Leaders Need To Be Energisers

Harvard Professor, Rosabeth Moss Kanter tells us why 'energy' is such an important dimension of leadership:

'Some people become leaders no matter what their chosen path because their positive energy is so uplifting. Even in tough times, they always find a way. They seem to live life on their own terms even when having to comply with someone else's requirements. When they walk into a room, they make it come alive. When they send a message, it feels good to receive it. Their energy makes them magnets attracting other people.

Just plain energy is a neglected dimension of leadership. It is a form of power available to anyone in any circumstances. While inspiration is a long-term proposition, energy is necessary on a daily basis, just to keep going.

Three things characterise the people who are energisers.

1. A relentless focus on the bright side. Energisers find the positive and run with it. A state government official in a state that doesn't like government overcomes that handicap through her strong positive presence. She dispenses compliments along with support for the community served by her agency, making it seem that she works for them rather than for the government. She greets everyone with the joy generally reserved for a close relative returning from war. I can see sceptics’ eyebrows starting to rise, but judging from her success, people love meeting with her or getting her exclamation-filled emails. She is invited to everything.

The payoffs from stressing the bright side can be considerable. In my new book, SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good, I tell the story about how Maurice Levy, CEO of the global marketing company Publicis Groupe, tilted the balance in his company's favour when his firm was one of several suitors for Internet pioneer Digitas. At one point in a long courtship, Digitas hit problems, and the stock collapsed. One of Publicis's major competitors sent Digitas's head an email saying, "Now you are at a price which is affordable, so we should start speaking." Levy sent an email the same day saying, "It's so unfair that you are hurt this way because the parameters remain very good." Levy's positive energy won the prized acquisition.

2. Redefining negatives as positives. Energisers are can-do people. They do not like to stay in negative territory, even when there are things that are genuinely depressing. For example, it might seem a stretch for anyone to call unemployment as "a good time for reflection and redirection while between jobs," but some energisers genuinely stress the minor positive notes in a gloomy symphony. A marketing manager laid off by a company hit hard by the recession saw potential in people he met at a career counselling centre and convinced them that they could start a service business together. He became the energising force for shifting their definition of the situation from negative to an opportunity.

"Positive thinking" and "counting blessings" can sound like naïve clichés. But energisers are not fools. They can be shrewd analysts who know their flaws and listen carefully to critics so that they can keep improving. Studies show that optimists are more likely to listen to negative information than pessimists, because they think they can do something about it. To keep moving through storms, energisers cultivate thick skins that shed negativity like a waterproof raincoat sheds drops of water. They are sometimes discouraged, but never victims.

An entrepreneur who has built numerous businesses and incubated others had a strong personal mission to raise national standards in his industry. He began that quest by meeting individually with the heads of major industry organisations, all of whom told him that he would fail. He nodded politely, asked for a small commitment to one action anyway, just as a test, he said, and went on to the next meeting. Eight or nine meetings later, he was well along on a path everyone had tried to discourage him from taking.

3. Fast response time. Energisers don't dawdle. Energisers don't tell you all the reasons something can't be done. They just get to it. They might take time to deliberate, but they keep the action moving. They are very responsive to emails or phone calls, even if the fast response is that they can't respond yet. This helps them get more done. Because they are so responsive, others go to them for information or connections. In the process, energisers get more information and a bigger personal network, which are the assets necessary for success.

The nice thing about this form of energy is that it is potentially abundant, renewable, and free. The only requirements for energisers are that they stay active, positive, responsive, and on mission. Are you an energiser? '

Leaders Need To Be Energisers

Leadership Trends for 2010 - If your business isn't looking ahead, you're already behind

Two results from this year's Best Companies for Leadership survey, conducted by Bloomberg BusinessWeek and Hay Group, stood out. First, the Top 20 companies this year are significantly more likely to be primarily focused on "positioning for the future" than other companies.

The behaviour of these companies indicates they believe the recession is over. Their focus is on seizing the initiative as the recovery begins to gather momentum. These companies are innovating new strategies, tactics, and execution and are already working to gain a competitive advantage.

Secondly, there is a revealing shift in what the top companies value in leaders. In last year's programme, the quality that the Top 20 companies valued most in their leaders was execution—the ability of leaders to achieve results through others. This year, the most valued quality is strategic thinking.

Last year's focus on execution was a clear reflection of the turmoil that virtually every business had to deal with. In the teeth of the recession, with workforce reductions and limitations in resources commonplace, forward-looking companies recognised the importance and value of simply maintaining focus and performance with some kind of consistency.

This year's emphasis on strategic thinking suggests that, like an individual recovering from a personal upheaval, businesses today are taking stock: reviewing their options, rethinking their strategies, considering new opportunities and innovations.

As the recession recedes—but with reduced credit resources and different consumer and business buying patterns—companies are shifting their vision from the short to the long term and choosing to move forward with new strategies and initiatives that offer the greatest potential to impact top-line growth.

At the same time that they are shifting focus from short to long term, this year's Best Companies for Leadership are taking a broader view of what's important. The data suggest that the Top 20 companies this year are more likely than other companies to find value in being inclusive, socially responsible, and globally aware in their outlook.

This result reflects recognition on the part of leading companies that they are operating in a complex and every more deeply interconnected global system and that their responsibilities extend beyond achieving short-term returns in shareholder value.

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

Leadership Trends for 2010 - If your business isn't looking ahead, you're already behind

Athletes as Role Models

Why is it that more professional athletes seem to be struggling to maintain one key ingredient in their lives – integrity?

Days of Grace is the memoir of the late pro tennis great Arthur Ashe. The book outlines Ashe’s final years after it was learned he was infected with the AIDS virus through a blood transfusion during a heart bypass operation in 1983. Ashe was able to keep the illness private until 1992. He died in early 1993.

Ashe epitomised integrity, both personally and professionally. What would Arthur Ashe say if he were able to provide insight on some of the latest story lines in professional sports?

How would Ashe react to someone like Michael Vick being given a chance to resurrect his tarnished image in the NFL? It certainly helps that Vick has someone in his corner whose personal integrity parallels that of Ashe. When you listen to Tony Dungy, you see a man who gets it today like Ashe got it then. Dungy and Ashe are examples that integrity can co-exist in professional sports. Does Vick get it? Public opinion is still out.

What would Ashe say to gun-carrying Gilbert Arenas of the NBA's Washington Wizards? Several incidents involving guns and pro athletes in the USA over the past few years have fuelled public perception that some carry handguns around like women carry purses!

What would Ashe think of the soap opera that has become Tiger Woods’ world? It is anybody’s guess how the Woods saga will unfold over the next year. A billion-dollar image is now mired in alleged infidelity with multiple women.

Professional athletes who feel they are above the law or public scrutiny have been around for years in the UK and the USA. In baseball, home run records established by Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds are now tarnished milestones?

More professional athletes need to work on expressions of solid character and less on expressing themselves as a human canvas for tattoo artists. After the career is over nobody will remember their body art. Athletes are remembered for character. 

Athletes as Role Models

Preparing with a Purpose

The images are timeless:  the clock ticking down, the wild celebrations in the rink, the goalie wrapped in an American flag, and legendary sportscaster Al Michaels screaming the now-iconic line, "Do you believe in miracles?"  The 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team's defeat of the Soviets is one of the greatest upsets in sports history.  Disney even got in on the act with the release of its blockbuster movie Miracle in 2004, which won an ESPY as the best sports movie of the year. 

Thirty years ago today, on February 22, 1980, that famous game took place, which captured America's heart and made Olympic history.  It would come to be known as the "Miracle on Ice." But as Jim Craig, goalie for the team, will tell you, "What we did wasn't a miracle.  It was the result of hard work." 

This is Craig's insight  on that famous game, and on what US Olympic Coach Herb Brooks did to get his team ready:

"Brooks ran every practice preparing us to beat the Soviets, the best team in the world," Craig says.  But even before Brooks began preparing his team, he prepared himself.

For more than a year before the team roster was set -- even before he was named to the position of Head Coach -- Brooks analysed the Soviet team, studying their style and figuring out what had made them so dominant.  He watched game reels and even travelled to watch them play in Moscow and on the road.  As the gold medal winners in five of the last six Olympic Games, the team from the USSR was unquestionably the best team in the world.  

Before long, however, Brooks discovered that the Soviets' dominance wasn't due to a secret technique.  Instead, he realised that their success was owed to the fact that they could out-skate their competition at the end of the game, when the stakes were the highest.

From that moment on, his coaching philosophy shifted as he focused most intensely not on hockey skills, but on conditioning for his team.

"Coach pushed us harder than any of us had ever been pushed," Craig explains "But he did it because he knew that the great strength of that Russian team was that its players were in incredible shape at the end of the game.  They blew people away in the third period. We took that away from them by being in better shape.  We worked every day in practice to be ready for that third period of that one game."

Brooks' non-traditional approach to preparation was intense:  The US team worked out before games, when other coaches insisted their players should rest; they worked out after games, when other teams were celebrating a win or consoling each other over a loss.  When the moment finally arrived all that practice made sense.  As the Americans came out of the locker room, trailing just 2-1 to start the third period of that game 30 years ago today, the Soviets looked into their opponents' eyes and they saw no fear.

The rest is history.  

Even though Al Michael's line was a fantastic one that truly captured the emotion of the moment, as Jim Craig observed, the greatest moment in US Olympic history really wasn't a miracle.

Brooks did not push his team to simply practice the skills they already possessed.  Instead, he found where the competition was stronger, and focused his team's training on overcoming that strength.  They didn't just work to match the next team they would face, but they drove themselves to the point of exhaustion in order to beat their biggest competitor.  

Great teams understand that victory over their toughest competition is the result of careful and meaningful preparation.

The lesson is easily transferable to whatever your own goal may be.  Do you prepare with an eye towards the biggest opportunity you can imagine?   If you hone your thought-process and develop your practice habits around taking on your greatest opponent, imagine how easy it will be to win against lesser competition along the way.

How does your team prepare?  Do you do the homework to find out exactly what it is that makes your competition so tough, and do you follow that up with the necessary work to face it head-on? 

Greatness is not achieved simply by reviewing what you already know but by tailoring your work to fit the needs of each situation, and by understanding what is necessary to succeed in every competition.  Take the time to consider exactly what kind of preparation each scenario calls for, and then pursue that goal with dedication and focus.

There wasn't any other way of beating the Soviets.  Many other teams were just as good at puck-handling and skating as they were.  The only way to defeat them was to meet their level of endurance, and then to go past it.  Before Brooks prepared his team to do just that, no one else had been able to match the Soviets' conditioning.  Afterwards, every member of that American team knew that the late nights, aching muscles, and burning lungs had all been worth it. 

Remember, Greatness isn't something that happens by accident.  It comes about because of long hours and intense preparation.  The road to success is not always comfortable, but the result of that work is truly Great!

Preparing with a Purpose

What it takes to Win an Olympic Gold Medal

Team GB gold medallist Amy Williams' coach, the former world champion Austrian Mickey Gruenberger, was emphatic that, above all, it was triumph for the rider's skill and nerve – but there was no doubt about the value of her design support.

Gruenberger said: "If you want to win a medal everything has to stick together. You have to have the right equipment – you have to have the right athlete. You see in Formula One, Michael Schumacher is not able to win with a Minardi. It's quick but it is limited when compared to a Ferrari."

What it takes to Win an Olympic Gold Medal

Teaching Leaders How Not to Behave

Peter Drucker once said: ' We spend a lot of time teaching leaders what to do. We don't spend enough time teaching leaders what to stop. Half of the leaders I have met don't need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop.'

What are some of the behaviours which leaders need to be careful about? Typically, they are transactional flaws performed by one person against others. They include:

• Winning too much.
• Adding too much value.
• Passing judgement.
• Making destructive comments.
• Starting with 'No', 'But' or 'However'.
• Telling the world how smart we are.
• Speaking when angry.
• Negativity or 'Let me explain why that won't work'.
• Withholding information.
• Failing to give proper recognition.
• Claiming credit that we don't deserve.
• Making excuses.
• Clinging to the past.
• Playing favourites.
• Refusing to express regret.
• Not listening.
• Failing to express gratitude.
• Punishing the messenger.
• Passing the buck.
• An excessive need to be 'me'.

The solution to changing behaviours such as these is relatively simple - leaders need to use their positive skills rather than expose their negative flaws.

Teaching Leaders How Not to Behave

Mental Toughness Matters in Elite Sport and in Business

Mental Toughness is a key attribute of Positive Leadership™. Elite athletes show it in abundance. Congratulations to Amy Williams, Team GB's first individual Winter Olympics gold medallist for 30 years. 

Read this article from the English Institute of Sport website, published just before competition started and then compare it with Williams' comments as described in The Times after she won gold. It is clear that she did learn the importance of mental toughness and used her preparation to excel under pressure. There are lessons in this for business leaders as they prepare for high performance in their world.

English Institute of Sport

'The Skeleton competition gets underway at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games later today (Thursday), with Team GB slider Amy Williams in particularly impressive form in yesterday’s final practice.

The 2009 World Championships silver medallist, who accessing a range of English Institute of Sport (EIS) support services as part of her British based training at Bath, finished second fastest on both the final two practice runs at the Whistler Sliding Centre, where she was runner up at a World Cup event last year.

Among the EIS support she has received, Williams has worked closely with EIS Sports Psychologist Deirdre Angella leading up the Vancouver Games.

“The preparation with Skeleton for Vancouver from an EIS psychology perspective started about two and a half years ago and we really planned backwards from the Winter Olympics to ensure the athletes were in the best possible  position to deliver for these Games” she says.

“The British Skeleton Coaching and support team is well established and everyone’s expertise dovetails to provide the very best athlete preparation. One of the aspects for psychology was to focus on maintaining many of the effective features already in place.  With individuals working to personalise what was necessary for them to maximise their strengths in order to deliver their best performances.”

This process included looking at areas of performance that can and can’t be controlled, whilst agreeing on procedures that the athlete will look to follow in the event of various scenarios so that they are prepared for whatever happens on the day of competition.

“For Amy some of the work she did was aimed at harnessing the excitement of competition so that she can effectively transfer training performance into competition performance” Angella adds.

“We looked at ensuring she follows all the day to day basics and normalises her routine as much as possible so that she finds herself in a position where when she gets on her sled she has a simple focus which just allows her to trust her ability, the work she has done and the thrill of sliding.”

The hard work seemed to be having the desired effect in the practice runs, with Williams commenting yesterday’. “I managed to enjoy it, and whenever I relax, enjoy it and have fun, it seems to work out. If I can enjoy the track I think the results will follow” she said.'

The Times

'Amy Williams gave Great Britain a gold medal shot in the arm on day eight of Vancouver Winter Olympics and admitted her love for the Whistler track, on which the Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed last week.

Williams, leading after the opening day of the women's skeleton, held her nerve brilliantly to seal victory with two more lightning quick runs to get Britain's medal haul up and running.

"I love this track," she said after winning. "Once you get over the fear factor you learn to love it and the speed is your friend. You've got to work with it and relax and if you do that it's a great track to slide."

Williams insisted she had never let her position as overnight leader play on her mind. "I surprised myself because I wasn't really nervous," she said. "I slept absolutely perfectly and I was quite excited. It doesn't feel like an Olympic Games - it just feels like a normal World Cup race except with more people shouting for me.

"I'm not very good at statistics so I didn't realise I'm the first [individual] gold medallist for a long time. But I think it shows that if you have the determination any country can be good at any sport and you just have to concentrate and do your best." 

Mental Toughness Matters in Elite Sport and in Business

The Victorious Army Attacks the Defeated Enemy

At 23, Kevin Plank created a sports apparel company out of a Washington D.C. boat house. Fifteen years later, Under Armour is taking aim at the industry's biggest players, including Nike, Adidas and Reebok. Here he talks about growing his company, 'playing offense' and wisdom from Sun Tzu. 
For more, see - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/15/AR2010011503033.html?sid=ST2010012102117

The Victorious Army Attacks the Defeated Enemy

Are You a CEO of Something?

This New York Times interview with Mark Pincus, founder and chief executive of Zynga, a provider of online social games, shows how a collaborative leadership style makes an impact:

'Q. What are the most important leadership lessons you’ve learned?

A. If I was going all the way back, it would be playing on my school’s soccer team, because we were on the same team together, most of us for eight or nine years, and we were at a really little school in Chicago that had no chance of really fielding any great athletes. But we ended up doing really well as a team, and we made it to the state quarterfinals, and it was all because of teamwork.

And the one thing I learned from that was that I actually could tell what someone would be like in business, based on how they played on the soccer field.

So even today when I play in Sunday-morning soccer games, I can literally spot the people who’d probably be good managers and good people to hire.

Q. Based on what?

A. One is reliability, the sense that they’re not going to let the team down, that they’re going to hold up their end of the bargain. And in soccer, especially if you play seven on seven, it’s more about whether you have seven guys or women who can pull their own weight rather than whether you have any stars.

So I’d rather be on a team that has no bad people than a team with stars. There are certain people who you just know are not going to make a mistake, even if the other guy’s faster than them, or whatever. They’re just reliable.

And are you a playmaker? There are people who don’t want to screw up, and so they just pass the ball right away. Then there are the ones who have this kind of intelligence, and they can make these great plays. These people seem to have high emotional intelligence. It’s not that they’re a star player, but they have decent skills, and they will get you the ball and then be where you’d expect to put it back to them. It’s like their head is really in the game.

Q. How has your leadership style evolved, given your experience running several companies?

A. You can manage 50 people through the strength of your personality and lack of sleep. You can touch them all in a week and make sure they’re all pointed in the right direction. By 150, it’s clear that that’s not going to scale, and you’ve got to find some way to keep everybody going in productive directions when you’re not in the room. And that, to me, is a huge amount of what it means to manage.....

Q. So give me an example of what you did to change that.

A. I’d turn people into C.E.O.’s. One thing I did at my second company was to put white sticky sheets on the wall, and I put everyone’s name on one of the sheets, and I said, “By the end of the week, everybody needs to write what you’re C.E.O. of, and it needs to be something really meaningful.” And that way, everyone knows who’s C.E.O. of what and they know whom to ask instead of me. And it was really effective. People liked it. And there was nowhere to hide.

.....I keep my eye out for someone who has achieved a lot, so they’ve been a great athlete or on a great team, but then something didn’t go quite right, and they’re still very hungry and want to be C.E.O. of something. I like to bet on people, especially those who have taken risks and failed in some way, because they have more real-world experience. And they’re humble.

I also like to hire people into one position below where they ought to be, because only a certain kind of person will do that — somebody who is pretty humble and somebody who’s very confident.
This is another thing I really, really value: being a true meritocracy. The only way people will have the trust to give their all to their job is if they feel like their contribution is recognised and valued. And if they see somebody else higher above them just because of a good résumé, or they see somebody else promoted who they don’t think deserves it, you’re done.
My approach is that you have to earn the respect of people you work with.'

For the full interview, see - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/business/31corner.html?pagewanted=1&ref=business

Are You a CEO of Something?

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