Stuck Between Gears – Vision matters.

Stuck Between Gears – Vision matters.

A couple of weeks ago, I pulled my bike off the garage wall, checked the tires, and started for a leisurely ride without a chartered destination. My goal was to spin and explore. My neighborhood is relatively flat, so shifting gears was not necessary. The ride was perfect, the weather clear, and the wind on my face exhilarating. Everything was going great, so why not keep going further, longer!

As I ventured out of my neighborhood, the trail gradually increased its incline. Within a few feet of navigating around a bend, a long hill caught me by surprise. My shift into lower gears in the lower-middle part of the steep hill was way too late, and the ride became a struggle. Making my way to the top of the hill took much more energy and stamina than it would have if I had shifted earlier.

Vision matters. Looking further ahead, planning, and shifting in advance would have made an enormous difference. You can guess what happened next. Keeping my eye on the road ahead, anticipating inclines and declines, engaging the chainring effectively, using my momentum on the incline’s approach, and dropping through the gears quickly and smoothly was the plan of action to ensure an enjoyable ride through the hills. Each hill was more easily navigable with a mindset of looking ahead, strategizing, and improving my shifting.

Looking forward, envisioning, and navigating obstacles is part of leadership. These days, we need to challenge and question whether the approaches we used before and during 2020 will serve us well in unknown future situations. Systematic, systemic, and rigorously creative and dynamic coaching and development programs add enormous value to organizations.  The past few months had heightened opportunities to interact with leaders who seek to enhance awareness and commitment. Their aim is for skilled workforces to envision possibilities, navigate uncertainty and challenges, effectively shift through change, appropriately pivot, and lead others to maximize their potential and continuously learn.

Coaching with a continuous improvement mindset results in engaged and empowered employees, enhanced critical and strategic thinking, and the ability to solve the problem of how to improve their work effectively. Process improvement tools and techniques are incomplete without continuous improvement coaching that harnesses our workforce’s untapped and unused potential. I believe leaders need masterful coaching skills. Coaching competencies that enable one to ask powerful questions in a logical sequence and the pragmatism to create a safe space for one’s team to uncover, explore, and evolve new options and solutions are learnable skills. Developing these coaching skills takes commitment, volition, and a willingness to learn from a highly certified coach who has walked this path before and possesses mastery and skill.

Many organizations strive to be more efficient, do more with less, and fully leverage their workforce’s competencies and skills. A Lean Coaching program using a continuous improvement mindset nurtures, empowers, and harnesses your workforce in innovative ways, encouraging an entrepreneurial mindset. As a result, workers’ initiatives have longer sustainability, individuals and teams are more creative, and higher quality conversations result in new insights, actions, and outcomes.

42nd CU Leadership Convention – Las Vegas

42nd CU Leadership Convention – Las Vegas

Bullying or Be Humble and Kind

Bullying or Be Humble and Kind

Last Tuesday I was driving to the airport to have lunch with two of my sons when this Tim McGraw song called Humble and Kind came on the radio. Normally I play music in the background, but I was compelled to listen to McGraw’s lyrics, and they were timely.

Early that same morning I had an executive coaching call, and the client was in tears. She said her manager and peers were bullying her about her perspective on diversity. We worked through the challenge, and she left the call recentered with a declaration on how to move forward with dignity in interactions with her manager and coworkers.

After I completed the call, my heart was troubled because there is bullying in my children’s’ schools, the workplace, in the news, and even on airplanes. It is important to me to guide and support children so they are kind; likewise it is equally important to me to help leaders create engaged, supportive, and equitable work cultures. In my deeply reflective space, I had questions: Where do we unintentionally bully? When are we so resolute in our perspective that we come across as a bully in the boardroom, team meeting, or performance review? Do we come across as a bully when we don’t get our way at work? How are we creating dignity for ourselves and others?

There is a fine line between being a bully and being kind. McGraw says:

“Hold the door say please say thank you

Don’t steal, don’t cheat, and don’t lie

I know you got mountains to climb but

Always stay humble and kind

When the dreams you’re dreamin’ come to you

When the work you put in is realized

Let yourself feel the pride but

Always stay humble and kind…

Bitterness keeps you from flying

Always stay humble and kind”

The Workplace Bullying Institute reports that 72% of workplace bullies are bosses. Bullying in the workplace creates a hostile work environment, which is not helpful for a sustainable organization. I borrowed this list of workplace examples of bullying from The Balance.*

● Denying an employee access to resources, assignments, projects, or opportunities

● Little or no feedback on performance

● Withholding information essential to performing one’s job

● Failing to invite someone to an essential meeting

● Threatening job loss

● Excessive monitoring or micromanagement

● Assigning tasks that cannot be completed by deadline and setting unrealistic and impossible goals

● Interference or sabotage

● Treating a worker differently than peers and coworkers are treated

● Excessive, impossible, conflicting work expectations or demands

● Inequitable and harsh treatment

● Invalid or baseless criticism, faultfinding, and unwarranted blame

● Accusatory or threatening statements

● Humiliation, public reprimands, or obscene language

*https://www.thebalance.com/types-of-bullying-2164322

I hope this blog helps each of us increase our sensitivity to workplace bullying, support corrective action, and be humble and kind.

 

Deedee Myers

Founder/CEO
DDJ Myers

 

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