Entries by Steve Riddle

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Coaching Leaders: Learning To Lead

Organisations regularly fail to set their leaders up for success.
When it comes to development, up and coming managers and leaders themselves are just as responsible and culpable. Coaching provides the opportunity and impetus for growth and change.Leaders who have sought development and coaching are significantly more likely to engage their team members. Coaching leaders are also more likely to develop and maintain solid relationships and connections with those they work with. This is important as employee engagement rates continue to fall or at best, remain stagnant.

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Relationships: Understand Your Team to Lead Effectively

There is little doubt that being a leader offers many challenges and rewards. Being close to those you lead via proximity and emotionally provides the opportunity to meet the challenges and feel the benefits and rewards. 
Leaders who are present and accessible concentrate on more than simply having an ‘open-door policy’. They build relationships and understand their employees as individual people.

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Avoid a Common Leadership Mistake: Empower Your Team

Effective leaders make shared goals clear. They also clarify the role we each play in achieving them. Leaders empower their team members and hold them accountable for delivering agreed results. However, to inspire and empower you must have a connection with your team members…a relationship. The words and concept in the heading above could not be clearer. The message and need to establish accountability cannot be understated. Making this real in practice is the challenge.
How many of us truly provide the context and create the environment where trust and accountability are encouraged? Do you empower or dis-empower?

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Trust: The Cornerstone of Relationships and Leadership

It is fascinating to see people grow and develop. Like many in my industry, I do what I do because of a deep need to contribute and make a difference when coaching and mentoring. This continues to hold me in good stead as a coach, mentor and consultant. However, developing trusted relationships was also a core belief when I was leading people directly. Now, my goal is to help others learn why and how to apply these skills and attributes to influence and lead their team members.

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To Succeed, Focus on Inputs Not Results

The ability and desire to focus on those areas of our lives that provide the greatest return can often be confusing. Change and growth comes first through understanding and acknowledgement. When there is understanding, there is the potential for action. Without understanding and action, it is too easy to continue to do what you have always done. That may of course be justified in your mind, but it rarely leads to progression, growth and development.

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Brand and Perception: Leadership Essentials

The leader and employee in today’s environment must possess a credible and trusted brand, much like a company does.
This is sometimes also referred to as a personal and/or professional reputation. Either way, people see you a certain way based on your behaviours, words and actions. Being aware of this helps you to take control of your brand.

Like culture, it exists whether we influence it or not. Why then, wouldn’t you want to take control of this as much as possible? The benefits of modern technology and Social Media make this easier than in the past. It also provides potential pitfalls and risk.

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Integrity: A Leadership Negotiable or Must Have?

Is integrity a negotiable trait, or is it one of the cornerstones of good leadership? Without your integrity, you have nothing! People will follow what you do much more readily than what you say. Of all the facets of character, integrity might be the most critical. It means having the strength of character to learn from those ‘misbehaviors’ and seek continual self-improvement. Those who are prepared to see themselves for who they are and challenge themselves to develop, are regularly also people who are looked upon with respect and as having integrity. Both groups regarded integrity as the most important leadership attribute with 75 percent of workers believing so.

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Employee Engagement Survey Results: Fact or Fiction?

Employee Engagement surveys are barely worth the time and effort taken to produce them.
They certainly have questionable content and value for those organisations who rely on survey results for a genuine view of how employees feel. Big statements, perhaps! But only if you have not taken the time to meaningfully investigate the reasons why employees might feel the need to provide over-inflated scoring that does not reflect reality.
Engagement continues to be a major factor in business success and focus for management.

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Customer Service Is Not Rocket Science

At the risk of over simplifying a very complex topic, the customer service experience we deliver is often only the service we expect ourselves.
But, when providing a service in the moment it is easy to forget our own expectations. According to a report created by the Genesys group titled the Cost of Poor Customer Service, 73% of consumers end a relationship due to poor service. Consistency, context and clarity are incredibly important for employees to find their own way, within appropriate expectations.

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The Importance of Leadership Support in Coaching

Personal and professional development is critical to the ongoing success and growth for any leader. There are many aspects that will make this development even more effective and sustainable, particularly when participating in coaching. High on this list of attributes is the support the person being coached receives from their immediate leader. Support of people as they participate in development programs really does matter. I recently met with a very senior leader in an organisation – let’s call him Jack. Our discussion covered many areas of relevance, including the fact that I had been coaching various members of Jack’s team for different periods over the last 2 years.

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