Conversations for Fear-less Leaders

Many leaders share their concern about the time it takes to "coach" a colleague. It does not have to be time consuming. Once you build those coaching conversation muscles, the coaching can be effortless and quick.  The results can be impactful and sometimes-life changing. Listen to a conversation between Rhonda York and Dale Laughlin as they discuss their thoughts on makeing coaching an effortless conversation.

Coaching skills can end up being the gift of time for leaders. Invest time on the front in to develop your people. Then, as they grow, they have learned from you the steps to take and the questions to ask. This should minimize the amount of time they come to you with the questions-What do I do? And, How do I do that?Dale and Rhonda identify who and when to utilize the coaching skill with your teammates and colleagues.

As a leader who utilizes coaching skills to help build a strong team, creating the space for growth can happen with "A'Ha" moments. How do you know when a team member has experienced an A-Ha moment? What do I as the leader do with that? Can I make someone have an A-Ha moment? Listen to this episode of Conversations for Fear-less Leaders to find out the answers. Rhonda and Dale continue to provide tips, tools, and steps for the Leader as Coach.

Dale and Rhonda share stories of clients and the way they listen as coaches. This skill set is learned and has become a habit for both of these experienced coaches. We all listen, however, what might you be missing or not picking up on? Body language, tone, pace, what is not being said? All these items contribute to a message. Don't miss out on valuable messages.

Dale and Rhonda discuss the four types of listening. Fearful, Vulnerable, Compassionate, and passionate. Listen to understand the 4 types, how they show up, and the value of utilizing each listening type. Are you stuck in one type?

Asking the right questions carries more value than giving the right direction.  Questions help develop your team and to create more leaders. Help your employees learn to think and how to ask themselves questions prior to decision making. While you are growing leaders, you have more time to focus on your important work.Dale and Rhonda give tips and tools behind the value of asking high impact questions.

Are you really a good listener? Do you listen with all your senses, or just your ears? If so, you are missing out on valuable information. Dale and Rhonda provide tips on how to raise your game as a Fear-less leader by listening intentionally, completely, and with observation.

One of the many goals of leaders is to coach their team on moving forward. Yes, it is important, but not always easy. Dale and Rhonda discuss using high impact questions to help in that process. Listen as they share some tips and sample questions you can try as you continue to grow your leadership skills.

The test of the impact of your coaching is in the action that your performer takes after your conversation. The real work starts with your preparation. Listen as Rhonda and Dale demonstrate how a Leader seeks her support as she prepares for a follow-up coaching conversation with what she fears may be an increasingly overwhelmed employee. 

… Coaching is about building trust that enables the connection and makes transformational conversation possible, so that the relationship strengthens and sustains, earning leadership the right to lead.  Getting optimal alignment, integrity and benefit from each movement is fundamental. Whether we are exercising, walking, or in a Pilates class or on the dance floor, that mindfully engaged core is essential.  Similarly, as a Leader Coach, 5 core beliefs serve as your foundation! Keep them top of mind in each situation to power-up the effectiveness and impact of your coaching. 

In this episode of Conversations for Fear-less Leaders, Rhonda and Dale provide steps to consider when delivering a coaching conversation. Coaching does not have to be time consuming, but does require thought and practice. Start to put these 5 steps into practice during your next Leadership coaching conversation

One of the many skills leaders need to adopt is the coaching technique for helping your team grow. While many think this is a time consuming skill the value can happen in minutes, creating immeasurable growth plus a respectful and trusting relationship. Check out this new series with Rhonda and Dale as they share their thoughts and tips on becoming a coaching leader.

Are you on the EDGE when thinking back on 2021? How do you plan to make 2022 different?Where did you and your team succeed? Where is there room for improvement?Dale and Rhonda offer simple, but great tips for helping our Fear-LESS leaders wrap up 2021 and plan for a successful 2022. Pack your bags for a great trip into 2022, however make sure you are not taking extra baggage with you and only have what you need to help you and your team be a SUCCESS!Check us out again in mid-January after the holidays. Thank you for being faithful listeners. Find us at www.conversationsforfearlessleaders.com

We all have a tendency to avoid certain conversations, especially if we tell ourselves the conversation may end badly. However, Rhonda and Dale provide you some tips on how to approach those conversations and some reasons not to avoid them. Everything happens through communication, you must determine what type of communicator you want to be. How can you move your conversations forward, vs breakdown and avoidance.Rhonda and Dale would love to hear from you about some of your conversations, good, bad, and the evil. Find us at www.Conversationsforfearlessleaders.com

According to Bruce Tuckman, there are 5 stages of a Team; Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Mourning. Do you know what stage your teams are in? How successful are they traveling through each stage? Are your teams successful or struggling? This episode of Conversations for FearLESS Leaders describes the different stages, how to identify which stage your team is in, and how to manage any challenges you may face in each stage.Follow Rhonda and Dale at www.Conversationsforfearlessleaders.com

How Secure Is Your Ladder? How often do your assumptions mislead you? There was more to the situation than you noticed…if only you had realized!...How much difficulty, time, relationship damage could have been avoided if you hadn't jumped to conclusions? In today's podcast, Rhonda and Dale take you up and down the rungs of the Ladder of Inference. They'll give you an insight into how it works so you'll better understand why you think the way you do – and how that thinking can derail or enrich your conversations. Listen as they explain how to stay on the lower rungs to see more clearly, think more deeply and understand more accurately…..before you act. The Ladder of Inference was first developed by Chris Argyris (1982) and included in The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook by Peter Senge (1994 and 2014). Join the coaches as they explore how FearLESS Leaders can use this essential tool to reduce conflict, increase trust and build stronger relationships.  Listen for the mastery challenge at the end of the podcast. Stay in touch as you experiment. You can find us at www.conversationsforfearlessleaders.com

 “Behind the scenes is the reality of the challenge – how to communicate with each other when we feel we are pushed to the edge? (Judith E. Glaser)  Are you the one who's pushing? In this episode, Dale and Rhonda share their insights on the fears that push leaders and their clients to the edge. Listen to how they describe what the edge feels like, how false assumptions and beliefs fuel the fear, and how FearLESS Leaders can work with the fear so that it doesn't hold them back. It's not that the fear doesn't come up, but that the Leader learns to navigate it, turning it into a springboard for action. Look out for the Action Insights at the end of the podcast.Contact us at www.Conversationsforfearlessleaders.com

Are you stuck thinking about how to word your questions? When to ask them? How to decide what the ‘right' question would be?  As a FearLESS Leader, you can turn your questioning into a powerful conversational tool to heighten clarity, enhance alignment and evoke trust. Join Rhonda and Dale as they explore and answer these big questions about questions. Listen as they discuss using questions to listen; to measure personal mastery and leadership progress; to prepare and act with intention in all situations; to improve performance; and to protect your brand.  Are you up for their challenge? The Coaches end this episode with a challenge to all FearLESS Leaders. Will you take up their call to action? Let us know what you do and what results you get. Email us at  www.Conversationsforfearlessleaders.com

It can be so frustrating! You think you've communicated clearly and completely. Then you realize that what you said is not what was understood. You find yourself having to do  more telling and more explaining. Errors are made, deadlines are missed, and people become frustrated with each other.“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.” Robert J. McCloskey, a Spokesperson for the Pentagon.In this podcast, Rhonda and Dale discuss the ways in which the message can get distorted. They explore the power of questions and position them as potentially powerful, multi-purpose conversational tools. Used artfully and with precision, questions become probes that elicit understanding; levers that shift thinking; signals that prompt reflection; magnifiers that evoke new insights and deductions; and catalysts that enhance clarity and  engagement.Listen, as they outline a questioning process FearLess Leaders can use to improve their influence and impact as communicators. Contact us at www.Conversationsforfearlessleaders.com

Do not be put off by the title. To be a successful leader, your communications skills need to be top notch. In addition to how you communicate, you want your team members to hear and receive the message you are sharing.Are your conversations Kind? Do they promote forward movement for your teams? If not, self-check how you communicate and ask for feedback on your communication style.In this episode, Fear-less leaders will learn to refocus, redirect, and reframe. The quote by Robert J. McCloskey,  Spokesperson for the Pentagon during the Vietman War, will make you stop and think.Join Dale and Rhonda as they discuss the value of Loving Conversations.Contact us at www.Conversationsforfearlessleaders.com

In this episode, Rhonda and Dale deconstruct the great quote by Judith E. Glaser, author and founder of Conversational Intelligence. "To get to the next level of success depends on the quality of the culture, which depends on the quality of the relationships, which depends on the quality of the conversation. Everything happens through conversation."This powerful quote contains a wealth of information to improve your team, your organizations, and your relationships. One cannot be successful without a foundation of Trust. How do you build trust? Join Rhonda and Dale to learn how to improve your trust levels and improve your success rates.Contact us at www.Conversationsforfearlessleaders.com

“To get to your next level of greatness depends on the quality of the culture, which depends on the quality of the relationships, which depends on the quality of the conversations. Everything happens. through conversations.” Judith E. Glaser Rhonda and Dale deconstruct this powerful quote by Judith E. Glaser, the Organizational Anthropologist, prolific author and though leader, who made Conversational Intelligence®, her life's work.  Listen as they clarify and align big words like Trust, Connecting, Conversations, Relationships, Culture , Results and Sustainability with Psychological Safety, Authenticity and Intentionality.  Together, these words have the power to catalyze extraordinary results. As Fearless Leaders. your words shape your thoughts and, in turn, your behaviour which then shapes the quality of  the culture in which you connect, engage, navigate and grow with others. Are you leading powerfully and to your fullest potential? Listen to your words – what are you really saying?Contact us at www.Conversationsforfearlessleaders.com

We all do it-avoid conversations. We know we need to have a conversation with a co-worker, boss, direct report, or friend, but we avoid them. We create stories in our minds as to how the conversation might go, it is never a positive story, so we decide not to have the conversation. By avoiding the conversation, things may get worse. They usually do not auto-correct. In this episode, Rhonda and Dale discuss steps, tools, and tips, to make having important conversations easier and less threatening. Everything happens through conversations. Take the next step.Contact us at www.Conversationsforfearlessleaders.com

Team members and colleagues need to feel psychological safety in an organization to function at their best and give the team their best. It starts with trust and should be the norm and not a one and done.Rhonda and Dale are joined by Maree Wrack, their colleague from Perth Australia. Maree is a coach, professional speaker, and author. She shares her experiences working with organizations to build psychological safety in their teams.Contact us at www.Conversationsforfearlessleaders.com

“High-performing, successful organizations build cultures of introspection and trust and never lose sight of their purpose.” – Colin PowellThis week on Conversations For FearLESS Leaders we're tackling one of those evergreen issues that has come even more sharply into focus since the pandemic began - Building High-Performance Teams. With many organizations compelled to make the shift to remote work, it has become imperative for leaders to understand how to mobilize, motivate and incentivize their teams to continued excellence in the face of unexpected – and in some instances, unprecedented - challenges.In this episode we're unpacking a number of Big Ideas around team building, including: what makes a team the difference between high performance, high impact and high value  co-creation stakeholders working collectively alignment trust and psychological safety Above all, the first building-block of a high-performance team is the FearLESS Leader's sense of purpose and intentionality. They must maintain clarity on the team's overarching goals and objectives and understand their responsibility to be the kind of leader the team needs in order to succeed.  Listen now at www.conversationsforfearlessleaders.com - and subscribe to our notifications to be the first to hear next week's episode, where we'll take a more in-depth look at trust and psychological safety!#teams #teambuilding #highperformanceteams #performance #performancecoaching #emotionalintelligence #leadership #leadershipstrategy #leadershipcoaching #executivecoaching #conversationalintelligence #difficultconversations #conversationsforfearlessleaders  

Join Rhonda and Dale as they probe for a deeper understanding of how Triggers impact us and the daily challenge to navigate them. They draw from personal experience to unpack the troublesome words and phrases that trigger their discomfort both internally, in their inner dialogue and, externally, in their conversations with others. They explore, too, self-awareness and self-regulation as vital tools for disarming the triggers and readying ourselves to navigate through intentional and healthy conversations with others. As FearLESS Leaders, your power lies in this inner awareness and control in the moment as you navigate your triggers with positive intention. All this is easier said than done! Leaders require high levels of  patience, courage and resilience to change habits. There are new behaviours to adopt and some behaviours to do differently – to downregulate or do less; and, upregulate or do more. But we're not alone on the journey. As Leaders we have a support group or eco-system on whom we can rely as we do the inner work. Why should we bother? In a sense this is our life's work – to reach and move constantly towards our better selves and in all areas of our lives. This work takes time, patience, realistic expectations, support and resilience. There will be times when we will get stuck and when we will default back to the very behaviours we are trying to change; when we will be disheartened and triggered by our own perceived lack of progress. To reach Rhonda and Dale, Contact us at www.Conversationsforfearlessleaders.com

 |  |  |  |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |  | There's a new episode of the podcast out today! 

Problem-solving is one of the keys to great leadership. But how can you solve a problem you don't even know you have? We all have blind spots, areas where we make assumptions or hold beliefs without pausing to question their rational basis and the ways in which they influence our behaviour. The tricky thing about our blind spots is that because we aren't aware of them, we usually don't notice the impact they are having on those around us. All the while, these blind spots are disrupting our conversations, weakening our relationships and diminishing our influence.In the latest episode of Conversations for FearLESS Leaders, we explore the techniques you can use to uncover your blind spots and strategies for addressing them. (If you need an introduction to blind spots and how they can impede your development as a leader, check out the previous episode first!) ‘Opening the blinds' takes both humility and courage as you commit to seeking honest feedback and taking action to amend limiting behaviors. Ultimately this creates an environment of safety and trust in which you and your people can have healthy conversations that catalyze growth and transformation – even in the most difficult situations.Don't let your blind spots hold you back! Listen today at Contact us at www.Conversationsforfearlessleaders.com (where you can also sign up to be notified when we release new episodes) – and feel free to comment below about how you may have realized you had a blind spot of your own, or to share a topic you'd like to see us cover in future podcasts.#blindspot #difficultconversations #leadership #leadershipstrategy #leadershipcoaching #executivecoaching #conversationalintelligence #difficultconversations #conversationsforfearlessleaders 

Yes, you do have blind spots whether you admit it or not. The problem is we don't know that we have them or how they impact our colleagues. Hence, the name blind spots. Once you discover what your blind spots are, you will begin to notice how they affect others and develop your plan of action.Contact us at www.Conversationsforfearlessleaders.com

We know you have heard of succession planning--making sure someone is talented enough to take over certain roles. How are you developing the members of your team to create a strong bench of talent? Recently, two well-known US college basketball coaches retired, or announced their retirements. Both men have a history of winning seasons for their prospective school teams. While both teams had certain star players, they also had a strong bench which lead to their success, resulting in an outstanding legacy as basketball coaches. Your business team is no different. If you only focus on your stars, or current leader, you may be caught unprepared to move someone into a key position at a critical point in the game of business.In this episode, we discuss the importance of making an investment in your team members and how to create more emerging leaders on your squad. Don't wait till the need is present, invest now and experience success along the way.Contact us at www.Conversationsforfearlessleaders.com

As a leader, there is always the opportunity to help team members and colleagues grow in their abilities. Many times, the leader is too quick to place blame on the underperforming employee without looking within and asking, "what might I be doing to contribute to their ineffectiveness"?  To be a great and fearless leader, one has to do some reflecting on how our behavior, actions, and words can diminish the work ethics and success of others that we are hoping to experience. This episode provides questions to ask oneself before confronting your employee.Contact us at www.Conversationsforfearlessleaders.com

Most teams/organizations have employees whose work ethics do not meet the leader's standards. How do communicate to the employee in a way they will listen and the leader gets the results they are looking for? Listen for tips, tools, suggestions, from Rhonda and Dale.Contact us at www.Conversationsforfearlessleaders.com

Life happens! And, life has to go on! The roller coaster experience of this global pandemic continues for all of us. For FearLESS Leaders there is no other alternative but to show up with courageous intention and hopeful positivity. In this podcast, we reveal the essential questions leaders must ask as they do the inner work on themselves and the outer work with their people. Contact us at www.Conversationsforfearlessleaders.com

How do you keep your best employees to consistently perform at their high level? Where is the motivation? What can you as a leader do to support, encourage, and build the talent on your teams?Contact us at www.Conversationsforfearlessleaders.com

Successful leaders create a culture where TRUST is present and growing. Team members know their leader has their back, can be open with their conversations, and know they will receive honest feedback for growth. How do you let your employees know your culture is one of TRUST?Contact us at www.Conversationsforfearlessleaders.com

What is a Fear-less leader and how do they operate? What really makes a leader successful? A real leader is not fearless, a real leader has fear, realizes it, and decides how to manage through it, be vulnerable, open, honest, and real. Listen to this series of podcast delivered by two professionally trained coaches, certified in Conversational Intelligence and Team Coaches. Rhonda York of the US and Dale Laughlin of Trinidad and Tobago, bring their combined 40 years of expertise to leaders who are searching for ways to be more successful, especially in their conversations.Contact us at www.Conversationsforfearlessleaders.com