Posted by Kalani Iwiula on Tue, Aug 24, 2010
To be successful, organizations must fully utilize the skills and abilities of their people. Getting the best effort possible from members of your organization and operating in a manner that encourages growth and fosters new ideas are even more crucial in a down economy. According to Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown of The Wiseman Group, a leadership research and development firm, organizations can increase innovation and effectiveness without negatively impacting their bottom lines.
In their article for the Harvard Business Review, Wiseman and McKeown separate leaders into two categories: diminishers and multipliers. Diminishers “underutilize people and leave creativity and talent on the table” and have a “view of intelligence […] based on elitism, scarcity, and stasis.” Conversely, multipliers “bring the right people together in an environment that unleashes their best thinking—and then stay out of the way.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, Wiseman and McKeown’s research shows that leaders who are multipliers get the best performance and results from their people.
Don’t despair if your organization has a few diminishers—according to Wiseman and McKeown, anyone can learn to lead like a multiplier. All it takes is a willingness to “shift the responsibility for thinking from yourself to your employees.” Becoming a multiplier will not only add to your organization’s success; it will boost the morale and engagement levels of the individuals with whom you work.
Want to find out if your colleagues see you as a diminisher or a multiplier? Consider using team-effectiveness activities, such as our Survival Simulations combined with the Group Styles Inventory™ (GSI), a flexible suite of interactive exercises that promotes collaborative decision-making and constructive change. Programs that pair a simulation with the GSI offer an opportunity to achieve positive team growth in a low-cost, easy-to-use format.
To learn how to teach teams to break down the personal interaction barriers that prevent them from achieving their full potential and provide a focused direction for team improvement efforts, join us for our Foundation Workshop. The Workshop takes place September 21-24, 2010, in the San Francisco area—sign up and reserve a seat today!
Source Article: “Managing Yourself: Bringing Out the Best in Your People”—Harvard Business Review, May 2010.
Special thanks to Meghan Oliver for this article contribution.
Posted by Kalani Iwiula on Wed, Aug 18, 2010
According to a recent "Management Tip of the Day" by HBR, faced with failing businesses, most leaders tighten the purse strings, take strict control over the organization, and put strategy first. However, in the famous words of Peter Drucker, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." To right an organization headed for trouble, you need to build a culture that supports strategy implementation. Give employees a reason to care about your customers, their colleagues, and about how to do business right in a world that rewards cutting corners and compromising values. During a turnaround, don't focus exclusively on distinguishing yourself from the competition; find what brings you together as a company. It may be values, a vision, or a set of shared emotions. Articulate this sense of unity well and the business will follow.
In a recent blog post by HBR's Bill Taylor, he asks leaders two questions: What keeps you up at night, and what gets you up in the morning? What keeps you more committed than ever, more engaged than ever, more excited than ever, as the environment around you gets tougher and more demanding than ever?
According to Taylor, that question—what gets you up in the morning?—is one organizations need to take seriously if they hope to prosper during this period of crisis and (slow) recovery. And that's exactly what new CEO, Kent Thiry, did for DaVita just over 10 years ago in 1999. To read Taylor's article on Thiry's incredible culture change at DaVita, click here.
For Western Region/San Francisco-area OD, HR, & TD professionals looking for research-based training and development tools that engage participants, inspire sustained culture change and measurably improve organizational performance, consider attending our 4-day training forum, Foundation Workshop, on September 21-24. Click here for details.
Posted by Kalani Iwiula on Fri, Aug 13, 2010
With a trend toward increasingly diverse workgroups, conflict in the workplace is becoming more pervasive and unavoidable than ever. However, the negative impact of conflict on the financial and emotional well-being of an organization and its employees can be significantly decreased with effective leadership and a constructive organizational culture that encourages conflict resolution.
Agatha Gilmore, a senior editor for Chief Learning Officer magazine, reports that engaging in or resolving conflict in the workplace consumes anywhere from 25 to 40 percent of a manager’s time. In her article, Gilmore cautions that “conflict results in stress, frustration and anxiety—which, according to the Centre for Conflict Resolution International, can end up costing an organization $1.7 billion in lost work.”
So what’s the solution? According to Gilmore, leaders must be able to model and facilitate positive conflict resolution strategies.
Leadership development is not an easy task, but with the right tools, organizations can provide their leaders with insights into their personal styles and how these styles combine to shape their leadership performance. Multi-rater assessments, such as our Acumen Leadership WorkStyles™ tool, offer leaders a 360° feedback experience and a clear and meaningful direction for growth.
Take a moment to read Gilmore’s article and find out if your organization and leaders are heading in the right direction to build a constructive culture and foster effective conflict resolution.
Special thanks to Meghan Oliver for this article contribution.
Posted by Kalani Iwiula on Tue, May 25, 2010
ASTD ICE in Chicago was awesome! The American Society of Training and Development is the world's largest gathering of professionals dedicated to helping organizations train and develop their employees, and they're a very smart bunch.
Thank you to our customers and visitors who came by our booth to say hi and to check out our new Management/Impact assessment and other organizational diagnostics -- it was wonderful seeing everyone! According to ASTD numbers, there were about 8500 attendees with 1800 international professionals representing 70 countries.
With 340 booths to visit over 3 days, so many of you were ready for our Yoga session. Thank you so much for attending and learning our Circumplex constructive styles in a uniquely physical way with instructor, Dr. Janet Szumal, Ph.D.
Congratulations to Ram Charan and other distinguished colleagues who won various workplace learning and performance ASTD awards for 2009. A best-selling author and coach to CEOs, Ram's introduction to business came early in life while working in the family shoe shop in a small Indian town where he was raised. That background, combined with decades of observing and working with successful leaders, shaped his belief that business leaders learn best through a combination of experience, feedback, and self-correction.
Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group presented the keynote on Tuesday. If you did not attend, be sure to purchase the keynote audio from ASTD; you'll be glad you did, especially if you're tasked with strategic planning for your company's use of social media. Her new book, Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform The Way You Lead, suggests that leaders must gain the confidence to give up the need to be in control while inspiring commitment from people to accomplish goals, and Charlene's keynote included ample business examples to support her claims. I just opened my autographed copy and look forward to sharing more about it later.
If you attended ASTD ICE 2010, please share your experiences or what you enjoyed most.
Thank you!
Posted by Kalani Iwiula on Wed, May 12, 2010
HBR is featuring a six-week blog series on how leadership might look in the future. Only 3 weeks old since late April 2010, if you haven't read any of the posts you may want to do so. A symposium on the topic will be hosted in June 2010 by Harvard Business School's Nitin Nohria, Rakesh Khurana, and Scott Snook. The conversations inspired by these posts will help shape the agenda.
Here's the link: http://blogs.hbr.org/imagining-the-future-of-leadership/.
Thanks for reading!
Posted by Kalani Iwiula on Mon, Apr 26, 2010
According to a recent Harvard Business Review management tip, too many leaders think they are adept at everything. Self-aware leaders know that they can't possibly have the skills and knowledge to do it all. Instead, they are dynamic, adaptable, and emotionally intelligent. Here are three HBR tips to build your own self-awareness:- Observe your own performance. Take note of the areas you excel in and those that need improvement. Share these observations with your team.
- Know what you don't know. Accept that there are areas you have little expertise in. Seek out a team that can help you fill in the gaps.
- Monitor your impact on others. Because so much of work is about relationships, knowing how you affect others is a critical leadership skill. Manage your emotional responses and look for cues that you're building relationships, not destroying them.
Using a diagnostic instrument to improve your self-awareness can be helpful in your leadership development. While there are many Self or Feedback assessments to choose from, a
normed, reliable, and validated instrument will likely be your best bet.
Good luck, thanks for reading, and feel free to share your thoughts.
Posted by Kalani Iwiula on Tue, Jan 26, 2010
John Baldoni, a leadership consultant and coach, wrote a brief and engaging blog-post for Harvard Business Review offering a leadership challenge: How will you make a positive difference in 2010?
Whatever you decide, John offers 5 suggestions to increase the likelihood of successful implementation:
- Be imaginative
- Be relevant
- Be specific
- Be actionable
- Hold yourself accountable
To check out this brief and intriguing HBR post, click here.
Thanks for reading!
Posted by Kalani Iwiula on Mon, Aug 17, 2009
I read an interesting article by Tapan Munroe on workplace readiness. Citing various sources, Munroe's article explains that many corporate/industry readiness-training programs do not offer basic programs in critical thinking, creativity, or conflict resolution. The fundamental question posed: Is the workplace the best venue for hosting remedial training for new hires?
Munroe offers a short list of common-thread best practices and how small-to-midsize businesses can leverage local resources to maintain competitiveness.
Check out Tapan Munroe's article: http://www.tapanmunroe.com/columns.html
If you read the article, feel free to share your thoughts?
Thank you!
Posted by Kalani Iwiula on Tue, Jul 07, 2009
On Sunday, I watched the 60 Minutes interview with Katie Couric and Capt. Chelsey "Sully" Sullenberger. It was a repeat of the original interview done in February, but it didn't matter. It was well-worth seeing again.
In a Feb. 16 issue of Workforce Management magazine, John Hollon wrote an excellent piece about the emergency Hudson River landing. In his article, Hollon touched on three larger-than-life management lessons taken from the incident.
Lesson No. 1 - Don't ever discount the value of experience.
Lesson No. 2 - Training is important in good times and bad.
Lesson No. 3 - It's all about the team.
The article takes 5 minutes to read and offers real learning gems for leaders, managers, and team members.
Here's the article at BNET, check it out: Lessons from Flight 1549
Please share your thoughts.
Thank you!
Posted by Kalani Iwiula on Mon, Jun 22, 2009
Yesterday I finished David Meerman Scott's book, World Wide Rave, and I highly recommend it. If you're interested in growing your business fast, read this book. Similar to The Open Brand, you can finish it in one weekend. Also similar to TOB is utilizing the socialsphere to call attention to your brand, product, company, etc. DM Scott is a speaker on marketing and leadership and if you intend to execute new marketing strategies, this book is a good primer.
I met David at an Inbound Marketing seminar in San Francisco, April 28-29, 2009. He was a keynote speaker and gave a phenomenal presentation. He also autographed a copy of World Wide Rave and gave it to me. Free! I didn't know it at the time, but David walks his talk. When you read WWR, you'll know what I mean.
Totally accessible guy, totally timely book. I especially like the numerous WWR examples he shares. They are new, fresh, and innovative, yet any organization - large or small - can follow these examples to create a WWR of your own.
Check it out: http://www.worldwiderave.com
If you've read WWR, please share your top 2 take-aways.
Thanks for sharing!