Tag Archives: Leadership Coaching

Leadership

Leadership: Seed or Fruit?

Purpose: Learn immediately if you are fostering leadership or ignoring it. Discover the power of nurturing your people.

It was an enormous redwood tree. And due to regulations the forest service had to go to incredible trouble and expense in order to cut it down. The cutting team had to start by climbing to the branches and removing them one at a time from the lowest to the highest. Once at the top they could cut two foot lengths off of the trunk at a time until they reached the ground. It seems absurd to us that they started with the branches and then disassembled the trunk, a process that took hundreds of thousands of motions instead of just cutting at the base of the trunk, which of course, would have affected the entire tree. Recognizing that the efficiencies of working with the trunk in order to influence the rest of the tree holds true when we wish it to live and thrive, we have the choice to take a different approach – yet, many are attempting to grow branches before the trunk.

Leadership is the trunk. Strategic initiatives are the branches. Benefits are the fruit. This is not philosophy; it is a simple statement of the truth.

– Trunk = Leadership

– Branches = Lean Systems, Sustainability, Decentralization, Agility, Customer care, More.

– Fruit = Profit, Market share, Efficiencies, Quality, Environment, Innovation, Compliance, Low turnover, Prestige, Influence, More.

Are you starting at the right place?

There is no other place to start. An idea in action means people in action. The very second someone exposes their desire for the accomplishment of an objective; the idea is in motion through people. The exposure of the idea is leadership in itself, then the actions of people, whether guided by proper principles or not, is leadership.

There is a misconception that leadership is always positive. It is not. Leadership is setting the example. That example can be good or bad. Either way, that example will be followed. In their book, Built to Last, Jim Colllins and Jerry Porras say, “Top management will have an impact on an organization – in most cases, a significant impact. The question is, will it have the right kind of impact?” A manager sitting in his office all day, not interacting, not supervising, not inspecting, not involved, is setting the example for others. And yet, even if there is a low level use of positive leadership principles, there will still be a certain amount of good fruit.

These results, though limited, will usually follow from the power and validity of the idea, the existing infrastructure and manpower, and the mandate from the boss. The compulsory need to interact with others to accomplish a goal for mutual benefit means that a certain level of leadership capability exists and is needed in every person. The trunk of your business is leadership. Your company’s leadership, with its latent capacity, will piggyback the initiative and produce fruit.

In normal conditions of competition and growth, this present level of leadership is sufficient to produce enough fruit to keep everyone happy and focused on marginal periodic improvements. Due to the fact that the ability to produce quantum leaps in leadership capabilities has escaped corporate America, the incremental improvements created through books, seminars and tapes have sufficed.

Ignore leadership development at your own peril – Apply common sense

We have settled for the less involved leadership development approach and the nebulous results because we feel the need to do something without expending the resources that would then demand a measurement of ROI. In a Society for Organizational Learning supported survey, it was identified that one of the current challenges to leadership is that the “pressure is on for leaders to deliver and sustain measurable results and deliver results through others. (however) Focus of results is ROI, yet there is no measurement of ROI for leadership.” Though there is ample evidence to support the positive affects of properly principled leadership, many organizations are unmoved unless they have internal numbers to justify the expense. The cost of getting the numbers, however, is a barrier in itself and leads to an abandonment of a serious program and reliance on the marginal results of “what everyone is doing.”

Are you fixated on line items and task lists?

Our concentration, therefore, moves to the power of the ideal. Sustainability and Lean Manufacturing are the way to go, or it is our ability to be responsive to the market that is important, or by decentralizing we will produce the fruit we want. No matter the complexity of the strategic initiative it lends itself to a task list and line items. We can assign a person; put it in a pert chart and schedule meetings six months in advance. This black and white constitutes our corporate comfort zone.

We are darn good at it, and it predictably produces results – though marginal. We are spending time on the branches, squatting at the end waiting to see the fruit. We are lavishing attention on the branches, pruning, watering and talking to them. If a leaf sprouts, we know it. If a leaf falls, we know it. We mark it in black or red and continue to stroke the bark and fluff the leaves. All the while, the trunk is left to nature for its water, sun and soil.

The growth of the trunk is out of our comfort zone. Dean Hohl, the President of Leading Concepts Inc. explains that, “The objectives associated with leadership, teamwork, and communication, don’t lend themselves to task lists and line items.” They are nearly impossible to quantify and track. It is easy to rest on our experience that the trunk was here when we arrived and it will be here when we leave. We’ve build hundreds of branches, but never a trunk. We then rely on the latent soft-skills of our people to implement the ideals.

Today we find ourselves in an unanticipated predicament, which is pressing us from several different directions and threatening our viability. Foreign competition, new technologies, and ideals that require a shift in corporate culture all seem hard to keep up with and out of our control.

Acknowledging that we can have minimal impact on our competitors, especially those overseas, and that new technologies are something that are requisite for all to grasp, our greatest opportunity for advantage comes from a superior ability to implement the reigning corporate ideals. Many strategic initiatives, particularly sustainability and lean manufacturing, have drawn us in with promises of incredible fruit and their adaptability to black and white. However much these initiatives look like branches, they are actually part of the trunk.

These initiatives necessitate a sea change in corporate culture. Successful implementation requires the buy-in of nearly everyone in the company, which demands a purposeful approach to changing people’s values; a soft subject. The objective of changing people’s behaviors forces us to enter an arena parallel to that of soft-skill development. Our situation demands that we get out of our comfort zone and figure out how to effectively nurture the trunk.

In order to best control the situation our focus must go back to influencing people’s values. Along with helping people understand and value the power of the continuous improvement of lean thinking or the financial impact of sustainability, we have the complimentary opportunity to develop the soft-skills of teamwork, leadership and communication. If we are going to legitimately jump into this arena and do it correctly, not only is leadership complimentary, it is an imperative.

Continue reading →

Leadership

The Leadership Strategy: An Unmined Comstock Lode of Results

During the Second World War, Winston Churchill had a framed inscription on his desk that said, “It’s not enough to say we are doing our best. We must succeed in doing what is necessary.”

The world demands results. Good intentions and promises are no use to it. And one of the best ways for any leader to get results is to employ a strategy, which is a plan, method or series of actions for obtaining a goal or specific outcome. It doesn’t matter what job you have or how many people you are leading, if you don’t come to grips with the challenges of developing and executing strategies, you’re limiting your abilities to get results.

In a sense, strategies are promissory notes, payment due upon demand. One reason for their becoming less than worthy tender is they are not backed by a Leadership Strategy.

Leadership Strategy — have you heard of it? I bet you haven’t. For one thing, it isn’t taught at business schools. And for another, even in the unlikely case that you have heard of it and know what it is, you probably don’t know how to make it happen.

In this article, I’ll show you what a Leadership Strategy is and ways to institute it. It can be far more important than your standard business strategy.

Whereas a business strategy seeks to marshal an organization’s functions around central, organizing concepts, a leadership strategy, on the other hand, seeks to obtain, organize, and direct the heartfelt commitment of the people who must carry out the business strategy.

The business strategy is the sail, the Leadership Strategy the ballast. Without a Leadership Strategy, most business strategies capsize.

To understand what a Leadership Strategy is, let’s look at your past leadership activities.

Divide a single sheet of paper into two columns labeled A & B. At the top of column A write “business (or organizational) strategies”. On top of column B write, “Leadership Strategies” — in other words, what strategies were used to obtain people’s heartfelt commitments to carry out the business strategies?

Think of the strategies your organization has developed during the past few years. They might be product strategies, service strategies, growth strategies, sales strategies, marketing strategies. You do not have to explain it in detail, just give each strategy a tag and write down the tag.

Did the listings in column A match the listings in column B? Were there any listings at all in column B? That gap between what was in column A and what was in column B is a killer gap. It means that the business strategies haven’t been augmented by Leadership Strategies. And when that happens, results suffer.

I don’t care if you lead three people, three hundred or three thousand and more. I don’t care if you’re in sales, you’re a plant supervisor, a marketing manager or a COO, CFO or CEO. You’re going to need a Leadership Strategy.

And if you don’t think you need any kind of strategy, think again. Whatever job you’re doing takes strategic thinking. In fact, getting in the habit of looking at whatever you do in strategic terms gives you a great advantage in your career advancement.

The roots of the word “strategy” come from two German words, the first meaning an encamped or spread out army and then second word meaning “to drive.” In other words, a strategy gives direction, organization and force to an otherwise scattered organization.

Most business leaders are good a developing business strategies. They’re taught how at business schools. But I’ll bet that 9,999 out of 10,000 leaders don’t know what a Leadership Strategy is, let alone how it fits in with a business strategy.

Leadership Strategies are not taught at business schools because such Strategies find their meaning not in abstract formulations or case studies but in what can’t be taught but must be experienced, process and relationship.

And if you haven’t thought of a Leadership Strategy before, start thinking about it now, because it can boost your career in many ways.
Most leaders develop their strategies in bunkers, without taking into consideration those outside the bunker who have to implement it. Unwittingly, they buy into the “fallacy of automatic reciprocity” — the conviction that their devotion to the cause is automatically reciprocated by the people they lead. It’s a fallacy because reciprocity is not automatic. It can’t be ordered. It must be cultivated and earned.

Here, then, are five steps to developing a Leadership Strategy.

(1) Understand your business strategy. There are many books and courses on developing business strategies. I don’t want to re-invent this wheel. Suffice to say you should clearly develop that strategy.

(2) Identify the dream(s) of your cause leaders.

Why do I say “dreams”? Far from being fluff, dreams are the stuff that hard, measured results are made of.

Look at it this way: Leadership is motivational or it’s stumbling in the dark. The best leaders don’t order people to do a job, the best leaders motivate people to want to do the job.

The trouble is the vast majority of leaders don’t delve into the deep aspects of human motivation and so are unable to motivate people effectively.

Drill down through goals and aims and aspirations and ambitions and you hit the bedrock of motivation, the dream. Many leaders fail to take it into account.

Dreams are not goals and aims. Goals are the results toward which efforts are directed. The realization of a dream might contain goals, which can be stepping stones on the way to the attaining dreams. But the attainment of a goal does not necessarily result in the attainment of a dream.

For instance, Martin Luther King did not say, “I have a goal.” Or “I have an aim.” The power of that speech was in the “I have a dream”.

Dreams are not aspirations and ambitions. Aspirations and ambitions are strong desires to achieve something. King didn’t say he had an aspiration or ambition that ” ….one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'” He said he had a dream.

Continue reading →

Leadership

Turbo Charge Your Career With The Most Powerful Leadership Tool Of All: The Leadership Talk Part 3

To develop and deliver a great Leadership Talk, you must understand that every Talk has three important parts. (1) Audience Needs. (2) Strong Belief. (3) Action.

(1) Audience needs: The first step in putting together a Leadership Talk is to understand the needs of your audience. As I explained in Part Two, they cannot be ordered to be your cause leaders. Their commitment is one of free choice. They will not make that choice unless they believe that their being your cause leaders will in some way help solve the problems of their (not your) needs.

All needs are problems. All problems are crying out for solutions. When you are helping them with those solutions, you are a long way down the road of motivating them to make the choice to be your cause leaders.

When you answer these questions, you have a good idea what their needs are. (1) What is changing for them? (2) Who would they rather have leading them besides you? (3) What action do they want to take? (4) What do they feel? (5) What do they fear? (6) What’s their major problem? (7) What makes them angry? (8) What do they dream?

(2) Strong belief: Knowing your audience’s needs is important, but it’s only the first step in developing a Leadership Talk. The next step involves strong belief, not just your belief but theirs. Clearly, you must believe in the cause. But your belief is irrelevant. After all, if you didn’t believe in the cause, you shouldn’t be leading it. The key question is can you transfer your belief to them so that they believe in it as strongly as you do and will commit to becoming your cause leaders?

As I explained in Part Two, you are asking people to take leadership for your cause. Taking leadership is a special undertaking, calling for a special commitment. People will not undertake leadership lightly. It is not your choice for them to take leadership. It is their choice. And to weigh the pros and cons of that choice, they want to know two things: who you are and why you are there.

You must tell them or they will tell you. And if they tell you, you may not like what they say.

As to who you are: In their eyes, who you are involves your knowledge/skills as to meeting the challenges of the cause and your commitment to that cause. If they perceive that you have weak knowledge/skills and/or weak commitment, they’ll peg you as unworthy and maybe worse, untrustworthy.

As to you why you are there. There is only one answer to why you are there: They must know that you are there to help them solve the problems of their needs.

Without communicating strong belief on both counts, who you are and why you are there, you cannot give a Leadership Talk to motivate them to be your cause leader.

(3) Action. It’s not so much what you say that’s important when giving a Leadership Talk, it’s what the audience does after you have had your say. The function of The Leadership Talk is to have people take action that gets results — and more results than simply average results, more results faster, and “more faster” on a continual basis.

Once you begin to see your leadership interactions in terms of physical action, you’ll see your leadership, and the way you get results, in fresh ways. Challenge your cause leaders to take physical action by asking them, ‘What three or four leadership actions, PHYSICAL ACTIONS, will you take to achieve the results we need?’

Having people move from simply saying they will do things to actually taking the physical action to do them will dramatically increase
the effectiveness of your Talk.

I’ve been teaching the Leadership Talk to thousands of leaders worldwide during the past 21 years. Many of them have found that the difference between the Leadership Talk and presentations/speeches is the difference between typewriters and wordprocessors. I remember using a typewriter. I was happy using it. I had no idea that I needed a wordprocessor. But when I bought a wordprocessor and went through the trouble of learning how to use it, I saw how badly I had needed it all along. I saw that it was a quantum leap in terms of speed, efficiency, and productivity over a typewriter. So it is with the Leadership Talk and presentations/speeches. Once you go through the trouble of learning how to use Leadership Talks then applying them consistently on a daily basis, you will find they can transform your leadership effectiveness and boost your career in ways presentations and speeches could never do.

Such transformations won’t happen immediately. It will take you awhile to learn the processes and be comfortable using them. Since you’re not in one of my seminars, where the participants learn tested processes to create and deliver Leadership Talks in a relatively short period of time, you’ll have to rely on putting them together piecemeal.

But in these initial stages of developing and delivering Leadership Talks, putting them together piecemeal is an effective way of beating the learning curve. After all, leadership is long and careers are short. You are not learning to give Leadership Talks as a short term endeavor. It should be a career-endeavor. Step by step, be constantly aware of the three triggers, Need, Belief, Action. Speak from and to those triggers. You may discover that giving Leadership Talks consistently is the best thing that ever happened to your career.

2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

PERMISSION TO REPUBLISH: This article may be republished in newsletters and on web sites provided attribution is provided to the author, and it appears with the included copyright, resource box and live web site link. Email notice of intent to publish is appreciated but not required: mail to: brent@actionleadership.com

The author of 23 books, Brent Filson’s recent books are, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO GIVE GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS. He is founder and president of The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. – and for more than 20 years has been helping leaders of top companies worldwide get audacious results. Sign up for his free leadership e-zine and get a free white paper: “49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results,” at http://www.actionleadership.com. For more on the Leadership Talk: [http://www.theleadershiptalk.com]

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Brent_Filson/1911

 

Leadership

Get Out Of The Stone Age: Give Leadership Talks

160 years ago, the newly invented electric telegraph carried
the first news message. The message zipped 40 miles in a flash over wires from Baltimore to Washington, D.C.

The public was dazzled — except Henry David Thoreau. He wrote: “We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.”

Today, we live in a Golden Age of communication. We have the Internet. We have faxes. We have e-mails. We have streaming video. We have on-line audio. We have RSS feeds. We have logs and blogs.

Yet today Thoreau is as right as rain. When it comes to really getting our messages across, we’re stuck in the Stone Age.

Here’s why. The vast majority of business leaders I’ve encountered are repeatedly making a huge mistake in communication, a mistake that’s screwing up their jobs and careers. They’re stuck giving presentations and speeches. They’re NOT giving Leadership Talks!

What’s a Leadership Talk? Look at it this way: There’s a hierarchy of verbal persuasion when it comes to business leadership. The lowest levels are speeches and presentations. They communicate information. The highest, most effective way of communicating is the Leadership Talk. The Leadership Talk does more than simply send information. It has the leader establish a deep, human, emotional connection with the audience. That’s where leaders communicate for the best results.

Here are a few examples of leadership talks. When Churchill said, “We will fight on the beaches … ” That was a leadership talk. When Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you … ” that was a leadership talk. When Reagan said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” That was a leadership talk.

You can come up with a lot of examples too. Go back to those moments when the words of a leader inspired people to take ardent action, and you’ve probably put your finger on an authentic leadership talk.

Mind you, I’m not just talking about great leaders of history. I’m also talking about all leaders everywhere no matter what their function or rank. After all, leaders speak 15 to 20 times a day: everything from formal speeches to informal chats. When those interactions are leadership talks, not just speeches or presentations, the effectiveness of those leaders is dramatically increased.

That’s where business leaders communicate for the best results. You can order people to go from point A to point B. But the best way to get great results is to have people want to go from A to B. Instilling “want to” in others, motivating them … isn’t that what great leadership is all about?

Don’t get me wrong. The Leadership Talk is not some kind of “feel-good” way of relating. It took me 20 years to figure out how to give Leadership Talks and write two books about it. There are specific processes one must manifest in order to give Leadership Talks. Usually it takes me two full days to teach people how to do it. Once they learn it, they can use it throughout the rest of their careers. The Leadership Talk is relatively easy to learn and it takes years to master. The point is that through it, you can take specific, concrete steps to motivate people to take action that gets great results.

For instance, before leaders can develop and deliver a Leadership Talk, they must first answer “yes” to three simple questions: “Do you know what the audience needs? Can you transfer your deep believe to others so they believe as strongly as you do about the challenges you face? And can you have that audience take ardent action that gets results?” If leaders “no” to any one of those questions, he/she can’t give a Leadership Talk.

160 years ago the dots and dashes that chattered down the wires from Baltimore to Washington spelled out that the Whigs had nominated Henry Clay to run for the presidency.

Back then, Thoreau might have said nothing important was communicated; but today if you want to lead for great results, take Thoreau to heart. Communicate what truly IS important. Don’t give presentations and speeches. Give Leadership Talks. Forge those deep, human, emotional connections with your audiences. Get them motivated to take ardent action for great results.

2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

PERMISSION TO REPUBLISH: This article may be republished in newsletters and on web sites provided attribution is provided to the author, and it appears with the included copyright, resource box and live web site link. Email notice of intent to publish is appreciated but not required: mail to: brent@actionleadership.com

The author of 23 books, Brent Filson’s recent books are, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO GIVE GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS. He is founder and president of The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. – and for more than 20 years has been helping leaders of top companies worldwide get audacious results. Sign up for his free leadership e-zine at http://www.actionleadership.com and get a free white paper: “49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results.” For more about The Leadership Talk: [http://theleadershiptalk.com]

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Brent_Filson/1911

 

Leadership

A Whack Up ‘Long Side The Head Of Human Resources: The Leadership Imperative

When we perceive the simple center in the seemingly complex, we can change our world in powerful new ways.

Albert Einstein perceived the simple E=MC2 in the complexities of physical reality and changed the history of the 20th century.

Big Daddy Lipscomb, the Baltimore Colts 300 pound all-pro tackle in the 1960s perceived the simple center of what was perceived to be the complex game of football. “I just wade into players,” he said, “until I come to the one with the ball. Him I keep!” — and changed the way the game was played.

Likewise, human resources, despite its complex activities, should have a fundamentally simple mission, yet it is a mission that is being neglected by many HR professionals. I call that mission the Leadership Imperative — helping the organization recruit, retain, and develop good leaders.

Clearly, without good leaders, few organizations can thrive over the long run. What characterizes a good leader? A good leader consistently gets results — in ethical and motivational ways. Because they interact with all business functions and usually provide education and training for those functions, human resource professionals should be focused primarily on recruiting, retaining, and developing leaders that get results. Any other focus is a footnote.

Yet working with human resource leaders in a variety of companies for the past two decades, I find that many of them are stumbling. Caught up in the tempests of downsizing, compliance demands, acquisitions, mergers, and reorganizations, they are engaged in activities that have little to do with their central mission. Ignoring or at least giving short shrift to the Leadership Imperative, they are too often viewed, especially by line leaders, as carrying out sideline endeavors.

Many HR leaders have nobody to blame for this situation but themselves. By neglecting the Imperative, they themselves have chosen to be sideline participants.

Here is a three-step action plan to get the HR function off the sidelines and into the thick of the game.

Recognize. Link. Execute.

Before I elaborate each step, let me define leadership as it ought to be. For your misunderstanding leadership will thwart you in applying the Imperative.

The word “leadership” comes from old Norse word-root meaning “to make go.” Indeed, leadership is about making things go — making people go, making organizations go. But the misunderstanding comes in when leaders fail to understand who actually makes what go. Leaders often believe that they themselves must make things go, that if people must go from point A to point B, let’s say, that they must order them to go. But order leadership founders today in fast-changing, highly competitive markets.

In this environment, a new kind of leadership must be cultivated — leadership that aims not to order others to go from point A to point B — but instead that aims to motivate them to want take the leadership in going from A to B.

That “getting others to lead others” is what leadership today should be about. And it is what we should inculcate in our clients. We must challenge them to lead, lead for results with this principle in mind, and accept nothing else from them but this leadership.

Furthermore, leadership today must be universal. To compete successfully in highly competitive, fast changing markets, organizations must be made up of employees who are all leaders in some way. All of us have leadership challenges thrust upon us many times daily. In the very moment that we are trying to persuade somebody to take action, we are a leader — even if that person we are trying to persuade is our boss. Persuasion is leadership. Furthermore, the most effective way to succeed in any endeavor is to take a leadership position in that endeavor.

The Imperative applies to all employees. Whatever activities you are being challenged to carry out, make the Imperative a lens through which you view those activities. Have your clients recognize that your work on the behalf of their leadership will pay large dividends toward advancing their careers.

Recognize: Recognize that recruiting, retaining, and developing good leaders ranks with earnings growth (or with nonprofit organizations: mission) in terms of being an organizational necessity. So most of your activities must be in some way tied to the Imperative.

For instance: HR executive directors who want to develop courses for enhancing the speaking abilities of their companies’ leaders often blunder in the design phase. Not recognizing the Leadership Imperative, they err by describing them as “presentation courses.” Instead, if they were guided by the Imperative, they would offer courses on “leadership talks.” There is a big difference between presentations and leadership talks.

Presentations communicate information. Presentation courses are a dime a dozen. But leadership talks motivate people to believe in you and follow you. Leaders must speak many times daily — to individuals or groups in a variety of settings. When you provide courses to help them learn practical ways for delivering effective talks, to have them speak better so that they can lead better, you are benefitting their job performance and their careers.

Today, in most organizations, the presentation is the conventional method of communication. But when you make the leadership talk the key method by instituting “talk” courses and monitoring and evaluation systems broadly and deeply within the organization, you will help make your company more effective and efficient.

Continue reading →