A well-articulated vision can be your most important tool for creating positive employee and client experiences, hence maximizing financial growth. But surprisingly, in many successful organizations the top leadership vision for the future is an area of ambiguity for the majority of employees.

Only “22% of employees strongly agree the leadership of their organization has a clear direction for the organization.” according to Gallup’s State of the American Workplace Report

The lack of clarity around your vision can be most detrimental to optimal employee and client experiences. Spending a little bit of time on clearly articulating your vision and establishing alignment around it can go a long way in maximizing potential for your people, your organization, and you. Here are a few examples:

• Results that exceed expectations. A clear vision offers guidance as to where the organization is heading and its key pillars for getting there. This creates space for employees to take initiative, going above and beyond their stated goals to serve a bigger purpose while realizing their potential.
• Prioritizing clients. If developed properly, a well-articulated vision is constant reminder of who you are looking to serve and what makes you unique for them. It offers the foundation for developing and implementing strategies that optimize the client experience. As a result, your people are motivated to operate as a single team that is responsible for creating better and better client experiences.  
• Attracting and retaining top talent. High potential talent is typically looking for ways to align their capabilities and ambitions with a fulfilling and promising future. Sitting there and doing as told becomes underwhelming for them so quickly. A clear vision that allows them to reach for the stars is a big part of what they need to fuel the growth of your organization and stick with it.

Developing or revisiting and communicating your future vision may seem like a cumbersome effort that delays operations and delivery. Honestly, doing it right doesn’t typically take that long for an already successful organization. Yet, it multiplies your success in ways that could even be much beyond your own imagination.

Connect with us and let’s discuss our approach for facilitating visions development, articulation, and alignment using a simple format.

Lessons from our executive coaching and leadership advisory work

It’s well established now that the energy industry is somewhat a lagger when it comes to innovation, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and attractiveness to Gen Zs or young talent in general. Through our work as an energy industry executive coach and leadership advisor, my clients and I have identified some common blind sports that seem to be partially behind this delay.

Our executive coaching, leadership development, and strategy consulting clientele come from the different industry sectors: oil and gas, utilities, renewable energy, and consulting practices. Some of these segments are younger and more dynamic than others. So they may score more highly in innovation, DEI, and attractiveness to the younger generation. But the blind sports that we list here are useful for improving profiles across the different segments.

Identify and address your blind spots

Before you review our list, we suggest that you consider blind spots that you’ve identified for yourslf as potential hurdles for innovation, DEI, and succession planning.

We have identified three common blind spots where leaders show up as lacking balance or awareness, and hence too closed off to embrace innovation, diversity, and exponential growth.

Balancing trust and competency

This appears to be a challenge for executives who have identified a close circle of employees that they clearly trust more than most other employees. The result is typically a wider perception that useful information and growth opportunities mostly go to members of this inner circle. Some may view this as favoritism and others may feel that it renders their leader blind to the real potential within their organization. The leaders we work with benefit from becoming more inclusive in their interactions and casting wider nets for engaging about new opportunities.

Balancing authority and influence

Expecting employees to do what they are told to do is getting old. In best case scenarios, they will exactly deliver what they are being asked to deliver to avoid unfavorable outcomes. The most innovative, ambitious talent starts looking for fulfilling roles elsewhere. They seek leaders who are strong influencers and open up the space for people to grow. This motivates them to go beyond implementing the visions of their leaders into taking ownership of the future. This is where innovators find room to grow and surprise their leaders with results that they themselves haven’t envisioned.

Clarity and accuracy of DEI-related communication

“We don’t have an issue here. We’re a pretty diverse organization. Look around you!” Assuming that DEI is just about gender and racial diversity may very well suggest to your employees that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Equity and inclusion have become far more important than diversity quotas and they can easily drive your diversity numbers up. Also, most top executives are not DEI experts. I would start by letting the experts collect and analyze the data and empower employees to share their experiences. An accurate picture of the state of DEI and a clear plan can go a long way in reinforcing your credibility as a leader and restoring faith in your organization.

Which of these resonated with you or with your experiences with other leaders? What can you do about them?

The trick with blind spots is that they may be noticeable for everyone around us but impossible to notice for us. This makes them a quick win in any professional development journey.

Contact us today to schedule your complimentary strategy session and discuss your strategy for identifying and addressing your own blind spots.

1. “What would we do if you get hit by a bus tomorrow?”

My manager here was trying to express his desire to mitigate the risk of losing me given my unique capabilities and contributions. But he actually made me feel like I didn’t matter. I started looking for my next opportunity.  It wasn’t long before I left for an employer that I felt would sympathize with my family and me if I got hit by a bus! Making employees feel like they don’t matter could be one of the biggest mistakes a leader can make. And doing so with high potential employees can be most drastic. This statement above is still leaving a bad taste with me 19 years after I parted ways with this manager.

2. “Thanks for pointing out that your compensation doesn’t match your value and contribution here. I definitely agree. Let me look into it!“

I had brought up with our business unit leader that my pay was too low for my qualifications and performance levels. His response made me feel like I was being valued and appreciated. I ended up staying, made some of my best contributions, and followed that leader to his next job. And it was because of the trust he gained with his honesty and respect rather than the salary raise he offered me later.

3. “I am sad you’re leaving us but happy that you’re being pulled into an exciting opportunity rather than being pushed away by us!”

In this situation, I had submitted my resignation after accepting another exciting opportunity. This response from a leader that I looked up to was pretty inspirational. When I was ready for my next career move later, I reached out to my ex-employer and returned later for a much better opportunity under that same leader.

4. “Prepare a presentation to demonstrate to us your ability to complete your work on time.”

Rather than appreciating and leveraging my impact on people as a leader, my manager assumed I was spending too much time on the people management side of my job versus project deliverables. He didn’t ask about the status of my deliverables. This conversation basically drove me to prepare my resignation. I later was able to find a much more senior and influential leadership role with a company whose leadership made me feel respected and trusted.

The assuming leader could easily be the least effective leader. Making inaccurate assumptions based on what you see on the surface is a solid de-motivator of people. Staying curious and inquisitive would have been much more useful in this situation for working together on assessing and closing any performance gap. But assuming lack of delivery based on scattered observations is one of the quickest ways to disengage your employees and demotivate them. Ask yourself one question: to what extent are you successful in making your employees feel like you are partners in success versus a police-person and suspects?

5. “We have an important role for you to play in a new job,” in reference to a much more limited and limiting role

My manager mentioned this only when I said that I’d read between his lines that he was hiring my replacement. I was actually on the interviewing committee for another role and I had to guess that the intention was to replace me. Apparently, some of my colleagues had known about it while I didn’t. The interviewee himself knew about it. I could not trust my manager or his managers after this incident. Regardless of how suitable the role he described was for me, I didn’t feel safe anymore continuing to work for that company. So I started making plans for my next career move and resigned soon after.

And one last thing to say…

The Great Resignation, Silent Quitting, Disengaged Employees- Why?

Motivation might have become the rarest commodity for employers, hence the Great Resignation, Silent Quitting, and disengaging employees. This is probably the first time in our lifetime to remain in one collective trauma after the other for almost three years and counting. Many have lost loved ones in the process and others ended up with lasting health effects from COVID. And a good majority is feeling less financially secure with growing inflation worries. Also, almost every industry is experiencing some major disruptive transformations: Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), energy transitions, climate change, digital transformation, supply chain crisis, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), to name a few!

The motivation crisis may be bigger than the energy crisis, the environmental crisis, or the supply chain crisis. Because only when we have motivation are we able to address these crises. And some crises may actually be caused by the lack of employee motivation. Amidst all these disruptive challenges, many employees seem to be losing their motivation to stay employed or at least do their best. But this problem is not without a solution. It takes authentic engaging leaders.

What does authentic and engaging leadership look like?

You may also be struggling with your own motivation as a leader. And you probably know that you and your organization are not alone in this search for passion, excitement, and motivation. So how can you get some of that motivation back while we’re all still in the middle of the storm? It’s your opportunity to flex your leadership, stakeholder engagement, and change management muscles in new ways. Here we share some tricks that worked for our clients and their teams.

• Purpose. Ensure the clarity of your true purpose behind doing what you’re doing and how it aligns with your employees’ values. This will take a methodological approach to communicate and explain this purpose across the different layers in your organization.
• Vulnerability and Authenticity. Show up as an equally struggling human being that doesn’t have all the answers despite being at the top of some ladder. Also, don’t shy away from sharing some of your own unpleasant personal experiences and how they make you feel.
• Empathy. Take (rather than fake) genuine interest in how your people feel, what they’re going through, and how you can all help each other. It’s becoming more and more difficult for people to follow leaders who seem like they don’t care about them.
• Professional Help. Seek and offer to your people help in the form of  peer-to-peer mentoring and coaching, as well as therapy, counselling, and coaching support from independent professional services.
• Learning. Acknowledge that none of you has ever gone through a similar experience in the past and raise the bar for learning and development within your organization, starting with yourself. Set the examples in acquiring new skills and capabilities for a new normal.
• Challenge. Redesign organizational structures and roles in ways that challenge every employee to take responsibility for mitigating newly emerging risks and taking advantage of new opportunities. Take the time to match people with work that excites them and helps realize your vision and strategic goals.
• Accountability. Hold yourself and your most senior leaders accountable for meeting your own goals before you hold your employees accountable. Ensure that the general perception within your organization is that reward is directly tied to performance.
• Comradery. It’s not about who’s at the top anymore and unless people feel you are in this together it will be almost impossible to keep them motivated. Have fun with your people and encourage two way communication. If you want them to be motivated by your messages and actions, start by allowing them to motivate you!

How about you? What are you doing to keep yourself, your team and/or organization motivated?

At the beginning of the Mental Awareness Month this year, I would like to draw the attention of leaders to the importance of creating a work environment that prioritizes employee physical and mental health. Relying on financial growth and career progression opportunity alone to motivate people means that they work for you because they have to, not because they want to. Many leaders wonder why their people aren’t bought into their visions and giving their best. People will only do their best in environments where their mental health is not being jeopardized through a series of unreasonable requests or disrespect. As I typically say to my clients, try a little more compassion and kindness.

I was discussing this with one of my favorite clients a couple of weeks ago and he drew my attention to the fact that it took two. As the CEO of the organization, he pointed out that if your “senior leaders are constantly under delivering and hurting the business you may yourself having to pressure them to work harder and put in more hours.” After a short conversation we agreed that feeling the need to manage your employees’ time and workload is a symptom for a bigger issue that requires addressing. Start asking yourself about the balance your work environment provides, mainly related to the following:

• Competence. How do you feel about the ability of those who constantly under deliver to address the responsibilities you’re assigning to them?
• Support. To what extent are you supporting your team with their enablers for success?
• Accountability. How effective are your management practices in establishing and enforcing accountability?
• Consequences. To what extent do you, your leadership team, and other employees bear the consequences of your own lack of commitment?
• Engagement. How would you rate the actual buy-in of your vision and why it makes sense for people to do what you’re asking them to do?

Typically, the answer is some combination of all the above. So making everyone work much harder will make the problem fester longer and result in dissatisfaction among those who are actually delivering. If you ask me what to do, I would say do what my client and I are doing: identify and resolve the actual problem(s). And while you’re doing that don’t forget to give your employees the best wholistic employee experience which would encourage them to give you their best performance. Otherwise, they’ll keep doing what will secure their paychecks and protect them from any headache noncompliance may cause.

Like many business leaders, many of my executive coaching clients are concerned about their ability to stay afloat, let alone grow in the face of the increasing risk of employee attrition. We can claim that this post-COVID19 phenomenon has caught us by surprise. But we will soon be out of excuses. The global trauma that we all been going through remains a wake-up call for many. And many of your employees may very well wake up to the fact that they do not want to be working for you!

However, it seems that many leaders are still handling the Great Resignation in a reactive manner that falls short of addressing the tectonic shift that it is. Working through this situation with several of the executives I coach, I have become familiar with the temporal nature of this challenge. Therefore, different strategic options emerge different time frames. Below I offer a framework for a more proactive approach for handling the retention challenge.

Immediate: the Departing Employee Matters

The fact that there is a mass exodus from the workforce, some of which without immediate reentry, can just be a symptom for bigger issues. Also, your leavers my continue to be good resources for you. Therefore, consider the following:

• Take the exit interviews seriously. Beyond being an HR formality, they are an opportunity to learn about challenges to talent retention in your organization. They will be helpful for reducing your attrition rates.
• Avoid burning bridges with the departing employees. They are important future human resources for you. Your brand as an employee and a business will benefit from their word of mouth. Also, you may be able to establish contract arrangements with some of them to help with easing off the workload and sustaining your operations while you figure out longer term solutions. And, you may stand a chance of attracting your top talent back!

Short-term: Beware of Similar Decisions in the Making

Your exit interviews will provide you with a foundation for understanding the attrition risks you could be facing. Next, I recommend that you engage managers and employees, establishing partnerships to address some basic questions?

• Who’s next? Who else may be having similar concerns to the leavers and, thereby, contemplating similar decisions?
• Do you want to retain them? What can you do to retain them?
• What are the morale and workload implications on those who may be happily choosing to stay with you?
• What are some creative resource solutions to rationalize the workload?

Medium-term: Work Ethics Matter More Now

Another phenomenon that is emerging is that some employers may now be rushing to refill the open positions so fast that they forget to check on the candidates’ work ethics. In less drastic cases, they may sacrifice the cultural fit. What my clients have learned is that they may loose more time through the damage that a misaligned employee may cause. Eventually, they will have delayed their recruitment of  ‘suitable’ candidates by the few months it takes to recruit, hire, and fire the wrong candidates.

Long-term: Time for Leaders to Play Catch Up

The world has moved on from the “because I said so” leadership style and it’s time for leaders to play catch up. The Great Resignation is here to teach us a few leadership lessons. Leaders now are constantly being challenged to sell the idea of employment to their employees- let alone the idea of working for their organizations and each of them in person. This is probably the subject line for another blog. But what we know for sure is that two sets of long-term strategies must be in question now by most organizations:

• Talent acquisition, development, and retention strategies
• Leadership selection and development strategies as well as the key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure success and keep leaders accountable

And, finally let’s keep in mind that “human” resources require authentic and compassionate human leadership that values them and prioritizes their fulfillment and growth!

Whether you’ve been directly affected by the Great Resignation or not, its disruption of workforce dynamics will affect every organization and its leadership. To discuss what it means and how to be more proactive about it, contact us to schedule your free strategy development consultation.

On this International Women’s Day, let’s talk about empowering leaders not women because they need strong and diverse partnership now more than any gender ever needed help

It’s time to shift the global mindset around women issues. Regardless of the roles they play in families, communities, businesses, and/or governments, it has become crystal clear that women can be astonishingly resourceful, insightful, and powerful. Even in the most disadvantaged or traditional communities, matriarchs have been known to have transformational impacts on their tribes including the most mature and strongest male leaders. Organizations and communities that deprive themselves of real contribution from women could be depriving themselves of not only opportunities to grow but also their chances of survival. It’s like turning off half of your brain or one side of your body and expecting to compete with those who bring their whole bodies or brains to every situation.

Historically, many of us come from communities that held matriarch leaders in high regards. But, we’re having to fight some long battles in modern times to secure seats around the table as women leaders. Now more than ever, new and different risks and opportunities are facing community, business, and state leadership everyday. This diversity in challenges and opportunities requires diversity in thought and approaches. Yet in many circumstances we find ourselves having to justify the need for inclusive leadership. And we still address women issues from the point of view of solving problems for women and empowering them. Effective and successful leaders understand that they are not going to be able to conceptualize and realize grand visions just by surrounding themselves with people that look, think, and interact like them. They look to empower themselves with improving diversity and inclusion (D&I) at the top levels.

“A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don’t have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.” Nelson Mandela

As eloquently put by Nelson Mandela, great leaders seek diversity in thought and get excited about engaging in debate and growing collectively in the process. They understand that by inviting differences in opinion, approach, and human interaction style they will be able to expand their opportunities and mitigate their risks more and more creatively. The opportunity costs of homogeneity in leadership can be very high and many of us have observed them first hand. I believe that improving gender diversity and inclusion will require a mindset shift around the way we approach leadership development and assessment. Realizing our full leadership potential going forward is going to mostly hinge on a leader’s ability to leverage D&I as an enabler for their own growth and success rather than an objective in and of itself.

Starting with vision, we have long entered a world where leaders are differentiated by their ability to develop and realize visions that go beyond their individual imagination or the imagination of those with similar backgrounds. A key question for leaders to consider is: to what extent have women and other diverse groups with different backgrounds influenced your vision?

When it comes to strategy, regardless of whether a leader is be empowered by D&I or not, their competitors, vendors, and clients probably are. Leaders would benefit from continuously asking themselves if they are at least at par with their competitors and vendors in terms of the diversity of expertise they attract and truly leverage. Another important question is about the extent to which members of leadership teams represent current and potential market niches. Much money is being left on the table by leaders that refuse to build leadership teams that match the diversity of their clients and competitors.

And of course the importance of communication to successful leadership cannot be overstated. Effective communication takes listening to what’s not being said in addition to what’s being said, which can be very challenging. Another challenge is getting your message across as a leader in ways that motivate an increasingly diverse workforce and attract an increasingly diverse client and investor base. In today’s complex world, it’s practically impossible for a homogenous leadership team to master communication without the contribution of leaders whose genders, backgrounds and experiences prepare them to communicate differently.

I’m sure much of what I shared here is not shocking. But what’s shocking is the fact that we still talk about helping women much more than we talk about helping leaders and organizations through attracting more insightful, powerful, and resourceful women.