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New Leaders, Develop Your Intuition

Posted in Leadership, People-Skills, Soft Skills

If you are a new leader, your plate is full of responsibility and your to-do list with things to learn. Developing one skill will steer you through the new challenges and guide you to lead people well.

New leaders, develop your intuition.

Intuition is not voodoo. It is not magic. Intuition is not psychic ability.

Intuition is experience reapplied. Good detectives do it. Diagnostic physicians do it when when technology can’t. Very successful leaders do it.

New Leaders, Develop Your Intuition

Image by: Hexmar

If intuition is just experience, why call it intuition? Because it isn’t just experience.

Intuition is a synthesis of information and experience — especially about people — reapplied in a different time and space. Over time and with practice, the synthesis works so quickly that many people experience it as a hunch. In any case, this intuition delivers valuable foresight to a leader.


Steps to Develop Your Intuition

  1. Become a student of human behavior. Observe & listen to them. Communicate with them.
  2. Give yourself permission to see things as they are unencumbered with your fears, values, hopes, and personal agenda. Intuition comes from this. Like a detective, spot patterns and see exceptions to patterns. How they look when they are feeling certain things. How they behave in diverse situations when having those feelings.
  3. Build your intuition data bank. Embrace this input as non-measurable data. It crosses over time and space. Gather it to store and reuse in the future for synthesis and reapplication.



Implications for Leaders

To broaden your vision, don’t micro-manage. It is difficult to see the forest if you are working on one tree.

Get to know those you work with as people. Get to know them sooner than later — your colleagues, your team, your vendors, your suppliers, and other teams that your organization will work with.

Learn about diverse people behavior and never stop learning. If you stop, your intuition data bank becomes incomplete and your intuition flawed.

Acting on intuition alone is a mistake. Use your newly developed intuition as a pointer for further investigation. It maximizes the value of your intuition and minimizes pattern error, stereotyping, and bad decisions.

Consider Einstein’s view:”The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. I believe in intuition and inspiration. At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason.”


What benefits have you had from intuition? What do you do to develop it? I would love to hear your stories and perspective in the comments field below.


©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. For permission to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, has spent 23 years teaching corporate leaders, managers, and their teams to develop foresight and intuition for success in leadership, teamwork customer service, and sales. See this site for workshops and customers’ testimonials.

Professional People Skills: Handling Frustrating Nudges

Posted in Coaching Professional, Hot Topics and New Bits, People-Skills, Soft Skills

Handling frustrating people in your personal and professional life is not the same thing. In your personal life, handling those that truly frustrate you, in other words your nudges, can be as simple as walking away from them.

In a professional setting, it requires people skills (also known as soft skills). In truth, you could use these skills in your personal life too.

Handling Frustrating People Image by:JohnBell

In your professional life, the people skills for handling frustrating nudges also:

  1. Preserve your professional image
  2. Address the work issues and accomplish a goal
  3. Foster teamwork and good relations

The professional people skills approach begins not with a skill; it begins with an attitude.  The frustrating feeling often comes from a deeper feeling — loss of control.   Identify the deeper feeling to change your attitude. The professional people skills flow easily from there.

A Short Story. I was scoping a project and it was the third meeting. Another consultant was involved.  She is a wonderful at innovation and creative problem solving — loads of big ideas.  Yet she never lands.  She dreams yet struggles with delivery. My frustration started to mount.  I could feel my body tensing.  I wanted to scream out “more ideas?” and of course couldn’t, wouldn’t and didn’t.

The New Attitude. I took a slow breath (which relaxed my body and composed my mind) and told myself that success was still within my grasp: Self-Empowerment! With the deeper feeling addressed, I said to the clients and the other consultant: “Given the deadline for completion, shall we move ahead with finalizing our approach — or shall we continue to brainstorm new ideas and change the deadline?”

Summary.
Identify why you are frustrated, address that feeling internally to change your attitude, and the professional thing to say will be on your lips.

Who is your frustrating nudge? What type frustrates you? I welcome your stories and techniques in the comments field below.

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, uses her professional skill and experience to teach and counsel teams and leaders, for success with teamwork, customer service, and leading change.

Successful People Skills: See Opportunity in Gray Zone

Posted in Coaching Professional, Leadership, People-Skills, Soft Skills

There are many articles and quotes on what successful people do differently from other people. Answers range from they develop good habits to they do things that others won’t. To this list, I add:

Successful people see opportunity in the gray zone and convert it to black and white results.

See Opportunity in Grey Image Via:FreeFoto


Successful People:

  1. See new opportunity in the gray zone of uncertainty, chaos, unmet needs, disappointment, and doubt.
  2. Ask great questions to turn gray confusion into clarity.
  3. Move toward results.
  4. Avoid binary (black and white) thinking along the way. They think in shades of color and varying perspectives. They don’t think win/lose — they think win.

To do this, successful people spot fatal binary thinking before it takes hold and convert it to a win for themselves and others. How good are you at it or do you often see each situation as either/or.

Consider these successes: Teammates with different views who avoid either/or positions find other, possibly more valuable, solutions. Innovators turn traditional wisdom upside down and view problems from different angles. Customer service reps dealing with angry customers shine when they can see ways to meet the customers’ needs and companies’ needs at the same time. Leaders who explore the perspectives of their team members, without worrying it will lead to chaos, often discover better approaches.

Binary thinking makes many people feel safe, secure, and in control. Yet a short trip to the gray zone of ideas provides you with far more security because a better — previously unforeseen — solution may emerge. Then convert it to black/white results.

What successes have you had from exploring the gray zone and converting ideas to black/white results?

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers workshops, consulting, and coaching for success in teamwork and customer relations. Even after 20 years, Kate continues to learn and explore new paths for professional success. See more info at http://katenasser.com

Collaborator vs. Competitor – Can you bridge the gap?

Posted in Listening Power, People-Skills, Teamwork

Are you a natural collaborator or a natural competitor?  The immediate answer from many people is I can do both.  Sure but that isn’t the question.  Understanding your natural style can be of great help in your work life.  It can have substantially deeper impact on your broader everyday life as it frames how you see and react to various situations.

A few questions to ponder.

Do you a have a strong reaction to either word — collaboration or competition?  When you hear these words, what thoughts jump to your mind?  Which word makes you feel better?

By:FenChurch!

By:FenChurch!

Picture a highway where traffic is moving. You are in the far left lane.  Someone up ahead quite a bit signals they are moving into the left lane.  Do you generally speed up or stay at your speed? 

When someone jumps in and starts talking to you about something you are doing, what is your reaction?  Do you see their involvement as an intrusion and/or an attempt to direct you?  Or do you start out by assuming they are interested or collaborating?

If you were standing in the First Class/Elite line at a gate to board an airplane and someone came up and asked you “Are you in First Class?”, what would you think they were asking?  How would you respond?  I witnessed this.  To me it was clear that the passenger asking wanted to figure out if it was the First Class line.  The passenger that she asked, replied ”Yes, I can follow directions.”   She saw the question as a challenge to her competence rather than a need for help and collaboration.

How would you react to this recent tweet by @1paisley on Twitter?  “If U were arrested 4 being kind, would thr B enough evidence 2 convict U?” ~Author unknown.  My question here is not meant to suggest that competitors are unkind. Yet if you are turned off by this tweet, I propose that you are not a natural collaborator.

What difference does all this make?  Well both in work and in everyday life we encounter diverse people.  Relationships, teamwork, outcomes, and the possibility of success with other people depend on knowing yourself and understanding others.  

If you are a natural collaborator, realize that natural competitors may see your involvement as a competition or a challenge.  If you are a natural competitor, remember that natural collaborators may see you as uncooperative.  One key step for either type to use in bridging the gap — communicate your intention before your message.  Try it — it works!

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach

The Negative Side to Being Positive.

Posted in Coaching Professional, Listening Power, People-Skills

Flickr: HugoVK

Flickr: HugoVK

Is your positive attitude helping yourself and others?  Or are you so extremely positive that you drive others crazy?  Science Daily (July 3, 2009) published an article on the research of Dr. Joanne Wood and Dr. John Lee with interesting results about positive self-affirmations.   The results showed that some people do better when they are allowed to verbalize both the negative and the positive.    (See link below.)

This makes me wonder what effect extremely positive people have on others who see life as positive & negative or as primarily negative.   There are many who want to spread their positivism to help others live a much better life.   Yet it seems to me that if extremely positive people don’t account for others’ needs, their positivism can backfire.  They can come across as patronizing, controlling, and, oddly enough, insensitive.

I have a positive view of life and see life’s challenges straight ahead of me.  I take action to create a good life and learn from my experiences — both good and bad   However, I meet others who see the negatives more than the positives.  They live differently and I respect their choices.  Some have told me they were inspired by my positive outlook and actions.  Others go their own way.  I have also met people who try to convert me to their positivism before seeing how positive I already am!  This turns me off to what they have to offer.

So here are three steps to prevent positivism from being patronizing, controlling, and insensitive in everyday life.  [NOTE: In organizations and teams, positive can-do attitudes and positive disagreements are essential to meeting goals.  Too much negativity can slow momentum and derail end results.]

1.Coach only when asked.  In everyday life, don’t elect yourself someone else’s life coach.  Even positive words like “I would like to encourage you to …” are somewhat arrogant if the person didn’t ask for your help.   Live and enjoy your own positivism but don’t declare yourself Prince of PositiveLand and issue decrees.  You may become known as a royal pain in the a_ _.

2. Listen in the moment and understand others’ perspectives.  Listening builds trust through respect.  Extremely positive people are sometimes so busy encouraging others to be positive they don’t stop and listen to the moment others are in.  Everyone in this life is on a journey and they travel at different speeds.   Some get to positivism faster than others.  Some don’t even want to go there.  Exception: If you are a leading an organization through change and a true resistor is slowing the pace with mega-negativity, you will need to address that very clearly to ensure the momentum of change.

3.Disagree honestly and with respect. Become comfortable with honest respectful disagreement.  People disagree in life.  Working through disagreements often delivers great results.  Yet sometimes extremely positive people patronize during a disagreement because they seek immediate harmony.  Disagreement can be a positive if it is respectful.

Live positively and let others see your positive outlook and actions.  Be careful of pushing them to be positive — you could create the opposite effect.

I welcome your additions to this list and your other relevant comments below.  Here is the link to the Science Daily article mentioned above: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090702110503.htm

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach

MA Organizational Psychology