Leading into the “New Normal”
As governments around the world are under increased demands to reopen, leaders everywhere are making decisions in the face of staggering uncertainty and conflicting information. In many ways, the decisions that first closed down businesses and quarantined cities, although certainly difficult, were much easier exercises in short-term decision making and execution than those that leaders […]
Look for the Helpers: Humble Leadership in Times of Crisis
Many people are involved in a basketball game: A coach provides strategy, a shooting guard is agile, and a point guard assists in providing direction. In the heat of the game, the coach knows when to put in strong players, when to bench someone, and when to encourage every player to step up and give […]
Leading Effective Virtual Teams: Practical Advice for Transitioning Team Norms in this ‘New Normal’
At Hogan, we define leadership as the ability to build and maintain a high-performing team. And high-performing teams consistently outperform the competition. You want your team to be one of those, right? We don’t know what impact the current pandemic will have on our businesses, but we do know that high-performing teams are critical to our success. […]
Managing Stress with Strategic Self-Awareness
Feeling the Sunday scaries? At the start of each workweek, we prepare ourselves for the stressful situations we are likely to face throughout the week. With the recent pandemic, the stress we are feeling is unprecedented. As we try to go about the workday facing new challenges in an abruptly virtual world, the way that we manage […]
The importance of staff development during an economic downturn
To say that these are interesting times that we are living in is an understatement. Over the past couple of weeks, we have seen panic buying at supermarkets; a rout on global stockmarkets; racism and bigotry rearing their ugly heads; all coupled with a disturbing lack of leadership by many of our global leaders during […]
Managerial Competencies and Organisational Levels
I was talking recently with a very smart psychologist about IBM; I noted that IBM’s stock has gone down steadily for the past six years, and he said: “IBM is well managed but poorly led.” This perceptive observation assumes that managers’ jobs change as they move from supervisor to manager to executive. I have always thought […]
Crisis Mode: Assembling the Ideal Team for a Task Force
From 2008 to 2011, I worked as the leader of the human resources team at a Fortune 50 company. During that time, I had a challenging experience at one of the company’s manufacturing plants, which employed 1,200 people. Immersed in a list of negative key performance indicators, my challenge was to recover governance while facing […]
Middle Managers: Your Company’s Most Important Line of Defence in Crisis
“Are we going to lose our jobs because of this coronavirus?” asked Kelly, an account executive with a tenure of 11 years. “I — I don’t quite know,” replied Marla, Kelly’s practice manager. “The senior leadership team has said that there won’t be immediate layoffs, but we don’t know how long these shutdowns will last. […]
Managing Anxiety in the Workplace
More than usual, people are currently looking to their leaders to obtain information and guidance on how to navigate the challenges that individuals, teams and organisations are facing all over the world. With these times of uncertainty and change, it is natural that some people may be experiencing increased levels of stress and anxiety and […]
How Times of Crisis and Uncertainty Can Help You Spot High Potential
In any company, few things are more important than having a strong pipeline of high-performing leaders. In this new COVID-19 era, leadership teams everywhere are now faced with making critical decisions in an environment that changes hourly. Leaders from every size of organisation are required to exercise judgment in unprecedented scenarios. At Hogan, we have […]
