The power of 'emotional inclusion,' get smarter w/ the 'protege effect' & more

At ConantLeadership, we're committed to lifelong learning and continuous improvement. In service to your leadership growth, each month we curate this digest of timely resources from around the web to:

Share actionable advice from top leadership luminaries
Celebrate a range of viewpoints (inclusion is not an endorsement)
Contextualize workplace trends through a leadership lens
Illuminate cultural recalibrations in the world of work
Support your personal development in life, leadership, & beyond

Should Leaders Be 'Unbossing' Their Teams?

Some organizations seeking to bolster job satisfaction are "ditching the traditional command-and-control style in favor of a more sovereign approach," writes Jenn Lim in this Fast Company coverage of a long-growing trend towards offering more autonomy in the workplace. This trend is called "unbossing," which, despite its name, doesn't mean doing away with hierarchy completely but does encourage cutting bureaucracy and giving employees more agency, flexibility, and control. Lim says the concept "integrates purpose, values, and behaviors into the rules and regulations," so that workers know they are not only serving the company's agenda, but also reaping personal rewards that are aligned with their own values and ambitions. And she outlines four practical ways to intentionally start 'unbossing' your team.

1. Offer education and training.
2. Have conversations that go beyond tasks and productivity.
3. Test new AI tools and apps to meet employee needs.
4. Support open communication and feedback to ensure people "feel heard, valued, and comfortable with speaking up."

Get the full story here.

**For more on this, explore our coverage of why Stephen M.R. Covey says "a new world of work requires a new way to lead," focused on "trusting and inspiring people" rather than "commanding and controlling" them.

The Power of 'Emotional Inclusion'

"Worker engagement is at an 11 year low in the U.S." writes Aliza Knox in this Forbes coverage, and she adds that low engagement has "serious business implications" impacting company profitability and employee retention. There are a variety of factors that may cause waning engagement and Knox says one foundational reason may be a lack of "Emotional Inclusion." "Emotional Inclusion," a concept created by author Mollie Rogers Jean de Dieu in her book Emotional Inclusion: a Humanizing Revolution at Work, is an approach "that goes beyond traditional inclusion strategies by focusing specifically on the emotional and mental well-being of employees." There are five steps to getting started with implementing Emotional Inclusion.

1. Promote Open Communication.
2. Provide Training.
3. Recognize Emotional Contributions.
4. Create a Supportive Environment.
5. Lead by Example.

Knox says that "leaders can use this approach not only to address disengagement, but also to lay the foundation for a more resilient, innovative, and successful organization." Get the full story here.

**For more on this, explore our limited series, "EQ Answers to AI Questions," in which ConantLeadership Founder, Doug Conant, applies his emotionally intelligent leadership wisdom, accrued over a 45+ year career, to pressing workplace questions generated by AI.

How to Better Develop Leaders

In this Chief Learning Officer interview with Matt Paese, SVP of Leadership Insights at consulting firm DDI, Paese shares his thoughts on the critical skills today's leaders need, and offers tips for how to deliver better leadership development. First, Paese says that there's a misconception that most busy leaders are uninterested in allocating time for skills growth: "We find that leaders do want to learn," but "they need to learn in the flow of work, with real-time skill application, immediate feedback and continuous improvement in the context of actual work challenges." Then there's the question of which skills are most critical for leaders to develop. DDI's research shows that the five most essential skills in today's business landscape are:

Developing Talent
Strategic Thinking
Managing Change
Prioritization
Influencing Others

Paese says that leaders "want support to develop these skills," but "many organizations fail to provide learning and development opportunities" to meet this need, and "only 30 percent or less have ever received training to develop them." Companies that step up and successfully help leaders grow "are able to customize and deploy a wide array of content programmatically, addressing company-wide priorities and just-in-time needs, making development part of daily work." And most importantly, they prioritize interpersonal connection in their leadership training: "Leaders crave connections and are drawn to the human experience of learning. The most sought-after development experiences among leaders are instructor-led training in a classroom of peers." Get the full story here.

**For more on this, explore our suite of leadership development resources, including our signature training program, The Blueprint Boot Camp, which provides revelatory leadership learning in a community of peers, with personal coaching from Doug Conant.

Get Smarter with the 'Protege Effect'

In this The Guardian coverage, David Robson writes: "According to a wealth of psychological research, we learn more effectively when we teach someone else" about a topic, a phenomenon known as the "protege effect." This technique of "learning by teaching" has been studied for several decades, and while Robson warns that "there are few shortcuts to mastery," the "protege effect appears to be one of the most effective ways of accelerating our knowledge and understanding." There are many theories as to why inhabiting the role of "teacher," rather than "student," even as a role-play exercise or mental reframe, imparts learning benefits. One reason is in the preparation: "The brain boost appears to arise as much from the expectation of teaching as the act itself. If we know that others are going to learn from us, we feel a sense of responsibility to provide the right information," and to make sure we understand a topic fully before sharing what we know. Robson says that the challenge of "articulating our knowledge" to somebody else "helps to cement what we have learned." Studies show the protege effect having a measurable impact on the human brain "with greater activity in regions responsible for attention," and neurons "processing the material more deeply, which results in longer-lasting memories." To try out the protege effect right away, you can conjure "an imaginary mentee" to explain things to, create a "blog or video aimed at other learners" about something you're studying, or practice conversations with a friend or even a chatbot like ChatGPT. Get the full story here.

Healthy Mindset Shifts for Leaders

"Research has long shown the importance of self-care—yet many leaders still struggle to put self-care into practice in their own work lives," writes Palena Neale in this Harvard Business Review piece on how to prioritize your well-being to enhance your leadership capacity. Neale says there are many reasons why leaders resist prioritizing themselves "based on our personalities, experiences, socialization, and family contexts." Some have internalized widespread cultural messaging that an inner focus is self-indulgent while others "cite a lack of time" as a barrier to self-care. Whatever the reason holding you back, focusing on overall wellness is key to modeling "resilient and sustainable" leadership so it is worth pursuing. Neale says there are seven primary mindset shifts that can nudge leaders towards behavioral change.

1. Give yourself permission to extend care and empathy inward.
2. Meet yourself where you are.
3. Avoid all-or-nothing thinking.
4. Take a page from colleagues.
5. Prioritize small and steady.
6. Find an accountability buddy.
7. Celebrate and savor.

Once you've set yourself up for success with these mindset shifts, then you're ready to use Neale's self-care checklist to help you evolve your healthy routine. Get the full story, and engage with the checklist, here.

**For more on mindset shifts, explore our leadership resources on the power of a gratitude mindset, the joy of a growth mindset, and the mindset that helps you finish what you start.

Upskilling Is an Upside in the Talent Wars

The authors of this strategy+business article on how to "level up your skills approach" explain: In the "battle for talent," today's employees see upskilling as the "ultimate power-up," and say that "having opportunities to learn new skills is a key consideration" when they are deciding where to work or whether or not to stay with their current company. The authors' research shows "the stakes are high: companies risk losing top talent if employees don't see" a sufficient path to "build and flex." They recommend four key actions for shifting "your workforce skills strategy" to ensure leaders are attracting, inspiring, and retaining talent.

1. Upskill inclusively (don't just focus on your superstars). "Upskilling all employees, not just those with specialized skills, is crucial for creating a more inclusive and adaptable workforce."

2. Target skills, not formal qualifications. "Incorporate skills-based assessments into your hiring process, including practical tests, simulations, or work samples that allow candidates to showcase their abilities."

3. Forge new paths for on-the-job learning. "Traditional training courses and seminars have their place," but it's also wise "to create hands-on opportunities" for learning like "stretch projects, tours or job rotations, shadowing, and other options."

4. Inventory your cache of skills. "A skills database," which is "a system that captures and tracks the skills and expertise" of your workforce, is essential to "unlocking the world of workforce skills."

By following these four steps, the authors say "organizations can supercharge the employee experience and unlock the critical capabilities needed to stay ahead." Get the full story here.

**For more on attracting and retaining talent, explore our library of interviews with top-performing contemporary leaders who offer experience-backed advice for building effective and engaged teams.

Tidy Up Your People Practices

In this recent edition of the HR Brew newsletter, Mikaela Cohen talks to Terence Mauri about his tips for "detoxing, decluttering, and deleting outdated" people practices, inspired by his new book, The Upside of Disruption: The Path to Leading and Thriving in the Unknown. Mauri says leaders should take a page from famed organizing guru Marie Kondo and tidy up their systems and approaches to managing people: "Think about all the processes or ways of working that are no longer optimized, that are dysfunctional, even broken" and then eliminate them. He says leaders should analyze their BMI, "not Body Mass Index, but Bureaucratic Misery Index," which refers to a glut of protocols, meetings, and information that amount to "a tax on agility." Mauri warns the higher an organization's BMI, "the less engaged employees will be" because they're spending time on administrative tasks rather than "intelligent work." He says every leader should ask this key question: "What do we need to detox, clutter, and delete in order to create more bandwidth to focus on our highest value outcomes?" Then, Mauri says, be diligent about "elimination . . . actually removing barriers to agility, removing barriers to speed" so leaders can spend less time on "shallow work," and more time on driving high performance. Get the full story here.

The Secrets of 'Gifted Conversationalists'

"Gifted conversationalists are often perceived as being innately gracious and charismatic," writes communications expert John Bowe in this CNBC coverage, but in reality, "the ability to engage in spontaneous interactions is a learnable skill." While Bowe acknowledges that making small talk with strangers requires "a kind of courageous improvisation that many people find daunting," he encourages leaders to work on the skill because it is both "professionally and socially beneficial." He says there are three steps to making better small talk "at work, in the elevator, during social gatherings, or while attending business seminars."

1. Let go. Lower the stakes: "Take a breath. You're not storming the beaches at Normandy. You're simply acknowledging the presence of another person and offering a no-strings invitation to chat."

2. Forget about being deep, cool or 'real.' It's OK to start with surface-level pleasantries: "If you can't be clever or deep in the first moments of interaction, so be it. You're making a connection, and that's all that matters. If you have to force or even script your opening lines, it's hardly the end of the world."

3. Stop thinking about yourself and focus on the other person. Self-consciousness is distracting: "When you over-monitor yourself, your body, your words, or someone else's perception of you, you diminish your ability to listen. You've asked this person for their attention; now give them yours."

Get the full story here.

**For more on this, explore our coverage of why Brené Brown says "empathy is the secret source of connection."