Here is an interesting view on the challenges this approach poses for Toyota - http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/04/autos/toyota.fortune
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Toyota's no-show leadership
Here is an interesting view on the challenges this approach poses for Toyota - http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/04/autos/toyota.fortune
Diamonds in the Rough
http://www.sbnonline.com/Local/Article/14470/0/0/Diamonds_in_the_rough.aspx
These are his three key messages:
- Spread the passion
- Make time to connect
- Use your perch wisely
Keeping Your Word
First and most obviously, it weakens your credibility with other people. But even more importantly, it weakens your credibility, trustworthiness and reliability with yourself. You can't help but act in ways that reflect that. So, once you make an agreement and give your word, do everything in your power not to break it. A broken word, like a broken cup, can't hold much for very long.
When you keep your word, that is, keep it strong, keep it dependable, and keep it true, you will know the power of accountability. And when you lend this power to a worthy cause that you believe in, its effect will be doubly powerful.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "Trusting yourself is the first secret of success." But how can you trust yourself unless you honour your agreements and keep your word?
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
The True Test of Leadership
'For of those to whom much is given, much is required. And when at some future date the high court of history sits in judgment on each one of us--recording whether in our brief span of service we fulfilled our responsibilities to the state--our success or failure, in whatever office we may hold, will be measured by the answers to four questions:
First, were we truly men of courage--with the courage to stand up to one's enemies--and the courage to stand up, when necessary, to one's associates--the courage to resist public pressure, as well as private greed?
Secondly, were we truly men of judgment--with perceptive judgment of the future as well as the past--of our own mistakes as well as the mistakes of others--with enough wisdom to know that we did not know, and enough candor to admit it?
Third, were we truly men of integrity--men who never ran out on either the principles in which they believed or the people who believed in them--men who believed in us--men whom neither financial gain nor political ambition could ever divert from the fulfillment of our sacred trust?
Finally, were we truly men of dedication--with an honor mortgaged to no single individual or group, and compromised by no private obligation or aim, but devoted solely to serving the public good and the national interest.'
Positive Leadership - Success, Heroes and Role Models
'Some people think that successful persons are born that way. I'm here to tell you that a champion is someone who has fallen off the horse a dozen times and gotten back on the horse a dozen times. Successful people never give up.'
In the USA, Kurt Warner is a hero to many. In 1995, he was bagging groceries in Iowa for $5.50 an hour. Five years later, he earned the National Football League's Most Valuable Player Award and led his team to victory in Super Bowl XXXIV. Here is his story:
Warner is still playing in the NFL today. His 'bags-to-riches' story is as inspiring as the song 'Hero' by Mariah Carey.
54% of US Employees Feel Their Senior Leadership Team Is Effective
The latest results indicate that the global rating of senior leadership's effectiveness is 51%. Employees in India (69%), Brazil (59%) and the United States (54%) report the highest ratings of leadership effectiveness followed by those in China (53%) and Canada (52%). Workers in Japan (33%) reported the lowest ratings.
Employees' evaluations of their organisation's leadership team are driven by the extent to which senior managers gain employees' confidence through their decisions, actions and communications, keep employees well informed regarding company direction, and are seen as having the ability to deal with the organisation's challenges.
Employees in the United States believe their senior leadership teams are effective because leadership is viewed as trustworthy, employees are kept well-informed, leadership demonstrates that quality and improvement are important, the company strives to serve its multiple stakeholders and employees have confidence in the future of the organisation.
For all workers studied, a strong organisational leadership team has a significant impact on its employees' engagement levels. Employee engagement is the extent to which employees are motivated to contribute to organisational success, and are willing to apply discretionary effort to accomplishing tasks important to the achievement of organisational goals. Engaged employees favorably rate their pride in their organisation, willingness to recommend it as a place to work and their overall job satisfaction.
Additionally, employees with positive opinions of their leadership team state a much higher intention to stay with the organisation versus those who are dissatisfied. Those who favourably rate their leadership teams are also much more likely to have confidence in the organisation's future and feel that they have a promising future with the company.
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Lack of Leadership Holding Back Growth in the Scottish Economy
'What are the biggest handicaps holding back growth in the Scottish economy?
High on my list is the lack of leaders able to set and communicate a sense of direction for an organisation and to inspire all those who work in it.
Few things could be more powerful as unleashing leadership potential within Scotland, and this must be a priority in 2010 and beyond.
For years commentators have trotted out the same observation about the Scottish economy:- our companies don’t invest enough money in research and design; they are not innovative enough; too few people decide to set up a business; too few of our promising young companies grow into medium or large enterprises.
Let’s take a step back and try to understand the underlying causes. On research and design, why do so many companies have such low confidence in themselves and the future that they are unwilling to invest? On innovation, why are so many companies stuck in the ways they have always operated? Why are they so reluctant to change? Why do few people decide to take the plunge to set up their own business? Why do few of our promising young companies, often with world-leading technology, fail to grow to become large enterprises, and provide high levels of employment?
The common thread to all of these is the quality of leadership.
The lack of leaders with high aspirations, able to lead their organisation to reach their full potential, cuts across virtually all of Scotland’s economic challenges. It inhibits investment, innovation and enterprise. It is the thing holding back many companies and our economy from reaching their full potential.
For years the Scottish economy has underperformed the rest of the UK by about 0.5% a year. Not a lot in any single year, but over time it mounts up. Economists, who diagnose the drivers of productivity that largely drive this problem, highlight the importance of skills, investment, innovation levels and the amount of enterprise and competition in an economy. While these factors explain some of the discrepancy in productivity levels between the UK and overseas countries such as the US, Germany and France and also between Scotland and the rest of the UK, they don’t explain all of the gap. There is something else going on. It’s what the economists call “total factor productivity”, or how the elements like skills and investments are combined. Again that brings me back to leadership. It’s a failure of leadership in the Scottish economy that results in us failing to take advantage of the assets we have.
Of particular concern is the gap between the skills we have in Scotland – at least as measured by formal qualifications – and our productivity levels. Qualifications are not a perfect measure of skills, as many higher education institutions are now acknowledging as they focus more on employability.
Nevertheless, the gap remains worrying. We simply don’t use the skills of our people to their full potential. Too much of the talent in our organisations fails to be utilised to the full. If, as I would argue, one of the principal roles of a leader is to get the most out of the resources they have, then our leaders are failing to get the most from our biggest asset, Scotland’s people.
But all is not bleak. I have been enormously encouraged and excited by some of the companies from across Scotland that I have met over the last year – companies that are doing fantastic things, growing in spite of the recession, often with no more than average technology. What these companies do have are leaders with ambition, vision and a willingness to constantly seek a better way of doing something, a better product or service, or a new market.
Ritchie’s Forfar started out as a village blacksmith in 1870. In 2005, the leadership team set itself ambitious targets to double the firm’s agricultural engineering business. That led to the leaders thinking about their business in a completely different way and has allowed them to consider new products and markets, recently expanding into China.
Clydebank-based S3 Interactive is another example of a company which is constantly innovating in a rapidly developing new market. This has allowed it to expand out of its core business of recycling old mobile phones and into new areas such as repairs, refurbishing and exporting mobiles for re-use, and dismantling and recycling components. They have also recently taken that business model and applied it to other products such as digital receivers, iPods and MP3 players, becoming a real innovator and a company growing out of the green economy.
What both companies have benefited from is an ambitious and forward-thinking leadership team, which in turn has helped to create a very engaged and committed workforce. However, for every company that has excited me there has been one that frustrates me. Often with truly outstanding technology, there are too many organisations that are operating at a level well below what they are capable of, too many organisations that lack the ambition (to quote the old Army recruiting slogan) to be “everything they could be”.
What I have witnessed in Scotland is no different from my experience throughout my business career. The most successful companies in sector after sector are often not those who have “comparative advantage” in the traditional sense. They are those with highly effective organisations – high-performance organisations. The starting point in creating any high-performance organisation is leadership.
The challenge facing many of our companies is what I would describe as “satisfactory underperformance”. Underperformance because the company is operating at a level below its full potential; satisfactory because the leaders are satisfied with that state, or are unable to see the latent potential or are not motivated to go after it. It’s OK.
That observation of many of our companies could be extended to the Scottish economy. Scotland’s performance for too long could be described as satisfactory underperformance. In my view however it’s not satisfactory. It’s not OK. We need to tackle the root causes of the underperformance. Only then can we achieve our full potential as an economy.
By leadership I don’t mean that we should focus on the high-profile charismatic personalities that people often equate with leadership. I don’t mean to knock them – they can have a real impact in inspiring people to go the extra mile. Too often, though, organisations that depend on such an individual prosper when he or she is in charge, but slip back when they move on or retire.
We need something much more sustainable – a culture of leadership in our businesses. A culture that encourages and nurtures leaders who:
- Have high aspirations for their organisation;
- Can identify a sense of purpose;
- Can communicate and sell that aspiration and purpose to their entire staff;
- Have a sense of urgency;
- Are willing to try new things;
- Above all, can inspire people to operate at their full personal potential.
Businesses can seek support to develop their leadership skills from a range of sources. These include Scottish Enterprise but also the Institute of Directors, universities and private consultants. Training programmes and support are only one side of the story, however. Most of all, what Scotland needs is for our business leaders to step forward and start to lead their organisations to achieve their full potential.'
Francois Pienaar on Nelson Mandela
Monday, February 01, 2010
What Sets Roger Federer Apart as a Sporting Leader
This is a very interesting article and well worth reading -
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/sport/tennis/theres-only-one-roger-federer-20100129-n26k.html
Leadership Award Announced by NFL
The NFL established the Coach Don Shula Award, Commissioner Roger Goodell announced in Miami yesterday. Shula, the former coach of the Miami Dolphins, won more games (347) than any head coach in NFL history, including Super Bowls VII and VIII, and is the only coach with a 17-0 season.
Goodell said the annual award will honour a football coach who displays the integrity, achievement and positive impact on others as Shula did with Baltimore (1963-69) and the Dolphins (1970-1995).
"I am honored that Commissioner Goodell has created this award to honour football coaches that live with integrity and have the right impact on other people," Shula said. "I always relished the teaching and mentoring aspect of being a coach as being the most important thing we did. I look forward to working with Commissioner Goodell and his team to recognise the positive impact that our game can have on our society."
More Evidence Showing the Importance of Leadership Development in 2010
Respondents indicated a significant focus on leadership development in 2010, particularly at middle management level. They also anticipate focusing on high-potentials as they grow and develop to lead their businesses into an uncertain future.
The survey, amongst 2,500 HR and learning development professionals, was designed to provide an up-to-date perspective of the executive education and development landscape. Over 60% of those completing the survey were HR Directors, Vice-Presidents or Heads of HR or Learning & Development in some of the UK's largest employers.
Key findings of the Priorities Survey 2010 included all respondents stating that leadership development is the most important priority. The development of middle managers is also considered extremely important with 67% naming it as their first or second priority, compared to only 35% rating leadership development for senior managers in their top 5. The importance of succession planning and attracting new talent are key priorities for 2010, both rising in importance from 2009.
The survey results indicate that organisations are aligning their Learning and Development priorities with their business objectives more closely than they have ever done before.
For more, see - http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/press-release/henley-business-school-reveals-results-of-corporate-learning-priorities-survey-2010-134774.php
Increased Spending on Leadership Development Predicted in 2010
In particular, the research indicates that:
•More than four in 10 executives surveyed expect their companies to increase programmes aimed at developing high potential employees (47 percent) and cultivating corporate leaders (43 percent).
•Nearly three-quarters of surveyed executives believe that leadership development was either critically important (27 percent) or very important (45 percent) at their companies. And, an overwhelming eight out of 10 either agreed (55 percent) or strongly agreed (25 percent) that their companies have a clear leadership development strategy.
•Despite near universal agreement on the importance of leadership programmes, surveyed executives do not have a high sense of confidence about their efforts in this area. Only 10 percent of survey participants describe their leadership initiatives as "world-class across the board."
The implication of this type of research is that we expect executives to continue to shift their talent portfolios from 'defensive' measures, such as cutting headcount and focusing primarily on costs, to 'offensive' programmes, including retention of critical leaders and workers and increased spending on training and development with a focus on leadership.
For more, see - http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_US/us/Services/additional-services/talent-human-capital-hr/article/cf6c9a4636566210VgnVCM100000ba42f00aRCRD.htm
Leadership Requires an Ability to Deal with Adversity
Understanding how to leverage the emotions and the energy of the situations will help you create your own legends and examples. It will also reduce the unhealthy fear of failure that stifles so much creativity.
You don’t have to embrace or smile at failure. Instead, kick it in the teeth and use the emotional energy to propel you and your team forward.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
British Leaders - They're Not What They Were
Contemplating the grim prospect of Gordon Brown struggling to cling on to power, Labour ministers lining up to offer excuses at the Chilcot Inquiry, bankers refusing to accept responsibility for their mistakes and David Cameron approving those ludicrous airbrushed posters, it is hard to detect much intelligence, courage and discipline at the summit of our national institutions. And trustworthiness is not a word many of us would apply to the current House of Commons. '
For the full text of this fascinating article, see - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/gordon-brown/7104500/British-leaders-theyre-not-what-they-were.html
The Quiet Mind and Innovation
The "it" is designating daily time to calm and quiet the mind using techniques like meditation and neurofeedback.
The question of course, is why? The short answer is that 'break' is a big part of breakthrough - literally, figuratively, and scientifically.
Researchers looking into how the human brain actually solves problems now confirm what many artists and scientists have instinctively known about the process of idea incubation: that seemingly unproductive times are a key ingredient of immensely productive and creative ones.
We've all heard of apparently serendipitous occurrences - Archimedes' ("Eureka!") flash of insight regarding displacement occurring during a bath, and Einstein's theory of relativity coming to him in a daydream.
Neuroscientists now believe that the ability to engineer creative breakthroughs hinges on the capacity to synthesize and make connections between seemingly disparate things, and a key ingredient is time away from the problem. Experiments show that creative revelations come when the mind is engaged in an activity unrelated to the issue being addressed, and that pressure is not conducive to creative thought. Recent research demonstrates that the ultimate break - sleep - actually changes our mind's perspective unconsciously. Information is consolidated by a process taking place in the hippocampus during sleep, enabling the brain to effectively clear itself and reboot, all the while forming new connections and associations. The result is new insight and the aha! feeling of the Eureka moment.
The catch is obvious: if the neural workings of the brain are hidden from our awareness, we can't speed them up or artificially influence them to work harder or more intensely. We can only let go. Ironically, when we do - when we stop thinking and escape either physically or mentally, we actually speed up the transformational processes.
But here's the thing: we're reticent to take those breaks. Certainly we don't include them or build them in as a formal part of our problem-solving efforts. The question is why we don't, when without the break, there may just be no breakthrough.
Enter the irrational fear of failure.
Backing off is counterintuitive. It somehow feels wrong, like preemptive surrender. It's scary to ease up, because we may lose our steam, or we may abandon hope. We get anxious when the answers aren't so forthcoming, and we begin to doubt our creativity, abilities and intelligence, fearing that if we take our eye off the problem even for a moment, we may lose the energy we've invested.
The key is a quiet mind. We need to learn to rid ourselves from the potentially destructive negative self-talk: inevitable thoughts of failure, inner voices of self-criticism and judgment, and the ever-present temptations to compare ourselves to others whose circumstances have little to do with ours.
High performers know that the line between failure and success is very often drawn on the mental field of play. The good news is that turning down the chatterbox brain is something that can be learned.
Some prefer simply taking downtime to reflect and think, (or not think as the case may be). 'Think Week' is the now-legendary solitary sabbatical taken twice yearly by Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates. In his tiny lakeside cottage hideaway, he ponders the past, present and future of his company, of technology, and of his industry. He takes long walks along the lake shore in contemplation to quiet his mind.
Others take a more technological approach. Neurofeedback training is becoming popular with athletes and executives. The aforementioned Italian soccer team regularly unwound before matches in the ultra-secretive Mind Room, a facility wired for the technique, which involves zero-gravity recliners, stereo headphones, and tiny electrodes placed on the player's scalp that are linked to computers displaying various types of brainwave activity. Trainers monitor feedback and response to various stimuli, searching for unique triggers that improve the level of sensorimotor response (SMR) brainwaves that create the feeling of suspended focus athletes refer to as "the zone." Neurofeedback centers are popping up everywhere.
Finally, meditation may be the most powerful tool known.
Neuroscientists have since the 1990s been studying Tibetan monks in the hills above Dharamsala to understand how meditation affects brain activity. In the most experienced Buddhist practitioners, researchers using electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have discovered abnormally high levels of gamma brainwaves, which are believed to be associated with the brain's ability to synthesize disparate bits of data, solve problems, heighten perception, and boost consciousness.
Scientists have now concluded that mental training of this sort can create an enduring brain trait. That means we may actually be able to rewire our brains to adopt different thinking circuits. In fact, in a reversal of conventional medical wisdom, which holds that mental experiences result from physical goings-on in the brain, startling new evidence suggests the reverse may also be true - that our mental machinations may actually alter the physical structure of our grey matter. Neuroscientists call the phenomenon neuroplasticity.
In other words, when you quiet your mind, you change your brain, thereby setting the stage for breakthrough ideas. And that leaves a whole new world of opportunity for the innovator. '
Excerpt of Matthew E May's portion of an article originally featured on CNBC.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
How To 'Manage Up' A Difficult Leader
'Yael Zofi thought she was going to get fired.
An outgoing, talkative woman, she reported to a man whose personality couldn't be more different. Her boss ran the global leadership development and performance management division of J. P. Morgan. The two were in frequent communication, but Zofi tended to write long, detailed, chatty e-mails, and her boss zapped back terse, single-word responses. "I would write an e-mail describing the approach, the process, the length of time the project would take," she recalls. "He'd write, 'Yes.' I'd say, 'Yes what?'"
Terribly frustrated, Zofi reluctantly adjusted her communication style to suit her superior. "It drove me nuts to report to him until I realized he needed bullet points," she says. She began to omit all but the most pressing details from her notes, sending her boss e-mails that were nearly as brief as his responses.
After some weeks of this strategy, she left on vacation with a girlfriend. "My relationship with my boss was so rocky, I thought I was going to get back and be fired." Instead, when she returned to New York she discovered she had been promoted to vice president.
That was back in the 1990s. Zofi didn't quite realize it then, but she was using a technique that many oppressed underlings have found useful in dealing with difficult superiors: managing up. In other words, assessing your boss's weaknesses, paying attention to his or her management and communication style, and coming up with a strategy for dealing with it.
In 1998 Zofi left J. P. Morgan and started her own consulting and executive coaching business....In 2008 she published a book on the topic of managing up. It's now one of the focuses of her consulting work.
"You have to look at your relationship with your boss as your most critical relationship in your company," she advises. "Think about the boss not as a boss but as a client." Approach your boss on his own turf, she adds.
Zofi finds there are four primary categories of bosses--trendsetter, outgoing, perfectionist and stable--but she concedes that most humans are complex creatures who can have a little of each quality. Once you've figured out your boss's style, you can come up with an approach to suit it.
For instance, if you have a perfectionist boss who can't tolerate any form of chaos and expects employees to be expert at their tasks, you should always do plenty of background research, ask questions in advance of your work on a project, provide plenty of data to the boss and check in with progress reports along the way.
What if your manager is downright incompetent? Zofi has a solution for that, too. One of her clients worked at a medical device manufacturing company and reported to the daughter of the owner. The company made sophisticated medical resonance imaging machines that were constructed from parts produced in various countries including India, China and Israel. Overwhelmed by the challenges of coordinating so many disparate sources, the boss became extremely anxious, constantly pestering the employee for information and even interrupting her when she was in meetings or on the phone with long-distance suppliers.
"My client was getting sick over it," Zofi recalls. "It was affecting her personal life. She even thought about going on Prozac." Zofi counseled the employee to assess her boss's erratic personality and come up with a strategy to calm her down. Instead of confronting the boss directly, Zofi's client reached out to the foreign suppliers and gathered information. She wound up creating spreadsheets that laid out the status of each part and when it would come into the manufacturing facility. "She gave her boss a comfort zone," Zofi notes. The strategy worked. In addition, the employee formed good relationships with the suppliers, which helped everything run more smoothly. "She doesn't love her boss," Zofi notes, "but she's still got a job, and she's dealing with it." '
Friday, January 29, 2010
People Centred Leadership Delivers Outstanding Performance
Six high-profile UK organisations took part in the study including EDF Energy, Guardian Media Group, Tesco and Unilever. As data in the report demonstrates, one of the most striking elements to emerge from the research was the stark contrast between how outstanding and good leaders behaved.
Outstanding leaders focus on people, attitudes and engagement, co-creating vision and strategy. Instead of one-to-one meetings centred on tasks, they seek to understand people and their motives. Instead of developing others through training and advice, they do this through challenge and support. They manage performance holistically, attending to the mood and behaviour of their people as well as organisational objectives. And instead of seeing people as one of many priorities, they put the emphasis on people issues first.
Outstanding leaders are focussed on performance but they see people as the means of achieving great performance and themselves as enablers. They don’t seek out the limelight for themselves but challenge, stretch and champion others, giving them the space and support to excel.
The findings strongly suggest that an approach which connects leaders to people and people to purpose defines outstanding leadership. Leadership that focuses on mutuality and respect is not only good for people but good for organisations too.
For the full research findings, see - http://www.theworkfoundation.com/Assets/Docs/leadershipFINAL_reduced.pdf
Removing Negative Self-Talk
As we all know, people talk to themselves. We all spend the whole day talking to ourselves, even if we don’t realise it. Self-talk is like having a radio in our heads. We hear it wherever we are, and more often than desired, this voice is a non-stop reminder of how unlucky, bad, or silly we are. This character in our heads is an expert in getting us down through pessimism and criticism.
This voice can make us feel worthless and can leave us without control over our lives. It can convince you not to apply for your dream job, or not bother to make that positive change your life needs so much. Our inner critic feeds on the fear and the doubt it produces in us, but it is up to us not to let it take control. We can easily control the radio in our heads to play the stations that work for us instead of against us.
There is a way to change the station to a more positive one every time the negative tries to take control.
Follow these 3 simple steps, and turn the voice in your head into your biggest admirer:
Follow these 3 simple steps, and turn the voice in your head into your biggest admirer:
1. First, be aware of that negative voice talking to you and what it is saying. Observe the self-talk inside your head, truly listen to it; commonly we don’t pay attention to our thoughts, they just come and go automatically, and equally control our lives. You must gain awareness of what that voice is saying. Is it saying the same thing over and over again? How is it making you feel? Most of us don’t focus consciously on what our inner voice is saying; we simply accept its judgment as the truth, and this is where many of us get stuck, sometimes for our whole lives. Negative self-talk is, in most cases, only trying to deceive us with feelings of fear and doubt. What it says is not true. Learn to recognise who truly is in control of your life.
2. Second, assess your inner voice. Learn to recognise the forms it takes: maybe it gets nervous, mad, or frightened? Maybe there is a hint of a positive voice trying to gain strength over the negative one; if there is, you should be proud. Try to focus and listen to that background positive chat more and more every time you hear it. With practice, you will eventually hear it all the time. The most important thing is that you are aware that your inner critic is just a habit of your mind and that you can easily change the station to listen to a different tune, one that makes you feel good, energised, and proud about yourself and your life.
3. Now, after consciously recognising, listening, and evaluating your inner critic, you can start replacing negative talk with positive one. Give the good talk space to speak, and encourage it through positive affirmations, until you feel the change inside yourself. Affirmations are very powerful; these energise you and prompt you to act positively. If you feel resistance, try this: As soon as you identify the negative talk nagging you with something like “I can’t do anything right”, instantly change that into a positive affirmation, like “Everything I do turns out right”. This is a very powerful exercise because it allows you to assess how each statement makes you feel, and you will want to continue giving yourself bigger doses of positive talk every time.
US Business Leaders Lack Credibility
For more, see - http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jan2010/db20100126_231956.htm and http://www.edelman.com/trust/2010/
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Attitude is a Key Value of Positive Leadership
Attitudes can be either positive or negative. The notion of a positive attitude can be looked at from a whole variety of important dimensions, including courage, confidence, passion, enthusiasm, humour, patience, happiness and humility. A positive attitude often includes a simple smile.
While it's more common to promote a positive attitude, negative aspects can pop-up quite easily -- like arrogance, selfishness, complaining, comparing and judging others. These are dimensions of attitude that don't serve us well or for very long.
For this occasion, let's look at attitude from a couple of perspectives, enthusiasm and optimism.
Enthusiasm is derived from the Greek word for spirit. When you're enthusiastic, what spiritual well are you calling upon? Some say it's a virtue that inspires others to action even while it pushes fear and worry away for others.
Enthusiasm is contagious, but you can't pass it on unless you've got it yourself. George Bernard Shaw once said, “A candle loses nothing by lighting another.”
Greeting people with “I'm feeling great today” rather than just “I'm fine” or “OK” can set the tone for your conversations. Think about how a smile communicates your attitude. And a good belly laugh can really feel great, too.
People just naturally want to be around others who are upbeat. Enthusiasm is an attitude that we can choose.
Some wise person once said that an optimist is a human manifestation of spring. And springtime is when we're looking forward, we're planting, we're starting new projects, we're upbeat. This kind of positive outlook is a huge asset for anyone -- students, teachers, parents and leaders.
Humility is another valuable element of attitude. While some people think of this quality as meekness -- some say weakness -- it's more about respect and an unpretentious way of holding yourself.
As opposed to exalting yourself, it's about having a healthy ego. To many people, humility is born from one's spiritual perspective and has to do with yielding to a higher power, however you conceive of that. In the end, if you say you're humble, you're probably not.
There are lots of ways to work on your attitude. Here are just a few: be courageous and take calculated risks; try being patient; have confidence in your abilities; be open to seeing new possibilities; start your day with quiet reflection; and be grateful for the blessings you've received.
Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor, once referred to attitude as “the last of the human freedoms.” Attitude is a choice. Choose well !
Positive Leadership
Do you remember him from the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns of the mid-'60s? Grizzled and unyeilding, you had no doubt this was a true tough guy. Then through his Dirty Harry era he continued to evolve the tough guy persona, growing even meaner as he aged. In 1971 he caught the directing bug and shot his first film, "Play Misty for Me," in which he also starred. This was a haunting and often frightening tale of a disk jockey that is stalked by an obsessive fan. Even in his first film, a critical favourite, you could see the flashes of a great American storyteller.
Eastwood had proven to be versatile, tackling subjects as diverse as World War II and Blues music. He also had a very deft hand with the Western, reinvigorating the genre with "Unforgiven." So much so that we can often excuse him for the occasional clunker like "Space Cowboys" or "The Rookie". In "Invictus," Eastwood once again strikes Oscar-worthy gold with the inspiring true story of Nelson Mandela's quest to unite an apartheid-torn South Africa by winning the Rugby World Cup.
Teaming up once again with old friend Morgan Freeman (very convincingly as Mandela), they tell a story of hope, courage and the inspiration of positive leadership. Mandela, after spending 30 years as a political prisoner, is elected the president of South Africa — a South Africa deeply divided after decades of apartheid and rife with crime, economic chaos and social injustice. His quest, initially, is to bring the nation together through the universal uniter of sport. The only problem is, the South African rugby team, the Springboks, are not that great. Often disorganised, more often uninspired, the Springbok team has become something of an embarrassment for the country. Lead by Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon), the squad struggles until Mandela sees the potential for unification and invites Pienaar to afternoon tea to plant the seed of a World Cup Championship.
Both Damon and Freeman give inspired performances, performances that could easily have fallen into preachiness. Here, however, under the skilled direction of Eastwood, both actors give a performance that is subtle and inspiring. Freeman becomes Mandela and channels his soft spoken, positive energy perfectly. Damon, as the rugby team captain, gives a strong performance as a man shifting through the sea of change, embracing it and becoming a driving force within his country.
Not a sports movie nor a political movie, "Invictus" is a story about hope and change. Eastwood illustrates the great spirit within man to unite in a common spirit that can overcome any obstacles.
This could easily have been a film that spoke down to the audience. Instead, Eastwood delivers an inspired message that should be welcome by all.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Leaders of the Pack
'One of the issues being raised at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week is how to build effective institutions. It's a great topic, especially since so many of the world's major institutions are viewed as political, bureaucratic, unresponsive, costly and generally "ineffective."
But no organization ever starts out that way, and most leaders don't intentionally think about how to make their institutions less effective. So it's important for world leaders at Davos to get to the root of what causes organizational arteriosclerosis to set in--and how to prevent it from happening.
Institutions are living organisms that grow, develop, mutate and evolve over time. Some of this evolution is purposefully aimed at achieving specific goals, but much of it is unplanned as the organization reacts to environmental stimuli, competitive forces, political pressures, changing managerial priorities and technological innovations.
The result of this unplanned evolution is "complexity creep," the tendency for organizations to add units and layers; broaden its scope and mission; proliferate products and services; develop disconnected and inefficient processes; and reinforce unproductive patterns of behavior--all of which contribute to the gradual degradation of institutional effectiveness.
All organizations are subject to these forces over time. But some are fortunate to have leaders with the courage and skill to rein in the complexity creep and refocus the organization on getting things done more simply and with greater effectiveness.
When Jim Wolfensohn became president of the World Bank in 1995 he launched a series of initiatives challenging the complexity and lack of focus that built up in previous years. Relentlessly over the next decade Wolfensohn pushed the Bank's managers and stakeholders to focus on poverty reduction; simplify lending and internal administrative processes; create knowledge networks for leveraging the Bank's technical skills and experiences; improve management disciplines; increase transparency; and fight corruption.
His personal energy, along with his willingness to fight and make tough decisions, transformed the Bank from a bloated, ineffective and increasingly irrelevant institution to one that continues to play a key role on the world stage.
Unfortunately not every organization is blessed with leaders who instinctively know how to fight against complexity. In fact many people would say that a large number of today's leaders, many of whom are at Davos, are caretakers at best (and undertakers at worst)--and that there is a dearth of transformative leaders both in the public sector and corporations.
But it doesn't have to be that way. Every leader--be it a CEO or a middle manager--has the potential to push back against complexity and make the organization more effective. The starting point is to declare that the war against complexity is an intentional, ongoing and highly visible part of the leadership job--a "core competency" that is just as critical as strategic planning, budgeting and operations management.
So here's what the participants at Davos can do to build effective institutions--starting with their own:
Listen to your customers: To sharpen your institutional focus, get out and talk to the people who use your services or buy your products and encourage your team to do the same. Then come back and connect the dots between what your customers need and what you are actually providing. Most of the time you'll find that there are activities, initiatives, products and services that don't add value and should be eliminated or reshaped. At the World Bank Wolfensohn and his team created a "village immersion" program where senior staffers lived in poverty-stricken areas for weeks at a time. These experiences led the Bank to recalibrate many programs around villagers' needs instead of the needs of government bureaucrats.
Build internal and external networks. It is important to encourage your people to break through the constraints of organizational structure and systematically connect with partners, both inside and outside of the institution. At the World Bank Wolfensohn launched networks for all of the key professional groups (economists, agronomists, education specialists) and appointed senior people with clout and credibility to lead them. Sharing project information and experience across the Bank's different geographic units, and reaching out to experts around the world, accelerated progress on many initiatives, prevented the same mistakes from being made over and over and increased the capabilities of the Bank's staff.
Streamline processes. Over time, in any institution, people can get locked into doing things in complex ways that no longer make sense, take too much time or have too many steps. And since most people only see their own piece of the process, they rarely initiate process improvements. Therefore you and your team need to build the capabilities and forums for end-to-end process simplification and make it an ongoing part of the way the organization evolves. At the World Bank Wolfensohn funded a small group of business process improvement experts who worked with staff to streamline core processes such as lending, project approval and project evaluation, as well as internal processes such as performance management and budgeting. Over time they not only made it easier to get things done but also built the capabilities to continue process simplification on an ongoing basis.
If we really want to build effective institutions, the hard truth is that we will first need to build effective, transformative leaders who are willing to make it happen. Rather than just debate the question, perhaps the participants at Davos can decide if they want to step up to the challenge.'
Building a Leadership Community of High Commitment and High Performance
, “These choices begin with their definition of firm purpose—a desire to make a positive contribution to customers, employees, and society.” If a leader’s “primary goal is to acquire money and power, building an HCHP organisation will be beyond their reach.” To build enduring HCHP organisations, leaders must stick to the firm’s why: purpose and guiding values, strategy, risk profile, and basic for motivating, organising, and managing people. “In times of crisis, when capital markets may demand expedient decisions that could take the firm off the HCHP path, commitment to principles enables CEOs to go against conventional wisdom in decisions about strategy, debt, growth rate, acquisitions, and layoffs.”
These circumstances often create conflicting demands between people and profits that leaders must learn to integrate. This does not call for heroic leaders—single-minded and single-handed leaders—but leaders who are willing to listen and engage others in a collective action learning process. In a crisis we often look for saviours, but instead, writes Ron Heifetz in Leadership Without Easy Answers
, “we should be calling for leadership that will challenge us to face problems for which there are no simple, painless solutions.” Heroic leadership isn’t about listening or collective learning. “Most important,” writes Beer, “heroic leadership fails to perform the central function of leadership—engaging employees authentically in a process of organisational learning and development from which they as leaders also learn.” Leading the creation of a HCHP organisation is “not about aligning the company with the leader’s ideas. It is about enabling leaders and their people to learn together about the problems they face and the actions they must take.”
Surviving and thriving in this crucible of conflicting demands is no easy task. It requires that leaders strengthen and develop their internal resources. They must learn to enter the fundamental state of leadership when faced with challenges—a state that demands that they dig deep into their values and purpose. That fundamental state of leadership requires leaders to move from comfort with activities to focus on results, from self-absorption to commitment to mission and higher purpose, from focus on self to focus on others, from being internally closed to being externally open, and from hiding the truth to embracing the truth.
In general, underperforming companies have not developed leaders throughout their organisations. Beer suggests that this is because “most managers had come up through their home function, business unit, or region, and never acquired the broader general management perspective needed to understand and manage cross-boundary activities….In many of the companies, ineffective senior teams did not spend time developing common values and perspective about what constituted good leadership.”
Again, the primary responsibility to learn to lead from where you are lies with you.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Leadership Skills Lacking in Over 50% of US Managers
When asked to rank which qualities their boss best exhibited, likeability took the top spot among U.S. workers, followed by leadership, honesty, fairness, patience and loyalty.
Although leadership ranked second, just less than half of workers polled (49%) thought their managers exhibited strong leadership skills – a sobering data point reinforcing the need for renewed focus on leadership development.
Among other key findings from the survey are:
•Motivation & Mentorship Lagging: Only 24% of employees polled felt that their manager displayed motivational skills, and the same number noted that their supervisor failed to mentor and explain the choices made from an organisational perspective.
•Career Growth Continues: The majority of workers surveyed (66%) still feel that their manager promotes work and career growth internally – an important element to ensuring strong retention and engagement as the economy turns around.
•Leadership Is Remaining Honest About Economic Climate: 75% of employees trust their manager to be honest about their job security, and 77% agree that their supervisor should be candid about the company direction.
Regardless of how the economy is fairing, it's mission critical that organisations look inward and consistently review how their employees perceive the actions being made by supervisors and management. Employees that feel underappreciated and unmotivated are less productive and will be the first to leave once the job market shows signs of improvement. Developing strong leadership – at all levels of an organisation - is essential to solve this problem effectively and improve employee morale and retention.
Here are some thoughts for organisations looking to improve leadership development:
•Focus on identifying and developing leaders in critical roles at all levels of the organisation. It is essential for organisations to develop their leadership talent beginning with emerging leaders who may be in their first managerial roles and continuing through more senior high potentials and succession candidates. This comprehensive focus on development drives a culture of leadership excellence and improved performance throughout all levels of management.
•Ensure that leadership development efforts are aligned with specific business objectives and strategies. Leadership development activities should reinforce strengths and close skill gaps to enable leaders to bring their own performance and the performance of the teams they lead to the highest level of effectiveness in ways that are aligned with the evolving needs and goals of the business.
•Implement development approaches, such as executive coaching, that reinforce sustainable behaviour change. Development investments must drive a positive impact on the business in a method that can be sustained over time. Effective executive coaching is a strategic way to help management gain vision while continuing to expand skills.
For more, see - http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lee-hecht-harrison-survey-finds-strong-leadership-still-lacking-in-the-workplace-82679982.html
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