Many people think that influence is just for sales and marketing people. But actually if you’re a CFO or a procurement director, an in-house attorney or an engineer, you need influence to advance your career, to sell your ideas and to advocate for your team.

Influence is a process and not an event. And influence doesn’t come from the brilliance of your ideas. Influence comes from your ability to create a strong personal brand and to build a network of advocates around you.

Create a strong personal brand:

We all know what a personal brand is. It’s how you are known; your reputation. It’s what people think about when they think about you.

Having a strong personal brand is essential to influence. When people know they can count on you, know what you stand for, they are more likely to listen to you and “vote” for your ideas.

One of my clients found that out over the period of the year I coached him. Chris was the Vice President of finance for a large public tech company. The company did not have a consistent approach to budgeting, leading to confusion in how much each department could spend and a lot of work rationalizing budgets around the company. Chris wanted to institute some streamlined, consistent processes to improve the system and save money for the company.

When he tried to get buy-in for this new process, however, he got a wake up call. Key people did not support his idea. When I started coaching him, I talk to the people around him to get feedback for him. I found out that he was seen as smart, but that people believed he focused on the little things and not larger strategic issues. “Smart but tactical” was his brand. Chris was shocked to hear this, but after digesting it he decided to dig in and work on his brand.

Together we created a focused plan to build Chris’s brand as “strategic.” Before meetings he spent time thinking about the topic of the meeting and how he could add a strategic insight. He spent more time with a vice president of strategy and a vice president of corporate development to broaden his view. And he listened carefully to the CFO to see what she determined to be “strategic.”

After about eight months I went back to the people around Chris and asked them what changes they had seen in him. Unanimously they saw him as much more strategic, and also positive which was an interesting side benefit. With this stronger brand as background, Chris positioned his idea as strategic and got buy-in very quickly to do a pilot. The process got rolled out fully a year later, and Chris got promoted.

Top tip to build your brand:

Ask yourself what you want to be known for. Remember that if you are seeking to move up in your career you want to be known for your “leadership” and “executive” brand, not just your technical expertise.

Enhance your network:

A key part of having an effective brand is that the right people know about you. The “right” people are the ones who can help you get things done in your company.

The right people are all around you. It’s important for you to be connected to the people above you in the organization structure because they can greenlight projects for you. Strong connections with your peers — especially cross-functionally — are essential because they are the ones who help you conceive of and implement large-scale cross-functional projects. And don’t ignore the people who report in to you and their peers. They are the ones who will tell you what’s really going on and work extra hard to make you successful if you have the right relationship.

My client Barbara — the Chief Audit Officer of a public pharmaceutical company — saw that she needed to build her network when she was not invited to key meetings on potential acquisitions. She was frustrated by this, of course. But after we talked it through she saw that people got invited to these meetings based on their relationship with the Chief Counsel — someone she had a difficult relationship with — and their head of corporate development — someone she didn’t know at all.

Here are few facts: Barbara really should be in those meetings as a function of her job. And it’s not fair that she was excluded because she didn’t know the right people. And yet, that’s exactly what was happening. Yes, life is not fair, and that goes double for corporate life.

I coached Barbara to make friends with reality and improve her relationship with the Chief Counsel as well as get to know the had of corporate development. She did. Within one year (these things don’t happen overnight) she was invited to meetings related to acquisitions. As a side benefit she got to know many more people at the company and could then give her team much more interesting work. Building your network has many rewards.

Top tip to enhance your network:

Identify the 3–5 most important people you need to influence. Make a plan to build your relationship with them. What do you know about them already personally and professionally that will help you? Then repeat with some more people.

Originally published at https://www.forbes.com.

To Build Your Career Success, Build Your Influence. Here’s How. was originally published in Thrive Global on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For eighteen days, we all watched the unfolding attempts to rescue the “Wild Boar” soccer team out of that cave in Thailand. Now that we’re basking in the happy ending — all the kids and their coach got out — I’ve been reflecting that the mission to save them holds lessons for us as entrepreneurs.

In many ways, this rescue was a lesson in key principles for a startup. There was a problem that had to get solved, and the people involved had to work together to quickly invent ways to solve it. It took dozens of divers and hundreds of volunteers from over thirty countries to make it happen.

What are the elements that brought people together around this cause, and what can entrepreneurs learn from this mission to help drive their business and teams forward? Start with these five lessons:

1. Orient around purpose.

The kids were stranded in the cave. If nothing was done they would starve or run out of oxygen. The purpose of this mission was unmistakable.

A company’s purpose lays out its reason for being. It connects employees and customers to a mission above and beyond the mechanics of the business. Purpose-driven environments galvanize teams. A clear and inspiring purpose drives more employee engagement, creativity and discretionary effort.

And purpose leads to profit: Companies with a clear and higher purpose distinguish themselves from their competitors. Ultimately, these companies do better financially over the long term.

What you should do: Take a step back and define your “why.” How do you want to make a positive impact? What’s your company doing to drive that positive impact? This can sometimes feel abstract. Get your colleagues involved. How do they perceive the higher purpose of your company?

2. Ensure clear goals.

The goal of this mission was clear: Get all of the kids and the coach out of the cave. There was no ambiguity. The standard by which success was measured wasn’t in question.

What you should do: With startups, the goals aren’t always clear. Don’t berate yourself when you’re not 100 percent sure. Ask yourself and your team: What does “done” look like? That’ll bring clarity and structure.

3. Create sense of urgency.

The time constraints led to a sense of urgency. Oxygen was running short. Any number of natural disasters, including the likelihood of more rain flooding the area the kids were sheltering in. There was no time to waste.

A sense of urgency puts speed and weight behind people’s actions. When you don’t have sense of urgency you sometimes see your team have a lackadaisical about bringing a project to closure. A sense of urgency electrifies the team and gets everyone working with intention and energy.

What you should do: Specific timelines drive a sense of urgency. Make sure your projects have a concrete schedule and that everybody knows about it.

4. Make tradeoffs.

Throughout the mission, the rescuers had to make tradeoffs. They had to balance the need to move quickly to get the boys out and the expectation to maintain adequate safety standards. They had to balance their life-saving equipment with the need to adapt to small spaces and dynamics conditions.

All businesses have to make tradeoffs all the time. Company-building is about series of decisions you have to make with imperfect information and not enough time or money. Sometimes, rather than choosing the best option, you have to choose the least bad option.

What you can do: Accept that tradeoffs are always necessary. Consistent processes versus a one-off need to please a customer. Speed versus quality. Pick the most important thing to emphasize. That will help you structure the tradeoffs you need to make.

5. Use people’s talents.

Hundreds of volunteers contributed to the rescue effort. Divers rescued the boys in the caves. Leaders and politicians coordinated the efforts and communicated with the world and families. A group of volunteers from the south — known for their skill in climbing mountains to gather bird’s nests for bird’s nest soup — came to view the jungle from above to see if they could find a shaft that might be used the pull the boys out.

Everyone found a role to play that coordinated with their unique talents.

Companies are most successful when they find people’s unique skills and talents and put them in position them to use those gifts. One of the best things you can do is create an environment where employees are able to optimize their time and skill-set.

What you can do: Find out what your employees are best at, and find ways to make sure they can contribute using those skills. Make that a mandate for all of your managers and watch how the employees in your company come to life.

Published on: Jul 11, 2018

Originally published at www.inc.com on July 11, 2018.

The 5 Lessons Every Entrepreneur Should Learn From the Dramatic Thai Cave Rescue was originally published in Thrive Global on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Every startup reaches the point where they have learned, they have hired, they have structured. They stop tinkering with their “MVP” and start trying to get customers. They are ready to get things done. At that point these companies have to get excellent at execution.

But achieving this rigorous execution requires a mindset shift. And a new way of thinking requires asking different questions. So here, three questions for executives to up their skills in leading operational excellence:

1. What did we decide?

It’s amazing how a group of people will be in the same meeting, participate in the same discussion, but have a very different take on what happened in that meeting.

To make sure everyone is in sync, leave 10 minutes at the end of the meeting and ask, “What did we decide?” You might even grab a marker and go to the whiteboard to capture what people say.

I was once in a Leadership Team meeting where I insisted we go around the room and ask each of the six executives “What did we decide?” Two of them thought that nothing had been decided — they were waiting for more information. The CEO thought he had been clear that a certain strategic direction had been agreed to and he wanted the other executives to communicate this to their functional teams. The rest of the leaders thought that decision was clear but that the CEO was going to communicate it to the entire company, not expect the executives to communicate to their teams.

These are smart people. Communication is nuanced and tricky. Do yourself a favor and make sure — by asking people — what decisions they think came out of this meeting.

2. Who will do what by when?

Getting aligned about what you decided is a necessary but not sufficient step in driving operational excellence. Once you sort out and agree on what got decided, you must look at next steps, an owner, and a deadline.

In the best meetings there is rich, heated debate which brings data, context, and different points of view together. Finally the team lands on a decision. Executives agree on the next vertical to pursue, for example, or that the company needs to update its terms and conditions. There can be such a feeling of victory in that moment that people forget about actually putting the decision into place.

That’s the cue for someone — the CEO or someone else — to ensure the decision has an owner and the owner has a next step and a deadline. This simple question clarifies who that is and when that is, or highlights that this is not yet clear. Decisions are great, but owners, action plans and timelines make them real.

3. What does done look like?

Now that the team knows what they’re doing, and key tasks have a mini action plan and an owner, it’s helpful to get the team oriented on completion. Different people have a very different take on what something looks like when it’s complete.

A Chief Product Officer I coached found this out with his product team. He was working hard, pinch-hitting for a missing Chief Marketing Officer and getting involved in customer service. Because he was so stretched he didn’t make sure his product leads were clear on their deliverables (hey, it happens!)

When the end of the quarter came he got a nasty surprise when half of his product leads submitted plans, which were far from done. They had not consulted with their business counterparts; they had not gone through a prioritization process; they had other major gaps. The product leads had simply had a different understanding of what they were supposed to produce, and the result was confusion and slipped deadlines. Do not let this happen to you! Make sure everyone is clear on what done looks like, and do a mid-point check in while you’re at it to make sure everyone is on track with high stakes projects.

Start asking these questions and insist on getting answers that make sense to you. That way you’ll be well-equipped to drive operational excellence.

Originally published at labs.openviewpartners.com on May 2, 2018.

When a founder starts a venture the company is comprised of the founder/co-founders, their laptops, and often a lot of coffee. After putting in time and energy on their own, it’s a beautiful day when they finally raise their first round of funding. They can finally go out and build what they want to and gain traction.

Of course at that point, it’s time to hire. And, at some point most founders find themselves hiring their friends.

And why wouldn’t’ they hire their friends? Founders are talented, driven people who are often surrounded by talented driven friends. These friends have all built trust and loyalty over the years — there’s nothing like pulling an all-nighter with someone to get an A on that paper to test drive and work ethic.

Founders are often young and don’t have extensive work experience. Their networks are in many ways limited to the people they went to school with and perhaps met at their first jobs. It makes sense that founders will draw from that network of friends to build their startup.

And trust and rapport goes both ways. When founders start companies initially they are scrambling for resources and people. Friends of founders are the ones who will trust them, who will work for less than market value, and who will dive into the work with a high degree of intensity and loyalty.

When this works, it really works. One founder I coach hired one of his best friends from college as the first engineer. This individual — let’s call him Sam — was and still is one of the best, high performing, hard-working employees in the company. Sam built the first version of the product more or less on his own. He mentored and indoctrinated new engineers into the company and then formally took over as head of engineering.

When the company got bigger and landed it’s Series B funding, it was Sam who first realized he was not equipped to scale the engineering team. He brought that up to his friend, the CEO, and played an active role in recruiting and hiring the company’s first VP of Engineering. Now Sam is happily working for that executive.

That is a happy ending story. More often than not, though, hiring friends brings some problems and difficult moments. I have been called upon many times to coach founders through difficult conversations with their employee-friends and, hardest of all, coaching them in how to fire their friends.

So how can founders try to mitigate these risks before they happen?

1. Only hire friends if you would hire them anyway.

This sounds obvious but as founders vigorously look for talent they tend to lean towards people they feel most comfortable with. In the early stage especially there is a dearth of people and a lot of work to do. Sometimes founders feel frantic — almost desperate — to get people on board.

This is a lot of pressure. Founders want to move quickly. And founders are often not experienced hirers. This is a perfect storm to hire friends quickly into roles they aren’t suited for and assume they will figure it out.

Before you hire anyone create a written job description. Get specific about what you want this person to do and how you will measure her. Interview all candidates — including and especially your friend — using this job description. You’ll get a better outcome all around if you are structured about hiring.

2. Talk frankly with your friends when you hire them.

Make sure you are clear the scope of the role and talk through performance metrics. If your start up is really early stage you may not know how you will look at performance. That’s OK, perhaps you and your employee-friend will figure that out as you move forward; if so that’s the right discussion to have.

Talk about values and purpose and your expectations of them. Discuss the risks and each of your concerns about your friendship versus work. Have a “worst case scenario” discussion at least once and maybe more than once if you can stomach it.

If you have these conversations early on and approach the topic directly, you are much more likely to be able to have tough conversations with your friends-employees when you need to. Ultimately this will save a lot of time and energy.

3. Manage using performance metrics.

CEOs should measure their employees using performance metrics — that’s a statement that is almost too obvious to write. When you’re in the trenches of a startup, however, it’s very normal for CEOs to lose sight of the need to establish clear performance metrics for all of their executives. Then it is hard to hold them accountable when you didn’t have an initial agreement on what to hold them accountable to.

Published on: Apr 23, 2018

Originally published at www.inc.com on April 23, 2018.

Before You Hire Your Friends, Do These 3 Things was originally published in Thrive Global on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When a founder starts a venture the company is comprised of the founder/co-founders, their laptops, and often a lot of coffee. After putting in time and energy on their own, it’s a beautiful day when they finally raise their first round of funding. They can finally go out and build what they want to and gain traction.

Of course at that point, it’s time to hire. And, at some point most founders find themselves hiring their friends.

And why wouldn’t’ they hire their friends? Founders are talented, driven people who are often surrounded by talented driven friends. These friends have all built trust and loyalty over the years — there’s nothing like pulling an all-nighter with someone to get an A on that paper to test drive and work ethic.

Founders are often young and don’t have extensive work experience. Their networks are in many ways limited to the people they went to school with and perhaps met at their first jobs. It makes sense that founders will draw from that network of friends to build their startup.

And trust and rapport goes both ways. When founders start companies initially they are scrambling for resources and people. Friends of founders are the ones who will trust them, who will work for less than market value, and who will dive into the work with a high degree of intensity and loyalty.

When this works, it really works. One founder I coach hired one of his best friends from college as the first engineer. This individual — let’s call him Sam — was and still is one of the best, high performing, hard-working employees in the company. Sam built the first version of the product more or less on his own. He mentored and indoctrinated new engineers into the company and then formally took over as head of engineering.

When the company got bigger and landed it’s Series B funding, it was Sam who first realized he was not equipped to scale the engineering team. He brought that up to his friend, the CEO, and played an active role in recruiting and hiring the company’s first VP of Engineering. Now Sam is happily working for that executive.

That is a happy ending story. More often than not, though, hiring friends brings some problems and difficult moments. I have been called upon many times to coach founders through difficult conversations with their employee-friends and, hardest of all, coaching them in how to fire their friends.

So how can founders try to mitigate these risks before they happen?

1. Only hire friends if you would hire them anyway.

This sounds obvious but as founders vigorously look for talent they tend to lean towards people they feel most comfortable with. In the early stage especially there is a dearth of people and a lot of work to do. Sometimes founders feel frantic — almost desperate — to get people on board.

This is a lot of pressure. Founders want to move quickly. And founders are often not experienced hirers. This is a perfect storm to hire friends quickly into roles they aren’t suited for and assume they will figure it out.

Before you hire anyone create a written job description. Get specific about what you want this person to do and how you will measure her. Interview all candidates — including and especially your friend — using this job description. You’ll get a better outcome all around if you are structured about hiring.

2. Talk frankly with your friends when you hire them.

Make sure you are clear the scope of the role and talk through performance metrics. If your start up is really early stage you may not know how you will look at performance. That’s OK, perhaps you and your employee-friend will figure that out as you move forward; if so that’s the right discussion to have.

Talk about values and purpose and your expectations of them. Discuss the risks and each of your concerns about your friendship versus work. Have a “worst case scenario” discussion at least once and maybe more than once if you can stomach it.

If you have these conversations early on and approach the topic directly, you are much more likely to be able to have tough conversations with your friends-employees when you need to. Ultimately this will save a lot of time and energy.

3. Manage using performance metrics.

CEOs should measure their employees using performance metrics — that’s a statement that is almost too obvious to write. When you’re in the trenches of a startup, however, it’s very normal for CEOs to lose sight of the need to establish clear performance metrics for all of their executives. Then it is hard to hold them accountable when you didn’t have an initial agreement on what to hold them accountable to.

Published on: Apr 23, 2018

Originally published at www.inc.com on April 23, 2018.

“I’m weird,” announced Denise Shull as she sat down with me for our chat. “Popular psychology is focused on what you do — your behavior — and on being positive. I am focused on how you feel — consciously, but even more importantly unconsciously — and on the negative, on your fears and frustrations.”

Denise Shull, whom I must say for the record is charming and sane and not at all weird, is a performance coach. She works with individuals who have to make high stakes decisions in high pressure situations, specializing in working with Wall Street investment professionals and elite athletes. She is one of the inspirations for the character of Wendy Rhoades, the performance coach on Showtime’s drama BILLIONS. She is also author of the book Market Mind Games.

Shull got her start after being inspired by the work of Hyman Spotnitz, the founder of the field of Modern Psychoanalysis, who helped people cure their schizophrenia by helping them surface their unconscious rage. Shull started working with Deborah Greene Bershatsky and Charles Bershatsky, who were trained in the lineage of Spotnitz. Indeed they did help people with schizophrenia. “I was a trader,” said Shull. “And I ran a trading desk and I read all these books about psychology. And I just thought ‘well, if it can cure schizophrenia I’m sure it can help Wall Street.’”

According to Shull, feelings are the foundation of our decisions, but we don’t pay enough attention to them most of the time.

Her work is unconventional because she specifically helps people recognize unconscious anger and to become more and more aware of the entire range of their feelings. With awareness, people gain the ability to pause. And they also learn things. And in that space they can untangle their feelings and their impulses which in turn presents a more robust data set to choose which feelings to act on and which to tolerate.

Someone’s ability to take that pause is especially important in people who regularly have to make decisions in high pressure situations where “acting out” can lead to one wrong decision which has lasting negative consequences.

This plays out vividly in the markets. “What happens with portfolio managers and traders,” Shull said, “is that they get triggered by the market like it’s an annoying uncle. They know they are supposed to have decision rules, but after they get triggered they can’t follow them. Then they get upset with themselves that they can’t follow the rules they themselves set.”

Shull helps people understand the logic in why they give in to their urges, to buy a stock too quickly, for example, or sell impulsively when it takes a sudden downward turn. With all of the data about the factors in perception, a person’s seemingly destructive acts actually always make sense. This creates self-empathy and in turn more patience and more ability to follow the rules they set for themselves.

A typical example of this would be a trader at a hedge fund. Shull would help this trader recognize that he has fears and when these fears surface for him. “It’s very common for traders to identify the fear of missing out as a concern for them,” Shull said. “When something is taking off and they just feel they have to jump in or they will miss it.”

If the trader acts on that impulse he will buy that stock, triggered by the emotion of fear. That’s often a bad decision. If he pauses, identifies the fear, recognizes its effect on him, he can make a more reasoned choice. He might still buy the stock, but because he waited he can look at it more dispassionately, be patient and possibly buy it at a lower price. He might decide to get more data to be more sure about the position he wants to have. Honing that ability is the difference between average and high performance.

According to Shull, this work is effective in making better every day decisions and also in getting out of slumps, which is one of her specialties. She coaches elite athletes as well as traders and other financial professionals.

“I could help Sloane Stevens,” Shull said, referring to the tennis star who hasn’t won a match since the US Open.

When a high performing person has a slump, it is often caused by a negative feeling. When people don’t realize they are feeling angry or frustrated or sad, these feelings hover just below the surface of their consciousness and infuse into a person’s physiology. So when it is time to perform in high pressure moments, they miss the mark because there is what Shull calls “static” in their musculature. When people learn to identify those feelings, they gain insight, calm the static and are better able to focus. This gives them better outcomes.

People can use this process is in normal business circumstances. For example think about a sales executive approaching an important fee negotiation at the end of a quarter. She might have all sorts of emotions: excitement about getting the deal; anxiety about the approaching conversation; anger over a past fee negotiation; fear that she might not make her quota.

If she doesn’t separate out all these various emotions then they play out in the way she interacts with the customer. She may come across as high strung or “desperate” or aggressive, for example, even though she is very seasoned and knows that this won’t work. If she can recognize the set of emotions that are playing out by making them conscious, she can find ways to get them out of the way so she can be successful in this important meeting.

Practicing this over time makes people more effective. Shull likens it to learning to ski or play golf — it’s a physical skill. People still have the normal palette of human emotions. They just become more aware of them and more adept at getting them out of the way.

“It’s not that you don’t get mad,” Shull said. “You still get mad. You just use ‘mad’ as data. You don’t just act impulsively on mad.”

Originally published at www.forbes.com on February 5, 2018.

Meet Denise Shull, The Real Life Performance Coach From ‘Billions’ was originally published in Thrive Global on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

After the ball drops, after your team comes back from travel or hibernation after you have your first leadership team meeting, it can feel like the new year is far behind. Yes, you did some planning for the first quarter and yes you will have a kick-off meeting. To capture the real advantage of the “clean slate” that the new year gives you, here are three questions for you to consider to jump start your year.

1. What is your theme for the year?

A theme for the year is a great rallying cry for the team. Themes can also serve as yardsticks. How does the team know what to do next or which project to focus on? Does one contribute more to the theme for the year? Pick that one.

One company I work with spent last year focused on the theme of “learning.” That caused them to prioritize projects that would teach them the most. Yes, of course, they sold to customers and fixed bugs and delivered new features. But they allocated time, energy, effort and money to thinking about what they wanted to learn and designing experiments to learn that. They dedicated time to debriefing these projects so they could reap and share the learning and they consciously implemented their new knowledge.

This year their theme is “execution.” They are ready to start building stronger processes. They are structured to do what they know works rather than choose to do something off the beaten path to see what happens. This shift will determine their work plans for the year.

2. What are your “quick wins?”

One of the best ways to motivate people is to help them feel successful. A good way to do that is to set some very attainable goals that people can achieve in a short period of time. Yes, you need medium and long-term goals, of course! Medium and long-term goals are made up of short “sprint” milestones and helping the team set these up consciously will drive a winning culture.

One of the CEOs I coach is the founder of a SaaS software company. One of the company’s goals for the first 90 days of the year is to redesign and implement a new pricing model. So far so good: that’s tangible and that’s very important for the company. But it’s a bit of a slog. It will take the entire time to complete that deliverable. What is a quick win that someone can declare in the first month to help generate momentum and positive feeling?

The CEO talked with his VP of sales, and they agreed that the sales team would create two deliverables by the end of January: a top ten list of the common characteristics of their existing customers and an overview of what their competitors are doing.

These are necessary steps on the way to redesigning their pricing model. Framing them as “quick wins” helps people see where to start when they have a pretty big project which can be daunting on its own. Having a quick win to drive for helps them move fast. And when they achieve this and get acknowledgment for it they will feel good about their efforts. Also, everyone else in the company will feel good to be on the right track and part of a winning culture — pretty important given the ups and downs of start-ups.

3. How are your executives doing?

This is a good moment to think about the team. Is everyone in the right roles? Are they performing at a high level? Have you given them feedback to help them grow and perform better?

Now, let’s be honest: do you have some executives who are not performing as you’d like? Are you starting to dread interacting with one of them? Do you keep wondering if this is the right person in this role?

The first quarter of the year is a great time for startup CEOs to step back and think about their executives.

Some good actions you can take are:

• Sit down with each of your key people and have an open-ended one-on-one to start off the year. How do they feel? How do they think they are doing? How do they think the company is doing?
• Discuss expectations for the first quarter and for the year. Are they clear on your expectations of them? Do they know what success looks like? Do they have specific deliverables you have agreed to?
• What are their career aspirations? What do they need from you to better support them? What specific feedback and suggestions do they have for you?

If you have any executives who you are concerned about, resolve that this is the quarter you will handle this. Have a heart to heart with them and share your concerns. Make sure the executives understand clearly your expectations for them. See if they need more or different support from you. If you don’t think they can change, create a transition plan. Having the wrong people on the team brings everyone down.

Think through these questions and add some more if you like. Ask your leadership team what they think are some key questions and topics to help make the most of the beginning of the year. Then create a plan with dates and time frames that you all buy in to. This way you can start your beginning of the year sprint knowing you have a good structure in place.

Originally published at www.forbes.com on January 14, 2018.

Fred Kofman and Prakash Raman want you to know the revolution is here.

Kofman’s newest book The Meaning Revolution, to be released next May, advocates for a revolution of meaning and of consciousness. He lays out the need for this revolution in the workplace and how to be a part of the army leading this revolution.

Kofman and Raman focus on Executive Development at LinkedIn. Together with the broader Learning & Development team they work inside of LinkedIn to foster this revolution and to, as they say, “demystify consciousness.”

Kofman described his understanding of consciousness. “We are wired for instant gratification,” Kofman said. “As we grow more conscious we realize that what is good doesn’t always feel good; what feels good isn’t always good.

Kofman likens it to a diet. “You want to eat sweets, but to be healthy you have to eat with your mind, not with your sweet tooth, so you have to be conscious of the impact of the food on your health. You have to choose the food you eat consciously, not based on your desire for instant gratification.

“The same is true in relationships,” Raman added. “To be effective in building relationships with other people you act with consciousness, not with your impulse.” He gave an example of someone who interrupts a lot. That is their impulse, which does not lend itself to a solid relationship. Or people may shy away from having a difficult conversation out of their impulse to protect themselves from discomfort. Ultimately those impulses do not serve the larger goal of having strong, healthy relationships.

“Consciousness is nothing more than realizing you are acting to produce an effect, not just the pleasure of the immediate experience of the interaction,” said Kofman.

“Consciousness is also the desire to act in alignment with your purpose and your principles.

In using this work at LinkedIn, Raman and Kofman have seen meaningful results in leadership effectiveness, in team productivity and, ultimately, in the business results.

Some of the key principles of the work are:

Get information. “You need information,” Kofman said. “If you don’t know what to do, all the discipline in the world won’t help you.” Leaders also need to understand their roles in the bigger picture. Leaders need to have a sense of how they want to act, the tools they need to act that way, and an understanding of the context — the impact on the people around them of acting consciously or failing to act consciously.

Discipline. It’s not sufficient just to know what to do. You need to be able to do it. And you need to be able to do it in moments of high stress.

Kofman and Raman train leaders to be present and to choose behaviors intentionally in moments of stress. “We help people find their own mechanisms; to create their own habits,” Raman added. “For example if a leader has the habit of constantly interrupting and it is turning off the team, we guide the leader to find her own tool, her own habit, to be aware of this issue and to correct it.”

Critical to this is personal responsibility. “If you own the problem you can fix it,” Kofman said, “If it’s something outside of you there is nothing you can. We guide people to put themselves into the problem.”

Practice. “We look at the failure points and we ask what happened? Perhaps they couldn’t do it because they went unconscious. Maybe they forgot. Their emotions got the better of them,” Kofman said.

“We look for moments when they did the wrong thing and things blew up,” Kofman said. Once they find those cases, we role play them again. We have them practice. It’s like a sport; you have to get it in your body.”

“A large piece of what we do is to shine a mirror,” Raman added. “Being able to show them a spectrum of how the behavior hurts them, how it hurts the people around them, and how it hurts the organization is very powerful.”

Alisa Cohn is an Executive Coach and speaker who works with startup CEOs and executives and Fortune 50 executives. Find find out more and sign up for her newsletter at www.AlisaCohn.com.

Originally published at www.forbes.com on November 2, 2017.

We all know the slogans: “Fail fast and break things,” and “Ready, fire, aim.” They hold a kernel of truth, but if your really want to develop entrepreneurial thinking you need to dig deeper.

Dorie Clark has come out with a practical primer on how to become a more entrepreneurial leader. Here book from Harvard Business Review Press, Entrepreneurial You, provides an essential roadmap. (Disclosure: I was interviewed for the book.)

The book is in part fueled by her experience of getting laid off early in her career. She realized that she had to have a “portfolio approach” to her career to ensure that she would thrive.

In her book she lays out some key principles that everyone can use to think differently about their career and their business.

Develop multiple revenue streams. As Clark found out from personal experience, individuals and companies need to hedge against risk in the modern economy by developing multiple revenue streams. If you aren’t diversified and serve only a small number of clients, or only provide one product or service, you’re at serious risk of disruption. That’s not to say you should dilute your focus and do wildly different things, but if you find complementary ways to serve your existing audience (and people like them), you can garner a greater share of their wallet and make yourself indispensable.

Do not be daunted. We often overestimate the amount of competition we’re facing. In Entrepreneurial You, Clark cites a study by the researcher Josh Morgan showing that of the 200,000 podcasts operating in 2015 (the number has since grown), a mere 40% had published an episode in the previous six months. Many people get discouraged looking at the large number of aspirants, but you’re only competing against a select few. If you persist, most will wither away, leaving more opportunity for you.

You win before you launch. Execution matters, of course. But often, you win even before your launch if your strategy is solid. Clark profiles successful podcaster John Lee Dumas, who upended the podcasting world with his show, Entrepreneur on Fire. His innovation was to post new episodes daily instead of weekly. It took a much greater effort so others didn’t do that. But Dumas’ strategic bet — that more episodes would lead to more downloads, attracting sponsor interest and revenue — paid off enormously.

Align with influencers. In Entrepreneurial You, Clark shares the story of Derek Halpern, now a well-known blogger on psychology and business. Halpern had operated a celebrity gossip site prior to breaking into his new industry. Even thought he knew a great deal about online marketing and site layout, he had no contacts or credibility in his new field. To build these contacts, he approached the leading business bloggers and offered them a free critique of their websites, which he’d deliver via Skype, in order to help them optimize for conversions. If they found his advice helpful, their part of the bargain would be to post the video recording. Those recordings brought Halpern immediate credibility, because it showed him associating with, and providing advice to, leading figures in his new industry. Leveraging your skills and assets to align early on with influencers dramatically accelerates your trajectory.

Build trust through transparency. Clark tells the story of Pat Flynn, creator of the Smart Passive Income blog and podcast. Flynn was the first person to publicly share his “income reports,” detailing precise numbers about his revenues and expenses each month, so that readers could follow along and track his progress. “In order for me to really show people that this stuff actually worked, I needed to show people how much money I was making,” he told Clark. In return, that transparency has built massive amounts of trust with his readers, leading them to take his courses, purchase items through his affiliate links, and more. Flynn now regularly brings in more than $100,000 per month in income. Being open and honest with your audience has long-term benefits.

These days, everyone wants to take part in “the hustle.” To focus your efforts take some lessons from Clark’s Entrepreneurial You.

Alisa Cohn is an Executive Coach and speaker who works with startup CEOs and executives and Fortune 50 executives. Find find out more and sign up for her newsletter at www.AlisaCohn.com.

Originally published at www.forbes.com on October 3, 2017.

5 Insights To Become A More Entrepreneurial Leader was originally published in Thrive Global on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“My leadership team is driving me crazy,” Ron told me. I nodded. That happens more often than you’d think.

Ron is a 31-year-old founder/CEO of a company that provides logistics software to medium-sized businesses. The business is growing very fast and the team has done a good job managing that growth. Although young, Ron has a ton of savvy. He hired good people to help him build the company three years ago, but now that they had almost 100 employees he wasn’t sure it was the right team anymore.

Ron couldn’t quite put his finger on what was wrong but as we talked it through the picture emerged. The leadership team did not coordinate together. Each leader came to him for all decisions that crossed his or her function. The executives blamed each other when things went wrong in the business. And some of them just plain weren’t meeting their own goals.

In short, it was broken. Ron needed a framework to reconfigure it. Did he have the right people? And did he know their expectations? Did he even know his own expectations?

As a starting point I suggested we step back and check if each executive meets the criteria:

• Functional expert
• People leader
• Business leader

1. Functional Expert

This one is pretty straightforward. It’s usually a good idea to understand the field before you manage people in the field.

Ron mostly had this right, but there was some improvement to make. His head of product, Gary, had been in marketing at his prior job. Yes, he thought about product very intuitively and had a talent for user experience and design — that’s why Ron had given him the job in the first place. But he had no idea how to create a process to reliably launch new products. His people were always scrambling and not coordinated.

Gary also wasn’t technical. That by itself wouldn’t have been a problem, but he had done nothing to forge a great relationship with the VP of engineering as a more seasoned Head of Product would know to do. His attitude tended to be “those engineers work for us” and that tone trickled down to his people. If you have ever met an engineer, you might know that isn’t the best way to form a bond. So the two teams were nearly at war with each other. Too much of Ron’s time was spent calming each side down. It was draining and it stalled progress.

Ron realized that Gary had a lot of potential, but also a lot to learn. Ron’s first step was to explain his expectations that Gary rapidly learn how to create process. To do that Gary needed to make an ally of his engineering counterpart. Gary got it. He immediately went to clear the air with the VP of engineering. Luckily the VP of Engineering was happy to work together more collaboratively. He also had a lot of experience in producing product. He was able to teach Gary from the sidelines. The process came together quickly and the teams saw their leaders working well together and followed suit. Gary — who also read up a fair amount on the field and found a very experienced mentor to learn from — was well on his way to becoming more knowledgeable about product management as a function.

2. People Leadership

In the drive to hire functional experts, it is sometimes easy to forget that they need to be good at managing people in the function. They should have the qualities necessary for leadership and experience managing more and more people. They should see people leadership as an area of functional expertise in which they strive to excel. And it would be nice for them to have a philosophy about people leadership, or at least the interest in creating one, and to be self-learners in the art and science of people leadership.

There were one or two glaring holes here. Ron’s sales leader, Ben, had been a top sales professional but had never managed people at all. Just because someone is a great functional expert it doesn’t mean they are a great people leader. Far from it! And you need both. Ben tried hard, but his team was just about in a mutiny and Ron was constantly called in to save the day or give a speech to prop them up.

Ron’s head of marketing, Trisha, had managed people before, but only very junior people. She was good at explaining to her people what to do and how to do it. She was not very good at letting her team — who had a lot of experience themselves — use their own judgment. Two top people had recently quit her team so the issue was quite critical.

After talking to each of them, Ron decided to remove Ben from the head of sales role and to coach Trisha to help her develop her leadership skills. He took over sales himself for the short-term — not ideal but sometimes that’s the only way to do it. He got two high potential sales managers to stretch themselves to help him run the team — and, by the way, to work on their own people leadership skills. He gave Trish direct feedback and some ideas of how to change her style which she put into practice immediately.

3. Business Leader

The end game is the overall success of the company. That’s obvious, but in the heat of the moment with a lot of pressure to make their functional goals it’s easy for executives to focus on the good of their department at the expense of the business. And in this environment without the right mindset, executives blame their peers when something goes wrong rather than work together and focus on solutions that are right for the business.

Reminding your team of the bigger picture and helping them keep it top of mind is critical. Ron realized that he had never set this expectation with his team. He called a meeting of the executive team to talk through company goals, their functional goals, and how he expected them to work together. That led to a deeper conversation about the business than they had ever had before, and they all agreed to check in about the bigger picture more often.

As a leader, you need to set your expectations with your executives clearly and to do so you need to make sure you have your own framework. Try assessing your people with the framework 1) Functional Expert; 2) People Leader; 3) Business Leader.

I would love to hear from you — reach out and tell me if you find this helpful!

Originally published at labs.openviewpartners.com on October 2, 2017.