07/22/2020

The Question You Need to Ask to Focus and Engage Your Team

You must consider how people make you "feel"

Gary Burnison, the CEO of recruiting and leadership development firm Korn-Ferry writes a weekly email every week which I subscribe to. Not surprisingly, a lot of his notes the past several months have focused on leading during the pandemic. This past week, Gary offered a pointed metaphor to describe where he thinks we collectively are in the process.

He wrote that we’re not in a sprint or even a marathon to the next normal; we’re in an IronMan® Triathlon and we’re about halfway through the opening two mile open water swim. If Burnison is right, we still have a 26.2 mile marathon and a 112-mile bike ride to go after we get out of the water.

Even if we get to skip the bike ride, it’s increasingly clear that we have a long way to go on this. So, what do you do as a leader to keep yourself and your people focused and engaged on the results that are most important for all of you to achieve? I’ve been talking with a lot of coaching and leadership development program clients about that lately and have landed on a question that has been helpful to everyone I’ve asked it of – “How do you want your team to feel?”

Please select this link to read the complete blog post from Eblin Group.