Carolyn Stern, Author at EI Experience

Identifying and Overcoming Your Growth Barriers

by Carolyn Stern | Jul 18, 2022 | Personal Development, Self-awareness

The Importance of Identifying Barriers

Barriers represent the real-life issues that get in the way of our success. The fascinating thing about barriers, however, is that though they may appear overwhelming, they serve a purpose — they help us uncover the root cause of our problems.

Awareness of these barriers and how to combat them has become vital for success, especially for those of you in leadership positions. It’s important to learn to identify your obstacles because they do not just affect you; they also affect those around you.

For instance, say your suggestions in the workplace are dismissed by a colleague multiple times. This re-occurring event could result in you not wanting to share your thoughts anymore and, consequently, get in the way of innovation, collaboration, and the team’s overall performance.

This issue has now become a barrier to professional development and is affecting your team’s productivity.

There are various reasons why leaders are blocked from achieving their full potential. Obstacles are inevitable, so learning to identify them before they become barriers to your success is crucial.

So, what can you do to identify and eventually overcome these hurdles?

How to Identify Barriers

Begin by pausing to recognize the kind of challenge you are facing and how it is impacting you. Some barriers may be hindering your professional development, while others may be getting in the way of your personal growth.

Understanding the type of barrier you are dealing with will clarify how you address it moving forward.

Here are the three fundamental steps to help you identify and address your barriers, as well as those of your team:

1. Self-evaluation

Taking a step back and recognizing how you feel is critical. Start by identifying a one or two-word feeling, then ask yourself what that feeling is telling you about yourself, others and the situation you are facing. Take a moment to acknowledge your feelings and pinpoint what triggered them. Be an observer of your emotions, actions, and body sensations.

2. Assess The Needs of Your Team

Encouraging an open-door policy and weekly team meetings will provide insight into what your team members need from you, what challenges are triggering them and how it’s making them feel. Open and engaged communication with your team will help you identify how they can support you and how you can support them. It’s a two-way street.

3. Coach Yourself and Your Team

Now that you have identified your and your team’s triggers and how they make you feel, use that emotional data to determine the next steps. For instance, if you know you don’t like your ideas being dismissed, give that feedback to the person dismissing you. Coach yourself and your team by using emotions as information to act appropriately and professionally in the workplace.

Overcoming Your Barriers

Now that you have clarity on identifying your barriers and your team’s, you can start to see the positive impacts this will have on your life.

Eliminating barriers to growth means removing all that interferes with your ability to self-improve. The result of overcoming such limitations is that it will give you satisfaction and a sense of fulfillment. Ultimately, you will be empowered to express your ideas, and your team will be motivated to work as a unit with you.

If you need personalized help identifying your growth barriers or those of your team, book a call with us!

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The Core Concepts of Self-Coaching

by Carolyn Stern | Jun 20, 2022 | Coaching, Personal Development, Self-awareness

What Is Coaching?

The role of a coach is to help people find solutions to their workplace challenges, rather than being the problem-solving hero and doing it for them. Coaching requires active listening and asking meaningful questions that get the other person thinking about their obstacles and their respective solutions.

Essentially, coaches ask good questions to help the coachee see things from new perspectives and determine the best path forward through their issues. A coach will simply provide the coachee with the guidance necessary to distinguish and accomplish goals on their own.

What Is Self-Coaching?

When you play the role of both the coach and the coachee, you guide yourself through your workplace challenges or times of transition. When self-coaching, you tend to follow the core elements of self-coaching:

So, why is self-coaching so much more complex than coaching someone else?

The truth is that self-coaching involves a lot of reflection and confidence. It requires a lot of internal work of your whole self and all areas of your life. You have to play both roles and try to get yourself to see things from different perspectives and challenge old ways of thinking.

How Do I Start?

The first step to being successful in self-coaching is to identify why it’s necessary to start. Ask yourself, “what is the driving force behind coaching myself?”.

Life brings many obstacles, and the likelihood of having a coach nearby every time something comes up is not always feasible. While it would be great to have someone available at your fingertips to support you through every complication, it is just not realistic.

The impact self-coaching can have on your life will empower you to achieve your personal development independently.

The 4 Core Concepts of Self-Coaching

1. Pinpoint your focus

We cannot proceed with the self-coaching process without defining our end goal. The first step is to clarify what is important to you. What are you trying to achieve, and why?

Take this step as your chance to visualize your success. Envisioning the desired outcome can help you eliminate any sort of limitations. Having a clear vision of your success will strengthen the likelihood of it becoming your reality and thus, become a great source of motivation.

This practice starts with imagining what success looks like but, most importantly, how achieving success will make you feel. Picture how your future self will be fulfilled. Daily positive affirmations are also a great way to assist the power of visualization and are excellent reminders of your ultimate goal.

2. Do the inner work

Focusing on setting aside time to reflect and practice self-awareness is essential. Analyze your starting point, what obstacles are interfering with your goal, and how you will eliminate those barriers.

For this to be effective, you will need to have a clear mind. Going on a walk or meditating are a couple of things you can do to help you get in the right mindset. Once done, find a quiet place with no distractions to start your inner work.

Most importantly, you will need to be completely honest with yourself. Doing so will help you identify if there are any particular actions you need to start or stop. Most of all, this is a fantastic opportunity to acknowledge your efforts to improve.

3. Ready, plan, go

You’ve done the most demanding part — being honest with yourself; now, you need to craft your strategy. Do you have resources? Have you thought about what hindrances could get in your way? Put everything that could or could not go according to plan down on paper, and ensure you have a course of action for it.

Life is unexpected, and though we may want things to steer in a particular way, the reality is that they may not. You need to prepare yourself in advance for such instances. Remember what Benjamin Franklin said, “if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.”

Setting up a plan that acknowledges various outcomes may happen will not only set you up for success but will also strengthen your tolerance and increase your adaptability. Progress isn’t always a straight line. Sometimes it’s two steps forward, one step back. Having a plan, including when you relapse, is critical for your ongoing success.

4. Recognize your accomplishments

Take a moment to acknowledge your self-coaching efforts. It’s no easy task, and you deserve to celebrate how far you’ve come!

Did you achieve your objective? Was it hard to follow your initial plan?

Some reflective time will help you understand what worked best and what didn’t. Above all, you did it, which deserves a celebration. Don’t forget to recognize your accomplishments because, whether big or small, they are equally important.

We are confident that these four core concepts of self-coaching will start you on your journey of becoming a great coach for yourself. Remember, it’s all within your power. As John Wooden wisely said, “a great coach can change a life.”

Do you want to start coaching others? Book a coaching workshop with us!

Have you heard of our 6-step self-coaching model? To become familiar with it, you can pre-order our book, The Emotionally Strong Leader: An Inside-Out Journey to Transformational Leadership, available on September 13th.

Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter to learn more about us and how coaching can help your organization. You will receive our latest updates, inventory of resources, and much more!

To stay connected, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.

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Workplace Success Starts With Employee Recognition

by Carolyn Stern | Jun 2, 2022 | Employee Recognition, Engagement, Transformational Leadership

A Successful Workplace: Creating a Culture of Recognition

Every leader’s goal is to ensure a clear path to success and identify all the factors involved. While it may be clear that a business cannot operate without its employees, how can you ensure that employee productivity and engagement are at their full potential? What could you, as a leader, do to ensure you are setting up your team and business for success?

The answer is undoubtedly complex, but one element remains easy to implement: recognizing your employees as people, not just workers.

Though this may be straightforward, a self-reflective question would be, “what am I doing to demonstrate that I value my team beyond the tasks they are completing?”. Actions speak louder than words. It is not enough to know that your employees are an essential key element for your business’ success; you need to implement actions that demonstrate they are seen, recognized for their efforts, and valued.

Employee Appreciation Leads To A Positive Workplace

Now that the objective is clear, it’s essential to understand the importance. How much can recognizing your employees as people impact your business? What consequences could your business face if you don’t corroborate your employees feeling valued and appreciated?

NO SENSE OF BELONGING

The lack of acknowledgement of employees as an asset to your team can directly impact their sense of belonging, and negatively impact the business by creating a sense of detachment from peer-to-peer and the business objectives. The result: your employees will feel easily replaceable.

Developing a sense of belonging is vital for employee retention and ensuring they are aware of how every task they perform contributes to the organization’s overall success. In other words, they need to know that their role and responsibilities positively impact the team’s performance, thus creating value in their actions.

LACK OF PRODUCTIVITY

Engaging in actions that show you don’t consider your employees as significant enough will diminish their desire to want to do their tasks effectively and efficiently, ultimately causing a drop in productivity and quality of work. If employees don’t see how their performance impacts the organization’s growth, they will stop caring and settle for doing the bare minimum.

The consequences of not treating your employees with regard will affect their engagement and quality of life and, at length, lead to career dissatisfaction.

And what would someone experiencing all those things do? Seek other employment opportunities.

MENTAL HEALTH

Treating employees as just workers rather than acknowledging they are human can have serious adverse effects on their mental health. Not feeling valued as a human being will often cause people to lose their sense of belonging. A CCOHS study on Psychosocial Risk Factors in the Workplace showed that a “lack of recognition and reward undermines employee confidence” and can lead to:

Social isolation
Decrease in social engagement
Decrease in motivation
Job dissatisfaction
Depression
Absenteeism

Employee Recognition Tactics

As a leader, you want to create a working culture that recognizes employees as people first. To achieve a positive work environment, you will need to craft a plan to target all the concerns identified so far. First, here’s a list of things you can start doing right away to go the extra mile for your employees.

ACTIONS YOU CAN START TODAY

The first and most important step to beginning an action plan is to listen to your employees actively. Employees need to be heard loud and clear before executing measures that align with their needs, so begin the critical conversations with your team members! Collecting their feedback will be a great way to create a smooth and clear pathway.

After implementing active listening, the next step is to:

Invest in employee training and development. A Harvard Business Review article mentions a LinkedIn study reporting that “94% of employees said they would stay with their employer if it invested in their career development”, thus reinforcing the value employees see in having the opportunity to grow professionally.

Employee surveys and regular check-ins can promote active listening. When paired up with investing in your team members’ professional development, it will result in a company culture that nurtures employee engagement, and most importantly, it will create top performers.

We encourage you to perceive this blog as a toolkit to build a strong structure that shapes your organization for success. A conclusive message to take home would be the following: rather than seeing your employees as just workers, instead, recognize them as collaborators.

If you need help building a positive workplace culture that features employee recognition as a priority, book a call with us!

Sign up for our newsletter to learn more about us and how emotional intelligence can help your organization. You will receive our latest updates and inventory of resources, and much more!

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Factors that Influence Team Engagement

by Carolyn Stern | Mar 14, 2022 | Emotional Intelligence

Has your team engagement dropped over the past year? Since team engagement is directly correlated to employee engagement, we looked closer into employee engagement over the past year. A 2021 Gallup study found that 34% of US employees were engaged in their workplace while 16% of employees were actively disengaged. Compared to a 14% disengagement rate in 2020, this is a concerning upwards trend that is critical for leaders to reflect upon carefully. This study also found that the three areas contributing to the greatest declines in employee engagement were, “…clarity in expectations, having the right materials and equipment, and the opportunity for workers to do what they do best.” (Gallup, US Employee Engagement Drops for First Year in a Decade, 2021) As all three areas are fundamental to employee engagement, and by extension team engagement, it is important that leaders continually work toward providing employees with at least these key areas.

For leaders looking to increase team engagement, it’s important to look at what factors impact team engagement and then determine how these factors can be improved upon to increase engagement.

What factors impact team engagement and how can I fix them?

A whole host of issues can impact your team’s engagement, but we’ll highlight the top 3 factors , and give you some tips on how to fix or improve upon them.

Clarity

As noted in the study above, clarity is one of the key elements of positive employee engagement. Employees who are aligned with organizational values and direction are more likely to perform well and be more engaged at work. Ensure that you are sharing your organization’s core values along with vision and mission statement, plus keep these documents up-to-date. Not only does this establish clarity, it also ensures that new employees are aligned with the organization’s values and future direction.

Flexibility & Shifting Work Environments

An EY study shows that 90% of employees want “flexibility in where and when they work.” (Ernst & Young Global, Business suffering ‘commitment issues’ on flexible working, 2021) Because the pandemic opened up new ways of working, many employees are now looking for hybrid or remote work options which is forcing employers to evaluate traditional work patterns. These new work environments can really impact your team’s engagement–especially when it comes to having team meetings or events. To help strengthen your work environment to include and adapt to hybrid or remote workers, ensure that you are focusing on both physical and mental well-being along with encouraging human connection.

Technology

As our work environments shift, more importance is placed on technology, both in respect to physical technology and software. An EY study showed that 64% of employees want faster internet and videoconferencing technology available in physical offices while 48% of employees wanted organizations to upgrade their at-home hardware or reimbursement for higher-speed internet or cell phone expenses. In order to ensure that all employees can perform their work functions appropriately and participate in engagement activities, it s extremely important that employers establish either budgets for hardware or provide hardware plus offer allowances for internet and/or cell phone expenses.

What does all this mean?

A recent Inc.com article sums it up perfectly: “1. Focus on outcomes rather than time spent in the office. 2. Trust and empower your employees.” (Inc., This Company’s New 2 Sentence Remote Work Policy is the Best I’ve Ever Heard: Siemen’s new remote policy is a master class in emotional intelligence, 2021)

In our opinion, both of these points are connected. In order to focus on results, leaders must trust and empower their employees. By creating an environment focused on well-being and human connection along with providing employees with clarity regarding organizational values and direction, you’re laying the foundation for trust and empowerment. Once you’ve established this foundation, the ability to focus on results will naturally follow. The key here is using emotional intelligence to create a culture of engagement as this allows you to elevate your employees to go above and beyond, both for your team and for the organization.

That’s great, but how do I increase team engagement?

There are definitely a few ways that you can leverage your emotional intelligence to effectively increase team engagement. Focus on these key steps:

Schedule team meetings regularly to increase clarity amongst the team. Ensure you use a meeting agenda to outline the purpose of a meeting as well as to define the topics that will be discussed and decisions that the team needs to make.
Ensure you allocate time for your team to make connections and have conversations unrelated to work.
Show personal interest in your team members and be present during your conversations with them.
Show appreciation in the workplace and encourage others to do the same!

Provide regular feedback to ensure you’re cultivating a culture of transparency and growth.

If you need help building your team’s engagement, book a call with us here!

To learn more about emotional intelligence and how it impacts your organization, sign up for our biweekly newsletter here, where you will receive our latest updates, and inventory of resources and much more!

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by Carolyn Stern | Dec 23, 2021 | Engagement, Leadership, Management Skills

As a leader, are you engaging the WHOLE employee? Are you considering all factors that make them human? These components include their values, relationships, physical and mental health, etc. All of these factors add to the element of employee engagement at work.

We can spend as much time and as many resources on employee satisfaction as we want to, but employee engagement issues will occur if you do not look at your employees holistically.

A common misconception with employee engagement is that if the company strives to have the best tangible incentives such as frequent pay raises or an espresso machine on-site, their employees will instantly be engaged. As leaders, much more goes into making the employee feel valued, respected, and heard. Like you, they want to ensure that their well-being is acknowledged.

A lack of engagement affects the employee and puts the company’s overall well-being at stake. When we look at employees who are not thriving in the workplace, burnout is 61% more likely to be experienced and 48% of people report stress on a daily basis. What would happen if we focused on lowering these levels of burnout and stress by taking care of the entire employee and improving leadership skills? Let’s talk about it.

The Truth About Employee Engagement

Think back to a time in your life when you could barely keep your head above water. Work and life struggles weighed you down, and all you knew was stress and anxiety. Now, think of a time when you were supported and cared for, and life wasn’t so much; which of these scenarios made you feel the most competent? Is it safe to assume that you chose the latter?

When employees feel like their employers are checking in with them and ensuring their work and life needs are met, they are more likely to stay within the company long-term, put their best foot forward, and genuinely enjoy their work. A common theme is that employers are not focusing on what matters most; being human in the workplace. This is what amplifies employee engagement.

Unlock Employees’ Full Potential

When an employer focuses on the employee as one of many staff members and not as an individual, they often miss out on their full potential. We all come from different walks of life, meaning we have our own set of unique talents and capabilities.

When employees feel comfortable in the workplace, they are more likely to go above and beyond, exercise their skills, and sometimes even uncover new talents. Focusing on each employee as a whole will create a positive work culture, help your bottom line, and improve your ability to attract and retain employees.

Using Emotional Intelligence To Engage Your Employees

It is one thing to understand why we need to bring more humanity into the workplace, but to put it into action is another step. Here are three ways to use emotional intelligence to engage and support employees.

1. Ask Questions And Practice Active Listening

Before beginning this conversation, inform your employee that there is no wrong answer and that they are safe to share; this will hopefully help them give you their genuine response.

Ask them questions such as:

Do you feel engaged when you are working? If not, what do you think is missing?
Are you being challenged enough in your work? If not, what steps can we take to change that?
Are you genuinely enthused and passionate about the work you are doing? If not, what can I do to help get you to that point?

Asking these questions may feel foreign to you at first, but your employee will leave the conversation feeling valued and heard, which will make them feel more connected to you and the company.

2. Support Employees In Non-Work Challenges

It begins with understanding that employees face many challenges outside of the workplace that may hinder their potential, and to ensure your employee puts their best foot forward, work alongside them to better understand what they need.

Have conversations with them about any challenges they may be facing and work towards finding a realistic solution. Pave the way for the future generational workforce by showing your people that you care and want to see them achieve their full potential.

3. Embody Empathy

Lastly, and most certainly not least, practice empathy. When you embody empathetic leadership, it will allow you to truly understand each person on an individual level; it will enable you to build and develop deep relationships with those you lead. When you have deep connections with your employees, you can empower them and give them the opportunity to improve and excel in your company.

What It Comes Down To Is..

Your employees have so much more to offer than you may initially see on the surface. Empowering each individual in all aspects will not only assist their professional development but also the functionality of your company as a whole.

People want to enjoy their time at work and are much more likely to be productive if they do. It’s clear that this is achieved by cultivating a safe, passionate, and empowering workplace. You’ll find that as your staff’s engagement levels increase, so will yours.

If you need help engaging your employees, book a call with us here; we’d love to listen and provide support in any way we can.

To learn more about emotional intelligence and how it impacts your organization, sign up for our biweekly newsletter here, where you will receive our latest updates, an inventory of resources, and much more!

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