Michel encourages leaders to be mindful when communicating, particularly because of the power positions you hold that sometimes your intent and your impact are not the same. 

Intent is how you think or feel and impact is how your words, decisions, actions, make others feel.

We are not communicating to blank slates and the processor that the other person uses is shaded by their own experiences, by mistakes that others have made, by bad experiences, by their lived experiences, childhood trauma and so on.

These all affect how your message is processed. Be mindful of that.  Our intent is transparent to us so we assume it's equally clear to others and that our message is received in the same spirit.

When we cut off someone,  we expect them to be gracious to us because it's an honest mistake. When someone else cuts us off, it's not an honest mistake. We call them names and we make all kinds of assumptions about why they cut us off. 

This is the called the fundamental attribution error. It's a process where we judge ourselves by our intentions and we judge others by their actions.

As leaders we need to be mindful when communicating that we hold a little bit more power.  Our intentions may be good, but the impact can be devastating because of the power differential. 

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You are the part in partner. You are part of something bigger than yourself. Part of a team, an organization, part of a community, part of something much bigger. And so when you recognize yourself as part, then you understand the importance of partner in because you do not complete the puzzle.

In this episode, Michel shares that as a leader you're going to be held accountable to create, to cultivate a culture of wellbeing, one that provides equitable inclusive employee experiences, one that's adaptable, accountable and provides employee development opportunities.

That's no ordinary undertaken and therefore leadership is more than anything else.

This form of leadership is about the influence process. No one leader can create all of those environments. Leaders have to share leadership across the organization with a team of self leaders. Who also influence the process towards the vision and the goal and towards cultivating that culture.

They work together to create spaces for experimentation, exploration, education; spaces to make mistakes, to failures, spaces for peer leadership, spaces for shared leadership and spaces for connection and partnership.

In order to be able to communicate and partner effectively, we have to be very good self leaders. We have to be able to communicate and partner within our teams, across teams, across organizations, across stakeholder groups, and as the world shifts, relationship demands shifts and people's styles and preferences shift.

Michel encourages you to get obsessed with partnering. Partner across culture, partner, across department, across interest groups, across geographic lines.  Communicate in the language of partnership, and intentionally pursue meaningful partnerships. 

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Communication Rule #1: Communicate with others they way they want to be communicated with. You wouldn't communicate with a child the same way you communicate with an interviewer. You should not communicate with everybody the same way. 

In this episode Michel shares that your capacity to communicate is often seen as an indicator of ability, intelligence, competence, confidence. It's one of the most important tools for professional and personal success. It helps you to influence others. 

Influence is critical to success whether you're doing sales, leadership, or you just want to get things done. When you overlook the importance of these keys in the communication process, poor communication is the result. Poor communication is usually a symptom of another problem. That's why we talk about context. 

As a master communicator you need to develop the skill to flex your style, to meet other's needs. Communication is interactive, iterative, inclusive. It's flexing your style and dialoging.

Asking questions, sharing stories, filtering noise, filtering ego, filtering emotions, shifting your mindset and perspectives very frequently and be intentional about improving the way you communicate with others are among the tips Michel shares in this value packed episode.

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The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place, according to George Bernard Shaw.

In this episode, Michel shares that sometimes you think you've communicated your point, but the message has not been received or understood, the meaning has not been transferred because what you said is not what was received. Communication requires us to exchange information and meaning through a common system.

The challenge with a common system is that we all have different stories about the world. We all have different backgrounds. We all take in different information and we interpret the information in our own unique ways according to the book, "Difficult Conversations." She shares her own personal story that highlights how this is a challenge for communication.

One key skill that helps us to develop this common system of exchanging meaning is perspective taking.

This is using alternative points of view. Entertaining, incorporating, inviting different perspectives. A perspective is a lens. It's a frame. If it is an angle. It's a way of seeing. Our thoughts are limited by that frame, by our lenses. It's very important for us to always be thinking about strategies to broaden our thinking, to explore multiple ways of seeing.

Perspective taken is a skill and it can be learned. Michel provides many tips to develop perspective taking.  

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The ground shifted! It shifted for you, for me, for all of us.

 People became more aware of some of the social issues, mental health, social justice, wellbeing, care community, a sense of belonging, more awareness of the importance of those at work. More awakenness about the inequities around us. Different attitudes, emerged about all of the things that became more clear. People began to hold us more accountable, particularly us as leaders, much more accountable. For how we do our work and certainly hold us accountable for taking action. Those are just some of the things that shifted.

 
In this episode Michel highlights that most of these shifts took place below the surface. She encourages us as leaders to always remember and pay attention to context to reduce risks. 

 It's always important to understand context. It is even more essential coming out of this pandemic. Nothing is the way you left it. Not the environments you used to frequent, not the people you are speaking with. They're not the same, even though they may appear the same above the surface, much of what's shifted has shifted below the surface. 

 Check your mindset to be better prepared for what’s ahead.

Take five and set aside time to think about what can you do differently? How will you do it differently and what will be the benefit of doing it differently? Take time to identify areas where you have a fixed mindset and then intentionally shift it. These are the riskiest areas for leaders if we don’t identify them before others do. Consider the system of mindsets that you're going to cultivate to help you unpack your best post pandemic self.

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In this episode, Michel discusses five lessons that loss can teach us about how to lead. She shares that last July, she lost her mom to stage four cancer. In December, she lost her aunt in law to stage four cancer and then in May she lost another aunt in law to stage four cancer. 

Just three of the painful losses she chose to highlight. This episode could be entitled how cancer took so much from her last year or some variation on that. 

Instead, she takes the opportunity to share the top 5 lessons she learned about how we can better lead based on what loss teaches. Michel admits she is speaking to herself as much as she is sharing these reflections and lessons with you:

1. Create a Culture of gratitude
2. Create a Culture of well being. Unplug from time to time. Do good for your people.
3. Culture of care, compassion, empathy, forgiveness. Give yourself and others wiggle room. Difference between big and small issues and create an environment to make mistakes and take risks.
4. Create  greater connection and community by building deeper relationships with more people.  Your legacy is all about people. Build connections, learn from each other, share best practices, tips and tricks. We belong to each other.
5. Do it now. Time flies. This calls for bold leadership. Do the things you want to do but are scared to do. Don't get caught sleeping, wake up and lead.

Michel has learned is that there will always be something coming up. So she wants to encourage you to step forward with a bolder leadership coming out of this pandemic, coming out of such great loss globally. Coming out of any personal losses you may have experienced as well.

Leadership is shifting. leadership is demanding more. Let us go out and connect more with people. Let us deepen the relationships that we have. Let's extend the community we're a part of. Let's include more people. Let's get to know them, not just their names. Let's go deeper to learn about their stories, to see how we connect with each other. And let's move this ball forward. 

What was the nature of your losses over the past couple years? What lessons did you learn that can inform our leadership?

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In this episode Michel encourages us to run our own race, walk our own path and pursue our own journey.

She shares the story of a pregnant elephant and a dog to highlight why we shouldn’t compare our journey with others.

This episode is jammed packed with tips and motivation to helps us run our own race including these:

1. Define the race you run based on who you are, don’t compete with anyone else
2. Make sure to take time to understand the value of your own race
3. Know who you are and know the nature of your skills, goals and method of work
4. Run the race. Take the necessary actions to stay on track
5. Be aware of the field that you're running against in this race.

Michel invites you to be clear on who you are and the quality of the goals that you are producing. Determine if you are in this to produce a few elephants or many puppies.

The race you run is up to you. Which race are you running?

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• Communication
• Soft Skills
• Senior Leadership Training

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In this episode, Michel invites us to take a moment to reflect on our goals as we come to the middle of the year. 

She suggests we go back and think about the goals we set for ourselves at the beginning of the year provides some questions consider:

How am I doing on the goals that I've set myself at the beginning of the year, now that I'm at the midway point.

Do they provide a transformation? Do they make my life better? Do they move me forward? Do they make me feel better? Do they impact the lives of others? Do they bring about change in my community, family, world? 

Consider if you are setting goals that don’t require you to stretch? Can you update your goals to make them stretch you a little bit more? 

Then she invites us to take a moment to reflect on our process so far this year.

What's working well for you?

What you need to do to make it better?

What is getting in the way?

She shares her own personal reflection to help us see how we may be unconsciously telling ourselves stories that affect goal attainment.

So whatever you're doing right now, Michel invites us to pause. We're only at the mid year. If we start to pick up the pace, if we start to make changes right now, and if we refocus, we can really UpSkill our goal setting process, our goals, our achievements to achieve more by year end.

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You may have heard the popular saying that some things cannot be taught, they must be learned or experienced. 

Some things will only become clear when we engage in it ourselves. When we give ourselves the opportunity to be enlightened, to shift our mindset, to open up our frame of reference, to disrupt our usual ways of doing things.

In this episode Michel shares an experience she recently had, which brings home the message that somethings cannot be taught, they must be experienced.

Michel attended a three day long wedding celebration including Hindu, non-religious and a Christian elements.

Michel labels the event as a masterclass in how we should be consider living. It highlights the level of openness that we need and the way that love  cuts across religious, racial and other boundaries. 

Carefully designed experiences allow us to shift from being quick to reject, resent or fight against ideas to authentically connecting with each other. When we engage and share stories we learn how we are actually so much more similar than we are different. We learn to appreciate our differences.

These opportunities for engagements, and experiences that bring people together from disparate places,  to recognize that we are a lot more similar than we are different are among the recommendations Michel makes in this episode.

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• Communication
• Soft Skills
• Senior Leadership Training

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If the only thinking you do is automatic, that is risky for you as a leader.

As Leaders, we are required to intentionally think and about our thinking. 

In this episode Michel provides tips and tools to UpSkill your thinking so you can thrive in this more complex Leadership space.

Although we think continuously, many of us are not mindful, conscious or intentional about our thinking.

In this uncertain business environment intentional thinking is critical for leaders to survive and thrive.

Listen to the simple steps Michel provides that every leader at any stage in the leadership journey can easily implement right now.

At UpSkill, we are building a community of UpSkillers, learning and growing together.

Please listen, subscribe and share!

With decades of combined leadership experience, team of coaches, facilitators and subject matter experts can help to UpSkill your organization.

We offer corporate training, coaching, e-learning courses and consulting services for:

• Inclusive Leadership
• Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
• Communication
• Soft Skills
• Senior Leadership Training

Email us: [email protected]

Learn more: www.upskillcommunity.com