Episode #70: Three Coaching Tips to Enhance Your Leadership Skills at Work

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

Transcript

Welcome to THE CAREER ACCELERATOR, the podcast where corporate managers will find tips and tools to deliver results through others.

Hello. Today I will share three coaching tips that can enhance your leadership skills at work. 

I’m your host, Percy Cannon. 

In our last episode I shared three of the top challenges I continue to see that interfere with cross-functional collaboration in the workplace.

1. Departments setting their own priorities and protecting their own resources, then not sharing them across other units. This can lead to inefficiencies and duplicated efforts.

2. Departments developing their own subcultures within the organization, which can lead to different communication styles and work practices. Bridging these cultural gaps is essential for effective collaboration.

3. Lack of clarity and alignment within leadership teams. Effective cross-functional collaboration requires strong leadership to drive initiatives and ensure that teams are working toward common goals. 

The solution I gave was to adopt a Team #1 approach. Team #1 can foster a culture of collaboration, implement integrated processes and systems, promote open communication, and ensure strong leadership and alignment of goals across the organization.

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

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.

Here are three coaching cases I’ve encountered that illustrate how to expand your leadership impact:

1.   The first case comes from a leader who had very strong analytical skills. In fact, she had built most of her sales career largely based on that strength.

When I worked with her, she had recently been assigned to lead a new team. She quickly developed a broad and deep understanding of the business data in her territory, and she challenged her team to act on the insights she had uncovered. Her team members, however, were not used to this level of analysis and felt a bit overwhelmed by the new boss.

After reviewing the team’s feedback on her leadership style, she acknowledged that she needed to adjust her communication method and overall approach with her team. She engaged them in the analysis of the raw data and worked with them to uncover any insights that could lead to improving sales results.

She focused on her analytical strength and learned how to be aware of the emotions that her original communication style produced within her team. The adjustments she made were an excellent example of how to combine a focus on your strengths with emotional intelligence elements.    

2.   The second case comes from another leader who was very successful at delivering business results, mostly by himself, with little credit given to his teammates from adjacent departments.

This silo approach left an untapped business opportunity to improve his results by leveraging his extended team resources.

Feedback from team members clearly indicated that he lacked awareness of the negative effect his leadership style had on his teammates. They did not trust him and did not enjoy working with him. 

When he became aware of the situation, he changed his approach, engaging his extended team on different projects where there was a clear interdependency between them. It took a while to gain their trust, but little by little this improved approach helped him leverage his extended team’s know-how and produce improved business results.

The focus he placed on teamwork and improving his emotional intelligence were key to dramatically improving his business performance and, as an important bonus, earn a promotion.  

3.   The third case I want to share comes from a leader who had a communication challenge with his boss. 

The issue was that in their regular one-on-one meetings, his boss would get constantly distracted with messages arriving at her laptop and phone. Dialogues were regularly interrupted as she answered these messages while he was still in the middle of a conversation.

Although the issue was a clear lack of emotional intelligence from his boss—for not being socially aware of the effect her behavior had on her employee—the solution had to come from the leader I was coaching.

We started by identifying the potential root cause for his boss’ behavior:

·        The one-on-one sessions lasted an hour.

·        It was obviously hard for the boss to stay away from her laptop and phone for what we assumed was “such a long time” for her.

This did not allow him to adequately cover key business and personal topics that needed her involvement. 

After jointly analyzing the situation and brainstorming for potential solutions, we decided to try the following approach:

·        What if he offered to reduce the sessions to 30 minutes, and ask his boss to close her laptop and phone during that time so she could give him her undivided attention?

·        Would the 30 minutes he could gain back be enough of a “prize” for her to abstain from checking her laptop and phone?   

He proposed this approach to his boss, and she agreed to try it. The outcome was mixed but positive overall. Although it wasn’t perfect, it was still an improvement on the original situation.

In summary, you heard three tips today on how to grow your leadership capabilities:

·        Focus on your strengths.

·        Develop your emotional intelligence.

·        Hone your teamwork skills.

Coaching these leaders helped them become more effective, adaptable, and empathetic, which translated into being better equipped to lead their teams, influence stakeholders, and drive organizational success.

If interested in learning more about my coaching programs, use the links provided on this platform to schedule a free, no-strings-attached, coaching call with me.

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. In the next one, I will continue to provide content that can help you become a more effective leader and a better team player. 

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

This is Percy Cannon, working to help you make the rest of your life…the best of your life®.