Leadership 101: What Successful Leaders Do—and How They Do It

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Sarah: Hi everyone, and welcome to today’s webinar. Hosted by HRDQ-U, and presented by Katy Tynan. My name is Sarah and I’ll moderate the webinar. The webinar’s going to be about an hour today, and if you’ve any questions you can always type them into that questions box. We’ll be answering these questions as they come in live at the end of the presentation, or in email if we do run out of time. So welcome Katy and thank you so much for joining us today.

Katy Tynan: Thank you so much for having me. Great. So I am going to jump right in. We have a lot on the agenda today. This is going to be a packed hour of learning, and I’m excited to be here with you. So happy Wednesday everybody. I don’t know how it is where you guys are, but it’s pouring down rain where I am, so I am happy to be inside, and hanging out with you guys. And today we’re going to talk about leadership.

Katy Tynan: We’re going to talk about it at a pretty high level because there’s a lot of meat in here. And really I could take any one of these agenda items, and do a whole webinar just on that. But, I want to go through these items today, because we get so many questions about leadership, and about management, and really these fundamental skills of leaders, and managers which are still really challenging in the workforce.

Katy Tynan: We know that we have heard that we have an engagement problem. That only 30% of employees and workers are typically engaged, and we want to change that. And one of the ways that we change that is by helping managers, and leaders become more skilled because those people are the people who have the biggest impact on how people feel about their jobs day to day. So here’s what we’re going to cover today.

Katy Tynan: We’re going to talk about these key characteristics. What are those leadership characteristics? What are those behaviors, and how do we get to them? We’re going to talk about trust and confidence, which really trust is the root of leadership. You don’t follow someone you don’t trust, and we’re going to talk about how to avoid some of these behaviors, whether intentional, hopefully not or just accidental.

Katy Tynan: These unintentional behaviors that some people do that undermine their leadership. And we’re going to talk specifically about how to create a sense of teamwork on your team. How to hopefully get people on your team to want to work together and to be engaged, and to talk about how to act decisively, and lead in a crisis.

Katy Tynan: So again, really high level, but we are certainly going to go through a lot of fundamental leadership content today, that’s going to help you understand what the basics are, what the framework looks like, where you should be focusing your attention and hopefully, whether you’re a leader yourself, or whether you’re somebody who manages programs for leaders.

Katy Tynan: If you’re in more of an HR role, this is really valuable information for you as you think about supporting the people who are leaders in your organization. So let’s talk real quick about leadership and why it matters. And we have a definition here that leadership is about positively influencing others to accomplish a specific goal, emphasis on the positive here. I think a lot of times when we think about leadership, we think about feedback, and correction, and management, and getting people on the same page.

Katy Tynan: And really at the end of the day it’s about influence, positive influence, to move towards a goal. So you’re going to hear a lot about leadership in your work right now because leadership is a big focus in the workplace these days. It’s an area where companies are really trying to work on developing leaders, developing a leadership pipeline because they know that, that’s the root of productivity.

Katy Tynan: That’s how we get stuff done. So leadership is a critical skill, whether you’re at this moment in time, an individual contributor. Whether you’re part of a team, I think we all have opportunities to be leaders in our work and in our lives. And so we need to understand the basics of how to get that done. So here’s a nice quote from John Quincy Adams, and I’m from Boston. So you know, he’s one of our local guys for many years ago.

Katy Tynan: So if your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more. You are a leader. So again, anybody can be and should be a leader. I just want to debunk something for a minute before we dive into some of the details. A lot of people ask me, “Katy, what’s the difference between a manager, and a leader?” And, “Am I a leader, whether or not I have a management title?” And the answer is manager, is title.

Katy Tynan: Manager is a role within an organization. Whereas, leadership is a set of behaviors. It’s a way that any individual person can act, and so you can be a leader for yourself, for your community, in your workplace. So leadership skills really cross every single boundary of your life and of your work. If you happen to have a manager title, that’s great.

Katy Tynan: But the reality is not everybody does, and not every leader needs to be identified as a manager. So again, that’s why we have this quote in here, is because it’s all about … leadership is all about how you behave. So I want to do a quick poll right now, just to get us started, and over on the right hand side, just so you can see if you’ve got this little doc open, you can see the polls are going to come up in a second, and there’s also a chat window.

Katy Tynan: If you guys have questions as you go along, I know that Sarah mentioned you can put them in the question box, but I’m also going to have you use the chat on occasion, so just be aware of where that is, so that you can use it if you want to. So I’m just going to launch this poll, and you’re going to see over on the right hand side, it’s going to say, what do you choose, yes or no? Do consider yourself a leader?

Katy Tynan: So let’s go ahead and weigh in. I’ll give everybody a minute or two to just get your votes in there. Wow. Everybody’s rolling right in. So great. I’m glad to see you’re all onboard and engaged with the webinar today, and being part of it. Good. So, right now with 81% in, it looks like 93% of you are saying yes, that you consider yourself a leader, and that is awesome because again, just going back to what I said before.

Katy Tynan: Being a leader is something that we all have the capacity to do and frankly that I think everybody needs to be able to do, whether you’re leading yourself or whether you’re leading a team, you are a leader. So these skills are important. So I’m just going to close out of that pole, and just carry on, and we’re going to talk about quick now in the chat about teaching and the teaching element of leadership.

Katy Tynan: So in the chat box, if you will, just go ahead and chat a word that describes someone that you consider a teacher. Someone who’s influenced you in your life. Somebody who maybe you look back on and think, “Gosh, I learned a lot from that person.” So use the chat on the right hand side and it says … there’s a little dropdown arrow that who’s to chat to.

Katy Tynan: I’m not sure if you guys can send questions to everybody or not, but I’ll read them out as they come in. But go ahead and chat if you can, and just let me know what you think, and I’ll just give a second for people to chat ins and things. Okay, so supportive, engaging, relatable, inspiring, empowering, motivated. Oh my goodness. These are such awesome words. Interested how [inaudible 00:07:46] let me get what I was going. Patience.

Katy Tynan: Yeah. Motivation. Yeah. Advocate. I love that. Mentor. Trustworthy. Supportive. Allowed me to fail. Oh my goodness, you guys have the best answers. So these are all qualities of a teacher, and they’re also qualities of a leader. And I want you to think of those two things together.

Katy Tynan: All the time that when you’re leading, what you’re doing is trying to get people to be their best selves and the best role models for that are often teachers because that’s how they’re thinking all the time. Teachers are thinking about how to help their students get to be their best selves. So keep that in your mind as we think about and talking about these leadership activities.

Katy Tynan: So how does this translate into the working world? What does it mean to be a teacher? To be a positive influence? To inspire others in the really real world? And so what I want to do is just break it down into these seven elements, and we’re going to talk about them in more detail. But it’s about having a vision. It’s about pursuing excellence, communicating, being trustworthy, building confidence, being enthusiastic and serving others.

Katy Tynan: So let’s dig into these. I won’t spend much time right here. We’re just going to dig right into each of these elements. So the first thing that’s really critical and powerful for a leader to do is to have a vision. So what do we mean by having a vision? Does it mean you know, you should wander outside and see pink elephants? No, having a vision means that you can picture, and see in your mind a future positive, successful situation.

Katy Tynan: So you can envision a state of mind, a state of being that you are not in right now, a future state that you and your team are going to work together to get to. So, having a vision is the ability to imagine the organizational future and then inspiring other people to work together towards that. Okay, well that sounds pretty simple, but what does that mean?

Katy Tynan: Well, here’s the great examples of vision statements. And I’m not going to read these out to you. I’ll let you read them to yourselves, but when you think about an organization that has a vision or a person that’s charismatic, that has this vision, this sort of powerful sense of a future state that’s positive, you can probably think of a lot of organizations that are like that.

Katy Tynan: You can probably think of some people that you’ve worked for that are like that. But most people, have the sense in the negative. Meaning they’ve worked for an organization that has no vision and people are just kind of going through the motions. They’ve worked for team where there isn’t really a sense of vision. There’s a reactive feeling.

Katy Tynan: So, the important part as a leader of having a vision is not necessarily that you have to create it yourself. It’s that you need to look at your organization and say, “Where’s this organization going?” You need to look at your team and say, how does our team play into that? How do we help the organization achieve that goal? And then you have to look at each individual person on your team yourself included, and say, how do I contribute to that?

Katy Tynan: What’s my personal way of helping us achieve that goal, and how can I help others get there? So this idea of having a vision, and sharing that vision at the highest levels of the organization, that’s organizational leadership. But when it comes down to your team, it’s about figuring out how you guys fit into that vision. And as I said, because everyone can be a leader, it’s also about creating your own vision for yourself.

Katy Tynan: The future of you, where do you want to be in five years, 10 years? How do you want to get there and how does this particular role or this particular scenario play into that? And then once you have that vision, you need to, as a manager, and again, leadership management will be different, but typically as a manager, whether you’re a project manager or a team leader or whether, again, you’re leading yourself.

Katy Tynan: You need to translate that vision and break it down into these everyday activities. So where are we now? How are we going to get there? Where are we going to concentrate our efforts to get there? How are we allocating our resources? That’s the process of breaking down that vision into those day to day activities. The second thing that leaders do is pursue excellence.

Katy Tynan: Now that sounds sort of buzzwordy, right? Well, of course we all want to pursue excellence. But we mean it in a really tactical way that teachers pursue excellence, meaning they want people to be their best themselves and their students. They set these high expectations, they offer support, they break down barriers, and they notice when their students make progress.

Katy Tynan: So pursuing excellence is about setting this bar really high and saying, we do great stuff around here, and we want to get better all the time. We want to see ways to improve, we want to be open to suggestions for how we can be better and take risks and get feedback. So these are some of the tactical ways that leaders pursue excellence. And when you’re thinking about it in your own context, it’s really about this learning mentality, this learning culture.

Katy Tynan: And of course you guys are all here today on this webinar, because you value learning. But increasingly, as our work is changing and our workforce is changing, we’re all being asked to be creative, to do things we’ve never done before, and so it’s more and more important for leaders to model and individuals to feel that sense of how learning is important and how learning plays into the success of the organization.

Katy Tynan: So the next step in the process for the leaders, the next really critical skill is this idea of setting expectations. So we talked about the vision. You want to have that vision, and then we talked about setting the tone of excellence and saying, we expect great things. We expect you to do your best. We expect to learn and grow and now we’re talking about the tactical sense of how do you do that.

Katy Tynan: So, you create these challenges of reaching targets, but you also understand that you’re not going to hit that target every time. So it’s about feedback. It’s about improving. It’s about going from here’s the big goal to how do I get there? If you think about a runner who’s training for a marathon, they don’t just get up off their couch and suddenly run a great marathon.

Katy Tynan: They train in a lot of different ways. They run a lot of different ways. They move their body, they work out in other ways, lifting weights. They eat in a nutritional way, they do all of these things. They come together to create an environment for success. So setting the expectation that our ultimate goal is to run the marathon, but what are the milestones along the way that are going to help us get there.

Katy Tynan: How are we going to do it? So these expectations come in the form of Time; How are we going to get there? How long is it going to take? What are the milestones? Cost; what do we need in order to achieve these goals? Satisfaction; what’s that feeling going to be when we get there? What’s the customer’s experience? What’s our colleagues experienced? Who is going to experience these things?

Katy Tynan: And then finally, the bottom line part of it, which is how does this fit into the big picture and the benefits of our organization? The next skill that leaders need to have is effective communication. And we hear this time and time again. Research tells us this, that the number one skill of managers is effective communication. You can have an awesome vision.

Katy Tynan: You can really pursue excellence and set the expectation of what everyone’s going to do, but if you can’t communicate that in an effective way, it’s going to be really hard for you to achieve your goals as a leader. So here are some tips for communicating effectively. First of all, show your passion. People don’t want to work with someone who doesn’t care about the work that they do.

Katy Tynan: This goes back to the pursue excellence piece, right? If you don’t care, the people around you are not going to care. You follow someone who’s a leader who has passion for something. You also need to be clear, logical, convincing, and use plain language that people can understand. So one of the things that happens a lot in organization, some of you have probably experienced this, is a leader will get up and they’ll start explaining something and it will start going over everyone’s head.

Katy Tynan: Because they’re using terms, they’re using information that not everybody has, and it starts to get away from that really tactical, plain language of how are we going to get there together. So make it as clear as you possibly can and we’ll talk about this. And the second one we talked about being trustworthy. The other piece here which I think is really valuable to remember is storytelling.

Katy Tynan: How are people connected to this information? How are they connected to what you’re trying to share? And then obviously you want to check for understanding. You want to make sure this information is as widely available through technology as possible. So all of these elements of communication are really critical, but you can’t do anything if you’re not trustworthy.

Katy Tynan: And we’re going to talk about this in two phases, we’re going to talk about it here, and then I’m going to come right back to it in the second when we talk about the behaviors that some people do that are not helpful. That erode that leadership capability. So trust comes from consistency, it comes from reliability. It also comes from competence.

Katy Tynan: So let’s say you got on an airplane and as you walked by the cockpit, you overheard the pilot saying, “What does this button do?” How confident would you feel about their leadership? Not Very. You want to know that the person who’s steering the ship knows what they’re doing. But the third element here that I think is so important is compassion. Empathy. This idea that a leader not only is competent and knows what we’re trying to do, sets the bar high and asks for your best of work, but is compassionate and understands your perspective.

Katy Tynan: So, I know a lot of people say it’s just business. It’s not personal. You shouldn’t get emotionally involved. And I think that’s not the best advice. Because truthfully, a leader who’s not emotionally involved at some level with the people on their team, with the work that they’re doing, with the vision they’re creating. If you don’t care, you’re not going to be able to be an effective leader.

Katy Tynan: So compassion is a critical part of building trust and being a person that other people want to be around and want to work with. So how do you build trust? Well, the obvious one is you keep your promises. And that’s harder than it sounds, right? A lot of times you’re going to want to say that you can do something because that’s what people want to hear.

Katy Tynan: But if the truth is that’s not going to happen in the timeframe that you expect to do it or that other people want you to be able to do it. You don’t want to make promises that you can’t keep. So you want to under promise and over deliver. You also want to be transparent and honest in your communication about challenges, about problems. I’m sure you guys have worked for some leaders who are not transparent.

Katy Tynan: People who would not tell you the whole story and really it becomes very frustrating when you feel like you can’t do your job, you can’t do your best work, because you don’t know what’s happening and you don’t have the tools and the resources and the information that you need to be successful. So communicating, honestly, not circulating rumors obviously don’t add to the problem, and praise more than you criticize.

Katy Tynan: So [inaudible 00:20:22] as you mean very, very personally. And so when we hear praise, we tend to discount it a little bit. Whereas when we get criticized, we really take it to heart. So as a leader, when you’re thinking about giving feedback, it’s really important to have that ratio, that balance of being more positive, giving more positive feedback. Telling people when they’re doing it right than it is to tell them when they’re doing it wrong.

Katy Tynan: In fact, what I like to tell the people I’m coaching is, go for a week without criticizing anything and see how it goes. And it’s funny, you’ll realize that you actually say more negative things than you think. When you start paying attention really closely to what you’re saying. So make a conscious effort to praise more, to be positive, to notice when people are doing the right thing, as opposed to only noticing when people are doing the wrong things.

Katy Tynan: And then finally, practice what you preach, right? This is trustworthiness. If you expect people to behave in a certain way, you need to behave that way. If you want people to be responsible, if you want people to follow up, if you want people to show up to meetings on time, guess what? You need to show up to meetings on time and be responsible and follow up.

Katy Tynan: So, do what you say other people need to do. Those are just the fundamentals of building trust. Okay, so now we’re going to use that chat box again real quick and just here’s a quick scenario. You’ve got to implement an action or a policy that you know is not going to go down well. It’s going to be unpopular, like cutting staff or cutting the budget, or telling people there’s not going to be a bonus this year.

Katy Tynan: Gosh, how often has that happened? So how could you do that in a way that minimizes that erosion of trust? How can you do that in a way that people can continue to trust you? So, I want to go ahead and use the chat box real quick and just go ahead and chat any ideas that you guys have specifically, about how you might do it. ‘Transparency. Yep. ‘Deliver it with empathy.’

Katy Tynan: Oh, I love that. ‘Involve the team in the process,’ yep. In a timely manner. Oh my goodness, yes. Don’t wait until the last minute to tell people. Be positive about things. Explain why and validate exactly how people understand what’s behind the decision. Use Compassion. Exactly. You guys got it. So, when you as a leader have to deliver bad news, which happens, right?

Katy Tynan: We don’t always get to be the bearers of wonderful news. We’re not always carrying around sacks of money and saying, “Here, everybody gets raise.” We are often asking people to do hard things. We are often asking people and challenging people to do the tough stuff. So you guys are absolutely right and you’ve got it. You need to explain why, you need to be compassionate and use empathy.

Katy Tynan: You need to be transparent and honest about the process, and you need to do it in a timely, straightforward, clear manner. Excellent. Okay, so now we’re going to move onto the next topic, and there’s just a couple more of these. Again, these are the key competencies of leadership. Building confidence. So we just talked a bunch about trust and this is really just digging into the details of that.

Katy Tynan: This idea that you as a leader are instilling confidence in your team because you had that confidential yourself and I want you all to take a step back for a second, and think about someone that you’ve had in your life that has believed in you at a time that maybe you didn’t believe in you. So you went ahead and wanted to do something and you weren’t sure you could do it, and somebody else gave you that vote of confidence.

Katy Tynan: That’s the thing that leaders do, right? It’s not that they say, “I’ll do it for you.” It’s not that they say, “I’m better than you are.” It’s not that you’re building confidence in yourself as a leader, you’re building confidence in the people on your team. You’re building confidence in their own abilities, so that they can build on those successes.

Katy Tynan: So that they can get better and grow and develop, and that’s just really a fundamental skill of a great manager, is that there’s somebody who inspires people to climb those heights and to do their own best work. So building on their successes. When you see someone mastered a challenge, go ahead and put another challenge in front of them. Say, “Great, good job. You have done something amazing. Now, what do you think? Do you think you can level up?” Help people be involved in that decision making process.

Katy Tynan: We all have had managers who keep dumping things on us and yeah, maybe it feels like a challenge to the manager who saying, “Oh, I’m helping you level up your skills.” But what it feels like on the other end is you just keep putting more stuff [inaudible 00:25:48] funny. So this is a balance, right? And the more you can involve people in their own control about how they accept challenges, the better they will learn and build their own confidence.

Katy Tynan: Make it safe to fail. This is really critical. We are all doing work these days. That is typically creative work a lot of times stuff that we don’t really know how to do perfectly. And innovation is making it so that we are all trying to find newer, better, faster, higher, stronger ways of doing our work. So that means that we need to take risks, we need to try new things, but we cannot do that if we are not in an environment where it feels safe to fail.

Katy Tynan: And safe to be honest about that. So what we want, is for people to try something and then to come back and say, “Here’s what I tried, it didn’t work. I need your help or feedback on figuring that out. Can you help me?” That’s what we want. But instead, a lot of times I think in organizations where management is not as good, we are under constant pressure to innovate.

Katy Tynan: And yet we are also told that we have to execute at this really high level of perfection. So just be aware of that balance. Be Aware of that concept that if you are going to ask people to take risks, then you need to be able to create an environment where it is safe and okay if not every time the outcome is perfect. And maybe that means creating a situation where people can try things before it goes up onto the big stage.

Katy Tynan: So, rather than having someone try and fail in front of a board meeting, they could try something and do that presentation internally to the team first, get feedback, make it better, refine it, and then do that presentation to the board. So create an environment where people feel comfortable testing their own limits. And then finally, don’t compare people to each other.

Katy Tynan: This is all about strength based management. Everyone has their unique strengths and everyone is different. And you want to try and create an environment where each person is able to be successful, not where you have one winner and everybody else is eliminated. So don’t compare people one to the other, but build on those strengths and create an environment where people can do their best work.

Katy Tynan: All right. Enthusiasm. This is key. Again, it goes back to what I said before about caring about your work. Nobody wants to work for someone who doesn’t care about what they’re doing. Nobody wants to come to work and have an environment where people are just going through the motions. So enthusiasm is a critical part of the manager’s role. It’s about setting the tone.

Katy Tynan: So here are some important things about creating an enthusiastic environment in the area you work. And again, I just want to go back to saying, you don’t have to be a manager to do these things. Being enthusiastic, bringing your level of enthusiasm. Even if this is your very first job, this is something that you want to do, but it’s even more critical when you’re the leader, because you’re modeling that positive attitude.

Katy Tynan: That we can do it attitude, and that we’re going to do it together. So when you’re enthusiastic, other people will naturally want to follow. They’ll want to be on your team. You will draw people to you by bringing enthusiasm. You create that energy and people are willing to go the extra mile when they’re working with someone who’s very enthusiastic.

Katy Tynan: So you’re building your personal brand, and every day that you come to work, the way that you approach your work. People take note of that and then that’s how they think of you. So thinking in your head, what do I want to be known for? What kind of a person do I want to be? And think about who you want to work with. And what you’ll typically find, is that the people you most want to work with are the people who bring that enthusiasm and that passion to their work.

Katy Tynan: And then finally, the last key skill that leaders need to have is the sense of service. And you may have heard the term servant leadership, which is a specific model of leadership. But in general when we’re thinking about leadership, we’re thinking about how our role, how our behaviors impact others. So let’s think about it in terms of a job for a minute. And then we’re going to go back and think about it in terms of your life.

Katy Tynan: But if you are a manager, if you’re a business owner, if you are in HR, if you’re in a role where you are thinking about talent and talent strategy, you have this sense of responsibility towards the people that you’re working with. That company, that job, that role is important to the lives of those people who are on your team. And so, a servant leader starts by thinking from the perspective of that sense of responsibility.

Katy Tynan: It’s a commitment to helping people get better, to helping people be their best selves and really to helping people become the people that they want to be and grow and develop. And finally, it’s this willingness to make sacrifices to meet employee’s needs. And for those of you who have been employees for a lot of your life, that may feel kind of foreign, right?

Katy Tynan: Because we’re told, “Oh, your company doesn’t care about you. You’re a commodity. You could get fired any time.” We hear a lot of those things, but the truth is talent right now is one of the most essential competitive advantages that businesses have. So companies are highly, highly motivated to find great people who are a good fit, and then help them grow and develop.

Katy Tynan: So, as a manager, your role in that is to think from a service perspective, how can I be of service to these people on my team? How can I help them grow and develop with the understanding that when you help those people grow, what you are also doing is helping your organization move forward in a really positive, proactive way. So, that’s the essence of servant leadership, and I want to just talk really quickly because we don’t have a ton of time about servant leadership in life.

Katy Tynan: It’s this approach and this idea when you’re not thinking about it from a work perspective, but thinking about it from a life perspective of going and seeing how you can help. Approaching the world in a how can I help way, as opposed to what are these other people going to do for me? So it’s just a mindset and an approach that great leaders tend to have, the idea of how can we make things better?

Katy Tynan: How can we leave this situation in a better state than it was, when we got here? So here are some behaviors that show that you’re doing the right thing on this. First of all, are you listening? Like really genuinely listening. And again, this is something I think that is worth doing a little experiment with. Sit down with somebody, whether it’s somebody on your team or maybe it’s a friend or a colleague and just commit to 10 minutes of listening to them and saying nothing and having a completely blank face.

Katy Tynan: But you’re asking questions, you’re engaging with them about whatever issue or situation they’re talking about. But always with the sense of you trying to understand them better. Not trying to interject your own thoughts, not making recommendations and suggestions, not telling them when that happened to you the last time or your funny story, but really, really listening.

Katy Tynan: And you will find that even 10 minutes of active listening, just incredibly strongly builds a relationship with people. And it’s rare. We don’t often have that time to devote to studying and listening to people in a meaningful way. You also want to let people know that they’ve been heard. You want to respond to them. How can you help? Once you’ve asked that question, how can I help? Then you want to respond to that.

Katy Tynan: If they ask you, “Could you do this?” Yes, I can. And then follow through and do it. So, that’s the trustworthy element. Engage with people and care about those people in a meaningful way, in a human way, as a one person to another. So these are elements of servant leadership and they are just sort of these basic fundamentals of how leaders approach the work of creating a vision and getting people to buy into that shared vision.

Katy Tynan: What can we do together that makes this company, that makes this team, that makes this world a better place that’s inspiring and that’s how you inspire people to take action. Okay, so we’ve just talked about these seven specific behaviors that good managers do and I’m just going to run through them real quick again as a reminder, which is having and sharing a vision, pursuing excellence, communicating effectively, being trustworthy, building confidence, being enthusiastic and serving others.

Katy Tynan: So those are the key behaviors that create the sense of leadership that inspire people to work with you. Now, I’m going to talk quickly about some behaviors that undermine leadership and some of these maybe familiar to you because there are certainly people out in the world who are not great managers. So the first one is, lack of transparency. How many of you guys have worked for a boss who hides things who holds onto information and doles it out to their favorites but doesn’t tell everybody or organizations that have a hidden agenda.

Katy Tynan: They say they’re in it for the power of the positive good that they’re doing, but you know, they’re all about the money or they let people go and then they say, “Oh, you know, those people weren’t doing what we needed them to do.” But the reality is, you know, that they just needed to make those cuts in order to have more net profit at the end of the month.

Katy Tynan: So lack of transparency, hidden agendas, inconsistency and unpredictability. All of these things make people disengaged. They make them disconnect. And that’s a problem in the work world. Because we want people to be connected, we want them to be engaged. So when you’re being transparent, you need to be authentic. You need to come and say, “I’m sharing something with you because I think it’s important for you to know it.”

Katy Tynan: So you can talk a lot, but it doesn’t mean you’re communicating the important thing. So as a manager, as a leader, it’s important to step back on a regular basis and say, “What am I putting out there? And what of it is important? And maybe I don’t need to fill the airwaves all the time, but maybe I just need to focus on communicating the essential messages rather than talking all the time.”

Katy Tynan: So here are just some great tips for how to communicate more effectively. These are some specific things that when you’re being transparent, you talk about organizational changes, financial performance, how are we doing as a company? What are our goals? You’d be amazed at how many organizations feel like the business plan is a big secret and no one should know about it, but everybody in the company needs to know what we’re trying to do. Otherwise, we’re just guessing about what the priorities should be.

Katy Tynan: We’re just guessing about what the right decision should be. So these are some elements that are certainly things that transparent organizations share, but even if the organization isn’t transparent, if you’re in a leadership role and you know some of this stuff, it’s stuff that you want to share with your team so that they can understand what’s happening and feel confident and feel like they can focus. And I just want to highlight here because it comes up a lot when we talk about transparency.

Katy Tynan: The one thing that will make people disengage faster than anything else is if you make them feel uncertain about whether they’re going to have their job for a period of time. People depend on their work to pay their bills, to plan vacations, to put food on the table, to do all these things, and the minute that you make people worried about their livelihood, is the minute they start sending out their resumes.

Katy Tynan: So when you are transparent, when you help people feel like they know what’s coming and they’re not worried about unexpectedly losing their jobs, they’re going to be able to focus more clearly on their work instead of worrying about what might be happening behind the scenes. So that’s transparency. Here’s the second behavior that undermines leadership. Neglect. These are bosses who don’t pay attention, who are withdrawn themselves, maybe who are disengaged.

Katy Tynan: These are typically leadership and management behaviors, where you have someone who is not paying attention, they’re not closely connected, they’re not bringing their passion and their enthusiasm to their work. So this is phrased as a question, right? Would your employees, would the people you work with, your colleagues, your stakeholders, your customers, would any of these people say, “Gosh, I never hear from this person, or they’re not interested in me, or they don’t know what I can do, and what I can’t do, and that’s just a symptom, typically have somebody who isn’t focused on connecting with people.

Katy Tynan: So here’s some tips for actively engaging people so that you don’t fall into that neglect to bucket, right? Don’t hide in your office. Not that most of us have an office these days because you know the open office schemes are all the rage and most of us are sitting right at where everyone can see. But a lot of us are also working from home, working remotely, working in a large organization. So whether it’s physically or metaphorically, don’t hide from the people that you work with.

Katy Tynan: Go out and engage with people, and it doesn’t have to be all day every day, but on a regular basis. You want to be having one on one conversations with the people who are critical to your team, with the people who are your colleagues, with the people who are your peers in the organization. You want to work with people to understand their individual goals, to make sure that people understand what the organization is doing. But really, and most importantly, you want to help people understand that you care about them at a very personal and individual level.

Katy Tynan: So ask people about themselves, ask them how they’re feeling and how they’re doing. Ask them, what’s going on that they feel great about and maybe what’s something that they would like to change. I think a lot of organizations wait until an exit interview to have some of these conversations, right? They don’t ask people what’s worrying them or what’s bothering them or what they wish was different until it’s too late.

Katy Tynan: So as a leader, you want to always be engaged with people and I know what you’re saying and you’re a little bit right, which is what if people don’t tell you? Well, sometimes they don’t. But that comes from trust. So people who trust you and have confidence that you hear them, that you’re interested in what they have to say, that you’re going to take action on what they have to say. They will tell you those things.

Katy Tynan: But if you don’t build that confidence and you don’t build that trust, then you won’t be able to have that open dialogue. So develop those relationships and work with those individuals to help them figure out and know what their growth plan is, and then you won’t have to worry about being a neglectful boss. And then the last one here is unwillingness to change.

Katy Tynan: Who has worked for a manager or an organization that is stuck in a rut. All of us probably, right? Where things are the way they are because they’ve always been that way. And unfortunately in this day and age, you can’t survive as a business with that attitude. Innovation and change is all around us. It happens all day, every day, and so we all need to be comfortable [inaudible 00:43:43] and we need to be willing to change, to innovate, and to learn and to grow.

Katy Tynan: So as a leader, when somebody comes to you and makes a suggestion, you want to step back. You might feel defensive and say, “Gosh, why are you criticizing me?” But you need to step back and say, “Hey, here’s an opportunity. Maybe I do need to change. Maybe we as an organization need to change.” So definitely be open to and welcome these new ideas because those are also a great way to grow and to develop your people.

Katy Tynan: So now we’re going to shift gears, right? So we’ve just talked about the behaviors that undermine leadership. So we talked about the things that are good. We talked about the things that are bad and those include this lack of transparency, neglect, unwillingness to change. Now I want to talk quickly about leadership impact, and how you have an impact on the people around you.

Katy Tynan: So the way that you impact people is through influence, right? I can’t tell you how many managers come to me when I’m coaching them or when I’m doing a management training, and they say, “Katy, I really thought management was about telling people what to do. And I realized that’s not what it’s all about.” And I’m like, “Yeah, that is totally true.” None of us. And if we think about it in the other direction, right? None of us wants to be told what to do.

Katy Tynan: That’s not inspiring. So what you want to do as a manager is influence people to be their best selves, inspire them to achieve goals together. So how do you do that? Well, first of all, it comes back to that clear articulation and communication around the vision itself. The more clearly you can paint that picture of that ideal future state and inspire confidence in others that we can get there together, the more people will want to be part of your process.

Katy Tynan: You also want to anticipate the idea that not everyone’s going to agree with you, that it’s not going to be completely smooth, that we’re going to have bumps on the road along the way. So you’re going to need to be patient and flexible. You’re going to need to focus on some of the behaviors that need to change. I don’t know how many times I have said this, but if we are here today and we want to be somewhere else tomorrow, that means we need to change.

Katy Tynan: And I know that sounds obvious, but habits are really hard to break. It’s really hard to change and so as a leader, what you’re trying to do is identify those behaviors that each individual person and collectively as a team we need to do differently. And then you need to be patient because that change doesn’t happen overnight. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to quit some kind of a bad habit, but it doesn’t work the first time.

Katy Tynan: You know, you decide on a Monday that you’re going to stop eating junk food and then you know, it’s Tuesday afternoon and you’re starving and you hit the snack machine. So what are you going to do? Are you going to stop and say, “Gosh, I failed. I’m never going to try that again?” No, you need to be patient. You need to look at your motivation. Maybe you need to try having some more, nutritious snacks in your drawer, or you need to go for a walk or whatever, you need a different approach.

Katy Tynan: But as a leader, when you’re trying to get people to make those changes, you need to have all kinds of tools in your toolbox for how you’re going to do that. And that all comes from influence as opposed to from telling people what to do and how to do it. And then finally, I just want to talk a little bit here about promoting teamwork. So I’ve talked a lot today about supporting individuals and helping individuals do their best work and as a leader, that’s really your job.

Katy Tynan: But in addition, there’s this team view, this team perspective that you need to have as well. So how do we get people not just to try and do their own great work, but to work better together? Well, there’s a lot of different theories on this, and again, I said at the outset, each and every one of these topics could be a whole webinar in and of itself, but teamwork comes from helping people share the same goal and then recognizing that they each bring their own individual talents to that solution.

Katy Tynan: So you need to create, if you can, a team that has all of the right skills to get where you’re trying to go. That’s the basics of teamwork. Then you need to set these expectations that together we’re all holding up this work that we’re doing as a team and if any one of us slacks off, we’re not going to make it, so how do we promote that idea of putting the team ahead and making sure that our shared goal is just as important as any of our individual goals.

Katy Tynan: Part of that comes from you pitching in and working alongside. Part of that comes from observing and being part of the conversation before you take action, and also from having these regular meetings together to promote this sense of team identity. How are we together doing this? Now again, I’m just going to make a comment here because I’ve managed a lot of remote teams, that I don’t mean you have to do this in person, right?

Katy Tynan: You don’t have to go out for drinks or go for coffees or go for lunches. In fact, in a lot of cases, that’s not possible, but you do have to have some way of communicating, collaborating, and getting together as a team so you can stay on the same page. And technology is great for that. So you can leverage things like these collaboration tools. You can leverage all kinds of different tools and techniques to do this, but being able to pull a team together and to reiterate what are we trying to do?

Katy Tynan: Oh, that’s right. This is our shared goal, this is why we’re all working so hard. And to identify, huh somebody is stuck over here, and they need help and we don’t want them to just be sitting alone in their cube or in their open office or in their house saying, “I’m stuck and I need help and I don’t know what to do.” So those are some of the ways that good leaders promote teamwork, and help everyone have a shared goal, a shared idea of what success looks like.

Katy Tynan: Okay. So now we’re onto the last two topics, which is first of all, acting decisively and then going to talk about leading in a crisis. So these are just some tips for the fast paced world that we live in. So we’ve talked all throughout this hour about general leadership qualities and behaviors and all of those things are easier talked about than done, particularly when things are coming at you in a million miles an hour, right?

Katy Tynan: So it would be great if you had all the time in the world to sit back and say, “Okay, I need to plan one on ones with everyone and I didn’t need to be really thoughtful and I need to take time to active listen, and oh my gosh, the pace of work just does not always allow you to do that. So how do you act decisively? How do you move quickly through some of these decisions that come to you as a leader rapidly?

Katy Tynan: Well, first of all, you need to ask a lot of questions. I think there’s a lot of new leaders who feel like the important thing is to make a decision really fast, but it is much more effective to ask questions initially and to leverage the knowledge of your team. So I would actually put this in the little bit of a different order here, which is decide what you need to know, then ask the questions that you need to gather the information that’s necessary for you to make that decision.

Katy Tynan: And then, turn that information into knowledge. Once you know what you need to know, you need to pull in those experts that are going to help you make sense of that information and then finally you can move on to making a decision. This is the power of all the other things that we’ve talked about today, which is if you have built confidence, and trust on your team, if you’ve been transparent. When something happens, that’s a sudden need to make a decision.

Katy Tynan: When you need to act, all of those things that you did before, have built an environment where you can quickly pull people together and get the information you need, trust the people that are giving you that information and make sure that you can move forward quickly and decisively. But I’m also going to say sometimes you’re going to make the wrong decision. And the wrong decision right now, is better than the right decision too late. So even if you have the best information that you can possibly have, sometimes you’re still going to make the wrong decision.

Katy Tynan: So the last thing we’re going to talk about today and then I’m going to open it up quickly for Q&A and again, if we have questions that go beyond the timeframe, I will answer them in some blog posts and some things like that as well. But this last piece is just about demonstrating leadership in a crisis. It’s just what we talked about, being decisive, communicating frequently, being positive, getting together and brainstorming options, coming up with solutions based on what the smart, talented people on your team have to offer, as opposed to feeling like you have to be the smartest person in the room.

Katy Tynan: So all of this is just bringing together all of the other things that we’ve talked about today, about how to lead effectively, after you’ve built that base of the fundamentals. So I’m just going to quickly go back through the stuff that we’ve talked about and then we’ll wrap up and I will answer questions you have. So, we talked about the characteristics of the leaders, those seven key characteristics that leaders typically have, we talked about some of the behaviors that undermine leadership, and we’ve talked about ways to act decisively and to demonstrate leadership in a crisis situation.

Katy Tynan: All of this information that we’ve talked about today is available on the HRDQ library and it does also reproducible, again, for your organization. So you can talk to HRDQ to find out more about some of these tools and resources that will let you take some of this information that I know was a lot to cover in an hour, and disseminate it throughout your organization.

Katy Tynan: So I want to thank you guys so much for being part of this Webinar and for joining me today. And I will go ahead and take a quick look at the chat box and the question box and see if there’re any questions that people have. So one question already came up. “Will this webinar be available to be viewed later? I see it’s being recorded?” Yes, I do believe the Webinar will be made available to you guys and that you’ll be able to, watch a recording of it later and it will be posted on HRDQ.

Katy Tynan: And if you registered for this, you will receive a followup email, I believe that has that information. The slides, I’m not sure whether those will be part of, they’ll obviously be part of the recording of the Webinar, but I don’t know if you’ll be able to get those standalone. So I’m going to let Sarah answer that one, if she has an answer for that.

Sarah: Yep. The slides, we’re not going to be emailing the slides thereafter. So go ahead, download them now. And yes, the webinar will be online probably about tomorrow. So you can always do it on demand then. We do have questions coming in, but I don’t think we’re going to have time for that live Q&A. Like Katy said though, please feel free [inaudible 00:55:59] those questions into the chat box.

Sarah: I’ll be marking down those questions and then I’ll send them over to Katy, and she’ll answer those for you and we’ll probably send those out either on the blog or in an email. And Katy, could you just go on next slide and also Katy’s contact information. Any more questions for her, I’ll shoot her an email and if you could see just over the next slide.

Katy Tynan: I can, there we go.

Sarah: Thank you. Perfect. Yeah, we’re offering a 15% discount for leadership one-on-one, which was the foundation of today’s session. Just go ahead, and use webinar leadership at checkout. If you’ve any questions, get in touch with our customer service team and also look out for upcoming webinars on hrdqu.com. So Katy, thank you so much. That was wonderful. Would like to add any final thoughts for I just go ahead and wrap up then?

Katy Tynan: No, thank you guys so much. It’s been great.

Sarah: All right, perfect. Thank you Katy and everybody on the line. We appreciate your time and we hope you found this webinar informative. Thanks all. Bye.

This was a rewarding session and I have benefited from all the tips on leadership. Tis definitely will further enhance my leadership skills and my team performance. Thank you.