Consultancy Matters

A person's passion is the sincerest definition of who they are. Passion can manifest itself in a hobby, an aspiration, or if you're really lucky, a career. Take two people, Joe and Jane, as an example. Joe has a passion outside of his career. He devotes a lot of his free time to this passion and naturally speaks about it to his peers. When his peers think of him they probably define him as "person passionate about X." Now take Jane, one of the lucky few who has made a career out of her passion. She devotes twice the amount of time, twice the amount of energy and twice the amount of conversation to her passion. How do you think her peers define her?

If you've read Simon Sinek's bestseller Start With Why, then Jane will remind you of Herb Kelleher, co-founder of Southwest Airlines, or Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc. Joe will remind you of the Wright Brothers. Each of these individuals built empires by undyingly following their passion. Sure, you can claim that these individuals are used as examples because of winner's bias. But they succeeded because not only were they extremely passionate. They succeeded because they were able to clearly communicate their visions.

I consider myself extremely lucky. Like Jane, I've built a career out of my passion. When I first launched my film production company, my team asked the same questions regarding our clients that our competition was asking:

• What is this client doing that's different?
• What do they bring to the table?
• What problems are they solving for their customers?

While these questions helped us understand our clients, we realized they weren't getting to the core of what defined them. We were part of the same old convention of business. We were focusing on what our clients were doing and not why they were doing it in the first place. Once we realized this, we began asking ourselves different questions:

• How can we harness the passion that defines the client's company to create a story?
• Are their employees inspired by that passion?
• Does the story align with their core values?
• How can we align the story with the company's brand mission?
• How is that story going to connect with their audience?
• How are we going to make the story authentic and engaging?

Via The Learning Factor

Vulnerability fuels the strongest relationships and can transform employee performance.

Via Jay

If there's one thing all management experience has taught me, it's that feedback is one of the most important parts of the relationship between an employer and employee. It is also one of the most complicated--especially when it comes to critical feedback.

 

But constructive criticism is very much a necessary part of work life, so it needs to be handled well and in real-time.

 

Kim Scott's Radical Candor is a great way to think about delivering feedback that might not always be easy to hear, but is important nonetheless. Kim, a former Google and Apple executive, often points to an experience during her early days at Google when her then-boss Sheryl Sandberg told her she said "um" too often during an otherwise slam-dunk presentation. Sheryl was clear in her criticism and suggested Kim get a speech coach (at Google's expense) to address the issue. Here is a further explanation of why this works:

Via The Learning Factor

Promotions to positions of leadership are a mixed blessing for those whose leadership skills are weak. But are leadership skills hereditary or can they be acquired?

Via Jay

Via The Learning Factor