How Strong is your Bridge?

Does your Bridge look like this?

Leadership and teams need to be aligned in a partnership that enables them to build bridges to cross whatever difficult paths they may travel.

Image by Margit Wallner from Pixabay

Today’s world is moving faster than it ever has, and that’s not changing anytime soon! What’s within your control is how you deal with the speed of change and how you manage the outcome. The help of a highly engaged and motivated team can make all the difference. The key to building that team is creating a trusting environment.

Alignment, vision, expectations, goals and accountability are all things that any good leader strives for when leading people, however most teams fail in achieving many of these or have difficulty sustaining a cohesive environment. Why is that? When you think about leadership and the amount of responsibility put on someone who is accountable for a group of people it can become overwhelming and at times, extremely stressful. But it doesn’t have to be this way, in fact, leadership can be the exact opposite and it all boils down to the one thing - the level of trust between the leader and the people they are leading. Many of us spend our days in a leadership position mainly trying to serve the needs of our boss, forgetting that we should be serving the needs of our teams.

Trust is a value that cannot be instructed, it must be earned. Trust is developed when two people build a relationship. When a relationship starts to flourish in a very positive way, trust is being established. This is the same within the workplace, where it’s important to recognize that the responsibility to create this trust lies with the leader. It's the leader who sets the tone and is responsible to foster and grow a trusting environment. I view leadership and teams as an aligned partnership that enables them to build bridges to cross whatever difficult paths they may travel. When the trust is strong, those bridges cannot be broken no matter the size of the challenge they are dealt.

Too often these bridges can be destroyed by a push to increase the bottom line at any cost. This type of thinking fosters individualistic needs and the teams and leaders go into survival mode. When you enter into this atmosphere of self-preservation, it inherently weakens the organization…your bridge has crumbled and the foundation that carries leadership and teams in a common direction has been destroyed. However, it’s not to say a bridge can't be rebuilt or repaired if you recognize the problem early enough. This responsibility solely lies with highest level of leadership in the organization. These leaders must have enough courage to recognize and admit that the bridge has been destroyed and create the vision for what lies ahead after trust is rebuilt.

The job of the leader is to create a safe environment in which people are motivated and inspired to look after one another. This can only be done when the leader of the organization sets the vision, then follows and supports the team day in and day out. What does your bridge look like? Is the foundation of trust rock solid, allowing your teams and leadership to travel freely and take on insurmountable challenges? Or is your foundation of trust destroyed and it is now time to construct a new and stronger bridge that will carry your teams and leaders for many years to come. Don’t wait too long, in today’s world you will quickly get left behind.

Victor or Victim...the Choice is Yours

Every one of us has a choice to make when we wake up in the morning and start our day. This choice is simple, it’s yours, and you are in complete control of it. Granted some people may face bigger challenges than others, however life will always have ups and downs and that is something that will not change. What you can change is your outlook and how you overcome those challenges. The choice we can all make every day is choosing our attitude.

Think about if for a second, when you wake up and the weather is bad, does that lead to negative thoughts, that then become negative conversations with others? Maybe you had to get up earlier than you normally would, and this turns into complaining to others about how tired you are. Or do you look on the bright side, start to think about all the great things that could happen that day and the days to come? This is what I call the Victim/Victor attitude and it truly is a choice that is made by you and only you.

What fascinates me is the number of people who truly have no clue that they portray a victim mentality. There are varying degrees of this, where some really stand out and others may not. When I facilitate workshops and train to this material it quickly becomes evident as to which category people in the class fall into. Typically, the victims in the class are shocked that this is how they are viewed and how they conduct themselves.

How can you tell if you are in the mindset of being the victim? Here are some examples of what a victim looks like: making excuses, blaming others and not accepting responsibility. Rather than helping with a situation a victim complains about it, or worse they tell you what you did wrong. They display a helpless attitude; defeated, denial, always looking for people to feel bad about their situation, pointing fingers, and conversations are perceived as negative. Does that describe you? If you’re not sure ask a trusted friend/coach who will be honest with you. Not to worry these behaviours can be corrected! However, it takes commitment and a willingness to want to change. With a strong coach you can get on the road to becoming a victor! Your coach should be someone you trust to give you open and honest feedback to steer you in the direction of winning!

Some examples of what a victor looks like: a victor accepts responsibility; a victor knows how important it is to assist in times of crisis. A victor maintains a positive attitude at all times. A victor provides hope no matter what the situation; a victor will encourage, and a victor continually tries to find the good around them. This doesn’t mean that the victor is spreading cheer when the ship is sinking, it’s the opposite. The victor will help to pull things together and they will take the people who are defeated and push and coach them to see their way through any situation. A victor is truly an accountable person!

Accountability is a very interesting word this is often perceived differently by others. For me, I used to believe accountability was about disciplining people for not living up to what they were expected to do, man was I wrong. Accountability is accepting what you are responsible for and living up to your expectations day in and day out. When you make a mistake and you will, you own it and learn from it. When a person makes a commitment to set their sights on being a victor they naturally assume accountability because of how they view things. They also excel over others in their personal life and work, because to them they have an attitude that anything can be accomplished.

Do yourself a favor and start to pay attention to the people around you and observe. Listen for conversations that would describe a victor or a victim, you may be surprised at what you learn.

The mind is a powerful thing folks, tomorrow morning when you wake up, are you going to be a Victor or Victim…. the choice is yours!!