Voltage Vista

Consultants and coaches are like cars: I’m not gonna standby and watch you lose. We win together. But I can’t help you, if I don’t know you. My contact info is in the comments. You should find one before you need one.

If you're spending this Saturday morning stewing on challenges with your team, I'm gonna depart from my regular admonishment about working too much. So, since you're already working and I have your attention, let me ask you something: are you unsure about how important it is to offer harassment training to your team? Do you hesitate to provide harassment training because of cost, but want to do more to improve your organization’s culture? Share this free quiz with the leaders on your team to be sure they know the harassment basics and get info about my unique offer for small organizations: I help them get the training they need at a price they can afford, https://lnkd.in/egbUrzsd Don't just share the quiz...take it, and I’ll get your results to you right away!

Often harassment and bullying look the same to employees. Both represent unpleasant and unwelcomed behavior they don't like; however, the difference lies in the reason why the behavior is taking place. While we can debate if it's ever appropriate to yell at employees, it is not illegal for a leader or supervisor to yell at an employee because of something they've done. The same behavior becomes illegal when it's done because of someone's protected class status, i.e. race, religion, ethnicity, etc. When the behavior isn't illegal, it's up to your organization to decide it's culture and the types of behaviors that it will tolerate.

Have you ever dated someone who broke their promises over and over again? The same distrust and disdain that you feel in that context is what employees experience when they have proof that management isn't going to do anything about an issue that has come up several times and is still unaddressed or resolved. From the leaders perspective, there are multiple legitimate reasons why this happens; however, it still leaves a sour taste for employees. My suggestion: choose 1 - 2 items from a team retreat and make it your business to do something about them. What would you recommend that a leader do to get the team to take them seriously?

Believe it or not, this happens more often than you might think. I mean, who do you know who actually ENJOYS dealing with conflict? Want to know what I did with this particular group? I designed a one day team retreat that focused on trust building for the first half of the day. I knew I'd have to invest heavily in getting them to feel safe enough to talk honestly. Then, I used the assessment tool from The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. I couldn't have asked for a better outcome! Not only did the team discuss their issues, they also created a plan to demonstrate to their direct reports that they were aligned. It was important to them to address how their influenced had been undermined by the gossiping.

Throw new leaders to the wolves, much? ❓❓ Seriously, why do we keep promoting people into leadership roles without training and equipping them for the job? I cannot begin to count the number 🔢 🔢 of conversations that I've had with leaders who agree that people are often promoted because they're good at their current jobs or because the organization wants to keep or reward them. It is rare that these conversations include a discussion about what the organization is doing to prepare leaders. Even if the leader isn't entirely new to leadership, there is little attention paid to the transition process. 🙀🙀 Once, a training participant told me that she was promoted at 11:30am, right before going to lunch and told that her new job was STARTING when she got back! 💡💡 "It's the Manager" by Gallup presented data from supervisors where they said that they often felt unsupported and unprepared, but that unable to ask for help. They feared being deemed less than capable or being treated like their needs were a disruption to their bosses. Now, imagine being uncomfortable in your role AND being responsible for guiding and coaching others. 💡💡 💡💡 On the other hand, research also tells that one of the greatest predictors of employee engagement and satisfaction is their relationship with their immediate supervisor. The math isn't mathing! 💡💡 💡💡 Here's my question to you: why aren't we, as leaders, leaning into what we know? We know that new leaders need coaching, training, and leadership, but we keep falling into the trap/norm of not doing it. What's your org's reason? 1 - We don't have the budget to train. 2 - Our staff is lean, and we're strapped for time. 3 - We under estimate the impact of supervisors on their direct reports (and on compliance). 4 - It's just not what we've done around here, and it's hard to change culture.

As I reflect on two previous podcast interviews, with Dr. Pam Chatman and Keith "The Prince of the Delta Blues" Johnson, I saw a connection. On one hand, Pam’s work focuses on serving the people of the Delta. On the other hand, Keith’s story, in part, captures the spirit of someone who is doing as much as he possibly can not to be one the people Pam helps. Both Pam and Keith hail from the Delta and neither looks down their nose at their fellow Delta native. Perhaps, it could be said that Pam represents hopefulness and support and that Keith represents what happens when hope, opportunity, and drive come together. Now, consider these other two aspects of their stories. In Keith’s day job, he works in HR at a casino in Tunica (By night, he is actually a blue guitarist and is known as the “Prince of the Delta Blues). He shared how he works to support the employees, who are usually Delta residents, to make sure they know how the organization can support them when they experience challenges that impact how they show up at work. Sometimes, it is impossible to maintain a boundary between your personal and work life. Meanwhile, Pam focuses on getting people what they need, whether it is resources to pay bills, food, or transportation to work. I can imagine that they hear heart-wrenching stories on a regular basis. By the same token, their personal journeys attest that they are intimately familiar with some of the circumstances that they hear. As they do the work that they do, I also imagine that there are times wherein they feel torn because we know there have to be times when they are unable to help everybody who requests help. Whether in nonprofit settings or otherwise, how do leaders grapple with realities like these and avoid burnout? Additionally, if you are a leader in an emotionally demanding context, how do you know you are burning out before hit the wall? What do you do to manage your physical and mental health? #allleadershipispersonal #valuesbasedleadership #nonprofitleadership

What's your two cents?

How often do you meditate on what you believe are the fundamentals of leadership (i.e., without these qualities, a person cannot be effective as a leader)? Yes, we can read all of the leadership books (and we should); however, it is important that each of us develops personal mantras and decides how we will show up in the leadership space. The definitions of leadership shouldn’t be reduced to cookie cutter responses. Each of us, whether we lead on or off the clock, must decide for ourselves what effective leadership is and grow from the experiences that give us feedback regarding whether our perspectives on leadership get the job done. I’ve been stewing on the list below, both in terms of the items on the list and how I’ve ranked them. What are your thoughts? What would you add, take away, or re-order? 1 - Credibility with stakeholders, genuine commitment to the organization’s mission, and unequivocal support from key figures in the organization. 2 - Courage, integrity, EI (especially self-awareness and relationships that help you see how you are perceived), ability to handle risk, effective communication skills. 3 - Ability to grasp and influence the org’s vision, values, priorities, and goals. Ability to build relationships and trust in order to benefit from others’ knowledge and skills and to build meaningful buy-in for change. 4 - Ability/willingness/desire to regularly (perhaps, constantly) recalibrate and reaffirm the vision, values, priorities & goals. 5 - Ability to SWOT the external environment, including the interests and needs of competitors, how other entities directly and indirectly benefit from and are threatened by your business, and how your business. Knowledge of the industry you’re in, adjacent industries, and that of your clients. 6 - Commitment to mutual accountability. 7 - Personal financial reservoir to reduce likelihood of malfeasance and questionable decisions based on fear of personal financial loss (conversely, some research shows that group members become selfish and hard to work with when they need very little from the group of which they are a part). #allleadershipispersonal #aligneverything

My team created this super long video (lol) to make this point: harassment prevention is part of the foundation for leaders who want to build their cultures with intention. Believe it or not, a lot of my leadership and culture work starts with a client telling me about a harassment complaints. Here's why: an effective culture that enables your employees to do their best work is a culture that respects the law AND makes it clear what the leadership team values. When harassment training is done well, participants will tell you about everything from bullying to retaliation to feeling like the leaders aren't serious about protecting or respecting them. Surfacing these issues gives an organization an opportunity to do something before employees decide to visit an EEOC field office or consult an attorney. But lets be clear about something: harassment prevention training is NOT the same thing as DEI training; yet, many inclusion issues are steeped in discrimination and bias, whether conscious or not. Think of it this way: harassment laws are the sub-floor of the house and the least an organization can do. You can walk on it, but do you want to? Should you? If your organization's idea of culture focuses solely on avoiding blatantly discriminatory behaviors, you're walking on the subfloor. Culture is the floor that we see and use most heavily, and it is as decorative as it is functional. It impacts how furniture are decor are chosen, who is invited into the house, whether visitors see only the living room or are permitted into the living quarters. It even impacts the neighborhood in which the home is located and whether people even want to visit your home. What's the floor like in your house? Would your team say that it is clean? Is it warped in some places? Do you avoid looking at it and focus only on the windows in your office? I placed a link to a very simply harassment quiz in the comments. Take it and let's talk about your score...and your team.