Welcome to the Leadership Solutions Blog!
As the workplace continues to shift and contract, future success will be based on leaders demonstrating their ability to collaborate and build effective relationships. So, in the spirit of collaboration, we boldly request you share our information with as many people as possible as you seek to operate in a mindset of “abundance”.
Recently I achieved my coaching certification as a master practitioner of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming – the science of how your thoughts affect your behaviors). During my training I learned that it is possible to train your mind to “think and act within a state of abundance.”
Career success can be attained despite any obstacles you may encounter. When you practice the key leadership principle of “thinking in abundance”, you begin to recognize that there is more than enough opportunity for everyone who chooses, to create the level of career or business success they desire. Yes, even in today’s challenging times, you can achieve whatever you focus your mind on accomplishing. Therefore, you no longer have to fear or be concerned with what someone else has that you may not have. Thinking from a “mindset of abundance” opens up opportunities to collaborate and freely share information.
When times are tough and challenging, it can be real tempting to fall into the trap of “negativity”, “isolation” and “hoarding information”. You can easily convince yourself that it is you against the world as you try not to become expendable in this current lean business model of cost cutting.
As an executive coach, I help leaders understand the significance of being a resource to others as a framework to achieve the future success you desire. You need others just as much as they need you. No one can stand alone and expect to succeed as the pace of meeting work expectations continues to accelerate.
Over the years as I have navigated climbing the ladder of success as a corporate leader and now as a business owner, I have discovered one guiding principle that stands the test of time:
Your skills will make room for you when you are willing to work with others and openly share your knowledge.
It is only when you share information will people truly understand the value you bring. Today’s workplace dynamics demand that everyone work in alignment and become more accountable in order to achieve the continued success of the organization. Your awareness of the direction and challenges within your environment is the first step in creating the necessary organizational alignment for success.
As you improve your awareness, I encourage you to identify the key relationships you will seek to co-partner with in the new world of work that is being created.
If you are struggling with determining your continued path to career success in this environment of constant change, contact me to discuss strategies you can implement to unleash your potential as a problem solver of today’s business challenges.
~Deborah Chambers Chima, CEO, Chambers Consulting Group, Ltd.
Collaborative Leadership Influence: The Secret Ingredient to Business Success
Do you find the steps leaders must take to be effective can often be a long arduous process? Too often I observe current leaders relying on their position power, rather than their ability to use collaborative leadership influence to achieve the desired business results. As leaders, we must understand the power we have to use a collaborative approach versus a command and control approach is well within our control. Read more about Collaborative Leadership Influence
Collaboration: The Leadership Skill of the Future
Too often, senior leaders are focused on protecting their turf by relying on a leadership style of using command and control tactics instead of seeking opportunities to influence the behaviors of others by teaching collaboration. They seem to have forgotten the basic management principle that you are only as good as your people make you. Read more about Collaboration as a Leadership Skill
I must start this post acknowledging that I have not written to my group of leaders in awhile.
Why? I lost my mojo for encouraging leaders to show up and demonstrate your ability to collaborate and communicate with passion. I have spent a 30 year career encouraging and supporting leaders who desire to demonstrate a collaborative leadership style for the purpose of working effectively with other people to get the job done.
Yet, I am finding that those same good leaders are losing their jobs like mad. So as a leadership expert, it makes me wonder what does it really take to have a successful career in this new mad world that has been created over the last couple of years?
If you communicate effectively, seek to collaborate with others no matter how difficult they may be, strive to demonstrate leadership, and practically do everything right, shouldn’t one expect that they will not be found redundant and terminated? (more…)
Tags: collaborate, communicate, communication, leaders, Leadership Skills
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“The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet. ”
Hesburgh
You are an insightful and collaborative leader. How can I help? Wouldn’t it be great to hear these words immediately after you communicate your vision on an important topic? Have you ever wondered how great leaders become so effective with the way they communicate? Let’s face it. A leader’s communication style is a large part of your ability to get others to take action.
Without action, a vision or strategy is nothing more than a beautiful set of words. It may sound good, but do your words create such an effect that people are compelled to want to know how they can be a part of it? If not, you need to determine the steps needed to powerfully communicate your vision.
If you appear unsure of your message by the tentative way in which you communicate it, you will struggle with getting your team, your peers, and definitely your boss to believe in what you are saying.
On the other hand, if you aggressively try to engage people in an attempt to make them listen, they will definitely tune you out. So what is the magic answer to get others to listen, understand, and engage with you to bring your vision to life?
I believe the power of communicating your leadership vision starts with the ability to build a collaborative bridge that compels people to want to know more.
Here are some examples:
- When you need to get your peers to buy into your idea, you must first be willing to openly acknowledge that you need their help. Hold on before you say no way. That simply means you must make sure your initial words communicate your desire to partner with them. If your vision is truly going to have any chance of being accepted, you must make your message about them and not you.
(more…)
Tags: collaborate, Collaboration, communicate, communication, leader, leadership
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‘Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.”
Do you realize one of the best strategies to ensure you reach your career goals is to first collaborate with others to help them reach their goals ? I know. It probably seems counter-intuitive to expect that in this age of fast pace, ever changing work dynamics, you need to consider how you can help other people be successful. Why? Because it is only when you reach out to help someone solve a challenge do they really began to understand all that you have to offer. The more others know about your skills due to a personal interaction, the more they will want to collaborate with you. (more…)
Tags: collaborate, Collaboration, collaborative leadership style, leaders
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“When nothing is sure, everything is possible.”
~Margaret Drabble
I recently received some news that rocked me to my core. I admit that even as a proven leader, initially I went through all the emotions one can experience when you receive unexpected news. Do you know what I mean when I say all thoughts of striving to be a collaborative leader just went out the window? I attempted to justify why the decision was totally wrong. I even ranted and raved to my trusted inner circle. I was thrown totally off my success game. I thank them for their patience in letting me get it out of my system.
If you have ever experienced a major disappointment at work after giving your all, then you understand the betrayal I felt when it was determined by others that I had taken the project as far as I could.
To say I was not happy is putting it mildly. Then, something miraculous happened. I remembered the importance of understanding ” what matters most”. (more…)
Tags: change, collaborative leader, leader
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“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.”
— Niccolo Machiavelli
It is no secret that today’s leaders are balancing a lot of balls. These balls can rightfully be named: nonstop demands, vision, strategy, execution, developing people, managing expectations, communication, and last but not least, managing the unknown.
The stalled economy has created the need for leaders to become comfortable with not knowing in advance if your ideas, goals, and desires will get the desired results and yet you must move forward anyhow.
Dealing with the unknown of what is coming over the horizon yet you stay the course because you believe your team can create something great, is becoming the new normal. This style of collaborative leadership requires guts and perseverance.
Collaboration requires leaders who are comfortable with ambiguity as they seek to bring life to their vision.
Collaborative leaders believe enough in the people they have assembled on the team that regardless of the unknown , they have the ability to help everyone stay focused on achieving the goal.
How can becoming comfortable with the unknown help a leader be successful?
1. You will learn to confidently stay the course as you learn to appreciate the small baby steps you sometimes must take to reach a bold goal.
2. You will be able to accomplish more than you originally imagined because you will release your fear of needing to have all the answers immediately.
3. You will create more opportunities to demonstrate your capabilities because you will stand out from your peers as a leader who recognizes that the rules have changed and therefore the approach to reaching success must also change.
Learn to get comfortable with operating in the unknown. The current terrain demands that leaders recognize the need to take a stand and perform with the attitude that regardless of the shaky environment, you know that you bring value to your organization.
Depending on your industry, the current trends indicate that the economy is slowly trending upward. The reality is that no one knows when things are going to positively turnaround. Yet; leaders who recognize the need to stay the course despite not always having a compass are the ones who will survive.
Are you willing to lose your fear of not having all the answers as you make the decisions required to bring your vision to life?
Tags: colaborative leadership, collaborative leaders, communication, leaders, strategy, vision
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“Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.”
Albert Einstein
As you consider the myriad of leadership challenges you encounter each day within your department, team or staff, would it be productive to have a host of viable solutions readily accessible? Too often, leaders do not take the steps to explore how challenges can be resolved by using a collaborative approach. Striving to be a more collaborative leader can result in a plethora of options surfacing as viable solutions to the problem at hand.
Seeking to obtain the consensus of stakeholders is a strategy many leaders use to reach closure on a particular issue. I believe that striving for consensus in order to reach agreement can be a limiting approach. In order to achieve consensus agreement, most people need to have a limited number of options to consider in order to make a decision. On the other hand, using collaborative skills to solve a problem or situation opens up all kinds of possibilities of the best solutions to take. Leaders must become comfortable using a different set of skills to influence others.
Collaborative leaders must understand the following secrets to unleashing the creativity that allows the best resolutions to surface to the forefront.
- Create opportunities for ideas to be communicated in a non judgmental environment. No idea is to small or too big to be discussed. The focus must be placed on participants using their creative skills rather than their analytical skills initially.
- Create teams or groups of people who typically do not work together yet each person clearly understands how their individual insight contributes to the overall discussion. The focus must be placed on minimizing silos and maximizing potential contributions.
- Create an environment where every one’s input is valued regardless of their title or position. The focus must be placed on breaking down hierarchical mindsets. Many times people on the front line wont speak up because they feel outranked. Yet these same people often have great ideas on how to resolve a problem once and for all. (more…)
Tags: Collaboration, collaborative, collaborative leaders, creativity, leadership
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“I understand now that the vulnerability I’ve always felt is the greatest strength a person can have. You can’t experience life without feeling life”
Elizabeth Shue
As a leader, have you ever experienced a situation where you recognized that taking the risk to reveal your thoughts to others could make you vulnerable to criticism? Yet, you said it anyway? More than likely, despite your sincere desire to be collaborative by sharing your thoughts,your mind was in a battle between being cautious and taking the risk to open up.
I have discovered that thinking in a collaborative manner allows the fear of being vulnerable to significantly diminish. How?
- Being collaborative allows you to open up in ways you never dreamed of. As a leader, the opportunity to reveal your insight creates a chance for others to recognize all that you have to offer. The first time you open up can be scary, no doubt about it. Yet, if you do a good job of formulating your thoughts your confidence will soar as you observe some people responding positively. You may not get everyone on board with your ideas so just focus on initially convincing a few. Having a few like minded collaborators will do wonders for improving your vulnerability.
- Being collaborative creates a chance to try out new innovative concepts. There is less vulnerability in failure occurring when collaborative partners bring their best thinking to the table. The best ideas are those where everyone contributes to the discussion with no concern of rejection or ridicule. (more…)
Tags: Collaboration, collaborative, leaders, leadership, vunerability
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“The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.”
Theodore M. Hesburgh
Striving to be more collaborative is hard work. What makes it so difficult is the requirement to involve others in order for an environment of collaboration to exist. When you work alone, you only have yourself to blame if things don’t go as planned. You also get to shine in all the glory when things go well.
A leader who desires to be collaborative understands you must be open to letting others speak their mind about your vision, your ideas, your thoughts. A collaborative leader must be willing to lay their vision down on the chopping block and allow others to thoroughly inspect it , rearrange it, and sometimes completely redo it. Collaborative leaders must be open to the reality that you don”t have all the answers.
By being open to allowing others in for the purpose of collaboration, you now have an even greater opportunity to bring forth the best idea, concept, or product. As a result, you now have a greater opportunity to make a big impact within the desired environment. So how good are you at inviting others to the table of collaboration with you?
(more…)
“Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better”
Bill Bradley
There is no doubt that most organizations are experiencing change at an unprecedented pace. Collaboration skills is the new weapon of distinction amongst leaders who desire to get to the next level of performance. As a leader in today’s challenging environment, you are responsible for helping people create success despite all the chaos that constant change brings. (more…)
Tags: change, Collaboration, collaborative, collaborative leaders, collaborative leadership style, leadership
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