Starting a business should be one of the most energetic and creative activities for any founder. Designing, talking, convincing — these are the most common tasks that an entrepreneur wannabe is thinking of. Once they start the process, they would need to plan, structure, and decide. The work starts to resemble a project manager’s work.
Though entrepreneurship and project management are distinctive areas with different competencies, Taavi Tamberg, Arvi Kuura, and Reet Soosar have researched that “project managers are expected to act as entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs”. Could entrepreneurs learn something from project managers and transfer some of their competencies in their work?
Here are some examples, taken from Nathalie Udo and Sonja Koppensteiner’s research:
Knowledge of concepts, methodologies, practices, and vocabulary of the profession
When you start cooking something, you gather the tools and ingredients. Similarly, starting a business needs a good understanding of the terminology and the different information that is required by investors. Maybe in the field of entrepreneurship, they are not named like this, but for sure you can find some academic research and books on this.
Knowing the purpose of the business
Even though the founders do not have all the details figured out yet, having a clear purpose is crucial. Questions like where the business is headed and deciding on long and short-term goals are important to answer. There is a possibility that what the founder initially imagined will change in time, but defining the purpose and following it is important.
Knowledge of processes, methodologies, and tools & techniques
In project management, as in entrepreneurship, there are tested ways for structuring data. This is one piece of information that partners and investors are expecting the founders to know. Even if it is about a business model canvas or a pitching deck, they are known in the entire venture capital pipeline.
As processes, there is always the question of how much time should founders stay in planning or how quickly should they go to test the market. How much should stay and define different plans or just sketch something and give it a shot? This is also a recipe that differs for every founder.
Ability to recognize resistance and overcome it
Wishing to bring something new or something improved in the market is understanding that resistance is part of the game. There will be potential resistance on all sides, from the competition, suppliers, and even potential customers. Having strategies for this could be a lot of help for start-up enthusiasts.
Communication — the ability to provide information regarding tasks, plans, schedules, strategies to stakeholders
Using a methodology in project management gives you the clarity and structure of tools and ways to communicate. In entrepreneurship, this is something that has to be settled and decided by the founders. Here are some of the questions that should be considered:
How much should they reveal?
How should they create the stakeholder’s grid?
How often should they engage in communicating with them?
Who should communicate from the start-up side?
Ability to keep the project moving toward successful completion in face of aggressive schedules and discouraging developments
In projects, people are under pressure to meet deadlines and deal with the scarcity of resources. In building a startup, founders could take the structure and the discipline from project management, create templates, and use them in iterations. Yes, iteration is part of the entrepreneurship game also. However, the creative process can be formalized more and get inspiration from project management by creating steps to follow, milestones to overcome, and deadlines to reach.
Some aspects of project management can be transferred to entrepreneurship. A good idea is an idea in practice, even though it is not in the best shape. Plan, schedule, distribute roles, and structure information. Starting a business can look like the most complex project, so it is important to adapt to some of these techniques.
Confidence is a belief in one’s ability to succeed. It is positioned in between a trait or an ability. Much research has been conducted on confidence over the years. The majority of this research accentuates the importance of confidence in life which leads to studying the techniques to build and improve confidence.
Additionally, Locke et al. have found that the stronger people’s self-confidence is, the higher the goals are and their committedness towards them. This shows that self-confidence could also indicate one’s willingness to act. In this sense, self-confidence is considered one of the most influential motivators and regulators of behavior in people’s everyday lives as it helps strengthen one’s resilience in facing adversity to succeed in life.
However, people often do not include developing confidence together with their competence. A peer-reviewed meta-analysis found an overlap of only 9% between how good people think they are and how good they actually are. This phenomenon could reduce one’s self-awareness and performance, which may result in the creation of a narcissistic culture. Therefore, the need to keep confidence in check must be highlighted and should be practiced with the following strategies.
Test your core beliefs
Core beliefs are the most basic assumptions about one’s identity. It determines the degree to which people see themselves as safe, competent, powerful, and autonomous. These beliefs become the foundation or rules of how one governs one’s behavior. Core beliefs and the associated rules are fundamental to one’s personality, hence to self-confidence, as a personality trait.
The role of core beliefs is also emphasized in the definition of self-confidence. While positive beliefs lead to becoming a confident person, too much positivity could become toxic which results in overconfidence. Meanwhile, negative beliefs could result in underconfidence. To change these two extremes, McKay, M., et al. mention a seven-step process in their workbook, Thoughts and Feelings: Taking Control of Your Moods and Your Life, to help test an individual’s core beliefs:
Identify your core beliefs by asking situational “What if” questions and exploring what that situation can mean for you.
Once the core belief is identified, assess its negative impact by thinking about how this can affect your work, mood, and relationships.
From there, identify rules based on your core belief by exploring its veracity through questions like “What do I actually do to cope with my belief? What do I avoid? How do I think I’m supposed to act? What are my perceived limits?”
Generate catastrophic predictions for each rule in case you break them. Think of scenarios that can possibly happen if you do not follow your rule.
After that, start with a rule that has the least consequence and test it based on the following five selection criteria: easy to set up the situation, allows a direct test of the underlying core belief, has a clear prediction of your behavior rather than suggestive feelings, has an immediate outcome, and has a relatively low amount of risk associated to it.
Test your rule in a real-life situation and keep a record of how you handle the situation based on the new behavior and the outcome it brings. Keep doing this until you are able to test out all the rules.
Once you’ve done all these, you should be able to develop a new core belief. With this new belief, go back to step three and repeat the process. Write the new rule as affirmations by using “I” language in the present tense rather than commands or restrictions.
The whole process can go on for as long as it needs to be until you are comfortable with the new core belief and its rules. The important thing to consider here is to continuously keep a log of everything as it may act as support for new rules in the future. This will also help guide you as you fortify and balance your self-confidence.
Control your worries
Confidence is closely related to a sense of worry. Worry represents a natural process of mental problem-solving on the uncertainty that invokes a feeling of anxiousness. It can motivate people to put extra effort into work or personal tasks, making them feel more confident as they face their problems. However, worry is more known for its negative impacts, such as cognitive bias, which may lead to either underconfidence or overconfidence.
Worry is also a cyclical pattern involving thoughts, body, and behavior. For example, the thought of being rejected during a job interview can chain into other negative thoughts, resulting in anxiety. Subsequently, physical symptoms associated with the fight-or-flight response begin to manifest such as heart palpitations and muscle tension. People may adopt a self-serving behavior to avoid this uncomfortable feeling by shifting the blame to others for making it harder to land a job.
Based on this pattern, it is recommended to control worry by approaching it in three levels. First, to deal with physical stress, you can practice relaxation exercises regularly. Relaxation provides breaks in the cycle of the fight-or-flight response. One of the techniques is progressive muscle relaxation which involves alternating tension and relaxation in a group of major muscles.
Second, practice risk assessment to know which risks to avoid and be prepared for instead of worrying to help your thinking process. There are two main aspects to risk assessment: probability estimation and outcomes prediction. You need to estimate the probability of a worst-case scenario from the feared event coming to pass, with 0% for no likelihood to 100% for absolute inevitability. Then, predict the outcome you most fear while trying to figure out the possible coping strategies that would help ease the worry.
Finally, these five steps can help in mitigating worry behaviors:
Record your worry behavior
Pick the easiest one to stop and predict the consequences of stopping it
Stop the chosen behavior or replace it with a new behavior
Assess your anxiety before and after
Repeat steps 2-4 with the next-easiest behavior
Being confident surely helps one overcome adversity. However, having too much or too little confidence without being accompanied with proper competence could have negative impacts. Therefore, verify your core beliefs and control your worries to have the right amount of confidence. As Charles Darwin said, “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”
People receive an influx of information on a daily basis, especially with the digital acceleration that the world is experiencing today. Aside from being able to search for virtually anything on the web, people have been relying on video conferencing and other virtual means to communicate with one another since the global lockdown last year. This also brought about the consequence of “Zoom fatigue” or the psychological fatigue from the constant use of these tools.
As such, people are more pressed for time than ever to keep up with the flow of information. Some would opt to multitask in receiving information – like reading an email during a meeting – as an attempt to stay relevant. While individuals are constantly on the lookout for new information, it also distracts them from the present and turns them into ineffective listeners. Even in communicating, others would anticipate what will be said and prioritize what their response will be instead of listening to the other party.
Despite being an essential skill, listening is currently overlooked by most. In fact, there are studies that point to the idea of listening as a skill that people are losing due to several reasons that can act as listening barriers, like visual distractions, impatience, and even an overall sense of superiority over the speaker. Due to these factors, people are susceptible to misunderstandings, which may lead to poor decision-making and dissolve relationships.
To avoid this from happening, it is imperative that one should practice being an active listener. Doing so will help you understand and retain what is being said while also showing that the other party is recognized and respected. This is not only to build stronger relationships but also to lessen misunderstandings and become more effective in maintaining information.
Techniques in active listening
Being an active listener doesn’t only entail that a person listens. Rather, it is a conscious effort to provide one’s full attention to understand and empathize with the speaker. Here are a few ways that will help you become a better listener:
Let them speak. More often than not, people preoccupy themselves with their judgments while another person is talking by evaluating what is being said and prioritizing their own response. Instead of doing this, hold your judgment, keep an open mind, and let the other person finish what they want to say without interrupting to see their point of view. This will also help you widen your perception and open up the avenue for you to learn something new.
Be fully present. Contrary to what people may think, multitasking does not guarantee an increase in productivity. For example, having conversations with other people while doing something else is not only counterproductive but shows a lack of respect for the other person. Avoid distractions like reading your emails or doing other tasks when you are having a conversation with a person to give the speaker your full attention.
Actions speak louder. A person’s body language can express a lot more than what can be said. Crossing your arms, avoiding eye contact, or fidgeting may signal to the speaker that you are disagreeing or not listening to them. Meanwhile, providing eye contact, leaning in, or nodding your head occasionally will let them know that you are paying attention.
Clarify and summarize. Once the speaker is done, it is encouraged to repeat or paraphrase their thoughts, so they know that you understood what they meant. This also gives you an avenue to ask questions or clarify what has been said. Doing so opens the conversation more and reduces miscommunication between you and the speaker.
While the world is constantly racing to get to the next big thing, it is important to take the time and listen. As such, active listening is an indispensable skill that can help build relationships in and out of the workplace. By practicing these steps, you can become more patient and empathetic, as well as improve your leadership skills.
At the start of the 21st century, the field of coparenting was found to be centrally crucial across diverse families and structures. While the term has been associated with divorce or separated families, it doesn’t necessarily refer to the current relationship of the parents. Instead, coparenting refers to how two or more adults work together to care for and raise children with respect and support for each other’s role and function as parents.
Children from infant to adolescent have been found to benefit from positive coparenting. Children that grow up with parents that support and collaborate together tend to exhibit prosocial behavior, work actively and independently, and have better attentional capacities. This may be associated with a child’s imitation of the positive relationship dynamics they observed in coparents; in turn, they tend to display these same dynamics to others later on in life.
The Impact of Coparenting
Children of all ages benefit when the parental figure in their lives provides a healthy environment through positive coparenting. A lot of studies found that well-coordinated coparenting has been related to a wide variety of child development. Here are some ways that show positive coparenting as a significant role in supporting a child’s healthy development.
Sleep Duration. Healthy maintenance of coparenting habits can have a positive effect on the efficient implementation of a child’s bedtime routine and improve their sleep. However, if parents are unable to maintain positive coparenting and the routine, it may induce emotional distress in their child. This may also interfere with a child’s sense of security which can affect their sleep.
Emotional development. The limbic system, most commonly known for emotion regulation, starts to develop during the first year of a person’s life. Positive coparenting can help babies regulate emotions, reduce distress, and learn rhythms. This will also support an infant’s emotional development, directing them to have stronger emotional regulation later in life.
Reduce behavioral problems. Unresolved difficulties in coparenting may result in an unstable environment for a child to grow up in. This may cause the development of problematic behaviors such as social withdrawal, depressive/anxious symptoms, aggressive or antisocial behavior, and hyperactive symptoms. To lessen these problems, coparenting can predict child emotional adjustment and behavior.
Coparenting components
Positive coparenting can be developed before a child is born and is a process that can grow in the family through nurturing and practicing. Coparents who build stable habits while their children are young will be more proficient at keeping solidarity as children grow older. For this, Mark E. Feinberg formulated four coparenting components that can be applied when developing positive coparenting habits.
Childrearing agreement.Parents need to decide how to handle and manage their child’s life. This includes the educational priorities, discipline method, moral values, and emotional needs of a child. Parents will be practice how to tackle disagreements and agree on their ways so they may pass down knowledge and values to their children.
Division of labor.Parents need to divide responsibilities and tasks related to the daily routine of childcare and household early on. Apart from that, they have to manage their expectations and beliefs when dividing their duties. This will affect the level of satisfaction and flexibility between coparents.
Support/undermining.Parents have to show their support towards each other, such as affirming the other’s competency as a parent, acknowledging and respecting the other’s contributions, and upholding the other’s parenting decisions and authority. The negative counterpart of this is expressed through undermining the other parent through criticism, disparagement, and blame. To prevent this, parents will need to learn how to voice recognition, appreciation, and encouragement towards each other.
Joint family management.Managing family interactions is an essential responsibility in coparenting that can be seen in at least three ways. First, there has to be an ample amount of communication that parents engage in when managing coparenting duties. Second, the amount of conflict that emerges when parents discuss or engage in coparenting activities should be kept to a minimum. Third, the interactions and involvement between parents and children should be balanced. Overall, parents will need to learn how to manage communication, conflict, and participation in the family.
Conclusion
Positive coparenting has a vast impact on children’s lives that can only occur when the adults or parental figures in a child’s life provide adequate protection, safety, and respect. As such, its function will be determined by how much the parents manifest positive coparenting in daily life. Once coparents can maintain a healthy way of working together, there is a bigger chance for children to experience a higher level of security within the family. This will manifest when coparents support one another and are attuned to the needs and sensibilities of their children.
What does business as usual mean now? How have last year’s events changed the future of work? How has employee engagement changed? New business models, exponential technology, agile working methods, and regulation are constantly changing how organizations work. Let’s take a closer look at lessons learned through the experiences of employee engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The world was shaken, and despite the negative effects of the recent global health crisis, we can all agree on one thing: We learned a lot in terms of organizational change and growth. After businesses were forced to close their offices and manage all their employees remotely, the learning curve for managers was initially steep. Yet this new way of functioning has brought valuable lessons about how to boost employee engagement that should not be forgotten in the new normal.
Employee engagement refers to the emotional commitment an employee has to their organization and its employees, vision, and goals. It is not only about employee satisfaction, high salaries, or benefits packages. Employees who are engaged in their work and committed to their organizations give companies crucial competitive advantages, such as higher productivity and lower employee turnover.
So, let’s see some lessons and how some companies managed their organizations and increased engagement in a virtual environment.
1. Choose a supportive management approach.
Some companies have been allowing their employees to work from home even before the pandemic hit. They already have rules and ways to manage teams remotely. Other organizations were completely surprised when the lockdowns happened, having no procedures or ways to manage and assess employees in a remote work setup. Some common online methods used were daily or weekly team meetings and frequent 1-1 check-ins.
For many, having frequent check-ins led to a micro-goal setting and allowed employees to receive constant feedback. This coaching approach has led to performance improvement. It also allows management to easily assess and measure progress while also boosting team productivity, which, in turn, keeps employees engaged and gives them a sense of purpose and achievement in reaching goals.
INMAGINE’s remote working environment was quick to adopt best practices in the areas of employee engagement and retention. This creative company founded in 2001 started an anonymous online feedback channel for employees to share anything, assuring them that lines of communication are open. They have also formed peer support groups according to six personality types. It serves as a platform for employees to exchange stories and thoughts not just about their jobs but also their personal lives.
2. Assure a flexible and positive work environment.
For most employees, a change in the environment has become the biggest challenge. It is felt in the transition from being physically present in the office, where one can focus on work, to working at home, where varying contrasts abound, such as being alone or having young children or elderly to care for., All of these could be disruptive to any workflow.
That said, the flexible working environment that most employees experienced during COVID-19 has changed our understanding of work-life balance. Working from home has allowed employees to do their work and attend to personal needs (e.g. taking care of children, elderly, and pets and running errands) simultaneously. This has served as a reminder to managers that several non-work-related factors can affect an employee’s mindset and engagement.
Employees have proven the ability to maintain the balance between work and personal needs, albeit through a forced testing period. In the post-COVID period, management must not forget the importance of constantly creating a positive work environment for their employees. This must include ensuring that work fits into their employees’ lives and not the other way around. When employees feel that their personal needs are valued by management, their emotional connection to the organization is strengthened, and they are more likely to stay.
3. Encourage trust in leadership.
During these challenging times, employees had to trust their leaders to take the right direction and to make tough decisions about the future. A key part of trust in leadership is transparency, which means employees are aware of what is happening within their organization. This is particularly important during a work-from-home scenario, where employees rely on leaders to make crucial decisions for the future of their jobs and the organization. This is why clear, open communication between management and employees on how the organization is tackling COVID-19 is crucial.
At INMAGINE, online meetups with founders and online mentoring sessions with the CEO allowed employees of all levels to engage directly with senior management leaders. In these sessions, employees can freely ask questions and solicit feedback. Having a good collaboration platform is another example of how INMAGINE eases the challenges of working from home. INMAGINE uses Bitrix to keep employees updated on work matters, enable employees to chat live online, and create workgroups for discussions and brainstorming. The tech team advocates extra tools to help manage projects and people, Jira. This ensures that all deadlines are crystal clear to everyone, and the pipeline of each project journey is clearly outlined.
4. Build a virtual office watercooler.
For decades, practitioners have gathered around office watercoolers to catch up with colleagues. Casual conversations run the gambit from professional to personal topics. If you and your team are missing these chats, why not create a virtual watercooler so they can continue even if you are not physically in an office? Establish an “Around the Watercooler” team on the Microsoft Teams platform where team members can start or engage in random conversations throughout the day when they need a break. Add an optional standing “Watercooler Conversation” on Zoom during the week to encourage this type of interaction. If your firm uses Slack, check out the Watercooler app, where bots organize random conversations among team members. Ask your employees what platform is best for them.
5. Make a virtual remix of the firm’s favorite tax season activities.
Bring back the friendly atmosphere from the fun activities you used to have by creating new virtual versions. Incorporate a “crazy hat day” or “wear your favorite sports team attire” in virtual check-ins. Ask individuals to share interesting backstories about what they are wearing, then vote for the best attire. Host monthly lunch celebrations online to recognize your team’s accomplishments. To add to the excitement, have a meal from a restaurant client delivered to the team. How about a bracket selection party for Christmas, New Year Celebration, or other types of celebrations.
6. Reward good efforts.
People want to know that they are appreciated, especially when they work additional hours to help the company achieve its goals. Make it a priority to acknowledge your team members for their hard work. Share success stories during meetings. Pick up the phone, initiate a quick Zoom call, send an email, or write a personal note to say “thank you.” Tell them how much their dedication means to you and the management. Send them a gift card from their favorite restaurant or store, movie tickets, or other types of incentives. Do all you can to make your staff feel appreciated and valued. A little recognition can make the difference between an engaged employee and one that has a foot out the door.
To inspire trust in leadership in the post-COVID-19 period, we recommend having frequent check-ins and transparent conversations between top management, head of departments, and employees to feel included in what is happening within the organization. Moreover, it is also imperative for employees to learn about individual growth opportunities.
Leaders who invest in the learning and development of their employees will be encouraging engagement. Learning can be provided not only through professional education and training but also through constructive feedback, a crucial element in achieving a learning organization status. These practices will boost employee engagement and help organizations to retain their employees for the longer term.
Managing individual and team performance requires up-to-date knowledge and skills. Through The KPI Institute’s Employee Performance Management Professional and Practitioner training courses, leaders will learn how to develop a culture of performance and implement performance systems aligned with the strategic goals of the company. Learn more about the course by sending an email to [email protected] or calling T: +61 3 9028 2223 M: +61 4 2456 8088
