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.
In the leadership and coaching classes that I train for Pryor Learning Solutions, I talk about how feedback is vital in a coaching conversation to develop team members. Both positive and negative feedback help us to capitalize on our strengths and improve upon our weaknesses. For leaders who want to develop their teams, it is important to give feedback that is honest and regular, to build trust individually and as a group.
My team, since starting my business three years ago, are the students in my classes, who are asked to give me feedback at the end of each class on a seminar evaluation form. I always read their feedback to give me ideas on how to improve my training ability and their class experiences. I give feedback to students in class to guide them in developing feedback discussions with their team members that positively-frame problem-solving and individual development of critical thinking skills.
My critical thinking about my training developed when I received feedback last year that I was a skilled trainer, but that there was no big takeaway from my class. This changed how I thought about my role as a trainer to lead my students toward their own development, not just deliver a curriculum. This year my class feedback has improved with students commenting on how many takeaways they have gotten from each class. This makes me proud of my work, knowing that I used negative feedback to improve myself and others.
To continue to embrace feedback for development, I have revised my website contact page to encourage feedback submission, including what you would like to see in my blog posts, so that I can make sure to cover your desired learning topics.