Our Archive

Blog Archives

Dropinceo > Blog > c-suite

Why teachers are the most overlooked asset in the C-Suite

Throughout our educational journey, teachers have had a profound impact on us. They’ve nurtured our problem-solving skills, effective communication, and innovation. But why is this support system often missing in the workplace?

I’m not suggesting we directly hire teachers from academia. Instead, I propose we identify individuals within our organizations who already possess these nurturing characteristics and consider ways to elevate their roles in supporting teams. My book, “The CEO’s Compass,” is a resource that can help CEOs and anyone facing challenges in their current playbook. I emphasize this in my chapter on people where I say that people are the greatest tool in your toolbox and investing in them can pay dividends. 

Here are a few tips for creating an environment that supports teaching skills in the workplace:

Implementing the Concept: First we must assess the organization’s readiness for such a change. Leaders need to realize teaching is a human capital investment vs. a compliance activity that the hope and pray assures peace of mind. We need to connect with the hearts and minds of leadership to realize that at the other end of the product or service they produce is a family member. If we don’t invest in elevating the skills of our team with deep understanding, failures can have deep negative impact. Only then can we appreciate that teachers specialize in taking concepts from theory to application. These skills translate to business leadership by assessing the readiness of the organization, focusing on change management, and defining the desired outcomes. It’s about elevating education and creativity within our teams.

Investing in Team Strengths: It’s crucial to assess team strengths and invest in individuals who have a teaching and nurturing persona. This could mean identifying someone within the organization who possesses these skills or considering bringing in external support, such as an educator or fractional chief people officer, to advise and nurture the current team.

Preparing the Team for Change: Preparing the team for the changes and investments being made is essential. We need to communicate to our workforce that these efforts are not just compliance activities, but a genuine investment in their growth and the future success of the company. The return on investment may be intangible, but it’s significant – improved employee retention, team performance, and customer experience.

Training and Skill Development: Time constraints can make training a challenge. Instead of lengthy training sessions, I recommend providing an hour or two of overview training on the new skills and integrating it into their day-to-day work. Real-time observation, coaching, and application of the new skills within their current challenges can accelerate the impact and make the training more effective.

Celebrating Achievements: Sharing progress, celebrating achievements, and recognizing the organization’s commitment to investing in its people and teams is important. I encourage continuous engagement and repetition of these principles.

If you are aspiring to the C-Suite, and tired of the hustle, are you ready to change how you work and implement these tips? 

If you are a business owner or C-Suite leader, are you ready to invest in your people and help them be successful? Their success is your success! 

Now is the time for you to collect your thoughts and take action. I want you to succeed and this framework can enable you to do it yourself. 

However, if you need more help, I’m here for you as the Drop In CEO, CEO whisperer or as a sounding board. 

To hear more about my story about framework, please tune into my podcast that is releasing this Friday 8/18/23. 

Maybe you simply need a support system to apply these new insights. I find leaders need a place to talk through the challenges and that’s why I created The Drop In CEO Collective, a forum for C-Suite leaders of today and tomorrow. To learn more about our next event you can visit our page and register. 

Would you rather have a quick 1-2-1 to discuss your specific challenge? Could The Drop In CEO be your support system? Direct Message me on LI or contact me via my website and let’s have a conversation. Until then, I wish you much success. 

Read More

Why is Mid-Year Evaluation Important for Your Goals?

Are you feeling overwhelmed by the challenges of achieving your goals? Do you feel like you’re off course and struggling to find your way back? When we hit the halfway point in the year, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by how much we still have to accomplish by the end of the year. Taking a moment to reflect and refocus is critical for avoiding burnout and optimizing our actions for better results. 

One of the ways we do this is by focusing on how closely our actions align with our purpose (one of the seven points of the CEO’s Compass.) Recently I sat down and tracked all of the business connections and opportunities I was creating and realized that only about 5% were truly aligned to the work I wanted to do. While other opportunities might be good financially or appealing to my creative side, they weren’t getting me closer to my ultimate goal. Understanding that allowed me to make decisions to utilize my time in ways that more closely aligned with my purpose, and while I can say no with confidence, I can also say YES to the right opportunities faster. 

Making fast, aligned decisions is easy when you run it through the first 5 points of the CEO’s Compass:

  • Purpose: Are your current actions aligned with your true purpose?
  • People: Do you have the right people with the right skills in place to lead them to success?
  • Performance: Performance is human centric. Are you utilizing the people around you (yourself, your team, and your community) in a way that gets you to your goal?
  • Process: Is your current process streamlined to get you where you need to go, or is there room for improvement?
  • Platform: Are you using the right tools for this process? How can technology help you?

Ask yourself these questions. Invest in yourself. If you already have your clearly defined actions and you are on track, Kudos to you. But if you found that people around you are not on track, consider sharing this article with them. Maybe talk to them about the CEO’s Compass – a tremendous resource that might get you unstuck from where you happen to be.

If you are aspiring to the C-Suite, and tired of the hustle, are you ready to change how you work and implement these tips? 

If you are a business owner or C-Suite leader, are you ready to invest in your people and help them be successful? Their success is your success! 

Now is the time for you to collect your thoughts and take action. I want you to succeed and this framework can enable you to do it yourself. 

However, if you need more help, I’m here for you as the Drop In CEO, CEO whisperer or as a sounding board. 

To hear more about my story about framework, please tune into my podcast that is releasing this Friday 6/30/23. 

Maybe you simply need a support system to apply these new insights. I find leaders need a place to talk through the challenges and that’s why I created The Drop In CEO Collective, a forum for C-Suite leaders of today and tomorrow. To learn more about our next event you can visit our page and register. 

Would you rather have a quick 1-2-1 to discuss your specific challenge? Could The Drop In CEO be your support system? Direct Message me on LI or contact me via my website and let’s have a conversation. Until then, I wish you much success. 

Read More

The Most Practical Framework for Assessing Your Career Goals

So often, we hustle and try to get the work done. We cover for people that are on vacation. We’re so busy trying to keep all the balls moving that we forget that we as leaders need time to pause and reflect. Are you feeling overwhelmed and unsure of your next steps in your career or business? Sometimes the most important thing you can do to move forward is taking breaks and zooming out to gain clarity and focus.

The hard truth is that if you fail to take breaks, circumstances may provide one for you. I never used to own up to this. I have been let go from jobs a handful of times, and I can tell you the time off was life changing for me. When I got away from the work at hand, I gained so much clarity. Each time I had to dust off my resume or pause to think about my guiding principles for the new opportunity that I was seeking, I gained so much insight. When you’re in a job and you’re zoomed in all the time, you don’t take the time to assess where you’re going. If you need to slow down or speed up or change course, it’s best to do it intentionally before life does it for you.  

I remember being let go from a job that I probably shouldn’t have taken to begin with, but the money was good. I soon realized that I would not pursue that line of work in the future because it did not feed my soul. And quite frankly, I was miserable. These breaks are so important, yet fail to take them intentionally. We would rather wait for life happens to us and reflect when we’re in crisis.

If you want to be intentional about your next break, I’ve created a simple framework to make the most of your time:

  • Ask your boss for feedback: Ask what you can start doing, stop doing, and change in order to be more successful in your current position.
  • Give actionable feedback: When sharing your observations with your team, make sure there are tangible outcomes for them to pursue. 
  • Identify your actions: Listen to feedback and choose 1 or 2 actions you can take in the next quarter and focus solely on those things.
  • Make those actions a habit: Once you’ve gone to all the effort of making a change, hold yourself accountable to make that change a habit for long-term success. Deb shares her personal experiences and provides a framework for setting intentions, assessing progress, and making changes. By focusing on one or two changes at a time, you can celebrate your progress and stay on course towards your goals.

In a world that values hustle and constant productivity, it’s easy to forget the importance of taking breaks and gaining clarity. It’s essential for leaders to reflect on their actions and make changes when necessary. So take a deep breath and zoom out. Your career or business will thank you for it.

If you are aspiring to the C-Suite, and tired of the hustle, are you ready to change how you work and implement these tips? 

If you are a business owner or C-Suite leader, are you ready to invest in your people and help them be successful? Their success is your success! 

Now is the time for you to collect your thoughts and take action. I want you to succeed and this framework can enable you to do it yourself. 

However, if you need more help, I’m here for you as the Drop In CEO, CEO whisperer or as a sounding board. 

To hear more about my story about framework, please tune into my podcast that is releasing this Friday 6/23/23. 

Maybe you simply need a support system to apply these new insights. I find leaders need a place to talk through the challenges and that’s why I created The Drop In CEO Collective, a forum for C-Suite leaders of today and tomorrow. To learn more about our next event you can visit our page and register. 

Would you rather have a quick 1-2-1 to discuss your specific challenge? Could The Drop In CEO be your support system? Direct Message me on LI or contact me via my website and let’s have a conversation. Until then, I wish you much success. 

Read More

C-Suite Leadership Messaging is the greatest under developed skill

With my 35 years of business experience and the last 4 years in my own, coaching C-Suite leaders of today and tomorrow, one of the most under developed skills is in messaging vision & strategy.

I have seen so many talented leaders including myself successfully delivery tactical content only to be deflated because we were unable to move the needle, spawn conversation or achieve the outcome we seek to achieve. It becomes a source of frustration for many and then creates limiting believes and a negative mindset about ones’ capabilities. Ultimately it deflates confidence for which stuck C-suite leaders of tomorrow cannot find a path forward. 

In this week’s Drop In CEO Collective, I provided a framework for which I have found is starting point to not only craft your 30 second elevator pitch for your vision & strategy, but gets you to think differently.

Here is the framework, an example of good and a very bad example of what not to do:

Framework:

  • Grounding statement that relates your Topic to a greater strategy (gets people to wake up and listen)
  • Provide more details and context that justify why the topic is important
  • Propose a solution or course of action to spawn conversation.

Example of good:  Evolving our Root Cause Analysis capability is critical to reaching long term defect reduction in order to create a greater customer experience. By implementing this training & coaching program within these functional areas in the next 24 months, we will not only see a reduction in our customer defects, but we will be the first business unite of its kind to take a step forward in investing in our people which pays many dividends in employee loyalty. I propose we have a follow up workshop in the next two weeks to work out the details of the strategy, deliverable timeline and necessary resources.

Example of bad: We need to purchase now the Root Cause Analysis training package in order to train all employees across 3 business units using state of the art software that enables collaboration and real time reporting. When we implement the new tool, we should be able to show people how to do RC analysis more effectively and ultimately reducing our defect rate from 5% down to 2% which is our 2024 goal. The cost is $25,000 and would like to discuss how / when we can move forward with this proposal.

The good example aligns the leaders message to a greater strategic goal, provides a bit of context to help people to understand the impact and a call to action to move the conversation forward.

The bad example is from a place of siloed thinking and provides too much detail for which people may deflect or delay any constructive conversation leaving the messenger deflated. 
. 
The attendees of this past collective agreed that this was a different way of thinking and this could help them to craft more impactful messages and be seen, heard and respected as a C-Suite Leader. 

If this is a challenge for you as a C-Suite Leader or you see people on  your team struggling with this exact same issue, but you don’t have the capacity or capability to address, please have the courage to leverage a support system.

Drop in to my next Drop in Collective offered on March 20th and click here for your exclusive invite to this offering. 

It may be the best investment of 50 minutes towards effective Messaging for influence & impact. 

Let me know; I’d love to support you. 

Until then, I wish you much success-Deb

Read More