• Most Popular Posts

  Most Popular Posts

  • Setting SMART Objectives
  • How to Read and Digest a Book!
  • Leaders vs. Managers..... Are they really different?
  • About
  • The ten C’s of employee engagement
  • Do What you Love and Money Will Follow?
  • Leader as social architect...
  • 5 Principles of Innovation
  • The Importance of 'Know Why' over 'Know How'
  • Fish rot from the head down, as do organisations...

  Recent Posts

  • Recent Posts

    • The best investment advice from Warren Buffet
    • Talking time to stop and think
    • Executives are unhappy with their leadership development
    • The four key components of a personal leadership vision
    • Leader as map maker
    • What beliefs support your leadership philosophy?
    • 4 key factors that impact on organisational productivity
    • 20 Bad Habits That Can Hold You Back from the Executive Suite
    • Shaping conversation as a leadership practice
    • A Brief Guide to World Domination

  Recent Comments

  • Recent Comments

    • Boom Daniel on The best investment advice from Warren Buffet
    • The best investment advice from Warren Buffet | The Practice of Leadership on How to Read and Digest a Book!
    • Knowledge is power « Lead on Purpose on Talking time to stop and think
    • Knowledge is power « Lead on Purpose on About
    • causas-e-efeitos.com » Blog Archive » “…too much for the whistle” on Learning from the life of Benjamin Franklin
    • DCO Weekend Reader - 8/15/08 on 20 Bad Habits That Can Hold You Back from the Executive Suite
    • Dan McCarthy on Executives are unhappy with their leadership development

  Blogs I Read

  • Blogs I Read

    • All Things Workplace
    • Be Excellent
    • Dan McCarthy
    • Employee Engagement: Results That Matter
    • Extreme Leadership
    • Leadership Now
    • Leading Questions
    • Life 2.0
    • Phil Gerbyshak Challenges You to Make It Great!
    • Servant Leadership Blog
    • Slacker Manager
    • The Changing NHS
    • The Question of Leadership

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

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

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

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

 

 

Photo by mercurialn

 

“It’s a lonely road for those of us who choose to be remarkable, and the path of convention can sometimes be appealing. That path is paved with safe lives, middle of the road monotony, and little chance of failure. But where’s the fun in being like everyone else out there?” – Chris Guillebeau

I stumbled across a really great blog “The Art of Non-Conformity” by Chris Guillebeau, who has written a manifesto titled “A Brief Guide to World Domination”, it has really got me thinking and I encourage you to download a copy and read it. It will challenge your thinking and encourage you to greatness…

“If you want it badly enough, and are willing to make some changes in your life to cause it to happen, you too can take over the world… or do anything else you really want to do. Yes, you really can have it all. The only things you’ll need to give up are assumptions, expectations, and the comfort zone that holds you back from greatness.“

Consider the following “11 ways unremarkably average” from Chris’s manifesto:

1. Accept what people tell you at face value
2. Don’t question authority
3. Go to college because you’re supposed to, not because you want to learn something
4. Go overseas once or twice in your life, to somewhere safe like England
5. Don’t try to learn another language; everyone else will eventually learn English
6. Think about starting your own business, but never do it
7. Think about writing a book, but never do it
8. Get the largest mortgage you qualify for and spend 30 years paying for it
9. Sit at a desk 40 hours a week for an average of 10 hours of productive work
10. Don’t stand out or draw attention to yourself
11. Jump through hoops. Check off boxes.

Looking at the above list, how many of these ‘ways’ describe you? I think that if you find more than two or three, you need to read this manifesto! Can you clearly and succinctly answer the following two questions…

1. What do you really want to get out of life?
2. What can you offer the world that no one else can?

A true leader is an original, he is not and cannot be a copy! Download and read this manifesto, it will challenge and inspire you to be the change you want to see in the world…

 

Technorati Tags: Mediocrity, Attitude, Manifesto, Leadership, Vision, Purpose, Passion, Career, Life

Leadership can never be divorced from the individual. And as a leader, you cannot impart what you do not possess. This is why “the main ingredient of good leadership is character”…

“The main ingredient of good leadership is good character. This is because leadership involves conduct and conduct is determined by values.” - Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf

Whilst many place value in titles and positions, it’s behaviour that wins people’s trust and respect. One of the foundational leadership principle is that leaders need to model the behaviours and attitudes which they expect from others. The example set by leaders are most powerful when grounded in values and when leaders live their values in their own authentic manner. When is comes to values they are most effectively demonstrated by your behaviour, words count, but not nearly as much as your deeds.

 

Good leaders lead from the front. They take the initiative to go first. People follow a person, before they buy into a strategy and plan. People need more than grand idea. They need to seen the idea lived in the flesh.

 

• Do you set the example by aligning your values with your actions?
• Do you lead from the front?

 

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Values, Character, Behaviour, Management, Example

Leaders do not get enough time to think, this is the result of a recent survey. . .

"… of nearly 1,200 managers and directors by the UK-based Chartered Management Institute has found more than eight out of 10 struggle to prioritise their work, with conflicting demands pulling them in all directions…. Two-thirds complain they have ‘little time to think’ and more than half struggle to find time to plan strategically…. the majority of managers claim they struggle to finish tasks, with seven out of 10 admitting they are not looking for new market opportunities or product gaps in the marketplace."

Taking time out to think is critical for effective leadership. Tom Peters has also discussed the importance of leaders taking time to think, he quotes from the book “Leadership the Hard Way” in which the author “insists that the leader-manager must free up no less than 50% of his-her time from routine tasks.”:

"Most managers spend a great deal of time thinking about what they plan to do, but relatively little time thinking about what they plan not to do … As a result, they become so caught up … in fighting the fires of the moment that they cannot really attend to the longterm threats and risks facing the organization. So the first soft skill of leadership the hard way is to cultivate the perspective of Marcus Aurelius: avoid busyness, free up your time, stay focused on what really matters. Let me put it bluntly: every leader should routinely keep a substantial portion of his or her time—I would say as much as 50 percent—unscheduled. … Only when you have substantial ’slop’ in your schedule—unscheduled time—will you have the space to reflect on what you are doing, learn from experience, and recover from your inevitable mistakes. Leaders without such free time end up tackling issues only when there is an immediate or visible problem. Managers’ typical response to my argument about free time is, ‘That’s all well and good, but there are things I have to do.’ Yet we waste so much time in unproductive activity—it takes an enormous effort on the part of the leader to keep free time for the truly important things."

Are you setting aside time to think? Is it enough?

 

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Time Management, Thinking, Management, Business, Research

Richard Stengel , who worked with Nelson Mandela on his autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom” has an article in Time titled “Mandela: His 8 Lessons of Leadership”, these 8 lessons of leadership are:

1. Courage is not the absence of fear — it’s inspiring others to move beyond it. “Mandela was often afraid during his time underground, during the Rivonia trial that led to his imprisonment, during his time on Robben Island. ‘Of course I was afraid!’ he would tell me later. It would have been irrational, he suggested, not to be. ‘I can’t pretend that I’m brave and that I can beat the whole world.’ But as a leader, you cannot let people know. ‘You must put up a front.’ And that’s precisely what he learned to do: pretend and, through the act of appearing fearless, inspire others. It was a pantomime Mandela perfected on Robben Island, where there was much to fear. Prisoners who were with him said watching Mandela walk across the courtyard, upright and proud, was enough to keep them going for days. He knew that he was a model for others, and that gave him the strength to triumph over his own fear.”
2. Lead from the front — but don’t leave your base behind. “For Mandela, refusing to negotiate was about tactics, not principles. Throughout his life, he has always made that distinction. His unwavering principle — the overthrow of apartheid and the achievement of one man, one vote — was immutable, but almost anything that helped him get to that goal he regarded as a tactic. He is the most pragmatic of idealists.”
3. Lead from the back — and let others believe they are in front. “Mandela loved to reminisce about his boyhood and his lazy afternoons herding cattle. ‘You know," he would say, "you can only lead them from behind.’ He would then raise his eyebrows to make sure I got the analogy. As a boy, Mandela was greatly influenced by Jongintaba, the tribal king who raised him. When Jongintaba had meetings of his court, the men gathered in a circle, and only after all had spoken did the king begin to speak. The chief’s job, Mandela said, was not to tell people what to do but to form a consensus. "Don’t enter the debate too early," he used to say. … The trick of leadership is allowing yourself to be led too. ‘It is wise,’ he said, ‘to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.’”
4. Know your enemy — and learn about his favorite sport. “As far back as the 1960s, mandela began studying Afrikaans, the language of the white South Africans who created apartheid. His comrades in the ANC teased him about it, but he wanted to understand the Afrikaner’s worldview; he knew that one day he would be fighting them or negotiating with them, and either way, his destiny was tied to theirs.”
5. Keep your friends close — and your rivals even closer. “Many of the guests mandela invited to the house he built in Qunu were people whom, he intimated to me, he did not wholly trust. He had them to dinner; he called to consult with them; he flattered them and gave them gifts. Mandela is a man of invincible charm — and he has often used that charm to even greater effect on his rivals than on his allies. On Robben Island, Mandela would always include in his brain trust men he neither liked nor relied on.… Mandela believed that embracing his rivals was a way of controlling them: they were more dangerous on their own than within his circle of influence. He cherished loyalty, but he was never obsessed by it. After all, he used to say, ‘people act in their own interest.’ It was simply a fact of human nature, not a flaw or a defect.”
6. Appearances matter — and remember to smile. “When Mandela was running for the presidency in 1994, he knew that symbols mattered as much as substance. He was never a great public speaker, and people often tuned out what he was saying after the first few minutes. But it was the iconography that people understood. When he was on a platform, he would always do the toyi-toyi, the township dance that was an emblem of the struggle. But more important was that dazzling, beatific, all-inclusive smile.”
7. Nothing is black or white. “Life is never either/or. Decisions are complex, and there are always competing factors. To look for simple explanations is the bias of the human brain, but it doesn’t correspond to reality. Nothing is ever as straightforward as it appears. Mandela is comfortable with contradiction. As a politician, he was a pragmatist who saw the world as infinitely nuanced. Much of this, I believe, came from living as a black man under an apartheid system that offered a daily regimen of excruciating and debilitating moral choices: Do I defer to the white boss to get the job I want and avoid a punishment? Do I carry my pass? …. Mandela’s calculus was always, What is the end that I seek, and what is the most practical way to get there?”
8. Quitting is leading too. “Knowing how to abandon a failed idea, task or relationship is often the most difficult kind of decision a leader has to make. In many ways, Mandela’s greatest legacy as President of South Africa is the way he chose to leave it. When he was elected in 1994, Mandela probably could have pressed to be President for life — and there were many who felt that in return for his years in prison, that was the least South Africa could do.…. ‘His job was to set the course,’ says Ramaphosa, ‘not to steer the ship.’ He knows that leaders lead as much by what they choose not to do as what they do.”

 

Mandela is a great leader and role model for us all..

Happy 90th Birthday Madiba!

 

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Madiba, Nelson Mandela, Role Model, Example, Management, Lessons

An article from the New York Times discusses research by the Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, author of “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success”, has found that people generally approach life with one of two mind-sets when thinking about their talents and abilities…

“Those who believe they were born with all the smarts and gifts they’re ever going to have approach life with what she calls a ‘fixed mind-set.’ Those who believe that their own abilities can expand over time, however, live with a ‘growth mind-set.’… Guess which ones prove to be most innovative over time… ‘People who believe in the power of talent tend not to fulfill their potential because they’re so concerned with looking smart and not making mistakes. But people who believe that talent can be developed are the ones who really push, stretch, confront their own mistakes and learn from them.’ In this case, nurture wins out over nature just about every time.”

This research confirms what we have always known about great leaders, they continually seek to grow and increase their personal talents and abilities. In his book “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership”, John Maxwell refers to this as the Law of the Lid’… 

“Leadership ability determines a person’s level of effectiveness…. the higher you want to climb, the more you need leadership. The greater the impact you want to make, the greater your influence needs to be. What ever you will accomplish is restricted by your ability to lead others…. Leadership ability is always the lid on personal and organizational effectiveness.”

A fixed mind-set creates a lib on our leadership potential, it constrains us, preventing us from becoming effective leaders. Talent will only take you so far, the higher you go, the greater the need for leadership. We can all develop and increase our leadership capability. To be effective we need to raise our “leadership lid” through continuous learning and development, and to grow leaders must adopt a growth mind-set. When leaders stop growing, they stop leading…! Continual personal growth is central to effective leadership.

 

As leaders build their teams, they should be looking not only for talented individuals, but also for individuals who have a growth mind-set.

“Ms. Dweck does not suggest that recruiters ignore innate talent. Instead, she suggests looking for both talent and a growth mind-set in prospective hires — people with a passion for learning who thrive on challenge and change…. People with a growth mind-set tend to demonstrate the kind of perseverance and resilience required to convert life’s setbacks into future successes. That ability to learn from experience was cited as the No. 1 ingredient for creative achievement in a poll of 143 creativity researchers cited in ‘Handbook of Creativity’ in 1999.”

Look to build your teams with talented individuals who have a grow mind-set. People who continually seek to grow and develop themselves.

 

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Growth, Mind-set, Development, Management, Business, Talent

"Leadership: The capacity and will to rally people to a common purpose together with the character that inspires confidence and trust" - Field Marshal Montgomery

This is an interesting definition of leadership by Field Marshal Montgomery, in the definition he highlights to key components for effective leadership:

• A Common Purpose: Leadership is about creating purpose and meaning that is shared by a group of people. Creating a vision is great first step, but unless the vision is shared by the people it’s, will not align action.
• Character that Inspires Confidence and Trust: Who you are as a leader is just as important as what you can do… your competence. Vision and purpose is necessary, but not sufficient, without a proven character people will not follow. Character is supported by core values and a leadership philosophy which inspires trust. People trust leaders who are honest, transparent, are accountable and have integrity. Character is the foundation of leadership, if you don’t believe in the messenger, you won’t believe the message!

 

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Vision, Purpose, Definition, Character, Trust, Business, Management

Google has taken time to clearly articulate their business philosophy, described in the article, “Ten things Google has found to be true”. The article highlights Google’s beliefs, values and principles, which guides how they go about growing and managing their business. The ten things that comprise Google’s business philosophy are:

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
3. Fast is better than slow.
4. Democracy on the web works.
5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.
6. You can make money without doing evil.
7. There’s always more information out there.
8. The need for information crosses all borders.
9. You can be serious without a suit.
10. Great just isn’t good enough.

These are the ten things that support Google’s business philosophy and guide Google’s leadership. In the same way, all leaders need a personal leadership philosophy, a set of values, beliefs and principles that influence how they act and lead.

“In order to live, man must act; in order to act, he must make choices; in order to make choices, he must define a code of values; in order to define a code of values, he must know what he is and where he is—i.e., he must know his own nature (including his means of knowledge) and the nature of the universe in which he acts—i.e., he needs metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, which means: philosophy. He cannot escape from this need; his only alternative is whether the philosophy guiding him is to be chosen by his mind or by chance.” - Ayn Rand, 1966, “Philosophy and Sense of Life” from What makes Ayn Rand’s philosophy unique?

Many leaders fail to take the time to think and reflect on their leadership philosophy, the beliefs, values and principles that supports their leadership. A leaders philosophy is grounded in who they are as individuals. A clear leadership philosophy supports consistent action, building credibility and trust with the leader’s constituents.

• What are the ten things that form the basis of your leadership philosophy?
• Do you live your ten things?

 

Technorati Tags: Philosophy, Leadership, Management, Google, Business, Worldview, Mental-Model, Thinking, Reflection, Values

I have written in a previous posts on the differences between management and leadership and recently I can across an interesting article with an interesting take on the topic.

“Management can be taught. Leadership cannot be taught or learned, it must be earned.”

I like this perspective, it means that leadership is a choice, it’s the result of out attitudes, values, behaviours and our effectiveness. In a nutshell, it’s the results we achieve and how we go about achieving them.

“If one looks at management development literature, it is only over the last 15 - and particularly the last 10 - years that leadership is mentioned at all. Prior to that, leadership was mostly only assigned to historical political figures such as Napoleon, Churchill, Kennedy and so on. These were people who earned the title leader. Leader was never assigned to organisational supremos. Nor was it given to any manager. It seems that some writers, keen to establish what makes a great manager great, settled on the term leadership as a distinguishing factor. Then they tried to define it. Then we tried to measure it. Some of us even tried to teach it! And there our troubles began…… My contention is that one becomes a manager when one signs on for the job, be it head of the country, firm, school, department or first-line supervisor. One only becomes a leader when other people say so….. This definition of leadership, rather than focusing on the inputs, such as personal skills, characteristics, competencies, traits etc, focuses on the outputs. Managers are judged on their status as a leader in the eyes of their followers and stakeholders by what they do and achieve.”

In his research, Bob Selden, the author of “What To Do When You Become The Boss”, found the following four condition required to create the essence of leadership, these are the conditions required for others to follow, there needs to be:

• A shared understanding of the environment - ‘We know what we face‘
• A shared vision of where we are going - ‘We know what we have to do’
• A shared set of organisational values - ‘We are in this together‘
• A shared feeling of power - ‘We can do this‘

What I like about the above four conditions of leadership is that they are shared by the team and the organisation. This view is consistent with Peter Senge who describes leadership as:

"a capacity in the human community to shape its future."

Although the leader makes a choice to create the conditions for leadership, once these conditions are in place, the community becomes empowered to take action towards the shared vision, the result is leadership.

"The wicked leader is he who people despise. The good leader is he who people revere. The great leader is he who the people say we did it ourselves." - Lao Tsu

Considering this perspective on management and leadership and the results of your management over the past year. Take some time to ask yourself the following questions:

• Have you made the choice to lead?
• Have you established the four conditions for leadership in your team?
• If not, what actions can you take over the next few weeks to establish these conditions in your team?

 

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Management, Teamwork, Business, Book, Vision, Values, Research

Talent Management has a great article “In With the New: Leader Dos and Don’ts” that provides some tips of leaders who are transitioning to a higher leadership challenge, from team member to team leader, from manager to senior manager, from senior manager to director. All of these transitions place a higher demand on our leadership capability.

1. Don’t step into the old leader’s shoes. “‘I think there’s often a temptation to try to emulate the persona of the person who was leaving, [and] that’s particularly difficult if the person was a very well-liked leader,’ Lash said. ‘You have to be very careful not to run a popularity contest with your predecessor or be overly concerned with making the same kind of mistakes that your predecessor made.”‘
2. Stand up for what you believe in. “‘A leader demonstrates values, beliefs and behaviors that other people aspire to,’ Lash said. “In order to be able to do that, the first thing that you need to do is to be very clear about what you stand for.‘”
3. The great pretender. “Whenever you delve into new territory, there’s the fear of being ill prepared and unequipped — it’s only natural. ‘Everybody feels a bit of that imposter phenomenon,’ Lash said. ‘The reality is that the majority of leaders feel that they don’t know what they’re doing.’ … But the difference between the leaders who succeed and those who don’t is how they deal with that anxiety”
4. Listen and learn. “In the first 30 days of office, new leaders need to spend an enormous amount of time figuring out where they will get the data they need to make good decisions, and much of that involves listening to others and keeping an objective and open mind, Lash said. ‘The worst thing a new leader can do is be so consumed with taking action that they don’t take the time to listen,’ he said…. While the tendency might be to prejudge people or speak only to other executives, new leaders need to get down into the trenches and listen to as many perspectives as possible, Lash said. And while obtaining hard data is important, it’s having the soft data — the perceptions, attitudes and emotional underpinnings of the company — that allow a leader to excel.”
5. Seek advice. “New leaders get to where they are because they are competent high potentials who are widely esteemed in the organization. But sometimes living up to that reputation can force self-reliance, Lash said. ‘What you end up doing is you try to protect that trait or that image at all costs,’ he said. “You tend not to reach out to others; you tend to try to solve all the problems yourself. And you somehow assume that if you don’t know something that you’ll just have to figure it out because you certainly can’t go to other people…. The best leaders, however, recognize and acknowledge their weaknesses and seek out trusted advisers to help them”

Leadership transitions are always challenging, causing us to stretch a grow. Whilst leadership transitions are exciting, they are risky and need to be managed carefully. These tips provide a great starting place for preparing for a leadership transition.

 

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Transition, Leadership Development, Management, Business, Plan, Growth, 90 Days

“The more you are like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.” — Walt Disney

Warren Bennis one of my favourite leadership authors, in his book "On Becoming a Leader", he discusses how leaders are originals and not copies. To be an original, a leader must know and understand what and who he is. In the book Warren spends time talking about how important it is to understand who we are, some of his insights….

"Leaders have nothing but themselves to work with…. we are our own raw material. Only when we know what we’re made of and what we want to make of it can we begin our lives - and we must do it despite an unwitting conspiracy of people and events against us….. To become a leader, then, you must become yourself, become the maker of your own life….. Know thyself, then, means separating who you are and who you want to be from what the world thinks you are and wants you to be….. Until you make your life your own, you’re walking around in borrowed clothes."

These are great insights. We too often either go with the flow or adapt ourselves to the environment, and if we do this too often, eventually we lose ourselves.

 

• How are you doing in his area?
• Do you spend time reflecting on who you are and who you want to be?
• Are you striving to become more of who you are?
• Are you an original? Are you unique?

 

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Reflection, Original, Quote, Business, Book, Management

Photo by homelessballoon

 

An article by Dan Heath and Chip Heath, in Fast Company, Analysis of Paralysis discusses a key principle, "If your strategy doesn’t help employees act, it’s not a strategy.", as discussed in the article….

"Researchers Eldar Shafir and Donald Redelmeier helped prove this point in an article in The Journal of the American Medical Association. They gave doctors the medical history of a 67-year-old man who’d been suffering chronic hip pain from osteoarthritis. He’d been given drugs to treat his pain, but they had been ineffective, so there was only one viable option: hip-replacement surgery, which would involve a long and painful recovery. Then a final check with the pharmacy uncovered one medication that hadn’t been tried. Would the doctors like to give the drug a shot? Forty-seven percent of doctors chose to try the medication in a final attempt to keep the patient from going under the knife.

Another group of doctors saw the same facts, except they were told that the pharmacy had discovered two medications that hadn’t been tried. If you were the patient with the bum hip, you’d be thrilled–two nonsurgical options are better than one. But when the doctors were presented with two nonsurgical options, only 28% chose to try either one.

What happened here is decision paralysis. More options, even good ones, can freeze us, leading us to stick with the "default" plan, which in this case was slicing open someone’s hip. This clearly is not rational behavior, but it is human behavior. Similar tests with different groups have revealed consistent results.

Think about the sources of decision paralysis in your organization. Every business must choose among attractive options: growing revenue versus maximizing profitability, quality versus speed to market. Fold together lots of these tensions, and you have a surefire recipe for paralysis. It took only two options to fuzz the doctors’ brains. How many options have your people got? As Barry Schwartz puts it in his book The Paradox of Choice, as we face more and more options, ‘we become overloaded…. Choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize.’ …. Simplicity is the way out. Imagine if the doctors in the psychology study had worked for a hospital with the mission statement, ‘Invasive treatments should be a last resort.’ Suddenly, the choice isn’t so paralyzing, even with two drugs. The statement is simple because it makes a decision easier, not because it’s dumbed down. Doctors aren’t idiots."

The underlying principle is that: Simplicity allows people to act.

 

Leaders need a clear leadership philosophy, resulting in a set of principles that are clear and simple. When leaders are clear about their leadership philosophy and openly communicate it to their teams, people can confidently make decisions and act to bring about the leader’s vision. A good example of a leader communicating the principles that others can use to guide the organisation towards a vision is Jack Welch from GE. Remember Jack’s set of six leadership principles….

1. Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it were.
2. Be candid with everyone.
3. Don’t manage, lead.
4. Change before you have to.
5. If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete!
6. Control your own destiny or someone else will.

These principles gave people a means to guide their decision making and actions, knowing that they were acting in the spirit of their leader’s vision. What principles do you use to guide your actions? Is your team aware of your principles? Do they understand them? Do you use principle with your team to guide how you go about achieving your vision? If not, this may be a good time to focus on developing a set of principles to guide how your team goes about achieving your vision.

 

Technorati Tags: Principles, Character, Philosophy, Decisions, Vision, Execution, Action, Leadership, Management, Business, Jack Welch, Simplicity

I found and interesting article from The Josephson Institute entitled “The Character of Leadership” in this article Warren Bennis discusses the importance of character for leaders.

“Successful leadership is not about being tough or soft, assertive or sensitive. It’s about having a particular set of attributes — which all leaders, male and female, seem to share. And chief among these attributes is character…… the noble mission of the leader can’t be used to justify the means. In the leadership arena, character counts. I’m not saying this casually. My convictions about character-based leadership come from years of studies, observations, and interviews with leaders, and with the people near them.”

Most organizations evaluate their executives and managers using these seven criteria:

1. Technical competence or business literacy (knowledge of the territory)
2. People skills (capacity to motivate people)
3. Conceptual skills (ability to put things together)
4. Results (track record)
5. Taste (capacity to choose terrific people most of the time)
6. Judgment (ability to make wise decisions in a fog of reality and uncertainty);
7. Character (integrity to walk the talk).

“Of all these, we know the least about judgment and character, including how to ‘teach’ them. That’s a shame, because I’ve never seen a person derailed from a position for lack of technical competence. But I’ve seen lots of people derailed for lack of judgment and character. The stakes are high for the individual, the organization and the country, so it’s worth knowing more about the character-component of successful leadership.”

What is Character?

“Character isn’t a superficial style. The word comes from the ancient Greek verb meaning “to engrave” and its related noun meaning “mark” or ‘distinctive quality.’ Character is who we essentially are. I also believe, however, that our character is continuously evolving. Unlike some of the Freudians, I don’t think character is fixed at age six. I think we continue to grow and to develop. The corollary of this is that the process of becoming a leader, to me, is much the same process as becoming an integrated human being. I see a real connection between what it takes to be a leader and the process of character growth……. one way to define leadership is as character in action.”

Warren Bennis highlights the following important aspects of character based leadership..

 

Vision

“Leaders create a vision with meaning – one with significance, one which puts the players at the center of things rather than at the periphery. If organizations have a vision that is meaningful to people, nothing will stop them from being successful. Not just any old vision will do, however; it must be a shared vision with meaning and significance…. A vision can be shared only if it has meaning for the people involved in it….. To communicate a vision, you need more than words, speeches, memos and laminated plaques. You need to live a vision, day in, day out — embodying it and empowering every other person to execute that vision in everything he or she does, anchoring it in realities so that it becomes a template for decision making. Actions do speak louder than words.”

Purpose

“I can’t exaggerate the significance of a strong determination to achieve a goal — a conviction, a passion, even a skewed distortion of reality that focuses on a particular point of view. And the leader has to express that determination, or purpose, in various ways….. Michael Eisner once told me that Disney didn’t have a ‘vision statement,’ but rather a strong ‘point of view’ about the Disney culture. When making big decisions, Eisner says, ‘the strongest point of view almost always wins the argument.’”

Trust

“Real leaders, and people of strong character, generate and sustain trust. I can’t overemphasize the importance of encouraging openness, even dissent…. Leaders must be candid in their communications and show that they care. They have to be seen to be trustworthy. Most communication has to be done eyeball to eyeball, rather than in newsletters, on videos, or via satellite. One of the best ways to build trust is by deep listening. People’s feeling that they’re being heard is the most powerful dynamic of human interaction. Listening doesn’t mean agreeing, but it does mean having the empathic reach to understand another…… To trust others, to have confidence in them, people of course also need to see evidence of competence……. Yet another indispensable aspect of character, and leadership, is constancy……. Before they can trust a leader, followers have to know what to expect. So sometimes leaders have to put off their grand ideas or glorious opportunities until they have had a chance to convince their allies of the ideas’ value. In business, as in politics, the effectiveness of a decision is the quality of the decision multiplied by the acceptance of it….. What all these behaviors and skills surrounding trust add up to is integrity, and that means character.”

Action

“What employees want most from their leaders is direction and meaning, trust and hope. Every good leader I have spoken with has had a willful determination to achieve a set of goals, a set of convictions, about what he or she wanted the organization to achieve. Every leader  had a purpose. Remember what hockey great Wayne Gretzky says, ‘It’s not where the puck is that counts. It’s where the puck will be.’ Character counts because, in the leader, character is having the vision to see things not just the way they are but the way they should be — and doing something to make them that way…… Leaders have a bias toward action. They have the capacity to convert purpose and vision into action. It just isn’t enough to have the great vision people can trust. It has to be manifest in some external products and results. Most leaders are pragmatic dreamers or practical idealists (even though those descriptions may seem like oxymorons). They step up and take their shots every day, perhaps knowing that ‘you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take,’ to borrow another line from ice-rink philosopher Gretsky…… ‘Strike hard and try everything,’ wrote Henry James. You’re never going to get anywhere unless you risk and try and then learn from each experience. Leaders have to play even when it means making mistakes. And they have to learn from those mistakes….. Companies are the direct reflection of their leaders. All the leaders I know have a strongly defined sense of purpose. And when you have an organization where the people are aligned behind a clearly defined vision or purpose, you get a powerful organization. Effective leaders are all about creative collaboration, about creating a shared sense of purpose. People need meaningful purpose. That’s why we live. With a shared purpose you can achieve anything. And that’s why a central task for the leader is the development of other leaders, creating conditions that enhance the ability of all employees to make decisions and create change. The leader must actively help his or her followers to reach their full leadership potential. As Max De Pree once put it: ‘The signs of outstanding leadership appear primarily among the followers.’”

How do you go about becoming a good leader?

“Figure out what you’re good at. Hire only good people who care, and treat them the way you want to be treated. Identify your one or two key objectives or directions and ask your coworkers how to get there. Listen hard and get out of their way. Cheer them. Switch from macho to maestro. Count the gains. Start right now”

Highly Recommended Reading..

If you haven’t read any of Warren Bennis’s books I would strongly encourage you to do so. He has authored more than twenty-five books, many of them on the topic of leadership. Some of my personal recommendations are:

 

 

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Management, Books, Vision, Character, Purpose, Action, Integrity, Warren Bennis, Business, Meaning, Significance

The leadership practice of being fully present and in the moment is one of the most powerful and difficult leadership practices we can master. This state of being is captured by Lao-Tzu as follows:

Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?
The Master doesn’t seek fulfillment.
Not seeking, not expecting,
she is present, and can welcome all things.

The practice of being present and mindful in our leadership is an important discipline. Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee discuss this topic in the article ”In a Bad Spot? Try Mindfulness” have shed some light of this critical leadership skill.

When navigating through uncertainty, especially during times to rapid change, crisis or when facing novel situations the ability to be fully present is critical. This is because in these types of situations, “When faced with this kind of turbulence, mindfulness becomes even more important. You need more, rather than less, information, and it is generally more difficult to get. You need to leverage your strengths and find those people who are succeeding despite the disruptions. You need to stay calm.“

Their advice?

“In high-pressure situations….. many people point outward: They find reasons for their problems outside of themselves. They blame others or the situation and they look for excuses. Good leaders point inward: They take personal responsibility for what is happening and what needs to be done, even when circumstances play a definitive role. Dan Sontag routinely asks himself, ‘What is my part in creating this situation and what do I, personally, need to do about it?’….. In high-pressure situations . . . most people point outward: They find reasons for their problems outside of themselves.”

The ability to be fully present and to respond appropriately to the situation unfolding before you requires self-mastery. One wrong step and the situation can spiral out of control. To help remain mindful the authors point out that one needs to be self-aware and have an understanding of your environment and the people around you.

 

Self-Awareness

“Knowing yourself enables you to make choices about how you respond to people and situations. Deep knowledge about yourself enables you to be consistent, to present yourself authentically, as you are. We trust—and follow—people who are real, who are consistent, whose behavior, values, and beliefs are aligned. We trust people whom we do not constantly have to second-guess…. Honing the skills of mindful attention to oneself enables us to make better choices because we recognize and deal with our internal state — thoughts, physical sensations, and emotions. We are then better able to make sense of people and situations around us. Our perceptions are clear, not clouded by our own filters, biases, and unexplored or unacknowledged feelings. Through purposeful, conscious direction of our attention, we are able to see things that might normally pass right by us, giving us access to deeper insight, wisdom, and choices.”

Environment and People Awareness

“For a leader, each conversation and exchange is an opportunity to gather valuable information about people, groups, and cultures, while building relationships and resonance. Attending carefully to our human environment and our relationships enables us to see details we may have missed and generate more accurate ideas about what is really going on. We notice subtle patterns in people’s behavior, group dynamics, organizational processes, and even worldwide events. When we are mindful, we are more in control of ourselves and situations simply because we see reality more clearly. … paying attention to the dance between people and groups. By listening to their conversations, watching how they interacted, and noting what they hinted about one another in one-on-one discussions with her, she saw subtle signs of competition and mistrust among the members of the group. She also noticed the opposing side’s quiet satisfaction in the face of this situation.”

The ability for us to be fully present, mindful of our internal state and the environment allows us to respond as true leaders. This practice is especially required when managing organisational change and crisis situations. The more we practice being present the better we are able to influence, guide and lead.

 

Technorati Tags: Mindfulness, Being Present, Change, Crisis, Practice, Leadership, Management, Business, Self-Awareness

The more I read about leadership and as I observe leaders in organisations I’ve come to believe the Russian proverb that “A fish rots from the head.” as true and found that it applies equally to organisations. An organisation is the shadow of the top leader. An organisation and a team is only as successful as it’s leader. John Maxwell calls this “The Law of the Lid“, which states that:

“Leadership ability determines a person’s level of effectiveness…… Leadership ability is always the lid on personal and organisational effectiveness.”

Show me a frustrated team and I’ll show you a weak leader.
Show me an under performing organisation and I’ll show you a weak leader.
Show me an apathetic church and I’ll show you a weak leader.
Show me a losing team and I’ll show you a weak leader.

But…..

Show me a focused team and I’ll show you a great leader.
Show me a high performing organisation and I’ll show you a great leader.
Show me a passionate church and I’ll show you a great leader.
Show me a winning team and I’ll show you a great leader.

“The spirit of the organisation is created from the top” - Peter Drucker

Organisations and teams require great leadership to thrive and succeed. It seems that far too often organisations are over-managed and under-led. The leadership at the top of an organisation is of paramount importance. I’m still amazed at the lack of focus on an organisations top leadership and what truly astonishes me is the lack of urgency when it comes to removing poor performing leaders. All too often poor leaders are left to destroy customer relationships and staff morale. Leadership has be held to a higher standard, especially when is comes to their character.

I cannot over-emphasise the importance of selecting the best people for top leadership positions. How do we