Episode #7 – Mastering Organizational Leadership: Driving Ideas In Global Corporate Environments 

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[00:00:00] INTRODUCTION

[00:00:00] Taty Fittipaldi: She is not executive level material. When you hear people in the corporate world saying that about someone or worse about you, one of the big culprits could be organizational leadership. Or a lack of it for a better saying.

[00:00:17] Taty Fittipaldi: In today’s episode, we will discuss about the organizational leadership pillar, the third pillar of The Global Leadership Pillars™. This pillar is a tricky one. Most people learn the skills under this pillar after long years of experience or expedite them through specific training or an MBA. Today, I want to share with you what organizational leadership is all about. And what skills you need to develop to have a great sense of organizational leadership, and I’ll provide you some tips for you to start applying the things you learn today.

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[00:00:54] TODAY’S STORY

[00:00:54] Today’s story.[00:01:00]

[00:01:04] Taty Fittipaldi: Jeremy was a strategic account manager at a big marketing company firm. A long time customer recently asked him for a higher discount for a package renewal. And he had a hard time getting it approved with the finance team. The CFO himself came to talk to him and ranted about him having to take a financial course for non-finance person. “You can go on making crappy deals like that, Jeremy,” he blurted. That comment really hurt. He felt belittled and had a burning anger in the pit of his stomach.

[00:01:41] Taty Fittipaldi: Jeremy felt humiliated. His reaction to the situation was not good. His body was tense. How was he supposed to make good deals anyway, then.

[00:01:52] Taty Fittipaldi: Jeremy is not a bad employee, but he’s not very good at handling conflict and criticism. Even [00:02:00] though he’s generally seen as a good natured person.

[00:02:03] Taty Fittipaldi: If only he knew what he was doing wrong, to prompt that kind of comment. He wouldn’t feel so stressed out right now. Because at least he would know how to diffuse the situation. He decided to contact a long lost friend from college. Who became a CPA and worked in finance in a global corporation. He thought he could pick her brain and get in line with some arguments to convince the finance team.

[00:02:32] Taty Fittipaldi: His friend was a busy person, but was glad to hear from him. They set up a coffee date and she agreed to give him some tips on how to negotiate with the finance department. She asked him to bring his last P&L or profit and loss report, and he’s account track records. So she could have some more context about what was going on. When they finally met, she’s spent a long deal of time looking [00:03:00] at the papers, the charts and the data.

[00:03:02] Taty Fittipaldi: Her first reaction was a big shock to Jeremy. “Your P&L is indeed a mess, Jeremy.” She’s slowly started. “What do you mean Samantha?”

[00:03:12] Taty Fittipaldi: “Well, it seems you give too many discounts. You rely on discounts to make a deal. Don’t you?” She pointed out.

[00:03:19] Taty Fittipaldi: Jeremy’s heart was in his throat. He wasn’t expecting that.

[00:03:24] Taty Fittipaldi: She noticed his body tense up, even though he didn’t say a word. ” Look.” She went on.

[00:03:31] Taty Fittipaldi: “It’s a good thing that you are getting in touch with the finance people, but you need to know what you are doing. Becoming more literate in finance is actually not a bad recommendation. I don’t think their intention is bad.” she sweetly shared.

[00:03:48] Taty Fittipaldi: “How about this?” She started. “Go back to your finance team, and tell them you thought about their suggestion and your up for the challenge. Ask them which training they would [00:04:00] suggest. If nothing, at least you’ll start to get in their good side. That would be a great way to start.”

[00:04:07] Taty Fittipaldi: “I can’t believe it!” He said. ” You were siding with them. Plus, it sounds like a lot of work.”

[00:04:15] Taty Fittipaldi: “Yeah. I’m not surprised you feel this way because indeed it’s a lot of work. It will be a lot of work, but you can’t go on like this.” She said assertively. “Start the training and let’s meet every other week to talk about your progress.” “What should I tell my current client?” Jeremy asked a little worried. “Well, I’ll tell you what to do when I have a negotiation. I always ask the other party, what’s the best alternative they have. That helps me, you know, see what my value proposition really is. And also helps me understand if there are other options that I haven’t considered.”

[00:04:54] Taty Fittipaldi: After this conversation, he decided to experiment with this new [00:05:00] approach, although he still felt a little hurt about the whole situation. But he would accomplish nothing by bickering with the finance team like this. So he decided to approach this as, if you were learning a new language, to communicate with a foreign land. The finance land.

[00:05:18] Taty Fittipaldi: Once he started the training, he indeed noticed that his financial literacy was actually close to zero. He finally started to realize how discounts infected the company’s profits, his own pockets and how they impacted the product mix, among other things.

[00:05:37] Taty Fittipaldi: The training took place over several months, and doing those sessions, he started to build a better understanding of how to structure a deal in a way that made sense for the company and for the clients. His line of questioning when talking to clients also changed because he started to explore way more about how clients see [00:06:00] value instead of telling them how he could provide a value from the get go.

[00:06:04] Taty Fittipaldi: He also started to feel a lot better about himself. He learned about budgeting and how to manage his budget and P and L. And also learn some tricks to improve his business acumen, which helped him have, you know, novel ideas for new negotiations. His relationship with his finance department also improved because his conversations with them became more robust and sensible. Indeed, it was like learning a new language and now he could communicate much better. As Jeremy continued his training and improvement in financial literacy, he received an unexpected offer from a competing marketing firm. They were impressed with his newly acquired financial acumen and believed he could significantly boost their business with his is strategic account management skills.

[00:06:57] Taty Fittipaldi: Jeremy was now faced with a [00:07:00] dilemma. On one hand, he had invested a lot of time and effort into improving himself at his current company. And he felt a sense of loyalty to his colleagues who had supported him through his transformation. On the other hand, the new offer was incredibly tempting, offering him higher pay and the opportunity to work with a fresh set of clients and challenges.

[00:07:24] Taty Fittipaldi: Jeremy decided to have an open and honest conversation with his current employer about the competing offer. He presented it as an opportunity to demonstrate the value he had added to the company, through his training and improvements. His current company, recognizing the potential loss, offered him a promotion. And a substantial increase in salary to retain him. Jeremy accepted his company’s offer, and he realized that his journey of self-improvement had not only enhanced his skills, but also earned [00:08:00] him the recognition and rewards he deserved.

[00:08:03] Taty Fittipaldi: In the end Jeremy’s journey of self-improvement transformed him from a well-intentioned employee with no financial acumen into a high value strategic account manager, with a reputation for delivering results for the company and its clients.

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[00:08:19] SPONSOR’S NOTE: This episode is sponsored by Coaching Expatriates, a leading global executive development company that helps leaders around the world create happier and more profitable workplaces using the four success pillars in global leadership, an innovative leadership learning methodology. Visit their website at www. coachingexpatriates. com.

[00:08:46] TODAY’S LESSON

[00:08:46] TODAY’S LESSON: Today’s lesson.

[00:08:56] Taty Fittipaldi: Today’s story is not very different from the story of [00:09:00] millions and millions of people working in sales organizations today. We’re born. We grow up, go to school, go to college, start working in sales or whatever other department in the company, have functional training and learn as we go. The problem is that having functional training and learning as we go hardly provides us the strong foundation to have worthwhile organizational leadership. What is organizational leadership? Organizational leadership is one of the four success pillars in global leadership, also called The Global Leadership Pillars™. Let’s quickly recap what these four pillars of global leadership are. Personal leadership leads self for greater performance. People leadership leads people to empower a vision, organizational leadership leads ideas, to create positive impact. Cultural leadership leads behavior. [00:10:00] To create an inclusive and happy workplace. So what exactly is organizational leadership? Organizational leadership is the ability to leverage data and help organizations set strategic goals, while motivating individuals to execute their assignments to achieve those goals successfully. And when I say data, I mean, any form of data: could be financial data. Any other quantitative data. Qualitative data, marketing data, or so on.

[00:10:33] Taty Fittipaldi: And for anyone to achieve this, they have to work on several key competencies and skills that suport organizational leadership. Let’s see what they are.

[00:10:44] Taty Fittipaldi: Number one, financial literacy.

[00:10:47] Taty Fittipaldi: Every leader, no matter which position they have must understand what each of their actions and decisions will create in terms of value or a consequences to shareholders. Most [00:11:00] think that finance thinking is reserved for those only in the finance department. But the truth is that companies who don’t have leaders literate in finance, regardless of their department, don’t thrive as much as those companies that do. Learning the finance essentials will help leaders make smarter and faster decisions because they will know how their decisions will impact the shareholders’ value. In our story today, Jeremy was an average account manager who made the deals solely based on discounts. Because of that, he was hurting the company’s profits and also his reputation. Although his job title had the strategic word associated with it, he was not known for being strategic. This quickly changed as soon as he was able to move past his negative feelings, and took the advice to improve his [00:12:00] financial literacy. Once that happened, not only his financial literacy improved, but he was able to make smarter and more strategic decisions, which brings me to the next topic.

[00:12:14] Taty Fittipaldi: Number two strategy and decision-making skills. Every leader must know how to create, or participate in, a robust strategy cycle in their business and endeavors. They also must know the basics to ensure the company’s strategy is correctly maintained. Learning strategic thinking is key. Every company has its own strategy process, meetings, and cycles. That’s why a requirement for a strategic thinking is business acumen. Which we’ll talk more in a bit. Hold that thought. A second requirements is planning. You cannot simply wing strategy. You have to assess, analyze, plan [00:13:00] your actions and implement your plan. So this planning mindset is crucial. What comes next is decision-making. We make decisions every day, right? Small and big. And we make better decisions if we know the best processes and approaches to make them. There are a few key elements in a good decision-making process, such as. A clarity of the triad vision values strategy. If you don’t have a clear vision, the strategy you will be using to make it happen, and which values you will hold true while you get there, your path will be tortuous and even costly.

[00:13:44] Taty Fittipaldi: B clarity of processes, every company has its own processes, as I said, and ways of doing things. if you don’t know how to work with them, You’ll fight the system and people. This will [00:14:00] make you tired. It will cost money and you might not end up making the best decisions. Or timely decisions, for that matter.

[00:14:09] Taty Fittipaldi: C decision criteria. Decision criteria or the lack of them, is one of the biggest things that hold high executives back from making good decisions. Having criteria is like having a filter that tells you which things are worthy of your time in a search. It works pretty much the same.

[00:14:32] Taty Fittipaldi: D decision impact awareness. .

[00:14:35] Taty Fittipaldi: Who and what will your decisions affect? We often make decisions, but we don’t introduce casuality thinking into the process of making decisions. Casuality thinking is sort of a scenario analysis. It’s a way of trying to figure out what potential outcomes your decisions will have.

[00:14:56] Taty Fittipaldi: E decision fatigue. [00:15:00] This is worth an entire episode. So we’ll discuss decision fatigue in the future. But in a nutshell decision fatigue is the process of exhaustion in our minds due to making too many decisions. When we are fatigued this way, we make poor decisions. Actually a good piece of recommendation is to never make critical decisions when we are decision fatigued. This might sound crazy, but our gauge for decision fatigue happens daily. So we must be conscious of how fatigued we are daily, before making decisions.

[00:15:42] Taty Fittipaldi: F. Decision-makers styles. Different people make decisions differently. And these different ways are mostly associated with what the decision makers value the most. There are mostly six types of decision makers and [00:16:00] when we identify which ones we are, and the other parties involved in a decision, we are able to zone into their values and have a more productive conversation. Because we are able to find common grounds.

[00:16:16] Taty Fittipaldi: When a leader does not know these six elements and how to work with them for decision-making, the company can have the best decision matrix in the world outlining who is allowed to do what, who is allowed to decide on what. Still, leaders will make crappy decisions. So leaders must learn to create a decision-making process for themselves, using many or all of these elements and get educated on how to make better decisions.

[00:16:50] Taty Fittipaldi:  Number three. Budgeting.

[00:16:53] Taty Fittipaldi: Although this is considered as part of the finance essential suite, I decided to put it [00:17:00] separately, because it is critical. And most leaders overlook this, especially if they don’t hold power over their budgets. In other words, someone else makes the final budget decisions. Learning how to budget a department, an the organization, a project or whatever endeavor you want, differentiates you big time and can catapult your career. Look, leaders are like shareholders housekeepers. Would you want a housekeeper who wastes things and can’t run a house smoothly? Or one who can’t make the most with what they have? Learning how to budget is equivalent to learning how to make the most of what you have at your disposal.

[00:17:47] Taty Fittipaldi: Regardless of your seniority, title, or authority level, this is a skill you must have as a global leader. In our story today, our hero, not only initially [00:18:00] had zero financial literacy, but he also never reviewed or analyzed his sales track records, costs, our budget. His only measure was whether he achieved the sales target, or not. For example, if you understand budgeting, you will start to see if the costs you are generating will deliver an expected ROI. Or return on investment.

[00:18:26] Taty Fittipaldi: Think about this in this way: if you have a small account, You might take a decision-maker to coffee, while if you have an account 10 times bigger, you might take the decision-maker to restaurant. When you understand and are aware of your budget, you start to match your costs or in this case, your investments, based on the potential return they could give you for your budget.

[00:18:53] Taty Fittipaldi: Number four business acumen. Business acumen is your ability to understand the business that you were [00:19:00] working for inside out. What are the products? What do they do? Who’s the audience that buys the products and services and why do they buy them? How is your company positioned in the market? What’s your company strategy? Who decides on what?

[00:19:16] Taty Fittipaldi: What are the main company policies, main values, organizational purpose, and so on. Most global leaders map all these out in their very first 90 days in a new position with a company.

[00:19:29] Taty Fittipaldi: If you have never done this before to increase your business acumen, check out our first 90 days guide, that will help you do exactly that. I’ll leave details in the description below. Look. If you are in your silo and only know about your department, you will not be a good leader. You heard how many aspects business acumen has, and I didn’t even get started. So leaders need to learn a process that they can use to [00:20:00] gain that business acumen, once they get into a new company.

[00:20:03] Taty Fittipaldi:  Number five executive presence. Executive presence is the ability to project confidence, professionalism, trustworthiness, reliability, and inclusiveness through specific skills. People think about executive presence as a “have it”, or ” lack it” kind of talent. That’s wrong.

[00:20:23] Taty Fittipaldi: The good news is that executive presence is completely learnable. Executive presence is actually a conjunction of many skills. Like communication skills, impression management, gravitas, posture. Demeanor, adequate attire, planning and preparation, influencing skills, intuitive listening skills and confidence projection, to say a few.

[00:20:46] Taty Fittipaldi: Right out of the bat, you can see why it is such a hard skill to master because you have to master first a bunch of other skills and only then learn to glue them all [00:21:00] together.

[00:21:00] Taty Fittipaldi: Now, let me tell you this. It has been shown that leaders with perceived higher executive presence can get higher pay than those who are not perceived in such way. Oh, and they are usually promoted faster too.

[00:21:16] Taty Fittipaldi: Which is sort of what happened in our story today. By gaining financial literacy and business acumen, Jeremy was able to use his skills to project greater executive presence and be perceived in a much better way as an employee and strategic account manager.

[00:21:36] Taty Fittipaldi: Number six. Stars model of business evolution.

[00:21:40] Taty Fittipaldi: The stars model is a business evolution model developed by Michael Watkins. This model’s purpose is not to box or label a business. Understanding this model helps leader quickly identify what actions to take based on what they [00:22:00] know about that company’s stage. Models like these help us make sense out of the situations faster,. And devise a proper set of actions to achieve what we want.

[00:22:12] Taty Fittipaldi: That is why I recommend working on the stars model to every single leader who hires me to help them with their new role transition.

[00:22:20] Taty Fittipaldi: And we do this with the first 90 days plan, I just mentioned. As a leader, the set of actions you work on in a startup is totally different from one that is in a turnaround stage, for example. It’s like a working with kids. A five-year-old might enjoy the merry-go-round, but the teenager might enjoy the roller coaster, more. Businesses are a bit like that. You have to match initiatives to the right stage of their evolution so that you can be more effective and get greater returns. Learning this model, its stages, and what to do in [00:23:00] each stage, sets you apart as a leader. If you want to learn more about this model, mr. Watkins has a wonderful book on this topic, called the first 90 days, proven strategies for getting up to speed faster and smarter.

[00:23:15] Taty Fittipaldi: I will leave a reference link in the show notes below.

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[00:23:17] NARRATOR: You’re listening to The Leadership Nest, the podcast that nests stories, knowledge, and science to soar the leadership in you with your host Taty Fittipaldi.

[00:23:34] TODAY’S TIPS TO APPLY WHAT YOU LEARNED

[00:23:34] TODAY’S TIPS TO APPLY WHAT YOU LEARNED: Today’s tips to apply what you learned.

[00:23:43] Taty Fittipaldi: As you can see, developing organizational leadership is not a small feat.

[00:23:49] Taty Fittipaldi: There are many skills involved, as we listed in our lesson today. And some of these skills have a set of sub-skills that are also [00:24:00] complex to learn and master.

[00:24:01] Taty Fittipaldi: The first rule of thumb in talent development is to develop one, or a few things, at a time. Learning a new skill is like learning a new language. If you tried to learn a new language, you know, it requires passion, focus, and a lot of practice. And practice takes time.

[00:24:23] Taty Fittipaldi: You have only 24 hours in the day and you still have to eat, to go to the bathroom, last time we checked.

[00:24:31] Taty Fittipaldi: So selecting what will get your main attention and focus to learn, and practice, is the best way to start applying the lesson today. Choose one skill at a time.

[00:24:43] Taty Fittipaldi: If you’re the type of person who likes to plan things ahead, you can map out what you need to learn and line them up. This way you can start learning a new thing, as soon as it started getting the hang of the previous skill you were learning.

[00:24:59] Taty Fittipaldi: If you don’t [00:25:00] know where to start. My suggestion is to consider learning finance first. A lot of people will turn their eyes to this and, you know, put their fingers on their throats.

[00:25:12] Taty Fittipaldi: I totally understand this. Some people hate numbers and math. I get it.

[00:25:18] Taty Fittipaldi: But the good news is that you don’t have to know advanced math to learn finance. Actually, you don’t need to learn a lot of math at all and make too many calculations to become more literate in finance. In fact, most finance courses for non-finance people provide P&L simulations in Excel files, where you can simulate and see the results without having to do a single calculation yourself.

[00:25:47] Taty Fittipaldi: And that’s enough so long as you understand the impact of the cost, the revenue, and the decisions behind them.

[00:25:55] Taty Fittipaldi: The third suggestion on one to make, to apply what you just learned is [00:26:00] to improve your business acumen.

[00:26:02] Taty Fittipaldi: I remember when I was first hired as a full-time finance employee in a big global company. I was great at what I did, but I did not take the time to learn more about the company and gain business acumen. The first time I received similar feedback to Jeremy, that I had to improve my business acumen to provide better services to my stakeholders, As him, I was also hurt. But as with Jeremy, as soon as I gulped my negative feelings, and took action on the feedback, things started to change for me. And the way people viewed me also changed.

[00:26:41] Taty Fittipaldi: If you don’t want to go full out on business acumen just yet, try at least answering the following questions about your own company.

[00:26:50] Taty Fittipaldi: What was your original purpose of my company? What’s my company’s purpose today. And what about its mission? [00:27:00] Do I know it’s mission?

[00:27:01] Taty Fittipaldi: How do I exactly fit into this mission? In other words, what’s my part in making this mission happen.

[00:27:09] Taty Fittipaldi: What are the main values of this company? How are mine aligned? Don’t forget those values that are not written anywhere.

[00:27:19] Taty Fittipaldi: What are the products of this company and why do they separate them into the product lines the way they do. What’s the logic behind this. What do these products do each. How is the audience that buys our products and services. And why do they buy them? Why not the competitor’s product.

[00:27:44] Taty Fittipaldi: How is my company positioned in the market?

[00:27:47] Taty Fittipaldi: What’s my company’s growth strategy. Is it fully organic? Inorganic. A combination, what type of combination?

[00:27:57] Taty Fittipaldi: Who are the main decision makers [00:28:00] and who are the influencers in the company? Those people who don’t actually make the decision, but they have a great influence in it.

[00:28:10] Taty Fittipaldi: What are the main policies, for example, commercial policy, inventory policy payment terms policy, et cetera.

[00:28:20] Taty Fittipaldi: While I was telling you these questions, your mind was probably already thinking about some of the answers. If for some of the questions you thought. I don’t quite know. I need to, you know, check on this, then it’s your perfect opportunity to start there.

[00:28:38] Taty Fittipaldi: Do you know, a great idea that would make this more fun and useful? How about you find people to help you answer the questions that you are not still 100% sure about. This way you can start networking with other areas and departments, and learn their perspective and pain points. Which will [00:29:00] also increase your business acumen. There is no better ally for business acumen and the organizational leadership, as a whole, then networking and connecting with people on a deeper level.

[00:29:12] KEY TAKEAWAYS

[00:29:12] KEY TAKEAWAYS: Key Takeaways

[00:29:21] Taty Fittipaldi: What’s your main takeaway from this episode, here are mine.

[00:29:25] Taty Fittipaldi: Number one. Organizational leadership is one of the four pillars in the global leadership pillars. And it is the ability to leverage data, to help organizations set strategic goals, while motivating individuals to execute their assignments to achieve those goals successfully.

[00:29:44] Taty Fittipaldi: Number two feedback can sometimes hurt us, but it does not mean they don’t hold true value when we listen to them.

[00:29:54] Taty Fittipaldi: Number three, in order to Excel in organizational leadership, to lead ideas [00:30:00] effectively, we need to learn key things for our development.

[00:30:04] Taty Fittipaldi: A financial literacy, including budgeting. B strategy thinking and decision-making skills. C business acumen. D executive presence, which in turn is a combination of many skills in itself. E stars model of business evolution to address initiatives according to the right business evolution or a stage.

[00:30:29] Taty Fittipaldi: Number Four one effective way to start applying the things said in this episode, Is by selecting one skill to develop at a time. Starting with financial literacy and business acumen can have greater returns on the investment for emerging leaders who are eager to make the biggest difference possible in the shortest amount of time.

[00:30:51] Taty Fittipaldi: Number five, having a 90 day plan when starting in a new role can not only expedite business acumen, but will also help the leader [00:31:00] have holistic view of their role and how they can best help the company. In turn, this will create an initial, huge, positive impact on your stakeholders from the get go, because this leader will be perceived with higher executive presence.

[00:31:17] HIGHLIGHTS

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[00:31:17] Taty Fittipaldi: This brings us to the end of this Leadership Nest episode. I hope you have enjoyed learning about organizational leadership and which skills you must hone to Excel at it. Tune into our episode next week, when we’ll be chatting about the last pillar in The Global Leadership Pillars™, cultural leadership.

[00:31:37] PODCAST HIGHLIGHTS: If you have any questions you’d like us to answer in a future episode of the show, just go to speakpipe. com slash Taty Fittipaldi or click the link in the show notes below to leave us a brief audio message. Make sure to visit us on our [00:32:00] website, www.leadershipnest.com, where you can subscribe to our show anywhere podcasts are streamed so you never miss a show. While there, if you find value in our show, you can also subscribe to our Global Leadership Weekly Newsletter from Coaching Expatriates, where we deliver bite sized lessons on global leadership, decision making, and cultural competence to help you learn how to think, relate, and strategize in a whole different way as a global leader. if you liked the show, you might want to check our online global executive leadership program, a nine week leadership development and learning system that will help you lead internationally while making financially conscious and impactful decisions. Taty Fittipaldi is also available for private coaching. See the website for more details at www.coachingexpatriates.com/executive-coaching. Thanks [00:33:00] for joining us this week on the Leadership Nest Podcast. Be sure to tune in next week for next episode. Until the next time, keep nesting! Wherever you are in the globe, this is Taty Fittipaldi wishing you, a beautiful day.