LeaderFactor Notes | Free Downloads

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Lead With Influence, Not With Power

Lead as if you have no power. We are being asked to lead in increasingly-dynamic environments. Those who chase innovation will lead as if they have no power. Otherwise, your competitive advantage will expire faster than your adaptive capacity can keep pace.

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Building Connection in a Remote Team

Today, teams are built differently. Remote work has changed the way we interact and connect with our colleagues. While team-building activities and personal moments can easily slip through the cracks of your living room couch, valuable connection isn’t off the table. With intentional effort, your remote team can feel just as connected as an in-office team. Here are some LeaderFactor tried-and-true methods of remote connection:

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How Psychological Safety Cures Imposter Syndrome

Imposter syndrome. The all-too-common feeling of inadequacy that makes you doubt your successes and achievements. It occurs outside of the comfort zone and triggers a fear of exclusion that motivates you to work harder than necessary to prove your worth.

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Infusing Psychological Safety Into Your Creative Process

It’s a Wednesday morning and you walk into an art museum. The paintings on the walls are quiet and serene--betraying the effort that went into them. But these works of art didn’t appear out of thin air. Sometimes taxing, and often flowing, there was a creative process behind them.

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How to Handle Tough Feedback

To create incubators of innovation where divergent thinking, creative abrasion and constructive dissent thrive, we must learn not only to tolerate, but actually invite and welcome constructive feedback. This may feel like an unnatural act at first, but it’s a skill you can develop. Here’s how:

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5 Behaviors That Foster Challenger Safety

Challenger safety satisfies the basic human need to make things better. It’s the support and confidence we need to ask questions such as, “Why do we do it this way?” “What if we tried this?” or “May I suggest a better way?”

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Staying In-Sight and In-Mind as a Remote Worker

There’s some truth to the adage: out of sight, out of mind. If you’re a remote worker you may be wondering if this applies to you. Does the adage hold weight on our virtual teams? Are we left to the mercy of cloud-based collaboration tools to remind our employers of our existence? If we’re only “in sight” when we’re on-screen, can we still have an impact on our organizations?

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5 Behaviors That Foster Contributor Safety

Contributor safety satisfies the basic human need for autonomy and contribution. You feel safe and are given the opportunity and role clarity to use your skills and abilities to make a difference. Here are five behaviors that will help you foster contributor safety on your team.

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5 Behaviors That Foster Learner Safety

Learner safety satisfies the basic human need to learn and grow. When we sense learner safety, we’re more willing to be vulnerable, take risks, and develop resilience in the learning process. Here are five behaviors that will help you foster an environment of learner safety.

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7 Questions to Assess Your Personal Impact on Psychological Safety

To assess your personal impact on the psychological safety of your team, ask yourself the following seven questions. Then, find a trusted advisor who can tell you the truth and reveal any blindspots related to these questions. Once you find your weak points, work to improve these areas.

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Removing Exclusionary Bias, Behavior, and Policy Through Psychological Safety

Consider this: We include naturally in childhood and exclude unnaturally in adulthood. Why? Exclusionary behavior is learned behavior, the result of bias (conscious or unconscious) acquired through socialization. How, then, do you root out exclusionary bias, behavior, and policy?

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5 Steps to Create Innovation With Your Team

Innovation is a team sport: it comes easier and faster when you work together. Here are the five steps to make innovation happen on your team.

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Avoiding The Bear Trap of Success

Success is prone to dismiss feedback and alternative points of view. You stop listening, you start distorting, you begin to suffer the effects of isolation. Fortunately, you can resist the bear trap of success and the distortion it brings. Start by asking yourself 10 questions.

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Show Me Your Resume of Failure

What’s behind your resume? In many ways, you left out the best parts–the crucible experiences that taught you the most. So let’s finish the job by writing your resume of failure, dripping with blood, sweat, and tears, and revealing the reality of your gritty life. Keep reading to learn how.

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Leadership vs. Management: What's the Difference?

Leadership and management are related and yet distinct disciplines. Every leader needs management skills and every manager needs leadership skills. But the leadership-to-management ratio varies by position. What's yours? Check out these 23 dimensional differences between the two.

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What to Do with a Toxic Leader

In our research, we discovered a crucial distinction: Some employees work with actively toxic leaders who, themselves, engaged in toxic behaviors, while others worked with passively complicit leaders who allowed others to be toxic without consequence. Is this you? Here’s what to do next:

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5 Ways to Create Inclusion Safety

Inclusion safety satisfies the basic human need to connect and belong. It allows us to interact without fear of rejection, embarrassment, or punishment. It boosts confidence, resilience, and independence. Here are five ways to foster inclusion safety and acceptance in any social setting.

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7 Misconceptions About Psychological Safety

As the central measure of cultural health, psychological safety is exploding as an organizational priority. Various definitions of psychological safety exist, each slightly different. Here are seven dangerous misconceptions about it that you should avoid as you learn about this hot topic:

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Using Kindness to Overcome Unconscious Bias

How do you overcome unconscious bias? Kindness is the answer. When you commit to be kind, you approach every human interaction with that commitment foremost in mind. Then, when an unconscious bias suddenly appears, it collides with your commitment to be kind, creating dissonance within you.

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The 3 Most Deadly Hiring Mistakes

Hiring an employee is a high risk/high reward proposition. Hiring the right person can bring unimaginable benefits. Needless to say, emotion, urgency, and unconscious bias can hijack the process and lead to a regrettable hire. Here are three dangerous hiring mistakes and how to avoid them.

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How to Spot a Toxic Culture in a Job Interview

If your interviewers work in a toxic culture, they will try to hide it through surface acting. Mild and subtle indicators will reveal their efforts to conceal. Your job is to gather the clues and get to the truth. Here are nine questions to help you spot a toxic culture in a job interview:

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10 Things Leadership is Not

When it comes to understanding leadership, we've created a myth-making industry, a platitudinous art, an intellectual toy. We've made it too complicated, and in many cases, the theories we've hatched are dangerously misleading. Consider the following 10 flawed theories.

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5 Ways to Avoid the Intellectual Muzzle of Group Think

In terms of team performance, the homogenization of thought is the enemy. If the team is offering a pre-packaged agreement before it begins analysis and discussion, that’s normally a sign that the team has been intellectually muzzled. To avoid this costly trap, do the following.

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7 Ways to Reboot a Silent Team with Psychological Safety

Silence is a normal response to being humiliated or punished; teams disengage when they have no voice. How do you reboot a silent team? You create an environment of rewarded vulnerability (psychological safety). Here are seven specific suggestions to re-invite team members to participate.

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How to Connect with a Person Not Like You

The way that we see someone affects the way we value them. Connecting with someone like you is easy, it feels natural. We call this homophily, meaning that we bond with people with whom we share common characteristics. But how do we connect with someone who is very different from you?

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Psychological Safety Stay Interview Guide

Employee engagement and retention are directly linked to the level of psychological safety they feel in each of the 4 stages. In conducting a stay interview, ask each of the following two-part questions, then listen intently. Use this information to inform future company culture changes.

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12 Ways to Assess the Psychological Safety of a Virtual Meeting

Social cues can look different when we meet virtually. Are cameras on? Turning on your camera is the first act of vulnerability in a virtual meeting. Going off camera may indicate anxiety, fear, or low social energy. Here are 11 other ways to assess psychological safety in virtual meetings.

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3 Reasons Demand for Psychological Safety is Exploding

Psychological safety is an environment of rewarded vulnerability. Employees now see psychological safety as a term of employment, not a perk.

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Do You Work for Money or for Meaning?

When money becomes your sole focus, you may find that your aspirations get sucked into a vortex of acquisition, consumption, and presentation. This modern version of indentured servitude is quite powerful. Working for meaning, on the other hand, allows for deeper joys and fulfillment.

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Culture (noun) The Way We Interact

Fish have water. Humans have culture. You can’t step out of culture and dry yourself off with a towel, you’re always in it. Culture includes values, assumptions, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, customs, mores, and artifacts. All of those things surface in the way we interact together.

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5 Ways to Create Psychologically Safe Meetings for Introverts:

Introverts need time to absorb and reflect on questions, problems, and information. They like to crystallize their thinking before making it public. They’ll become emotionally fatigued before they become intellectually fatigued. Here are five ways to support them in your next meeting: