SmartBrief is partnering with Big Think to create a weekly video spotlight in SmartBrief on Leadership called “VIP Corner: Video Insights Powered by Big Think.” This week, we’re featuring Anil Gupta, a global strategist.
India and China have almost unfathomably large labor markets, but unemployment is not in itself a major issue. Rather, it’s a lack of of “experienced managerial talent, and in certain specialties, certain professions like accounting in China, IT professionals in India, because essentially this kind of talent cannot be scaled up very readily,” says Anil Gupta, a business-school chair of global strategy and entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland.
These nations have, in many respects, moved beyond outsourcing to become independent centers of economic generation, and with that comes a need for managers, research and development and other positions requiring skilled, trained and experienced labor. While this situation will benefit the scarce number of people with those talents, Gupta says, it also benefits multinational companies that can not only recognize the need, but also respond to it. (read more…)
SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 170,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each Tuesday in our e-newsletter.
Last week, we asked: What’s more important in a leader’s presentation?
- Consistency: The leader’s actions following the presentation must match what he/she said: 65.18%
- Confidence: The way the leader carries himself/herself and delivers the message is critical: 23.08%
- Content: The information the leader presents is the most important thing: 11.74%
It’s not the presentation. Your PowerPoint presentation and your pretty charts matter much less than the actions you take after you deliver your pitch. Your teams want to see your actions more than they want to hear your words. So instead of spending your time obsessing over what numbers or charts to include, spend your energy on figuring out and executing the required actions that you say you’ll do after the presentation. (read more…)
I’ve been visiting college and trade-school websites and looking at their business and communication courses, and I’ve discovered that only a handful of schools present comprehensive social media courses that directly connect with real-world business strategies.
Most curricula offer classes that emphasize confident handshakes and e-mail etiquette. Certainly, these are necessary as students seek quality employment in a lagging economy and competitive job market. But why is there such a disparity in course innovation?
A trajectory for student success
For years, faculty and administrators have been criticized for their reluctance to accept change. Career counselors are providing students with résumé templates that are 10 years old. As social media converge with sales and business, it’s clear that archaic mindsets and tools are interfering with the trajectory of student success.
Instructor Carie Statz at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee offers sage advice: “Bring the real world into the classroom as much as possible.”
What skills do graduates think they are lacking? (read more…)
I’m lucky. Having been with a number of Fortune 500 companies, I’ve worked with some incredible leaders. They may not be names you know, but these are a special few who lead and communicate so well they bring people together to achieve amazing things.
From CEOs to supervisors and everything in between, these leaders have a few common communication habits that any of us can take to persuade, inform and encourage teams to be more successful. I’d like to share them with you.
- Share an inspiring vision of the future. Leaders who do this build a sense of shared purpose by painting a compelling vision of the future. They answer these questions: Where are we going, what does it look like, what are the benefits, what role do I play in the success? The differentiator is consistency. The best leaders know they need to paint this vision over and over. At every opportunity, they share the vision of what’s ahead.
SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 170,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each Tuesday in our e-newsletter.
Last week, we asked: How well does your organization do succession planning for key positions?
- Extremely well: We all know who’s next in line for any position: 2.94%
- Well: We know who the next level of talent is for most positions: 22.79%
- Fair: Some positions are planned for, but many are not: 42.28%
- Poorly: If we lose a critical player, it creates succession chaos: 31.99%
Next! Who’s next? Unfortunately, 75% of us aren’t sure. People leave organizations all of the time. Your job as a leader is to keep that organization humming. One way to do so is to avoid the inevitable business interruption of someone departing the organization. The best way to do that is with rigorous succession planning. (read more…)
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