ROSWELL, Ga., July 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — When the world is in the midst of an urgency epidemic, how can leaders properly use urgency to motivate rather than burn out their teams?
“Like a chef, how can you effectively put hot sauce on the right things (and not on everything leaving your kitchen)?” asks Brandon Smith, author of the new book The Hot Sauce Principle: How To Live And Lead In A World Where Everything Is Urgent All Of The Time(2020, www.indiebooksintl.com).
“As someone who has studied workplace functionality in a myriad of industries and coached hundreds of mid and executive corporate leaders for nearly two decades, I’ve had a front-row spectator’s seat to the evolution of the urgency epidemic,” says Smith. “If you are the recipient of others’ urgency, how can you properly respond so as to not allow others to infect you?”
Rather than time management, the book is about urgency management. Smith is a leading expert in leadership communication and curer of workplace dysfunction. Known as “The Workplace Therapist” and host of The Brandon Smith podcast, he is a sought-after executive coach, TEDx speaker, and award- winning instructor.
“If you don’t have enough trust when you add urgency into the system, those you are hoping to motivate and activate will reject your efforts,” Smith adds.
Smith advises to manage urgency, consider the following approaches excerpted from the book to strengthen your trust with your team before you begin to increase urgency:
Communicate your expectations. State your intentions, motivations, and expectations from your team today. “I often coach clients to think about what they believe is their management philosophy—the values that are most important to them at work and in life (for example: growth, respect, responsibility, accountability, family, commitment, etc.). Pick the top three to five, write them down, and share them with your team.”
Practice authenticity. Be intentional about sharing who you are as a person. Do you love Thai food? Are you obsessed with bocce ball? Do you have a thing for the beach? “I have found in my experiences coaching clients and executive teams that people want to know more about the leader they are working for,” says Smith.
Practice vulnerability. Perhaps the most difficult for leaders, the ability to practice vulnerability goes a long way in establishing trust with others. This can take many forms. For example, acknowledging what you don’t know or asking for help. And when the time is right, nothing highlights the power of vulnerability more than sharing more of your personal story, including all the struggles that have made you who you are.
Keep your word—always. An obvious practice but a critical one. “I had a client tell me that her manager promised her a promotion several years ago. The deadline came and went. She continued to press, and he continued to avoid her. It became clear to her that he made a promise he couldn’t or didn’t want to keep. Perhaps he had a good reason, but in the absence of that explanation, she sees him as a trust breaker. She’s done with him and has begun looking for something else.”
Be consistent. Perhaps one of the more overlooked elements to building trust is basic “consistency.” This doesn’t mean that you can’t change your mind. Rather, it encourages us to identify the things that we don’t want to change, and make sure we protect those.
He is the founder of The Worksmiths, LLC, an executive coaching and leadership development firm whose clients include numerous Fortune 500 companies. Smith has personally coached more than 1,000 leaders and executives across the globe representing both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations.
“In my ideal world, I’ll be out of a job,” says Smith. “In that world, every workplace is healthy, productive, fulfilling, and dysfunction-free, with great leaders and honorable managers guiding the ship. That sounds amazing, but until then, I know there’s much to be done.”
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SOURCE Brandon Smith