Communicate with impact, Leadership courage
Neena Newberry
How to Communicate Negative Stuff in a Positive ...
Neena Newberry
What Really Helps When You're Overwhelmed
Strategically stand out, Leadership courage
Neena Newberry
Early Morning Habits of Successful People
Communicate with impact, High performing teams, Leadership courage
Kimberly DeJesus
Making Awkward Feedback Easier

A Simple Question to Stop You from Spiraling [One Thing Video Series]

Want to build your leadership skills in just two minutes? Today I’m excited to share a new segment of our One Thing You Can Do video series. In this video, I explain a simple way to shift your mindset when your frustration at a person or situation starts to send you into a negativity spiral. With so many of us experiencing stress and even burnout, having easy tools like this one to support your wellbeing is more important than ever.

For more practical leadership strategies you can start using immediately, I invite you to learn more about our award-winning New Lens® app. It’s designed to make leadership development more accessible than ever through bite-sized lessons and small action steps. Ready to learn more? Request a demo now.

Transcript

Hi, I am Neena Newberry. I'm excited to share another segment of our One Thing You Can Do video series, which is under two minutes long and modeled after our New Lens app - which is all about giving more access to leadership tools, strategies, and resources that can be helpful to you. 

So, let's get started. Today, I want to share with you that I came across a note that I had written to myself a couple of years ago, and in this note it said, “Ask yourself, what meaning are you giving this?” So let me put that into perspective for a second. In those moments where you get frustrated or you have an argument with someone or something is not going as planned, and you start to spiral a bit (you start to go negative) to ask yourself, “What meaning am I giving this?” 

Is it that, “Oh my gosh, we're never going to get this done”? Or, “Oh, this person doesn't respect me or this person doesn't listen to me.”  - you know, start doing this personalizing thing, which is easy to do when we've been in a place of lots of change, lots of stress, burnout. There are so many different things that are in the mix. So recognizing what's going on for you is really important. 

So, asking that question, “What meaning am I giving to this?” and to be able to then shift and recognize how empowered you actually are - and that is to give a different meaning to it. Maybe it's just that this person wasn't really thinking about how they came across, or this person is moving so quickly that they're not noticing the impact they're having. Or that they're just not pausing to consider the downstream effects, versus “Wow, they don't respect me. They don't like me.” and all these other things. So this week I want you to try this out, see how it goes for you. For other tools, resources, and strategies, visit newberrysolutions.com.

Newberry Solutions Turns 15

Whaaaat?! Newberry Solutions has been in business for 15 YEARS!!! This huge milestone crept up on us. These 15 lessons have made the biggest difference on this unexpected journey into entrepreneurship (yes, I had no idea I was going to start a business when I left my executive role at Deloitte), and I hope they help you as you continue to navigate your path.

To help me celebrate, please pay it forward by sharing this list with others. Giving people the tools and resources they need to be successful is what has meaning and heart for me.

  1. “I’ll see it when I believe it” - Wayne Dyer. It all starts by taking a leap of faith. I started my company three months before the economy tanked in 2008. If I didn’t believe that what I wanted to achieve was possible, how could anyone else? (My commencement speech at Texas Woman’s University was inspired by this too.)

  2. Keep passion and purpose at the forefront. In times of fear, self-doubt, and fatigue, reconnect to your passion and purpose to get yourself back on track. Your “why” is powerful.

  3. Keep your eye on the big picture. It will keep you from sweating the small stuff and will help you keep things in perspective.

  4. Focus on the “right” work: those areas where you can have the biggest impact on the business given your role and strengths. There’s only one of you – invest your precious time, energy and strengths wisely.

  5. Pause. Exhale. Repeat. Never underestimate the power of breath to ground you. In a few seconds, you can bring your stress level down.

  6. Small steps lead to big results. To keep from getting overwhelmed, don’t worry about solving everything; start by defining the first two steps. Learn from each step and iterate. This helped me immensely in 2008 and again when I battled cancer during the pandemic.

  7. Trust that things will unfold as they should, especially when you’ve already taken proactive steps. Get out of your own way and don’t overthink it.

  8. Keep generating options (aim for at least three). You always have more options than you think, even when things seem impossible.

  9. Take care of yourself. Self-care is not a nice-to-have strategy. It’s your oxygen mask. You can’t be there for anyone else, let alone yourself, if you run out of gas.

  10. Make it easy for people to help you. Arm them with the information and tools they need to help. And, most importantly, accept help.

  11. Surround yourself with people who energize you, raise the bar and challenge you to think differently.

  12. Trust your intuition or gut. Remember that it’s not just a feeling in your body; it’s wisdom developed from years of experiences, challenges, painful lessons and resilience.

  13. Know when to walk away. When emotions run high, take a break. When you are fried, take time off. Keep Maslow’s hierarchy in mind.

  14. Pay it forward without worrying if anything will come back to you. It always does—tenfold.

  15. Use your body to change your mind. Blast that favorite song and dance it out, walk in nature, and do those power poses (Amy Cuddy).

I want to challenge you to identify one or two lessons to keep at the forefront for yourself. These lessons apply whether you are an entrepreneur, in the corporate world or not in the workforce at all.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t express my gratitude to you for being part of this 15-year journey. We wouldn’t be here without you. As always, our top priority is your success. If we can help your organization through the New Lens® app, executive coaching, leadership development programs or speaking, please reach out to us.

3 Questions to Shape the Rest of the Year

It’s hard to believe, but we’re halfway through 2023. This is a good time to catch your breath, reflect on the year so far, and make any necessary tweaks. Use these three simple questions to guide you. You could also talk about these questions with your team.

1. How has the first half of the year unfolded for you? Has your organization experienced layoffs, resignations or both? Is there any tension about staff returning to the office, whether full or part time? These are both common issues that companies are grappling with in 2023. For more insights on both, and how they affect both you and your team, check out our most recent white paper, “Managers Under Pressure.”

2. What's working — and what's not? Especially in stressful times like these, we tend to focus on the negative. But don’t skip ahead to the second half of this question! Celebrate the positive results you and your team members are creating. And then think about what really helped you get those results. Acknowledging what’s going well will give everyone a psychological boost and proactively put your team’s strengths into play more fully.

3. Based on your answers to the first two questions, what's one shift you want to make in the second half of 2023?

One idea to consider here is investing in development opportunities for you or your team for the rest of the year. Remember that staff development can amplify strategies that are working well or help you make course corrections. Our award-winning New Lens® app can help you do both. Contact us for demo.

All of us here are at Newberry Solutions are always in your corner cheering you on and sharing valuable resources to help you be productive and successful, in the second half of 2023 and beyond. Please let us know how we can help.

How to Deal with Challenging Team Members

As a leader, you probably have at least one team member who has a knack for pushing your buttons. Your challenging team members may be high performers in many ways. But their negative behaviors still make life harder for you and the rest of your team. Today I want to share some ideas on how to address a difficult team member, as well as some specific responses you can use in the moment to redirect them.

Give Timely Feedback

It’s easy to delay giving feedback, especially when you’re busy. But the cost is high — for you, for the rest of your team and even for the challenging team member — if you put off addressing the issue. Remind yourself that you are offering feedback out of genuine concern for everyone involved. Remember also that your team member probably wants the feedback because they know it’s important for their career development.

Focus on Impact

Once you’ve decided to offer feedback about a team member’s challenging behavior, the next step is thinking about how to present that feedback effectively. Help the employee understand their behavior by identifying it, providing information on when and where you’ve noticed it occurring, and sharing its impact. For example, maybe their habit of shooting down ideas surfaces primarily in meetings with a key stakeholder group. Talk about the effect, from what you see or what you’ve heard from others. “I know this isn’t what you intend, but I’ve heard others say that your communication style leaves them with the impression that you are resistant to their ideas.”

Next, offer ideas about what your team member should do more often or less often. Sometimes it can be very powerful to ask the employee to focus on how they want to show up in interactions with others. In other words, by helping them identify what they do want others to notice about them (for example, openness to ideas), they may stop engaging in the other limiting behavior.

You can supplement your own coaching and advice by connecting your team member with development resources like our award-winning New Lens® app. An assessment within the app helps them identify their developmental needs.

What to Say in 5 Challenging Situations

In addition to making a plan for giving feedback and providing development opportunities, you can also think about what to say when your team member engages in the problem behavior in a setting like a meeting. When others are present, it’s not appropriate to deliver the same kind of feedback you would one on one. But you can make statements that help your employee course correct and that keep the larger conversation on track. Here are a few examples.

  • Challenging behavior: Naysaying. Your team member always seems to focus on why ideas will not work.

How to respond: "I understand your concerns and appreciate your perspective. What could we do to make this idea succeed?"

  • Challenging behavior: Complaining. Your team member has a knack for seeing the glass as half empty and griping instead of resolving the problem.

How to respond: "Let’s take a few minutes to vent and then shift to finding a solution." 

  • Challenging behavior: Derailing. Your team member distracts others from the core issue at hand.

How to respond: "I appreciate your comment. Just so I’m clear, please help me understand how it ties to what we’re trying to accomplish?"

  • Challenging behavior: Taking on too much. Your team member has a habit of volunteering for tasks during a meeting, but then getting overwhelmed and creating a bottleneck.

How to respond: "If you take on this work, how much time will it entail? How does that fit in with other priorities you already have? What support might you need?"

  • Challenging behavior: Getting lost in the weeds. Your team member gets bogged down in details and loses sight of what's really important.

How to respond: "Let's take a look at the bigger picture to make sure we’re considering the 'what' before we get into the 'how,’ and that we’re meeting our objectives."

This week, pay attention to your team members’ habitual behaviors and how they affect you and the rest of your team. Are there opportunities for feedback and coaching? And how do you want to respond when these behaviors surface?

Is Your Team Overwhelmed? Here’s How to Help

I don’t have to tell you how stressful the past few years have been. As we developed our most recent white paper, “Managers Under Pressure,” we found research showing that all of this cumulative stress has taken a toll. Performance and morale are suffering. Employee engagement is at a seven-year low, which Gallup calls “one of the biggest threats to organizations and entire economies” in 2023. On top of that, more than 40% of professionals report feeling burned out at work. 

With your energy tank running on empty, you may find that you and your team members may feel more overwhelmed in the face of challenges — such as a major project or an organizational change — than you did in the past. 

Finding both short and long-term solutions is critical. 

Let’s start by taking a look at some quick ways to get yourself on track —three questions to ask your team and yourself.

1. Are you focusing on the right work?

When things feel chaotic and you are strapped for time, it’s even more critical to focus on where you can have the biggest impact on the business and your career. Challenge yourself to identify the top three areas and the percentage of time you should allocate to each. Use this to guide what you say “yes” and “no” to. With only so many hours in each day, remember that making the highest and best use of your talent and skills will help you deliver more in less time. And remember to strategically leverage others to free up your capacity. 

2. Do you create space to be strategic?

High performers know that they can’t simply react to what’s going on around them and still deliver consistently strong results. Being strategic and intentional about what they say and do is key. When things get hectic, how consistently do you carve out time on your calendar to reflect so that you can do just that? Don’t underestimate the importance of this strategy in keeping you focused on the bigger picture. Even setting aside 15 minutes a week can help you be much more proactive.

3. Are you getting enough rest?

Maintaining your energy during demanding times can be the difference between thriving and surviving. When people work long hours, they may not get the rest or sleep they need. Both are foundational to giving you the energy to maintain a positive attitude, outlook, and perspective and the ability to make good decisions. If you don’t get 7-8 hours of sleep a night or take short breaks throughout the day, what one step can you take to address this? It can be as simple as taking some deep breaths, walking away from your desk, or going to bed 15 minutes earlier.

With a longer-term view in mind, remember to also look for ways to help you and your team put sustainable practices in place.  Through thousands of hours coaching leaders, we’ve seen where individuals get stuck time and again and the strategies that can really help them move forward. That led us to make this content available through our award-winning New Lens® app. But it goes way beyond content, to help you take action with the support of cohorts and managers. We’d love to show it to you. Let us know if you’d like to see a demo.

Turning Our POWER into Action

How can you claim your personal power and put it into action? That was the question at the heart of Orchid Giving Circle’s annual POWER Leadership Forum earlier this month.

I was very honored to emcee and work with the planning committee to design this event for an organization I’m passionate about. Hosted and supported by Texas Women’s Foundation, OGC raises funds to support nonprofits serving the North Texas Asian community. The POWER Forum’s purpose is twofold. It advances OGC’s philanthropy. At the same time, the event develops and connects leaders within this community. POWER Forum 2023 succeeded in both of these missions. I came away inspired and energized, so I wanted to share with you some of my key takeaways.

Learning and Connection

The POWER Leadership Forum featured a high-caliber lineup of speakers. These AAPI women executives delivered insights on topics like confidence, purpose, imposter syndrome and being a “first” or an “only.” For those of us in the audience, hearing executives talk about issues that we have faced as well created a greater sense of connection and openness.

The speakers’ words left me thinking about questions like these:

  • How can we better recognize the power that we have?

  • When things don’t go our way, what roles do we take on (victim, aggressor, etc.)?

  • As leaders, how can we better educate others about identifying their power and using it as a resource?

I also appreciated the chance to talk in small groups about the advice and stories we heard in the presentations and how to apply it to our own lives. To keep the momentum and learning going after the event, POWER Forum attendees received a subscription to Newberry Solutions' award-winning New Lens® app. New Lens® makes learning digestible through bite-sized lessons and small action steps to enhance your impact as a leader.

Coming Together for Change

In addition to providing inspirational content, this OGC event also drove home the power of people identifying a need and then coming together to address that need. In this case, the need was for more philanthropic dollars earmarked for the AAPI community. (Currently, only 0.4 percent of all U.S. philanthropic dollars go to Asian Americans.)

All of us members of Orchid Giving Circle are so grateful to the sponsors who joined with us to make this year’s POWER Forum a success. I’m proud to say that Newberry Solutions was a presenting sponsor and that several of our client organizations also backed this event. It was amazing to collaborate with them, especially Frito-Lay who generously hosted us at their beautiful campus.

This week, I encourage you to think about the power that you have, how you might use it and how you can amplify your power by joining with others. The New Lens app can be a valuable resource as you consider these questions. Schedule your demo now. I also invite you to learn more about Orchid Giving Circle and how to support our work.

Are You Tired of Being Strong?

Over the years, people have consistently told me how strong I am. It’s always left me wondering, “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

Well, let’s just say it’s a mixed bag. Being strong and capable has served me well but, at times, has been a huge point of frustration. Today I want to share a little of my personal journey because I know some of you strong, reliable, “never-let-a-ball-drop” women may be going through something similar. 

Photo by Heather Ford on Unsplash

On the positive side, being strong and capable has helped me work through tough situations, take risks, go for what matters to me and show that I bring something valuable to the table. On the negative side, I regularly feel the weight of life and the fatigue that comes with always being strong and being the person that everyone can count on.  

Wouldn’t it be nice if life were a bit easier?  

Well, I’ve decided that it has to be easier. So I’ve been working to better understand my own role in creating this situation. 

My biggest epiphany was realizing how much I have been tolerating for years, without anyone really knowing that I have been – including me. It’s amazing the insight you gain when you truly start opening yourself up to the possibility that there’s something you really need to see, learn or do differently to move forward.  

As I began to seek new information, I noticed my recurring fatigue and pain. This led me to ask, “What am I missing? What do I need to learn?” From these questions, I began to see the physical and emotional signs that I had been ignoring for years. Maybe you have some, too? 

Whether you realize it or not, these signs hold invaluable insight. What chronic or recurring aches and pains do you have in your body, whether it’s back pain, headaches or something from an injury? How often do you find yourself surprised by the magnitude of your reaction to certain types of situations? The signs are all around us, but are you noticing or ignoring yours? And what are they telling you?

As I started on this journey, I enrolled in a somatic coaching class. This type of coaching is all about giving you access to your full intelligence — intellectual, emotional and physical. In Western society, we often over-emphasize intellect and ignore the rest. So I want to encourage you to get in tune with your body. It holds more wisdom than you realize. Somatic coaching has been very powerful for me personally and as I help others move past roadblocks with this approach.

For those of you running around out there in back-to-back meetings or activities in the flurry of life, start by just taking five minutes a day to simply pause and notice. How are you feeling emotionally? How does your body feel? Where does it hurt? What does all of this tell you? What do you need right now?

For me, guided meditations have become a good way to reflect. As a very physically active person, taking the traditional approach to meditation by sitting still was really hard. So I had to start by doing it my way – listening while I’m running outside. That approach has worked well, but I have also come to realize the power of just being and breathing. I don’t meditate that way very often but when I do, it’s powerful. Today was one of those days. 

Here are the words that came up for me in the silence. I think they may resonate with you:

Lighten the load.

Let go of the burden.

You are loved and cared for anyway.

Bring playfulness back into your life.

Just play.

Enjoy life.

So, today, I want to challenge all of you women running around out there over-delivering and wondering how you can keep this up, or if you even want to. Yes, I’m talking to those of you who are taking care of everyone else before you take care of yourself or tolerating less than you deserve. Lighten your load. Do something for yourself today. You deserve it. Nothing is going to fall apart. You’ve already made sure of that.

And I’m right here in your corner, cheering you on.

What’s New from Newberry Solutions

In this environment of constant change, we’re passionate about providing organizations the tools and resources they need to respond to the latest challenges. Besides our blog and social channels, we’ve also been sharing our insights and strategies through some top media outlets and in a new white paper. We want to make it easy for you to tap into our expertise, so today I’m rounding up our 2023 publications so that you can catch up on any you might have missed.

Forbes Coaches Council: Retention, Growth and Development

The Great Resignation may have faded from the headlines, but employee retention is still a big issue. That’s why I wrote the article “To Retain Employees, Help Them Grow And Develop” for  Forbes Coaches Council. In it, I shared ideas on how to prioritize growth and development even when schedules and budgets are tight.

As a Council member, I also contribute to roundup articles alongside other inspiring coaches. We’ve tackled a variety of topics so far this year:

Fast Company: Stress Management

One of the major themes we’re seeing this year is the importance of managing stress (both your own and your team’s) to prevent burnout. I talked about this topic in the article “4 ways managers can take care of themselves through stressful situations” for Fast Company. As I wrote in the article, “before you can be there for your team, you have to first take care of yourself.”

White Paper: Managers Under Pressure

In addition to those media publications, we also launched a new white paper this year, “Managers Under Pressure.” We created this research report because we saw how important managers are in helping organizations navigate key issues like remote work, layoffs and resignations. But, at the same time, managers are more likely to suffer from burnout than either higher-level leaders or individual contributors are. “Managers Under Pressure” will enhance your understanding of today’s unprecedented challenges, how those challenges affect your organization’s managers and how to help your managers become more resilient, effective and engaged.

Share the Learning

I hope that these resources will help you meet your goals at work and that you will also consider sharing them with your team members and peers who are also navigating these issues. To go deeper with our learning and development resources, check out our award-winning New Lens® app. Schedule your demo today. 

How to Ease Your Team’s Stress (and Your Own)

Has the cumulative stress of the past few years taken a toll on you and your team? You aren’t alone. I’m hearing the same thing from many leaders I work with. As we created Newberry Solutions’ latest white paper, “Managers Under Pressure,” we learned that research backs up what we’ve all observed firsthand:

  • Employee engagement is at a seven-year low, which Gallup calls “one of the biggest threats to organizations and entire economies” in 2023. 

  • On top of that, more than 40% of professionals report feeling burned out at work.

  • For managers, the situation is even more dire. Their burnout rate is 43%. 

If you lead a team, it’s crucial right now to both prioritize your own wellbeing and support the people who report to you. You can make a big difference for them. A survey by The Workforce Institute at UKG found that managers impact people’s mental health just as much as their spouses do. 

I understand, though, that helping your team deal with stress (and managing your own) might feel like just one more thing to do when your schedule is already packed. So today I want to make this a little easier by passing along some unique, impactful tools that can supplement more traditional approaches to stress management. You can use these tools yourself and share them with your team members.

  • The Living in Green Project. The website for the Living in Green Project provides information about stress management that’s great for sharing with your team. One valuable tool is the “Which State Is Your Nervous System In?” infographic, which can help you understand your stress levels. Be sure to check out their blog for more simple but powerful strategies grounded in neuroscience. 

  • The Chopra App. If you are interested in meditation, but not sure how to get started, this app from wellness pioneer Deepak Chopra makes the practice more accessible. It includes meditations designed for a variety of situations. You can also find meditations as short as five minutes so that you can always fit a mindful pause into your day.

  • Tapping. This is one of the quickest ways I know to reduce negative emotions and get your energy back to a calm and balanced state. Tapping is also easy to learn, affordable and can be used almost anytime. Think of it as a form of acupressure as a way to identify and release roadblocks. It is backed by science, and I can tell you from my own experience that it really works — and works fast.

Resources from Newberry Solutions

Our passion is creating solutions that address the challenges we see leaders experiencing. Earlier, I mentioned our white paper, “Managers Under Pressure,” which will help you learn more about both the magnitude of workplace stress in 2023 and how you can empower your managers to deal with their own stress and support their teams. We’re also thrilled to hear from users of our award-winning New Lens® app that they feel better equipped to handle any stressful situation. Schedule your demo today.

Our New White Paper: Managers Under Pressure

At Newberry Solutions, we work with some of the world’s top companies. That means we get a firsthand look at the latest challenges organizations are facing, as well as how they are doing in meeting those challenges.

Across all fields, we’ve seen a clear trend emerge. Managers are more important than ever in helping organizations navigate key issues. But, at the same time, managers are more likely to suffer from burnout than either higher-level leaders or individual contributors are. In other words, the very people your company likely needs most right now are at high risk of disengaging or even leaving.

That’s why we created our new special report, “Managers Under Pressure: Why these key employees are feeling squeezed in 2023 — and what you can do to support them.” In it, you will learn:

  • The current state of both layoffs and resignations, and all the ways that this turbulent employment environment places additional burdens on managers.

  • What the “new normal” of remote and hybrid work looks like, and how managers are dealing with it.

  • The cumulative effects of three change-filled years on a stressed-out workforce.

  • How to support your managers’ wellbeing and productivity so that they can support your organization’s success.

Take a moment now to download your own copy of “Managers Under Pressure.” We hope that it will become a valuable resource for you and that you’ll share it with other forward-thinking leaders. After you read it, we’d love to hear your feedback and questions. So please tag me in your LinkedIn posts about our white paper, or contact us directly at info@newlensleadership.com. 

Are You Living Out Your 2023 Theme Word?

Can you believe we’re at the end of Q1 for 2023? This year is flying by, so it’s a good time to check in on your theme word for 2023.

You might remember that I chose “fun” for my theme word. That theme has played out in some interesting ways so far this year. I have made new friends, listened to live music, danced, and gone parasailing, snorkeling and jet skiing with my son during a spring break in Turks and Caicos!

With my breast cancer diagnosis three years behind me, I am finally physically getting back to being me. It’s been fun indeed to feel really fit again. And it’s brought up another important word for me: gratitude. I’ve really noticed who brings out my joy when we spend time together. I’m so grateful to these women who have been in my corner during my post-cancer journey. The richness of the support they’ve given me inspires me to support others as well.

That also seems like a fitting note to conclude Women’s History Month 2023. I’m always in awe of what happens when women unite in their passion to lift others. This year, I’ve seen that passion in (to name just a few examples) United Way of Metropolitan Dallas’ Women of Tocqueville, at the Dallas Business Journal’s Bizwomen Mentoring Monday and in Orchid Giving Circle as we prepare for the next POWER Leadership Forum in May. I’m looking forward to telling you about more meaningful — and fun! — events coming up soon, too.

This week, think about one or two tweaks you can make to bring you more into alignment with your 2023 theme word. What can you add to your calendar to support your intentions for this year? And what can you remove? Remember, we’re always here with tools and resources to support your goals, and in your corner cheering you on.

10 Things Successful Women Consistently Do

March is Women’s History Month, and an important time for us here at Newberry Solutions. One of our passions is developing high-performing women leaders. We’re proud to have been recognized for this work. And we’re excited that the tools we’ve created to make leadership development more accessible (like the New Lens app) are helping women thrive and make a bigger impact.

In honor of Women’s History Month, I wanted to reshare a list of the 10 things that successful women consistently do. Everything on this list is based on what I’ve observed over thousands of hours of coaching leaders. As much as we’d like to think the playing field is similar for men and women, women typically face different types of challenges at work and they play different roles at home. So, naturally, we would expect to see some differences in what successful women do. 

So many of you have told me that this list has been helpful to you or that it’s helped you to mentor or support other women. I hope to keep that momentum going today with this updated version of that list.

Successful women …

  1. Realize that they’ve already earned their current role and fully assume the position. They pay attention to their executive presence and the messages they are sending about their confidence and authority.

  2. Recognize that their own behavior plays a huge role in “teaching” others how to treat them.

  3. Own their value by accepting and appreciating positive feedback. They know their strengths and look for ways to maximize them.

  4. Authentically invest in cultivating sponsors — leaders with power and influence. They understand that mentorship is not the same thing as sponsorship.

  5. Don’t shy away from office politics. Instead, they ethically engage in it to give them access to resources, information and influence they need to get things done.  

  6. Negotiate for what they want.

  7. Proactively share their positive business results in a way that others can learn and benefit from. (If you have trouble with this, check out our guide to tasteful self-promotion.)

  8. Design a “sustainable model” that honors their personal and professional priorities. This is especially important now that hybrid work can make it harder to unplug while you’re at home.

  9. Drive for results in a way that maintains or strengthens relationships. Results and relationships are inextricably linked and an investment in both is necessary.

  10. Pave the way for other women. They look for the potential in others and find ways to support their growth.

As you read through this list, what resonated for you? What one step can you take this week to bring it to life for yourself or for another woman you work with? As always, we’re here to help, with several resources including our newest tool to make leadership development affordable and scalable, the award-winning New Lens® app.

How to Strengthen Team Relationships with Collaborative Learning

As a firm that helps top organizations develop their leaders, we get a firsthand look at emerging trends in learning and development. Three years ago, the coronavirus pandemic caused a sudden and massive shift to remote learning options. But, in recent months, we’ve been seeing the pendulum swing the other way.

In-person learning programs are on the rise again. One reason? Remote work has decreased the sense of connection among employees. Two-thirds of remote workers report feeling isolated or lonely at least part of the time. More than half of hybrid and remote workers also report having fewer work friendships.

We’re seeing especially strong interest in collaborative learning. This article will help you better understand collaborative learning, its benefits and how you can implement it in your organization.

What Is Collaborative Learning?

Collaborative learning is centered on employees sharing their knowledge and expertise with each other. It can take many forms. For example, if your organization has a program that pairs employees for mutual mentoring, that’s collaborative learning. Affinity groups or employee resource groups can also create opportunities for employees to learn together.

Embracing collaborative learning doesn’t mean that you solely rely on your employees’ expertise, though. For example, our New Lens® app delivers bite-sized lessons on key leadership skills and gives options for learning with a cohort. Our WOW! Program℠ also utilizes the power of collaborative learning by combining audio lessons with in-person meetings.

What Are the Benefits?

At Newberry Solutions, we’ve seen organizations that provide collaborative learning reap a number of benefits:

  • First, relationships among employees get stronger, which is especially important in this new era of remote work. Even before the pandemic, I frequently advised clients to pay more attention to their peer relationships (not just relationships with their bosses or direct reports).

  • Feelings of isolation decrease. Instead of feeling alone in dealing with an issue, employees feel like their challenges are shared and that they can lean on each other.

  • Collaborative learning can feel more relevant. Both employees and employers are tired of training programs that fail to address what they experience at work. Whether you are using outside content (such as the New Lens® app) or not (as with an internal mentoring program), collaborative learning focuses on effective solutions for your organization,

  • Learning becomes more accessible. With how busy everyone is, it can be hard to get away for a conference, offsite or other event. Collaborative learning sets the stage for what The Josh Bersin Company calls “growth in the flow of work.” This kind of learning can happen every single workday.

Put Collaborative Learning into Action

This week, I want to challenge you to look for ways to drive collaborative learning for your team. Could you put them together in small groups to share their expertise? Or perhaps you could team up with other department heads to help your teams get to know each other and learn about each other’s work. We’re also happy to tell you more about our New Lens® app or WOW! Program℠. Just reach out for more info.

Are You Leveraging Your Coaching Skills?

In the past few years, we’ve seen a big shift in expectations for leaders. Previously, leadership largely followed a “command and control” model. Leaders figured out what to do and told others to do it. But today we value a new kind of leader — one who’s skilled at coaching employees to find their own solutions.

“Increasingly, coaching is becoming integral to the fabric of a learning culture—a skill that good managers at all levels need to develop and deploy,” Herminia Ibarra of London Business School and leadership trainer Anne Scoular wrote in Harvard Business Review.

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

Honing your coaching skills benefits your team members and the organization as a whole, as well as your own career path. (In fact, we believe so strongly in the power of coaching that we created the New Lens app to make coaching easier for leaders and more accessible to employees at all levels.) In today’s article, I’ll help you assess where you are now with your coaching skills and how you can coach more frequently and more effectively.

How Coaching Pays Off

As an executive coach myself, I can tell you that coaching delivers real results, including:

But providing regular coaching can be a challenge for managers. With recent workforce cuts at many companies, schedules are tight. Furthermore, according to Chief Learning Officer, managers may lack the skills to be effective coaches: “Most managers are hired or promoted based on their tenure with the organization or past experience in non-managerial roles. They’re chosen based on legacy rather than skills. They may have what it takes to run the business, but they often lack the ability to support, motivate and empower a team.”

The Definition of Coaching

To strengthen your coaching skills, let’s take a look at how often you’re currently coaching. To do that, we have to first understand what coaching is — and isn’t.

The International Coaching Foundation defines coaching others as “a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”

This definition of coaching from tennis coach Timothy Gallwey also applies to coaching in the workplace: “"Coaching is unlocking a person's potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them."

Many of the common interactions we have with our reports do not qualify as coaching, including:

  • Telling someone exactly what to do.

  • Giving them advice on what to do.

  • Offering them performance feedback.

Instead, coaching is more about listening and asking powerful open-ended questions to help someone else challenge their thinking, broaden their perspective and get unstuck.

Based on these definitions, how are you doing as a coach to your direct reports? How often are you asking coaching questions vs. giving directions or providing feedback?

Listen and Ask Questions

Now let’s think about how you can coach more frequently. A good starting point is to keep an eye out for coachable moments as they arise during your day. You don’t have to coach constantly. It’s not the right solution in every situation. For example, in a high-risk, high-visibility scenario, it’s probably safer to give direct instructions in the moment and then coach later.

When you identify good opportunities for coaching, remember to practice active listening. Pay attention to what your direct report is really communicating and don’t just wait for your chance to talk. By listening deeply, you can identify questions that can help employees develop their own solutions. A common mistake here is to ask leading questions that are more about nudging the person to the solution you would choose. Instead, your questions should sound more like these:

  • “What’s most important to you about this issue?”

  • “What problem are you really trying to solve?”

  • “What have you tried already, and what did you learn from that?”

A New Way to Coach

In addition to the coaching you provide, you can also look for other ways to offer your team members more coaching. Technology now makes the benefits of coaching more accessible than ever. Our New Lens app, for example, can supplement your own coaching with content that’s targeted to common situations we’ve seen our clients face. Schedule a demo now.

Your Theme Words for 2023

Earlier this month, I shared with you my theme word for 2023: fun! And I’m having a lot of fun hearing about your 2023 theme words. I love the variety and the inspiration I’m finding in all of your thoughtful intentions.

Image by Annette Meyer from Pixabay

If you’ve chosen your theme word, keep the momentum going by choosing the one or two next actions you will take to bring your theme to life. Remember, you don’t have to figure out the whole year at once. Trying to do so just ends up being overwhelming. Once you complete those first couple of steps, then you can identify a couple more.

If you haven’t chosen a theme word for 2023 yet, it’s not too late to set the tone for the rest of the year. Maybe the responses here will spark an idea for you. (You can also still share your 2023 theme word with me and other members of the Newberry Executive Solutions community.)

My theme word of this year is grace. I’m going to work at going out of my way to give compassion, kindness and love throughout 2023.

  • Susan Asimakis

Joyful! I want to have a joyful life and do things that bring me joy. When I do things that bring me joy, I attract joy. Joyful!

  • Nicole DiRocco

Emerge.

– Yvonne Evers

My theme word for the year is opportunity. I want to open myself to all the possibilities in life and work. I want to do things differently than I have before and see every risk as a reward.

  • Jeannie Gardner

I so love this exercise. I've chosen a word for the last several years. And this year, it's actually an acronym: #THINK2023. I want to think more so that my responses are:

Thoughtful
Helpful
Inspiring
Nice
Kind

— Renee Hansen

Mine is growth. Keeping a growth mindset in terms of new opportunities, personal development, building new relationships, turning lemons into lemonade. Here's to growth for all in 2023!

  • Sally Siegel

Mine is gratitude.

  • Beth Spinda

My word is investment: putting in the work now and seeing benefits later.

— Amina Thomas

Together, we can turn our intentions for 2023 into reality. As always, we’re here to support you with Newberry Executive Solutions’ services and self-paced tools. Our newest solution, the award-winning New Lens app, integrates the essential elements of a successful leadership development program for today’s workplace. New Lens draws on decades of in-the-field learning working with business leaders, a track record of success helping over 75% of our clients get promoted, and an approach that is affordable, scalable and customizable. We would love to see if it can help you. Schedule a demo now.

New Lens Video Series: My Theme Word for 2023 Is…

Every January, I come up with a theme word for the year ahead. I find that a theme word is easier than a resolution and tends to have a lot more staying power.

 

It didn’t take long to select my theme word for 2023. Watch this video to find out what my word is and why I chose it. After you watch, I’d love to hear what your theme word is for the new year. Just join the conversation on my LinkedIn page. We can all motivate each other to set powerful intentions and live by them in 2023.

 

Need some inspiration for choosing your theme word? Check out last year’s discussion in our LinkedIn community. This was one of my favorite online conversations with you in 2022, and I’m looking forward to hearing what you have planned for 2023.

4 Questions to Close the Year

This blog has a holiday season tradition. At the end of each year, I share a few questions that will help you reflect on the past 12 months and look forward to the next 12. I do this exercise myself every year because it yields big insights from a very small investment of time. I’ve heard from both my coaching clients and readers of this blog that they also build a lot of forward momentum through these end-of-year questions.

Photo by Tim Hüfner on Unsplash

If you’ve done this exercise before, you probably remember the drill. If not, all you will need are a few distraction-free minutes (as little as 10 should do the job) and a pen and paper. (Yes, you can use your computer if you want, but you'll get the most out of this exercise if you write your answers out by hand.) Don’t overthink. Just write down the first things that come to mind for you. There’s a lot of value that comes from just slowing down and listening to your thoughts.

Ready to get started?

1. What Did You Learn About Your Leadership in 2022?

This year put many of us to the test as we coped with the Great Resignation and the impact of a challenging economy. What did you observe about yourself as a leader in 2022? What themes or patterns do you see?

2. What Did You Learn from Other Leaders?

You can learn a lot about the kind of leader you want to be, and the kind you don't want to be, from the other leaders around you. What did you learn from the leaders around you from the way that they prioritized, brought out the best in others and took care of their own well-being?

3. What Do You Want to Take Forward Into 2023?

Do you want to know a common mistake that even successful leaders make? They don't pause often enough to notice what they're achieving and how they're achieving it. When you understand how you accomplish what you do, you can put your personal best practices into play more deliberately—and help others leverage them too. What were your wins in 2022? How did you make them happen? By identifying what you did well, you can be deliberate about tapping into the power of those strategies in 2023.

4. What Do You Want to Leave Behind?

The end of the year is a good time to think about any setbacks, mistakes, conflicts or big changes that you find yourself dwelling on. Sometimes we can stay stuck in frustration even as we push ourselves to move forward and be more resilient. But resilience doesn’t mean simply powering through. Instead, it requires delving into our thoughts and feelings and taking a look at successes and failures – so we can learn from them and make different choices. Taking some time to reflect on these things can help us identify what got in our way, as well as what we can do differently in the future – and avoid taking baggage into next year.

Planning for Next Year?

I hope that this article helps you close out the year at work on an inspired note. I’m so grateful to you for reading these articles and engaging with Newberry Solutions this year. This is our last article of 2022, but we’ll be back in the first week of 2023 with more resources to help you accomplish what’s important to you.

As you look toward the new year, arm yourself and your team with easy-to-use, high impact tools. If you haven’t already, check out the award-winning New Lens app, our program to develop effective leaders at all levels in a way that is affordable and scalable. We would love to help you determine if it’s a fit. Schedule a demo now.

What Should an Effective Leadership Development Program Look Like?

Today I’m wrapping up my series to help you select a leadership development solution for your team and set them up for success in 2023. So far, we’ve talked about two things: assessing your team’s needs and clarifying the most critical outcomes of your leadership training. In this final segment, I want to share key elements that an effective leadership training solution should include.

Photo by Headway on Unsplash

Digital Learning Is Essential

Remote work is here to stay, which means that organizations must integrate digital learning into their leadership development programs. Although in-person learning options still offer tremendous value, it has become much harder to convene participants in a single location for training as the workplace has evolved. Now, more than ever, training must be accessible when and where employees need it.

Collaborative Learning Works

When you think of leadership training, do you imagine an expert imparting knowledge to participants? Well, that’s only one part of the picture. The other is to include collaborative learning to tap into diverse perspectives, foster creative problem-solving, and build stronger relationships among peers. Each of these benefits go beyond developing skills and knowledge to significantly increase employee engagement.

Solutions Must Be Scalable AND Customizable

According to Gorana Sandrić, an HR consultant and career coach:

A traditional approach to talent management, in which leaders would select the targeted few “worthwhile of higher developmental investment,” is more and more part of the past. As L&D leaders, (we) must change the perspective that talent is rare and tap into hidden talent pools, which means expanding the possibilities for development and career networking to wider groups of candidates. 

Leadership training must be customized in addition to being scalable. Employees and employers are tired of training programs that fail to address their everyday challenges or deliver real-world results. Before they commit, organizations want to see the relevance of the learning option to the needs of their company and individual learners. That’s the approach that Procter & Gamble is taking. Chief Learning Officer Ann Schulte explains: 

To help our people learn faster, we are disrupting how we manage learning and development to focus more on the immediate business context and personalized needs by providing easy access to information, performance support aids, and carefully curated training that is relevant and can be directly applied to work. 

Learning Should Be Part of Every Day

Leadership training should be easy to incorporate into everyday work. In other words, training shouldn’t only happen outside the workplace on rare occasions or in large blocks of time; it should enable learning every single day. 

This approach to training has been shown to deliver better results. 

Researchers have found that when we learn a new skill outside the setting where we need to use it, we have less chance of putting it into action. For example, strategies learned at a conference, offsite, or other event can be impractical once the learner is back on the job. As development experts Josh Bersin and Marc Zao-Sansers put it, “for learning to really happen, it must fit around and align itself to working days and working lives.” 

Is New Lens Right for Your Team?

As we have worked with companies to develop high performers for the past 20 years, we continue to develop solutions to address the critical needs we see. Our newest solution, the award-winning New Lens app, integrates the essential elements of a successful leadership development program for today’s workplace.

New Lens draws on decades of in-the-field learning working with business leaders, a track record of success helping over 75% of our clients get promoted, and an approach that is affordable, scalable and customizable. We would love to see if it can help you. Schedule a demo now.

What Leadership Skills Should Training Address?

As you continue to navigate a lean work environment full of change, are you looking ahead to next year to see how to develop your team’s leadership skills? Choosing a leadership training solution can feel like “one more thing” to tackle, so I’m sharing a series of articles to help make the process a little easier.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

In the first article, I shared some questions you can use to uncover what your team needs from leadership development training. This week, I’ll focus on helping you clarify the outcomes for your training solution. Remember, the program you choose doesn’t have to solve everything that’s going on with your team, but it should address your top two or three concerns. Below are common leadership challenges we hear about. Which ones affect your team?

Reducing Stress

I don’t have to tell you that everyone is busier than ever these days. Perhaps your team, like many others, is stretched thin because of staffing cuts or hiring freezes. According to findings of the Future Forum Pulse survey released in October, burnout is still on the rise, and 43% of professionals feel burned out. As a coach and facilitator who specializes in working with high-performing women, I was especially struck that the survey found 32% more burnout among women compared with men.

To be effective, leadership development solutions must address stress and burnout. Reducing your team’s stress burden will make it easier for all of you to deal with any other ongoing issues.

Prioritizing the Right Work

In a survey by Paychex Inc., 43% of respondents said a lack of time management skills is holding back their career advancement. As we navigate through uncertainty and change with lean teams, it’s no wonder that time management is difficult for many professionals.

To quickly gauge whether your team uses time effectively, ask yourself whether each member spends most of their time on their “Big 3”: the top three areas where they can have the biggest impact on the business. If not, aligning their capacity with what drives results should be a focal point in your leadership training program.

Improving Communication

Surveys consistently reinforce the importance of their employees’ communication skills, and leaders themselves say it is one of the most important leadership competencies. 

But, for many teams, the rise of remote work has introduced new communication challenges. Issues range from miscommunication over email and chat to overcommunication by managers who keep tight reins on remote workers to not knowing how to manage the volume of communication. The leadership training solution you select should reflect the new realities of workplace communication.

Developing Stronger Relationships

Closely related to communication is the ability to nurture productive relationships at work. Even before the pandemic, many high performers fell into the trap of keeping their heads down to focus on results at the expense of relationships.

Today, we have to be even more deliberate about relationship building. Research shows that employees find it harder to form a sense of connection with their colleagues in a hybrid workplace. And that impacts everything from collaboration to employee well-being. An effective leadership training solution should guide employees in how to build relationships with remote employees. If a training program involves peer learning or affinity groups, that in itself can strengthen relationships.

Engaging and Retaining Employees

One of the most important outcomes of a leadership development program isn’t necessarily part of the curriculum. Simply offering training and development is a big step toward keeping your employees engaged and retaining them at your company. In a 2019 survey, 94% of employees said they would stay at their company longer if it invested in helping them learn. A study that year by Sitel Group found that 92% of U.S. employees said that learning increases their engagement and motivation at work. 

What’s Ahead in This Series

As you consider the outcomes I’ve mentioned today, what is most important for your organization? With this in hand, you’ll be one step closer to selecting the leadership development solution that’s right for your team. In the final article of this series, I’ll talk about what effective leadership training looks like. In the meantime, I invite you to explore one of our newest leadership development solutions, the award-winning app New Lens. New Lens is designed to teach your team members how to manage their capacity, focus on the right work, communicate with impact - in a way that fosters connection and fits into their busy schedules. We would love to see if it can help you. Schedule your demo now.

Gratitude at Work Is More Important Than Ever

As we head into Thanksgiving, I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of gratitude at work, especially when things are challenging. 

Research just keeps showing us all the ways that gratitude benefits both us and others:

Feeling grateful, and expressing that gratitude, doesn’t mean that you are glossing over very real challenges at work. But I also believe that there are many reasons to be grateful even when your job is at its most stressful.

To help you identify your own reasons to be grateful, I want to share one of my favorite gratitude exercises. It involves tapping into your feelings of gratitude for three kinds of people:

  1. Your supporters, energizers and cheerleaders. Whether this year has been difficult, awesome or some combination of the two for you, there are always people who make a real difference in your life. Who has gotten you through the tough times? And who has helped you create the great moments of 2022? Pausing to feel gratitude for these people will lift your spirits. But actually expressing this gratitude will give you an even bigger boost and be deeply meaningful to the people you are thanking. What can you do to let them know that they’ve made your life better? One idea: Positive psychology pioneer Martin Seligman recommends "Gratitude Visits" as a way not only to honor that special person but also to improve your own well-being.

  2. Your high performers. When things are busy and stressful, your high performers can get lost in the shuffle. It’s all too easy to take them for granted as you focus on underperformers who need more help to get the job done. We all also tend to leap from one project to the next without taking time to celebrate successes. But don’t forget that everyone needs to hear words of praise and gratitude. When your high performers feel appreciated, it can affect their engagement, morale and productivity. And with retention on everyone’s minds these days, that’s a really big deal.

  3. The people who have tested you. At first, you may not see any reason to be grateful for your abrasive boss or difficult colleague who puts everyone on edge. But, whether you realize it or not, these individuals have taught you a lot about your values and who you are as a leader. I suggest writing thank-you notes (not to be sent!) to the people who drive you crazy. This practice can be liberating and help you identify the positives in a difficult situation.

What are you most grateful for at work this Thanksgiving? All of us at Newberry Solutions want to express our own gratitude for this vibrant community. Thank you for sharing your support and your insights with us, and for always keeping us motivated and inspired to create new resources for you. Happy Thanksgiving!

P.S. Looking for our series of articles on choosing a leadership training solution? We took a break this week for a holiday message. But we’ll be back next week with Part 2.