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Click Here! Donna mixed thirty essential leadership principles with practical tools and step-by-step methods to create “Lead or Someone Else Will.” With its easy-to-read format and thought-provoking questions for you to consider, this book is designed to help shape your leadership brand and legacy. You will learn from and enjoy reading the brief, yet pointed discussions of leadership that the author has laced with entertaining, yet thought-provoking stories from the author’s leadership coaching practice. It’s not a tell-all, but a teach all – giving you all that the author has learned about leadership as an administrator, coach, and consultant. This book was a joy to write, and the author hopes that you enjoy reading “Lead or Someone Else Will: A Coach’s Guide to Leadership.” If you’re interested in contributing, you can help shape Donna’s next leadership book by sending your recommendations to DonnaColes.Coach@gmail.com.
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10/20/2019 0 Comments Coaching BlogLEADERSHIP SOLUTIONS
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Donna Coles, author of this blog, invites you to schedule a no-cost Consultation to discuss your leadership development needs. Click here to schedule your confidential Consultation. © 2018 CoachingWithDonnaColes.com All Rights Reserved  To manage through a change process, it’s important for leaders to have well thought-out and coordinated communications. Without mindful planning across the organization, communication in support of an anticipated change may be difficult to navigate for the leaders and the employee groups. Lack of clarity and direction from leadership may cause initiatives and employee trust to fall flat.
Even with the best leadership communication through change, understand that some recipients of your communication may not agree that a problem worth resolving exists. They may be your outliers who must be convinced that a problem exists before they will agree to participate in the solution. Provide the data and the bottom line including the necessity for everyone involved to participate fully in the initiative. Have two-way communication with members of your organization -- avoid an abundance of one-way communication. With one-way communication, like messages in a bottle, you'll have little timely awareness of your impact. Thanks for reading my blogs. While you’re here, schedule a no-cost telephone Consultation to discuss your leadership development needs. Click here to schedule your confidential appointment.  Distrust of your ability to lead your employees creates an environment that encourages de-facto leaders to emerge from your employee group. Employees are often grateful for the emergence of the de-facto leader. That employee can have the attention of your employees and a level of power that overtly or covertly usurps (or supports) your capacity to lead.
A de-facto leader may have information that leadership needs to make change processes truly successful. Unknown to leadership, the de facto leaders provided employment-sustaining supports to coworkers and in effect kept the organization operating smoothly. When leadership was made aware of the mathematical deficits within the shop, short-term and focused tutoring was made available to employees who wanted the supports. Enhance your power to lead your employees. Ask questions, stay in touch with your employees. Leave no niche available for the de-facto leader to diminish or take away the strength of your leadership. When a de-facto leader begins to emerge from the employee group, recognize the employee’s desire to impact the workgroup by enlisting the employee’s support. Support the employee’s desire to make an impact. Lead, or your de-facto leader will. Thanks for reading my blogs. While you’re here, schedule a no-cost telephone Consultation to discuss your leadership development needs. Click here to schedule your confidential appointment.  The leader’s role in meeting management, is not for the faint at heart, particularly in times of change. Meeting management requires the leader to maintain a focus on the task at hand as well as focus on the interpersonal dynamics of the group. Focusing on the task requires the leader to mindfully introduce new information and new initiatives, lead through the process of closure and abandonment of current initiatives, guide discussions, clarify issues, allay fears, and suggest the likely consequences of lack of successful compliance.
When in a leadership position, to take charge means that in a timely fashion, you will lead group discussions out of the past and encourage the group to move forward, into the future. Leading the way, you’ll share your vision for the future, brainstorm the possibilities, and communicate your commitments to excellence. You’ll want to maintain focus on the action plan and accountability, and how you’ll accomplish the goal. Take care to disallow the discussion to get sidetracked to the past – where it’s most comfortable. Thanks for reading my blogs. While you’re here, schedule a no-cost telephone Consultation to discuss your leadership development needs. Click here to schedule your confidential appointment.  The use of disciplined decision-making means that prior to formulating and acting upon your conclusions, you’ll identify the information required to make a rational and informed choice. You’ll clarify what’s needed and seek out sources of information. You’ll move beyond your uncomplimentary perceptions of others and strive to effectively work with each information source – to purposefully obtain the data that you require.
Personalities won’t matter. The potentiality of personality clashes won’t deter you from being a disciplined decision maker. And without fail, you’ll work to avoid clashes. And you’ll retrieve the information that you need. Once you’re ready to make your decision, you’ll explore the possibilities while avoiding confirmation bias – the type of thinking that allows you to selectively gather information that confirms your early conclusions. On the other hand, flexible thinking allows you to accept information that disconfirms your early thought. Of course, when we look at decision-making processes, we know that each situation requires its own depth and breadth of consideration to formulate a suitable response. The success of your choice will undoubtedly be measured by the positive shift within the organization. Thanks for reading my blogs. While you’re here, schedule a no-cost telephone Consultation to discuss your leadership development needs. Click here to schedule your confidential appointment. 6/3/2019 0 Comments Re-Energize Your Career Question: How do we re-energize our career development strategies when we’ve lost momentum?
Answers: We re-clarify our career legacy dream. We refocus our career vision when it becomes murky. We re-commit to our achievable goals. We problem-solve and target our efforts to better manage our day-to-day challenges. We once again set our energies in motion with renewed determination to accomplish our objectives. And we re-engage our life purpose. It’s important to accept that losing momentum from time-to-time is natural – a normal occurrence when “life” happens to our best intentions. And, then, we re-engage, once again, and move forward. While accepting a leadership position certainly means accepting responsibility for helping to determine your organization’s direction and speed as it navigates the waters toward its mission and vision; you must also keep in mind that you have a responsibility to “captain your ship”. As a result, you cannot allow your “vessel” to go adrift. Neither can you allow your “vessel” to become an empty one. Let your self-motivation take you to excellence. Thanks for reading my blogs. While you’re here, schedule a no-cost telephone Consultation to discuss your leadership development needs. Click here to schedule your confidential appointment. 6/3/2019 0 Comments stop Career derailment Career foolishness is also called career derailment. And, we’ve all dealt with the threat of derailment at some point in our careers. Foolishness has many sources. And, oftentimes, it is not the result of our lack of skills or absence of knowledge. Foolishness can be sourced in our inadequate cultivation of a supportive network -- lack of support can lead to our inability to engage in timely adaptation. Our maladaptive ego needs can lead to self-serving poor choices and unethical choices. But, we are not the only source of our derailing career foolishness.
Foolishness capable of derailing our careers can be the willful acts of others. These acts can be intended to sabotage our work, diminish our successes, destroy our reputations, and damage our relationships. Foolishness can be calculated barriers and challenges placed before us, that on the surface, seem to only have significant meaning to someone other than ourselves – until we realize the damage that those barriers and challenges have done to our careers. Having a mentor or coach with whom we candidly discuss our decisions and choices can help us avoid career foolishness. It takes courage to mindfully confront our, and others’, foolishness. Career mindfulness demands that we construct and reconstruct our career plans as environments and industries change. And, we manage our lives accordingly. We develop and nurture our networks of people who tell us of our foolishness – no matter how painful it is to hear. We seek meaningful advice and support. Thanks for reading my blogs. While you’re here, schedule a no-cost telephone Consultation to discuss your leadership development needs. Click here to schedule your confidential appointment. 1/5/2019 0 Comments Abolish “Need to Know” Giving employees freedom to participate in organizational improvement processes is an important way to encourage employees to embrace inevitable organizational change. When given the freedom to participate from the very start, employees view change as a possible, yet, imperfect, solution to one or many organizational problems. They view the solution from the inside out; and don’t expect perfection.
With the support of leadership, employees can become better problem solvers and more fervent supporters of the organization. They develop a deeper awareness of the complexity of organizational problems and sub-issues; and they have a greater opportunity to become intrapreneurial – taking ownership of their jobs and outcomes. Creative thought emanates from knowledge. Thus, it is the leader’s role to prepare employees for participation in creative problem solving and brainstorming by first sharing information in an open and collaborative way. The level of preparation will yield greater employee participation. When leaders relinquishment the “need to know” method of information sharing, employees are given the opportunity to fully participate in organization improvement dialogues. Thanks for reading my blogs. While you’re here, schedule a no-cost telephone Consultation to discuss your leadership development needs. Click here to schedule your confidential appointment. |
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