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Leadership:How New Leaders Can Keep Their Nerve & Avoid Distractions…Managers Who Think they are Fully Prepared & Equipped to Take on Top Jobs can Come Unstuck when They Finally Land the Role

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Countless books and articles have been written about what might be termed “the grander aspects” of leadership – the need to have a vision, the ability to decide on and execute a strategy, the importance of communication, the crucial role of motivation and such like – but rather less attention is paid to the “nuts and bolts” of being a leader.

laughing-leader-4

 

While it is understandable that management thinkers should focus on ideas of leadership, managers themselves need to realise that what seem like little things can assume great importance and have a significant effect on their ability to pull off those great ideas. Quite simply, even managers who think they are fully prepared and equipped to take on top jobs can come unstuck when they finally land the role.

Marcus Agius is a former investment banker who chaired Barclays Bank and the former UK airports operator BAA and has for the past year been chairman of PA Consulting. He says that many people appointed to chief executive or chairman positions fail to appreciate “how very different it is to run the whole show rather than just a bit of it”.

A key part of this is understanding that, while he or she may be in overall charge, the CEO or chairman does not actually run anything. Those reporting directly to them do the running. Allied to this is the realisation that, while it is possible to know most of everything when you are running a division, it is impossible when you are in charge of a whole big business. “That’s worrying, because you worry about what you don’t know,” says Agius. “One of the new things you have to learn is how to keep your nerve! How to resist the temptation to interfere.”

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Another perspective on this area is provided by Kevin Kaiser, Michael Pich and I.J Schecter in their recent book, Becoming A Top Manager (Jossey-Bass). They warn managers to beware of their expertise. By this they mean that executives spend most of their careers being promoted on the basis of their perceived functional knowledge. This obviously gives them confidence, but, they say, “it may also prevent proper appreciation of the relevance of other areas in the company”.

This is a problem because a general manager is supposed to be just that – a person who looks at the whole business – and not somebody who is stuck in a comfort zone based on their own experience and abilities. Worse, expertise in a particular business function “may simply strengthen incorrect presumptions” and close minds to the willingness to take account of new information or insights, say Kaiser and Co.

Delegation plays an important part in helping new managers deal with the realities of a bigger, more complex business than they have been used to. Agius acknowledges that this can be difficult for the simple reason that the typical CEO has a certain degree of confidence, even arrogance, and is therefore likely to take the view that nobody is likely to do what needs to be done better than them. But John Adair, a highly respected writer on leadership, believes that delegation is vital. “Delegating can save you time and develop your staff. You should delegate as much as you can,” he writes in John Adair’s 100 Greatest Ideas For Effective Leadership and Management(Capstone/Wiley).

At the same time, the leader cannot just rely on divisional directors to tell him or her what is going on. There needs to be a means of them being alerted to potential problems. The actual mechanism can differ – some CEOs have chiefs of staff, others rely on their finance director, still others have long-serving personal assistants. Indeed, Agius says that a good and trusted PA can make a huge difference to a leader’s effectiveness through minimising disruption and stress. Conversely, managers who get through a lot of PAs can “get in a muddle” and never seem to be as efficient, he adds.

One of the key ways in which an effective PA can help a new leader settle into the role is through diary management. On being appointed to the top job, the leader will inevitably have a lot of calls on his or her time. While the leaders themselves will need to learn to be ruthless about which meetings they need to attend and which calls they need to take, the experienced PA can be invaluable in managing the mechanics of this activity and – via their relationships with other PAs – in ensuring smooth and effective communications with other executives.

Leaders themselves can help with this, however, by managing their time as well as the business and the people working for them. Adair says that a leader needs to be certain that he or she can define their business role and know what amounts to a successful outcome; that they can spend time thinking and planning for themselves and others; that they have a clear understanding of their business purpose and that they know the balance they wish to achieve between business and private commitments.

But, given the intense demands that are a characteristic of the typical general manager’s life, the importance of time management cannot be overstated. Adair reminds readers of the view of the late management guru Peter Druckerthat only when we manage time can we manage anything. This is true, of course, of any manager, but it is especially true for those at the very top of the organization. Adair, and indeed various other self-help experts, offer valuable advice on such areas as handling meetings, avoiding receiving too much paper and travelling. In the end, though, it comes down to priorities and ensuring energy goes into effort that – to coin a phrase – really makes a difference.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for a new general manager is to focus on being effective rather than busy. The problem with rushing around is that, while it looks like the individual concerned is justifying their pay cheque, they are really not in control and so are unable to carve out the time necessary for reflection and making sense of what is going on around them.

 

Forbes.com | March 19, 2015 | Roger Trapp

Strategy: 9 Rules of Office Politics you Have to Understand to Get Ahead…Women are More Likely than Men to Avoid the Politics & Believe That If they Focus on Their Performance & Work Hard

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There isn’t any topic about the workplace that brings up more anger and frustration than office politics.  “It’s just not fair!” is what I hear over and over again when addressing this topic in presentations and workshops. Women especially find this an emotional issue.

house of cards season 2 frank underwood

Why? Because women are more likely than men to avoid the politics and believe that if they focus on their performance and work hard, they will get ahead. This avoidance, however, sets them up to be blindsided.

Unaware of the politics at play, they are often passed over for promotions and not given the resources they need to succeed. They become disillusioned and angry.

The reality, which is sometimes hard to come to terms with, is that it takes political savvy to get ahead and stay ahead.

1. You can’t escape it. It’s everywhere.

It is not uncommon for people to voice their annoyance with the politics in their company and department and seek another position to solve this problem. They make a move only to find out that politics exists everywhere. In some instances, the politics may not be obvious, but it exists in every department and every company. In fact, whenever there is more than one person, there is politics!

Think about going out for dinner with a group of friends. Who sits next to whom? Who shares the gossip with whom? In sharing this gossip, are they hoping to gain favor and influence? Are they seeking to be accepted and liked? They are perhaps using this information for “political” influence with their friends.

Have you visited your children’s classroom and observed the dynamics? Aren’t there politics at play there as well? Children seeking favor with the teacher or other students is a common behavior. They learn at an early age what it takes to have power and influence and what it takes to succeed.

The fact is you can’t escape politics. It’s everywhere and you need to deal with it at some level in order to thrive in the workplace.

 

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2. The unwritten rules often rule.

The people who try to diligently follow the rules are often very frustrated. Yes, every company has a company handbook with the formal policies, but it is the unwritten rules that are important. What’s frustrating about this fact is that these rules are not obvious. It takes both focus and intention to discover what the rules are before you break one of them by mistake.

In fact, some unwritten rules are sacred and you need to know what they are or you can step on a landmine that will sabotage your career. If you’re lucky, when you join a new company or department, a trusted colleague will fill you in as to what the real rules are.

Once you accept the fact that there are unwritten rules, you can make it your intention to uncover them. The rules often differ depending on your boss, department, and team. Therefore, you must be cognizant of your surroundings to understand how to play the game and how to win the game.

Playing ChessFlickr / Gábor

3. The rules are constantly changing.

Another challenge to office politics is that the rules are always changing. Just when you’ve figured out what rules are sacred to your boss, he/she changes the rules and what was acceptable yesterday will not help you move forward tomorrow. New leadership comes in and things shift.

People adapt to these changes and what they once considered to be important is no longer valid. It’s a full-time job staying abreast of people’s rules and the importance they attach to their rules at different points in time.

4. People who get promoted aren’t the most qualified.

This can be the most frustrating fact of all. For when you work hard and then witness other people less qualified than you getting promotions, it doesn’t seem fair. It seems that these people pay more attention to the politics than they do their jobs, so you feel justified in being upset.

In reality, however, the people who have developed their political and social capital along with great performance will always come out on top. For they have mastered how to work the system, and they have aligned themselves with people in the organization who have power and influence.

5. All decisions are influenced by politics.

Politics influences all decisions; whether it’s access to scarce resources, promotions, special bonuses and incentives, or raises. There are most certainly policies and procedures in every company but if you track how decisions are made, you will recognize that they are often influenced by politics.

Some people get special attention because they happen to be in favor with decision makers and influencers. These people are plugged into the power sources and benefit from it.

If you want to know who the people are who have influence and power, take the time to track how decisions are made. You will soon see that decision makers have a network of influencers that they consult. These informal networks of influencers have tremendous power.

golf driving rangeCindy Hughes/Shutterstock

6. There are informal networks within the company that have power and influence over all decisions.

The power and influence isn’t always determined by the organizational chart. There are informal networks, sometimes referred to as the Old Boys Club, that have the ear of senior management. They don’t necessarily occupy the top of the organizational chart, but don’t be fooled.

They still have a great deal of power over decisions that impact the direction of the company and your career. These decisions are most often made in informal settings outside the office, over drinks after work or on the golf course. That’s when the brainstorming and discussion takes place that results in major decisions.

7. The informal power networks are extremely difficult to penetrate (especially for women).

Women have traditionally been excluded from these informal networks. This fact makes it more difficult for women to impact the decision-making process. Typically, they aren’t invited to the informal meeting before the meeting or the meeting after the meeting where key decisions are made. This is certainly frustrating if you’re an outsider to these networks, because it means you can only react to decisions and not be proactive in the process.

8. There are constant shifts in power and influence.

One thing we know for sure is that change is constant. Over the course of my corporate career, I lost count of the number of mergers and acquisitions my companies endured. Each time, there was a change in leadership and direction.

Senior leaders come and go and the culture changes, the rules change, and as a result, the power and influence shifts. People gain and lose favor and the dynamics are always in flux. Yes, it’s frustrating to keep track of all this, but it’s necessary for you to survive and thrive in a politically charged environment.

9. Politics can make or break your career.

This is, of course, the most frustrating fact of all, especially for those people who believe in a meritocracy. Many of us believe that we will be rewarded for our hard work and talent. After all, we succeeded in school because of our diligence. But the rules in the workplace are different. It’s not a true meritocracy. It’s not a level playing field.

In order to be successful, you need to not only do the hard work, perhaps even extra work, but also create visibility and credibility for yourself. Otherwise, you run the risk of remaining invisible in a crowded and competitive environment.

Politics is all about relationships. It’s critical to build and nurture relationships with people who can positively impact your career. You need to build a power network by identifying and aligning yourself with those with power and influence. You also must be aware that politics rules and there are constant changes in the workplace dynamics that can trip you up if you aren’t aware of them.

The facts about office politics may be very frustrating, but they must be understood for your success. Embrace the politics, whatever they are, and pay special attention to the reality of your workplace. How are decisions made? Who influences those decisions? What are the unwritten rules? What does it take to get promoted?

Your performance and your political savvy are the key to getting ahead and staying ahead.

Want to know how savvy you are about what it takes to get ahead? Take this challenge on The Politics of Promotion.

Interested in learning how to navigate office politics? Check out my book, “The Politics of Promotion: How High Achieving Women Get Ahead and Stay Ahead.”

 
http://www.forbes.com/sites/bonniemarcus/2015/01/19/the-9-most-frustrating-facts-about-office-politics/#ixzz3UlnFbH3f

Leadership: Managers Need to Make Time for Face Time…Heavy Travel Schedules often Interfere with Necessary Interaction with Subordinates

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Alan Buckelew, chief operations officer of Carnival Corp., moved to Shanghai last September so he could help the world’s biggest cruise-ship company expand in China. He still supervises five executives at its Miami headquarters.

Directions Man

A heavy workload forced Mr. Buckelew to conduct year-end performance reviews for three of those deputies via videoconference—but he wasn’t happy about it.

“A review is probably the one time when you want to be physically present,” Mr. Buckelew says. He says he apologized to them about his Miami absence, and vows to evaluate every lieutenant face-to-face this year.

As businesses expect more senior leaders to both manage more far-flung teams and spend more time with distant clients, face time has become a precious commodity—and a source of professional agita. Technologies like videoconferencing and enterprise social networks claim to enable true connection over great distances, but the reality is often is far from perfect.

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When it comes down to it, there is still no good substitute for being in the same room with a direct report or a high-level boss, many executives say. Yet there is little consensus about how much face time it takes to manage effectively.

“Few executives can deliver business results quickly and engage their people at the same time,’’ says Matt Paese, vice president of succession management and C-suite services for leadership consultants Development Dimensions International. “But increasingly, our corporate clients try to hire or grow ones who can,” because they recognize “they can’t sustain business growth without a healthy culture.”

Hands-off leadership carries career risks. Take, for example, Louis Chenevert, who abruptly relinquished command of conglomerateUnited Technologies Corp. in November 2014 amid criticism that he was too detached from his top team.

Traveling frequently for work can leave employees without adequate feedback or a boss wondering whether you manage well, suggests Bruce Tulgan, author and chief executive of Rainmaker Thinking Inc., a management researchand training firm. “You have to be there to problem-solve.”

Ramesh Tainwala, CEO of luggage maker Samonite International S.A., says that after advancing into the top job in October, he quickly replaced its head of Latin America because the man ran the region from Denver and spent only 40 days a year in Latin America. (Samsonite previously had been based in Denver.)

“Unless you are in the field with your people, it’s difficult for you to manage it,” he adds.

The new head of Latin America is based in Chile, but is almost constantly on the road. Mr. Tainwala told him, “You need to be traveling 20 to 25 days a month” in the new role.

Mr. Tainwala himself travels 25 days a month for Samsonite from his base in Hong Kong. Since becoming CEO last fall, he has held four face-to-face sessions with his senior management team, stationed in four regions world-wide. An April 13 session in Mansfield, Mass., will be his third far from Hong Kong.

“A conference call cannot substitute for face-to-face interactions,” Mr. Tainwala continues. “When we meet in person, we almost hear each other’s thoughts.”

Yet a distant boss with a sudden yen for face time may encounter resistance from subordinates. That happened to a senior manager at an environmental consulting firm in 2012.

The manager realized she had been too hands-off with her team, missing meetings due to conflicting client demands, she told Mr. Tulgan of Rainmaker Thinking after attending his seminar about being a highly engaged boss. She soon scheduled half-hour sessions with each team member.

Several staffers bristled at the sudden outreach, complaining that she was micromanaging them, according to Mr. Tulgan. She convened a meeting to explain how her increased engagement could be helpful. “I want you to help me help you,” she said. Her team adjusted over time, and that helped her land a higher-level role at a larger rival early last year, Mr. Tulgan says.

Even when the team is nearby, isolated bosses must find ways to appear present. When Rick Russell managed 1,100 people as chief commercial officer of Sunovian Pharmaceuticals Inc., a small drug maker in Marlborough, Mass., his dozen deputies occupied the second floor at headquarters. He toiled behind closed doors in the executive suite two floors above.

After a 2012 employee survey concluded that people felt walled off from their leaders, he decided to make himself more visible. He created a second-floor satellite office surrounded by glass on three sides. Dubbed his “fishbowl,” he worked from the office nearly every Friday, with a deliberately light schedule and no executive assistant.

Wary colleagues gradually grew comfortable about dropping by, Mr. Russell recalls. The chief medical officer adopted the satellite-office idea, too.

The next year’s poll showed Sunovian employees’ trust for the top brass improved significantly.

“Fostering close ties with your lieutenants is the stuff that gets results,” says Mr. Russell, now CEO of Greer Laboratories Inc., a midsize biologics concern. “You have to rally the troops. You can’t do it from a memo.”

Mel Berning, chief revenue officer at A+E Networks in New York, takes a different approach. He travels two weeks a month for the cable network. While at headquarters, he says he tries to avoid “antiseptic” formal meetings and calls with his six direct reports.

Instead, he breezes into somebody’s office at 8:30 a.m. “You have a conversation that is less hurried and less guarded,” Mr. Berning notes. “Face-to-face encounters are so much more revealing than a text or an email.”

Inhi Cho Suh, a unit vice president at International Business Machines Corp. who manages a far-flung team, says being reachable at odd hours helps her stay involved.

During a West Coast business trip last year, she rose at 4 a.m. to join a conference call with East Coast team members as they struggled to launch an important new service. IBM unveiled the cloud-computing service in October.

Ms. Suh works hard to decide when she must deal face to face with lieutenants. For an urgent decision, she occasionally alters her schedule to meet them in person.

“It’s not about being available all the time,” observes Ms. Suh, who is on the road 40% of the time. “You have to be available when they need you.”

—Kathy Chu contributed to this article.

Write to Joann S. Lublin at joann.lublin@wsj.com

 

WSJ.com | March 17, 2015 | JOANN S. LUBLIN

 

Strategy: Here’s a Simple Exercise that Can Help you Think Through any Big Decision…It’s Respecting my Natural Inclination to Think Through the Worst that Could Happen

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Anxiety gets a bad rap. We often talk about it as something that needs to be “cured.” But according to “Anxiety Toolkit” author and psychologist Alice Boyes, that’s over-simplifying.  With a little mental finesse, anxiety can be an ally.

Bad Employee

Boyes herself uses a simple thinking exercise to put her anxious nature to good use.

“I make myself think of the worst that could happen and the best that could happen,” she tells Business Insider. “Instead of just automatically assuming that something will have a negative outcome, I’ve trained my brain to see the possibility that it might have a positive one.”

It’s a thinking exercise that dates back 2,300 years ago to the Stoic philosophers of Ancient Greece.

“It’s respecting my natural inclination to think through the worst that could happen,” Boyes says.

Imagining the worst helps her prepare. Channeling a tendency toward anxiety can be super helpful in the case of travel, she says, since she always has backup plans. For example, if a bus doesn’t come and she needs to get somewhere, she’s going to have already looked up the alternative route.

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And imagining the best helps her see options she would have otherwise skipped.

“When I started my therapy practice, I contacted some magazine editors and said, ‘Hey, I’m available if you need comments for your stories,'” she recalls. “I was thinking they would think, ‘Who is this little person contacting us?’ But it actually led to writing for magazines.”

After writing for magazines like Psychology Today, Boyes found that one of her key skills was translating the principles of therapy into advice people could use in their everyday lives. But she never would have had that realization unless she would have imagined positive outcomes — and ignored that voice in her head that said: Why am I doing this? This is silly.

By thinking through the best and worst outcomes, you work with your emotional tendencies in a constructive way:

• If you’re a naturally anxious person, it will make use of the tendency to plan while training you to imagine more positive outcomes.

• If you’re a naturally optimistic person, it will make use of that dreaminess while keeping you prepared for what might happen. 

It’s about making use of all of both styles.

“All of these emotions have a positive role in people’s lives,” Boyes says.

Strategy: The Shocking Differences in Basic Body Language Around the World…The Body Speaks Volumes. But what it Says Depends on the Culture you’re In.

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The body speaks volumes.  But what it says depends on the culture you’re in. Facial expressions, gestures, mannerisms, and degree of eye contact vary greatly across countries.

playmobil-lego-handshake-hand-shake

For example, “Arms, which are used little by Nordics during conversation, are an indispensable element in one’s communicative weaponry in Italy, Spain, and South America,” writes Richard Lewis in “When Cultures Collide: Leading Across Cultures.”

The cultural differences in body language are vast — there are entire books dedicated exclusively to hand gestures — but we’ve selected a few to create a simple, body-language etiquette guide that highlights some surprising differences, thanks to information from Lewis’ book and the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA):

Body Language Infographic_02

Strategy: 3 Ways the Best Leaders Deal with Change…Some People just Can’t Accept Change. Others Thrive on It.

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Some people just can’t accept change. Others thrive on it.  Some hunker down and try to avoid it. Others face it head on, embrace it and climb up the next rung of the ladder because of it.

steve jobs

The news of change provides them the incentive and the energy to prevail over some challenge. Employers generally want to hire and keep this type of person.

There is nothing more constant in our lives than change. It’s dynamic.

Change simply means that something is different than it was a minute, a day, a week ago. Some trigger has modified the details of your life, the organization you work for, even global economic conditions.

Most all news, tweets, synchronous viral updates — which report change — are typically bad news. When have you read something on your device that was good news?

The fact is the overwhelming amount of change going on is actually good. It just doesn’t get spread around like its opposite. Fear is also a virus carrier, and it breeds on the dark side of things.

Edmund Burke wrote: “We must all obey the great law of change. It’s the most powerful law of nature.”

Change usually results in some kind of upheaval in our lives. Someone will say “I didn’t see that coming” — like a divorce, or getting fired, for example. Another might be laid off from a job and feel like they are the victim of change.

But change is actually just energy, and its positive or negative force could evolve with the personal perspective you have on it. For example, as horrific as it sounds and feels, getting fired could ultimately be positive.

The fact is, the more technology-managed our world, the faster the rate of change.

Change can be caused by evolving external forces, such as the rise of ISIS. Most people did nothing to start this phase of terror perpetrated on the world. But that doesn’t mean they can avoid its ramifications.

And then some change is fostered internally, by the change in the way you see your life going, by new perspectives on your employment, education, relationships, and your health.

Leaders are people who don’t just learn to live with or manage change — they actually create change and help others successfully navigate it.

steve jobsChange is disruptive and can even be turbulent — especially when it hits close to home and plays with our emotions. But then leadership today is all about managing disruption. And disruption is an hourly occurrence.

Here are three ways to come out as the victor over change.

1. Recognize that change is a permanent fixture of our economy and our lives.

Somehow identifying it this way takes the edge off of change. President Kennedy wrote: “Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are sure to miss the future.”

john f kennedeyUniversalImagesGroup/Getty Images

Change is always around the corner. You don’t need to live in fear of it but you need to welcome it, even encourage it. This is what smart business leaders do to anticipate changes in market conditions that can effect everything from the cost of financing because interest rates fluctuate — or the loss of sales because consumer trends evolve.

Smart business leaders know they have to reinvent their business model every eighteen months or face the consequences of unseen change.

I remember my discussions with the brilliant “car guy” Bob Lutz, who transformed Chrysler and later General Motors by embracing changes in the auto-buying public. He told me that he tried to change the culture at these companies to turn them into entertainment firms father than transportation manufacturers because this was the change customers were demanding. And look at how American cars have come roaring back.

2. Listen carefully to catch the change behind the change.

Change can be tricky and misleading. Be careful not to make a superficial translation of some trend only to be led down some dead end. Not all change is what it seems on the surface.

If you don’t truly get under the change and analyze it before you react to it, you may miss something — like the critical time to quit your job and move on.

Since what I deliver for companies and nonprofits is growth, change is both a cause and a lever for the growth I am attempting to produce. At least 50% of the time there is resistance to change or what is called the “RC Factor.”

Some people cling to their old beliefs until they are torn away from them and forced to change. Sometimes people want change but they want it without changing! How much growth do you think that produces?

I remember working for one company that completely missed a major change in the market conditions that rendered their products obsolete. They just could not accept the fact that people were no longer buying from them — they knew better!

Of course that is not how it works. The customer is king. And the king will lead you to revise your products and services if you will only listen carefully enough to what the market is telling you.

3. Impersonalize change.

You are not the only person in the world affected by change. You may be stuck in a trap where you think that you caused the change in your life and that it is harmful to you alone. Taking responsibility for personal behavior is always the right thing to do. Obsessing about your own personal problems caused by change it is not.

Most often change actually happens just because world beliefs, politics, economic and social conditions are dynamic and they are constantly acting and reacting upon each other to cause the change that filters down to the individual.

It’s also important to accept that the world is in general on a course of individual and collective improvement — even though there may be dips into brutality, accidents, weather catastrophes — living conditions the world over improve every day.

More people are being educated, fewer people live in poverty, there are more cures for diseases. Longevity is increasing and that itself shows a consolidation of progress.

Jim Rohm wrote that “Life does not get better by chance. It gets better by change.”

What I try to do is to balance what I hear about conditions in general. I try to not be influenced by one speaker or leader. I attempt to think for myself and form my own opinions about change. Then I try to use it to my advantage and play a game to see if I can guess when and where it will appear next.

James Rosebush was a Reagan White House official and is now the CEO and founder of GrowthStrategy.us. His leadership column appears on Business Insider every Tuesday.
http://www.businessinsider.com/3-ways-the-best-leaders-deal-with-change-2015-3#ixzz3Ueylz0pE

Strategy: How To Make Your Own Luck…So, How can you get the Luck of the Irish on Your Side, Year Round?

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Today on St. Patrick’s Day, everyone celebrates the Luck of the Irish. On the other 364 days each year, the rest of us (without this Irish heritage) seem to lament the few who are always lucky, catching big breaks out of nowhere and being in the right place at the right time.

 

 

However, the reality is simple – few of us are actually luckier than anyone else; some people are just more prepared than others. There’s an old saying that, “when the student is ready, the teacher will emerge.” The same principle applies to opportunity: the more prepared you are, the more “lucky” you get.  So, how can you get the luck of the Irish on your side, year round? Start doing the things you need to do NOW, so that when the opportunity comes up, you’re ready to seize it.

Know your elevator pitch cold. If you EVER meet someone who asks you what you do or what you’re working on, there should be no hesitation. Your 20-second description of your startup’s mission should be as ingrained in your brain as your own name. If it’s not, practice. It will feel awkward to say the same thing repeatedly (your shower or car are perfect places to do so), but you need to develop that muscle memory. You never know whom you’ll bump into, in line at a coffee shop, at a friend’s house for dinner, or even in an airplane seat next to you. Bonus points: always have business cards handy – should be an obvious point, but just in case.

 

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Do the job that you want, not just the job that you have. It’s great if your aspirations are to move up from junior developer to a senior one, or from an entry-level sales associate to a team leader. Keep dreaming big – that’s the first step. Now, in practicality, do your job and rock it out. And then, step it up.

Take it upon yourself to solve a problem, lead a project, or even develop something on the side. No matter what it is, take the initiative to demonstrate that you’re capable of a role above your current station. When it’s time for leaders to determine who’s the best fit for a promotion, it’s hard to ignore the person whose actions spoke louder than words.

Always be learning. Read every article you can get your hands on. Attend every industry-specific conference to can afford. Study under a trusted mentor and expert. Have lunch with a professor doing research in your field. Investing in yourself is one of the best investments you can possibly make.

No matter your trade, there’s an infinite amount of content that’s available for consumption – and you never really know where inspiration will strike. In this case, the more “at bats” you take by consuming that much more information, the better your chances of being on the cutting edge, transforming your field, and riding the prized first-to-market wave.

Today and every day, remember that the harder you work, the “luckier” you’ll become. So, in order to make your own luck, just out-hustle everyone else.

Josh Linkner is the author of two New York Times Bestsellers, “Disciplined Dreaming” and “The Road to Reinvention.” For more info, check out joshlinkner.com or follow him on Twitter @joshlinkner.

Strategy: Science says These 9 Tactics will Help you Win Any Argument…Arguments aren’t Logical. To Win them, you Have to Understand People

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Arguments aren’t logical. To win them, you have to understand people. We’ve scoured the research and compiled the following science-backed tactics that will help you win any argument.

 Be civil.

Be civil.

REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

Contrary to what your debate coach said, arguments aren’t rational.

So respect the other person’s perspective, no matter how ridiculous it sounds.

“When people have their self-worth validated in some way, they tend to be more receptive to information that challenges their beliefs,” University of California, Irvine, political psychologist Peter Ditto tells New York Magazine.

With that emotional connection established, you can then start getting logical.

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Don’t try to ‘win’ the argument.

Don't try to 'win' the argument.

John Moore / Getty

Attacking someone’s ideas puts them into fight-or-flight mode.

Once they’re on edge, there will be no chance of persuading them of anything.

So if you want to convince someone of something, practice “extreme agreement”: Take your conversational partner’s views and advance them to their logical — and perhaps absurd — conclusion.

Don’t ask why. Ask how.

Don't ask why. Ask how.

Star Wars / Lucasfilm

In a 2013 study, University of Colorado psychologist Philip M. Fernbach separated people with extreme political views into two groups — people who had to explain why their opinions were right, and those who were tasked with explaining how their ideals could be turned into actual policy. 

The result?

Folks who gave their reasons for being right were just as convinced of their convictions after the experiment as they were beforehand. But the people who had to explain the mechanics of implementation had softer views.

Follow up.

Follow up.

Justin Sullivan / Getty

Pixar cofounder Ed Catmull knew Steve Jobs for 26 years.

They had some arguments.

He avoided having shouting arguments with Jobs, and instead employed a persistent method: 

I would say something to him and he would immediately shoot it down because he could think faster than I could. … I would then wait a week. … I’d call him up and I give my counter argument to what he had said and he’d immediately shoot it down. So I had to wait another week, and sometimes this went on for months.

It would resolve in one of three ways: Jobs would admit that Catmull was right; Catmull would realize that Jobs was right; or Jobs wouldn’t respond to Catmull, in effect giving his approval.

Ask open-ended questions.

Ask open-ended questions.

Guian Bolisay / flickr

If you’re in a spat with your spouse, couples psychologist John Gottman says to ask questions that allow him or her to explain where they’re at. 

Examples include:

• How would you change it if you had all the money in the world?

• What do you want your life to be like in three years?

• How do you like your job?

It works in arguments at work, too — open-ended questions help transform competitive interactions into cooperative ones.

Be confident.

Be confident.

John Parra/Getty Images

People don’t listen to the smartest person in the room.

A 2013 study found that they listen to whoever is acting like they know what’s right.

University of Utah management professor Bryan Bonner says that people unconsciously look for “messy proxies for expertise” like extroversion, gender, race, or confidence level instead of paying attention to what people are actually saying.

“We’d hope that facts would be the currency of influence,” Bonner told the Wall Street Journal. “But often, we guess at who’s the expert — and we’re wrong.”

Use graphs.

Use graphs.

Chris Potter

A new study from Cornell University researchers Aner Tal and Brian Wansink shows that people trust scientists. Thus, doing things that make you appear scientific — like using a graph — makes you more trustworthy.

“The prestige of science appears to grant persuasive power even to such trivial science-related elements as graphs,” Tal and Wansink write.

Demonstrate that other people agree.

Demonstrate that other people agree.

Youtube

In “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion,” Robert Cialdini says that “social proof” is one of the best tactics for getting people to see things your way. It exploits the well-documented tendency for people to conform to others’ opinions, even if they’re strange.

According to social proof, we assume what other people are doing is the correct behavior in a situation. It’s the reason why long lines in front of a restaurant make the food inside seem so tantalizing. It’s also why having a celebrity endorsement — like William Shatner — is such an effective marketing tool.

Go beyond anecdotes.

Go beyond anecdotes.

Shutterstock

A story about how your uncle or your college roommate eats loads of butter and still stays fit is an anecdote.

But if you want to be taken seriously, you need to use data, the kind that’s arrived at through peer-reviewed studies with large sample sizes.

Better yet, go for consensus.

“Scientists often use ‘consensus’ as the ultimate argument-winner, and for good reason,” Jacquelyn Gill writes on Contemplative Mammoth. “Scientific consensus is the collected opinions of all scientists, and not just the one you’re arguing with. There can be one or two scientists who disagree (just like there are a handful of people who don’t believe the Holocaust happened), but if the vast majority of scientists have reached consensus, it means that there is so much evidence in support of an idea that it’s basically a guaranteed thing, based on state-of-the-art knowledge.”

 

Businessinsider.com | March 16, 2015 | Drake Baer 

http://www.businessinsider.com/science-backed-tactics-to-win-argument-2015-3?op=1#ixzz3UazzFDkq

Leadership: Culture: Why It’s The Hottest Topic In Business Today…No Matter if You’re a CEO, HR Executive, Manager, or Team Leader – Culture Really Matters. Consider it One of your Most Powerful Tools for Business Success

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Last year Merriam Webster’s dictionary stated that ”culture” was the most popular word of the year. Well, it has now become one of the most important words in corporate board rooms, and for good reason.

Change

We have a retention crisis. New Deloitte researchshows that culture, engagement, and employee retention are now the top talent challenges facingbusiness leaders. More than half business leaders rate this issue “urgent” – up from only around 20% last year.

What’s going on? It’s very simple: as the economy picks up steam (unemployment now below 5.5%), employees have more bargaining power than ever before. Thanks to social websites like LinkedIn LNKD -2.74%, Glassdoor, and Indeed, a company’s employment brand is now public information so if you’re not a great place to work, people find out fast. This shifts power into the hands of job-seekers.

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And many companies have work to do. Gallup’s latest research shows that only 31% of employees are engaged at work (51% are disengaged and 17.5% actively disengaged). Analysis of the Glassdoor database shows that the average employee gives their company a C+ (3.1 out of 5) when asked whether they would recommend their company to a friend (Bersin by Deloitte research with Glassdoor).

We have arrived in a world of “haves” and “have-nots” when it comes to attracting and engaging top talent.

Let me cite some examples:

I recently met with one of the world’s biggest industrial manufacturers on the east coast and they lamented losing top aerospace engineers to Google GOOGL -1.48%. They’re scratching their heads to figure out how to prevent more top engineers from leaving.
A large well-known Silicon Valley company considering a major facelift of its corporate campus to attract young people. They’re not sure if it will work or not, but they feel they have no choice. Here there is a war to build the “best workplace in the world” – free food, unlimited vacation, yoga classes, beer bashes, and bright open offices are everywhere. (Check out Google’s new space age campus design.)
Most financial services companies I meet with tell me they are struggling to hire top people. While the industry is still popular with MBAs, the recession damaged the reputation for this industry and it’s just starting to recover.

Companies that focus on culture are becoming icons for job seekers:

  • Fortune’ Best Companies happen to be many of the same companies listed in Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work and also LinkedIn’s Most In-Demand Employers. This shows that companies with strong positive cultures (Fortune and Glassdoor’s list is based on employee surveys) are now the most in-demand.  So the “culture winners” are winning bigger.
  • Younger companies that focus on culture see a huge payoff. HubSpot, a growing New England tech firm focused on its culture (around 1,000 employees), has Glassdoor ratings of 4.6, far above the industry average. They give their staff free books and education and believe so strongly in transparency that they post their board meeting notes and culture manifesto online.
  • NetFlix’s culture manifesto ”freedom with responsibility” is one of the most popular documents on the internet, 11 million+ viewers. Everyone wants to copy it.
  • Value statements have popped up everywhere. Zappos’ cultural values focus on innovation, Quicken Loans  uses its colorful “ISMS” to guide values (“call back every client the same day” is one of their values), Google has its 10 ”truths” (focus on the user is one), RW Baird has its “ unique culture,” Salesforce focuses on community, and it goes on and on.
  • Culture-driven companies explicitly put their people first. Wegmans, the #7 best place to work in the Fortune list, reset business goals just to create the jobs and career growth they want for their people. “Take care of your people and they will take care of your customers,” as the saying goes.
  • Traditional companies like Aetna are now heavily focused on culture. Recently the New York Times published an article about Aetna’s CEO Mark Bertolini. He has raised wages, improved health benefits, and introduced yoga and mindfulness training to his entire company to improve retention and culture in the call centers. Their $100M + turnover problem is rapidly going away and he claims to have already improved the bottom line by 3-4 %.

Look at how office space is now part of building a great culture. Fortune’s new “25 coolest offices of the 100 Best Companies” shows how most of these great places to work are actually great PLACES to work. Flexibility, entertainment, and bright colorful offices and art make these companies a fun place to work.

People now believe that culture has a direct impact on financial performance. I just talked with two industry analysts who read Glassdoor comments before they publish analyst reports.  Both told me they use this data to understand employee sentiment read comments about the CEO as part of their core research. It also helps them compare competitors.

As the saying goes, “Culture eats Strategy for Lunch.”  (And free lunch is now part of the culture.)

Ok it’s a Popular Topic. What is culture anyway?

Culture is a big and somewhat vague term. Some define it as “what happens when nobody is looking.”

In reality, it’s much more complex. Culture is the set of behaviors, values, artifacts, reward systems, and rituals that make up your organization. You can “feel” culture when you visit a company, because it is often evident in people’s behavior, enthusiasm, and the space itself.

I visit a lot of companies and I can often sense the culture in a few minutes. Are people busy and working with customers? Or are they quietly working alone? Do they get in early and leave late? Or does the parking lot empty at 4:30? Is the office beautiful and inspiring with values and icons around, or is it messy and busy? Is there a sense of order or a sense of family?  All these clues help diagnose culture.

The Competing Values Framework, by Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn, is a terrific textbook on organizational culture. After years of research the authors grouped organizational cultures into four types and their research shows that most teams fall into one of these four types. You can diagnose your culture using tools like theirs (and others) and it will help you align your values and hiring to the culture you want to build.

competing-values-framework

Our research shows that culture and employee engagement are tightly linked. When you clearly define and guard your culture, people know what to expect and feel comfortable. One CEO I interviewed told me that “calling people back the same day” was part of his culture – so he monitors that behavior and it makes the organization a customer-centric organization.

When I asked the SVP of HR at a financial institution how they guard their culture she said “people who don’t work as a team just don’t like it here. They leave.” Culture is like a flywheel: it gets stronger the more you reinforce it.

As a company grows or acquires another company, the culture will often shift. IBM has been through many culture changes over the years, and one can trace them to major transitions in the business. Sometimes an acquisition will damage a well-honed culture, so watch out here. (When HP acquired Compaq, for example, a culture of engineering quality was mixed with a culture of low-cost production, causing a historic challenge.)

Many HR and management practices will drive or support culture. Do you value employee development? Are people empowered to take charge or do they follow the rules? How are people promoted and why? The Simply Irresistible model describes many of the factors. If you’re focused on culture, we encourage managers and HR teams to think about the “total employee experience”: everything from the coffee in the coffee machine to the quality of management plays a role.

simply irresistble

How Do We Build and Manage Great Culture?

Ultimately culture is driven by leadership. How leaders behave, what they say, and what they value drives culture.

I proved this myself: I analyzed the Glassdoor database and found that the factor most highly correlated with an individual’s recommendation of their company as a place to work was “quality and trust in leadership.”

So the selection of leaders, development of leaders, and the coaching of leaders are all critical to building the right culture. Companies that focus on building great leaders spend almost 3X the average on leadership development, and they get a tremendous return for it.

Once culture is established and communicated, it becomes a tool to screen candidates. Zappos uses culture as a screening tool for all hires, by trying to see if they are “wacky.” Southwest Airlines reinforces its culture of fun by asking candidates to tell a joke. These companies realize that some people just won’t fit, regardless of their pedigree.

When I asked the SVP of HR at a financial institution how they guard their culture she said “people who don’t work as a team just don’t like it here. They leave.” Culture is like a flywheel: it gets stronger the more you reinforce it.

culture
Culture Drives Employment Brand: Source: Liz Pellet, Fellow, Johns Hopkins University

If you want to improve your culture, look carefully at how you coach and evaluate your people. Do you believe in “forced ranking?” or “up or out?” That process in itself creates a type of culture – one most companies are moving away from. Today more than 60% of the companies we surveyed are changing how they evaluate performance because they want to drive empowerment and innovation into their organization. We call performance management the “secret ingredient” to building a highly engaged culture.

The ISMS Culture Book of Quicken Loans
The ISMS Culture Book of Quicken Loans, one of the best culture-building artifacts I’ve seen!

A New Industry of Culture and Engagement Tools

An industry of new culture diagnostic and feedback tools is emerging. Historically culture assessment has been a niche market of small psychology firms (companies like Human Synergistics, Dennison Consulting, and Senn Delaney have been around for years). Now, driven by the need to engage and attract people, this market is going mainstream. New, mobile and real-time tools to assess culture, collect regular and real-time feedback, and analyze employee sentiment are disrupting the $billion market for employee engagement and culture surveys.

Some of the new vendors include CultureAmp, TinyHR, BlackbookHR, Achievers, Globoforce, BetterCompany.co, Glint.io, OfficeVibe, Waggl, Canary, and dozens of others now offer real-time engagement and employee feedback tools to help you better understand and improve your workplace environment. Deloitte has a new culture assessment tool which is gaining great momentum. (Read Why Companies Fail to Engage Today’s Workforce for more information on this new market.)

Keeping it Simple: Part of Building a Great Culture

Remember also that great cultures are easy to understand. So keep it simple. If you can’t write your values and culture down in a few words, it’s probably too complex to understand.

simplification

We believe simplification is becoming the next big thing in business. More than 60% of the companies we surveyed told us that their employees feel “overwhelmed” by the volume of activity and messages they get at work. So part of your cultural facelift should also be “decluttering” of the workplace.

GE recently launched a major new strategy to simplify its business: the company is teaching managers how to focus, showing people how to spend more time with customers, and simplifying its back office processes. SAP did the same thing, and saw employee engagement rise by almost 30%.

Simplification can also improve the culture of compliance. New research by Deloitte Australia shows that financial services firms that focus on culture instead of compliance systems have better compliance. The research believes $240 billion is wasted on overly-complex compliance systems which could be replaced by a “culture of compliance.”

Great corporate cultures have always thrived on simplicity. Remember the mantra at IBM in the 1970s and 1980s? It was very simple: “Think.” The Nordstrom’s rule? ”Use good judgement.” These are simple statements that help people focus. When the rules and values are simple, we remember them.

One of the 10 ”Isms” in Quicken Loans’ manifesto is “ keep it simple.” Don’t make things complicated and don’t design for the “edge cases.”

Design thinking, agile and distributed management is all a part of simplifying work and improving corporate culture. This is an area where HR has work to do (read The Decluttering of Human Resources for more).

Ok I get it. Culture Matters. What should I do?

The prescription is pretty simple. Do you take culture seriously? Do you understand and monitor your culture? Does leadership use culture as a way to communicate values and strategy? Are you investing adequately in your people programs?

There are many role models to follow: Southwest Airlines’ culture of customer service and fun (elegantly described in The Southwest Way); Apple Inc.’s culture of innovation and technology elegance; Google’s culture of focusing on the user; even the US Post Office’s culture of service and reliability. Most of the companies in the Fortune Best Places to Work have a strong focus on culture – usually embodied by the CEO.

Your culture, like your strategy, is unique to your organization. It builds over time and is often hard to change. And when things don’t seem to be going well, turn back the clock. Sometimes the culture is what changed: remember what made your company great in the first place.

Finally, remember that culture lets you focus on your purpose and mission. As Joey Reiman describes in his book The Story of Purpose, people are not intrinsically motivated by profit or market share – it is purpose and values that bring us to work every day.

The Purpose of Work is to Work on Purpose. Meaning makes money., by Joey Reiman

No matter if you’re a CEO, HR executive, manager, or team leader – culture really matters. Consider it one of your most powerful tools for business success.

—–

About the Author: Josh Bersin is a leading analyst in HR, talent, leadership, and HR technology. He is also founder and Principal of Bersin by Deloitte, a leading research and advisory firm.

Forbes.com | March 13, 2015 | Josh Bersin

Strategy: Only Idiots don’t Play Office Politics — Here’s How to Master the Game…Don’t Answer Questions If you Don’t Know Why They are Being Asked

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The idea of playing politics gets a bad rap.  Often you’ll hear people say, “Oh, you’re just playing politics with that decision” in a context that usually means, “You don’t really believe what you’re doing, but you’re doing it in order to avoid doing the right thing.”

House of cards

Success in business requires you to be an expert at getting what you want.

The truth about success in business, sports, or any other venture is that it requires you to be an expert at navigating the people part of getting what you want — in other words, playing politics.

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You can’t avoid playing politics.

Especially if you care about being successful.

If you’re not good at playing politics, you’ll find yourself frustrated and angry because of how ineffective you are. Your good ideas don’t get listened to. Your good plans don’t get taken seriously. Your good intentions and hard work ethic never seem to get the attention they deserve.

Maybe it’s time for you to figure out how to play better politics. Here are a few helpful ideas to get you started:

  1. It’s OK to point the finger as long as you’re honest when it comes to pointing the finger back at yourself when appropriate.
  2. Someone else acting inappropriately isn’t a valid argument for why you shouldn’t get in trouble when you do the same.
  3. If those around you don’t know what you’re doing, their natural assumption is that you’re not doing anything at all.
  4. A little bit of respect and humility goes a long way in your relationships with other people.
  5. It’s no one else’s fault that you’re not as successful as you want to be, so stop taking your frustration out on them.
  6. Small details left unresolved always become the huge obstacles that eventually bring about your demise.
  7. Don’t answer questions if you don’t know why they are being asked.
  8. If you’re not sure what your value is, don’t expect to be satisfied by the compensation other people give you.
  9. Fewer meetings and more short, personal conversations are the secret to getting people to see it your way.
  10. How you say what you need to say is more important than what you actually say.

You need to master the game.

The truth about playing politics is that you don’t hate the game itself. You just don’t like it when the game is played poorly.

You don’t like being lied to. You don’t like being talked down to. You don’t like not knowing where you stand.

So don’t be that guy who does that to others around you. Get better at playing the game.

Businessinsider.com | March 11, 2015 | 

http://danwaldschmidt.com/2015/03/business/only-idiots-dont-play-politics#ixzz3UMHF7Djz