Leadership Excellence - July 2023

Motivating Peak Performance Through OKRs and Goal Alignment

How leaders can foster a healthy workplace culture

- Jason Richmond, CEO and Chief Culture Officer Ideal Outcomes, Inc

5 Major Leadership Challenges In A PostPandemic World

Overcoming obstacles and embracing growth in a changing world

- Mike Lee, Future of Leadership Keynote Speaker, MindShift Labs

Don’t Ignore These Two Important Leadership Communication Tools

To be heard, use your EARS

- Jacqueline Farrington, Founding Director, Farrington Partners

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Chaos Isn’t A Bad Thing. Eight Other Truths Leaders Need To Know

Mastering leadership in the midst of turbulence

- Gary Harpst, CEO, LeadFirst

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Empowering Success with OKRs and Adaptive Strategies

Ina world where change is the new norm, leaders face an uphill battle filled with unprecedented challenges. From the global pandemic to digital revolutions, social justice movements to uncertainty at every turn, effective leadership has become a complex dance. To conquer this dynamic landscape, leaders must equip themselves with the internal skills necessary to navigate the storm

In the pursuit of excellence and staying ahead of the competition, organizations are in a constant quest for the Holy Grail of operational efficiency. Enter Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), the secret sauce behind the success of giants like Google, Netflix, and Amazon. But here's the catch: while OKRs have proven their worth time and again, many organizations still struggle to unleash their full potential. It requires organizations to sidestep common pitfalls and embrace the best practices that pave the way for tangible benefits. Imagine a world where performance soars, innovation thrives, and employees are engaged like never before. That's the world OKRs can create.

Welcome to the July edition of Leadership Excellence! In this issue, read informative articles that focus on the relevance of OKRs in today's business world, strategies to overcome leadership challenges, insights into investing in leadership development and much more.

In her article, OKR Best Practices That Promote A Culture Of Empowerment And Innovation, Keryn Gold (Managing Partner at OTBi Solutions) discusses the power of OKRs and how they can drive success in today's fast-paced business landscape. The article emphasizes best practices for optimal OKR implementation, including clear objectives

tied to the organization's mission, SMART key results, employee involvement, and adaptive monitoring.

Jason Richmond's (CEO and Chief Culture Officer, Ideal Outcomes, Inc.) article, Motivating Peak Performance Through OKRs and Goal Alignment, highlights how OKRs empower organizations to navigate challenges and drive progress.

Learn practical tips and effective strategies to overcome common leadership hurdles in Mike Lee's (Future of Leadership Keynote Speaker, MindShift Labs) article, 5 Major Leadership Challenges In A Post-Pandemic World.

Discover the secrets to investing in leadership development and nurturing your skills for long-term growth and achievement in Stephen Bailey’s (Co-Founder, ExecOnline) article, The Multiplying Effect Of Coaching On Leadership Development

In brief, with the right tools and mindset, leaders can navigate change, overcome challenges, and create a high-performance workplace culture that drives success.

We hope you find the latest edition of Leadership Excellence useful and informative in your leadership journey. Your feedback and suggestions on our articles are always welcome.

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OKR Best Practices That Promote A Culture Of Empowerment And Innovation

Align on what matters

By Keryn Gold, Ph.D., OTBi Solutions

robust goal-setting aligned across the organization. Created at Intel, made famous by Google, and adopted by many other companies — from tech giants like Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, Adobe, and LinkedIn, to myriad high-growth start-ups — the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) model, when done correctly, promises enhanced performance, innovation, and alignment.

Many organizations, including these tech giants and progenitors of the model, sometimes struggle with optimal implementation of the OKR model, however, and have fallen into traps that handcuff leaders and employees alike.

Pitfalls to Avoid

Though powerful, OKRs are not immune to misuse. We’ll start by highlighting some common pitfalls to avoid, then get into best practices that address these challenges to enable organizations to fully leverage the power of OKRs to improve profits and accelerate innovation while empowering employees and improving engagement:

1. Lack of Alignment, Goal Transparency & Accountability Across the Organization.

2. Too Many, Mushy, or SetThem-And-Forget-Them OKRs.

3. Not Having Employees Involved In Defining OKRs.

4. Overemphasis on OKR Achievement in Performance Reviews.

5. Lack of Consistent, Regular Communication and Review.

OKR Best Practices – Promote Clarity & Ownership

From my experience running companies and leading divisions at multiple start-ups, Fortune 50 and FAANG companies, in my view, there are some critical best practices leaders should keep in mind to derive maximal value from OKRs:

1. Articulate Clear Objectives That Tie to Organization’s Mission, At Every Level

The first step is to establish well-defined, inspiring, and challenging objectives at the organizational level. These should directly tie to the mission, vision, and values of the company.

Avoid being vague — aim for clarity and directness. The best objectives are those that answer the question, "Where do we want to go?"

The path to operational efficiency and organizational success begins with clarity and

The CEO should set overall organizational OKRs. Then, each department head should set theirs that ties to the CEO’s, each director’s OKRs should tie to the department head’s, and the manager’s to the director’s. Individual contributors should set their own that tie to their manager’s OKRs.

Make these OKRs public, from the CEO to the interns. This is what Google did at its most successful, and it enhanced accountability, growth, and alignment across all levels of the organization.

2. Define Measurable Key Results in the Form of SMART Goals

Key results should be quantifiable, achievable but ambitious, time-bound, and directly tie to the overarching objective. They should answer the question, "How will I know I'm furthering the Objective?"

Remember, a key result is not a task or an activity, but a measurable outcome. Employees should be able to articulate the “how” and “why” of each key result. Employees should not be micro-managed on how they achieve them. The goal is to have clarity on the “North Star” and provide employees with a means to explicitly tie their work to overall organizational objectives.

3. Let Employees Take the Lead to Promote Engagement & Ownership – Set At Least 1 Stretch Goal

Rather than have OKRs happen to employees, employees at all

levels should play an active role in defining their own OKRs so they see them as being there for them. This increases ownership and engagement, provides a sense of autonomy, leads to a better understanding of organizational mission and their part in achieving it, and ultimately — in turn — leads to a higher probability of achieving set goals. The key is giving them multiple channels to brainstorm and inform their OKRs. Let the processors and introverts think it through offline and provide feedback and ideas asynchronously. Then, let them talk through it live with the more extroverted people, and have employees take ownership of synthesizing and writing down explicit OKRs that further both their own and organizational mission and goals for future growth and development.

Encourage employees to set no more than three to five OKRs, and have at least one be a stretch goal around something they’d really like to learn and are passionate about so they don’t sandbag. When at their best, many organizations like Google set a 70% target for OKR achievement.

I also like having quarterly “idea bounces” with my teams on ways we can improve operational efficiency, empower our fellow teammates, partners, and customers, and drive additional organizational profit. This encourages innovation and brainstorming that can inform specific “stretch” goals to layer

into OKRs so employees can work on some true passion projects, improving engagement while minimizing their fear of failure.

4. Monitor Progress Asynchronously – 1:1 Aren’t For Status Updates, They’re For Unblocking Employees

I’ve yet to meet anyone who liked pointless or too-long meetings that could have been an email, Slack message, or written update. I encourage leaders to provide advice and unblock and encourage employees during 1:1s, not seek status updates. I always have mechanisms where employees can asynchronously update their progress, and have them provide, in advance of regular weekly/biweekly 1:1s, areas they’re stuck on and what they most need help with.

This facilitates more rapid learning, growth, and innovation. I’m also a big proponent of monthly or quarterly newsletters, put together by each manager and people leader all the way up the chain that communicates that group’s key achievements and blockers for key results that tie to their public OKRs, that also highlight particularly noteworthy contributions by employees who have gone above and beyond, and specific ROI and measurable business value generated. This can be made more efficient by recent advances in generative AI technology.

Regularly-distributed team, department, and executive newsletters provide additional

opportunities for individual contributors to gain executive visibility and promotion. This encourages accountability, enhances trust, employee engagement and ownership, and ensures people know what everyone is working on and progress toward goals, so there aren’t any surprises. Lack of clarity is the primary driver behind organizational dysfunction, and this practice helps encourage cross-organization alignment.

5. Adjust & Reprioritize OKRs – Adapt to Change

OKRs should not be rigid and set in stone. Circumstances change, and when they do, it’s necessary and appropriate to adopt OKRs accordingly.

With the frameworks and cross-organization newsletters mentioned above, leaders, managers, and individual contributors alike can stay aligned and keep a finger on the pulse of OKR progress and market dynamics, ideate, reprioritize, and pivot focus when and as appropriate. We’re in a period

of rapid disruption, and this flexibility and adaptability allow organizations to stay ahead of the curve and respond rapidly and more effectively to change.

At some tech giants, it also reflects well on managers and people leaders and gets them promoted when they get their people promoted. This aligns incentives around empowering individual contributors and lower-level leaders. Creating consistent lightweight systems and cross-organizational visibility to team added value and ROI generated via the best practices shared above encourages people leaders to rise in a meritocratic way and bring their people along with them.

By embracing OKRs and the best practices above, organizations can avoid common pitfalls and encourage alignment, improve employee engagement and innovation, and further the organization’s strategic vision. The key to success is not just about setting and achieving the right goals but having supporting

cross-organization clarity and transparency and fostering a culture of continuous learning, innovation, and shared success.

Additional Resources:

1. Summarizing Measure What Matters by John Doerr | by Wade Lahring | Medium

2. Top Companies Who Use OKRs and Their Success Stories — Peoplebox

3. 33 OKR Statistics for 2023 (mooncamp. com)

4. A history of OKRs with John Doerr and Andy Grove - Coda

5. What Companies Use OKRs to Grow? (aligntoday.com)

Keryn Gold, Ph.D., is the Managing Partner at OTBi Solutions. She is an award-winning business and consulting leader, advisor, and certified business and executive coach who empowers organizations to achieve the seemingly impossible and accelerate achievement of their multi-year plans 3x+ within months. She served as CEO and COO of startups, ran consulting groups, worked in venture capital and private equity, and led Data Science & Product Strategy divisions and Centers of Excellence at multiple Fortune 50 and FAANG companies. She has a career history delivering 50x+ first-year ROI in less than 3 months to her clients, from start-ups to non-profits to the Fortune 10, across industries.

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Motivating Peak Performance Through OKRs and Goal Alignment

How leaders can foster a healthy workplace culture

By Jason Richmond, Ideal Outcomes, Inc.

BillBelichick recently uttered two short sentences that displayed one of the reasons he’s become one of the greatest NFL head coaches of all time.

“I’m responsible for it. So that’s it.”

Belichick, who holds a record six Super Bowl wins (all with the New England Patriots), was accepting accountability for multiple violations of NFL rules by an assistant coach. Then he quickly switched to a forward-looking stance discussing future team training.

Often described as a “student of the game” with a deep understanding of each player position, Belichick inspires exceptional performance by setting the highest possible goals and then steering his team to accomplish them.

He’s hands-on, constantly analyzing individual and team performance and issuing direction. Imagine if he gave

feedback to his assistant coaches and players only once or twice a season. How well would the Patriots continue to perform?

Yet, many business leaders today quite frankly not only do an ineffective job of providing any kind of feedback (constructive or negative), but also struggle to give praise. And despite having risen through the ranks, lack the wherewithal to develop employees, coach, or course correct.

Implementing OKRs

Feedback is a time-proven strategy to engage employees and develop a healthy workplace culture. According to a Gallup study, it dramatically increases remote worker engagement— something that’s extremely important in view of the expansion of hybrid work.

The Objectives and Key Results (OKR) methodology provides a powerful goal-setting structure, in which results can be measured ensuring alignment and accountability across teams and

leaders. First introduced by Andy Grove at Intel in the 1970s to give employees a sharply targeted focus, it contains three critical components: objectives, key results, and follow-up.

Objectives

Objectives are big-picture and qualitative in nature. Make sure that they are inspirational, exciting, achievable, and measurable. Make them mission-specific and for a limited time. Typically a quarter is a good period, although shorter time frames can also work well. Objectives tell us in a bold manner where we want to go, and they get us all rowing in the same direction. It’s up to senior leadership to establish the overall objectives and for teams within that framework to create their own. It’s a good idea to get input from employees at all levels so that there is widespread buy-in.

Key Results

KRs are focused and quantitative. They tell us how well we are progressing toward our objectives. A rule of thumb is to have about three key results for each objective. Not ten: who can monitor and focus on ten results without watering them all down? KRs tell us quickly if we are on the right track or need to shift focus. Organizations typically use KRs such as growth, employee engagement, market share, and quality but KRs can measure other results, depending on the objective. Examples might be Net Promoter Scores or other measurements of customer satisfaction, employee turnover, quality of hire, and customer retention.

For KRs to be truly effective they must be developed by the person or group that is accountable for meeting them. Remember, people

own the world they create—and we want people to own these results. They should also be challenging but achievable. If they’re hard people give up; if they’re too easy, you aren’t doing anything to inspire exceptional performance. You want to push people and stretch them so that when the KR is achieved, the sense of pride is palpable.

Follow Up

Follow up, along with regular communication, is critical. How often, is the first question you must decide. Again, timing in part depends on the level of experience of your employees. Newer employees might need frequent—maybe even daily— follow-up. Seasoned employees will not need so much hand holding.

Many of my clients apply an agile approach. They hold short weekly meetings at which everyone working toward the objective and the KRs briefly share progress, ask for help where needed, and discuss potential barriers to success. They also share next steps: what are they going to get done this week.

Finally, it is helpful to take a team pulse: how confident are they overall that the KRs will be met? Such meetings can be held in small groups or with individual employees, depending on the nature of the project. Follow-up also includes celebrating successes!

Goal Alignment

Effective OKRs ensure that individuals have a clear understanding of their company’s overarching objectives and how their work contributes to achieving those objectives.

can see progress (or lack of progress) it promotes a sense of individual and collective responsibility—and for the leader as much as anyone else.

When leaders openly accept their accountability, they cultivate an environment of trust, which serves to promote stronger relationships and collaboration. Transparency and accountability also play a vital role in upholding a company’s ethical standards which, in turn, boosts employee morale.

Final Thought

Teams can work together leveraging each other’s strengths and expertise. This kind of alignment minimizes silos, encourages cross-functional collaboration, and cultivates a sense of unity. In a rapidly changing business climate, goal alignment empowers organizations to be agile and adaptable.

Goal alignment also reduces the risk of individuals advancing conflicting priorities and creates an overall sense of purpose and a harmonious work environment. And who doesn’t want that?

Transparency and Accountability

OKRs foster a culture of transparency and accountability. When everyone in an organization

Managers who set inspiring objectives, track, and measure them with targeted, challenging Key Results, and follow up on progress are well on their way to creating and sustaining a high-performance workplace culture.

Jason Richmond is the CEO and Chief Culture Officer at Ideal Outcomes, Inc

When leaders openly accept their accountability, they cultivate an environment of trust, which serves to promote stronger relationships and collaboration.

The Best Leaders Help Their People Be Heard

3 strategies for listening effectively

By Dr. Jennifer Nash, Jennifer Nash Coaching & Consulting

Fromthe research, interviews, surveys, and stories, the data is clear: Leaders who make the time to hear others and help them feel heard retain talent and drive outstanding results. Business results, leadership success, and healthy relationships depend on your ability to accurately hear other people.

But what behaviors get in the way of hearing others? Many behaviors hinder us from truly hearing the people around us. From earbuds crammed in ears while on the subway to talking over people in meetings, there are multiple ways we passively (or aggressively!) signal we really aren’t interested in hearing others. My research with executives and leaders points to a triple threat of barriers: advocacy, assumption, and attention.

Advocacy

If you have ever spoken out in favor of your preferred political candidate, recommended your spouse’s favorite restaurant for dinner, defended women’s rights, or protected someone from a

bully, you’ve practiced advocacy. These specific examples reflect selfless advocacy: persuading others to support other people, places, concepts, or things for others’ positive benefit. In contrast, selfish advocacy is when you try to persuade others to adopt your beliefs, ways of thinking, or positions for your own self-validation, excuse rationalization, or ego’s benefit.

What makes selfish advocacy a barrier? It gets in the way because your attention is diverted—it’s focused on you and your position rather than the other person. In other words, it focuses on benefits to you rather than the other person’s gains.

Assumption

Tarina, a leader in the financial services industry, got along well with her teammates. Yet, over time, she casually observed that some of her peers didn’t appear to pull their weight when it came to tasks and quality project deliverables. When Tarina accepted a promotion to manager, she had to shift these relationships from

peer/peer to direct report/manager interaction and held one-on-ones with each of her nine team members.

Tarina asked her team members what they needed or was missing to deliver outstanding performance. When she heard their responses, she realized she had to suspend her assumptions. What she had interpreted as not pulling their weight was actually a lack of proper managerial support. As a result, Tarina learned that people want to be heard and know that you have their best interests at heart. They want to feel like you’re all on the same team. As so often happens, when there is an information gap, we tend to fill in the story ourselves. Most often, that story is incorrect.

Attention

Why is attention a barrier? Because when someone isn’t attentive to you or mindfully present you don’t feel heard and you tend to withdraw from the working relationship, organization, or interaction. When we fail to pay attention, we pay dearly in missed

opportunities to create connections, build understanding, and strengthen relationships.

Now that we’ve covered three barriers that get in the way of your hearing others and helping them feel heard here are three solutions to remove these roadblocks.

Inquiry

What makes inquiry such a powerful tool? Inquiry shifts your attention to the other person and away from yourself. It demonstrates curiosity and a desire to hear and learn more about the other person’s worldview, challenges, or successes. Inquiry creates a sense of togetherness rather than divisiveness. In these ways and more, it counteracts the advocacy barrier described previously.

Fact-Check

Many leading news outlets employ legions of people as fact-checkers.

Fact-checking is a process of confirming an assertion’s accu-

racy or truth. To check a statement’s accuracy, there are many credible data sources you can use, such as think tank reports, academic research, industry publications, personal interviews, research databases, and more. When you collect data about a specific topic or situation, you use evidence to support or disprove the other person’s position. This prevents you from making unfounded assumptions about the other person’s statements, actions, behaviors, thinking, or beliefs.

Paraphrase

Paraphrasing eliminates attention barriers because it requires a laser focus on the speaker. It takes energy and attention to interpret and process spoken and unspoken messages. To effectively paraphrase, you must hear and listen to the speaker’s words, vocal communication, and non-verbal communication.

Hearing someone is one of the most important things you can do for success in your life, leadership, and career. When you

hear people, they feel respected, valued, and validated. You gain awareness of their needs, worldviews, and experiences. You gather new insights and broaden your awareness and frame of reference.

Jennifer Nash, Ph.D., MBA, PCC is a leadership expert and consultant to Fortune 50 organizations such as Google, Ford, Exxon Mobil, JP Morgan, IBM, Boeing, and Verizon. She is the Founder & CEO of Jennifer Nash Coaching & Consulting, helping successful leaders connect people and performance to deliver exceptional results. She is the author of Be Human, Lead Human: How to Connect People and Performance

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5 Major Leadership Challenges In A PostPandemic World

Overcoming obstacles and embracing growth in a changing world

By Mike Lee, MindShift Labs

During the spring of 2020 with all the gyms, yoga studios and parks closed, I started running to break up the monotony of my days. A day in early June, as I finished the last couple of blocks of my run, and was reflecting on the current state of the world, I kept saying to myself, “This is insane. What is happening right now is insane. How am

I going to lead myself through this unprecedented uncertainty? And how will I help people who rely on me for guidance?” It was this surreal moment where I saw all these things colliding: the global pandemic, a digital-first work environment, the social justice movement, and uncertainty.

While I was stretching on the stairs outside of my apartment, I had a couple of realizations:

1. Leaders have never had to deal with more things at once. One of these challenges would have been tough, but all of them happening simultaneously is unprecedented. And senior leaders, emerging leaders, and leaders without a title need to be equipped with the internal skills to navigate this new world of work long after the pandemic.

2. The world we once knew is gone forever. Covid-19 has changed everything on multiple levels. While it was disruptive initially, it is also an incredible opportunity for those who take advantage.

While I’d never been through a pandemic, my life and work experience in many ways had prepared

me to meet the moment. Leading myself and others through challenging situations — both failures and successes — was incredibly familiar to me. I was no stranger to adversity. And I knew that many of the answers were already within.

Fast forward to today, and on top of a looming recession, leaders are dealing with five major challenges.

1. The Purpose Crisis

Mckinsey found that nearly two-thirds of US-based employees surveyed said that Covid-19 caused them to reflect on their purpose in life. And nearly half said that they are reconsidering the kind of work they do because of the pandemic.  Leaders can no longer ignore this, especially when managing Gen Z and Millennials. A return to the job market due to the recession, increased compensation and perks are not going to solve this long-term.

2. The Engagement Dilemma

Second, companies are working harder than ever to retain and engage their existing population of employees. Global employee engagement is at an all-time low costing companies $7.8 trillion annually.

3. The War for Talent

Companies are also fighting for a smaller pool of qualified talent and to retain the top talent they currently have. Covid-19 changed what current employees and job seekers need, expect, and want from their work experience and those that lead them.

Companies and leaders need to create a work experience their people can’t wait to talk about.

This starts with the human connection that makes people feel like they belong to something bigger than themselves.

4. Leadership Mindset

Mountains of research show senior and emerging leaders are not equipped with the skills for the future. Business schools traditionally cover skills like strategy and are missing out on the heart-centered leadership skills that research shows are increasingly important. A Forbes article argued that empathy is the number one leadership skill required in today’s world of work.  According to a recent Fortune survey, only 7 percent of CEOs believe their companies are building effective global leaders, and just 10 percent said that their leadership development initiatives have a clear business impact. And, MIT Sloan Management Research found that only 12 percent of respondents strongly agree that their leaders have the right mindsets to lead them forward. It’s pretty apparent that organizations don’t feel their leaders are equipped to lead into the unknown.

5. Leadership Burnout

On top of these challenges, leaders are dealing with burnout at incredibly high rates. According to a Forbes article “Nearly 60% of leaders reported they feel used up at the end of the workday, which is a strong indicator of burnout.” A byproduct of stress, CEOs also experience depression at a rate double the average population.

Unless leaders address these internal challenges — like purpose, burnout, and mindset — they aren’t going to be able to keep their current people engaged, activate high performance, or attract top talent to be competitive in the marketplace.

The Opportunity

Despite these challenges, this moment in time presents a massive opportunity: Gen Z and Millennials want their work to contribute to something bigger than themselves, be a place they belong, and have a leader who can guide them on their personal and professional journey. If you can create a culture that provides those perks, you can set yourself up to win in the future marketplace. The question is this: Will leaders and organizations stay stuck in past paradigms, or will they level up for the future?

In a world of disruption, change, and adversity Mike Lee helps individual contributors, leaders, and organizations activate the purpose-driven, futurefocused, and heart-centered skills that drive engagement, win the war for talent, and create cultures of belonging. He’s blended a diverse background of mindset, mindfulness, and high performance to create a counter-cultural approach to the future of leadership. For 15 years, he worked with some of basketball’s elite earning testimonials from NBA players such as MVP Steph Curry.  His latest book, The New Rules For The Future of Leadership, has been endorsed by the likes of Neiman Marcus Chief People and Belonging Officer, New York Times best-selling authors, and other Fortune 500 leaders.

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The Multiplying Effect Of Coaching On Leadership Development

The synergy of learning programs and coaching experiences

By Stephen Bailey, ExecOnline

Leadership is a quality, but it’s also a huge asset. Companies that report a strong bench of leadership talent are three times more likely to be among the top organizations for financial performance. As markets and workplaces evolve, so must our investment in leadership development.

There are a number of opportunities for leadership development learning programs that cater to personal preferences. The same could be said for

coaching practices that help established or entrepreneurial professionals find their way in a competitive marketplace. There’s no reason, however, that learning and coaching efforts need to be mutually exclusive.

Each on its own is powerful. But there’s a multiplier effect when you combine learning and coaching experiences to fully develop the capabilities of your current leaders and accelerate the contributions of your high performers.

Cultivate a Learning Culture

We’ve entered a learning economy, and it’s defining what leadership will mean in the future of work. Whether you’re a small company staying nimble in the face of larger competitors or a large company trying to avoid being disrupted, the key to your competitive advantage is your ability to learn faster than the pace of change.

With so many employees now valuing professional development, creating a learning culture can mean significant benefits related to reduced turnover, higher productivity, and improved execution of strategic priorities. It can also foster engagement and spur innovation. But it only works if workforce development is a core part of who your organization is and how it plans to grow.

In the past, education and professional development for corporate settings have been seen as milestones along a finite route. While other professions require continuing education coursework and certifications to ensure professionals are able to meet changing needs and technologies, corporations have largely viewed leadership development only in terms of episodic skills training or as the infrequent prerogative of senior management.

Yet the half-life of skills is shrinking. To meet the multifaceted needs of modern leadership, development needs to be a central and ongoing component of your company’s strategic planning.

This ensures that your leaders are adequately prepared with the skill sets to match your evolving business priorities. It also formalizes and democratizes leadership development access in order to maximize and diversify leadership potential and capabilities across your organization.

Adopt a One-and-the-Other Approach

In times of economic uncertainty, it’s understandable when organizations look to cut costs where possible. This may mean you consider leadership development experiences an acceptable investment, but feel internal mentorship and sponsorship opportunities are sufficient support in lieu of formal programs and coaching. Yet there are key differences.

Mentoring tends to be less formal and results-driven than coaching. Sponsorship usually means exposure to senior management but doesn’t necessarily involve ongoing guidance on what to do when you get there. Both are important, but having someone who is formally trained in helping leaders advance and who can serve as a source of accountability is an invaluable tool for a more comprehensive leadership development program.

In fact, nearly 50% of leaders want to be educated by external coaches. Coaches provide an objective view of a leader’s goals and progress beyond the bounds of the organization. In combination with a leadership development program, coaches can reinforce learning by providing feedback and sustained support for real-life application of the principles learned.

In addition to individual support, group coaching can offer opportunities for interactions between leaders in similar stages of development that are more personal than a learning course environment. That peer-topeer resource is invaluable in gaining perspective and, in combination with a leadership development program, can help inspire innovations within your organization.

Measure for Impact

So how can you determine the real value of doubling up on development efforts? Despite tools like the Kirkpatrick model for evaluating learning, many organizations still view measuring development ROI as a nebulous undertaking.

In truth, a lot of organizations simply lack alignment on objectives, available data, and what’s important to communicate. They also lack a framework from which to view and measure against business priorities.

In my experience, investing in leadership development–both learning and coaching–helps drive the following core business objectives:

● Retention: encouraging leaders to stay by helping them feel more secure in their value to the organization. Providing leaders with development programs boosts their capabilities, and supplementing that with coaching support improves their perception that they are highly regarded contributors to your organization.

● Productivity: motivating leaders to go above and beyond through the increased engagement that comes with feeling properly supported. The combination of experiential development programs and coaching can help leaders navigate real-world challenges with real-time results.

● Goal achievement: equipping leaders with the skills they need to better achieve organizational goals. Development programs provide the how-to; coaches can help leaders dive deeper into the why and what-if to explore out-of-the-box options that may further benefit your organization. In fact, alumni of my

company’s leadership development programs reported they are 1.5x more likely to apply learning when complemented with coaching.

Of course, capturing data for these measures is only useful if it’s contextual, digestible, and actionable. That requires a common understanding among your organization’s senior leadership team–including your head of development–about organizational challenges, goals, and anticipated shifts in business priorities. And that comes down to viewing development efforts as integral to your organization’s growth and competitive positioning.

To outpace change (and your competitors), you need to uplevel your leadership development initiatives. That means providing your leaders with the means for development experiences that are engaging and inspiring, practical and applicable, and thoroughly supported for sustained learning. When you combine the individual benefits and strengths of learning programs and coaching services you reap the reward of an exponential return on your investment in your leaders and the future of your organization.

Stephen Bailey is an entrepreneur, leadership and workforce expert and futurist, who works with corporate leaders within the Fortune 500 and Global 2000 to create memorable life-changing learning experiences. Stephen co-founded ExecOnline, a premier provider of certified, online leadership development experiences, to diversify the leadership pipelines of the world’s largest organizations by democratizing access to high-quality leadership training. Prior to ExecOnline, Stephen served as the CEO and Chief Product Officer of Frontier Strategy Group (FSG).

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Don’t Ignore These Two Important Leadership Communication Tools

To be heard, use your EARS

By Jacqueline Farrington, Farrington Partners

Leadersoften underestimate how intentional they need to be in every aspect of their communication, including voice and body language. It turns out it’s a hazard of the job. Merely holding positional power can reduce your ability to perceive how your words and gestures impact others. Researcher Adam Galinsky calls it the “power amplification effect”. A raised eyebrow at the wrong moment or an offhand comment can spike fear in team members or sabotage trust – even impact the bottom line.

It’s a lesson one CEO learned the hard way.

Years ago, a leader we’ll call Vikram was a new CEO. He came up from inside the company. Despite being groomed for the role, when it came time to promote him, there was a lot of internal discussion about whether he was ready for the top job. Ultimately, the board gave its approval.

They quickly regretted the decision after his first earnings call.

Don’t Ignore These Two Important Leadership Communication Tools

Because the report was by phone, the attending analysts and press couldn’t see Vikram, only hear him. When the call ended, the biggest news wasn’t the company’s lackluster earnings but Vikram’s tone of voice. The press characterized him as deflated and noncommittal about the company’s future.

The media reports undermined the company’s reputation and sabotaged the board’s faith in Vikram to steer the ship. When they hired me to work with him, the board was blunt: We can’t afford this to happen again.

It didn’t. Vikram handled the next earnings call like a seasoned CEO.

During our work in the intervening months, Vikram discovered a pivotal truth: Your voice and body are tools for delivering communication with emotional intelligence. If your tools aren’t sharp or used correctly and for the right tasks, your message will fail. There must be congruency between your gestures, voice, and intent. Without alignment, you risk being misunderstood and possibly alienating the people you most want to influence.

Full-Throated Leadership

Your voice is a richly expressive instrument capable of broadcasting a wealth of information about you, your motives, and your social adeptness. The tone, pace, rhythm, and pitch of speech carry nuanced shades of meaning, creating a secondary level of communication known as paralanguage. Our brains are hardwired to perceive and trust these subtle vocal cues, prioritizing them over the content. In short, as Vikram found, how you say what you say matters.

You can use words to startle, motivate, provoke, deflate, or soothe. But along with word choice, your decision to punch up or downplay different phrases demonstrates your sensitivity to the situation and the listener’s needs. If Vikram had deliberately used his voice to underscore his genuine belief in the company’s robustness, the news – and the firm’s profitability – may have taken a different turn that day.

To Be Heard, Use Your EARS

You’re more likely to land important messages by adding variety and contrast to your speech. Listeners can habituate to what we’re saying and tune out –especially with a monotone delivery. To leverage your full vocal expression, remember the acronym EARS: Energy, Articulation, Resonance, and Stops. Let’s break it down:

● Energy refers to the volume and speed of your voice. Speaking at a comfortable pace, between 110 to 160 words per minute, helps maintain listener engagement. Think of velocity in terms of the message you want to convey. Faster speaking may suit lighter, humorous content, while slower speech often fits more serious, complex, or crucial information.

● Articulation involves the clarity of your speech – your consonants, vowels, and the words you choose to emphasize. A well-articulated message helps your audience understand and remember key points.

● Resonance gives your voice its unique quality, including pitch and tone. It’s the color and timbre of your voice – crucial for projection and volume. Using your full optimum pitch range, where you’re most resonant, makes your voice more attractive and easier to listen to for team members.

● Lastly, Stops are intentional pauses in your speech, allowing your audience time to absorb your message. Extended pauses can add gravity and confidence to your delivery. It’s like using your voice as a highlighter, emphasizing key points for the listener.

Embody the Message

Nonverbal communication helps our audiences understand what we’re saying and how to feel about our message, making body language a crucial pathway to building trust and rapport. The problem is that leaders are often bombarded with a grab-bag of instructions. Appeals to hold eye contact, smile, maintain an open posture, and use expressive gestures are nearly mantras in the leadership canon.

While each of these suggestions can be useful for building rapport, they can also send the wrong signal in the wrong context.

It’s more important to clarify your reasons for communicating – to understand why you’re modifying your body language. Begin by asking yourself these questions:

1. What message do I need this audience to hear?

2. For this message to be heard by this audience, how do I need to show up?

3. How does this compare to my habitual way of showing up?

Then, to help your body move in concert with your objectives easily and authentically, remember three simple things:

● Intend to Connect – Begin by taking stock of the physical space and the message’s context. Ask yourself how big or small your gestures need to be. Where do you need to be relative to the person or audience for them to feel comfortable and you to be heard? Then lower your defenses – and theirs – by practicing sincere curiosity and openness. In response, your body will naturally make itself less threatening. You’ll find yourself relaxing, leaning in, nodding, and matching your posture to theirs.

● Be Purposeful – Are your gestures attached to the meaning of your words, or are they repeated over and over as a habit or nervous filler?

Shuffling your feet, looking around, and waving your hands could signal you’re off-ground and disconnected from the audience. Breathe and reengage your intention to connect. Focus your physical energy on movements that underscore the reasons behind your message. Your gestures and posture will naturally become crisp, deliberate, and energetic when charged with a goal.

● Clarify Your Point of View – How you feel about your message dramatically impacts your delivery. Imagine you need to give a team member critical feedback for a missed deadline.

If you’re angry, your gestures can show up as accusing or, worse, threatening. It’s okay to be upset by the delay, but what do you want to accomplish with the message? If you aim to set firm expectations yet motivate the employee, your movements will likely soften. Clarifying your intention aligns your nonverbal cues and makes them specific to the context.

At the next earning call, Vikram still wasn’t visible to his audience, but he acted as if he was. Being congruent in his actions and intentions carried through to his voice and changed the tenor of the call. Exercising mastery over his voice and gestures not only helped Vikram deliver an on-point address but truly embody leadership.

Jacqueline Farrington has over 20 years of experience as a change-maker, empowering leaders and their teams to spark transformation and innovation through communications. She works with senior and board-level leaders at multinationals such as Amazon and Microsoft. Jacqueline blends her experience in the performing arts, vocal pedagogy, communications, psychology, and organizational and executive coaching to help her clients find unique communication solutions. Her new book, The Non-Obvious Guide to Better Presentations: How to Present Like a Pro (Virtually or in Person), provides actionable, practical concepts, tips, and tools to improve any speech or presentation. She is the Founding Director of Farrington Partners.

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High-Visibility Leadership: 5 Simple Steps To Boost Presence And Engagement

Mastering the art of being seen and heard in leadership

By Fiona Passantino, Executive Storylines

clients, partners, and board members? Five easy ways to start.

Invisibility

The chair you’re sitting on is a solid, real thing. We can trust it to support our full weight. We can stub our toe on it and we can move it around.

And yet it, like all the things in our world, consists of mostly empty space held together by the furious spinning of unfathomably small particles with lots and lots of energy.

A company operates much the same way. Mostly empty space, its culture, purpose, and belief in leadership exist mainly in the minds of its people.

Often, our top-level leaders live in another world; they work at the same company with the same goals, vision and share the same elevators, but are invisible to the community working for them. How can leaders increase their presence, visibility, and interaction with the people making the company run, and still meet the needs of other stakeholders,

We, humans, believe in things we see. When we see and feel the presence of leadership in our daily working lives, we believe that it is there, and can buy into the vision and mission more powerfully than the words etched into the lobby wall. When our leaders are visible, engaging us and communicating about this purpose, working alongside us, and ready to listen, it builds trust, inspires, and empowers.

But so often managers and top-level leaders live in another world. Their days are packed with back-to-back meetings from morning to night with only a knife blade able to get between them. And yet these are the moments they are expected to do the managing, guiding, listening, and “people” part of their jobs.

Five Habits of High-Visibility Leaders

With employees working hybrid, the need for highly visible leadership is crucial for stemming the outgoing tide of attrition, attracting talent and keeping engagement high in-house.

TIP 1: Walk the halls

and start small. Walk the halls just 10 minutes a day during high-traffic moment - around lunchtime, during coffee breaksand just start up a conversation with whomever you see.

What do you say? Start with hello. What’s your name? What do you do What do you like about your job? What don’t you like? Then move on to ask their advice: Hey, we have a townhall coming up. What’s a good poll to ask at the end?

Listen. Even if the ideas are weak, incoming data from a human working for you still matters. These small interactions make a big difference to us on the ground and can put a smile on our faces for the rest of the day.

Leaders are often consumed with office politics, surrounded by high-level stakeholders, clients, partners, and board members. Their own positions and influence often take precedence over the nuts and bolts of the job. They appear now and then to give inspirational webinars, to share quarterly numbers, or to address the community at a town hall.

They are rarely seen in the lunchrooms, at the coffee corners, on factory floors or digitally, in the flowing river of company social feeds. And yet they work in the same company, parking in the same garage and use the same elevators.

Doug Conant, a visionary CEO of Campbell Soup Company, would spend a few minutes every morning walking around the plant and offices just talking to people. It didn’t matter what their role was in the company, who they were and who they knew. He would chat with whoever was there, get to know them, and often memorize their names and the names of their kids, showing a genuine interest in their lives 1. He called these informal moments “touchpoints”.

High-visibility leaders that talk and listen to us make us feel valued, even if our job titles say otherwise. But so many leaders simply don’t want to appear awkward or say the wrong thing. The best way is just plunge in,

Finally, make sure other people see you doing this. This may sound cynical, but calculated optics are multipliers, so never let a good visual go to waste. If the employee agrees to a selfie, it’s perfect for posting on internal social media channels.

TIP 2: Be present during meetings Being “present” is the act of being focused and engaged with 100% of your mind, heart and body. Existing in the current time and place, attentive to the people around you. You’re undistracted and mentally sharp.

We are ghost walkers most of the day. We physically inhabit a space and time but our minds linger on the past or future. The voices in our heads drown out what’s happening around us. We’re bored, stressed, preoccupied, or

multitasking. Our lack of presence makes others around us feel disrespected and frustrated.

We tell our children to put their phones away at the dinner table so that we can all be physically and mentally together once a day. But these lessons don’t always apply at work. Our managers are fading in and out of our meetings; on their phones, writing texts and checking emails, not really listening to what is being said. Sending the signal that others should do the same. Is there a point in having the meeting at all?

In a survey of 2,000 employees, Bain & Company found that among 33 leadership traits including the ability to create compelling objectives, express ideas clearly and be open to feedback, they found that the ability to be mindfully present was the most essential 2 .

Leaders who are present encourage their teams. They are motivating and command respect from those in the room since they are showing it. They send the message that presence is a requirement for meetings, not just for the ones they are running.

TIP 3: Engage Digitally Engaging digitally means jumping into the chattering stream of internal company social

platforms. Whether it’s Teams, Workplace, or Slack internally or LinkedIn externally, leaders who contribute to others’ posts by sharing feedback, commenting with additional points or simply praising strong content signal to their teams that someone is listening.

Only half of all S&P 500 CEOs have a social media presence 3 . This is despite the fact that 82% of employees believe it is important for their leaders to communicate vision and values through social channels 4

Why do this? Social media is a fast and easy way to join the conversation both inside and outside the company. It allows you to engage quickly with stakeholders and the broader public in a direct, transparent way. Especially younger workers have come to expect their leaders to pay attention to their feeds 5

Listening to the internal chatter provides insight into what’s going on in the community. It gives you first-hand access to information as many crises bubble up in the social channels first, before trickling into the traditional media.

Start by scheduling a few 15minute sessions a week in a structured way. Once this becomes a habit, work towards a daily check-in, with the goal of posting one comment, photo or video every day. Divide your social time between listening and engaging. You will see the effects immediately.

TIP 4: Delegate High-Profile Tasks

Effective leaders know they can’t accomplish everything themselves. High-visibility leaders know that they don’t want to.

Confident leaders are able to relinquish control and hand tasks to others so they can focus on activities that yield the highest returns for the company. This also develops the team which motivates and engages, increases productivity and ultimately delivers a better customer experience6

But most leaders jealously keep the high-profile, largely ceremonial tasks to themselves. This includes speaking at town halls, giving quarterly reports, speaking at conferences, or welcoming big-ticket customers. These tasks convey authority and status to the person carrying them out, but there is nothing magical about reading numbers off a PowerPoint. This can be done by someone closer to the ground, a fresh face, with time to prepare accordingly.

Giving these roles to lower-level employees actually increases the status of the leader. Leaders influence company culture with these moves, and the effects are energizing, instant, and lasting. The message is that the company cares about the development and growth of the least among us, and is willing to give these glorious tasks to people at entry levels. It’s a win for the speaker and makes the leader appear magnanimous and electrifying to the audience.

TIP 5: “Ask Me Anything”

Open Q&A sessions where employees are encouraged to “Ask Anything” are great regular events to start up. The CEO becomes a real person with strengths and flaws, unafraid to answer direct questions and ready to share compelling information. The format is easy: the leader is available for one hour in the largest room in the company, and there is no speech, agenda, or talking points planned. The leader is there to just listen and answer.

These sessions work best with a few ground rules in place. First of all, they can’t be done last minute; ample time is needed to promote the event, clear schedules, and set up a nice brand. Make sure there are seeded questions in advance and a few reliable volunteers to ask them if no one else speaks up. The leader should come prepared to address the elephants in the room and potentially have a backup to source more specific questions; a CIO or CTO, for instance.

Visibility and Change Management

Decisions made on high have a big impact on employees. It’s stressful to imagine that new rules, re-orgs or business directions can come down at any moment, which must be accepted in order to remain on the payroll.

Engaged, valued employees are willing to swallow a lot. When we deeply believe in our leaders, our purpose, and our individual roles in making it all run, we make sacrifices and uncomfortable changes. If the vision behind the change is clear and we are brought along in the process, implementation becomes easier later on 8.

Notes

1 Hougaard, Carter (2017) “If You Aspire to Be a Great Leader, Be Present” Harvard Business Review. Accessed February 1, 2023

Finally, collecting the most important actions to change and following up with a plan to implement within ten days of the event is critical. Executing the plan, and showing the results are perfect ways to open the next session; if there is proof of action and follow-through, these events will be well-attended and successful 7

2. Gaudet (2022) “Why Executives Need To Be On Social Media: Approaches For Business Leaders” Forbes Magazine. Accessed February 1, 2023. Councils Member

3. Gaudet (2022) “Why Executives Need To Be On Social Media: Approaches For Business Leaders” Forbes Magazine. Accessed February 1, 2023. Councils Member

4. Dutta (2010) “Managing Yourself: What’s Your Personal Social Media Strategy?” Harvard Business Review. Accessed February 1, 2023.

5. Badal, Ott (2015) “Delegating: A Huge Management Challenge for Entrepreneurs” Gallup. Accessed February 1, 2023.

6. HarmonizeHQ (2021) “How to Run a Successful Ask Me Anything with a CEO?” AttendanceBot Blog. Accessed February 1, 2023.

7. Ross (2021) “6 Ways To Increase Visible Leadership In The Workplace” Marie-Claire Ross, Trustology. Accessed January 31, 2023.

Fiona Passantino started as an oldschool comic artist, writer and video game designer. After a more than 20year career as a corporate communications professional, she became an Employee Engagement, Communication and Culture specialist and founder of Executive Storylines, a consulting company based in the Hague. She helps leaders and teams be at their best at work, and with and strategic AI integration. Fiona is a speaker, blogger, podcast host and the author/ illustrator of the 2023 UK Business Book Award-winning “Comic Books for Executives” series. These ideas and more are part of the Guides to Engagement and Communications.

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Chaos Isn’t A Bad Thing. Eight Other Truths Leaders Need To Know

Mastering leadership in the midst of turbulence

By Gary Harpst, LeadFirst

Twenty-first-century leaders are no strangers to chaos— and the last few years have underscored that truth. We ride nonstop waves of disruption and uncertainty in various forms: supply chain upheavals, staff shortages, changing attitudes about work, wildly shifting workplace demographics, and ever-evolving technology. And that’s not even counting the

chaos that comes with the day-to-day managing of people! No wonder so many leaders (whether experienced or new) feel so overwhelmed.

But chaos isn’t a “bad” thing at all. Rather, the disorder and confusion we must navigate daily is a powerful catalyst for creating purpose and growth—sometimes tremendous growth—in people’s lives.

Every one of us is capable of bringing order out of chaos.We innately possess the ability to transform the chaotic resources around us to serve our purposes. Our job as leaders is to facilitate this transformation in ourselves and in our teams.

You were created to overcome chaos. (Really!) Not only is chaos not the enemy, it was created for us. And we are designed to beat

it, not to be its victims. In fact, we inherently crave to face chaos head-on and transform it into something positive.

The essence of leadership is knowing how to order and arrange—or integrate—the raw materials of chaos. Inside organizations we are tasked with integrating many people, each of whom has desires of their own, into a team that works together and does the right things in the right order.

Every leader should step back and ask the profound question: If electromagnetic energy holds the atoms in my body together, what is it that holds my team (organization) together? Answering that question and acting on the

answer is what it means to be a leader.

The battle against chaos starts with defining purpose. Every organization, every leader, and every employee should be in agreement on the “why” behind all that you do. This will bring focus to the problems you want to solve so you can ignore the rest. A world with too many opportunities to pursue is just another form of chaos. Just be sure that the vision or purpose you choose is not too vague. When this happens, it is difficult to guide resource allocation in a way that gets results.

One test of good visioning is that everyone understands the vision and relates their responsibilities to it. Another test is whether the

vision provides clarity for people to know how to invest their time. A clear path to increased chaos is ‘biting off more than you can chew.’”

Chaos is no excuse. Just because you can’t control it, doesn’t mean it can’t be managed. You may not be able to plan for unexpected disruptions, but too many people believe they are helpless in the face of chaos. For example, a manager might say, “I can’t promise to get the new training program built and rolled out by the end of the first quarter, because I get so many requests for custom reports and other support issues. I can’t plan my work.”

Left unchallenged, this kind of thinking justifies living with chaos

instead of managing it. We turn into victims of the surrounding randomness instead of planning for it. Of course, we can’t control everything, but there is great power in making a plan, finding solutions when problems arise, and moving forward always.

YOU create some of your chaos. While much chaos comes from outside forces, it can also come from our internal battles (loathe as we are to admit it). It can feel uncomfortable probing the turmoil of our internal desires, ideas, and half-formed thoughts. However, not doing so can keep us in a vicious cycle of wanting things and then behaving in an entirely contradictory manner. Perhaps we enroll in the gym or buy fitness equipment but never find time to work out. Or we insist we want to learn a new skill but can’t seem to sign up for a course to practice it.

No one wants to do what they should all the time. But con-

fronting our human tendency to not do the things we know we should do helps us understand what it means to lead ourselves and others. For example, we may not want to make the cold calls required to grow our sales because they are not easy or fun, but not doing so inevitably leads to chaos—we make less money, we compromise our performance record, and we put our jobs in jeopardy.

The leader’s job is to help people understand and channel their desires and align them to the tasks at hand. Desire is a double-edged sword. It fuels our capacity to bring chaos into order. It drives us to create what’s worth creating, be that an inspired organization, a work of art, or the next technology breakthrough. But left unchecked, desire can be destructive. The leader’s job is to understand the dual nature of desire. Deep down, what is it you want? What is it your employees want? Knowing the answer allows us (leaders and

employees alike) to draw on this inner power source to think, feel, and act in ways that help us a) thrive and b) stay out of trouble. We are more effective leaders when we try to get to the root of what motivates people. Often, the people involved benefit from bringing their underlying desires to the surface, because sometimes they are unaware of the effect of their actions. And when I say ‘they,’ I also mean ‘me.’

Leverage chaos to get people to act… It’s no surprise that politicians say, “Never waste a good crisis.” Disruptions and crises have a way of aligning people’s desires with their actions. An example could be the rise of a major competitive threat or a big new product rollout that shakes up the status quo. These unifying times of focus can be fear-based, or they can be inspirational. The common element is that they help us get aligned internally and with other people.

…But know that your job isn’t done once the chaos dissipates. Order is easier to create than to keep. As the crisis passes, the aligning force dissipates, internal misalignments surface and organizational entropy sets in and eventually leads to its own chaos.

The number-one problem I see in organizations is that people fail to understand that the alignment that occurs whenever a crisis erupts is temporary. People overestimate their desire to make the changes required to keep chaos at bay. A leader’s challenge is to help people who are not doing what they say they want to do. When people fall out of alignment, be prepared to call them on it and help them get back on track.

Overcoming chaos brings new chaos. (So, get used to it.) Chaos always exists. Bringing order to

one level of chaos creates another level that must be managed. Think, for example, of taking raw lumber and other materials and building a house. Now you have an ordered “system” that will return to a chaotic state unless you invest in taking care of it.

Think about a start-up or a business that launches a new product or service experience.The first chaos mastery involves figuring out how to design, build, and launch something of value to a customer. But once launched, that product needs its own ecosystem for selling and supporting it. That second phase lasts much longer than the first phase and has new categories of ongoing chaos that have to be managed.

Ultimately, we should think of chaos as a force that refines us all. It’s not something to dread. In

fact, when you accept that chaos is inevitable, it allows you to focus on managing and preventing it rather than fearfully wondering when it might turn up again.

Once you realize that you have everything you need to face any chaos that faces you, nothing can stop you from pursuing your desires and goals. You are truly free to be at your best and to help bring out the best in others.

Gary Harpst is the author of Built to Beat Chaos: Biblical Wisdom for Leading Yourself and Others. He is the Founder and CEO of LeadFirst Having been a CEO for 40 years, Gary has experienced the challenges of every aspect of business ownership, from start-up to rapid growth to acquiring other companies to being acquired. (Solomon Software, which he co-founded, was purchased by Great Plains and ultimately sold to Microsoft.) He is a keynote speaker, writer, and teacher whose areas of focus include leadership, business, and the integration of faith at work.

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Setting Employees Up For Success

Invest in the ongoing professional development of employees

By Sarah Stewart-Browne, North Strategic and Stephanie Silver, North Strategic

TheCanadian workforce has undergone a significant shift in the last year, with many organizations transitioning to new models of flexible working. This new way of working can be a challenge for employees, especially when it comes to feeling engaged and building their professional experience and personal brand. This reality, combined with gaps in in-person training as a result of the pandemic makes it more important than ever for employers to be focused on professional development opportunities and training for employees.

Benefits for Employees and Employers

Investing in professional development opportunities can lead to a wide range of benefits for both employees and employers. For employees, it can improve their confidence, engagement, and performance. By providing opportunities for employees to learn and grow, employers demonstrate a commitment to their employees’ professional development, which can lead to increased loyalty, job satisfaction, and retention.

Investing in employees pays dividends when we look at it through the lens of a company’s brand reputation and protection. Leadership training is often prioritized when it comes to learning and development budgets to make sure employees, who are heading into leadership positions, are ready when the time comes. It is equally important to think about training those who are already in leadership. They are the faces of your business. Media training and

presentation not only bolsters confidence, but it also helps spokespeople deliver brand messages in a clear and compelling way.

Crisis and risk management training will help you mitigate risk, and it prepares your team for the worst-case scenario – something many companies faced head-on in the last few turbulent years. Organizations that fared better than others are the ones that were prepared.

Strategies for Employers

When it comes to investing in employee professional development, there is no one-size-fits-all approach for businesses. It is important to understand what kind of training your employees want and create a strategy that meets the needs of a diverse and ever-evolving workforce.

There are different ways to do this. One effective strategy is to offer training programs that are tailored to specific job functions or career paths. For example, offering personal branding support to senior-level employees or those recently promoted into executive positions as they become spokespeople or public representatives of your brand. Investing in a smart, strategic executive thought leadership strategy is critical to defining a brand’s voice and building consumer trust.

Another is to provide mentorship opportunities, in which employees can learn from more

experienced colleagues. If you don’t already have a formal mentorship program in place within your organization, now is a great time to make that happen.

Strategies for Employees

While employers play a critical role in supporting professional development, employees can take an active role in their own growth and development. In a hybrid world, that means looking at both in-person and virtual opportunities. This can involve seeking out things like stretch assignments and projects, online courses, or attending industry events where IRL can be made. A lot of employers offer annual allowances for training, so take advantage of that budget!

Building relationships with mentors and colleagues who can support their growth and development is

another effective strategy for employees. Mentors can provide guidance and support, while colleagues can offer opportunities to collaborate and learn from those with different perspectives and skill sets.

Investing in professional development is a critical component of building a strong and resilient workforce. By implementing effective strategies, employers can support their employees in reaching their full potential. At the same time, employees can take an active role in their own development, which can lead to increased job satisfaction and fulfillment. As we continue to navigate the post-pandemic workplace era, now is the time for organizations to invest in the ongoing professional development of their employees - ultimately, everyone involved stands to benefit.

Sarah Stewart-Browne is the President of North Strategic

Stephanie Silver is the Vice President of Human Resources of MSL Canada, North Strategic and Notch Video

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