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Day: July 14, 2021

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Growth Personal Development

Collaborative Global Leadership Development

Collaborative Global Leadership Development

Visit KeepLeadingPodcast.com to access the full content available for this episode!

Global Leaders, especially well-developed and thoroughly equipped leaders, do not just appear; they get developed through conscious effort and intentional training.

With a focus on Zambia and the process of leadership development, in this episode (#110) of the Keep Leading!® podcast, I explore “Collaborative Global Leadership Development” in Zambia, with one of the world’s most renowned coaches, Nankhonde Kasonde-van den Broek. Nankhonde is the Founder and Lead Consultant at Nankhonde Kasonde Consultancy and the Founder and Creative Director of KHONDE. Our discussion highlights the necessary steps to make a 21st Century Global Leader at the micro-level impact the world at a macro level.

Key Requirements for Transforming Leadership at the Micro Level
Certain elements come with developing global leaders at the micro-level and their significant implications on the world. It all starts with understanding individual responsibility before the collective.

● Resilience

Teaching self-sufficiency and resilience in conditions where external help isn’t the first option is one of the ways to stay on track.

These qualities are innate as an African and need to be shown more and deliberately to lead.

● Seizing Opportunity

Recognizing the need to seize available opportunities to develop as a leader is essential.

Developing hard (technical) and soft (interpersonal) skills is necessary to increase leadership opportunities and efficiently lead when given a chance.

● Responsibility

It is necessary to understand the responsibility and depth of work that comes with building a new leadership mindset from scratch without the oppressive limitations of pre and post-independence. (Zambia gained its independence from Britain in 1964)

It takes confidence, courage, and necessary skills to develop and exercise exemplary leadership.

● History and the Future

When looking at building leaders who can effectively lead at a global level, looking at where they’re coming from side-by-side with the envisioned future is vital.

It’s a literal mind transformation that exceeds just building capacity and skills; it’s a total overhaul of what leadership used to mean to what is required of a global leader in this new age.

Collaborative Components of Leadership Development

● Connection and Humanity

As a prospective global leader, the knowledge that our existence connects the world is foremost. It’s essential to understand its significance to your immediate environment and its ripple effect on the planet.

● The Big Picture

With leadership development, equipping leaders with the ability to see and contribute to the bigger picture and goals is vital for sustainable growth.

While developing leaders in their local communities, building a bridge to connect with global progress and opportunities helps to see issues and details more clearly.

● Influence of Culture

When creating tools to use in developing global leaders, it is essential to incorporate cultural and social influences into those tools.

The influences of Zambian culture and intelligence with foundations of global best practices can be intertwined with tools, building, adapting, and improving them.

● Cross Referencing

Even as we build leaders on our stage, creating methods of referencing progress compared to global standards is important.

Having norms and comparison groups helps to appreciate what your current average is and where you stand is vital for sustainable growth and gives the best of both worlds.

● A Common Goal

As we grow, seeing that we are for each other and not against each other is vital. We all have a common goal of growth and building leaders who can take the reins of leadership even when we are not doing so presently.

Taking elements that show results from one another and incorporating them with a shared vision of growth and support is always the way to go.

Eddie Turner is the Keep Leading!® podcast host—a podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights.  Subscribe and Share wherever you get your podcasts.  Follow Eddie Turner on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook! Visit www.EddieTurnerLLC.com to learn more!

 

 

Categories
Growth Health and Wellness

7 Ways to Help Your Child Through the Pandemic

How have you been coping? Last year has been particularly challenging for many parents: tasked with working (increasingly long) hours from home, maintaining an (increasingly messy) house 24-7, and perhaps playing teacher to their children as well.

You might have noticed your child “acting out” more often than usual. They’re likely feeling the effects of the pandemic, cooped up at home and cut off from their friends. The isolation may not cause permanent damage, but it’s certainly taking a short-term toll on kids and parents alike.

As a parent, it’s your job to look out for your children’s mental and emotional wellbeing—which, by the way, requires you to meet their needs, not be a superhero. Here are 7 ways you can support your kid:

Give them the 411

If you have very young children, you may not have talked to them yet about COVID-19. Make sure you do as it becomes developmentally appropriate. Kids need to know why they have to wash their hands for 20 seconds, or wear a mask, or stay 6 feet apart from others. If you have older kids, be sure to explain how you’ve come to your decisions about everything from school to slumber parties. We’re all making calculations to keep our children safe; be sure your kid understands your family’s math.

Add or maintain structure

Simple routines add structure, and structure makes kids (and adults) feel safe. They know what to expect. Try setting times for waking up, eating, studying, and doing chores. Assign tasks around the house. Differentiate the weekends from the weekdays. Make sure to build in some free time so kids can assert their independence by controlling their own activities.

Set attainable goals

It’s far better to achieve and celebrate small wins than to undermine a child’s confidence by setting impossible goals. Being able to complete smaller tasks, such as changing out of pajamas or taking a quick walk every day, will help them feel accomplished and self-assured.

Offer freedom to explore

Let your children discover and explore their own unique interests. Allow them to find self-expression in whatever pursuit they choose: be it playing with LEGOs, learning about dinosaurs, or aspiring to be the next Ruth Bader-Ginsburg. Broadening your mind and expanding your creativity is something not even a pandemic can take away.

Let them cry it out

Who doesn’t feel like yelling or bursting into tears these days? Give your child space to grieve and process their emotions. When they’re ready, ask what’s really bothering them. Do they miss seeing their friends? Are they feeling afraid or insecure about the world? Acknowledge that your child is a human being with complex emotions, and let them express those emotions without rushing to a solution.

Stay connected

We all need a support system. Schedule Zoom or Facetime calls with grandparents or friends. Build in quality time for your family to be together beyond rushing past one another during the work/school day. It will help everyone feel less isolated.

Give them their own space

Finally, carve out a special place just for your child. It doesn’t have to be an entire room; a small nook in your kitchen or office area will do. Giving kids room to breathe, physically, mentally, and emotionally, gives them space to grow and learn.

The last several months have been difficult for all of us, and it’s of the utmost importance that we find healthy ways to cope. Remember that you need support, too! To connect with a group of a thriving community of fellow parents, be sure to follow the Conscious Parenting Revolution on Facebook.

P.S. Not a part of our FB community yet? Follow the Conscious Parenting Revolution for exclusive content you can’t get anywhere else.

Visit us at: www.consciousparentingrevolution.com

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

Don’t Let Great Younger Generation Ideas Slip through Your Fingers

An executive I know hired a young woman for his marketing department and put her to work managing some current campaigns. He found out 18 months later that she was a bona fide expert about marketing on social media—she practically lived on social media. She could have brought so much more to her new employer from day one, yet that extra value went completely untapped for a year and a half.

Call that knowledge loss, call it money wasted, or call it something worse. Whatever you call it, it’s bad. How did it happen? Since I don’t work for that company I can’t say for sure, but it was presumably because the top executives there were all Baby Boomers. It likely never occurred to them that a new younger generation worker had ideas they needed to hear.

Is your management failing to acknowledge the contributions of younger workers? If it is, here are some steps to take to be sure you’re discovering and tapping into the unique insights and skills your younger workers possess.

• Strategy One: Uncover hidden skills during the recruiting process. It’s a mistake to screen job applicants by only saying, “Here’s what you’ll have to do on the job…can you cut it?” Instead, ask questions like, “We’re recruiting a team to market our new app—what do you think we need to do?” Or, “We are currently using the XYZ platform to track ad usage in our franchise locations—do you know of anything better?” To use a Zen kind of paradigm, be the student, not the teacher. The things you learn could be very valuable indeed.

• Strategy Two: Invite comments and ideas during new employee training. Training is an ideal time to ask new hires important questions like, “How strong do you think our brand is” or, “Do our competitors do something better than we do?” If you ask questions like those, you let new employees know that you are a company that values honest and open input, and training is the place to do it. After an employee begins working for you, he or she may want to communicate big ideas only to a supervisor, where they could potentially die. Or worse, he or she might never voice those big ideas at all.

• Strategy Three: Get some reverse mentoring going. Reverse mentoring has become popular in many organizations. The idea of reverse mentoring is usually to have an older executive mentored about technology by a younger, tech-savvy employee. I would recommend widening that lens and having younger generations and other young workers keep your senior executives up to speed on things like marketplace trends, new products that have entered the marketplace, and news about “hot” competing companies. The wider you can cast your net for ideas from young employees, the more you benefit.

Reward the big ideas and information that younger generations bring. If an employee delivers a valuable piece of information to you, offer recognition, feedback, or increased responsibilities. Treat it like gold. If you don’t, that bright young mind is likely to think, “Why should I tell my company anything? They ignored me the last time I did.” It’s up to you to offer the recognition that keeps information flowing.

Remember that younger generations have ideas, information, and skills that you need. Are you listening to them? If you aren’t—let’s face it—the fault lies with you. Open the doors, let the information in, and watch your company improve in ways you could never imagine.

Action Step: Meet with your divisional and departmental managers and ask them to help identify younger generations who have specialized knowledge that may benefit your organization.