ENCORE! 2.5 INSIGHTS

  Great leaders are committed to developing other people as leaders, which often means putting them in positions where they might fail. This also involves encouraging people to step outside their comfort zone and helping them learn from setbacks and mistakes as opposed to punishing them for setbacks and mistakes and blunting personal growth. Being coached helps a leader understand that to have the greatest impact as a leader, is not by doing more by everyone else but by empowering other people to do more and motivating them to do their best. This means letting go of certain responsibilities and recognizing the limits of one’s expertise. A dynamic leader does not need to have all the answers… you just need to ask the right questions. In short, effective leadership looks a lot like coaching.  Follow Through on Company Values Great leaders also internalize the responsibility to embody the culture and to walk the talk. It's a truism in organizational life that the "values plaque&q

The digital economy has radically changed the way many of us now work - including organizational leaders. The top-down, ‘hero’ approach of leadership that worked in the industrial age is no longer fit for purpose and digital leaders need different methodologies. Today, fostering collaboration and encouraging innovation are now core competencies of effective leaders. Relying on traditional leadership structures, processes and behaviors in modern digital-native businesses can lead to a whole range of issues, from lost revenue and higher employee turnover, to decreased customer satisfaction. This new work paradigm requires an updated model of leadership based on six new truths: Leaders work in agile teams — Teams have become the new normal in corporate workplace culture. Legacy hierarchy has been replaced by agile, cross-functional teams that assemble around a project or initiative that may last weeks, months, or even years. Instead of static groups of direct reports who merely execu

Scenario planning is a must-use process for functional leaders to drive immediate actions, decisions and longer-term strategic planning.  The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a wide range of strategic planning activities. As the focus turns largely to recovery and renewal, functional leaders are increasingly pulled into enterprise conversations about likely outcomes when the way forward is neither clear nor certain. They also have to plan for a range of potential outcomes for their own functions. Scenarios are compelling descriptions of possible futures — not necessarily the most probable ones, but plausible, coherent and substantially different ones driven by the unavoidable barriers facing the business. Business models are evolving frequently, particularly as executives consider which pandemic-related trends will become permanent. This requires a prompt shift in the strategy that defines how the enterprise will play and win — and requires all functional leaders to be p

Article by Steven K. Haught, MBA If you know everything there is to know, then you can take a pass on this article and move on to something more to your liking. Or… maybe your curiosity will get the best of you and you will stick around and read.  After that, who knows what might happen to you. Let's talk about the underlying attributes of genuine effective leadership. What causes a company to experience success?  Is it the leader's brilliance, or the leader's impact on the people that surround him or her?  Impact can of course be interrupted many ways. Quite often startup cultures, particularly tech companies, gets caught up in the bravado of “crushing”, “disrupting”, “paradigm-shifting”, or “becoming the next unicorn.”  Success is a heady business.  Anyone who has experienced this kind of adrenaline knows what I am talking about.   Very quickly and almost without awareness on the part of the leaders, especially the founder, the company quickly rises t

Real leadership means creating the future, but who has the time? Senior management has to manage the business for profit, yet decision-making for day-to-day stability can stifle new ideas and development.  Many companies, particularly in professional services, have deep expertise beyond the management group, but these staff are often excluded from innovation teams and become more accustomed to taking orders than breaking molds.  Creativity and job enthusiasm suffer, and a critical need goes unaddressed. How to disrupt the stagnation and tap into this huge capacity? The common solution is to rely on strategic planning. This is essential, but only goes so far, setting out an overall road map but not filling in the detail of how to get there. It gives management a chance to feel they are leading the charge and will discuss with the teams so they have a “voice.” But it often has a top-down feel, which for staff can mean a requirement rather than an opportunity. Cascadi

By Steven K. Haught, MBA Worrying is a huge distraction. It may pretend to be helpful in organizing, prioritizing and getting things done, but in truth it distracts us from helping others.  Worry saps our joy and does nothing to fix a situation – we can solve problems more energetically and effectively with a light mind of patience.  After months of fear, isolation, soaring unemployment and uncertainty brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the U.S. Census Bureau estimates one-third of Americans are anxious about the future. Worry produces stress and uncertainty about things beyond our vision, and together they overwhelm us with anxiety. COVID-19 has produced not only a health epidemic, but also an anxiety epidemic: Once we thought we were invincible; now we feel fatigue as we ponder our own future Once we sprang out of bed because we had things that needed to be done; now we crawl to our home office with a sense of resignatio