Are Leaders Made or Born: Hard Work vs Talent
Friday, November 27, 2009
What do M&S and Chelsea Have in Common?
Jeff Randall gives you the answer in his piece in today's Daily Telegraph -
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeffrandall/6664637/If-Britains-got-talent-why-are-we-being-run-by-foreigners.html
Here's how he concludes his commentary on why, if Britain's got talent, we are now being run by foreigners!
'But here's a thought. If, contrary to jingoistic intuition, an influx of foreign management is really a boon to Britain, why stop there? Why not clear out the muppets who are running British politics and replace them, too, with imported talent? The Canadians have done an impressive job in cutting massive deficits, how about their poaching their leader? Just imagine – we could trade Gordon Brown for Stephen Harper. It seems like a good deal to me.'
Building a 'Leaderful' Team
As a coach he has been a revolutionary in his way of building winning organisations, by developing what he calls the "leaderful team," in which every player is prepared, technically and psychologically, to step up to lead--or to step back to support, as needed. The idea is to maximise the potential contribution of every team member in a way never before attempted in sport.
Forbes magazine recently interviewed Ric Charlesworth in two sessions: "How Hierarchies Do Harm" and "How You Can Develop A Leaderful Team" :
http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/16/charlesworth-hierarchy-hockey-leadership-ceonetwork-managing.html?partner=leadership_newsletter
and
http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/23/charlesworth-hierarchy-leaderful-leadership-ceonetwork-managing.html?partner=leadership_newsletter
The articles are well worth reading.
Links Between the Lack of Positive Leadership and Stress in the Workplace
“… significant associations were found between Dictatorial leadership and lack of Positive leadership on the one hand, and long-lasting stress, emotional exhaustion, deteriorated SRH [self-reported general health], and the risk of leaving the workplace due to poor health or for unemployment on the other hand.”
For more, see - http://diss.kib.ki.se/2009/978-91-7409-614-9/thesis.pdf
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Thanksgiving Thank You's
They are two words that have the power to transform our health, happiness, athletic performance and success. Research shows that grateful people are happier and more likely to maintain good friendships. A state of gratitude, according to research by the Institute of HeartMath, also improves the heart's rhythmic functioning, which helps us to reduce stress, think more clearly under pressure and heal physically. It's actually physiologically impossible to be stressed and thankful at the same time. When you are grateful you flood your body and brain with emotions and endorphins that uplift and energise you rather than the stress hormones that drain you.
Gratitude and appreciation are also essential for a healthy work environment. In fact, the number one reason why people leave their jobs is because they don't feel appreciated. A simple thank you and a show of appreciation can make all the difference.
Gratitude is like muscle. The more we do with it the stronger it gets.
In this spirit here are 4 ways to practice Thanksgiving every day of the year.
1. Take a Daily Thank You Walk - Take a simple 10-minute walk each day and say out loud what you are thankful for. This will set you up for a positive day.
2. Meal Time Thank You's - On Thanksgiving, or just at dinner with your friends and family, go around the table and have each person, including the children, say what they are thankful for.
3. Gratitude Visit - Martin Seligman, Ph.D., the father of positive psychology, suggests that we write a letter expressing our gratitude to someone. Then we visit this person and read them the letter. His research shows that people who do this are measurably happier and less depressed a month later.
4. Say Thank You at Work - Doug Conant, the CEO of Campbell Soup, has written over 16,000 thank you notes to his employees and energised the company in the process. Energise and engage your colleagues and team by letting them know you are grateful for them and their work. And don’t forget to say thank you to your clients and customers too.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Expressing Gratitude for Your Colleagues
Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on those things for which we are most grateful. And as a leader you know that it is important to express your gratitude - not only on key holidays - but regularly when the situation warrants. Although a simple “Thank You” can go a long way, you should always be on the lookout for additional opportunities to show your colleagues just how much you appreciate them and their daily contributions.
Here are a few suggestions of practical ways that you can express your gratitude for your colleagues:
Provide public praise for a job well done. Whenever a colleague performs exceptionally well, you should always acknowledge their accomplishments and celebrate their successes in front of their colleagues. To do so shows just how extraordinary the performance was and how much you appreciate the outstanding effort.
Offer to cover when a day off is needed. Do you have a colleague who has been working at maximum capacity? Show your appreciation (and your compassion) by offering to cover while he/she takes a much-needed break.
Lend a helping hand in return. Whenever a colleague helps you with an assigned project or lightens your administrative load by taking on additional tasks, thank them and then take action to find a way to reciprocate.
Give your undivided time and attention. Individuals feel most appreciated when their thoughts and opinions are heard and acknowledged. Show your gratitude by carving time out of your schedule to get to know your colleagues and provide them with your full focus and attention.
Present opportunities for growth and development. Show your colleagues that you appreciate and care about them by seeking out ways to help them learn and grow. Can you delegate an assignment that would provide a new learning experience? Do you know of a training programme that would expand their technical knowledge? A great way to show gratitude to your colleagues is to personally invest in their success.
As you look forward to Thanksgiving, take a look around you and ask yourself what you can do to express your gratitude to your colleagues. Seize the moment and show your colleagues how much you appreciate them and their continuous contributions.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Leadership Lessons from the past 18 months
The quickest impact on leadership in business will probably be felt at the board of directors level. Driven by fear of the risks that have been exposed, board leaders will start by changing their own behaviours. Directors want more visibility into corporate practices and risks, and more data to directly verify more dimensions of corporate performance. They feel their positions are much more on the line, and they are starting to ask for the staff and capabilities to do more checking up, probing more deeply even in areas historically left to management.
Boards will revise formal governance structures, adjust team composition, and reconsider the personality and skills of the people placed in top positions. As always, they will respond to prevailing interpretations of recent history. In seeking a new form of leadership, boards will start with the oldest truths: Those in authority must have foresight, and they must lead by example. They must motivate and inspire on a moral basis, through aspiration as well as rewards and punishments. It is precisely this calm, considered, and ethical leadership, required to lead large numbers of people when the economy is tough, that seems to have been in such short supply recently.
Guided by their boards, many institutions will recommit to public responsibility. Trust and simplicity will become major selling points. Enterprises in banking or in business in general industry that can command greater trust or offer closer connections with their customers will enjoy substantial opportunities.
Many companies will also need to find structures and processes, both formal and informal, that challenge thinking and retain productive dissent. The leadership team form will be left intact, but its potential will be tapped in new ways. Teams will be populated with more diverse personalities, whose challenge will be to work together to set some new directions and renew moral leadership while paying closer attention to day-to-day execution.
These leadership team members will have to learn to recognise the power of the unknowable. We have found out the hard way that conceptual financial models, which seemed for a time to provide a new means of rapid growth, can actually obscure the underlying realities of the economic system. We now have some catching up to do as we recognise the failure of these models to comprehend and control the complexity and interdependence of our world. Leaders in financial services might do better if they understood that we human beings are all limited, that our best course is to accept that we are intrinsically prone to get things wrong, that we need to keep our wits about us, and that to succeed in the arcane world of finance, we need most of all to stay grounded in day-to-day reality.
We must promote leaders for whom doubt and uncertainty are simply a part of the human condition, not the enemy of action or a sign of weakness. They must tolerate questioning and doubt within their own organisations, and apply it productively themselves. We must make it an organisational habit to regularly challenge even what seems to be most obviously true, to remain open to different types of data, especially including direct experiential and “feet on the street” observations.
The makeup and management of executive teams may have to change. The evidence is clear that the most productive teams contain diverse people. Teams composed of people from a range of backgrounds outperform teams composed entirely of the so-called best and brightest, for example. And those who shrink from conflict or believe that only harmonious teams can be effective will also disapprove of the kind of open dissent that encourages better leadership and decision making. That is a different definition of productive teamwork than has been applied in the past.
If people recognise this, we should see improvements in the organisation and management of executive teams and boards. In composing teams, boards will tend to favour a diversity of characteristics, and they should guard against the drift toward homogenisation.
This type of governance structure is made even more necessary by the fact that only 25 percent of new ceo's today come from outside the company. Consequently, the outsider’s perspective is not coming from top executives. Many corporate leaders will thus need organisational innovations that provide visibility and challenge to management at quite detailed levels. The financial control function at most companies is an excellent and well-established example; this oversight arrangement can be extended to other corporate functions.
The most successful leaders of these newly transformed organisations will do one more thing distinctively well. They will set the overall purpose and mission of the organisation, not just its strategy. Indeed, they will often concentrate on corporate purpose or mission, leaving strategies to the executive team. We already know that companies with an articulated purpose that goes beyond simply the expediency of “making more money” have fared much better in the downturn. They will also fare better in the recovery. But this will depend on the temperament of leadership. If we are fortunate, the leaders who emerge this time will be honest, robust, and farsighted enough that their prevailing style will last for some time.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
New Leadership Study Focuses on People-Led Economy
The study, 'Leadership and the Performance of People in Organizations: Enriching Employees and Connecting People', points out that today's leaders must take into account the erosion of trust in management over the last few years and the changes in a workforce that is using technology to form personal connections both beyond - and within - the workplace.
"These enhanced connections should result in what the study's researchers call a 'constituent-based approach to leadership,'" says Michelle M. Smith, Forum president. "This approach successfully balances the needs of employees, consumers, shareholders and the community at large and ensures that their needs are met in an authentic and transparent manner."
Practicing a people-centred management and leadership style can pay off handsomely. According to the Forum study, companies practicing this approach have seen positive bottom line results in which value emerges for every constituent. They refer to this as the Human Value Connection.
The Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement (http://www.performanceforum.org/ ) is a research center within the Medill Integrated Marketing Communications graduate program at Northwestern University. A central objective of the Forum is to develop and disseminate knowledge about communications, motivation and management so that businesses can better design, implement and manage Employee Engagement initiatives inside and outside the organisation.
5 Ways to Manage Like a CEO
2.Hire functional experts who are also solid, upcoming managers. The order and choice of words is critical here. You can mentor capable, upcoming managers, but you probably can’t teach them a functional expertise, nor should you or will you have the time. If they’re not eminently capable, you can end up with multiple critical simultaneous problems, which could be job or even career-ending.
3.Business comes first. Business and customers always, always, always come first. Now, that doesn’t mean you let morale get out of control or internal processes fall apart, but you must recognise that the primary function of the business is business, and that means customers and sales. Any manager who doesn’t get that is doomed to mediocrity and stagnation.
4.Manage up. A critical function of any manager is to provide his boss with what she needs to succeed, and in a manner that fosters a compatible and mutually beneficial relationship. And frankly, that goes for peers, too. If you sense your boss and peers are not getting what they need from you, meet one-on-one and ask. Successful CEOs work with their boards and other key stakeholders the same way.
5.Help to “manage the company.” This is a critical mindset that can make all the difference in your career. If you have a strong silo mentality - my group is all that matters - you will never move up. But if you always remember that one of your priorities is to help “manage the company,” then your chances are great increased. Why? That mindset gives you a broader perspective that will indeed help the company and be positively perceived by peers and executive management.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Leadership Lessons from the Military - For Women
2.Avoid emotional outbursts. As one drill instructor put it: “Save the drama for yo’ mama.” Never, ever cry at work.
3.Set higher standards for yourself than for others.
4.Don’t apologise for something that’s not your fault. Example: Never say “I’m sorry” when you interrupt a meeting. Say “Excuse me.” And when you do screw up, say you’re sorry once.
So Whatever Happened to Command-and-Control Leadership?
Is it any wonder that the RBS (pre October 2008) has become a seminal case study in poor leadership?
Fear is not a motivating factor. You might be able to get a little bit more out of someone in the short term, but you will completely erode your business and your culture in the long term. You’re going to lose all your good people. You’re not going to have people tell you the truth, and it becomes the tradition.
Command and control leadership is not culturally relevant anymore. Even if you look at generations who are coming up, the idea that you need somebody to tell you what to do and not think for yourself — that’s not today's culture. With that sort of manager or ceo, you’re not going to keep intelligent, inspired talent, because they want some form of entrepreneurial environment to be able to exercise their talent. Leaders need to challenge colleagues to be able to do that, not tell them to do something 'my way', especially when they might be able to do it better! Also, all organisations are significantly diverse today. Command-and-control isn’t the kind of corporate culture people want to be in anymore.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
68 Rules? No, Just 3 Are Enough
'I once sat through a three-day training session in our company, and this was for new managers, very capable people who were ready for a big step up. I counted, over three days, 68 things that we told them they needed to do to be successful, everything from how you coach and mentor, your annual reviews, filling out these forms, all this stuff.
And I got up to close the session, and I’m thinking about how it isn’t possible for these people to remember all this. So I said there are three things that matter. The first is competence — just being good at what you do, whatever it is, and focusing on the job you have, not on the job you think you want to have.
The second one is confidence. People want to know what you think. So you have to have enough desirable self-confidence to articulate a point of view.
The third thing is caring. Nothing today is about one individual. This is all about the team, and in the end, this is about giving a damn about your customers, your company, the people around you, and recognising that the people around you are the ones who make you look good.
When young people are looking for clarity — this is a huge, complex global company, and they wonder how to navigate their way through it — I just tell them that.'
For more, see - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/business/22corner.html?pagewanted=1&ref=business
What is the CEO's Role in Driving Performance Culture?
All levels of the company need to understand that from the top of the company down, everyone is committed to addressing issues that hold people back from greater job satisfaction and higher levels of job performance. The CEO must guide the leadership team to remove artificial barriers that hold down performance such as misunderstandings, poor vision or direction and limited or no access to facts that drive the business.
Few people intentionally perform poorly when provided with reasonable training, equipment, work environment and motivation.
The CEO leader must be conscious of the whole picture and look beyond the traditional boundaries to see that her business (or department) is successful and that employees are excited about what they are doing and are onboard with the direction of the business.
Effective Internal Communications Help Engage and Retain Top Talent.
As the economy continues to shift, keeping employees up-to-date on how the company is responding, and how they are affected, will help insure against their becoming demoralised and disconnected. Effective communication helps engage employees, and that has positive implications for productivity and the bottom line.
Here are the best practices of companies that are highly effective communicators, based on the 2009/2010 Watson Wyatt Communication ROI Study:
Communicate how business changes will affect employees. Sixty-two percent of highly effective communicators have clearly defined employee value propositions, which tell employees what to expect from the company and what the company expects from them.
Trust and train leaders to talk about change. Some 73% of highly effective communicators say managers are effective at supporting the executive management vision through their actions. Face to-face communications, such as town hall meetings or staff meetings, are preferred over social media or printed material when the conversation is about business change.
Use measures and metrics. Effective communicators are twice to three times more likely to have a documented communications strategy. A little more than half of the highly effective communicators are including more communication outcome metrics in their strategies. However, 43% of all respondents said they had no formal measures or assessments.
Generally, the best-performing companies plan communication strategically, like any other business area.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
The Top Companies for Leadership - 2009
1 IBM
2 Procter & Gamble
3 General Mills
4 McKinsey
5 ICICI Bank
6 McDonald's
7 General Electric
8 Titan Cement
9 China Mobile Communications Corp.
10 Hindustan Unilever
11 Natura Cosméticos
12 Colgate Palmolive
13 TNT Hoofddrop
14 Deere & Company
15 Whirlpool
16 3M
17 Cargill
18 Olam
19 Eli Lilly
20 PepsiCo
21 American Express
22 Lockheed Martin
23 Intel
24 Infosys
25 Fedex
For more, see - http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/19/news/companies/top_leadership_companies.fortune/index.htm
The Race for Top Talent
Friday, November 20, 2009
What Business Can Learn From Elite Athletes
Peak performance in business is often thought of in terms of sheer intellectual capacity. However, in the same way that athletes achieve high performance in a holistic way, so business should veiw sustained high achievement by executives as a staircase of capacity building:
Physical Capacity - building endurance, promoting mental and emotional recovery.
Emotional Capacity - creating an internal climate that drives the high performance state.
Mental Capacity - focusing physical and emotional energy on the task at hand.
Spiritual Capacity - providing a powerful source of motivation, determination and endurance.
So if executives are to perform at high levels over the long haul, they have to train in the same systematic, multi-level way that elite athletes do. Companies cannot afford to address their employees' cognitive capacities while ignoring their physical, emotional and spiritual well-being.
For more information, please contact Gavin Hastings at Positive Leadership - gavin.hastings@positiveleadership.co.uk
Becoming a Better Listener
Here are four easy steps to becoming a better listener:
1. Look for situations to practice not speaking. Try just listening to others and notice how often you have to stop yourself from speaking. The less you find yourself wanting to interrupt, the better listener you will become.
2. To improve your listening flexibility when another person is speaking, in addition to listening to the factual content ask yourself, 'What is this person feeling'?
3. Look for non-verbal messages such as body language, facial expressions and tone of voice to get in tune with the feelings behind the message. Try reflecting back what you are picking up with; You seem to be concerned about that. Or, You must be really pleased about that.
4. Restating in your own words what you have heard from your team members demonstrates that you really were listening, and when you add the feeling content, it shows that you care about them as well.
You hear what you listen for...what you are focused on. Focus on listening to understand—both the facts and the feelings. Your team members will notice your efforts to be a better listener and this will open up healthier interpersonal communication in your workplace.
How to Lead in a Recession
1. Stand up and be seen. It's a simple yet powerful way for leaders to be effective. Warren Buffett raised his profile in this recession, reassuring investors and even helping to calm markets.
2. Steer the culture with stories. Southwest Airlines has always understood this, celebrating stories of employees who perform heroically for customers. Make sure the stories you repeat embody the culture you're aiming for as the economy recovers.
3. Upgrade your people standards. With high unemployment, you have an opportunity to raise the bar on whom you hire and promote.
For more, see - http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/09/news/economy/recession_leadership.fortune/index.htm?section=magazines_fortune
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Passion Matters
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Why Leadership 'Purpose' is a Bottom Line Issue
Purpose is also a bottom line issue because of its ability to drive the personal and work outcomes in employees that allow you to operate your business efficiently. If you are doing a poor job on the personal and work outcomes you will be incurring excessive costs (e.g. poor quality products, waste, absenteeism, turnover) and squandering profit.
The key to these enhanced work outcomes and the coveted profits that accompany them lies between the ears of your employees. Experienced meaningfulness, or 'why work matters', is the critical psychological state most closely associated with purpose. Your mission and even your vision are most often meaningless to your employees (have you asked them lately?).
Purpose, why we do what we do, has the potential to make work meaningful for your employees, and that makes purpose a bottom line issue. Make sure you understand why your business matters to your employees.
As Colin Powell says in this speech, the role of a leader is to put people in the best possible position to achieve the 'purpose' of the organisation. The best leaders are those who can convey this purpose throughout the organisation.
What Skills Will It Take To Lead Successfully In The Future?
The research project was designed to answer the following questions:
- What leadership skills and perspectives are critical for success now and in the future?
- How strong are current leaders in these critical skills and perspectives?
- How aligned is today’s leadership strength with what will be the most important skills and perspectives in the future?
The research identified the following seven competencies as most critical for success, now and in the future:
Leading people: directing and motivating people.
Strategic planning: translating vision into realistic business strategies, including long-term objectives.
Managing change: using effective strategies to facilitate organisational change.
Inspiring commitment: recognizing and rewarding employees’ achievements.
Resourcefulness: working effectively with top management.
Doing whatever it takes: persevering under adverse conditions.
Being a quick learner: quickly learning new technical or business knowledge.
The interesting thing to note from this research is that only three of the ten required skills for the future are current top ten skills.
All the others rated as important for success in the study are not skills that leaders have mastered today. This means that today’s leaders are not meeting the demands of their organisations. The CLL call this the “Leadership Gap”, referring to the huge gap that exists between the leadership skills organisations have today and the skills they will require in five years time.
Given these findings we need to take personal responsibility and ask ourselves:
What are we doing personally to improve our leadership skills?
What are we doing to help others improve their leadership skills?
If we are taking action, are we doing enough?
The Attributes of Successful Leaders
Lessons from Five Decades in Business
In a recent Forbes article he describes what five decades in business have taught him:
- Be positive.
- Shut out the noise.
- Understand people.
- Balance vision and pragmatism.
- Think about the long term and the greater good.
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