5 Ways to Encourage New Ideas In Your Business
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5 Ways to Encourage New Ideas In Your Business

BySonya Shelton

  Leaders create positive change. You don’t always have to be the creator or innovator, but it’s important to recognize and support good ideas. It doesn’t matter whether you came up with them or not. The difference between your success and failure could be just one idea. Here are some ways to encourage new ideas in your workplace: Talk with…

Are You Challenging Assumptions In Your Workplace?
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Are You Challenging Assumptions In Your Workplace?

BySonya Shelton

A successful leader once shared that he constantly asks himself one question: “What am I not seeing?” Assumptions are one of the areas that may be a blind spot, and leadership requires us to challenge them repeatedly. What used to work yesterday may no longer apply today, and it’s important for leaders to question and challenge those assumptions. The hardest part about…

Executive Leaders Encourage Dialogue
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Executive Leaders Encourage Dialogue

BySonya Shelton

  Often, great ideas come from healthy debate. When team members exchange ideas and opinions, new ideas can emerge. Working collaboratively always produces better results than working competitively. When people compete within an organization, they don’t support each other toward the shared vision. This creates a culture of self-interest, rather than organizational interest. Competition is healthy for competitors, not for team members. Imagine…

Why You Need to Check for Understanding
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Why You Need to Check for Understanding

BySonya Shelton

It happens all the time: we think we’re being understood, but we’re not. And we have no idea. We often don’t bother to check to make sure people understand us, even when it’s critical. It doesn’t help that most people don’t want to admit they don’t get it, especially to the leader. You may get a nod or even an…

How Executive Leaders Stop to Create Growth
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How Executive Leaders Stop to Create Growth

BySonya Shelton

As we embark toward achieving our vision, organizations sometimes continue to do things that either don’t work or don’t support the vision. When someone questions “why do we do that?” The answer is often “we’ve always done it this way.” Sometimes the person answering the question really doesn’t understand the purpose, which means they’re missing information. However, most often, the truth is that…

3 Tips to Reorganize Toward Your Vision
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3 Tips to Reorganize Toward Your Vision

BySonya Shelton

When you change the vision, it’s important to ensure the structure of the organization supports the retooled vision. Reorganizing can improve integration, flexibility, and productivity in a powerful way. If you want to achieve significant change, some structural changes will likely be necessary. It’s difficult for people to do new things in their current role since they’re in the habit of doing things…

Are You Giving Effective Feedback?
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Are You Giving Effective Feedback?

BySonya Shelton

Because managers and executives struggle with the process, feedback has developed a negative reputation. Feedback doesn’t equal criticism. Feedback is providing someone with observations that influence their performance. Since influence is your number-one job as a leader, it stands to reason that giving feedback is an important part of your role. People want to know how they’re doing, and they want to hear…

How to Lead your Team Through Change
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How to Lead your Team Through Change

BySonya Shelton

In today’s business world, not only is change the norm, but the speed of change continues to accelerate. Dealing with change and leading others through it can be challenging. No matter what business you’re in, your ability to lead your organization through change can make or break your success. Changes come in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons. The…

Strengthen Your Vision by Setting the Context
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Strengthen Your Vision by Setting the Context

BySonya Shelton

As the leader of your organization, you understand the context behind your vision and your decisions. It’s part of the environmental considerations you need to understand. However, not everyone sees the context the same way you do, so it’s important to explain it. To really make your vision come to life, you need to create the whole picture for yourself and for…

Take Time to Express Your Intentions
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Take Time to Express Your Intentions

BySonya Shelton

In any situation, where there’s a vacuum of information, people will make it up. This is especially true of leaders in organizations. People constantly interpret the motives of everything the leader says and does. So it’s best to express your intention, so no one wastes time trying to figure it out or make it up….