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You are already a great leader, or at least you have it inside of you, now you just need to tap into that source. As long as you can become passionate about something, and share that passion with someone, then you will find that you can always create an opportunity to find like-minded audiences who will follow your lead.
I have to be honest.. I often tire of reading leadership updates that profess to have found the next new revelation.
Keeping it simple
I’ve always found it easiest to do in business as you would do in personal life. This prevents conflict of interest, and stops you from having to think too hard about how to behave when a decision needs to be made. People will only consistently be inspired & follow if they believe and trust. It’s a matter of authenticity, and people are too smart to be fooled by anything less.
The Five Practices
While recently reading The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership Model, I was again reminded about how each and everyone of us already has the traits to be a successful leader in our own right.
Can you not…
- Model the Way (walk the talk)?
- Inspire a Shared Vision (tell relevant stories)?
- Challenge the Process (ask “why”)?
- Enable Others to Act (share the responsibility)?
- Encourage the Heart (provide feedback & recognition)?
Private vs. public life
How do you lead at home? With friends & family? How do you inspire your children? More than stating facts, aren’t you more successful when you tell stories? Stories that are relevant to whichever audience you’re wanting to move to action & join you? At the core, it’s the same in business, you just need to carry over those traits and express them in a business format to obtain the same results.
Leadership training doesn’t work
Leadership is more about bringing out the leader already in you, and finding a way for those traits to resonate with your target audience, than it is about trying to become “a leader”. That’s where people typically have the challenge, tapping into their natural leadership state in order to become an authentic leader.
That’s why it’s called “leadership development” & not “leadership training”.
Call to action
If you can’t do it on your own, find someone who can help you identify what’s not working? Maybe you’ve been trying to become a leadership style you’re not. How can you leverage the resources at your disposal to turn the situation around? Can you use your environment to help you share the leadership challenge? Do you simply need to tap into your authentic self (strengths)? Do you need to make some adjustments in your team because you’ve simply hired the wrong people?
You’re more in control of influencing the situation than you might have originally thought. So what’s your next move?
After reading “The Secret to Putting Together an Insanely Successful Team”, I wanted to highlight a best practice criteria for building great business teams.
The author Sallie Krawcheck goes on to state; “When I have built business teams in the past, I’ve tried to round out the group by including
- a visionary
- a doer
- a skeptic
- a client advocate
- and a “historian” as part of the team
I have also worked to include diverse backgrounds, whether acquired (time spent abroad, time spent at competitors) or innate (gender, ethnicity).”
What are some of the characteristics of the best teams you’ve ever worked with or created?
What if you were to say “NO” to one thing each day?
Too radical? How about each week or even month? I’m just looking for you to take one step, which I’m sure you’ll repeat and increase in intensity once you’ve reaped the rewards of your first “NO”.
What’s your first “NO” going to be?
- Commitments you can let go
- Appointments that aren’t absolutely essential
- Non-essential to-do items
- Multi-tasking
- Distractions
- Moving quickly
- Doing smaller tasks instead of important tasks
This list was inspired by a post that came across my browser. It was just a simple reminder that you can’t make space for something new, potentially more rewarding, unless you get rid of something old (like a habit). Think back to last week.. and now reflect on the elements of the week that didn’t provide you any added value. What activities just took up space on your calendar, and didn’t provide any significant thrust toward your goals or objectives?
Real world example
For several weeks, a client of mine kept resisting a “NO” challenge. Finally, he said “NO” to everything that he deemed “unimportant / non-priority” for one week. By the end of the week, his e-mail was overloaded and certain commitments his clients were expecting went unfulfilled. A failed experiment? Absolutely not. After a 15 minute debriefing, what he realized was that too many people within the organization hadn’t stepped up to the plate & assumed delivery responsibilities that were within their competency.
An opportunity
He went on to encourage others to go beyond the perceived limitations they blamed for not delivering more. With my help, he worked with these individuals to develop the solutions that were within their reach to satisfy their customers needs. At the same time, I worked with their leadership to instill more autonomy & empowerment across the board.
Results
By the end of the exercise, without any additional investment, we had;
1) gained 25% of productivity for my client, who could now invest this new found time in more strategic priorities and thus adding greater value to his customers.
2) empowered a series of product managers to go beyond their perceived limitations, giving them greater recognition, satisfaction & motivation to deliver even more.
3) shortened the delivery cycle to final end-users, getting them much needed solutions they required to do their jobs better & faster.
These were only the 3 benefits immediately experienced. As in other cases, there are already additional knock-on affects of that first “NO”. Ironically, this is an example of how a “NO” is delivering multiple “YESes” across an entire organization.
Call to action
What’s going to be your first “NO”?
- Commitments you can let go
- Appointments that aren’t absolutely essential
- Non-essential to-do items
- Multi-tasking
- Distractions
- Moving quickly
- Doing smaller tasks instead of important tasks
I would love to hear back from you with the results you experience after this experiment. please come back & post your results so that others can continue to learn from your experiences.
Applying the Topgrading methodology could save the US economy $300 million!
As a decade long practitioner, I fully support their case-study.
The Facts
- There were approximately 51 million people hired across all industries in the U.S. in 2011
- 10% of all hires in 2011 were managers, so let’s assume there were approximately 5.1 million managers hired in the U.S. in 2011
- The average salary of “managers” is approximately $59,000
- 25% of managers hired turn out to be serious mis-hires (a.k.a. “C Players”)
- The cost of mis-hiring a C Player is, very conservatively, five times their pay (5 x $59,000 = $295,000)
Cost of mis-hire studies
- 5 times salary for a sales rep
- 15 times salary for upper mid managers
- 27 times salary for highly paid presidents and CEOs
Variables required for success
Just like any other proven process, there are 2 essential non-negotiables you’ll have to ensure in order to reap these rewards.
1) You will have to have a clear company culture (here’s an example) that is actively lived.
2) You’ll have to have an effective leadership that understands the story & will be the gardian of your values & principles.
Leadership is much more than “management”, and it’s awe-inspiring when effectively practiced. These statistics talk about certain key roles, but they are relevant to any role in your organization. Can you really afford to continue to have “C Players” that detract from your potential to scale?
Call to action; how are you insuring your hiring practice
Do you have all of the fundamentals necessary for the skill & will “bullseye”?
Do you have the practice to ladder / drilldown to get the real story and subsequent hidden impacts?
Do you sell sell sell your organization until the candidates can’t wait to come in & get on-boarded? Do you even have an effective on-boarding process?
What are you going to do (differently) next in order to improve your current situation?
If you don’t have some, or any of these, I suggest you contact me for a quick 30m chat that could save your company (and peace of mind).
The act of “management”, by its own connotation and emotional association, is a constrictive exercise with a goal of limiting (the risk) a situation.
You manage a crisis.. you manage a dip in sales or performance.. you manage someone who’s not performing.. etc.
If you find that everyone in your company is managing, then who the hell is leading it?
Leading gets things done
Leading, on the other hand, is an expansive exercise with the goal of getting you beyond a situation. You lead people into the promise land. You lead people to recognize & achieve their untapped potential. You lead an organization into a new market, opportunity and or greater results & performance.
When you’re leading effectively, you’ll find yourself doing a lot less management because people in your organization will be more invested & committed to stepping up to the plate and taking charge. Vested people keep things from having to be managed!
Exclusive vs. inclusive
Management, traditionally, is hierarchical. You don’t hear of people “managing” unless they’ve been promoted. On the other hand, leadership is hierarchical-less and can come from anywhere within your organization. You don’t need to promote anyone into a leadership role, you just need to foster leadership as a desired opportunity that can make anyone shine.
A receptionist can lead an initiative that has everyone in the office become more enthusiastic about the workplace environment. Likewise, as a face to your public, they can contribute impact-filled insight based on what they’re hearing when your audience thinks no one is listening.
Managing is limting
Anytime I’ve walked into an organization that was in trouble, I first had to managed (damage control) before I could lead (taking them to the next level). In my own life, when I’ve found myself in trouble, I’ve first had to manage my circumstances before I could lead myself into a better state.
Sound familiar? If you spend too much time managing, you’re most likely only acting upon the symptoms and not the root cause. That’s called going in circles! You’ll also find that management is a very lonely place. Leadership, on the other hand, is inspiring and naturally makes people want to join in on the fun & celebrate.
Getting ahead of the curve
Over the last 3 decades, especially in the US & Europe, economical cycles have not affected some organizations as it did others. Wether colleagues or competitors, those that found themselves prioritizing a leadership culture not only made it easier to get through tough times, it made them better prepared to leverage the first signs of recovery. They always seem to find themselves 3 steps ahead of others who buried their heads in management roles.
People naturally want to lead & be lead
All of the popular surveys today scream out that people don’t want to be managed. People work best when they’re inspired. People engage more when they believe in a cause, and therefore chose to be led. People will break their backs, astonishing you with their creativity and conviction to succeed when they have a vested interest.
Call to action; it’s your choice
Why are you still managing when you could be leading? The process is simple! You just need to break the pattern and make different choices. Initially it will take some management, but leadership is your end goal.
What one thing can you do today to get you on the road to leading vs managing? How can you align, motivate & empower your organization to truly scale by taking care of the day-to-day and allowing you to focus on leading them to the promised land?
Whilst reading Seth Godin’s recent recent mini article on the illusion of choice, I was transcended back to my own experiences of tail-spin vs. actively taking one significant step toward a solution that matters.
Making an educated “none of the above” choice far outweighs a multitude of decisions that run people in circles & provide no real different result as a consequence.
Making a choice often means admitting we don’t have the answer & seeking help where we haven’t before. Making a choice can be uncomfortable, but I can guarantee it’s an opportunity for growth. Making a choice brings along responsibility and mandates follow-through.
In order to make a rewarding choice we must recognize our existing circumstances and find the root cause of what’s gotten us here. Only then can we say “none of the above” and make a choice to head in a different direction. The saying goes “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.”
What choices are you going to make today that are different from what you’ve done in the past? What hasn’t worked for you (to the degree that you wanted) so far? And how will the next different choice break a recognizable pattern, that instead delivers a different results moving you in the direction you need to be?
The right question is not, “is the path perfect?”.. but rather “is this somewhere I’d like to go?” Because it’s significantly easier to cross a gap when you have a direction and momentum. – Seth Godin’s “life is full of holes”
Think about your own personal or professional challenges? When have you been able to face the unknown and conquer your own fears? What has inspired or encouraged you to take “a leap of faith”?
It’s not easy to leave your comfort zone, but the rewards that come with the learnings are priceless. That’s why I call that space just outside of your comfort zone.. the learning zone. That’s where you learn the most about yourself, what you truly stand for, and what you’re all about.
If you’re unwilling to look inward or backward in reflection to recognize what needs to be changed.. if you’re unwilling to look beyond the hurdle or chasm just ahead of you and find strength in the reason why you must make that leap of faith.. if you’re not ready to embrace the learning zone as a necessary tool to make you better & stronger.. then you’re not really willing to do what’s necessary to make your dreams & ambitions a reality.
Where is it that you want to go? What’s the purpose behind your climb? What’s the support network you’ve engaged to get you there? How have you made your journey relevant to theirs? What are the most important 3 to 5 things that you need to nail in order to be successful? These are only the first questions you should be asking yourself well before you find that next chasm.
And always remember.. it’s significantly easier to cross a gap when you have a direction and momentum.
What’s driving your direction and momentum these days? How are you providing the right direction and momentum to your support team?
“The challenge of communication isn’t to never miscommunicate, it’s to cut down the time between the interaction and the realization that the communication didn’t get through.”
Let that sink in for a few seconds…
“Because the sooner we know we’re not connecting, the sooner we can fix it.” That comes from Seth Godin’s most recent article on “communication”. It’s masterful in it’s simplicity!
The key to scaling an organization ends at relevance and starts with communication. The faster you can communicate to your audience how what you need done is relevant to them and their success, the faster you will get the buy-in, commitment, quality & results you require to achieve your goals.
It’s due this very same logic that makes the One Page Practice so effective in getting people literally on the same page, rowing in unisone in the the right direction, and getting the right results when you most need them.
How are you ensuring you’ve got the most effective and efficient communication protocols in your organization?
It’s not rocket science, people no longer leave their jobs purely for more money, but rather for more intrinsic motivators of personal development & growth.
As Leigh Branham states in his book; The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave, “employee turnover is not an event.. it is a process of disengagement that can take days, weeks, months or even years until the actual decision to leave occurs”. His four fundamental human needs of trust, hope, sense of worth and competence (when lacking) that drive employee disengage and thinking about leaving come straight from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Another latest substantiation that money is NOT an intrinsic motivator can be found on Dan Ariely’s TED Talk: What makes us feel good about our work.
Both of these examples can be immediately traced back to either poor leadership, and or leadership development, or the company was a wrong match to begin with. The latter is resolved when and if the company in question published, communicated & actively lived it’s core ideology.
Seeing as neither people nor organizations change their behaviors unless the pain becomes so great that there is no other choice, I’d love to hear what change you’re going to implement in your behavior as a leader, including influencing your organization’s current behavior. Please comment below..
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