Leading in a VUCA World

Do you find yourself overwhelmed by the pace of change?

Here is what one of my clients very vulnerably shared with me:

“The big challenge I am facing is the uncertain world coming my way. My clients, marketplace, technology. people, processes, financial targets, span of control are all now very complex. Due to the pace of change all over, it has created a new normal – an uncertain world”

VUCA is an acronym used by the American Military to describe extreme conditions in the cold war. It stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. The rapidity of change is the fiercest challenge individuals face today. In saying this I spent several hours diving into the complexities this brings, along with what can be done from a leadership perspective:

Instill and promote workplace transparency

Transparency matters for a company’s culture, because it builds trust and stronger relationships between employees, management and the company itself. Keeping everyone in the loop leads to more collaboration and shared learning, greater creativity, faster problem-solving which eliminates going back and forth and ultimately improved performance. Most important, it keeps leaders honest. It’s hard to hold an out-of-whack perspective if there’s an abundance of open information pointing in a different direction. I am of the opinion that transparency should be one of the core values of any organisation and more time should be spent thinking about to keep it truly engrained in the culture as organisations grow.

Encourage your team to promote candid conversations with senior leadership. Hold a monthly Q&A session whereby these concerns can be dealt with in a respectful manner that allows individuals to feel comfortable raising concerns and speaking their minds. Remember the goal is to illicit information and seek collaborative solutions that work for both you and the organisation.

Have an appetite to learn

Knowledge is power. However, there are also cycles of knowledge relevance. Knowledge that is vital today may very well be irrelevant tomorrow. Hence, in a VUCA world, leaders need to have:

The desire to learn: This puts the leader ahead of the learning curve to attain the necessary knowledge and skill sets in order to be successful in the present and also to have the foresight to anticipate the challenges in the future.
The humility to unlearn: Much of the failures experienced by leaders and organisations are due to their unwillingness to innovate and explore new ways of doing things. The arrogance of insisting that “it has always worked in the past” will only bring calamity in the future.
The urgency to relearn: When it comes to surviving and even thriving in a VUCA environment, timeliness in taking the right action is of utmost importance. This can only happen when leaders and their teams have a sense of urgency to quickly gain new knowledge and skills to address the new realities.

Get used to being uncomfortable and embrace change

A VUCA environment is all about change. Very often these changes are forced upon us whether we like them or not. Effective leaders don’t resist change.

When change does happen, good leaders are neither surprised by it nor reject it. Good leaders embrace change.In fact, great leaders change before change is even needed. They are always ahead of the innovation curve. These leaders have great strategic insights to anticipate VUCA conditions. Consequently, they will build strategies, processes, culture and crisis management plans to successfully mitigate difficult times.

I hope these tips were valuable to you. Let me know what you think can be done to succeed in these uncertain times?

Founder and CEO of Elite Performers. Shiraaz is a Leadership, Career Coach and NLP practitioner who writes on leadership and management challenges. He also targets other areas of personal and professional development.

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7 Tips For New Managers

Being promoted to a management position can be an equally exciting and an intimidating task – especially for those to whom leading does not come naturally. A promotion of this nature presents the newly appointed manager with the responsibility for motivating, guiding and driving a team of people, all the while having to manage performance expectations.

It’s not like you’re inexperienced, but your knowledge of management has likely been academic, abstract or gathered as a team member. And as a new manager, you’re no longer observing, but doing, and being judged on those actions.

So, what can you do to set yourself up for success? Well, take a deep breath for starters. You just need a little bit of fine-tuning since you’re new to the job, here are 7 tips for newly promoted managers.

1. Understand the new role and expectations

In order to be successful in any role, it is important to be clear on the expectations. Make sure you are clear on how success is measured in the role, what your objectives are, and the expected outcomes. This will help you to plan ahead and prepare, and ensure you feel more at ease in your new role. Create a successful plan and process that works for you and the team and communicate your expectations effectively. If this falls apart, the desired goals may not be reached within given deadlines.

2. Build relationships with your team

Get to really know your team, their strengths, weaknesses and career goals. Building trust with your team will enable you to manage them better which ultimately relates positively towards your performance. Seek resourceful ways to build rapport with each member individually and remember ‘people like people who are like themselves’

3. Seek a mentor

Seek a mentor in the organisation who has the experience and management style that you appreciate. This will be critical to your success as they have walked the road before and can assist you when you need to bounce ideas off and guide you in moments of indecision. Set up a weekly 30 minute call with your mentor to ask questions, gather information as well as insights. This also allows you to build a network within your organisation.

Leadership contains certain elements of good management, but it requires that you inspire, that you build durable trust. For an organisation to be not just good but to win, leadership means evoking participation larger than the job description, commitment deeper than any job contract’s wording.

4. Understand the difference between management and leadership

Leadership is often thought of as an act of inspiration, while management an act of control. Model the behaviour you want to see in your team and set the tone for the office. This is your moment to create a leadership style that resonates with you. What kind of person do you want on your team? Hard-working, dedicated, engaged? Then be those things. Don’t take a passive approach, GO ALL IN!!

5. Learn situational leadership

Situational leadership is an adaptive leadership style. This strategy encourages leaders to take stock of their team members, weigh the many variables in their workplace and choose the leadership style that best fits their goals and circumstances.
Leaders must be able to move from one leadership style to another to meet the changing needs of an organisation and its employees.

6. Learn how to deal with performance issues

Your goal as a manager should not be to make friends with your employees. The reason is friendships often prevent tough feedback and there’s no performance component to a friendship, whereas performance is your biggest concern as a new manager. This may the most challenging task as a new manager but will provide the biggest growth. Be prepared to give constructive feedback as well as receive the same. Use the learnings of this exercise to map out growth opportunities for both you and the team member.

Success in management requires learning as fast as the world is changing.
Warren Bennis

7. Embrace it and have fun

Work hard, yes, but also acknowledge wins and celebrate success. Celebrations are often great opportunities for team bonding, and a way to keep everyone enthused and motivated.
Leading can be an extraordinary and rewarding responsibility. One should never take it lightly or take it for granted. Embrace this opportunity for the growth it is going to provide.

What other tips do you think will help new managers in the workplace? Share these with me in the comments. I look forward to learning from you.

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3 Ways to Deal With Fear

Being an entrepreneur, I have found the topic on fear to be overwhelming. I say this because I was faced with fear when I started my business, you know the internal dialogue we play in our minds…what if??

What if it doesn’t work out?
What if I’m not good enough?
What if I can’t pay my bills?

Fear is the single biggest dream killer, well before we get to the starting blocks, we find ourselves defeated by our very own thoughts. This process can be debilitating, and often when the pain becomes unbearable, the best way out is to seek the positive.Remember when Marianne Williams said “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us”And it dawned on me, we have 2 primary motivators in life: Pain and Pleasure.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. Bertrand Russell

Some philosophers have hypothesised that the feelings of pain (or suffering) and pleasure are part of a continuum. They describe pain and pleasure very much like a push-pull concept; human beings will move towards something that causes pleasure and will move away from something that causes pain. Much like our relationship with fear, we often seek ways to move away from it and into a pleasurable state. Let us look at 3 ways to better deal with fear?

1. Change the relationship with fear

Successful people redefine their relationship with fear. You can too. They succeed because they develop in spite of attitudes. With perseverance and persistence, they do what it takes to overcome great obstacles.They are willing to get through difficult times, transcend their limitations and become stronger and wiser because of their challenges.Most importantly, they believe in themselves and are unwilling to trade their destinies for safety, comfort and momentary gratification.

2. Change your thoughts about fear

Worry is a useless activity. If the brain is worrying, it means it doesn’t have a solution. If it doesn’t have a solution, it goes around and round, creating more fear. When you catch yourself worrying, you’re free to just turn it off—think of something else: Family, Holidays, Cars!We can control our brains. We can train the brain out of fear thinking. We can drown out persistent negative thoughts with positive affirmations such as: I have the power to create change, I choose happiness, I let go of all that no longer serves me.

Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out.Karl Augustus Menninger

3. Use the fear to grow

We can learn from our fears, and use it as a driving force to propel us to new heights.That thing you’re scared of? It’s probably scary because you aren’t sure what to expect. Sure, you might not succeed. But if you do, greater things could happen than you already realise. It’s certainly a chance that is yours to decide whether to take or not, but if you don’t try then you have a 100% chance of missing out on that potential greatness. It takes looking that fear in the face, standing up to it and saying “you’re in my brain trying to get me to take a step back, but I’m stronger than you and know that if I can power through it will be worth it and I will emerge even stronger than before.”In the end, fear is just another type of motivation. It’s not as pleasant as enthusiasm or mania, but it pushes us to take action on some things and avoid others, just as all motivations do. What matters with motivation is what you apply it towards. In some ways, the world could use more fear in the right places. Fear of being mediocre, ignorant or wasting your life on pursuits that don’t matter.

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3 Simple Ways To Improve Your Team Culture

Workplace culture seems to be the buzzword around organizations these days, and its not always positive.
Getting up and going to work should not be an activity that people dread every day. People spend more than half their lives at work – it should be fun. I believe that employees should look forward to going to work. In fact, they should have a hard time leaving because they enjoy the challenges, their co-workers, and the atmosphere.

Culture matters and should be the building blocks to eliminate stress from employees. In fact, culture sustains employee enthusiasm. Here are 3 simple ways to improve your team culture.

1. Align your values

Employees that are aligned to the values and mission of an organization are dedicated to accomplishing the goal. When employees are on board with the mission, they’re engaged in the job and want to help the mission succeed, which in turn helps the company succeed. From a leadership perspective, when we align with our values on a daily basis, we find that we have more energy and feel more fulfilled because we are leading from what’s important to us – our values. If they are not aligned, we feel less authentic and become demotivated, this will reflect in our leadership ability.

“No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, If you’re playing a solo game, You will always lose out to a team” Reid Hoffman

2. Encourage Teamwork

Not many leaders have the luxury of hand picking their team, but if you do, you may want to assess their strengths and weaknesses to ensure the best combination of skills. Surround yourself with excellent people and be careful not to choose clones of yourself. Diversity is good, if the individuals are willing to work together.

Sometimes it might be challenging, especially when you’re assigned individuals who have no interest in being part of a team. Your leadership ability will be tested to create an environment whereby your employees work cooperatively and collaboratively. Develop effective teamwork and you’ll inspire productivity, quality and loyalty. This will not happen on its own. It has to be catalyzed, becoming part of workplace culture and integral to people and processes.

3. Allow Self Expression

As organizations get larger, they tend to limit employee freedom. Employees who are less involved in key decisions will feel as though their impact on the business is drowned out. This is something you will dread later on if you allow to become a part of your team culture. The best employees don’t want this. If you have milennials in your team it will only be a matter of time before they move on. Forbes found that millennials are also the most ethnically diverse generation which may translate to more prominent cultural expression in the workplace.

They want to have a voice and a meaningful impact on the company and its direction. They know they have the ability to create for the company without the need for management approval.

Did these tips help you? What other ideas do you have—and how are you implementing them?

Let us know in the comments.

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Why Creating a Blueprint For The Future is Essential

Have you ever felt stuck? That restless, anxious feeling, whereby you know what you should do and don’t know what to do about it?

It’s important to know where you going in life and not just go through the motions. Yes I have fallen victim to this a few years ago but I was able to claim back my power and started creating the life I wanted. It wasn’t easy at first, but through self-discipline and consistency, you would be amazed at what can be achieved.

I have found that the basic business management fundamentals offers a model that allows to be put into numerous contexts and experiences. The P.O.L.C model which is widely known consists of Planning, Organizing ,Leading and Control. Think of it as a process whereby each step builds onto the others. Lets take a deeper look at how the P.O.L.C model can be applied to create a blueprint for the future.

Planning

We have all heard the saying ‘If you fail to plan, you plan to fail’. Planning is the foundation of everything we aspire to achieve. All the visionaries in the world we live in today have spent countless hours during this phase. Want to get started with phase 1? Start by doing the following:

Get a journal or a notepad (doesn’t have to be fancy) and start writing everything you want to achieve.
Get clear and specific (If weight loss is a goal for you, then be sure to add how many kg’s/pounds you aim to lose within the first month and so on.
Identify Obstacles that will stand in your way (Most commonly: OURSELVES)
Identify people who can assist you in achieving your goal or who have achieved the goal you currently desire.

Organizing

Now that you know where your life is going, let us move onto the next phase. Organizing for success, this is your life you dealing with, so no short cuts. Note that this step has a co-dependency on the first in order for it to be truly effective. Being organized is being in control, and to get this you have to start by planning.

What are the most important tasks that you have to get through today that will enable you to achieve your goals in 3-5 years?
List them in order of priority.
Start with the hardest first.

Leading

Leading is all about action. We are the ultimate leaders in our lives and the best way to practice leadership is on ourselves. If you can lead yourself, you can lead people. The procrastination ends here so take the bull by the horns or ‘eat that frog’ and get things done. Once we have momentum, we start implementing accretion into our lives and those small gradual steps end in big results. If you find yourself struggling, remember you wrote down in the planning phase someone who has achieved the result you seek, this is your moment to reach out to them and find out how they can assist you.

Control

You have come to this step in the process and I implore you. This might be the most difficult step of all. Getting started is easy, maintaining it is the tough part. The only way we can create lasting change in our lives is through discipline and consistency. Being in control is different to staying in control, that’s why tracking your progress daily is essential.

I hoped you enjoyed reading this. If you don’t already, this is an opportunity for you to create your blueprint for the future. Share this post so that others can benefit and if you need any help, email me.

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