Strategy – Page 11 – thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World

How to Navigate Office Alliances

November 6, 2024/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Leadership, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

Some people won’t do their dirty work themselves. They’ll align themselves with other partner groups to stall your progress.

Every organization suffers from some level of political intrigue. Whether it’s hoarding of resources, manipulative tactics, or passive aggressive behavior office politics distract your organization from getting things done. It also makes time at the office stressful and discouraging. Ignoring these dynamics can create risk for you, but you can take a productive approach to dealing with common political issues.

Alliance building

Some people won’t do their dirty work themselves. They’ll align themselves with other partner groups to stall your progress. These people might operate in the background. They can even promise things to other groups in exchange for their support against your ideas and your agenda.

When you encounter resistance from multiple directions, look for common interactions or relationships. You might be able to find out who is working behind the scenes against you. Once you know who is advancing an agenda counter to yours, it’s a lot easier to deal with the concerns they’re raising with each of those stakeholders they’re moving forward. You might have to pay for some support or build alliances of your own to overcome this type of situation.

Let’s imagine we have a senior vice president of sales. He wants resources for his product. He hears that a director of product development is trying to launch her own new product into the marketplace. The senior vice president goes out and he lobbies with supply chain and tells them how hard it’s going to be to launch her new product into the market. He lobbies with finance and tells them he’s not confident in her market estimates for how big that product is going to be. He then goes to marketing and says, you know what, her new product is actually going to cannibalize this really big product of yours. He’s actively working behind the scenes to sabotage her idea. All three of those groups then resist her product launch.

She then has to get them bought in to her idea. The way she can do this is understanding and addressing each of their concerns. She should come at it from a fact-based and data-driven approach. She should use logic and not emotion to understand what their issues are and provide them the data to let them know that her idea is a good one. She might then sit down with that SVP to try and understand what his broader concerns are. If she just ignores him, he’s going to keep trying to advance his agenda against hers. Sometimes the direct approach is the best approach.

If you find yourself in a situation where you’re getting unexpected resistance from multiple different areas, you might have somebody operating in the background. Take a step back and understand who might have an agenda that runs counter to yours. Then sit down with them, understand the concerns, and productively try to resolve them.

Want to learn more about navigating politics as a senior leader? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to navigate politics as a senior leader. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

Communicating Strategy is as Simple as Creating a Map

November 5, 2024/1 Comment/in Books, Communications, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Strategy doesn’t have to be something reserved for executives or communicated in a secret language that most people don’t understand. By creating a simple strategy map, you can effectively communicate your strategy to your entire organization.

Today’s guest post is by Sanjiv Anand, author of Execution Excellence.

A few years ago, I visited a client who was the CEO of the subsidiary of a major French firm. Waiting in his conference room, I saw not art, but power point slides decorating his walls. When he walked in, I asked him what was going on. He said he had the slides up there because he had a significant number of employees take a walk through the conference room each week and read the slides. He felt it was the most effective way to communicate his strategy to his team. I know it sounds funny, but it’s not. Look at what extremes people go to to communicate strategy.

For too long strategy has been the like the keys to the executive washroom. Those who have the keys know what the strategy is. Unfortunately, those who have to execute it have no clue. Town halls, the quintessential American invention of CEOs sharing their wisdom on the direction of company and key themes, don’t do justice to the topic of strategy.

Many firms have attempted to deal with this by expanding the involvement of a large number of employees in the strategic planning process, supposedly a more democratic process as it’s bottom-up. These initiatives are clearly pushed by HR professionals seeking employee empowerment.

The reality is none of this works. Not decorating the walls with power point art, nor the bottom-up approach. The bottom-up approach doesn’t work because as one goes deeper in the organization, the role becomes less strategic and more operational. And the tendency of management taking a bottom-up approach is to then think operationally and what the potential strategy could be keeping current processes in mind, while good strategy is about change and innovation.

So what works?

What to Do When Someone is Taking Credit for Your Work

October 31, 2024/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Leadership, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

People looking to advance their careers in the organization might try to curry favor with key stakeholders and influencers. This can mean taking credit for your ideas as their own.

Every organization suffers from some level of political intrigue. Whether it’s hoarding of resources, manipulative tactics, or passive aggressive behavior office politics distract your organization from getting things done. It also makes time at the office stressful and discouraging. Ignoring these dynamics can create risk for you, but you can take a productive approach to dealing with common political issues.

Jockey for position

People looking to advance their careers in the organization might try to curry favor with key stakeholders and influencers. This can mean taking credit for your ideas as their own. It can make them seem more indispensable if they’re working on really important projects. They may even try to freeze you out of visibility opportunities by not inviting you to key meetings.

I worked with one senior director who got a new boss. When this VP came in, he wanted to impress the C-suite. This VP took over roles on key steering committee meetings and uninvited this senior director. The VP did this even though he had no expertise in the area. All he wanted was visibility. He actually uninvited this senior director from steering committees he had led for three or four years. The VP also took credit for the senior director’s work, and when things went wrong, that VP deflected blame to other parts of the organization.

The senior director asked me, “What do I do here? I’m being uninvited from these meetings, this person’s taking credit for my work, and I’m really concerned that people are going to start wondering what I do.” He actually went out and sought out mentors across the organization. He asked them for their input on key projects he was working on. In doing so, he was letting these influential people know that these were his projects. After major meetings or progress milestones on the project, the senior director sent out recap emails to other parts of the organization to let people know that he was the one driving the efforts.

If you deal with this type of situation where somebody is jockeying within the organization and freezing you out, a technique you can use is building those mentoring relationships across the organization. It’ll help make sure that people know what you’re working on, and if you’re leading a project where there are milestones, send out recap emails after a meeting. Again, you’re letting people know that you’re driving the work. The nice postscript to that story about the VP was people eventually figured out that all he was doing was jockeying for position, and he eventually got fired from the organization.

It’s tough when you’re in these types of situations. It’s going to require you to be patient and be diligent about making sure people know that the value you deliver is the value coming from you and your team, and it’s not somebody else’s project. Find those mentoring relationships, and get the word out about the great work your team is doing.

Want to learn more about navigating politics as a senior leader? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to navigate politics as a senior leader. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

How to Deal with Resource Hoarders

October 24, 2024/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Leadership, Strategy, Training /by Trevor Jones

If you’re in a situation where somebody is keeping resources from you, help them understand how your agenda supports their agenda.

Every organization suffers from some level of political intrigue. Whether it’s hoarding of resources, manipulative tactics, or passive aggressive behavior office politics distract your organization from getting things done. It also makes time at the office stressful and discouraging. Ignoring these dynamics can create risk for you, but you can take a productive approach to dealing with common political issues.

Resource hoarding

A way to get ahead or maintain positions of importance is to hoard resources and build a kingdom. By pulling more resources like people and budget into your sphere of influence, you gain power in the organization. But building kingdoms can prevent things from getting done. If you need resources, help the person who has them understand how their resource contribution advances their own agenda. Get public commitments of those resources and manage those commitments through project plans. One other thing to realize here is, if you have resources and people are coming to you to contribute those resources to their projects, you need to understand that you need to provide those resources to valid projects. Be a good contributor to the growth of your organization.

I know one CIO who had just joined the company. He was trying to make a name for himself. He knew getting resources was critical for so many of the projects out there, and he held a lot of those IT resources. He made it really difficult for some people to get the resources they needed. He came at this from the perspective of, “I’m only going to allocate resources to projects that make me look important.” A lot of those projects were in a really big business unit. The problem was, there were some small business units that needed those resources too. But he was always saying no.

One project sponsor in one of those small business units was having a hard time getting the IT support he needed. He sat down with the CIO and he said, “You know, I know that big business unit seems like it matters the most, but this small business unit is really the future of the company, and I think you really want to be a part of that growth story. So if you contribute your resources, you’re going to be a big part of that story going forward.” It totally changed the way the CIO was looking at the situation. He immediately allocated a lot of resources to this small business unit. He then went to the senior leadership team and started bragging about he was contributing and really driving the growth of this small business unit. It was a little bit unseemly, but that stakeholder who needed those resources for that small business unit got what he needed.

If you’re in the situation where somebody’s holding back those resources, a great way to free those resources up is to help that person understand how your agenda drives their agenda. If you can make that connection for them, the resources are going to flow your way.

Want to learn more about navigating politics as a senior leader? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to navigate politics as a senior leader. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

Are People Stalling Your Ideas? Here’s What You Can Do

October 16, 2024/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

When you’re dealing with stalling behavior, using a sensitivity analysis or putting the burden of proof on the other person can help you break out of that stall and move your ideas forward.

Every organization suffers from some level of political intrigue. Whether it’s hoarding of resources, manipulative tactics, or passive aggressive behavior office politics distract your organization from getting things done. It also makes time at the office stressful and discouraging. Ignoring these dynamics can create risk for you, but you can take a productive approach to dealing with common political issues.

People Stalling Your Ideas

Some people aren’t comfortable directly opposing your idea, but they don’t want the idea to move forward. So what they do is they stall. They hope your idea just eventually dies. This person might seem really interested in helping you. They’re very interested in your ideas and your recommendations—a little bit too interested. Every time they interact with you they say how excited they are. They’re really eager to help you. Then they ask for more information. Then the next time they sit down with you, they ask for more information, and more, and more, and more. They’re using this as a stalling technique to prevent you from moving forward. But the way they’re doing it makes them look really helpful and supportive in the process.

To get past this dynamic, I like using a basic sensitivity analysis if people are bringing up concerns about maybe how many customers you might lose because of your idea. You might start drilling in and doing retention analysis and looking at historicals. But that is going to be a never-ending pool of analysis you need to do. Instead what you can do is say, “You know what, for this to turn into a bad idea we would have to lose a thousand customers. Does anybody in the room believe that this idea would cause us to lose a thousand customers?” If everybody in the room says, “There’s no way we would lose that many,” all of a sudden, that analysis this person is asking for is completely irrelevant and you can move forward.

Another technique I encourage people to use when you’re seeing this stalling behavior is putting the burden of proof on the other person’s plate. If they have to do work, suddenly some of their concerns aren’t as important to them. What that conversation can sound like is, “Hey, you know what, that’s a really interesting concern. I would love to see your analysis on that. When do you think you can have it done?” The person might say, “Yeah, it is really important and I’m going to go do the analysis and I’ll get it to you next week.” Well then it’s a big concern. More often than not, what I see is, “Well, you know that’s actually going to be complicated and I don’t really have the time to do that analysis. And you know, as I think about it some more, this really isn’t that big of a concern.” And then you’ve gotten past the stall.

Let’s imagine you have a chief financial officer who doesn’t like one of your ideas. They keep showing up to your meetings and asking a lot of financial analysis questions. You find yourself answering those questions every single time and getting them more data and more data and more data but they keep asking for more. A way to break out of this stall is to ask them to run the financials using their scenarios. That’s going to be a lot of work. They might just walk away from the situation. If they really do believe that these are big concerns, they’re going to do that analysis. If they don’t believe they’re big concerns and they’re just really trying to stall you, you might find that they walk away from it and say, “You know what, I guess the project can proceed from here. I’m not as concerned as I initially thought I was.”

When you’re dealing with stalling behavior, using a sensitivity analysis or putting the burden of proof on the other person can help you break out of that stall and move your ideas forward.

Want to learn more about navigating politics as a senior leader? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to navigate politics as a senior leader. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

How to Handle Information Hoarders

October 9, 2024/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Information is power. Withholding it is how people can force themselves into a decision-making cycle or weaken your efforts to get things done.

Every organization suffers from some level of political intrigue. Whether it’s hoarding of resources, manipulative tactics, or passive aggressive behavior office politics distract your organization from getting things done. It also makes time at the office stressful and discouraging. Ignoring these dynamics can create risk for you, but you can take a productive approach to dealing with common political issues.

Information hoarding

Information is power. Withholding it is how people can force themselves into a decision-making cycle, or weaken your efforts to get things done. Without their information, your idea can’t move forward. Even worse, they might wait until the last minute to share information and show how bad your idea is. To counter these situations, make it public what information you need, and ask them to provide it. If they won’t provide it, tell them you’re going forward with what you have. This forces their hand. When they don’t provide the information, call it out.

I dealt with one client who was a vice president, and we were trying a cost reduction project for their organization. I was an external consultant at the time. I went to her and I said, “Hey I need this data to be able to make the business case.” She said, “Well I’m not really comfortable sharing that data outside the organization.” I pointed out that we had a confidentiality agreement in place and she still said, “Yeah I’m not really comfortable sharing that information with you.” So I worked on the project as best I could, but the steering committee meeting was going to be the next week. I went to her and I said, “Hey I really need that information to make this case.” And she said, “Yeah, I’m not going to provide it.” So I went back the next day and I said, “Here are the numbers I’m going to share with the steering committee.” And she said, “Well those are totally wrong.” “It’s the best I got without that data, so this what I’m going to present.” She then realized that the steering committee knew that she was the guardian of that information. If I went and presented an idea that was bad or with incomplete numbers, it was going to reflect on her. That situation then flipped her hand, and she provided the information I needed.

I know one other individual who was a senior vice president, and he saw an idea that publicly he was very supportive of. The person leading the project asked him, “What are your concerns?” And in that meeting he said, “I have these two concerns, and here’s how you can address them.” The person went off, they addressed the concerns, and they came back for the final meeting. When they presented their idea, this senior vice president threw out a huge objection right at the last moment, and it was based on information that he knew and nobody else did. Needless to say, the project stopped. This individual had to get that project back on track, and the way they did it was they went back to that SVP, they clarified what his concerns were, and they shared that information in that final steering committee meeting, but not before they had been embarrassed.

When you’re dealing with these situations, be rigorous about the information gathering efforts you’re putting in place. Do your stakeholder management. I like using a tool called a RACI matrix. RACI stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. What you do is you make a list of all the stakeholders, and you let people know the role they’re playing in the process. It tells people who’s providing what information to the project. It lets everyone know that these people are being consulted, and they have inputs into the process. Basically you’re putting them on notice that you’re telling everyone that they are providing specific information for that recommendation. When you go to present the idea, you can even ask this person who has the information to present that part of the recommendation. Involve them in the process. When you do that, they have to own it. They won’t want to present incomplete or inaccurate data in those situations.

Getting the information you need is how you’re going to advance your ideas and your agenda in the organization. When you see somebody holding back that information, make sure they’re put on notice, and people understand their role in how that recommendation moves forward.

Want to learn more about navigating politics as a senior leader? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to navigate politics as a senior leader. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

How to Handle Passive Aggressive Behaviors

October 2, 2024/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Passive aggression is challenging to deal with because it’s so hard to see until it’s too late.

Every organization suffers from some level of political intrigue. Whether it’s hoarding of resources, manipulative tactics, or passive aggressive behavior office politics distract your organization from getting things done. It also makes time at the office stressful and discouraging. Ignoring these dynamics can create risk for you, but you can take a productive approach to dealing with common political issues.

Passive Aggressiveness

Sometimes people will say they agree with you. They love your idea. They say they’ll do whatever you need and give you all the resources you need to move forward. Then, they simply do nothing and passively resist your efforts. They might not give the resources they commit to or take the actions they said they’ll perform. When you’re dealing with this type of behavior, get written commitments that are then shared and followed up on publicly.

I know one chief operating officer who was involved in a major cost reduction project. He didn’t like the program’s direction, but he had to look committed to it. Especially because it was the CEO’s top priority. The COO said he’d provide teams to do analysis. He said they’d contribute ideas for cost savings. But he always came up with other priorities and excuses for why his folks weren’t contributing time or ideas for the project. To look committed, he spun-up a bunch of meetings to try and drive the cost reduction effort forward. The problem was all those meetings did was waste time, create new work, and actually slow the project down. When dealing with the situation, the project manager sat down and got public commitments from this COO in terms of the time their teams would spend, and the ideas that the team was responsible for delivering. Those public commitments eventually got the behavior to change.

When you’re dealing with this situation, pay attention for patterns of failed commitments. Passive-aggression is hard to spot at first. So, by looking for where people are coming up short, it might be an indicator that you’re dealing with this type of behavior. When you’re dealing with it, get public commitments from this person in terms of resources. Also ask this person to provide public updates, so everyone can hear how they’re moving the project forward. And when there’s a shortfall in terms of a commitment, make them explain it. It’s not up to you to make excuses for them.

Passive aggression is really challenging to deal with because it’s so hard to see until it’s too late. By paying attention to commitments and seeing when people are falling short, it gives you an opportunity to call the behavior out publicly and get things back on track.

Want to learn more about navigating politics as a senior leader? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to navigate politics as a senior leader. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

Navigating Politics as a Senior Leader: Overcome Approval-Withholding Behaviors

September 25, 2024/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

When you’re dealing with somebody who’s looking to slow you down, be proactive about understanding the concerns and addressing them in a public forum.

Every organization suffers from some level of political intrigue. Whether it’s hoarding of resources, manipulative tactics, or passive aggressive behavior office politics distract your organization from getting things done. It also makes time at the office stressful and discouraging. Ignoring these dynamics can create risk for you, but you can take a productive approach to dealing with common political issues.

Overcome approval-withholding behaviors

Some stakeholders either won’t like your ideas or they don’t want you to advance your career in the organization. To slow you down, they’ll deliberately withhold approval for your ideas if they have a role in the decision-making process.

To get past this, ask for their concerns and do so in a public forum. You can do it in a meeting, or on an email where multiple people are cc’d. Ask for conditional approval to move forward with your idea. Say something like, “Are those all your concerns and if we address those concerns, and bring you the data, will you approve the idea?” You’re putting that person on record to say yes to your idea if you address their concerns. It tends to corner them into making a decision rather than constantly throwing out new objections to your idea.

I know one situation where the senior vice president didn’t want an individual in the organization to advance. She was constantly second guessing this person’s decisions. She threw out new objections every single day. This individual turned to using their staff meetings to discuss the concerns. During the staff meeting, he asked her, “Hey, I know you have problems with this idea. Can you tell me if those are your top two concerns?” The SVP said, “Yes, that’s what I’m worried about.” He then said, “Okay, if I come back to you with the data, and address those two concerns, will you approve this idea?” And she said, “Absolutely, that would be great.” A couple of weeks later, he came back with the data. He shared it in the staff meeting where everybody had heard her say yes a couple of weeks before. She had no choice in that moment other than to approve the idea.

When you’re dealing with this situation, actively seek out this stakeholder’s objections. If you avoid the person and avoid their concerns, they’re going to keep coming up with new objections to slow you down. Another technique you can use is to find ways to make your success their success. Ask them to be a sponsor of your project. If the project moves forward, it’s going to be good for them as well as good for you.

When you’re dealing with somebody who’s looking to slow you down, be proactive about understanding the concerns and addressing them in a public forum.

Want to learn more about navigating politics as a senior leader? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to navigate politics as a senior leader. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

Navigating Politics as a Senior Leader: Avoid Being Undermined

September 19, 2024/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Some people won’t have approval authority over your ideas, but they still seek to sabotage them nonetheless. Many times they’re doing this to advance their own interests.

Every organization suffers from some level of political intrigue. Whether it’s hoarding of resources, manipulative tactics, or passive aggressive behavior office politics distract your organization from getting things done. It also makes time at the office stressful and discouraging. Ignoring these dynamics can create risk for you, but you can take a productive approach to dealing with common political issues.

Avoid being undermined

Some people won’t have approval authority over your ideas, but they still seek to sabotage them nonetheless. Many times they’re doing this to advance their own interests. A lot of times these behaviors come from peers. When you’re advancing an idea, they throw every objection they can think of. They even proactively go and talk to other stakeholders to talk down your ideas. In some situations, they even speak poorly of you on a personal level.

When you’re dealing with these situations, remain fact based as you address their concerns in public. Bring forth your data. Let people know the logic behind your idea. That takes emotion out of the situation. If this person is campaigning against you, have a direct conversation with them. Let them know you’re aware that they’re speaking behind your back. Ask them to come directly to you with concerns instead of speaking to others.

I dealt with one of these situations personally. I was leading a big cost reduction project, and one of my peers was on the team. This individual shared personal text messages I had sent him with our COO. Needless to say, given the content of those text messages, our COO was not happy. They were not really flattering about the way he was participating in the project. The reason my peer shared this information with our COO is he was trying to curry favor with the COO and the CEO.

When I found out about this, I went directly to our COO. I apologized for the text messages. I said it wouldn’t happen again. I then sat down and had a very direct conversation with my peer. I asked him not to share that kind of information anymore. It was personal between me and him. Going forward, I tended to cut him out of the loop of information that I was sharing with other people, because I didn’t want to take the risk of him doing one of those end runs with another senior stakeholder.

When you find out someone is working at cross purposes to you, be fact based in addressing the concerns, and let them know you don’t appreciate the behavior. That’s one of the best ways to get that behavior to stop.

Want to learn more about navigating politics as a senior leader? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to navigate politics as a senior leader. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

How Covid Changed Leadership Forever

September 16, 2024/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Leadership is entering a new phase. Covid changed everything. If there were divisions before, now they are wider than ever before. The resulting world is now in recovery.

Today’s post is by Chris Lewis, author of The Silent Rebellion.

Leadership is entering a new phase. Covid changed everything. If there were divisions before, now they are wider than ever before. The resulting world is now in recovery.

The pandemic opened up the gaps between continents, countries, companies and colleagues. Everywhere people were separated. Sometimes this was physical between young and old. It was also separation by profession. If you were a doctor or a builder, you had to continue the best you could. Consequently, they died at twice the rate of other managerial professionals.[i]

The gaps between young and old, rich and poor, black and white, healthy and sick were all exacerbated. Covid triggered a deep response in humanity. One of the great problems was that it created a sense of helplessness. People were often sitting at home bombarded with bad news. They wanted to do something. When the UK’s National Health Service set a target for 250,000 volunteers, it was overwhelmed with the response. 750,000 people applied.

My colleagues were no different. At the height of the division in January 2021, we decided there was something we could and should do to help. It had to involve all of us and it needed to be something local or personal. Using the thousand points of light principle, we decided that we would ask every one of our colleagues to reach out to a community cause that meant something to them. We would arm them with a minimum amount of US$1,000, then add onto to that agency services, connections and resources. The net result was an explosion of energy and an extraordinary concept was born – that of employee-directed philanthropy.

Since then, the Team Lewis Foundation has helped over 2,000 causes all over the world. In so doing, we have found some of the most inspiring, most dedicated and most resourceful leaders. These are not the leaders we hear normally about. They don’t usually even describe themselves as leaders. They serve a community and are as happy getting the coffees, driving a minibus, or making the sandwiches. Their impact though, during Covid and beyond, has proved to be the margin of victory, sometimes even of existence. These people really are making a life or death difference in their communities.

So, we wrote a book about them. The Silent Rebellion points out that leadership is not about just making money, it is about something more. Money is a bit like manure. Lots of it piled up can smell bad. Spread it around a bit, it can do some good. It needs to be remembered that when such divisions are created, it’s not just leadership that’s questioned, it’s the very system itself.

Every survey points out that the younger generations of job-seekers are attracted to an organization’s values. This is a necessary, but not sufficient feature, so we added a bonus of the same amount to anyone activating their cause. The only criteria that we insist on is that the recipient must be a recognized, authorized, documented charity. In America this is a 501c (3) charity. This means that our colleagues can nominate a cause of the left or the right. It can be environmental or equality-based. It can be about welfare either for humans or animals.

This also has an important implication for senior leadership. In these days of business and political cross-dressing, politicians behave like business people and business people like politicians. They seem to want to have a position on every political issue – environmentalism, equality, identity, you name it. This is dangerous for many reasons. Firstly, business people are terrible as politicians. Just look at those who have tried it. Secondly, business colleagues are rightly skeptical of top-down schemes designed to make them look good. They’ve seen too many examples of corporate pink-green-blue-washing. Finally, it’s also not what all shareholders want. Of course, shareholders are as diverse as colleagues. Seldom are shareholders pleased with a one-size fits all approach.

Not only is trusting your colleagues with channelling funds more effective, it is also more interesting. Some of the causes revealed by their interests, illuminate their characters and potential. Above all else it reminds you that you work with colleagues who are often inspiring, interesting and emotionally stimulating.

[i] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19relateddeathsbyoccupationenglandandwales/deathsregisteredbetween9marchand28december2020

Chris Lewis is co-author, with Inez Robinson-Odom, of THE SILENT REBELLION: Becoming A Modern Leader. Lewis is founder of TEAM LEWIS; Robinson-Odom is Vice President of Professional Development.

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Navigating Politics as a Senior Leader: Coping with Aggressive Behaviors

September 11, 2024/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

People can behave poorly either in private or in public. This ranges from temper tantrums to intimidation and bullying. Use this approach to diffuse aggressive behaviors.

Every organization suffers from some level of political intrigue. Whether it’s hoarding of resources, manipulative tactics, or passive aggressive behavior office politics distract your organization from getting things done. It also makes time at the office stressful and discouraging. Ignoring these dynamics can create risk for you, but you can take a productive approach to dealing with common political issues.

Coping with Aggressive Behaviors

People can behave poorly either in private or in public. This ranges from temper tantrums to intimidation and bullying. These behaviors are designed to silence the target of their anger and scare others into giving them what they want.

To diffuse this aggressive approach, provide feedback and align with other senior stakeholders who can help diffuse the behavior. When you provide the feedback, ask for confidentiality. Provide feedback from meetings where multiple people were in the room so that feedback can’t be directly attributed to you. This person might want to retaliate. Share this feedback with a trusted executive or Human Resources. If the situation is happening with a very senior executive, most companies have an ethics line you can call. That information typically goes straight to the Board of Directors.

When you provide your feedback, be fact-based. Leave the emotion out of it. When you provide feedback, it might sound something like, “In this meeting this person said the following words.” Leave out the part about the way it made you feel. By providing fact-based feedback, you’re giving them something that they can act on. If the situation is happening in private and no one else is around, consider hitting the pause button when the person gets aggressive. End the meeting when they explode.

I worked with one CEO who would blow up quite frequently. When he did, it was usually because the team hadn’t thought of something. There was usually swearing involved. When it happened, we took an approach of saying, “You know what, we hadn’t considered that. You’re right, it’s something we need to think about. Let us look into it and get back to you.” The meeting was over. It was not going to be productive to continue the conversation.

I coach one chief operating officer who deals with a CEO who can be pretty volatile. When she deals with him and he explodes, she’s now taken an approach of saying, “You know what, I’m not having this conversation right now while you’re yelling at me. It’s not productive. I’m not going to talk to you when you’re this upset. So let’s stop the meeting now. We’ll go recollect ourselves. And we’ll get back together when we’ve calmed down.” That allows for productive issue resolution.

The bullying and aggressive behavior won’t stop until the individual gets clear feedback that the behavior is unacceptable. When you provide the feedback, be fact-based. And when the explosions happen in a one-on-one environment, it’s okay to hit the pause button and come back later.

Want to learn more about navigating politics as a senior leader? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to perform better in negotiations. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Using Speed, Agility, and Innovation to Beat Your Competition

September 9, 2024/0 Comments/in Books, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Innovation, speed, and agility can be a winning combination if they’re used appropriately. Those elements must be tied closely to your strategy if you really want to win.

Today’s post is by Jeffrey Phillips and Alex Verjovsky, authors of OUTMANEUVER: OutThink, don’t OutSpend.

Every executive knows speed is important. Meg Whitman at Hewlett-Packard declared recently that “the future belongs to the fast.” But is speed enough? If you can simply accelerate the current activities, products and strategies that your business implements, will that help you win in the future?

Or what about being more “agile.” Agile was originally a software technique, meant to shorten software development times and make the development team more accountable to customer needs. From there, everyone is adopting the concept of “agile.” There’s agile marketing, introduced by thought leaders at CMG. Can agile help you win more? Of course. Is it, by itself, enough? Probably not.

Or, think about innovation. There’s probably no other topic that has the same level of emphasis across industries and geographies. Everyone knows innovation is important. But again, if you can innovate successfully, is that enough? Do any of these factors, by themselves, help your company win?

We believe that each of these factors is important, but left to themselves, implemented in a discrete fashion, without integration or coordination they won’t make a significant difference. But if you could create a framework in which each of these activities were a vital component leading to a completely new way to compete, then you’d see a significant impact on your revenues, profits and market share.

Maneuver Strategy