I constantly read and listen to leadership books that are assigned in my doctoral program in organizational leadership, recommended for my dissertation research, or that I find to be helpful to my training students to continue their classroom learning.and personal development.
Here is a list of the leadership books that I have read in the past year and have found very helpful in continuing to develop my authentic leadership style and helping others to discover and develop their own leadership styles.
In the classes that I train for Pryor Learning Solutions, I utilize what I have learned from these books when I train Leadership, Team-Building & Coaching Skills, Leadership & Management Skills for Women, Communication Skills for Women and Dealing with Difficult People. If you decide to read any of these books, come join me in one of these classes to apply what you have read through our rich class discussions.
When I train leadership classes, the most common problem that I hear about from students is that they don't know how to manage their employees' bad attitudes. I advise them to stop trying to manage their employees so much and lead them more.
Using a collaborative leadership approach means involving everyone in your organization in team discussions, which demonstrates that everyone is equally valued to you as a manager. To open up collaborative discussion, a leader can state their perspective with "I" statements and follow them with open-ended questions to understand their employee's perspective.
Often times an employee's negative attitude comes from their different perspective or values that are not shared by the manager. Managers create their employees' bad attitudes, or add to them, by not communicating respectfully and actively listening to understand them. It takes some extra time to figure out how to get on the same page, but it will pay off with increased understanding and respect at work, therefore, more work can be accomplished. You create a win-win situation in which the employee is treated as they want and the employer getting better work results.
I found a couple of open days this month (which are hard to come by with my heavy training and travel schedule), so I decided to take advantage of my Pryor+ membership and attend some professional development classes. My training goal was to improve my training skills and see how other trainers conduct their classes.
I met the wonderful trainer pictured with me above, Lena Brown, at a "Training The Trainer" class in Towson last week. Lena gave me great ideas on how to step-up my visual presentations, group exercises and class activities when I train.
I know that I am an auditory learner, relying heavily on spoken words to grasp concepts, so I tend to train predominantly through verbal communication. Now I have more tools to balance my training with engaging visuals and activities for visual and kinesthetic learners. This training will help me develop my own Collaborative Intelligence, which will enhance my own leadership abilities.
How do you keep sharpening your tools? Reading, taking classes, engaging in new activities, other tools? I'd love to hear about it, please share with me.