Wednesday, January 29, 2020
Monday, January 27, 2020
6 Steps for Building Your Personal Brand
6 Steps for Building Your Personal Brand
There are 6 steps that you can take as a leader to build your personal brand that will get results. In this podcast you will discover why every leader should take this seriously and how these 6 steps for building your personal brand will impact your personal and professional life.
Why is Personal Branding Important?
Let’s start by answering this basic question: Why is personal branding important?
Your personal brand is important because your team members will inevitably see you as the face of the company, or at least one of its most influential representatives. When you’re in a leadership position, your values and priorities are naturally going to be assumed to be the values and priorities of the company as a whole, so it’s important to be aware of this.
Also, a personal brand can very easily be parlayed into thought leadership. In a lot of ways, I think branding yourself is all about identifying your superpower or your key strengths, then building a brand identity around that. When people in the business community learn what your superpower is, they’re going to start calling on you to use it. That can lead to amazing opportunities for your business.
Lastly, branding yourself can also make your employees more likely to buy into your initiatives and your ideas. That’s because they’ll feel like they have a clear sense of who you are and what drives you, they get to know The REAL YOU!
6 Steps for Building Your Personal Brand
I have found that some people are naturals at building their personal brand and others would like a roadmap for success. That is why I put together these 6 steps for building your personal brand that are easy to implement with great results!
- Assess yourself and Understand Your Strengths and Weaknesses. Before you can start branding yourself and before you can begin offering effective team leadership, you need to assess your strengths, weaknesses, and values. There are a number of leadership assessment tests out there that can give you a good idea of where you stand, including your personal team leadership style.
- Write your personal mission and vision statement. I find it helpful to actually create a written statement of your personal brand. This doesn’t have to be something you make public; this is simply for you to focus on your brand and your team leadership style. I’ve worked with a lot of leaders who have real “breakthroughs and transformation” while drafting their personal branding statements.
- Establish your thought leadership through the production of good content. Your personal brand needs to be shared in a in a way that it gets noticed. You can do this through keynote addresses, videos, blogs, or even a smartly employed Twitter account. What’s important is having your personal branding strategy articulated in a way that people will see and understand what your superpower is so they can buy!
- The importance of having an elevator pitch. I think it’s important to have an elevator pitch for your business, but it’s also important to have a personal elevator pitch. When you meet someone at a conference or event and they ask what you do, what do you tell them? What’s your succinct, one-or-two-sentence way of sharing your superpower? And how do you convey your team leadership style?
- Be authentic and Real. People can sense if you are being real and authentic and they judge you within the first 30 second of meeting you. Being real means not speaking to things you’re not knowledgeable about, and not pretending to be an expert when you’re not; and, sticking to your basic values, allowing them to guide all your decision-making rather than just going with the crowd. After all, it’s that set of values you really want to become known for.
- Be consistent everyone is watching. Do what you say you’re going to do, show up when you say you’re going to show up, and deliver on what you pledge to deliver. This is crucial for how to be a good team leader, and it’s crucial for branding yourself effectively. Simply put, if you’re not consistent, the only thing you’ll be known for is your inconsistency!
Learn More About How to Be a Good Team Leader Through Executive Coaching
A personal branding strategy can help you advance your career, and it can also help you offer effective team leadership. Every great leader and athlete have a coach. Let us show you how executive coaching can get you immediate results! If you’d like to talk more about what how we can help Reach out today and let’s talk. Contact me at www.rickgoodman.com or call 888-267-6098.
And don’t forget, my Solutions Oriented Leader book is now available to order online. In this first-of-a-kind, comprehensive guide, I’ll lead you through the everyday challenges of the modern workplace while providing you with easy-to-implement solutions to achieve world-class results!
6 Steps for Building Your Personal Brand
6 Steps for Building Your Personal Brand
There are 6 steps that you can take as a leader to build your personal brand that will get results. In this podcast you will discover why every leader should take this seriously and how these 6 steps for building your personal brand will impact your personal and professional life.
Why is Personal Branding Important?
Let’s start by answering this basic question: Why is personal branding important?
Your personal brand is important because your team members will inevitably see you as the face of the company, or at least one of its most influential representatives. When you’re in a leadership position, your values and priorities are naturally going to be assumed to be the values and priorities of the company as a whole, so it’s important to be aware of this.
Also, a personal brand can very easily be parlayed into thought leadership. In a lot of ways, I think branding yourself is all about identifying your superpower or your key strengths, then building a brand identity around that. When people in the business community learn what your superpower is, they’re going to start calling on you to use it. That can lead to amazing opportunities for your business.
Lastly, branding yourself can also make your employees more likely to buy into your initiatives and your ideas. That’s because they’ll feel like they have a clear sense of who you are and what drives you, they get to know The REAL YOU!
6 Steps for Building Your Personal Brand
I have found that some people are naturals at building their personal brand and others would like a roadmap for success. That is why I put together these 6 steps for building your personal brand that are easy to implement with great results!
- Assess yourself and Understand Your Strengths and Weaknesses. Before you can start branding yourself and before you can begin offering effective team leadership, you need to assess your strengths, weaknesses, and values. There are a number of leadership assessment tests out there that can give you a good idea of where you stand, including your personal team leadership style.
- Write your personal mission and vision statement. I find it helpful to actually create a written statement of your personal brand. This doesn’t have to be something you make public; this is simply for you to focus on your brand and your team leadership style. I’ve worked with a lot of leaders who have real “breakthroughs and transformation” while drafting their personal branding statements.
- Establish your thought leadership through the production of good content. Your personal brand needs to be shared in a in a way that it gets noticed. You can do this through keynote addresses, videos, blogs, or even a smartly employed Twitter account. What’s important is having your personal branding strategy articulated in a way that people will see and understand what your superpower is so they can buy!
- The importance of having an elevator pitch. I think it’s important to have an elevator pitch for your business, but it’s also important to have a personal elevator pitch. When you meet someone at a conference or event and they ask what you do, what do you tell them? What’s your succinct, one-or-two-sentence way of sharing your superpower? And how do you convey your team leadership style?
- Be authentic and Real. People can sense if you are being real and authentic and they judge you within the first 30 second of meeting you. Being real means not speaking to things you’re not knowledgeable about, and not pretending to be an expert when you’re not; and, sticking to your basic values, allowing them to guide all your decision-making rather than just going with the crowd. After all, it’s that set of values you really want to become known for.
- Be consistent everyone is watching. Do what you say you’re going to do, show up when you say you’re going to show up, and deliver on what you pledge to deliver. This is crucial for how to be a good team leader, and it’s crucial for branding yourself effectively. Simply put, if you’re not consistent, the only thing you’ll be known for is your inconsistency!
Learn More About How to Be a Good Team Leader Through Executive Coaching
A personal branding strategy can help you advance your career, and it can also help you offer effective team leadership. Every great leader and athlete have a coach. Let us show you how executive coaching can get you immediate results! If you’d like to talk more about what how we can help Reach out today and let’s talk. Contact me at www.rickgoodman.com or call 888-267-6098.
And don’t forget, my Solutions Oriented Leader book is now available to order online. In this first-of-a-kind, comprehensive guide, I’ll lead you through the everyday challenges of the modern workplace while providing you with easy-to-implement solutions to achieve world-class results!
Sunday, January 26, 2020
Friday, January 24, 2020
4 Strategies for Delivering Solutions Oriented Feedback
4 Strategies for Delivering Solutions Oriented Feedback
As a motivational keynote speaker, I receive solutions-oriented feedback regularly from my clients. Delivering and receiving feedback as a leader is crucial for your growth and your teams growth. In this podcast I am going to share 4 strategies for delivering solutions-oriented feedback that produces results. As a motivational keynote speaker its important for me to receive feedback in order to improve my performance and the truth is that it’s necessary.
But both kinds of feedback can ultimately be valuable: We need the affirmation just as surely as we need the correction. I review some of the best motivational keynote speakers in the world to improve my skills and sometimes the feedback is painful, but that’s what makes you want to get better
And, as a leader, part of your job is delivering feedback as needed. That means offering both kinds of feedback to your employees—and frankly, it can sometimes be hard to know what to say and how to say it.
Let me offer my advice—some basic tips for transformational leaders looking to deliver employee feedback as effectively as possible.
4 Strategies for Delivering Solutions Oriented Feedback
Ask your team members for feedback on you and it will encourage them to receive feedback. When someone actually requests feedback, it’s a lot less threatening… and thus, they’re much more likely to really listen and absorb it. As a motivational keynote speaker, it’s important for me to lead by example. I am always actively seeking out feedback on my own performance which opens the door for them. Also make it clear to your employees that you’re happy to have a low-key conversation about their performance any time they like.
Focus on growth opportunities and solutions. When your feedback is all about results, it can make your team members feel pressured. You can defray this by encouraging them to think in terms of learning, growth, and personal development. Don’t make your feedback about the bottom line; make it about effort. This means that you have to provide training and growth opportunities which will lead to better retention.
Take the Yoda approach. Yoda was famous for teaching by asking questions—guiding his young jedi to discovering insights on their own. You can take a similar approach when you give employee feedback, asking team members to reflect on their own performance and come up with some of their own insights. As a motivational keynote speaker, I regularly invite other speakers to critique my performance and they always start my asking me questions about how I feel it went and what I would improve.
Understand your teams personality. When you’re praising an employee, it can often be best to do so publicly—unless you know the employee to be shy, or to eschew public shows of affirmation. Meanwhile, when you criticize, it’s almost never wise to do it in front of an audience; better to take those opportunities one-on-one. This is no different than when I am about to deliver a motivational keynote speech, I send out a pre-program questionnaire so that I can understand the demographics of the audience in order to deliver a more focused message at the event which gets better results!
Those are some of my guidelines and strategies for effectively coaching and delivering solutions-oriented feedback to your employees. If you’d like to hear more about how transformational leaders deliver solutions-oriented feedback, I’d love to tell you! Reach out today and let’s chat together. You can contact me at www.rickgoodman.com or call 888-267-6098.
What is a solutions-oriented leader? Take the free Solutions-Oriented Leader Assessment now https://www.solutionsorientedleader.com/assessment
and claim your Comprehensive Guide to Achieve Success. Dr. Rick Goodman’s Solutions-
Oriented Leader book is now available to order online. In this first-of-a-kind, comprehensive
guide, author Dr. Rick Goodman leads you through the everyday challenges of the modern
workplace while providing you with easy-to-implement solutions to achieve world-class results!
Saturday, January 18, 2020
The Ten Best Questions for Assessing Your Organizational Culture
The Ten Best Questions for Assessing Your Organizational Culture
In this podcast I am going to share with you my ten best questions for assessing your organizational culture. In order to assess your organizational culture to make changes its important to develop questions that will point you in the right direction and I know these ten questions for assessing your organizational culture will put you on the right path.
What’s difficult sometimes is defining your organizational culture, putting a finger on what makes it distinct. With that said, I think this quick questionnaire can be vital for just getting you started in thinking critically about what your organizational culture is and how it might be improved.
What is Organizational Culture?
Before we can assess our organizational culture it’s important that we understand what is organizational culture, generally speaking?
The way I explain organizational culture is that it’s a summary of how people at your business interact with each other… and, how they interact with clients and customers. More formally, you might say that organizational culture is the mixture of beliefs, assumptions, values, and habits that comprise the psychological environment of your workplace.
Organizational culture comes in different varieties, and some are healthier than others. So, how do you assess your company’s culture? That’s what we’ll address next.
Assessing Your Organizational Culture
Here are my Ten Best Questions for Assessing Your Organizational Culture
- What is the mission/purpose of the organization? Is this mission statement written or codified in some way for people to view? Would you say that most team members can articulate the mission? Or, if you asked 10 different employees what the mission is, would you get 10 different answers?
- What motivates your employees? Are team members motivated into action by a sense of mission or by promise of a reward, or the threat of corrective action? What’s the motivating force at your company?
- What’s the organizational structure? Would you say that the structure of your company is hierarchical? Or is it more of a flat structure, where team members all feel like they’re on pretty much the same footing? How does this structure impact your daily productivity and employee relationships?
- Is your company overall collaborative? How often do different departments work together with one another? On a typical project, is one employee holed up in their office, or do you see a lot of instances of teamwork and cross-disciplinary unity?
- Do people in your company feel respected and appreciated? Actually, start with yourself: Do you feel respected, both by people who work under you and by the people to whom you report? Do colleagues appreciate your particular skills and subject matter expertise? Do you feel like you have opportunities to add value, and is that value welcomed and appreciated by the rest of the team?
- Is there freedom to fail with new initiatives? What happens if a team member tries something innovative and new and it doesn’t quite work as intended? Is punitive action taken? Is that employee scolded by the boss? Or do you have a work environment where effort and experimentation are rewarded and encouraged, even when things don’t quite pan out?
- How does employee morale impact the end client/customer experience? This is a tough one to assess, maybe, but think about the general mood of your employees. Does it seem like their disposition carries over into friendly, attentive, courteous customer service? Or do you notice that lackluster attitudes lead to a chilly demeanor with customers?
- How would you characterize leadership at your company? Leadership and organizational culture go hand in hand. I’d encourage you to ask whether the managers/bosses/supervisors/executives at your company lead by example; whether they micromanage; whether they delegate; whether they ultimately trust employees with some real autonomy and freedom.
- Can you name three specific areas where your organizational culture could be improved? Simple question… simple but crucial! No company culture is ever perfect. It’s always going to be a work in progress and thinking critically about specific areas for improvement can be a really helpful exercise. What are a few things that immediately spring to mind? And do you think other team members would share your assessment?
- On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your organizational culture? Would you recommend it to a friend? Again, this may sound simple, maybe even simplistic. But I think there’s real value in just doing a quick gut check: How much do you like your organizational culture, really? Your instincts here may be more revealing than you can imagine.
If you’re interested to see how our team can help you with your organizational needs
reach out to me at your next opportunity. Contact me at www.rickgoodman.com email us at info@rickgoodman.com or call 888-267-6098.
Monday, January 13, 2020
5 Strategies for Fixing a Toxic Work Culture
5 Strategies for Fixing a Toxic Work Culture
There are many things that can contribute to a toxic work culture such as high stress, constant turnover, low morale and no teamwork. In this podcast I'm going to share five strategies for fixing a toxic work culture that you can use immediately with great success! Ask yourself a question; Is that the kind of workplace you have? It’s been my experience that often people who work in a toxic environment don’t quite realize it; they question their own reality, or simply blame themselves for their unhappiness.
But if you and your teammates struggle with engagement, with high anxiety, and with the constant interruptions of office politics and team discord, that may mean that your culture is simply poisonous.
That’s the bad news, but there’s some good news too: Leaders shape culture, and as such they can be proactive in fixing a culture that’s broken. It won’t be easy and it won’t be overnight, but there are some things you can do to remove the toxicity in your work environment.
Here are 5 strategies that you can use immediately to fix your toxic work culture
Focus your employees on their highest and best use. Instead of assigning work to each employee find out what they love to do both inside and outside of work, allow them to gravitate toward teams and projects that they feel passionate about—as long as they are working on initiatives that benefit the company. You may find that they possess a skill that will help the team and you didn’t even know about it!
Firing continues until morale improves. A big part of reserving healthy company culture is getting rid of the people you identify as toxic. I always make sure you counsel and coach them beforehand and try to make the save it’s much more effective. Don’t create a work environment where employees are constantly afraid, they could get axed without warning. However, if they won’t fit into the culture of the company you have to let them go and find a place where they will be more successful and happier.
Spend time and invest in training and developing your people. Don’t offer them a job; offer them a career, and a professional journey which means investing in your people especially leadership skills. This means mentoring, coaching, and using your annual review system to learn more about what your employees really want—and showing them how you can help them achieve it.
Don’t hire people just to be bigger. Don’t hire a person just because you need a warm body in the room to make your team look bigger. Hire because you find people whose gifts and passions align with your culture and will add value to your team.
Encourage and insist on teamwork. If you want to build your team its best to create projects that are designed to be tackled by several team members working in tandem. This will help to strengthen your team and build a bond and culture of family.
Again, these strategies won’t stamp out your toxic culture immediately—but they will help you to build something truly healthy and positive.
Dr. Rick Goodman CSP is a motivational keynote leadership speaker who provides solutions globally that help people and organizations lead, engage, and grow their business.
For more information on how you could bring Dr. Rick Goodman into your organization for keynote speech, a leadership workshop or executive consulting and coaching contact rick@rickgoodman.com
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Friday, January 10, 2020
The Best Employment Engagment Strategies for 2020
The Best Employee Engagement Strategies for 2020
The best employee engagement strategies are crucial to your business success moving forward, I don’t’ believe that there is a one-size-fits-all approach. In this podcast I will share with you the best employee engagement strategies for 2020.
In fact, I’d urge skepticism regarding most cookie-cutter approaches to retaining high levels of employee engagement. The fact is that all companies are different, and it’s important to choose your employee engagement strategies based on culture, company size, goals, etc.
There are a few principals that if implemented will surely bring you success because they are employee engagement strategies that work well across all different types of organizations. I’m not saying these are completely foolproof, but if you execute them properly, I think you’ll see your employee engagement numbers start moving in the right direction. Also, these principles can lay a firm foundation for more stronger and more advanced employee engagement effort in the future.
The 5 Best Employee Engagement Strategies for 2020
Give your employees a roadmap that will ensure their success.
Most people on planet earth prefer to have some sense of where their lives and their careers are headed. Your employees are no different. Younger employees are especially eager to have some sense of what’s coming down the road; they want to know if they have a real future within your organization or need to plan a career trajectory that involves a few employer changeups.
The best things you can do to facilitate employee engagement is provide your team members with positive feedback that they have a real future with your business with chances to grow new skills and have more responsibility. This can be as simple as holding regular career discussions with your employees, asking them where they see themselves in the years to come and providing them with some ways in which they can position themselves for advancement within your enterprise.
Always acknowledge and praise good work.
People like to have their efforts and accomplishments recognized.
It may seem like a small thing to highlight your team members’ achievements or to celebrate their successes… but actually, it’s no small thing at all for hard-working professionals to receive accolades from their upper management.
Statistics consistently show that most employees worry their efforts go unnoticed; and when employees feel like their hard work is never appreciated, they quickly lose their motivation to do anything but the bare minimum. I even believe some employees are just doing time until the next opportunity.
One of the most effective employee engagement strategies you can muster is to provide a few simple words of recognition when the situation calls for it.
Keep open lines of communication and even an open-door policy
Ensuring consistent, two-way communication between managers and employees is vital to a good employee engagement program.
All leaders should be proactive in sharing news and updates with team members. Nobody likes to be left in the dark, so make sure your employees have a good sense of where the company is headed, how things are going, what big projects are coming down the pipeline, etc. Dispensing such information on a “need to know” basis only can cause your team members to feel like you don’t really trust or value them.
Also, make sure you have channels in place for employees to present their questions, concerns, or suggestions, without fear of any kind of retaliation. It’s important to have an open-door policy, but you should go a step further and make sure employees know that their comments and feedback will be truly received by a leader or manager and treated with due seriousness.
For your organizational culture to thrive, it’s critical that you provide consistent two-way communication.
Give team members a sense of purpose and instill pride in their work.
Don’t assume that your team members are content to simply show up each day, do some grunt work, and collect a paycheck.
This may be true of some employees, but many of them want to do work that actually makes a difference. This is especially true of younger employees. They want to know that what they do matters.
Understanding that this is a powerful and motivational tool it can be helpful to provide a clear set of business values and principles, and to show each team member how their daily efforts connect to those values and principles. Make sure your employees know the mission of your organization and feel like they’re helping to further it.
Be fair with Everyone.
Sometimes the best strategies are the simplest of all to implement. I’ll offer a simple yet seismic suggestion: Treat your employees with fairness.
What do I mean by this? For one, it’s critical that employees feel like they are being judged on the basis of the effort they put in, not external factors that are outside their control.
Also, it’s important that leaders and managers hold themselves to the same standard (perhaps even a higher standard) as their employees.
Be sure that your team members consistently feel like they’re getting a fair shake; that so long as they work and behave to a specified standard, they will be rewarded in kind.
Questions About Employee Engagement Strategies?
These are some vital principles that I think will serve your organization well, and that translate pretty well from one business setting to the next.
Do you have additional questions about formulating or implementing employee engagement strategies? I’d love to chat with you! Connect with me and let’s have a conversation about employee engagement strategies. Contact me at www.rickgoodman.com or call 888-267-6098.