In Your Power: React Less, Regain Control, Raise Others

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Sharon Melnick, PhD., the leading expert on guiding leaders to be in their power and author of a best-selling new book In Your Power: React Less, Regain Control, Raise Others, shares this article as a companion to her podcast In Your Power. 

 

Listen to the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-Creating Our Future via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify,  Amazon Music,  Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

Facing overwhelmed calendars, ‘quiet quitting’ team members, and competing agendas with colleagues, many leaders can feel like their day is a battle to be heard, accomplish important work, and feel valued.

When this is the case, the leader’s experience is like a ‘thermometer’ – their mental and emotional state goes up and down according to circumstances and other people’s actions.  Being the thermometer makes you feel powerless, causing burnout or resignation.

Leaders always have more power than they think they do, and can access this power by shifting from being the thermometer to being the ‘thermostat’. When you are the thermostat, you set the tone, you have a vision and bring people along toward it.

The word power comes from the Latin root posse, which means “to be able”.

Being in your power is the ability to ‘stay good in you’ and then to make it better for everyone around you.

Being in your power transforms your leadership from reactive to transformational.

Here are 3 mistakes that keep a leader from being in their power and using their power as a force for good:

 

1. You leak your power.

As humans, we are biologically wired to focus on what we can’t control so we can track threats and respond to them promptly. When we act from this factory setting, it keeps you as the thermometer.

For example, Keisha was a leader in a finance function which had a lot of holes in its system. Her SVP and business partners would reach out to her from 7am to 11pm. She was overwhelmed and spent her days ‘fighting fires’.  She got to the point where she was ready to leave.

Where was her power? We sorted out the aspects of the situation she could control, her 50%, and distinguished those from the aspects of the situation she couldn’t control, the other 50%. She became impeccable for her 50%, maximizing what she could control.

She started to approach the situation as the thermostat: she gathered the involved parties into a series of meetings, presented her vision of a root cause fix, and systematically got buy-in for her vision from her peers and the CEO.  She stopped reacting to every request because of her need to please and pressure to prove herself.  She elevated the contribution of her team members, freeing her up to lead strategically.

Keisha started maximizing what she could control, and led all parties in the cross-functional problem to a company-wide solution.  The CEO put her on the fast track to be the CTO successor, and she now has dinner each evening with her husband.

 

2. You give away your power.

Many leaders source their self-confidence from the feedback they get from others in their job.  It’s important for every leader to be responsive to feedback on how they can be more effective in their role. However, this is different than the inner feeling of confidence you have about yourself as a person. When a leader tries to derive their inner self-confidence from their job, it drives them to act with behaviors intended to get validation or prevent negative feedback, rather than make their best contribution.

I coached a Chief Human Resources Officer who felt pressure to transform her company’s culture to be more inclusive, and also to make a final call on return to work decisions. She had brought up her point of view to her executive peers a few times and couldn’t get heard. She believed that they were looking to her to have all the answers, and was concerned she would be judged for not being able to make the impact expected of her.

For her upcoming executive team meeting, she planned to put together another PowerPoint about the corporate scorecard to try to get buy-in for her ideas. In our coaching we strategized a different approach. Instead of playing her small game (worrying whether her peers thought she was living up to expectations) she played her big game.

This time she made a safe space for a conversation about why the leadership team was not acting on decisions that reflected their stated values. She took responsibility for her own contribution to this and invited her peers to reflect on how they were leading as well. This courageous act sparked a series of authentic conversations that led to a transformation that became part of the DNA of the organization.

She didn’t give away her power worrying what others thought about her. Instead, she thought about the contribution she was there to make and her legacy. She was the thermostat, setting a new temperature and standard for communication and role modeling on the executive team.

 

3. You overlook the power you already have.

Your power goes beyond the tasks written in your job description. As the leader, you create the weather on the team – you can set the tone, shape the vision, and use your attention and social capital to support people and initiatives. You also have relational power.

Kathy was a leader in an engineering firm and noticed attrition of top talent and especially women engineers who as a group were the highest revenue producers. She raised the good solutions to the 2 owners of the firm who had not acted on them. She felt powerless. She was the thermometer: second-guessing whether her vision was right, resenting the owners, and questioning whether to stay at the firm or leave.

She came to see she had so much more power than she thought. She led an initiative to improve the culture at the partner level and started to stem the tide of resignations.

She had the power of persuasion, aligning her ideas with the vision of the board and the owners so she could unlock their energies in the service of a vision that was in the best interest of the future of the firm.

3 months later they agreed to reduce their ownership by 30% and distribute it amongst the highest revenue producers – and they put Kathy into the CEO position.

She was the thermostat – bringing everyone along toward a culture where more people could thrive, and toward a vision in which the firm’s reputation and valuation would increase, along with the share of ownership for their high performers.

As I share in my book In Your Power, a leader in their power raises everyone around them!

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Sharon Melnick, PhD is the leading expert on guiding leaders to be in their power.  Informed by 10 years of research Harvard Medical School.   battle tested with over 40,000 professionals at  Fortune 500 fast growing companies.   She is the author of a best selling new book In Your Power: React Less, Regain Control, Raise Others.

 

RESOURCES:

Ready to measure your leadership skills? Complete your complimentary assessment through the Innovative Leadership Institute. Learn the 7 leadership skills required to succeed during disruption and innovation.

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-Creating Our Future via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify,  Amazon Music,  Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

 Epic! The Women’s Power Play Book

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Carolyn Buck Luce, a strategist, executive coach, and author of the recently published EPIC! The Women’s Power Play Book shares this article as a companion to her podcast Epic! The Women’s Power Play Book. 

 

Listen to the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-Creating Our Future via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify,  Amazon Music,  Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

Do you want the next ten years of your life to be epic? 

That’s the question at the heart of the Decade Game, a framework I’ve invented to help women discover a deeper and more powerful version of themselves that’s truer to their life’s purpose. 

At its core, the Decade Game is simple. It’s a continual practice of make-believe. You are both the designer and player of a game with an epic quest. The magic of your design is that it continues to evolve as life unfolds, integrating all parts of your life. 

The secret sauce of the Decade Game is that there are 87,600 hours in a decade. Even if you sleep eight hours a night, it leaves over 50,000 hours of awake time. Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 bestseller Outliers popularized the “10,000-hours rule,” originally coined by the Swedish psychologist K. Anders Ericsson. This rule posits that it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert in any field. 

So, let’s do the math. In the Decade Game, you can become a world expert in five distinct yet related domains of mastery in ten years and still sleep eight hours a night. These domains of mastery are the heart of the game and cover the five main areas of your life: Self, Others, Craft, Learning, and Contribution. They are the games within the Game. Below, I’ll explain why each pillar is important and how you can begin your journey toward mastering each. 

1. Self

The heart of the model is YOU, the Self pillar. Your job is to do your psychological, physical, emotional, spiritual, and self-care work to construct your rehabilitation and remembrance of your best self. What is my internal journey of transformation over the next ten years? What do I need to learn and experience to be in the right relationship and integrity with myself and my faith? What is the transformation work of my heart, body, and soul that I am committed to practice and master? How would I feel if I was not afraid?

Remember when you would go into a toy store looking for a great new game? The name of the game gave you an idea of the type of adventure you would be on. Each pillar needs a customized name, a title, for the way you would describe what the transformational shift would look and feel like if you were able to win in that game of your choosing. 

The name you give your Self pillar describes the seismic shift in the quality of your own presence at the end of a decade if you finally let go of the negative core beliefs that no longer serve you.  You are answering the “Who Am I?” question, “For me, I am…”.  And the title should be a delicious, juicy, and inspiring You. One player of the Decade Game, a software designer named Priya, rose to the challenge with the title “I Adore Myself.” What a declaration of sufficiency and power!

2. Others

When you show up as your best self, then you are able to be in “right” relationship with the people you love. This is the second pillar of Others. Ironically, it is hardest to be your best, most evolved self with the people you love the most. That is where our deepest wounds lie. 

For many, this is the hardest pillar of all. This is the place to put into practice your own internal work of self-forgiveness, compassion, unconditional love, healthy boundaries, and emotional intelligence.

This pillar requires you to answer tough questions. What is my transformation work with my family, friends, and colleagues? What is the repair work? What is the forgiveness work? Where am I doing their work instead of letting them do their own work? What are my healthy boundaries? How can I create conditions in the way I relate that invites them to be their best selves?”

Your Others pillar should be named for how you want to show up in a way that invites the ones you love to respond accordingly. You are answering the “Who Am I?” question, “For you, I am…”. The name will reflect the enhanced and transformed quality of your presence for them that is the result of your intentional work.  A Decade Gamer with a large extended family after 3 marriages named her pillar, “I am Oasis”.

3. Craft

While your Craft may relate to your job, it cannot be reduced to it. Instead, your Craft represents how you choose to offer and package your unique skills, talents, techniques, knowledge, and gifts as your signature “work” in the world. It reflects your commitment to be a master craftsman in your field of interest—a master that can inspire others and can be counted on to bring “a thing of beauty” into the world. 

Ask yourself, what is your unique offering that reflects both the genius of what you do and how you do it in a way that brings forth goodness into the world? How are you a master craftsman amidst other colleagues who have similar technical skills or training, e.g., how do you differentiate? What is game-changing about what you want to “do” in the world? The objective of this pillar is to be fully equipped to grow in mastery in your career and/or your community.

Naming this pillar should be fun and illuminate a game-changing capability or capacity that isn’t mainstream today but will be an important agent of transformation. Maybe your Craft is to help build a capability that doesn’t exist today but will be essential to transform the current state of technology, or healthcare, or education, or communities. After all, many of the cool job descriptions today did not exist a decade ago. Name this pillar for the coolest job title you can think of for your decade business card.  One entrepreneur who loved leading leadership teams into the unknown entitled this pillar “I am an Expedition Guide”.

4. Learning

The fourth pillar is the domain of Learning. Although the act of learning is a key component in Self, Others, and Craft, it takes on a different meaning here. This is where you place all the experiences you want to have purely for the love of adventure, curiosity, pleasure, and erudition, like travel, art, hobbies, and reading. 

This is also the domain of unlearning, unknowing, and decolonizing your understanding of the world as you knew it so as to relearn from a deeper place of wisdom. This pillar guides you in an open inquiry. What gets my creative juices flowing? What hobbies have I ignored or experiences have I foregone because I was too busy?” What would I love to learn if only I had the time? This domain expands your horizons by being curious about what the world can teach you.

To name your pillar, start by listing all the “elective courses” of the experiences you would love to have and the people/places you want to learn from in your imagined curriculum and fieldwork. Then name this pillar the title of your imagined PhD program or dissertation that describes your newfound mastery. Examples have included PhD in Compromise Through Gardening and Dr. of Shamanic Wisdom

5. Contribution

Contribution is the last pillar of mastery. In your first four pillars, you are building your own mastery. Here you are scanning for other masters in the form of leaders and/or organizations that are building their mastery in service of a purpose that is complementary to yours. And they need your masterful gifts, talents, and wisdom to be complete. 

Who are the impactful leaders and organizations that are doing great work in…? How can I focus my philanthropic approach over the next decade? Where can I contribute my superpowers to other master change-makers who need them? In this domain, you are contributing your best self to society-at-large.  Where am I willing to be “all in” with my “4W’s – my wealth, wisdom, work and worldly connections”?

This domain of mastery is most easily named by giving it the title of your imagined granting foundation or nonprofit that would reflect and telegraph to “grantees” the areas you are committed to invest in.   Past examples include, a) What Would Greta Do.org, b) Olive Branch.org, and c) CommunityTable.org.

Fit the Pieces Together

These five domains of mastery are distinct yet connected. Mastery in each influences the journey of mastery in the other pillars. They each pave the way to your decade destination. 

To increase your chances of experiencing an epic decade, you need to devote an equivalent amount of effort to name and pursue excellence in each of these domains instead of over-privileging one at the expense of others. For you overachievers, don’t get anxious. You don’t have to be working on each domain at the same time. You have all the time in the world—50,000 hours—to fit the puzzle pieces together in a masterful way.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Carolyn Buck Luce is one of America’s most respected and accomplished voices on Women’s Leadership and their relationship with power. She is the author of the recently published EPIC! The Women’s Power Play Book.  A gifted strategist and executive coach, Carolyn has spent the last five decades of her career building highly effective cultures, businesses, teams, and leaders in both the public and private sectors. From a diplomat in the USSR, to a Wall Street Banker, to healthcare futurist and management consultant, throughout her career, Carolyn has focused on helping courageous leaders make the difference they dream of.

 

RESOURCES:

Ready to measure your leadership skills? Complete your complimentary assessment through the Innovative Leadership Institute. Learn the 7 leadership skills required to succeed during disruption and innovation.

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-Creating Our Future via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify,  Amazon Music,  Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

Women on the Rise: A Leadership Journey to Overcome Gender Bias with Reta Jo Lewsi

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Reta Jo Lewis, President and Chair of the Board of Directors of EXIM (Export-Import Bank of the United States), shares her insights in the podcast Women on the Rise: A Leadership Journey. This interview is part of the International Leadership Association Series featuring guests from the International Leadership Association 2022 Global Conference held in Washington, D.C., in October 2022.

This week’s article is written by Maureen Metcalf, founder and CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute, as a companion piece to her interview.

 

Listen to the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-Creating Our Future via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify,  Amazon Music,  Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

The leadership journey is fraught with obstacles and pitfalls. Despite so many gains over the last century, this remains especially true for women. But there are paths to success – and Reta Jo Lewis provides an excellent example.

Studying the role models in her family, as well as the political leaders she championed, Reta Jo forged her own leadership success as the first African American female president and chair of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. She distilled her experience into six critical steps you can follow to help on your own leadership path.

1. Have a strong foundation of education and knowledge.

From skilled trades to C-suite, this step is important for any career. Education is an investment. Start broad to build a strong base, then hone in on your chosen career field. And never stop learning; every single profession is evolving and changing, so keep your mind fresh. Formal education is great, but there’s lots to be learned by reading books, attending conferences, and networking with others. And seek out mentors! They’d love to share the experience and wisdom no textbook can duplicate.

2. Develop a mission and goal-oriented mentality.

This really boils down to working for something bigger than yourself. Reta Jo learned this as a child, growing up in a family of entrepreneurs who taught her the importance of giving back to the community. She took that attitude to her work in the White House, serving the nation, and now, serving the world through the Export Import Bank. That sense of mission, of setting high goals, gives you extra motivation to take on your leadership career’s inevitable challenge.

3. Look for guidance and role models who have been successful before.

This relates to having a mentor. A mentor is a role model you work with directly, but you can also study someone whose leadership style you admire from afar.

Either way, look for people who have achieved success in your particular field—though advice from a great leader usually works in any field. By building relationships with successful people, you can learn from their experiences, and steer clear of avoidable obstacles.

4. Build a strong professional network and collaborate with others.

Networking can be daunting, especially for introverts. But the rewards are well worth the effort: your network of friends, family, and professional peers is a rich pool of advice, wisdom, and support. It’s a great information conduit, too; you’ll often get leads on jobs and other opportunities through your network long before they become public knowledge.

We list collaboration here because it’s an easy and natural way to build a network. Each person you collaborate with gets to know you; working on assignments together builds your professional relationships one project at a time.

5. Remain persistent and focused on your goals.

You’re going to stumble on your path. There’s no path to success that doesn’t include failure. The key is to “fail forward,” to learn from that failure and use the knowledge gained to get closer to your goal. Persistence helps you get back up; focus helps you keep looking ahead.

Reflect on what went wrong and how to improve. Tap into your professional network or mentor for advice. Read about your role model for inspiration: they failed plenty, too! And don’t forget your network of friends and family; they’re at the ready to provide emotional support.

6. Have confidence in your abilities.

Believe in yourself…and believe in the skills and knowledge you have acquired.

There’s a big gender divide on this step. Several studies reveal that men are more willing to take a risk applying for a career-advancing job for which they don’t meet all of the qualifications. Women tend to apply only when they have all (or very nearly all) the qualifying traits.  If you followed the first five steps, you’re sure to have the knowledge needed to grow into any job. Hold on to that confidence so you take advantage of opportunities as they arise!

Even the best of us can lose confidence under heavy criticism, biases, and other obstacles. But networks, relationships, role models, and mentors can all help us see the strengths we lose sight of in those moments.

 

Taken together, these steps helped Reta Jo Lewis climb high in her leadership journey. Where will they take you?

 

ABOUT THE INTERVIEW GUEST:

On February 9, 2022, the U.S. Senate confirmed Reta Jo Lewis as EXIM’s President and Chair of the Board of Directors. Chair Lewis was sworn in by Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris on February 16, 2022. Ms. Lewis is a senior executive with over 25 years of leadership experience in international affairs, legal, public policy, business and regulatory affairs, and subnational diplomacy.

Ms. Lewis was most recently a Senior Fellow and Director of Congressional Affairs at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. At GMF, Ms. Lewis led and oversaw initiatives, programs, and bipartisan exchanges for members of the U.S. Congress and their European counterparts, focusing on leadership development and subnational diplomacy efforts. Prior to her time at GMF, she served as the first-ever Special Representative for Global Intergovernmental Affairs under Secretary Hillary Clinton at the U.S. Department of State during the Obama-Biden Administration. As Special Representative, Lewis was the chief diplomat in charge of the international efforts to build and support strategic relationships between the federal government, state and local leaders, and their foreign counterparts. In 2013, she was awarded the Secretary’s Distinguished Service Award.

Ms. Lewis was the first Black woman to serve as Vice President and Counselor to the President at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. She led the Chamber’s initiatives focused on fostering strategic alliances between small businesses, especially women- and minority-owned businesses, entrepreneurs, and executives. She is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and former Member of the Board of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security. Ms. Lewis received a J.D. from Emory University School of Law, an M.S.A.J. from American University, and a B.A. from the University of Georgia. She is a native of Statesboro, Georgia.

 

RESOURCES:

Ready to measure your leadership skills? Complete your complimentary assessment through the Innovative Leadership Institute. Learn the 7 leadership skills required to succeed during disruption and innovation.

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-Creating Our Future via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify,  Amazon Music,  Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One. A

Leading With Care and Purpose

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This podcast, Leading With Care and Purpose features Sudhanshu Palsule, an award-winning educator, leadership philosopher, CEO advisor, author, and speaker. He is regarded as one of the leading thinkers in the fields of Transformative Leadership and Leading in Complexity. Raj Sisodia is a FEMSA Distinguished University Professor of Conscious Enterprise, Chairman of the Conscious Enterprise Center at Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico, and Co-Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Conscious Capitalism Inc.  This interview is part of the International Leadership Association Series featuring guests from the International Leadership Association 2022 Global Conference held in Washington, D.C., in October 2022.

The companion article is written by Maureen Metcalf, founder and CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute. 

 

Listen to the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-Creating Our Future via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify,  Amazon Music,  Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

We are living in a transformative time, where people are increasingly aware of the need to shift away from a profit-driven model to one based on purpose and caring. Sudhanshu Palsule is an expert in Transformative Leadership and Raj Sisodia is a leading voice in growing movement of Conscious Capitalism, which seeks to create a new story for business. But what does this new story look like? We can bridge the gap between the current system and the new paradigm by following these steps to achieve conscious awakening:

 

1. Recognize the four pillars of conscious capitalism: a higher purpose, a stakeholder mindset, conscious leadership, and a caring and trusting culture.

All four pillars are key to creating a more meaningful, purpose-driven business, but higher purpose is at the very core of conscious capitalism. It reflects the values and beliefs of your business and provides a clear and compelling reason for why the business exists. It becomes the north star for you and your team.

A stakeholder mindset looks beyond just shareholders to the well-being of all stakeholders, including employees, customers, suppliers, and the community. You view everyone your business affects – and who, in turn, affect your company.

Conscious leadership is about leading with empathy, care, and awareness. That care extends to yourself; the healthier and more whole you are, the better you can lead!

Finally, a culture of caring and trust creates a safe and productive environment for employees, customers, and other stakeholders. It’s an inevitable byproduct when you’re practicing conscious leadership.

Raj Sisodia’s research shows that, working together, these four pillars help business thrive and create real value for stakeholders.

2. Understanding the human need for purpose.

A sense of purpose is a fundamental need for people across cultures. Indeed, it’s been shown as a vital element in talent acquisition and retention: high-performing employees and leaders require a sense of working for something bigger than themselves to feel fully engaged (and productive) at work.

On the Innovating Leadership podcast, Raj Sisodia and Sudhanshu Palsule discussed the importance of businesses setting a purpose beyond simply making money. Even Adam Smith, the formal founder of capitalism itself, firmly believed businesses have a higher purpose, a social responsibility to their employees and communities.

Raj and Sudhanshu also explored how understanding the need to care is a fundamental part of leadership. It allows a leader to look beyond simply maximizing profits and consider the human cost of doing business.

3. Help our culture grow a higher mindset to bring mainstream leadership out of its archaic Industrial Era practices and into a 21st Century model.

To reach this more relevant mindset, we must awaken to our individual purpose and potential, and recognize our connection and dependence on our coworkers, our communities, and the rest of the world. No person, no company, is fully local: we’ve been tied to a global economy from the very outset of civilization 5,000+ years ago.

Strive to create your new narrative to match the new, post-Industrial, and post-COVID world around you. Along with purpose, focus on creating value rather than simple profit.

It will be a difficult journey: even now, we see the old system fighting it, trying to make everyone stay with the old, outmoded but comfortably familiar mindsets. But the rewards are unparalleled: you’ll help create a more inclusive, conscious, purposeful, and higher-valued business world.

 

No matter what level of business you are in, you can make a difference. Believe in yourself, trust in your vision and values, and always remember that you can achieve great things.

 

ABOUT THE INTERVIEW GUESTS:

Raj Sisodia is FEMSA Distinguished University Professor of Conscious Enterprise and Chairman of the Conscious Enterprise Center at Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico. He is also Co-Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Conscious Capitalism Inc. Raj has a Ph. D. in Business from Columbia University. His fifteen books include Conscious Capitalism (2013), Everybody Matters (2015), Firms of Endearment and The Healing Organization. Raj has worked with numerous companies, including AT&T, Verizon, LG, BorgWarner, Kraft Foods, Whole Foods Market, Tata, Siemens, Sprint, Volvo, IBM, Walmart and McDonalds. Raj received an honorary doctorate from Johnson & Wales University and has served on the boards of Mastek and The Container Store.

Sudhanshu Palsule is an award-winning educator, leadership philosopher, CEO advisor, author, and speaker. He is regarded as one of the leading thinkers in the fields of Transformative Leadership and Leading in Complexity. Author of several books, his latest book, “Rehumanizing Leadership” was published in 2020. Sudhanshu is a fellow at Cambridge University’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership. He is also an Educator and Academic Director at Duke CE (part of Duke University, USA). He has written several books including The Social Leader, Managing in Four Worlds, The Ecology of Organizations, Personal Growth, and Science, Technology, and Social Change.

 

RESOURCES:

Ready to measure your leadership skills? Complete your complimentary assessment through the Innovative Leadership Institute. Learn the 7 leadership skills required to succeed during disruption and innovation.

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-Creating Our Future via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify,  Amazon Music,  Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

Intentionality: The Secret to Leading Remotely

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Monique Jefferson, Chief People Officer of Community Preservation Corporation (CPC) (a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) within the multi-family affordable housing sector), shared this article as a companion to her podcast Intentional Leadership in a New Work World. 

This information is part of the Connex Executive Insights Series, produced in collaboration with Connex Partners. This invitation-only executive network brings industry leaders together from the worlds of HR and Healthcare. Connex Members are part of a cutting-edge community, finding actionable solutions to their most pressing business challenges via high-value peer exchanges and curated resources, including tools, platforms, partners, and c-suite networking opportunities. Executive Insights Series features highly respected and engaging guests who share novel ideas and practices related to the latest leadership topics.

Listen to the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-Creating Our Future via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify,  Amazon Music,  Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

It feels as if the world of business has been abuzz since the early days of the pandemic with talk of hybrid and remote work: what those terms mean; what their optimal strategies and best practices are; how organizations can maintain a single, cohesive corporate culture without being inflexible about the unique needs of each distinct employee group. One question that comes up rather frequently in leadership roundtables is, how must managers change their skillsets to meet the new challenges and realities created by these alternative employment models?

Monique Jefferson, Chief People Officer for The Community Preservation Corporation (CPC), has a very practical answer to that: “This isn’t rocket science. I fundamentally believe that what made a strong manager or leader before the pandemic hasn’t changed, and that good leaders are still operating the same way.”

Jefferson is an HR professional with more than two decades of experience in understanding human capital management, HR business strategy, and leadership – experience she’s now leveraging at CPC to develop and implement their long-term strategic HCM vision with a focus on talent advancement, a growth-centric culture, and meaningful DEI action. These are all critical to CPC and their mission as the largest CDFI solely committed to investing in affordable multifamily housing. They work hard to foster a sense of community and inclusivity within the workplace, which comes about as a direct consequence of not just HR strategy, but how their leaders engage with their teams on a daily basis.

“What has changed,” Jefferson clarified, “is that leaders need to be more intentional in how they lead, manage, and keep the employee front-of-mind. The same core principles apply, but the details of their implementation have changed.”

The Importance of Intentionality

Jefferson followed with an example: Pre-pandemic, a manager may have regularly met with their team members every day. They saw them at watercoolers, at their desk, and it wasn’t hard to strike up a conversation. But now, those conversations need to be scheduled and kept consistent lest they fall out of sight and out of mind. “You’d be surprised how many leaders, to this day, still aren’t having regularly scheduled one-on-ones with their employees,” Jefferson explained before reiterating just how far such a seemingly simple act goes.

Regular, individuals facetime is critical, but Jefferson also stressed the importance of finding better ways to engage groups of employees, such as during team meetings. “Not only should participants be visible, but they should be invited into the conversation and feel welcomed to do so. Which you can enhance through small, meaningful gestures: make sure closed captioning is available so people can see what’s said if the signal gets weak; have individuals new to the team introduce themselves and make a habit of sharing their pronouns; and if you know that your team has several parents on it, don’t schedule the conversation around the time when kids will be getting out of school.”

“Leaders need to be mindful of who is on their team,” she continued, “and intentionally make time and space to connect with them – together and individually – in a way that fits their reality.”

Leading with Empathy

Underpinning Jefferson’s recommendations are the principles of meeting employees where they’re at and leading with empathy, both of which have emerged as clear best practices for any organization. The stress of the last few years has pushed many to their breaking point, and attempting to keep that individual and emotional toll somehow separate and compartmentalized from work is no longer feasible in a world where “home” and “office” have become so entangled.

In fact, as indicated by Forbes Contributor Tracy Brower, we see the need for empathy bear out very clearly in the data: nearly two-thirds of employees have experienced an increase in stress, which not only compromises sleep and personal wellness, but spills over negatively into personal lives and parenting. Their job performance has suffered, collaboration has become increasingly difficult to maintain, and the weight of it all has contributed in so many ways to the labor market’s sharp increase in turnover. But, as found in the Catalyst study cited by Brower, much of that can be remedied by empathetic leadership: 61% of employees under empathetic leaders feel they can innovate; 76% of those experiencing empathy feel more engaged; and nearly 3 times as many employees feel their workplace can be and is inclusive under empathetic leadership versus those teams where empathy was not prioritized.

Despite the more touchy-feely reputation empathy has, it’s able to drive organizational culture, strong managerial relationships, and even business results in a way that other leadership competencies simply cannot. It’s part of who we are as humans, as evidenced by this Evolutionary Biology study into how the introduction of empathy into our decision-making corresponded with a clear increase in cooperation and performance. Or, how research at the University of Virginia indicated that our brains are hardwired to experience the same threats and emotions we perceive our friends and teammates experiencing. By tapping into that innate potential, leaders can more easily, effectively, and compassionately achieve their team objectives.

Empathy Versus Sympathy

However, Jefferson cautions that there is a distinct difference between empathy and sympathy, with the latter leading to disastrous consequences.

“These two things look very similar, but they are not. Here’s an analogy: say an employee is in crisis, down in a ditch. Their manager is above them, and wants to help them out of the hole. Empathy is listening to that employee, understanding their plight, connecting it to your own experience, and using that to find a way out, helping hand outstretched. Sympathy, however, is connecting too strongly and deeply with that employee, and choosing to jump in with them so you can wallow together. It prevents the situation from moving forward, and results in the core problem going unaddressed.”

“An effective, empathetic leader creates space for the employee to get their frustrations out,” she continued, “before using a series of probing and leading questions to help direct, influence, and counsel the employee into the solution phase.” Jefferson stresses that those leading questions are more important than they may sound, as trying to fix the problem for them, or forcing a solution onto them does the employee a disservice. By helping them create the solution instead, employees are empowered, come away feeling more accomplished, and have more time to adjust and sustain the changes they need to make.

The Intentional Leader

“All of that – being mindful of employee realities, creating inclusive spaces, leading with empathy – starts with listening to employees and being open to really hearing them. What other people need is often different than what you’d need in that same situation,” Jefferson clarified, “and it may even be different than what you want to give. By asking employees how they can best be supported, what they value, what success looks like to them, and what they need to feel safe bringing their authentic selves to work, leaders put themselves in a position to lead with intentionality.”

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Monique Jefferson is an expert in human capital management with an instinct for determining the impact of organizational change, particularly on marginalized groups. She is a results-oriented, proven human resources executive with over 20 years of global experience in the financial services, legal, Insurance, media, non-profit and professional services industries. She provides strategic input and guidance to leadership teams to drive growth, ensuring alignment of organizational objectives with human capital considerations while maintaining a strong focus on diversity, equity and inclusion. Monique has led regional and global teams to deliver value-add human capital solutions to c-suite executives. Her primary areas of expertise include talent and performance management, compensation, leadership development, diversity, equity, inclusion & belonging, talent acquisition, executive coaching, cultural change, employee engagement, training, employee and labor relations.

Monique currently serves as Chief People Officer of Community Preservation Corporation (CPC) (a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) within the multi family affordable housing sector) where she develops the human resources strategic plan and builds a culture that will enable CPC to attract, engage, grow and retain a high performing, diverse workforce. Monique previously served as the Chief Human Resources Officer of New York Public Radio, the second largest public media company in the U.S., where she led a culture transformation and implemented the first Race Equity Action plan for the organization. She has also served as the Head of HR for Business Services across the Americas region and head of the global HR business partner function for Hogan Lovells, an AmLaw 25 international law firm. Additionally, Monique was Vice President of Human Resources and senior HR business partner at New York Life Insurance Company. As a Senior HR Business Partner, she led a team that provided HR client support to all corporate functions and was the strategic HR advisor to 5 executive management committee members including the enterprise CFO, General Counsel, Chief Risk officer, Chief Compliance Officer and Chief Actuary.

Prior to joining New York Life Insurance in 2009, Ms. Jefferson spent over seven years with Merrill Lynch in the Global Markets & Investment Banking division. In 2008, Ms. Jefferson was promoted to Director of human resources where she was the senior HR relationship manager for Investment Banking covering the domestic offices, Latin America, Canada and the Financial Institutions group globally.

Before going to Merrill Lynch, Monique worked at Bristol Myers Squibb pharmaceuticals as a sales staffing specialist and manager of leadership development. In 1998, Ms. Jefferson also worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers as a resource manager where she handled the internal mobility and career development of associates and interns within the assurance practice. Ms. Jefferson began her career as a financial auditor in the New York office of Ernst & Young LLP.

Ms. Jefferson is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR & SHRM-SCP) and was an instructor at the New York Institute of Technology, where she taught the SHRM learning system course for the PHR/SPHR exam. She is also an executive coach and is certified in The Leadership Circle Profile.

Ms. Jefferson graduated from Bentley University with a Bachelor of Science in Accounting and holds a Master of Science in Human Resources Management from the New School University. Ms. Jefferson is a recipient of the Harlem YMCA Black Achievers in Industry recognition, The Network Journal’s 40 under 40 and 25 Influential Black Women in Business awards, Get5 HR Hero award for outstanding volunteerism, EMpower Ethnic Minority top 100 executives, and Crain’s New York HR Notable. She is an active member of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the Brooklyn chapter of The Links, Incorporated, board member and past President of the CALIBR Global Leadership Network, past board member of the National Association of African Americans in Human Resources (NAAAHR) greater NY chapter and is a member of the New School alumni advisory council. Additionally, Ms. Jefferson has served on the board of trustees for the Lefferts Gardens Charter School, where she was board chair from 2011 – 2013.

 

RESOURCES:

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The Courage to Assume Responsibility

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 Ira Chaleff is an author, speaker, workshop presenter, and innovative thinker on the beneficial use of power between those leading and those following in any situation as a companion to his interview with Neil Grunberg, Ph.D., a Professor of Military & Emergency Medicine at the Uniformed Services University, Courageous Followership. This interview is part of the International Leadership Association Series.  This series features guests from the International Leadership Association 2022 Global Conference held in Washington, D.C., in October 2022.

 

An excerpt from chapter 2 of The Courageous Follower:

THE MOST FREQUENT COMPLAINT I hear from leaders is that they would like the members of their team to assume more responsibility for the organization and initiate ideas and action on their own. While there are often very good reasons team members don’t do this, embedded in either the leader’s style or the organizational culture, it is interesting to hear that most leaders want their staff to take more initiative. They don’t want to be the only one leading. Recent research on courageous follower behaviors shows that, although each of the behaviors is valued, the courage to assume responsibility is as valued by leaders as the other four behaviors in the model combined. Examining our preparedness to exercise this responsibility is a crucial platform for moving toward partnership with a leader.

When I was at the University of California at Berkeley in the early sixties, a confrontation between the police and students erupted over the subject of free speech. The confrontation happened in the student plaza while the ad hoc student leadership and the administration negotiated the issues elsewhere. I was one of the hundreds of followers supporting the student leadership. By nightfall hundreds of police and thousands of students on both sides of the issue had amassed. The atmosphere was growing ugly, with stink bombs and epithets being hurled at the demonstrators. It looked like the helmeted police would charge into the demonstrators to break up the sit-in. The crowd included a person who was blind and children. I was concerned that people would be hurt.

Joan Baez, the folk singer and political activist, was performing at the Greek theater on another part of the campus that evening. She had recently achieved national fame. I called the hotel where celebrities stay in Berkeley and left her a message describing the situation. I asked her to come to the site of the confrontation, expressing the hope that by having a prominent figure present more restraint would be exercised and violence could be prevented. Though she didn’t know me, she responded and appeared a little while later. While she made her presence known, each side restrained itself until a settlement was reached and everyone voluntarily dispersed. I learned the power of taking initiative without formal authority.

Unfortunately, I have not always assumed that much responsibility. Recently, I found myself disappointed by the quality of meetings my company held. The meetings consumed a lot of expense and time as people came from two continents, yet they seemed to cover the same ground each year in an uninspiring format. I complained about it to the organization’s founder and president but did nothing else to change it.

Then I had the opportunity to use a self-assessment instrument and was startled to find how disaffected I had become with the president. This flew in the face of my self-image as a positive, contributing team member. I was challenged to assume responsibility for the situation rather than complain while it deteriorated.

I drafted a memo to the other participants in the company meetings and told the president that I intended faxing it to each of them. He supported the initiative. The memo explained what a terrific opportunity I saw in our annual meetings and offered a creative idea for taking better advantage of the meetings. I asked for their feedback. Nearly all replied, several with ideas of their own that I felt improved on mine. Out of this process, and to the president’s delight, we constructed a new, stimulating, and valuable format for part of the meeting.

By assuming responsibility for our organization and its activities, we can develop a true partnership with our leader and sense of community with our group. This is how we maximize our own contribution to the common purpose. Assuming responsibility requires courage because we then become responsible for the outcomes—we can’t lay the blame for our action or inaction elsewhere.

But before we can assume responsibility for the organization, we must assume responsibility for ourselves. I had to recognize my disaffection and do something to change it. I had to assume responsibility for my own growth. We cannot remain static ourselves and expect to improve the organization.

In this chapter, I explore the responsibility a courageous follower takes for self-development and for the development of the organization. Though we coordinate our activities as appropriate, we also take actions independently of the leader to forward our common purpose.

SELF-ASSESSMENT

Assuming responsibility for our personal development begins with self-examination. We cannot know in which direction we need to grow until we first know where we are. Courageous followers do not wait for performance reviews (strained events that these usually are anyway); they assess their own performance.

In addition to evaluating their job “competencies,” courageous followers also examine the more illusive subject of their relationships with teammates and leaders. If charity begins at home, development in the relationship between followers and leaders begins in a follower’s vestibule; a follower’s issues with authority are the other side of a leader’s issues with power.

Our relationship to authority is so deeply ingrained that it is difficult to be fully aware of our beliefs and postures vis-à-vis leaders. For our entire childhoods, at home and school, those in authority had tremendous power to dictate to us. We learned to survive by complying with, avoiding or resisting those authorities. The strategies we adopted became patterns for future behavior and influence our attitudes toward our current leaders.

Most work environments in adulthood reinforce our childhood relationship to authority. We must strive for greater awareness of our own beliefs, attitudes, and patterns of behavior toward authority, and look at their consequences. For example:

Challenging a specific leader on a specific subject may be healthy, but a pattern of challenging all leaders on all subjects is not. A rebellious, alienated follower will never earn the trust to meaningfully influence a leader

A follower’s deferential language and demeanor toward a leader may be appropriate, but strained subservience or chronic resentment are not. A follower who is too subservient and eager to please authority cannot provide the balance a leader requires to use power well.

Clamming up when a leader interrupts us in a raised voice may have been necessary at home or school, but it serves us and the leader poorly now. Tolerating disrespect for our voice and views will reinforce the behavior and weaken the relationship.

It is important to move beyond viewing a leader as a good parent or bad parent, a good king or bad king, a hero or villain in our world. If we become aware of such attitudes, our challenge is to learn to relate to the leader on a different basis. By paying attention to how we interpret the leader’s actions, to the feelings that interpretation evokes in us, and to the behaviors we employ to cope with those feelings, we can loosen our grasp on the mechanisms we once needed for survival. We can begin to examine what other choices we have as adults for relating effectively to authority.

FOLLOWERSHIP STYLE

There are different ways to represent our individual style of relating to leaders. Useful models for doing this can be found in the works by Robert Kelley and Gene Boccialetti, cited in the bibliography. In my workshops, I use a two-axis representation derived from the core of the Courageous Follower model that participants in workshops find helpful in understanding their strengths and potential growth needs.

The two critical dimensions of courageous followership are the degree of support a follower gives a leader and the degree to which the follower is willing to challenge the leader’s behavior or policies if these are endangering the organization’s purpose or undermining its values. This holds true at all levels of leadership and followership. We will examine both of these dimensions in depth in subsequent chapters. At this point, however, it is useful to reflect on where you place yourself in this matrix of follower behaviors.

The possible combinations of these two dimensions produce four quadrants that can depict the posture you tend to assume in relation to leaders. There is variance, of course, depending on the leader to whom you are relating. But, if you change quadrants radically based on the leader’s temperament and style, you are ceding too much power to the leader to determine your professional behavior. It is useful to identify your core tendency or natural position in relationship to authority at this point in your personal development. Then you can chart a growth path for yourself.

The four possible quadrants in this model of followership style are

  • Quadrant I: high support, high challenge
  • Quadrant II: high support, low challenge
  • Quadrant III: low support, high challenge
  • Quadrant IV: low support, low challenge

QUADRANT I: HIGH SUPPORT, HIGH CHALLENGE – THE PARTNER

A follower operating from the first quadrant gives vigorous support to a leader but is also willing to question the leader’s behavior or policies. This individual could be said to be a true partner with the leader and displays many of the characteristics identified with courageous followership in this book. Even within this quadrant, of course, there is room for growth as one can become stronger and more skillful in both dimensions.

QUADRANT II: HIGH SUPPORT, LOW CHALLENGE – THE IMPLEMENTER

This is the quadrant from which most leaders love to have their followers operate. Leaders can count heavily on followers who operate from this profile to do what is needed to get the job done and not require much over sight or explanation. However, if the leader begins to go down a wrong path, these are not the followers who are likely to tell the leader so or, if they do, they are not likely to pursue the matter if the leader rebuffs their attempts. Growth for those tending to this style of followership lies in the direction of being more willing to challenge a leader’s problematic actions or policies and learning to do so effectively and productively.

QUADRANT III: LOW SUPPORT,HIGH CHALLENGE – THE INDIVIDUALIST

Surrounding every leader are one or two individuals whose deference is quite low and who do not hesitate to tell the leader or anyone else in the group, exactly what they think of his or her actions or policies. These are potentially important people to have in the group as they balance the tendency of the rest of the group to go long with what seems acceptable while harboring reservations. However, because these individuals do not display equal energy in supporting the leader’s initiatives, they marginalize themselves. Their criticism becomes predictable and tiresome, and the leader finds ways to shut them out. Growth for individuals who operate from this style of followership lies in the direction of increasing their actual and visible support for the leader’s initiatives that forward the common purpose.

QUADRANT IV: LOW SUPPORT, LOW CHALLENGE – THE RESOURCE

Any group has a certain number of people who do an honest day’s work for a day’s pay but don’t go beyond the minimum expected of them. There are often legitimate reasons for this. They may be single parents whose priority is leaving at 3:30 to pick up their children from day care, graduate students whose priority is excelling in their course work or volunteers who can give only a few hours a week. However, it is difficult to advance their careers or make significant contributions to the organization while operating from this quadrant. When they are ready to give more priority to their participation in the group or organization, they must begin to raise their level of support for the leader and begin to earn the standing to also credibly challenge policies and behavior.

The following is a summary of the attitudes and behaviors likely to be displayed by individuals relating to leaders from each of these quadrants.

While these tendencies can be measured, you probably already have a sense of how you tend to operate, at least in relationship to the current leaders with whom you interact. As you read further, keep in mind this self-assessment and the direction in which you feel you would like to grow. You can then consider and test the ideas and suggestions you will encounter to help you do so.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Ira Chaleff is an author, speaker, workshop presenter and innovative thinker on the beneficial use of power between those who are leading and those who are following in any given situation. His groundbreaking book, The Courageous Follower: Standing Up To and For Our Leaders, is in its third edition, has been published in multiple languages and is in use in institutions around the globe including educational, corporate, government and military organizations. He is coeditor of The Art of Followership: How Great Followers Make Great Leaders and Organizations, part of the highly regarded Warren Bennis Leadership Series. He has written on the appropriate use of power in non-traditional settings in his creative non-fiction work, The Limits of Violence: Lessons of a Revolutionary Life. He holds a degree in Applied Behavioral Science and is a Board Certified Coach from the Center for Credentialing and Education. Ira Chaleff lives in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains outside of Washington, DC, where bears frequently disobey the No Trespassing signs on the road and help keep his connection strong with the wonders of nature.

Neil E. Grunberg, Ph.D., is Professor of Military & Emergency Medicine at the Uniformed Services University, Bethesda, Maryland. He is a medical psychologist, social psychologist, and behavioral neuroscientist. Dr. Grunberg earned baccalaureate degrees in Medical Microbiology and Psychology from Stanford University (1975), a Ph.D. (1980) in Psychology from Columbia University; and completed doctoral training in Pharmacology at Columbia’s Medical School (1976-79). He has been educating physicians, psychologists, and nurses for the U.S. Uniformed Services since 1979 and has published > 220 papers addressing behavioral medicine and leadership. In 2015, Dr. Grunberg was selected to be a U.S. Presidential Leadership Scholar.  

 

RESOURCES:

Ready to measure your leadership skills? Complete your complimentary assessment through the Innovative Leadership Institute. Learn the 7 leadership skills required to succeed during disruption and innovation.

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-Creating Our Future via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify,  Amazon Music,  Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

Using Storytelling to Elevate Leadership With an Emmy Award Winning Director

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Chris Nolan is a multiple Emmy Award-winning director, creative director, marketing strategist, branding story expert, and author who provided this article as a companion to his podcast Using Storytelling to Elevate Leadership.

This article is part two of a two part series. In a Chaos. There Is Creativity. Welcome to VUCA MAX… Part 1 was published on November 10, 2022.

Chris Nolan’s first podcast was Facing Uncertainty: It’s VUCA.

 

IN A CHAOS. THERE IS CREATIVITY. WELCOME TO VUCA MAX… PART 2.

In the last article, we discussed why we must reverse the normal business tendencies with innovation and creativity.  And why there is a great deal of frustration and failure that exists in organizations.

In this article, we attempt to bridge the gap between creative and non-creative universes, or those people who view themselves as more rational, left-brain non-creatives.

Many times, leaders who don’t know how mysterious and serendipitous and unpredictable the creative process is—and they can make too hasty a judgment about the value of ideas or who should contribute to ideation.

People in non-creative universes have exactly the opposite relationship to ideas—they immediately say “Is it relevant to what we’re doing?”  It’s as if you’re the head of Ivory soap: your job is to sell more soap bars and if you get distracted by someone saying “How about liquid soap?”—you say, “Can we stay on topic? How do we sell more bars?”

Below Malcolm Gladwell weights in on many of the arguments we discussed in the last article such as “embracing chaos” and “awkward strangers” on innovation teams.

I think that innovation and creativity flourish in environments that are messy, that permit mistakes that allow people to step outside of their roles that involve people who wouldn’t otherwise be thought of as natural teammates… Just when there is an acceptable level of chaos, I think that good things happen. The trick in encouraging creativity is being willing to tolerate chaos and that’s very difficult for us to do. It’s not first on our impulse.  – Malcolm Gladwell

In a world moving faster than we think, and disrupting business overnight, every new idea demands focus.  Not just marketing.  We must cultivate messiness and be comfortable with the unknown.

 

THE FUTURE IS MOVING FASTER THAN YOU THINK

According to Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler in their book, The Future Is Moving Faster Than You Think, every major industry on earth is going to be reinvented over the next 10 years.  Furthermore, we’re going to see more wealth created over the next decade than ever before in history.

In just a few years, all 8 billion of us on the planet will be connected. Just imagine the innovative potential of that mind meld.

Needless to say, it’s a critical time in business when we desperately need to energize our innovative assets and tap into our creative brilliance—right now!

Which is why the most important skillset, according to almost any study of the most important 21st century skillsets, is innovation.

In fact, an IBM study ranked it higher than global thinking and integrity.

A McKinsey & Company survey found that more than 70 percent of executives anticipate innovation will be a top driver of growth for their companies.

Yet, McKinsey also found most of these executives have been disappointed by their companies’ innovation efforts.

The reasons according to management consultants are: one, they aren’t utilizing the full power of collaboration within their whole enterprise, and two, as Gary Hamel says, leaders have ADD: Ambition Deficit Disorder. “They are too conservative, too risk adverse in their vision and innovation.”

Which brings us back to creative blocks. And the fact that a VUCA MAX world calls for counterintuitive, creative thinking. Which means doubling down on ideation even during downturns.  (For more information on VUCA MAX, refer to part one of this series).

After all, we need bigger thinking to overcome bigger challenges. That calls for what business expert Jim Collins calls BHAGS, Big Hairy Audacious Goals. Or what Google calls Moonshots.

 

BLESS THE MESS

I was fortunate enough to consult on several moonshot projects for Google, which is when I first heard of the concept of VUCA and learned about X, Google’s Moonshot Factory.

Astro Teller is the current CEO of X, Captain of Google Alphabet’s Moonshot Factory, and really the dominant thought leader in the field of moonshot breakthrough ideas.

He offers compelling reasons why we should both champion moonshots and celebrate the mess.

Teller says, “We spend most of our time breaking things and trying to prove that we’re wrong. We run at hardest parts of the problem first. Get excited and cheer. Hey, how are we going to mess-up our project today?”

Teller’s visionary leadership is also coupled with strategies to make them real. That’s why they are a called a Moonshot Factory.

A great book that delves into research from neuroscience and psychology on the benefits of messiness, disorder and even confusion to produce extraordinary creativity is Tim Hartford’s Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives.

 

EFFECTIVE SERENDIPITY

Additionally, the chaos of creativity calls for being aware of what AI and Neuro-evolution expert Ken Stanley calls Effective Serendipity.

In his AI research, Stanley determined that serendipity plays a much deeper role in innovation than we think, which has implications for human innovation over artificial intelligence.

This concept of evolutionary innovation is especially important during this age of machines and technology. Machines are tasked with a single run, based on past data and knowledge, that has a sole objective.

But true innovation is about creating things that don’t exist. In other words, you can’t really have an objective for something that doesn’t exist. And, in many cases, past data can’t predict foresight.

For example, some of the greatest human discoveries were serendipitous like penicillin, radioactivity, the telephone, plastic, anesthesia, rubber, and even rock & roll—the list goes on and on. Yes, there were stepping stones leading to these revelations, but in the end they were their own Blue Ocean.

Effective Serendipity is not quite controlled chaos, but a more intuitive view of the creative enigma. It’s an acknowledgement that happenstance, randomness, coincidence, accidents, and experimentation are part of the process. And like evolution, disruption helps you get there.

It’s also understanding of why exercising non-linear Human Agency in a technological world is so important. As the astronaut in 2001: A Space Odyssey found out when HAL, his ship’s main supercomputer, went bonkers: there are often times consequences and limitations to relying on technology to determine our future.

Like nature, creativity evolves and is messy. Recognizing how it works frees you up to experiment, to take risks, and overcome fear.

 

YES, AND

Another great example of chaos, adversity immersion, and messiness in action is improvisation.

“Yes, and…” is the first rule of improvisational comedy. The central idea being, regardless of what you may think about what someone states, you accept the idea and say “Yes, and…” and keep riffing on the idea, versus saying “No, but…” which would kill the collaborative jam.

This technique was used on Second City stages where some of the most inventive comedians (Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, Tina Fey, Mike Nichols, and Amy Poehler to name just a few) honed their improv chops.

Eventually, innovation gurus began incorporating the formula into business in order to improve the brainstorming process. And when you think about it, improvisation is actually an intense version of the Adversity Immersion exercise.

Why? Because improve is a hot seat of chaos and messiness. First, you are thrust on stage while a random action, subject, or theme is thrown at you (by the awkward stranger in the audience) and then the troupe bats around discordant non-sequiturs that they try to make sense of by riding a roller coaster of “Yes, ands…”

The whole process is a fishy stew of messiness, chaos, and uncertainty that must be made into a tasty bouillabaisse.

Furthermore, by embracing chaos, disorder, and uncertainty, you not only become more creative, but you begin to develop antifragile resilience to change and the unknown.

 

FUTURE MINDSET MASTERY

All of which leads us to the ultimate creative goal: Future Mindset Mastery. The future demands that we embrace chaos, awkwardness, adversity immersion, and the uncomfortable, and celebrate the amazing opportunities in the disruptive process.

To get there, one of the things our VUCA MAX Future Mindset Mastery coaching program stresses is Future Back Storytelling. We want to get you from the possible to the impossible.

We do this through Future Scenario, Foresight Maps, and Story Ladders to create a mosaic of future ideas and actualize them into movie-like scenarios. The result is a portfolio of ideation from mutations to 10x moonshots.

In the age of machines, information knowledge will be the domain of computers and bots.  Now, data is tremendously valuable, but computers don’t “think” the way humans do. Machines generate knowledge which they cannot explain and work by eliminating choices until there is the best choice.

Human beings—like nature—evolve. We compound and converge concepts. We kluge choices and mutate ideas. That’s why it takes a chaotic process to discover the unexpected discovery and create impossible breakthroughs.

In his book Beyond Knowledge, George Washington University professor William Halel tells us technology is driving a new age of higher consciousness. This calls for a Future Mindset Mastery that accesses our higher faculties and human agency.

It requires fostering key value shifts that catalyze the next stage of human evolution: an expanded focus on creativity and imagination, bolder vision, intuition, wisdom and exponential empathy for all—not just humanity, but animals, plants and the whole planet.

Future Mindset Mastery is how we reach the upper limits of human potential in an increasingly accelerating, complex, uncertain, and chaotic world.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Chris Nolan is a multiple Emmy Award-winning director, creative director, marketing strategist, branding story expert and author. He brings 25 years of branding, writing, directing and production experience in both entertainment and marketing to his content production company, 90,000 Feet, working for clients such as Disney, Google, and Toyota.

He recently directed and co-wrote with Mike Schindler, the documentary “It’s VUCA: The Secret to Living in the 21st Century”. Chris and Mike have followed up the film with a book and an extensive leadership and executive coaching program called VUCA MAX.

To preorder the book or for more information on the VUCA MAX program go to https://itsvuca.com or contact Chris at Chris@itsvuca.com.

 

RESOURCES:

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Make An Epic Career Change Today (Without Sacrifice!)

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Tammy Alvarez, CEO and founder of Career Winners Circle provided this article as. a companion to her podcast The Job I Love to Hate: It’s Never Too Late to Upgrade Your Career!. 

 

You’ve worked for years, maybe even decades, and you’ve found yourself stuck in a rut with no idea how to break the cycle and start doing something you love. But the minute you think about making an epic career change you get excited. The butterflies kick in, and you can almost see yourself in the center of all the action doing high-impact work that you love.

Pivoting careers is very different than getting the same job in the same industry. All the things you know about getting a new role won’t work when you want to make an epic career change. You’ve got to do things differently.

Fortunately, these things can be learned and perfected. Your sense of being overwhelmed can be replaced with a new approach so you keep those butterflies of excitement going. If you’re like most people, you believe that an epic career change will require you to take a step back. And nobody wants to do that. You’ve worked hard to get where you are and the thought of having to give anything up and ‘start over’ is soul-crushing. After all, the majority of people who try and make an epic career change do it wrong and end up making the ultimate sacrifice by having to move back a few spaces in the game of life.

You do not have to sacrifice your career happiness for progress.

You have spent a lifetime acquiring skills, perspectives, insights, and experiences that are amazing. Why do they suddenly ‘not count’ just because you start working in a new industry or new role? It sounds kind of ridiculous when you think about it – right?

Again, you can change careers the right way or you can do it the wrong way. When you learn how to leverage all your experiences and skills as an asset to your target career, the thought of taking a step back will be a distant memory.

Making that epic career change doesn’t need to whittle away everything you’ve worked so hard for. You can love your job, be excited about your career, and still have the income, influence, perks, and position you’ve worked so hard to achieve. Doing this isn’t hard, it’s just very different from what you’re used to.

 

Reinventing Your Career: 3 First Steps

When the time comes to re-invent your career, most people get stuck before they even get started, resulting in too many talented people sitting on the sidelines. If you fall in this category, you know that you’re missing out on your opportunity to make the impact you want and to have the career you’ve always dreamed of. And let’s face it: it gets extremely frustrating when this happens over and over again.

Here’s how the thought cycle goes: I want something different, and I am ready for a change! But…

What am I qualified for?

Who will want me?

Will my skills transfer?

Will I have to take a cut in pay or job title?

What will everyone think?

Do I have what it takes?

These doubts are how you get stuck before you even get started. It doesn’t have to be that way. The reason you’re not able to make that move you’ve always wanted is you’re asking the right questions at the wrong time. These are all excellent questions, but they should not come first. They actually come dead last.

Here are three questions you need to ask yourself before starting to think about how to reinvent your career:

  1. How much resilience do I have to make a career change? Changing careers is absolutely achievable but it’s not as easy as simply going to work for a competitor or taking a related role in the same industry. Every time you step out to do something you’ve never done before, it requires a ton of resiliency to both get the role and to keep the role. You should check in with yourself and make sure that now is the right time for you based on how resilient you are able to be at this stage of your career.
  2. What are you most passionate about? Have you fallen into the trap of chasing jobs for money, title, status, social expectations, and the like? If you suddenly find every day to be soul crushing, then it’s time to step back and re-evaluate what is most important to you. Take your whole self into consideration and narrow in on the things that really matter to you. This will not only guide your future decisions: it will give you the fuel you need for the long haul.
  3. How far and fast do you want to grow? If you’re not growing, you’re not reaching your fullest potential. Regardless of how much you do or don’t like change, falling into the mundane rut of the status-quo is a mind-numbing experience. Nobody wants that. Take stock of your growth trajectory both personally and professionally. Get really clear on the pace of growth you can sustain at this point in your career, and put yourself in situations where you can grow at a comfortable pace all the time.

Answering these questions is the first step in climbing out of the darkness of an unsatisfying job, and into a renewed career that lights you up!

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Meet Tammy Alvarez, CEO, and founder of Career Winners Circle. A comprehensive collection of coaching and training programs designed to strengthen leaders to grow their careers quickly and sustainably.

Her spirited “Break all the Rules” approach blends decades of C-Suite experience on Wall Street with a pragmatic, results-based coaching style. She helps business professionals like you create impact so you can love every Monday morning again!

She is an inspirational coach, trainer, and epic storyteller who delivers transformative learning experiences for her global client base. She believes the heart of every successful business is leaders who inspire courage.

 

RESOURCES:

Ready to measure your leadership skills? Complete your complimentary assessment through the Innovative Leadership Institute. Learn the 7 leadership skills required to succeed during disruption and innovation.

Additional Resources offered by our trusted colleagues and partners

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-creating Our Future via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify,  Amazon Music,  Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

A Call To Action – What Can We DO?

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We are reposting this previously published material because we must remain committed to taking action as we enter 2023.

As we watch the Black Lives Matter movement unfold in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and that of others, some in the press and others whose names will not be remembered by the masses, we want to offer a blog that provides actions we can each take in addition to protesting. Each of us has a role to play in eliminating systemic racism. No step is too small when we are touching the lives of our neighbors, friends, and the precious people who are adversely impacted. Again, no positive action is too small. This post is offered by Maureen Metcalf, Founder of the Innovative Leadership Institute. We are personally committed to making an impact.

A Call To Action from Black Tech 614 – Columbus, Ohio

For organizations and individuals who are motivated to act in the interest of Black People and their communities through technology-based skills and opportunities, we offer these positive, peaceful, and proactive commitments.

Help Us Adopt a School
The gaps that slow economic progress show up in schools first. Greater access to high-quality teacher training, technology devices, broadband, mentors, and skill development activities will help our schools close the digital divide for students and their families. With your financial support and organizational partnership, we will work with TECH CORPS to bring much-needed resources into a school in Columbus.

Help Black Founders Get Access to Capital
Black founders are disproportionately creating employment and wealth opportunities in historically Black communities and with Black Men and Women. Due to systemic barriers and biases, many struggle to access traditional venture capital, private equity, and loans. We will work with The Columbus Minority Business Assistance Center at the Columbus Urban League Huntington Empowerment Center and BLK hack to connect innovators with capital.

Help Black Men and Women Get Second Chances to Build a Stable Income.

Beyond the Black Tech 614 call to action, The Innovative Leadership Institute would like to recommend resources to educate yourself as well as share information about one of our ILI Team Members and his Business, Hire-Directions.

Educate Yourself – Listen to podcasts to learn more about bias and how successful leaders overcome the impact it causes.

  1. Listen to our show – Implicit Bias – What You Don’t See Hurts You! Dr. Rebecca Heiss discusses how Implicit bias creates a disadvantage for leaders and their organizations. We want listeners to understand implicit bias and how it impacts each of us. As leaders, we need to understand and manage implicit biases because they impact our hiring choices, promotion and succession decisions, and policies. To hire and retain top talent, we need to remove bias from the decision-making process as much as possible.
  2. Listen to the podcast: Winning In The Face of Adversity: Overcoming Challenge with Grace. In a time when people are sharing more of their personal struggles, we talk to Congress Woman Beatty and Doug McCollough about their struggles and, more importantly, how they navigated those struggles so that they could make their greatest impact on the world. Congresswoman Beatty not only overcame, but she also changed the people’s view of what it was to be a successful black woman, and she mentored women to make sure the pipeline behind her was strong. The country was better because of all facets of her service! She talks about how helping women succeed helps America succeed. She serves as a role model for inclusion globally by serving with grace and decorum! Doug shares how his focus on inclusion is expanding the field of employees working in technology in central Ohio. Through his board work and his work as CIO, he is creating a pipeline that allows unemployed people to get trained and find technology jobs. He is helping build the system that will close this gap long-term!

Manage Yourself – once you listen to the interview about bias, ask yourself:

  1. Where am I biased?
  2. How is that bias hurting others?
  3. What can I change?
  4. Who will be my change accountability partner?

Support Others – take action that reduces the problem. We each have a role to play. While we certainly need policy changes and significant shifts, we also need to take small steps – we must do what is “ours to do”.

  1. Mentor – identify a person who is interested in being mentored and offer to provide that mentoring. Mentoring works both ways. As a mentor, you can learn about the life experience of people who have traveled a different journey than you. Use the opportunity to understand and advocate!
  2. Volunteer – identify needs that you can uniquely fill. The beauty of volunteering is you don’t need money or education. You can help a neighbor or a stranger. You can engage in a structured program like those advocated by Black Tech 614, volunteer for Meals On Wheels, or other programs that support people who need support (the point is to help others in times of need). Studies show that volunteering gives the volunteer a health boost and increases resilience.
  3. Research how you spend – support minority-owned businesses.  While most of us will continue shopping for staples from big box stores, we can also allocate some of our spending to local, black-owned, and minority businesses. We proudly partner with Hire-Directions and strongly recommend their services. HIRE DIRECTION is a data-driven career, talent, and workforce solutions provider dedicated to helping organizations and aspiring professionals solve the job fit equation and optimize career development. The breakthrough map of the Talent Genome and next-generation talent DNA mapping technology connects people, talent, and careers to the right jobs in a brand new way.  The Hire-Directions system helps individuals find, maintain, and advance along the best career path, while helping organizations acquire, develop, and retain the best talent with the least risk. Just as doing what is yours to do means making choices within your sphere of control, we at ILI are making partnering decisions with Mark Palmer because his assessment is the best we have seen in the market! I am not making a recommendation because it is politically correct. I have recommended this assessment for years. I recommend knowing who does the best work and buying from minority and black-owned businesses when possible. 
  4. Hire black employees. It can be harder to identify and hire black and minority employees. When people have been systematically overlooked, they don’t appear in the standard search. Go the extra step to ensure you are identifying a diverse slate of interview candidates. I realize this takes additional effort.
  5. Create support systems to allow you to retain candidates after you hire them. Support could mean data-driven appraisal systems to ensure everyone is rated fairly and bias is minimized. It could include creating employee resource groups. Each organization will differ, as will each group of employees. There is no prescription. When in doubt, ask, communicate, and demonstrate care.

For all those people taking an active role in learning, discussing, peacefully protesting, and making changes, we applaud you. For those ready to act but unsure of what to do, we invite you to take action on one or more of the recommendations in this blog. We encourage you to share what you are doing with us, and we will post some of your comments.

 

 

Five Trends Leaders Can Expect To See In 2023 (And How To Prepare)

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Maureen Metcalf, founder and CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute, wrote this article as a companion to her podcast with Christopher Washington, a learning ecosystem designer who serves as Executive Vice President and Provost of Franklin University, 5 Trends to Know: Leadership in 2023.

 

Traditionally, VUCA stood for volatile, uncertain, chaotic and ambiguous, but more recently a more positive acronym has emerged to represent the positive response to VUCA: vision, understanding, clarity and agility or adaptability. VUCA will define the coming years, and there’s an opportunity for leaders to shift the negative VUCA to the positive VUCA.

With every challenge, there is an opportunity. Moving our mindsets from negative to positive can be the biggest challenge for leaders. When considering leadership trends last year, I wrote, “We need to rethink how we lead and structure our businesses and lives for our people, organizations and communities to thrive. Most of us have mental models reflecting slower change and less complexity. It is time to update those models. Old models generate increasingly suboptimal decision-making and action.” This sentiment is even more true today. We must continue celebrating what works and adjusting what doesn’t work.

According to the documentary It’s VUCA: The Secret to Living in the 21st Century, one aspect of successful organizations is they are antifragile, meaning they get stronger under stress. For our organizations to thrive, we need to consider the system we operate in and determine how to make them antifragile.

Here are five trends I believe will have an impact on organizations in 2023, along with some prompts for leaders to consider in order to make their organization more antifragile:

Trend One: There will be a greater focus on sustainability and energy security.

The strain on the oil supply caused by the Russia/Ukraine conflict and the high cost of natural disasters has impacted businesses and government resources. According to a recent Forbes article, “The past two years saw record numbers of billion-dollar disasters.” In addition, geopolitical alignments are shifting as we watch how countries and continents align on taking climate action and how developed countries will support less developed countries to mitigate the impact on their populations. The United States government is investing significantly in energy security to address these pressures. As a result, the opportunity to expand climate-resilient businesses will grow substantially.

Ask yourself:

  • What are you doing to assess and manage your energy consumption?
  • Have your leaders been trained in environmental, social, and corporate governance leadership practices focused on your industry?

Trend Two: Inflation and food insecurity will continue to affect consumers.

Inflation is impacting nearly every aspect of our lives. For many, it’s most apparent at the grocery store. The United Nations’ Food Price Index remained virtually unchanged in October, with prices still much higher than pre-pandemic costs. A downward trend in food and fuel is required to ensure consumer spending remains healthy. There’s an opportunity now to build food systems that withstand climate-based shocks. This could include everything from strengthening food distribution systems to enhancing production capacity in areas impacted by drought.

Ask yourself:

  • How does reduced consumer buying power affect your business?
  • Can you create offerings that appeal to budget-conscious consumers?
  • Does your organization provide solutions to mitigate food insecurity or help those affected most by the rising costs of basics?

Trend Three: A growing investment in artificial intelligence and chip production could lead to new business opportunities.

With the passage of the CHIPS Act in August, we saw the U.S. government invest in “reshoring” chip manufacturing and invest in research and development to support the defense industry and competitiveness of hardware and software supply chains. According to McKinsey, “The CHIPS Act directs $280 billion in spending over the next ten years.” This investment will help the U.S. compete in the artificial intelligence space, which is important considering that the controller of the A.I. sets the values programmed into A.I.

Ask yourself:

  • What opportunities could “reshoring” create for your organization?
  • How are you using A.I. or robotic process automation to improve your competitiveness?

Trend Four: The Great Resignation and ‘quiet quitting’ will alter the workforce.

Amid the Great Resignation, many organizations are struggling to find and keep employees. If they can attract employees, they face the phenomenon of “quiet quitting,” when employees do just the minimum to accomplish the job. According to Gallup, “The ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees is now 1.8 to 1, the lowest in almost a decade.” This means that “quiet quitters” now make up at least 50% of the U.S. workforce.

There’s an opportunity now for companies to take a new approach to engaging employees. Some companies are looking at utilizing employee listening technology for real-time sentiment tracking and considering structural changes like four-day work weeks.

Ask yourself:

  • How can you better engage your existing employees and attract new ones?
  • Which of the emerging approaches to talent could you experiment with?

Trend Five: There will be an increased need for leadership development.

I’ve seen firsthand how leaders are the most significant leverage point for success in many organizations, yet they often neglect their development to focus on delivering short-term results. This short-term focus will have an increasing impact that differentiates the successful from the unsuccessful organizations. There’s an opportunity for organizations to develop leaders committed to continuous development and systems that reinforce development.

Ask yourself:

  • How is your organization building its leaders’ ability to navigate the VUCA climate?
  • What additional leadership development investments would further elevate your organization?

In addition to writing about trends, I wanted to focus on the opportunities these trends provide. As leaders, we can position our organizations to be more resilient or, even better, to be antifragile. As we move into 2023, how can you help to build an antifragile organization?

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Maureen Metcalf is the founder and CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute. She is an expert in anticipating and leveraging future business trends. Ms. Metcalf helps leaders elevate their leadership quality and transform their organizations to create sustainable impact and results. She captures 30 years of experience and success in an award-winning series of books used by public, private, and academic organizations to align company-wide strategy, systems, and culture using Innovative Leadership techniques. Ms. Metcalf is a Fellow of the International Leadership Association. She also serves on the advisory boards of the School of Strategic Leadership at James Madison University and the Mason Leadership Center at Franklin University. Ms. Metcalf earned an MBA from Virginia Tech. She can be reached at mmetcalf@innovativeleadership.com.

Christopher Washington is a learning ecosystem designer who serves as Executive Vice President and Provost of Franklin University.

 

RESOURCES:

Ready to measure your leadership skills? Complete your complimentary assessment through the Innovative Leadership Institute. Learn the 7 leadership skills required to succeed during disruption and innovation.

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-creating Our Future via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify,  Amazon Music,  Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.