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Over 75% of organizations with diversity and inclusion training continue to adhere to the antiquated advice of celebrated diversity trainer R. Roosevelt Thomas Jr. His refrain that C-suite leaders who wished to exert strategic benefits of diversity management must insist employees resign if they weren't willing to accept new rules and procedures, revealed after five years zero improvements in the white women, black men, and Hispanics in management positions.
While many businesses more and more turn to teams from committees to self-directed workgroups, the expectation is that the new style will expand efficiency by increasing inventiveness, momentum, and execution. Still, our image of collaboration should be coupled with realistic expectations of a meaningful relationship among team members should be.
What happens to an organization when leaders whose fears masquerade as all-knowing encourages conflict and protective silos? It turns out that instilling trust is more critical to the development of an organization than suggested. In our extensive experience as management consultants, we’ve helped challenge some of the issues organizations continue to struggle with, such as customer loyalty, teamwork, transformative leadership, and meaningful meetings.
Do you know your leadership blind spots? Here are 7 that can turn things around. If you can find a way to do well during the toughest times, you take market share and when the financial situation improves, you are the established, go-to brand. But there are significant blind spots that keep business leaders from reaching their potential and creating the success they dream of, even in boom times.
I agree that if you want the very best level of human performance during this crisis when your employees return to work, it is vital your people feel that you are doing what needs to be done to ensure their safety. But are you asking the right questions? There are issues to consider when bringing workers back to work that need addressing.
True, authentic power does not emerge from authoritative postures, titles, or position. Influence comes from a submission to serve. Serve from the heart.
Unless we carefully cultivate the characteristics of humility, we can be distracted by humility’s opposite: The levers of pride. C. S. Lewis penned, “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.” That is when we run into trouble.
Develop the best strategies based on reliable competitive assessments, understanding customer-behaviors, building fundamental competencies and deciding on the right areas to compete that will fulfill the desires of their shareholders. Read the 7 driving forces of great leadership with tips you can use.
Self-leadership is needed now more than ever before. If you just look around, you’ll discover Every family and workplace needs more of it. I understand Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll has an approach to unleash imagination, initiative, and passion. He has incorporated “tell the Truth Mondays.” Trust makes feedback possible. A key element in creating amazing teams.
In today’s vastly competitive landscape, not to mention frequent high-profile legal actions mixed with an increasingly diverse workforce in ways other than race, organizations are encountering tremendous challenges when it comes to inclusion. I ask again, “Are You Inclusive Or In A Protective Silo?”
A poll was conducted of over 700 executives from various countries. The poll resulted in the executives identifying 6 major challenges adversely contributing to the development of their managerial effectiveness. They’re quite revealing:
Image courtesy S O C I A L . C U T @socialcut
A failure to inspire people in their organization
Failure to develop employees
Led teams ineffectively
Did not guide change initiatives
Didn't effectively manage internal stakeholders
Underestimated organizational politics
The conclusion from these 6 challenges was stark. They needed to develop managerial effectiveness.
What significant steps can one take leading to managers and leaders improving managerial effectiveness?
Set specific goals
Effectively delegate
Maximize value
Managers are overwhelmed in their quest to improve their employees, innovate and meet organizational objectives. They rarely succeed at mastering important and urgent matters. Everything becomes an emergency.
They fail to resolve important matters because they are omnipresent and nowhere. They put out fires but little else.
Here is a word of caution. Make certain you maximize value by executing the time in the areas of important but non-urgent. This minutia is where the real work should be focused on.
It is easy to develop certain skills in others while neglecting the personal assessments needed of managers, by managers. Examine where you are. How you are doing. Your role requires clarity for yourself before it migrates to team members. They can often see the competencies managers need to develop before the managers themselves.
Learn to master the core competencies that you need to be effective in the job. Work on your strengths. Admit your weaknesses and exert the power to make them serve you. If you would like to discuss how we can deliver this training to your organization through our online learning programs, please schedule an appointment here.
About Jim Woods
Jim is President of Woods Kovalova Group located in Denver, CO. He is an author of children books for 5 year old’s as well as leadership books. Working globally on every continent, Jim and his team have advised and trained Fortune 1000 companies, U.S. Military, Government, small businesses and individuals seeking performance improvement. Jim is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and earned a master’s degree in organizational development and human resources. He has taught leadership and human resources at Villanova, Colorado Technical University and Dickinson University. To have Jim work with your organization schedule an appointment here.
Fully participating in the tactics to overcoming unconscious bias in the workplace helps each of us to assume responsibility for what we think, say and do. We are not hinges on a door swinging aimlessly in any direction the door swings. We are duty-bound to look forward not in weakness following “truths” that weren’t.
Do you want to lead more effectively, especially during difficult times? Consider your leveraging these strategies as you work to nimbly navigate the unexpected, and sometimes thorny, pace of change. Whatever the size, most businesses face many of the same challenges. There are the tasks of maximizing profits, minimizing expenses and finding talented staff to keep things moving seem to be top challenges. What is different is how these challenges are prioritized. Here are five challenges facing businesses of all sizes.
But employees typically respond to the environment established by leaders and managers. One can find negative bitter angry and cynical people within the same company with the same pay under the tutelage of the same employee engagement plan. In far too many organizations the most important aspects of the equation are lost.
Just think about it for a moment. The one job despite the training that is replete with bureaucracy is management. The people are generally good employees. They are well-intentioned. But they do what they see their bosses do. Presume they have all the answers. Slow to harvest suggestions from “underlings.” Everyone else is broken but them. They succeed, however never beyond good enough. They are the great Oz.
