Realizing your responsibility to lead can be scary, but done right, leadership breaks down to communicating, informing and involving your employees, while never micromanaging them.
In front of a packed room of MIT students and alumni, Vivienne Ming is holding forth in a style all her own. “Embrace cyborgs,” she calls out, as she clicks to a slide that raises eyebrows even in this tech-smitten crowd. “Really. Fifteen to 25 years from now, cognitive neuroprosthetics will fundamentally change the definition of what it means to be human.”
Being a leader is not for everyone, and this is especially true during a crisis. A good leader will rise to the occasion, lead with integrity, and make sure everyone involved is given the tools needed to get past any challenge. The stress of a crisis can make most people panic, but a good leader can keep their cool and use their problem-solving skills to hash out a quick plan of attack.
The modern workplace is vastly different from what it once was. Today, organizations of all sizes and industries face increasingly globalized markets, remotely-located employees/teams, and the need for cross-disciplinary teams. To meet the demands of customers, it is imperative to have agile leaders who can balance people, processes, and innovation to keep the organization moving forward.
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.
Developing your corporate values early in your company’s history can have a lasting and positive effect on your organization and its culture, and it’s easier to do when your team is small. After all, it’s much easier to steer a four-person speedboat than a 2,000-person cruise ship. Once your team grows larger, it may be challenging to reach consensus around what your values should be.
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.
As the son of Armenian immigrants who fled to Italy and later the United States to escape communism, Bedros Keuilian has always lived with purpose.
