Posted on Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Is Your Leadership on Auto-Pay

Tracy Worley

Tracy Worley is America’s leading grace coach, international key-note speaker, trainer, syndicated radio host, author, and potential seeker, strategist and CEO of three values leadership based organizations. She works with business executives, entrepreneurs, and leaders world-wide to develop potential, tailor employee engagement modules, and turn up the volume on individuals and organizations potential personally and professionally.

Tracy knows firsthand about what it takes to find your potential, Individuals and organizations have individual cultures, stories, and rhythm – Tracy’s innovative style knows how to make it work. With a background in business management, business communication, project management, and life’s drama, Tracy found herself running a multi-million dollar organization at the age of 25.

Tracy knows from life experience the ups and downs of colossal failure and the elation of success beyond imagination.

But it’s exactly all these experiences that built character, knowledge, wisdom, and intuitive insight into individual and organizational potential. Tracy is highly intuitive, perceptive, and a world thinker in connecting what you cannot see. These gifts give her the ability to strategize with clarity where you are, where you want to be, and how to get there. Tracy’s expertise: training highly successful people to lead with authenticity to the desired success her client’s desire and deserve.

Is Your Leadership on Auto-Pay

I recently came to a conclusion that Auto-Pay does not make my leadership easier. I have found myself in situations where Auto-Pay was not working and then receive a notice of PAST DUE.

Which begs the question is my leadership PAST DUE? Please bear with me as with Leadership always parallels to human stories and there are far too many stories where individuals pass-away but their accounts stay in auto-pay for months.

Two Questions: would your team navigate the plan with clarity if you went on Auto? Would your team even know you are on auto?

There is a definitive fine line between leading with involved clarity and letting your team do what they do best vs. being completely absent (the third is micro-leading).

With all negative or positive situations I sit back and ask myself a few questions:

What did I learn?
- How can I apply for future success?
What or how should I move forward?
- Small course adjustments.
Is this still a correct course toward the goal?
- Is the main thing still the main thing?

If you Google the benefits of auto-pay all sorts of benefits come up from saving time, security, easy, cost-savings, convenient, etc. . . . Leading an organization or team we tend to apply auto-pay to our day. When hiring individuals the expectation of what is required of them is in their job description. However, how often do we communicate with clarity the objective, planned goals, and the benefits of their role?

Here are a few ways to take your leadership off of auto-pay and into engagement where true success lies toward your organizations planned goal:

Clarity
- Gives design to your purpose.
- Gives direction to your team.
- Creates innovation in developing strategies and systems to keep within the lane of the desired outcome.
- Goals are measured progress; create a plan with clarity and everything will build toward your success.
- Integrate a plan as goals are the measured components to success.

“Systems permit ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results predictably.” ~ Michael Gerber

Message
- Communicate to your team frequently; remember it takes around seven times before a message is received.
- Communicate the message in several ways; verbally, written, and in practice.
Model
- Daily if not weekly model the behavior and follow the system of clarity set into place.
- Your team must see you in action and not AUTO; action lends to modeling the behavior to success.

“Knowing the future is difficult; controlling the future is impossible. Knowing today is essential; controlling today is possible.” ~ John C. Maxwell

Leadership on auto-pay leads to destruction and rarely leads to the desired outcome. Leadership is intentional by checking in daily/weekly and engaging in conversation with your team to sustain the clarity and momentum to your planned success!

Look UP and OUT!

Tracy Worley

Posted on Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Is Your Leadership Underwear Clean?

Tracy Worley

Tracy knows from life experience the ups and downs of colossal failure and the elation of success beyond imagination.

Yes, is your underwear clean?

For generations the mothers in my family asked the children before leaving for school, “Do you have on clean underwear?” Or, “Make sure you have clean underwear on in case you get into an accident.”

I am not sure anything is clean after an accident and what underwear has to do with it . . . but my mind evolved from clean underwear to asking “is your leadership heart clean”?

The heart of a leader sustains life of an organization. Here are a few areas’ to reflect on your Clean Leadership Heart:

Are you intentional in growing yourself, others, and organization?
- Education, Innovation, Space for Creativity
Are you helping others UP the ladder?
- Mentoring, Modeling
Do you allow others and yourself to get dirty?
- FAIL is an awesome four letter word and should be part of your organizational process, let your people get curious, let your people get dirty
Do you create space for risk?
- An organization cannot grow and create innovation without planned risk

The heart of leadership is not who comes out on top clean, but who comes out on top with a team who is dirty with knowledge, wisdom, confidence, and respect of each other of a job well done and well fought.

Success is not for the weak of heart and that is why leadership is dirty! As stated, “If success was easy everyone would be successful.” Everything worth setting a goal toward is not easy and if it is/was easy for you go back and reflect on the few questions above you may have a few people to thank.

I challenge you to come out dirty with knowledge, wisdom, and the confidence to trust and respect your team!

Cheers to Dirty Leadership Hearts!

Look UP & OUT my friends,

Tracy Worley

Posted on Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Is Your Leadership. . .DOA?

Tracy Worley

Tracy knows from life experience the ups and downs of colossal failure and the elation of success beyond imagination.

We hear a lot about employee engagement, leadership, and saturated with 7 Steps to What Ever Ails You.

My questions to you are:

Are you Dead on Arrival?
Are you showing up to work, home, and life: filled-up to serve your clients, employer, and self?

I am asking you these questions because as leaders we must show up with intention and ‘alive’ in everything we do. Modeling the behavior we expect is what we must do as well.

When I work with organizations in employee engagement we always start with a survey to see where the engagement needle is and the culture. I can say 99% of the time when engagement is low there is little trust and/or respect to and from leadership.

Here are a few steps to engaging your clients, employees, peers, leadership, and yourself:

Discuss and outline your vision and navigate where you are going (You may feel like you are repeating yourself and that is great. It takes an average of 7 times for people to hear and understand a message and everyone on your team learns and comprehends differently such as verbal word, written, hands-on)
Set exceptions by creating and modeling the culture your organization desires and deserves (i.e. if employees are required to clock in 5 minutes before start, leadership should model 10 minutes before start)
Connect with clients on personal level (i.e. paraphrase what they have said, or remember your last conversation such as if they mentioned a soccer game ask them how it went)
Connect and collaboration with peers by setting parameters of expectation, timelines, etc. . .(this always resolves who is responsible for which task, and accountability for the entire team)
Connect with employees on 15 minute one-on-ones (be candid and transparent where you are, and they will be candid and transparent where they are on projects, hurdles, and how they plan to over come them)
The core of engagement is transparent humility (this is not showing employees or clients how to weep but to let them know you are human, everyone wants to know they are on the team with someone who has heart)

The above list is not an all inclusive list but is a start to ask yourself where you are as a leader in engagement, and what it means to your organization. These few principles can also be applied to personal relationships when connecting to our loved ones.

Gallup updated their poll in 2013 and 70% of our employees are dis-engaged. If you could increase your engagement by 21% to your payroll what would that mean to you? Our three phase program has a track record of increasing engagement and with this improves morale, client satisfaction, and overall turnover.

Look UP & OUT ,

Tracy Worley