Public speaking and presenting in front of a group of people can be quite stressful – we’ve all been there. In a virtual setting, when you can’t see your audience and their reactions, and, on top of that, you need to deal with tech setup, it becomes even more challenging to deliver a great presentation.

If you feel nervous when presenting virtually – don’t worry, you’re not alone. In a recent BBC article, Marissa Shuffler, an associate professor at Clemson University who studies workplace wellbeing, said that when we’re on camera, we’ve very aware we’re being watched. She said: “You are on stage, so there comes the social pressure and feeling like you need to perform. Being performative is nerve-wracking and more stressful.”

We’ve put together 7 tips to help you deliver a memorable virtual presentation with no stress.

Share schedule and agenda

When you’re scheduling your presentation as part of a team meeting or other event, share some key points on the agenda in order to set expectations. For example, how much time you expect your presentation to take and what points you’re planning to cover.

Choose a place where you won’t be distracted or interrupted

Some of you might have an advanced home office setup while others work from their living room. Either way, when you present, settle down in a place where you can avoid distractions and interruptions. If possible, try to choose an angle that won’t make your background too distracting for your audience, and avoid direct light shining from behind you. As an option, you can use a virtual background in your video conference tool.

Test your tech setup in advance

Tech hiccups are the last thing you’d like to focus on while presenting! We’d recommend doing a test run in advance to make sure you’re prepared to share your screen and your audio setup is optimal.

Less text, more visuals

Images and other graphics are known to captivate attention and help understand your key points. Instead of adding more text to a slide, talk through it.

Make extra effort to encourage participation

Many would say that you should treat your virtual presentation just like a live one – but the bar is actually even higher, especially for the audience to speak up and interact. Prevent your presentation from becoming a lecture where participants are in listen-only mode. Encourage audience participation and interaction by asking questions. Sometimes, instead of addressing the whole audience, it can also help to engage a specific participant in a question.

Keep a high pace

Always keep in mind that your audience has a short attention span. Move through your presentation quickly enough so that participants have to pay attention to keep up – rather than you having to stop them getting disengaged!

Follow up with a recap

Whether someone’s connection broke off during the meeting or they just prefer to consume content at their own pace, follow up with a recap of the key points – for example, in an email or your team channel on a collaboration platform you’re using.

Ashok P Das
Alex Mathew
www.techagelabs.com

The present generation of students feels the opposite. They have the access to the whole world on their phone/laptop. Most of them in the present days are studying at home which they dislike most, even if they want they can’t find a job, they are worried about the elderly people. They are also overwhelmed about the challenges of COVID, and most of them are worried about the state of the leadership of the countries across the world. Most of them wan’t to protest against what is happening around them. What the youth of today and future generations of tomorrow are dealing with and seeing are beyond anybody’s comprehension. Here are some insights to help anyone leading and parenting our youth today which may not be perfect answers and will not answer all the questions and concerns. How are we to navigate this time as a parent or a carer?

Here are some tips to help navigate as a leader and a parent :

• Be aware of what you know and how you feel about everything going on.
• Be truly open and honest about it.
• If you notice ANY changes of behaviour, do not ignore it.
• If they are scared and anxious, let them know that what they are feeling is truly okay.
• Let them know how you do not have all the answers too.
• Teach them that everyone is different and we must treat everyone with respect.
• What we are seeing around the world is also an opportunity for growth and change.
• If you find they would not open up change the focus.  Taking them for a ride together, play along with them some game would be a great way to discuss what is going on around them.
• Help them by understanding what’s worrying them and come up with practical solutions.
• Give them the importance of the purpose of life  and how you can support them or you can all support a charity or cause during this time.
• Teach them to reflect their thoughts by writing them in a journal which  will mitigate half of their problems,
• Shower them with lots of love& compassion. Listen to them, don’t fix,
• Be approachable. Make them feel safe to talk to you without judgement.
• Teach them the right platforms to educate their young minds.
• Teach them about kindness for themselves and others.
• Show them the importance of telling you how they feel and also the courage for the conversations they want to have.
• Work with them on the importance of values.
• Support and embrace their views and beliefs even though they might not be yours.
• Teach them about how to feel and be safe during this time.
• Tell them that they an we will be stronger because of what’s happening and that they will learn a lot about themselves.
• STAY COURAGEOUS, STAY KIND.

These random thoughts on the issues facing the youth and the young came to my mind after the unfortunate   deaths by suicide by many across the country.  These are times when our minds have played tricks on us, and sometimes gotten the better of us. When a sudden distrust of everybody and the need to distance from our fellow human beings brought to the fore angst, regrets , and  unfulfilled needs that might have lingered underneath the surface always brings to forth the thought that you are unworthy of existing in this world.

And for society at large, or the collective conscience, it leaves a scar that is not so easily healed. Frequently also, a sense of anger and impotence at our inability to reach out to those that  need help  will also arise from your deep insights.

Mental isolation can have devastating effects as one’s mental and physical health. Meditation and trying to have a total peace of mind, reaching out to your family and friends without inhibition and also openness in thought sharing, can always rouse you and lead you from darkness to a new dawn.

ASHOK SHARMA

HUMAN RESOURCE CONSULTANT

TRIVANDRUM

ashokhrconsultant9@gmail.com( Acknowledgement : Adapted from Courageous Conversations Blog)

• Ask yourself  “ Is this the worst that can happen? How do you think you would have handled something worse than this”.  It is our over thinking that makes any situation seem like it is hard to handle.  The moment we change the track of our thinking  to “This is not the worst”, the panic that crippled us subsides, and that situation becomes  easy  to manage.

• Instead of feeling  bad , weak, blank, or confused, let’s think how we can utilize hard times to become braver, stronger, more creative and loving. You’ve been trying hard to achieve something but you are not successful. Think differently.  “If this doesn’t seem t be yielding results, let me try another way”. We will discover within us, a surge of energy that will open up more avenues for handling the same situation efficiently and we will become braver and stronger.
• When you make a mistake your wounded ego can blow it up to an extent that you condemn yourself. ‘ I’m worthless’… Instead of being your enemy, be your friend. Regain confidence by being a friend instead of an enemy to yourself and be humble to accept your mistake with  a heart filled with deep gratitude and love . A hysterical moment should be converted into a  historical moment that you reminisce as an event that made you braver and stronger.
• Sunshine cannot be got every day. Appreciate even cloudy weather- one should learn to. Anxieties and insecurities will fly away if you have this attitude .You can’t be strong and creative if you keep complaining about life. When you learn to enjoy all seasons, you will become a bright and warm presence for those who need to rise above their clouds.
• Sometimes a bad day for your ego is a good say for your soul. We become more mature to endure and handle life through the fire of hard times. We always count our losses. Why don’t we start counting our blessings. Sometimes we have to pay the price for our foolishness. But let’s be grateful that we could catch at the bud stage before it could grow into a big disaster. In hard times, we get to know our strengths as well as our weaknesses. But knowing our weaknesses in itself is strength. Ultimately we come out stronger, wiser than before.

Make hard times into a song and dance. Understand that it is your desire and ego that is projecting difficulties. Don’t just jot these points down. Repeat and apply again and again till they become your beliefs.

Remember, it’s the storms that make us stronger. And amid chaos rests vast opportunity- for those who have developed the eyes and the skills to embrace it.

Great heroes are made during seasons of discomfort versus during days of ease. Let’s remember this always during these times of pain and despair.  As the famous poet Shelley said “  If winter comes, can spring be far behind”.

Adapted from  THE SPEAKING TREE

Ashok Sharma, HR Consultant, Trivandrum

ashokhrcosultant9@gmail.com

We’ll be able to to tell coming generations of this season we’re living through.

We will speak of the pain and the harm.

And we will talk of the wisdom and honour that this time has delivered to us and also reflecting on the good that we may find as we stay inside,shelter-in-place and experience more stillness.

And so… these are some of the benefits of lockdown ( while society focuses on so much negativity)…

1. All real healing, transformation and evolution happens- not out in the world-but deep in the wilderness – of silence, solitude and stillness.
2. Being forced to stay in one place a long time also provides the rare opportunity to be incredibly creative.
3. Times of discomfort are periods of elite growth. We don’t expand so much when everything’s fabulous.
4. Because of the virus, many families have become much closer. People who needed to forgive have forgiven. Broken fences have been mended. Meals together are a thing again.( My own cooking skills have been sharpened.).
5. We take less for granted now. Fresh vegetables. Walking in a park. Going to a restaurant. Flying in an aeroplane. These things seem special again.
6. The pandemic has forced us all to slow down. This gives us the great chance to get to know ourselves better. Our gifts and talents. Our fears and wounds. And as we use this period to build higher selves, we remake tragedy into triumph.
7. Many have realised that all the things that were purchased to look good on the street have zero worth- when no one’s on the street.
8. People are reading books. Classics and modern treasures. Poetry and biographies .And so we become enriched. Versus being busy .And being cyber zombies.
9. Suffering has opened many a human heart in this new world. Neighbours are helping each other. Strangers are smiling at one another. The hardness that many of us used to protect our goods hearts is eroding. Slowly.  But certainly.
10. We are seeing Mother Nature breathing again. Without the planes flying and the factories operating and the ships sailing, the skies and lands and oceans are returning to more of their natural glory. This is a sacred gain.
11. Many are using lockdown as a lab: to learn new skills and build new new acumen so that when everything opens up again, they are massively more valuable to the marketplace. And therefore they attract greater rewards for themselves, while they scale their impact.
12. Most of us are becoming more resourceful. Wasting less. Caring more. Making do with what we have. And feeling ever so grateful.
13. It’s a time for spiritual opening. When things fall apart, human beings are granted the opportunity to become born anew. Part of us dies so a more creative, brave, generous and useful us can show up. We let go of what we were to become all that we must be. And this is a blessing   And not a curse.
14. Hope that these lessons remind you of the good in the bad. And help you assert your greatness while so many around us stand flat-footed in the face of terrific fear.

ASHOK SHARMA

HR CONSULTANT & MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER(9447130111 ashokhrconsultant9@gmail.com)

But it’s equally obvious that in many organizations, feedback doesn’t work. A glance at the stats tells the story: Only 36% of managers complete appraisals thoroughly and on time. In one recent survey, 55% of employees said their most recent performance review had been unfair or inaccurate, and one in four said they dread such evaluations more than anything else in their working lives. When senior HR executives were asked about their biggest performance management challenge, 63% cited managers’ inability or unwillingness to have difficult feedback discussions. Coaching and mentoring? Uneven at best.

Most companies try to address these problems by training leaders to give feedback more effectively and more often. That’s fine as far as it goes; everyone benefits when managers are better communicators. But improving the skills of the feedback giver won’t accomplish much if the receiver isn’t able to absorb what is said. It is the receiver who controls whether feedback is let in or kept out, who has to make sense of what he or she is hearing, and who decides whether or not to change. People need to stop treating feedback only as something that must be pushed and instead improve their ability to pull.

For the past 20 years we’ve coached executives on difficult conversations, and we’ve found that almost everyone, from new hires to C-suite veterans, struggles with receiving feedback. A critical performance review, a well-intended suggestion, or an oblique comment that may or may not even be feedback (“Well, your presentation was certainly interesting”) can spark an emotional reaction, inject tension into the relationship, and bring communication to a halt. But there’s good news, too: The skills needed to receive feedback well are distinct and learnable. They include being able to identify and manage the emotions triggered by the feedback and extract value from criticism even when it’s poorly delivered.

Why Feedback Doesn’t Register

What makes receiving feedback so hard? The process strikes at the tension between two core human needs—the need to learn and grow, and the need to be accepted just the way you are. As a result, even a seemingly benign suggestion can leave you feeling angry, anxious, badly treated, or profoundly threatened. A hedge such as “Don’t take this personally” does nothing to soften the blow.

Getting better at receiving feedback starts with understanding and managing those feelings. You might think there are a thousand ways in which feedback can push your buttons, but in fact there are only three.

Truth triggers are set off by the content of the feedback. When assessments or advice seem off base, unhelpful, or simply untrue, you feel indignant, wronged, and exasperated.

Relationship triggers are tripped by the person providing the feedback. Exchanges are often colored by what you believe about the giver (He’s got no credibility on this topic!) and how you feel about your previous interactions (After all I’ve done for you, I get this petty criticism?). So you might reject coaching that you would accept on its merits if it came from someone else.

Identity triggers are all about your relationship with yourself. Whether the feedback is right or wrong, wise or witless, it can be devastating if it causes your sense of who you are to come undone. In such moments you’ll struggle with feeling overwhelmed, defensive, or off balance.

All these responses are natural and reasonable; in some cases they are unavoidable. The solution isn’t to pretend you don’t have them. It’s to recognize what’s happening and learn how to derive benefit from feedback even when it sets off one or more of your triggers.

Six Steps to Becoming a Better Receiver

Taking feedback well is a process of sorting and filtering. You need to understand the other person’s point of view, try on ideas that may at first seem a poor fit, and experiment with different ways of doing things. You also need to discard or shelve critiques that are genuinely misdirected or are not helpful right away. But it’s nearly impossible to do any of those things from inside a triggered response. Instead of ushering you into a nuanced conversation that will help you learn, your triggers prime you to reject, counterattack, or withdraw.

The six steps below will keep you from throwing valuable feedback onto the discard pile or—just as damaging—accepting and acting on comments that you would be better off disregarding. They are presented as advice to the receiver. But, of course, understanding the challenges of receiving feedback helps the giver to be more effective too.

1. Know your tendencies

You’ve been getting feedback all your life, so there are no doubt patterns in how you respond. Do you defend yourself on the facts (“This is plain wrong”), argue about the method of delivery (“You’re really doing this by e-mail?”), or strike back (“You, of all people?”)? Do you smile on the outside but seethe on the inside? Do you get teary or filled with righteous indignation? And what role does the passage of time play? Do you tend to reject feedback in the moment and then step back and consider it over time? Do you accept it all immediately but later decide it’s not valid? Do you agree with it intellectually but have trouble changing your behavior?

When Michael, an advertising executive, hears his boss make an offhand joke about his lack of professionalism, it hits him like a sledgehammer. “I’m flooded with shame,” he told us, “and all my failings rush to mind, as if I’m Googling ‘things wrong with me’ and getting 1.2 million hits, with sponsored ads from my father and my ex. In this state it’s hard to see the feedback at ‘actual size.’” But now that Michael understands his standard operating procedure, he’s able to make better choices about where to go from there: “I can reassure myself that I’m exaggerating, and usually after I sleep on it, I’m in a better place to figure out whether there’s something I can learn.”

2. Disentangle the “what” from the “who”

If the feedback is on target and the advice is wise, it shouldn’t matter who delivers it. But it does. When a relationship trigger is activated, entwining the content of comments with your feelings about the giver (or about how, when, or where she delivered the comments), learning is short-circuited. To keep that from happening, you have to work to separate the message from the messenger and then consider both.

Janet, a chemist and a team leader at a pharmaceutical company, received glowing comments from her peers and superiors during her 360-degree review but was surprised by the negative feedback she got from her direct reports. She immediately concluded that the problem was theirs: “I have high standards, and some of them can’t handle that,” she remembers thinking. “They aren’t used to someone holding their feet to the fire.” In this way, she changed the subject from her management style to her subordinates’ competence, preventing her from learning something important about the impact she had on others.

When you set aside snap judgments and explore where feedback is coming from and where it’s going, you enter into a rich conversation.

Eventually the penny dropped, Janet says. “I came to see that whether it was their performance problem or my leadership problem, those were not mutually exclusive issues, and both were worth solving.” She was able to disentangle the issues and talk to her team about both. Wisely, she began the conversation with their feedback to her, asking, “What am I doing that’s making things tough? What would improve the situation?”

3. Sort toward coaching

Some feedback is evaluative (“Your rating is a 4”); some is coaching (“Here’s how you can improve”). Everyone needs both. Evaluations tell you where you stand, what to expect, and what is expected of you. Coaching allows you to learn and improve and helps you play at a higher level.

It’s not always easy to distinguish one from the other. When a board member phoned James to suggest that he start the next quarter’s CFO presentation with analyst predictions rather than internal projections, was that intended as a helpful suggestion, or was it a veiled criticism of his usual approach? When in doubt, people tend to assume the worst and to put even well-intentioned coaching into the evaluation bin. Feeling judged is likely to set off your identity triggers, and the resulting anxiety can drown out the opportunity to learn. So whenever possible, sort toward coaching. Work to hear feedback as potentially valuable advice from a fresh perspective rather than as an indictment of how you’ve done things in the past. When James took that approach, “the suggestion became less emotionally loaded,” he says. “I decided to hear it as simply an indication of how that board member might more easily digest quarterly information.”

4. Unpack the feedback

Often it’s not immediately clear whether feedback is valid and useful. So before you accept or reject it, do some analysis to better understand it.

Here’s a hypothetical example. Kara, who’s in sales, is told by Johann, an experienced colleague, that she needs to “be more assertive.” Her reaction might be to reject his advice (“I think I’m pretty assertive already”). Or she might acquiesce (“I really do need to step it up”). But before she decides what to do, she needs to understand what he really means. Does he think she should speak up more often, or just with greater conviction? Should she smile more, or less? Have the confidence to admit she doesn’t know something, or the confidence to pretend she does?

Even the simple advice to “be more assertive” comes from a complex set of observations and judgments that Johann has made while watching Kara in meetings and with customers. Kara needs to dig into the general suggestion and find out what in particular prompted it. What did Johann see her do or fail to do? What did he expect, and what is he worried about? In other words, where is the feedback coming from?

Kara also needs to know where the feedback is going—exactly what Johann wants her to do differently and why. After a clarifying discussion, she might agree that she is less assertive than others on the sales floor but disagree with the idea that she should change. If all her sales heroes are quiet, humble, and deeply curious about customers’ needs, Kara’s view of what it means to be good at sales might look and sound very different from Johann’s Glengarry Glen Ross ideal.

When you set aside snap judgments and take time to explore where feedback is coming from and where it’s going, you can enter into a rich, informative conversation about perceived best practices—whether you decide to take the advice or not.

5. Ask for just one thing

Feedback is less likely to set off your emotional triggers if you request it and direct it. So don’t wait until your annual performance review. Find opportunities to get bite-size pieces of coaching from a variety of people throughout the year. Don’t invite criticism with a big, unfocused question like “Do you have any feedback for me?” Make the process more manageable by asking a colleague, a boss, or a direct report, “What’s one thing you see me doing (or failing to do) that holds me back?” That person may name the first behavior that comes to mind or the most important one on his or her list. Either way, you’ll get concrete information and can tease out more specifics at your own pace.

Roberto, a fund manager at a financial services firm, found his 360-degree review process overwhelming and confusing. “Eighteen pages of charts and graphs and no ability to have follow-up conversations to clarify the feedback was frustrating,” he says, adding that it also left him feeling awkward around his colleagues.

Now Roberto taps two or three people each quarter to ask for one thing he might work on. “They don’t offer the same things, but over time I hear themes, and that gives me a good sense of where my growth edge lies,” he says. “And I have really good conversations—with my boss, with my team, even with peers where there’s some friction in the relationship. They’re happy to tell me one thing to change, and often they’re right. It does help us work more smoothly together.”

Research has shown that those who explicitly seek critical feedback (that is, who are not just fishing for praise) tend to get higher performance ratings. Why? Mainly, we think, because someone who’s asking for coaching is more likely to take what is said to heart and genuinely improve. But also because when you ask for feedback, you not only find out how others see you, you also influence how they see you. Soliciting constructive criticism communicates humility, respect, passion for excellence, and confidence, all in one go.

6. Engage in small experiments

After you’ve worked to solicit and understand feedback, it may still be hard to discern which bits of advice will help you and which ones won’t. We suggest designing small experiments to find out. Even though you may doubt that a suggestion will be useful, if the downside risk is small and the upside potential is large, it’s worth a try. James, the CFO we discussed earlier, decided to take the board member’s advice for the next presentation and see what happened. Some directors were pleased with the change, but the shift in format prompted others to offer suggestions of their own. Today James reverse-engineers his presentations to meet board members’ current top-of-mind concerns. He sends out an e-mail a week beforehand asking for any burning questions, and either front-loads his talk with answers to them or signals at the start that he will get to them later on. “It’s a little more challenging to prepare for but actually much easier to give,” he says. “I spend less time fielding unexpected questions, which was the hardest part of the job.”

That’s an example worth following. When someone gives you advice, test it out. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, you can try again, tweak your approach, or decide to end the experiment.Criticism is never easy to take. Even when you know that it’s essential to your development and you trust that the person delivering it wants you to succeed, it can activate psychological triggers. You might feel misjudged, ill-used, and sometimes threatened to your very core.

Your growth depends on your ability to pull value from criticism in spite of your natural responses and on your willingness to seek out even more advice and coaching from bosses, peers, and subordinates. They may be good or bad at providing it, or they may have little time for it—but you are the most important factor in your own development. If you’re determined to learn from whatever feedback you get, no one can stop you.

The high levels of efficiency that allow highly task-focused leaders to be so productive often come at the expense of a more people-based focus. Things like building relationships, inspiring a team, developing others, and showing empathy can fall by the wayside. Highly efficient leaders often lose their focus on people due to a limiting belief that more people-focused activities will slow them down and impede their ability to execute, and to ultimately be successful.

The irony is that an intense focus on efficiency and getting things done (consistent with the pacesetting leadership style in Daniel Goleman’s classic Leadership that Gets Results) makes these leaders less effective overall. The result is often a negative impact on organizational climate and burnout of team members. In a 2017 study by Kronos and Future Workplace, burnout was highlighted as the biggest threat to employee engagement, with 95% of HR leaders citing it as a key driver of employee turnover.

These leaders can also incur high costs themselves, such as having a promotion blocked, or even being fired — not to mention the costs to their personal lives and relationships.

Consider Sarah, a Vice President at a real estate investment firm whom I coached, who was a star performer — until her promotion to partner was blocked. Her high levels of efficiency and productivity in closing deals had made her successful, but came at the expense of morale and engagement among the junior staff. She also had not invested in building relationships with others who could advocate for her partnership. While closing deals was an important factor in becoming a partner, her firm sent a clear message that this wasn’t the only factor that mattered to the organization’s success.

James, a career-transition client of mine, was a partner at a global professional services firm. He delivered great insights and results for his clients, had deep domain expertise, and was considered to be brilliant by many. However, the extreme demands and unrealistic expectations he put on his team resulted in low engagement scores, turnover of valued staff and, ultimately, his dismissal.

Great leaders are able to balance task-focus (getting things done) with people-focus (inspiring, developing, and empowering others). Highly task-focused leaders tend to have tunnel vision in their drive for results, rather than applying a broader lens that recognizes the need to sometimes “go slow to go fast”. Leaders who balance task- and people-focus are equally driven and also strive for results, but they keep the broader organizational needs in mind. They also recognize that it’s not just about being efficient — it’s about being effective.

In research conducted by Robert Anderson and William Adams for their book Scaling Leadership, they identified that the number one differentiator of effective leaders is strong people skills, and that six out of ten of their biggest strengths related to people skills such as listening, developing others, and empowering their team members.

Overly task-focused leaders also tend to be more reactive, operating from a position of fear, and often displaying highly directive, controlling, or perfectionist behaviors that can alienate others and be disempowering to their teams. Sarah had an underlying fear that “If I let go of control and empower others, they’ll mess things up and I’ll look bad.” In James’ case, it was a belief that “If I don’t work this intensely, I won’t be successful.” These limiting mindsets kept these leaders in a “doom loop” of high task-focus and low people-focus, where they doubled-down on what they did best — getting things done.

If you sense that you may be overly task-focused, here are some suggestions to re-set your priorities:
Get feedback. Ask key stakeholders how well they think you balance your task-focus versus your people-focus. Ask them to quantify it: “Out of 100 points, how would you rate my focus on tasks versus people?” You can also ask, “What could I do to demonstrate greater people focus that would be meaningful to the rest of the team?” If you’re concerned about your colleagues being candid with you directly, a third party such as an executive coach can collect this feedback for you.

Identify high-value ways to focus on people. Incorporate the feedback you receive to identify some regular practices to implement, such as having periodic career development conversations with direct reports, eliminating distractions during these conversations so you can actually focus on the other person, or having coffee with a colleague to get to know each other beyond work. These efforts should be genuine and not forced, even if you feel a bit awkward initially. Building deeper personal connections can make others feel valued, and not like a means to an end.

Engage in self-observation and reflection. Notice in real-time when you are being impatient or moving too fast. This provides an opportunity not only to be more present, but also to improve your self-awareness. Ask yourself reflective questions to help gain insights into what’s driving your behavior, such as “What am I trying to avoid?” or “What’s my fear in terms of slowing down?”

De-bunk your limiting beliefs. Create some safe experiments to collect information that disproves the limiting beliefs that are driving your behavior. This might include talking to others who are good at balancing task- and people-focus to gain some insight into how they do it and how this balance has contributed to their success.

Practice self-management. Building greater self-awareness in the moment provides an opportunity to pause and choose a different approach. This might mean choosing not to send a slew of emails about your big project over the weekend, pausing to acknowledge a colleague’s effort, or taking the time to teach a team member something new.

To be sure, task-focus and achieving results are vital for any leader, team, or organization to succeed, but without a sufficient balance with people-focus, success will be limited at every level.

China’s Surveillance Infrastructure Used to Track Exposed People

China’s surveillance culture became useful in the country’s response to COVID-19. Thermal scanners were installed in train stations to detect elevated body temperatures—a potential sign of infection. If a high temperature was detected, then the person was detained by health officials to undergo coronavirus testing. If the coronavirus test came back positive, authorities would alert every other passenger who may have been exposed to the virus so they could quarantine themselves. This notification was enabled because of the country’s transportation rules that require every passenger who travels on public transport to use their real names and government-issued ID cards.

China has millions of security cameras that are used to track citizens’ movements in addition to spotting crimes. This helped authorities discover people who weren’t compliant with quarantine orders. If a person was supposed to be in quarantine, but cameras tracked them outside their homes, authorities would be called. Mobile phone data was also used to track movements.

The Chinese government also rolled out a “Close Contact Detector” app that alerted users if they were in contact with someone who had the virus. Travel verification reports produced by telecom providers could list all the cities visited by a user in the last 14 days to determine if quarantine was recommended based on their locations. By integrating the data collected by China’s surveillance system, the country was able to find ways to fight the spread of the coronavirus.

Mobile App for Contact Tracing

In Europe and America, privacy considerations for citizens are of bigger concern than they are in China, yet medical researchers and bioethics experts understand the power of technology to support contact tracing in a pandemic. Oxford University’s Big Data Institute worked with government officials to explain the benefits of a mobile app that could provide valuable data for an integrated coronavirus control strategy. Since nearly half of all coronavirus transmissions occur before symptoms occur, speed and effectiveness to alert people that may have been exposed are paramount during a pandemic such as coronavirus. A mobile app that harnesses 21st-century technology can accelerate the notification process while maintaining ethics to slow the rate of contagion.

Tech innovators had already worked on solutions to effectively monitor and track the spread of flu. FluPhone was introduced in 2011, but the app wasn’t highly adopted, which limited its usefulness. Other app solutions are in the works from a variety of organizations that aim to give people a tool to self-identify their health status and symptoms. Along with all the challenges coronavirus has us facing, it’s also providing essential learning experiences for data science in healthcare.

In the United States, the government is in conversation with tech giants such as Facebook, Google, and others to determine what’s possible—and ethical—in terms of using location data from Americans’ smartphones to track movements and understand patterns.

Official Dashboards Track the Virus and Outbreak Analytics

Another tool that has been helpful for private citizens, government policy-makers and healthcare professionals to see the progression of contagion and to inform models of how invasive this virus will be are dashboards from entities such as the World Health Organization that provide real-time stats. The dashboard I have been watching is this one. These dashboards pull in data from around the world to show confirmed cases and deaths from coronavirus and locations. This comprehensive data set can then be used to create models and predict hotspots for the disease so that decisions can be made about stay-at-home orders and to help healthcare systems prepare for a surge of cases.

Outbreak analytics takes all available data, including the number of confirmed cases, deaths, tracing contacts of infected people, population densities, maps, traveler flow, and more, and then processes it through machine learning to create models of the disease. These models represent the best predictions regarding peak infection rates and outcomes.

Big Data Analytics and Successes in Taiwan

As coronavirus spread in China, it was assumed that Taiwan would be heavily hit in part because of its proximity to China, the regular flights that went from the island to China each day, and how many Taiwanese citizens work in China. However, Taiwan used technology and a robust pandemic plan created after the 2003 SARS outbreak to minimize the virus’ impact on its land.

Part of their strategy integrated the national health insurance database with data from its immigration and customs database. By centralizing the data in this way, when faced with coronavirus, they were able to get real-time alerts regarding who might be infected based on symptoms and travel history. In addition to this, they had QR code scanning and online reporting of travel and health symptoms that helped them classify travelers’ infection risks and a toll-free hotline for citizens to report suspicious symptoms. Officials took immediate action from the minute WHO broadcast information about a pneumonia of unknown cause in China on Dec. 31, 2019. This was the first reported case of coronavirus, and Taiwan’s quick response and use of technology are the likely reasons they have a lower rate of infection than others despite their proximity to China.

Technology is vital in the fight against coronavirus and future pandemics. In addition to being able to support modeling efforts and predicting the flow of a pandemic, big data, machine learning, and other technology can quickly and effectively analyze data to help humans on the frontlines figure out the best preparation and response to this and future pandemics.

But when we first spoke with him a year and a half ago, he was worried that those managerial assets were turning into liabilities. “We’re seeing focused competitors in nearly every segment of our business,” said Johnson. (We’ve changed his name and other details to protect the confidentiality of our conversations.) “They’re small, but they attack like piranhas.” The new entrants were bringing out products and services that distributors loved. Their lenient return policies encouraged customers to try their offerings. Their faster deliveries within tight time frames reduced distributors’ warehousing costs and inventory levels. Johnson’s company was having trouble responding to the pressure, particularly when doing so required the denizens of its well-guarded organizational silos to collaborate with one another on innovations.

As consultants, we hear similar concerns from many executives like Johnson interested in creating agile leadership teams. One of us (Darrell) has written about the opportunities and challenges of ramping up agile by adding more and more teams (see “Agile at Scale,” HBR, May–June 2018). But after studying hundreds of companies for our new book, we believe that if a company wants to be fast on its feet, transform customer experiences, and continuously outpace competitors, it needs more than lots of agile teams. To create a truly agile enterprise, the top officers—most, if not all, of the C-suite—must embrace agile principles too. This article explores how agile leadership teams function, how they differ from conventional executive committees and from other agile teams, and what agile means for senior executives’ day-to-day work lives.

Creating Balance from the Top

The job of a conventional agile team is to create profitable, innovative solutions to problems—come up with a new product or service, devise a better business process, or develop an advanced technology to support new offerings. The job of an agile leadership team is different. It is to build and operate an agile system—that is, an agile enterprise.

Building an agile enterprise does not mean replacing traditional operations with agile teams everywhere. Agile is primarily for innovation, and the testing and learning it involves can compromise critical operating processes. Imagine the adverse consequences of encouraging wide variation, on-the-spot experimentation, and decentralized decision-making—all hallmarks of agile—in areas such as food or drug safety, antidiscrimination and harassment policies, accounting standards, and quality control. Thus, building an agile enterprise means finding the right balance between standardizing operations and pursuing (sometimes risky) innovations. If you were running a restaurant, you would want to make sure that the food and service were of consistently high quality and that the decor was always clean and appealing. At the same time, you would need to innovate: for example, introduce new menu items, new kitchen or front-of-the-house procedures, or new features such as a customer personalization program. If you pay insufficient attention to operations, quality slides and costs rise, harming both customers and the business. If you devote insufficient attention to innovation, your restaurant becomes boring and unable to adapt to a changing environment.

In a large firm, it’s not easy to maintain balance. A business’s operating system is made up of many components—for example, the firm’s purpose and values, its talent engine, and its data and technology systems—and each of these can get seriously out of whack, becoming either too static and hidebound at one extreme or too risky and chaotic at the other.

Balancing the Agile Enterprise

A business operating system comprises many components, each of which can get out of balance. To create an agile enterprise, the agile leadership team identifies the optimal balance point for each component—this may not fall in the center, depending on the firm’s context and circumstances—and then assesses where rebalancing is needed.

There’s no set formula for finding the right balance. Every company and every activity within each company will differ. Managing R&D activities for a robotics business, for example, demands a different balance point than managing operations for a salt-mining company. To find the optimal balance, the agile leadership team typically begins by creating new metrics to help determine how agile the company is, how agile it should be, whether it is moving in the right direction at the right speed, and which constraints are impeding progress. Surveys of internal and external stakeholders to obtain their subjective views of business processes combined with objective measures—such as innovation cycle times, flow efficiency (work time versus wait time), and market share changes—are useful for determining the existing state of the operating system components. The team then develops a sequenced list of activities aimed at achieving an optimal balance for each component. The agile process forces leaders to get out of their silos and work together as a multidisciplinary group, breaking through impediments and pivoting when necessary. By rebalancing whichever of the components are out of alignment, they will, over time, create an operating system for an agile enterprise.

The Agile Leadership Team

Typically, the agile leadership team includes part or all of a company’s executive committee. At a minimum, it consists of the CEO and the heads of finance, human resources, technology, operations, and marketing—the individuals most critical to the components of the operating system.

For most types of agile teams, members are allocated 100% to a single initiative. That’s not possible for agile leadership teams. Executives must simultaneously play multiple roles. They have to build and manage the agile enterprise’s overall operating system, diagnosing which components need to be improved and figuring out when and how to strike the optimal balance in each. They have to sponsor and lend their expertise to teams tasked with redesigning and rebalancing one or more components. At the same time, they must continue to oversee business units and functions and ensure that operations run reliably and efficiently. They must serve as mentors, coaches, and decision makers. And they must handle corporate governance issues such as compliance and shareholder communications—not to mention the crises of the moment. While performing such operating roles, leaders should keep agile values and principles in mind, but they do not organize into formal agile teams with all the associated roles, ceremonies, and artifacts.

Handling these responsibilities is a tall order, far different from both a traditional executive committee’s work and that of textbook agile teams. Let’s examine how this plays out in practice, returning to Brian Johnson and his company.

While a lot of us are following recommendations so far, making sure everyone sticks with them for the long haul is a tougher ask. Some people are still or have resumed congregating in groups. Some churches, with support from their local leaders, are flouting stay-at-home orders. And protesters have begun to demand that businesses reopen sooner than experts suggest.

Directives aren’t particularly effective in driving sustained behavior change because we all like to feel as if we are in control of our choices. Why did I buy that product, use that service, or take that action? Because I wanted to. So when others try to influence our decisions, we don’t just go along, we push back against the persuasive attempt. We get together with a friend, shop more than once a week, don’t wear a mask. We avoid doing what they suggested because we don’t want to feel like someone else is controlling us.

Our innate anti-persuasion radar raises our defenses, so we avoid or ignore the message or, even worse, counter-argue, conjuring up all the reasons why what someone else suggested is a bad idea. Sure, the governor said to stay home but they’re overreacting. Maybe the virus is bad in some part of the country, but I don’t know a single person whose gotten it. And besides, many people who get it are fine anyway, so what’s the big deal? Like an overzealous high school debater, they poke and prod and raise objections until the persuasive power of the message crumbles.

So if telling people to do doesn’t work, what does? Rather than trying to persuade people, getting them to persuade themselves is often more effective. Here are three ways to do that.

1. Highlight a gap.
You can increase people’s sense of freedom and control by pointing out a disconnect between their thoughts and actions, or between what they might recommend for others versus do themselves.

Take staying at home. For young people who might resist, ask what they would suggest an elderly grandparent or a younger brother or sister do. Would they want them out, interacting with possibly infected people? If not, why do they think it’s safe for them to do so?

People strive for internal consistency. They want their attitudes and actions to line up. Highlighting misalignment encourages them to resolve the disconnect.

Health officials in Thailand used this approach in anti-smoking campaign. Rather than telling smokers their habit was bad, they had little kids come up to smokers on the street and ask them for a light. Not surprisingly, the smokers told the kids no. Many even lectured the little boys and girls about the dangers of smoking. But before turning to walk away, the kids handed the smokers a note that said, “You worry about me … But why not about yourself?” At the bottom was a toll-free number smokers could call to get help. Calls to that line jumped more than 60% during the campaign.

2. Pose questions.
Another way to allow for agency is to ask questions rather than make statements. Public health messaging tries to be direct: “Junk food makes you fat.” “Drunk driving is murder.” “Keep sheltering in place.” But being so forceful can make people feel threatened. The same content can be phrased in terms of a question: “Do you think junk food is good for you?” If someone’s answer is no, they’re now in a tough spot. By encouraging them to articulate their opinion, they’ve had to put a stake in the ground — to admit that those things aren’t good for them. And once they’ve done that, it becomes harder to keep justify the bad behaviors.

Questions shift the listener’s role. Rather than counter-arguing or thinking about all the reasons they disagree, they’re sorting through their answer to your query and their feelings or opinions on the matter. And this shift increases buy-in. It encourages people to commit to the conclusion, because while people might not want to follow someone else’s lead, they’re more than happy to follow their own. The answer to the question isn’t just any answer; it’s their answer, reflecting their own personal thoughts, beliefs, and preferences. That makes it more likely to drive action.

In the case of this crisis, questions like “How bad would it be if your loved ones got sick?” could prove more effective than directives in driving commitment to long-term or intermittent social distancing and vigilant hygiene practices.

3. Ask for less.
The third approach is to reduce the size of the ask.

A doctor was dealing with an obese trucker who was drinking three liters of Mountain Dew a day. She wanted to ask him to quit cold turkey, but knew that would probably fail, so she tried something else. She asked him to go from three liters a day to two. He grumbled, but after a few weeks, was able to make the switch. Then, on the next visit, she asked him to cut down to one liter a day. Finally, after he was able to do that, only then did she suggest cutting the soda out entirely. The trucker still drinks a can of Mountain Dew once in a while, but he’s lost more than 25 pounds.

Especially in times of crisis, health organizations want big change right away. Everyone should continue to stay at home, by themselves, for two more months. But asks this big often get rejected. They’re so different from what people are doing currently that they fall into what scientists call “the region of rejection” and get ignored.

A better approach is to dial down the initial request. Ask for less initially, and then ask for more. Take a big ask and break it down into smaller, more manageable chunks. Government officials responding to the pandemic are already doing this to some extent by setting initial end dates for social distancing measures, then extending them. But there might be more opportunities, for example when experts allow for some restrictions to be lifted — say, on small gatherings — but insist that others, such as concerts or sporting events, continue to be banned.

Whether we’re encouraging people to socially distance, shop only once a week, thoroughly wash hands and wear face masks, or change behavior more broadly, too often we default to a particular approach: Pushing. We assume that if we just remind people again or give them more facts, figures, or reasons, they’ll come around. But, as recent backlash against the Covid-19 -related restrictions suggests, this doesn’t always work over the long term, especially when your demands have no fixed end date.

If we instead understand the key barriers preventing change, such as reactance, and employ tactics designed to overcome them, we can change anything.