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leadership coaching

WHAT APATHY IN LEADERSHIP LOOKS LIKE

July 29, 2020 by Judy Cirullo

Dictatorial and power-hungry people in charge don’t make the worst leaders, surprisingly enough. But when apathy in leadership shows its face inside your business, you’ve got a major hill to climb.

NOBODY KNOWS WHERE THEY STAND

Maybe it’s something that’s flown under your radar for some time. You’re not experiencing much disagreement or pushback from your team.

But you have this sense that they’re not functioning at anywhere close to the capacity you believe they’re capable of.

This is one of the best clues that your team is under the direction of an apathetic leader. Whether that’s you or someone else you’ve designated the job to.

Things that matter aren’t getting done in a timely fashion. There’s a sense that your team members aren’t feeling truly heard or understood.

Yet empty praise gets delivered to the underperforming team because your leader is “out of touch” with what’s really happening with the team’s performance.

OTHER KEY INDICATORS OF AN APATHETIC LEADER IN CHARGE

As it turns out, team members would rather have a “boss” who was power-hungry or who micromanaged them than someone who acted like they didn’t exist at all.

Of course, that’s the extreme of apathy…Not acknowledging much of anything or anyone else with a relevant and reasonable response. But it’s a cancer that can and will surely take over your entire staff.

That is if they stay long enough at their post.

All other relevant factors considered, like skill suitability for the job, high turnover is a key indicator your leader is apathetic.

That is if they stay long enough at their post.

Lack of open conversations, signs of distrust, high absentee rates, poor decision-making, and increased stress levels are other potential side effects.  

DEEPER REPERCUSSIONS OF APATHY IN YOUR WORKPLACE

Indifference is a way of being towards others that makes nearly every human retreat. 

Sensing a lack of energy, concern, excitement, or passion from a leader instills in your team that they don’t matter. What they want, how they think, what they feel isn’t important.

As your greatest asset, your team needs to feel connected, relevant, and absolutely necessary to the success of your business. If they don’t, you’ll very soon be filling vacancies.

ENERGY LEVELS AND APATHY IN LEADERSHIP

More often than not, a leader who is apathetic is operating at a Level 3 on the seven levels of energy scale. And that leaves your team operating at Level 1. Both of these levels are catabolic in nature.

Essentially, at Level 3, the leader feels as if everything is fine. They rationalize. Coping with the day to day is where they’re vibrating at. This essentially means they’re not leading with intention and appear to have “checked out” on what’s really going on with their team and in the business.

At Level 1 energy, the team members feel stuck. Like they can’t have or do what they choose. They’re operating at a level of fear and feel directionless. Operating at this level long enough causes analysis paralysis, lack of action, and problem-focused victimhood.

Without an engaged leader to steer the ship, it’s an understatement to say it’s so far off course it may never get headed back to the destination.

CORE DYNAMICS AT PLAY WITH AN APATHETIC LEADER

The good folks at iPEC created a coaching certification known as COR.E Dynamics which allows for a specialization in the area of Leadership.

As a certified graduate of the program who coaches clients on leadership, when I see this problem present, I ask my clients questions surrounding two specific dynamics.

The first is the Awareness core dynamic. And the second is Acceptance.

THE AWARENESS CORE DYNAMIC

To explore awareness, I ask not only about self-awareness but also about the awareness my client has of the others they’re charged with leading.

How aware they are of how they show up as a leader. Awareness of their environment and surroundings.

Most times they get a quick sense of how much of their daily responses are based on automatic behavior. Going through the motions doing what is habitual. Like being on autopilot when you brush your teeth or drive your car.

And, if that’s how you’re living your days, it’s a quick realization that how your team is showing up is a direct reflection of interacting with your disengaged, automatic behavior.

THE ACCEPTANCE CORE DYNAMIC

Once you have awareness, you can move onto a better understanding of why it is you behave, act, or respond as you do.

You get to clear a path and unravel how your past experiences have shaped you into what you stand for and what matters most to you

Instead of being reactionary about life happening to you, there gets to be an acceptance of the part you play in creating the life you have…As well as the one you want.

Working through self-acceptance allows you to accept that the past is gone, to focus on the present, and to reframe or shift your energy from a catabolic level 3 into the higher anabolic levels.

IS APATHY AT PLAY IN YOUR WORKPLACE?

To know this, take a quick look at the following criteria. 

If you can answer yes to witnessing two or more of these conditions, you’ve caught it early enough to affect real change with Core Dynamics Leadership coaching. 

  • Boredom
  • Feeling insecure about tenure in a job
  • Micromanagement
  • Minimal progress
  • Poor performance goes unchecked
  • Team members are unpleasant
  • Lack of communication
  • Team feels no confidence for the leader in charge

CORE DYNAMICS AT PLAY WITH AN APATHETIC LEADER

Ultimately, choosing or being the “right” leader in charge is the ideal way to run your business.

However, nobody is immune to making an underperforming choice or becoming stale on the vine.

Energy has a way of fluctuating from a catabolic to an anabolic state naturally for anyone. Leaders aren’t immune to this truth.

The best course of action you can take is choosing instead to have awareness, acceptance, and getting the assistance you need to reframe your way of thinking about your leadership role.

Treated early enough, dramatic shifts in your team and your workplace can follow closely behind when you choose leadership development to squash apathy. Schedule a free strategy session with me to learn how.

Filed Under: Executive leadership coaching Tagged With: anabolic energy, catabolic energy, core dynamics, core energy coaching, leadership coaching, leadership development, team culture, the seven levels of energy

HOW TO MASTER LEADERSHIP AT A CORE LEVEL

April 29, 2020 by Judy Cirullo

There is no better way to master leadership than to get personal.

When you dig deep, work from the inside out, and realize you don’t know what you don’t know, you’ll be in a much better headspace to hone your leadership skills.

Develop these skills and they will serve you not only in business, but in every relationship you build for life. 

10 CORE DISCIPLINES OF LEADERSHIP MASTERY

There are 10 essential COR.E Disciplines to master leadership that make up iPEC’s COR.E Dynamics program.

IPEC developed the COR.E Dynamics program with the underlying philosophy of improving your performance when you take any action in your life. 

While you work through these 10 disciplines the ultimate goal is to improve your energy so you can realize your greatest potential and reach maximum effectiveness.

COR.E Disciplines provide an excellent framework for me to help developing leaders uncover and work through their blind spots.

Following are the 10 disciplines to work through in order to master leadership.

AWARENESS

Level 1 is awareness. 

Here I guide clients on understanding the difference between external and internal drivers of behavior. I get them to consider what lenses they wear when interpreting reality and interacting with others.

ACCEPTANCE

Level 2 is acceptance.

At this level, I help clients explore how their past experiences frame their current expectations of themselves and others. This is also the time we discuss moving emotional energy from being reactive into being accepting.

CONSCIOUS CHOICE

Level 3 is conscious choice.

This level is one that high performers tend to struggle with. At this level, I help clients work through judgmental decision making and into the awareness that they can make choices that are not fear-based or habitual.

TRUSTING THE PROCESS

Level 4 is trusting the process.

Show me someone who fears the unknown. A perfectionist. Or a “Type A”. Someone who is cemented into using systems and processes. This is the level that will trip them up. Letting go with faith and knowing change can be a good thing are highlights of working through this level.  

AUTHENTICITY

Level 5 is authenticity.

This is the level when I guide leaders to fully express who they are so they can lead others most effectively. Which means, they need to understand what matters most to them and let all the other definitions of what is valuable according to others fall away. 

FEARLESSNESS

Level 6 is fearlessness.

At this level, I help guide leaders on how to turn whatever fears are keeping them from being effective into their fuel for success. A big portion of working through this level is identifying what exactly they are afraid of.

CONFIDENCE

Level 7 is confidence.

When a leader lacks confidence, everybody who is called to follow them suffers. At this level, I help clients identify how lack of confidence shows up, how to be more confident in their skills, and how their energy affects their team. 

CONNECTION

Level 8 is connection.

By far this is the level that produces incredible gains in helping my clients feel more effective as a leader. Once you have an awareness of how you connect to yourself, others, life, spirituality, and your environment, then you can see how each of these scenarios sync up to reveal exactly how effective you are.   

PRESENCE IN THE MOMENT

Level 9 is presence in the moment.

Once you make a commitment to being present or mindful of what’s happening in your life in real-time, you can improve your performance. Presence allows you to eliminate distractions as well as to practice detachment from outcomes.

100% ENGAGEMENT

Level 10 is 100% engagement.

This is the level of ultimate leadership mastery achievement. If you’ve ever described someone as “playing full out,” realize that person has set an intention and made the commitment to be their best self in every arena of their life.

SUMMARY OF WHAT IT TAKES TO MASTER LEADERSHIP

As an iPEC certified coach with a COR.E Leadership Dynamics Specialist designation, I work through each of these COR.E disciplines with my leadership coaching clients when the need arises.

While many clients will work through these levels in order, others are at a competency level to bypass deep work on some of the disciplines.

To review, the COR.E Disciplines are:

  • Awareness
  • Acceptance
  • Conscious Choice
  • Trusting the Process
  • Authenticity
  • Fearlessness
  • Confidence
  • Connection
  • Presence in the Moment
  • 100% Engagement

Which levels are you struggling to master? 

If you’re not sure, schedule a free strategy session with me so I can help you discover the best level for you to focus on now. Afterward, you’ll have a list of action steps you can take that will improve your leadership skills. 

  • master leadership
  • master leadership

Filed Under: Executive leadership coaching Tagged With: eadership skills, leadership coaching, leadership mastery, leadership skill set

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