The Look & Sound of Leadership
An ongoing series of Executive Coaching Tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the way you want to be perceived.
Episodes
An ambitious leader knows she’ll need to network to achieve her career goals. But, to her, networking feels slimy, so she asks her coach for help.
Some core concepts from this episode:
- The purpose of networking is to know people.
- Don’t target people. Nurture a relationship.
- Make networking 5% of your job every week.
- Networking makes you a more valuable employee.
- Show interest in the other person. No monologuing about yourself. <...
Before testifying in a high-stakes case, a theorist and his coach swap horror stories about their nerves hijacking them and the lessons they learned.
Tom’s Top Three Ideas for Mastering Nerves:
- Celebrate Incremental Improvement
- Write Happy Endings
- Ignore Your Nerves
Here is the clip of Emma Stone battling her anxiety.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkN0sPQ76E0
Email Tom and tell him he’s crazy here.
For ...
Angry at himself for continually putting others’ needs before his own, a leader turns to his coach for tools. He learns a new way to think and a behavior to try.
Be in touch with Tom here.
Listen to Tom’s conversations with Neha on “Bridge to Leadership” podcast here and here.
Our Essential Tools bin has free resources to help you build your look and sound of leadership.
G.W. Bailey’s imdb page is here.
This e...
A vice president, struggling to control his team of artists, learns a technique for managing bad behavior from his coach. He likes it so much, he uses it with his high performers, too.
The tool described in this episode is simple to understand but may take a bit of courage to implement.
Courage can be taught. Brené Brown created her Dare to Lead course for exactly that purpose. Ready to build your courage? Reach out to us h...
A leader is so furious with his self-absorbed boss, he considers quitting the company. He asks his coach to help him manage himself and defuse his triggers.
In addition to the five strategies Tom talks about in this episode, there are lots more strategies in his conversation with Dave Stachowiak on Coaching For Leaders “How to Deal with a Boss Who’s a Jerk.”
Tom’s wide-ranging conversation with Josh Dittmer can be found here.
Tired of losing to more savvy players, a leader seeks to decode the secrets of playing politics, focusing particularly on company culture.
Download our free Political Style Chart here.
“The Secret Handshake” is a great tool for mastering workplace politics.
Looking for a transcript of the show? Read it here.
More tools are in our podcast library. This episode is in three categor...
A leader feels stuck. She sees others winning resources she felt should have been hers, but she hates playing politics. What to do?
Download our free Political Style Chart here.
“The Secret Handshake” is a great tool for mastering workplace politics.
Many more tools are in our podcast library. This episode is in three categories:
Here are five episodes to help develo...
A leader, surrounded by people she knows and trusts, can’t seem to get traction with them. In conversation with her coach, she discovers an unexpected cause.
Tools for teams abound in this episode.
The four tools Tom suggests as first steps for helping your team openly discuss ideas are:
- Say ‘thank you’ when people offer an idea;
- Be curious; don’t dismiss ideas or people;
- Don’t take differences personally; it’s not a...
A co-founder, at odds with his partner (also his best friend!), reaches out to his coach for help saving the business and the friendship.
The episode introduces The Conflict Resolution Wheel. Download it for free from our Essential Tools bin along with other communication tools like the Feeling Words Grid.
The Wheel is based on a tool in the Couple Communication course, a program to help you understand and connect with your partner ...
A senior leader, having risen through the ranks, ends her coaching engagement by comparing notes with her coach about the skills that have helped her most.
This episode identified seven essential leadership skills:
- Conquer catastrophic thinking;
- Use fewer words;
- Value relationships as highly as results;
- Don’t take anything personally;
- Commitment to Development;
- Reflection;
- Speak for Yourself.
Resources to develop those last three:
...
At the end of her rope, a leader asks her coach for help managing a direct report who, she says, is the most defensive person she’s ever met.
This episode was packed with tools. We’ve put them into an easy-to-understand infographic. Download it for free here.
Kim Scott, the best-selling author of the electric book Radical Candor, wrote a short, friendly guide with tools for handling defensive employees. Find it here.
During her first C-suite years, a leader burned a lot of bridges. Her boss, who’d traveled a similar path, gets her a coach and sets only one goal: repair relations through emotional intelligence.
Lots and lots of tools and resources this month:
Free downloads:
Books and papers to sharpen your skills
“Executive Presence: The Missing Link between Merit and Success”
A highly effective leader finds herself in the middle of a terrible mess, not of her own making. When her coach marvels at her ability to stay calm amidst the chaos, she shares a lesson she learned from her dad.
In addition to the tools discussed during this episode, Tom also talks about:
“Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High.”
Wanting to command rooms with her voice, a team leader turned to her coach for exercises. She learned the secrets of “RVP.”
In this episode, five practices to help you develop a voice that will command a room are discussed:
- Vocal variety
- Expect resistance
- Rhythm
- Volume
- Pitch
This episode has multiple tips and tools for each of those five development areas.
The Zootopia clip that gets so much attention is here: ht...
In conversation with her coach, an executive explores whether leaders and managers use language differently in order to be effective in their roles.
There are lots of ideas in this episode. To help you sort the tools and put them into practice, we’ve created an infographic for you to download. It’s in the Essential Tools bin along with all the others. Help yourself!
This episode is tagged in three categories in the Podcast ...
An executive, in conversation with her coach, wonders if leaders and managers are different. And whether it matters.
This episode has lots of ideas flying around. To help you sort the tools and put them into practice, we’ve created an infographic for you to download. It’s in the Essential Tools bin along with all the others. Help yourself!
This episode is tagged in three categories in the Podcast Library:
A leader, stuck in an unhealthy cycle, searches for a way out. In conversation with his coach, he learns a four-square tool that just might work.
A new free Essential Tool illustrating the four-square model is available for download in the Essential Tools bin. No login required. Help yourself.
The model in this month’s episode is a variation on The ACT Matrix. Here’s our favorite YouTube video about The Matrix.
The creators of The ACT...
A team leader had a habit of jumping to conclusions. His most recent leap landed him in hot water. In conversation with his coach, he learns a tool for making better choices.
We created a new free Essential Tool illustrating The Ladder of Inference. It’s in the Essential Tools bin along with all the others. Please help yourself.
The “Don’t Judge Too Quickly” ads are on YouTube here:
A senior executive worries that his lieutenants are not being taken seriously by the senior leadership team. He discusses with a coach how to help his rising leaders accelerate their growth. This is that conversation.
We created a new free Essential Tool for you called “Executive Thinking.” It illustrates the “altitude” analogy Tom told during the episode. It also supports one of the four exercises you can do with your team.
A leader causing upset among her people is given a coach. In conversation, they examine what might be triggering people to be upset with her. The exploration leads to a simple, yet difficult, idea.
Transcripts of every episode are available for download in our library.
Tom mentioned two episodes with mindfulness tools. They are:
This episode is filed in three categories in the library:
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