The good news: You can own your future. You are the master of your destiny. Here are some interesting thoughts on #OwnYourFuture. Great article by Dr. Dr. Travis Bradberry. Being Likeable does not belong to a lucky few. You can learn it. Don’t seek attention, pay attention. The best thing: If you are likeable and are surrounded with likeable people, that is going to be a great atmosphere. It’s going to be a lot of fun. #PeopleDev
If you don’t believe in people, they won’t grow
This is an interesting and true thought of Monique Valcour in the HBR . If you don’t believe in people, they won’t grow, they won’t evolve.
Personally it reminds me on two lessons I’ve learned. #1 was in school. I didn’t perform as expected in Chemistry and after some 6 months I had a serious discussion with my teacher explaining my the implications of my low performance. But one thing that made the difference: Somehow he believed in me. He told me: “I know that you can perform much better..” He believed in me. A year later he highly recommended me to study Chemistry due to my excellent performance an natural skills for the subject.
#2 was 15-20 years later, now being a leader myself, one of my team members wasn’t perceived as a high-performer by the rest of the organization. Literally his days were counted before I stepped in to reorganize. It was time to give back. I told him that I trust him and believe that he will be good in leading his own team and gave him a chance and promised to support whenever needed. He took this challenge – and given the unsupportive rest of the organization it was a challenge. The stunning rest of the story is that he became an excellence leader with high focus on people development.
There are two more articles which – at least from my perspective – have the same idea:
“People stopped trusting leadership when leadership stopped trusting people” from Dean Brenner http://switchandshift.com/11-trademarks-of-rebellious-leadership
and
“Vertrauen führt” from Carsten K. Rath http://www.carsten-k-rath.com/2016/04/06/vertrauen-fuhrt/
Let me share a story that happened some years ago. We met a group of Chinese investors. They loved our concept and were willing to implement it in China; opening 100 stores in the first year… Isn’t that great? That is fantastic. Back home, we presented it to our board. The feedback we received was: “Who’s gonna run the show?”
It’s a people-thing. In the end, every business development initiative comes back to people and to change. If you could continue business as usual, you wouldn’t have to worry about anything. So there wouldn’t be a need to develop your business.
Think global. If we don’t think out of the box, we don’t see new opportunities, in the above story the new market China. We are not yet there. We don’t have a team to enter the market, identify appropriate locations, manage the building and get the business running. Is this reason enough to stop thinking about it? – Short period of silence… Now you need somebody to shout out “No!”
Act local. Let’s pretend somebody did you the favor. Now keep on going. As we don’t have the team yet to enter a new market, we have to build it up. Find the people – this can be existing members of your organization or external – who are willing to go on a new endeavor. It is more important that they are keen on doing something new rather than that they have 10+ years experience in entering new markets. Set up the team and offer all support they need. Stay to your word.
This is a transformation. For sure entering a new market – and doing business on a different continent with an expansion speed beyond everything that is known in your business – what else can it be than a major transformation? And thinking about a new opportunity in this way “Let’s set up a team and support them as much as possible.” In contrast to the implicit No of “Who’s gonna run the show?” This is a transformation, too.
Change comes in different flavors and for different reasons. The flavors can be anything from changing the work environment, changing behavior, changing skills to changing doctrine and changing personality. I first discovered them in the book “Führungsstark im Wandel” by Alexander Groth.
In the end it is always the Think global – act local principle. First you have to think, then you have to act.
Following the “What is in it for me?” attitude. Everyone asks himself “Why should I change? Why should I be part of this change initiative?”
There is a threat in each and every change: It could be worse than today. That is the ultimate reason why a clear vision is one of the success factors of a change project.
Ein jeder Wechsel schreckt den Glücklichen: Wo kein Gewinn zu hoffen, droht Verlust. (Friedrich Schiller – Die Braut von Messina)