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A Leader’s Role in Career Development
What’s a leader’s role in career development? We live in a world of continuous fluctuation and leaders are faced with increased challenges and complexities. This volume of change heightens the need for each of us to take hold of our own career development. We cannot rest on our laurels and coast. Wikipedia defines career development as how individuals change their careers within and between organizations. According to the Canadian... -
Asking Effective Questions
The Navigator – Maximizing the Impact of your Questions… When was the last time you paused to assess your ability to ask impactful questions? Reading nearly any leadership article reminds us that asking effective questions is a strong mechanism for increasing awareness (self and others), making better decisions and impacting both employee engagement and bottom-line results. In the 2009 white paper, Transforming Your Organization by John McGuire, Charles Palus,... -
In praise of recognition…
We agree that receiving recognition is something of value. The opportunity is to pause and reflect on our ability and commitment to deliver this regularly to our colleagues. Why bother… Recognition, the validation of what is positive, is one of the key ingredients in helping people grow. It is impactful because it answers a fundamental human need, the need to feel valued for what we do. Leaders are in... -
Learning Agility
What are you going to put on your development plate this spring? Consider your learning agility. Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, is known for deliberately seeking out the unfamiliar and figuring out how to get things done when faced with new challenges. This is a key component of being an agile learner. “ “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” John F. Kennedy > According to... -
Confidence
What does confidence have to do with leadership? As we enter the more relaxed months of summer, perhaps this would be a good time to reflect on confidence. How much time do you spend thinking about your capabilities? What do you know about the confidence levels of your team members? How is your current confidence level working for you or perhaps getting in your way? Self-confidence is a measure... -
Listening Leaders
For many of us, listening is a challenging skill to master. One could argue that listening is simple – it requires us to be present, and that takes practice, but we really don’t have to do anything else. So what gets in the way? While someone is speaking, our minds are busy reacting or filtering: Assuming – I know what you are going to say Solving – I wish... -
Self-Awareness
Daniel Goleman in his 1998 book Emotional Intelligence, referred to self-awareness as the first component of emotional intelligence and defined it as “the ability to recognize and understand your moods, emotions, and drives, as well as their effect on others”. More recently in Becoming an Agile Leader by Victoria Swisher, 2012, self-awareness is described as “the degree to which an individual has personal insight, clearly understands their own strengths...
