Weekly Impact Brief (2023.Nov.19)
Build better teams through communication, listening and providing psychological safety; Gain competitive advantage with AI and driving new business.
Note: We are in private beta. There are rough edges; this Brief will evolve in the coming weeks before we launch more broadly. We value your feedback! To share your input, click here.
Read time: 4 min
Welcome
It’s great to have you here!
This Brief offers leaders quick, fact-driven insights on trending articles released in the last week around leadership, innovation, and more. These are curated from top sources, such as McKinsey, Harvard, and many others, looking at elements of the Impactful Framework.
In case you missed the last Impact Briefs, here are the links for the previous two:
Thought Starter
Last week, we covered the element of “Feedback”; this week, we cover “Teamwork”, the bedrock of successful organisations. It blends individual skills, perspectives, and efforts toward a common goal. Teamwork commences with vulnerability and trust-building.
Highlights
MIT Sloan Management Review: How To Productively Disagree On Tough Topics
McKinsey & Company: CEOs’ Choice For Growth: Building New Businesses
Harvard Business School: Did You Hear What I Said? How To Listen Better
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania: How Will AI Transform Industries And Organizations?
Insead: The Pitfalls Of Giving Feedback Across Genders
[Feature] Harvard Business Review: What Is Psychological Safety?
Impact Pulse
Each week, we review 200+ articles from 50+ premier academic and consulting firm sources to highlight a few “essentials” below.
How To Productively Disagree On Tough Topics
Big Idea: To avoid workplace friction and conflict, be open to recognizing different perspectives and find common ground in order to engage in respectful and constructive conversations about divisive issues like identity, diversity and justice.
Quick Quote(s): "Instead of avoiding divisive issues, learn how to have thoughtful conversations that build mutual understanding and respect… Often, what’s needed is not more knowledge but more acknowledgment of shared knowledge… Try asking yourself what you have in common with your conversation partner that might surprise them… Finding those uncommon commonalities requires a bit of ingenuity, and it might feel taxing at times. But the payoff is big: Finding them can jolt both of you out of the reflexive and unconscious sense that you are adversaries in the conversation."
CEOs’ Choice For Growth: Building New Businesses
Big Idea: Drive innovation by focusing on growth strategies like diversifying revenue streams and investing in new ventures, M&A and digital transformation to increase shareholder returns and gain a competitive advantage.
Quick Quote(s): "Organizations are doubling down on building new businesses, even amid ongoing economic uncertainty… The latest McKinsey Global Survey on new-business building finds that a larger share of CEOs than in previous years are making the creation of new revenue streams their top strategic priority… CFOs see business building as the most likely strategic action their organization will take in the next 12 months, beating restructuring and capital structure changes… Twenty percent of revenues at respondents’ organizations came from new businesses built within the past five years, up from 12 percent last year."
Did You Hear What I Said? How To Listen Better
Big Idea: Improve workplace communication by developing listening skills and paying closer attention to avoid communication misperceptions and misalignments. Feeling heard increases workplace motivation and job satisfaction as well as employee retention.
Quick Quote(s): “(One experiment found that) nearly a quarter of the time (24 percent), the listener wasn’t paying attention to their partner. Even more significantly, 31 percent of the time, the listener’s and speaker’s perceptions of attention didn’t match up… People often aren’t tuned in when we think they are, and it’s tough to tell when someone is actually paying attention… It seems people are able to act like they are listening really well, even when they can’t hear their partner. (Use) verbal cues—pausing and asking questions or calling back to things said earlier, for example—(to) prompt better communication… make people feel heard by remembering to ask questions and offering verbal feedback.”
How Will AI Transform Industries And Organizations?
Big Idea: The role of AI in business is changing and shifting focus from data processing to generating new knowledge. It is essential to balance AI integration with human expertise and address and ethical considerations raised while adapting to constant AI advancements.
Quick Quote(s): "This is the most exciting time to be alive because basically what we’re on the precipice of is just really very fundamental transformations as to how people get information, how people generate information. And we’re just beginning to understand how this is affecting society… whether you are a young entrepreneur, right into the game, or whether you are an established company, it’s very important to understand the technology trends in figuring out your position in your field.”
The Pitfalls Of Giving Feedback Across Genders
Big Idea: Use the three A’s approach —assisting, actionable advice, and asking first— to provide effective cross-gender feedback, address gender-based power imbalances and respect boundaries.
Quick Quote(s): "Just like how giving feedback across cultures requires tuning one’s degree of bluntness, hitting the right note when giving feedback across genders calls for managers who know how to mitigate power dynamics… While women and men are equally likely to be described as technically competent, women are significantly more likely to be described as aggressive, according to one Stanford study. Consequently, female leaders who provide candid feedback can easily be perceived as being on the attack… When people get spontaneous feedback, their heart rate jumps to levels typically associated with moderate or extreme duress… One useful approach is what I call the “three A’s of feedback”. The idea is to offer advice in a way that gets the message across while balancing the power dynamics… The first A is that feedback must be intended to assist… The second is that it must be actionable… The third A is to ask for feedback before you provide it."
Featured Summary
Below are our featured insights for the week: MIT Sloan discuss the importance of scenario planning and questioning assumptions to avoid ghost scenarios.
What Is Psychological Safety?
Big Idea: Team psychological safety is an essential shared belief that encourages risk-taking, open communication, and learning from mistakes all of which enhances team innovation and effectiveness.
Quick Quote(s): "The 'team' in team psychological safety is important. 'This is a group level phenomenon — it shapes the learning behavior of the group and in turn affects team performance and therefore organizational performance.'"
"Psychological safety leads to team members feeling more engaged and motivated, because they feel that their contributions matter and that they’re able to speak up without fear of retribution."
Parting Thoughts
Thank you for spending your precious time with us.
We are still in early “beta” mode for the coming weeks. If you find this Brief useful, please forward it now!
Please feel free to reach out with any thoughts or questions that today’s insights might have sparked.
Impactfully yours,
Ali Monadjem (LinkedIn profile)
For The Impactful Executive Team
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