In everyone’s workplace world…leaders, co-workers, colleagues and just job-related friends come and go throughout the years.  The circumstances for their job or career change can vary from family concerns…to physically moving to a new area…or a different job that maybe has a huge salary increase!  But no matter the change…The Challenge of Starting Over is often a confusing, time-demanding and difficult transition for many.

In my experiences, The Challenge of Starting Over with new leadership personnel has often delayed or negatively impacted the establishment of mutual priorities for organizational development, need to maintain a high level of momentum with regard to actions/events/projects currently in play and the creation of a new/altered method of quality/timely communication.  As you can see all three of these actions do not progressively improve over-night and not without the appropriate amount of professional nurturing.  Therefore, it is necessary to step-back and as a leader take a high-level assessment of the entire Starting Over situation and adopt a co-equal methodology for moving forward together!

Simple, straight-forward actions may include:

• Automatically sharing operational messages to help understanding of product/service plans.
• Take the initiative to invite the new leader to moving forward style meetings.\
• If not co-located…visit them at their office/place-of-major-business.
• Make phone calls and in-person visits your primary method of communication at first.
• Offer a list of YOUR principle network of leaders for them to be aware of.
• Be sure to promote INCLUSION as a priority to your current-co-workers to set an example of “openness” for information.

The Challenge of Starting Over will only be harder and become more difficult if you ignore it.

Today as I work with multiple customers in a variety of professional sectors, the decision-making patterns between what is wanted by customers…versus what is more needed…versus the recommendations I offer…seems to be more irregular and confused than in times past.

What do I mean?

With all of the ever-expanding training/learning topics available…combined with the diverse options for training/learning program delivery, deciding what is wanted or needed for maximum personal/organizational/business effectiveness and efficiency has become ultra-challenging.  And then when one asks a “once-removed” consultant for their input…the uncertainty only grows.

So what’s a workable answer?

This week’s TRIPLE III TIME:  Wants-Versus-Needs-Versus-Recommendations message goal is to encourage everyone to go back to the beginning…to better find the best customer service answer.  Too many times individuals or groups seeking professional advice are not FIRST asked the toughest help question:  What problem are you really trying to solve?  If you can get everyone involved to initially focus more directly on solving the core customer service problem…the more likely you are to best identify the need(s) to be addressed!

Customers seeking your product or service always have many wants and needs.  The easy customer satisfaction route is to just provide them with their “want” and move on!  The tougher but more progressive route is to help address their specific problem areas and thereby concentrate on their real developmental needs.

Focusing exclusively on customer problem/need areas may regularly cause “professional discomfort” in performing your “day-job”!  But if you are committed to really helping people…that is your biggest responsibility.

If you ever think that a term like Leadership has been completely defined or is not in need of continuous improvement… you would be wrong! A great explanation of this issue is included in a summary of a TED Talk offered by Shelley Prevost a few years ago entitled: “Lead Like A Girl”.

“As leaders, we can find ourselves feeling like we have to cut off the other parts of ourselves in order to focus solely on the part that makes us a leader. So we don’t talk about our children or our partners, we forget how we act around them, and we assume that this is a different part of our personality. However, Prevost believes that it’s these seeming paradoxes that make us great leaders-we don’t just have to be a leader; we can be a nurturing leader. Or a funny leader. Or a thoughtful leader. We can create our own definitions.”

It has taken me quite some time to get past an early-career leadership practice when I standardly felt the need to “put on my Director’s face” in order to correctly deal with a challenging issue. For much of my career I believed that I had to totally change my “regular” leadership personality/style to effectively address ever-changing situations. However if you follow Shelley Prevost’s great leader beliefs…being ultra-direct, nurturing, thoughtful, funny and many other traits are all human elements that contribute to make us “Leadership-Whole”.  And doesn’t that just follow being authentic?

Bottomline:  Today, think about checking YOUR own definition of leadership.  Does it match up with who you are and what you stand for?  Or are you trying to fit into someone else’s definition of leadership and thereby losing your sense of authenticity, trust and believability?