Joelle K. Jay

leadership

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The 3 Essential Ingredients for Advancing Women Leaders

 

Women leaders: There is much you can do to empower yourself to achieve in your career and take leadership in your own life.

We can’t always change others’ ways of thinking, but we can play a part in inspiring change. The culture is quickly changing, becoming more gender-balanced, generationally rich and culturally diverse.

 

If you are a corporate leader seeking to balance your leadership team, here are three top recommendations for advancing women in leadership. If you are a woman who wants to elevate yourself, work with your organization to discover what resources are available, or take leadership to create these opportunities for yourself.

 

Find the right tools.  The new advantage for women in leadership is knowing you can empower yourself to achieve in your career and take leadership in your own life – and a large part of that is finding the right tools to help you continue to learn, grow and succeed.

Whether it’s the right mentor, the right coach, the right reading materials, or the right class or networking capabilities, be open to using the tools at your disposal.

 

Encourage executive coaching. Because the dilemmas are still not always safe topics for conversation, the confidentiality of executive coaching and its deeply personal, entirely individualized nature makes it an ideal environment for working through the challenges that inevitably accompany leadership development and taking advantage of the opportunities ahead.

Of course, as executive coaches we’re biased here. More than enough evidence suggests executive coaching is an invaluable tool to increasing the presence of women at the corporate executive level.

In our own research at the Leadership Research Institute, we have found executive coaching for executive women has resulted directly in promotions. In one study, over 85% of the female senior-level leaders we have coached were promoted with the first six months of beginning their coaching, and almost all of them advanced within the year.

 

Offer leadership development programs for women in leadership. Programs that teach the skills and strategies of leadership provide the opportunity for learning and discussion about the challenges facing women and men in the workplace. The challenges are critical for all aspiring leaders to understand – not just for women.

Leadership development programs can be part of a comprehensive strategy that companies adopt to integrate the development of talented leaders with the goals of their companies to promote their advancement.

 

Corporate Leaders: When you include all three elements mentioned above in your wheelhouse for advancing talent, and when you commit to balancing your leadership teams with both women and men who are the best, strongest, most talented, most committed leaders, you’ll see remarkable results.

Women in Leadership: As you now continue to advance your career, use the above methods to gain knowledge and strategies for supporting women in leadership – starting with yourself.

 

Are you ready to get your new advantage? Get your free Executive Summary of The New Advantage here!

The previous article appeared on Inc.com as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

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3 Steps To Create A High-functioning Team

Every leader wants a high-functioning team. On a high-functioning team, the members are highly engaged. They distribute tasks to build on each other’s strengths, generate ideas and find creative solutions in a spirit of collaboration, synergy, and a conviction that ‘‘all of us is better than one of us.’’ Together, they achieve the common goal.

The belief is that a team that makes the most of the talent around the table creates better results.

It’s energizing, it’s inspiring, and it’s efficient. It’s also good for business. Good teamwork is credited for a host of positive outcomes, among them productivity, performance, client satisfaction, and strategic alignment.

But how does one get such a team?

If you look around your own team and see a loose collection of individuals, heads down in their offices, focused on their personal agendas, you’re not alone. A high-functioning team is not easy to build. But it can be done – and the following three steps are a great start.

 

Ask the right questions. Have each member of your team answer three questions:

  1. What are the strengths you can build on to improve your leadership?
  2. Where are your opportunities for improvement?
  3. What goal do you want to set now?

Have everyone take the time, individually, to provide thoughtful answers.

 

Build an action plan. The resulting action plan from the data above will give each leader a focus for ongoing support to drive the team toward growth in the areas that matters most to them and their team, and where the payoff for improvement would affect them personally and contribute to the success of the organization.

Sample action plans include:

  • Being more strategic and less tactical in day-to-day work,
  • improving employee engagement,
  • changing up management styles, or
  • delegating more effectively to focus on strategic priorities.

Each team member’s action plan will be unique and tailored to his or her specific goals.

 

Make time for group leadership development. Group leadership development meetings can occur one-on-one or in a group, perhaps once a month. In your first meeting, put together four to six topics in the areas of leadership and management that could shore up the team’s capacity as individuals and more importantly, that would strengthen their leadership capacity as a group. Then spend the coming months tackling those topics together in the service of your goals.

 

To be truly effective, a high-functioning team should have clear, agreed-upon goals. The ultimate goal of these meetings is for the team to designed their future. Fresh ideas will emerge, each member will contribute, and, more importantly, the team will be able to achieve all of this on their own – which, after all, may be the hallmark of a true, high-functioning team.

 

To learn more about how SBL can help you get results for your team and organization, as well as yourself on an individual level, see my guide.

The previous article appeared on Inc.com as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

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Why You Need To Adopt A Strength-Based Leadership Strategy This Year

A focus on weakness is ingrained in our culture, and, during these changing times in leadership, it’s time for a paradigm shift in that thinking. A new movement in the business world could fundamentally change the way we think about improvement, especially for business leaders who truly want to be their best and to bring out the best in their people.

This revolution capitalizes on the unique contributions of each individual, leveraging their unmatched, powerful ways of being and doing. It results in increased efficiency, improved effectiveness and a happier way of life.

The approach is Strengths-Based Leadership (SBL).

SBL is a philosophy of leadership based on the belief that we are all born with unique strengths and talents, and that when we act in alignment with those strengths, we are at our best. We can understand it by studying its history, or context, and its key concepts. SBL is part mindset, part skills and practice.

 

Two key concepts explain this approach, the understanding of which allow individuals to leverage the philosophy and play to their strengths:

 

Our strengths are enduring and unique. Our strengths are enduring, because we are born with them. Strengths are things we do naturally. They’re easy for us, and we usually enjoy doing them. They’re unique, because no one else in the world has the same combination of strengths, expressed the same way, as anyone else.

 

Our greatest room for growth is in the direction of our strength. For many people, this is a switch. Typically what people do is put all of their attention and energy into their weaknesses and take their strengths for granted.

 

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to improve; it’s the obsession with weaknesses as the place to improve that’s counterproductive. It’s much more powerful to build on our strengths. Importantly, the message should not be that we ignore our shortcomings. In many instances, we must attend to them. We manage our weaknesses so we can build on our strengths.

So when it comes to putting SBL to work, you must first identify your strengths, then commit to doing more of the activities that strengthen you while doing less of the activities that weaken you. What are your strengths? How can you minimize your weaknesses? How can your weaknesses work for you? Ask yourself, your mentor and trusted friends these questions to capitalize on how SBL can radicalize your leadership strategy.

 

To learn more about how SBL can help you get results for your team and organization, as well as yourself on an individual level, see my guide.

The previous article appeared on Inc.com as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

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Leaders: This Is The Secret To Preserving Top Talent

If company leaders hope to keep top talent, they are going to have to preserve their most talented employees.

If talented employees hope to fulfill their potential, they are going to have to learn to think differently.

For both company leaders and their talented workers, the kind of thinking and working required in the complex work environments that have come to characterize today’s business settings are more intense than they were in the past. To succeed, employees must learn to be more strategic.

More thoughtful.

More aligned.

Leaders at every level must be approach their work with all of the talent they have, for the benefit of the company and for the sustainability of their results.

Imagine what a difference that could make. Leaders who take time for the proactive, good strategic thinking feel clearer and more settled. They are able to discern the priorities and stay focused on them, and the rest of the busyness just fades into the background. They are more focused on results. They are better team players. They are aligned to their company vision, their managers’ needs and their partners.

Best of all, they have time for themselves to rest and renew their energy. Overall, they experience a more committed, results-based approach to work and life that leads to loyalty in a company, better retention, and a better quality of life.

How does one create such an environment? The secret is personal leadership.

Just as corporate leaders must apply the practices and principles of strong leadership to make their company succeed, so must individual employees apply the practices and principles of strong leadership to succeed for themselves. Personal leadership is at the heart of a high quality way to work.

Bringing a personal leadership approach to an organization – or even to your own work – requires three steps.

First, identify talented individuals in whom to invest. If you’re a leader who wants to be successful in your own career, that “talented individual” may be you.

Next, empower them to take a leadership mindset, and teach them to focus on their top priorities.

Last, do so in a way that would be efficient in terms of both cost and time so they develop themselves as leaders while keeping up with the pace of their business.

One company I worked with build a program around these three steps, with impressive results. They nominated their top talent to participate in a leadership program focusing on personal leadership. They helped participants to see themselves as leaders who added value to the company. And they integrated their leadership development with big goals for the company. As a result, the program participants not only felt stronger as leaders, they improved their impact to the company, to the tune of millions of dollars added to the bottom line.

Learn more about how personal leadership can help get results for your company – or for you personally. Download a free Executive Summary of personal leadership and get started learning how you can be a better leader… and lead a better life.

 

The previous article appeared on Inc.com as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

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4 Reasons Successful Leaders Lose Sight Of The Importance of Performance

Have you ever felt that no matter how well you do at work, you never seem to get the rewards?

It’s a frustrating experience, and perhaps even more so for women than for men. (Research shows that whereas men only have to show potential, women are only promoted on their performance). Either way, it’s critical for you to have proven accomplishments if you want your talent to be recognized.

Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee that your performance will speak for itself. Corporate life is more complex than that. But, you can make great strides by understanding the advantages of exceptional performance. Throughout the ups and downs of a career, it may be the best thing you can do for yourself.

You may be thinking as you’re reading this that you’ve been focused on your performance all along, which is excellent. But leaders lose sight of this critical element of their success. There are several reasons:

1. It may seem strange, but it’s possible to miss the importance of performance.

Performance measures may not be clear in your organization, or maybe you’re the one who’s not entirely clear on those measures.

2. You can become focused on the wrong thing – the next job, office politics, or the fire drill of the moment, instead of your results.

If you’re not tracking your progress, it could be that no one else is, either.

3. You can neglect to track changes in your performance measures over time.

Your performance measures change as your jobs change throughout your career. Be sure you’re staying current.

4. One final, and potentially disastrous mistake is forgetting to identify, communicate, and improve your results.

You don’t have to overdo it, but you do have own your performance. No one else will do it for you.

You can avoid these pitfalls by getting clear on the performance measures that matter in your role – tracking the changes in those measures as their careers progress – and continuing to prioritize your results. Ask yourself: What are the performance measures on which you’re judged? Does your manager agree, and how do you know? Do you have concrete examples of results you’ve delivered and their importance to the organization? How will you measure your own results, and how will you communicate those results?

Remember, when it comes to your own performance, you are your own best advocate. You secure your performance by getting clear on the metrics that matter in your role – tracking the changes in those measures as your career progresses – and continuing to track your results.

 

The previous article appeared on Inc.com as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

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Feedback Is Different For Men And Women Leaders, Here’s Why

Have you ever been blindsided by feedback, or thrown off course because no one gave you feedback you needed?

Feedback is the ongoing formal and informal input you get from the sources all around you. It includes the explicit messages you get from the people with whom you work, but feedback can also come from your own observations, the way others react to you, and your results. It’s helpful in many ways, but it can be troublesome when it’s absent, misleading, incomplete, or poorly received.

Many of the women leaders I’ve worked with over the years have complained to me that the feedback they receive from superiors or peers is frequently contradictory, vague, or secret, so they can’t respond to it, and as a result they can’t gauge how they’re doing or improve.

That happens far more than we’d like, which is why so many organizations are revisiting their performance review processes and trying to get it right. Meanwhile, feedback remains treacherous for women. The Center for Talent Innovation reports:

  • Women are 32 percent less likely to receive any feedback from male superiors.
  • When they do get feedback, 81 percent of women say they have trouble responding to it, because it’s so “distressingly contradictory.”
  • When women make up less than 25 percent of an applicant pool, they are more likely to be negatively evaluated.

 

In addition, we have observed at the Leadership Research Institute that, compared to men:

  • Women tend to be harder on themselves when receiving feedback from others.
  • Women are also hard on themselves when they self-assess, tending to underrate their own abilities.
  • Women can feel overwhelmed or crushed by feedback.
  • Women tend to get softer feedback from others – despite the fact that rigorous feedback is one of the ways leaders strengthen their capabilities

 

In other words, more so for women than for men, feedback – meant to be a helpful vehicle to move leaders forward through self-improvement – can hold them back. It’s up to you to seek out mentors or peers that can help give you the feedback your looking for, and don’t be afraid to be specific with that you’re asking for.

So whether your company has good feedback structures or not, you can take advantage of the wealth of information available through feedback – both positive and negative – that will boost your confidence and the constructive criticism that can save or propel your career. Ask yourself: What feedback do you need to let go? Where do you need to know more? How will you stay open to the feedback you receive?

 

For more ways to set and achieve your goals, see my services page.

The previous article appeared on Inc.com as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

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The Four-step System For Conquering Your New Year’s Resolution

It’s the 3rd week of January.

How’s that New Year’s Resolution going?

New Year’s Resolutions have a poor reputation for being successful, but it’s rarely because of the goals set themselves. Your goals are important. You do want to achieve them. Sometimes people are quick to dismiss the value of New Year’s Resolutions and even stop setting them – after all, what’s the point, if you’re not going to follow through? But if you set a resolution – or a goal – that matters to you, maybe the solution lies not in giving up but shoring up your chance to be successful.

What you need is a proper framework.

A framework is a way of thinking and doing things that you can count on to help you succeed. Without a framework, you’re left to your own unreliable devices. Will power. Trying really hard. Both strategies that fail when your motivation wanes.

It’s better to tackle your goals with a framework you can follow that will lead you through the hard times and help you stay motivated for the long term.

So how to you go from “trying really hard” to actually achieving your 2017 goals? Try this framework: problem, project, plan, and process.

Problem. Define the problem. We make changes when something is wrong and we want it to better. So what’s wrong? What’s the problem you’re trying to solve?

Project. Once you’ve identified the problem, make solving it your new project. Aside from setting the goal (“Drop 10 pounds.” “Increase revenue 10%.” “Hire new team.”), take the time to sit down and map out how you will achieve it.

Plan. Once you know how you want to tackle this project, put pen to paper and make the plan. What will you do, and when? What’s your timeline? What are the milestones? What are the steps?

Process. A plan is only as good as the paper it’s written on until you implement it, so the last step is to put a process into place. Decide when you will revisit the plan, and how often. Set about a regular routine of identifying the next immediate step; taking that step; evaluating the outcome; and revisiting the plan for the new next step. If you do this, achieving your goals is no harder than a walk through the park. You just take one step after another, until before you know it, you’ve arrived where you wanted to be.

Imagine the difference this could make for you in achieving your goals. Where once you had a feeble resolution (“Get my finances together”) now you have clarity about the problem (“My finances are a mess, and if I’m not careful I’m going to miss the chance to build a strong retirement.”). You have taken it on as a project. (“In the next six months, I am going to focus squarely on getting organized with my finances.”) You developed a plan. (“I know what I am going to do in each month to move from a mess to a strong financial set-up for the long-term.”) And you have a process. (“Monday is now “Money Monday.” Every Monday I look at my financial plan and choose the steps to move forward.”)

When it comes to making your 2017 goals a reality, remember, don’t just get inspired. Get ready, get started, get it done, and get the results!

 

The previous article appeared on Inc.com as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

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3 Challenges To Personal Mastery Every Successful CEO Must Conquer

Leadership is the ability to define an inspiring vision of the future and then compel people to achieve it. Personal leadership is the ability to do that for yourself – identifying “what do I need to do,” “why am I doing it,” “how do I do it,” “who can help” and “how do I leverage my strength.” If you do that in a way that is structured and disciplined, you can gain personal mastery.

Several months ago I spoke with fellow coach, Dawn Grossart, on the subject of personal mastery, and we came to the same conclusion: Personal mastery is that pot at the end of the rainbow that most people are trying to achieve, whether they’re first starting out in their careers or if they’re successful entrepreneurs or CEOs.

When done right, personal mastery becomes self-initiative growth and drive to success on your own. When you can do that, then you’ll have clarity and confidence, and you can achieve what you want to achieve and live the life you want to live.

The greatest challenges entrepreneurs face when it comes to self-mastery are the usual suspects: Procrastination, fear of visibility, running out of steam or giving up before you see the results you’re looking for. It gets hard. What I like to coach leaders to do is to identify those challenges, and then identify the polar opposite – the matching solution.

So, for example, if procrastination is the challenge, then personal mastery for you might be about developing discipline. Or, if you’re challenge is fear of visibility, then maybe the solution has to do with finding your way and your comfort zone. So, maybe you’re not ever going to be on The Today Show, maybe that’s not your kind of visibility, but maybe a local audience on your local station’s public morning show is where your true customer base lies.

Last, when it comes to giving up or running out of steam, sometimes leaders forget to identify the matrix and measure themselves against those matrixes so they can see the progress they’re making and let that become their motivation to keep going. They may actually be, in fact, moving forward, and they need to be able to see it on paper to get the feeling that they’re actually moving ahead getting where they want to go.

Here is something I’ve learned as a leadership coach: The coaches’ job is to help people find their own answers. But people can only find their own answers if the answers are already within them. Sometimes just a little bit of information from the outside can change everything, so in addition to finding your own framework, successful leaders must go out and search: What is the framework you need to accomplish your goals, what are you trying to achieve, and who can help you do that? Now, take your framework and tweak it until you find the one that’s right for you and get to the results you want: personal mastery.

 

The previous article appeared on Inc.com as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

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How Women Leaders Can Define Their Own Metric For Success

You can make great strides in your career by understanding the advantages of exceptional performance, and how to make that performance count. Performance is the degree to which you do your job well. Your performance is measured by your results, using whatever outcomes matter most in your organization and your role in the organization.

Leaders strive to have meaningful results. They want to know their efforts will make a positive impact on their careers, whether that means building their reputation, getting new opportunities, or being rewarded for their good work. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee. Corporate life is more complex than that.

Many company leaders believe that their performance will count for everything; however, in complicated and changing organizations, it doesn’t. When it comes time for career advancement, you cannot always control what happens to you or believe that your performance will count for everything. But, you can take steps to ensure that good things do happen and allow your performance to be the foundation to that success.

Performance becomes a dilemma for women when it doesn’t seem to count the way it should–you do your best, get great feedback, and nothing happens. Research shows that women, much more than men, must have proven accomplishments before their talent is recognized.

The perfect performance environment would be a true meritocracy–a system in which people chosen to advance were selected on the basis of their ability. Performance is certainly not the metric from which people are evaluated, but it is the most important. Performance is a clear indicator of success and understanding when to deliver peak performance and showcasing it appropriately cornerstones a place for a successful career.

Leaders can lose sight of this when they forget to prioritize and advocate for their own good performance for several reasons. For instance, performance measures may not be clear in your organization, or maybe you’re the one who is not entirely clear on those measures. Clarifying those priorities can make identifying your performance more obvious and directed. You can also become focused on the wrong thing–the next job, office politics, or the fire drill of the moment, instead of your results. In addition, you can neglect to track changes in your performance measures overtime. Your performance measure changes as your jobs change throughout your career. Be sure you are staying current.

A final, and potential disastrous mistake is forgetting to identify, communicate, and improve your results. You don’t have to overdo it, but you do have to own your performance. No one else will do it for you.

You secure your performance by getting clear on the metrics that matter in your role–tracking the changes in those measures as your career progresses–and continuing to track your results.

By doing this, you can reap the benefits of a job well done. Typical benefits of good performance are pretty straightforward: salary, benefits and bonuses. Beyond that, additional and less concrete rewards become available such as confidence, marketability, promotability, career choice, and fulfillment.

If you show yourself to be a talented leader–and a future leader–of your company, you can start gathering the experiences now that you will need to succeed in the future. Then you won’t just be promotable, you will be prepared.

 

The previous article appeared on Inc.com as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

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How To Take Command Of Your Executive Presence In 2017

Executive presence is a vital sign of your readiness to take on bigger leadership roles. Yet, many leaders don’t know what executive presence actually is, much less if they have it. That would be worrisome, except for the fact that you can change it. You can shape your presence to project an image consistent with who you want to be and the opportunities you want to have. Executive presence is the degree to which others perceive you to be a leader.

The trap many leaders fall into is being underestimated by others because of the way they present themselves. They may be perfectly capable, but if their presence doesn’t project the expected image of a leader, they may be seen as less powerful than they are. Women can easily become victim to this problem, being undervalued because of their perception from others. To eliminate this problem, they need to think deeply about acquiring executive presence, which can be complicated for women.

With historically few women holding high-level leadership positions, the image of what executive presence should be is often based on a man and, to further complicate things, “women are unfairly deemed to have the wrong leadership style needed to be successful.” Business women are trapped in a double bind of combining being an ideal manager, which means being masculine, with being an ideal woman, which means being feminine. To combat this contradiction, women must present themselves as leaders while maintaining their natural strength and style.

The second hurdle women face when tackling executive presence is the sensitivity of the topic. Women, in particular, have trouble getting feedback on their presence- especially when it comes to appearance. While appearance is only one small element of presence, it is an important one. Specific details of appearance, like unkempt attire and provocative clothing, can undercut presence up to 75 percent. Not to mention it is difficult to address.

Resolving this dilemma is more than a matter of managing perception and communicating to others that, “I have what it takes, and I’m ready to fill the role of a leader.” It is also about being confident in yourself. The more you can learn about the impressions you make on others, the more you can shape your image to fit their expectations, while also working on strengthen your own self-image.

Executive presence manifests in the silent judgements people make about you, rightly or wrongly. The more specifics you can get about how you are being measured, the better you can assess yourself. These attributes play important roles in determining executive presence: status and reputation, physical characteristics, demeanor, communication skills, interpersonal skills, interpersonal behavior patterns, values-in-action, intellect and expertise, work outcomes and power use. By understanding these different elements in yourself, you can shape your presence intentionally, to make a positive impact.

When you find your unique way of expressing executive presence, you will naturally develop a stronger sense of yourself as a leader, termed as “A Sense of Self” (another vitally important factor of executive presence). Understanding yourself as a leader will not only allow you to shape your executive presence, it will also make you feel powerful, and it will show.

 

The previous article appeared on Inc.com as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!