LIFT PORTAL
MY LEADERSHIP STORY

Assignment:  Final Reflections

​You're in the home stretch!
Click on the PPT slide and download the templates to use during our last session. Be prepared to share your story with all of your colleagues as well as the senior leader sponsors.

As always, reach out to your coach with any questions.
We're excited to hear your final reflections.

​Empowered

What your employees are asking:
Do I have choice?
Am I trusted to make decisions?
Am I in control of my outcomes?

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Assignment:

• Complete the delegation matrix exercise
  
• Reflect on what gets in the way of delegating for you
  
• ​Engage in a delegation conversation or activity  by experimenting with a polarity related to empowerment

POLARITY EXAMPLES:

• STRUCTURE and FLEXIBILITY
• ACCOUNTABILITY and ACCOMMODATING
• CLEAR DIRECTION and UNKNOWN TERRITORY
• ​HANDS ON and HANDS OFF
  

[Click on the image below to access the slides on Empowerment]

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If you're looking for more...

"Stuck on an Escalator" is a short (2 min), funny video on feeling helpless. This often is the reality when teams rely so heavily on others for direction and guidance and lose faith in their own competence and abilities to make decisions.

Is your team waiting for your direction. Are they not taking the initiative? Check out this HBR article on the Neuroscience of Trust. It includes helpful tips for leaders to increase trust on the team.

Language is so critical when delegating. Are others dismissing your requests or not taking you seriously? It may be an issue of how you're delivering your message and the expectations you're setting. Check out this article on the Promise-Based Management cycle that originated from computer programming language.

​Valued

What your employees are asking:
Am I making a difference?
Do my contributions matter?
Am I important?

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Assignment:
Beware of Your Strengths Conversation & 
​Notes of Appreciation

Beware of Your Strengths: Engage in a performance-based conversation to provide feedback to a colleague or team member. Follow the path of the polarity map and start with their good intentions. Here's a sample to help you get started. Reach out to your accountability partner to practice.

Notes of Appreciation: What is noticed, gets repeated. Take the time to share notes of appreciation to colleagues or team members. Use this template as a guide. Simply provide your observations of one's behavior (in a specific manner) and share the impact that behavior/action had on you, the team, the firm and/or the client. We want you to write at least one a week and if you really want to see a difference, try once a day.

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If you're looking for more...

Although this video is geared towards a study with middle school kids, the concepts transfer to the workplace. As a leader, you want to encourage the effort not the outcome. Support others through struggle and allow setbacks to naturally occur. The narrator in this video is Carol Dweck, Professor of Psychology at Standford University and is best known for her work on the Growth Mindset.

Here's an article from Jim Collin's book, Good to Great, that is a wonderful description of being both direct and empathetic. An essential polarity to leverage when supporting others growth and development. This is a story about how Admiral Stockdale survived as a prisoner of war. As he said, "You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” He attributes his survival to both his ability to accept the facts of his brutal reality AND retain hope for the future. Too much focus on the brutal facts or too much focus on being optimistic would lead to one's demise.

Connected

What your employees are asking:
Do I belong?
Does my manager care about me?
Do I feel connected to something bigger?

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Assignment:   
​Group Agreements & The Backwards Loop

Group Agreements: As a reminder, now that you’ve completed your Team Pulse Survey, we ask that you close the loop with the people who provided input and do the following:

• Thank them for the feedback and share a few themes with them 
• Discuss the themes as a group and together identify 4-5 group agreements 

The Backwards Loop:
​Identify one person in which you have differing views and feel you could benefit from using the Backwards Loop. We recommend you reach out to your accountability partner from the other group to practice the conversation once or twice before you engage in the real conversation. ​

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If you're looking for more...

Loads of great resources directly related to your role as a Career Manager and Job Lead at Booz Allen.

Check out one of our favorite videos (9:22 mins) called, "This is Water." One of the best concepts in this video is the question of, "What's unlikely but not impossible?" This is a powerful question especially when you are disconnected with someone else. How do you re-engage? You need an open mind. This one question allows you to suspend your "truth" of the situation and open your mind to other possibilities. You may be completely wrong, but in doing so you open your mind up to consider new alternatives and outcomes. 

This short clip (2:54 mins) on differentiating empathy and sympathy is critical when connecting with others. 

Check out this video (5:10 mins) on the "Ladder of Inference." This will help you understand how people interpret objective data and make inferences from the data all in a blink of an eye. The danger occurs when our assumptions become our truth. We see what we believe and we believe what we see. When interacting with others (especially when you have differing views) see if you can uncover the rungs of the ladder. In other words, ask questions such as "What led you to believe that?" or "What else may be possible?" or "Help me understand your thinking." These are all effective questions to better understand where the other person is coming from. 
​

CULTURE & ENGAGEMENT

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Assignment:
​Complete Pulse Check Analysis

Download Pulse Check Analysis document and come prepared to share your insights from the data you collected from your team.

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If you're looking for more...

Check out this powerful, 11-minute animated video, "The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us" by Daniel Pink that aligns nicely with the Dynamic Engagement Model.

While watching this 3-minute video on Chobani's culture, think about how they were able to engage employee's at all levels and the implications in doing so.

Here are a few articles too that talk about leading at a higher level and leveraging the "both/and" mindset.

If you have any questions or technical difficulty, contact support@MendelowConsulting.com