by Julia Felton | Feb 24, 2015
In a recent article the Harvard Business Review cited the following as traits of innovative leaders. I’m curious what you think about these traits and are there any you would add.
Many organisations would like their leaders to create more innovative teams. But how exactly should they do this? Most highly innovative leaders can often find it difficult to pinpoint what accounts for their skill. Research carried out by US –based leadership development consultants Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman identified 10 distinctive behaviours that set innovative leaders apart.
These leaders:
- Display excellent strategic vision. The most effective innovation leaders could vividly describe their vision of the future
- Have a strong customer focus. They networked with clients and asked incessant questions about their needs and wants.
- Create a climate of reciprocal trust. They initiated warm, collaborative relationships with the innovators who worked for them.
- Display fearless loyalty to doing what’s right for the organisation and customer. Pleasing the boss took a back seat to doing the right thing for the project.
- Put their faith in a culture that magnifies upward communication. These leaders were often described as projecting optimism, full of energy, and always receptive to new ideas.
- Are persuasive. They presented ideas with enthusiasm and conviction, and the team willingly followed.
- Excel at setting stretch goals. They set goals that required people to go far beyond just working harder but required that they find new ways to achieve a high goal.
- Emphasize speed. These leaders believed that experiments and rapid prototypes were preferred to lengthy studies by large committees.
- Are candid in their communication. These leaders were described as providing honest, and at times blunt, feedback.
- Inspire and motivate through action. This comes from a clear sense of purpose and meaning in the work.
So do you have the skills and mindset as a leader to create innovative teams? I’d love to hear if you’d focus on anything different.
by Julia Felton | Jan 27, 2015
Whether you are a business owner or an employee it is essential that you find the right person or job role that is a match for you. I know given the tough economic conditions we’ve been through recently that it is tempting for a candidate to apply for any job for and for recruiters who needs to find resource to accept a less and ideal candidate.
Stop. This is such a flawed strategy for both parties and ultimately ends up costing everyone valuable time, energy and money as:
- The candidate ultimately won’t enjoy the job. Sure they might be able to do the role, but are they giving 110% to it. If the role is not aligned to their own passion and purpose they simply won’t be as productive or creative in the role as they could be.
- For the business owner they are not utilizing the team members best strengths and so ultimately the productivity and engagement of the team member declines and the net result is less profitability for the business.
What both parties crave for is a situation where the team member is working to their strengths, and delivering massive value to the business . This occurs when the team member is in a state we call flow. Put simply, flow is the path of least resistance. When team members are in flow, productivity rises, results increase, occurrences line up, everyone has more fun and feels more connected to the organisation and it’s goals.
When a team member is in flow they feel energised, focused and fully engaged in the task at hand. Often there can be a distortion of time as their internal clock does not seem to match the external clock – perhaps you have experienced this when you have been doing something you love and time just literally seems to fly by. That’s a time that you were in flow.
So how do you know if you are in flow:
- If you are feeling stressed, overwhelmed or anxious, then it’s a fairly good indicator you are out of Flow.
- The opposite is true when you are in Flow, you feel joy and even rapture whilst performing the task. In the work place, this results in a harmonious environment.
The challenge I come across time and time again are team members that are in the wrong roles. They are not playing to their strengths and as a result the are sabotaging the success of the business. This is not usually intentional it is just that unless you are in flow you are unlikely to be able to access the hidden 90% of your potential that exists.
Imagine the benefits if all your team members were operating at or above their peak performance level. Imagine what an impact that would have both on the motivation of the employee but also on the organizational results. Customers would feel more cared for, projects would get delivered on time and the harmony in the workplace would be infectious. This is the type of workplace where trust pervades as everyone is doing their role to their very best.
One tool that I use to help my clients and their business get into flow is something called Talent Dynamics. Based on an ancient Chinese philosophy, the I Ching, it allows each person in a team or organisation to understand the quickest and easiest way for them to get into and stay in Flow by working with their strengths. It also helps them understand where they are most able to add value to the organisation. Simply, by understanding the value you contribute to a team, then you can immediately help identify potential Business Development opportunities.
If you manage a team then by profiling your whole team you can create mutual understanding and get the whole team into flow. Understanding the strengths of team mates and how they contribute and add value to the business allows you to better communicate and it is easier to gain trust and respect with each other and so deliver results in performance and profitability.
So whether you’re a business owner or a candidate make sure that you find the perfect role for you – one that speaks to your strengths and where you can add real value.
The first step to finding out your strengths is to identify where you are most trusted in business. You can take the quick 30 second assessment at http://bit.ly/trusttest.
by Julia Felton | Sep 26, 2013
Step 6 in creating a Joined Up Business is resource effectively and to do this you need a Joined Up team. So many entrepreneurs I see are struggling to harness more clients and cash because they are the centre of the business as a result the business cannot grow. I have always said that success is a team sport as so if you want to up level your business you need to bring valuable team members. Yet time and time again I see people making poor decisions regarding the resources they need. So why is this? The reason is that often we like to hire (engage the services) of people like us but that is the death knell for a small business. People like us like the same tasks that we like so the result is that the other tasks (the ones we hate and procrastinate about) never get completed.
I m sure many of you are familiar with the wheel of life. You map all the areas of your life and aim to get everything in balance because only if the wheel is in balance can it turn effectively. On the way to the airport this morning I had a stark reminder of what happens when things get out of balance because I got a flat tyre. Being out of balance – with only three tyres – meant I could not go forward and so had to pull over onto the hard shoulder of the motorway. And the only way to efficiently and effectively get me moving again was to summon in support in the form of the Green Flag man. He came and changed my tyre for me so I could get going again. It was a really great analogy for me of how often the same thing happens in business. We forget to focus on an area until it goes wrong and then we either have to try and fix it ourselves or find support and team members to get this challenge resolved.
So how do we find the right people to work with us in our Joined Up Team ? How do we identify individuals that we can work with who can add real value to our business. Well the trick is not to hire people like us but rather the opposite because these people will love doing the tasks we hate. The tool I use to help me determine the right person to hire is Talent Dynamics. This short assessment helps people identify their natural strengths and so reveals the areas of business where they can add the most value because they are in flow. So what is flow? Flow is the state we are in when time flies by and we love what we are doing. Everything seems easy, yet time and time again I see business owners stepping out of flow because they seem to think that business should be hard. They fail to realise that they are delivering the most value when they are doing what they love and things are easy.
Within Talent Dynamics there are 8 different archetypes and you can read all about them here. Each archetype has different strengths and activities that they are best suited to work on in a business. Maybe you have high dynamo energy like the creators – they have their head in the clouds and are great at strategy and creating new ideas but lousy at follow up and detail. Contrast this with the traders (tempo energy people) who love detail and have their ear to the ground. They love to know what is going on and are great at detail. Give them customer facing roles where they can nurture the clients and they will flourish.
Then there are blaze energy people who just love connecting with others. It’s all about the people for them so they are great at networking, deal making and raising the visibility of your business. In contrast steel energy people are all about the task and analytical detail. The process is more important for them than the people so these people relish roles like accountancy and finance that are meticulously detailed. It’s important to note that we all have our unique energy blueprint and can all “do” all the energies but you will be more efficient, productive and therefore happy if you focus on the activities that you have the greatest affinity and propensity to excel at.
Once you understand where your strength and talents lie it is easy then to hire people with complementary skills. In doing so you create a Joined Up Team that is balanced and gets all the tasks of he business accomplished. You can take your talent dynamics test here and if you need any help in creating your Joined Up Team just let me know and we can schedule a Joined Up Business Strategy Session to jump start your business to the next level.
