LEADERSHIP RESOURCES BLOG

Leadership can be stressful. But effective leaders use stress as a constructive force rather than allowing it to become a destructive one. Stress occurs when conditions produce awareness that some action is required to satisfy a need, to solve a problem, or to prevent some undesirable result. Without constructive stress, motivation would be at an extremely low level, and very little would ever be accomplished. Adopt the attitude that stress is a challenge to your creativity — a welcome opportunity to perform well. Adjust your language to reflect this attitude. Constructive stress inspires people to act, to achieve, and to utilize more of their full potential for success.

Stress becomes destructive when the pressure to act cannot be met, or when one believes it cannot be met. If the perceived need to act requires more time, more money, greater skill or productivity than the individual can supply, the force of stress becomes negative. The result is physical or psychological damage — or both.

Even more damaging than the physical toll of stress are the psychological effects.

Continuing stress destroys the thrill and excitement of achievement because no accomplishment ever seems good enough. The resulting dissatisfaction with personal productivity causes a breakdown in relationships with people at work and at home. Undue stress hampers decision-making effectiveness, decreases personal productivity, and blocks creativity.

Minimize destructive stress with these ideas:

1. Set Goals

Clearly-defined goals and a written plan of action for both your work and personal life give you these stress reducing benefits:

You always know where you are going and, therefore, feel little fear of the unknown.
Obstacles are not perceived as threats because you have anticipated them and planned how you will handle them.
Making choices is simplified because your goals serve as criteria.
A written plan of action for achieving goals provides ready-made decisions regarding specific actions to take. Overall organizational goals and plans simplify the leadership of people. They specify the actions and activities needed and who is responsible for each one. The plan of action for achieving the goals of the organization provides standards and procedures for measuring individual and organizational productivity. You and your team members know automatically whether productivity is adequate. There is no need to wait until the end of the month or quarter and suddenly find that goals were missed.

2. Identify Priorities

One of the most effective ways to choose which activities you will perform is to evaluate their cost. Determine the value of one hour of your time based on your annual income.

When you know how much your time is worth, you have a better standard for choosing items of work you will perform personally and those you will delegate. Just as you would not be willing to pay a hundred dollars for a cup of coffee, you should not spend a hundred dollars worth of time accomplishing a five-dollar task. Compare the cost of your time to the worth of the activity involved.

Another approach to establishing priorities is to evaluate the contribution each activity will make to the achievement of organizational and personal goals. Focus on activities that make major contributions to moving you and your team members closer to your goals.

3. Prevent Burnout
Unless you handle stress constructively, burnout is likely. Burnout is brought about by unrelieved work stress and results in extreme emotional exhaustion and dramatically decreased productivity. Prevention, of course, is the preferred way of handling burnout. And, it is just as vital to prevent burnout in your people as it is for yourself. Effective leaders are positive role models; they handle stress constructively to prevent burnout.

Identify specific sources of stress, then plan and carry out appropriate actions to minimize or eliminate them. Common sources of stress include:

• work overload
• excessive time demands
• unanticipated or unrealistic assignments or deadlines
• interpersonal conflicts

4. Keep Your Perspective
Remember why you made the effort to clear out the stress producing mind clutter of old attitudes, old work habits, and old problems. Strive to enhance your enjoyment of life and your productivity by keeping all areas of your personal and business life in proper perspective.

The specific method or process for developing or training varies with what is to be taught, the learning abilities of the people involved, and their prior experience. This basic approach can be followed as a general outline for instruction on any type of training or development:

Explain what is to be done and why.

• Tell team members what the task involves and why it is important. Answer any questions in a friendly, positive manner. Point out how the individuals will benefit. If they can expect to receive higher pay, increased job status, or become more valuable to the organization in some other tangible way, tell them so. Describe to them how their efforts help reach the organization’s goals. Remind them that by receiving further training and development, they can better meet their personal goals for increased responsibility and greater compensation.

Explain the major steps.

• Break down the task into steps that are easy to understand. Provide a written description and guidelines in addition to your verbal explanations. Providing a written procedure saves you and the team member time later in answering questions. Written procedures also demonstrate your confidence in the abilities of your team members to follow written instructions, to answer their own questions, and to learn independently.

Have the trainee explain to you the procedure.

• Encourage the trainee to “talk through” the procedure. This helps you and the trainee to identify any misunderstanding about the procedure. When all the trouble spots are eliminated and trainees can accurately and confidently describe the procedure, they are ready for the next step.

Demonstrate the procedure.

• Teach one step at a time. Demonstrate what to do by performing the activity, explaining as you work, while they watch and listen.

Remember that people learn differently.

• Nearly all learn best by watching the successful performance of the skills you are teaching and then by actually performing the skills themselves.

Help trainees to perform the procedure.

• When you first allow the trainee to perform the procedure independently, remain available as a resource. Avoid assuming too much responsibility. Remember, you are there to help the trainee succeed.

Evaluate progress.

• Praise satisfactory performance and point out ways to improve still more. Always emphasize what a person does right. Show what could be done better, and ask questions that lead the trainees to expand their understanding of the process and to develop the knowledge to perform correctly. Give major attention to the aspects of the performance you want to be repeated. Wrong behavior will then be eliminated, and good performance will take its place.

Provide a tracking system.

• Set up a method of tracking performance. Always inspect what you expect. This approach encourages people to become accountable for their own success and adds to the respect they feel toward you as a good coach and mentor. As soon as possible, put learners on their own to perform with only routine checkpoints. Let them know you have confidence in their ability. The efficiency and effectiveness of nearly every task in any organization can be enhanced by providing a written procedure for it. Written guidelines require careful analysis of a task, a description of the best way to do it, and a tracking system for determining how well the task is being done. Use a tracking system to enable people to measure their success so they can assume responsibility for their own continuous improvement.

Remember that you can never transfer years of knowledge and skill directly to another person. If you assume a condescending, impatient attitude, people quickly detect it and cannot do their best. Use the advantage of your expertise to facilitate the learning experience of the other person.

You are constantly teaching, training, and developing other people. Every time you give someone an assignment, or tell a person what to do, how to do it, and when it must be completed, you use some technique of instruction. By becoming more aware of these everyday opportunities for training and development, you can turn informal instruction into powerful learning experiences.

Metrics drive improvement. As Peter Drucker once said, “What gets measured, gets done.”

When an athlete reflects on his performance, he doesn”t simply rely on his feelings and how he felt when he was on the court. He digs into his metrics and statistics, including shooting percentage, free throw percentage, number of rebounds, etc. Using this valuable data, the athlete can usually be coached and motivated to increase his results in the future.

In most regards, metrics are a good thing. Companies need to establish measurements and analyze them regularly to identify opportunities for improvement. However, just because you can measure something doesn’t mean you should. While a chart or graph might look pretty, if it doesn’t tell you the facts you need to know, it can be a waste of time and energy. To be effective, feedback and measurement need to have a clear and specific purpose.

Consider the following questions to analyze your company dashboard/metrics:

• Is the report providing me with the information I need to improve results?
• Is it providing my people with critical feedback so they can make adjustments?
• Do my employees really use this? (or are they gathering the data only because they “have to”)
• Does the data motivate individuals to do better in the area that’s being measured?
• Are the metrics linked to the overall goals of the organization?

With the metrics from your company’s dashboard, plus some clarifying questions like these, you can start to identify trends in your organization and opportunities for growth.

With a name like “Cruisin’ Down Memory Lane”, the 2nd annual Leadership Lincoln alumni gathering is going to be the best event ever!

Dan Sedor and David Buntain, have been selected to chair the event. Sedor is an executive vice president at Leadership Resources. Buntain is an attorney with Cline Williams and founder of Leadership Lincoln.

In 2010, Dan chaired the Reunion on the Runway where over 300 Leadership Lincoln alums gathered at Duncan Aviation for the initial event of its kind. Hosted by Robert and Karen Duncan and sponsored by Union Bank, the first year was a smashing success. In fact, Sedor did such a great job that he has been asked to co-chair this year’s event and move up to chair the entire event next year.

The 2011 “Cruisin’ Down Memory Lane” event will be held on August 20 at The Smith Collection Museum of American Speed with Clay Smith. Speedway Motors has generously agreed to host the event. Food, drink, silent and live auction will be a part of the evening.

Leadership Lincoln was founded in 1985 by a group of community leaders to ensure our city a pool of well-trained and knowledgeable individuals ready and willing to assume leadership positions in the community. The purpose of the annual event is to bring alums from all of Leadership Lincoln’s programs together for an evening of fun and celebration. The first annual event was initiated in 2010 as part of Leadership Lincoln’s Silver Anniversary.

On Friday, April 8, Mike Anderson facilitated the 3% Club luncheon on the topic of building business value. Mike is Vice President and Coach at Leadership Resources, serving from the Omaha location. His presentation, entitled “Value for Today and Strategies for Tomorrow,” brought together a room full of 23 local business leaders and professionals.

Value is in the eye of the beholder; it’s a perception. So how do we go about defining value in a business? The group brainstormed several ideas of what defines a valuable business. It soon became evident the importance of having a value strategy. If you have no destination, any road will get you there. Choose your advisor team, understand your options, and execute your plan. Mike talked about always having a backup plan in place. What would happen to your business if you were ran over by a truck tomorrow? “Better prepared = Better value!”

“It’s always been a mystery to me how businesses are valued for sale, and now I know the basics so I can prepare my own business for sale someday,” said Kindra Foster Lindbloom, owner of Foster Executive Writing & Editing. “I learned that the first thing I need to do is make sure I have processes in place–not a natural thing to do for a one-person office, but now I have some motivation.”

Important Steps to Remember:

• Financial review
• Valuation
• Vision/strategic plan in place
• Assess management team – Are they prepared?
• Run your business as if it’s for sale (and you are the buyer)

Value for Today, April’s 3% Club Session PowerPoint – Download Now!

Will You Be My Mentor?

At some point in your career, a bright-eyed intern or gregarious up-and-comer will approach you and ask you that fateful question, “Would you consider being a mentor for me?”

While you might be flattered, you may also be thinking, “I have no idea how to be a mentor!”

Mentor Qualities

Before you brush off the request or think you’re in over your head, read through the list of mentor qualities originally published by Toastmasters International (below):

• Available – Be available by phone, email, in person, to help build the relationship and answer beginning questions they might have.
• Patient – People learn at different speeds, and some need more guidance than others.
• Sensitive – Tact and diplomacy are vital. Many people are afraid to face their fears and/or work on weaknesses.
• Respectful – Each person is unique – respect your mentee’s wishes and don’t push too hard.
• Flexible – Life happens; always remember that not everything goes according to plan and you may have to allow for last minute changes or shifts in goals.
• Supportive – Demonstrate pride for what your mentee has accomplished. Be an advocate for their development.
• Knowledgeable – Know what you can offer a mentee – what is your area of expertise? What knowledge/experience will benefit your mentee?
• Confident – A mentor should come across as self-assured, friendly, and eager to help.
• Good Listener – By being a good listener, you enable the mentee to articulate any problem and sort things out.
• Concerned – A good mentor must genuinely care about people and want to help them become their best.

Serving as a mentor to another person is a matter of listening, offering wisdom and sharing your experience as it relates to their goals. And you don’t have to mentor this person from now until the end of time. If you’re worried about the time commitment, set some boundaries for your mentor relationship.

Expectations and Boundaries

Determine the length of time you will meet and the frequency of your meetings. If you choose to discuss matters over the phone or through email, establish parameters for those methods of communication as well.

Manage your expectations along with the expectations your mentee has for you. The ten qualities above, combined with expectations and boundaries you can both agree on, lay the foundation for a positive mentoring experience.

Process Overview:

Designed for all levels of employees, offering a combination of personal leadership development, productivity and communication enhancement, as well as empowerment skills. The Effective Personal Productivity (EPP) process provides motivation and skills to help you successfully lead your personal career and organization to achieve “Your Next Level of Success.”

Development Topics:

• The Nature of Productivity
• Goal Achievement through Time Management
• Increasing Productivity through Controlling Priorities
• Improving Productivity through Communication
• Empowering the Team
• Increasing Productivity of the Team

Process Details:

• Program Kicks off Wednesday, April 27 at 10:00 AM
• Meets weekly and monthly for a period of 6 months
• Each session lasts approximately 2 hours
• Investment includes coaching, classroom facilitation, and materials

To enroll in this program, or get more information, please fill out the contact form or call a Leadership Resources associate at (402) 423-5152.