— Executive Aid Station —
Bobbie LaPorte & Associates
April 2022
Like the aid stations that help athletes make it through an endurance race, this Executive Aid Station is a place for you to take a brief respite from your busy day, reflect, and learn something new to help fuel your personal and professional success.
Business Update
Are we really past all the anxiety, uncertainty and loneliness that working through COVID brought?
I guess it depends on who you ask. But over the last few weeks, I am definitely hearing more about in-person company meetings, sales kick-offs, industry conferences, and customer events. Leaders are feeling optimistic about the future and enthused once again about the possibilities that lie ahead, and about the prospects to create impact for their business and their teams, despite the many issues that still face us.
As a leader, it is part of your responsibility to fairly reflect the reality of our changing and challenging envirnonment—but also to help your team navigate through this time. Many changes continue, like a post-COVID return to the office, increased travel requirements, new performance and production requirements, and catching up on deferred initiatives, to mention a few. All of these require careful planning, setting expectations, and...
Training Update
As we wrap up the month of April and head into May (already??), it sometimes feels like Mother Nature is trying to pull a fast one on us. One day we have summer-like temperatures; the next, it’s cold and rainy. In Lake Tahoe, where I am often, locals call it the “shoulder season,” where temps can be in the 60s, followed by eight inches of snow two days later.
If there is one thing we have learned through the last two years, it’s that flexibility is the key to survival. As an endurance athlete who thrives on structure, I find it disconcerting to have my “routine” thrown out the window by weather conditions. But I have learned over the years to develop options to get my scheduled workouts in: strength training with my own body weight when I can’t get to the gym; jumping rope or walking up and down stairs when an outdoor run is out of the question; mixing up what I normally do to find other ways to exercise. The added benefit: it’s enjoyable to try new ways of moving your body.
— Insights —
What I'm Reading
George Moves to London by Giana Gyr
I hope you will indulge me this month as a share a more personal book selection—one that I believe will resonate with many of our readers.
My niece, Giana Gyr (former techie from HotelTonight and New Relic), moved to London two years when her husband, Andreas, relocated for his job with Google. Moving overseas during COVID was not a simple endeavor. It was particularly challenging because it included their four-legged family member, George, a big, loveable Great Pyrenees + who-knows-what mix rescue dog.
I will leave it to you to explore George’s “moving” adventure in this delightful and fun storybook for all ages that Giana wrote and fancifully illustrated. For anyone who is a dog lover and knows the challenges of traveling with your furry friends, this sweet story will likely hit home and provide much-needed relief from the business reading we do every day.
Leadership Tip: What makes your brand inspiring?
Earlier this year I had the privilege of producing and delivering a three-workshop series for the Executive MBA cohort (EMBA) at Santa Clara University. It was a thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding experience working with mid-career professionals to uncover, articulate and share their executive brand.
One key point we covered: just like product brands, executive brands have both rational (think functional/technical expertise) and emotional attributes. The emotional element of your brand conveys what makes your approach different and why people are inspired by you and want to work for/with you.
Here are some questions to ask yourself to get started:
- Why do people want to come work for you?
- What inspires and energizes people on your team to come to work every day?
- How do others introduce you (i.e., how do they see you)?
This can be challenging to uncover, but with a little intention and attention, you can build a powerful and differentiated brand that makes a difference as you advance your career in today’s highly competitive executive marketplace.
GET READY FOR CURVEBALLS
Hardback, paperback and e-book versions of When the Curveballs Keep Coming: A Leadership Playbook for an Uncertain World are now available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
LEARN TO LEAD THROUGH UNCERTAINTY
My online course, Leading through Uncertainty: How to Lead When What You Know Doesn’t Count Anymore, is now live on Innerplicity! Enroll yourself and your team in this engaging 4-week course to learn powerful skills and techniques you can put to work right away. You’ll learn to normalize uncertainty—so you’re never thrown off guard again.
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