Leading with Purpose
Lift Up Your Leadership, Live Your Best Life
Feeling like your leadership potential is being held hostage? Maybe it is. How can you be sure?
Ask yourself these three key questions:
- How am I able to consistently contribute really great work?
- How is my work life improving?
- Am I raising the quality of life for myself and others?
If your leadership role feels like it’s being held hostage, it may be time for you to set it free via a
better career, work-life fit in the new world of work.
Rethink engagement.
Our 24/7, interconnected work world – where free-flowing information is delivered via integrated systems that link networks of relationships and expertise – is rapidly redefining the nature of work. As organizational models pave the way to creating new design structures to better meet customers’ expectations, the ability to rise up requires tomorrow’s leaders to rethink organizational, career, and work-life success.
Lifting your own level of engagement by examining your well-being can be a helpful way to understand how satisfied – or dissatisfied – you are as a leader in the context of your career, work-life fit. Intrinsically, we understand that a higher level of well-being is better for us personally as well as for our organizations, but somewhere along the way in the process of company mergers, downsizings, and rightsizings we may find our satisfaction with our own abilities spiraling downward as more accountabilities have shifted to management. Now we find ourselves having to address unprecedented work challenges while also trying to prioritize our own conflicts between the demands of life and career.
Before you can reasonably expect to increase the discretionary effort of others and help them achieve, let’s give some thought to how you might more fully live your own best life and end the downward spiral.
A new approach.
Finding enrichment and improving well-being is possible, even during these demanding times. Just as many organizations measure the overall impact of their employees’ well-being on business performance, you too can elevate your understanding and rekindle engagement with your work by re-calibrating your career and your life.
Taking a different approach to evaluating your own well-being starts with a deeper dialogue and holistic understanding of the elements impacting your overall leadership experience and aspirations. Obtaining fact-based insights that scale your professional and personal priorities can help you design a personalized road map that keeps you focused on the decisions and strategic conversations that lead to your best life and a rewarding workplace experience. How important is your life’s game plan?
This year will be different.
The new year can be filled with exciting advancements, growth opportunities, and new work styles. Ask yourself one simple thing:
Am I just getting by? Or am I thriving? How will I thrive more?
By taking an honest view of your leadership role today and its impact on your quality of living, you can begin to make strategic choices and conduct the workplace conversations necessary to lifting up your leadership potential, become an even better leader, and live your best life.
To get started on crafting your customized road map and enjoying the benefits of fresh insights and a well-coordinated strategic agenda, contact us today.
©2012 All rights reserved. Judy White, SPHR, GPHR, HCS is the founder and president of The Infusion Group™. A trusted partner in creating new possibilities in talent management and workplace culture design to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, and society. How may we help you?
Photo Credit iStockPhoto/eyetoeyePIX
What Story is Your Workplace Telling Others?
Founder, Judy White, SPHR, GPHR, HCS is honored to be featured in this month’s issue of
Women With Know How Magazine. The full article (with permissions) is available here:
Successful companies have more than great products and services. Their performance stems from a clear vision, established strategic priorities, and the ability to act on objectives rapidly. World-class organizations, large and small, go beyond. They cut through an overcrowded marketplace with a distinct competitive differentiator: their people.
Every connection that is made with customers, clients, and relevant stakeholders extends the story of your workplace. How your associates communicate, care, and connect with customers reflects their innate talents and leaves a lasting impression. It can also make the difference in whether co-workers invest more discretionary energy, creativity, and extra effort or simply submit the minimum.
An energized leader recently shared with me: “I can’t ever imagine leaving this company. I love working here.” After many years of working in health-care technology, this Generation X leader discovered his hidden talent potential, refocused his work/life priorities, and made a decision to align his values with the technologies that he found most intriguing and with which he felt he could deliver the highest customer return.
Smiling, he proceeded to share the many ways in which his new workplace was knocking his socks off by enabling him to connect with customers and collaborative colleagues to come up with new approaches to solving business challenges with leading-edge design technology solutions that far exceeded anyone’s expectations. As a result, his company is blazing new trails in helping its clients achieve extraordinary results.
Before the shift, the narrator inside this Generation X leader’s head was playing the role of “Passionate Geek.” Imagine if he continued to listen to the old narration that said, “You don’t have what it takes to be a relationship-builder in IT. You’re a techie.” If he had stayed tuned to that, he would have delivered far inferior customer outcomes and possibly passed on contributing valuable ideas, energy and innovation that could help his company’s clients achieve success.
As women business owners, you have a unique opportunity to create more empowering workplace stories by following four intuitive steps:
- Become aware of your current stories. Tune into the commentary that runs through your mind as well as your workplace conversations. Often, leaders are moving in a number of directions and miss the story entirely. It’s especially important to be tuned in when you’re experiencing adversity and significant change.
- Assess the stories that are being told. Are the stories representing the reality of your workplace? Or are the stories offering insight into past perspectives that may be based in fear? Are these past perspectives holding your workplace back from connecting with clients, customers, and co-workers?
- Decide to act on truth. As leaders, you can continue to live based on past experiences, or you can bring people’s talents together and collectively move closer to those stories that reflect current truths.
- Create a new story. You can be active participants in your workplace stories, and you can let go of those that hold you back. The words of your employees, your choices, and your collective actions matter — they mean more to your clients (and employees) than you think! They can affect the outcome, remarkably.
Reflecting on the differences between the Generation X leader’s new workplace and his former employer, I was curious what his perspective might be. His reply? “My new workplace provides me with the support and tools to care for our clients, while trusting me to make the decisions that can create and deliver the best story (and solution) to help them be more successful.”
©2011 All rights reserved. Judy White, SPHR, GPHR, HCS is the founder and president of The Infusion Group™. A trusted partner in creating new possibilities in talent management and workplace culture design to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, and society. The Infusion Group™ brings together a portfolio of workplace services to achieve personalized business strategies for clients in the new world of work. For more information on achieving greater workplace potential, please visit www.theinfusiongroupllc.com.
Finding Freedom In The Middle Of The Minefield
General Norman Schwarzkopf decorated military hero and strategist during the Gulf War has been reported by observers serving on the fields alongside Schwarzkopf as the epitome of leadership. 
One story reminds us of a such a time. While Schwarzkopf was visiting U.S. Troops in Saudi Arabia(1990) he received word that men under his command had encountered a minefield on the notorious Batangan Peninsula. Rushing to the scene by helicopter, he found several soldiers still trapped in the minefield. Schwarzkopf urged them to retrace their steps slowly. One of the men tripped a mine and was severely injured but remained conscious. As the wounded man flailed in agony, the soldiers around him feared that he would set off another mine. Schwarzkopf, also injured by the explosion, crawled across the minefield to the wounded man and held him down so another could care for his leg injury. Infested with landmines, Schwarzkopf’s discernment and resolve eventually, led his surviving men to safety. His act of courage to find freedom for his troops and a nation meant he would have to lay down his own life.
Finding Freedom
For many of us, we may never have to demonstrate that level of bravery and courage like our forefathers, military service men and women have done, but each day management faces a unique set of situations in an uncertain world that can raise the question as to whether freedom remains in our nation and is possible to achieve in workplaces for the future.
The new reality reminds us that the status of our lives personally and professionally has been changed forever. Aside from regulation, trends in global competition, slow workforce population growth rates, impending retirements of baby-boomers, and increasingly flatter organizational structures have contributed.
How do you find freedom in the new workplace amid rapid change? Intuitively, we know that freedom is never free, that it comes with a high price. Therefore, when we honor the gift by accepting personal accountability, we find our freedom. For leaders this means accepting your stewardship role ~ including your success.
How you define success at work has direct impact on the freedom you’ll ultimately experience. Below are several tips leaders can take to renew freedom in the changing world of work:
- Acceptance. Be willing to accept the responsibility that comes with stewarding talent in the new workplace. Understand the investment that it will require to be leaders and developers of a multi-generational workforce and the sacrifices, demands and changes it will require. What might you need to adjust in order to meet these responsibilities?
- Develop strengths and build your capabilities. Many CEO s keep a running list of new learning experiences they strive to accomplish each year. Brush off your strengths list and grow the talents you already have. Identify a list of development opportunities that you would find challenging and intriguing; aimed for personal and professional growth.
- Understand your worth. Reflect on day-to-day emotional reactions and determine if there are behaviors undermining your overall effectiveness as a leader or contribute to building a healthy sense of self-worth. Vision yourself as achieving respectful success by building others. You’ll not only find freedom, you’ll help your organization navigate through any landmines.
- Re-evaluate your monetary value. As employers continue to flex their workforce while navigating economic uncertainty through the use of contingent professionals and free-agents, conduct an honest skills inventory and ensure it remains current with organizational shifts, competitive with market competition and aligns with your long-term financial objectives. Freedom comes by taking the responsibility to close any gaps rather than rely only on a company’s ability to meet these needs.
The road to freedom requires focus and the intrinsic passion to be free. Imagine if you were able to achieve success in one or all of these areas mentioned?
Find support and resources to help you take freedom even further. Become a member of our new community – - by registering here, it’s FREE!
© 2011 All Rights Reserved. The Infusion Group LLC. Judy White, SPHR, GPHR, HCS is the President of The Infusion Group, LLC, a people management consulting and coaching firm located in Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina. Optimizing workplace solutions, www.theinfusiongroupllc.com Follow: @TheInfusionGrpLLC To request reprint permission, please contact the Infusion Group™
Lead Your Workplace Where It Is Afraid To Go
Rules of Engagement
When was the last time you can recall hearing people excited to be at work? There is something to be said about a positive work environment. You know it the moment you walk into it. The same can be said of the opposite. Which of the two environments best describe your workplace?
Imagine what it would sound like as people arrived to work in the morning powered up and on-fire to take on the challenges of the week. Their energy levels high and their attitudes are at the top of the charts. What are the possible ramifications? Could you expect greater attention to detail, strategic ‘what box?” thinking, and even positive feedback from your internal and external customers and vendors? Wouldn’t it be refreshing to deliver some good news to your company?
So, how do we make this a reality? The answer depends on where you decide to focus your efforts. What is it going to take to help your workplace feel connected, valued and energized to leap over tall buildings and spread explosive effort?
Lead With Conviction
While change fires up most of us, sound leadership principles and discipline ground us. By the time your CEO becomes aware of the extent of dysfunction, the issues have often become so ingrained into the company that it takes extraordinary leadership to turn things around. Demonstrate extraordinary by finding your inner conviction for a positive and healthy work environment and begin to move forward with the first successful key:
1. Determination – Make the vital decision that cultivating a healthy environment really matters. Communicate the rules of engagement and the importance of respecting new behavior expectations by presenting them to the organization. To avoid any misunderstandings of these new behavior expectations, demonstrate first by your sound discipline and leadership.
Lead With Accountability
Learn from the valuable lessons of the past and why practices may have lead to dysfunctional behavior and take the actions necessary today to instill a more positive workplace environment for the future. This means a healthy balance of recognizing positive employee behaviors and actions, while remaining open to receiving feedback that might identify opportunities for organizational improvement. Begin restoring workplace integrity and build trust step-by-step. Consider success key #2:
2. Practice the Discipline of Accountability – Cultural stewards are tenacious not tyrannical in their approach to creating a positive work culture. Focus on the better qualities of people first and move like “your hair is on fire” when the new rules of engagement are broken. Respectfully enforce firm consequences if violations occur and consistently recognize productive behaviors.
Start Today!
Root out any dysfunction that might be chipping away at your culture by ensuring everyone is clear and held to the new rules of engagement, before it takes your customers, employees, and profits to the doors of your competition.
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©2011 All rights reserved. Judy White, SPHR, GPHR, HCS is the President of The Infusion Group ™ LLC, a next generation people management consulting and executive coaching firm based in the Raleigh/Durham, NC area. To receive the latest tips and resources for building thriving workplaces – Infusing Solutions @Work!, sign up here. For reprint permissions, please write to: contact@theinfusiongroupllc.com @InfusionGrpLLC
When the Fit Isn’t Right
Before you say “you’re fired,” think about what you’re really losing.
Most leaders agree that talent is their most important asset. For many organizations, when a situation arises that calls a worker’s fit into question, management looks at performance and works with human resources in a process that might end in termination. Forward-leading 
organizations assess performance, too. But as talent stewards, they work toward a holistic understanding of their talent and the root causes of a performance drop to determine a course of action that can better align organizational objectives with the employee’s strengths and interests.
Consider this actual scenario:
Brian was recruited by one of the leading industrial multinational organizations in the world. His stellar credentials and experience as a physicist and engineer led his new department to achieving remarkable results. Brian earned trust and became a respected leader. He was a critical expert in designing innovative solutions and contributed to advanced technologies that yielded high margins for the company, and management recognized his passion for growth and rewarded his high performance with a promotion. Brian’s expanded role encompassed two unique disciplines. He experienced some initial success, but over time his performance varied. After collaborative talks and a review of Brian’s learning experiences and performance feedback, management recognized that Brian’s expertise in the additional department didn’t match his knowledge in the areas in which he performed best. Although performance levels had wavered, management recognized that Brian made every attempt to acquire the learning necessary for the new role, lived the organizational values, was honest in his dialogue, remained ethical and maintained professional poise.
Management converted judgment into verifiable fact, acknowledging that the expanded role was too technically distinct from Brian’s previous functions and taking organizational responsibility for combining two roles that didn’t fit. Management’s confidence in Brian didn’t change one iota. They knew Brian was still a highly competent and intelligent expert who added value to the organization, and they took the steps necessary to objectively assess their “assets.”
As leaders, what actions can you begin to take today to strengthen your commitment to talent and build your talent stewardship capacity? We offer:
- Place people before the numbers.
- Invest the time to pinpoint critical roles prior to talent acquisition.
- Increase your understanding of the unique blend of traits and competencies necessary to achieve organizational objectives.
- Calibrate talent and conduct robust dialogue to ensure talent fits the role.
- Take appropriate risks and act on pending talent decisions.
Remember that when the fit isn’t right, it signals an opportunity for leaders to identify appropriate talent moves that can better serve the organizational mission and align the interests of key talent. Focus on the root cause of what might be hindering a proven employee’s success. While this takes strong commitment, the end result can strengthen your workforce and maximize outcomes instead of creating another turnover.
To learn more about how maximizing your talent, click here.
© 2011 All Rights Reserved. The Infusion Group LLC. Judy White, SPHR, GPHR, HCS is the President of The Infusion Group, LLC, a next-generation people management consulting and coaching firm located in Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina. Learn how we can help you optimize workplace solutions by visiting www.theinfusiongroupllc.com Follow: @TheInfusionGrpLLC
To request reprint permission, please contact the Infusion Group™
The Ultimate Sacrifice
The Infusion Group™ would like to extend our deepest gratitude for the men and women in uniform who gave the ULTIMATE sacrifice to honor our country and protect our freedom.
We remain forever grateful to these men and women and to their families who embraced their duty with profound humility and courage.
This Memorial Day, our hearts and prayers join others as we remember the fallen and their families for defending our freedom; our heroes.
When Did IT Decide to Pay Them Selves Last?
Today’s IT leaders face a broader challenge in building and sustaining a high performance community in the midst of increasing customer demands and a global marketplace seeking premium IT skills.
The rapid pace of business and economic transformation continues to challenge almost every organization. Achieving sustainable outcomes is dependent upon the impact of strategic agility, innovation, a talented workforce and business performance. As IT executives strive to meet the new strategic demands of their organizations, leaders may find themselves inadvertently falling into work patterns that may place their strategies at risk. At what stage in this transformational process did IT decide to pay them selves last?
While striving to bring a new level of innovation to the organization and trying to achieve more with fewer resources, many have been confronted with negative repercussions such as working intense hours, low interpersonal connection among colleagues and little to no recognition of IT professionals. Rather than maintaining cost efficiencies, these work patterns place a tax on employees’ well-being, innovative capabilities and slowly impact overall work product, value creation and business outcomes.
We invite you to consider the following questions in evaluating your IT culture:
- How will you plan for your IT division to operate in this new environment?
- What does your team stand for and what does it aspire to accomplish?
- How effective is IT in meeting its part of the brand promise, culture, reputation and representation of organizational values?
How might collective IT actions strive to be a strong internal neighbor and community member? Are you compromising IT well-being and financial performance in doing so?
Pay Yourself First
If IT is to succeed and contribute sustainable strategic value, leaders must learn to pay themselves first. Ensuring an integrated talent management strategy that is continuously reviewed allows you to manage resource flow and will energize critical IT talent and empower and enable the support needed to transform and adapt to innovative solutions.
An in-depth talent review is imperative for any IT executive to strategically assess and pro-actively align pivotal roles and talent for future priorities. Making strategic talent investments requires fresh insights and collective collaboration to identify and effectively prioritize key workforce decisions; decisions that will contribute to the value of the business. This may include a toolbox of integrated talent management practices, sophisticated IT talent resource pools, and calibrated leadership competencies to achieve strategic goals.
Based upon the needs of the customer, commitments to global stakeholders and environmental impacts, by paying yourself first and investing in the strategic talent priorities of IT’s people portfolio, CIOs stand on the brink of achieving optimal potential and delivering an explosive return on value and well-being for their organizations.
For reprint permissions, please request to: contact@theinfusiongroupllc.com
© 2011 All rights reserved. Judy White, SPHR, GPHR, HCS is the President of The Infusion Group ™ LLC, a next generation strategic people management consulting and executive coaching firm based in the Raleigh/Durham, NC area. Partnering with leaders and organizations in designing the new workplace to have meaningful impact on people, businesses and society. For more information, please visit www.theinfusiongroupllc.com
Photo credit: iStockPhoto
Measurements That Matter
Stretching the boundaries has many leaders and high potentials feeling overworked and undervalued while to-do lists continue to expand. It’s a vital time to ask key questions that keep your actions on course toward improvement.
Optimizing measurements that matter in your work life will assist you in achieving your goals and 
avoiding reactions that derail your best intentions. You’ll know when the measurements are working when you see aspiring leaders keep adapting and trying for more progress.
Establishing critical measurements that matter help us build upon strengths, increase self-confidence, and explore new possibilities. Measurements also provide us a mechanism to improve our resilience during those times when we take a risk but fall short of our objectives. They help minimize the disruptive thoughts our brains naturally steer us toward that can pull us off course.
How can leaders stay proactive and keep their time, energy, and impact from being wasted? What are the motivating measures that can be addressed day-to-day, bringing you closer to your goals and keeping your mind engaged? Here are some measures to consider:
- Where did you save and/or lose time? How much?
- How did you increase your level of energy and engagement? What actions might be necessary to improve and/or sustain it?
- How were you able to refocus your time and/or energy toward your most meaningful and high-priority goals?
- What motivated you to take more positive actions?
- What conversations, with whom, were energizers? Why? Whom do you need to recognize?
- How did you collaborate more effectively or support others in reaching their own targets?
Here are some ways to put those measures to work to keep you agile during a transition:
- Define the transition ahead and decide what goals will mean the most to you.
- Identify which of these goals are emotionally meaningful.
- Take time each day to review your measures. Keep them fresh in your mind and let them serve as helpful reminders of the overall goal.
- Each evening, assess what was effective, identify areas to improve upon, and let go of what didn’t work. Identify what you can do differently the very next day and put trying it on your to-do list.
- At the end of the week, reflect on your overall progress and make the necessary adjustments. Find an accountability partner – a trusted friend, business partner, or colleague – to share your findings with.
- Over the weekend, review your measures and ask whether they are still on target with your intentions or whether they need to be adapted to give you an accurate picture. Consider adding new measures that might be helpful.
- Be willing to share encouragement and relevant insights with others to support outstanding progress and ask for feedback from others. This step will build respect and pride in the collective effort toward progress.
Staying focused on what’s meaningful and important now and on what’s next can help you avoid unnecessary struggling and generate experiences that display more of the best in yourself and your leadership capabilities.
Remain committed to measuring what matters, especially when excuses creep in over time and threaten to slow your movement forward.
For reprint permissions, please write to: contact@theinfusiongroupllc.com
©2011 All rights reserved. Judy White, SPHR, GPHR, HCS is the President of The Infusion Group ™ LLC, a next generation people management consulting and executive coaching firm based in the Raleigh/Durham, NC area. For more information, go to www.theinfusiongroupllc.com and discover how to move your ideas and potential forward. The Infusion Group™ IFG is available
Make It Memorable in the Moment
Recognition doesn’t need to be complicated. Just make it memorable.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to recognizing people in the new workplace. Tailoring a customized recognition approach can make memorable experiences given diverse workforce shifts, and current organizational values and cultures.
Here’s a six-step process to developing a strategy for making those memorable moments.
- Identify the behaviors, contribution level and performance impact made by the individual and team. Celebrate project completions, giving special memorable recognition to performers that exceed standard levels of impact. For example, recognize the completion of a project that is done ahead of schedule and within budget. However differentiate the recognition in a noticeable way when a project delivers ahead of schedule, within budget and adds massive value to customers and the organization.
- Consider the most appropriate medium of recognition outreach and the investment value to the organization. The medium could be in person, via email, phone, or via social media through your organization’s intranet. How has recognition been communicated with an employee or team in the past? What will make it more memorable for them? What level of investment is needed to increase value in the present while ensuring remarkable deliverables in the future?
- Know what recognition matters to individuals and teams. Obtain feedback from employees and teams on what they perceive to be memorable recognition. Sometimes the most memorable may be served in the form of a personal visit from the CEO extending gratitude, or perhaps when peers openly share their appreciation to each member of the team, acknowledging their contributions.
- Identify the right recognition to offer. How can you make your approach sincere, authentic and meaningful even if it’s just by brightening their day with a kind and genuine email or voice mail? Do you have performance feedback from a management colleague that you received about your team that you could acknowledge? Can you provide an idea, such as obtaining a certification, that could help take their career development a step further? What’s the memorable recognition that is clearly you, your brand and style, that you’d like to communicate to all members of the team or privately to a top performer and aligns with the company direction?
- Assess timing. How might you memorably surprise the individual or team when they are most receptive to hearing the message and understanding the meaning behind the tangible reward? For instance, one vice president personally sent flowers to the spouses of his top performers during a critical period. The attached card expressed the qualities and values displayed by each of them and the impact their contribution made to the company. The vice president took it a step further and thanked the spouses for their sacrifice and support during a critical time and enclosed a dinner gift certificate to the top performer’s favorite restaurant.
- Keep learning and improving. Maximize your observation skills and ask employees in your workplace what matters to them. Challenge yourself to grow in areas of communication. Design and deliver recognition in the moment when the performance impact is relevant.
To request reprint permission, please contact the Infusion Group™ .
© 2011 All Rights Reserved. The Infusion Group LLC. Judy White, SPHR, GPHR, HCS is the President of The Infusion Group, LLC, a next generation people management consulting and coaching firm located in Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina.
Are You Aligned For The Transformation of Work
Leadership and Management
The Future of Work is transforming.
The Infusion Group™ is prepared to help you, our valued connections, align and accelerate the opportunities that are ahead in this disruptive and dynamic business environment to build the next era of thriving workplaces.
Watch for Details about our upcoming event and offerings coming soon or if you’d prefer, receive announcements directly by registering below:
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Learn More About What’s Ahead
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How You Can Lead Beyond the Competition >>>>
Please note this event is open to management and executive leaders at this time. Consultants who are interested in information on this topic, may request information on resources we’re excited to be making available by contacting us at: contact@theinfusiongroupllc.com
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