One On One, Inc.

01/24/2025

On January 16th, I had the honor and pleasure of being the keynote speaker on leadership at the National Association of Dental Laboratories conference at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

With over 200 attendees present, I shared some thoughts and insights on leadership and how to grow the next generation of leaders and create a culture that sponsors retention.

A special thank you to Rachel and Deborah at the NADL for their support, and to Judson Boothe, CEO of Pan-Am Dental, for connecting me with the NADL.

10/22/2024

Using Positional Authority While Maintaining Healthy Relationships with Your Staff

Positional Authority refers to the power and influence one holds due to their position within an organization. This type of authority is inherent in roles such as managers, supervisors, and team leaders. While positional authority can be a powerful tool for driving performance and achieving organizational goals, it must be wielded thoughtfully to maintain healthy and productive relationships with your team. Your team needs to feel a connection with you as their leader. This comes by investing time into each individual to better support their growth.

Understanding Positional Authority
Positional authority is derived from the formal hierarchy of an organization. It permits leaders to make decisions, allocate resources, set initiatives, and set the direction of their team members. However, relying solely on positional authority can create perceptions of rigidity, control, and being overly authoritative in nature, which may decrease creativity, reduce morale, and ultimately lead to turnover.

Positional authority is important and so is connecting with your team. How do you balance the two? We have some answers. The first place to start is by recognizing how to use your positional authority in a way that creates the most influential and positive experience for your team. Effective use of this leadership authority can inspire, motivate, and empower your team, all while maintaining positive and respectful relationships.



Key Behaviors to Focus On
Decision Making Behaviors:
As a leader, the final decision is typically yours to make; however, how you get to your decision can be the difference in gaining buy-in or finding resistance.

To make effective decisions:

Gather Input: Involve your team in the decision-making process. This not only brings diverse perspectives, but it also shows you value your team’s experience, thoughts, and perspective. Leaders need to be cautious of leading with their ideas, thoughts, and opinions before first considering those of others. Therefore, you can unintentionally send the message that you are not interested in theirs. As often as possible, gain other’s perspectives before sharing yours.

Be Transparent: Clearly communicate the reasons behind your decisions. Transparency builds trust and reduces uncertainty and any misinterpretation.

Stay Decisive: While it’s important to consider input, your authority means you may have to make the final decision, even when it’s unpopular. Your team will respect your decision if you confidently make it based on data, facts, and opinions of your team.

Communication Behaviors:
Communication is a cornerstone leadership behavior that could impact the relationships and morale of your team.

We suggest you use your authority to:

Set Clear Expectations: Clearly articulate goals, responsibilities, and expectations. This helps prevent misunderstandings and ensures everyone is aligned.

Provide Constructive Feedback: Offer feedback that is specific, actionable, and focused on improvement.

Positive Reinforcement: Praise efforts and achievements to motivate and encourage more of the behaviors you want to see.

Listen Actively: Nonverbal communication is just as important. Use active listening to show genuine interest in your team members' ideas, concerns, and feedback.



Delegation Behaviors:
The stereotypical abuse of authority is that the leader delegates all their tasks to their team while perceivably putting their feet up on the desk and do nothing all day. While we are huge fans of delegation, let’s look at the behaviors that promote the best leader/team member relationships:

Delegate to Empower: Use delegation to give your team ownership and decision-making responsibilities. People will more likely stay with companies when they feel they can influence the business’ future.

Delegate to Develop Talent: Use your positional authority to coach, train, and invest in the future talent in your department or organization. Build up talent for succession planning and business advancement whenever possible.

Delegate with Trust: Delegate and don’t micromanage. Give your team members the room to accomplish task and projects. The best way to maintain mutual trust is to delegate with detailed and specific expectations with incremental follow-ups.

Leadership and Managerial Behaviors:
Lastly, when your organization gave you the title with the authority to be a leader, you accepted the responsibility to uphold the core values, culture, and organizational policies. Essentially, people and processes are one of the most important parts of your job.

Use your leadership authority to guide your organization by:

Establishing Clear Processes: Define workflows and procedures to streamline operations. Set focus, structure, and direction, which will lead to less confusion and chaos.

Leading by Example: Model desired behaviors and demonstrate the behaviors and work ethic you expect from your team. This sets a standard and inspires others to follow suit.

Maintaining Order: Help your team understand the priorities and direction. A focused environment and team typically are less stressed, more productive, and have better morale.

Encouraging Teamwork: Promote collaboration and teamwork by creating opportunities for team members to work together on projects and initiatives.

Providing Support: Offer guidance and resources as needed. Check in regularly to provide support and address any challenges. This includes work-life balance.

Being Reflective: Make sure you are stepping back and removing yourself from the day-to-day action to reflect on your interactions, your team’s interactions, and decisions made. You have the authority to influence how the team works together and services your customers. Watch this from a bird’s-eye perspective to see if it’s really the way you want your organization to run.

Positively using your positional authority involves a balance of decision making, setting clear expectations, providing feedback, coaching, fostering collaboration, leading by example, and effective delegation. By doing so, you not only influence your team positively but also build strong, lasting relationships that drive success and ultimately will increase business growth.

All the above behaviors and suggestions will mean nothing if you don’t “walk the walk” in balancing your authority and connecting with the people on your team. Remember, leadership is about consistency day in, and day out, so embrace the authority in your position and apply it respectfully in the context of supporting the success of your team!

By: Matt Francoeur
Go to our website (www.oneononehr.com) for more articles.

10/17/2024

How to Give Feedback and Effectively Address Performance Issues

Giving feedback and addressing performance issues can be challenging, but mastering these skills is crucial for fostering a productive and positive work environment. Whether you're a manager, team leader, or colleague, below is a guide to ensure your feedback is constructive and impactful.

Why and When Are You Providing Feedback?
Before providing feedback, assess your intent. If you care about the person and want to help them or the team to improve, then you are in a good headspace to provide feedback based on good intent.

If you are addressing a personal agenda, STOP, do not pass Go. You should not provide feedback. Wait until you are truly approaching the individual with good intent.

Ensure your feedback is timely. As soon as an observation is made, you should quickly follow up with your feedback. This way the situation is quickly recalled and discussed without the “blurring” that occurs with time.

Feedback: Balance Positive and Constructive
While it’s important to address performance issues, it’s equally important to acknowledge what the individual does well. This balance, often referred to as the “sandwich” approach, helps maintain morale and shows that your feedback is fair and well-rounded. Start with what the individual does well. Then go into what you think they can do to be more effective. Using this strategy will help with receptivity.

Feedback Elements
When providing feedback, clarity is key. Focus on specific behaviors or incidents rather than general traits. Use facts and data. Talk about what was expected versus what was provided. This approach avoids ambiguity and helps the recipient understand exactly what needs to change.

Feedback should be forward-looking. Instead of merely pointing out problems, offer actionable solutions and support. Provide guidance on how they can improve. Here is what you can do to be “more effective.”

Approach feedback with empathy and professionalism. Understand that receiving feedback can be difficult and approach the conversation with sensitivity. Acknowledge their feelings and maintain a supportive tone throughout the discussion.

Ask for Feedback
Use your time together to ask the individual what you can do to be more effective as a leader. And when you receive feedback, don’t try to defend or justify your actions. Thank them for the feedback, process it, and take the necessary steps to show improvement.


Conclusion
If you follow the recommendations above, you should alleviate the anxiety around having what some perceive as a difficult conversation. It also should prevent small performance issues from becoming large performance issues by having timely, course-correcting conversations.

Effectively giving feedback and addressing performance issues requires a blend of clarity, empathy, and constructive support. By being specific, balanced, solution-oriented, and empathetic, you can help individuals improve while maintaining a positive and productive work environment. Remember, the goal of feedback is not just to correct but to guide and empower for the future success of the individual and team.

By: Gail Ciccione - For more articles, visit our website at

Laura Muñoz 10/15/24 Laura Muñoz 10/15/24 How to Give Feedback and Effectively Address Performance Issues  Discover key strategies like assessing intent, using the "sandwich" approach, and maintaining clarity and empathy. Learn how to provide constructive feedback that empowers individuals and en...

09/25/2024

Are You Fully Leveraging the Full Power of Positive Reinforcement and Feedback?

A few years back, we were hired to provide leadership training for 35 leaders in a manufacturing plant. Each leader took our leadership assessments, and the average score for “Reward” was very low - around 28 out of 100. That meant their need for positive feedback was low, creating an assumption that others didn’t need it either. Human nature is to impose our needs on others, so the culture was all business, transactional, and some would say negative, and morale was low while turnover was high. There was little positive reinforcement.

After identifying the lack of positive reinforcement, we challenged the leadership team to each share two moments of positive reinforcement or feedback in the morning and two in the afternoon each day for one week. Statistically, that was 140 moments of positive feedback and reinforcement per day and 700 for the week.

Afterward, in the debrief with site leadership, we learned that the results were astonishing! By Wednesday, the “team” was talking more, teamwork had significantly improved, and productivity was higher, even record-breaking on one day. Leadership had never seen anything like it before this week. Simplified, leadership changed their behavior, the culture improved, employees were re-energized, and plant performance was better.

This story highlights the impact that positive reinforcement and feedback can have on people. As leaders, there are always distractions from positive leadership, with the pressure to be better, improve results, and do more with less. Sound familiar? This thinking conditions leaders to mostly see what needs improvement, what isn’t good enough, and how people could perform better, and it creates a more critical eye on performance. It’s a mindset that develops under day-to-day pressures.

But how do we really achieve results? Through people. People need to feel appreciated, motivated, understood, and have their value recognized. They don’t just want a job but want to feel part of something and connected to their leader. Absent of positive reinforcement and feedback, people are left to interpret their performance, which can create stress, self-doubt, and anxiety. These are all emotions that could be avoided with positive feedback and reinforcement.

Please consider the risks and consequences if your leadership style lacks a steady stream of feedback and positive reinforcement. Could you be unintentionally demotivating people, lowering their morale, or missing out on their discretionary effort? What lurks in the shadows is disengagement, quiet quitting, and potential turnover. Again, no bad intention but perhaps just too busy or distracted to provide enough positive reinforcement and feedback.

Leaders should be careful not to fall into a few common traps. Some leaders think that people are just doing the job they are getting paid for, and positive reinforcement and feedback aren’t necessary. Or they have an experienced person or a SME who knows what needs to be done without the leader’s involvement or feedback. It could be that the leader is just too busy to notice the good things and only communicates about what could be better. Another possibility is that maybe the leader isn’t motivated by positive reinforcement and assumes others aren’t as well.

The Cost of Positive Reinforcement: We challenge any leader to find the expense line on the P & L for positive reinforcement and feedback. Don’t waste too much time, because that line doesn’t exist. Leaders who have the self-awareness around the value of positive reinforcement provide it often as a free and discretionary opportunity to motivate and inspire. All it takes is a little time and self-awareness, and the benefits can be exponential.

The Impact of Positive Reinforcement: Positive reinforcement and feedback is a powerful tool that acknowledges, reinforces, and rewards desired behaviors, achievements, performance, and efforts. The key to providing positive feedback is to make it detailed, specific, and timely. For example, telling someone they did a “good job” can be ineffective and confusing. It can leave that person wondering what exactly about their performance was liked by the leader, or what they want more of. If your feedback is: “I like the way you responded to project emails quickly,” or “You provided daily project updates,” or “You ran tight meetings with an agenda and stayed on topic,” then you will likely get more of that. Our mantra is simple: reinforce what you want more of and, low and behold, you just might get it!

Positive Reinforcement Creates Followers and a Culture in Which People Want to Work: Did you ever work for someone who mostly only provided negative feedback, was all business, lived in the status quo, deflected change, and didn’t motivate or inspire people? When you provide positive feedback and reinforcement, people feel connected to their leader, valued, appreciated, and recognized. The leader and the environment bring energy and positivity, and people want to learn, grow, and perform. When your leadership is known for positive feedback and reinforcement, you will create loyalty, commitment, energy, and motivation. It’s a simple leadership technique that is 100 percent in your control. When individuals receive positive reinforcement, they are more likely to continue demonstrating the desired behaviors and strive for excellence, which often leads to improved productivity and performance.

Catch People Doing Things Right: This is a technique to make positive feedback and reinforcement a process to simply look for people doing things well or right. Have a keen eye to see the good things in people and their performance and shift your focus and attention to seeing positive behaviors and achievements ahead of what could be better.

Conclusion: Using positive reinforcement and feedback is often under-utilized, and something that is 100 percent controlled by the leader. With a little more self-awareness, attention to people and performance, and positive communication, you will inspire more discretionary effort and better performance.

So, here’s our challenge to you. For one week, provide positive feedback and/or reinforcement twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon, and then stand back and watch what happens. You might be very surprised and wonder why you didn’t start this long before now.

If you would like to discuss how to more effectively use positive reinforcement and feedback or discuss the results of our challenge with you, please feel free to reach out to Rich at 413-237-9891 or [email protected]. Visit Coach's Corner on our website for more information and more articles: www.oneononehr.com/blog

Author: Rich Frigon

Rich Frigon 9/24/24 Rich Frigon 9/24/24 Are You Fully Leveraging the Full Power of Positive Reinforcement and Feedback?  In today's rapidly evolving workplace, understanding the dynamics of employee engagement is crucial for organizational success. Read More Laura Muñoz 9/17/24 Laura Muñoz 9/17/2...

09/18/2024

Do you really know what your employees need from you?

If you don’t know, then ask. One of the critical components of Servant Leadership is being in tune with your people’s needs and providing tailored leadership to each person on your team. If you want to help your team get closer to reaching their full potential, you, as their leader, should shift your leadership style accordingly and provide each person the type of leadership that inspires them.

So, do you really know what your employees need from you? If not, here are some questions to consider asking your team members:

What is the one thing you need most from me?

What is the best way I can show my support for you?

What are your top three motivators?

What are your primary triggers or “hot buttons”?

What do you enjoy most in your current role?

When you achieve your goals, how do you like to be recognized?

Are there developmental opportunities with which I could assist you?

Given how you may have been coached in the past, what would you like me to:

a) start doing? 

b) avoid doing?

c) continue doing?

You might consider making this a team-building activity. Dedicate a staff meeting to explain why this is important to you as a leader, and then allow your team to work on the above questions over a couple of weeks. Afterward, set up one-on-one meetings with each team member and let them share with you their candid responses. Of course, the leader must make the environment safe, so the employees will be open and transparent about their needs. This is all in how you frame the discussion.

As a leader, you should aim to help your team members reach their aspirational career goals. If you want to deliver great results, it starts with providing your team with what they need. Make this about them, provide them what they need, and watch the magic begin.

Blog by Gail Ciccione

For more blog articles or to learn more about our services, please click on the link to visit our website: https://www.oneononehr.com/blog

09/05/2024

How To Make Accountability A Positive Process

Accountability is a crucial aspect of effective leadership, driving individual and team performance, and achieving organizational goals. However, if someone says, “I’m going to hold you accountable,” then those words don’t generally mean a good time! It may cause you to break out in a sweat, your heart rate may go up, or it may keep you up at night! Over time, accountability has taken a bad rap.

Some leaders don’t do a good job of coaching people through to expectations, so they miss an opportunity to provide feedback and help you improve. Instead, they are hands-off, wait until performance needs improvement, or an issue needs to be addressed, and then they get involved in “holding people accountable.” In other words, they are reactive versus proactive with their influence in support of your success.

In these cases, holding people accountable is a negative or punitive process, because the act of addressing performance issues is after it has happened. Why does it need to unfold like this? What can you do to make accountability a process and not a moment in time? Let’s explore how to make accountability a positive process and a catalyst to support the success of others.

1. Set Clear Expectations: Effective accountability starts with setting clear expectations that are detailed, specific, and time bounded. As a leader, clearly communicate goals, objectives, and performance standards to your team. Ensure that expectations are understood and agreed upon by all parties involved.

2. Follow Up On Expectations: Provide feedback, monitor performance, coach, teach, and train. In other words, practice servant leadership.

3. Create Touchpoints: Touchpoints are incremental moments of accountability. Touchpoints take on different looks, such as meetings, e-mails, phone calls, self-reporting, surveillance, conference calls, etc. Touchpoints should feature positive feedback and reinforcement, constructive feedback, and progress updates, and all these moments can be moments of incremental accountability.

4. Practice Servant Leadership: Become a better performance coach, so you can influence performance before or during poor performance, not afterwards. Shift the focus of accountability from blame and one of reaction to learning and growth and influence before the situation gets out of hand. Emphasize the importance of continuous improvement and provide constructive feedback that helps individuals identify areas of development. Encourage a growth mindset within your team where mistakes are viewed as opportunities for learning and development rather than reasons for punishment. Create an environment where taking risks and experimenting are encouraged, as is innovation and creativity.

5. Be Personably Accountable: Lead by example and set the standard for excellence by holding yourself to the highest standard of accountability in your actions, decisions, behaviors, and commitments. Demonstrate behavior you expect from your team by meeting deadlines, fulfilling obligations, and taking responsibility for outcomes. When leaders exemplify accountability, it sets the tone for the entire team and reinforces the positive nature of the process.

6. Celebrate Achievements: Acknowledge and celebrate individual and team success and achievements. Recognize the efforts and accomplishments of your team members and reinforce that their accountability led to recognition and rewards. Celebrating successes creates a positive accountability cycle and a culture of recognition and continuous improvement.

Accountability, when approached positively, can be a transformative force to higher performance, better morale and motivation, and a more satisfying employee experience. By setting clear expectations, building trust, encouraging ownership, providing feedback, and promoting a growth mindset, leaders will create an environment where accountability is embraced as a catalyst for individual and team success. Embrace accountability as an opportunity for development and collaboration and watch your team thrive.

If you would like to learn more, please click on this link: www.oneononehr.com/blog

09/03/2024

Are You Missing the Good-Will Boat as a People Leader?

Everybody is motivated by different things, and good will is a primary motivator for many people. When we conduct exit interviews or meet with people who have given their notice, we hear a consistent theme as to why they are leaving: it is a lack of connection with their team leader. They felt little to no concern for their well-being and/or didn’t feel care, empathy, or compassion from their team leader; therefore, these exiting employees had little hope that their future was in good hands or would be better than the past.

Good will is defined as care, concern, and compassion for people. When employees have good will, their standard of expectation is that they will have some level of friendship and relationship with their team leader. When a team leader shows some level of good will, an employee will be motivated to offer higher levels of discretionary effort, more collaboration and communication, and more commitment and loyalty. Good will puts an emotional hook in the minds of the employee towards the company.

Without good will, an employee may not trust their team leader, because they don’t know him or her. A lack of trust can develop when the team leader often shows more interest in getting the work done than in providing support for the employee. The team leader can seem distant and aloof, and the employee can feel unsatisfied or even abandoned.

If you are task-oriented, high-energy, or a type-A personality, then you may need to slow down, connect better with people, prioritize time spent with them, schedule people-connection time in your calendar, look people in the eye, show empathy, offer servant leadership, create a relationship and invest in it, and then watch what happens.

Suddenly people will begin to talk with you more, collaborate more, bring more ideas and solutions, be more creative, and have more pep in their step, and you will wonder what changed. What changed is you! People live what they learn and learn what they live, so give them the experience that you want back.

Be ever present, make time for people, ask for feedback on your leadership, and learn how you can support people better.

If you would like to learn your level of good will, call us today, and let’s discuss how we can measure your good will and coach you on how to use it.

08/29/2024

Engagement or People Connection?

The latest buzz word in business is engagement. “Be engaged with your people.” “Stay engaged.” “Promote engagement.” “We need to measure employee engagement.” Engagement, engagement, and engagement!”

We say bah-hum-bug to engagement.

Ask yourself, “What if the leader:

isn’t good at engagement? “

gives the employee a bad experience when they engage?”

is all business and too direct?”

lacks soft skills?”

has an aggressive communication style?”

doesn’t demonstrate any good will or servant leadership?”

If you need to direct a leader to engage, then there is probably a good chance they may not be great at it, because, if they were, they would already be engaging!

We feel that “people connection” is the wave of the future, and we are on a crusade to replace the term “engagement” with “people connection.” When you connect with people, you look them in the eye, you communicate directly with them, you are ever present, you listen to them, you demonstrate respect for opinions and input, and you make them feel valued. People connection builds trust, fosters relationships, promotes communication and collaboration, and makes people feel they are part of something. It creates camaraderie and a sense that someone cares about them. “Engagement” can lack many of these elements.

As you go forward from reading this, realize that bad engagement is worse than no engagement. Practice people connection where you prioritize the moment, share the moment, and show the individual with whom you are talking that they are important enough for you to give them your undivided time and attention. Prioritize people and then watch what happens next. You are welcome!

Ask yourself, “Are you engaging or connecting with people?” Call us if you would like to discuss the difference.

To read more, go to Coach's Corner on our website:
https://www.oneononehr.com/blog

08/28/2024

Servant Leadership: Your Ticket to Reducing Turnover and Inspiring Discretionary Effort

Traditional leadership puts the team leader at the top of the organizational chart with “subordinates” reporting “up” to the boss. For example, in a team of 10 associates, the team leader oversees these associates and provides them direction and constructive feedback when necessary. An associate’s effort is based on what they want to offer at any given time on any given day. Sounds simple, right? - Like traditional leadership.

Servant leaders think of their role quite differently and consider leadership as an act of service to the associates, or those pseudo reporting to them, unlike traditional thinking that positions the leader as the boss. They see their primary responsibility is to support the success of the associates by not just being their “boss,” and their behavior is supportive. You may ask, “How can that work?”

While servant leadership may sound counter intuitive, a servant leader’s standard work is to provide positive reinforcement, set expectations, coach, teach, train, remove barriers, build relationships, seek feedback, listen to their employees’ concerns, and celebrate the associates’ successes. Servant leaders build talent, trust, capability, confidence, commitment, and loyalty by providing leadership that people want to follow. Servant leaders understand their end game is to achieve success through people, and they constantly seek and provide feedback. Servant leaders inspire discretionary effort, take more ownership, and bring higher performance.

Ask yourself, “Are you practicing servant leadership and is your team benefiting from all a servant leader has to offer?” If you would like to better understand the answer to this question, please feel free to give us a call.

Visit our Coach's Corner on our Website to read more articles - https://www.oneononehr.com/blog/