all resources & insightsAt ConantLeadership, we’re committed to lifelong learning and continuous improvement. In service to your leadership growth, each month we curate the Leadership That Works Newsletter, a digest of timely resources from around the web. We prepare this resource in order to:
- Share actionable advice from top leadership luminaries
- Celebrate a range of viewpoints (inclusion is not an endorsement)
- Contextualize workplace trends through a leadership lens
- Illuminate cultural recalibrations in the world of work
- Support your personal development in life, leadership, and beyond
In this month’s Leadership That Works Newsletter: Should leaders be ‘unbossing’ their teams?, the power of ’emotional inclusion,’ how to better develop leaders, get smarter with the ‘protege effect,’ upskilling is an upside in the talent wars, and more.
As always, we’re sharing the content from our Leadership That Works newsletter here on our blog in case you’re not subscribed to our mailing list. If you find these links enriching, you can sign up to receive our newsletter right here.
Should Leaders Be ‘Unbossing’ Their Teams?
1. Offer education and training.
2. Have conversations that go beyond tasks and productivity.
3. Test new AI tools and apps to meet employee needs.
4. Support open communication and feedback to ensure people “feel heard, valued, and comfortable with speaking up.”
Get the full story here.
The Power of ‘Emotional Inclusion’
1. Promote Open Communication.
2. Provide Training.
3. Recognize Emotional Contributions.
4. Create a Supportive Environment.
5. Lead by Example.
Knox says that “leaders can use this approach not only to address disengagement, but also to lay the foundation for a more resilient, innovative, and successful organization.” Get the full story here.
How to Better Develop Leaders
In this Chief Learning Officer interview with Matt Paese, SVP of Leadership Insights at consulting firm DDI, Paese shares his thoughts on the critical skills today’s leaders need, and offers tips for how to deliver better leadership development. First, Paese says that there’s a misconception that most busy leaders are uninterested in allocating time for skills growth: “We find that leaders do want to learn,” but “they need to learn in the flow of work, with real-time skill application, immediate feedback and continuous improvement in the context of actual work challenges.” Then there’s the question of which skills are most critical for leaders to develop. DDI’s research shows that the five most essential skills in today’s business landscape are:
- Developing Talent
- Strategic Thinking
- Managing Change
- Prioritization
- Influencing Others
Paese says that leaders “want support to develop these skills,” but “many organizations fail to provide learning and development opportunities” to meet this need, and “only 30 percent or less have ever received training to develop them.” Companies that step up and successfully help leaders grow “are able to customize and deploy a wide array of content programmatically, addressing company-wide priorities and just-in-time needs, making development part of daily work.” And most importantly, they prioritize interpersonal connection in their leadership training: “Leaders crave connections and are drawn to the human experience of learning. The most sought-after development experiences among leaders are instructor-led training in a classroom of peers.” Get the full story here.
**For more on this, explore our suite of leadership development resources, including our signature training program, The Blueprint Boot Camp, which provides revelatory leadership learning in a community of peers, with personal coaching from Doug Conant.
Get Smarter with the ‘Protege Effect’
In this The Guardian coverage, David Robson writes: “According to a wealth of psychological research, we learn more effectively when we teach someone else” about a topic, a phenomenon known as the “protege effect.” This technique of “learning by teaching” has been studied for several decades, and while Robson warns that “there are few shortcuts to mastery,” the “protege effect appears to be one of the most effective ways of accelerating our knowledge and understanding.” There are many theories as to why inhabiting the role of “teacher,” rather than “student,” even as a role-play exercise or mental reframe, imparts learning benefits. One reason is in the preparation: “The brain boost appears to arise as much from the expectation of teaching as the act itself. If we know that others are going to learn from us, we feel a sense of responsibility to provide the right information,” and to make sure we understand a topic fully before sharing what we know. Robson says that the challenge of “articulating our knowledge” to somebody else “helps to cement what we have learned.” Studies show the protege effect having a measurable impact on the human brain “with greater activity in regions responsible for attention,” and neurons “processing the material more deeply, which results in longer-lasting memories.” To try out the protege effect right away, you can conjure “an imaginary mentee” to explain things to, create a “blog or video aimed at other learners” about something you’re studying, or practice conversations with a friend or even a chatbot like ChatGPT. Get the full story here.
Healthy Mindset Shifts for Leaders
“Research has long shown the importance of self-care—yet many leaders still struggle to put self-care into practice in their own work lives,” writes Palena Neale in this Harvard Business Review piece on how to prioritize your well-being to enhance your leadership capacity. Neale says there are many reasons why leaders resist prioritizing themselves “based on our personalities, experiences, socialization, and family contexts.” Some have internalized widespread cultural messaging that an inner focus is self-indulgent while others “cite a lack of time” as a barrier to self-care. Whatever the reason holding you back, focusing on overall wellness is key to modeling “resilient and sustainable” leadership so it is worth pursuing. Neale says there are seven primary mindset shifts that can nudge leaders towards behavioral change.
2. Meet yourself where you are.
3. Avoid all-or-nothing thinking.
4. Take a page from colleagues.
5. Prioritize small and steady.
6. Find an accountability buddy.
7. Celebrate and savor.
**For more on mindset shifts, explore our leadership resources on the power of a gratitude mindset, the joy of a growth mindset, and the mindset that helps you finish what you start.
Upskilling Is an Upside in the Talent Wars
4. Inventory your cache of skills. “A skills database,” which is “a system that captures and tracks the skills and expertise” of your workforce, is essential to “unlocking the world of workforce skills.”
By following these four steps, the authors say “organizations can supercharge the employee experience and unlock the critical capabilities needed to stay ahead.” Get the full story here.
Tidy Up Your People Practices
In this recent edition of the HR Brew newsletter, Mikaela Cohen talks to Terence Mauri about his tips for “detoxing, decluttering, and deleting outdated” people practices, inspired by his new book, The Upside of Disruption: The Path to Leading and Thriving in the Unknown. Mauri says leaders should take a page from famed organizing guru Marie Kondo and tidy up their systems and approaches to managing people: “Think about all the processes or ways of working that are no longer optimized, that are dysfunctional, even broken” and then eliminate them. He says leaders should analyze their BMI, “not Body Mass Index, but Bureaucratic Misery Index,” which refers to a glut of protocols, meetings, and information that amount to “a tax on agility.” Mauri warns the higher an organization’s BMI, “the less engaged employees will be” because they’re spending time on administrative tasks rather than “intelligent work.” He says every leader should ask this key question: “What do we need to detox, clutter, and delete in order to create more bandwidth to focus on our highest value outcomes?” Then, Mauri says, be diligent about “elimination . . . actually removing barriers to agility, removing barriers to speed” so leaders can spend less time on “shallow work,” and more time on driving high performance. Get the full story here.
The Secrets of ‘Gifted Conversationalists’
“Gifted conversationalists are often perceived as being innately gracious and charismatic,” writes communications expert John Bowe in this CNBC coverage, but in reality, “the ability to engage in spontaneous interactions is a learnable skill.” While Bowe acknowledges that making small talk with strangers requires “a kind of courageous improvisation that many people find daunting,” he encourages leaders to work on the skill because it is both “professionally and socially beneficial.” He says there are three steps to making better small talk “at work, in the elevator, during social gatherings, or while attending business seminars.”
1. Let go. Lower the stakes: “Take a breath. You’re not storming the beaches at Normandy. You’re simply acknowledging the presence of another person and offering a no-strings invitation to chat.”
2. Forget about being deep, cool or ‘real.’ It’s OK to start with surface-level pleasantries: “If you can’t be clever or deep in the first moments of interaction, so be it. You’re making a connection, and that’s all that matters. If you have to force or even script your opening lines, it’s hardly the end of the world.”
3. Stop thinking about yourself and focus on the other person. Self-consciousness is distracting: “When you over-monitor yourself, your body, your words, or someone else’s perception of you, you diminish your ability to listen. You’ve asked this person for their attention; now give them yours.”
Get the full story here.
**For more on this, explore our coverage of why Brené Brown says “empathy is the secret source of connection.“
Insights & Resources from ConantLeadership
Doug Conant’s Limited Series: EQ Answers to AI QuestionsThe second question in the series was: “What are the most common mistakes leaders make when driving change?”
Read Doug’s EQ answer in the latest edition here. And keep an eye out for the third edition in October.
‘You Signed Up for Something Important’ — 2 Leadership Experts on Creating a Culture of Accountability
In this blog resource, Doug Conant speaks with Vince Molinaro, an acclaimed expert on workplace accountability, and they share tips for creating a “deep sense of ownership” among leaders.
25 Quotes about Managing Change
We originally published this roundup of quotes about managing change in 2017 and it has since increased in popularity in the post-pandemic era. So we’ve updated this piece as an “encore” with 5 new bonus quotes from some of the top thought leaders in our network.
The Secrets to Recognizing Your Team
In this first edition of Doug Conant’s limited series, “EQ Answers to AI Questions,” he shares actionable tips for making people feel valued and building trust in the digital age.
August’s Leadership That Works Newsletter
About the Author: Amy Federman is ConantLeadership’s Director of Content and Editor in Chief, and co-author with Doug Conant of the WSJ bestseller, The Blueprint.
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