Sarah K. Robinson - FRESH Leadership: 5 Skills to Transform You and Your Team

Fresh Leadership: Five Skills to Transform You and Your Team

ISBN 978-1-946533-45-6 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-946533-46-3 (ebook)

Copyright 2019 by Sarah K. Robinson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior written consent of the author, except as provided by the United States of America copyright law.

Sarah K. Robinson does not claim to be employed by, affiliated with, or sponsored by Gallup. All non-Gallup information has not been approved and is not sanctioned or endorsed by Gallup in any way. Opinions, views, and interpretations of Gallup research are solely the beliefs of Sarah K. Robinson.

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Published by Niche Pressworks, Indianapolis, IN

http://NichePressworks.com

Printed in the United States of America

To three leaders I love dearly: Dawson, Jack and Hope.

To my patient and insightful first reader, David.

F.R.E.S.H. is an acronym thatlike most good ideas Ive ever hadpopped into my head and refused to leave. It was 2010, and I had been working in the field of organizational behavior for about twenty years and teaching organizational behavior concepts to college students since 2002. My students frequently told me or wrote within their papers that they wished their manager could take this class.

Im not completely nave. Initially, I suspected that this comment was just a few desperate students attempting to flatter their instructor and potentially improve their grade. However, after hearing this comment more than a handful of times, I decided it needed further consideration.

I wondered, What could I teachwhen freed from the academic requirements that I was normally bound tothat would catapult mediocre managers into a new stratosphere of highly effective leadership? Once I asked myself this question, the answer seemed obvious: it was a combination of topics that would help managers to become both book smart and street smart when it came to leadership.

What I mean by this is that I frequently interact with leaders (many of whom have no advanced degrees or special training) who are extremely savvy when it comes to understanding how to motivate and inspire their team members. These leaders have leadership street smarts as opposed to leadership book smarts. However, I have also worked with leaders who have multiple advanced degrees in business or organizational behavior who have used their impressive book smarts to create a successful team. Of course, it is the rare and exceptional leader who has bothleadership street smarts and leadership book smarts.

Leadership street smarts is not normally taught in classrooms. Despite the lack of formal training, I have found that the qualities of a street-smart leader become obvious when I interact and coach leaders or prospective leaders who possess these qualities. And, they are even more obvious to those who are led by such leaders. For example, the street-smart leader often will intuitively understand the emotions of others, may see hidden gifts and talents of her employees, or may recognize how to cultivate relationships to bring out the full potential of the team.

As a college instructor, I was keenly aware that our class discussions kept circling back around to the same issues, regardless of what our syllabus indicated our days focus should be. Despite my efforts to keep the group interested in individual differences, personality, perception, ethics, creativity, decision-making, motivation, communication, group dynamics, conflict, stress, or politics, we seemed to stray back to a few hot topics.

In 2011, when I renamed my consulting business FRESH Concepts, Inc., my plan was to share my combined consulting know-how (i.e., real-life experience) and my academic knowledge (Industrial and Organizational Psychology background) with the world.

Although it seemed obvious to me that there is an overlap between what is taught in academia and what is done in real life, it seemed that this connection was missing for aspiring leaders. I asked myself: How could current or aspiring leaders connect the academic and real-life dots? They were challenged with not only doing their current job but also synthesizing the learned and observed workplace behaviors that might help them drive their team to a higher level.

The acronym FRESH was inspired by my hope that these academic and real-life insights could be combined in a meaningful way. On the next page is a brief overview of the FRESH Leadership perspective.

In the chapters ahead, well look at each of these principles and practices individually, detailing why they are important to effective leadership.

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.

John Quincy Adams

A middle-aged businessman learned, only ten days before he was to take his new position as CEO, that his business was on the verge of bankruptcy. At the outset, his executive team considered him an unsophisticated and second-rate leader. His employees had mixed feelings about his abilities. Even his board of directors questioned his aptitude, despite the years of hard work and dedication he had shown in his field.