17 Jul Leadership Radar (part 4)
Once Found, What to do About Changes
Presented below are the two areas where changes will be found (1) in others and (2) in yourself. Also, there are tips on what to do about changes.
Two areas where changes will be found
There are two areas where changes will be found using Leadership Radar. The first is easier than the second. The first involves using all of your senses to detect changes in others. It involves using all of your senses to detect changes in the environment.
The second is tougher than the first. The second involves self-awareness and spotting changes in yourself. It involves monitoring your mood and detecting changes in how you feel.
FIRST AREA – Changes external to yourself – Changes in Others (not you)
The easiest type of changes to find are those around you. Changes in others. You can reference the “Types of Changes” above to give you some ideas of possible changes in others.
Step One – Look – Find changes using your Leadership Radar.
Changes are sometimes easy to spot with Leadership Radar.
- Look at the statistics in the area – have they gone up? What changed? Have they gone down? What changed?
- You can look at the person – how do they look? Happy? Upset? Anything unusual? Something different or changed?
- You can look for things that are not normal for this person. Is a usually happy person sad? Is a normally talkative person now quiet?
- You can look for unusual things. Are they now coming to work late? Missing work? Not completing tasks? Quality dropping? Projects not done on time?
Step Two – Evaluate and Handle the Change
Did the change result in something getting better?
Great. Acknowledge the person and the change so that they also see the change and the positive impact of the change. Get their agreement to keep the change in place (after all, things are now better – so don’t change it!)
Answer the following questions so that you can share with the rest of the leadership team:
- What changed?
- How did things get better?
- What led to the change?
- Is this something that can be repeated for this person?
- Is this something that might benefit others in the organization?
- Is this worth training others on?
Did the change result in something getting worse?
Not so great. It is okay. We are going to fix it. Acknowledge the person and the change so that they also see the change and the negative impact of the change. Get their agreement to reverse what changed by going back to what worked (better) before the change.
Answer the following questions so that you can share with the rest of the leadership team:
- What changed?
- How did things get worse?
- What led to the change?
- Is this something that might repeat for this person?
- How can we detect this change in the future so that it won’t harm others in the organization?
- Is this worth training others on?
SECOND AREA – Changes in yourself – Changes in you
This is the hardest change to find with Leadership Radar. It involves looking at yourself.
Step One – Look at how you are feeling
- Are you frustrated?
- Are you complaining about someone or something?
- Are you angry?
- Are you impatient with others?
- Do you feel like something is not fair?
- Are you critical of others, the company, or someone?
Something changed. You do not “normally” feel the emotions above. Know that the reason you are feeling this way is because of a change. Time to go find it.
Step Two – Remember you are a Leader and it is your job to do something about things that are not the way they should be. A change the leads to you feeling frustrated, angry, impatient, critical or upset is a change that needs to be handled and fast!
As fast as you can, go talk with another leader. Talk through your feelings and emotions with another leader. Working with another person is always easier than working alone. Find what changed.
- What happened just before you feeling upset, etc.?
- What was the change?
- What do you feel led to the change?
- What could you do to put things back the way they were or make them better so that you don’t feel this way?
- How can we detect this in the future so that it won’t upset you?
- Is this worth training others on?
Work out how to handle it – get feedback on whether your plan will work and then execute. Here are some guiding questions that might help.
- Are you frustrated?
- Why?
- What can you do about it?
- What can you do to train or lead another person to eliminate or reduce this frustration?
- Are you complaining about someone or something?
- Why?
- What can you do about it?
- What can you do to train or lead another person to eliminate or reduce the complaint?
- Are you angry?
- Why?
- What can you do about it?
- What can you do to train or lead another person to stop feeling angry?
- Are you impatient with others?
- Why?
- What can you do about it?
- What can you do to train or lead another person to be patient?
- Do you feel like something is not fair?
- Why?
- What can you do about it?
- What can you do to train or lead another person to make it fair?
- Are you critical of others, the company, or someone?
- Why?
- What can you do about it?
- What can you do to train or lead another person to stop being critical?
Step Three – Apologize if you exposed your frustration, complaining, anger, impatience, unfairness, or criticism to others.
You are a Leader and it is your job to maintain a safe environment. One free of frustration, complaint, anger, impatience, unfairness, or criticism. So own it. It is okay to feel these things. It is healthy to feel these things. It sets a very good example to feel these things, show others, and then apologize to them. Let others know it is okay and then apologize. Because after all, even though it is okay, it is not what we want. So apologize.
Step Four – Do what you need to do to make it right.
Find the action you need to take or action you need to stop to make the feeling go away.
90% of the time this involves you training another person. You need to work with them to do what you want and that means that they probably didn’t know how to do something.
10% of the time it may involve needing to let someone go or putting them on a performance plan. Talk with another leader.
Step Five – Let it go
Forgive yourself and let it go. You did everything right. You found the issue. You owned up to it and apologized. You then fixed it. Now let it go.