The world is changing at a pace we have never seen before. A quick look at your Twitter feed or news scroll will show you just how volatile and uncertain the world has become. I believe our greatest challenge in navigating an unpredictable world is remembering to stick to the basics: Get your leaders right and connect with your people!
Get Your Leaders Right
Jim Nixon, Chairman and CEO of Nixon Energy Services and EY World Entrepreneur of the Year Judge recently explained to me that selecting the right leaders is critical to success in any environment, particularly a volatile one. He is currently invested in six business and when it comes to investing, “I have got to have a high degree of confidence in the management team” he says. When either building or vetting a management team Nixon specifically looks at their ability to listen, take advice, and be flexible. “I want someone smarter than me” and they don’t necessarily need to have the experience because that is teachable.
Nixon also points out there has to be chemistry. The leaders on your team must have a high degree of excitement and enthusiasm for the business as well as an alignment with the vision and values of the business. “I want to understand what drives them and their vision for the future” says Nixon. This is why it is critical that you take the time to understand who your candidates are and how they will fit with the values and culture of your company. Vetting prospective leaders for values and culture fit is often overlooked in the hiring process. Be sure to structure your interviews to cover values alignment and culture fit before getting into skill because chemistry matters.
Connect with You People
“The only solid ground is the trust and good will in your business” explained H. Fisk Johnson, Chairman and CEO of SC Johnson while addressing a recent conference. Trust is about authenticity and transparency, which is something Johnson believes has been critical to the success and longevity of the family owned and operated SC Johnson.
Strong teams are safe teams, psychologically safe that is. Psychological safety is critical to fostering the trust necessary to create a culture of open dialogue. In other words, you have to be open to challenge and encourage dissent. The impact of psychological safety isn’t conjecture, there is data to back it up. The Google Aristotle Study famously found that underlying the most successful teams at Google was in fact psychological safety. Google’s researchers found that their highest performing teams were the ones where speaking up was encouraged and even rewarded. This atmosphere allowed for a more open and rapid exchange of information, which led to greater bottom line success.
Keep in mind that fostering a team culture of open dialogue requires ongoing effort. Leaders must recognize constructive disagreement and encourage healthy resolutions.
Michael “Dr. Woody” Woodward, Ph.D. is a New York University (NYU) Clinical Faculty Member and Program Lead for the MS in Executive Coaching and Organizational Consulting program at the NYU School of Professional Studies. Dr. Woodward is the author of the Amazon top-selling bookThe YOU Plan and also writes for Psychology Today. Dr. Woodward has appeared on camera over 350 times including The TODAY Show, LIVE with Kelly, Fox & and Friends, and CNN among many others. He has been quoted as a work-life expert in The Wall Street Journal, Miami Herald, Forbes and Entrepreneur.
As an executive coach and consultant Dr. Woodward focuses on developing leadership capacity and has worked with senior leaders from Bacardi, SAP, VMWare, and The Miami Herald. Since 2013 Dr. Woodward has been leading executive education programs across the country where he has trained managers from Bose, Verizon, McDonald’s, and the NBA among others.
Prior to joining the faculty at NYU, Dr. Woodward served as an advisory board member and founding faculty member with the award-winning Florida International University (FIU) Center for Leadership. Dr. Woodward also taught as an adjunct at both the FIU Department of Psychology and NYU School of Professional Studies.
Before founding his own firm in 2005, Dr. Woodward served as an HR consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting (PwC) and as a project manager for IBM Business Consulting Services. He has also been an advisor to the Ernst & Young (EY) Entrepreneur of the Year and Entrepreneurial Winning Women programs as well as a thought leader in the IBM Smarter Workforce Futurist program.
Dr. Woodward received a bachelor’s in psychology from the University of Miami, a master’s in industrial and organizational psychology from Springfield College, and a Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology from Florida International University. While at FIU Dr. Woody published award-winning research on teamwork titled Cooperation and Competition: The Effects of Team Entrainment and Reward Structure, which earned him an appointment as a Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) Scholar.
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