executive

Steph Curry has mentors that help him with his shot. Can you believe that? The best basketball shooter on the planet has mentors to help him shoot better!? You would think he should be mentoring other people, right? 

Steph has coaches too. And he plays on a team, meets with other players from around the NBA to discuss basketball and life. But he also has mentors.

If you are an executive reading this article, compare yourself, as a leader in your company, to Steph Curry leading his team.

You may have a coach. And you may have an executive team that advises you on company matters, and you may participate in an executive advisory group. But do you have mentors?

This is not meant to offend, but chances are that you aren’t as good of an executive as Steph Curry is a shooter. And even if you were, you should be taking every advantage you can if you want to be the best at your game. So if 2-time MVP, 3-time NBA champion, 6-time All-NBA team Steph Curry thinks he needs a mentor to achieve greatness, then you could probably use one too. 

So, what is a mentor?

A standard definition would say a mentor is simply an experienced and trusted advisor.

But there is clearly more to mentorship than that.

Does being experienced mean they must be older than you?

Does trusted mean that you have worked with them for many years?

Our research indicates that those assumptions about “experienced” and “trusted” are incorrect.

The best mentoring relationships are horizontal. Horizontal mentorships are mentoring relationships where two people are open to learning from each other and being constantly curious, giving their insight to the relationship, and approaching the personal/professional relationship as equals. In this mentorship paradigm, experience and trust are measured in more than just “years”. 

Great horizontal mentorship is built on a mutual perspective on the relationship between work and life. We call this work orientation. Some people view their work as a job (meaning their focus is on work/life balance), career (meaning their focus is on professional growth) or calling (meaning their focus is on personal/professional mission alignment). There is not a right or wrong work orientation and it is fluid, meaning it can change throughout your life.

Work orientation is an important factor in building great mentor relationships. When potential mentors are matched strictly on age, years of experience, status, or area of expertise, the likelihood that the relationship will last for 6 months and be considered productive and quality is 18%. These factors simply aren’t enough.

What if, instead of using superficial features, we matched people based on a deeper connection? When mentors are matched with aligning Work Orientations, the likelihood that the relationship will last for 6 months and be considered productive and quality jumps to 72%.

These relationships become even more successful when work orientation is combined with horizontal mentorship, particularly for company leaders and executives. Horizontal mentorship between executives is a powerful tool for improving yourself and your company. You can relate to similar decisions faced and strategies to consider – even if you are in completely different industries. You can emotionally relate to the stressors of the work and can take a smarter approach when challenging you to grow professionally. Their outside, yet equal perspective provides something that an individual executive’s team or coaches won’t (because that executive controls their pay and job status).

1. Have somebody else to help balance the mental load of what an executive is normally carrying.

As an executive, you are faced with a lot of decisions and plans. Even if you are the most organized and well-planned person, your team is spending their full-time working with you in the office, and your only guidance is from your team. It’s difficult for someone to bring a new perspective to you when they are seeing the same things you see – even if they feel comfortable challenging you. Also, you have probably split your team into departments and you or a combination of you and your executives orchestrate the entire operation. Not everyone can relate and help you prioritize what is most important. Someone with a shared work orientation and has similar responsibilities in a different company/industry can help you ease the mental load of what you are facing.

2. Look at challenges from a different lens from somebody completely outside of your industry.

Success leaves clues. But it’s up to you to find them. What was successful in one industry might work in another. If you are an executive and your network is insulated and rarely expanding, you will only surround yourself with the same thinking. Finding new mentors and continuing to build relationships with current mentors will help you expand your problem-solving abilities.

3. Be able to emotionally attach and disengage.

A mentor is not a spouse. A mentor is close enough to you that they can understand and empathize but distant enough from you that you can make mistakes with what you say or how you phrase something without it backlashing. You can technically fire your spouse, but that’s a relationship that you probably don’t want to fire if you don’t have to. It is okay for you to have a mentor relationship with somebody for 6 months and then if you decide you don’t like their advice anymore begin to grow distant. You can always pick that relationship back up again if you would like. 

1. I don’t have the time for mentors.

Are you working in the business or on the business? Executive mentors can help you work on the business. As a leader, you need to be thinking ahead and willing to do the work now so that your job will be easier later. If your job is to cut down trees, going at it day after day with a dull axe isn’t working hard, it’s working poorly. Mentorship helps you sharpen your metaphorical axe; neglecting your toolkit means you are neglecting your work, even if you think you can’t make the time.

2. I already have mentors.

How did you find your mentors? From the circles you actively connect with and run in? If you all hear the same things, are given similar advice, and trying the same strategies, are your mentors giving you anything new? Or are they just confirming what you already know? Finding executive mentors outside of your circle will make you see your blind spots. 

3. I don’t need mentors.

This sort of response typically comes from a place of ego. Anyone who says this is conveying that they have learned everything and there is no room for them to grow. Which, paradoxically, is proof that they in fact still have plenty more to learn. The knowledge and experience gained from an executive mentor is simply irreplaceable. As I stated at the opening of this blog: chances are, you are no Steph Curry (in your field). The best of the best are that way for a reason. Success leaves clues and this one isn’t buried that deep.      

Every executive will benefit by cultivating a group of strong, diverse mentor relationships, especially ones outside of their industry and normal sphere of influence. The diversity of thought that comes from these types of relationships lead executives to make massive breakthroughs in their businesses, and within themselves mentally and emotionally. What’s your excuse?

I was fortunate enough to be invited as a guest on the IBJ podcast a month ago to discuss the topic of the Great Resignation and why people are making career changes in droves. One of the consistent themes my fellow guest, Mandy Haskins, and I identified was how critical of a role that the manager plays in whether people stay or go.

One of the most important components for being a strong manager that engages their team and helps them feel connected to the work is their ability to have effective one-on-one meetings with their direct reports. 

This article is going to explain why having one-on-one meetings between managers and direct reports is so critical to being a strong manager. Next, I’ll present some tips on how to have effective one-on-ones and how you can assess the quality of those important meetings.

Gallup came out with research that identified that 70% of employee engagement variance is based on the relationship between the manager and that employee. The adage “people don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses” is absolutely true. And the best way to ensure that you are consistently connecting with and having a pulse on your people is by having regular 1:1 meetings with direct reports to understand their feelings about work and their own path within the organization.

A 1:1 is time taken between a manager and direct report to discuss updates between each other and their overall feelings about the work. However, not all managers treat these meetings with the same significance. Some managers define a 1:1 as a quick chat about upcoming tasks. On the other hand, some other managers create an agenda to discuss key components of the employee’s work, keep notes from previous conversations to follow up on, and share a vision for the employee (and have the employee share a vision with them) that includes their role in the organization and their role within the particular team or department. 

The problem here is that the difference between the former and latter examples of 1:1’s is vast: you simply can’t get a good read on the situation without putting in the work to have effective 1:1’s. So I wanted to take some time to identify what an effective 1:1 looks like, what you should be discussing, and how you can assess the value of those meetings over time.

An effective 1:1 is a meeting between manager and direct where report the manager has asked the direct report to share some updates about their work and tasks to the manager before the meeting has started (i.e., updates on goals, perceptions of task performance, team productivity, team cohesion, and feelings about their ability to help others without being asked - organizational citizenship). This key step gives the manager context on to what has been accomplished since their last meeting and how they are feeling about work from a high level.

When the manager and direct report meet, the manager has questions prepared to ask their direct report that will help the manager better understand any gaps between the manager’s perspective and the direct report’s experience. For example, consider a case where a direct report shared before the 1:1 that they are feeling a little down on their task performance this month. However, their manager feels that the individual did a fine job and didn’t notice any signs of lower task performance. Effective managers can learn more about the cause of this gap in perception by asking questions like these in the next 1:1 meeting:

·         What areas do you think you performed well this past month and what areas do you think you could improve?

·         What aspects of your work do you like most? How do they play into your strengths and vision for where you'd like to be?

·         How do you feel about your work and the people you work with?

·         What areas of your work would benefit from greater clarity from myself or other team members?

What is critical about the questions a manager has prepared for the conversation is that they are not simple yes/no questions, nor are they “why” questions. Yes/no questions are not as effective in a 1:1 because managing and understanding your direct reports requires some curiosity from the manager to get useful answers. Binary questions leave out the details that provide needed context and understanding between manager and direct report. 

“Why” questions are also not as effective in a 1:1 because they insinuate that something needs to be justified. For example, if the manager would have asked “Why do you think you performed poorly over the past month?”, the subsequent response involves backtracking and providing a justification for why they scored themselves the way they did. It puts the employee on the defensive and hampers shared understanding. It also disincentives’ employees from being honest in future conversations and doesn’t lead to any greater understanding between manager and direct reports. What/How/Who questions are much more effective for 1:1’s because they emphasize curiosity and help a direct report feel comfortable sharing an honest assessment of themselves, their team, and their experience.

Management simply doesn’t allow for some one-size-fits-all scientific solution. Management is more of an art that needs to be adjusted on a case-by-case basis to fit their direct reports, their work, and work culture. At Ambition In Motion, we have created a tool that helps managers better understand their direct reports’ core feelings about work over time (updates on goals, feelings about their task performance, feelings about the team productivity and cohesion, and feelings about their ability to help others without being asked - organizational citizenship) called AIM Insights. 

One thing we have found to be really effective with the tool is when we measure the correlation between the number of 1:1’s had and their employees’ change in responses month-over-month trends for those core feelings on work. When there is a positive correlation, that would mean that the more meetings that manager has with that direct report, the higher the direct reports’ scores are (which means they should have more 1:1’s with that employee). When there is a negative correlation that would mean that the content and quality of those meetings need to change to help improve that employee’s feelings about work.

Of course, there are other factors that can impact how an employee is feeling at work, beyond their relationship with their manager, so this can’t solve every challenge an employee is facing at work.

However, refer back to the Gallup statistic – 70% of employee engagement variance is based on the relationship between manager and direct report. Measuring this every month can help a manager find the right communication style and cadence that works best for each direct report. This, in turn, can help managers better understand their employees, improve their engagement levels, and increase retention. As the relationship between employees and employers continues to change and evolve, I’m sure that the “winners” of the great resignation will be the managers who adapt and thrive: they will keep their best employees, develop up-and-coming stars, and provide a prime landing spot for anybody that’s sick of the old paradigm.

Your team knows better than anyone what it’s like to work for you. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to tell you. When it comes to giving feedback, many direct reports figure, “Why risk it?” or “What’s the point?”

They’re cautious because they’ve heard about, or experienced managers lashing out, hurting people’s careers, or just plain ignoring them when they share what they really think. But it doesn’t have to be that way!

You can be a different kind of leader; one who understands that just about everything you do and say impacts your direct reports’ lives and performance; a leader who truly wants to hear their unpolished feedback; who proactively seeks out that feedback so that everyone can reach their highest potential, including you. 

 

No one wants to offend the boss, right? But without input, your development will suffer, you may become isolated, and you’re likely to miss out on hearing some great ideas. 

The feedback you get from your direct reports can help to shape your management style, decision-making process, and the ways in which you interact with your team members. This kind of feedback can not only make you a better manager, but ultimately, it can also help to inspire a higher level of performance in your team.

So, how can you get your direct reports to give you HONEST feedback?

 

            Acknowledge the fear, and embrace your desire to be the best leader for your direct reports! 

            As the boss, you have to set the stage so people feel comfortable with you. You need to break through their fear. You know that everyone makes mistakes, even you! Tell them this. Explain, honestly and openly, that you need their feedback.

But at the same time, it’s important that you recognize how hard it might be to hear this tough feedback. It’s human nature to feel upset when you’re criticized. However, in order for you to be the best leader that you can be, and to help your team thrive, you need this feedback! Here are three ways to help you get there:

 

●     Establish a groundwork for high-trust feedback exchanges 

●     Conduct regular 1:1 meetings with your direct reports 

●     Use the right evaluation software: AIM Insights 

 

 

Do you want your direct reports to give you honest feedback?

You can’t expect your direct reports to provide honest, open, and helpful feedback if you don’t provide it to them. It’s a two-way street. So take care to model best feedback practices that signal trust, respect, and fairness. 

Unless you already have a strong, trusting relationship with your direct reports, you likely won’t get far bulldozing your way straight into a sensitive task (e.g., “So, how am I doing as a manager?”). But most people, even new hires, will be comfortable and possibly even flattered if you initiate feedback exchanges over lower-stakes topics related to the team’s work. This will send a strong message that you care about, and rely on, your team’s opinions. 

Showing that you care about your direct reports through mutual feedback is essential! You won’t get honest feedback from your direct reports if they don’t feel safe. And they won’t feel safe if you react to the inevitable challenges of work-life with cringes, frustration, or anger. 

 

 

With a loaded schedule like yours, you have limited time, your task list is endless and the goals are aggressive. And your calendar is already full of other meetings: Management meetings, Quarterly review meetings, Sync meetings, and much more…

But as a manager and leader, there’s one meeting you should have and follow: one-on-one meetings with your team.

A one-on-one meeting is a dedicated space on the calendar and in your mental map for open-ended and anticipated conversations between a manager and an employee. Unlike status reports or tactical meetings, the 1:1 meeting is a place for coaching, mentorship, giving context, or even venting.

The 1:1 goes beyond an open door policy and dedicates time on a regular cadence for teammates and leaders to connect and communicate.

 

For more information on how to have an effective 1:1 with your direct reports, click here.

 

 

What method do you use to conduct self/team evaluations? 

When conducting performance evaluations, things can often get messy. How often should you conduct them? What forms should be involved in the process? How long should it take everyone? 

Stress, no more! At Ambition in Motion, we’ve created AIM Insights, a software to help YOU conduct your evaluations with simplicity. 

AIM Insights is a tool utilized by fortune 500 companies to help teams set goals, measure performance, and engagement improvement, and create greater communication between direct reports and managers.

This software allows leaders to stay up to date on their direct reports’ engagement levels, productivity levels, and individual goals on a month-by-month rolling basis. 

 

As a manager, it’s crucial that you respond to employee feedback. 

One of the biggest frustrations for employees who take the time to give thoughtful feedback is when this feedback is ignored by their peers, manager, or organization. Responding to feedback from your team members shows them that you take their ideas and opinions to heart.

Remember, it’s important to read, ponder and acknowledge all of the feedback given to you, but you’re not required to take all of it! 

Regardless of whether you decide to take the feedback or not, you owe it to the direct report who gave you the feedback to communicate your intentions. 

Sometimes it’s important that we have these conversations about our intentions in order to show our direct reports that we’re changing and growing every day. 

 

Example of what you might say if you choose to take the feedback: “Thanks so much for your feedback, John. You make a great point. I’m going to work on talking less during meetings and making sure others get the opportunity to weigh in. If it’s OK with you, I’d also like to check in with you in our 1-on-1s to see if you notice any progress.”

 

Example of what you might say if you choose NOT to take the feedback: “Thanks so much for your feedback, John. I’ve given it a lot of thought. While hearing your feedback about my meeting facilitation was helpful, I’ve decided to prioritize another behavior change right now: committing more time to coach the team. But it means a lot to me that you were honest, and I’m going to continue asking for your input.”

 

            Utilizing your 1:1 meetings to convey your thoughts and appreciation of your direct reports’ feedback is a great place to start! 

            Good luck! 

Todd is an executive for a high-growth tech startup that has 400 employees. His biggest challenge in optimizing his team’s performance is the ever-changing nature of the business.

Todd’s CEO and board regularly come to him with changes to the company’s operations. Sure, he is involved in many of these decisions, but often by the time the conversation gets to him, the CEO and board have already made up their mind and changes are already in the works and he has to catch up. 

The challenge is that his team has been spending the past 3 months working on a completely different plan and now, much of that work has to be scrapped for this new plan.

As a mastermind group, the Ambition in Motion team asked Todd questions to clarify his situation and then we provided some suggestions.

One of the big suggestions was getting ahead of the trends so that he and his team could be a part of the change management process as opposed to having the change happen to them. 

This requires better data collection and access to user feedback information as well as the freedom to begin experimenting with new ideas as the new information comes in.

The other big factor in all of this is properly setting expectations both for his team and for his board and CEO as the ideas he and his team come up with may not work, but at least it gives them a lens into what they are trying and gives them an opportunity to experiment.

Ultimately, the ability to set expectations both for your team and for your leadership is critical to having work where the expectations meet reality and people are excited to come to work. When people feel unclear about their role or the changes happening at work and they feel powerless over them, stress ensues and people leave or worse, become actively disengaged.

Oftentimes, this confusion of beginning a new role with a lack of understanding, training, or data, occurs most frequently amongst new managers beginning the role as a leader of a new team. 

 Data in a workplace is absolutely essential. Data includes performance reviews, employee values, wants, and needs, as well as information about what previous employees implemented and how it impacted their teams. 

 The amount of data connected to an organization today is on an unprecedented scale and impossible to process manually; this is why it is important to invest in an effective data management system.

This is why data is seen as one of the most important assets of an organization; it is the foundation of information and the basis on which people make decisions. Hence it would follow that if the data is accurate, complete, organized, and consistent, it will contribute to the growth of the organization. 

Most importantly, the right data alongside proper training is what will lead a new manager thoroughly into the position of effectively leading a new team. 

These are some of the additional and undeniable benefits of effective data and how it can effectively improve a rapidly changing workplace.

1. Increases productivity

If data can be accessed easily, especially in large organizations, your company will be more organized and productive. It reduces the time that people spend looking for information and instead ensures that they can do their job efficiently. 

Employees will also be able to understand and communicate information to others. Furthermore, it makes it easy to access past correspondence and prevent miscommunication due to messages lost in transit.

For new managers, being able to access and identify information about past performance can boost effective leadership faster than having no data at all.

2. Smooth operations

A seamless operating system is every business’ dream and data management can make that a reality. It is one of the determining factors in ensuring the success of an organization; if one takes too long to respond to their customers or to the changing trends around them, they run the risk of falling behind. Heightening the data within performance reviews will allow for quick transitions of productivity for teams. 

A good data management system will ensure that you respond to the world accordingly and stay ahead of the competition.

3. Cost-effective

If you have a good system in place, you will spend less money trying to fix problems that shouldn’t have occurred in the first place. 

 Most importantly, improperly training new managers will lead to a decrease in productivity and ineffective leadership, which will ultimately lose time and money for the company. 

4. Better decision making

When everything's in its place, and everyone knows where to look for it, the quality of your decisions improves drastically. By nature, people have different ways of processing information, but a centralized system ensures a framework to plan, organize and delegate.

Additionally, a good system will ensure good feedback, which in turn will lead to necessary updates to the process that will only benefit your company in the long run.

Get ahead of the struggles that come with change; engage in the best management practices 

Performance review data must deliver meaningful results.

After you’ve properly trained your new managers, it’s your company’s job to provide your new managers with meaningful performance reviews to analyze. Meaningful reviews include honest feedback from employees; a product that your new manager can use to effectively lead their new team. 

 Traditional performance reviews lack meaning. Charts measure trends, but trends don’t tell a new manager how to make a difference, and how to best lead their new team and minimize the learning curve of new managers becoming effective leaders.

 So why do managers need more than just data to effectively lead their team? 

 There’s simply no training for a new position in analyzing charts. 

 What do the charts mean? Sometimes trends are low, and sometimes they are high. But that doesn’t tell you what the employees were thinking or experiencing when they filed these performance reviews. 

 Charts and reports are not training. 

 However, putting effort into detailed and trustworthy performance management with coaching will enhance training for new employees in new positions as well as guide your company in tackling the changes that occur within a workplace, and quickly making effective leadership decisions. 

Coaching enhances performance. It can benefit anyone, not just athletes. Just like athletes, leaders are under pressure to perform every day. And just like with athletes, coaching is the best way to ensure that leaders can perform at a high level.

Workplace coaching is a burgeoning industry with a growing body of literature to support it. In this article, we break down workplace coaching, how it works, and how you can use it to help grow your organization.

 

Executive coaches work with business leaders to enable their rapid development. They also assist with specific problems that a board member, or senior manager, wants to work through outside of the normal business framework. 

Unlike training, coaching focuses very specifically on the issues that an executive wants to work through. Thus it becomes a speedy way to improve skills and achieve personal and professional objectives.

The executive coach gives the executive feedback and a new perspective that enables them to set goals and work towards them. The coaching sessions use objective feedback to drive the executive's thought processes forward through their issues.

 

There are many uses of executive coaching but the most common reasons for engaging a coach include the following:

 

●       Onboarding or Transitioning: when a board member or senior manager is promoted, coaching can quickly help them prepare for their new role. It's also a very useful method for helping someone who is transitioning from one area of responsibility to another at the same level.

●       High Potential: individuals who are identified as having real talent, can often be coached to accelerate their personal development within an organization.

●       Organizational Change: coaching can support transformative business programs to ensure that leadership can keep pace with change.

●       Neutral Party Support: sometimes the executive will need to run ideas over a sounding board to be better able to articulate them in their own business.

●       Personal Effectiveness Programs: if the executive themselves plays a coaching role, for example in their management position or during 360-degree review processes, coaching can help them develop their own approach.

 

Coaching enables leaders to deal with the unknown.

The workplace is a dynamic environment, characterized by turnover and volatile market forces. The beauty of coaching is that leaders do not need to know everything in order to be effective; instead, they need to know how to empower those around them.

Executive coaching gives businesses a way of developing their senior staff in a cost-effective and timely manner. 

Coaching sessions enable the staff member to concentrate on the issues that are most critical to their performance, without the fluff of lengthy training courses. They allow the director or manager to remain at their post whilst developing and thus don't take away from their contribution to the business.

It can be said that executive coaching is one of the most important methods for improving the skills of your leaders and directors. 

It should be easy to demonstrate a clear return on investment for this kind of coaching. And anything that has a positive impact on the bottom line is something that your business should be considering.

 

If you are interested in bringing a coach on board, there are several ways to identify the coaching needs of your workplace.

First, you can bring in a consultant with expertise in gathering information in organizations through surveys, assessments, and interviews.

There is no better way to identify needs than by talking to the people involved in your organization. 

In this case, you can select a sampling of your staff to interview, asking them about the skills and resources that they feel they need to do their job effectively.

If you feel that employees are not giving honest feedback or you are stuck, it may be time to bring in a consultant.

 

            AIM Insights has hundreds of executive coaches that specialize in specific areas of expertise: sales, technology, operations, etc. 

            Fill out our executive coaching form and the AIM Insights team will pair you with the right executive coach for you. You also have the option to be put on a rotation over a period of time with multiple executive coaches that specialize in different areas of business. 

Regardless, these pairings are made based on metrics and feedback tested by AIM Insights. When you begin, you will be asked to take assessments that will generate the most effective executive coaches for you. 

This can even be done through the AIM Insights People Leader Certification program, where you will be paired with an experienced coach, personalized to your field of management, working with you through gaining a management certification to excel in your career. 

What difference does AIM Insights bring to executive coaching? 

Lots of benefits at a fraction of the cost. 

There are two reasons why AIM Insights is cost-effective: 

 

1.     The insights from the initial assessments done on the executive client allow the executive coach to have enough feedback and guidance to give to the manager immediately 

2.     This is more effective than the executive coach going out and marketing themselves on LinkedIn, commenting on posts with no guarantee that they will be given a job. By creating a marketplace for managers and executive coaches to come together, coaches can spend more time coaching.

            

AIM Insights has hundreds of executive coaches, ready to guide you at a customized level. If you want to see efficient, long-lasting improvements within your organization, and you believe that executive training can benefit you, set up a meeting to speak with the AIM Insights team and find out how you can get started with a customized executive coaching program. 

 

As Bill Gates said:

 

As an executive of your company, you are the face of the company or business you run. You are the one that everyone first thinks of when they hear or interact with your brand, you are the one they blame if something goes wrong, and you are the one they remember. 

Executive branding is important no matter what kind of business you are in, whether it be retail, construction, manufacturing, healthcare, technology, or any other industry. 

Branding is necessary for all aspects of your business; you want everything to be cohesive and be true to who you are and what you believe. Those values and beliefs should trickle down the pipeline of your employees, and as an entire brand, you should all feel similar in how you see the workplace and the world.

 

 

Executive branding starts with determining what you want your core message to be. Your message should coincide with what your target audience believes, and you need to use your message to grab their attention. For example, if you are the executive of an environmentally friendly packaging supplies business, your message should relate to the work your company does and how you do it. Your target audience would be business owners of all sizes who want to only use packing supplies that are eco-friendly. If you brand yourself properly and market your message to those people, you’ll have a loyal customer base in no time.

Even though you may not deal with your audience daily as other people within your company do, it’s still extremely important to brand yourself as the executive. Your branding is what helps you make connections in the business world, it helps get your name in front of people’s eyes, and it helps to boost your business more than you probably imagine.

Whether you’re in a new position as executive or you’ve been executive for 10+ years, there is always room for improvement when it comes to branding yourself.

 

 

 

As an executive of a company, you barely have free time as it is. So, do you really need to take the time to brand yourself? Here are 5 reasons why it’s necessary to establish a personal brand for yourself:

 

Executive branding is your one chance to show your audience what makes you and your business unique. What do you offer that others don’t? Why should they support your business over your competitors? What makes you unique?

These are all things you should answer when defining your brand as executive. People support those they align with, in all aspects. If someone can see who you are as a person and can see you truly care about a cause or believe in a product or service, they’ll see that and come to your business with their credit card ready. Authenticity and uniqueness are what drive people to your brand!

 

The only way to gain new clients or customers and create loyal ones is to get them on your side. Let’s go back to the eco-friendly packing supplies business example. If there is a small business owner that believes in your cause and can tell you truly care about saving and protecting our environment and they like you as a person, they are 10x more likely to continue supporting you even if your prices are higher. 

Relationships are crucial and maintaining them is an essential practice. 

In fact, 71% of consumers say they prefer to support companies that align with their own values. Why is that? Because they like you for you, not for your prices or products. You have similar values and that is what makes people loyal to one brand over another.

 

Going back to the stat that 71% of consumers out there prefer to purchase products or services from brands that align with their own values and beliefs, creating an executive brand is one of the best things you can do to show your target audience what you believe in and why you believe it. 

These days, people don’t just type in something online and purchase the first thing that pops up. They take time to research the company, see who runs it, and learn why they started it. If you don’t tell your story well enough or show potential consumers what you believe in and why, or what your values are in life, odds are they have already clicked off your page.

Why is that true? Because people like to see authenticity and they like to know you became an executive of a company for a reason other than to make a new income. Consumers don’t want to feel like you are using them to get a paycheck, they want to feel good about purchasing and investing in your business because your values and beliefs are the same as theirs. 

Make sure to tell the world what you believe in, what your value in both your personal and professional life, and why. If you hit this on the head, your loyal customer base is going to skyrocket.

 

Any high-up executive knows that no one is perfect, and you are bound to make a mistake at some point in your career. When you are in control of your executive branding, you can determine how people see you. Are you the nice boss that allows your employees to dress down on Fridays? Or are you the mean boss that doesn’t want to pay people’s healthcare?

When positioning your brand, you need to think about what you want people to think of you as. If you treat your employees right, you market yourself right, and your brand yourself properly, you can drown out the negative comments made. 

This can be sharing things about yourself, your life, or an experience you had with a customer. It can also be donating to a cause you believe in, or this can be showing off how you treated your employees to a team bonding experience. Whatever kind of boss you want to be, make sure you consider how people are going to see you from that. 

 

As an executive, you only want to be seen in a positive light, so make sure you brand yourself to receive only positive thoughts! Branding is one of the best business tools you can use and guess what? It costs nothing but time and energy! Branding yourself as an executive is something you should take your time 

Conflicting interests are unavoidable within an organization. Although challenging, aligning conflicting interests is necessary for effective decision-making. Executives and shareholders all tend to have the common objective of company success, however, each individual may have a different set of criteria and incentives that determine what constitutes success. Recognizing these differences in interests to promote success, is important when navigating a situation in which there are many conflicting interests at hand.

Examples of conflicts that arise from parties with competing incentives include: 

Steps to approach conversations when parties have conflicting interests include: 

It is important to recognize personal company goals and strategies that will be used to achieve them prior to meeting with others to discuss future initiatives. This self-reflection period ensures that all ideas are articulated clearly in this environment with differing interests. After developing goals and implementation strategies,  it is important to identify areas of flexibility within these strategies. Even when plans are thoroughly suited to achieve personal goals for the company, it is likely that there will be areas that require adaptation to best incorporate the perspectives of others. 

2. Define and understand each party's interest 

Prior to or at the beginning of a meeting it is important for each party to articulate their interests. Creating this understanding early on will allow everyone to have some common ground and know why others' interests are a certain way. Certain factors may contribute to these interests, such as organizational policies, deadlines, or resources that are applicable specifically to an individual's role. Being conscious of these different parameters for other's decision-making will encourage a more empathetic environment. 

3. Develop open communication and active listening

Respectful communication is pivotal when managing conflicting viewpoints. Creating open communication will allow for clarification of ideas, voicing concerns, and considering other perspectives in order to formulate the most effective solutions. Open communication also consists of encouraging everyone to contribute. If someone hasn’t contributed much to the group discussion, invite them to share their ideas to ensure everyone is on the same page. 

During the discussion, be mindful of utilizing active listening habits. Taking notes (if appropriate), providing nonverbal cues, and maintaining eye contact is incredibly important in signaling to others that their contributions to the conversation are valued. Failure to actively listen to others may prevent them from being receptive to ideas later shared. 

 
4. Identify shared goals 

To unify a group, it is helpful to recognize what commonalities exist. Within an organization, everyone tends to have similar hopes for future success for the organization as a whole. While the methods to achieve this success may vary, articulating this common goal can help emphasize that everyone is doing their best to fulfill this shared purpose. 

5. Compromise 

Being willing to be flexible and negotiate can help to manage these differing interests. Sticking to a rigid predetermined set of demands will only lead to a stand-still. Compromising on aspects of a plan demonstrates to others that collaboration can help achieve the best possible solutions for all parties. 

Developing innovative solutions may also be a way to best fulfill everyone's needs. It may be possible that all presented solutions aren’t able to properly achieve the best outcome for the group. In that case, brainstorming and innovating can help create a brand-new plan that wouldn’t have been achievable without the input of the whole group. 

6. Finalize and implement solutions 

When determining the final solution, reiterate the conclusions made to double-check that everyone has reached a similar understanding of the future steps. Ensure that these final plans are in writing and shared with everyone involved in the conversation so they can be referred back to it. Having a finalized document with this consensus will make the implementation of the solution more efficient because it can help to ensure everyone is taking action in the appropriate manner. 

It can be incredibly difficult to manage conflict without the proper knowledge of personal conflict management habits and other strategies that are suitable for handling conflict. Incorporating conflict management instruments can help to develop optimal strategies for navigating conflicting interests. The Thomas- Kilmann Instrument is an assessment developed to determine ways to improve personal conflict management strategies. After completing the assessment, individuals will receive their evaluation of overall assertiveness and cooperation during conflict scenarios. From this placement, they will be provided with different strategies to improve their conflict-solving skills. Identifying areas of personal improvement can be difficult, so utilizing an assessment tool that is dedicated to identifying areas to develop for handling conflict can be incredibly valuable. 

Joining an Executive Mastermind Group where you can have a group of peers share their feedback on your situation and provide suggestions can be a great opportunity to best prepare to handle these situations.

Managing conflicting interests can also be utilized as an opportunity for growth. If a meeting wasn’t as productive as anticipated, it can be a time to reflect on personal negotiation skills and different approaches to improve upon communication and cooperation in later discussions. 

Aligning conflicting interests can also be achieved through more preventative measures. Building capacities to prevent conflicts of interest can work to ensure leaders are on similar pages. This can be implemented through changing metrics in which different departments are evaluated or even in-depth discussions to develop a shared framework for company growth. Implementing training activities to develop strong cooperation and strategies for compromising can also be beneficial to prevent stagnant conflicting interests going forward.  

It’s important to keep in mind that aligning interests doesn’t mean 100% agreement at all times. Oftentimes, compromising leads to outcomes that fulfill everyone's needs to an extent, but don’t fully achieve what they sought out to. Leaders need to know how to best align these conflicting interests to prevent impasse and achieve organizational success. 

The success of an organization is heavily dependent on the collective performance of its teams. With these cross-functional collaboration dynamics, managers can encounter situations where the underperformance of teams outside of their direct oversight impacts their team's performance. Addressing and rectifying the underperformance of other teams may appear challenging due to the intricacies of organizational dynamics. Through embracing proactive strategies and creating a positive environment, managers can develop mutual support and elevate the organization's performance. 

Determining that an inefficiency stems from the underperformance of another team may be easy, but it may prove difficult to identify the specific issue caused by this underperformance. Gathering data to specifically support observations can help to uncover the root of the issue. Data can be observational data or even the collection of performance metrics for the team/ projects. 

Gathering data can also be conducted through receiving feedback from direct reports. Their sentiments and experiences working in conjunction with the underperforming team may yield important insights that are not reflected in the data. Feedback can be gathered outside of the team as well. It is possible that other teams that collaborate with the underperforming team are experiencing similar issues and may have a different perspective on the situation. Consider gathering as much information as possible to develop a complete understanding of the current problem. 

After gathering information and identifying the issue, communicating with the other team leader is an imperative next step. As a manager of an outside team, no feedback should be given directly to individual team members; any concerns should be directed to the manager of that function. Set up a one-on-one meeting with the other manager and transparently communicate the situation. 

During this conversation, ensure that the productivity concerns are shared in an empathetic manner. Placing blame on the manager will not evoke a productive conversation as it will put them on the defensive. Clearly articulate the data that was collected to demonstrate how the underperformance is impacting the organization and other teams. 

It helps to practice this conversation ahead of time. Having a coach to help practice and guide the conversation can be incredibly helpful in the message sticking. 

This conversation is also an opportunity to collaborate on a mutually beneficial solution. Come prepared with potential resolutions that the other team manager could implement. Recognize that as an outside party, these solutions may not be feasible, so be conscious that the other manager may have a different perspective. 

Setting clear expectations is another key component of communicating underperformance. Articulate key metrics that should be improved and actionable steps the team will take to make these improvements. Implementing changes can take time, so collaborate on a feasible timeline so that these steps can be accomplished. Making numerous drastic changes in a short period could worsen the underperformance. 

Recognize that an underperforming team can be incredibly difficult for the other team leader to navigate. As a peer, providing additional support and resources can create a more efficient route to resolution. At the intersection of functions, there may be areas where both teams can improve their processes to streamline performances. 

With many team responsibilities, directly providing support to the other manager may be difficult. Sharing resources such as performance tracking software or external coaching can provide relief without personally assuming responsibility for providing constant support. 

From the beginning stages of addressing the underperformance of teams, ensure that all information is documented. Specifically, when communicating with the team leader of the underperforming team, it is crucial to create a record. During the conversation, ensure that diligent notes are taken regarding the issue that is communicated, resolution steps, and future expectations. Following the conversation, share the meeting documentation with the other team leader to ensure both parties are on the same page and provide a reference for the future. 

Documentation serves as a record if further steps are required. If collaboration with the other team leader is difficult or the resolution steps are not adhered to, reaching out to upper management may be the next step. Providing this record of previous communication and acknowledged expectations will allow upper management to have a better understanding of the steps previously taken to resolve the issue. 

The previous strategies are good methods to work towards a solution, however, complications while collaborating on a solution can arise. After valiant efforts to solve the issue don’t prove successful, consider reaching out to upper management. If both managers have exhausted all potential solutions, involving another member of leadership can help to provide a different perspective. 

Another instance that may require upper management involvement is if the other manager has extreme resistance to resolving the solution. Serious efforts should be made to collaborate with the other manager or even encourage them to independently consider strategies to increase performance. However, if they are unwilling to discuss the problem or refuse to make adjustments, involving management may be a more effective step. Using the extensive documentation of all the steps taken to resolve the issues, communicate what the problem is and potential solutions. Articulate that the other manager was contacted and share the records of attempts to resolve the issues with them before deferring to upper management. 

Following the implementation of adjustments, monitor for improvements. Analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs) for the underperforming team's responsibilities for improvement can help track the impact of the implemented solutions. Gathering feedback from both teams can also serve as a gauge of the effectiveness of the solution. 

Periodic check-ins with the other manager are another beneficial method for monitoring progress. Dedicating time to discuss the adjustments made and how it has affected both teams will help to make sure both teams are moving in a positive direction. Results from adjustments may not be observed immediately. After some time, if there is little improvement, consider finding an alternative solution. 

When improvements occur, recognize and celebrate them. Continued positive reinforcement can motivate the team to sustain these improvements. Making changes can be difficult, so even the small success should be celebrated. Approaching the situation with understanding and a positive attitude will encourage everyone to truly help the team succeed. 

The ability to address and help resolve the underperformance of teams outside of one's oversight is a testament to effective leadership. Communicating, collaborating, and problem-solving can contribute tremendously to overall success. Proactively addressing team underperformance will not only elevate their success but also develop a culture focused on collaborative success.