It doesn’t take long before direct reports of my clients ask me how to deal with a moody or unresponsive leader. It’s an interesting request, because the leaders they’re referring to are often either indifferent to—or in denial about—their impact.
Some leaders believe it’s their right to be moody. As a result, they reject the idea that they should be more receptive to what their people say or ask.
Yesterday, April 22, would have been my mother, Agatha’s 99th birthday. I’ve been thinking about her a lot this week, especially some notable, early achievements that happened before I was born.
She broke through a lot of barriers as a young adult. Although she majored in sociology in college, she also completed the requirements of a biology major, a field her Catholic college didn’t consider “appropriate” for young women.
One of my clients has an employee who consistently blames others for anything that goes wrong in his department. And, if he is criticized by his manager, he has an artful way of ignoring the message and pointing the finger elsewhere.
A culture of accountability offsets an environment of blame. This employee (we’ll call him Samuel) has unique technical expertise. Certainly, this talent is recognized and appreciated, but by not paying attention to the team leader’s guidance, Samuel has created more problems with clients than he has actually solved.
I recently led a workshop on leadership skills, during which several participants asked questions about managing people. A common theme underpinning these questions was their timidity as managers.
Several examples were related to employee entitlement and how these managers could more effectively deal with employees’ self-declared privileges.
One of my clients suffers from executive delegation syndrome. This occurs when successful leaders can’t get out of their own way by not delegating sufficiently.
As leaders advance professionally, often into executive level functions, they can’t keep doing everything they were doing up until this point. You may have been an account executive, for example, and now you lead a department of 14 accounts executives.
One of the things that helps people make progress is to consciously think about what they know now that they didn’t know last week (month, year, etc.). Incremental knowledge – no matter how small or big it may be – accumulates and adds to your professional development.
Why not ask this question at your weekly team meetings? If you take time to have a quick round robin, you may be pleasantly surprised with what you hear.
Are you suffering from too much work, not enough time, and (heaven forbid) your employees need guidance to do their jobs?
Good news, bad news, the same news: Get used to it.
You know the cliché: you can’t see the forest through the trees. One manifestation of this in the workplace is that when people are severely overworked, they can get distracted by minutia and miss the important things.
One of the best antidotes to the forest-trees issue is to keep your important goals at the top of your mind. If you are feeling sidetracked and are struggling making decisions, you can ask, “How does doing this help me achieve my goals?”
Famous last words. How many times has someone said that they would get back to you, complete a task, follow up on a lead, or get some information to you. . . and you get old waiting to hear something?
Now, in fairness, there have certainly been times when you’ve not followed up on things, so before you start ranting about everyone else, you might want to look in the mirror.
Did that title get your attention? Alas, I’m not talking about romantic encounters, rather, this is about appreciation. This being the “love month” – highlighted by Valentine’s Day on Saturday – makes this topic worth elevating.
Be generous in expressing appreciation to colleagues, team members, and clients – and anyone who provides service that you value. This can be as simple as “thank you.”