Why Leadership Development Programs Must Teach Networking

During Newberry Solutions’ webinar this month, Yana Melnikova at PepsiCo and I talked about the importance of opening up leadership development to more people, beyond high potentials and high performers. 

But it’s not just about who you include; it’s also about the foundational leadership skills that you help them learn. This raises a vital question: To transform potential into performance, what skills should your leadership development program teach?

Photo by fauxels

This question was top of mind for us as we developed our New Lens® learning platform. Based on years of experience working with top companies, we identified the biggest levers of high performance. In other words, these are the skills that we have consistently seen have the biggest impact on business results and increasing employee readiness for roles at the next level. One of those skills that often gets discussed but not ineffectively integrated into leadership development programs is building a powerful network.

Results and Relationships 

Too many people put networking on the back burner or think of it as something to squeeze in outside of their “real work.” In fact, I would wager that there are employees at your organization who are talented and hardworking, but who are not considered future leaders because they keep their heads down and believe their work should speak for itself.

Of course, results are important. But leadership isn’t just about individual competencies; it’s also the ability to get things done with and through others. Especially as an employee moves up the leadership ranks, their effectiveness depends on their relationships — with their direct reports, with their boss, with higher-level leaders, with their peers and with colleagues in other departments. That’s why a great leadership development program must set the stage for relationship building.

Ways to Encourage Networking

So how can a leadership development program help your employees build a network that will help them both drive results and advance their careers? Here are a few ideas:

• Teach networking strategies. Many people mistakenly believe that only extroverts can be good at networking. The reality, though, is that anyone can learn best practices that can help them get better at building relationships. For example, I always show my coaching clients how to identify the most critical relationships to success in their role, specific business goals or projects.

• Incorporate mentorship and sponsorship. Mentors can serve as role models for leadership development program participants, providing advice and perspective to help them develop their skills and navigate challenging situations. Sponsors, on the other hand, have clout and yield considerable influence on key decision-makers. Sponsors also give program participants critical exposure to opportunities and visibility to other influential leaders, and advocate on their behalf. While employees can establish these relationships on their own, mentorships and sponsorships are more effective when they’re part of a formal program.

• Utilize collaborative learning. One of the most overlooked but most impactful relationships are peer-to-peer. Integrate collaborative learning to foster employees sharing their knowledge and expertise, help each other navigate through challenging situations, and increase self-awareness.  Combining collaborative learning with high-quality content can even further accelerate results. We’ve already seen the power of this with New Lens, which takes the power of bite-sized lessons on foundational leadership skills and then enables deeper discussion and learning with a cohort. Not only does this accelerate learning; it strengthens workplace relationships that have become harder to build or maintain in this world of hybrid work.

How is your organization helping employees build the relationships they need for success? If you would like to learn more about how New Lens can help build networking skills (or critical leadership skills necessary for every level), check out a preview of sample content and schedule a demo.

Webinar Recap: The 5 Barriers to Leadership Development (& How to Overcome Them)

What a great webinar we had this week! Big thanks to our guest, Yana Melnikova of PepsiCo, and to all of you who attended and asked such thoughtful questions. If you watched the webinar, you know that we shared a lot of valuable, actionable insights about leadership development. This article captures the highlights, so you can keep it handy as a reference. And make sure you don’t miss our next webinar for senior HR leaders – secure your spot here. 

Leadership ‘Bench Strength’ Is Suffering

The topic of this webinar was “The 5 Barriers to Leadership Development (And What Companies Can Do About Them).” Before discussing those barriers, though, we set the stage by talking about how confident companies are in their leaders and future leaders. According to DDI’s Global Leadership Trends Report 2023:

● Only 12% of companies report confidence in the strength of their bench.

● Compared to companies with weak benches, companies that report strong benches are:

o   10 times more likely to have employees rate their leader quality as “very good” or “excellent.”

o   6 times more likely to be capable of engaging and retaining top talent.

o   5 times more likely to be able to prevent employee burnout.

o   3 times more likely to be among financially top-performing organizations.

Clearly, many companies need to build their leadership bench strength. We believe this is because of those “5 Barriers” in our webinar title. So what are those barriers? And how can we address them?

Barrier 1: Unclear or Inconsistent Strategy

I don’t have to tell you that there’s been a lot going on in the world and in the business environment over the past few years. Amid all of this, HR departments have had to pivot again and again. As a result, many organizations have been left with unclear or inconsistent leadership development strategies, and they haven’t had the bandwidth to take a step back and re-evaluate them.

As someone who is transforming talent management and organizational development globally at PepsiCo, Yana was the perfect discussion partner for this topic. She shared insights into the key components of a successful leadership development strategy. One of the most important is taking a holistic approach that gives employees “meaningful, critical experiences to practice and master their leadership capabilities.

Yana put it like this: “Everybody knows that 70% of development happens on the job. At the same time, this is where the majority of companies fail the most.”

She also stressed that any leadership development strategy should include clear expectations: “The simpler, the better.” Employees should be able to quickly understand what’s expected from them, but they should also be inspired by your leadership development framework. Yana and I both believe that leadership development should be thoroughly integrated into employees’ work, not something extra added on top. 

Barrier 2: The Audience Is Too Narrow

Everyone who is involved in leadership development at their organization should read the HBR article “Leadership Training Shouldn’t Just Be for Top Performers.” This article defines the “leadership development paradox”: Organizations keep investing in development for the employees who need it the least. High performers and high-potentials get opportunities, but others miss out.

Over time, the gap between the “haves” and “have nots” in leadership development keeps getting wider. This is a big problem because, according to DDI, the greatest source of untapped leadership potential is at the lowest levels of an organization. However, leaders may not recognize potential if it doesn’t align with what leadership has traditionally looked like where they work.

The leadership development paradox is one of the biggest reasons Newberry Solutions developed our New Lens® learning platform. Access to leadership development depends on budgets, so we wanted to create a solution that is affordable and scalable. Yana shared that PepsiCo addresses this issue by having a “wide variety of leadership development programs that will address different cohorts or different target audiences.”

Barrier 3: Training vs. Development

These two things are not the same. True leadership development enables employees to use new insights and tools to keep growing their skills and contribute in a different way within the organization.

I recommend that organizations look closely at any leadership development program they are considering to make sure the content is relevant to employees. I would also caution companies about getting lured by whatever is “shiny and new” in leadership development instead of reinforcing through application what employees have already learned. In New Lens, we leverage “micro-learning” so that employees can make development an effortless part of their day.

Another factor that drives long-term development is collective learning. Is your organization driving connections between employees that help them share knowledge? PepsiCo even works to build relationships on the global level, Yana shared.

Barrier 4: Focusing on the Wrong Narrative

In your organization, does the discussion of leadership development revolve mostly around the cost or the benefits? The framing really makes a difference in how effective any leadership development program is.

“The more you involve current leaders and executives in the leadership development, the more they will see the value and the impact,” Yana said. And I agree! Leaders need to see the connection between the investment in leadership development and the results that investment delivers. Yes, having these conversations takes time when everyone is busy. But they’re so important to your organization’s long-term health.

Barrier 5: Underutilizing Technology

Technology continues to evolve at a dizzying pace, giving us access to more and more data. Leadership development programs should take advantage of these advances. For example, how are you measuring the impact of development programs?

As I touched on earlier, technology also enables us to make leadership development available to more people — anytime, anywhere. And it empowers us to deliver customized development experiences at scale. For the first time, having a leadership development program tailored to your unique needs does not necessarily involve working one one-on-one with a coach. With New Lens, each user gets their own unique development plan.

Based on her experiences, Yana sees great potential for technology, including AI, to take us to the next level of leadership development.

Next Steps for HR Leaders

Thanks again to everyone who made our event this week a success. I’m already looking forward to our next webinar. It’s scheduled for 9 a.m. CDT on Friday, June 7, so save a spot on your calendar and stay tuned here for more details. In the meantime, I invite you to check out our New Lens platform and how it has helped other companies. You can explore sample content here.

Stay in the conversation by joining our next webinar for senior HR leaders – register here to make sure you don’t miss out.

Questions about how to strengthen your company’s leadership development pipeline? Let’s talk.

Are You Developing Enough Leaders?

One of the biggest things we’ve learned from the pandemic and the other challenges of the past few years, is that we all need to lead today. Leadership skills are critical at every level. But, in too many organizations, leadership development programs are still reserved primarily for employees already identified as “HiPo’s” – high-potential and high-performing employees. In other words, the employees who receive the most leadership development are the very ones who need it the least because there performance is already strong. In an influential article for Harvard Business Review, professors Navio Kwok and Winny Shen call this phenomenon “the leadership development paradox.” In the long-term, this approach affects the quality, diversity, and size of an organization’s pipeline of leaders. But we can address it by providing leadership training opportunities to a wider array of employees.

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

How Strong Is Your Leadership Pipeline?

When a company decides whether to invest in leadership development for an employee, they directly shape that employee’s career path. Employees who receive leadership development are more likely to be promoted to senior level, high-exposure roles. Meanwhile, employees outside of that high-potential group are more likely to stay at their current performance level or even get worse — because they’re getting less access to the leadership development programs that could help them improve as well as opportunities for career advancement.                       

When only a select group of employees gets greater access to leadership development, organizations miss out on what others could potentially contribute. Although budget is a key consideration, can we afford to do this? Even small improvements across a broader population can have a big impact on overall company performance and cultivate a sustainable culture of growth and innovation.

According to DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast 2023, CEOs are already worried about how to develop the next generation of leaders — and only 12% of companies are confident that they have a strong bench of leaders who are prepared to step into key roles.

As a firm with a niche focused on developing women leaders, we’re also concerned about how the leadership development paradox may disproportionately affect women. Ambition has increased, as shown in the McKinsey/LeanIn.org Women in the Workplace 2023 report, which  found that eight out of 10 women want to get promoted. The numbers are even higher for women younger than 30 and women of color (93% and 88%, respectively).

However, the report also found that women are still under-represented at every level of leadership. They’re less likely to get that first promotion to manager than men are. (And the gap is even bigger for women of color.) With fewer women than men rising through the ranks, it only makes sense that fewer women reach the highest levels of leadership.

How to Develop More Leaders

To fix the leadership pipeline, we must offer leadership development more broadly — but in a way that satisfies each individual’s needs while addressing tight schedules and company budgets. 

We embedded those principles into our New Lens® learning platform, added the same expertise we’ve used to help 75% of our clients get promoted, and packaged it all into bite-sized lessons and collaborative learning that employees can easily fit into their days.

Beyond considering something like New Lens, use these strategies to strengthen your leadership pipeline:

• Rethink how you identify potential leaders. DDI recommends using digital assessments to identify hidden talent.  They explain that “leaders may not recognize potential if it doesn’t align with what leadership has traditionally looked like in the organization,” adding that in remote or hybrid environments, some leadership skills may be overlooked.

• Tap into your internal expertise. How are you making the most of the vast knowledge your people can share with each other? Mentorship and sponsorship are surprisingly underused tools for cultivating future leaders. Also look for opportunities to use peer-to-peer cross-training to build relationships and leadership skills.

• Make key experiences more accessible. It’s common for organizations to have roles that are seen as a springboard to higher leadership positions. Is your organization inadvertently funneling only certain groups to these jobs? For example, are women pushed toward marketing and HR vs. operations?

Your organization can unlock limitless potential by investing in more leadership development opportunities for your employees. We live and breathe these issues with our Fortune 500 clients. So, as you consider your company’s short and long-term development needs, schedule a call with us. We would be happy to discuss how you can strengthen your pipeline of talent by unleashing more employees’ potential.

Are You Underutilizing These Powerful Ways to Close the Leadership Gap?

I have some bad news and some good news about mentorship and sponsorship at work. First, the bad news: These two strategies are extremely underused. According to Gallup, only 40% of employees have workplace mentors, and 23% have sponsors. The good news? Improving these numbers is low-hanging fruit and holds huge potential for increasing the number of women in senior leadership, enhancing engagement and retention and even bolstering the bottom line at your organization.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic after serving as one of the mentors at the Dallas Business Journal’s recent Mentoring Monday, a nationwide event sponsored by The Business Journals that brings together successful female business leaders and women who want to tap into their advice and insights.

Image by Sue Styles from Pixabay

As a longtime advocate for advancing women, I’m excited that we’re learning more about how to create meaningful results for individuals and their employers through relationships with mentors and sponsors. In honor of Women’s History Month, let’s take a deeper dive into this topic and make the case for your organization to invest in programs that integrate the power of both mentorship and sponsorship.

What Is the Difference Between Mentors and Sponsors?

Mentors and sponsors serve valuable, but not identical, roles in your network. Mentors typically serve as role models, providing advice and perspective to help you develop your skills and navigate challenging situations. Mentors can be at any level in the organization, with peer and reverse mentoring becoming more frequently used approaches. 

Sponsors, on the other hand, have clout and yield considerable influence on key decision-makers. Sponsors also give you critical exposure to opportunities and visibility to other influential leaders, and advocate on your behalf. 

As a longtime executive coach and the creator of a leadership development platform, I’m not surprised by how underutilized mentorship and sponsorship are. I’ve had many clients fall into the trap of thinking their good work is enough. It often takes people a while to realize that who they know is just as important as the quality of their work. They overlook how much their relationships give them access to resources, information and influence that they need to get work done and to advance their careers.

The Power of Support at Work

While mentorship and sponsorship are good for everyone, I’m especially intrigued by their potential to address an issue that many organizations struggle with: the leadership gap between men and women.

According to the Women in the Workplace 2023 report  from McKinsey in partnership with LeanIn.org, women are underrepresented at all stages of the leadership pipeline. While 48% of all entry-level employees are women, only 40% of managers are. The gap keeps getting broader all the way to the C-Suite, where men outnumber women by a more than 2-to-1 margin.

That’s a problem on many levels. Researchers have found that companies with more female leaders make more money, are more socially responsible and have better customer service. Female CEOs can even drive stock prices. Companies recognize these benefits, and many are increasing their efforts around leadership development for women.

These programs must include opportunities to develop relationships with mentors and sponsors. When you look at data from Gallup, the Women in the Workplace report and other recent research, it becomes clear why these relationships can be so beneficial for women’s careers:

• Women are more ambitious now than they were before the pandemic. In 2019, about 70% of women wanted to get promoted to the next level. Today, that figure is 81%. (For women under 30 — your organization’s rising generation of leaders —93% want promotions.) In other words, high-potential women want to know that they have a future at your organization. Gallup found that when an employee has a mentor or sponsor, they’re much more likely to feel that they have a clear path forward.

• Learning and growth are deeply important to your workforce. More than 9 out of 10 employees said they would stay at their company longer if it invested in helping them learn. Mentorship and sponsorship help address that demand. According to Gallup, employees with mentors are twice as likely to say they’ve had recent opportunities to learn and grow.

• Perhaps the greatest potential for mentorship and sponsorship programs lies in helping more women find sponsors. Currently, 25% of men have a sponsor at work, while only 22% of women do. According to Herminia Ibarra of London Business School:

Too few women are reaching the top of their organizations, and a big reason is that they are not getting the high-stakes assignments that are prerequisite for a shot at the C-suite. Often, this is due to a lack of powerful sponsors demanding and ensuring that they get these stepping-stone jobs.

Ibarra has also found that men and women describe their relationships with supporters differently: Women talk about how these relationships increase their self-understanding, while men talk about others endorsing them and helping them plan their career advancement.

How to Improve Mentorship and Sponsorship

So how can your organization maximize the power of mentorship and sponsorship to advance women leaders?

• Examine how the rise of hybrid work has affected who receives mentorship or sponsorship in your organization. For example, men are more likely than women to receive mentorship and sponsorship when they work onsite, according to the Women in the Workplace report.

• Start thinking about how to weave elements of mentorship or sponsorship into existing programs without overburdening participants or executives. While support relationships that develop on their own are great, formal programs can create even more impressive results, Gallup found.

• Whether or not you have a formal program, make sure your organization is teaching coaching skills. Potential mentors and sponsors are more likely to help when they have the right tools to do so.

• Consider a tool like the New Lens® platform that facilitates mentoring conversations. Our app leverages the power of both peer learning and manager feedback.

Finally, remember that we understand the power of mentorship and sponsorship at Newberry Solutions and we welcome the chance to answer your questions and share how New Lens and our other tools can empower you to support women leaders. Schedule a New Lens demo now, or get in touch with us for more information.

How to Make Hybrid Schedules Work for Men AND Women

Women, Men and Hybrid Work

Have you been thinking of hybrid work as just a “women’s issue”? The recent Women in the Workplace report from McKinsey and LeanIn.org debunks that narrative — but it also finds  some inequity between women’s and men’s experiences with hybrid work schedules. Based on the report, as well as my own conversations with clients and other business leaders, I want to share some ideas that will help you maximize the benefits of hybrid work for everyone in your organization, as well as make return-to-office initiatives less contentious and more productive.

Image by fancycrave1 from Pixabay

Flexibility Benefits Everyone

First, some good news. In large numbers, both men and women said that hybrid work has improved their work-life balance and reduced feelings of fatigue and burnout. Additionally, 83% of all respondents said one of the biggest reasons that they like hybrid work is that it helps them be more productive. 

It’s great to see this confirmation that it isn’t just women who value hybrid schedules. All too often, there’s a perception that women want to work remotely, while men prefer going back to the office. But, in reality,  women and men want control over where and when they work. Flexibility is one of the key benefits that attracts an employee to a company and keeps them there.

I was also happy to see the report address a trend I see playing out every day with the high-performing women I work with. In our new hybrid world, women are more likely to feel set up to succeed than they did in the past. Hybrid work has taken away a barrier to their ambition by making it easier to balance their career with other priorities, such as childcare and eldercare (both of which are still disproportionately handled by women).

Men Benefit More from In-Person Work

The Women in the Workplace report also points to some areas for improvement when it comes to how organizations are handling hybrid work.

It is disappointing to learn that men are still more likely than women to receive mentorship and sponsorship, to be looped in on information, and to be praised and rewarded when they work onsite. However, I wasn’t surprised, especially when it comes to sponsorship. While both mentors and sponsors give you advice, sponsors also advocate for you within your organization. They’re vital to career advancement, but there’s a long-term trend of more men than women having sponsorships.

The report also points out that women — especially women with traditionally marginalized identities  —  experience microaggressions at the office  more often than men do. Women are a little more likely than men (29% vs. 25%) to like hybrid work because it cuts down on unpleasant interactions with their coworkers. Another finding hints at what may be driving those interactions: There’s a big difference (53% vs. 36%) in how many women over men said that hybrid work reduces the pressure they experience about managing their personal style or appearance.

Recommendations for Organizations

So what actions should organizations take based on the Women in the Workplace report? As a firm that has a long track record of helping high-performing women succeed, we offer these ideas:

Right now, both men and women who work flexibly aren’t worried that it will affect their careers. However, as we see more news articles reporting that remote employees are more likely to be laid off, concerns could start rising. Make sure that your managers are trained to evaluate remote workers. For example, face time at the office should not be a key performance metric. You can also look at your performance review process to make sure it treats all employees fairly, whether they work onsite, remotely, or on a hybrid schedule.

While workplace conflict is unavoidable, keep in mind that employees may also be experiencing microaggressions, such as comments on their appearance. If your organization is pushing for more in-person work, consider offering some refreshers on microaggressions. When employees, especially women and other marginalized groups, feel more welcome and accepted, it’s only natural that they will want to be in the office more often.

Level the playing field for men and women, remote workers and onsite workers. Everyone should feel that they have access to the information, relationships, recognition and training that will benefit them. This was one of our big motivators in creating our New Lens® learning platform, which can be accessed 24/7, no matter where an employee is. (Go here to see it in action.) Also consider implementing programs that pair women with mentors and sponsors.

Hybrid work is here to stay. To reap its benefits and minimize disadvantages, organizations must be deliberate about shaping policies to promote equity and inclusivity. What is going well — and what isn’t — with hybrid work at your organization? What else can you do to make sure that hybrid schedules work for everyone?

Fixing the ‘Broken Rung’ for Women at Work

You’ve probably heard of the glass ceiling for women at work. But what we really should be focusing on is the broken rung.

That’s according to the Women in the Workplace 2023 report, from McKinsey in partnership with LeanIn.org. The report debunks workplace myths about women (I wrote about its findings regarding women and ambition recently.) One of the biggest myths is that the glass ceiling is the biggest obstacle women face in reaching senior leadership. But what McKinsey and LeanIn found — and what we’ve observed firsthand here at Newberry Solutions — is that the barriers to women start far earlier in their careers.

Photo by RDNE Stock project

The broken rung discussed in the report is the fact that fewer women than men get that first key promotion to manager. That puts fewer women in the leadership pipeline, which ultimately leads to a shortage of female candidates for senior leadership positions. As the report states:

Because of the gender disparity in early promotions, men end up holding 60 percent of manager-level positions in a typical company, while women occupy 40 percent. Since men significantly outnumber women, there are fewer women to promote to director, and the number of women decreases at every subsequent level.

How big of a problem is the broken rung? McKinsey and LeanIn found that for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 87 women were. The gap is even bigger for women of color: 73 were promoted to manager for every 100 men who were. This problem is not new. The Women in the Workplace report has flagged it for nine consecutive years. But we clearly need to do more to address it. As a firm that’s passionate about helping women succeed — and that has a strong track record of helping them get promoted — this is one of our top priorities. So we want to highlight McKinsey and LeanIn’s recommendations on fixing the broken rung — and add some of our own.

How to Help Women Get Promoted

• Realize that the problem is not with women and their ambition. Some leaders may brush off the broken rung by claiming that women don’t want promotions and are more likely to step away from work. But that’s outdated — and inaccurate — thinking. The Women in the Workplace report shows that women are actually more ambitious now than they were before the Covid-19 pandemic. (We’ve seen the same thing in our work with high-performing women.) Roughly equal numbers of women and men want promotions. That’s even true for women who work remotely or on a hybrid schedule.

• Address performance bias. All too often, women are hired or promoted based on what they’ve done, while men are hired or promoted based on potential. In their report, McKinsey and LeanIn recommend taking “de-biasing” steps. For example, require that managers give their rationale behind performance evaluations and recommendations for promotions.

• Make development more equitable. Do the current learning and development programs at your organization include enough women who have the potential to be promoted? And does the content of those programs focus on what women need to get promoted? For some inspiration, check out our case study “Empowering Women to Reach Their Leadership Potential.” It tells the story of how a Fortune 50 company used our New Lens® learning platform to prepare more women for promotions.

Research is clear that companies benefit from having women in senior leadership roles. But to accomplish this goal, you have to take action much earlier in the leadership pipeline. This is one of the reasons we created New Lens, and we’re excited that it’s becoming part of the solution for the broken-rung problem. To learn more and set up a demonstration, visit newlensleadership.com.

The Truth About Women and Ambition

True or false? During the Covid-19 pandemic, women have become less ambitious than men are.

False. Very false.

But if you answered “true,” I can understand why. Perhaps you’ve seen news articles about the “lazy girl jobs” trend or women leaving the workforce.

Photo by Jopwell

Those headlines, however, tell only part of the story. The Women in the Workplace 2023 report, from McKinsey in partnership with LeanIn.org, fills in some gaps in the narrative. This report debunks myths about women at work, including the one that they lack ambition.

Because we’re a firm with a special passion for developing women leaders, the Women in the Workplace report is always required reading for us. We believe it should be for your organization as well. Over the next few weeks, we’ll take a closer look at the report’s findings, compare them with what we see firsthand through our work, and share recommendations on cultivating women leaders in your organization. And we’ll start with the myth of women’s declining ambitions.

8 Out of 10 Women Want Promotions

The pandemic was an enormous blow to women at work. More women than men lost their jobs, and women experienced more stress and burnout than men did. But the Women in the Workplace report found that women are actually more ambitious now than they were before the pandemic. In 2019, about 70% of women wanted to get promoted to the next level. Today, that figure is 81% — identical to the percentage of men who want to get promoted. Younger women and women of color are even more ambitious. Among women under thirty, 93% are aiming for a promotion, while 88% of women of color are.

The report also refutes the perception that women who work remotely or on a hybrid schedule are less ambitious. In fact, they’re a little more likely to want promotions than women who work fully on-site. Furthermore, across all types of work schedules (remote, hybrid, on-site), women are just as likely to want a promotion as men in comparable arrangements.

What We’re Hearing from Women

The Women in the Workplace report’s findings on ambition track closely with what we’ve observed firsthand. Our work frequently involves helping top organizations cultivate women leaders. (For some examples, check out our case studies on how companies are using our New Lens® app to invest in women’s development.) We’ve coached countless women and spoken at events for women (such as the D CEO Emerging Women Leadership Network Program). Beyond  Newbery Solutions, I’m also involved with nonprofits and other entities that focus on elevating women, including Texas Women’s Foundation, the Senator Jane Nelson Institute for Women's Leadership at Texas Woman’s University, the United Way Fund for Women and Children, and 50/50 Women on Boards. So I have a lot of conversations with women about what’s happening in their careers and in their workplaces.

And what I hear from them echoes what McKinsey and LeanIn.org found. Women care deeply about their work and are constantly looking for ways they can make a bigger impact. They’re excited about flexible schedules that help them manage their personal lives without shortchanging their careers. The McKinsey/Lean In statistics aren’t the only findings that demonstrate women’s ambition. Women are starting more businesses than they did before the pandemic. Women are also more likely to attend college and obtain their degrees than men are.

Build a Pipeline of Women Leaders

As we celebrate women’s growing ambitions, we must also look for ways to translate these ambitions into gains for women at the top levels of leadership. While we’ve made some progress in closing the C-suite gender gap, women still hold less than one-third of these roles

The problem, according to the Women in the Workplace report, is a broken leadership pipeline. Women are less likely to get that first promotion to manager than men are. (And the gap is even bigger for women of color.) With fewer women than men rising through the ranks, it only makes sense that fewer women reach the highest levels of leadership.

 This discrepancy ultimately hurts organizations. We see in the McKinsey/Lean In report that there are great numbers of ambitious women out there who are eager to lead. When these women don’t get promoted, their employers miss out on untold potential. 

So how can we make our workplaces more equitable and help women get the promotions they aspire to?

• Talk about the Women in the Workplace report with your team. This discussion can help surface any misconceptions about women and ambition that your employees may have.

• Make leadership development training accessible to more employees. Companies rarely have budgets to provide coaching to everyone who wants it. It’s more likely to be reserved for senior leaders. That leaves out vast numbers of high-potential employees who could benefit. This was one of our main motivations for creating New Lens.

• Implement employee resource groups (ERGs) for women and women of color. According to the McKinsey/Lean In report, 93% of companies with strong pipelines of women leaders had ERGs with content tailored for women. That’s compared with 83% for companies overall. For women of color, the difference is even more dramatic: 61% of companies with strong pipelines have targeted ERGs, compared with 44% of companies overall.

Increasing the ranks of women leaders is a big topic, and one we’ll continue to explore in upcoming articles. Got questions? Please share them with me on LinkedIn. You could help shape our future content. In the meantime, check out the full Women in the Workplace 2023 report and explore how New Lens® democratizes access to leadership development.

4 Questions for Team Leaders as 2023 Ends

As 2023 draws to a close, you might find yourself in a whirlwind of year-end tasks, deadlines and holiday preparations. In the middle of all that, you might not have had the chance to take a step back and assess the broader picture of how your team is faring. But as we approach the new year, it's crucial to set aside time to reflect. Taking a pause to evaluate the collective journey of your team over the past year can provide invaluable insights on the path you should take going forward. Use these questions to help you take the pulse of your team and identify what they might need from you.

Image by Alexa from Pixabay

What does your team’s stress level look like? As a leader, it’s crucial to recognize the symptoms of burnout on your team and to address them quickly. The effects of long-term stress (which we’ve all been experiencing!) can show up in different ways. For example, you may have noticed that your team members don’t seem as focused as they used to, or that communication feels strained. If your team members are showing signs of burnout, affirm your commitment to their well-being and look for ways to address the situation. Do you need to adjust workloads, deadlines, or the pace of work? Do team members need more support to navigate any changes or uncertainty? 

How can you help team members manage their energy? To address stress and burnout, you can also ensure that team members have the resources they need to maintain balance and sustain high performance. Leaders play a pivotal role in fostering a supportive environment that encourages overall well-being. Encourage healthy habits like regular breaks, setting boundaries between work and personal time, and actually using vacation days. And don’t forget to lead by example: If you work around the clock or don’t take breaks or vacations, your team members will assume that’s what you expect of them (no matter what you say).

How clear is your team on what success looks like? Since the beginning of 2023, a lot may have changed in your organization. Priorities and expectations have shifted; new challenges and opportunities have emerged. You may assume that your team knows what’s most important now. But, in times of rapid change, sometimes key messages about priorities get lost in the busyness of our day-to-day work. So, take some time with your team before year-end to talk about priorities going into 2024. Connect the dots for your team members about how their roles fit in and affect those priorities. Make sure each team member knows the top areas where they should focus to have the biggest impact on the business and empower them to focus on those “big three.”

Is there a need to upskill your team? If you have observed performance issues in your team in 2023, ask yourself whether they have the skills and training necessary to succeed. Over the past few years, so many organizations have gone through resignations, layoffs and restructuring, leaving their employees grappling with new roles or evolving responsibilities. Beyond that, if staffing is lean and workloads are heavy, your newer team members may have received little to no onboarding. But even your seasoned employees may need additional training if they’re taking on different types of projects. We’ve definitely seen these struggles and created the New Lens® app to address them while making it easy to fit development into busy schedules and tight budgets.

This week, I challenge you to identify one area to focus on with your team in 2024, and one or two initial steps you will take. This small investment of time will yield big payoffs in the coming year.

12 Key Takeaways from the New Lens Micro Summit

What an amazing event we had last week! Of course, that's thanks to our wonderful speakers and to all of you, our engaged New Lens® Micro Summit: 4 Core Strategies for Success attendees. I’m still soaking in all the insights that were shared and am so grateful to each of you who joined us.

Reflecting on the summit, it's clear that each speaker brought a unique perspective, shedding light on critical areas of leadership, teamwork, networking, and resilience. I've taken a moment to recap a few of the takeaways that stood out to me. Whether you attended the summit or are catching up now, I believe these insights will resonate and offer actionable strategies for your own leadership journey. Let's dive in.

Michol Ecklund

Michol, Chief Sustainability Officer and General Counsel at Callon Petroleum, has navigated change throughout her career. So who better to speak on the topic “Focus on the Right Work: The Great Resignation Compounded Workloads”?

In her comments, Michol highlighted the emerging challenges post-pandemic where workers are increasingly unhappy, burnt out, and seeking new job opportunities, often attributed to amplified workloads from organizational restructuring. Here are some highlight from the advice she shared:

• Create space to connect in a genuine way. Remember, everyone has a life outside work. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable with your team. “By checking in with others and sharing more about your own situation, I think you ultimately build deeper relationships,” Michol said. “You build even more motivated employees and even more committed employees that want to be part of your organization.”  

• Balance your personal productivity with that of the team. You may be more productive working from home, but your team may be more productive if everyone spends more time at the office. Find an approach that considers both sets of needs.

• Get back to the basics to avoid burnout. Getting enough sleep is critical. It affects how you show up personally and professionally, your energy, and your ability to be productive.

Mark Benton

Mark, Vice President of HR Corporate Functions at McKesson, also talked about navigating the shift to hybrid work when tackling his topic, “Develop a High Performing Team: How Unprepared Leaders Impact the Workplace.” I so admire Mark's ability to surface important topics that need attention. 

One theme that stood out was the challenge of staying connected when working remotely. In this context, building trust and understanding your own strengths and weaknesses are vital for good leadership. Other highlights:

• Empathy is more important than ever in the world of hybrid work. Your team members want to know that you care about them as people, that you recognize what they are contributing and that you are willing to help them.

• Managers today have to help distributed teams stay connected. One way to do this: be very intentional about checking in with each other.

• Be more of an "ask person" than a "tell person". You can help your team members grow by asking coaching questions.

Hilda Galvan

Hilda, Partner-in-Charge at Jones Day Dallas, spoke on the topic “Build a Powerful Network: How Remote Work Affects Relationships & Productivity.” Hilda is gifted at cultivating relationships both professionally and in her community involvement, so I was thrilled that she could share her advice with us. 

She advised leaders not to favor in-office workers over remote ones and to communicate clearly. Building relationships, even when remote, is key to good leadership. A few key takeaways:

• To get people back to the office, talk about why it’s so important. For example, remind veteran team members how much they learned by being around colleagues who were senior to them. Today, they can do the same thing for younger employees. By broadening their perspective,

• Engaging with issues you care about will energize you and can help counteract any feelings of loneliness from remote work. Connecting with others who share your passion can also lead to meaningful relationships.

• Treat small pockets of time in your day as opportunities to maintain relationships. For example, call an old friend while you’re driving to a meeting across town.

Tina Bigalke

As Global Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer at PepsiCo and someone with a wealth of leadership experience in business and HR, Tina was the perfect speaker to talk about the topic “Build Leadership Courage & Resilience: Strategies to Navigate Uncertainty”. 

She also gave us insight into how PepsiCo has been a training ground for so many Fortune 500 CEOs and shared PepsiCo’s holistic resilence model which has helped its staff navigate these challenging times.

Some key insights:

• Identify the capabilities and skills your organization will need for the future (not just for today) and assess your employees against those skills.

• Don’t be afraid to have honest conversations with employees about how they’re doing and their path forward in your organization. 

• Have a variety of development tools in place for employees, especially younger ones, who truly want to gain new skills.

More Micro Learning

A huge thanks to Michol, Mark, Hilda and Tina for packing so much valuable information into just a couple of hours. It was so important to us that this event fit into busy schedules and deliver a powerful payoff for just a short investment of time. That’s the same philosophy that drives Newberry Solutions’ award-winning New Lens® app. With “snack size” lessons combined with collaborative learning, New Lens makes leadership development affordable and scalable. I invite you to learn more and schedule a demo for your organization.

Don’t Miss Out on This Leadership Event

We’re counting down the hours now! Newberry Solutions’ Micro Summit: 4 Core Leadership Strategies for Success happens on Wednesday, October 25. If you haven’t registered yet, please take a moment and do so now, because I don’t want you to miss this unique opportunity.

During the Micro Summit, I’ll be talking about vital leadership strategies for today’s world with four incredible business and HR leaders:

• ​Focus on the Right Work: The Great Resignation Compounded Workloads | With Michol Ecklund, Chief Sustainability Officer and General Counsel, Callon Petroleum.

• ​Develop a High Performing Team: How Unprepared Leaders Impact the Workplace | With Mark Benton, Vice President, HR Corporate Functions, McKesson.

• ​Build a Powerful Network: How Remote Work Affects Relationships & Productivity | With Hilda Galvan, Partner-In-Charge, Jones Day Dallas.

• ​Build Leadership Courage & Resilience: Strategies to Navigate Uncertainty | With Tina Bigalke, Global Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, PepsiCo.

I’m so excited that Michol, Mark, Hilda and Tina will be joining us. They have been successful in their own right, but each of them also does so much to give back to the community and elevate others. Having just one of them on our program would be amazing, but the fact that all four have agreed to share their expertise fills me with gratitude.

Can you take a couple of hours out of your day on Wednesday to make a powerful investment in yourself? Then register here. Know a leader you want to encourage? Share the link with them, too. I’ll see you there on the 25th!

What Does It Mean to Coach Your Team?

Over the past year, we have been delivering a coaching workshop globally to help leaders build critical thinking skills of their teams. We’re seeing a huge demand for this topic, and it’s no mystery why. A survey by the Association for Talent Development found that 90% of organizations expect managers to coach direct reports. At the same time, though, more than half said that a lack of coaching skills stood in the way of their goals.

To become a better coach to your team members, the first step is understanding what coaching really is — and isn’t. And that’s what I want to explore with you today.

Photo by Christina Morillo

Coaching ISN’T Advice or Feedback

I’ve found that many leaders think they’re coaching when they are actually advising or giving feedback. Developing your team members involves all of these activities at one time or another. But they aren’t the same thing.

Advising is defining or directing the action an employee should take to solve a particular problem or issue. Advising is the best option sometimes — for example, in a high-stakes or crisis situation under a tight deadline. But it’s also easy to overuse, since solving an issue for your team member is often the quickest way to get it off your plate.

Delivering feedback is describing past performance with a focus on acknowledging strengths and ways to improve. Meaningful feedback is crucial to keeping your team members engaged. Like coaching, delivering feedback can fall by the wayside when things get busy. But it doesn’t have to be time-consuming. Get in the habit of sharing what you noticed a team member doing as soon as possible after you observe it. Even a couple of minutes after a meeting to point out what worked well and what would have been more effective can go a long way.

Coaching involves listening, asking thought-provoking questions and acknowledging the employee’s perspective, which empowers them to problem-solve and take action. Each part of that definition is important:

• Active listening helps you understand what’s really happening with your team member and the situation.

• Asking questions helps your team member develop their own solutions. A common mistake here is asking leading questions that nudge the employee toward what you would do. Leading questions negate the benefits of coaching.

• Empowering your team member means that you are laying the groundwork for them to handle situations on their own in the future instead of coming to you for answers.

Empowerment is at the heart of why coaching is so important. Your team members will never develop to their full potential without coaching that challenges their thinking, broadens their perspective and helps them get unstuck. Learning and growth enhance performance and engagement, which is good for employees themselves and for the organization.

But coaching also benefits you. As we touched on earlier, giving employees solutions when they come to you with a question or issue might save time in the short run. But, in the long run, you’re setting yourself up for spending yet more time “putting out fires.”

This week, think about how often you are taking advantage of coaching moments with your team members and start looking for more opportunities. I also invite you to check out our New Lens® app, which we designed to arm your team members with high-impact strategies and facilitate manager coaching. Bimonthly one-on-one meetings between managers and participants are part of the program, and we make it easy by providing a discussion guide for managers to use.

Free Leadership Development Event

Since we’re talking about ways to develop your team members, I wanted to remind you about our upcoming Micro Summit: 4 Core Leadership Strategies for Success. This is a rare opportunity to get insights from four dynamic and accomplished business and HR leaders, all in just a couple of hours and for free. The Micro Summit happens 11 a.m.-1 p.m. CST on Wednesday, October 25. Please sign up while we still have open spots. You can register here and share this link with your team members and other colleagues. I’m looking forward to seeing you there!

Are You Using These 3 Types of Coaching?

Coaching is becoming a bigger and bigger part of the job for leaders. As someone who is all about helping companies and leaders achieve high performance, it’s exciting to see in Harvard Business Review that employees want more coaching, and organizations want managers to spend more time providing it. 

As a Master Certified Coach and creator of a leadership development app, I’ve seen the powerful benefits of different types of coaching. That’s why we integrated three types into our New Lens® app. Read on to learn about the different forms that coaching can take, and how each one can benefit you and your team.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Individually Working with a Certified Coach 

This is what many people picture when they hear the word coaching. If you are looking for a coach, whether for yourself or for others in your organization, research candidates carefully. Look for a coach who has formal training and certifications. The International Coach Federation advances the coaching profession by setting high professional standards, providing independent certifications and building a network of credentialed coaches. There are three levels of ICF certifications: Associate Certified Coach (ACC), Professional Certified Coach (PCC) and Master Certified Coach (MCC).

I also recommend asking a coach these types of questions before engaging them:

• What is their coaching philosophy and approach?

• What types of clients do they work best with? 

• What kind of results can you expect?

• What examples of success do they have from past clients?

To learn more about our approach, check out the executive coaching page of our website.

While one-on-one coaching delivers powerful benefits, it may not be affordable or accessible to all the employees in an organization who want or need it. New Lens addresses this by providing targeted coaching within the app that focuses on some of the most impactful tools, exercises and strategies to drive high performance. 

Peer Coaching

Even if working one-on-one with a coach isn’t within reach right now, there are other ways you or your team can experience the benefits of coaching. One of those ways is peer coaching. Through our work with client companies that have used New Lens and our other programs, I’ve seen firsthand how effective peer coaching can be.

Peer coaching can take many forms. For example, in the New Lens Program, participants meet monthly with a cohort. The experience is designed to strengthen relationships, create a safe place to share challenges, amplify the power of the content, and promote sharing of best practices. Recent research by Rob Cross shows that peer relationships have a bigger impact on inclusion, advancement, and retention than relationships with managers.

Remember that you can also create your own methods to take advantage of peer coaching — for example, setting up coaching partnerships or small groups.

Peer coaching has its own set of advantages. It’s less expensive than working with an executive coach, so more people in your organization can benefit. Peer coaching is also usually easy to implement. 

Manager Coaching

Of course, your team members also need coaching from you. This can feel difficult sometimes. I don’t have to tell you how busy leaders’ schedules are these days. On top of that, many leaders have not been trained on how to coach effectively.

However, giving your team more coaching is probably easier than you might think. A great first step is looking for coachable moments as they arise during your day. When you identify good opportunities for coaching, remember to practice active listening. Pay attention to what your direct report is really communicating and don’t just wait for your chance to talk. By listening deeply, you can identify questions that can help employees develop their own solutions.

We designed New Lens to facilitate manager coaching. Bimonthly one-on-one meetings between managers and participants are part of the program, and we make it easy by providing a discussion guide for managers to use.

A Powerful (and Free) Event to Share with Your Team

At Newberry Solutions, we’re always looking for new ways we can help you steer your team’s growth and development. That’s why I’m so excited about our upcoming Micro Summit: 4 Core Leadership Strategies for Success. This virtual event is easy to fit into busy schedules. In just a couple of hours, you’ll gain valuable, actionable strategies for success from four incredible business and HR leaders. It all happens 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. CST on Wednesday, October 25. Please join us while we still have open seats. You can register here and share this link with your team members and other colleagues.

How to Develop Your Team When Time, Budgets Are Tight

As a leader, one of your most important responsibilities is helping your team members develop to their full potential. But that raises a big question: How are you supposed to accomplish this when all of you are busy and your training budget is small? Today I want to give you some quick, affordable and easy ideas to encourage your team members’ learning and growth. Be sure to read to the end of the article, where I’ll tell you about a free leadership development event you can share with your team.

Photo by Christina Morillo

Leverage What You Already Have

It’s easy to forget about the existing learning and development opportunities at your organization, especially when your schedule is full. But this is a great place to start when you’re looking for ways to develop your team. For example, does your workplace have a cross-training program? Are there affinity groups? What about tuition reimbursement? If you’re drawing a blank, get together with other leaders so you can pool your knowledge about current resources.

Help Team Members Learn from Each Other

So what’s your #1 existing resource? Your people themselves. Take a moment to think about the strengths of each of your team members. You’ll probably be impressed by the depth and breadth of knowledge and experience on your team! Now consider how you can tap into each person’s expertise. Some options include lunch-and-learn events and peer-to-peer coaching.

Build Learning into Every Day

All too often, we think of learning as something that happens in addition to our regular jobs. But some of the most powerful learning actually happens through our work experiences.  Leadership expert Josh Bersin calls this “growth in the flow of work,” and research has shown it delivers real results. According to Camille Preston, a business psychologist and leadership expert: “The most innovative leaders and organizations are seeking ways to integrate leadership development into everything they do.” You can help your direct reports grow by helping them join a cross-functional team, present in front of senior leaders or take on a special project, just to name a few examples.

Coach and Give Feedback

I get it: You’re really busy. But you can provide more coaching and feedback without taking too much time out of your day. Get in the habit of sharing what you noticed about your team members’ behavior right after you observe it. Even a couple of minutes after a meeting to point out what worked well and what would have been more effective can go a long way. If you want to start coaching more but aren’t sure how to begin, I contributed to an article for Forbes Coaches Council that provides some “baby steps.”

Our Free Leadership Development Event

I hope the ideas in this article will help you create more development opportunities for your team members. Making learning more accessible is one of our key values at Newberry Solutions. That’s why we created our award-winning New Lens® app. And it’s why I’m so excited about our upcoming Micro Summit: 4 Core Leadership Strategies for Success. Like New Lens, this virtual event is easy to fit into busy schedules. In just a couple of hours, you’ll gain valuable, actionable strategies for success from four incredible business and HR leaders. It all happens 11 a.m.-1 p.m. CDT on Wednesday, October 25. I invite you to register here, and to share this link with your team members and other colleagues. 

Coach to Build Critical Thinking Skills [One Thing Video Series]

Want to gain more time in your day AND unleash your team members’ full potential? Here’s the secret: Build your coaching skills. When you take a moment to coach a team member through a problem instead of solving it for them, you’re building their capabilities and confidence. That empowers them to work more independently — and frees up time for you. In my latest One Thing You Can Do video, I explain the first step to effective coaching.

Want more practical leadership strategies you can start using immediately? Reach out to me about New Lens®.

Transcript

Hi. I am Neena Newberry. Today I'm excited to share another One Thing You Can Do video. These are videos that are just a couple of minutes long. They're modeled after the New Lens app, which is all about helping you get leadership strategies and tools in bite-sized chunks. Today I want to talk to you about coaching. Coaching is such an important skill set, and I'm not just saying that because I am an executive coach. I'm saying this because as managers, leaders, even as team members, we always have that opportunity to decide: Are we going to just hand over the solution to somebody when a problem comes up? Or are we going to actually help them think through it in a different way and perhaps use coaching skills? It's a fantastic way to actually build critical-thinking skills in others.

Sometimes we forget to do that. We're in a rush, or we have limited time. We're stressed out, whatever it may be, or we're not necessarily even thinking about the fact that we should be pausing and let the other person think through this, even if they came to us for help. When I talk about coaching skills, one of the most critical pieces is to really understand what on earth is it that they truly need help with. Then, asking them some thought-provoking questions to help them think through it. Leverage your expertise that way vs. solving it for them. That typically involves asking some pretty good open-ended questions, meaning questions that you can't answer with just a yes or a no. Next time someone comes to you with an issue or problem, something they want to talk through, or even a goal, think about leveraging your coaching skills, and it can make a huge, huge difference. For other tools, resources, and strategies, please visit our website at newberrysolutions.com and check out our New Lens app.

3 Questions to Shape the Rest of the Year

It’s hard to believe, but we’re halfway through 2023. This is a good time to catch your breath, reflect on the year so far, and make any necessary tweaks. Use these three simple questions to guide you. You could also talk about these questions with your team.

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger

1. How has the first half of the year unfolded for you? Has your organization experienced layoffs, resignations or both? Is there any tension about staff returning to the office, whether full or part time? These are both common issues that companies are grappling with in 2023. For more insights on both, and how they affect both you and your team, check out our most recent white paper, “Managers Under Pressure.”

2. What's working — and what's not? Especially in stressful times like these, we tend to focus on the negative. But don’t skip ahead to the second half of this question! Celebrate the positive results you and your team members are creating. And then think about what really helped you get those results. Acknowledging what’s going well will give everyone a psychological boost and proactively put your team’s strengths into play more fully.

3. Based on your answers to the first two questions, what's one shift you want to make in the second half of 2023?

One idea to consider here is investing in development opportunities for you or your team for the rest of the year. Remember that staff development can amplify strategies that are working well or help you make course corrections. Our award-winning New Lens® app can help you do both. Contact us for demo.

All of us here are at Newberry Solutions are always in your corner cheering you on and sharing valuable resources to help you be productive and successful, in the second half of 2023 and beyond. Please let us know how we can help.

How to Deal with Challenging Team Members

As a leader, you probably have at least one team member who has a knack for pushing your buttons. Your challenging team members may be high performers in many ways. But their negative behaviors still make life harder for you and the rest of your team. Today I want to share some ideas on how to address a difficult team member, as well as some specific responses you can use in the moment to redirect them.

Photo by fauxels

Give Timely Feedback

It’s easy to delay giving feedback, especially when you’re busy. But the cost is high — for you, for the rest of your team and even for the challenging team member — if you put off addressing the issue. Remind yourself that you are offering feedback out of genuine concern for everyone involved. Remember also that your team member probably wants the feedback because they know it’s important for their career development.

Focus on Impact

Once you’ve decided to offer feedback about a team member’s challenging behavior, the next step is thinking about how to present that feedback effectively. Help the employee understand their behavior by identifying it, providing information on when and where you’ve noticed it occurring, and sharing its impact. For example, maybe their habit of shooting down ideas surfaces primarily in meetings with a key stakeholder group. Talk about the effect, from what you see or what you’ve heard from others. “I know this isn’t what you intend, but I’ve heard others say that your communication style leaves them with the impression that you are resistant to their ideas.”

Next, offer ideas about what your team member should do more often or less often. Sometimes it can be very powerful to ask the employee to focus on how they want to show up in interactions with others. In other words, by helping them identify what they do want others to notice about them (for example, openness to ideas), they may stop engaging in the other limiting behavior.

You can supplement your own coaching and advice by connecting your team member with development resources like our award-winning New Lens® app. An assessment within the app helps them identify their developmental needs.

What to Say in 5 Challenging Situations

In addition to making a plan for giving feedback and providing development opportunities, you can also think about what to say when your team member engages in the problem behavior in a setting like a meeting. When others are present, it’s not appropriate to deliver the same kind of feedback you would one on one. But you can make statements that help your employee course correct and that keep the larger conversation on track. Here are a few examples.

• Challenging behavior: Naysaying. Your team member always seems to focus on why ideas will not work.

How to respond: "I understand your concerns and appreciate your perspective. What could we do to make this idea succeed?"

• Challenging behavior: Complaining. Your team member has a knack for seeing the glass as half empty and griping instead of resolving the problem.

How to respond: "Let’s take a few minutes to vent and then shift to finding a solution." 

• Challenging behavior: Derailing. Your team member distracts others from the core issue at hand.

How to respond: "I appreciate your comment. Just so I’m clear, please help me understand how it ties to what we’re trying to accomplish?"

• Challenging behavior: Taking on too much. Your team member has a habit of volunteering for tasks during a meeting, but then getting overwhelmed and creating a bottleneck.

How to respond: "If you take on this work, how much time will it entail? How does that fit in with other priorities you already have? What support might you need?"

• Challenging behavior: Getting lost in the weeds. Your team member gets bogged down in details and loses sight of what's really important.

How to respond: "Let's take a look at the bigger picture to make sure we’re considering the 'what' before we get into the 'how,’ and that we’re meeting our objectives."

This week, pay attention to your team members’ habitual behaviors and how they affect you and the rest of your team. Are there opportunities for feedback and coaching? And how do you want to respond when these behaviors surface?

How to Ease Your Team’s Stress (and Your Own)

Has the cumulative stress of the past few years taken a toll on you and your team? You aren’t alone. I’m hearing the same thing from many leaders I work with. As we created Newberry Solutions’ latest white paper, “Managers Under Pressure,” we learned that research backs up what we’ve all observed firsthand:

Photo by Pedro Figueras

• Employee engagement is at a seven-year low, which Gallup calls “one of the biggest threats to organizations and entire economies” in 2023. 

• On top of that, more than 40% of professionals report feeling burned out at work.

• For managers, the situation is even more dire. Their burnout rate is 43%. 

If you lead a team, it’s crucial right now to both prioritize your own wellbeing and support the people who report to you. You can make a big difference for them. A survey by The Workforce Institute at UKG found that managers impact people’s mental health just as much as their spouses do. 

I understand, though, that helping your team deal with stress (and managing your own) might feel like just one more thing to do when your schedule is already packed. So today I want to make this a little easier by passing along some unique, impactful tools that can supplement more traditional approaches to stress management. You can use these tools yourself and share them with your team members.

• The Living in Green Project. The website for the Living in Green Project provides information about stress management that’s great for sharing with your team. One valuable tool is the “Which State Is Your Nervous System In?” infographic, which can help you understand your stress levels. Be sure to check out their blog for more simple but powerful strategies grounded in neuroscience. 

• The Chopra App. If you are interested in meditation, but not sure how to get started, this app from wellness pioneer Deepak Chopra makes the practice more accessible. It includes meditations designed for a variety of situations. You can also find meditations as short as five minutes so that you can always fit a mindful pause into your day.

• Tapping. This is one of the quickest ways I know to reduce negative emotions and get your energy back to a calm and balanced state. Tapping is also easy to learn, affordable and can be used almost anytime. Think of it as a form of acupressure as a way to identify and release roadblocks. It is backed by science, and I can tell you from my own experience that it really works — and works fast.

Resources from Newberry Solutions

Our passion is creating solutions that address the challenges we see leaders experiencing. Earlier, I mentioned our white paper, “Managers Under Pressure,” which will help you learn more about both the magnitude of workplace stress in 2023 and how you can empower your managers to deal with their own stress and support their teams. We’re also thrilled to hear from users of our award-winning New Lens® app that they feel better equipped to handle any stressful situation. Schedule your demo today.

How to Strengthen Team Relationships with Collaborative Learning

As a firm that helps top organizations develop their leaders, we get a firsthand look at emerging trends in learning and development. Three years ago, the coronavirus pandemic caused a sudden and massive shift to remote learning options. But, in recent months, we’ve been seeing the pendulum swing the other way.

In-person learning programs are on the rise again. One reason? Remote work has decreased the sense of connection among employees. Two-thirds of remote workers report feeling isolated or lonely at least part of the time. More than half of hybrid and remote workers also report having fewer work friendships.

Photo by fauxels

We’re seeing especially strong interest in collaborative learning. This article will help you better understand collaborative learning, its benefits and how you can implement it in your organization.

What Is Collaborative Learning?

Collaborative learning is centered on employees sharing their knowledge and expertise with each other. It can take many forms. For example, if your organization has a program that pairs employees for mutual mentoring, that’s collaborative learning. Affinity groups or employee resource groups can also create opportunities for employees to learn together.

Embracing collaborative learning doesn’t mean that you solely rely on your employees’ expertise, though. For example, our New Lens® app delivers bite-sized lessons on key leadership skills and gives options for learning with a cohort. Our WOW! Program℠ also utilizes the power of collaborative learning by combining audio lessons with in-person meetings.

What Are the Benefits?

At Newberry Solutions, we’ve seen organizations that provide collaborative learning reap a number of benefits:

• First, relationships among employees get stronger, which is especially important in this new era of remote work. Even before the pandemic, I frequently advised clients to pay more attention to their peer relationships (not just relationships with their bosses or direct reports).

• Feelings of isolation decrease. Instead of feeling alone in dealing with an issue, employees feel like their challenges are shared and that they can lean on each other.

• Collaborative learning can feel more relevant. Both employees and employers are tired of training programs that fail to address what they experience at work. Whether you are using outside content (such as the New Lens® app) or not (as with an internal mentoring program), collaborative learning focuses on effective solutions for your organization,

• Learning becomes more accessible. With how busy everyone is, it can be hard to get away for a conference, offsite or other event. Collaborative learning sets the stage for what The Josh Bersin Company calls “growth in the flow of work.” This kind of learning can happen every single workday.

Put Collaborative Learning into Action

This week, I want to challenge you to look for ways to drive collaborative learning for your team. Could you put them together in small groups to share their expertise? Or perhaps you could team up with other department heads to help your teams get to know each other and learn about each other’s work. We’re also happy to tell you more about our New Lens® app or WOW! Program℠. Just reach out for more info.

Are You Leveraging Your Coaching Skills?

In the past few years, we’ve seen a big shift in expectations for leaders. Previously, leadership largely followed a “command and control” model. Leaders figured out what to do and told others to do it. But today we value a new kind of leader — one who’s skilled at coaching employees to find their own solutions.

“Increasingly, coaching is becoming integral to the fabric of a learning culture—a skill that good managers at all levels need to develop and deploy,” Herminia Ibarra of London Business School and leadership trainer Anne Scoular wrote in Harvard Business Review.

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

Honing your coaching skills benefits your team members and the organization as a whole, as well as your own career path. (In fact, we believe so strongly in the power of coaching that we created the New Lens app to make coaching easier for leaders and more accessible to employees at all levels.) In today’s article, I’ll help you assess where you are now with your coaching skills and how you can coach more frequently and more effectively.

How Coaching Pays Off

As an executive coach myself, I can tell you that coaching delivers real results, including:

• Greater self-awareness

• Improved critical thinking skills

• Less turnover (94% of employees would stay longer at a company that helps them learn)

• Improved engagement and motivation

But providing regular coaching can be a challenge for managers. With recent workforce cuts at many companies, schedules are tight. Furthermore, according to Chief Learning Officer, managers may lack the skills to be effective coaches: “Most managers are hired or promoted based on their tenure with the organization or past experience in non-managerial roles. They’re chosen based on legacy rather than skills. They may have what it takes to run the business, but they often lack the ability to support, motivate and empower a team.”

The Definition of Coaching

To strengthen your coaching skills, let’s take a look at how often you’re currently coaching. To do that, we have to first understand what coaching is — and isn’t.

The International Coaching Foundation defines coaching others as “a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”

This definition of coaching from tennis coach Timothy Gallwey also applies to coaching in the workplace: “"Coaching is unlocking a person's potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them."

Many of the common interactions we have with our reports do not qualify as coaching, including:

• Telling someone exactly what to do.

• Giving them advice on what to do.

• Offering them performance feedback.

Instead, coaching is more about listening and asking powerful open-ended questions to help someone else challenge their thinking, broaden their perspective and get unstuck.

Based on these definitions, how are you doing as a coach to your direct reports? How often are you asking coaching questions vs. giving directions or providing feedback?

Listen and Ask Questions

Now let’s think about how you can coach more frequently. A good starting point is to keep an eye out for coachable moments as they arise during your day. You don’t have to coach constantly. It’s not the right solution in every situation. For example, in a high-risk, high-visibility scenario, it’s probably safer to give direct instructions in the moment and then coach later.

When you identify good opportunities for coaching, remember to practice active listening. Pay attention to what your direct report is really communicating and don’t just wait for your chance to talk. By listening deeply, you can identify questions that can help employees develop their own solutions. A common mistake here is to ask leading questions that are more about nudging the person to the solution you would choose. Instead, your questions should sound more like these:

• “What’s most important to you about this issue?”

• “What problem are you really trying to solve?”

• “What have you tried already, and what did you learn from that?”

A New Way to Coach

In addition to the coaching you provide, you can also look for other ways to offer your team members more coaching. Technology now makes the benefits of coaching more accessible than ever. Our New Lens app, for example, can supplement your own coaching with content that’s targeted to common situations we’ve seen our clients face. Schedule a demo now.

What Leadership Skills Should Training Address?

As you continue to navigate a lean work environment full of change, are you looking ahead to next year to see how to develop your team’s leadership skills? Choosing a leadership training solution can feel like “one more thing” to tackle, so I’m sharing a series of articles to help make the process a little easier.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

In the first article, I shared some questions you can use to uncover what your team needs from leadership development training. This week, I’ll focus on helping you clarify the outcomes for your training solution. Remember, the program you choose doesn’t have to solve everything that’s going on with your team, but it should address your top two or three concerns. Below are common leadership challenges we hear about. Which ones affect your team?

Reducing Stress

I don’t have to tell you that everyone is busier than ever these days. Perhaps your team, like many others, is stretched thin because of staffing cuts or hiring freezes. According to findings of the Future Forum Pulse survey released in October, burnout is still on the rise, and 43% of professionals feel burned out. As a coach and facilitator who specializes in working with high-performing women, I was especially struck that the survey found 32% more burnout among women compared with men.

To be effective, leadership development solutions must address stress and burnout. Reducing your team’s stress burden will make it easier for all of you to deal with any other ongoing issues.

Prioritizing the Right Work

In a survey by Paychex Inc., 43% of respondents said a lack of time management skills is holding back their career advancement. As we navigate through uncertainty and change with lean teams, it’s no wonder that time management is difficult for many professionals.

To quickly gauge whether your team uses time effectively, ask yourself whether each member spends most of their time on their “Big 3”: the top three areas where they can have the biggest impact on the business. If not, aligning their capacity with what drives results should be a focal point in your leadership training program.

Improving Communication

Surveys consistently reinforce the importance of their employees’ communication skills, and leaders themselves say it is one of the most important leadership competencies. 

But, for many teams, the rise of remote work has introduced new communication challenges. Issues range from miscommunication over email and chat to overcommunication by managers who keep tight reins on remote workers to not knowing how to manage the volume of communication. The leadership training solution you select should reflect the new realities of workplace communication.

Developing Stronger Relationships

Closely related to communication is the ability to nurture productive relationships at work. Even before the pandemic, many high performers fell into the trap of keeping their heads down to focus on results at the expense of relationships.

Today, we have to be even more deliberate about relationship building. Research shows that employees find it harder to form a sense of connection with their colleagues in a hybrid workplace. And that impacts everything from collaboration to employee well-being. An effective leadership training solution should guide employees in how to build relationships with remote employees. If a training program involves peer learning or affinity groups, that in itself can strengthen relationships.

Engaging and Retaining Employees

One of the most important outcomes of a leadership development program isn’t necessarily part of the curriculum. Simply offering training and development is a big step toward keeping your employees engaged and retaining them at your company. In a 2019 survey, 94% of employees said they would stay at their company longer if it invested in helping them learn. A study that year by Sitel Group found that 92% of U.S. employees said that learning increases their engagement and motivation at work. 

What’s Ahead in This Series

As you consider the outcomes I’ve mentioned today, what is most important for your organization? With this in hand, you’ll be one step closer to selecting the leadership development solution that’s right for your team. In the final article of this series, I’ll talk about what effective leadership training looks like. In the meantime, I invite you to explore one of our newest leadership development solutions, the award-winning app New Lens. New Lens is designed to teach your team members how to manage their capacity, focus on the right work, communicate with impact - in a way that fosters connection and fits into their busy schedules. We would love to see if it can help you. Schedule your demo now.