What makes work attractive to people?
"Human beings are “symbolizing, conceptualizing, meaning-seeking animals," – Clifford Geertz The disconnection between employee aspirations to work and what they really experience at work is being increasingly voiced by their quest for destiny of preferred work and workplaces. This forces managers...
Spirituality and Purposeful Leadership
Neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor in her new book Whole Brain Living says that most of humanity who live urban lives are stuck in the left brain. This results in linear, mechanistic thinking in the past and future tense, structured, certain, analytical, detail oriented, seeks differences, happy to...
The Battle of Attrition Post COVID
Leaders today have just gone through a gruelling two-plus-year fight of normal business challenges that was coupled with an unprecedented worldwide COVID pandemic. As many would say, “you cannot make this up.” As we come out of the COVID pandemic, many leaders and their teams are just now coming...
Address the risk of burn out to increase employee retention
“It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.” — Lou Holtz The astounding phase of announcements on people moving to new jobs over the past year indicates high volatility in the market for top talent. This poses a major retention risk for managers. The August 2021 PWC U.S....
Inaction is also a Choice: A Leader’s Dilemma
One of my coaching clients was struggling with one of the most difficult choices a leader must make. His company was growing quickly and some of his most trusted lieutenants didn’t have the necessary skills to foster exponential growth. The choice was stark: thrive by replacing loyal colleagues...
Leading Purposefully in The Era of ESG Reporting Fatigue
Purposeful leaders can create benefits for their companies and stakeholders by linking ESG reporting and company purpose and values. Let’s take a look at why. Much has been written about ‘sustainability reporting fatigue’ in recent years. There is no denying the toll Environmental, Social and...
Challenges of Internal Transition to a C-level Role
High potential candidates for a C-level position can benefit from an executive coaching engagement to prepare for the role and to succeed while in the role. Transition challenges are well-documented in the popular business press and peer-reviewed academic research. Many organizations experience...
From Startup to Exit: Necessary Leadership Adaptations
Each phase of a business’ life-cycle poses unique leadership challenges, and the Bonar Institute team can assist at each stage as coaches, mentors, and strategic advisors, and trainers. Senior executives need to adapt leadership practices and optimize the organizational structure for each phase of...
Need to Create Purposeful Teams
Teams need to be purposefully built. This is true because teams need to have the right balance of the skills and team characteristics required to solve the specific challenges they are facing. Team challenges can, generally, fall into three buckets: Generating exceptional levels of performance...
Anticipant Leadership – New Rules for Leadership in the Digital Society
There have been many transitions for humankind. From the Neolithic, scientific, agrarian, industrial, information, and now digital era. Each one of these transitions fundamentally changed our lives. And for the better - on balance. What was fundamental in each change was that humans were involved...
Freedom
“Without freedom, creativity cannot flourish. The right to freedom is crucial to progress in any society, and the context is having a sense of Global Responsibility.” - His Holiness The Dalai Lama Freedom is a deeply rooted value in how we live our lives in Western societies. It is a critical...
Endurance and Equanimity: Attributes of an Effective Leader
Endurance is the ability of an organism to exert itself and remain active for a long period of time, as well as its ability to resist, withstand, recover from, and have immunity to trauma, wounds, or fatigue.i Equanimity is defined as a state of psychological stability and composure...
Why We Should Do Better to See Social Entrepreneurship As a Spectrum
As events were unfolding at the Capitol in Washington on January 6 and in the subsequent hours when technology giants like Twitter, Facebook, and Amazon decided to kick certain users off their platforms based on how users leveraged the platforms, I kept wondering how much longer the business world...
Artificial Intelligence is Shifting Traditional Notions of Competitive Advantage
“Consistency is the playground of dull minds” ― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Traditional sources of competitive advantage (CA) focus on relatively static aspects that allow companies to gain greater market share. Proprietary assets, distribution networks,...
Bonar Institute & Purposeful Leadership
I am often asked what is purposeful leadership, and why is it the focus of the Bonar Institute? These queries have inspired me to revise an article I published on purposeful leadership following the founding of the Institute in December 2014. Based on my work with executives and the review of some...
Use Simple Rules to Avoid Bottlenecks
Organizations that enable employees to feel respected as individuals, as professionals, and as members of a team, also trust them to fully develop the potential of their skills, talents, and creativity. Jody Thompson and Cail Ressler, devised ROWE (Results Only Work Environment), a human...
Align Virtual Teams and Employees with Your Organization’s Mission, Vision, Strategy, and Values to Optimize Performance
Idea: Remote employees and virtual teams need continual alignment with your organization’s values, vision, mission, and strategy (VVMS) to optimize performance. Employee alignment with your VVMS mitigates some of the inherent performance challenges facing individual remote workers and virtual...
Disruption and Innovation
When COVID 19 hit several months ago, the words we heard most in our collective lives were “disruption, chaos, and disaster”. No one knew or could even imagine how the next few months would play out. At that time, we had no doubt that we would get back to our lives and businesses very quickly....
Inherently Spiritual People must be led by Spiritually Intelligent Leaders
The COVID pandemic has given the world a pause as we face the biological response to an ecological crisis. The crises exacerbated by the frenetic pace of the world with unfettered consumerism and economic growth have given us time to reflect on the merits of the globalized neoliberal world. The...
Empowering Clients to Thrive, Not Just Survive
Issue: The breadth and depth of risks facing businesses cannot be overstated. Seismic disruptions resulting from technological innovation and the instantaneous dissemination of data and information are transforming economies. Interconnectivity results in today's crises being truly global -...