Have you heard of emotional agility? Coined by the Harvard Business Review, the term closely aligns with a more widely used term, emotional intelligence—but the two concepts are not interchangeable.

Emotional intelligence is defined as being aware of and in control of one’s own emotions. On the other hand, emotional agility is defined as approaching one’s inner experiences mindfully and productively, a feat that has become increasingly challenging during this COVID season.

The differences between emotional intelligence and emotional agility can have a profound impact on how leaders perform and how they treat others in the workplace. Just like emotional intelligence, emotional agility requires one to be in tune with their own emotions, but it doesn’t place emphasis on suppressing or controlling them. You can be emotionally intelligent but still lack emotional agility (though the reverse is not true). Leaders today are facing challenges surrounding mental well-being which are immune to demographics, thus, strategies that employ emotional agility are increasingly important. Becoming more emotionally agile will make you a better leader—while remaining emotionally rigid can compromise your ability to lead effectively and make the best decisions for your team. Here’s how:

How A Lack of Emotional Agility Affects Leadership

Leaders are always expected to be “in control”—so they tend to suppress negative emotions or push them away when in the corporate realm. In reality, though, they get hooked on these emotions, creating unhealthy and unsustainable habits to try to control them, as Susan David, the author of Emotional Agility, explained in HBR. When leaders become hooked on their negative emotions, their thinking becomes rigid and repetitive. They become stuck in old patterns. That’s bad news for leaders, since world-class leadership requires a high level of agility. Moreover, a lack of emotional agility in a leadership team can stifle innovation and stall personal development.

Lacking emotional agility can also impact a leader’s decision-making abilities. Leaders may try to avoid new situations or challenges that may trigger their negative thoughts, passing on opportunities that would actually be good for them and the company. Or they may take the opposite route, intentionally trying to push back their negative thoughts by taking on situations they’re not equipped to handle or that go against their values. Either way, they let their negative emotions—not rational business decisions—rule them.

Finally, a leader must always be thinking of how his or her actions influence those around them. Emotional inflexibility sets a bad example for employees. Employees take behavioral cues from their leaders, so employees will pick up on and adopt the negative emotional styles of leaders who aren’t emotionally agile. That can result in a toxic workplace culture, one where stilting emotions and not speaking freely or emotional outbursts become the norm. Consequently, when you account for the additional stress and pressure employees are tackling in work cultures that are struggling to accommodate the pandemic, you may well find yourself confronting a loss of camaraderie and respect amongst your team.

How Leaders Can Become More Emotionally Agile

The cost of remaining emotionally rigid is clear, while becoming more emotionally agile can help you become a world-class leader known for sparking change and embracing a vibrant organizational culture. Here are two ways you can become a more emotionally agile leader in the workplace:

1. Practice Acceptance

Instead of fighting or hiding from negative emotions, leaders should first accept them, allowing themselves to fully feel them. Unfortunately, this is especially tough for leaders to do because of the clichés associated with projecting leadership. For example, a survey recently revealed that the number one most important trait for a leader is positivity—expectations like this, of an always sunny and encouraging disposition, make it hard for leaders to accept their negative emotions. Doing so, however, gives leaders a chance to model healthy ways to deal with emotions to their employees while avoiding making important decisions based on said emotions.

2. Take Actions Based On Values Over Emotions

Of course, there’s a difference between acceptance and action. Just because you accept your negative emotions doesn’t mean you have to act on them. In fact, Susan David recommends that before responding from an emotional place, leaders should examine whether that reaction will further serve their own values or help others in the company. Making values-based, not emotion-based, decisions can also help leaders shape a workplace culture into one built on values. Leaders can use the stated values of their organization to guide their actions, instead of relying on their emotions.

3. Exercise Tolerance When Modeling Emotional Agility for Your Team

These practices will ensure that as a leader, you have the ability and skillset to handle emotionally laborious obstacles in a healthy way. However, you must take care to have patience when instilling these lessons in others, both in how they come to understand what emotional agility is, and in how they learn to apply emotional resolutions. Becoming emotionally agile isn’t something that will simply happen, nor is it something that all people will inherently understand. It will take time, and for many will be an arduous undertaking, especially for those who are unused to tactics that require being attuned to your emotions. They will be confronting their own negative or unwelcome experiences, which often perpetuates feelings of shame or frustration, and can manifest as disagreeable behavior. Being tolerant of this behavior, in yourself and in others, and of the time required to complete this education, is of paramount importance if you want people to grow to be emotionally agile leaders in their own right. As a leader, it is your responsibility to create an inclusive, safe space in which others can discover and progress along this journey for themselves.

Conclusion: Emotional Agility Impacts a Leader’s Effectiveness

How leaders deal with their emotions in the workplace has a profound effect on individual, team, and organizational success. Therefore, leaders need emotional agility in order to deal with negative emotions in healthy, productive ways. To encourage the development of this skill, organizations would benefit from including it in their leadership training and development plans.

Leadership is not just limited to a handful of individuals in the C-suite—leaders exist at many levels in an organization. Every supervisor, line manager, and department head should strive for a well-rounded and balanced skill set that will make them an exceptional leader. It might take time to develop all of the necessary skills, but each step in the right direction benefits both the individual and the organization.

To develop world-class leaders at your organization, ensure your training and development programs address these 10 qualities.

1. Charisma

Leaders must be likeable if they are going to be successful in the long term. Individuals gravitate toward those they enjoy working with, and if a leader doesn’t have this quality, they will have a hard time connecting with others and excelling in their position. Although many leaders naturally have a degree of charisma, this is a quality that can be continually developed and honed.

2. Clarity

Communication is a key skill for leaders, and the best ones do it simply, clearly, and memorably. When great leaders communicate, they focus on making the information easy to understand and recall later. Achieving a world-class level of communication takes practice, but the skill can be taught and improved over time.

3. Direction

Leading a team or an organization requires first having, and then sharing, a vision with clear goals. This involves creating a clear vision for yourself and then having the skills to effectively share it with others and translate it into actionable steps. Conveying direction requires a leader to have both clarity and strong communication skills.

4. Knowledge

Subject-matter knowledge is essential, but knowing how to use the power that comes from understanding is what makes great leaders stand out. Great leaders also recognize that they don’t always have all of the knowledge they need, and they take the time to read books, attend training events, and continually improve as leaders and individual contributors.

5. Decisiveness

Making important decisions is not always easy, but effective leaders take on this responsibility with confidence. They take the necessary time to assess a situation, and then act decisively. World-class leaders stand behind their decisions and are accountable for outcomes.

6. Conviction

Persevering in the face of challenges and displaying confidence in decisions comes from having strong conviction. Leaders who have this conviction will excel in their fields. When individuals recognize that a leader is firm in their convictions and believes in themselves, they are more likely to follow that person. The ability to set goals and persevere until they have been achieved is a sign of a true leader.

7. Accountability

Great leaders have the discipline to meet deadlines, fulfill promises, and follow through on commitments. Having the self-discipline to consistently deliver what they say they’re going to deliver and modeling the behavior they want to see in others are two strong leadership qualities that should be encouraged.

8.  Approachability

Leaders must interact with a lot of people in their daily work. The great ones are able to adapt and meet people where they are to make them feel comfortable. Leaders need to be approachable in order to stay in the loop and stay on track toward organizational goals. People are most inclined to approach others whom they trust, which is why leaders must have integrity and an affable demeanor.

9. Competence

Demonstrating skill in a range of areas is essential for leaders to earn the trust and respect of their team. Competence in a leader’s core field is critical, but great leaders seek to gain new skills as the world evolves around them. Continual learning to adopt new skills is a true indicator of a world-class leader.

10. Humility

A world-class leader might be a very skilled and talented person, but they won’t continue to improve and thrive if they don’t keep their ego in check. Don’t confuse being humble with being subdued or timid; it’s about controlling the ego, not eliminating it completely. Remember that humility and confidence are not mutually exclusive.

Conclusion

It’s rare to find an individual who excels in all of these areas, but it is possible to develop leaders with an effective training and development plan that teaches these qualities over time so participants can eventually master them. World-class leaders recognize that there is always room for improvement and will happily take the necessary steps to advance their skill sets. Work with each individual to Identify the qualities that could be better and invest the time and resources to improve them. This could include reading relevant books and articles, taking a course, going to a training event, and, of course, practicing every day.

For more tips on how to become a world-class leader yourself, read The Leader’s Pocket Guide for Leading Yourself, Others & the Organization.

Teamwork and collaboration positively impact individual and overall company performance. One study found that companies that promote collaborative work activities are five times as likely to be high-performing as those that don’t. Collaboration within and between teams ensures that information, time, and other resources are shared for the benefit of everyone involved. When individuals collaborate, each person has an opportunity to contribute their best ideas and efforts, ultimately making each team more productive. Here are five strategies to increase teamwork and collaboration in your organization.

Promote Frequent Communication

For any team to function properly and work productively with other teams, frequent communication is a necessity. Frequent communication helps to answer individual questions, overcome obstacles, and resolve conflicts. It also reduces the potential for confusion and duplicated efforts. Some of the ways you can ensure frequent communication in support of collaboration and teamwork include:

• Establishing different forums for employees to communicate and share ideas, including in-person meetings, brainstorming sessions, and email or other virtual communication means
• Providing interpersonal communication skills training to help employees at all levels learn how to achieve complete and accurate understanding when communicating with others
• Offering training that helps leaders solidify their ability to manage internal communications within departments and teams and build skills that will help them develop their leadership presence

Ensure Leadership Support

To achieve any kind of change in the workforce, company leaders must be enthusiastic champions of the effort to do so. Company leaders set the tone for teamwork and collaboration through their own example and by delivering clear expectations and feedback to the individuals on their team. When leaders reach across functional lines to share information and resources and recognize those on their team who also collaborate well with others, other members of the team will be more likely to engage in activities that support positive team functioning.

Leverage Collaboration Technology

Many digital solutions facilitate easier and more streamlined collaboration between individuals, no matter where they’re based. As new platforms and solutions become available, employees increasingly rely on collaboration technology to make progress on projects, get input on next steps, and share ideas to boost creativity. In fact, an Alfresco survey found that 83 percent of professionals depend on technology to collaborate, and 82 percent said they would be impacted by the loss of it. Examples of collaboration technology include:

• Internal social networks that improve communication and information-sharing among the workforce
• Project management software that includes file-sharing and chat capability.
• Virtual whiteboard platforms

Develop Collaboration and Teamwork Skills

Collaboration doesn’t always come naturally to everyone. Therefore, the best way to increase collaborative behavior in the workplace is to teach employees what successful teamwork looks like and what actions they can take to support it. When people understand all the benefits of effective teamwork, they’re more likely to develop a collaborative mindset and engage in desired behaviors. Teamwork and collaboration training teaches employees how to:

• Productively share resources, assign tasks, and maintain quality standards
• Communicate effectively and frequently with team members
• Build team focus on objectives and their outcomes

Reinforce Collaborative Behavior

Any behavior you’re trying to establish in the workplace will require regular reinforcement over time so that individuals don’t revert to old ways of doing things. When you reinforce collaborative behavior, there is less opportunity for silos to form, and the organization is able to develop a culture of openness and transparency. Some of the key ways you can reinforce collaborative behavior include:

• Tying promotion and developmental opportunities to collaborative behavior
• Leveraging training reinforcement tools, such as assessments, quizzes, and mobile boost learning, to help employees retain newly learned collaboration knowledge and behaviors
• Recognizing and rewarding individuals who practice and promote collaboration

Conclusion: Implement These Strategies to Improve Teamwork and Collaboration

Teamwork and collaboration in the workplace don’t happen on their own; they must be cultivated. When individuals have support from leaders and understand how they can work collaboratively, silos break down and teams become more productive. You can make it easier for leaders to cultivate teamwork and collaboration at work through corporate culture, training and development, coaching, and so on.

Leadership accountability occurs when individuals reliably deliver on their commitments, showing others they can be trusted to do what they say they’ll do. Leaders further demonstrate accountability by taking responsibility for the outcomes of their actions and decisions and successfully transforming effort into results, whether in person or a virtual environment. As Phil Geldart, founder and CEO of Eagle’s Flight, explains in his book, In Your Hands: The Behaviors of a World Class Leader, leaders at all levels of the organization can demonstrate leadership accountability. Through their behavior and quality of decision-making, they can set the performance standard others want to emulate.

“Let the quality of your work and decisions be the gold standard against which the performance of others comes to be measured.”

“Gold standard” accountability is of such a high quality that others see it as the best possible combination of behavior and judgment, compelling others to follow it. It consists of performance excellence and the mastery of the key skills and behaviors necessary for any job. Drawing on some of the insights from In Your Hands, here are 5 ways to build “gold standard” accountability in leaders at every level of the organization.

5 Ways to Build Leadership Accountability:

Lead by Example

When individuals demonstrate accountability through their actions, they are setting the pace for leadership and performance excellence. They’re also showing others how to be accountable for doing what they say they’ll do. Leaders can be pacesetters and demonstrate accountability by exhibiting the following behaviors:

• Discipline – staying on track and not getting derailed by competing priorities or desires
• Integrity – being honest about the likelihood of delivering on commitments, and apologizing when something goes wrong
• Execution – mastering new skills and behaviors and striving to achieve executional excellence

Develop Accountable Leaders

Training in specific skills and competencies can help leaders understand what it means to be accountable and which behaviors help to demonstrate accountability. By building accountability into your leadership development program, leaders at all levels will learn how to deliver on commitments and then see the importance of being reliable and trustworthy in the eyes of others. Leadership development can also help managers learn how to set and communicate expectations within variable work settings, and how to hold their direct reports accountable for the results they commit to.

Communicate and Share Information

Demonstrating accountability and ensuring it in others also involves sharing information and knowledge that will help others know how to behave in certain scenarios. Individuals learn by watching others and practicing desired behaviors, but they also learn from the advice and guidance of others who are already achieving “gold standard” accountability. For those who manage others, it is also important to communicate the importance of results, so that effort does not get confused with outcomes. A juggling act many have come to bear as they navigate a disrupted work environment, set by Covid.

Build Individual Understanding

At the outset of any initiative or activity, whether virtual or in person, it’s important for individuals to understand expectations, the resources and support available, and what they need to do to be accountable for their part. This helps to avoid the pitfall of over-committing and under-delivering. Some of the tools that can help support individual understanding of the need to be accountable include:

• Mentorship and coaching – help individuals see different behaviors that can help them demonstrate accountability
• Multi-rater assessments – show individuals how their own accountability (or lack thereof) impacts others
• Team meetings – provide an opportunity for regularly reviewing and discussing the progress of everyone’s accountabilities and how they impact the team’s goals and objectives

Require Accountability

To ensure intention leads to actual results, ultimately individuals need to understand the requirement to demonstrate accountability. For individuals who manage others, it’s necessary to set clear expectations, and then ensure there is agreement that a commitment is doable and the goal is obtainable. Lastly, leaders need to insist on the delivery of the committed goal. They can provide support by setting up regular checkpoints to review progress, give timely feedback, and determine additional resources or support that may be needed.

Individuals demonstrate accountability every day—by delivering on commitments and showing in their behavior that they can be relied on to achieve results. When expectations are clear and individuals have the proper skills, knowledge, and resources to perform, they are more likely to show a greater level of accountability. With the help of leaders who model desired behaviors and leadership development and other training that teaches accountability, employees see the difference between effort and results, and learn to deliver both.

It is probably not hard to believe that the top five single factors that cause bad days at work include: a lack of help and support from leadership, negative coworkers, lack of praise or recognition, uncertainty about the organization’s vision and strategy, and busyness/high workload. Fortunately, a leader who effectively coaches their direct reports can positively influence and mitigate all of these factors if willing, aware, and able.

This is especially important in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment, such as what is currently being experienced all over the world. Fortunately, there are a few best practices leaders can adopt to begin coaching employees in the workplace, whether that is in-person or virtually.

What Is Coaching in the Workplace?

Coaching in the workplace is when a leader addresses performance objectives and helps unleash the potential within a direct report. According to Harvard Business Review, coaching provides an opportunity to act as a sounding board, facilitate transitions, and address derailing behavior. Rather than traditional performance management systems, coaching allows leaders to communicate immediate changes or actions to be taken by employees that can improve the performance of the individual, team, and organization.

3 Steps to Coaching in the Workplace

Now that we have defined what coaching is, let’s discuss how to coach employees in the workplace. Leaders who follow the steps that follow will be able to not only improve short-term results, but improve engagement, inspire loyalty, and encourage future growth and improvement.

Step 1: Model the Behaviors You Want to See In Your Employees

An important initial step to effective coaching is showing individuals what great performance looks like. It’s one thing to tell people how to behave, but another to show them through your behavior. Leaders who “walk the walk” show through their actions how to adapt to change, how to incorporate new processes or behaviors into daily work life, and how to be a reliable member of the team. Ultimately, employees are more likely to be receptive to coaching when they have leaders who live the expected and required values and behaviors every day.

Step 2: Coach Employees In-the-Moment

Coaching is more than merely giving feedback or telling people what to do. Effectively coaching others requires taking an approach that ensures the feedback will be heard, accepted, and acted upon. Great coaches take the time to connect with the people they’re coaching, carefully observe their behavior, and offer new ideas that help individuals make the jump from good to great. Coaching must always be delivered in the right context and at the right time. If it’s not, the coaching is likely to be rejected or ignored.

Many of today’s employees crave in-the-moment feedback and words of affirmation that will help them succeed in day-to-day activities. When employees only hear feedback or get direction during an annual or semi-annual review, it happens after the fact and cannot be as easily worked out with the help of their leader. Conversely, when you provide coaching in the moment – for example, helping someone with a client negotiation as it is happening – the person can immediately apply the feedback to ensure a better outcome.

Now, the best coaches communicate in a way that encourages people to remain open to coaching and willing to take action based on feedback, regardless of whether it happens face-to-face or through a screen. Bear in mind that when coaching, how you communicate feedback will be just as important as what your feedback is. For example, if you need to have a difficult coachable moment with an employee, set up time to do so in private, away from the eyes and ears of colleagues. Then when that time arrives, follow the C.O.A.C.H. framework:

Connect and Communicate: Establish relationships and create connections before coaching so it can be conducted authentically and genuinely.

• • Online Coaching Tip: In the world of remote work, maintaining connection is more important than ever. For those you lead, find creative ways online to stay connected so you always have a relationship status that has “permission to coach.” Impromptu phone calls, notes, and caring questions help demonstrate that you care.

Observe: Always observe and ask probing questions before diagnosing and advising.

• • Online Coaching Tip: This is where most coaching breaks down, so to combat this leaders must be intentional about creating context where they can see team members performing. This requires forethought and making this explicit to the team member otherwise they will default to the leader. As an example; sales leaders need to be deliberate in creating a context to be on calls with their reps where the rep is owning the entire call and not relying on the leader to carry the conversation.

Assess: Gain an understanding of the actual performance of the individual versus the expectation you, or the organization, has of them.

• • Online Coaching Tip: Leaders generally default to one of two extremes, both of which break down learning. The first is that they overly weight context for the reason for poor performance and do not assess team members against what was possible for them to achieve. The other is that they assess team members against an abstract standard that is not possible in context. Accurate assessment is based on critically thinking through what performance was possible for the individual and holding them to that level. Only once they achieve that, then leaders can raise the bar.

Clarify: Clearly distinguish the gap between the expectation and an employees actual performance so they know exactly what to work on.

• • Online Coaching Tip: As leaders we often draw from a deeper well of experience and mental models that allows us to see the competency gap clearly. It can be easy to assume communicating the gap will make it clear to others, but this is rarely the case as they lack the context and framework that we have in our positions. Therefore, take the time to ensure that those you are coaching understand the gap (remember, this often takes longer than you think!). Ensure you plan appropriate time and check for clarity by having your team member explain the gap back to you in their own words.

Explain How-To and Encourage Questions: Having concrete actions that they will be supported in implementing is imperative to having coaching translate into better performance. Whether you provide the actions or facilitate them committing to them is situational, the key is that they are explicit, mutually understood and have a time frame for completion. Mutually agreeing to the anticipated results of doing these steps and encouraging them to initiate with you for support in achieving the outcome is also critical so that they don’t become a check the box exercise but rather a collaboration to improve their results.

• • Online Coaching Tip: In an era of zoom fatigue, leaders face a dilemma in that the best time to coach is immediately after the performance but the mental space to do all 5 steps in the coaching process well requires mental and emotional energy. When faced with this dilemma consider breaking your coaching into two parts. This first happens immediately after the observed performance and deals with assess and clarify. Then ask the person to think about how to improve and commit to giving it thought yourself. At this point, schedule the second part within 48 hours to provide any additional clarity and then tackle how to do it. 

Step 3: Require Action and Results

Coaching is only effective if it results in actual behavior change. You can model and coach all day, but there comes a point when you’ll need to hold individuals accountable for performance outcomes and results. At this stage, the coach needs to require individuals to take the necessary actions to meet performance expectations. This requires ensuring accountability by providing a timetable for reaching specific milestones and by establishing regular checkpoints to review and discuss progress.

Conclusion: Training Leaders to Be Great Coaches Is a Worthwhile Investment

Coaching is a powerful leadership strategy and yet research states that “only about two in 10 managers intuitively understand how to engage employees, develop their strengths and set clear expectations through everyday conversations. In effect, only about two in 10 managers instinctively know how to coach.” What this means is additional training may be needed to equip leaders with the skills, tools, and behaviors they need to start coaching employees effectively. Not to worry though, 86% of companies feel that they recouped the investment they made into coaching plus more on top.

Everyone experiences some kind of conflict in the workplace at some point. Something which Covid has added a realm of complexity to, to not only detect, but also resolve. Conflict can arise in many situations, but disagreements with coworkers commonly cause interpersonal strife. In fact, in an 18-month research study, nearly 100 percent of respondents cited interactions with coworkers as the primary cause of conflict at work. Conflict in the workplace also impacts employee productivity. According to one study, a single employee spends nearly three hours every workweek trying to resolve some kind of conflict. Even worse, unresolved conflicts can impact employee engagement and have negative implications for company culture.

Change is inevitable, and for organizations everywhere, things are moving faster than ever before. One study found that industry change, mergers and acquisitions activity, and disruptive startups will shorten the average lifecycle of an S&P 500 company from 24 years to just 12 years by 2027. Whether it is a result of organizational initiatives, a merger or acquisition, a leadership transition, or simply shifting market conditions, it isn’t about if, or even when change will occur. It’s about how long-lasting and disruptive the change will be, and how it is handled by the organization.

Being prepared to not just survive change, but to proactively design and leverage opportunities for change from within the organization, is a key differentiator in today’s markets. To do this effectively, it is important to understand change management vs. change leadership.

What is Change Management?

Change management is usually reactionary and can be seen as a linear process, with a single goal and preset checkpoints. These are defined by the change managers, and implemented by relevant individuals. As a Forbes article put it, “change management can be seen as an intermittent project, with a discrete beginning and end, addressing one or two big-ticket items, such as restructuring the organization or implementing a new IT system.”

As anyone who has been through a major change in an organization knows, it is rarely that straightforward. It is an iterative process that requires strong leadership, input from throughout the organization, and course-corrections throughout the process. To bring the biggest benefit, implementing change requires more than just management – it requires change leadership.

What is Change Leadership?

Change leadership is a proactive approach to change management, where change is seen as an opportunity for growth and improvement rather than a finite project. Change leaders create an inspiring vision, and advocate for that vision throughout the organization.

Change leaders take a people-centric approach. They consider how change affects employees, their processes, and their tools. They work alongside company leaders, HR, and employees to successfully integrate the change rather than impose it. Change leaders seek out insights and feedback, and strive to understand any challenges the change initiative is causing. They acknowledge when things aren’t working as anticipated and adjust the plan accordingly. This gives employees a voice in the initiative, empowering them to provide the input that will allow them to support and engage with the initiative.

But before a change initiative even begins, true change leaders work diligently to build trust with their employees. That way, when change happens there are strong relationships to provide a foundation that allows employees to follow even when things seem uncertain.

What Do Change Leaders Do Differently?

1. Inspire Others with a Vision

A good change leader can create a vision for the future of the organization that will inspire others to support change, rather than resist or fear change. The vision will clearly show why change is necessary, the benefits of changing, and how people will be affected in their work. Successful change leaders anticipate, understand, and address employee concerns in that vision. A clear vision not only ensures that everyone understands the benefits of organizational change, but that they feel like a part of it – the picture is so vivid that it inspires everyone to want to achieve it.

2. Define the Strategic Plan

People will begin to connect with the vision for change when they have a clear understanding of the direct impact on their everyday work. To do that, change leaders bring the vision to life by sharing the strategic plan for accomplishing the change. This includes how team and individual accountabilities will be affected, when, and how the processes will change.

3. Communicate Effectively with Employees

Communication can’t stop after the vision and plan are shared. It must continue with progress updates, any adjustments to the plan, and celebrations of the milestones along the way. During a change management initiative, leaders should encourage two-way communication and actively seek opportunities to solicit feedback and questions from employees. They recognize the importance of safe avenues for individuals to provide feedback, ask questions, and seek reassurance, because there will be no meaningful insights without that safety – and change leaders know that would be missing a critical step toward success.

4. Provide Consistent Support

To ensure success, change leaders make sure there is ample support available. This includes providing leaders at all levels of the organization with the skills and information they need to coach and assist their employees. By working with teams and individuals, leaders can address specific changes to tasks and duties, collect suggestions and ideas related to optimizing new processes, and identify areas where further training and supports will be needed. By providing these supports proactively, leaders can maximize the chances of success.

5. Sustain Energy Long-Term

Change leaders know that successfully achieving the vision requires maintaining momentum and avoiding backtracking wherever possible. By routinely providing updates, implementing retention strategies, making adjustments, and reiterating the vision on an ongoing basis, the organizational change initiative stays top of mind. Providing any metrics you’re tracking helps everyone to see the progress as it unfolds. Some change leaders even find that conducting surveys periodically helps them to keep their finger on the pulse of employee mindsets and commitment so they can proactively overcome challenges and friction in the process. Especially in the case of long-term change initiatives, maintaining momentum after the kickoff is crucial to success.

Conclusion

Companies that pursue and embrace change are well positioned to continue to evolve and grow, while those that resist change are at risk of stagnation – or even extinction. Pursuing and embracing change takes more than a change management approach. It requires leaders who lead the change and diligently work to guarantee the organization’s success. When companies simply manage change as it comes, they are constantly attempting to avoid threats. But when leaders can adopt a change leadership approach, change becomes an opportunity to thrive.

Even with the right strategy, the necessary budget, and the most efficient systems in place, achieving the desired results comes down to a company’s most important resource: people. Keeping a team engaged and excited about their work can be a challenge for leadership at every level, which is why having a motivation strategy is so important.

Even when people are passionate about their work, it’s easy to get bogged down in the daily grind and lose motivation. Understanding why individuals lose motivation and how to overcome those hurdles will help you develop a motivation strategy that keeps employees enthusiastic and engaged. Use these six strategies to inspire your team to go the extra mile.

1. Communicate the “why”

Understanding what is required to complete a certain task or project is just part of the equation. In order for employees to stay motivated, they must also understand why they are doing it. When leaders clearly communicate the overall vision and keep it at the forefront through consistent communication, employees will have a deeper appreciation for the work they are being asked to do. Even the most mundane task can take on new importance when the reasons behind it are understood and embraced.

2. Create a culture of collaboration

People are much more motivated to complete a task or project if they feel that they have some ownership of it. One way to accomplish this is by inviting participation through a culture of collaboration. When employees know that their ideas and opinions are welcome, expected, and heard, they will become more engaged. Individuals who are able to provide input in the earlier stages of development and throughout the course of a project are more likely to be motivated to see it through to the end and do their best work because they have a sense of ownership and pride in the outcomes.

3. Show your appreciation

Although rewards and incentives can be great motivators, sometimes a few words of gratitude can have a much deeper and longer-lasting impact. Individuals want to know that their efforts are appreciated. When leadership acknowledges their accomplishments, both publicly and privately, this genuine praise can go a long way. Don’t wait until a project is finished to show your gratitude and give credit. Acknowledge the late nights, clever ideas, and other positive moments as they happen.

4. Set challenging but realistic goals

Give teams a challenge that will help them grow as individuals and as a team, offering people an opportunity to do work that extends beyond what they have always done. The occasional special project or urgent push to meet a deadline can help recharge a team that feels stuck in the daily routine. They might find different ways to work together, discover a new sense of camaraderie, or develop new skills that they can use to improve other projects. Make sure the goal is realistic and achievable so that the experience is motivating and not discouraging.

5. Provide development opportunities

People get excited when they learn something new, especially when it helps them do their jobs better. Provide ongoing training and development opportunities for both teams and individuals that enable people to continually improve and hone their skill sets. When teams learn something new together, it helps them bond and build new connections. When individuals bring new skills back to the team environment, it can lift everybody up.

6. Create a positive working environment

No matter what motivation strategy you execute, if the daily working environment is unpleasant, it’s difficult for people to get excited about going to work. Think about how each employee spends their day. Do they have the opportunity to take a break in a comfortable, welcoming space? How do coworkers treat each other? It’s up to leadership to create the type of working environment that sparks inspiration and keeps people motivated. This means that leadership has to create an inviting workspace and model the types of behaviors that contribute to this type of culture.

Conclusion

These are just a few examples of the many ways you can motivate and inspire your team. Think about strategies that will be most effective for your teams and make a plan for executing them. Some approaches, such as expressing appreciation and gratitude, can be implemented immediately and become part of the culture. Others, such as implementing a training and development program, will take more time to fully execute. Remember that people are your organization’s most valuable resource and that investing in them can provide invaluable returns.

Although they might not be directly performing the work that requires safety procedures, leaders play a significant role in safety performance. Leadership establishes the standards and values in an organization and has the power to enforce safety requirements. For these reasons, it’s critical for leaders to have a deep understanding of the day-to-day challenges employees face while doing their jobs.

In addition to the organizational leadership team, individual workers play a significant role in maintaining safe practices and cultivating a culture of safety. Because of this, natural safety leaders tend to emerge among the group. Recognizing these people and empowering them to take on leadership responsibilities in their teams will help your organization maintain a strong track record of safety in the workplace.

Understanding the importance of safety leadership is critical for any organization that wants to create a safe working environment. Learn how to nurture the natural leaders in your team to take your commitment to safety to the next level.

What is Safety Leadership?

A safety leader is somebody who not only exhibits personal safety behaviors, but inspires others to do the same. These are people who not only follow safety protocols to the letter, but speak up in a constructive way when they see that others could be doing something in a safer manner.

Who can be a safety leader? Anybody who demonstrates these behaviors:

• Understanding and following safety procedures
• Reporting safety issues when they arise
• Proactively preventing safety issues
• Implementing new processes to improve safety
• Encouraging others to take safety seriously

Safety leaders don’t necessarily have to be managers or supervisors. It can be anybody who has positive social influence over their peers and an interest in improving safety across the organization. It’s important to note that a safety leader should be less like a hall monitor and more like a cultural influencer. The best safety leaders are the people who help their peers improve without them even realizing it’s happening. They are the people on the team who others come to for advice about best practices because they know they’ll get a response that is both correct and useful.

How to Cultivate Safety Leaders

Ideally, an organization has safety leaders across all teams and departments. This means that multiple individuals have to step into the role of safety leadership. Follow these steps to develop the safety leaders in your organization:

Identify the Naturals

Some employees are naturally inclined toward safety leadership. Identify these individuals and empower them to develop their leadership role. Look for the employees who have the best safety records and observe how they interact with their peers. They might provide gentle reminders to wear safety gear or offer advice about safer ways to do specific procedures.

Invite Ideas

Safety leaders are always thinking about how processes can be improved. When you have identified potential safety leaders, encourage them to share their ideas and implement them. These are the types of people that are willing to take on extra work if it contributes to a safer environment, so tap into that engagement to make improvements across the organization.

Provide Training

Anybody can improve their leadership skills with ongoing training. Provide your safety leaders with development opportunities so they can learn even more ways to engage their coworkers about safety. This might include experiential learning to help people become more comfortable with their new leadership skills before applying them on the job.

Remember that safety leadership is not a singular role. In fact, the more safety leaders you have in your organization, the more likely you are to achieve your safety goals. Always be on the lookout for people who are driven to go the extra mile when it comes to safety.

Conclusion

Achieving organizational safety goals requires leadership, both from executives and among the people doing the work. Be aware that safety leaders are not always in managerial roles and that often the people doing the work have a deeper insight into the steps that will improve safety. Cultivating safety leaders by identifying them, giving them a voice, and providing additional training will increase the motivation they already have and help encourage safe behaviors across the organization.

When planning corporate events and meetings, you will quickly find a world of possibilities for almost every aspect of your event – venue, decorations, food, activities, and more. Having so many possibilities can easily cause information overload and make it difficult to make decisions. To help ensure that every decision you make during the event planning process is going to help create a cohesive meeting for attendees, having a theme can be a life saver. Establishing an event theme early on and sticking to it throughout the process has a number of benefits, including:

1. Supports Your Event Message

A theme can be a surprisingly effective way to drive home the message of the event and achieve your stakeholders’ objectives. For example, say that the event is focused on kicking off a long term objective, and the event goal is to inspire employees to look forward to the future so they are making decisions today that support success tomorrow. In this case, a future-themed event would be ideal to highlight the message in a way that is fun for attendees. The elements you weave throughout the day can showcase the long term objective that the organization is striving for, while highlighting the importance of keeping the future state top-of-mind.

2. Creates a Cohesive Attendee Experience

From pre-event communication, to event day, to post-event follow up, a theme will help establish a unique and identifiable brand for your event. The human brain processes information by organizing it into categories, so by using a theme, you provide a cohesive experience that ties everything together for your attendees.

Every element that you choose that supports the theme helps unify the event. Choose an experiential activity that supports the theme, select food that fits with it, even pick transportation that is connected to it somehow. For example: you are hosting a company meeting with an established goal of improving productivity and morale among many departments. You have selected an aquatic theme. To create that cohesion:

• The venue is on the ocean or large body of water
• You have ocean-inspired drinks and dishes
• Your color scheme is a mix of blues that are used throughout pre-event communications, the event website, brochures, and event-day materials
• You have a boat scheduled to bring attendees from the airport to the venue
• The experiential activity you selected to drive the message home shares the aquatic theme and supports the goals you wish to achieve

Because a theme was established, all of these components could be selected throughout the planning process to contribute to a cohesive experience for attendees. Whether the theme you choose is whimsical or serious, it ties everything together and makes the event memorable.

3. Contributes to Engagement and Excitement

The event theme is a great way to generate excitement leading up to the event, and keep them engaged while they are there. You can progressively provide hints for attendees about what the theme is using pre-event communication, getting them excited about what’s in store. Then, they will spend the day looking out for those elements and little details that relate back to the theme, making it an engaging and share-worthy experience.

Gamification is not just a way to make your corporate event agenda more fun – it can be a unique way to bring home the key messages, and build useful skills among your attendees. When it’s done effectively, gamification helps attendees to feel fully immersed in the event experience, while passing on tired tactics that attendees expect, like speakers, icebreakers, magicians, or comedians. If you are thinking about adding gamification to an upcoming corporate event, take the time to consider the components in this article so you can make a plan to effectively and successfully gamify your event.

Conclusion

Coming up with just the right theme that ties into event objectives can be a lot of fun – and once you’ve made that initial decision, it’s a lot easier to decide on all kinds of components of your event. Having a solid theme that ties into the event goals not only makes your life easier, it also results in an event that is fun and engaging for attendees while effectively achieving stakeholder objectives.