In our work at Be Leadership, we bring together positive impact and leadership developent to help organizations bring their purpose to life through their people. If you’re curious to learn more about this, we’ve developed a small brochure that covers the business impact of social leadership, the types of programs we run and the results that we see. You can download this here.

We’d love to hear from you if you want to partner with us to create a powerful social leadership experience for your organization. 

Download now

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See a highlight below or you can listen to the whole podcast here: https://outthinker.com/podcast/

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In this social era, new connections are also forming between business and society. As consumers, we expect more responsiveness and a stronger human relationship amidst digital transformation. Employees expect organisations of all forms to act responsibly and with purpose, and engage with broader society in a positive way. This is leading to new collaborations between governments, businesses and non-profit organizations.

Social leaders thrive in this new business climate. They are conversational, connected leaders who have the skills, perspectives and self-awareness needed to drive both business and societal impact.

Throughout this year, we will be exploring the 12 key skills that are needed by social leaders in this new decade. Each month, we’ll focus in on one of the 12 skills and offer tips to help you develop that area. We start our year with a foundational skill, Curiosity. Follow along here, on Instagram at @be_leadership or on LinkedIn!

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My last visit to Kenya was in 2010, and this term never came up during that trip. In fact, I had never heard the term at all before last week, but it quickly became familiar: As the week went on, I noticed that people brought up their side hustles in nearly every conversation I was part of. People were as likely to talk about their side hustle as they were their primary jobs, their families, or their education.

Kenya has quite an established gig economy and much of the population works in relatively short-term, simultaneous parallel contracts. Many others are looking for a second income stream to support a better lifestyle. According to a recent study, more than 40% of the Kenyan youth have a hustle, the second highest in Africa after Nigeria. However, what I learned from my conversations is that frequently side hustles are more than just a second source of income. I met people with side hustles as diverse as mobile phone repair, graphic design, hiring out tents for weddings and corporate events, selling crafts at a Maasai Market, and farming. Some people even mentioned their master’s degree or volunteering activity. Immediate income wasn’t necessarily a prerequisite – but passion seemed to be.

People’s eyes would light up when they talked about their side hustles. These were projects that people chose to spend time on. They were passion projects they made time for on the side, which often gave them energy as well as income. I heard about the number of acres a senior manager was farming and how she was distributing her produce. I learned about the techniques used to weave baskets being sold at the market. I heard about the number of hours a volunteer worked with the Kenyan Red Cross, and the number of phones repaired in a standard week. I heard all of these stories and left inspired.

I think we all need a side hustle.

What is yours?

(If you want to learn more about Kenyan side hustles, check out this list of side hustle ideas, or these inspiring women who have established successful hustles based on their hobbies and interests.)

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As a population, we spend so much time in the protection of our offices, homes or cars, we aren’t always aware of the changes in weather. But in the past few days, we’ve had gusts strong enough to rattle the car when you’re driving on an exposed part of the motorway. Winds this strong are hard to miss, so you can imagine that running in them isn’t easy.

On the first day of this weather, I came back from a run exhausted and discouraged. I had gone out to run a 5K and had come back missing the mark by almost half a kilometer. I was so hard on myself. I gave myself no credit for the fact that the weather wasn’t cooperative. Instead, I assumed I was just more tired than normal or that I needed to be more fit.

Later that day, I was at a client meeting and a strong gust picked up an outdoor table and blew it over. I only then acknowledged that my difficult run wasn’t entirely my fault.

As leaders, we sometimes work on projects where we feel like we’re running in a headwind. Things just aren’t going smoothly, we are not on schedule, and people aren’t delivering. Our energy lags, and we get discouraged and down. It’s easy to project this onto everything else and decide we don’t like our jobs, we aren’t happy in our work, or we aren’t successful. Or we blame ourselves for not having the skills or the smarts for the job. In actual fact, a change of project or environment can bring us renewed energy and allow us to perform at our best.

What headwinds are you running in? How can you find ways to turn around?

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What matters though is less the specifics of the space but the change. Creating a change in environment is a wonderful way to jump start your creativity and effectiveness. Even if you work from the library, or a coffee shop, or your garden for a day, you’ll find that breaking your normal routine allows more focus and fresh insights. Not only are you likely to have fewer interruptions, you can set aside quality time to think, reflect, write, or just work. It’s amazing what’s possible.

I have been lucky to spend most of my working career with organizations who support flexible working. As long as I get high-quality work done, my clients don’t mind (or know) where I am. I can be travelling, sitting on my sofa or waiting for my daughter in the car as I check my email. This was true in my past corporate life as well. While this requires discipline to ensure I am not working and on-call 24/7, it also allows a wonderful level of autonomy over how I structure my work and life. I am not alone in having this level of flexibility: According to the Institute of Leadership and Management, 94% of UK organisations offer employees some form of flexible working, and 73% of managers say that their organizations are largely supportive of it. But even if we have it, we don’t always take advantage of this option.

One of my colleagues recently sent me a link to an organization that is connecting hosts and ‘office riders‘ who want to find room for co-working, a meeting or event space or even a creative venue for a photo shoot. Their proposal is that professionals can connect with hosts who have under-used space in private places, allowing you to work wherever and whenever you want. Their current options include Sophie’s living room, Sebastian’s rooftop and Yann’s connected caravan. Sadly OfficeRiders appears to be largely French based, so I can’t register my new walled garden or look for local homes to escape to for my next UK offsite just yet. But the concept is so good.

Whether you are stuck in an office cubicle or even lucky enough to have a cool modern workspace that you haven’t ventured outside of in a while, I encourage you to start the year right and break out of the box to try a new working space. You’ll be amazed at how much you can achieve.

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I like to think I’m a good remote worker. After a decade of remote working at Microsoft and nearly two years as an independent consultant, I certainly have many years of practice. As an extrovert, I enjoy connecting with people be it online or face to face. And I know how to get good work done without sitting in one room with my colleagues. I had one Microsoft manager I never even met – my interviews were all done by phone while he lived in the US and I lived in England. We worked together for nearly six months before he changed roles, never meeting face to face. He was a great manager and we collaborated well.

But we live in an age of distraction – as I sit on a conference call, I can see a pop-up window from Facebook on my PC, letting me know a friend has updated her status. I see the banners, badges and alerts on my mobile reminding me of my next meeting, alerting me to a change in weather, updating me on my status on Plants vs Zombies, reminding me to study my Finnish vocabulary for the day. The potential for distraction is huge and extends far beyond the sunny sky, my yowling cat, the postman at the door and my empty teacup.

So how can we stay focused and present with all of these competing data streams flinging themselves at us while we’re trying to work?

1. Write down all possible distractions:

Before I go into many meetings – but particularly virtual ones – I find it useful to actively set aside all of my distracting thoughts. I do this by writing them down. Take 5 minutes before a meeting and ask yourself what is going on that might stop you from focusing on the coming conversation. List everything you can think of. This isn’t a to-do list — write everything on your mind. For example, I may write that I am distracted by a conversation I just had with a colleague, wondering how my daughter is doing in an exam, or thinking about what to make for dinner. Once the list is made, physically put it away for the duration of the call. Just the act of writing these distractions down, and getting them out of your head – and committing to leaving them behind for the course of your meeting – can help you focus.

2. Close all unnecessary applications:

Clearly if we can’t see the notifications and popups we’re less likely to be tempted to respond to them. While it’s obvious, it’s not often practiced: turn off any devices you’re not using, close email, close applications not in use. If possible, move your phone out of the room. There is some evidence to say just having a phone on the table next to you is distracting, even if it is face-down and silent. Unless you really need it, remove it from sight.

3. Disclose your challenge:

I have worked with a number of colleagues who struggle with focus. Sometimes, they mention this challenge before a meeting starts. They say something along the lines of “I am really distracted today, I have had lots of back-to-back meetings.” I tried this once – mostly to get some forgiveness for my lack of energy – and found that I was far more engaged for the following hour! Having admitted to everyone I was struggling to focus, I found myself re-committing to the conversation.

4. Take notes:

Writing is a great way of increasing focus. If you take notes on the meeting, write the questions you want to ask, or even doodle, it can increase your concentration.

5. Use video:

Video isn’t always practical, and sometimes it’s impossible, but when bandwidth and the tool allow, it can really change the engagement levels of everyone on a virtual meeting. Not only do you feel peer pressure to stay focused and engaged when a camera is on, people can read each others’ body language, thus improving the effectiveness of many meetings.

6. Schedule in breaks:

Finally, an obvious tip that is often neglected: Instead of scheduling a call or meeting for an hour, schedule it for 45 minutes and use the 15 minute break to walk around, preferably outside. Fill that mug with tea, check your email, maybe even look at Facebook. Deal with some of those distractions you set aside in Step 1. By creating this window of time when you know you can take care of some of these other things, you give yourself more permission to ignore them the rest of the hour.

The post How to Focus in the Age of Distraction appeared first on Be Leadership.

These unicorns are far more agile than companies of the past. But agility depends not only on cutting edge technology. Digital disruption requires new ways of working. To be competitive, businesses – old and new – are shifting from top-down, command and control hierarchies, which have been prevalent since the turn of the century, to ones which are flatter and leaner. They are ditching performance reviews, re-evaluating management by objectives and re-thinking job specifications. And alongside this overhaul, we need a new style of leadership.

In this environment, where we have far more connectivity than in the past, our leaders need to focus on connection, alignment and engagement. We need to practice new skills and behaviours, or Social Traits. These traits – defined by us at Be Leadership based on direct experience with modern organizations undergoing transformation – surface as those that differentiate leaders today from those in the past. We all have these Social Traits – but not in equal measure. Therefore, if we think about where we are strong and practicing these traits and where we could further focus, it will make us far more impactful employees and leaders.

The Social Trait Cards

To support our clients in thinking about this leadership evolution, we have created a deck of Social Trait cards. In physical form, our clients use these cards as part of workshops to reflect on their own social leadership skills and how they might continue to develop themselves and their teams (or organizations) to be even more effective.

Given the popularity of these cards with our clients, we have decided to make them available online in PDF form free of charge. You can download these cards today. We’d love to hear your feedback on your experience using them!

How to use the Social Trait Cards:

1. Download the Social Trait PDF
2. Print the document and cut out the individual cards.
3. Looking at the traits represented on each card, consider your own strengths and development areas. Which of these traits do you regularly practice? Which do you see as your strongest attributes? Which could use more attention? Order the cards from strongest to weakest.
4. Pairing up with someone who knows you, or in silent reflection, consider how you might leverage your strongest traits for greater impact, or develop those which you are not practicing as effectively now. What is one change you can make starting today to become a stronger Social Leader?

These cards were developed by Be Leadership Ltd to support individuals in their Social Leadership development. We’re delighted if this tool is valuable for you and would love to hear about your experience using them. The Social Trait PDF is copyrighted material and is meant for your personal use only.  If you’d like to reproduce them, or are interested in using them for your team or organization, please visit www.be-leadership.com to learn more about Be Leadership’s services or contact shannon@be-leadership.com to discuss.

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When I was at Microsoft, Bill Gates used to take time out each year for what he called Think Week, to get away from the day-to-day and think strategically about new concepts. For Bill and Microsoft, this week was about reading, learning about new technology and innovation, and getting caught up on recent research. What came out of these weeks were new ideas for the direction of the company.

As part of Be Leadership, I do lots of reading. I read more in this role than I have in any other; I feel I’m constantly learning about incredible innovations in leadership and business. But what I don’t do enough is step out of the day-to-day to focus on my longer term strategy and reflect on how I want my business to develop.

So next week – when many of my American clients and friends are on holiday celebrating Thanksgiving – I am having my own Think Week, where I will spend three and a half days reflecting on the past 12 months and then looking forward to 2016.

Day 1: Business Strategy

My Think Week will start with a look backward and then project forward to next year. I use a fantastic cloud-based accounting tool called Kashflow, so I have a good handle on my finances and P&L. But there are other questions I want to spend some time considering.

Looking back:

• What are my overall financial results? How does this compare with my projections?
• Who are my company’s clients? Where does my business come from?
• How happy are my customers? How much impact am I having with the work I do? How can I tell?
• How diverse are my company’s clients?
• How diverse is the work I have done? Are these the areas I want to be focusing?
• How do I spend my time? Is this in line with my desires and expectations?
• What are my company’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats?

Looking forward:

• How complete is my (primitive) business plan? Should I make it more robust?
• What is my company’s unique value proposition? How clearly can I articulate that? Can I make this clearer?
• What is my company’s mission? Purpose? Values?
• Who would I include on my company’s Advisory Board? My personal Advisory Board? Are these the same? How should I be working with these people?
• How can I get customer input on my work and my plans?
• What are my business objectives for next year?

Day 2: Business Growth

Given the maturity of my business, I am spending a whole day this year focused on growth. If Be were at a different stage, I might choose to look strictly at customer satisfaction or zero in on marketing. If my organization were larger, I might focus on people management. As Be Leadership heads into its second year, I have a number of questions to consider around growth, relating to customers, marketing and business development.

At the end of Day 2, I have a call scheduled with my mentor of nearly 20 years, Holly. I work quite a bit on my own, so it’s important to me to have people I trust who ask good questions and challenge me. My friend and ex-colleague from Microsoft, Matthew, has offered to review some outputs from this week. And my fellow executive coach Sarah is meeting with me on Friday to check on what I’ve achieved. All of these check ins will keep me focused and accountable and help make the week a success.

Here are some questions I will answer on Day 2:

• How do I define successful growth for 2016 and beyond?
• What do my clients need from Be Leadership? Will this change in the future?
• What are my customer channels? Are there new channels to consider?
• How effectively does my website represent my company?
• Are there resources I can develop that would help me more successfully market my business?
• How effective is my customer tracking? How can I better support and communicate with my clients?
• What partners do I need in 2016 to grow my business?
• What other changes will I make in 2016 to support growth?

Day 3: Personal Growth

Day 3 is my last full day of Think Week, and I want to use this time to make some decisions about my personal involvement in Be Leadership and my own development next year. In 2015, I did work on my executive coaching practice and completed a certification with the NeuroLeadership Group. As I continue to invest in my skills next year, I need to consider where to focus. I also need to think about my overall career.

Here are some questions for Day 3:

• What do I want to achieve with my learning and development in 2016?
• Given this, where should I invest my development time and money?
• What financial investments should I be making for my future (eg pension)?

Day 4: Reflection

On the final day of my Think Week, I will spend time reflecting on what I covered during the week and will have a coaching call with my colleague Sarah.

I’m energized by the thought of this work and spending my Thanksgiving week exploring these questions. And since it’s Thanksgiving, I want to say thank you to all of you who have supported Be Leadership and me personally this year. I am grateful for the opportunities I’ve been given, the people I have met and how much I have learned.

Would you or your organization benefit from a Think Week? What questions would you like to reflect on and answer?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

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