Overcoming Key Challenges on the Path to Leadership Excellence

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Whether you’re a new leader or an experienced one, there’s always more to learn. This is especially true if you don’t get formal leadership training — which most leaders don’t.

In one study, almost half of leaders with 10 or more years of management experience said they’d had nine total hours of training, and 43% of new managers with less than a year of experience had no training at all.

As a leader, it’s important to understand that many times, overcoming key challenges in your leadership style is up to you. The good news is that there are many ways to identify and address challenges as you move toward leadership excellence.

Here are some key challenges to watch for and how to overcome them.

Identifying Your Natural Tendencies

Everyone has a default way of responding to situations. For example, some people respond to stress with confidence and even aggression, while others think things through before acting, and others freeze and struggle to manage their emotions.

Interestingly, your genetics may have a lot to do with your default reactions. Studies have found that hereditary traits can impact everything from aggression and anxiety to risk tolerance. Knowing your natural tendencies in different work situations allows you to know where you’re starting and what changes you might want to make.

Of course, you’re not stuck with what you inherited — you can always work on your default behaviors to improve your responses. However, it takes intentionality and practice, so be patient with yourself. Overcoming these built-in reactions is challenging!

Balancing Confidence and Humility

Many leaders understand the importance of seeming confident — it inspires confidence in their teams. However, too much confidence without humility can turn people off. You don’t want to come off as an arrogant leader.

How can you balance confidence with humility? Start by understanding your strengths but also your weaknesses. It’s important to know your limits and surround yourself with people who are strong in the areas where you are lacking. People will trust you more when you’re honest about what you can do and what other people are better suited for.

Next, be honest with yourself and your team about challenges. You don’t need to share every detail with everyone, but it’s important to get everyone on board to face challenges together. That way, you get everyone’s best effort when you need it most.

Finally, be open to feedback from your team. Being open to change shows you’re humble enough to grow and confident enough to take constructive criticism. Leaders who know they have both strengths and weaknesses tend to get more respect than those who pretend they can do everything.

Getting Your Team On the Same Page

Getting a diverse group of people with their own unique motivators and challenges to work together is extremely difficult. The best leaders make it look easy, just like the best NFL quarterbacks make big plays look easy, but it isn’t.

Getting buy-in from your team is possible, however. Whether you’re working on a specific project or trying to keep employees engaged with the company, you can start by sharing a vision for the future and explaining the role the team can play. When employees understand how their work makes a difference, they’re much more likely to buy in.

Next, ensure your employees understand the power of collaboration. Inspired people can run off and try to do everything alone, but you need your team to work together. Showcase inspiring examples of teams that made a difference, and help everyone understand the strengths that each employee brings to the table. When your team can see everyone’s strengths, they’ll be more likely to trust each other and work well together.

Finally, don’t micromanage! Once you’ve set the vision and helped reinforce collaboration, step back and let your team own the project or their daily work. Be available for coaching, growth, and helping employees advance in their careers, but trust your team members to execute their skill sets day-to-day.

A manager who inspires and trusts their employees will have a team that’s bought in, productive, and engaged.

Know What Your Team Needs From You

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to leadership. Leadership excellence requires you to understand your specific employees and meet their professional needs.

What are some things employees want in a leader? First, good communication is essential. It’s vital to work on both your verbal and written communication because you’re as likely to be communicating via email as you are running a meeting.

If your employees sense genuine support and warmth in your communication, that will go a long way toward building confidence in your leadership, which results in better buy-in.

Next, work on your remote management skills. Today’s teams are often at least partly remote or hybrid, and managing remote employees has unique challenges. It’s important to ensure everyone feels like part of the team, your remote workers get enough coaching and professional development, and you don’t overlook someone simply because they aren’t onsite. It’s also vital to understand how projects are going and ensure everyone is on top of their responsibilities.

Finally, encourage your team to work together. Some sports teams think they can win by bringing a ton of stars onto the team, but they fail due to a lack of chemistry. Often, teams with good talent and great cohesion beat teams with great talent but poor cohesion. As a leader, you can encourage connections within your team by recognizing each person’s talents, praising contributions, and putting a stop to toxic behavior before it has time to damage the team.

Leadership Excellence is Within Reach

Having formal leadership training is helpful, but you can become an excellent leader on your own as well. Recognize your tendencies and find ways to improve them. You can get feedback from others in your organization, read books about great leaders, and find inspiration from a variety of sources.

You’ll never overcome all the challenges associated with great leadership, but as you face each obstacle and address it, you’ll become a leader that employees respect, rally to, and are willing to do their best work for.

About the Author: Luke Smith is a writer and researcher turned blogger. Since finishing college he is trying his hand at being a freelance writer. He enjoys writing on a variety of topics but technology and business topics are his favorite. When he isn't writing you can find him traveling, hiking, or gaming.

Five Lessons the Fall Season Teaches Us About Life

The Fall season is my favorite time of year. It is a special time of the year, especially in New England. The trees produce a stunning explosion of color as the leaves change from green through yellow, orange, red and then turning to brown before falling to the ground. Trees are a wonderful example of the cyclical nature of life. No other season teaches us so many profound lessons about life.

Here are five life lessons that the fall season teaches us.

1. Embrace the change

Fall reminds us of the impermanence of life. It reminds us that change is inevitable! You’d think we’d get the hang of dealing with change yet it brings with it such fear that we can go to extraordinary lengths to avoid it. Fall shows us that far from shunning change natures achieves this transition effortlessly.

Fall shows us how to embrace change in glorious splendor. It reminds us to accept and flow with the change. Just like the falling leaves you have to let go in order to move forward, grow and heal. Periods of transition and change are often fraught with pain and crisis. But mindset is everything – if you can surrender to that change, trust the process, believe that the universe is working with you and that everything is happening for a reason then you can see your pain and accept change on a more comfortable setting. You can also sit in the knowledge that when the time is right you too will spring back to life and bloom again.

2. Learn to let go

Fall reminds us of the importance of letting go. It shows us that within the cycle of life there comes a time to let go and release those things that no longer serve us. Human nature encourages us to hold tightly to things and yet Fall shows us how to transition and surrender through this process in glorious technicolor.

All too often we cling to the past, hold our wounds tightly and get fixed and locked down with certain habits or mindsets. All of these ultimately cause us more suffering. Life is happier and easier when we can flow, surrender and let go.

3. The metaphor of healing

The four seasons are great metaphors on the process of pain and healing. When life throws us into chaos we tumble into the change and transition of Fall. When we are wounded and hurt we retreat and hunker down in the darkness of Winter. But there comes a time, just like Spring when we slowly start to re-emerge before the time comes when we finally lift our heads to the sun and emerge once again in the sunshine and laughter of Summer.

Wherever you are in this cycle try to surrender and flow with it. Trust that there is a process and journey to healing and rebirth. Healing is not linear it has peaks and troughs, highs and lows. Know that hindsight will give you many answers and that one day you will be able to back at a difficult time in life with insight. Often our darkest hours are the reason we shine so brightly.

4. Delight in the detail

Fall is a beautiful time and yet most of us go about our lives too busy and distracted to notice. Use this stunning season as a reminder to live more mindfully. To take a slower and more mindful pace to life and to notice the detail. Pay attention to the colors of the sky, the falling leaves, the sound of frost beneath your feet. The birds whose songs still chirrup bright and clear. Wherever you live to make it a habit to notice the changes taking place in the natural world around you.

5. Enjoy the little things in life

Finally, the fall season gives us a chance to appreciate the little things in life. A cup of hot aromatic tea, a warm blanket, a good book – these simple things can make us truly happy after being outdoors in the autumn cold. With the chilly weather and depressing images the fall brings to us, you realize the great power the little joys of life have.

Whether you like the fall season or not, you can’t deny that the lessons it teaches us about life are insightful and important.

Lean Quote: Keys to Effective Communication We Can All Master

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"Communication is your ticket to success if you pay attention and learn to do it effectively."   —  Theo Gold

Open communication is at the center of Lean and Respect for People. Employees need to know what is expected of them and how they’re performing. Visual displays such as scoreboards, scheduling charts, team communication boards, and recognition displays all help to keep information flowing between employees, departments and upper management.

Communication is the glue that binds an organization together but do not assume that several announcements and a note on the notice board is sufficient to get the story out. Some say to communicate seven times and seven ways but that does not mean seven months apart. Develop and implement a robust communication plan and check to see if the total target audience has received the unfiltered message. If you want to know if your message is getting out clearly why not ask the most obscure person on the night shift if he or she heard the message? The day shift is easy but how about the rest of the folks?

To be an effective communicator remember The “Be List”.

·        Be A Teacher

·        Be Enthusiastic

·        Be Positive

·        Be Consistent

·        Be Demanding but Considerate

·        Be Courteous

Not only should one be able to speak effectively, one must listen to the other person's words and engage in communication on what the other person is speaking about. Avoid the impulse to listen only for the end of their sentence so that you can blurt out the ideas or memories your mind while the other person is speaking.

Effective communication is all about conveying your messages to other people clearly and unambiguously. It's also about receiving information that others are sending to you, with as little distortion as possible. Doing this involves effort from both the sender of the message and the receiver.

Developing advanced communication skills begins with simple interactions. Communication skills can be practiced every day in settings that range from the social to the professional. New skills take time to refine, but each time you use your communication skills, you open yourself to opportunities and future partnerships.

2023 Northeast Lean Conference Re-cap

Last week I attended the Northeast Lean Conference in Worcester, MA. The Northeast Lean Conference was created by GBMP to provide information and inspiration to Lean practitioners - from those just starting out to seasoned Lean leaders from the manufacturing, healthcare, service and other vital industry sectors.

The theme, It’s About Time, has a double meaning:

• First, the correct use of Lean methods – from 5S to SMED to Standardized Work – absolutely reclaims and repurposes wasted time for the betterment of customers, employees, and the company.  Provide employees with these methods and watch the creativity surge.
• Second, there has never been a better time than today when so many organizations regardless of industry share a common motivation:  How to satisfy increased customer demand in the face of scarce resources?  Doesn’t that sound like Lean?  It’s about time for management to make a visible commitment to continuous improvement.

Andrew Koenig, CEO of City Furniture, kicked off the conference with message about Lean implementation with heart. Andrew’s lean journey started in college with a trip to Toyota in Japan. He implemented Lean throughout all departments in a retail company by creating a culture of mutual trust and respect, teamwork, and a deep sense of urgency to continuously improve. As a result, they have seen many major breakthroughs in turnover reduction, operational process improvement, customer experience, safety, associate satisfaction, strategic planning, and finance. We need to focus on people and teamwork – not just problem solving. “You need to have strong mutual respect among all the associates, so they feel no fear in offering ideas and highlighting problems,” Andrew explained. “Every day, we are pulling problems out of our associates, and leaders, working together to solve them.” For strategic planning purposes, Andrew has a catchphrase: Bottom Up, Top Down, Closed Loop. “We are trying to get everyone in the entire company to participate in our strategic planning processes, give us their ideas, and share that with the senior team, who then share that with me. What I learned from Toyota is that you need to get everyone engaged in improving the business."

Melinda Mante, GBMP Lean Consultant, showcased a set of practical habits you can immediately implement to inspire action from her experience at Intel. There are 3 leadership actions:

• Set direction – challenge the status quo
• Show the way – go first, learn, and demonstrate
• Support – enable, encourage, and care

There is approximately 4000 weeks to live on average. Every day matters. At work its’ much less. Set aside time on calendar for these leadership elements.

Tom Sullivan, Senior Vice President of Operations at Ruger, ended the first day share their journey to develop a Lean New Product Development process.

Highlights included:

• Dedicated formal project management is very important – Obeya Room co-located teams
• Simultaneous product & process development (Single Thought Flow) “Tatakidai” = chopping block, rapid prototyping
• Virtual Obeya Room – COVID pushed this idea but still very effective for dispersed teams
• Leaders Genba with Lean NPD Team – Servant Leadership
• Focus on Lean Thinking – PDCA, 8 wastes for NPD, Mura, Muri
• Standard Work – the one best way to do something

Billy Taylor, Founder and CEO of LinkedXL, got day 2 going by sharing three key principles: Deliberate Clarity, Deliberate Ownership, and Deliberate Practice to achieve success in any organization. Billy says “Winning is not everything, how you win is everything.” Most people don’t know if they are winning and many leaders only know at end of month. If you make people visible, hhey will make you valuable.

From his book “The Winning Link” Billy outlines how we win:

• Deliberate Clarity - You can not manage a secret, Define Winning
• 10ft and 10sec rule – ask people close to board what the board means to them
• What is your leadership standard – What you tolerate, you cannot change
• Walk by and not say anything and then that is new standard
• Deliberate Ownership
• Strategy + Execution = Results
• In the absence of ownership comes blame
• Celebrate the red so you can harvest the green
• Deliberate Practice – Daily Management Process, Let’s people know if we are winning or losing.
• Enables problem solving, drives ownership
• Physical Safety is needed
• Take action
• Be hard on the process so you can lead easy on the people
• Trust
• Earning the Right to Change
• Create a safe environment for change
• Behaviors are visible, Mindsets are hidden
• Critical to measure what matters…Everything that matters cannot be measured?

Allan Robinson, Professor at UMass Isenberg School of Management, discussed strategies for managing change. It is said that 70-80% of change initiatives fail because:

• Poor execution of the chosen change methodology
• Current methods require time, effort, and patience
• They require extremely strong leadership

Most methods (from the 1940s) don’t incorporate modern understanding in continuous improvement, innovation, and lean. The limitations of traditional approaches to management of change:

Perhaps our management approach makes a difference: How can we make our organizations more adaptable to change. A big part of the answer emerges from feedback loops and dependencies discovered more recently by the lean, continuous improvement, and innovation communities. Front-line driven important is a powerful way to make your organization is more adaptable.

80% of organization’s improvement potential is from front-line ideas

Frontline driven improvement is very sensitive to poor leadership and misalignment, so it forces managers and leaders to significantly change their behavior, and address misalignments that are normally ignored. It cannot happen without also getting high levels of trust and respect between management and the front lines. It cultivates a culture of constant improvement and problem-solving.

Helen Zak, Director of Research at The Shingo Institute, closed out the conference with tips, words of wisdom, and learning from 38 years as a change agent. Helen’s Top 5:

• It’s All About Time – the most valuable resource on the planet
• Psychological Safety – free from fear of acknowledging problems and comfortable tackling problems
• Team Sport – transformation requires alignment and teamwork
• Dissatisfaction with status quo – good enough is not enough
• People Development – lean leader’s job is to develop people

There were many other great presentations, but this is a brief highlight. Mark your calendars for next year’s conference Leveraging Lean to Thrive in Uncertain Times in Providence, RI November 7-8, 2024.

The Value of Discovery

On the second Monday of every October, we have a holiday in the honor of the European explorer, Christopher Columbus. Christopher Columbus is important for accidentally discovering America, thus starting the Age of Exploration, and causing world changing events that continually influence history even up today.

This is a good time to talk about the importance of discovery to Lean thinking.  Fundamentally, discovery is the act of detecting something new, or something "old" that had been unknown. Discoveries are often made due to questioning.

Thinking is not driven by answers but by questions. To think through or rethink anything, one must ask questions that stimulate our thought.

Questions define tasks, express problems and delineate issues. Answers on the other hand, often signal a full stop in thought. Only when an answer generates a further question does thought continue its life as such.

Thinking is of no use unless it goes somewhere, and again, the questions we ask determine where our thinking goes. Deep questions drive our thought underneath the surface of things; force us to deal with complexity. Questions of purpose force us to define our task. Questions of information force us to look at our sources of information as well as at the quality of our information.

Encourage a questioning culture.  Urge everyone to question. Ask why several times to try to get to the root cause of problems.  Challenge everyone to think and learn. Because without questioning there can’t be discovery. And without discovery there can’t be improvement.

In the spirit of Columbus Day take some time to discover and learn about your company, your employees, your problems, your processes, and your customers so that you can think Lean improvement.

Lean Quote: Set an Open Door Policy for Accessibility

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"The best leaders are approachable and accessible. They are truly part of the team and not merely a figurehead."   —  Ramanathan M

An open-door policy refers to the practice of business or organizational leaders leaving their doors open so that employees feel welcome to stop by and meet informally, ask questions, or discuss matters that have been weighing on their minds.

These days, with open office environments, co-working spaces and remote team members working around the globe, the “open-door policy” is more metaphorical than ever before.

Follow these three key steps.

1. Set boundaries

Your goal as a manager should be to keep a finger on the pulse of what’s really going on with your team. So, how do you make yourself accessible for meaningful discussions without turning yourself into a counselor or micromanager?

Clear communication lays the first building block to creating a successful open door policy. Even managers who encourage frequent, informal conversations through “walk around management” may need to establish set office hours, say before and after team meetings.

If daily interruptions and vent sessions are limiting your productivity as a manager, another option might be to schedule weekly one-on-one meetings with each team member.

2. Always listen intently

The next step in a successful open door policy requires that you listen intently to what an employee has to say. Let the person “speak their truth,” without interruption from phones, email or other people.

Recap what you heard the person say in order to make sure you fully understand the problem. Beware of being dismissive of an employee’s vent because a genuine issue may be lurking behind their frustration.

If the employee brings a recurring issue to you, there’s likely a root cause that needs to be addressed. You might say, “I notice there’s a pattern here. What do you think the solution is?”

By driving the conversation toward solutions, you discourage endless venting and encourage employees to come up with their own solutions.

Remember, not every person thinks in terms of solutions or problem-solving. Walking such employees through decision-making processes teaches them to rely on their own abilities.

3. Focus on the solution

Time, yours and your employees, remains a key component to maintaining a well-oiled open door. After all, endless interruptions compromise your ability to lead your team and your team’s productivity.

Managers should try to solve any issue the first time, within the parameters of what’s functionally achievable. By slaying problems as quickly as possible, you set up your team for maximum success, particularly when you involve them in the decision-making process. Things could get worse if you and your team fail to act.

The rationale behind the open-door policy is to develop trust and communication between employees and management, and facilitate a regular feedback process that deals with and improves day to day issues in the work environment. Such a policy is more important than ever since the transition to remote work, as managers need to find new ways to communicate and engage their employees.