You’re a young leader with responsibility for a small team and you want more responsibility. And there’s nothing more frustrating than being told, “Not now. Give it time. You’re not ready yet.” (And if you manage a young leader, please don’t use those despair-inducing words.)

There are several areas of your leadership and work where you can invest to give yourself the best chance at that bigger responsibility: your knowledge and wisdom, the results you achieve now, relationships you build, and opportunities to speak up.

Knowledge and Wisdom as a Young Leader

We rarely know as much as we think we do. One of your most important tasks as a young leader is to learn everything you can about the business and yourself.

1. Get to Know Your Business

How does your business make money? How does your organization make a difference to your customers, clients, or constituents? As you learn the answers to these questions, focus on how the work your team does makes a difference. What are the vital outcomes? Not just the process you follow or the output you have to produce. Look beyond that—why are you doing what you do? What’s the end goal—the reason for the work?

These questions help you think strategically. You’re not just doing what you’re told—you’re doing what matters most for the business and your customer. The ability to think strategically is one of the most important abilities you’ll need to cultivate if you want more senior levels of responsibility.

2. Ask “Why?” with Respect

There will be times as a young leader where you don’t know how an assignment relates to the big picture. You might be tempted to just ask your manager, “Why do we have to do this?” Hopefully, your manager takes the question the way you mean it and gives you the context. But many people interpret “why” questions as challenging or argumentative. To avoid this unhelpful misunderstanding, try this instead: “I want to ensure we’re fulfilling all the objectives here. Can you help me understand the big picture goal here?”

3. Understand what Matters Around Here—especially for the role you want

You just earned an advanced degree – congratulations. That was a lot of work! But it doesn’t automatically mean you should get a promotion. Unless you’re in a business where that credential automatically comes with more responsibility. Sure, an advanced degree might be a requirement, but it’s not the only thing you need.

We’ve seen many a young leader achieve a degree or other visible certification and immediately seek promotion, only to get frustrated when it doesn’t happen. Often, they hadn’t paid attention to the organizations values and what behaviors and outcomes matter most.

What matters most in your organization? Are there trusted relationships you need to build? A consistent track record of results you need to show? Do you need to demonstrate a particular kind of knowledge or ability? Be sure you know what matters most – and how you can invest in those areas.

4. Ask for What You Want and Listen for What You Need

Are you a young leader who’s concerned about whether or not to let your manager know that you want more responsibility? Assuming that your team is doing well and you’re achieving the results you are responsible for, we would encourage you to ask.

You can use our Development Discussion Planner to prepare for the conversation. Take time to think about your current role and the role you want. Let your manager know you want to have the conversation and give them the planner you completed.

Show up the conversation with genuine curiosity. What do they see or know that you don’t? Are there additional skills or experiences they recommend you gain? Listen carefully and take notes. Then, as you work together, you can both look for opportunities to learn those skills or get the experience.

5. Learn If You Want to Manage

While you may be hungry for a promotion, take an honest look at your management and leadership responsibilities. Do you enjoy them? Do you like helping a team of people achieve more together than you, or they, could do individually? If so, you’ll be able to deal with the challenges that happen with every management and leadership position.

And if you don’t enjoy this work, that’s important to know. If you don’t enjoy leading a team, why would you want to do more of that? It only gets more challenging. If leading and management aren’t for you, there’s no shame in that—and it’s good to know now. Find a role more suited to the work you enjoy.

Results Focus for a Young Leader

To distinguish yourself and be ready for more responsibility, take responsibility for the outcomes that matters most.

6. Be Good at Your Work

One of the most common frustrating conversations with a young leader is when they want a promotion, but they’re not getting results now.

What results are you responsible for? Are you achieving them?

No excuses. If your answer starts, “I would, but…” then please don’t go ask for a promotion. Your first qualification is being good at what you do now.

Focus on your team’s current responsibilities. How can you help your team excel at doing that? If there are problems with vendors, challenges with another department, equipment, or other reasons for subpar performance, how can you solve them?

If you want more responsibility in the future, take responsibility now for the challenges in front of you. The skills you build to solve these problems will help when you face thornier problems.

7. Take Responsibility for Outcomes

One of the best opportunities to distinguish yourself as a young leader is to own the outcomes. You’ve learned why your work matters. Now, look at whether your team’s output is having the desired outcome. If not, how can you help make that happen?

A common problem for young leaders is that they’ll “do the work” or follow the process, but stop there. If “I did what they asked” doesn’t achieve the needed outcomes, you have an opportunity to lead.

You don’t have to solve it all yourself. Include your team. Clarify the goals and have an honest discussion about what it will take to get there. Once again, you’re honing the same leadership skills you’ll at higher levels.

8. Make Mistakes, Once

You should be making some mistakes. You can’t possibly know everything and part of your eventual knowledge you’ll gain from experience. And experience is a fancy word for “hmm, that didn’t work – what can I learn from that?”

There’s nothing wrong with making a mistake if you are trying to do the right thing. The key is to make the mistake only once. Learn from it, incorporate that knowledge, and open the door to the next level of learning.

9. Master Management and Communication Fundamentals

Start with these Six Core Competencies You Can’t Lead Without. Build your muscle memory now and everything gets easier.

Show up to your work with confidence and humility. Focus on results and relationships. Help your team know the habits that lead to success, practice consistent communication, check for understanding, and schedule the finish. These core leadership and management skills will scale with you and prepare you for future roles.

Conversely, if you get more responsibility, but lack these skills, you have farther to fall and less time to learn. Master them now and you’ll have them when you need them.

Relationships Focus for a Young Leader

Investing in relationships inside and outside your organization will help you in many ways.

10. Prioritize Peers

One challenge you can face as a young leader who is hungry for success and promotion is resentment from your peers. In addition to building relationships and supporting their success, be aware of some of the common mistakes that can sabotage your collaboration.

Be aware of unbridled tenacity, over-advocating for your team, and not sharing what you know. Help your peers succeed as you invest in your career and you’ll be there together—or they’ll trust you more when you get that next promotion.

11. Build Your Network

When you invest in more relationships, you’ll have more opportunities, solutions, and wisdom. It’s helpful to build relationships inside and outside your organization.

Internally, look for those sponsors and mentors, but also pay attention to how you and peers can support one another. You can be an encourager to someone who is a technical advisor to you. Or you can be an advocate for someone who challenges your thinking.

12. Practice Constructive Conflict

Building effective relationships at work doesn’t mean you roll over and agree with anything or anyone. Mastering productive conflict will help you be a more effective young leader and qualify you for future roles. Productive conflict are the discussions where you help a group of people improve their thinking, make better decisions, and collaborate.

Here are twelve phrases from our book Powerful Phrases for Dealing with Workplace Conflict (HarperCollins May 2024) that will help you navigate any challenging conversation.

13. Build Leaders on Your Team

The most effective leaders constantly invest in others and build more leaders. One way to be ready for a promotion when it comes is to have someone who can immediately lead your team. Building leaders on your current team makes you more promotable.

14. Get Consistent Feedback

One easy way to distinguish yourself is to ask for, and act on, feedback from your peers, your manager, and your team. You can do this once or twice a year to choose one specific area where you want to grow. Use our Do It Yourself 360 process to have these conversations and get the feedback to help you be your best.

People will notice your follow-through when you build a reputation as someone who seeks, and implements, advice.

Speaking Up as a Young Leader

Whether it’s proposing a new solution to a vexing problem or raising your hand to volunteer, choose yourself and exercise your voice.

15. Share Ideas and Solutions

What are the problems and pain points that keep your manager or their boss up at night? Can you make a meaningful suggestion that has a chance to solve the problem? Or maybe it will spark someone else’s thinking and together you come up with a new answer.

Use our I.D.E.A. Model to vet your ideas and give them the best chance to be heard and get traction. They won’t always choose your idea. But you’ll establish yourself as a critical thinking and someone who cares.

16. Get Good at Accountability

One of the most promotion-worthy skills you can build as a young leader is comfort with accountability conversations. Build on a foundation of character, trustworthiness, and your skill at doing your current work with the ability to give and receive feedback.

Our I.N.S.P.I.R.E. Method is a practical way to navigate your performance feedback conversations.

17. Attend and Speak at Conferences

Conferences are one of the fastest ways to challenge your assumptions, broaden your perspective, and understand your work in a larger context. You’ll meet people with similar challenges, but different solutions. Or different approaches you can use. In addition, conferences give you a chance to build your network and better understand your industry.

Another opportunity conferences give you is to speak. Offer to share what you know. You’ll get experience speaking, presenting, and meet people. And when people start to say nice things about your thoughts and presentation, you can take those back to work and they positively reflect on your organization.

When Positions aren’t Available

If you work in a smaller business, a flat organization, or a large, very stable, slow-growing business, you might be ready for more responsibility, but openings are rare.

In these circumstances, you have a couple of choices. One option, if your team is humming along and able to do its work well without you, is to look for different assignments that expand your skills and understanding. It might not be more responsibility, but a different responsibility. The new challenge can be refreshing and continue your growth.

And, of course, you may need to look outside your current organization if you are ready, but unwilling to wait for an opening to come along. In this case, be sure to secure your next job before quitting this one.

Your Turn

When you’re a young leader who’s hungry for a promotion, take the time to invest in your understanding, focus on results and relationships, and speak up consistently. You’ll establish yourself as a caring, committed, strategic leader. Do these consistently and you’ll be on short lists for new roles.

We’d love to hear from you. What advice do you have for a young leader who’s hungry for success? Or, if you are a young leader, what have you found helpful?

You Might Want to Check Out These:

• How To Get Your Boss to Appreciate and Recognize Your Genius
• How to Not Screw Up Your Brand Even When You’ve Been Screwed Over
• Drive Your Career Success with Ed Evarts (podcast)
• How to Be Less Negative—and Still Be Yourself

The post Fuel Your Career: 17 Critical Skills When You’re a Young Leader Hungry for Success appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Staying Coachable

0:00 – Welcome to season 9

4:00 – The value of people who can speak truth to you and help you grow

8:00 – What “coachable” means and why it’s important for leaders to model and cultivate

12:20 – How great leaders influence their team-members’ desire to change

14:46 – Why you don’t have to be bad to get better

16:38 – Giving yourself and your team permission to improve

20:10 – The four ceilings that self-limit our growth

21:47 – The challenge of comfort and the opportunity of mountain tops

23:02 – Why you need to include rest and restoration in your drive to improve and grow

27:55 – A defining question: Who are you trying to impress?

31:43 – The four critical questions for staying coachable, coaching yourself, and others

32:00 – What do you want?

33:00 – Where are you now?

36:00 – What needs to change? Weaknesses to address?

37:56 – What will you do differently?

39:04 – Dealing with the gift of unhelpful feedback

48:10 – Get started with a look in the mirror.

Connect with Sean

• WEBSITE
• LINKEDIN
• TWITTER
• FACEBOOK
• YOUTUBE

Sean’s Book: Staying Coachable

The post Staying Coachable with Sean Glaze appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Your Dream Job

00:43 Our guest is Carson Tate. She is the founder and managing partner of Working Simply Inc. a business consulting firm that partners with organizations, business leaders, and employees to enhance workplace productivity, foster employee engagement, and build personal and professional legacies, all things we’re fans of here on the show.

04:09 Why did Carson want to write this book?

06:58 There are two main buckets to look for in job satisfaction. How is your productivity in your role? Do you own it or do you feel overwhelmed and inefficient? Next, examine your purpose. What do your engagement and fulfillment look like? Do you love it?

10:20 How the one person that you’ve got control over is you. Your dream job starts with you.

11:05  Get clear on how do you want to be seen and acknowledged for your contributions at work. Then learn how each person on your team appreciates being acknowledged. We tend to appreciate people the way we want to be appreciated, and oftentimes that doesn’t work.

15:00 As we remember that we get more of what we encourage and celebrate, get to know the encouragement that’s relevant for your people.

18:27  Aligning your strengths. Get clear on your unique capabilities, skills, and experiences, so that when you do that type of work, it lights you up. It’s energizing. Consequently, you want to do more of it.

Own Your Relationships and Development for your Dream Job

22:41  How to make our work relationships work. None of us work in isolation. So, how do you cultivate the authentic relationships that create that sense of fun and community at work?

27:56  How to develop that personal professional development plan, to love and own the direction you’re heading. Carson outlines this plan here as well and gives us where to find several other tools and resources that support this either on her website or LinkedIn.

29:08  Carson outlines the steps of the GROW process.

33:37  The downfalls to having a fixed mindset as a leader, and many advantages to opening up to an expanding mindset.

Get the book

Connect with Carson

Website

LinkedIn

The post Love it. Own it. Your Dream Job with Carson Tate appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Drive Your Career Highlights

5:01 – Learn the importance of building your career success based on doing something recurrently vs frequently. What’s the difference and why does it matter?

8:20 – Why building a positive relationship with your boss is so important for your career.

12:57 – Challenges to building a good relationship with your boss and how to overcome them.

14:22 – The million-dollar question to ask your boss (recurringly.)

16:34 – What a good relationship with your boss actually looks like.

19:26 – Challenges when moving to a new team or new supervisor and how to address them.

21:44 – How you, as a leader, can cultivate better relationships with your team members.

23:48 – A frequent source of work conflict and how to resolve it.

26:07 – How to “play the hand you’re dealt” when managing your career.

26:49 – When you should think about walking away from the role you’re in.

29:50 – The roles listening, curiosity, and empathy play in your leadership and success at work

32:22 – A deeper look at empathy and how to incorporate it into your leadership – with a focus on when and where to focus on empathy.

35:08 – A good question to start conversations and create connection.

38:52 – One empathy-boosting email technique you can use today.

40:39 – How humility contributes to a better career (and Ed’s book.)

43:47 – The simplest step (that is also challenging) to get started: self-reflection questions that will guide you as you take responsibility for your career, build a better relationship with your boss, and lead with curiosity and empathy.

Connect with Ed:

• Excellius.com
• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Get Ed’s Book:

The post Drive Your Career Success – featuring Ed Evarts appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

But, how do you get others to see it? Particularly, now. After all, your boss has bigger fish to fry than talking about your career.

But this crisis could go on for a while.

And you care about your future and want to make a bigger impact.

In-person visibility is at an all-time low. The company off-site where you would normally have some great hallway conversations is now virtual.

But the good news is that in some ways it’s even easier to emerge as a leader and get noticed for your leadership potential.

Because you know what your company needs right now?

Great leadership at every level.

If you’re stretching out of your comfort zone, contributing what you can, truly caring for the people around you, making the tough decisions, and prioritizing what matters most—you are bound to get noticed.

5 Ways to Demonstrate Your Leadership Potential Now

This is your moment.

New leaders always emerge in times of crisis.

Stay focused on adding value, making a consistent contribution, and worry less about who gets the credit.

It might not happen right away, but trust me, there will be a point that people look back and say, “Who made a difference during our time of crisis, what did they do, and why did it matter?”

You want your name at the top of the list.

Here’s a start.

1. Connect deeply.

Everyone is struggling in their own way right now. Show up with deep empathy (and a bit of vulnerability) and work to connect. Influence starts with trust and connection. And you know what else? It feels good! For you and for them.

2. Keep your cool.

Grace under pressure is by far one of the hardest leadership competencies to teach. And, it’s one of the most important leadership competencies needed right now.

When everyone’s freaking out about a fast pivot, or visibly oozing pandemic stress onto everyone around them, the people who can provide stability and calm stand out.

Just like stress, calm is contagious. Anything you can do to help the people around you stay grounded will add huge value. Be the one who helps the team stay focused and productive.

3. Consistently contribute I.D.E.A.s to improve the business.

And not just any ideas. Bring ideas that are strategically aligned with what your organization needs to do to thrive in the next 18 months.

No one has all the answers. That’s your invitation.

Show that you get what matters most and bring ideas about how to solve a big problem, and in the next 9 box review, your boss will be sharing how resourceful you are with excellent critical thinking skills. You can use our I.D.E.A. model to vet your ideas and then make your case.

4. Be sure every meeting you attend is better because you were there.

People are Zoomed out. Everyone we talk to is sharing that remote work is leading to more meetings, not less.

You don’t have to be in charge of a meeting to make it better.

Check out our FREE remote team’s resource center for ideas on how to lead remote meetings, run better remote one-on-one and more and work to make any meeting you are a part of better. Suggest alternative ways to communicate, including asynchronous communication.

5. Lead a team to solve a problem.

There’s no shortage of challenges right now. Pick something that’s really frustrating you, that’s within your ability to make better. Find a few like-minded people and work on it. Don’t do it because you need visibility. Do it because you care and want to make your organization better. Every leader I’m talking to right now is looking for more gung-ho, solutions-oriented people to help.

Be the person others see as working to make things better.

Your turn.

What ideas do you have for someone looking to demonstrate their leadership potential right now?

The post How to Demonstrate Your Leadership Potential Now appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

The #1 response is just a belly ache laugh.

The #2 usually contains some expletive.

I’ve also heard some great metaphors, including:

Understanding how my boss thinks is like putting together Ikea furniture. It looks easy when you leave the store (meeting), but when you get back there a lot more screws than you need and the directions are in another language.

Most leaders make following harder than necessary.

10 Ways to Be a Leader Who’s Easy to Follow

1. Be crystal clear

Be sure your team knows the number one mission so well they can say it in their sleep.

Sure you’ve got competing goals, but be crystal clear on how your team can change the game, and what you need them to do to make that happen.

I recently ran into a guy who once worked on my sales team at Verizon Wireless. He was now working at a small company where I was consulting. He heard I was there, so he walked into a leadership program I was doing to say “Hi.” We had just finished talking about being crystal clear, so I took a chance.

“Eric, back when we worked together, what was the most import goal?”

He didn’t miss a beat. “Winning in the SMB space. Everyone needs to get ‘All Aboard’ (which meant everyone needed to sell at least five lines a month)” 6 years and another company later, he remembered.

Be that clear and you will be successful.

2. Be approachable

You want them to understand what needs to be done. If they don’t, they’ll spend a lot of time guessing. Be super approachable.

3. Be a teacher

Get in there and show them what to do. You’ll be seen as credible and helpful. Don’t do it for them. Be a teacher.

4. Be forgiving

People want to follow human beings who understand they’re human too. Be forgiving.

5. Be human

Show a little vulnerability. Be clear you don’t have all the answers. People find it easy to emulate people, not rock stars.

6. Be knowledgeable

For goodness sake, know what you’re doing. And if you don’t, do everything you can to get smarter on the subject matter quickly. It’s hard to follow a bozo.

7. Be connected

The easiest to follow leaders are those who remove roadblocks by phoning a friend. Have lots of genuine connections to call when your team is need.

8. Be trustworthy

Do what you say. Every time.

9. Be a role model

10. ?

Number 10 is up to you. What would you add?

If you haven’t done this recently this is a great “Courageous Question” to ask your team.

“What’s one thing I could that I do to be easier to follow?”

And then be open when she tells about the “damn spreadsheet” that’s making them crazy or the meetings that suck the life out of them.

Great leaders are easy to follow. Be that guy or gal.

P.S. I’m here to help. Please call 443-750-1249 for a free consultation on how we can make this your team’s best year ever.

This is number five in the series on 7 Ways to Beat the Competition. If you’re just tuning in…

1. Get there early

2. Be an explainer

3. Pay attention to your own game.

4. Help your team get smarter

The post 10 Ways to Be Easy to Follow appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

You’re looking for a great place to work; with people you admire and where jerks don’t survive. A place where you can get results, without losing your soul.

A great place to work where you can learn and grow; where your work makes an impact.

In this economy, if you’re good, you’ve likely got choices. So how do you decide if this is the right place for you?

How do you figure out if your prospective employer is truly offering a great place to work or a shiny veneer with a foosball table and a clever recruiter?

A Practical Guide for Building Career Security

Whether you’re wrestling with a greener grass dilemma or just starting out, take time to dig a bit deeper and ask yourself these questions.

C- Cause

Do your homework on the mission, vision, and values of the organization. Dig around their website, do a Google search, talk to others who work there—be sure you understand what matters most and how it aligns with who you are. Just because this is a great place to work for someone else, doesn’t mean it is for you.

• Does the mission of this organization light me up?
• Are people here doing work I believe in?
• Is this how I want to be spending my time?

A- Admiration

Do what you can to find out a bit about the people who work here. Ask open-ended questions during the interview process to learn more about their motivations and leadership styles. Then ask yourself:

• Are these my people?
• Are there leaders here who I admire—people I could learn from and perhaps even emulate?
• How did they treat me in the interview? How did they treat their assistant? How did they show up when they ran into others walking down the hall?

R- Rigor

Do what you can to see how work gets done. Ask to talk to some people doing similar roles. It won’t feel like a great place to work if you can’t get anything done.

• Do they have the tools they need for success?
• Is there a culture of accountability and collaboration?
• What gets in the way and slows them down?

E- Energy

As you look around, tune into the energy level. Most great places to work have a vibrant feel.

• Do people seem engaged and excited about what they’re up to?
• Are the breakrooms filled with lonely people staring into microwaved Tupperware with little connection, or are they smiling and engaged in upbeat conversation?
• Start in the parking lot. What would it feel like to walk through those doors every day?

E- Expansion

Think past job security to career security. A great place to work will leave you better than they found you.

• How will you grow professionally and personally from working here?
• What new skills will you acquire?
• Will there be opportunities for lateral moves and special projects?
• What is the typical career path for someone in this role?

R- Risk Taking

This may be the hardest to tap into, but it’s worth trying. If you get a chance, do a bit of job shadowing or at least talk to people in the role you will be taking on.

• Is this a culture full of FOSU (fear of speaking up) or do people feel like they can tell the truth—up, down and sideways?
• What happens if you make a mistake around here?
• Are innovation and new ideas encouraged?

If you’re looking for a great place to work, it’s worthwhile to take the time to go a level deeper to learn as much as you can about what you’re getting into.

The post A Practical Guide to Finding a Great Place to Work appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

“Don’t bother me with this crap. I don’t believe in leadership training. It’s a complete waste of time. It’s nothing against you as the new Training Director. I get that I have to work with you in some way. If you MUST talk training, please work through Joe (one of my directors), he’s the most touchy-feely of my direct reports, I’m sure he’ll be nice to you.”

Yikes. Those were the words I heard from Beth, one of the Presidents I was asked to support, in my new role as training director at Verizon.

The truth is, I appreciated her candor. She’s not alone. A lot of senior leaders are skeptical of training ROI.

“You want me to take my people out of the field, where they could be serving customers and bringing in new business for theory and games? No thank you.”

And I get it. No one wants that kind of training. I’ve certainly been to my fair share of flavor-of-the-month training, and have my own bookshelf of binders full of good ideas, not implemented.

I’ve also attended great training that helped me change the game.

I imagine you have too. What makes the difference?

5 Ways to Make Leadership Training Stick and Increase ROI

Training is only valuable when it leads to sustained behavior change and improved business results.

Great leadership training:

• is a process, not an event.
• is closely aligned with strategic business initiatives.
• inspires managers with new ideas and tangible ways to improve the business
• creates long-term change in individual behavior and business results.

I’m grateful for Beth’s challenge in the first few weeks of a job that was to become a formative role, both in my Verizon career and now, running my own leadership development company.

I was sure that Beth couldn’t hate training that truly made her people and results stronger. She just hated bad training. Who doesn’t? (P.S. Beth later promoted me into my most significant operations role at Verizon where I reported directly to her).

Here are 5 ways to ensure a stronger ROI and to make training stick:

1. Design the training on business outcomes

Don’t start training until you have a strong vision of what will be different as a result. What behaviors are you looking to change? How will that impact your MIT (Most Important Thing– strategic goals)? Don’t stop at “We need stronger team leaders.” Go deeper. Get specific. Work with a training partner who understands your business and who can build a program to achieve exactly what you need.

2. Build programs that include the participant’s manager

Training doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Be sure you have real buy-in from the level above. You don’t just want conceptual support. Managers need insights and specifics about what is being trained and how they can best support it. We love to do an executive briefing session before our programs so leaders understand the ROI, are prepared with strategic questions, and have a clear path to support their teams’ learning and application.

3. Include teams in the implementation

It’s scary for people to have their managers go off to training and then come back and feel like an experiment as the manager implements four new ideas without any explanation. You’ve probably lived through a manager who brought back a new idea, used it for a week, then forgot about it. That’s frustrating for the team and the manager loses credibility. Be sure your managers know how to talk with their teams about what they are doing differently and why. The best leadership training has an ROI that cascades beyond the manager being trained.

4. Deliver training in digestible learning over time

You can’t learn to lead in one half-day workshop. Even if you have a limited budget, find creative ways to build programs that combine learning with practice, reflection, and feedback. We love to leverage new technology that incorporates simple micro-learning push-technology to learners’ phones via text message between sessions to inspire and reinforce real-world application.

5. Welcome new ideas, insights, and help them take the next step

Great leadership training is bound to get your managers fired up with new ideas. Listen to their insights and find ways say “Yes” to what might happen next. When they come back with ideas to improve the business, listen. If it’s something you’ve tried before, invite them to the next step. Rather than “We tried that, it doesn’t work” you might try: “In the past when we’ve tried that, we ran into an issue with X. I’d love for you to think about how we might overcome that and implement your idea.”

Your Turn

How do you ensure your leadership training creates real behavior change and lasting results?

Download our Leadership Training brochure here. 

The post 5 Powerful Ways to Ensure Leadership Training Sticks appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

I’ve heard all of the following phrases and many more like them uttered over the years.

“I can’t take a vacation, every time I do the whole place falls apart.”

“I had that organization running so well, and then she took over what a mess”

“Well, she was the lynch pin that held that whole place together, now that she’s moved on I am not optimistic”

“I came back from maternity leave early, I just couldn’t stand the thought of cleaning up the mess”

“She built all those relationships, we can’t replace that”

Not only have I heard these phrases, I am embarrassed to say that I have said some of them.

Sometimes they are true.

Sometimes they are not.

Either way, it’s not leadership.

An important sign of real leadership is what happens after the leader moves on.

• Is there a clear vision?
• Does the team have a clear brand and shared values?
• Do the next steps seem perfectly clear?
• Does each member know how they can best contribute?
• Can the team rely on one another to get things done?

And yet, some leaders seem to take secret pride when things fall apart in their absence. They exude a quiet form of giddy when their team can’t function without them.

Short-term results are important. But how do you build a team that can sustain results long after you have moved to the next assignment?

If you are a “indispensable” leader, something is really wrong. You are not adding value long-term.

What can you do now, to ensure your impact will last?

Is Your Team Built to Last?

Jim Collins has fantastic research about how great companies do this in his books, Good to Great and Built To Last. Important research, great reads.

But if you are like most of my readers, you are not the COO of a Fortune 50 company. You are you. You have done your best to build a great team. You care deeply about the results you have built. You care even more deeply about your team. How do you ensure all this sustains?

Over the coming days, I begin a series on Building Results That Last Beyond Your Tenure. In each post, I will share my insights, along with more questions for our Let’s Grow Leaders Community.

I look forward to our conversation on how to…

• Establish a Strong Vision
• Develop Key Behaviors
• Create Interdependent Success
• Leave a Remarkable Successor

Take a few minutes. Reflect on your stories and get ready to share. Not ready to share stories? Bring on the questions. Together we will explore the excitement, challenge and nuances of building results that last beyond tenure.

The post How To Build Results That Last Beyond Your Tenure appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.