Aug
28
Alec Hogg from Moneyweb provides insight into some of Warren Buffet’s best investment advice. During the question and answer session at the AGM of his Berkshire Hathaway group Warren Buffet made the following comment regarding the best investment that you can make…
"The most important investment you can make is in yourself. Very few people get anything like their potential horsepower translated into the actual horsepower of their output in life. Potential exceeds realisation for many people…… Just imagine you’re 16 and I was going to give you a car of your choice today, any car you wanted to pick. But there was one catch. It was the only car you were able to have for the rest of your life. You had to make it last. So how would you treat it?
Well, of course you’d read the owners’ manual about five times before you turn the key in the ignition. You would keep it garaged; any little rust would get taken care of immediately; you’d change the oil twice as often as you were supposed to - because you would know it had to last a lifetime….
Then I tell the students you get one body and one mind. And it’s going to have to last you a lifetime so you’d better treat it the same way. You’d better start doing it right now because it doesn’t do any good if you start working on it when you are 50 or 60 and the little speck of rust has turned into something big… The best asset is your own self. You can become to an enormous degree the person you want to be."
This is great advice from a truly great investor. Taking the time and energy to investing oneself, is the starting point for great leadership. Leaders invest in themselves in the following ways.
- Leaders surround themselves with great people: Successful leaders surround themselves with great people. Great people challenge our thinking and our behaviours. People shape us as much as we shape them. Leaders ensure that they are shaped by people who have demonstrated their competence and character.
- Leaders read great books: Learning is critical, it is the most powerful lever we have in life. Books challenge our thinking and actions. Books provide leadership insight and a foundation for leadership action. The most important point to remember when reading for personal development is to focus on digesting and applying what we read. It’s not about the quantity of books we read, but how much of what we read that is applied to our lives.
- Leaders have a personal growth plan: Growth does not just happen. Preparation is required for effective learning, growth requires deliberate practice and a conscious effort. One of the best things you can do is develop your own personal growth plan.
“The only difference between who you are today and the person you will be in five years will come from the books you read and the people you associate with” - Charles Tremendous Jones
Investing in oneself takes time and nobody has any extra time, leaders make room for what’s most important and personal growth and learning is most important to leaders. Remember, successful leaders are generally those people who are willing to do what most others aren’t willing to do. How much are you investing in yourself?
Technorati Tags: Growth, Learning, Books, Buffet, Investing, Warren Buffet, Leadership, Management, Business, Development
Aug
24
Talking time to stop and think
Filed Under Personal Leadership | 3 Comments
One of the topics that I have written about on numerous occasions is the importance of setting aside time to reflect and think. How are you doing with this leadership practice? Do you have a place to think and shape your thoughts? Consider the following event in the life of Edward Bear from Winnie the Pooh…
“Here is Edward Bear now coming downstairs on his head bump bump bump behind Christopher Robin. It is as far as he knows the only way of coming down though he feels there really ought to be a better way if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think about it.” - A A Milne, Winnie the Pooh
Winnie-the-Pooh (original version from 1926)
Bump bump bump! Does this characterise your days, weeks and months? Are you acting purposefully? Are you taking the necessary time to think? When last did you set aside some time to think about how and why you’re doing what you’re doing?
Technorati Tags: Thinking, Think, Reflect, Reflection, Action, Results, Leadership, Management, Business, Pooh, Time Management, GTD, Lifehacks, Lifehack, Productivity, Quote
Aug
24
Executives are unhappy with their leadership development
Filed Under Organisational Leadership | 1 Comment
Leadership development is the pressing need of organisations across the globe. Whilst there are organisations investing significant sums of money to develop leaders, according to recent research the results have been disappointing. Management-Issues discusses research by the Global Leadership Forecast 2008|2009, by consultants DDI, which sets out to examine why confidence in leaders is declining despite a heightened focus on developing leadership talent. The study surveyed almost 1,500 HR professionals and more than 12,000 leaders from 76 countries. The key findings of this research is as follows:
- Although three-quarters of the executives surveyed said that improving leadership talent was a top business priority, just four out of 10 were satisfied with what their organizations were actually doing to help them, a decline of 12 percentage points since the last Leadership Forecast was published two years ago.
- “… what emerges from the report is a clear message that while executives want more opportunities to learn on the job, such as special projects or moving to a new assignment, their senior management seldom takes responsibility for making this happen".”
- Almost six out of 10 executives said that they and their manager had not agreed on a formal written plan for their development.
- Only around a third of senior managers were held accountable for the success of leadership development programs.
- Just a quarter of organizations monitor their leadership development programs or formally measure their results. "Great leadership doesn’t happen by accident - organizations need to start listening to their leaders and make the right development investments if they want different results than they’re getting now," Wellins said.
- Only half of organizations globally have succession plans for their leadership team and US organizations even lower than the global sample. “But having succession plans isn’t the whole story - HR professionals indicated that one in three succession candidates fail.”
This research makes it clear that developing future leaders is not seen as a priority by today’s leaders. The sad thing is that one of the primary responsibilities of leaders is to grow and develop other leaders. It seems that we are failing in executing this responsibility. What actions can you take over the following week to start developing a programme to grow and develop future leaders in your teams and organisations?
Technorati Tags: Leadership, Leadership Development, Development, Research, Management, Business, Talent, HR, Succession
Aug
24
The four key components of a personal leadership vision
Filed Under Leadership Practices | Leave a Comment
Stewart Friedman, Professor of Management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and author of “Total Leadership”, wrote a great post titled “Define Your Personal Leadership Vision” discussing the four key components of leadership vision…
“Leadership vision is an essential means for focusing attention on what matters most; what you want to accomplish in your life and what kind of leader you wish to be. A useful vision has to be rooted in your past, address the future, and deal with today’s realities. It represents who you are and what you stand for. It inspires you, and the people whose commitment you need, to act to make constructive change towards a future you all want to see.
Let’s look a bit more closely at the four key components:
- A compelling story of the future is engaging; it captures the heart, forces you to pay attention. Those who hear it want to be a part of it somehow. And they are moved.
- What does your future look like - what’s the image? If others could travel into the future with you, what would they find? A well-crafted leadership vision is described in concrete terms that are easy to visualize and remember.
- The story of your future should be a stretch, but it must be achievable, too. If it were not achievable, you would have little motivation to even bother trying.
- Finally, future simply means out there - some time from this moment forward, but not so far away that’s it’s out of reach.”
These four components provide a great way to test the strength of your leadership vision. If you test your leadership vision according to these four components, how does it stack up?
- Does your leadership vision capture the heart and force you to pay attention?
- Is your leadership vision described with a clear image of the future?
- Is your leadership vision achievable?
- Is your leadership vision within reach?
Technorati Tags: Vision, Leadership, Management, Business, Future
Aug
21
Leader as map maker
Filed Under Personal Leadership | Leave a Comment
Leadership is a journey and an effective leader brings along a map. Maps are useful tools to helping us understand where we are, where we want to be and what route we need to take when journeying from where we are, to where we want to be.
Photo by pingnews.com
A key leadership practice is that of leading change. Leading change requires that we shape people’s thinking. Thinking guides action….. resulting in either great or mediocre performance. Thinking and reflecting results in robust mental maps and robust mental maps leads to effective action. Shaping thinking is about, shaping the maps of current reality and that of future destinations that people carry around in their heads.
As leaders, we are responsible for the mental maps we develop for ourselves and others. These mental maps are used to guide our journey. Peter Senge in his best selling book “The Fifth Discipline” called these mental maps, mental models, which he defined as follows:
“’Mental models’ are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action. Very often, we are not consciously aware of our mental models or the effects they have on our behavior.” - Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline
Mental models or as I like to refer to them mental maps, are the maps of how we see the world and how we understand, the way that the world around us works. These are maps and frameworks which reflect our understanding of the critical aspects of reality. Why is all of this important? Well, the key reason, requires us to understand that we all make decisions, resulting in actions, based on the mental maps we hold of reality. Poor maps lead to poor results. The more effective the mental maps we hold, the more effective is our action, resulting to better results.
- If you get the facts wrong, you get the map wrong
- If you get the map wrong, you do the wrong things and take the wrong action
As leaders we need robust mental maps that help to ensure that we take action that produces positive results. The three steps detailed below describe how we go about building robust mental maps.
1. Map reading through sensemaking: I have posted on the importance of sensemaking to leaders on this blog in the past. The MIT Leadership Center article “Making a Difference by Making Sense” makes the following observation concerning sensemaking.
“As a leadership capability, sensemaking closely resembles map making. At the MIT Leadership Center dialogue on sensemaking, academics and practitioners spoke of places, observations, and directions, of ‘where we are,’ ‘where and why we are going,’ and ‘what we should look for as we go.’… Like cartographers, sensemakers create consequences with their maps. The way they understand and then describe an environment has ramifications, because this understanding guides future action.”
As we travel through life we read the landscape of people, events and consequences. Interpreting and assigning meaning and importance to events and behaviours. Through this process of observation, we begin to develop a picture of how the world works and how we need to behaviour to be effective in it. It’s conclusions that form the beginning of our leadership map.
2. Map making through inquiry: We develop and build upon our initial mental maps though a process of further inquiry and learning. This is how our comprehension of reality and possible futures are developed. Inquiry is not something that just happens, we need to make conscious effort to inquire and build our maps. The inquiry we do may be in the form of research, reading, interviewing other or the observation of cause and effect relationships of everyday life. Some of the best learning happens when we reflect on life’s experiences and the consequences of decisions we make.
3. Map testing through experimentation: Map reading through sensemaking, leads to map making, resulting in insight and understanding, leading to map testing through experimentation. Experimentation with our ideas and insights are important, as poor maps lead to poor results. We need to ensure that we have our maps right. When we act, we act within the context of the leadership map we have developed. Through experimentation we test our maps, testing whether we are getting the results we expected when acting based on our leadership map. After evaluating the effectiveness of our actions, we get an idea of the effectiveness of our mental maps. If, after some experimentation, we are not getting the results we expect, then the map is wrong and requires adjustment.
As leaders, we need to ensure that we are leading from a mental map that results in effective action.
- Do you have a clear mental map as to what is effective leadership?
- Do you consciously use this map to guide your actions?
- Do you test your mental map through experimentation?
- Do have a mental map that is shared with others to align organisational action?
Technorati Tags: Mental Model, Maps, Leadership, Management, Business, Effectiveness, Strategy, Change, Sensemaking
Aug
11
Whilst browsing a Slideshare presentation Inspiring Communication by werner.iucksch the following slide hit me between the eyes.
Great leadership is inspired by great ideas and great beliefs. Every leader needs a solid leadership philosophy, supported by strong beliefs, that guides a leaders behaviour and action. Some of my personal beliefs concerning leadership are:
- Leaders are made
- Leaders are originals and not copies
- Passion Rules! We are made to do what we love.
- Trust is the foundation of leadership! Character creates trust, and trust makes leadership possible.
- Empowerment cannot be given, its an internal attitude and mindset that need to be cultivated and nurtured.
- Touch the heart before engaging the mind.
- Connecting with constituents is the leaders responsibility, the leader must move to connect with others.
- Seek involve the whole person in the work, spirit, soul and body.
- You lead people and manage things.
- Through our word and deeds we teach people how to treat us!
- Leaders are effective only when they play to their strengths.
- Leadership is a choice!
- Leadership is influence and not position.
- You need to win the private victory before you can win the public victory.
How about you? Do you know what beliefs support your leadership philosophy?
Technorati Tags: Leadership, Philosophy, Management, Business, Belief, Principles
Aug
11
4 key factors that impact on organisational productivity
Filed Under Organisational Leadership | 1 Comment
The Institute for Corporate Productivity article “Productivity Is a Higher Priority, but Which Initiatives Really Work?” discussing a the May 2008 survey, of 305 respondents, asking questions about 16 factors that have the potential to raise productivity. Of the16 factors, the following five factors, corporate culture, leadership, compensation and benefit programs, training and development, and performance management. Of the five factors, the most productive organizations furthest outstripped the average ones in the following four areas:
- The culture of the organization: “Seventy-nine percent of the most productive organizations say that, to a high or very high degree, the cultures of their organizations help raise employee productivity.”
- Leadership: “Seventy-six percent of highly productive companies said that, to a high or very high extent, leadership in their companies raises productivity (compared with 48% of all respondents).”
- Employee engagement practices: “Whereas just 31% of average respondents said their organizations use engagement practices to a high or very high extent to boost productivity, 59% of highly productive organizations said they do. Engagement means that workers are mentally and emotionally invested in their work and in contributing to their employer’s success.”
- Employee health/wellness programs: “People like to work for organizations that send strong signals that they care for their employees. These particular programs may be sending those signals more than most other types of initiatives do… It’s also possible that such programs actually boost the physical and mental well-being of workers, leading to higher rates of work productivity.”
The research highlights the importance of effective leadership for company success. Organisational and indeed personal success rises and falls on the effective practice of leadership. What are you doing to develop your leadership ability? What are you doing to develop the leadership ability of others? This may be the most important task of any organisation.
Technorati Tags: Leadership, Management, Business, Research, Employee Engagement, Culture
Aug
11
20 Bad Habits That Can Hold You Back from the Executive Suite
Filed Under Personal Leadership | 6 Comments
A Business Week article lists the following 20 interesting bad habits, complied by executive coach Marshall Goldsmith, describing what hinder leaders from progressing into the executive suite of their organisations:
- Winning Too Much: The need to win at all costs and in all situations—when it matters, when it doesn’t, and when it’s totally beside the point.
- Adding Too Much Value: The overwhelming desire to add our two cents to every discussion.
- Passing Judgment: The need to rate others and impose our standards on them.
- Making Destructive Comments: The needless sarcasms and cutting remarks that we think make us sound sharp and witty.
- Starting with “No,” “But,” or “However”: The overuse of these qualifiers, which secretly say to everyone, “I’m right. You’re wrong.”
- Telling the World How Smart We Are: The need to show people we’re smarter than they think we are.
- Speaking When Angry: Using emotional volatility as a management tool.
- Negativity: The need to share our negative thoughts, even when we weren’t asked.
- Withholding Information: The refusal to share information in order to maintain an advantage over others.
- Failing to Give Proper Recognition: The inability to praise and reward.
- Claiming Credit We Don’t Deserve: The most annoying way to overestimate our contribution to any success.
- Making Excuses: The need to reposition our annoying behavior as a permanent fixture so people excuse us for it.
- Clinging to the Past: The need to deflect blame away from ourselves and onto events and people from our past; a subset of blaming everyone else.
- Playing Favorites: Failing to see that we are treating someone unfairly.
- Refusing to Express Regret: The inability to take responsibility for our actions, admit we’re wrong, or recognize how our actions affect others.
- Not Listening: The most passive-aggressive form of disrespect for colleagues.
- Failing to Express Gratitude: The most basic form of bad manners.
- Punishing the Messenger: The misguided need to attack the innocent, who are usually only trying to protect us.
- Passing the Buck: The need to blame everyone but ourselves.
- An Excessive Need to Be “Me”: Exalting our faults as virtues simply because they exemplify who we are.
Take the time to reflect on the above list. Which three of the above habits most describe habits that are holding you back? Make a decision to change them in the weeks that lie ahead. As John Maxwell reminds us “Leadership is developed daily, not in a day”. By working of removing bad habits daily, we become more effective leaders.
Technorati Tags: Leadership, Management, Career, Habits, Development, Business, HR, Growth
Aug
5
Photo by b_d_solis
Conversation is an important part of effective leadership and change for the following reasons:
- Vision must be shared, before it can be lived… this requires conversation.
- Change is underpinned by conversation Organisations change, when people change…. and … people change one conversation at a time…..
- Employee engagement is driven by meaning and purpose… this requires conversation.
- Execution requires alignment of action…. this requires conversation.
Given the importance of conversations in the leadership practice, the following principles serve as useful guides to leaders wanting to shape conversation:
- Leaders are the custodians of an organisations conversation. Conversation happens on a daily basis in within teams and organisations and much of this conversation occurs by default. By this I mean that it’s aimless and unproductive. The quality of an organisation’s conversation is the leadership’s responsibility. To effectively navigate change leaders need to be proactively engaged in focusing, shaping and influencing an organisation’s conversation. The quality of the conversation can be directly correlated with the quality of the organisation’s leadership. Using conversation deliberately means that we need to think carefully about how we will craft conversation and how we can use it purposefully.Quality conversation leads to effective decision making, engaged employees, a compelling vision and aligned execution. This requires leaders have a clear point of view about, what the organisation needs to be talking about at this time. “A leader’s job is to engineer epiphanies one conversation at a time.” - Susan Scott
- Effective conversation is about meaningful inquiry. An effective conversation is always based on asking questions that matter. This means that leaders must to be open to multiple perspectives and view points. To explore all facets of an issue requires open questioning your primary tool. Asking not telling, using open ended questions then standing back to listen. This is the key skill of inquiry. What is the ratio between asking and telling in your daily conversations?
- Conversations shape the context in which people act. Effective leaders use conversation deliberately to shape the organisations direction. However, without a clear philosophy and vision, the shaping of the organisations conversation cannot happen. Leaders need to have a clear message that effectively sets the container in which conversations take place. A great container for conversation require leaders to be clear about the following issues:
- The organisations purpose - why it exists?
- The organisations key objectives – what it needs to achieve?
- The business model – how it makes money?
- The leadership philosophy - how people behave?
- Their goals, priorities and actions – what is most important, what should be do first?
“What gets talked about in a company and how it gets talked about determines what will happen. Or won’t happen. Conversations provide clarity or confusion. Invite cross-boundary collaboration and cooperation or add concertina wire to the walls between well-defended fiefdoms. Inspire us to tackle our toughest challenges or stop us dead in our tracks wondering why we bothered to get out of bed this morning.” - Susan Scott
- Language and words shape meaning. Effective leaders are very aware of the impact of their words. What a leaders does and what a leader says, are amplified and exaggerated by their constituents. Given this, if leaders don’t take charge of their words and carefully shape their messages, someone else will do it for them.
“…it’s through language that we create the world, because it is nothing until we describe it. And when we describe it, we create distinctions that govern our actions. To put it another way, we do not describe the world we see, but we see the world we describe.” - Joseph Jaworski, Synchronicity: the Inner Path of Leadership
- Build bridges and not walls. Leaders are in the business of building bridged to the future, this require the breaking down of walls! Change will always require the destruction of walls and the building of bridges. One of the best ways to do this in conversation is to replace “Yes, but . . .” and instead say “Yes, and . . .” When someone says something you disagree with, don’t make them wrong with “Yes, but I don’t agree with you” Rather, help them understand that you you have a different point of view “Yes, and in my experience there is another way of understanding that situation.”
- Leaders selectively involve influential people in meaningful conversations. When seeking to bring about change, leaders involve influential people to help shape the message and allow them to take the necessary action to bring the message to life. This involves a very conscious choice of people, and of process that’s convened to manage the organisations the conversation. Conversation taps into our head and hearts, it taps our mind and our emotions. Inspire influential people and they will take your message to others, sparking further conversation…
- Keep the conversation focused on a few key themes. Focus the organisations attention on a few key themes, the essential drivers of performance and shapers of behaviour. Concentrate the key themes on what really matters. These themes must be simple enough to communicate effectively and be understood. They should be repeated over and over, be managed and measured so that they lead to action. Key themes need to be framed so that they capture the imagination and inspire further conversation.
Considering the above principles, how effectively are you leading your organisations conversation?
Technorati Tags: Conversation, Communication, Strategy, Planning, Objectives, Vision, Management, Business, Inquiry, Language, Collaboration
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