How Self-Care Can Improve Your Business

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Self-Care|How Self-Care Can Improve Your Business We know that taking care of ourselves at home is important. We know that eating well and exercising regularly is what will keep us healthy. But what about our work? As a business owner, you will probably find there are times that you feel stressed and anxious, or that you work long hours and neglect your own self-care due to this.

If this is the case (as it is for many small business owners), it is essential to take a step back and think about your own self-care. After all, taking care of your physical and mental needs can improve your business. Here’s how it works.

You Can Say No

Being able to say no in business is important. If you say yes to everything that anyone asks of you, you will soon become overwhelmed and exhausted. Not only that, but you will use up all of your time doing things that are of no benefit to you, leaving little time left to do anything that will help to grow your business.

Practicing self-care means that you will be stronger and more able to say no. You will be able to look at each situation objectively and determine whether it is going to be something that you can do well and whether it will positively impact your business.

You Can Do More

Those days when you struggle into the office even though you’re feeling unwell are not productive days. It would be better if you stayed at home practicing self-care, looking after yourself and resting. That way, you will heal more quickly and get back to work sooner, resulting in less time off than if you tried to go in and became more unwell. You will also find that just a few days off to rest and mend will mean you are more productive when you return, and the quality of the work you do won’t suffer.

The more severely ill you are, the more time you will need to take off. There may be other complications including a hospital stay or the need to use The Medical Negligence Experts to help you once you have recovered if there has been a problem. No matter how long you need to take off work, rushing back will only make things worse. In these cases, insurance or a good manager will need to be used to help you.

Good Company Policy

At some point, you may well hire other people to assist you in your business. You need them to be happy and function well, and if you can lead by example this will be beneficial. Practicing self-care by having scheduled breaks throughout the day, having set working hours, taking the time to relax and exercise where possible, and eating well is something that you can instill in your employees. This will make the business somewhere that is good to work in, and your employees will be more loyal to you if they know you have their best interests at heart.

Make it company policy that self-care needs to be a priority and your workers will be more productive and much happier in their jobs.

The Effective Guide to Leadership Development Programme

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Articles |Leadership Development|The Effective Guide to Leadership Development ProgrammeWhat is a Leadership Development Program?

Leadership development refers to specific programs utilized by organizations, in order to train or coach an employee(s) about effective leadership requirements. These programs focus on improving the skill-set and attitudes of the individual or group of individuals.

Why is leadership development important?

The productivity of a workforce is largely dependent on the capability of its leaders. The importance of leadership development programs are manifold and are crucial to the development of organizations. These include:

  • Effective leadership development program helps people to execute and identify improvement strategies which will increase the productivity of valued resources and organizational success.
  • The more a company focuses on internal leadership development, the easier it is to achieve specific organizational objectives and goals such as, strategy change, reorganization, and cultural transformations among others.
  • Leadership development has been shown to help people become more open to constructive feedback and develop self-awareness, clarify behavioural patterns that may hinder job effectiveness, and also identify strengths and personal development needs.
  • Through proper coaching, a leader’s ability to assimilate is heightened, and a high-potential leader is developed. Thus, creating a highly effective manager who will undoubtedly assure success in new assignments.
  • In the long-run, having leaders that can foster a positive culture will provide a big impact on the organization.

StrategyDriven Talent Management Articles |Leadership Development|The Effective Guide to Leadership Development ProgrammeTwo Approaches to Learning about Leadership Development

There are two major approaches to leadership development and training programs which are individual or Self-directed approach and collective or other-directed approach. It’s essential that you learn and understand the approaches you can implement in improving your leadership development.

Formal vs. Informal training

Formal approaches are well structured, organized, pre-planned and forward-looking in order to achieve a specific outcome. While informal approaches are the knowledge you gain while on the job, carrying out your various day-to-day activities, reading a book or having discussions with a friend or colleague.

Regardless of the approach, that is, informal or informal, it is vital to capture and recognize that learning is a continuous process. You can’t just read a book or two and claim to know all about effective leadership.

If you are to become a great leader, then you need to learn to learn, and continue on the pathways to leadership development. The tip for continuously learning is to develop the ability to reflect on your past experiences as well as the experiences of others.

Individual or Self-directed Vs. Collective or Other-directed training

Individual development has been the targeted approach for a while now. Just as the name implies, it focuses on the development of a particular person or individual, solely to identify the person’s weaknesses and strengths, and in turn, train and improve his/her ability and trait.

This can be achieved through strategies like attending different seminars or workshops, reading books or other educational resources, one-on-one coaching, and questionnaires, among others.

The advantage of this approach is vast. The most important being undivided attention on the individual which will boost or speed up the individual’s skill and trait. However, this approach can be difficult to implement, costly and also send mixed messages within an organization.

Collective or Other-directed approach

A more recent approach is the collective approach, which focuses on training a group of people rather than an individual. This approach is easier to implement and can also produce powerful results in terms of leadership succession.

However, due to a lack of focus on individual skill-set, people may end up learning skills that do not fit their personalities or personal values or end up developing skills they already have.

Guidance for constructing a leadership development Program

  • Communicate your vision by outlining the qualities and skills required to occupy specific leadership positions in your organizations.
  • Set SMART organizational goals
  • Implement realistic and achievable solutions

Focus on the outcomes by monitoring the performance of the leader at every step of the way, through a regular meeting.

Tips for personal leadership development

  1. Strategic thinking
    Have a broader business perspective. Learn to ‘think outside the box’ and see the big picture. Also learn to understand the ‘why’ and not just the ‘how’.
  2. Coaching
    Learn to direct and guide your team rather than always telling them what to do.
  3. Financial Shrewdness
    Fine-tune your financial literacy to better understand and interpret the company’s financial statements.
  4. Active Listening
    Tone up your ability to pay more attention and demonstrate that you value what other team members have to say.
  5. Industry, competitive and customer knowledge
    Understand what your customers need, have a vast knowledge of the industry you are in and know your competitors.
  6. Point balance
    Leaders need to know how to balance their strengths and use them when needed and to ‘put a leash’ on them when they are not appropriate. Strengths overused can easily turn into weaknesses.
  7. Time management
    Manage your time appropriately and learn to prioritize. Make a step-by-step plan for resolving tasks and avoid seemingly unproductive ventures and focus more on value added activities.
  8. Talent management
    Have a succession plan for your position, fill all positions with ‘A players’ and do not be afraid to let go of toxic employees. Refine your ability to hire, promote, delegate, assess and promote your staff.
  9. Leadership Presence and Effective Communication
    Learn the ability to ‘command attention’, communicate with people whose styles and perspectives may differ from your own and also respect their perspectives. Utilize available technology to improve internal communications and collaborate virtually.
  10. Integrity Building
    Inspire your employees to be people of unquestionable integrity when you stick to your values and core beliefs, do not make unreasonable demands of your team nor make false promises.
  11. Change Management
    Learn to summon others to change, instigate changes, be flexible to change, bring needed changes to light, drive company-wide inspiration and motivation to change, and also set the parameters for developing a culture of change within the organization.
  12. Develop an effective collaboration with employees.
  13. Conflict and confrontational management
  14. Cross functional knowledge and perspective including the ability to network across boundaries

Business Politics Lessons Learned – Who Hired You and What About the Person You Actually Work For?

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StrategyDriven Business Politics Lessons Learned Article | Who Hired You and What About the Person You Actually Work For?Landing the best jobs is often about who you know; from referrals to outright hires. But what happens when who you know is not the hiring manager?… Business Politics!

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Taking Your Business Forward: The Best Practices To Follow

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Once you have established the management processes and settled into your daily tasks, running your business should be relatively straightforward. While there are often unexpected issues that need tackling, the longer that your business is running for, the easier it should be to manage.

Being established and settling into a routine is the goal, but the next step should always be to prioritise growth. Taking your business to the next level will ensure that your business has a future – but, failing to embrace growth will only mean that your competitors will step in to pick up your inattention. If your business is running smoothly, it’s time to start moving forward.

Set Goals

You will be better able to push your boundaries if you have some clearly identifiable and measurable goals to aim for. Having goals is a proven way to encourage productivity and motivation, and can help you with your focus. Setting goals will also make it far easier to measure your business’ progress and track the achievements that you make.

If you want your business to start moving forward, then you need to get out of your comfort zone; goal setting is the ideal way to challenge yourself. Create a growth plan with clear goals and your business will be better able to move forward successfully. Remember to have both short-term and long-term goals, too.

Your Online Presence

The majority of business owners in the digital age are aware of how important their online presence is. Once your business is established, you need to ensure that not just your brick and mortar premises are running smoothly; getting more from your website will involve putting more priority on it, and this can be a challenge.

Websites alone have many components to take into consideration and it can be difficult to keep up with everything that it needs, as well as the emerging trends that might be of benefit. You could keep up to date with industry updates by following the mega publications like Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch or the smaller, more actionable update blogs, such as local SEO specialist Jon Monk’s Max Your Web.

Or, if teaching yourself SEO is not something you have the time or effort for – you can simply outsource your website management to a professional company, who you can then trust the management and development of your SEO strategies to. Either of these methods would help you get a lot more benefit from your online platform and the efforts you are making.

Online Security

Making sure that your website, your business, and your customers are safe from a cyber attack is crucial. When everyone is a potential target for cybercriminals, the onus will be on you to ensure that the security of your website, as well as your stored data, are protected as much as possible.

Moving your business forward will mean that you need to place a priority on online security, and these tips can act as a checklist of basics that you will need to adopt into your online strategy:

  • Employee Awareness: It’s unfortunate, but the vast majority of business-related cyber crimes are caused by employee negligence. If you want to protect your business, then you will need to instill a strong culture of cybersecurity. Have regular staff meetings to highlight the latest phishing scams, and make certain that every employee has basic online security training.
  • Password Safety: While everyone is aware of the need for strong password management, most people tend to stick to the same two or three rotated passwords. This can be very dangerous, but there are simple ways to make your business more secure through better password habits. Learn (and teach) positive password habits and your business will be much more secure when it comes to moving forward.
  • Hardware/Software Protection: There are many different tools that you can use to help keep your business safe online. The most basic of these is a firewall, and you should definitely have at least one version installed on your system. Your business will not be able to move forward if you are under constant attack by hackers, so make sure that you not only install a good firewall but that you also keep it updated as often as possible.
  • Additional Steps: As well as these basics, you might also want to consider adopting two-factor verification on all of your most important online accounts. This adds an extra level of security that can be difficult for hackers to get through. You should also look at encryption as well, as this can be used to keep your stored data private and confidential.

In the digital age, protecting your online presence is as important as keeping a warehouse locked. Protecting your business online will make it far easier to move forward in both the digital space and the real world.

Customer Service

Your customers are clearly the most important aspect of your business that you will have to consider when it comes to moving forward. Attracting and then keeping customers needs to be the goal, and that means creating a work culture that is customer-focused. The better quality of service you provide, the more likely that your business will be rewarded with repeat custom and positive word of mouth. Make sure that you are constantly looking for feedback, addressing any issues that may arise, and act quickly and proactively when you get a complaint. Look for ways to make your business 100% accessible.

Competitor Surveillance

You don’t need to set up a tent and spy on them with binoculars, but keeping a constant watch on your competitors is one of the more traditional ways to move your own business forward. There are two ways that your business can make use of a competition watch, and both can be used to make your business stronger:

  • Keeping ahead – The more that you know what your competitors are up to, the easier it will be to keep ahead of what they are doing. If you see that your competition is promoting a new website design, take notes and assess your own. Keeping up with competitors is essential, and if you don’t know what they’re going to do next, then you will quickly fall behind.
  • Pick up the slack – By being more aware of your competitors, you will have a better understanding of what they are doing wrong. This gives you a major opportunity to adopt the products and methods that they are neglecting, making your business seem far more professional than even the most established rivals.

Final Considerations

As well as these essential steps to take there are a number of optional elements to consider. These will largely be dependant on the culture of your business, but it’s worth looking at:

  • Continuous education: Always make sure that you know all that there is to know about your products and your sector. Learn marketing through online resources, or the language of your biggest customers via DuoLingo.
  • Learn delegation: Your business will never be able to move forward if you try to micromanage everything yourself. Use your workforce, and your business will only grow stronger.
  • Open communication: The more that your staff are able to communicate with you, the more your business will benefit. Create as open a culture as you can, and you will be rewarded with a more creative and impactful business model.

No business can be expected to move forward without some changes. Staying static is the fastest way to grow stale, and that can leave you exposed to competitors and changing needs of your customers.

Improve The Quality Of Entrepreneurial Negotiations With Teamwork and Brainstorming

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | Entrepreneurial Negotiation | Improve The Quality Of Entrepreneurial Negotiations With Teamwork and BrainstormingAccording to our research, the single biggest threat to entrepreneurial success is an inability to handle the negotiations that arise at key interactions in the evolution of a start-up. Founders must be able to prevent, detect, and respond to potential negotiation mistakes in each part of their galaxy.

But often the very qualities that help entrepreneurs launch businesses – willingness to take risks, high levels of self-confidence, a desire for rapid results – can, in themselves, become stumbling blocks. Based on interviews and research we’ve done for our book, Entrepreneurial Negotiation, we have pinpointed the most common negotiation mistakes that founders make. One of the most insidious occurs when entrepreneurs are too self-centered or maintain a limited perspective. Failing to recognize the needs and priorities of those with whom they are negotiating, can mean that no deal will be reached.

Here’s a simple solution: entrepreneurs should not prepare alone or negotiate alone. Research proves that team negotiations create about 25% more value on average than solo negotiations. That’s because a team is better able to take in more about the other side’s interests, achieving an increased level of information exchange, and finding more mutually beneficial trades.

Therefore, you should bring at least one trusted colleague with you during any negotiation. Plan to talk with your colleague during breaks and between sessions to help you confirm your understandings. Based on that person’s expertise, you may also empower him or her to pass you notes, call for a break, or join the conversation if he or she sees something of significance that you are missing. Just like the aviation industry has learned to improve air safety significantly by giving copilots permission to speak up, you may significantly improve your ability to detect and prevent mistakes by employing other “cockpit resource management” capabilities within your negotiation team.

Here’s another reason you should not negotiate alone. Options, timetables, costs, BATNA’s (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement) and so on, generally do not remain stable during negotiations, especially between sessions. Some of the information or ideas that the other side presents may mean something different to you when seen from a new vantage point. Discussing this with your colleague is important. Also, if there is a move that you suspect may provoke the other side, or may put you in a position that would be close to making a mistake – step away from the table. Initiate a consultation with your colleague, or contact another expert for advice.

Brainstorming To Get Unstuck

We’ve also learned that when entrepreneurs have a narrow perspective, they generally miss out on opportunities to create value. Entrepreneurs who make the mistake of haggling suffer from exactly this narrow mindset. When detecting that you are focused on one primary item, or that you have started a tug of war on a single issue – try to switch into a problem-solving mode and look for possible trades that will create value.

To this end, we suggest using brainstorming to come up with more options. We recommend using two simple ground rules: offer no judgments on the quality of what is being proposed (during brainstorming) and don’t worry about attribution. No judgment means that when one person proposes an idea, no one should judge it as good or bad at that moment. (In the world of theater improvisations this is known as the “Yes, and …” response.) Remember that a partial idea, a bad idea, or an absurd idea might serve as a bridge to a better idea if someone doesn’t shoot it down immediately. “No attribution” means that an idea should not be immediately attributed to the person who suggested it. Better that no one feels “ownership” at the outset. This way, the actual originator doesn’t have to defend their proposal (which could cause them to stop listening to other ideas).

After generating as many options as possible, consider each one as part of an overall package. To reach agreement, you will need to find a package that is acceptable to both sides. Each party may not like every- thing in the package, but the deal as a whole needs to be better for each than doing nothing.

Teamwork and brainstorming are two important methods that entrepreneurs can use to improve the outcomes of their negotiations. Applying these practices will help insure the long-term viability of your organization.

About the Authors

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | Samuel Dinnar | Entrepreneurial NegotiationSamuel Dinnar, co-author of Entrepreneurial Negotiation, is an instructor at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As founder and President of Meedance, he provides global consulting services and serves as a mediator specializing in business conflicts that involve founders, executives, investors, and board members. To learn more, visit: www.EntrepreneurialNegotiation.com or www.meedance.com.

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | Lawrence Susskind | Entrepreneurial NegotiationLawrence Susskind, co-author of Entrepreneurial Negotiation, is a professor of urban and environmental planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, co-founder of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, and the founder of the Consensus Building Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. To learn more, visit www.EntrepreneurialNegotiation.com