Category Archives: teams

Establish a Culture of Trust

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Countless management books, seminars and programs offer insights into how leaders can develop trust within their organizations. Their consistent theme—“It begins with you”—is certainly valid, as leaders must model trust and set an example for their people. Success depends on a personal campaign of inner reflection, values assessment and relational intelligence. Training can be effective and rewarding, but much of the focus often stops there.

Leaders develop trust (defined as “relying on others to do the right thing”) after observing people’s character and behavior over time and gaining confidence in them. They earn trust by consistently displaying personal integrity, accountability and concern for others.

Trust, in fact, is the most potent tool in a leader’s arsenal, asserts JetBlue Airways Chairman Joel Peterson in The 10 Laws of Trust: Building the Bonds That Make a Business Great(AMACOM, 2016). Trusted leaders are more productive, profitable and prosperous. Their people are more engaged, morale and loyalty soar, and the overall work ethic is enviable. The organization sees lower turnover, waste and inefficiency.

But trust is not limited to Mahogany Row. While we’re often led to believe that trustworthy behavior will permeate the work environment like ripples in a pond, this trickle-down theory is overly simplistic. As Gallup studies reveal, employees trust their coworkers even less than their leaders. Organizations cannot reach their full potential until leaders establish a culture where employees trust their coworkers. Leaders may require assistance from a professional coach to achieve this goal.

Create a Standard of Integrity

Leaders are standard-bearers who establish the basic tenets of integrity throughout their organizations. They must clearly communicate four key values and expectations: truthfulness, honesty, respectfulness and positivity.

  1. Truthfulness
     
    Speaking the truth is challenging in toxic environments where messengers get shot. It may be tempting to ignore reality and tell people what they want to hear, notes management consultant Jim Dougherty in The Best Way for New Leaders to Build Trust (Harvard Business Review, December 13, 2013). Leaders must nonetheless deliver bad news when it’s warranted—and demand honorable behavior from those who receive it.

    People sense less risk when an organization’s culture respects those who tell the truth, even when it hurts. When leaders address mistakes constructively and avoid embarrassing their staff, there’s no need to lie or stretch the truth. The penalty for lying must outweigh that for making errors. Enforce this mindset in your culture so truthful coworkers earn others’ trust.
     

  2. Honesty
     
    When employees treat each other honestly (do the right thing), trust grows over time. Dishonesty must be met with consequences. If you deal with it firmly, even for subtle infractions, your culture of integrity strengthens and people trust each other more.
     
  3. Respectfulness
     
    A culture of respect and honor fosters high levels of trust among coworkers. Again, a leader’s behavior sets the stage for success. Respectfulness includes basic social considerations like accepting people and listening to their opinions and ideas.

    Leaders also demonstrate respect when they seek feedback without favoritism, encourage participation from everyone on a team and value each staff member within the organization. Such behaviors enhance trust; being judgmental, resentful and prone to attack destroy trust. Instill a mindset of respectfulness into your culture so trust among coworkers can flourish.
     

  4. Positivity
     
    Positivity is an often-overlooked means of building mutual trust, as long as one’s efforts are neither faked nor forced. Infusing your culture with a positive mindset has many powerful benefits. Cynicism and sarcasm are trust killers. People are repelled by these behaviors, knowing nothing trustworthy comes from them.

    A positive approach assumes the best in people and gives them the benefit of the doubt, thereby setting them at ease. Trust-building leaders expect their staff to exhibit thoughtful behavior and language. Add this requirement to your organization’s code of conduct or formal HR policy.

Promote a Spirit of Unity

Employees trust their peers once they experience teamwork. Unity becomes the norm when people share the load and help each other. Reciprocity is a noticeable trust-building act that’s contagious. Coworkers dedicated to a common cause commit to each other. They lift each other up and spur one another on. Leaders who instill a spirit of unity build a culture more prone to trust.

Great leaders help employees grasp the power of reconciliation when dissention arises. They don’t expect their people to always get along, but they count on them to apologize and forgive so relationships can be restored and strengthened. Durable relationships lead to mutual trust.

Raise the Level of Empowerment

Leaders confer the highest levels of authority and trust on employees who effectively complete tasks, resolve problems and make fair decisions. These employees, in turn, become more open to trusting others. Trust is a commodity people spend in proportion to what they receive.

As a leader, you convey trust by honoring people’s ideas and suggestions and letting them pursue those with merit. Give people opportunities to earn your trust, and allow them the luxury of failure as they work toward accomplishing their goals. Failure is often the most valuable way to learn and grow. As JetBlue’s Peterson points out, sharing some of your power creates a higher level of trust among your employees.

Develop a suggestion-submission system, where employees’ ideas for improvement are evaluated. Reward those whose ideas are implemented. Examine your policies and procedures to determine whether any can be improved based on the staff suggestions. Employees are the true experts in how things work at the most detailed organizational levels. The trust they feel from leadership will carry over to their peers.

Allow employees to be cross-trained so they can be more empowered. This raises their level of engagement. Offer them training or continuing-education opportunities. The feeling of being trusted to add value raises their appreciation for trust. A mentor program also empowers both mentors and mentees. Employees who feel trusted claim a higher stake in the organization and have greater trust in their coworkers, leaders and future.

Reinforce Personal Accountability

People who can’t be counted on lower organizational morale and engagement. They flame resentments and dissatisfaction throughout the rest of the organization. Address this issue by reinforcing the importance of personal accountability.

People demonstrate accountability by doing what they say they’re going to do, when they need to do it. Leaders promote this by holding people to their commitments and making accountability part of the performance assessment. In fairness, leaders also need to provide their people with the means to meet these commitments.

Accountability also means tackling problems head on and not running from them. People trust coworkers who meet challenges with noble efforts so everyone wins. A culture of trust thrives only when people at all organizational levels fulfill their responsibilities. Managing work with measurable criteria expands trust in the system. Clarity is a strong trust builder, according to leadership consultant David Horsager, author of The Trust Edge: How Top Leaders Gain Faster Results, Deeper Relationships, and a Stronger Bottom Line (Free Press, 2012).

Accountability often overlaps integrity, in that people who admit their mistakes are trusted more. Inspiring this kind of transparency allows people to air their mistakes and learn from them. Be a leader who encourages learning, focusing on fixes instead of blame, to build trust. The pursuit of solutions empowers people to reach new levels and expands trust.

Sharpen Communication

Many trust issues stem from poor communication. People who don’t communicate clearly or authentically aren’t trusted. Properly conveying information makes conversations, emails, phone calls and meetings more effective and trustworthy. Leaders need to provide training in communication skills and monitor employee progress.

Anger, resentment, offensiveness and rumors destroy trust. Leaders must take aim at these issues and set behavioral standards that are continuously reinforced. Ask your people to put themselves in other team members’ shoes when communicating. How will their words be perceived? Can they achieve a win-win situation? Can they step back from a conflict, calm down and form a more reasonable response?

Employees who communicate reasonably and professionally with each other raise workplace trust. Integrity is best revealed through communication, and unity is best realized in a high-integrity environment.

There’s no question that leaders set the tone for every aspect of workplace trust, and the necessary mindsets are passed down through the ranks. Leaders must put policies in place to monitor and correct undesirable behavior. Those who see the highest levels of coworker trust provide ample training, support and enforcement for trustworthy behavior policies.

Building a Culture on Strengths

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Much has been documented on the advantages leaders have when they strive to discover their employees’ strengths and make the best use of them. According to Gallup surveys, 67% of employees who feel that their strengths are used and appreciated by their leaders are engaged in their work. This compares to a general engagement rate of 15% in the workplace as a whole.

Employees who are permitted to use their strengths are more interested in what they’re doing and apply themselves more fully. They are more productive, inspired, and loyal. It has been long shown that when organizations lead people through their strengths, they benefit in many ways: higher sales and profits, lower turnover and absenteeism, and better customer reviews.

Clearly, it’s to your advantage to maximize the use of your peoples’ strengths. The strength of the organization depends on the applied strength its employees. But this is more than just assessing peoples’ skills. Leaders who establish a culture of strength-mindedness instill a collective focus on and value in the strengths of people. It’s a focus that must be engrained into everything and everyone.

Discover People’s Strengths

For you to know the strengths of your people, you first need to know your people. Focusing on strengths is inherently a focus on people: their abilities, interests, knowledge, and aspirations. Technical strengths are only a portion of the picture. Strengths are also measured in the softer skills: character, courage, confidence, and communication. Leaders who spend time with their people, getting to know them, have the greatest ability to assess these kinds of strengths and know how they can be applied in the workplace.

Many personal strengths are revealed through one-on-one conversations. Another way to discover character strengths is to observe how your people handle themselves, how they behave, respond, and make decisions. Getting insights from coworkers or other leaders adds to the collection of information on a person’s strengths.

Technical strengths are often more straightforward to judge by reviewing a person’s work: its thoroughness, accuracy and inventiveness. You can see peoples’ strengths by how well they tackle challenges and find solutions to problems. Their values are revealed in how they take on their responsibilities. Making note of these things gives you a good sense for the strengths of your people.

Channeling Skills into Teams

In today’s dynamic environment, leaders get great benefits by grouping their people into multidiscipline teams to make the most of their strengths. Structuring teams with a diverse set of skills and personalities feeds synergy and motivation. When paired with other skillsets, people inspire one another and learn from each other. The sense of unity reduces barriers and creates a collective drive to solve problems with creative solutions. Leaders are better able to forge a focus on goals rather than specific work assignments, leading to a higher rate of productivity.

With teams, empowerment is more viable, where authority is pushed down to the lowest level possible. People develop a greater spirit of self-sufficiency and decision making, providing higher levels of ownership, pride and interest in their work. They share their strengths and develop new ones from their teammates. They use their strengths to embrace challenges and have a more positive outlook when they’re given these freedoms.

You can utilize peoples’ strengths even more by creating workplace layouts that maximize collaboration and communication within each team. A combination of private and common spaces, with appropriate noise abatement and elbow room yields maximum engagement. Team members are naturally led to combine strengths with the different disciplines and backgrounds of their teammates, letting them get to know, trust, and influence each other. The power of interaction can compensate for a lacking in certain strengths.

Matching Projects to People

Leaders who select projects for the strengths of their people have a far greater success rate than those who simply dole out work without strength considerations. Intentionally crafting projects that specifically challenge the strengths of a person or team are also more successful. People are more inspired and inventive when forced to use their strengths, especially when they are pushed to their limits.

Projects come is varying degrees of complexity and difficulty. Leaders who want to maximize their peoples’ strengths will assign projects toward the lowest level of capability that can pull off results. This creates a challenge that causes people to lift their game, grow, and find fulfillment in ways they never thought they could.

Growing Peoples’ Strengths

Gallup and other survey takers have shown that one of the aspects people value in their jobs the most is the opportunity to learn and grow, specifically through additional learning and training. People want to get better at what they do, to be stronger contributors, and more qualified to advance to greater responsibilities. Leaders who provide their people with these opportunities see them not only advancing their current strengths, but developing new ones. As a leader you have no better ability to succeed than when your people are continuously raising their capabilities and the desire to use them.

Another significant way people can grow is to take on the role of trainer or instructor, and share what they know. Establishing in-house training programs is a great way to grow strengths in everyone. It also raises the candidacy of people for potential advancement or involvement in more complex projects.

Developing the strengths of your people is beneficial through the reputation they develop, both within and outside your organization. Internal expertise is obviously beneficial for organizations that rely on winning projects from the business community. It also pays dividends internally, when other employees seek out your team experts to learn and grow additional strengths. Forget the politics of keeping your peoples’ strengths to yourself. Everyone wins when you enhance your entire organization by sharing what you have.

The Strength-Based Philosophy

The most productive and effective organizations, the ones that have the most engaged and creative people, are the ones that have a culture focused on the strengths of their employees. The emphasis is on what people can do, not on what they can’t do. None of this happens by itself, but only through the living example and specific direction of the primary leader. These are leaders who have the philosophy that strengths are the primary focus of everything their organization attempts to do.

Such a culture invests heavily in its people, encouraging and rewarding the use of strengths. Create programs to discover and track the strengths of your employees. Offer training and teaching experiences continuously. Establishing a team structure allows people to maximize and share their strengths. Trusting people to apply themselves and be stretched beyond their comfort zone causes them to meet challenges and find new solutions.

Leaders in strength-based cultures assess their people’s performance not just on quantifiable results, but on the effectiveness of their personal development. How well do they use their strengths, and how do they maximize them or develop new ones? Leaders who are focused on strengths often coach their people directly, cultivating more talents and strengths. Setting up a system of internal coaching is also a powerful way to enhance and develop strengths, build networks, and increase collaboration.

Your strength-based culture must teach communication skills, where strengths get enhanced and used to connect people and forge a spirit of unity. Leaders who instill a mindset of helping one another get the greatest benefits from the strengths of their people, where they feel fulfilled and valued. Applying a collective focus on peoples’ strengths can fashion a culture that will boost your business better than any other approach.

The Traps of Consensus-Style Leadership

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Most employees favor consensus-run organizations, where a leader uses inclusion and feedback to manage democratically. A consensus-style leader is a refreshing alternative to the tyrant who issues stern orders. But democracy, taken to an extreme, creates numerous frustrations for direct reports.

Leaders who advocate for consensus want everyone to feel valued and happy. These apparent benefits may be dwarfed by their inherent traps, creating the very unhappiness they strive to prevent. Overly inclusive leaders may unwittingly sabotage their efforts.

Consensus-style leaders are seen as mediators or peacekeepers, seeking a calm, cooperative environment. They disdain conflict and disunity, experiencing a sense of well-being only when everyone gets along. They seek to maintain a spirit of togetherness and happiness, going out of their way to ensure people’s needs are met.

Unlike tyrants or compulsive leaders, mediators put their people’s needs ahead of their own. They accept a more behind-the-scenes role, according to Beatrice Chestnut, PhD, author of The 9 Types of Leadership: Mastering the Art of People in the 21st Century Workplace (Post Hill Press, 2017). Peacekeepers don’t want prominence or attention, just the satisfaction that everyone is productive, pleased and supportive.

To keep the peace, consensus-style leaders give people equal consideration by seeking their input and concerns. They welcome all ideas and suggestions so the team can come to agreement and keep the majority happy. Leaders mediate disagreements to avoid strife, often forgoing their own preferences and desires. But as Dr. Chestnut explains, such sacrifices may unintentionally reduce overall team effectiveness, morale and progress.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Consensus-style leaders offer some significant benefits. They:

  • Attempt to understand people’s perspectives and needs to ensure they’re affirmed and pleased
  • Avoid becoming angry to prevent discouragement or upset
  • Solicit each person’s input and ideas to avoid feelings of exclusion or disillusionment
  • Mediate disagreements to help the team find unity and safety
  • Give of themselves, often setting aside personal preferences for the common good
  • Make themselves available for discussion or assistance
  • Help each person contribute to team success without favoritism
  • Influence through diplomacy to avoid offending people
  • Shrug off personal credit to recognize others
  • Avoid blaming others and focus on solutions

As healthy as this work environment may seem, consensus-minded leadership has several potential drawbacks:

  • Leaders tend to hold back their opinions to avoid disunity, which diminishes their authority and ability to lead firmly.
  • They avoid conflicts they fear may be too difficult to handle, which permits underlying trouble to brew and makes unity tougher to maintain in the long run.
  • They take less initiative when outcomes may not sit well with everyone. Passive leaders often miss opportunities for improvement or success.
  • They struggle with decisions when they fail to achieve consensus. People may then be reluctant to trust them, especially in tough times.
  • Their indecisiveness limits progress, thwarting people’s efforts to complete assigned tasks. This causes frustration and disengagement.
  • They keep the peace by giving answers they believe people want—but not need—to hear. This misinformation causes errors in direction, judgment and outcomes.
  • They skirt around constructive feedback instead of clearly explaining how employee performance must improve. Substandard work or attitudes go unaddressed, and a lack of corrective actions may threaten the organization’s well-being.
  • They fail to offer directives when the team incorrectly prioritizes tasks. They discredit their own expertise in a misguided attempt to empower their people, which may compromise goals and progress.
  • They disfavor change, especially if it may disrupt the comforting status quo. Organizations may fall behind.
  • They ignore their personal needs as they tend to everyone else, thereby inviting fatigue, anger, resentment or burnout.

Detecting a Consensus Mindset

Employees can easily spot behaviors to which consensus-driven leaders may succumb. Problems are sure to arise if too many of these signs are prevalent.

Leaders who consistently struggle to make decisions, especially on issues where the team’s view is split, are too democracy oriented. Their tentativeness often encourages organizational stagnation and overarching employee frustration.

Consensus-style leaders tend to agree with everyone in meetings, making excessive attempts to acknowledge each participant’s views. Trying to give everyone a positive response takes peacekeeping to a new level, as not every idea has merit or weight. Praising every comment strains credulity and sets the stage for misdirection and misunderstandings.

As these leaders work overtime to provide affirmation, they may unconsciously exhibit subtle sullen behavior or give people the silent treatment. These passive behaviors may stem from resentment, notes Berit Brogaard, PhD, in 5 Signs That You’re Dealing with a Passive-Aggressive Person (Psychology Today, Nov. 13, 2016). Democratic leaders who regularly ignore their preferences or blindly favor team harmony are likely to develop some passive-aggressive tendencies.

Passive-aggressive behavior also surfaces when consensus-style leaders fail to fulfill their commitments. Saying “yes” to a request just to keep the peace often results in an unspoken “no,” later to be conveniently attributed to “forgetfulness.” Consensus-minded leaders resist suggested changes and are stubborn about initiating them. They want to keep everyone comfortable because it seems to make people happy, and this is their tacit goal.

Peacekeeping leaders seem overly settled and appreciative when disagreements are resolved and will look dismayed or pained when conflicts continue. They make noble efforts to mediate and return the group to harmony, without assigning blame. They may hesitate when asked for their personal viewpoint, making conflict resolution awkward, if not ineffective.

Consensus-driven leaders will deflect attention, preferring to shine the spotlight on their people. They’re uncomfortable with traditional levels of power or control and become distressed when issuing firm orders. They try to direct with softer skills and inspire their people with an uplifting, positive approach, making subtle requests seem as harmless as possible. Many democratic leaders prompt their people to volunteer for tasks so no objectionable assignments need to be doled out.

The Consensus-Driven Character

Developing a more effective leadership style begins with understanding how the consensus-style leader thinks and feels.

Those who overvalue consensus and unity identify conflict as their primary source of managerial tension. Disharmony causes them anguish, so the prospect of confrontation troubles them. They work overtime to establish and maintain a peaceful environment, believing that oneness is the only viable way to work—and anything short of it constitutes a problem to be rectified.

Their primary means of maintaining a unified team is to help people meet their needs, keep them positive and cooperative, and affirm togetherness while dissuading strife. This sometimes means playing the role of mediator or peacekeeper. At other times, it may mean avoiding difficult situations, hoping they’ll blow over. Keeping the peace often involves telling people what they want to hear or hiding difficult issues from them. In the moment, the short-term benefits seem to outweigh the potential long-term risks.

Blind Spots

Leaders who feed off consensus and unity as their primary means of comfort have difficulty seeing the consequences of their behaviors.

Clearly, people are never in continuous harmony. Too many opposing interests prevent long-lived peace and quiet. Ironically, a leader desperate to prevent conflict can actually foment it. Building consensus involves working through and acknowledging disagreements. Skirting them prevents consensus. Leaders fail to realize their efforts can be counterproductive, causing tension and frustration, and quashing group decision-making.

Telling people what they want to hear can be an act of miscommunication. Incorrect information leads to faulty conclusions and improper direction or activities. Leaders fail to see that keeping the peace causes more tension than being truthful and working through the issues. Employees appreciate transparency more than peacekeeping.

Leaders are better trained than their employees to evaluate complex issues. The team’s consensus may not offer the best solution. Forgoing authority in an attempt to empower people may severely backfire. Long-term goals are more important than immediate gratification.

Keeping the peace can be exhausting, especially if it means stuffing your preferences or agenda. Consensus-style leaders must accept that it’s nearly impossible to prevent all conflicts or outspokenness within the ranks. The peace they think they’re preserving may wreak havoc. Being tired, frustrated or anxious quickly ruins a leader’s ability to manage people.

Helping Leaders Through Consensus Dependency

It’s often difficult to assess one’s own issues, so consensus-style leaders will benefit from professional coaching that pinpoints specific weaknesses.

Learning to accept and work within conflict is key. Leaders who resist conflict must understand its necessity. The best ideas and solutions often hatch from disagreements. If leaders can learn that conflict needn’t be painful and that it’s actually healthy in the proper proportions, they can use it to their advantage. Minor conflicts won’t destroy unity, as leaders may fear, but rather forge it.

Employees want courageous, decisive leaders to pull them through difficult times, especially when conflict arises. Leaders must learn there are times when consensus is beneficial and other times when strong, decisive leadership is the gold standard. One’s ability to separate the two determines success. Making the correct call draws people to you, while fumbling puts them off.

Leaders who reveal themselves, who are transparent and passionate, are the most revered; they create the most loyal followers. Holding back your opinions in favor of team feedback has its place and time, but people want a real leader they can know, trust and learn from. Consensus-style leaders need to project a leader’s persona that blends the proper levels of humility, courage, wisdom, insight and confidence. Your people won’t sense these attributes if you fail to express them.

As consensus-style leaders overcome their inhibitions, their strength will shine through, and unity will be stronger than ever.

Emotionally Healthy Leadership

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Leaders face a variety of pressures and expectations in today’s corporate environment. Their responses to these pressures vary, as do the personalities behind them. Ineffective or (worse) toxic cultures are a result of leaders who respond to trials in detrimental ways. Consistently effective management requires a high inner stability, making emotional health one of the most critical attributes a leader can have to keep an organization running well.

Studies and statistics tell us the woes of employees dealing with leaders who make life difficult. The rates of disengagement and turnover attest, in part, to how leaders can make work an undesirable experience. Leaders who cause cultures to have low morale, disunity or distrust are likely to have deficient emotional health. Often this condition stresses the emotional health of everyone.

If you were to take a step back, would you be able to sense any emotionally difficult aspects of your leadership role? Would you say they inhibit your performance, or the performance of those reporting to you? If so, you may need to address your emotional health.

Being Self-Aware

Anyone can allow emotions to override discernment or rational thinking. When this happens to a leader, decision making and solution generation are compromised. Emotions can get the best of a leader, and unfortunate things happen. Those who can find the proper balance of thought and feeling have the greatest advantage for managing well.

Emotional balance requires knowing your tendencies. Leaders must be cognizant of their emotional inclinations in order to address any shortcomings and correct them. This is one of the most challenging areas of leadership. In addition to technical skills and people skills, emotional skills require the deepest self-discovery. They require an accurate self-awareness that often calls for honest feedback from others. No one is the best judge of their own emotional state.

Self-awareness is a subset of emotional intelligence (EI), the ability to understand and manage emotions to maximize the effectiveness of relationships, behavior and decision making.

Although emotions can range from very positive to very negative, negative emotions—including anger, contempt, disgust, guilt, fear, and nervousness—typically interfere with effective leadership and cause unfortunate aftereffects.

To assess your emotional tendencies, note and identify emotions, primarily during moments of stress or trial. Make a habit of stepping back to identify the emotion of the moment. Patterns may appear.

Do you find yourself easily angered or openly frustrated? Do fears or anxieties tend to make you hesitate or become unable to make tough decisions? Are your relationships suffering from resentments or pessimism you can’t seem to break? How is this impacting your culture? Try to identify these emotions and identify thoughts or actions that precede them.

While we can’t control how others behave, we can control our responses. Are your responses healthy? In other words, are they adding value? Are they justified? These are all aspects of the emotional assessment in being self-aware.

Defense mechanisms of avoidance, intimidation, denial or over-delegating are a result of an emotional inability to manage situations in a healthy way. If you find yourself repeatedly resorting to these tactics, you will benefit by evaluating why you have difficulty coping with stress. Consider working with a trusted mentor or executive coach for objective feedback and support in identifying and working through issues. Make a plan to begin an improvement process.

Enduring Under Stress

Every leadership position faces stress. It comes with the territory. The key is not to let it get the best of you; emotions make stressful moments worse. Leaders can’t be optimally effective when emotions interfere with their discernment or decision making.

Once damaging emotions can be identified, the effect they have on your leadership role becomes clearer. For example, anxiety not only inhibits decisions but shows your people an unreliable trait that loses their trust. Who will they count on to lead them through stormy seas? Anger causes resentment, distrust and withdrawal in your people. Their productivity suffers under these conditions, and that feeds more anger, replaying a vicious cycle.

A key to enduring under stress is to evaluate situations as objectively as possible, step back to grasp the need for rational responses, and maintain a strong, reliable composure. Emotions are important for a leader but must be balanced in healthy proportions with other traits. In Emotional Health & Leadership, the Global Leadership Foundation asserts that positive emotions, rational thought, and gut feel have a place in discernment and decision making. Find the best ratios for each instance.

Filtering out stress and negative emotions becomes easier when trials are treated as situations requiring calm rather than reflex. The key is to get better at making thoughtful, constructive responses rather than automatic reactions. Taking responsibility for your responses requires forethought and conditioning to step back and think— before acting. These are all behaviors worth practicing and perfecting.

Leaders who rely on their proven abilities and strengths respond to trials with more confidence. They trust their skills and are not overly concerned about how others judge them. Do you find yourself worrying more about your reputation than fixing your organization’s problems? You might be under-confident, anticipating the worst, or taking the trial as a personal incrimination. Enduring under stress is enhanced by making your focus less about your personal welfare and more about the company’s.

Thinking Positively

Do you see assignments as opportunities, or burdens? Are you typically optimistic, or cynical? Do you forgive people, or hold onto grudges? Do you spend your time seeking solutions, or blame? The detrimental side of these questions is prompted by unhealthy emotions, caused by a negative mindset.

Develop a more positive outlook. Making unjustified assumptions or judgements leads to unfortunate decisions. Leaders who rely more on facts and past experiences find healthier solutions. A positive outlook is the key to the most positive results. It also inspires positivity in others.

Learning to filter negative emotions brings forth more positive, helpful ones. This creates a more inviting and engaging culture, where people and their perspectives are valued. Become an expert in your emotional state. A leader who is emotionally healthy has the most opportunity to head a healthy organization.

Employee Engagement: Your Secret Weapon

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Surveys and studies indicate global job dissatisfaction is at a two-decade high. Disengaged employees account for nearly 70 percent of the workforce, which significantly affects the bottom line, according to data from Towers Watson. They cause corporate income, earnings and profits to suffer to the tune of $500 billion each year.

Comparative surveys also indicate that leaders believe engagement is higher than it actually is. Appearances never tell the full story, contributing to this disconnect in perspective. Busy people are not necessarily engaged but may be overworked. Leaders struggling in a dysfunctional culture may not discern low performance levels.

When leaders focus more on managing tasks than on people, the disconnect widens. Staff attitudes and performance trend downward. Disengaged leaders beget indifferent employees. When an organization’s culture fosters disengagement, it’s ultimately up to leaders to take corrective action.

The Basic Engagement Mindset

Leaders must focus on people, understand what they need, and motivate them to enhance engagement and productivity, notes leadership consultant Clint Swindall in Engaged Leadership: Building a Culture to Overcome Employee Disengagement (Wiley, 2011).

Many leaders fail to understand disengagement’s impact. They may not associate staff disengagement with overall inefficiencies, low productivity or reduced profits. Studies show these factors have a greater influence on corporate performance than the economy, market trends or competitive forces. In other words, an organization’s strengths and weaknesses hinge more on internal than external issues, most importantly the staff’s emotional health.

Dissatisfied workers simply don’t care as much as their satisfied colleagues. Their performance, efforts and concerns about company or customer well-being are marginal. When too many employees fall into the “disengaged” category, the outcomes we experience are predictable.

Many leaders believe transferring or dismissing troublesome employees is the most effective way to conquer disengagement. They see killing the problem as the simplest, quickest way of eliminating it. This may occasionally hold true, but it should never be one’s de facto approach. A culture known for high turnover will never inspire morale. Strong relationships are the key to overall organizational wellness and employee satisfaction. Enhancing relationships—not cutting them out—is the answer, and it takes hard work.

Leaders must start by adjusting their mindset and focusing on two main engagement ingredients: caring about others and knowing how to reach them. You can cultivate significant improvements by being mindful of basic human needs and doing what you can to meet them. Start with the culture, recognizing that the traditional focus on programs and processes no longer works.

Engagement Through the Organization

Leaders who recognize engagement’s importance have a greater advantage. Enthusiasm skyrockets when they create a positive environment, promote helpfulness, value their staff and provide the resources necessary for success.

Adopting a philosophy that puts people first strengthens engagement, provided it’s backed by actions. Your people need to see signs that you value them. Convey this by giving them the tools they need to do their best work. Do they need additional manpower or funding? Are better supplies or equipment required?

Do your people have the direction and plans they need to ensure projects are completed successfully? Are procedures and policies thoroughly communicated, and is training adequate? Do people know exactly what to do—and why they’re doing it? Without these baseline provisions, people feel lost, frustration builds and disengagement flourishes. Frustration leads to resentment and low morale when leaders fail to implement solutions.

Never forget that people need adequate skills to accomplish the tasks you’ve assigned. Only then can they be confident in their abilities and enjoy success. Doing good work compels people to continue on the right path. As they reap the rewards of a job well done, they continue to grow and can make greater contributions to the organization. They’ll look forward to new challenges and opportunities. It’s your job to provide them with the tools they need to advance.

A culture that fosters empowerment and accountability motivates people to find their own solutions and make a difference. Enhance this by giving people as much authority as their abilities allow. Let them suggest improvements to their processes, and authorize them to implement as many as feasible. This gives your people a greater sense of ownership—one of the greatest professional motivators.

Leaders who establish an excellence-oriented mindset provide these basic organizational benefits so their people feel valued and achieve short- and long-term success. Caring for your people raises their level of engagement by building strong bonds of trust, thankfulness and respect.

Engagement Through Partnering

Nothing extinguishes engagement more than feeling controlled, used or disrespected. When leaders treat their employees as a lower class or as props for personal gain, resentment and disillusionment set in.

Leaders who create a culture of unity, where everyone is on the same team and equally important, inspire the highest levels of engagement. If employees are regarded as partners rather than subjects, they have the highest sense of value. Their performance matches their engagement, and they can accomplish amazing feats.

True partners are included in all decisions, plans and discussions. They are stakeholders and will more readily buy in when there’s a personal investment. They should be familiar with the organization’s vision, mission and strategy. Allow them to contribute and understand how they fit into big-picture growth and improvement. Inclusion is a great motivator. Many employees lack access to company business plans—sometimes inadvertently, often intentionally.

Inform people about situations related to their specific roles and duties. Open communication on matters big and small promotes inclusion and value. Share important decisions with them, and explain the reasons or rationale. Give them the supportive data or validation you were given so they can better appreciate the organization’s methods and values. This improves their trust, comfort and engagement.

With any decision or change, allow people to understand how they’re affected ¾ collectively and individually. Leaders should set the example of embracing the progressive aspects of new policies or practices. Part of enhancing engagement is creating a more positive environment, where people feel cared for, their interests are considered and their futures are secure. They don’t need propaganda or fluff—just truthful, trustworthy and timely information.

Your people will feel more unified and engaged when they understand how they’ll contribute to upcoming changes, meet the new challenges and make their environment better ¾ together.

Everyone benefits when leaders share their personal progress or status. Such communication conveys value and unity. Find the best ways to impart information, and allow people to offer input or feedback. Meetings, reports or messages can be used in different ways, with varying effectiveness. Creating a way for people to raise concerns and get answers enhances their interest in their roles. Keeping people connected and informed pays many dividends.

Engagement Through Personal Connection

While providing resources and information enhances relationships, it takes more to strengthen them: a personal connection with people and an investment in their lives. The most successful leaders demonstrate a genuine caring. Employee engagement reaches only moderate levels without it.

As Swindall states, both leaders and employees contribute to workplace disengagement. Employees generally start their jobs with enthusiasm but lose it over time after chalking up negative experiences. Employees cannot be expected to make the initial efforts to correct problems. Leaders must initiate improvements and oversee organizational health.

Relationships drive engagement, which, in turn, drives productivity and success. Leaders must therefore be the relationship initiators and encouragers. If you care about people, your natural inclination will be relationship driven. In fact, personal connection is so critical that it takes the top spot among the 10 key factors influencing employee engagement, as listed by organizational behavior experts Dan Crim and Gerard Seijts in "What Engages Employees the Most OR, the Ten Cs of Employee Engagement" (Ivey Business Journal, March/April 2006).

Connecting with employees and getting to know them have powerful benefits, conveying value and appreciation. Your staff senses your support and understanding as the relationship grows. They respond with trust, loyalty and effort. The employee gets to know your character, forging a tighter bond. A leader conveys caring by being interested in an employee’s life, family and aspirations.

Strong relationships permit the frank sharing of concerns and ideas, leading to joint ownership. Both parties better grasp the other’s world. Greater accountability and transparency lead to higher engagement for both parties, and a greater sense of unity. Following up on your commitments is the final step in showing people you can be trusted to take care of them.

Effective leaders don’t show bias or partiality among employees. All people should be treated equally, under the same set of rules, with equal considerations, consequences and rewards. Favoritism destroys unity, while fairness is a great trust-builder, enhancing employees’ perspective and engagement. Employees also look for a leader’s flexibility when their personal lives are challenging. Offer it if you can. Working from home, taking time to attend to a family situation or being left alone while on vacation are important considerations that greatly enhance attitudes and engagement.

Leaders who accentuate positive results build a powerful culture. Find tasks your employees are doing well and point them out. Two of your most powerful words are “thank you.” Use them frequently.

Encourage and motivate people to learn, grow and take on more. Your support through their seasons of growth is essential. Recognizing and celebrating their accomplishments will greatly raise their engagement. A leader’s success is the compilation of their people’s many achievements. Everyone benefits.

The leadership mindset needed to build employee engagement involves a number of natural steps, all of which can be learned and executed. The basic premise is to make underperforming employees better and good employees great, building on who they are and what they’re truly capable of doing. Start with those who will best spread their positive attitudes to their coworkers, assisting your efforts to raise the bar. The goal is to bring out the best in everyone.

Raising Your Trust Quotient

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A consistent outcome from many large employee surveys tells us that business leaders are among the least trusted professions in today’s culture. Overall, trust in leadership is the main employee concern in the workplace.

Gallup’s research further confirms this by showing that leaders who don’t focus on their people have the trust of only 9% of their staff. Leaders who make people their priority foster a 73% trust level from their employees. This is a stunning statistic that exposes a marked difference in leadership mindsets.

Trust has long been considered a powerful trait that enables leaders to succeed. People who trust their leader are willing to follow them. They are more willing to engage their duties, make strong efforts to benefit their organization, prize the quality of their work, and feel like their efforts have value. Conversely, a leader who is not trusted can never overcome large, inevitable pitfalls.

Trust is a decisive difference maker in personal and collective prosperity, so it makes sense for leaders to raise their trust quotient as high as possible. You may ask where you should start. Gallup’s work indicates that the primary leadership mindset needed to establish and build trust is a genuine focus on people. Why don’t more leaders pursue this? They may not grasp its gravity or they may not understand the four basic elements.

A Helping Hand

Employees generally want to succeed by doing good work. They want to know what’s expected of them, how to complete their tasks, and have the ability to get them done well. Due to many complexities and volatilities, your people almost always need help from you.

People simply want to be provided what they need to succeed. Being in the trenches, most people accurately know what it takes to get their work done, and often better than their leader.

As a leader, you have the responsibility to provide the resources your people need to complete assignments. Adequate funding, supplies, or equipment may be required. More manpower and/or time might be necessary. Effective decision-making is a resource people also feel they need.

Sometimes the softer management skills meet the biggest needs. Your people may require further training or coaching. They may hope to be mentored to grow and develop their skills. Sometimes a positive attitude is what people want most when times get tough. Being observant and engaging will allow you to see the needs.

All of these are ways you can help. Remember that if your people fail, so do you. Helping them is thus one of your top imperatives. People will know they’re being taken care of when they are consistently helped. This fosters security and confidence, which builds their trust in you.

A Spirit of Appreciation

Everyone needs to know they matter somehow, that their work has value to someone. Each of your people seeks purpose, whether they recognize it or not.

Being valued for who they are and what they do is critical to self-worth and self-esteem. Without these no one is motivated about his or her duties, let alone succeeding at them.

If you show your people that you appreciate them, you are telling them they are worth valuing. You show them they are important to the organization, and they’re important to you as their leader. Your employees will respond by valuing their relationship with you, and in turn offer you their trust.

You can demonstrate that you value someone simply by showing an interest in them and their lives. Most people generally respond well to this, but only if it’s sincere. Faking it will be spotted eventually, and the outcome will be worse than not attempting at all.

Get to know your employees, their interests and aspirations. You can value people by understanding what they need, and caring enough to provide it if possible. You’re telling them that they are important enough to step up and offer the kind of help only someone at your level can provide.

Another important way to value people is to acknowledge their successes and celebrate with them. In the Entrepreneur Magazine article 9 Tests Every Leader Must Pass, Alan Zimmerman describes the importance of not only highlighting your peoples’ success but also rewarding it appropriately. These are powerful ways to value people that help them feel needed. Their trust in you will grow.

A Life of Integrity

Trustworthiness is strongly portrayed when a leader behaves, speaks, and responds with integrity. Leaders who act honestly and genuinely are trusted to do the right thing. When you are beyond reproach, people know your actions and decisions are not selfishly motivated and thus don’t need to be suspected. If you live out truth and transparency, holding yourself accountable to everyone, your people offer you their trust.

Integrity also means giving of yourself for the benefit of your people. Trustworthy leaders place a higher priority on the welfare of those they lead. People know they are in good hands, with a noble cause underlying their efforts. Often that requires courage, and this is another trustworthy trait.

A Heart of Humility

Leaders who treat their people as more important than themselves earn much trust. They give credit for successes rather than take it. They bear the heat for the disappointments rather than blame their staff. Humble leaders also praise their people for their accomplishments, and allow them their chance in the spotlight.

If you seek feedback and ideas from your staff, and allow them to partner with you rather than be ruled by you, you will earn their trust. Your people will feel they contribute, and have the freedom to use their skills. This practice builds teamwork and unity; two themes people yearn for, yet statistically, rarely experience.

Leaders who admit they can always learn from others show their openness to value and trust their people. This generates trust in return. In the American Management Association article 5 Ways A Leader can Build A Culture Of Trust, Rich Eich points out that a leader who admits their mistakes displays humility. Employees are further encouraged to trust you if you also show how you’re learning from your mistakes. Your genuineness is displayed, and people sense a greater connection with you.

In essence, the level of trust you earn from your people is a measure of the connection they feel they have with you. By making your people top priority, you’ll build higher levels of trust in your organization and find more ways to succeed, over and over. Best of all, implementing them costs you very little, yet gains you very much. It’s the best ROI you’ll ever have!

Leading by Your Values

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As a leader, the only effective way you can direct your life and the lives of others is to truly know what you stand for. Your personal principles, or values, direct your thoughts, priorities, preferences, and actions. The aspects of life that you value shape your character, which determine how you lead. They determine how you do everything.

Unfortunately, many leaders haven’t identified their values, and often find their roles frustrating, confusing, or unfulfilling. If a leader’s experience can be described this way, imagine what their people are experiencing. If you struggle with internal conflicts, or have a sense of something important missing from your life, assess your values.

Max Klau states in his Harvard Business Review article, Twenty-First Century Leadership: It’s All About Values, that a significant purpose of personal values is to serve a cause greater than yourself. Great leaders have a vision of serving by contributing to a cause where they try not to be the focal point. This requires a set of values based on benefiting others.

Your values are simply your ideals, the foundational principles that you live by. They are the important standards you feel should govern body, mind, and spirit, manifested throughout the course of your personal and business life. Generally people resonate most with a handful of values, each having a great influence on their character. Prioritizing just a few prevents losing focus.

Some examples of personal values that leaders have been known to embrace:

  • Honesty
  • Integrity
  • Accountability
  • Humility
  • Loyalty
  • Serving others
  • Excellence
  • Optimism
  • Relationships
  • Hard Work

The list is broad. No two leaders will have the same set of core values. They are almost as unique as fingerprints. Your values establish your personal standards for what is right and wrong, acceptable and not acceptable. They are the basis for judging your personal progress of growth, your impact on your areas of responsibility, the contributions you’ve made, and the satisfaction you receive.

Values Are Barometers

Paul Larsen, in his book, Find Your Voice As A Leader, (Aviva Publishing, 2016) recognizes that because we set our personal standards with our values, they serve as gauges or barometers for the important things in our lives.

Your sense of success is based on how well you feel you’re upholding your values. If relationships are a high value, you can assess how many new ones you made, or how many struggling ones you mended. If you value humility, you can judge how well you allowed others to be lifted up and recognized.

As a leader, your satisfaction or fulfillment can be gauged by your values of serving or hard work. You are rewarded with great feelings and a sense of worth when your values lead you to make a positive impact in these areas.

A high value of optimism or excellence can impact your emotional level or state of energy. Similarly, a high value of loyalty or commitment impacts your perception and approach to challenges, endurance, and perseverance.

Values As Warnings

Larsen also sites that leaders whose roles are misaligned with their values experience inner conflict, stress, or frustration. You may be a leader facing hardships without recognizing the reasons. An inner look at your values may reveal some contradictions in your business life that need to be addressed.

If you value transparency and are required to be vague in dealing with difficult corporate issues with your people, you will be torn inside. Your emotions and spirit will suffer by going down a contrary path.

If you value excellence, you will be discouraged and defeated if the pressures of your environment force your people to submit substandard work. Your inner self is in conflict with your actions.

If you value relationships, you will be distressed if your workload doesn’t permit you to engage your people in ways that allow you to know them. You’ll sense an emptiness inside that won’t go away.

Look for the warning signs. Your responses to situations, your confidence and positivity, or your quality of relationships can be affected by actions that contradict your values. This is another reason why assessing your values is so critical. Allow a coach or mentor take you through the process of identifying those ideals that you strongly believe in.

Assess your job, your duties, and your career path, to see where you fit and where you don’t. Make changes before a value-action misalignment takes you further down a painful path. Neither you nor your people benefit if you are in conflict with your values.

Making Use of Your Values

Leaders who follow their values are seen as authentic, and are appreciated because they’re genuine and trustworthy. Use your values and the related personal attributes to enhance your environment. Set a vision based on value-oriented choices and hone in on a path for the future; for yourself and your organization.

Your values establish your culture. You set standards for what is right and wrong; just the kind of leadership people seek. The virtues and principles you stand for can help you establish organizational goals. By being the example of honorable values, you motivate staff to implement your vision.

Valuing people builds the relationships that create engagement and investment. An authentic, relational culture fosters value-based responses, accountability, and higher accomplishments. The values of trust and respect forge truthfulness and a focus on people. Leaders who earn the trust of their people experience a special unity that enhances their entire organization.

Put your values to work in your leadership style, decision making, and goal setting. As the people in your organization recognize, respect, and adopt your values, they are embedded in the organizational culture.

Renewing Your Values

As a leader, you grow into your leadership skills. Experience and tenure give you the opportunity to see how your values evolve. Wisdom comes from successes and failures, and leads to the understanding that some things are more meaningful than you originally thought.

Seeing how relationships have been so vital for you and your organization leads you to place a higher value on people. Perhaps some relational failures came with a heavy price. By adjusting your values, the importance of engaging and helping people is enhanced.  Everyone benefits from your renewed perspective.

If you have learned the hard way that taking credit for the contributions of others causes them to distrust you, your values probably needed review. Valuing humility and trust more than you once did can be a change brought on from past mistakes. Everyone has some character flaws. Great leaders learn from their mistakes and evolve their values.

Getting caught by a customer for being deceptive will likely cause you to revalue the ideal of integrity. Truthfulness or accountability may be hard lessons to learn, but as long as improvements are made and damages are atoned, a renewing of values will send you off in a better direction.

Values are worth assessing periodically. Take stock of yourself, what you stand for, and what mindsets you may need to adjust. Some good questions to ask yourself are: what’s worth standing for… and why?

Keep your values in mind as you lead. They will be evident in your actions, decisions, and conversations. Your values will guide your thinking, responses, goals, and vision. Your people will see a nobler, genuine, trustworthy leader who is worth following.

Overturn Negative Thinking

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There is nothing more detrimental to an organization than a leader with a negative mindset. In their view, efforts are rarely good enough, things just don’t ever seem to go right, plans will likely fail, people are unreliable, or problems are beyond fixing. 

Do you work with or report to someone like this? Or, more importantly, are you known for being a person like this? If so, there are ways to address it.

Negative thinking, sometimes seen as pessimism, can be a pervasive handicap, not only for a leader, but also for everyone down the line. Organizations with a negative attitude at the top will end up in ruin, according to John Maxwell, author of the book entitled, Attitude 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know (2003, Thomas Nelson).

Negative and positive thoughts have a way of fulfilling themselves, since our beliefs, hopes, fears, plans, responses, and abilities are shaped by how we think. Of all people, it’s the leader whose mindset has the greatest impact, making this the most critical area to be addressed, for the benefit of all.

Effects of Negativity

Negative thinking is generally caused by anxieties, which in turn have their roots in emotionally damaging experiences, either in childhood or adulthood. Continual disappointments, stresses, or pain tend to lead to a negative mentality over time, and this would be tough enough if only one person were affected.

But the greatest tragedy of a leader’s negativity is that it affects everything and everyone. Attitudes spread quickly, often leaving no trace of a source. They go unnoticed, as a subtle, silent killer.

Teamwork is destroyed when negativity causes people to dislike each other, find fault with each other and resist each other. Performance and progress are inevitably slashed. Productivity, quality and delivery follow a similar demise. Turnover and burnout are inevitable.

In short, bad thinking generates more bad thinking and bad responses lead to more bad responses. If it isn’t dealt with in a timely manner, the cliff can’t be avoided.

Assess Your Thoughts

As situations impact you, try to take a step back and sense what’s happening. What kinds of thoughts come to mind? Are they negative?

A tougher challenge is to determine the legitimacy of your perspective. Are your thoughts based on the facts of past experiences or just your impressions of them? Are you letting stories replay themselves in your head to influence your viewpoint? It’s easy to do. Ask yourself if what you’re experiencing is really that bad. It rarely is.

Recognize that past negative outcomes seem more prominent in our minds than positive ones, thus people tend to more heavily emphasize the negative. Realize that you are just as vulnerable to this trait as everyone else.

This can help you question the validity of negative thoughts or impressions. Maybe they’re flawed. Try to set them off at a distance, just for a moment, and give them a subjective evaluation. Seek a true sense of reality.

Many leaders don’t make the effort to do this. It’s simply easier to complain or brood. Rather, work through the issue. Let an experienced coach help you. You can become consistently conscious of your thought process, giving you the beneficial ability to step back and assess.

Take a Look at Your Responses

Think back to similar circumstances and try to see a pattern of how you responded. Does this specific issue always set you off, or make you feel defeated? Did every attempt to follow a similar plan result in failure? Did you get blamed every time things like this didn’t work out? This review can help you realize that the answer is no.

Psychologist and author Martin Seligman, known for his work in the subject of positive psychology, is a pioneer of this approach. A pattern of negative behavior, once identified, can be challenged. Injecting realism, especially with the insight of others, will help with a fair comparison of past negative and positive experiences.

By exposing negative thoughts as invalid, they lose their power. Positive viewpoints are given more credit, resulting in a broader, balanced perspective. There is no need to automatically fall back to a negative mentality, as it certainly does no good.

Reframe Your Thinking

With a rational approach of exposing some negative thinking as false, positive thoughts can fill the gap. With enough practice, negative thinking can be disconnected from the routine. You can acknowledge that it’s detrimental to you (and everyone else), and it should raise a red flag.

Your review of the past proved that good things did happen, and they can again. Your past difficulties don’t necessarily impact your future challenges. It may seem like another trial is coming your way, and it smells familiar. But strive for a positive way to look at it. Put to work what you learned in the past to forge a better viewpoint.

Dwelling on the negative will never help you overcome any trial. Let the negative angst go. Trying to wrestle with it only invites it to continue to jab at you.

A Leader’s Responsibility

As a leader, your role is to rally your people to a common vision, by helping them attain their goals. You can’t do this with a negative mindset. You owe them the most positive experience possible, so everyone can succeed together.

Think not only of yourself in your mission to overturn negative thinking. Think of them. They’re looking to you to lead them well. That’s a big calling. It can only be fulfilled effectively from a positive frame of mind, which is contagious.

With a more realistic perspective and the valuable input of others, you can adjust your viewpoint, approach, and actions. You no longer need to assume that things will always be painful, but legitimately believe things can, and will, get better.

Overcoming Adversity: 3 Steps Great Leaders Take

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How a leader responds to adversity reveals how effective that leader is. Reactions to setbacks or crises not only test leadership character, but define it.

Some difficulties are devastating, and unfortunately, they are compounded by leadership responses. There’s no real training for adversity on the leadership ladder, except experience. A leader who doesn’t effectively deal with a trial will succumb to it. The rest of the organization won’t be far behind.

Leaders can prevent this. There are specific methods that can defuse setbacks, allow subsequent crises to be more manageable, and make leaders stronger. Leaders can learn to conquer setbacks by using simple, logical steps to make their way through each difficulty.

Better yet, with the right approach, setbacks can provide advantages that would not have been possible otherwise. Leaders with these skills will weather any storm, regardless of its cause.

From Setback to Success

Ryan Holiday, in his book, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumphs (Portfolio/Penguin, 2014), claims that leaders can turn the roadblock they face into a path to success. Ironically, the impediment is a gift.

When a leader is hit with a crisis, fear and anger may be triggered. A leader who remains in this state is paralyzed and derailed.

Instead, leaders can view obstacles as self-motivating challenges. They can tap into determination to turn a weakness into a strength. Leaders can view challenges as a test that can be utilized to thrive, not just during a crisis, but in spite of it.

To defeat obstacles leaders can use a three-part weapon system, according to author Holiday.

  1. A mindset or perception on how to view the situation.
  2. The motivated action plan on how to address the specific issues.
  3. An inner drive or will that keeps the mindset and action plan going.

The Right Mindset

When a leader gains a rational perception of a situation, it’s put into proper perspective. A useful perspective of a setback is one that doesn’t focus exclusively on negative emotions, but looks at the facts. A leader’s healthy viewpoint has logic and a sense of discernment to see things as they really are, not what they may appear to be.

The first step in dealing with a crisis is to remain calm. Composure not only helps with clarity, it has a positive effect on others. Worry only feeds on itself, and then it feeds on the leader.

A shaky emotional state, one of fear or anxiety, only makes the problem seem much worse. Instead, leaders who redirect distracting thoughts build the strongest mental positions.

The second step is to frame the trial accurately. Correct decisions can’t be made if the understanding of the issue is flawed. A leader’s thoughts must be stable and reliable. This takes discipline, but it can be learned, especially with the help of a seasoned coach.

Gathering data, other perspectives, and root causes are exercises a wise leader undertakes to get the facts and the most accurate picture of the problem. Without these prerequisites, no decisions or plan will be effective enough.

The third step is to make the situation as manageable as possible. A leader who breaks a crisis down into workable chunks finds the most effective solutions, fixing simpler things, one at a time. This permits even small successes to appear larger than the trial itself, which is a positive perspective.

An effective leader gets in the pattern of reevaluating after each chunk is dealt with. A day-by-day approach will keep emotions, tactics, and activities in check. They focus on today: tomorrow will be addressed tomorrow.

With a positive outlook, the entire challenge is seen as an opportunity to learn, correct, prevent, and get better. Failure is not final, but a step to the next success. Every leader fails. Great leaders don’t let failure take them down.

Author Holiday encourages leaders to allow the trial to push them to be something greater, to grow their capabilities to think around roadblocks, and defeat things most people deem undefeatable. Let setbacks create a champion in you. In a sense, this ends up being more important than the trial itself. The trial is simply an advantage to be used by a crafty leader. This is perhaps the toughest mindset to adopt, but invaluable to do so.

A Solid Foundation

A leader with a healthy mindset takes the most prudent steps. Too many leaders regard immediate action, any action, as a step in the right direction. This is dangerous thinking.

Before any action plan is initiated, a leader needs to establish the proper foundational conditions within the organization. Steadiness in the culture—in the corporate mentality—is essential. As the leader enhances their own mindset, they inspire staff, especially management.

The leader’s initiative must become everyone’s initiative. Everyone needs to take ownership and have the dedication needed to see things through. The obstacle needs to be removed, and it’s going to take persistence. The roadblock won’t go away by itself, and no one has a magic wand to make it disappear. Only facing it head on will suffice. The effort will not be a sprint but a marathon, so a leader needs to prepare everyone for endurance. Quitting is not an option.

The BP Deepwater Horizon oil platform disaster of 2011 was a classic example of leadership not following this principle. Responses were stalled, uncoordinated and unaccountable to the public, the government, and the families. A solid foundation of initiative and prudence was clearly missing. Trust in BP plummeted, and the poisoning of the environment far exceeded what was considered up to that point as tragic.

A leader who charts a strong course will have staff that can follow structured steps, stick to a plan, make things more manageable, and less stressful. If more leaders would learn this preliminary process, more crises would be overcome well. This is the meat of an effective setback defeat.

The Best Action Plan

With a leadership team in sync on their mental and emotional approach, solutions can be derived and put into place. But again, a careful and deliberate method yields the best results. Taking action for the sake of action often makes things worse. Action is not needed. Prudent action is.

Leaders who follow the most deliberate and manageable process are the most successful. Trying to slay the entire beast with one sword thrust is detrimental. Gradual, proportional steps are best, tackling one sub-issue at a time. This requires discipline, and it must come from the leader.

The downturn in Kodak’s analog photography business exemplifies a leadership plan that didn’t fully respond to the threats of disruptive technologies. Legacy products were not phased out in time to make way for new ones. Innovation wasn’t ramped up enough to transition the company. An effective, systematic strategy was not implemented. The company is a fragment of its former self.

The leader must also keep everyone focused. Staff can get anxious and want to jump ahead too soon. They may want to quit. Competing issues tempt managers to spread themselves too thin. People can struggle with shaking off disappointment or a sense of failure. The leader’s task is to encourage, empower, and escort.

A leader aiming for ideal solutions will be frustrated and will frustrate their team. Many crisis situations are not the time for ideal, but for making due. They are a time for rolling with the punches.

Leaders who get results consider non-traditional approaches. Attacking a problem through the side door can be the most effective way to find a solution. By preparing teams to step out of their comfort zones, they are open to new ideas. This can be a humbling experience, and that’s often helpful. Pride has no place in this process.

Teaching the staff to embrace the struggle brings out the best in them. A leader who takes things seriously, but holds them loosely, demonstrates what wisdom is.

With these action plans, the leader will direct everyone to an effective resolution in ways that were never initially thought possible.

The Will to Win

As solutions are attempted, ups and downs will occur. Leaders often take their people into new territory. Things don’t always follow the plan. Defeating setbacks requires humility, resilience and flexibility from the leader, according to author Holiday. This is manifested in the inner will.

Leaders must reflect this for their people, and inspire it in them. They should demonstrate the desire to apply themselves in the most effective way, and maintain this energy until the setback is overcome.

Being an encourager is part of leadership responsibility. The things most worth doing are difficult, and difficult things take time. The leader prompts everyone to be determined not to give in or give up. This is the will to win.

HP’s purchase into touch screen consumer products offered them a solid opportunity amongst the top competitors. But underdeveloped hardware, software and relationships with carriers caused the walls to close in. After spending billions of dollars, the strategy was abandoned just months after launch, instead of pressing forward with the will to overcome. Their prospects for tablets and smartphones vaporized, as the market for them soared.

A strong will also calls for wisdom and discernment. The solutions being tried need to be weighed to minimize the chance of bad surprises. Smart leaders oversee the planning of alternate routes, just in case. They anticipate what can go wrong, accept the outcomes that can’t be controlled, and maneuver toward the ones that can.

Leaders who can stand up to stiff opposition, whether circumstances or people, will forge a strength in their staff, and inspire them to respond boldly. Unity builds a force more powerful than can come from the same number of individuals.

The tragedy is not that things go wrong or crises knock you down. The tragedy is that when a leader doesn’t have the skills or the will to take their organization through the trial, they miss the opportunity to learn from it, and grow because of it.

The Paradox of Leadership Give and Take

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Western leaders have been conditioned for generations to believe that the way to advance is to claim as much as possible, to take more than you give. Many leaders make personal gain the objective of business life, and almost any means to achieve it is fair game.

Hard work, perseverance, passion, and talent are valuable, of course. However, in the human dynamics of business, taking what you can, even if it’s from others, is often the method used to attain rewards.

But what if there was a paradoxical truth that showed the opposite to be the case—that by giving away what you have, you’ll get even more? There is substance to this truth, and it warrants examination.

The majority of employees see their bosses fitting the mold of the “taker.” These leaders are viewed as prioritizing their personal needs above everyone else’s, in a competitive arena where there are definitive winners and losers.

This perception is so common we stereotype managers by their interpersonal behavior. An aggressive, self-serving leader who gets what they want by using people to get it is seen as powerful, competent, and productive. We assume this taker is a person who will work their way up the corporate ladder effectively.

Conversely, leaders who put their needs last, who serve their people by giving more than they take, are seen as weak, interdependent, and insecure. These “givers” are not viewed as likely to advance.

Again, cultural experience makes some of these things seem factual, but looking deeper reveals another reality.

Adam Grant, in his book, Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success (Penguin 2013), describes the contrast between these two basic styles of leadership social interaction: the taker and the giver.

Takers are more self-focused, motivated to succeed first, and give (if necessary) down the road. The ends justify the means, so they believe. Givers are focused on others, and sense the need to give of themselves first, and success will come later. The benefits to others are paramount.

Takers see themselves as superior and set apart from the rest. Givers recognize that they belong to a team with diverse skills and that they all depend on each other.

Takers are more independent, claim more credit, and are reluctant to share knowledge, privilege, or power. Givers are more willing to ask for help, and to share credit, knowledge, and rewards.

In the traditional mindset that claims the spoils go to the victor, the takers have the perceived edge in leadership success. And initially they may. But over time, as author Grant points out, success depends heavily on how leaders approach their interactions with other people.

The Deception About Taking

The premise regarding those who try to claim as much value as they can is that they get what they want. They have an intentionality that achieves goals and maximizes opportunity. Takers make things happen for themselves, and for the most part, those around them, as they take advantage. We’ve seen this happen all the time.

This is an attempt to gain, with a narrow focus on personal benefits. The costs are secondary, and often discounted. However, the position that seems advantageous at face value is rarely advantageous at all—for those reporting to the taker and even for the taker themselves. This is the deception of the taker’s way.

Leaders who are takers are self-promoting and self-protective. They take credit that may belong to others and spin things in ways that benefit their position. Employees have little difficulty spotting this. Eventually, the leader becomes known for this and the responses of those around them are not favorable.

Takers grow to earn the disrespect of those they work with because of the maneuvers they make. No one likes to be taken advantage of, or have their work claimed by their boss. Other leaders are often affected as well, and word spreads.

Takers may be envied by some, due to their apparent favor with higher leaders. Others may resent them. Both responses fashion enemies. People subject to a taker sense the detriment to their own careers, and that is about as negative a feeling as possible in the work setting.

Overall value in the group declines, due to the draining of motivations and ambitions from its members. The long-term career prospects for a taker are compromised because team performance suffers and turnover rises. Leaders who are responsible for this fallout eventually develop negative reputations that excuses cannot defend.

It’s deceiving. Amazing skills, training, and drive are often considered the recipe for stardom. What often appears to be a leader who has the world at their command is someone who suffers from a damaged success ladder. The damage is self-inflicted—all because of a poor way of treating people. The leader doesn’t recognize the long-term effects of taking from others.

The Surprise About Giving

Givers, on the other hand, generally don’t strike people as those who will attain what corporate life considers success. They put the needs of others ahead of self, sometimes helping them with their tasks instead of focusing on their own. Giving leaders are more prone to add value to their people than worry about what they receive personally.

By traditional standards, givers are viewed as inefficient or slow achievers. This unfavorable impression is a result of not spending enough time on their tasks. Thus their recognition for advancement is often negatively affected.

Giving leaders care about helping people become their best by teaching, helping, or mentoring. They recognize that in a group of diverse talents, everyone needs others to reach the peak of effectiveness. To them, success comes in teams, not so much to individuals. If this means a tarnished personal reputation, then so be it. In the competitive business world, this mentality is often considered strange, even crazy.

However, as with the taker, paradigms about givers can be inaccurate. With time, the workings within the giver’s world can reveal surprising benefits.

Givers trust people and give them the benefit of the doubt. They are willing to risk themselves by betting on those around them. Givers understand there is a difference between taking and receiving. As author Grant defines, receiving is a willingness to accept help, with the desire to reciprocate. Givers credit others for their work.

Unlike taking, giving is appreciated. Givers focus on the success of others, and grow to earn the respect and trust of those around them. They are noticed as someone good to work with. People welcome givers because they add overall value to everyone. This raises the success of the team as well.

Givers draw people to them, and the giving becomes contagious. There are numerous benefits for those following a giver. They have a huge learning advantage. Their abilities are strengthened. The desire to give to others is enhanced. Mutual giving breeds interdependence, which breeds stronger networks and beneficial contacts. The increase in skills expands exponentially.

Employee engagement expands as well, and people are more motivated about their jobs. This increases productivity and efficiency. Eventually, the giving leader is recognized as a major contributor, as people throughout the organization realize and talk about it.

The biggest surprise is that giving leaders can be the most successful leaders of all, despite their apparent shortcomings. As author Grant suggests: organizations need more givers and fewer takers. The paradox of leadership giving and taking is easier to grasp when we look below the surface, and see the effects of time: give away what you have to end up with more―take what you want and end up with less.

Strengthening the Giver’s Image

Giving leaders can be very effective overall because of how they enrich those around them. Yet there is still an impressionable bias against them. Some regard them as soft or weak. This can stifle or threaten a giver’s career. But there are ways they can combat this.

Many givers are aware of the impression others have. Giving is, after all, an unnatural conduct in the tough corporate environment. The giving leader can fear appearing soft, and this can deter them from giving, by acting more like people expect. This helps no one. But fortunately givers can raise their stock by busting the common myths about givers.

Giving leaders can be firm, yet still be kind. Helping can require expectations or accountability, and still enhance engagement. A giving demeanor can be serious, yet fair―tough yet appreciative. These are not mutually exclusive traits. They work very well together.

Givers can be results-oriented, without being critical, threatening, or inconsiderate, like takers tend to be. Employees want to be held accountable and led well with conviction under defined expectations. The giver is perfectly positioned to do this, and to do it in a way people respect and admire.

Don’t Be a Doormat

Givers, if taken advantage of too often, can become leery, and eventually withdraw giving to avoid being hurt. This truly renders the giver ineffective and grants the takers more control.

This “doormat” state is avoidable. Givers can learn to trust with greater discernment, spotting genuine givers from takers in sheeps’ clothing. To do this, they raise their level of observation.

Get to know people and watch their behavior. Remember that agreeable people are not necessarily givers. Look for motives and values as true indicators rather than outer appearances. Wait for clues, such as shallowness or true genuineness. Observe how they treat others. Notice if they regard themselves highly or not.

Givers can also adjust their approach to suspected takers. If there is a lack of reciprocity, they can become what author Grant calls a “matcher,” someone who will give, but conditionally. Giving is done with the agreement that the other person gives back.  Assertiveness is appropriate to require fair and honorable exchanges.

Giving leaders can put up their guard, yet still be polite. Learn to say no, but do it considerately. Reduce your exposure and find another resource to meet someone’s needs, and observe how that transpires. If there is cooperation and reciprocation, then the giving faucet can be opened up again, while continuing to assess the indicators.

Givers are a vital key to organizational success, and are responsible for the success of many others. They understand that winning doesn’t require that someone else lose. There are enough credits and rewards for everyone. Takers draw life out of an organization, and leaders are wise to avoid those behaviors. A coach or trusted colleague can help with this.

Giving doesn’t require major sacrifices or deeds. It just requires caring about others and sharing what you have inside. Try to emulate the spirit of the giver, and see what good things happen.