Challenging the Process: What About Taking Risks? Over the past several weeks we have been talking about Challenging the Process. Stepping out of our comfort zone, looking outside the box, taking risks, looking for the little wins and building on them. As leaders in organizations, we first need to be prepared to take risks but then also to provide space for your direct reports to take risks. As Yoda said, “The greatest teacher failure is”. What are you taking away from the series so far? Where is your learning, what risks are you taking to challenge the process?
Most of us I will assume set goals and make plans, but how do we do when it comes to checking where we are in those plans, goals? Keeping milestones? Tracking how we are doing?
Here is another layer. As a leader, how are you at developing your people to be effective in their planning and organizing? Leading them to be as effective as they can be?
In this week’s Vlog I explore these questions and give some thoughts on how to go about this using the fifth behaviour of Challenging the Process from The Leadership Challenge (Kouzes & Posner)
John K Whitehead & Associates coaches individuals and organizations in becoming more effective by helping them improve their interpersonal communications, emotional intelligence, and resiliency.
If you have enjoyed reading these posts, please Follow Me – and if you sign up for my Blog I will send you a copy of my eBook, “What Are These Things Called Soft Skills?”
Kouzes and Posner ask the question, “What can you learn when things don’t go as expected?” as their 4th behaviour in the practice of Challenging the Process. I want to shift that a little and ask, what can you learn when things go as expected? More of a positive right? We are really good at debriefing and deconstructing things when they go wrong, and rightly so, so that we can hopefully not do whatever that was again. But we often skirt over wins, – yea!! we did it! and move on. But what have we learned when we win or are successful… what worked?
One of the questions I ask in my coaching when a leader is hitting a roadblock is “have you ever run into this before and what happened?” If it was successful, how was it solved? Many times, the leader has run into this situation, issue before and successfully traversed the challenge. So lets not forget about the wins, sometimes the small wins and what we can learn from them.
John K Whitehead & Associates coaches individuals and organizations in becoming more effective by helping them improve their interpersonal communications, emotional intelligence, and resiliency.
If you have enjoyed reading these posts, please Follow Me – and if you sign up for my Blog I will send you a copy of my eBook, “What Are These Things Called Soft Skills?”
Building on last week’s Vlog Post which talked about how to challenge others to try out new and innovative ways to do their work, this week focuses on you and your role in this. It’s not about doing things the same way but looking outside the box for new and innovated ways to do things. First being a continues learner helps, having the mindset of always learning new things yourself. Second, going back to last weeks topic, how often are you sending your direct reports off to find new and innovating ways to do things and not to rely on “this is how we have always done it”? Watch this weeks video to learn more…..
John K Whitehead & Associates coaches individuals and organizations in becoming more effective by helping them improve their interpersonal communications, emotional intelligence, and resiliency.
If you have enjoyed reading these posts, please Follow Me – and if you sign up for my Blog I will send you a copy of my eBook, “What Are These Things Called Soft Skills?”
When a direct report walks into your office with an issue, challenge or answer they need, what do you do? Do you give them the solution to the challenge, and answer to their problem? Then, is the next thing you do is complain because you can’t find the time to get your own work done? Do you think there may be a connection here? The second behaviour in the practice of Challenging the Process is to challenge people to try out new and innovative ways to do their work (The Leadership Challenge, Kouzes & Posner, and leaders who are doing extraordinary things in organizations are ones that practice this behaviour. In this weeks Vlog post I give you some ideas on how you might handle this challenge….
John K Whitehead & Associates coaches individuals and organizations in becoming more effective by helping them improve their interpersonal communications, emotional intelligence, and resiliency.
If you have enjoyed reading these posts, please Follow Me – and if you sign up for my Blog I will send you a copy of my eBook, “What Are These Things Called Soft Skills?”
