Now more than ever we need leaders to practice emotional intelligence. This is something I heard time and time again when interviewing CEOs for The Future Leader. Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand your own emotions and the emotions of others. It’s moving past the hard skills of leadership to the “softer side” that allows you to connect with people on a deeper level.
What are your organization’s values?
Chances are they include things like: trust, collaboration, innovation, honesty, putting the customer first, and diversity.
Do you think your company is the only one with those values? Of course not!
If the words themselves aren’t unique, then what makes your company different?
Values are just words or phrases, they aren’t special. What matters is how those values come to life.
The idea of servant leadership is a far cry from the command and control style of leadership that was commonplace just a few decades ago. To succeed in the future of work, modern leaders must be humble and willing to serve their employees and company to get the best results.
Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to work with and speak with a hundreds of CEOs at companies around the world. I love to ask them about their habits and how they approach business and life in general.
For the first few years of my career I was terrible at creating boundaries. I said yes to everything and everyone until I finally got burned out. One day I realized that I wasn’t actually doing anything I needed or wanted to do, instead I was doing what other people wanted me to do!
Domino’s Pizza is known for getting pizza to customers quickly, but it doesn’t take the same approach with its employees. Domino’s and its CEO, Richard Allison, know that focusing on people takes time and can’t be rushed. Of all the ingredients that go into making a delicious Domino’s pizza, the most important is the focus on its people.
Your job as a leader isn’t just about making the business more money.
You need to look beyond the organization to see how the work you are doing is impacting society, local communities, and even the world.
What can you do to make sure that you will add value to any organization you are a part of, regardless of what the future might bring?
Help make other people more successful!
Well…sort of.
The future of work is full of opportunities. But people won’t be able to take advantage of those opportunities if they don’t take risks.
It’s a philosophy Shellye Archambeau, former CEO of MetricStream, has followed her entire life. Shellye looked for opportunities early in life and took risks to get them. As an African American woman with an eye on not only working in but leading the tech industry, Shellye often had to chart her own course, but she grew by taking risks and creating success on her own terms.
A cup of coffee changed my life forever. Sounds crazy right?
It was 2016 and I had just graduated with honors from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a dual B.A. in business management economics and psychology.
I was VERY excited to join the corporate world.
My plan was simple. Get a good job, work hard, go back to school to get my MBA, and then climb the corporate ladder to be an executive at a company like Coca-Cola or IBM.
Simple right? Nothing went according to plan.
