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

Learning How to Grieve As An Entrepreneur

Featured in the April/May WBENC President’s Report.

Design In Motion (Peter Norlin Blog)

Design In Motion: How Design Intelligence Can Shape Workplace Culture An Innolect Blog offered by Peter Norlin 1. Beginning the Journey As a student of organizations for over 30 years, and as Innolect’s Practice Leader for Strategic Change, I use […]

Build Your Leadership Team (Enterprising Women Magazine)

By Kittie W. Watson , was posted in the September 2015 issue — Vol. 16, Number 3 — 2015.

The Executive Selection Process: Selecting and Hiring the Best Talent (Enterprising Women Magazine)

Successful companies take steps to improve their hiring and retention success rates with increased focus on testing, assessments, thorough reference checks and formal onboarding programs.

We’re Learning – Are You Listening? (Chief Learning Officer Magazine)

Different people have different listening styles, and it can affect how they absorb information. To maximize learning efforts, facilitators may have to adapt to multiple listening styles.

Sustainable Legacy Leadership (OD Practitioner)

When corporate HR leaders partner with nonprofits to supplement in-house development opportunities, great learning occurs in both organizations.

Is Coaching Right for You (Enterprising Women Magazine)

Most Fortune 500 companies have coaching programs for leaders who are transitioning to new roles that require new skills or capabilities.

Embrace Yourself: The Art of Self-Promotion (GWBC)

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.

Collaborating to Win: Managing Competition when we Work Together (OD Practitioner)

Organizations promote collaboration through their messaging, yet competition is often rewarded. There is an inherent, embodied polarity in human nature: “working against” vs. “working with.”

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.