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Is your team rowing together in the same direction for the same reason?
Are your direct reports making decisions in alignment with the goals? Is your business plan being executed smoothly? Disconnects in an organization are common and resolvable. The responsibility for resolving disconnects sits squarely on the leader’s shoulders.
I was coaching an executive whose organization grew from a series of thirty+ small acquisitions over three years. The executive’s frustration was that his direct reports were not running their areas as expected. With curiosity, I asked what his direct reports would say if asked what those expectations were. The executive paused and responded honestly that he was not sure. The leader quickly realized that he had some work to do first. He stepped back and invested time to create a shared understanding and buy-in of the vision and objectives. The path to successful outcomes became clearer and smoother.
Are your direct reports making decisions in alignment with the goals? Is your business plan being executed smoothly? Disconnects in an organization are common and resolvable. The responsibility for resolving disconnects sits squarely on the leader’s shoulders.
Vision + Alignment + Execution ==> Accelerated Success
A straightforward approach to create clear connections across the organization is outlined in Wiley’s Everything DiSC Work of Leaders®. Combining multiple years of research and best practices from hundreds of leadership experts, the following model for the Work of Leaders’ resulted. The most successful leaders must be adept and intentional when:
Crafting a Vision,
Building Alignment around that vision and
bringing it to life by Championing Execution.
Although this may sound like leadership 101, not all leaders understand the best practices associated with each of these three fundamental steps of the Work of Leaders. Within each step are six best practice behaviors. Leaders need to be agile and choose the best behaviors based on each step. The behavior needed for success in one step may inhibit success in another. For instance, Remaining Open is critical during the vision crafting step. Yet an emphasis on that during execution may slow progress and confuse the team. Equally, the need to create structure during Execution is a best practice. If that is prioritized during the vision step, it may prevent creativity and bold thinking.
Accelerate your impact by strengthening the connections
All three steps and their set of best practices must be skillfully performed to accelerate the success of the organizational objectives and vision. Gaining a quick understanding of where a leader’s strengths and gaps are, allows growth to be targeted appropriately and efficiently. Value in real-time will be achieved as the behaviors are strengthened.
Having a view of an entire executive team acts as an impact multiplier for the organization. It will provide valuable insight into potential collective obstacles to meeting organizational objectives. A dashboard, shown below, will provide a view of behaviors that come more or less naturally for the team collectively. This can shine a light on where the collective preferences may help or inhibit the organization’s success.
Wiley’s Everything DiSC Work of Leaders® Team View
Activate Today
Taking the time to step back, zoom out and look at yourself and your leadership teams’ development opportunity is a valuable investment to accelerate your organization’s success. MBM ELEVATE is ready to discuss how to harness and adjust this approach for your unique business need.
Mary Beth Molloy
Certified Executive Coach and Business Consultant, she delivers uncanny focus on the intersection of your business vision and goals and the leaders you’ve entrusted to achieve them.
She knows what it takes to accelerate and elevate business results through leadership development and performance. It’s her powerful blend of these experiences together with her practicality, purpose, and positivity that drive our value.
Mary Beth is interested in hearing from you. | Follow on LinkedIn | Share comments or ask questions
Is Your Blind Spot Limiting You?
So, you may not think it really matters if there is a blind spot in yourself or in one of your leaders if numbers are being met. But, blind spots can be like a governor on a rental truck. There is more power under the hood, but it is being held back.
Do blind spots really matter?
Do you have a leader that meets expectations but is not realizing the true potential of the team? Are you such a leader? As a leader, maybe you personally have received some consistent constructive feedback over the years that you filed as unimportant or incorrect because you continued to rise up in your career.
So you may not think it really matters if there is a blind spot in yourself or in one of your leaders if numbers are being met. But, blind spots can be like a governor on a rental truck. There is more power under the hood, but the governor is preventing access to it. The other cars are passing you and you get frustrated. You may even find yourself yelling at the truck and the rental company.
What is resulting from your blind spot?
What if you could remove that governor? What if you more than met your goals? What if the team was thriving? Hitting on all cylinders, over and over again? Beating out competitors? Attracting top talent?
Blind spots can yield:
o Missed opportunity today - If you so certain in your opinions and action oriented and get a lot done, your blind spot may prevent you from hearing other ideas or other client needs and an opportunity is overlooked.
o Unused potential or organizational capacity - If you are very empathetic, helpful and diplomatic – your blind spot may be that you don’t balance this with being clear on expectations and holding others accountable. This may be sub-optimizing your team.
o Ineffective behaviors – If your typical behavioral strengths aren’t yielding expected results and you are stressed, you may push on your strength harder or blow up or retreat. None of which may be productive or effective.
Identify & Disable your blind spots before they limit you.
Whether applied to a team or an individual, knowing what your blind spots are and the why behind those, opens up tremendous opportunity for accelerated growth and increased impact. Many times the individual is overusing their strength and not taking advantage of more effective behaviors for the situation.
Learning how to use behaviors in balance to optimize your effectiveness is liberating. Having a large toolkit of mastered skills and knowing which tool to use when, will result in the agility and adaptability needed in these volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) times.
The best organizations and leaders identify their blind spots before those become an issue or landmine. Before it hinders their agility to pivot and adapt.
If you want take the governor off that engine, let’s chat. MBM ELEVATE will explore objective assessments and coaching techniques that can unearth blind spots and develop increased leadership agility for you and your team.
Mary Beth Molloy
Certified Executive Coach and Business Consultant, she delivers uncanny focus on the intersection of your business vision and goals and the leaders you’ve entrusted to achieve them.
She knows what it takes to accelerate and elevate business results through leadership development and performance. It’s her powerful blend of these experiences together with her practicality, purpose, and positivity that drive our value.
Mary Beth is interested in hearing from you. | Follow on LinkedIn | Share comments or ask questions
Are You In Shape to Lead or Work Remotely?
Now is time to pause and be intentional about making remote working more effective. Tools and technology all can help. But you won’t realize the return on those if the leader and team do not adjust their behaviors to be effective in remote interactions.
No warm up…initially
The uncertain nature of coronavirus and government mandates pushed businesses to move their workforce out of the office almost overnight. A rapid response was needed and heeded. That did not allow for much warm up, planning, discussion or thoughts on best form.
The panic has subsided, the need to consider employee health remains and the forecast is that we are not likely to revert to the pre-pandemic work model.
Time to target core muscles
Now is time to pause and be intentional about making this a more effective way to work. Tools and technology all can help. But you won’t realize the return on those if the leader and team do not strengthen some core muscles to increase their effectiveness in remote interactions. The set of behaviors for focus target remote communication and productivity management. These are a few core ones:
Remaining open and empathetic
Setting and communicating clear goals
Holding yourself and others accountable
Questions to consider:
Are your leaders flexing up the core muscles needed for success in a more virtual team environment?
Have you intentionally adjusted for :
the impact of less structure?
Work From Home (WFH) interruptions?
no hallway conversations?
Is everyone on the team developing the behaviors needed to be more effective?
How can the capacity to work remotely be measured and understood?
Accelerate with Analytics and Coaching
Good news – there is an objective way to accelerate to these answers. The key behaviors needed to lead a remote team can be assessed and developed. Discerning quickly where the development opportunity lies in the leader and each team member, allows focus for rapid improvement. Using tools like Harrison’s Remote Workforce Analytics , combined with targeted coaching, will allow organizations to maximize performance and meet the challenges of leading teams in a remote environment.
We look forward to helping you increase the effectiveness of leading and working remotely. Contact us to get the conversation started.
Mary Beth Molloy
Certified Executive Coach and Business Consultant, she delivers uncanny focus on the intersection of your business vision and goals and the leaders you’ve entrusted to achieve them.
She knows what it takes to accelerate and elevate business results through leadership development and performance. It’s her powerful blend of these experiences together with her practicality, purpose, and positivity that drive our value.
Mary Beth is interested in hearing from you. | Follow on LinkedIn | Share comments or ask questions
Don’t Get Stuck Playing Defense Against VUCA
How to determine if leaders are equipped to play offense or stuck playing defense against VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity)
Offense Means Opportunity
We talk about VUCA a lot, with good reason. It stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity, and right now, we are surrounded by intensity across all four. What does that mean for businesses? That depends on the state of readiness of their leaders, and if they are equipped to play offense or stuck playing defense.
When you’re stuck playing defense, you’re letting the circumstances drive your behavior. Your line of sight becomes very short, and you wind up “just getting by” (or worse) when times get tough. Businesses that have a strong offensive game are able to find opportunity in the challenges, better anticipate twists and turns, and keep their attention focused on the bigger, longer-term goals.
How to Know Which Ground Game You’re Playing
If you’re thriving through turbulent times, you must have some offense working somewhere. If you feel like all your energies are spent playing “whack-a-mole” with the issues of the day, chances are you’re stuck on defense. Either way, the secret to a well-rounded game plan is in the capabilities of the organizational leaders.
After years of working with executive teams to balance out great defense with great offense, we’ve identified a starter set of questions to explore to determine if you are playing offense in the interest of your organizational vision.
Questions to Explore
Are your leaders Amplifiers or Blockers?
Are they Agile – can they manage metrics today AND employ innovation to increase capacity AND create a vision to capture opportunities amidst VUCA?
Can they align AND inspire AND unleash disparate teams to collaborate across networks to achieve the purpose of the company?
Are they risk takers AND analyzers of pitfalls AND optimistic about the future?
The Winning Play
Here’s the catch. You can’t settle for answers to just one of these questions. To play successful offense in the game of VUCA, you need to answer, master, and execute against all of them at once. It’s a tall order, but moving your organization and team to playing offense is trainable, actionable, and puts you in a position of strength for growth.
We look forward to elevating your offense. Contact us to get the conversation started.
Mary Beth Molloy
Certified Executive Coach and Business Consultant, she delivers uncanny focus on the intersection of your business vision and goals and the leaders you’ve entrusted to achieve them.
She knows what it takes to accelerate and elevate business results through leadership development and performance. It’s her powerful blend of these experiences together with her practicality, purpose, and positivity that drive our value.
Mary Beth is interested in hearing from you. | Follow on LinkedIn | Share comments or ask questions
Empathy: Leaders must connect first to lead successfully
Empathy as a “Hard Skill” to Master for Business Impact
When you focus on empathy, you will see positive impact on your leadership strength! Wait, you think empathy is just a buzz word? You are not clear on why it is so important to leadership? I invite you to take just a few moments to read on about why focusing on this can up your leadership effectiveness, what empathy really looks like and how you can master it.
Why is Empathy a Big Deal?
The strain on our teams did not magically go away when the new year arrived. Great leaders acknowledge the impact of that strain on the likelihood of business success. Add the data proves this.
Studies over the last 20+ years have proven that the most successful leaders have mastered empathy and other indicators of Emotional Intelligence (EI).
According to several such studies referenced in Working with Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman, “90% of the difference between average leaders and the best ones is related to emotional competencies. And Emotional competencies were found to be two times as important in contributing to excellence versus pure intellect and expertise.”
There are 12 Emotional Intelligence/Social Intelligence (ESI) competencies as identified per the coursework taught at Case Western University and the work of Richard Boyatzis, professor and author. Within those 12 ESI competencies, there are four that are considered ‘threshold,’ including empathy.
These threshold competencies and associated behaviors leaders must understand and master. Yet studies also show that the same top four ESI competencies are primary leadership derailers, or where they struggle most.
Mastering EI behaviors must be on the learning agenda for the best leaders. The great news is that they are comprised of specific behaviors that can be learned. Starting with empathy is timely and foundational.
What Do We Really Mean by Empathy?
Empathy and the other primary EI competencies can sound abstract and overwhelming until you break them down.
Definitionally, empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within the other being's frame of reference. It also helps to look at it behaviorally, as this may help you visualize the meaning. It starts with deep listening.
To develop this capacity, you should understand and then practice the associated behaviors listed below:
Read individual’s moods and non-verbal cures accurately
Listen attentively to others - to words and the tone
Respect and relate well to people of diverse backgrounds
Understand others’ perspectives, especially when different from your own
Understand the reasons for another’s actions
How Does Empathy Show Up In Leadership Interactions?
How might practicing these behaviors show up in a leadership interaction? To paraphrase Professor Melvin Smith at CWRU, “one doesn’t hear what you know till one knows that you hear.” That means you as the leader must provide clues to let the people around you know you’re listening, you understand, and you empathize.
Whether you are discussing the annual revenue plan, a person’s career goals or chatting about what he/she did over the weekend, try incorporating signaling statements that help you focus, and help them recognize your empathy.
Following are a few sample statements you might use to provide that frame of reference as you are practicing empathy:
I see your frustration, tell me more about that.
I hear your excitement, tell me more about that!
Help me better understand what that means to you.
This sounds very important, tell me more.
Building Empathy to Up Your Game
Now that you recognize the power of Empathy as a key competency in great leaders and realize that the associated behaviors can be learned, it’s time to build it through practice.
“Listening is a magnetic and creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward,” said Karl Menninger.
Substitute the word leaders for friends - The leaders who listen to us are the ones we move toward - and hear the power in these words.
When you better hear and understand a person, you will be significantly more successful in creating the line of sight to the goal for that person. Pick one person or one situation today where you listen empathically.
Ready to start on your path of mastering empathy? Contact us today
Mary Beth Molloy
Certified Executive Coach and Business Consultant, she delivers uncanny focus on the intersection of your business vision and goals and the leaders you’ve entrusted to achieve them.
She knows what it takes to accelerate and elevate business results through leadership development and performance. It’s her powerful blend of these experiences together with her practicality, purpose, and positivity that drive our value.
Mary Beth is interested in hearing your results | Follow on LinkedIn | Share comments or ask questions
MBM Elevate: Business Consulting & Executive Coaching
We see this as the perfect time to elevate our impact across more organizations and leaders. We are ready to come alongside you and your team to help you thrive in the midst of VUCA. MBM Elevate accelerates organizational impact through expanding clarity of vision, capacity of the team, and competencies of leaders.
The amplified volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) of 2020 turned up the heat on businesses and their top executives. We see this as the perfect time to elevate our impact across more organizations and leaders.
We are ready to come alongside you and your team to help you thrive in the midst of VUCA. MBM Elevate accelerates organizational impact through expanding clarity of vision, capacity of the team and competencies of leaders.
Founded on 30 Years of Business Experience and Positive Energy
MBM Elevate is here to help you achieve your goals no matter what the future brings. Our Founder, Mary Beth Molloy, established MBM Elevate based on her success accelerating results through people over the course of her decades-long career at Hewlett Packard (HP) / Electronic Data Systems (EDS).
Mary Beth has been a successful business leader in the functions of: business strategy, sales and marketing, consulting and technology outsourcing. She has worked in large, public, global corporations, regional privately-owned firms, nonprofits and in her own consultancy. She has built, integrated and led cross-functional and global teams. Mary Beth has held responsibility for P&Ls up to $100m in revenue. She is a Certified Executive coach. She had the opportunity to relocate 3 times for business, work internationally and lead diverse teams.
With a proven approach that links organizational vision directly to leadership behavior and results, MBM Elevate reflects an expansion of her capacity to help elevate more organizations, teams, and leaders.
What Counts: Impact and Outcomes
Our work focuses on driving impact through a combination of business consulting and executive coaching to expand clarity of vision, capacity of the team and competencies of leaders. Linking these in a practical plan yields the desired outcome and impact.
Business Consulting
With a strategic perspective, specific expertise around outcome-based consulting, and deep experience working with executive leaders across complex organizations, we offer an intentional set of solutions to deliver impact across your entire organization. Our solutions include:
Aligning Vision Expectations and Execution
Growth Strategy & Plan Clarity
Team Collective Effectiveness
Succession Strategy
Executive Coaching
Executives are exposed to new and changing business realities that challenge and stretch them. Yesterday’s strengths are not the only needed abilities to thrive today and in the future. We use certified Executive Coaching practices to assess, address, and accelerate abilities that will expand impact today and ready you for tomorrow through solutions including:
Executive Coaching for a Specific Role
Emotional Intelligence Elevation
Expansion & Agility in Current Role
Leader Blind spots Hindering Growth
Newly Hired Executive Assimilation Acceleration
Your Success Is the ROI
When you work with us, it’s all about you. We are on your team. We start with a proven process, and adjust it in a unique way to align it with where you are and where you’re going. The MBM Elevate approach provides uncanny focus to help the organization prioritize energy and leadership development for intentional impact at the individual and organizational level.
We look forward to elevating our impact for you. Contact us to get the conversation started.
Mary Beth Molloy
Certified Executive Coach and Business Consultant, she delivers uncanny focus on the intersection of your business vision and goals and the leaders you’ve entrusted to achieve them.
She knows what it takes to accelerate and elevate business results through leadership development and performance. It’s her powerful blend of these experiences together with her practicality, purpose, and positivity that drive our value.
Mary Beth is interested in hearing your results | Follow on LinkedIn | Share comments or ask questions