Susan Colantuono highlights how women's career advancement is often hindered by a lack of business acumen, urging listeners to strengthen their skills. Debra Tannen discusses the intricacies of communication and its role in fostering professional relationships. Don Miguel Ruiz revisits the impactful teachings of 'The Four Agreements' for personal and professional growth. Karen Berman emphasizes the importance of financial intelligence, providing tools to decode business models and financial statements, crucial for succeeding in the corporate world.
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Quick takeaways
Improving business acumen, especially for women, is vital for career advancement and involves understanding negotiation and financial concepts effectively.
Sports coaching principles can offer valuable insights for professional development, emphasizing mentorship and continuous improvement while navigating diverse team dynamics.
Deep dives
Improving Business Acumen
Improving business acumen is essential for career advancement, particularly for women facing unique challenges in the workplace. Understanding negotiation tactics is critical, as many women may not advocate for themselves in salary discussions, which can have lasting impacts on their careers. Recommendations for enhancing business knowledge include engaging with user-friendly resources like books aimed at explaining financial concepts in simple terms, such as those using relatable analogies. Additionally, regular consumption of insightful media, like the Marketplace program, can provide valuable economic context and broaden one’s understanding of the business landscape.
Navigating Audiobook Reading
Managing the consumption of audiobooks poses distinct challenges compared to physical texts, particularly when it comes to referencing and summarizing content. Utilizing apps that allow users to take notes while listening can help, although the effectiveness may vary based on personal habits. Alternately, purchasing both audiobook and print versions of crucial texts enables readers to engage more deeply with the material. Exploring ways to integrate technology into the reading experience could present future opportunities for better managing and cross-referencing audiobook content.
Learning from Sports Coaching
The principles of sports coaching can offer valuable insights applicable in professional settings, emphasizing the importance of continuous improvement and dedicated mentorship. Coaches can play a crucial role in developing skills, as even top athletes require guidance to enhance their performance. However, caution should be exercised when applying sports metaphors in business contexts, as they may not resonate universally with all team members. Emphasizing diverse methodologies can help create an inclusive environment where concepts from various fields can be applied effectively.
Streamlining Organizational Tasks
In light of workforce reductions, it is critical for organizations to reassess their tasks to eliminate redundancies and focus on essential functions. Implementing zero-based budgeting principles encourages teams to start from scratch and justify every task's continued relevance, fostering a cleaner and more efficient workflow. Engaging teams in an open dialogue about task prioritization can create a collaborative environment for identifying and removing non-essential activities. This approach not only aids in organizational efficiency but also contributes to a healthier workplace culture by addressing morale through collective participation.
Bonni Stachowiak
Teaching in Higher Ed
Question from Allison
Do you have any tips on improving business acumen? I watched this TED talk. Susan Colantuono states that the reason women have a difficult time advancing in their careers is because their business acumen is not strong enough. What are your thoughts?
Bonni mentioned Pocket
Books by Debra Tannen*
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz*
Marketplace
100 Best Business Books of All Time
Financial Intelligence by Karen Berman and Joe Knight*
Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur*
Audio question from Suzie on how to record book notes
Dave recommended Audible* (a free month of Audible and two free books available from this link*)
Recommendation from Frank
I work in supply chain for a large healthcare system and I'm often asked to lead project teams, so I'm finding the advice on the show very helpful. I find that the coaching skills that I learn can often be applied to either teaching 14 year old girls the great game of softball (which often crosses into life lessons), or managing 40 year old professionals on a project team.
So with that in mind, may I suggest the book Coaching the Mental Game by H.A. Dorfman*? Although it's a sports coaching centric book, so much of it can be applied in other coaching roles and it's thought of the gold standard of sports coaching books.
Dave also mentioned Positive Coaching by Jim Thompson*
Question from Jignesh about personality type
Dave’s past article on 7 Questions to Engage People You Just Started Managing will be helpful
Recommendation from Jamie
A really good book that I used with my team was The Thin Book of Trust: An Essential Primer for Building Trust at Work by Charles Feltman*. I had my entire team read it and then we discussed it. A big benefit of the book is that it is short but power packed. It really helped my team in four ways:
The book does a great job in discussing well-formed requests (the goal, the deadline and the conditions for success). The first two my team did well, but the last one was an area we struggled with (me as well as several of my team members). Thus, we talked about ensuring that we dealt with the conditions for success – rather than making assumptions – if the conditions are not specified ask.
The book does a good job about acknowledging how commitments should be made – rather than assumed or implied. The classic example is when everyone is in a meeting, a task is discussed vaguely and walking away from the meeting everyone believes someone is going to do the task – except that someone.
Given #1 and #2, the book emphasized how well-formed requests and explicit commitments can bolster trust. Trust is negatively affected if the requests are not well-formed and commitments are not explicit to everyone – particularly the one with the task!
The book breaks trust into sincerity, reliability, competence and care – seeing it broken down this way helped me and my folks analyze (and fix) some areas within our team where trust was broken and it also helped each person understand the reason for the lack of trust of certain people. The book even provides suggestions for how to repair trust in an approachable way.
Question from Michael
I had a valuable experience this week. I reside in the Washington DC/Baltimore/Virginia metro area and I mentor a young man who resides in Baltimore. In the wake of the recent riots he called me at 10 PM on Monday night and asked what I would do - he was unsure whether he should be on the streets protesting or whether he should stay home and watch. Now, I coach these young men to be responsible but also true to their instincts for doing what is right. In this case however, I was torn between advising what was responsible which in my opinion would be to stay home and what was right which was to join the protesters. I asked him what he felt Martin Luther King would do in this situation.
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