Tony Gambill

Remote, hybrid, in-person teams all need the same things for success. Autonomy, healthy relationships and the ability to do their best work (competence). There are many tools to create an environment that facilitates these factors but they all require leaders to establish an environment that has alignment, clarity, and trust. This requires a leader to invest their time and energy in creating meaningful goals, synergistic roles, and effective and efficient processes.

Below are three Self-Leadership abilities that will help us bring our best selves to a constantly evolving work environment. 1) Increased Capacity For Agility And Development Change requires the agility to leave behind old mindsets and habits that no longer serve us and to develop new behaviors that allow us to succeed in our evolving work environment. 2) Advanced Emotional Competence The goal is to develop our ability to manage our emotions effectively so that they inform us but don’t define us. 3) Focus On Self-Care We must learn that taking time away from work, stress and anxiety improves our performance, accuracy, health and well-being—a wise investment.

Nine of the Top 10 Job Skills as listed by the World Economic Forum (see below) are focused on demonstrating self-awareness, emotional intelligence, empathy, social intelligence, and agility during their most challenging and complex situations. 1. Analytical thinking and innovation 2. Active learning and learning strategies 3. Complex problem-solving 4. Critical thinking and analysis 5. Resilience, stress tolerance, and flexibility 6. Creativity, originality, and initiative 7. Leadership and social influence 8. Reasoning, problem-solving, and idea generation 9. Emotional intelligence 10. Technology design and programming We must first learn to lead ourselves before we can effectively lead others.

2 Levels Of Strategic Leadership 1) Strategically Leading Team • Alignment And Connection To The Organization's Strategic Priorities • Right Capabilities, Structure And Processes • Laser Like Focus On The Teams Fewest Most Important Tasks • Shared Problem-Solving Of Important Team Challenges And Opportunities 2) Strategically Leading Employees • Clear Individual Goals And Priorities • Regular Performance And Development Conversations • Ongoing Feedback Conversations • Frequent Coaching Conversations

Research has shown over and over again that empathy is a critical element for leaders to exhibit emotional intelligence, design thinking, high performance, effective teamwork, healthy relationships, and clear communication. But just like all strengths and habits, there can be a shadow side for leaders who express too much or the wrong type of empathy. Overly empathic leaders can lose their ability to make difficult decisions leading to poor performance and burnout. Healthy empathy requires that leaders pay attention to others’ needs without sacrificing their own needs. Healthy leadership empathy is taking time to understand others’ perspectives before making the harder decisions that serve the greater good.

More often than not, a lack of follow-through is because the leader did not create explicit agreements for next steps. Both parties walk away from the conversation assuming they are aligned but without taking time to make explicit agreements, there is no shared alignment. Unfortunately, this often results in frustration and lack of trust. Below are some examples of Quality Questions to help generate shared accountability for action. • How would you define success?  • What are we each committing to do moving forward? • What steps must you take to get there? • What support do you need from me? • How will we hold ourselves accountable? • How and when will we reconnect to check progress?