The Quantified Communications Blog

Think back to your college days, and imagine a lecture hall packed with hundreds of students. The professor, wearing a body mic or standing behind a lectern, looks like a spec to the people in the balcony, who take furious notes (or don’t) as she lectures. Every single day.

In a recent article for Forbes, leadership strategist Victor Lipman writes that new managers making the transition into their first leadership roles are in need of more training than anyone else in the organization, and yet these young rising stars often have little to no support. 

As educational technology (“ed tech”) carves out a growing space for itself in classrooms at all levels, the proliferation of vendors and offerings has led to an understandable mistrust of the hundreds of flashy tools promising instantaneous improvements and rapid transformations in the classroom.

In business today, more than ever before, the only certainty is change. With consumer preferences and expectations growing rapidly and a host of technological innovations transforming the way we think about work, productivity, and interaction, the status quo is a distant memory, and the future is a kaleidoscope of endless possibilities.

How many conversations have you had this week in which you’ve tried to convince someone to adopt a certain opinion or act a certain way? As a leader, you’re constantly working to influence others, whether you’re convincing investors to continue backing the company, consumers to purchase your products or services, or employees to support your vision.

Once upon a time, leadership was a little more standard than it is today. Would-be executives emerged from MBA programs into a corporate world in which, for the most part, they knew what to expect. Business as usual was the norm. Today, however, the status quo is anything but, with the World Economic Forum reporting on a number of factors that have led to a period of dramatic change in the world of work:

Last week, Katie Kuehner-Hebert of Chief Executive published an article outlining what makes JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon the leader of the US financial pack. She gave an overview of Dimon’s career and leadership experience, but celebrated his candor as one of his chief assets, citing his top spot in Quantified’s 2017 CEO Authenticity Index as evidence.

Online learning often gets a bad rap. As we’ve written before, the remote, automated nature of these programs can make them feel too low-touch to provide the same quality learning experience students can receive in the classroom. And often, that’s the case. When each student is simply clicking through a standardized lesson and answering a few multiple choice questions at the end, it’s no wonder the learning feels superficial.

At the University of Virginia Darden School of Business Leadership Communication Council last month, the headline was this: “Social media, digital communication and technology-enabled connection have created an era of radical—sometimes painful—transparency for businesses,” and “…the best means to communicate successfully given the disruptive state of constant transparency is to align communication with action.”

Do you remember a time, as a kid, when you wanted to ask your parents for something—a new toy, a raise in your allowance, a dog? How did you go about it? Did you just come right out and ask, or did you spend time preparing your arguments, collecting your reasoning, and maybe even making a visual presentation? Did you debate with yourself whether to ask your parents together or individually? Who did you ask first?