Helen Beedham
Helen Beedham, author, thought leader, speaker and adviser with over 25 years’ experience in corporate workplaces explores how we use our time at work and why we never talk about why we don’t have enough of it. She explains what it really means to find better ways of managing the time available and in a way that is more beneficial to employees, careers and the bottom line.
Rene Van Stein
Rene Van Stein, a highly experienced communications facilitator and Executive coach will share some simple techniques to help you as an HR leader to find your ‘WHY’ at work, as well as some simple strategies to help you to communicate in a way that inspires the people that you work with to trust and collaborate with you.
Samantha Caine
Sam, CEO of Business Linked Teams tells us more about servant leadership and why it’s important, exploring how the theory could be helpful in your organisations as well as sharing some practical ideas about how you might do that!
Automation is altering the way organisations operate and leadership won’t be exempt from change says Samantha Caine, Managing Director at Business Linked Teams.
Despite the scaremongering headlines, automation and digitalisation are already having an impact in the workplace. From manufacturing to administration functions and beyond, the so-called ‘rise of the robots’ has already begun.
From IT to manufacturing and more, automation is driving business efficiency. It’s not all doom and gloom for us homo sapiens. Countless studies have told us that we won’t be put out to pasture once the robots have completed their enrolment. Research from Gartner suggest that while 1.8 million jobs might be lost by 2020, another 2.3 million jobs will be created.
Analysis of readily available salary data for various industries reveals a significant drop in new workers prepared to enter low-paying jobs. Those same menial, unsatisfactory jobs are exactly where automation is being applied. Graduates emerge from their studies having picked up technical skills that are required in the industries they have chosen to pursue a career in, so automation needn’t be feared.
Yet those working in the industries where automation is taking hold will require a new style of leadership. Even if automation isn’t implemented in your organisation, the use of automation elsewhere in the world might have a significant impact on the way your organisation operates.
The rise of automation in China has driven up Chinese exports, deeply impacting the global supply chain, creating a butterfly for businesses around the world. Organisations need people that are able to manage in a world that is becoming increasingly complex.
Leaders need to be able to understand technology and its impact on business at the same time as being able to recognise what this means for the people they lead and the customers they interact with. No more is it enough to just be a technical expert.
With automation increasing complexity, traditional command-and-control leadership just doesn’t fit in today’s organisational structures. To help organisations understand the internal and structural disruption posed by technologies like automation, its arrival has been likened to the role of social media during the Arab Spring.
Twitter, Facebook and other social networks were essential tools in the mobilising of masses of people more efficiently that governments were able to mobilise their own military forces. The point isn’t that traditional business leadership operates like a dictatorship, but that similar to social networks, these new technologies are flattening organisation structures and decentralising authority in traditionally hierarchal organisations.
As such, leadership has to be transparent with those in leadership positions accessible to those they are working with. They cannot be seen to be working above their staff but alongside them. They must still be seen as an authority, but one that is there to guide, not govern.
In this new automated world, leaders will need to have high levels of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and people leadership skills. They will need to be able to embrace technology and to encourage others to see both its value and its limitations. They will also need to be able to operate effectively within a constantly changing environment, going as far as to embrace the change and inspiring others to operate in the same way.
There are various steps organisations must take to successfully approach the transition from traditional leadership to leadership fir for the age of automation and this begins with ensuring the right talent pool is in place. As organisations become increasingly reliant on technology, they must identify young, experienced people who are passionate about technology and have a proven record.
Where organisations have already placed individuals on leadership programmes, they must assess their current skill levels against the skills required to lead in the new world. Then appropriate training and development pathways can be established. Where gaps in competence are identified, external expertise such as a leadership training consultant can be brought in to facilitate change.
Most importantly, organisations must ask themselves whether they have a deliberate and documented strategy in place for making sure their leadership pool is fit for the future. This is where a sustained learning journey should come into play, enabling the development of desired skills and behaviours in bitesize chunks over a sustained period.
As automation continues to alter the way businesses and entire industries operate, the shapes of hierarchal structures will continue to shift. The need for leaders who can adapt and accommodate for such significant changes will continue to grow, therefore organisations must assess and then address their options for nurturing effective leadership sooner rather than later.
Just as the world is constantly changing, so too is the way that B2B Buyers buy.
The biggest shift has been and will continue to be related to the vast amount of quality data that is now available on the internet. This vast resource of valuable information has made it much easier for buyers to gather the information that they think they need in order to make intelligent purchasing decisions and this in turn has led to fewer opportunities for sales people to get in front of their customers and to influence those buying decisions.
According to Gartner, when we look at the whole time that a B2B buyer spends considering which purchase to make, only 17% of that time is actually spent with potential suppliers…..if they are comparing multiple suppliers, then the time with each individual supplier might be as little as 4 or 5%. That’s not a lot of time for a sales person to make an impact, especially when we consider the amount of classic sales activities they need to get through; rapport building, educating the customer, finding out about their needs, aligning and communicating the value of their solution, negotiating etc.
Many businesses think that this lack of access is down to the individual sales person’s ability to get in front of the customer and to communicate value quickly and effectively enough when in reality, numerous studies show that problem is far less to do with the sales person’s struggles to sell and far more to do with the customer’s struggles to buy.
Research tells us that in complex B2B sales, the customer’s business has, on average, 6 – 10 decision makers armed with 4 or 5 pieces of information about possible suppliers and potential solutions. In order to make an effective decision, these buyers need to work together to assess and quantify the information and opinions that they’ve already gathered between them, at the same time as including the constant stream of new information readily available from other suppliers, the internet, technology etc. This is no easy task and never before has the term ‘complex sale’ been more apt.
In order to be able to navigate a complex sale, it’s important that sales people really understand the journey that B2B buyers need to go through in order to make a decision and the steps they typically take. Sales people also need to recognise, that this journey isn’t linear – B2B buyers may return to previous steps time and time again and they value suppliers that are able to facilitate this journey smoothly.
To make an impact with a B2B buyer there are some key things that sales people need to remember:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is having an influence in your life whether you’re aware of it or not. AI powered algorithms decide which music or shows to recommend on your favourite streaming platforms. When you order something on Amazon, AI decides which other products to recommend based on your purchase. Those online ads that seem to magically promote products or services you’ve been thinking about? That’s AI choosing which ads to show you based on your browsing activity.
Yet when it comes to our working lives, we’re often presented with headlines that tell us AI is something to fear. It’s often framed as a technology that will eventually take our jobs away from us, but the truth is, AI is here to help us become better at our jobs.
There are various applications in sales where AI can add real value:
Monotonous tasks prevent us from getting on with the more important aspects of our jobs and can sap the enjoyment from our working lives. In sales, the monotony can range from trawling through long lists of leads to gathering data on your prospects and creating weekly reports. These repetitive and time consuming tasks can be removed from salespeople’s workloads with AI, allowing them to get on with doing what they do best – selling.
All too easily you can waste too much of your time working towards a deal you believe will deliver, only to find yourself at a dead end with nothing to show for your efforts. AI can eliminate this frustrating process, effectively feeling out the deals worth chasing. Salespeople can train the AI to recognise a good deal and can even predict the products or services the prospect will be interested in based on previous sales data.
Predicting your team’s sales numbers for each quarter is one of the most daunting challenges of your job. Getting it wrong can result in your team falling short of the expectations you’ve set, so forecasting accurately is key. AI algorithms are now supporting sales managers by accurately predicting where your team’s sales will fall, making it achievable for your team to successfully meet the forecast you’ve presented.
Selling isn’t all about sizing up prospects and getting a foot in the door. There are always upselling and cross-selling opportunities within your existing client base, but these can be easy to miss. AI can quickly identify clients that are likely to be open to upgrading the current product or service you’re supplying. Not only does this create more revenue opportunities – it also means a reduction in marketing costs.
It can be difficult to work out how much discount you need to offer to win a deal. Offer too much discount and you’re losing money the client would’ve been willing to spend. But if you don’t offer enough, the deal might fall through. AI can analyse specifics of past deals such as the size of the deal, how many competitors you’re up against, the clients’ revenues and more, to recommend the most suitable discount that you should apply to each deal.
It can be difficult to adjust to working with new technologies in the workplace. Sometimes skillsets and behaviours need to be developed to ensure people are getting the best value from working with the technology implemented. A blended training strategy that incorporates elements of both online based self-study and face to face training sessions will support the development of any new skills or behaviours required. With the right training strategy and the right technology investment, AI can be a transformative force for your sales team.
Whether we like it or not, global political upheaval is having a noticeable impact on the way we do business. From Brexit to the trade wars between US and China, the global business landscape is changing.
It’s evident in the recent headlines that global businesses are weighing up different options to remain agile. From manufacturers moving facilities to countries that are more economically viable, to concern over the impact changing rules around free movement on the sector’s growing skills gap, it’s clear that we are entering an era of uncertainty.
One thing is for certain – businesses will require strong leadership to ensure resilience in the face of uncertainty. There are many skills that leaders need in order to be effective. These are the top five skills that are particularly relevant to leaders operating in a global market place:
Whether it be with team members, project stakeholders or customers, the global leaders of tomorrow need to be able to identify and sell the value of what they are doing. They need to be able to move beyond merely expressing what is going to happen to communicating in a way that takes full account of where the other party is, what the impact of the situation is going to be and how it will add to that person’s life, job, project or business. These abilities could almost be described as ‘commercial’ attributes. Put simply, it’s about selling the benefit in a way that is instantly beneficial to the other party.
Constant change is now a given. There is no way of stopping it and all the research would suggest that change is only going to become more intense. Leaders will need to be able to use a range of people management skills to coach and manage their teams to handle all types change. Some of that change they will be driving but more often than not, it will be change that they are simply having to respond to. It’s essential that leaders maintain the operational activity of their team whilst embracing the changes that they will inevitably experience.
Businesses across the world are looking for ways to differentiate themselves so that customers choose them. There has been a growing realisation that this can no longer be solely the responsibility of the sales function. Successful businesses of the future are reworking their entire business process by placing the customer at the centre of all activity, not just sales activity. In reality, what this means is that leaders in every function, not just customer facing functions, will need to be able to align their strategy, business objectives and team workload to reflect what the customer wants.
In a global operating environment, there is always a push towards harmonisation of processes, of values and of ways of working. In many ways this is a good thing but there is always the risk that harmonisation goes too far, to the point of diluting local understanding and the ability of businesses to flex to match local operating environment. The leaders of tomorrow need to be skilled in transferring global expertise to a local workplace. They need to be able to translate approaches and values to whichever environments they find themselves in.
The speed of digitalisation is constantly increasing. What was new yesterday will be out of date tomorrow and yet it can’t be escaped. Whether technologically driven or not, leaders in a global market place will need to learn both how to embrace technological change that is imposed on them and even more so, how to leverage technology in order to gain a competitive advantage.
A leadership development programme is the most effective way to instil these skills within future leadership. But what makes an effective leadership programme? It should centre around these four steps:
gle most important driver behind your leadership training programme should be your business strategy. Businesses will only succeed and grow if they have the best leaders with the right skills and capabilities that make them able to implement it.
In practical terms this means that the content of any leadership development programme should be directly linked to what Leaders need to deliver for their business. For example, if your business strategy is about long-term innovation, you may want to ask whether your leaders are able to innovate themselves? And then you may want to consider whether that’s the most important thing or is it more important that they have the skills and processes to inspire and enable their teams to be innovative? Do they understand the organisational culture that’s required to foster an innovative environment and can they create that for their teams?
Being able to recognise and identify what skills Leaders actually need in order to implement business strategy isn’t always obvious. It’s key to remember that no Leader can implement a strategy themselves – it’s about identifying what skills they need in order to enable others to do it.
Generic leadership programmes are everywhere in every format, and fundamentally the content is the same from one to the other. The key to a truly successful leadership training programme is tailoring the content and applying it to the business’ own operating environment, customers, products and processes.
For example, when you are training leaders how to coach, don’t just cover a generic coaching model; show them how it fits in the context of your business’s performance management process and give participants the opportunity to try out coaching within the very same framework. Challenge yourself to make sure that as well as the theoretical coaching steps that they need to go through, leaders know where to find development opportunities for their people in your organisation, so they understand how their coaching efforts contribute to the overall succession plan for the business.
In the same example, even when it comes to developing activities, make sure your role plays are reflective of the jobs and people that they will have to coach to make sure that all of the learning opportunities are relevant and reflect the real world.
One of the biggest mistakes that businesses make is to overlook the vast wealth of leadership expertise that they already have within the organisation. No one knows your people, processes, products, customers and challenges better than the people that are dealing with them on a daily basis and their expertise should be leveraged for the benefit of others.
For sure, you may not have expert leadership trainers and facilitators within your ranks but you do have very specialist stories and experiences that can be integrated within your leadership training. The very best leadership programmes are a seamless collaboration between external leadership trainers and internal experts who can help to bring content alive and to position it in the context of jobs that the leaders do today and will need to do in the future.
When developing a leadership training programme, it’s all too easy to get swept up with the content and the practicalities. It’s often a high profile project, with senior management’s eyes on it, so questions about guest speakers and impressive locations find themselves towards the top of the agenda as those responsible for developing the training seek to make an impact.
The trouble with this approach is that the essence of why there is a leadership training programme in the first place is lost. Developers forget that this is not about an exciting event and great photos and feedback reports at the end of the event. Any leadership training programme (and by that we mean face to face workshop), is simply part of a much longer leadership development journey and it’s essential it has a long-term impact.
No one attends a training programme and becomes a great leader overnight – training programmes are simply interventions along the way and inputs of theory and practical skills that contribute to a leader’s toolbox. Your challenge in developing a truly effective programme is to make sure that the opportunities for development reach far beyond the limited amount of classroom time that you have allocated.
A successful leadership training solution should incorporate self-study, line manager coaching, peer support groups and regularly adjusted training plans. In essence, it’s about developing a programme that enables continuous leadership development, long after the trainer has packed up the flipchart and gone home.
By implementing an effective leadership development programme, businesses can ensure value is communicated, change is embraced, customers are placed at the centre of business processes, local cultures are understood and digitalisation is embraced. All of this will ensure resilient leadership in an uncertain future.
Leadership development is a growing trend across many industries. A wide variety of organisations are beginning to acknowledge that developing leadership internally has many benefits. From reducing the time and cost involved in recruiting from outside the business to improving retention of existing talent, investment in internal leadership development provides an attractive alternative.
But when it comes to implementing leadership development programmes, businesses often struggle to decide where the responsibility for development lays. Recent research from BLT finds different departments and functions at odds over where the responsibility should fall.
While the research finds 92 percent of organisations currently have a leadership programme in place, many seem to lack a cohesive approach meaning they are struggling with the practicalities of rolling out leadership programmes. Deciding where the responsibility of leadership development lays is one of the more significant challenges as it gets segmented between business leads and line managers.
When it comes to creating leadership strategy, the survey found that 36 percent of HR professionals believe it is the responsibility of the business lead while 32 percent believe it should be HR’s responsibility. There are similar splits in the results when it comes to who should be creating the leadership strategy and who should be identifying leadership candidates.
These findings highlight the importance of HR and line managers working together to develop cohesive and effective leadership programmes.
Here are 3 practical actions to enable collaboration in the implementation of a leadership development programme.
By establishing a cross functional steering group comprising of representatives from all areas of the business, the training needed can be more easily defined based on each member of the group’s first-hand knowledge of the leaders in their function. The group can also work together to ensure that the learning content is aligned to business deliverables and decide who will provide support throughout the design, implementation and review phases of the training.
Competency frameworks are the result of the real analysis of job roles and the levels required to be able to do the job. Therefore, using competency frameworks to define the content of the programme is important. If organisations are clear about the jobs that people are required to do and the precise level to which people need to perform, then it becomes much easier to identify appropriate content to address the gaps and also to measure success of the programme afterwards.
Many organisations will acknowledge that an external training provider is paramount in delivering the level of leadership input that is needed in truly effective leadership programmes. What they don’t necessarily realise is that the impact of the training is amplified significantly when dovetailed with the contribution of relevant internal experts. Involving people from all functions in the delivery is important and in practical terms this could mean inviting people along to deliver short presentations, to share stories and experiences or to answer Q&A’s. It could be as simple as ensuring that line managers provide structured coaching around the programme itself.
When it comes to implementing leadership development programmes, businesses should consider the tensions over where the responsibility should lay as evidenced in the research. By following these steps and creating cross functional groups, defining competency frameworks and leveraging internal expertise in programme delivery, organisations can ensure successful leadership development through stronger collaboration.
Cultivating future leadership from within is a growing trend in many businesses. It’s great for ensuring the long-term stability of the business because existing leaders won’t be around forever. How to grow your own leaders from within requires mentorship and here are the five reasons why.
As millennial employees and the generations that follow are beginning to represent larger portions of the workforce, studies show that they are seeking greater mentorship from their employers. The Huffington Post has reported that 79% of the millennial workforce see mentoring as critical to their workplace success. Research by Deloitte has suggested that millennial workers who intend to stay with an organisation for more than five years are twice as likely to have a mentor than not.
Employers should recognise this as a good sign. It shows that those entering the workforce are hungry to excel in their roles and believe in staying with the business long term if they are given the opportunity to develop.
For many employees, the level of mentorship will determine how long they intend to stay with the business. Further research by Deloitte has revealed that 43% of millennial workers plan on quitting their current job within two years. Let’s not let the terminology blind us from the facts – the millennial generation represents a significant portion of the workforce. Employers should begin to consider how they can satisfy the demand for increased mentorship. Not only will this stabilise workforce retention and reduce the cost procuring external talent, it will provide a stronger talent pool for future leadership.
There is in fact stronger demand on leadership to confidently navigate businesses through disruption. Evolving technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, changing customer demands, globalization and now nationalism are all disruptive factors that pose a risk to businesses today. Mentoring will be critical to ensuring those who understand these growing challenges also understand how to lead effectively.
BLT’s latest research on UK leadership training programmes uncovers a divide between HR and line managers when it comes to taking ownership of leadership development.A mentor will give the business greater visibility of how and where those taking part in development programmes can improve. Line managers might not get this visibility and HR certainly won’t as they have limited face time with each person. Most importantly, the mentor can communicate this back to those undergoing development, making sure the feedback is constructive and that achievements are highlighted too.
Mentors are more than role models. When they recognise the areas where people need support, they can connect them with others in the organisation who are experts in the relevant subject area and can provide the support required. Relationships build from these connections and these relationships will be important to continued development over time. Strong leadership relies on strong relationships, so by the time people reach the point where they’re ready to take up the leadership mantle, many of those relationships will be in place within the organisation.
While it’s obvious that business and the individuals undergoing development will benefit from mentorship, it’s easy to overlook the fact that there are many benefits for mentors too. For someone who’s been in the organisation for a while, the opportunity to become a mentor can be energising, re-igniting the individual’s engagement in the business and creating a stronger sense of value through the impact they’re having on the business.
Mentoring others can build confidence and help individuals learn more about themselves as well as increasing their own skillset. Ultimately mentoring presents an opportunity to create a legacy within the organisation which can be passed down as mentees become mentors, providing the business with a consistent supply of strong, homegrown leadership on demand.
Successful selling requires a certain set of behaviours, but those behaviours are constantly evolving. As new sales challenges and new developments emerge, salespeople must adapt or face losing out to competitors that have understood and reacted to changing behavioural requirements to support their sales strategies.
It’s important that companies communicate the latest behaviours that sales people should be demonstrating and encourage and support them to understand and successfully integrate those behaviours into their daily sales activities when dealing with prospects and customers.
Here are five behaviours that are becoming increasingly relevant in sales:
Younger generations often get a bad rap from their elders. Take the millennial generation now representing a large percentage of the workforce. Millennials are often criticised for being reliant on technology, constantly glued to their phones and users of dumbed down language and writing. But instead of criticising, salespeople need to embrace and partake in the way younger generations communicate. They need to understand their expectations and see things from their perspective. Different portions of your target market will be represented by different generations. Use social selling to engage with different generations in the way they’re used to engaging with others, demonstrate an understanding of their world view and talk about things from their perspective and you’ll build better business relationships.
In a world where people concentrate on their online personas almost as much as their real selves, everyone has a personal brand. Businesses need to embrace this as an opportunity and make the most of the tools available, such as social media and thought leadership opportunities, to help build the brands of their salespeople, positioning them as industry experts. In doing so, they can amass an online following where your business can be freely promoted, while your salespeople build reputations of trust and expertise. This also increases the opportunity for engagement with prospects digesting the content that your salespeople are putting out there. Your salespeople don’t need to be skilled writers – the content itself can be created with your marketing team, an agency or a freelancer.
Scaremongering headlines often deride technologies that have been developed to make our lives easier. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one such technology that improves efficiency and intuition in the sales process. AI can take over the management of many of the basic, time-consuming tasks that slow down your salespeople, from creating contact lists, logging communications with prospects and generating sales proposals. The market for smart sales tools has exploded and continues to grow. Businesses embracing and implementing these solutions are removing the menial tasks from their sales people’s workloads, enabling them to place a stronger focus on what they’re best at – selling.
When it comes to selling, businesses are becoming increasingly customer-centric. This approach, sometimes referred to as Account Based Selling (ABS) means building a sales strategy around each individual prospect. Each prospect will have its own requirements and its goals that differ from every other prospect. By placing those requirements and goals at the centre of your sales approach and tailoring your offering around them, you will set your business apart from your competitors. Today, prospects have unbridled access to information about the products and services available to them, so a solution that can be carefully tailored to their needs will make your business stand head and shoulders above the one-size-fits-all solutions that are also being offered to them.
Instilling any new behaviour in your salespeople, your leadership or across the wider business requires a careful blend of self-led study and group-based learning activities. While digital training solutions have become popular for allowing people to fit training around their busy schedules by enabling access to online content and activities where and when it suits them, the human touch is still an important aspect of behavioural training. Blending online self-study with face to face and group learning activities will provide both flexibility but also builds a support system by maintaining the traditional collective element of workplace training.
Embracing these 5 behaviours will enhance your businesses sales activity, but embedding the behaviours successfully will come down to how well you tailor behavioural training to your sales people’s needs. By adopting a blended approach across a sustained learning programme broken down into bitesize learning activities, you can ensure your people thrive in the ever-changing world of sales.
