The Look & Sound of Leadership

Knowing she’ll need to network to achieve her career goals, an ambitious leader asks her coach what a good networking conversation actually sounds like.

Resources for Building Your Networking Skills

Leverage the latest algorithm on LinkedIn with this research report.

Coaching For Leaders podcast: “How to Grow Your Professional Network”

Coaching For Leaders podcast: “Executive Presence with Your Elevator Speech”

10 Rules for Networking

Link to 10 Rules of Networking PDF in Essential Tools bin

...

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.

Listen to Tom’s “Flow” and “Fall” stories on the Coaching Stories podcast with Dr. Sam Humphrey. 

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 ImprovementWrite Happy EndingsIgnore 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

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 episode lives in the podca...

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 here.

Find more resources to build your skills in the podcast archive. Search these categories:

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.

Free tools to support your professional development are in our Essential Tools bin. Please help yourself.

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 categories:

For Women
Perception – how you perceive others
Relationship Building

Here are five episodes to help develop your political savvy:

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:

Self-Talk

Leadership

For Women

Here are five episodes to help develop your political savvy:

...

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 about you;Develop your comfort with disagreement.

The Gradients of Agreement tool supports the ideas in...

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 better.

The course’s workbook, Talking and Listening Together, is meant for self-study. It’s available for purch...

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:

Commitment to Development

The Executive Executive – an episode with a different list of essential skillsFour Factors Executives Need to be Successful – another list of essential skills thenschel@essenti...

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.

Harvard Business Review’s Amy Gallo talked with Dave Stachowiak on this episode of the Coaching for Leaders podcast. As with eve...

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:

The Feeling Words Grid

EQ Model

Books and papers to sharpen your skills

“Executive Presence: The Missing Link between Merit and Success” 

“The EQ Edge: Emotional Intelligence and Your 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.”

Conversations with Coaches – Episode #184

Executive Coaching Special Interest Group

The Feeling Word Grid

<...

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 varietyExpect resistanceRhythmVolumePitch

This episode has multiple tips and tools for each of those five development areas.

The Zootopia clip that gets so much attention is here:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHKwnUa3txo

This episode is tagged in three...