Unlock the leadership secrets that will transform your team's culture and performance with Jenni Catron on the Lead Culture Podcast. As we explore the eight indispensable skills every manager should master, I'll guide you through the intricacies of self-leadership, emotional intelligence, and the multifaceted role of a modern manager. Whether you're a seasoned leader or aspiring to step into a management role, these insights will equip you with the strategies to foster a thriving workplace environment. Expect to emerge with renewed confidence in providing feedback that nurtures rather than undermines, cultivating a culture of respect that permeates every level of your organization.
We need your help to get the Lead Culture podcasts in front of more leaders! There are three simple things you can do that truly help us:
Unlock the leadership secrets that will transform your team's culture and performance with Jenni Catron on the Lead Culture Podcast. As we explore the eight indispensable skills every manager should master, I'll guide you through the intricacies of self-leadership, emotional intelligence, and the multifaceted role of a modern manager. Whether you're a seasoned leader or aspiring to step into a management role, these insights will equip you with the strategies to foster a thriving workplace environment. Expect to emerge with renewed confidence in providing feedback that nurtures rather than undermines, cultivating a culture of respect that permeates every level of your organization.
We need your help to get the Lead Culture podcasts in front of more leaders! There are three simple things you can do that truly help us:
The Art of Leadership Network. Hey leaders, welcome to the Lead Culture Podcast, part of the Art of Leadership Network. I'm your host, Jenni Catron. Each week, I'll be your guide as we explore powerful insights and practical strategies to equip you with the tools you need to lead with clarity and confidence and build a thriving team. My mission is to be your trusted coach, empowering you to master the art of self-leadership so you'll learn to lead yourself well, so you can lead others better. Each week, we'll take a deep dive on a leadership or a culture topic. You'll hear stories from amazing guests and leaders like you who are committed to leading well. So let's keep learning on this leadership journey together. Friends, today I'm going to talk about eight critical skills managers need to positively lead culture. You hear me use the phrase often. The podcast is named Lead Culture because I really do believe those two things go hand in hand, and what I find frequently is that equipping our managers, our mid-level leaders, is really critical to successfully leading cultures.
Speaker 1:The health of your team is directly related to how your leaders manage. Now, I know that manage word is not everybody's favorite, but what I'm talking about is a leader who has responsibility for giving direction, guidance, coaching. They have that management responsibility for other team members. There are other team members who report to them, and so the health of your team is directly related to how your leaders manage. When my team and I are working with organizations to help them improve their culture, we often find that a major obstacle to improving their culture is the inconsistency of their leaders. This shows up in the surveys that we do, that we often can tell just by some of the survey results that we seem to have a gap in the competencies of the people that are leading other staff members, and so with one particular organization, I was pretty baffled by the challenges they were experiencing. They were showing kind of all the usual symptoms of a somewhat toxic culture, things like significant staff turnover, some gossip, mistrust. But when we did our staff-wide survey, the team indicated a great deal of camaraderie and love for their leaders, like they really actually seemed to enjoy each other, and so the data seemed completely at odds, and so we just began to dig in deeper, just trying to figure out what's going on here with the data and some of these inconsistencies, and what we discovered was that, while the staff loved and appreciated each other, they didn't have trust for how their leaders made decisions. So, while they respected their leaders as individuals, they didn't respect their leadership skills. A very interesting but subtle distinction, and so this finding reinforced what we repeatedly see to often, people are promoted for their competence and likability, but are not trained and equipped for management responsibility.
Speaker 1:There are specific skills we need when we are going to take on management responsibility that are so critical to succeed, and it has a huge impact on culture. So when we talk about leadership development as it relates to culture, we have to focus on developing your people, managers. There's a fascinating shift that has taken place in the last couple of decades. In past years, executive leaders used to be the most looked to for vision, direction and guidance. Your most senior leaders were the ones that employees looked to the most, but today, employees look to their direct manager for these things. They have a lot of expectations of that person they directly report to. The expectations of managers are perhaps greater than they've ever been. Not only are they responsible for ensuring that their team executes on the organization's goals, but they're also expected to be career counselors, coaches and mentors, and for many leaders, this can feel like an impossible expectation, especially if you were just really good at your skill or the responsibilities, the role that you had, and then you got promoted because of how good you were at the job, but then that job takes you into a role where you're now responsible for all of these management skills, all these leadership skills that you haven't been trained for, and this is where we find repeated problems and things that actually begin to really hinder great culture. Organizations that build great cultures recognize that they have to disproportionately develop and support their managers. I'm going to say that again because this is the key Organizations that build great cultures recognize that they have to disproportionately develop and support their managers.
Speaker 1:And while this is in no way an exhaustive list of leadership skills, today I'm going to share eight of the most critical skills managers need to demonstrate in order to positively lead culture. So I'm going to go through these really quickly. We're going to just talk about them at a very high level, but I want you to just start evaluating. Okay, how am I doing? How are other people managers doing? Are there a couple of these that we need to give some extra time, some coaching, some training to, so that our managers are better equipped? So the first one this will be no surprise to you is self leadership. The single greatest skill every leader needs is to lead themselves well. You hear me say it all the time lead yourself well to lead others better. Self leadership is a commitment to consistent growth, discipline and doing the right thing for the sake of those you lead. It's thinking with the I'm leading myself well for the good of others. Self leadership is taking responsibility for your growth and development and recognizing what you need in order to serve and lead others well. And so, again, that's the foundation for every one of us, as we have to lead ourselves well.
Speaker 1:The second one is emotional intelligence. This really is the superpower of the best leaders their ability to understand themselves, others, to read experiences, to read rooms right the superpower of emotional intelligence. We live in a time when much of our work can now be replicated by machines and AI. Right Like it is, we're all trying to figure out, especially the world of AI, and we're wondering what is that going to mean for our jobs. But what cannot be reproduced authentically are the skills that have historically been referred to as the soft skills, those emotional intelligence skills, those intuitive skills, meaning the skills required to emotionally connect and interact effectively with others, being a good people person. So I believe that, no matter how many job functions AI replaces, the need for leaders who can relate and respond to humans will be the differentiating behavior. And so emotional intelligence incredibly important skill for leaders to develop. And the thing I love about emotional intelligence and you've probably heard me say this on other episodes is that emotional intelligence can be developed. So this is one of those things that we can grow and we can develop in. So that is super encouraging and I think it's super essential for leaders moving into this next era of leadership.
Speaker 1:Number three communication. I hold a deep conviction that good communication is an act of respect for others. That is a core conviction for me. Even with this strong belief, I fail miserably and frequently when it comes to communication. I'm typically moving too fast, I'm not thinking who needs to be in the loop on things.
Speaker 1:Communicating well and consistently is incredibly challenging, especially for leaders that are juggling a lot of responsibilities. There's a lot going on, and so sometimes we even assume communication has happened when it hasn't. George Bernard Shaw said this. He said the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. We just kind of assume, or we suspect, that we've communicated something when often we have not. So most of us think we are better communicators than we actually are. I think we've just got to kind of come to terms with that, that we're probably not as good of a communicator as we think. So to be a good communicator requires intentionality, and when I say be a good communicator, I'm not referring to public speaking. I'm talking about learning the best practices that allow your everyday interactions to provide the clarity and direction that equips others to succeed. This, again, is one of the things that shows up in a lot of the culture work we do is one of the big issues is communication. The communication, the right information, is not getting cascaded through the organization, and there's typically a gap between executive leadership and the rest of the staff, and often, again, we've got this mid-level leader who is kind of at the crux of this, and so if you don't have good communication skills that are kind of in the middle tiers of the organization, this is a big one for building trust and building healthy culture.
Speaker 1:Okay, number four decision making. Does your team understand how you make decisions, or is it always a guessing game for them to determine what you will do Right? Is it always like a question of I don't know what she's going to predict on this one. I often hear from teams that they don't understand how decisions are made in their organization, so they lack clarity for who has the authority to make what decisions, and this often results in complacency. Team members get exhausted by trying to figure out, which in turn leads to a lack of action, right, like. Eventually you just kind of give up, throw your hands up and go okay, I'll just follow directions, you know. And so we get a lack of complacency when team members aren't sure how decisions should be made, at it it's extreme. It's finger pointing and blaming, because no one takes ownership, because they're not sure if the decisions are within their power, right? So all of a sudden we're starting to point fingers and blame others because we don't feel like we have the power to make that decision, but we also don't know who does so.
Speaker 1:There are a number of different tools for decision making. We don't have time to get into those today, but I want you to think about this If it's not clear how decisions are made in your organization, this is a good one to take a look at and then figure out, and there are a lot of things that impact how decisions are made. It could be your culture. It could be the life cycle stage that your organization is in. Other factors may play in determining how decisions are made. So you have to kind of get to the root of how are decisions actually made here, and is there a process or a system to that? Is it just kind of legacy in the way we've always done it? Are there better ways we need to do it? What tools can we use? The important part of decision making as it impacts culture, is that your team understands how decisions are made. It should not be a guessing game for them. This one again. All of these are big. This one I find to be one that really kind of sits at the heart of some of the biggest challenges within teams. Okay, number five delegation Leaders empower others by delegating.
Speaker 1:This is a huge skill set that we, as leaders, need. The problem with delegation is that most leaders approach it from too extreme and, in my opinion, unhelpful perspective. So we have some extreme or unhelpful perspectives. The first one is we'll delegate to get stuff off our plate. Essentially, it's all about you as the leader and what you can get rid of right, we've all been guilty of that. The second extreme is that you're afraid to delegate because you're you aren't comfortable asking others to do things right. So either you delegate everything and it's kind of selfishly motivated, or you're afraid to delegate because you aren't comfortable asking others to do it. So most of us sit at one of those extremes of the spectrum. So be thinking about that.
Speaker 1:Delegating well requires a better perspective on the purpose of delegating. I think delegating serves two very important purposes. It creates an opportunity to grow the skills of your team members, which, in turn, fosters an opportunity for coaching and development right. So it's really a development focus. It forces you to consider what you need to let go of in order to make room for the new responsibilities you need to take on and grow from. So the first is that you really want to look at delegating as development. You want to increase the opportunity for your team members to develop more skills and then, in turn, that's creating room for you to take on new things and new ways. You're learning and growing as a leader. So really seeing delegation as a development tool is the way to think about this. Delegating done well allows team members at every level to continue to increase their capacity and their skill set.
Speaker 1:Okay, number six accountability. This is a big one. By definition, accountability means an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one's actions. So you get it. You know what accountability means. The best teams embrace a culture of accountability where each team member accepts responsibility for their role and they understand what they will be expected to account for their actions, right? So the question is did they fulfill their commitment? That's the question of accountability.
Speaker 1:When team members lack clarity on their role and responsibilities, it becomes quite difficult for them to take accountability. So again, sometimes we'll see some complacency here. If I lack understanding of my role or responsibilities or what's expected of me, then I'm not accountable because I don't know what I should be accountable to. They don't understand what they're accountable for, so, as a result, they're often complacent or disengaged. They might deflect responsibility by claiming well, I didn't know that that was my responsibility, or say things like I thought someone else was doing that. If you hear some of those things, that likely means that someone needs more clarity to be more accountable. Accountability is only possible when organizational clarity has been provided, and where accountability goes wrong and gets labeled micro management is when accountability isn't accompanied by ongoing conversations that clarify expectations. And so a lot going on there, a lot going back to the clarity thing that we talk about a lot in culture, but that accountability piece, in order to hold people accountable, we've got to make sure we've created the clarity for what they're responsible for. All right.
Speaker 1:Number seven feedback Question that I think is so powerful is the question what's it like to be on the other side of you? What's it like to be on the other side of you? Healthy teens foster a culture of feedback. Feedback is essentially evaluative communication. Let me say that again, feedback is essentially evaluative communication. Remember that I said that communication is an act of respect to others. Well, feedback just takes that a step further. Feedback, while sometimes more personal and sensitive than standard communication of information, is the ultimate act of respect for those we engage with. Feedback done with a desire to help others grow and improve builds trust and emphasizes a culture of care. And so feedback, again hand in hand with some of these other skills, is really powerful because the desire is for growth, the desire is for development and it's really kind of extending our good communication skills by giving more specific, sometimes personal, constructive feedback. That helps people get better, and we all know what it looks like when we're given feedback in a healthy and thoughtful way. Those are some of our biggest growth moments.
Speaker 1:Okay, and number eight. Last one ownership. In great cultures, every leader at every level has a deep commitment to their work, to their team and to the mission of the organization and in turn, they behave like owners. So they show up and engage as if they were the founder or the leader. They care deeply about the work and demonstrate their commitment through the behaviors that we've talked about so far. So this one becomes more of an overflow of all of the others. Right, as we help equip leaders to lead well, as we help them develop those skills, they take greater ownership in the work they do. Ownership is really an attitude, even more so than a skill, and it's definitely a byproduct of development. As you develop your leaders, you increase their buy-in and commitment and therefore increase their ownership.
Speaker 1:So let's review these eight really quickly before we wrap up today. The first one is self-leadership We've got to lead ourselves well. Number two emotional intelligence. Number three, communication. Number four decision-making. Number five delegation. Number six accountability. Number seven, feedback. And number eight ownership.
Speaker 1:So I hope those got you thinking today. Maybe you thought about some places where you see opportunities for yourself to grow. Maybe you see some places for some of your other team members that manage other leaders and or volunteers other staff or volunteers even all of these skills apply, so I want you to choose maybe one or two of them to focus on. You might discuss the list with other managers on your team and see where you even notice. Okay, here's one we're collectively weak at. Maybe this is something we've undervalued in our culture as a whole and we want to take more time to grow and develop in that. And then I would just suggest find a resource to help you grow in this skill. You can find books, you can find videos or podcasts different resources to help you grow in these skills. Just taking a simple action can have significant effect on developing these skills with your team.
Speaker 1:And if this content resonated with you today, I just want to encourage you that you're not alone. Like we hear this over and over and over again, many organizations don't have the luxury of a staff person who's focused on leadership development. So it makes sense why some of these skills are underdeveloped, especially when we're promoting people into new roles. So I wondered if you knew that 4Sight has a solution for developing your people managers. The 4Sight Leadership Institute is a leadership development training program led by myself, the other 4Sight coaches and special guests, and through monthly video teachings on topics like we've talked about today, the team will train you in practical, hands-on tools to help you learn how to lead well on your journey to becoming an extraordinary leader. In addition, we do a monthly group live video coaching call with a 4Sight coach for discussion and application of the content, really helping you unpack it and apply it to your world.
Speaker 1:See, friends, leadership can be frustrating when you feel ill-equipped to face the daily challenges of leading yourself and leading a team. So the content you'll have access to is designed to equip you not only to navigate those challenges effectively but to learn how to lead yourself and lead others well. So if you're interested in that, you can find the details at get4sightcom. That's G-E-T, the number four, s-i-g-h-t. com slash leadership institute get4sightcom slash leadership institute. You can use code 27month that's 27month to get $20 off your monthly registration. That's nearly half off the monthly cost of the leadership institute. And if you'd like a more customized approach to your leadership development, just email me at Jenni@ get4sight. com that's J-E-N-N-I at get4sight. com and we'll share how a 4Sight coach could be your fractional leadership development director for your entire team. We have a number of our coaches who take the leadership institute and actually facilitate that for you and your team, kind of curating it specifically for your team, and so if you're interested in a more comprehensive program for your whole staff, just email me at Jenni@ get4sightcom. If you're looking to just enroll yourself or a couple of your team members, go to get4sight. com/ leadership institute and use code 27month to get $20 off.
Speaker 1:All right, friends, I hope this episode got you thinking today. Let me know what you thought. Send us a message on Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin we're at Get 4Sight and I'm at Jenni Catron. You can find us on any of those channels. We'd love to say hi and if this episode was helpful to you, would you share it with another leader? Just send it. Maybe send it to the other people managers on your team and use it as a conversation starter to say hey, what skills do we need to learn and grow and develop in to keep leading better and to build a healthy culture? All right, friends, thank you so much for listening today. Keep leading well and we'll see you next week. What will we learn for you?