Future-Ready Leadership – Enlightened Business

Is it important to be a future-ready leader? Re-skill or learn 3Q skills that help you develop a new relationship with change that takes you forward faster and better. A new relationship that inspires the best in yourself and people. Will this new age of innovation usher in a new age of enlightened business where collaboration, innovation, and purpose-driven organizations thrive? Will you be ready?

Enjoy questions and answers around this topic. I think that the test of good information is that it is evergreen, and I believe with all my heart and my mind that the points discussed are more important AND relevant than they were in 2012 when I was interviewed by Dr. Amit Nagpal when you read excerpts from this interview. WHAT do YOU think? What do you agree with? Disagree with? What would you like to learn more about? Enjoy the Q & A and share your opinion on the blog!

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Dr. Amit: Tell us how we can create enlightened businesses. How can workplaces become more passion oriented?
Irene: Enlightened businesses will develop employee engagement through training, coaching, and initiatives that drive improved engagement and passion. Yes, workplaces must become more passion oriented, in that the workers, the managers, and the leaders must all be engaged and moving forward. We have a new generation that seeks meaning in their work, and we must have recognition in the workplace that meaningful work and employee engagement is critical.

Dr. Amit: What are the 3 most important points for 21st-century leadership?
Irene: Mission, Vision and Empowerment/Engagement

Dr. Amit: How do we ensure that our experiences do not become our baggage?
Irene: I think that the only way to ensure that our experience does not become our baggage is related to consciousness and perspective. Desire to grow, to learn, to evolve, to share and contribute fuel our potential. And, our ability to learn to see even the most difficult challenges we have faced as learning experiences that can not only take us forward but help us grow in ways we never thought possible, is critical. Instead of asking why is this happening to me, or getting stuck in the past, we must focus on what pearls of wisdom and experience we can take from the past, on learning that can help us create a better present and future.

Dr. Amit: Tell us about your REACH philosophy?
Irene: Effective leadership and communication are all about: Redirecting Empowering Actualizing Communicating and Harvesting.This is also the focus of great coaching. Let me explain
Great leadership and communication mean redirecting one’s efforts and attention and initiatives, actualizing potential, developing enhanced communication and collaboration (engagement) and harvesting the results.

Dr. Amit: How can we tap into collective intelligence?
Irene: I think there are many ways to tap into collective intelligence, many layers…However; in terms of organizations, the best way to tap into collective intelligence is to make learning part of the culture. I think that as we also see the global marketplace really expand, there will be a natural evolution of our collective intelligence as success is dependent upon transforming me to we. We must learn to work collaboratively, learn faster and do more for each other. In many ways, this has already started to happen.
Peter Senge spoke about the learning organization decades ago. What he referenced in the Fifth Discipline is still critical today. A successful organization is a learning organization, and today that means tapping into the collective intelligence through culture and initiatives that improve the learning ability of the organization and its employees.

Dr. Amit Nagpal: Irene, Tell us something about 3Q edge.
Irene Becker: The 3Q Edge™ refers to three critical areas of strength that I believe are important to life and leadership in the 21st Century.Areas of strength that can be developed/built using not only our potential but the challenges we face as catalysts for positive growth. Q1 IQ-Intellectual capacity under stress Q2 Emotional Intelligence Q3 Spiritual Quotient-our alignment to our highest power, our greatest values.

Click here to read the full interview

Anything else about Future-Ready Leadership. You Betcha!

Click here to read last week’s post: 7 Ways to Develop Future-Ready Leaders
Click here to read How Leadership is Changing in Today’s World John Mattone-Irene Becker

Irene Becker | Just Coach irene@justcoachit.com

7 Ways to Develop Future Ready Leaders

How can you build a better, stronger business in a marketplace where change, challenges, and hyper-competition will continue to accelerate? Develop future ready, 3Q leaders who adapt, evolve, collaborate and grow at the speed of change.

Enjoy the following infographic and the accompanying article on seven powerful ways to help your business, your organization survive and thrive in disruptive times.

Step 1. Systematize!

Align your business strategy with objectives and make sure that your financial/business reporting systems AND the systems you use to monitor hiring/training/rehiring/talent optimization, as well as suspect, prospect and strategic partnership pipelines are well oiled and working. Make empowerment, engagement, financial and business accountability real. Your horizon can change in a bleep, being prepared means an alignment of strategy, objectives and real-time information and a 360-degree snapshot of each area of business importance!

Step 2. Build Your 3Q Leadership Edge | Your Advantage at the Speed of change

Build three critical areas of strength that are modeled by your leadership, honed by your management, taught to your employees and used to reach, engage and satisfy your clients, prospects and the communities you serve. 3Q Leadership Strengths are built by optimizing strengths and learning how to USE changes, stressors, and failures to build and optimize your potential. Counterintuitive, yes, but it is the way to develop future-ready leaders!

IDEATION Q1: Ideation, strategic thought, focus on what counts, ability to learn-relearn.

EMOTION Q2: Emotional Intelligence: Communication, collaboration, resiliency, risk tolerance

INTEGRITY Q3: Integrity of Purpose, Communication & Action: Values, integrity and the using intrinsic motivators as anchors. Optimize, humanize, monetize with ideation, emotion, and integrity.

Step 3. Get the Info You Need, Go to the Source

The best sources of information are the employees who are at the front lines of your business actively dealing with your clients. Do you get regular input from employees at the front line? Have you established a great system of vertical and horizontal communication, of employee engagement and participation? Do you have a system of surveying and engaging current clients, of reaching out to find out what they like, what they need and how you can help in a greater way. Do you have a social media program (internal, external or both) that is meeting your growing needs and objectives? The human bond, the human relationship whether planted and cared for person to person or through social media channels is the most important bond you have.

Step 4. Develop a Community of Purpose

Business sustainability and your attractiveness factor rely upon shared values and objectives. What are the values and business objectives that your company lives and breathes? Are you using your values, your objectives, the integrity of your purpose and commitment to all constituents (employees, clients, prospects, strategic partners, stakeholders, the actual and virtual communities you serve) to build a strong community of purpose?

Step 5. Don’t Just Train — Retain and Grow Skills (Reskill)!

The best training in the world helps, but it is not enough. Training that sticks is training that is accompanied by coaching, or a form of follow-up to make the training stick. Cookie-cutter sells, but if you want to train and retain it is critical to find not only a high integrity, excellent provider who understands your needs, goals, and objectives but a person or organization that will go the extra mile by providing the collateral support you need to make the training stick!

Step 6. Master MBWA

Peter Drucker coined the term: Management by Wandering Around decades ago; and while command and control leaders often ascribe this to taking a stroll through the general office and peaking in cubes to make sure everyone is working, MBWA is an exercise is humanization, in reaching out to the people who work for you and developing rapport. Success is a human factor, and it begins with the people you lead and manage. Do they know you? Do they like you? Do they trust you? If you can answer yes to all three questions, the imperative for MBWA is still critical because you need to maintain employee relationships in disruptive times where rampant disengagement is a workplace pandemic.

Step 7. Do More Good Work

Purpose equals profit on a multiplicity of levels. Put your great company, products, and services in the limelight. Give back in a way that differentiates your company. Feed the souls of your people and your community. Find a new way to involve more of your staff in a CSR initiative, or find a community project that a department or business unit can champion. Pick a charity, cause or community development project and partner with them! Show your community that you care and they will care back!

Yes, your business is all about creating value for others, and doing so in disruptive times means getting clear about what really matters. Corporate governance and financial management are bedrocks, but they will not generate business; they will not fill your pocketbook without a value proposition that hits the heart and soul of your clients, your prospects and furthermore engages new strategic partners and alliances as well as the community you serve, and the digital community that follows you.
© Irene Becker, 2019

6 Ways to Build Constructive Discontent-A 21C Superpower

Do you want to communicate and collaborate across boundaries? Improve leadership and life results? Learn to watch your emotions without judgment or reaction while focusing on your true/most important goals/objectives. Pie in the sky? Think again, I have done it and my clients have done it for 14+years. You too can achieve similar results by developing a new perspective and skill set (“constructive discontent” that takes you forward stronger, happier and faster. The proof is in the coaching. Developing constructive discontent may be the most powerful thing you can do because it is a 21st C superpower!

I believe passionately in constructive discontent as a critical learned skill that can change lives in a multiplicity of ways. Coaching leadership teams/healthcare professionals many years ago led me to doing a certification in coaching emotional intelligence, consulting and to developing my 3Q philosophy and model. Anything else? Yes, my personal life, career experiences and fascination with all things “neuro” compelled me to find a way to lead, succeed and reduce toxic stress in very difficult, challenging circumstances.

Here are 6 ways to start building a 21C superpower: Constructive Discontent. Read more about 3Q life and leadership skills-building your 3Q edge.

1. Expect change to be stressful but know that you can use them to move forward smarter, faster and happier. Part of accommodating change is doing what you can to get additional help or support, using effective delegation, dedicating daily time to recharge, repurpose and reinvigorate. Find effective ways of putting your brain into an alpha state during the day will help you develop mindfulness, increased focus on what is important and is terrific at lessening stress…

⇨ Here is a quick 2-3-minute exercise I call THE PAUSE that is easy to learn and really effective.

2. Understand and limit crisis orientation. Our brains are automatically set to go into fight or flight in reaction to fear. We live in a world where we are surrounded by negativity, fear, change, and fear of change. Learn to understand when you are going into fight or flight mode so that you can move past the 90-second window of reaction and respond rather than react or flee.

⇨ Develop your ability to move past fight or flight, because you can retrain your brain to refocus while not moving to fight or flight so that you will respond and NOT react.

3. Be gentle with yourself. Get rid of the negative self-talk, the should have, would haves. Notice any signs of stress in your body. Apply self-compassion.

⇨ Take a few moments to breathe deeply because it is impossible to maintain the same level of stress, anxiety or tension after breathing deeply.

4. Resist negativity because it will not take you forward. Develop positive habits of thought, positive coping styles that will allow you to build constructive discontent. Take positive steps to alleviate the pressures, the stressors you can do something about.

⇨ Establish personal boundaries and priorities that work for you not against you. Offset pressures with time for relaxation and activities that bring you pleasure.

5. Develop habits of thought that will help shift your perspective and discover new options. We are social animals, you need social relationships and you need ME time to just reflect and reboot!

⇨ Eliminate burnout factors by strengthening meaningful relationships with others and meaningful time with yourself.|

6. Develop flexibility by simply identifying one rigid pattern of behaviour/coping and turn it around. Observe yourself for one day. Notice how you react to compliments, to demands, to angry co-workers. Develop greater self-awareness (not judgment/ self-judgment) and learn to become the participant observer.

⇨ Pick a habitual or rigid pattern of behavior and turn it around in small consistent ways. Each small step repeated consistently is a power step forward.

Develop constructive discontent, build your 3Q edge before the next change, challenge or negative stressors nips at your heels! Purpose, meaning, contribution are the drivers that build our best selves, best work, best organizations; they are drivers that can be elusive without developing constructive discontent because the velocity of change, challenges, competition will continue to grow, as will the opportunity to transform what is into what CAN be in our lives, workplaces, and world.

⇨ QUESTIONS FOR YOU: How is reactivity impacting your work, your life or the lives of those you lead, work for or love? Are you ready to improve communication and collaboration? Do you want to turn reactivity around? What difference would doing so make in your life? I welcome your comments and or questions on the blog!