Positive Leadership: Successful Small Team Leadership

For years, numbers of leading researchers and practitioners have advocated the so-called "differentiated" style of leadership -- a style in which managers treat staff members differently based on their skills, personalities and other factors.

Others have raised doubts about this management style, questioning its effectiveness and wondering if it could ultimately prove divisive.

A new study from W. P. Carey examined the relationship between two types of leadership behaviour and team effectiveness.

The study concluded that in this regard at least, team-focused leadership (in which teams are treated as units, rather than a group of individuals) is significantly more effective than the differentiated style in the realm of team management. Surprisingly, the study also showed that differentiated leadership had negative impacts on group dynamics and, by extension, organisations as a whole.

For more, see: http://knowledge.wpcarey.asu.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1783

Positive Leadership: Successful Small Team Leadership

Positive Leadership: How to be an Authentic Leader

How To Be An Authentic Leader

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Positive Leadership: How to be an Authentic Leader

Positive Leadership: True Grit

Grit is defined as perseverance and passion toward long-term goals (Duckworth et al. 2006). Gritty people tend to persevere, self-regulate and push themselves toward success. 

Drs. Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman (2006) found that the correlation between self-discipline and achievement was twice as large as the correlation between IQ and achievement.

Additional research suggests that people with grit:

• report experiencing more happiness than those who are less gritty, even when controlling for age and education;
• earn higher GPAs than their non-gritty classmates, even with lower SATs scores;
• are more likely to outperform in spelling bee contests, regardless of verbal IQ.

The bottom line is that the research shows that self-control is more important than self-esteem in determining achievement.

For more, see: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/Grit%20JPSP.pdf

Positive Leadership: True Grit

Positive Leadership: Jose Mourinho, The Greatest Coach in The World

The best coach in the world is Jose Mourinho, head coach of soccer’s Real Madrid.  

The March 7th edition of Sports Illustrated profiled “the best coach in any sport, anywhere.”

The resume of this great coach and leader:  In seven full seasons managing Porto, Chelsea, and Inter Milan, he has won 14 major trophies which includes two Champions League titles and six domestic league championships.  In addition, he has gone nine years without losing a home league game, a winning streak of 148 matches over four different teams.

The following are the key learnings all leaders can learn from 'The Special One':

Embrace Success – “Everybody wants me to be The Special One.  But I don’t worry.  There could be a worse nickname.”

Criteria – “He’s at the top, there’s no doubt about that.  You have a certain criteria in terms of top management, and that is longevity of success – which is very difficult today – and what you win.  You have to regard his achievements as really first class.” – Manchester United coach Sir Alex Ferguson

Challenge – “Real Madrid wants to be the best – of the present and future.  That’s my challenge.”

Expanded Horizons – Mourinho studies the management styles of Microsoft and Apple.  He also read Colin Powell, Jackson, and John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success.

Understanding – “A football coach who only understands football is not a great coach.”

Diversity – “My players are men.  Men with different personalities, different cultures.  To deal with this is very important is building a team.”

Universal Adoration – “You can see how close players are with him.  He has a way of getting into players’ minds as a manager…the kind of man who’s ready to give you all his confidence and trust because he expects that you’ll give it back.”

High Intelligence – Mourinho fluently speaks 5 languages – Portuguese, English, French, Italian, and Spanish.

Customisation – Mourinho addresses his team in the language of the team’s country.  This helps foreign players integrate into the culture they are currently living.  However, he communicates with each player in their native language.  Have you heard of anything like that from a leader.

Comfort - “By speaking five languages I can have a special relation with them.  A player feels more comfortable explaining emotions in a language where he has no doubts.  So he has no problem to open his heart, to criticise, and to be criticised.”

Humble Beginnings – Mourinho broke into the business not as a player, but as a translator.

Timing – Mourinho contends the most important moments in games are what he calls “transitions”, going from offense to defense.  “You must have a great balance.  That’s why I believe in having players with the tactical culture to analyse the game.  All of them have to think the same thing at the same time.”  

Respect - “What Mourinho brings is a newfound respect for the coach, a position that has always been criminally undervalued at Real Madrid.” – Sid Lowe

Adaptability – “At Real Madrid, I am adapting to the qualities of the players.”

Utilising Talent – “I’ve always had great players, but I’ve never had a Cristiano Ronaldo.  Last year Real relied too much on Cristiano to decide things.  The best thing is not to make him feel responsible for the success or non-success of the team…He can make the difference when things are very equalised, but behind him he has a structure.  I think he’s much more comfortable.”

Family – “I have to do what they (wife of 21 years Tami and two children) want (when at home).  I have to watch the programmes they want to see, the movies they want to go to.  I have to go to wrestling because they enjoy wrestling.”

Thanks to Brian Dodd for this great article.

Positive Leadership: Jose Mourinho, The Greatest Coach in The World

Positive Leadership: A Healthy Team

A healthy team:

• Encourages other team members regularly…
• Cares for each team member's personal life outside the team…
• Assists other team members during crunch periods…
• Cross trains one another for different roles on the team…
• Challenges each other when needed, working towards the best solution for the team…
• Ensures everyone on the team gets credit for a win…
• Applauds another team member’s success…
• Values input from everyone on the team…
• Defends one another from outside attacks…
• Protects the integrity and vision of the team, even over personal interests.

The word “team” comes with a certain expectation that is more than people simply performing a function together. If you want people to feel and play as a team, then they must perform as a team.

Positive Leadership: A Healthy Team

Positive Leadership: Do You Have The Skill Set To Be A Good Leader?

Are you responsible for implementing and facilitating change for your entire organisation or for a small team?  Are you achieving your leadership goals—both personally and for your organisation? Take our short quiz to find out…

If you are a leader who is responsible for implementing and facilitating change within your organisation you need to:

• ensure that an adequate change management plan is in place
• be able to determine where people are in the transition process
• help stakeholders to let go of the “old way” of doing things, adopt new processes, and define clear endings for the change/transition that is being implemented
• create and implement effective strategies to facilitate the beginning, neutral, and ends of change/transition. 

If you are a leader that is responsible for employing specific leadership behaviours into your organisation, you need to:

• learn how to identify yourself within certain behavioural statements
• be adept in identifying competency statements, and making them behavioural statements
• learn methods for validating your leadership competency models for your organisation
• understand how to measure the intangible—that is behaviour.

 If you are a leader that is responsible for gauging your organisation’s emotional thermostat while achieving leadership goals, you need to:

• gain insight into your leadership style, in order to drive change on a macro level
• be aware of coaching strategies that will allow you and others to achieve their professional and personal best
• learn how to mold micro-initiatives into missions that will have a macro-impact. 

Did you pass the test? Are you competent in your areas of responsibilities? 

Positive Leadership: Do You Have The Skill Set To Be A Good Leader?

Positive Leadership: Inspiration

Positive Leadership: Inspiration

Positive Leadership: How to be a Good Boss

8 Google Rules for Managers

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Positive Leadership: How to be a Good Boss

Positive Leadership: Monday Morning Motivation and Integrity

Monday Morning Motivation: Five Steps to Energize Your Team, Customers, and Profits :

1. The love of the truth. A key ingredient to establishing and maintaining your integrity is to discover and then face the real truth – not just what you hope to be the truth, but the absolute reality of your situation. Our nature is to be selective with the truth and cling to the things that are pleasant to us.
2. Courage to stand up and speak out for what you believe. To stand up for your beliefs, you have to know what you stand for. Your integrity begins when you speak out about what you believe. What are your core values? What’s so important that it will never be compromised for any reason?
3. Persevere in your pursuit of fairness. In a grey area, err on the side of fairness. What you do is being closely watched by your team, and their judgments are based on their perception of what they observe. It may not be fair, but you have to manage your people’s perceptions – not all decisions are black or white. Err on the side of your team. Swallowing your pride is a small price to pay to retain or gain their trust in you.
4. Live what you teach. Talking about integrity is easy. In fact, in Enron’s 2001 annual report, integrity was listed as one of its most important corporate values – along with communication, respect, and excellence. It seems sort of silly now, but Enron’s leaders probably spent thousands of hours identifying which values to list. The list does not mean anything – the way they ran their company meant everything.
5. Continually ask, “What is the right thing to do?”

Positive Leadership: Monday Morning Motivation and Integrity

Positive Leadership: Stuart Holden

Bolton Wanderers midfielder Stuart Holden, who comes from a Scottish family, albeit he plays for the USA, has been ruled out for six months as a result of the injury he sustained in a challenge on Saturday. 

Today's comments from his manager, Owen Coyle, sum up why this talented footballer has played in the World Cup Finals for his country:

"First and foremost our main concern is for Stuart and his recovery. He will get all the time and support that he needs. Stuart has been outstanding for me this season and he has shown in his performances that he is one of the best midfielders in the Barclays Premier League. He has such desire, strength of character and a winning mentality, and he will draw on all those attributes in his rehabilitation."

Positive Leadership: Stuart Holden

Positive Leadership: The Importance of Team Values

Scotland Rugby star, Richie Gray talks about the importance of team values:

Positive Leadership: The Importance of Team Values

Positive Leadership: The Shadow Effect

The Shadow Effect is an emotionally-gripping, visually-compelling docudrama that reveals why suppressed emotions and unresolved internal conflicts leads to behaviour that continually unseats politicians, destroys celebrity careers, destabilises the economy and affects the lives of millions each year.

In this age of public humiliation and media meltdowns, the work of New York Times bestselling author, Debbie Ford, continues to make headway as she exposes the opposing forces of both light and dark that compete for attention within every human being. In her film debut, The Shadow Effect, Ford presents the hidden power of “the Shadow” alongside some of today’s most provocative thinkers including Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Mark Victor Hansen, James Van Praagh and others.

In this life-altering journey, individuals who have transcended child abuse, racism, the Holocaust, war, and wounded upbringings, share their remarkable stories. Meet those who have learned to face their terror, heal their wounds, and embrace their higher, heroic selves to overcome the shadow effect.

Positive Leadership: The Shadow Effect

Positive Leadership: World Leadership Day

Today is World Leadership Day.

World Leadership Ambassadors are passionate about connecting people from all walks of life with their innate leader, the source of inspiration, creativity and infinite energy. We challenge the way we think about leadership and develop leaders for the new world. We embrace diversity and offer new definitions of leadership. We pose big questions that are intuitively coming to the forefront and balance these with new insights and ways of looking at the world. We offer rich, thought-provoking resources that will challenge your thinking about the world we live in, the world we want to live, and our roles as leaders, creators and innovator.

Our ambition is that by 2014, World Leadership Day will be recognised as ‘The Global Resource Centre for Authentic Leadership’.

Graham Watson of Positive Leadership Limited is Scotland’s World Leadership Day Ambassador.

For more, see:  http://worldleadershipday.org

Positive Leadership: World Leadership Day

Positive Leadership: The New Approach to Being in Command

The long held concept of command-and-control leadership is being tested as organisations are experiencing the largest technological shift of our generation. 

Talk with your customers. Listen to your employees. These are well-tested truisms of business. But ask organisations to engage with people on Facebook or Twitter and a look of sheer terror crosses their faces.

In her newest book, Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead, Charlene Li addresses the challenges facing leadership given the dramatic impact social technologies have had on customer, partner, and employee relationships.

Positive Leadership: The New Approach to Being in Command

Positive Leadership: Defining Leadership - 'How to Be, Not How to Do'

Frances Hesselbein is the Founding President and Chair of the Board of Governors of the Leader to Leader Institute, formerly the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management.  She served as CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA from 1976-1990. 

Learn more about her definition of “leadership” here:

Positive Leadership: Defining Leadership - 'How to Be, Not How to Do'

Positive Leadership: Companies to Admire

Here are five factors that we think matter in answering the question; ‘Do I admire that company?’

1. What ideas does this company stand for? There are plenty of organisations with interesting technology or hot products. But the most admirable companies don't just sell competitive products and services. They stand for important ideas -- ideas that are meant to shape the competitive landscape in their field, ideas meant to reshape the sense of what's possible for customers, employees, and investors.

2. Does this company work as distinctively as it competes? You can't do something compelling, distinctive or original in the marketplace unless you do something compelling, distinctive or original in the workplace. Strategy is culture, culture is strategy.

3. Has this company created an emotional and psychological contract with its customers? Success today in every field is about so much more than price, performance, features -- pure economic value. It is about passion, emotion, identity: sharing your values. The companies that we admire aren't just efficient and productive, they are memorable to encounter.

4. Is this company a leader in creating leaders up and down its ranks? The organisations we admire don't just lead their industries in terms of innovation or financial performance or market share. They also understand that the only sustainable form of long-term business leadership is the capacity to create grassroots leaders at every level of the organisation.

5. Is this company as consistent as it is creative? Even in a world of constant change and fast-moving markets, the really great companies don’t change their strategies and practices in response to outside forces. They are confident about the ideas in which they believe; the culture they have created, their connections with customers, and are willing to stick to their strategies even as the word around them is in turmoil. As Jim Collins, the great management guru, has argued, "The signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change. The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency."

Positive Leadership: Companies to Admire

Positive Leadership: Continuous Improvement

University of Michigan Athletic Director David Brandon talks about the lessons he learned from former U-M football Coach Bo Schembechler, who he played for in the 1970s and how it applied to the business world as well as the big business of college athletics.

“You will either get better or you will get worse,” Brandon said, recalling one of Schembechler’s favourite sayings. 'He used to say that it’s not whether you win or lose, but did you get better. Because if you aren’t, then other people around you are. And that makes you weaker. That’s exactly how it works in business.'

Brandon, the former CEO of Domino’s Pizza and current chairman, also talks about what it takes to run a business.

Positive Leadership: Continuous Improvement

Positive Leadership: Attributes of a Great Team Member

Here are 5 characteristics of an excellent team member:

1. Needs very little direction – Catches on quickly, learning the leader’s expectations, having confidence in his or her ability, and knowing the vision of the organisation well enough to make routine decisions with little or no input from the leader.

2. Asks specific questions when unclear of an assignment - He or she doesn’t ask general questions, that require full explanations, but rather attempts to think through the issue on his or her own enough to ask specific questions. This saves everyone time and speeds progress.

3. Needs very little supervision – An excellent team member follows through on what he or she committed to do with limited oversight.

4. Recognises results as part of the reward – While fair compensation is necessary for the health of any team and most leaders can improve on giving praise, the excellent team player does the work to see the results of a project done well, not exclusively for recognition.

5. Considers the interests of the entire team - Excellent team members look out for good of the whole team…the entire organisation. He or she wants what is best for everyone, even if that means they have to personally sacrifice for the win of the team.

Positive Leadership: Attributes of a Great Team Member

Positive Leadership: Initiative

If you’re stuck at the starting line, you don’t need more time or permission. You don’t need to wait for a boss’s okay or to be told to push the button; you just need to poke.

Poke the Box is a manifesto by bestselling author Seth Godin that just might make you uncomfortable. It’s a call to action about the initiative you’re taking – in your job or in your life. Godin knows that one of our scarcest resources is the spark of initiative in most organisations (and most careers) – the person with the guts to say, “I want to start stuff.”

Poke the Box just may be the kick in the pants you need to shake up your life.

Exclusive interview with Seth Godin from GiANT Impact on Vimeo.

Positive Leadership: Initiative

Positive Leadership: Building Consensus and a Way Forward

One of the greatest challenges today is how to engage multiple stakeholders and/or large numbers of stakeholders in collectively crafting a way forward. How do you allow each person to be heard and yet craft a strategy to move forward in a reasonably timely fashion?

Traditional engagement methods fall short, but there is a process, which Positive Leadership often uses, that allows every voice to be heard and that enables groups of tens, hundreds or even thousands of people to swiftly tap their collective wisdom and collective find a way forward. This process is the World Café (http://www.theworldcafe.com/).

L180-100406-What is the World Cafe? from Ravi Tangri on Vimeo.

Positive Leadership: Building Consensus and a Way Forward

An Introduction to Positive Leadership Limited

An Introduction to Positive Leadership Limited

Positive Leadership: Values-based Decision Making

Just as organisations need to identify their purpose and values in order to meet their marketplace needs and be competitive and successful, individuals also need to understand and identify their values. 

This clarification of values by the individual allows them to base their decisions on those values. It allows a framework from which to reference and a select options. Wisdom literature states that a house divided cannot stand. An individual who consistently makes decisions on shifty or inconsistent values often finds themselves in frustrating situations. 

Persons who have clearly identified their values are able to base their decisions with laser like focus on desired outcomes.

Values-based decision-making is a very holistic approach to life and leadership. We must have one level of ethics or values that we use for all of our decisions. We cannot say that we have one set of values for the workplace, another set of values for our home, and another set of values for our place of worship. Just as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, our values can be judged by the lowest common denominator. This discussion of one’s personal values may appear to have little to do with one’s workplace environment. However, it has everything to do with one’s happiness in the workplace, for this is the point of values congruence.

A person cannot consistently perform in a manner that is inconsistent with the way they see themselves. Eventually your values will find you. Time and truth go hand-in-hand.

When was the last time you sat down, clearly identified your values, and possibly incorporated them into your purpose statement? It has been said that if you aim at nothing you would hit it every time. What targeted values do you have in your sights?

Positive Leadership: Values-based Decision Making

Positive Leadership: What it Takes to be an Extraordinary Leader

After writing more than 50 books on topics ranging from Buddha to getting a good night's rest, Deepak Chopra recently turned his attention to leadership and entrepreneurs in The Soul of Leadership: Unlocking Your Potential for Greatness. While there's no shortage of spirituality in this book, readers -- Chopra hopes -- will get a healthy tutorial on how to practically start and build organisations and companies that thrive and possibly even inspire.

Here are his answers two important questions:

What are the keys to successful leadership?

'Any leader has one main goal: How to envision that future and how to create that future. So in order to be really effective, the leader needs to harness the intelligence, creativity, emotional engagement and also the emotional connection with the people that are part of his or her team in order to manifest that vision.'

Can leadership be learned?

'Leaders are not born that way. Circumstance, context, history, culture and precise timing bring out the leader. It's said the civil rights movement was born when Rosa Parks refused to get up from her seat. When asked why she did that, she said she was tired. It is really a mysterious phenomenon, but I believe that in any moment of crisis, there's a moment for leaders to emerge, and they usually do. Among the many, there are always one or two people who realise the opportunity and their potential. We all have the potential. We all may not have the desire. If you don't have the desire, then you're not a born leader. Inherent in the desire is the potential for leadership.'

Positive Leadership: What it Takes to be an Extraordinary Leader

Positive Leadership: Leadership Lessons from Walmart

Walmart CEO Mike Duke leads the world's biggest retailer, which has 2.1 million employees and serves 200 million customers each week. Here are excerpts from a recent interview Duke did with The Associated Press:

‘Q. What ideals from Sam Walton do you embrace?

A. Leadership is about showing respect to every individual, about humility over arrogance, about listening and getting feedback from a broad array of constituents. It's about a passion for customers and knowing customers first-hand, not theoretical, not through some data, but by having personal, passionate communication with customers.

And leadership is about striving for excellence. It's about setting aggressive goals and not being afraid to go after very aggressive goals and targets. I think it's even better for a leader to set an aggressive goal and come up a little short than it would be to set a soft goal and to exceed it.

Q. What should a leader value most?

A. Integrity and trust. If a leader doesn't have the trust of associates, of customers, of shareholders, then all the other things, the ability to speak eloquently and to sing and dance and entertain, (don't) mean a thing if a leader is not trusted.’

Positive Leadership: Leadership Lessons from Walmart