By  Jessica Hicks, Associate Multimedia Editor at Thrive Global

Managing people is tough — but managing people as they work from home during a global pandemic, well, that’s another story. Whether you’re a first-time manager or have been leading people for years, the coronavirus crisis has likely pushed you into uncharted territory. On top of overseeing day-to-day workflow, problem-solving, and paying attention to the bottom line and deliverables, there’s another big task on your plate: helping to take care of the human capital on your team when you don’t see them every day. 

“It is difficult to know what demands each individual is facing — whether it be navigating health issues, a partner that is a frontline responder, children in need of care, extended family members that are isolated,” Ashley Hardin, Ph.D., a professor of organizational behavior at Washington University in St. Louis, tells Thrive. “Many employees are balancing many roles and enacting those roles simultaneously for the first time.”

By Patrick Lencioni

I’m a big believer in reminders.  Samuel Johnson, the 18th-century author, once said that “people need to be reminded more than they need to be instructed.”  I’ve learned this in the context of managing my own life, in the parenting of my children, and even in consulting to CEOs and other leaders.  Which is why I wasn’t all that surprised when a long time client recently asked us the question, “as a CEO, I’m not sure how I should be spending my time every day.”
Here was a guy who has been using the organizational health concepts from The Advantage in his company for years, but who had lost sight of how those concepts should relate to the prioritization of his daily activities.  Basically, he needed a reminder, which prompted me to write this essay. 
The simplest answer to his question is this: “A CEO should spend most of his or her time doing the things that only he or she can do.  Anything else can be delegated, and should be whenever possible.”  There are a few responsibilities that leaders of an organization, whether they are CEOs, division presidents, school principals or pastors, cannot delegate.  A large part of those responsibilities relates to what we call organizational health.  They include:

Dr. Travis Bradberry

When emotional intelligence (EQ) first appeared to the masses, it served as the missing link in a peculiar finding: people with average IQs outperform those with the highest IQs 70 percent of the time. This anomaly threw a massive wrench into the broadly held assumption that IQ was the sole source of success.
Decades of research now point to emotional intelligence as being the critical factor that sets star performers apart from the rest of the pack. The connection is so strong that 90 percent of top performers have high emotional intelligence.

“No doubt emotional intelligence is more rare than book smarts, but my experience says it is actually more important in the making of a leader. You just can’t ignore it.” – Jack Welch 

Emotional intelligence is the “something” in each of us that is a bit intangible. It affects how we manage behavior, navigate social complexities, and make personal decisions to achieve positive results.

​Being successful in life requires you to make the right decisions for yourself and this takes knowing who you are and what you uniquely offer. When you say yes to the right projects and job for yourself, you are able to beautifully handle the work and the obstacles that inevitably arise as you make something happen in the world. 

Susan brings you a cutting edge, revolutionary body of knowledge called BG5 that applies the principles of individuality from Human Design. Using the knowledge gained from BG5 analyses catapults you into a new way of dealing with yourself and others which leads to unprecedented results. 

by Suzie Doscher 
There are wonderful books, classes, films, talks, workshops, DVDs, magazine articles, conversations, coaches, and therapists teaching the importance of being in the moment, staying in the now and going with the flow. But how do you really do this?

It seems odd that we do not just naturally live in the now. After all, almost everyone would agree that the present moment, the now, is all we have. The fact remains that most people do not live in the present moment and have to learn how to do so.
 
Reasons to master living in the moment:

• You receive instant relief from stress
• You are able to manage fears better
• You become calmer. A sense of calmness enters if you stop to take a few breaths. Focusing on your breathing returns your mind to the present moment, away from your thoughts.
• You feel stronger and some of your personal power returns. You feel stronger because you took charge of the moment. This offers the feeling of having influence and consequently strength.

 
Steps to practice being in the moment:​

BY XIMENA VENGOECHEA 5 MINUTE READ

It happens to high- and low-performing teams alike: The ties that bind everyone together just aren’t as strong as they could be. Maybe you’ve inherited a team that’s always been sluggish and uninspired, or one that’s usually steady, but the trust is eroding under pressure. Or perhaps you’re just trying to take your team to the next level. Whatever the case, every team needs to reflect once in a while on what could be improved. It’s human nature to be conflict-averse, but it’s every manager’s job to bring points of conflict out into the open and move forward together.
Unfortunately, most meetings aren’t the best venues for doing that. Typical team meetings focus on planning what’s ahead–an upcoming project, the next quarter’s top goals and metrics, expectations moving forward. But there’s a simple alternative, focused on reviewing the immediate past, that can change how your team works for the better.

by Bill Gentry, Director, Leadership Insights & Analytics and Senior Research Scientist

A professional getting promoted into his or her first formal leadership position in an organization is one of the biggest and most difficult transitions for any leader.
Far too often, the leader and the organization take for granted just how difficult that transition is.
The numbers prove it: No wonder 50% of managers in organizations are ineffective.

Their ineffectiveness may be the result of not realizing what they are getting themselves into when it comes to leading others, not being supported in their new leadership role, and not being given the opportunity for training and development early enough in their careers as leaders.
Think of the time and money that has to be spent on replacing these ineffective leaders—not to mention dealing with the low morale and disengagement of employees working under these ineffective leaders. 

A personal care company that is part of my acceleration portfolio could never have envisioned sharing prime retail space with the giants in its product category. Thanks to e-commerce, it does so today and quite promisingly so.
Traditional size-based and time-based competitive advantages are fast evaporating. In fact, in many cases, tech-enabled business models are turning size-based advantage into a handicap.
Uber doesn’t own a single car and AirBnB doesn’t own any hotel room. In just six years, asset-less messaging app Whatsapp has one billion users, a figure most large telecom companies took decades to reach. Even in the financial sector, peer-to-peer lending platforms are hot on the heels of established banks.
Established companies could face an existential crisis as conventional advantages evaporate, entry barriers lower and rate of disruption grows. However, they must take heart from the one durable advantage they have over start-ups: top talent. ...Click 'Read More'

by Gordon Tredgold 

According to a 2014 Gallup poll, companies, 82 percent of the time, appoint the wrong person to a management or leadership position. That's a staggering number. 
And yet it's not inconsistent with either my own experience or other statistics that we see -- such as one, this time from a 2015 Gallup poll, showing that as many as 70 percent of workers are either disengaged or actively disengaged. 

More evidence? It comes from what seems to be the No. 1 reason why people leave companies: 50 percent of the time, they cite their relationship with their direct manager. 
We can only conclude that those managers shouldn't have been there in the first place, and that poor management appointments are to blame. We might also suspect that those appointments not only damaged the mood and morale of these organizations but affected their bottom line. For example, the weak employee-engagement figures cost American businesses around $450 billion every year. 

The challenge is that these situations are not going to be completely resolved until they address the real root cause: hiring and promoting the wrong people in the first place. Here are seven characteristics that companies should look for in future managers. If those people don't have them, then don't promote them. ..

Nigel Casey BSc (Hons) Digital Technology, Design & Innovation: Learning & Development at DigitalProfessionalsAcademy.com

Whether you work in the realm of digital development or not, your teams are without a shadow of a doubt, already digital. Whether you work in an organisation or as a freelance professional, you work in and with digital teams. The digital age is upon us and you are in it and a part of it whether you realise it or not.

1. Silos in Digital Teams

Encouraging, enabling or tolerating silo mentality is not good managerial practice by any stretch of the imagination. It describes a situation in which co-workers tend to operate independently to such an extent that information does not flow fluidly across teams or departments. I believe that most of the time employees do not choose to work in Silos, nor do they do it with the intention of gaining the upper hand, deliberately withholding information or sabotaging co-workers’ progress. They simply have their own, often fine-tuned systems for getting stuff done, having found a way to operate that works for them individually, without considering, or even being expected to consider the implications and how their modus operandi affects overall productivity.
Clearly, the end result can be described as the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, or even attempting to do. Lots of hands, all waggling around independently from one another, all doing their best. ...Click 'Read More' below

by Baba Shiv

​Invention has another mother: failure. It may seem counterintuitive, but repeated failures can, and often do, lead to success. Every time we try something new and fail, it provides valuable information about what went wrong and, as important, what went right. From that, we can make small changes and try again, continually learning and innovating. “If you’re trying to solve a problem there are potentially hundreds of possible pathways to take, but only a few are going to lead to the appropriate solution. And the only way to discover that is to try and fail and try again,” says Baba Shiv, a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business whose research focuses on innovation in the workplace.