To generate engagement and create a great experience, employees need to feel valued. In order to feel valued, they first need to feel like they’re being heard and experiencing opportunities that contribute to the success of the business. This is where listening to understand plays an important role for a leader. Your challenge is to set aside the chaos of your day, the report that needs to be completed, the fire that needs putting out, and be fully present in every conversation.
The first thing to remember when practicing silence is that it’s ok to feel awkward when no one is speaking, that doesn’t make it wrong – and the more often you do it the more comfortable you’ll feel about it.
Outside of my own life experiences, I only understood the importance of being resilient when I became a mentor in the Juno Adaptive Leaders Program. The program partners working professionals with unemployed or disadvantaged community members for a twelve-week period with the objective of getting them back into sustainable employment. If you go with the definition that leadership is the …
My first leadership role in a corporate environment was in a contact centre. From the minute the phone lines opened in the morning, through to closing off in the evening, it was manic. If I wasn’t really disciplined at prioritising my work I could spend the whole day fighting fires and have zero time to work on improving the business. …
I had a conversation this week with a leader who, when I asked how work was going, said things were “unusually quiet which is concerning”. It reminded me of the pressure many leaders face when trying to keep their people busy during quiet times. It’s not unlike the pressure we feel when it’s crazy-busy and we don’t have time to …
