Positive Leadership: Neuroscience and Leadership

Emerging findings in neuroscience research suggest why inspiring and supportive relationships are important — they help activate openness to new ideas and a more social orientation to others. 

If you believe that leadership involves inspiring others and motivating them to be their best and develop, learn, adapt and innovate, then activating the parts of their brain that will help requires that we: (1) be social; and (2) engage the person in positive, hopeful contemplation of a desired future. The latter might also be stimulated when discussing core values and the purpose of the organisation or project.

All too often, people in leadership positions begin conversations about the financials or metrics and dashboard measures of the desired performance. While important, this sequence confuses people and may result in them closing down cognitively, emotionally and perceptually.

If you want them to open their minds, you need to discuss the purpose of the activity (not merely the goals) and the vision of the organisation or clients if a desired future were to occur. THEN, you can lead a discussion about the financials, metrics and measures. But you have made it clear that the measures follow the purpose, they have not become the purpose.

Insights such as these may move the primacy of a leader’s actions away from the often proselytised “results-orientation” toward a relationship orientation.

Learn about this and other important findings in neuroscience that have the potential to tell us what we need to know to be good, even great leaders - http://www.iveybusinessjournal.com/neuroscience-and-leadership-the-promise-of-insights

Positive Leadership: Neuroscience and Leadership

Positive Leadership: Creating the High Trust Organisation

This is the conclusion of a truly inspirational essay by the co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market, John Mackey. 

The essay is to be commended - http://www.managementexchange.com/blog/creating-high-trust-organization

‘We have the opportunity to create more conscious and higher trust organisations in the 21st century. To do so will require three major changes.

First the organisation must become conscious of what its higher purposes are. Without consciousness of higher purposes, organisations will not reach their fullest potential because the creative energy within the organisation will not be fully expressed.

Secondly, we’ll need our leaders to evolve to higher levels of consciousness and trust themselves. We will not be able to create high trust organisations without more conscious and high trust leaders. Less conscious leaders will tend to hold their organisations back.

Thirdly, we will need to evolve the cultures of our organisation in ways that create processes, strategies, and structures that encourage higher levels of trust. These will necessarily include the important ideals of teams, empowerment, transparency, authentic communication, fairness, love and care.’

Positive Leadership: Creating the High Trust Organisation

Positive Leadership: Gender Bias in Leader Selection

According to the glass cliff phenomenon, companies in trouble often turn to female leaders in an attempt to break the status quo of male mismanagement, because feminine attributes are associated more with cooperation and other interpersonal skills needed to rescue a firm from crisis.

For more, see: http://www.strategy-business.com/article/re00125?gko=01ae0

Positive Leadership: Gender Bias in Leader Selection

Positive Leadership: How Young CEO's See The World

The 50 and under set of chief executives are looking for highly skilled workers around the planet to tackle complex tasks:

Positive Leadership: How Young CEO's See The World

Positive Leadership: Managing Yourself: Zoom In, Zoom Out

Zoom buttons on digital devices let us examine images from many viewpoints. They also provide an apt metaphor for modes of strategic thinking. Some people prefer to see things up close, others from afar. Both perspectives have virtues. But they should not be fixed positions, says Harvard Business School’s Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter. To get a complete picture, leaders need to zoom in and zoom out.

A close-in perspective is often found in relationship-intensive settings. It brings details into sharp focus and makes opportunities look large and compelling. But it can have significant downsides. Leaders who prefer to zoom in tend to create policies and systems that depend too much on politics and favours. They can focus too closely on personal status and on turf protection. And they often miss the big picture. When leaders zoom out, they can see events in context and as examples of general trends. They are able to make decisions based on principles. Yet a far-out perspective also has traps. Leaders can be so high above the fray that they don’t recognise emerging threats. Having zoomed out to examine all possible routes, they may fail to notice when the moment is right for action on one path. They may also seem too remote and aloof to their staffs.

The best leaders can zoom in to examine problems and then zoom out to look for patterns and causes. They don’t divide the world into extremes—idiosyncratic or structural, situational or strategic, emotional or contextual. The point is not to choose one over the other but to learn to move across a continuum of perspectives. 

For more, see: http://ht.ly/46yCH

Positive Leadership: Managing Yourself: Zoom In, Zoom Out

Positive Leadership: The New Business Elite

Here are the top companies in the Fortune Magazine listing of the World's Most Admired Companies 2011, ranked by attribute, as reflected in the last survey before the recession (2007) and in this year’s survey.

(The top ranked British company is British American Tobacco, albeit it does not feature in the World's Top 50.):

Attribute	Pre-recession champ	New champ
Ability to attract, develop, and keep talented people	General Electric	Goldman Sachs
Effectiveness in conducting its business globally	Nestlé	McDonald’s
Innovativeness	Apple	Apple
Quality of management	Procter & Gamble	McDonald’s
Quality of products and services	Anheuser-Busch	Amazon.com
Responsibility to the community and environment	UPS	Statoil
Soundness of financial position	Exxon Mobil	Google
Value as a long-term investment	Berkshire Hathaway	Google
Wise use of corporate assets	Exxon Mobil	McDonald’s

For more, see http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/02/news/companies/most_admired_intro.fortune

Positive Leadership: The New Business Elite

Positive Leadership: The Benefits of Being Positive

Over the years there has been much research on the positive effects of being positive and the negative effects of being negative. The research is clear. It really does pay to be positive and the benefits include enhanced health and longevity, happiness, career advancement, athletic performance, team building and financial success. Being positive is not just a nice way to live. It’s the way to live. In this spirit here are 11 benefits of being positive.

1. Positive People Live Longer - In a study of nuns, those that regularly expressed positive emotions lived on average 10 years longer. (The Nun Study)

2. Positive work environments outperform negative work environments. (Daniel Goleman)

3. Positive, optimistic sales people sell more than pessimistic sales people. (Martin Seligman)

4. Positive leaders are able to make better decisions under pressure. (Heartmath.org)

5. Marriages are much more likely to succeed when the couple experiences a 5 to 1 ratio of positive to negative interactions whereas when the ratio approaches 1 to 1, marriages are more likely to end in divorce. (John Gottman)

6. Positive people who regularly express positive emotions are more resilient when facing stress, challenges and adversity. (Several Studies)

7. Positive people are able to maintain a broader perspective and see the big picture which helps them identify solutions whereas negative people maintain a narrower perspective and tend to focus on problems. (Barbara Fredrickson)

8. Positive thoughts and emotions counter the negative effects of stress. For example, you can't be thankful and stressed at the same time. (Several Studies)

9. Positive emotions such as gratitude and appreciation help athletes perform at a higher level. (Heartmath.org)

10. Positive people have more friends which is a key factor of happiness and longevity. (Robert D. Putnam)

11. Positive and popular leaders are more likely to garner the support of others and receive pay raises and promotions and achieve greater success in the workplace. (Several Studies)

Positive Leadership: The Benefits of Being Positive

Positive Leadership: Reflections on Leadership from Sir Alex Ferguson of Manchester United

Here are some reflections from one of the UK’s most successful football managers ever, Sir Alex Ferguson, on successful leadership:

He believes he was born with a few leadership traits but the rest he learned.

He was born with high energy levels and a natural ability to take decisions. He takes quick decisions and never goes to sleep at night with a decision not made or doubt about one he has made. The rest he has learned. He built the foundations at an early stage:

•             he was a player and so he understood the game

•             he committed to personal training and development e.g. by doing all his coaching awards.

On leadership:

•             He decided on the pursuit of a clear goal at each stage in his career (e.g. he left East Stirlingshire because he knew he couldn't go for the European Cup there!).

•             He believes and invests in young talent and has always recruited good people around him. (All his key staff have now been with him for over 20 years.)

•             He admits that he learns from his mistakes.

•             He accepts that when you are the leader there are many myths that will surround you and untruths that will be said about you but you have to learn to live with that.

•             He leads with a set of values - commitment to the organisation; a belief that his team can be the best; keeping his feet on the ground and leading with humility.

•             He doesn't filter bad news, believing people should know where they stand.

•             He believes no individual is bigger than the organisation and would not hesitate to remove someone (best player or not) if they started to behave like they thought they were.

•             He believes there is now a clear "Spirit of Man U" that will go on beyond him, built by players like Scholes, Beckham and Giggs.

•             And finally, when he was at Aberdeen, with a terrifically supportive Chairman in Dick Donald, their AGM record was 7 minutes! Not a bad goal for any business in itself!

Positive Leadership: Reflections on Leadership from Sir Alex Ferguson of Manchester United

Positive Leadership: Improving the Returns on Leadership Development

In a recent study by the Corporate Leadership Council of the Corporate Executive Board, many organisations indicated that they were moving to increase their investment in leadership development. However, less than 20% of study respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that their "Programmes have delivered the Leader Capabilities Needed by the Organisation."

According to the CLC research, the root causes for the historic poor returns on leadership development investments are attributable to three things:

1. Disconnected Strategy: Leadership Strategy is not integrated with business strategy.

2. Misaligned Outcomes: Leadership outcomes and metrics are not connected with business outcomes.

3. Uncoordinated HR Activities: Leadership activities are not integrated with other HR activities.

The Positive Leadership approach which states that desired outcomes are only realised when the Values of Positive Leadership™ are aligned with business strategy is one response to the raising the returns on leadership development.

For more information on the Positive Leadership approach, please contact: graham.watson@positiveleadership.co.uk

Positive Leadership: Improving the Returns on Leadership Development

Positive Leadership: Hard Work Matters

Dr. Angela Lee Duckworth is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Angela studies non-IQ competencies that predict success both academically and professionally. Her research populations have included West Point cadets, National Spelling Bee finalists, novice teachers, salespeople, and students. Her research validates what we all know to be true: hard work matters!

Positive Leadership: Hard Work Matters

Positive Leadership: Use What You've Got

Marilyn Tam is the executive director and co-founder of the Us Foundation (http://www.usfoundation.org). She has had an extraordinarily diverse life, from her beginnings in a traditional Chinese family in Hong Kong to her meteoric rise in the international business. Her long, distinguished background includes prominent executive roles at numerous world-class companies, including CEO of Aveda, President of Reebok Apparel & Retail Group and Vice President of Nike.

Whatever qualities you have, no matter how limited or broad that they may be in your own mind, Marilyn Tam has set out to show people how to use what they’ve got to achieve their dreams.

Positive Leadership: Use What You've Got

Positive Leadership: Creating a Culture of Accountability

How do successful organisations enable their people to take ownership for delivering on their intended results? Staying competitive usually means finding practical answers to that question. 

From our perspective, creating higher levels of ownership often drives better results and increases the value and growth of the company. To be truly effective in today’s corporate environment, leaders must be able to help find ways to create higher levels of ownership and joint accountability for achieving key results. 

In this video John Spence shares some of his best ideas on how to successfully meet this challenge.

Creating a Culture of High Accountability from John Spence on Vimeo.

Positive Leadership: Creating a Culture of Accountability

Positive Leadership: Building Your Leadership Presence

Here are some thoughts on how you can build your leadership presence:

How You Feel

Be yourself. You need to feel comfortable and confident. The best way to do that consistently is to be who you really are. Putting on an executive-like facade does not work nearly as well as simply being comfortable in your own skin and projecting confidence.

Confidence. You don’t need to have a big, showy personality to have executive presence. Having a strong presence is about confidence, not personality. Even if you are a quiet, humble person it’s about putting your best self out there consistently, not changing your personality.

Fearlessness. 

If you can’t be confident, be fearless. Don’t back off when you are not confident. You’ll come off much worse if you are tentative and worried about what you are presenting. 

Practice and prepare. If you are not comfortable in the moment, then prepare. Don't feel bad about practicing ahead of time. Script what you will say and rehearse it. You will be more confident in the moment, and you will get more confident over time, with practice.

Never mind the details. Don't wait until you feel like know everything. Disconnect "knowing everything" from having executive presence. If you spend all your time learning the details, you will not gain executive presence. You won't be stepping up and putting yourself out there, and to make matters worse, people will always see you in the weeds.

How You Look

Quality matters. It's not about fashion; it's about looking like you care. No one ever felt more confident by wearing a cheap suit. Put some effort in.

Remove distractions. Make sure nothing about your appearance distracts from your competence. Take stock, get feedback. Make changes.

How You Behave

Lead the room. Don't just be in room. Lead the room.

Be fast on your feet. Part of executive presence is being able to actively listen and respond, and not become defensive under attack. You also have more presence if you can be flexible and don't always need to stick to the script.

Be Present! Part of executive presence, is “presence”. You need to put yourself out there. Don’t stay in the shadows. Speak up. Have something to contribute. Be personable. Be the one to ask key questions or put forth recommendations. Don't talk just to talk, but don't be silent just to avoid risk. Step up.

Fit in Socially. You need to be able to fit in to higher level networks. Get over being awe-struck, and find a way to personally connect with people as higher levels. If you can't fit in socially, you will appear junior. You need to make others comfortable that you belong there.

Never Appear Overwhelmed

Ease and grace. Although this is part of how you behave, it’s worth emphasising because appearing overwhelmed is inversely proportional to executive presence. You need to find a way to deal with 'overwhelm' privately, and have others see you as calm and in control. If you appear overwhelmed, no one will see you as ready for more.

Positive Leadership: Building Your Leadership Presence

Google Page 1 Ranking for Positive Leadership

Google Page 1 Ranking for Positive Leadership

The Positive Leadership Approach

The Positive Leadership Approach

Positive Leadership: The Ethics of Excellence

The ethics you live out as you go about your work can provide the foundation for excellence. The high calibre organisation is, after all, merely a reflection of its people.

Positive Leadership: The Ethics of Excellence

Positive Leadership: Empowering your Colleagues

A true leader’s success is not measured by their individual accomplishments – it’s measured by the impact they have on those they lead.

Leading means giving others continuous opportunities to learn and grow.  Regardless of your title or position of authority within your workplace, you can show your leadership abilities by empowering others on a daily basis.  

Start by asking yourself the following questions: 

• What strengths, experiences or best practices can I share with my colleagues that may enhance their overall performance?
• Do I have a colleague who I can help to achieve his/her professional goals?
• Which of my colleagues would benefit from additional or new responsibilities?
• Do I have any tasks or projects that I can delegate in order to provide a colleague with a new, enriching experience?
• How can I make time in my daily schedule to follow-up and ensure that my colleagues are able to come to me with any questions, concerns or problems they may encounter.

Leading is about inspiring others to perform up to their fullest potential. 

When you provide others with new experiences and help them remove obstacles in their path to success, you enhance their knowledge, confidence and ability to achieve peak performance.  Start today by identifying one colleague who could benefit from any specific knowledge, skills or guidance you can provide.  Then commit to their development by empowering them to learn, grow and achieve new heights of success.

Positive Leadership: Empowering your Colleagues

Positive Leadership: Making Decisions

The moment of truth has arrived and it’s time to decide. You have investigated alternatives, narrowed the field, determined all the positive and negative consequences, considered costs and benefits, and, all in all, done a great deal of careful consideration.

But here it is again – that paralysing fear of actually choosing. What if you make the wrong choice? What if what you choose to do doesn’t work? And then you start to sweat and your stomach aches and your head hurts and pretty soon you start to wonder if maybe you should decide not to decide.

Maybe you “have to” choose. Or maybe you’re tired of feeling paralysed and you’re going to bite the bullet and actually do something. But what?

Well, here’s an idea that may help. First, make a list of your choices. Then, rank them with number one the most acceptable, then number two, and so on. Now, focus on your number one option. That’s where your energies should go, that’s the one you should pursue – for now.

Once you’ve chosen, commit to it. Really give it your best effort and a good chance to work. But remember that if number one turns out not to be such a good idea, you can always try the next option on your list, or make another choice.

When you’re stuck, any step in the right direction is a milestone. There’s more than one route to any destination, and this method will give you the breathing room you need to get going.

Positive Leadership: Making Decisions

Positive Leadership: "What Do You Want?"

Have you ever heard of the “if only” syndrome? Maybe you have a touch of it yourself. People with this syndrome often blame others for their disappointments and failures.

They blame their families – “Nobody could succeed with the parents I have.” They blame their friends – “If only my so-called friends would come through for me once in a while.” They blame their circumstances – “It’s obvious that the deck is stacked against me.” Their complaints frequently start with the words “if only,” such as, “If only I had more money. If only I had paid more attention in school. If only I was better looking, a different race, a different age.” You get the picture.

They stumble through life feeling anxious or depressed, dreaming of unlikely events that will transform them, magically, through little or no effort of their own. And, because they envy others, it’s hard for them to feel any genuine pleasure in anyone else’s successes.

The cure for the “if only” syndrome is to take responsibility for your own life once and for all. Give up blame and learn to hope. Give up finding fault and learn to set achievable goals. Give up thinking about what you’d do if you won the lottery, and figure out what you can do with the 50 pounds you have now.

By the way, do you know the magic of taking responsibility for your failures? When you do, you also take control of your success.

Positive Leadership: "What Do You Want?"

Positive Leadership: The Purpose of Leadership

Purpose is at the heart of Positive Leadership. Focusing on the purpose of the team allows good leaders to lead their followers in a way that gets desired results. 

Recent research has looked at the effects of understanding and embracing purpose or the ‘why’ of an organisation.

In one study, Adam Grant of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School visited a call centre at a large American university, where each night employees made phone calls to alumni to raise scholarship funds.

With the permission of the university, Grant and his team randomly divided the call centre representatives into three groups. For a few days, before they made calls, people in the first group read brief stories from previous employees about the personal benefits of working in the job – how they developed communication skills and sales know-how that later helped them in their careers.

The second group also read stories before hitting the phones, but theirs were from people who had received scholarships from the funds raised and who described how the money had improved their lives. The aim of these stories was to remind workers of the purpose of their efforts.

The third group was the control group; they read nothing before dialling for dollars. Participants were also told not to discuss what they’d read with the recipients of their calls. Then a month later, Grant measured the performance of the three groups.

The people in the first group, who’d been reminded of the personal benefit of working in a call centre, did no better than those in the control group. Both groups earned about the same number of weekly pledges and raised the same amount of money as they had in the weeks before the experiment.

However, the people in the second group – who took a moment to consider the significance of their work and its effect on others’ lives – raised more than twice as much money, in twice as many pledges, as they had in previous weeks and significantly more than their counterparts in the other two groups.

In other words, reminding employees about purpose – the “why” – doubled their performance.

For more, see: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/8288971/Think-Tank-Have-you-ever-asked-yourself-why-youre-in-business.html

Positive Leadership: The Purpose of Leadership

Authentic Leadership: How You Can Take the Lead

Betsy Myers can tell you what being an authentic leader means to her. As a woman who has had careers in the private, corporate, and political arenas, Ms. Myers knows that being an authentic leader requires tremendous self-awareness and the right team of people who will act as your support group. 

Ms Myers served as a senior adviser to Barack Obama’s Presidential Campaign. Prior to this appointment, Myers was the Executive Director of the Centre for Public Leadership at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. 

Ms. Myers has drawn her inspiration to succeed and her support from a broad collection of people: her colleagues, public and political leaders, and close family and friends. She knows that leading an authentic life plays a critical role in the making of an authentic leader.

Authentic Leadership: How You Can Take the Lead

Positive Leadership: Truth

We’ve all heard the saying “the truth hurts.” But while lying to protect someone else’s feelings may seem easier, it can be very damaging in the long run. Let’s talk about truth in relationships.

Lying to someone you love can be devastating and can undermine their trust in you for a long, long time. How do you feel about lying? Would you prefer that those around you keep unpleasant truths from you? Or, would you prefer to know the truth, no matter what?

How would you like the truth told to you? Brutally, with no regard for your feelings? Or tactfully, with a gesture of affection and a few softening words, such as, “Remember, we said we’d be honest with each other, so here goes,” or “I’m no expert, but here’s what I think.”

The truth doesn’t have to hurt if it’s offered with a loving spirit. What hurts is feeling that we have to wear a mask over our true thoughts and emotions. If we want our relationships to last and grow, honesty and truth must be our inevitable goals.

Sure, we will fall from the truth from time to time. It’s only human. But we must put aside our ideas that deception of those close to us is something we do for their own, or our own, good. Hiding the truth leads to living a life of lies. Who needs it? 

It is lies, not the truth, that hurt and the truth that heals. 

Positive Leadership: Truth

Positive Leadership: How to Negotiate to Achieve Your Goals in the Real World

A former Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, Stuart Diamond (Law/Univ. of Pennsylvania) debuts with a superb how-to based book - Getting More: How to Negotiate to Achieve Your Goals in the Real World - on his immensely popular Wharton course on negotiation. The author prepares for any negotiation by asking himself, "What are my goals? Who are 'they'? What will it take to persuade them?" Depending on the answers, he then draws selectively on bargaining tools and strategies described in this anecdote-rich book.

Others in his field assume that most people in a negotiation are rational. Not so, says Diamond. People in the real world—whether friends, store clerks or CEOs—tend to be emotional and irrational in their interactions. Since the 'people' involved make up 90 percent of a negotiation (substance accounts for only 10 percent), you must negotiate based on your understanding of "the pictures in the head of the other party"—a phrase Diamond frequently uses to underscore that psychology trumps the issues at the bargaining table.


Successful negotiators must prepare, learn what makes others tick (through research and small talk), take small steps, communicate clearly, turn problems into opportunities, avoid deceit and embrace differences. Above all, writes the author, they must stay focused on specific goals and connect with the other party. Many of Diamond's suggestions are counterintuitive...This immensely useful book will have wide appeal and leave many readers anxious to put their new skills to work.

Positive Leadership: How to Negotiate to Achieve Your Goals in the Real World

Positive Leadership: Build Collaboration

All successful influencers cultivate collaboration to form productive relationships. Effective influence results from two-way dialogue, not manipulation. 

Here are six questions to ask yourself when forming productive partnerships: 

• What do I want to achieve from this relationship?
• What does my potential colleague want to achieve?
• How can I weave these sets of wants together so we are both satisfied?
• What can I give up without undermining my overall goal?
• What can my counterpart bring to the table that might not be immediately obvious?
• What new solutions serve our common goal?

"The secret is to gang up on the problem, rather than each other." - Thomas Stallkamp 

Positive Leadership: Build Collaboration