Consultancy, DEI, and Communication in Leadership
This article was adapted from Episode 32 of the Elevated Entrepreneur Podcast. Click here to listen.
In today’s episode, we are joined by Chief Ife Bell. Chief Ife is a change leader, international coach, and innovator from Ghana. With her many certifications and speaking experience, Ife is an organizational change leader best known for development, coaching, and strategy deployment that raises performance with measurable success year after year. She is passionate about developing leaders, increasing business performance, and developing strategies focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
In this article, you will learn more about consultancy, enhancing DEI in your business, balancing preparedness and leading in our creative zone, and balancing empathy, collaboration, management, and effective communication.
Read on!
What Consultancy is and How it works
According to Ife, consultancy is a way of thinking. It is an opportunity and a funnel that allows us to bring different expertise, knowledge, and experience to a particular situation. Consultants are like master crafters who are able to quickly hear what their client needs and provide the right mix of ingredients for their problems and opportunities.
We are all subject to being short-sighted when challenges hit, and we have to get off the dance floor and get onto the balcony to look at our situation from a different perspective. When you are on the dance floor, you can only see who is next to you, who is in front of you, and maybe catch a glimpse of the pool table. You are in the wind, and it can be difficult to remove yourself, but when you go up to the balcony, you can get a full picture of what is happening, and that is where consultancy comes in.
When it is close to us, we are passionate about it, excited about it, or frustrated about it, and it can be difficult to lean back and take an objective view. An outside perspective is very helpful in getting clarity.
How to navigate your first gig as a consultant
Often because we are new to the field, we are not able to price and budget our gig appropriately. So many consultants, when starting out they underestimate their input into the value they need to deliver and also go in without understanding their audience and where they are in their journey. Ultimately they end up doing so much work for little pay.
If you're just got into the industry, don't over-promise what you can deliver, and be careful to do your homework so that you can know where the authority lies and how you can structure your message to deliver value to your clients.
Being over-excited about your first gig, your content, what people can take away, and the possibilities of what they can do without doing your homework can lead to overwhelm and deter you from actually delivering Value.
Balancing Preparedness and Creative Leadership
As entrepreneurs, we can turn anything into a diamond, and finding the balance between preparedness and leading in our creative zone is critical to our success. We have to be adaptable to lead effectively by understanding our audience while still focusing on the new things that we want to bring into your business.
Focusing on your sweet spot and reflecting on your content will help you to take it to the next level. Create time for creativity, sit with your work, dream about what could be different, and update your work to increase your impact.
Don't allow your model or training to get redundant by using it every now and then.
How To Balance Empathy, Collaboration, And Management
Balancing empathy, collaboration, and management is not a one-size-fits-all strategy, especially with the evolution of leadership we are experiencing today. In the past, leadership was just about management and control, but the new theory of leadership is more focused on soft skills, using empathy and collaboration with management practices to work with our teams.
Leadership is not about giving everything and getting results. It's about finding a balance of how much we give to our team and enhancing meritocracy. Meritocracy is about getting it when you earn it, and this creates equal opportunities and enhances diversity, equity, equality, and belonging.
Tip: Balancing empathy, collaboration, and management is giving everyone an equal opportunity to win.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and How to Enhance it
DEI Is all about giving people the ability to access and take advantage of the opportunities available. However, so many of us confuse DEI and equity approaches with someone with a deficiency needing something. We categorize the people we think have a deficiency that is not us, and we design a product to help them.
We can be in a room, team, and a business that is made of homogeneous people, and there is a need for DEI because there is visible and invisible diversity. For instance, as a hiring company, if someone has a reading disability and reading is part of the Job qualification, we need to give them the ability to compete. They just need extra assistance with reading if they have a reading disability.
According to Ife, If you are to enhance DEI in our organizations, we need to start thinking about what people need to be able to take advantage of opportunities vs. designing a product to help them with their disability.
Enhancing Effective Communication in Your Business
As entrepreneurs, we are constantly assuming that people know, but the reality is they don't know. Assumptions are never effective, they are a sign of frustration and inability to communicate effectively, but according to Ife, there is a right way to say it and unlock it.
When we are not using the right language to help us unlock the action we are looking for, we switch off. To be effective in your communication as a leader, you have to get away from assumptions, communicate in a language and style that other people hear, and be clear and concise without leaving room for people to make it up. In the absence of effective communication, people will always make it up.
Effective communication is about making our communication visible for others to see and understand. Making your communication visible helps us to communicate in different ways. Some people are auditory and can keep up with the conversation without seeing it, while others need to read or see graphics to get it. People hear and digest information differently, and adjusting your strategy to ensure you communicate effectively is key.
Our communication style is based on our lived experiences, upbringing, and cultural background, and adjusting it can be very scary, but you have to do it to be effective.
Tip: The key to communication is Grace and Curiosity; you have to be willing to ask powerful questions that are impactful at the moment.
-Raylen
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