Thanksgiving is the great American holiday where family and friends share time with each other 
andtake time to show genuine thanks and gratitude for all the things we have in our lives like health, food, freedom, and opportunities to prosper. Whatever your politics are this Thanksgiving, the facts are clear that there are more American working – 132,000,000 of us - than ever before in the history of the country and the unemployment rate is at a record low of 3.6%. Compare that to the post-recession rate of 10.0% at Thanksgiving 2009 and you realize we have a new generation of employees and leaders who have never know anything but good times.
To celebrate this Thanksgiving and the good time leaders are enjoying in the business environment, I wanted to take a few moments to reflect on some of the most important tools leaders are using today that make them the most effective leaders they can be. We live in complex times and leaders need all the help they can get so I have reviewed some of the top tools we use in our business simulation-centric learning journeys and share the best tips and techniques that all leaders can be thankful for in 2019.
The GROW Coaching Model
The GROW Coaching Model has become mainstream because of its simplicity and effectiveness. It’s also a “free” model which means there aren’t any expensive licensing fees for companies to pay every time they use it. The GROW model is effective for providing coaching to employees for development. It is forward looking and many people believe that instead of giving traditional “feedback” you should give “feed forward” using the GROW Model. GROW stands for the following:
- Goals – What are the goals you are trying to achieve?
- Realities – What are the realities of the situation, and what are reasonable goals to achieve?
- Objectives – What are the specific and measurable objectives to achieve?
- Way – What is the way forward in terms of plans and process to achieve the objectives?
We should all be thankful for the positive GROW conversations we can have with our direct reports and others who work with us on processes.
Tools to Lead Disruptions
No organization can afford to stick with the status quo in today’s highly competitive global marketplace. Good leaders evolve strategy, great leaders disrupt it. Here are five tools that leaders can implement to lead disruptions within their organizations:
- Revisit the needs of your customers – Too many organizations think they know everything about their customers and become complacent. Customer satisfaction scores tell you how you did in the past, deep research into the future needs of your customers tells you what you need to do in the future. Almost every organization gets complacent in terms of understanding changing customer needs because it’s easier to focus on the status quo. And then they wake up one day to a disrupted business.
- Identify unmet needs – As part of revisiting your customer needs, you need the skills and tools necessary to identify customer needs that are not being met. This requires extreme confidence and the ability to see things that perhaps your customers don’t even see yet.
- Develop and test solutions quickly and efficiently – Once you have identified a portfolio of unmet needs, you must develop and test solutions fast and get them into pilots quickly so your customers can try them and help you develop the final versions of your new products.
- Create a culture that embraces change – Sometimes the easiest part of leader the disruption is coming up with game-changing innovations while the hardest part is selling them internally to people who only want to say “no.” Great leaders develop the skills and tools needed to create a culture that embraces change. For example, in our Leading Change simulation we suggest that the most important thing you can do as a leader is the identify the change agents within your organization who are excited by the change and will influence others to go along with it.
- Don’t become satisfied – The final leadership tool related to leading disruptions is making sure you are your teams are never happy and never satisfied. Disrupt the disruption if you think there is a better more profitable way. Hire and train people who thirst for change and are never happy with the status quo. Even if you’ve just disrupted your own business model!
Ability to Lead Across Generations
There are some leaders out there who may be leading teams that span five generations of employees including:
- The Greatest Generation
- Baby Boomers
- Generation X
- Millennials
- Generation Z
To many, the thought of leading across five daunting task that feels literally impossible to overcome because you can’t make everyone happy. Based on our research and work in this area, we present to our clients three effective tools of leading across generations to be thankful for:
- Establish a cadence of effective communications that everyone can work with – One of the primary jobs of being a leader is communicating. But what do you do if you have multiple generations of people on your team? The answer is easy in concept and can be easy to execute if you do it well. Establish a common cadence of communicating with your teams through effective meetings, just one or two primary forms of interaction like phone and email or phone and texting but don’t let your team have 8 different methods or else nothing will work.
- Leverage different perspectives – Instead of looking at multiple generations as a negative, view it as a positive by embracing all the different perspectives they can bring. I have seen this become a very effective method that makes people feel engaged and is actually good for the business!
- Focus on the motivators (not the detractors) of each generation – It’s easy to get caught up in the stereotypes of each generation. “Hey Boomer, let me introduce you to this new thing called Uber.” Or, “Oh poor little Snowflake, you will still get a gold star for doing a crappy job or else you are going to melt” are not going to make it. Instead, focus on the things that make each generation great. Millennials may want more experiences, while The Greatest Generation wants to teach and share. Understand the strengths of your team from a multi-generational perspective and leverage it for success.
Wishing you a happy and safe holiday!
