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I found this really quote interesting, it’s from a post I found on Management Craft…

“In the years since, I’ve come to believe that there are two approaches to life. The first, followed by most, the the “paint by numbers kit” approach to life. You do what other people say. You follow a well-traveled path. You stay within the lines. And you end up with a nice, pretty - and unimaginative - picture. The second, followed by few, is to start with a blank canvas and try to paint a masterpiece. It is a riskier path, a harder path, a path filled with ambiguity and creative choice. But it is the only way to make your life itself a creative work of art.” - Jim Collins (Foreword to the book “The Highest Goal: The Secret that Sustains You in Every Moment“, by Michael Ray)

What struck me is how many leaders ‘play it safe’. As leaders we should be taking risks, pushing the boundaries and challenging paradigms. Since when has ’safety’ been the objective of leaders? Never! Many ‘leaders’ fall into the trap of remaining “within the lines”. They remain “within the lines” of their peers expectations, the remain “within the lines” of their ‘job descriptions’, they “remain within the lines” of their existing skills and “they remain within the lines” of their industry. How about you? Are you actively redefining your life as a creative work of art?

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Management, Business, Attitude, Attitude, Quote

An article from Gallup Management Journal titled “The Impact of Positive Leadership“discusses the benefits of positive leadership. In the article Tom Rath Coauthor of “How Full Is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life” discusses the importance of positive interactions in the workplace.

Over the past decade, scientists have explored the impact of positive-to-negative interaction ratios in our work and personal life. And they have found that this ratio can be used to predict — with remarkable accuracy — everything from workplace performance to divorce. This work began with noted psychologist John Gottman’s exploration of positive-to-negative ratios in marriages. Using a 5:1 ratio, which Gottman dubbed “the magic ratio,” he and his colleagues predicted whether 700 newlywed couples would stay together or divorce by scoring their positive and negative interactions in one 15-minute conversation between each husband and wife. Ten years later, the follow-up revealed that they had predicted divorce with 94% accuracy.

So what is the optimal positive-to-negative ratio in organizations? A recent study by psychologist Barbara Fredrickson and mathematician Marcial Losada found that work teams with a PNR greater than 3:1 were significantly more productive than workgroups that did not reach this ratio. Positive emotions, however, need to be grounded in reality: Their research also uncovered an upper limit for positive-to-negative ratios of 13:1. When workgroups exceed that PNR, things are likely to worsen; completely blind optimism can be counterproductive — and downright annoying — in some cases.

But managers shouldn’t worry about breaking the upper limit. The levels of positive emotions in most organizations are woefully inadequate and leave substantial room for improvement.

Leaders need to be very conscious of how their emotions and behaviour impacts their followers. As mentioned leaders need to actively manage the tension between “being positive” and the need to “face reality”. To manage this tension positive leaders remain engaged, but focus on the future they’re trying to create. Always accepting responsibility to be the difference they want to see in others.

How positive are your interactions? What’s your ratio? Have you consciously chosen to be positive?

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Management, Business, Role Model, Attitude, Research, Teams

An interesting article, “Seven Characteristics of Highly Effective Entrepreneurial Employees” by Joe Hadzima a senior lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management.

• Ability to Deal With Risk.
• Results Oriented.
• Energy.
• Growth Potential.
• Team Player.
• Multitasking Ability.
• Improvement Oriented.

Technorati Tags: Management, Career, Entrepreneurship, Business

Interesting research on employee engagement from Gallup Management Journal.

Organizations that understand the connections between worker stress and health and well-being can help their employees manage stress and find balance in their work and personal lives. When they do, productivity and engagement improve.

The Gallup Management Journal surveyed U.S. employees to probe their perceptions of how happiness and well-being affect their job performance. Gallup researchers examined employee responses to see which factors differed most strongly among engaged employees (27% of respondents) and those who were not engaged (59%) or actively disengaged (14%).

Gallup research……. show that supervisors play a crucial role in worker well-being and engagement. When respondents were asked to respond to the statement “My supervisor focuses on my strengths or positive characteristics,” 77% of engaged workers strongly agreed with the statement. Just 23% of not-engaged and a scant 4% of actively disengaged workers strongly agreed that their supervisor focused on their strengths or positive characteristics. Interestingly, not one engaged worker disagreed with this statement.

Read the rest of the article here.

Technorati Tags: Research; Organisational Leadership; Management; Leadership

The T+D Blog has an interesting article on some of the reasons why top CEO’s get fired. According to a four-year study from LeadershipIQ.com, CEO’s were fired due to:

• Mismanaging change (31%)
• Ignoring customers (28%)
• Tolerating low performers (27%)
• Denying reality (23%)
• Too much talk, not enough action (22%)

Technorati Tags: Management, Leadership, Business, CEO

“What is the managers job? It is to direct the resources and the efforts of the business toward opportunities for economically significant results. This sounds triteand it is. But every analysis of actual allocation of resources and efforts in business that I have ever seen or made showed clearly that the bulk of time, work, attention, and money first goes to problems rather than to opportunities, and, secondly, to areas where even extraordinarily successful performance will have minimal impact on results.

What is the major problem? It is fundamentally the confusion between effectiveness and efficiency that stands between doing the right things and doing things right. There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all. Yet our tools especially our accounting concepts and detail focus on efficiency. What we need is (1) a way to identify the areas of effectiveness (of possible significant results), and (2) a method for concentrating on them.” - Peter F. Drucker

[Via: Management & Leadership Quotes]

Technorati Tags: Management, Effectiveness, Leadership, Drucker

Be Excellent directed me to a collection of formal leadership definitions, some of the definitions that stood out for me are:

Leadership is “the behavior of an individual. . . directing the activities of a group toward a shared goal.” (Hemphill & Coons, 1957)

“The servant-leader is servant first…It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead…” (Greenleaf, 1970)

Leadership is “the process of influencing the activities of an organized group toward goal achievement.” (Rauch & Behling, 1984)

Leadership is “a process of giving purpose (meaningful direction) to collective effort, and causing willing effort to be expended to achieve purpose.” (Jacobs & Jaques, 1990)

“Leadership is about articulating visions, embodying values, and creating the environment within which things can be accomplished.” (Richards & Engle, 1986)

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Quotes, Quote, Definitions

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