Today’s business world is different than it used to be, requiring business leaders to have new sets of skills to succeed. The sheer amount of responsibility that CEOs now must face can be incredibly overwhelming. The term that many apply to this concept is VUCA, which stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. This concept shows how the state of the world is in constant flux, which makes leading far more difficult. However, having the right tools can make that prospect a little easier. Let me share with you today some tools many successful entrepreneurs, young leaders and progressive startup founders use that can help you stay in control no matter how uncertain or complex a situation may seem.
1. 360° Talking
In an uncertain environment, communication skills are easily able to make any situation better. Thus, today’s entrepreneurs need to be able to ask the right questions to determine the problem, delegate tasks to the right people or departments and explain how their knowledge and skills can resolve the situation. These skills can reduce the uncertainty of many situations and bring a level of control to an otherwise ambiguous situation.
2. Uber-Management
To get into a CEO position or any position of leadership, people must have above-average management skills. However, in today’s world, it is more important than ever before. Projects have more facets than they used to, with more people in multiple locations and with a plethora of cultural backgrounds required to make those projects successful. Juggling these facets, the people, the budgets and all of the details require someone who can manage a lot while still staying focused on the final objectives.
3. Talent Combination
As mentioned, today’s projects are more complicated than ever before with more people involved. Getting these people to work together is one of the most effective ways of reducing the unknowns of any project while still achieving peak performance. People may be in the office, work remotely or some combination of both, making the ability to get these teams working together essential — and success critical!
4. Lateral And Critical Thinking
Some people accuse millennial entrepreneurs and young leaders of not having lateral or critical thinking skills that are on the same level as those of workers in the generations before them. The question, though, is not which generation is better at problem thinking. The key question is how to improve personal development skills to be able to see what is going on and come up with solutions. It’s critical to alter these solutions to fit a myriad of problems, and people need to be able to implement these solutions into the problems effectively. If one solution does not work to reduce the problem, the solutions will need to undergo alterations to work as imagined.
5. Collaborative Know-How
One of the most sought-after skills for current entrepreneurs and successful leaders is collaboration. This needs to be within the company, with customers or clients and with any other stakeholders. Doing it right allows for increased company performance, as well as more innovative solutions for the company to bring to the market.
6. Underutilized Inspiration
Being inspirational is something that many overlook when it comes to leadership. Today’s CEOs — more than ever before — need to be role models that employees can emulate. Doing so boosts the organization’s culture and allows for a more cohesive experience when a customer or client works with people at different levels within the company. Plus, it allows everyone in the company to reach out in an attempt to reach the same goals.
7. Vital Flexibility
Stress is an inevitable result of the constant change that comes with today’s business environment. Point taken! That is why flexibility is so vital to successful CEOs. It helps avoid some of the stress that comes with these fluctuations and allows for a more agile way of working. Additional plus: Being flexible and working with agile tools is the only way to stay current with fast-moving market trends and consumer behaviors. Evolution is going to happen during every role that we play, so if you want to become a high performer, you need to be flexible enough to evolve with it.
The more of these skills that young entrepreneurs learn to master, the less the VUCA world is going to challenge them. When your goal is to have more healthy high performance in your life as an entrepreneur or young leader, let’s focus on these seven must-haves to surpass even your own expectations and learn to be the leader your company wants and deserves! Reach out to us at braininspa today and let’s jointly work on your skills – because we care for you!
This article was originally published on Forbes.com in October 2019.
There is a feeling some people call “being overwhelmed.” It makes them unsure about where to start because there are a trillion things requiring their attention. Others call it “being off-balance.” Something feels just not right. And then there are those who keep repeating what nobody can hear anymore because everyone is feeling the same thing: “I am so stressed. I don’t even know where to start.”
Do You Know Your Priorities?
Whatever you call it, the feeling is prominent these days, and it is often a sign that you are not living by your priorities. Maybe you live on autopilot and take care ofwhatever others require you to do, what you are supposed to do, or what your family or boss requested that you do. Isn’t it time to get your balance back, to be your own master and complete those to-dos that bring you closer to your desired goals? To do this, it is critical that you define which priorities you have for your life, specifically right now, for this exact moment in your life.
Between Stimulus And Response, You Have The Freedom To Choose
Maybe you’ve heard of Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist who was imprisoned in a Nazis concentration camp but survived and wrote a book called Man’s Search for Meaning. It was during these agonizing days when Frankl became aware of what would later be quoted a million times: “Between stimulus and response, you have the freedom to choose.” Frankl realized that whatever happened to him (the stimulus), he himself (and nobody else) had the freedom to choose his response to the stimulus.
Saying No To Everything — Almost Everything
Transferring this idea to our daily struggle means that at any given moment, you have a chance to choose. Say yes or no; do or don’t; go left or right. Most importantly, once you have identified your vision and your key priorities in life, you should say no to everything that distracts you or takes away time from your priorities.
Assuming you have a clear vision of where you are going with your life, and you have defined your goals, then you can judge which activities help you go in the right direction. In assessing whether something presented to you is a priority and should get your time and attention, ask yourself only two simple questions:
1. Is this really my subject, my problem, or somebody else’s? This question should help you identify who has the ownership of this topic and if that subject is important for you or has an impact on your bigger goals.
2. Will there be consequences that affect my goals if I choose not to respond? This question should help you understand how to prioritize this task, as well as lead you to consider what action is required.
If one or both of these questions is answered with no, there is no required action from you, so either disregard the task/topic presented to you or put it on your “maybe of interest someday” list. Answering both of these questions with yes means that you need to deal with the subject, allowing for your time and attention. Finally, consider the three-minute-rule. If the required action derived from this request takes less than three minutes of your time, and you can do it right away — get it done. If the task needs more than three minutes, delegate it and make sure it shows up on your “waiting for” list.
You can also put a date on the task to indicate when you will schedule time in your calendar to work on it. I learned from true productivity masters to schedule meetings for less time than you might otherwise. For example, 15 minutes instead of the commonly used 30 minutes. Without question, this allows you to fit many more potential discussions or meetings into your calendar and helps participants focus on what really matters. Last but not least, you could place this task that takes more than three minutes on your “next action items” list. Maybe you structure this list by topic or project. This “next action items” list is your No. 1 go-to place when it comes to defining your day or your week.
This article was first published with Forbes®.com.
One of the most common challenges my senior management clients face is how to foster curious, high-performing, healthy and engaged employees during an era in which constant change and innovation are keys to success (see also Leadership In The Digital Age). The answer is actually simple: The No. 1 factor for preparing employees across functions and business units to become a true asset to the business is trust. And trust doesn’t cost money. It starts at the leadership level, with the behavior of each and every leader.
But nearly all of my clients overlook this. Instead, they expect to hear suggestions like invest more budget in talent development programs, approve requests for more team-building workshops, hire the latest VR-enabled training gadget, offer more flexible work time and other perks, and so on. These are all good ideas and, for sure, they can pay off, but it is trust that makes the real difference.
Why trust? Because trust has the power to inspire and influence. It’s the glue that bonds us to each other and turns threads of connections into steel cables. Trust is among the strongest known predictors of a country’s wealth and it is the basis for long-term investments, motivation, engagement, and innovation. The 2015 Edelman Trust Reporteven ranked trust as the essential factor for innovation. Yet leaders across the globe do a lousy job in building trust with their teams. Although we know from research that key trust-building leadership attributes are beyond the 50% importance rank, only 20% of leaders meet that expected level.
Can you build trust? Yes, of course! Can you do this easily? No, not at all! It takes time, and the trust and reputation you build over years can be destroyed and ruined within seconds. Nevertheless, there are always a few steps you can take to improve:
Talk open-book.
Don’t tell your people only half of the truth – be honest with them. Tell them the full story, explain where you stand, and demonstrate integrity. Leadership isn’t about being the smart one keeping secrets from a stupid crowd of employees. Be transparent and get feedback.
Correct wrongs.
Remember how you told your kids or were told by your parents to say “sorry” if you did something wrong or to fix the sandcastle if you destroyed it on purpose? How come we forget to apply the same principle as adults in the business world? If we as leaders mess up, we should apologize and try to fix our mistake.
See people, not hierarchies.
In almost all the large, medium and small organizations that I’ve worked with, there is a phrase about demonstrating respect written into each organization’s core values. Make sure that you apply this in your daily business life — play fair, play kind, and be respectful regardless of age and gender, and most importantly, regardless of hierarchy.
Do what you said.
Again, this is one of those attributes that we value most and try to teach our next generation. But it’s all worthless if we ourselves don’t live up to being trustworthy, keeping our commitments, and doing what we promised or said we would do.
Listen with five senses.
We experience a lot of information all day (and night) long. Make time for face-to-face conversations with your team members. Then, make sure you listen first, go back and ask for clarification, and then ask for feedback. Listen with all your senses — because sometimes our eyes and our hearts are better listeners than our ears.
Building trust takes time, but investing in these steps now will help you, your employees and your organization succeed.
This article was first published with Forbes®.com
It is a question that many leaders at different levels and industries keep asking themselves at least on a weekly basis: If research is correct that the quality of my life depends on my social connections, which in return impact my happiness, how should I handle those 40+ hours a week with negative and even toxic people around me? They take away my energy, they kill my vision and positive perspective and they just make me see the glass half empty instead of half full!
Whether hiring the wrong people, organizing teams with the wrong players or simply not dealing with toxic people in an efficient way will impact your personal and your organization’s productivity and performance. Together with some of my colleagues from the Forbes Coaches Council, we tried to find positive solutions to that tension.
Wendi’s advice: Disengage Through Diplomacy and Positive Solutions
Remaining diplomatic, neutral and polite toward a toxic employee is one sure way to extinguish any negative discourse or problem behavior. A great way to expand on this is to consider taking the higher road by not feeding into or clashing with a toxic colleague’s behavior. When the toxic colleague displays negativity, you can address it with positive solutions that disengage their behaviors.
Laura’s advice: Be Bold Enough to Care
I often work with leaders on cultivating curiosity and empathy. A “toxic employee” is also a human being. Start by getting curious about what they are experiencing in the whole of their life and practice empathy that demonstrates support. That alone may be enough to cause a shift, or you could discover that their “toxicity” is reflective of something deeper going on in your organizational culture.
Bill’s advice: Top Leaders Get Beyond Labels
The best leaders understand when they make an inference that a colleague is “toxic” they aren’t ready to “deal with” them until they unpack the word. What does “toxic” look like? What is a person doing when they are being “toxic”? Once a leader can describe the behavior, then they should confront the behavior (e.g., “When you [fill in the blank with such and such behaviors], it has the following impact…”)
Jessica’s advice: Be Direct and Open Their Eyes
Many times people don’t realize they are the ones who are contributing to the toxic behavior. Be direct and make them aware of what you are seeing. Don’t make an ultimatum, but present them with support and solutions allowing them to make the decision to change. If they choose not to change their behaviors, this is when you make a business decision later to part ways.
My personal advice: Listen, Lead and Leave
Normally toxic people aren’t toxic to the entire organization. It is just the wrong minds in the wrong crowd with wrong tasks. Good leaders listen first how their team feels about this toxic colleague and how this person pictures him/herself. Then they take the lead and re-shape the environment. If nothing works, leaders have the duty to protect their team and make toxic members leave the party.
This article was co-created by international executive coaches and initially published on forbes.com
What if I told you that your profits don’t come from your great products or services? They also don’t come from your latest online campaign, and they certainly don’t come from your improved multichannel strategy.
So where do they come from? The answer is simple: According to the recent Mercer study, 52% of a company’s long-term profitability is directly related to the quality of their leadership team. When you ask different leaders in an organization about how they would rate their personal leadership performance, though, only 39% see themselves doing a good job with their leadership abilities.
So what makes it so difficult to be a good leader? It all starts out with
the bad quality — or sometimes the nonexistence — of decision-making that’s frustrating. Instead of having the guts to say “A” or “B” and have a solid reasoning behind it, many leaders play ping-pong with important and critical business decisions. By doing so, they oversee the fact that in the digital economy fast decision making is critical and necessary.
It gets more difficult when you add the daily dose of rivalry and competition amongst senior members all the way up to board members. Unfortunately, the leadership mindset in many industries is still “old-school,” where fighting over personal advantage is considered success and team-based decision-making is seen as a weakness. And if you then sprinkle this with the expectations of the millennial workforce on leadership — being motivated by visionary people, who inspire and serve as true role models — you realize pretty fast that it is difficult to live up to all these differing expectations.
Hardly any leader is well-trained on these dimensions, since all those skills are neither part of the curriculum at business school nor part of an established training program in the workplace to help leaders develop and prepare themselves accordingly.
Many leaders also miss support from their supervisors yet face unrealistic goals, which makes leading with vision and motivation even more difficult.
In short, expectations for leaders are high — and will be higher in the future. The digital economy, with its new millennial talent, diverse teams spread all over the world, need for fast decision-making based on data analytics, and full scope of digital products and services will demand even more from leadership teams. Below are three core competencies leaders must master in order to be effective today.
Core Ability #1: Master The Balancing Act
The competence to manage and guide through change is a core competence today. From a top-down perspective, leaders are expected to deal with high-pressure situations and still make the right decisions while helping their direct reports adjust and anticipate the future — a balancing act for which one needs training. But not “training” in the classical setting of a short offsite leadership seminar. Rather, a professional, business-experienced coach or mentor is needed for regular support and consulting. Companies can also support growing leaders by offering a monthly peer group where employees can share experiences and learn from each other. This can have a significant impact on mastering the balancing act required by leaders today.
Core Ability #2: Walk And Talk
In addition to driving organizational change, a leader’s ability to collaborate and to successfully communicate with different stakeholders is critical. Times are gone when single fighters made it to the top. To jointly achieve bigger goals in a team effort and to ensure a communicative and participative leadership style are what organizations need to train and coach the next generation of leaders in. If leaders continue to rush from meeting to meeting, are out on lunch appointments, barely prepared for annual employee reviews, and lock themselves in their beautiful corner office for most of the day, they will never get a true feeling for what’s going on with their people. Make time on a leader’s agenda to work with and get to know his or her team members, understand what drives and motivates them, and then take it from there.
Core Ability #3: Mix The Formats
Without a doubt, the requirements leaders face in the digital future are beyond what they learn at any good business school. And in many cases, those unforeseen real-life situations account for the biggest lessons learned. How can leaders prepare for those? How can leaders learn?
By mixing formats.
Yes, make sure your leaders understand the basics and the “theory,” which you can provide in off-site training or online courses. But also make sure that your leaders then get access to experienced coaches or mentors who help them apply what they’ve learned to real business environments.
In conclusion, by making sure that your high potentials have access to mentors, allowing your leaders to schedule more people-time into their calendars, and mixing learning formats, your organization will be better prepared for future success and profits.
