Tag: reflection

Ways of Improving Your Strategic Thinking Skills

by Anne-Maria Yritys, posted in Change Leadership, strategic vision, strategy execution

If asking any experienced business leader what the single most important ingredient for success in business is, the response would likely be the capacity to execute a well thought out business strategy. Part of strategy execution is also the existence of a written business strategy at the core of any business. Without a long-term business strategy, there is no business. Without proper strategy execution, a well thought-out business strategy written nicely on paper will definitely fail.

Strategic thinking, therefore, is important to any business person, manager and leader. The ability of strategic thinking allows for you to plan both long-term and short-term, and helps you to adjust your strategic plan along the way, in accordance with your (changing) operational environment.

How can you improve your strategic thinking skills? There are definitely many ways, at the core of which is to understand better how your brain works! Your brain likes to be challenged, at any age, because pushing yourself beyond old limits and patterns of behavior and thinking will allow for your brain to perform better. Continuous learning, including unlearning old behaviors and patterns, is therefore at the core of being a good strategist.

Moreover, challenging yourself, including your attitude and beliefs, allows for you to gain completely new experiences and perspectives. That is why it is so important for any good strategist to remain curious throughout career and life, know how to question things, and learn how to see the big picture. Enough rest and sleep is also important, as well as distancing oneself regularly from any noise in one´s surrounding: that is, taking time out on a daily basis to meditate and to find a quiet place where you can distance yourself from the everyday noise in your life. It can be as short as a few minutes.

Since many business people and leaders, including entrepreneurs, find their existence at times being rather lonesome, it is extremely important to find people to exchange ideas and thoughts with. If you are an online entrepreneur, for instance, you can selectively join various groups and activities both in the 3D world and online. We are all social beings and depend on other human beings in many ways. Asking others for help, and/or gaining perspective by engaging with different kinds of people in both business and private will definitely be an enriching experience and an eye-opener for anyone who wants to improve and develop her/his strategic thinking skills.

What other ways can you think of? Please comment and share your experiences, ideas and thoughts!

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Virtues and Sins Part 2: Patience vs. Wrath

by Anne-Maria Yritys, posted in Authentic Leadership, Building Dialogue, Change Management, Communication Skills, Life Coaching, Virtues and Sins

Have you ever felt impatient? Full of wrath, not knowing how to calm down or how to relax? Letting off steam in a proper manner e.g. through regular physical activities is good for anyone´s health, but if and when we do exercise wrath in maliscious ways, we end up harming not only others around us but most of all ourselves. Do you agree?

Having the gift of the tongue may be helpful in some situations, but playing a smart aleck can sometimes turn against you. Therefore, patience and the ability of listening, truly attentive listening often brings one further and enhances the birth of a true dialogue.

Then, what is a dialogue? And how is it related to patience and wrath? Simple questions, non?

A few years ago I had the privilege of attending a class held by Shawn Spano, Ph.D., about communication and dialogue at SJSU in Silicon Valley. According to Spano, there are many different approaches to dialogue. As an example, he used a unique form of human communication relating it to the social construction theory.

“Communication is the process through which we collectively create our social worlds. Rather than see communication as a neutral vehicle for transmitting information from one person to another, social construction treats communication as a primary activity, one that not only reflects meaning but shapes it as well”.

Seen from this perspective, everything comprising our social worlds (emotions, personalities, relationships, beliefs, attitudes, identities etc.) are being created in patterns of communication.

Social construction in key words:

– Individuals co-construct their social worlds through communication processes

– Communication is a process of action, not only transmission of information

– To widen the boundaries of people´s social worlds, there is a need to create communication bridges in-between these.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ARGUMENT AND DIALOGUE:

In Argument we…:

  • Try to win
  • Compete for speaking time
  • Speak for others
  • Create a potentially threatening and uncomfortable environment
  • Take sides with others
  • Polarize ourselves from those with whom we disagree
  • Feel unswerving commitment to a point of view
  • Ask questions to make a point or put the other person down
  • Make predictable statements
  • Make simplistic statements
  • COMPETE

In dialogue, we…:

  • Try to understand
  • Value listening
  • Speak from personal experience
  • Create an atmosphere of safety
  • Discover differences even among those with whom we agree
  • Discover shared concerns between ourselves and others
  • Discover our uncertainties as well as deeply held beliefs
  • Ask questions out of true curiosity and the desire to know more
  • Discover significant new things
  • Explore the complexity of the issues being discussed
  • COLLABORATE

(Source: http://www.publicconversations.org)

Once again: what has this got to do with patience and wrath?

Just about everything, since we all have the ability of constructing our social worlds through our means of communication. Communication and dialogue are at the core of every individual´s and organization´s success, but still, more often than not, undervalued.

Through the development of communication and dialogue we can all become successful at what we do, both in business and private.

For more information, feel free to contact me and to comment my posts. I love being in dialogue with people.