This week, Ford Motor Company announced the redesign of the F150 pickup truck. You can read more of the details in this Business Insider article. Yesterday morning on Morning Joe on MSNBC, Brian Sullivan asked Mark Fields, President & CEO of Ford, “Why mess with the best-selling vehicle in America?” Fields replied, “You set the standard through innovation. That’s how you maintain leadership.” Being and staying the best, as Fields understands, requires innovation. Creativity and innovation are becoming more and more important in our competitive global market. Your team’s creative talents will be a differentiator. There are useful methods for measuring your business climate on creativity and innovation. You can measure a work group, division or your entire organization. By doing this, you can jump start creativity and communicate the importance of creativity and innovation within your organization. Similar to a leader who receives 360-degree feedback to gain self-awareness, work groups and organizations need to assess their environment before implementing a development plan to improve the climate and become more innovative. It is also helpful to measure innovation and creativity of a culture when organizational restructuring has been unsuccessful to bring about desired change. Metaphorically speaking, your “truck” may need a redesign if you are going to be competitive and lead in the future. Find out how innovative your culture is. Making improvements in this area will accelerate your success and impact your bottom line.
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A colleague and I had dinner a few weeks ago with a woman who could not stop talking about her accomplishments and abilities for two hours. Essentially, she was telling us how great she was, always had been, and would continue to be. She worked hard at trying to convince us that she is, indeed, great. This young woman is talented and bright and is having a marvelous career in her large, global company. However, people can’t stand working with her. People have said behind her back and to her directly that she is full of herself. This is a problem. Are the behaviors exhibited by this professional woman egotistical or self-confident? Self confidence is often seen as a strength in leaders and professionals while begin egotistical is seen as a negative. The tricky part is that walking the line between being self-confident and being egotistical can be a balancing act for some people. Self-confidence comes from an intrinsic sense of self-worth. It comes from deep awareness of what you are and are not good at, what you’ve accomplished and what you still need to learn. Once you have insights in these areas, it is easy to be confident without being egotistical. People like working with and for leaders who are confident. These leaders build others up and instill confidence in others. Legitimate self-confidence can be contagious. Egotistical people are usually insecure and are looking for external validation to make them feel good about themselves. They promote themselves so that they can get praise from others. They are competitive high achievers more than team players because they enjoy the praise that they achieve as an individual. Consciously or unconsciously they strive to get enough praise to prove their self worth. They are exhausting to be around. As a leader or a professional, being perceived as egotistical will undermine one’s career and success. Getting insight and coaching in this area helps build self-awareness, insight, and the ability to adjust when needed. There are a variety of tools and processes that can help in this area. Developing authentic self-confidence takes time and effort, but is essential to being the type of leader others want to work with. This is critical to being the leader you want to be. |
AuthorLisa Liszcz has over 20 years of experience developing leaders and teams in four different global organizations in a variety of industries. In 2014 she became an entrepreneur and is rocking her inner superhero and loving her life like mad. Archives
May 2018
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