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Leadership

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Leadership is an interactive conversation that pulls people toward becoming comfortable with the language of personal responsibility and commitment.
LEADERSHIP TIPS
“The crux of leadership development that works is self-directed learning: intentionally developing or strengthening an aspect of who you are or who you want to be, or both.” Primal Leadership by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis & Annie McKee (Harvard Business School Press)

Management Agility

"Warm and fuzzy" works well for internet memes--not for management advice.

Yet, too much of what's written about improving performance in companies treats "the soft stuff" in a soft way.

Authors Colin Price and Sharon Toye, argue, "It's time to recognize that "soft stuff" is really the hard stuff and to bring hard science to management."

Their book, "ACCELERATING PERFORMANCE: How Organizations Can Mobilize, Execute, and Transform with Agility" demonstrates a research-backed approach to how organizations and leaders can drive transformation in a highly disruptive, ever-changing world.

Drawing on a combination of empirical research and decades of experience advising global companies, the authors share a step-by-step approach to accelerating your company ahead of the competition.

Four Key Skills of Ripple Intelligence

Businesses need to take one final step: They need to develop capabilities that allow the planned changes to really take hold and that will under-gird a new way of approaching business.

Your job as the manager is to understand how ripples will play into each other and to spot the opportunities and the dangers. If you bring together the right capabilities and establish the right dynamics, you can build teams that are far stronger than individuals.

How to get to higher level of thinking than most companies achieve today:

Level 1 thing is about binary decisions.

Level 2 is about operating on a scale.

Level 3 is about coordinating to stretch the power of the resources.

Level 4--where companies need to get to whenever possible--is about what is called "strategic unlock."

You find ways to funnel customer feedback directly to development teams to improve their products and reduce development costs. Everybody wins.

You keep the hierarchy but increasingly manage outside it, marshaling resources in mostly informal ways to go after problems and opportunities.

Source: Colin Price: Accelerating Performance: How Organizations Can Mobilize, Execute, and Transform with Agility

February 27, 2017 in Books, Business Coaching, Career , Leadership, Memes, Skills, Success, Tips, What is, Work life | Permalink | Comments (0)

A Compelling Communicator

Getting to the Story

You've established the critical insights and how those insights will be based on our understanding of the limitations of working memory. You have simplified the argument by managing down quality and by "decomplexifying." You have assembled a body of content that is both relevant and elegantly simple.

Now you take this material and find the overarching storyline that's hidden within it. It's a critical step in the design of any presentation, and it's fun to do.

Such a lack of structure leads to two inevitable results.

The first is that the presenter loses the audience. The second result is that nothing sticks. Random information will not stick in the human mind, and clearly that's the bigger problem.

This story, illustrates a critical point that's decidedly easy to miss. You have excellent content, but excellent content isn't the issue. If that content isn't properly organized, it's hard to process in the moment--and almost impossible to retain.

How Your Brain Stores Information

There's no new brain science in play here; this is a principle that has been understood for centuries. The key to human learning is context. The brain requires context as it seeks to absorb and retain information.

Learning theory has known that humans learn sequentially. We absorb a piece of information, which then becomes the context for, and the basis of, processing all the information to follow. Context creates comprehension. Which raises a question: If context creates comprehension, how do we create that context in our presentations?

Your presentation should arrive at a question the exact moment that question arrives in the audience's mind. In any presentation, be ready to speak the phrase "You're probably wondering," because it tells the audience that their logic is explicitly tracking with the presenter.

As long as you've identified a reasonable question and run with that, the flow will make total sense and the audience will still track with you. This approach to structuring an argument is well-understood, and known in scholarly circles as the "diatribe," in which authors play out just such an imagined conversation.

Source: Tim Pollard: The Compelling Communicator: Mastering the Art and Science of Exceptional Presentation Design

Bob Kulhan: Getting to "Yes And": The Art of Business Improv

Six ingredients to becoming an employer of choice.

Assumptions Guide Our Perception

The Art of Marketing

February 21, 2017 in Books, Business Coaching, Career , Communication, Memes, Success, Tips, What is, Work life | Permalink | Comments (0)

Imperfect Leadership

Success isn't about being perfect and always making the right choices.

Successful management is the result of understanding and accepting your own humanity. Then you can become a truly successful leader. Then you can become perfect in your own imperfection.

In a 2012 study of 361 top-level executives from 53 countries, by the Center of Creative Leadership, 19% of respondents stated that leaders are born to lead, while 52% believed that leaders are created; 29% said that both factors are equally important.

Leadership is a skill, similar to playing a musical instrument. Clearly, some are born with more musical talent than others. By the same token, there may be a few special individuals with natural leadership ability, who don't need to learn anything at all. The problem is that there are not enough of them to fill all the management positions in all of our organizations.

Successful leaders do not achieve greatness by being perfect; they do so by accepting their own humanity while adopting down-to-earth attitudes and values.

Given the current state of political affairs and our ability to relate to other people--with humility and authenticity--is the foundation for successful management.

Source: Kelly Odell: The Human Way: The Ten Commandments for (Im)Perfect Leaders

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Can't Get Enough Leadership

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Develop Leadership Skills: A Mobile Reference Guide

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February 17, 2017 in Books, Business Coaching, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Communication, Current Affairs, Ethics, Leadership, Memes, Self-Awareness, Skills, Success, Tips, What is, Work life | Permalink | Comments (0)

High-Potential Leaders

What "High Potential" Means Now

Everyone has potential to grow, but not everyone, has the potential to lead a large, complex organization in the near and distant future.

Today's high potential leaders, or "hipos," must be able to identify the untapped opportunities their companies will pursue and mobilize in the organization. They should exhibit three characteristics that the previous generation of leaders did not always need:

They imagine on a large scale. Hipos can take in a ton of information from many different sources and almost instantly find what could be meaningful. For example, Alphabet, now the umbrella company for Google and other subsidiaries, has a whole population of people who are working to solve the world's biggest problems.
They seek what they need to make it happen. Hipos will talk to anyone. They don't just stay within the hierarchy. A young Steve Jobs didn't hesitate to call Bill Hewlett, co-founder of tech giant Hewlett-Packard, when he was seeking technical help.
They understand the concept of the ecosystem. Companies rarely act alone in delivering their product or service. Hipos understand the complex web of participants, from the makers of small parts that go into larger ones to the mom-and-pop shops or FedEx fleet that delivers the product.

Hipos will come primarily from the 53 million millennials in the work force now. Text messaging and Twitter train them to be brief and to the point. With a wide mental bandwidth and ability to absorb key information, they can construct a bigger picture very quickly.

The primary reason companies like Facebook, GE, Netflix win today is the quality of their generals. Never before has it been more valuable to have or to become a high potential leader; one who can set the path and execute a winning plan in this digital age.

Source: Ram Charan: The High Potential Leader: How to Grow Fast, Take on New Responsibilities, and Make an Impact (J-B US non-Franchise Leadership)

Can't Get Enough Leadership

Develop Leadership Skills: A Mobile Reference Guide

Ask the Coach

February 15, 2017 in Books, Business Coaching, Career , Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Communication, Current Affairs, Leadership, Memes, Web/Tech, What is, Work life | Permalink | Comments (1)

Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined

Many of us are focused on the wrong approach to reach our goals and improve our lives. We don't need to get more than what we already have. We just need to learn to use what we have.

There are four basic actions that people can take to strengthen their stretch:

Broaden experiences: When we get exposure to a variety of experiences, we learn about using resources in different ways and give ourselves permission to break convention.
Act without planning: Get going, impose constraints -- it fosters spontaneity and creativity.
Expectations: If we can learn to be more generous and expect the best, we create positive prophecies, which research has shown can make children higher achievers and employees more productive.
Unthinkable combinations: Mix things up to find previously unknown synergies. Many of the best inventions came about this way.

Some people and organizations succeed with so little, while others fail with so much in a new book STRETCH: Unlock the Power of Less.

Two mindsets drive how we work and lead businesses: "stretching" and "chasing." Stretchers embrace what they have, finding unconventional ways to use resources already at hand.

Source: Scott Sonenshein: Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less -and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined

February 14, 2017 in Books, Business Coaching, Career , Failure, Leadership, Memes, Self-Awareness, Skills, Success, Tips, What is, Work life | Permalink | Comments (0)

Leading a Team may require Facing Pain

Courage is a mindset that requires grit and determination.

Most organizations have a list of core values that are displayed on the wall and show up in a variety of company marketing materials, from coffee mugs to baseball caps.

During orientation, many organizations train their new hires about their values and how to live them. And yet, on any number of occasions, you can see leaders acting in direct opposition of what they claim to be their values. These are often the same companies where two weeks after new-hire orientation, someone takes you to lunch and explains the real values of the organization. Or, if no one is looking out for you, you find out only after stepping on a cultural land mine.

What separates a good manager from an exceptional leader is explained in "The Courageous Leader," who is willing to face any challenge rather than avoid it. Making a difficult decision or change. Taking a stand. Having an emotionally-charged conversation. Giving and receiving feedback.

Accepting pain, author Angela Sebaly argues -- as opposed to avoiding that touchy conversation, indefinitely postponing making that tough decision or change or simply shirking other uncomfortable situations -- requires courage.

Values serve an important purpose for leaders. They provide a strategic road map for the vitally important to seemingly mundane everyday decisions. Unfortunately, not enough leaders consistently live their values through daily actions, which has a huge negative impact on teams, organizations, and communities.

Source: Angela Sebaly: The Courageous Leader: How to Face Any Challenge and Lead Your Team to Success

Can't Get Enough Leadership

Develop Leadership Skills: A Mobile Reference Guide

Ask the Coach

February 13, 2017 in Books, Business Coaching, Career , Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Communication, Ethics, Failure, Leadership, Self-Awareness, Skills, What is | Permalink | Comments (1)

Leadership Effectiveness at Work

Personality at Work has introduced broad research showing strong links between a leader's personality and outcomes--sometimes, extraordinary.

Organizations are shaped as much by the personalities of their leaders as by product innovations, marketing prowess, or technical ingenuity, yet identifying personality attributes that promote or inhibit organizational effectiveness has been an elusive goal, despite the existence of assessment centers and executive coaching.

In Personality at Work, author Ron Warren says, "people actually think about complicated interpersonal issues in language...words...not graphs and charts. He highlights the personalities of leaders like Alan Mulally, who transformed Ford Motor Company, as well as the pilot of Qantas Flight 32, that appeared doomed yet landed safely with 469 aboard due to the crew's leadership, teamwork, and communication.

"There are significant advantages for professionals to develop average behavioral skills to replace deficiencies -- especially for professionals filling leadership roles that demand behavioral competence in areas that do not come to them naturally," says Warren.

Each of us has choices: we can turn off our "behavioral autopilot" and make conscious choices to raise our effectiveness and satisfaction at work.

The ten dysfunctional behaviors that leaders most often conclude they need to start, stop, or improve to be more effective:

Start giving people attention
Start asking tough questions
Stop yelling
Stop over analyzing
Give more verbal recognition
Improve listening skills
Start working more closely with subordinates
Be more tolerant
Start to delegate more
Start to be more assertive

Whether a senior executive, aspiring professional, organizational psychologist, HR professional, or someone interested in what makes organizations effective, Personality At Work provides theory and powerful tools for making conscious choices to manage behavior to drive effectiveness and satisfaction at work.

Source: Ronald Warren: Personality at Work: The Drivers and Derailers of Leadership

Can't Get Enough Leadership

Develop Leadership Skills: A Mobile Reference Guide

Ask the Coach

February 08, 2017 in Books | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Art of Business Improv

What does improv have to do with business?

The skills that we rely on during improv, including centered thinking and split-second decision-making, also apply to many day-to-day challenges of the business world.

You're interviewing for a job, leading a meeting or handling an unhappy client, and then, uh-oh, you get a question you didn't anticipate...what do you do? Improvise!

In "GETTING TO "YES AND": The Art of Business Improv," veteran improv performer Bob Kulhan shows how to improve your odds of success through the practice of improvisation--a set of learning and experiences that train your mind to react, adapt, and communicate effectively before a crisis occurs, so that you bring your best self to the table when it happens.

Improv technique such as the "Yes, and" approach (which offers unconditional acceptance and an invitation to build as opposed to "Yes, but," which shuts people down), divergent and convergent thinking (which separates the creation of ideas from the process of judgment), and focusing what the other person is actually saying rather than jumping ahead with a response can translate into more productive meetings, swifter decision-making, stronger collaboration, and positive conflict resolution.

Sample: Here one performer says, "Wow, it's hot in this kitchen."

"Yes, and..." your response might be, "Yes, it is hot. And the fact that I set the place on fire probably isn't helping any."

As Kullian says, "The same skills that make for exceptional comedic improvisation--intense listening, focus, energy, engagement, teamwork, authenticity, adaptability--are skills that any person can utilize to positively impact the workplace."

Source: Bob Kulhan: Getting to "Yes And": The Art of Business Improv

Can't Get Enough Leadership

Develop Leadership Skills: A Mobile Reference Guide

Ask the Coach

February 06, 2017 in Books, Business Coaching, Career , Leadership, Memes, Self-Awareness, Skills, Success, Tips | Permalink | Comments (0)

White House Lies

Major news organizations are still reckoning with how to report on the President's lies.

Throughout last week, President Trump repeated his calumny that he lost the popular vote only because millions of "illegals" voted for Hillary Clinton. Trump's obsession with this subject may arise from his pathological need to tally every score in his own favor, but he surely knows that his propaganda also advances the Republican Party's efforts to extend barriers to legitimate voting by Latinos and African-Americans, through voter-I.D. requirements and other state laws.

Diverse studies have turned up no evidence of significant fraud in recent elections. Trump nonetheless vowed to sign an executive order commissioning a federal investigation.

One might wish that the solemn responsibility of leading a nuclear-armed world power would steer a successful seventy-year-old man away from routinely telling whoppers, yet it is hardly surprising that Trump has not changed since taking the oath of office.

When the Founders enacted the First Amendment, they could not have imagined the personage of Donald Trump, but they did have tyrants in mind.

Source: The New Yorker, February 6, 2017

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Leadership During Difficult Times

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February 04, 2017 in Communication, Current Affairs, Ethics, Memes, Safety & Security, What is | Permalink | Comments (0)

Getting to the Heart

In a new book, "Get to the Heart," the author delivers specific strategies that will get your stakeholders out of the conference room and into the world of your insights and ideas.

Business people are just as affected by emotion as consumers. Their ways of expressing it might be a little different, but they're still driven by emotion.

Even though a request is for rational data, what the person really wants is emotional reassurance.

Emotion heightens our ability to understand. Emotions help you own it. Stories evoking emotion are the next best thing to experience--they don't happen to us firsthand, but they can still touch our emotions and give us the glue that heightens our ability to understand, remember, and own the information.

Modern marketing is based on two premises. There's the product, and there's the emotional benefit we give our target. Today, great marketers know that an emotional benefit will touch people more deeply.

Source: Ted Frank: Get to the Heart: How movie storytelling secrets can make your presentation clear, compelling, and earn you a seat at the table