Leadership Today - Practical Tips For Leaders

In this conversation, Andrew Beveridge speaks with Brad Englert, founder of Brad Englert Advisory and author of 'Spheres of Influence'. They discuss the importance of mentorship, building genuine relationships in business, and the significance of understanding both internal and external spheres of influence. Brad shares insights from his extensive experience in IT and leadership, emphasising the need for proactive customer service, the power of apology, and the challenges of influencing without formal authority. The discussion also touches on the dynamics of hybrid work environments and the importance of maintaining connections in a remote setting. Learn more about Brad and access a free chapter of his book - https://bradenglert.com/podcast/

Takeaways

• Mentorship is a two-way street, involving both giving and receiving.
• Understanding your boss's expectations is crucial for success.
• Building genuine relationships can lead to long-term success.
• Proactive customer service is more effective than reactive fire drills.
• Apologising can build trust and strengthen relationships.
• Long-term relationships can lead to unexpected opportunities.
• Creating a positive organisational culture requires clear communication and values.
• Navigating crises requires preparation and strong relationships.
• Influencing others without authority is a key leadership skill.
• Hybrid work environments require intentional relationship-building.

Chapters

00:11 Introduction to Brad Englert

03:26 Understanding Spheres of Influence

10:13 Building Genuine Relationships

16:24 Cultural Transformation in IT

23:04 Navigating Crisis and Change

28:58 The Power of Apology

32:24 Communication and Clarity in Leadership

36:52 Understanding Expectations and Influencing Upwards

39:29 Building Customer Relationships

45:02 Influencing Without Authority

48:46 Navigating Hybrid Work Environments

51:59 Looking Ahead: The Future of Leadership

We are continuing to explore The Leader's Mindset which has four elements: Goal Orientation, Optimistic Outlook, Options Thinking and Drive for Growth. I encourage you to listen to the previous episodes first and also take the time to complete our free Mindset to Action assessment. This provides detailed feedback on all four areas along with development suggestions. Just go to https://leadership.today/mta

Continuing our journey metaphor, we can be clear about where we're going, have a positive attitude towards that journey, and even be great at identifying various options to get there, but without Drive for Growth we won't make progress.

Drive for Growth is like momentum and making forward progress on the journey. With a Drive for Growth mindset, a person will be motivated to keep going and persist even when things get hard. They push themselves to standards that are greater than the minimum that's expected. Without a Drive for Growth, a person tends to give up when things become difficult to achieve. They also find it hard to get going on a task they know will be difficult.

Sometimes it can feel like some people are just born with higher levels of drive and motivation, but we can all develop and improve our Drive for Growth. Here are five practical ideas you can use:

1. Boost Your Mood: Procrastination is about putting short term mood repair over long term results. We procrastinate because it makes us feel better in the moment. Research demonstrates that boosting your mood by completing an activity you enjoy makes you less likely to procrastinate. Whether it's going for a quick walk or talking with a colleague, take a few moments to boost your mood before you begin.
2. Start Small: Getting started can be the hardest part of pursuing any goal. Identify a small first step you can take to make progress. Dedicating a short amount of time such as 10 to 15 minutes to begin can also be a useful approach. You can then add another 10 to 15 minutes on at the end, as you're likely to be more motivated once you get started.
3. Review Why It Matters: It's challenging to make progress when we lose sight of why our actions matter. Think about your broader goals and sense of purpose in life. Identify how activities align with this purpose to give you that extra motivation.
4. Reflect on Progress: Take stock of the progress you have already made. Think about where you were a month or a year ago and reflect on what you've learned and how you've grown. This will help to build your confidence and motivation to keep going.
5. Recognise That Growth is Difficult: Learning anything new is uncomfortable. Feeling awkward and wanting to give up are natural responses to trying any new activity or pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone. It doesn't mean that you lack potential. Push through the awkwardness towards growth and improvement. Becoming comfortable with feeling uncomfortable is a key part of a Drive for Growth mindset.

Choose one of these to practice over the coming week. That's our final episode in this series on The Leader's Mindset. If you found the episodes and Mindset to Action assessment helpful, please share them with a friend or colleague. We are committed to sharing resources that help everyone with their leadership and you play a big part in spreading the news. Have a great week as you become an even better leader.

Leadership Today On-Demand Special Offer

We have a great deal for podcast listeners on our Leadership Today On-Demand subscription. Just go to www.leadershiptoday.com and checkout using the promo code PODCAST for 25% off an annual subscription.

Leadership Today On-Demand is a video subscription service that allows you to work on your leadership in your own time and at your own pace. It is available online and through our Apple iOS and Android apps for phones and tablets. Our mission is to help you to become an even better leader.

Your subscription brings together all of our video content in one place including:

- Five online courses with workbooks

- Five five day challenges with workbooks

- Nineteen recorded webinars

- A searchable library of 170+ "how to" quick videos on a range of leadership challenges

That's over $4,500 of content for less than the price of a single online course. And there are more videos added each week.

Get Connected

Find out ways to get connected here: https://leadership.today/connect

We are continuing to explore The Leader's Mindset which has four elements: Goal Orientation, Optimistic Outlook, Options Thinking and Drive for Growth. I encourage you to listen to the three previous episodes first and also take the time to complete our free Mindset to Action assessment. This provides detailed feedback on all four areas along with development suggestions. Just go to https://leadership.today/mta

We often aren't great at coming up with multiple options when we encounter challenges. Typically we will generate one option, and then become stuck if that option doesn't work.

Options Thinking is like identifying various pathways to the destination on your journey. With Options Thinking, a person identifies ways around emerging challenges and problems. They are confident in their ability to come up with another way around obstacles they might face. Without Options Thinking, a person gets stuck when things don't go to plan. They find it hard to identify new ways to reach their destination when the first pathway is blocked.

So Options Thinking has two parts - the identification of options up front, and then immediately focusing on options when you become stuck.

There are five ways you can build your Options Thinking:

1. Brainstorm Options: When you face an obstacle, immediately start to brainstorm options. Recognise that option generation and option evaluation are two distinct steps. If we are trying to evaluate our options while we generate them, we will often throw out too many options that could have merit. Instead, spend time generating multiple options before evaluating them.
2. Ask Yourself Questions - Use these questions to help prompt further options:
   • What are your options moving forward?
   • What else might you do?
   • What has worked so far?
   • How could you do more of that?
   • Who else could help?
   • What are the pros and cons of these options?
   • What are the easiest options that will have the biggest impact?
3. Engage Others: Ask a trusted colleague or friend to help you generate new options. Having someone asking you for further options and guiding you towards new areas to consider is extremely helpful. It's often even better if the person isn't close to the problem so they can take a more objective view.
4. Change Your Setting: Consider where you come up with your best ideas. Most people develop their best ideas when they're relaxed, maybe having a shower or going for a walk, and when they're interacting with others. Make sure you give your brain time to relax and consider options, and bring others around you to bounce ideas off.
5. Reflect on Past Successes: Take time to reflect on moments when you have overcome challenges or worked through adversity. Reflecting on our past successes can encourage us to keep going and generate new ideas to move forward.

As always I encourage you to select one of these to practice over the coming week. In our final episode of this series we are going to explore Drive for Growth. Have a great week as you become an even better leader.

Leadership Today On-Demand Special Offer

We have a great deal for podcast listeners on our Leadership Today On-Demand subscription. Just go to www.leadershiptoday.com and checkout using the promo code PODCAST for 25% off an annual subscription.

Leadership Today On-Demand is a video subscription service that allows you to work on your leadership in your own time and at your own pace. It is available online and through our Apple iOS and Android apps for phones and tablets. Our mission is to help you to become an even better leader.

Your subscription brings together all of our video content in one place including:

- Five online courses with workbooks

- Five five day challenges with workbooks

- Nineteen recorded webinars

- A searchable library of 170+ "how to" quick videos on a range of leadership challenges

That's over $4,500 of content for less than the price of a single online course. And there are more videos added each week.

Get Connected

Find out ways to get connected here: https://leadership.today/connect

We are continuing to explore The Leader's Mindset which has four elements: Goal Orientation, Optimistic Outlook, Options Thinking and Drive for Growth. I encourage you to listen to the two previous episodes first and also take the time to complete our free Mindset to Action assessment. This provides detailed feedback on all four areas along with development suggestions. Just go to https://leadership.today/mta

When I talk about mindsets, the most common one that people think of is optimism and pessimism. Optimism has lots of positive benefits, particularly when you combine it with the three elements of hope theory covered in the Mindset to Action assessment. Combining the two overcomes the main shortcoming of optimism, which is its lack of direction and momentum. Just looking at the world in a positive way and expecting good things to happen doesn't take you anywhere - you need clear goals, openness to options, and the drive to push you forward.

Continuing our journey metaphor, Optimistic Outlook is like the perspective you bring to the journey. A person with an Optimistic Outlook thinks positively about the future, expecting things to go their way. They see the future as positive. A person without an Optimistic Outlook mindset focuses on the negatives and what can go wrong. They anticipate more bad things to happen than good things.

I'm often asked if it's possible to have too much optimism. The research suggests this is the case, but that it's pretty rare. For example, with extremely high levels of optimism I may be reluctant to take personal responsibility when things go wrong. What is more common is so-called toxic positivity, which describes a culture where people only focus on the positive and ignore challenges, criticisms and issues. The Leader's Mindset is all about tackling challenges and making progress, therefore avoiding this potential trap.

The Mindset to Action report provides five ways of building and maintaining an Optimistic Outlook.

1. Gratitude Journal: Write down three new things that you are grateful for each day. This will help you to focus on the positive things happening around you that are so easy to miss. Before long, you will have trained yourself to focus more on the positive than the negative in your work and life.
2. Consider the Three P's: Martin Seligman describes three ways in which optimists and pessimists think differently in both good and bad situations - personal, permanent and pervasive.
   • When things go wrong, an Optimistic Outlook involves:
   • Personal - not automatically blaming ourselves, but rather accepting the outside forces that have contributed to the situation
   • Permanent - not extending the bad situation out, but realistically appreciating that this will pass and that other good things are probably happening
   • Pervasive - not extending the challenging event to all aspects of our life, but rather compartmentalising it to one aspect of our life
   • When things go right, an Optimistic Outlook includes:
   • Personal - seeing the role that we played in achieving a good outcome
   • Permanent - extending out the good result over time, and making sure we reflect on the good things that are happening in our lives
   • Pervasive - using the good result to flow into other aspects of our life
3. Tame How You Speak To Yourself: Often the way we speak to ourselves is not very kind. When things go wrong we can quickly become our own worst critic. If a friend spoke to us the way we speak to ourselves in those moments, they probably wouldn't be a friend for very long. Instead, be generous and kind to yourself. Speak to yourself as a supportive friend.
4. Reframe Challenges as Opportunities for Growth: When we expand our horizons and try new things, we build optimism and resilience. Sure, we might make mistakes or find new things hard - that's to be expected. See these minor setbacks as chances to become wiser, stronger and more capable.

Why not pick one of these to practice over the coming week? In the next episode we are going to explore Options Thinking. Have a great week as you become an even better leader.

Leadership Today On-Demand Special Offer

We have a great deal for podcast listeners on our Leadership Today On-Demand subscription. Just go to www.leadershiptoday.com and checkout using the promo code PODCAST for 25% off an annual subscription.

Leadership Today On-Demand is a video subscription service that allows you to work on your leadership in your own time and at your own pace. It is available online and through our Apple iOS and Android apps for phones and tablets. Our mission is to help you to become an even better leader.

Your subscription brings together all of our video content in one place including:

- Five online courses with workbooks

- Five five day challenges with workbooks

- Nineteen recorded webinars

- A searchable library of 170+ "how to" quick videos on a range of leadership challenges

That's over $4,500 of content for less than the price of a single online course. And there are more videos added each week.

Get Connected

Find out ways to get connected here: https://leadership.today/connect

In the last episode we introduced The Leader's Mindset which has four elements: Goal Orientation, Optimistic Outlook, Options Thinking and Drive for Growth. I encourage you to listen to that episode first and also take the time to complete our free Mindset to Action assessment. This provides detailed feedback on all four areas along with development suggestions. Just go to https://leadership.today/mta

Snyder's hope theory, which the Leader's Mindset is partly based on, indicates that setting and pursuing meaningful goals is a core element of satisfaction, well-being and general health. Yet we're typically not great at setting and achieving goals. Research reveals that of the roughly 50% of people that set a New Year resolution, only 8% achieve the goal they set. Research from Strava, the fitness tracking company, reveals that of those who set a clear fitness goal for the new year, a full 80% have given up within two weeks. That's people who are motivated to make a change and encouraged to set a structured goal. So what goes wrong?

Setting a goal is a rewarding activity, but working toward a goal requires effort. This shift from reward to effort is where many people give up. We also know that development and growth is uncomfortable. It's typically more comfortable to just let the goal go and stay where we are. We also often express our goals as a general desire rather than a decision. Compare "I want to improve my public speaking" with "I will improve my public speaking". The second statement demonstrates a decision to change.

If we use the metaphor of a journey, Goal Orientation is like identifying a destination point on a map. With a Goal Orientation mindset a person is clear about what success looks like in their own terms. They have a clear vision for the future and regularly set goals towards that vision. They know where they're headed and why that's important to them. Without a Goal Orientation mindset, a person isn't clear about their future direction and where they want to head. They become directionless in their lives and therefore may struggle to make progress.

Goal Orientation is where a Leader's Mindset begins. And like any mindset, you can develop Goal Orientation with intention, practice and time. Here are four practical strategies to develop your Goal Orientation.

1. Define What Success Means To You: It's important to have your own vision of what success looks like for you. It can be easy to end up chasing others' ideas of success, or to become directionless without a clear vision of who we want to be. Consider the following questions to develop your own definition of success for your life. What are two or three key values for you? What three things would you want people to say about you at your retirement party? How would you spend your time if you no longer needed to work for money? What matters most to you? How do you define success for your life?
2. Make Sure Your Goals Are SMART: SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This framework provides a set of criteria for goal setting that ensures clarity and accountability. Specific: Define goals clearly and precisely. The more specific the goal, the easier it is to understand and work towards. Measurable: Set concrete metrics to track progress. Measurement adds objectivity to the process and enables you to assess whether the goal has been achieved. Achievable: Goals should be challenging yet realistic. Ensure that the goal can be accomplished with the available resources and effort. Also make sure there is an achievement point - a moment when you can say that the goal has been completed. Relevant: Goals should be relevant to the individual, team, or organisation's current needs and priorities. Time-bound: Set a clear timeframe for achieving the goal. This adds urgency and prevents goals from dragging on indefinitely.
3. Set Goals Across Different Time Horizons: Goal Orientation involves regularly setting goals to work towards that align with your vision of success. Sometimes we can set goals that are either so far into the future that they seem impossible, or so close to where we already are that they're not worth pursuing. A helpful approach is to break long term goals into smaller goals across different time horizons. Experiment with setting goals on the following time horizons: 10 years plus, 5 years, 1 to 2 years, 3 to 4 months, 1 month, 1 week. You can keep these goals in a note that's easy to edit and update. Your shorter term goals should be contributing towards your longer term goals and objectives.
4. Review Progress and Refine Goals: It's easy to set a goal and then fail to review your progress. Ensure you regularly review your goals. Set times up in your calendar to review your progress. Also be open to refining your goals. Just as your vision of success may change over time, so too might your goals. If a goal doesn't matter to you any more, it's okay to delete it and set a new goal.

Why not pick one of these to practice over the coming week? In the next episode we are going to explore Optimistic Outlook. Have a great week as you become an even better leader.

Leadership Today On-Demand Special Offer

We have a great deal for podcast listeners on our Leadership Today On-Demand subscription. Just go to www.leadershiptoday.com and checkout using the promo code PODCAST for 25% off an annual subscription.

Leadership Today On-Demand is a video subscription service that allows you to work on your leadership in your own time and at your own pace. It is available online and through our Apple iOS and Android apps for phones and tablets. Our mission is to help you to become an even better leader.

Your subscription brings together all of our video content in one place including:

- Five online courses with workbooks

- Five five day challenges with workbooks

- Nineteen recorded webinars

- A searchable library of 170+ "how to" quick videos on a range of leadership challenges

That's over $4,500 of content for less than the price of a single online course. And there are more videos added each week.

Get Connected

Find out ways to get connected here: https://leadership.today/connect