Managers can unintentionally — or even intentionally — undermine teamwork in several different ways, but one behavior that stands out is how managers or team members address conflicts within the team. [Read more…]
To achieve long-term business success and achieve a stronger market position, organizations must become better at building a leadership pipeline for the future—leadership that can take them to the next level of performance, with an understanding of the future requirements related to organizational culture, evolving workforce, technology evolution, compliance issues, and the performance changes dictated by stiffer and stiffer global competition. The leadership competencies and skills required three, five, ten years from now will be very different from those of today. [Read more…]
At some regular interval, your organization reviews and refreshes its strategic plan. Now that we are well past the end of Q2, how much have you thought about a key factor that will help you execute your strategy: your organization’s leadership pipeline? Do you have that nagging question in the back of your mind that you may not have the leadership needed to achieve the long-term strategy? Do you have a structure and process in place to develop the leaders you’ll need? Current leadership development processes and programs in your organization may be doing a good job of developing today’s leaders, but what about tomorrow’s?
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Does kinder, gentler leadership abdicate accountability?
Our experiences in 2020 and 2021 have taught us that leading others has taken on added dimensions requiring the use of stronger soft skills while also managing remotely. Researchers and experts are telling us that a kinder, gentler leader is here to stay. In watching your inbox over the past year, you saw many articles about the need for compassionate and caring leadership and management through times of turmoil. If your career has seen a lot of forceful, dominant, invincible leaders (or if you are one), this new, more compassionate type of leadership may be unfamiliar territory. [Read more…]
As if COVID is not enough of a challenge for organizations to deal with, some organizations have been talking with us about a different challenge: keeping their highest performers during the pandemic. The issue being discovered by our clients and friends is that of motivating employees, not just by adding “fun” activities or a more energizing work environment. Employees want more. [Read more…]
How the Best Leaders Cultivate Truth and Candor
Every day we are inundated in information, articles, and social media shares about leadership and its relationship to organizational performance and culture. One thing we don’t hear as much about is leadership and its role in creating a climate of truth in the organization. It caused me to think about organizations and leaders I have known who are or have been the best at cultivating honesty. The challenge is this: in some organizations, the higher you are in the hierarchy, the less you know about the real truth related to processes and performance. So, it is vitally important to have channels of information open, so that issues can be addressed and problems solved. With many of our organizations operating in the Work from Home (WFH) and Work from Anywhere (WFA) environment open channels of communication and candor are perhaps more important now in the than they have ever been.
The best leaders I know foster an atmosphere of truth-telling in many ways, demonstrating five key behaviors: [Read more…]
Many organizations have effectively adapted or “pivoted” in recent months, but CEOs and other leaders tell me, “We are working harder for every dollar than we ever have.” For many executives, there is a question in the back of their minds: “Can we sustain this?” In times like these, high performance and organizational improvement are more important than ever.
A recent client was improving processes in light of their recent “pivot” due to COVID. Earlier in the year, the firm had changed some processes to adapt to the new market and the “new normal.” Because of the pivot, the company was working harder for each dollar earned than in 2019, and it was not sustainable. To survive 2020 and plan for 2021, [Read more…]
Since COVID hit, our organizations have been struggling to keep performance and throughput up, while also managing the needs of health and safety of our employees. Before the pandemic, with most employees working in the office, managers thought they could tell when employees were busy doing their jobs and working hard (well, perhaps like that famous Seinfeld episode).
After COVID hit, employees in many organizations were largely working from home (WFH), and managers became VERY unsure about how to handle the situation. The longer the organization went without setting clear expectations and measurements related to performance, the more nervous managers became. [Read more…]
During COVID, we have received a great deal of advice related to pivoting our businesses (or staying the course), adapting our processes, managing remote employees, or navigating the combination of some remote workers and some in-office workers. Many organizations are currently in that interesting state of balance with some working from home and others not. Several challenges arise: some employees working from home may perceive those still working from home as “favorites” who are not required to do as much work. Those who have returned to the workplace may be stressed over a higher risk of contracting COVID. Those working from home are juggling children at home and multigenerational households, all the while wondering what they are missing out on, including potential advancement opportunities. How can you reinforce stability and calm?
With continuing uncertainty, one of the best tools in the leader’s toolbox is accountability. Why does accountability matter more now than ever?
In recent weeks, many business leaders have talked with me about remote work and their plans for reopening their workplaces, and many are evaluating reopening their offices and bringing employees back from remote work arrangements—many organizations have already done so.
In good times or bad, any strategic decision starts out by defining objectives, and the decision about reopening is no different. Once the objective is defined, a plan can be created to accomplish that objective, guide communication, drive operations, and measure results. As your business makes its plans, what overarching objective has it defined? [Read more…]
