Better Leaders League

We get so wrapped up in our day-to-day coupled with the speed and intensity of work that days and weeks often go by without the time or space to think about our leadership. In this episode, I share a simple tool to help managers (and everyone, really) to self-audit their growth. This tool helps jiggers us back into being intentional about the efforts we make as managers and the outcomes they produce.

Picture a tug-of-war. Your confident self has one end of the rope and your self-doubt has the other. Any time you'd like to step into something that requires confidence, you have to first battle it out with the doubts and inner critics that show up. Sometimes confidence wins the tug-of-war and sometimes your self-doubt does. Yet, what's most frustrating is the seemingly lack of control over which one is going to come out on top. For managers, my guess is confidence fluctuates at different times for different people. You are unique in the types of things that you struggle with and where you might need more confidence in your leadership. In this episode, I share an idea to help with confidence-boosting, especially when your self-doubt kicks in.

How full is your cup? All of us understand the importance of being able to cope with the stressors and challenges at hand. Managers especially have a responsibility to up their capacity to cope for themselves, of course, but also for the people they lead. Coming out of a year like 2020, our ability to monitor our stress levels and maintain a healthy capacity to cope with everything at hand is even more critical. In this episode, I ask managers 2 questions to help bring the intention back to how they are resting, recovering, and rejuvenating in order to bring their best to their team.

The world has a love/hate relationship with New Year's resolutions. We love them because making a fresh start always sounds like a good idea. What better time than when we flip the calendar page into a blank white new year? We hate them because - right out of the gate - we're fairly certain we're going to fail. In this episode, I share an easy and failure-proof way of making short burst resolutions focused on you, your team, and how you operate at work.

The start of a new year is a great time to initiate a refresh when it comes to managing your team. A refresh might be a simple shift or a tiny change, something not too daunting or complicated that it never gets done. A refresh might be just what you need to inject some new fuel into how you are showing up for your team and the environment you're curating for the folks that report to you. In this episode, I share a 3-part audit you can take to think about how a refresh might serve you and your team.

Coming out of a coaching call with an entry-level employee - one who was struggling with a toxic work environment - I realized that every one of us has learned lessons from the tough work situations we've been in. In this episode, I share my thoughts on the timeline of our careers and how, at various points, we're taking away lessons that end up serving us our entire careers.

We all know 2020 was a year that never stopped dealing us the hard cards. It seemed like one thing after another as each month went by. It's also true that we NEED the hard cards (especially as managers) to learn how to handle whatever else is coming our way in the future. Managers everywhere were forced to take a few backsteps this year just to deal with all the chaos, change and challenge that occurred. In this lesson, I talk about how backsteps are just as important as the forward ones - teaching managers nimbleness, flexibility, resilience, and more.

David Marquet's book, Leadership is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say and What You Don't really struck a chord with me on how managers communicate and what outcomes result. Marquet uses the sinking of the El Faro cargo ship as his case study and shares fascinating details about how people of authority speak and how that influences the people on their team. In this episode, I give insight into ways managers can leave space in conversations to allow for a less-directive atmosphere, one that is inclusive and gives space for healthy debate and team contribution.

There's power in your words, so much so it affects the outcomes in your life (positive and negative). Rooted in the Law of Attraction, negative words attract other negative forces toward you. In this episode, I share why managers should be more aware of how their words impact their team, starting with a story about my son and his declaration to the world about "the worst movie ever!"

Where do you have strong opinions about things that never get audited? Where is there no regular check-in or rethinking to make sure this opinion of yours is still valid? In this episode, I share the idea of checking on our convictions on a regular basis to make sure they still hold true for us.

What exactly is influence and why is it so important when you are leading a team? I recently finished Dale Carnegie's classic, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and was blown away by his simple and powerful principles. So much so, I believe it should be required reading for every manager. In this episode, I share 4 key ideas that I hope will shift how you operate as a manager whose job it is to influence others on a daily basis.

A lot of my recent training work has centered on helping employees find ways to cope with change, challenge, and uncertainty. Because the world is overwhelming us in so many ways, it's time we had more strategies to help us counter the stress and anxiety. Recalling the Law of Rhythm and how the universe makes sense and order out of chaos and confusion, we too can call on rhythm to help us through tough times. In this episode, I share a simple tool to help shift your mindset when it all gets too much.

This is more than a cute scene from a movie, it's an important lesson in connection and authenticity for managers. In one simple admission, this "manager" connects herself to her "team" in a way that we can all learn from. It begs the question for all of us, are we allowing the space for vulnerability in our leadership?

This election has got me scared. It also has me thinking. Control over the election outcome - or any outcome for that matter - lies in our response to it. There's the "thing" that happens (good or bad), and there is our response to the thing. There's a lesson here for leaders who are being tasked to step into their leadership to a degree beyond measure, especially during turbulent times.

Are we learning how to become more flexible tough all this craziness? Oh heck, yeah. Is it teaching us lessons that will benefit us later on? Yep, that too. Remind yourself of all that you are learning and how well it will serve you, especially when things seem overly difficult. All of these limits that have been put on us physically sparked flexibility and, ultimately, grew resiliency in all of us.

Is there something that bugs you so much and yet, you find that you don't speak up about it or don't do anything to solve it? You keep silent and all the while stewing over the problem, wasting your mental energy. Wouldn't it take just as much energy to positively address it? Perhaps it's time to reframe our role in solving the problems that face us.

What needs to happen for you to feel happy? What would have to happen for you to feel successful at work? We may have far too many "rules" in place that essentially block our ability to achieve the feelings we desire - or we have our happiness or our success tied to things that we have no control over..."When my boss does x.... When my spouse does x...THEN I will be happy." Maybe it's time to re-evaluate how we gauge our personal and professional success.

Do you remember playing games as a kid and asking for a do-over? Maybe it was a wonky handball hit or a sloppy volleyball serve – asking for a do-over seemed a logical thing to do when things didn't go the way you wanted them to. It got me thinking: Can managers call do-overs?

Hi there, I'm Cecilia Gorman. Somehow, this podcast caught your eye and I'm happy you're here. Trust that the goal of each episode is to give you a nugget of advice to help you become a better leader (and better human!). Enjoy.