Positive Leadership: Rory Shows Resilience and Bouncebackability!

The sporting story of the past week was undoubtedly the implosion of Rory McIlroy at the US Masters Golf. 

Having led the tournament for three rounds he dropped 8 shots in less than 10 holes to finish well behind the eventual winner Charl Schwartzel.  It was a classic lesson in the effects of pressure on performance – as the realisation that he could actually win the thing ultimately became his undoing.

After the second round all the talk was about how Rory would be the youngest winner since Tiger Woods at 21 years of age - but after he so spectacularly failed to win it, should we also blame his age for his inability to handle the pressure?  Well it didn’t stop Woods, but there’s no doubt that a few grey hairs and the experience of having ‘been there before’ makes an enormous difference when it comes to the crunch.  You can’t simulate that in training – it very often comes down to experience, focus and pure desire.

The good news is that Rory is already showing the kind of resilient response that he’ll need to bounce back from this disappointment and turn it into the kind of learning that could fuel his future success. 

Immediately after he finished he tweeted:

“Well that wasn’t the plan! Found it tough going today, but you have to lose before you can win. This day will make me stronger in the end.”

Here he clearly shows that he’s got things in perspective – the humour is definitely a good sign!  He is already able to attribute the failure as a one-off and something from which he will build confidence and experience.  After two rounds in this week’s Malaysian Open – a 10,000 mile trip through 12 time zones – McIlroy is joint leader of the tournament on 11 under par!!

So watch this space – this is the mentality of a future champion!

Positive Leadership: Rory Shows Resilience and Bouncebackability!

Positive Leadership: Follow Your Own Truth

Meaning is not something a leader stumbles across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in the lottery. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own self-understanding. You find it in your past, in your passions, affections and loyalties, out of your innate talents and gifts, out of what you believe is true; out of the people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. You can learn from others and benefit from their wisdom but in the end, your life is your own. Only you are responsible for the choices and decisions you make in life.  Let it be a life that has dignity, elegance and meaning. Find your own truth and become the captain of your soul.

Positive Leadership: Follow Your Own Truth

Positive Leadership: Hard Work beats Talent

Journalist and former table tennis champion Matthew Syed (author of Bounce : How Champions are Made ) argues that academic research has ruled out the idea of innate talent.

Positive Leadership: Hard Work beats Talent

Positive Leadership: Resilience

As Rory McIlroy admits he'll find it hard to forget his recent Masters nightmare, Matthew Syed, author of Bounce : How Champions are Made explains why the young player can recover.

Positive Leadership: Resilience

Positive Leadership for the 21st Century

Harvard Business School Alumni Achievement Award recipients discuss the financial crisis, the changing relationship between business and government, and the key elements of effective leadership.

Panelists:

John Doerr Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers;

Jeffrey R. Immelt Chairman, GE;

Anand G. Mahindra Vice Chairman & Managing Director, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.;

Meg Whitman Former President & CEO, eBay;

James D. Wolfensohn Chairman, Wolfensohn & Company LLC.

Positive Leadership for the 21st Century

Games Promoting Positive Leadership

How can games influence middle-level managers in their work? Byron Reeves, founder of Media X at Stanford, discusses an IBM sponsored study on how a game such as World of Warcraft can foster leadership skills. Listen to his groundbreaking findings.

Games Promoting Positive Leadership

Positive Leadership: Supporting Change

A good rule to remember when it comes to relationships is, “What you see is what you get.” If we want to form lasting relationships with others, we must start by being happy with who the other person is. It is courting disaster when you bring thoughtless or angry people into your life assuming that under your influence they will change.

You see, what’s likely to happen is you will change your behaviour to accommodate them, rather than the other way around. Change is not something we can force on other people. Change comes from within. And, when people are pushed from outside forces, they push back.

If, in major ways, the people in our lives are not what we think they should be, nagging them or manipulations designed to get them to change is not the way to go. Change will never happen if we are certain we are always right, or if we believe that the fault lies always with the other person. Perhaps if we were to allow them the dignity of being who they are without our criticism, we might find change happening naturally of its own accord. 

One thing is certain. When we give up blaming and criticising, our relationships with others improve enormously. So does their self-esteem and feelings of competence. You see, we can help others to change, and support their own change efforts, but it’s just not helpful to try to choose their direction for them.

Positive Leadership: Supporting Change

Positive Leadership: SuperCorp: How Companies Create Innovation, Profits, and Social Good

In this talk, Harvard Professor, Rosabeth Moss Kanter discusses key insights that follow from a three-and-a-half year investigation that served as the basis of her recent book SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good. She argues that there are strong potential synergies between financial performance and attention to community and social needs. By embracing values and focusing on the world outside the organisation, companies can gain competitive advantage while responding to social problems.

Positive Leadership: SuperCorp: How Companies Create Innovation, Profits, and Social Good

Positive Leadership: Integrity

Peter Shergold, Macquarie Group Foundation Professor, talks about the characteristics of bring a great leader.

Positive Leadership: Integrity

Positive Leadership: Desired Traits for 'Good' Managers Revealed

Employees in Australasia now think trustworthiness and openness are the most important characteristic of a good manager.

Compared to this time last year, trustworthiness and openness has jumped from seventh to number one on the Top Ten Characteristics of a Good Manager list generated by Leadership Management Australasia (LMA).

The list has been drawn from LMA's late November 2010 L.E.A.D. (Leadership, Education and Direction) Survey of 3,000 employees across Australia and New Zealand, conducted by Chase Research*. The on-going L.E.A.D. Survey, which monitors workplace issues across all major sectors, has been running for 10 years.

This new perspective on the characteristics of a good manager is echoed in the growing importance of managers giving their people the space to do their work and supporting them at the same time (up from 5th to equal 2nd), and providing the resources employees need to do their job (up from equal 11th to equal 7th).

Characteristics of good managers - November 2010
Question. A person's working relationship with their immediate manager or managers, with whom they have frequent contact, can have a significant impact on their performance and satisfaction in their role. What would you say are the top five most important characteristics for a good manager to have, in order to positively influence your performance in your role at work?

Results

Characteristics of good managers (employee view)	Rank 2009	Rank 2010
Is trustworthy and open in approach	7	1
Clearly communicates where we are going	1	=2
Gives me the space to do my own work, but supports me	5	=2
Listens to and respects my input into decisions	4	4
Gives regular and honest feedback on how I am going	2	5
Is fair and even handed/makes reasonable demands	3	6
Provides the resources I need to do my job	=11	=7
Recognises me for extra efforts/results	10	=7
Coaches and develops me	9	9
Trusts me with challenging work	8

* 14% of the respondents were from New Zealand yielding the same results

Positive Leadership: Desired Traits for 'Good' Managers Revealed

Positive Leadership: 3 Steps to Building a Better Top Team

When a top team fails to function, it can paralyse a whole company. Here’s what CEOs need to watch out for:

1. Getting the right people on the team . . . and the wrong ones off.
2. Making sure the top team does just the work only it can do.
3. Addressing team dynamics and processes.

For more, see: https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Three_steps_to_building_a_better_top_team_2743

Positive Leadership: 3 Steps to Building a Better Top Team

Positive Leadership: 9 Things Successful People Do Differently

Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. is a motivational psychologist, and author of the new book Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals

Here is what she has to say about the nine things successful people do differently:

‘Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren't sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive answer — that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others — is really just one small piece of the puzzle. 

In fact, decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do:

1. Get specific.
2. Seize the moment to act on your goals.
3. Know exactly how far you have left to go.
4. Be a realistic optimist.
5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good.
6. Have grit.
7. Build your willpower muscle.
8. Don't tempt fate.
9. Focus on what you will do, not what you won't do.'

For more, see: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/02/nine_things_successful_people.html

Positive Leadership: 9 Things Successful People Do Differently

Positive Leadership: Wishing Someone Luck Can Improve Performance

Activating a positive superstitious belief can boost people's confidence, which in turn improves performance.

In an experiment, a dexterity task that normally took more than 5 minutes was accomplished in just 191.5 seconds, on average, if participants were wished good luck before they started it, according to research led by Lysann Damisch of the University of Cologne in Germany. Before trying to roll 36 little balls into little holes in a transparent plastic cube, the participants were told by a researcher, "I press the thumbs for you," the German equivalent of "My fingers are crossed for you." 

Positive Leadership: Wishing Someone Luck Can Improve Performance

Positive Leadership: Building Your Emotional Well-Being

Three Blessings™ is designed to increase your life satisfaction and to sweeten your memories about the past. It has been determined in well-designed research studies that becoming much more conscious of good events reliably increases happiness and decreases depression.

'The secret of happiness is to count your blessings while others are adding up their troubles.' William Penn 

Positive Leadership: Building Your Emotional Well-Being

Positive Leadership: Next Generation Leadership

Here's an interesting video from a panel discussion on "Next Generation Leadership." The panel included David Gergen, executive director of the Harvard Centre for Public Leadership; Rosalinde Torres, managing director of the Boston Consulting Group; Betsy Myers, leadership advisor and former chief operating officer for the Obama campaign; and Harvard Professor Bill George. It was moderated by George Leadership Fellow John Coleman who was in his final year of the joint degree program of Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School.

Positive Leadership: Next Generation Leadership

Positive Leadership: Impossible?

Positive Leadership: Impossible?

Positive Leadership: How Effective Leaders Adjust Their Focus

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business School professor, explains why executives must constantly consider both the big picture and the details.

Positive Leadership: How Effective Leaders Adjust Their Focus

Positive Leadership: Culture Drives Results

This extract is from an interview with Stephen I. Sadove, chairman and chief executive of Saks Inc., conducted by The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/business/30corner.html ):

‘Q. What’s your philosophy of leadership?

A. I have a very simple model to run a company. It starts with leadership at the top, which drives a culture. Culture drives innovation and whatever else you’re trying to drive within a company — innovation, execution, whatever it’s going to be. And that then drives results.

When I talk to Wall Street, people really want to know your results, what are your strategies, what are the issues, what it is that you’re doing to drive your business. They’re focused on the bottom line. Never do you get people asking about the culture, about leadership, about the people in the organization. Yet, it’s the reverse, because it’s the people, the leadership, the culture and the ideas that are ultimately driving the numbers and the results. So it’s a flip.

What I try to teach people is, don’t ask the first question in terms of numbers. Let’s talk about the people, let’s talk about the culture, let’s talk about the ideas and the innovation.’

Positive Leadership: Culture Drives Results

Positive Leadership: Sport Changes Lives

Sport changes lives. Check out this video to see why!

Positive Leadership: Sport Changes Lives

Positive Leadership: Mental Toughness

British businesses are still beset by failure rates that look set to loom above pre-recession levels until 2015 at the earliest, according to the latest Industry Watch report by accountancy firm BDO. In the face of such turbulent economic times there is mounting pressure on companies to ensure their staff, and in particular managers and leaders, are armed with the necessary resilience to guide their organisations through the recession and onwards to a successful future.

Long associated with elite sportsmen and women, mental toughness is a concept that is increasingly in demand among organisations under pressure to survive, grow and succeed.

Here are some thoughts on how to go about developing mental toughness:

Challenge

Work with someone else to help you review and prioritise your work, especially when things are changing quickly. Time management tools and techniques could help you be better organised.

Commitment

Take time to understand the people around you – their strengths and weaknesses. Play to their strengths and don’t expect things that they can’t reasonably deliver. Recognise contributions from others and give praise where it’s due.

Control

Start you next piece of work with a colleague – share the challenge and the problems! Relaxation techniques, such as breathing exercises or yoga could help you cope more effectively with stress.  Remind yourself that what you do really does matter – identify the benefits of what you do.

Confidence

Praise yourself when you achieve – and seek every opportunity to do so. Change your work environment temporarily to set new challenges. Find ways to make sure that if you have something to say you say it! Get a mentor. List five positives about yourself and work with a manager, friend or colleague to identify these.

Positive Leadership: Mental Toughness

Positive Leadership: Andy Murray and Ivan Lendl

Much has been said recently about Andy Murray's need to find help if he wishes to be the world #1 and win majors. Boris Becker has advocated that he seeks support from former world #1, Ivan Lendl. 

This is what Lendl has to say about success and highlights why he may be the extra resource Murray needs on his quest to reach the top.

'LESSONS ON SUCCESS FROM #1 TENNIS PLAYER, IVAN LENDL

By Eddie Binder 

Recently, I talked with Ivan about his approach to developing his skills, assessing his competition, achieving the leadership position and sustaining that position over time to achieve such excellent results in tennis.  Ivan also has a keen interest in business, so we also discussed how his tennis career offers relevant and compelling insights to business.  

Following then are excerpts from our conversation.

Question:   How did you approach setting the right objectives for your career over time?

Ivan:  When I first started playing junior tennis, my goal was to be better than all other players on the European circuit in my age group.  When I turned pro, the top 100 and top 50 were my goals.  I turned professional at 19 in 1979, and made the top 20 in my first full year on tour.  I was ignorant at first about rankings.  All I cared about was playing because I loved playing.  By the end of 1981, I was ranked #2 in the world but could not achieve my ultimate goal of becoming #1 for three years.  So, I had to change my approach.

Question:   What did you do differently to become #1?

Ivan:  My progress on the professional tour was so fast that I didn’t think about improving.  Then, when I could not get to number one, I sat down and asked myself what I needed to reach my goal.  I identified three areas … I needed to learn how to play a slice backhand and return left-handed serves better (Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe were key competitors at the time); and I needed to get quicker.  So, I found left-handed college players who would serve to me for hours on end.  I needed to work on my skills so I could trust my sliced back-hand against Connors or McEnroe in the fifth set of the U.S. Open, if necessary.  It was hours of practice and then hitting that shot in lesser tournaments and early rounds of majors before I knew I could hit that shot under the pressure of a fifth set in a major.  To gain quickness, I turned to a track and field coach who had worked with Olympic athletes.  He outlined several drills that would be right for my goals and I did the drills day-in and day-out without fail. 

Here is the issue, you may be able to identify the things you need to do to improve, and a lot of people are able to do that, but you are never sure that you are doing the perfectly right thing.  Most people are not able to stick to it.  That’s the biggest difference I find.  When you work on something new, you have to give it a long time.  Don’t give it two weeks and say it doesn’t work.  If it doesn’t work after six months, then look at things and see if you need to make adjustments.  But do not give up too early.

Question:   Once you began working on the weaknesses you identified, how long was it before you achieved the desired result?

Ivan:  15 months.  I started my work in early summer of 1984 and became #1 after the 1985 U.S. Open, in which I beat McEnroe in straight sets.  (Note:  Ivan also went on to win the U.S. Open in 1986 and 1987 as well.)  The key for me was knowing that I had to make changes to improve.  But I also was never quite sure I was going about it in the right way.  You can never be 100% sure the changes will work.  A lot of guys give up when they don’t get immediate results, they don’t stick to it.  You have to be incredibly patient.

Question:   After you became #1, what were the factors that enabled you to sustain leadership for such a long period?

Ivan:  It’s attributable to several factors.  First, you have to believe that you are that good.  You did not just get lucky and win a lucky match or two.  You have to believe that you are that good and deserve to be #1 because of achievement, not by default.  Second, my goal was always to win majors, and winning majors took care of #1.  I have seen guys who have had the goal of being #1 and once they achieved it, they had nowhere to go.  Setting the proper goals is critical.  The third was to always ask myself “how can I get better?”  The reason I wanted to get better was so that I could stay #1 longer because my competitors were constantly asking themselves how they could beat me and they worked to improve.  Once you reach #1 you can sit back and do nothing, or you can sit back and analyse again.  I realised that my competition was changing and therefore I needed to change my practice routine.  This helped me to improve and widen the gap and keep them at bay the longest possible time.  

So, you know, Eddie, there is a correlation between sports and business.  There are two kinds of success.  One kind of success is to be the best and be happy with that.  The other kind, which I believe in, is to know that I am best the best now but I want to be the best three years from now and I was prepared to do what was necessary to do that.'

Positive Leadership: Andy Murray and Ivan Lendl

Positive Leadership: The Lost Art of Management

While corporate malfeasance was once considered the exception, the American public is increasingly viewing unethical, immoral and even criminal behaviour as the norm.

According to the authors of Drucker's Lost Art of Management, business management has lost its bearings. Drawing on Drucker's work and teaching, the authors create a new philosophy of management based on the principles leaders throughout history have relied on to be effective, both indvidually and as custodians of civilised society and healthy economies; principles such as societal values and standards, individual character development and the use and abuse of power.

The authors have done an excellent job of connecting Drucker's vision of leadership dominated by integrity and high moral values with the discontinuities created by an ever changing world.

Positive Leadership: The Lost Art of Management

Positive Leadership: Greatness Starts And Ends With Passion

Passion is like bookends to process.

Passion starts things. It inspires us to start a business, take classes or take risks. But without some learning, some structure or some process, that passion can quickly run out of steam or find itself fueling a futile exercise.

Process is what helps us get good at what we're passionate about. It gives us expertise and credibility. It is what gives us the intellectual capacity to solve problems and make advancements. However, if we get stuck in the process, though we can get good at what we do, we can never be great.

Greatness always requires passion.

Positive Leadership: Greatness Starts And Ends With Passion

Positive Leadership: Business Ethics

In this talk at Bentley University, Harvard Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter discusses key insights that follow from a three-and-a-half year investigation that served as the basis of her recent book SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good. 

She argues that there are strong potential synergies between financial performance and attention to community and social needs. By embracing values and focusing on the world outside the organisation, companies can gain competitive advantage while responding to social problems.

Positive Leadership: Business Ethics