Leading for Influence

Whether you are born with leadership skills or are looking to develop them, we can partner to build or fine tune them. I’ll work with you to build the tools for communication, coaching, and mindfulness to help your employees grow both as individuals and as a team.

Communication – yes, this includes public speaking and body language. I often find my clients want to advise and instruct more than they listen and ask questions.  This is the opposite of what a leader should be doing.

Central to communication is listening.  There are three levels to listening:

    1. Shallow/self-centered – think: waiting to respond
    2. Context centered – listening to relate it to something contextual
    3. Global listening – deep listening. Tuning in to the non-verbal cues, energy, and body language of the person.  Being present with them.

Speaking – you also need to be present.  Pay attention and be in-tune with your audience, be it one person or a board room full of people.  Make it about them, not you.

Pro-Tip – when listening or speaking, try wiggling your toes in your shoes to help ground you and bring you back to presence. Try it!

Coaching skills – The data is clear.  The number one skill to be an effective leader is coaching.  Google conducted a large-scale internal study and found that the number one trait in their most effective managers and leaders was being a good coach.

Coaching is NOT advice giving, mentoring, therapy, teaching, consulting, best-friending, or training.

    It is forward-focused partnering.

It IS asking probing questions to help get the person being coached out of their ingrained neural pathways.  It IS being an accountability partner.  It can be about being tough and just rough enough to help give someone some distance from their habits to be able to get some perspective on their subconsciously held thoughts and choose their new, desired thoughts.  Thoughts lead to emotions and emotions lead to actions.  We must know what our background thoughts are to change our lives and reach out potential.  What our deep, unconscious thoughts are manifest into the physical world.  Change your thoughts, change your life.

Start coaching your people today.

Presence and Mindfulness – How to be effective, powerful, and sustainable.  Get present.

We have all had the experience of interacting with people who are lost in their own thoughts.  I’d venture to guess that most of the people we interact with daily are not very present very often.  In contrast, think about a time when you interacted with someone that was fully with you, fully present, and engaged.  It’s such an amazing feeling that it’s almost overwhelming.  It can be unnerving for some people to experience that level of presence, especially if they rarely get to engage with people at that level.  They feel seen so deeply that their ego screams as if someone shined a flashlight in its eyes.  They feel they’ve been seen naked or something.  This is why making eye-contact for more than a few seconds can feel like someone is seeing into your soul.

But, the more we get to interact with people that hold space for us, we get more and more comfortable with the support.  We realize that what they are giving us is truly a gift, especially in this day and age when presence is so rare.

Also, I’m sure you know the feeling when someone enters a room and they have a magnetism and brightness about them.  When I met Joe Biden, I felt pulled-in by his presence and I remember the occasion vividly.  You, too, can become this magnetic.  You can walk around with a ring of gravity pulling people towards you.  It’s all about presence.

Bonus about presence and mindfulness.  As you know, we love grit.  Grit can truly get you most anywhere in life.  Interested in upping your grit?  Get mindful.  I have found in myself, and data backs this up, that when I need to be grittier, I need to slow down to speed up.  By this I mean that we need to get mindful. Here are some resources to help you get started.