LeadershipTraction®

How Do You Think?

Leaders hold a unique position of authority in business. When they’re on the right track, they have the ability to make things significantly better. But when not, they can make things infinitely worse.

And fundamental to it all, is how we think. Because if we’re thinking the wrong things – or thinking about the right things in the wrong ways – our results can’t help but be substandard.

So take a close and honest look: As a leader of others, how many of these counterproductive thoughts are you – or leaders in your charge – guilty of?

Do you think that the complexities of your job are sometimes too difficult to manage?

If so, you’re likely affecting…

• Project and Program Management Success
• Accountability Discussions and The Shaping Others’ Behaviors
• Interactions Up, Down, and Across The Organization
• Collaboration
• Planning, Development, and Longer-term Deliverables

Do you think up excuses for avoiding difficult, challenging, and important conversations?

If you do, you’re likely diluting…

• Employee Performance Feedback
• Preparing for Big Meetings
• Evaluating Key Metrics
• Managing Conflict
• Clarity of Communications

Do you worry how impossible it sometimes seems to properly motivate, lead, and inspire others?

If so, you’re likely inhibiting…

• Team and Team Member Performance
• Thought Leadership and Vision
• Priority Management and Follow-through
• Change Management
• Others Demonstrating Greater Urgency, Thoroughness, and Consistency in What THEY Do

Do you notice how flustered and annoyed you get with sudden shifts in plans and priorities?

If you do, you’re likely undermining…

• Organizational Flexibility and Agility
• Employee Effectiveness
• Intelligent Workplace Conversation
• Working Through Ambiguity
• Mood and Culture

Do you wonder why you get so defensive and resistant when others criticize or judge you?

If so, you’re likely dismantling…

• Organizational Capacity-Building
• Leveraging Employee Strengths And Mitigating Their Weaknesses
• Control, Challenge, and Commitment
• Grit, Resolve, and Resilience
• Work/Life Balance
• Delivering Key Business Deliverables

Wrong Thinking, Wrong Outcomes

So how’d you do?

If any of the above resonated for you, then it’s time to change how you’re thinking so you can improve how you lead.

Because if you don’t, others in your organization will soon start modeling your counterproductive thinking – if they haven’t already – and the tasks that they once found ‘easy’ to accomplish will soon seem too difficult. And the assignments they used to think were ‘challenging, but doable’ will soon become near-impossible.

And that type of thinking can only lead to one thing for them, and you:

Failure.

Unmitigated, unavoidable failure.

But with the proper guidance and perspective – the proper coaching and mentoring – leaders can not only learn to avoid these pitfalls, they can start engaging with themselves, and those in their sphere-of-influence, in significantly more powerful and productive ways.

They key, of course, is recognizing that in order to change how you lead, you have to change how you think.

That’s where LeadershipTraction comes in.

Changing How You Think Changes How You Lead

When leaders shift how they think – about leadership, in general, and their specific roles and responsibilities, in particular – good things start to happen sooner in terms of what they think, feel, believe, and do. In other words, when they change how they think, they change how they lead:

• “I can’t,” becomes “How can I?”
• “I don’t know how,” becomes “Let’s figure this out!”
• “It’s too hard,” becomes “I love a good challenge!”
• “I’m overwhelmed,” becomes “I’m confident I can do this!”
• “I’m spinning my wheels,” becomes “How best to hit it ‘head-on’?”
• “I’m not good enough,” becomes “I refuse to let this be a referendum on my self-worth!”

So take another honest look: As a leader of others, what’s you next move? Where do you need to ‘up’ your game?

Trusted Coaching and Mentoring

During the last twenty years, LeadershipTraction has become a consistently reliable resource for organizations, leaders, leaders of leaders, and HR/OD professionals to engage with, stay with, and reengage with, over time.

Why? Because of one simple, irrevocable truth:

That’s why LeadershipTraction specializes in engaging leaders in deeply-meaningful and personally-relevant conversations about how they think – and how best to span the gap between the outcomes they WANT and the outcomes LIKELY TO result if they don’t change their thinking.

And, simply enough, in doing so, the chances of actually achieving what matters most – to you, the people you work with, and the people you serve – can dramatically increase.

Changing How You Think Changes What You Think

Consider any one of the following perspectives and ask yourself what you’d be able to achieve if you could consistently think – and lead – this way:

Every conversation you have as a leader has two related, yet distinct, purposes:

• To address the work at hand
• To build and sustain the relationships (and organizational capacity) needed to successfully complete all future work

Effectively managing conflict, or its potential, is central to everything a leader does:

• Asserting priorities always involves the potential for conflict
• Knowing how to effectively navigate through conflict (and helping others do so, as well)  is a fundamental leadership competency

Just doing your job is not doing your job:

• That may get you an ‘average’ performance review
• If you and those in your charge can’t consistently demonstrate a meaningful, timely, and visible business impact, however, you’ll rarely be recognized as essential contributors

Improving employee performance and engagement stems directly from how you manage commitments:

• In holding others accountable for their commitments to you
• In holding yourself accountable for your commitments to them

Strategically focusing your attention requires more than just managing your to-do list:

• To solidify your leadership voice, vision, style, and executive presence
• To expand your consensus-building, courageousness, and ability to navigate and expedite complex change

Delegating what you are ABLE to do is what allows you to do what ONLY you can do

• Just because you can do it yourself doesn’t mean you should
• Fear of delegation is really just a form of procrastination
• Who’s doing the work that you’re not getting to?

Admitting you don’t know something is a sign of strength, not weakness:

• Pretending you know is ego-driven irresponsibility and sends the absolute wrong message about you as a leader – and human being
• Properly focusing your learning (and the learning of others) not only reduces fear, stress, and strain, but naturally encourages everyone – including yourself – to perform at increasingly higher levels

These are all good places for any leadership development effort to start, but they’re especially important if you’re finding that you or members of your team are not achieving the results you’re hoping for – the results you’re actually needing.

Irrefutable Evidence of Change

Does it work? Does engaging with LeadershipTraction actually have the impact intended?

Individual results, of course, vary, but here are some ‘flash stats’ on how clients have benefited from working with LeadershipTraction that might help soften your reluctance:

+99% – the percent reported ‘satisfied’ or ‘very satisfied’ with the personalized coaching, mentoring, and support they received.‌⁣

~95% – the percent of clients who’ve renewed their engagements beyond the initially agreed-upon duration.

23-45% – the average improvements cited across more than 10 essential leadership development competencies directly related to improving their impact, influence, strategic thinking, and TRACTION.‌

+25% – the percent of ‘completed’ clients so satisfied that they re-engaged, anew, several months, if not years, later.

~4x – the multiplier of value received for every $1 spent, that is, the average ROI (return on investment) that clients calculated having received.‌

One – the number of conversations it typically takes for real, relevant, and irrefutable traction to start kicking in.

Tap or click for client testimonials and endorsements.

Changing How You Think Changes How You Communicate

What do you do when you need to talk something out?

Who do you talk WITH when you don’t want to talk about something with just anyone?

• Can you talk with your boss?
  • Maybe, but bosses are often just too busy
  • And sometimes you just need more time and Undivided Attention than your boss is open to providing
• Can you talk with your direct reports?
  • You certainly can, but they often don’t have the perspective to provide effective counsel
  • And directs often should not be privy to some of the ‘unfinished’ thinking you’re still working your way through
• Can you talk with your peers?
  • Peers often face similar concerns, but conversations with them all-too-often digress into useless gripe sessions
  • And if you’re doing your job right, they often don’t have any more perspective than you already have
• Can you talk with your spouse or significant other?
  • Most people do, but many find it’s not always the most helpful because they have vested interests
  • And when they can speak honest truths, it’s admittedly hard not ‘shoot the messenger’
• Can you talk with your friends and relatives?
  • They surely may want to help, but how often do they, really?
  • And how often have those conversations digressed into them wanting YOUR help?
• Can you continue to keep it all bottled up inside?
  • There’s a reason the parent company of LeadershipTraction is GottaGettaCoach!, Inc.
  • Say it aloud, “I gotta getta coach!”

What do YOU need to talk about?

Coaching Isn’t Therapy, But it IS Therapeutic

Working with a professional coach – particularly a fully-trained, certified, and experienced professional coach from LeadershipTraction – is all about helping you with what YOU need.

Coaching conversations are specifically designed to help you separate the signal from the noise and get clear from your muddled thoughts so you can carve out and clarify what’s most crucial for ensuring your goals and objectives can be met, moving forward.

Coaching conversations provide a confidential, focused, and surprisingly-engaging exploration of what you need to get back on the right track, with greater confidence, clarity, and ease.

And they work!

So is it time? Are you ready to get back to achieving precisely what you know you need to achieve?

It starts as easily as arranging a simple, preliminary conversation.

Changing How You Think Changes What You Can Achieve

The whole point of any leadership development initiative is to help leaders learn to think more clearly, collaborate more freely, take full responsibility for all of their decisions, and create a more positive and lasting business impact – more quickly and easily than they might, otherwise.

Who doesn’t want that?!

If you think that a simple, preliminary conversation – about your leadership development needs or those of others in your organization – might be useful, call or contact LeadershipTraction to coordinate calendars.

Best, too, to do so sooner rather than later, though – before you get sidetracked by the very concerns that brought you here in the first place!