Ask yourself: When was the last time someone seriously “dropped some knowledge” on you? Something that really grabbed your attention? Your imagination? Made you laugh, shed a tear, both? Something that possibly inspired you to, as Steve Jobs said in his famous Stanford speech, “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” Hopefully it wasn’t as far back as your college graduation. But, chances are, it wasn’t at work.
Modern companies often strive to be more customer-centric. The more aware you are of customer needs and the more empathy you have toward their motivations, the easier it is to build a great product.
When you decide to play referee with your team’s disagreement, one of the worst things you can end the argument with is “agreeing to disagree.”
There are a number of ways senior leadership can connect and engage with employees beyond the normal flow of executive communications.
Making a sale is all about how you frame your offer. The customer is not interested in what you have to sell, but in what he has to gain. The easiest way to make a sale is to continually put yourself in his shoes and discuss your product or service in terms of what effect it will have on your customer’s life or business. And when it comes time to ask for the actual sale, the same thing holds true. Skip the tired “do you want to buy one?”, and use one of these more meaningful phrases instead.
Too many leaders avoid making tough calls. In an effort not to upset others or lose status in the eyes of their followers, they concoct sophisticated justifications for putting off difficult decisions, and the delay often does far more damage than whatever fallout they were trying to avoid. In fact, hard decisions often get more complicated when they’re deferred. And as a leader gets more senior, the need to make hard calls only intensifies.
Basic understanding and empathy can go a long way in helping toxic leaders recover their best selves.
Anne Raimondi was stumped. Two people she managed weren’t getting along, and it was really impacting progress. In her private conversations with each of them, they had the same goals and wanted the same things. But in the room together, they’d disagree on everything. They’d quibble over the smallest things, avoid spending time together, and jump to assuming the worst about each other, even though they were ultimately on the same team.
Leaders: learn to embrace your shortcomings.
An executive coach is a qualified professional who helps their clients gain self-awareness, clarify goals, achieve development objectives and ultimately unlock their potential. Worldwide, executive coaching is a $3 billion per year industry. The American Management Association estimates that the need for coaching will increase in 2018. They also predict that executive coaching will continue…
