Leadership Qualities: Good Leaders Know You Can’t Fight Reality

Summary.   

Acceptance is often misunderstood as approval or being against change, but it is neither. Acceptance is about acknowledging the facts and letting go of the time, effort, and energy wasted in the fight against reality. Your reality may be that you are falling behind on revenue, a competitor has outflanked you with a new product, or that the effects of the pandemic are still hurting your business. Whatever it is you’re facing, you can’t employ your best skills to deal with it until you stop the wrangle against reality and accept what you’ve been handed, ready to change things for the better. The author offers three kinds of acceptance that leaders should focus on: 1) Accepting results 2) Accepting circumstances 3) Accepting their failings and those of others.

The ability to accept reality is one of the most useful, and most misunderstood, skills for a leader. It’s a concept that has been around for centuries in philosophy and more recently in psychology, and properly applied can help drive change. As Carl Jung wrote, “We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.” But I don’t see acceptance applied enough by leaders today as a valuable tool for achieving better results.

Complete Article at HBR

 

Job Search: How to Job Hunt (When You’re Already Exhausted)

Summary.   

When you’re already worn out from working full time, caring for family, and managing this new way of “Covid being,” it’s hard to muster up the energy to jump into a job hunt or consider changing careers. Incorporating these five coaching and change management principles into your job search will help you stay motivated throughout what can feel like a grueling process even at the best of times. First, give some thought to why you actually want a new job, and why you want it now. Next, use visualization techniques when exhaustion or false narratives take over. Then, create a plan and follow it methodically. Next, let go of the things you can’t control. Finally, prepare for the inevitable emotional ups and downs.

When Fred, a client of mine, realized he wasn’t feeling fulfilled in his job, he wanted to find something more meaningful. So he started a job search. Within days, he was interviewing multiple times a week for multiple companies, and each interview required hours of preparation while he was also spearheading major projects at his full-time job. As his workload became more frenetic, he said many times, “This is exhausting,” and at times thought he would give up for a while if the roles he was interviewing for didn’t come through.

Complete Article at HBR

Job Interviews: 8 Tips for Conducting an Excellent Remote Interview

 Summary.   

Remote interviewing is here to stay, as the pandemic and its evolving offshoot, the Great Resignation, continue to reshape the modern workplace. Today’s job hunters aren’t just looking to boost their salaries. They’re also seeking flexibility, well-being, and a workplace culture that aligns with their own values and sensibilities. Interviews that delve into these topics can give both parties valuable information about whether a prospective employee is likely to feel fulfilled and engaged at a particular organization. We can absolutely have these conversations “face to face,” even when we’re not in the same physical room. The author presents eight tips for employers seeking to master the medium in order to identify top talent from a distance.

As companies scramble to fill a record number of job openings remotely, the internet is awash in tips for candidates seeking to stand out from the crowd while confined to a Zoom box.

But what about the employers on the other end of the connection? For them, “cracking the code” on remote interviewing is just as critical. Bad hiring decisions cost money and drain morale. Without the multitude of data points available only in person — the feel of a handshake, the way the energy in a room changes when a candidate walks in — employers need to develop new strategies for gauging whether someone is a good fit.

Complete Article at HBR

Proof That Positive Work Cultures Are More Productive

 

Too many companies bet on having a cut-throat, high-pressure, take-no-prisoners culture to drive their financial success.

But a large and growing body of research on positive organizational psychology demonstrates that not only is a cut-throat environment harmful to productivity over time, but that a positive environment will lead to dramatic benefits for employers, employees, and the bottom line.

Although there’s an assumption that stress and pressure push employees to perform more, better, and faster, what cutthroat organizations fail to recognize is the hidden costs incurred.

First, health care expenditures at high-pressure companies are nearly 50% greater than at other organizations. The American Psychological Association estimates that more than $500 billion is siphoned off from the U.S. economy because of workplace stress, and 550 million workdays are lost each year due to stress on the job. Sixty percent to 80% of workplace accidents are attributed to stress, and it’s estimated that more than 80% of doctor visits are due to stress. Workplace stress has been linked to health problems ranging from metabolic syndrome to cardiovascular disease and mortality.

The stress of belonging to hierarchies itself is linked to disease and death. One study showed that, the lower someone’s rank in a hierarchy, the higher their chances of cardiovascular disease and death from heart attacks. In a large-scale study of over 3,000 employees conducted by Anna Nyberg at the Karolinska Institute, results showed a strong link between leadership behavior and heart disease in employees. Stress-producing bosses are literally bad for the heart.

Complete Article at HBR