Author: leadgen

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Gus Kenworthy had a secret. Despite winning an Olympic silver medal in slopestyle in Sochi, Russia where the U.S. swept the podium for only the third time in U.S. Winter Olympic history, he wasn’t the best freestyle skier he could be.

He would qualify first at ski events only to find himself falling in the finals. The pressure of the secret was too much. If he wanted to be a great skier, he had to be honest with himself, his teammates, and all those he loved.

Kenworthy publicly revealed in ESPN’s October 2015 Magazine issue that he was gay. In doing so, he became the first male action-sports athlete to do so. While he didn’t think the revelation was particularly newsworthy, he announced it publicly to serve as an example to kids who were in the same position that he was.

Gus was born and raised in Telluride, Colorado. At the age of 16, he came to the attention of ski industry professionals and sponsors when he submitted a one-minute video of his skiing to one of the most prestigious freestyle events: the Jon Olsson Invitational.

Gus’s career as a triple threat freestyle skier took off after that. While competing in slopestyle, halfpipe, and big air he has helped push the boundaries of the sport with the first-ever double-cork 1080 in a halfpipe, the first ever double flip on a hip jump, and the first double flip off a rail!

Coming out has only improved Gus’s professional life and ski performance. Directly after his ESPN revelation, he reached the podium twice at the X Games events in Aspen, Colorado, and Oslo, Norway, and won a silver medal in slopestyle at the world championships in Sierra Nevada, Spain. And Visa, Toyota, Ralph Lauren, and Head & Shoulders are just a few of the sponsors that have shown him love.

At the 2018 Winter Olympics, Gus stepped out front and center as a spokesperson for LGBT issues, doing interviews, hosting events, and becoming the face of the LGBT community. While his inspiring sports story did not end with a second trip to the podium at the 2018 Olympics, Gus is happy and continues to serve as a great example of the how good things can happen when you are true to yourself.

Kyle Crocco is the Content Marketing Coordinator at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau, a graduate of UC Santa Barbara, and the lead singer of Duh Professors. He regularly publishes business book reviews and thought articles on Medium, Business 2 Community, and Born 2 Invest.

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In 1995, I had just sold my first company and needed to recharge and renew myself. I decided to attend a workshop at Esalen with Dr. Joan Borysenko, the noted brain scientist. The first evening of her workshop, Joan asked each of us to state our intention for the weekend. I shared with the group that I had several things I wished to accomplish, one of which was greater clarity on what my new work or calling was to be. I had been doing a lot of inner searching, but still hadn’t hit on the right fit for my next endeavor.

At the end of the evening, Joan mentioned that there was wonderful early morning singing that took place at the New Camaldoli Hermitage just down Hwy 1. Five of us got up at around 5 a.m. and headed for the seminary. When we got there, the monks were singing beautiful a cappella hymns in a small chapel with great acoustics. We joined in and felt the power of our voices in this resonant chamber. At one point, we stopped singing and a young monk read a passage from scripture that said, “Whenever you ask for something in life, ask for it in the name of Spirit or the Christ.” Then we went back to singing again.

After the service was over and we were winding our way down the hill and back towards Esalen, I said to myself, “Christ, would you please look in on the following things that I would like to take place?” And I proceeded to list my intentions from the night before, including wanting clarification on my new calling.

The rest of the day went nicely. Little did I know what was in store for me when I went to sleep that evening. I had an incredible dream where I was providing the finest transformational educators to people, making it easy for anyone who wanted greater self-understanding to find in one location all the resources they would need to better themselves. People were growing and healing, they were happier, relationships were joyful and meaningful, and I was providing a worthwhile and profound service. I woke up with this vision emblazoned on my mind. I felt like I had received a vision directly from God!

That morning I had breakfast with Joan and shared my vision of this new service. She loved the idea and said that she wanted to be the first person on my team. Furthermore, she said that she would help me to sign up other personal development experts whom she knew worked with integrity and heart. I was overjoyed with the wonderful support I was receiving for this divinely bestowed idea.

Twenty years later, BigSpeak is working with over two-thirds of the Fortune 1000 and many midsize corporations helping them deal with the critical issues of business, such as leadership, teambuilding, managing change, communication, innovation and living lives of balance and contribution. Personally, I am extremely fulfilled and am in the process of writing about the various factors that lead to successful personal and professional growth as well as organizational transformation. I am extremely grateful to Esalen for contributing an environment where I was able to receive such a profound vision. Providing individuals with the tools to help them develop as leaders while transforming their organizations into places where the human spirit soars gives me and our entire team the greatest satisfaction and joy.

To read more about our Founder and CEO Jonathan Wygant click here.

Originally posted https://www.esalen.org/page/his-own-words-jonathan-wygant-dreams-new-company-bigspeak

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This article was originally written by Robyn Benincasa for Harvard Business Review.

I’ve learned about building great teams the hard way: by competing in the world’s toughest adventure races. From the leech-infested jungles of Borneo to the towering peaks of Tibet, my teams have run, paddled, mountain biked, climbed, and whitewater-rafted for up to ten non-stop days and nights, with no shelter, no warm food, and no reprieve from the competitors nipping at our blister-covered heels. If just one racer from a four-person team quits, we’re all disqualified. By necessity, the journey to the unimaginably distant finish line becomes less about athletic skill than about great leadership and the ability to inspire tattered teammates.

So how do leaders keep a team moving toward an audacious goals with one heart and one mind? Here are a few essential rules that I’ve learned from the toughest teams on earth:

Be ruled by the hope of success rather than the fear of failure. Are you doing what it takes to “win” or what it takes to “not lose”? Fortune favors the bold. Great leaders shatter the norm, change the game, and do things that have never been done. They are courageous, not only in terms of innovation, but in terms of perseverance: taking step after step, day after day, relentlessly pursuing excellence. We won many a race not only by “slowing down less” than the other teams, but by coming up with some game-changing solutions. In the Borneo Eco-Challenge, for example, we turned a proposed hiking leg of the race into a swimming leg by jumping into the whitewater rapids and swimming for several hours downriver (just yards from the hiking trail) mostly in the dark. It was extremely risky, but also cutting-edge cunning. We never looked back, and led the race from there to the finish line.

Offer a tow line, but most importantly, take one. Leave your ego (but not your confidence!) at the starting line.You happily offer your strength to your teammates when they need it, but do you also offer your weaknesses? On our team, every racer has “tow lines,” made from thin bungee cords, hanging from the back of our packs. If we’re feeling strong, we offer it to a struggling teammate. If we’re having a low moment, we grab a tow line from someone stronger and get lightly pulled along until we recover. The goal? To “suffer equally,” as my favorite team captain eloquently puts it. You’ll get farther, faster if you do. I believe that you haven’t used all your strength as a leader until you’ve accepted help from your teammates. It’s tough to do sometimes. But people will be thrilled to have a chance to help you and, by allowing them to, you’ll create a stronger bond between you.

Always act like a team; it’s far more important than feeling like one. You’re not always going to feel warm and mushy about your team. You’re human! But on adventure race teams, no matter how we feel, we’re never allowed a day off from being the leader or teammate that people need us to be. So we fake it until the good feelings come back. During the World Championships in Ecuador, my team had a major disagreement about our navigation. In fact, we didn’t speak for hours. But as we approached the media crews on our exit from that hiking leg, our team captain said something that changed the game for us: “If you want to become the world champions, you need to act like world champions.” And I’m telling you we could have won an Academy Award for that performance: congratulating each other on a job well done, getting food for each other, high fives and hugs all around. It was all for the cameras, of course, but guess what happened? By the time we’d gotten our new gear and moved on, we were all genuinely happy together again. The argument never resurfaced. We were too busy winning.

This post is part of the HBR Insight Center on The Secrets of Great Teams.

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Marketers are familiar with the famous “4 Ps” of Marketing: product, price, placement, and promotion. But in today’s social media-driven landscape, there is a new set of buzzwords in town.

The traditional “4 Ps of Marketing” were first published by E. Jerome McCarthy in 1960 and have since been the dominant, though increasingly challenged, framework for marketing strategy.

Sound vaguely familiar? Here’s a quick refresher on the 4 Ps:

Product refers to both tangible products (goods) and intangible products (services). Tied into this P are concepts such as product design, branding, and packaging.

Price is the pricing strategy of a product including rebates and discount policies and the impact price has on how customers perceive the value of a product.

Promotion refers to how a product is marketed.

Place is about access to a product and, increasingly, about convenience.

The Debate

Defenders of the traditional 4 Ps argue that they are consistently relevant, at least in a broad context, since they act as a crucial reminder that marketing is inextricably connected to other aspects of every business.

Other advocates make the valid point that branding in a digital age can cause more focus on immediate publicity—for example, by creating a viral hit—over more sustained success, which can only come from a product that conforms, at least to some extent, to the 4 Ps.

But while some of the concepts behind these P’s may still be relevant, a lot has changed since they were established in the 1960s.

The Digital Dilemma

Technological innovations and the digitalization of traditional marketing channels have facilitated more direct communication between brands and consumers.

But while marketing channels have been completely transformed, the 4 Ps have endured. Isn’t it time we rewrite the traditional framework to better align marketing strategies with the modern digital age?

To that end, I recommend we scrap the 4 P’s and consider the marketing expertise of Omar Johnson, CMO of Beats By Dre and former VP of Marketing at Apple. After growing Beats By Dre into an industry leader, his tactics are unequivocal. Instead of holding steadfast with the 4 Ps he follows a different formula: product, people, and story.

Product: The product is still “King.” That will never change. If your product is lousy and inauthentic it will fail. Bottom line. Of course, there are ways to make your product stand out and Johnson encourages every company to try to distinguish their products in some way. He credits the excitement around Beats By Dre to the color choices, something that most headphones at the time were lacking.

People: Johnson believes people are the most important of the three focuses. With the change to digital marketing, people want people, not products. Yes, product is still “King,” but even good products won’t sell without the right marketing. With every bit of our lives being shared on social media, people look to celebrities and social media influencers to help make their decisions about products.

Can’t decide on a hairspray? I saw Kim K using this one in a video—buy that. Can’t decide what shoes to strap into? Obviously, be great like Michael Jordan and buy his shoes.

Johnson used influencers and unpaid celebrities to turn Beats By Dre into a billion dollar company. He made a point of aligning his brand with the best people, like when he gave a pair of headphones to all Olympic athletes who went to the Beats Lounge.

Story: Johnson believes the story follows the people. When he came up with his campaign “Above the Noise” he interviewed the best athletes across all sports to find a common thread that tied their experiences together. Through this process, he found all competitors need to focus and drown out the noise around them.

He used his products’ differentiating feature to tell a story the people wanted to hear. With a more connected social world, people’s interest have shifted, as well as their trust. Instead of focusing on the traditional aspects of marketing, marketing experts like Omar Johnson are looking to the people to tell their story and genuinely engage them.

The content writers at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau are Experts on the Experts. They hold doctoral, masters, and bachelors’ degrees in business, writing, literature, and education. Their business thought pieces are published regularly in leading business publications. Working in close association with the top business, entrepreneur, and motivational speakers, BigSpeak content writers are at the forefront of industry trends and research.

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Every event planners’ two biggest fears are What if no one comes? and What if they hate it? You have nightmares of empty seats or people walking out saying the speaker was a waste of their time. You’ve checked all the boxes off your event planning checklist, everything is in place, and now you have to get butts in seats.

Dissolve some of the anxiety around these two questions by marketing your event in all the right ways. Here are BigSpeak’s tips for marketing your next event to bring in the best-fit crowd for your speakers.

Use existing events

This is the easiest way to target a specific demographic, with little work on your behalf. Decide if you’re targeting an industry, a type of person, a location, etc.. Once you know who you want to attend your event, it’s easy to find similar events where you can make an announcement or advertise. This is a sure way to get the right people’s attention and decrease the risk of someone leaving your event unhappy because it was #irrelevant to them.

Market your speakers

Whether or not you have a big name speaker, the better you showcase your speaker’s talents the more enticing your event will be. If you have someone famous or well-known in their field, like Mark Cuban or Omar Johnson, people will flock to your event.

However, lesser-known speakers can still be leveraged to get bodies in seats. You picked that speaker for a reason; you know their best qualities. So, advertise those. Explain why your soon-to-be audience needs to hear what this person has to say.

Social media and blogs

Of course, in 2018 we all know your event must have a social media presence to draw in a crowd. A StubHub survey found that 62 percent of attendees learned about the event through Facebook events, and for millennials, the number rose to 72 percent. Since most sign-ups are online, an easy way to start an internet conversation about your event is to prompt the attendee to share the news of their sign up with their Facebook friends.

The social media fun doesn’t stop there. Once they’re at the event, 55 percent of women and 45 percent of men will post about it on social media. To encourage this you should create and promote a hashtag and an easy handle for your attendees to tag, like #BigSpeakVoices.

The power of influencers

One amazing thing about having an influencer speak at your event is the free publicity. Unlike other celebrities or big names influencers are based on social media and can (and do) use their following to promote items they are genuinely excited about it. If they are speaking at your event they are likely to be excited and share the news with their large fan base. Bringing influencers like Amber Rae or Chris Burkard to your event means their 3 million followers is exposed to it without any additional advertising.

Corporate sponsorships

Corporate sponsorship is good for both parties. Not only will they receive advertising at your event, but you can generally work out a deal where the sponsors are advertising for you as well.

You want to be sure you’re aligning your event with the right sponsor in order to target the right demographic. If they are advertising your event to their contacts, you want these people to be a part of your demographic. Often sponsorships between similar companies or complementary companies happen naturally; if not, you can reach out to a company you believe fits your demographic.

Contests

Anything with “free,” “giveaway,” or “win” will trigger a large response. Running social media contests where you provide a pair of free tickets to your event—or something to complement the event—with the instructions to share or repost will viralize your event fast. Once again, if you’re hitting the right demographic then the users will generally be sharing your contest with like-minded peers who will jump on the bandwagon. #winning

Wearables

Everyone loves a good gift bag. Fill them with T-shirts so everyone leaving the event will be a walking advertisement, generating buzz for any future events to come.

Printing T-shirts is dirt cheap. All you need is an eye-catching logo; something bright but not too annoying. You want these people to wear the shirts outside of their houses after all.

Jessica Welch is the Content Marketing Associate at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau, holding a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature and Anthropology from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Her business thought articles often appear on Business 2 Community, Born 2 Invest, and YF Entrepreneurs.

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What do jazz music and your company’s structure have in common? If you said nothing you have a lot of redesigning to do. Natalie Nixon, Ph.D. is a design strategist, author, lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, and business keynote speaker who’s here to help you get jazzy with it.

Nixon sees jazz as stories being spun from codes, boundaries being pushed and played with, complexity birthed from chaord. Yes, chaord, a term smithed by Dee Hawk that paradoxically melds chaos and order.

Chaord: (n) a mixture of ‘chaos’ and ‘order,’ extracting the randomness of chaos and the boundaries of order.

Nixon has focused her career on helping companies find new creativity through improvisational organization.

In her allegory, Nixon explains how jazz musicians who riff and freestyle are experts in all the rules they’re breaking. Jazz embraces the randomness of chaos, but there should never be anarchy within the music. Jazz musicians have sheet music and extensive knowledge of music theory as boundaries and guidelines for their performance. She believes businesses should use the chaord of jazz as a model for their companies.

Corporate leadership should outline the edges of the box for employees, then encourage them to think and move outside the box. When a company implements chaord it allows the team enough stability to let their creativity and innovation flow.

Nixon applies seven lessons she learned from jazz to building a company structure that inspires creativity while optimizing productivity.

1. Provoke competency

If you go to a live jazz show, you’ll see a musician take center stage and riff on the horn, then step back and allow the sax man to try to top his solo. In an improvisational organization there is less hierarchy and more open stage where team members can challenge each other to take their turn in the spotlight with an innovative idea.

2. Embrace errors

Most startups nowadays are familiar with the idea of embracing failure and learning from it. Nixon says the Ritz Carlton takes it one step further with their system MR BIV—mistakes, revisions, breakdowns, inefficiencies, and variations—where they examine their errors in weekly meetings using the acronym.

3. Minimal structure

This is the idea of allowing an unfinished skeleton of an idea to be introduced to the team (or band) to further develop it together. A jazz musician may only have a melody, but it becomes a full song by allowing the other musicians to experiment with it.

A good way for companies to experiment with ideas is to prototype, giving you feedback without the expectations of consumers or employees.

4. Distributive tasks

By distributing tasks, you shift the resources and responsibility in your company. In jazz, the musicians are constantly playing with the roles in every song; where there were once trumpets there may now be cello. Incorporating moving pieces into a company allows everyone involved to not only learn the entire system better, but also to inspire innovation.

5. Retroactive sensemaking

Retroactive sensemaking is one step beyond reflection. Companies and jazz musicians reflect on the past and then borrow that insight for the future. When a bassist has an incredible riff, the first thing the band does after the show is examine why it worked so well and how they can carry that momentum forward. It’s the same when an employee has a great sales period or a killer presentation.

6. Hang out  

Hanging out is about the “hallway moments” or watercooler chat that spark innovation. It may seem like the easiest of the tasks, but many companies sacrifice it with the hope of driving productivity. They couldn’t be more wrong. Hanging out builds company culture, as well as broadens employees’ minds and introduces them to things they won’t find in their cubicle.

7. Solo vs. Support

Nixon sees that there is a time to take your solo and a time to support your center-stage musician with a nice bass line. In a company, you need to be comfortable stepping back in order to allow emerging leadership to flourish. The idea of ebbing and flowing from your central place on the bandstand will allow the entire team to feel supported and perform to their best abilities.

Jessica Welch is the Content Marketing Associate at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau, holding a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature and Anthropology from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Her business thought articles often appear on Business 2 Community, Born 2 Invest, and YF Entrepreneurs.

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Kevin Surace is the most disruptive innovator you don’t know about—yet. His work has influenced as many industries as Steve Jobs without all the accompanying fame, celebrity status, and biopics. Before the iPhone and Siri were a twinkle in Jobs’ eye, Surace developed the first cellular smartphone (AirCommunicator) and the first digital assistant (Mary). All the data devices that we know and love today are thanks to the technology and patents Surace helped pioneer.

Clean Energy

Surace is an expert at disruption and innovation and is always looking for the next problem to solve. As CEO of Serious Materials, he helped innovate in the area of clean energy, reducing the carbon footprint of building materials such as drywall and windows. The soundproof and eco-friendly drywall he helped develop, known as EcoRock, was made from recycled waste and help cut manufacturing emissions by 80 percent. The super-energy-efficient windows the company created reduced emissions from heating and cooling up to 40 percent and were used to retrofit the Empire State Building and the New York Stock Exchange.

Artificial Intelligence

Surace was also the co-creator of multivariate reverse auctions for B2B commerce and now has turned his attention back to A.I. as CEO of Appvance.ai. Surace’s new company is disrupting the testing of software by completely automatizing the testing process using A.I. and reducing the need for human testing of software. In addition, Surace sits on the boards of several revolutionary companies, such as COYUCHI, which is delivering disruptive retail and e-tail models featuring organic linens and providing the world’s first lifetime subscription for sheets and towels: “Coyuchi for Life.”

Accolades

His work in disruptive innovation has won him many accolades: Inc. Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year, CNBC’s top Innovator of the Decade, World Economic Forum’s Tech Pioneer, Chair of Silicon Valley Forum, Planet Forward’s Innovator of the Year nominee, featured for 5 years on TechTV’s Silicon Spin, and inducted into the Rochester Institute of Technology’s Innovation Hall of Fame.

Music Director

A true renaissance man, Surace can just as easily be found giving a rousing TED talk as conducting an orchestra in the Bay Area. He began his life in music at age five, playing percussion, concentrated in music while at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), and has been involved in music productions ever since.

His move to conducting orchestras happened by chance. The conductor of a production he was working on fell ill and Surace was asked to step in. He found that his CEO leadership skills and his sense of rhythm made him a natural for pulling out the best performance from players. Now his orchestra Big, Bold, and Brassy, featuring international jazz star Nicole Henry, can be found wowing audiences at corporate events.

TED Speaker

Surace’s performance background have made him an assured and exciting presenter with his brand of “Edutainment.” Over the past decade, Surace has been a fixture at TED and TEDx talks, presenting more than 15 times, and speaking on the diverse industries he has disrupted—clean energy, automation, A.I.—and the revitalization of American industry.

Kyle Crocco is the Content Marketing Coordinator at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau, a graduate of UC Santa Barbara, and the lead singer of Duh Professors. He regularly publishes business book reviews and thought articles on Medium, Business 2 Community, and Born 2 Invest.

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Original article by Glenn Llopis can be found on Forbes.

Employees are tired of being told what to do and just checking the box.  So are their leaders – even if they won’t admit it.  They are tired of just doing what they are told. By following the same corporate playbook, they have little room to grow and evolve as individuals.  They want to do more and be more entrepreneurial. They want their professional goals and those of their organization to be in alignment. The result is most leaders are conflicted, battling the gulf between assimilation to what the corporate playbook dictates and being the authentic and vulnerable leaders their people want and need.

If today’s leaders are responsible to guide business transformation, businesses should not define how leaders act, influence and create momentum in search of future growth. To lead business transformation, leaders must learn how to transform themselves to define the future growth of their businesses.

If organizations truly want their leaders to have growth mindsets, corporate playbooks must give leaders room to grow as individuals and opportunities to influence their organizations’ futures.

What Happens When the Business Defines Individual Leaders?

• Leaders are measured on how well they execute based on how the organization wants them to think, limiting their abilities to best serve the unique needs of the business. In this environment, the individual is being told what to do inside the box they are given. This limits their ability to see, grow and share. They play not to lose. Transformation and a growth mindset is limited. Complacency ensues.

What Happens When the Individual Leaders and Employees Define the Business?

• Leaders have the freedom to be more inclusive. They are rewarded for sharing their wisdom for the betterment of the business. They embrace diversity of thought, appreciate differences and see and seize previously unseen opportunities. They see, sow, grow and share opportunities with courage not complacency. They play to win because they desire to be significant for the betterment of a healthier whole. Possibilities for transformation through a growth mindset are unlimited.

So how do we get there? Here are the 12 crucial leadership traits for creating a growth mindset:

1. Be open-minded

A growth mindset requires leaders to be more inclusive to the unique needs and perspectives of others. Growth requires more than sales and revenue; it requires a clear understanding of human capital assets. It involves learning how to serve the unique needs of the individual clients and/or consumers and the unique needs of employees.

2.  Get comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty

Allow risk to be your new best friend. Companies operate in environments where ambiguity and uncertainty are at all-time highs. Leaders must embrace uncertainty and see through the ambiguity to find previously unseen opportunities by taking the time to step back and understand why the ambiguity and uncertainty exist. As they do, it is imperative that leaders bring their people along to ensure they do not fear uncertainty and ambiguity either but embrace it to create momentum and sustain it.

3.  Show strong situational awareness

Having situational awareness is the ability to see around, beneath and beyond what you seek.  It’s the difference between circular and linear vision. Most leaders don’t have a growth mindset because they are out of touch with the situations at hand — their linear vision gets in the way.  They act as if they need to be in control rather than activate the people around them to influence more. Circular vision effectively utilizes the resources and assets of the organization in ways that guide and drive growth opportunities.

4.  Have a greater sense of preparedness

Most organizations are not prepared for transformation. They spend millions planning for it yet fail to operationalize it in the workplace and marketplace. That’s because they fail to anticipate the unexpected. They lack the preparedness required to face the strategic implications of the investments and the uncertainty involved in deploying transformation.

5.  Have clarity on what others expect from your leadership

A growth mindset is ultimately about thinking differently and taking on new, elevated levels of ownership as a leader. As such, people are watching your every move. They are closely paying attention to decisions you make and why you are making them. They may even be skeptical about them and your ability to solve for the right growth opportunities. Thus, leaders must make sure others understand what they can expect from their leadership. Don’t assume they know. Be clear about the path to growth and the role others play to help the organization get there.

6.  Take ownership

Transformation is a fancy term for the ability to reclaim relevancy. Taking ownership is the difference between being relevant and allowing the marketplace to pass you by. A growth mindset demands resiliency and over-delivering value. Don’t tolerate complacency. Leaders who tolerate it release the need for them and others to be accountable which gives the impression that they don’t care enough.

7.  Grow with people

The days of people perceiving that their leaders have all the answers is gone. In fact, people feel that their leaders are out of touch with today’s workplace realities, and thus are perpetuating silos as a result of their leaders’ hidden agendas.  Today’s leaders must grow with their people. They need to eliminate hierarchy and rank and create environments of greater intimacy in which all people can get to know each other so that they can grow and evolve together. Leaders must then not only value the relationships forged but invest in them to keep earning the trust of others.

8.  Seek to eliminate mediocrity and complacency

Mediocrity and complacency gets in the way of growth. What organizations don’t realize is that while they encourage their leaders to have a growth mindset, corporate values and workplace cultures have become so outdated that they make it difficult for the outcomes associated with growth to take root. Those are environments in which mediocrity and complacency are not only tolerated but thrive! Leaders must ensure they eliminate the traps of mediocrity and complacency starting with themselves and knowing what they solve for and then drive the same knowledge through their teams and the organization.

9.  Break down silos

Disconnected thinking in the workplace is a sure sign that silos are getting in the way of a growth mindset. A growth mindset sees those silos as barriers to growth.  Leaders who are hungry for growth break down silos and seek alignment to connect the dots of opportunity that currently don’t exist. Breaking down silos requires leaders to be more inclusive –allowing others to get in their lanes and the lanes of others. They don’t worry about titles or sharing credit. They welcome it. In fact, they demand that an organization lead more inclusively and that everyone has an entrepreneurial attitude to grow and evolve together.

10.  Have a strong executive presence

Executive presence is not about selling a business transaction or showcasing knowledge, capabilities and skill-sets. Executive presence is about a leader’s ability to create a moment – an experience that ignites others to want to know more about them and their businesses. Executive presence requires self-trust, confidence, self-awareness and the ability to navigate the needs of people. It is about earning the right from others over time to explore more meaningful and purposeful business relationships. Simply put, executive presence is not about “you”; it’s about others. ‘

11.  Stand for inclusion and promote individuality

Inclusion is a system for making sure organizations are welcoming at every level to every individual. Inclusion is about finding like-mindedness in our differences and embracing individuals’ unique ideas and ideals. Leaders with a growth mindset have a deep desire to do this and lead inclusion and embrace individuality as their primary growth strategy. They understand that if you’re not inclusive enough, then reputation management gets in the way of progress.  Do you have an enterprise-wide growth mindset, click here and find out.

12.  Want significance more than just success

Leaders that do not desire to be significant care primarily for recognition. Leaders that desire to be significant care primarily for respect. Recognized leaders appeal to the head where things are easily forgotten. Respected leaders captivate the heart – and the heart doesn’t forget.  Leaders with a growth mindset desire to be significant, because they want the growth that they create to take the organization to places it has never been before. They want growth to help their organizations evolve.

Leaders with growth mindsets practice all (12) of these traits.  Organizations that give them the freedom to do it on their own terms for the betterment of the business are the ones that realize the growth transformation promises.

We are transitioning from a knowledge to wisdom-based economy, it’s no longer just about what you know but what you do with what you know. Allow your leaders to do what they know they can do. Let them out of the box.

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In the 1930s, Harvard University began the longest study on human happiness. They invited 19-year-old sophomores from Harvard as well as teenagers from the poorest neighborhoods of Boston to participate. For over 75 years, they did interviews, medical tests, and checked up on their subjects every two years to see how they were doing. And what they found about happiness surprised them.

Robert Waldinger is the fourth director of the study. In his TED talk, “What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness,” Waldinger says that while many young people tend to think that fame, fortune, and hard work will bring them happiness, it’s actually our social connections that are most important for our well being.

Three Lessons on Well-Being and Happiness

In this popular talk, which has garnered more than 20 million views, Waldinger explains the three lessons the researchers learned. First, having social connections is better for our health and well being—and conversely, loneliness kills. Second, having higher-quality close connections is more important for our well-being than the number of connections. Third, having good relationships is not only good for our bodies but also for our brains.

For more insight on these three life lessons, check out his TED talk.

For More Insights on Happiness:

Shawn Achor Reveals Exercises You Can do for Two Minutes A Day to Immediately Feel Happier

Why Good Relationships Are Better Than Riches, Fame, and Accolades for Long-Term Happiness

Decrease Your Media Use to Increase Your Happiness

Kyle Crocco is the Content Marketing Coordinator at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau, a graduate of UC Santa Barbara, and the lead singer of Duh Professors. He regularly publishes business book reviews and thought articles on Medium, Business 2 Community, and Born 2 Invest.

As seen on BigSpeak.com

Chaos—nobody likes it, nobody wants it. We try so hard to eliminate chaos from our lives. We organize our living space and workspace meticulously to “clear our heads.” We shuffle our children off to school with perfectly arranged backpacks and folders, then turn around and tidy their room so we don’t have to worry about a chaotic house on top of whatever chaos touches down at work.

Robert Richman, cultural strategist and Co-Creator of Zappos Insights, is here to tell us that chaos can be our friend. After helping Zappos grow 50 percent when they were acquired by Amazon, he developed a program to educate other companies on how Zappos held onto and grew a healthy company culture in the midst of accelerating growth.

Richman believes that chaos and growth go hand in hand, so instead of scrubbing and bleaching chaos out of our homes and shuffling chaos around our desks, we need to learn from it. He says that the only time you feel chaos is when you are submerged in it. The trick to understanding chaos and coping with it is to identify patterns. No matter how crazy and unpredictable a situation feels, there is a pattern to find within it.

The people who find the patterns are able to paradoxically control chaos, and therefore control change.

While this is much easier said than done, Richman has some hacks that will help you to change your mindset about chaos.

Create chaos.

By creating chaos you are birthing change. The key to creating chaos is welcoming spontaneity. He likens this to being an Uber driver. When you invite random people or situations into your life, you are allowing an element of chaos into your space, but the experiences you gain will help you grow.

This can be awkward, but Richman says awkwardness is part of the process of wrangling chaos. By ‘winging it’ more often, you will definitely run into some uncomfortable situations. This discomfort is the chaos that will help you grow.

Destroy chaos.

Wait…aren’t we suppose to create chaos? Yes, but only the good kind. Richman explains that while some chaos is productive, other aspects of it can drag you down. When you make a to-do list, what are the things you dread the most? Do those first. Once those are out of the way you free your mind of the burden of these tasks and open yourself up to more opportunities to create good chaos and change.

Surround yourself with the right people.

When you build a team of talented people around you who believe in each other and yourself, you eliminate a piece of could-be-chaos. The chaos of change is either amplified or diminished in our own minds. The biggest factor in stirring up a storm of chaos is self-doubt. It’s natural for all of us to waver in our confidence, but when you have a team of believers as a safety net, you won’t waiver for long. Richman believes, “It’s not so much believing in yourself, as much as those who believe in you.”

Jessica Welch is the Content Marketing Associate at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau, holding a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature and Anthropology from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Her business thought articles often appear on Business 2 Community, Born 2 Invest, and YF Entrepreneurs.