Tag: Leadership

Updated on February 24, 2024

Five Reasons A Chief Of Staff Will Be Your Best Hire

By Yolanda Lau

Today, the Chief of Staff (CoS) role has become common in corporations and startups — though it dates back centuries and originated in politics, government and military. CEOs and owners of growing companies, whether startups, small businesses, professional service companies, or agencies, are always short on time and resources. Even after hiring an assistant, senior managers and executives, CEOs and owners often find that their focus is still divided among too many different priorities. All too often, a CEO or owner needs more help than they are getting.

A Chief of Staff is very different from a virtual assistant (VA) and is also distinct from an executive assistant (EA). A VA is usually a freelancer who works on remote administrative tasks on demand while an EA manages your calendar, emails and other correspondence, day-to-day schedule, and travel arrangements. In contrast, a CoS thinks strategically and works independently. In addition, a Chief of Staff is often a part of the senior management team.

While no two CoS roles are the same, here’s why a Chief of Staff will be your best hire.

1. A Chief of Staff will save you time.

Most executives I’ve talked to who have hired a Chief of Staff say that doing so gives them a quarter to half of their time back. They also can get more done in the time they have left. This is because not only do Chiefs of Staff take day-to-day tasks off your plate, but they also create and implement systems and processes to help you get more chunks of focused time.

In a startup’s early days, your CoS may help you systematize your marketing plan, then manage your QA automation team, then move on to build a repeatable sales process, and then create an internship program. And that’s all while helping to manage budgets and prepare for board meetings. Your Chief of Staff should be a generalist who can go from one project to the next without missing a beat, allowing you to focus on strategic thinking and planning.

2. A Chief of Staff will improve the flow of information.

An experienced Chief of Staff will significantly improve the flow of information between departments that were previously siloed. Plus, they will also improve communication between you, your senior management team, and the rest of your staff. Your CoS will cultivate relationships throughout your organization, allowing him or her to give you unfiltered and unbiased opinions. Without ties to a particular department, you will also find that your Chief of Staff may become one of your most trusted advisors.

3. A Chief of Staff will help you make better decisions.

An experienced CoS will help guide and implement an objectives and key results (OKRs) process throughout your company. With more time on your hands and better information, you’ll be better equipped to think through important decisions. And with your Chief of Staff knowing your business as well as you do, he or she will be a wise and reliable counsel for difficult decisions.

4. A Chief of Staff will identify and reduce your costs.

A good CoS will identify areas for improvement and take action. For example, if your company is manually paying invoices and onboarding 1099 workers, your CoS may recommend implementing a contractor management solution (CMS) or vendor management system (VMS). Switching to a VMS or a freelancer management system (such as Liquid) should help reduce person-hours needed for these manual processes, reduce direct costs due to overpayments and late fees and help your team source pre-vetted talent across departments.

An experienced Chief of Staff will always be looking for operational inefficiencies like these, recommend solutions, and then implement them. And then your CoS will move on to the next project or opportunity.

5. A Chief of Staff will help you boost your impact.

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift to the future of work. Companies are increasingly comfortable with remote work and relying on blended workforces of employees and on-demand workers. In this environment, the CoS role becomes even more essential, not less, helping you to more nimbly adapt and iterate to take advantage of opportunities.

A Chief of Staff will help you maximize your time, improve your decision-making, make the flow of information to you more efficient and help you reduce your costs. A Chief of Staff will have a direct positive impact on your business, particularly in areas that fall outside of scope for your other executives. In short, hiring a Chief of Staff will help you be a more effective executive, allowing you to build your company and focus on your vision.

It’s time to take your company to the next level. Define what you need in a chief of staff, then find that perfect match. The Chief of Staff is a role you won’t regret adding to your management team.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Nine Tips For Leading With Grace And Compassion

By Yolanda Lau

With many companies forecasting a sharp decrease in revenue and profits due to these uncertain times, CEOs and other leaders are under significant pressure. Not only do they have to lead themselves through these challenging times, but they are also responsible for managing and guiding their organizations and executives — and their respective teams — to succeed in stressful times. Leaders must cultivate and promote healthy and resilient mindsets on the current crisis and future crises to come.

By cultivating the following habits and behaviors, CEOs, executives and heads of HR can lead with grace and compassion to create a productive and mindful work atmosphere while positioning their companies for sustainable long-term growth and success.

1. Embrace self-awareness and self-compassion.

Start by being aware that the events of the world have affected you, and give yourself compassion for how you have reacted. Working 80-hour weeks is not sustainable for you or for your team. Deciding to furlough and/or lay off employees is emotionally draining, especially when these are people whom you’ve worked with for a long time who have become like family. Acknowledge your feelings and give yourself the gift of grace. Be kind to yourself. Practicing self-compassion is the first step to compassionate leadership.

2. Develop a gratitude practice.

I believe gratitude makes for more effective leadership. Developing an attitude of gratitude gives leaders the focus needed to quickly pivot in stressful environments and challenging situations, such as those we are all experiencing today. When you pause to practice gratitude, you give your mind, emotions and even your body a moment to recalibrate and become more resilient. This helps clear your mind of distractions, allowing you to more clearly focus on the present and uncover hidden opportunities. In addition, practicing gratitude can contribute to a more positive work environment, allowing your team to work more effectively.

3. Practice and hone emotional intelligence.

Develop your emotional intelligence and encourage your executives to bring their emotions to work. In turn, your executives will encourage their respective teams to fine-tune their emotional intelligence. As a leader, you must manage how you present your emotions while also encouraging the spreading of emotions that can spur higher productivity, increased job satisfaction and better financial performance.

4. Embrace curiosity, open-mindedness and innovation.

Encouraging diversity of thought is critical, especially during a crisis. Being curious allows you to explore challenges and find innovative solutions and opportunities. Encourage teams to think outside the box and be open-minded. This allows you to identify and quickly address new opportunities being created as a result of this crisis. More importantly, this lays a strong foundation for agile growth, positioning your company for future success.

5. Promote mindfulness.

Like emotional intelligence, mindfulness at work starts from compassionate leadership and trickles down through the organization. Learn to be mindful and present in all of your interactions, encouraging your teams to do the same. Leading with mindfulness can help improve overall productivity, decrease stress, lead to increased innovation and create a healthier workplace for all.

6. Practice active, compassionate listening.

Practice active, compassionate listening, especially with your team and direct reports. Listen attentively when your employees speak, taking care to defer judgment. Ask pertinent, open-ended questions and paraphrase when appropriate to show your genuine desire to come to a mutually beneficial understanding. Active listening can build strong relationships and help employees feel less isolated. While many of us are working remotely and decreasing our social interactions, many of us need to feel more connected to others. In addition, during challenging times, it’s more important than ever to insist on regular one-to-one meetings.

7. Encourage asking for help.

There’s a looming mental health crisis coming as a result of these uncertain times. Everyone needs help right now, but it can be challenging for high achievers to ask for help. Start by checking in with employees. Find out how they are doing and encourage them to ask for what they need. Encourage departments to engage a liquid workforce, especially if you have enacted a hiring freeze due to budgetary concerns. Getting your team the on-demand help that they need can help increase productivity and morale.

8. Focus on the present, while keeping an eye on the future.

The goal isn’t to predict the future, but to bolster your company to be better prepared for whatever may come. Make the changes you need to position your company to weather future challenges while staying present and mindful. This too shall pass, just as many other challenges before it has. Focus on positioning your company to become agile so that you can quickly adapt and pivot as the future becomes more clear.

9. Commit to leading with grace and compassion.

You may not feel comfortable demonstrating vulnerabilities, but leaders need to be aware that your team is always modeling the behavior they see. Your employees are looking to you and other leadership to understand what is appropriate. If you appear to be close-minded or insist on doing it all yourself, executives and employees will follow suit. Ineffective leadership can very quickly negatively impact productivity, morale and eventually the bottom line.

However, leaders who are compassionate, mindful and emotionally intelligent active listeners are better equipped to lead their companies through uncertainty and are well-positioned for post-crisis growth and success. When you commit yourself to lead with grace and compassion, you give yourself and your organization the mindset and tools to succeed during any circumstances.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Modern Businesses Need Modern Strategy

By Yolanda Lau

The future of work is rapidly changing and already impacting businesses today with the growth of the liquid workforce. Companies are also facing ever more complex challenges as we are increasingly globally connected. Modern businesses need a modern business strategy built on strategic and operational agility to thrive and grow, especially in today’s turbulent times. To compete successfully, companies need to iterate rapidly and be opportunistic in their approach.

Developing Strategic And Operational Agility

In Harvard Business Review, Donald Sull, senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, wrote, “Business opportunities are not distributed evenly over time. Rather, firms typically face a steady flow of small opportunities, intermittent midsize ones, and periodic golden opportunities to create significant value quickly.” This statement is as true today as when it was first published in 2009 and underlines the importance of strategic and operational agility in any modern business strategy.

Since that time, what has changed for businesses are fundamental shifts in how we work, where we work and what we work on. Covid-19 has rapidly accelerated the shift to remote work, but the future of work is much more than that. Workers, particularly knowledge workers, are increasingly becoming their own bosses. Upwork and the Freelancers Union reported that in 2019, over 57 million people worked as freelancers in the U.S. Similarly, as companies increasingly embrace agile and scrum methodologies, work is becoming more project-based than strictly role-based.

Modern companies dynamically build specialized project teams to tackle different opportunities and challenges. Startups to enterprise-size companies can successfully develop and execute modern business strategy by enabling two key pillars: an agile, flexible workforce and project-based work.

Creating An Agile, Flexible Workforce

As the liquid workforce grows, companies are working with FlexTeam, GLG, Catalant, and other consulting companies or expert marketplaces to develop a blended workforce that consists of a mix of full-time and on-demand (liquid) talent. Human resources leaders are rethinking their approach to building and developing a company’s workforce, shifting to growing a talent-based workforce. With a talent-based mindset, these leaders consider both the near-term and long-term skills and experience needed to support a modern business strategy. The workforce is no longer composed primarily of employees; it’s now an overall talent pool of full-time employees and liquid workers available to tap on demand.

With liquid workers as part of the workforce, companies can nimbly and quickly deploy the right talent to address strategic opportunities and challenges. Knowledge-based workers can swiftly jump in from day one to lead or execute projects. Companies benefit from faster time-to-market for projects and more cost-effectively managing their resources. A blended workforce often yields fresh thinking and new ideas — it can even boost diversity and inclusion for a company.

And while this workforce may be a fluid, yet integral, part of the team, it’s essential to have the right onboarding and processes in place to set up every liquid worker for success. Building strong relationships with your liquid talent is critical for retaining them in your talent network for future engagements.

Shifting To Project-Based Work

Project-based work has long been supported by traditional, big consulting companies. However, working with big consulting companies frequently poses challenges for modern businesses. These companies often move too slowly; the future of work requires modern businesses to move quickly to take advantage of opportunities or resolve challenges. Additionally, consulting companies can be expensive to engage, particularly for smaller companies.

Modern businesses are increasingly relying on liquid talent for project-based work. These knowledge workers can bring a new perspective and deep expertise and can quickly jump in and help these businesses address specific questions, challenges, and opportunities, often through shorter engagements. For example, liquid talent might create competitive or strategic analyses, conduct market research or build financial models. On-demand talent supports all levels of businesses, also serving as consultants and advisors for corporate boards.

The key to engaging liquid talent for high business impact is to focus on answering very specific questions or addressing particular challenges.

Transitioning To Modern Strategy

Competing successfully in an increasingly complex environment requires businesses to be nimble, agile and opportunistic. Building an agile, flexible workforce and shifting to a project-based work mindset are critical. Without these fundamental building blocks of modern strategy, businesses are forever conceding the potential for first-mover advantage. Start taking advantage of the opportunities today and tomorrow by shifting to a modern business strategy approach.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Interested in the Future of Work? Join the Work of the Future #FutureOfWork Facebook Group.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

FlexTeam  is  a mission-based micro-consulting firm, co-founded by Yolanda Lau in 2015, that matches talented mid-career women with meaningful, challenging, temporally flexible, remote project-based work opportunities. FlexTeam’s clients are businesses of all sizes across all industries and sectors. FlexTeam’s most requested projects are competitor / market research, financial models, and investor decks. FlexTeam is also the team behind Liquid.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Rethinking The Role Of Human Resources In The Future Of Work

By Yolanda Lau

The future of work is the liquid workforce, and as such, the role of human resources must evolve to meet today’s challenges. Yet, many HR leaders are only engaged in areas related to their full-time workforce and aren’t involved in the planning and management of the liquid workforce.

Here are some things to keep in mind as you rethink your HR role.

Automation Is The Future Of Work

A recent McKinsey report predicts that automation will result in many occupations — such as administrative assistants and bookkeepers — shrinking through attrition and reduced hiring. Millions of Americans will need to be retrained and redeployed during the coming automation age.

HR will need to take the lead in helping to develop a digitally ready workforce that can adapt to the changing needs of each company. But this workforce will also look very different from today’s — companies are migrating toward a blended workforce that includes full-time workers and liquid workers. HR leaders need to reconsider how they develop and retain the best talent. To do this, they need to fully understand the direction of their companies and the types of talent and skills needed to support that direction.

Digitalization Is The Future of Work

As HR leaders shift from managing full-time employees to managing talent, they will need to embrace digitalization. For HR, Gartner noted that digitalization is changing everything. With a blended workforce, your talent acquisition processes and systems must evolve to encompass traditional hiring and on-demand skills sourcing.

In many companies, HR leaders are not involved in overseeing the contingent or liquid workforce. Often the procurement or purchasing department takes the lead, resulting in an emphasis on cost over talent sourcing or management.

HR leaders need to develop a talent network that encompasses internal and external talent and focuses on identifying, matching and developing the skills that the company needs at any given time. As part of developing that talent network, HR must build relationships with global online talent marketplaces.

Shifting To A Talent-Based Workforce

As HR leaders rethink their workforce strategy, they need to assess where using the liquid workforce makes sense. What skills does the company have within its full-time workforce? What skills will it need in the near future? Are these long-term or short-term needs? Will the demand for these skills vary over time? HR leaders should assess these factors to determine where the liquid workforce should be integrated into their strategic workforce plan.

As the blended workforce grows, HR needs to reconsider not only how and where talent is sourced, but how to manage that talent. Organizations must have rigorous contracting and onboarding processes in place for their liquid workers. These processes protect the company, aid in meeting compliance requirements, and enable the rapid on-ramp of liquid workers. Also, a consistent onboarding process helps liquid workers instantly feel like part of the team and hit the ground running on projects.

Managing Performance With A Liquid Workforce

The skills required to engage with and manage a liquid worker are similar in many ways to those required with full-time employees. However, the “how” and “what” of using those skills are very different since liquid workers are entrepreneurs who are working in partnership with an organization. People managers will need support and training from HR to adapt their styles to partner most effectively with their liquid workers. HR leaders should encourage the sharing of best practices for working with liquid talent across the organization.

Performance management also needs to be rethought with a blended workforce. Having a performance management system with your liquid workers is essential. Every engagement with a liquid worker should be evaluated and assessed against performance metrics and goals. Evaluations should be maintained in your talent database.

Similarly, retention strategies need to be redeveloped for a blended workforce. Consider how to reward high-performing liquid talent. For example, some organizations offer performance bonuses, equity or back-end profit participation.

Modern companies are shifting to a more blended workforce where liquid workers represent a greater and greater share of the workforce. HR needs to take the lead on the workforce strategy and plan not only for full-time workers, but also for liquid workers. Liquid workers are human resources and, as such, should be part of the strategic remit of HR leaders rather than co-mingled and lost among vendor spending. It’s time for the role of HR to evolve and truly encompass all human resources.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Interested in the Future of Work? Join the Work of the Future #FutureOfWork Facebook Group.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

FlexTeam  is  a mission-based micro-consulting firm, co-founded by Yolanda Lau in 2015, that matches talented mid-career women with meaningful, challenging, temporally flexible, remote project-based work opportunities. FlexTeam’s clients are businesses of all sizes across all industries and sectors. FlexTeam’s most requested projects are competitor / market research, financial models, and investor decks. FlexTeam is also the team behind Liquid.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Tackling Diversity And Inclusion: Sponsors, Consultants And Advisors As Part Of Your Strategy

By Yolanda Lau

The business case for diversity and inclusion is clear — diversity in thought correlates directly to increased economic output. But without a chief diversity officer or chief diversity and inclusion officer, it falls to HR to lead on diversity and inclusion.

The Business Case For Diversity And Inclusion

There are a multitude of known strategies for improving diversity and inclusion, including creating policies and practices that tackle unconscious bias, improving company culture and securing buy-in for D&I strategies. In addition, I recommend engaging on-demand consultants and advisors as part of your D&I strategy.

McKinsey found that companies with diverse executive teams achieved 53% higher returns on equity than less diverse teams, Similarly, Morgan Stanley found that the share price of companies with more women in their workforce (and in senior positions) outperformed companies with fewer women.

McKinsey also discovered that companies with the most gender-diverse executive teams were 21% more likely to have industry-leading profitability, while companies with ethnically/culturally diverse executive teams were 33% more likely to outperform on profitability. More importantly, McKinsey illustrated the penalty for diversity failure: Companies at the bottom for both gender and ethnic/cultural diversity were 29% less likely to achieve above-average profitability.

Complexity Of Implementing D&I Strategies: Tackling Systemic And Structural Issues

Improving diversity and inclusion clearly leads to improved business and economic performance. What’s not as obvious is how to improve diversity and inclusion.

Unconscious Bias Training Isn’t Enough

Diversity and inclusion is complex. Start by objectively defining and measuring diversity and inclusion goals. Given the business case for D&I, all executives should work to increase diversity and foster a culture and environment where every employee feels welcome. Authentically incorporating D&I into your corporate culture is necessary to ensure that your D&I strategy is embraced and successful. This, in turn, helps HR create a recruitment strategy for attracting a more diverse pool of candidates — and build a robust talent pipeline to attract, develop, mentor, retain and sponsor diverse leaders and workers at all levels.

Unconscious bias training makes individuals aware of how stereotypes and biases impact behaviors and decision-making. Training executives and employees to overcome racism, prejudice, bias and discrimination is a start, but it’s not enough. D&I strategies must also tackle systemic and structural issues (SSI) — complex issues that allow biases to persist in the workplace and throughout society.

Sponsorship Programs Are Better Than Mentorship Programs

HR professionals need to ensure that evaluations for hiring and promotions are done by multiple leaders using objective variables, lessening the effects of the systemic bias of preferring to hire people who look similar to themselves. Diverse search and evaluation committees can be helpful, if truly diverse — one token woman, trans, black or brown person doesn’t count.

Sponsorship programs are an effective way to overcome network gaps, another systemic and structural issue that further increases inequality. CNBC reported that up to 80% of jobs are secured by networking. Most people leverage their network (“who they know”) to secure even a first-round interview — and diverse candidates usually have smaller, less powerful networks to leverage.

While mentors serve as advisors who help mentees shape their ambitions and plans, sponsors take a direct role in sponsee advancement. Sponsors are senior-level leaders who advocate for sponsees, helping them earn promotions and raises and get credit for their successes. Sponsors put skin in the game, using their network and connections to advance sponsees via guidance and, crucially, endorsement.

Sponsorship or advocacy programs should contain elements to support the roles and development of both sponsors and sponsees. For example, create structured leadership programs for sponsees and formulate a thoughtful selection process for sponsors, positioning sponsors as agents of D&I change to lead to economic gains. Lastly, build in strategic touchpoints and guidance for sponsor-sponsee interaction.

On-Demand Consultants And Advisors As A Short-Term D&I Strategy

These are just a few D&I strategies that every company should implement today. As Ellen Pao says, we also need more radical solutions to tackle D&I. But these strategies move slowly, and economic gains will take time to manifest.

Melinda Gates founded Equality Can’t Wait on the premise that it’ll take 208 years to achieve gender equality at the current rate. We need to do more to tackle diversity and inclusion — and companies who don’t will stagnate as competitors with clear and effective D&I strategies will increase economic output. Working with diverse on-demand consultants and advisors is an unconventional D&I strategy, but an effective one.

Firms like ours (FlexTeam) and Business Talent Group exist to keep women engaged during the mid-career period when many choose to leave the traditional workforce — a decision often driven by caregiving for children or elderly parents. By reengaging women who have left the traditional workforce, you make a direct impact to keep the workplace more diverse.

A Better Future

But beyond that, corporations that need to move quickly to increase diversity are turning to on-demand workers, consultants and advisors as part of their D&I strategy. These on-demand thought leaders from diverse backgrounds — backgrounds that your company lacks — can tackle high-value projects for your company. By engaging diverse thought leaders to assess and react to technology trends and challenges, your company can start to manifest economic gains from diversity of thought while working on longer-term, wide-ranging D&I strategies.

Diversity and inclusion should be an integral component of your management strategy. Today’s executives and HR leaders need to engage diverse on-demand consultants and advisors as part of a multiprong strategy to tackle the complex, systemic, structural problems at the root of D&I issues.

Are you heading toward stagnating business performance or are you leading your organization toward a better future and improved economic performance?

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Interested in the Future of Work? Join the Work of the Future #FutureOfWork Facebook Group.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

FlexTeam  is  a mission-based micro-consulting firm, co-founded by Yolanda Lau in 2015, that matches talented mid-career women with meaningful, challenging, temporally flexible, remote project-based work opportunities. FlexTeam’s clients are businesses of all sizes across all industries and sectors. FlexTeam’s most requested projects are competitor / market research, financial models, and investor decks. FlexTeam is also the team behind Liquid.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Bringing Emotions Into The Workplace

By Yolanda Lau

Emotions matter. Emotional intelligence is a critical 21st-century skill, and as such, companies with emotionally intelligent executive teams have a competitive advantage. Today, managers and executives must not only master their own emotions, but also craft strategies to support emotions at work. Doing so ultimately creates a more productive, supportive, and energizing work environment for all.

How We Got Here

For most of the 20th century, companies valued employees who behaved like robots. When the limiting factor in increasing productivity was increasing the efficiency of assembly line workers, having emotions at work became a liability. If a worker had to take a moment during factory work to process their emotions, that would hold up the production line. In fact, our current educational system is said to have been developed to train people to become assembly line workers who could be easily replaced. But humans aren’t emotionless robots or machines.

But the world has changed. We have actual machines to complete assembly line manufacturing, and the skills needed to succeed in today’s workforce have changed.

Why Emotions Matter

It can be challenging to leave emotions behind when coming to work — it’s why crying happens in the bathroom when people are expected to smile at their desks. Emotions, particularly negative emotions, can be distracting at best and be debilitating at worst. Moreover, positive and negative emotions are contagious. Emotions can spread unconsciously among people in groups, such that when you encounter someone in a bad mood, you may unknowingly begin to feel upset as well.

The truth is that try as we might, emotions leak out of us. Your employees’ emotions leak out to each other and your customers and potential customers. And a potential customer sensing negative emotions is less likely to become an actual paying customer. In contrast, a potential customer who senses excitement and joy from a business’s employees may feel more energized, allowing you to move them further down your sales funnel.

Thus, it is essential to be aware of your feelings and inner emotions — to connect with those emotions and name them. Without this awareness, it is difficult to manage or change those feelings. Still not convinced? Research has found that employees working in cultures of joy and compassion show increased commitment and reduced burnout.

Expressing Emotions Versus Being Emotional

Some people think that strong negative emotions are linked to raised voices, slammed doors, eye-rolling and more. In short, people think that strong negative emotions result in venting, which we know to be unproductive. But these are simply unskillful expressions of suppressed negative emotions — expressions that can cause harm to others.

In contrast, expressing emotions begins with getting in touch with how we feel. It’s important to take responsibility for how we express those emotions and how those expressions impact those around us.

Practical Tips

Let’s go over some tips to develop your emotional intelligence and to encourage your team to bring their emotions to work. Doing so will do more than increase productivity; you’ll create a workplace that employees feel supported in, allowing you to recruit new employees more competitively.

1. Learn The Language Of Emotions

Tools like Emotion wheels, RULER’s Mood Meter, or Atlas of Emotions can develop your vocabulary of emotions. Soon you’ll be able to name the wide range of emotions that are part of the human experience — energized, lonely, worried, peaceful, motivated, fuming and anxious are all valid feelings. When you name your emotions, you defuse them and take away their power. From there, start adjusting how you react to your emotions.

2. Conduct Check-Ins

Once you and your team are comfortable with the language of emotions — have started developing emotional intelligence — you can begin to incorporate ways to encourage and allow employees to bring their emotions to work. Conduct individual or group check-ins that encourage employees to share what they feel, be aware of where their attention is and process and manage their emotions.

Some teams use a green-yellow-red check-in system, where green indicates that you’re in the flow, while yellow means you’re feeling off, and red means you have some feelings blocking you (feelings that you are encouraged to tend to before you get back to work). Others prefer the RULER Mood Meter with its yellow/green versus red/blue check-ins and its ability to allow people to be more expressive. However you structure these check-ins, they should encourage your employees to express and manage their emotions for the goal of increasing employee productivity and satisfaction.

3. Encourage Positive Emotions

Creating a kudos board — whether virtual or in your office — where people can post kind words about their co-workers can help employees get in touch with and share positive feelings. You can also schedule or periodically remind people to breathe or relax. Encouraging positive emotions at work will pay dividends.

4. Honest Leadership

I recommend that leaders be aware of their mood and deliberately energize and lift their spirits before interacting with their teams. Leaders must be honest with themselves and their team members about their feelings. Faking positive emotions can only fool people for short periods of time, but your true feelings will eventually leak out. Your team will pick up on your posture, facial expressions, and vocal expressions to “catch” your negative emotions. Moreover, faking emotions can also lead your team to distrust your words — which can lead to disastrous consequences.

Today, managers and executives must use their emotional intelligence to not only manage how they present their emotions, but also to encourage the spread of emotions that will contribute to higher productivity, increased job satisfaction and improved team performance. Paying attention to the emotions in your workplace may be the difference between success and failure for you and your business.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Interested in the Future of Work? Join the Work of the Future #FutureOfWork Facebook Group.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Four Tips For Managing Your Liquid Workforce

By Yolanda Lau

We’ve all heard that the “gig economy” is the future of work. Estimates put the number of Americans doing freelance work between 54 million and 90 million. In particular, there’s been an increase in the number of freelance strategy and management consultants, as well as marketplaces and platforms connecting businesses to independent consultants. Boutique sites like SpareHire, HourlyNerd, MBA and Company, Hillgate, Toptal Business (formerly Skillbridge) and 79 Studios’ own FlexTeam make top quality consultants more accessible to and affordable for smaller businesses.

The future of work is the liquid workforce, and trends show that it’s imperative for companies to activate this cohort in order to maintain their competitive edge. Managing your liquid workforce — from freelancers to highly specialized on-demand advisors and consultants — is both like and unlike managing your full-time workforce. Overall, much is similar, but the specific strategies and techniques are slightly different.

Having managed hundreds of freelancers, I’ve learned that to successfully grow and manage your liquid workforce, you need to think like both a human resources leader and a finance leader. Once you’ve mastered this, your company will become more agile, and you will accelerate your own career development.

Here are four tips that can help leaders working with the liquid workforce, whether you are managing a few freelancers or hundreds.

1. Developing Your Talent Pool

How can you attract the right freelance talent for your company? In many ways, it’s similar to searching for the right candidate for a full-time position. When hiring an employee, establishing the strengths, experience and skills the right candidate will possess is critical. You also need to assess and evaluate the candidate, along with checking referrals. To source candidates, canvas your network for recommendations and use online portals.

From a tactical perspective, these actions are mostly the same when hiring a freelancer or vendor. The main difference is that instead of posting a job, you will post a request for proposal (RFP).

Your approach to liquid and full-time talent will diverge on strategy for developing those pools. Inherently, your freelance talent is fluid. How often and how long you work with each freelancer will vary. Often, you will want to start freelance work within days — or even hours. What this means is that to fully take advantage of the potential for liquid talent to accelerate your business, you need to approach the development of this talent pool strategically.

Think ahead about the types of skills your business will need over the coming year. Do you already have relationships with freelancers with those skills? If not, consider using smaller trial projects to recruit and vet new freelancers. Keep track of your liquid talent pool in a database or freelancer management system — make it easy to search and find the talent with the right skills and experience.

2. Onboarding And Processes

Just like your company has human resources management systems and processes for managing full-time employees, you need to have the right processes and systems in place to successfully grow and manage your liquid workforce.

A robust onboarding process that includes both automation and customization is just as critical for your freelancers as it is for your employees. The right onboarding process not only gets your project off to the right start, but also ensures your company is compliant with regulations. Make sure your onboarding process includes executing independent contractor agreements and nondisclosure agreements, as well as collecting all the W-9 information your company will need for filing 1099 forms.

Your systems and processes should also make it easy to manage and pay your freelancers. As you grow this team, keeping track of projects and invoices can become complicated and time-consuming very quickly. Plus, as your liquid workforce becomes a critical part of your overall workforce, you need to have robust financial management. Your company needs to not only accurately track payments, but also track cash flow and future expenses for your freelancers. To become an expert manager of your liquid workforce, you have to be more than an HR leader — you have to also be a finance manager with complete control and visibility into current and future expenses.

In my experience, depending upon the number of freelancers you hire, you can easily save 20 or more hours every month by using an FMS instead of manual processes and spreadsheets.

3. Evaluating Your Team

Effectively managing your liquid workforce is about much more than handling RFPs, contracts and invoices. Providing feedback to your freelancers throughout a project is critical to successful project completion and to building long-term relationships — 360-degree feedback matters for freelancers, too, not just employees. Gather feedback from anybody who worked with an individual freelancer. Use the responses to share feedback and to review their performance.

As part of your review, remember to think ahead to potential future projects. What types of projects is this freelancer best suited for? What level of complexity can he/she handle? Keep notes on working style or other factors to help you partner even more successfully on the next project.

4. Retaining Your Freelancers

Like your employees, freelancers want to be valued. Would your employees still want to work for you if they were underpaid? What if you didn’t pay them on time? Are you offering the freelancer routine work, or is it more interesting, challenging and intellectually stimulating? Do you provide positive and constructive feedback? Are you committed to the freelancer’s success and providing support when needed? Think about these factors from the freelancer’s perspective; this will help you build long-term relationships with your liquid workforce.

Don’t forget that for most freelancers, one of the critical benefits of freelancing is flexibility. Make sure you are supporting this and respecting any boundaries set on available hours for communication and meetings.

Beyond Liquid Workforce Leadership

As you develop, manage, evaluate and retain your liquid workforce, you’ll expand your skills as an HR professional and position yourself for executive-level advancement. What’s more, using these tips will help you grow your liquid workforce into a strategic advantage for your company, with agile talent ready to tackle any challenge. You and your company will be ready for the future of work.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Interested in the Future of Work? Join the Work of the Future #FutureOfWork Facebook Group.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Books to Live By

By Yolanda Lau

Confession: I spent New Year’s Day 2019 reading one entire book and starting a second (John Maeda’s The Laws of Simplicity and Mitchel Resnick’s Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play, both published by the MIT Press, in case you were curious.).

I’ve always been a bit of a bookworm. Ok, more than a bit. I was the strange girl who spent hours upon hours in libraries and bookstores, who had shelves upon shelves of books. I’d read on the subway, waiting for coffee, and sometimes even while walking. It’s no wonder I never excelled at sports.

As I child, I loved reading adaptations of classic novels — at that age my most prized possession was a pocket-sized electronic dictionary. In my teens, I continued loving fiction, especially historical fiction. In my twenties and thirties, I’ve come to enjoy non-fiction, particularly biographies, business books, and books on science (think Oliver Sacks or Mary Roach) and positive psychology (science of happiness).

I have a ton of favorites, so many (about 50 or so) that I usually break them down by category. Of those, there are a handful that I live my life by (and by handful, I mean that only in comparison to the 600+ books I own). These are books that I turn to over and over again for guidance and advice; books I frequently recommend.

Books that guide my life, personal and professional:

Books that have shaped my vision for building companies:

What books have shaped your views and guide your life? I’m always eager to discover new books.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.