Great leaders build success by learning to think differently from the average person.  Successful people have sought to master a single skill: The ability to THINK CRITICALLY. 

Critical thinking is the process of careful and deep thinking about a subject or idea. It includes being able to analyze and weigh facts, to carefully reason, and to make insightful connections. 

Here are five tips: 

1. Learn To Accept Negative Feedback When someone criticizes your work, it doesn't feel good. You'll be tempted to defend yourself, or to close your mind.  Don't. Steps to accepting negative feedback Recognize its value Ask for it regularly Reward it. Thank people for it Never punish negative feedback Listen actively Don’t respond right away Don’t refute the criticism or justify yourself Don’t take offense. Don’t interpret it as a personal attack.

2. Block Time To Think The whirlwind and urgency of the day is a very strong pull on your time.  But don't confuse motion with progress.  Don't confuse urgent with important.  Critical thinking is hard work. So, when it comes time to analyze facts, block out time in your calendar to engage in deep thought, because it is important. Use some of the following questions to help you analyze: What is the problem preventing you from being successful? If you could solve the problem, what does success look like, how do you measure it? What are the facts and assumptions? What are some alternative solutions to achieve the goal? What are the pros and cons of each alternative? What is the best solution given the goal and your practical constraints? 

3. Create The Conditions For Insight Quiet moments: Quiet moments help reduce external perceptual competition (e.g., sights, sounds) for our conscious attention or awareness, allowing the brain to detect weaker signals more readily. Looking inward: Looking inward, or thinking about your thinking (also known as metacognition), shifts the focus of awareness away from older, more established solutions, and away from external input. It also can shift your focus to your thought process itself, as opposed to just the content of your thinking. Positive emotion: Research suggests people are more likely to solve more problems with insight when in a positive mood than in a negative mood. Distance from the problem: When you walk away from the problem and allow your attention to drift, this frees up the conscious mind from focusing on very strong and well-rehearsed signals. 

4. Zoom In and Zoom Out One pitfall that prevents critical thinking is focusing only on the detail and the short-term. Zooming Out is essential to big picture decision making. It helps you to put things in context and stress principles that are important, but perhaps you may miss some subtleties and nuances. Zooming In brings the details into sharp focus. Opportunities may look large and compelling, but may lack context.  One trap of Zooming In is that the constraints of the details become "the problem to solve" rather than trying to achieve the original outcome. The best leaders work the zoom button in both directions.  When faced with a crisis, they can address the immediate situation while seeking structural solutions. They can zoom in to see problems while zooming out to look for similar situations, root causes, and principles or policies that will help prevent the crisis from recurring. 

5. Take a Break From The Problem You'll benefit by taking a break and letting all the facts settle in your mind. This allows you space to learn and adapt from your experience and room to process what you have been thinking about and release negative emotions. Learning to think critically can take you and your work to the next level.

In this chat I talk about how to become more effective at delegating.

First I talk about barriers to delegating.

Next I talk about the benefits to delegating

I talk about part of your job as a leader being to

I make a case for building capability and capacity on your team

I explore what it looks like when work is getting done at the right level and when it is not

I close with several tips to delegating

Spend the time up front to clarify and align on

Delegate the right level task/objective for each team member’s skill set

Allow time for learning and growth

Create lists of questions or a template

Set up a good cadence of accountability

Be patient and supportive

Resist the urge to “tell” or jump in and take over.

Do not abdicate accountability

Recognize and celebrate success

Don’t give up.  Developing your team and learning to delegate takes time.

In this chat, I talk about 7 things all great leaders do.  For some of these things, I have already discussed in detail in previous podcasts so I'll point out throughout this chat.

1. Great leaders improve how you are showing up

- Podcast on EQ

2. Great leaders give meaning to the team

- Podcast on Purpose and goals

3. Great leaders build a high performance teams

- Podcast on Credibility, Difficult conversations

4. Great leaders know how to motivate individual team members

5. Great leaders develop their people continuously

6. Great leaders see their job as improving the effectiveness of the team

7. All of this is centered around great meaningful communication.  

And they repeat this cycle endlessly.

In this episode, I chat with my good friend Gustavo Guillemin about Communicating Across Cultures.  Gustavo is a published author, a Professor, and had delivered TEDTalks.  

The world today is Globalized.  We can often find ourselves in situations where we need to communicate effectively with people from different cultures.  This is not just a necessity at work. It is highly likely that your neighbors or the people you socialize with come from different cultures.

Gustavo and I share stories about times when we both made notable mistakes while communicating with people of different cultures.  

Gustavo also shares the Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory.  This is a framework for cross-cultural communication, developed by Geert Hofstede. It shows the effects of a society's culture on the values of its members, and how these values relate to behaviors, using a structure derived from factor analysis. 

If you work or communicate with people from different cultures, you'll find this chat very informative.

This chat is somewhat an extension to my previous chat on the differences between a "Manager or a Leader".  

In this chat, I delve deeper into the characteristics that define great leaders.

In my career I often see folks getting promoted to “Manager” and that is typically because they were a great operator.  They were the best technician, or the best barista or the best sales person, but in the end their team was unhappy, or overall they didn’t achieve what they were supposed to so this person ultimately failed as a leader.

The biggest reason for this is that being a Manager and being a Leader are two totally different skill sets and the individual contributor who was promoted to Manager, was never trained as a leader.

In this chat, I’ll explore the different behaviors of a Manager vs a Leader.

Before we run through a side-by-side comparison, let’s talk for a second about who can be a leader.  As I talked about before, many people see Managers are Leaders.  I’ll submit that you can have leaders at any level in the organization.  This will make more sense as we run through the side-by-side comparison.  Also, as we run through this list, think about other leaders to see how these attributes align.  Leaders such as the President of the United States, or the informal leader of your own social group.  Thinking about how leaders behave in a different context will help you better grasp the ideas.

Purpose:  Managers provide stability and predictability; Leaders drive change

Focus:  Managers manage the work, Leaders lead people by inspiring and motivating

Vision:  Managers look at short-term / today; Leaders look at long-term / Horizon

Direction:  Managers follow existing direction / maintain status quo; Leaders provide new direction and change the norm

Values:  Managers value results; Leaders value achievement

People:  Managers view people as subordinates; Leaders view people as followers 

Control:  Managers exert formal influence; Leaders exhibit personal charm

Appeals to:  Managers appeal to the head; Leaders appeal to the heart

Culture:  Managers endorse the culture; Leaders shape the culture

Approach:  Managers plan details around constraints; Leaders sets and leads direction

Decision Making:  Managers make decisions; Leaders facilitate decision making

Rules:  Managers makes the rules; Leaders break the rules

Action:  Managers tend to be more reactive; Leaders tend to be more proactive

Risk:  Managers minimize risk; Leaders take risk

Concerned:  Managers are concerned about doing the thing right; Leaders are concerned about doing the right thing

In this chat, we explore Creativity and Innovation with Fatima Donaldson.  

We talk about what inspired her passion for photography in her early years, and explore the struggles she had as a creative throughout her career and what she did to overcome them.  We talk about the importance of courage, a great support system of friends and family, being properly educated in your craft, and finally applying a process to creativity and innovation.

Fatima applies her expertise in marketing, layout & design and business management along with creative freedom to interpret how products, services, lifestyles and ideas can be created photographically. In all those years, Fatima has worked in very diverse settings all over the world to create unique captures customized for the project whether that was a Fortune 100 advertising campaign or an upcoming exhibit and everything in between. The projects vary as do the industries. Her creativity is applied to her extensive body of work serving as the common thread that weaves her style into every image.

In addition to her commercial work, Fatima also creates unique captures during her travels. In her words, "I love to capture a moment...the moment of being". She shares these images at her gallery in The Silos part of the Sawyer Yards in Houston.  It is open every 2nd Saturday for Open Studios from 12-5pm and by appointment.  You can also see and purchase her fine art work at www.fatimaphotography.com/

Are you in a situation where you find that you need to have that "difficult conversation" with someone? 

Whether you're at work and one of your team members is just not producing the result you're looking for, or in your personal life, someone is displaying some undesirable behavior that you want them to stop immediately.

To start, you should recognize that the reason you are having to have this difficult conversation is most likely because someone is resisting you in some form or fashion.

And there's a reason for this.  I believe that when we can't make progress with someone who is resisting us, it comes down to one thing.  

Every person on earth has a need to be seen and heard and know what they said mattered.  They want to be validated.  

You are more likely to get someone to commit to you if you give them a chance to hear what they have to say.  Then you consider it when you are making a decision and even if you decide against the path they wanted to go, I believe they will be more likely to commit if they were seen and heard and concerns considered than if they were not.  

It also increases the likelihood of them committing if you explain why you decided on the path you did and how their input was taken into consideration. 

But, despite your best efforts, if you still find yourself in a position to have a difficult conversation.  How can you accomplish this?

We'll use a model called AFIRM.  It's an acronym that spells out the steps you should take.  Here is what each of the letters of the acronym stand for.

A = Ask

F = Fact

I = Impact

R= Request

M = Mutuality

Remember what I said in the beginning.  You will get resistance if people don't feel validated, so when you are going through the AFIRM model, don't ram your view down their throat.  You need to solicit their view and thoughts on each and every one of these points.

Let's start with the Ask.  The purpose of this step is to be able to broach the conversation with them in a manner where they will not be defensive and be open minded. This is probably the most difficult of all the steps.  If you know they feel tension in the relationship consider the best time to even broach the ask.  

Next talk about the facts.  Don't first launch in with your version of the facts.  Ask them what they think the facts are.  And we need to distinguish between fact and opinion or judgment.  The goal that you are trying to accomplish here are the facts about their behavior.  Remember, the reason you are having this conversation is because they are exhibiting behavior you feel needs correcting. 

Once we have the facts established.  Now comes the "impact" of their behavior.  The goal of this step is to help them understand the negative consequences of the behavior you established in the fact step. Share what you think is the impact of their behavior, but also be prepared to hear their side.

Once they understand the negative impact of their behavior, you should make a request of them.  Be clear about the outcome you want.  This step is what most people jump to when they launch into difficult conversations.  Hopefully you can see how futile it is to start here.  It should not be a specific how?  Like, Never talk to Bob that way again.  A better way is to express the outcome you want and have them figure out how to accomplish it. 

Finally the M in AFIRM stands for mutuality.  At this point, you have not yet gotten their commitment. The goal of this step is to get that commitment.  What you want out of this are specific actions and the time those actions will be done.  Specifically get them to commit.

I hope this model gives you are framework on how to have difficult conversations.

I often get asked, "How do I increase my credibility?"  Maybe you are starting out in your career or you got a new job or got assigned to work with a new team, or you've been on a team for some time, but just don't seem to be getting the merit you feel you earned.

One of the best books I read on building credibility is called The Speed of Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey.

In the book, Covey talks about what he calls "The 4 Cores of Credibility".

Core 1 is Integrity, Core 2 is Intent, and together these make up one's character.  Core 3 is Capabilities and Core 4 is Results, and together these last two make up one’s competency.

Integrity - This is what most people think about when they think of trust.  To many, integrity basically means honesty.  While integrity does include honesty, it includes much more.  In the book, Covey defines Integrity as being congruent inside and out.  A congruent person acts in harmony with their deepest values and beliefs.

Intent - This has to do with our motives, our agenda, and resulting behavior.  Trust grows when our motives are straightforward and based on mutual benefit - in other words, when we genuinely care not for ourselves, but also for the people we interact with, lead or serve.  When we suspect a hidden agenda from someone or we don't believe they are acting in our best interest, we are suspicious about everything they say or do.

Capabilities- These are the abilities we have that inspire confidence - our talents, attitudes, skills, knowledge, and even style. They are the means we use to produce the final core - results.

Results - Refer to your demonstrated track record, your performance, your getting the right thing done at the right time.  If we don't accomplish what we are expected to do, it diminishes our credibility.  If on the other hand, when we achieve the results we promised, we establish a positive reputation or performing, being a producer, and... our reputation precedes us.

Covey talks about whether we're aware of it or not, people notice the 4 cores.  They affect your credibility.  Understanding them will give you conscious competence.  It's like putting your trust glasses on.  It will enable you to see beneath the surface, to see specifically why you - or others - are trusted or not.  It will enable you to pinpoint what you can do in your own life to increase trust, and how you can work with others to help them increase trust at work and at home.

This was just a brief summary of the book “The Speed of Trust” by Stephen M.R. Covey.  If you are interested in learning more, I encourage you to buy the book.