Getting Good Feedback

Angry at himself for continually putting others’ needs before his own, a leader turns to his coach for tools. He learns a new way to think and a behavior to try. 

Be in touch with Tom here.

Listen to Tom’s conversations with Neha on “Bridge to Leadership” podcast here and here.

Our Essential Tools bin has free resources to help you build your look and sound of leadership.

 
G.W. Bailey’s imdb page is here.

This episode lives in the podcast archive in these three categories:

For Women

Managing Yourself

Self-Talk

Five episodes to help conquer your people pleasing tendencies: 

188 Boundaries

165 The Conflict Conversation

220 Holding Boundaries

219 How to Set Boundaries

116 Speaking Your Truth 

Grab a free transcript of the show here. 

Our monthly Essential News email provides links to even more resources. Sign up here.

From Tom and everyone at The Look & Sound of Leadership, thanks!

A vice president, struggling to control his team of artists, learns a technique for managing bad behavior from his coach. He likes it so much, he uses it with his high performers, too.

The tool described in this episode is simple to understand but may take a bit of courage to implement.

Courage can be taught. Brené Brown created her Dare to Lead course for exactly that purpose. Ready to build your courage? Reach out to us here.

Find more resources to build your skills in the podcast archive. Search these categories:

Assertiveness

Feedback

Management Skills

Five episodes you might listen to are:

#47 Discussing Difficult Behaviors

#18 Holding People Accountable

#138 Managing Disruptive Executives

#127 Managing Performance: Up or Out

#65 Sorting & Labeling

A free infographic for Sorting & Labeling is in our Essential Tools bin. Help yourself to that and all the others.

Thinking about developing someone in your organization, or yourself? Reach out to Tom here.

Grab a free transcript of the show here.


Our monthly Essential News email provides links to even more resources. Sign up here.

From Tom and everyone at The Look & Sound of Leadership, thanks!

#podcast #managingbadbehavior #leadershippodcast #leadershipchallenges  #behaviormanagement  #leadershiptips   #leadershipdevelopment  

A leader is so furious with his self-absorbed boss, he considers quitting the company. He asks his coach to help him manage himself and defuse his triggers.

In addition to the five strategies Tom talks about in this episode, there are lots more strategies in his conversation with Dave Stachowiak on Coaching For Leaders “How to Deal with a Boss Who’s a Jerk.” 

Tom’s wide-ranging conversation with Josh Dittmer can be found here.

Free tools to support your professional development are in our Essential Tools bin. Please help yourself.

Ready to explore coaching? Reach out to Tom here.

Other episodes to help you manage yourself in difficult workplace relationshipsare:

• The Disruptive Executive – Part One
• The Disruptive Executive – Part Two
• Don’t Take It Personally
• Handling Defensive Behaviors
• The High-Maintenance Executive

Looking for a transcript of the show? Download it here.

Our monthly Essential News email provides links to even more resources. Sign up here.

Thanks to all of you, from Tom and everyone at The Look & Sound of Leadership. 

Happy, healthy, safe new year!

Tired of losing to more savvy players, a leader seeks to decode the secrets of playing politics, focusing particularly on company culture.

Download our free Political Style Chart here.

“The Secret Handshake” is a great tool for mastering workplace politics.



Looking for a transcript of the show?  Read it here.


More tools are in our podcast library. This episode is in three categories:

For Women
Perception – how you perceive others
Relationship Building

Here are five episodes to help develop your political savvy:

188 - Boundaries
210 - How to grow your self-management
67 - “I hate politics”
142 - The Mindful Executive
121 - Your Goodwill Bank Account

Our monthly Essential News email provides links to even more resources. Sign up here.

Let us know how we can support you.

Happy, healthy, safe new year. I look forward to being with you all in 2024.

From Tom and everyone at The Look & Sound of Leadership, Happy New Year! And thanks!

A leader feels stuck. She sees others winning resources she felt should have been hers, but she hates playing politics. What to do?

Download our free Political Style Chart here.

“The Secret Handshake” is a great tool for mastering workplace politics. 

Many more tools are in our podcast library. This episode is in three categories:

Self-Talk

Leadership

For Women

Here are five episodes to help develop your political savvy:

187 - Agreeable Disagreement

215 - How to Stay Calm Under Fire

192 - Pursuing a Promotion

207 - Tough Conversations

67 - “I Hate Politics”

Our monthly Essential News email provides links to even more resources. Sign up here.

JAPAN!

Email me with your suggestions for what we should not miss in Japan this December! tom@essentialcomm.com

Let us know how we can support you.

Be kind to yourself. Things are rough out there! From Tom and everyone at The Look & Sound of Leadership,  be well! And thanks!

A leader, surrounded by people she knows and trusts, can’t seem to get traction with them. In conversation with her coach, she discovers an unexpected cause.

Tools for teams abound in this episode. 

The four tools Tom suggests as first steps for helping your team openly discuss ideas are:

• Say ‘thank you’ when people offer an idea;
• Be curious; don’t dismiss ideas or people;
• Don’t take differences personally; it’s not about you;
• Develop your comfort with disagreement.

The Gradients of Agreement tool supports the ideas in this episode. Download it for free from our Essential Tools bin along with other communication tools like Sorting & Labeling.

Additional tools for team growth mentioned in this episode are the classic Crucial Conversations and Tom’s conversation on The cATalyzing Podcast.

This episode is in our podcast library in three categories:

Communication Skills

Leading Teams

Management Skills

Specific episodes that will help you develop your team are:

Facilitating Open Dialogue

How Teams Fight

Leadership Behavior in Meetings

Power Tools for Teams: Plus/Delta

Questions as Leadership

Taming Meetings 

Our monthly Essential News email provides links to even more resources. You can sign up here.

To those of you who post reviews, thank you so much for supporting the show.

Let us know how we can support you.

Until next month, from Tom and everyone at The Look & Sound of Leadership, be well! And thanks!

#podcast #TeamDecisionMaking #Teamwork #Leadership #ConsensusBuilding    #EffectiveTeams  #TeamCommunication #TeamLeadership   

A co-founder, at odds with his partner (also his best friend!), reaches out to his coach for help saving the business and the friendship. 

The episode introduces The Conflict Resolution Wheel. Download it for free from our Essential Tools bin along with other communication tools like the Feeling Words Grid.

The Wheel is based on a tool in the Couple Communication course, a program to help you understand and connect with your partner better.

The course’s workbook, Talking and Listening Together, is meant for self-study. It’s available for purchase online. 

Another book Tom references in this episode is the classic Crucial Conversations.

This episode is in our podcast library in three categories:

Communication Skills

Managing Yourself

Relationship Building

Five episodes that will help you continue to develop your conflict resolution skills are:

Conflict

The Conflict Conversation

Creating Safety for Hard Talks

A Difficult Conversation

Resolving Conflict

Every month our Essential News email provides links to even more resources. You can sign up here.

Thank you thank you thank you to those of you who post reviews. You make such a difference to us. Thanks for supporting the show!

Let us know how we can support you.

Until next month, from Tom and everyone at The Look & Sound of Leadership, be well! And thanks!

A senior leader, having risen through the ranks, ends her coaching engagement by comparing notes with her coach about the skills that have helped her most. 

This episode identified seven essential leadership skills:

• Conquer catastrophic thinking;
• Use fewer words;
• Value relationships as highly as results;
• Don’t take anything personally;
• Commitment to Development;
• Reflection;
• Speak for Yourself.

Resources to develop those last three:

Commitment to Development

• The Executive Executive – an episode with a different list of essential skills
• Four Factors Executives Need to be Successful – another list of essential skills thenschel@essentialcomm.com – my email address if you want help thinking about your own development

The Ability to Reflect

• Mindfulness Resources
• Building Self-Awareness

Speak for Yourself

• The Four Agreements – Agreement #1: “Be Impeccable with Your Word”

Episodes to build assertion:

• Showing Teeth
• The Voice of Authority
• Assertion v Aggression 

This month’s episode lives in our podcast library in these three categories:

Executive Presence
Leadership
Self-Talk

Five episodes to help you with different skills are:

Building Empathy
“Don’t Take Anything Personally”
The Executive Executive
Personal Connections
Short Sounds Confident

Our monthly email has links to more resources. You can sign up here.

All our infographics are available to you for free in the Essential Tools bin.

Let us know how we can support you.

Until next month, be well!

From Tom and everyone at The Look & Sound of Leadership, thanks!

At the end of her rope, a leader asks her coach for help managing a direct report who, she says, is the most defensive person she’s ever met. 

This episode was packed with tools. We’ve put them into an easy-to-understand infographic. Download it for free here. 

Kim Scott, the best-selling author of the electric book Radical Candor, wrote a short, friendly guide with tools for handling defensive employees. Find it here.

Harvard Business Review’s Amy Gallo talked with Dave Stachowiak on this episode of the Coaching for Leaders podcast. As with every episode of Dave’s, this is indispensable. 

To work on “deserving” dive into The Four Agreements.  

To dig deeper into tools for taming defensiveness, search our podcast library in these three categories:

• Communication Skills
• Management Skills 
• Relationship Building

Five specific episodes on this topic you could listen to are:

• 7 Steps to Stop Emotional Hijacks
• Be Impeccable with Your Word 
• Handling Defensive Behaviors
• Managing Bad Behavior
• Managing Disruptive Executives

Sign up to get our monthly email with links to resources that support each episode.

Calling all COACHES! Come join our Executive Coaching special interest group (SIG) sponsored by the Los Angeles Chapter of ICF. Check out our SIG and all the others here.    

Or shoot me an email with your questions. I’m at tom@essentialcomm.com.

All our free infographics are in the Essential Tools bin.

Your reviews supporting the show help us continue as an ad-free podcast. 

Let us know how we can support you.

Until next month, be well!

Thanks from Tom and everyone at The Look & Sound of Leadership.

During her first C-suite years, a leader burned a lot of bridges. Her boss, who’d traveled a similar path, gets her a coach and sets only one goal: repair relations through emotional intelligence.

Lots and lots of tools and resources this month:

Free downloads:

The Feeling Words Grid

EQ Model

Books and papers to sharpen your skills

“Executive Presence: The Missing Link between Merit and Success” 

“The EQ Edge: Emotional Intelligence and Your Success”

“Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well”

“Executive Presence” from Center for Talent Innovation

This episode is tagged in three categories in the Podcast Library:

Executive Presence

Managing Yourself

Personal Growth & Self-Development

Five episodes to help you command a room:

109 Building Emotional Intelligence 

146 Building Empathy

155 The Human Element

69 Leadership & Self-Deception

17 Speaking for Yourself 

Please help yourself to any (or all!) of our free infographics in the Essential Tools bin.

Our deepest gratitude to those who post reviews. Thank you!!! 

Let us know how we can support you.

Until next month, be well!

Tom and The Look & Sound of Leadership team.