San Francisco Bay Area Executive Coaching

Leadership 2023: A Shift to Self-Employment?

Leadership 2023:
A Shift to Self-Employment?

Is self-employment right for you? Is 2023 the best time to start your own business?

Questions like these are common right now. And the answer is: definitely, maybe.

Many leaders, executives, and managers secretly wish that they were self-employed. When they examine past career choices, future opportunities, and the reality that time is finite, they open the window to options and opportunities.

Regardless of the type of business, self-employment isn’t for everyone. It requires passion, know how, and opportunity. It requires strategy and great timing. And it takes resources.

To be sure, there are many pros and cons to consider:

• A very rapid pandemic recovery reduced US unemployment from 10.2% (mid-2020) to 3.7% (November 2022). How will you identify and secure needed employees?
• Ongoing pandemic impacts, including those to global economies. In anticipation of inflation (or recession), some services spending will be reduced in 2023. Is your ideal client a business, consumer, or mix?
• While many home offices, technology, and skills were improved over the past two years, some supply and demand issues linger. What do you need to “open shop” and fulfill commitments?
• US consumer confidence declined in November 2022, however, it is about the same as 2006 – 2007, 2015, and the short-term business conditions outlook improved. Would a partnership (or collaboration) be a better option to reduce risk? Maybe more importantly, if you don’t offer your service or solution, who will?

Start Smart

The shift to self-employment can be the most rewarding accomplishment and pathway to success there ever was. But, ask anyone who has ventured out on their own, and they’ll tell you tales of blood, sweat, and tears shed. If you’ve got a novel, great idea, it won’t take long before others are nipping on your heels. It’s important to start right: start smart.

Ask yourself:

• What steps must I take to transition to entrepreneurship?
• Can I give myself permission to succeed, or fail?
• How does fear keep me in a reactive stance, constrained by outmoded routines?
• Am I content to live partially, or am I ready and willing to explore new ways of thinking and feeling?
• Can I gather the energy needed to realize my unlived potential?
• How can I take one small step?

Hone Your Value Proposition

Begin with a value-proposition: a simple, memorable statement about what you do, and why you do it. Your value proposition describes the functional and emotional benefits of your company and brand. Functional benefits are linked to specific product features, while emotional benefits refer to positive feelings that customers experience when using your products and services.

For example, the functional benefit of a gardening tool could be the efficient removal of lawn weeds, but the emotional benefit could be its ease of use by people with knee ailments. Value propositions are not necessarily about offering the cheapest products. They are about convincing customers that they are getting value for their money.

A value proposition can be created in four steps:

Step 1: Know your customer

Your customer is a business person with quite a large house, who likes the "meditative feeling" of cutting his own lawn, but gets bored by the job when it takes too long.  He's looking for a good quality of cut, for the job to be done quickly and enjoyably.

Step 2: Know your product or idea

The product is a ride-on mower with a 25 horsepower (powerful) engine and 45 inch (wide) cutting blades.

Step 3: Know your competitors

The mower goes faster and cuts wider than the competition.

Step 4: Distill the customer-oriented proposition

"Our mower cuts your grass in 50% of the time of 'big brand' mowers in its class. And it leaves the lawn looking beautiful too!"

Craft Your Business Positioning Statement

Your business positioning statement flows from your value proposition. It should describe why customers should use one product over another.

For example, a small bakery's positioning statement could be its multigrain breads and custom-designed cakes that appeal to customers who are looking for flavorful and creative products that are different from the standard mass-produced items at big-box grocery stores. Correct positioning could determine market-share gains and profitability. In this case, the bakery is trying to position its products in the market segment that includes customers who want high-quality, high-priced goods. If it tries to compete solely on price, it may not survive because bigger companies can use their buying power to drive down input costs.

Positioning statements focus on the most relevant benefit and points of competitive differentiation that are meaningful to the persona:

1. Audience (persona type/niche market)
2. Product
3. Category
4. Differentiator
5. Key customer benefit
6. Think "Why?" and answer the customer’s question of WIFM

Be prepared to modify your positioning statements to respond to changes in the business environment. 

Memorize Your Personal Positioning Statement

Your personal positioning statement flows from your value propositions and business positioning statement. It describes why customers should choose you over someone else.

For example, your personal positioning statement could include how you have helped other clients and appeal to prospects who are looking for similar results (or have similar problems).  Based on your niche market values, personal positioning statements focus on the most relevant benefit of working with you versus your competitors.

Try this basic template, and fill in the blanks:

For ____________________ (your audience/niche market/persona type),
I am the ____________________ (your specialty or category of service)
with the unique combination of ________________ (your differentiator)
that can help you ____________________ (key customer benefit/the “why”/WIFM answer).

These tools also help to keep your vision alive. They are reminders of what you do, and why you do it. Most importantly, they prepare you to answer the question: “what do you do?”

Unleash Your Inner Entrepreneur

Leaders and executives often make great entrepreneurs. After all, many have grown through the ranks in an organization, and understand what it takes to succeed in business:

1. Facilitator
2. Teacher
3. Pragmatist
4. Motivator
5. Visionary
6. Mystic (magnetism)

As an entrepreneur, you’ll move through the ranks. Knowing which aren’t a good fit—and knowing what you don’t know—allows you to focus your time, energy, and attention on areas where you excel.

Generally speaking, your passion will stem from your knowledge or experience with the technical aspects of your business: the first three ranks. Successful entrepreneurship requires a solid understanding of logistics, including resources, supply chains, and production, as well as marketing, finance, and everything in between.

As you take on more responsibility (and grow your business), the role of facilitator, teacher, and pragmatist can be taught to others, delegated, or hired out. Your role will shift to motivator as you encourage others in their performance.

As a visionary, you’ll share your ideas, identify possibilities and opportunities, and make connections others may miss. Even without a team yet in place, you’ll be called on to communicate your vision and inspire action from others: creditors, investors, and clients. This requires social intelligence, charisma, and magnetism; it requires the mastery of mystic.

The Mastery of Mystique

Mystique is a transformational, rather than transactional, quality. It affects our internal—not external—state. The charismatic entrepreneur changes the way we feel about ourselves, our values, and our beliefs. Our behavior and performance are therefore influenced on a deeper level.

Consider your formative life experiences. It’s not about what happened to you, but how you responded. For example, if something traumatic raised your self-awareness; if it caused you to question, reflect, gain insight, and ignite your passion, share this with others.

In challenging times, charismatic entrepreneurs can unite a group and inspire focus, more so than any other force.

Serendipity, Self-Employment, and Success

Self-employment isn’t for everyone. It requires passion, know how, and opportunity. It requires strategy and great timing. And it takes grit. Successful entrepreneurs use their grit to:

• Anticipate that obstacles are inevitable and find a way around them.
• Develop their abilities by finding solutions to setbacks.
• Build willpower by using it like a muscle—anticipating when they’re vulnerable, avoiding temptations, and preparing contingency plans and coping strategies.

Successful entrepreneurs focus on what they will do, rather than what they won’t do—a tactic that fosters positive energy. They know success depends on adapting to challenges and persisting, even when they’re ready to wave the white flag. And, they are open to opportunities in surprising places.

Successful entrepreneurs see what others don’t; they notice the un-noticed, and expect the unexpected. Those who are successfully self-employed turn these noticed, unexpected observations into opportunities. Some call it serendipity.

As Christian Busch, PhD, writes in The Serendipity Mindset (Riverhead Books, 2020), “[Serendipity] demands a conscious effort to prompt and leverage those moments when apparently unconnected ideas or events come together in front of you to form a new pattern.” To put it simply, they connect the dots.

According to Busch, there are three types of serendipity: Archimedes, Post-it, and Thunderbolt.

1. Archimedes Serendipity: When a solution to a known problem comes from an unexpected place. This type of serendipity is common for natural entrepreneurs.
2. Post-it Serendipity: When a solution to a known problem is stumbled upon by exploring a different and/or unrecognized problem.
3. Thunderbolt Serendipity: When a solution to an unknown problem presents itself.

Why Is This Important?

As successful entrepreneurs will tell you, no matter how strong your passion or know-how, success depends on your openness to opportunity, and how well you have trained yourself to recognize opportunities around you. You see, serendipitous entrepreneurs connect the dots between the small things and life’s bigger problems. 

Busch writes, “Learn to spot serendipity.” Recognize opportunities in things, places, and with others. Connect the dots and recognize patterns.

One of the biggest hurdles in this process is confidence, or lack thereof. Sometimes, our need for perfectionism (and fear of failure) holds us back. But when we accept that failure is better than no attempt, we can let go of limitations, and open to a world of possibilities.

Some successful entrepreneurs intuitively cultivate serendipity. They are open to the unexpected, and able to proactively lead during times of uncertainty.

Lead with Love

Maynard

Dr. Maynard Brusman
Consulting Psychologist & Executive Coach

Trusted Leadership Advisor

Emotional intelligence and Mindful Leadership Consultant

San Francisco Bay Area and Beyond!

www.workingresources.com

[email protected]

415-546-1252

Top 5 Clifton Strengths – Maximizer, Learner, Ideation, Strategic, Individualization 

VIA Character Strengths – Love of Learning, Social Intelligence, Bravery, Gratitude, Appreciation of Beauty&Excellence



I coach emotionally intelligent and mindful leaders to cultivate trust and full engagement in a purpose-driven culture who produce results.

Pause, Breathe, Be Present, Love, Open to Possibility, Cultivate a Meaningful Life
Live Deeply Into Your Magnificence and Our Shared Humanity in the Present Moment

Confrontations that Create a Win-Win-Win

Confrontations that Create a Win-Win-Win

What has been your recent experience with confrontations? When did you last initiate one?

Confronting someone for their behavior today is no easy feat, especially when emotions are easily triggered and opinions vary. We often become quick to challenge their logic (What were you thinking?!), credibility (Where did you learn to…?!), and personality (Who do you think you are?!)

At the other end of the spectrum, we avoid confrontations; we don’t want to make matters worse. But, when we say nothing, we perpetuate the problem (and in some cases, become co-conspirators.) Great leaders and managers understand this.

When expectations are left unmet—including protocol infractions, civil disobedience, illegal behavior and everything in between—frustration, lack of accountability, and broken relationships become the norm.

What if we could make a positive difference?

Most of us are not highly skilled in win-win-win confrontation. We feel stuck between a rock and a hard place. Instead, we can learn and practice positive confrontations: address the issue in a way that supports the wellbeing of self, others, and the relationship between the two.

Calculating Risks and Rewards in Confrontations

Conflicts can range from disappointments (i.e. someone not meeting our expectations) to micro aggressions, to outright dangerous and/or illegal behavior. And yet, we are often hesitant to say anything. Why is that?

Our willingness to speak up changes based on what’s at stake.  In general, most of our daily conflicts boil down to:

1. Priority or value differences
2. Behavior or communication style differences
3. Inequality (or perceived inequality)

In Crucial Accountability (McGraw-Hill Education, 2013), authors Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler share their 30+ years study on confrontations.  When they asked people why they remained (or became) silent in the presence of an injustice or violation of a social norm, the majority of responses were a version of, “it’s not worth it.” The perception was, they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, make a difference.

But here’s the thing: when a positive example of a successful confrontation is witnessed, people speak up.

According to the authors, “Provide individuals who have been disappointed or poorly treated with something to say and a way to say it that leads to the result they want, and their mental math changes. Better yet, their behavior changes. People now believe it’s in their best interest to step up to violated promises, broken commitments, and bad behavior. And they do.”

Avoid the Blame Game

One of the biggest obstacles in confronting someone is the blame game.

Consider the observation made by comedian George Carlin: anyone driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone driving faster than you is a maniac. It usually includes the question: “What is the matter with them?!”

When we ask ourselves, “What would lead a rational, reasonable, and reliable person to do that?” we move from a stance of blame to inquiry. We create a safer space for an actual exchange of ideas: the foundation for positive confrontations. When people feel safe, you can talk about almost anything.

People feel safe when they believe that:

• They are respected as human beings; there is or could be mutual respect for the other
• There is regard for their goals; there is or could be mutual purpose

Even in situations when you don’t know the other person, you send a message about your level of respect and regard. Positive confrontations require that you set the right tone from the offset. To pro-actively avoid or counter defensiveness, include the use of contrasting statements.

Let’s say, for example, you encounter someone at work who is not using protective safety gear, even though it is a company policy.

Lead the conversation with a contrast, such as: “I don’t want you to think that I am criticizing you, your work, or your judgment. I just want to talk about our company policy regarding protective safety gear, and how we can best support it.” Then, you can state the policy, why it is important to you, and close with a sincere question, such as, “What do you think?”  

Listen to their response, and re-state or re-phrase what you heard them say (in positive terms and language), and ask them to commit to following company policy. Acknowledging their perspective (their thoughts, experience, feelings, and understanding) can go a long way toward mutual support, commitment, and adherence to policy.

Positive Accountability

Positive accountability is the conversation that takes place after someone has made a commitment, and failed to keep it. Like positive confrontations, they often start with the question, “Why?” They become positive accountability confrontations when both parties are able and willing to comply to a solution, and the relationship is strengthened.

Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, and Switzler outlined a three-step process to address bad behavior, un-kept promises, or broken commitments that resulted in unmet expectations: CPR.

• Content: identify the action or event that took place (the here and now).
  1. Unbundle the problem. Identify all the elements.
  2. Identify what is bothering you the most.
  3. Be concise: communicate the issue in one (simple) sentence. It could be as simple as, “When you X, I feel Y, therefore Z.”
     For example: “When you don’t wear a mask, I feel scared for your health and mine, therefore I would like you to wear a mask in this shared space.”
     
     
• Pattern: when the action or event recurs, address the pattern over time.
  1. Point out the number of times this event took place, what you had agreed to, and how the repeated actions/events affect predictability, respect, and trust. This is different than pointing out the action or event.  It requires honesty, and respect.
  2. For example: “It is my understanding that we agreed you would wear a mask in this shared space, and this is the second time I have seen you not wearing one. I am concerned that I can’t count on you to keep your word.”
     
     
• Relationship: how this affects your relationship.
  1. Explore the intentions and consequences with compassionate curiosity (for you, them, and others).
  2. Share your understanding (about the content or pattern), and how you feel about the other person.
  3. Share your objectives: what you want to happen in the future for you, them, and your relationship.
  4. For example: “We agreed you would wear a mask in this shared space, and this is the third time I have seen you not wearing one. This pattern is putting a strain on our relationship, and I am concerned about that. I want us to be able to trust each other, and to act with mutual respect.”

Be Aware of Your Stories

It’s easy to become hooked by our emotions, especially when the stakes are higher. That’s why it’s so important to be aware of the stories we tell ourselves before, during, and after a confrontation.

When we tell ourselves that the other person (or organization) is the villain, we often end-up telling ourselves we are the victim, and we engage our amygdala: that reptilian brain responsible for fight, flight, or freeze.

But when we recognize and address our own fears, we are better prepared for a more neutral, compassionate, curious conversation that yields a win-win-win. Curiosity is a key component that helps us find common ground.

Best Practices

Confrontation and holding others accountable is not always easy (or end with the best results!) But if you want to grow personally and professionally, you need to be willing to engage in conflict.

• Stay in the moment. If you find yourself focusing on, or getting caught in emotions, breathe. Label the emotion: there is fear; there is anxiety; there is anger. If you need to, take a break. Pause the conversation, provide a neutral reason (I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I need to take a quick break; can I get you anything?) Resume the conversation as promised.
• Listen more than you talk. The majority of your speaking time may be best spent asking questions to gain better understanding. Get out of the way so you can hear what’s important. Pay attention to cues. Notice body language, and what is not being said.
• Anticipate you will have a positive outcome. There is a big difference between being liked, and being respected. Conflict is an opportunity to repair and strengthen valuable relationships. It also helps you identify malignant relationships, and when absolutely necessary, remove yourself from the relationship with minimal damage.
• Create a sense of co-presence when confronting someone, especially when doing so virtually. Know your technology capabilities and limits. Use video, and keep your environment free from distraction. While it may feel awkward at first, practice gazing into the camera when speaking, and alternate the camera and view of the other person when they are speaking.
• Be specific. Use the CPR method to outline your discussion, specific examples, and keep you on track. When initiating the invitation to meet, use a contrasting statement to set the tone. Review what you agreed to, and establish next steps.
• Follow-up to strengthen the relationship. After a confrontation, you may be inclined to avoid that situation or person again. But positive confrontations that create a win-win-win rely on pro-active follow-up that strengthen the relationship. Acknowledge the positive confrontation. Send a thank-you note (or email): for their time, engagement, and honesty. Summarize the conversation and individual and collective goals. If appropriate, reiterate your agreement and next steps.
• Reach out to build the relationship. Send an email, text, or even better, call on an unrelated matter. This reinforces the message that you care about them, and your relationship.

Dr. Maynard Brusman
Consulting Psychologist & Executive Coach
Trusted Leadership Advisor
Emotional intelligence and Mindful Leadership Consultant
San Francisco Bay Area and Beyond!
www.workingresources.com
[email protected]
415-546-1252

Top 5 Clifton Strengths – Maximizer, Learner, Ideation, Strategic, Individualization 
VIA Character Strengths – Love of Learning, Social Intelligence, Bravery, Gratitude, Appreciation of Beauty&Excellence



I coach emotionally intelligent and mindful leaders to cultivate trust and full engagement in a purpose-driven culture who produce results.

Pause, Breathe, Be Present, Love, Open to Possibility, Cultivate a Meaningful Life
Live Deeply Into Your Magnificence and Our Shared Humanity in the Present Moment

Channel Stress for Peak Performance

Channel Stress for Peak Performance

As a leader, how do you channel stress? How do you use stress to your advantage?  

More than ever, it’s critical that we take care of our bodies and mind. After all, our success depends on being able to function in a healthy, productive manner.

So when your flight, fight, freeze, or fawn response is triggered, how do you respond? How do you signal to your body when you are in real danger, and when you are experiencing stress?

The term “stress” is overused and often misunderstood, as it’s bandied about to describe both cause and effect:

• Cause: “There’s a lot of stress at work these days.”
• Effect: “I’m so stressed that I can’t think straight.”

It’s interesting to note that while neuroscience has taught us a great deal about stress, we cannot always distinguish between the psychological state of stress and the physiological response to it.

What is clear is that if we’re in a chronic state of high-level stress, emotional strain leads to physical consequences. The body responds with anxiety and depression, as well as high blood pressure, heart problems and cancer. Chronic stress eats away at the brain’s connective tissue.

We can’t completely eliminate stress. But, we can better manage our body’s natural responses to stress. We can take control, ground ourselves, and even improve our brain’s ability to function.

The Science

Severe stress activates the “emergency phase,” commonly known as the fight-or-flight response. It’s a complex physiological reaction that marshals resources to mobilize the body and brain to peak performance. Fortunately, it engraves the memory so we can avoid this stressor in the future.

Our ingrained reaction is essentially a three-step process:

1. Recognize the danger.
2. Fuel the reaction.
3. Remember the event for future reference.

Unfortunately, any amount of stress triggers neurological systems that manage attention, energy, and memory. Moreover, we can find ourselves in a constant state of stress. You see, the mind is so powerful that we can set off a stress response just by imagining ourselves in a threatening situation. It’s time to take good care and ground ourselves.

Grounded is a state of being when you’re feeling your emotions and you’re aware of your present moment experience. Being grounded also means that you’re feeling responsible for your safety and well-being. Grounding is an effective therapeutic approach for managing stress, anxiety, and improving overall mental health.

Stress and Your Autonomic Nervous System

The human body is pretty amazing. Not only can most of us choose if, when, where, how, and why to use it, there are systems that automatically work for us. Our autonomic nervous system (ANS) regulates our breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, and many other functions that allow us to survive.

The traditional view of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) is that of a two-part system:

1. Sympathetic nervous system (SNS), which is more activating, and can be triggered by stress to fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. The burst of cortisol may cause our hands to sweat, voice to shake, and stomach to clinch as our pulse rate and blood pressure rise. These are the physical manifestations of anxiety.
2. Parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which counter-balances our SNS and supports health, growth, and restoration. When our brain believes we are safe, we slow down and our systems reboot.

The Vagus Nerve

Our vagus nerve (pneumogastric nerve) is difficult to track, but we know that it is the longest nerve in the ANS. It extends throughout our thorax (esophagus, trachea, heart, and lungs; respiration and circulation) to the abdomen (stomach, pancreas, liver, kidneys, small intestine, and portion of large intestine; digestion and elimination). The vagus nerve can be very powerful, especially when we are feeling stress:

1. It can trigger the parasympathetic response.
2. Communicates from the brain to the body and from the body to the brain.

Dr. J. Eric Vance, MD, writes in Psychiatric Times (May 2018) that we are in a constant state of surveillance for risk, safety, threats, and opportunities to respond. He refers to this process as “neuroception.” Fortunately, we can practice calming techniques that send a signal from our body to our brain that we are safe.

Activate Your Parasympathetic Response

Your parasympathetic response (PNS) is your body’s way of returning to rest or calm. Think of it like this: the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) works to stimulate fight, flight, freeze, or fawn—ways to keep us alive when in danger. The parasympathetic response system is our parachute out of danger: this system regulates our emotions in stressful situations.

Fortunately, there are ways we can strengthen our parachutes:

1. Practice deep-breathing (engage vagal tone). Your vagal tone is a measurement of your heart rate variability when practicing slow, deep breathing. A stronger vagal tone leads to better blood sugar regulation, heart health, and digestion; a reduction in migraines; and greater emotional stability and resilience. Lower vagal tone is associated with mood instability, depression, PTSD, diabetes, chronic fatigue syndrome, cognitive impairment, and inflammation. Fortunately, deep, slow breathing can increase your vagal tone and trigger parasympathetic response.
   1. To determine your vagal tone, find your pulse. Notice any change as you slowly breathe in and out. If it increases as you breathe in and decreases as you breathe out, you have a stronger vagal tone.
   2. To strengthen your vagal tone, practice slow, deep-breathing.
      
      
2. Soften the eyes/gaze (use peripheral vision). Softening the gaze, or focus, relaxes nerves in and around the eyes. This often occurs naturally when you are lost in thought or daydream. Conversely, when your SNS has been triggered you may experience tunnel vision. When we use peripheral vision, we signal the brain and trigger the PNS.
   1. To soften your gaze, squeeze and relax your eyes. Expand your vision to the sides: notice what is at the outer edges of your vision.
      
      
3. Valsalva maneuver (increase chest cavity pressure). This practice can trigger the heart to slow down.
   1. To practice this, bear down to compress your stomach to your pelvic floor. Alternatively, you can close your mouth, pinch your nose, and try to exhale as you would to alleviate ear pressure. My favorite practice is to breathe in slowly for five second, hold the breath while bearing down, and then slowing exhaling. I do this once or twice, then breathe normally for 30 seconds, and repeat the cycle.

Channel Your Stress

Not all stress is bad. When we can mindfully engage in the three-step process to recognize, fuel, and remember, stress becomes a building block for wisdom. If we can avoid panic, fear, or pessimism, stress can help us achieve peak performance.

This is not always easy, especially for intelligent, creative leaders who can overthink themselves into a frenzy. But remember: stressful challenges allow us to grow and learn when we employ active coping methods and move out of pessimism, fear, and retreat. Just as the mind can affect the body, the body can affect the mind.

Most people know that when they exercise, they feel better—but they cannot explain the connection. They assume they’re burning off stress, reducing muscle tension or boosting endorphins, all of which are true. There’s more to it than that.

It’s hard to remember that our bodies and brains were built to move. Our brains need physical activity and stimulation. We need to exert more energy than “keyboard calisthenics” allows.

Exercise is crucial to the way we think and feel. It:

• Cues the building blocks of learning in our brains
• Improves mood
• Lowers stress and anxiety
• Improves our ability to pay attention, focus, and concentrate
• Helps stave off the deleterious effects of hormonal changes

Exercise increases levels of serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine—key neurotransmitters that traffic in thoughts and emotions. People with low levels often suffer from clinical depression and stress, which can erode the connections among the brain’s billions of nerve cells. Chronic depression actually shrinks certain areas of the brain.

Conversely, exercise unleashes a cascade of neurotransmitters and growth factors that can reverse this process. This is why active coping is so important in our stress-filled workdays.

Get Physical

Along with developing and practicing grounding techniques, channel your stress with physical activities:

• Take 10-minute walks to move, stretch, and relieve stress. If possible, change locations: go outside your normal workspace to change your scenery.
• With doctor approval, try squats, pushups, or other types of intense activity for 60 – 90 second intervals. Ideally, your weekly total exercise should accumulate to 150 minutes of aerobic activity and target (strengthen) major muscle groups at least twice.
• Identifying physical activities that you enjoy, alone or with others, can help you channel stress, and set SMART goals: a tool that will help you and not add to your stress.

A qualified coach or therapist can help you develop and practice grounding techniques and set SMART goals for peak performance.

Hiring Top Talent

Get the Right People on Your Talent Bus

As a leader, how do you get the right people on your bus?

While the U.S. unemployment rate declined to 3.9% in December 2021, many managers and leaders feel an increasing urgency to fill open positions. And it’s understandable: short-staffed teams are at greater risk for disengagement, errors, and burnout. So, it’s not uncommon to see new-hire incentives including signing bonuses, flex work schedules, and childcare grants.

Unfortunately, filling open positions with the wrong person can make matters worse. When this topic comes up with leaders and managers, I hear about the impact to efficiency and productivity, client trust, and the triple-bottom line.

Instead of hiring the wrong person, great leaders improve their recruitment efforts, discernment in talent selection, and development (and support) of their existing talent pool.

The Pressure to Hire

Even in the best of times, getting the right people on the bus is a persistent challenge for leaders and managers. After all, talent is a critical driver of corporate performance. Consider the factors that greatly influenced the past two decades:

• The irreversible shift from the Industrial Age to the Information Age: an average of 1.9 million new knowledge workers was needed every year.
• Intensifying demand for top-performing managers
• Drop in the number of workers ages 20-54: in the U.S., this was 10 million fewer than anticipated from 2000 – 2020.
• Ability to search for and find other positions (switching from company to company)
• Ongoing earnings inequality

As a result, managers often feel pressured to hire, even if it is not the right fit. This contributes to hiring mistakes, attrition, and increased expenses. It also impacts the organization’s potential managerial and leadership talent pool. Leaders and managers need to get the right people on the bus from the start.

Avoid These Hiring Mistakes

As a leader, what is your strategy to fill open positions during an “employee market”? How do you avoid hiring mistakes?

This is a frequent topic of discussion right now, especially as it falls upon new managers to fill other open—and often critical—positions. But let me ask: What is the hiring success rate for your managers? How did they manage bad decisions? What about you?

When an organization succumbs to the pressure of filling management positions with a poor fit, everyone suffers. Finding the right manager is critical. It requires enough time and energy; it requires a reliable process.

The Process Problem

The biggest hiring mistake is failing to establish a reliable hiring process.

Even in the best of times, managers report that the hiring process is time consuming and often frustrating. This leads to a negative bias, and an increased risk of impulsive hiring. Eager, energetic, and articulate candidates become more attractive when hiring decisions rely too heavily on interview impressions and intuition.

Consider the 85 years of data collected and analyzed by Frank L. Schmidt and John E. Hunter. Their research reveals that employment interviews are only 57% accurate when it comes to getting the right people on the bus. This is only slightly better than a coin toss.

Instead, great leaders develop a process tailored for their organization and culture. They commonly assess candidates on intelligence, work sample (results portfolio or work sample test), integrity test (conscientiousness), and structured interviews.

More than ever it is important to assess candidates for motivation and attitude, emotional intelligence, and the ability to manage stress. Work habits, leadership and team skills, ability to learn and adapt, and many other intangibles contribute to performance and success.

However, before testing and interviewing can take place, it is critical to understand the real performance requirements. What does the job entail? Why did the last person leave?

Selecting the wrong candidate will inevitably create more issues. This is the time to review, and if necessary, update job descriptions. It’s important to know what you are looking for.

The Best Job Descriptions

The best job descriptions reflect what needs to get done today, and in the near future. Savvy leaders and managers also focus on the behavior and traits necessary to achieve desired results. They consider how the role:

1. Solves current and future anticipated business challenges/needs.
2. Impacts (affects/interacts/collaborates) other teams, departments, lines of business.
3. Benefits from specific competencies and traits.

For example, a combination of four key traits has the greatest impact on workplace teams, according to a recent article in Harvard Business Review. These include:

1. Reliability: Flexibility only goes so far if an employee is unreliable. The job description may indicate the ability to manage unexpected events.
2. Readiness: Prior training and experience may indicate job-readiness, but not always. A growth mindset may be just as important.
3. Attitude: Those who practice positivity at work are more efficient, productive, and supportive of team members. Attitudes are contagious.
4. Communication: Whether the position is face-to-face, virtual, or both, the ability to communicate is important. Look for clarity, coherence, and comprehension.

Performance & Outcome Job Descriptions

If the past two years has taught us anything, it’s the importance of flexibility and adaptability. Almost every manager and employee can share a story about going above and beyond a title, role, or expected tasks. Skills and abilities have been tested, strengthened, and expanded.

However, what got us here may not get us there. If a job description indicates required education and/or years of experience rather than a measurable objective, it is outdated. Sure, experience and skills are important. But an outcome-oriented job description is a better predictor of future performance. For example, “reduce operating expenses by 9% within the first six months” emphasizes performance and potential and provides measurable objectives.

Talent Attraction and Management

Even in the best of times, the majority of businesses do not prioritize talent management. As a result, attrition rates rise and performance suffers. Talent management is, and will continue to be, a major competitive advantage in the coming years. That’s why high-performing companies have a talent mindset: they believe in the importance of talent and take action to strengthen their talent pool.

Talented, high performers may expect top-pay and perks, but they need to believe in and feel passionate about what they are doing. They are looking for a way to create something of value, meaning, and often scale. Over the past two decades, creative freedom was a priority for many; today it is the balance of freedom and safety. Attracting top talent requires the right messaging.

One way to evaluate this is to review your Employee Value Proposition (EVP). Is it a real summary of your employee experience as a part of your organization? Does it truly reflect the culture, values, work satisfaction, leadership, compensation, and more? How do you know this?

Employee Survey

Now may be the time to conduct a formal survey and ask your employees how closely your EVP reflects their experience. In addition, ask what they value. You can offer options and/or write in answers, and ask them to rank in importance.

For example, top performing managers often report that they value:

• Exciting work
• A value-drive culture
• Great leaders in a great company
• Incentives and rewards
• Opportunities for growth, development, and advancement
• The ability (and support) to meet personal and family commitments.

Finally, ask what they would change. How could their work experience improve? What about the organization?

Keep your survey as short and simple as possible, and start with why: how you will use the information to improve their work experience. Follow-up with the results of your survey and any action (next steps) you will take.

Talent management is about attracting, hiring, and retaining the best people and making this a high priority.

Retain Top Talent

Managers must keep their team members actively engaged. They must monitor tasks, conditions, and outcomes and their relationship to roles, responsibilities, and strengths. Providing optimal working conditions becomes a more crucial responsibility.

To support your employees and keep them engaged:

• Communicate: Provide status updates and opportunities for real-time dialog. While email, text, and meetings are important, make time to connect in one-on-one conversations. All serve to strengthen interpersonal bonds.
• Consider support strategies: Help people “play” at work, develop strengths to achieve mastery of their work, and ways to reward their efforts and results.
• Re-examine roles and responsibilities: Consider if/how to create new/different/temp/AI positions), or hire for a different position.

Retention and engagement often go hand-in-hand. To help people engage, evaluate the alignment of their strengths and tasks. Do they enjoy their work? Is it too easy, or too difficult? Why? As a manager, what are you doing to address this?

Every employee should feel recognized and valued for what they do. While they may learn from their mistakes, they grow even more when their successes are noticed and praised. Recognize achievements, efforts, and attitudes. Praise the small wins, and the big victories follow.

Many factors cause disengagement, but the most prevalent is feeling overwhelmed—physically, mentally, or emotionally. You see, our level of engagement depends on how we feel: optimistic, grateful, autonomous, able, hopeful, supported. We need to feel true appreciation.

Dr. Maynard Brusman
Consulting Psychologist & Executive Coach
Trusted Leadership Advisor
Emotional intelligence and Mindful Leadership Consultant
San Francisco Bay Area and Beyond!

www.workingresources.com

[email protected]

415-546-1252

Top 5 Clifton Strengths – Maximizer, Learner, Ideation, Strategic, Individualization 

VIA Character Strengths – Love of Learning, Social Intelligence, Bravery, Gratitude, Appreciation of Beauty&Excellence



I coach emotionally intelligent and mindful leaders to cultivate trust and full engagement in a purpose-driven culture who produce results.

Pause, Breathe, Be Present, Love, Open to Possibility, Cultivate a Meaningful Life
Live Deeply Into Your Magnificence and Our Shared Humanity in the Present Moment

Emotionally Intelligent Leaders - Apologize When Appropriate

Mindful Leaders Humbly Apologize

When an apology is in order, how do leaders in your organization apologize?

We can’t help but notice when it goes poorly. Sometimes, it’s a matter of people (or a person) not ready or able to forgive. And that’s understandable, especially when there is no attempt at restorative justice.

Other times, apologies go sideways when egos get in the way. At best, it falls short as a polished explanation; the apology is an attempt to justify the behavior. This often results in the erosion of trust.

Great leaders—whether they are seasoned executives or untitled leaders—know how to humbly apologize. They understand that mistakes happen and that they are not infallible. Real leaders hold themselves accountable and make amends.

The Humble Apology

A person offering a humble apology acknowledges an offense has occurred, seeks to understand the harm that has been caused, and identifies how it will correct the mistake and avoid making the same mistake in the future.

Unfortunately, even seasoned executives can get this wrong. The fear of losing credibility stops them from doing the very thing that will actually help restore their credibility: an admission of wrong-doing. The irony is that in doing so, they can begin to move on and repair trust.

What’s Your Motivation?

As Joseph Grenny, author of Crucial Conversations (McGraw-Hill Education; 3rd edition, 2021) sees it, an apology is motivated by either restoring integrity or restoring trust. In the 2016 Harvard Business Review article Grenny shares how trust is lost when our abilities and/or motives fail to meet the expectations of others. This can actually create more than one problem:

1. Relationship problem: When a leader falls short, they must address what they did and how it affects others, including trust in the leaders’ competence and motives.
2. Integrity problem: When a leader falls short, they must address who they aspire to be.

Understanding Trust

At the core of leadership apologies—whether it is on behalf of the organization or in behalf of the leader—is trust. But here’s the thing: when leaders offer a humble apology, their motivation is not about acquiring trust, it’s about personal change. Great leaders build trust from the inside out.

In the recently published book, The Power of Trust: How Companies Build It, Lose It, Regain It (Public Affairs 2021), authors Sandra J. Sucher and Shalene Gupta examine the how and why others—clients, employees, or any stakeholder—make the decision to trust. They begin by defining trust.

The Complexities of Trust

• Trust is a relationship with three components: the person extending trust, the person receiving trust, and the expected action.
• Trust occurs in degrees. In our disappointment (or hurt, or anger) it’s easy to forget that trust in not an all or nothing proposition; trust is a spectrum.
• Trust can be regained. Trust must be earned, typically by listening and responding appropriately.

The Elements of Trustworthy Leadership

• Competence: While this includes managing uncertainty and navigating external circumstances to reach goals and objectives, more important is keeping promises and commitments.
• Motives: how do you serve the interests of others? How do you balance this with self-interests?
• Means: how do you reach or exceed your goals? Trustworthy leadership demonstrates fairness with information, distribution, procedures, and relationships.
• Accountability: As a leader, how do you demonstrate responsibility for your decisions and actions?

The Public Apology

Unfortunately, persons in power often struggle with apologizing. The fear of admitting wrong-doing is often driven by fear of failure, losing esteem, or making matters worse.

Harvard Business Review (2019) published an article that suggests that “sometimes apologizing is not the best strategy.” Based on their analysis of research conducted by several universities, authors Sandra J. Sucher and Shalene Gupta define two categories of mistakes:

1. Incompetence (i.e. failure of product or service reliability)
2. Integrity (i.e. failure in acting fairly or responsibly)

These categories and definitions differ from that of Granny, which may explain their analysis: when mistakes result from incompetence, apologies are effective. When mistakes occur as a result of integrity problems, apologies are not effective. They explain that when a leader or organization really did act with integrity, denial is a better strategy.

The Elements of a Public Apology

Genuine public apologies are based on three elements:

1. Identify what happened and what is happening. Understand what went wrong. If issuing a statement, be factual and disclose errors.
2. Focus on the person(s) harmed. When making a public apology, make it timely (ASAP) and include details about those affected. The only “I” or “we” statement made should be followed by an expression of sorrow.
3. Concrete action. Reparations, in the form of change and/or compensation, may be in order. Share what action you will take in the future to prevent further harm.

How Real Leaders Apologize

A real apology is offered in a real-time conversation with the person harmed. Ideally, this is in-person, virtually, or if this is impossible for the person harmed, a phone call. The conversation should occur ASAP, and include four key elements:

1. Acknowledgement of harm done. Ask questions to understand their perspective. Don’t argue, explain, or rationalize.
2. Acknowledgement of their feelings and values. Again, ask questions to affirm and encourage them to talk about what is important to them. What do they need?
3. An expression of empathy. Without humbly stating the impact of your error—how it has affected them—your apology becomes a hollow justification of yourself or your actions.
4. Acknowledgement of what you will do. Don’t rush to this conclusion. If you will be making your apology public, as the person harmed how they feel about this. Do you have their permission to reveal details about them?

A follow-up letter, email, or direct message/text to the person harmed may be in order. Refrain from using social media to communicate, unless it is part of your public apology. Reiterate a summary of the four key elements to hold yourself accountable.

Dr. Maynard Brusman
Consulting Psychologist & Executive Coach
Trusted Leadership Advisor
Emotional intelligence and Mindful Leadership Consultant
San Francisco Bay Area and Beyond!
www.workingresources.com
[email protected]
415-546-1252

Top 5 Clifton Strengths – Maximizer, Learner, Ideation, Strategic, Individualization 
VIA Character Strengths – Love of Learning, Social Intelligence, Bravery, Gratitude, Appreciation of Beauty&Excellence



I coach emotionally intelligent and mindful leaders to cultivate trust and full engagement in a purpose-driven culture who produce results.

Pause, Breathe, Be Present, Love, Open to Possibility, Cultivate a Meaningful Life
Live Deeply Into Your Magnificence and Our Shared Humanity in the Present Moment

10 Areas Ripe for Innovation

10 Areas Ripe for Innovation

We tend to think of new technology as the space where game-changing innovations occur, but fertile new ideas may reside elsewhere. The Doblin Group, a Chicago think tank, has identified 10 areas where innovation can deliver competitive advantages:

1. The business model: how a company makes money
2. Networking: including organizational structure, value chain, partnerships
3. Enabling processes: the capabilities a company buys from others
4. Core processes: proprietary methods that add value
5. Product performance: including features and functionality
6. Product systems: extended systems that support the product
7. Service: how a company treats customers
8. Channels: how companies connect offerings to customers
9. Branding: how a company builds its reputation
10. Customer experience: including the touchpoints where customers encounter the brand

Think of problems as opportunities to find worthy and inspiring solutions. In Metaskills: 5 Talents for the Robotic Age, business adviser Marty Neumeier encourages leaders to use the following questions as inspiration points:

• What’s the “either/or” that’s obscuring innovation opportunities?
• In which areas do the usual methods no longer achieve predicted results?
• What’s the “can’t-do” that you can turn into a “can-do”?
• Which problems are so big that they can no longer be seen?
• Which categories or sectors exhibit the most uneven rates of change?
• In which area is there a great deal of interest, but very few solutions?
• Where can you find too little or too much order?
• Which of your talents can be upscaled in some surprising way?
• Where can your passion take you?

Most of us are ill prepared to meet these challenges, which are coming faster than we think. Armed with knowledge, those who are future smart can take action to reinvent themselves, their businesses and their world.

Transformational leaders can create a full engagement culture driven by purpose and passion by working with an executive coach and culture change expert. The investment is well worth the reward: your ability to influence the future, your career and your personal-development capabilities.

Are you working in a company where executive coaches provide leadership development to help leaders put positive leadership into action? Does your organization provide executive coaching for leaders who need to build a company culture built on trust? Transformational leaders tap into their emotional intelligence and social intelligence skills to create a more fulfilling future.

One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is “Am I a transformational leader who inspires individuals and organizations to achieve their highest potential, flourish at work, experience elevating energy and achieve levels of effectiveness difficult to attain otherwise?” Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent organizations provide executive coaching to help leaders create a culture where respect and trust flourish.

Working with a seasoned executive coach and leadership consultant trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-I, CPI 260 and Denison Culture Survey can help leaders nurture mindful conversations in the workplace. You can become an inspiring leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become fully engaged with the vision, mission and strategy of your company or law firm.

Working Resources is a San Francisco Bay Area Executive Coaching Firm Helping Innovative Companies and Law Firms Assess, Select, Coach, Engage and Retain Emotionally Intelligent Leaders; Executive Coaching; Leadership Development; Performance-Based Interviewing; Competency Modeling; Succession Management; Culture Change; Career Coaching and Leadership Retreats

...About Dr. Maynard Brusman

Dr. Maynard Brusman

Consulting Psychologist and Executive Coach|
Trusted Advisor to Executive Leadership Teams
Mindfulness & Emotional Intelligence Workplace Expert

Dr. Maynard Brusman is a consulting psychologist and executive coach. He is the president of Working Resources, a leadership consulting and executive coaching firm. We specialize in helping San Francisco Bay Area companies select and develop emotionally intelligent leaders.  Maynard is a highly sought-after speaker and workshop leader. He facilitates leadership retreats in Northern California and Costa Rica. The Society for Advancement of Consulting (SAC) awarded Dr. Maynard Brusman "Board Approved" designations in the specialties of Executive Coaching and Leadership Development.

“Maynard Brusman is one of the foremost coaches in the United States. He utilizes a wide variety of assessments in his work with senior executives and upper level managers, and is adept at helping his clients both develop higher levels of emotional intelligence and achieve breakthrough business results. As a senior leader in the executive coaching field, Dr. Brusman brings an exceptional level of wisdom, energy, and creativity to his work.” — Jeffrey E. Auerbach, Ph.D., President, College of Executive Coaching

For more information, please go to http://www.workingresources.com, write to [email protected], or call 415-546-1252.

Are you an executive leader who wants to be more effective at work and get better results?

Did you know that research has demonstrated, that the most effective leaders model high emotional intelligence, and that EQ can be learned? It takes self-awareness, empathy, and compassion to become a more emotionally intelligent leader. 

Emotionally intelligent and mindful leaders inspire people to become fully engaged with the vision and mission of their company. Mindful leadership starts from within.

I am a consulting psychologist and executive coach. I believe coaching is a collaborative process of providing people with the resources and opportunities they need to self manage, develop change resiliency and become more effective. Utilizing instrumented assessments - clients set clear goals, make optimal use of their strengths, and take action to create desired changes aligned with personal values.

I have been chosen as an expert to appear on radio and TV, MSNBC, CBS Health Watch and in the San Francisco Chronicle, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Time and Fast Company.

Over the past thirty-five years, I have coached hundreds of leaders to improve their leadership effectiveness.

After only 6 months, one executive coaching client reported greater productivity, more stress resiliency, and helping her company improve revenues by 20%. While this may depend on many factors most of my clients report similar satisfaction in their EQ leadership competence leading to better business results.

You can choose to work with a highly seasoned executive coach to help facilitate your leadership development and executive presence awakening what’s possible.

For more information, please go to http://www.workingresources.com, write to [email protected], or call 415-546-1252.

Subscribe to Working Resources Newsletter: http://www.workingresources.com

Visit Maynard's Blog: http://www.workingresourcesblog.com
 
Connect with me on these Social Media sites.

http://twitter.com/drbrusman
http://www.facebook.com/maynardbrusman
http://www.linkedin.com/in/maynardbrusman
http://www.youtube.com/user/drmaynardbrusman
http://google.com/+maynardbrusman

 

 

 

The Future of Work: 5 Skills for the Robotic Age

The Future of Work:
5 Skills for the Robotic Age

The challenges of 21st-century work—rapid innovation, unrelenting change and unprecedented uncertainty—have created a stress pandemic.

Depending on your disposition, you may view the future as ripe for a spectacular explosion of creativity or poised on the brink of self-destruction. Either way, there’s no going back.

The tools and skills we’ve developed over the last century inadequately address imminent challenges. We’re caught between two paradigms: a collapsing industrial platform and an uncertain new one.

“Information Age” insufficiently captures the spirit of where we’re headed. We will be forced to interpret unprecedented information streams and navigate vast knowledge networks to solve new problems.

Too Much Information

The world’s ability to store, communicate and compute information has grown at least 23% annually since 1986. Digital information increases tenfold every 5 years.

Amazon seeks to make every book ever printed available in any language in less than 60 seconds. Google’s mission is to organize all of the world’s information and make it universally accessible.

But we’re not yet ready to deal with these interconnected, nonlinear and amorphous challenges. Our skills remain too basic. We must break free of static, linear thinking and move toward dynamic, holistic information processing.

Man vs. Machine

Our educational system has taught us to copy, memorize, obey and keep score—skills we now ask machines to handle. Computers have taken over many of our jobs.

In February 2011, the IBM computer “Watson“ trounced two Jeopardy! champions over a 3-day competition. Watson’s cognitive-reasoning skills were far superior, with access to 200 million pages of structured and unstructured content (4 terabytes of disk storage, including the full text of Wikipedia).

Even before Alex Trebek finished reading a clue, Watson’s 2,880 parallel processor cores began to divvy up the workload. At 33 billion operations per second, they could search 500 gigabytes of data (roughly 1 million books) in the blink of an eye. Watson could also hit the buzzer in less than 8 milliseconds.

During the 3 seconds Watson took to deliver a correct response, various algorithms worked across multiple processors to return hundreds of hypothetical answers. Watson was programmed to hit the buzzer only after reaching a 50% confidence level. By the end of the game, Watson had surpassed previous champions’ winnings by almost 200%, easily becoming the first nonhuman Jeopardy! champion.

In February 2013, IBM announced that Watson’s first commercial software application would be used for utilization management decisions at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Ninety percent of nurses who use Watson now follow its guidance.

This is an example of how robots, machines and computers will ultimately take our jobs. We must harness our creative energy in new ways to stay ahead of the “robot curve.”

Creative Destruction

In 1942, economist Joseph Schumpeter coined the term creative destruction to describe the continual process of economic and technological innovation. Modern-day examples include:

• Telephone replaces telegraph
• Automobile replaces horse-drawn carriage
• Digital camera replaces film
• Smartphone replaces cell phone

The need for efficient transportation and communication will persist while their delivery systems will always change.

“Help! A Robot Ate My Job!”

If you haven’t yet heard this complaint, you will. Today’s widespread unemployment is not a jobs crisis; it’s a talent crisis. Technology is taking every job that doesn’t require a high degree of creativity, humanity or leadership.

In times of rapid change, success favors those who can make big leaps of imagination, courage and effort. Innovation and creative destruction are rampant in the first two decades of the 21st century. The call for new ways to work will become even more pressing.

10 Areas Ripe for Innovation

We tend to think of new technology as the space where game-changing innovations occur, but fertile new ideas may reside elsewhere. The Doblin Group, a Chicago think tank, has identified 10 areas where innovation can deliver competitive advantages:

1. The business model: how a company makes money
2. Networking: including organizational structure, value chain, partnerships
3. Enabling processes: the capabilities a company buys from others
4. Core processes: proprietary methods that add value
5. Product performance: including features and functionality
6. Product systems: extended systems that support the product
7. Service: how a company treats customers
8. Channels: how companies connect offerings to customers
9. Branding: how a company builds its reputation
10. Customer experience: including the touchpoints where customers encounter the brand

Think of problems as opportunities to find worthy and inspiring solutions. In Metaskills: 5 Talents for the Robotic Age, business adviser Marty Neumeier encourages leaders to use the following questions as inspiration points:

• What’s the “either/or” that’s obscuring innovation opportunities?
• In which areas do the usual methods no longer achieve predicted results?
• What’s the “can’t-do” that you can turn into a “can-do”?
• Which problems are so big that they can no longer be seen?
• Which categories or sectors exhibit the most uneven rates of change?
• In which area is there a great deal of interest, but very few solutions?
• Where can you find too little or too much order?
• Which of your talents can be upscaled in some surprising way?
• Where can your passion take you?

5 Skills for the Robotic Age

We need to stay on top of the robot curve—the constant waterfall of obsolescence and opportunity fed by competition and innovation.

Neumeier presents five metaskills that—so far—robots cannot handle:

1. Feeling encompasses intuition, empathy and social intelligence. Humans draw on emotion for intuition, aesthetics and empathy—skills that are becoming more vital as we enter the robotic age.
2. Seeing is the ability to think whole thoughts (also known as “system thinking”). We understand parts of a system when we appreciate their relationship to each other, rather than in isolation. Before tinkering with a system, we need to ask:
   1. What will happen if I do nothing?
   2. What may be improved?
   3. What may be diminished?
   4. What will be replaced?
   5. Will it expand future options?
   6. What are the ethical considerations?
   7. Will it simplify or complicate the system?
   8. Are my basic assumptions correct?
   9. What has to be true to make this possible?
   10. Are events likely to unfold this way?
   11. If so, will the system really react this way?
   12. What are the factors behind the events?
   13. What are the long-term costs and benefits?
3. Dreaming requires you to apply your imagination—one of the brain’s more mysterious capabilities. Innovators transform their dreams into practical solutions. You dream by disassociating your thoughts from all that is linear and the logical. Like most things, dreaming improves with practice. Unfortunately, it’s never taught in business schools—a gross omission that discourages innovation.
4. Making involves mastering the design process, including skills for devising prototypes. Creativity is nothing without craft. The act of making something turns imagination into brilliant products, services and successful businesses. Think of it this way:
5. In design, sketching is the mother of invention.
6. In science, it’s the experiment.
7. In business, it’s the whiteboard diagram.
8. In writing, it’s the rough draft.
9. In acting, it’s the run-through.
10. In inventing, it’s the prototype.
11. In jazz, it’s jamming.

You must constantly push yourself beyond your limits and pay attention to the tasks that trip you up. In design circles, this is known as fast failing. Successive drawings and models are designed to illuminate the problem and, in the process, spark intuition among collaborators. It will be interesting to see how 3D printing will be used to enhance the design process. Unfortunately, too many organizations value process and standardization at the risk of suppressing surprising results.

5. Learning is an ongoing process. We must continually master skills to adapt. We then apply our newfound knowledge in innovative ways. Learning is enhanced through good moods, action and emotional experiences. We become masterful through deliberate practice.

These five metaskills can keep you two or three steps ahead of the machines, algorithms and outsourcing forces of the robot curve. They’ll also bring you greater creativity, a higher purpose and a deeper sense of fulfillment.

So far, the human brain has many advantages over machines, but the gap is closing. You’ll need to routinely upgrade your skills to remain essential.

Will You Be “Future Smart”?

Game-changing trends will continue to affect business, technology, the workforce, the economy, security and the environment. We’re well aware of many of them: climate change, energy demand and population growth. We can only guess at others.

Thriving in this future requires you to become predictive, adaptive and agile—what global futurist James Canton, PhD, calls Future Smart. Exponential new technologies will emerge in digital money, mobile commerce and big data. An explosive new middle class of more than 1 billion consumers will enter the marketplace. We can look forward to:

• Regenerative medicine that extends our life span and rebuilds our bodies
• Robots and drones that drive our cars, teach our kids and fight our wars
• Smart machines that design, manage and service 40% of all global businesses—energy, commerce, finance and manufacturing—without humans
• Always-connected digital consumers who challenge every business to change its strategy
• Climate-change wars that redefine security and resources

Most of us are ill prepared to meet these challenges, which are coming faster than we think. Armed with knowledge, those who are future smart can take action to reinvent themselves, their businesses and their world.

Transformational leaders can create a full engagement culture driven by purpose and passion by working with an executive coach and culture change expert. The investment is well worth the reward: your ability to influence the future, your career and your personal-development capabilities.

Are you working in a company where executive coaches provide leadership development to help leaders put positive leadership into action? Does your organization provide executive coaching for leaders who need to build a company culture built on trust? Transformational leaders tap into their emotional intelligence and social intelligence skills to create a more fulfilling future.

One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is “Am I a transformational leader who inspires individuals and organizations to achieve their highest potential, flourish at work, experience elevating energy and achieve levels of effectiveness difficult to attain otherwise?” Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent organizations provide executive coaching to help leaders create a culture where respect and trust flourish.

Working with a seasoned executive coach and leadership consultant trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-I, CPI 260 and Denison Culture Survey can help leaders nurture mindful conversations in the workplace. You can become an inspiring leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become fully engaged with the vision, mission and strategy of your company or law firm.

Working Resources is a San Francisco Bay Area Executive Coaching Firm Helping Innovative Companies and Law Firms Assess, Select, Coach, Engage and Retain Emotionally Intelligent Leaders; Executive Coaching; Leadership Development; Performance-Based Interviewing; Competency Modeling; Succession Management; Culture Change; Career Coaching and Leadership Retreats

...About Dr. Maynard Brusman

Dr. Maynard Brusman

Consulting Psychologist and Executive Coach|
Trusted Advisor to Executive Leadership Teams
Mindfulness & Emotional Intelligence Workplace Expert

Dr. Maynard Brusman is a consulting psychologist and executive coach. He is the president of Working Resources, a leadership consulting and executive coaching firm. We specialize in helping San Francisco Bay Area companies select and develop emotionally intelligent leaders.  Maynard is a highly sought-after speaker and workshop leader. He facilitates leadership retreats in Northern California and Costa Rica. The Society for Advancement of Consulting (SAC) awarded Dr. Maynard Brusman "Board Approved" designations in the specialties of Executive Coaching and Leadership Development.

“Maynard Brusman is one of the foremost coaches in the United States. He utilizes a wide variety of assessments in his work with senior executives and upper level managers, and is adept at helping his clients both develop higher levels of emotional intelligence and achieve breakthrough business results. As a senior leader in the executive coaching field, Dr. Brusman brings an exceptional level of wisdom, energy, and creativity to his work.” — Jeffrey E. Auerbach, Ph.D., President, College of Executive Coaching

For more information, please go to http://www.workingresources.com, write to [email protected], or call 415-546-1252.

Are you an executive leader who wants to be more effective at work and get better results?

Did you know that research has demonstrated, that the most effective leaders model high emotional intelligence, and that EQ can be learned? It takes self-awareness, empathy, and compassion to become a more emotionally intelligent leader. 

Emotionally intelligent and mindful leaders inspire people to become fully engaged with the vision and mission of their company. Mindful leadership starts from within.

I am a consulting psychologist and executive coach. I believe coaching is a collaborative process of providing people with the resources and opportunities they need to self manage, develop change resiliency and become more effective. Utilizing instrumented assessments - clients set clear goals, make optimal use of their strengths, and take action to create desired changes aligned with personal values.

I have been chosen as an expert to appear on radio and TV, MSNBC, CBS Health Watch and in the San Francisco Chronicle, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Time and Fast Company.

Over the past thirty-five years, I have coached hundreds of leaders to improve their leadership effectiveness.

After only 6 months, one executive coaching client reported greater productivity, more stress resiliency, and helping her company improve revenues by 20%. While this may depend on many factors most of my clients report similar satisfaction in their EQ leadership competence leading to better business results.

You can choose to work with a highly seasoned executive coach to help facilitate your leadership development and executive presence awakening what’s possible.

For more information, please go to http://www.workingresources.com, write to [email protected], or call 415-546-1252.

Subscribe to Working Resources Newsletter: http://www.workingresources.com

Visit Maynard's Blog: http://www.workingresourcesblog.com
 
Connect with me on these Social Media sites.

http://twitter.com/drbrusman
http://www.facebook.com/maynardbrusman
http://www.linkedin.com/in/maynardbrusman
http://www.youtube.com/user/drmaynardbrusman
http://google.com/+maynardbrusman

 

 

 

The Leadership Skill of Kindness

The Need for Kind Leaders

Is your organization led by kind leaders?

This year has been like no other. Most leaders and managers are eager to put it behind them. Yet, we’re not out of the woods. A culture of kindness will make it easier.

Researchers have found that kindness is associated with better and stronger physical and mental health; relationships, teams, and communities; life satisfaction, and even economics. According to researcher and psychologist Dacher Keltner, PhD, “The science of human emotion, kindness and goodness are not to be taken lightly, they are actually good for our bodies and minds.”

Unfortunately, uncertainty, increased stress, and frustration have challenged and tested many organizational cultures: the way we collectively perceive, think, and feel at work. Add to that tribalism, polarity, and over exposure to vitriol, and incivility is easily sparked. Organizational culture is damaged, and left unchecked over prolonged periods, altered.

The Importance of Kind Leaders

Over the past two decades, thousands of employees have been polled about their treatment at work. According to research referenced in the recent Harvard Business Review article, 98% report experiencing uncivil behavior, often prompted by thoughtlessness, rather than malice. Common forms include:

• Interrupting others
• Discussing other employees
• Acting in a condescending manner; belittling someone and/or their contributions
• Arriving late; responding late (or not at all)
• Ignoring others
• Negative eye contact—giving the side eye, dirty looks, rolling eyes, or staring
• Yelling, shouting, and/or verbally assaulting others (insults, harassment)

While subtle forms (and microaggressions) are often easier to overlook, they erode engagement, morale, and ultimately, organizational culture. Managers, and leaders, must intervene, not in kind, but in kindness. Being kind can boost oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin, a neurotransmitter that helps regulate mood. In turn, our outlook, creativity, efficiency, and productivity improve.

The Leadership Skill of Kindness

Kindness is an interpersonal skill that requires a certain amount of strength and courage. Even though sympathy and caring for others is instinctual, consideration, empathy, and compassion are often required to lead and support others with kindness.

Kind managers understand that there is no kindness in allowing problematic behavior to continue. They have the difficult conversations with their employees to prevent ongoing failure. They work to improve the lives of others. How? First, they cultivate feelings of kindness.

Put Kindness on Your Radar

To be sure, it’s easy to focus on the negative. But when we intentionally look for acts of kindness, our bodies are rewarded in a very positive way.

Research from 88 studies involving over 25,000 participants found that those who witness an act of kindness—from cooperative action to comforting someone in distress—increase their own kindness at work.

When people witness others being praised for their kindness, motivation to act kindly also increases. However, the more time that passes after bearing witness to a kindness, the less inspired people feel.

If you’re not already, keep a journal. Make a note about acts of kindness at work. It could be a simple list with name, place, date, and action; a folder of emails; a collection screen shots; whatever works for you. Also consider the social conditions that prevent kindness at work.

Practice Self-Kindness

First, recognize the hard stuff. Here are two important questions to consider:

1. In what ways has life become more challenging?
2. What is the current state of your social ties?

Think of times when you felt a strong connection with someone—a meaningful conversation; a shared success or loss—and journal about the experience.

Then, recognize ways life has gotten a bit better. Have you been able to spend more time with family? Have you explored or developed different interests? What about greater understanding of different perspectives, beliefs, or opinions?

Reinforce your self-worth. Honor who you are, and act with authenticity. Exercise your power to choose, especially when it comes to attitude.

Finally, tackle the hard stuff. Prioritize ways you can strengthen your social ties.

Establish friendships at work. Clear boundaries and a willingness to make difficult decisions are necessary. This requires emotional courage and specific skills to avoid the formation (or reputation) of an exclusive clique. Wise leaders and managers practice mindful kindness.

Practice Mindful Kindness

There are two components of mindful kindness:

1. Consideration and action regarding the social conditions, practices, and policies that prevent employees from finding the good in human nature.
2. Random acts of kindness conducted in mindful ways that are sensitive, inclusive, and equitable.

Both of these components focus on treating everyone with mutual care and respect:

• Practice honesty with consideration. Brutal feedback is not kind. Be clear, direct, and compassionate.
• Show you care with unconditional acceptance. While you might not like or accept certain behavior, separate the action from the person.
• Step through fear to do what is right, right now. Be courageous, and practice justice and compassion for all.
• Welcome others into your circle. Extend kindness to everyone; grow your circle of friends.

Even the smallest acts of mindful kindness can go a long way, especially under the microscopic gaze of others. While the biochemical boost is powerful, research has found it only lasts three to four minutes. That’s why it’s so important to make kindness an ongoing daily practice.

Expanding Kindness to Community

A new analysis of studies reveals that witnessing goodness inspires us to be kind. When we see or hear about people acting kindly or helpful, we are inspired to do the same. Even the smallest gesture can have a meaningful ripple and go a long way.

In Working Knowledge, published by Harvard Business School, researcher, professor, and author Boris Groysberg and journalist Susan Seligson identified seven simple phrases we can use to communicate kindness.

Words of Kindness to Use Everyday

1. “I hear you.”
2. “Are you okay?”
3. “What can we/I do to help?”
4. “How are you managing these days?”
5. “I’m here for you.”
6. “I know you’re doing the best you can.”
7. “Thank you.”

Incorporating these phrases into our daily conversations expand kind communities. They help to satisfy our need for love and belonging, and create unity.

Daily Kindness Practices

Kindness in community sustains our capacity to thrive. When given freely, it moves beyond our immediate circle (family, co-workers, organization) to our greater community, through:

1. Service: reach out to those around you.
2. Responsibility: take positive action wherever you are.
3. Integrity: do the right thing.
4. Tolerance: Honor the strength in diversity.

Tara Cousineau, PhD, author of The Kindness Cure (New Harbinger Publications, 2018), writes that “how we learn from our past and envision our future depends on how we choose to live in the present moment.” When kindness is our north star, compassion, generosity, and forgiveness become natural, and spread exponentially.

 

Dr. Maynard Brusman

Consulting Psychologist & EQ Executive Coach and Mindful Leadership Consultant
Trusted Leadership Advisor

Professional Certified Coach (PCC), International Coach Federation

Board Certified Coach (BCC)

San Francisco Bay Area and Beyond!

I coach emotionally intelligent and mindful leaders to cultivate trust and full engagement in a purpose-driven culture who produce results.

Our services:

• Executive Coaching
• Mindful Leadership
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For more information, please go to http://www.workingresources.com, write to [email protected], or call 415-546-1252

Establish a Culture of Trust - Sharpen Communication

Sharpen Communication

Many trust issues stem from poor communication. People who don’t communicate clearly or authentically aren’t trusted. Properly conveying information makes conversations, emails, phone calls and meetings more effective and trustworthy. Leaders need to provide training in communication skills and monitor employee progress.

Anger, resentment, offensiveness and rumors destroy trust. Leaders must take aim at these issues and set behavioral standards that are continuously reinforced. Ask your people to put themselves in other team members’ shoes when communicating. How will their words be perceived? Can they achieve a win-win situation? Can they step back from a conflict, calm down and form a more reasonable response?

Employees who communicate reasonably and professionally with each other raise workplace trust. Integrity is best revealed through communication, and unity is best realized in a high-integrity environment.

There’s no question that leaders set the tone for every aspect of workplace trust, and the necessary mindsets are passed down through the ranks. Leaders must put policies in place to monitor and correct undesirable behavior. Those who see the highest levels of coworker trust provide ample training, support and enforcement for trustworthy behavior policies.

Dr. Maynard Brusman
Consulting Psychologist & Executive Coach
Trusted Leadership Advisor

Our services:

• Executive Coaching
• Mindful Leadership
• Attorney Coaching
• Emotional Intelligence and Conversational Intelligence (C-IQ) Workshops

For more information, please go to http://www.workingresources.com, write to [email protected], or call 415-546-1252

Cultivate a Culture of Trust - Reinforce Personal Accountability

Reinforce Personal Accountability

People who can’t be counted on lower organizational morale and engagement. They flame resentments and dissatisfaction throughout the rest of the organization. Address this issue by reinforcing the importance of personal accountability.

People demonstrate accountability by doing what they say they’re going to do, when they need to do it. Leaders promote this by holding people to their commitments and making accountability part of the performance assessment. In fairness, leaders also need to provide their people with the means to meet these commitments.

Accountability also means tackling problems head on and not running from them. People trust coworkers who meet challenges with noble efforts so everyone wins. A culture of trust thrives only when people at all organizational levels fulfill their responsibilities. Managing work with measurable criteria expands trust in the system. Clarity is a strong trust builder, according to leadership consultant David Horsager, author of The Trust Edge: How Top Leaders Gain Faster Results, Deeper Relationships, and a Stronger Bottom Line (Free Press, 2012).

Accountability often overlaps integrity, in that people who admit their mistakes are trusted more. Inspiring this kind of transparency allows people to air their mistakes and learn from them. Be a leader who encourages learning, focusing on fixes instead of blame, to build trust. The pursuit of solutions empowers people to reach new levels and expands trust.

Dr. Maynard Brusman
Consulting Psychologist & Executive Coach
Trusted Leadership Advisor

Our services:

• Executive Coaching
• Mindful Leadership
• Attorney Coaching
• Emotional Intelligence and Conversational Intelligence (C-IQ) Workshops

For more information, please go to http://www.workingresources.com, write to [email protected], or call 415-546-1252

Build a Culture of Trust - Raise the Level of Empowerment

Raise the Level of Empowerment

Leaders confer the highest levels of authority and trust on employees who effectively complete tasks, resolve problems and make fair decisions. These employees, in turn, become more open to trusting others. Trust is a commodity people spend in proportion to what they receive.

As a leader, you convey trust by honoring people’s ideas and suggestions and letting them pursue those with merit. Give people opportunities to earn your trust, and allow them the luxury of failure as they work toward accomplishing their goals. Failure is often the most valuable way to learn and grow. As JetBlue’s Peterson points out, sharing some of your power creates a higher level of trust among your employees.

Develop a suggestion-submission system, where employees’ ideas for improvement are evaluated. Reward those whose ideas are implemented. Examine your policies and procedures to determine whether any can be improved based on the staff suggestions. Employees are the true experts in how things work at the most detailed organizational levels. The trust they feel from leadership will carry over to their peers.

Allow employees to be cross-trained so they can be more empowered. This raises their level of engagement. Offer them training or continuing-education opportunities. The feeling of being trusted to add value raises their appreciation for trust. A mentor program also empowers both mentors and mentees. Employees who feel trusted claim a higher stake in the organization and have greater trust in their coworkers, leaders and future.

Dr. Maynard Brusman

Consulting Psychologist & Executive Coach
Trusted Leadership Advisor

Our services:

• Executive Coaching
• Mindful Leadership
• Attorney Coaching
• Emotional Intelligence and Conversational Intelligence (C-IQ) Workshops

For more information, please go to http://www.workingresources.com, write to [email protected], or call 415-546-1252