Tag: trust

From a good place

FabrizioLeave a comment

You can be vulnerable by sharing your negative feelings, and you can be vulnerable by sharing the positive ones as well.

Tell that you feel happy, accomplished, in love, serene, successful, at peace, lucky, grateful, loved, accepted, at ease. You will be more exposed than you have ever been, and still be in a state of mind that will help you deal with the exposure and familiarize with it.

Training to be more vulnerable does not have to start from your deepest and darkest emotions. Go from a good place instead. It’s not necessarily easier, surely quite as effective.

Distance and neutrality

FabrizioLeave a comment

Empathy requires distance and neutrality.

It might sound counterintuitive, and still it is an important point.

Only with distance and neutrality you can refrain from judgement and keep the bias for action at bay. Only with distance and neutrality you can avoid being overwhelmed by what the other person is feeling, to the point you might turn into a paladin for their cause (and cut out all the rest).

Empathy is acceptance.

What if

Fabrizio1 Comment

What if tomorrow, as leaders, we would make the decision to stop getting into employees’ way and let them free to self-organize and solve the problems they are hired to solve.

What if we would remove all rules and trust that people would actually do their job to the best of their ability.

What if we would decide to raise everyone’s salary, not because we have had a particularly brilliant year, not because we have reached all our targets, not because we have outperformed the competition, just because it is the right thing to do.

What if we would choose not to fire people when things don’t work, but actually challenge ourselves to find a way to make them work.

What if we would genuinely commit to work on our culture, and make that a reason why people come and stay.

What if we would agree that the measure of our success is the state in which we leave our teams when we move on, and more importantly how many leaders we helped developing.

What if we would make an intentional effort to build relationships, not with our peers, upper management, and executives, but with the people we aim to inspire and guide.

Just because you don’t know any other way, it does not mean there is no other way.

Imperfect

Fabrizio1 Comment

You are probably not the strongest.

You are probably not the smartest.

You are probably not the most fearless.

You are probably not the nicest.

You are probably not the greatest.

You are probably not the most positive.

And yet you are here. With the responsibility to make something strong, smart, fearless, nice, great, positive happen.

Work with your limits and don’t let them hold you back.

The world needs you.

Imperfect.

Crisis

Fabrizio1 Comment

When crisis hits, make sure you have an answer to these three questions and share that with all those involved.

Who is in charge? This is about establishing who has the responsibility to take us out of the crisis. It does not mean they will do everything, make all decisions, come up with all ideas. It means they are in charge.

How often will people hear from who is in charge? Make a calendar, ensure communication is constant, better if it happens every week, at the same time, on the same channel. If there’s nothing new, share there is nothing new and take the chance to gather thoughts, feelings, ideas, opinions.

What is expected of people involved? This is arguably the most difficult, because asking us to wait is not really an option. Establish clear roles to enable change, make us feel that we are part of the solution, give us a specific purpose. Tell us we matter with facts.

If you tackle the crisis before having answers to these three questions, your efforts will probably do more damage than good.