New Thoughts on Current Business Topics to Develop Leadership and Team Capabilities

Latest Thinking and Insights

Our consultants share and present new thinking on today’s current business topics. Though our research, work with clients, contributions as business leaders and life experiences, we look for and explore the latest developments to grow leaders, teams and high integrity workplaces. Our team is widely published and has a track record of creating groundbreaking assessment tools, leadership ideas and forward-thinking concepts to support global client systems.

Below is a sampling of articles and papers:

Articles

The Wisdom of Hope

By Harry Hutson ‘Hope’ is an impractical idea that turns out to be useful, especially in painful times like these. Hope is often misunderstood, underestimated, ignored and belittled, not least because it has separate, seemingly contradictory modes. You want […]

Edging Toward the Center

An Opportunity to Align Our Values, Our Practices, and the Purpose of Our WorkBy Matt Minahan and Peter Norlin So, how many OD consultants does it take to have a meeting? I figure it can be done with about […]

From We Will to at Will: A Handbook for Veteran Hiring, Transitioning and Thriving in the Workplace –Chapter 10: Women Veterans

The following excerpt from the book From WE WILL to AT WILL: A Handbook for Veteran Hiring, Transitioning, and Thriving in the Workplace (Justin Constantine with Andrew Morton, June 2018) was written by Kittie W. Watson, Ph.D., Melanie N. Joyce, […]

Storytelling in Pursuit of Truth: Crisis Communications in the Post-Truth Era

Written by Harry Hutson, Ph.D. and published in The Practitioner’s Journal of The NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science in February 2019. That post-truth is accorded airtime in public discourse signals a crisis of trust in our institutions. We cannot […]

What’s the Link Between Golf and Leadership?

Written by Randy Chittum, Ph.D. for the Jackson Journal and published in March 2018. The capacity to “see” oneself in action, while also “seeing” others and the system, is the critical step on the journey to truly masterful leadership. Whether […]

Effective Listening: Five Lessons from the Best (Journal of Christian Nursing)

Written by our President and Founder, Kittie W. Watson, Ph.D., was published in the July/September 2017 issue.

How Your Company Can Better Retain Employees Who Are Veterans (Harvard Business Review)

Written by Kittie W. Watson, Michael Perry, Becky Ripley and Randy Chittum was published on the Harvard Business Review‘s website on July 11, 2017.

Make the Essential What Gets Done (Fort Jackson Journal)

Written by Kittie W. Watson and Becky Ripley, was published in the May 2017 issue.

From Regional to Global: Using a Network Strategy to Align a Multinational Organization (HR People + Strategy)

An article Innolect President Kittie W. Watson collaborated on, along with Maya Townsend and Lisa Coen, was published in the Spring 2017 issue.

White Papers

Are you a bi-lingual veteran - Watson

When military veterans enter the corporate world, they enter an unfamiliar culture with new rules, expectations and language. Even so, the military experience has prepared veterans to learn, adapt, think differently and quickly. Entering the corporate environment provides a new challenge and opportunity for veterans to apply their skills and achieve success.

Innolect Culture Matters - Watson 2015-1

One of the greatest problems facing organizations today is employee retention and engagement. As many as 50% of people recruited leave their jobs in the first two years of employment, and 25% of those leave within the first six months. A primary factor that determines whether or not employees choose to stay is culture fit.

Embrace Yourself: The Art of Self-Promotion

Presenting current gender communication research, this article addresses the importance of self-promotion and executive presence as well as suggests opportunities for increasing visibility in 2013. As an advocate for women-owned businesses, GWBC® and Watson are in the business of helping WBEs build their capability and skill at positive self-promotion. GWBC’s mission is to partner with women to increase their visibility and recognition for their hard work and success. It is important for women to tell their story and position themselves and their companies for even greater success.

How to Improve Listening and Increase Influence

Leadership is often defined as the ability to influence others. Beloved leaders set the stage to influence through relationships built on trust, confidence and support. Others influence by providing data and evidence to demonstrate their value. And, still others influence through power and control of rewards. Our research over the last 30 years suggests that employees are influenced differently depending on their listening preferences.

Virtual Leadership Competencies: “Leaders Leading Leaders and Teams”

Leaders are expected to manage virtual teams in ways that ensure successful launches, good decision making and to maintain team commitment and collaboration. Yet, globalization, technological advances, telecommuting, and outsourcing have created workplaces where leaders rarely see the individuals they lead, and often struggle to use their skills without face-to-face contact. With so many leaders managing team members who are living in different time zones, countries, and continents, or even just in different locations in the same city, there is an ever increasing need for people who don’t see each other frequently to figure out how to work better together.

Listening Preferences- The Paradox of Small-Group Interactions

When challenging issues or problems arise, many leaders seek out the positive benefits of a joining a team rather than tackling a problem on their own. While understanding the value of working in teams, these same leaders frequently become frustrated with the time and energy required to manage differing personalities and conflicting points of view within teams. The contradictory nature of working with teams creates a paradox of both wanting and not wanting to work with others. There are hidden dynamics that can hinder a team from functioning effectively – listening preference differences.