Ep 160: 5 Ways to Be a More Effective Leader

We all know that to be an effective leader, you have to utilize your team strengths, have empathy, and more. But many leaders still struggle with handling the crucial aspects that everyone wants to put aside but are truly at the forefront of team success. In today’s episode, you will walk away with tools to gain self-awareness and identify key changes you can make in your leadership approach to be successful.  Tune in now to discover how you can become a better leader!

Chapters:

• 0:00 - Intro
• 3:00 - Essential Leadership Skills for Growth
• 7:22 - Building Trust and Effective Delegation
• 17:57 - Building Effective Leadership Skills
• 30:48 - Key Takeaways & Outro

Transcript

Lisa: 0:00

Hard conversations are essential for growth. I look back at every hard conversation a leader has ever had with me. It wasn't fun, it honestly sucked, but I can tell you right now I took away something from every single one of those, and maybe it was something that I needed to grow in, maybe it was something that I needed to be aware of, but I never walked away not learning something. Welcome to the Confident Podcast. I am Lisa Targinton, your host of this podcast. If you found yourself hitting play on this podcast, it means it was meant for you. My goal is to help empower and guide you to become a better version of yourself through conversation, advice and tips that are real, vulnerable and authentic. I'm excited to have you join this journey with me, so let's get started. Hey everybody, welcome back for another episode of the Confident Podcast.

Lisa: 0:53

I am your host, lisa Tarkington, and I have a really, really great topic for us to be talking about today when it comes to confidence, and that is all about being an effective leader, being an impactful leader and making changes, and this is really important to me, because this is something that I basically eat, breathe and sleep. Not only am I a leader myself, but I'm a leadership coach and I do a lot of facilitation and workshops around confidence, self-esteem, leadership and a ton of other skill sets that really help someone become more effective, and so this is what we're going to be talking about today, but before we do that, you guys know I love to give you some life updates, give you some things that we've been working on, and I cannot believe that it's summer already in Michigan, like this is the best time of year. It's just really hard to be in the office 24-7 when there's this big, bright sun out just waiting for me and the dogs to be out playing, and so we've been enjoying it. I think it's really important for me that during Michigan summers, I definitely am still disciplined, with my hours within work, really focused on my career and growth there, but also really getting outside, and I encourage all of you to do the same thing. There's something really beautiful about when we set boundaries, when we're disciplined, but also when we're laughing and having fun.

Lisa: 2:12

You know it was a big aha the other day when I got home from work and usually when I get home I still have about two more hours of work to do and my husband was like, hey, I'm going to go fishing before we go to the gym. Do you want to join? And I said yes, and his face was like you're going to come with me, you're not going to work? And I just said like yes, I can work later, but right now it's so nice out, we need to enjoy it. And it was a big moment for me to realize like that sometimes that your families can be affected by how many hours that we put in sometimes or when we're always trying to achieve a goal. Where are other things that might be we might be missing out on, and I share that because it was something so simple.

Lisa: 2:54

But something that really related to me of like this is the summer, that I probably say this every summer, that I'm going to make some changes and I feel like every summer I do a really good job of that. So maybe for you it's a different evolution or a time or a season in your life, but I always use the summers here in Michigan because they're so short that I want to really enjoy them, and so I encourage all of you to take a moment to kind of reflect on your boundaries right now, how you're being disciplined and really how you can get some sunshine into your life and just some more time with friends and family, because it's so worth it to spend time with them. And then other news. I guess, like there's nothing too crazy going on over here. Besides, I am enjoying coaching life so much. I just love it. I love watching leaders take it to the next level, I love watching my team grow and I love watching myself grow. You know, we've been through so many ups and downs and I just have to say it's so cool to see yourself mature from even January, my maturity from last year's maturity to five years ago, when I started a nonprofit, to my first career. All of those things come with growth and experience, but also watching your confidence shine. So, as you listen to these podcasts, I hope that you continue to take away things that are really going to help you as a individual and help you with your personal growth, because I'm always about looking inward so that we can make a change to really help more people.

Lisa: 4:17

And so, with that, let's dive into today's topic all about being an effective leader. So I'm going to read this quote because I just find this so great. So the challenge of leadership is to be strong but not rude, be kind but not weak, be bold but not be a bully, be thoughtful but not lazy, be humble but not timid, be proud but not arrogant All of those things. I bet you, as you listened to that, it was just kind of like yes, yes, yes, these are all things that we hear a lot of times as leaders is do this, but don't do that, but do this, and et cetera, et cetera. And so I want you to put on the lens today of you're going to be told a lot of different things when it comes to leadership. There's going to be a lot of different skills that you need to have, and if someone was to ask me what are all the skills that a leader needs to have, I'd probably name 20 different things. But I also know that our brains can't do well when I have a 20-page to-do list of all the things I need to grow in.

Lisa: 5:13

But we have to start somewhere, and self-awareness is extremely important whenever I teach leadership, and as much as that's important, that's not what I'm going to be talking about today, because I've talked a lot about that on the podcast. I've talked a lot about how self-awareness is just key to growth and confidence in all aspects of our lives, but I really want to talk about these five different things today. The first one is trust, the second one is delegation, the next one is systems and processes, the fourth one is conversation and the fifth one is communications. I'm going to say those one more time. It's trust, delegation, systems and processes, conversations and communication, and all of these are very important if you want to be an effective leader.

Lisa: 5:55

And when I shared that quote earlier about the challenges with leadership is being strong but not rude, being kind but not weak, being bold but not a bully, being thoughtful but not lazy, being humble, bold but not a bully, being thoughtful but not lazy, being humble but not timid, being proud but not arrogant All of those things I remember. Some of those things have come up in feedback conversations with leaders. Right, we're always looking to grow. Leadership in my roles have always given me feedback on different things and I've had to find the type of leader that I want to be today and who I want to continue to strive to be Now. It's been a continuous growth process for me, especially as you've heard my podcast about getting the ego out of the way, about trusting people. All of these things have come to, really, I would say a bubble and kind of like, continue to grow for me in my careers and I take leadership very seriously and that is why I'm an executive leadership coach and I'm a leadership coach to many individuals.

Lisa: 6:52

So I wanna dive into all of these five different things because I think, no matter what from today, I just want you to take away as much as you can so that you can implement into your life or also notice wow, I'm really not doing that. How do I do that more in my life? And so the first one is trust. Take that deep breath in, because I always hear from people well, I trust my people, I trust my people, but do you right? So sometimes we don't always and sometimes we do. So we'll dive into this.

Lisa: 7:22

So trust is the cornerstone to effective leadership. So when your team trusts you, so you as the leader and you trust your team, you are more likely to make more effective decisions. They're going to follow your guidance and you guys are going to come together for a common goal. But trust is earned in both ways. So when people think about this, they think about the trusting of the team, which I find very important, because I hear a lot from leaders that you know they have all of these high expectations, they have all of these things with their teams, but then they go do the things that they're asking of their team, which we'll dive into that here in a second.

Lisa: 7:59

But when you trust your team, you're kind of I'm going to kind of picture it where your hands kind of go off the wheels and you're allowing someone else to drive for a little bit and trust is really hard for both people. Sometimes it's hard because we've had past experiences with leaders that we kind of still have those memories in our brains. Sometimes the stakes are really high and there's a lot of pressure. So people have a struggle trusting because they're like, well, we have to get this done now. Can I trust you to do this? Sometimes we're scared because we're scared to be the fear of vulnerability. We're scared to give up ownership. We have these micromanagement tendencies or maybe we did from past experiences. And the last one is we have a pressure to perform. So it's hard to trust each other when maybe someone else from another level is telling us to do certain things, and it's hard to trust our employees or those next to us.

Lisa: 8:56

And so when trust is key, just think about that for a second. If someone doesn't feel like they can, that you trust them, they're going to continue to feel like they're failing you and they're going to continue to probably not have their best foot forward. But think about that as well is that, when you do trust someone, how they are able to then just grow, just grow, and that's what we want, right? We say all the time that we want the individuals to grow. That's why we're leaders, we want to be effective, but many times we don't trust individuals, and this actually could just be on situations too. So I challenge you.

Lisa: 9:36

I will have a little action for each one of these. The action for this one is I want you to think about and maybe you have an employee, or maybe you have an employee that doesn't really trust you. Look at what are the different areas that you might not trust someone, or that you say that you trust them but you're not allowing them to grow, and I want you, in the next week or two, to really start growing in. How do I start to gain that trust back and forth? How do I build that conversation, how do I build that relationship? Because the more that you get to know someone, the more that you align on things, the trust is going to grow, but also you will be much more effective and the goals of the company will continue to soar as well. So then there's delegation. I'm gonna take another deep breath on this one because, honestly, this is one of the hardest ones that I had struggled with. I thought I was really good with delegation For years in my job that I had before I started my nonprofit.

Lisa: 10:35

I delegated a lot, but I also had a lot of delegation on me as well, and I would say, as I built my own company, delegation was a lot harder. And I say that because I was me. It was me for a while by myself. When I was at my old company. I had a team. I had all these people to rely on where I could just kind of do, like my thing oh, this fits for this person, this fits for this person. But when you start your own company, it was me by myself, and so how was I going to do that? Right? Like how was I going to do everything? And so I did it all. Right, I wanted, I learned it all, I learned all the systems so that I could build it Well, as you build a team.

Lisa: 11:18

The point of adding someone to your team is to delegate, to take things off your hand and to trust that you hired the right person. Back to the trust right, trusting that you have the right person in the job. And so I had to learn a lot about delegation. Because, back to building your company. You kind of feel in this control that you want everything to go the way that it always has and when it doesn't, again we start to lack that trust. We have, maybe, some communication barriers that are in place as well, but there's so much power in delegation, so I want to talk about that.

Lisa: 11:54

So when we delegate tasks to someone else, it frees up our times to focus on the things that actually we're supposed to be focusing on in the moment. So I'm going to yes, you become less task-oriented because you are focusing more on strategic and partnerships, but there's something very freeing about that as well. But if you are saying that I need to be more strategic, oh, but I'm going. I need to X, y, z and I need to approve the colors of the paper that we're printing on and that I need to approve the email before you send it, that is micromanaging, that is not delegating, that is definitely not trusting your employees, and so when you start to build that trust up, when you start to hand things off to someone you know and start to learn from them, it opens up you to be able to do the things that now you need to do for the company.

Lisa: 12:45

But not only that as an effective leader, you are allowing your team to thrive. I mean, think about it. Take yourself back to when you first started at an organization or maybe your own company or anything, when someone was like hey, I really appreciate the skill set about yours, would you be willing to help me with X? You probably lit up because someone was looking at you to really utilize your skills. And I think that that is so valuable to put yourself in people's shoes so that you can really see, like, okay, I've been there before, I know how exciting it is, I love when utilizing my skills. So allow someone else to use their skills.

Lisa: 13:22

And as leaders, I'm going to let you know right now you do not have to have your hands into everything. It is tough, it's very tough. Right now you do not have to have your hands into everything. It is tough, it's very tough. But if you hire the right people and you have the right trust on your team, then you need to let go and you need to delegate. So your homework for this one in your action is notice how many times you are trying to take control of situations throughout the week and maybe you take it over, or you are teaching and you're delegating. I want you to calculate how many times you actually do this, and the reason why I want you to do that is because so many times we just do it and we don't even think about it. As I'm saying all of this, I have one thing in my mind right now where I'm like I really need to work on delegating that and the trust there, because it's still something that I'm holding onto, that I no longer need, because I have the right person in that job for that role, and I need to let go. So maybe, even if you're listening to this, that those are things that are coming to your mind.

Lisa: 14:20

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Lisa: 15:16

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Lisa: 15:49

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Lisa: 16:25

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Lisa: 17:15

So the fourth one is systems and processes. This one is something that I got advice from right when I started my nonprofit. I'll never forget this, and it didn't really. It made sense to me, but I don't think I really knew all the structure that needed to go into place here. So when I first started my nonprofit, a leader sat me down and said you know, one of the things I wish I would have done when I started my organization was, as I was building something, I was also writing the process for it, and that was very intriguing to me because I was like yep, that's exactly what I'm going to do. Did I do it? No, I did not, and it's because I was go, go, go, go go.

Lisa: 17:57

Well, then I got my first employee and guess what? I had none. I had maybe a few, I'm not going to say none. I maybe had a few processes in place, but not enough. Where then I could say here's the processes, go, do, right. And so then it was kind of like they weren't doing the way that I would normally do it, but I never built the processes or systems, so I couldn't really asset of them and I felt like we were wasting time and money, and we were honestly because we didn't have the right systems and processes in place, but it wasn't their fault. It was me as a leader, not setting them up for success with those things.

Lisa: 18:38

And so one of the things that I truly believe is, when a company has the right systems and processes in place, it takes a burden off of their employees and it takes a burden off of the leader, and I share that because, as I've continued to grow, having these different processes and slowing down and really building them out. Now, don't get me wrong, it takes time. It is a lot of you have to slow down to go fast, and this is actually something that I had an employee bring up to me back in the fall is like, hey, I know we have to slow down to go fast, but it'll be so worth it. And I look back and it's been months probably eight months since we've had that conversation and I was just working on a project the other day and, instead of having to call that person or figure it out myself, I was able to pull up the process and see exactly what needed to get done, and that was so helpful for me because I saved us time and frustration, and that's really important to think about because it helps the team come together, because it's like, okay, this is how we're going to be effective and we're going to be efficient.

Lisa: 19:36

And the other thing is is having systems in place. I didn't have a project management system or a CRM system when I started. I didn't have all these different things that are out there. That helps you a lot with these things, but the biggest thing with all of these is is we have these now in my company and I will tell you, it makes a tremendous difference in our work-life balance, our culture, and we're not done. We have definitely a lot more funnels, but the automation guys that's out there, all of these new things that the digital world has brought us, we need to take advantage of, and I say that because, as someone who took a while to really understand how they all work together, it has been a game changer for my company.

Lisa: 20:19

But, as an effective leader, none of those things are effective if there's a lot of human error in them as well. So all of you can build all the most beautiful systems and processes in place, but if you're not delegating and you don't trust your people and you might even have the wrong people in these roles. These things are not going to be effective for you. So I also want you to think about that piece. How are you training your folks to use them? How are you instead of if someone comes to you and you know it so well, you're just doing it for them? How are you positioning them to understand the process or the systems in place and really build that culture?

Lisa: 20:54

And I'll share some of my favorite ones that I use. So we use Asana for project management, game changer. We use all the Google Meets, google Chat, all of those types of things, and then that's eliminated. Our text messaging to each other. We utilize I use Loom sometimes when I'm a very verbal communicator, and so being able to show my staff kind of the changes that I'm making has been effective. Toggle has been amazing for looking at how I spend my time and then being able to make changes, as well as CRM systems. We have one for donor relations, but there's so many out there and you can have all the systems, but really about how to utilize them to your fullest, and we continue to look at how do we automate things and how do we make them better and as an effective leader. If I didn't listen to my staff, that would have been on me to not make those changes. But it's also really important that we continue to put these things in place to meet deadlines, to see priorities, to seek accountability and clarity, and it really helps with decision making and being innovative and really employee empowerment as well.

Lisa: 22:03

All right, number four hard conversations let's do another deep breath. Four hard conversations let's do another deep breath. Because this is another really really hard topic for people. I hear constantly from people that conflict and conflict resolution is really really hard for people, but I also think it's because we probably maybe didn't build the relationships up front, we didn't communicate things effectively, we weren't clear. Maybe we aren't listening All of these different things that cause us to feel that way, and I still I'm not going to say that I'm perfect at it, but I think that people need to look at it as hard conversations are essential for growth.

Lisa: 22:46

I look back at every hard conversation a leader has ever had with me. It wasn't fun, it honestly sucked, but I can tell you right now I took away something from every single one of those and maybe it was something that I needed to grow in. Maybe it was something that I needed to be aware of, but I never walked away not learning something. Sure, I was upset sometimes and I'm not going to say that every hard conversation comes out as butterflies and rainbows but it's also like one of those things where, if you don't bite it in the butt, it's going to keep coming up and up and up.

Lisa: 23:19

So you might as well just have those conversations with people and they're not always fun but I truly believe that we have to get over those humps to really think about, like, okay, how am I going to do this? And we're scared of it because they can be uncomfortable, right, we have a fear of negative situations that we just want to stay away from. We want to avoid them. And the other thing I hear a lot from people and I do this too is that we play out the scenario in our heads so much and, honestly, guys, it doesn't even go that way sometimes for us. Sometimes we have conflict avoidance, we have this desire to be liked and we're also uncertain of the outcome. So we just avoid these things at all costs. But we need to flip the script. These conversations have to happen.

Lisa: 24:06

So we need to reframe this as a learning and a growth opportunity, not only for you as a leader, but also for the staff member or the individual that you're working with, because it's about focusing on what is the purpose of chatting, what are the facts versus the emotions and thinking about their perspective and sharing your perspective as well. And I have this rule that I have set for myself that if I don't bring it up after a certain amount of time, I'm not allowed to continue. I'm not allowed to bring it up. You can't bring up something months after it happened because that's unfair to the person, because you had a moment to really help them. But when you bring it up three months later, you've allowed that behavior for so long and now you want to talk about it. So I'm really big on biting things in the butt right away, having those hard conversations and also like who doesn't want to just like get it over with, right? Or we're going to stew on it for months saying, oh, it's going to get better. Oh, it's going to get better. It might, but you're going to find a way to go around the conversation 20 times when instead you could just have that conversation.

Lisa: 25:10

So the action here is really to look at what is a hard conversation you probably need to have in the next couple of weeks or what is something that you need to do right now to really help you with that, and maybe that is reframing it. Maybe that is looking at things as an opportunity or maybe that means that you really need to look at it as, like these are not hard conversations to hurt someone's feelings. These are hard conversations because we have to grow the business and we need to grow as a company and a culture together. And the last one is effective communication. So all of these things that I'm talking about delegation, trust processes, conversations all lead back to communication.

Lisa: 25:50

And I just led a whole facilitation on effective communication the other day. Because having clarity, having your expectations set and two way street you have expectations of someone, allowing them to share their expectations of you. You know I think it was the other day I heard like clear is kind that's by Brene Brown, and I find that very important because a lot of times we kind of like kind of go all the all over the place with our communication versus just being very clear with someone and it's very effective because then you're not beating around the bush Now you need to be nice about it, but we all have different communication styles. But I would say one of the things I hear the most is when people are clear, you're able to kind of get through all of the mud and move forward quickly. The other thing to think about when it comes to effective communication is what is your communication style and what is those of around you. So I'm a very big verbal communicator. That is how I work. That's how I've always worked, but I've also worked with people who are like to write things down or they process for a long time. I'm very, very quick on my decisions and so understanding how to work with everybody. But then how do you meet in the middle to meet everybody's needs? And so that is something that I would really really tell people. That that would really help them with effective communication is understanding where everybody likes to be communicated to, and then how do you meet in the middle.

Lisa: 27:15

The other thing is is I hear all the time from people that there's still email wars happening out there. Right, you send an email off and then someone emails you back and instead of just picking up the phone, you have these email wars happening and they become very passive, aggressive, but imagine if you just picked up the phone right away and you had that conversation and you figured out something. Over time. It's just going to get a lot easier. Back to systems and processes. Everything becomes more effective, quicker and faster and goals for the company are met in a more effective way. And that even goes back to hard conversations, because sometimes we hide behind email or chats or all of these things because we're scared of the outcome or it might be a hard conversation, but I always say it's honestly the most essential and easiest way to be efficient when it comes to effective communication, and sometimes people don't always do well with it, but it's if you don't start it now that practice will never get better and better and really understanding where you need to meet people at, and so for me, that's something that I've had to continue to learn to be an effective leader, because, again, back to delegating and being solo.

Lisa: 28:29

For so long I got very stuck into my ways and so being able to really understand how do I need to be an effective leader, how do I need to effectively commute to really help my team, but not only that, help anybody that I serve, and my clients and my customers, and so that's your action here is to think about. Maybe take two people that you work with and ask yourself have I been effective with my communication? Have I been clear? Have I set the expectations for this project? Have I been intentional with my staff meetings of this is what I want to achieve today. Is everybody on board with this? And all of these things really do matter.

Lisa: 29:10

Now, don't get me wrong. Confidence is important. Obviously, this podcast is all about confidence, but so is self-awareness, so is taking care of yourself, but so are all the five points that I just made, and why they're so important is because if you start to build all of these things into your life, your confidence is going to grow, because your skills and your talents are also going to grow in how to delegate, in effective communication, in hard conversations, which are all essential for effective leadership. And I hear that so much. Lisa, I want to be an amazing leader. I care so much, and I know you do. You wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you didn't care.

Lisa: 29:49

But now it's about putting things in place to not only take that burden off of you, but to really make your culture the best culture that you've ever imagined. So, to close out today, I really hope that you took away some really great tools to really help you grow as a leader and, as you know, we have a digital platform that allows you to learn these tools whenever you need, at your fingertips. There's 24-7 access to this, and so check it out it's leadwithinleadconfidentlyorg and use the code podcast50 for a discount that I'm giving to all of you, because I really want to see all of you guys become successful leaders and grow not only internally, but also have that ripple effect into other people. So, as I always say, continue to spread love and kindness to everybody that you meet and have a great day. Thank you for tuning into the Confident Podcast.

Lisa: 30:48

If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, follow the Confident Podcast on Instagram and TikTok and share it with those who might benefit. Also, if you are looking to work one-on-one with me, message and follow podcast on Instagram and TikTok and share it with those who might benefit. Also, if you are looking to work one-on-one with me, message and follow me on Instagram at LisaTarkingtonOfficial. Stay confident, stay inspired and, until next time, keep striving to be the best version of yourself. Take care.