This behavioral assessment tool gives you a quick and easy way to identify and understand how you most often interact with others. These “Action Modes” (Mover, Follower, Opposer, and Bystander) together with Kantor’s theory of structural dynamics help capture the structure of every human interaction, no matter how complex or distinct. This app will identify your most common Action Modes, assess whether you are “strong,” “weak,” or “stuck” in each, and then provide a personalized report that includes guidance on how to improve your interactions, leverage your strengths and limit your weaknesses.

Once you’ve taken the assessment, a personalized report that can be sent via email and you have the option of sharing your results with your friends and colleagues via social media. Best of all, it’s free and you can find it in the iTunes App Store!

Enter The Social Media MBA, new from Christer Holloman, the man the London Evening Standard called “one of London’s Top 25 Most Influential Individuals within New Media.” Holloman was also recipient of The Telegraph’s 2011 Digital Award (Industry).

In The Social Media MBA editor Holloman has crowd sourced 15 thought leaders from 4 continents to offer an exceptional educational tool written explicitly for experienced social media professionals.

Featured in the book are case studies produced by the social leaders at these brands:
ARM by Kerry McGuire Balanza – Director of Strategic Marketing
Aviva by Jan Gooding – Global Brand Director
Dell by Stuart Handley – Communications Director
Evans Cycles by Will Lockie – Head of Social Media
GlaxoSmithKlein (Ribena) by Verity Clifton – Brand Marketing Manager
Kodak by Madlen Nicolaus – Social Media Manager
Phillips by Hans Notenboom – Global Director B2B Online
Sage by Cath Sheldon – Online PR Specialist

The best way to learn about the book is to hear from several of the contributors, including Holloman, in this short video:

*Be sure to connect with the co-authors and other readers by joining The Social Media MBA Alumi group, visit http://www.socialmedia-mba.com, or search for the group on LinkedIn to stay updated on the latest, ask questions and/or join discussions.

Chances are you’ve already seen this new book pop up in your online reads. Dion Hinchcliffe spoke with Drake Baer of FastCo to produce this insightful Q&A. The authors were also featured in InformationWeek’s Brainyard. As soon as you finish reading our 5 questions with the authors, hop over there to get more details on just how to design a social business.

What does Social Business by Design mean?
It’s an organized approach to incorporating social media into the way a business strategically operates, based on the experiences of hundreds of companies that have successfully made the transition to social business. This deliberate approach helps companies move beyond tactical adoption and become more strategic about social media internally and externally, reaping substantially higher benefits.

How is your approach to social business strategy different from others?

A key difference in our approach is the realization that making substantial changes to a large organization can be an inordinately difficult, time-consuming activity. With this in mind, we asked ourselves, what if we could uncover a set of methods specifically designed for the needs of the traditional enterprise? Social Business by Design is that handbook. It clearly lays out the organizational changes as well as the new processes and structures needed, all the while putting them into a roadmap that is manageable and achievable by the average organization.

What is the most important thing an organization can start doing now in the social space?

First, build competency in the concepts at a strategic level while raising social media literacy across the organization. This lays a strong foundation that will later greatly accelerate the desired outcomes of a social business plan.  Also, it’s critical to foster a close, effective working relationship among the main internal actors: typically the C-suite sponsors, the IT department, legal, human resources, and compliance, along with the heads of the lines of business that will be co-creating and adopting social business solutions.

What has been the single most important development in social business?

Probably its profound pervasiveness. That social media is now the leading form of digital communication on the planet, even over e-mail, is still not widely appreciated enough, yet it’s a seismic change in how people live, behave, and interact with each other, and it’s happened in a historically short time period. Businesses are finding that they have a lot to do in order to catch up.

What do you see as the next big change in social business?

The next big change is moving beyond short-term adoption and beginning strategic social business transformation. Most companies have added social media to how they do things, updating their processes incrementally by sprinkling in some social media. However, those companies reaping the largest benefits are the ones rethinking what’s possible by also incorporating peer production, mass participation, social collaboration, and network effects, to name just a few other areas that can greatly benefit. While many companies have successfully energized their workforce, marketing efforts, and customer care with social media over the years, the cases in our book show that those that commit to social business throughout the organization achieve remarkably higher returns on investment and competitive positioning.

He recently sat down with Shellie Karabell for an INSEAD Knowledge video interview (the corresponding article lives here) to discuss his latest book, The Hedgehog Effect, and the evolution of leadership development over time. The Hedgehog Effect is our current featured book on JosseyBassBusiness.com. It gets its unique name from German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer’s analogy between humans’ and hedgehogs’ discomfort with social proximity. Eventually, after a lot of shuffling, they find the optimum distance for warmth and comfort. For human hedgehogs, this conundrum—our simultaneous need for closeness and distance—is a fundamental reason why people often find it so difficult to work successfully in groups and teams.

Written for coaches, consultants, leadership development directors, and anyone working in or with teams, The Hedgehog Effect offers a group coaching model, incorporating living case studies, that Kets de Vries has developed over his more than 20 years of executive coaching. 

Below, we’ve picked out some highlights from Kets de Vries’ talk with INSEAD. You can view the complete video interview and corresponding article at INSEAD Knowledge.

• What makes a leader? “Early experience and significant experience on the job.”
• “There are no leaders without context…. There are so many combinations, permutations, [of a leader] that make for success.”
• Another player in leadership development? “Serendipity, the element of luck. Of course you can make your luck a little bit.”
• “The Secret Life [of Groups] is ‘What are the issues hanging in the cloud? What are some of the issues there?’ It can be many different things. I’ve always told my coaches a number of rules. One is…Do No Harm. You have to create a safe place, [encourage] people to want to talk in a different way….. Strike when the iron is cold, not hot. When the iron is too hot people don’t listen anymore. And sometimes you have to take bold action. Sometimes you are wrong.”

•  Stanford Social Innovation Review gives readers an excerpt from the book, describing the creation of the Mitticool- “The fridge [that] consumes no electricity, is 100-percent biodegradable, and produces zero waste during its lifetime.”
• This Economist article focuses on the book’s theme of cutting costs – Jugaad Innovation is all about frugality – and discusses the growing conversation between Eastern and Western businesses. (They also deemed Jugaad Innovation the “most comprehensive book yet to appear on the subject.”)
• Forbes looks at Jugaad Innovation from a very practical stand point, pointing out the areas of American life that could be enhanced by using the methods outlined in the book.
• In this Harvard Business Review post, the Jugaad Innovation authors site examples of how the Jugaad mindset is being put to practical use in the United States.

Have you heard of jugaad innovation? Got the book already? We’d love to know what you think in the comments section.

Beth Comstock (Chief Marketing Officer, GE) put it perfectly, saying, “In business, we plan to avert disaster, launch products, and forecast financials, but rarely do we plan to Get Lucky. This method of planned serendipity should be part of every innovator’s toolkit.”

And here’s something else for your toolkit (that’s free): To coincide with the book’s release the authors had this handy infographic created. If this sort of thing appeals to you, be sure to click the share button above this post and share the love.

If you are a woman seeking to project authority and credibility:

Keep your voice down. When stating your opinion, use the authoritative arc, in which your voice starts on one note, rises in pitch through the sentence, and drops back down at the end.

Claim your space. Females can compensate for men’s larger and taller stature by standing straight, broadening their stance, spreading out their paperwork, and even putting their hands on their hips in order to take up more physical space.

Watch your hands. Everyone uses self-pacifying gestures when under stress. People rub their hands together, grab their upper arms, touch their necks, and so on. But, as a woman, you will be viewed as much less powerful if you self-pacify with girlish behaviors (twirling hair, playing with jewelry, or biting a finger.)

Curb your enthusiasm. Women who express the entire spectrum of emotions often overwhelm their audience (especially if that audience is primarily male). So, in situations where you want to maximize your authority, minimize your movements. When you appear calm and contained, you look more powerful.

Straighten your head. Head tilting is a positive signal that someone is interested and involved. But head tilting is also a universal sign of acquiescence and submission. When you want to project authority and confidence, you should hold your head in an erect, more neutral position.

If you are a man seeking to project more warmth and empathy:

Try a little tenderness. A man’s ability to hold his emotions in check is viewed as an advantage in business negotiations. But that doesn’t mean that men shouldn’t allow their feelings to show in other business situations. Whether you are promoting collaboration, building employee enthusiasm for a new corporate direction, or addressing the negative consequences of a major change, showing emotion is not only a good thing, it is a powerful leadership strategy.

Look at people when they speak. The amount of eye contact you give as a leader is especially telling if you reserve it only for those whose opinion you agree with. Increasing your eye contact (and, most especially, making sure you are not looking at just some members of your team and ignoring others) will send signals of inclusiveness and warmth.

Stop solving problems. Men’s discomfort dealing with emotion leads them to immediately search for solutions, rather than understanding that sometimes people just need to be heard. The next time someone comes to you with an emotional problem, try being a sounding board rather than a problem solver.

Lighten up. Men need to monitor their facial expressions, especially those that come across as intimidating, overpowering, or deliberately forbidding. Such visual power cues are certainly useful in some situations, but just as certainly not useful in others. The problem is, hard looks can become habitual in all your business dealings without your realizing it. Once you’ve become aware of that habit, however, you can begin to modify your facial expressions to suit the situation. An encouraging smile, for example, can go a long way if your goal is to build team morale and foster innovation. When you lighten up a bit, you may be surprised to find your people responding with more positive contributions than you’d expected.

Excerpted from The Silent Language of Leaders: How Body Language Can Help – Or Hurt – How You Lead (Carol Kinsey Goman).

*Did you see Carol’s article for Forbes.com yesterday? In less than a day it received over 35,000 hits and 1,000 shares. See what everyone’s talking about: Read “12 Ways to Spot a Liar at Work” now.

This matters because research shows that women are happiest between the ages of 18-25 and after age 50, when, for many, converging life demands­ like kids and work­ are less pronounced.  Being fulfilled and happy during the most productive time in our professional lives, often require us to invent new, better terms and to get “yes” decisions from others.  In PUSHBACK, I argue that if women negotiate for better conditions, using tips like those below, they will see leaps in their confidence, happiness, and life circumstances: 

Open Assertively: Realize that people suffer from low expectations more than anything else in negotiation, a factor which makes them aim low and get too little, overpay, or paralyzes them into not negotiating at all. Always start with an outcome that would delight and thrill you, not simply satisfy you.

Close the Gap: Sometimes a simple switch in the way we view our role can be action enough to drive a negotiation or debate into a favorable direction. Don’t overestimate the other party’s power.  Instead, see the other person in a non-deferential and a more equal, peer-to-peer way; this can make all the difference in getting the outcomes we want.

Hear ‘No’ as ‘Not Yet’: One big mistake many people make is to assume that when someone says “no,” the matter is closed for discussion. Often the timing just wasn’t right the first time so a second ask (timed better or under different circumstances) will do the trick. It’s more than okay to be tenacious and ask again— in fact, if you never hear “no,” you’re probably not asking for enough.

Negotiate Even If There’s No Precedent:  It’s okay to ask for an exception to the rule. For example, who cares, that no one else has ever asked for a phase-back return from maternity leave? Be the first one to ask for it, making the case as to how work will get done, how operations will continue to flow smoothly, and how you and your boss can build in checkpoints along the way to evaluate how it’s going.

Do Pre-Work: Negotiators gain an edge with busy people by presenting the other side with a draft work plan or agreement that approves your request. Your plan should illuminate the key details, save the other side time, and make it easy to say “yes.”

Never Capitulate Too Soon:  While in a negotiation, get comfortable drawing out the conversation—or even postponing it—if need be rather than nodding your head in agreement or surrendering with “Okay.”  You can experiment with being silent for a few seconds to level the power and you can ask questions that open up dialogue.  These questions deepen conversation and often resemble, “Can you explain how you arrived at that solution?” and “How could I help you feel more comfortable with this request?”

Selena Rezvani is the co-owner of Women’s Roadmap, a consulting firm that elevates more women into leadership through assessment, design of gender-inclusive policies, and coaching. Rezvani is a commentator on NPR’s 51 Percent: The Women’s Perspective, writes columns for The Washington Post and Forbes, and is the author of The Next Generation of Women Leaders.

Her new book Pushback is available in stores everywhere today. To learn more about the book visit Selena’s website www.selenarezvani.com or tweet her @selenarezvani. Selena was recently featured in this Forbes article on “Why Women Lose at Negotiation,” which sites a LinkedIn survey that concluded LinkedIn users were more comfortable negotiating. What do you think?  

And if you have more questions for Selena don’t forget to send them to us at jbbizchat@wiley.com before April 17, 2012 (Equal Pay Day). Selena will be answering your questions in another post on JosseyBassBusiness.com.

When bad news happens, people have a tendency to either withdraw from the media or trivialize the situation. When the emergency department at Sunrise Hospital in New York was accused of turning away an uninsured homeless man with chest pain who died moments later, the hospital’s spokesperson was asked by ABC News to comment. “We’re all going to die,” the spokesperson said. True, but not really an appropriate comment considering the circumstance. In the aftermath of the 2009 earthquake in Italy that killed 260 people and left 18,000 homeless, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told survivors to consider themselves on a camping weekend. “Go to the beach,” said Berlusconi. “Take a short vacation.”

To avoid coming across as insensitive or glib, there are three fundamental concepts you should keep in mind in order to present yourself and your organization in a positive manner:

• Be Accessible and Forthcoming: Lying low is rarely a good strategy when it comes to dealing with reporters who are searching for comments or answers. Failing to make oneself available to media when problems arise only yields the floor to others who will speak, and what they say will no doubt be critical. As an old public relations adage goes, “Mess up, ‘fess up.”

• Be Among Those Most Upset: When bad news happens, you have to be among those most upset about the situation, even if your negligence caused it. Media and other stakeholders will look to you to see your reaction. Are you responding with genuine concern? Or is there a callous or indifferent manner to the delivery of your message? Your response must reflect compassion and empathy, both in content and tone. In addition to saying the right words, you must look as if you genuinely believe what you’re saying. Being among those most upset demonstrates your sincerity in acknowledging a damaging situation and reflects an appreciation of the impact that situation has on stakeholders. When bad news happens, people don’t care how much you know, they need to know how much you care.

• Know That Facts Will Never Win Over Emotion: Historically, public relations professionals bombarded people with facts and figures designed to persuade them that there was no reason to worry about company performance, the new dumpsite, or the proposed low-cost housing project. Corporate executives and spokespeople traditionally talked over and around the emotional concerns of others, not fully realizing the alienating nature of that approach. The fact is that news is about emotion. Facts used to counter emotion are not enough to convince people who are upset or distraught. For them, facts are incidental. All the fact in the world may prove a point, but if individuals feel strongly about an issue they’ll go with their gut. Therefore, instead of regurgitating facts and figures, focus on the emotions that underpin the issues you and your organization face.

Excerpted from When the Headline Is You: An Insider’s Guide to Handling the Media (Jeff Ansell, with Jeffrey Leeson).

Consider for a minute how many hours a day the average senior manager spends sitting
in meetings. A recent Wall Street Journal article reported that the average was eight
hours! That means that most of our corporate and government leaders are basically doing
all their work in the minutes between meetings and after hours. And what if those eight
hours are mind-numbingly boring or yield few tangible results?

It’s a fact that despite a multitude of books about meetings and endless workshops, most
meetings are poor and remain a major drain of both time and money. One possible reason
for this is that most leaders continue to run meetings without paying any attention to
process.

They fail to understand how to use even the simplest tools to structure decision-making
conversations. When people exhibit ineffective behaviors, they don’t know how to
redirect them. When a conversation goes off on a tangent they fail to move the off-topic
item into the parking lot. They don’t even do simple things like appoint a time-keeper to
make sure that meetings end on time.

Another major issue is that most meeting leaders don’t post and enforce meeting
guidelines. As a result people text while colleagues are talking and work on laptops to
keep on top of their emails. Of course, who can blame them for doing this! With so many
hours spent in meetings, you have to get your work done sometime!

The result is that meeting are actually getting worse instead of better.

Since we seem to be stuck in a death-spiral about meetings, here are some really simple
suggestions that all meeting managers can apply today:

1. Send out a detailed agenda ahead of time that shows the expected outcome and timeframe for each topic. Specify any required homework.

2. Post a set of meeting guidelines in clear site. Invite people to add any new rules they think would be helpful. Then enforce the rules by politely but firmly pointing out when any rules are being broken.

3. Find a free timer app that counts down and display it in clear sight. Ask someone to call out major markers to prod people along.

4. Tape a blank sheet of flip chart paper on a side wall with the words Parking Lot at the top. Point out digressions and park them for the next meeting, unless group members make a conscious decision to overturn the agenda.

5. Manage participation. Call on quiet people. Politely redirect side-chatters and interrupters with simple-to-use intervention language.

6. Make sure that all decision-making conversations are discussed in a structured manner. Learn to use simple tools like Forcefield Analysis, Root Cause Analysis, Gap Analysis, Affinity Diagrams, Decision-Grids and Multi-voting. Always let people know before any decision-making discussion if they’re making the final decision or just being asked for input to the eventual decision maker.

7. Do a super fast Pluses and Deltas Exit Survey at the end of every meeting using sticky notes to collect improvement ideas. Keep doing the surveys until there are no more recommendations, which means that people feel the meetings are perfect!

The final and most important recommendation is that all meeting leaders should learn the
basics of group facilitation. This can be done by taking a training course, getting a great
book on the subject or taking an online course.

Leaders should approach this challenge with the goal of not only improving meeting
quality, but cutting the overall time their people spend in meetings in half!

When leaders start to use facilitate techniques to manage their meetings, they will soon
discover that facilitation is actually not a “touchy-feely”, nice-to-have frill, but an
essential tool for bringing much needed structure to their work with their people.

Click here to download your own copy of The Faciliation Cue Card, a handy set of reminders to help you before, during, and after a faciliation.

Ingrid Bens has a Master’s Degree in Adult Education and is a Certified Professional Facilitator. She has been teaching facilitation skills workshops for over twenty years and is the author of the Facilitation Skills Inventory or FSI, an instrument for assessing facilitator competency, published by Pfeiffer Co.

Ingrid is also the author of the best-selling book Facilitating With Ease! now in it’s third edition. All of the suggestions for meeting improvements made in this article are described in her book, along with hundreds of other practical tools and tips.