The Career Accelerator

Today I want to share three coaching tips that can help you grow your leadership capabilities:

1.   Focus on your strengths.

2.   Develop your emotional intelligence.

3.   Hone your teamwork skills.

Mastering them can help leaders like you become more effective, adaptable, and empathetic, which translates into being better equipped to lead your teams, influence stakeholders, and drive organizational success.

If interested, schedule a free, no-strings-attached, coaching call with me @ https://calendly.com/percy-cannon/30min

One area I continue to see in corporate leadership teams that needs improvement is the low levels of cross-functional collaboration, which hinders their operational efficiency and strategic alignment. Simply put, each team tends to run like a separate entity.

The recipe that I give to leadership teams, which I originally learned from best-selling author Patrick Lencioni, is to have the leadership team become team #1 for its members.

Team #1 can foster a culture of collaboration, implementing integrated processes and systems, promoting open communication, and ensuring strong leadership and goal alignment across the organization.

As a leader, consider giving Team #1 a try. 

What can a people manager like you do to reap the benefits of one-of-one meetings with your employees?
The short answer is to focus on “what’s in it” for your employees. How do you do that? 
Listen to this episode for three tips to significantly improve the engagement, trust, performance management, and overall business impact of each of your employees through well run one-on-one meetings.

If you want to minimize politics and confusion, improve your organization’s productivity and the morale of your employees, and lower attrition of good people, consider applying the 4-step model of Organizational Health:

1.   Align the behaviors of your team,

2.   Align the intellectual clarity of your team by answering 6 critical questions,

3.   Over-communicate this clarity to the rest of the organization, and

4.   Reinforce this clarity through simple human and business systems.

Contact me so we can set up a free, 16-question assessment developed by Patrick Lencioni’s company, The Table Group, to determine where your organization has the biggest opportunity for growth. 

How would you rate your capabilities to generate business results in 2023 through these three key audiences?

1. Through your direct reports: Unlike individual contributors, who mostly deliver results by themselves, as a people manager, you are largely dependent on the business impact generated by your direct reports. 

2. Through your colleagues: As a team member, your objective should be to ensure alignment on the few important collective priorities that the team will pursue and the role that each person will play in delivering such goals. 

3. Through your boss: Building a strong working relationship with your boss is crucial for success. Understand their communication preferences, seek feedback, and show a genuine interest in the overall success of the organization. 

Listen to this podcast to find out where you did well and where you can do better in 2024 and beyond.

Share your highs and lows in the comments section.

Today I want to share my reactions to the top three messages I took from the excellent book No Rules Rules, written by Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings with Erin Meyer. The book is full of provocative practices that have influenced Netflix’s continued success during the last two decades.

1. Build your “talent density.” Employee quantity is not the way to assess your talent strength. What counts is the quality of the people on the team.
2. Err on the side of providing feedback, above, below and sideways. Start with one baby step: Take the initiative. Ask to receive feedback from your employees.
3. Treat others the way they, not you, want to be treated. Become self-aware of the way you treat others and be curious to learn how each other person prefers to be treated.

If you like what you heard today, please rate, subscribe, or follow this podcast and share it with your coworkers and friends.

In this episode you will listen to the top three leaderships lessons I took from the book The Wisdom of the Bullfrog, recently written by retired U.S. Navy Admiral William McRaven.
1.    The first one was Admiral’s McRaven’s definition of leadership: “Leadership is accomplishing a task with the people and resources you have, while maintaining the integrity of your institution.” I like how this definition combines delivering results, using available resources, and completing the task within the construct of your personal and organization’s values and principles. All three elements have got to be there to excel as a leader.
2.    The second lesson I shared was: “When in command, command.” If you are in a leadership position, lead. Don’t delegate the key decisions.
3.    And the third leadership lesson was: “Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.” Become the leader who takes the initiative and motivates and expects this type of behavior from their team.
Practice one or more of these three lessons to become a better leader. 

Today I will provide four tips to help you engage in more productive conflict at work. 

Where would you rate your typical team meetings on what best-selling author Patrick Lencioni calls “The Conflict Continuum”?

Would you say that your meetings are mostly benign, with your team members very guarded and slow to make decisions so nobody will get upset or feel challenged? Lencioni calls these “Artificial Harmony” meetings.

Or do your meetings fall more toward the other end of the continuum, where you may have mean-spirited discussions and even personal attacks?   

To achieve positive resolutions in your meetings, here are four tips that can move the needle to somewhere close to the middle of the conflict continuum. The middle is the place where great teams maximize the power of healthy conflict:

1.  Agree on a set of ground rules for how to debate. When I coach leadership teams, I usually ask them to share any rules they may already have for conducting their meetings. Most of these rules focus on the “logistics” of starting and ending on time, sticking to a single topic or prioritizing them if there’s more than one, not interrupting the speaker, and others.

2.  Ensure there is 100% participation in the discussion. Silence should not be an option, regardless of whether the meetings are remote, in-person, or hybrid. Having said this, the leader should be aware that each team member addresses conflict differently, based on their personalities, culture, and other personal views.
This is where personality tools, such as DiSC help uncover the different discussion styles of the team members.

3.  Beware of the emotions in the room and manage them, starting with your own. All of us have emotions, and some topics may elicit a type and level of emotions that can easily derail a meeting and potentially harm relationships. 
In terms of your own emotions, as my friend and mentor Bob Burg suggests, imagine there are two versions of yourself in a car: a calm one and an emotional one. Which of the two should be in the driver’s seat? Don’t let the emotional-you wreck the car with out-of-control behaviors.
And if you spot the emotional level in the room reaching unproductive and potentially offensive levels, call for a break or wrap up the discussion to be continued at another time.
You could also include a ground rule on what to do if emotions reach a potentially high level so everybody understands how to manage the situation.   

4.  Listen and summarize what you heard to confirm your understanding. In a recent episode, I proposed to listen more and speak less. Maybe this is why we have two ears and one mouth.
You can take this practice to the next level by playing back what you think you understood from the other person. There are at least three benefits for doing this:

a.  The other person will feel listened to and will be more open to discussing different perspectives.

b.  You will buy time to prepare your response to the other person.

c.   You will confirm if what you understood was indeed what the other person wanted to communicate.

If you want to become a better influencer, listen to this interview with Bob Burg, the co-author of The-Giver series of books.
Bob will share the Five Secrets of Genuine Influence, which were presented in his latest book "The Go-Giver Influencer." 
The 5 secrets are:

1. Master Your Emotions.
2. Step into the Other Person’s Shoes
3. Set the Frame. 
4. Communicate with Tact and Empathy.
5. Let Go of Having to be Right.  

If you want to know more about Bob Burg, visit his website at:
www.burg.com
Want to schedule a consultation call with Percy Cannon?
https://calendly.com/percy-cannon/30min
Want to learn more about Percy Cannon and his partners at Grupo Azimuth?
https://www.grupoazimuth.com

Today I share three concrete actions you can start working on in 2023 to help you become a better leader by listening more and speaking less.