Chris recently sent me this e-mail putting his finger on a vital coaching and developing skill:

“In your March newsletter, you reference your leadership wheel and I enjoyed reading the results of your findings as put into that model. I am currently working with a person who is in a leadership role and while he is very dynamic and committed to the organization, I find that he displays a bit of a defensive attitude to ideas that are presented in our meetings. It tends to come across as a ‘yes, but’ type of comment. It is my experience that this slowly causes people to adopt the attitude ‘Why bother making suggestions, his mind is made up.’

It appears to me that one additional characteristic of leaders is the ability to affirm team members in such a way that they feel their ideas are of merit and have been acknowledged. I was wondering where that fits in your model.”
Chris Prosser, Director of Canadian Operations at The Adler Group

Chris is referring to “Characteristics of Admired Leaders” from this month’s issue of The Leader Letter.

An effective leader is open to feedback and builds an environment where people are encouraged to speak their truth, share their honest views, provide constructive push-back, and engage in healthy debates. That’s the essence of Authenticity and Courageous Conversations. I’ve written a few articles on Fostering Openness and Transparency and do see it as a core leadership skill.

How a supervisor or manager makes a team member feel is at the heart of defining Management versus Leadership. Strong management skills will often make a team member feel like the boss is capable and effective. Strong leadership skills will make a team member feel like he or she is capable and effective. Strong leadership increases confidence and can-do spirit.

Making team members feel that their ideas have merit and have been acknowledged is an outcome from skilled application of many of the Timeless Leadership Principles. It most clearly fits in my model as part of Coaching and Developing. I’ve written quite a bit about this vital area.  The Leader’s Digest: Timeless Principles for Team and Organization Success, identifies nine best practices of highly effective coaches. You can read a summary of them at A Coach’s Playbook for Leaders.

Complimentary Weekly Podcast of Firing on all Cylinders Excerpts Now Available (No Charge)

Just after Firing on All Cylinders: The Service/Quality System for High-Powered Corporate Performance was published (now over 100,000 copies sold), I recorded an audio series reading excerpts from the book. We are now making these freely available in a weekly podcast series. CLICK HERE to access the installments as they are posted. We’ll be posting all 10 segments over the next 10 weeks. On this page you can sign up to be notified whenever the next segment is available.

You can learn more about this series and look at an overview of the audio on the Firing on all Cylinders audio CD web site page.