Michelle Ray

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How to Enhance the Perception of Your Organization’s Reputation

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Reputation management has become increasingly important in the social media age. This pertains to the reputation of individual leaders as well as corporations. What does your workforce say about your brand and your business? Are you able to effectively leverage goodwill that you have worked to establish with customers and staff? These are key questions for all employers because of this simple truth: Perception is reality. [Read more…] about How to Enhance the Perception of Your Organization’s Reputation

Can you teach an old dog new tricks?

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We’re all familiar with the adage: “Can’t teach an old job new tricks?” Well, I beg to differ for this reason:  If we don’t teach those old dogs new tricks, they simply won’t survive. And if you’re one of those “old dogs”, maybe that’s you as a leader…struggling with the idea of embracing new realities; evidenced by the way that you have been leading your organization.

Like dogs, many humans find it difficult to learn something new when the context changes. In our current business landscape where disruption has become the norm, it is easy to understand why leaders struggle in a “change in context” environment. Humans are also creatures of habit. We become uncomfortable with the unfamiliar and find it difficult when the context in which we are doing business changes. The adage “repeated discomfort generates comfort” is one solution that can be applied in the face of change and uncertainty. However, if we are to accept new realities, we first need to address our mindset.

Thoughts are driven by our deeply held beliefs, which manifest as attitudes that dictate outcomes. The manner in which we interpret situations and events and subsequently make decisions is evidence of mindset in action. It takes years to form habits and may take even longer to break them. For this reason, the idea of altering perspectives may seem overwhelming. Unlike dogs, humans possess a higher level of consciousness and larger cerebral cortex with space for complex abstract reasoning. We have the capacity to shift our thinking in order to embrace and adapt to a new order of things. The difficulty lies in overcoming internal pre-programmed messaging regarding our fears and consequently, our mental roadblocks when faced with the need to do things differently.

Remember that you have invested a certain amount of time choosing to view your enterprise in a particular light. If you suspect that you are resisting the need to move forward and “learn new tricks”, it may be helpful to ask yourself: “How accurate is my perspective? “ Or “Is my fear real or imagined?” You may discover that your frame of reference regarding how you view the business landscape is no longer serving you, and it’s time to muster the courage to take the lead and welcome new possibilities.

Can your organization afford to get stuck in the old ways of doing things? It isn’t unusual for leaders and teams to buy into the chorus of voices that say: “Why do we need to change if everything’s working? We’ve always done it that way so why should we change now? “ There is a new imperative requiring you to be that “new dog” who is willing to practice new tricks.  Are you holding back your organization by accepting the default “we’ve always done it that way.” position?

Change is possible when you decide to let go and to be willing to constantly improve and to try new methods and new ways of doing things. The most successful organizations are embracing innovation and new thinking as part of the normal way of going about their business.

Now, and in the future, learning “new tricks” is essential to not only survive, but thrive. By letting go and changing your habits and the habits of your business,  you will see what is possible… and amaze yourself in the process.

 

This article is a partial transcript of https://youtu.be/nZrtPgctx5k on YouTube.

Michelle Ray (Twitter) is one of the best international leadership keynote speakers in Vancouver. She helps you discover your potential through presentations, coaching and consulting. With over 20 years of experience Michelle has worked with hundreds of companies around the world. She is taking bookings for speaking engagements and can be contacted at MichelleRay.com

Business and Cognitive Bias

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Imagine a workplace where managers and coworkers viewed one another through a purely objective lens. Or where customer concerns were resolved without blame, judgment, or misunderstanding, 100 percent of the time.

Sounds pretty far-fetched, right?

[Read more…] about Business and Cognitive Bias

Setting the Vision when Leading Organizations

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SHRM identify that one of the competencies that we need to have as leaders is the ability to set the vision. They identify this as one of the key competencies when it comes to leading organizations. Setting the vision is all about being transformational.

It’s about being focused on the future. On the other hand, leaders who are transactional are going about the day-to-day functions associated with leadership. And whilst all of those are critically important, the idea of being future focused is above all else. It means that you have an eye on tomorrow and that you are thinking about the vision in everything you do. It’s about big picture thinking and sometimes we get so caught up in the minutiae of the day-to-day, that we lose sight of that vision.

Great leaders are always cognizant of the vision and they’re able to take people along with them to realize the vision of their organization. Think about great leaders that you have come across in your own life. Great leaders that you have studied. Why have you admired them?

I would say the great majority of leaders that I have admired are the visionaries. So great leaders are those who are able to keep their eyes firmly fixed on the future.

This article is a transcript from Michelle Ray’s Leadership Secrets at YouTube YouTube.

(Twitter) is one of the best international leadership keynote speakers in Vancouver. She helps you discover your potential through presentations, coaching and consulting. With over 20 years of experience Michelle has worked with hundreds of companies around the world. She is taking bookings for speaking engagements and can be contacted at MichelleRay.com

Why are Interpersonal Skills important for Leaders

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So, what are interpersonal skills, and why are they important as a leader? When I think about the times that I have had individuals come up to me and ask me about their leaders, or talk to me about their relationships with their leaders it’s amazing how they focus on the personal side, and the soft skills side. And it’s interesting because not every leader is conscious about the value of honing those soft skills.

It’s amazing because they are so critically important. What is it really mean? It means that you have the ability to connect with people. You have the ability to listen to people. You’re showing a genuine interest in others when they come to you and talk about what is going on in their life. It means that you’re making time for people and you’re really cognizant of who they are as an individual.

So, in the myriad of things that you’ve got going on and everything that a leader has on their plate it is so important to realize that that person that is in front of you in that moment, that is wanting your attention, they are wanting your attention for a reason because of your influence, because of the fact that they look up to you. So, for you to be able to have a conversation to really listen to their concerns, to as I said, know what’s going on with them in their life is far more important in the grand scheme of things than a task they might be working on.

Let’s never underestimate your ability to have a conversation, to be a great listener, and to hone your soft skills as a leader every day that you’re in that position.

This article is a transcript from Michelle Ray’s Leadership Secrets at YouTube YouTube.

(Twitter) is one of the best international leadership keynote speakers in Vancouver. She helps you discover your potential through presentations, coaching and consulting. With over 20 years of experience Michelle has worked with hundreds of companies around the world. She is taking bookings for speaking engagements and can be contacted at MichelleRay.com

The Autocratic Leadership Style

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Some might say that an autocratic leader is out of style. I beg to differ. When could you need an autocratic style of leader? Well, it all depends on how you perceive the word autocratic. For example, in times of change and flux what do people need? They need someone to show them direction.

They need someone to say this is the way we are gonna do it. This is the way through. This is the way that we overcome this challenge. In other words, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a negative. Autocratic doesn’t necessarily mean dictatorial.

It means showing people the way when they are unable to discover it on there own. It means helping people to navigate through a difficult situation when people are at the crossroads or when people are confused about what to do next.

It’s someone who knows how to call the shots when people can’t find the way out. So, realize that may be one style that you can use and it’s situational depending on the circumstances. You might be the one who needs to call the shots and in those circumstances, that is totally okay.

This article is a transcript from Michelle Ray’s Leadership Secrets at YouTube YouTube.

(Twitter) is one of the best international leadership keynote speakers in Vancouver. She helps you discover your potential through presentations, coaching and consulting. With over 20 years of experience Michelle has worked with hundreds of companies around the world. She is taking bookings for speaking engagements and can be contacted at MichelleRay.com

Key Leadership Traits: The ability to Take Risks

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SHRM defined one of the most important competencies in leading organizations as taking risk. The ability to risk. Without question, we want to be conscious of taking calculated risk. There is a difference between taking extraordinary risk and taking calculated risks. What kind of a risk taker are you? If we don’t take risks, we simply stand still. Of course today, it’s impossible to move forward without taking some kind of risk. That involves of course being able to let go of the fear and trust yourself. Trust in who you have around you. Trust in your decisions. Trust in your decision-making ability that you are able to take that next step.

Some of the risks we take may seem overwhelming initially, but once you’ve taken that risk and you’ve lived to see the result, you realize that what you actually did will give you the energy to continue to take risks. Being a risk taker doesn’t necessarily mean you are the risk taker extraordinaire, but you have an ability to embrace your fears, move through them and take the next step to take the risk.

This article is a transcript from Key Leadership Traits: The ability to Take Risks YouTube.

(Twitter) is one of the best international leadership keynote speakers in Vancouver. She helps you discover your potential through presentations, coaching and consulting. With over 20 years of experience Michelle has worked with hundreds of companies around the world. She is taking bookings for speaking engagements and can be contacted at MichelleRay.com

Celebrating the Opportunity of Change (Part 5)

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As leaders, you already know the importance of not only managing change, but embracing it as well. I want you to consider how you can celebrate the opportunity that change represents. Think about it, you used to wait hours or maybe even days for information to be transmitted and printed on a scroll of thermal paper.

Today, that happens in seconds. You used to travel over oceans to meet with clients and counterparts. Now, you can conduct so much of your business virtually. And think about all the information you have at your fingertips today, thanks to the internet.

So we all have a lot of experience with change. It’s not like it’s foreign to us. With awareness, we can reflect on the times when we felt we could never overcome a particular challenge. Yet we rose to the occasion. We were able to demonstrate agility and willingness to try new things. Just as athletes develop muscle memory, your ability to navigate change will become more instinctual with practice.

The most powerful choice you can make is to focus on the aspects of change that are within your control. At any point, you can choose to decipher how change unfolds. How you give meaning to the challenges that come with change will ultimately influence the outcome. When you hit your next bump in the road, ask, why am I being disrupted by change, and how can I embrace it.

That’s the leadership mindset.

This post is a transcript of https://youtu.be/VHlM080bCb8 on YouTube

(Twitter) is one of the best international leadership keynote speakers in Vancouver. She helps you discover your potential through presentations, coaching and consulting. With over 20 years of experience Michelle has worked with hundreds of companies around the world. She is taking bookings for speaking engagements and can be contacted at MichelleRay.com

Change Management Ep.4 Change and Disruption

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It’s interesting how people will often use the term disruption, and the term change interchangeably. I do believe however that there are some subtle differences. Disruption is defined as a disturbance or problem that interrupts an event, an activity, or a process. It often necessitates change.

Let’s outline the process of disruption. If you think of life as a continuum, we find ourselves rolling along the highway of life, and right now we have the present. We have our current state. All of a sudden, some kind of disruption, unanticipated event occurs and we find ourselves in an altered state. There it is. That change has happened. As I said, often unexpectedly and it shakes us up. So, we take a dip as a result of that disruption.

Some of us do not know how to get ourselves out of it, so we stay in that altered state paralyzed by that disruption. But if you consider that life is actually full of peaks and valleys, when we realize that we have gone through disruption before, we almost invariably are able to find ourselves rising out of it naturally. So when we do that, we are in a new state, and we are often operating at a higher level than we did previously. We’ve achieved a new level of consciousness. So we’ve taken our lives and our careers to a new level as a result.

There are people however, that do not stay in that new state, in fact they are operating at the same level that they were previously. They remain unconscious. Because they haven’t been able to accept the disruption, however difficult it might have been, they cannot come to terms with that, and as a result, they stay stuck. And when we don’t change, and we don’t move, life and opportunity will pass us by. And without moving to that new state, it may actually be too late.

Whether we choose to label change as disruption, or disruption as change, it is often about semantics. So in summary, let’s remember, disruption is the new norm. Disruption can occur internally within your own organization or externally, driven by the market, or by your competitors. And by operating at a new level of consciousness when disruption occurs, you can benefit both personally and professionally and grow as a result.

This post is a transcript of https://youtu.be/7Ngoce9bIZo on YouTube

Change Management Ep.3 Get Buy-In to Change Initiatives

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One of the biggest issues that leaders constantly ask me about is, how do I get my team to buy into change? And this is really important, because you need their support. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself at a standstill. And even worse, people will feel that the change is being imposed on them.

To prevent that from happening, here’s what you need to do. Recognize first of all that change is emotional. Change isn’t logical. Without you validating people’s emotional state, they are not gonna feel heard. They’re not gonna feel as though their reaction matters. It’s a natural thing to react to change, as we spoke of previously.

So remember to acknowledge people’s emotion before you expect them to buy in.

Next, realize that people change when they see a higher reason to change. They need to understand it. They need to see that it matters to them, that there’s a purpose to it that has applicability to their lives and to their careers.

So unless they can see that higher reason, they are more likely to be entrenched in the status quo. And also remember how important it is for you to ask for their input. You’re more likely to get acceptance of your ideas by hearing others’ ideas first.

As I said previously, people want to know that they matter. So when you listen to their ideas, and get their input, they are more likely to be receptive to your plan.

It’s also important to realize that people will change when they want to, not necessarily when you want them to. So when we try to impose a timeline, we might feel that people are going to recoil more quickly. You may have initiatives that need to happen quickly, but I want to encourage you to remember that people need to see the reasons to change before they will accept your ideas.

In summary, remember, account for the emotional response. Acknowledge the fear. It is a natural reaction to change. Realize that how you position change can influence the outcome. When you are able to get that buy in, it’s due to the fact that you have taken into account other people’s ideas, other people’s input. And minimize the shock factor by involving people from the outset and realizing that their ideas are just as valuable, and may contribute to the success of your change initiatives.

This post is a transcript of https://youtu.be/sJ-eJUn3Ghs on YouTube