Growth & Leadership Insights

Employing Empathy

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Empathy, the capacity to understand another person’s perspective and feelings, is often described as the ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes. But don’t confuse empathy with making people happy or being nice. Empathy is a skill that enables leaders to scan large sets of data and establish priorities, sorting out what’s noise and what’s essential information by assessing signals, anomalies and novel patterns that compel their attention. For those who master it, employing …

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Resilience

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Today’s tech driven world tends to increase our sense of predictability, helping us complete our functional tasks on a timely basis, sustaining our competitive posture. Starbuck’s coffee is the same worldwide; Amazon will deliver your package as close as possible to tomorrow. But working against this predictability, and undermining the expected outcomes, is the continual disruption of routine, perpetual change that challenges us to reassess what is valuable. Change willcontinue to occur, with increasing frequency, …

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Doing To Improve

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In their pursuit for improved performance, leaders nurture a team culture that is comfortable challenging the status quo, and sharing the commitment and accountability for embracing change.  Recognizing their responsibility to develop those they lead, these leaders counsel that natural talents can only take a person so far. They promote change initiatives as learning experiences that expand knowledge, strengthen skills and open opportunities to make a difference. From their own experience, they appreciate that beneficial learning is best accomplished by …

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Assessing Culture

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Emerging from months of virtual-only connectivity, many businesses are discovering that the long-term lack of in-person interaction among their staff has compromised their culture.   Control, dependence and short-term thinking have grown more dominant over collaboration, risk-taking, initiative and more strategic thinking.  Businesses are living entities, with cultures built and nurtured by all those whose energy and commitment have produced the company’s progress. Their culture is what binds them to one another, enabling their execution of strategy …

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The Customer Experience Advantage

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The customer-driven market grows stronger every day, propelled by relentless disruption and change. Those who thrive in this market deliver exceptional customer experiences, synced with their product or service, and based on their awareness of customer goals, as well as needs.  Such experiences build enduring relationships which subsequently provide awareness about trends, changing customer demands, feedback on strategy, and innovation opportunities – all valuable inputs for decision-making and value creation.  Your company’s customer-service personnel, serving as …

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Consensus Is Not Commitment

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Achieving goals requires a team commitment. Consensus is not commitment, but leaders can confuse the two outcomes in the pursuit of collaboration.  Fostering a culture of dialogue in which teammates are encouraged to share their opinions, suggestions and concerns is a necessary first step towards commitment and shared accountability. But the objective is not to build team agreement or to create harmony versus conflict. On the contrary, the objective is to discover and assess differing perspectives that enable …

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Faster ROI on Leadership Development

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Measuring ROI on leadership development is elusive. At the strategic level, it can take time to generate the improved results expected from leaders in whom such an investment is made. But achieving those results is actually the culmination of multiple, interim actions, taken by the leader’s team who were motivated by the leader to do more than fulfill assigned responsibilities, to invest their energy and talent in making something better. Each change initiative included KPIs which identified …

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Preserving Culture in a Downturn

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When business turns down, and layoffs are necessary, preserving culture can be challenging for leadership.  Leaders who sustain the dignity of those who must depart, who communicate clearly and honestly, employ a fair, ethical process, and offer resources to assist are seen as modelling a company’s core principles, thus preserving some trust with the survivors.  A poorly managed downsizing damages that trust, perhaps irrevocably. It also crushes morale and loyalty, increases resentment, and reduces employee engagement …

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Investing in Appreciation

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During this prolonged time of disruption and stress, those you lead benefit from your personal attention in letting them know that they are appreciated and valued. The return on these efforts is higher individual and team performance, greater collaboration, increased willingness to invest in changes that deliver improvements, and enriched job satisfaction for your people.  Good employees are hard to find, develop, and keep. And replacing trained, experienced people is often quoted as the #1 non-productive cost …

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Kindness

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We defeat disruption, fear, and uncertainty by relying on our beliefs, values and stories. Challenging situations can dismay and paralyze, or they can inspire and energize. Each of us chooses which path we will take. I’m writing this on Martin Luther King Jr. day. Dr. King chose to take control rather than be controlled. And on this day, we honor his choice, his decision to persevere with his message and methods which continue to be reasonable, positive and …

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