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by Michael Jarrett

Interactions between the chief executive and other members of the top management team appear to follow distinct scripts. Managers who take note can boost their standing or stay out of harm’s way.

Top management teams (TMT) have been studied since at least the 1980s for insights into how chief executives and their deputies make the strategic decisions that can make or break organisations. But little is known about what exactly happens in the decision-making process, which more often than not is steeped in politics and power play. This article is about a ground-breaking study we conducted that filmed and analysed verbal and non-verbal exchanges in TMT meetings as they happened.

Our findings, published in a new paper, suggest that, contrary to previous research that highlighted the influence of stable, longstanding alliances in organisations, coalition-building in TMTs can also be in-the-moment and fluid. By forming even temporary coalitions with other TMT members and deploying simple influencing behaviours, senior managers can persuade the CEO to take their side and sway key decisions.

Reading the room right

We studied two TMTs similar in size, gender composition and other key dimensions. TMT A belonged to a medium-sized computer game company based in Canada while the other, TMT B, was the top team of a business services company with global operations. (more…)

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by Christina Wood

A mentoring relationship can be a very rewarding experience for everyone involved. IT leaders offer advice on how to get started and how to ensure your mentoring efforts pay off.

No matter where you are in your career path, a terrific mentor can help you take on bigger roles, gain insight into technical challenges, and become a better leader. Being a mentor, too, is an important career move — and not only because it looks good on your CV and flatters your ego.

Mentoring can help you hire quality staff, create knowledge on your current team, keep employees  from leaving, and boost everyone’s job satisfaction. It is a learning opportunity — for mentor and mentee — unlike any other. But how do you establish a mentorship, and do it well once you get there? And how do you encourage and enable the people on your teams to do it, too?

Asking someone to be your mentor or offering to be someone’s mentor can be more awkward than asking someone out on a date. That social anxiety about dating has spawned an industry of advice columnists, books, and sitcoms to help people navigate it. How about mentoring?

I asked skilled mentors for pointers on how they initiate a mentorship, what they talk about, and whether there’s an app to help connect mentors and mentees.

This is what they told me. (more…)

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By Kate Morgan

The ‘Great Resignation’, which has seen millions of people leave their positions, has put US job vacancies at a 20-year high and left companies scrambling for recruits. The narrative around this mass exodus has largely been that employers failed employees, so they’re going elsewhere to find better options.

But better doesn’t always mean more money; more often, it means a better benefits package. Employees are increasingly seeking a new set of perks to match their actual needs, and bargaining for the things that really matter to them, like improved leave policies and flexible working.

Of course, while companies have a vested interest in maintaining happy, healthy employees, the bottom line still reigns supreme. But in the wake of the pandemic – and the way it’s shaken up the employment market – companies and workers are finding themselves in a new kind of negotiation, as employees figure out what’s reasonable to ask for, and companies decide how much to give.

Benefits for individuals

Although workers are looking for additional support across the globe, this issue is especially crucial in the US, where many workers count on their employers for assistance and healthcare access that isn’t provided for on a government level. (more…)

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by Dr. Peter Fuda

Whether you’re moving within the C-Suite or overseeing a shift for a company employee, these steps can help you succeed.

Whatever your profession, age or seniority, chances are that you will change your job (and possibly even career) sometime in the next one to three years. In my own network of senior executives, approximately 30% are in transition at any given moment. This happens so frequently now, that it feels like I have a part-time job in executive transition.

In my experience, the difference between those who transition successfully and those who fail rarely comes down to their capability or commitment. It comes down to what they do in between roles: whether they jump straight into the next thing or take some time to set themselves up for success.

If you are moving into a new role sometime soon, there are five tactics that I recommend you embrace before you start. Equally, if you are welcoming a new hire into your team sometime soon, then I recommend you encourage and support them to adopt these same five tactics.

Revitalize, Reconnect and Reflect  (more…)