriated, our message doesn’t land in a meaningful way, which has people pretend to agree.

Both communication styles undermine the possibility of understanding, agreement, and being on the same side.

Learning how to give power to your message, without overpowering or giving it away, supports everyone to speak frankly.

Accountability produces trust, freedom, accomplishment and recognition. The root of an accountability culture is a certain kind of communication.

We develop patterns of speaking, listening and ways of being that are habitual. Usually we aren’t even aware of these habits. In addition, there are natural enemies of communication that erode accountability.

The ability to create and grow a culture of accountability is a core competency in business. The language of accountability is the key to that competency. It produces high performance and partnership throughout the organization.

We all have instincts that compel us to be reactionary to life and to each other. Our brain creates pathways, in other words, patterned ways of showing up, listening, and talking. Our instincts trigger the inherent enemies of communication, which build barriers to being heard and understood.

George Bernard Shaw said, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion it has taken place.”  Transform your ability to be understood and to understand others.

When we think about leadership, mostly we think about it as leading others. I’m talking about self-directed leadership, a focus on personal mastery.

The root of the loss of power in our leadership capacity for the real challenges is in our own thinking, conclusions, assumptions and reactions.

Personal mastery is mastering oneself with discipline to confront our beliefs, views and perspectives on people and situations.

Personal Mastery is about having a command over yourself to deal with circumstances powerfully, effectively and deliberately.  It means an ever-growing capacity to make good decisions and act. Imagine the difference to your team, company, community and our world, if leadership challenges were approached with a focus on personal mastery.

Aristotle said, “Anyone can get angry – that is easy.  But to be angry at the right person, at the right time, for the right purpose, and the right reason, in the right way – that is not within everyone’s power; and that is not easy.”

Emotions can make smart people stupid.

 All of us have had the experience of being hijacked by our emotions, or dealing with someone who has. The impact of this often creates distance between us and others; as well as leaves us with a loss of control. Emotions create connection or separation. Emotions strengthen or weaken relationships. Further to that, emotions affect teams, families, and communities. Emotions even impact our immune systems, thoughts, words and actions – on all levels.

Emotional Intelligence is the suite of competencies that gives us the ability to manage our own emotions, be aware of another’s emotional state and deal with the emotional climate in a given relationship.

Employee engagement is a workforce variable that must be understood as its own issue, and it’s part of the larger challenge of attracting and retaining top talent.

Statistics show that 74% of employees are not fully engaged in the work they do. This has significant costs to organizations. We’ll take a holistic view of employee engagement and learn a method that can be applied to multiple strategies to increase the level of employee engagement in your organization.

No one wakes up in the morning asking, “How can I screw up today?”

In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Sixty-seven percent of employees say they want more feedback. Most of us know the importance of feedback to people.

Leaders sometimes hesitate to provide feedback because it can be a risky and uncomfortable conversation. This is particularly true if the needed feedback is corrective. Learn to see multi-dimensionally: the behavior, the person and the results. We’ll explore the barriers to giving feedback, the power of balanced feedback, and introduce a method to the art of performance feedback.

Performance isn’t a final goal, it’s a dynamic target. Regardless of how good you are, there is always room to perform better.

How your team performs is a sign of how healthy the relationships are among your team members.

Relationships build the foundation of trust, which in turn builds the capacity to explore differing perspectives. This contributes to the overall health and strength of the team.

Trudy uses Patrick Lencioni’s “Five Dysfunctions” model to help you assess your team’s current reality, and to leverage any untapped potential.

You will grow trust, appreciate each other, and unite the team in commitment and accountability with a focus on results.

We speak about it, we seek it, we aspire for it, and yet the experience of it is rare.

What is it?  Collaboration.

Collaboration is a complex process with changing dynamics and pressures influencing the players.

The root of successful collaboration is communication. As human beings, we develop patterns of communication that are habitual, and most often hidden from our awareness.

There are also innate enemies of communication we all face which make communication reactionary rather than responsive and create barriers instead of collaboration.

Face and confront the gap between behaviors and intentions. Learn how to engage stakeholders to be collaborative in solving problems with increased buy in, to improve the ability to take the right action to achieve desired results.

If you don’t identify the trajectory your team or business is on, you may be dying a slow death.

If you look at your current reality, there is a predictable future that today’s circumstances are producing.

When leaders don’t know what to do, we do more of what we already know, especially when the result has been successful.  Even when you are successful with today’s performance, you must know how to create a new future.