Leadership Development

This time of year can bring potentially difficult conversations. After all, this is usually when we tackle high-stakes discussions like: end of year reviews, budgeting, and giving feedback. Have you ever avoided having tough conversations?

What gets in your way? Is it the potential relationship impact, fear it won’t make a difference or that you’ll learn something or get some feedback you’d rather not hear?

Can you relate to this leader’s story?

Here are 3 ways to build your skill and will to conduct tough conversations:

1. What triggers you? Build self-awareness by understanding and identifying situations and behaviors that cause you to react. Why does this happen?  What are the deeper values and experiences that can get in the way for you?  By better understanding your own emotions, values and triggers, you can work on preparing yourself to respond with intention when your emotions get triggered.

2. Learn to evaluate emotions in others by reading cues in body language and facial expressions.

Take this free facial expression recognition quiz from UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center and test your skills at noticing emotions in others.

(Note that learning to recognize emotions is not an invitation to label someone’s feelings, but rather an opportunity to ask about what might be going on for them.  A best practice is to ask, don’t assume.)

3. Learn how to de-fuse defensive behaviors. Download this handy set of tips to add to your toolbox.

Above all, don’t put off tough conversations, even though they may never be completely easy for you. The reason they are tough is that they are often really important! Delaying the discussion means the issue goes unresolved, may get worse, or taint the relationships through lingering feelings and thoughts. Instead, consider putting your energy into building on strategies to strengthen ability to conduct tough conversations with competence and confidence.

Want to make BIG change? Take a page from the youth leadership playbook.

“A couple of years ago, I was walking with my baby cousin and saw a bunch of smoke and clouds coming out of a building…then I noticed all this trash, then cars spewing stuff. I thought about my little cousin and how the world should be better for her. I started picking up trash, then started talking to neighbors about cleaning up and advocating against the pollution we live in. It’s not OK that life expectancy varies by where you live!”

This story comes from Ra’Mauri, 12 years old and a leader at Youth vs Apocalypse. His insight to start local and make change personal, is echoed by youth climate leaders around the world. Any leader who is driven by the vision of a better world, whether inside an organization or in communities, has much to learn from the playbook these young leaders are creating.  In interviews with several leaders ranging from 12 to 16, these key lessons emerged.

Get fueled by the future: As Hannah, age 15 put it, “It feels like no one is fighting for our future, so we have to fight for it ourselves. We need to wake people up from denial.” As the old adage has it, nothing motivates like a deadline, and the pivotal “deadline” of 11 years to decisively cut emissions, is motivating huge numbers of youth to get involved across the globe. By vividly painting the picture of both the possibilities and dangers of the future, these young leaders are connecting emotionally and motivating commitment. Their clarity about how high the stakes are if nothing changes is seeing them through a lot of challenge and adversity.

Tap into your own superpower: Samara, age 12, is a self-described introvert. Rather than treating that as a barrier to being on the front lines of this movement, she says: “I tapped into the power of the community and its unity to feel comfortable putting my voice out there.” And she uses her strength of building deep, personal relationships to get more people involved.

Youth leaders described  a whole host of partnerships and alliances across like-minded individuals and organizations. Samara and Ra’Mauri talked about being “co-Presidentes” for the climate strike food detail and leaning on each other’s complementary skills. The result? Being able to navigate group conflict on BBQ vs. sandwiches and serving BBQ sandwiches for the win!

The lesson? Assess your own assets and match them up to the challenges at hand. Then honestly catalog and communicate your weaker areas as a change leader…but don’t spend a ton of time trying to improve those. Be humble enough to accept help and support.

Apply systems-thinking. Ariella (16) described actions during the climate strike. “We stopped at ICE and some of my friends didn’t get why. But the immigrant crisis around the world is only going to get worse through climate change.” Understanding interconnections, especially subtle ones, is an advanced leadership skill and means you can create holistic, sophisticated plans and solutions that will work in the real world.  Another powerful practice is mapping your own ecosystem for like-minded teams, organizations and/or individuals. Who is out there and how can you leverage the system, not just the parts?

It may have to be you. Youth leaders expressed sadness and anger at having their childhoods “taken from us.” As one leader put it, “Honestly, making this important and sometimes skipping school is hard. I want to do well at school, and I want to have fun with friends, really I just want to be a kid. But this issue is too important and too many people are in denial. I can’t just pretend things are OK.” Look around you. Are you waiting for someone else to step in and make positive change towards something you care about? Maybe who you are waiting for is actually…you.

Keep hope alive. Young people are supposed to be hopeful and future-oriented. After all, they have their whole lives in front of them, right? But many Gen Z’ers find themselves leaning on each other to generate the hope they need to keep going in the face of our climate crisis. Sharing personal stories of struggle and success, playing music together, potlucks, costume/art parties, and bringing different organizations together to feel camaraderie and shared purpose are all ways youth are staying inspired and energized for the long fight.

Let’s give Ra’Mauri the last word: “Work with other organizations and make common cause. Share information and wisdom to learn from each other. Make friends because that’s what will keep you going.”

“How did you convince your leaders to invest money in leadership development?”

“I didn’t have to.”   said Cindy Gillespie, VP of HR at Amy’s Kitchen.

This was in response to a question I
received when accepting the LEAD award
for the #1 Corporate University on behalf of Amy’s Leadership Academy.  Andy and Rachel Berliner, the founders and leaders of our family-run company have always
fostered a strong company culture and a community that takes care of each other (one of Amy’s values). Investing in growing our leaders is just one way we take care
of our employees and is critical to the future
of Amy’s.

During Amy’s early days of crazy rapid growth, we saw the need for more leaders, so we hired talent from other big food manufacturers.  Many of these external hires struggled to quickly learn and appreciate the complexities and culture of our company. We also recognized we needed to develop more of our existing employees into strong leaders that would drive continued strong growth, but also protect and role-model our equally important company culture

At that time, I was personally participating in a Community-Leadership training program.  I was inspired and motivated by the high level of engagement, motivation, and on-going connection with fellow participants.  In partnership with Enact Leadership, we incorporated this community approach into Amy’s Leadership Academy (ALA), which is headed into its 7^th year this fall.

ALA combines building a leadership foundation with key business capabilities.  Employees from across the organization have the opportunity to apply.  We select a cross section of HiPos and current leaders to participate in the program, to create a leadership cohort with different backgrounds and experiences.   This emphasis on leadership skills anchored in our strong company culture is creating value not only from external recognition, but also in our internal engagement efforts.

Contact us at Enact Leadership if you want support in co-creating customized leadership development solutions of any size (in-person AND online) that incorporate your organization’s values and drive tangible business results.

Please join us to hear Sindri Anderson, co-founder of Enact Leadership, interviewed on CUTV News Radio as part of its Empowered Women Series program. During the interview, Sindri will discuss why:

• Leadership is not for the faint of heart, and how, even at the first level of leadership, people can be negatively impacted if a leader is unskilled or not self-aware.
• No matter what kind of an organization, leaders have to figure out how to lift up and unleash the talent of all of their people
• If we want parity and true inclusion for the under-represented and marginalized in our leadership ranks, we have to commit to culture, policy, and leadership mindset changes

When? Tuesday, May 28 at 11 AM PT / 2 PM ET
Where? Listen in live on Blog Talk Radio here.
Can’t join live? Listen in later here.

Eager to participate in the conversation? If you have any questions for Sindri while on air, please call (347) 996-3389.

We hope you’ll listen in!