For more on this subject and other great articles in this issue:
For more on this subject and other great articles in this issue:
For more on this subject and other great articles in this issue:
Truly honored and blessed to reconnect with the leadership team from Carnival Cruise Lines.
Energetic, heart filled and highly skilled, these leaders were eager to hone their skills even farther. No amount of superlatives will be able to completely describe this group and the relationship with each of them is priceless.
For more on this subject and other great articles in this issue:
A sincere apology offered to a difficult person can go a long way in helping ease the situation and win them over. At a minimum we need to apologize for what they are feeling and an apology is not an admission of wrongdoing.
We are so incredibly thankful for all of you. We appreciate greatly our customers, friends, vendors and program participants and on behalf of the entire team at Aegis Learning, Happy Thanksgiving!
Genuine and sincere empathy, either situational or emotional, will go a great way to diffuse a difficult person. Always listen for queues in which you can provide empathy and never compare to any situation you have experienced. Also add the use of the person’s name during this step.
And never, ever, use comparative empathy when you directly compare someone’s experience to yours. A real empathy killer.
At the end of the day, the decision was yours. Even with collaboration and using systems thinking, you made the call. The decision is part of your leadership record and legacy.
Effective leaders cannot run from their decisions. They cannot blame others. They cannot blame the economy. They cannot hedge or try to escape accountability. It was your decision.
When right on target a decision is a glorious thing. Your hard work paid off and you chose the correct course of action. Everything fell into place nicely and the return was better than anticipated. It is pretty easy to own that type of decision.
The harder decisions to own are the clunkers. The ones that don’t work out so well or the choice that just did not pan out. Those are hard to swallow and to have your name attached.
Effective leaders own decisions that are both good and bad. With good decisions, the leader will share credit with the team, those that provided valuable input and any stakeholder that gave clues about outcomes or consequences.
When the decision is a poor choice you are on your own buddy. Can’t blame the data or any person. It is all you.
With bad decisions, there are a couple of additional decision points that come into play. The poorest choice is to defend and continue to cheerlead for a bad decision. This is simply digging a bigger hole and drawing more attention and potentially, criticism to a bad decision.
The effective leader must admit the mistake and work diligently to fix it. Simply say that you made a mistake, you are sorry and you will get it fixed. Use plenty of personal pronouns to make sure the ownership of the decision is clear. You may not get beaten up for a bad decision but you will certainly loose credibility if you try to run from it.
When looking at a poor decision, first check and see if you gave yourself enough time to analyze and diagnose the situation and all of the potential impacts. This is the most common reason for poor decisions. Then, retrace the system thinking and seek a different and wider scope of input that focuses on why the first decision failed and that the issue still exists. Never compound a poor decision with a rash or arbitrary fix that is simply designed to save face.
Tim Schneider is the founder of Aegis Learning and has been working with teams and leaders for 25 years. He generates results, impact and his sole focus is your success.
He is the author of The Ten Competencies of Outstanding Leadership and Beyond Engagement and a widely sought speaker, training facilitator and individual development coach.
The first, and most important step, in dealing with difficult people is to listen to them. Complete and uninterrupted listening is needed to remove the emotionalism and allow you the space to provide solutions later. Creating boundaries is also needed to keep the interactions civil and acceptable.