Scotland Rugby star, Richie Gray talks about the importance of team values:
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Positive Leadership: The Shadow Effect
The Shadow Effect is an emotionally-gripping, visually-compelling docudrama that reveals why suppressed emotions and unresolved internal conflicts leads to behaviour that continually unseats politicians, destroys celebrity careers, destabilises the economy and affects the lives of millions each year.
In this age of public humiliation and media meltdowns, the work of New York Times bestselling author, Debbie Ford, continues to make headway as she exposes the opposing forces of both light and dark that compete for attention within every human being. In her film debut, The Shadow Effect, Ford presents the hidden power of “the Shadow” alongside some of today’s most provocative thinkers including Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Mark Victor Hansen, James Van Praagh and others.
In this life-altering journey, individuals who have transcended child abuse, racism, the Holocaust, war, and wounded upbringings, share their remarkable stories. Meet those who have learned to face their terror, heal their wounds, and embrace their higher, heroic selves to overcome the shadow effect.
Positive Leadership: World Leadership Day
World Leadership Ambassadors are passionate about connecting people from all walks of life with their innate leader, the source of inspiration, creativity and infinite energy. We challenge the way we think about leadership and develop leaders for the new world. We embrace diversity and offer new definitions of leadership. We pose big questions that are intuitively coming to the forefront and balance these with new insights and ways of looking at the world. We offer rich, thought-provoking resources that will challenge your thinking about the world we live in, the world we want to live, and our roles as leaders, creators and innovator.
Our ambition is that by 2014, World Leadership Day will be recognised as ‘The Global Resource Centre for Authentic Leadership’.
Graham Watson of Positive Leadership Limited is Scotland’s World Leadership Day Ambassador.
For more, see: http://worldleadershipday.org
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Positive Leadership: The New Approach to Being in Command
The long held concept of command-and-control leadership is being tested as organisations are experiencing the largest technological shift of our generation.
Talk with your customers. Listen to your employees. These are well-tested truisms of business. But ask organisations to engage with people on Facebook or Twitter and a look of sheer terror crosses their faces.
In her newest book, Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead
, Charlene Li addresses the challenges facing leadership given the dramatic impact social technologies have had on customer, partner, and employee relationships.
, Charlene Li addresses the challenges facing leadership given the dramatic impact social technologies have had on customer, partner, and employee relationships.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Positive Leadership: Defining Leadership - 'How to Be, Not How to Do'
Frances Hesselbein is the Founding President and Chair of the Board of Governors of the Leader to Leader Institute, formerly the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management. She served as CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA from 1976-1990.
Learn more about her definition of “leadership” here:
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Positive Leadership: Companies to Admire
Here are five factors that we think matter in answering the question; ‘Do I admire that company?’
1. What ideas does this company stand for? There are plenty of organisations with interesting technology or hot products. But the most admirable companies don't just sell competitive products and services. They stand for important ideas -- ideas that are meant to shape the competitive landscape in their field, ideas meant to reshape the sense of what's possible for customers, employees, and investors.
2. Does this company work as distinctively as it competes? You can't do something compelling, distinctive or original in the marketplace unless you do something compelling, distinctive or original in the workplace. Strategy is culture, culture is strategy.
3. Has this company created an emotional and psychological contract with its customers? Success today in every field is about so much more than price, performance, features -- pure economic value. It is about passion, emotion, identity: sharing your values. The companies that we admire aren't just efficient and productive, they are memorable to encounter.
4. Is this company a leader in creating leaders up and down its ranks? The organisations we admire don't just lead their industries in terms of innovation or financial performance or market share. They also understand that the only sustainable form of long-term business leadership is the capacity to create grassroots leaders at every level of the organisation.
5. Is this company as consistent as it is creative? Even in a world of constant change and fast-moving markets, the really great companies don’t change their strategies and practices in response to outside forces. They are confident about the ideas in which they believe; the culture they have created, their connections with customers, and are willing to stick to their strategies even as the word around them is in turmoil. As Jim Collins, the great management guru, has argued, "The signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change. The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency."
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Positive Leadership: Continuous Improvement
University of Michigan Athletic Director David Brandon talks about the lessons he learned from former U-M football Coach Bo Schembechler, who he played for in the 1970s and how it applied to the business world as well as the big business of college athletics.
“You will either get better or you will get worse,” Brandon said, recalling one of Schembechler’s favourite sayings. 'He used to say that it’s not whether you win or lose, but did you get better. Because if you aren’t, then other people around you are. And that makes you weaker. That’s exactly how it works in business.'
Brandon, the former CEO of Domino’s Pizza and current chairman, also talks about what it takes to run a business.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Positive Leadership: Attributes of a Great Team Member
Here are 5 characteristics of an excellent team member:
1. Needs very little direction – Catches on quickly, learning the leader’s expectations, having confidence in his or her ability, and knowing the vision of the organisation well enough to make routine decisions with little or no input from the leader.
2. Asks specific questions when unclear of an assignment - He or she doesn’t ask general questions, that require full explanations, but rather attempts to think through the issue on his or her own enough to ask specific questions. This saves everyone time and speeds progress.
3. Needs very little supervision – An excellent team member follows through on what he or she committed to do with limited oversight.
4. Recognises results as part of the reward – While fair compensation is necessary for the health of any team and most leaders can improve on giving praise, the excellent team player does the work to see the results of a project done well, not exclusively for recognition.
5. Considers the interests of the entire team - Excellent team members look out for good of the whole team…the entire organisation. He or she wants what is best for everyone, even if that means they have to personally sacrifice for the win of the team.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Positive Leadership: Initiative
If you’re stuck at the starting line, you don’t need more time or permission. You don’t need to wait for a boss’s okay or to be told to push the button; you just need to poke.Poke the Box
is a manifesto by bestselling author Seth Godin that just might make you uncomfortable. It’s a call to action about the initiative you’re taking – in your job or in your life. Godin knows that one of our scarcest resources is the spark of initiative in most organisations (and most careers) – the person with the guts to say, “I want to start stuff.”
is a manifesto by bestselling author Seth Godin that just might make you uncomfortable. It’s a call to action about the initiative you’re taking – in your job or in your life. Godin knows that one of our scarcest resources is the spark of initiative in most organisations (and most careers) – the person with the guts to say, “I want to start stuff.”Poke the Box just may be the kick in the pants you need to shake up your life.
Exclusive interview with Seth Godin from GiANT Impact on Vimeo.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Positive Leadership: Building Consensus and a Way Forward
One of the greatest challenges today is how to engage multiple stakeholders and/or large numbers of stakeholders in collectively crafting a way forward. How do you allow each person to be heard and yet craft a strategy to move forward in a reasonably timely fashion?
Traditional engagement methods fall short, but there is a process, which Positive Leadership often uses, that allows every voice to be heard and that enables groups of tens, hundreds or even thousands of people to swiftly tap their collective wisdom and collective find a way forward. This process is the World Café (http://www.theworldcafe.com/).
L180-100406-What is the World Cafe? from Ravi Tangri on Vimeo.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
Positive Leadership: Values-based Decision Making
Just as organisations need to identify their purpose and values in order to meet their marketplace needs and be competitive and successful, individuals also need to understand and identify their values.
This clarification of values by the individual allows them to base their decisions on those values. It allows a framework from which to reference and a select options. Wisdom literature states that a house divided cannot stand. An individual who consistently makes decisions on shifty or inconsistent values often finds themselves in frustrating situations.
Persons who have clearly identified their values are able to base their decisions with laser like focus on desired outcomes.
Values-based decision-making is a very holistic approach to life and leadership. We must have one level of ethics or values that we use for all of our decisions. We cannot say that we have one set of values for the workplace, another set of values for our home, and another set of values for our place of worship. Just as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, our values can be judged by the lowest common denominator. This discussion of one’s personal values may appear to have little to do with one’s workplace environment. However, it has everything to do with one’s happiness in the workplace, for this is the point of values congruence.
A person cannot consistently perform in a manner that is inconsistent with the way they see themselves. Eventually your values will find you. Time and truth go hand-in-hand.
When was the last time you sat down, clearly identified your values, and possibly incorporated them into your purpose statement? It has been said that if you aim at nothing you would hit it every time. What targeted values do you have in your sights?
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Positive Leadership: What it Takes to be an Extraordinary Leader
After writing more than 50 books on topics ranging from Buddha to getting a good night's rest, Deepak Chopra recently turned his attention to leadership and entrepreneurs in The Soul of Leadership: Unlocking Your Potential for Greatness
. While there's no shortage of spirituality in this book, readers -- Chopra hopes -- will get a healthy tutorial on how to practically start and build organisations and companies that thrive and possibly even inspire.
. While there's no shortage of spirituality in this book, readers -- Chopra hopes -- will get a healthy tutorial on how to practically start and build organisations and companies that thrive and possibly even inspire.Here are his answers two important questions:
What are the keys to successful leadership?
'Any leader has one main goal: How to envision that future and how to create that future. So in order to be really effective, the leader needs to harness the intelligence, creativity, emotional engagement and also the emotional connection with the people that are part of his or her team in order to manifest that vision.'
Can leadership be learned?
'Leaders are not born that way. Circumstance, context, history, culture and precise timing bring out the leader. It's said the civil rights movement was born when Rosa Parks refused to get up from her seat. When asked why she did that, she said she was tired. It is really a mysterious phenomenon, but I believe that in any moment of crisis, there's a moment for leaders to emerge, and they usually do. Among the many, there are always one or two people who realise the opportunity and their potential. We all have the potential. We all may not have the desire. If you don't have the desire, then you're not a born leader. Inherent in the desire is the potential for leadership.'
Positive Leadership: Leadership Lessons from Walmart
Walmart CEO Mike Duke leads the world's biggest retailer, which has 2.1 million employees and serves 200 million customers each week. Here are excerpts from a recent interview Duke did with The Associated Press:
‘Q. What ideals from Sam Walton do you embrace?
A. Leadership is about showing respect to every individual, about humility over arrogance, about listening and getting feedback from a broad array of constituents. It's about a passion for customers and knowing customers first-hand, not theoretical, not through some data, but by having personal, passionate communication with customers.
And leadership is about striving for excellence. It's about setting aggressive goals and not being afraid to go after very aggressive goals and targets. I think it's even better for a leader to set an aggressive goal and come up a little short than it would be to set a soft goal and to exceed it.
Q. What should a leader value most?
A. Integrity and trust. If a leader doesn't have the trust of associates, of customers, of shareholders, then all the other things, the ability to speak eloquently and to sing and dance and entertain, (don't) mean a thing if a leader is not trusted.’
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Positive Leadership: What The Top Performers Do Right
A survey conducted by Six Disciplines reveals what top-performing organisations do differently, and provides insights for business leaders who want to know where they should focus their efforts going forward.
The original survey, conducted several years ago with over 300 C-level executives from small and mid-sized US businesses, has now been re-published by Six Disciplines, in an effort to share the insightful results, and to validate the original research findings.
The original survey, conducted several years ago with over 300 C-level executives from small and mid-sized US businesses, has now been re-published by Six Disciplines, in an effort to share the insightful results, and to validate the original research findings.
Based on the research, the top performers are very good at the following set of 10 best-practices. The numbers behind each best-practice are the average scores for the top quartile of top-performing businesses, on a scale of 1-to-5, with 5 being the highest score.
- Expect/Demand Quality 4.78
- Technology Is Seen As An Investment Not Expense 4.62
- Leaders Are Involved In Strategic Change 4.57
- A Teamwork Approach To Challenges 4.51
- Employees Are Engaged and Fulfilled 4.44
- People Help One Another Succeed 4.40
- Leaders Set Clear Vision 4.39
- Technology Is A Competitive Advantage 4.32
- Technology and Training Are Up-To-Date 4.32
- Seek/Listen To Advice 4.29
Positive Leadership: Why Leaders Must Think Systemically
Vision, purpose and hard work (three of the Values of Positive Leadership™), although excellent in and off themselves, are not complete without a holistic view of an organisation’s leadership system.
Within such a system, a leader must be a continual learner, placing all of the Values of Positive Leadership™ into his arsenal of leadership tools. He must learn and understand the implications of each Value individually, but through his systemic mindset, he realises that the true magnifying power occurs only when the Values are viewed as a total system.
Leaders learn; leaders do; leaders teach - an unbeatable cycle when adopted by all leaders within an organisation. Leaders communicate the leadership strategy and how it aligns and interacts with the business strategy to deliver results, while identifying the systemic causes hindering the achievement of desired results.
Therefore, if a potential leader cannot think in a systemic fashion, he literally is unqualified for top leadership positions in today’s interconnected world.
For more on how Positive Leadership can help leaders throughout your organisation think systemically, please contact: graham.watson@positiveleadership.co.uk
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Positive Leadership: England Rugby and Arsenal FC
Some excellent comments here from England Rugby Coach, Martin Johnston, interviewed by Oliver Brown of The Daily Telegraph:
‘It would be a brave man who bracketed Martin Johnson and Arsène Wenger, but the iron-fisted totem of England rugby appears firmly in the professor’s debt. Johnson is talking, as he is so often prone to do, about “the group” at his disposal in this auspicious World Cup year. But when it comes to selecting his players for such a group, he reaches for some intriguing inspiration.
“I heard Wenger speaking last autumn and he was talking about the type of characters he wanted to play at Arsenal,” says Johnson…….“He was saying the guys who were winners were never happy with their performance. They always want to improve, to get better. You should never get to the stage of patting yourselves on the back.”…………
In his blinkered focus, Johnson invites accusations of acting as a disciplinarian. Does he, I wonder, allow his players to breathe as part of their ferocious training regime. “Breathing’s on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” he grins, before recalling an innovation by his celebrated predecessor, Sir Clive Woodward, known as the 'Lombardi rule’.
Loosely, this refers to the principle devised by legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi, who would call team meetings for 9am and then start them at 8.30. Johnson plainly endorses the philosophy. “Clive was a real stickler for punctuality. But it’s not simply about rules, it’s about embracing the right type of behaviour. If you can’t trust guys to be on time for a meeting, how can you trust them to do something that’s difficult? It’s about behaviour." ......'
Positive Leadership: Leadership & Capability
Former HP ceo, Carly Fiorina explains that leadership is about three things: capability, collaboration and character.
She stresses the importance of capability, which is about asking questions and listening to answers. It is also about celebrating new ideas and taking initiative to try new things. She insists that a continuous learning process is important to strengthen an entrepreneur's capability
Monday, March 07, 2011
Positive Leadership: Neuroscience and Leadership
Emerging findings in neuroscience research suggest why inspiring and supportive relationships are important — they help activate openness to new ideas and a more social orientation to others.
If you believe that leadership involves inspiring others and motivating them to be their best and develop, learn, adapt and innovate, then activating the parts of their brain that will help requires that we: (1) be social; and (2) engage the person in positive, hopeful contemplation of a desired future. The latter might also be stimulated when discussing core values and the purpose of the organisation or project.
All too often, people in leadership positions begin conversations about the financials or metrics and dashboard measures of the desired performance. While important, this sequence confuses people and may result in them closing down cognitively, emotionally and perceptually.
If you want them to open their minds, you need to discuss the purpose of the activity (not merely the goals) and the vision of the organisation or clients if a desired future were to occur. THEN, you can lead a discussion about the financials, metrics and measures. But you have made it clear that the measures follow the purpose, they have not become the purpose.
Insights such as these may move the primacy of a leader’s actions away from the often proselytised “results-orientation” toward a relationship orientation.
Learn about this and other important findings in neuroscience that have the potential to tell us what we need to know to be good, even great leaders - http://www.iveybusinessjournal.com/neuroscience-and-leadership-the-promise-of-insights
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Positive Leadership: Creating the High Trust Organisation
This is the conclusion of a truly inspirational essay by the co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market, John Mackey.
The essay is to be commended - http://www.managementexchange.com/blog/creating-high-trust-organization
‘We have the opportunity to create more conscious and higher trust organisations in the 21st century. To do so will require three major changes.
First the organisation must become conscious of what its higher purposes are. Without consciousness of higher purposes, organisations will not reach their fullest potential because the creative energy within the organisation will not be fully expressed.
Secondly, we’ll need our leaders to evolve to higher levels of consciousness and trust themselves. We will not be able to create high trust organisations without more conscious and high trust leaders. Less conscious leaders will tend to hold their organisations back.
Thirdly, we will need to evolve the cultures of our organisation in ways that create processes, strategies, and structures that encourage higher levels of trust. These will necessarily include the important ideals of teams, empowerment, transparency, authentic communication, fairness, love and care.’
Saturday, March 05, 2011
Positive Leadership: Gender Bias in Leader Selection
According to the glass cliff phenomenon, companies in trouble often turn to female leaders in an attempt to break the status quo of male mismanagement, because feminine attributes are associated more with cooperation and other interpersonal skills needed to rescue a firm from crisis.
For more, see: http://www.strategy-business.com/article/re00125?gko=01ae0
Positive Leadership: How Young CEO's See The World
Friday, March 04, 2011
Positive Leadership: Managing Yourself: Zoom In, Zoom Out
Zoom buttons on digital devices let us examine images from many viewpoints. They also provide an apt metaphor for modes of strategic thinking. Some people prefer to see things up close, others from afar. Both perspectives have virtues. But they should not be fixed positions, says Harvard Business School’s Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter. To get a complete picture, leaders need to zoom in and zoom out.
A close-in perspective is often found in relationship-intensive settings. It brings details into sharp focus and makes opportunities look large and compelling. But it can have significant downsides. Leaders who prefer to zoom in tend to create policies and systems that depend too much on politics and favours. They can focus too closely on personal status and on turf protection. And they often miss the big picture. When leaders zoom out, they can see events in context and as examples of general trends. They are able to make decisions based on principles. Yet a far-out perspective also has traps. Leaders can be so high above the fray that they don’t recognise emerging threats. Having zoomed out to examine all possible routes, they may fail to notice when the moment is right for action on one path. They may also seem too remote and aloof to their staffs.
The best leaders can zoom in to examine problems and then zoom out to look for patterns and causes. They don’t divide the world into extremes—idiosyncratic or structural, situational or strategic, emotional or contextual. The point is not to choose one over the other but to learn to move across a continuum of perspectives.
For more, see: http://ht.ly/46yCH
Positive Leadership: The New Business Elite
Here are the top companies in the Fortune Magazine listing of the World's Most Admired Companies 2011, ranked by attribute, as reflected in the last survey before the recession (2007) and in this year’s survey.
(The top ranked British company is British American Tobacco, albeit it does not feature in the World's Top 50.):
| Attribute | Pre-recession champ | New champ |
| Ability to attract, develop, and keep talented people | General Electric | Goldman Sachs |
| Effectiveness in conducting its business globally | Nestlé | McDonald’s |
| Innovativeness | Apple | Apple |
| Quality of management | Procter & Gamble | McDonald’s |
| Quality of products and services | Anheuser-Busch | Amazon.com |
| Responsibility to the community and environment | UPS | Statoil |
| Soundness of financial position | Exxon Mobil | Google |
| Value as a long-term investment | Berkshire Hathaway | Google |
| Wise use of corporate assets | Exxon Mobil | McDonald’s |
For more, see http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/02/news/companies/most_admired_intro.fortune
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