The Best of L2L Blogazine 2013 (Top #10 and 9)

This week L2L is bringing you a recap of the Top 10 most popular blog posts over the last year. Enjoy Top #9 and 10!

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#10 | How to Manage Conflicts the Emotionally Intelligent Way | by Aditi Chopra

Throwing Chairs

Conflicts are present in our lives no matter whether we are at work or home or in a volunteer position.

Managing conflicts can be a stressful experience for all parties involved.

Dealing With Conflict

Sometimes we create conflicts by our own actions and at other times, it comes our way by no doing of our own.

Irrespective of how it came about, we ought to have the skills to deal with it.

There is a spectrum of people on how they view conflicts. On one extreme is someone who avoids conflict at any cost and on the other extreme is a person who invites conflict. A lot of us are in the middle of this broad spectrum. I would say that neither of the extremes is good.

  • One should not avoid conflicts because if you throw things under the rug, there will come a point where you will trip over the rug yourself.
  • On the other extreme, you have people throwing (virtual) chairs at others by inviting conflict with people around them. And of course, this is certainly not the way to live in a social world.

Where ever we happen to be on this spectrum, we ought to know how to come out of a conflicting situation in a win-win manner.

Emotional Intelligence Steps

If you happen to have created the conflicting situation yourself, it should be easy for you to fix it. Keep your ego aside and make amends with the person with whom you have created the situation.

However, it is not that straightforward of a case when someone else creates a conflicting situation for you. In that case, you need to follow a certain process to deal with the entire situation.

  • First of all, try to get a hold on your emotions. When someone springs a conflict on you, usually, your emotions of anger will run high. They will most probably manifest in a physical way. Getting a hold on your emotions during the first few hours and not reacting is the key to handling it intelligently. I once got a great advice from my mentor – he told me to write an email to the person who had created a conflicting situation with me but save it as draft only. He told me to sit on it for twenty-four hours and then re-read my email. If you follow this advice, you will invariably find yourself changing the wordings of the email. I actually practiced this approach for first few times; after a few iterations, I got to a stage where I didn’t have to even pen down my emotions on a drafted email. I could work on it in my head but the point is to not take action until your emotions have subsided.
  • When your emotions have cooled down, you will be able to think rationally and put yourself in the shoes of the other person to understand why they acted in the way they did. Try and find out what exactly did you dislike about their behavior.
    • Is it what they said?
    • Is it the manner in which they said it?
    • Are they under some pressure to act in the way they did?
    • What really is the cause of your concern?
  • When you understand the cause of concern, have that important conversation with them in a heartfelt way. Show them that you understand where they are coming from and genuinely make them understand what you disliked about their behavior. When you speak from your heart, you will certainly succeed in reaching out to the other person and resolving the conflict.

So what type of person are you when it comes to handling conflicts at work? Are you more likely to throw it under a rug, or are you more likely to throw a chair? What steps can you take to moderate your tendencies to better handle conflict with emotional intelligence? I would love to hear your thoughts!

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Learn, Grow & Develop Other Leaders

———————
Aditi Chopra
Aditi Chopra is an experienced leader in the software industry
She is a consultant, writer and a leader
Email | LinkedIn |  Web | Blog | Twitter | Book

Image Sources: sd.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk, kritischestudenten.nl

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#9 | 3 Traits Leaders Need to Shape a High-Performance Culture | by Chris Cancialosi

Time to Re-Invent

Some businesses focus on creating a culture of fun, so leaders fill break rooms with kegs and fruit snacks. Others pinpoint that they want a culture of transparency, so developers create open forums for inner office dialogue and feedback.

These can be good tactics to employ when working to create a company culture.

But if your culture is tactical and not strategic, these types of approaches ultimately won’t have a large impact on a more important issue — how your company performs.

Creating a High-Performance Culture

A high-performance culture creates a high-performance business.

And to do this, you need leaders who can embed this into company processes.

To create and maintain a high-performance culture, it’s crucial for leaders to be aware of their own beliefs and assumptions about how work should get done. They also need to be aware of how those beliefs influence and reinforce behavior within a company.

Leaders who are better able to reinforce behaviors that drive business strategy are better able to achieve their goals in the near – and long-term. If they are inflexible in their beliefs despite shifting strategy, the result will be a culture that elicits and reinforces unproductive behaviors from the team.

Leaders who are most effective at driving the kind of behavior that supports strategy generally share a few commonalities.

Three Traits Leaders Need to Develop

The following are three traits that all leaders need to master to improve the performance of their organizations.

Insight into the Company’s Past, Present, and Future

Leaders driving high-performance cultures crave data. They want to understand the underlying beliefs and assumptions that exist in the fabric of their organization and how they drive value-added behaviors.

Conversely, they need to understand how those beliefs drive intended or unintended outcomes in terms of business performance.

Behaviors that once helped the organization succeed may no longer be effective in getting the company from where it is to where it needs to be in the current competitive landscape.

Emphasis on Inclusion

Successful leaders don’t try to shoulder responsibility for culture all on their own; they recognize that employees play an important role in how culture evolves. Leaders must look for every opportunity to engage employees in meaningful ways and make sure that all employees feel they own the culture and its evolution.

Aptitude for Embedding Culture

Leaders should view culture as the framework for everything that happens or fails to happen in their organization. Culture can’t be perceived as an “add-on,” distinct from the rest of the business.

Rather, leaders should include culture conversations into all existing meetings and practices.

Leaders who do this can proactively shape things like recruiting processes, compensation plans, talent management efforts, and employee development to evolve and align more closely to the core business strategy.

Developing These Traits

It’s unrealistic to think that all leaders or employees will naturally embody and use every business-savvy trait from the get-go, but luckily, these characteristics can be developed over time.

Here are a few ways leaders can develop these traits in themselves and their team:

  • Integrate the culture process into business processes — from strategic planning to meetings and gatherings. Every aspect of business should be a part of evolving the company culture toward an identified goal.
  • Work diligently to engage employees in the process of defining the company’s culture and actively moving it in a specific or new direction. People at every level of your organization should understand how they fit into the bigger picture.
  • Develop personal relationships with your team to make sure clear communication and to build a stronger culture. Don’t rely on technology (i.e., email) as the primary source of communication. Master the art of engaging your team in a meaningful way.
  • Determine what skills and strengths you already have as a leader and how to use them to motivate your team in ways that align with your business. Don’t try to be something that you’re not; it only erodes trust.
  • Collaborate with a company culture expert who can help you better understand your culture and how it evolves — or could evolve — over time. He or she will work with you to decide how you can use your culture as a competitive differentiator.
  • Allow your company’s culture to influence your role as a leader as much as you influence your company’s culture. See success as validation for good decisions and practices, and recognize failure as a need to reevaluate choices or actions.

Your Competitive Edge

Developing a high-performance company culture is an important part of creating a competitive edge. Leaders must have an understanding of the characteristics necessary for shaping and evolving their company’s culture, as well as how to use these traits in a real-world way.

Leaders who are curious, who make sure employees “own” the company culture, and who embed culture in day-to-day processes will drive business performance that helps meet strategic goals.

So how are you doing at creating a high-performance culture at your organization? Are you recognizing areas in which you can improve your culture to be more productive? And what successes have you had in the past that point to real increases to your bottom line?  I would love to hear your thoughts!

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Learn, Grow & Develop Other Leaders

———————–
Chris Cancialosi, Ph.D.
Chris Cancialosi is founder and managing partner at gothamCulture
He helps provide Critical Insights to Leaders who want to Drive Performance
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Web

Image Sources: nusum.files.wordpress.com

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