Number One Effective Leadership Skill

Leaders speak up when they need to. They speak up when others behave inappropriately. They speak up when they see dangerous things happening. They speak up when they see injustice. They speak up when they see discrimination. They speak up when they see stupid things happening.

One of my clients, a young Nurse Manager, this week realised that she needed to speak up on behalf of a patient she was concerned about. She revealed that, prior to undertaking leadership training and coaching, she would never have had the courage to speak up as she did, that she would have worried all night about her patient, not slept, become resentful with the rather scary team member whose care she was questioning, and generally tie herself up in knots over her passivity and lack of confidence. Not to mention the potentially very poor outcome for the patient.

Everyone (apart from confirmed sociopaths) fears confrontation. We avoid confrontation or difficult conversations because we fear the response, we fear losing control emotionally, we fear the other person not liking us and we fear not knowing the right words to say. In my years of training people in assertive communication, I cannot think of one person who says they enjoy confronting poor behaviour or work issues. It takes courage and preparation and rehearsal and support and more courage and practice and skill.

My client spoke up clearly and calmly, and arranged for a team review of the care of the very, very sick patient, some tweaks were made to the care and so far the patient is alive and on the improve. My client said she felt sick before, during and after the conversation but was so proud of her ability to stick to her course and achieve a good outcome for her patient and herself. She handed over to night shift, went home, had a sound night sleep and returned to work the next day to find the patient improved. Her colleague has displayed some sulky and passive-aggressive behaviours to her-code for “I don’t like what you said to me the other night” often used by sulky passive- aggressive types-common to all work places-in itself -a whole topic worthy of another blog!

I agreed that she had done the right thing for her patient and herself but also for her standing in her team. She had shown courage, calm and management accountability to the rest of the team. Even those nurses and doctors not on that night would have heard of the conversation-work grape vines work very well, especially when the boss takes charge and behaves as she did.

On reflection she told me that the key lesson from the experience was that she could speak up; that the experience was hard but with worthy outcomes and that it would never be so hard again! She is well on the road of her leadership journey.

The Story of the Nothing Box

Participants in the leadership and management programs that I am involved in love all of the program and workshop content (clever and appreciative little people that they are!) I can’t take all of the credit though –that must go to my wonderful guest speakers! One such gem is Avril Henry- who teaches the importance of understanding and appreciating diversity in the workplace- be it gender, generation or cultural diversity.

By far the most favourite bit is about how men and women think and communicate differently (Yes –it is true!) Men are much more single minded where as women not only multi task but multi think. Avril gives a wonderful analogy to highlight this. If you took the top off a man’s head and looked inside his brain -one can see a series of boxes- a “sport”  box, a “fishing or hobby “ box , a “family” box, a “work” box, a “ sex “ box, and a “nothing” box. Men have one box open at a time and we (females) are not welcome in that box. It is not our box. If the work box is open then that is what he is thinking of, if the sport box is open then that is the only focus .If the “nothing” box is open then that is genuinely what he is thinking of-“nothing” and that is fine-It doesn’t mean anything is wrong as many women assume. If you ask what your male partner is thinking and he says nothing-he means nothing! That is just his way of thinking.

Conversely if you looked inside a woman’s brain you see a big ball of string all interconnected so that women can be thinking of work, family, friends, TV shows, books, gossip etc all at once. We rarely have nothing on our mind- So if you are having relationship angst around how your man (and male work colleagues) communicates, it may be helpful to consider what box is open and respect that nothing box!

It is not uncommon after the workshop for participants to ask Avril to go home with them and explain the nothing box to their wives or girlfriends. One participant felt it was a message worthy of national broadcasting and inclusion in all school curriculums-so thrilled he was to have his thinking of nothing moments validated and decriminalised.

Stay tuned for the next instalment-The Story of the Diminishing Daily Word Usage.

Wobbly about Goal Setting

I have been asked to be a guest speaker at local women’s networking group tomorrow night. I love speaking to groups of women and love the business promotion opportunities that they provide- in fact I love speaking full stop-just ask anyone who knows me! * Yet I am currently uncharacteristically, underwhelmed at the prospect, as the topic is “goal setting”.


Now goal setting is basically the bread and butter of any good coaching session so I should be filled with enthusiasm and ideas for the talk. So what does this uncommon reluctance tell me? Like all good coaches, I do lots of self reflecting-Why am I feeling this reaction? What is the deeper meaning here? How can I make the talk tomorrow evening helpful and engaging for the people who come?

This is what I have discovered from my self questioning.

We are bombarded with messages- internally-by ourselves and externally- by others- about goal setting- lose weight, get rich, spend less, be kinder etc etc-particularly at this time of year-Post NYE and the start of the working year -so my reluctance comes from knowing that many such goals are set, yet many more are discarded, not met and so the whole exercise becomes a bit of a downer. So I am concerned that people will just hear goal setting and switch off.

Therefore, I have decided that the crux of my talk will be to inspire people to take some time out of their busy lives and plan how they want their life to be in 2012-in all it’s glory-work, play, study, money, travel-whatever -then choose the domain that they want to make the biggest change and decide what needs to happen first to help that change happen-so before they know it my audience would have set themselves a target and the g.o.a.l. word has not even been mentioned!**

In conclusion I will remind the audience that the most successful people never tackle such a change program on their own and to encourage them to understand change takes time, support of others and rewarding of small steps. I’ll let you know how it goes.

By the way-what are your tips for effective goal setting?

* In case you are worried about what sort of coach I would be please, be re-assured I am an excellent listener as well (and modest, as you can already tell)

** I will use a Mind Mapping technique- a very powerful and easy way to plan, and then review your life.