Leadership People Skills Make It Easy to Gather for Success | #PeopleSkills

Leadership people skills foster team success.  Why? Because leaders’ people skills make it easy to gather and interact for success.

No matter what the challenge and  the competencies of the team, people must metaphorically and literally gather for success.  They will want to gather because of your outstanding leadership people skills. 

The unfortunate opposite of this is talent leaving a bad boss with horrible leadership people skills.


Leadership people skills: Image is many hands.

Leadership People Skills Easy to Gather Image licensed via Istockphoto.com.

Image licensed from: Istock.com


Leadership People Skills – Make It Easy to Gather for Success!

Successful leaders draw employees together to mix their talents for unique success. They prevent the following unnecessary and useless obstacles to interaction.

  • Comparing people to their predecessors.

    Avoid saying things like “You have big shoes to fill” to new employees. These statements don’t gather people for success. They reflect the leaders’ fear of failure. This is a worthless unnecessary detour.

    Stay on the road to success. Gather everyone today for an even better tomorrow.

    Leadership people skills: Engage the talent for who they are not for who they aren’t. “We have great challenges and great talent here.” When you express your belief in them, you make it easy to gather for success!


  • Labeling struggle as childish.

    As pressure mounts and employees voice complaints, don’t show your frustration with the statement “Stop whining.” This mislabels what they are doing and embarrasses them. How will they save face and gather for success? By avoiding you or shutting up when you’re around? This is another unnecessary obstacle to success.

    The truth is complaints and whines are not the same thing. Complaints are the precursor to solutions. Whines are a child’s cry of unhappiness. Leadership people skills: Empathize with the struggle, reaffirm their talent, and elicit their solutions! This is how you make it easy to gather for success.


  • Using competitive philosophy w/ collaborative types.

    Leaders who are motivated mostly through competition often make it hard for collaborators to gather for success. Replace: “Which one of you will come up with the best solution?” with “How many great solutions can we generate?” This makes it easy for competitive and collaborative types to gather for success. Competitors will naturally see the challenge they crave and collaborators will see the connection they need.


Leaders, to ensure your people skills make it easy to gather for success – first check your beliefs.

Successful leaders believe:

  • Emotional intelligence engages people for success; it doesn’t entangle, detour, and strangle results.

  • Inspiration brings out everyone’s best; embarrassment and threats stifle the creative spirit and amputate talents.

  • Collaboration promotes an exchange of diverse views to produce one tremendous result; competition shuts out interaction in the hopes of reaching the best result.


Leaders, what are your beliefs? How comfortable are you abandoning the traditional model of hierarchy and competition? If you are willing to embrace engagement, collaboration, and emotional intelligence, you will make it easy to gather for success!



Question: Leaders, how have you made it easy to gather for success?



From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™

Related Posts:
People Skills: Wise Leaders Choose AND not OR
People Skills: Integrity vs. Authenticity

©2013-2016 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. I appreciate your sharing the link to this post on your social streams. However, if you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com for permission and guidelines. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.


Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.


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14 Responses to “Leadership People Skills Make It Easy to Gather for Success | #PeopleSkills”

  1. Thanks for stating stop with the “Labeling struggle as childish.” Talk about counter productive yet many people fall into bad habits and behaviors because it is “easier.”

    I agree true leaders take the time to improve themselves and bring others with them in that journey.

    • Kate Nasser says:

      Michele,
      When we fall into the “easier” trap — the results are far from easy! Thanks for adding this dimension to the post and here’s to a mutual journey of continuous improvement.

      Best,
      Kate

  2. Kenya says:

    I needed to read this. I am meeting with a team that is known for attendance problems, finger pointing and focusing on being non-productive. My job is to motivate them to work in a more cooperative way with each other. This validates the approach I plan to use for leading the meeting.

  3. Dan says:

    Hi Kate — As always, I enjoyed this article! I think another positive action for leaders is to convene people for mutual learning. In my days as a staff member, it was clear our team, including our two leaders, enjoyed getting together to learn something new about our professional work. It was never billed as “this is what you need to learn” (which promotes fear). Instead, it represented a cutting edge for all in the room and answered questions about the horizons of our work.

    This might happen today by bringing in someone knowledgeable or just reading an article together and spending a few minutes in discussion. Sadly, in some workplaces the recession and negative management philosophies have amplified the sense that there’s no time for group learning. Yet this is a great way to recharge spirits and break down barriers while building skills.

    Best to you!

    • Kate Nasser says:

      Dan,
      Tough times do breed that belief that there’s no time for learning. Yet learning is what successful people and companies do in good times and bad!

      You always lend depth of insight to any post and I am grateful.

      Many thanks,
      Kate

  4. Hi Kate, it is my first time coming across your website through one of the persons I follow in Twitter. I must say that I absolutely enjoyed reading this article. Quite informative. I especially liked the part where you differentiated between complaining and whining. Had not looked at them from this perspective until now. Great lessons to take back with me into my workplace. Thanks for sharing.

    • Kate Nasser says:

      Hi Yvonne,
      So much of what I write comes from work/life experience. My goal: provide inspiration to action. I am so pleased to know that you found this post both enjoyable and valuable.

      Thank you for visiting and contributing your view.
      Warmest regards,
      Kate

  5. Another awesome post Kate! I know, I know….better late then never! haha
    Here’s the BIG one for me right here:
    ‘Using competitive philosophy w/ collaborative types.’

    First, before I elaborate on this, I just want to say that I understand the competitive mindset even on a personal level. Mainly when it comes to ego defenses and triggers. The natural tendency is to fall into one of my natural self-protect or coping strategies if trigger is big enough. ‘All shields up and brace for impact’. 🙂 I”ve also been in the military and have understanding in that field as well. Until the consciousness of the entire planet is raised (and at the same time), we will be at risk for various wars. So unfortunately, I don’t see a complete end to the competitive mindset in those situations.

    Apart from that, I’m predominantly a collaborator. I love helping. I love being a part OF something. Even if some thing I like to tackle by myself (like working alone on a project), there is nothing more satisfying to me when I know it is contributing to the ‘whole’ in some way.

    Recently, I shared a quote I found with someone that I felt really helps shine a spotlight on the major difference between the competitive vs collaborative mindset. It’s a quote by Wen Ito. Although the quote is referencing love, it is still quite useful in showing the vast difference between these two very different mindsets.

    ‘My love you win again and again;
    but let’s play this game of chess.
    I will not be trying to win,
    Only to surrender everything to you
    All to you, my love, even
    my body and soul.’
    ~Wen Ito

    All romance aside, the difference is clear. One side is trying to have power over in order to take something away from the other. This is the competitive mindset. The other side wants nothing more then to share and to give. (collaborative mindset) The block is in the mindset.

    As long as the competitive mindset is stuck in needing to have power over and winning over the other, it is blind in being able to see that the collaborator would gladly share and give willingly without the force of being over-powered and controlled. The collaborator can’t easily ‘surrender’ and willingly share to someone trying to dominate and have power over them.

    There is also another important difference between the competitive and collaborative mindset that tends to clash as well. And that is the issue of position. The competitive mindset tends to view people in terms of who is superior and who is inferior. Someone is above while others are below. Competitive leadership tends to think in these black and white terms.

    In contrast, the collaborator, whether they are a leader or a member of the team, view everyone on a rather level plane. While recognizing each person has varying levels of strengths, weaknesses, gifts, and talents to contribute. The collaborative team member does not ‘look up’ to an ‘official’ leader. Nor does the collaborative leader ‘look down’ on their team members/employees. These are merely labels and roles to perform specific functions and tasks.

    The competitive mindset has a more difficult time grasping it. They tend to think the collaborator is in competition with them and the collaborator isn’t even competing.

    Anyway, those are some of my thoughts on the subject. Thank you for inspiring me to share them! And thanks again for another great post Kate.

    • Kate Nasser says:

      Hi Samantha,
      You expanded this post tremendously with your deep reflections on competitors vs. collaborators. The issue of power and position — which defined traditional leadership — has changed as the working world moved to knowledge workers and knowledge based technology. It is a natural setup for collaboration.

      Interesting that the competitive mindset has held on and still impacts leadership and teamwork.

      So the next 10 years will certainly be interesting as we see how it continues to unfold!!

      Very honored that you offered your insights here. And your incredible support of the #peopleskills Twitter chat on Sunday morning (despite it’s early hour for you in Pacific Time) is wonderful.

      My gratitude,
      Kate

  6. Again, a great post Kate! You do such a wonderful job of explaining abstract concepts that are bandied about, but often without information that lets people apply them day to day. You teach people how to be inspiring and motivating leaders.
    Thanks, Chris

    • Kate Nasser says:

      Dear Chris,
      You are living proof of the value of hearing other views. So often someone else can explain what I do — better than I can. I am grateful, honored, and humbled.

      Many thanks,
      Kate

  7. Kate Nasser says:

    I agree Dan. I think competition is the lowest form of motivation when used by leaders. There are people who are naturally motivated by competition and have learned the value of collaboration. That impresses me!

    Many thanks for commenting here and feel free to include URL links of posts that relate.

    Warmest wishes,
    Kate

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