Ethical behavior plays a vital role in the business world, as it establishes the values and norms by which businesses conduct their operations. A comprehensive set of principles and practices known as “ethical conduct” guarantees that organizations behave responsibly, equitably, and reasonably.
This conduct is crucial for fostering enduring corporate partnerships, supporting sustainable business practices, and averting reputational and legal issues. In this situation, it is impossible to exaggerate how crucial ethical conduct in the workplace is to building a thriving corporate culture, satisfying customers, and creating a long-lasting organization.
This article will teach us different examples of ethical behavior in business!
What is Ethical Behavior?
Actions and choices deemed morally reasonable and appropriate are referred to as ethical behavior, and ethical behavior in business is extremely important to carry out the business and for smooth communication. Ethical behavior includes a person’s core ideas, values, and ways of thinking, as well as the norms and expectations of society for proper behavior.
Honesty, fairness, accountability, respect for others, and care for the environment are just a few values that serve as the foundation for ethical behavior. It is frequently related to occupations like medicine, law, and finance, where stringent ethical rules of conduct are in place to uphold the profession’s integrity and safeguard the interests of the people it serves. It may be used in both personal and professional situations.
Examples of Ethical Behavior in Business
1. Honesty and Transparency
Honesty and transparency are guiding ideals for ethical behavior in business. Building trust with clients, staff, and other stakeholders requires being honest and upfront in all business interactions and conversations. Being truthful in advertising, financial reporting, and consumer relations is a part of this, as is refraining from dishonest or misleading tactics. Transparent decision-making and communication are also more likely to help businesses avoid legal and reputational issues while preserving the loyalty of their clients and staff.
2. Fair Treatment of Employees
One crucial component of ethical corporate conduct is treating all employees fairly, regardless of their color, gender, religion, or other personal traits. This entails creating a safe and welcoming work environment, paying fair salaries, and giving competitive benefits.
Additionally, it entails preventing harassment or discrimination in the recruiting, promotion, and performance review processes. Businesses can create a healthy workplace culture, improve employee retention and happiness, and reduce legal and reputational concerns by treating people fairly and respectfully.
3. Clear Responses to Customers
A crucial component of ethical behavior in business is providing customers with safe and dependable goods and services and accepting accountability for any hurt or damage the company may have caused. Businesses must ensure that the goods and services they provide are safe, up to par, and don’t endanger the environment or their clients.
Businesses must also be ready to address any adverse effects that their goods or services could have and take action to settle any consumer complaints or disputes fairly and quickly. Companies can increase consumer trust, reduce legal and reputational concerns, and improve society as a whole by accepting responsibility for the effects of their goods and services.
4. Respect for Privacy
An essential component of ethical behavior in business is safeguarding stakeholders’ personal information and data, including clients, employees, and other customers. Businesses must protect the information they gather and ensure that it is only used for those reasons. This includes maintaining the privacy of clients and staff members, preventing unwanted access to personal data, and taking precautions to guard against cyberattacks and data breaches. Businesses can preserve the confidence of clients and workers while avoiding reputational and legal concerns by respecting privacy.
5. Environmental Sustainability
Minimizing the damaging effects of company activities on the environment is a crucial component of ethical corporate conduct. By cutting back on waste and emissions, businesses can function sustainably and think about how their decisions today may affect society tomorrow. This entails lowering their carbon footprint, reducing waste, using eco-friendly products and materials, and conserving energy and water. Adopting appropriate environmental practices can help companies support the earth’s sustainability, attract clients and workers who care about environmental concerns, and avoid legal and reputational trouble.
6. Avoiding Conflicts of Interest
Avoiding actions or choices that advance the personal interests of company executives or staff at the expense of the company or its stakeholders is a key component of ethical behavior in business. Conflicts of interest can occur in various circumstances, such as when a corporate executive has a personal financial stake in the firm they are working with or when an employee abuses their position for personal gain. By avoiding conflicts of interest and addressing reputational and legal concerns, businesses can ensure that decisions are made in the best interests of the firm and its stakeholders.
7. Respect for Laws and Regulations
Abiding by all relevant laws, rules, and ethical guidelines is an essential part of conducting business.
What Happens When You Lack Ethical Behavior in Business?
A lack of ethical behavior in business can have significant repercussions, including reduced social responsibility, diminished creativity, lower staff morale, and reputational damage. Companies that engage in unethical behavior may face penalties or litigation, negative media coverage, and a decline in customer brand loyalty, all of which can cause significant financial losses and reputational harm. Ethical conduct is crucial for fostering trust, employee engagement, sustainable company practices, and long-term success in the corporate environment.
Conclusion
Ethical behavior in business is a collection of values and guidelines that serve as a responsible and equitable framework for corporate activities and choices. It involves being truthful and transparent in all interactions and business dealings, treating workers fairly, caring for consumers and the environment, respecting privacy, preventing conflicts of interest, adhering to rules and regulations, and engaging in charitable activities. By adhering to these values, companies can increase employee and consumer trust, improve society, and reduce legal and reputational concerns. Building an ethical workplace culture and a profitable firm that operates sustainably and responsibly are both crucial for long-term success.
Personal agendas are subjective rankings of their importance to an individual and their perceived extent to others. These are personal to-do lists or tasks one has in his mind aside from the general or public duty. It is not common for everybody to have secret agendas when they meet new persons or at their place of work.
Some people see it as a means of not trusting others to run personal agendas alongside the public or general duties, especially in group work. This article will find out if it is good to keep an individual plan at work or not. We will be looking at the advantages and the disadvantages of having personal agenda.
Before we move on, we must know that there will be some people with personal agendas where there is a general task or plan where people are involved. It now differs from each person if it will help the task at hand or not. There are positives in having a personal plan, and there are negatives as well.
Even in friendships and relationships, some people keep and sustain the relationship or friendship they are in to because of their schedule or what they stand to gain in the relationship. You must understand that personal agendas are not what is written in big alphabets for everybody to see. They are left hidden for people to find out. Sometimes, individual plans are hidden agendas because they are told but left in the head of the personality involved.
The personal schedule can be found in anything that involves two parties (this could include human to human, human to an organization, and so on). Having a personal plan doesn’t mean that the person is against the general plan. It can also mean that depending on the aim of the persons involved. Personal agendas could include using the available task to build or develop one’s self which is positive. Also, it could be damaging if one has an ulterior motive as a personal agenda.
Some people do not like to work with people who have individual plans is understandable to an extent. For instance, you are working with somebody. The person prioritizes his or her schedule over the general or group task at hand, leaving the other person to do most of the work involved. Mismanagement of personal programs sometimes makes it very hard to want to entertain in workplaces or relationships.
Here I’m going to explain Advantages Of Having Personal Agenda At Work:
Proper Organization
The personal plan helps to give proper organization for work to be done. Someone with personal agenda plans well and arranges his things properly. Adequate management of personal agenda entails appropriate organizational skills, and such a person doesn’t allow his public and company’s plan to be hampered by his schedule. Your work schedule includes a timetable of work to be done, due dates of some assignments, work programs, social and personal activities. It is straightforward to split office work from other works (family and other social activities).
Goal Centered
Having personal agenda at work keeps us focused on our goals. When you have a proper and documented personal plan, it keeps you on the path to achieving the goal. You will be able to differentiate the company’s work from your personal goals. With this, you can be sure to develop yourself while still accomplishing the team’s goal. Someone might be so addicted to his work, and at the end of his working years, he hasn’t learned so much.
Time Management
We have said that personal agenda at work gives you a proper organization of your activities, leading to time management. Once you know the tasks ahead and figure out how to go about them, you can set deadlines for each task and work towards it. Under this, you can set aside the major and minor tasks (i.e., setting priorities) and allocate enough time for individual jobs; this will help cut off unnecessary tasks and irrelevant activities.
Accomplishment is easy to track
Personal agenda at work gives us the ability to be able to track success. It is easy to map out areas we have done well and areas that need improvement. When we can do this, it helps us to do a proper assessment of our work. And also, procrastination at work is reduced. It builds our confidence more and when we see our past success.
In a work area, it is the working together of a group of people working together to achieve a common goal. Human operations are different from each other, which affects how people tolerate personal agendas at work among employees. As a leader of a company or an organization, you are expected to know that aside from the general plan you and the company have, employees will have their agendas.
Even as a leader, leaders have personal agendas; Hence, management of the unique project is critical. We will examine why having a personal schedule at work might deteriorate communication and work effectiveness among employees.
Hindered Free-Flow of Ideas
Work effectiveness can only come by sharing ideas and rubbing minds together at work to get better results. When employees hold back their thoughts and stands due to their agendas, this will hinder the free flow of ideas. What is meant to be a discussion of the heart becomes a session of indirect attacks. Some people hold back necessary and important beliefs because of their plan. They always want to act independently to achieve the best results for personal gains and recognition. This affects the team’s effectiveness and productivity because when an idea is brainstormed, it can be effectively perfected when analyzed by multiple brains.
Loss of Trust and Respect
If personal agenda is not appropriately handled at work, it will lead to a loss of trust and respect among workers. This is another reason why private plans might be bad for business. As a leader, if you want to settle a misunderstanding about one of your workers having personal agendas and some of the workers are not cool with it, you need to apply wisdom and not rush into making decisions that cost the office’s harmony. Running into judgments will look like you are siding with some part which will lead to broken trust, which could need a long time to restore and, in some cases, might not be restored.
Reduction in efficiency and productivity
Personal schedule at work is good, but it becomes a drawback tool to the team’s work when prioritized over the general task. Here comes the question, “Is it good to prioritize personal agenda over the general task and agenda at work?”. The answer is no because the company hired you to come and work for them; in this case, the company’s plan and goal are the primary while the personal agenda is the secondary thing at work.
Not all workers have an individual plan at work; some do the job due to passion, some because they have no options, and some because they have learned and studied in that line. The goal of each category differs from one another, and that should be respected.
Another critical question that must be asked is whether having a personal agenda at work is a priority? Many people feel like they are better, and they have ambitions just because they have an individual plan at work. This causes intimidation for those who don’t have any personal agenda. This would eventually lead to a hostile working environment with personal agendas clashing, reducing work efficiency and productivity.
How To Set Proper Personal Agenda At Work
Create a goal
The first thing to do here is to know your objectives because, without them, you cannot set reasonable goals. For an effective personal plan at work, you must know what you want to achieve, visualize them, like them and be specific. Develop a plan: After you might have created your goals, the next thing is to develop a plan for them. Note that your plan at work is not your primary task there, so you must design a plan that accommodates both the general mission and your schedule very well so that nothing will hinder the other.
Be self-disciplined
If you keep agendas and are not self-disciplined, it won’t change or succeed. It is one thing to set proper personal plans at work, and another thing is to be disciplined about them. Part of these disciplines includes sticking to the goals and strategy you have drawn, showing commitment and consistency. Remember, it is a personal plan which nobody will do for you.
Track your progress
Tracking your progress is as important as having personal agenda. You must frequently evaluate your progress. Reviewing and tracking your progress allows you to be more precise and more specific about your plan.
What do you mean by bringing your best self to work? Unfortunately, with several competing priorities in the workplace, you sometimes lose the actions that may help you be the best you can be for yourself, your clients, and your colleagues. Let’s find out what it means and how you can bring your best self to work.
What Does It Mean to Bring Your Best Self to Work?
Newton’s law of motion teaches us that an object in motion stays in motion unless force is applied. This law applies to each of us as well. If you want to find your passion, you must put passion into your actions. If you’re going to have more energy, you have to move more. As energy creates energy, passion creates passion. Everybody wants positive, energetic people around them, especially at work where you spend eight hours a day and even more. At times you see your colleagues more than your parents or spouse.
When you look around you, your team, colleagues, and bosses, certain people make you feel that life is far from boring when they enter the room. It doesn’t necessarily mean they are the life of the party. It’s more like they are full of life. They reap what they have sown. Those around them respond to their positive attitude and are paying it forward in their way. Such people arrive at the workplace in the morning, ready to conquer obstacles and succeed. They are willing to cover that extra mile to break through the glass and bring innovation with what they have.
These people are bringing their best selves to work!
All people at work feed on each other’s energy, and it is great to see everyone embracing it in their way. However, this is not something you can switch on as you walk in the door. It takes more than just having a smiling face. What you do outside your workplace determines the true attitude you will bring to it. Perhaps most of you focus on excelling at your work, but you sometimes forget that whatever you do beyond work and on the weekends is a prime marker of your success.
Bringing your best self to work includes investing in yourself, being mindful of what you make up for your time, and having fun in whatever you do.
Friend. Star. Director. Creator. Searcher. Which one are you?
What if you get a chance to listen to your eulogy when you are still there? What do people appreciate about you the most? So, take time to think about what you are like when you are at your best and having the best effect on everybody else. While doing this, part of your brain lights up, producing zest and enthusiasm.
Anyone who can work in an office can tell you which work personas you fall into based on your personality, job description, and skill set. Though having a certain workplace niche might be comfortable, staying stuck in your comfort zone can hinder your professional growth. Also, they can negatively impact your wallet as well. On the other hand, when you align some personality traits with the job you desire could mean extra earning power.
When it comes to success in the workplace, your personality matters a lot. It is not enough to manifest new traits. You must be bold to show them.
To understand and change your persona at the workplace, you must first know what it is. Think about how you behave at work usually and then look at these typical personas. You are likely to identify with more than one, but find out which one you fit best.
The Friend enjoys connecting and networking with others. Building solid relationships is its strength, and the main challenge is to balance work and play.
The Star aims to be recognized for its success in its career. They meet deadlines and deliver high-quality work. The main thing they struggle at perfectionist tendencies.
The Director thrives and flourishes in leadership positions. They have the quality to manage people as well as various tasks. But they also struggle when it comes to delegating tasks.
The Creator is driven by innovation and creativity. They can find solutions to problems at any time. But the everyday task can easily bore them.
The Searcher gets motivated by the desire to make a difference. Searchers have the drive to progress forward and help others.
How to Bring Your Best Self to Work?
Here we are talking bout How to Bringing Your Best Self to Work?
Be Authentic
The basis of bringing your best self to work is authenticity. It is about showing up honestly with vulnerability and without self-righteousness. Undoubtedly it takes courage to be authentic, and it is essential for growth, trust, and connection. You can do certain simple things to be more authentic at work, like admitting wherever you are wrong, not knowing something, or asking for help in a polite, genuine way. All of these need courage and require you to embrace and let go of your need to be correct.
Studies have shown that more authentic leaders engage in constructive, active conflict behaviours, admitting their part in creating conflict or widening the lens to consider alternate viewpoints. Being authentic is imperative to resolve conflict at work positively and productively. In addition, it has been tied to less burnout as it helps you deal with jobs involving emotional labour more easily.
EQ or emotional intelligence is about having self-awareness and being able to handle your emotions. Besides, it is also about being socially aware of yourself and managing relationships. Emotional intelligence is more important for success than your IQ, experience, and professional skills. Employers value emotional intelligence more than other job skills. Moreover, it is important to understand that emotional intelligence is not the antonym of intelligence. It is not the victory of the heart over the head. Simply it is the unique intersection of both.
A greater emotional intelligence quotient can help prevent burnout from a job and improve performance on some tasks. The most excellent way to build emotional intelligence is to cultivate regular heedfulness. Take some time to pause, breathe and centre yourself regularly, allowing you to be more aware and manage your emotions more effectively. Also, mindfulness leads to more understanding and compassion for others, which helps you manage your relationships successfully.
Engage in Self-Reflection
The most important values-based leadership tool is self-reflection. It is the intentional practice of taking time almost daily to step back and see inward to have clarity on your priorities and values. You can identify whatever matters to you the most through self-reflection. Also, recognize what gives you more confidence in your decision-making. Otherwise, you will move from one activity to another and from crisis to crisis without making any sense of purpose or direction. Like everyone, when you get off track at times, self-reflection will bring you back to the centre and help you steer the challenges you are facing.
Moreover, self-reflection can counteract stress, pressure, anxiety, fear, and worry by first throwing light on what you are feeling and staying grounded in reality.
Look for Learning Opportunities
Learning should always be a top priority in your day-to-day activities. Every day, set aside 10 minutes to read, listen to, or watch anything that will help you work better. You may try to learn a new skill once a month or check if your coworkers can teach you something. For example, if you see a coworker with a strong work ethic who completes tasks quickly, speak with them and learn from their practices.
Embrace a Mindset of Growth
It means approaching your life and work with the intent to understand that you can improve anything if you are willing to practice, work hard and dedicate yourself. It is about looking at everything you experience, including your challenges, as opportunities for learning and growth. There is a vast difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset, where the belief is that a person is born with innate gifts, whether they have them or not, and this cannot be changed.
People with a growth mindset are more likely to have a sense of commitment to their organization and support risk-taking than their fixed-mindset peers. When you try new things, especially the ones that push you out of your comfort zone and scare you, it’s an incredible way to practice having a growth mindset.
Turn Weaknesses into Strengths
Most people can identify a career-limiting habit readily. Besides, managers of the organizations have reported that only ten per cent of employees showed a change a year after a performance review. Most of you assess your weaknesses but do not always take steps to correct your career-limiting behaviours. It would help if you changed the behaviour by following the points given below:
Recognize and pay attention to anxious moments. When you’re dreading giving a big presentation at work and continually checking your email, you’re not only being distracted but also acting out a habitual anxiety and stress reaction.
Stay with it if you find yourself in this situation. Substitute a purposeful, well-thought-out alternate action for the ineffective behaviour. To allow yourself time to breathe, drink a glass of water.
Then consider what you might be able to do instead. “What do I actually want now?” you might wonder. And think about how you’re going to get there.
Avoid Distraction
When working in front of a computer, the average person is distracted or disturbed every 40 seconds. We can’t work for more than a minute without being interrupted! Find simple techniques to overcome everyday self-sabotaging behaviours to improve your professional performance.
If you’re having trouble organizing data, take a break from your work and go for a stroll. Alternately, move to a new location. Similarly, face down your phone to avoid being distracted by continual notifications. Finally, make time for solitude throughout your workday to avoid feeling worried or overwhelmed by little setbacks.
Make the Most of the Appreciation Power
Showing gratitude is necessary for making amazing connections, strengthening teams, and keeping negative events in perspective. It’s not the same as expressing thanks, though. Sometimes you mix the two up, particularly in professional settings. However, recognition is based on performance or outcomes, what people produce or do, while appreciation is based on who they are or people’s inherent worth.
You want to do everything you can to appropriately recognize positive outcomes such as sales, implemented ideas, and completed projects. But there is a breathing human being behind every achievement or failure. Regardless of the outcome, appreciation is about emphasizing your gratitude for people’s efforts and the human characteristics and qualities they possess that you value, such as kindness, humility, or humour. It’s something you can say whenever you want.
Gratitude is a close relative of appreciation. It can transform workplaces. In addition, it also brings employees greater happiness, job satisfaction, health benefits, and better relationships with coworkers.
To Conclude
Bringing your best self to work means approaching your job with a sense of playfulness and being fully aware of your own and others’ flawed humanness. It entails a willingness to stand out. There is no single model for what authenticity in the workplace should look like. On the other hand, authenticity allows you to be vulnerable, inquiring, and deliberate in your own way. You become your bravest and boldest selves at work when you take advantage of this opportunity. You develop and adapt in tandem with your organizations.
When the actions mentioned above – speaking up, taking chances, and accepting responsibility are modelled and encouraged, especially by individuals in leadership positions, the team and the environment become as psychologically safe as possible. On the surface, these notions appear to be very simple. However, similar to several important aspects of growth, business, and life, it is not their understanding that creates a difference. It is their application.
Most of your clients do not have any particular love for you; you are only valuable to the extent to which you can help them solve their problems. The new dynamics across the world entrepreneurs are built on fantastic thought leadership platforms. All your client’s problems and challenges can be skillfully solved while underpinning your sales on their visit and interaction with them. These platforms are meant to stand you out from other experts in your field of work.
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP PLATFORMS is about delivering new ideas and content to your target publics based on deep insights into the business issues and challenges they face. In the process, the value you provide must transcend just distributing products. Your opinions on events and issues should differentiate you from your competitors, establish you as the ‘go-to’ expert in that field, and position you as a trusted advisor – all with the intent of getting sales. Creating a website or social media page for such a purpose is termed a thought leadership platform.
CHOOSING THE BEST THOUGHT LEADERSHIP PLATFORM
Arriving at the proper thought leadership platform naturally is a challenging task. A good starting point is to apply some rigor to your search process. Try the following tips for THOUGHT LEADERSHIP PLATFORMS.
Scan the media and social media sites for issues affecting your brand or sector.
Search for quality content bordering around the products and services that you offer. You need to be at the forefront of all the current events in your field and be proactive in addressing them appropriately on your thought leadership platform. This will make you top of the go-to experts in your field. This will invariably increase your market acceptability.
Make sure you Track your competitors’ progress and methods to ensure the kind of thought leadership platform you want to run are not already in use by a competitor. If you fail to carry out this crucial step, you may play second fiddle to your competitors. The critical turning point in running a successful thought leadership platform is that they inspire their visitors to think outside the box. The platform encourages all visitors to apply conventional means to inspire new interest in their products and services.
Determine The True Worth of your Organization
Analyze and understand your company’s actual worth, i.e., its total values, to define the best thought leadership platform that best suits your business. It’s possible you have been wining in some areas of your company, and it will only be natural that you stick to your tactics. Where you need to apply the skills and techniques of your thought leadership platform are the failing areas. You should know the issues and seek to find a lasting solution to them.
Study Your clients’ Challenges and What Excites them
Most critically, Research your clients’/customers’ needs regarding their issues, challenges they face over the next two to three years to ensure that your thought leadership platform aligns with these. When your clients are aware that they can get solutions to all their challenges, they will naturally want to be associated with you and follow all your instructions to the letter, including your product recommendations.
Note the trend of events in your field and be ahead all the time
Trend spot to identify the forces that could shape your audience’s lives now and in the future, which will offer a greater focus for all the materials you post on your leadership platform. The crucial factors that will decide your clients’ satisfaction must be identified and taken as your key strategic communication point with them. The most effective thought leadership platforms are never lacking the right key focus points. They strive to help their clients to get a solution to virtually all their challenges in their field of choice.
Identify a champion to lead your campaign – you need a spokesperson.
You should hire very competent and hardworking thought leaders who will constantly hold your clients spellbound with quality contents and materials. This will add value to your existing clients as well as your potential clients. Your thought leadership platform should work like a magnet and get people hooked. This might require you to spend some cash to get this done if you can’t handle it yourself. Nothing excellent comes cheap, especially the driver of your sales.
Ensure you examine your properties, i.e., do you have any existing intellectual property that could be turned into your campaign materials with a little more work. This will help you to cut costs a bit. If not, your team should manage tour thought leadership platforms professionally.
All these above mentioned tips will help you in THOUGHT LEADERSHIP PLATFORMS.
Companies with strong cultures tend to do well. Leadership is treated the same way- for it to truly succeed, it should become part of an organization’s culture. For many years some of the leading management consultancies have had an intense focus on thought leadership.
They’re delicious in their thought leadership platforms, and it has been the critical point of their client engagement strategy. In many cases, they push their sales from there, and it has become part of their culture, including every member of the organization. These companies have illustrated that companies must maintain a very viable thought leadership platform for thought leadership to thrive.
In today’s cluttered information environment, it’s not enough to produce content and provide average products and services. To stand out and differentiate yourself requires that you be a thought leader in your field and maintain an excellent leadership platform.
This means vision, innovation, credibility, a depth of knowledge, at times going against popular opinion, is the outlet that people – particularly those within your industry – look to for answers and direction. This implies knowing and forecasting patterns and knowing how to capitalize on them. It means recognizing patterns and connecting dots that others don’t see. Differentiation is usually viewed horizontally as simply doing things differently from your competitors.
But thought leadership is vertical, meaning you rise above peers and competitors. Normal differentiation keeps you trapped in the commodity world, meaning you’ll constantly compete on price. Thought leadership lets you overcome the pit of commodities; Buyers like more than what you are selling; they want your experience and expertise to be in-depth. And because they believe in your advice, you’re going to sell more of your products.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THOUGHT LEADERSHIP PLATFORMS
Thought leader platforms must offer some benefit to their readers or visitors. They are either willing to support their audience with decision-making or problem identification or facilitate their ability to invent the next big thing. All of us have a specific amount of expertise and industry experience. Still, it is the industry’s powerbrokers that eventually close more deals and get investors and consumers more effectively than everyone else to reach for their wallets.
As a result, thought leadership platforms can build or break a brand, and they help drive customer engagement and help create the next generation of consumers. Thought leadership platforms also help drive innovation and progress by publishing carefully crafted and managed columns and other social media posts. Such interaction points are where thought leaders talk about new products, features, services, technological advancements, or business ways.
This allows them to harness a whole new spectrum of customer feedback, comments, and experiences. This way, they can formulate new or improve production processes or impact the general way business is conducted in other meaningful ways. It also leads to improvements and advancements in the industry as a whole.
DO NOT ABANDON YOUR COMMODITY.
We encounter this problem constantly – people don’t want to enter the commodity trap, so their business model shifts to information. This is a mistake; your commodity is your primary economic engine. On your thought leadership platform, invest more in speaking and consulting gigs, but use them to drive business to your commodity.
Take your fees as icing on the cake, but never confuse them with your primary economic engine. For example, mortgage broker Kenton Brown offers training every Saturday on his leadership platform, but he understands that mortgages are his economic engine. Very few people can have thought of leadership as their primary economic engine and flaunt a platform for such. It’s a gamble, and it takes massive amounts of time and effort. It’s largely dependent on personality and charisma.
As an acknowledged thought leader, you can charge more, and you’re all but guaranteed to have a steady stream of clients. Escaping the commodity trap doesn’t mean stopping selling commodities; it means building an effective thought leadership platform to sell your commodity.
Every organization and the business person must take a course or seminars/workshops on how you launch and run a successful thought leadership platform in the modern age. Your clients will constantly look up to you for professional assistance. The more you try to help them overcome their challenges, the more they become attached to you.
It will be natural they recommend you to their family and friends when they face a similar situation in the future. With the digital marketing boom and numerous online resources, consumers can now obtain information on anything almost instantaneously. Your thought leadership platform must be such that it will be catered to all your clients’ fundamental needs.
What is the Difference Between Influence and Persuasion? In the social media world, we often hear of influencers who subtly promote products or brands to their followers. This phenom has taken the world by storm in the last ten years. As a member of the Black Sheep Community, we are often seen as either influencers or persuaders. This means we, through our communication, sway the non-member public to our point of view.
But what is an Influencer, and how does it differ from a Persuader? How closely are these two concepts related? Regardless of the leadership position you are in, understanding the distinction will mean the difference between failure and success.
Firstly, the two concepts or terms are most certainly related to each other. Being able to influence people is often misconstrued as persuasion and vice versa. Secondly, they both have pros and cons.
The Difference between Influence and Persuasion can be understood by knowing its terminology.
The terminology of the Difference between Influence and Persuasion is given below.
Here I’m going to explain The terminology of the Difference between Influence and Persuasion is given below.
Influence
the ability to present a case or statement so that the other party has the information to change their point of view themselves. This means that you use no force or cohesion to sway them; through listening to your statement or argument, they reach their conclusion and change their opinion—a long-term change.
using your communication skills to temporarily change the opinion of others to achieve a short-term goal. Persuasion is getting people to take action, such as in sales and politics. The buy-in is most certainly short-lived, and often there is a feeling of change again, such as buyer’s remorse.
How Does the Difference Between Influence and Persuasion Apply to Being a Thought Leader?
When you want to get your point across to an audience, you need both these skills. You must be able to influence and persuade at the same time. The required measures of each are dependent on the situation, and it is your primary job to understand when to use each. Creating lasting change in any environment requires you to use the two communicative styles in unison.
Firstly, your influencing skill will be tested as you will have to present your cause with facts and context. This strategy often gets you in the firing line. In other words, you must be able to stand firm as your opinion gets scrutinized by peers and detractors. For you to increase your influence on a specific topic, you would first have to establish trust. This trust will begin to build your credibility with your audience.
Credibility comes from four core aspects, Integrity, Intent, Capabilities, and Results. These core characteristics will show your ability to back up your opinion.
Integrity
Can only be displayed by being honest. Honest about shortcomings and achievements. In the world today, your life is on show permanently using social media, and any disparity from your cause will hurt your ability to influence.
Intent
Your intent must be clearly understood. You must show your desires (intent) by meticulously spelling out your motives and what you want to achieve.
Capabilities
You will not influence if you cannot show that you can do what you want yourself. By leading from the front, you will have more influence over your audience.
Results
Your track record will speak volumes. If your historical results show that you are not capable of results, you will have very little influence over your audience. To expand your influence, you will also need to engage and connect with your audience. This engagement will get your audience involved with your cause. Your audience will have various opinions about the project or cause, and these should be understood and possibly integrated into your process. This sincere interaction with the people around you will increase the level of influence that you can exact.
Your clear vision and defined results will also give you more influence over your audience. Let’sLet’s be clear if you are standing on the soapbox and trying to motivate your audience to action. Yet, the desired results are not clear and defined, and you will not get the dynamic response you desire. In any social environment, people will only take action once they understand what they will achieve by their actions.
Creating profound and lasting influence, you also need to share your passion for your cause. Your passion is what will get people to listen first of all. A straightforward analogy is if you cannot display your passion through your words and actions, no audience will follow you. Passion is not fake; it is an authentic manifestation of your belief and drives for your cause.
To be an authentic influencer in leadership or any capacity, you need to display and enact these simple principles in every action you take. This will create a profound and lasting influence on your audience over time. Actual influence does not happen overnight. It talks about time for people to process your actions and words in their world and circumstance.
Persuasion Skills
When it comes to persuasion, it is often described as the ability to sell ice to Eskimos. The sales and marketing industry most often uses the art of persuasion. As the definition above states, you will temporarily change your audience’s understanding to achieve a temporary goal. No, whether this is to sell them a product or whether this is to make them join your cause, the process is all the same.
When you first start your journey as a thought leader or an activist, you will most likely use your persuasive skills more at first. Without the benefit of trust or connection, you will have to present your case differently to your audience to get buy-in. This is where your persuasion skills, your sales skills will become vital to your success.
We have all met actual salespeople in our lives. These are the people that can present an unknown subject or topic in such a way that you start paying attention. You might even want to buy the product or start having serious thoughts about it. They can instill trust and confidence in a short time by being sincere and polite.
Persuasiveness is how you will get noticed and how you will make the initial impact on your audience. If you have not noticed it yet, actual salespeople have an excellent vocabulary and speak with authority. When you take your stand, you must be prepared to be questioned and criticized. One of the best ways to prepare is to have all your facts and arguments well planned out and ready. This will give you the confidence to speak your truth. Know When to Use These Skills in Unison.
As activists and thought leaders, we will constantly be using our effective and persuasive skills to navigate the world. People often misinterpret these skills we want to communicate with. Therefore, you need to be authentic in all your actions and words.
Human beings have the innate ability to detect when someone is incongruent and dishonest. Or at least most people have the ability. If you want to start a cause and get buy-in from your social structures, you need always to bring the actual message. Your leadership journey will forever be understood in those first few times that you stand up and make yourself heard. So, practice your influencing skills by being authentic and credible. When you take up your cause, don’t give up when you get resistance; don’t stop just because it seems complicated.
Build your image and keep the focus on your project so that you can build your credibility and trust. This might take longer than you want it to take, but you will see the results in the end.
Black Sheep Community and The Difference between Influence and Persuasion
For activists and thought leaders, there is a place where you can share with peers that have experienced much the same as you have. If you have a message that you want to share with the world and are not sure how to approach it or begin, Black Sheep Community has the answer. Here you can connect with like-minded people committed to making a difference, and you can share in their success stories. You can get directions as to how to find yours.
Make the Black Sheep Community your new base of operations and share the many skills and abilities that our members share. You will understand the power of influence and persuasion and how to use these critical skillsets to further your cause. Join us today and start your journey as a thought leader.
Big Head Egos, we all know them. We don’t all like them. But is there a place for a big head ego in the world? Does society at large reward a big head ego? Well, the answer is more complicated than you might think. Suppose we look at the last 100 years of history.
There are examples of big head egos and humble people who have significantly impacted our lives. There are also many examples where having a big head ego created success for individuals. Likewise, again where being humble did the same. Each one of these has its followers and detractors. So, the question then remains, is there still a place for Big Head Egos in the current world and social structure?
What is Big Head Ego?
Well, the concept is just what you think it is. It describes the people we know that are out there, prominent personalities that thrive on others’ admiration. But most importantly, these individuals have an enormous view of themselves. They believe that they have all the answers and all the right questions. They do not see why they would fail, and they always see themselves as just a little better than everyone else.
For the record, there is nothing wrong with having an ego. Having pride in yourself and your accomplishments is healthy. It’sWhen you force it on people, it will become a problem for you and those around you. As a leader in your community, you need to have humility more than being egotistical. A Big Head Ego does have a few advantages, though. In certain circumstances, you do need a larger-than-normal ego to survive.
Big Head Egos of Today
To understand the concept of Big Head Egos a little better. We need to look at the life of a certain ex-president of the USA. You know the man I am talking about. Yes him. Throughout his life, he has always been known for his larger-than-life Ego. Up until a few years ago, this characteristic served him well, for the most part.
As a businessman, he had some great successes earlier in life. This is where the ego attitude was born and bred. It is also where we can see the potential positives of a big head ego. Here is a man surrounded by a whole team of people who all worked on various projects and for his companies. Yet when there were any accolades to be handed out, he was the only one that would stand up and receive them.
With the many properties that his company developed, he even went as far as placing his name on the buildings. This is not necessarily evidence of a big head ego; however, if you add the persona of the guy to the mix, that is when the real truth comes out.
Significant head ego individuals don’t do everything themselves; they surround themselves with people that are willing to do their bidding without question. If you take a closer look at his life and how he got to where he is today, you will see the charismatic effect that a big head ego can have on people.
Modus Operandi of Big Head Ego
A big head ego wants to be the main character in their legend. They will display their achievements and material property in the public eye to get praise and admiration. In the public eye, this guy would be flaunting attachments like his model wife, business success, basically anything that would make him stand out from the crowd.
The psychology behind a big head ego is one of narcissism. The definition of narcissism is in love with the idealized grandiose image of self. This means that you always want to project the brand image that you have in your head about yourself to the world. If we look at our subjects’ lives, we can see how this has played out over the years.
As I said before, for the most part, this was a successful strategy for him. He had many successes and even had a career on tv as a reality show host. There is much to be said for the success that he has had in the past. Yet he also had many failures, and the real test of a big head ego is how they deal with failure.
Any success will be blown out of proportion and will be pontificated from the rooftops. Yet failures will be explained away, and responsibility will be laid in front of other people or circumstances door. If whatever they were doing goes well, it was all because of their leadership and input. But when the project fails, they have 101 excuses as to why it did not go well; sometimes, he even stated that he did not believe it would work from the get-go.
The downfall comes when the big head ego attempts something that needs more than just Ego and past skills. When you are so used to your environment, you do not see the need for growth or learning. You attempt to become the leader of the free world.
Unless you have been living under a rock for the last five years, you will surely know what I am talking about. Our subject became the American president, based on principles that only spoke to the egos of others. I will not get political, but as I am sure the audience is firmly divided on our subject, I will delve just slightly.
Our subject’s political promises and commitments made played into an untapped ego psyche of the American people. In the land of the free and home of the brave, you need a little ego to survive. Fortunately for him, there was more than enough of it to make him president. As a leader, he excelled at doing the unpopular popular thing, trying to fulfill his outlandish promises, and stoking the fires of separation. See, a big head ego needs to be admired and praised, and this will only happen if your admirers are in your camp, especially at this level of leadership.
The behavior of the big head ego is always about strutting and prancing. I say that because you will never see big head egos walk into a room looking down. They will always walk into a room, eyes up and looking straight at the room and sizing you up. Bighead egos arrive; they don’t join. Bighead egos expect that you must be in awe of their presence and hang on to their every word. No matter how insensible it might be.
Over the term of his presidency, there are many examples of how the big head ego that might have served him well in business made him the laughing stock of the world. People in America and throughout the world would weekly discuss the latest act of big head ego and how it just does not do any good. Except for maybe himself. He was surrounded by people that would do his bidding. And the minute they spoke against him, they would be removed from the spotlight and replaced.
The final failing of big head ego was during the last year when COVID struck. If you look at the rest of the world’s response to the pandemic and how the USA responded, you see the effect that a big head ego can have on situations. The American response is arguably the worst in the world. And this is not talking about all the other examples of how big head ego would not accept the facts and started making them up to suit himself and his narrative.
Authentic Ego
In contrast, if you examine the president before our big head ego, you see what an authentic ego looks like. A man that came up just like we all did work hard and won the office on statements that included the people around him. He worked tirelessly to achieve what he truly believed was in everyone’s interest. He invoked trust and confidence when he spoke, and he never lied. The contrast to big head ego is also Ego. But an ego that is founded on humility and compassion. Where big head ego is one founded on self-idolism and self-importance.
Being part of the Black Sheep Community means you must be strong and able to defend yourself when tested in social surroundings. Your cause, whatever it might be, will get scrutinized and your opinion will be questioned, and your Ego will take a beating. Ego is part of us all, and we must be mindful not to let it get out of hand and nurture it to be strong. Your healthy Ego will give you the ability to persevere and make it through whatever you need to. Be surrounded by like-minded people, and you will see the effect of a robust and authentic ego and how to nurture it in your life.
