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Why Chemistry Trumps Competency In Leadership

Posted by on February 19, 2016

In the book Good to Great the author makes a big deal about getting the right people on the bus, in the right seat on the bus and also getting the wrong people off the bus. Hopefully by now everyone gets the importance of this concept to the success of any organization.

Another interesting point that often gets overlooked is that he also states the people who are on the team are more important than what they do together. This goes far beyond the truth that if you have the right people they will figure out what you need to do.

He even says that one of the keys to having a great life is to genuinely enjoy the team of people that you are working with on a daily basis. He uses words like love and respect to describe these relationships.

I spoke at a conference where a departmental group of employees were having an annual getaway event. As I watched them for over two days and listened how they responded to each other I was extremely impressed with the community they have developed over the years.

I left with the clear impression that the relationships within that department were far more important to them than the specific jobs they accomplished on a day to day basis. Oh by the way, because of their strong sense of community their performance metrics were outstanding.

Building a team spirit that highly motivates people because they care about and enjoy the people they work with should move to the top of any leader’s agenda. This also may be the key factor in attracting and retaining the top performers in any industry.

Categories: Leadership Development Organizational Culture | Comments Off on Why Chemistry Trumps Competency In Leadership

3 Ways To Respond To A Difficult Boss Who Resists Change

Posted by on February 17, 2016

I once spoke at an annual conference for the utility industry on the subject of change. The major takeaway was that long after this recession cycle is over we are never going back to the way things used to be.

The world has permanently changed the way we live and especially the way we work. The power of technology and the globalization of world economies are driving change in an unprecedented way.

At the end of both my presentations we had a question and answer session. The dominant question from everyone was what do you do when you know change needs to occur but your boss either does not see the need or simply will not give up on the status quo?

The first thing you must do is to continue to respectfully continue to tell the truth. The moment you give up and become a yes man you have stopped doing your job.

The second thing you must do is check your motives. At the end of the day if I have tried to be helpful and share my perspective in the right way then I can go home knowing I did it right.

The third thing is to realize that it is not in your job description to change your boss any more than it is to change your mate at home. When we hit the wall is when we assume responsibility that was not given to us and become frustrated when the people above us don’t seem to get it.

After several months of respectfully communicating what you see from your perspective and nothing seems to be changing and you get the impression that they don’t want to hear it anymore. The you must realize that in the end you will either change the corporate culture you are working in or if you stay too long it will change you.

When I have reached this point the change that needs to occur is not in my boss but where I am working. I will not settle for a paycheck becasue the world is in a mess and I want to make a difference.

Categories: Leadership Development Leading Change Staff Development | Comments Off on 3 Ways To Respond To A Difficult Boss Who Resists Change

The Power of Gratitude

Posted by on February 12, 2016

I was thinking again about Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff by Richard Carlson where he talked about his tendency to start thinking negative thoughts with all the bad news that is out there today. I fight this as well, especially when you are going through a hard time personally or when there is this slight issue of a failing economy.

It is important to build into your life the daily discipline of thinking about all the good things that you have in your life. We all should be grateful just to be alive and the basics of life including food, clean water and shelter. There are multiplied millions of people who struggle just to make it through one more day.

Beyond that we have families and friends and hopefully we are fulfilled by doing something with our life that we know will make a difference. Through our faith we can have forgiveness for our failures and hope for the future.

The power of gratitude though is released when we go beyond thinking about it and personally telling someone else how thankful we are for what they mean to us. This sets off a chain reaction of them passing on their gratitude to someone else in their life and the cycle continues.

So as we all are waiting today for an invasion of terrorists, the fall of the stock market or who is going to win the election lets start spreading something positive in our lives by telling just one person thanks.

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The Fatal Flaw Of Executive Leadership

Posted by on February 10, 2016

When you are evaluating any leader’s effectiveness you tend to look at two major categories that summarize everything else. They are the character that defines the core values of the person and the competency or skill set that they bring to the position.

Marshall Goldsmith is one of the top Executive Coaches in the market. His book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There is a great read for all leaders who want to reach their maximum potential. He identifies twenty habits that can completely destroy your influence as a leader.

The amazing thing that he confirms for all of us is that the most critical problems related to executive leadership have very little to do with core industry specific competency or even the expected qualities of productive leadership.

The overwhelming majority of smart, disciplined, experienced and passionate leaders are failing in the one major area of basic people skills. They do not relate well to their superiors, peers, subordinates and sometimes even customers.

They do not listen, make negative comments about people when they are not in the room, and always tend to punish the messenger when bad news is delivered just to list a few. Almost always these potential fatal flaws are obvious to everyone but the leader who does not even see them as an issue.

An absolute necessity for any effective leader is to establish a culture within their organization where the truth can be told and they will get the feedback they need or these extremely negative blind spots will never be revealed.

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4 Things Successful Change Leaders Do Well

Posted by on February 8, 2016

It has often been said that the pain of the present must become greater than the fear of the future for change to really work. Although that may be true, it is an over simplistic assessment of the reality of just how complex leading change is both for individuals and organizations. This HBR post takes a much more comprehensive approach:

“We know that two-thirds of large scale transformation efforts fail. But that’s not a terribly helpful piece of information―unless we’re looking for confirmation that this is hard, really hard. What is useful is to understand what leaders can do to substantially increase the odds that their companies won’t be among the two-thirds of those that fail.”

3 Ways To Regain Personal Momentum

Posted by on February 5, 2016

When negative things are happening in your life and you feel like you are in a deep hole and cannot see how to get out there are three key personal leadership disciplines that will help you get your positive momentum back.

The first is Perspective. When things are not going well today it is very important to put the present in the context of the long look that includes both the past and the future. All of life both the good and the bad tend to run in cycles. You cannot choose many times the circumstances about what happens to you but it is your responsibility to choose how you respond to them.

Adversity in life will either make you a better person or a bitter one and that choice is within your control. The key thing about your past is you must learn from it but never live in it. Failure never has to be final unless we let it.

The same is true about the future. You can choose to watch the news 3 hours a day and live with fear, worry and doubt or you can be grateful for what you have and face the future with hope and a positive attitude.

The second personal leadership discipline in dealing with change is Priorities. The one incredibly good thing about a down cycle is that it always forces us to separate what is important in life from what is not.

We must start by not asking the question what have I lost but what do I still have? I would encourage you to write down everything that is still in your life that is important and when you see it all you will be amazed by how blessed you really are.

Someone has well said the tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon but we wait so long to begin it. Regardless of your age or stage of life this dramatic period of change we are all going through is the perfect time for you to decide how you want to spend the rest of your life. If you need some help get a life coach to walk through this process with you.

The third discipline to deal with change is to be Proactive. When some people face dramatic change they choose to live in denial as if this is not really happening to me. On the other extreme others know the change is real to the point of becoming emotionally depressed about their new state of life.

I must assume personal responsibility to change myself first and start leading myself by making good daily decisions before my life can begin to turn around in different direction. The only way to do that is to do what you can with what you have right where you are and do it today with all your heart.

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How To Boost Your Teams Productivity

Posted by on February 3, 2016

I have never experienced a time where there has been more confusion between planning and execution or directive leadership vs. collaboration. Many leaders are over delegating and wondering why projects fail to meet expectations and other leaders are still micro managing and minimizing productivity. This HBR post is one of the best I have see on this subject:

“We all have too much to do and too little time to do it. As a boss, you may have already learned how to plan, prioritize, and streamline your work. But how can you help your team members do the same? Should you dictate the processes and tools they use? How do you keep people from taking on too much and burning out or continuously spinning their wheels?”

Effective Leadership Must Be Courageous

Posted by on February 2, 2016

A legend from India tells about a mouse who was terrified of cats until a magician agreed to transform him into a cat. That resolved his fear until he met a dog, so the magician changed him into a dog. The mouse-turned-cat-turned-dog was content until he met a tiger—so , once again, the magician changed him into what he feared.

But when the tiger came complaining that he had met a hunter, the magician refused to help. “I will make you into a mouse again, for though you have the body of a tiger, you still have the heart of a mouse.”

Courage is defined as the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger and pain without fear. In the economic environment we find ourselves in today there are many things that we could choose to fear.

What we desperately need today are leaders who possess the character to make the hard calls that will help us move through this crisis and into a brighter future. In this day when the pace of change seems to be moving at the speed of light there will seem to be a new danger around every corner.

When Jim Collins describes the type of leaders that led their organization to greatness they possessed two key qualities. They are individuals with extreme personal humility and an unwavering resolve to do whatever must be done to produce the best long term results, no matter how difficult.

Great leaders are certainly human but on the inside they possess the heart of a lion and not of a mouse.

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Stop Trying To Achieve Work-Life Balance

Posted by on January 29, 2016

I have never like the whole concept of work-life balance. It implies that both areas have equal importance and the honest truth is they don’t. Balance also creates competing priorities instead of integrating your life around core values. Mark Merrill has some compelling thoughts:

“I’m talking about the work-life balance that we are so often told to pursue; the search term brings up almost 200,000 Google results. The idea is that if we try hard enough, we can keep everything in our life in good order and perfect harmony.”

Leadership Demands Authenticity

Posted by on January 27, 2016

There are many generational issues that have to be resolved between the Baby Boomer generation of existing leaders and the Next Generation workforce that is coming onto the scene. The old positional power model of simply telling everyone what to do and they automatically follow with no desire for involvement in the process is gone.

Potentially the single greatest leadership quality new leaders are looking for from those in positions of responsibility is authenticity. They place a high value on working with people that are real and genuine compared to others who like to play mind games.

A leader must know who they are personally and what they believe are the core values for themselves and the organizations they lead. Then when the hard decisions must be made and there are many of them today, everyone on the team will trust their motives instead of questioning them.

Jack Welch placed a very high value on authenticity for his top leadership team. In his book Winning he wrote, “Leaders can’t have an iota of fakeness. They have to know themselves-so that they can be straight with the world, energize followers, and lead with the authority born of authenticity.”

There is nothing better at the end of a long day than to look back and know that all your actions were consistent with your character. No more playing games just keeping it real.

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