Creating an environment of psychological safety is vital for team trust and collaboration. Leaders can achieve this by modeling vulnerability, encouraging inclusive participation, establishing clear communication norms, implementing structured reflection, providing support, and monitoring team dynamics. Key strategies include sharing personal mistakes, seeking feedback, promoting open dialogue, valuing diverse perspectives, setting respectful interaction expectations, conducting regular debriefs, offering training,...
"Leading Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DI&B) effectively requires balancing empathy with strategy. In today’s VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) world, DI&B leadership isn’t just ethical—it’s essential for team resilience and innovation. This article explores my experiences and the top challenges leaders face: unconscious bias, resistance to change, and measuring impact. Offering practical guidelines, do’s and don’ts, and the role...
On November 1, we hosted our first “VUCA@Work” web event, an engaging 90-minute session aimed at helping leaders navigate Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. The event featured real-world examples, interactive discussions, and essential coping strategies, such as scenario planning, data-driven decision-making, and fostering psychological safety. Attendees left with practical tools for emotional resilience, agile decision-making, and transparent communication. This...
It’s become a trendy managerial acronym: VUCA, short for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, and a catchall for “Hey, it’s crazy out there!” (HBR). It’s also misleading: VUCA conflates four distinct types of challenges that demand four distinct types of responses. That makes it difficult to know how to approach a challenging situation and easy to use VUCA as...
In today’s globalized world, effective leadership goes beyond national identity. Taiye Selasi’s concept of asking "Where are you a local?" helps leaders connect deeply with their teams by focusing on lived experiences. Understanding rituals, relationships, and restrictions fosters empathy, inclusivity, and drives stronger collaboration in diverse environments.
The Core Quadrants by Daniel Ofman are an effective tool for team building, helping teams understand individual dynamics and how to collaborate better. By identifying core qualities, pitfalls, challenges, and allergies, teams gain insights into strengths and areas for growth. For example, one team member’s creativity (core quality) may lead to chaos (pitfall), while another’s structure (core quality) could...