Category: Leadership

Power Distance Killed Nokia (Plus 7 Tips To Discover Your Gaps)

Posted by Phillip Wilson | Feb 29, 2016 | Leadership

Power distance killed Nokia. Not Apple, Microsoft or Android. A recent study investigates just how it happened.

It is almost impossible to believe, but the iPhone isn’t even 10 years old. If you used a cell phone before 2007 you almost certainly owned a Nokia product at some point. They were THE mobile phone company.

But Nokia is gone now. Many reasons are given for Nokia’s decline. Most observers blame the iPhone or the fact that Nokia just didn’t have the capacity to keep up.

But those stories don’t add up. Nokia’s problem was cultural.

Nokia’s leaders never took Apple seriously until it was way too late. A key reason for this misstep was that mid-level managers did not feel safe confronting their leaders. There was too big a power distance gap between top leaders and other coworkers.

Helping Others Makes Better Leaders (5 Tips to Grow Others)

Posted by Phillip Wilson | Feb 26, 2016 | Leadership

“Helping others can actually create the sense of meaning we’re seeking. Rather than ruminating on what makes our life worthwhile as we work toward burnout, we can find the answer outside ourselves, in human connection.”

This was the conclusion drawn by Elizabeth Hopper, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Berkeley. Hopper began her research with the understanding that there are two types of well-being: “hedonic well-being (a sense of happiness) and eudaimonic well-being (a sense of meaning and purpose).”

One study sought to look specifically at those differences and found that while “having strong social connections was important for both happiness and meaningfulness…helping others in need and identifying oneself as a ‘giver’ in relationships were related to meaning alone.”

10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation | Celeste Headlee TED Talk

Posted by Phillip Wilson | Feb 22, 2016 | Leadership

Spoiler alert… here are the 10 ways to have a better conversation:

1. Don’t multitask – be present
2. Don’t pontificate (she suggests writing a blog instead 🙂 ) “Everyone you will ever meet knows something that you don’t” (Bill Nye)
3. Ask open ended questions – start with who, what, when, where, why or how
4. Go with the flow – whatever you think of, let it go
5. If you don’t know, say that you don’t know…

Managing Millennials: Only YOU Can Stop Generational Profiling

Posted by Phillip Wilson | Feb 19, 2016 | Leadership

Stop Generational Profiling

Targeting someone because of their race is called profiling. Targeting someone based on their age is no different. It’s called it Generational Profiling and we are in the middle of an epidemic.

For some reason people who should know better have built a cottage industry around teaching people how to get all these generations to work together. However, most of what I’ve seen about managing Millennials is a hodgepodge of worse than useless advice. It focuses managers on exactly the wrong things. It focuses on the often meaningless differences between people, instead of looking at the massive number of things we have in common.

In her book Retiring the Generation Gap Jennifer Deal discusses a study of 3000 people across generations. Her finding is that the differences between generations are minor compared to the things we all share in common. For example, all three generations want to feel respected at work. They want leaders they trust. They dislike change (yes, even Millennials). They want to learn and receive feedback.

Why Approachable Leadership?

Posted by Phillip Wilson | Feb 15, 2016 | Leadership

We know there’s a lot of great leadership advice out there already – 5 Dysfunctions, 7 Habits, Crucial Conversations, Situational Leadership, Start with Why. So why doesn’t it stick? Well, it’s a lot like saying I know how to swing a golf club, why aren’t I a scratch golfer?

Let’s face it, most leaders know what they are supposed to do. But when you get into the heat of battle a lot of times you end up falling back into bad habits. The more you do to complicate things the more likely you are to abandon it early. Like the esteemed management thinker Mike Tyson once said:

“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”