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Welcome to my "Spontaneous Metaphor Booth!" 

How do leaders deliver difficult news?

One of the most difficult rooms a leader walks into is a boardroom with a human resources officer and an employee or who needs to be terminated from their position. The energy is thick with wonder and waiting. There is anticipation with a badge in hand. They all nervously wait and listen. Sometimes they are angry, anxious, or hungry for information. The leader hasn't had to fire a physician or another executive before. This is tricky.

There is a delicate balance between directly saying what is up. Saying “you're fired” but saying it with compassion and listening to them as well. They might say, “We've tried XYZ and it's simply not a good fit or alignment anymore.” Depending on the situation, there may room for explanation but, usually no explanation is required, and this should not be a surprise. Maybe there is an option for a package severance with a non-disclosure clause? Maybe another option suits everyone better – we can be flexible and listen to...

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A Snow Shoe Experience with Dr Kristen Truman-Allen

On a team expedition snowshoeing, you might be focused on a specific development area, like communication. Having had some structured coaching content prior to the expedition, we set out to just be play and see what comes up!

Imagine seventeen members all moving at different paces. Some never have snow-shoed or even been in the mountains! Each team member has a different level of physical agility, and everyone is moving at different pace. When one person is driving hard they may be way ahead of the group. The last one in the group may feel left behind. Often times, no one wants to complain or feel like they are holding anyone back and they surely won't say if they are hurting or frustrated or scared or insecure. What you experience with me in this case is holding space for all of these emotional, physical and communication challenges to come up.

Because we are in a different environment, the challenge actually parallels how things are in their team or organization and individually....

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3 Simple employee engagement strategies for executive leaders.

 

Executive leaders, your engagement is crazy important.  Your team engagement will effect your overall success! 

Engagement is the most valuable measure of employee productivity and loyalty. Ensuring that your employees have creative, playful, healthy connected opportunities for their work will help them serve others without getting burned out.  Focusing on their engagement will revolutionize your experience as a leader as you all become more engaged, purposeful, and healthy and achieve catalytic results.   And when your employees are engaged you have less turnover and recruitment expenses, less conflict management and way more creative solutions. 

So, if you are looking for ways to keep your employees ignited, even during change, uncertainty or even chaos, these strategies are for you. 

Here are three simple strategies for getting 100% employee engagement

Number 1.    Be Vulnerable  Share your current reality.  Even if it...

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3 ways Executive leaders can respond to their teams with Empathy in times of crisis

 

 

As executive leaders, our role is to influence change and make a positive impact in the world. We must have responsive, effective, collective human connections to influence change.

People will lean in and be vulnerable with you if they trust you and feel connected to you. We must be intentional about our reactions in times of crisis and RESPOND with empathy.  Empathy is an attempt to understand a different perspective.  Empathy is feeling with another person and is essential for us in order to lead without fear, inspire trust and be clear, kind and direct. 

So, if you are and executive leader, looking for empathetic ways to respond to your teams,  Please stick around. YOU are NOT alone!

And if you find this video useful, please share it with everyone you work with,  Because the more we are all leading from our most authentic, empathic selves, the more vulnerable and creative  and engaged our teams will be. 

To help you respond with...

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Burnout to Connection for Full Engagement

 

Are you burned out or disengaged?

Or maybe your feeling disconnected?

Let’s talk about how to shift from the experience of being burned out in relationships, at home, or at work. 

Today, I want to explore the component of disconnection/depersonalization and help you shift to the ENGAGED experience of being connected, involved, seen and heard with a sense of belonging. Burnout is characterized by exhaustion, depersonalization, cynicism and the feeling of not be accomplished.

Depersonalization happens when we protect ourselves from the painful things that we witness in our service(s), such as lack of outcomes, recurrent difficult situations, and conflict. This is common in public service professions where we exhibit a large amount of empathy and over time, find ways to disconnect so we don’t feel the pain of others. We also do this in order to not feel as deeply in order to cope and continue to do our work. 

Depersonalization begins as protection but...

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