The Authentic Leader Show

I chat with Terry Monroe, the Executive Director of the Virginia Society of Association Executives (VSAE) and President of Association Management Services with Eisenman and Associates.

I'm also excited to announce that I'll be presenting at the VSAE morning seminar and association lunch on March 7th. We'll touch on that program during this episode, but first, dive into Terry's insights:

• What's cooking at VSAE? Terry unpacks the strategic thinking behind their popular programs, including the morning seminars and luncheons.
• From new association manager to leader: New association managers, this one's for you! Terry sheds light on the unique challenges you might face in your transition and offers valuable advice.
• The future of association leadership: What trends are shaping the landscape? Terry shares his expert perspective on what's ahead.
• Real talk: Terry doesn't shy away from his own experiences. He opens up about the hurdles he faced early in his career, offering relatable lessons for all of us.

Don't miss this episode packed with wisdom and practical takeaways!

I am thrilled to bring you my interview with Scott Love, an award-winning recruiter, speaker, author, and host of The Rainmaking Podcast. After my recent appearance on Scott’s Rainmaking Podcast, we had such a great conversation that I invited him to join me for an Authentic Interview.

Here are some key insights Scott shared in this interview.
* Scott shares his thoughts about being “followable”, earning trust, and becoming someone others want to follow.
* He shares practical tips for new attorneys (or managers) on managing both external and internal relationships within the firm.
* Scott provides details about why people are naturally attracted to those who can effectively solve problems.
* We had an interesting discussion on the strategic placement of a Montessori school next to a hospice center and its implications.
* Scott emphasizes the importance of discipline through consistent rituals and shares how they contribute to success.

What are your key takeaways from the interview?
* Do you agree with Scott’s opinion that job changes are influenced by either strategy or leadership?
* What problems do you solve for others, and do you believe people are attracted to problem solvers?
* What are the rituals that contribute to your success?

Tune in to the episode now to gain valuable insights and practical tips from Scott Love!

This interview is recorded in front of a live audience who had just finished lunch at the Independence Golf Clubhouse. We had a terrific audience of business leaders who you will hear in the background during the interview. Since the last live Authentic Interview event 5 years ago, I turned those first interviews into this podcast The Authentic Leader Show and interviewed 70 additional people.

This interview with Boomer Muth, CEO and Co-founder of Koalafi (formally WestCreek Financial). Kaoalfi has partnerships with local and national Fortune 100 retailers. Their rapid growth has been acknowledged by Deloitte and Forbes has recognized Koalafi as one of the best startup employers.

Here is just a sample of what we discuss in this interview:

• Boomer’s first management experience
• Boomer’s leadership style and how it’s directed by a code that he lives by.
• How aspiring to be a rock star has led to Boomer’s eventual start of a business and becoming CEO?
• Why your business should not be a family.
• How Boomer is using AI and how AI affects your cognitive load.
• I share my story of one of my biggest failures when providing my services. And it happened with Koalafi.

In this podcast episode, we challenge the common practice of promoting top performers into managerial roles and highlight the potential pitfalls of this assumption. We explore five segments that dive into the complexities of transitioning from being an outstanding individual contributor to a successful manager.

The Assumption of Top Performers as Easy Choices

There is a routine but often incorrect assumption that top performers will seamlessly transition into managerial roles. I share my personal example that underscores how this assumption can lead to disappointment and underperformance.

Identifying Interest and Providing Exposure

It’s important to assess a top performer’s genuine interest in managing teams. I share the significance of conducting one-on-one meetings, offering low-risk assignments, and providing constructive feedback to help top performers gain valuable experience before promotion. I address the value of providing exposure to management and leadership skills.

The Critical First Steps in New Management Roles

It’s critical to establish momentum at the beginning of a new management role. Training and coaching are essential to provide direction, eliminate guesswork, and prevent unnecessary failure. I share some valuable tips and strategies for new managers, emphasizing role clarity, advice-seeking, communication development, and what it means to be a role model.

Resources for Business Leaders

Organizational leadership plays an important role in setting new managers up for success. It’s important to identify and prioritize managerial and leadership skill gaps. The Leadership Diagnostic Tool for New Managers is an effective tool for this assessment. The New Leader Lab 2-day workshop is also an important resource to equip new managers with foundational tools.

The Importance of Supportive Leadership

Senior leaders and mentors also play a critical role in supporting new managers. I share a compelling story of how a skilled software engineer successfully transitioned into a managerial role with the support of proactive leadership development. It’s important to foster a culture of mentorship and continuous learning within organizations.

This podcast episode encourages us to rethink our approach to promoting and supporting leaders. By considering individual readiness, providing necessary resources, and fostering a culture of mentorship, organizations can ensure that top performers thrive in managerial roles and contribute to overall business success.

Welcome to "The Authentic Leader Show." The podcast for Leaders of Managers as they transform their New Managers into Authentic Leaders of Teams.

In today's episode, we're tackling a topic that resonates with countless leaders: "Mastering the Transformation - Six Essential Skills New Managers Need." If you're a new manager navigating the often turbulent waters of leadership, or if you lead management teams, this episode is made for you.

The Managerial Transition:

Becoming a manager is an achievement in itself, but the transition from being an individual contributor to leading a team is a journey with challenges and self-discovery.

Many new managers find themselves realizing that the skills that earned them their promotion are not the same skills that will ensure their success as a leader. It's a transformation that's simple but far from easy.

As we explore this transformation today, we'll uncover the six essential skills that every new manager needs to steer their teams toward high performance.

The Six Essential Skills:

This episode revolves around the ability to communicate effectively with team members, peers, and superiors, including delivering clear messages, building consensus, and active listening. Prioritization, delegation, and efficient workload management are vital to a manager's success. How new managers must motivate, inspire, set positive examples, and provide guidance to their teams. Identifying issues, crafting action plans, and implementing solutions are central to overcoming the myriad challenges new managers face. Building meaningful relationships with team members, peers, and senior managers, which involves empathy, active listening, conflict management, and genuine care for others' success. How new managers must make informed and timely decisions, gather and analyze data, consider various perspectives, and involve their teams in the decision-making process.

Embrace the Transformation:

Mastering the transition from manager to leader is a journey that starts with honing these six skills. It demands continuous practice, self-reflection, and a willingness to learn and adapt. We encourage you to seek opportunities to develop these skills and seek guidance and feedback along the way.

Transforming from a new manager to an authentic leader involves embracing a coaching mindset. Guided by team goals, the leader as coach draws from sources like benchmarks and industry norms. Establishing personalized goals for each team member fosters a coaching role when discussing performance.

Setting performance expectations including defining the purpose of work assignments, clear results, and priorities are all tools for a leader as coach.

As with any sports team, feedback is also key for coaches in the work environment. In both cases, feedback conversations must focus on driving improvement and acknowledging strengths. Adapting your management and coaching style must also adjust to the skills, experience, and motivation of each person on the team.

Watch or listen to today’s sixteen-and-a-half-minute episode.

Sometimes the term “manager” can be unfairly vilified as being “bossy”.
Boss and manager are not the same things.

Managers should lead their teams. The questions are “Can all managers be leaders?” And, “Can leaders also be managers?”

In this podcast, I’ll explain the difference between leadership and management and how the skills of each can complement each other.

I’ll also share the luxury manager and leaders have with their teams and what busy managers will say about their luxury.

Watch or listen to today’s fourteen-and-a-half-minute episode.

In today's podcast, I share five reasons first-time managers don't set clear performance expectations.

I also share how to help team members to understand what is expected and how they can improve their performance.

Watch or listen to today's twelve-and-a-half-minute episode.

Should you wait to start a meeting to allow latecomers to arrive or should they start on time?

In today’s podcast, I share my thoughts about starting meetings on time along with a list of reasons why.

I also share how to best manage latecomers with a list of things NOT to do.

Lastly, I share additional “musts” when facilitating meetings.

In today's podcast, I share four reasons I hear leaders say that they are focusing on first-time managers. 

I share each of these four reasons and why each is so important to the success of first-time managers and their teams.

You feel like your first-time manager isn’t making it. You aren’t sure why they aren’t more successful leading their team.

In today’s podcast are FIVE signs your first-time manager may be failing and what to do.

We cover everything from asking for help, inconsistencies in results, and taking responsibility for mistakes, to how first-time managers are spending their time and their descriptions of their priorities.

In my first role as a manager, I couldn’t listen to my manager. I didn’t know it then but I later realized that I didn’t feel qualified to be a manager while at the same time wanted so bad to be a manager.

Taking advice/coaching from my boss made me feel inferior and it only proved that I didn’t know what I was doing.

This is exactly why I committed more than 25 years ago, to learning all that I could about what it takes to be an effective manager and leader.

For almost a decade now, I have been helping managers of first-time managers transform them into leaders of high-performing teams.

In this podcast, I share a story from when I taught swim lessons and how it correlates with first-time managers who don’t take advice from their bosses.

A study by Gartner showed that 60% of new managers fail within the first 24 months.

In the 10+ years of formally coaching managers (and observation throughout my career), in my professional opinion, that's about right.

First-Time managers are not set up to succeed, but not intentionally.

The managers of these first-time managers don't have time or a training curriculum to set them up for success.

Here are my 10 "whys" The First-Time Managers Summit is like no other.

Find out if your first-time manager is a good fit for this summit. Not all first-time managers are a fit for this summit. To find out if your first-time manager is a fit, go to: AuthenticSuccessOnline.com. With only 10 participants, you will want to get your manager's name on the list sooner than later.

The Two Ds for Emerging Leaders of High-Performing Teams
Emerging Leaders know that they need to assign work, but many times don’t have a framework for doing so.

Emerging Leaders are both frustrated and surprised that managing their team isn’t as easy as they thought it would be. Until they uncover key principles, starter strategies and systems, and tools, these leaders continue to struggle to lead their teams to high performance.

Today I’m sharing the connection between some of the key disciplines of Authentic Leaders with how they are applied to effective delegation.

In this episode I share:

* How having a team direction can be an effective tool when delegating work.
* How managers can strategically increase decision-making in their team.
* How intentional communication helps to hold your team accountable for their work without conflict.
* How feedback needs to be delivered so that the person receiving the feedback can both receive it and take action.

Delegation is a skill that most managers and leaders I work with struggle with most. Most assume delegation success and are often confused when delegation fails.

Most managers and leaders are so busy that they don’t make time to debrief and understand what went wrong in their delegation. So they delegate again and wonder why delegation isn’t more successful.

I shared 10 Reasons that Delegation Fails in episode 106. It’s about the deeper underlying root causes of delegation failure. I encourage you to listen to that episode too.

Today is a higher-level understanding of six simple activities you can do to make your delegation more successful and reduce delegation failure. Listen to today’s episode and go back to listen to episode 106 and see the difference.

Most managers who micromanage their team are unknowingly doing so. Most micromanagers would say that they aren’t micromanagers. You may be micromanaging and not realize it.

So, what’s so bad about micromanaging anyway?

If you are a micromanager, it can feel like you are taking control and ensuring that your team doesn’t mess something up.

If you are the team member being micromanaged, it can feel like your manager is getting in the way of your productivity. It can be suffocating and insulting. It can make you question, “if I am going to be micromanaged like this, why am I even doing this work?”

Today's episode is about recognizing if you are unknowingly micromanaging and how to eliminate micromanaging with confidence.

Leaders who attend my Delegation Master workshops learn about delegation so that they can make room for higher-level thinking.

But, sometimes these same leaders have gotten overeager and go beyond what they are actually able to delegate. When over delegating key responsibilities that the leader can’t delegate, it creates a real problem for the leader that can be hard to recover from.

Because when a leader crosses that line, the leader’s earned credibility and influence erodes. I want to keep you from delegating more than you are able to and ruining your earned influence as a leader.

Preventing erosion of your leadership from misguided delegation can be shown through examples. These 6 examples that I am going to share today are not comprehensive. In other words, I’m not saying, “If you don’t delegate these things, you don’t have to worry.” Rather, these examples are to get you thinking about other similar things that you can’t delegate.

Leaders continue to struggle with their delegation strategy.

• Some may not realize that they even have a strategy, which ends up being haphazard delegation.
• Some realize that delegation is necessary, but don’t know how to intentionally and strategically delegate.
• Others, whom I call delegation masters, fully embrace a delegation strategy as a part of their leadership plan.

The problem comes when leaders want the immediate results of being a delegation master. Implementing your delegation strategy isn’t immediate. It’s an investment.

Just knowing the top reasons delegation fails can keep your next delegation of work from failing.

There is a lot at stake for leaders when delegating work. The ability for leaders to effectively delegate has a direct effect on a leaders ability to lead their team, get high priority work done, increase a team's productivity, identify better ways of getting work done, develop and uncover a team's capabilities, establish a team culture of creativity, innovation, & initiative, increase a team's morale, develop confidence among the team . . . the list goes on and on.

But failing to be effective at delegation, prevents everything I just listed from happening.

Leaders don’t understand what delegation really is and what it is not. Many leaders are already delegating without realizing it.

Every task completed by your team, every function they perform, and every project that they work on is a task that you delegated to them. If your team wasn’t performing these tasks, functions, or projects, you would be doing them.

The real problem comes when delegating new tasks, functions, and projects to your team. Are you delegating authority or accountability?

In today’s episode, I share how leaders can go too far when delegating to their technology teams and how to simply determine what you are really delegating.

Are you delegating accountability or responsibility?