Host Christi Scarrow and guest Shelly Anwyll, Vice President, Business Development & Member Experience at the Ontario Chamber of Commerce and Executive Co-Chair of NextUp Toronto, discuss the importance of active listening, empathy, and proactive communication in leadership. They emphasize the need to recognize and respect the perspectives of others, foster trust, and prioritize stakeholders' priorities. They also share their experiences as new managers, highlighting the challenges of delegating responsibilities and trusting team members. Shelly offers advice on how to overcome these challenges, including reframing one's mindset and recognizing the value of learning from mistakes.

Action Items

• To actively listen, don’t go to into situation with a preconceived notion of the outcome

• Recognize that the priorities of individuals you are trying to influence may be different than the organizational priorities

• Build trust with others to make difficult conversations easier

• Continue enjoying the learning process of developing skills over time rather than rushing progress.

Outline

Active listening and its importance in leadership roles.

• Shelly Anwyll emphasizes the importance of active listening in leadership.

• Active listening is essential for effective collaboration, especially in diverse settings

• Christi Scarrow and Shelly Anwyll discuss prioritizing stakeholders' perspectives in collaboration.

Leadership, conflict resolution, empathy, and trust-building strategies.

• Shelly Anwyll emphasizes proactive communication to manage conflicts, which she is in tune with through visual cues.

• Christi Scarrow and Shelly Anwyll discuss empathy and trust in leadership, with a focus on generational differences and the importance of face-to-face interactions.

• Shelly Anwyll emphasizes the importance of direct feedback and leadership accountability in building empathy and trust, regardless of reporting lines.

• Shelly advises managers to prioritize building trust and comfortable relationships with their team members.

• Shelly suggests empowering team members to make decisions and learn from mistakes to help them develop and evolve as managers.

Leadership challenges and growth.

• Christi Scarrow and Shelly Anwyll discuss the challenges of letting go of control as managers and trusting team members to do their jobs.

• Shelly advises that when managers struggle to delegate to consider the worst that could happen if something goes wrong and to focus on learning from the experience.

• Shelly Anwyll: Leaders often overmanage due to discomfort with messy parts of leadership.

• Shelly Anwyll: Enjoy the journey, don't rush to the finish line, and recognize that experience is part of successful careers.

Useful Links

Host: Christi's Web Page

Guest: NextUp Toronto

Lighthouse NINE Group: Web Page

Contributors

Music: All The Fixings by Zachariah Hickman

Editing: tribe74

Keywords

individual, situation, empathy, hospital, evolve, part, managing, messy, manager, conflict, listening, people, conversation, leadership, struggling, team, behaviors, facilitated, occurs, organization