Here’s a question for you. What would you say is the single most important factor for success in the business world? I would describe this as the X factor in our equation of you to the power X. The power X??? What interesting thought …what is the decider/determining factor in our success… Over the next…
Think.Blog
Self-Awareness
Self Awareness is a crucial quality for effective leadership. When leaders possess self-awareness, they have a clear understanding of their strengths, weaknesses, values, emotions, and impact on others. This awareness enables them to make better decisions, build stronger relationships, and inspire and motivate their teams more effectively. Here are some Reflection and introspection: Self-aware leaders…
How to have a courageous conversation?
Courageous conversations are discussions that involve addressing sensitive, challenging, or controversial topics with openness, honesty, and respect. These conversations often involve taking risks, stepping outside of comfort zones, and engaging in dialogue that can be uncomfortable or emotionally charged. The purpose of courageous conversations is to foster understanding, promote growth, and build stronger relationships. Here…
Learning to rumble
In the context of Brené Brown’s work, “rumble” refers to the process of engaging in difficult conversations or addressing challenging situations with openness, vulnerability, and a commitment to finding a resolution or understanding. The concept of rumble is derived from Brown’s research on vulnerability, shame, and courage. Here are some key aspects of the rumble…
Psychological safety
Psychological safety refers to the shared belief within a group or team that it is safe to take interpersonal risks, such as expressing ideas, asking questions, and sharing concerns, without fear of negative consequences to one’s self-image, status, or career. It is a critical aspect of creating a supportive and high-performing work or social environment….
The Four Stages of Psychological Safety
In 1986, the Chernobyl power plant suffered a major disaster that directly killed 31 people and is estimated to have indirectly killed over 4000. While the plant itself possessed an inherently unsafe design, the Russian culture, at the time, did not encourage the raising of concerns or mistakes. During a simulated power shutdown, operators who…
Johari Window
History It is necessary to improve self-awareness and personal development among individuals when they are in a group. The ‘Johari’ window model is a convenient method used to achieve this task of understanding and enhancing communication between the members in a group. American psychologists Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham developed this model in 1955. The…
How to Create an Environment of Psychological Safety
Psychological safety is a crucial factor in creating a healthy and productive team environment. Here are some steps that can help create psychological safety on a team: Encourage open communication: Build trust: Emphasize the importance of learning and growth: Promote inclusivity: Lead by example: Set clear expectations: Address conflicts: Creating psychological safety on a team…
I am Vector Question Challenge
Join me over the next month as we reflect on our year -through questions for each day of December… Question of the day: If you had to describe your year in 3 words, what would they be? Answer in the comments section below…..
I am Vector Thinking Tool
Being Resourceful and Innovative
When you look at the history of Innovation – these two names are bound to come up – Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. Now I don’t know about you – but when I look at this picture, I wish I was in that conversation. I wish to hear the words exchanged between these two friends…
Commitment to your Success Journey
Hey there, So as we have been working through the Leaderbytes on Success – I referred to a Homework Piece that you would need to engage in… Your Success Manifesto here: I commit myself today to being successful. I recognize that success is a process, not a destination. I will discover my dream and do…
What it really means to trust
Brené Brown on What it Really Means to Trust Brené Brown explains the complexity of trust—how it’s gained, how it’s lost, and why trusting ourselves is so important. BRAVING: An Acronym for Building Trust To talk about trust, Brown uses the acronym BRAVING which stands for: boundaries, reliability, accountability, the vault, integrity, non-judgment, and generosity….
Success Series
Success is an elusive thing!!! Listen to today’s LeaderByte on unpacking what true success is for each of us!! Download Your Complimentary E-Book Here “The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.“Carl Rogers You can see by the definition above why success is a journey rather…
The Five Behviours of Cohesive Team
Summary Patrick Lencioni’s 2014 book “Five Dysfunctions of a Team” offered a useful fable about an executive taking over a company (Decision Tech) and her challenges creating a cohesive executive team. The novel is an easy read with recognisable characters. Everyone will relate to the scenario of a team of leaders that struggle to be…
Mentorship
29 Questions to ask your mentor in your next meeting. What are good questions to ask a mentor? Every mentor/mentee relationship is different so don’t take a cookie-cutter approach. Prepare questions that feel right for you and that you think will help build a successful mentoring relationship. But, to help get you started, we’ve put…
To thine own self be true …
Wonderful words by Shakespeare indeed. But gosh – I am not sure whether like me you struggle to know “thine self”. Today we turn this blog focus around a bit!!! I focussed on Engagement for the past 4 months and the next 4 are deeper to this beautiful chasm called YOU!!! I say Chasm –…
How Managers Impact Engagement
We have a saying – Employees join companies and quit managers. When it comes to engagement and retention, managers are the key pivot point for employees. Gallup has found that 70 percent of the variance in engagement relates to the relationship between a manager and his or her team. Let’s explore this further. An engagement problem is typically…
Engagement Trends
After all this time collecting valuable data on the engagement trends in an organization, what are we finding? Let’s dive in. Overall Engagement Trends When we measure engagement, the results usually look like a bell curve. The Actively Disengaged and Somewhat Disengaged employees fall on the left side of the bell curve, and the Actively Engaged and Engagedare over on the right….
Understanding Instrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation in the Workplace
This past month we’ve talked all about the brain, emotions, and our natural and intense need to establish safe and secure relationships both at home and at work. For our last post in this series, I’m taking on an important topic when it comes to understanding behavior: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Motivation isn’t about inspirational…
Adult Attachment Theory: The Science of Employee Engagement
Understanding Engagement Early man discovered a harsh reality when it comes to survival in a primitive era – the best defense in a hostile and violent environment wasn’t a spear or a shield – it was a clan or a tribe. For hundreds of thousands of years our predecessors lived every day with a simple,…
The Role of the Limbic System at Work
What do you think drives employee behavior? Pay raises? Happy hours? Free coffee? It’s possible these perks can boost your team’s moment-to-moment happiness, and they are certainly nice benefits. But, when it comes to getting work done – and retaining your best performers – will lattes influence their long-term behavior? The answer is no. What…
Leadership Challenges: Leading with Intention
All month I’ve been working through challenges managers bring to me during my bootcamp and workshop sessions. Today’s challenge is all about how to lead with intention to create an engaged culture at work that doesn’t solely rely on the leader but rather creates a culture of engagement throughout the entire company. It starts with…
Leadership Challenges: Leading a Multigenerational Workforce
Over the past few weeks we’ve touched on challenges all leaders face. Today I’m tackling an issue I’ve seen pop up over and over again lately (and one that we will continue to face!): how to lead a multigenerational workforce. I get questions about this from managers all the time. “How do I calibrate my leadership…
Leadership Challenges: Accountability
This month I’m taking on your biggest leadership challenges. Last week we discussed creating a retention strategy to keep your top performing employees. This week I’m touching on accountability, an issue that comes up frequently during my work with CEOs. Understanding to whom (or to what!) your employees feel accountable to will help you in…
Leadership Challenges: Retention
This month I’m tackling the topic of leadership challenges. Leaders face challenges at every turn. Beyond the external challenges like increased competition, changing best practices, and new markets, leaders also face pressures inside the company – everything from retaining your best employees to ensuring your entire senior leadership team models the values of your company….
The Four Most Important Lessons Regarding Core Values for Your Company
Every company has a set of values that impact the daily behavior of employees. Company values can either be nice, inspirational words on the office wall with little to no impact on employees’ day to day, or they can represent the true embodiment of what a company culture stands for. Leaders that heed these four…
Correcting a Disengaged Culture
Do your employees exhibit low levels of trust and reliability? Do they produce poor quality work, attempt to evade responsibility, or make excuses for bad outcomes? If so, the problem goes beyond your employees – it’s time to step back and pay attention to your whole work culture. Widespread disengagement is a result of a dysfunctional culture in…
Learning a Relational Leadership Mentality
In his seminal book Instant Replay, about the World Champion Green Bay Packers under legendary coach Vince Lombardi in the 1960s, Jerry Kramer describes Lombardi’s leadership. He was authoritarian, mercurial, and endlessly demanding. Despite a roster of Hall of Fame players, everyone knew who the boss was. Players feared Lombardi and his tirades and worked tirelessly…
Four Factors That Motivate Your Employees Daily
Every employment comes with a paycheck; it’s the very definition of a job. But as long as employees are fairly compensated, survey after survey shows that money is not one of the top workplace concerns. Far more impactful in today’s workplace are a number of workplace conditions that could be labeled as quality of life on…
Subtle Signs of a Toxic Company Culture
The marketing guru Stan Phelps likes to say that it’s hard to see the label from inside the can. He’s talking about having perspective in a marketing sense, but the same holds true inside a company’s workplace. When things go wrong, it’s often senior leaders who are the last to know. Most organizations don’t set…
Breaking Down the Corporate Hierarchy
n his seminal 1989 study, The Iceberg of Ignorance, consultant Sidney Yoshida found that top management and middle management are aware of less than one-tenth of front-line problems, whereas supervisors are aware of three-quarters of them, and front-line employees know about all of them. This is probably not shocking to you. In many organizations, the lowest-paid…
Culture Problem
How to Know When Your Company’s Problems Lie in Corporate Culture There is a pervasive feeling among your managers that their frontline employees aren’t invested in the company’s goals and objectives. Your office empties at 5:00 p.m. and doesn’t fill again until 9:00 a.m. the next day. People trickle into meetings five or ten minutes…
Absenteeism
Absenteeism in the Workplace Has Tangible Costs Absenteeism bears high costs for companies due to lost productivity and disruption to teams and project deadlines. Employees fail to show up for a multitude of reasons, some more legitimate than others. One key reason is a toxic work environment that makes coming to work depressing, onerous, even…
William Kahn: Father of Employee Engagement
In 1990, when Jack Welch was leading General Electric to ever-greater heights by preaching the power of firing 10 percent of his employees each year, Dr. William A. Kahn advocated a different approach. Kahn—a professor of organizational behavior at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business—published groundbreaking research in the prestigious Academy of Management Journal in which he…
You Must Measure Employee Engagement
It’s well accepted in business that what gets measured gets done. Organizational leaders can talk all day about employee engagement, but measuring the organization’s progress brings into stark relief whether those efforts are working—providing a road map to what should come next. When an organization measures its employees’ engagement, it signals to the staff that…