5 Minutes on Your Burning Leadership Questions

I often ask leaders in my trainings questions like:

"What are your burning questions about being a people leader?" and "What is the hardest part of being a supervisor?"

I thought I'd share some of what I'm hearing.

Maybe the responses will resonate with you, help you feel less alone, or help you articulate something you've been feeling.

Or maybe, you won't find yourself represented in the responses.

If that's the case, I encourage you to hit reply and let me know how you'd respond.

Here are the top three themes:

1. Strong relationships

I'm talking building trust, direct communication, conflict, and feedback.

No surprise here, right? In fact, I already have several blog posts about one-on-one conversations, the importance of feedback, safe spaces and brave spaces.

Communication is hard.

Honesty is tricky, especially when giving feedback.

I heard from supervisors:

• How do I build or regain trust?

• How do I communicate directly and hold space for feelings?

• How do I handle conflict and help resolve it?

2. Supervising across differences

We know that difference is necessary and important. It's often the important catalyst for new ideas. If we're open to it, it's the ingredient for learning and growth.

But how do we supervise people with different personalities, skills, abilities, from different cultures, generations, and backgrounds, and many other differences?

As leaders, how do we work with difference?

How can we best understand ourselves to see our own conscious and unconscious biases?
 

Supervisors asked:

• How do I change communication or leadership styles when appropriate?

• How can I maintain a sense of fairness within this difference?

• How do I know if my expectations for the job are realistic and unbiased?

3. Managing expectations

This theme is big and ranging.

Supervisors asked about:

• When do I let employees do things their own way?

• How and when do I get out of the way?

• How can I motivate someone who doesn't want to be motivated?

Questions like these come up a lot. Supervising, as I often say, is more art than science.

There are not clear cut answers to these questions.

But, I'll be honest, I love digging into the nuance of these questions. I promise more on this, and all the themes and questions posed above, in the coming months.

These three themes certainly don't cover everything I've heard from leaders recently.

Burning questions also included:

How do I go from a peer to a manager?
How do I know I'm being a good leader?
How do I help people through change?


What's really resonating with you from what you read above? What is missing? What would you love for me to dig deeper on in the blog?