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Big efforts are happening online to organize information, including highly technical information from your field, and you lag behind if you don’t understand how that is happening.“ BeCause Global Consulting CEO Nadine Hack has advised leaders of Fortune 500 companies, heads of state, and other organizations globally on clarifying and achieving their goals. She has served as a non-executive director on for- and not-for-profit boards, including as chair, vice chair and committee chair for governance and nominating. She was the first woman to serve as Executive-in-Residence at IMD Business School and continues to work in executive education programs providing guidance to senior executives in many capacities.  She distilled decades of her work with clients on engagement leadership and its framework Strategic Relational Engagement (SRE™) into teachable lessons on improving stakeholder engagement within organizations and among sectors to increase productivity, profitability and sustainability. Hack has advanced degrees from Harvard and The New School and has received numerous awards including International Outstanding Achievement, Woman of the Year, and Inspiration Award for lifetime achievement presented at the Säid Business School Oxford University. She is a Fellow at New Westminster College, created and taught graduate courses at NYU and SNHU and has guest lectured at many other universities. She has been a speaker at meetings and conferences globally. She’s had articles written about or published by her including in The Financial Times, Forbes, Huffington Post, ReWiring Business, The New York Times and UN Chronicle. She’s appeared on television, radio, Internet, at a TEDx event and is on an international on-line database of women experts, SheSource. You can connect with Nadine here: https://twitter.com/nadinehack https://ch.linkedin.com/in/nadinebhack

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IN TOR 011 YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:

• What an ‘engagement leader’ is and does, the personal gains from bringing people together, engaging stakeholders and the importance of clarity.
• Nadine’s own concept of Strategic Organizational Engagement (SOE), which helps draw a roadmap for leaders to engage with people inside and outside, even with adversaries, in the search for common understanding and business objectives.
• What she thinks belong in the toolbelt of a 21st century leader, including the ability to share knowledge, building consensus, trust and the untapped resources of social media.

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OUR CONVERSATION INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING:

Organizations

• TED
• Coca-cola
• Unicef
• Unilever

Topics

• Engagement
• Leadership
• Connections
• Strategic Organizational Engagement (SEO)
• Stakeholders
• Consensus building
• Relationship empowerment
• Reward mechanisms
• Aids
• Children nutrition

Places

• Geneva, Switzerland
• India

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EPISODE CRIB NOTES

An engagement leader Drawn about bringing people together. Cross sector partnerships for mutual benefit. Clarification on goals, stakeholders. Plans are shelved because the actors were not identified. Mandela: “he reached out to the very people who incarcerated him for 27 years.” Engaging with the enemy. But you don’t need to be Mandela to promote engagement. People want to connect, engage deeply. That is research backed.   Social media “One of the most exciting frontiers.“ In 2009 she advised people about social media, but was not engaging in it herself. She pushed herself, experimented. It was overwhelming at first, but participation allowed her to find affinity. Any type of endeavor is getting organized online. “I’m lucky to live this time.“   Strategic Organizational Engagement (SOE) A broad spectrum of stakeholders have more impact, everyone is more connected. Understanding the roles each one plays and how connections can be leveraged is the skill to have. SOE has decades of precedent in team and consensus building literature. “Achieving a beloved community.” Applied to business and productivity. Building consensus is a business must.   SOE skillset There are still prejudices about validity. It’s a bias that sets leaders back. Common wisdom promotes territoriality, but the opposite is true in terms of growth, value and productivity. Leaders often fail to engage stakeholders, internal and external. SOE is a 21st century set of skills. Value depends on capabilities, needed and current conditions, processes. SOE allows for thorough diagnostics. It’s imperative to build and empower relationships. Internal stakeholders are the core. Leaders often don’t have internal action plans to them. Chains of trust, to enhance engagement skills organization-wide. Structural support. Rewarding internal collaboration.   Business case (Plug to her TEDx on the 70s logging industry https://youtu.be/u_zyi6ea874) Companies today have a mission statement. But annual bonuses don’t necessarily compensate on them. Rewards must be concrete. “Adversaries are allies.“ Collaboration fails, even with interested parties, often because lack of clarity. “Make an effort to engage despite the difficulties.“ What bring people together is humanity. “People have more things in common than they think.“   Failure Coca-cola AIDS Africa. Work on prevention. Public private intervention in India for child nutrition. National and local governments, UNICEF, local and international NGOs, Unilever. They all wanted to help on the subject, “but they couldn’t quite agree on exactly what to do.” They didn’t trust each other’s motivations. Ambitions of scale, India as a template. But it didn’t sail. Leadership failed to find and provide clarity. Head roles change constantly. “Being really clear is a big step, in all aspects of life.“ “If you don’t know where you’re going, it does not matter where you are.“ There are small successes but people often don’t feel confident to move forward.   Advice “Regardless of your level, be as open as you can. Nobody holds all the knowledge, it can be anywhere, in anyone.“ “When you share knowledge, nobody loses.” It includes people. “There are always things to do.“ Be humble.

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Please share, participate and leave feedback below!

If you have any feedback you’d like to share for me or Nadine, please leave your thoughts in the comment section below! I read all of them and will definitely take part in the conversation. If you have any questions you’d like to ask me directly, head on over to the Ask Stephen section. Don’t be shy! Every question is important and I answer every single one. And, if you truly enjoyed this episode and want to make sure others know about it, please share it now: Also, ratings and reviews on iTunes are very helpful. Please take a moment to leave an honest review for The TOR Podcast!