With most of us still working remotely, many of the conventions we created to tune-in and support our team members have to be rethought. I have two favorite hacks that work regardless of your location. One puts you in the right frame of mind for managing and leading, and the other helps your team frame the day for success.
We’ve barely scratched the surface of the areas in our organizations where thinking differently is essential for survival and success. Teaming, strategy and problem-solving all loom large and merit this treatment. However, starting with the role and work of leaders and the processes for adding talent to the team and supporting their development are perfect entry points.
We talk a big game about teams in business, yet often they disappoint. Raise your hand if you’ve been on a so-called team that devolved into a debating society that went nowhere. Regardless of outcomes and experiences, we continue to throw teams at issues expecting or hoping for magic. It turns out, hope is a lousy strategy because team development demands deliberate focus and hard work.
Every day, you have countless opportunities to exhibit behaviors that leave people and situations a little bit better off than you found them. Here’s a list of fifteen behaviors that will help you improve the situation for everyone:
Cultivating influence in your firm and industry is a long-term process. However, there are a few communication adjustments you can make immediately to ensure you are properly projecting yourself when it counts:
It’s an understatement to suggest this is a time for creative problem-solving in our organizations. Yet, too often, we react to symptoms or throw solutions at poorly defined problems. The failure to get to the root cause and underlying assumptions behind something that seems to be a problem results in half-measures and new, resultant problems. Here’s a technique to stop the madness!
In this crisis environment, there are only two behaviors that will save your organization: curiosity and listening.
Art Petty and Wally Bock talk about some of the later books in Jim Collins’ Good to Great Series: How the Mighty Fall and Great by Choice. Both of us agree, one is a great business book and highly relevant for our world today.
In this article, I make the case we’ve been developing and valuing the wrong qualities in our organization’s leaders. We need to focus on a new style of leadership—leading for resilience.
Interestingly, the most important advice I ever received from a mentor about leading and succeeding was all about strengthening my communication skills.
