The Importance Of True Leadership As We Face Recession
In the face of any crisis, true leadership is essential to stabilize an organization and maintain the morale of the people who keep it running.
A pandemic, labor shortages, broken supply chains and inflation on the rise—the past few years have carried us from crisis to crisis. This chain of events has rocked our foundation. Now, just as we start to feel back on somewhat solid ground, we face the potential of a recession.
Challenging times call for true leadership to stabilize an organization and maintain the morale of the people who work to keep it going. True leaders step up and help their teams navigate difficult times so they can emerge even stronger. When facing a recession, that leadership is more important than ever.
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Diversity Is Not the Same to Everyone. Here’s Why That Matters
If companies want to reap the benefits of diversity in its truest form, it’s time to consider diversifying it.
I know I’m not the typical picture of diversity. However, growing up in communist Poland offered me a unique approach to problems and solutions that most businesspeople I meet today never consider. Diversity of thought — combining our differences to cover as many diverse perspectives as possible in our decision-making — is where companies find the most benefits.
While diversity and inclusion of traditionally marginalized groups are important, being truly diverse takes more thought than people realize. To truly experience greater diversity, we need to eliminate bias, go beyond what diversity looks like and choose the people that bring something new to the table.
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Four Strategies For Your Board To Expedite Company Growth
Most organizations have a board of directors to provide governance, but an advisory board is optional and members have less liability, so they can more readily offer advice. These boards serve different purposes, but both can also propel a company to success. A well-curated board of experienced members can fill in all of the areas where your company needs expertise. When properly chosen, a board can drive more growth.
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How immigrants can turn their challenges into business strengths
As of 2019, 13.7% of the United States’ population was foreign-born—but as researcher Peter Vandor noted in Harvard Business Review, immigrants make up approximately 25% of startup founders. Just as emigrating and starting life in a strange country involves taking big risks, so does starting a company—and many immigrants see both paths as equally viable, Vandor found, because of an innate higher tolerance for risk.
DIFFERENT FORMATIVE ENVIRONMENTS LEAD TO NEW THINKING
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Working Harder And Smarter During Tough Times
The pandemic, supply chain crises, a possible recession—you might think we’re passing through particularly difficult times, but we’ve passed through difficult times before. At any point, a major event could hit and throw your life and business out of whack. When this happens, you can’t just drop everything and give up. Leaders have no choice but to keep working through challenges if they want to succeed. The stronger you remain, the better you’ll come out of it.
In our current climate of uncertainty and oncoming challenges, my advice is always the same: Even when work gets hard, work harder.
Overcoming adversity can make you stronger.
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Creative Work Is Best Done As A Team
I encourage leaders to drive greater creativity and innovation by encouraging teamwork at all company levels.
I’m a firm believer in not doing everything myself. After 25 years at the C-level, there have been many times when I ended up taking on tasks on my own, but it’s often more of a struggle to operate that way. I prefer to tackle creative work with the help of a supportive and diverse-minded team.
In a world where competition has increasingly become a game of generating the best and most ideas, the best creative work is often done in teams. Therefore, I encourage leaders to drive greater creativity and innovation by encouraging teamwork at all company levels.
Teamwork Boosts Creative Thinking
The old saying, “Birds of a feather flock together,” perfectly illustrates our tendency to seek out people with similar perspectives, but this can dampen creative thinking. Harvard economics professor Richard Freeman noticed the tendency of scientists to work with those who were similar to them. Chinese scientists in one lab, Indians and Europeans in two others. He analyzed the publications put out by similar-minded scientists and found that papers with more diverse groups of authors received more public citations and prestige. Diverse input is a strength.
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Being A CEO Requires Creativity: Three Tips For Building A Creative Environment
These days, it seems we find a new crisis around every corner. The pandemic, broken supply chains and, now as we approach 2023, some experts are predicting an oncoming recession. But on the opposite side of uncertainty is innovation and the foundation of every disruptive decision. Leaders who can be creative, adaptable and open-minded in the face of uncertainty will be the ones who take advantage of those opportunities.
While today’s CEOs highly benefit from creativity, that doesn’t mean only creative CEOs can be successful in an uncertain climate. Anyone with a foundation for great leadership—meaning they’re organized, dedicated and open-minded—can surround themselves with creative counterparts to pass ideas by. This allows the less-creative executive the opportunity to build the environment they need to innovate and stay competitive, even during times of uncertainty.
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Three Ways To Check More Than Just Boxes When Adding Diversity to Your Organization
Immigrating to the U.S. as a child gives you an entirely new perspective on what it means to add diversity to an organization.
People talk a lot about diversity — sometimes so much that I wonder if we still remember why. When leaders assemble diverse teams, the conflicting understandings of normalcy can lead to some friction — but as long as people are open-minded to the idea that their normal is not the only possibility, that friction can yield great results. A multifaceted, multicultural team can deliver some very unique and creative solutions in the workplace.
But when leaders hire people for their diversity simply to meet some standards of compliance, they might end up with more than just healthy friction. Unless these hires understand the benefits of bringing together diverse minds for more creative innovation, they may also bring conflict into a team.
Diversity should do more than check off boxes for your corporate diversity requirement; inclusivity for decision-making roles should go beyond basic divisions. Immigrants, like myself, know that diversity of class and culture can bring many benefits to a collaborative effort. To do diversity better, we need to go back to the source of its importance-bringing more diverse perspectives to work together and generate better ideas for business and society.
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How to Stay Calm in a Crisis and Lead Your Team Through Anything
Calmness is the key to leading through a crisis — leaders who stay calm can get their teams through anything.
The pandemic brought a wave of global uncertainties: supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, inflation, rising prices and an oncoming recession. Crisis after crisis has characterized the 2020s.
When facing so much uncertainty, it can be easy to worry about the future. That worry often then becomes doubt, which can quickly spiral into panic. And when we panic, we usually rush. But try to take a step back and think of your last rushed decision that ended up being a good one; panic is never a good foundation for making healthy decisions. Calmness, on the other hand, is the key to leading others through a crisis. Leaders who can stay calm can get their teams through anything.
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Leader v. manager: How managing a company is different from leading a board
In the corporate world, when we finally make it to CEO, we become company leaders. This is not a position many people know firsthand—if Zippia’s estimate of over 38,708 chief executive officers in the U.S. is correct, that means CEOs make up just 0.0001% of the country’s population. C-Suite executives and vice presidents also experience the feeling of knowing what it takes to be a leader, but not all leadership is alike.
COMPANY LEADERS MANAGE THE COMPANY
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