Tag Archives: US

Being Experienced Doesn’t Automatically Make You a Great Mentor

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By Andy Molinsky

 

Coaching and mentoring is more popular than ever — and for good reason. As individuals progress in their jobs and careers, they’re constantly challenged to build their skills and act outside their comfort zones. Timid executives are called upon to learn to deliver motivational speeches; conflict-avoidant managers need to learn to deliver bad news; and mild-mannered job seekers need to pitch and promote themselves at networking events.

And mentoring doesn’t just happen in traditional corporate settings. It also abounds in educational, religious, athletic, and nonprofit worlds as well, where deeply experienced individuals become coaches and mentors to help others with less experience get on the fast track to success. Continue reading →

How to Build a Meaningful Career

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by Amy Gallo

 

Everyone aspires to have purpose or meaning in their career but how do you actually do that? What practical steps can you take today or this month to make sure you’re not just toiling away at your desk but you’re doing something you genuinely care about?

What the Experts Say
Unfortunately, most of us don’t know how to make the job decisions that lead to satisfaction. Nathaniel Koloc, the CEO of ReWork, which provides recruiting services to companies that offer purposeful work, says that’s because no one really ever teaches us how: “Very few parents, teachers, and mentors urge us to think about this or give us mental models to use,” he says. “We tend to only get nibbles of what meaningful work is in our twenties.” As a result, we often pick jobs for the wrong reasons, says Karen Dillon, coauthor of How Will You Measure Your Life. “We look for things that we’re proud to talk about at a cocktail party or look good on a resume.” But rarely are those the things that translate to satisfaction. Here are principles you can follow to find a career — and a specific job —­ you don’t just enjoy, but love. Continue reading →

We All Can Transform Culture Through Resonant Leadership

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by Johann Gauthier and Sue Elliott

“The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say ‘I.’ And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say ‘I.’ They don’t think ‘I.’ They think ‘we’; they think ‘team.’ They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but ‘we’ gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.” –Peter Drucker

It’s September 5, 2006. Alan Mulally is appointed president and CEO of Ford Motor Company. This American icon is facing bankruptcy and extinction. The company is projecting a $17 billion annual loss. Every brand — and every model — is unprofitable. There is no commitment to be best-in-class. Continue reading →

3 Questions to Get the Most Out of Your Company’s Data

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by James Allworth, Maxwell Wessel, Aaron Levie

Our world is sentient. Websites watch where we look. Mobile applications keep track of our response times. Companies learn which buttons we like to press and which we don’t.  With cameras, microphones, and thermometers, the human race is giving inanimate objects everywhere eyes, ears, and skin. And with all this observation, we’ve created a massive new layer of information.

Jonah Peretti, the CEO of Buzzfeed, knows that this layer of information can be used to test, learn, and iterate in rapid cycles. In this world, you can know, with some level of certainty, the way to craft the exact right title for an article — whether it’s investigative journalism or a cat video. “This isn’t possible in print, broadcast, or traditional films, which may be why the media industry is such a dysfunctional place,” Peretti has said. “Executives make huge bets based on gut, it’s hugely expensive to take risks, and most projects fail.” Continue reading →

Decoding leadership: What really matters

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By Claudio Feser, Fernanda Mayol, and Ramesh Srinivasan

New research suggests that the secret to developing effective leaders is to encourage four types of behavior.

Telling CEOs these days that leadership drives performance is a bit like saying that oxygen is necessary to breathe. Over 90 percent of CEOs are already planning to increase investment in leadership development because they see it as the single most important human-capital issue their organizations face. And they’re right to do so: earlier McKinsey research has consistently shown that good leadership is a critical part of organizational health, which is an important driver of shareholder returns. Continue reading →