The Art Of Magazine - Volume 18

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Diversity’s Missing Ingredient Patrick Lencioni

Don’t Fall into the 24-Hour Trap Laura Vanderkam

Can Anyone Stop Amazon From Winning the Industrial Internet?

Vijay Govindarajan

The New Leadership Mandate: Culture-Building Denise Lee Yohn

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VOLUME 18

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Arianna

Huffington

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Talent & Leadership Development • Career Solutions • Executive Search & Recruitment

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BUILDING TOMORROW’S LEADERS

TODAY Since our inception in 2008, The Art Of has shaken the complacent and challenged the status quo as we’ve forged a dynamic global community that has helped to define and inspire thousands of individuals and businesses over the last 10 years. Thank you for joining us on this journey!

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ANNIVERSARY

CONTENTS TOP INSIGHTS FROM Vice President Joe Biden, Dr. Tasha Eurich, Brigid Schulte and Valerie Jarrett

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HOW TO MAKE YOUR TEAM SMARTER Micheal Bungay Stanier

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WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT EMPOWERING WOMEN FROM A CEO IN THE MIDDLE EAST Connie Dieken

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HOW TO BE HAPPY AT WORK: THE POWER OF HOPE Dr. Annie Mckee

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THE TRUTH & LIES BEHIND READING BODY LANGUAGE OF DECEIT Mark Bowden and Tracey Thomson

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CAN ANYONE STOP AMAZON FROM WINNING THE INDUSTRIAL INTERNET? Vijay Govindarajan

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TEN WAYS TO SPEED UP YOUR GENDER EQUALITY EFFORTS Stephania Varalli

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WOMEN IN STEM: TRANSFORMING THE TECH INDUSTRY Jaime Leverton

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DON’T FALL INTO THE 24-HOUR TRAP

22 CAN ANYONE STOP AMAZON FROM WINNING THE INDUSTRIAL INTERNET?

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DIVERSITY’S MISSING INGREDIENT

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10 WAYS TO ACTUALLY, FINALLY IMPROVE COMPANY CULTURE

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4 WAYS TO LEAD WITH AUTHENTICITY IN UNCERTAIN TIMES Mitch Joel

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INCLUSION: THE KEY TO UNLOCKING OUR FULL POTENTIAL Bill McFarland

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10 WAYS TO ACTUALLY, FINALLY IMPROVE COMPANY CULTURE Arianna Huffington

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DIVERSITY’S MISSING INGREDIENT Patrick Lencioni

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THE NEW LEADERSHIP MANDATE: CULTURE-BUILDING Denise Lee Yohn

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THE POWER OF DIVERSITY Mélanie Dunn

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THE IMPORTANCE OF COMPANY CULTURE Nadine Cole

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THREE DISCIPLINES EVERY TEAM LEADER NEEDS TO MASTER Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick

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AN INTERVIEW WITH Natali Altshuler

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DON’T FALL INTO THE 24-HOUR TRAP Laura Vanderkam

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ARE YOU HOLDING YOURSELF BACK? Tammy Heermann

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WHY YOUR OLD FRIENDS ARE YOUR MOST POWERFUL CONNECTIONS David Burkus

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THE POWER OF WOMEN AND GIRLS Caroline Riseboro

PRIME

M INISTER

PREMIER

M INISTRE

Statement from the Prime Minister of Canada It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to The Art of Leadership for Women Conference.

While we have taken significant steps toward gender equality, we know that much more work needs to be done. I remind Canadians and people around the world that we all have a role to play in the fight for gender equality, and that we all benefit from a more gender equal world. Women and men, girls and boys, we must all step up and speak out, because half of the population cannot solve a problem that affects us all.

Thank you to the organizers of this year’s conference and to all speakers who took time out of their schedules to be here today.

Please accept my warmest regards and best wishes for a memorable event!

Ottawa 2018

Founders’ Letter Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.

CO-FOUNDERS Christopher Novais Scott Kavanagh

– Seth Godin CREATIVE DIRECTOR

It was the year of the Blackberry vs. the iPhone upstart. Michael Jackson turned 50. The stock market crashed and Barack Obama was elected President. A lot can change over a decade. Some 70 conferences, 200+ speakers and 100,000+ attendees later, The Art Of is proud to be celebrating its 10th anniversary with a renewed commitment for the future.

The Art Of has matured from being an inspirational conference developer into a respected, dynamic leadership development company supported by a global community impacting thousands of individuals and businesses each year. We’ve evolved to incorporate the kinds of applicable tools and techniques for leadership that can be powerfully implemented within any corporate culture, and on every platform.

Our speakers certainly walk the talk. We’ve featured over 200 thought leaders including Malala Yousafzai, Vice President Joe Biden, Arianna Huffington, General Colin Powell and Brené Brown. These unique voices have delivered profound narratives, lessons on teamwork, disruption, innovation, and game-changing ideas that can take careers to the next level while re-energizing spellbound conference attendees.

In 2018, learning experiences for leadership and women in leadership are where our commitment lies. Enlightened leadership that celebrates new ideas with actionable strategies is our focus. Developing the next generation supports our goal to enhance leadership capability so that it can affect change at every level of any organization. Hop on board, we’ve already started redefining where business is taking us.

Helping you succeed,

Joey Van Massenhoven

HOW TO REACH US The Art of Productions Inc. 46 Sherbourne Street, 3rd Floor Toronto, Ontario Canada M5A 2P7

ADVERTISING & SUBSCRIPTIONS Visit: www.theartof.com/magazine Email: magazine@theartof.com Call: 866-992-7863 (In U.S.A and Canada) Write to The Art Of: Subscription Services 46 Sherbourne Street, 3rd Floor, Toronto, Ontario, M5A 2P7 Our subscribers list is occasionally made available to carefully selected firms whose products or services may be of interest to you. If you prefer not to receive information from these firms, please let us know at privacy@theartof.com or send your request along with your mailing label to The Art of Productions Inc, 46 Sherbourne Street, 3rd Floor, Toronto, Ontario, M5A 2P7

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TOP INSIGHTS FROM Vice President

Joe Biden Leadership Creates Culture Leadership is about sharing the success and sharing the losses with everyone. It’s about holding yourself accountable; to be open to ridicule, praise, and personal attack in the pursuit to uphold and create a great culture.

Smart Leaders Hire Smart People Even though most people have a fear of being outshone, surround yourself with people who are smarter than yourself. Do not attribute education to good judgment because even the most incredibly educated people don’t always know how to make the right decisions. Do not underestimate the ability of the human mind to rationalize because character is not a consequence of several different acts, it’s a product of consistency and people upholding their word.

Be Accountable A leader needs to take extreme accountability on consequential decisions.

For example, Barack Obama was willing to put his career on the line in the case of Osama Bin Laden to ensure that psychological and physical terrorist networks were brought down.

“Leadership is making the decisions and owning them.”

Leadership is making the decisions and owning them.

Lead By Your Decisions Leaders need to make the tough decisions. That means taking all the facts and understanding all the perspectives. It also means taking the blame for the consequences of your actions, understanding the risks, and sharing the praise when it’s due.

What Leadership Really Means The people who change the culture are the people who take risks and make themselves vulnerable to criticism, in hopes of changing the culture, shifting the norm, and setting an example for the rest of the world. Leadership means that you understand that what you are doing is a call of duty; what you do is bigger than just yourself or for your own monetary gain. Ask yourself what value do you have that you are willing to lose in order to succeed and stay true to what you say you are about? How can you be the leader that you want to be and say you are?

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TOP INSIGHTS FROM

Dr. Tasha Eurich

Myth or Fact?

Studies show that the most incompetent people are the most confident about their performance, and yet 95% of people would tell you that they are self-aware. How you see yourself and how others see you can be different.

How many people are ACTUALLY self-aware? Try 10-15%. Most leaders do not start off being self-aware – they just believe they are. Those who are more self-aware and curious become more self-accepting in the process.

Seeing who you are, clearly and compassionately, allows you to gently stop making that assumption. Self-aware leaders don’t assume they are leaders. They ask what, not why. They learn the brutal truth as they build self-aware teams.

“Leaders who are more self-aware and curious become more self-accepting in the process.”

The 7 Pillars of Internal Self-Awareness There are two kinds of self-awareness: Internal, whereby you see yourself clearly and External, whereby you know how others see you. Both types work independently but which type do you need to focus on the most, and which the least?

We understand our values and principles.

We understand what we’re passionate about.

We know what we want to accomplish and experience both at work and life.

We understand where we fit, the environment that makes us happy and engaged.

We understand our patterns of our personality.

We understand our reactions—knowing our momentary reactions, strengths & weaknesses.

We understand our impact on others The What and the Why Thinking isn’t knowing. In fact, studies show the more we think about ourselves the less we actually know ourselves. To deal with a tough boss, for example, replace the ‘Why’ questions with ‘What’ questions. Instead of asking WHY are we like oil and water, ask WHAT can I do to work better with my boss?

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Leaders who are more self-aware and curious become more self-accepting in the process.

TOP INSIGHTS FROM

Brigid Schulte

Living in Contaminated Time We live in an era of Time Confetti. This is time spent where everything is happening all the time, all at once and nothing is streamlined. Yet, we are often living on Contaminated Time—time spent when you are everywhere and nowhere because you are thinking about everything constantly, all at once and not living in the moment. Neuroscience studies prove that people think that we shouldn’t have leisure time, that we always need to be busy, yet ideas often come out of those moments of pause time.

“Leisure is like beauty, it is in the eye of the beholder, it’s about how you feel.”

Myth #1 Hours = Effort The best workers don’t work all the time. Norway is the most productive country per hour, and they have 6 weeks of vacation. Your brain is wired for the best ideas to come in the moments of pause and silence, not when you’re constantly working. A Professor named John Robinson from the University of Maryland said that women had 30 hours of leisure time.

Myth #2 Maternal Instinct Mothers know best? A majority of men and women assume that males = careers and females = family. It’s engraved in us as a subconscious bias even though men are physiologically capable of caregiving duties themselves.

The ideal worker, thought to be males, without caregiving duties, doesn’t exist.

Leisure is like beauty,it is in the eye of the beholder, it’s about how you feel.

Myth #3 No Playtime Leisure and play is a waste of time. JK Rowling was stuck on a train, where she said she looked out the window and spaced out. That is when the entire plot to Harry Potter fell into her brain.

Realities of Time It isn’t true that the time we spend doing work is directly correlated to the quality of work. Nor is it true that the ideal worker is one who doesn’t have the task of caregiving.

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TOP INSIGHTS FROM

Valerie Jarrett

Laddering Up Things don’t always go according to the plan that we set out for ourselves. How do you find that next step in your career or the new job that you are passionate about? It’s never too late to find your calling or passion. Everything comes easy if you are willing to work hard, be curious and take a chance.

Promote Others As a leader, you aren’t just advocating for yourself. You need to advocate for others as well. To create a culture that recognizes that diversity is a strife, you need to put your reputation on the line and stand by those whom you believe in.

Create Culture. See Value Increasingly, women are staying in jobs because of the culture and men have to recognize the value of women and understand what we bring to the table. We can’t expect men to know this. It’s our job as women to help them understand and to explain how it is in their self- interest.

No Woman is an Island Women in leadership roles shouldn’t try to be super-women who master it all and do everything on their own. They need to be able to recognize when they are having a hard time and to get help when needed. Surrounding yourself with a team that is diverse with different perspectives and life experiences will lead to you making better decisions.

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Everything comes easy if you are willing to work hard, be curious and take a chance.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR TEAM SMARTER (Hint: It’s Not by Including More Smart People) MICHAEL BUNGAY STANIER

Where the Invisible Gorilla Went Have you seen the invisible gorilla? No? You’ve missed a phenomenon, then, a viral video sensation that pointed to the science being done on the nature of attention. I’m not giving too much away when I say that the general conclusion is that we tend to overrate our ability to

pay attention to what’s happening. (We also overrate our ability to make rational decisions, to drive well, to not be sleep deprived and to avoid bias. In fact, we tend to overrate our ability to do pretty much everything; it’s possibly one of the secrets to the human race’s success.)

One of the scientists behind the research, Chris Chabris, has shifted his own attention and is now working on the nature of collective intelligence. I learned about this when listening to an episode of the excellent You’re Not So Smart podcast.

The Question behind Collective Intelligence People have been attempting to codify and measure intelligence forever, the best-known metric being IQ: intelligence quotient. We all have a sense of what IQ is. Then there’s EQ — that’s ubiquitous.

And there have been spluttering attempts to get MQ, BQ, CQ and PQ off

the ground as well.

But while these all give us a bearing relative to other individuals, what makes for a more intelligent team? How do you make your team or working group smarter? Could it be as simple as finding a bunch of people with high IQs and

throwing them together?

Well, of course not. Using experiments that tested groups of two to five people, both in person and collaborating over the internet, Chabris’ research points to three factors that predict the smartness of teams.

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1. SHARING THE STAGE The first factor is the extent to which the conversation is shared equally among all members of the team. The more each voice is heard equally, the smarter the team is collectively. It’s a stunning finding when you think about how most workplaces operate. Not just the fact that teams tend to have the talker — the pontificator, the person who’s overly confident about just how excellent their wisdom is — but, behind that, the continuing belief in the heroic, allknowing leader whose job is to dispense wisdom and solve all problems.

A leader who’s willing to step away from the comfort of being the voice of authority and command, in order to

facilitate different voices being heard, is a rare thing. And it’s perhaps one reason Microsoft is having a bit of a renaissance, as its CEO starts to shift the culture to allow just that.

and assume you know what’s going on.

Data, of course, has its place, as does judgment, particularly when the two are teased apart and you know what’s what.

But operating with a sense of empathy enhances team wisdom.

2. OPERATING WITH EMPATHY 3. INCLUDING WOMEN The second factor is the level of empathy within the team. The more each member has what Chabris calls “social sensitivity,” the smarter its collective intelligence. As you accurately read the feelings of others and understand their states of mind, you make better decisions.

So often, the instinct is to do the opposite: push down the emotion, focus on the data and the facts only (or more likely, your opinions about those facts)

And the final factor? Having women on the team: the more there are on the team, the smarter the team is. Now, Chabris is very keen that we don’t rush to big conclusions about this finding. He can’t quite explain it, and so this is where you want to be really clear on the difference between correlation and causation.

But yes. The more women on the team, the greater its collective intelligence.

The Silver Bullet for Creating Collective Intelligence There is one shift in leadership behaviour that drives two of the three factors and increases collective intelligence: enabling managers and leaders to be more coach-like.

Which is not quite the same thing as having them coach. Coaching often involves hiring an executive coach to come in and offer support, or running the occasional formal “coaching session” where a senior person coaches someone on their team. Being more coach-like, on the other hand, is an everyday way of behaving that can be used in any interaction. In its essence, it is simply this: staying curious a little longer, and rushing to action and advice-giving a little more slowly.

Here are three tools to help managers build a coaching habit.

1. PICK ONE GOOD QUESTION (IT COULD BE THE AWE QUESTION) If the goal of being more coach-like is to stay curious a little longer, then the engine of curiosity is a good question.

There are hundreds of powerful questions to choose from, but rather than

picking a hundred of them, pick just one.

Get good at asking that one question really well, then add the next question to your repertoire.

If you’d like some unsolicited advice on which question to start with, may I suggest “And what else?” The AWE Question, as it’s known, can be the most powerful coaching question in the world, for two reasons. First, the initial answer to a question is rarely the only one or the best one. And second, asking “And what else?” keeps you curious and stops you from rushing into action mode. In other words, it’s a self-management tool.

2. MAKE IT A HABIT What’s hard about being more coach-like is not the theory but the practice. How do you shift the deep-seated behaviour of jumping in to offer an option, an answer, a solution? Good intentions get you nowhere. Habits, however, are the building blocks of behaviour change.

The Coaching Habit introduces the New Habit Formula, a simple three-part

process that sets out the science and art of building a habit. Based on the work of people like Charles Duhigg and BJ Fogg, it asks you to define the trigger (the situation in which the habit occurs), the old behaviour you’re looking to eliminate and a new behaviour (habit) you can do in 60 seconds or less.

3. ELIMINATE FAKE QUESTIONS AND FAKE LISTENING “Have you thought of…?” and “Did you try…?” and “What about…?” aren’t actually questions. They’re your advice, with a question mark tacked on at the end.

Similarly, that vigorous head-nodding and mmm-ing you do to signal to someone that you’re listening intently when you’re actually listening to your inner voice — that’s not really listening.

Tune in and notice how sneaky those fake questions and fake listening are in your everyday conversations. Once you start noticing the trigger, you’ll be able to build a new habit (see point 2, above) of asking questions and listening differently.

Who Doesn’t Want a Stronger Team?

Chris Chabris’ work tells us that shared contribution, empathy and the inclusion of more women make for a smarter team.

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I can’t do much in this article about gender balance. But I do know that helping your managers be more coach-like can

be the WD-40 of leadership skills, getting individuals and teams unstuck and operating at a higher level.

WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT EMPOWERING WOMEN FROM A CEO IN THE MIDDLE EAST Five ways to influence faster, better change in gender dynamics CONNIE DIEKEN

In what is arguably the most conservative culture on earth—the Middle East— more is being done by men and women to dismantle gender barriers than in most Western countries.

If you find that hard to believe, read on...

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You might be feeling shocked or skeptical.

You might be deeply disturbed by the decades of edicts that have diminished Middle Eastern women. By the harsh rules of gender segregation, the dearth of women’s legal rights and the myriad of other well-documented sociocultural issues woven into the culture.

I’m not asking you to set those realities aside.

To the contrary. My point is this: If a chief executive of a major corporation in the Middle East can influence women’s equality amid this history, we all can.

No excuses.

After all, the Harvey Weinsteininspired reckoning in the U.S. has unmasked the fact that we’re not nearly as far along toward our goal of gender equality as we thought. It’s become painfully clear that organizations and industries around the world could use a more modern and pragmatic approach to gender dynamics.

So let’s look at how this CEO is forging a new way ahead for women at a record pace—and how your organization can, too.

Bader Al-Kharafi was recently named the most influential man in Kuwait. Just 40 years old, he’s innovative, thoughtful, and courageous. He has an engineering degree and an MBA from the London Business School, and he hails from a legendary business dynasty in Kuwait called M.A. Kharafi & Sons (MAK), which operates 135 companies in 28 countries. And while it’s never easy to follow in the footsteps of a renowned father, he’s earned deep respect in the region for his leadership following his father’s death in 2011.

Just as important, Al-Kharafi comes from a family of strong women. His mother helped develop influential leaders in the family business (once named in Fortune as the 29th richest family in the world), his aunt was the president of Kuwait University, and his wife runs both a yoga studio and marathons. Al-Kharafi and his wife are raising their children to be good to others, honest, and always deliver on promises—the same principles that his parents taught him about business.

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him, Al-Kharafi is now on a mission to re-engineer social dynamics in the workforce in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Mind you, it’s a financially pragmatic approach, as well. After years of government funding from oil boom profits, residents across the region have disregarded productivity. The unemployment rate for the region’s youth hovers around 30% (Why work when the government gives you money?), and 76% of women in the MENA region are not represented in the workplace, says the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Having as many women as men in the region’s labor force could boost global GDP by $12 trillion.

Which means that unleashing the region’s considerable human promise— its aspiring women—is a social and business imperative. Al-Kharafi has taken action by forming The Women’s Empowerment Network, an initiative to transform the social and economic power of women in the MENA region.

He recently launched the initiative at his largest company, the Zain Group, where he’s the vice chairman and group CEO. Zain is a leading mobile telecom provider serving 45 million customers in eight countries in the MENA region, from Saudi Arabia to South Sudan.

I’ve spent many years advising C-suite leaders at Fortune 500 companies on how to influence in all directions, regardless of the conditions. So I was honored when Al-Kharafi and his team asked me to help develop and lead the recent daylong kickoff of the initiative in Kuwait. The program included a live interview with Al-Kharafi, along with think tanks on women’s empowerment, education, and entrepreneurship, with 250 female participants from Zain’s eight countries along with 1,000 others via Livestream.

Our goal was to create lists of actionable ideas to help women advance to leadership positions.

Al-Kharafi and I expected that the women would rise up and share their truth and ideas. Others did not. I was warned that the women, while polite, would remain silent.

The opposite occurred. The women stepped up and responded by sharing their truths, openly, all day. They created an impressive list of attainable ideas to help men and women lead together in their region.

I was stunned at the rapid pace of meaningful change. Al-Kharafi and his team began to implement the ideas within days, creating new policies and processes to help women fast-track their growth, including leadership coaching, mentoring programs, and even fully paid MBA educations.

If other organizations around the globe embrace this pragmatic approach, it will elevate gender dynamics everywhere. In other words, a leader in the Middle East can help all of us push the reset button on our own attempts to attract, retain, and develop leaders of both sexes.

This assignment taught me new lessons. Here are five things that the most influential leaders like Al-Kharafi are doing to ensure positive change in gender dynamics:

1. THE CEO MUST BOLDLY CHAMPION THE MOVEMENT. It’s imperative that the CEO gets out front and leads this empowerment change—and is not just a figurehead.

The chief executive must make gender parity a priority and clearly define the movement’s intentions, ideal outcomes, measurements, and expectations. These robust, two-way conversations must be delivered in person, and the chief executive must invite and answer every question.

2. EMPOWERMENT MUST BE TIED TO P&L. It’s not what you say, but what you measure, repeatedly and transparently, that creates priorities and changes minds.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are a reflection of an organization’s true priorities. Establish KPIs that benchmark and monitor your definition of successful gender parity. These could include such variables as pay levels and attrition rates between men and women

in similar functions and the ratio of women promoted to women eligible for promotion. These metrics must go beyond meeting arbitrary quotas and should become agenda items at board meetings, strategic planning sessions, and operational reviews to demonstrate progress to key stakeholders, including investors and employees.

3. INFLUENCE MUST BE ANCHORED IN ALL DIRECTIONS—AND INTEGRATED INTO THE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS. It’s crucial to create a top-down, peer-topeer, and bottom-up culture of meaningful influence for gender-equality practices and policies to succeed. Give people concrete methods and empowering conditions in which to make decisions and share their suggestions. Organizations must encourage open-membership action

teams and think tanks and move quickly to implement positive change, regardless of where it originated.

4. YOU MUST IDENTIFY WHY WOMEN (AND MEN) IN THE WORKFORCE ARE SILENT ABOUT GENDER ISSUES. People tend to go silent if they fear one of three things: retaliation, indifference, or disbelief. In order to influence a positive outcome, you must understand how and why the negative forces and whisper campaigns took root. What’s the root cause of silence in your culture?

Openness begets openness.

5. LEADERS MUST ENGAGE IN BATTLE AGAINST WORKPLACE DOMINANCE. It’s crucial to fight destructive power plays and hissy fits at all levels.

Misconduct isn’t limited to high-profile leaders who assert their power and positions. A culture of dominance spills over to the rest of your organization. It manifests itself in departments and teams who assert their superiority over others.

To ignore them leads to resentment and high turnover rates.

One bit of advice that I shared with leaders in the Middle East is that when females join the conversation they’ve inspired and help lead it, lasting change will occur. The empowerment movement will only take hold when men and women lead it together.

It’s time we ended our comparative complacency in the U.S. along with the belief that we’re somehow “better” than others, if not perfect. We’re falling short of the initiatives that others are taking, and the situation won’t get better unless we recognize that we all share this responsibility and take action with these five imperatives now.

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HOW TO BE

HAPPY AT WORK: The Power of Hope DR. ANNIE McKEE Bestselling Author, Emotional Intelligence Expert and Senior Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania

To be happy, I’ve discovered, you’ve got to run toward something: a hopeful, inspiring vision of your future.

Life really is too short to be unhappy at work Yet far too many of us aren’t even close to being content—much less delighted—with our work or our workplaces. Instead, we are stressed and exhausted. We can’t remember what we used to love about our jobs.

Colleagues we trust and respect are few and far between, and half the time it doesn’t even feel safe to be ourselves.

All of this is spilling over into our personal lives. We’re having a hard time sleeping or have given up on exercise. Relationships are suffering, too. We feel trapped and struggle to see how things will get better. To be happy, I’ve discovered, you’ve got to run toward something: a hopeful, inspiring vision of your future.

No one wants to live like this. Still, a lot of us give up and settle for lessthan-fulfilling jobs. We tell ourselves that we’re not supposed to be happy at work; that’s for other parts of life.

We try to cope by avoiding that bad manager or getting that stubborn, 18

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annoying person off the team. We shut down, give less, and fantasize about telling someone off. Sometimes we run away from the job, the company, even our careers. But running away isn’t going to make things better. To be happy, I’ve discovered, you’ve got to run toward something: a hopeful, inspiring vision of your future.

Hope is at the Heart of Happiness at Work Hope is the starting point for creating a future that is better than today. It encourages us to dig deep down inside ourselves to find our most unique talents and gifts and to use all of our resources to help us along the way. Whatever difficulties we face—whether it’s a health issue or a loss or a setback at work—the hope that tomorrow will be better is what helps us get up every morning, put one foot in front of the other, and carry on.

And, when we believe that things will get better, they often do. That’s because a hopeful, captivating, and personally compelling vision makes

us feel strong, powerful, and in control.

We are motivated to face up to our present challenges and even our fears and to take steps toward the future we want for ourselves and others.

How Hope Works Think about a project at work that you are passionately committed to— one that means a lot to you. Now imagine that you’ve recently decided to slow the project down—to get it right rather than just get it done.

Your boss doesn’t agree. He just wants it finished and isn’t concerned about cutting corners. If you are like most people, you’ll immediately feel defensive. Something you care about is under attack. When we experience hope. The stress response diminishes: our breathing slows, muscles relax, and blood pressure drops. Our immune system even functions better.

As you conjure up all the bad things that could happen, you get scared. You’re mad, too, and you start to second-guess your decision. At this

When we experience hope. The stress response diminishes: our breathing slows, muscles relax, and blood pressure drops.

Our immune system even functions better.

point, you are not thinking clearly, you can’t easily access reason and rationality, and you probably won’t make very good decisions about what to do. You’re in the throes of an amygdala hijack— that state when the limbic brain (what some people call the reptilian brain) is in charge and your higher-order thought processes shut down.

Fortunately, the exact opposite happens when we experience hope.

The stress response diminishes: our breathing slows, muscles relax, and blood pressure drops. Our immune system even functions better. This physiological response helps us

manage our emotions, especially emotions like anger and frustration that push us into amygdala hijack. We put unreasonable fears to rest, begin to see humor in situations, and tap into enthusiasm and energy.

Hope is a powerful human experience. It helps us in every aspect of our lives, including what we do and accomplish at work—and how happy we are at work. When we are hopeful, we can see ourselves as more potent in the world and more able to have an impact on our future.

With hope, along with a sense of purpose and meaningful friendships,

we can find true happiness in our work. Luckily, we live in a time where organizations and academia are taking happiness seriously; leaders in major oil companies, provincial governments, technology startups and corporations often report that happy employees are more creative and committed.

The personal and practical—not to mention economic—consequences of workplace unhappiness are too great to be ignored. By activating our emotional intelligence, and taking control of our own happiness, we can unleash our true potential—as employees and human beings.

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THE TRUTH & LIES BEHIND READING BODY LANGUAGE OF DECEIT MARK BOWDEN AND TRACEY THOMSON

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You cannot actually tell if someone is lying based on just one body language sign.

Some people feel they are “a natural” at reading other people’s body language.

They have “the gift.” It’s an instinct. You may be one of them. And so sometimes you just know when someone is lying to you. Family, friends and in the workplace you get the feeling they are not being truly honest with you, and you act accordingly. Sometimes you may be right on the money, while other times you may end up wondering “how did I read that so wrong?”

The reality is that judging accurately the thoughts that inform someone else’s behavior, including the intent to deceive, is less of an art and more of a way of thinking; and that critical thinking process that gets you closer to the truth can be learned. In TRUTH & LIES: What People Are Really Thinking, Mark Bowden & Tracey Thomson teach you a system to better understand human behavior and the nonverbal communication that goes with it, that revolves around a critical thinking element that helps you suspend your judgement and get closer to the all the accurate facts - and arrive at the most likely truth of any situation. Part of that process is suspending our instinctive judgements and investigating the bias we may have.

Many of our judgements about what body language cues mean, though they feel to us so instinctive and obvious, are actually learned ideas and so not in fact pure or innate. These ideas are often based on folklore that has become accepted as fact, that we pick up from family, friends, colleagues and from the media- clickbait that feels so right and true, but can actually be dangerously false.

Here are just 3 of the many popular myths around the body language of lying

that are busted in TRUTH & LIES: What People Are Really Thinking:

MYTH: Fidgeters Are Hiding Something Fiddling with your hands for no apparent reason may be the displacement of emotions and thoughts that are unexpressed, anything from excitement or boredom to frustration or relief. It can be a self-pacifying behavior where the physical movement creates a stimulus that calms us in times of anxiety.

Or it can just be a way to shift parts of the body to make us more comfortable after being still for too long. In no way can it be seen as a sure indicator of deceit.

Besides, if someone really wanted to hide something from you, don’t you think they would be able to control their hands for just a while to get away with it? Without this ability, poker players couldn’t bluff.

Undercover cops would be instantly exposed. Most relationships would be irreparably damaged forever.

MYTH:

Looking Up to the Right Means They’re Lying

Does the direction in which someone’s eyes look give away that they are lying? The idea that looking to the right indicates lying, while looking left suggests truth telling, is shown by research to be false. The University of Edinburgh completed three studies to show there is no definitive correlation between the direction of eye movement and whether the subject was telling the truth or lying (1). However, it is fair to

say that eye-accessing cues (unconscious eye movements) do indicate an internal search for or retrieval of information, or creation of data, information and memory.

MYTH:

Lying Is As Plain As The Nose on Your Face

Remember Pinocchio? Wouldn’t it be great if there were a single physical sign that exposed a deceitful person as plain as the nose on their face? Well, there’s a good reason that the story of Pinocchio is a fairytale. You cannot actually tell if someone is lying based on just one body language sign. And to this end, the idea that people touch their noses when they are telling a lie is largely folklore.

In fact, the idea that the nose alone can display subtle tell tale signs of lying is pure fantasy. However, wrinkling the nose in disgust, if detected alongside other signals, could certainly indicate a deceitful person smelling their own rat of a lie, such as flaring nostrils as part of the micro gesture of disgust.

So next time you feel you have spotted a liar, take a moment to check yourself and think again. Was it one of the signals explained above that triggered you, or perhaps another popular idea about the body language of lying that you’ve read?

Ask yourself if there could be another story behind the behavior that is more accurate than your first snap judgement.

For the complete SCAN system for critically thinking in the moment and making better judgements more often about the meaning behind body language, read the new book TRUTH & LIES: What People Are Really Thinking

by Mark Bowden and Tracey Thomson.

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CAN ANYONE STOP AMAZON FROM WINNING THE INDUSTRIAL INTERNET? VIJAY GOVINDARAJAN Just the announcement that Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and Jaime Dimon will be entering the health care space has sent shock waves for industry incumbents such as CVS, Cigna, and UnitedHealth. It also puts a fundamental question back on the agendas of CEOs in other industries: Will software eat the world, as Marc Andreessen famously quipped? Is this a warning shot that signals that other legacy industrial companies, such as Ford, Deere, and Rolls Royce are also at increased risk of being disrupted?

To start to answer that question, let’s tally up the score. There are three types of products today. Digital natives

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(Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, IBM) have gained competitive advantage in the first two, and the jury is still out on the third:

Type 1 These are “pure” information goods, where digital natives rule. An example would be Google in search, or Facebook in social networking. Their business models benefit from internet connectivity and they enjoy tremendous network effects.

Type 2 These are once-analog products that have now been converted into digital

products, such as photography, books, and music. Here too, digital natives dominate. These products are typically sold as a service via digital distribution platforms (Audible.com for books, Spotify for music, Netflix for movies).

Type 3 Then there are products where inputoutput efficiency and reliability of the physical components are still critical but digital is becoming an integral part of the product itself (in effect, computers are being put inside products). This is the world of the Internet of Things (IOT) and the Industrial Internet.

Manufacturing-heavy companies such as Caterpillar, Ford, and Rolls Royce compete in this world. An aircraft engine is unlikely to become a purely digital product any time soon! Such products have three components: physical components, “smart” components (sensors, controls, microprocessors, software, and enhanced user interface), and connectivity (one machine connected to another machine; one machine connected to many machines; and many machines connected to each other in a system).

Digital natives have already disrupted industries such as media, publishing, travel, music, and photography. But who is likely to assume leadership in creating and capturing economic value in Type 3 products: Digital natives or industry incumbents? Ford or Tesla?

Rolls Royce or IBM? Caterpillar or Microsoft? Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase combine or UnitedHealth?

THE CHALLENGES FOR DIGITAL NATIVES Value will no doubt be created in the era of smart, connected machines. We don’t expect Amazon or Microsoft or IBM to design, make, and market agricultural tractors, aircraft engines, or MR scanners. The question really is: Can digital natives develop softwareenabled solutions that siphon off significant value from industrial hardware? The answer is “yes.”

But it won’t be easy. It will require tremendous amounts of investments in building new capabilities for hardware companies like HP, Cisco, Dell, Samsung, and Lenovo; established software companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft; and start-ups. In particular, there are three barriers they must overcome:

1. The physics of the hardware

Companies like Rolls Royce design and manufacture jet engines. These are very complicated machines. There is hard science behind these machines.

That’s much different than digital natives like Airbnb where marketing is more important than technical expertise.

Industry incumbents have expertise in the material sciences, for instance.

Further, scientific knowledge keeps improving over time. They have made heavy R&D investments—both basic and applied—to remain at the cuttingedge of the physics of the hardware.

Much of this scientific knowledge is protected by patents.

Mastery of hard science is a pre-requisite to develop softwarebased solutions on the hardware.

These companies’ superior product/ domain knowledge provides them the comparative advantage to model the asset’s performance and write high-end/high value-added software

Can the industrial giants lead in the Industrial Internet?

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applications. A “pure” digital company can write commodity software applications. But it must acquire enough capabilities on the physics to write sophisticated apps that improve assets’ performance.

2. Customer intimacy Industrial giants have well-established b r a n d s , b u i l t s t ro n g c u s t o m e r relationships, and signed longterm service contracts. They’ve won the customer ’s trust, which is why customers are willing to share data.

Digital natives can work with industrial customers, but they have to first earn their trust; they must build capabilities to understand customer operations; they must match the industrials’ cumulative learning from customer interactions; they must learn to ask for the right data; and they have to hire experts in several verticals that can turn data into insights.

3. Difficulty in sharing risks Industrial incumbents have product knowledge, customer relationships, and field engineers on customer sites.

Companies like Rolls Royce can, therefore, offer outcome deals where they guarantee customer outcomes (examples: zero downtime, higher speed, more fuel efficiency, zero operator error, greater reliability) and share risks and rewards with customers. It would be very hard for Amazon or Google to guarantee customer outcomes and take risks with businesses whose operations they know little about.

THE CHALLENGES FOR INDUSTRIAL GIANTS Can the industrial giants lead in the Industrial Internet? The answer is “yes.” But it won’t be easy for them, either. They too have three significant barriers to overcome:

1. Software talent The IT talent in industrial companies can execute projects oriented towards process efficiency and cost reduction.

That talent is ill-suited to develop new, breakthrough software products that offer superior customer outcomes. For that end, they must be able to attract world-class innovators and software engineers. Is, say, Rolls Royce, in the same consideration set as Facebook and Google for young tech employees?

Not, really. If so, how can the industrial giants compete to attract the best talent?

2. Digital culture Industrial businesses and digital businesses operate with completely different principles. The characteristics of hardware businesses include long product development cycle, Six Sigma efficiency, and long sales cycle. Software businesses have different characteristics: short product development cycle, flexibility, and short sales cycle. The industrials must build a digital culture based on concepts like lean, agile, simplicity, responsiveness, and speed. That’s a tall order for an established enterprise.

3. The Incumbent’s Dilemma Digital has the potential to disrupt industrial businesses. There are three ways digital strategy can cannibalize “core” industrial business. First, data and insights can help improve the productivity of machines; digital, therefore, has the potential to cannibalize future hardware sales.

Second, data and insights increase the reliability of machines; digital therefore has the potential to cannibalize future service revenues. Third, software subscription and license might enable customers to do self-service. Current customers could terminate/renegotiate service contracts, and potential customers may not enter into service contracts at all. In short, it is very

difficult for a company to disrupt itself.

The future of the Industrial Internet will involve partnerships across a variety of players including tech companies and industrial companies. The key issue: Who will assume the leadership position to extract maximum economic value in such an ecosystem? Will industrial companies take the lead? Or will the digital natives take the lead?

Both have a chance.

If I were a betting man, I would place my bets on tech giants over industry incumbents. One factor that will favor digital companies in the industrial internet is technological/scientific breakthroughs that level the playing field for newcomers. For example, breakthroughs in battery technology made the electric cars possible. Electric cars are much simpler to design than cars with internal combustion engines, allowing Tesla and BYD to enter the market despite Ford’s decades of expertise. Since electrification and driverless cars go together, other tech companies such as Google, Baidu, Apple, and Lyft will also be able to enter the automotive market. Similar technological changes in jet engines and agricultural tractors can allow tech giants gain foothold in these industries as well.

More importantly, Amazon or Google have the resources to acquire the capabilities to master the physics and acquire customer relationships and compete with the industrial giants in the Industrial Internet. They have enough resources and some to buy them, if needed.

Among the tech giants, Amazon is a likely winner in the Industrial Internet.

It has successfully fused physical with digital. Amazon understands the economic laws of analog products and is not afraid of massive up-front investments and slower growth.

Its acquisition of Whole Foods and experiments with Amazon Go grocery stores are an example. Amazon is the one company everyone’s scared of, even industrial giants.

This article originally appeared in HBR.

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TEN WAYS TO SPEED UP YOUR GENDER EQUALITY EFFORTS STEPHANIA VARALLI Co-CEO, Head of Media, Women of Influence

We don’t need three silver bullets, we need a thousand flowers blooming.

In 2017, the World Economic Forum predicted we’d be closing the economic gender gap in 217 years—37 years longer than the estimate they provided in the year prior. It wasn’t, unfortunately, that surprising; in many key measures, from workforce participation to the gender wage gap, we haven’t moved the needle significantly for twenty years.

Which leads to the question: Why is our progress in gender parity so slow?

As the Co-CEO of Women of Influence, an organization that has

been working for women’s workplace equality for 24 years, this is a problem I consider daily. The simplest answer is that the issue is complex, rooted in our culture and fueled by unconscious bias.

A massive societal mindshift doesn’t happen overnight. True, but accelerated and meaningful change at an organizational level—from eradicating their gender wage gap to setting a 50:50 target for leadership—are efforts that, when added up, make a significant difference in the overall picture.

In January we partnered with Cata-

lyst Canada on the first annual Radical Change Summit, which brought together business leaders who had taken a leap forward in gender equality, rather than a small step. They shared not only their successes, but also how they achieved them—with the goal of inspiring others to take similar action. As our keynote speaker, Sarah Kaplan, director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, put it: “We don’t need three silver bullets, we need a thousand flowers blooming.”

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THESE ARE THE KEY INSIGHTS FROM THE DAY: 1. BE AWARE OF HOW BIAS IS EMBEDDED IN YOUR CURRENT SYSTEMS “If I had one piece of advice it would be this: Pay attention to the ways that current systems, policies and practices unintentionally create tailwinds for some people (white, straight men) and headwinds for others (underrepresented groups). Don’t focus so much on the implicit bias in our brains, which is hard to change. Rather, look at how bias is embedded in practices and come up with innovative solutions to change those practices.”

– Sarah Kaplan, Distinguished Professor of Gender & The Economy, Rotman School of Management 2. AUDIT YOUR COMPANY FROM TOP TO BOTTOM, TO DETERMINE GAPS BASED ON GENDER “Have the courage to audit your entire company on how women fare versus men, from top to bottom. Audit pay by level, by promotion trajectory and maybe most importantly, audit the language you use for merit, promotion criteria, and recruiting. I guarantee you will be surprised by the simple changes you can make that can contribute to equality and a better environment for women.”

– Blake Irving, Director and Former CEO, GoDaddy 3. DON’T BUY INTO THE DANGEROUS MYTH OF MERITOCRACY “Meritocracy can reinforce privilege.

While everyone wants to believe that they attain career success because they worked hard and earned their spot, most people don’t realize that some form of privilege helped them in their careers.

If we remember this, we become more aware of the need to check our biases and examine the hidden disadvantages that various groups face.”

– Rod Bolger, Chief Financial Officer, RBC 4. GIVE WOMEN EQUAL ACCESS TO “HOT JOBS” “Make sure that women get equal access to ‘hot jobs’ and other on-the-job development opportunities. Catalyst research shows that women are less likely than men to lead large and highly visible proj26

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ects, have access to P&L roles, or receive international assignments that accelerate advancement. This inequity stifles women’s progress, and can drive them to seek out opportunities elsewhere. Ensure talent management practices include metrics that track who receives access to critical on-the-job development opportunities, and require at least two qualified women to be considered for each open opportunity.”

– Anna Beninger, Senior Director, Research and Corporate Engagement Partner, Catalyst US 5. INTENTIONALLY RECRUIT OUTSIDE YOUR OWN NETWORKS AND COMFORT ZONE “Hire and promote from 100%, rather than 50%, of the talent pool. Equity nurtures excellence. Recruit outside your own social and business networks and outside your comfort zone. Systematically remove gender bias from selection processes and reject the age-old excuse for not hiring women that they are not a good ‘fit.’ Evaluate candidates on the basis of demonstrated accomplishment, not the after work drink or early morning squash game. Embrace difference for the innovative potential it offers.”

– Charlotte Yates, Provost and Vice President (academic), Guelph University 6. ADOPT A ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY FOR DISCRIMINATION AND HARASSMENT “Organizations need to have a zero tolerance environment in the workplace for discrimination and sexual harassment.

Simply put, an organization that does not promote the safety of its employees, leaves itself open to losing its talent and damaging its reputation.”

– Pamela Jeffrey, Partner and National Lead, Inclusion and Diversity Strategy Practice, GTA, KPMG Canada 7. COMPLY WITH PAY EQUITY LAWS IN SPIRIT AND IN FACT. DON’T WAIT FOR A COMPLAINT TO BE FILED OR AN AUDIT TO TAKE PLACE. “A commitment to equal pay for equal work and pay equity will signal to female employees that you are serious about gender economic equality, leading to better employee engagement and retention of female employees, and benefitting from the diversity of thought

that women bring to the workplace.”

– Emanuela Heyninck, Commissioner, Ontario Pay Equity Commission 8. TAKE TIME TO RECOGNIZE YOUR ORGANIZATION’S HIGH-POTENTIAL WOMEN “Ensure leaders are taking the time to recognize high-potential women. Whether it’s young women new to the profession, or senior employees with high tenure, advocating on their behalf is the first step to giving them the visibility needed to progress in their career. Getting to a place where this type of thinking is in an organization’s DNA is a goal we should all strive for.”

– Kerri-Ann Santaguida, Vice President and General Manager, Merchant Services, American Express Canada 9. KICK-START MENTORING AND SPONSORSHIP BY MAKING RELATIONSHIP-BUILDING PART OF YOUR ORGANIZATION’S DNA “Mentorship and sponsorship programs work because of trust-based relationships. So it’s essential that senior leaders are aware and understand the power/ impact that mentoring and sponsorship can have on their culture. Also, creating an environment where less experienced leaders are encouraged to build relationships with leaders across and through the organization earlier in their careers will help build natural and meaningful mentorship/sponsorship relationships.”

– Dave Moncur, Vice President Human Resources, PepsiCo Foods Canada 10. HAVE FLEXIBLE WORK OPTIONS AVAILABLE AND SUPPORTED BY THE COMPANY “Contrary to the myths that stop employers from instituting flexible work options, these policies help with both recruitment and retention, create a culture that inspires women to aim higher, and are also proven to reduce both hard and soft costs across the organization. The key to success for any flexible work program is to ensure that it is fully supported in the company culture and utilized by employees from all levels across the organization.

When flexible work options are viewed as an accommodation you run the risk of creating further discrimination and bias within your workforce.”

– Jennifer Hargreaves, Founder, Tellent

Are you ready to meet your full potential?

Take the next step in your professional development. Join Canada’s largest community dedicated to women’s career advancement.

Get complimentary access to:

Exclusive Event Invitations Membership Benefits Expert Insights & Tools

womenofinfluence.com/join

Women in STEM: Transforming the Tech Industry JAIME LEVERTON VP AND GM, CANADA & APAC, COGECO PEER 1

For those of us in the technology world we know that growth often follows disruption, and that disruption leads to a need for transformation.

For most of my professional life, I have been focused on transforming organizations within the technology industry. Early in my career, I discovered a passion for business transformation after joining a Canadian organization to help turn around a unionized sales division. After that, my interest was piqued and I began actively seeking out these types of opportunities. Over time, I learned what to look for in an organization that was in the right position to undergo a transformation, and how I could help affect that change effectively.

But now, there’s another type of transformation that needs to take place, specifically in the way women are treated within the Canadian STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) industries.

I believe my experience at Cogeco Peer 1, and how we have been focused on turning around a high potential, but nevertheless underperforming division, could provide a bit of a blueprint for a transformation of the broader industry.

It’s a strategy that involves a lot of listening, consensus, and making quick decisions that create impactful results.

When I joined Cogeco Peer 1 in May 2017, I immediately put into place what I like to call my 90-day game plan.

The first 30 days were about listening, assessing, and going deep into the business. Over the next 30 days - I expanded my listening tour outside my

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hard reports, I broadened my reach, and started floating ideas. The last 30 days, it was time to get started, and to act. Quick wins were important. Strategy was set, and we started to execute.

Now, eight months later, Cogeco Peer 1 is strongly positioned for growth.

With a strong, seasoned management team in place we are now ready to take on the industry. And not unlike what I have had to do in my own career, we are ready to compete and aggressively differentiate ourselves from the rest of our industry.

One of those areas where Cogeco Peer 1 differentiates itself happens to be the number of women working in the highest ranks of the company. In fact, Cogeco Peer 1’s three General Managers are all women. I firmly believe that our turnaround has been due, at least in part, to the diversity of voices we have in the upper echelons of the company.

And while that’s an impressive start, our industry needs a structural change of its own to make sure that simply having women in leadership roles does not set us apart from the rest of the industry. According to the 2016 Canadian Labour Force Survey, women make up just 27% of the workforce in information and communications technology (ICT) firms. What’s worse is that number is down from 2011, when we made up 30% of the workforce in ICT companies.

That’s where our community of female leaders can impact change.

When you consider how few women there are in the technology world today, and how our numbers are declining, and how important those voices are to the future of the industry and the way we create products and services, it’s easy to see why it’s so critical for all of us to do everything we can to get more women into the technology field.

From a broader, macroeconomic perspective, when you realize that most of the good new jobs in our modern economy are being created in the STEM fields, you can quickly see why it’s so critical for us all to come together to inspire our young girls to pursue careers in these fields.

For all of us women in the technology field, we can be powerful allies for younger women as soon as they enter their first roles in an industry that is heavily dominated by men.

Before I found the first strong female mentor who helped me navigate

Today, just five per cent of Canadian technology companies have a female CEO, and more than half don’t have a single female executive. corporate Canada and bring out my authentic self, (my unicorn, as I call her), I had a rocky start. I didn’t always get the best advice. One of my first mentors coached me to hide my femininity.

“Don’t talk so much with your hands, and watch the inflection in your voice, or people won’t take you seriously,” they told me. That advice got to me—and not in a positive way.

At the outset of my career, I was nervous. I dyed my blonde hair brown and kept it tied up or back, dressed in overly conservative business suits,

and wore glasses. I did anything and everything I could do to tone down my femininity. I was hiding who I really was. Thankfully, I figured out that the real path to success lay in my ability to embrace my femininity and through it my authentic self, but I wouldn’t learn that without some help.

Personally, it took seven years before I found the woman in my organization who helped turn things around for me.

Today, just five per cent of Canadian technology companies have a female CEO, and more than half don’t have a single female executive. And according to the Conference Board of Canada, women’s progress in reaching senior management positions has stalled, with men being two to three times more likely to be in a senior management position than women.

Female leaders can transform businesses. Through coaching and mentorship, we can transform industries and ensure young woman see themselves in senior management roles.

We need a transformation that enables more young girls to believe they can excel in science, technology, engineering and math. One that enables young women to believe a degree in STEM is the way of the future.

Change doesn’t happen overnight. And the place of women in the technology world is no exception. I’m proud to work for a forward-thinking organization like Cogeco Peer 1 that believes in the power of female executives and is investing in the future of the company and powering the potential of the industry.

But we all need to do our part if we’re going to come together and affect real change. We’ve listened, we’ve assessed, we’ve broadened our reach, and it is time to get started, and to take action leading a transformation that will change the look and feel of the types of people in our industry.

And it starts with supporting one another.

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4 WAYS TO LEAD WITH AUTHENTICITY IN UNCERTAIN TIMES MITCH JOEL President, Mirum – Author, Six Pixels of Separation & CTRL ALT Delete

All of us have moments where we feel like we’re not a part of something meaningful or bigger than us.

There is something that all great leaders do.

There is something that all great leaders do that we can all learn from. Many of the best leaders (in business, community, politics and entertainment) study leadership traits like presentation skills, body language, persuasion with a depth and rigor that few of us do. There are countless bestselling business books and TED Talks that tackle these subjects. Professionals will spend thousands of dollars each year to attend conferences, where these specific topics are covered. From overall

strategies to very specific tactics, those who know how to present an idea - in a powerful way - tend to get ahead. Personally, I’ve had the great pleasure of being able to grow my business from a small startup in 2000 to being acquired by WPP (the world’s largest marketing and communications network in the world) to turning that business into a now-global brand called Mirum. With over 2000 employees in over 20 countries and under the WPP banner, I still get to travel the world and

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present on stages like The Art Of… to businesses (small, medium, large, b2b and b2c). In short: I get to watch some of the world’s best brands and leaders present their ideas. I also get to sit in the audience and take notes. I get to see which ideas take flight... and which ideas flop. Which leaders can convey a semi-decent idea that gets mass buy-in, verses a leader who

can’t get their team around a very powerful and transformative concept. Yes, it’s about communications and presence. Still, there are four key components that make ideas connect, and we have seen this in everything from a new business pitch to an investor, to a global brand looking to shift business models, to a politician attempting to take office and beyond.

Here are the four ways to lead with authenticity in uncertain times: 1. I SEE YOU. Your audience has to know that you are not talking at them. Your audience has to know that you are not talking to them. Your audience must feel like you are talking with them. Every audience member has to not only feel - but know - that you see them. You know them. You understand their day-to-day, and that you’re not there to float your own ideas, but rather create a solution to what they (truly) face day in and day out. Without judgement. “I see you.” When someone is in trouble (emotional, physical or spiritual), they want you to see them... not feel bad for them. This is my number one motivation before clipping a microphone on my shirt. I want my audience to know this: I see you.

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2. I UNDERSTAND YOU. This does not mean that you have to listen to their feedback or ask for input. This does mean that you understand their challenges, because you have seen them, experienced them and are not just compassionate about those challenges, but that you have thought long and hard about what it means to be them. A lot of leaders think that they understand the situation, when - in reality - they have a thought about how to solve the challenge - at a leadership level - without understanding how it truly affects each and every person on the team and in the work that they do.

3. THIS IS NOW YOURS/OURS. Think about the

The best leaders remind their audience that they are not forgotten, and that they won’t be forgotten moving forward.

businesses that offer employees ownership opportunities.

Think about the businesses that constantly attempt to cut out the layers of management and rules/regulations to allow people to flourish. These are bold and powerful first-steps.

Now, think about the leaders that remove themselves from the pedestal and truly empower everyone to take part in the success (and, let’s be clear: financial success is only part of this equation). Think about the leaders who truly build a team... a movement. Great leaders don’t build great companies or great teams. Great leaders turn everything into a movement that everyone takes ownership and responsibility for. Great leaders make it everyone’s for the taking.

4. YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN... AND NEVER WILL BE AGAIN. We are all worried about the effort that we put into our own lives. Are we doing enough? How are we performing? We are all worried how we are perceived by our peers and by our leaders. All of us have our own set of insecurities. All of us have moments where we feel like we’re not a part of something meaningful or bigger than us. Along with “I See You,” many people do feel forgotten (either a lot of the time or at some moment in time). From not getting that

promotion, to being let go and beyond. The best leaders remind their audience that they are not forgotten, and that they won’t be forgotten moving forward. It’s powerful. It doesn’t always come to fruition, but if you can make your audience acknowledge the moments when they have felt forgotten, and honestly reassure them that this is going to end, you can - and will - win them over. It can’t be a platitude. It has to be something that they live and breathe.

These are ambiguous tools, so do no evil.

All tools of presentation, persuasion, influence, leadership and beyond can be (and have been) used for evil. These same tools have been used to make partisan groups more divided than united. The tools are ambiguous. Before presenting ideas (on stage, in a board room, over a meal), the 4 concepts above are meant for the leader to equalize his thinking in terms of the relationship between presenter and audience. Great leadership moving forward feels inclusive.

Brand, innovation, transformation, dealing with disruption, building better experiences... this is what we do.

This is what great leaders must do.

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INCLUSION:

THE KEY TO UNLOCKING OUR FULL POTENTIAL BILL McFARLAND CEO and Chief Inclusion Officer, PwC Canada Our Canadian report card on supporting diversity is something for everyone to be proud of. We’ve welcomed more than 1.2 million immigrants in the last six years with plans to accept an additional 300,000 each year, despite an increasing nationalistic fervor in many parts of the world. We have a highly educated female population and 82% of working aged women are active in our workforce—the highest ever participation of women in the Canadian labour market. Canada is also regarded as the gold standard for diversity and inclusion. But there’s more to do.

MIND THE GAP It has been nearly 30 years since corporate Canada acknowledged the gender gap in our workforce. While many organizations and leaders have and continue to take steps to make progress, we—as a business community and society—have not progressed fast enough.

Today, only 3% of the world’s top 500 companies are led by women, according to a recent Ipsos poll, and a 2017 Canadian Securities Administrators report found that only 14% of public company board seats in Canada were occupied by women. That’s a marginal improvement from 11% in 2015.

Specifically within the tech industry, our Move the Dial report revealed that 5% of Canadian tech companies had female founders or CEOs. The culprit for this slow progress seems to be a deeper, systemic issue around inclusion. In PwC’s global study Time to talk: What has to change for women at work, 71% of Canadian women were actively seeking opportunities to develop and advance in their careers.

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However, more than a third were concerned that their gender, age, ethnicity or sexual preference would be a barrier to their progression. Forty-one percent of new mothers felt overlooked for promotions and development opportunities upon returning to work.

The message was clear and we must listen; opportunities are not equal for everyone.

SHIFTING FROM DIVERSITY TO INCLUSION I believe it’s time to shift the conversation from diversity to inclusion. Verna Myers once famously said: “Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance”. Building a culture of inclusion is critical to realize the benefits of our differences and become a more progressive business and society.

That means fostering an environment where people can bring their best, most authentic selves to work so that innovative ideas can thrive.

The benefits of inclusion are well

documented. PwC’s 2018 Women in Work Index suggests that if we harness the full potential of the female workforce at all levels within organizations, we would see a US$6 trillion growth in OECD GDP. And research by Catalyst shows that Fortune 500 companies with the highest percentage of female directors on their boards report 53% higher returns on equity. From a broader customer perspective, 72% of Canadian CEOs in PwC’s Global CEO Survey said having a diversity and inclusion lens helped them satisfy evolving customer needs and improved their bottom line.

ACCELERATING PROGRESS There are four actions we can take as leaders to foster a more inclusive culture: 1. BE PURPOSE-LED, VALUES-DRIVEN. Every conversation around diversity and inclusion should be connected to your broader organizational purpose, values and business strategy. At PwC,

inclusiveness lies at the heart of our broader business, customer and people strategies. Rather than treating diversity and inclusion as a one-time PR or HR exercise, we focus on how it will enable us to build stronger teams, be more innovative, and deliver on our purpose of helping solve important problems and build trust in society. Talking about diversity and inclusion in this way helps our leaders and people understand that actions to support this priority are rooted in our values, and should be at the core of every interaction with our people, clients and stakeholders.

not reflective of the diversity in our firm?

Through some immediate actions and sponsorship of talent, we now have two highly accomplished women on our fivemember executive team who lead two of the firm’s largest business units. And each member of our Canadian and Extended Leadership Teams are responsible for identifying and sponsoring top female talent at the senior manager, director and partner levels. We role model the behaviours of inclusiveness, mentorship and sponsorship for others.

2. SECURE LEADERSHIP BUY-IN AND ACTIONS.

Progress doesn’t happen on good intentions alone; goals foster accountability and drive actions.

This is not about creating quotas for the sake of checking a box. It’s about setting aspirational goals to measure progress and drive actions to create a more inclusive and level playing field for everyone. At PwC, we set a national business goal of achieving 50/50 gender parity among our new partner admits by 2020. We evaluate how each business unit—and its partners and coaches—are contributing to this goal and the results inform our approach to recruitment, learning and development, and succession planning efforts. We’re also a proud signatory of the 2022 Catalyst Accord, which holds Canadian businesses publicly accountable for the advancement of women in corporate

Developing a high performing, inclusive culture requires commitment from the top. That means getting leaders to role model inclusive behaviours and actively sponsor top talent. Being a sponsor means being more than a sounding board for career advice. It requires playing an active role in helping women develop critical skills and relationships, and putting your credibility on the line as their champion when development opportunities arise.

When I became CEO of PwC Canada seven years ago, changing the demographic of my Canadian Leadership Team was one of my top priorities. How could I ask my partners to consider more diversity on their leadership and account teams when my own team was

3. ACCOUNTABILITY TO DRIVE ACTIONS.

Canada. That accountability is helping us deliver on our commitment. Today, 30% of our Canadian PwC Board members are female and last year, 55% of our new Tax partners and 42% of new Assurance partners were female!

Yes, we have more to do but setting and publicly stating our aspirational goals has moved the dial for us.

4. UNDERSTAND OUR BIASES AND ADJUST BEHAVIOURS. We all have biases. It’s important that we learn what they are so that we understand how they affect our decisions and adjust our actions. There’s a common stereotype that those who prioritize work-life balance or seek flexible working arrangements are lazy, or lack the capabilities or commitment to be a high performer. Leaders and coaches must recognize that everyone contributes in different ways, and work-life balance and flexibility needs are important to everyone, not just to those of a certain life stage or gender. Setting aside our biases and encouraging people to take advantage of these types of support programs will only help them become stronger and more engaged—at home and at work—and will improve the satisfaction and retention of top talent.

A free Gender Bias eLearn—co-created

by PwC and United Nations Women—is available online at heforshe.pwc.com to help you and your teams learn more about unconscious biases.

Progress only happens by commitment to new actions. So let’s commit to having more inclusive conversations in a safe environment and demonstrating leadership support by role modeling inclusive behaviours and actions—everyday, in everything that we do. These actions will help move the dial and unlock the true value of our diversity.

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10 WAYS TO ACTUALLY, FINALLY IMPROVE COMPANY CULTURE ARIANNA HUFFINGTON There are endless truisms about the importance of company culture—so many that the idea of a strong culture has become a cliché. We often just nod our heads and move on. But it matters. So how can we put flesh and blood on the idea to make it more than just a nice saying? How can companies embody the connection between culture and the bottom line? Here are ten ways.

1

END THE BURNOUT DELUSION

Burnout is not the price we must pay for success. Leaders need to realize that taking care of their human capital is just as important as PnL, Ebitda and quarterly earnings. Living a sustainable life, and making sure their employees do too, is the best way for a leader to sustain growth.

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• Women

EMBRACE OPENNESS

The more transparent a company’s culture, the more likely it is that the inevitable problems can be routinely identified and fixed before a crisis hits.

Every time a mistake or failure comes to light, and lessons are drawn from whatever went wrong, a company is a step closer to a culture built for growth rather than just maintenance.

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AVOID THE “GROWTH ABOVE ALL” MINDSET

The idea of growth as a purpose and end in itself becomes cancerous. It metastasizes into every area of the company—determining the people who are promoted and, increasingly, the people who are hired. Left unchecked, it subsumes all other primary values— ncluding empathy, collaboration, and professionalism.

4

MAKE THE WORKPLACE WORK FOR WOMEN

Far too many workplaces are fueled by a culture of machismo—itself often

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driven by a “growth above all” mindset and burnout glorification. We talk a lot about gender parity and how there should be more women at the top of every profession, but we’re never going to get there if we don’t change the dayto-day experience of women at every level. Here are some signs that your workplace is not working for women:

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have to pump milk in the bathroom because you’ve made room for a ping-pong table but not for a private corner for new mothers.

• The

only way you have to bond with teams is drunken parties.

• Leaders

tell the company story and try to motivate people using all Art of War metaphors.

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GETTING RID OF BRILLIANT JERKS

Too many companies buy into the cult of the top performer, which tolerates otherwise unacceptable behavior. The collateral damage may not become obvious immediately but is unmistakable over time, as it determines what behavior is deemed acceptable (at least for the select few).

Narrowly defined performance is like short-term growth: it might appear to keep you going forward day by day, but a company will eventually find itself way off course. We need to expand our performance evaluations to include embodying cultural principles—like

empathy and inclusivity.

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USE TEAMS TO BUILD RESILIENCE

It is imperative, at a time of accelerated change, to create cultures that value building teams. Teams can be always on, but individuals can’t. They can offer support, and amplify and reinforce incentives. They also build empathy, foster creativity and strengthen resilience. As you learned from your high school gym teacher, for a team the total is more than the sum of its parts.

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TREAT CULTURE AS THE COMPANY’S IMMUNE SYSTEM

I n t e r n a l l y, a h e a l t h y c o m p a n y values and celebrates everyone’s contributions—which directly impacts retention and recruitment. Externally, an unhealthy culture can quickly lead to multiple problems and crises that can damage a company’s reputation, especially in the era of social media. In a culture that has run itself down, our resilience becomes compromised much like the resilience of the human body does; we become more susceptible to viruses that are part of every company (because they’re part of human nature).

In healthier times, we’re collectively able to identify these toxic elements and quickly reject them.

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MEET THE DEMAND FOR PURPOSE

Millennials expect and demand that the brands they identify with stand

...In a culture that has run itself down, our resilience becomes compromised...

for principles beyond profit. At the same time, technology has made it impossible for companies to hide behind a glossy ad campaign, and a half-hearted claim to authenticity will undermine a brand. After all, authenticity is the foundation of trust, which is easily shattered—and hard to rebuild. Building trust with consumers is much harder when employees themselves don’t feel like they’re part of a trusting and authentic culture.

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9 MODEL ATTHE THE TOP. MODELCHANGE CHANGE AT TOP Only leaders mature enough — whatever their age!—to find a center of strength and calm in the middle of any challenge can initiate the changes a culture needs. And from that place they can make the best decisions for the company. When employees see their leaders modeling this behavior, it creates a ripple effect, especially if employees who follow suit are celebrated and promoted.

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USE CRISIS AS AN OPPORTUNITY

Any crisis that happens as a result of overlooked cultural problems is also an opportunity to turbo-charge cultural changes that are sometimes harder to implement without a catalyst. Often, because of inertia or stakeholders protecting the status quo, a spark is needed to get people to look beyond just what’s next on their to-do list. I’m a big believer in the power of catharsis (not just because I’m Greek!)—a purging process that facilitates renewal. The goal when a crisis hits shouldn’t be just to get through it but instead to come out with a stronger culture than ever before.

Originally published at time.com

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DIVERSITY’S MISSING INGREDIENT PATRICK LENCIONI 38

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When it comes to tapping into the competitive advantage of diversity, few companies succeed.

Recently, I was reminded why.

Our firm was having a meeting to discuss important elements of our strategy and marketing efforts when something really great happened— we got into an argument. Not a disagreement. A loud, contentious, uncomfortable and passionate argument.

On one side of the battle was a pair of our team members who were arguing their point based on a very accurate and literal interpretation of something we had decided months earlier. On the other side was a group of team members that was even more loudly making their point (probably because I was a member of that group and I’m Italian and Irish) based on a more theoretical interpretation of that past decision.

For a few minutes, our debate sounded more like a brawl, with team members calling each other out for their intellectual biases and blind spots.

Fortunately, because there is a great deal of trust on our team, our argument never came anywhere close to personal or mean-spirited attacks, though an outsider who didn’t know us certainly would have thought it did.

When the melee was over and we had arrived at a decision, a couple of things occurred to me. First, the conflict we had engaged in—as uncomfortable as it felt at the time—was a wonderful thing because it allowed us to get closer to the truth, which often lies somewhere between two divergent points of view (though this was not a new revelation for me, I am amazed at how much I still need reminders).

Second, those divergent points of view were based, not on randomness, but on the diverse personality profiles of the people on either side; one side was comprised of our more rational and data-driven team members while the other represented our more emotional, intuition-dependent people.

Which brings me back to the power of diversity, and the reason why it remains so misunderstood and under-exploited in most organizations: it requires conflict.

The practical advantage of diversity boils down to this: a group of people with different perspectives usually makes better decisions and finds more creative solutions than those who have largely similar views, backgrounds and skill sets.

This is true for all teams, whether they’re running

a corporation, a church, a school or a movie studio.

However, when a team cannot productively engage in conflict, not only does that diversity remain untapped, it becomes a competitive disadvantage.

That’s because when team members with divergent points of view cannot openly and passionately advocate their positions, the team will not be able to properly understand and incorporate those ideas into a final decision. Instead, they will frustratingly agree to compromise, walking away dissatisfied with the outcome and resentful of their team members who they still don’t understand.

...THE KEY TO MAKING DIVERSITY WORK IS TO TEACH PEOPLE FIRST HOW TO APPRECIATE ONE ANOTHER’S DIFFERENCES, AND THEN HOW TO CHALLENGE THEM...

This is the norm in virtually every organization where I’ve worked or consulted. And that’s because when we talk about diversity, the emphasis is usually on acceptance and tolerance and “getting along.” All of which, of course, are good things.

The problem surfaces when those qualities prevent people from challenging one another’s points of view out of fear of being labeled close-minded or intolerant.

And so the key to making diversity work is to teach people first how to appreciate one another’s differences, and then how to challenge them in the context of pursuing the best possible outcome. When a company can do that, it will transform diversity from a slogan to a real competitive advantage.

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THE NEW LEADERSHIP MANDATE: CULTUREBUILDING DENISE LEE YOHN

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“Aharai!” is the motto Israeli military officers use when leading their forces into combat. The battle cry means “follow me” and it reflects a doctrine that all great leaders embrace.

Today the need for leaders who go first and set an example is greater now than ever before because a healthy workplace culture is critical to an organization’s success and leaders are critical to the health of organizational culture. A vibrant, vital culture is a powerful antidote to the unprecedented threats most organizations face today: a war for talent, the dearth of employee engagement, and issues of equality and diversity. As a leader, you play a critical role in cultivating a thriving culture.

Some leaders think that corporate culture is out of their control because it grows organically, so they shrug off any responsibility for it. It is true that culture can’t be imposed. But you can and should set the conditions to cultivate a culture and deeply influence the way your employees think and perform daily.

Guide and grow your organizational cultures through communication, action, and people decisions.

Consistent, Compelling Culture-Building Communication Although strong communication is well-recognized as the key to great leadership and culture-building, most business leaders don’t communicate well. At least that’s what their employees say. According to talent management firm Aon Hewitt, only 42 % of employees feel management communicates effectively. And human resources firm Towers Perrin has found that just over half of employees believed that their leaders generally tell them the truth.

The keys to successful leadership communication—especially as you try to cultivate your desired culture—are consistency, simplicity, storytelling, and relevance.

• CONSISTENC Y. C o n s i s t e n t l y a n d relentlessly communicate your company’s overarching purpose and core values and why they’re important. It’s not enough to talk about these foundational elements of your culture when they’re first being set or on an annual basis. You must regularly weave culture-building messages into your presentations, memos, and conversations with employees and other stakeholders.

You may tire of talking about the same topics over and over again or think you’re being repetitive, but studies have shown repetition and consistency are critical to comprehension and traction.

• SIMPLICIT Y. Strive to make your communications simple and accessible.

Some leaders try to be charismatic or come across as impressive whenever they speak or share information, so they get caught up in conveying a message that sounds exciting or that is full or jargon or complex terms instead of one that has substance and can be easily understood by everyone. But that doesn’t mean you have to “dumb it down” or make your message boring. Just strive to be clear and authentic.

• STORYTELLING. Illustrate your message with engaging stories. Giving examples and telling stories helps people relate to abstract ideas like culture and core values. For example, stories about great successes achieved in the face of great odds or of people who have pushed through challenges will cultivate values like perseverance and performance.

Storytelling creates high levels of interest and feelings of authenticity—and a compelling narrative gets people to see themselves in the story so they become personally engaged.

• RELEVANCE. Make your communications relevant to the culture you desire. Carefully choose the topics you talk about because they can speak volumes about the kind of culture you’re trying to cultivate. If your desired culture is one that is familial and casual, you’ll want to talk about your employees in a personal way and reference the things going on in their lives outside of work. If you’re seeking to cultivate a culture of innovation and creativity at your organization, infuse your communications with references to cutting-edge ideas and iconic geniuses.

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While actions—big and small—speak louder than words, a lack of action can be just as powerful.

ACTIONS THAT SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS What you say about your culture matters, but just as important, what you do provides models of action for your people and telegraphs your commitment to the purpose and values of your organization.

In her book Built On Values, Ann Rhoades, former head of people for Southwest Airlines, reports that 61% of managers said that actions by leaders were the most likely to influence the behavior of others in the organization. She encourages leaders “leverage [this] very persistent tendency of employees to follow the leader.” You must be a paragon of your desired culture because everyone is watching you.

While actions—big and small—speak louder than words, a lack of action can be just as powerful. You can’t expect your employees to act in ways that you don’t or won’t. If you want to inspire a more innovative culture but you yourself don’t take calculated risks or you criticize people when they try something new and fail, employees won’t make the changes you want them to.

THE POWER OF PEOPLE DECISIONS The most important culture-building actions a leader makes are in hiring, firing, and promoting employees.

People decisions are perhaps the most visible way you can shape your culture, but they must first be embraced a leadership responsibility. You must understand the strategic importance of every hiring decision and be committed to your role in ensuring that understanding is shared across all managers.

When your organization relies on core values to make choices about whom to hire, fire, and promote, you make sure the right people are on your bus—and you send a powerful message to your organization about the importance of its values. Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, advocates using “public hangings,” that is, calling out executives who do not align with a company’s values.

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In a Fortune article, Welch and his wife and business partner, Suzy Welch, explain, “If your company’s culture is to mean anything, you have to hang—publicly—those in your midst who would destroy it.”

The Welches believe that the employees who most threaten their organizations—who most undermine the culture of the company—are those whose actions don’t align with company’s core values but who produce great results. Managers typically give employees in this category a pass because of their great performance but they should be let go. Keeping these employees, they argue, sends “a big fat message to every other employee: Our company’s values are a joke.”

The Welches’ language may be harsh, but it describes spot-on why a leader’s decisions about people are critical. The hiring and firing decisions you and your fellow leaders make may be the ultimate litmus tests for the strength of leadership commitment to cultivating your desired culture.

A GREAT CULTURE REQUIRES GREAT LEADERSHIP Culture is only going to increase in importance in business success. As savvy employers increasingly use data and analytics to pinpoint the skilled workers needed in their organization, the war for talent is only going to escalate. More companies will then have to offer more distinct and sustainable cultures to attract and retain in-demand talent. And the need to unify and align diverse and dispersed employees with a singular purpose and values is only going to grow as companies continue to globalize, workforces continue to diversify, and the pace of business continues to accelerate.

Building a healthy, valuable, sustainable culture starts with you. You must prioritize culture-building and take responsibility for achieving it. You can’t take it for granted, you can’t delegate it, and you can’t take a day off from it.

The Power of Diversity MÉLANIE DUNN Global President and CEO, Cossette

THE GLOBAL LEADER OF COSSETTE SHARES HER INSIGHTS ABOUT WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A FEMALE EXECUTIVE

If you look up the definition of “leader” or “leadership” in any dictionary, there is no mention of gender. According to Oxford, a leader is “the person who leads or commands a group, organization, or country.” Emphasis on “person.” There really isn’t a cookiecutter mold of what a leader is anymore.

Even when you consider two men in the exact same role, as with the current and previous U.S. presidents, you get two leaders who couldn’t be more different. And as time marches on, society is hopefully moving away from stereotypes that portray female leaders as cold and bossy, and male leaders as assertive and charismatic.

Case in point is Cossette, a fully integrated marketing communications agency that was founded by seven men in 1972. Today, Mélanie Dunn is its Global President and CEO, Chairman of Vision7 in Quebec, as well as a member of the Vision7 International Executive Management Team. In other words, a leader—and a highly accomplished one at that.

With a quiet, understated confidence, Mélanie has helped drive the company’s expansion through her integrated communications approach and strategic direction. And true to being a trailblazer, she has her own thoughts on what it means to be a woman in a leadership role.

As a woman CEO, what is your take on female leadership?

The expected behaviours of a good leader are firmly entrenched and therefore haven’t evolved much over time. Companies usually encourage w o m e n t o b e m o re a m b i t i o u s , assertive, and to take more risks— in short, to behave more like what’s expected from a traditional leader, i.e. a man. I think companies have to adapt to new leadership styles preferred by women rather than ask the women themselves to change.

Companies should place more

value on empathy, collaboration, generosity, and sharing of power— traits that are typically associated with women and are not necessarily highly prized by companies at the C-suite level.

That said, I think Cossette and its holding company, V7, have embraced this philosophy and have created an environment whereby women like myself are nurtured and can remain true to themselves. Which explains why I’m still here after 18 years!

What has your personal experience been like moving into a leadership role?

Mélanie Dunn

As Global President and CEO, I’ve been working with leaders in other business sectors who have problems and realities different from my own.

I believe that it’s important to see others’ points of view. To not be too quick to judge, and to put myself in their shoes. With empathy, curiosity and understanding, I have learned to make a greater effort to appreciate each person’s reality and to not dismiss anything as futile or trivial.

Staying true to myself, to my values and my leadership style, is a conscious

choice I’ve made. However, it doesn’t mean that it’s always been easy.

Generally speaking, hiring practices favour a more conventional leadership style. New scorecards are needed to change the way people are hired, along with the types of skills that are valued, thereby increasing the level of female presence at the C-suite level.

Companies should also be more willing to adapt their operations to be more in line with the realities faced not only by women but by all employees.

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Do you consider greater diversity to be an asset?

Absolutely. Diversity is our greatest strength. It’s at the root of everything—it’s anthropological. It makes us stronger and more resistant. For me, the idea is to have men and women in leadership roles who come from a variety of cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. However, if once they assume their roles, they all do the same things in all the same ways, or develop the same behaviours, it defeats the purpose.

More specifically to advertising, diversity brings different points of view to the same problem, so it reduces risk. It provides a variety of ideas, which means a higher chance of success. Better representation of different types of people in our workforce not only means a greater likelihood of attracting high-calibre talent, but also provides a better understanding of our target markets. Our creative and strategic product will reflect this diversity, and we’ll be able to speak to more consumers. There are huge benefits all around.

A LEADER SHARES HER INSIGHTS ABOUT THE IMPACT OF COMPANY CULTURE AND EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

What can businesses do to better accommodate all employees?

Many companies have programs to support employees who have children, like onsite daycares, flexible hours and virtual work, but few people in the C-suite take advantage of these. I try to be a role model and lead by example. New employees are more likely to take advantage of these perks if their bosses do so as well.

Often I’m called upon to attend inter-office meetings or interact with people who aren’t in the same city, but due to personal responsibilities, such as caring for my family, I’m not always able to be there in person. Just because I can’t physically attend a meeting doesn’t mean I’m not fully present. And it doesn’t mean I’m less dedicated or less involved. Being able to connect by phone or video conferencing for these meetings, without being negatively perceived, is worth its weight in gold. Thankfully, my company is very open to this practice and have put several technologies in place to make it easy to do.

I enjoy taking advantage of flexible hours, and I won’t hide or feel guilty. While it’s important to show that I’m committed and making an effort, it’s equally important to be a well-balanced person. Many companies now accept that, and hopefully one day, these practices will just be business as usual.

About Cossette Cossette is a fully integrated marketing communications agency. It’s a community of 900 creative humans, who help people and brands connect in meaningful ways.

Cossette was named Agency of the Year in Canada in 2016 and 2017.

The agency currently has offices in Halifax, Québec City, Montréal, Toronto and Vancouver and has been making strides to become a major player in the global advertising community. To learn more, please visit cossette.com.

Nadine Cole

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The Importance Of Company Culture NADINE COLE Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cossette With so much of our lives spent at work, it’s no wonder that creating a company culture that excites and stimulates employees is fundamental to attracting and retaining the best talent and building your brand’s identity.

When Nadine Cole first took over Cossette’s western offices, she took a different approach to building up the culture

of her team at the integrated marketing and communications agency. The results have been astounding with the region now reporting the highest engagement scores in the network.

Since then, she hasn’t looked back as the office culture has evolved organically and taken on a life of its own. Here are some lessons to learn from her approach.

Why is culture important to you?

Work is such a big part of your life from a time standpoint, you really should be passionate about it. I want my team to wake up feeling driven and excited about what they are going to accomplish at work that day and I know that we as

a company need to play a pivotal role in creating the best environment possible. It’s about investing in people, not just on a work level but as individuals.

How do a positive culture and a strong employee engagement impact the success of a business?

They impact energy thus output in its simplest form. Those who are engaged are more invested in what Cossette is about, and this translates to their accountability and the quality of work they produce. When people feel valued and happy in their role, you can see it in their productivity and the

quality of their work. Not only are they more likely to stay and grow with the company in the long term, but they will also become ambassadors for your brand, helping to build up your company’s reputation and attract new talent and business through word-of-mouth referrals.

Tell us about what makes your offices special.

When I first took on the leadership role, we had just completed a reorganization where the majority of staff moved into a newly created company. I had 21 staff from four different disciplines and one key client. I made it a priority to build our culture up from scratch by engineering events and activities to bring people together. At first it was just two of us leading the charge, but eventually it turned into something organic and took on a life of its own.

Now we have a whole team of people who meet regularly to map out an annual calendar of events and initiatives that meet the needs of our 60 employees. Balance is important— it’s not just about parties—so we take a strategic approach to ensure a healthy mix of social, community outreach, creative,

personal growth, and training sessions are considered.

Some of our creative initiatives include an annual Talent Show and a Cossette Film Fest, where people can create their own short films complete with movie posters and a screening event. Something we’re really proud of is our creative C project where people can pitch an idea that they don’t have the resources to implement on their own. The best ideas receive up to $5,000 in funding to support people in their passions outside of these four walls.

A while back some of the team also expressed a desire to do more to give back, so Cossette Karma, our community outreach committee, was created and is now a thriving initiative.

How do you put your own personal stamp on your team’s culture?

I participate in everything—whether it’s a Halloween costume contest or team building activity—and really give it my all.

Even if I don’t always feel like it, it means a lot for me to play

a big role in our company culture. You can’t expect culture to happen if you don’t show up or lead by example. It leaves an impression on people.

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How do you keep your employees motivated and engaged in the company?

We run three surveys a year to collect anonymous feedback from our staff.

This allows us to measure engagement year over year. It’s imperative that as many people as possible participate in these surveys—otherwise their perspective cannot be taken into account

when implementing change—so we strive for and often receive 100 percent participation.

Once all responses are collected, I hold an all-agency meeting to go through the feedback with a focus on the top three areas for improvement

(based on recurring themes). The office is then broken up into smaller groups to develop solutions, which they then present back to the wider group. This approach gives everyone a voice to drive change as it is the collective who vote on what goes forward.

Have you ever had a mentor who modelled effective company culture, which you now emulate in your own leadership style?

During my early years at Cossette, I was fortunate to have Mélanie Dunn, our now Global President and CEO, as my mentor. While we didn’t work out of the same office, Mélanie always made time for me. We had a standing monthly

call and once a quarter we would get together and Mélanie would let me shadow her for a full day. Seeing her interact with our colleagues at all levels taught me that an effective leadership structure is not hierarchical, but flat and

collaborative. Mélanie’s empathy and open-door policy laid the foundation for my own leadership style, which is reflected in my approach to our company culture.

What are your top three do’s and don’ts for leaders looking to build their organization’s culture?

DO’S 1. STRUCTURE IT RIGHT. Be strategic when building the base of your organization’s cultural initiatives. Provide direction and get the right people involved as ambassadors to drive organic growth. Support initiatives that relate to your company values.

2. PARTICIPATE. Join in fully...but know when to leave. As the leader, it’s important to show up to events and stay for a respectful amount of time, but also leave early enough so people can let loose.

3. BE TRANSPARENT. Transparency is key not only to employee engagement but also company culture. Leaders should be open and honest about both the good and the bad of their organization (financials included). Your team will pick up on the negatives whether you choose to share them or not, and an honest approach will help to build longterm trust.

DON’TS 1. DON’T KIBOSH IDEAS. Set some parameters for your team to work within, but don’t define each detail. If there’s something that doesn’t work from the onset, let your team run with it. Trust that they will find a solution.

2. DON’T CLOSE YOUR DOOR. Be approachable and make time for people. Your time is worth its weight in gold. Closed doors should only be for private calls or confidential meetings.

3. DON’T ASK FOR FEEDBACK IF YOU DON’T INTEND TO ACT ON IT. If you ask your team questions and collect data on how to improve your company’s culture, then you need to act on it. If you don’t, then don’t bother—it will impact you more negatively in the long run.

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Now more than ever, culture matters to the success of a business.

Start by laying the groundwork; build trust and give your team a voice and the rest will follow. It’s not just about work output, but about investing in your people and creating an environment in which they will thrive. You’ll be surprised at what they can achieve.

A woman’s place is in the office is in the courtroom is in scrubs is on the podium is in the boardroom is in a hardhat is on the field is in the classroom is in the studio is in parliament is in a lab is in history books is everyw(here)

go beyond.

THREE DISCIPLINES EVERY TEAM LEADER NEEDS TO MASTER CHESTER ELTON AND ADRIAN GOSTICK

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Lack of career development has become the number one reason why employees leave a job.

There’s some bad news about modern teams: Most are nowhere near as effective as they could be and many are riven by tensions. Such dysfunction drains employee energy and creativity rather than fueling them. A recent workplace survey by Salesforce.com shows a whopping 96 percent of executives cite poor collaboration and communication as the main sources of workplace failures. Ouch.

So, how can managers better lead their teams to improved performance given all the distractions and challenges we face today?

Almost every week, we speak to busy managers who are facing increasingly pressing trials that the most popular books on teamwork simply don’t address: The rise of the millennials; increased speed of change; teams with global, virtual and gig workers; as well as crossfunctional friction between departments or locations.

Our task in researching The Best Team Wins was to help leaders understand how to effectively manage teams of people in this era of unprecedented change.

The research we tapped included our own surveys of more than 850,000 people, which helped us identify the traits of managers of the most successful teams and isolate disciplines that employees indicate are most motivating.

Here’s a highlight of just three of the disciplines of the best teams and team leaders we found:

MANAGE TO THE ONE Lack of career development has become the number one reason why employees leave a job—a change from just a few years ago when pay topped the list.

But focusing on career development is a relatively low-cost way to keep team members and keep them engaged, and is well within the control of the leader.

We found considerable payoffs in increased passion, creativity and productivity when leaders took even a small amount of time to personalize responsibilities based on team members’ individual drivers. In many high-engagement teams, we discovered variations on a practice we call job sculpting, in which managers give each employee some work to do that is especially motivating to him/her, while altering or transferring other work that might be demotivating (if at all possible). Sounds simple, right, but the payoffs of a formal process like this can be remarkable.

CHALLENGE EVERYTHING Feeling comfortable to express one’s views, take smart risks and being given roughly equal time to speak up are the hallmarks of what’s called psychological safety. Our research shows that fostering these characteristics is vital for effective problem-solving and innovative thinking within a fast-moving team.

But keeping debate from escalating into dissension and backstabbing, while assuring all team members get a roughly equal hearing, is tricky; thus, we asked great team leaders the methods they use to promote healthy discord. Some of the rules for debate we found on open teams included: • Challenge the position, not the person, and don’t make it personal • Seek to gather facts and do not jump to conclusions • Come to the debate ready to present data not supposition • Listen. Remember you are not in a competition to win • After the team makes a decision collaboratively, we are all going to support it

DON’T FORGET THE CUSTOMER In the most global, diverse, technologically driven workplace in history, any manager who doesn’t find time to understand how to work more collaboratively with other functional areas of the business is going to be left behind. But we find the focus of all team efforts must be kept rigorously on customers, whatever they look like. With that as a foundation, turf consciousness begins to diminish. And, as an ancillary benefit, a primary focus on defining who customers are and then empowering employees to truly serve them boosts employee engagement by creating clarity about a team’s purpose. Helping others (customers) improve their lives in some way is a much stronger motivator to most of us than abstract business goals of increasing sales, bringing down costs or elevating ROI. 49

Interview with

Natali Altshuler Sr Director of Product Development

Tell us about Electronic Arts.

EA is a global leader in interactive entertainment software. We make video games! We deliver games, content and online services for Internet-connected consoles, personal computers, mobile phones and tablets. Here in Vancouver, our studio is home to some of the biggest video game franchises in the world such as EA SPORTS FIFA, which was the bestselling video game in 2016. We employ about 1,500 creative and passionate people here at our amazing campus.

Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background, how did you come to work at EA? I’ve been at EA for 14 years. You could say that I grew up at EA! I joined EA when I graduated from UBC with a Computer Science and Business degree and I began as a junior project manager working in EA SPORTS. Early in my career I had the opportunity to learn on the job and have been fortunate to have many different experiences - from managing the development of pretty much every domain area of a game, to then growing to manage whole game teams, and ultimately to present day where I oversee development of multiple franchises.

What is your role there? How many people do you manage?

I am a Sr Director of Product Develop-

ment overseeing the EA Sports titles being developed in Vancouver, Canada and Bucharest, Romania. I’m responsible for the EA SPORTS FIFA, NHL and UFC franchises. Together it’s a group of approximately 600 people.

What are some of the unique challenges you face as a leader at Electronic Arts?

Working in video games is very exciting and fast paced, but also comes with a variety of unique challenges. One aspect is working with a wide variety of different disciplines and people from diverse backgrounds. The teams at EA are quite large - a typical game team would include software engineers, artists, designers, animators, UX designers, producers, project managers, data analysts, QA testers, business analysts and more. As such, as a leader you need to be constantly adapting your leadership style to account for all the different job families and ensure that everyone is working cohesively as one team!

Another unique challenge is that the key quality measurement for video game experiences is something completely intangible - fun. Fundamentally, how do you measure “fun”? How do we know if the game will be “fun” in time for launch? In order to “find the fun”, game development requires constant iteration. And that is definitely the most 51

“ 2.2 billion gamers across the globe are expected to generate $108.9 billion in game revenues in 2017.” – Newzoo Global Games Market Report, April 2017 challenging aspect of developing games.

The best thing we can do to overcome that uncertainty is to expect and plan for change, all the time. Making games is not about building the perfect plan and then executing on it. Rather, it is about adapting to a constantly shifting set of requirements and reevaluating our plans all along the way. Balancing this amount of change while ultimately ensuring that the game gets completed to quality, on time and on budget is a true challenge for any leader!

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used to run the FIFA franchise and I was one of the managers on his team at the time. He was truly a very inspiring leader, but most of all Andrew made us believe. He made us believe that we were the most important team working on the most important product in all of EA. He saw FIFA as the greatest and best selling video game franchise in history long before any of us did. And with a relentless drive for producing the highest quality of work he led FIFA to the top of the charts where it remains to this day.

You must have worked with some great leaders over the years! Tell us about some of them and the impact they had on you.

What is your leadership style?

What do you think makes you an effective leader?

I certainly have had the opportunity to work with many great leaders over the years, but the one that stands out the most in my mind is Andrew Wilson who is currently the CEO of EA. Andrew

I don’t think I have one particular style, so I definitely believe in exercising situational leadership and adjusting my approach based on the situation and the people involved. My style

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varies greatly; I can be very much in the details as required when I’m working on budget submissions or audits of projects, to more of a coach when I’m helping another leader grow into their role and new responsibilities, to a more transformational type leader when I’m challenging the team to improve our existing process and practices. I think the key to leadership is being self-aware enough to know both your true strengths and weaknesses, open enough to listen to the team around you and humble enough to be willing to learn from your mistakes, adapt and move forward.

What do you look for when you hire for leadership roles into the organization?

We hire people with a wide range of professional backgrounds, and although game development would be a strong asset, it’s by no means a requirement.

Canada is the third largest developer of videogames in the world, trailing only the United States and Japan.

For senior leaders, we’re looking for people with experience running largescale, complex projects and leading large teams. For more junior/entry-level roles, we’re looking for those who are passionate and willing to learn. And across all levels, we look for natural leaders with good interpersonal skills, passion and who are strong problemsolvers.

The tech industry has traditionally been fairly male dominated. What has your experience been like as a female leader?

Yes, software development is still a male dominated field but there are plenty of women at EA as well, and quite a few in senior leadership roles. EA has a strong focus on diversity, where across our organization we strongly believe that in order to make game experiences that appeal to a large array of people we must

have as much diversity in our teams as possible. This is not just about women in tech, but being inclusive of all types of diversity. The more diverse our teams are the better our game experiences will be. There’s no better example of this than the FIFA team, which has such diverse backgrounds that there are 23 unique languages spoken in the development team. Overall, my entire experience at EA has been tremendously positive and to be honest I have never felt limited or challenged because I’m a woman. My career has always felt like it has progressed forward due to my performance and delivering results - EA is a true meritocracy.

Your role carries a great deal of responsibility and must keep you very busy. How do you balance that with your personal life?

It can certainly be difficult at times.

There have been times when I have really struggled, and still do to a certain extent now as I try to find that right balance. Thankfully, EA is a modern workplace, where I have the flexibility to adjust the hours in the office and occasionally work from home if needed. Also, one of the key things for me was realizing that I need people’s help and accepting that help. I am very fortunate to have a true partner in my husband who is incredible supportive and understanding of my job’s demands. My parents have also been instrumental in helping with the day-to-day responsibilities of carpools, after school activities and all the fun stuff that comes with having two young kids. I run a very detailed calendar for home - I am a project manager after all - and it takes a lot of planning and communication to keep it all running smoothly!

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DON’T FALL INTO

THE 24-HOUR TRAP LAURA VANDERKAM

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I hear this refrain all the time: There aren’t enough hours in the day to get to everything I want to do. You put in a long day at work, but that means you don’t make it home for dinner. Or maybe you make it home for dinner, but then you don’t get to the gym. Or maybe you get to the gym, but leave dozens of emails unanswered.

It can seem like life is one long series of trade-offs, but here’s a different way to think about it. Maybe there aren’t enough hours in the day, but so what?

We don’t live our lives in days. Life is much broader than that. Things do not have to happen daily, nor do they have to happen at the same time every day in order to count. Believing that they do means falling into what I call the “24-Hour Trap.” For women in particular, the 24-Hour Trap often leads to pitting work against family. But when we view time more holistically, we see that we have space for anything that really matters.

Sometimes the 24-Hour Trap is just an excuse. People tell me all the time that they want to exercise more,

and then they talk themselves out of it because there is not a perfect time every single day. Sure it would be great to exercise, but they’re not the kinds of people who can leave for an hour at lunch every day. Or they have families they’d like to see so they can’t go to the gym for an hour every night after work.

But who said exercise has to happen daily, or at the same time every day? A better plan might be to look at the whole of the week and see where it can fit in.

Maybe that’s one early morning a week, one lunch time walk, a class at the gym some night when a partner or relative can cover, then a family bike ride on the weekend. That is four times a week right there. It didn’t happen at the same time every day, but it didn’t have to.

Exercise is certainly important, but I find that the 24-Hour Trap is even more pernicious when it comes to how women balance work and life. Not long ago I got a note from a woman who was facing what she considered a very knotty work/life dilemma. She was newly in management. She needed her team to trust her, and that required spending relaxed time together. Her team sometimes went out for drinks, and she knew she should go sometimes and pick up a round. But she was also a new mom, and so if she went out with her team, she wouldn’t be putting her child to bed.

She had talked herself into believing this was one of those hard choice moments: work vs. family. Be a good manager, or be a good mom. Women can’t have it all!

It sounds tough, but only from the 24-hour perspective. After all, did her team want her to take them out every single night? Friday, Saturday, and Sunday too? Even if she was an amazing woman, no one wants to hang out with

a boss that much! If she took her team out one night a week or so, she’d be home the other six nights. Six is greater than one. When she fell into the 24-Hour Trap, she was pitting work against family. Looking at life from the 168hour (one week) perspective meant she could be the kind of manager who was regularly nurturing her team, and the kind of mother who was there almost every night. She truly could have it all.

If you find yourself facing a work/ life dilemma, see if broadening your time perspective might change how you see your choices. Rather than racing out of work every night, yet only getting a little bit of time in the evening with your young children, try working very late — past bedtime — twice a week, and getting home much earlier on the other three nights. Rather than fretting

We don’t live our lives in days. Life is much broader than that. about being in a hotel in Calgary for two nights, celebrate that you’re home the other five.

There may not be enough hours in the day to get to everything in life but that doesn’t matter. With 168 hours in a week, you can work 50, sleep 56 (8 per night) and still have 62 hours for other things. The time is there. We just have to choose to see it.

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ARE YOU HOLDING YOURSELF BACK? TAMMY HEERMANN Leadership Transformation Expert and Senior Vice President at Lee Hecht Harrison 56

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If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times from the women I work with. “I’m my own worst enemy.”

As women leaders, we sometimes spend an inordinate amount of time ruminating about the things we can’t control, and ignoring the things that we can. We become obsessed with the negative people and traditions and mechanisms that keep us from reaching the highest levels of leadership, but devote precious little time examining our own talk tracks and mindsets.

The end result is that we unconsciously sabotage our own chances for success.

Over years of working with women leaders, I have identified a list of common ways that women hold themselves back.

Doubting your own potential.

You have likely heard the famous statistic that men apply for a job when they meet 60% of the criteria, but women apply only if they feel they meet 100% of the criteria. Many women I work with believe they will never be ready or qualified to take on a more senior role.

When contemplating a new opportunity, women, I find too often, wallow in negative questions and talk themselves out of going for it. We ask ourselves, ‘Am I ready?’ Or, ‘How will I stand a chance against more experienced candidates?’

Our belief in rule following also gets in the way. The reality is that no one is 100 per cent qualified for a new job.

If you doubt your own full potential, you’ll never actually achieve it.

Working heads down.

At a panel of senior executive women, an audience member asked me: “How do you make time for networking?”

I told them that coffee and lunch are part of your job because building relationships is the work of leadership. Sales people get this – you have to reach out and meet people face-to-face to be successful. However, rarely do we apply the same reasoning to relationships inside our own organizations.

The good news is that women inherently value relationship building. The bad news, however, is that women are reluctant to apply this talent for their own gain. They make connections that benefit their organizations, but somehow fail to implement it as a strategy to promote their own career aspirations.

Accepting the role of wallflower.

Deborah Tannen, a linguistics professor at Georgetown University, has found in her research that in public forums, women talk less than men. And when they did, their ideas were not often picked up or attributed to them.

I have seen many up and coming female leaders clam up in

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meetings or lose their confidence when speaking to senior leaders. More often than not, it comes down to a mistaken belief that they have nothing to add to the conversation, that they know less than the other person, or that they will sound stupid.

But when you choose to stay silent and not participate, you are projecting the exact image that you want to avoid.

You look like you have no ideas, and nothing to contribute.

The same holds true for our strengths and accomplishments. Many women are simply afraid to tell people about all that they have achieved. They see selfadvocacy as bragging. They believe firmly that “their achievements will speak for themselves.” The fact is, they don’t and staying quiet means there is a very good chance you won’t be considered for the next great promotion.

Striving to be Superwoman.

The myth of perfection plagues most women. We think that to have it all, we have to be perfect in everything we do. It’s a state of mind that takes its toll.

Scientific studies have shown clearly that women suffer higher levels of anxiety than men. The belief according to

If you doubt your own full potential, you’ll never actually achieve it. experts is that these differences can be explained partly by hormones, partly by brain chemistry, and partly by an upbringing that has conditioned women to feel more responsible for the happiness of others such as a spouse or children.

This mindset often manifests in relentless and inescapable feelings of guilt. When you’re at home, you feel guilty for not doing work; and when you’re at work, you feel guilty for not being at home.

However, there is reason for hope for working mothers. In a new Harvard study, Kathleen McGinn and her colleagues found that daughters of working mothers grew up to be more successful in the workplace than their peers. They earned more and were more likely to take on leadership roles.

Sons of working moms were more likely to grow up making a more significant overall contribution to childcare and household chores. Furthermore, children under 14 who were exposed to mothers who worked for at least a year grow up to hold more egalitarian gender views as adults.

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The hamster-wheel of tactical work.

I was having a lively discussion with a group of HR leaders on the barriers women face in advancing to more senior roles. One of these barriers was described as being willingly trapped in the “hamster wheel of tactical work.”

A senior male HR leader said he’d observed how, at the end of every meeting of his team, the female peers volunteered to take on all the action items and the administrative details. They even stayed to clean up the debris left over from the meeting. Essentially, they willingly bore the brunt of the grunt work, while the men just skated away.

Women need to be aware that when you get stuck in tactical work, it creates the impression that you are unable to take on strategic thinking and tasks. The same holds true when you can’t delegate responsibilities (at work and at home!). It will erode the quality of what you do and it diminishes your profile as a leader.

Endless rumination.

I was listening with rapt attention to a guest speaker address a group of high-potential female partner hopefuls. She was asked: what is the single most important lesson she learned over her career as the lone female amidst a sea of male partners?

She said she was much happier and more successful when she learned to “just get over herself.”

This meant not ruminating incessantly about every decision, beating herself up when she had a setback, taking everything so seriously, or holding onto grudges. When she got over herself, she could project the confidence of a leader.

Not only did this lead to greater success, but it also allowed her to sleep better at night.

It’s hard to get control of the voices that take up office in our heads. Those that make us question ourselves, tell us we’re not good enough, or make us hang on to unproductive feelings when they’re past their due date.

Overtime this leads to cynicism, unhealthy relationships and burnout, none of which are helpful for productive functioning at work.

Final Thoughts Our research at LHH has consistently shown that women who adopt mindsets that demonstrate confidence in their strengths and key attributes tend to ultimately achieve higher levels of leadership success. That’s hardly revolutionary; our mindsets and beliefs shape our behaviors, which in turn forge the image that others have of us.

I encourage you to devote some time every day to reminding yourself of the strength and value you bring to your organization. And help other women never doubt the fact that they too have a lot to offer.

Let’s not have the greatest barrier faced on the road to leadership success be ourselves.

WHY YOUR OLD FRIENDS ARE YOUR MOST POWERFUL CONNECTIONS DAVID BURKUS

Growing up, Michelle McKenna-Doyle was always a fan of sports, specifically Football. Her passion for football ran in the family. Her father was a devoted fan of legendary quarterback Joe Namath, and her brother accepted a full scholarship to play football at the University of Alabama. Indeed, her father was almost certain he would see his child make it to the NFL one day. And he was right—it just wasn’t his son. McKenna-Doyle’s career took a winding path, but eventually she found herself in the Chief Information Officer

role for several different Fortune 500 companies.

One day—while checking her fantasy football league—she stumbled upon a job listing on the NFL website and eventually she decided she would apply. But she had no connection to the NFL, so she started exploring her network. The closest lead should could find was a former colleague, who worked for an executive search firm. His company wasn’t handling that particular search, but he knew who was and made the introduction.

His referral helped Michelle interview with the senior leaders of the league, and got the job as CIO. On the day she started, she had been given the highest office a female executive had ever held in the league. And her father finally got to see one of his children make it in the NFL. Our tendency when things get tough is to seek out trusted, familiar counsel. When we need a new job, for example, we default to those close to our network. We tell our friends and family, but ironically skip over 59

A FRIEND OF A FRIEND OF A F ND OF A FRIEND OF A FRIEND A FRIEND OF A FRIEND OF A F ND OF A FRIEND OF A FRIEND A FRIEND OF A FRIEND OF A F ND OF A FRIEND OF A FRIEND our weak ties and go right to coldly responding to job postings online. Or when we need advice about a major problem, we tend to only share our dilemma with those close to us— those we feel comfortable around.

But that comfort comes at a cost.

Most of the strong ties in our network are connected to each other. They are often so tightly clustered that information known by one person is already known by everyone else in that cluster. In contrast, our weaker connections often build a bridge from one cluster to another and thus give us access to new information—not unlike McKenna-Doyle’s old colleague who now worked in the executive search world. Even though the strong ties in our life are more likely to be motivated to help us, it turns out that weak ties access to new sources of information may be more valuable than the strong ties’ motivation.

This counterintuitive finding first came from a now classic study by sociologist Mark Granovetter. In 1970, Granovetter was a PhD student at Harvard University and decided to conduct a study of job transitions.

When surveying respondents, he would often ask whether a friend

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had told them about their current job.

So many times, respondents would answer with something like: “Not a friend, but an acquaintance,” which suggested to Granovetter that he ought to look further. He asked hundreds of people how often they saw those contacts around the time they received the job information. Granovetter used three categories: often (at least twice a week), occasionally (more than once a year but less than twice a week), and rarely (once a year or less). When Granovetter looked at the collected results, he found that less than 17 percent of job changes saw their contacts often. Over 55 percent said they saw their contact occasionally and over 27 percent said rarely. “The skew is clearly to the weak end of the continuum,” Granvotter wrote in his 1973 paper presenting this data. That paper, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” would go on to become one of the most cited papers in sociology.

In that paper, he noticed the role former colleagues and long-lost friends played in helping individuals. “Chance meetings or mutual friends operated to reactivate such ties,” Granovetter noted. “It is remarkable that people receive crucial information from

individuals whose very existence they have forgotten.” Over time, other researchers would come up with a shorter name for such a weak tie that used to be stronger—a better name for McKenna-Doyle’s old colleague.

They would label it a dormant tie and their research would prove just how valuable these weak connections are.

Researchers Daniel Levin, Jorge Walter, and Keith Murningham have been studying the power of dormant ties for almost a decade. Specifically, they have been surveying business executives, encouraging them to deliberately reactivate old connections, and then observing the results. And the results have been quite powerful. In one experiment, the trio asked a group of 224 executives from four executive MBA classes to reconnect with two people to whom they had not spoken for at least three years, but who they think would have advice that would help them on a major work project.

Specifically, the executives were to contact one person with whom they had a strong relationship before they fell out of touch, and also with one individual with whom they had a weak tie relationship. In addition, the executives selected two current

FRIEND OF A FRIEND OF A FR OF A FRIEND OF A FRIEND O FRIEND OF A FRIEND OF A FR OF A FRIEND OF A FRIEND O FRIEND OF A FRIEND OF A FR OF A FRIEND OF A FRIEND O contacts (one strong, one weak) with whom they had already sought out for advice during the course of their project. The researchers then asked executives to assess all four contacts’ advice in terms of value (actionable knowledge) novelty, trust, and the extent to which they had a shared perspective.

As one can imagine, many of these executives were not excited about the idea of cold calling old colleagues and asking for advice. However, as the researchers, and the executives themselves, discovered, the advice from the dormant ties was more likely to be valuable than the advice from current connections. Likewise, the dormant ties were more likely to provide unexpected insights and more novel advice than current ties.

“In spite of their initial hesitation,” the trio wrote, “almost all of the executives in our studies report that they have received tremendous value from reconnecting their dormant relationships.”

Like weak ties, dormant ties are a wealth of new, different, and unexpected insights. Our dormant ties are still around and interacting with other social circles and encountering

new experiences. But unlike weak ties, many dormant ties were once stronger relationships and because of this, the trust and motivation to help are much stronger than current weak ties.

Like the executives studied, and like McKenna-Doyle no doubt felt, reaching out to old colleagues and friends can be uncomfortable, but the

make it a point to reach back out to one per week through email, telephone, or whatever feels best and catch up. Don’t have an agenda in mind, just make it a point to reignite the relationship and trust that the value being created will be useful down the road. That’ll make the conversation feel less awkward and open you up to new possibilities. If

...our weaker connections often build a bridge from one cluster to another... pay off is more than worth it. What can make it especially awkward is only reconnecting when the time comes to find that new job or get counsel on a new project. So don’t wait. Instead, start today and make reconnecting a habit. Make a list of 4-5 people, just like the executives in the study, and

we want to maximize the value of our network, then we need to make sure we are using all of our connections and not limiting ourselves to just our current strong ties. The bottom line is that when it comes to new information and opportunities, our weak and dormant ties are much stronger.

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THE POWER OF WOMEN AND GIRLS CAROLINE RISEBORO President & CEO, Plan International Canada

Challenger of the status quo and champion of girls’ rights, Caroline Riseboro shares insights into how executives and leaders can advance gender equality in the workplace.

Why are there still so many barriers to women gaining leadership positions, particularly on Boards or at the c-suite level?

We need to begin redefining leadership and executive roles. As they exist now, they are very much a product of the patriarchal systems that created them. We need to stop trying to make women fit into molds, and start re-shaping the system to better elevate women of all diversities and backgrounds.

Despite what gender stereotypes may tell us, women excel at leadership. They do it every day at home, in their personal lives, and at work. They are not afraid to ask for help when needed, and surround themselves with people that can support them.

Leadership under women may look different than leadership under men. We need to stop seeing different as bad.

What advice would you give to women pursuing a leadership position?

I would say not to doubt your capacity! Leadership isn’t easy, so the trick is to make it manageable. My belief is that this happens through the combination of courage and resiliency. But like anything else, they only come with practice, so I suggest everyone seek out opportunities to be both courageous and resilient. Take on projects during your career where you are able to chart the course to the solution.

Look for larger challenges along your path to leadership that will help you build your skills.

And finally, find at least four people who can help you when needed, no questions asked. Build that web of advisors that covers all areas where you’re vulnerable. Create that support system that works both ways. The more someone feels they can rely on you, the more reliable they will be for you.

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What role can leaders and executives plan in recognizing and addressing the gender norms and societal expectations that too often hold women back?

Leaders must embrace the need for change and lead by example – for the good of their own businesses and the economy as a whole.

Throughout my career, I have discovered these unwritten rules about perfection and performance apply to women exclusively, rooted in society’s longheld beliefs about what it means to be female. Not only are they harmful for women, they are harmful to society as a whole.

As leaders, we need to acknowledge that deep-seated gender norms heavily influence how we work together, thanks in part to cultural expectations about the roles and responsibilities that men and women should have.

For me, this means building a work environment that accommodates family life and empowers - and rewards - all employees that seek more balance between professional and personal commitments. And in some cases, it requires calling out those that continue to perpetuate gendered expectations that harm our society as a whole. personal lives, and at work. They are not afraid to ask for help when needed, and surround themselves with people that can support them.

Leadership under women may look different than leadership under men. We need to stop seeing different as bad.

What will be the biggest challenge for the next generation of women?

Non-discriminatory laws and policies and gender parity in specific sectors are clearly not enough. The research Plan International has conducted has shown us that in order to transform attitudes and change the rules of society there must be a specific focus on power which, today, remains largely in male hands. These unequal power relations often remain invisible and internalized.

Until they change nothing else will.

It is not enough to make basic changes like hiring more women – we must ensure that appropriate conditions and support structures exist at all levels for them to thrive.

Discriminatory gender norms can be challenged, power imbalances between women and men can be changed, but they must be confronted before young women arrive in the workplace because they start at home, continue at school and pervade every area of our society.

If not tackled, the stereotyping that holds girls back and places often unrealistic expectations of being tough and strong on boys, wanting to restrict us all to a binary identity, continues down the generations.

We also need to find a way to begin engaging men and boys in this conversation and work - because we cannot change these systems alone.

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VOLUME 18 | TheArtOf.com

PLAN INTERNATIONAL CANADA’S MISSION Every day, millions of girls around the world are denied their basic human rights—simply because they’re girls. Plan International Canada is a global movement working to end gender inequality and promote girls’ rights.

THE FACTS: DID YOU KNOW? • Globally, more than 62 million girls are not in school.

• Girls are 2x as likely to be malnourished than boys.

• Every year,15 million girls are married before the age of 18.

THE POWER OF GIRLS In the developing world, millions of girls are denied their basic human rights, simply because they’re girls. In fact, girls in the poorest regions of the world are among the most disadvantaged people on the planet.

They are more likely to live in poverty, more likely to be denied access to education, and more likely to be malnourished.

And yet, studies show that when you invest in girls, the whole world benefits. If a girl has enough to eat, a safe environment, and an education, she’ll work to raise the standard of living for herself, her family and her community. And in time, she can even strengthen the economy of her entire country.

• Girls with secondary school education are 6x less likely to marry as children.

• On average, a girl with 7 years of education will marry 4 years later and have fewer, healthier children.

• For every extra year a girl stays in school, her income can increase by 10 to 20%.

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