Top 4 Challenges Facing Leaders Today...

Most people get promoted up to management and/or leadership roles because of their great technical skills and capability in their previous roles. Logical and linear is typically what gets people promoted.

The problem is, the skills and strengths needed in their previous roles are worlds away from the strengths and skills needed to manage and lead a team of people, effectively, efficiently, resourcefully, and successfully.

Kristen Hansen, in her book 'Traction', The Neuroscience of Leadership and Performance, talks about the top 4 challenges facing leaders today:

1. Lack of problem-solving skills
2. Stress and the lack of skills to know how to manage it resourcefully
3. Fast-paced environments with rapid changes
4. Lack of effective communication and connection

Take a moment now and think about the leaders you've known and reported to. Were they, in your eyes, great? Effective? Did they display skills such as empathy, compassion, understanding? Great communicators? Great listeners? Great motivators? OR were they Adequate? Woeful? Lacked adaptability, transparency? Dismissive?

How did the different leaders you’ve had make you feel? Empowered? Excited? Capable? Inadequate? Doubtful? Worried? 

I remember working for a leader who used to ask for our feedback, yet every time we would bring ideas to the table, they were dismissed, disregarded, and quashed. Is it any wonder the team was so disengaged, toxic, and underperforming...

To want more engagement, more open communication, innovation, great problem solving, greater resilience, and high performing teams, means to develop the right leadership skills in both self and others.

A common problem that exists with technical managers is a lack of the skill to be able to move a conversation from green brain to red brain effortlessly in order to connect and influence.

To deliver any message, in any situation, and communicate it in a way that breaks down communication barriers, builds trust, rapport, and brings people on board with you, is a skill.

This is a huge factor in the communication and leadership gap.

Language has what’s called ‘poundage’, where some words are heavier than others. If we only use the ‘heavy’ words, the reactive, red brain words, it’s hard to ''feel'' great about the conversation, in fact, it's hard to feel great about anything because there is no emotion attached.

To drive action, we must connect with emotion.

Ultimately, it's not what you do, what you say, or even what you give, rather it's HOW you communicate and WHO you're being.

To find out more about how to strike a balance between RED and GREEN to effectively communicate and calibrate the person in front of you, CONNECT with Alexandra.