Want to build leadership skills? Talk about politics

It's said that we must never discuss religion and politics in groups, but learning how to have sensitive conversations and model that for our teams is a mark of outstanding leadership, writes Joel A. Davis Brown, an organizational development consultant and author. Brown recommends coaching your team on how to manage cultural differences, teaching them how to have meaningful dialogue and inviting them to come together to respectfully "share, listen and build a greater sense of community."

Put it into practice: Leading your teams in respectful dialogue around politics can help them learn to model inclusion through healthy engagement with others and teach leadership-level behaviors, Brown writes. "If successful, organizations may be able to do what our political factions have not been able to achieve consistently: leadership with grace, skill, and diplomacy."

Coaching your employees is not about teaching them skills but helping them discover their talents and inspiring them to pursue their strengths, writes Tiffany Gaskell, co-author of "Coaching for Performance 6th Edition" and co-CEO of Performance Consultants International. "Adopting the principles of coaching in a development journey is far-reaching: individuals can evolve and transform their work and lives, while organizations can develop and transform the work and lives of their people," Gaskell writes.

Put it into practice: "Command and control" methods of leadership can stifle the growth of your team, which inhibits the development of your company, Gaskell notes. "Indeed, there is a need for all of us to embrace a new paradigm in leadership that will create a new way of interdependent working across organizations and beyond -- globally."

While digital communication is convenient, genuine interactions such as face-to-face meetings and personal conversations are crucial for team engagement and productivity, writes Melissa Perry, the Dean of the College of Public Health at George Mason University, who offers five strategies to create more human-centered leadership. "In our rush to respond instantly (or reply all), we lose the space for real problem-solving and strategic thinking," Perry observes.

Put it into practice: Use in-person or online meetings when discussing delicate or complex issues and recognize the effort your team puts into those meetings to enhance engagement and model their importance, Perry suggests. "By celebrating these actions, you reinforce the importance of relational skills alongside traditional performance metrics."

Smarties co-president Liz Dee rejected the advice to hide the fact that the company is run by women, choosing instead to emphasize authenticity and inclusivity while focusing on maintaining relevance in a competitive market. "It's really important, particularly as women in leadership, to tell our stories [and] not be ashamed or afraid to be authentically ourselves," Dee says. "We're a women-run business."

High school students Calcea Johnson and Ne'Kiya Jackson have published ten new proofs of Pythagoras' theorem, challenging the long-held belief that trigonometric proofs of the theorem are impossible. Their work, published in the American Mathematical Monthly, utilizes the Law of Sines to sidestep circular reasoning, offering novel solutions to this ancient mathematical problem. 

My second radio job was also my first job as a news reporter and anchor. I had never written news before and the news director at this small station was probably only five or six years older than me, but he had much to teach me about how to do news.

One day, I was covering a murder trial, and I called him in tears because there had been so much information during the day (and emotional testimony) that I had no idea how to narrow it all down into a 30- to 40-second news report.

He took the time to walk me through the most interesting testimony I had heard throughout the day. He didn't tell me exactly what to do. Instead, he listened as I recited the details, and as I did, I got a sense of which ones were the most important to cover.

It was his coaching over the couple of years that we worked together that made me a good reporter. I learned to skillfully think through all the stories and events that I covered to uncover the most interesting elements to put into my reports. He didn't do it by instructing me in "how to write news" but by showing me how to rely on my instincts about what made the story interesting.

I took that skill all the way to the newsroom at CNN -- the pinnacle of any journalist's career. I'm forever grateful to my mentor for coaching me instead of instructing me. He taught me to rely on my intuition and how to separate unimportant details from crucial ones. He made me a better reporter and storyteller.

How are you coaching your team? Are you giving them solutions, or are you asking enough thoughtful questions and guiding them to trust their intuition and build their skills from the inside out?

As Tiffany Gaskell writes, coaching is a journey, and the "process fosters evolution at every stage, for evolution emerges from within and can never be taught in prescriptive ways."

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