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Difficult Conversations Don't Have to Be Difficult

Thu, 03 Mar 2022 02:14:17 GMT

Difficult Conversations Don’t Have to Be Difficult

For employees and companies on Employee Appreciation Day

Have you ever entered a conversation with the best of intentions only to be pulled into a death spiral of emotions, destruction, and debate? Over the years as a Human Resources and Talent Development Executive and the co-creator of the Power of a Positive Team Consulting Program and Training, I’ve seen people avoid conversations because they were scared to have them, and I’ve seen some brave souls attempt to create collaboration but miss the mark by getting stuck defending their position while trying to prove their point.

This has happened on many topics but most often, I see these conversations around addressing poor performance, asking for greater compensation, defending an idea or a direction for a team, project or company, and any time a disagreement of perspective comes up that is important to the parties involved.

These conversations are some of the most powerful opportunities for unity and cohesion in the workplace. However, many times they become the place relationships, teams, and companies break and divide.

I also see people try so hard to be what they believe is professional that they leave out the role that human emotion plays in positive communication. You must be professional, but it is also personal. You have to approach significant conversations with the reality of the hearts and minds involved.

I’ve witnessed and participated in these types of challenging conversations over the years and set on a path to learn as much as possible to provide people and organizations with resources to capitalize on these opportunities to build stronger bonds and create top workplaces. With the right approach, it is possible to create unity instead of inflaming differences when topics challenge our communication skills. I work with teams to have difficult conversations and show them they don't have to be difficult.

Friday, March 4 is National Employee Appreciation Day . Using the tips outlined below, you can have positive outcomes that drive unity and cohesiveness in the significant work conversations that often get mismanaged by employers and employees without the right strategy.

There are many resources created to support team success. Over the years I’ve been exposed to some amazing training and development materials for productive, nourishing, inclusive, supportive, goal-aligned workplace conversations. I use many of them in my work developing leaders, teams and organizations.

As a leader, you know that preparation helps you have the positive conversational outcomes you intend. Consider using some of these techniques to increase your probability of success when having challenging conversations.

1) Redefine significant, challenging conversations in your mind.

I call them Heart Conversations instead of Hard Conversations. This terminology was shared by a colleague, friend, and Strengths Strategist Petra Krebbs . We were having a team discussion about my view that labeling conversations as difficult or hard is positioning ourselves for challenges before we even start. I used to call them business conversations or significant conversations. Petra shared with our team that she calls them Heart Conversations in her coaching work, and this rang true for a number of reasons.

First, you need to prepare your heart and examine your motives and intentions before having the significant conversation. Move through this eight-point checklist by asking yourself:

Am I truly believing the best of the other individual?
Am I ready to listen more than I talk?
Am I willing to see the situation from their point of view?
Am I calm and prepared to have the conversation with facts and examples without making personal attacks or getting easily offended?
Am I prepared to disagree but still align at the end of the conversation to maintain unity and strong bonds?
Am I prepared to keep the conversation confidential and not go to others to create sides or vent?
Am I prepared to say I am wrong if the conversation uncovers something I might not have been aware of?
Am I prepared to let the other person save face and not magnify a mistake the other person might have made?

If so, you are well on your way to having a Heart Conversation instead of a hard conversation. See? Don’t you already feel different just by labeling this interaction differently?

2) Visualize positive outcomes

Write out your thoughts and create a story of how the positive outcomes you intend for yourself and the other person look in your mind and build them on paper. Visualize the conversation going well and record the elements that are part of the story of success. Make sure to record the details you see in your mind. What environment is best to have the conversation? Notice the body language. How is eye contact happening? Are you listening intently? This reinforces the positive picture you’ve imagined by writing out the details on paper or in a typed document.

3) Practice privately with a trusted resource

This is not always necessary because going to the person and having the conversation directly is the best path. However, as you get better at these conversations, you can benefit from practicing your visualized and written scenario with someone you are confident will be honest and keep everything confidential. Many times a Human Resources leader is a fantastic option or a mentor you know is mature, neutral, and genuinely has everyone’s best interest and the company’s as a priority.

4) Complete final heart conversation preparations

A final step would be to assess the state of your heart. Really seek to examine it so that you feel as calm as possible. The clearer the picture you have of your intentions, the more the other person will be able to feel your authenticity. Hubert Joly’s book The Heart of Business is an excellent way to connect the heart of business to how you have effective conversations to bond and unite even in the most challenging communication circumstances. Joly says, “Purpose and human connections constitute the very heart of business.” I agree. Effective communication and the way we handle significant conversations are the life-giving blood pumping to and from that heart. Joly even has an electrocardiogram for your business on his book site.

Regardless, the days of imposing forced separation between your heart and your work are over (if they ever even truly existed), and developing the ability to have hard conversations as Heart Conversations will be a gift that you can give to your employees and your entire organization.

As we say in The Power of a Positive Team Training, "Difficult Conversations Don't Have to Be Difficult".

For additional reading, check out these resources that help shape successful teams:

The Power of a Positive Team
The Power of Positive Leadership
Conversational Intelligence
Crucial Conversations
Everything DiSC Productive Conflict
Disagree Agreeably and Diplomacy and Tact from Dale Carnegie

For support with your team's significant conversations and ongoing development leadership@amypkelly.com

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Amy P. Kelly believes in people and helps them grow. The “P” in her name stands for the middle name she received from her grandmother Pauline and symbolizes the power on the inside of each person to fulfill their purpose. Amy is the Vice President of Consulting for The Jon Gordon Companies and co-author of The Energy Bus Field Guide a roadmap to fueling your life, work, and team with positive energy. Her work is focused on growth and optimal performance for individuals, teams, and organizations. She was recently published in the Association for Talent Development’s Global TD Magazine Mindset

Shifts for Better Human Performance Improvement . Her second book GLUE – A Leadership Strategy to Bond and Unite is a short story about leadership, faith, and forgiveness and is available at www.gluebondandunite.com .

Three Key Diversity of Voice Strategies to Elevate Results in Your Team and Organizational Development Programs

Thu, 20 Jan 2022 20:36:25 GMT

Three Key Diversity of Voice Strategies to Elevate Results in Your Team and Organizational Development Programs.

Is your team begging you not to plan another virtual team-building session? Are they longing for something different if you are able to meet in person? Do you find that when you pick a theme for your team and organizational kickoff session and development programs less than 50% of the group connects with the speaker, book, or training program you select?

As team developers, we know that one voice will never reach all the hearts and minds in your team or organization and that one author or researcher’s thought leadership principles and practices will not resonate with everyone in your organization. Over time, even the most powerful thought leadership material and messaging will lose its impact on a large percentage of the team.

If you are looking for new ways to engage and develop your team, whether in person or virtually, consider the powerful Diversity of Voice approach to elevate results. I’ve been working in team and organizational development for over twenty years, and I’ve uncovered three reliable opportunities to improve program outcomes using the Diversity of Voice approach.

Diversity of Voice in organizational development happens when different perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences are shared within the same thought leadership and training material. For example, you want your team to focus on active listening. You may encourage this skill on a regular basis, offer an example of how active listening will improve sales, connect active listening to attainment of individual and organizational objectives, and you may have a presenter that worked in sales for many years speak to the company. Some of his or her strategies will resonate with your team, some won’t.

The Diversity of Voice approach provides vibrancy by tapping into different professional experiences and backgrounds that will exemplify the competencies you are asking your team to demonstrate. Using a variety of speakers such as business executives, life coaches, former pro athletes, mental agility coaches, and college coaches to deliver similar material to a team or organization adds multiple perspectives and vibrancy to the message. The team is now more interested. They pay attention. They respect the fact that you provided many voices that come from many backgrounds, different parts of the organization, and various types of teams. More of your team connects with the material. More of the team applies the material toward organization objectives, and you achieve greater return on investment.

Using various styles, cultural backgrounds, and life experiences impacts people’s receptivity of the person delivering the message and the message itself. Diversity of Voice strategies engage a larger percentage of your team to produce increased results in team building, team development, and organizational development initiatives. Creating an intentional Diversity of Voice plan may take time but it will produce higher engagement that leads to stronger results.

Strategy 1: Internal Diversity of Voice Initiatives

An internal Diversity of Voice approach developed within the organization focuses on team development with leaders from multiple internal functions who speak to the same material and practices you are asking the team to activate. When you take the time to have operations, sales, marketing, legal, finance, information technology, and others speak to how a specific program is applicable to their portion of the vision, mission, and objectives, there will be greater engagement and better outcomes for your program. Your team sees cohesiveness and teamwork demonstrated in the message delivery, and they see their contribution respected based on their functional area being represented.

Strategy 2: External Diversity of Voice Initiatives

Diversity of Voice Programs provided with an outside perspective consist of speakers, consultants, and trainers who will increase engagement and momentum at the launch of a program and sustain focus over time – ultimately driving results. One of the top requests from high performing employees is learning and development. Providing learning opportunities from speakers and facilitators with unique and relevant backgrounds appeals to teams looking to continue to expand their skill set in innovative ways.

According to HRCI’s Ruth Hartge , one of the disruptive trends for 2022 is the need to redefine leadership. Diversity of Voice from external sources provides a broader foundation for leadership role models. Many companies overlook this opportunity, and your organization can benefit from Diversity of Voice as a competitive advantage for talent attraction, engagement, and retention.

To maximize external Diversity of Voice programs, start by identifying a theme for your organizational development. Connect the theme to the organization vision, mission and objectives. Define specific behaviors and skills you would like to see your team activate. Next, look for thought leadership programs that use a team of presenters from different professional career paths to deliver the content and programs. Ask to review the resumes of individual speakers, consultants, and trainers to ensure a wide range of experiences are included to add dimension and depth to your leadership team’s backgrounds.

Strategy 3: Provide Additional Tools and Resources to Aid Development of Diversity of Voice Initiatives

Build FAQs, Job Aids, and Battle Cards to clearly articulate how the Diversity of Voice approach applies to all functions in the organization. Consider including links to videos, books, and individual or group coaching programs supported by the organization. Establish an ongoing curriculum such as microlearning sessions to increase engagement and knowledge retention. And, offer a request for additional ideas from employees such as “If you think of other ways to bring this program to life in our organization, please connect with us” and provide the contact information.

The Diversity of Voice approach supports your team and organizational development programs by providing a multitude of ways to engage with employees as they work to fulfill their role as a part of the vision and mission of the team. When your speakers, consultants, and trainers come from different industries, cultures, fields, generations, and life experiences with a unified message of relevance to the material you are using for your team development, you increase engagement and results while creating a team that feels supported.

Discover how Diversity of Voice could work for your team .

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Shifts for Better Human Performance Improvement . Her second book GLUE – A Leadership Strategy to Bond and Unite comes out in February 2022.

2nd Article in a Series, Tiles of Talent: How to increase engagement in virtual meetings

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 01:11:02 GMT

In my work developing leaders, teams, and organizations, one of the top questions right now is, “Do you have any strategies to keep my team engaged and connected through all the virtual meetings?”

Many of us are working on this challenge, and this article is the second in a series where I will share strategies and practical actions that are making a difference.

This series is titled “Tiles of Talent” , because it is about engaging the capable and creative individuals represented in every rectangle on the screen in a virtual call. Each individual is a unique “Tile of Talent” in a virtual mosaic of beautiful knowledge, skills and abilities, and getting consistent engagement in virtual calls requires strategies to reach every tile.

The strategy we will focus on for this article is foundational to engagement in your virtual meetings, and I encourage you to accept it as a core truth on your journey to virtual meeting engagement virtuoso. Many of the leaders I work with who were struggling with engagement in their virtual team meetings made this adjustment. It increased engagement immediately, and the positive momentum continues.

Virtual Meeting Engagement Strategy:

To gain maximum engagement in “the meeting”, you must engage your team outside “the meeting”.

Engagement in virtual meetings starts by investing in communication outside of the official meeting. If the only interaction you have with your team is in a group call, you will not get maximum engagement. If you want your team to be engaged during your virtual meetings, they have to know you authentically care about them individually. Each unique tile of talent must know that they are important, and they must experience their importance through your time investment outside of “the meeting”. You do this through authentically demonstrating you care about their ideas, their contribution, and their personal well-being.

How can you build this strategy into your work without being in one-on-one meetings all the time? There are ways to create efficiency while maintaining consistency and authenticity.

The first step is to state your intentions. Include them in the virtual meeting engagement goal. Tell your direct reports, “I have a goal for our team to benefit from highly engaged and productive virtual team meetings. One of the ways this will occur is through our commitment to excellence in our one-on-one meetings. I care about you and value your role in our success. I want to know your ideas and input. As we stay connected through consistent communication in our one-on-ones, we will be best-prepared for engagement in our team meetings.”

After you communicate your intentions, activate the second step in implementing this strategy. Consistently deliver on your commitment to have one-on-one communication. It sounds simple, but it takes leadership fortitude. Engagement does not happen without consistency in this area, and many distractions threaten leaders' follow through.

You will see something happen after a few weeks. It is a phenomenon described in best-selling author Jon Gordon’s book “The Power of a Positive Team” . The phenomenon is described as “Commitment recognizes commitment” . You may have experienced this personally. When a leader is committed to a team and personally engaged with each individual, the team starts to bring greater engagement and commitment, too. When teams see commitment in action, it generally inspires greater commitment back. It creates a cycle of engagement and can be the X factor in sustaining focus and engagement in virtual meetings. When you commit to consistent engagement with your team about their priorities outside of the “the meeting”, you will receive greater commitment and engagement inside “the meeting”.

The final step in this strategy is vulnerability. Admit that you are learning and do not have all the answers in creating highly engaging virtual team meetings. The world shifted to a primarily virtual work environment less than one year ago. We are still learning how to operate in the new construct. Foster a growth mindset for your team around this topic. Demonstrate vulnerability to the reality that we are all working to stay engaged and create the best approaches for long-term success. We are building the best practices for virtual meeting engagement together.

Create more virtual meeting engagement for your “Tiles of Talent” by being engaged outside "the meeting".

Once you lay this foundation, you can begin to layer in additional virtual meeting engagement strategies. I will share more in the next article.

Author's Note: Please consider me your "Emergency Leadership Coach", and send your priority career questions regarding leadership, team, and organizational development for possible anonymous inclusion in future articles. The word emergency in "Emergency Leadership Coach" does not signify a reactive posture. I've found when leadership challenges arise in careers, they tend to be an "emergency" for the person with the challenge. We are working together to prepare you for those challenges. Most people want to be a good leader and help their team and organization succeed. It is a smart decision to get trusted input across multiple sources to help you make the best decision for your career and team results. The "Emergency Leadership Coach" can be one of your trusted resources as you grow. Email success stories and questions to leadership@amypkelly.com .

Tiles of Talent: How to increase engagement in virtual meetings

Sun, 13 Dec 2020 20:00:01 GMT

Many of us are working on this challenge, and this article is the first in a series where I will share strategies and practical actions that are making a difference.

The first strategy is to share the responsibility for engagement with the team, and make it a development opportunity. When having one-on-one meetings with each member of your team, work collaboratively to prepare an opening activity for the next team meeting. Get your direct report’s input during the one-on-one, and have them help shape the opening engagement activity for the next team meeting. Ask the person to lead the engagement activity in the next meeting as a part of their leadership development. Ask them to assess the success of the activity and provide written feedback on what worked and what could be improved. As each member of your team has the opportunity to lead one of the meeting engagement activities, you can make it a fun way to share the responsibility of team engagement across the entire group. It is also fun to see the variety of approaches from the team and how they support each other in the process. Leaders must design plans to engage and develop the team. This strategy creates engagement in the meetings and encourages creativity while simultaneously developing talent.

The second strategy is to incorporate a sense of flexibility for personal preferences and comfort into your meetings. Many clients turned one of their meetings into what they call an outdoor meeting. The members of the team can be outside during the session or any location of their choosing, as long as they can participate productively. One client has a walking meeting for their last weekly meeting of the month. The team members are able to go on a walk in their home or building or neighborhood or even on a treadmill. They are asked to be in a safe place to walk and participate as long as they can be heard clearly. Walking during the meeting is optional, and many choose to sit outside during the meeting or on a porch or walk to a location close by their home and sit down for the meeting and return after the meeting is completed. Regardless, the flexibility is something the employees appreciate and look forward to in the sea of other more standard virtual meetings. The agenda is sent ahead of time, and the leader of these more flexible meetings say team engagement and productivity has increased with the flexibility offered. People on the team expressed gratitude for the options and for the trust to participate in whatever fashion felt most helpful for their state of mind that day. Team members also shared the shift in their environment made them feel more creative. Another benefit of the flexibility includes a stream of new meeting format ideas flowing in from the team.

The third strategy is to bring in a professional facilitator or an internal subject matter expert to host a monthly or quarterly meeting. An investment in a team development professional brings new perspective and external expertise along with a freshness and vibrancy to the rhythm of regular team meetings. Creating a partnership with a professional facilitator to host a series of team meeting activities demonstrates an investment in trying new approaches to support your team. Another way to demonstrate a commitment to providing diverse engagement methods is to have individuals from other parts of your organization host a team discussion at the beginning or end of your regular team meeting. Providing different perspectives and new voices helps to open dialogue.

The fourth strategy is to take a course or hire a consultant to expand your skill set. There are courses to learn new ways to increase engagement in virtual meetings. Many organizations are putting tremendous effort and resource to offer these courses, so you have plenty of options. Attending a course or sending members of your team to a course for their learning and development helps to reinforce the fundamentals, learn new approaches, and fuel creativity for the ongoing challenge to optimize engagement in virtual meetings. Another approach is to hire a consultant to take a more hands-on approach to coaching greater engagement in your virtual meetings. I work with teams to observe and assess virtual meeting engagement and build team-specific plans to improve results.

Engagement in virtual meetings is a challenge and opportunity for leaders and their teams. There are many current strategies to improve engagement, and new ones are being added all the time.

Use these strategies to create virtual meeting engagement with your “Tiles of Talent” , and let me know your success stories. More strategies that are working for leaders and their teams will come out in future articles.

Getting Better at Getting Better

Tue, 08 Sep 2020 18:44:26 GMT

If you want to get better at the process of getting better, this article is for you.

The fact is - many want to improve performance, and many struggle with the performance improvement process. As we come from the recent Labor Day Weekend, this article is intended as a tribute to the contribution of workers past, present, and future by offering three steps to support performance improvement and maximize the impact of our work.

Implement these 3 steps to get better at performance improvement today.

1. Reserve judgement on the cause of performance issues.

One of the biggest mistakes people make in performance improvement is rushing to judgment on the cause of poor performance. This approach undermines credibility of the individual and the organization.

To avoid rushing to judgment, create a positive investigator’s mindset looking for valuable opportunities. Cultivate a perspective where you consider it an honor to address performance challenges as a way to grow and improve. Be accountable to identify the issues as close to the root cause as possible. Be open-minded, curious, and authentically judgment-free in the process. Take the time to ask questions, gather data, collect evidence from multiple sources, and listen. Create an environment of trust. Performance improvement is not about finding flaws, performance improvement is getting better and identifying the right areas of opportunity to do so. Make a practice to speak with job performers, process owners, systems owners, managers, and department leaders about performance improvement issues before creating any recommendations.

Time constraints are a reality in most performance improvement efforts. To avoid caving in to pressure for quick results, make an intentional decision to slow down. Ask for more time if necessary. Manage the positive pressure of urgency and the need for fast results through clear communication with stakeholders. Taking time to gather data sends a message to the culture that “We do things right and care about the best result.” Gathering data can take more time on the front end, but it saves a great deal of time and waste down the road, as well as the reputation (and possibly the values) of the team and organization.

2. Take a holistic, systems thinking approach.

Many leaders only look at the individual performer level when performance issues arise and assume the individual performer level is the “problem”. At that point they recommend training or consider the person (or team) “bad at what they do”. This creates a small-minded culture with many missed opportunities. Performance issues could be related to incomplete instructions, poor job description, flawed processes, systems, sub-par management, and/or misalignment with organization priorities.

More variables influence performance than the individual performance level. When improving performance, it is essential to consider the three levels of performance from Geary A. Rummler and Alan P. Brache’s book “Improving Performance: How to Manage the White Space on the Organization Chart” . Rummler and Brache’s book contains a complete set of resources to improve performance via their methodology . For the purposes of this article, consider this important performance improvement reality: You must look through three lenses to properly identify the best performance improvement solutions: the organization level, process level, and job/performer level.

3. Be present in the performance improvement.

Be present with your team until your work is done. Improving work and performance is personal. You brought great people onto your team. They care about what they do. When you determine the performance improvement solution, do not make a recommendation and disappear. Demonstrate a collaborative partnership to convey the importance of successful completion. Be present throughout the implementation and ongoing evaluation of the solution. This can look many ways. Presence can be achieved through check-in calls or stakeholder meetings. It can include written or video updates. The one thing you cannot do is walk away. Define and communicate how long you will be a part of the performance improvement solution. Set an official hand-off date, and consistently show up prepared and present to fulfill your defined role until final hand-off to a specific individual.

Share and discuss this article to:

Ignite fresh excitement for the strategic role of performance improvement in individual, team, and organization results.
Create a work environment that values new ideas and embraces opportunities to discuss thoughtful performance improvement.
Build trust by eliminating the idea that “the fault must be at the individual performer level”.
Enhance comfort in team member ability to identify, define, and discuss performance improvement.
Identify opportunities to increase excellence in performance at the individual, process, and organization level.
Develop your team to view performance improvement as an essential skill in leadership development.

Activate the Top Leadership Skill for 2020

Fri, 17 Apr 2020 23:43:08 GMT

The whole world should be humming the same tune for the remainder of 2020.

It wo uld sound something like this “Listen…just a little bit longer” to the tune of “Stay Just a Little Bit Longer” by Jackson Browne.

For the remainder of 2020, the path to best serve your people and your clients will be to listen, and listen just a little bit longer than you normally would.

As the current health emergency continues, the most underutilized leadership skill of all time will become the top focus to support your people and your clients.

Leadership and communication training regularly include information and application related to active listening skills. The idea that anyone could be an effective manager, coach, teammate, or business partner without listening is ridiculous, and it makes the decision simple when determining if active listening skills are an important part of employee development for any role and for any stage in a career.

Listening is something you should prioritize in any circumstance, and when things get tough and circumstances are changing rapidly, listening becomes even more important. You have to decide what to listen to and for how long. The one thing that is certain, you have to listen well.

If you do not know what is going on, you cannot make good decisions. And if you do not have an idea of what people are asking for, you cannot devise pathways to get them what they say they need. You have to balance listening and action, so the things you do listen to, you need to listen closely and maybe just a bit longer than you might in non-emergency situations.

You also need your leaders to listen for you. You need every member of the team to be focused on listening. Each person must listen to clients, partners, the market, the news, and listen to each other to synthesize relevant information to solve problems and deliver solutions.

You also need to listen to demonstrate that you care. There is no opportunity to meet an untapped need or to help someone in a truly difficult circumstance if you do not hear the urgency and the specifics of the need.

With so many relevant audiences to listen to and with so many people in need of increased effective listening skills, what can you do to support the best application of this priority skill?

Activate these five strategies now to increase listening effectiveness and better position yourself and your team for success.

1. Empower your learning and development organization to identify, promote, and distribute job aids and eLearning courses on active listening. Make sure learning and development leaders connect the listening training and resources to the intended outcomes: teamwork, client support, leadership development, problem solving, and coaching. Do not just say, “Become a better listener.” Tell them why.

2. Create a reward and recognition program for effective listening. Reward and recognize individuals that drive team, client, and organizational outcomes through effective listening. Ask managers and employees to look for examples of great listening in one-on-ones, team meetings, client meetings, and impromptu opportunities to listen when an internal or external business partner needs support. You are looking for your team to find examples where they believe there is correlation between great listening and a positive outcome. You may not be able to prove causation. The heightened focus on active listening will create an environment and a culture that focuses on the value of listening.

3. Schedule listening sessions. Create space inside your team and organization to give people the opportunity to share wins, suggestions, and challenges.

4. Leverage surveys and crowd sourced input from your teams and organization. Be as transparent as possible with the results, and take action on the top, aligned opportunities to support the input provided. Ask your team, “How could we get better at listening?”

5. Demonstrate your own listening skills. Be present. Talk less. Listen just a little bit longer than you normally would. Be an example in client meetings, team meetings, in one-on-one meetings, on phone calls, and by reserving time in large organizational meetings for input from the team.

Listen…just a little bit longer. Can you hear the music?

5 Keys to Being Promotable

Fri, 17 Apr 2020 23:43:05 GMT

Positivity Powers Promotions

I recently had to deliver challenging news to someone I’m responsible for leading and care about very much.

It went something like this, “You are not promotable right now. I cannot put your name forward as a recommendation for the promotion and compensation you wanted, because you do not have the positive attitude that a leadership position requires. Your brand is consistently associated with negativity and personal best-interest, not team best-interest, and that is not promotable.”

This type of conversation is not something I take lightly, and as a leader I know that my team’s success is my responsibility. That was why the tough, truthful feedback was necessary (it wasn’t the first time either), and I know I am accountable to deliver that feedback and offer solutions to help get the person where they want to go.

Also, the real opportunity in this situation is that it can end up being one of the most powerfully positive points in this person’s career IF they choose to take ownership of their attitude and the way it impacts their team and the company. Plus, I just want to go on record, demanding promotions and raises is NOT solely the domain of millennials. (I adore millennials.) I see this happen across all generations, and the way to address this opportunity is consistent regardless of age and career history.

Developing people and helping them achieve their very best requires positive energy. It requires positive energy from the leader, and it requires positive energy from the people working to drive their own career progression and personal growth. It is an essential quantity to be recommended for a promotion, and it is a foundational element for anyone that wants to be put in the succession plans for greater responsibility with a team or organization.

Promotion is truly a partnership built on positive energy.

So, what happened? How did the story end?

We don’t know yet, because the person referenced has to make a choice and commit to consistently doing the work involved in charting a new course in their communication and behavior.

What I do know is that I’ve seen people in this same situation in the past, and when they followed these simple steps with an authentic desire to improve and boost their positive energy and leadership…It WORKED!

These are the five keys to promotability that can put a person back on the road to success and ultimately at the top of the “promotability” list that every management team maintains.

1. BE GRATEFUL. Every morning, wake up and be thankful for your job, your role, your team, and the opportunity to be a part of it. What does this look like? You focus on what is good, not what is wrong, and you do NOT complain. Complaining makes you appear small-minded and petty. It is not behavior that puts you in a position for a promotion. Gratitude is promotable. Complaining is NOT promotable. In Jon Gordon’s book “The Energy Bus” one of the actions you can take to improve this habit is a Gratitude Walk. Take a short walk and think of all the things you have to be grateful for. If you do not want to do this, fine, but create the habit of gratitude in your morning routine, and stick with it – until it sticks with you.

2. BE A SOLUTION. Choose to solve problems, not be a part of them or fan the flames of drama around team challenges. Everyone knows those people, and you do not want to be one of them. They are also NOT promotable. Problems exist. Everyone knows that. You do not run from them. You solve them. You do not waste time in the mire and muck complaining about how much is wrong. Assess the situation, and fix it as best you can. A couple of these success stories can end up providing powerful fuel for a promotion.

3. FOCUS OUTWARD. Look for ways to help others on your team get promoted. Look for ways to make your team or workplace better. Spend less time thinking about what you want or think you deserve. Demands and ultimatums are NOT promotable. They can seem self-centered and appear that you spend your time on yourself, not what is best for the team or business. Leading the way on your team by noticing others needs and goals, and helping them get there - That is promotable. That is the type of leader companies and teams need.

4. BELIEVE THE BEST. Believe the best of others, and believe the best of yourself. Expect that someday you will get promoted, and expect that your teammates want to help you and are doing their best work too. The more you drive your decisions and actions with a strong belief in your team and yourself, the more they will feel the positive energy and tap into your strength and conviction. This will impact the culture, and the best will start to come your way. No one wants to work with someone that they feel does not believe in them. No one wants to work for someone they feel doesn’t believe in them. As a leader, you must cultivate the power of positive belief, and believe the best.

5. USE THE POSITIVE ENERGY FORMULA. This formula is from “The Energy Bus” book, and it provides a systematic approach to creating positive, solution-focused energy – the type that will get you the promotion you are looking for. E(Events) + P(Your Perception) = O(Outcome) This formula is a demonstration of the POWER you have to increase your promotability. When you look at events that happen, and you perceive them as opportunities, and you approach the events with a positive focus, then you can drive positive outcomes. Ahead in the distance you start to see the signs of a promotion.

You may need to leverage this formula and the four other keys for promotion for a while in order for your boss, co-workers, and executive team to notice the change. But believe me, they will. And when they do, I look forward to hearing about your new position and all the other fabulous results you received and created for others along the way.