Wtco

A great Leader is a person able to sustain the others in order to develop himself, he’s able to develop the company through the development of his/her people.

Be open and honest, in 21th century is the most productive strategy

What makes an effective leader? This question is a focus of my research as an organizational scientist, executive coach, and leadership development consultant. Looking for answers, I recently completed the first round of a study of 195 leaders in 15 countries over 30 global organizations. Participants were asked to choose the 15 most important leadership competencies from a list of 74. I’ve grouped the top ones into five major themes that suggest a set of priorities for leaders and leadership development programs. While some may not surprise you, they’re all difficult to master, in part because improving them requires acting against our nature.

Demonstrates strong ethics and provides a sense of safety.

This theme combines two of the three most highly rated attributes: “high ethical and moral standards” (67% selected it as one of the most important) and “communicating clear expectations” (56%).

Taken together, these attributes are all about creating a safe and trusting environment. A leader with high ethical standards conveys a commitment to fairness, instilling confidence that both they and their employees will honor the rules of the game. Similarly, when leaders clearly communicate their expectations, they avoid blindsiding people and ensure that everyone is on the same page. In a safe environment employees can relax, invoking the brain’s higher capacity for social engagement, innovation, creativity, and ambition.

Neuroscience corroborates this point. When the amygdala registers a threat to our safety, arteries harden and thicken to handle an increased blood flow to our limbs in preparation for a fight-or-flight response. In this state, we lose access to the social engagement system of the limbic brain and the executive function of the prefrontal cortex, inhibiting creativity and the drive for excellence. From a neuroscience perspective, making sure that people feel safe on a deep level should be job #1 for leaders.

But how? This competency is all about behaving in a way that is consistent with your values. If you find yourself making decisions that feel at odds with your principles or justifying actions in spite of a nagging sense of discomfort, you probably need to reconnect with your core values. I facilitate a simple exercise with my clients called “Deep Fast Forwarding” to help with this. Envision your funeral and what people say about you in a eulogy. Is it what you want to hear? This exercise will give you a clearer sense of what’s important to you, which will then help guide daily decision making.

To increase feelings of safety, work on communicating with the specific intent of making people feel safe. One way to accomplish this is to acknowledge and neutralize feared results or consequences from the outset. I call this “clearing the air.” For example, you might approach a conversation about a project gone wrong by saying, “I’m not trying to blame you. I just want to understand what happened.”

Empowers others to self-organize.

Providing clear direction while allowing employees to organize their own time and work was identified as the next most important leadership competency.

No leader can do everything themselves. Therefore, it’s critical to distribute power throughout the organization and to rely on decision making from those who are closest to the action.

Research has repeatedly shown that empowered teams are more productive and proactive, provide better customer service, and show higher levels of job satisfaction and commitment to their team and organization. And yet many leaders struggle to let people self-organize. They resist because they believe that power is a zero-sum game, they are reluctant to allow others to make mistakes, and they fear facing negative consequences from subordinates’ decisions.

To overcome the fear of relinquishing power, start by increasing awareness of physical tension that arises when you feel your position is being challenged. As discussed above, perceived threats activate a fight, flight, or freeze response in the amygdala. The good news is that we can train our bodies to experience relaxation instead of defensiveness when stress runs high. Try to separate the current situation from the past, share the outcome you fear most with others instead of trying to hold on to control, and remember that giving power up is a great way to increase influence — which builds power over time.

Fosters a sense of connection and belonging.

Leaders who “communicate often and openly” (competency #6) and “create a feeling of succeeding and failing together as a pack” (#8) build a strong foundation for connection.

We are a social species — we want to connect and feel a sense of belonging. From an evolutionary perspective, attachment is important because it improves our chances of survival in a world full of predators. Research suggests that a sense of connection could also impact productivity and emotional well-being. For example, scientists have found that emotions are contagious in the workplace: Employees feel emotionally depleted just by watching unpleasant interactions between coworkers.

From a neuroscience perspective, creating connection is a leader’s second most important job. Once we feel safe (a sensation that is registered in the reptilian brain), we also have to feel cared for (which activates the limbic brain) in order to unleash the full potential of our higher functioning prefrontal cortex.

There are some simple ways to promote belonging among employees: Smile at people, call them by name, and remember their interests and family members’ names. Pay focused attention when speaking to them, and clearly set the tone of the members of your team having each other’s backs. Using a song, motto, symbol, chant, or ritual that uniquely identifies your team can also strengthen this sense of connection.

Shows openness to new ideas and fosters organizational learning.

What do “flexibility to change opinions” (competency #4), “being open to new ideas and approaches” (#7), and “provides safety for trial and error” (#10) have in common? If a leader has these strengths, they encourage learning; if they don’t, they risk stifling it.

Admitting we’re wrong isn’t easy. Once again, the negative effects of stress on brain function are partly to blame — in this case they impede learning. Researchers have found that reduced blood flow to our brains under threat reduces peripheral vision, ostensibly so we can deal with the immediate danger. For instance, they have observed a significant reduction in athletes’ peripheral vision before competition. While tunnel vision helps athletes focus, it closes the rest of us off to new ideas and approaches. Our opinions are more inflexible even when we’re presented with contradicting evidence, which makes learning almost impossible.

To encourage learning among employees, leaders must first ensure that they are open to learning (and changing course) themselves. Try to approach problem-solving discussions without a specific agenda or outcome. Withhold judgment until everyone has spoken, and let people know that all ideas will be considered. A greater diversity of ideas will emerge.

Failure is required for learning, but our relentless pursuit of results can also discourage employees from taking chances. To resolve this conflict, leaders must create a culture that supports risk-taking. One way of doing this is to use controlled experiments — think A/B testing — that allow for small failures and require rapid feedback and correction. This provides a platform for building collective intelligence so that employees learn from each other’s mistakes, too.

Nurtures growth.

“Being committed to my ongoing training” (competency #5) and “helping me grow into a next-generation leader” (#9) make up the final category.

All living organisms have an innate need to leave copies of their genes. They maximize their offspring’s chances of success by nurturing and teaching them. In turn, those on the receiving end feel a sense of gratitude and loyalty. Think of the people to whom you’re most grateful — parents, teachers, friends, mentors. Chances are, they’ve cared for you or taught you something important.

When leaders show a commitment to our growth, the same primal emotions are tapped. Employees are motivated to reciprocate, expressing their gratitude or loyalty by going the extra mile. While managing through fear generates stress, which impairs higher brain function, the quality of work is vastly different when we are compelled by appreciation. If you want to inspire the best from your team, advocate for them, support their training and promotion, and go to bat to sponsor their important projects.

These five areas present significant challenges to leaders due to the natural responses that are hardwired into us. But with deep self-reflection and a shift in perspective (perhaps aided by a coach), there are also enormous opportunities for improving everyone’s performance by focusing on our own.

(thanks to HBR source)

Buongiorno a tutti

Mi permetto di mettere di dare qualche suggerimento rispetto ai possibili errori che si possono verificare durante il lavoro di tutti i giorni

Non tutti gli errori  sono da considerarsi negativic – alcuni di loro sono in realtà un bene a causa delle opportunità di apprendimento preziose che essi presentano. Dividendo i fallimenti della propria organizzazione in tre categorie vi aiuterà a distinguere i buoni, i fallimenti cattivi, quelle inutili:

Fallimenti evitabili nelle operazioni prevedibili. Questi sono causati da una formazione inadeguata, disattenzione o mancanza di capacità. Sono facili da diagnosticare e risolvere – utilizzando una lista di controllo, per esempio – ma non sono molto utili.
Fallimenti inevitabili nei sistemi complessi. Le piccole battute d’arresto del processo sono inevitabili, così considerandoli fallimenti è controproducente. In genere possono essere evitati seguendo le best practice per la sicurezza e rischio.
    Fallimenti intelligenti. Questi possono essere considerati buoni fallimenti in quanto accadono  come conseguenza di una innovazione lungimirante. Essi forniscono informazioni preziose che possono aiutare a stare davanti alla concorrenza. Ma possono diventare cattivi errori se l’organizzazione inizia a lavorare ad una scala più ampia di quanto sia necessario.

Grazie

Giuseppe

When business is conducted globally, we often have to travel long distances to launch projects, meet with partners, negotiate deals, address crises, manage customer relations, and engage in a variety of other activities on the behalf of our organizations. And if you have to cross time zones, it can wreak havoc on the circadian process that regulates sleep, leaving you feeling tired and groggy just when you need to be your most productive.

It may be tempting to assume that you can tough your way through jetlag. However, this belies the powerful physiological mechanisms at play. The circadian process utilizes a 24-hour clock-like cycle, and conforms to this cycle relatively precisely. On average, the cycle can adjust by about one hour per day(a little less when going East rather than West, as I’ll explain below.) However, when traveling across more than one time zone, the circadian rhythm becomes mismatched with your activity schedule. In other words, you will have a hard time sleeping when you want to sleep and a hard time staying awake when you want to be awake.

The greater the time change, the greater the mismatch. As a result, subjective energy levels suffer, and you’ll also suffer cognitive and performance decrements. So when you’re making difficult decisions during a negotiation in India, you will be cognitively impaired. When you’re trying to develop new customer relations in China, you will be irritable and more easily frustrated. Managing arduous tasks and intercultural interactions are already tricky enough; doing so while in a diminished cognitive state only adds to the difficulty.

Fortunately, the research literaturesuggests some smart strategies for ameliorating these effects. One approach is to at least partially pre-adjust your own activity schedule while you’re still in your home time zone, in order to prepare for the time zone you are traveling to. This is much easier when you are traveling East than West; going to sleep a few hours early is usually very difficult, but staying up a few hours later is typically more feasible. So if you live in New York and have an important trip in San Francisco, moving your bedtime and wake time an hour later each day during the three days leading up to the trip can give you a head start. You can try the same in the opposite direction, but try a smaller change each day (20 minutes instead of an hour). A similar strategy would be to arrive one or more days early in order to give your body more time to adjust to the new time zone.

If this is not feasible, then do your best to help your body adjust to the new time zone as fast as is reasonable. I sleep on the plane if it is at the time of day people would normally be asleep in my destination time zone. If I land in London at 9am local time, but my body is still on Boston time and it feels like 4am, I may be tempted to go to sleep. But a good strategy could be to stay up for the day. Walking outside and exposing yourself to sunlightcan help suppress melatonin production — a key promotor of sleep — minimizing feelings of sleepiness and encouraging your body to shift to the new time zone.

You and Your Team

If you are trying to sleep in the new time zone, you may want to try the opposite. If I land in New York at 10pm local time and am departing from Seattle, it makes sense to try to get to sleep on the East Coast schedule as soon as is reasonable. Light manipulation can play a role in this process. Blue lightthat’s emitted from your digital devices and most lightbulbs, in particular, suppresses melatonin. That’s why, when I travel, I bring glasses that filter out blue light. I wear them at night a few hours before I want to go to sleep at a local time that is earlier than it would have been in my home time zone. Using this strategy to block blue light from electronic devices and lightbulbs minimizes melatonin inhibition, thus promoting sleep. Some people may choose to take melatonin supplements to help even further.

These strategies can be effective, but will be limited in the degree to which they can move your circadian process in the desired direction. Moreover, for some short trips, you may decide that it is not worth it to get your circadian process in alignment with the local time — especially because you have to go through the difficulties of switching back when you return.

In such cases, there are two strategies left. One is to try to be strategic about your schedule in the new time zone, optimizing your work activities for your own circadian rhythm. To a lesser degree, you may be able to do the same in the new time zone. Find out when your peak periods of energy and alertnesswould be in your home time zone, and try to schedule the most important activities in your temporary time zone to line up with your own energy levels. For example, when I travel from Seattle to Singapore, I try to schedule the most important activity for 8am Singapore time, which is 5pm Seattle time, when I would typically be at a high energy level. Waiting until 3pm in Singapore would feel like midnight to my body, and I know I would be more tired. I may still be working at that time, but hopefully I have switched to less important activities by then.

The last ditch strategy you can use is caffeine. Caffeine masks many of the feelings of sleep deprivation and circadian misalignment — primarily by blocking adenosine signals that tell your body you should be feeling tired. Caffeine does not fully eliminate the effects of jetlag, but it will lower the likelihood that you have to struggle to stay awake when you want to be awake. But beware; not only does caffeine persist in your system long after you drink it, making it harder to fall asleep later, but the more you drink caffeine the more you will come to depend on it.

None of these strategies is ideal. It’s not realistic to assume that you will be able to fully adjust to local time right away, or completely eliminate the effects of circadian misalignment. However, the greater the degree to which you can use these strategies, the more likely you will be able to perform well on your trip. Tilt the odds in your favor as much as you can.