Center for Creative Leadership (CCL)

It may be human nature to resist change--particularly when it's delivered as a hardship, disappointment, or rejection. But by developing resiliency managers can not only survive change, but also learn, grow, and thrive in it. In fact, for leaders, developing resiliency is critical. Resiliency helps managers deal with the pressures and uncertainties of being in charge in organizations today. This guidebook defines resiliency, explains why it's important, and describes how you can develop your own store of resiliency. It focuses on nine developmental components that, taken together, create a sense of resiliency and increase your ability to handle the unknown and to view change--whether from disappointment or success--as an opportunity for development.

The ongoing state of many organizations is one of change. People who experience major change tend to exhibit one of four patterns of response: entrenched, overwhelmed, poser, or learner. The people in each group need different kinds of help in order to make the transition. This guidebook will help you understand how people, including yourself, are responding to change and what you can do to help them move forward.

Have you ever wondered how to deal with a sensitive issue within your team? For example, how do you raise the issue that the women rarely get listened to? How do you bring up your observation that the team members from Marketing always dominate the meetings? This guidebook focuses on ways to determine whether to raise such an issue in a team meeting - and if so, how.

One of the first steps to take toward increasing team effectiveness is to pay attention to how the team is formed. You can head off most of the problems that beset teams during the formation stage by setting a clear direction, building organizational support, creating an empowering team design, identifying key relationships, and monitoring external factors. When a team is formed with the five high-performance principles described in this guidebook, it has a head start on achieving success.

If you are scheduled to participate in a leadership development program, or if you're considering such a program, you can substantially increase the benefits to yourself and to your organization by preparing for the development experience. This guidebook will show you how to prepare yourself and how you can help prepare your colleagues and your work environment to make the most of a formal development program.

This guidebook is about changing the way you think about setting goals. It is about identifying goals that are important and meaningful. Creating those kinds of goals means taking stock of your values--what you believe and how you act to carry out those beliefs--in five key areas of your life: career, self, family, community, and spirit. Once you've identified what's really important you can create goals that will help you improve and carry out those values through your actions. The goals you create will be SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timed. Setting meaningful goals will reward you with real progress toward success in all areas of your life.

When people work together over time, certain key events stand out as having the potential to teach lasting lessons for the future. Leaders can use the Critical Reflections process to help their groups learn these lessons, whether the key event was a great success or a wretched failure. The goal is to affect future outcomes in similar situations: either to repeat the current success or to avoid repeating the same mistake.

If you were to ask managers and executives where they get the most influential and effective developmental training, the answer you're likely to get is "on the job." Too often, those same managers and executives discount what can be learned from experiences outside of work. CCL research demonstrates that activities that take place outside of the regular workday contribute to a leader's effectiveness as a manager. This guidebook shows how to see those activities as opportunities for developing key leadership skills in such areas as interpersonal relations, communication, collaboration, and flexibility.

This book offers help in making changes - and in getting people to notice them. It's hard work deciding to change and then making the change happen. But what if you're doing all that work and making significant changes - and no one notices? It can be very discouraging But take heart This book shows you how to move on with the follow-through: getting people to notice that you are changing.

As managers move higher in an organization, it can be more difficult for them to get accurate and unbiased input about their performance and leadership skills. Many managers recognize that to focus their personal development plans they need the uninterrupted time and attention of a skilled, objective professional - a coach. This publication extends and improves on CCL's knowledge first articulated in the Ideas Into Action Guidebook Choosing an Executive Coach, and it draws from CCL's extensive coaching practice as detailed in The CCL Handbook of Coaching: A Guide for the Leader Coach. Leadership Coaching places coaching in its proper place as a means of leadership development to be integrated with other methods. It helps readers figure out how to evaluate their readiness for coaching and how to engage a coach to achieve the most benefit. It also provides practical guidance for executives who are being urged to take coaching or who have coaching provided for them as part of a leadership development initiative.

In a fast-paced global economy emphasizing innovation and productivity, leaders need to bring as much wisdom as possible to bear on their daily decisions. They often find themselves pulled between making decisions quickly and making them well. The processes described in this guidebook, inquiry and reflection, can help you develop your capacity to make wise choices. You will begin to see a broad range of possible responses and wisely choose the ones that will work best.

The context of leadership has changed. Traditionally, leaders worked in organizations in which people largely shared a common culture and set of values. Today, leaders must bring together groups of people with very different histories, perspectives, values, and cultures. The people you lead are likely to be different from you and from each other in significant ways. Leaders today need an awareness of social identity, their own and that of others.

Balance isn't an issue of time, but an issue of choice. It's about living your values by aligning your behavior with what you believe is really important. Aligning your behavior with your values is much like any other developmental experience; the basic process involves assessment, challenge, and support. This guidebook will help you determine where you are, define where you want to go, and then put into place the tools you need to get there.

Despite all of the attention and accolades that organizations place on teams, they are not always the most efficient way to meet a business challenge. It's expensive and time consuming to launch a team, and it's a full-time job to lead a team toward achieving organizational objectives. This guidebook was written to help managers determine if a team is the right tool for meeting a business goal, and explains potential obstacles and challenges to forming a team that can operate at its full potential.

As individuals, we can be creative and ambitious in both our personal and professional lives. But individual efforts can't always match the energy and productivity of a group. Cultures, societies, clubs, schools, and militaries arose out of our need to band together for mutual support. Organizations were created to deal more effectively with the environment - both the natural world and the world of work. But there is a trade-off when we move from individual contributions to group efforts: the relationships necessary for working together can spawn conflict. Both worlds create a landscape where conflict flourishes, but a conflict with your boss doesn't necessarily spell the end of your career with an organization. There are steps you can take to gain perspective on and to manage the conflict so that it focuses your energy and your boss's energy on the needs of the organization, moving both of you toward a more productive working relationship.

Conflict with direct reports is one of the most difficult challenges facing managers today. But it's a challenge that successful leaders must learn to address. Managers who develop an understanding of difference without judging and are willing to see more than one perspective or solution are in a good position to manage such conflict. They are better prepared to understand emotions that can trigger conflict, to clarify performance expectations, and to provide ongoing feedback for the support and development of their direct reports.

In today's business world, the complexity and pace of change can be daunting. Adaptability is a necessary skill for leaders to develop in order to respond effectively to this change. This guidebook contributes to a greater understanding of adaptability and the cognitive, emotional, and dispositional flexibility it requires. Leaders will learn how to develop their own adaptability and to foster it in others, thereby becoming more effective for themselves, the people they lead, and their organizations.

Dispersed teams have members in different countries, cultures, and time zones. Such teams share some important characteristics with local teams, but they also present unique challenges. Organizations need to prepare for and support them properly to realize their full potential.