Jun 13, 2017
Ken Downer, in his RapidStart Leadership Blog, Take Action, Written Blog wrote that “Whether it’s your first leadership position or your fifty-first, taking over can be a challenging business”. He does give the Four Questions to Ask if You Want to Lead Effectively.
Hi key to success is “Don’t start out by answering questions; start by asking them”. He came up with four questions all leader should ask. Getting thde answers helps leading confidently and effectively. Below is the extensive post.
Have You Heard This One?
A company, feeling it was time for a shake-up, hires a new CEO. This new boss is determined to rid the company of all slackers. On a tour of the facilities, the CEO notices a guy leaning on a wall. The room is full of workers and he thinks this is his chance to show everyone he means business!
The CEO walks up to the guy and asks, “And how much money do you make a week?” Undaunted, the young fellow looks at him and replies, “I make $600 a week. Why?” The CEO then hands the guy $600 in cash and screams, “Here’s a week’s pay, now GET OUT and don’t come back!”
Feeling pretty good about his first firing, the CEO looks around the room and asks, “Does anyone want to tell me what that slacker did here?” With a sheepish grin, one of the other workers mutters, “He’s the pizza delivery guy.”
First Impressions
A successful start as a new leader doesn’t require bold actions or drastic measures. And if you try to start leading before you know what’s going on, you risk firing the pizza guy and looking foolish, like our CEO in the joke above.
A strong foundation for effective leadership is built not on dramatic acts but on understanding the environment, and building trust, so that when it is time to take action, your team will be willing to follow you.
To establish those things, here are four questions you should ask, why they are important, and some tips for how you can get the answers you need.
4 Questions
1. Ask: What is the vision?
This is all about knowing the direction you need to take the team. Leadership is influencing others to get something done, so it’s crucial to understand what the long term vision of your organization is, and the short term goals you need to meet to get there.
Get the answer: The best way to get this is to meet with your boss. Even if you already know the organization and each other, do this anyway. It’s important to sit down and discuss their specific expectations.
It can be intimidating if your boss doesn’t initiate a meeting, or seems too busy. But set it up and make it happen. You can’t lead effectively if you are uncertain about the direction you are going.
2. Ask: What are the team’s strengths and weaknesses?
This is all about who’s on your team and what they can do. Maybe you have been around a while and already kind of know. Or you are the newest kid on the block and don’t know anyone.
Either way, it’s worth the time and effort to deliberately evaluate the relative strengths of your team members and compare that to what your team is supposed to be doing.
Get the answers: Talk to each member of your team. Get to know them as people, and ask them to explain what they do, how they do it, and what challenges they face.
By developing an understanding of who is on your team and what they can (and can’t) do, you are laying the foundations of trust and improving your grasp of team capabilities.
When you know what obstacles are holding them back, you will be able to see how you can help clear the way forward.
3. Ask: What don’t you know that you should?
This is about your personal competence in your leadership position. It’s directly related to building the trust that is so essential on an effective team.
An early mistake new leaders can make is to try to act as if they already know everything. Even if you think you do, people will shut down on you if you act as though no one can teach you anything.
Get the answers: The best leaders I’ve known were always full of questions and curiosity, even when they thought they knew the answers. They were confident, but when they didn’t understand something, they wouldn’t try to hide it. Instead, they became intensely curious.
They would ask lots of open-ended questions like, “tell me more about how that works,” “how do you fix it when it breaks” and “where do you get the resources you need?”
And when you identify an area of knowledge that you can’t fill in a short conversation, make a plan to get smart.
Who would you rather follow – someone who pretends to know everything or the person who admits he doesn’t but actively strives to fill in a knowledge gap whenever he finds one?
4. Ask: Who do you need to know?
As the leader, a crucial part of your job is synchronizing the actions and efforts of your team with the rest of the world. To do this you have to have a leadership network.
Get the answers: Think about who your team supports or gets support from on a regular basis – it could range from suppliers to maintainers, marketers, customers, finance, and human resources. Also ask your boss who you should get to know.
Make a list, then go introduce yourself. Do it before you need something from them. Ask about what they do, how they interact with your team and about any challenges they are having that have involve your team. Simply connecting with people and showing that you are interested in them will open doors, improve your understanding of your environment, and give you places to turn when problems arise.
New Leader Questions – The Takeaway
Being a new leader can be tough even under the best of circumstances. One of the best things you can do to make it easier on yourself is to get clear on the direction, fill in your knowledge gaps, and get connected to others who can help you move your team forward.
This list just scratches the surface of how to focus your efforts in the early days of a leadership position. After all, firing the pizza guy is probably not the way you want to start things out!
Apr 24, 2017
Europe - North Africa Cooperation in High Education comes in as education in the MENA generally and more specifically in its western half of North Africa has been for some time prioritised with various efforts being made to improve it through notably innovation with a view to creating job opportunities for the youth.
Illiteracy however remained and is still rampant although varying from country to country and from cities to rural areas within each country.
Historically, education systems of the Maghreb countries having within the last 50 years undergone since independence, reform processes whose main objectives was to prepare for the nationalization take over through European inspired education curriculums while stressing the need to respond as closely as possible to the aspirations of the indigenous cultures by providing teachers in re replacement of the predominantly European body of educators.
The situation nowadays is best described by an article on University World News Issue No. 456 of April 21, 2017 by Wagdy Sawahel who elaborated on Europe and North African higher education cooperation plans for the future.
It is well known to all around the Mediterranean basin that education and innovation are mechanisms of progress in the 21st century, whilst all ideas related to that goal resonate as being somewhat impossible to attain in most capital cities across North Africa without as it were, a hand from Europe.
In efforts to promote cooperation in science, technology, innovation and higher education, five countries of the Arab Maghreb Union and five European countries have approved a two-year cooperation plan aimed at stimulating economic growth, job creation and social cohesion in the Western Mediterranean region.
The 10 countries are known as member states of the “5+5 Dialogue initiative: A sub-regional forum for dialogue”.
The five Maghreb countries involved are Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. The five European countries include Western Mediterranean nations, namely, France, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain.
The new two year plan (2017-18) was announced at the third conference of the ministers of research, innovation and higher education of the member countries of the forum for the dialogue in the Western Mediterranean, held under the theme “Promotion of Higher Education, Research and Innovation to Achieve Social Stability and Economic Development", in Tunis, Tunisia from 30-31 March.
Institutional network
According to a dedicated website for the 5+5 Dialogue initiative launched in Tunis, the plan encompasses several initiatives and projects, including the setting up of a network of higher education institutions, the formation of teams of researchers and engineers around joint projects, the development of a rectors’ network, along with the promotion of exchanges of best practices in quality assurance and governance.
The network of higher education institutions within the Dialogue 5+5 will focus on encouraging cooperation between higher education institutions in the Western Mediterranean Basin.
Based in Tunisia, the regional network will focus on strengthening existing university linkages and developing newer partnerships around novel cooperative projects.
The network will participate in the construction of 'Mediterranean spaces' dedicated to research, innovation and higher education approved and outlined in the 2013 Rabat Declaration and endorsed at the first conference of ministers of research and higher education of the 5+5 Dialogue states, held in Morocco.
Free movement
Mediterranean spaces will be based on the principle of free movement of researchers between the two western shores of the Mediterranean and on a connection to regional and global scientific networks to facilitate the exchange of scientific data and development of skills.
It will also focus on intellectual property, patenting and exchange of students, academics and research between countries.
The network will also support initiatives that promote institutional partnerships, including scientific networks, the mobility of students, faculty and administrators, multi-diploma or thesis co-supervision, and the development of online training and research
Collaboration with researchers in the region will be enhanced under the Horizon 2020 programme known as PRIMA – Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area – that will help bridge the gap and regulate the brain drain through the creation of poles of excellence in member countries.
The proposed Dialogue 5+5 rectors’ network will focus on specific initiatives including organising regular encounters between rectors and presidents from all Dialogue 5+5 countries, with visits to universities and polytechnic institutes as well as international meetings of students and researchers, and the holding of conferences and seminars on mobility and academic interchanges.
Enhancing quality
Besides sharing quality assurance practices, the plan will enhance exchanges on governance with a focus on the organisation of teaching, research and innovation in order to improve the management, efficiency and financial autonomy of institutions.
At the opening of the conference, Tunisian Prime Minister Youssef Chahed said that a national conference on higher education reform will take place in Tunis in the period from 30 June-1 July to present a higher education reform plan that will focus on five major axes, including university training, employment, human resources, governance and innovation, according to a local press report.
Apr 18, 2017
Jenna Goudreau published a piece in Business Insider on January 16, 2017 about a Harvard psychologist explaining how People first judge you based on 2 criteria after just meeting. This write up went down very nicely shortly afterwards all around the social media with notable success and thousands of likes and counting. Here is the extended version of this article that after more than a year did not vanish into oblivion. On the contrary, it is not only vivacious in everyone's mind, it has actually helped spur a revisit to this very basic aspect of human interaction.
Harvard social psychologist Amy Cuddy. Craig Barritt/Getty
People "size you up in seconds, but what exactly are they evaluating?
Harvard Business School professor Amy Cuddy has been studying first impressions alongside fellow psychologists Susan Fiske and Peter Glick for more than 15 years, and has discovered patterns in these interactions.
In her new book, "Presence," Cuddy says that people quickly answer two questions when they first meet you: Can I trust this person? Can I respect this person?
Psychologists refer to these dimensions as warmth and competence, respectively, and ideally you want to be perceived as having both. Interestingly, Cuddy says that most people, especially in a professional context, believe that competence is the more important factor. After all, they want to prove that they are smart and talented enough to handle your business.
But in fact, warmth, or trustworthiness, is the most important factor in how people evaluate you. "From an evolutionary perspective," Cuddy says, "it is more crucial to our survival to know whether a person deserves our trust."
It makes sense when you consider that in cavemen days it was more important to figure out if your fellow man was going to kill you and steal all your possessions than if he was competent enough to build a good fire.
But while competence is highly valued, Cuddy says that it is evaluated only after trust is established. And focusing too much on displaying your strength can backfire.
She says that MBA interns are often so concerned about coming across as smart and competent that it can lead them to skip social events, not ask for help, and generally come off as unapproachable. These overachievers are in for a rude awakening when they don't get a job offer because nobody got to know and trust them as people.
Cuddy says: If someone you're trying to influence doesn't trust you, you're not going to get very far; in fact, you might even elicit suspicion because you come across as manipulative. A warm, trustworthy person who is also strong elicits admiration, but only after you've established trust does your strength become a gift rather than a threat."
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