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April 28, 2016

How Leaders Should Handle Company Downturn

Effectively dealing with challenges or struggles when a business is undergoing a massive economic or structural downturn is a incredibly difficult task for leaders regardless of industry. To create and maintain long-term success, be sure to follow these steps to stabilize workflow internally, while also producing an atmosphere that is conducive to further business engagements.

Along with utilizing emotional intelligence throughout these various processes, using a concept titled “strategic empathy,” allows leaders to project an interesting balance of both the individual employee and the overarching business goals. Emotional intelligence is also a key component to remember as you maintain business relationships with employees, upper management officials and employees who report directly to you.

leadershipAppreciate honesty
Even if sometimes honesty in the workplace can be frowned upon, as your company undergoes this transition, be sure to value and highlight the importance of truthful advice, thoughts, or ideas during meetings. Although you must listen at every level, the best leaders look carefully for that middle ground or middle manager that deconstruct whatever is going on internally is a great way to move forward and grow to better times.

Anxiety
In addition to leaders being anxious about the company’s future, keep in mind that employees of all levels are aware of the business’ current state. While there is a huge possibility you may be experiencing a huge amount of anxiety, take a deep breath and be the role model for your team. This in turn will quell any nervousness, anxiety or doubts your employees may be experiencing.

Fix whatever is broken
One mistake that many leaders fail to address properly is fix or deal with the issue before it spirals out of control. Utilizing decisiveness as a salient tool is the best way to align your verbal confirmations with intelligent, well-thought out action.

Outside perspectives
Receiving advice from other coworkers, employees or leaders internally can be quite useful, but this information can be somewhat partial. Keeping an eye out for objective perspectives that can offer unbiased insight in this business situation can create a level of awareness to issues you may be overlooking. Peers, friends from other companies who have undergone a similar experience, and leaders in different industries can offer sound insight that has the potential of guiding your company through this difficult time.

Collective effort
Another important step to take while your business is struggling is to create at atmosphere built around working towards a common goal. Establishing a common, single-focused mindset can not only appease everyone’s conscious a bit, but also augment positivity across the board. Challenges like these will test your strength, perseverance and dedication as a leader in your respective field.

March 20, 2016

How Leaders Should Support Internal Hires

When hiring external candidates for various open positions at a company, there is a certain process that allows for support, training and structure offered to the new employee regardless of department. Unfortunately, far too commonly internal hires lack various forms of structure which is generally offered to employees who come externally from other firms, companies or organizations.

Unlike internal hires, external hires received intensive onboarding support, briefings on how the business or organization operates and emotional support to assimilate to the new company culture. In many companies, the process related to helping internal hires or employees to adjust to their new job was often times less prioritized for resources to help guide newly employed external candidates.

Faulty leadership can create a mentality for new internal hires based on the “sink or swim” notion that definitely is more detrimental to not only, the employee, but also for the department she/he is currently affiliated with. This overall lack of emotional support in various areas is prone to not only a high turnover, but, in addition, a great loss of talent that has not been properly fostered in a nurturing way geared towards long- term success.

As an increasing amount of companies and organizations are realizing this fault in what is called their “inboarding process,” this provides an ideal time for leaders to initiate the necessary changes in order to alter the ineffective nature of the process in place.

According to a recent study at Genesis Advisers categorizing around 500 leading HR companies, roughly a third of new hires at any given company are employees from other internal departments. One very useful way for leaders to rectify this lack of support in this employee transitional phase is to most effectively “assess transition risk” in order for every party involved to benefit from this internal transfer.

The first step for leaders to better understand and assess transition risk is to create a model to frame major shifts in the company. These shifts can include promotions, business deals between departments and their brief job history. With all these factors in mind, this could develop into an essential tool to decipher the kind of support need for internal hires.

The main takeaway from this assessment of the transitional risk model is to not only better set priorities in a more effective way, but also for leaders to dismantle to the ongoing politics or setbacks in departments where internal transfers are made. This will in turn create a more holistic level of awareness across various areas to improve both individual and professional performance.

January 25, 2016

Success Through Moderate Self-Criticism

While there are opposing views as to whether being actively self-critical can positively or negatively affect the way you can operate or better yourself in the workplace, one chief recruiting officer based out of Chicago thinks of this concept in a different light. While also stating that being overly critical can definitely damper your self-esteem and feelings of self-worth, there is no doubt that Krisi Rossi O’Donnell doesn’t effectively use self-criticism as a means to improve herself in her career. Promoted ten times at LaSalle network in Chicago in the past ten years, there is no question that O’Donnell is aware of how to successfully tap into self-critique as a motivating, useful way to push herself in her career.

The first beneficial part of being self-critical is the process of overthinking every move or decision in order to holistically view a certain situation or address a specific issue. By sometimes over analyzing aspects of your work life, you have the potential of developing the mentality of not only coming up with the best solution through intense examination, but also envisioning what potential outcomes could result in your decision. This art of envisioning for both the short term and long term effects will help you anticipate many outcomes until the result occurs which is very useful for managing expectations.

In terms of self-awareness, O’Donnell highlights some ways in which we are able to embrace this notion without overusing it excess, which in turn can be detrimental. “People who are self-critical are self-aware,” O’Donnell says. “They know exactly where they need to improve, which is crucial to continue growing and developing in your career.” It’s certainly true that the ability to see yourself as others see you is a key skill for effective leaders, and just about everyone else.

Moreover, with all this self-criticism as a primary way to provide you with the mental or emotional resources to strive and therefore better yourself, one of the salient ideas to keep in mind is to always remember there is more room to learn. Growing through the process of never failing to learn in your career is an essential cornerstone in relation to building and moving forward in your respective industry.

Similarly, by embracing failures more than successes in your career is the most beneficial form of capitalizing on how to improve some of your weak points that you weren’t previously aware of. While self-criticism is a great resource for advancement, using it sparingly is a must to achieve a healthy balance or dose of emotional security in your day to day work life.

November 25, 2015

Emotional Intelligence Now Considered Key Leadership Skill

Emotional intelligence is a pretty recent concept. It was coined in 1990 in a research paper by John D. Mayer of UNH and Peter Salovey of Yale. It was later defined by Mayer in the Harvard Business Review thusly:

“From a scientific (rather than a popular) standpoint, emotional intelligence is the ability to accurately perceive your own and others’ emotions; to understand the signals that emotions send about relationships; and to manage your own and others’ emotions. It doesn’t necessarily include the qualities (like optimism, initiative, and self-confidence) that some popular definitions ascribe to it.”

Almost a decade later, Rutgers psychologist Daniel Goleman established the important connection between emotional intelligence and business leadership. In HBR’s 1998 article, “What Makes a Leader,” he states that the most effective leaders all have a high degree of emotional intelligence. IQ and technical skills are irrelevant when it comes to reaching an executive position.

Emotional intelligence has five major components:

  • Self-awareness
  • Self-regulation
  • Motivation
  • Empathy for others
  • Social skills

Each of these components allow people to recognize, learn from, and connect with other people’s mental states.

According to HBR, understanding what constitutes emotional intelligence is important not only because it is so central to leadership, but because people who are strong in some components of it may be lacking in others. One example used by Salovey during a 2010 leadership conference was Bill Clinton, who was remarkable in his empathy yet devoid of self-control.

Mayer and Salovey coined the term “emotional intelligence” the same year that the functional magnetic resonance imaging machine was invented. For the first time, people could look at what was happening in the brain while it was functioning. Golemans extensive work on the subject of emotional intelligence is infused with findings from these studies. With that research Goleman and others have been able to further establish the connection between emotional intelligence and leadership.

They’ve been able to understand what physically happens to the brain when you understand what another person is saying, for example. They’ve also found definitively that emotions like anger can lead to bad decision making and that sometimes things like flattery simply do not work. All of these modes of research lead to a simple conclusion. In order to be a better leader you need emotional intelligence of a high degree.

There are still some counterarguments though, notably a Wharton progessor named Adam Grant who has reported that there is a lack of correlation between tests results measuring emotional intelligence and business results. His methods are obviously contested by Goleman and others.

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