If You Want to Be a Good Leader, Understand The Link Between Business Values and Leadership
Let’s look at two different lessons about leadership and corporate values:
In 1982, Johnson and Johnson (J&J) discovered that someone had contaminated their Tylenol Extra Strength capsules in at least half a dozen Chicago pharmacies and grocery stores. Because of their corporate values committed to public safety, J&J leadership responded immediately: warned customers to stop consuming it, halted advertising and removed all Tylenol from store shelves until they could determine the extent of the tampering.
In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig platform exploded, and its owner, British Petroleum (BP), realized it had a leak. Company officials first reported the leak volume was low, but when the rig sunk days later and eleven workers died, investigations into BP’s practices found they took shortcuts, cut corners and ignored early warning signs. Its leadership was dishonest from the get-go, and to recover, the company had to revisit and update its corporate values.
Business values are the guiding principles that shape an organization’s culture and inform its decisions and actions. Good leadership, in turn, is essential for aligning an organization’s actions with its values and creating a positive and productive culture.
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Are You Tired of Losing Valuable Employees? Here’s How to Train and Build Leaders From Within Your Team
Creating a leadership pipeline within an organization can save a company — here’s how to do it.
Losing good people is expensive. In 2017, Gallup estimated replacing one employee to cost anywhere from half to double that person’s annual salary. That translates to between $660,000 to $2.6 million per year for a 100-person organization with an average salary of $50,000.
That costly burden makes it even harder to survive in a competitive labor market, and today’s market is more competitive than ever. According to a 2020 study by Crayon, a market and competitive intelligence tools supplier, 90% of businesses surveyed feel the market has become more competitive; 48% of respondents said it had become “much more” competitive. Add in an exhausted workforce and fears of recession, and most companies today would struggle to survive the loss of good people.
Company founders and executives depend on their leadership teams for stability. While we as leaders try our best to build loyalty and engagement to keep them, we also need a plan if it ever comes down to having to replace them. Record-breaking quit rates are only finally starting to slow down. Considering how costly and difficult it is to attract and recruit high-quality talent to replace those who leave, everyone should aim to train and recruit leaders from within. This way, we not only offer them a reason to stay with our company, but we also develop their talent and potential contribution to it.
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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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How to Best Recruit Board Members Outside of Your Industry
The value of board members from outside your industry cannot be understated – here’s why.
ew individuals are experts in everything. Even the cumulative expertise in most businesses could use input from more experts in diverse areas. This is why we have boards — a panel of experts in areas that fill in the gaps in our existing company knowledge base.
But even once we find the right group of experts from our industry to take a seat on our board, we would still stand to benefit from the wisdom of more diverse perspectives and experiences. Their range of successes and failures becomes additional resources to put together more tried and tested strategies in the face of new challenges.
Outside board members can bring a lot to a company, but to find the right ones for the job, we need to know what to look for:
Related: How Board Members Can Help You Through a Recession
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How Growing Up in a Communist Country Made Me the Leader I Am
Formative years in 1970s Poland impacted every aspect of my life, and taught me lifelong lessons that continue to enrich and empower.
I was born in Poland in 1971. Shortly after World War II, the USSR forced communism upon the nation, and it was basically under Soviet control. Essentially, anything extra that Poland produced was sent to Soviet Russia to line the pockets of or otherwise empower the elites. Meanwhile, the common people often hovered on the edge of starvation. This existence marked the first ten years of my life, and being raised under communism is something I’ll never forget. In part, the experience drove me to become an entrepreneur and a leader.
Lessons I learned from those formative days:
When life gets hard, work harder
By the time I was 10, I’d witnessed five years of my parents struggling under that oppressive system. Times were always tense, and for many, quite unhappy. We worried about having enough to eat, and there were no gifts at birthdays or on Christmas. When I was about 7, I had to go to the store in the early morning to stand in line, and there were frequently adults fighting around me. At times, it was terrifying.
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5 Ways to Ensure You Have True Diversity Within Your Business
Diversity is complex and not as simple as some people may think, but having true diversity will improve every aspect of your business.
The government defines diversity as “the range of similarities and differences each individual brings to the workplace, including but not limited to national origin, language, race, color, disability, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic status, veteran status, and family structures.” Too often, I’ve seen this diluted to the introduction of one woman and one minority to the company board of directors. Is this really the pinnacle of a diverse company foundation? What about the rest of the workforce? Is diversity really just a matter of fulfilling quotas?
In my experience, true diversity enriches a company, but it must be the real deal. It has to be embraced from the boardroom to the mailroom if it’s going to thrive. After all, how diverse is your company, really, if all the diversity is sitting at the bottom of the pay scale while the boardroom remains unwaveringly similar to 19th-century men’s clubs, minus the Victorian suits? Here, I want to explore how companies can nurture diversity for a more rewarding and successful operation.
Opening doors requires open minds
I’ve always lamented how the government definition of diversity, which is really quite nice, often becomes distilled to employing a few representative “types” to achieve the “diversity-approved” rubber stamp. That’s just not the level of diversity that I’m hoping to foster. But, to create a truly diverse team that goes beyond employing a certain number of minorities and a certain number of women, you have to have an open mind and be willing to look at diversity from more complex angles.
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