by Sven Sommerlatte
OTIUM is a Latin word that means using leisure time for Reflection and Introspection.
Use this time to learn more about Personal Development, improve your Career Strategy or become a better Leader.
Leaders often have a heavy schedule. Travel and jet-lag may add fatigue. They have to resolve stressful situations and have to manage public exposure inside or outside of their organizations. Physical and mental well-being are essential conditions to efficiently cope with these challenges. Just like top performers in sports, leaders have to look after their fitness in order to become true corporate athletes.
The choices to take a new job, to change company or to give a new orientation to our career are highly strategic personal and professional decisions. It is very important to have a robust decision process to avoid regrets and second thoughts. This article outlines a simple tool that will make better career decisions.
Studies show that the stress level among leaders is increasing all the time, because the pace of change is accelerating. Leaders have to provide a lot of energy to respond to this, but that is expected to be done in a calm and determined way. This can be perceived as a paradox: How to stay perfectly calm in a storm? In this article we will use examples from the philosopher Heraclites to illustrate how to combine high energy and great serenity in order to mater stress.
Many companies have difficulties establishing a strong feedback culture. This article outlines what barriers exist and outlines 3 simple tips how to overcome them.
Choosing the right employer for your career start is a key decision. You will find here tips on how to select companies to target and how to be best prepared to apply for your dream job. This will help you putting all the chances on your side for a great career start!
Servant leadership means that leadership is exercised as a SERVICE to the organization, because the leader has a permanent concern for the needs of the teams. He/she feels responsible to create the conditions that will allow employees to be successful in any given situation. That is a big shift from the traditional top down perspective where leadership is seen as a prerogative to set direction and to hold other accountable for their achievements. Such decisive decision making is part of a service oriented leadership and should be exercised when required to provide clear direction. But leaders should also be inspirational, create great working conditions and be able to coach team members when needed. This is a much broader understanding of leadership and can be seen as the black belt we should strive for during our lifelong leadership learning journey.
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We are in the daily race for higher objectives and strive to over-achieve. Ambition is good, but is sometimes overshadows what we truly aspire to. Aspiration is related to our deeper desire. The closer we get to our aspired state the more fulfillment we experience. We should be careful not to miss this in the rush. That article might help to connect to what we truly aspire to.
In this article I would like to discuss the controversial question, if employees should be informed about the way their potential has been rated. Assessment of potential is a highly complex topic. I will outline here why superficial discussions on potential can be quite damaging. My recommendation is therefore to rather focus on career perspectives, which is what employees really need to know about.
The quality and the implementation of individual development plans is often not fully satisfactory. Last minute cancellations from training programs are one indicator for that. Employees don’t feel fully responsible for their own development. Here is a proposal how to change that: giving each employee an annual development budget and empowering them to invest this into the development action they believe are most valuable. Find out here how concretely that could concretely work!
Many studies have shown that people today prefer videos to text, especially among the younger generations. This is a clear trend. The incredible richness of content on YouTube is a result of this. But from what I can observe, leaders are still not always very familiar with this tool and sometimes even reluctant to stand in front of a camera. I hope that this article can help overcome some of these barriers and make your communication more efficient and more powerful. I will outline here the 4 key steps to shoot YOUR video. You will find practical advice on content creation, shooting, post-production and on the publication of your video. Get started, now! (suite…)