Category Archives: management

The Best Business Strategy for Crisis Recovery

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If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.~ John Quincy Adams

As a leader, what strategy are you using for crisis recovery?

Strategy has become top of mind for business leaders. Too be sure, we are faced with incredible hurdles, many of which are outside of our control. As a result, many leaders have taken drastic measures.  

On May 8, 2020, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported their findings from two monthly surveys: households (measuring labor force status, including unemployment) and establishment (measuring non-farm employment, including hours and earnings by industry). According to the report, unemployment increased to 14.7% in April, and temporary layoffs increased ten-fold to 18.1 million.

Conversely, some industries (including call centers and IT, warehousing and distribution centers, manufacturing and sales, healthcare and finance) are seeing a labor shortage, including management and specialty roles. Facing a serious shortage of employees, leaders struggle to recruit and retain qualified candidates.

Whether you’ve had to cut hours, furlough employees, or fill positions, a speedy business recovery requires the right strategy. Smart leaders focus on productivity. They engage their employees in the development and refinement of processes and systems to improve output.

Productivity Versus Efficiency

Productivity and efficiency are frequently used interchangeably. However, when it comes to business strategy there is a difference. Put simply, productivity is the quantity of work produced. Efficiency, on the other hand, refers to the resources used to produce that work.

Our recent generation of business leaders has focused on efficiency to reduce input and maintain output: doing the same with less. But a speedy business recovery requires doing more with the same: it requires a focus on productivity. This requires careful planning with input from employees, allocating resources appropriately, and measuring productivity and efficiency.

Productivity is measured by the change in output per labor hour over a defined period of time. In most businesses, it is directly tied to performance—at all levels within the organization. Improve performance, improve greater topline growth. What leaders do to improve performance affects productivity.

Productivity: Your Key to Speed

When employees are already pushed to their maximum capacity, how do leaders increase output? They adopt a productivity mindset to improve processes and systems.

Most employees want to be productive. Unfortunately, many are prevented from reaching their capacity because of obstacles created by bureaucracy, old methods, or broken systems. Smart leaders improve productivity by engaging their employees in a bottom-up approach to identify obstacles and inadequate systems.

A survey of 300+ senior executives published by the Harvard Business Review (March, 20017) found that leaders with a productivity mindset show faster growth and higher margins than their industry peers. Leaders who focus on people and processes enable peak performance. Great leaders re-think working environments, processes, and infrastructure.

How to Increase Output in the Wake of a Crisis

Rather than focus on efficiency by reducing staff (and demoralizing employees left to pick up the slack), savvy leaders work with employees to identify ways to increase output. They:

  • Focus on people and processes. Ensure the right people are in the right roles best suited for their strengths and abilities.
  • Inventory routines and workflow. Examine the “why” and effort of each process. Categorize and verify alignment with goals/mission. Identify obstacles, gaps, and redundancies.
  • Remove obstacles. This includes the organizational drag created by bureaucracy or complex organizational structures that (no longer) align with operations or real sources of value.
  • Inspire and motivate. Support autonomy and accountability. Recognize efforts, illustrate how they align with goals and mission, and celebrate small and large victories.  

Our path to a speedy recovery requires a productivity mindset, at all levels within an organization. Most managers know more about collaboration, communication, decision-making and strategic planning than ever before. But managing through a business recovery creates additional pressure: how to increase output in the wake of a crisis.

Highly productive teams and business units develop and commit to:

  • A common purpose: team members shape their common purpose. They understand how their individual and collective actions create value for their clients, the organization, their team, and individually.
  • SMART goals: team goals link to their common purpose, and benchmark achievements are recognized throughout the process to energize performance.  
  • Trust in processes: appreciation of diverse skills, mutual accountability, and access to the resources required to reach goals and build continued commitment.

Trust is created and nurtured with ongoing dialog, honest feedback, and follow-up. This can be a challenge if processes are changing, new teams are forming, and/or team members have shifted to virtual or remote work.

Most of our communication is non-verbal and relies on visual cues. When new team members are from different business units, or even different cultures, strong communication is even more important. Building cohesiveness, commitment to a shared purpose, and trust is critical.

Engage Your Teams

Prepare for the conversation. During a virtual team meeting, explain that you will be sending a confidential email survey of three questions to each member of your team.

Create your survey. Consider using a spreadsheet where you can compile the results, or use a program like SurveyMonkey, where responses can remain anonymous. Your questions should include:

  • On a scale of 1 to 10, how well are we working together as a team?
  • On a scale of 1 to 10, how well do we need to be working together as a team?
  • If you could change two key behaviors to help us close the gap between where we are and where we want to be, which two behaviors should we all try to change?”

Compile the data and calculate the averages for numbers one and two. The “average” team member believes that his/her team is currently at a “5.8" level of effectiveness, but needs to be at an “8.7.”

For question three, notice if there are any themes, and how they align with productivity, goals, purpose, and mission. Prioritize the suggested behavior changes. Which are the two most important?

At your next team meeting, share the scores, suggested behaviors, and the two behaviors you would like the team members to adopt (and why, linking to mission, purpose, and goals.) In addition, ask each team member to choose two behaviors for personal change, to track their progress, and share their results in follow up meetings.

When team members commit to this type of accountability, they focus on their own behaviors. When people are working together toward a common goal, trust and commitment follow. Productivity improves.

Best Practices of Highly Productive Leaders

As a leader, what are you doing to boost your own productivity?

For some leaders, the response is, “productivity of what?” The deeper question becomes, “Do we really want to return to business as before, or, do we want to use this opportunity to pivot?”

This is their time to examine what it is they want to do, and what systems they need in place to complete their objective.

Highly productive leaders develop strategies to think more clearly and achieve greater results. This begins with a clarity and understanding of your values and purpose.

Take a few minutes, consider these questions, and write out your answers:

  • How is your current role tied to your values and purpose?
  • What about the products or services your organization provides?

Whenever you engage with a coworker, client, or business associate, be mindful of your values and purpose. When faced with difficulties, these will be easier to recall.

Update your strengths inventory. Make note of the strengths you have improved:

  • What have you learned?
  • How were you able to do this?

Odds are, overcoming complex, challenging situations allowed you to grow.

Highly productive leaders focus on small victories. They climb huge mountains, one small step at a time. They keep their footing by pausing periodically, acknowledging what they have accomplished, before they resume their ascent.

If you lose your footing, don’t beat yourself up. Choose self-compassion. This not only boosts your well-being and productivity, it helps you build empathy and compassion for others.

Practice positivity. Acknowledge difficulties, barriers, and suffering, and find ways to recharge yourself. Separate fact from fiction, focus on the good, and cultivate gratitude. This is your best practice as a highly productive leader.

Tough Times, Wise Decisions May 2020, Content for Coaches and Consultants

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In a time when “flattening the curve” requires universal participation, when, how, and who to re-open requires tough decisions. Wise business leadership is needed more than ever before.

There’s no shortage of talks, posts, or tweets on our need for wise, capable leaders who pursue the common good; who balance big-picture thinking with next-step management. But predicting outcomes becomes much more complex as systems and people interact in unexpected ways.

We need our leaders to do the right things, in the right way, against the right time frame. The real stand outs can navigate intrinsically complex circumstances, make smart decisions, and inspire others to do the same.

Two challenges commonly surface in complex circumstances: unintended consequences and difficulties in making sense of a situation. Unfortunately, many leaders tend to overestimate the amount of information they can process: humans have cognitive limits. More than ever, leaders need input from others to grasp complexities and determine how they affect other parts of the system.

A leader must be able to keep the big picture in clear view, while attending to all of the small executions that will lead to the right outcomes. They need wisdom.

Wise Leadership Defined

Socrates believed that wisdom is a virtue, acquired by hard work: experience, error, intuition, detachment and critical thinking; and that the truly wise recognize their own limits of knowledge.

Wisdom is also a paradox: based partly on knowledge, shaped by uncertainty; action and inaction; emotion and detachment. Wise leadership reconciles seeming contradictions as part of the process of wisdom, for wisdom is a process.

“Wisdom is not just about maximizing one’s own or someone else’s self-interest, but about balancing various self-interests with the interests of others and of other aspects of the context in which one lives, such as one’s city or country or environment or even God.” ~ Robert J. Sternberg, Wisdom, Intelligence, and Creativity Synthesized (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Wise leadership is a combination of elements, including intelligence, self-awareness, acknowledgement of personal limitations, humility, patience, and emotional resilience. To put it in the simplest terms, wise leadership is the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience and understanding, to make good decisions.

According to Sternberg, “leaders are much more likely to fail because they are unwise or unethical than because they lack knowledge of general intelligence.”

Six Abilities

Professors Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi shared their research on the six abilities of wise leaders in the Harvard Business Review article, “The Big Idea: The Wise Leader.” They found that it isn’t just uncertainty that challenges leaders, rather, it’s leading people to adhere to values and ethics. They point to six essential abilities:

  • In complex situations, wise leaders quickly perceive the true nature of the reality; the underlying issues for people, things, and events taking place now, and projections for future consequences. Their explicit and tacit knowledge (honed by a love for learning), perspective (broadened by open-mindedness and their habit of asking “why?”), and creativity allows them to envision a future before jumping to decisions.
  • Wise leaders practice moral discernment: they make decisions about what is good for the organization and society, and act on it. They strengthen their discernment with:
    • Experience (especially facing adversity and overcoming failure)
    • Adherence to values/ethics (self-awareness of values and ethics, which are modeled in business and organizations)
    • Pursuit of excellence (not to be confused with perfection) 
    • Learning (a breadth and depth of subjects, including history, philosophy, literature, and fine arts.)
  • They enable symbiotic learning by providing opportunities to interact closely with—and between—others; wise leaders develop relationships, and the spaces to nurture them. Today, that may mean more virtual meetings and the development of new groups, teams, and networks, as well as technology skills.
  • Wise leaders use applicable metaphors and stories to communicate their experience and understanding into tacit knowledge that all can understand. Great stories describe relationships (between people, places, times, or things). They don’t have to be long, but the right story, at the right time, can call others to take right action.
  • They nurture wisdom in others through mentoring, apprenticeship, and distributed leadership. Mentoring focuses on learning to achieve competence, proficiency, skill, know-how and wisdom. Apprenticeship focuses on sharing experiences, contexts, and time.
  • Wise leaders bring people together and inspire them to take action. They understand and consider differing points of view, emotions, needs, and the element of timing. Wise leaders embrace the paradoxes of life; they refrain from either/or thinking, and cultivate a both/and mindset.

The Process for Tough Decisions

Simple systems are extremely predictable and require few interactions or interventions. And while complicated systems have many moving parts, their operations are predictable; there are clear patterns. Complex systems may operate in patterned ways, but their interactions are continually changing.

Wise leaders continuously assess and adjust for new data, as well as all of the possible consequences of a change:

  • Identify subject matter experts and resources. A wise leader relies on data, but also ensures that the right questions are being asked, to (and by) the right experts.
  • Collect accurate, verifiable, and reliable information. Recognize interests, goals, and values to create context for the data.
  • Evaluate and annotate findings. While you may be tempted to discard information that may be unreliable, incomplete, biased, etc., save the information with notations for future reference.
  • Create time and space to reflect on the information. Examine it with your mind, gut, and heart, by asking yourself:
    • “What is socially just?”
    • “Who stands to benefit the most?”
    • “Who is most at risk?”
    • “How will this impact the future?”
    • “What are the impacts today?”
    • “What is the right thing to do, right now?”

Sometimes, taking more time before acting is the wisest thing to do. To be sure, action is important. But give yourself time to embrace the elements that make you wise, as well as the paradoxes:

  • Recognize your limits, and ask for help when needed. Act with humility and courage.
  • Acknowledge feelings, practice temperance in expression, and strengthen your emotional resilience.
  • Allow time and space for others, as well as self. Be patient, forgiving, and show mercy.
  • Practice compassion and fairness. View situations as they are, with a dispassionate, clear eye of human nature.
  • Demonstrate your ability to cope with adversity: be brave, persistent, and act with integrity.
  • Embrace ambiguity, practice gratitude, and cultivate hope that more shall be revealed.

The Wisdom of the Crowd

If you have wise subject matter experts, research indicates that their aggregate knowledge will exceed the knowledge of any one individual expert. But there’s a caveat: diversity and process.

As researchers from Duke University found, averaging cancels error when the crowd wisdom is based on two factors:

  • Diversity: your subject matter experts should bring diverse perspectives. For example, one expert may focus on short-term goals, and the other on long-term goals.
  • Process: your subject matter experts should not be influenced by others before sharing their findings.

When making decisions, you’ll also need to decide how much weight you give to their wisdom, as well as yours. This also comes in to play when you can’t find enough qualified subject matter experts, or when there simply isn’t a model or path to follow. That’s when wise leadership is put to the test.

In highly complex systems, when there is information overload or not enough pertinent data and analysis, how do you make high-stakes decisions?

In October 2019, Harvard Business Review author Laura Huang published an interesting article on the topic. According to Huang, it’s important to recognize two factors: what is the level of unknowability, and what is the context.

When there is just not enough information (when the level of unknowability is high), and, when there is not a proven model or schema (when there is not a map or context), you’ll need to use your inner wisdom.

Wisdom of the Inner Crowd

Researchers recently shared their findings on how the wisdom of the inner crowd can boost accuracy of confidence judgments.

“Analytical and simulation results show that irrespective of the type of item, averaging consistently improves confidence judgments, but maximizing is risky…our results suggest that averaging—due to its robustness—should be the default strategy to harness one’s conflicting confidence judgments.” ~ Litvinova, A., Herzog, S. M., Kall, A. A., Pleskac, T. J., & Hertwig, R. “How the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ can boost accuracy of confidence judgments,” Decision, February 2020

These finding suggest that similar to the wisdom of the crowd, averaging yields better results. Of course, navigating through a pandemic is new for most leaders. But, wise leaders are keen observers, have learned how to recognize patterns, and rely on mental models. They challenge themselves to make tough appraisals and learn from the consequences. When it comes time to reflect on the information they’ve gathered and analyzed, they apply the wisdom of the inner crowd.

Wise Leadership and Emodiversity

Are you experiencing brain fog? Or, maybe it’s a combination of brain fog, pierced by a wide range of emotions. This is no surprise; stress can wreak havoc on our cognition and emotions. But take heart: wise leaders benefit from emodiversity.

In the May 2019 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology, researchers published their findings on emotions and wise reasoning. In the past, theories suggested that the downregulation of emotion may lead to better decision making. But new research finds that recognizing and balancing emotions stimulates insights, and better reasoning.

Emotional awareness is key. Knowing what you feel, and how often you experience the feeling, may be more effective than knowing why.

A Wise Leadership Journal

If you aren’t already, keep a journal. Give yourself permission to write your thoughts and feelings for a minimum of five minutes, without any editing: no grammar, spelling, or content corrections. Allow yourself to go longer, if needed.

A journal will also allow you to track your inner crowd. As Dan Ciampa wrote in Harvard Business Review, “The More Senior Your Job Title, the More You Need to Keep a Journal” (July, 2017), learning what is important and what lessons should be learned happens after the fact. It allows for more meaningful, and productive, exploration of alternative solutions.

The Balance of Positive and Negative Emotions

Wise leaders understand that both positive and negative emotions work in the decision making process. Positive emotions open us; they expand our social, physical and cognitive resources. Negative emotions serve to limit our thoughts and behaviors; they help us to focus and act more decisively in times of stress or crisis. But an imbalance can sap our energy and lead to brain fog.

Research conducted by organizational psychologist Marcial Losada, PhD, along with psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, PhD, finds that a 3:1 positivity-to-negativity ratio is ideal for optimal functioning. Wise leaders track their ratio, and when needed, increase positive moments.

To reduce the impact of negative moments, practice mindfulness meditation; observe your thoughts without judgment. If you are getting caught up in negative thinking, try these tips suggested in Fredrickson’s book, Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity and Thrive(Crown Archetype, 2009):

  1. Recognize and counter negative thinking habits (always/never, most/least, internal/external).
  2. Distract yourself from rumination.
  3. Practice mindfulness (observe without judgment).
  4. Limit your exposure to bad news streams.
  5. Avoid gossip and sarcasm, and increase positive feedback to others.
  6. Practice gratitude, and smile more.

Wise leadership envisions the best possible future for everyone. As Stephen S. Hall writes in Wisdom (Random House, 2010),

“In an age of reason, thought will seem like wisdom’s most esteemed companion. In an age of sentiment, emotion will seem like the wisest guide. But when human survival is paramount, social practicality and science are likelier to lead us through to better times.”

How to Cultivate Realistic Hope

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In times of uncertainty, we often turn to the news media, leaders, and experts for answers. Conflicting reports weaken our trust, creating more uncertainty. As more bad news continues to stream in, we turn away.

To distract ourselves from intrusive ruminations, nagging guilt, loss, and trauma, we seek relief. Many of us use distraction techniques: we focus our attention for two minutes on a pleasant memory, image, or even a focus on our breath.

However, some of our distraction behaviors do more harm than good. Often impulsive (and sometimes compulsive) we develop binging behaviors to numb us from our thoughts and feelings. Such behaviors include activities like binge-watching series, compulsive-eating/drinking, or worse. These behaviors further separate us from others, and any real sense of hope.

Instead, we need to ease our emotional pain and prevent the problem from becoming worse. We need to cultivate realistic hope.

Realistic Hope

Realistic hope is not based on the perspective that everything was, is, or will be fine. To the contrary, hope is about a breadth of perspective with real, specific possibilities that call us to action.  

In Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities (Haymarket Books, 2020), Rebecca Solnit writes: “Hope is not a sunny, everything-is-getting-better narrative, though it may be a counter to the everything-is-getting-worse narrative. You could call it an account of complexities and uncertainties, with openings.”

Unrealistic Optimism

Unrealistic optimism, or false hope, is not based on critical thinking. To be sure, there are benefits of being optimistic, but optimism without any real basis or plan to support it is a hollow promise; it is not the same as realistic hope. False hope is not clearly linked to realistic planning for the future.

Hopeful People

Hopeful people understand that what they do matters, even if they do not know how it will matter, or for whom. In times of uncertainty, they embrace the unknown and the space it creates to shape the outcome, individually and collectively. Hopeful people recognize uncertainty, think of new pathways around obstacles, and take action.

Recognize Your Loss, and Arrest Despair

In a time of social-distancing, physical-distancing, isolation, and quarantine, we are at greater risk of loneliness, which has serious implications.

We are wired with a fundamental need to connect with and feel accepted by others. This can explain why some of us are willing to risk the suggested guidelines, rules, and even laws regarding “stay-at-home.” When social-distancing interrupts this need from being met (because of lack of opportunities to maintain or create supportive relationships), it can have a powerful and detrimental effect on our physical and psychological health: loneliness, loss, and despair.

Researchers Louise C. Hawkley, PhD and John T. Cacioppos, PhD, describe loneliness as a distressing feeling equivalent to physical pain. Their study, published in 2010, found that left untended, loneliness has serious consequences for cognition, emotion, behavior, and physical health. Loneliness can even shorten our life expectancy.

Understand Despair

In psychology, despair is the feeling of hopelessness: that things are profoundly wrong and will not change for the better. Despair is one of the most negative and destructive of human affects. During difficult times, despair is common.

Typically, despair dissipates over time as a crisis is resolved. But when a crisis goes on for an extended period of time and despair doesn’t dissipate, it becomes chronic: it impairs our functioning and quality of life. When such despair is profound—when we feel existentially helpless, powerless, and pessimistic about the future—we may be experiencing clinical despair: we feel hopeless about life and the future.

Arrest Despair

Viktor Frankl, an existential psychiatrist and concentration camp survivor, described despair as meaningless suffering, and created a simple formula to identify it: despair equals suffering without meaning: D=S-M. Finding meaning can arrest despair.

For example, recognizing self-defeating behavior and taking steps to correct the behavior can create meaning. Similarly, when clinical despair stems from undiagnosed clinical depression or bipolar disorder, the meaning (or reason) for suffering is identified. Of course, in either example, when despair persists despite treatment, additional support is required.

As C.G. Jung once said, "We cannot change anything unless we accept it."

If we are ignoring, or denying our loneliness, sadness, anxiety, or despair, we are cutting off our true selves, and drifting toward clinical despair and depression. Instead, we must recognize feelings and loss: our circumstances, thoughts, and feelings. This often requires great courage. And you don’t have to do it alone. A qualified coach, social worker, therapist, or doctor can help, and many are now available for video or virtual sessions.

Clinging to false hope, which may serve the valuable purpose of survival for a period of time, ultimately prevents moving past the despair of trauma. Instead, cultivate realistic hope.

How to Cultivate Realistic Hope

In these difficult times, it’s no easy task to balance the reality of the fear, anxiety, and suffering that is occurring, and simultaneously cultivate realistic hope. How do they stay so grounded?

Authors Angela Wilkinson, PhD, and Betty Sue Flowers, PhD write in Realistic Hope: Facing Global Challenges (Amsterdam University Press, 2018) that hope is possible because of our evolved, functioning brain (the frontal cortex communicating with the sub-cortical regions), a perspective or belief about possibility (a space for potential fundamental change and social progress) and a focus on the benefit to public and private good.

As C.R. Snyder writes in The Psychology of Hope: You Can Get There from Here (FreePress 2010), “Hope is the sum of the mental willpower and waypower that you have for your goals.”

Willpower: In this sense, your willpower is your driving force; it is your mental energy that will propel you toward your goal. It is your determination and commitment: your grit. Often times, your willpower is the story you tell yourself, about yourself: your self-talk. A strong willpower sounds like, “I can,” or “I got this,” or even, “let’s try this.” People with a strong willpower are willful: they focus on what they will do, rather than what they won’t do.

To maintain your willpower, pay attention to your self-care. Establish and maintain new routines that foster positive energy and cultivate realistic hope.

Waypower: Your waypower is the course you will take; it is your mental capacity that you will use to reach your goal. Your waypower allows you to adapt and adjust as necessary; in essence, it is your perception of your ability to create thoughtful, flexible, and realistic plans.

If you want to cultivate realistic hope, you need an objective framework of the problem. Expert opinions are critical: unbiased and relevant, in breadth as well as depth.  Empathy and dialog are key to gain perspective.

Second, you need to vision alternative futures, or scenarios, to develop a vision for the future, or goals. Accurate data, analysis, and modeling over time make it realistic.

Goals: Your goals are the outcome that you imagine. Knowing exactly what you want to achieve, and how long it will take, keeps you motivated. Establish smart goals and contingency plans (if/then planning) to maintain momentum. 

Act With Realistic Hope

We are in the midst of a grand transition, facing problems without borders and governments without solutions. But, the good news is that there are efforts underway that offer realistic hope: solutions can be found. In many cases, those involved in finding solutions are international entities, ad hoc groups, non-governmental organizations and individuals. These individuals cultivate realistic hope.

Hopeful people recognize the challenges, their purpose, and a time horizon. They commit to act and complete the process, over and over again. As our knowledge expands, as new stakeholders emerge, and as mind-sets change, the framing of the problems will also change, and relevant scenarios will need modification. Together, we can do this.

What do you think? What are you doing to cultivate realistic hope? What steps are you taking to act with realistic hope?  I’d love to hear from you.

Great Leadership in Times of Crisis

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The men and women in charge of our organizations are now faced with unchartered challenges: leading their organization through a global pandemic. In this time of crisis, most leaders are doing their best to step up and inspire people to do their best. And they’re doing a great job.

One of the challenges is the evolving new normal. Rapidly changing guidelines, mandates, and infrastructure require continual monitoring and adjustments. Leaders are in a constant state of discovery, decision making, designing, and implementation. This requires resilience, collaboration, and great communication.

Those who are able to adapt quickly and wisely are best positioned to lead their organization, and in many cases, their entire nation, in novel ways. Great leadership in a time of crisis will see us through to the other side.

Business continuity management is more important than ever. Based on the conversations I’ve had with leaders, developing, refining, and implementing contingency plans is well underway. With careful attention to employee safety and preparedness, leaders can minimize risk, and in some cases, position themselves for post-crisis growth. Below are a few leadership best practices. Are you taking these steps?  

Legal Obligations

First, and foremost, focus on employee safety. Review policies, and then identify actual practices. (What happens in the field may not be the actual procedures management recommends.) Ensure you have adequate communicable-illness plans and practices in place.

Credible Authorities and Resources

Depending on the size and reach of your organization, these may need to be local, regional, national, and global, and could include CDC, WHO, EUCDPC, Singapore and UK.

Contingency Plans

If you haven’t mapped out or developed contingency plans, take a look at the tools and resources developed by the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), here. While they are designed for Red Cross organizations and volunteers, they offer any leader elements to consider in a pandemic.

Identify a crisis management team with the authority and autonomy to work through bottlenecks. Identify cross-functional alternates in different scenarios to: stabilize supply chain, monitor and test financials, protect the workforce, engage customers, and coordinate communication.

  • Review your absence policies, including when/how employees can return to work. Some employers have been forced to reduce their work force. Review your benefits policies.
  • Empower and equip remote/telecommute work. A member of your crisis-management team should work closely with IT, HR, communications, and facilities to identify resources and requirements for remote workers. If you haven’t already, ask every team leader and manager to identify tasks that can be completed remotely, and who is capable of completing the tasks.
  • Determine measurable performance metrics to improve efficiencies and enhance future change.
  • Identify data-security issues and resolutions.
  • Establish communication protocol. Ensure that employee contact information is up to date, and the crisis-management team has the current information.

Companies in China can teach us a great deal about leadership in a time of crisis. Smart policies, the anticipation and mitigation of operational roadblocks, and most importantly, the care of our employees and clients will help us through.

Communications

Rumors, misinformation, and fear can spread as quickly as a virus. Clear, factual, and reliable communication is vital. A key role for your crisis-management team is the oversight of communications. At a minimum, messages should be reviewed and verified by the team to ensure that they are consistent with policies. Test your process to verify that they will reach all employees, and that all employees are able to have questions answered.

Develop messaging for different scenarios to inform coworkers or third parties about increased risks or exposure, along with a current phone and email contact list by location for health reporting.

Designate a person(s) to promptly notify local public health authorities about confirmed as well as suspected cases of the coronavirus. Ensure your designee is properly trained: while employees may be obligated to disclose contraction of Covid-19, personal health data is protected under HIPAA.

Thoughtful, intentional, and honest communication is a vital strategy to navigate a fast-moving crisis. Avoiding or burying bad news serves no one in the long run. Transparency requires preparation for the “worse before better” reality.

When internal and external clients—your stakeholders—have confidence in your motives and commitment, they’ll respond in kind. The most important catalyst in a time of crisis is a trust in the word of the leader and the actions they take.

As Harvard Novartis Professor Amy C. Edmondson, author of The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (Wiley, 2019) says, “Transparency doesn’t happen without psychological safety: a climate in which people can raise questions, concerns, and ideas without fear of personal repercussion.” Ensure you have a strong, two-way communication system in place as we navigate through this time of crisis.

Virtual Meetings

Virtual meetings are a great tool, even to have those difficult or controversial conversations. As a leader, all participants will look to you to set expectations and boundaries. Model the behavior you would like to see.

  • Prepare, practice, and test.
  • Whenever possible, meet via video, with an option of audio/dial-in for slower bandwidth. Consider having a virtual meeting assistant or facilitator.
  • Send an agenda before the meeting, with all needed materials and instructions. Be clear on the meeting objective, and monitor time and focus.
  • Allow for instruction and if needed, practice time. Include reminders about disabling interrupters, i.e. cell phones, alerts, IMs/pop-ups, and closing any programs or tabs on their computer with sensitive or private information. For any meeting lasting more than 50 minutes, build in breaks.
  • For smaller groups (<20) have all participants introduce themselves by name, role, geographic location (town/city) and surrounding (my home office). During the meeting, ask people by name to contribute. For larger groups (20+), use polls and voting (raise your hand) to encourage engagement. Of course, polling with smaller groups is effective, too, and the data can be captured for later use.
  • Just like your in-person meetings, allow adequate time for questions, and discussion on next-steps: deadlines, roles, and when to expect updates.

Manage Stress and Build Resilience

Building mental resilience requires intention and practice. It’s a skill of noticing our thoughts, un-hooking from those that are unhelpful, and refraining from punishing ourselves for less than helpful thinking (which also begins with noticing). Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a great method to practice this. UMass Memorial Medical Center is just one organization who offers an 8-week online live course.

Guided meditation is also a great option, and there are many Apps available to help. Two of these include Insight Timer, where you can access >25K guided meditations led by some of the most renown leaders, (including Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach, and Sharon Salzberg), and see how many people around the world were also meditating with you; and UCLA Mindful, which offers English and Spanish meditations ranging from 3-19 minutes and work with difficult emotions.  

Some Buddhist communities are also offering virtual, online “sits” to support others with their practice, and remind us of our human connectedness. Trike Daily, The Buddhist Review Tricycle.org, offers a great exercise for leaders: relax the problem solver.

Make Better Decisions

Threats to our well-being, uncertainties, and awareness of our lack of control elevate anxiety, stress, and lead us to make short-sighted decisions. Unwittingly, many of us feed uncertainty by consuming more negative news and rushing to action. Here are three techniques you can use to slow down:

  • Calm your mind. Use a four second breathing technique. Slowly breathe in for four seconds. Hold your breath for four seconds. Slowly exhale for four seconds. Pause for four seconds. Repeat.
  • Rest your eyes; if possible, gently gaze out a window. Give your mind space to unhook from screens, images, and headlines.
  • Find new ways to connect with others. Meaningful connection begins with compassion. The practice of compassion starts by asking, “how can I help this person?” The great paradox is that by opening ourselves with this one question, we actually build mental resilience and manage stress.

Leaders who slow down, deliberate with data and reason, make better decisions. Take the time to read, verify, reflect, and check before making personal and business decisions. A qualified executive coach can help.

Mitigate Anxiety

While it’s important to be transparent in communications, be mindful that anxiety and fear are contagious. When anxiety is elevated for a period of time, it becomes chronic. Fortunately, there are actions leaders can take to mitigate this.

  • Prepare yourself. Before you speak, write, or hit send, take a minute to center yourself. Pause, and breathe.
  • Imagine. What has been the experience of others? What are their challenges and needs? Acknowledge this in your message.
  • Validate. Share information that is credible. Be mindful and clear with your word choices. When you don’t know, say so.
  • Act. Identify the next action step for you and your audience. This provides an opportunity to unite, contribute, and take action, all supportive to a sense of purpose, meaning, and control. Be prepared to answer questions through this process, acknowledging their feelings.

Be Present and Focus on the Now

We are in the midst of the most disruptive crisis since World War II. At that time, rationing, 24-hour manufacturing, and strong supply chains proved to be most effective to “get through.” Today, we rely on business leaders, in the private and non-profit sectors, to set the vision and lead us to the other side.

Even under the best of circumstances, it’s not an easy task. We know from research that stress narrows our focus and compromises decision-making capacity. We act conservatively (which is a good thing), but stress diverts our energy, attention, and creative thinking.

To focus on the now, ask your team:

  • What do we want to accomplish?
  • What did we do yesterday that worked well?
  • What do we need to do today, based on any new information?
  • What do you need from me to accomplish this?

Plan for Later: Think Ahead

Leaders who are able to think ten steps ahead collaborate, partner, and foster innovative solutions. They utilize modularity diversification to protect and insulate units within the larger organization. As circumstances continue to evolve, they remain flexible. Crowdsource designing is the next level of modularity, diversification, and innovate solutions.

Think of the wide range of innovators who recently mobilized to address the serious shortage of critical equipment needed to treat the coronavirus. These designers, engineers, manufacturers, students, doctors and leaders found each other through online messaging platforms, and worked together to build innovative protective gear and ventilators.

Seven Business Models for the Future, And Today

In The Future is Faster Than You Think (Simon & Schuster, 2020), Dr. Peter Diamondis and Steven Kotler predict seven business models that will rule the decade:

  • The Crowd Economy: Developments that leverage the billions of people already online and the billions coming online with 5G expansion. Existing developments include crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, ICOs, leveraged assets, and staff-on-demand. An example of this economy is Airbnb, which doesn’t own the real estate it lists.
  • The Free/Data Economy: In exchange for data about yourself, you are given access to a tool or toy. An example of this is Facebook, Google, and Twitter.
  • The Smartness Economy: Many of these goods and services are referred to as the internet of things, or IoT, which are in essence, existing tools which have become “smart.” For example, smartphones, smart speakers, and autonomous vehicles.
  • Closed-Loop Economy: These waste free systems are also referred to as biomimicry or cradle-to-cradle. An example of this model is The Plastic Bank, where anyone can collect and drop off plastic for compensation, and Plastic Bank sells the plastic for reuse.
  • Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs): Operations are carried out by a set of preprogrammed rules and machinery. For example, a fleet of autonomous taxis with a blockchain-backed smart contracts layer, could run itself 24-7, including driving to the repair shop for maintenance, without any human involved.
  • Multiple World Models: With the growth in augmented and virtual reality, avatars for work and/or play offer increasing opportunities for new businesses. An example of this is Second Life, where players paid for the design of digital clothes and digital houses for their digital avatars.
  • Transformation Economy: This is the next step in an experience economy, where people pay to have their life transformed. Examples of this are Burning Man and CrossFit, where the experience may not be pleasant, but transformative.

While some of these models may seem frivolous during this time of crisis, there are opportunities here. They can address the challenges of prolonged social distancing (multiple world model, transformation economy), the need for sterile delivery (decentralized autonomous organizations) and the strain on our healthcare (crowd economy.)

As a leader, what is your vision for the future? What new behaviors (processes) can/should be implemented in the future? What business models will support your vision? What are you doing, just for today, while simultaneously thinking ten steps ahead?

We will get through this together. Let me know how I can help.

When Your Values Shift

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Everyone knows how important it is to “know yourself,” yet how often do we reflect on why we do what we do? (Or for that matter, what we did?) Do we really understand our motives and values?

Before we even graduate from high school, most of us have participated in interest inventories and career aptitude tests. By the time we graduate from college, our interests, studies, and skills have aligned. We anticipate we’re on a path best suited for our personality, talents, and education.

And yet…most of us don’t recognize the extent of our complexity. Our personal preferences and unique sense of values are buried under layers of expectations and demands. To add to the complexity, our values shift over time.

When we identify as, or claim to be, a specific type of person (kind, caring, and genuine), but our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors indicate otherwise (we are resentful, rude, and just want other people to fall into line), we may be unaware of our true values.   

Of course, we are quick to notice when we see this happen in others. Our perception may be that they are inauthentic, manipulative, or fake; maybe even a hypocrite.

When our own behaviors are incongruent with what we claim to value, many of us have a physical reaction: a twinge, cringe, or moment when our body says, “no!”

But just as common, we learn to ignore these uncomfortable feelings. Eventually, we stop paying attention. We become mistaken about our own identity, unaware of the shift in our values.

This can manifest in a mid-career crisis. Our careers are moving along at a satisfactory pace, and one day we wonder, “How did I end up here?”

How Your Values Shift

In reality, our values are dynamic. With enough time or experience the hierarchy of our values can change. Typically, the shifts occur as a result of:

  • New knowledge
  • Social values and attitudes
  • Personal experience

In a 2015 study, researchers Valdiney V. Gouveia, Kátia C. Vione, Taciano L. Milfont, Ronald Fischer studied more than 36,000 individuals across five geo-social regions and found that regardless of gender, values substantially change through-out our life span.  

Why This Matters

Your values are the underlying foundation of your inspiration, vision, and motivation. They help you set a course to what you believe truly matters; they guide you to purpose and fulfillment. Understanding when and how they shift will help you make adjustments and improvements—in performance, satisfaction, and happiness.

Understand What Drives You

Our ideas of self are molded at a very early age. Parents, care givers, and teachers encourage certain behaviors that help us integrate with our peers. We are encouraged to go-along, to get-along.

Unfortunately, even well intentioned adults can send messages counter to our actual nature or personality type. “You are so good at following the rules,” doesn’t acknowledge your ability (and desire) to question arbitrary or unfair rules.  We develop a limited, if not warped, sense of self.

In reality, we are remarkably complex. Our environment and social context contribute to the actions we take; they influence our values and motivations.  

According to Johnmarshall Reeve, PsyD, in “Understanding Motivation and Emotion,” (Wiley, 2018), “Through our unique experiences, exposures to particular role models, and awareness of cultural expectations, we acquire different goals, values, attitudes, expectations, aspirations, and views of self.”  

What Is Driving You?

All humans have four basic drives that are embedded in our genetic DNA and remain active in us today:

  1. The drive to acquire
  2. The drive to bond
  3. The drive to learn
  4. The drive to defend

These basic drives have helped in our survival as a species. But, what drives us beyond mere survival? How do we go from survive to thrive?

Hierarchy of Values

Based on their research, Drs. Eduard Spranger and Gordon Allport identified a hierarchy of values, when in certain combinations shape our interests and level of satisfaction:

  • Aesthetic:  A drive for balance, harmony, and form
  • Altruistic:  A drive to help others; for humanitarian efforts
  • Economic:  A drive for economic or practical returns
  • Individualistic: A drive to stand out as independent and unique
  • Political: A drive to have influence; to be in control
  • Regulatory:  A drive to establish order, routine, and structure
  • Theoretical:  A drive for knowledge, learning and understanding

Understanding your individual hierarchy of values—how you rate each value, and how they combine—can help you understand what drives you, and how you can go from survive to thrive.

What Are Your Values Today?

At some time in our life, most of us feel the need to assess our values: what is truly important to us. Unfortunately, we often avoid this task; it’s much easier to keep doing what we’re doing. But then something happens that jolts us out of our complacency.

It could be the loss of something (a promotion or position), or someone (a loved one, or respect of a colleague). Or, a more minor event that illuminated something was just not right: new knowledge, understanding, or perspective. It’s time to examine your values.

The most current version of Drs. Allport, Vernon, and Lindzey’s instrument to measure value hierarchy  (IMX Values Index, or VI profile) has been updated with seven dimensions:

  • Aesthetic: Each experience is judged from the standpoint of grace, symmetry, or fit. Contrary to the theoretical dimension, life is seen as a procession of events; each enjoyed for its own sake. Chief interest is in the beauty of life.
  • Altruistic: prizes other persons as ends, and is therefore kind, sympathetic, and unselfish. Contrary to the political dimension, love is itself the only suitable form of human relationship.
  • Economic: interested in what is useful and practical; focused on security and bottom-line results. In some instances he may have regard for the regulatory dimension, but frequently conflicts with other values.
  • Individualistic: seeks to express uniqueness and be granted freedom over actions. Contrary to the political dimension, seeks neither power nor control of others or the environment in general, but rails against subjugation by any external force.
  • Political: interested primarily in power and control, whatever the vocation, and is the most universal and most fundamental of motives. Prizes personal power, influence, and renown.
  • Regulatory: seeks unity. Often described as mystical, yet directed towards achieving structure, order and to be one with they system.
  • Theoretical: interested in the discovery of truth. Divests itself of judgments regarding the beauty or utility of objects, and seeks only to observe, reason, understand and systematize knowledge.

The two highest dimensions are the most inspirational. The middle three are situational: in certain circumstances they might be a factor. The two lowest scoring dimensions are actually de-motivational, and important to note.

A qualified executive coach can help you rate these seven dimensions, and identify the 21 combinations that influence interests and drive behavior.

For example: if you score high for the altruistic dimension, but are average in the economic dimension, you may be inclined to give away your expertise or products, or even compromise on your salary requirements. Knowing this about yourself can help you plan how and when to say “yes.”

And this is just one example. Identifying your values today will help you understand what drives you, what motivates you, and what inspires you. It will help you become more effective in everything you do.

Leadership in the Time of Disruption

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In the past decade, we’ve seen remarkable innovations and extraordinary technological advancements change the way we live, play, and conduct business.

Today, anyone with a smartphone has access to general artificial intelligence. We can easily manage everyday tasks (Google Assistant), send money (Venmo), travel about town (autonomous taxis in some U.S. cities), and answer our doors—from anywhere (Ring).

In the world of sports, racing sailboats have gone from large, single wooden hulls to aerodynamic vessels of flight. Their once canvas sails are now wings that carry the team on two or three small hydro-foils faster than the speed of wind.

Simulators and virtual reality are now a part of learning and training. Organizations have become data-driven cultures, led by Chief Data Officers, who work with data scientists and computers that process hundreds of hypothetical questions and answers.

And incredibly, we’re just getting started.

The most notable innovations are the direct result of disruptors: leaders who changed the game. They transformed existing markets (or created new ones) by focusing on convenience, simplicity, accessibility, or affordability. Disruptive leaders learned to innovate more quickly, cheaply, and with less risk. But this is no easy feat, especially in today’s accelerated environment. For many, disruption causes anxiety, fear, and leads to disruption fatigue.

Ignoring the problem, or worse, feeding the fear, are not real solutions. Leadership in the time of disruption calls for a two-prong approach: improving current product performance and developing new disruptive technology.

In many cases, starting, re-tooling, and scaling a business is easier than ever before. But achieving and maintaining success is another matter. While rapid innovation and new technologies allow for faster speed to market, there are considerable risks and impacts.

Leadership in a time of disruption calls for an examination of mission and vision. It requires a clear understanding of current, as well as potential future disruptors. To succeed, leaders, executives, and managers must lead with careful consideration and mindful intention.  

The Great Paradox

While disruptors are innovators, not all innovators are disruptors. Disruption changes how we think, behave, do business, learn, and live life. Disruptive innovation displaces an existing market, industry, or technology, and produces something new, more efficient, and worthwhile.

Researcher, professor, and author Clayton Christiansen described disruptive innovation as a corporate effort to redefine quality, adopt new technologies, and anticipate customers’ future needs. To put it simply, instead of trying to best their competitors, disruptors change the game.

In The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail(Harvard Business Review Press, 2016), Christiansen shares his research on success sustainability, and the great paradox of two principles taught in business schools: that you should always listen to and respond to the needs of your best customers, and that you should focus on investments of those innovations that promise the highest returns. But according to Christianson, these two principles “sow the seeds of every successful company’s ultimate demise.”

Most sustaining technologies foster improved product performance; they are discontinuous, radical, or incremental, explains Christiansen. Disruptive technologies result in worse product performance—at least in the near-term; they underperform established products in mainstream markets. But, they have other features that a few fringe (and generally new) customers value.

Are we burned-out on the hype?

The word “disruptive” evokes memories of school children unable to self-soothe or stabilize feelings, passionate entrepreneurs sharing their vision, and bosses who are feeling the pressure from their bosses or shareholders.

In an interview with The Guardian, Georgia Institute of Technology Professor Ian Bogost shared with Leigh Alexander, “The big difference between even disruptive innovation and plain disruption is that the former was focused on some improvement to a product or service or sector or community, while the latter is looking first at what it can destroy. Everything is fire and brimstone.”

When Christiansen first used the phrase “disruptive innovation” it evoked possibility, excitement, and hope. Today it signals uncertainty and change. Leadership in the time of disruption requires that leaders address fear, before it takes hold.

When Fear Takes Hold

A fear-based culture is not always easy to spot, at least at first. Indicators to watch for include:

  1. Workers overly focus on daily goals.
  2. Supervisors overly focus on results, infractions, and order
  3. Problems are ignored
  4. Communication is via rumor
  5. Uncertainty and suspicion are status-quo
  6. Stress and illness are common
  7. The blame game (and CYA) run rampant
  8. Collaboration does not exist
  9. Advancement is rare
  10. Team-players are identified by their willingness to support the culture of fear
  11. Mistakes are not tolerated

Certainly, a healthy level of fear is vital for individuals and organizations. However, leaders contribute to a culture of fear by doing nothing; unfortunately, these leaders are often unaware that their leadership is fear-based. Instead of trusting (and inspiring) their colleagues and employees, they employ fear as a means to control. These leaders also create silos within their organization (isolating lines of business, departments, teams, and individuals) and set unrealistic goals and expectations.

Fear-based leaders may have good intentions, but when their own fears are left unaddressed, they manifest into a heightened sense of urgency.

In a recent HBR article, researchers examined what happens when leaders and organizations emphasize urgent action over thoughtful consideration.

In the study, Research: Organizations That Move Fast Really Do Break Things, (HBR 2020), a “move fast and break things” attitude exposes fast-growing organizations to significant risks. Psychologists refer to this tendency as “locomotion goal pursuit.” Organizations who emphasize urgent action over thoughtful consideration are more likely to have unethical decision making.

The researchers found that by offsetting a strong locomotion motivation with a strong assessment motivation, an organization can grow conscientiously.

What Great Leaders Do in Disruptive Times

We’ve moved past the industrial age to the information age, where data, blockchain, and quantum computers may prove to be the great disruptors in every economy, sector, segment, and industry. Understanding the basics of these technologies can help leaders address fears and engage all stakeholders in the development of strategies and tactics for sustainable technologies and disruptive innovations.

Examine your assumptions. What do you know about disruptive innovation? What do your employees know? Here are just a few topics to consider:

Data: Facebook, Google and Twitter now collect 5.6 billion bits of data per day. And in just the first three weeks of February 2020, HBR published 11 articles on the subject of data. How are you using data? Do your employees understand how their data is being collected and used?

Blockchain: a growing list of records that are linked using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data. The data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without alteration of all subsequent blocks, which requires consensus of the network majority. Reuters has created a graphic of this process.

Quantum computers:  a handful of companies have introduced prototype quantum computers. The fundamental component is the quantum bit, or qubit, which can have a value of 0 or 1 at the same time. This allows quantum computers to consider and evaluate many outcomes simultaneously, thereby increasing their calculating power exponentially.

Mission, Values, and a Triple-Bottom Line

Review your mission, values, and understanding of a Triple-Bottom Line.

Twenty-five years ago, John Elkington coined the phrase “Triple Bottom Line.” In 2018, he pointed out the misuse as an accounting framework, where profit remains center stage. In the HBR articleElkington explains, “The TBL wasn’t designed to be just an accounting tool. It was supposed to provoke deeper thinking about capitalism and its future, but many early adopters understood the concept as a balancing act, adopting a trade-off mentality.” The goal of the triple bottom line was to transform a system change; a disruptor to unsustainable sectors and a genetic code for next-generation market solutions. 

Rather than re-distribute wealth, could we pre-distribute it? Could we democratize the way that wealth gets created in the first place? These are just two of the questions Don Tapscott posed in a TEDTalk. “Technology doesn’t create prosperity, people do. But here’s where technology has escaped out of the genie bottle. It’s giving us another opportunity to rewrite the economic power grid and the old order of things, and to solve some of the world’s most difficult problems, if we will it.”

Disruptive Times Call for Compassion, Learning, and Conversations

Fear of overwhelm keeps us from recognizing the feelings (and existence) of others, and often, even our own fears. Ironically, the key to overwhelm is an ongoing practice of compassion.

Practice compassion: Mindfulness teacher Tara Brach, PhD, has developed a great tool leaders can use to practice compassion daily. In her book, Radical Compassion: Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with the Practice of RAIN (Viking, 2019) Brach details a four-step meditation that quickly breaks the grip of fear, judgment, shame, and other difficult emotions:

  1. Recognize what is happening
  2. Allow life to be just as it is
  3. Investigate with a gentle, curious attention
  4. Nurture with loving presence

Grounded in modern brain science, the practice of RAIN helps leaders uncover limiting beliefs, fears, and our tendency to feed a sense of urgency that chokes our creativity.

Support learning: Learning and development is more than teaching employees the knowledge they need to perform the basic requirements of their job, rather, it encompasses a broader process to increase skills and abilities across a variety of contexts.

According to a 2019 employee survey reported by Statista, the top five skills employees need to develop are influencing and negotiating (46%), having difficult conversations, design thinking, leading and managing change, and coaching.

Likewise, effective leaders pursue personal and professional development opportunities to improve their competence, self-awareness, and other-relatedness. They grow in ways that are transformative, not just transactional.

Have the conversations: Recognize and acknowledge fear and uncertainty.

In the recent Oscar winning movie, American Factory, documentary film makers take a thoughtful look at how a Chinese billionaire opened a factory in an abandoned General Motors plant located in Ohio. It is a deeply nuanced view of globalization, the decline of labor and organized labor, and the impact of artificial intelligence through automation. And your employees are talking about it.

Are you engaging in these conversations? How?

Despite all the advances in technology and innovation, organizations succeed because of people.

As USA sailing team skipper Rome Kirby says, “Stuff happens at a pretty high speed. The pace of the game now has changed a lot, so we got to make decisions and communicate at a pretty high pace…when you get it right, and sail well, it’s the team that wins the race.”

That’s why CEO and helmsman Nathan Outteridge brings home the gold medals. He and some of his team mates have sailed together for as much as ten years. According to Outteridge, “The F50 is a one-designed boat, so all the foils, all the rudders, all the wings, everything is the same. The only reason one boat goes faster than another is because of what the people onboard are doing…if each person doesn’t do their role properly, performance suffers.”

Remember: your communications should be logical and consistent with facts and experience. To understand nuances, explore both sides of the coin. While you want to strike an emotional chord, avoid using fear. Instead, address the interest of all stakeholders. A qualified executive coach can help.

Leader Insights Improve Innovation

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As a leader, are you known for your insights?

Consider this: In January 2018, the World Economic Outlook (WEO) reported the broadest synchronized global growth upsurge since 2010, and estimated positive growth through 2020. But in December 2019, they reported the weakest pace since the financial crisis a decade ago. According to the WEO, “rising trade barriers and associated uncertainty weighed on business sentiment and activity globally.”

On January 20, 2020, they reported that despite prominent risks, “global growth may be bottoming out,” suggesting that we are on the cusp of great change. And while many leaders and organizations take a cautious, wait and see approach, great leaders recognize the opportunities for innovation. They think beyond adaptation, drive change, and make significant contributions that shape our future.

Leaders who are known for their insight identify fresh trends and actively prepare new products and services—before a need or problem is even identified. They instill an innovative mindset throughout their organization. Insightful leaders simultaneously improve efficiencies today, and prepare for the demands of tomorrow.

Innovation is not a choice. However, a lack of insight often results in a lack of innovation. Leader insights improve innovation.

Barriers to Insight

Insight is a process. Unfortunately, we often create barriers for insights to occur. We:

  • Over focus on risk management and compliance, and leave little room for creativity and insights.
  • Emphasize efficiency and effort on short-term goals, and discourage insight and innovation.
  • Set unrealistic deadlines that actually inhibit opportunities for insight.
  • Adopt a win-at-all-cost mentality that increases pressure and squelches opportunities for insight.
  • Fail to recognize our own bias, assumptions, blind spots, and leave questions unasked.
  • Fixate on the wrong problem(s) and dive into rabbit holes.

These barriers go beyond a leader and affect the entire culture. Of course, insight and innovation isn’t limited to leaders, executives, research and development personnel, or marketing departments. Cultures that are stuck in status-quo mode or strung-out in a quest for perfection become trapped and paralyzed.

Insight is a Process

The human brain is a marvelous machine, able to generate brilliant innovations seemingly out of thin air. And while intuitive thinking and insight can lead to innovation, they’re not the same. Intuition is the use of patterns already learned; insight is the discovery of new patterns. Unlike routine problem-solving, our insights aren’t conscious or deliberate.

In a November 2019 article for Psychology Today, Dr. Marty Nemko, PhD, describes the process as:

Raw Ingredients => Filtration => Fermentation => Evaluation

As a leader, you deal with a tremendous amount of those raw ingredients: data. It can be useful when appropriately analyzed, but in some cases may prove overwhelming and misleading. In Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights (Public Affairs, First Trade Paper Edition, 2013), Gary A. Klein, PhD describes the process as:

  • New information joins what we already know, and sets the stage for discovery.
  • Our stories frame and organize the details.
  • Insights generate a new narrative: a set of beliefs that are more accurate, comprehensive, and useful.
  • Our insights change our perspective: how we understand, act, see, feel and desire.

Most importantly, insights change what we do next, and what we need to validate new ideas. Innovation is not just about finding a new product or service. Insights create solutions to customers’ problems—even the ones that aren’t yet clear or articulated. Start by asking these six questions:

  • What do underlying trends suggest about possible future states?
  • What would happen if some of these trends converged into a perfect storm?
  • Where is there a small, but growing, trend?
  • What can you learn from analogies and metaphors?
  • What similar situations have companies faced in the past?
  • What can you learn from others’ mistakes and history?

When insightful leaders recognize the need to change, they ensure their business is prepared to innovate, before it’s too late.

Improve Your Leader Insights

When we step back and painstakingly observe a problem, examine perspectives and context, reinterpret the familiar, become aware of unfamiliar and unseen relationships, and ask questions, we can improve our insights.

You can improve epiphany moments with a few key strategies:

  • Be Inquisitive: insightful leaders make a lot of “what if?” inquiries.
  • Make Human Connections: insightful leaders interact with people from diverse backgrounds to access new perspectives.
  • Notice and Observe: insightful leaders are always looking at the world with business radar to detect surprising solutions.
  • Play and Experiment: insightful leaders try new things, in new places, to expose themselves to new experiences.

Identify specific tactics to implement these strategies. For example, alter your environment by changing your office, reversing furniture and items on your desk, or working in a completely different setting. You can also prime your brain for epiphanies with exercise: endorphins trigger positive emotions and creativity, and distance changes perspective.

Try these tactics to improve your leader insights:

  • Mandate R&R for yourself: get ample sleep, take vacations, and disengage. Consider incorporating meditation into your daily routine.
  • Practice gratitude: think about the people, places, and things that bring you joy, and express your gratitude.
  • Daydream: periodically consider your long-range goals, assess your values, and develop plans.
  • Learn something new: start a new hobby, study a different culture, or delve into something completely unrelated to your past experiences.

New information and experiences prime your brain for insight and innovation. Interact with diverse people, ideas, and situations. As you stretch your comfort zone, you’ll expand your curiosity, think abstractly, and identify seemingly remote associations.

Consider working with a qualified executive coach to improve your insights. They can help you identify your assumptions, fixations, or limited perspectives that create barriers to insight.

Use Your Insight to Improve Innovations

Leader insights improve innovation in four distinct steps:

  • Identify opportunities.
  • Develop a framework: organize ideas into plans or pilot projects.
  • Test, assess, and if necessary, make changes.
  • Execute.

Each step requires an open mind, and that you learn from mistakes. Test your ideas, revise when necessary, and have persistence and patience to wait for results.

Identify Opportunities

“Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.” ~ Zig Ziglar

This is the gathering step, when you need a beginner’s mind. Focus on the client, and what may be going on in their mind. This is a basic, three-step process:

  • Identify your target client.
  • Identify problems the client is struggling to solve today. Clarify how your client is using your product or service (it may be different than you think.) Ask your client what they are trying to accomplish.
  • Discover any signals that suggest the client is dissatisfied with the status quo.

Before you jump to solutions, ask “why?” five times in succession. This will help you identify assumptions, underlying issues, and help you get to the heart of the problem. Your “why” questions could be the form of “why?” or “why not?” After your five “why?” questions, move to “what if…?”

When you ask questions in context, using observation, listening, and empathy, you are likely to gain insights on client experiences, and opportunities for innovation.

Develop a Framework

While your idea doesn’t have to be perfect, it must deliver better solutions. Research how other leaders solved similar problems and develop your framework. Ensure that you include short- and long-term:

  • S.M.A.R.T. goals (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-based)
  • Required resources
  • Anticipated revenues
  • S.W.O.T. Analysis (strengths, weaknesses, obstacles, threats)
  • Known (and unknown) assumptions
  • How the solution aligns with your values, mission, and purpose

And remember: most innovators point to failures as their greatest success. It is most likely that your first idea will lead to a better one.

Assess and Test Your Insights

“Innovation is seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.” ~ Dr. Albert, Szent- Györgyi

Make no mistake, leader insights drive change. But improved innovations require resilience and persistence. Tests are the best way to learn about existing and new critical assumptions. You’ll know whether your idea works only after actual implementation.

Sharing and feedback are a critical part of this stage. Fortunately, it’s easier now than ever to get prototypes made and reviewed. As 3-D printing becomes widely available and affordable, this might become even easier and faster.

After test completion, analyze the results. Review your framework and make adjustments based on your learning. Re-test.

Start with a pilot project to minimize resources and maximize potential. Document everything, and remain open for feedback, new information, and adjustments. Remember that a balance between minimizing performance errors and maximizing the flow of ideas and opportunities for improvement will improve insights. If questions arise that can’t be answered, be honest.

Track information that can be used in training, marketing, and reporting. Prepare presentations for executives. Your presentation style and contents will influence your project’s acceptance or rejection, so be meticulous. Lead with “why”, and link to values, mission, and purpose. If necessary, seek help from presentation experts to ensure success.

Remember: Success is never guaranteed, no matter how hard you push or market your innovation. As Thomas Edison said, “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” His greatest creation may have been his invention factory.

Edison’s lab was the world’s first R&D facility, generating more than 400 patents. Rather than focusing on one invention, one field of expertise, or one market, Edison created a setting that enabled his inventors to move easily in and out of separate pools of knowledge, to keep learning new ideas, and to use old ideas in novel situations. Their insights improved innovation.

Positive Progress and the Art of Negotiation

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How much time and attention do you spend negotiating every day?

Think about it: just getting to your work space requires negotiating activities, meals, and space (think nutrition versus convenience, after-school activities, commuter lanes, etc.) At work we negotiate our way through business deals, customer relations, office politics, and career advancements. Such negotiations often require the agility of Captain America, the stamina of Dean Karnazes, and the wisdom of Yoda.

Ask any experienced parent (or listen to the news) and you’ll hear how playing hardball with threats and bluffs simply does not yield positive progress. However, traditional wisdom that points to a win-win strategic formula of trades and compromises is not without challenges. Of course, most of us are not super-heroes or world class athletes. Positive progress requires mastery in the art of negotiation.

What is the Art of Negotiation?

Negotiation is the process of agreement that takes place between individuals or organizations autonomously (by algorithms or machines) or human interaction (verbal or written dialogue). Generally, the objective is to identify common interests and resolve opposing differences. But as authors Michael Wheeler and Jeff Cummings write in The Art of Negotiation: How to Improvise Agreement in a Chaotic World, “agility is the mark of a master negotiator. Yes, preparation is important, but negotiation is a two-way street.”

Negotiations often break down when people focus on their positions, rather than on legitimate interests. The resulting polarization squelches curiosity, creativity, and compassion. This is often seen in positional bargaining, where egos are hooked, relationships become strained, and neither party is satisfied.

For example, you want your children to eat something healthy for breakfast. You offer an orange, a cup of unsweetened steel-cut oats, and a cup of unsweetened almond milk. They counter that they want sweetened cereal and a glass of sweetened juice. You then drop your offer to half-an orange, three bites of the oats, and no less. One of your children counters with two orange sections. This exchange goes on until you meet in the middle.

The problem with this tactic is that the legitimate interests are not addressed, rather, both parties focus on their position and the compromise does not take into account the needs of either party.

What’s Your Negotiation Style?

Most people have a default negotiation style. Two of the most common are hard-bargaining and win-win.

The underlying motivation in the hard-bargaining style is based on a competitive, zero-sum game, that is to say, if one gains, the other loses. With this style of positional bargaining, there is a winner and a loser of limited resources.

In the win-win style, both parties seek to understand underlying interests and values of the other party. This gentler style is common with friends, family, and those who value relationships. Of course, a hard-bargaining, “muscle, might, or deception” style will dominate a gentler style, and ultimately result in a loss for both parties. Alternatively, a principled negotiation style supports both parties equally.

When both parties seek to meet the legitimate, basic interests of both parties using fair standards, mutually satisfying options are identified and result in a sound agreement. Positions, personalities, and egos are separated from the problem or conflict. Mutual respect is demonstrated with direct, honest, and empathetic communication.

The Art of Principled Negotiation

It’s not easy to change habits and disentangle emotions when negotiating. It may be difficult at first to enlist others in the task of working out a wise solution to a shared problem. Your first goal is to find a better way to negotiate.

In the best-selling book Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton outline four elements of principled negotiation:

  1. People: Separate the people from the problem.
  2. Interests: Focus on interests, not positions.
  3. Options: Generate a variety of possibilities before deciding what to do.
  4. Criteria: Insist on a result based on an objective standard.

These four elements require skills in analysis, planning, and discussion.

Analysis: Gather and organize information. Identify the outcome (basic need or want) you wish to achieve. Identify the desired outcome for the other party.

For example, if you are negotiating breakfast with your children, you’ll need to specify exactly what you believe to be indicators of nutrition or health. Is it consistent energy until lunch? You may want your children to eat only unprocessed, unsweetened foods, but their nutritional needs may be met with a balance of unprocessed, minimally processed, and naturally sweetened foods. You also need to know what each child wants. Is it something quick, easy, and sweet? This broader perspective differs from trying to convince both children to eat an orange, a cup of unsweetened steel-cut oats, and a cup of unsweetened almond milk. The focus is on outcomes—not positions or specific foods.

In principled negotiations, you’ll want to consider any people problems, partisan perceptions, and unclear communications as you identify others’ needs. Note the options already on the table (i.e., oranges, steel-cut oats, almond milk, sweetened cereal, sweetened juice), and identify any criteria already suggested as a basis for agreement (taste/pleasure, nutritional value, speed/ease, etc.)

Planning: Only after you have thoroughly analyzed legitimate needs, wants, and desired outcomes, generate ideas and decide what to do. Consider these questions:

  1. When people problems arise, how will they be managed?
  2. What are your most important interests (needs, wants)?
  3. What are some realistic objectives?
  4. What are some additional options?
  5. What criteria will be used in decision making?

Discussion:  This is an opportunity to practice curiosity without judgement. Through two-sided, open dialog, both parties explore differences in perception, feelings of frustration and anger, and other factors. Remember to examine all four of the elements: people, interests, options, and criteria. Each side should come to understand the other’s interests. Both can then jointly generate options that are mutually advantageous and seek agreement on objective standards for resolving opposition.

Using our breakfast example, one child may want to skip the meal entirely, while the other wants something sweet. Negotiating a compromise requires family members to examine options that satisfy the group. Ultimately, you may need to create two separate agreements.

This method of reaching agreement considers all parties’ interests and allows you to reach a joint decision without the high costs of positional bargaining.

But what happens when positive progress fails?

When Negotiations Stall

Negotiating is about coping with complexity. To succeed, negotiators must be prepared, but more importantly, they must be prepared to cope with rapid change and mistakes. Agility and curiosity is the best approach.

We often act out of habit, without question. To be sure, it’s difficult to admit our common human condition of thinking we know more than we do. The ego protects itself by gravitating toward feelings of certainty. In that state of mind we’re unlikely to ask questions.

Instead, practice being a good questioner. Recognize your own feelings of discomfort or self-consciousness with not knowing. Ask naïve questions. A beginner’s mind is open to all possibilities while an expert’s is not.

When people do ask questions, they’re often relying on assumptions and biases. Even if you don’t yet know "how," it’s important to ask "why" and "what if" questions. And remember to listen well.

Negotiation is the exploration of the scope of the issues, the best means for resolution, and the nature of your relationship with counterparts. When negotiations stall, you might just need to go back to the exploration stage.

When Negotiations Fail

Negotiations often fail when we cut corners, rush to solutions, and accept proposed solutions—even when our best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA) would have been better. Similarly, failure also occurs when a solution can’t be implemented.

Remember our breakfast example? If you had reached a point of exasperation and said to your children, “eat what I made, or go hungry,” a stalemate would likely ensue. And it’s really no surprise.

According to the Harvard Law School Program on Negotiation, negotiations fail when strong emotions come in to play. Instead of objectively discussing a proposed solution, comparing it to your BATNA, and making a rational choice, threats are issued.

While some critics argue that a BATNA encourages positional bargaining, others point to the objectivity and assurance an alternative provides. A well thought out BATNA, or estimated alternatives to a negotiated agreement (EATNA), increases your confidence, identifies your alternatives, and helps you to recognize subpar and best solutions.

The art of negotiation requires preparation and agility. With practice, you’ll see positive progress while maintaining positive relationships during the process.

Brain Gender: Different, Yet Equal?

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Is there really such a thing as brain gender?

In March 2019, researchers attempted to answer this question based on an MRI database of 490 men and 575 women. What they reported was relative to the structural differences between men and women:

“By using the designed 3D PCNN algorithm, we confirmed that the gender-related differences exist in the whole-brain FA images as well as in each specific brain regions. These gender-related brain structural differences might be related to gender differences in cognition, emotional control as well as neurological disorders.”

Their summary supports the theory that there are differences between a male and female brain, and that these differences determine our thinking, feeling, behavior, and psychological health. But, notice the keyword they used: “might.”

Unfortunately, they are not alone. For decades scientists have been pointing to similar findings and analysis, commonly accepted as fact. Consider the differences molecular biologist Dr. John Media describes in Brain Rules (Pear Press, 2008):

  • Men have a bigger amygdala, a structure that processes emotions.
  • The male brain produces serotonin (a neurotransmitter that regulates mood, learning and memory, among other functions) more rapidly than the female brain.
  • Women have larger connectors in the corpus callosum, which links the brain’s right and left hemispheres. (The left hemisphere is thought to be the primary source of neural information for routine tasks. The right deals with novelty and innovation, including experiences and data that are less structured. The right hemisphere is more image-based and operates in the realm of metaphors.)

Research is important: it influences the way we teach, work, and relate to one another. But there are big problems with brain gender theories and studies. They frequently support gender stereotypes, create barriers, and limit individuals from reaching their potential.

The Power of Brain Gender Stereotype

It has been widely accepted that men and women differ in how they manage people and give orders. Studies pointed to how women soften their demands and statements, whereas men are more direct and unapologetic. For example, women use phrases like:

  • “Don’t you think?” (after presenting an idea)
  • “If you don’t mind?” (following a demand)
  • “This may be a crazy idea, but…” (preceding a suggestion)

Is this nature, or nurture?

Many women are culturally conditioned to encourage harmony in relationships, as evidenced by softened demands, hedged statements, and a more tentative communication style. But tentative communication doesn’t mean a woman actually feels tentative or lacks confidence. Similarly, more direct communication, as seen with men and some women, doesn’t mean a person is arrogant, bossy, or feels superior. These are learned communication styles: a matter of nurture.

The amygdala governs many emotional responses, as well as our ability to remember them. After experiencing a traumatic event, the female amygdala communicates with the left brain hemisphere. The opposite occurs in men: their amygdala communicates with the right hemisphere.

It’s been widely reported that women remember the emotional details of an event, while men recall the ultimate outcome. Furthermore, women use both hemispheres when speaking and processing verbal information, while men primarily use one. These facts are broadly accepted as matters of nature.

But as Cordelia Fine, PhD writes, “Our intellects are not prisoners of our genders or our genes, and those who claim otherwise are merely coating old-fashioned stereotypes with a veneer of scientific credibility.”

Recognize Neurosexism

The term “neurosexism,” coined by Fine, refers to a flawed belief that results from the intersection of neuroscience and sexism. The belief is based on the assumption that gender differences perceived in character and behavior are caused by biological differences between male and female brains. We now have growing evidence and research that points to self-fulfilling prophecies.

Gina Rippon, PhD, and author of The Gendered Brain (Vintage Digital, 2019), has analyzed gender-related differences in the brain. What she has found is that when the differences in brain size are accounted for, differences in key structures disappear. As Rippon explains in an interview with theguardian.com:

“The brain is a rule scavenger and it picks up its rules from the outside world. The rules will change how the brain works and how someone behaves. The ‘gender gap’ becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

The Greater Power of Neuroplasticity

We now know that the brain continues to grow well into our later years through a process called “neuroplasticity.” Specifically, brain activity associated with a given function can be transferred to a different location, the proportion of grey matter can change, and synapses may strengthen or weaken over time. Neuroplasticity accommodates learning by producing new neurons, cells that help transfer information. 

“By the close of the 20th century, the brain had come to be envisaged as mutable across the whole of life, open to environmental influences, damaged by insults, and nourished and even reshaped by stimulation—in a word, plastic.”~ Sociologist Nikolas Rose and graduate student Joelle M. Abi-Rached, Neuro: The New Brain Sciences and the Management of the Mind(Princeton University Press, 2013)

Neuroplasticity demonstrates that brain cells can change in response to intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Not only is it possible to change our brain, we can change the way we look at brains, our nature, and our potential. Even as adults, our brains continually change by the work we do, the hobbies we have, our diet, exercise, thought patterns, and attitudes.

Research from Georgia State University suggests that society’s expectations about gender roles alter the human brain at the cellular level. And while our brain may want to quickly sift, sort, label, and file to conserve energy, humans aren’t that binary. We are misguided when we try to classify people into two distinct, many times opposite, and often disconnected forms of masculine and feminine.

The next time you hear someone make the argument that women are more emotional, consider this caution from Rippon, “A gendered world shapes everything, from educational policy and social hierarchies to relationships, self-identity, wellbeing and mental health.”

What’s most important is to recognize the stories we tell: to each other, and to ourselves. Are we building bridges for positive change? How are we encouraging each other, and ourselves, to grow, collaborate, and achieve, individually and together?

The Workplace Bully

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Despite what we have learned over the past two decades, the workplace bully remains a key problem for leaders and managers. The experts¾academics, management consultants, industrial psychologists¾all report an increase in bullying. And it’s not limited by demographics, tax brackets, or titles: bullying is increasing in cubicles, manufacturing plants, and even executive suites.

According to a 2017 National Survey, 61% of Americans are aware of abusive conduct in the workplace. This includes 19% of Americans who are bullied and another 19% who witness it, totaling an estimated 60.4 million Americans. Examples of the bullying are much more apparent via news outlets, social media, and the like.

For organizations and individuals, the costs are staggering. Some estimates exceed $150,000/bully/year. This costs employers and insurers $250 billion annually for direct employee health care expenses, turnover and re-training expenses, accidents related to stress-induced fatigue, litigation and settlements, and resistance to top-down change initiatives.

Traditionally, experts recommend that those bullied document the events, calculate the costs, and present these to the employer with a request to remove the bully. Unfortunately, the reported success rate for this approach is only 22.3%. The best approach for individuals and organizations is prevention: protect your employees with policies that enforce zero tolerance for workplace bullying and model the behavior.

Recognize Bullying, Harassment, and Aggression

In today’s culture, workplace bullying is defined as unwelcome behavior that occurs over a period of time and is meant to harm someone who feels powerless to respond.

According to the official website of the U.S. government, stopbullying.gov:

“Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior…that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time.

In order to be considered bullying, the behavior must be aggressive and include:

  • An Imbalance of Power: …such as physical strength, access to embarrassing information, or popularity—to control or harm others. Power imbalances can change over time and in different situations, even if they involve the same people.
  • Repetition: Bullying behaviors happen more than once or have the potential to happen more than once.

Bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.”

Generally speaking, bullying in the workplace goes largely unrecognized by employers, but great leaders and managers watch and listen for the signs:

  • Changes in employee behavior (withdrawn, absent; agitated, frustrated)
  • Individual pitting or competition
  • Blaming, or taking undeserved credit
  • Gossip, mockery, jokes, or other forms of humiliation
  • Cliques, alliances, or teams, that are not inclusive and supportive that lead to shifts, or redistribution of responsibilities, tasks or assignments
  • Spying, interfering, obstructing, poaching, undermining, or sabotaging

Aggression may involve a single incident, while bullying involves repetition and patterns of behavior. It is often subtle and hard to put one’s finger on. Bottom line, workplace bullies undermine an individual’s right to dignity at work.

Understand the Risks

While workplace bullies are likely to target peers, bullying crosses all levels of organizations, from the top down and from the bottom up. A 2019 Study suggests that stressful situations increase the risk of exposure to workplace bullying.

According to the recent study, A Risk Factor for Exposure to Workplace Bullying,

“Employees reporting a higher degree of imbalance between efforts and rewards (i.e. who are under-rewarded in comparison to their efforts) have a higher likelihood to be a target of bullying. The perceived injustice may lead employees to engage in norm-breaking behavior and also signal low social standing to others, thereby potentially eliciting negative behaviors from others.”

Other risk factors include:

  • Major organizational changes (mergers, restructuring, new technology, or re-tooling)
  • Staff/resource shortages
  • Poor communication (silos, fragmentation, and one-way communication)
  • Lack of policies
  • Interpersonal conflicts
  • Increased goals/demands

Left unchecked, bullying can become status-quo for an organization, creating a bully culture and a spiral of abuse.

Bully Culture

A bully culture is created when bullying becomes accepted as part of the workplace culture. According to author Tim Field and founder of bullyonline.org, there are several different types of workplace bullies, and distinctions between corporate, organizational, and institutional bullying:

Organizational bullying: when an organization struggles to adapt to changing markets, reduced income, cuts in budgets, imposed expectations, and other external pressures. [short-term occurrences]

Corporate bullying: when an employer abuses employees with impunity especially where the law is weak and jobs are scarce. Examples include: coercing employees, unfair dismissal, denial of benefits, spying/monitoring, creating competition between employees, encouraging fabrication of colleague complaints, etc.

Institutional bullying: when bullying becomes entrenched and accepted as part of the culture. Examples include: people are moved, permanent roles are replaced by short-term contracts on less favorable terms with little alternative but to accept; workloads increase, schedules change, roles change, career progression paths are blocked or terminated, etc., all without consultation.

Threat Assessment

Violence in the workplace is not uncommon: in 2017, assaults resulted in 18,400 injuries and 458 fatalities, according to the National Safety Council. While healthcare workers, service providers, and education workers report more violence than other industries, it can happen anywhere. Training to recognize signs of a workplace bully can help. Many industries have also adopted a threat assessment process to prevent violence. The American National Standards Institute endorsed the use of such teams in colleges in 2010 and workplaces in 2011.

Threat Assessment Process

The threat assessment process involves three functions: identify, assess, and manage. Threat assessment is different from the more established practice of violence-risk assessment, which attempts to predict an individual’s capacity to generally react to situations violently. Instead, threat assessment aims to interrupt people on a pathway to commit violence.

Forensic clinical psychologist Dewey Cornell, Ph.D., describes threat assessment for American Psychological Association in public health terms: prevention, not prediction:

“Just as seatbelts and speed limits prevent injuries without predicting who will crash a car, and restrictions on cigarette sales reduce lung cancer deaths without pinpointing who will get the disease, threat assessments aim to prevent violence without profiling potential attackers. We don’t intervene because we predict someone is dangerous, we want to intervene because they’re troubled or there’s conflict or people are worried about them. Prevention becomes a bonus or a secondary gain from dealing with the underlying issue."

How it works:

  • Identify. Authorities identify threats. To do that, people need to know when, how and where to report concerns.
  • Assess. Gather and evaluate information from multiple sources to better understand if the person is planning violence. That could involve security professionals, supervisors, or human resources managers talking to the person of concern, his or her peers and supervisors, as well as looking to social media sites. Authorities may also analyze the subject’s current situation. They ask: Has the subject recently lost a job, gone through a divorce, or filed for bankruptcy? How has he or she handled adversity in the past? Investigators ascertain whether or not the person of concern has a motive, a target, and the organizational skills to carry out an attack. Can he or she get a weapon and use it?
  • Manage. More often than not, an assessment reveals a manageable underlying issue such as bullying, anxiety, or depression that mental health professionals are well trained to handle.

According to Cornell, "We found in case after case, with a systematic, careful approach focused on the problem that stimulated the threat, the threat can go away and the concern about violence diminishes. Every threat is really a symptom of a problem that someone can’t resolve."

It is imperative for leaders and managers to recognize the signs of a workplace bully and address issues before violence erupts.

Correct a Bully Problem

Psychologists have typically looked at violence from an individual perspective, such as who might be likely to commit violent acts, however, they need to dispel the myths and identify the organizational factors that may lead someone to bully in the workplace.

Dispel the Myths

  • Not at my work
  • It’s a fact of life (and we can’t stop it)

The truth is 80% of people studied in 2016 had experienced cyberbullying in the workplace, according to the University of Sheffield and Nottingham University. But there are things that individuals and organizations can do to correct a bully problem. The system, or the organization, is responsible for a psychologically healthy environment. Correct a bully problem by addressing organizational issues:

  • Train employees on how to respond to bullying, how to communicate with difficult people, and other interpersonal training programs.
  • Examine your corporate culture. Check with the human resources department for complaints of unfair treatment or stress and disability claims. Look for patterns within a department.
  • Evaluate your anti-bullying policies, procedures, and processes. Ensure there is an effective and supportive system in place for reporting difficult interpersonal issues.
  • Provide adequate coaching or counseling for victims and offenders. One of the most crucial aspects of creating a healthy workplace is what a company does when it finds a problem employee or manager. The instigator should be made aware that the behavior is inappropriate and not given further responsibility over others. To do so would be to institutionalize the inappropriate behavior.
  • Set clear examples and limits about appropriate behavior at work. Enforce standards and policies in a positive way, early on.
  • Mitigate stress. Certainly, managers do not have control over all the variables that may trigger stress and negativity, but when people perceive a fair workplace, they don’t act out. Provide a sense of employment security, a feeling that it is possible to move within the organization as change occurs. Employees also feel they are trusted, respected, treated with dignity, and given some control over their jobs.

Practicing respect in the workplace and eliminating bullying changes a whole company. Production and efficiency goes up, morale improves, and profits soar. Research indicates that even psychologically unhealthy people are much less likely to engage in violence in a healthy work organization.

Prevent Workplace Bullies

There is no federal anti-bullying legislation in the United States, however, 30 states have introduced workplace anti-bullying bills in recent years, and businesses in California are required to train supervisors on how to identify abusive conduct. But even without protection under federal or state law*, bully behavior can be prevented and prohibited with employer policies and practices.

Don Philpott, a former senior correspondent for Reuters and editor of International Homeland Security Journal suggests a five-step process for understanding and preventing workplace violence in The Workplace Violence Prevention Handbook, (Bernan Press, 2019). This approach can also be used to prevent workplace bullies from causing further harm to individuals and organizations:

  • Understand
  • Detect
  • Defuse and protect
  • Assess and contain
  • Prevent

Anti-bully Policies and Practices

What are your anti-bullying policies and practices? How do they prevent bullying? Ensure there is an effective and supportive system in place for reporting difficult interpersonal issues.

Attorney Jessica Westerman suggests that employers:

  • Create an inclusive culture: prioritize inclusivity.
  • Survey all employees (anonymously) to identify problems.
  • Tailor policies and procedures in response to survey findings.
  • Establish clear anti-bullying policies, and communicate via writing in all languages used in organization.
  • Conduct workplace civility training to promote respect for all.
  • Conduct bystander intervention training to empower co-workers to intervene and create a sense of collective responsibility.
  • Establish and implement clear and simple procedures to report incidents and maintain employee’s confidentiality.

Key to preventing workplace bullying is the knowledge and belief that such incidents can be promptly reported, heard, and investigated, and that workplace bullies will be held accountable. Therefore, it is imperative that leaders create and adopt policies and codes of conduct that address respect in the workplace and bullying.

* Bullying is actionable under federal law when the basis for it is tied to a protected category, such as color, national origin, race, religion, sex, age, disability and genetic information. If bullying amounts to some other civil or criminal wrong, such as assault or battery, it could amount to a claim under state law.