Leadership Development Requires the Involvement of Leaders

Recent research in the USA indicates that most senior executives are believed to spend less than 25 percent of their time on leadership development activities, even for positions typically associated with leadership development - (http://www.hreonline.com/HRE/story.jsp?storyId=213109302)

While it is clear that the quality of the time spent on leader development is far more important than the quantity of time, researchers found that the quantity of time does matter and that many organisational leaders are reporting that senior executives are simply not putting in the necessary time.

Specifically, about two-thirds (65 percent) of executives whose firms have a head of human resources, half (50 percent) of executives whose firms have a chief learning officer, and four in 10 (40 percent) of executives whose firms have a head of leader development, indicated that no more than 25 percent of those individuals' time was spent on leadership development.

This may be seen as a clear signal that leadership development is not a high priority, despite rhetoric to the contrary.

Separate global research (http://image.exct.net/lib/fefd1674706403/m/1/RM_Employee_Engagement_Jan_2010.pdf) shows that only 34% of employees identify themselves as fully engaged, while 50% identify themselves as completely unengaged with their organisation.

With this in mind, the good news is that senior executives do see leader development as being among the top five leadership challenges confronting their organisations, with only the issues of leading innovation and internal growth being seen as bigger challenges.

Leadership Development Requires the Involvement of Leaders

The Priorities of Leadership

“The more senior your management position is, the more important it is to connect the organisation or the project to the outside world,” said Alan Mulally, president and chief executive officer of Ford.

“How does this fit in with what we’re doing? What is the real goal, the real mission? And it makes you think about: What business are we in?”

The comments come from an interview for The New York Times, “Planes, Cars and Cathedrals,” published online on September 5, 2009. Throughout the interview, Mulally addressed the following questions:

• How do senior leaders set organisational vision and values?
• How do senior leaders deploy your organisation’s vision and values?
• How do senior leaders’ personal actions reflect a commitment to the organisation’s values?

“I think the most important thing is coming to a shared view about what we’re trying to accomplish—whether you’re a nonprofit or a for-profit organisation,” said Mulally. “What are we? What is our real purpose?”

High-performing organisations focus through a shared vision. Creating such a vision requires leaders who will listen to employees and customers and find the common themes and interests that everyone can support. “The higher the calling, the higher the compelling vision that you can articulate,” Mulally said, “then the more it pulls everybody in.”

To make his point, he recounted one of his favourite stories. “This reporter stops by a construction site and he interviews three bricklayers. He asks the first bricklayer, ‘What are you doing?’ And he says, ‘Well, I’m making a living laying these bricks.’ The reporter says: ‘Oh, that’s great. That’s very noble.’

He asks the next bricklayer, ‘What are you doing?’ And he says, ‘Well, I am practicing the profession of bricklaying. I’m going to be the best bricklayer ever.’

And the reporter asks the third bricklayer, ‘What are you doing?’ And he says, ‘I’m developing a cathedral.’ There is technical excellence and professionalism, but we all want to contribute to making a cathedral.”

Mulally listed four things he has “to really come through on” as the leader of Ford, along with critical questions he must answer:

1.Connecting what Ford is doing to the outside world. “Where is the world going? Where is the technology going? Where are the customers going? Where is the competition going?”

2.Identifying the value proposition of the company. “What business are we in? What are we going to focus on?”

3.Balancing the near term with the longer term. “Do we have a plan that works in the near term and also creates value for the long term?

4.Focusing on the values and standards of the organisation. “What are the expected behaviours? How do we want to treat each other? How do we want to act?”

These and other critical questions are asked and answered as part of developing a Positive Leadership™ strategy. To learn more about the process of introducing Positive Leadership™ to your organisation, please contact: graham.watson@positiveleadership.co.uk

The Priorities of Leadership

Tiger Woods

'I stopped living by the core values that I was taught to believe in....... I've had a lot of time to think about what I've done. My failures have made me look at myself in a way I never wanted to before. It's now up to me to make amends, and that starts by never repeating the mistakes I've made. It's up to me to start living a life of integrity. I once heard, and I believe it's true, it's not what you achieve in life that matters; it's what you overcome. Achievements on the golf course are only part of setting an example. Character and decency are what really count.' 
Tiger Woods, 19 February 2010

Tiger Woods

Leadership is Linked to Financial Results

Comparing the total return for the 20 Best Companies for Leadership in a recent BusinessWeek.com/Hay Group survey against the S&P 500 shows the following:

% Change	I Year	3 Years	5 Years	10 Years
Top 20	+ 1.6	+ 4.0	+ 8.4	+3.0
S&P 500	- 37.0	- 8.4	- 2.2	- 1.4

Leadership is Linked to Financial Results

Role Models for a Leader

During his stint as commanding general of the multi-national force in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus took "enormous strength" from the experiences of Ulysses Grant at Shiloh. Petraeus also commended former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's advice to attend to problems when they first crop up, and businessman Jack Welch's views on subordinate leader development. However, for the military, "this is also about life and death," Petraeus said, causing him to place a premium on leadership qualities such as integrity.

Role Models for a Leader

Leaders Who Build Trust Will Accelerate Their Organisation's Success

Trust means that every employee, starting at the top, knows the organisation's core values, its vision, and the plans for getting there. Trust means that roles and responsibilities are clear, and that the rules for dealing with conflicts are well understood. Trust means holding people accountable for what they do and don't do. In short, building trust through open communication is the quickest way to build bonds with employees, customers, and shareholders - and to accelerate your organisation's success.

Leaders Who Build Trust Will Accelerate Their Organisation's Success

Positive Leadership Begins With Values

A strategy begins and ends with values - a prioritised listing of what is important to you. This is Positive Leadership.

Once you know what you value as a leader, you can set goals to help you bring about end-results that are aligned with your values. 

That is a strategy, and it is bigger than individual goals, and every bit as important. Without an overall strategy, you may climb the ladder of success. However, when you get to the top you may find that it is leaning against the wrong tree. You may find that the one with all of the fruit is just out of reach, if you haven't developed a good strategy to get there. Make sense?

Positive Leadership Begins With Values

The 20 Best Companies in the USA for Leadership 2010

For more, see - http://www.businessweek.com/careers/special_reports/20100216best_companies_for_leadership.htm

The 20 Best Companies in the USA for Leadership 2010

The Power of Positive Interactions

John Gottman's pioneering research found that marriages are much more likely to succeed when the couple experiences a 5 to 1 ratio of positive to negative interactions whereas when the ratio approaches 1 to 1, marriages are more likely to end in divorce. Additional research also shows that workgroups with positive to negative interaction ratios greater than 3 to 1 are significantly more productive than teams that do not reach this ratio.

So what does this mean for you? For most of us, it means we need to increase the number of positive interactions we have at home and at work and reduce our negative interactions. We need to engage each other with more smiles, kind words, encouragement, gratitude, meaningful conversations, honest dialogues and sincere positive interactions. And to foster these actions we need to create personal and team rituals that help us interact more positively. If we make them part of our organisational process and individual habits they are more likely to happen.

For instance, at home you might decide to take a walk with your spouse each night after dinner and talk about the positive things that happened at work. The more you practice this the more it will become ingrained in your life. At work you might make it a point to smile at your co-workers and customers more often. As a manager you would spend more time praising your employees for the things they do right rather than always focusing on what everyone is doing wrong. Make it a point to personally praise 5 people every week. As an organisation you might gather all of your employees on a call once a day to share a positive message. Or perhaps you might gather your sales team together each week and have your team members share success stories. The ideas are infinite. The key is to intentionally cultivate more positive interactions to fuel success.

However, please know that this doesn't mean we should never have negative interactions. There is research by Barbara Fredrickson from the University of Michigan that shows if a work group in a company experiences a positive to negative interaction ratio of 13 to 1 the work group will be less effective. This implies that no one is willing to confront the real problems and challenges that are holding them back. Sometimes we need to confront a situation to move past it and, as we know, ignoring problems that stare us in the face doesn't work. Negative interactions are necessary so long as they occur much less frequently than positive interactions.

Positive interactions are essential to a healthy marriage, positive work environment and individual and team success. In this spirit when you are finished reading this, we encourage you to go thank someone at work or at home and let them know how they impacted your life in a positive way. Then make it a habit.

The Power of Positive Interactions

How to Become a Positive Leader

In the words of a 19th century American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, “ No man can for any considerable time wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which is the true one.” You should therefore concentrate on building your inner character rather than building reputation or image. D. L. Moody said “if I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of itself.”.

To become a person of integrity and a positive influencer, you need to develop the following qualities:

1. Fulfill your commitments-one of the surest ways to break trust with people is to renege on a promise. Hence never promise anything you can’t or don’t intend to keep. 

2. Live honestly- choose to be truthful; avoid telling lies. Avoid hypocrisy and duplicity; be consistent in your character with everyone. This will make people have good impressions about you.

3. Exemplify humility-People tend to distrust someone they perceive to be driven by ego, jealousy or an air of superiority. Humility is one of the hallmarks of an effective leader and a positive influencer.

4. Imbibe an attitude of service- leadership is all about serving others and not an opportunity to be served. Sir Wilfred T. Grenfell says “the service that we render to others is really the rent that we pay for our room on this earth.” Leaders are to give of their time, energy and gifts to others.

5. Do the first things first- Resist the temptation to do the easy and quick activities because these are often the trivial things. Zig Ziglar says “when you do the things you have to do when you have to do them, the day will come when you can do the things you want to do when you want to do them.”

How to Become a Positive Leader

Why Sport Matters

Governments don’t back sport simply for its economic value. They back it because it provides such a powerful tool for nation-building. 

Spectators, on the other hand, love sport because it offers mythic lessons in the great themes of life. Sport is about the rewards of courage, self-discipline and faith in oneself. Sport is unflinching proof that every hero’s fate – and by association our own — is ultimately one of defeat either by an opponent, by circumstance or by age. Sport reveals that victory and defeat balance the same equation, that there cannot be one without the other and that it’s important for the winner to honour the loser. Sport teaches humility. Sport demonstrates that time is the master of all. Sport reminds us that we all live in the fleeting moment and that at some point we, too, must arrive at that one last moment that is all we have and all we will ever have. Sport affirms the moment’s value. 

The public response to sport is a measure of its importance.

Approximately half the population of the planet is expected to watch the Vancouver and Whistler Olympics on television. This audience isn’t coerced, it is self-selecting. The audience alone reflects a degree of interest that opponents of sport as spectacles prefer to ignore.

Why Sport Matters

The Role of 'Positivity' in Peak Performance

In Sustainable Peak Performance, authors Dr Mike Pratt and his wife Helga have demonstrated the role of ‘positivity’ in sustaining peak performance and the links between sustainability, happiness and performance. Part of the book shows how the three concepts of 1. wellbeing (happiness), 2. working in “flow” or full engagement, and 3. making a difference as an enterprise can create the context for performance.

At the personal level, happiness comes through choice and action. The choice part is about ensuring both self-discipline over mind / body / spirit and self-determination of our own fate across all walks of life. The action part is about activities that provide gratification through progressing meaningful goals and activities that simply provide pleasure.

To quote a key passage from Sustainable Peak Performance:

“… happy people appear to choose meaningful personal and work-related goals, undertake activities that enable them to exercise their ‘signature strengths’ and virtues, make meaningful progress towards the achievement of their goals, and embrace altruistic goals and activities.”

The Role of 'Positivity' in Peak Performance

Constant Communication is a Key to Effective Leadership

‘Whether you have a really small team or a really big team, communication needs to be at the forefront. It needs to be simple. It needs to be consistent. And even when you’re tired of what the message is, you need to do it again and again and again. Because everybody listens at different levels, and everybody comes to the table with a different perspective and a different experience. And the same words mean different things to different people. On some very key things, people need to internalise it, and they need to own it. And when they do, you’ll know that you’re effective as a leader, because you hear them saying it.’ 

Susan Docherty, General Motors

Constant Communication is a Key to Effective Leadership

The Top 5 Deadly Sins for Leaders

1. Arrogance and insensitivity to others

Whether it’s yelling, screaming, and berating, or a more subtle approach to letting everyone else don’t they don’t matter, everybody can’t stand an arrogant leader.

2. Not listening

Not listening is another way of displaying arrogance and insensitivity, even if you don’t mean to be.

3. Manipulative

Getting things done by manipulating people shows a lack of authenticity and keeps people guessing what your true intentions are. It fosters a lack of trust.

4. Lack of integrity

Lying, cheating, blaming others for your mistakes – it only takes one mistake to ruin a reputation for life.

5. Selfishness

A “me first” approach, inability to collaborate or build a team, and unwillingness to collaborate.

If you’ve ever been told you display any of these traits, then do yourself and everyone around you a big favour – get some help!

The Top 5 Deadly Sins for Leaders

The Most Effective Leaders Focus On Their People's Strengths

Strengths-Based Leadership is a book which is well worth reading. Why? For a start, on page 10 the authors assert that great historical leaders, such as Winston Churchill or Mahatma Gandhi, have more differences than similarities and that it was the differences that defined them and made them great. Then, their basis for the book is decades of Gallup studies on this topic; the research firm's data includes more than 20000 in-depth interviews with senior leaders, studies of more than a million work teams, and 50 years of polls regarding the world's most admired leaders.

Three interesting findings emerge, which add to our insights into leadership.

The first of these is that the most effective leaders focus on their people's strengths, not their weaknesses. Gallup research shows that focusing on staff strength results in staff who are eight times more engaged in their work than those whose leaders focus on their weaknesses.

Some background is required on the "strengths" referred to in the title. Donald Clifton, an educational psychologist, developed the Clifton Strengths Finder, a measure of personal talent that identifies the areas in which an individual has the greatest potential for growth.

In the last years of his life, Clifton was asked what he had discovered from his 30 years of leadership research. His answer was that a leader needed to know his strengths as a carpenter needed to know his or her tools, so he or she could use the right one at the right time. This, he concluded, was probably all that leaders could be said to have in common. If you spend your life trying to be good at everything, you will never be great at anything. Being "well rounded" inadvertently breeds mediocrity, and in the area of leadership this is no less true. While the best leaders are not well rounded, the best teams are.

This brings us to the second finding, that the most effective leaders surround themselves with the right people. Think of the team in which you work; the chances are high that members were not recruited because of their complimentary differences. This is as true at entry level as it is at board level. The leader, unaware of the issue of strengths, is most likely to surround himself with people who agree with him and who have similar backgrounds and personalities. A company like this will not grow, adapt or change, and this has been verified by Gallup research on thousands of executive teams.

There are 34 themes in the Strengths Finder model and they cluster about four domains of leadership strength: executing, influencing, relationship building, and strategic thinking. A leader who is strong at influencing may well be strong in very different ways, using very different strengths, compared to another fine leader also strong in the general domain of influencing. This is because each of the four domains has eight or nine themes and great leaders appear to be strongest only in four or five of these. Where they are not strong, they will call on team members to supplement, resulting in a work group that works.

The third finding to emerge is that the most effective leaders understand their followers' needs. Most of the research conducted in the field of leadership has focused on leaders to the exclusion of followers - an oddity if you consider that you cannot be a leader if no one wants to follow you. One could argue that studying the impact of the leaders should be good enough: did they consistently produce great results in the classroom, boardroom or operating room? But, as Peter Drucker notes, the leaders who made the greatest impact on the 20th century were Hitler, Stalin and Mao and "if that's leadership, I want no part of it".

To explore why people follow, Gallup conducted a formal study of 10000 followers between 2005 and 2008. The questions were very simply and very clever. What leader has the most positive influence in your daily life? (Pause here and answer this for yourself.) Now identify three words that best describe what that person contributes to your life. (Pause again.) What emerged from their research was trust, compassion, stability and hope (or words to that effect.) These concepts deserve reflection: to know I can trust you, that you treat me like a fellow human, that you assure my present and show me the way to a future.

There is much to ponder in this book.

The Most Effective Leaders Focus On Their People's Strengths

Leadership Means Building a Winning Team

“You win in the locker room first. Then you win on the field.”

Whether we’re talking sports, business, education, healthcare, etc. the key to success is to build a winning team first. Of course this seems obvious but with increasing pressure to reach certain targets and goals and a challenging economy it’s easy for leaders and their teams to become outward focused on numbers and outcomes rather than inward focused on building the right environment, culture, attitude and synergy.

We must remember that it’s not the numbers that drive the people but the people and team that drive the numbers. 

The power comes from the inside and then it extends outward. Just as physical trainers will tell you that to build a strong body you must build your core, to build a strong organisation you must build your core foundation-consisting of your people and team. Without a strong core you’ll have weak energy, weak performance and weak results.

The New Orleans Saints were able to perform at a high level in the recent Super Bowl and as Drew Brees, their quarterback said, “We came together as a team and we believed in each other.” Without this belief, synergy and unity do you think it would have been possible for them to win the Super Bowl?

The same goes for the game of business and life.

Now more than ever it’s time to energise your people, communicate with them and move them in the right direction with a shared vision, focus and purpose. Negativity and fear are knocking your people off balance. It’s time to regroup, refocus, re-energise and create a strong core. With a solid foundation and a winning team you create strength on the inside that can withstand the negativity, naysayers and adversity on the outside.

Culture, players and coaches win championships. It’s their beliefs, actions, talent and teamwork that make the difference.

Leadership Means Building a Winning Team

Ideas for Developing Your Leadership Skills

What can boxing teach us about leadership?

1. Be resilient and retain the the desire to succeed

The boxer is characterised by a drive to complete and win many rounds of punishment. The boxer also has to demonstrate huge commitment to training, which is driven by desire – this in turn is based on a personal ambition that is nurtured and encouraged over many years and pushes an individual to go beyond the normal boundaries of performance. (One of the reasons sport is probably a good vehicle for testing desire is that it engages the emotions in a way that business sometimes fails to do for many people.)

2. Develop passion to inspire genius

To be a true genius, people must have heart; geniuses possess a passion that makes them do extraordinary things. How can we expect people to raise their games if they are not inspired by what is happening to them in the workplace? Therefore, senior managers and business owners need to understand what makes people tick – their core values and beliefs, for example. Emotional intelligence teaches us to be self-aware so that we can appreciate what drives our people.

3. Be positive and address situations

A positive mental attitude is built around a self-belief that makes you a winner whatever the circumstances. It always seeks a solution to problematic situations; it does not lay blame to others and rarely looks backwards, accepting what has happened and building on it. In business, management often spend too much time investigating why they find themselves in a predicament, and too little time addressing the situation.

4. Bring out the charisma

One of the key elements of leaders operating in team-based environments is charisma. Charisma can be interpreted as the personal character that attracts and engages followers. This can take many different forms; even if leaders aren’t overtly charismatic, they can earn the respect of their followers by their undying commitment.

5. Be inspirational through good times and bad

In a team environment, inspiration is the leader’s ability to transfer all of their relevant personal characteristics to the rest of the team. The leader uses his charisma to inspire the other team players to push their own boundaries. If the team has the right people, the leader should be able to inspire people to push their personal performance limits when they probably least want to, when the pressure is on.

6. Banish your ego

Ego is one of the key reasons for an individual failing to succeed. Ego stops an individual from learning and developing the attributes to succeed in the long term; it makes them think they are better than they actually are. Boxing is ideal for removing the ego, as a lack of awareness of your personal weaknesses can have painful repercussions.

7. Take the knocks – and get back up

The boxer’s road is long and lonely. Coaches are a great help, but a huge percentage of drive is personal. When things are not going well, the easiest route is to pull out and give in. A special character is needed to get up seven times after being knocked down six times (as demonstrated by Rocky). In the ring, the pressure pushes the individual forward. But self motivation is key to personal development when there is no pressure to succeed. Drive is the ability to channel energy in the required direction; it ensures the individual focuses on the end result and does not lose sight of the objectives to be achieved.

8. Be confident that you can drive change

Self-confidence is different from ego, in that it encourages learning and does not think that the individual is ‘too good’ to improve. The boxer needs self-confidence to make the other elements work. The business leader needs to believe that he or she can make a difference and alter the path that the organisation is taking. One of the biggest obstacles to decision-making is the fear of making a mistake. In business, leaders are great at hiding their fear and disguising it in different ways. In boxing, fear leads to indecision which means you will lose. Something needs to be done.

9. Hone your inner strength to maintain your will to win

Many people feel the boxer’s strength is their physical attributes. However, the very best boxers’ key attribute is their inner strength. The physical body is likely to give in quite early on in proceedings, depending on the level of training. However, there are numerous instances when the biggest and most physical boxer has failed to win against a physically weaker opponent. Inner strength drives determination and a will to win.

10. Push yourself – mentally and physically

Boxing involves the greatest integration between the mind and body. Leaders need to explore how far they can push their physical being, and in doing so develop their mental strength. Physical training that pushes the individual beyond their boundaries tests their determination and mental will to progress.

Ideas for Developing Your Leadership Skills

Leading through Facilitation

Successful executives focus not on handing down orders, but rather on facilitating collaboration, says SunGard CEO Cristóbal Conde. To make that happen, Conde uses a Twitter-like platform to enable his global workforce to share ideas and brag about their successes. "It's more like being the producer of the show, rather than being the lead," he says. "By creating an atmosphere of collaboration, the people who are consistently right get a huge following."

For  more, see - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/business/17corner.html?ref=business

Leading through Facilitation

Leadership Requires Self Discipline Throughout the Organisation

The Positive Leadership™ game plan for winning provides a seamless link between the values of Positive Leadership™, the strategically aligned results which must flow from these values and the ability to sustain these values and deliver these results, even when under pressure. 

The market is the ultimate test or competitive arena for those who share the values of Positive Leadership™. Preparing to win and win consistently in such an arena requires exceptional talent, preparation and support. Being a successful competitor in business is at the heart of leadership, in the same way that it is in sport. Positive Leadership™ draws extensively on lessons from elite sport and recognises the importance of developing the ability to thrive under pressure and use the competitive arena as a source of advantage over others.  The winning edge requires the ability to display mental toughness, confidence and poise.

Any Scots who follow this blog will know that in today’s Six Nations Rugby international versus Wales, Scotland unfortunately showed what happens to the desired result when a team fails to display the values of Positive Leadership™ when under pressure.

However of much more importance than the result is the health of injured Scotland winger Thom Evans. Our thoughts are with him.

Leadership Requires Self Discipline Throughout the Organisation

Four Actions to Survive the Recession and Emerge Triumphant

Here are some interesting post recession leadership lessons from Harvard Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter:

'In these difficult days, doing nothing is not an option. Passivity will only make things worse. But what can we do when there is little or no new investment? Here are four useful actions I've seen work effectively.

Move while others are distracted. This is the strategy of a very successful long-term CEO who has steered a European company into global prominence as one of a handful of industry leaders. He cultivates important relationships during times of crisis when competitors are looking elsewhere, enabling him to make acquisitions others coveted but couldn't get.

This is also how Continental Airlines, under Gordon Bethune, profited when the Northeast electric power grid went down for two days in 2003. Other airlines cancelled hundreds of flights, while confident Continental's empowered employees kept their flights going. Noting the stranded passengers from other airlines when LaGuardia and Kennedy airports closed, Continental ran extra flights from Newark, thereby rescuing the passengers and making millions of extra dollars for those two days. Competitors lost money and goodwill.

Announce and own a grand concept. Okay, you might not be able to raise money for it nor do much about it now, but you will be well-prepared when markets recover. Ideas are cheap to begin to articulate and brand--and priceless once established.

In early November, as the financial crisis was still fresh in its horror (and Obama's election still fresh in its exuberance), Sam Palmisano announced "Smart Planet," a new IBM concept, via a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. The intention for now is to stimulate discussion and pin down the idea of intelligent networks for future infrastructure, or any of the other aspects of a smarter (more information-infused) capacity for roads, buildings, supply chains, etc. With a modest communications effort, IBM can put the "smart planet" idea on public policy agendas and "own" an idea ripe for action whenever recovery occurs.

You don't have to be an IBM to own ideas. A few years ago, colleagues and I at Harvard floated the idea of ‘Advanced Leadership’, a new stage of higher education and kept the idea alive even through a standstill at Harvard during a transition of presidents. We did things that cost nothing, such as writing a working paper, speaking at conferences, and getting colleagues interested. We were ready when new initiatives were supported again, and we "own" a well-received innovation idea.

Get rid of things that have outlived their usefulness. This is a personal lesson, since I deal with crisis by removing basement clutter or giving away old clothes - nothing like that clean closet feeling and the action is under my control. The same principle applies to businesses. Turbulent times demand that resources go to the high potential areas. If a company is still too cluttered with product SKUs that proliferated unnoticed, declining lines of business, meaningless rules or reports, or the like, do the housecleaning, fast. Even those who don't like it will understand.

Concentrate on helping your users, clients, or customers succeed. Always good advice, but now we have to really mean it. Obviously, companies dependent on their revenue-paying customers cannot afford to stand by while those customers decline. Sometimes that involves giving them extras for nothing.

Leaders of a large consulting firm have told their staff that they should worry more about their clients than about themselves, thinking up ways their clients can survive, even if every microsecond isn't billable. Or if you are a supplier of a diagnostic tool to hospitals, for example, and see a cost-saving idea outside of your area of expertise while hanging around the hospital, pass it on.

Generosity might not get you anything now, but you'll be well-positioned for the future, hopefully with healthier customers and bigger ideas.'

Four Actions to Survive the Recession and Emerge Triumphant

Leadership Means Getting The Best From Your Team

A team is a collection of individuals and the leader’s job is to create an environment for the team to achieve ever-greater things together.  While in theory it is a good idea to treat everyone the same, reality is quite different.  Everyone is special.

Some high-achieving individuals are giving you their best effort most all of the time. They are totally devoted to the company and have been known to work day and night to do their best, while others simply don't have that kind of dedication or self-motivation.  

So next time you stand in front of everyone in the company and implore the entire team to dig deeper and try harder, you stand a chance of pushing "Mr. or Mrs. Hard Driver" right off the cliff.  “What does he want from me?  I’m working as hard and as fast as I can.  I’ve devoted my entire life to this company.”  Meanwhile, “Mr. Low Achiever” is wondering what he is going to order for lunch and is minimally fazed by your exultation's. 

Oftentimes you need to spend one-on-one time helping over-achievers to throttle back the engine a bit.  They need balance in their life to keep performing at a high level and the leader is uniquely qualified to make certain they stay fresh and motivated as the high achiever is the last person you want to lose.  They will appreciate the extra attention and if you are going to focus on lifting the effort it is always best to lift the effort and spend valuable management time with your best employees.

That is why leaders need to choose their words with more care when they are speaking to large gatherings of diverse team members.  

Leadership Means Getting The Best From Your Team

Leadership is Critical to Success

“The truth is that no one factor makes a company admirable. But if you were forced to pick the one that makes the most difference, you’d pick leadership.” (Warren Bennis, 1998)

Effective leadership has proven results, from the release of employees’ potential to improved financial performance at the bottom line. If you need convincing, take a look at the research:

• According to the Institute for Strategic Change, the "stock price of 'well-led' companies grew by over 900% over 10 years, compared with 74% for poorly led companies".
• In research with Harvard Business School, executive search consultants Odgers, Ray & Berndtson found that the quality of leadership accounts for some 15-20% of the total variance in companies' performance.
• Ineffective leadership was found to be the cause for the removal of CEOs in 73% of cases, exceeded only by financial or ethical malpractice and mental or physical incapacity.

If, as some commentators believe, "understanding leadership is the ‘single most important task for society today'." (Donald Krause, 1997), organisations need to make sure that they are doing everything possible to develop today’s and tomorrow’s leaders.

According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development’s (CIPD) training and development survey 2005 which measured the attitudes of 664 training managers, “91% believe there is a direct link between investment in leadership development and business performance” and “98% believe that well-designed leadership activities can have a positive impact on the bottom line.”

Leadership is Critical to Success

Five Ways for a Leader to Motivate the Team

1. Lead with Optimism - Negativity and fear are likely knocking your people off balance and it’s time to regroup, refocus, and unite to create a winning mindset, culture and positive team environment. Now, more than ever, is a time for positive leadership. Now is the time to uplift, encourage and inspire your teams. When your people talk about the challenges, you talk about the opportunities. When others talk about why they can’t succeed, you give them every reason why they can. So often the difference between success and failure is belief and as a positive leader you need to inspire this belief and optimism in your people.

2. Jump into the Trenches – You need to be humble and hungry. Humble in that you seek to learn, grow, and improve every day, and hungry with a passion to work harder than everyone else. Now is not a time to be barricaded in your office. Now is a time to be in the trenches with your people, leading, working, and building a successful future.

3. Fill the Void - These are uncertain times. Employees are questioning how their industries and jobs will be impacted by the current economy. They’re unsure about what actions to take. Unfortunately this uncertainly creates a void and where there is a void, negativity will fill it. In the absence of clear and positive communication, people start to assume the worst, and they will act accordingly. Make transparency the norm, not the exception—after all, the more you communicate, the more you foster trust, and the more loyalty is built. Talk to your team members often, and let them know where they stand. Host frequent town hall meetings, host a weekly conference call, send out a daily email, and share your positive vision for the future. As a leader, you must continually communicate, communicate, and communicate.

4. Share a Positive Vision – Rally your team around a positive vision for the road ahead. Instead of being disappointed about where you are, decide to be optimistic about where you are going. Vision helps you and your team see the road ahead and it gives you something meaningful and valuable to strive towards. Discuss where you have been, where you are going and why you are going there. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream/vision and he changed the world with it. Share your dream and improve your organisation with it. After all, if you think your best days are behind you, they are. If you think your best days are ahead of you, they are.

5. Teach Your People to Be Heroes, Not Victims - Heroes and victims get knocked down. The distinction between the two groups lies in the fact that heroes get back up while victims simply give up. Help your employees to realise that they are not victims of circumstance. Rather, remind them that they have a high locus of control—in other words, they have a significant influence over how things turn out. Faith and belief in a positive future lead to powerful actions today! Life is a story, and the story we tell ourselves and the role we play determines the quality and direction of our life. The most successful people and teams are able to overcome adversity by telling themselves a more positive story than the rest. Instead of a drama or a horror movie, they define their life as an inspirational tale. Instead of being the victim, they see themselves as a fighter and over-comer.

Five Ways for a Leader to Motivate the Team

A Positive Video That Every Leader Should Watch

We came across this award winning video entitled "Validation" recently. The video demonstrates the power of positive and genuine reinforcement - one of the most effective things a leader can do to achieve an immediate uplift in results.

A Positive Video That Every Leader Should Watch