Coaching Tip: The Leadership Blog

Authentic Leadership

Your perception of me is more important than my perception of me. 

Behavioral Awareness

The behavioral blind spot is your reputation that others are discussing--but not with you.  In reality, the likelihood is that you will always have a behavioral blind spot, which others may always discuss without you being aware.  The danger is that this behavioral blind spot can derail your career.

To avoid this, you must be proactive to learn about yourself and the perception of you held by others.  You do this by:

• Learning as much about yourself as possible by examining your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in order to assess your strengths and weaknesses.  Why do you think, feel, or respond in particular ways?
• Obtaining information from those with whom you work.  Volunteer to participate in multi-rater (360-degree) assessments if that option is available to you.
• Taking advantage of self-assessments that are available to you.  The DISC is a popular instrument that can provide excellent information about the advantages and disadvantages of your work style.  It can also help you to understand others.

Being willing to seek information is only part of the formula.  The other parts are accepting and then using the information.  Of course, you can deny that it is true...or...believe it, but do nothing about it...or...believe it and create the reputation of using the input to improve your interpersonal performance.

Character of Leaders

The quality of performance in most organizations is a direct reflection of the quality of leadership.  The following four questions help identify the worthiness of leaders:

1. Are you competent?
2. Do you listen to your conscience?
3. Is your character sound?
4. Do you have compassion for others?

In the pursuit of power and control, many individuals choose to abandon what is right for what is popular.  This egotism is truly the "PGA" of the good old boy network: power, greed and arrogance! 

Because the character of leaders determines the destiny of organizations, we need more men and women who have the courage to stand for what's right and not compromise their souls in the name of political correctness.

A Chinese proverb states it best:

"If there is righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in character.  If there is beauty in character, there will be harmony in the home.  If there is harmony in the home, there will be order in the nation.  If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world."

Wise leaders understand that living a life of integrity is simply doing the right thing in all situations, regardless of the consequences.

Source:  Byrd Baggett: Charisma Based Leadership: How to Be the Leader that Everyone Wants to Follow (Good Things to Know)

Beware of the Loss of Consumer Confidence

The sharp decline reported last week in one confidence gauge, from Reuters and the University of Michigan, has sent up caution flares. Their March index of consumer sentiment sank by 10 points, the 10th-biggest drop on record and a reversal of five prior months of gains.

Yesterday, the Conference Board confirmed this decline when they announced that their gauge of consumer confidence fell to 63.4 this month from 72 in February.  The drop was driven by a less-optimistic view of the future as was reflected in the Reuters/University of Michigan consumer survey.  While that drop would be somewhat more muted than the Michigan survey, it may be more worrisome.

That is because the Conference Board's survey places a slightly greater emphasis on labor-market prospects.  And it is quite different, and potentially more damaging, as consumers weren't just pulling back on discretionary purchases because of higher fuel prices, but again fretting about their jobs, too.

That concern has hampered consumer confidence throughout this middling economic recovery.  And while the recession may have officially ended in June 2009, Tuesday's data confirms that confidence today is actually weaker, on average, than it was at the low point of the downturn.  Given that, the choppy nature of consumer spending, and the recovery more broadly, isn't too surprising.

The key question in the Reuters/University of Michigan consumer survey is: "Do you think the economy a year from now will be better, the same or less than it is today?"  The answer to this question is a key indicator of future consumer spending and leads the U.S. stock market and all other early warning signals of economic direction.

The broader message is clear: Consumer sentiment remains unusually weak at this stage of the recovery.  And growth isn't likely to pick up until confidence does.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, March 28 & 29, 2011

CEO Disease Symptoms

"CEOs often hear what they want to hear rather than what really is on the minds of their subordinates," said Mark Anderson, president of ExecuNet, that conducted a survey of 2,463 C-level respondents in December 2010.  "CEOs think of guiding the ship as their purview."

Rank-and-file employees often complain that CEOs don't understand what motivates them. It turns out, CEOs aren't much better at naming what motivates their "C-level" direct reports, either.

Nearly 13% of chief financial officers, chief marketing officers, and other C-level executives say that having input into company decisions is their top reason to stay with a company, according to the survey.  But only 7% of CEOs think that's a central reason their C-level direct reports stick around.

The survey found perception gaps in other areas of work, too.

While only 4.4% of CEOs thought work-life balance was important to their subordinates, about 9.6% of C-level executives said it was.  And about 9.6% of C-level executives also said their work location was important.

More than 14% of CEOs thought their reports stay because they like the actual work they do; whereas only 5% of the C-level executives gave that as a top reason.

More than 4% of CEOs thought their reports considered their trust with the company's owner as a top reason for reports to stay, but almost no C-level executives named that as a reason.

The divide between what motivates executives and what CEOs think motivates them mirrors boss-employee thought gaps at all levels of companies, said Peter Cappelli, professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

"When we talk about hourly employees, we think that things like personal relationships and work flexibility motivate them, but when we talk about executives, suddenly everyone talks about money," he said. "But that difference is simply a falsehood."

According to the survey, 4.7% of C-level executives said total cash compensation was a reason to stay, while 7.1% of CEOs thought that was a top reason for their reports to stay.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2011

Still Enough Time to "Conquer the Crash?"

"If you were fortunate enough to have read the first edition of Robert Prechter's Conquer the Crash, your money was safe and sound as stocks, real estate, commodities and many bonds plummeted."  Conquer the Crash, 2nd edition, (quote from inside book sleeve)

The New York Times bestseller Conquer the Crash published in 2002: As the quote above suggests, Bob Prechter advised readers to avoid risky assets and embrace cash and cash equivalents.

But did the 2007-2009 declines represent all of the bear market?  And is the "Great Recession" over?

Many financial commentators believe the answer to both questions is "yes."   The latest Elliott Wave Theorist reports on attitudes toward the rally of the past two years:

"...sentiment measures today do not indicate caution, skepticism and disbelief but rather multi-year extremes in optimism among five sets of market players: individual investors, futures traders, options traders, newsletter advisors and mutual fund managers."

Regarding the economic outlook, the March Elliott Wave Financial Forecast notes a recent business story headline which reads, "Good Times Ahead." The story quotes a top banker saying, "Businesses have plenty of capital and are starting to expand again."

The same issue of the Financial Forecast also reminded subscribers that the fear of inflation remains widespread:

"When Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke touched on the 'politically volatile subject of inflation' in [recent] Congressional testimony, the blogosphere erupted with proclamations about runaway prices across the board. Here's one sample, 'There can be only one possible result. Inflation of everything we use is going to explode.'"

Yet Robert Prechter has another perspective on market optimism, a business climate "turnaround," and notions of runaway inflation.  That is why he updated the second edition of Conquer the Crash to include 188 new pages:

Robert R. Prechter Jr.: Conquer the Crash: You Can Survive and Prosper in a Deflationary Depression

These new pages include "updated lists of banks, insurers and Treasury-only money market funds in the U.S., top-rated for safety."

More than ever, Prechter emphasizes safety. In a word, it's the key to conquering a severe market downturn. Follow the advice about safety in CTC, 2nd edition, and you'll be better prepared for a deflationary depression. 

Elliott Wave International has put together a FREE, 8-lesson report based on Conquer the Crash, 2nd edition. This free, 42-page report can help you prepare for the future -- financially and economically!

Why not read "8-Lesson: Conquer the Crash Collection"? It's FREE!

Become a member of Club EWI (membership is also free), and you'll have immediate access to "8 Lesson: Conquer the Crash Collection." Just follow this link and you're on your way to financial peace of mind.

This article was syndicated by Elliott Wave International and was originally published under the headline Still Enough Time to "Conquer the Crash?". EWI is the world's largest market forecasting firm. Its staff of full-time analysts led by Chartered Market Technician Robert Prechter provides 24-hour-a-day market analysis to institutional and private investors around the world.

Robert R. Prechter Jr.: Conquer the Crash: You Can Survive and Prosper in a Deflationary Depression

Google: Too Big and Out-of-Control

The Google story started as a legend of popular culture.

In 1995, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, graduate students at Stanford University, figured out a way to scan and index the Internet.  By 1998, they had incorporated Google, coming up with a company name that suggested the audacity of their ambition. ("Googol" is the math term for the figure 1 followed by a hundred zeros.)  And they came up with an informal company motto to signal their benign intent: "Don't be evil."   Today, Google reaches billions of pages of content. 

In 2001, Page and Brin hired their first CEO, Eric Schmidt, who had a Ph.D. in computer science and twenty years of management experience in tech companies; most recently, he had been the CEO of Novell.  They settled on an unusual power-sharing arrangement.  As Schmidt describes it, "We've agreed that any major decisions the three of us agree." 

By 2002, when I began advertising with Google, the company had become very profitable, thanks to a novel program called AdWords, in which advertisers bid to display their ads whenever the user searches for keywords.  If the user then clicks on the advertisement---a "sponsored link"---Google earns revenue on a pay-per-click basis.

Through the period of March of 2002 to March of 2011, my small executive coaching company, Signature, Inc., spent over $56,900 on Google AdWords advertisements.  However, because of a lack of awareness of policy changes by Google and its decision to  outsource AdWords customer service to India (even though Google has an AdWords office here in Ann Arbor, MI, USA), my company's AdWords expenditures have been terminated (due a lack of Google management oversight and its customer service being lost in translation).

Now, Google leadership seems to recognize that its management capability needs  improvement and has taken action to realign top management effective April 2011 and  begin to re-engineer management oversight by training its managers to improve internal and external communication.

Google's Corporate Growing Pains Began to Show in the Beginning of 2008

Google Inc. in February 2008 had its second straight month of disappointing growth in "paid clicks," a key metric that reflected the overall health of the company, according to data released by research firm comScore Inc. 

Since then, the company has been harvesting its dominant market share by raising AdWords "cost per click" advertisements to improve corporate revenue.  Concurrently, online advertising competition has increased with Microsoft/Yahoo and others digging into Google's search engine advertising market share through providing better value to online advertisers.

The key question is does Google's top management have the leadership capability required to turnaround a company whose glory days may have been in the past while Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft/Yahoo, Apple, Amazon and other information technology companies continue to outpace Google?  

The Twitter Influence

We often think of social media as a powder keg.  Facebook and Twitter have the potential to provide an instantaneous sounding board for disconnected people due to their wide range and immediate feedback; creating sudden consequences for anyone who stands out from the crowd.

Whether you're a Twitter user like Lady Gaga (over 7.5 million followers) or, say, me (only 135 followers), you're always aware of roughly how many people follow you.  It’s just how people keep score on the site and compare themselves with friends and colleagues.

But it turns out that counting followers is a seriously flawed way to measure a person’s impact on Twitter. Even one of Twitter’s founders, Evan Williams, made the point recently: someone with millions of followers may no longer post messages frequently, while someone followed by mere tens of thousands may be a prolific poster whose messages are amplified by others.

So who are the most influential people on Twitter? 

The people at Twitalyzer, an independent research firm, studied the question, and came up with something called the Influence Index.  It counts the number of times somebody’s Twitter name is mentioned by other users (including retweets, which occur when one user rebroadcasts another’s message). The Influence Index doesn’t merely measure who’s talking on Twitter, but it also measures how much someone is affecting the conversation.  Look at how low Lady Gaga’s influence score is at 41. 

In politics, Newt Gingrich's influence score is 13 with over 1.3 million followers whereas Sarah Palin's influence score is 39 with 401,505 followers.

Among the discoveries: It helps to come from one of the four countries where Twitter is most popular — the United States, Brazil, England and Canada.  Among the top ten influencers are: Conan O'Brien (2.367 million followers - Influence Index: 88), Snoop Dogg (2.5 million followers - Influence Index: 85) and Barack Obama (6.5 million followers - Influence Index: 83). 

Eric T. Peterson, the chief executive of Twitalyzer, points out that some of the most influential users also make a big effort to respond to much less famous people with personal messages. Kim Kardashian falls into this category. President Obama, as you may have guessed, does not.

Source: The New York Times, March 27, 2011

A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Canadian Malcolm Gladwell in his book, "Outliers," tells us that the way Canadians select hockey players is a beautiful example of what the sociologist Robert Merton famously called a "self-fulling prophecy" --- a situation where a "false definition, in the beginning....evokes a new behavior which makes the original false conception come true."

Canadians start with a false definition of who the best nine and ten-year-old hockey players are.  They're just picking the oldest every year.  But the way they treat those "all-stars" ends up making their original false judgment look correct.

As Merton puts it: "This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error.  For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning."

If you make a decision about who is good and who is not at an early age; if you separate the "talented" from the "untalented"; and if you provide the "talented" with a superior experience, then you're going to end up giving a huge advantage to that small group of people born closest to the age cutoff date. 

Note: In Canada, the eligibility cutoff for age-class hockey is January 1.  A boy who turns ten on January 2, then, could be playing alongside someone who doesn't turn ten until the end of the year---and at that age, in preadolescence, a twelve-month gap in age represents an enormous difference in physical maturity.

In the U.S., the cutoff date for almost all nonschool baseball leagues is July 31, with the result that more major league players are born in August than in any other month.  The numbers are striking: in 2005, among Americans playing major league baseball 505 were born in August versus 313 born in July.

It seems ridiculous that this arbitrary choice of cutoff dates is causing long-lasting effects, and no one seems to care about them.  In Canadian children's hockey, it's the biggest nine and ten-year-olds who get the most coaching and practice.  Success is the result of what sociologists like to call "accumulative advantage."  The professional hockey player starts out a little bit better than his peers.  And that little difference leads to an opportunity that makes that difference a bit larger, and that edge in turn leads to another opportunity, which makes the initially small difference bigger still--and on and on until the hockey player becomes a genuine standout.

If Canadian hockey and U.S. baseball children leagues acknowledge that cutoff dates matter, they could set up leagues divided up by month of birth....letting players develop on separate tracks and then pick all-star teams.  With all child athletes having a fair chance, then national teams suddenly would have twice as many athletes to choose from.

 Malcolm Gladwell: Outliers: The Story of Success

Managing the Influences that Govern Our Behavior

Most people blame lack of willpower for their inability to change a bad habit.

But it turns out willpower has surprisingly little to do with it.  A book based on the latest psychological and medical research, Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success, documents a study of more than 5,000 people at the Change Anything Lab in Utah.

When it comes to kicking bad habits, we have far less control over our behavior than we think.  That's because our behavior is governed by outside influences that make us susceptible to bad habits.  For example, if your fridge is stocked with junk food, your likelihood of eating fruits and vegetable decreases significantly.

The good news from these findings is that while we don't have as much control over our behavior as we'd like, we do have control over the influences that govern our behavior and that puts the power to change back in our control.  Here are four strategies to create enduring change:

• Identify crucial moments: Find what specific temptations distract you from your primary goal.
• Create vital behaviors: If you establish rules for avoiding temptations in advance of crucial moments, when you encounter them, you are more likely to change your behavior.
• Engage all six sources of influence: For example, change your environment and turn your enablers into allies in accomplishing your goal.
• Turn bad days into good data: Don't look at failures as an opportunity to fall off the wagon, instead, learn from your failures and adjust.

Here is how you can use those six sources of influence to improve your performance at work and thus secure the promotions/rewards you deserve (from the MIT Sloan Management Review, 2008):

1. Flash forward to the future.  Motive yourself by visiting your default behavior; think about the money you'll lose and the opportunities you'll miss.

2.  Invest in professional development.  New habits require new skills.  Identify the skills you need to progress in your career.  Actively develop those skills by attending seminars and reading books to expand your expertise.  Then apply those new skills.

3.  Hang with the hard workers.  The bad attitudes and habits that keep you back are likely being enabled, tolerated or encouraged by others.  Use positive peer pressure by surrounding yourself with hard-working friends who share your career goals.

4.  Find an Outside Coach and Inside Mentors.  Changing habits requires help.  Get a coach and you'll make change far more likely.  Find an executive coach and trusted mentors to encourage your progression and help you navigate the career development opportunities that exist within your organization or industry.

5.  Put skin in the game.   Reward yourself for reaching short-term goals by placing money at risk. 

6.  Control your workspace.  Make your new habits easier by enlisting the power of your surroundings.  For example, just add a few visual cues that help you focus on your goals, and your behavior will change rapidly.  Remove items that distract you from performing meaningful work.  When possible, turn off electronic interruptions that keep you from being as productive as you need to be to move ahead.

 Kerry Patterson: Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success

Creativity + Practice = Success

In studying creative people who are passionate about what they do, we can enhance our own creativity, and business savvy, even if we work in a completely different arena.

Of course, it’s easier for most people to relate to musicians and other creative people work than to people who design furniture.  The obvious emotion underlying a great song makes us feel that we have at least some understanding of the performers and their motivations. The authors of “Come Together,” both Nashville residents and avid Beatles fans, make the most of that idea: that in the beginning at least, the Beatles were just like you and me.

According Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers: The Story of Success,"  the Beatles success was based on those years after Lennon and McCartney first stated playing together in 1957, seven years prior to landing in America.  In 1960, while they were still just a struggling high school rock band, they were invited to play in Hamburg, Germany.  There the band would play hour after hour to catch passing traffic.  It didn't pay well but, the sheer amount of time the band was forced to play, the band gained more confidence as they put their heart and soul into their performance.  In Hamburg, they played for eight hours at a time, seven days a week, which resulted in a new way of playing: all told, they performed for 270 nights in just over a year and a half.  By the time they had their first burst of success in 1964, they had performed live an estimated twelve hundred times.  Most bands today don't perform twelve hundred times in their entire careers.

Before Leonardo Da Vinci, the concept of “creativity” didn't exist

By Guest Author Michael J Gelb

Prior to the Renaissance, the notion of individuality didn’t exist, because the concept of individuality, as we now understand it, didn’t exist.  Paintings, for example, remained unsigned, and painters, anonymous, because the individual was considered unimportant.