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Strategic Planning in a Rapidly Changing World

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Is your company getting the desired results from your strategic planning process? If not, it’s likely that your organization may be skipping or poorly executing on one or more of the three key elements to a sound strategic plan.

The costs associated with an incomplete planning process are significant. They include:

  • Losing your lead in the market
  • Inability to reach financial and operational goals
  • Sense of defeat amongst the team and a sense that strategic planning is a waste of time
  • Loss of credibility of the leadership team

A strategic planning process that is most likely to deliver the results you expect consists of three key elements.

  1. Answer the most critical strategic planning questions.
    • Who are our customers and how can we serve them better?
    • Who are our competitors and how do we differentiate ourselves?
    • What do we do best and how do we leverage those strengths?
    • How can we prepare the organization to seize opportunities and shore itself against threats?
    • What types of situations do we need to consider for the future and what must we do to prepare for them?

Too often, organizations spend a fortune on consulting firms to provide complex strategic plans that are either overly philosophical in nature or have outstanding ideas that don’t quite boil down to clear, executable initiatives.

Once you have the answers to the most critical strategic planning questions, you want to craft a few, clear, compelling strategic initiatives to strengthen the organization.

  1. Set a few clear priorities. The most important outcome from step one of the strategic planning process is to identify the most important priorities of the organization. Working with a longer list of potential priorities, the organization can now discuss the relative value of each and arrive at no more than three to five key priorities.

A downfall at this step of the process is when an organization sticks with a long list of priorities. While this may serve a purpose of keeping the peace by including everyone’s thoughts, it makes it highly unlikely that the organization will get anything done completely.

  1. Implement the strategy. We so often hear that strategy never seems to get executed. There are several reasons why this is the case.
    • Not committing the necessary resources to accomplish the strategy such as appropriate capital, technology, training, and people.
    • Neglecting to reprioritize the workload of busy employees and simply asking them to do more.
    • Failing to stop old initiatives that are no longer relevant and even compete with the new.
    • Lack of establishing clear role, responsibilities, accountability and reward systems.
    • Giving up too soon.

A sound strategy focuses as much time and energy on implementation planning as it does on responding to the key planning questions and establishing priorities.

What part of the process does your organization need to shore up? While some organizations are exceptional at the ‘big picture” questions, they often fail to follow up. Some set too many priorities and are unable to accomplish them with limited resources. Others may excel at execution but struggle with establishing a compelling vision.

If this sounds like your organization, we can help with a proven 3-part strategic planning process that is simple for you to implement while achieving efficient results.

To learn more, please contact Dutra Associates at Sherry@DutraAssociates.com.

Adapted with permission by Center for Executive Coaching.

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development, Career and Retirement Coach and Facilitator who works with corporate leaders in small to mid-size businesses, across the span of their careers. She helps them to accelerate business outcomes and team performance, navigate their own career path, and transition to retirement with ease using proven methodologies and strategies that get results. If you would like to uncover and address hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success, leverage your strengths, and accelerate your progress toward the results you desire, contact Sherry for a complimentary consultation.

10 Keys to Success in Your New Role

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Congratulations! You decided to make a move in your career. You networked, navigated the lengthy interview process, and were offered the job. The time for celebration is at hand! You might be thinking, “the hard work is over, right”? Well, the first stage of the hard work is over. Now you are faced with the first ninety days in your new role which are critical to your long-term success.

How do you hit the ground running? Not in the way you might imagine. Often, we have the urge to dive in and quickly make a big impact. Yet, slowing your pace a bit and getting the lay of the land before jumping into action yields the best results. A misstep at this point, can earn you a reputation that can take quite some time to turn around.

Keys to Success

Here are 10 key tips to set yourself up for success in a new role.

  1. Be clear on expectations. There are both spoken and unspoken requirements of a role. Gain a clear understanding from your manager of not only the measurable performance expectations but also the intangible ones. What informal rules exist on how to accomplish your job?
  2. Support your manager. What are your manager’s aspirations? How can you support them in a way that helps them achieve their goals? Get a sense of how they prefer to receive communication, i.e., face-to-face, via email, via text, etc. Understand how frequently they want updates from you. What are the things you need to avoid doing when interacting with this person? How can you make life easier for your manager?
  3. Take time to observe and learn. New managers and executives sometimes make the mistake of equating success with making rapid changes. Determine how long you have to observe, learn, and then make well-informed decisions about planned changes. The length of time you have available for this will vary with the situation. The point is that you’ll likely have at least a couple of months to map out a plan forward. Resist the urge to jump in too quickly. Hasty decisions often do not end well.
  4. Create your vision and strategy. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never know if you’ve arrived. Identify the key people who should have a voice in establishing a vision for your area of responsibility. Develop a shared vision, determine the strategy to realize it, get buy-in, and communicate the vision and path to get there. Then, ensure you have clear measures of success and hold key players accountable for their contribution to the execution of the vision and strategy.
  5. Evaluate your team. Take the time to get to know the people on your team. What are each person’s strengths, areas for development, aspirations, motivations, and results? Begin to set expectations with each person. Understand what support each individual needs from you and how you can add value to the team. Determine if you have the right mix of people. What adjustments might need to be made to ensure you have the right team to implement the vision and strategy?
  6. Align with the culture. What is the culture like in this new organization? Which behaviors are expected, and which behaviors are not tolerated? What are the values of the organization and how are these lived, or not, in day-to-day operations? How does your style fit with the culture and values of the organization? Where do you already fit in well? Where might you need to modify your style (without compromising your own values)?
  7. Build strategic relationships. There are formal and informal leaders in every organization. Who are the key players in yours? These leaders may be found amongst executives, high potentials, project leaders on key initiatives, and top performers. Which are the most impactful relationships for you to begin building? Building relationships in a strategic way will help to lay the foundation for success.
  8. Understand the political landscape. Stepping into a new role may bring with it potential land mines. Asking questions that will reveal where to tread lightly will go a long way toward your success.
  9. Create a personal development plan. Development never ends. With each new step comes a need to deepen one’s knowledge of the industry, the business, or to expand one’s leadership skills. Learning should be a life-long pursuit. Be sure to create a development plan for yourself within the first 90 days in your new role.
  10. Small wins build momentum. Where are the places where you can begin to make progress without large scale changes? Find some small, impactful, early wins that get the ball rolling while you set the stage to excel in your new role.

Which of these key tips have you successfully used? What others would you like to share?

Adapted with permission by Center for Executive Coaching

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development, Career and Retirement Coach and Facilitator who works with corporate leaders in small to mid-size businesses, across the span of their careers. She helps them to accelerate business outcomes and team performance, navigate their own career path, and transition to retirement with ease using proven methodologies and strategies that get results. If you would like to uncover and address hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success, leverage your strengths, and accelerate your progress toward the results you desire, contact Sherry for a complimentary consultation.

How are Your Teams Feeling Right Now? Measure the Emotional Culture

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A lot of different elements underlie organizational success. You’ve got to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right product and with the right people. But even with the best of these, a great workplace culture truly matters. Do you know the emotional culture in your organization?

Eventually competitors can come along and replicate your best practices, strategies, and processes. As Herb Kelleher, co-founder of Southwest Airlines, once famously said, “All airlines have airplanes.”

According to Kelleher, “We’ve never had layoffs. We could have made more money if we furloughed people. But we don’t do that. And we honor them constantly. Our people know that if they are sick, we will take care of them. If there are occasions of grief or joy, we will be there with them. They know that we value them as people, not just cogs in a machine.”

So consequently, culture matters.

Culture is defined many ways. One of the more commercial ways of thinking about it is this. Culture is the degree of alignment between strategy and the way employees think and behave.

In 2016, HBR ran an article titled Manage Your Emotional Culture. The article talks about and distinguishes between Cognitive Culture and Emotional Culture. It goes on to talk about the fact that emotional culture is rarely managed as deliberately as cognitive culture and that it’s often not managed at all. It gives some great examples of how much companies suffer as a result. Employees who should be showing compassion (in health care, for example,) become callous and indifferent. Teams that would benefit from joy and pride instead tolerate a culture of anger. People who lack a healthy amount of fear (say, in security firms or investment banks) act recklessly. The effects can be especially damaging during times of upheaval, such as organizational restructurings, financial downturns and, as we all have experienced, global pandemics.

WHERE TO START IN UNDERSTANDING EMOTIONAL CULTURE?

To discuss and understand the concept of emotional intelligence and emotional culture, first we need to look at the underlying science of emotions. Why do we react the way we do and how does others’ behavior impact us the way it does?

We all experience a wide range of pleasant and unpleasant feelings at work as we interact with colleagues, customers, suppliers, and others. These feelings influence our decisions, behavior, and performance.

Pleasant feelings have a ‘broaden and build’ effect causing us to think more broadly, engage more deeply, and perform better.

Unpleasant emotions tend to have a ‘narrow and limiting’ effect, causing us to be more closed-minded, less engaging, and poorer at performing. Collectively, these emotions impact the bottom-line for better or worse.

Let’s start with the positive/pleasant emotions. Think about your experiences in the workplace for a moment. When people feel relaxed at work, they tend to be solution focused. When they feel valued, they often promote the brand. When they feel cared for by the company, they go above and beyond in the level of discretionary effort they put towards the company. Finally, employees that are empowered are often the hardest working and innovative team members.

Conversely, let’s look at negative or unpleasant emotions. When people feel anxious, they are more likely to be reactive. When stressed, we can become aggressive. It’s human nature. When an employee feels fearful, they can sometimes blame others. Finally, when people feel disempowered, they can assume lack of responsibility and ownership for their work. We’ve all been there.

Research shows that people in high performing organizations experience more positive emotions and fewer negative emotions than those in low performing organizations. (Boedker et al. 2011)

So, why aren’t more organizations working to focus on understanding how their people are feeling and managing their EMOTIONAL CULTURE?

DO YOU KNOW HOW YOUR PEOPLE ARE FEELING RIGHT NOW?

Emotional culture surveys are the most direct and impactful way to measure emotional culture because they measure three distinct things to help identify whether or not emotions experienced need to shift. They measure:

  • Experienced emotions
  • Expected emotions
  • Ideal or desirable levels of emotions

When you understand how your people are feeling, how they’d ideally like to feel and where the gaps are – you can do something about it. It allows you to more easily understand where the differences are – so you can be informed in making decisions for your L&D, training and development of your teams, and workplace culture. You can continue to strive to be a great place to work.

We’d like to give you the opportunity to do so by experiencing The Emotional Culture Index from Genos International.

The Emotional Culture Index is designed to measure three dimensions of emotions at work.

  • Current state – How often your people experience certain feelings at work.
  • Expected state – How often your people think it’s fair and reasonable to experience these feelings at work given the nature and context of your workplace.
  • Ideal state – How often your people think they should ideally experience these feelings in your workplace to be effective.

It also allows participants to share confidential free text responses on key areas. You can customize the survey by department, team, region, or a particular demographic or group.

It takes only a few minutes to complete. You will receive a complimentary report with its findings and can discuss the results privately with me, a Genos Certified Emotional Intelligence Practitioner.

NEXT STEPS 

As we enter the work of AI, automation and machine led learning, our ability to feel and be human is what makes us unique. We encourage you to take this opportunity to uncover your emotional culture. Please contact Sherry Dutra at sherry@dutraassociates.com to find out more about this limited time offer.

Article in collaboration with Genos International Europe.

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development, Career and Retirement Coach and Facilitator who works with corporate leaders in small to mid-size businesses, across the span of their careers. She helps them to accelerate business outcomes and team performance, navigate their own career path, and transition to retirement with ease using proven methodologies and strategies that get results. If you would like to uncover and address hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success, leverage your strengths, and accelerate your progress toward the results you desire, contact Sherry for a complimentary consultation.

There’s an Uptick in Retirements: Is Your Organization Ready?

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The conventional wisdom has held that 10,000 baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) are expected to retire, on average, each day in the United States through 2030. This loss of expertise and knowledge was already having an adverse impact on many organizations. Now, the impact of COVID-19 has accelerated that trend. According to a Pew Research Center report, the pace of retirements amongst baby boomers in 2020 (3.2%) more than doubled the 2019 rate (1.5%).

On the one hand, this is excellent news for those getting ready to enter the next chapter of their lives and an opportunity for younger workers to step into new roles. On the other, how prepared is your organization for a more rapid brain drain?

Based on pre-pandemic research conducted by the authors of Critical Knowledge Transfer, one company reported that in the next anticipated wave of nearly 700 retirements, they would experience a loss of 27,000 years of experience.  If that’s not enough to have you sit up and take notice, I’m not sure what will, especially as the trend ticks upward. That said, not every vacated position is created equal. Some will certainly be easier to fill than others. Perhaps the appropriate level of expertise and skill is readily available on the job market or you have done the work to ensure that someone within your organization is ready to take on the role. Unfortunately, this is the exception rather than the rule.

Taking a Proactive Stance – 5 Key Tips

  1. Knowing the average age of your employee population is not enough. That still keeps the potential problem at hand difficult to define. Take a closer look at the specific roles held by long-term employees and seasoned managers who are within a few years of retirement age. Which positions require critical skills and experience that are not easy to find on the open market?  Long term employees across and at all levels of the organization often hold critical, hands-on experience of how to get things done through their comprehensive knowledge of processes, company historical information, clients and customers.  Without a proactive approach, your organization runs the risk of realizing, too late, that you have a critical skill shortage that is adversely impacting your business performance.
  2. Consider implementing a mentoring program that effectively engages both older and younger workers in accelerating development and bridging the knowledge gap. Providing training for both mentors and mentees can help to ensure that a mutually beneficial mentoring relationship is created and both parties find the experience a valuable one.
  3. Utilize knowledge capture methods to gather critical expertise and make it available across a wide range of people. There are many ways to store and manage institutional knowledge including online forums, podcasts, webinars, and videos, to name a few.
  4. Pay attention to employee engagement. Younger members of the workforce have an average job stay of roughly four years.  Ensure the right managers are in place who truly care about their employees’ success. Robin Reilly, a Senior Consultant at Gallup has written that such managers “seek to understand each person’s strengths and provide employees with every opportunity to use their strengths in their role. Great managers empower their employees, recognize and value their contributions, and actively seek their ideas and opinions.” Increasing employee engagement will assist in keeping younger workers from jumping ship.
  5. Provide professional and leadership skill development to your employees to develop your associates and prepare those great managers. The on-going opportunity to build on strengths and expand one’s comfort zone through training and development programs advances the growth of your internal talent pool and demonstrates your commitment to their success.

It is a critical time to proactively address the seismic shift that is accelerating in terms of talent shortages in the workplace. These are just a few of the tips that can help you to mitigate your risk. Don’t wait another day to identify where your organization is most vulnerable and take the steps now to ensure a smoother transition.

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development, Career and Retirement Coach and Facilitator who works with corporate leaders in small to mid-size businesses, across the span of their careers. She helps them to accelerate business outcomes and team performance, navigate their own career path, and transition to retirement with ease using proven methodologies and strategies that get results. If you would like to uncover and address hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success, leverage your strengths, and accelerate your progress toward the results you desire, contact Sherry for a complimentary consultation.

Losing Employees? – Try This Simple Leadership Approach to Engage and Retain Your Team

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“The Great Resignation” is something that we are hearing and reading about on a regular basis. Now, more than ever, employees are leaving their roles at an amazing rate – in May of 2021 alone, 3.6 million Americans quit their jobs. According to Gallup, “48% of America’s working population is actively job searching or watching for opportunities”.

While the term ‘employee engagement’ can sound like just another buzzword, it’s anything but. For U.S. employers, the lack of employee engagement is estimated to result in $450 – 500 billion in lost productivity on an annual basis. For over 20 years, Gallup has been researching employee engagement and the percentage of engaged employees has barely budged in the United States during this timeframe. Based on 2021 research, Gallup has reported that 36% of U.S. workers are engaged, 49% are not engaged, and 15% are actively disengaged.

What is Employee Engagement?

What exactly is employee engagement?  According to Gallup, an engaged employee is one who is “involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace”. Someone who is experiencing this type of engagement is most likely to be aligned with their team and organization’s goals and making key contributions to producing desired results. Organizations that do the best job of creating employee engagement achieve earnings-per-share growth greater than 4 times that of their competitors. Additionally, other business boosting results are enjoyed by those companies who exemplify employee engagement. These include higher customer engagement, increased productivity, lower attrition, and higher profitability.

A Simple Approach

There are a multitude of methods available for increasing employee engagement with varying ranges of complexity, time commitment and cost. Yet, the solution may be simpler than you think. When we talk about employee engagement, we often speak in generalities. It can sound as if there is a group called “employees” that we must direct something towards collectively. A one size fits all approach has less of an opportunity to positively drive your engagement levels than one simple opportunity that many leaders have, at every level, including the C-suite. This opportunity, the key to engaging employees, is to get specific about each person.

One Employee at a Time

Engaging employees happens one person at a time. The place to start is to get to know each person on your team uniquely. How much do you already know about each employee and what makes that person tick?

How many of these questions can you answer right now about each employee on your team?

  • What are their career aspirations?
  • What personal aspirations do they have?
  • What motivates them?
  • What are their most important values?
  • What key strengths do they bring to the team?
  • What type of behavioral style do they favor?
  • What professional development needs do they have?

Call to Action

As you begin the new year, if you can’t answer all of these questions for each employee, I invite you to make it a priority to schedule 1:1 meetings to discover those answers. Then, look for the opportunities to:

  • let them use their strengths each day,
  • take on assignments that build the skills for their future career path,
  • communicate with them in a way that matches their style.

Your employees want to work in jobs that allow them to do what they do best, to grow and develop professionally, and feel a sense of purpose in what they focus on each day. What drives engagement and motivation is unique to each individual. So, get started by getting to know your team. Look for ways to align what is important to each person with the work they are doing, and watch your results begin to shift.

If you would like support in increasing employee engagement in your organization, please contact me to have a conversation. We offer a simple yet powerful and practical methodology to support you in improving employee engagement.

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development, Career and Retirement Coach and Facilitator who works with corporate leaders in small to mid-size businesses, across the span of their careers. She helps them to accelerate business outcomes and team performance, navigate their own career path, and transition to retirement with ease using proven methodologies and strategies that get results. If you would like to uncover and address hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success, leverage your strengths, and accelerate your progress toward the results you desire, contact Sherry for a complimentary consultation.

Developing These Six Behaviors Will Help You Become a Better Leader

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Copyright Genos International EU. Used with permission.

There is an abundance of research on the impact emotions have on an individuals’ performance in the workplace. It shows that people often perform their worst when they experience unproductive feelings, such as feeling frustrated, concerned, stressed, inadequate, and fearful.

Research also shows that people perform their best when they feel involved in purposeful work that develops who they are… and when they feel valued, cared for, consulted, respected, informed and understood.

So, how can developing your leadership help ensure your people feel and perform their best?

Leadership is fundamentally about facilitating performance, supporting others to do their best, and to do their work effectively and efficiently. One of the most robust, consistent findings in the area of social sciences is that there is a direct link between the way people feel and the way people perform. As such, leaders need to be skilled at identifying, understanding and influencing emotion within themselves and others in order to inspire performance.

Emotionally intelligent leadership is about leaders intelligently using emotions to facilitate high performance in themselves and others.

How, then, do leaders develop the skills to do this effectively? In the virtual Emotionally Intelligent Leader program, participants first engage in a personal Genos EI Leadership Assessment, in order to understand “how they are showing up at work.”

Participants will improve their understanding of emotions and emotional intelligence. They will also explore and practice tools and techniques for applying emotional intelligence in leadership and creating conditions for others to achieve high performance.

In the program, participants will:

  • explore the neuroscience of emotions and emotional intelligence,
  • examine tools and techniques for effectively asking for, and responding to, feedback,
  • explore techniques for developing self and other awareness,
  • examine how we can use reactive and proactive techniques to build our resilience and effectively manage strong emotions,
  • explore an approach for facilitating engagement discussions with staff members, and
  • explore techniques for applying EI in leadership and creating high performance in others.

The material for the program is based on the Genos Emotional Intelligence Leadership Model.

The Genos model of emotionally intelligent leadership has been developed from over a decade of research work examining how effective leaders use emotional intelligence abilities in their leadership of others.

The model comprises six emotionally intelligent workplace competencies. These competencies represent skills and behaviors based on underlying abilities and experiences that are measurable, observable, and critical to successful job performance.

The six Genos EI Competencies are:

  1. Self-Awareness
  2. Awareness of Others
  3. Authenticity
  4. Emotional Reasoning
  5. Self-Management
  6. Inspiring Performance

Self-awareness is about being aware of the behaviors you demonstrate, your strengths and limitations, and the impact you have on others. Leaders high in this skill are often said to be present rather than disconnected with who they are. Self-awareness is important in leadership because:

  • a leader’s behavior can positively or negatively impact the performance and engagement of colleagues
  • leaders need to know their strengths and limitations in order to continuously improve and maintain success
  • leaders’ interpretation of events at work is both made by, and limited by, their intelligence, personality, values and beliefs.
  • In order to objectively evaluate events, leaders must know how they interpret the world and how this helps and limits them.

Awareness of others is about noticing and acknowledging others, ensuring others feel valued, and adjusting your leadership style to best fit with others. Leaders high in this skill are often described as empathetic rather than insensitive to others and their feelings. Awareness of others is important in leadership because:

  • leadership is fundamentally about facilitating performance, and the way others feel is directly linked to the way they perform
  • awareness of others is necessary in order to take effective steps to influence and facilitate others’ performance
  • to bring out the best in people, leaders need to adjust their leadership style to best fit with the people and situation they are leading.

Authenticity is about openly and effectively expressing yourself, honoring commitments and encouraging this behavior in others. It involves appropriately expressing specific feelings at work, such as happiness and frustration, providing feedback to colleagues about the way you feel, and expressing emotions at the right time, to the right degree and to the right people. Leaders high in this skill are often described as genuine, whereas leaders low in this skill are often described as untrustworthy. Authenticity is important in leadership because:

  • it helps leaders create understanding, openness and feelings of trust in others
  • leaders who are guarded, avoid conflict, or are inappropriately blunt about the way they feel can create mistrust, artificial harmony and misunderstandings with those around them
  • leaders need their people to be open with them. If, as a leader, you do not role-model this behavior, your direct reports will be guarded with you.

Emotional reasoning is the skill of using emotional information (from yourself and others) and combining it with other facts and information when decision-making. Leaders high in this skill make expansive decisions, whereas leaders who are low in this skill often make more limited decisions based on facts and technical data only. Emotional reasoning is important in leadership because:

  • feelings and emotions contain important information, for example, if a colleague is demonstrating frustration or stress, these feelings provide insight that they are going to be less open and supportive of new ideas and information
  • the workplace is becoming more complex and fast-paced; this requires quick, solid decision-making where all the facts and technical data are not available (gut feel and intuition are important in these environments)
  • people are influenced by emotion; if you fail to consider how people are likely to feel and react to decisions made, you may not achieve the appropriate buy-in or support for your decisions.

Self-management is about managing your own mood and emotions, time and behavior, and continuously improving yourself. This emotionally intelligent leadership competency is particularly important. Leaders high in this skill are often described as resilient rather than temperamental in the workplace. The modern workplace is one of high work demands and stress, which can cause negative emotions and outcomes. Self-management is important in leadership because:

  • a leader’s mood can be very infectious and can, therefore, be a powerful force in the workplace; one that can be both productive and unproductive
  • this skill helps leaders be resilient and manage high work demands and stress
  • to achieve, maintain and enhance success, leaders need to pay conscious attention to the way they manage time, how they behave and to continuously improve how they lead others.

Inspiring performance is about facilitating high performance in others through problem solving, promoting, recognizing and supporting others’ work. An individual’s performance can be managed with key performance indicators. This is important, however, research has shown that this “compliance” style often fails to drive discretionary effort and high performance. Leaders who combine this with a more inspiring style often empower others to perform above and beyond what is expected of them. Inspiring performance is important in leadership because:

  • leadership is fundamentally about facilitating the performance of others,
  • managing performance with rules and key performance indicators usually produces an “expected” result rather than an “unexpected” high-performance result
  • people often learn and develop more with this type of leadership style, resulting in continuous enhancements to performance year on year.

Strong leadership has never been more important as we navigate the impact of COVID-19. If you’d like to learn how you can bring this virtual program to your organization to support your leaders in becoming more emotionally intelligent, contact me at 603.595.1588 or via email at Sherry@DutraAssociates.com.

Adapted with permission by Genos International EU

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development, Career and Retirement Coach and Facilitator who works with corporate leaders in small to mid-size businesses, across the span of their careers. She helps them to accelerate business outcomes and team performance, navigate their own career path, and transition to retirement with ease using proven methodologies and strategies that get results. If you would like to uncover and address hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success, leverage your strengths, and accelerate your progress toward the results you desire, contact Sherry for a complimentary consultation.

 

Seven Principles of Extraordinary Results

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Are you consistently getting the personal and professional results that you desire? Given the level of unknowns that we are currently facing, it is more challenging than ever to stay on course. What if you had a model that easily conveyed how you create the results that you experience each day? What if you could gain insight into the patterns of your thinking and behavior that serve you as well as the patterns that do not?  What possibilities might be open to you if you could learn to run your system rather than having it run you? The Results System™ allows you to gain these benefits by providing the framework, tools and solutions that raise the bar and drive results.

The Seven Principles of Extraordinary Results provide a simple introduction to the key concepts behind The Results System™.

  1. Results First and Foremost:

What is the outcome that you desire to achieve? Start first with defining your end result and work backwards from there. You create what you focus on.

  1. Goals are Not Results:

It’s important to make a distinction between a goal and a result. When you do not, you run the risk of limiting your choices and options.  A “result” is the outcome you want to create.  A “goal” is a target or milestone designed to achieve the result. For example, when you say, “I want to reach my sales target for the quarter,” you might think you are describing a result.  In fact, this is actually a goal. The result is what you will have when you achieve your sales target, such as financial stability.

  1. Choices Not Actions:

Choose your actions wisely.  Often, you might feel you are making progress when you can check items off of a list.  Yet, you may end up wasting time by leaping too quickly to action and completing tasks that are not fully aligned with creating the results you desire.

  1. Invisibles Make the Difference:

Remember that everyone has blind spots and other factors that are not yet visible. Take time to become more self-aware to reveal the aspects that are operating behind the scenes. Doing so drives better choices and actions.

  1. Silent Partners Make Predictable Patterns:

All humans have a unique and wonderful “operating system” that creates unconscious repeatable patterns of thinking and behavior.  Having such a system allows you to motor throughout your life without having to consciously think about each step you need to take to complete daily tasks like getting ready in the morning or driving your car. Over time, these patterns of thinking and behavior become invisible and operate behind the scenes.  In most cases, they serve you well. Yet, when you want to change in order to get a different result, these automatic patterns kick up a fuss. In order to dissuade you from changing, there are even three lines of defense to keep you from making a shift: remaining invisible, making change awkward, and telling us stories in our own voice that convince us that change would not be beneficial.

  1. Change is a Process:

Any change that you set out to make has an emotional component to it. To create change that lasts we must deal with the inevitable feelings that will come up. While initially you might start off positively fired up about making the change and are certain you will be successful, the actual practice of creating new habits and permanently changing your behavior may cause you to swing from confidence to doubt to hope.  When you experience this roller coaster, it may be enough to have you give up and go back to your old habits. Keep in mind that the emotions that arise are all a natural part of the change process.  In knowing that, you can design strategies to manage the emotional ups and downs and achieve the result you want.

  1. Use the System:

Take a systems based approach to creating your results. The Results System™ model helps you to reveal the visible and invisible factors that drive your ability to create results. Your Results System™ is unique to you. Even teams and organizations have a Results System™. Using the model will create greater self-awareness around the strengths and the detractors that impact your results and provide you with a means to make conscious choices and choose the actions that support the achievement of your key outcomes.

Call to Action

  • Are you willing to make changes to achieve the result you desire? If so, what action(s) are you willing to commit to in the next week to help you achieve this result by implementing the above principles into your life and work?
  • If you would like to learn more about how you can reveal your own Results System™ and develop strategies to create the results you desire, please reach out to me to discuss how this system can help you in all areas of your life. The Results Accelerator™ is an intensive professional development experience, based on the Results System™, that can be delivered virtually for individuals as well as for teams.

Adapted from “Seven Principles of Extraordinary Results” by ThoughtAction, LLC, 2015. Adapted with permission.

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development, Career and Retirement Coach and Facilitator who works with corporate leaders in small to mid-size businesses, across the span of their careers. She helps them to accelerate business outcomes and team performance, navigate their own career path, and transition to retirement with ease using proven methodologies and strategies that get results. If you would like to uncover and address hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success, leverage your strengths, and accelerate your progress toward the results you desire, contact Sherry for a complimentary consultation.

Adaptability: A Key Management Skill for Challenging Times

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As I write this, parts of the United States are beginning to allow some businesses to slowly re-open. Over time, more and more people will be going back to work. If you are a middle manager, you might be inclined to attempt a ‘business as usual’ approach as your team returns. Yet, there is nothing usual about the path forward. Most of us are experiencing the greatest ambiguity, volatility and complexity that we have been faced with in our entire personal and professional lives. There is no roadmap to follow, no prescription to cure the impact that COVID-19 has had on every aspect of our lives. A key management skill that is especially critical to your success right now is your level of adaptability. How able are you to adapt or adjust to new conditions?

As a middle manager, you are on the front lines with your team. It is your role to execute on the strategies that senior leaders set forth. And, it is equally your role to be there for your team and create an environment where people can be open about their concerns. You will be walking a tightrope as you strive to balance between empathetically helping your team cope with the stress they are feeling and ramping up productivity. There is no way to know what is coming next. Will stay at home orders start up again in the fall?  Will there be furloughs or layoffs ahead? When will business rise to pre-COVID levels? No one has the answers.

So, rather than focus on what is out of your control, help your team to get focused on what they can control or influence. Draw on the key strengths of your team, provide them with the latitude and support to do their work, and keep yourself in a positive frame of mind as a model to your team. Developing your capacity for adaptability can support you in these challenging times to be the manager that you would like to be. Here are a few tips to consider:

  • Learn: You do not need to have all the answers. Being curious, asking questions, and involving others in finding the way forward will generate innovative solutions and commitment to your evolving business.
  • Be mindful of the conversation in your head: What are you telling yourself? Self-doubt will paralyze you and prevent you from taking what might be some necessary bold moves.
  • Step outside your comfort zone: Everyone is in new territory. Expand your horizons and try new approaches. Leaning too heavily on what is already known to you will slow your progress. Experimenting with new possibilities is what is called for now.
  • Take small steps forward: In the current environment, the best strategy is one in which you use what you know right now to determine just your very next step. When you take that step, check for the result and let that determine the next small step. Small steps in unknown territory allow for easy course correction.
  • Show yourself some compassion: Not every step will have the intended result. Let that be okay. Rather than spending any time on beating yourself up, instead look at what you might learn that will inform your next move.

No matter the situation, your ability to lead is tied directly to how you choose to behave. Your ability to choose your behavior versus react to circumstances is improved through self-care. Ensure that you ask for the support you need from your own manager and lean on your colleagues so that you are grounded, calm and empathetic. Practice the skill of adaptability and you will be primed to lead your team through this crisis.

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development, Career and Retirement Coach and Facilitator who works with corporate leaders in small to mid-size businesses, across the span of their careers. She helps them to accelerate business outcomes and team performance, navigate their own career path, and transition to retirement with ease using proven methodologies and strategies that get results. If you would like to uncover and address hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success, leverage your strengths, and accelerate your progress toward the results you desire, contact Sherry for a complimentary consultation.

The Key to Engaging Employees: It’s Not What You Might Think

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Employee engagement is something that we hear about on a regular basis. In fact, we hear about it often enough that it can sound like just another buzzword. Yet, it’s anything but. The lack of employee engagement is estimated to result in $7 trillion in lost productivity worldwide on an annual basis (Gallup 2017). For nearly 20 years, Gallup has been researching employee engagement and the percentage of engaged employees has barely budged in the United States during this timeframe. Based on 2018 research, Gallup has reported that 34% of U.S. workers are engaged while globally, only 15% are engaged.

What is Employee Engagement?

What exactly is employee engagement?  According to Gallup, an engaged employee is one who is “involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace”. Someone who is experiencing this type of engagement is most likely to be aligned with their team and organization’s goals and making key contributions to producing desired results. Organizations that do the best job of creating employee engagement achieve earnings-per-share growth greater than 4 times that of their competitors. Additionally, other business boosting results are enjoyed by those companies who exemplify employee engagement. These include higher customer engagement, increased productivity, lower attrition, and higher profitability.

A Simple Approach

There are a multitude of methods available for increasing employee engagement with varying ranges of complexity, time commitment and cost. Yet, the solution may be simpler than you think. When we talk about employee engagement, we often speak in generalities. It can sound as if there is a group called “employees” that we must direct something towards collectively. A one size fits all approach has less of an opportunity to positively drive your engagement levels than one simple opportunity that many leaders have, at every level, including the C-suite. This opportunity, the key to engaging employees, is to get specific about each person.

One Employee at a Time

Engaging employees happens one person at a time. The place to start is to get to know each person on your team uniquely. How much do you already know about each employee and what makes that person tick?

How many of these questions can you answer right now about each employee on your team?

  • What are their career aspirations?
  • What personal aspirations do they have?
  • What motivates them?
  • What are their most important values?
  • What key strengths do they bring to the team?
  • What type of behavioral style do they favor?
  • What professional development needs do they have?

Call to Action

If you can’t answer all of these questions for each employee, I invite you to make it a priority to schedule 1:1 meetings to discover those answers. Then, look for the opportunities to:

  • let them use their strengths each day,
  • take on assignments that build the skills for their future career path,
  • communicate with them in a way that matches their style.

Your employees want to work in jobs that allow them to do what they do best, to grow and develop professionally, and feel a sense of purpose in what they focus on each day. What drives engagement and motivation is unique to each individual. So, get started by getting to know your team. Look for ways to align what is important to each person with the work they are doing, and watch your results begin to shift.

If you would like support in increasing employee engagement in your organization, please contact me to have a conversation. We offer a simple yet powerful and practical methodology to support you in improving employee engagement.

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development, Career and Retirement Coach and Facilitator who believes we each have far more potential than we typically tap in to. She helps you learn how to step into your full potential so you can create consistent, optimal performance for yourself and your team with less stress and more enjoyment. If you would like to uncover and address hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success, leverage your strengths, and accelerate your progress toward the results you desire, contact Sherry for a complimentary consultation.

 

Harnessing the Power of Focus: 3 Tips to Prepare for the New Year

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This is the time of year where I like to take a pause and reflect on:

  • what went well,
  • what did I learn from, and
  • what do I want to create in the coming year

Where are you right now in the pursuit of your goals for this year? Where have you knocked it out of the park? Where has your progress lagged your expectations? What are your top priorities for the coming year?

In The Power of Focus, authored by Canfield, Hansen and Hewitt, the point is made that “the main reason that most people struggle professionally and personally is a lack of focus.” The book provides practical and easy to implement strategies to support you in creating and reaching your targets in all aspects of your life. No matter what stage of life you are in, being deliberate, persistent and focused will serve you in creating your future. Here are a few key tips from the book that will help you lay a foundation for harnessing your focus and get you ready for the coming year.

Focus: Laying Your Foundation

#1 – Develop Successful Habits
Habits are nothing more than behaviors that we engage in over and over again until we do them without thinking about them.  Early on in life, most of us learned how to ride a bicycle.  Remember how much there was to think about?  We had to pedal, steer, watch out for traffic, keep our balance, use hand signals for a turn…so much to keep in mind. Yet, as we practiced those behaviors repeatedly, riding a bike became easier and easier to do until that day when we just got on the bike and pedaled away without a second thought.

We all have good habits and some not so good habits.  Take stock of your behaviors that support you, such as getting 7 – 8 hours of sleep each night, eating healthy foods, or spending time with your family. Acknowledge yourself for your good habits and keep them going. Then, take stock of your not so good habits that are getting in your way, such as being late to meetings, doing your email while a colleague or associate is talking with you, or not exercising regularly. Prioritize which one you’d like to work on first and define the new habit that will replace it. Finally, take consistent action each day to install that new habit. Research indicates that it takes, on average, 66 days to form a new habit. The amount of time it takes for you is dependent on the habit’s complexity. Be patient and persistent and keep track of your progress. Before you know it, you’ll be ready to work on the next successful habit you’d like to take on.

#2 – Leverage Your Strengths
One of my teachers once shared a philosophy she had learned in her career and it has guided many of my own decisions.  That philosophy is “if it’s not my genius, it’s not my job.” Too often, whether we work in a company or are running our own businesses, we get caught up in the day-to-day operations and administration and spend more time putting out fires, answering email, handling bookkeeping, and managing employee problems than doing what we most love.  Focus the majority of your time each week doing the things that you do best and let others do what they do best.  When you are using your strengths, you are far more likely to be engaged and energized. This puts you in the mindset that will allow you to do your best work.

Before you say, I can’t afford to hire someone. Think again. If you’re inside a company, you likely already have people who would be happy to take on some of the tasks that are draining your energy. If you own your own business, imagine how much your business could grow if you took back those hours that you’re spending doing things you don’t enjoy.  That will more than pay for the bookkeeper, marketing consultant, or personal assistant who you hire full or part-time.

Remember, this is all about focus.  If you are scattered in too many different directions, it’s impossible to get traction on your most important result.

#3 – Create Your Master Plan
Finally, to set a strong foundation for harnessing the power of focus, you must create your master plan. What is your vision for the future you want to create in the next year? Really give yourself some time and quiet space to play with this. Make this vision as all encompassing as possible and state each aspect of it as though it’s already happening, such as, “I am taking a month of vacation each year,” or “I am working with a collaborative team.”  Include every aspect of your life, not just your work. This might include, your financial life, health and wellness, fun, relationships, personal development, contribution/volunteering, and anything else that is important to you.

Then, consider what milestones you will meet 6 months from now, then 3 months from now, 1 month from now, next week, and tomorrow to bring that vision to reality. Create goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, reasonable and time-based. I know we’ve all heard about SMART goals. Be honest though. How often have we all set goals that are a bit on the vague side?

Once you have that list of goals, ensure that you are taking one step toward your broader vision every day.  Creating a habit (see tip #1) that ensures you are focused on chipping away at your goals each day will keep you inspired and moving in the direction of your desired destination.

Call to Action

As this year draws to a close, I invite you to pause and take the steps that will determine your success in the new year. If you’d like to dive more deeply into what focus can do for you, click the link for more information on The Power of Focus. Best wishes for a focused year.

 

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development, Career and Retirement Coach and Facilitator who believes we each have far more potential than we typically tap in to. She helps you learn how to step into your full potential so you can create consistent, optimal performance for yourself and your team with less stress and more enjoyment. If you would like to uncover and address hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success, leverage your strengths, and accelerate your progress toward the results you desire, contact Sherry for a complimentary consultation.