leadercommunicator blog

Welcome to my weekly round-up of the best-of-the-best recent leadership and communication blog posts I've seen over the past week. Given the current state of business today and how much has changed because of COVID-19, I'm continuing to use the Weekly Round-Up as a place to share some of the best resources I'm seeing to help leaders and communicators navigate these challenges with their teams. 

This Week's Round-Up of Leadership and Communication Blogs:

• Leadership Behaviors During the New Normal: Envision and Engage
  By Robert A. McDonald (@Bob_McDonald75 via @SmartBrief and @SBLeaders), SmartBrief
  
  Retired Procter & Gamble Co. Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Robert A. McDonald, explains how and why leaders need to make a deliberate plan to engage – more so now than ever before.
  
  “While the purpose and values of an organization don’t frequently change in this world and, in fact, are often the antidote, the behaviors of leadership should change. One of the biggest challenges in the current environment is the social distance required to ensure safety in the coronavirus era. This distance makes leadership more difficult. I remember in 1991 when I was living in Manila and leading Procter & Gamble's business in the Philippines, I was also tasked with leading P&G’s Hair Care business throughout Asia...”
  Read more >>

Like many of you, I’m starting to prepare for my holiday break (away from work!), with my family. And while traditional year-end vacations may be canceled, it doesn’t mean you need to continue working. After a year like this one, we all deserve some time to recharge, even if that means extra time at home to catch up on our favorite TV shows.

With Thanksgiving behind us, and the winter holidays ahead, I’m reminded that we’re approaching 2021 – a year that couldn’t come fast enough for many of us. We’ve come a long way in the past months, and leaders, communicators and employees have flexed, stepped up to the challenges, and have shown great strength as we settle into our “new better,” as one of my colleagues says in her classically optimistic way.

Life can sneak up on you sometimes. Luckily, we have some last-minute Thanksgiving recipes (inspired by Grandma Elsie and her famous spice mix, of course) for you and your family or friends to enjoy. Let us help with some food for thought (literally!) on some winning and all-time-favorite recipes from Grandma Elsie's collection. These recipes are sure to make your life – and your holiday season – a little easier and hopefully, a touch more delicious.

5 of Our Favorite Thanksgiving Recipes

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, we’re excited to share Grandma Elsie’s world-famous Pumpkin Chiffon Pie recipe with you. So get out your grocery list because these are the most delicious, mouthwatering pies you’ll ever taste. We guarantee you’ll want these on your Thanksgiving table. And if you’re new to the blog and are curious about who Grandma Elsie is, or want to learn more about our Thanksgiving tradition at The Grossman Group, you can do that here.

Ingredients

At The Grossman Group, we started the year gearing up to celebrate a big milestone: our 20th Anniversary. And come March, things changed.

We quickly shifted our plans, and our focus, like the rest of the world. In our case, we began providing our clients support for the pandemic, for social unrest, for diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging, and more. We did this to help organizations connect with their people in new and meaningful ways, and to facilitate the tough conversations on difficult, yet critically important topics people were, and are, grappling with in their personal and work lives.

As the calendar year starts to wind down, and some of the uncertainty settles into place, I’ve found myself pausing to think about all the great work communicators have done this year, despite being up against the most unprecedented personal and professional challenges of our lifetime. I think what’s served communicators and the leaders they support so well during the past months, is they relied on tried and true effective communications strategies to keep employees informed, engaged and focused, listened to, and set up for success.

Welcome to my weekly round-up of the best-of-the-best recent leadership and communication blog posts I've seen over the past couple weeks. Given the current state of business today and how much has changed because of COVID-19 and calls for racial justice, I'm continuing to use the Weekly Round-Up as a place to share some of the best resources I'm seeing to help leaders and communicators navigate these challenges with their teams. 

This Week's Round-Up of Leadership and Communication Blogs:

• Irv Grousbeck: The Power of “I Don’t Know”
  By Bill Snyder (@BSnyderSF via @StanfordGSB), Stanford Business
  
  As a C-suite executive, you might think you always have to have the answers, but thinking that way can be a mistake. H. Irving Grousbeck, an adjunct professor of management at Stanford Graduate School of Business and the cofounder of Continental Cablevision, explains why.
  
  “If you’re a top-level business manager, admitting that you don’t know something can be difficult. After all, anyone who has clambered to the top of the corporate food chain is expected to exude certainty and self-confidence. In short, you’re supposed to be the person with all the answers...”
  Read more >>

When a pumpkin pie isn’t enough for your Thanksgiving spread, delight your friends or family with this warm, comforting caramel-apple crisp. Serve it right out of the cast-iron skillet just like Grandma Elsie used to do. We used local Gravenstein apples, but you can use your favorite firm, tart variety (Honeycrisp, Jonathan, Mutsu, etc.) that is perfect for baking.

Ingredients:

Ask any journalist and they can tell you about the 5 Ws and an H. Any solid news story covers those six basic ingredients. The same is true for communicating inside an organization, especially as it relates to sharing a compelling vision or guiding decisions about the future.

Want to ensure you don’t forget a critical detail in your communications? Think 5 Ws and an H to ensure you're capturing important perspective, sharing the all-important context, and making it relevant for your audience. 

As we all continue to celebrate the season of giving, we want to share another one of Grandma Elsie’s famous recipes with you. This time: Elsie’s Elegant Elixir! Toast to the season and the spirit of Grandma Elsie with this delicious cocktail. 

Directions:

Serves 2 (Elsie wouldn’t drink alone).