Insights

During this strange period of isolation, both leaders and individual contributors alike have experienced significant challenges affecting the way they work and connect with their teams.

While terms like “remote employees” and “virtual teams” were commonplace before the crisis, COVID-19’s impact on the workplace has expanded their meaning exponentially. This new reality has accelerated three major trends for individual contributors and three additional trends for leaders that will substantially impact the future of work as the world moves out of the crisis.

Three trends amplified by COVID: For individual contributors

1. Technological proficiency is requisite for success.‍

While the ability to comfortably navigate new technology has long been a core requirement in the workplace, COVID has made this skill imperative. Workers must now fully embrace new hardware and software tools as the primary conduit for connection, communication, collaboration, productivity and value creation. Anyone still dragging their feet and using workarounds to camouflage a lack of proficiency with new technology will struggle even after organizations return to a physical workplace.

2. “Adapt or die” is the critical mindset to embrace.

For years, leaders have been talking about being “agile” – agile projects, agile leadership, agile strategy, the list goes on. Now that agility has been called into question, and people who can thrive in this way of thinking and working will be highly valued. This divide is already apparent. Those rapidly adapting and prototyping new ideas are seeing success, while those that are waiting or hoping for things to simply “go back to the way they were” are getting left behind. To be successful in today’s environment and into the future, individual contributors must be able to shift quickly to new roles, projects, teams, or wherever the business needs them most.

3. Personal lives and work lives have never been more intertwined.

Many people have had to adapt to a new working environment – home. It is now commonplace to see people’s children (who have also been challenged to adapt) on video conferences, or hear dogs barking on conference calls. Spouses and partners have had to learn how to juggle parenting responsibilities while making time for video calls. In a post COVID environment, more workers will continue to work from home, enjoying the reduced commute and travel times they experienced during the crisis. Corporations will encourage this, as the productivity gains and cost savings will entice them to limit office investment and support funding workers’ home offices. As offices reopen, the ability to manage work life-personal life integration will continue to be a necessary skill.

Overall, success for both leaders and individual contributors during this time depends on their ability to embrace new technologies, willingness to adapt to change, and ability to smoothly integrate personal life and work life.

Three trends amplified by COVID: For leaders

Beyond these skills, leaders within large organizations also need to be aware of the following:

1. Empathy is now more important than ever.

Empathy, defined as the core ability to understand the feelings of others, has become fundamental during this challenging time. Leaders must understand their peoples’ personal context – their health, the safety of their family and friends, and their current mental state – before engaging them with work expectations. The immediacy of this skill will subside eventually, but moving forward, leaders will be expected to continue to consistently lead with empathy. The prolonged and persistent impact of COVID on everyone’s families, fortunes and work routines will demand that leaders demonstrate an authentic concern for their people’s well-being as well as their productivity. At the same time, leaders are still responsible for delivering business results through their people and teams. Thus…

2. Providing effective feedback is fundamental for success.

While crucial before the crisis, without the everyday, informal communication that occurs in the physical workplace, the quality and the frequency of feedback has become even more important. In the current remote environment, people are experiencing fewer social interactions than ever before. This isolation tends to breed anxiety, which can lead to feelings of insecurity. As such, employees will need more feedback on their work – both congratulatory and constructive – to build and maintain their confidence and sense of purpose. Over time, individual contributors will become accustomed to more frequent, meaningful communication, and once the crisis is over, leaders who fail to deliver this will lose the engagement and trust of their teams.

3. Quality communication is key.

Today’s leaders need to be excellent communicators, regardless of the medium. COVID has challenged leaders to be more adept at using technology like Zoom and Slack, but mastering the art of communication is omnipresent. Experts agree that technology, social media, the increased volume of data and data sources have diminished peoples’ attention spans. So now, as leaders are being challenged to share complex concepts through virtual methods, the ability to articulate clearly and concisely in a compelling way that influences others has become table stakes. The need for effective communication through spoken and written word was already important before COVID, but the crisis has augmented this requirement substantially.

In essence, leaders that currently excel – those who demonstrate empathy while still holding people accountable for performance, and communicate complex ideas in a clear and compelling way – will continue to do so in the post-COVID workplace. If you’re a leader struggling to lead your team during this challenging time, consider shifting your approach to embrace these behaviors; they will allow you to engender the highest levels of trust, attract and retain the best talent, and deliver results more consistently, today and in the future.

High value skills in a post-COVID 19 world

For individual contributors

• Proactive adoption of technology
• Adaptation to Change
• Successful Integration of Work and Personal Life

For leaders

• Demonstration of Empathy
• Higher Quality and Volume of Feedback
• Ability to Communicate Complex Ideas Clearly

We created the BTS Sales Index to give a simple and easy-to-understand predictive monthly metric that gives enterprise leaders the right vantage point by which to view their critical business decisions.

BTS Sales Index May 2020 Update

-4.3

BTS Sales Index May 2020:

108.8 (-3.8%)

April 2020* in the Economy

• Aggregate revenue of BTS 1000 decreased from $3.519 trillion in March to $3.384 in April, declining by $135 billion
• The US economy lost 20.5 million jobs in April, the largest decline by far since tracking began in 1939
• The unemployment rate jumped more than 10 percent in one month to 14.7 percent, also setting an unprecedented high since the Department of Labor started recording the data 72 years ago
• These job numbers do not include independent contractors, such as Lyft drivers, so the 14.7 percent unemployment rate most likely undercuts the number of jobless Americans
• With air travel down 95 percent year over year, oil and gas companies are cutting up to 30 percent of capital spending globally
• The now 23.1 million people unemployed are largely due to local governments placing restrictions on what businesses could be open, with about 60% of the economy remaining under stay-at-home orders

*the May update is reflective of April 2020 data

Why

Line of business and sales leaders tasked with making strategic decisions don’t have a good measure of confidence when deciding to ramp up production or invest in customer relationships. Quarterly GDP numbers and the S&P 500 paint two different pictures of economic performance, the former too slow to incorporate new data and the latter too likely to overreact to investor sentiment.

We created the BTS Sales Index to give a simple and easy-to-understand predictive monthly metric that gives enterprise leaders the right vantage point by which to view their critical business decisions.

What

The BTS Sales Index represents the aggregate total revenue of the 1,000 largest publically traded companies in the US in one simple to understand number.

How

As mentioned above, the BTS Sales Index is comprised of the total revenue of the largest 1,000 publically traded companies incorporated in the US. Every month, we collect the total revenue reported by these companies and run the data through our custom-built indexing tool. The index uses the total revenue of the BTS 1,000 companies at the end of the second quarter of 2013 as its baseline because the economy showed signs of stable recovery. Unemployment was back to normal rates, housing prices remained steady, and stock prices were back to record levels.

Obviously, we are living through an extraordinary and unprecedented situation in the world today—both personally and professionally.

Collectively, we are all doing our best to reimagine how we live as well as how we work.  Given that the crisis has created an unimaginable level of uncertainty as well as anxiety across the globe, leaders need to be doing a good deal of soul searching about what matters most now.To that end, I’ve given much thought over the last week about what executive presence needs to look like from leaders in the face of this crisis.

Over the past five years, I’ve worked with thousands of leaders on executive presence, coaching 400 or 500 of them individually after they received feedback from their manager, peers, direct reports and others on executive presence.  Based on my work with these leaders and my understanding of the science behind executive presence and influence, here are the facets that leaders most need to demonstrate now—and how to make them actionable.

‍1.   Composure

‍This quality reflects how much the leader is perceived as steady in a time of crisis.  Basically, emotions are contagious—for better and worse!What to do now. Be “real” about the crisis—don’t downplay the reality or magnitude of it.  Allow some time to check in with people about how they’re feeling today about the crisis.  But then you want to make sure everyone is generating light rather than heat.  Get everyone to focus on how to make course corrections: What can be done to address today’s concerns while anticipating tomorrow’s downstream consequences?

‍2.   Interactivity

‍The quantity and quality of two-way communication between the leader and others will be important than ever during this crisis.What to do now. You can create a greater sense of calm by ensuring that there is predictability about how and when you exchange ideas and concerns with your team.  Consider announcing a more frequent cadence of meetings for the immediate future. As the news and outlook changes several times a week, make sure people aren’t left to wonder what’s happening and why.  Staying in touch regularly also means that you’ll keep your finger on the pulse of what others wants and need right now.

‍3.   Resonance

‍While meeting more regularly is a great step, this crisis also means that you need to be able to dig deeply into understanding everyone’s hopes, fears, and needs.What to do now. Make a point of asking questions that surface what others are thinking, feeling, and planning to do.  Failing to do so will make you run the risk of appearing “tone deaf” during a crisis.  Take it a step further and pick up on the nonverbal behavior of others, as people often will show what they’re feeling before they’re willing or able to say what’s in their head or heart.  If you notice body language that seems troubled or uncertain, hit the pause button and ask questions to find out what’s really going on. That‘s why video is such an advantage over a simple phone call when working remotely. More than ever, people need to know that their leaders care about how they’re doing.

‍4.   Authenticity

‍In addition to being a good listener and focusing on others during a time of crisis, you need to balance that by being candid, transparent, and genuine about what you yourself share.What to do now. In the face of so much uncertainty right now, you may be tempted to “wait and see” and go silent.  But if you do, the risk is that people will fill that void with their own assumptions—and those often can turn negative.  This leads to more churn, distraction, and disengagement.  Even when you don’t have all the answers, you need to be talking to people—sharing at least the process of what will happen even if you don’t yet have the content.

‍5.   Vision

‍Authenticity is strongly linked to Vision.  In both cases, people need to understand the why behind the what—the intent behind the content.What to do now. With Vision, you need make that “why” come alive by telling the story of the road ahead and why everyone should feel a sense of mission and purpose about that.  If you’re not sure about what that vision of the future should be, the first step may be to go on a “vision listening tour” in order to “crowdsource” ideas.  Another idea would be to create a short-term vision: What do we need to focus on for the next few weeks at least?  Providing clarity about what everyone’s doing and why will help keep people energized through difficult times.All 15 facets of executive presence can be valuable in a time of crisis. But for now, focus on these five qualities.  If you have a strength in one of these facets, now is the time to leverage it.  If one of these qualities is more difficult for you, get help from a trusted advisor, mentor, or coach to make sure it’s not a derailer during this challenging time.

Above all, remember that this crisis represents not only a challenge but unique opportunity for you and your organization.  By displaying these qualities, you can position your organization to find its way through a dark moment in history and move toward a brighter dawn.For more resources on leading through these unprecedented times, click here.

The word “crisis” originates from the Greek krisis, which translates, literally, as “decision.”

Even in the best of times, decision by committee rarely works. Teams endlessly debate and swirl when trying to find an outcome agreeable to everyone. During a crisis – it can not only make a tough situation even tougher, but it can hit your company’s bottom line.

Take the example of the president of a health insurer who described the challenge to us this way. He and his leadership team are finding that the timeframe they have to make critical decisions has shortened significantly. In addition to moving thousands of employees to remote work environments – leading to risks of server overload – there have been real-time, completely new decisions to be made on telehealth coverage, COVID19 claims processes, getting front-line doctors paid more quickly, assessing complicated patient cases and responding to difficult questions from clients and partners. In this environment, his leaders are working long hours and trying to do the right thing, but there has been overlap and confusion as multiple people have tried to tackle the same decisions. They are struggling to streamline the decision-making process so that they can get the right things done faster.

They, like many organizations, have defined familiar ways of making decisions and getting things done. But right now, executives trying to lead their companies through COVID19 are telling us that the biggest barrier they are running into is actually sticking to those carefully thought-out processes. There’s no clear roadmap for a global pandemic crisis. Emotions and stress levels are high, the flow of information has leaders drinking out of a fire hose, and everyone has an “expert” opinion on what the company should do.

Unless leaders decisively move things forward, you put a lot at risk:

• Losing the confidence of your leadership team, employees, and stakeholders
• Wasting valuable time that could be spent solving other problems
• Delaying manufacturing and distribution decisions that can impact company liquidity
• Pivoting the business too slowly toward innovation and growth opportunities

Company performance is largely driven by how effective leaders are at making decisions, and how nimbly they can act on them. Research done by Bain & Company found that the greatest determinant of a company’s performance is the ability of that leadership team to efficiently make critical decisions when you take into consideration the following attributes of a decision: quality (did the decision end up being the right one), speed (faster or slower than competitors), outcome (what action was taken) and effort (what resources went into making the decision).

So how can you continue to drive company performance while helping your organization adapt to the current crisis—all without losing sight of some of the fundamentals that made you successful in the first place? Here’s our list of five key steps to staying on track.

1. Decide who’s deciding.
   In a crisis, the evolving landscape may require a change in who makes the decisions and how the decisions get made. Depending on circumstances, one of four decision-making styles may be a better fit.In the midst of a crisis when leaders feel a strong need to act, many will choose to take a Command approach. This involves making a decision with little or no input from those around the table. These types of decisions result in compliance, but don’t generate much commitment. For instance, in a life-or-death situation, a leader may not have time to consult with others, or the plan of action may be clear and just needs to get started.
   
   To generate more commitment, leaders can take a Consult approach and ask for input while still maintaining ultimate decision-making authority. Getting input from others does not mean giving up decision rights. A leader may have a couple of options in mind and solicit feedback before deciding, or they may want to get additional options on the table before making the call.
   
   Leaders may want to gain even greater buy-in from those affected by sharing decision making through a Collaborate approach. The pain associated with group decision making comes from doing it poorly. When the process is well structured and the leader sets a time limit, collaborative decisions can be just as efficient as getting group feedback before the leader decides. Particularly when many people share ownership around the plan execution, this approach can help put it into action.
   
   Finally, leaders don’t have to make every decision. When taking a Constrain approach, the leader sets boundaries on decision options and leaves the deciding to others. As an example, the leader may ask the IT team to source a new platform for remote meetings within a stipulated budget and time frame, but they maintain the freedom to choose the vendor.‍
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2. Look beyond the numbers.
   It’s important to leverage data and information that is easily accessible. But during times of crisis, there can be too much intel, and not enough time to analyze it. That can leave you with analysis paralysis, and can get in the way of being quick, and being decisive. On the other hand, you don’t want to act without any basis of judgment at all—you want to take advantage of past experience and leverage your own intuition. Seasoned crisis leaders leverage what we define in the Bates ExPI^TM as Practical Wisdom – the ability to distill the most relevant information needed and anticipate the likely consequence of a decision – something that comes with having lived through catastrophe before. For instance, a leader may draw on lessons from the Great Recession around how they maintained key customer relationships as they assess options for how to reorient their priorities now.
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3. Make room for others.
   Even if you’re serving as the ultimate decision maker, it’s important you remember that you don’t know it all. Creating an environment where ideas and opinions can be raised and appreciated creates a sense of trust and belonging. COVID19 is not a crisis event. It is a crisis cycle which will likely ebb and flow in waves as the situation unfolds over time, and you need to manage engagement and productivity over the long-term. Make sure you set up a way to gather feedback and be open to reevaluating your plans and decisions as time allows.‍
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4. Check your bias at the door.
   It’s human nature for unconscious bias to sneak into our decisions. We may rely too heavily on information that validates the direction we already want to go, something known as “confirmation bias.” Or we may look for affirmation from a peer group that unconsciously practices group think and is less inclined to be open to alternative views. One good way to tackle this is to have a designated “devil’s advocate” on the crisis management team; someone whose job is to ask questions, probe for dissenting views, and generally validate that the leader has considered other perspectives.‍
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5. Communicate, communicate, communicate.
   Often, the biggest team breakdowns during a crisis are the result of misunderstandings or mismanaged expectations. If an executive team thinks they have a different role in the decision-making process or expects problems to be solved within a set timeframe – they may be frustrated, disappointed, or even hostile towards the leader when things don’t go as planned. A leader with good interpersonal skills and a clear, defined communication strategy will help keep the team aligned and focused on a common goal – serving employees, stakeholders, and the business.

A crisis can derail even the most stable and grounded leader. We hear every day from executives who feel they are spinning their wheels, overwhelmed with the pressure of looming decisions and personally emotional about the impact COVID19 is having on their companies, their families, our global community. It’s a heavy burden to carry. But this is a time to double-down on your confidence, to lead decisively, to connect with your stakeholders, to demonstrate empathy, and to focus the firm on the future – one decision at a time.

How we think and feel personally about what is happening directly affects how we show up every day.

In challenging times like these, when the sky seems to be falling, we cannot throw in the towel and give up. It’s the very moment we are called upon to double down on what’s most important and take radical action to reconnect with resilience, kindness and courage.

Human beings are hardwired to resist uncertainty, and therefore we experience greater stress when outcomes are uncertain. Plus our new normal in working in isolation adds a new vulnerability because it compounds feelings of not knowing what is going to happen next which impacts emotional well-being.

We can boost resilience by discovering the ways that will give us the necessary oxygen so we can be present to those we love and we can lead well in our personal and professional lives. Neuroscience studies all show that sleep, nutrition, and exercise are all key wellness components that enrich how we feel. Sleep in particular resets our brain and our body’s health each day. Mindset matters as well. The narrative we are tell ourselves about a given situation has a direct correlation to our emotional and physical well-being. If we are reacting, how we respond from that mental state greatly affects those around us.

Examining those narrative stories helps shift from reactivity to resilience. Ask, “What am I feeling? What story am I telling myself? Is it true? What are the facts? What can I control? What is out of my control? What can I choose that will empower me now?” Take a pause, and breathe deeply. Deep breaths slow the heartbeat, stabilize blood pressure and lower stress. Take time to reflect on our choices and commit to the action that reconnects us to our personal power and resilience.

Most of us are busy and juggling a lot already. Then add a crisis and it’s easy to forget about our own needs. Taking care of ourselves helps us be more creative and resilient. And that is a radical act.

Resilience boosters that help you stay calm and present:

1. Play:

Play is an excellent mood booster. It promotes brain functionality, releases endorphins and improves abilities to plan, organize, relate, and regulate emotions. So goof-off and laugh.

2. Focus on gratitude:

Research says a daily gratitude practice is healthy for the mind and body. It reduces stress, helps you sleep better and gives a well-being boost.

3. Create a routine:

A routine brings a feeling of order and gives a sense of control. Set a few manageable goals as less is more. Choose a schedule tailored to your needs that works for you and your family. If you have kids in the house, plan quality time to build stronger bonds. It makes them feel more secure.

4. Virtual connection:

Reach out to people you care about. Stay close to loved ones. Call up old friends. The more we stay connected the better we will feel.

5. Keep your mind and body active:

Listen to guided meditations, play music, dance, start a new hobby, build something, or create fun workouts. Invite someone to join you.

6. Limit news consumption:

It’s important to stay up to date but limit the amount of time as news negatively impacts your well-being. It’s okay to unplug.

7. Seek support when you need it:

If you are feeling overwhelmed, reach out to someone you trust. Teleservices are also available for therapy and coaching.

8. Healthy Habits:

Eating right can boost your energy and help you sleep. Take steps to create the right conditions for you to sleep well. Sleep is the ultimate rejuvenator.

And to those who are leading teams, you’ve got double duty. Be kind, be compassionate, practice self-care, and stay-informed. We don’t know what new moments are causing our people stress so it's important not to assume what is hard for them.

Three great questions to ask: How are you doing? What do you need? What could we be doing better? Then listen, deeply.

This disruption is real and the end unknown. Let's be curious and grant each other grace to be wherever we are and make it okay to feel whatever we feel in the midst of these chaotic times.

If you ask sellers what their customers are telling them now, they’ll probably respond, “They want lower prices.” And yes, in a recessionary environment, customers will seek to cut costs wherever they can. But, unless your value proposition is to be the low-cost provider, selling on price is a bad strategy at any stage of the economic cycle.

So, what’s a good strategy?

Until now, the most successful B2B sellers have been those that understood their customers’ businesses the best. Salespeople with strong business acumen create value by linking their offerings to the result their customer is trying to achieve. Strong sellers show how their offerings will accelerate the achievement of initiatives to grow market share, enter new markets, launch new products, optimize manufacturing production or service delivery, and, of course, lower overall costs.

However, times have changed.

There are 5 rules you need to know to be successful in today’s environment.

• Get smart. Dynamic Business Acumen, which describes a seller’s understanding of what is changing in their customer’s business, is critical for success. As a seller, you need to know the top strategic priorities of your customer’s CEO today. And it’s not a time to make assumptions. How do you do this? Talk to everyone you know inside the customer company. For publicly held companies, read everything the CEO is saying.
• Cash (flow) is king. It’s easy to think the most important priority is cutting costs. That’s only partially true. Right now, almost every company is trying to increase cash flow. As a seller, you need to think about how your offerings reduce inventory holdings or increase the speed of collecting receivables and demonstrate this to the client. How? Your marketing team should provide sellers with messaging that explains how your offerings can improve customer cash flow.
• Go virtual. Another CEO priority is recreating relationships with customers through more virtual interactions. Can your offerings help your customer reach more of its customers? CEOs are trying to hold onto as many employees as possible, but that means they must find new ways for those employees to create value for customers. How? Think about how your offerings enable employees to do new things quickly.
• Play the long game. Right now, every day seems to bring new challenges. Yet, CEOs continue to keep one eye on the long term. That means that salespeople can also help companies position for the future. How? Look closely at what is the CEO saying about the longer term. Are there new markets to serve? New offerings to create? New ways of manufacturing and distributing their products? Find the area where your company can help.
• Divide and conquer. In every downturn, customers segment into three categories. Some of your best customers will buy more because their new plans require it. Others, because their industries are being hit hard, will stop buying. The third group sits in the middle. What does this mean? Now more than ever, your salespeople need to segment customers and focus sales time on the customers that are buying more, while giving time secondarily to those continuing to purchase at some level. Furthermore, sellers need to reduce the time they spend with industries that are contracting. All of this means that qualifying opportunities is critical. How can you implement segmentation? Sales managers can play a big role in ensuring that sellers are prioritizing their sales activity correctly.

Don’t get caught in the pricing vise. Find new ways to add value to your customers’ operations and strategic priorities. Solve for more than you have in the past by thinking about the customer’s entire business, not just the person or business process you sell into.

Over virtual coffee several weeks ago, a team member asked the group “What’s the one phrase, expression, or statement you find yourself saying often?” The responses varied from “the new normal” to “unprecedented times” to “leading in uncertainty.” In that moment, their statements were very true. People had only recently started social distancing and working virtually.

Although much of the initial shock from the crisis has dissipated, the sentiments described by my colleagues persist: things will never be the same, everything has been turned upside down, and nothing is certain anymore. While these feelings are very real, there is a lurking danger that these statements are becoming a limiting set of beliefs.

There is a deluge of ‘expert’ papers, advice, and whitepapers in the marketplace trying to make sense of how to react to the current situation, but it’s challenging to know what advice is of value. Much of what is being advised converges around a few key ideas, but surprisingly enough, most of these ideas don’t actually seem to be new at all.

‍Much of this so-called sage advice was as relevant six months ago as it is today, and some was just as relevant six years ago. What has changed is that we are now standing on the fabled ‘burning platform’ forcing us to act. Actions that were important but not urgent are now both.

The trick here is that if a problem moves around the urgent and important spectrum, your response to it also needs to change. So, as a people strategy leader, how do you navigate these uncertain times?

Engaging the organization in a learning strategy

For many businesses, your previous strategy probably still applies today. What will have changed is the risk mitigation, contingencies and how and when you execute your strategy. Prior to this crisis, you probably had more time to conduct the intellectual preparation and planning of your people strategy. You would engage and involve stakeholders to get agreement across the board with the key players. You would aim to get sign off for the ‘biggest play’ possible, impacting those who mattered the most or the greatest number of employees. This isn’t how the sign off process is working now or will likely work in the coming months or even years.

People strategy execution has had to evolve to become faster and more adaptive. This means more permission to act on what you believe is best and making smaller, planned people strategy bets and lots of them. The COVID-19 crisis has become the burning platform enabling strategic implementation of people strategies that needed a radical shift even prior to the current situation.

Take for example a mining and industrial organization that has been planning to introduce a single global coaching provider, top to bottom and worldwide for their business, since 2017. The organization wanted high quality, scale, excellent cost management and a clear strategic alignment of coaching to their leadership expectations and organizational values. Despite this good intention, there had never been a strategic need to prioritize this initiative above some of the ‘fix the basics’ activities. The COVID-19 crisis reframed this idea into a priority. A strong, uniform coaching strategy would drive resourcing leaders in a fast, agile manner, developing them as better leaders in a crisis and deploying support for their resilience in this crisis. Acting in the moment of need, the organization implemented this initiative. As a result, the company’s strategy has been hugely strengthened by having a strong Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) case. It prevents absenteeism and encourages more productivity and engagement worldwide.

Developing an organization-wide learning strategy isn’t new but contextualizing it and using disruption to navigate uncertainty has strengthened its positioning as a valuable priority.

Learning initiatives and core learning

In recent years, most organizations have shifted towards including initiative-focused learning in their strategies. This means that in addition to the more traditional planned and repeated core learning, organizations are including a more focused learning component that revolves around the business’ context and overall strategy. This approach remains effective, but in 2020 there is a need to shift further towards the initiative focus. These initiatives need to center around adaptability, virtual and digital capability, leading effectively in uncertainty, resilience, and team effectiveness.

The techniques and technology for previous initiative-based learning haven’t changed, but the current business context means that more people in your learning teams need to be able to execute on them.

Modalities of learning

There is currently an outsized focus on changing modalities of learning, but in reality, only one modality has changed – face to face is now off the table and will remain so for the foreseeable future. This is not an excuse to pause, but rather a challenge to reframe. Learning strategies outside the classroom has been done successfully for a long time, as have those old 70/20/10 plans that were intended to be the backbone of learning design for the last 20 years. The biggest mistake we can make is to pause learning activity in the hope that “face to face will return…eventually”.

It’s unclear what will happen, but in the meantime, there are plenty of resources and learning to draw on to ensure that the advancement of people’s growth isn’t held back. The real question is how to make it safe for people to continue to grow and deliver fantastic learning virtually.

Shifting learning modalities has been one of the more common strategic themes in recent times. Now in the wake of this crisis, there is the opportunity to leverage digital and virtual solutions, making learning more modularized - smaller, easier to consume, a journey over time that paces alongside the person, their role and the natural flow of their work.

Focus on wellbeing and mental health

As a result of COVID-19, more open source support is available to assist those with less developed strategies, but the methods for deployment have not changed dramatically. Many of the solutions being used in this space are already digital and virtual, as most of the technological innovation already occurred in the last decade. Utilize what you have and remember that the best resources may just be the human elements – making space for peer to peer learning, reflection time and creating armistice time in diaries to prevent the endless virtual meetings. These are the simple fixes and if consulted, most employees can give you lots of ideas about what they want and need in this space.

The continuous theme for the wellbeing and mental health of employees is ongoing and the only change is that now our strategies and preparation work are being tested for their efficacy.

Differentiated Talent Proposition

In a moment of crisis, you are continuing to differentiate talent, but so far it is more focused around the ’moments of need’. You deploy people faster and more deliberately. For example, key people stepping up to play steering and guiding roles in the crisis, as well as or instead of their ‘day job.’ To do this effectively, you must draw on your experiences from short term assignments, secondments, project and agile methodology. Often, you just need to do it faster. Down the track as the economic impact of the crisis is better understood, re-evaluating roles and talent will be inevitable, but restructures are one of the few certainties in your people strategies.

People have always been at the heart of an organization’s success. COVID-19 and its associated restrictions and lockdown requirements have only highlighted this and the importance of strategically deploying your talent to reach its maximum potential.

Looking Around and Ahead

Despite the many changes unfolding and at record speed, there is still consistency and simplicity out there too. Look for it. Focus your attention on short and long term and look for where you can find consistency across the narrative for the next 12 – 18 months, even in this inevitable uncertainty.

You may not think that organizations are hiring or adding headcount amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but some are—and they’re doing so in droves. At a time when much of the US is under shelter-in-place orders, organizations that keep us safe, fed, and supplied have seen surges in customer demand and, in turn, the need to hire. To keep up with this unprecedented demand, these organizations find themselves trying to screen and onboard people in as little as 24 hours with minimal or no face-to-face interaction. And guess what: there are lots and lots of candidates vying for these jobs.

Selecting and onboarding large influxes of candidates can drain what are already very limited resources, especially when processes are manual and are not virtual. At times like the present organizations simply want to get dependable people in the door who are willing and able to perform any number of tasks assigned to them from one day to the next.So, why not simply truncate the hiring process by eliminating pre-employment screening to get people onboard faster? Organizations need to add headcount, and there are plenty of candidates to fill these positions. If an employee does not work out, an organization can simply move on to the next candidate. Where’s the problem? Eliminating pre-employment screening is not the answer; instead, it creates a whole new set of problems.The wrong selection (i.e., hiring) decision can lead to massive consequences on overall organizational success. Consider the cost of a poor hire for your team or organization. What are the time and training consequences? While each case depends on the role, the cost of a bad hire can be upwards of three times the individual’s salary. Regardless of the specific dollar amount and human resource costs, negative outcomes result directly from poor selection decisions, most of which can be prevented with proper pre-employment screening and assessments.‍

Sub-par performance and results. When individuals are placed into jobs that require knowledge and skills that they lack, their performance will suffer. Even if the organization takes the time—which costs money—to train and onboard these individuals, how can the organization be certain that the training will “stick,” or that the individuals have the underlying capacity to learn the requisite knowledge and skills? Obviously, an organization is not going to place someone into a highly technical role if the individual does not have the proper background and training, but the learning curve—again, time and money—for any job will be shorter for some people than it will be for others. Properly screening candidates for the requisite knowledge, skill, abilities, motivation, drive, dependability, etc. required to be successful can reduce the risk of sub-par performance in spades.

‍Cancer to the team. We all know what it’s like to work with someone who is unable or unwilling to carry his/her weight on the team or has a poor attitude. These individuals can single-handedly lower the morale of the entire team at lightning speed. Screening candidates’ skills, abilities, attitudes, and behavioral tendencies can drastically reduce the likelihood of hiring caustic employees.

‍Liability to the organization. The liability of a bad hire on an organization can take on many forms. We’ve already talked about the performance implications of hiring people who lack important job skills and the impact of hiring the wrong people on team morale. These certainly present liabilities to the organization. But what about the risk of hiring reckless employees to work in environments where following safety protocols is a must? Or putting people who lack customer service skills in front of customers? Or asking people who have poor attention to detail to work in a warehouse picking parts or filling orders? Each of these situations has the potential to result in negative outcomes for the organization, including reputational risk and even safety risk. All of these liabilities can be reduced by screening candidates for the requisite knowledge, skill, and/or abilities required to perform the job.Regardless of whether an organization is filling 5 or 500 openings, or whether the organization has 10 or 10,000 candidates, proper pre-employment screening and assessment is a must. It is well worth the extra 20-25 minutes that it takes candidates to complete most pre-employment assessments. Selecting the wrong person for the job benefits no one and is a disservice to everyone involved. Instead, now more than ever, we recommend putting automated systems in place to screen candidates and help refine candidate pools to those most likely to be successful—ultimately adding the greatest value to your team and organization.

We created the BTS Sales Index to give a simple and easy-to-understand predictive monthly metric that gives enterprise leaders the right vantage point by which to view their critical business decisions.

BTS Sales Index April 2020 Update

-0.1

BTS Sales Index April 2020:

113.2 (-0.1%)

March 2020* in the Economy

• Aggregate revenue of BTS 1000 decreased from $3.521 trillion in February to $3.518 in March, declining by $3 billion
• Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 701,000, the first decline in payroll growth since September 2010
• The unemployment rate rose to 4.4 percent; the last time the unemployment increased 0.9 month over month was January 1975
• March hiring was lowing than February across all industries, with three dropping more than 20 percent
• With the coronavirus pandemic still causing widespread shutdowns, be on the lookout for further impacts to the economy

*the April update is reflective of March 2020 data

Why

Line of business and sales leaders tasked with making strategic decisions don’t have a good measure of confidence when deciding to ramp up production or invest in customer relationships. Quarterly GDP numbers and the S&P 500 paint two different pictures of economic performance, the former too slow to incorporate new data and the latter too likely to overreact to investor sentiment.We created the BTS Sales Index to give a simple and easy-to-understand predictive monthly metric that gives enterprise leaders the right vantage point by which to view their critical business decisions.

What

The BTS Sales Index represents the aggregate total revenue of the 1,000 largest publically traded companies in the US in one simple to understand number.

How

As mentioned above, the BTS Sales Index is comprised of the total revenue of the largest 1,000 publically traded companies incorporated in the US. Every month, we collect the total revenue reported by these companies and run the data through our custom-built indexing tool. The index uses the total revenue of the BTS 1,000 companies at the end of the second quarter of 2013 as its baseline because the economy showed signs of stable recovery. Unemployment was back to normal rates, housing prices remained steady, and stock prices were back to record levels.

Authenticity is a quality that the best leaders have learned to value and demonstrate.

Sharing life stories and using real human language can help executives connect with their employees, their clients, their Board members, any stakeholder – in a way that feels personal and real. Even more importantly, as our research has shown, authenticity is not just a “nice to have” for today’s leaders: it is a business imperative. We uncovered that authenticity is one of the five leadership qualities that statistically differentiate leaders of high-growth companies. Further, our research on Millennials shows that for this influential and critical cohort, authenticity is the most important quality for leaders to have. If you want to lead and inspire the workforce of the future, authentic leadership must pave the way.

But what happens when a leader blurs the line between authenticity and oversharing?

I remember a particularly precarious time during which a large financial institution I worked for was rumored to be on the chopping block. Stories were swirling in the media about potential buyers, and employees were rattled. They needed reassurance, and they needed a steady hand with leadership. As I coached the CEO on an upcoming call with employees, we talked through what information he was able to share and what his audience needed to hear.

We agreed that there were limitations due to legal and regulatory circumstances, but that he could be upbeat and positive, commit to future updates, and help settle the organization until the path forward was clear.

Imagine my surprise when he kicked off the call and went down a totally different path… one that included speculation about possible company spin-offs, and a relatively negative slant on prospective buyers. The end result was a lot of shaken employees, unsure about their future employment.

When I asked the leader why he had gone forward with that approach, his comment was “I wanted to be transparent. I didn’t want to be scripted. I felt they deserved to hear what was happening in my own thoughts. I needed to be true to myself.”

While his decision came from a place of good intent, we had what HBR refers to as the “authenticity paradox.” A genuine desire to be candid can often be seen as “freewheeling,” the last thing a team needs during times of change. Rather, leaders need to find a way to balance authority with approachability.

Here are 4 ways a leader can do that:

• Prepare, prepare, prepare. In times of peak stress or time constraints, it’s tempting to skip over really thoughtful preparation. In this case, the leader felt that “preparation” translated to being scripted, and that didn’t feel true to his leadership style. It’s important to write down key messages in language that you’d actually use – phrases and words, not full sentences. And then practice, practice, practice until it doesn’t just feel natural – but it IS natural.
• Think about your audience agenda. You’re likely speaking to a broad base of stakeholders, some who are new to change, and some who have lived through it too many times to be rattled. While it’s important to consider your entire audience, particularly think about folks who will likely be most impacted by the potential change – emotionally or professionally. Those who might not have experience and context to settle their nerves… and put yourself in their shoes. Speak to them directly.
• Share your own experience. If you’re in a position where you’re leading such a conversation, it’s likely not your first rodeo. Perhaps you sat in their shoes in the early stages of your own career. Think about what that situation was, how it made you feel, what you needed to hear, and then share it. Personalizing your comments with your own experience expresses empathy and understanding – which will likely have more impact than glazing over details you don’t have.
• Appreciate your multiple “selves.” For most of us, there are different dimensions to how we present ourselves based on circumstances. Who you are at home may be different than who you are at work. This doesn’t mean you aren’t authentic at work, it just means you need to bring a different type of authenticity into that environment. Embrace this and be open to continually redefining who your “true self” is as a leader. As one leadership specialist shares, “As leaders, we do not just need a clear sense of who we are (our essential selves) – we must also be willing to change our leadership identity (our constructed selves) each time we move on to bigger and better things.”

Today’s business climate is one of disruption and turmoil. It is critical for senior leaders to be able to stabilize, focus, and inspire the troops in order to deliver on business strategy and create sustainable growth. Your ability to do this effectively rests on your capacity to tap into the power of your authentic self, while balancing your charter to help the enterprise stay the course. Take the time to be mindful about how you communicate and share, and you’ll show up as that authentic, inspiring leader you want to be.

On Friday March 20, the DJIA closed at 19,174. That was down more than 35% from its peak in February. For a point of reference, this is about the same decline that we experienced in all of 2008, in just one month. The impact has been equally large and dramatic in just about every aspect of how we live and work. Never has it been more clear that we live in a VUCA world. For those of you who are unfamiliar with that acronym, it is a concept that originated with students at the U.S. Army War College to describe the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of the world after the Cold War. At this point, the Cold War looks like child’s play compared to our current situation.‍

Why resilience matters

‍Resilience is the antidote to our VUCA world. Now, more than ever we need to rely on, and continue to develop, our resilience to help our companies and our teams navigate in this crisis. Resilience is what allows leaders and teams to be calm, steady, and resolute in times of challenge or crisis. It provides for greater agility and flexibility. It enables us to keep our eyes and energy on a better future. It gives us the opportunity to collaborate even more effectively with our colleagues.Resilience can be easy to see and understand when we think about people like Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill,  and Albert Einstein – who was told by a teacher that he “would never be able to do anything that would make sense in this life.” We’ve seen it in many business leaders like Steve Jobs, Akiro Morita and Henry Ford – who went broke 5 times before starting the Ford Motor Company. If you look closely enough, you see it all around – especially today with the tens of thousands of healthcare providers who are working overtime to keep us healthy.If you look even closer, you will see your own resilience. One of the interesting facts we learned in studying resilience in the workplace is that most of us have a great deal of grit, determination and strength.

‍How resilience can help in times of crisis

‍In 2012 I co-authored a book on the topic: “Lemonade, The Leader’s Guide to Resilience at Work.” We researched thousands of business leaders and developed a model of resilience that includes 15 leadership behaviors that can help leaders to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.

My favorite of these resilient behaviors is reframing.

Reframing is the ability to find a silver lining no matter how dire the situation. It is the ability to choose how you talk about the facts and create a context for yourself and for others to see them differently. For instance, if you live in Mauritius, you can call it “a small, insignificant island.” Or you can call it “the largest ocean state in the world.”In the context of our current crisis, you could be talking about how “physical distancing” is creating a feeling of isolation. Or you could talk about the opportunities it presents for us all to learn to use collaboration technologies to both get our work done and not feel so isolated. Both are actually “true” in some objective sense. But the ability to reframe a problem or challenge into the more positive perspective makes it more possible for people to take action. In this example, your team will be able to see and embrace the opportunity more readily in learning the new technologies and feel less fear as they sit in their new home offices with no context besides the news.Think of the benefits of applying this to thinking about how to pivot the business to weather the storm. What new business models, markets, partnerships might be out there waiting for you to uncover?

‍Reframing as a business imperative

‍The ability to reframe reminds me of an executive I advised a few years ago. Scott was (and still is) a very experienced and successful leader in his organization. He had a reputation for turning around projects and programs that were underperforming. He had a strategic mind, a keen attention to detail and very high standards for performance. Scott was seen as potentially one of the organization’s senior-most leaders in the future. But something was holding him back. His high standards and intense drive translated into zero tolerance for mistakes.When mistakes happened, as they always do, Scott adopted a rigid and unyielding attitude. He simply could not see the learning opportunity that mistakes can present. The people who worked most closely with Scott learned to follow his lead. Some of his people were actively hiding or ignoring mistakes out of fear of Scott’s reactions. This created a dynamic that suppressed any kind of productive problem solving and Scott was operating in the dark about problems cropping up.This all came to a head when the company lost one of its biggest customers. This customer moved its business to another supplier because in their own words, “you kept making the same mistakes and you haven’t kept up with changes in our business.” This was shocking to Scott, who hadn’t realized there were problems with this customer, and that his team didn’t have the capability to solve the problems. This proved to be a much-needed wake-up call for Scott. He was forced to learn to view mistakes differently, to reframe them as learning opportunities. In doing so, he created a different mindset in himself and his team. He went on to become an even more successful and accomplished leader. His mantra became a quote from one of his heroes, General Omar Bradley, who said, “I learned that good judgment comes from experience and that experience grows out of mistakes.”

‍How to reframe

‍There is a simple practice you can use to build your own ability to reframe. You can even invite colleagues or your team to join you in this exercise. Try this the next time you encounter a problem.

• Draw a line down the center of a page.
• On one side the headline is “challenges.”
• On the other is “opportunities.”
• Your task is to re-write the problems as possibilities.

Doing so will give you, and those you are tasked with leading, more energy to get through and even to accelerate through this unprecedented crisis.

“It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” - Epictetus‍

The current crisis facing most companies as a result of the global pandemic has tested us all and made us wonder whether our crisis planning is adequate for today’s modern, potentially existential issues facing businesses.

While issues are coming at us quickly, we are having to make decisions – often without a sufficient design plan in place. Now is a good time to document as you go, to create a “living document” for the current AND future crises. In this process, you may notice failings or weaknesses in the system that must be addressed; fixing them may ultimately strengthen and stabilize your business for the long-term.

Our conversations with clients have helped us identify what seem to be the most common failings. Rather than discourage you, we hope this prompts your thinking and helps you to communicate to your organization what you’re doing now, how you are looking ahead to be prepared for the future, and how they can contribute.

‍1.   Failure to plan for the unthinkable.Most businesses have a continuity plan in place, but they aren’t often reviewed, refreshed, or tested. Steps you’re taking right now should be documented for future reference. We recommend four ways to do that.

• Write it down: As you make decisions or implement strategies, take time to capture the change or new action and document it.
• Update it: Schedule time at each quarterly business continuity planning session to discuss real-life scenarios in which every policy, procedure, and functional area is tested.
• Incorporate it: Make business continuity planning and testing a strategic imperative, driven and supported by the senior leadership team. Involve the CEO to ensure it is taken seriously.
• Learn from it: Record and capture learnings from the tests in the firm’s documented continuity plan. While you can’t ever predict the scope or impact of every possible scenario, you can minimize just how far you have to go to cover your bases.

2.   Failure to see beyond the usual “blinds spots.” A challenge many leaders face is that they have grown up in a business together and have experienced many of the same situations as a group. While they have a common understanding of the business and operations, this collective viewpoint can lead to group think -- reinforcing the current direction, rather than raising counterpoints.

During this crisis and beyond, you need other experts around the table, people who challenge your way of thinking and bring different perspectives to help uncover those blind spots. Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln were both known for bringing close their adversaries and people who irritated the status quo. Take steps so you are preparing to look beyond the known:

• Welcome different opinions and dissenting views
• Create a culture in which colleagues and team members can speak up
• Add new voices who can identify potential issues or problems that you might not see

3.   Failure to admit mistakes, even if unintended. Take heed of the lesson a CEO of a large financial organization recently learned. He was repeatedly criticized for a very slow and less-than-heartfelt effort to take responsibility for illegal practices within the firm. He did not assume accountability for wrong-doing, leaving customers and regulators dismayed, costing him his job, and damaging the company’s brand reputation.One of the most important tenants of crisis leadership is to accept responsibility, acknowledge missteps, and commit to transparency. You can expect that whatever you are doing, there will be critics. If you expect legitimate criticism, have a plan on to respond – it’s not too late. If your company was a little slow determining the right COVID-19 response, or unable to nimbly get remote employees up and running, be upfront and say so. A simple message like – “We needed to do better, we will do better, this is how we’re doing better” – will go a long way in solidifying trust and employee engagement through what will likely be an extended crisis period.

‍4.   Failure to focus. When a crisis hits, it is difficult for leaders to focus. Yet decisions need to be made, and quickly. There will be different views on what should happen now, and later. Take those into account without allowing “too many cooks in the kitchen” trying to call the shots on the same issues. Concentrate on the problem to solve with good decision-making technique to create focus.

• Define the problem. As a leader you can start by asking the question, “what’s the problem we’re trying to solve?” Pausing to get this right, before you start solutioning, prevents you and the team from wasting time on the wrong issues or getting stuck in endless debate.

• Define the criteria. Generate criteria for potential outcomes, before you discuss any solutions. If you throw out solutions without having a method to evaluate them, that can start an endless conversation loop. Establish a means of assessing desirability, feasibility and viability of each possible outcome and rank them in importance.

• Agree on solutions. Brainstorm a list of possible solutions, and then cross-reference with your established criteria. Combine solutions if necessary and rank them in terms of how they meet the criteria. Vote, and narrow the list to no more than two solutions to be tested.

5.   Failure to act. Crisis is a strange time. You need to thoughtfully and intentionally respond, yet the environment requires you to be decisive and act quickly, often without all the information. Some leaders get paralyzed by the need to get all the facts and more before they move.Don’t wait until you have your plan 100% finalized before you communicate or execute. You need to make a move based on what you know.That isn’t to say you shouldn’t adapt as you go. In a crisis like this where so much is unknown and hard to anticipate, give yourself flexibility to incorporate new information. Look at how things evolve and discuss the impact on your current thinking and plan. Modify, discard, or stay the course.18^th century Scottish poet Robert Burns one said, “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Accepting that things will go wrong is the first step. Learning and growing from the experience is next. Consider these steps and you’ll help your organization move from crisis to calm, and ultimately – survive and thrive.

We created the BTS Sales Index to give a simple and easy-to-understand predictive monthly metric that gives enterprise leaders the right vantage point by which to view their critical business decisions.

BTS Sales Index March 2020 Update

+1.6

BTS Sales Index March 2020:

113.3 (+1.4%)

February 2020* in the Economy

• Aggregate revenue of BTS 1000 increased from $3.47 trillion in January to $3.52 in February, rising by $48 billion
• Employers add 273,000 jobs in February, compared to the 175,000 projection
• Health care, food services, government, construction, professional and technical services all added jobs in February
• The unemployment rate dropped down to 3.5 percent, 0.1 percent lower than the start of the year
• While February was too early to see the impact of the coronavirus on the labor market, it was in a good place before the virus began to spread and cause concern
• Early indicators in the most vulnerable sectors include some travel and transportation companies imposing hiring freezes, postponing raises, and encouraging unpaid time off
• The next few months will undoubtably test the resiliency of this strong labor market

*the March update is reflective of February 2020 data

Why

Line of business and sales leaders tasked with making strategic decisions don’t have a good measure of confidence when deciding to ramp up production or invest in customer relationships. Quarterly GDP numbers and the S&P 500 paint two different pictures of economic performance, the former too slow to incorporate new data and the latter too likely to overreact to investor sentiment.

We created the BTS Sales Index to give a simple and easy-to-understand predictive monthly metric that gives enterprise leaders the right vantage point by which to view their critical business decisions.

What

The BTS Sales Index represents the aggregate total revenue of the 1,000 largest publically traded companies in the US in one simple to understand number.

How

As mentioned above, the BTS Sales Index is comprised of the total revenue of the largest 1,000 publically traded companies incorporated in the US. Every month, we collect the total revenue reported by these companies and run the data through our custom-built indexing tool. The index uses the total revenue of the BTS 1,000 companies at the end of the second quarter of 2013 as its baseline because the economy showed signs of stable recovery. Unemployment was back to normal rates, housing prices remained steady, and stock prices were back to record levels.

Chuck, a merchandising executive for a global retail company, received feedback that while he was generally a calm and rational person, his anger at mistakes and unpredictability during stressful situations were limiting his career growth. Additionally, those at the level above him felt his presentations were too “in the weeds” and not strategic enough. This meant he wasn’t being included in succession plans for higher level roles.

Chuck’s behavior was causing many challenges within his group. His unpredictability made his team hesitate to let him know about problems right away, as they were hoping to figure out a solution before having to approach him. By the time he did find out, the problems were much harder to resolve. This was causing larger supply chain issues and downstream revenue hits that most likely could have been avoided if Chuck were able to address the problems sooner.

You might be thinking that you know a few leaders like Chuck. Unfortunately, we find that feedback like this is all too common. In fact, the data we’ve collected through the thousands of executive leadership assessments, using the ExPI^TM, reveal that three of the four lowest rated leadership qualities are:

1. Restrain
2. Composure
3. Resonance

Restraint points to a leader’s temperament and predictability. Composure is about how well a leader handles crisis situations and Resonance is about how a leader connects with others and positions him/herself to notice what others are thinking and feeling.

These three facets of leadership are key to emotional intelligence (EI) - the ability to notice our own emotions, manage our reactions, notice others' emotions, and respond appropriately - because they point to our ability to remain even-tempered, to take the heat out of crisis situations, and to address others’ emotions.Why do leaders have such a hard time demonstrating EI?Usually, it’s not that these leaders don’t have emotional intelligence. Rather, it is often a result of a couple of habits that get in the way.

• A strong 'action' bias. What has gotten these leaders to senior levels is this action: their ability to make quick decisions, act with speed, and respond efficiently to tactical questions. Therefore, when a situation requires thoughtfulness or a pause in the action, these leaders are not practiced in how to stop, slow down, think, and then act. And, if they are highly emotional their team will hesitate to reach out to them when thoughtfulness is required.
• Easily triggered. When a leader’s core value or deep belief is being challenged, they can be easily triggered. For example, a leader who has very high Integrity can quickly overreact when a team member seems to make a poor decision, even if it might be within the realm of a good decision to another leader. Or a leader can be triggered if a peer promises to send information by a certain date and doesn’t deliver.

Take Chuck, for instance. In prior roles, he made quick decisions regarding what customers would want which led to great buying decisions. He was able to change course rapidly and resolve problems when confronted with supplier issues. He was known as the guy who knew exactly where to go to get the right merchandise in the right stores. All great qualities, for a single contributor. And, arguably great qualities in lower level leadership positions. However, they are not great qualities for this executive leadership role. He was acting so quickly that his organization couldn’t keep up. And because he was so hot headed, his team didn’t let him know this was happening.

An African proverb, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together,” holds true for many of the leaders we work with. When their action bias is front and center, they are often alone. And when they take a moment to look in the rearview mirror, they see that their teams are floundering. Alternatively, we see that when leaders slow down, they can rally their teams to get on board with their vision. They create engagement and synergy within their team that leads to real business results.

What can you do?

If Chuck’s story hits close to home, or if you tend to react when you wish you’d thought the situation through instead, then building your mindfulness muscle might be the answer. Mindfulness, or the act of noticing our own emotions and creating a gap between the stimulus and our response, builds emotional intelligence. It also strengthens the qualities of Restraint, Composure, and Resonance.

The challenge is that it requires noticing habitual reactions, pausing, and choosing to respond differently instead. This is easier said than done. However, once we begin choosing a new response and do so consistently, over time, we create powerful new habits and begin demonstrating greater emotional intelligence.

How to incorporate mindfulness into your leadership

Here are some simple things you can do to begin building your mindfulness muscle.

• Assess your speed and slow down to bring others along for the ride
• Keep distractions to a minimum to ensure you are truly connecting with people and noticing what might not be spoken
• Notice when you are triggered and take a few deep breaths before responding
• Respond with curiosity to inquire about the other person’s perspective, as opposed to responding from your triggered, reactive frame of mind
• Prepare for a challenging meeting or conversation by anticipating what might trigger you and deciding how you will respond differently this time
• When things get heated, defer or postpone the topic by suggesting discussing it off-line, after the meeting, or after more information is gathered

You create your organization’s environment and your demeanor sets the tone for your team. Do you want to nurture a hectic, chaotic environment or a thoughtful, innovative organization?

It can often feel like there’s absolutely no time to pause. However, we know through working with thousands of leaders, that powerful and effective leadership resides in both the pause and the thoughtful response.

Sustainability is one of today’s buzzwords. We all have it on our minds, individually and collectively.

It is the issue of our time. It is the issue of businesses and organizations, ensuring that their strategy and culture balance people, planet, and profit. At its core, sustainability is about empowering all life within our ecosphere, human, animal and plant, to coexist, sustain and thrive. Organizations play a significant role as key contributors and participants in society. Addressing sustainability is on the agenda, but we know our pace of change is simply not fast enough to meet the timelines needed to truly turn things around.Some argue that we are already too late. This week, Sir David Attenborough said, “It’s up to us to put before the nations of the world what needs to be done. Now is the moment” (BBC News). However, at this moment, the sustainability strategy is simply not being executed at the level we need. And for a while now, this word – sustainability, and what it represents, has been on my mind.

The Four Greatest Coaching Conversations can be read in many ways. It carries insights that prevail and transcend arguably all contexts. One that needs to be acknowledged right now is sustainability. This book isn’t the answer to the world’s sustainability issues, but it does provide the fundamental insights necessary to find an answer, your answer, to shifting mindsets that will successfully drive sustainability in your world.

At BTS, whilst we have a sustainability agenda, I am guilty of ignoring it in my day-to-day work. Most recently, one of my direct reports asked me if she could deliver a pro-bono workshop, which she previously ran for our team at a local school during work time. I remember my immediate reactive thoughts: “aah, that is a good cause. But this is going to cost time and money. It is going to be too hard to sign this off. It will set a precedent for the rest of the team. I need time to think this through.” It was too easy to simply ignore the heart and mind in front of me, wishing to express her social responsibility. Our social responsibility. Why was this happening?

Taking a step back, many organizations are still working out their sustainability strategy. Others have one, like we do. It doesn’t seep through all levels of the business at all times.

To deliver a strategy successfully, we believe that an organization must consider each of the following elements of the equation:

Execution of strategy = Alignment x Mindset x Capability

To create a sustainable business culture, we need to align the business at all levels (people, structures, processes, including aligning with outside institutions and influencing the political arena). In speaking with our clients, when the sustainability agenda is not aligned nor embedded into the business strategy across all levels, it fails to have any concrete impact. We must shift mindsets, individually and culturally. We must develop the capabilities (the roles and skills needed to make it happen).

But how do we shift these mindsets, both on an individual and cultural level?

Well, this is the heart of The 4 Greatest Coaching Conversations. Based on research from thousands of coaching conversations, we identified the four types of mindsets that are the most important for unlocking leadership and action:

• Be-mindsets: These are conversations about getting over your limiting beliefs and acting from an empowered place
• Inspire-mindsets: These are conversations about releasing your sense of meaning, values and purpose
• Relate-mindsets: These are coaching conversations about empathizing and connecting, in order to overcome barriers that stop you from engaging hearts and minds
• Think-mindsets: These are coaching conversations about releasing your creativity when adapting to and solving business challenges that you face today

When researching the mindsets that can inhibit a sustainable strategy within businesses, we found these mindsets appearing most often (and in brackets, some truths from current studies):

• Apathy – I feel like giving up when experiencing the reality, a sense of powerlessness (instead of owning your power to influence change within and beyond)
• Abdication of responsibility – the real responsibility belongs to others, other leaders in the business, other organizations or other countries (as opposed to each person and organization taking their responsibility as a citizen of the world)
• Uninspired – I don’t feel I can make a difference, demotivated, especially when I see the real solutions are not in my capacity to solve (as opposed to seeing the reality that ‘no one person can solve it all, but a significant amount could be solved if each person were inspired to do at least one thing’)
• Meaningless – there’s no point (as opposed to seeing the change we can meaningfully make)
• Avoidance or denial – it’s too much/overwhelming when I think about it or it’s not really that bad, and I end up avoiding (instead of allowing your heart to be impacted and touched, and acting on your compassion)
• Separation – I see myself or the business as separate from the environment (as opposed to seeing them as an interconnected participant)
• Too busy – I haven’t got time/it’s too much effort, my job is already at risk (instead of thinking how the job can sustainably adapt to the changes and how to create win-win)
• Too costly – it’s too costly to seriously consider (as opposed to thinking about creative solutions that already exist that reduce cost)

Each one of these mindsets above falls into the four groupings that we refer to in the book: Be, Inspire, Relate and Think. For each mindset, we share researched and tested coaching methodologies that help you to shift your mindset and release leadership. The intention of the book is to share this research and methodology with the world, which is targeted towards line managers, businesses and coaches, who can then unlock leadership in a variety of contexts: sustainability, diversity, and work-life balance.

In the example with my direct report, my Think mindset got in the way – my limiting ‘cost’ mindset didn’t see the creative win-win for business and people. Thankfully I caught it. My direct report is delivering the workshop. The cost to the business? Three hours of time. The benefit? We impact a local school with some of our work, we touch their hearts and minds, our people are inspired by the difference that one person can make, my direct report will develop her skills, we honor our responsibility and act on our care for the society we operate in and are part of…the list goes on. A true win-win-win for people, planet and profit.

We can bring change, just one conversation at a time.

Old habits die hard, and that’s especially true for senior leaders who hold top roles inside their companies. Sam is a good example of this. Despite running one of the largest business units for his organization, he is the first to acknowledge that his own leadership style has held him back from advancing into even higher executive levels. His perspective? “I’m in a senior role and should be focusing on the strategy of my business. The reality is that I am still putting out fires and too involved in the day-to-day execution.”

Successful transitions are part of any leader’s career journey, and experienced leaders know adopting new behaviors and ways of leading as each role requires it are requirements for advancement. They also know that it isn’t enough to adopt new habits, but they must also remove the old ones. If this sounds like you, consider two habits that can hold great leaders back.

The Habit of Hiding

Paul is a leader who hides in plain sight. In meetings with his new executive peers, he struggles to get a word in edgewise and primarily plays the role of listener. Paul’s view is that he’s new to his role and this team and needs to be learning more. He wants a bit more time under his belt before speaking up. He’s also a self-described introvert and someone who doesn't like interrupting or jumping into conversation. The problem is that his CEO has a very different expectation of how he wants Paul to engage and interact. “Paul needs to find his leadership voice and I expect him to weigh in. I know he has good ideas, but by not sharing them, he’s losing credibility with his new peer group.”

Leaders hide, even very experienced ones. We hide when:

• We are unwilling to raise concerns in a group setting
• We are reluctant to challenge up
• We hunker down, spend too much time in our office, and prioritize getting our stuff done over building relationships
• We pretend we’re OK with something when we aren’t
• We use email instead of having a conversation
• We avoid or delay making tough decisions
• We get other people to deliver our difficult messages
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The Habit of Drifting

Drifting is easy to do. The reason for this is simple. Senior leaders tend to be spread incredibly thin and pulled into many different directions. The result is drifting away from those key areas that move the needle and matter, and instead, putting too much time and energy into areas that don’t create value. Do that too often, you lose momentum and waste days or weeks with nothing to show for it.

Lisa ran into this challenge when she was up for the CFO role at her global company. Despite being on the succession plan and her years of experience as Treasurer, she didn’t land the role. The feedback? She hadn’t done enough to move the needle in key areas within the finance function and there were questions about whether she would really be able to influence and have an impact at an enterprise level. Lisa doesn’t disagree: “As a finance leader, I should know better than anyone about the importance of paying myself first. But as I look back on it, I majored in the minors. I lost focus and got too caught up in responding to everyone’s requests, answering emails, and sitting in on meetings I didn’t need to attend. Certain priorities wound up taking a back seat.”

Here’s how to stop drifting:Build more focus into your day and week.

• Build more focus into your day and week.
• Watch for a tendency to please everyone.
• Count how often you say ‘yes’ instead of ‘no.’
• Cut your time responding to email in half.
• Pay yourself first. Each week identify 3 top priorities. Take action each day to advance.
• Get discipline over your distractions. Use your phone for purpose. Less scroll time.
• Identify decisions to make now and just make them.
• Remind yourself: It isn’t about intention, it’s about execution.
• Get honest about why you’re drifting: is it a lack of time or something else?

Getting promoted into a senior role is an achievement, but it will take more than past performance to deliver success now. Evaluate which new habits and behaviors you’ll need to be effective now and resist the temptation to fall back into the old behaviors that may be convenient or comfortable, but don’t reflect who you are anymore.

We created the BTS Sales Index to give a simple and easy-to-understand predictive monthly metric that gives enterprise leaders the right vantage point by which to view their critical business decisions.

BTS Sales Index January 2020 Update: -0.3

BTS Sales Index January 2020: 109.3 (-0.3%)December 2019* in the Economy

• Aggregate revenue of BTS 1000 decreased $10 billion, from $3.41 trillion in November to $3.40 in December
• The US added 145,000 jobs in December. Retail contributed 41,000 jobs during the holiday season
• Despite the end-of-year surge in retail shopping, Pier 1 Imports and Macy’s both announced store closures
• The unemployment rate held steady at 3.5 percent, marking the third record-low month of 2019
• Although this decade started and ended without a recession, growth during the past 10 years has been slower compared to previous booms
• The US and China reached a trade deal that will be signed by mid-January

*the January update is reflective of December 2019 data

Why

Line of business and sales leaders tasked with making strategic decisions don’t have a good measure of confidence when deciding to ramp up production or invest in customer relationships. Quarterly GDP numbers and the S&P 500 paint two different pictures of economic performance, the former too slow to incorporate new data and the latter too likely to overreact to investor sentiment.

We created the BTS Sales Index to give a simple and easy-to-understand predictive monthly metric that gives enterprise leaders the right vantage point by which to view their critical business decisions.

What

The BTS Sales Index represents the aggregate total revenue of the 1,000 largest publicly traded companies in the US in one simple to understand number.

How

As mentioned above, the BTS Sales Index is comprised of the total revenue of the largest 1,000 publicly traded companies incorporated in the US. Every month, we collect the total revenue reported by these companies and run the data through our custom-built indexing tool. The index uses the total revenue of the BTS 1,000 companies at the end of the second quarter of 2013 as its baseline because the economy showed signs of stable recovery. Unemployment was back to normal rates, housing prices remained steady, and stock prices were back to record levels.

Leading with Purpose, Part 1

Most CEOs I speak with are not 100% at peace with their company’s purpose. As the market, their people and their business evolve, so will their purpose. As some of the best companies of past and present show us, there is strength, and even magic, in a great company purpose. What is also clear, however, is that this magic does not come from just having a “purpose” or “vision,” but rather from how well a company is executing against their purpose.

When Southwest Airlines (which has been profitable for 45 consecutive years, and on FORTUNE’s list of World’s Most Admired Companies for 24 straight years) was first starting out, their mission was to make flying affordable.¹ They rallied their people on the idea that a grandmother should be able to affordably buy a ticket, at the drop of a hat, to get on a flight to see her new grandchild. This simple mission led to the “Southwest Effect,” which transformed the airline industry, and continued to be a lens with which the Southwest leadership team made key decisions.

Today, Southwest’s vision has evolved: “To become the world’s most loved, most flown, and most profitable airline.” And they are executing on this vision. They continue to drive superior shareholder returns against all industries on the S&P 500 (as they have for the past 44 years), and in 2018 were named the top low-cost airline in JD Powers customer survey reports for the second year in a row.

As the Southwest example highlights, great company purpose combined with a leadership team who will build the work-flows, culture, processes and metrics to live up to it can be an enormous employee motivator. But we have also experienced, both at BTS and with our global clients, that a good company vision and purpose on their own are not sufficient – employees need them to be even more personal to them as an individual. I remember a lunch I had twelve years ago with a 24-year old new hire who was my direct report. After some small talk he looked at me and said, “Why are you here? Why have you spent seven years with the same company?”

I’ll never forget that lunch. It was the first time I had been asked the question, and it was the beginning of a new decade where our employees were much louder and more active about wanting to reflect and spend time on our mission and purpose, linking it to their personal values and the impact they strived to have in the world. Luke, that 24-year old new hire, has made me and our company better as a result of his question.

In the last decade, there has been a growing emphasis in the business world on finding a deeper motivation to unlock greater meaning at work. For some this may sound ‘fluffy,’ or as one executive we spoke to commented, “Is this just the next version of the pursuit of vision and values? It sounds great on paper but too often makes little real difference as it tends to stay on the wall, rather than live in your heart.”

Yet your people spend the majority of their life at work and with colleagues. At its best, a sense of purpose is a way of bringing meaning to their work and understanding the contributions they are making to the company, as well as greater society. It makes sense, then, that employees who are clear on their personal and professional purpose end their work day invigorated and proud of what they’re doing instead of exhausted by mindless work that is bereft of real meaning.

According to a recent PWC study, 79% of business leaders believe that purpose is central to business success – but only 34% use their organization’s purpose as a guidepost for their leadership team’s decision-making. Signs that your workplace may be lacking organizational purpose are distracted employees and a lack of comradery. These are significant factors – so why don’t more organizations devote time to developing clear purpose and values? Well, developing organizational purpose is no easy task, and much of it starts with your own personal purpose. If you’re unsure of what exactly your own personal purpose is, have no fear – in the next two installments of this blog series, we will offer simple steps to help you uncover your personal and organizational purposes and get closer to leading through the lens of purpose.

Leading with Purpose, Part 2

As we discussed in the first post of this blog series, purpose is an essential ingredient for business success and employee engagement today. Yet purpose is a nebulous concept, and often difficult to pinpoint. I know this firsthand. Around twelve years ago, a consultant in his early 20s joined the BTS San Francisco office where I was working, and I took him out to lunch. Within ten minutes of sitting down to lunch, he asked me, “So what’s your purpose? Why have you been at the firm for so long?” I’ll never forget it. I’d been at the company over six years, and that was the first time somebody asked me that. I felt it was a fair question, and yet I didn’t have an eloquent answer at the ready.

Coming up with a response, I started to talk about some of my guiding principles, things like learning and having fun, how I’m proud of the impact our work has on clients, and how I love building a team of leaders (or a business) that grows every year. The question from this new hire, though, who was probably ten years younger than me, put me on the spot and made me feel a bit inadequate as a leader. At first I did not have a crisp, compelling answer.

Since then I’ve been in many dinners with other executives from Fortune 500 companies to tech startups, who more and more frequently are being expected to lead their organizations with a clear purpose… and at the same time understand that each employee’s purpose and what motivates them is going to be slightly different than theirs, the firm’s and their peers’, and that’s okay. Once a leader or a firm has clarity of purpose it can be a beautiful energy and driving force, and should be the first lens with which leaders run their business.

So, how does one find a sense of purpose?

In truth, many people assume that only those who follow a vocation like medicine, teaching or work in the charitable sectors can have a true sense of purpose at work. Our experience, as well as much current research and writing, would suggest otherwise.

One simple way of looking at this is captured elegantly by the Japanese concept of Ikigai, or ‘The reason for being.’ The idea of Ikigai is that one’s sense of purpose lies at the intersection of the answer to four questions:

1. What do I love?
2. What am I good at?
3. What can I get paid for?
4. What does the world need?

Image from Forbes.com

Take these four questions and look at the organization you are already a part of. Use them to see if you are in touching distance of doing more purposeful work, whether it be at the core of what you do or as a part of work that sits slightly outside the current definition of your job. Whilst we may not get the ultimate answer to the purpose question from our current work, once we have identified our own Ikigai we can go in search of the more meaningful elements of our jobs and start shaping the agenda at work in a new way. In the next installment in this blog series, we will discuss how to use your personal purpose to shape your organizational purpose and lead with meaning.

Leading with Purpose, Part 3

As we discussed in the first two posts in this blog series, finding your personal purpose is an essential ingredient of finding meaning in what you do. Once you start looking at your profession through a purposeful perspective, you very well may start to see business opportunities that you did not see before. As one executive we worked with in this space said “Once I realized that what I wanted was to help people live healthy and fulfilling lives, I started to see just how much potential there was in the work we do, even if it wasn’t driving the short-term numbers. Knowing what I stood for and seeing the need in the world meant that I was prepared to back new market opportunities because I knew it was the right thing, as well as ultimately good business. I was no longer prepared to live with the conventional wisdom inside the organization. Now we have opened up a whole new segment that is one of our most promising. Being more purposeful unlocked my courage and my creativity in ways that not much else could.”

Today, most executives agree that purpose is important. According to EY and HBR’s “A Business Case for Purpose,” 89% of executives say that an organization with a shared purpose will have higher employee satisfaction, and 84% say that business transformation efforts will have greater success if integrated with purpose. Despite this, only 39% say that their purpose is clearly articulated and understood in the organization. But for Millennials and the majority of employees these days, the expectation of a clear purpose is now the norm. If you don’t have it, they notice right away.

So, what can you do about this organizational purpose gap as a leader? Once you’ve uncovered your own sense of purpose, there are two next steps that you can immediately apply:

1. Reflect on the last time you talked to your team about purpose and what your purpose is. What motivates you the most? If it’s been more than a couple quarters (or longer) since you shared that, perhaps use an end of quarter celebration or a memo or some other upcoming communication to reflect. It could be along the lines of, “Many of you have asked me why I spend my time on X, why I’m still here, why I’ve spent so many years here…. So I just wanted to share what motivates me, what I’m passionate about, etc.” and welcome people to share for themselves what motivates them. It’s critical that you define it in your own words, and are completely authentic in it. Purpose is a double-edged sword – if it doesn’t feel authentic, it can create cynicism, but if it is genuine, it can be very inspiring.
2. Create a series of senior team conversations where people prepare and reflect on some of the recent moments they’re most proud of, the moments when they’re happiest at work and with the team. By doing this, people will uncover what truly motivates them – and you’ll find out a number of things about your team. To get the conversation started, sometimes it’s helpful to share your personal purpose as well as a few different purposes that have come from your peers to allow people to warm up to some of their reflections.

The Pursuit of Organizational and Personal Purpose in Parallel

Bridging the purpose gap and finding a way to pursue both organizational and personal purpose in parallel is where the power of finding meaning at work can drive true impact. If we look for strategic opportunities that present themselves as we try to tackle the worlds big challenges, there are suddenly thousands of ways that businesses can make a lasting difference and set themselves apart. Those businesses who are in pursuit of finding their purposeful advantage are fertile breeding grounds for meaningful careers and the delivery on the aspirational dream of great work doing great things.

We see reason for hope here. But only by looking at the purpose question as a driver of organizational advantage as well as by focusing on finding our own personal ‘Ikigai’ are we likely to avoid the search for purpose becoming another well intended promise that never quite delivers.

We analyzed a set of survey results of 12 leaders who have taken our multi-rater assessment, the ExPI™. At first glance, this is a diverse group. They work for about six different companies in roles that range from manufacturing and supply chain to talent development and consulting. The industries include aerospace/defense, chemicals, non-profits, payment processing, and industrial equipment. The gender mix is pretty even.

All of that said, there has been almost uncanny recurring theme for this latest batch of folks. The vast majority of them received a low rating from peers, direct reports and supervisors in the facet of Restraint—or in the related facet of Composure… or both.

We define Restraint as the degree to which a leader is perceived as calm, deliberate, and reasonable rather than excitable, impulsive, and dominated by their emotions. In other words, does the leader come across as more “Ready, Aim, Shoot,” rather than simply “Shoot!”?  Composure is similar but reflects whether a leader is seen as steady in times of crisis or change, generating light instead of heat.

The somewhat surprising string of low scores in these qualities prompted the question: “What is the story about all these leaders in need of Restraint?”

Well, there are a few possible stories here. It could be pretty simple. Within our database of over 14,000 surveys, Restraint is the lowest-rated facet in Character and the fourth-lowest overall of the 15 facets of executive presence, so statistically you might expect to get occasional periods where five or more leaders in a row have it as one of their two development themes.  We’ve had stretches where it feels like everyone is working on Vision, for example—another facet that tends to have low mean scores.

Upon deeper reflection, though, it seems that Restraint is more likely to be a quality that emerges as a need when a leader hits an inflection point.  We work with many senior leaders and high-potential leaders, and one observation that has emerged is that in fact there are times when these leaders are promoted due to their lack of Restraint.To understand this, when we look again at this group of 12 leaders who are low in Restraint, we see they are rated highly in many other important facets of executive presence:

• Confidence – Being decisive and having a bias toward action, not analysis paralysis
• Practical Wisdom – Delivering relevant insights based on subject matter expertise
• Appearance – Showing up prepared, energetic, looking “ready for the game”
• Integrity – Having a high bar for themselves and others, and walking the talk
• Authenticity – Sharing your thoughts and feelings openly and genuinely

If you’re looking to promote someone, you probably are going to pick a smart, driven person who knows their stuff and gets things done quickly as opposed to someone who is slower to act.

Then what happens after this person is promoted? Their new role demands that they slow down to create room to engage others by asking them questions, listening to them, being open to their ideas, and getting into real dialogue with them that leads to alignment and execution. It’s no longer so much about them, but how they appear to others.

As such, a lack of Restraint now becomes an impediment to influence. In the open-ended comments section of their assessments, these 12 leaders were readily acknowledged to be passionate, decisive, forthright subject matter experts. The other side of the coin is that they’re not as likely to come across as calming, inviting, approachable, inclusive, or aware of what their stakeholders are thinking and feeling. And the more senior these leaders become, the more they will need to get work done through others rather than themselves. Communication and influence essentially become a leader’s most important skill set.

It’s a classic ‘what got you here, won’t get you there’ story, really. In this case, in fact, ‘what got you here’ can start hindering your ability to rise any higher unless it’s addressed.

The good news is that Restraint can be developed. It’s a case where learning why and how to slow down will definitely speed up your ability to engage, inspire, align, and move people to act.

Regardless of whether you’re presenting a business case internally or looking to sell a product or service to folks beyond your walls, it can be daunting to walk into these high-stakes scenarios. Senior leaders are notoriously busy and impatient, and you need succinct, targeted messages to win them over.

In the course of the work we do with senior leaders to help them communicate more persuasively, we find one somewhat surprising habit that can get them into trouble when communicating upwards with a call to action.

Take one example – a set of leaders we worked with from a global technology firm.  These leaders typically call on CIOs and other very senior leaders in the technology function to make the case to buy their products and services. In helping this group to prepare and practice their approach to presenting to this important audience, we found that they all started their presentations this way.

• “Thanks, everyone, for taking time out of your busy schedules to meet with me today.”
• “First of all, I wanted to say how very much I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to meet today.”

As we walked through the initial feedback session, the group felt this was a fine way to start – and one they often rely on in the room. But what stood out to me was the fact that their tone and language was overly deferential. It wasn’t engaging their audience as equals. As I shared with the group, “All of you need to be seen as trusted advisors, strategic partners, and peers to these leaders—rather than as deferential vendors.”

Being overly deferential can show up in a variety of ways. In many “communicating up” situations, high-potential leaders speak way too fast. This comes across as saying, “I know I’m not really worthy of your time, so I will hurry through my content as fast as I can to underscore that fact.” The problem highlighted above – thanking the audience too much – is very common across many different situations.

Some of the leaders we work with push back that this is a problem – they share comments along these lines: “I don’t see anything wrong with this. You need to be courteous.”

This is true, but there’s a big difference between being polite and professional, and using language that highlights the fact that the other party is more powerful and important. In the case of this group of technology leaders, they are all calling on very powerful folks—people who know more about being a CIO and more about their own company than these leaders do.

But what I suggested to them is that they need to remember that they’re the experts in their field and know way more than their prospects do about how to solve the types of problems that their products and services can solve. Furthermore, they know far more than their prospects do about how their fellow CIOs are dealing with these same issues. As I pointed out, “You are in a great position to come across as a strategic partner and peer.”

Being too deferential can hurt your business impact in so many ways. When you’re selling ideas internally or externally, you may not only lose the deal—you may lose future opportunities to have a seat at the table because you aren’t seen as a peer and a partner. You also show that you really don’t know how to communicate up. You can be branded as “not ready” for the next promotion, the next collaboration, or the next deal.

Keeping your deference at bay

Here are six steps to keep your deference in check:

• Don’t fawn over people for taking the time to meet with you. Your time is valuable too.
• Avoid the temptation to give a lengthy history or background. Remember that the best way to be courteous is by being ready to focus on the problems and opportunities that matter to them more than on your own agenda.
• Make the time worth their while by being concise. In just a few minutes, you should be able to cover what the problem or opportunity is, why THIS is the right thing to tackle NOW, and what your idea is for handling it.
• Allow ample time for questions and be ready to go where your audience wants you to go.
• Control your speaking pace. The more important the point you’re making is, the slower you should go.
• Limit your use of PowerPoint slides. Over-reliance on a deck will make it harder to connect personally and may send the message that you don’t really know your stuff.

This peer-to-peer approach literally levels the playing field, making it easier for you to score big when it comes to driving business results.

Only 9% percent of people who set New Year's goals actually achieve them, according to research by the University of Scranton. According to U.S. News, approximately 80% of resolutions fail by the second week of February. Whichever source you believe, the odds are not in favor of sticking to New Year’s Resolutions.

Whether it’s time, resources, competing priorities, or over-committing, there are plenty of challenges that get in the way of sticking to plans to advance or to improve aspects of your life over the course of the year. It’s not surprising that many of the leaders we work with fall prey to these same obstacles when it comes to finding the time and energy to invest consistently in their own growth and development when they have so much on their plates.

With that in mind, here are a handful of ideas to help you stick to your goals and maintain your focus for the next 12 months -tips that have resonated with the leaders I coached last year:

‍Make sure your goals are not an unsustainable death march

‍Every January, my wife and I chuckle about how crowded the gym is. “Just wait,” we’ll say. “All of the New Year’s Resolution people will drop off within a month or so.” And they do. Why? My view is that people tend to make unrealistic, unsustainable goals for themselves. If you start off the year vowing that you’re going to work out an hour every day or eat nothing but salad for lunch and dinner without fail, you’ve probably set out on a death march. And if that’s how it feels, you’ll give it up pretty fast. Instead, decide what’s realistic, and then stick to it, barring something as extreme as a hospitalization or an overseas flight.

‍Commit to trying out new behaviors for two months

‍Research suggests that it takes a while for a new habit to stick. I met with a mentee the other day who really needs to change up some habits around exercise and work breaks. My advice was to set that realistic goal and commit to it 100%--but only through February. At that point, she could allow herself to reflect on tweaking her routines… and in the meantime, she’s probably done some things long enough to turn them into habits.

‍Remember that energy starts with great sleep habits

‍Due to one obstacle described to me often by leaders trying to elevate their effectiveness, I read a good book this year called The Sleep Solution: Why Your Sleep is Broken and How to Fix it? by W. Chris Winter, MD. I used to get sick a couple of times a year, and finally realized that it happened when I overdid it at work, got a little ill… and then kept overdoing it. I stopped, learned to get extra sleep when I got run down, and I haven’t had a sick day in my seven years at Bates.

Here are some great tips from that book:

• Try to wake up at the same time every day to get in a good sleep rhythm
• Exercise in the morning: It’s best for most people’s energy
• Avoid looking at screens an hour before bed time—or use a blue light filter if you must
• Make your room as dark as possible, and, especially, don’t sleep with the TV on!
• Commit to the number of hours of sleep you need each night: Catching up on the weekend doesn’t really work

Stop deciding every day whether or not you will exercise

‍This one changed my life about 18 months ago. My wife and I wanted to lose some weight, so we started with a sustainable micro-goal: “Let’s do what it takes to not GAIN any weight each week!” To make sure I could hit that goal, I vowed to work out six days a week, 30 minutes minimum. Through this schedule and a few dietary tweaks, I lost 18 pounds in six months.

The key was I realized that I had developed a terrible habit: lying in bed each morning, deciding if I would go to the gym. I would mull how well I slept… whether I had a tickle in my throat, and so on, and then I was sunk. Instead, I now put my gym clothes, keys, and gym ID in the bathroom before I go to sleep.  When I wake up, I just get dressed and get out the door, and before you know it I’m done with my daily commitment.

‍Load the deck in your favor when planning when to do what each day

‍Everyone’s energy is a little different over the course of the day. Some start the day with a full tank of energy, and it depletes as the day goes on. I start out strong, wane in the early afternoon, and bounce back energetically from 3 until 6 PM. As a result, I try to be intentional about when I do various kinds of work. If I have some cognitive heavy lifting to do, I try to do it early or late. In the early afternoon, I may opt for a walking meeting, answering emails, or building a program in PowerPoint—things that I can do without a high level of energy.

Give some thought to what works best at whatever time of the day, and schedule yourself accordingly.

‍Periodically review what you should keep doing and what you should give up

‍Frequently, leaders continue doing tasks and attending meetings long after they should have delegated the work or opted out of participating. Periodically, make two lists: the stuff that you should continue doing and the stuff that you should consider giving up or giving away. As you rise in the organization, you will get noticed for having more of an enterprise-wide view. To have that, you need to get out of the weeds.

‍Determine what you need to do to bring your best self to work every day

‍Everyone varies when it comes to how many hours they can work and how much downtime they need—as well as what they need to do during that time away from work. Every quarter or so, evaluate how energized you feel and keep tabs on what’s happening in weeks when your energy is high or low. If you’re starting off Monday morning feeling tired and stressed, something’s wrong.

So, what do you need to do to bring your best self to work each day? That’s something that only you can figure out.

For me, it’s helpful to think of Saturday as a “no work day,” and I try to limit work on Sundays too. From making all sorts of energy management mistakes over the years, I also have come to realize that I’m not at my best if:

• I don’t eat a substantial breakfast
• I’m eating carb-heavy lunches
• I’m not making sufficient time for my family, friends, and hobbies outside of work
• I’m consuming more than one drink of alcohol on a night before a workday
• I’m not making sufficient time for my family, friends, and hobbies outside of work

Meaningful, lasting change is never easy. Whether you’re mulling a New Year’s Resolution or a behavioral change at any time of the year, think about what you want to do, why it matters, and how you’re going to sustain it over the long haul.

If you do, you’ll be feeling a lot better by the time the ball drops on another new year.

In this complex era of disruption, changing customer demands and the call for transparency on the part of today’s leaders, much attention has been paid to the need for authenticity in those leaders to respond.

From our research-based Executive Presence model (the ExPI^tm), and our work with thousands of senior leaders, we know first-hand about the importance of authenticity to influence, align, and inspire others to act and engage to create impact.

We also know how challenging it can be to develop and enhance those behaviors that define authenticity. Here are several observations based on what we have learned, for leaders to consider as they build out those skills.

‍What is Authenticity?

‍Authenticity, one of the 15 dimensions of executive presence in our model, means being real, genuine, transparent, and sincere in one’s relations with others, and revealing the experience and beliefs that define oneself. This facet comprises six items, which can be broken into three themes:

• Whether you’re perceived to be sincere—not fake or phony
• Whether others experience you as transparent—inclined to share thoughts and feelings
• Whether you come across as someone who shares personal stories and life lessons

The vast majority of leaders who have taken the Bates Executive Presence Assessment get high scores on that first theme. When leaders get lower ratings on the facet of authenticity, it’s almost always because they are seen as less transparent or less likely to share more of their personal experiences—or both.

‍The Gap You Create When You are Missing Authenticity

‍When we ask leaders if they think it matters to have a lower score in authenticity for these reasons, they usually sense that it does but can’t always explain why.  Our recommendation is to put a three-word reminder up somewhere in their office: Avoid the void!

What does that mean?  There can be any number of situations where leaders may not readily share their thoughts and feelings. Likewise, some leaders aren’t in the habit of sharing many life lessons in the office.

What’s the impact on others if people don’t hear much about your thoughts, emotions, or stories? It creates a void in the minds of others—a big blank. Human beings don’t like voids; they create ambiguity, uncertainty, and anxiety. So what do we do when there’s a void? We tend to fill it with our own assumptions. Unfortunately for all of us, these assumptions almost always turn negative.

How does this play out?  Let’s say you don’t speak up much in meetings or share much of your personal story with others. There may be a whole bunch of valid reasons for that:

• You’re an introvert who likes to think things through before speaking.
• You’re a private person who likes to keep work and home separate.
• You have a role where you need to worry about what you disclose to whom.
• You haven’t been aware of the importance of sharing the why as well as the what.

But if others don’t know what’s going on in your head, they’ll assume far worse of you.  They may think you’re disengaged, distracted, or overwhelmed. They could assume that you don’t have a point of view, that you’re aloof, or that you just don’t care. All of these interpretations may be wildly off base, but the perceptions exist.

‍Six Tips to Avoid the Void – and Still Be You

‍Here are six tips for avoiding the void—while still being true to your authentic self:

1. If you need more processing time prior to sharing your thoughts and feelings, become more intentional and deliberate about preparation—and not just for presentations.

2. If you’re not ready or able to talk about content, you should share why and tell people when and how you will share more.

3. Sharing stories and life lessons from earlier in your career rather than deeply personal stories is usually more comfortable for relatively private leaders.

4. If your job or role requires you to withhold your thoughts and feelings to some degree, reflect on whether you’re overusing this tendency. There may well be times when you need to be more of a consultant and less of an impartial facilitator or coach.

5. Be more deliberate about sharing what you’re feeling as well as what you’re thinking.

6. Be sure to share the intent behind the content—the rationale or the “why behind the what.

When you “avoid the void,” you will no longer be at risk of people assuming the worst of you because you aren’t opening up and sharing what you’re thinking and feeling, or some defining experiences from your career or life. In short, the more you are transparent, the more qualities of executive presence become crystal clear, and the more you will inspire, align, and engage others to act and create impact.