B2B Reads: Creative Problem-Solving, Perfectionism, and Thought Leadership

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In addition to our Sunday App of the Week feature, we also summarize some of our favorite B2B sales & marketing posts from around the web each week. We’ll miss a ton of great stuff, so if you found something you think is worth sharing please add it to the comments below.

How to Build a High-Performing Team: Ten Vital Conversations
In this blog post, Karin Hurt and David Dye offer 10 potential conversations to improve your team’s performance and communication. They’re quick, effective topics to get at the core of team dynamic and culture. The authors note: “when you’re neck deep in urgent deadlines, fast pivots, and navigating uncertainty and change, it’s easy to postpone those vital conversations to “someday when we have more time.”

The Art of Listening
In this article for The People Development Magazine, Kate Dames provides an overview of the value of listening, and offers simple models to think of listening as, like “listening = attention + impact.” She notes the different levels and types of listening as well, noting: “Listening is one of the most valuable tools any leader has access to in order to strengthen relationships. Artful listening requires an increase in perception and then followed by action. It requires presence, focus, and non-judgment.”

Sales Management, We Understand The Pieces/Parts, But Not The Whole
In this post, Dave Brock reflects on his own book, and how many of the practical sales lessons he’s written about have been difficult to synthesize and implement by real managers. He writes: “The mistake I had made was focusing on the components, the subsystems, assuming the managers knew how to put it all together in doing their jobs.” This lead Brock to develop the Sales Execution Framework, or SEF, which he outlines further.

4 ways to become a creative problem-solver
In this blog post, Ulli Appelbaum offers four practical ways to “overcome mental biases and become a better creative problem solver.” They’re prompts and practices that help to turn on the creative problem-solving part of your brain, and start to think in terms of creative solutions. On the issue of thinking creatively, Appelbaum says: “What prevents us from thinking creatively and coming up with truly new ideas to solve our business problems or brand positioning assignments? The answer is our biases.”

5 Ways to Level Up Your Thought Leadership
In this article, Todd Stansfield lays out some of the best ways to cultivate better, more effective thought leadership. He cites new research that “shows that nearly three out of every four buyers don’t find value in at least half of the thought leadership they consume. From the same research sample, however, nearly half bought from an unknown company because of its thought leadership.” This leads into his five strategies, which include “‘teach, don’t sell,’ ‘take a stance,’ and ‘back your claims.'”

The Costs of Being a Perfectionist Manager
In this piece for the Harvard Business Review, Anna Carmella G. Ocampo, Jun Gu, and Mariano Heyden offer insights on new research surrounding perfectionism in young adults. For managers who do have “perfectionistic compulsions,” these new findings do offer “practical evidence-based steps.” Ultimately, the authors found that “perfectionists are likely to be goal-focused and action-oriented and these strategies are aimed at helping them recalibrate their expectations.”

The 3 Secret Blunders Leaders Make
In this blog post, Dan Rockwell points out three common mistakes, or blunders, that leaders make. They include, “‘leaving your best self at home,’ ‘getting lost in the weeds,’ and ‘thinking you know when you don’t.'” Rockwell goes in depth in both explaining these pitfalls and offering solutions to combat them.

The catalyst behind highly effective development conversations
In this article, Julie Winkle Giulioni provides an overview of how to have highly effective development conversations. She address some of the common misconceptions about this process: “prioritizing development doesn’t mean engaging in check-the-box processes, annual planning or even carving out five minutes from each one-on-one to talk about anything but performance. It means weaving growth conversations into the fabric of daily life.”

How CEOs Can Benefit By Thinking Like An Ultra-Endurance Runner
In this piece, Karen Brown draws an analogy between endurance running and CEOs by detailing the similar challenges and mental blocks that both groups face, and how each might overcome them. She offers specific, data-driven advice on how leaders can overcome a variety of common roadblocks.

Want to be a better leader? Build your ethical muscle
In this blog post, Emily Miner draws on current events and “multi-stakeholderism” to drive home the importance of creating an ethical culture as a leader. She provides nine different strategies for leaders to ensure that they’re keeping an ethical mindset at the forefront of their organization.