Mark Villareal

With the scarcity of women in leadership, decisions lack the balance that includes logic, common sense, and emotion that drives culture and execution of strategic plans to their fullest potential. As a result, the revolution of women in leadership is a growing dynamic. Smart and successful companies large and small are now seeking ways to expand their diversity with outstanding and brilliant women leaders. They see capabilities before they see gender and reward accordingly. The keys lie in nurturing aspiring women leaders to prepare themselves to take advantage of the growing need as well as showing companies of tomorrow how to set themselves up for dominance by building a diverse workforce including the leadership team led with stability and confidence that women leaders bring.

Successful organizations and leaders understand that culture, a strong culture is the foundation for success. This starts before, and during the hiring process and is instilled from day one. All employees implement and protect the culture as it is built from the top-down and bottom-up.

Many organizations struggle in understanding and gaining the strategic advantage in their industry. Most organizations may have a misconception on what is a strategic advantage, how to identify and how to build and stay ahead to build a long term growing and sustainable business. Setting a vision that is not constantly communicated will create an environment of confused employees with a lack of purpose who come each day to a job and not a career. Companies that lack a career lattice advancement and a culture of helping people achieve their dreams within or outside the organization may actually lack a long-term vision of success and has established a status quo environment that lacks innovation.

Crisis management is a skill and circumstance that the best organizations prepare for. They teach the leadership teams the keys to problem-solving and decision making, that when a crisis happens, which they will, they are best prepared to make it through. But what are the stages of a crisis, and why is understanding these stages important for execution yet alone survival.

Emotional intelligence is so important, that leaders today must have a higher EQ than IQ. Understanding the 5-components of emotional intelligence and how they can play a role in maintaining a positive culture, behavior modification, and conflict resolution. The ability to harness your emotions, and to comprehend the make-up of others is one step towards success. The important dynamic is EQ can be increased as IQ is set in stone. Building intelligent teams are the new drivers of this decade and century.