Catalyst Empowerment Academy

Become a Fantastic Listener With These 9 Techniques
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Most of the time, what gets in the way of being an effective listener is our thoughts. We have this little voice in our head that is constantly judging, evaluating, criticizing, analyzing and editorializing everything that we hear. When I did research among a number of managers and asked them why they didn’t listen, they gave the following explanations for not listening:

“Sometimes I listen to see if I agree or not.”

“I usually am thinking about what I should say in response.”

“I listen to understand if what the person is saying will have a negative impact on me.”

“I don’t listen to some people, because I already know what they are going to say.”

“I know I don’t listen, because I am thinking more about what I am thinking than to what the person is saying.”

Notice in all of these responses, the individual is preoccupied with his or her thoughts. When this happens, they are obviously not listening nor capturing the sum total of the messages that are being sent.

Here are some easy-to-use strategies that will help you become a fantastic listener.

Become a Fantastic Listener With These 9 Techniques Most of the time, what gets in the way of being an effective listener is our thoughts.

Research Says You Can Earn Way More Money by Boosting Your Emotional Intelligence. Here Are 4 Ways to Do It
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People with high EQs make an average of $29,000 per year more than people with low EQs.

Travis Bradberry, co-author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0, conducted the study in which his team tested the EQ of over 42,000 people and compared their scores with their annual incomes.

In his report, Bradberry states, "The road to higher income is paved with the quality of your relationships. People earn more money as they become more emotionally intelligent."

Research Says You Can Earn Way More Money by Boosting Your Emotional Intelligence. Here Are 4 Ways to Do It People with high EQs make an average of $29,000 per year more than people with low EQs.

The 3 Elements of Trust
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As a leader, you want the people in your organization to trust you. And with good reason. In our coaching with leaders, we often see that trust is a leading indicator of whether others evaluate them positively or negatively. But creating that trust or, perhaps more importantly, reestablishing it when you’ve lost it isn’t always that straightforward.

The 3 Elements of Trust And which one is most important for leaders.

Insecurity Keeps Most Employees Quiet During Team Meetings. Self-Aware Managers Use These 2 Tactics to Get Them to Speak Up
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There are ample amounts of research on the benefits of diverse and inclusive teams. Unfortunately, many organizations never realize them due to team conditions that unintentionally stymie creativity. These environments lack psychological safety, suffer from groupthink, and inadvertently push conformity.

We have to get in front of these concerns to ensure employees feel safe speaking up and teams benefit from their unique perspective.

Insecurity Keeps Most Employees Quiet During Team Meetings. Self-Aware Managers Use These 2 Tactics to Get Them to Speak Up Is your team too quiet? It could be a sign that they don't feel safe speaking up.

The Most Common Type of Incompetent Leader
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"Researchers have studied managerial derailment — or the dark side of leadership — for many years. The key derailment characteristics of bad managers are well documented and fall into three broad behavioral categories: (1) “moving away behaviors,” which create distance from others through hyper-emotionality, diminished communication, and skepticism that erodes trust; (2) “moving against behaviors,” which overpower and manipulate people while aggrandizing the self; and (3) “moving toward behaviors,” which include being ingratiating, overly conforming, and reluctant to take chances or stand up for one’s team. The popular media is full of examples of bad leaders in government, academia, and business with these characteristics.

However, my friend was describing something arguably worse than an incompetent boss. His manager was not overtly misbehaving, nor was he a ranting, narcissistic sociopath. Rather, his boss was a leader in title only — his role was leadership, but he provided none. My friend was experiencing absentee leadership, and unfortunately, he is not alone. Absentee leadership rarely comes up in today’s leadership or business literature, but research shows that it is the most common form of incompetent leadership."

Source:
https://hbr.org/2018/03/the-most-common-type-of-incompetent-leader?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=hbr&fbclid=IwAR1HD6F25adju2Ls-ciSV1RnQL6gi06EyT_EtgLOujSCzl3oAM3M6bsBK94

The Most Common Type of Incompetent Leader Why an absentee boss is worse than an abusive one.

4 Ways to Create a Learning Culture on Your Team
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True learning cultures, defined by CEB as “a culture that supports an open mindset, an independent quest for knowledge, and shared learning directed toward the mission and goals of the organization,” are still the exception rather than the norm.

Recent research found that only 10% of organizations have managed to create them, with just 20% of employees demonstrating effective learning behaviors at work.

Research by Bersin examined the issue of learning culture in great detail and found that companies who effectively nurture their workforce’s desire to learn are at least 30% more likely to be market leaders in their industries over an extended period of time.

4 Ways to Create a Learning Culture on Your Team Start by hiring curious people.

Leaders Focus Too Much on Changing Policies, and Not Enough on Changing Minds
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Not long ago, I asked 100 CEOs attending a conference how many of them were currently involved in a significant business transformation. Nearly all of them raised their hands, which was no surprise. According to a study by BCG, 85% of companies have undertaken a transformation during the past decade.

The same research found that nearly 75% of those transformations fail to improve business performance, either short-term or long-term.

So why is transformation so difficult to achieve?

Business transformations are typically built around new structural elements, including policies, processes, facilities, and technology. Some companies also focus on behaviors — defining new practices, training new skills, or asking employees for new deliverables.

What most organizations typically overlook is the internal shift — what people think and feel — which has to occur in order to bring the strategy to life.

The result is that transforming a business also depends on transforming individuals — beginning with the most senior leaders and influencers.

Leaders Focus Too Much on Changing Policies, and Not Enough on Changing Minds To achieve the outcomes you want, start by thinking about people and culture.

Most Managers Don’t Know How to Coach People. But They Can Learn.
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According to Sir John Whitmore, a leading figure in executive coaching, the definition of coaching is “unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them.” When done right, coaching can also help with employee engagement; it is often more motivating to bring your expertise to a situation than to be told what to do.

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Our research also supports the idea of receiving feedback from coaching experts in order to improve. The risk of letting only nonexperts help might reinforce and normalize ineffective behaviors throughout an organization. Specifically, coaching experts could give feedback on how well the coaching skills were applied and if any coaching opportunities have been missed. This monitoring could take the form of regular peer coaching, where managers in an organization come together to practice coaching with each other, or to discuss common problems and solutions they have encountered when coaching others, all in the presence of a coaching expert. Here managers have two advantages: First, they can practice their coaching in a safe environment. Second, coaches can discuss challenges they have experienced and how to overcome them.

Most Managers Don’t Know How to Coach People. But They Can Learn. Most are just telling their employees what to do.

Employees around the world are reporting that big organizational changes are affecting their jobs. From leadership transitions and restructurings, to mergers and acquisitions, to regulatory changes, there seems to be constant unrest in the workforce. But according to one survey of more than half a million U.S. employees, almost one-third don’t understand why these changes are happening.

Don’t Just Tell Employees Organizational Changes Are Coming — Explain Why And explain how they connect to your mission.

The Most Successful Office Workers Have Bosses Who Do These 5 Things
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Often, in a business setting, office workers will exhibit the potential to succeed and even the drive but then fail to reach their goals.

They might know how to do the work you need them to do and possess the required skills and abilities. Yet, there's something missing. They don't quite hit the mark on projects, perhaps because they don't know where the mark even is (e.g., they don't know the expectations). They have the skill and the drive but not quite the vision or insight to achieve the desired results. They try and try but they keep failing.

That's where you come in. If you are a leader in business, there are several key traits that can help employees to extend beyond mere skill. It's true that leadership is one part inspiration and another part motivation, but it can be even more than that.

The Most Successful Office Workers Have Bosses Who Do These 5 Things Great bosses know how to fan the flame of success.

How to Motivate Employees to Go Beyond Their Jobs
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Every day, employees make decisions about whether they are willing to go the extra mile in ways that contribute to their organization’s success. These are important decisions because research shows that when employees are willing to go beyond their formal roles by helping out coworkers, volunteering to take on special assignments, introducing new ideas and work practices, attending non-mandatory meetings, putting in extra hours to complete important projects, and so forth, their companies are more efficient and effective.

As a result, a critical task for successful managers is to motivate their employees to engage in these extra-role behaviors, which researchers refer to as “citizenship behaviors.”

How to Motivate Employees to Go Beyond Their Jobs It’s critical for organizations, and it makes work more fulfilling.

3 Signs You Possess a Skill Most Don't Have (and How to Capitalize On It)
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Like so many other aspects of life, you are your most valuable asset. This is especially true when you bring unique skills to the table--abilities most people don't have.

The challenge, of course, is recognizing where your gifts lie and then finding ways to capitalize on them. Though this certainly isn't easy, here are three signs to look for to start the process.

3 Signs You Possess a Skill Most Don't Have (and How to Capitalize On It) When you recognize where your gifts are, you're one step closer to finding ways to leverage them in business.

Great Leaders Are Confident, Connected, Committed, and Courageous
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"No matter your age, your role, your position, your title, your profession, or your status, to get your most important work done, you have to have hard conversations, create accountability, and inspire action.

In order to do that, you need to show up powerfully and magnetically in a way that attracts people to trust you, follow you, and commit to putting 100% of their effort into a larger purpose, something bigger than all of you. You need to care about others and connect with them in such a way that they feel your care. You need to speak persuasively — in a way that’s clear, direct, and honest and that reflects your care — while listening with openness, compassion, and love. Even when being challenged.

And, of course, you need to follow through quickly and effectively.

To lead effectively — really, to live effectively — you must be confident in yourself, connected to others, committed to purpose, and emotionally courageous.

Most of us are great at only one of the four. Maybe two. But to be a powerful presence — to inspire action — you need to excel at all four simultaneously."

Great Leaders Are Confident, Connected, Committed, and Courageous Which ones do you need to improve on?

Smart Leaders Prevent Burnout With 3 Golden Rules
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Burnout, a concept first coined in 1974, lies on a continuum somewhere between chronic stress and depression. Early findings suggest that it can change the brain's structure.

Emotional exhaustion and cynicism are early warning signs of burnout, which can stem from an imbalance in six aspects of work and life: workload, control, reward, community, fairness, and values. Many of these imbalances can be grouped around three key epicenters of risk--self-identity, control and exhaustion--and turned into three golden rules:

1. Protect self-identity
2. Maximize control
3. Minimize exhaustion

Smart Leaders Prevent Burnout With 3 Golden Rules Target three key areas to protect your team from burnout.

Bosses play a big part in our lives; good bosses not only make life a bit more bearable but also add wisdom and insights into our lives.

Tag somebody you used to work for, and share how grateful you are for having them in your life! 😎