Building a Supportive Environment: The Importance of Kindness

An attitude is more than just an expression of how you feel; it is the way you make others feel, it is how people will perceive you and what you represent. In a business environment, being friendly is pretty much the minimum standard for building a community. However, people are not robots. We have real things and emotions that impact our mood. To combat the repercussions that could come from overt negativity, we need to understand why it is important to be kind and what it leads to. 

In any team setting there will be situations of uncertainty, worry, or even bad attitudes among members. While it’s normal to experience these issues, they must be dealt with to mitigate the impact they have on the team and the overall mission. When you focus on the positive in what you do, you can handle interactions far more rationally. 

This level of control is the first step to emotional intelligence and being a professional in the workplace. This is important for career advancement and community building, especially after studies have shown that nearly 60% of workers in America have considered leaving their job because of a co-worker. Plus, let’s be honest, if you’ve made it this far into the article, you’ve probably dealt with someone at work who’s tested your patience. If you are interested in building an empowering community for your organization then building a friendly and supportive environment is the best way to do so.  

Here are some ways to actively implement this:

Value In The Negative

When a negative situation happens, it feels like everything is falling apart and you may begin to overthink. However, negative or hard situations are not there to break you down— they can equip you to handle further difficulties should you face the situation and not avoid it. 

For example, let’s say you have a co-worker who does not follow through on their tasks or maybe leaves out key details. This would annoy anyone passionate in their role as this person is directly hindering production quality. While one could become frustrated, bring it to HR, or just clean up the mess that person made, they could instead ensure they’re on the same page with this co-worker at all times. This may require staying on top of them frequently, or making goals for them but that is a small price to pay in contrast to a lack of quality work. 

Put Your Pride Aside

The core reason for ending up in conflict most of the time is because of ego. It’s easy to see what everyone else is doing wrong, but how often do we look at our role in situations of conflict? When you check your ego, you become far more positive in the eyes of your team and you will be easier to work with.

Sounds great, right? It is, but it is also difficult to do, especially when rank enters the picture. For the sake of the team, put your ego in check before focusing on the actions of others.

Embrace Autonomy

Teamwork is great and staying on the same page is important, but just like anything else, it needs to be balanced. To ensure the satisfaction of team members and the production of quality work, everyone needs time to work independently. This can be balanced by having planned meetings at appropriate times. Each meeting can have goals that you want to have reached by the time they happen to ensure the time apart is used efficiently. This is also going to be beneficial to the planning process. 

Again, a supportive environment cannot be built by over-controlling. Teams have to assess what areas to focus their support on. Balancing this by managing the team to produce their work will have everyone engaged. This will not only help the quality of work but it will allow members to improve as professionals.

Conclusion 

With today’s working conditions, people are either making the most out of their job or in search of a new one. As an organization, you want to attract talent and build a community around your brand. This starts at an individual level; your attitude and energy are transmissible, so don’t waste that power on negativity.

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What Does Ineffective Leadership Really Look Like?

There is no such thing as a bad team or a bad organization, but there is such a thing as bad leadership, and this problem is toxic to organizations. The attitudes and approaches of a leader are transmitted to the people that work for them. Unfortunately, leaders may not see it this way and instead view their team as being incompetent or difficult to coach. 

If a leader has a bad attitude, how would you expect their team to perform? Now, this may be a more obvious form of ineffective leadership but what about the less obvious? A pivotal part of being a leader is managing people. Some leaders can be very good with that, especially when it comes to building relationships. However, effective leadership involves imposing discipline on team members. A leader who is too emotionally invested in their team may not be able to handle imposing discipline on their members. 

This is where the dichotomy comes into play; there needs to be a balance between connecting with the team and being able to hold the line when necessary. Ineffective leadership happens when the pendulum goes too far one way. This can make it difficult to identify if and when your leader is ineffective. You may see them as overbearing or inconsiderate when they’re using discipline tactics to get the best out of you. On the other hand, you may enjoy how lovely and accommodating your leader is when they may be failing to hold you accountable.

In the end, leadership approaches will vary, as each team will require the methods that best utilize their skills. The measure of an approach's effectiveness will depend on the results displayed by the team. Is the team meeting deadlines? Producing high-quality work? Passionate about what they’re doing? Regularly communicating? Clarifying with and asking the leader for help? 

These are all things to take inventory of when assessing leadership effectiveness, but you will also want to watch for the following:

Communication Barrier

When working with or for someone in a leadership role, there should never be discomfort or a lack of access to communicating with that person. Opening this line of communication should be something the leader takes on. However, if you find that they are not, then subordinates have to take initiative to fix the issue. How do you do that? Communicate with them and communicate with each other. You ultimately want to set the standard by stepping up to lead when others won’t. 

In some cases, there can be a communication barrier either with leadership or within the team due to conflict. When this is the case, it simply needs to be addressed and dealt with (the procedures for which will be up to the organization). A leader who avoids conflict, gives up their power, whether that be failing to discipline team members or address a situation. The bottom line is that it does not build healthy relationships. 

Lack of Discipline

This idea goes a couple of ways, the first being a lack of discipline among members of the organization. Again, a leader who does not impose discipline on their people is doing no benefit to the longevity of their team's success. This must of course be met with standards of implementation to avoid the second common issue. A leader can think they are imposing discipline when they are going too far and may begin micro-managing or failing their role in the supportive aspect. 

Essentially all members of a team must assess the needs to complete whatever it is they set out to do. Once these needs are identified, realistic goals and timelines should be set to prevent straying away from the plan. In the case of leadership, they are simply there to provide support and ensure the process is meeting the established standards.

Taking Too Much Credit

We know that leaders are responsible for their team's outcomes, but a leader who is quick to take all the credit for their team's success is throwing away its value. When a team succeeds, it creates cohesion and a supportive environment. This is especially important today as 89% of employees are leaving their jobs due to feeling unsupported. 

To create an environment that will attract talent, it must have an emphasis on company culture and team inclusivity. The best leaders are humble enough to recognize their team's role in success. They also know the importance of sustaining the environment by, again, giving up the short-term reward for a long-term return. 

Conclusion

You may think nobody gains anything from ineffective leadership, and when it comes to trying to run an organization, this is true. However, someone who has the experience and knows how to navigate an ineffective leader can manage up or do whatever is necessary to mitigate its impact. In doing so, that person becomes an effective leader. 

We work with successful companies to increase their net profits using exceptional custom software solutions, contact us here to see how we can help your business grow!

Why You Should Never Stop Learning

Think about how much your perspective has changed over the last 5 years, how much have you grown? Time does pass quickly, so much so that we even begin to categorize it like chapters of a book. While we have all this time and everyone looks for ways to maximize its value. That, of course, will look different for everyone, but how does one take advantage of the great big world around them? 

One of the best resources we can continually invest in is our mind, and broadening our perspective of reality. This does not only come from reading books, it’s the people we surround ourselves with, the music we listen to, and the things we tell ourselves. All of these factors add up over time and accumulate to a sum that is our future. This is why it is so important for us to take in as much as we can.

Author Brian Herbert has a beautiful saying that goes “The capacity to learn is a gift; The ability to learn is a skill; The willingness to learn is a choice”. Successful people are not born with some gene that earns them wealth, they have to build it. Not just wealth in terms of money, but also terms of knowledge. 

Working hard is not simply sitting at a desk cranking out work, it starts by challenging yourself to think differently. Think about it, you have to go out and put your mind in different situations for it to expand. So often people can get down on themselves thinking they can’t do something when they simply need to go out and gain experiences. 

If you spend your whole life in a box, would you know there’s a world outside the box? You would be quite shocked to discover a world full of people. Don’t let your box limit your experiences, get out and learn.

Here are some things to consider:

Purpose Driven

No matter who you are, you never really know enough, the people who get the most out of their careers, relationships, and overall lives are driven by purpose. Purpose ultimately is an internal duty you have to become something more of yourself. The road of purpose is guided by teaching moments, learning the hard way, failing, and eventually getting back up to try again. Any and every pitfall you could imagine will teach you more about your character and whatever field you’re attempting than anything else will. 

Open-Minded

There is no person better to work for or work with than someone who is open to new ideas or is easy to coach. When we approach situations with curiosity, we open up the possibility of challenging our perspective. Additionally, we’d be much less likely to engage in conflict by simply taking the time to acknowledge and understand the views of others. By no means do we have to agree with them, but that will be subjective to you. 

The Known vs The Unknown

When faced with choices, there is often the safe path or the path of risk, though this is a trick because both paths are risky. Intuitively, one will stand out to you based on your values and beliefs. Which one would you or have you taken? Did your curiosity lead you towards the unknown? Or did you want to play it safe? No matter what you would or have done in this situation, you will have to do it again and there will be lessons waiting for you at the end. 

A central part of being a leader, not only for an organization but when leading yourself is to know when to take risks. This does not mean making outright irrational decisions, but it does mean making moves you have researched to the best of your ability that you think will be beneficial. Again this will be subjective to you but consider this message from actor Jim Carrey “you could fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love”. 

Conclusion

Taking a chance on going after what you want for yourself is something you will not regret, even in times when it gets difficult, there is a benefit to that. Keep looking for answers, keep asking questions, and be a student for life. 

We work with successful companies to increase their net profits using exceptional custom software solutions, contact us here to see how we can help your business grow!