Rockford Chamber of Commerce Blog

Improving Your Leadership Skills By Thinking Differently

10/17/2022

Is your team stagnant, or is there a sense of tension in your department? It may not be "just your gut feeling," but rather an indication that your team is in a "flight or fight" mode. Today, we're looking at three distinct emotional states in the workplace, fight, flight, and flow, and the implications when leaders shift out of flow and into flight or fight.

Start With Team Analysis
The condition of your workplace may reflect your own state of mind as a leader. If you're feeling in flight-or-fight mode, it's hard to lead your team in a creative, problem-solving flow.

Let's look at the emotional state of each "zone":

Fight is a feeling of anxiety or a need to trump a co-worker in being right. The fight feeling is one where people feel threatened or a noticeable divide between groups in a team. Stress in the work environment and a lack of direction or resources can lead to infighting. Office politics and unskilled leadership can lead to people being more focused on fear of failure or retribution, and the team loses cohesiveness. Flight feels like wanting to hide and avoid conflict. In this environment, employees feel like there's little they can do to change things and mainly keep their heads down. Innovation stagnates, and enthusiasm for the team's goals wanes.

The flow state is one where collaboration and innovation are at their highest. Everyone on the team feels relaxed and excited about the project or new ideas. "Flow state" is a feeling of creative energy, cited by professional athletes, musicians, and writers as a time when they're focused on a goal. For collaborative teams, flow state is the kind of working environment where everyone is focused on the task and feels they're heard. Becoming more self-aware of your own working emotional state and the state of others around you can help you make better leadership decisions.

Solving Fight or Flight Mode to Achieve Flow
A new project, start-up company, or special team often starts with a lot of energy and enthusiasm. Over time, however, and with poor leadership, the organization can shift from a productive, cohesive team to a more toxic workplace, and leaders lose a sense of cohesiveness and flow.

So how can leaders keep their team from slipping into a fight or flight mode? The first way is to look at your emotional state. Are you tense and hyper-focused on being "right" more than team success? Or maybe you feel like your suggestions for improvements are like yelling into the void, and your team has given up. If you note that you're consistently in flight or fight, your team has probably picked up on it, and they, too, are mimicking your state.

Stop, take a breath, and calm yourself. Once you're calm, assess the workplace situation to determine what's causing your frustration. Is there competition among team members for scarce resources? Is your team frustrated because their suggestions are falling on deaf ears? Is office politics or territorialism reducing efficiency? Once you've found the problems, you can work toward a solution. When your employees see you working to change and address their concerns, they, in turn, may follow your lead. However, moving from a flight or flight workplace environment can take time, so it's essential that you show patience and a commitment to resolving the issues that caused your team to stagnate.

Chamber Board Urges Local Taxing Bodies to Hold Levy Flat

10/6/2022

At the September 27, 2022 Rockford Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors meeting, the board voted to adopt a resolution urging local taxing bodies to hold their levies flat, the crux of the resolution is as follows:

NOW THEREFOR BE IT RESOLVED that; the Rockford Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors hereby supports and recommends to the business community to strongly encourage its local taxing bodies in Winnebago County to work together to adopt priority of reducing or keeping their levy flat and thereby reduce the overall property tax rate.

As part of our mission to Lead Business Growth, the Chamber is responsible to its members to work to remove obstacles that could be a burden to a healthy business environment. Increased property taxes are a burden on our future talent pipeline, our current workforce, and businesses that are already suffering from inflation, wage hikes, and supply chain issues. Increased property taxes right now are just not good for business.

Here is the full resolution:

WHEREAS: The property tax is an important component of our overall structure of taxes that are critical to local governments. It can be a stable, consistent revenue source for local government services (including schools), and its high collection rate makes it a reliable pledge for debt and bond security, and;

WHEREAS: The property tax is also a highly visible tax, meaning that most Illinois property owners are typically aware of the exact amount of property tax they pay, because they are explicitly billed twice per year, and;

WHEREAS: Retaining Illinois' highest-in-the-nation 9,000 units of local government drives up tax bills, contributing to property tax rates that are among the highest in the U.S. As recent as 2019 Illinois is ranked as having the second highest real estate tax rate in the country, and;

WHEREAS: Winnebago County has one of the highest median property taxes in the United States, and is ranked 151st of the 3142 counties in order of median property taxes; Winnebago County ranks 80th in property taxes as a percentage of income and 29th as a percentage of property value, and;

WHEREAS: A 2012 report by the Illinois Policy Institute study on property taxes since 1990 showed that residential property taxes in Illinois have grown 3.3 times faster than median household incomes, and that the residential property tax burden as a percentage of median household income had risen 76 percent, and if Illinois had frozen its residential property taxes in 2012, it would have taken 28 years for property tax levels to return to 1990 levels, and; WHEREAS: 2022 represents the year of the quadrennial reassessment may lead to higher property values, which can also influence property tax levels; and

WHEREAS: Business community surveys conducted by the Rockford Chamber of Commerce routinely find that taxes are consistently a primary concern among the business community;

WHEREAS: The amount of dollars a taxing body seeks for their annual budget represents the annual tax levy, which then determines the necessary tax rate to generate that levy amount;

WHEREAS: An effort has been made by some local taxing bodies within Winnebago County to hold the line on their levy amount over the past few years, thereby having the effect of lowering property tax rates and saving taxpayers millions of dollars; and dies within Winnebago County

WHEREAS: to reduce or Winnebago A concerted, collaborative effort by all taxing bo keep their levy flat will lead to an overall reduction in the gross property tax rate County;

NOW THEREFOR BE IT RESOLVED that hereby supports an ; the Rockford Chamber of Commerce Board of in Directors d recommends to the business community to strongly encourage its local taxing bodies in Winnebago County to work together to adopt priority of reducing or keeping their levy flat and thereby reduce the overall property tax rate.