Ask & Lead to SUCCEED live 2022 November 26
Questions we covered:
How to build trust in leading a job interview?
I just got promoted. How do I perform as a leader?
How to measure leadership success?
I co-lead a team with my manager but we are totally different leaders he is very micro managing and I give more freedom. What can I do to?
I am the youngest leader how do I overcome the pressure?
I am a young female leader and nobody takes me serious in the team. What do I do wrong?
There is a person in my team that undermines me as the new leader, what can I do?
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Hello, hello and welcome. We are life again. Music is off. Good. Saturday night in the Netherlands, and of course, Saturday morning in the US and North America. So welcome to Succeed our q and a, which is Ask and Lead to Succeed.
[00:00:24] If you're interested in more, what we do go to wearesucceed.com, where you already find a lot of educators and a lot of content to leadership education. And this is our q and A format, so if you have questions, I am happy to try to answer them inside of the live show.
[00:00:45] So let's get into it. So first question. First question was how to build trust in leading a job interview. So that was a person that is starting to lead a job interview, and that job interview was in person. So this person asked me, how can I build trust?
[00:01:04] How can I kind of increase my game inside of a job interview?
How to build trust in leading a job interview?
First and foremost for me is start focusing on doing a conversation. So really building a conversation rather what you always do, you have prepared your questions. Specifically, if it's your first job interview, focus on a conversation.
[00:01:29] Let the person know that you're human as well, that you're a little bit excited and you just won't have good conversation. If you just go into with that feeling of having a good conversation, you will already win way more than if you just rattle your questions, specifically if you're new in the job interview game, let's call it like this.
[00:01:49] So another thing I always do, and I've learned that from someone who was very experienced in doing job interviews, leading with your story, If you want the person that you interview open up, you give them already a story. Because they will basically follow your lead. So if you introduce yourself, if we just start with the first thing, you are introducing yourself.
[00:02:11] You're introducing your company. Introduce it in a way that the person is interested in giving a similar perspective, so you can introduce yourself. I'm the manager, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, and this is my responsibility. I'm super successful, and that's it. Or you start and hey. This is my name.
[00:02:31] This is my hobbies. This is my family situation. I love hiking. I love running, I love this. And this is the deeper person of me. So you give more about yourself than just the job topics that will replicate it by the person you interview. If you give this to the interviewee. The interview will as well go deeper into the personal topics.
[00:02:52] If we just take that example, it works 99.9% of the time because everyone, at least what I've seen, a lot of people who are going into job interviews, specifically, if they're junior, they're just preparing the obvious questions, which is fine. It's good to be prepared, but just get the stress out of the situation and introducing yourself in a human way.
[00:03:15] And people will love this because then you open up a conversation. And then ask questions to whatever they're saying. It's not about just jumping straight into your business questions, just ask, oh, you have been in whatever, um, Italy. I was in Italy too. What did you do? Have you been there? So that you start doing it in a conversational style rather than just.
[00:03:39] Focusing on the questions that are job related. Of course, you need to bring them in over time, but you will learn more about the person and if the person fits into your team. If you start a conversation. And of course if it's in person, then it's different than in a digital setting, but I'm not going too much into that today day.
[00:03:59] Next question. Again, if you have questions and see this live, you are welcome to post them wherever you see. . And of course if you have questions and you want them to be answered next time you can just reach out to us. Go to wearesucceed.com, and there's a connection page where you can ask us questions.
[00:04:22] Next question I got is I just got promoted.
How do I perform as a leader?
First perspective is an alarm bell. Performing as a leader, what does it mean? So first you need to clarify what performing as a leader mean to you. If you are just promoted as the leader in your first leadership role, it can be overwhelming to you. So don't put too much pressure on you. Focus on a long term perspective. Long term means more than two weeks, more than three weeks, more than a year even. But what I can tell you, if you start in a new leadership role, first time leader, focus on your team as much as possible.
[00:05:09] Listen and learn what they're after, what they're about, what are the problems If you just focus on listening you will make 80% of the things right, because while you're listening, you get ideas while you're listening, you can confirm things that you believe are wrong or not wrong, and you go deeper into what's going on with the team, and then you can make your decisions together with the team afterwards.
[00:05:35] Listening is number one priority for you when you're getting started. Don't focus too much on what is performance. Be clear to yourself that leadership is focused on your team and it's not about you performing. You will perform when your team is performing. And that means you need to empower your team, you need to engage your team, and that starts with listening to your team. And then the performance will come through the team and will be reflected to you as the leader as well.
[00:06:04] Often we have a misconception that we as the leader, Are driving the totality and we are responsible for the totality, and that's why you need to perform as a leader and you need to pressure the team that they need to move onto whatever the task is. I understand this from an organizational concept perspective, but you will be way more successful if you focus on the individual's inside of your team and listen to them and help them to perform, but as well reflect to you what's wrong, what's right, and then you can help them to get a direction.
[00:06:41] Next question:
How to measure leadership success?
[00:06:45] I think that's important for you to understand it for yourself. What does success mean for?
[00:06:50] Do you want to be a leader that is driving a big change? Do you want to be a leader that's engaging with the team? Do you want to be a happy person? So there are different topics when it comes to that question. Ultimately, it's important for you to understand the complexity of a department. Most of the time you're responsible for a department or a team inside of a department, inside of an organization.
[00:07:14] So what does the organization say is success? For me. It's not just you as an individual. Yes, you as an individual can perform with specific tasks, which means you can increase the engagement of the team between each other, and that will be reflected to you as the leader if you build this culture inside of the team.
[00:07:35] But understanding what is required from the organization, what is the organizational culture, and then the next part is understanding what is the right thing for you. Do you want to make a big career? Do you want to be a leader that is trusted? All this different specifics, you need to clarify first and foremost with yourself and then link that to the organization.
[00:07:57] If that is linked to the organization, then you will understand what is the right thing to do and how the organization and your manager is measuring your performance. In my experience, the performance of a leader is measured on the outcome and output of the team. And that means you need to focus on the team and listen and understand what's right, what's wrong, how they are, and focus on building relationships with them.
[00:08:26] And this will always be successful. In my career over plus 25 years now. It's always been the case that if you focus on the team, if you focus on your team members, you will be successful as a leader because you understand what's wrong and you can help to understand them and as well work together with them to find solutions for the future.
[00:08:50] So next question.
I co-lead a team with a manager, but we are totally different in the leadership style we have. One of the leaders is micromanaging and one of the leaders is more freedom giving person.
And that was the conversation I've had. So a difficult situation for this person, and this person was asking me for help and reflecting a little bit.
[00:09:15] What can this person do? What I was giving advice was start talking with the manager, lay out the cards on the table and understand, hey, we have different styles, but we have the same direction. What is the direction we want to go towards? Where do we want to be with the team? Where do we want to grow?
[00:09:37] Where do we want to change things? How do we do this. Most properly the leader you work with in this team is not on the same level like you are. From an understanding of how do we build trust? If you as the leader, are more freedom giving and the other person is more micromanaging, it's important for you to have a conversation.
[00:09:57] What is the right style. And worst case, you need to split out team members in specific ways that you work with them on different tasks and the manager is working with them on other tasks where it's more required to do micromanagement. For me, micromanagement is always the wrong solution, but I understand in some circumstances it's needed.
[00:10:18] So have a conversation with the manager, align where he want to go, and then bring the team to the table to understand what their needs are. Because it's not just your perspective or the manager perspective it is as well. What are the needs of the team? Do they need micromanagement? Do they request micromanagement?
[00:10:39] Do they need more freedom? Do they want to be independent on how they're moving? And they just get a bigger task delegated and then they want to figure it out themselves? And of course, it's also related on company culture is related on the culture where you live in which part of the world, because it's different in all parts of the world.
[00:10:59] But number one, for this topic, start having a conversation with the manager.
[00:11:06] Next question.
I am the youngest leader. How do I overcome the pressure?
Being the youngest leader most of the time you as a young leader, put the pressure on yourself.
[00:11:18] Nobody else is putting pressure on you because everyone understands, at least the experienced leaders should understand that starting a leadership career and your first leadership role is difficult. You need to figure things out. You do mistakes. First and foremost, start with yourself to step back and understand why do you put so much pressure on yourself?
[00:11:39] We're living in a very, very fast paced world where everything needs to happen tomorrow. Leadership is a growing education, a growing skill set. Let's call it like this. And you will learn this over time. You will not learn this in two weeks, three months, even in a year, you will not learn this.
[00:11:58] Yes, you can get better step by step, and some people have natural talents but you're not perfect and most probably you will never be perfect. I'm a leader since plus 20 years, and I'm not perfect and will never be perfect because I learn every day something new. So important. Focus on yourself. See it as a learning journey.
[00:12:20] Look into the long term and that will help you to succeed with your leadership style. Have a conversation with other leaders how they did this. Find a mentor, find a coach that help you to get more secure.
[00:12:34] I always say start with leading yourself and you will be successful. And I think that's very, very important for this person.
[00:12:41] If you have questions, go to wearesucceed.com and you will see a lot of questions q and as and as well. Very, very interesting conversations and webinars about leadership where we have covered a couple of things already that I'm answering in this q and a.
[00:12:59] Next question.
I'm a young female leader and nobody takes me serious in the team. What do I do wrong?
[00:13:06] For me, I would start with reframing the question. Focus on how do I do things differently. You need to understand for yourself what do you want to do, and how do you want to be as a leader. It's not always that people are not taking you serious. Maybe they just see that you're not confident with yourself and therefore they're not taking you serious, or you assume they're not taking you serious, but they do if you're confident with yourself.
[00:13:39] For you and your confidence it's very, very important that you don't measure yourself on other people's feedback all the time. I know it's good to get feedback. I know it's helpful as a young person to get feedback, but build out an understanding for yourself of where you want to be and how you get there. And over time with the learning mindsets, you will get to a place where you feel confident. If you always give every single feedback you get, either written feedback or verbal feedback, or you interpret into everything you see everything you feel something into that. It's very, very difficult to be a leader. Because that's happening every day. You are always
[00:14:27] in the mix between different perspectives, different interests, the interest of the organization, the interest of your team members. I don't believe that they don't take you serious with this. So it's really go deeper into yourself and understand where you want to be, and then look into maybe good leaders you have seen and then replicate what they are doing. Replicate how they're managing a conversation. And if you have a specific person in the team, then you can take that on a one-on-one level. But really focus on yourself and look into how can you go deeper and understand what you can do differently rather than what you do wrong.
[00:15:08] What you do wrong is the wrong starting point.
[00:15:10] Last question.
There is a person in my team that undermines me as the new leader. What can I do?
[00:15:18] For me they're, let's say, two strategies. Strategy number one is ignore, which will lead to a long-term bad relationship and as well for you doubting yourself, even if you ignore it. It's always there.
[00:15:33] Number two is jump in and take a discussion. Face the challenge for yourself. Go and confront this person on a one-on-one. Very, very important one-on-one. Have a conversation with this person and than reflect your feelings. I feel this, I understand this. It's not about, Hey, you do this, this, this. You do, do, do. If you focus on pushing the person, the person will always push back.
[00:16:00] If you start with iMessages, which is, I feel unsecure in this situation because you said this, this, this. I don't know how I should lead you because of this, this, this, this. Open up a conversation where you're not going into a confrontation mode. But try to put things on the table that you don't feel well with this situation and you want to change this and that you want to find a solution for this issue. And maybe it's completely just your perception that this other person undermines you. Or the other person maybe wanted it to be in your shoes, being in your leadership role, and that's why this person is pushing a little bit. The other person is not well.
[00:16:46] There's thousands and thousands of reasons why a person is undermining another person. Not everything comes from, I want to do something bad to you. Sometimes it's just people are reflecting things they have in their personal life, in their circumstances, they're not happy in the place. They are reflecting this to other people, and that's the way how they express themselves.
[00:17:12] If you start a conversation, it's very, very easy for you to open up and be very honest and open and feedback without pushing another person. It's very hard when you do this the first time, believe me, do it and focus on listening. Give the other person the possibility to talk as much as possible because then it will open up.
[00:17:39] And if it's not opening up the first time, do it again. Give it a chance. Take, let's say three months and try to improve this situation. Take it as your responsibility to open up and not pushing the other person to understand what's wrong with this situation. How do we figure this out? Be very open to the person that you want to increase the relationship.
[00:18:03] You want to have a good situation because it's important to you, and it's important to the organization, and it's important for the team.
[00:18:10] So if you have questions, reach out to Qeresucceed.com. Go to the webpage, have a look what we have already there, a lot of q and As already. Maybe you will find a question that is already answered. If you can't find the question, let us know, there is a contact page and you are welcome to ask those questions and we will bring them into one of the live q and as or even go deeper and do a full webinar or other educational topics for that. That's it. Thank you very much for today. Have a wonderful weekend, and see you next week in our next q and a.