Creating courageous conversations...Unlocking exceptional performance™
What is your reality?
Facing a daunting reality of doing more with less, dealing with uncertainty, adapting quickly to changing circumstances, the leader succeeds through people and by building bridges with the focus always on the results. Leadership is a critical competitive advantage in any industry. But leadership just doesn't happen. Real leadership takes a great deal of thought, insight commitment and energy in order to bring out the very best of who we are and the very best in our people.
In leading others at whatever level of responsibility, an individual must be skilled at conversation in order to achieve results. Deliberate and focused conversations create an environment for individual growth, purposeful actions, sustained improvement and maximized performance. The ability to engage others in a dialogue invites people's best—energizing, releasing creativity. The real work is in the conversation. Creating authentic, courageous conversations enables exceptional performance.
What is a courageous conversation?
They are conversations where we find the courage to speak authentically and honestly with each other about issues that may be very difficult to discuss. Think the "real truth." These conversations could involve speaking about a difference of opinion, a radical approach to a project which challenges the status quo, providing honest performance feedback which will be difficult for the employee to hear, or a controversial message.
A courageous conversation is one in which individuals are tackling the issue rather than ignoring or bypassing the truth. As leaders, our role is to engage others in meaningful conversations which push us all to the frontier of discovery and optimal performance. In today's world, we are too often numbed by the chatter or the silence. The challenge is to step up and engage others in meaningful conversation—an honest dialogue for meaningful actions. Central to leadership is our ability to create a real conversation that others will willingly join. The dialogue serves as the powerful reinforcer in gaining commitment of others to stretch for themselves and for the organization. It is viewed as real, authentic, and without pretense.
Are you and your people challenged to get things done and produce results? Do your people avoid real conversations? It takes toughness, guts, and great courage to engage others in the truth. What is the conversation you are not having with your customer? To be focused on excellent customer relations, we must have frank conversations to find out where they are headed and how we might improve. If we are afraid to hear bad news, we stop caring about our customers. What is the conversation we are not having with a staff member or a work group? Get real. Be real. This must be built into the very fabric of who we are. What is the conversation we are not having in our own life? With a partner, a loved one, with ourselves? It all starts here. If we are real with ourselves, we will be real with others.