Grit is a good word. It’s an even better trait. You know what grit is when you see it. It’s that grind-it-out sticktoitiveness in the face of adversity displayed by individuals long on character and short on “I can’t.” Here are some of my most inspiring examples of grit:
We spend an incredible amount of time immersed in a world of our own fabrication—the world as it feels and looks and acts from inside our organization’s walls. It’s not the culture that will kill you, it’s the view. It’s time to change it. Take off the blinders and look up and out further. Extend your focal point.
There are literally dozens of opportunities every day for you to make a difference. From the fundamental act of paying focused attention to a coworker, to offering a personal morning greeting or engaging in the acts of management such as: providing encouragement or delivering respectful, constructive feedback, these simple gestures have a big impact on the people and environment.
Harvard Business School Professor, Linda Hill’s, description of context faced by everyone in a leadership role in this era: “overload, ambiguity and conflict” is spot on. It is a much more articulate labeling of what I describe as, “the leadership blender.” And it reflects the state of existence of a large percentage of leaders as they strive to do more with less, faster, and with more impact. You could not ask for three more challenging contextual sets of circumstances. Here are some thoughts in developing your “inner game of leading” to help you survive and thrive in this era of change:
For all of us operating in the relative safety of corporate walls, there’s more than a few powerful lessons on leading we can gain from those operating in harm’s way. The first lesson is humility.
While a leader’s competence is viewed as the most important attribute to engender trust, the fact that he or she genuinely cares about team members is an important number two.
When things break bad (even momentarily) in an organization, a number of predictable reflexes kick-in. Expenses are cut. Operations reviews evolve into extended, public proctology exams with everyone taking a long look searching for answers and blame. Some of the responses are reasonable and expected. Others are destructive. Suspending the work of developing your leaders and managers is destructive. Instead of letting your training budget dictate your team and leadership development efforts, here are 5 high-contact ideas to turbo-charge your efforts:
The toxic employee has a “special” knack of destabilizing groups, destroying trust between coworkers and stifling conversation and creativity in nearly every situation. For a number of reasons…none of which are worth much, too many leaders hesitate when it comes to purging these radioactive waste products from their teams. If you’ve been rationalizing retaining one of those characters that creates fallout with every encounter, it’s important to recognize what you’re doing to everyone else and then to take action.
When it comes to the forward-looking issues around talent, team and strategy development, the uncomfortable answer to the question in the headline for this post for just about all of us (myself included) is, “Not enough.” Here are 4 ideas to help you manufacture time for the critical developmental and strategy discussions needed to push your business forward:
In difficult situations, reality tinged with optimism and backed by encouragement serves as a more effective motivator than a saccharine-sweet message of false praise and manufactured positivity.
