Lead From Here

Cross functional collaboration is such a buzzwordy business term, I realize that. That reality is, it's the single fastest way to create real change in a company.

Without a cross functional support a lot of improvements fail to launch, or launch and fail miserably...because for big initiatives to take hold, it requires that all parties involved have a say in how it's implemented. That isn't easy and this type of work isn't high on anyones priority list.

With that, it's on YOU to build those relationships. Setup monthly syncs, be open to comms about pain points and make sure they know you are there to help, not just drain more of their already limited time. If you make the effort and become a resource they can come to for help, you can start to put yourself in the drivers seat of pulling together good people that want to improve the business, not just their department.

Having cross functional leaders backing any idea or plan, increases it's chance for being implemented AND finding success once it's implemented. It's not easy, but it's worth it!

I hope this is helpful, thanks for being here! Reach out for questions or comments!

-------------------------------------------------

#leadership #leadercommunity #podcast #leadfromherepodcast #leadfromhere #buildingrealtionship #crossfunctionalrelationship #relationships

Most leaders, were more often than not at one point or another a solid technician in their field. They were good at their job and developed opinions and best practices on how things should be done. This at the core isn't a bad thing and is a good way to connect with your people and help them build their own careers.

Where this can go wrong is when a leader mistakes what they THINK is the best way to do things...and what ACTUALLY impacts the team negatively. Those are two very different things. They think because the person isn't doing it the way they did it, then something is wrong and it's bad. In reality, if the team isn't noticing it or being impacted by it, there isn't anything for you to push on...make a suggestion, sure, but it's not a scorecard item or a place to have a difficult convo.

Leaders are usually worried that because it's impacting them, it must be impacting the team and they just don't realize it. I can tell you that most teams, if something is negatively impacting them, you as their leader will hear about it, pretty consistently until the problem is solved. So if you feel something is off, the team's sentiment is the best place to start. If you aren't hearing anything about the situation that you are concerned about (and don't lead them to what you want to hear), then it's not worth your time or energy.

I hope this is helpful, thanks for being here! Reach out for questions or comments!

-------------------------------------------------

#leadership #leadercommunity #podcast #leadfromherepodcast #leadfromhere #personalpreference #negativeimpact #impact

Confidence is a slippery slope. There is a difference between confidence and arrogance. Confidence is not having the answers and being an insufferable know it all...it's about pulling all the talent you have around you to create the best possible strategy.

From there, it's all about being confident and making the call...followed by helping and supporting your team/peers/leaders through the process of implementing that strategy. Understand that you will get calls wrong, potentially fairly often. It's important to remember that you aren't looking for perfection, you are looking to make the best decision possible with the information that you have in front of you in that moment.

If you were wrong, own it. Don't mistake arroagance for confidence. Arrogant leaders, don't do the due diligence and put more things at risk than necessary...then also don't take the blame, it's someone elses fault. Own it. Everytime.

I hope this is helpful, thanks for being here! Reach out for questions or comments!

-------------------------------------------------

#leadership #leadercommunity #podcast #leadfromherepodcast #leadfromhere #confidence #confidentleader #leadwithconfidence

This is a touchy subject, it's important to know that depending on the health of your relationship with your leader, leadership group and company...this could get you in hot water or even worse fired. It SHOULDN'T be that way, but there are a lot of companies out there where this is a reality. This isn't advice specific to your life, take it as information to making your own decision.

The main key for this topic...you need to exhaust ALL options before doing this. You should have multiple documented attempts at getting your plan in place...if after multiple attempts, your leader passes on the opportunity to support you, then you can attempt to setup a skip level with his leader (if you don't already have skip levels).

In this meeting, it's important to not talk negative about your boss. It's important to just layout your request/plan/idea and see how his boss responds. If they ask, why you didn't bring it up to your boss, you can mention that you brought it to them a few times, but that they didn't seem interested in being involved, but that you would love for them to be included.

Here is where it lives on or dies...if your boss passes on it and your bosses boss passes on it...it's probably dead in the water. If you get lucky enough to have a convo with an Executive...then maybe throw the idea out, but I wouldn't schedule time beyond your bosses boss. If you can't get them to buy in, you are probably not going to get anyone else on board and more importantly, they may have context you aren't aware of (feel free to ask them if there are concerns that keep them from backing the idea).

I hope this is helpful, thanks for being here! Reach out for questions or comments!

-------------------------------------------------

#leadership #leadercommunity #podcast #leadfromherepodcast #leadfromhere #bypassingyourleader #aboveyourleader #overyourleader

Whether you are a new leader or a seasoned leader, there are going to be times when things just go bad. It can mean a lot of things, but as a leader, it's important not to jump to conclusions.

Most of the time, when things go bad, it's just a fluke. It's something that happened, that no one predicted, and it hurt. Whether that is a missed deadline, a failed launch or a bad strategy...they all started with the best intentions. So how do you respond when this happens?

It's up to you as a leader to not make brash decisions. You need to evaluate the situation and decide whether the issue was preventable, has happened before or was truly just a perfect storm of crap that lead to a bad outcome. If it was preventable, take that learning and make sure there is process to avoid it in the future. If it has happened before, understand what about the process change from before (if it happened) allowed for this to happen again. If it was just a fluke, perfect storm...there is probably nothing you need to do. Use your energy where you can make actionable difference, every issue doesn't require attention.

If through your digging and research you find that a single resource or team is the root cause of multiple similar issues...then perhaps it's time to take action to put coaching place or get HR involved. Whathever the outcome, it's on you to understand what happened and act accordingly.

I hope this is helpful, thanks for being here! Reach out for questions or comments!

-------------------------------------------------

#leadership #leadercommunity #podcast #leadfromherepodcast #leadfromhere #goesbad #roughtimes #resilience

Delivering bad news as a leader is an important part of leadership.

It's important because it's unavoidable and the way you deliver bad news can make or break a team. The words you use, the tone, the follow up and ownership all come together to either help or hurt the situation.

When you are delivering bad news, it's important to remember empathy. Your team is hearing bad news for the first time and it's coming from you. You might have had context or your haven't, but as a leader you usually have a bit more awareness than the average employee.

If you lack empathy, you can impact the teams ability to trust you more than necessary. If you are delivering bad news, there is an element of trust that will be broken regardless. With that being said, depending on how you act and communicate, you can dig yourself and your leadership team a bigger hole to dig yourself out of.

The wrong words, being too dismissive or careless can tell the team you really don't care. This is easy to avoid when your team or your department is impacted, but what about when partner orgs are affected? Your teams are all developing relationships cross functionally that you may or may not have awareness of...if you are flippant about bad news from another department, they could read that as careless, ignorant or heartless. All of those are bad when it comes to maintaining trust.

Most of the time bad news comes from sources beyond you, so it's important to make sure you communicate it with the utmost integrity and empathy.

I hope this is helpful, thanks for being here! Reach out for questions or comments!

-------------------------------------------------

#leadership #leadercommunity #podcast #leadfromherepodcast #leadfromhere #Autonomy #agency #autonomyvsagency

This topic is a fun one because a lot of people think Autonomy and Agency are the same thing! Spoiler alert, they aren't!

Autonomy means that your leaders give you the freedom and space to execute on what they think is best way for things to work to meet their strategic goals. Agency means your leaders trust you with making the call on what is necessary to deliver on the overall goal, without having a strong opinion on the how.

As you can guess Automony tends to lead to a much slower organization. The leaders that lead the teams, don't actually get to make the call on how to proceed, what to work on and how execute properly. They are being handed decisions and direction on everything and given the space to execute on it. Those decisions and direction are coming from people that have a ton on their plates, whether it's customers, other departments or a lot of reports...they are slower to make decisions and move things forward, simply due to their lack of bandwidth.

Teams that are build and given agency, are typically faster, more able to pivot and change direction if needed. They are also fast, they move quickly because they are more bought into the execution because they own it, from start to finish. They are building a plan to reach the high level executive goals and then owning and executing on a daily basis. Which allows for faster decision making, high levels of clarity and ownership and finally...faster delivery.

It's not easy to let go of the reigns for some executives, but the long term benefits to doing so can be massively beneficial to the business.

I hope this is helpful, thanks for being here! Reach out for questions or comments!

-------------------------------------------------

#leadership #leadercommunity #podcast #leadfromherepodcast #leadfromhere #Autonomy #agency #autonomyvsagency

Innovation is a word that is thrown around a lot and usually it's in the business setting. Don't get me wrong, innovation is important...but innovation isn't a hall pass to do whatever without oversight or guardrails.

A lot of people will argue that you can't manage innovation. I think it's important to understand that there are parts of the process of innovation that should absolutely be managed. The ideation and creative aspects shouldn't be managed or guardrailed...but the process for executing on a vision, should be. Too often innovative projects spin and spin and spin looking for the perfect execution of the idea instead of focusing on how to get it into the hands of people.

That is how innovation happens, you build something and you give it to people to challenge, give feedback and simply use! It can't be a thought experiment with not actionable outcomes...that is philosophy. As a leader it's your job to make sure that they stay focused on readiness and timelines, all while also challenging assumptions.

This may all feel very micromanagy...but the point is to make sure that we are seeing a return on investment for our projects focused on innovation.

I hope this is helpful, thanks for being here! Reach out for questions or comments!

-------------------------------------------------

#leadership #leadercommunity #podcast #leadfromherepodcast #leadfromhere #innovation #progress #innovationandprogress

This definitely fits into the difficult conversations category of Leadership. Essentially, if your people don't know where they are at any given time, your team isn't running as effectively as it could...and it's your fault.

Your job as a leader is to coach and support your team. If someone is struggling or if someone is crushing, it's up to you to tell them! It's up to you to layout the wins or layout the expectations that aren't being met. If you skip this or don't do it often enough (quarterly reviews aren't enough), then you aren't doing your job as a leader. If you aren't having regular one on ones, you should, if you are and multiple of them go by without you communicating the wins or the shortcomings...you aren't leading effectively and your team will suffer for it.

The best way to measure whether you are doing this effectively or not is to think of each of your people...if your boss were to do a skip level with each of them and he would bring up all the negative or positive things you have said about each person to them directly...would they be surprised by any of it? If the answer to any of those people is, yes they would be surprised, this is your opportunity to make a change.

I hope this is helpful, thanks for being here! Reach out for questions or comments!

-------------------------------------------------

#leadership #leadercommunity #podcast #leadfromherepodcast #leadfromhere #directleadership #communication #directfeedback

A lot of people feel that chaos is just a way of life. While it is an inevitability at times, it should NEVER be a way of life.

People are just less effective in extended chaos and it adds the risk of burnout to all parties involved. The reality is, extended periods of chaos a unhealthy for you, your teams and your business. It leads to poor decision making, unclear strategy and sloppy execution.

While there will be times that you need to work with and through chaos, it's important as a leader to take steps to find the source of the chaos and then put an end to it. If not in the immediate, you have to build a plan to have it removed.

This isn't an easy task, especially when partner departments or even company executives live in chaos themselves...they tend to make it more difficult to remove it...but nonetheless, it's up to you as a leader to effectively communicate the shortcomings of the lifestyle with data and insights.

I hope this is helpful, thanks for being here! Reach out for questions or comments!

-------------------------------------------------

#leadership #leadercommunity #podcast #leadfromherepodcast #leadfromhere #chaos #chaoticleadership #chaosinleadership