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Opportunities & Insights from Across Our Community
Hi everyone, here’s what we have for you this week:
Does your company allow you to craft your employee journey? In this week’s episode of The Everyday Leader, Syakaa William from Tanzania shares about crafting his experience as a Project Manager at global consulting firm Dalberg.
The mark of a good leader is their ability to “walk the talk”. We share 5 ways to practice what you preach.
Brainstorming with peers from other companies can yield tangible results. Watch our interview with Richard Kyambadde from Rwazi.
Read on for more details…
Being mindful of setting the right pace of work for a team, enabling a customized work journey for staff and identifying a problem you are passionate about
Here are a few highlights from the conversation with Syakaa:
Leaders must set the pace of work for their team while being open to adjust: During his first experience as a project manager at Dalberg, Syakaa set ambitious goals and timelines, but didn’t build in enough time for his team to absorb the initial information and start implementing. Since then, he has been more intentional about being very upfront during project kick off calls about aligning on expectations and opening lines of communication.
Great companies enable a customized work journey for their teams: Dalberg has embraced a number of workplace trends, including the ability for high-performing staff to craft a flexible work plan based on their personal and professional goals. Examples including working from different offices, taking time off for sabbaticals, and selecting the work projects they take on.
Passion for a problem provides the energy needed to persevere over many years: While at boarding school, Syakaa launched an initiative aimed at tackling youth unemployment in his home country of Tanzania. He has kept at it with a co-founder over the past decade, going through many ups and downs as they learned what has worked and what hasn’t. While many young people’s personal impact projects tend to fade as they enter the workforce and face the day-to-day realities of life and career building, Syakaa has not yet given up on his organization and is also pursuing ways to align his consulting work with his organization’s mission.
Leading By Example: 5 Ways To Practice What You Preach
Leading by example is to guide others through your behavior instead of your words. Your intention is to inspire others to emulate your behavior. It is especially important for an effective leader as it leads to increased productivity, fosters trust and respect, and positively influences the team culture.
Here are 5 tips on how to lead by example in everyday life:
Take care of yourself: There’s been an increased drive to help teams find a balance between work and personal life. It can however be difficult for junior staff to prioritize this if their leaders are not intentional about encouraging this. One way you can support your team through this is by letting them know your preferred work style and encouraging them to share and follow theirs. Try as much as possible to accommodate different workstyles and prioritize your own self-care to make your team feel comfortable doing the same for themselves.
Keep your word: Great leaders are known to uphold integrity at all times. Leading by example involves keeping your word to both employees and clients alike. While it can be difficult to admit that you don't have the capacity or the ability to do something, it’s better to do so than to risk giving people false hope, or being untruthful. Communicate in advance if you find yourself in a position where you cannot honor a commitment. Keeping your word as a leader results in increased respect from your team and they strive to do the same.
Hone your leadership skills: Learning never stops and to build a learning culture within your team, leaders must continue to hone their skills and bounce back from failure. Being open about one's failures and shortcomings also encourages the team to share their failures and learnings with each other. Set an example by taking the positive aspect of that failure for your progress. This builds trust within the team.
Get your hands dirty: Much as your main responsibility is to give direction, get in the trenches with your team every once in a while. Get to know what their day-to-day looks like. Being involved in your team’s work gives you a snapshot of the challenges they encounter and enables you to help come up with better solutions. Working to solve your challenges alongside your team also boosts their morale and provides the sense of “If they can do this, I can do this, too”.
Learn from your peers: Peer-to-peer learning encourages leadership development. Through the use of targeted conversations, peer coaching produces action-oriented ways of addressing key challenges that they are facing in their personal or professional situations. Explore CoffeeChat’s Peer Coaching Network to regularly learn from peers at other companies.
Marketing & Community Manager at high-growth startup works with peer coaches to brainstorm and develop practical solutions to challenges he faces in his role
Richard Kyambadde is the Marketing & Community Manager at Rwazi. He oversees all branding, communications, digitalization, and public relations needs for Africa's leading data provision services across Africa and the globe. He also works to build a community of young people equipped with skills to reduce the gap in unemployment through data gigs.
Richard has been a part of the peer coaching network for some time now and is matched monthly with a leader from another company for a 2-way peer coaching conversation. We sat down with him to hear about his experience so far. Watch the interview, or read the transcript summary below:
What motivated you to participate in our peer coaching network?
I did executive coaching sessions last year which allowed me to not only learn more about myself but become a better version of myself as well. Peer coaching presented an opportunity to learn from other people from various companies through brainstorming on challenges or projects. I have often found that though these may initially seem different and unique to you, they are often the same across various functions, organizations, or industries. Through these sessions, I am able to come up with different and new ways to navigate these challenges.
Which part of the peer coaching experience do you enjoy or benefit from the most?
The need to table a challenge or project one is working on to get a different point of view helps one to come prepared and keep the conversation on track. Peer coaching gives me the boldness to face some of my challenges head-on. This is because It takes a lot of strength and vulnerability to share your work with others and give another individual a chance to look at your issue from a different lens.
How have you applied the principles of peer coaching to your everyday work?
I've gotten tangible solutions from all my engagements. Through brainstorming, I am able to merge my own ideas as well as my learnings to come up with workable solutions. For instance, I was able to implement a rewards system for my team through the strategies I discussed during one of my sessions.
What have you been able to achieve since joining the CoffeeChat Peer Coaching Network?
It has opened up my world. Interacting with different people from different walks of life has helped me stay challenged, and hungry and avoid being complacent with where you are. Much as you may be doing great work where you are, you also have an opportunity to see that there are other individuals doing just as great.
If you were to recommend CoffeeChat to your best friend, what would you say?
You do not know what you don’t know, hence the importance of exposing yourself to different ways of thinking. Through CoffeeChat’s peer coaching network I am able to build strong functional networks with people who are experts in their fields. I may not know how to do something, but there’s always someone I can reach out to and ask.
CoffeeChat’s peer coaching network enables individuals to build skills that help them lead themselves and their teams more effectively. Participants engage with leaders from other organizations in a 2-way coaching conversation that facilitates learning, brainstorming, and networking.
Interested in learning more or joining CoffeeChat’s Peer Coaching Network? Visit our website to apply.