Unlocking Leadership Through Authentic Communication

This episode is the reason I started this podcast. It’s all about communication being genuine. And the genuine communication, coupled with the interest in the person being successful helps with collaboration. And guess what? Collaboration under these circumstances truly solves problems AND develops strong relationships between you and your team members. Check this episode out and make having conversations like I demonstrate here your new standard practice.

How do high performing teams spend less time on emotions and more time on performing? I believe it has to do with the leader clearly communicating what the team can expect from their leader and what the leader in turn expects from their team. The leader’s job is to model what they commit to and hold the team accountable for reciprocating. This shifts the team from being emotional to taking action and feeling supported. In this episode, I show you how to get there.

It’s not rocket science. You need to do the thing to get the results. Nothing else will get you the results. In this episode, I give you three practical recommendations you can start using today to gain credibility and get results. And the best part? They’re not even hard.

Don’t let employees waste your time by asking you to have their conversations for them. In this episode, I’m empowering you as a leader to push back and have your employees resolve their own issues instead of putting you in the middle of them. After all, they have the grown-up title, the grown-up pay and the grown-up responsibilities. Now they get to use their grown-up words to maintain their own professional relationships on the job.

You can still say “no” to an employee and walk away with your relationship intact. But in order for this to happen, you, as a leader, must come to the table prepared to talk…not defend…but truly talk and problem solve. I’m going to show you how to overcome two of the biggest objections leaders give when it comes to approving requests. Make these simple adjustments and whether you can help your employee or not, they’ll see you as an advocate and not just the decision maker.

One of the worst situations a leader can be in is having to choose between losing an employee if they aren’t promoted or promoting an underprepared employee into a role they’ll likely fail in. Here, I go over why I NEVER recommend promoting people before they’re ready. I give you the steps and solid verbiage for how you can convey to the employee that they won’t be offered the job and I also tell you what you can do to keep them before they’re ready to be promoted. Now that’s a win win!

When I ask leaders if they have considered conducting “stay interviews” to help them understand how they can retain their top performers, many times I hear that they already do this. But what the leader describes to me is far from a stay interview. Let me help you with three keys to a successful stay interview. I’ll give you the best questions to ask during your first interview…there are only 3…and share some common pitfalls that leads can find themselves in and how to avoid them. Hope this helps!

I often hear from leaders that they’re worried about getting sued when it comes to addressing concerns with employees. Oftentimes, these worries aren’t things that will really come true. However, here, I talk about situations leaders unknowingly get themselves into that could put them at more risk than anything they came to me about in the first place. In this episode, I help you so you aren’t writing someone’s legal claim for them.

What is the threshold for making a performance conversation more formal? How many times do I need to address a performance issue before moving the discussion to the next disciplinary level? Well I hate to say this but the answer is…it depends. In this episode, I talk you through the rationale I use when making recommendations to leaders in terms of performance documentation and when to address at the next level.

In this episode, I’m going to help shift your thinking from a progressive performance document system to a system that meets the development needs of the employee. We’ll review the documentation levels and what we might use each level for. I’ll give you a high-level intro to a system that focuses on the process and not the person. And we’ll wrap up with how to double check your document level to make sure it’s appropriate. Let’s get great at the basics!