Business and Leadership Keynote Speaker
Love it or hate it. Change is a part of life and business.
Reacting to it is human. Anticipating it is wise. But mismanaging your change management process is entirely avoidable.
If you ask Google: What percentage of change management initiatives fail? You will see 202 million results!
The number doesn’t matter.
Getting to the cause while adopting a proactive, purposeful plan matters more. [Read more…] about 7 deadly sins of change management…and how to avoid them
If there is one gift 2020 offered to the world, then perspective would be a suitable choice. As we reflect on the year that just passed, hindsight can truly be viewed as 20/20. That is, the year provided great insight for the world. Humanity as a collective discovered how to be better: More empathy, open-mindedness and appreciation for the many things that we used to take for granted. For example, the simple act of a hug, enjoying the company of family members at the dinner table and perhaps more significantly than any other state of being, the freedom to go about our daily lives without restrictions.
Organizations have also gained benefits from the unexpected, adverse circumstances. Although many leaders may not have initially viewed 2020 from a positive lens, the imperative of adapting to these challenging times provided numerous opportunities for introspection and improvement. Leaders can glean the following five key lessons that will continue to have relevance for years to come: [Read more…] about Five Key Leadership Lessons from 2020
As I work with leaders from organizations in the corporate world, small businesses, associations and all levels of government, what I consistently see is a collective desire to respond to on-going change and disruption with less struggle and anxiety. The COVID-19 pandemic has elevated their concerns as they scramble to adapt to the unexpected and unfamiliar new realities that have been thrust upon them. Specifically: How to keep themselves and their teams feeling positive about the future, how to take the lead when there is so much uncertainty and how to effectively manage and keep their teams engaged remotely. [Read more…] about Unprecedented Times Call For Exceptional Leadership… Now More than Ever.
What are the core issues facing leadership in 2020 and beyond? Walk into any meeting comprising of senior leaders and the hottest topic of conversation will likely revolve around change, technology, clients and talent. While it is no surprise that these top-of-mind challenges are keeping many leaders up at night, the unrelenting need to constantly recalibrate is the most interesting aspect of doing business today and into the future. What will be different? And what, if anything, will be the same? [Read more…] about Leadership in 2020 and Beyond: What will be different? What will be the same?
“I love change.” How many times have you heard people embrace change with such enthusiasm? Rarely is the likely answer. One could argue that it depends on an individual’s perspective, or perhaps, one’s response to imminent and on-going change is influenced by unexpected circumstances, either personal or professional. The reality is that unless we reside in a bubble or choose to isolate ourselves completely from technology, media, or the world, it is impossible to avert the inevitability of change. [Read more…] about Five Ways to Find Opportunity in Change
SHRM defined one of the most important competencies in leading organizations as taking risk. The ability to risk. Without question, we want to be conscious of taking calculated risk. There is a difference between taking extraordinary risk and taking calculated risks. What kind of a risk taker are you? If we don’t take risks, we simply stand still. Of course today, it’s impossible to move forward without taking some kind of risk. That involves of course being able to let go of the fear and trust yourself. Trust in who you have around you. Trust in your decisions. Trust in your decision-making ability that you are able to take that next step.
Some of the risks we take may seem overwhelming initially, but once you’ve taken that risk and you’ve lived to see the result, you realize that what you actually did will give you the energy to continue to take risks. Being a risk taker doesn’t necessarily mean you are the risk taker extraordinaire, but you have an ability to embrace your fears, move through them and take the next step to take the risk.
This article is a transcript from Key Leadership Traits: The ability to Take Risks YouTube.
Michelle Ray (Twitter) is one of the best international leadership keynote speakers in Vancouver. She helps you discover your potential through presentations, coaching and consulting. With over 20 years of experience Michelle has worked with hundreds of companies around the world. She is taking bookings for speaking engagements and can be contacted at MichelleRay.com
Leadership Competencies is all about honing your ability to be adaptable, to be flexible. Today, I would say more than any other time, we are seeing the pace of change accelerating and so of course, we need to be flexible. We need to be adaptable, and along with being adaptable, we need to be willing to be flexible. There is no room today to stand still.
So, how adaptable are you to move with the pace of change, to recognize that things are happening outside of yourself faster than you can even imagine, faster than your business can even keep up with at times. So, if you are willing to be adaptable, and if you are willing to remain flexible, then you are in a position to teach other to do the same. You are in a position to be able to transcend change and you are able to remain on top of ever changing business dynamics and where your customers are going.
So, remaining flexible, is that you? Remaining adaptable, is that you? Because that is what we need to do as one of the core competencies to lead yourself.
This article is a transcript from Leading Self: Developing Adaptability YouTube.
Michelle Ray (Twitter) is one of the best international leadership keynote speakers in Vancouver. She helps you discover your potential through presentations, coaching and consulting. With over 20 years of experience Michelle has worked with hundreds of companies around the world. She is taking bookings for speaking engagements and can be contacted at MichelleRay.com
As leaders, you already know the importance of not only managing change, but embracing it as well. I want you to consider how you can celebrate the opportunity that change represents. Think about it, you used to wait hours or maybe even days for information to be transmitted and printed on a scroll of thermal paper.
Today, that happens in seconds. You used to travel over oceans to meet with clients and counterparts. Now, you can conduct so much of your business virtually. And think about all the information you have at your fingertips today, thanks to the internet.
So we all have a lot of experience with change. It’s not like it’s foreign to us. With awareness, we can reflect on the times when we felt we could never overcome a particular challenge. Yet we rose to the occasion. We were able to demonstrate agility and willingness to try new things. Just as athletes develop muscle memory, your ability to navigate change will become more instinctual with practice.
The most powerful choice you can make is to focus on the aspects of change that are within your control. At any point, you can choose to decipher how change unfolds. How you give meaning to the challenges that come with change will ultimately influence the outcome. When you hit your next bump in the road, ask, why am I being disrupted by change, and how can I embrace it.
That’s the leadership mindset.
This post is a transcript of https://youtu.be/VHlM080bCb8 on YouTube
Michelle Ray (Twitter) is one of the best international leadership keynote speakers in Vancouver. She helps you discover your potential through presentations, coaching and consulting. With over 20 years of experience Michelle has worked with hundreds of companies around the world. She is taking bookings for speaking engagements and can be contacted at MichelleRay.com
It’s interesting how people will often use the term disruption, and the term change interchangeably. I do believe however that there are some subtle differences. Disruption is defined as a disturbance or problem that interrupts an event, an activity, or a process. It often necessitates change.
Let’s outline the process of disruption. If you think of life as a continuum, we find ourselves rolling along the highway of life, and right now we have the present. We have our current state. All of a sudden, some kind of disruption, unanticipated event occurs and we find ourselves in an altered state. There it is. That change has happened. As I said, often unexpectedly and it shakes us up. So, we take a dip as a result of that disruption.
Some of us do not know how to get ourselves out of it, so we stay in that altered state paralyzed by that disruption. But if you consider that life is actually full of peaks and valleys, when we realize that we have gone through disruption before, we almost invariably are able to find ourselves rising out of it naturally. So when we do that, we are in a new state, and we are often operating at a higher level than we did previously. We’ve achieved a new level of consciousness. So we’ve taken our lives and our careers to a new level as a result.
There are people however, that do not stay in that new state, in fact they are operating at the same level that they were previously. They remain unconscious. Because they haven’t been able to accept the disruption, however difficult it might have been, they cannot come to terms with that, and as a result, they stay stuck. And when we don’t change, and we don’t move, life and opportunity will pass us by. And without moving to that new state, it may actually be too late.
Whether we choose to label change as disruption, or disruption as change, it is often about semantics. So in summary, let’s remember, disruption is the new norm. Disruption can occur internally within your own organization or externally, driven by the market, or by your competitors. And by operating at a new level of consciousness when disruption occurs, you can benefit both personally and professionally and grow as a result.
This post is a transcript of https://youtu.be/7Ngoce9bIZo on YouTube
When it comes to the status quo, you’ve got three choices. Accept, leave, or change. Let’s look at each one of these. Acceptance. Acceptance isn’t acquiescence. Acceptance is when you say to yourself, “This is okay with me, I can live with it.” Or, you may decide to leave. Some of us have had to exercise this choice. We’ve left jobs, we’ve left relationships, we’ve left managers. We’ve said to ourselves, “This situation no longer serves me, I am okay with making the decision to go.”
I would add however, that if you make this choice, what have you learned from the experience? Because, without learning something, it’s bound to catch up with you somewhere else. History tends to repeat itself. If you decide on the other hand, that you don’t want to accept it, and perhaps leaving it isn’t necessarily the right thing, you do have a very powerful choice. That is, to change.
Change who? Change you. Change how you see it, and change how you respond to it. That is one of the best choices that you can make. I know why we hold back. One of the reasons we stop ourselves from making the necessary changes that we need to make, is because we don’t trust ourselves enough. That’s all about intuition. It’s really important to understand the difference between acting on intuition, and being what I like to call, counter-intuitive. When we operate on our intuition, and we are finding ourselves facing change, we kick into what’s known as the fight or flight response. I’m sure many of you have heard of that too.
We either run away from a situation because we fear that it is threatening. Or, we decide to fight, to take it on. We are going to exercise either one of those options in the face of a threat. Whether that threat is real, or imagined. What I have learned is about being counter-intuitive. That means you’re going against the grain. You recognize your own internal fears, you actually recognize your reactivity. But, you don’t buy into it. Instead, you forge ahead. Feel the fear, and do it anyway.
We’ve all seen examples of people, and businesses that have successfully anticipated change. They’ve risen above the naysayers. They’re the trend setters, such as Apple, Microsoft, who were led by Founders considered to be the mavericks. Ahead of their time. Why? Because, they pursued their vision without buying into the opinions of the media, or competitors, who viewed them as being out there. Companies with ideas that would never fly because they thought they were simply outrageous.
What about bringing out the maverick in you? Let’s summarize. Learn to be proactive versus reactive. Trust yourself. Utilize your options. You do have a choice. Become the change agent you need to be in order to realize your vision, because when you do, anything is possible.
This post is a transcript of https://youtu.be/BVelWlZHb9U on YouTube
