... and What Skills will be Needed for Success - (Part One) 

It’s here. Welcome to 2022 and Happy New year! Hopefully, you have been using your business acumen skills for the past six months to prepare and plan for what is certainly going to be a challenging year ahead. Every year is different and presents business leaders with incredible opportunities for success, and at the same time opportunities to fail. If there is one thing we know, the best way to mitigate risks is to have a well-trained organization that understands how your business works.

To help get your year off to a great start, here is a two-part post where we review our top 5 Business Acumen predictions and discuss the skills needed to overcome business challenges and take advantage of business opportunities.

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As one year ends and another is about to begin, it is human nature to reflect back before we look ahead. The year just ended was unlike anything any of us have ever experienced and valuable lessons come out of disrupted, challenging times. During the year, I wrote more than 75 different blogs based on real-world practical experiences emanating from delivering more than 1,200 hours of business acumen and leadership training to some of the best companies and leaders around the world. I took a few hours to look back and think about the key leadership lessons from this historic year and process what they mean to us as business leaders moving forward.

Work is an Action, Not a Location

One of the most popular blogs I shared back in July was called, “Stop Insulting Your Employees by Welcoming them Back to Work.” I can share now that one of our dear clients, the President & CEO of a top 5 Pharmaceutical company, shared it with all his leaders imploring them not to discount the efforts employees made figuring out the new normal of working remotely. By the end of 2021, most successful leaders realized that “work” is not a location, it is an action that has measurable outputs. An earlier blog that was also very popular back in April called, “3 Leadership Implications of not Working in an Office Every Day” shared perspectives that helped drive changed skills that when used were very effective:

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One of the biggest challenges facing sales professionals and customer account teams around the world is the conversation about raising prices due to the global supply chain crisis and increases in raw material costs.

During the past few months, I have delivered several major Strategic Business Selling™ sales training programs to sales teams within several industries including specialty chemicals, high-tech, specialty materials, consumer products, and coatings and paints.

Throughout these engagements, the moods have been dampened as a result of the pending price issues and I have been asked to help by sharing best practices and tools that can help develop the skills to have that incredibly hard conversation with customers. It is my pleasure to share with readers of this blog the full content of an approach that can help direct and support having the raising price conversation.

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One of the many joys of leading an award-winning business is helping to design and provide our point of view in the scripting of our global digital leadership simulations. Over the past few years, I have had the privilege of working on more than a dozen different business simulations that have taught skills in the areas of coaching, giving feedback, executing new leadership behaviors, leading change, leading execution, and resolving business conflicts.

In conducting our research and working with our innovative clients, it has become apparent that in 2022 and beyond trust is more important now than ever. As we move into 2022, we are going to move trust up in priority in terms of defining and learning about leadership. I can’t give way the exact algorithm, but let’s just say it is moving from being in the top 7 into the top 3. In other words, the best way to be an effective leader in our leadership simulations is to develop and establish trust.

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It was one of the most fascinating learning moments of the year. And this year has been like no other in terms of incredible learning moments.

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