This action learning leadership development post has been moved to: http://lsaglobal.com/best-leaders-know-get-along-team/
Two Leadership Challenges that You Must Overcome to Get Along With Your Mates
This action learning leadership development post has been moved to: http://lsaglobal.com/best-leaders-know-get-along-team/
How and Why to Finally Stop Micro-Managing
You don’t ever want your top talent to quit. Star performers are too difficult to find and cultivate.
The sad thing is that it happens…employees quit and often their managers had little clue the employee was a flight risk. All the more reason to constantly evaluate your leadership skills so you know what your team is thinking and feeling.
It turns out that one of the biggest lessons learned from action learning leadership development assignments is that too many employees leave because they feel they are being micro-managed. And yet their bosses had no idea that their behavior was so resented. Micro-managers stifle employees. Micro-managers decrease motivation. Micro-managers squelch engagement.
Are you a micro-manager? Check your leadership style against these clear signs:
- You enjoy making frequent and minor corrections.
- You are never fully satisfied with employees’ work products.
- You insist on being copied on all work and all emails.
- You are frustrated when you would have done something differently.
Even if not, ask your team if they would like less oversight and supervision from you. You might find that less structure will unleash their greater potential and productivity.
4 Reasons “The Best Way to Learn” Works
The kind of lecture-based, rote learning practiced in old-fashioned classrooms may have worked once upon a time…but this is a new era and it calls for a transformation in the way lessons are learned.
The best, most effective, most efficient way for aspiring leaders to learn is through action learning for leadership development under the tutelage of a skilled consultant, facilitator and coach. Here is why it works…
- You learn faster. Rather than read or listen about what you should do in a certain situation, you try it out real-time. The results and feedback are immediate and the lesson is learned because it is interactive, relevant and engaging.
- It is personal and specific. The learning scenarios are designed for the most important leadership situations you will encounter within your specific organizational culture and role. Just like scuba students learn how to clear their mask, paramedics learn to give CPR and pilots learn how to take off and land, leaders within each company face key challenges unique to their industry, strategy and culture. Effective learning focuses only on what matters most.
- You get insights. By consciously reflecting on the results of your actions and with the help of your peers and coach, you will understand what to do better next time and even how to avoid key mistakes going forward.
- There is accountability. You are the one to direct the action and you are the one to take responsibility. Your coach will be there to support you and provide insights but, ultimately, you are making the decisions and determining how to apply the lessons going forward.
Leadership 101 - Do You Know How Your Employees Want to Grow?
The best leaders know their employees on an individual basis, know what makes them tick, and know how they want to grow.
It is up to you to have conversations, one-on-one, with each of your team members to learn what their ambitions are and how they envision their future. Then you can act as their coach in helping them achieve their personal and professional goals.
To begin, ask open-ended questions. If you have established trust, they will feel comfortable sharing their dreams. Then, in the mode of action learning for leadership development, ask them to come up with a creative action plan to take the first steps in their career development. If they yearn to become a project manager, perhaps they can take on responsibility for one phase of a current project. Then meet on a regular basis to give them targeted performance feedback and encourage their progress.
Learn more at: http://www.lsaglobal.com/action-learning-leadership-development/
Are Leaders Born or Made? 3 Guidelines to Make New Leaders
After two decades spent in the field of leadership development, we contend that leaders may be born with intelligence and raw talent but they are essentially made through experience over time. We believe that leaders must learn to effectively lead.
If you are in a leadership role in your company, one of your most important responsibilities is to raise a new generation of leaders to take over smoothly when you move on. The most effective way to nurture and grow leaders is through the process of action learning for leadership development. Once you identify some so-called high potentials, here are three guidelines on how to prepare them to take on ever greater responsibility:
- Experience: Give them broad exposure to different, unfamiliar and increasingly complex jobs. They will learn new skills and stretch in new ways in different and broad settings.
- Feedback: Support them with ongoing and targeted performance coaching about their relationships, approach and results. Provide frequent and timely feedback and help them understand the reasons for their successes as well as learn from failures.
- Support: Match them with savvy mentors…either current leaders or veterans who have the experience and know-how to share their advice and counsel when it is needed most.
Meetings Reflect a Company’s Culture – Pay More Attention to their Design
Rather than just let a company’s culture evolve on its own, savvy executives take a more active role in defining the way they want things done.
One of the best ways to take charge and practice action learning for leadership development is to focus on how meetings are run. Meetings are no trivial matter. For example, Harvard Business Review reported that one company spent 300,000 hours a year supporting a weekly executive committee meeting.
In a way, meetings are a microcosm of how an organization operates. Do a few always dominate? Do you hold people accountable for following through? Are they well planned? Are only the right people in the room? Do they start on time? Do people speak their mind? Do people get along?
Articulate the behavioral norms you want to encourage by setting clear standards for company meetings. Once established, they will influence how communication occurs, how decisions are made and how actions are taken throughout the organization.
Consider setting norms for dress code, timeliness, agendas, objectives, attendees, decision making, accountability, communication, problem solving, facilitation and scribe.
Learn more at: http://www.lsaglobal.com/action-learning-leadership-development/
The Learning Model that Harvard MBAs Use
A Harvard MBA degree is coveted by many aspiring to the C-level suite.
For years, Harvard followed a traditional case study model. But now the Business School has modified the instructional approach to an action learning case method model. Students are immersed in realistic business situations and are called upon to make decisions with incomplete information, conflicting goals and time pressures…just like in the real world. They learn by experience rather than lecture.
Why? Because it is far more effective.
- Action learning for leadership development relies upon experiential reflection and problem-solving as the major learning tools.
- Participants solve real-world problems and learn far more than if they studied books or sat through lectures.
- The learning is student-driven, active, and solution-focused.
- Students actually experience what happens as they implement solutions.
- They analyze the situation, make a move to solve the problem, assess the results of their action and reflect upon what worked and what did not…all in the cause of improving business performance.
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