Written by: Ilham N Musayev, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Here it is – The year 2021 gradually comes to an end. I have been thinking a lot on what subject to touch before we close this year, so that I could add some value to all my readers and at the same time remind about the areas we discussed already. So, here it goes…I have decided to bring key points from all my 8 articles published to date together and call it “The best of 2021 Business insights from Ilham “
I hope it would serve as one stop-shop for some good insights, ideas and points I shared in 2021 with you all.
Prologue
The first go was with the subject of “Servant Leadership – The game-changer and the magic way forward”.
Here are key moments:
“The Best Leaders Have a High Consideration Factor. They Really Care About Their People” – Brian Tracy, motivational public speaker and self-development author”.
One thing which is common and key for all servant leaders and actually makes true servant leaders is their ability to realize and know that leadership is about others. It’s about serving first and leading second. And it is not about telling people that you are servant leader, and they can trust and follow you. It is about people seeing this leadership in your actions and attitudes about leading (mindset) and your leadership behaviors are what will make that statement come true.
The truth is that there are “must have’s” we need to focus in first instance. These are: Active listening, powerful questioning, commitment to grow people, building trust and full pack of other coaching skills. Having coaching skills and practicing them masterly is a definite state which makes servant leaders different from others.
I personally believe the following are critical:
Active Listening | Empathy | Focus on People’s growth
There are many young and middle career people these days who have a huge potential to transform into great servant leaders. I invite them especially to reflect, brainstorm and consider this opportunity as the game changer and the magic way forward.
Read the full article: Servant Leadership – The Game-Changer and The Magic Way Forward
The second article was about the “Coaching and Mentoring — Dads and Sons”.
The brilliant idea came to my mind, “What are the benefits and practical application of Coaching and Mentoring in father-son-grandfather relationships. How can we share our experience & knowledge with our sons (or kids) and learn the wisdom from grandfathers? I have never deeply thought about this subject, especially now, when many things changed and transformed: values, approaches, we become more digitized and virtual.
The challenge we have nowadays is that we are dealing with 3 generations (on average). At least in my case: it’s about Baby Boomers, Xennials (or crossover generation), and iGen/Gen Z’s.
“Small boys become Big Men through the influence of Big Men who care about small boys.”
I’ll start with the father-son relationship. Let’s explore what coaching skills we could utilize when dealing with this type of relationship.
The known coaching skills are empathy, curiosity, positivity, persistence, communication, sincerity, guidance. How wonderful they are!
For example, when kids are smaller, they are asking curious questions and learning from that experience. And how they do that? – with passion, curiosity, without attachment to nothing at all. Let’s turn the dial now. Are we asking them the same questions with the same passion and curiosity?
If one father grows his son with great empathy, positivity, sincerity, and guidance, then imagine how their relationships, understanding, and trust will grow too. That’s so wonderful! Let’s be true to ourselves and admit that mostly we are not doing that.
And now, let’s quickly dive into mentoring skills. There are so many opportunities that come up in this space too. Here are the most important ones:
Create an open and supportive environment for discussion.
Demonstrate good listening and follow-up skills.
Provide constructive feedback and advice.
“Grandparents are wonderful, because they listen and show genuine interest in what you have to say.”
“What was silent in the father speaks in the son, and often I found in the son the unveiled secret of the father.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
Families that expect and build strong relationships between the generations are more likely to have them. That is because family members are taught from an early age that family members share obligations. Those obligations may include caregiving for kids and older people and general sharing of tasks, values, and principles. And the assistance flows in both directions — from young to old, from old to young.
Read the full article: Coaching and Mentoring — Dads and Sons
The third conversation was about the “Trust”
It is nowadays practically impossible to do anything without trust. But, as they say, it is “Hard to build and easy to lose.”
My best example when referring to trust is about the bird sitting on the tree: “A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because her trust is not on the branch but its own wings.”
Trust requires time! It develops gradually over time and results from personal knowledge and cognitive assessment of another person’s behavior. Credibility is created through people’s track record of openness, vulnerability, and experiences with each other.
Trusting another person is always risky because it is unknown whether the other party can be trusted or not. Hence, one must be willing to take that risk with consideration of the “unknown.”
Here is another favorite quote of mine comes: “I trust you is a better compliment than I love you, because you may not always trust the person you love, but you can always love the person you trust.”
There are normally 6 elements or layers upon which the trust is built:
Dependability factor |Transparency |Capability |Authenticity |Fairness |Openness and Vulnerability
Successful coaching and mentoring relationships are also absolutely built & depending on trust.
Trust in the workplace is another important subject to pay serious attention to. It is clearly visible if employees enjoy a culture of honesty, maintain psychological safety, and exercise mutual respect.
The paramount paradox of trust is that it develops when people have shared strong experiences, but from another hand, these quality experiences require trust too. Thus, those teammates who already trust one another represent an essential foundation of trust on which others in the team can further build trust.
Read the full article: Trust
The fourth conversation was about Personal Effectiveness & Efficiency – From Basics to Athletics …and how Personal Agility System (PAS) offers the support.
“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"In short, personal effectiveness means getting the best out of yourself. It’s an approach to success that involves utilizing all of your energy, skill, and motivation to develop and reach the goals you set for yourself. Individuals with good personal effectiveness tend to constantly strive to achieve more, advance their careers, and grow in both a personal and professional sense.”
“A truly efficient worker is the one who invests their time, efforts and other available resources into value-generating activities. The measure of the efficiency of a person can be expressed through the relationship between the lead and cycle times of their tasks.”
I have achieved my bigger goal of bringing all priorities together by using the Personal Agility System and identifying how those activities fit into my busy schedule. There actually were some activities that required a stop rather than a start. However, it is very individual and personal, and I needed to tailor my priority list to serve my specific mission and create the desired balance. Balance is the keyword here!
I personally think that PAS is a great tool for business people, senior managers, and those who have a lot on the plate to handle; this system definitely helps to boost personal effectiveness and efficiency (we now know what they mean 😊) and get on top of the priorities people have on agenda.
I am very happy and open to connect and guide on this journey those who really want to move from Personal Effectiveness & Efficiency basics straight to Athletics!
Read the full article: Personal Effectiveness & Efficiency – From Basics to Athletics …and how Personal Agility System (PAS) offers the support
The fifth was the article about “Feedback — A Gift That Uncovers Blindspots And Prevents From Coming Back”
“I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better” — Elon Musk.
There are many ways and definitions of perceiving and understanding the meaning of “feedback.” However, not everyone understands the true mission of the feedback and its intentions in the same way, which creates the biggest conflict in our minds and behaviors. For information, most people get it negatively and set themselves for negative emotions when they hear about receiving the feedback.
Nowadays, giving and receiving feedback is so critical business communication skill. And most importantly, it is a two-way process of both giving and receiving information efficiently and constructively. Today, in our lives, feedback is a paramount part of business, education, training, and even professional coaching engagements.
I personally believe that any feedback process should be fair, theme and area of conversation should be mutually agreed upon, and it should not be forced. If receiving party is not ready or not quite aligned with the reason on why it is provided and where the value is obtained, then that is where the conversation needs to happen in the first instance. In order to be fair and for both parties to get most of the value from this communication, I trust that good coaching skills can massively help.
Taking care to deliver feedback with clarity and sensitivity will help people around us focus on the reality of our messages, even in a remote environment.
Read the full article: Feedback — A Gift That Uncovers Blindspots And Prevents From Coming Back
The sixth conversation was about the “How Maturity And Awareness Of It Drive Growth And Development”.
It is very natural that during early stages the development (both in life and at work) we depend on many people, their guidance and direction. Sometimes, during life, most people are getting so much addicted to this “autopilot” mode that neglect to see that specifically, this environment ruins the future, development, and growth.
Have you ever heard the question, “Who is your superhero?” or, “Whom do you want to look like when grew up or at a certain age?” I personally think that these questions are setting people for failure. I agree that we can get inspired by certain heroes or have a passion to have their qualities. However, becoming those heroes is not a good idea because we would then become someone else without being ourselves. Each of us is unique and hence we are all originals. There is no logic in wanting to be someone and become a copy!
Let’s now put a spotlight to the next question: What are the common symptoms of the maturity?
And here is the next quote to continue the conversation, “Maturity begins when we are content to feel we are right about something, without feeling the necessity to prove someone else is wrong”
Everyone who realized that we are all unique and different, by being mature follows the logic “Just because my path is different doesn’t mean I’m lost” How beautiful and deep is that!
Thus, a mature person is (within reason) competent, generous, empathetic, and restrained.
And at the end I would like to close the conversation out with wonderful statement, “Maturity is not when we start speaking big things. It is when we start understanding small things…”
Think about it and reflect…
Read the full article: How Maturity And Awareness Of It Drive Growth And Development
Next one goes “How To Cultivate And Encourage Speak Up Culture In Organizations” , was our seventh conversation.
According to workplaceethicsadvice.com, “Speak up culture” refers to a healthy, supportive environment, where team members feel free to share their ideas, opinions, and concerns, without fear of retaliation or penalty.
So, from the context above and definition of speak up what words jump out immediately?
It is about “culture”, “healthy environment”, “ideas”, “safe space”, “no retaliation” and many similar words.
In order to build the right culture, there should be the right environment. That environment takes decades to build, maintain and then eventually sustain. Who builds this environment? People do!
As a conclusion, I can only say that leaders have a lot to play in building the right environment and walking the walk. One of the critical elements of this process is Openness and Transparency… about how reported ideas being reviewed, progressed, and in general how the investigation process works.
And one last point is that leaders need to be open and willing to listen, it should start from regular team meetings and other regular conversations and move to the next levels up. This means that cultivating psychological safety is another important contributor to speak-up culture. Omitting psychological safety is the biggest mistake, which can cost companies a lot of loss including both monetary and people.
Read the full article: How To Cultivate And Encourage Speak Up Culture In Organizations
Subject was about “What Shifting From Conventional Into Modern Leadership Means?” was number eight.
It is not a secret that we are transforming into a new era where organizational models, styles of working and digital transformation take precedence in our lives and that impact is growing exponentially every day. This is mostly dictated by the requirements and processes happening on the global level and need to something modern, smart and however non-complex.
This transformation is also prompted a drastic changes in the leadership approach and styles. Old and traditional ways of leading proved to be non-effective and nonproductive and from another hand not compatible with all the changes happening globally now.
Ingenious leaders must be able to look at each individual from all perspectives. The needs and concerns of employees outside of work directly impact their performance at work.
It is worth mentioning that on top of all the above an important role in growing modern leaders plays professional coaching. This is proposed to be done in 2 main directions:
1. Developing leaders as coaches and 2) Coaching leaders to bring out the most out of them.
“Coaches and the people they coach know that for the future to be different, we need to change the way we do things in the present…. More often, changes involve shifts in attitudes, thinking, perceptions, and behavior.” Gary Collins, American actor.
Read the full article: What Shifting From Conventional Into Modern Leadership Means?
Epilogue
I am blessed to be part of Brainz Executive Contributor family and I hope the articles above added some value and helped to get some insights throughout 2021.
Happy New Year and All the best in 2022.
Ilham N Musayev, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Ilham N Musayev, is a mentor and coach (outside of the company his works for) who helps people to unlock their potential in career and personal development. He also helps in area of personal effectiveness, setting realistic goals and becoming organized and structured.
Ilham also helps to re-gain the [lost] confidence and look to issues and problems from a different perspective. Another area of his support is helping to cultivate servant leadership via coaching and mentoring technics.
Overall, he is an energy sector professional with 23+ years of practical experience obtained by working in one of the leader companies in this sector. Ilham’s experience is very multilayered. He worked and gained his experience from following functions: Wells, PSCM, Operations, Global Projects by mainly providing project controls support.
For the last three years he worked in Modernization and Transformation and Agile Design Teams and helped his company to transform to new ways of working. He currently is a part of Agility team and as an agile coach supports the company by implementing agile ways of working.
Ilham holds following professional certifications and accreditations: ICF-ACC | ICF Member | PARA | PARP | PSM I | PAL I | PSPO I | PMP® | ICAgile ICP-ACC/ATF | MSc. PM | EMBA.
Ilham’s position is that staying open for support, serving people as a leader, and helping people to grow is what wins heart and minds and is the only answer to all questions.
His mission: “Aspire to inspire, before we expire”.
