Welcome back!
When you are seeking to develop others, leverage your power and connections for their good. If you have the ability to help someone get ahead, do it. Introduce people, set up mentoring relationships, assign staff to special projects together, and use your influence to open doors. Power was made to be used for good, not evil!! For the sake of the whole, not for self-serving motives. Delegate power as much as you possibly can. Put people in charge of initiatives and events. Give them the chance to see what you do all day, or let them shadow someone else who does what they aspire to do someday. Give people as much special responsibility as makes sense for them and for you, then help them succeed in their new role. When you share your power and connections, you do not diminish them. You exponentially expand them. It is a grace filled way to lead.
Another key skill to include in your team’s development plan is stress resilience. First, you have to model it! Get your own stress under control and then teach others how to handle their stress by your example. Life moves at an increasingly fast pace with ever widening global implications. Stress management is essential regardless of the field of endeavor. On a daily basis our brains are bombarded with information and our emotions have to navigate a maze of experiences that can leave us exhausted, frazzled, and weary. Learning how to deal effectively with stress is a critical skill for all life stages. All of us have a frustration tolerance beyond which we cannot cope. We are having a lot more serious health problems at younger ages because our bodies just cannot keep up with the demands stress places on them. Stress resilience can be trained, and everyone benefits from learning it. You will have a good start down the road of building a healthy work culture if everyone is working on handling their own stress well.
Until next time, I’ll be praying that you find a stress resilience plan that works for you and your team!
