In March we held the first Disruptive networking event of 2018. We were very proud to host Jacki Rowles as our guest speaker. If you were lucky enough to have attended the event you would have heard Jacki presenting an overview of the Google Search Inside Yourself Program (SIY). However if you missed it, here's a recap to help spread the message of mindfulness-based emotional intelligence in the workplace and why every organisation can benefit. Giving back to our community is at the core of Disruptive’ s philosophies and we are honoured to be able to provide access to great leaders and experts and what better way to start that than with mindfulness and mental agility.
An executive coach, Jacki has a wealth of experience across counselling and working for major international consulting firms as an executive HR leader. Training leaders and organisations about mindfulness-based emotional intelligence develops clear understanding about what it’s like to balance high performance with employee well-being - impacting on engagement, productivity and turnover.
With all this change a new modern leadership skillset is required and that’s what piqued our interest with the Search Inside Yourself programme. Born at Google from one engineer’s dream to change the world. It began in 2007 when veteran engineer Chade-Meng Tan assembled leading experts in mindfulness, neuroscience and emotional intelligence to develop an internal course for his fellow Googlers. It quickly became an incredibly popular training program within Google. Interest outside Google was so great that the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI) was established in 2012 as an independent non-profit organization.
The evening presented a conversation on presence and developing strong understanding that people are the driving force of a thriving organisation. Meaning for those that embrace mindfulness, it will provide invaluable insights to leaders who need to create a positive culture and retain their top talent within their organisation. If you're still learning that emotional intelligence is key to leadership skills, then here's some reasons why you need to add this coaching to your development plans.
With great growth comes great responsibility
Rapid scale or adoption of digital comes with organisational wide change, embracing empathy and a continuous learning mindset. Creating amazing digital customer experiences begins with understanding your customer journey and the employee experience that supports it - or as we like to say 'EX makes the CX'. Being truly successful means questioning everything you know and looking to co-creation with employees. We live in the space of growth marketing, inbound lead generation and the organisational cultures to support this.
At Disruptive we're working with companies who are either ready to scale or ready to change in the face of a new digital era. Alongside new growth comes other challenges and responsibilities for leaders - for both the success of your company and your people.
Over the last decade, almost all businesses have experienced disruption through innovation and technology. Whether it’s transport with Uber or travel with Airbnb, no business is immune, start up or established; all organisations are vulnerable so everyone should be disruptive ready and focus on their own growth and scalability. This is when the benefits of a program like Google's (SIY) can be invaluable.
Fewer resources and smaller budgets have meant that Growth Hackers/Growth Marketers must use out of the box thinking to conquer competitive markets in a low cost way. Your ideas, decisions, strategy and metrics must all be informed by growth. You need resilience, stamina and a strong and loyal team to make it through this early growth phase. Therefore, as leaders we have a responsibility to ensure that you not only understand yourselves but you're also able to empathise with others in order to influence people around you in a deliberate, effective and compassionate way.
Harnessing technology and embracing change
The product revolution means that not only are physical goods products, but now software and apps are called products too. This huge change in both buying habits, technology products and how they are distributed mean that traditional marketing has had to adapt to a new sales funnel that calls for inbound marketing and a customer centric approach. This requires both an organisational mindset change as well as a growth methodology change. It's both the "what" and the "how" and requires galvanising the business behind the "why" - rapid scale and growth involves people right across the business.
As a HubSpot Agency Partner, we provide an expert service to get companies started with Inbound Marketing to help accelerate growth, increase brand awareness, build trust and ultimately generate leads and sales. For example, by focusing on lead generation, customer acquisition and customer retention you can achieve great results. However, this change to automation and outsourcing requires all your team to be on-board in order for you to achieve your business goals. To support teams through change, coaching like the SIY program and using collaborative tools supports collaboration and teamwork by developing empathy and compassion. Having this strong bond will give you a loyal and hardworking team.
Building strong foundations -Growth marketing in a digital era
Finally, with all this change, stress and challenges we understand how important it is for the team to develop their solutions, learning comes from experience and they need to be a crucial element in the co-creation and design of the solutions. Before you head off on your growth journey you need to ensure you have the right foundation and infrastructure to support your new customer base or to meet new customers on the platforms they are choosing, which should be where your core team focus. Key to your business' scalability is understanding that attracting, engaging and converting customers also requires the right talent and organisational support.
Using human centred design thinking and customer journey mapping we identify the right organisational structure to support business success - but it’s an area that’s often crucially neglected. As mentioned above, you need strong and inspired leadership so we all need help managing stress, building focus and sustaining high performance. Embracing an emotional-intelligence based model in your workplace early on will pay dividends in your success a few years down the line.
If you're looking to find out more about rapid growth and the systems that can help support you then feel free to subscribe to Disruptive Unicorns' updates.
