Leadership Excellence January 2023

Leadership In The New World Disorder

How

On the Cover Articles

The

Obsession

– Yoram Solomon, Founder, Innovation Culture Institute™ LLC

18 The Human Side Of Leadership

Building great leaders for the future of work

– Christine Hildebrand, CEO, Wendy Horng Brawer, Chief Learning and Development Officer, Sofia Chancey, Chief Strategy Officer and Lisa Hardy, Chief Brand Officer, Intune Collective, LLC

25 It All Starts With Your Leadership

High-performing organizations follow a similar path when it comes to activating strategies

– Michael Felden, Director of Strategic Growth, Root Inc.

- Marty Strong, Retired SEAL Officer, CEO, Chief Strategy Officer, LGS Management Group, Inc.

Leadership In The New World Of Work

Four ways to get into your leadership Genius Zone

- Catherine Mattiske, Founder, TPC — The Performance Company

Leader Complexity: A Necessary Ability For Effectiveness In Leadership

How to vertically develop leaders

- Ryan Gottfredson, Ph.D., Author, Researcher and Consultant, ryangottfredson.com

10 Leadership Trends You Are Likely To See In

2023

Leaders are aiming to get back to thriving beyond the profits

- Thom Dennis, CEO, Serenity in Leadership

14 22 28

What The World Of Work Needs Now

Leadership can only be sustained if we choose to practice soft skills

- Joan Marques, Dean and Professor of Management, Woodbury University’s School of Business

Editorial Purpose

Excellence Publications

Leadership Skills to Navigate the New World of Work

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Happy

New Year and welcome to 2023’s first edition of Leadership Excellence!

The year 2022 has been challenging with the lingering effects of the pandemic and related disruptions, inflation, changing work environments, digital transformation, political turmoils, and much more. Leading people in an era of constant disruption and ever-increasing uncertainty is a tough job. And in order to thrive in this chaotic environment, it’s essential to adapt our leadership strategies and capabilities.

While business-centered leadership and associated competencies will always be essential, human-centered leadership skills are quickly becoming the topmost requirement to succeed today.

The new year poses a new set of leadership challenges and demands more relevant people skills to stay ahead in the game. What are the key leadership trends and essential leadership skills set to rule 2023? Read the January edition of Leadership Excellence to learn that and more in a variety of expert articles including the following highlights.

Leaders and aspiring leaders seeking to thrive in this caldron of chaos and confusion need to learn how to succeed in the new world disorder. What effective skills or knowledge can leaders apply to a crisis scenario? Marty Strong (CEO, LGS Management Group, Inc.), in his article, Leadership In The New World Disorder, sheds light on surviving and thriving against the forces of chaos and disruption.

Discovering your Inner Genius is essential for achieving success in the new world of work, according to Catherine Mattiske ( Founder, TPC — The Performance Company) in her article, Leadership In The New World

Of Work. Read the full article to learn how tapping into your Genius Zone can make you an effective leader in any work setting.

In his article, Leader Complexity: A Necessary Ability For Effectiveness In Leadership, Ryan Gottfredson (author, researcher, and consultant) introduces a relatively unknown ability necessary for navigating complexity and tumultuousness and explores how leaders can develop this ability.

Today, leaders are choosing to do more than just survive and are aiming to get back to thriving beyond the profits, by focusing on culture, innovation, and taking a long-term view. Thom Dennis (CEO, Serenity in Leadership) in his article, 10 Leadership Trends You Are Likely To See In 2023, shares a few trends in leadership we are likely to see in 2023.

In brief, leadership in the new world of work is a challenge that requires business leaders to think differently. It is essential for them to connect with their employees, understand their goals, and develop an environment for success. At the same time, if we want leaders to be successful in navigating a crisis, it is essential to help leaders develop the abilities and skills to better navigate complex and tumultuous environments.

We hope you enjoy reading all the articles in this edition of Leadership Excellence and look forward to your valuable suggestions/ feedback.

Happy Reading!

Write to the Editor at ePubEditors@hr.com

Babitha Balakrishnan Editor, Leadership Excellence

Debbie Mcgrath Publisher, HR.com

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In a world of unparalleled challenges (global pandemic, racial injustice, political rivalry, digital 4.0, emotional malaise), uncertainty reigns. Finding opportunity in this context requires harnessing uncertainty and harnessing starts with reliable, valid, timely, and useful information. The Excellence publications are a superb source of such information. The authors provide insights with impact that will guide thought and action.

Dave Ulrich

Rensis Likert Professor, Ross School of Business, University of MichiganPartner, The RBL Group

I have really enjoyed both reading and contributing to HR.com’s magazines over the past year. As a scholar-practitioner, it has been a wonderful outlet to share my current academic research with a broader practitioner audience, in a very timely manner. If you want to reskill and upskill your workforce, point them towards the wide array of offerings from HR.com.

Jonathan H. Westover, Ph.D., MPA, SFHEA, AFCIPD

Chair/Professor | Organizational Leadership Academic Director | Center for Social Impact Faculty Fellow | Center for the Study of Ethics Utah Valley University

During the COVID pandemic, I have learned that I need a source that provides high-quality, cutting-edge, and timely information on a wide-variety of topics. HR.com’s Excellence Publications has been that source for me.

Ryan Gottfredson, Ph.D.

Consultant/Trainer/Speaker/Coach Assistant Professor - California State U. Fullerton

Leadership In The New World Disorder

How to survive and thrive against the forces of chaos and disruption

By Marty Strong, LGS Management Group, Inc.

What

aspects of our intellect can we all bring to bear when the proverbial sky is falling and the rules, we’ve lived by for so long are suddenly rendered moot by unforeseen and dramatic change? Leaders and aspiring leaders seeking to thrive in this caldron of chaos and confusion need to learn how to succeed in the new world disorder.

To desire order is all too human. The very definition of order suggests a sense of calm, control, and poise. Less drama, less stress, comfortable predictability. What’s not to like? As adult professionals, leaders should step away from this abject fantasy, take a deep breath and then come to grips with how the world really works, down in the core of your being, you know this to be true. You watch as everything around you shifts, moves, and evolves. Any attempt to slow this natural process is futile so why not just embrace it? Why not just go with the crazy flow and master the new reality?

I believe that true order is an illusion. The universe we all live in was created in chaos, and since that dramatic beginning, you, me, all of us, have been participating in a natural continuum of that big bang event. When I was in the Navy SEAL teams we trained for crisis, we prepared for bad data, missing pieces of the picture, and complete reversals of fortune. We did this because these dynamics are the nature of war and it is no less true in business. In business, leaders strive to contain, to mitigate,

when they should be learning how to become comfortable with change.

The shock we all feel when the processes, systems, procedures, and people we’ve come to rely on fail, is emotional and mind-numbing. This initial visceral reaction is bad enough, but it can get worse. Often management teams slide into the dark abyss of denial. The shattering of previously held truths being too much to even contemplate. The hope for a return to normal, they pray for order to be restored, and when that doesn’t work they seek leadership to light the way.

What effective skills or knowledge can leaders apply to a crisis scenario?

First and foremost, study business history. The truth about the universe and human nature plays out again and again in the tragic stories of once great companies and corporations.

Second, accept that change is inevitable and be ready to master that chaotic environment by training for the day when it hits you or your organization.

Third, practice judgment, the application of wisdom not data and analytics models. When significant disruption occurs, you must fight back with your intelligence and your heart because the old data and models will let you down.

And fourth, practice being creative. Creativity is the single most powerful tool a leader has when faced with reinventing or reimagining the world after a crisis. Brainstorm, gather abstract data points, communicate outside your comfort zone, and leverage applied and purposeful curiosity to create a new beginning.

Navy SEALs apply creativity all the time. Unconventional warfare units are just that, unconventional. Their tasks, their missions, are complex and odd. A challenge a conventional military force cannot execute. Nobody in the SEALs knows when their time will come, but when it does, they are prepared for the unknown. They embrace the shaky assumptions and the constantly changing target environment. They plan for the most likely case and then move forward. Adapting and evolving the plan continuously as key inputs erode and cold reality forces them to adjust. They apply wisdom and judgment to successfully navigate the problem set and never intellectually or emotionally rely on hard rules, fixed information, or rigid procedures.

Organizations and their leaders can become nimble, agile, and flexible. Characteristics combine to help us cope with and eventually master the chaos all around us.

Marty Strong is a combat veteran who spent twenty years in the Navy’s elite SEAL teams. He is a practicing CEO, Chief Strategy Officer, and speaker. He also serves on the board of LGS Management Group, Inc., and the board of BEST Robotics, Inc. Marty is the author of Be Nimble: How the Creative Navy SEAL Mindset Wins on the Battlefield and in Business (January 2022), and his new book, Be Visionary: Strategic Leadership in the Age of Optimization , released January 2023. Would you like to comment?

Leadership In The New World Of Work

Four ways to get into your leadership Genius Zone

By Catherine Mattiske, TPC-The Performance Company

The Genius Zone is a powerful concept that can help anyone become an effective leader. By accessing your Inner Genius, you can learn to navigate the complexities of the modern work environment and communicate effectively with colleagues. Through this process, you will develop the strong leadership

skills necessary for success in today's world.

In the Genius Zone, you will unlock your true potential and identify new ways to approach projects and tasks. You'll gain a better understanding of yourself and your team, as well as how to

maximize their strengths to meet organizational goals.

Learning how to ask powerful questions and having difficult conversations are key components of successful leadership that you can master through exploring the Genius Zone.

Here are four ways to get into your leadership Genius Zone:

1. Learn New Leadership Strategies

The new world of work is constantly evolving and so are the leadership skills needed to stay ahead in the game. To learn effective leadership strategies that can help you navigate this ever-changing landscape, it’s important to understand how technology, globalization, and innovation have changed the way we lead. From remote working to virtual collaboration, having a firm grasp of these principles is essential for developing a successful team—no matter where they may be located. Through understanding these trends, you can learn how to effectively communicate with colleagues across different time zones while still providing strong leadership that encourages positive results. With an eye on the future and a willingness to learn new techniques, you can become a leader who can successfully manage projects even when working with dispersed teams. By taking the time to learn about these strategies, you can step confidently into the ever-changing world of work and lead with confidence.

2. 360° Connection

Leadership in the new world of work requires 360° connection— not just between leaders and their direct reports, but also peers, colleagues, customers, and partners. To be a successful leader in today’s business

landscape, it is essential to create meaningful relationships with those you interact with on a professional level. This 360° connection fosters trust and respect, which is critical for effective communication, collaboration, and development. Leaders must be agile in their approach to connecting with others to stay ahead of the competition and ensure that everyone remains aligned on common goals. 360° connection encourages the sharing of ideas and feedback, which ultimately leads to more innovative solutions for business challenges. Ultimately, 360° connection is an essential aspect of leadership in this new world of work. It enables leaders to stay connected with their teams, build strong relationships, and create a sense of community that drives business success.

3. Communicate “Their Way”

The modern workplace is defined by constantly evolving needs and demands. Leaders must therefore be equipped with the skills to adjust their approach accordingly, especially when it comes to communication. Communication

“their way” is a key element of successful leadership in the new world of work. This involves understanding everyone within your team and communicating in a style that resonates with them. Understanding how to use various forms of communication, such as an individual’s Inner Genius Archetype, can be a powerful tool for establishing trust and creating an environment where everyone

feels comfortable sharing their ideas. Communication “their way” also involves finding creative ways to keep team members engaged in the work you're doing and ensuring that everyone feels valued and important. Ultimately, understanding your team members’ needs and communicating on their terms will help you foster an environment of trust, openness, and collaboration that allows everyone to be more successful together. With this in mind, it is essential for leaders to be flexible and adjust their approach when needed in order to truly maximize their team’s potential.

In addition, leaders need to be comfortable creating an environment that encourages employees to tap into their inner genius — a “Genius Zone” where they can shine and demonstrate their unique gifts. Communication in the new work world should focus on actively engaging team members in meaningful dialogue, drawing out their ideas, and encouraging them to think outside of the box. By doing so, leaders can foster an environment of collaboration and creativity — one in which everyone feels valued and inspired to do their best work. Communication is a two-way street, after all. When employees feel heard and respected, they will be more likely to share their voices and contribute their unique perspectives to the workplace. With successful communication in the workplace, everyone can thrive.

So, when it comes to leading in the new world of work, remember that communication is key! Establish an environment where team members feel comfortable expressing their thoughts and opinions — a place where they are encouraged to tap into their inner genius and contribute their unique talents to the workplace.

4. Influence for Opportunity

In order to succeed in the new world of work, leaders must be able to influence for maximum opportunity. Influence is no longer about hierarchy or title — it’s about engaging and empowering others to take ownership of the vision, goals, and objectives of an organization. Influence also requires understanding the different perspectives that exist within teams and creating a safe environment where team members can come together to share ideas and collaborate.

Leadership in the new world of work is a challenge that requires business leaders to think differently. It is essential for them to connect with their employees, understand their goals, and develop an environment for success. Influence for opportunity has become a critical component of modern leadership; it involves creating relationships, building trust, and communicating effectively.

To build maximum opportunity to influence, business leaders must focus on connecting with their team and forming relationships.

This is done by understanding each individual’s goals, strengths, and weaknesses so that they can form an environment in which everyone can succeed — the collective Genius Zone. It also involves communicating effectively to ensure everyone is on the same page.

successful in this rapidly changing world. Keep your team connected with a 360° view of what's happening and make sure you're communicating with them in a way that works for them. Use your influence to create opportunities for your team members to shine. When everyone is working in their Genius Zone, you'll be amazed at what your team can accomplish.

differently.

Finally, influencing for opportunity requires modern leaders to take responsibility for the success of their teams, recognizing that every individual’s contribution is critical to achieving results. They must foster an atmosphere of collaboration and trust where everyone feels comfortable contributing and sharing ideas.

Conclusion

Discovering your Inner Genius is essential for achieving success in the new world of work. It enables you to take charge, make smart decisions, and inspire others with your leadership style. By tapping into your Genius Zone, you can become an effective leader in any setting — whether it’s online or offline!

Leaders who can learn and adapt quickly will be the most

Global business educator and author, Catherine Mattiske , is the founder of TPC — The Performance Company, a leading training and consulting organization that has worked with Fortune 100 companies worldwide. Established in 1994, TPC has offices in Sydney, Los Angeles, New York, London, Singapore, and Basel (Switzerland). The author of more than 30 books, her latest is “Unlock Inner Genius: Power Your Path to Extraordinary Success” (September 2021). Discover your team’s Genius Quotient at thegeniusquotient.com

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Leadership in the new world of work is a challenge that requires business leaders to think

The Cost Of Our Obsession With Leadership

Why do we aspire to be leaders?

By Yoram Solomon, Innovation Culture Institute™ LLC

Corporate America’s culture is obsessed with leadership. A 2010 study found that Leadership was the number one topic pursued by more than 90% of corporate buyers of education. The second topic was "General Management Development" with 68%. This obsession has consequences and costs, outlined in this article.

Why Do We Aspire to Be Leaders?

One reason is more money. Paywatch found that the ratio between CEO and average employee salaries increased from 42-to-1 in 1980 to 343-to-1 in 2010. Rising in the organization’s hierarchical ladder carries financial benefits. Another reason is gaining power and control. Power is addicting. The ability to control information flow, decisions, and people’s careers appeals to many. Being treated as the “higher-ups” entices many to strive for leadership positions. Some people want to be managers because they don’t want to be managed or, more specifically, micromanaged. Finally, people want to become leaders because our corporate culture is obsessed with leadership, and that obsession is contagious.

Not Everyone Can Be A Leader

Can you imagine a special forces military unit where all five members are leaders, each pulling in a different direction? Not everyone must be a leader. Some need to simply do their special job as individual contributors. Is a software programmer, writing amazingly creative code that creates innovative products a leader? How about a surgeon? A pilot? A military sniper? Those individual contributor roles

require skill and experience, not leadership, and that’s OK!

Cost #1: You Lose Great Individual Contributor Talent

You lose their contribution when you take great individual contributors and turn them into leaders. You can’t lead (or manage) others while doing your job. Take your best software programmer and turn them into a leader, and you lose your best programmer. Unless, of course, they are very good at leadership, in which case you will promote them further. The Peter Principle states that a person will always get promoted to their level of incompetence. You will stop promoting them when they reach that level and will be “stuck” with an incompetent leader who was a perfectly good individual contributor.

Cost #2: When You “Gain” Bad Leadership, You Might Lose Other Employees

Some people are bad leaders because they are not competent in leadership (competence is one of the six key components of the relative trustworthiness model). In some cases, they can overcome this deficiency through training. In other cases, it can’t. Some people are not good leaders because they simply don’t have the required personality traits. Employee creativity and productivity are 47% correlated with autonomy, which is 67% correlated with the leader’s trust in their employees. A leader's trust in their employees is the product of their trustability (their willingness to trust employees in general) and the specific employee’s trustworthiness.

A 2018 survey showed that asked leaders, “what is the most important quality for you in your employees?” showed that their top response (47.5%) was the willingness to work hard, and only the second response (38%) was trustworthiness. When leaders don’t intend to trust their employees, they won’t. We are the sum of our experiences, and some people’s experiences cause them not to be willing to trust their employees. These people should not be leaders because they are less likely to trust their employees (even the trustworthy ones), less likely to give them autonomy, micromanage them instead, and thus reduce the employees’ creativity and productivity, and eventually, the employee. Employees who don’t feel trusted experience 317% more stress, 37.5% less joy, 36% lower job satisfaction, 67% higher burnout, and are 33.3% less likely to stay another year with the company.

Cost #3: The Competition for Leadership Hurts Trust in the Team

Leadership is a hierarchical pyramid. The higher you go, the fewer people you see in senior leadership positions. Considering that many of those promoted to leadership positions are internal to the organization, you realize that when your boss gets

promoted, you or another peer in your team will get promoted to their position. This creates competition among team members. They start focusing on letting the leader (and sometimes even above the leader) know what their contribution was, talking about other team members behind their backs, and holding back on their contribution within the team, trying to make their contribution more visible outside the team. Those are all causes for reduced trust within the team, resulting in lower team creativity and productivity. And once a team member gets promoted to lead that team, some will quit due to the sudden change in the relationship with that new leader, and some will quit because they believe they deserved the promotion and not the team member who actually got it.

There Is No Going Back

Our obsession with leadership has yet another negative side-effect: it prevents you from returning to the individual contributor position you previously held. Demotion is frowned upon, and employees who got promoted to their level of incompetence as leaders would rather leave the company than ask (or accept) a demotion.

What Can (and Should) We Do?

There are several things that employees, leaders, HR departments, and companies, in general, can do to prevent those costs of our obsession with leadership:

● Thoroughly evaluate the capacity of an individual contributor to being a good leader Assess whether promoting the individual (or accepting a promotion) would be better for the organization, the individual, and other employees on the team. If training is required— obtain that training prior to the promotion.

● Rising in the organization’s leadership ladder should not be the only way to get recognition, pay increases, and other benefits. Great individual contributions should be recognized as well. Some companies do a great job of creating a technical ladder parallel to the hierarchical one.

● Reduce the pay gap between leaders and individual contributors. Money should not be why a great contributor will strive to and eventually, becomes a bad leader.

● Stop the obsession with leadership. Accept the enjoyment of individual contribution and its value to the company. And if, for any reason, you got promoted to a leadership position and found that you don’t like it or are not good at it (those two are typically correlated), accept the demotion and go back to doing what you were great at and enjoyed.

Yoram Solomon , Ph.D., MBA, LLB, is the author of The Book of Trust® , host of The Trust Show podcast, founder of the Innovation Culture Institute™ LLC, and facilitator of the Trust Habits™ workshop.

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Leader Complexity: A Necessary Ability For Effectiveness In Leadership

How to vertically develop leaders

By Ryan Gottfredson, Ph.D., ryangottfredson.com

Leaders

are continually facing increasing change, pressure, uncertainty, and complexity. And, there is little indication that the increasing tumultuousness of leaders’ environments is going to slow down, stop, or reverse course.

As a leadership researcher and leadership development consultant, I am finding that the complexity of leaders’ environments commonly exceeds leaders’ abilities to effectively navigate that complexity. Stated differently, organizations are commonly running on a leadership deficit.

There are two primary consequences to this leadership deficit: (1) organizations are floundering and (2) leaders are struggling

We are seeing more and more organizations declare bankruptcy or sell on the cheap. The United States Courts revealed that filings for Chapter 13 bankruptcy increased 26.6 percent in 2022 compared to 2021.

Also, we are finding that leaders are so stressed out that they are struggling with their mental health. Bupa Global recently reported the following statistics from the last year:

● 77% of senior executives suffered from at least one symptom associated with poor mental health

● 24% of senior executives have suffered from insomnia and disturbed sleep in the last year

● 30% of senior executives have reported struggling with depression

● 7% of senior executives have considered self-harm (up from 1% in the prior year)

The more we appreciate the increasing tumultuousness of leaders’ environments and recognize leaders’ lagging capabilities to navigate that tumultuousness, the more it becomes clear that we need to help leaders develop the abilities and skills to better navigate complex and tumultuous environments.

In this article, I want to introduce a relatively unknown ability that is necessary for navigating complexity and tumultuousness and explore how leaders can develop this ability. This ability is leader complexity

What is Leader Complexity?

Formally, leader complexity consists of a leader’s ability to both differentiate and integrate stimuli in the environment to achieve a deeper level of situational awareness which enables them to address challenging situations in a positive and adaptive manner. More informally, leader complexity involves the degree to which a leader sees themselves as being a complex being and able to tap into the various aspects of their personal complexity to best navigate a given situation.

To make this ability come to life, it is helpful to recognize that people and leaders commonly operate in different modes. For example, Leader A may primarily operate

in “good soldier mode,” which allows them to be friendly, a team player, and kind. But, occasionally, the leader may also operate in “connection mode” or “parent mode” where they also leverage their kindness and friendliness.

Leaders low in leader complexity sees themselves as very consistent and simple people. They have a low number of modes, there is low diversity in character attributes that they rely upon across these modes (e.g., friendly, kind), and they struggle to shift from one mode to another.

Leaders high in leader complexity sees themselves as very complex and dynamic people.They have a large number of modes that they operate from, there is high diversity in character attributes

that they rely upon across these modes, and they can easily shift from one mode to another.

For example, Leader B may have eight primary modes that they can quickly and effortlessly slip in and out of. One mode might be “achiever mode” where they are driven, focused, and competitive. Another mode might be “leader mode” where they are visionary, motivating, and ethical. A third mode might be “coach mode” where they are supportive, empathetic, and enabling.

Opportunity for Introspection

For understanding leader complexity, let me invite you to introspect on your personal complexity by engaging in the following exercises:

Leader Complexity: A Necessary Ability For Effectiveness In Leadership

● Write down a label for the most common mode that you operate from.

● Write down the primary character attributes associated with that primary mode.

● Write down other common modes that you operate from and their associated attributes.

● It can be helpful to think about a recent day. Go through your day and identify the different modes that you were in throughout the day and explore how easy it was for you to shift modes.

● Write down modes that you don’t spend much time in, but you need to spend more time in.

● Consider what you can do to improve your ability to shift modes and step into modes that you need to operate from more than you currently do.

How to Enhance Leader Complexity

Enhancing leaders’ complexity requires a form of development most human resource personnel are not familiar with. It requires vertical development, which differs from the more traditional form of development: horizontal development.

Horizontal development is adding knowledge and skills to an individual. It is a lot like adding apps onto an iPad. The apps are beneficial because they broaden our functionality.

It might be natural to think that to improve leaders’ complexity, we just need to help them download new “modes.” But, what researchers are finding is that one’s ability to download new modes is predicated upon the sophistication of their underlying operating system. It is that underlying operating system that is generally restrains leaders’ development of leader complexity.

If we want to help leaders upgrade leaders internal operating system so they are more capable of (1) developing a wider repertoire of modes and (2) switching seamlessly between various modes as their situation requires, we need to employ vertical development.

Leader Complexity: A Necessary Ability For Effectiveness In Leadership

How to Vertically Develop

In order to vertically develop, we need to engage in development efforts that differ from traditional horizontal development efforts. Let me discuss three options.

First, vertical development always starts with deepening one’s self-awareness and questioning existing beliefs, values, and mindsets. In my practice, I focus most on mindsets. What I have found is that most leaders think they have positive mindsets. But, when they take my Personal Mindset Assessment, most leaders find that they have at least one mindset that is not very sophisticated. In fact, out of over 30,000 people who have taken my mindset assessment, only 2.5% are in the top quartile for all four sets of mindsets measured in the assessment.

Second, vertical development often requires a coach. This is because much of vertical development involves awakening to one’s blindspots, which leaders are quick to ignore and may not even know how to find. Thus, it is helpful to have a coach to help one do the deep self-awareness work that vertical development work requires.

Third, not only may a coach be helpful, but a therapist may also be necessary. Neuroscientists and psychologists are increasingly finding that early-life trauma results in neurological adaptations that are suited for survival and self-protection, not leadership. For example,

if leaders experienced neglect as a child, they may have become dissociated and have a diminished ability to connect with their emotions, which prevents them from being emotionally intelligent (inhibiting their ability to get into relationship-oriented modes). If that is the case, the only way to help that person become more emotionally intelligent is for that person to neurologically heal from their past trauma. Generally, this type of work requires a therapist.

It is only by helping leaders enhance their complexity that we will be able to reduce the leadership deficit and empower leaders to bring the versions of themselves that are most appropriate for meeting the demands of the tumultuousness they must navigate.

Elevating Leaders’ Complexity

The reality is that our world is going to become increasingly tumultuous. If we want leaders to be successful in navigating that tumultuousness, it is essential that we help leaders improve their complexity. This means, helping them vertically develop their internal operating system so that they can use a wider repertoire of modes and improve their ability to shift seamlessly in and out of our modes.

Ryan Gottfredson, Ph.D . is a cutting-edge leadership development author, researcher, and consultant. He helps organizations vertically develop their leaders primarily through a focus on mindsets. Ryan is the Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-selling author of Success Mindsets: The Key to Unlocking Greater Success in Your Life, Work, & Leadership . And, he is the author of the upcoming book, The Elevated Leader: Leveling Up Your Leadership Through Vertical Development . He is also a leadership professor at the College of Business and Economics at California State University-Fullerton.

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Enhancing leaders’ complexity requires a form of development most human resource personnel are not familiar with.

Leader Complexity: A Necessary Ability For Effectiveness In Leadership

The Human Side Of Leadership

Building great leaders for the future of work

By Christine Hildebrand, Wendy Horng Brawer, Sofia Chancey, and Lisa Hardy, Intune Collective, LLC.

In order to design business solutions today, we need to access deeper and more innate parts of our intelligence and humanity. When we connect more fully to our intrinsic wisdom and consciousness, we are able to imagine and innovate beyond what has been possible before. This way of creating requires us as leaders to enhance our capacity in order to meet the demands of our world and time.

The human aspects of development augment and amplify the technology that has been transforming us so far. At Intune, we see the human side of leadership as the key to creating balance across all four business intelligence: Functional, Analytical, Relational and Emotional. Most adults are really good at the first two our content expertise and analyzing information pertinent to our success or survival — and yet need support cultivating healthy relationships and understanding, being comfortable with, and regulating our emotional selves. By developing the Human Side of Leadership, we build our capacity to optimize our success despite complexity, fast-paced growth and change, and the unknown.

Conscious leaders inspire and lead by blending their analytical minds and their energetic hearts. They balance their left-brain — science, logic, and analytics — and right-brain — creativity, intuition, empathy, and metaphorical thought for the benefit of developing better people, products, purpose, and overall, a better world.

Awareness-based, human-centered leadership skills are the abilities your leaders, teams and organization need to bring out new levels of connection, engagement and performance.

This article shares skills that build awareness and the relational and emotional intelligence needed to be more effective leaders

Albert Einstein

1) Self-Awareness and Growth Mindset

Leaders in this new world of work must have the skill of self-awareness: The ability to honestly evaluate, recognize, and regulate their own beliefs, patterns, and actions; and discern the impact of these patterns on others.

2) Empathy and Compassion for Others

Empathy is the capacity to feel what another person is experiencing and compassion is the desire to help ease their pain, sending is the sensitivity to assess and detect feelings and emotions that are not expressed but can be felt.

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”

—

3) Humility + Humanity

While humility is not the first or even the third trait that comes to mind when thinking of successful business leaders, it anchors conscious leaders’ ability to rise above one’s own needs in order to better serve others.

4) Transparency +Truth

Truth is the state of being true or honest. Transparency is the practice of sharing truth. Top-level modeling of truth and transparency is

essential to have a culture that reflects these values. The payoff is higher commitment and productivity.

5) Resilience + Emotional Intelligence

Resilience is the ability to bounce back after setbacks and emotional intelligence is the ability to regulate one’s emotions as well as assess others’ emotions.

6) Purpose

When we leverage individual purpose and tie it to a team or organizational purpose, it serves as a north star that can generate higher engagement, improved morale and collaboration.

7) Servant Leadership

Servant leadership was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in The Servant as Leader - An essay that he first published in 1970. Servant leaders share power with their people, put the needs of employees first, help people develop and perform, and exist to serve them.

There you have it! 7 skills to cultivate as a leader for greater impact and relevance in these times

Feel free to check out the entire ebook here to learn more about each skill along with applications and micro-practices to integrate these skills into life and work.

Christine Hildebrand is the CEO of Intune Collective, LLC . She is a management consultant, strategist, and executive leadership coach.

Wendy Horng Brawer is Chief Learning and Development Officer at Intune Collective, LLC, DEIB consultant, team facilitator and leadership coach.

Sofia Chancey is Chief Strategy Officer at Intune Collective, LLC

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Lisa Hardy is Chief Brand Officer at Intune Collective, LLC

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10 Leadership Trends You Are Likely To See In 2023

Leaders are aiming to get back to thriving beyond the profits

By Thom Dennis, Serenity in Leadership

After another incredibly tumultuous year, leaders have been trying to steady the ship to navigate through the difficult times, but many are choosing to do more than survive and are aiming to get back to thriving beyond the profits, by focusing on culture, innovation and taking a long-term view. These are the trends in good leadership we are likely to see in 2023.

1) Visionary Storytellers

I recently interviewed Dean Carter, who led global HR and Shared Services at the ground-breaking company Patagonia and is now a Director of Griffith Foods, the global traceable and sustainable food ingredients experts. He said: “A leader for me is someone who has a compelling view of the future and their way of looking at the future is a very compelling thing to align behind. They also

know their vision always has to be possible and the team needs to be able to clearly see the actions that can be taken to get there.” Dean argues that visionary leaders have a better way of communicating their mission and objectives and can harness their narrative in such a way that it makes people want to be a part of making that vision happen.

2) Walk The Walk

Leaders will regularly need to re-examine if they are on track and are still aligned with their mission statement, values and purpose, and leading clearly with those at the forefront. During tumultuous times we need responsible leaders more than ever. A recent study of nearly 700 US companies showed scant correlation between stated company values and employee perceptions of the organization so this will have to change in the very near future.

3) Superb Tacticians For The Future

Leaders understand they need to re-create a hybrid workplace where workers want to be, to see friends, explore ideas, make a difference, learn and find meaning. Do these things

well, and retention problems will be eased. You have to make money to stay in business, but you keep employees during otherwise difficult times if they are engaged, learning, and increasingly enjoying themselves. As Dean said about culture: “If we’re talking about making it fun, it probably isn’t fun”, and advocated for CEOs who don’t take themselves too seriously.

4) Nurturers

This means, taking a firm line on sharing the burdens, reducing toxicity and burnout in the workplace, and wanting the best for colleagues’ mental and physical health. Being individual-employee-centric and offering flexibility and support are key.

5) High Cultural Intelligence

Senior executives and partners serve as a model for vision, purpose, and company culture and there is a 750% differential in profits at companies with aligned and mature cultures versus those that fail to cultivate their cultures. CQ is an easily learned and developed, but extremely important skill.

6) Build Better Teams

Leaders who have high-performing C-Suites say they are 42% more effective at managing complex initiatives, 31% more effective at delivering stakeholder value, and 30% more effective at attracting top talent. During times of transition, such as a merger or private equity deal, the quality of a business’ management team is the most-cited reason for deal success and second for deal failure.

7) Innovators

Technology is always evolving, offering new opportunities to CEOs looking to transform their business. That’s especially true when pursuing net-zero. It is also true for companies that are making the shift to put software at the heart of their business. Leaders will be looking for innovators with software experience and who want to explore the use of AI in the context of responsibility, trustworthiness and ethics. The trend is for an increasing number of members of the C-Suite to have software experience.

8) Empowerers

The best leaders are those who enable their people to make good decisions. Admiral Horatio Nelson is still today recognised as an inspirational leader and an incredible tactician. He knew that once the battle started, there would not be any possibility of communicating between ships so instead he empowered each of his captains to take decisions and risks. He did this by sharing his strategy and communicating in depth with them so they could act with autonomy because they really knew each other and understood the desired outcome. There has been a trend in leaders towards autocracy in recent years – this rarely works over a period of time and makes succession extremely difficult. Leaders need to empower, build morale and make their teams feel entrusted.

9) Clear Succession Plan

The leaders of 2023 understand

that they need to listen and learn from others to improve and grow themselves. We simply cannot do it all ourselves. These leaders also know that at some stage someone is going to do it better than them and power sharing is in the best interest of everyone, including ourselves. Successful leaders will surround themselves not with sycophants but with people who will question them and provide alternative opinions, feedback and solutions.

five times greater than expected, along with massive media coverage. As the cost of living and environmental crises rage on in 2023, expect to see leaders take bigger, more courageous and more meaningful leaps of faith to support important causes.

Dean Carter was interviewed by Thom Dennis in Serenity in Leadership’s ‘Leading Responsibly in a VUCA World with Integrity and Purpose’ series.

Visionary leaders have a better way of communicating their mission and objectives and can harness their narrative in such a way that it makes people want to be a part of making that vision happen.

10) Authentically Support Important Causes

In 2016, Patagonia announced that it would donate 100 percent of its global retail and online sales from the shopping event on Black Friday straight to grassroots organizations that work in local communities to “protect our air, water and soil for future generations”. They made a record-breaking $10 million in sales during the event, a figure

With an MSc in Change Agent Skills & Strategies, skills as an NLP Master Practitioner, 17 years of experience as an officer in the Royal Marines, and having worked extensively around the world, Thom Dennis brings all his experience together as a facilitator, speaker, consultant, educator and change agent as CEO of Serenity in Leadership. For the last 30 years, his career has been dedicated to facilitating transformation through organizational change. Would you like to comment?

It All Starts With Your Leadership

High-performing organizations follow a similar path when it comes to activating strategies

By Michael Felden, Root Inc.

The last three years have felt like a decade of their own. With a global pandemic, political polarization, economic pressure, and increased government regulation, one can never be certain what the next day holds. Add a dash of evolving customer demands, increased competition, and technology evolving at an increasingly rapid pace, and you wonder how we all manage to keep up. Most organizations are now in the thick of strategic planning for next year, and these external forces

are having a dramatic impact on their plans for the future.

By and large, leadership teams (and consultants) are pretty good at coming up with new strategies to meet changing demands. But too often they’re DOA. So why do they fail so often? Why is it so difficult to get people to embrace them?

Ideas are easy. Activating them in a way that makes people think, feel, and act differently is not.

A high-performing organization is not distinguished by its ability to see new opportunities through the clouds – it is by taking these opportunities a step further and properly executing them.

Through observing thousands of companies over several decades, we’ve concluded that successful, high-performing organizations follow a similar path when it comes to activating the strategies that drive organizational and cultural change. Here’s your blueprint…

Defining Your Strategy Through Root’s Strategy Activation Process

Your company is unique. Your strategy is unique. Your people and culture are unique. Every moment in time is unique. That’s why it’s so difficult for organizations to perfect and replicate the recipe that enables people to widely understand and accept what’s happening. However, take solace in knowing that if applied correctly, there’s a system that will

maximize your chances of wide adoption by the people who need to carry your strategy forward:

● It all starts with your leadership. Does this sound familiar: Your leaders seem to be generally aligned on the path forward. There may be some detractors, but for the most part, they’re rowing in the same direction. But stop to take a closer look – are there words or concepts that mean different things to different people? Is there an inconsistent understanding of how they’ll operate in the future state? Is there a lack of clarity on how each leader will work with the others to get there? Do they need to adopt consistent behaviors that will further support the strategy? Do they tell different stories of the transformation? If any of this resonates, your leadership team needs to take a pause and get on the same page. Generate clarity, consistency, and conviction at the top and you’ll be set up for success as your strategy is activated.

●

En masse understanding and support. Building an organizational movement around a change cannot be done without your people leaders. Your strategy will be made or broken by your managers, so focus first on enrolling them as advocates. Really take the time to give them the skills and tools to properly inform, motivate, and inspire their people so when Go! is pressed, the strategy will be activated quickly, consistently, and at scale. On that note, “Go!” DOES NOT MEAN POWERPOINT. It doesn’t mean town hall presentations. It doesn’t mean the slick video your marketing or comms department cooked up. All those tools have a place, but they’re not going to drive true behavior change. Don’t rely on one-way mediums used to simply communicate information and tell people what to do or feel. If you really want to drive support for your strategy on a large scale, change the conversations your people are having with each other. Connect them – intellectually AND emotionally – to the why, what, and how and give them the freedom to make their own conclusions about how they fit in.

● Sustain the momentum. So your leaders are aligned, and you’ve built great excitement and momentum with all your people. Unfortunately, that sense of connection won’t stick unless you work hard to sustain it. It’s easy to declare victory if the initial rollout is successful, but that’s like calling checkmate on the opening move. Create a path so that people have a way to continue the conversation at a team level. Publicly celebrate successes and admit where you learned things along the way. If you need to pivot and change course down the road, go back to the formula of making sure people understand why, what, and how. Bring new joiners under the tent as part of their early onboarding because it’s hard and frustrating to jump on a moving train. The activation of your strategy is not a moment in time – it’s an ongoing mindset to reinforce support, engage new audience and battle resistance

“Perfect results count – not a perfect process.”

– Rob Strasser

Smart strategy activation requires a paradoxical combination of focus and agility. On one hand, organizations must have a clearly defined systems view that is interpreted consistently across the enterprise. Give people the box top of the puzzle and create cross-functional sightlines so they understand their impact in making it all work.

On the other hand, plan for the unexpected. Individuals need to be given both the coordinates of the destination AND the GPS to get them there. Let your people know that the pace of change and volatility is not slowing anytime soon, so an audible may have to be called. If the infrastructure and understanding of the strategy itself are solid, the twists and turns aren’t setbacks – they’re merely shifts in the scenery. This mindset is one many leaders have adopted in the past few years and is one that must continue for organizations to achieve and sustain success.

Michael Felden is Director of Strategic Growth at Root Inc . He's a passionate leader with 15+ years of business development experience leading high-performing sales and partnership teams, cultivating strategic relationships, developing profitable new products and revenue streams, and driving operational strategy, innovation, change, and efficiency. Would you like to comment?

What The World Of Work Needs Now

Leadership can only be sustained if we choose to practice soft skills

By Joan Marques, Woodbury University’s School of Business

One of the undeniable beauties of living and performing in the world of work today is also one of the main challenges: being able to not only cope with but thrive in changing circumstances.

Successfully leading any workforce in any industry and in any part of the world today, requires a set of wakeful behaviors that every leader could develop.

The primary behavior is mindfulness. This can be cultivated by engaging in regular reflection on decisions made, actions undertaken, and the outcomes generated.

Reflection requires some quiet time. It can happen through, for instance, silent contemplation, insight meditation, journaling, or nature walks. The practice of regularly reflecting will result in increased insights, potentially leading to more considerate future decisions, and most likely, more compassionate actions. It remains a fact that decisions are always made with insufficient information, and that hindsight yields numerous overlooked aspects. This is where mindfulness as a foundational practice becomes invaluable, as it takes into account experiences, outcomes, and insights from prior, sometimes seemingly unrelated

circumstances, that widen the awareness periphery.

An equally critical behavior is creativity. While this may sound more like a skill to be developed, creativity is exuded through what we do rather than through what we think. Many people may think that creativity is not for everyone, but with some effort, we can all cultivate creative moves in our operations. Creativity is not only important in dealing with major changes, but even more in maneuvering through the many unexpected turns of professional performance. There is always competition on the horizon: not just from individuals, but also from other entities, and even from societal or natural developments that can pitch our current operations into obsolescence in a heartbeat. Behaving with creativity can become second nature, and it grows on us if we allow it to. The first few steps on every path may be uneasy, but practice makes perfect, and creativity is no exception to that rule.

Then there is the behavior of authenticity. Today’s workforce is smart, quick-witted, and insightful. Our team members can easily distinguish sincerity from deception. And once caught hiding or bending the truth will lead to an irreparable loss of trust. Even though authentic behavior may reveal our vulnerability, especially in conflict situations, it remains the better and most courageous course of action under all circumstances, and it will be more appreciated and respected in the end.

Support is another behavior that will enhance appreciation from stakeholders for a leader. Being supportive requires cautious judgment. Sometimes it will place you between a rock and a hard place, meaning that support of one side may come across as a rejection of the other. This is one of the many challenges that leading others brings, and it requires the earlier mentioned practice of mindfulness, along with a lot of courage, to do the right thing.

Flexibility is yet another behavior that leaders in today’s world cannot ignore. Being flexible may sometimes require leaders to reevaluate their own values and perhaps their entire stance toward performing. One of the most prominent areas of flexibility leaders are confronted with today is the option for employees to work remotely or on location. The recent pandemic has revealed possibilities we did not consider or thought to be

unattainable before. And while there is a lot to be said about the organic spontaneity of performing and socializing on-location, there is also a plethora of advantages to be mentioned in allowing employees to perform remotely if their work allows it. The best approach for work situations that can be done in multiple settings may be a hybrid modality, where people rotate their presence at work, and get the opportunity to work from home at least part of the time. Practicing this kind of flexibility may lead to greater levels of employee fulfillment and job satisfaction, and grant them a feeling of being appreciated.

Even though the list of behaviors and skills is far from complete here, the last one to mention in this limited space is communication. What we say and how we say it can make a difference in how we are perceived as a leader. Communication requires all the behaviors mentioned before: it takes mindfulness, creativity, authenticity, support and flexibility to successfully communicate, especially when the message is not one others would like to hear. But even an unpleasant message can be accepted with grace if we communicate it in a proper way, leaving people their dignity and showing respect in how we approach them.

Leadership is initially acquired and adorned by knowledge of the field in which we perform, but it can only be sustained

if we choose to practice the soft skills laid out above. Not every leader has to be an expert in the technicalities of the position. That’s what we have our high-skilled team membersengineers, accountants, financial analysts, information system experts and others - for. But keeping the team motivated, productive, and satisfied requires behaviors of an interpersonal nature that is intuitive and built on our innate humaneness. And that is what it all boils down to.

Joan Marques is an author, educational and social entrepreneur, who currently serves as Dean and Professor of Management at Woodbury University’s School of Business. She teaches, presents and writes on topics related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and ethical leadership. Her research and practice-based insights have been widely published in scholarly as well as popular journals and magazines. She has authored/ co-authored and edited more than 35 books. Her most recent single-authored book is, “Leading with Awareness” (Routledge, 2021).

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The Future Of Work 2023: Putting People First

Here’s what to expect in the year ahead

By Kaleana Quibell, Sequoia

If the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that workers want more control than ever over when and how they work. Different approaches and tools allowing gig work, hybrid work, remote work, and even AI work, are taking the business world by storm. Companies that truly want to come through

for their people must take not just the workday itself, but workers’ family commitments, passions, and other needs outside of work into account. The most successful programs will recognize the whole person – and their community – and support their entire physical, emotional, and mental well-being.

Here’s what to expect in the world of work in the year ahead.

Although economic volatility is sure to last into 2023, structural changes to the labor market will make ‘unemployment’ look much different than in years past.

The employment market has restructured over the last decade, and now, over 36% of U.S. workers are actively part of the gig economy, according to a recent study of workforce participation by Upwork. These workers can be hard to accurately capture with traditional job surveys, which target the conventional workforce (people who work a set schedule for 40 hours per week). As a result, traditional measures of unemployment may no longer provide an accurate reflection of the true state of the workforce in rough economic times. With many workers no longer believing in a single professional identity, workplaces may need to start embracing side hustles as part of career growth.

AI will eat up tedious work, shifting companies to invest more in expertise and strategic skills development for employees. Beyond its usefulness in creating artistic avatars from selfies, AI will grow more intuitive and increasingly use multiple “senses” at once. Between chat bots, robotic process automation and predictive analytics, artificial intelligence is quickly taking over repetitive tasks that were previously expensive and time-consuming when done by people. This creates an opportunity for businesses to cut costs, and employees to refocus on more complex problem-solving and strategic work. Expect to see smart businesses continue their adoption of AI, but also invest heavily in training and education to sharpen their staff's strategic business skills. This process will help give businesses an edge over their competition.

Mental health resources will be non-negotiable for attracting and retaining talent in the coming years. With physical and mental well-being combined in so many ways, mental health resources are no longer a nice-to-have but a must-have benefit. A collective of medical experts is now calling for regular anxiety screenings during annual physicals. Employers will continue upping their mental health benefits to match offerings for physical health. Offerings such as Brightline, Headspace Health and Lyra Health are just a few of the many solutions that organizations should consider and customize to meet the needs of their unique workforce. These offerings are helping to fill a real void caused by therapy and clinician shortages (a result of the pandemic) that have led to extreme wait times or the inability to find therapists at all.

Employees will ask for increased transparency into demographic metrics that demonstrate DEI. With additional transparency and reporting requirements, businesses that have fallen behind on DEI will have their progress shown publicly. As a result, there is going to be more work needed in this area so that companies can show measurable progress in diversity and inclusion. Businesses will need to work harder to make sure their organization reflects the demographics of their operating environment. More transparency means more accountability – and this will be examined in all areas from recruitment to benefits.

Traditional office space will be shed, and co-working will boom once again. Faced with an economic downturn, companies will continue to seek ways to reduce their real estate footprint and costs. Smaller, consolidated workplaces will place a focus on collaboration stations rather than solo workspaces. At the same time, coworking spaces that saw a decline in recent years will become popular once again as smaller groups of workers come together under one roof, each one closer to where those staffers live.

Maintaining company culture in a digital-first era will require geographically specific motivators. Hybrid work is here to stay. We'll see offices become gathering hubs for collaboration, offsites, and team

events. Hybrid arrangements will become more formalized next year, with colleagues coordinating which days to head into the office in advance. With this permanency comes new challenges in keeping corporate culture from getting lost or forgotten. New cultural scaffolding is needed to hold people accountable for the things that make distributed-work work. Employers need to start with a “rearchitecting of values” to emphasize behaviors and attributes that feed successful people engagement and collaboration in distributed environments.

Expect companies to identify “geographic leaders” amongst their distributed workforce to carry the banner in various metro areas with local offsites and networking meetups. Employers will need to welcome input from employees, lead with trust, and respect work-life boundaries.

As the future of work continues to evolve and be redefined in 2023, companies will do well to remember that with 75% of a typical business’ spend being on its people, success really does hinge on putting people first.

Kaleana Quibell is the VP of Wellbeing and Platform Partners at Sequoia , where she oversees the company’s well-being programs and partnerships, helping to support clients in coming through for the various needs of their people. Her background in the Total Rewards sector includes experience in recruiting and onboarding, benefits and human resources, and employee well-being program design. Would you like to comment?

Women In Tech: The Challenge Of Balancing Leadership And Motherhood

Make sure your employer embodies a family-first culture

By Deirdre Leone, ContractPodAi

In our work lives — especially in the technology industry — we have seen a massive change in the past two years. With the majority of roles becoming fully remote and teams being spread out across the globe, how we now work has affected our personal lives directly. This has resulted in parents everywhere struggling to find a balance between parental duties and work responsibilities.

For mothers, especially, the challenges of finding a work-life balance only intensified with the shift to remote work. Technology has been a male-dominated industry for generations, with only 25% of tech-related jobs being held by women. And from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., mothers have been perceived to be the main point of contact for all things childcare.

Comparing the benefits offered in other countries with what is standard in the United States places this problem into even deeper relief, as the gulf between what the U.S. gives women and families and what other parts of the world do is huge. The United States is the only country in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to provide zero paid maternity, paternity, and parental leave Any paid parental leave is either an added employer benefit or taken from the employee’s personal or sick leave. While many companies recognize the importance of this period in some way, the fact that

it is not codified in law means that it really is up to a company’s discretion. And many times, that does not work out in the family’s favor.

We also know that the lack of universal health care in the U.S. affects families, too. While it’s implemented differently in particular locations, universal health care is present in every country in Western Europe I’m neither arguing that we should all pack up and move, nor that healthcare systems in other parts of the world are flawless. However, the fact that the U.S. forces many families to rely on health care coverage tied to their job sets up the conditions in which women must make increasingly difficult decisions about their careers and their family’s health.

Due to the lack of female representation in the technology industry, it's common for leadership roles to be taken up by men primarily. This can lead to company benefits that don't accurately support mothers’ goals and needs. Poor maternity leave policies are just one example of this. In today's workforce, the standard time off after welcoming a child into the world is 8 to 12 weeks — with some businesses not even paying mothers during their hiatus. Again, the European model is worth investigating, as 29 European countries offer at least 2 months worth of paid time

Some countries offer more time off but don’t guarantee the same amount of pay. Given the economic might of the U.S. globally, this is a shameful fact. And, all too often, these inadequate policies lead women to make the tough decision to leave their roles indefinitely, decreasing the percentage of technology positions held by women altogether. Furthermore, it’s interesting to see the U.K. government proposing a new law to grant the right to for employees to ask for part-time hours or home-working arrangements - this goes to show how important this topic of flexibility is for the UK region, for all genders.

In addition, women are often passed over for promotions due to the possibility of them having a kid in the future. When a man is considered for a promotion, rarely does leadership have to take into account the likelihood of paternity leave. But when onboarding women, hiring managers are already thinking about how it will impact the business. This leads to delayed job advancements stemming from internal biases. And delayed job advancement feeds into the gender pay gap between men and women. While the U.S. has made strides in this area, a recent

study found that the pay gap improvement slowed during the pandemic, especially for minority women.

I’ve been fortunate enough to work at a mother-friendly company, where I’m able to maintain a healthy work-life balance while advancing along the promotional track to leadership. My advice to other professional women is this: when entertaining a new role at a new company, make sure the employer embodies a family-first culture. However, this goes beyond reviewing the benefits advertised on a company website. In addition, interview employees in the role and division you are considering joining, asking them scenario-based questions, to ferret out the true cultural view on parenting. It’s crucial not only to your success at work and home but also to your overall satisfaction.

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Women In Tech: The Challenge Of Balancing Leadership And Motherhood

Deirdre Leone , is SVP, Commercial –Global at ContractPodAi

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