Communication is the fundamental cornerstone for any successful relationship. Whether it be personal, or business.We have countless interactions throughout our day, but often fail to realise the impact it can have to others around us.Specifically in leadership, setting the tone can either exponentially improve your company or tank it completely.

Communication For Leaders

Gratitude is a subtle nuance when it comes to leadership. Too much, and you wont appear as a leader anymore. Too little and your team will consider you a dictator.So what works best?"We could not have done it without your hard effort"With this, you show gratitude to the person for their contribution to the team, and how pivotal their role.Some other key phrase which leaders can use to help their team."How can I help?""What do you need from me?"(so that I can help you perform better)Effective leaders serve the needs of others , and it all starts with care and concern.

Gratitude 

Involving your team in decisions being made is essential for teams being humble and honest. It shows that you value their opinion and know how to ask for help"I could use your advice on which direction to take"Leaders need to extend trust first, instead of earning it which goes against conventional wisdom"I trust you"In situations where you aren't sure about decisions , be comfortable about it to your team"Honestly, I dont know."Your team might give you more ideas out, and chances are they're ones that you've not thought about. And if not, it shows that you're comfortable with the unknown.

Team Building

Communication is an underrated tool. It's easy to notice why a team works well when you see them talk, but when a team doesn't work it's not easy to see why they don't work well , even if they're a stellar team

They may not be what you expect, but using them often will help increase trust.

communication

Communication

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

If You Use These 6 Phrases a Lot, You're a Better Leader Than You Think

Short and sweet, a mission statement sums up the core of who your company is and why it exists. They are typically succinct, only a sentence or two. They are inspiring and not boring.When done right, the company’s mission statement acts as a powerful driver that informs every aspect of your organization, from daily operations, to customer loyalty, to employee satisfaction.

The mission statement

A vision statement is aspirational. It outlines where your company strives to be in the future — whether that is one year from now or ten. In contrast, a mission statement spells out where your company is right now.Think of your company’s vision statement as a long-term goal post. The end point towards which you are working. If your vision statement is a goal post, then your mission statement is what drives you toward that goal post.

Mission vs Vision Statement

Better Sales: A 2020 study found that if consumers think a company has a strong purpose, they are:<ul><li>4x more likely to purchase from the company</li><li>4.5x more likely to recommend the company to family and friends</li><li>6x more likely to defend the company in the wake of public criticism</li></ul>Happier & More Productive Employees: <a href="https://www.gallup.com/workplace/336275/things-gen-millennials-expect-workplace.aspx">According to Gallup poll</a>, Gen Z and millennials (who make up nearly half of the full-time workforce in the US) value belonging to a company with a strong moral compass.

Why have a mission Statement

Brainstorm as a team and discuss based on a few questions. Aim for a short paragraph on each question.<ul><li>Why does our company exist?</li><li>What value do our products or services bring to consumers?</li><li>What core beliefs guide our work?</li><li>What makes our company different, better, or more inspiring than our competitors?</li></ul>Once you have one (or more versions of the) mission statement run it check it against these criteria:<ul><li>Plausibility: make sure it ties back to your everyday business operations. </li><li>Readability: No corporate speak or jargon.</li><li>Voice: Use language that is active and compelling. </li></ul>

How to get to the magical Mission Statement

<ul><li>Starbucks: Inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup & one neighborhood at a time.</li><li>Microsoft: To empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.</li><li>Square: Everyone should be able to participate and thrive in the economy</li><li>Pinterest: Bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love</li><li>Target: Help all families discover the joy of everyday life</li><li>Southwest Airlines: Connect people to what’s important in their lives through friendly, reliable & low-cost air travel</li><li>Google: Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible & useful</li></ul>

Cool Mission Statements

Working on updating the mission statement for Deepstash. Do you have any ideas that can inspire us? 

A well-written mission statement speaks volumes about your company. Gather inspiration from mission statement examples and learn how to craft your own.

career

Career

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

product

Product & Design

Company Mission Statement (with Examples)

The ability to be resilient is not just a mindset thing: It is an execution thing.

Understanding resilience

Organisations that have some healthy paranoia, where they're constantly looking for threats and opportunities become resilient. Adversity can come from unforeseen market conditions or from internal conditions.  But resilient organisations plan for those things. The more engaged the workforce is, the more resilient the organisation will be to overcome adversity.

Workplace resilience

A quick take on building resilience in the workplace from Brent Gleeson – former Navy SEAL, author, and founder of TakingPoint Leadership. Get the full lesson from Brent Gleeson for your business: https://bigthink.com/plus/ How is a boardroom like a battleground? Both spaces require communication, collaboration, and a high degree of mental toughness. In an article for Forbes, Gleeson wrote that his experience in combat gave him, “a highly valuable and applicable set of tools that translated well to entrepreneurship and leadership in business.” Of course, most people aren't fighting life-or-death battles at their desks every day – but they do face unique and complex challenges. On top of their normal job responsibilities, today's workforce is grappling with an ongoing global pandemic, political polarization, the effects of climate change, and the day-to-day stressors of balancing work and home life. In such uncertain and chaotic times, why are some employees able to thrive while others are barely scraping by? The difference often lies in their capacity to quickly recover from difficulties, a skill that can be taught in the workplace through resilience training.  See the full article on building resilience, here: https://bigthink.com/articles/resilience-training/ Follow Big Think+ -LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/big-think-plus -Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthinkplus -Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bigthinkplus

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

teamwork

Teamwork

videos

Videos

A quick take on building resilience in the workplace from Brent Gleeson – former Navy SEAL, author, and founder of TakingPoint Leadership.

Get the full lesson from Brent Gleeson for your business: https://bigthink.com/plus/

How is a boardroom like a battleground? Both spaces require communication, collaboration, and a high degree of mental toughness. In an article for Forbes, Gleeson wrote that his experience in combat gave him, “a highly valuable and applicable set of tools that translated well to entrepreneurship and leadership in business.”

Of course, most people aren't fighting life-or-death battles at their desks every day – but they do face unique and complex challenges. On top of their normal job responsibilities, today's workforce is grappling with an ongoing global pandemic, political polarization, the effects of climate change, and the day-to-day stressors of balancing work and home life. 
 
In such uncertain and chaotic times, why are some employees able to thrive while others are barely scraping by? The difference often lies in their capacity to quickly recover from difficulties, a skill that can be taught in the workplace through resilience training. 

See the full article on building resilience, here: https://bigthink.com/articles/resilience-training/

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With a diverse library of lessons from the world’s biggest thinkers, Big Think+ helps businesses get smarter, faster. 

From leadership with Simon Sinek to design thinking with Sara Blakely, our learning solution unlocks potential across organizations by building the capabilities that are relevant today and will continue to be relevant tomorrow. 


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Building resilience in the workplace | Brent Gleeson

AI-powered <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/technology-and-the-future-of-work/importance-of-investing-in-employees.html?id=us:2el:3dp:wsjspon:awa:WSJCIO:2022:WSJFY22">opportunity marketplaces</a> that divide work into tasks, projects, or roles that can be matched with people from anywhere in the organization.

Match opportunities with talent

To develop its COVID-19 vaccine in record time, for example, pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca mobilized employees into cross-functional tiger teams rather than according to functional expertise. But it also tapped its ecosystem, collaborating with academia and regulatory agencies and employing new ways of working.

Make cross-functional teams 

When hiring, consider such segments as alumni, workers who have taken career breaks to be caregivers, people in untapped geographies who can work remotely, the long-term unemployed, immigrants and refugees, and those with physical disabilities or neurodiversity challenges

Hire creatively 

<ul><li>When employees are empowered to make decisions about where and how they could work, engagement and productivity increase.</li><li>That should also involve training managers for hybrid work so they focus on outcomes, not in-office face time.</li></ul>

Empower employees with where and why of work

Talent is one of the biggest issues facing C-suite executives today. Leaders should not only understand the big shifts at play but also reimagine workplace systems, policies, and culture to deal with the current crisis and withstand future shocks.

remotework

Remote Work

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

From ‘the Great Resignation’ to ‘the Great Reimagination’

When managed correctly, group decision-making—an inherently inclusive process—is one of the most successful ways to make effective decisions. It can help:<ul><li>Generate buy-in from stakeholders by involving them from the beginning</li><li>Build consensus by inclusively considering the pros and cons of each option</li><li>Encourage workplace creativity by surfacing ideas from any individual or team, not just leadership or internal subject matter experts</li><li>Create more favorable business outcomes by sharing decision-making responsibilities with everyone.</li></ul>

Group Decision-Making

If managed incorrectly, group decision-making can result in poor business outcomes. A flawed group decision-making facilitation process might:<ul><li>Trivialize or replace high-priority tasks with lower priority tasks, resulting in collective procrastination</li><li>Diffuse accountability throughout the entire group, thereby avoiding responsibility for poor outcomes</li><li>Create inefficient groups that struggle to focus on the big picture and go off on tangents</li><li>Contribute to “groupthink” where group members reach a consensus without critically evaluating alternative viewpoints.</li></ul>

Disadvantages of Group Decision-Making

<ul><li>Bain and Company’s RAPID Decision-Making Model can help organizations make better decisions when multiple stakeholders are involved. RAPID clarifies decision accountability.</li><li>Each letter in the word RAPID signifies a group member’s role during the decision-making process. According to Bain and Company, when roles are clearly delineated in this way, groups make the right choices swiftly and effectively.</li><li>It’s important to note that not every decision merits the level of effort and investment that goes into creating explicit RAPID roles. Nonetheless, RAPID is a useful framework for larger decisions.</li></ul>

The RAPID Framework

The Nominal Group Technique (NGT) relies on a moderator who records ideas produced during a group or individual brainstorming session. Group members discuss their ideas with the moderator, who compiles a list of all the ideas.Participants or a panel of decision-makers then vote using index cards numbered one through five. The numbers correspond to the priority the idea should receive. The votes are then calculated and ideas pursued in order of the priority score they received.

The Nominal Group Technique

The Delphi Technique is similar to NGT but instead of in-person discussion, it relies on questionnaires to gather information and insights from a group of anonymous individuals.The questionnaires are delivered in rounds and the questions in each round are determined by the responses from the round before. Starting in the second round, participants rank the ideas presented by order of priority. The questions grow progressively more focused on a small subset of ideas on which the leaders make a decision.

The Delphi Technique

<ol><li>Frame the decision. Framing a decision sets the overall context. To do this effectively, leaders should critically examine the overall issue they face.</li><li>Generating alternatives. Once leaders have framed the problem and understood the context, they should determine alternative solutions. The more options generated, the greater the team’s likelihood of uncovering an innovative solution. I</li><li>Decide the course of action. When enough alternatives are created, the process of group decision-making can finally begin. </li></ol>

Decision-Engineering Process

<ul><li>Involve all employees.</li><li>Keep it anonymous. If employees feel that their responses can identify them, they are more likely to withhold their true opinions due to fear of retribution.</li><li>Beware of non-proven techniques. Some methods of conducting group decision-making create barriers to effective, efficient, and objective decisions. </li><li>Share collective responsibility for the outcome. All members should feel accountable for the decision and its outcome. </li></ul>

Improving the Group Decision-Making Process

Collecting diverse opinions and perspectives to inform decision-making is essential. When decisions affect many people across an organization, group

Effective Group Decision-Making Techniques

People need space to learn, absorb, and take charge of their career and individual development. Providing this seeds a deeper sense of professional self-awareness, a better understanding of role responsibilities, and a basis for personalized goal-setting.
It’s impossible, though, to contemplate those big-picture dimensions of professional skills advancement and career evolution when your days are too busy. Creating an employee learning community designates space for a growth mindset.

Make your workplace a learning community

In a remote environment, there are fewer opportunities to meet colleagues in person and to expand one’s network at conferences and industry events. '
One of the most fundamental ways to build these muscles is to practice. To foster this, give your team internal networking opportunities.

Build hubs for networking

Leaders can only create a culture of belonging for their employees when they have a diverse leadership team.
Employees can’t thrive if they feel like they don’t belong. Employees need a comfortable climate, a network, and the knowledge that the leadership team is a destination for everyone. A company cannot feel like an exclusive club for only insiders.

Think long-term on diversity

Mentor relationships support developing talent and inspire quality performance while providing a structured path for development. That means providing a safe place for exploration, experimentation, and risk. Development is best accomplished within a supportive community.
Having no opportunities to engage with senior leaders is a barrier. Lack of career support and mentorship is another obstacle. Commit to your team members, especially underrepresented employees. Develop and support their professional and leadership goals. These can be your future leaders and mentors.

Commit to mentorship mediums

What you need to know in order to start building a culture of learning

books

Books

Creating A Culture Of Learning 

Investing in employees is a critical long-term commitment for companies.

travel

Travel

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

4 employee development tips to show your people they matter

Attentional bias can be defined as our tendency to focus on certain elements while ignoring others. It can be understood as failure to look for evidence against an initial possibility, or as failure to consider alternative possibilities.Our attention can be biased by external events as well as internal thoughts and emotions. For instance, being hungry may make you pay more attention to food, and holding certain beliefs will skew your thinking towards decisions that are aligned with these beliefs.

Attentional bias

<ul><li>Pay attention to your attention. Whenever you feel your attention is being automatically pulled into a specific direction, ask yourself why this is the case.</li><li>Go beyond the most obvious answer. If you find the answer to a question completely obvious, chances are some of your thinking is based on heuristics that may not be the only way to approach the problem at hand.</li><li>Cultivate open-mindedness. Being open-minded is not something you just decide to become. It can be cultivated by asking good questions, reading books outside of your usual interests, and connecting with people who think differently.</li></ul>

How to manage the attentional bias

We often follow a train of thought without noticing the selective factors in our attention. This is called the attentional bias.

productivity

Productivity

Attentional bias: the invisible puppeteer behind our decisions

First coined by Robert Cialdini in 1984, social proof is also known as informational social influence. In his book Influence: Science and Practice, he discusses social proof as one of the influential psychological principles that persuade us to behave in certain ways.In ambiguous situations, decision-making is made difficult by uncertainty regarding the potential outcomes, which may result in decision anxiety. Social proof (safety in numbers, or reliance on the authority of others) therefore becomes a powerful influencer of decision making if we feel that others are better qualified to decide.

Social proof

Positive public reviews and ratings persuade us that a company or their product is trustworthy. Endorsements from specialists such as doctors or dentists also encourage consumers to choose a recommended product rather than one with no professional testimonial, even if the products are otherwise comparable.It’s interesting to note that we don’t tend to seek safety in any kind of numbers. When we see ourselves as similar to those around us, we are more likely to view their behavior as correct, and therefore adopt it as our own.

The power of positive endorsement

<ul><li>Herd mentality can prevent us from practicing critical thinking and exploring new, innovative ideas.</li><li>Even if an opinion is held by a large group of people, this does not necessarily make it correct. </li><li>Following the crowd can lead people to make poor decisions that they would not have made without the encouragement obtained from social proof. </li><li>In addition, social proof can cause you not only to act, but also to fail to act. </li></ul>

The dangers of relying on social proof

<ul><li>Be mindful of influencers. Successful influencers are incredibly persuasive. When you see a product or argument being advertised, be aware of the underlying mechanism of influence at play.</li><li>Interrogate your own beliefs. It can feel easier and quicker to adopt the beliefs of others, rather than interrogating your own opinion on a subject. </li><li>Know when a decision matters. Moral decisions, choices that will affect your income or career, or expensive purchasing dilemmas should be made with more than just reliance on social proof. </li></ul>

How to wisely use social proof

The informal fallacy of making choices that fit with those of our peers is known as social proof. While it can help us to make everyday decisions, it is vital to learn how to use it wisely rather than blindly following the crowd into what could turn out to be a bad choice.

Social proof: is there always safety in numbers?

Is a set of practical approaches and tools for change management that have been developed by a large number of managers on a variety of projects and have repeatedly proven their effectiveness.Reason for the need for project management: 1) The external environment is dynamically changing and changes in companies and organizations are becoming more frequent, complex and complex. 2) Achieving the goals of projects requires close interaction between departments with different functions within the organization and the involvement of many external parties.

Project Management

Is the main document that defines the scope of the project and all related conditions. It contains a brief description of the project, its goals, content and environment, working with which allows you to:1) Work out the main aspects of project implementation2) Assess the necessary time, human and material resources for this3) Coordinate the project idea with the leaders of the organizationThe charter is written once and cannot be corrected. Should be short and clear. Its purpose is to fix agreements on content between all interested parties. Is a certain guarantor for you.

Project Charter

The charter must answer 5 questions: - Why? main and intermediate goals - What? scope of work of the project - When? project time - With whom? order of work and resources - How many? project costIn order for employees not to consider the project an "anchor", employees need to be able to easily answer these questions: - Why does the management consider it necessary to develop this particular area of ​​activity? - What will be the result of the implementation of this particular project for the company? - What will be the benefit of the project?

Project Charter #2

The life cycle of a project is the period of time between the moment the project idea is formalized and the moment it is closed. The main stages of the life cycle program (initiation, planning, implementation and closing). Rule of thumb = [Finish, then move on]Use NPV Formula for Calculating Project Success

Life Cycle Of Project

1/Initiation: - The goals and objectives of the project are determined - Risk analysis is carried out (a survey of specialists to identify all hidden stones) - Analysis of stakeholders or interested parties of the project is carried out - The estimated costs and benefits of the project are calculated and compared - The project team is formed2/Planning: - A plan for the implementation of the project is drawn up - Required resources are determined - The project budget is being developed - Detailed risk management plan - Participants of the project are determined

#1-2 Stage Of Life Cycle

3/Implementation takes 50-60% of the time: - Execution of the plan - Monitoring and control of key points and targets - Analysis of current results - Changes in existing plans and ways to implement them - Forecasts of further developments 4/Completion: - Client training - Transfer of documents - Free up resources - Learning lessons

#3-4 Stage Of Life Cycle

Reasons for project failures: 1) Lack of resources 2) Unrealistic deadlines 3) Errors in formulating goals 4) Lack of project team cohesion 5) Lack of detailed planning 6) Inefficient communication within the project 7) Changing goals during the project 8) Conflicts between the goals of the project and the interests of the departments of the organization

Reasons for failure

1) The plan does not record changes in the project 2) Decisions are made behind the scenes, without discussion in the team 3) The register of risks and their status are not updated 4) Reporting procedures are carried out formally 5) One of the key indicators is not controlled 6) Communications are not optimized 7) Customer loyalty is not controlled and maintained

Project management. Basic things you need to know about it.

Проектный менеджмент считается основой Менеджмента развития любой крупной, да и не только крупной Компании или организации, или государственного развития.
На нашем курсе Вы узнаете основы управления проектами. Рассмотрите практические инструменты, применяемые ведущими мировыми экспертами в этой области. Мы рассмотрим оценку рисков проекта, планирование, управление командой проекта и многое другие. 
Наш курс – отличный старт для понимая и осознанного управления любой деятельностью!

Project management

Pushing a new feature or changing a product is a huge balancing act for the product manager.Having the team trust you to speak on their behalf is rule number one. Always know the current status and context: You should always know where key people in the company stand on what’s important and why. You should also know what’s going on with the competition.

Being A Product Manager

Jump from small details to the big picture: You should be able to articulate the highest level strategy behind a product but also be ready to explain why a particular UI element is placed the way it is. Compliments should always go to the team. Credit should be handed out freely and generously. Success belongs to the team but failures belong to you.

How Product Managers Handle A Meeting

Obviously, you have no authority over the founders or cross-functional stakeholders you’re presenting to — you also probably don’t have authority over the engineers you work with. You have to be a good communicator and make things easy for people. QA a new feature, write the first blog post, make mock-ups your designers might think are amateur but will give them inspiration. Do the boring stuff that makes a difference and moves things forward.

Be An Influencer, Not An Authoritative Master

You may not be the decider at the table, but it’s your responsibility to make sure a decision gets made. Half of this is getting the right information in front of them. The other half is getting the right people behind them.

Getting Decisions Made

Keep the presentations short, 10 to 15 slides max. Most of the time, they can just be sent to the team over email unless there’s something really controversial. You should try to eliminate as many meetings as you can.Distilling a product review down to 10 slides can be a challenge, but it's an excellent forcing function to provide a full but simple snapshot of where your project is at.

The Slide Deck

If derailments crystallize into serious decisions, it is a good idea to pin founders down to brass tacks. Ask them directly: ‘So is that a decision? Then make your next actions clear: We’ll follow up on that point and come back to you.More importantly, only agree to decisions in a meeting that you’ve had a chance to think through and feel confident in your team’s ability to execute.

Concrete Decisions

Use the decisions made by founders to get things done. Use them to motivate your team and the teams you need to support you. Employees are usually at a company because they respect the founder.For all these reasons, positively relaying what happened in product review meetings, and very closely tying future actions to founder asks is a great way to get people aligned.

Aligning The Team

If fielding founder requests and concerns are a major part of a PM’s job, an even bigger part is motivating and coordinating designers and engineers to reach company goals. This comes with its own share of personalities, land mines and mind tricks. To inspire a team, tell a good story. Then break it down into an execution plan.

Motivating Your Team

Work with short milestones, ideally two weeks. It’s impossible for an engineering team to have a detailed six-month roadmap. It will never be accurate. In two weeks, people understand what they can get done this week and next week, and they can keep it all in their heads. It’s also enough time to make substantial, visible progress.

The Milestones Of The Goal

There are two types of meetings — decision-making meetings and status update meetings. Both should be kept short and only include the relevant people. Status meetings should be based around what people have accomplished. Demos are the best. Culturally, you should set a low bar for demos not needing to be super polished so people aren’t afraid to show their stuff early. Applaud each other. Create an environment where engineers can’t wait to show each other what they’ve built, and they leave eager to go back to it.

Short And Focused Meetings

You have to be protective of your time and your team’s time. As a PM, you’re in meetings all the time where executives are very blunt and say that things aren’t working at all and the team needs to do a better job at X, Y or Z. You have to develop a thick skin, and then you need to learn how to translate all of the criticism you hear into something motivating.

Handling Criticism

Engineers usually take it upon themselves to think through all the edge cases to any scenario, but they really appreciate it when PMs and designers beat them to it. Engineers want to be inspired by the vision, see a plan for the tactics, and then see how the latter will add up to the former with all things considered.

The Edge Cases

Big technology companies are now known for deploying new products and features internally before testing them or releasing them to the public. It gives product managers and engineers a chance to work out the bugs and safely gather feedback. It gives them a glimpse of what their friends and family will see, and one of the greatest joys of being a product manager or an engineer is being that guy who helped build something everyone you know uses and loves.

Eating Your Own Dog Food

<ul><li>You need a team task list that transcends a simple bug system. It should be big, ideally on a whiteboard that everyone can see and consult.</li><li>You have to be a ninja-quality expert at email. Being responsive is mission-critical. It’s okay if engineers and designers are bad at email, but PMs absolutely cannot be bad at email. You have to get back to people right away.</li><li>Maintain your own task list and organize it into sub-lists: today, this week, someday and maybe. Never silently drop a task and don’t tolerate silent drops from the people on your team.</li></ul>

Survival Tips For Product Managers

Todd Jackson has experience managing products at Google, Facebook and his own startup. Here's what he learned.

Top Hacks from a PM Behind Two of Tech's Hottest Products

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If You Use These 6 Phrases a Lot, You're a Better Leader Than You Think