Berger Leadership Blog

Jan 07, 2022

Be ready to lead in 2022

Happy New Year! January marks a time for new beginnings; and for the first blog post of 2022, let’s review the tools that we, as leaders, can use to stay prepared for anything that comes our way this year.

In Dan Rockwell’s recent blog post, he discusses three ways to be ready to lead.

1. Be ready to say YES

In this case, ‘no’ protects the status quo while ‘yes’ disrupts. If ‘no’ becomes your default response to employee input and ideas, people choose sleepwalking over engagement. In the blog post, Rockwell gives five ways to lean toward a yes rather than giving an idea a hard pass.

  1. How can you give that a try?
  2. What are you trying to accomplish? Instead of simply saying ‘no’, explore goals.
  3. What do you need to make this happen?
  4. What needs to be true for you to take this idea forward?
  5. Who is impacted if you move this idea forward?

If you review these steps and make a conscious ‘yes’ you’re letting your team know that their ideas matter.

2. Be ready to finish tasks

It is easy for us to habitually add to our to-do list without taking tasks out. It’s exciting to add new tasks to help set them in motion; but in order to increase concentration, finish something old before starting something new to avoid feeling overwhelmed in the process.

3. Be ready to learn

As leaders, we must possess the quality of being willing and able to learn more each day. You can be ready to say ‘yes’ and ready to finish tasks, but you’ll crash and burn if you aren’t ready to learn. Rockwell highlights four ways to be ready to learn, including:

  1. Show up asking, “What can I learn?”
  2. Stay open to learning from unexpected people.
  3. Ask, “What am I missing?”
  4. Record learnings.

It’s important to set goals for ourselves in the new year and to set ourselves up to achieve them. Utilizing these methods to show that we’re prepared as leaders allows our teams to not only learn from us, but pass these productivity tools throughout our entire organizations.