16May2024
Leader’s Digest | May 2024
by: Nordic Business Forum
Welcome to the May 2024 edition of the Leader’s Digest, your monthly compass for navigating the world of business leadership. This time, we’ll dive into the crucial topic of well-being.
Contents
- The Impact of Bad Bosses
- Your Mind Matters: Mental Well-being at Work
- Fixing Problems for Well-being
- Free Webinar on Customer Experience with Will Guidara
- Sneak Peek to the Behind the Scenes at NBF
- Inspirational Quote by Patrick Lencioni
New Leadership Insights
The Impact of Bad Bosses
In a world where leadership can make or break a company’s spirit, the destructive power of certain personality traits in leaders should not be underestimated. Narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and sadism can be especially detrimental to employees when possessed by their leaders. How?
⚠️ Disruption in Team Collaboration: Leaders with these traits may display favoritism, manipulation, and scapegoating, which can disrupt team dynamics and undermine collaboration. This can lead to conflicts, decreased trust, and hindered teamwork.
⚠️ Toxic Work Environment: Leaders with these personality traits often prioritize their own interests over organizational and team goals, creating a toxic work environment characterized by manipulation, lack of empathy, and disregard for ethical norms. This can cause decreased morale, increased turnover rates, and reduced productivity among employees.
⚠️ Mental Health: There are statistics that managers have a significant impact on employees’ mental health, with 69% reporting their managers have the greatest influence, equal to that of their partners. Stress at work also negatively affects a large portion of employees, impacting performance (78%) and well-being (64%).
Additionally, a research conducted in Finland showed that 44% of respondents attributed the reason for leaving their jobs to the poor leadership skills of their supervisors. This impacted the decision to leave even more than compensation (31%) and workload (28%). As the saying goes—people don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses.
Learn more about the employee well-being and business impact of bad bosses from our latest blog!
Your Mind Matters: Mental Well-being at Work
Mental health and well-being is critical for individuals, communities, and organizations. That’s why our friends at Thinkers50 have weekly LinkedIn live sessions throughout the month of May with the world’s leading management thinkers to highlight the most pressing mental health issues in business today. The first two sessions have already taken place, and we wanted to share a couple of insights:
Focus on the Fundamentals
From the first session, we want to highlight what author and professor Rita McGrath had to say:
”We know what drives people to be burned out. Too much work, no control over what you work on, toxic bosses, no recognition, no rewards, a lack of a supportive community, a lack of a trustworthy environment, a sense of unfairness, and no great match with our values. We have studied this, we know this; this is not some giant mystery. So, I would argue that we know how to create great, supportive, mentally safe workplaces. We just for some reason don’t regularly do it as much as we should.”
So, the solution is not investing in meditation apps or doing yoga at workplaces, but rather the road to mentally healthy workplaces goes through practicing fundamental things like dignity, listening, connection, and fairness.
Accept Yourself as Who You Are
From the second session, we picked up an insight from Sanyin Siang, professor at Duke University:
”To lead others, we have to have the right relationship with ourselves. We have to lead ourselves first. Being able to accept one’s flaws and mistakes can help you be more compassionate when dealing with your team. When we help ourselves flourish, we help our team flourish.”
Sanyin underlined that self-reflection and acceptance are key practices for every leader. She also suggested that in order for ourselves to become our best selves, the best thing we can do is surround ourselves with people who want to see us flourish.
Fixing Problems for Well-being
“‘Move fast and break things’ is still a widely held belief that we can either make progress or take care of each other. That a certain amount of wreckage is the price we have to pay for inventing the future… But the trade-off at the heart of this worldview is false. The most effective leaders we know, solve problems at an accelerating pace while also taking responsibility for the success and well-being of their customers, employees, and shareholders. They move fast and fix things.”
In this TED talk, leadership author and visionary Anne Morriss reinvents the playbook for how to lead through change by building trust and fixing problems.
Personal Development Boost
Webinar on Customer Experience with Will Guidara
“This is what I would later call the Rule of 95/5: Manage 95 percent of your business down to the penny; spend the last 5 percent “foolishly.” It sounds irresponsible; in fact, it’s anything but. Because that last 5 percent has an outsize impact on the guest experience, it’s some of the smartest money you’ll ever spend.” – Will Guidara
Want to learn how to build a brand centered around customer experience? Former co-owner Eleven Madison Park and Bestselling Author of Unreasonable Hospitality, Will Guidara joins our next webinar to share why our world is becoming a hospitality economy and how every business can choose to be in the business of hospitality. See you on the 30th of May!
NBF Spotlight
Join us behind the scenes as we introduce our speakers, share event updates, and more!
Speaker of the Month: Brené Brown
🔸 Courage Researcher
🔸 Bestselling author
🔸 Experienced Professor
Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston, where she holds the Huffington Foundation Endowed Chair at the Graduate College of Social Work.
Brené has spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. She is the author of six #1 New York Times bestsellers and is the host of two award-winning podcasts, Unlocking Us and Dare to Lead.
Brené is the first researcher to have a filmed lecture on Netflix, and in March 2022, she launched a new show on HBO Max that focuses on her latest book, Atlas of the Heart.
At Nordic Business Forum 2024, Brené will guide us towards courageous leadership by sharing her insights on vulnerability, trust, and resilience.
Negotiation Email Crash Course featuring Chris Voss
What does it take to prepare for an important negotiation? And how to overcome common negotiation mistakes?
NBF 2024 speaker and FBI’s former lead hostage negotiator Chris Voss recently shared his top tips with us and we turned them into a 3-part email crash course. Sign up to learn Chris’s invaluable insights on negotiation preparation strategies, common pitfalls to avoid, and the single most important principle in negotiation.
Sign up to boost your skills in high-stakes negotiations!
Stop and Think
“At the heart of every healthy organization is humility.”
– Patrick Lencioni
