Why Practice in Leadership makes Perfect

If you watch any sports training session, you will see a lot of repetition. The players or athletes involved will be practising basic manoeuvres, over and over. Winning rests on absolute mastery of the basics, honing skills until they become second nature.
Building expertise in anything takes thousands of hours and it is only by practising continuously and learning from the experience that we achieve the level of skill we want and need.

There are many reasons you might want to learn and develop a skill, but for those who have been in business for some years, you’ll know that the fast-pace of change means that the ability to learn new skills is key to continued growth and success. The challenge is that continuous improvement requires us to stretch ourselves, and as I know from personal and professional experience, that isn’t always comfortable.

So whether you are seeking to acquire a new skill yourself or looking to develop others within your team, here’s what you need to ask yourself:

1. Are you ready?
In two ways – firstly do you have the basic competency to attain the skill? Secondly, how much time and energy are you able and willing to give to learning and developing the skill? It is a common misconception to think that if you have to work hard at learning a new skill it means there is a lack of ability. This is a limiting belief – being ready and committed to working hard is a choice. As Apple founder, Steve Jobs said, “I’m convinced about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.”

2. Is it needed and what’s the return?
Gaining a new skill is an investment and you need to know what the return for learning it will be. Simply improving an existing skill can make a big difference to an individual, team or organisation’s performance, provided it’s the right skill for the business.

3. What help can you get?
Help and support from other will keep you motivated to continue learning and practicing. Just like the football coach who maintains the discipline of practice drills to build competency as well and introduces new techniques to learn, a qualified business coach, trainer or mentor will encourage and support you. Recruit colleagues, friends and anyone who’ll let you practice your skills – people you trust to say the things you need to hear, to give you honest and constructive feedback in a way that keeps you accountable and helps you to cement the change.

4. Do you need to pace yourself?
Be realistic about how much you can take on. In the same way that so many people join a gym with the best intentions of going several times a week but gradually, over time, lose motivation, so learning a new skill can fall by the wayside unless you see specific results along the way. Be selective, choose the key skills that are going to make the biggest difference in the shortest space of time. Once you start seeing and experiencing the positive difference they make, you’ll be inspired to keep going.

5. How do you know when you’re ready to put in practice what you’ve learned?
The only way to know the answer to this question is to do it. The only way to become a great presenter is to present. The only way to become the runner who has just finished a marathon is to go running. You might dread the presenting or the running, but it’s the doing that takes you down the road to becoming.

If you need help to see where the leadership and management skills gaps are in your business, or want to hear more about how we can help you embed and use new skills with confidence, or would like to get a handle on how skills training could help your organisation, then get in touch. If perfection is the goal then practice is what you need and we’d love to help.

Keep Calm and Build Rapport

I was asked recently to run a training session at a company that was going through a great deal of change. Many of the delegates had been told they would have to reapply for their jobs and most had been told they had to attend the training session. Morale was low and looking at the body language and facial expressions of those sitting in front of me, it was clear that learning was the last thing on their minds. What options were open to me to turn things around, to make the session I had planned into a positive and beneficial one for those attending?

We all face difficult conversations at times, whether with our children, parents, or partners at home at work with colleagues, employees or customers at work. Conversations don’t always go as we’d like, or reach the best outcome and that’s because often the conversation happens before rapport is in place.

Rapport is a close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups concerned intuitively understand each other's feelings or ideas and communicate well.  It’s that feeling of ‘getting on’ or ‘hitting it off’ with someone which sometimes comes naturally but more often than not has to be built. The good news is that it can be built quite quickly once you know how

1. Match the mood
Watch and consciously match the other person’s posture and movements; listen and match the speed, pace and volume of their speech to increase rapport. Back in my training room, I simply acknowledged that I was aware that there was a degree of uncertainty in the business and that some of the delegates might be feeling less than enthusiastic about the day.

2. Ask questions that are positive, non-specific and easy to agree with
An example I might have used would be, “I know some of you are wondering how much you’ll learn from this training, aren’t you?”

3. Use metaphors and stories
Anecdotes and metaphorical stories that have a similar structure as the message you want to convey, but a different content, are a great way to communicate a similar point in a way that allows the other person to make sense of it using their own images, experiences and ideas.

Rapport means being able to relate to others in a way that creates a climate of trust and understanding, and that’s a great place to influence positive change in any context.

Is Customer Service your ‘Leaking Bucket’?

So often the focus of business development is on acquiring new customers, but retaining customers and building their loyalty is just as important to keep their business. What can be learned from organisations that deliver great customer service?