Ally PCS Self-Mastery Skills for Effective Leadership

Leadership Tips to Increase Morale

2008-07-26T16:12:00.004-07:00

Low morale in the workplace can be a symptom of many ailments. It can range from outside economic frustrations to too much work and not enough help.

Being an effective Leader in your organization means identifying challenges that may affect your group’s performance, and putting together an action plan that will help alleviate those difficulties.

Some solutions can be very involved and labor intensive – strategic planning, implementation, and follow-through can be time consuming but are necessary components to successful organizations. However, if you have an urgent morale problem that must be addressed and corrected immediately, you may want to look at short-term, effective fixes that can move your organization – and staff – forward.

You may already have most of the answers to your morale issues in your head – the solution may be as simple as listening to your staff.

Pay attention to your employees. Sounds simple, but how often do you listen to what they are really saying? Are they getting sick more often? Do they complain more now than a few months ago? Do they have time to take sufficient breaks? Do they appear to be ‘spinning their wheels’ and nothing gets accomplished?

These are all signs of a problem that needs immediate attention. If a formal meeting is out of the norm for your company, try one-on-one communication. Get past the symptoms to what is really causing the problems.

Solutions may be as simple as offering flex-time to accommodate family issues; having a ‘shred’ day at the office to get rid of accumulated ‘junk mail’ and old files that can be bogging down work performance; or how about cross-training staff to alleviate workload lopsidedness.

Be creative and keep it simple. The benefits far out-weigh the effort you have to put forth to empower and motivate your staff.

Increase productivity, increase morale, empower your staff, and give them the tools they need to succeed.

To your success!

Kathy Nesselroad

Lead Your Business To Success

2008-06-23T12:52:00.008-07:00

Do you ever feel like a hamster travelling full-speed on its little hamster wheel and by the end of the day you know you have accomplished everything you had set out to do but in reality, you are no further along than when you had started?

Sometimes it's important for us to take a deep breath and a step back so we can evaluate what it really is we need to accomplish in order to enjoy success.

I'm hosting a complimentary Teleseminar on Wednesday, June 25th at 5:00 pm PDT that will discuss your role as a Leader, what benefits Time Leadership plays in your daily life, and the importance Emotional Intelligence plays in how effective you are in business.

Sign-up - Here's How!

Email knesselroad@allypcs.com for your call-in instructions and your complimentary Leadership Roles Assessment guide in PDF format. Find out which of the five Leadership Roles you need to work on in order to balance your Leadership Effectiveness.

For Program Details and to Learn More - Click Here!

To your success!
Kathy Nesselroad
http://www.allypcs.com/

5 Strategies to Help Ease Economic Pain

2008-06-16T18:46:00.011-07:00

We can’t change the economy and the outside forces affecting our business – so we need to re-evaluate ourselves as leaders in our organizations and how we view our circumstances.

What can we do to take our current reality and make it work to our advantage?

I’ve put together 5 ideas that may help you to re-focus on your current strategies and possibly look at creating new strategies – using your vision as your direction. Or at the very least – kick-start a brainstorming session.

We all agree that it is a value-driven market – and we must focus on the customer’s value perception. Their value reality is based on the benefits they will receive, less whatever their cost is. Customer/client perception is the key.

So the first idea is to:

1. Re-evaluate your Competitive Differentiators.

There are 2 requirements of a Competitive Differentiators

a. First is the factor within an industry that distinguishes one organization from another

b. And second, it must result in direct benefits to the customer

Be your own customer or client. What would you expect from your organization? What would make you choose your organization over a competitor?

Some organizations within certain industries can do Secret Shopper Programs to give them a customers’ perspective.

2. Look beyond the car in front of you.

Change is constant. As a leader in your organization, it’s your responsibility to look ahead – at the current market; new innovations affecting your industry; new innovations that may indirectly affect your industry; and trends in the economy.

a. What’s happening in the current market for your industry that may be a window of opportunity for you now that wasn’t there in the past?

b. What are some of the newest innovations in your industry that may open doors in other areas of your business model that have, until now, gone untapped?

c. What are some of the newest innovations not in your industry that indirectly affects your company and has the ‘band-wagon possibility? Going Green? Can you spin that around and make it work for you? Technological advancements? Can you apply or create new avenues that may benefit your customers/clients or perhaps use to decrease operational costs?

d. As a leader, it’s up to you to know when it’s time to make the hard decisions. Is it time to re-evaluate your organizational structure? Has your revenue dropped significantly enough where it is now crucial for you to look at the number of your staff? Was a new product or service a great addition 3 years ago but now its sales isn’t worth the cost? Do you have a stale budget? Are you using last years’ budget model? Have factor’s changed enough since then for you to consider moving budget dollars from one category to another?

3. Remember to lead from the balcony.

Take a look at your organization again – this time from the balcony. In tough times we often get caught up in the daily fires and just trying to stay afloat. When we do that – it’s difficult to see what is really happening in the organization as a whole.

a. Are you missing opportunities? No one else in the organization has this “big picture” view or the ability to understand and impact all elements of your team’s success as you do.

b. You can still be in the middle of action and be on the balcony. The balcony isn’t a physical state but instead a state of mind.

c. To lead from the balcony – involve others in solving a problem rather than doing it yourself. You can take more time to explore the root causes of a problem and fix a broken system rather than solve the daily crisis. You can remain aware of the impact of your actions by being aware of the ‘atmosphere’ of your team.

4. Empower those around you.

Go from Directing and Doing to Developing and Leading. This frees up your personal productivity. Your organization will mirror your level of productivity.

5. Get yourself in check.

What’s your Personal Paradigm – Your mental filter that is made up of a constellation of core beliefs through which you view the world and make meaning of your experiences?
You cannot solve existing problems with the same mindset (or paradigm) that created them. I have that on my email signature line and I’m passionate about its meaning. (From Einstein's quote)

To your success!

Kathy Nesselroad

How is Your Focus?

2008-05-13T16:15:00.004-07:00

We all know that having the proper tools to move us forward and help us get the job done is one of the key elements of working smarter. So what tools do you use to keep yourself focused on high-payoff activities? Thomas Guide or GPS?

Do you become distracted easily by the numerous choices and directions you can go, or are you focused and directed - you know where you want to go and get there through the least path of resistance.

Knowing what your high-payoff activities are and what you have to do to achieve them doesn't necessarily mean you will get the results you had expected. You may, in fact, just end up with a headache and feeling overwhelmed with little or no results (or at least not the results you had intended).

Make a plan and stick to it:

1. Identify what the activities are that will achieve the pay-off you are looking for
2. Set your GPS for that direction
3. Avoid self-imposed detours
4. Focus on the outcome
5. Avoid over-committing yourself
6. Reward yourself for a well-planned road-trip to success!

It is better to trim-down and complete your task-list of high-payoff activities than to feel overwhelmed and incompetent by getting caught up in the busy side streets and road work.

I highly recommend using the GPS.

To your success!

Kathy Nesselroad
http://www.allypcs.com/
Ally Professional Coaching Services, LLC
Solutions for Today's Business Needs

Is there Trust in your Organization?

2008-03-28T10:09:00.004-07:00

What happens when your company battles with itself?

This is a clear sign of unhealthy and destructive behavior that directly affects your bottom line. There is no win/win; there is no win/lose; the only outcome that is derived from internal relationships battling against one another is lose/lose.

Lose/lose environments:
1. Destroys Trust in your organization
2. Poisons interpersonal relationships
3. Destroys organizational effectiveness
4. Diverts time and energy
5. Provokes anger, resentment, and retaliation

Building confidence in your relationships with others is the foundation for Trust.

When you have high trust in your work relationships with others, you can become a high performing team and organization. Being willing to trust begets trust, and so the positive cycle begins, thus creating win/win relationships working towards a common goal.

Building win/win relationships begins with:
1. Listening empathetically
2. Finding out what is important to others
3. Agreeing on clear, common goals
4. Avoiding absolute statements
5. Involving others who are affected

Define the first steps you need to take to transform your organization; build upon those steps and create trust, win/win solutions, and ultimately, a high performance team working toward a shared mission or purpose that motivates and inspires others.

To your success!

Kathy Nesselroad
President and Managing Director
Ally Professional Coaching Services, LLC
http://www.allypcs.com/

Trust is part of our Compass Program beginning May 2008.

It is the first in a series of twelve half-day workshops designed to increase performance and build interpersonal relationships, communication, trust, and teamwork within your organization.

Don't Feed Them to the Wolves!

2008-02-25T10:52:00.002-07:00

Every year, thousands of businesses close their doors – for good. When the economy is bad, those numbers can double. Surviving during a recession is possible, but you have to work smart to keep your business alive. It's not easy, and there are hard decisions to make, but it can be done.

One of the smartest decisions your company can make during an economic downturn is to reevaluate your priorities and focus on your employees. Layoffs are common, but what happens with the employees you keep? They are your best, right?

A reduced workforce means less staff with more duties. Some lack the experience of the responsibilities they have inherited. It is always best practices to cross-train your employees and document desk procedures for coverage during an unexpected illness, vacation, or family crisis – and in this case – a recession. However, a number of organizations do not have these safeguards in place. This is the one area you should NOT skimp on when cutting expenses. It is imperative that you give your employees and your managers the tools they need to keep your organization running.

Train them! Workshops, eLearning, onsite training programs are essentials for your staff to perform efficiently and effectively. Remember, they are your best – you don’t want to lose them now. Replacing a good employee will cost you one and a half times their annual salary in lost company ‘memory’, lack of basic process familiarity, and on-the-job training. A new employee will require from three to six months to be familiar enough with his or her new position to perform efficiently and effectively, and even more time to get to the same level of productivity as the employee you lost. It’s better to invest in who you have now, than to double your expenses later, whether in a recession or not!

Communication, commitment, leadership, training, and follow-through with all levels of your staff will not only encourage and motivate them, but also create high performance teams within your organization, and as your reward, build a results-driven high performance organization for years to come.

Kathy Nesselroad has more than 20 years of corporate management, team-building, and leadership skills. She is the President of Ally Professional Coaching Services, LLC and a strategic partner with 360 Solutions, an international training and development organization.