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On Friday March 20, the DJIA closed at 19,174. That was down more than 35% from its peak in February. For a point of reference, this is about the same decline that we experienced in all of 2008, in just one month. The impact has been equally large and dramatic in just about every aspect of how we live and work. Never has it been more clear that we live in a VUCA world. For those of you who are unfamiliar with that acronym, it is a concept that originated with students at the U.S. Army War College to describe the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of the world after the Cold War. At this point, the Cold War looks like child’s play compared to our current situation.‍

Why resilience matters

‍Resilience is the antidote to our VUCA world. Now, more than ever we need to rely on, and continue to develop, our resilience to help our companies and our teams navigate in this crisis. Resilience is what allows leaders and teams to be calm, steady, and resolute in times of challenge or crisis. It provides for greater agility and flexibility. It enables us to keep our eyes and energy on a better future. It gives us the opportunity to collaborate even more effectively with our colleagues.Resilience can be easy to see and understand when we think about people like Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill,  and Albert Einstein – who was told by a teacher that he “would never be able to do anything that would make sense in this life.” We’ve seen it in many business leaders like Steve Jobs, Akiro Morita and Henry Ford – who went broke 5 times before starting the Ford Motor Company. If you look closely enough, you see it all around – especially today with the tens of thousands of healthcare providers who are working overtime to keep us healthy.If you look even closer, you will see your own resilience. One of the interesting facts we learned in studying resilience in the workplace is that most of us have a great deal of grit, determination and strength.

‍How resilience can help in times of crisis

‍In 2012 I co-authored a book on the topic: “Lemonade, The Leader’s Guide to Resilience at Work.” We researched thousands of business leaders and developed a model of resilience that includes 15 leadership behaviors that can help leaders to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.

My favorite of these resilient behaviors is reframing.

Reframing is the ability to find a silver lining no matter how dire the situation. It is the ability to choose how you talk about the facts and create a context for yourself and for others to see them differently. For instance, if you live in Mauritius, you can call it “a small, insignificant island.” Or you can call it “the largest ocean state in the world.”In the context of our current crisis, you could be talking about how “physical distancing” is creating a feeling of isolation. Or you could talk about the opportunities it presents for us all to learn to use collaboration technologies to both get our work done and not feel so isolated. Both are actually “true” in some objective sense. But the ability to reframe a problem or challenge into the more positive perspective makes it more possible for people to take action. In this example, your team will be able to see and embrace the opportunity more readily in learning the new technologies and feel less fear as they sit in their new home offices with no context besides the news.Think of the benefits of applying this to thinking about how to pivot the business to weather the storm. What new business models, markets, partnerships might be out there waiting for you to uncover?

‍Reframing as a business imperative

‍The ability to reframe reminds me of an executive I advised a few years ago. Scott was (and still is) a very experienced and successful leader in his organization. He had a reputation for turning around projects and programs that were underperforming. He had a strategic mind, a keen attention to detail and very high standards for performance. Scott was seen as potentially one of the organization’s senior-most leaders in the future. But something was holding him back. His high standards and intense drive translated into zero tolerance for mistakes.When mistakes happened, as they always do, Scott adopted a rigid and unyielding attitude. He simply could not see the learning opportunity that mistakes can present. The people who worked most closely with Scott learned to follow his lead. Some of his people were actively hiding or ignoring mistakes out of fear of Scott’s reactions. This created a dynamic that suppressed any kind of productive problem solving and Scott was operating in the dark about problems cropping up.This all came to a head when the company lost one of its biggest customers. This customer moved its business to another supplier because in their own words, “you kept making the same mistakes and you haven’t kept up with changes in our business.” This was shocking to Scott, who hadn’t realized there were problems with this customer, and that his team didn’t have the capability to solve the problems. This proved to be a much-needed wake-up call for Scott. He was forced to learn to view mistakes differently, to reframe them as learning opportunities. In doing so, he created a different mindset in himself and his team. He went on to become an even more successful and accomplished leader. His mantra became a quote from one of his heroes, General Omar Bradley, who said, “I learned that good judgment comes from experience and that experience grows out of mistakes.”

‍How to reframe

‍There is a simple practice you can use to build your own ability to reframe. You can even invite colleagues or your team to join you in this exercise. Try this the next time you encounter a problem.

• Draw a line down the center of a page.
• On one side the headline is “challenges.”
• On the other is “opportunities.”
• Your task is to re-write the problems as possibilities.

Doing so will give you, and those you are tasked with leading, more energy to get through and even to accelerate through this unprecedented crisis.

“It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” - EpictetusThe current crisis facing most companies as a result of the global pandemic has tested us all and made us wonder whether our crisis planning is adequate for today’s modern, potentially existential issues facing businesses.While issues are coming at us quickly, we are having to make decisions – often without a sufficient design plan in place. Now is a good time to document as you go, to create a “living document” for the current AND future crises. In this process, you may notice failings or weaknesses in the system that must be addressed; fixing them may ultimately strengthen and stabilize your business for the long-term.Our conversations with clients have helped us identify what seem to be the most common failings. Rather than discourage you, we hope this prompts your thinking and helps you to communicate to your organization what you’re doing now, how you are looking ahead to be prepared for the future, and how they can contribute.1.   Failure to plan for the unthinkable.Most businesses have a continuity plan in place, but they aren’t often reviewed, refreshed, or tested. Steps you’re taking right now should be documented for future reference. We recommend four ways to do that.

• Write it down: As you make decisions or implement strategies, take time to capture the change or new action and document it.
• Update it: Schedule time at each quarterly business continuity planning session to discuss real-life scenarios in which every policy, procedure, and functional area is tested.
• Incorporate it: Make business continuity planning and testing a strategic imperative, driven and supported by the senior leadership team. Involve the CEO to ensure it is taken seriously.
• Learn from it: Record and capture learnings from the tests in the firm’s documented continuity plan. While you can’t ever predict the scope or impact of every possible scenario, you can minimize just how far you have to go to cover your bases.

2.   Failure to see beyond the usual “blinds spots.”A challenge many leaders face is that they have grown up in a business together and have experienced many of the same situations as a group. While they have a common understanding of the business and operations, this collective viewpoint can lead to group think -- reinforcing the current direction, rather than raising counterpoints.During this crisis and beyond, you need other experts around the table, people who challenge your way of thinking and bring different perspectives to help uncover those blind spots. Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln were both known for bringing close their adversaries and people who irritated the status quo. Take steps so you are preparing to look beyond the known:

• Welcome different opinions and dissenting views
• Create a culture in which colleagues and team members can speak up
• Add new voices who can identify potential issues or problems that you might not see

3.   Failure to admit mistakes, even if unintended.Take heed of the lesson a CEO of a large financial organization recently learned. He was repeatedly criticized for a very slow and less-than-heartfelt effort to take responsibility for illegal practices within the firm. He did not assume accountability for wrong-doing, leaving customers and regulators dismayed, costing him his job, and damaging the company’s brand reputation.One of the most important tenants of crisis leadership is to accept responsibility, acknowledge missteps, and commit to transparency. You can expect that whatever you are doing, there will be critics. If you expect legitimate criticism, have a plan on to respond – it’s not too late. If your company was a little slow determining the right COVID-19 response, or unable to nimbly get remote employees up and running, be upfront and say so. A simple message like – “We needed to do better, we will do better, this is how we’re doing better” – will go a long way in solidifying trust and employee engagement through what will likely be an extended crisis period.4.   Failure to focus.When a crisis hits, it is difficult for leaders to focus. Yet decisions need to be made, and quickly. There will be different views on what should happen now, and later. Take those into account without allowing “too many cooks in the kitchen” trying to call the shots on the same issues. Concentrate on the problem to solve with good decision-making technique to create focus.

• Define the problem. As a leader you can start by asking the question, “what’s the problem we’re trying to solve?” Pausing to get this right, before you start solutioning, prevents you and the team from wasting time on the wrong issues or getting stuck in endless debate.

• Define the criteria. Generate criteria for potential outcomes, before you discuss any solutions. If you throw out solutions without having a method to evaluate them, that can start an endless conversation loop. Establish a means of assessing desirability, feasibility and viability of each possible outcome and rank them in importance.

• Agree on solutions. Brainstorm a list of possible solutions, and then cross-reference with your established criteria. Combine solutions if necessary and rank them in terms of how they meet the criteria. Vote, and narrow the list to no more than two solutions to be tested.

5.   Failure to act. Crisis is a strange time. You need to thoughtfully and intentionally respond, yet the environment requires you to be decisive and act quickly, often without all the information. Some leaders get paralyzed by the need to get all the facts and more before they move.Don’t wait until you have your plan 100% finalized before you communicate or execute. You need to make a move based on what you know.That isn’t to say you shouldn’t adapt as you go. In a crisis like this where so much is unknown and hard to anticipate, give yourself flexibility to incorporate new information. Look at how things evolve and discuss the impact on your current thinking and plan. Modify, discard, or stay the course.18^th century Scottish poet Robert Burns one said, “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Accepting that things will go wrong is the first step. Learning and growing from the experience is next. Consider these steps and you’ll help your organization move from crisis to calm, and ultimately – survive and thrive.

With all that is going on in the world today, it is important for leaders to speak up and communicate the right message to their teams. Crafting a message during a time of crisis isn't easy. Many of our clients have come to us over the last week or so looking for guidance on crisis communication and messaging. When it comes to communicating high stakes and important information to the team, what to say and how to say it is key to connecting with your audience.

We created an 8-part template to ensure you inform, calm, and educate your teams about what matters. Here are the components that make up this template:

1. Clearly state what's happening now. Start off your communication with a clear overview of what is happening – address decisions that have been made and the context for why those decisions were made now. Keep it to 2-3 straightforward sentences.

2. Share a broader perspective. Follow that up with reassurance. Point out why this is a good decision within the broader context of what’s happening.

3. Offer positivity and silver linings. Without being falsely upbeat, now is the time to reinforce any positive aspects of the situation. Point out specifically why people should have reason to be optimistic.

4. Provide an honest assessment. The next step is to provide a realistic view of what might happen. Include the context of the situation and reassurance of how the company will react.

5. Rally the troops and tell them how. The next step is to bring the team together around the cause and provide a clear sense of what they can do in the situation to help the company and themselves.

6. Set clear expectations. Follow that with a set of specific expectations—what you are looking for from people in the short term.

7. Admit what you don't know. Be candid with what you don’t know. This will help build trust that the communication is not simply a whitewash and will put uncertainties – for the firm, and for your team members – into a context that offers transparency and encourages discussion.

8. Energize and mobilize. Close your communication with a message that seeks to energize and mobilize everyone to action. Give them reason to be hopeful and make sure they understand why you are hopeful too.

This 8-part template will ensure you inform, calm, and educate your teams about what matters. We hope you keep this tool in your back pocket and find it helpful as you navigate everything that lies ahead.

With the spread of Coronavirus, most of your people are probably working from home to stay safe. This presents challenges for both the business and your people.Employees are likely working alone out of a small apartment, crammed into a shared space with roommates, or on top of each other in a family home where partners and children are all trying to work or go to school via Zoom. This difficult working situation, coupled with a constant barrage of information about the growing pandemic and recession, breeds anxiety. The stress and worry combined with boredom mean that your people’s mental health is at stake.

At the same time, businesses are spending huge amounts of money covering costs and salaries, while their people are often doing less than their best work. Some employees are extremely busy, but the majority are not. For managers on teams with less to do, it’s not easy to find ways to spend time productively.As a leader, how will you keep your people motivated and productive?The key is to find engaging activities that are highly effective in a virtual work-from-home environment and add value to your business. How do you do this?

1. Turn this downtime into upskill time. While challenging in many ways, the current environment presents a unique opportunity – your people have more time than ever before. All people have skill gaps and mindset gaps, and by closing those gaps, your people and business will come out of this crisis stronger and more productive once business returns to normal. Help your people do this by providing them with the support they need – whether it is virtual coaching and assessments, or programs in leadership, sales, innovation and business acumen.
2. Deploy a strategy for virtual learning. Given that most are connecting remotely, your people need new ways to access content. Leverage digital tools that allow your people to learn from home while staying connected through interactive, engaging experiences. Meetings that are held live and virtual with strong social elements are a great way to do this. Another way to reach your people is through digital solutions, which include highly engaging videos and simulation with connected learning modules. Today, the vast majority of your learning needs can be addressed through virtual and digital solutions.
3. Keep it fun and social. It is mission critical for your people to feel connected and aligned during this difficult time. Offer opportunities for social connections that would normally take place during meetings like break-out sessions or virtual happy hours that allow your people to keep in touch and stay motivated to keep going. Competition is another fun way to keep development interesting and prevent people from “checking out.” Create a lively environment by leveraging virtual business simulations where teams compete against each other, or by setting up competitions to complete the most learning modules.

Taking action to shift downtime into development time will help your people at home stay engaged, productive, and mentally healthy. Your people will feel that they are continuing to learn and move forward, while getting smarter so they are ready to hit the ground running once things are back to normal.

We created the BTS Sales Index to give a simple and easy-to-understand predictive monthly metric that gives enterprise leaders the right vantage point by which to view their critical business decisions.

BTS Sales Index March 2020 Update

+1.6

BTS Sales Index March 2020:

113.3 (+1.4%)

February 2020* in the Economy

• Aggregate revenue of BTS 1000 increased from $3.47 trillion in January to $3.52 in February, rising by $48 billion
• Employers add 273,000 jobs in February, compared to the 175,000 projection
• Health care, food services, government, construction, professional and technical services all added jobs in February
• The unemployment rate dropped down to 3.5 percent, 0.1 percent lower than the start of the year
• While February was too early to see the impact of the coronavirus on the labor market, it was in a good place before the virus began to spread and cause concern
• Early indicators in the most vulnerable sectors include some travel and transportation companies imposing hiring freezes, postponing raises, and encouraging unpaid time off
• The next few months will undoubtably test the resiliency of this strong labor market

*the March update is reflective of February 2020 data

Why

Line of business and sales leaders tasked with making strategic decisions don’t have a good measure of confidence when deciding to ramp up production or invest in customer relationships. Quarterly GDP numbers and the S&P 500 paint two different pictures of economic performance, the former too slow to incorporate new data and the latter too likely to overreact to investor sentiment.

We created the BTS Sales Index to give a simple and easy-to-understand predictive monthly metric that gives enterprise leaders the right vantage point by which to view their critical business decisions.

What

The BTS Sales Index represents the aggregate total revenue of the 1,000 largest publically traded companies in the US in one simple to understand number.

How

As mentioned above, the BTS Sales Index is comprised of the total revenue of the largest 1,000 publically traded companies incorporated in the US. Every month, we collect the total revenue reported by these companies and run the data through our custom-built indexing tool. The index uses the total revenue of the BTS 1,000 companies at the end of the second quarter of 2013 as its baseline because the economy showed signs of stable recovery. Unemployment was back to normal rates, housing prices remained steady, and stock prices were back to record levels.

Chuck, a merchandising executive for a global retail company, received feedback that while he was generally a calm and rational person, his anger at mistakes and unpredictability during stressful situations were limiting his career growth. Additionally, those at the level above him felt his presentations were too “in the weeds” and not strategic enough. This meant he wasn’t being included in succession plans for higher level roles.

Chuck’s behavior was causing many challenges within his group. His unpredictability made his team hesitate to let him know about problems right away, as they were hoping to figure out a solution before having to approach him. By the time he did find out, the problems were much harder to resolve. This was causing larger supply chain issues and downstream revenue hits that most likely could have been avoided if Chuck were able to address the problems sooner.

You might be thinking that you know a few leaders like Chuck. Unfortunately, we find that feedback like this is all too common. In fact, the data we’ve collected through the thousands of executive leadership assessments, using the ExPI^TM, reveal that three of the four lowest rated leadership qualities are:

1. Restrain
2. Composure
3. Resonance

Restraint points to a leader’s temperament and predictability. Composure is about how well a leader handles crisis situations and Resonance is about how a leader connects with others and positions him/herself to notice what others are thinking and feeling.

These three facets of leadership are key to emotional intelligence (EI) - the ability to notice our own emotions, manage our reactions, notice others' emotions, and respond appropriately - because they point to our ability to remain even-tempered, to take the heat out of crisis situations, and to address others’ emotions.Why do leaders have such a hard time demonstrating EI?Usually, it’s not that these leaders don’t have emotional intelligence. Rather, it is often a result of a couple of habits that get in the way.

• A strong 'action' bias. What has gotten these leaders to senior levels is this action: their ability to make quick decisions, act with speed, and respond efficiently to tactical questions. Therefore, when a situation requires thoughtfulness or a pause in the action, these leaders are not practiced in how to stop, slow down, think, and then act. And, if they are highly emotional their team will hesitate to reach out to them when thoughtfulness is required.
• Easily triggered. When a leader’s core value or deep belief is being challenged, they can be easily triggered. For example, a leader who has very high Integrity can quickly overreact when a team member seems to make a poor decision, even if it might be within the realm of a good decision to another leader. Or a leader can be triggered if a peer promises to send information by a certain date and doesn’t deliver.

Take Chuck, for instance. In prior roles, he made quick decisions regarding what customers would want which led to great buying decisions. He was able to change course rapidly and resolve problems when confronted with supplier issues. He was known as the guy who knew exactly where to go to get the right merchandise in the right stores. All great qualities, for a single contributor. And, arguably great qualities in lower level leadership positions. However, they are not great qualities for this executive leadership role. He was acting so quickly that his organization couldn’t keep up. And because he was so hot headed, his team didn’t let him know this was happening.

An African proverb, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together,” holds true for many of the leaders we work with. When their action bias is front and center, they are often alone. And when they take a moment to look in the rearview mirror, they see that their teams are floundering. Alternatively, we see that when leaders slow down, they can rally their teams to get on board with their vision. They create engagement and synergy within their team that leads to real business results.

What can you do?

If Chuck’s story hits close to home, or if you tend to react when you wish you’d thought the situation through instead, then building your mindfulness muscle might be the answer. Mindfulness, or the act of noticing our own emotions and creating a gap between the stimulus and our response, builds emotional intelligence. It also strengthens the qualities of Restraint, Composure, and Resonance.

The challenge is that it requires noticing habitual reactions, pausing, and choosing to respond differently instead. This is easier said than done. However, once we begin choosing a new response and do so consistently, over time, we create powerful new habits and begin demonstrating greater emotional intelligence.

How to incorporate mindfulness into your leadership

Here are some simple things you can do to begin building your mindfulness muscle.

• Assess your speed and slow down to bring others along for the ride
• Keep distractions to a minimum to ensure you are truly connecting with people and noticing what might not be spoken
• Notice when you are triggered and take a few deep breaths before responding
• Respond with curiosity to inquire about the other person’s perspective, as opposed to responding from your triggered, reactive frame of mind
• Prepare for a challenging meeting or conversation by anticipating what might trigger you and deciding how you will respond differently this time
• When things get heated, defer or postpone the topic by suggesting discussing it off-line, after the meeting, or after more information is gathered

You create your organization’s environment and your demeanor sets the tone for your team. Do you want to nurture a hectic, chaotic environment or a thoughtful, innovative organization?

It can often feel like there’s absolutely no time to pause. However, we know through working with thousands of leaders, that powerful and effective leadership resides in both the pause and the thoughtful response.

Sustainability is one of today’s buzzwords. We all have it on our minds, individually and collectively.

It is the issue of our time. It is the issue of businesses and organizations, ensuring that their strategy and culture balance people, planet, and profit. At its core, sustainability is about empowering all life within our ecosphere, human, animal and plant, to coexist, sustain and thrive. Organizations play a significant role as key contributors and participants in society. Addressing sustainability is on the agenda, but we know our pace of change is simply not fast enough to meet the timelines needed to truly turn things around.Some argue that we are already too late. This week, Sir David Attenborough said, “It’s up to us to put before the nations of the world what needs to be done. Now is the moment” (BBC News). However, at this moment, the sustainability strategy is simply not being executed at the level we need. And for a while now, this word – sustainability, and what it represents, has been on my mind.

The Four Greatest Coaching Conversations can be read in many ways. It carries insights that prevail and transcend arguably all contexts. One that needs to be acknowledged right now is sustainability. This book isn’t the answer to the world’s sustainability issues, but it does provide the fundamental insights necessary to find an answer, your answer, to shifting mindsets that will successfully drive sustainability in your world.

At BTS, whilst we have a sustainability agenda, I am guilty of ignoring it in my day-to-day work. Most recently, one of my direct reports asked me if she could deliver a pro-bono workshop, which she previously ran for our team at a local school during work time. I remember my immediate reactive thoughts: “aah, that is a good cause. But this is going to cost time and money. It is going to be too hard to sign this off. It will set a precedent for the rest of the team. I need time to think this through.” It was too easy to simply ignore the heart and mind in front of me, wishing to express her social responsibility. Our social responsibility. Why was this happening?

Taking a step back, many organizations are still working out their sustainability strategy. Others have one, like we do. It doesn’t seep through all levels of the business at all times.

To deliver a strategy successfully, we believe that an organization must consider each of the following elements of the equation:

Execution of strategy = Alignment x Mindset x Capability

To create a sustainable business culture, we need to align the business at all levels (people, structures, processes, including aligning with outside institutions and influencing the political arena). In speaking with our clients, when the sustainability agenda is not aligned nor embedded into the business strategy across all levels, it fails to have any concrete impact. We must shift mindsets, individually and culturally. We must develop the capabilities (the roles and skills needed to make it happen).

But how do we shift these mindsets, both on an individual and cultural level?

Well, this is the heart of The 4 Greatest Coaching Conversations. Based on research from thousands of coaching conversations, we identified the four types of mindsets that are the most important for unlocking leadership and action:

• Be-mindsets: These are conversations about getting over your limiting beliefs and acting from an empowered place
• Inspire-mindsets: These are conversations about releasing your sense of meaning, values and purpose
• Relate-mindsets: These are coaching conversations about empathizing and connecting, in order to overcome barriers that stop you from engaging hearts and minds
• Think-mindsets: These are coaching conversations about releasing your creativity when adapting to and solving business challenges that you face today

When researching the mindsets that can inhibit a sustainable strategy within businesses, we found these mindsets appearing most often (and in brackets, some truths from current studies):

• Apathy – I feel like giving up when experiencing the reality, a sense of powerlessness (instead of owning your power to influence change within and beyond)
• Abdication of responsibility – the real responsibility belongs to others, other leaders in the business, other organizations or other countries (as opposed to each person and organization taking their responsibility as a citizen of the world)
• Uninspired – I don’t feel I can make a difference, demotivated, especially when I see the real solutions are not in my capacity to solve (as opposed to seeing the reality that ‘no one person can solve it all, but a significant amount could be solved if each person were inspired to do at least one thing’)
• Meaningless – there’s no point (as opposed to seeing the change we can meaningfully make)
• Avoidance or denial – it’s too much/overwhelming when I think about it or it’s not really that bad, and I end up avoiding (instead of allowing your heart to be impacted and touched, and acting on your compassion)
• Separation – I see myself or the business as separate from the environment (as opposed to seeing them as an interconnected participant)
• Too busy – I haven’t got time/it’s too much effort, my job is already at risk (instead of thinking how the job can sustainably adapt to the changes and how to create win-win)
• Too costly – it’s too costly to seriously consider (as opposed to thinking about creative solutions that already exist that reduce cost)

Each one of these mindsets above falls into the four groupings that we refer to in the book: Be, Inspire, Relate and Think. For each mindset, we share researched and tested coaching methodologies that help you to shift your mindset and release leadership. The intention of the book is to share this research and methodology with the world, which is targeted towards line managers, businesses and coaches, who can then unlock leadership in a variety of contexts: sustainability, diversity, and work-life balance.

In the example with my direct report, my Think mindset got in the way – my limiting ‘cost’ mindset didn’t see the creative win-win for business and people. Thankfully I caught it. My direct report is delivering the workshop. The cost to the business? Three hours of time. The benefit? We impact a local school with some of our work, we touch their hearts and minds, our people are inspired by the difference that one person can make, my direct report will develop her skills, we honor our responsibility and act on our care for the society we operate in and are part of…the list goes on. A true win-win-win for people, planet and profit.

We can bring change, just one conversation at a time.

Old habits die hard, and that’s especially true for senior leaders who hold top roles inside their companies. Sam is a good example of this. Despite running one of the largest business units for his organization, he is the first to acknowledge that his own leadership style has held him back from advancing into even higher executive levels. His perspective? “I’m in a senior role and should be focusing on the strategy of my business. The reality is that I am still putting out fires and too involved in the day-to-day execution.”

Successful transitions are part of any leader’s career journey, and experienced leaders know adopting new behaviors and ways of leading as each role requires it are requirements for advancement. They also know that it isn’t enough to adopt new habits, but they must also remove the old ones. If this sounds like you, consider two habits that can hold great leaders back.

The Habit of Hiding

Paul is a leader who hides in plain sight. In meetings with his new executive peers, he struggles to get a word in edgewise and primarily plays the role of listener. Paul’s view is that he’s new to his role and this team and needs to be learning more. He wants a bit more time under his belt before speaking up. He’s also a self-described introvert and someone who doesn't like interrupting or jumping into conversation. The problem is that his CEO has a very different expectation of how he wants Paul to engage and interact. “Paul needs to find his leadership voice and I expect him to weigh in. I know he has good ideas, but by not sharing them, he’s losing credibility with his new peer group.”

Leaders hide, even very experienced ones. We hide when:

• We are unwilling to raise concerns in a group setting
• We are reluctant to challenge up
• We hunker down, spend too much time in our office, and prioritize getting our stuff done over building relationships
• We pretend we’re OK with something when we aren’t
• We use email instead of having a conversation
• We avoid or delay making tough decisions
• We get other people to deliver our difficult messages
  ‍

The Habit of Drifting

Drifting is easy to do. The reason for this is simple. Senior leaders tend to be spread incredibly thin and pulled into many different directions. The result is drifting away from those key areas that move the needle and matter, and instead, putting too much time and energy into areas that don’t create value. Do that too often, you lose momentum and waste days or weeks with nothing to show for it.

Lisa ran into this challenge when she was up for the CFO role at her global company. Despite being on the succession plan and her years of experience as Treasurer, she didn’t land the role. The feedback? She hadn’t done enough to move the needle in key areas within the finance function and there were questions about whether she would really be able to influence and have an impact at an enterprise level. Lisa doesn’t disagree: “As a finance leader, I should know better than anyone about the importance of paying myself first. But as I look back on it, I majored in the minors. I lost focus and got too caught up in responding to everyone’s requests, answering emails, and sitting in on meetings I didn’t need to attend. Certain priorities wound up taking a back seat.”

Here’s how to stop drifting:Build more focus into your day and week.

• Build more focus into your day and week.
• Watch for a tendency to please everyone.
• Count how often you say ‘yes’ instead of ‘no.’
• Cut your time responding to email in half.
• Pay yourself first. Each week identify 3 top priorities. Take action each day to advance.
• Get discipline over your distractions. Use your phone for purpose. Less scroll time.
• Identify decisions to make now and just make them.
• Remind yourself: It isn’t about intention, it’s about execution.
• Get honest about why you’re drifting: is it a lack of time or something else?

Getting promoted into a senior role is an achievement, but it will take more than past performance to deliver success now. Evaluate which new habits and behaviors you’ll need to be effective now and resist the temptation to fall back into the old behaviors that may be convenient or comfortable, but don’t reflect who you are anymore.

We created the BTS Sales Index to give a simple and easy-to-understand predictive monthly metric that gives enterprise leaders the right vantage point by which to view their critical business decisions.

BTS Sales Index January 2020 Update: -0.3

BTS Sales Index January 2020: 109.3 (-0.3%)December 2019* in the Economy

• Aggregate revenue of BTS 1000 decreased $10 billion, from $3.41 trillion in November to $3.40 in December
• The US added 145,000 jobs in December. Retail contributed 41,000 jobs during the holiday season
• Despite the end-of-year surge in retail shopping, Pier 1 Imports and Macy’s both announced store closures
• The unemployment rate held steady at 3.5 percent, marking the third record-low month of 2019
• Although this decade started and ended without a recession, growth during the past 10 years has been slower compared to previous booms
• The US and China reached a trade deal that will be signed by mid-January

*the January update is reflective of December 2019 data

Why

Line of business and sales leaders tasked with making strategic decisions don’t have a good measure of confidence when deciding to ramp up production or invest in customer relationships. Quarterly GDP numbers and the S&P 500 paint two different pictures of economic performance, the former too slow to incorporate new data and the latter too likely to overreact to investor sentiment.

We created the BTS Sales Index to give a simple and easy-to-understand predictive monthly metric that gives enterprise leaders the right vantage point by which to view their critical business decisions.

What

The BTS Sales Index represents the aggregate total revenue of the 1,000 largest publicly traded companies in the US in one simple to understand number.

How

As mentioned above, the BTS Sales Index is comprised of the total revenue of the largest 1,000 publicly traded companies incorporated in the US. Every month, we collect the total revenue reported by these companies and run the data through our custom-built indexing tool. The index uses the total revenue of the BTS 1,000 companies at the end of the second quarter of 2013 as its baseline because the economy showed signs of stable recovery. Unemployment was back to normal rates, housing prices remained steady, and stock prices were back to record levels.