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by Mary Faulkner

A good beginning makes a good end.”—novelist Louis L’Amour

As we have noted in previous columns, most organizations recognize the imperative for change, with much of that change being driven by the need to update policies, processes and systems to support new ways of working. What HR leaders struggle with more than identifying that need is understanding how to get started.

That goes hand in hand with HR’s historic struggle with strategy. In fact, in 2014, Harvard Business Review made the click-bait argument that strategy shouldn’t be HR’s job. Back in the real world, however, HR is often challenged with balancing administration and vision, and in many organizations the scales tend to tip more towards administration. However, with work continuing to evolve and with a more rounded view of the employee experience coming into focus, HR is called upon to solve for all manner of issues related to the strategic direction of an organization, including the response to broad socioeconomic, geopolitical and cultural challenges. Ironically, HR’s ability to execute transactional work—traditionally an area where HR has excelled—has not always translated into successful outcomes.

Transformations can be daunting. No matter how much of a mandate HR leadership possesses to make the necessary changes, the task is often an uphill battle as the playing field shifts from month to month (or even hour to hour). To help navigate this ever-evolving landscape, the best thing a transformation leader can do is spend enough time up front building a solid plan. That may seem counterintuitive, given the fact that I just spent time explaining how difficult it is to execute transformation in a fluid landscape, but making the right kind of plan will put you in a position of strength to adapt to whatever the business throws at you. Continue reading →

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by Elizabeth L. Campbell and Oliver Hahl

Progress toward gender equality has stalled. Women are doing what conventional wisdom says is necessary for success: They’re earning advanced degrees, entering high-paying industries, and acquiring impressive qualifications at rates equal to or higher than men. But it still takes women longer to get promoted, and few make it to the top of the corporate ladder. Many women feel like they must be twice as good to get half as far.

They have good reason to feel this way — the findings of our peer-reviewed research suggest that exceptionally qualified women are undervalued and taken for granted by organizations.

To understand what happens when people are exceptionally qualified at work, we ran several experiments asking people with hiring experience to evaluate overqualified job candidates: those with more qualifications than what is necessary for a job. Organizations often don’t systematically document why they decide not to promote an employee or hire a job candidate, and even fewer would willingly share that information with researchers. As such, our experimental methodology provides the opportunity to study this phenomenon, which cannot easily be examined using field data from organizations.

We find that gender matters a lot — our results suggest that people are more comfortable hiring women for jobs they’re overqualified for than men. The reason why comes down to gender-biased assumptions about how challenging it will be to retain them. Continue reading →

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by Pia Lauritzen

Asking questions and listening to the questions of others helps leaders make better decisions.

It has become a habit of mine to kick off my presentations by inviting people to write down a question. I ask people to follow two rules: the question must be relevant to the context—typically, leaders meeting in or across organizations to discuss leadership—and it must be important to the person asking the question to get an answer.

After two minutes of reflection time, 90% of the people in the room have written something down. That’s when I ask them: Is it hard to come up with a question in a situation in which they know nothing about what’s going to happen next? Most of them say yes, because the exercise has forced them to:

• make up their mind about what’s important
• take other people’s situations into account
• think of their input in light of a shared goal.

By the time I start sharing my research on the nature and impact of questions, my audience will already have experienced and explained to themselves, and to one another, why successful leaders love questions: it’s because asking, listening to, and answering other people’s questions makes them better leaders. Indeed, there is a methodology, derived from six ideas from great thinkers, for harnessing the power of questions that can help leaders make better decisions and be more empathetic and purpose-driven. I call it the magical question triangle (see figure).

Building an inquiry-driven culture

Having worked as an advisor to executives for 18 years, I have never come across another theory, method, or tool that in two minutes helps leaders make up their mind about what’s important, take other people’s situations into account, and think of their input in light of their company’s or team’s common goal. So, what is it about asking questions that makes leaders spontaneously do so quickly what no carefully designed manual or process manages to do? Let’s take a look at the ideas that make up the magical question triangle. Continue reading →

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Early in the pandemic, Josh Bersin called it the Big Reset: “The Coronavirus is accelerating one of the biggest business transformations in decades.”

As the business landscape evolves and employees reassess their priorities, leadership is changing as well. To reset thinking on what it means to be a leader today, we asked other thought and business leaders for their perspective. This is the fourth in our series.

Great leaders are the ones who invest time and effort in creating and developing the next generation of leaders.

–Milan Rao, President, Smart Energy Water

Truly great leadership qualities are typically the least recognized yet most impactful of them all. Humility and agility—the ability to listen without ego or prejudice and then adjust and adapt as often as necessary is the foundation of exceptional leadership. We learn from our teams, everyone from our most tenured and senior employees to our newly hired team members—making sure to listen first and speak last, seeking input and remaining open along the way.

-Bill Gerber, Co-Founder, AccountingDepartment.com

Success in a team or organization is best achieved through inspirational leadership. Find your “why” and relate it to your team – from there build a master class on how to articulate your why and the performance of the team and org will elevate.    

-Greg Myers, Head of Recruiting / Talent Acquisition at TTEC.

If you’re inspired by these perspectives on leadership today, stay tuned…there’s more to come!  And if you are interested in crafting your own contribution, please email me at janis@issg.net

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by Nathan Furr

What innovators have learnt that empowers them to face the uncertainty of new pursuits.

Why are we so often unnerved by uncertainty? If you look back at the most significant events in your life, those which you are the most proud of – such as the big career shift, the geographic move, that important relationship – didn’t they all come after a period of uncertainty?

And consider that almost all innovations, breakthroughs, transformations and changes come only after first stepping into the unknown. Even when you didn’t choose uncertainty, such as the unknowns brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, weren’t there still possibilities hidden in the wings? Although we often try to avoid uncertainty, we forget that uncertainty and possibility are really two sides of the same coin. If we want new opportunities and possibilities, we first need to go through uncertainty.

Why we fear uncertainty

Evolution has wired us to fear uncertainty. This presents a challenge because, despite your best efforts to resist, uncertainty has been increasing for decades. Driven by shifts in technology that lower barriers to entry, greater global participation and connectedness, and numerous other factors, it is clear that uncertainty has become a regular part of our personal and professional lives. The World Uncertainty Index, which tracks political and economic uncertainty, has seen a steady upward trend since the index was started in the 1990s.

The challenge is that most of us were not taught to deal with uncertainty. It simply is not a skill taught in school or handed down by parents. As our world becomes ever more uncertain, the lack of skills to deal with the unknown may result in anxiety, over-reaction and rumination – if not mental paralysis. As Jostein Solheim, former CEO of Ben & Jerry’s put it, “There is ambiguity and paradox everywhere … For people who like the linear route forward, life is getting harder and harder in any field.” Continue reading →