Effective Leadership – Love, Trust, Feedback

What does Love have to do with effective leadership? Let’s explore…

In the last couple of years, working with some senior corporate leaders, helping them acuminate their Leadership skills and handle the common challenges they face as a leader, some very interesting issues keep coming forth in the coaching sessions…

Here are few of them (in their own words):

*I love and trust my team, But I wonder if my emotions are coming in the way of giving a powerful negative feedback, which is required for their growth.

*I’ve tried to help my team see their blind spots and tap into their potential, but it’s not working. It seems like the whole culture is so laid back. Nobody wants to change.

*I constantly doubt myself to deliver effective feedback that will work and my team too, to receive that feedback constructively and make that work for them.

*I keep telling my team, how much I value and trust them, But they have to deliver and make the changes required to bring the results that are expected of them at their position. Still, I see no results.

*Sometimes I doubt, if I have over-believed in my people and whether they are competent enough for the job given?

*I am not comfortable with difficult conversations and conflicts. I tend to avoid them.

*My need for approval and liked by others, hamper my ability to be authentic, effective and transparent at times of conflict.

Can you relate with any of these challenges as a leader?

Let’s connect some dots here, beginning with Love.

When a leader truly loves (genuinely) his people for who they are, believe in their goodness, their potential and human-ness within; they see them differently. They treat them differently.

They work towards building Relationships with their people based on the foundation of trust, care, and solid belief in them, as a human being with an innate potential to grow, not on the basis of target completion, numbers achieved and scorecard.

Wait! Before you judge this statement and jump to the corporate reality, where meeting targets, high performance and achieving numbers is the only criteria to view any person, above any thing else, keep reading please…

The truth is people who believe in themselves, who have high self-worth and self-esteem,good mental health, who feel valued and respected in organisations, work effectively in terms of productivity, performance and innovation.

In current times we clearly know, Conscious and heart-based leadership, based on inside-out approach, leads to building higher trust, where team members feel valued, and cared for, perform substantially much better than, where employees feel like being treated as good as their scorecard only.

Know that all change begins within, hence as a leader always keep evolving in your inner game through self-awareness and various practices. Read here in my article what attributes contribute to your inner game: How to build Trust as a leader

Now, let’s talk about the Outer game – how does Love and Conscious leadership look into action?

Here are Three Facets to simplify this for Business world:

“Communication, Feedback, Coaching”

Quality communication – Quality (empowering) communication is the water that nurtures the growth of people, ultimately leading to organisational growth.

As a leader, Ask yourself these questions on a regular basis: How does my communication impact my people?

• Do they feel trusted or not?
• Do they feel secure or not?
• Do they feel appreciated and valued or not?
• Do they feel, I believe in their competence and expect them to do great or not?

If you take a pause and reflect on these questions, you’ll definitely know the answers within. Every leader knows.

Once the awareness sets in, start with conscious, mindful communication to build trust and security in your team.

Here are few simple practical communication tips to start with:

Beware of using “BUT” in your conversation.

As popularly known, the moment you put the word ‘But’ after a statement, you’ve literally erased whatever you said before the word But.

For example: You’re doing great But… I Trust you But… I believe in you But… The words that come before But are not valid any more. Period.

What to do instead:

1. Use separate sentences.

For example: I trust you. I believe in you. Can you look specifically on this aspect and see what can you do in this project to increase the effectiveness (be as specific as you can). Let’s put a time in calendar when can you share your findings.

2. Use ‘And’ instead – I trust you and I believe that you can do better in this project with… (specific details)

Here’s the higher understanding for Leaders – You love and trust ‘the person’ and ‘their capability to grow’. What you evaluate and give feedback is ‘their skills, behaviour and performance’.

And even though these things are inter-connected, they are separate things, in Reality. Keep it that way, in your communication, both internally (inside your head) and externally (in your communication).

Next is feedback-

Forget Feedback, Learn to give Feed Forward: A technique by renowned Leadership Coach Marshall Goldsmith (shared the full technique below.)

Feedforward is a group exercise, the purpose of which is to provide individuals with suggestions for the future and to help them achieve a positive change in the behaviour/s as selected by them.

Let’s face the facts as leaders:

1. We are not that good at giving or receiving Constructive feedback.
2. No one takes a negative feedback, even if it’s constructive, in a positive manner.

The basis of feed forward is – It is more productive to help people learn to be “right,” than to prove they were “wrong”.

Feed Forward is based on this fact that – Negative feedback (even if constructive) usually becomes an exercise in “let me tell you where and how you were wrong.” This produces defensiveness on the part of the receiver and discomfort on the part of the sender, as well.

Even constructively delivered feedback is often seen as negative as it involves a discussion of mistakes, flaws, shortfalls, and problems.

Feedforward, on the other hand, is almost always seen as positive because it focuses on solutions – not on problems.

Feedback focuses on the past, on what has already occurred – not on the endless possibilities that can happen in the future, on which Feed-Forward is based. As such, feedback can be limited and static, as opposed to expansive and dynamic nature of Feed Forward.

An excellent team building exercise is to have each team member ask, ‘How can I better help our team in the future?’ Then listen to the feedforward from fellow team members, that can be in group or even one-on-one dialogue.

Coaching- Having a Coach by their side, is a great asset for the higher growth of the Leader (both inner and outer game), especially in the face of ever growing challenges of the VUCA world and learning coaching skills as a leader is must too.

Leader as a Coach: Coaching skills are not a luxury any more, rather an essential skill to learn as a leader.

So what does Coaching Leadership looks like?

Inculcating the right Attributes and beliefs as a leader (Read here about the simple attributes and beliefs of a great Leader, that people love)

In current times of huge workload, unrealistic expectations leading to overworked, overwhelmed and burnt-out leaders, it isn’t easy to inculcate these new attributes and skills.

Though as earlier stated, leaders who understand that they need to slow down, pay attention and prioritise deep work, while balancing it with the targets they have to achieve, get how essential these skills are.

1. Igniting empathetic curiosity. Having a compassionate curiosity, to truly understand the intrinsic motivation of your team, without any assumption or ‘I know it already’ attitude is an extremely powerful coaching trait to develop for leaders.
2. Allowing Enabling Conversations. It’s one’s ability to have a meaningful conversation by allowing deep inquiry through non-judgemental listening, asking open, powerful, thought-provoking discerning questions.
3. Unlearning the habit to tell (curbing the urge to fix). We all are tempted to tell what’s wrong, wanting to fix the problems for others, especially when we have already been there and done it. Only to realise it doesn’t work that way. Others have to find their own way. As a leader (as a parent leader too), one must learn not to rush to advising, telling or fixing the problems, but creating a conducive space for reflection and higher thinking, that naturally enables and empower your team in unimaginable ways.
4. Learn to handle conflicts as a seasoned ‘Authentic Coach Leader’. Your capacity to be honest, vulnerable and fully true to yourself, while being respectful to others, determines how beautifully you handle conflicts and bring ‘Win-Win’ solutions for your team and organisation.

Learn the collaborative style of conflict management which requires you to be on high assertiveness and high empathy, at the same time on scale, while handling difficult situations and conflict at workplace, with help of a coach or mentor.

Coaching leadership entails huge advantages, though there are some practical challenges to this style of leadership. Some of the common challenges include, lack of coaching time, in their already busy schedule (10 min coaching comes handy here), time-sensitive urgent issues, lack of coaching skills in leaders and unwilling team members.

Regular introspection and reflection as a leader and consistently working upon these attributes and skills is the key to effective coach Leadership (Having a coach by your side, is crucial here).

Simply put, “As a leader, you know what you need from your team, as a great Leader, you focus upon what your people and world needs from you for their enablement and your higher purpose on this planet.”

Are you striving for excellence and being more effective as a leader, connect with me for a chat through coach@salonisingh.com or drop a personal message here.