Explore what makes a story truly resonate — how to connect logic with emotion, foster collaboration, and inspire action using our model for effectively influencing others using appeals to the “Head, Heart, and Hands.” You’ll gain tools to craft stories that move people, align teams, and amplify your leadership voice.

We’ll also unpack how storytelling drives influence and connection in today’s organizations, featuring real-world examples and insights from social sector leaders.

Watch this webinar to hear fascinating stories, spark dialogue, and discover how authentic storytelling can transform leadership, advance purpose-driven organizations, and build brighter futures — together.

What You’ll Learn

In this webinar, you’ll learn:

• How storytelling can increase influence and improve leader communication
• The purpose of storytelling in leadership
• The structure of an effective story

The post How Storytelling Can Influence Action appeared first on CCL.

At least, that’s what they say. But for many of us, the holiday season can feel more like the season of stress, long lines, and countdowns. Whether we’re worried about meeting deadlines or in-laws, many of us muddle through the holidays and return to work wondering where the time went.

While some of the events to come over the next few weeks are inevitable, there’s a helpful technique you can use to help maximize your joy this holiday season — it’s called savoring.

Savoring is the scientific term for deliberately enhancing and prolonging your positive moods, experiences, and emotions.

You’ve probably done it before. Perhaps you closed your eyes to help you appreciate a moving symphony performance or stared in awe at your infant’s smile, trying to make sure you remembered every aspect of that moment. It’s important to note that savoring is not a mood or emotion itself, but rather a way of approaching positive emotions. For instance, you could savor feeling awe, interest, delight, love, pride, amusement, or contentment.

Why Savoring Is Linked to Happiness

Consciously savoring the good things in life is important because neuroscience research suggests that our brains have a negativity bias. Negative things tend to stand out in our minds, while positive things tend to be easily dismissed or forgotten. This makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint, given that remembering mistakes and bad experiences (like eating a poisonous fruit or being attacked by a wildcat) was important for survival.

But now, constantly ruminating over what went wrong probably does more harm than good. According to our former board member and positivity expert Barbara Fredrickson, people who see more positive than negative things in their lives tend to be more happy and successful, as well as more resilient leaders.

Considering this, it’s perhaps not surprising that savoring — or being good at taking in good things — is linked to increased happiness, more life satisfaction, and lower levels of depression, and it even enables leaders to support employee wellbeing.

In fact, some research suggests that savoring may be the secret behind why money doesn’t often buy happiness: As people become wealthier, they stop savoring the little things, so while their wealth increases, their savoring doesn’t, and neither does their happiness.

Savoring is also uniquely tied to stress. People who are struggling with rumination, stress, and burnout tend to have a harder time savoring things. But when stress is lifted, savoring seems to automatically kick in. Think of how good it feels to enjoy a quiet morning after meeting a big deadline, or to arrive back in a quiet hotel room after a long, rough day of travel.

Neuroscience research shows that sustained activation of a region of your brain called the ventral striatum is related to both savoring and lower levels of cortisol (a stress hormone), suggesting the possibility that one might help suppress the other.

How Leaders Can Find Joy & Maximize Holidays

Ready to try this positivity booster yourself? Science suggests that these 4 savoring strategies can help you savor joy over the holidays and the last days of the year, or really, in any season:

4 Savoring Strategies

1. Bask in happy moments.

Be present in the moment. Unlike a mindfulness practice, which emphasizes detached observation, savoring involves actively seeking out and soaking in the positive emotions using your 5 senses.

This comes more easily when you set your intentions ahead of time regarding where, when, and what you’re going to savor. For instance, if you plan to savor your family holiday dinner, you might notice special smells of your favorite foods, the sound of laughter with your relatives, enabling you to feel more grateful for your time together and less perturbed by a snide comment or a dry turkey.

• Try it out: Try selecting a few specific moments or events over the next few weeks that you plan to savor. Maybe it’s watching loved ones unwrap gifts, savoring a tasty meal, or being fully present when the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve. Whatever the occasion, remember to take in the enjoyable sensory, emotional, and relational aspects of the experience and hold on to them for as long as you can.

2. Wear your joy on your sleeve.

Put a smile on your face. Really! Another way to elevate your positive experiences is through your non-verbal behaviors and expressions. We typically think of our physical reactions as simply the result of our emotions (for example, we smile because we feel happy). However, science suggests the chain reaction goes both ways — smiling actually makes us feel happier, while hunching our shoulders and crossing our arms can make us feel more upset.

• Try it out: This holiday season, try intentionally laughing, smiling, hugging, exchanging high fives, jumping for joy, and doing the happy dance to amplify your happy moments.

3. Engage in positive mental time travel.

Let your mind wander. Even if you aren’t experiencing something positive in the present moment, you can still practice savoring. We all have the ability to “time travel” within our minds to a more positive moment — whether it’s sometime in the past or in our anticipated future. Studies show that vividly reminiscing over positive experiences in the past and eagerly anticipating future joyful occasions can boost your happiness levels, both in the moment and over time.

• Try it out: Think about a time when you felt so happy, you thought you would burst. Remember how you felt in that moment (Giddy? Grateful? Excited?). Replay the event in your mind as if you were reliving it. Remember what you were thinking, seeing, doing. Recall who else was there and why that moment was so special.

Alternatively, you could take a moment to think about what aspect of the upcoming week you’re most excited about. Really immerse yourself in the vision of the positive things that could happen.

4. Share your gratitude with others.

Connect meaningfully. While the first 3 savoring strategies can be done solo, this last one requires connecting with other people. Research suggests that sharing positive events with others is a great way to further amplify and savor the good things in your life. This strategy works best when you share with someone you’re close to and when that someone is likely to mirror back your positive emotions.

This creates an upward spiral of positivity. In fact, some research suggests involving others in your savoring can not only increase the positive impact of events, but also boost your mental and physical resilience.

This is consistent with our findings about the importance of gratitude in the workplace, too.

• Try it out: Do some savoring with others this holiday season by taking the time to connect with people who are important to you. Get hot chocolate with a valued colleague, or put aside work to spend quality time with a family member you don’t get to see often. Use the opportunity to share what’s going well in your world, reminisce over a memory or experience you both shared, or let them know how grateful you are to have them in your life.

A Final Word on Finding Joy With Savoring Strategies

Of course, all new habits take some practice, so don’t let yourself get frustrated if you forget to use these savoring strategies or if you don’t find joy and feel positive results right away. Just keep them in mind and try them again later. With time and practice, savoring can help you be a happier person and more effective leader, bringing more joy to the world — and to yourself.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Let us help you be more intentional about cultivating positivity in your leadership through savoring strategies and other wellbeing tips. Stay updated on our latest insights by signing up for our newsletters.

The post How to Maximize Joy & Savor the Holidays appeared first on CCL.

The key to successful AI integration across the organization is helping leaders at all levels understand how their use of AI connects to the organization’s collective mission. One way to achieve this is by assisting leaders in understanding the soft skills required to thrive during AI transformation.

Why Soft Skills Are Important for AI Transformation

In the context of leadership, soft skills are key qualities like empathy, compassion, and authenticity that help us form strong connections with others. These skills are just as important, if not more so, than technical skills, such as the ability to use AI. It’s tempting for organizations to think leveraging AI and soft skills means helping all their employees understand how to use AI to work more efficiently in their roles. While AI advancements can significantly enhance operational efficiency and help individuals uncover new insights, they cannot replace the uniquely human aspects of leadership.

At CCL, we believe that human leadership will guide and shape the future. The true strength of leadership lies in the uniquely human qualities that AI cannot replicate, such as empathy, vision, curiosity, and the ability to inspire others. Understanding the relationship between AI and soft skills is crucial for leaders to effectively harness AI’s potential while maintaining a human-centered approach.

The value of leadership soft skills extends beyond individual interactions; they’re essential for navigating complex challenges, fostering innovation, and building resilient teams. Collectively leveraging these soft skills across the organization is an essential factor in successfully navigating AI transformation. While leaders at all levels require a foundational understanding of AI, and some soft skills are important regardless of level, the essential soft skills for leveraging AI look different at different levels.

Senior Leaders: Guiding Ethics, Innovation & Vision

Senior leaders are often charged with designing a strategy in alignment with their organization’s mission, vision, and values. They’re also guiding the organization through uncharted territory. AI transformation is causing rapid change, and senior leaders play a key role in helping their organizations both navigate this change and thrive amidst it. Here are 4 key soft skills senior leaders need to guide their organizations through AI transformation.

• Communication: Senior leaders must drive clear and transparent communication about AI initiatives, goals, and integration. Such transparency helps foster a culture of psychological safety and builds commitment throughout the organization by helping the employees (or everyone) understand the collective vision of why AI transformation is essential.
• Trust: Senior leaders build trust by explaining the benefits, limitations, and implications of AI to stakeholders. This vulnerability can signal to the rest of the organization that “we’re in this together” and build buy-in for key initiatives.
• Ethics: Senior leaders must champion ethical AI practices in their organizations, and they serve as the role models for the rest of the organization’s leaders to follow. Organizations that lack clear ethical guidelines for AI risk eroding trust, inviting bias or misuse, and undermining both employee and public confidence in their leadership and decisions.
• Learning Agility: Senior leaders must cultivate a culture of continuous learning and innovation within their organizations by modeling the traits and behaviors they seek. By creating opportunities for skill development and recognizing learning-oriented behaviors, they also influence others in the organization to experiment and innovate, further shifting organizational culture.

Managers: Translating Strategy & Execution

Managers bridge the gaps between strategic direction and operational reality. Middle managers often find themselves pulled in multiple directions — upward toward senior leaders, sideways toward peers, and downward toward direct reports — so interpersonal skills like clear communication, influence, and collaboration become as critical as technical competence. Here are the 4 skills managers need to best leverage AI transformation.

• Collaboration: Managers need to navigate organizational politics and structures to connect AI potential with strategic goals. To achieve this, they must lead with empathy and adaptability, understanding their organization’s AI strategy, how it will reshape workflows and operations, and foster collaborative and productive working relationships between and across teams and functions.
• Communication: Managers must ensure clear communication about AI’s role and implications to employees to build trust and psychological safety. Serving as the bridge between individual contributors and senior leadership, they help foster understanding and collaboration across organizational boundaries.
• Learning Agility: Managers must continually identify opportunities for their teams where AI can enhance efficiency and productivity. By being adaptable, and helping model that adaptability for their teams, they can quickly integrate AI into existing workflows or spot opportunities for creating new workflows.
• Influence: Managers must encourage teams to explore AI tools and foster a psychologically safe environment for innovation. They should leverage their influence to build consensus and drive commitment toward adopting AI technologies in an ethical and productive way.

Individual Contributors: Innovators Inspired by AI 

Individual contributors are at the frontline of AI transformation. They’re often the first to integrate AI into their everyday work, and they’re experimenting with ways to do more and do better with AI. Individual contributors play a vital role in shaping strategy and executing AI initiatives, yet they often lack the communication, influence, and self-awareness skills required to translate their expertise into broader impact. Here are the key soft skills individual contributors need to best navigate AI transformation:

• Learning Agility: Individual contributors need to invest in personal AI literacy — understanding AI’s capabilities, AI tools, and how to take full advantage of AI to enhance their current role. Embracing learning agility can give these contributors the versatility, adaptability, and growth mindset to best leverage AI.
• Creativity: Individual contributors can immediately leverage AI to enhance their creativity. For example, they can use AI to augment problem-solving, facilitate brainstorming, and spur innovative thinking by exploring new ideas (or working with AI to challenge existing thinking).
• Resilience: While AI can be empowering, it can also be a threat in terms of replacing roles. For individual contributors, building a resilient mindset can help navigate this uncertainty — they can do this by leveraging AI to amplify their own skills as well as helping others remain resilient and be ready for what AI trends emerge next. This requires individuals to challenge and refine AI-generated output to ensure relevance and reliability.
• Collaboration: Individual contributors can serve as educators in their organizations, helping others understand terminology, promote ethical usage, and identify when to and when not to best leverage AI in the flow of work. Turning AI into a collaborative tool in your organization can enhance impact at multiple levels: individuals, teams, and the organization.

Navigating AI Transformation — A Leadership Imperative

To thrive amid AI transformation, leaders must embrace AI as an essential tool while cultivating the soft skills that define effective leadership. AI can certainly provide productivity gains and organizational efficiencies, but it’s not a substitute for the essential human qualities that make up good leadership. Whether you are a senior leader, manager, or individual contributor, understanding and developing these skills will enable you to navigate AI transformation by bolstering both your own individual performance and your organizational impact.

When leaders at all levels leverage soft skills along with AI capabilities, their organizations can best harness AI’s potential. Embrace this opportunity to grow and lead with AI, ensuring you and your organization are ready for the future.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

We have a number of leadership solutions to help you upskill your talent with soft skill development, in the format that’s best for your unique situation.

The post Essential Soft Skills to Lead Through AI Transformation appeared first on CCL.

The missing link isn’t technology, it’s culture: helping people understand how their individual contributions connect to the organization’s collective mission, especially as AI changes what work looks like.

But what do we mean by culture?

Culture is the self-reinforcing web of beliefs, practices, and behaviors that drive how leaders and organizations make decisions and the way things get done. In short, culture makes strategy happen. For AI integration, understanding the relationship between AI & culture change is vitally important.

Why Is Culture Change Necessary for AI Integration

Successful AI adoption across an organization requires a collaborative culture. When individuals use AI in isolation, productivity gains stay isolated. When teams use AI collaboratively — sharing insights, challenging outputs, building on one another’s work — the impact compounds. That shift happens when senior leaders intentionally shape the culture to support AI integration.

We’ve spent decades researching organizational culture change, and our experience has given us insight into how organizations can successfully move toward more interdependent, collaborative ways of working that are better positioned to leverage AI’s potential. Senior leaders play a critical role: they model the behaviors, set the expectations, and create the conditions where interdependent leadership culture takes root.

In previous research, we identified 5 principles that increase the likelihood of successful culture change. Here, we apply those principles to help senior leaders shift workplace culture to enable effective AI integration.

5 Principles for Shifting Culture to Effectively Integrate AI

1. Culture change is a guided, public-learning process.

Senior leaders architect the organization’s AI strategy and play a pivotal role in aligning AI efforts with the organization’s mission, vision, and values. But strategy alone doesn’t drive adoption; transparency does. As senior leaders adopt AI, they must embrace transparency, openly communicate what’s working and what isn’t, and learn from missteps.

AI adoption creates uncertainty. Workflows change. Roles evolve. People worry about relevance. When senior leaders publicly navigate that uncertainty — sharing their own experiments, setbacks, and adjustments — they signal that it’s safe for others to do the same.

What this means for your organization: Be transparent about how AI is adopted and used.

• Clearly communicate guardrails for AI use.
• Model behavior by being open and vulnerable about what you and your organization are learning about AI, sharing personal successes / failures with AI.
• Keep messaging about AI’s role aligned to your organization’s mission.

By fostering a culture of open experimentation and communication, you can both proactively model the culture change needed and create an environment where it can thrive.

2. Senior leaders must do the change work first.

Our research of nearly 300 leaders over 2.5 years showed that teams with high degrees of psychological safety reported higher levels of performance and lower levels of interpersonal conflict. For AI adoption, creating psychological safety at work is critical: people need to feel safe with experimenting with new tools, admitting when they don’t understand how AI works, and challenging AI outputs without fear of judgment.

Senior leaders create that safety by going first. When they model new behaviors — using AI transparently, sharing their learning process, admitting when they need to adjust — they signal that experimentation is welcome. The rest of the organization watches what leaders do, not just what they say.

What this means for your organization: Model psychological safety and drive change by emphasizing 3 key areas: resilience, experimentation, and accountability.

• For resilience, help your organization understand how to weather disruption, whether that’s because of the impact of AI or the leadership needed to navigate polycrisis — the web of interconnected, interrelated challenges we face today.
• For experimentation, create space for new and potentially wild ideas, fostering a learning culture that’s willing to take risks and learn from mistakes.
• For accountability, take responsibility for integrating AI throughout the organization and be willing to admit when adjustments are needed.

3. Developing vertical capability transforms your leadership culture.

Individual AI skills matter — knowing how to ethically use the tools, write effective prompts, and validate outputs. But organizational AI adoption requires something deeper: a culture where leaders think differently, not just work differently.

This is called vertical development. It means developing more complex and sophisticated ways of thinking, greater wisdom, and clearer insights. It involves gaining new perspectives and leadership mindsets needed to make your organizational strategy work.

Without vertical development, leaders optimize their own productivity but miss how AI could transform collaboration, innovation, or strategy execution across the organization. They see AI as a personal efficiency tool, not as a lever for organizational change.

What this means for your organization: Develop and encourage the mindset to ask bigger questions.

• How does AI change how we collaborate?
• How do we balance individual AI experimentation with organizational alignment?
• What does it mean to lead when AI is reshaping workflows and roles?

Vertical development gives leaders the capacity to navigate these questions, which is especially helpful during culture change — not with perfect answers, but with the sophistication to hold complexity and guide the organization through it.

4.  Leadership culture changes by advancing beliefs and practices simultaneously.

Real cultural shifts come from understanding how beliefs and behaviors shape and reinforce each other. New beliefs lead to new practices, which in turn reinforce or reshape beliefs, creating a continuous cycle. Senior leaders play a pivotal role in connecting and maintaining this cycle for their organizations.

What this means for your organization: You probably hear a range of beliefs about AI. Some leaders are skeptical, others see it as useful, and some view it as essential to productivity. Many leaders may already be integrating AI into their work and championing it to colleagues. But true cultural growth is unlikely to occur unless senior leaders harness the relationship between belief and action.

• Start with belief barriers: What explicit or implicit beliefs are holding your organization back? For example, does your organization have a culture of “not my problem” around certain issues or change initiatives? Do leaders view AI as someone else’s responsibility — IT’s job or the innovation team’s project — rather than a shared strategic priority?
• Then shift practices: If the belief is “AI isn’t my concern,” create practices that make it everyone’s concern. Require senior leaders to share how they’re using AI in team meetings. Build AI experimentation into strategic planning sessions. Make collective AI learning part of leadership development.

When beliefs and practices shift together, they reinforce each other. Leaders who experiment with AI develop new beliefs about its potential. Leaders who believe in AI’s strategic value create new practices to leverage it. The cycle compounds.

5. Managing culture change is a learn-as-you-go process, embedded in the work of the organization.

Organizations that want to adopt AI effectively need an agile, reflective approach to understand how AI is impacting the organization and what opportunities it creates. The same is true for culture change — it takes time, develops unevenly, and can’t be forced. Continuous learning is essential for navigating both, showing up at multiple levels:

• Individual: Leaders develop AI literacy, test and learn with new tools, and share insights.
• Team: Teams figure out how AI changes collaboration and innovation, and experiment with new processes.
• Organizational: The organization develops governance models, decides where to centralize vs. decentralize AI adoption, and adjusts strategy based on what’s working and what isn’t.

What this means for your organization: Ask questions and use the answers to derive deeper insights: 

• How will your organization adapt to the impact of AI at different levels?
• How will it adopt AI strategically?
• What governance models will it develop to effectively harness AI across functions?
• Will a decentralized approach, where each function best determines how to incorporate AI into its work, be more appropriate than an organization-wide model?

Organizations committed to continuous learning will be more prepared to tackle these questions, learn from successes and missteps, and apply those lessons to future decisions.

From Strategy to Action: Integrating AI for Organizational Impact

Effectively integrating AI in your organization requires a leadership development strategy that connects individual leader performance to collective achievement. By pursuing a strategic approach to leadership that adopts AI as a transformative tool across individuals, teams, and the organization, you can expand mindsets, foster innovation, and propel organizational success.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

If you and the rest of the senior leadership team are ready to start transforming your organization, partner with the experts in our Organizational Leadership practice to assess the effectiveness of the executive team, evaluate your current and needed future leadership culture, and ensure it supports your business strategy and priorities.

The post How AI & Culture Intersect: 5 Principles for Senior Leaders appeared first on CCL.

Here’s what our insights show: a single negative relational energy tie cancels out 4 positive relational energy ties. Before we unpack what this means for leaders and its impact on creating a positive work environment, let’s define what “relational energy” is.

What Is Relational Energy? 

Energy is an important individual resource. Personal energy can be conceptualized as physical energy (the objective energy that powers our body and comes from food, exercise, and sleep) and emotional energy (the subjective, affect-based energy related to emotional activation). Relational energy isn’t a third type; instead it represents the idea that social interactions are a source of positive or negative emotional energy. In essence, relational energy is the energy you get from others at work — it can boost your motivation and help you get more done or deplete you and negatively impact your work.

Past research shows that relational energy has an impact even after taking into account workplace social support and the quality of the relationship between a leader and team member. Prior work shows that positive relational energy with leaders is related to higher job engagement and better job performance. In workplace social networks research, de-energizing relational ties are related to reduced thriving, lower motivation, and increased turnover.

Relational Energy: What It’s Not 

Let’s clarify 2 key distinctions:

First, relational energy isn’t about the intrinsic emotional value of the topic — it’s about how people interact while discussing it. Two people can address a topic that may be perceived as negative, such as budget cuts, but still keep a high level of energy during the conversation. Similarly, 2 people can discuss a topic that may be perceived as positive, such as winning new business, but do so in a way that depletes energy.

Second, relational energy is distinct from employee voice, which is when employees speak up to leaders with ideas, concerns, suggestions, and process improvements. Employee voice is a proactive behavior motivated by a desire to improve the organization. Research shows that employee voice is positively related to work process improvements, organizational innovation and creativity, greater organizational learning, and better decision making.

Unfortunately, employee voice isn’t always well received, particularly by certain leaders. Past research shows that leaders with low self-efficacy (such as a low perceived ability to meet the high competence expectations associated with a leadership role) are much less receptive to employee voice. They’re more likely to negatively evaluate employees who speak up and are less likely to solicit input from employees due to their own ego defensiveness. Ironically, our research found that being more receptive to employee voice would likely make these individuals better leaders.

Although it may be tempting to dismiss employees who speak up as having “negative” relational energy, this misconstrues what relational energy really means. We encourage leaders to carefully rethink such judgments and reflect on whether these views are an ego defense mechanism.

Our Research on Relational Energy: What We Did & What We Found

In our Leadership at the Peak program, we collect data in our Team Vantage assessment. Team leaders and members rate how interactions with each person “typically affect” their energy level. This provides us with round-robin ratings of relational energy, which we analyze by rater source and link to team outcomes. We’ve collected data from more than 600 teams of 4–16 members each (an average of 7), totaling more than 34,000 relational ties.

First, the good news. More than 91% of relational ties were rated as either neutral or energizing. In contrast, de-energizing ties were rare — only 9% of all possible relationships.

Some teams had zero de-energizing ties, while others had more than a third of their relationships that drained energy. Overall, the proportion of de-energizing ties within a team ranged from 0% to 38%.

Now, the bad news. Those de-energizing ties tend to have outsized effects. Across the measures of team effectiveness that we examined, the standout finding is striking: removing a single negative energy tie is equivalent to adding 4 positive energy ties. (This is based on comparing the predictive effects of the total number of de-energizing and energizing ties within a team, then calculating the ratio of these 2 values.)

For team leaders aiming to foster a positive work environment, this underscores the significant challenge of counteracting the impact of even one negative energy tie in the team. That’s why a crucial metric is the team’s ratio of energizing to de-energizing relational ties.

Overall, our results reveal that a team’s relational energy is linked to multiple team outcomes. For example, when predicting psychological safety, having more strongly de-energizing relationships affects the team about 4 times more than having more strongly energizing ties. Put another way, as a team leader you would need to cultivate 4 strongly energizing connections among team members to neutralize the impact of one strongly de-energizing relationship — and that only brings the team back to neutral. To propel the team toward positive energy, you’d need to foster even more strongly energizing relationships.

You might wonder whether the impact of negative relational energy depends on someone’s role. Unfortunately, it does, and strongly. A negative energy tie with a team leader has 3 times more impact on team outcomes like psychological safety than a negative energy tie with a team member.

Recognizing Negative Relational Energy 

Before we get to practical advice for leaders, let’s identify what negative relational energy looks like. And, yes, there is some agreement about who brings the negative energy to the team. Below are some behaviors and attitudes that consistently drain the team’s energy and enthusiasm.

Some red flags are:

• Frequent complaining, with a focus on problems rather than solutions
• Viewing most situations in a negative light — win-lose or lose-lose scenarios rather than win-win scenarios
• Stirring up conflict by escalating minor issues and drawing others into the fray
• Often critiquing or blaming others, without taking personal accountability
• Showing little empathy for others’ needs, feelings, or situations
• Unnecessarily taking up significant time, attention, and energy to meet excessive demands

Given this list, you might wonder (as we often do) why anyone would choose to dwell in this negative energy space. While we can’t fully answer that, it may be because even though it doesn’t feel good, it may feel comfortable because it’s familiar. People often prefer comfort over the discomfort that comes with change.

Managing Energy at Work

Tips for Team Leaders

Frustration with others is one of the top leadership challenges, and managing negative relational energy on your team can be difficult. It’s important to be aware of the positive and negative impacts among your team members and look for significant changes in energy dynamics when certain team members are present or absent.

Pay attention to changes in conversational contributions; collaboration rates among team members; and conflict, disengagement, and team morale. Be wary of the inclination to downplay or dismiss the impact of negative relational energy, and realize that it takes significant effort and valuable emotional energy for team members to recover from negative relational interactions.

Although it’s good to have compassion for team members who bring negative relational energy, you also have a responsibility to limit their ability to negatively impact the team and its outcomes. Choosing to do nothing signals acceptance of the behavior.

Here are 3 strategies you can use:

1. Set clear expectations for behavior. Clearly communicate and model the positive, solution-focused behavior and attitudes you expect. Address behavior that doesn’t align with these expectations.
2. Offer support and development. In addition to giving feedback, provide opportunities for team members to develop new skills and strategies for managing problematic behavior. This may include training, mentoring, or coaching. If a team member shows no interest in changing their behavior, this is a clear signal about their self-focused intentions.
3. Take firm action when needed. These decisions are never easy, but if there’s no progress despite coaching and support, protecting the team becomes the priority. Consider structural changes (such as reassignment to a different role or limiting group interactions) to safeguard team psychological safety while continuing to work with the individual.

We recognize that one of the reasons negative relational energy can be so challenging to address is because it’s not clear bad behavior like sexism, racism, or abuse. Instead, it’s like the small, steady drip of acidic water on a rock. Over time, those tiny drops create fissures that can fracture a team and drive valuable members away.

Tips for Team Members

We often have no choice about who we work with, but we can influence how we work with others. If you have an energy vampire dynamic with someone on your team, here are actions you can take (no garlic required):

• Maintain your own positive energy. Keep an upbeat attitude and focus on solutions rather than problems to avoid getting drawn into negativity. When possible, choose to work with teammates who are an energetic match with you.
• Practice self-care and identify practices that recharge you. Ensure you’re mindful of your physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing and regularly engage in practices that replenish your energy at home (time in nature, exercise, hobbies) and at work (conversations with high-energy teammates).
• Focus your time. Managing energy at work includes managing your time effectively. If you must interact with negative relational energy, keep interactions brief. Refuse to spend time listening to complaints, blame, or unnecessary drama. When possible, communicate in ways that work best for you, like email, rather than synchronous interactions. Schedule meetings for when your energy is highest.
• Set personal boundaries. Be clear about what behaviors you will not tolerate, and communicate those boundaries directly. Be assertive in holding your boundaries and use “I” statements to explain the impact of someone’s behavior or attitudes on you and your work. If necessary, bring your team leader into the mix.
• Reflect and learn. Rather than ruminating about negative interactions, reflect on them productively to see what you can improve. Try new behaviors such as redirecting conversations to be more productive, seeking support from positive relational energy peers, and finding the humor in such interactions. The strategies you learn at work can likely be useful in your personal life, too. Recognize that the only things you have control over are your own behaviors and attitudes. 

Highlighting Relational Energy Awareness

Our recommendations focus on managing negative, rather than positive, relational energy. This is intentional, given the outsized impact it has in teams.

We hope this work raises awareness of relational energy and inspires a kind of energy consciousness: a habit of noticing what or who energizes or depletes you.

Above all, relational energy is authentic. This isn’t about faking positivity or forcing team members to display energy that they don’t feel. To do so would be merely performative (not to mention exhausting) and requires surface acting, which is related to higher stress and lower job satisfaction.

We’ve all experienced the impact of relational energy at work. Many of us understand it intuitively, even if it’s hard to explain. We hope that our research can help you name and claim your experiences and provide legitimacy for them. These insights and suggestions can help you recognize — and better manage — the profound impact relational energy has on your workplace experience.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Shifting relational energy on your team starts with better conversations. Develop the coaching skills to listen deeply, give effective feedback, and create psychological safety with our Better Conversations Every Day program.

The post Power Cord or Power Drain? How Relational Energy Shapes Your Team appeared first on CCL.

Anyone guiding a group toward a shared result will encounter challenges along the way — but what’s most challenging about leading organizations today? What are the top challenges of leadership, and have they shifted since the pandemic?

Our research team has been exploring such questions for decades now to stay abreast of the challenges and issues most commonly faced by leaders at every level. (See our 2023 research brief, 2021 technical report, and 2013 white paper for more information.)

Our Research Into the Challenges of Leadership

Based on the collective challenges reported in over 7,000 organizations around the world, and using anonymized data on individuals collected through our global 360 assessments, our research team has examined what over 48,000 leaders have identified as their most critical leadership challenges over the past several years.

Using an AI-powered language processing model to review and analyze their responses, we identified the most consistent challenges of leadership across many industries and sectors around the world. We further analyzed the data to determine how these challenges evolved in the wake of the pandemic.

The Most Common Challenges of Leadership at Every Level

Here we present what our research has found are today’s biggest challenges of leadership — the top 5 challenges faced by leaders at each of level of the organization — ranked by their relevance post-pandemic. And because development is more effective when it uses data to support the challenges of leaders at different levels, this list of leadership issues can be the focus for training & development efforts in all organizations, everywhere in the world.

For Frontline Managers

1. Frustrations with people and time

2. First time managing people

3. Deficient operational processes

4. Team performance

5. Personal improvement

For Mid-Level Managers

6. Personal limitations

7. Challenging business context

8. Ineffective interpersonal style

9. Cross-functional influence

10. Competing people and project priorities

For Senior Leaders

11. Credibility gaps

12. Limited market / sales growth

13. Process improvement across groups

14. Limited self-awareness

15. Transitioning into a new role

For Executives

16. Dynamic business environment

17. Strategic responsibilities

18. Interpersonal rigidity

19. Organizational readiness

20. Lack of cooperation

The Top Leadership Challenges of Frontline Managers

Regardless of where they live or work, those managing others in supervisory roles reported that their most common leadership challenge is frustrations with people and time — and this issue has only increased in frequency since the pandemic. Here are the top 5 most common challenges for frontline leaders, based on our research:

Frustrations With People and Time

Many frontline managers reported that their top leadership issue is feeling overwhelmed with inefficiencies and frustrated with others. This includes challenges with offering guidance to direct reports, overcoming resistance to change, dealing with difficult employees, and adjusting communication and feedback styles to collaborate more effectively with different people. And again, this appears to have become an even bigger concern for leaders at this level since the pandemic.

First Time Managing People

Another common leadership challenge among new managers is learning to juggle day-to-day challenges — such as managing others who were formerly peers, or employees who are older than they are — and just generally gaining respect as a new, first-time people leader.

Deficient Operational Processes

Needing stronger operational processes to address organizational problems was another frequently cited leadership challenge for this group.

Team Performance

First-level leaders also reported challenges with developing teams, giving effective feedback, providing direction, holding coaching conversations, and dealing with resistance from direct reports.

Personal Improvement

Learning to be better at active listening to understand the perspectives of others, improving flexibility, and being less reactive in pursuit of an “ideal self” are other commonly reported challenges for leaders on the front lines, our research found.

The Top 5 Leadership Challenges of Mid-Level Managers

Managers who are leading from the middle — with senior leaders above them and direct reports below — face many similar challenges of leadership as well. Our research found that the most common issues for mid-level managers were:

Personal Limitations

A top challenge for leaders at this level is their own personal limitations and feelings of inadequacy, as they often must overcome their own doubts about their abilities and readiness to lead — as well as the doubts of their peers or supervisors. Dealing with the challenge of personal limitations requires overcoming impostor syndrome, humility to seek the input of others, courage to do the right thing, and projecting confidence while communicating effectively.

Since the pandemic, mid-level managers have reported this as an issue even more frequently. With new cultures brought on by remote and hybrid workplaces, overcoming common limitations in order to make an impact as a leader has become even more challenging.

Business Challenges

In a tumultuous work environment, managers (particularly mid-level leaders) may struggle to deliver results. Leading within a challenging business context requires the careful deployment of limited resources, improved processes, and keeping employees engaged and motivated.

Ineffectiveness

When a mid-level leader has an ineffective interpersonal style, they struggle with relationships. This can play out on a spectrum, from dominating interactions to lacking the self-confidence to be assertive. On the other hand, effective interpersonal styles and embodying the characteristics of a good leader allow for open and honest conversations.

Influence

Successful leadership requires the ability to influence others beyond one’s group — often without formal authority. For those leading from the middle, the challenge of influencing others across functions includes building credibility, developing cross-organizational networks, and building and bridging partnerships.

Competing Priorities

Mid-level leaders report that they often find it difficult to balance competing people and project priorities, especially when they’re sandwiched between project-based deadlines and their employees’ engagement. It’s an important paradox that leaders must manage both relationships and tasks effectively. When resources are limited, motivating team members who vary in personality, abilities, and experience can feel at odds with effective project management.

The Top 5 Leadership Challenges for Senior Leaders

We noticed that the pandemic shifted the top leadership challenges for this group somewhat. Before COVID, limited self-awareness was cited as the most frequent leadership issue among senior leaders who head up functions, business units, departments, divisions, and regions, but the frequency of this challenge dropped significantly more recently. The challenge of overcoming credibility gaps, on the other hand, has become more pressing after the pandemic.

Credibility Gaps

This includes the challenge of building credibility as an organizational leader. Examples include gaining the trust of stakeholders and enhancing visibility within an organization. Senior leaders may also need to strengthen their leadership image or presence to be most effective.

Limited Market / Sales Growth

Making strategic shifts to maximize market growth and sales is another top challenge of senior leaders. This may include expanding the organization beyond core products, extending market reach, shifting to a market / customer orientation, and better aligning of sales.

Process Improvement Across Groups

Another key challenge for senior leaders is influencing the organization to improve and accept new processes, which requires being a strategic leader, effective boundary spanning leadership, and developing a broader perspective by taking a systemic view.

Limited Self-Awareness

Understanding how others perceive them and recognizing their impact on others — along with improving their confidence, approachability, and communication style (particularly when delivering difficult messages) — can be especially challenging for leaders at the senior level.

Transitioning Into a New Role

Adapting to changes in responsibilities and managing new people or former peers is a final key leadership issue at this level. This challenge may be brought on by a promotion, a new role, a functional shift, or a geographic move, or simply through preparing for the C-suite.

The Top 5 Leadership Challenges for Executives

Finally, senior executives leading the enterprise told us that their top 5 leadership challenges are as follows.

Dynamic Business Environment

For C-level leaders, the challenge of working in a dynamic business environment topped their list of leadership issues. This challenge can be brought about by new regulations, market and economic conditions, competition, or growth. To be effective, leaders must be able to develop and keep the talent needed to support change and revise their organization’s models and systems as required.

Notably, this challenge experienced the biggest rise in the wake of the pandemic. Even before the pandemic, senior executives were already used to leading their organizations in adapting to ever-changing circumstances, but COVID and its fallout accelerated that need even more.

Strategic Responsibilities

Developing strategy for an organization is another top leadership challenge for senior executives. This includes aligning priorities and initiatives across groups and developing teams to support strategic efforts. It’s helpful when senior leaders are able to link business strategy to leadership strategy.

Interpersonal Rigidity

For many senior leaders, shifting the way they interact with others to be more effective and the ability to adapt their style for varying situations or stakeholders is an important challenge. Leaders in C-suite need to have different techniques for flexing their approach, including in how they communicate the vision, manage or influence others, or leverage power over others to get things done.

Organizational Readiness Amid Uncertainty

Preparing their organizations for a turbulent future is an ongoing issue for senior executives. This challenge of leadership is experienced most often when there are organizational mission shifts, significant resource constraints, technology changes, or when new ways of working are needed.

Lack of Cooperation

Lastly, influencing others toward collaboration is a key leadership challenge for senior executives. This is especially common when they’re new to a role, managing former peers or more experienced colleagues, or collaborating with others on the senior team.

How to Respond to These Top Leadership Challenges

Tips to Help Leaders Address the Most Common Leadership Issues

Now that you know the most common challenges of leadership, how do you begin addressing them? One way is by looking at the larger themes that emerged from our leadership challenge research. Across all levels of the organization, we found that the challenges of leadership generally fall into 3 high-level themes, related to:

• Challenges of personal growth,

• Challenges related to managing people and getting work done, and 

• Challenges in managing across the organization and within a larger system.

Here are some recommended ways to respond to these 3 common themes in our overall leadership challenges research.  Many of these suggestions are part of developing the core leadership skills needed in every role, at every stage of a career.

1. To respond to leadership challenges related to your personal growth, work to maximize personal value.

Personal shortcomings and the aspiration to become a better leader define our first theme. Challenges here include learning to be more assertive during interactions, developing confidence, and understanding how others perceive you.

Individuals overcome leadership issues and create value for their organizations by focusing on the unique contributions that only they can make. Understanding what those unique values are, and delegating everything else (or as close to everything else as possible), allows leaders to maximize their value.

It’s important to recognize your own characteristics, behaviors, and habits in order to know what may be triggering challenges for you in your career. This way, you can work toward increasing your self-awareness and strengthening specific skills and growing as an individual leader.

Some internal challenges that many leaders face include a lack of confidence, a fear of failure, maintaining authenticity during self-promotion, impatience, resistance in responding to new ideas, or struggling to manage conflict in the workplace. All of these can be potential roadblocks to leadership success.

Understanding your own strengths and weaknesses and maximizing your unique value are part of improving your personal leadership brand.

2. To respond to leadership challenges around managing people and getting work done, focus on delegating more to others.

Our second leadership challenge theme involves the demands of managing both people and tasks. Specific challenges include managing for the first time, building cooperation between people, and overseeing multiple projects that compete for importance and resources.

You’ll be more productive, give your colleagues a greater sense of ownership, and build more trust on your team if you delegate, as well. But effective delegation requires more than just getting a task off your desk — it involves a repeating cycle of 4 key steps:

1. Understanding your preferences. Effective delegators prioritize their workload and decide which tasks to keep and which to give to someone else. They also understand how much feedback they want while the person they’ve delegated to works on the task.
2. Knowing your people. To delegate effectively, you must assign tasks to others with the necessary knowledge and skills. That means that you have to understand people’s preferences and abilities, using delegation to help direct reports develop, and coach people while allowing them to learn as they take on new tasks.
3. Being clear about the purpose of the task. A task’s purpose gives it meaning. By aligning this purpose with team or individual beliefs and goals, delegation can become part of purpose-driven leadership and an opportunity for personal growth.
4. Assessing and rewarding. You should engage in collaboration and work with your direct reports to develop ways to help them, and you, decide if a task has been completed properly, and to reward them appropriately.

3. To respond to leadership challenges related to managing across the organization, work to increase boundary spanning and build high-performing teams.

Working within the larger system of an organization is our third high-level leadership challenge. Examples include working in a dynamic business environment, needing stronger operational processes, and creating cross-functional influence.

As a leader, you must be able to create and lead teams effectively. To build high-performing teams, use our team effectiveness framework, which has 4 components:

• Core: Communicate a team’s reason for being so that all team members understand their core purpose and value. (A team charter can help with this.)
• Collective Mindset: Be sure everybody on the team knows what it takes to be a good team member. Teams adopt a collective mindset when they understand all members’ roles and responsibilities, as well as team norms for how team members work together.
• Cohesive Relationships: Ensure team members relate interpersonally by fostering a psychologically safe work environment where everybody feels a sense of belonging, is treated with respect, and communicates effectively.
• Connection: Teams can have a broader organizational impact when collaborating across boundaries. In other words, when colleagues who have different backgrounds and experiences connect, innovation and collaboration are enhanced.

A Final Word for HR Leaders on Our Leadership Challenges Research

Focus Development Efforts to Address the Top Challenges of Leaders

Developmental initiatives are more effective when they align with the real challenges that leaders are facing. For those who work in HR or Learning & Development, understanding these common leadership issues can be the catalyst for creating initiatives that truly address real-world needs, growing needed leadership capabilities for your organization’s talent pipeline.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Build your team’s capacity for overcoming common leadership challenges. Our array of leadership development programs are carefully designed to address the leadership challenges faced by leaders at every level. 

The post The Top 20 Leadership Challenges appeared first on CCL.

You may be pretty familiar with the model of the external leadership coach. But what if you need to coach a subordinate or a peer within your organization?

One of the most powerful responsibilities of leadership is helping others grow. Yet many leaders hesitate when it comes to putting themselves in the role of a coach. It may feel like a challenging task to coach a colleague or direct report, and you may wonder: What do I ask? How do I guide without simply giving advice?

That’s where a proven coaching framework and knowing some key coaching principles for leaders can help.

At CCL, we know from experience that coaching doesn’t have to be complicated. With the right approach, leaders at any level can use coaching conversations to build trust, improve relationships, and strengthen performance. Our world-class executive leadership coaches use our proven coaching framework and principles to coach others.

By applying the same coaching model and tips in your own conversations, you’ll improve your skills, confidence, and impact. These are the essential coaching principles for leaders to master, and the foundational coaching model they’re built upon.

The Assessment – Challenge – Support Coaching Model: A Practical Tool

Assessment – Challenge – Support (ACS) is our simple, proven leadership coaching framework that provides a clear path for guiding coaching conversations. Instead of relying on a script or feeling pressured to have all the answers, ACS helps you spark self-awareness, stretch thinking, and encourage follow-through.

Here’s what using this coaching framework looks like in practice.

Step 1: Assess — Where Are They Now?

Every good coaching conversation begins with curiosity. The Assess phase is about understanding your coachee’s current reality and inviting them to reflect.

Rather than jumping in with solutions, you create space for them to surface their own insights. This step helps build trust and sets the stage for growth.

Sample questions you might ask:

• What’s working well for you in this situation?
• Where are you feeling stuck?
• How do you see your role in this challenge?

By encouraging them to slow down and assess, you help the other person feel heard and increase their self-awareness, and you gain a clearer picture of where to guide the coaching conversation.

Step 2: Challenge — What’s Possible?

Once you’ve listened, it’s time to stretch their thinking. A key principle of coaching is creating a safe, supportive, yet challenging environment. Challenge isn’t about criticism; it’s about encouraging people to reframe and explore new possibilities.

A well-placed challenge helps your coachee to recognize assumptions, uncover hidden biases, or consider bolder options. Often, this is where breakthrough insights happen.

You might ask:

• What assumptions might you be making here?
• What options haven’t you considered yet?
• If you weren’t afraid of failing, what would you try?

Challenge opens the door to growth and invites people to look beyond their comfort zones and step into new possibilities and different ways of thinking and acting.

Step 3: Support — What’s Next?

Coaching isn’t complete without encouragement and follow-through. The Support phase is about helping the person translate any insight into action.

Playing the role of coach, you provide accountability and reassurance, but the ownership stays with them. This is where momentum builds.

Questions to consider asking:

• What’s one action you can commit to this week?
• How can I support you as you move forward?
• Who else could help you succeed?

Support ensures the coaching conversation isn’t just talk. It becomes a catalyst for real change.

6 Core Principles of Effective Coaching for Leaders

While ACS gives you a practical model for everyday coaching conversations, effective leadership coaching is also grounded in broader foundational principles and strategies.

Whether you’re an external executive coach or a leader coaching others within your organization, what it takes to coach people is fairly similar, and these 6 coaching principles for leaders will help you succeed.

1. Create a safe and supportive, yet challenging environment.

Coaching is most effective when people feel both safe and stretched. Too much challenge without support erodes trust. Too much support without challenge leads to stagnation. Strive for balance. (ACS is built on this very foundation.)

You want to build trust and confidence, encourage honesty and candor, boost morale, and help your coachee feel psychologically safe at work. It’s up to you to create an environment where risk-taking feels rewarding, not risky, so keep your attitude as open and as nonjudgmental as possible, and let the coachee know you support and respect them, even as you test their knowledge and skills.

2. Work within the coachee’s agenda.

Coaching isn’t about your personal priorities. When holding a coaching conversation, let the coachee decide which goals to work on and even how to go about improving. If you need to address organizational needs, shift into a managerial role so that the coaching relationship remains collaborative. This is an important coaching principle that leaders should know to preserve trust and effectiveness.

3. Facilitate and collaborate.

The best coaches don’t give answers; they ask good questions. Focus on using active listening skills when coaching others. Really hear the coachee’s needs and avoid filling the lesson with your own life stories and theories. Active listening and collaboration ensure that the coachee owns their next steps. Action items rest with the coachee — with you acting as the facilitator and collaborator. Your role is to guide, not to lecture.

4. Advocate self-awareness.

You want your coachee to recognize their own strengths and weaknesses — a prerequisite skill for any good leader. In the same way, you should understand how your behaviors as a coach impact the people around you. Demonstrate a sense of awareness in yourself, and you’re more likely to foster a similar self-awareness in your coachee. You may also want to share some specific ways to boost self-awareness.

5. Promote learning from experience.

Most people can learn, grow, and change only if they have the right set of experiences and are open to learning from them. As a coach, you can help your coachee reflect on past events and analyze what went well (and what didn’t). Foster experiential learning and using experience to fuel development, and your coachee will continue to improve long after the end of your lessons.

6. Model what you coach.

Be a leader yourself.

This, the last of the 6 principles of coaching for leaders, may be the most difficult to embody — as it means putting into practice the leadership lessons you’ve been trying to communicate.

And remember, if you don’t feel you have the capacity to coach on a particular issue, refer your coachee to someone else who has experience in that area or a trusted executive coaching services provider.

Why Coaching Principles Matter

Coaching is no longer the domain of outside experts alone. Leaders at every level and in every industry are expected to support growth and development within their teams.

By combining our proven and practical ACS leadership coaching framework with these 6 coaching principles that leaders should know, you can transform everyday conversations into powerful opportunities for performance and growth.

The result? Your team feels safe, stretched, supported — and equipped to step into the future.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Improve your leadership and enhance your ability to coach others with our Better Conversations Every Day coaching & conversational skills training to gain practical coaching tips and strategies to be a more effective leader-coach.

The post The 6 Principles of Leadership Coaching, Based on Assessment – Challenge – Support appeared first on CCL.

You probably already know that 360 assessments can give you comprehensive feedback on your job performance by giving you a view of yourself from multiple perspectives — including your direct reports, peers, bosses, and superiors, as well as your own self-perception.

We pioneered using 360 assessments for development and believe 360s are a critical tool that can be used in a wide array of leadership development initiatives. Understanding your 360 results is essential for helping identify your strengths and development needs, and for improving your self-awareness around critical leadership competencies. These results can also give you specific direction for how to improve and take your leadership skills to the next level.

Your 360 Results Can Help Prevent (and Predict) Career Derailment

At CCL, we’ve conducted many studies on the use of assessments and 360 feedback results.

We’ve also examined how executives can keep their career on track instead of derailing. “Derailed” is a term that Morgan McCall and Mike Lombardo coined nearly 50 years ago to refer to the careers of high-performing employees identified as having the potential to move up in the organization and take on higher levels of leadership responsibility, but who don’t live up to that evaluation of their potential. They plateau below their expected level of achievement, or they reach higher levels only to fail miserably, resulting in being demoted or fired. For these managers, their careers have derailed from the track that their organization had expected them to stay on.

By studying the traits of those who have derailed and those who made it to higher levels of the organization, our researchers have identified the characteristics that indicate a leader is more or less likely to derail. These are helpful to keep in mind when interpreting 360 feedback results. Among our findings:

• Leaders with lower ratings in their 360 results on task and interpersonal aspects of leadership are at greater risk of derailing in their careers, as compared to leaders who have higher ratings of task and interpersonal leadership.
• Leaders’ self-ratings of their task and interpersonal leadership skills tend to be poor indicators of whether others perceive them to be at risk of career derailment.
• Peer, direct report, and supervisor ratings of task and interpersonal leadership in the 360 results report tend to be reasonably good indicators of whether a leader is perceived to be at risk of experiencing career derailment. Peer ratings tend to be the best predictor of whether a leader is at risk of derailing.
• When discrepancies exist in 360 results between self- and observer-ratings, over-raters (leaders whose self-ratings are higher than their observers’ ratings) tend to be perceived as being more at risk of career derailment than under-raters (leaders whose self-ratings are lower than their observers’ ratings).

How to Interpret Your 360 Assessment Results: 3 Takeaways

Based on these findings, here are the 3 key takeaways from our study:

1. Improving task and interpersonal leadership skills will reduce your risk of derailment.

In our research, task leadership includes the following work responsibilities:

• Delegating and organizing work;
• Setting a work team’s direction; and
• Taking charge or action when needed.

Interpersonal leadership includes the following:

• Praising direct reports for their hard work;
• Mentoring others;
• Coaching direct reports;
• Resolving a group’s interpersonal conflict; and
• Negotiating effectively with others.

Make a proactive plan to improve in both these areas based on your 360 results, and your leadership effectiveness will significantly increase.

2. All raters matter, but especially consider 360 feedback results from peers.

While it’s important to pay attention to feedback from your direct reports, supervisors, and others in your 360 results, you may want to give extra weight or attention to your peers’ ratings of your leadership skills, given how effective these ratings in particular have been found at predicting career derailment.

3. Self-ratings are especially useful for comparing self-perception vs. others.

Self-ratings help you see how you rate yourself on leadership skills — relative to your direct reports, peers, and supervisors. How you rate yourself in relation to your raters provides an indication of your perceived risk level of derailing in your career.

Specifically, if you receive higher leadership ratings in your 360 results and your self-ratings are in agreement with your raters’ ratings, you tend to be more self-aware and therefore aren’t very likely to derail in your career.

On the other hand, if you discover in your 360 results that you tend to score yourself higher than your raters do, this can indicate that you have a higher risk of career derailment. If you find yourself in this situation, consider taking active steps to work on increasing your self-awareness and seek out some coaching to improve your performance.

Reflecting On Your 360 Results

Setting goals and creating a development plan of action are just as important as measuring and assessing your current skill levels.

The best way to approach your 360 feedback results is to give yourself some time to think about the ratings. On your own — or with help from a trusted peer or mentor — you can reflect on the competencies and consider what you do well and not as well. Then, ask yourself these questions:

• What do I consider to be strengths, weaknesses, or mid-range skills?
• How might different people have different perspectives of my strengths and weaknesses?
• Which of my strengths are most important for continued success in my organization?
• Which of my development needs are most important for continued success in my organization?
• Which of my mid-range capabilities (not clearly a strength or development need) are most important for continued success in my organization?

Next, think about 1–2 development goals. You might:

• Identify one of your strengths to capitalize on, or choose a mid-range capability and work to make it stronger.
• Identify a weakness that you want to work on transforming into a mid-range strength.
• Compensate for a weakness by “owning it” and adopting strategies to work around it.

Regardless of which you choose, take a look at our tips for setting achievable goals. You may want to consider sharing with your raters 3 things you learned from your 360 results and 3 things you plan to do based on their feedback. You can also ask for their help in holding you accountable as you work toward your 3 new goals.

Finally, think about using your experiences to fuel your development and whether you could seek out developmental assignments or other experiences to help you learn to lead and bring you closer to your goals.

In summary, 360 feedback results can be valuable to both you, as an individual leader, and to your organization, playing a critical role in facilitating your growth and development over the course of their career.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Our world-class leadership coaches can help you get more actionable insights from your 360 results, and coaching on your 360 feedback is included in nearly all our core leadership training programs.

The post How to Get the Most From Your 360 Results appeared first on CCL.