Your Working Relationships
Over your life you spend a lot more time at work than you do with your family which is why it becomes really important that you enjoy what you do. A job that sucks the life out of your soul is doing nothing for your health and wellbeing. But that does not mean the job has to be rewarding to be enjoyable and that is exactly where this article from Dan Rockwell starts. Positive Work Relationships Positive work relationships provide deeper collegial bonds, it supports effective knowledge sharing and relationship based learning. Worker productivity is directly connected to the productivity of co-workers. A study by Alexandre Mas and Enrico Moretti (2009) looked at peer effects in the workplace and found that when you put a highly productive worker on a team the whole team’s productivity goes up. The more frequent the contact, the more powerful the positive impact. For manyContinue Reading
Is Now The Right Time To Launch?
Is now the right time to launch your start up? It is the challenge that many entrepreneurs face, a global pandemic and global recession are challenging companies and industries all over the world but times of significant change bring significant opportunity. “Times of rapid and dramatic change can shift the tectonic plates of opportunity. “ There are numerous companies that have actually done very well at this time as lifestyle changes have created new demands. Organisations that supply online solutions to buy quality food, fitness and home office equipment have all seen significant growth as people navigate what seems to be the new normal. And business models have changed too with emerging support for subscription for products as diverse as cleaning products, tea and toilet paper. Four tests that potential founders should consider before launching a new venture: Compelling Opportunity – Identifying compelling evidence of customer pain – often founders look to theirContinue Reading
No One Person Can Solve This
The Pandemic is bringing up new leadership challenges and it is becoming clear that management styles need to change and that no one person can solve this on their own. This article points out that in these VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) times those who have stood out as the most effective leaders have demonstrated a new set of leadership skills. Based on 25 years of leadership research CLO believe that two very different leadership styles will cause failure or success in these turbulent times. Hero Leaders who direct from the top with an authoritarian, forceful and charismatic leadership style are much less likely to weather the current challenges. What has become clear is that no one person has all the necessary knowledge and experience to solve the problems, therefore leaders need to build an inclusive team that brings together different types of expertise to work together and createContinue Reading
Consulting Disrupted
Management Consultants have made an art form out of delivering insights and advice into how to deal with disruption in industries. Now Consulting itself is being disrupted and the changes are significant. “Disruptive Innovation” a term coined by Clayton Christensen in 1995 was used to refer to the radical changes that caused a step change across an industry. Industries like manufacturing, music, television, advertising, airlines, publishing and many more have all been through disruptive innovation. The underlying economics of how that specific industry made money and sustained itself suddenly changed and in many cases new entrants were in a much stronger position than the incumbents.. Management Consulting is a $200B+ industry but it is mainly human driven, it is built on hiring intellectual capacity (brilliance), methodology, polish and global industry knowledge. BCG, McKinsey, Bain and others hire the brightest and most technical business school students and this can be shownContinue Reading
Recovering From Failure
Recovering from failure, at some point in our careers, we all fail. It is how we recover from that failure that differentiates us. Failure is hard, it is ego shattering and very painful. But as Robert Kanaat writes; “failure, as much as it hurts, is a necessary evil. Failure, and the resultant pain it causes, helps to shape and mold us, tailoring a platform for future success. It doesn’t feel like something that’s beneficial at all when we’re going through it, but that failure is, in fact, a prerequisite for success.” The first step to dealing with any failure is to fix it yourself – don’t leave the clean up to anyone else, help the team recover and find solutions to move forward. Secondly apologise quickly, own the issue by taking responsibility and having a clear plan for resolution. Thirdly move on by focusing and managing your emotions. Virginia Villari writesContinue Reading
Am I Talent? Its a Question of High Potential
Anyone with leadership aspirations will consider the question ‘Am I Talent’ as they progress in their career. And while it is not purely a question for leaders the nature of the question is directly related to subjective nature of how others consider and measure your performance. As a subject matter expert, with specialist skills, experience and credentials it is quite clear the basis of how you are recruited or retained in a role. In sales roles, results speak for themselves and the salesperson who does not hit targets knows exactly why they are underperforming. So for leaders and aspiring leaders how do you know if you have what it takes? How do you know – ‘am I talent?’ or if I am High Potential… High Potential Firstly a caveat – you can be extremely talented and not on your organisations top talent list (sometimes referred to as High Potential orContinue Reading
Offer As Much Flexibility As Possible
Offer as much flexibility as possible sums up the new Microsoft employee guidelines for working from home and we can all learn from their example. With everyone around the world working from home for the last few months, embracing the flexible workplace just sounds logical. At Microsoft they have taken this to a new level by providing clarity in guidelines Offer As Much Flexibility As Possible The guide from Chief People Officer Kathleen Hogan, starts by explaining how empathetic she is about the emotional toil that come from the new demands of everybody working at home and often needing to contribute to home schooling at the same time. Working from home is mostly a supported choice and returning to the office is optional for employees (except for those essential onsite roles). It goes on to state that Microsoft plans to “offer as much flexibility as possible to support individual workContinue Reading
The Art of Asking Powerful Questions
The art of asking inquiring, challenging, powerful questions is one of the most fundamental differentiators of leadership. They challenge our basic assumptions and create awareness of patterns and connections. Powerful questions explore intentions, values, convictions, hopes, ambitions and possibilities. The quality of the questions you ask not only demonstrates an openness and curiosity for learning, a thirst for knowledge and an interest in the subject. It can also unpack the underlying drivers of situation build rapport, expose vulnerabilities or risks and identify creative opportunities. As we get older we tend to limit our view of the world we know, we blinker the areas of skill, experience, knowledge and subject matter expertise and tend to ignore, block or avoid areas we know little about. The more curious and inquiring approach that children use to learn is the same characteristic seen with genius minds able to consider much bigger questions. So whatContinue Reading
The Traits of Great Leaders
What makes a truly great leader? We all deal with range of different leaders every day in different parts of our lives but how many of them really inspire you – what are the traits of truly great leaders? Howard M. Shore identifies five character traits of great leaders. Integrity Having integrity means that have the strength of your convictions to put personal interests aside and ‘take the right action’. Humility Being humble and curious, recognise that personal success is almost always the result of the efforts of many others. Expressing Care Everyone deserves care, a great leader can put themselves into someone else’s place and deeply empathise with their underlying motivation and desires. Weak leaders are oblivious to others points of view and don’t care about them. Consistency Leadership consistency sets the tone for the team, erratic or inconsistent leadership behaviour creates team stress and disharmony. Influence Having aContinue Reading
Keeping Your Team Motivated
Keeping your team motivated during the pandemic is a widely recognised challenge. A recent survey of 600 CEOs by HBS asked what was keeping them up at night. The answers varied slightly but the common theme was motivation. “Keeping morale and motivation up amongst employees while they are dealing with the stress of COVID-19 as well as parenting/schooling children while working from home. How can we be supportive while maximizing productivity? How do we help employees with work/life balance?” “Keeping spirits high in a sales environment. At the moment our sales force has to work twice as hard for a quarter of the results. We have reduced the expectation of results but they still feel like they are losing every day. I believe this will be a marathon, not a sprint, and I will need help for the next many months to keep theirs and others’ spirits high so weContinue Reading
