A Standing Ovation

I saw a great post this week of a leader receiving a standing ovation and as he walked down between 2 rows of his team heading for the exit on his last day. The celebration was warm, genuine and emotional. People were cheering, slapping him on the back, hugging him and crying as he walked the guard of honour. I know nothing of the man or his work, but he had clearly made a massive impression and impact on his colleagues and team. I suspect he was a master at some of the core ingredients of building trust and psychological safety in a high performing team.

• Competence - in a professional environment, connection is important, but you also need to be able to get the job done.

• Warmth - we judge people in a heartbeat, way faster than they can demonstrate their competence. Warmth means you care and genuinely connect with people as people, not assets or resources. The easiest and quickest way to do this is make eye contact and smile.

• Integrity - do what you say you will do, when you say you will do it. Competence and warmth won’t be enough to continue building trust and psychological safety if you don’t follow through. (PS, this also means being good at saying “No” - more on that later)

• Connection - beyond your warm smile, is connection. Getting to know team members, what they care about, what they aspire to, what their challenges are, where they shine and where they need support not only show you care, but also help in building high performance.

• Clarity - Great leaders add clarity to everything- roles, boundaries, timeframes, measures of success, standards and more.

I reckon that standing ovation was built on these ingredients. And the beauty is they are all skills which means they can be learnt and improved by anyone. Which of them could use some attention in your world?

Capacity Building

Bonita Nuttall makes a really important distinction between Capability and Capacity.

They are clearly related. If we have a higher level of Capability, we are more likely to be efficient and effective, which positively impacts Capacity. But if we are already filled to Capacity, there’s no room to exercise capability.

Kindness

Our local open spaces look great. Today I saw why. A young city staff member was flat out with a rake and blower piling up and then picking up autumn leaves and rubbish. Without her efforts I reckon it would be knee deep. I paused on my morning walk and said “Thanks, the place looks great.” She smiled.

I’ve been reminded a lot lately about the impact of kindness. It’s easy, especially if we are stressed, to be short with others or overly focused on problems and criticism. At its worst, this can even be people making personal attacks. I certainly don’t always get this right. However small those harsh moments, they have a negative impact.

Christine Porath and Christine Pearson have investigated the impact of incivility (unkindness) in the workplace for decades. Their findings are profound. Even small moments directly impact people's mental health, productivity, customer service and the bottom line. Being kind is not only the decent human thing to do, but it makes good business sense too.

At the moment, many people across sectors are feeling fatigue, stress and pressure. One of the practical things we can do to impact this is set the intent of kindness, and follow it with action.

Ask yourself:

• When, how and with whom am I most likely to be harsh?

• In what simple ways can I demonstrate kindness today?

• How can I be kinder to myself?

If you’d like some specific suggestions, let me know.