Category: Leadership

Rare Video Shows How Steve Jobs Responds to (Blistering) Criticism

Posted by Phillip Wilson | Aug 19, 2016 | Leadership

As leaders, criticism is inevitable.

Criticism is inevitable because mistakes are inevitable. We are going to overlook some things that we should have paid more attention to. We are going to make decisions that prove to be the wrong ones. We are going to say things that we shouldn’t have said. We will fall short at times. We’re human.

Accepting that reality is the first step to being able to respond to criticism with steady assurance, class, and understanding. The video above shows Steve Jobs doing just that.

Don’t Roll the Dice: Four Keys to a Winning Change Management Strategy

Posted by Phillip Wilson | Aug 15, 2016 | Leadership

Failure to successfully implement change projects is killing companies.

Change projects are inevitable because change is inevitable. You must spend time innovating and implementing new processes if you want to stay ahead of your competition. The problem is, even those companies that are great at innovation tend to break down when it comes to implementation. In fact, only 56 percent of strategic initiatives meet their original goals and business intent.

How can we change that?

The answer most leader experts, managers, and academics have been giving in recent years is for teams to focus more on soft skills throughout their change efforts. In truth, it seems like soft skills—qualities like self-awareness, relationship building, effective communication, and the ability to create trust and motivate others—have become the catch-all for your leader problems. And while we are big proponents of soft skills in leadership (after all, our main message is leader approachability), the fact is nothing is a catch-all. You have got to learn to strike the right balance in applying your soft skills while not forgetting to consider and look to hard factors as well.

Guess What Behavior Led to 84% Fewer Workplace Accidents?

Posted by Phillip Wilson | Aug 12, 2016 | Leadership

Learning to be vulnerable at work decreases workplace accidents. I’ll admit it, this story...

7 Keys to Being a Leader Your Team Can Trust

Posted by Phillip Wilson | Aug 8, 2016 | Leadership

Trust is the most vital aspect of any relationship.

If you don’t trust someone it is extremely hard to get past that feeling and get any quality work done. Mistrust causes stress and distraction. It leads to politics and disengagement. And sometimes we find ourselves wanting to trust a leader or a coworker – but not feeling as though we can.

For some professions (the military, police and fire departments, heavy equipment operators, and healthcare professionals to name just a few) trust can be a matter of life or death. These leaders and teams must have trust for physical safety.

In most professions the stakes aren’t that high. But trust is still really important. For my team trust is essential for peace of mind. Without it we cannot perform our best.

Changing the Way We Innovate

Posted by Phillip Wilson | Aug 2, 2016 | Leadership

Businesses need to innovate.

When you’re not innovating, you’re not growing. And in a world where the next new thing is always just around the corner, to innovate even more important. It seems dramatic, but it’s the reality of today’s market – just look at what almost happened to Unilever had they not bought out Dollar Shave Club (click here to read our article on it).

How do we create employees and departments that innovate?

George E. L. Barbee recently came out with a book entitled 63 Innovation Nuggets. In Barbee’s 45 year business career, he was responsible for innovation with multiple Fortune 100 companies: Gillette, General Electric, PepsiCo, IBM and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. He knows how to build teams that innovate and thrive.

This white paper lays out twelve of those nuggets. I’m not going to go into all of them here, but I do want to discuss the nuggets that stuck out most to me.

First off, Barbee starts by making the point that most of us are far more innovative than we think we are. This is because most of us associate innovation with invention. And while that is true, you don’t have to invent something to innovate. All you have to do is pay attention. Observe what’s around you. And then transfer what you observed to another category where it can be applied.