Category: Leadership

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Leaders, here are 3 ways to grow, and inspire others to keep growing

Aligned Momentum - Mastery Mindsets
Mastery Mindsets are critical to business vibrancy

When I wrote the book The Pivot: Orchestrating Extraordinary Business Momentum, I was somewhat surprised when after boiling down all the possible indicators of what makes a leader successful in leading a vibrant business, and achieving Aligned Momentum, there were just six (listed at the end of this article).

Mastery Mindsets is the second key indicator in the first group of three, which indicate a readiness for brilliant execution of strategy. Your business cannot be vibrant, and you and all those in your organization cannot be nimble, without the openness, curiosity, courage, integrity and grit to continue to grow. Continued growth is the path of mastery.

You may be wondering how “vibrant business” is defined. I define it as:

A vibrant business commands the highest valuation, stays ahead of the competition, and is a great place to work.
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Want a Vibrant Business? Gain Clarity (Get Clear & Be Clear)

Get clear and be clear. As a leader if you do anything very well, be a master of communication so that everyone is clear and aligned toward strategic objectives.

Want people to be both aligned and engaged? Be clear in a way that connects what they desire for themselves to what the business needs from them in their role.

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Reflecting on Holidays. How can holidays foster collaboration?

To foster collaboration in any workplace, it is critical to recognize that not every person celebrates the same holidays and even if two people do celebrate the same holiday it is done often in different ways.

What might you do to show that you truly care to understand another person’s point of view, and to have the authentic curiosity to learn more about how their point of view came about?

On holidays of any nation, and every day, let’s be grateful that we can choose what to believe and how to BE.

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3 unintended consequences from not speaking out when your gut says it’s wrong

The Pivot
Create a culture where every person feels safe to speak out

It’s subtle. Yet it is powerful. That is: The internal pull to do what fits in – what doesn’t stir things up – because speaking out would be too uncomfortable. What is uncomfortable feels risky.

Yet by not speaking up you are also taking a risk, and perhaps a bigger risk than if you spoke up.

Every time we choose we are telling our brains that this is what we want.

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Want to reach your desired destination? Be focused & nimble

To keep momentum and reach your desired destination… be focused & nimble.

Focus is important. “You get what you focus on,” which in a business is typically what you measure. Keeping track of progress and outcomes helps with focus.

But you also must stay nimble – open, aware, and adaptable – to move around obstacles or to adjust a course. Sometimes what is being measured is not leading toward longer term strategic objectives. And sometimes strategy needs to change.

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Take Your Best Next Steps

Best Next Steps
Best Next Steps for Extraordinary Momentum

This first post in the Extraordinary Momentum Series offers 5 key ideas to help you get clear about best next steps, and how you can help others get clear about their best next steps.

When you are nimble, you are aware and open. You rarely get blocked or stuck. If you do – if someone, something, or even your own mindset or limiting beliefs – get in your way, you have what it takes to move around, over, under, through.

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Empower others to initiate change. Leaders orchestrate.

Employee Engagement-41pct Disengaged

Those of you who know me or are getting to know me… understand that I am all about business vibrancy. In my terms, that translates to a nimble organization, continuously building its business value, and a great place to work. An organization with these traits has what I call “Aligned Momentum,” which I show in the visual above this post and write about in my book (you can find an excerpt here).

For over 20 years the average results from employee engagement surveys have shown a rate of disengagement at over 30%. Aon’s recent 2017 Trends in Global Employee Engagement reports that 41% of employees are disengaged and feel undervalued.

What this reflects, at least in part, is a lack of empowering employees to initiate change – a critical step in a Pivot toward Aligned Momentum.

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As a leader you can’t change a person but you can change their context.

Culture and Brilliant Execution
You Can Create a Workplace Context Where People Thrive, and Execute Brilliantly

A critical part of a leader’s role is to build others up. Great leaders are highly skilled at this. Good leaders sometimes give up because they are not yet skilled in communicating in a way that empowers and inspires others. This is a skill worth developing.

“You cannot change a person, but you can change their context.”

~Lori Michele Leavitt, The Pivot: Orchestrating Extraordinary Business Momentum

You can create a safe place in which you and others become aware of how you each see the world. You can adjust how you communicate so that there is understanding of what you say, in the way you intended it, and that you care.

My intention is to speak to leaders, developing leaders and those who support leaders. My intention in sharing this video is not political (given our country’s turmoil from miscommunications and hate, I need to make clear that I am not speaking directly to this). Please watch and listen to JFK in the video below, perhaps more than once, and consider how your own communications might combine power and caring, as he does:

Continue reading “As a leader you can’t change a person but you can change their context.”