Imagine you’re driving along the highway, and see an electric sign saying “79 traffic deaths this year.” Would this make you less likely to crash your car shortly after seeing the sign? Perhaps you think it would have no effect? 

Neither are true. According to a recent peer-reviewed study that just came out in Science, one of the world’s top academic journals, you would be more likely to crash, not less. Talk about unintended consequences!

The study examined seven years of data from 880 electric highway signs, which showed the number of deaths so far this year for one week each month as part of a safety campaign. The researchers found that the number of crashes increased by 1.52% within three miles of the signs on these safety campaign weeks compared to the other weeks of the month when the signs did not show fatality information.

That’s about the same impact as raising the speed limit by four miles or decreasing the number of highway troopers by 10%. The scientists calculated that the social costs of such fatality messages amount to $377 million per year, with 2,600 additional crashes and 16 deaths.

The cause? Distracted driving. These “in-your-face” messages, the study finds, grab your attention and undermine your driving. In other words, the same reason you shouldn’t text and drive.

Supporting their hypothesis, the scientists discovered that the increase in crashes is higher when the reported deaths are higher. Thus, later in the year as the number of reported deaths on the sign goes up, so does the percentage of crashes. And it’s not the weather: the effect of showing the fatality messages decreased by 11% between January and February, as the displayed number of deaths resets for the year. They also uncovered that the increase in crashes is largest in more complex road segments, which require more focus from the driver. 

Their research also aligns with other studies. One proved that increasing people’s anxiety causes them to drive worse. Another showed drivers fatality messages in a laboratory setting and determined that doing so increased cognitive load, making them distracted drivers.

If the authorities actually paid attention to cognitive science research, they would never have launched these fatality message advertisements. Instead, they relied on armchair psychology and followed their gut intuitions on what should work, rather than measuring what does work. The result was what scholars call a boomerang effect, meaning when an intervention produces an effect opposite to that intended.

Unfortunately, such boomerang effects happen all-too-often. Consider another safety campaign, the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign between 1998 and 2004, which the US Congress funded to the tune of $1 billion. Using professional advertising and public relations firms, the campaign created comprehensive marketing efforts that targeted youths aged 9 to 18 with anti-drug messaging, focusing on marijuana. The messages were spread by television, radio, websites, magazines, movie theaters and other venues, and through partnership with civic, professional, and community groups, with the intention for youths to see two to three ads per week.

A 2008 National Institutes of Health-funded study found that indeed, youths did get exposure to two to three ads per week. However, on the whole, more exposure to advertising from the campaign led youth to be more likely to use marijuana, not less! 

Why? The authors find evidence that youths who saw the ads got the impression that their peers used marijuana widely. As a result, the youths became more likely to use marijuana themselves. Indeed, the study found that those youths who saw more ads had a stronger belief that other youths used marijuana, and this belief made starting to use marijuana more likely. Talk about a boomerang effect!

Of course, it’s not only government authorities whose campaigns suffer from boomerang effects. Consider Apple’s recent highly popular “Apple at Work” advertising campaign. Its newest episode, launched in March 2022, is called “Escape from the Office.” It features a group of employees who, when told they must come back to the office as the pandemic winds down, instead chose to quit and launched an office-less startup using Apple products.

A week before the launch of its ad campaign extolling remote work and slamming the requirement to return to the office, Apple demanded that its own employees return to the office. That juxtaposition did not play well with the 7,500 of Apple’s 165,000 employees who are part of an Apple Slack room for remote work. 

One employee wrote “They are trolling us, right?” and others termed the ad “distasteful” and “insulting.” After all, the ad illustrates how Apple helps corporate employees work from home effectively. Why can’t Apple’s own staff do so, right? That hypocrisy added to the frustration of Apple employees, with some already quitting. Again, a clear boomerang effect at play.

We know that message campaigns – whether on electric signs or through advertisements – can have a substantial effect. That fits broader extensive research from cognitive science on how people can be impacted by nudges, meaning non-coercive efforts to shape the environment so as to influence people’s behavior in a predictable manner. For example, a successful nudging campaign to reduce car accidents involved using smartphone notifications that helped drivers evaluate their performance during each trip. Using nudges informing drivers of their personal average performance and personal best performance, as measured by accelerometers and gyroscopes, resulted in a reduction of accident frequency of over one and a half years.

Those with authority – in government or business – frequently attempt to nudge other people based on their mental model of how others should behave. Unfortunately, their mental models are often fundamentally flawed, due to dangerous judgment errors called cognitive biases. These mental blindspots impact decision making in all life areas, including business to relationships. Fortunately, recent research has shown effective strategies to defeat these dangerous judgment errors, such as by constraining our choices to best practices and measuring the impact of our interventions.

Unfortunately, such reliance on best practice and measurements of interventions of such techniques is done too rarely. Fatality signage campaigns have been in place for many years without assessment. The federal government ran the anti-drug campaign from 1998 to 2004 until finally the measurement study came out in 2008. 

Instead, what the authorities need to do is consult with cognitive and behavioral science experts on nudges before they start their interventions. And what the experts will tell you is that it’s critical to evaluate in small-scale experiments the impact of proposed nudges. That’s because, while extensive research shows nudges do work, only 62% have a statistically significant impact, and up to 15% of desired interventions may backfire.

Nonetheless, Texas, along with at least 28 other states, has pursued mortality messaging campaigns for years, without testing them effectively by behavioral scientists Behavioral science is critical here: when road signs are tested by those without expertise in how our minds work such as engineers, the results are often counterproductive. For example, a group of engineers at Virginia Tech did a study of road signs that used humor, popular culture, sports, and other nontraditional themes with the goal of provoking an emotional response. They measured the neuro-cognitive response of participants who read the signs and found that messages “messages with humor, and messages that use word play and rhyme elicit significantly higher levels of cognitive activation in the brain… an increase in cognitive activation is a proxy for increased attention.”

The researchers decided that because the drivers paid more attention, therefore the signs worked. Guess what? By that definition the fatality signs worked, too! They worked to cause drivers to pay attention to the fatality numbers, and therefore be distracted from the road. That’s an example of how NOT to do a study. The goal of testing road signs should be the consequent number of crashes, not whether someone is emotionally aroused and cognitively loaded by the sign.

But there is good news. First, it’s very doable to run an effective small-scale study testing an intervention in most cases. States could set up a safety campaign with 100 electric signs in a diversity of settings and evaluate the impact over three months on driver crashes after seeing the signs. Policymakers could ask researchers to track the data as they run ads for a few months in a variety of nationally representative markets for a few months and assess their effectiveness. More broadly, any leader should avoid relying on armchair psychology and test their intuitions before deploying internal and external initiatives. Our feelings about how other people may respond often lead us astray due to our mental blindspots, requiring leaders to show humility and decrease their confidence in their gut impulses.

Innumerable barriers and setbacks can easily hijack the attainment of a goal. But studies on the effects and processes for achieving goals show that setting intentions in advance and implementing them as steps toward achieving your goals can greatly enhance the ability to attain them. 

Importantly, the difference between a goal and an intention is that a goal feels abstract, while an intention is linked more directly with an action. Goals are abstract because they’re rooted in the future, while intentions are focused on the present. 
 

Setting your intentions each day and following through with them ensures that you have clear, purposeful objectives and are motivated to stay on track. Without the process of planning your intentions for the day, your goal can easily become lost amid life’s chaos and clutter.  

Intentions provide the seeds of action. They are a way of adhering to a proactive — as opposed to reactive — approach, and they allow you to have firm control over your day and your immediate future. 

Plan to carve out 15-20 minutes — either at the beginning of the day or the end of the previous day — to keep track of what you plan to undertake in the day ahead. Also note what you were able to complete from the previous day’s intentions. Making time to set your intentions for the day is an intentional act in itself. It requires being grounded in the moment and allowing yourself time to reflect and prioritize actions that need your attention in order to keep your forward momentum.  

Use a spreadsheet, a flow chart, or a day-timer to record and keep track of each day’s intentions. Try breaking your day into segments — 30 minutes, 60 minutes, etc. — and give your brain a rest in between each task. Schedule your more difficult and challenging projects for the time of day when you’re most focused. 

Setting intentions can begin with defining high-level values and then assigning task-oriented actions that correspond with them — but all with the intention of helping you progress toward your ultimate goal. Defining high-level intentions for yourself provides a framework for setting your daily intentions. For example, here are six high-level intentions that I set for myself to lay the foundation for overall success: 

1. Maintain personal health and contentment. I recognize that I’m responsible for my own destiny, which means making every effort to live to my fullest potential and positively influence others. 

2. Act responsibly. I take responsibility for my actions and do what’s necessary to ensure that I remain accountable to myself and to others. 

3. Honor those who have influenced me. I remember that others have influenced me and that their influence is a key part of my own success — and how I, in turn, am able to influence others. 

4. Approach each day purposefully. I prepare for my day and have a clear understanding of my scheduled responsibilities. 

5. Pursue continuous education. I strive to remain educated and relevant in the industries that I influence through my coaching, advising, and consulting.   

6. Support my team. I assist my team members by working to understand and address whatever roadblocks or issues they face. 

One example of how a high-level intention plays out in my daily tasks involves setting aside time to read trade magazines, blogs, and newsletters to pursue continuous education and stay relevant. Another is setting an intention to slow down and remain present in my interactions with team members in order to give them the support they need. 

Strive to make setting daily intentions a habit. In this way, you remain focused on what you need to accomplish to achieve your goals — and reap the rewards of having attained them! 

It has long been clear that an effective educational leader needs to bring many and varied skills to the task at hand, not the least of which are the ability to communicate effectively, to organize, to collaborate, to unify and to promote growth.

But as we have learned during the pandemic, one of the most important skills is agility – the ability to adapt on the fly to ever-changing circumstances. Educator Pino Buffone summarized the challenge as follows in a January 2021 examination of agility:

So much has changed in regard to everyday life on Earth over the past year and a half. In society broadly, and the education sector specifically, the nature of the landscape has definitely shifted. With respect to leadership in schools and systems—provincially, nationally, and internationally—the organizational terrain has evolved because of the extraordinary experiences of the pandemic period and is not likely to return to the well-worn physical features of the past. Moreover, it is conceivable that changes to the features of institutions of public education have only just begun because of the impact of COVID-19 on children and school systems.

Buffone went on to cite several works showing how times like these demand adaptability and redefinition. One of those was the 2017 book “The Wonder Wall,” by former educator and administrator Peter Gamwell and communications strategist Jane Daly. While the book predated the pandemic, the authors labeled unsettled times like this one as a period of “inbetweenity,” when one era is nearing a conclusion and the next has not yet completely emerged. During such times it is abundantly clear that leaders have to adopt new approaches, lest they find themselves hopelessly lost amid the turbulence.

It is important to understand that throughout history there are examples of calamity leading to innovation, in all fields. As an example, consider the manner in which public sanitation was improved in the wake of the Black Death, or the way the so-called “Spanish Flu” pandemic in 1918 resulted in changes to patient care. COVID-19 has led to similar disruption, in such areas as vaccine development, social distancing and working conditions.

All of that has, of course, impacted education. Just as those in certain occupations have had to resort to remote work, those in education have adopted remote and hybrid models. As Buffone writes, there has been “a seismic shift” in long-accepted methods, which threatened to “widen existing inequities, but also make  qualitative and quantitative comparisons—already a challenge—much more difficult.”

Leaders as a result have had to adopt an innovative, inventive mindset, understanding and supporting the needs of students as well as educators, in order to create the best possible learning environment. Now those same administrators must continue to navigate the “inbetweenity,” understanding what approaches might work best as the coronavirus abates, and what might be applied if and when future public health crises arise. How can they best prepare their teachers and students for such an eventuality? How can they ensure that the best systems and procedures are in place? 

Again, it is a matter of being alert and aware. It is a matter of surveying the landscape, and seeing where problems might arise. And it is a matter of commiserating with others throughout the profession – comparing notes and seeing what might work best for one’s own school or district, then adapting accordingly.

As Buffone writes, proactivity and ingenuity are central to adaptability. So too are building relationships and partnerships, and cultivating the correct systems and processes. Moreover, administrators must be quick to pivot as the situation changes, and that has been the case the last several months, as schools have slowly reopened.

Janelle Duray, Chief Operating Officer & Executive Vice President at Jobs for America’s Graduates (JAG), writes that it is imperative for school systems to ”reconnect and re-engage students, especially those from vulnerable homes and communities.” And, she adds, it must be done quickly – that among other things, technology must be embraced if school systems are truly going to move forward in this tenuous time.

When I served as superintendent of Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS), I collaborated with our team in 2019 to put into place an initiative called Imagine PPS, which built upon our Expect Great Things foundation, enacted when I came aboard three years earlier. And indeed, we sought to leverage technology to our full advantage. We sought to address inequities within the district. And when COVID-19 reared its ugly head, the mission was unchanged, even if the delivery model was. We wanted to engage students, even if it was from afar.

Now administrators are making another adjustment, another pivot. Now it’s a matter of learning lessons from the recent past, while continuing to understand that further midcourse corrections might be required. It’s a matter of keeping your head up, being light on your feet and understanding that the educational world, like the world at large, is a complicated place and forever evolving. As Buffone writes, “Vision matters most when clarity is missing.” That being the case, a leader must always have eyes wide open.

I live and work in the crisis capital of the world: Hollywood, where people’s fortunes can turn on a dime. Early on in my own career as an actor, I experienced a heartbreaking setback (long story for another time), that taught me one of the most important lessons of my life: no matter how well you’re doing, a crisis will happen. So best to make a plan for dealing with it.

As an acting coach with a roster of A-listers as well as aspiring stars, that’s one of the fundamentals. You’ve got to have skin in the game to truly compete, but it had better be thick skin if you want to come out intact. How you survive a crisis — a rejection, a loss to a competitor, or a situation entirely beyond your control — depends on how you manage it. And the same goes for any field. Entrepreneurs, C-Suite execs, even new hires all have to be ready. And if you run your career like a business, which you should, you should have a crisis management plan too — something all smart businesses do.

It’s not a mystery, I can guarantee you that. But there are 5 simple yet powerful strategies that I’ve found are vital to handling a crisis:

 1. Admit failure.

In the entertainment industry, failure can be far too obvious to gloss over: you don’t get the role you tried so hard for, your agent dumps you, a film you’re in is critically panned. In sports, it’s similarly transparent: you either win or lose. But other aspects of life can be less black and white. That’s when knowing how to recognize and admit a failure comes in handy. You can’t learn from a failure if you run away from it.

2. Get excited about a setback.

Why would anyone want to embrace failure? Because it’s a learning experience — and it often provides invaluable lessons that you can take with you through the rest of your life. Being afraid of failure stops you from growing and can block the creativity and natural instincts that enable you to perform at your best. That goes for any field. Being a true professional means eradicating your fear of making mistakes. And surprisingly to some, when you give yourself the freedom to mess something up, you are far less likely to do so.

3. Fail fast and move on.

My sister is a vice president of a large Canadian fashion company. She surprised me by telling me that they often encourage their staff to “fail fast.” Their strategic thinking is that if you are going to try something that could possibly fail, do it quickly — so that you get to the success sooner. The practice applies to everyone.  When you fail fast, you can move on faster. So don’t hesitate. Practice the integrity of accepting responsibility and you will be amazed at how fast your good moral code rebounds to serve you in the most unpredictable and positive ways. Integrity brings integrity.

4. Practice risk management.

It’s your job to anticipate all the possible problems you could face in any given situation. Need some inspiration? Think sneakers and fast food. Anticipating upheavals or natural disasters could happen at the location of any one of their factories, so Nike operates more than one at once. If there’s a crisis at one, they can step up production at the other. McDonalds practices risk management when it comes to hamburger buns by making sure they have more than one source at any given time. Should there be any kind of quality control problems, they can easily adjust. If you’re prepared to tackle any possible problems that come up, you’re more likely to easily skate through. I tell actors going to auditions to prepare for anything — and in auditions, they’re ready.

5. Rebound with confidence.

What makes a great leader or a great actor — or a great team player — isn’t just skill, talent or discipline. It’s the ability to recover. I saw Hollywood do that when Covid-19 stopped the world in its tracks in March of 2020. It was one of the first industries to get back on its feet. Instead of second-guessing its own moves or focusing on the negative, the business came back to life with strict quarantine and testing measures. What do you have to do to be at your best again, quickly? Create a personal response plan for yourself and aim to bounce back fast.

A crisis can strike without warning. It can come from within your life, such as the death of a loved one, or outside of it, such as a company choosing to shut its doors or say goodbye to your whole department. Say a hit series you just landed gets cancelled, or a client you just successfully wooed has their own crisis and has to step away. Anything can happen. The goal isn’t avoiding a crisis altogether. It’s rapid resilience. Practice these 5 strategies, and you’ll find you have the flexibility, self-awareness, and the strength to recover fast. And then, get back on that stage.  

Individual and organizational change can be difficult.  Each time we go through any sort of change, some of us jump into it with seeming glee. Yet others seem to be held back by the very notion. 

In the business world, this is often termed resistance. Moreover, business leaders often go on to tell us that our resistance is irrational or a misunderstanding. Some “experts” will even tell us that the reason we struggle against change is that all the change we see makes us exhausted. But it is not resistance, and it is not exhaustion that makes us resist change. Quite simply, we are stuck. 

Getting stuck is a biological response to change that is rarely explored and even more rarely acknowledged in business and work. We build entire algorithms, schema, or mental models around how to navigate our worlds that are deeply wired into our brains. When a change comes along, it requires us to rewire these algorithms. And we don’t want to. We get stuck because our brains get attached to the way things are today.

MEL: The 3 components of our limbic system

More specifically, we have a part of our brain known as the limbic system that is responsible for writing these algorithms. It writes the code not in a computer’s zeros and ones, but rather in three key subcomponents — memory, emotion, and learning.  We call this MEL. Every time we learn something new, experience a strong emotion, or create a lasting memory, we develop a new piece of MEL that stays with us and triggers again in a similar situation.

MEL is certainly helpful for navigating the physical world. For instance, it helps us drive to work every day, recognize certain faces, and even read emotions. It is even useful for building connections among our peers, colleagues, and family members. We use the same process to write positive (and sometimes negative) memories into MEL along with the associated emotions to remind us how to respond to certain people that we love and maybe even those we dislike. We also use MEL to build affinities for organizations. It is the core of organizational culture, as we take the positive emotions felt by certain behaviors in an organization and replicate them throughout the organization. These are all positive ways we build and develop MEL for life. 

The challenge of getting unstuck

The downside is that MEL does not easily adapt. People feel uncertainty about the future because changes directly challenge MEL. As we consider something new, the positive emotions of the past are replaced with concern, fear, and even anxiety. These negative emotions manifest themselves in the workplace in the form of low morale, reduced motivation, and a decline in productivity (among others).  Employees shut down and get stuck. In turn, organizations get stuck as well.

So, how do we help people get unstuck? Three simple actions:

1. Start where people start

 In order to re-code MEL (memories, emotions, and learning), you can’t start with data, logic, and strategy. As important as it is for any person to ultimately understand the business need for a change, it’s far more compelling and effective to meet them where they start: with memories, emotions, and learning.  This means acknowledging and embracing the past — positive and negative — as part of developing a change initiative. Use effective storytelling, and create connection among people and the organization to drive change rather than simply rely on incentives. 

2. Acknowledge uncertainty

The uncertain feeling people experience in the fact of change is really a feeling of loss. Their MEL is challenged by something new, and it registers as a loss. Having an empathetic response means acknowledging this loss and helping people move through the change process with support. Leaders need to accept that change is hard, explain why it is hard for them as well, and share the pain of change with their team members. 

3. Re-writeMEL

The only way for people to truly become unstuck is to create new memories with positive emotions around a change. This can be encouraged through learning to help people feel what life will be like in a coming change. Strong communications can help build new emotional connections, and new positive memories can be developed through reward systems and incentives that help people feel appreciated and valued. 

Organizations are inundated with change: it’s become such a part of the way business is done lately that it can seem like the new normal. Viewing change as just part of the working world, however, can set an organization up for failure — as its people shut down facing the prospect of whatever comes next. Understanding the dynamics of MEL, and using empathy and communication, can help bring your team around. And once a team has embraced and prevailed through change, it has that skill as part of its own toolkit. Adapting to change is far less daunting when you’ve gone through it once already.

Everyone wants to find success in their life and career. The question is how to get there.

A few years ago, Google created Project Oxygen with the purpose of discovering what makes someone a good manager—or determining if managers even matter for success. Team members went to work gathering and analyzing data and came up with a definite conclusion: Not only do managers matter a lot, but the best ones display a consistent set of eight traits. Can you guess what was number one on the list— the most important quality successful managers should have? First and foremost, good managers are good coaches.

Of course that shouldn’t come as a surprise. The importance of good coaching has been studied and written about for some time now. It can help people see themselves and their experiences more clearly. It can help them respond to situations more effectively. It can help them expand their knowledge and capabilities. It can help them define what they need to do and stay on track as they do it. In short, good coaching can help them reach more of their potential and become the best they can be.

Yet, despite all the known benefits, good coaching doesn’t seem to be practiced all that much. Following up on his identification of six defining leadership styles, Daniel Goleman, psychologist and author of the bestselling Emotional Intelligence, wrote that even though coaching has been shown to improve results, “the coaching style is used least often [among the six leadership styles] in our high-pressure economy.”

Where does that leave all the people out there in need of a good coach?

The need is clear. How many times have we heard how disengaged people are at work? The Gallup numbers come out every year and they never seem to budge all that much. According to Gallup’s recent State of the Global Workplace report, 85% of employees are not engaged, or worse, are actively disengaged at work. That means there are a lot of people out there who just don’t like their jobs, despite the fact that they spend at least a quarter of their time at work.

Americans are also starting new businesses at the fastest rate in more than a decade, and they are opting for freelance or gig work more and more often. And they are increasingly working from home, which means they are likely without a manager or mentor on hand to act as their coach. People in these kinds of situations often don’t have options for personal coaching without paying high prices for it. Whether you work for yourself or for someone else, the market is becoming increasingly competitive and dynamic—if you don’t know how to develop yourself and your skills, you will fall behind.

So what are people who want to grow and achieve more supposed to do? Are they supposed to sit around and hope that their organizations get with the program? Are they supposed to wait and see if their bosses develop the coaching skills they need to succeed? And what about all the people who are self-employed, have lost a job, are transitioning to new careers, or retiring? It’s often in those transitional moments, whether professional or personal (i.e., moving to a new town, deciding whether to start a family, recovering from grief or illness) when people need coaching the most. But so often those are the moments when we end up having to figure things out on our own. Where are people who find themselves in these kinds of situations supposed to find the coaching help they could so sorely use?

As important as coaches are, there just aren’t enough good ones to go around—in fact, there’s a real coaching deficit out there. And the coaches who do exist are often far too expensive and in too high demand for most people to consider hiring their own. But that doesn’t mean you should go without. Your life is too important to leave your personal growth and professional development up to chance. It’s time to take the responsibility for coaching into your own hands and give yourself what you need to succeed, grow, and lead a more fulfilling life. It’s time to take charge of you and learn how to coach yourself.

There is no doubt that there are several leaders out there with the good intention of ensuring all their people are treated equitably, equally, and fairly. Many, moved by emotion and compassion and fuelled by reported statistics, stories of unfairness and racism, make declarations and take steps to drive positive change. These actions include establishing employee resource groups (ERGs), creating forums to share lived experiences, introducing reverse mentoring initiatives, and appointing heads of inclusion and similar.  

However, change remains slow, and while there may be many reasons for this, there are some that lie in the gift of the leader. Here are 10 of them for your consideration. 

1. Not investing enough time in your own self-awareness 

Physician first heal thyself is a saying that works well in this context. Self-understanding and awareness are something that leaders spend less time on than they should, and this makes it difficult to genuinely appreciate the unconscious bias that you have as individuals. Every adult human being is a product of background experiences, parental influence, culture, and so much more. Understanding how these things influence how you relate to other people – particularly people who are different from you – is a step towards tackling racial bias. 

2. Not proactively diversifying your own team of reports 

As a child, my mother often used an expression to demonstrate the importance of first making your own changes before asking others to do the same. That expression is “charity begins at home.” Many leaders who profess to ensure that racism and racial bias are stamped out are likely to have a racially undiverse team of reports. 

Suppose your organization is low on racial diversity. In that case, it minimizes your ability to genuinely appreciate the challenges of what can and must be done in your area of influence to ensure lasting change. Work to bring racial diversity into your team and organization. Set meaningful targets for yourself and your people. Work with your People and HR Team to have an effective onboarding process for all– one tailored to each individual’s needs – and over time, there will be a step towards consistent progress for all. 

3. Not proactively diversifying your HR Teams

HR is the critical partner to leaders in the world of work for your people. It is a leadership profession and is accountable for the well-being and welfare of all the people in the organization. However, the profession which should be taking a leadership role and partnering with the other leaders in the organization is itself not racially diverse, which puts it on the backfoot in its ability to effectively tackle and support colleagues in tackling racial bias. While the governing bodies for the profession provide insightful reports into the extent of the challenge, such as this one from SHRM, there is more to do within the body of the profession itself. If you are not racially diverse yourself, it is difficult to genuinely appreciate the depth of the problem. For example, the equivalent of SHRM in the UK – the CIPD, wrote in its  CIPD Race Inclusion Report that 88% of CIPD members identify as white and less than 10% of HR professionals in the workplace are from a different race to the majority. When you get to more senior levels, the percentage is lesser still, with a small number of Chief People Officers and Chief Talent officers being from a race other than white. 

4. Not going beyond a tick in the box

Many leaders put their entire teams and organizations through unconscious bias training, which can be applauded, especially if done from a place of care. However, the mistake is believing that once training is done, the problem is solved. Eliminating bias will not come from training alone. To take a step towards eradication, adequate resources should be invested in a root and branch review of every people process. Leaders and team members should understand the consequences of not adopting the behaviors required to enable inclusion. In the same spirit, excellent behavior and role models should be called out and recognized.  

5. Appointing a Chief Diversity Officer or Head of Inclusion without support

One way business leaders have demonstrated their stance against racial bias is the appointment at a senior level of a Chief Diversity Officer or Head of Inclusion. This is great as it shows a point of contact and a high level of accountability. The mistake, however, is that several are not provided with the resources required to execute the responsibilities of the job successfully. 

Sometimes they are tucked underneath an HR leadership team with little or no understanding of what it takes to eradicate bias. Therefore, if you appoint a leader into the critical role of leading the diversity and inclusion function in your organization, have them report into the highest level possible, give them a budget that can help make a difference and equip them with the mandate to drive change up and down the organization.

6. Allow denial from others 

Allowing others to deny the existence of racism is a mistake made in some organizations. Racism in the workplace still exists worldwide, as is highlighted in this HBR article. In fact, when there is stated denial, this can be evidence of racism, as highlighted in this article and talk at the University of Rochester, USA. This states that denial is the very heartbeat of racism. When you as a leader act like racial bias is a myth and at the same time allow your leaders and colleagues to do the same, you will enable it to fester. As leaders, you have a duty, a responsibility, and accountability to role model the behaviors that show there is no room in your presence, your team, and indeed your organization for any racial bias. It is unacceptable and undermines the dignity of another human being. Everyone, without exception, has a right to belong and be respected in the workplace. 

7. A reluctance to take a risk

To effectively tackle racial bias in the workplace, there must be a willingness to try the unknown and the unfamiliar. Leaders must role model this. Yet one of the things that leaders get wrong is an unwillingness to take a risk or do something that would be uncomfortable. As leaders, you must be willing to sacrifice your comfort for the team’s greater good. It means being willing to work with that little-known supplier, to challenge your colleagues and yourself on your hiring decisions. It means being willing to back those in the minority, calling for more stretching targets when it comes to race, even though you may be unpopular for doing so. When you choose to be the type of leader who believes that tackling racial bias is the right thing to do, progress can and will be made. Glassdoor recognizes companies who do this. 

8. Acting like all races are the same!

No two people are the same even if they look and sound similar and, even more so, no two races are the same. Therefore, behaving like they are all the same is a mistake. 

Leadership is relational, and while it is essential to ensure you sanction initiatives that give all your people a voice and way of speaking up and speaking out, it is also vital to ensure that there are initiatives in place to address the specific needs of different racial groups. Here in the UK, it is encouraging to learn that the expression BAME is becoming unpopular as it may prevent the real issues and needs of diverse communities of talent from being met, as is illustrated in this BBC report.   

9. Not making the pursuit of love-based leadership a priority 

Love is the unconditional acceptance of all of who I am, warts and all, and the unconditional acceptance of another person warts and all. Black history month presents an opportunity for all leaders and teams to genuinely explore the opportunity and the difference that a love-based culture and leadership would make in their organization. 

If inclusion enables diversity, then love is fundamental to inclusion. In a world and workplace where the pursuit of inclusion is critical, eradicating racial bias must be a prerequisite. When a leader operates from a place of love, they are willing to listen not only to the lived negative experiences of the black talent – and talent with different racial backgrounds – in an organization but a willingness to elicit and act on what can be done to change those experiences into positive ones. 

It is a willingness to put personal, leadership, and career development interventions into place and underpin these with measurable goals. 

10. See racial bias problems as part of your self-mastery as a leader

For the individual leader, love-based leadership is the pursuit of self-mastery – to be the best self possible. You as a leader must do this knowing that the impact you could generate through role modeling this and encouraging it through your teams and organization will result in a workplace culture where everyone without exception feels like they belong. Tackling racial bias then becomes the responsibility and accountability of all. 

Therefore, for every leader who reads this article, if you choose to pursue one thing in your quest to genuinely tackle racial bias, pursue the active presence of Love – that unconditional acceptance of self and others – in the workplace. It is the key that unlocks inclusion and diversity and ultimately eradicates the presence of racial bias and, indeed, any other bias. 

The past year has seen assaults on democracy, COVID-19 variants, Juneteenth celebrations, Squid Games, congressional deadlock, and the beginnings of the Great Resignation.

It was a year in which we debated coups and conspiracies, vaccine safety and efficacy, critical race theory, the causes of burnout, and why so many people want to leave their jobs en masse for the first time in living memory. Unfortunately, four leadership proficiencies are missing from the discussion right now that must be prioritized for 2022 (and beyond), which will allow us to turn the page on the past two tumultuous years.

One of the most asked questions today is: What can leaders do about disengaged employees leaving companies for greener (or different) pastures? The numbers are discouraging, with 95% of employees thinking of leaving their current employer according to a recent Monster.com survey.  And according to The 2021 People Management Report by The Predictive Index, “63% of those with a lousy manager are thinking of leaving within the next 12 months.” On top of these record numbers, inflation is rising, gas prices are out of control, and relief packages from the pandemic are expiring. At the same time, COVID-19 variants continue to mutate and increase across the globe. 

In these challenging moments, CEOs, founders, and managers need to turn to positive psychology and strengths-based leadership — concepts that have a record of creating conditions for success. 

 It’s time to tune in, listen, and validate the messages that these new trends are delivering. Employees in this buyer’s market prioritize purpose over paychecks, development over ego, coaching over bossing, ongoing conversations over annual reviews, growing their strengths instead of obsessing over weaknesses, and a work-life integration over workaholism. Here are the four key leadership attributes that can transform your workplace and re-engage employees.

Trust

According to Gallup, “Employees who trust their leadership are twice as likely to say they will be with their company one year from now.” Trust is all about authenticity, reliability, credibility, and interest in another person’s success and development while minimizing one’s own self-orientation. Leaders can gain, repair, and increase trust among employees by being transparent about difficulties and not cutting corners or taking shortcuts. Above all, seek to help your people thrive despite a negative environment.

Compassion

Compassion revolves around positivity – meaning that a leader will help uplift everyone in their care. Compassionate leaders augment their positive impact by being exceptionally calm and courteous, making others feel good, and communicating regularly that they care. They acknowledge good performance early and often and listen to others describe their goals and ambitions. A Gallup survey found that “51% of employees would change jobs for one that offered them flextime and 37% would do the same for a job that offered them the ability to work from anywhere (at least part of the time). The future of work will most likely be more employees working remotely.” Leaders with a strong ability to adapt to this new reality and show compassion will improve employees’ performance and increase their value in the workplace.

Stability

Stability means a leader’s ability to create a culture of security, strength, support, and peace. People need to know their jobs are safe — if indeed they are — but they also crave knowledge about an organization’s future. Research shows that only 22% of employees strongly agree that their leaders have a clear direction for the organization – and that was before the pandemic. There can be no stability without radical candor, which includes confronting the brutal facts of a given situation and then providing the steps to recovery with clear expectations for everyone involved. It’s always good practice to keep employees in the loop on their performance, good or bad, because people need and deserve to know what they’re up against. Besides, challenging times bring people together, and that’s what influential leaders have used over centuries to uplift, innovate, and inspire. 

Hope

Hope is a leader’s ability to give others a sense of direction, faith, and guidance, making them enthusiastic about the achievable future. According to Gallup, “Hope is significant because employees who strongly agree that their leader makes them feel enthusiastic about the future are 69 times more likely to be engaged in their work compared with employees who disagree with that statement.” 

Enthusiasm is contagious, and leaders who know how to wield this force are tremendously influential, well-liked, and successful. Upping your enthusiasm as a leader requires you to believe in what you are saying to others. If you don’t buy it yourself, it will be impossible to sell it to others. It requires you to do the hard work of aligning your team on critical success factors, milestones, contingencies, and impact measures that will be tracked along your journey to success.

There is no business without people, and in today’s uncertain climate, there will be no people to lead without these four vital capabilities. Now is the time to invest in them or risk the continued fallout of employee disengagement in a buyer’s market.

Before the pandemic, Zoom fatigue was a concept unfamiliar to the broad public. Some might argue that it didn’t yet exist. Solutions to it certainly did not.

As we’ve sought to adapt to the reality of the new communication that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought about, most of 2020 was a struggle to simply survive and communicate at a functional level. Now, having gotten through that period of figuring out the functionality of video conferencing, we have a new focus — how to boost the quality of our virtual communication.  

Zoom fatigue is a symptom that our virtual communication demands quality improvement. Focusing on quality is the next communication evolution required in our changing business environment with less emphasis on functionality.   

In any rapidly changing environment, adaptability is key to survival. As Charles Darwin famously said, “It is not the strongest of species that survive, it is the ones most adaptable to change.” Today this is as true for the post-pandemic business world as it was in the mid-1800s when Darwin made his observation of the animal kingdom.  

The quality of communication gives companies and individuals a competitive advantage. We can boost our personal credibility and our company’s brand by learning effective communication skills and how to apply them in a virtual environment. These skills make us more employable and better able to pitch for our next client, promotion, or pay rise.  

In today’s new virtual communication world, skilled communication requires what communications expert Patti Sanchez of Duarte Inc. calls “performative effort.” This includes using our body language and hands more effectively.   

Visual engagement of an audience — virtual or real life — has always been important. Body language experts extol frequent hand gestures ineffectively putting across one’s message. Research on the frequency of hand gestures among the top TED Talk presenters showed they used on average 25 gestures per minute versus the bottom-rated presenters. The latter employed an average of 14 gestures per minute. More focused gesturing is the evolution we need to be more effective virtual communicators.  

In my own research, I’ve not only studied the frequency of gestures but the types of gestures top communicators use and what meaning they convey. For example, in Barak Obama’s first inauguration address, he used a confidence gesture of a clasped fist with the thumb on top, “the Thumb of Power,” 93 times. Joe Biden used the downward chop gesture 78 times in his inauguration address. Christine Lagarde, the former head of the IMF and currently the head of the European Central Bank, used six hand chops, nine thumbs of power gestures, and a downward point — all in just 30 seconds! — to firmly state her position in a speech on climate change. 

Emphasizing our words through gestures is precisely what we need to do to motivate people in our virtual communication and counteract Zoom fatigue. 

Here are some tips for better virtual communication: 

1. Make sure hand gestures can be seen on screen. 

Gesturing out of shot is a gesture wasted — the audience can’t see it. It takes a conscious effort to lift our hands up to be visible on screen in a virtual meeting. Some people are still gesturing as if they’re having face-to-face conversations, yet their hands are held too low to appear on the screen.  

2. Greet meeting attendees with an “eyebrow flash.” 

When we greet people we haven’t seen for some time, we signal that we’re pleased to see them by raising our eyebrows, smiling, and throwing our arms open to show our eagerness to embrace them. We can see this behavior beautifully played out at airport arrival gates. On a Zoom call, we can use the eyebrow flash and smile. This combination lets people know that we’re pleased to see and reconnect with them. It sets a positive first impression for any virtual meeting or communication. 

3. Invite others’ input with an open palm. 

Extending an open palm towards the screen shows that we invite ideas and contributions. This clear visual signal during an interactive meeting can be used to show that we’ve completed our presentation and are ready to hear others’ feedback and ideas. 

4. Show conviction with the heart clasp.

Bringing the right hand across the chest to cover the heart is a gesture we associate with passion and conviction. When wishing to communicate our commitment to an idea or statement, placing our right hand over our heart will demonstrate that. 

As many of us struggle with capturing the same energy and impact in virtual presentations as we have from in-person presentations, making a greater performative effort will allow our audiences to connect and engage with our message. Making sure to bring our hands up into view and using a wide range of gestures will ensure our communication efforts are more visually engaging and effective.