I have recently started learning Italian. It has always been a dream. French is my mother tongue and I studied both English and German at school. I have to admit my German is now rotten and I will need a proper immersion to be able to speak the way I used to back in high school ! Though Italian is not part of the 6 top languages for global – minded CEOs as per the article below, I am very keen on mastering that language.

Learning a new language from scratch teaches you 3 amazing things.

1 – Humility. You are a beginner again in something and you sound at times quite dumb when you mispronounce words and confuse some expressions. But you keep going because the more you learn, the better you become, the more confident you are and eventually you will get there.

2- Persistence. It teaches you not to give up and keep going. As I said the more you learn, the better you become. It is as simple as that.Hard work and personal belief get you wherever you want.

3 – Cultural awareness. Learning a new language opens a door to invaluable knowledge of a particular country, customs, ways of thinking and seeing the world. So what are you waiting for to take up  a foreign language class?

The 6 Top Languages Global-Minded CEOs Should Know

During a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session earlier this year, Microsoft founder and prolific philanthropist Bill Gates said his biggest regret in life is that he speaks only English.

Not exactly what one would expect to hear from the billionaire founder of one of the largest tech corporations in the world.

Gates’s insightful admission comes on the heels of Mark Zuckerberg’s impressive demonstration of semi-fluent Chinese during a Q&A with Tsinghua University students in Beijing last October. By learning Chinese, Zuckerberg clearly demonstrated that mastering a local language is a key step toward developing deeper business relationships and winning the hearts and minds of target markets — and he’s right.

Here, the languages global-minded CEOs should be learning.

Related: The 3 Essentials of Expanding Into Other Countries
1. Spanish

Of all the languages in the world, Spanish is the language our online translation agency works with the most, reflecting an enormous market the world over. Aside from the huge potential of almost all of South and Central America with emerging economic powerhouses such as Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela — not to mention the significant market in Spain itself — learning Spanish is worth it if only to reach the Hispanic speaking community in the U.S., whose purchasing power is already more than a trillion dollars and growing.

As opposed to its spoken dialects, Spanish written forms are more uniform than other languages which makes them simpler to learn. As a Romance language, with the same letters and roots as English, you’ll probably twist your tongue a lot less than when learning Chinese.
2. Portuguese

Portuguese has already become the fourth most-translated language at our company, reflecting an exponential rise in recent years. It’s obviously not Portugal we’ve got our eyes on here, but rather Brazil, which is quickly transforming from emerging market to one of the world’s richest nations. With a huge population, tons of natural resources and a growing tech community, learning Portuguese will go a long way to penetrating the intricacies of the local business culture. Plus, imagine the fun speaking the local tongue come Carnival time.
3. Chinese

There are dozens of different languages and dialects spoken in China, and while Mandarin is by far the most widely spoken — in fact, it’s the most prevalent language in the world with 1.1 billion native speakers — other Chinese dialects are spoken by hundreds of millions of people.

Wu, for example, used in the financial hub of Shanghai, is spoken by more than 80 million people — that’s a potential market the size of Germany! Depending on what area of China you’re targeting and the fact that written dialects in the country are basically uniform, learning Wu, Jin, Min or Yue will certainly be worth the effort.
4. Russian

Russia has a market nearly 150 million strong, seemingly endless natural resources and a burgeoning IT sector. Plus, the language is also spoken to varying degrees in post-Soviet states (for almost 300 million speakers in all) — many important emerging economies themselves — making it number nine on our most-translated list. Knowing Russian will go a long way toward winning the trust of local business leaders. And you can read Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky in the original.
5. Arabic

Hundreds of millions of people around the world speak Arabic — the fifth most-spoken language in the world — so it comes as no surprise that Arabic is number 10 on our list. The Arab world, with a growing online culture, doesn’t have its own Amazon or Alibaba, making it a market with huge potential, not to mention the deep petro-economies of the region. Executives who speak their language are going to have a leg up in this cross-continental market. The drawback? With dozens of distinct varieties of spoken Arabic, choosing the right one will be a daunting process.
6. German

German is the second most-translated language at our agency, reflecting the country’s status as Europe’s largest economy and one of strongest economies in the world. Enough said.

Learning a foreign language may be a major investment of time and energy, but speaking even a rudimentary level of a country’s native tongue goes a long way to breaking down walls.

Source : https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244233

Here’s a great article from Harvard Business Review that makes the distinction between a mere manager and a leader.

Peter Drucker once said ‘ Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things’.

Vineet Nayar’s own definition is quite spot on too.

A young manager accosted me the other day. “I’ve been reading all about leadership, have implemented several ideas, and think I’m doing a good job at leading my team. How will I know when I’ve crossed over from being a manager to a leader?” he wanted to know.

I didn’t have a ready answer and it’s a complicated issue, so we decided to talk the next day. I thought long and hard, and came up with three tests that will help you decide if you’ve made the shift from managing people to leading them.

Counting value vs Creating value. You’re probably counting value, not adding it, if you’re managing people. Only managers count value; some even reduce value by disabling those who add value. If a diamond cutter is asked to report every 15 minutes how many stones he has cut, by distracting him, his boss is subtracting value.

By contrast, leaders focuses on creating value, saying: “I’d like you to handle A while I deal with B.” He or she generates value over and above that which the team creates, and is as much a value-creator as his or her followers are. Leading by example and leading by enabling people are the hallmarks of action-based leadership.

Circles of influence vs Circles of power. Just as managers have subordinates and leaders have followers, managers create circles of power while leaders create circles of influence.

The quickest way to figure out which of the two you’re doing is to count the number of people outside your reporting hierarchy who come to you for advice. The more that do, the more likely it is that you are perceived to be a leader.

Leading people vs Managing work. Management consists of controlling a group or a set of entities to accomplish a goal. Leadership refers to an individual’s ability to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward organizational success. Influence and inspiration separate leaders from managers, not power and control.

In India, M.K. Gandhi inspired millions of people to fight for their rights, and he walked shoulder to shoulder with them so India could achieve independence in 1947. His vision became everyone’s dream and ensured that the country’s push for independence was unstoppable. The world needs leaders like him who can think beyond problems, have a vision, and inspire people to convert challenges into opportunities, a step at a time.

I encouraged my colleague to put this theory to the test by inviting his team-mates for chats. When they stop discussing the tasks at hand — and talk about vision, purpose, and aspirations instead, that’s when you will know you have become a leader.

Vineet Nayar is the founder of the Sampark Foundation based in Delhi, and the former CEO of HCL Technologies. He is the author of Employees First, Customers Second. Follow Vineet at twitter.com/vineetnayar.

Source : https://hbr.org/2013/08/tests-of-a-leadership-transiti

We’re now accepting submissions for our 2016 Top Company Cultures list. Think your company should be on it? Apply Now »

Increasing employee engagement, creating a healthier culture and building a world-class organization that sees exceptional growth every year is what all leaders in any industry wants for their organization. If that is the goal for most leaders, then why do so few organizations succeed at the above three?

There are a ton of reasons that may be hindering an organizations success, but one key area that majority of companies completely neglect or refuse to pay any attention to is their employees’ personal dreams and desires.

Related: 10 Examples of Companies With Fantastic Cultures

I recently spent some time with Infusionsoft at their headquarters in Chandler, Arizona. You may have heard of them already, but Infusionsoft is a complete sales and marketing automation software for small businesses. I was completely blown away by their positive and healthy culture, employees and everyone’s eagerness to build the company to even greater success.

There are plenty of people who deserve credit for the culture at Infusionsoft, especially their CEO Clate Mask. What took me by surprise though was to find out that they have someone on staff who is actually labeled as their dream manager. Dan Ralphs, who is the dream manager at Infusionsoft, has one job description — to help the employees of the company achieve their personal dreams.

One of the company’s employees a few years back had read The Dream Manager by bestselling author Matthew Kelly. He loved the book so much that he desperately wanted to get it in the hands of Clate Mask, the CEO of the company. Being an avid reader and leader who is always looking to grow himself, Clate accepted the book and read it on a flight. Once he was finished with the book, he immediately knew that Infusionsoft was going to going to have a dream manager on staff.

In the book, Kelly writes, “The future of your organization and the potential of your employees are intertwined — their destinies are linked.” At Infusionsoft, you see this clearly, as employees are actively engaged in the workplace while passionately helping the organization build towards the grander vision while in return, the organization is passionately helping employees work towards their biggest personal dreams.

When talking to some of the employees at Infusionsoft, I would hear things such as, “I ran my first marathon because of Infusionsoft” or “I am almost out of debt because of Infusionsoft.” Hearing some of the personal dreams that have been accomplished is truly astonishing. Infusionsoft isn’t making miracles happen to make dreams come true for their employees, but they do show them that they immensely care about them as people and want to provide them with the resources and tools to help them achieve some of their biggest dreams in life. In return, they have employees who are extremely passionate about the company that they work for and are actively engaged in the workplace.

“The Dream Manager concept provides a revolutionary way of reversing this crippling trend toward disengagement and demonstrates how organizations large and small can actively engage their people once again, thus creating a competitive advantage of monumental proportions,” Kelly says.

You might be asking, how exactly does the dream manager program work? At Infusionsoft, every employee has the opportunity to meet with Dan Ralphs, the company’s dream manager. He asks them to write down one hundred dreams and eventually they pick one dream together and start to develop a plan on how to accomplish it. From there they have follow up meetings and track the progress of where everyone is at in relation to achieving their dream for the year.

The absolute best way to transform a company is to transform the people within that company. Regardless of what industry you are in or how big or small your company is, one of the best ways to engage your people, create a healthy culture, and get everyone on board to work towards the organization’s grander vision is to care and help them achieve their personal dreams.

You may come up with something completely different than what Infusionsoft has adopted or what Mattew Kelly writes about in his book, The Dream Manager, but the one thing you can’t ignore is constantly looking for ways to grow and develop your people. After all, your company can only become as great as the people within it.

Source : https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/253067

Six Hats Thinking

Developed by Dr. Edward de Bono, the “Six Thinking Hats” ™ technique is a framework designed to promote holistic and lateral thinking in decision-making and evaluation. Conducted alone or in group meetings, participants – project members, key decision-makers and stakeholders – are encouraged to cycle through different modalities of thinking using the metaphor of wearing different conceptual “hats”.

This approach seeks to combine the strengths of a range of different mental “states” which individuals instinctively tend towards – from rational and positive perspectives to emotional and intuitive, or from optimistic to pessimistic – by prompting participants to consider the same problem through a full spectrum of thinking styles in coming to common agreement on a decision or shared purpose.

Six “hats” are available to use, each identified by a different colour symbolic of a different style of thinking, and each dictating a unique mode of analysis. These include:

• White hat: “Information”. Objectively consider available information, focusing only on data available, where gaps in existing knowledge exist, and what trends can be extrapolated from the information to hand.
• Red hat: “Emotions”. Identify emotional reactions, judgments, suspicions and intuitions in oneself and others, separate from the objective data itself.
• Black hat: “Negatives”. Raise and consider any potential flaws, risks, challenges and fears in a decision or plan in order to preempt them and avoid the dangers of over-optimism.
• Yellow hat: “Positives”. Identify all optimistic, constructive aspects and suggestions regarding a decision or plan, with an eye towards building confidence and enthusiasm at the outset.
• Green hat: “Creativity”. ‘Blue-sky’ thinking. Consider abstract thinking, digressions, alternative proposals, and provocative statements.
• Blue hat: “Overview”. Consider the entire thinking process itself, i.e. ‘meta-cognition’. Review and assess the six hats session thus far, identify places where a specific modality of thinking needs expanding, revisiting, or balancing.

In a “six thinking hats” session, each of these hats is “worn” by participants, the process guided by a facilitator familiar with the option. These hats may be metaphorical, or even physical, and each change of “hat” indicates the next stage of the session. By the end of a successful “Six Hats” session, a particular decision or evaluation will thus have been considered from a range of viewpoints.

Example

The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) employed the six hat methodology in their support of Sri Lankan government’s attempts to improve the planning and implementation of post-tsunami housing and reconstruction efforts. To this end, Sri Lankan and German counterparts cooperated in a series of joint project planning sessions which began with six thinking hat sessions. These sessions were used to identify and generate mutual understanding of the key issues which needed to be better understood and addressed in the reconstruction process.

(Source: Ben Ramalingam. “Tools for Knowledge and Learning”, Overseas Development Institute, 2006. Online at http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/details.asp?id=5231&title=six-thinking-hats-edward-de-bono)

Advice

Advice for USING this option (tips and traps)

• Sessions should begin with a “blue hat” period, allowing participants to arrive at a consensus regarding how subsequent thinking should be accomplished – the other colors are then cycled through.
• For evaluation and performance review, the recommended sequence is Blue, Red, White, Yellow, Black, Green. Evaluators should feel free, however, to adapt this to whichever sequence they find most effective in practice.
• The facilitator should be ready to clarify each stage of thinking, plan the sequence of “hats” in advance, refocus discussions in line with each stage of thinking, and be prepared, if need be, change the thinking in line with participant feedback.

Advice for CHOOSING this option (tips and traps)

Do you have advice on choosing this option? Add it to the comments below.

Resources

Guides

• Six Thinking Hats –  DeBono Consulting Guide of the technique
• Tools for Knowledge and Learning – Guide: Collaboration Mechanisms: Six Thinking Hats in Ramalingam 2006, Overseas Development Institut (ODI).

Sources

De Bono, E. (1999) Six Thinking Hats, Revised Edition. Little, Brown and Co: London.

http://betterevaluation.org/evaluation-options/six_hats