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Second Crack — The Leadership Podcast

Gerrit Pelzer, Martin Aldergard

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Leadership Consultant Martin Aldergard and Executive Coach Gerrit Pelzer explore everyday leadership dilemmas and paradoxes. Get ready for thought-provoking questions which invite self-reflection and help you grow as a leader. More info: https://secondcrackleadership.com
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Top 10 Second Crack — The Leadership Podcast Episodes

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04/27/23 • 46 min

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From our experience in executive coaching and leadership development we see again and again that self-awareness is absolutely mission critical for self-development and personal growth. And of course, we can ask the question: Is there a link between a leader's self-awareness and his or her leadership effectiveness?

To help us answer this question, we have a great guest on the show, Dr. Nia Thomas.

Key moments

[05:19] Nia shares what triggered her curiosity about leadership and self-awareness

[08:04] Most important findings from Nia’s research. The “strategic level disconnect” between what people at the most senior levels of the organizations are setting in motion and what they seem to be thinking, compared to what others are thinking. One element of this is filtered feedback, and regardless of organisation, in a senior leadership position you will get filtered feedback, which means that you are disconnect to the rest of the organisation to a greater or lesser extent.

[16:14] Identified 3 layers of Leadership Self-awareness

  1. Reflection or Internal self-awareness, which is about me looking inward, knowing myself.
  2. Recognition or Internal social self-awareness, is about recognising that people are observing me and have opinions about me.
  3. Regulation or External social self-awareness, which is about regulating my behavior based on knowing myself, and knowing how others see me.

[27:40] Is there a correlation between a leader's self-awareness and their effectiveness?

The answer is a resounding yes - but. Leaders with high degree of self-awareness is an essential component to generate success. However, many organisations say it’s their aspiration, however the reality is, it’s not happening everywhere.

[31:28] What are potential dilemmas or challenges leaders might encounter when developing, or sharpening, their self-awareness?

  • Need to recognise that self-awareness is an ongoing journey that you need to invest your time and effort
  • The risk of filtered feedback, especially as a more senior leader
  • Situations of stress, when we can’t cope to regulate our behavior
  • ‘Busyness’ and seen to always be doing something, with no space for reflection

Self-awareness is a journey - “Know thyself, but ensure you keep reacquainting yourself”.

Reflection Questions:

  • Stop and ask: Can I describe how I think others see me?
    If I can't, how will I develop my antenna, my space, my opportunity to be able to answer that question?
  • What are the situations where I need to be more self-aware of my own behavior and its impact on my effectiveness as a leader?
  • What do I need to focus on to increase my self-awareness?
  • What are certain circumstances, situations, or people that either enhance or deplete my self-awareness?

---

Get in touch with Nia through LinkedIn Dr. Nia Thomas or email at [email protected]
---

More info about us and our work on our website: secondcrackleadership.com
Do you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions for us? Would you like to explore how we can help you to drive results in your organisations through a company-wide initiative or individual executive coaching? Then email us at [email protected] or connect on LinkedIn.
Gerrit Pelzer
Martin Aldergård

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04/27/23 • 46 min

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08/24/23 • 48 min

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A 360 Degree Feedback may be the most powerful leadership development tool you will ever use — if you use it correctly.
Feedback holds the key to successful leadership development. Despite our well-intentioned endeavours, our actions may not always align with our intentions in the eyes of others. The most successful leaders understand how they are perceived by others and adjust their actions and manage perception accordingly.
Receiving candid feedback is not always pleasant, but it invariably provides you with an opportunity to improve and develop as a leader.
A 360 Degree Feedback is a multi-rater assessment that weaves together insights from diverse vantage points. These vantage points, ranging from superiors and peers to subordinates and self-assessment, converge to provide a well-rounded picture of how others see you in comparison to how you see yourself.
This powerful tool, however, often falls short of its potential due to oversight in key aspects. A successful 360 journey commences with meticulous pre-process preparation, continues with accurate result interpretation, and ultimately requires taking the right actions to help you grow as a leader and create the desired impact.
Before Embarking on the 360 Degree Feedback Journey:

  • Define Your Purpose: Articulate why you are pursuing the 360 Degree Feedback and be clear on the context.
  • Curate Your Raters: Enlist a diverse and representative array of raters, not just your best friends.
  • Personal Invitations: Extend personalised invitations to your raters, and encourage them to provide ample text answers rather than mere ratings.

Receiving Your 360 Degree Feedback Results:

  • Guided Interpretation: Ensure you have a debriefing session with an executive coach certified in the 360 Degree Feedback tool you are using. A professional coach can help you navigate through a complex report and put things into perspective, enabling you to interpret the results correctly and gain the most from your 360 for effective leadership development.
  • Attitude is Key: Embrace an open mindset and resist the instinct to be defensive when confronting critiques. Approach feedback as a snapshot of external perception at a particular point in time.
  • Explore Alignment an Discrepancies: Explore hidden strengths recognised by others and blind spots wehre your self-assessment overshoots. Look for consistencies and inconsistencies in the ratings and comments. Scrutinise congruences and divergences within and between rater groups.

Take Effective Actions for Your Personal Growth:

  • Seek More Feedback: Paradoxically, often the 360 Degree Feedback is only the start for receiving more feedback: engage with selected raters, sharing insights from your report. Seek further clarification and request specific suggestions for improvement.
  • Holistic Growth: Development involves more than overcoming weaknesses. Capitalising on your strengths while bridging gaps is the pathway toward exceptional leadership.
  • A Coach's Guiding Hand: Collaborating with an executive coach can truly propel your personal growth. For most people, changing behavioural patters and unproductive habits is more difficult and time-consuming than they think. Busy executives tend to focus on their projects and day-to-day work, often neglecting their own development. “A coach really, really helps”, as Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO, famously noted.

Get in touch with us:
web: secondcrackleadership.com
email: [email protected]

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08/24/23 • 48 min

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10/26/23 • 45 min

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In this episode, we share insights from a 12-month project where we involved all executives, managers and employees in shaping and implementing a new vision and strategy for growth. The project resulted in re-energizing and motivating 700 people at a large chemical manufacturing plant, fostering not only business expansion but also fortifying a sense of ownership and teamwork across the site.

Key takeaways

  • Approach vision and strategy as a process, implementation included
  • Involve people in co-creating the vision & strategy to cultivate a sense of ownership and use the collective intelligence of the organisation
  • While the process requires more time upfront, the investment pays off rapidly during the implementation phase

Key moments

01:28 - Introduction to the case

A brief overview of the case company and the overall approach to the project.

05:02 - Phase 1: Gathering input

We delve into how we engaged numerous individuals right from the project's inception, seeking their perspectives on the future direction. Our emphasis was on understanding people, their ideas, motivations, hopes, and concerns. Unlike conventional strategy planning, there was minimal focus on data collection and SWOT analysis in this phase.

08:43 - Phase 2: Shaping the initial vision and strategy

We discuss how, through guided conversations, we transformed initially diverse opinions into a shared vision and strategy by the end of the process. Our focus was on creating opportunities for dialogue, ensuring a shared context, and facilitating co-creation.

16:18 - Phase 3: Defining a clear and concise vision & strategy

We address the most challenging phase of the project: transitioning from 'brainstorming' to making decisive choices to arrive at a clear and concise strategy ready for implementation. We share the four pillars of the strategy that were developed, highlighting how it was laser-focused on making the growth vision a reality.

28:02 - Phase 4: Supporting implementation

We explore the structure we established to facilitate follow-up, learning, and adaptation during the project's implementation phase. This included monthly leadership workshops, individual executive coaching, and effective communication and involvement of all employees.

Reflection Questions

  • What would I need to consider when designing my strategy process?
  • For instance, how long time do I have? Who needs to be involved? What role does my leadership team play in the process? Who owns the process and how are decisions made? How can I engage managers and employees? What role will they assume? How prepared are managers and employees to be involved? How prepared am I and the leadership team for increased involvement in the strategy process?
  • Based on this, how can I create the conditions that everybody can be involved? How do I make sure everyone's voice is heard?
  • Additionally, how can I, as a leader of a local entity or unit within a larger organization, approach the strategy process differently? How can I drive a growth vision and strategy that doesn't necessarily have to originate from the headquarters?

More info about us and our work is also on our website: secondcrackleadership.com.
Do you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions for us? Would you like to explore how we can help you to drive results in your organisations through a company-wide initiative or individual executive coaching? Then email us at [email protected].
To connect with us on LinkedIn:
Martin Aldergård
Gerrit Pelzer

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10/26/23 • 45 min

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09/22/22 • 44 min

In our series on the Inner Development Goals (IDG), we have already covered Being and Thinking. Today, we discuss the third IDG category: RELATING

Many leaders are focused on action to get results. The importance of relationships is often underestimated, as we discussed in Relationships at Work. Sometimes leaders intentionally want to keep a “professional distance” thinking it helps them to “stay in power”. “We are here to get the job done, not for relationships.” But in reality, we need relationships to get results.

The IDG framework offers practical guidance for leaders to improve relationships by developing four skills and qualities:

1) Connectedness: Having a keen sense of being connected with and/or being a part of a larger whole, such as a community, humanity or global ecosystem.

Modern science confirms what wisdom traditions like Buddhism have known for over 2,500 years: everything and everyone is interconnected. We can’t exist in isolation, we “inter-are.” We are part of a larger system. Leaders can’t stay outside the system.

Leaders need to strengthen the connection with this system. Improving the connection with others helps on the task level and get better results.

Reflection Questions:

  • What is my intention and mindset when I am about to interact with other people? Can I be curious and interested in the others?
  • What does a great "connection" feel like?
  • How well did I connect with people at work today?
  • What can I do tomorrow to make a great connection with people?

2) Humility: Being able to act in accordance with the needs of the situation, without concern for one's own importance.

Humility helps to make leaders more approachable. A humble leader can say, “I don’t know. I need your help.” Being humble does not mean you can’t be tough and have a strong drive for results. Humility is not a weakness, on the contrary: it takes confidence to show humility.

Reflection Questions:

  • Am I confident enough to be humble?
  • Does our culture allow people to be humble?

3) Empathy and Compassion: Ability to relate to others, oneself and nature with kindness, empathy and compassion and the intention to address related suffering.

Empathy means having a sense of what is going on in another person, especially what they are experiencing emotionally. Emotions provide the energy for action. Thus, leaders need to understand what emotions they might trigger in other people.

Compassion relates to the intention of reducing another person’s suffering.

Reflection Questions:

  • How aware am of my own emotions?
  • How good am I at having a sense of what other people are experiencing?
  • How often do I switch on my empathy “antennas”?

4) Appreciation: Relating to others and to the world with a basic sense of appreciation, gratitude and joy.

We can be so busy and focused on problem-solving that we completely forget to appreciate what is already good in our lives or what we and others have accomplished. Appreciation means not taking other people and their work for granted. Appreciation can be expressed in simple things like saying ‘thank you’. Expressing that other people are doing a great job and you as a leader notice this.

Being appreciated is a strong motivational factor at work.

Reflection Questions:

  • How do I show my appreciation at work?
  • What might I take for granted (people and tasks) in my everyday life?

More info about us and our work: secondcrackleadership.com

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09/22/22 • 44 min

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06/23/22 • 30 min

There are already hundreds of leadership models. And most companies have well-established competency frameworks for leadership. So why should we care about another model?

In this episode, we explore The Inner Development Goals (IDG) model and why we think IDG is a powerful tool for leadership development and organisational transformation.

WHAT'S IDG?

IDG was created in 2021 by three Swedish organisations: Ekskäret Foundation, The New Division, and the 29K Foundation. The purpose is to draw attention to the development of inner abilities and skills needed for people and organisations to contribute to a more sustainable global society.

"There is a vision of what needs to happen, but progress along this vision has so far been disappointing. We lack the inner capacity to deal with our increasingly complex environment and challenges. Fortunately, modern research shows that the inner abilities we now all need can be developed. This was the starting point for the 'Inner Development Goals' initiative.”

Quote from www.innerdevelopmentgoals.org

WHAT WE LIKE ABOUT IDG

We were immediately drawn to the clear structure: change starts from within, then addressing how we need to develop our thinking, connect and relate to others, collaborate and finally act.

This, in its parts, is nothing new. What is different and powerful is how the parts are put together in an easy-to-understand and easy-to-use framework.

We also like that IDG is co-created by over 1,000 thought leaders, consultants and professionals, combining the best global thinking on leadership. The broad base of support behind IDG makes it generally applicable for all leaders to use.

THE 5 CATEGORIES

IDG is structured along 5 categories, with 23 skills. In this episode, we give a quick introduction to how they are relevant.

Being — Relationship to Self

Thinking — Cognitive Skills

Relating — Caring for Others and the World

Collaborating — Social Skills

Acting — Driving Change

We will cover each category in more detail in separate episodes.

HOW CAN LEADERS BENEFIT FROM IDG?

We have already found immediate use of IDG in our own work as coaches and consultants, applying it with senior leadership teams and in leadership development.

IDG is also an effective tool to help increase momentum and scale in corporate transformation, not only directly related to sustainability. It helps create shared mental models and language for leaders to identify and develop the necessary skills across the organisation.

A third use is in supporting suppliers and other external partners in their development.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

  • Looking at the most complex challenges (e.g. sustainability) your organisation is facing:
    • where might a different approach be needed to create more momentum?
    • might there be too much focus on the 'technical' aspects and too little on the 'inner development' that enables change?
    • where do I/we need to work on my/our' inner development'?
  • Looking at the current leadership model in your organisation:
    • how effective is it in identifying and developing the critical inner skills and qualities that matter most for your transformation and change?
    • what inspiration might you draw from the IDG model?

REFERENCES

Find more information related to IDG at innerdevelopmentgoals.org

And more info about us and our work at secondcrackleadership.com

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06/23/22 • 30 min

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05/26/22 • 35 min

Today, leadership takes place in a challenging context, e.g.,

  • increasing complexity
  • increasing speed of change
  • information overload

Thus, decision-making processes become more difficult. Leaders are at risk of either delaying decisions (gathering more information) or over-simplifying and rushing to decisions.

In an increasingly complex world, single leaders or small groups of leaders can’t have all the answers. Instead, they need to involve the whole team in sense-making and decision-making processes.

Involving more people may seem counterintuitive, as if it delayed decisions further. However, utilising the collective intelligence of the people leads to better decisions and gets buy-in from the start. (See also “How to Speed-Up Corporate Transformation”)

The need to be competent may also keep leaders from involving more people. They associate competence with having all the answers and giving people clear directions and instructions.

Of course, leaders need to have professional knowledge and business acumen. But they do not have to be the smartest person in the room. Today, the leader's role is less of an expert. Instead, leaders must surround themselves with the best talent, align them around a common goal, and create the conditions under which they can be their best.

Ron Heifetz says that leaders must distinguish technical problems from adaptive challenges. For technical problems solutions exist already. A leader or an expert has the answer and can tell people what to do. In contrast, an adaptive challenge is totally new. No experts have the answer yet.

“The leader's job is not to provide the answer, but instead to frame the right questions for which answers are developed and discovered by the collective intelligence of the people.”

Being competent in today’s context is less about knowledge but instead about qualities we have covered in previous episodes such as being humble, understanding that human beings are driven by emotions , and that trust-based relationships are the foundation for performance.

According to Daniel H. Pink, leaders need to turn from bosses who tell others what to do into autonomy supporters. This can be done using coaching skills, including listening and asking powerful questions.

What might keep leaders from utilising the collective intelligence of the people:

  • The perceived need to express competence by having all the answers and tell others what to do; the fear that asking questions equals looking incompetent.
  • Past successes, such as frequent promotions, may make leaders think they do know better, they are smarter than others.
  • They don’t belief in their teams and struggle with letting go of control, or removing themselves from the centre of decision-making.

Reflection Questions for Leaders

  • How comfortable am I not knowing?
  • Do I feel I need to have all the answers? Or do I still appear competent when I ask questions and say, “I don't know”?
  • Do I feel a need to demonstrate I am the smartest person in the room?
    If yes: why? How can I let go of this?
  • How open am I to ways of working that are different from mine?
  • Do I believe in the potential of the people I'm working with?
  • What role do I want to take in this process as a leader? Am I going to be the expert, or am I going to be more like a coach, a facilitator, an enabler, or might I be an observer?

More info about us and our work is on our website https://secondcrackleadership.com.

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05/26/22 • 35 min

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Last time, we explored The Inner Development Goals — THE Leadership Model for the Future. Now, we take a deeper dive into the first category of this Framework: "Being — Relationship to Self"
Traditional leadership models tend to focus a on the actions ("doing") a leader has to take to be successful. However, the underlying "being" sets the stage for what actions we take and how we take them.
The IDG highlights five specific qualities and skills for leaders:
1) INNER COMPASS
Your inner compass gives you a sense of direction. It's about your core values and beliefs.
Challenge: We are so busy "doing", we rarely take time to stop and pause, and to reflect on the real priorities in our lives.
Reflection Questions:

  • What are your core values in life that make you judge things as right or wrong?
  • What really matters in your life? What gives you a sense of meaning and purpose?

2) INTEGRITY AND AUTHENTICITY
A strong inner compass enables us to act with integrity and authenticity. It is related to trust and honesty, a top characteristic of admired leaders.
Challenges: If we are not clear about where our inner compass is pointing , we may act inconsistently. We might worry if we can show up as our true selves at work.

Reflection Questions:

  • Are you practicing what you preach? Are you walking your own talk?
  • Do you trust you can be "your self " at work?

3) SELF-AWARENESS
Every change process starts with (self-)awareness. Beyond the obvious (e.g., strengths and weaknesses), outstanding leaders are also aware of their emotions and bodily sensations. They are aware of how these impact them and their interactions with others.
Challenges: As with the inner compass, building awareness may not be seen as a priority. When people do not know about the underlying biology, emotions and bodily sensations may be ridiculed as esoteric nonsense . Some may be afraid of what they might find when they start some self-exploration.
Reflection Questions:

  • How aware am I of my self?
  • How aware am I of my emotions ?
  • How do these emotions impact me and how can I regulate them productively?
  • How aware am of my body's signals (interoception) and can I interpret these signals in a useful way?
  • How do other people perceive me?

4) PRESENCE
The ability to be in the here and now and in a sate of open-ended presence. The quality of our presence is of critical importance particularly in our interactions with others.
Challenge: We have too many things on our minds. We may think that multi-tasking is more efficient than staying focused on just one task.
Reflection Questions:

  • How able am I to be in the here and now without thinking what's next?
  • How able am I to make a connection with another person ?
  • How present can I stay with a task or a person beyond just a few seconds?

5) OPENNESS and LEARNING MINDSET
Having a basic mindset of curiosity and a willingness to be vulnerable and embrace change and grow.

Challenge
: Past successes seem to confirm that our way is the right way. It can be challenging to question our own values and beliefs
Reflection Questions:

  • How open am I to ways of working (simple) or world views (huge!) that are different from mine?
  • Am I willing to challenge my values and guiding principles that I have lived by for decades?
  • Finally: In my current role, can I be my best self and how does being my best self look like?

More info: secondcrackleadership.com

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07/21/22 • 35 min

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How to Speed-Up Corporate Transformation

Second Crack — The Leadership Podcast

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03/24/22 • 30 min

The speed of transformation in your organisation depends on how fast you can involve and gain ownership from all employees. And this depends on how fast you are prepared to ‘let go’ of control. We discuss a case where we used a world-class tool called Howspace to engage employees in a large company and the implications for leaders.

[01:20] Changes/trends that set the condition for successful transformation.

  • Companies are on longer and more complex transformation journeys, e. g., towards greater sustainability. Managing change the traditional way is too slow.
  • People are less and less likely to just accept change. We must involve people at scale, from early on in the journey.
  • With high complexity, ‘the top’ of the organisation can’t possibly know everything. People across the organisation must take ownership.

To speed-up transformation, we need to scale-up how we involve every employee. Not only gain buy-in but also create a sense of ownership through 2-way dialogue. People need the opportunity to understand the change, to feel heard and understood, ask questions and co-create solutions with their peers.

[05:58] But is it even possible to involve everyone, and doesn't that take long time? With traditional approaches, yes. But with new tools we can actively involve all employees in shaping and co-creating change, and with help of AI, the tools makes for faster and more transparent 2-way dialogue across the organisation.

[10:24] CASE: Without change, this company and 5,000 employees are at risk of going out of business. With a new vision and strategy for greater sustainability, deeply impacting 8 countries, it’s a top-priority to involve all employees. Unspoken questions among employees were: What about our future? Will HQ invest in us? Will we have a job? Critical to quickly scale-up involvement to not start losing the best people.

[13:16] SOLUTION: We used a new digital tool called Howspace. With the tool:

  • People can explore and discuss what is changing and where the company is heading.
  • The AI lets us easily understand the input and sentiment of thousands of employees. Not possible without new digital tools.
  • We created one centre where all 2-way communication was placed. Management could easily get a sense of what is happening and get directly involved in the conversations.

Contrary to initial concerns, people participated very positively and with a lot of passion. They shared real concern for the challenges, but also optimism and motivation to be part of the journey. 95% of shift operators participated actively. It's easy to underestimate how much people actually want to be involved.

[21:07] IMPLICATIONS: It's a success case, but with important learnings for leaders. As the scale of involvement increased, we noticed some leaders began to hesitate and even try to slow things down. They might feel too uncomfortable not having all answers, or loosing sense of control. Leaders must think of how they will deal with high level of involvement, transparency and not being in total control.

[24:23] Wrap-up of key points

  • Involve people at scale, get buy-in, and ultimately ownership across the organisation.
  • Use tools such as Howspace to make this possible.
  • Leaders must be mentally prepared for a different speed of change.

[26:56] Reflection questions

  • What degree of control are you prepared to ‘give-up’, to make transformation faster
  • How would that make you feel ?
  • And how can you deal with that?

More about us at secondcrackleadership.com

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03/24/22 • 30 min

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Perception Management: A Key to Influence and Success

Second Crack — The Leadership Podcast

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02/17/22 • 25 min

Your success as a leader depends not only on the quality of your work. Whether you want to get a promotion or influence stakeholders to support your next big investment project, you need to make sure that you and your work are perceived in the desired way. Success is a function of performance and perception.

Managing perception does not mean you need to put on a show or try to be someone else. On the contrary: the best leaders can put themselves into other people’s shoes and cater to their needs while remaining authentic.

Key Aspects with Time Stamps

Your impact as a leader, your ability to influence and to be successful, depends on how other people perceive you. Therefore, you need to spend time and effort to manage other people’s perceptions actively, be that as an individual or a team of leaders.

[01:20] How we see ourselves can be quite different from how other people see us. A leader may see him-/herself as very spontaneous and the ability to adjust course quickly as a strength. However, their team members might find their frequent direction changes frustrating. Or what one considers as providing candid feedback may be perceived as destructive criticism.

[04:56] Success is a function of performance and perception. Delivering quality work is a necessity, but it is not sufficient. To be successful, others need to know about and recognise the quality of your work.

Tony's story: Tony (not his real name) was a director in a large multinational corporation. He became Gerrit's executive coaching client after he applied in vain for a General Manager position. Tony was well-respected and known for “getting the job done.” However, the decision-makers in the organization doubted that Tony had the big picture view they felt was mission-critical for the higher-level role.

Once Tony knew how these stakeholders perceived him, he focused on better understanding their needs and adjusting his communication style accordingly. Ultimately, Tony successfully demonstrated his ability to see the big picture and was soon appointed GM in another country.

Managing perception is not only critical for career advancement. It is also crucial to influence stakeholders, e.g., to get the buy-in for your next big investment project.

[11:47] In a consulting project, we helped a leadership team realise their long-term growth strategy for their company. They needed a major investment to increase manufacturing capacity. They understood that, besides the technical aspects of such a mega project, they needed the buy-in from various stakeholders: their local employees, authorities, communities, and, of course, from the management board at headquarters. They had to understand the varying needs of these different stakeholders. They needed them to trust that this team has what it takes to make the project successful from the various points of view: technically, safety-, and business-wise.

The local leadership team set up dedicated teams to deal with the different stakeholders to understand their needs and to manage perception — making sure the stakeholders see how their needs will be met through this project, and that the team handling the project was seen as competent. A year later, the Managing Director commented that he had never dreamed they would come that far in such a short time.

[21:30] Reflection Questions for Leaders

What do I want to achieve? (e.g., promotion, get buy-in for a project)
Who are actually the key stakeholders or decision-makers in this case, and what matters to them?
Is there a gap between how I see things (myself, my results, my business plan) and how my key stakeholders perceive them?
If so, how can I change their perception and close this gap?
More info: secondcrackleadership.com

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02/17/22 • 25 min

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Why Relationships at Work Matter More than You Might Think

Second Crack — The Leadership Podcast

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04/21/22 • 40 min

Trust-based relationships at work are the foundation for healthy performance.

We are social beings. However, what is often described as social or psychological is actually biological. Relationships are an essential aspect of evolution: living in groups has been critical for our survival as a species.

We developed capabilities to quickly judge if we can trust others, largely without conscious awareness, sometimes described as “gut feeling” (see neuroception and interoception).

Not only our hunter-gather ancestors benefited from productive human connections. Also in “modern” societies, our well-being depends on sound relationships.

A Harvard study revealed that people who are more socially connected to family, friends, and others are happier and healthier. They live longer than people who are less well-connected, and loneliness leads to less happiness, earlier health decline, and decline in brain function.

Functioning relationships are also critical for motivation and performance at work:

Sirota and Klein identified camaraderie, defined as “having warm, interesting and cooperative relations with others in the workplace“, as a primary goal of people at work.

Blickle and Hogan categorised getting along as a basic human motive: “Human beings are inherently social and at a deep and often unconscious level need companionship and social acceptance, and they dread rejection and isolation.”

Building productive relationships is a mission-critical task for leaders.

What can leaders do to nurture productive relationships?

1) Attitude: Common how-to advice suggests that leaders should listen more and ask more questions. However, we often neglect that it is not just the “doing” but that the underlying attitude or mindset is crucial: are you really interested in what the other person has to say?

Research suggests that our attitude towards others hugely impacts their performance (c.f. “Pygmalion in the Classroom"). In other words, if you believe the people you work with are heroes, they might become heroes. If you believe they are idiots...

2) Consistency: Building relationships is not a one-time activity. It's about how you show up consistently. Do you come across as authentic? Are you walking your own talk?

3) Understanding emotions: You need to be aware of your emotions, regulate them, get a sense of the emotions of others (empathy), and understand how others respond to your behaviours.

Leaders need to avoid triggering a “fear response” in others, often evoked by tone of voice, facial expressions, and other non-verbal signals submitted and received non-consciously. Instead, they need to nurture emotions such as joy, excitement, and trust.

Emotions are not just “touchy-feely stuff”; what is underlying emotions is a complex neurobiology. E-motions provide energy for action. We have explained this in detail in our Second Crack podcast episode “Emotions @Work - How Leaders Can Release Human Energy in Organizations”

Reflection Questions for Leaders

· At work today, have I made genuine connections with people? How?
· How do other people perceive me/my behaviours?
· How do I think about individuals at work? Do I believe in their potential? Have I already labelled them in a certain way? Do I really believe they can become heroes?

For more info, visit: secondcrackleadership.com.

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04/21/22 • 40 min

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FAQ

How many episodes does Second Crack — The Leadership Podcast have?

Second Crack — The Leadership Podcast currently has 28 episodes available.

What topics does Second Crack — The Leadership Podcast cover?

The podcast is about Management, Leadership, Podcasts, Business and Coaching.

What is the most popular episode on Second Crack — The Leadership Podcast?

The episode title 'Self-Awareness for Leadership Success - with Dr. Nia Thomas' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on Second Crack — The Leadership Podcast?

The average episode length on Second Crack — The Leadership Podcast is 41 minutes.

How often are episodes of Second Crack — The Leadership Podcast released?

Episodes of Second Crack — The Leadership Podcast are typically released every 28 days.

When was the first episode of Second Crack — The Leadership Podcast?

The first episode of Second Crack — The Leadership Podcast was released on Feb 12, 2022.

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3 Ratings