Introduction
This book is all about you. It's about your development as a person. It's about taking responsibility for what you create each minute of the day. Learning to improve your interpersonal skills will potentially benefit all your relationships, and many of the strategies and practices in this book relate to communication skills that can be used in a wide range of situations.
However, the material will be particularly beneficial for anyone in a leadership role who wants to improve their interpersonal skills.If you want to become a transformational leader, the journey starts with you. How can you transform yourself to more effectively lead others?
As a leader at any level in an organisation, you are influencing its culture, minute by minute. Every word you utter and every gesture you make potentially has an impact on others. Creating a culture of collaboration in an organisation starts with the individual. The best way to influence the culture is to bethe culture you would like to experience. This is a powerful way to take responsibility.
Adopting this approach brings a focus to the workplace on who you are as a person, as well as on what you do. When members of a group observe these two facets of their leader, existing side by side, the chances of building a successful, high-performing team significantly increase. So, ask yourself, "How can I develop to positively impact my business and personal relationships?"
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Defining Your Goals
Chapter 2: Listening Generously
Chapter 3: Speaking Straight
Chapter 4: Being for Each Other
Chapter 5: Honouring Commitments
Chapter 6: Acknowledgment and Appreciation
Chapter 7: Practising Inclusion
Chapter 8: Building Alignment
Chapter 9: Lines of Development
Summary
Acknowledgments
How to use this book
- The book is comprised of a series of chapters, each of which introduces a different aspect of working collaboratively. Read the book from start to finish, making note of the pages where you find collaboration strategies and coaching practices that you would like to work on.
- Choose one or two coaching practices to focus on. These should be those that will challenge you and create some discomfort for you.
- Use a journal to write notes as you engage with the practices in the book. Journaling facilitates the process of looking at yourself and making choices in your behaviour. What is internal is effectively made external on a piece of paper and is more easily reviewed.
- Answer the coaching questions for each coaching practice in your journal. These questions are there to help you understand your own internal processing and to see the shifts that are occurring within you.
- Refer to the journal each day to remind yourself which skill you are currently focusing on developing.
- Continually looking for opportunities to apply the coaching practices will accelerate your learning and development. Engage with each practice until you believe you have learned the new behaviour.
