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Posted by Ken Dropiewski

4 Key Behaviors of 2018’s Most Effective Leaders

“A true leader has confidence to stand alone, courage to make the tough decisions with the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He doesn’t set out to be a leader, but becomes one though the equality of his actions and the integrity of his intent.” – Douglas MacArthur

Whether you are leading the military, a start-up, or a top achieving sales team, succeeding as a leader in 2018 will require you to get clear on your goals and identify what really matters to your company. Identifying key leadership behaviors will help define your role for the upcoming year. Research shows that certain leadership indicators account for 89 percent of the effectiveness in modern enterprise.

Employs Measured Decision Making

Impulsive decision making can be a hindrance to problem solving. This year, resolve to gather all the facts before finalizing any decision. Avoid the pitfalls associated with reactive decision making, by taking time to identify and carefully consider the most reasonable options. By utilizing a step-by-step approach, you can make more deliberate and thoughtful decisions. First, organize relevant information. Next, define any alternatives. Finally, choose the most satisfying option.

Communicates Their Vision

This is essential to creating a results-oriented culture. This may prove difficult, though, if you struggle with translating the same message across different organizational outfits or teams. Communication expert Ben Decker recommends these tips:

Consider the needs of your audience
Target your message to ensure its relevance
Identify measurable goals, in common, for each group
Show each group the benefits of your vision

Strives to Be an Active Listener

This is one of the most powerful tools in your leadership arsenal. Active listening skills is the most effective way to show support, gain new perspective, and solve challenges. Specifically, leaders can exhibit superb listening skills through the following activities:

Verbally acknowledge the needs and requests of all stakeholders
Focus on the conversation at hand instead of multi-tasking
Resist the temptation to interrupt
Give the speaker 100 percent of your attention
Repeat or paraphrase back to the other party to ensure you are on the same page.

Creates a Supportive Environment by Embracing Diversity

Organizations run by diverse teams deliver results. Research by McKinsey proves that diverse companies were more likely to outperform companies without such policies. These companies were more likely to produce innovative new products and develop new business than were more homogenous teams. Here are a few goals for creating diversity:

Use unbiased recruitment and selection methods
Empower staff to use their strengths, individually
Implement diversity training for sensitivity and assimilation

The success and reputation of an organization hinges upon strong leadership. As MacArthur so beautifully expressed, leadership is a multifaceted role that relies on strong performance to achieve industry excellence.

Our strategy focuses on enabling our clients to identify, attract and retain the right people for the structure in which they will perform. Please contact us to learn more about our expertise in Executive Search for Leadership positions in Medical Device and Biotechnology. We look forward to the opportunity to help you consistently improve your performance and your business!

Follow me on Twitter @PrimeCoreSearch.

Posted by Ken Dropiewski

What is Design Thinking and How to Integrate it from Day One to Promote Innovation?

Design thinking is the practice of placing the end-user, their problems, goals, and challenges at the center and designing a solution from the center outward. Over the past few years we have witnessed the idea of design thinking (DT) emerge from theory to the modern ethos of business innovation. But how can design thinking be used to improve corporate learning and leadership training and what are the benefits?

The Challenges of Corporate Learning

Most methods used for training are based on expected or desired patterns of thought and do little to address the trainee’s needs, their questions, and their unique obstacles to learning. The corporate model of training tends to utilize the “teach to the objective” approach. This reduces training to the laying out of linear chunks of information that while laced with periodic knowledge checks, depends on repetition with the “hope” that the trainee will just eventually “get it.”

Design Thinking Promotes Innovation

Is it better for your employees to know the “correct” answer or would you rather them come up with the “best” answer through ideation and brainstorming that while adherent to your corporate theme, are innovative? Whether you are developing an onboarding program or training future leaders, one of the most powerful benefits of using the design thinking processes is achieved through the empowerment of your employees to innovate. When you engage your team in design thinking, you are teaching them how to think not what to think.

Design Thinking Stages

There are five basic steps to the design thinking process. Here is how you can apply these concepts to your corporate learning program to better train your employees, improve their onboarding experience, and increase the likelihood for innovation in your workforce.

Step 1: Empathy

During the empathy stage of DT, you want to really put yourself in the shoes of the person for whom you are designing.

Steps 2 and 3: Define and Ideate

Define the most common problems that your trainees will need to solve. In this stage, you will utilize your company’s greatest resource, the human ones! Brainstorm to generate new ideas, uncover hidden problems, collaborate and innovate the solutions.

Step 4: Develop and Prototype

In this step, you take the ideas and make them tangible. Putting the ideas into action may be the most significant challenge when it comes to applying the DT process to corporate learning. This will require you to consider the best learning modes for each individual trainee in every scenario. Since ensuring access to learning content is a major challenge today, you will want to consider these issues as you develop your learning product.

Step 5: Testing and Iteration

As we mentioned previously, there is no one-size-fits-all solution when you create a human-centric design. This means that you will probably need to try several learning modes, testing them each to find the best individual solution. The central idea, however, is to shift from an instructional model to one that is more experiential in nature.

Getting Your Team Onboard Faster

One significant benefit of using a design thinking approach to corporate learning is the ability you have to inform your trainees with the essential information they need to succeed at their jobs faster. We know from research that today around 90% of new employees decide whether to stay with a company within the first six months. Corporate learning needs to be impactful and relevant from day one.

How to Build Bench Strength Using Design Thinking

The essence of DT involves empathizing, listening to people and allowing them to identify the tough problems, new opportunities to explore, and create innovative solutions. Sounds a lot like leadership training, doesn’t it? Because design thinking combines systems analysis and outcomes-oriented problem-solving, it’s relevant to the development of business leaders.

Our strategy focuses on enabling our clients to recruit the right people for the structure in which they will perform. Please contact us to learn more about our expertise in Executive Search for Commercial Leadership positions in Medical Device and Biotechnology; including Marketing, Strategy, Sales Leadership, Training, Development, etc. We look forward to the opportunity to help you consistently improve your performance and your business!

Follow me on Twitter @PrimeCoreSearch.

Posted by Ken Dropiewski

Thought Leader’s Tips for Hiring Top Talent

Hiring top talent requires an investment of time and energy, but finding the perfect candidate can make all the difference between stagnation and advancement. Thought leader Lou Adler, CEO of The Adler Group, a sourcing and recruitment company, shares some insight into finding top talent.

Looking in All the Wrong Places

The first step in recruiting top talent is looking in the right places. In general, prospective employees fall into one of four groups.

The Known: people you know personally. If the job is similar, interviewing accuracy is high and the process is quick. The result, however, is often less than positive as these people often get the job for the wrong reasons and are therefore not the best candidates for the position.
The Semi-Known: people well-known by the people you know. By taking recommendations from people you know well you are likely to find top talent and trustworthy employees. This sweet spot comes with a drawback, however, as you will likely need to recruit these people from their current jobs.
The Less Well-Known: people who are well-know by someone who you could get to know. These connections, while somewhat weak, open a huge hiring pool. Hiring from this group requires carefully collecting referrals and then recruiting.
The Unknown: people who are not connected to you in any way. Those in this group present many unknowns. Hiring from this group requires thorough interviewing in order to convert an unknown quantity into a known.

Converting the Unknown into the Known

Regardless of which of those categories a candidate falls into, conducting a performance-based interview that digs into a prospective employee’s past shows important characteristics that indicate whether they will successfully fill the demands of the position.

Step One: Create a performance-based job description that includes the performance objectives that the job demands.
Step Two: Define the process necessary to reach these objectives.
Step Three: Ask candidates to describe their past accomplishments and their own process of success.

The interview must therefore prompt the prospective employee to describe accomplishments comparable to the job objects outlined in Step One. In order for the interviewer to understand exactly what the candidate has and can accomplish.

Adler gives the following advice: “ask the candidate to be specific giving dates, measurable details and the actual results achieved. Then start at the beginning of the project and find out the candidate’s actual role, the planning process used and how the plan was kept on track.” He also suggests including questions that “describe the environment…the hiring manager’s style…the pace…and how well the candidate adapted to these circumstances.”

Conclusion

Acquiring top talent stems from looking in the right places and converting unknown quantities into known. Investing in this process leads to new advances for your company as talented and experienced employees reach for new growth.

Follow me on Twitter @PrimeCoreSearch.

Posted by Ken Dropiewski

Leadership Training Secrets for Executives

Research by Gallup reveals that up to 70 percent of employee engagement depends on the influence and behavior of the manager. That is, management engagement drives employee engagement. As the saying goes, employees quit managers, not companies. This same Gallup study also found that executive teams who actively work with management will increase their engagement by up approximately 40 percent. Executives can create a positive domino effect through senior leaders by following the advice below.

Maximize Management’s Potential

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) states that there are key factors required for building high-performance teams. These factors include diverse expertise, mutual accountability, trustful interdependence, recognizable responsibilities, ambitious performance goals and commitment to the mission. Executives almost always require managers to use these factors to create employee teams, but how often do they use these same principles to develop management teams with strong cohesion, collaboration and communication? Well-trained management teams who are united in purpose and function will successfully meet goals, drive change, forecast problems and elicit employee engagement.

Create a Strong HR Brand

Most people think that HR exists to just conduct transactional functions that fill positions, create policies and maintain compliance. Modern HR leaders are strategic business partners who directly impact workforce strength, risk management and a company’s overall performance. HR leaders must be treated as key stakeholders who drive talent expertise, succession planning, employee engagement and staff development. Some HR leaders may struggle to transition from a traditional personnel function into a dynamic role, but executives can help them improve their leadership skills, reformat their thinking patterns and challenge existing training standards. Thoughtful executives will use valuable HR resources to find the best leaders who transform their passions into vibrant business functions.

Leverage Ancient Wisdom

Many inspirational speakers like to quote Sun Zi’s The Art of War, but there are many relevant and insightful texts that translate well into the business world. For example, Forbes magazine recommends the classic Chinese military text The 36 Stratagems. Unlike The Art of War that focuses on deceit, spying and misdirection, it provides tactics for winning, attacking, gaining ground, defeating enemies and managing chaos. Alternatively, The Book of Five Rings by the Ronin Miyamoto Musashi is a classic Japanese military text that defines a philosophic code of conduct and way of thinking. This book succinctly explains the intricacies of various strategies that can be applied to the modern business world.

As a final note, the most effective leaders will understand and respect their followers’ needs in order to establish stability, cultivate trust and refine performance.

Follow me on Twitter @PrimeCoreSearch.

Posted by Ken Dropiewski

C-Suite Reading List: 9 Leadership Books You Need to Be Reading

What does it take to be a great leader? How can you invoke your team’s best qualities? How can you create the best team for your organization? We have a few ideas to help you get started! Here’s a list of amazing books on leadership, from this year alone, that will cultivate your skills.

1. Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace By Christine Porath

Christine Porath, a Georgetown MBA professor, based her book on research and explains how you can be a more effective leader. She details the precise daily events that chip away at the heart of a team. The book teaches leaders on how to identify and put an end to destructive trends and become the leader your team needs to be its most productive.

2. Option B By Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant

Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook co-authored this book with Adam Grant a Wharton professor. It’s unclear who does the heavy lifting, as it speaks as a single voice. Option B tackles the hardships many leaders face. The stress of leadership can be grueling, but how do you overcome it? This book is your answer, to staying a leader despite the stresses you face.

3. Radical Candor By Kim Scott

Kim Scott, a former Google executive is currently a CEO coach in Silicon Valley. She believes we should be using candor when evaluating performance. In her book, she expresses the idea of a sweet spot between being an aggressive leader and a nice leader.

4. The Power of Positive Leadership by Jon Gordon

What is the best approach to being a great leader? What does it take? In this book, Jon Gordon explains you can untie your team through adversity with positive leadership and create a better company culture. Read this book to see how you can employ these tactics to your team.

5. The Captain Class: The Driving Force Behind the World’s Greatest Teams By Sam Walker

This book employs the ideas on how great sports team operate. No one can argue that sports definitely create an environment for great teamwork. What leadership qualities create an environment to get more from your team and improve the cooperation of its members? This book touches on unconventional methods that you can use for your leadership arsenal.

6. The Leadership Gap: What Gets Between You And Your Greatness by Lolly Daskal

In this book, Daskal shares patterns of powerful leaders and their obstacles to achieving greatness. Find out what your leadership archetype is, and discover incredible insights shared in the book about industry leaders, board room meetings. Apply her system for proven business results.

7. Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t by Simon Sinek

Sinek is no stranger to leadership, as evidenced by his critically acclaimed books and TED Talks all on the subject of leadership. In his latest book, Sinek explains how great leaders inspire action within their teams by building an atmosphere of group cohesion.

8. Leadership: The 100 Best Ways To Be A Great Leader by Ace McCloud

This book is perfect for those searching for real ways to learn about being a great leader. McCloud’s book will help you discover your strengths and work on your weaknesses to become a more effective leader. The strategies, tips, and best practices highlighted by this book will work their way into your life through hard work and practice.

9. POWER OVER THE PILLOW: 7 SECRETS TO MASTER YOUR GOALS, ACHIEVE SUCCESS AND BECOME UNSTOPPABLE: Create More Time, Develop Habits and Systems That Win by Stephen Toroni

Toroni’s book is great for creating strategic plans to achieve your goals and improve your leadership skills. Complete activities and learn step-by-step ways to accomplish your goals and take control over your outcomes. Don’t let the All-Caps title scare you, Toroni isn’t mad, he just writes that way!

These, of course, are not all the great leadership books of 2017, especially since we haven’t even finished the year. This is just a collection of the best books out this year to help hone your skills and to create a better year for your company and your career. Have I missed any?

Follow me on Twitter @PrimeCoreSearch.

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