Leadership (Page 3)

culture

In: Culture, Leadership

Consultancy O.C. Tanner have analysed and studied the Culture Trends for 2021 and produced a report on the top five culture trends that organisations need to get ready for to help their employees thrive. TREND # 1 – Emerging from crisis, companies focus on culture as companies around the world return to the workplace after months of remote work or they adjust to a new normal mix of onsite and remote work. The workplace culture in significant instability and change. Some organisations will need to restore the culture following layoffs, furloughs or site closures which have drastically changed and impacted the workforce. Other organisations are changing work processes and methodologies to adapt to the new need for social distancing. The underlying fear of COVID19 continues to provide uncertainty on what else might change. A recent CNBC/SurveyMonkey Workforce study found two out of three companies reported keeping employee morale up toContinue Reading

magic ingredient

In: Collaboration, Culture, Leadership, Team Diversity

Search on the term Cognitive Diversity in Teams and you will find hundreds of scholarly articles on the topic in journals, as well as editorial articles in magazines from all over the world. So what is cognitive diversity and why is it a magical ingredient for teams? Highly diverse teams bring a wealth of thinking, creativity and opportunity as the article author Richard Bliss states “diversity in the workplace or on a team is a competitive advantage. It’s also something that is not easily copied or replicated”. So why is it so hard to build a diverse team and get them to work effectively together? Well that is because that same diversity of thought can generate friction and cause conflict through the debate of alternative opinions. The greater the wealth of different opinions and diverging thoughts the harder to corral and align for critical decisions. This topic is tackled inContinue Reading

In: Crisis Management, Leadership

Extreme Uncertainty reflects the length of time and the magnitude of impact of the crisis and it is becoming the new normal for management. Around the globe leaders have learned to deal with various types of crisis, they come in some standard ways, natural disasters (such as earthquakes, fires, floods, cyclones, hurricanes and tornadoes), economic disasters (economic crisis such as recessions / depressions /GFC or Asian financial crisis), infrastructure disasters (such as Fukushima, rolling power brownouts) and environmental disasters (too many to mention). “Due to the severity of this crisis, many organizations are in a struggle for their existence. An existential crisis puts at stake the organization’s survival in recognizable form.“ The difference that these disasters have to the situation leaders face around the globe is that those were all confined by industry or geography and the magnitude of the impact decreases steadily with time. “In the present crisis, however,Continue Reading

LEADERSHIP

In: Leadership

Does your leadership need a renovation? How do you go about making changes to the way you lead without loosing credibility? Have you received feedback that your management style is causing problems with the team culture? This article looks at how leaders who recognise that they have areas to focus on improving, should proceed with out freaking your team out. Planning your renovation Leadership is about exercising influence to mobilise others to collectively tackle difficult challenges and achieve organisational results, whether they are in a management position or not. “competencies get us to the doorway of leadership, but character gets us through the doorway of leadership. Managers tend to control resources to get results, but leaders exert character to build a sustainable future”  Kevin Cashman, CEO at Korn Ferry It starts with humility The journey needs a level of transparency so that your team members can understand what you areContinue Reading

communications with clarity

In: Effective Communication, Leadership

The leadership competence of delivering succinct communications with clarity is extraordinarily powerful, so why do so many leaders fail to master the skill? The amygdola (or reptile brain) is hardwired to be impatient and to be somewhat negative (it is the fear centre of our brains) so if we don’t capture the interest of the audience in a short period of time it is likely that those listening will either turn off or even have negative emotions as the lizard in our heads considers the worst. Presentations, meetings and communications that fail to engage, frustrates the audience and can lead to a loss of productivity and motivation. I once had a leader who would use what he referred to as “the rule of three – tell, telling and told”. You start any communication by telling the audience about what you are going to tell them, you then go into theContinue Reading

In: Leadership

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

In: Crisis Management, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Uncategorized

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

WFH

In: FWOW, Leadership, Virtual Teams

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

Leadership traits

In: Leadership

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

In: Leadership, Motivation

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