Do You Lead With Your #HeartFirst? Part Two

Last week, I began reading Heart First for Emerging Leaders, which inspired this blog post.

As I dive deeper into the book, I’ve come away with even more nuggets of wisdom to share for those who aspire to or already lead others:

• Find out and remember what your employees are passionate about – and do something about it. Plan and talk about things you know they have a passion for on a regular basis to inspire authentic connection.
• Yes, saying ‘thank you’ is important, but go the extra mile and be specific about what they did to encourage more of it.
• Communication itself is not an outcome, but an enabler to reach your goals.
• The more complex the message you have to deliver, the “richer” the vehicle to communicate needs to be, with the richest being a combination of face-to-face and other channels to ensure comprehension.
• Consider check-ins with key team members that focus less on specific projects and more on how they feel about what they are working on and why. What is going well, and what makes the team member think “I really don’t want to go to work today.”
• Follow the five Cs for successful messaging by being clean, concise, credible, compelling, and consistent.
• You can often resolve a negative situation by changing the context and your delivery.
• Always remember that your team likely does not have the full context of a situation. Do not skip critical information assuming everyone already knows something.
• Avoid sweeping generalizations when giving constructive criticism like the plague.
• Avoid over-planning video meetings. Before booking yet another one, determine if said meeting can be a phone call, email, or even text. Not everything needs to be a face-to-face meeting, virtual or otherwise.

Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion to this three-part series inspired by the business book next week!