Category Archive: Servant Leader

Leadership Demands Courage

Posted by on April 27, 2009

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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Conflict Management

Posted by on March 18, 2009

At times we all have difficulty working with other people especially in stress charged environments.  It is very easy especially as leader to fall into the bad habit of making negative comments about people especially when they are not present.

This type of conflict resolution will do nothing but add to the problem and ultimately destroy your leadership credibility.  When anyone hears you making destructive comments about another person who is not there, they too realize that one day they will not be there either.

The principle that I have adopted is that if I have something negative to say to another person I will go directly to them and talk about it privately.  If it is not a big enough deal for me to go and talk privately then it should not be a big enough deal to talk with others.

This one discipline has eliminated at least seventy-five percent of my need to make negative comments  to other people and almost completely stopped the destructive habit of public personal criticism of others.  Now when I do need to talk with someone about a real performance issue my motives are right and my methods are positive.

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Called vs. Driven

Posted by on March 12, 2009

It is very important that we all know the difference between these two power words.  If you are not careful and buy into the media’s definition of success you will be driven to get all the perks of this lifestyle.

Driven people see their career as the primary provider of their physical and emotional needs.  It gives them power, possessions, position, pleasure and all the emotional significance they want from all the outward success they achieve.

Called people on the other hand see their career as a means to a much more important end and that is impacting other people.  They get up every day on a mission to make a difference and the bottom line for them is not profits but people.

I am convinced that called people in the marketplace can be more successful in every way than their driven counterparts.  They have a passion that goes way beyond just showing up for work and hitting the numbers.

All of us have a strong desire to look back at the end of our lives and know that we have made a real difference.  That difference will not be who has the most toys but who has helped the most people.

 

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Personal Mission Statement

Posted by on February 16, 2009

All of us have become proficient at doing all the major components of the business plan at work.  We know how to define goals, create plans, execute priorities and evaluate success.

However, very few of us use these same disciplines to help lead our personal lives.  Research shows that approximately 95% of us have never written out our personal goals in life, but of the 5% who have, 95% have achieved them.

Steven Covey popularized the phrase Personal Mission Statement in his bestselling book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  He makes the point that ultimately all professional success flows out of our ability to lead ourselves first.

Every day we must say no to something because there is simply too much to do when you include the personal, family, career and civic responsibilities of our lives.  If we do not take the time to define what we want our legacy to be for the people and things we care about the most they will by default usually end up on the no list.

What the annual plan does for your corporate productivity and performance your personal mission statement will do for the rest of your life.  It will help define the core values for you personally and your family and set realistic goals with strategies that will help you to write your own script for the totality of your entire life.

It should never be acceptable to succeed in one area of our lives only to fail in all the others.  Take the time to write down what is personally and professionally  important to you in this life because in the end that is all that will really matter.

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Community

Posted by on January 28, 2009

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.

This week I was speaking 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.

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Family Matters

Posted by on January 19, 2009

I have never known a successful leader who did not know how to establish goals, develop plans, execute priorities and finally evaluate success in their career.  The old saying about goals is true, if you cannot measure them, then they really don’t matter.

However, tragically for most people that is exactly what happens to them in their personal lives.  They say this part is ultimately the most important but they never take the time to write down what they want their legacy to be for the people that matter the most.

Because the personal does not get the priority of the professional the family usually ends up with the leftovers.  Leftover time, passion, affection and energy.

I have know people who can make million dollar decisions at work without blinking but by the time they get home they do not have enough emotional energy  to decide if they want hamburgers or soup for dinner.  They have been nice to other people all day, co-workers, suppliers and customers only to come home and be so fried they have to retreat to the T.V. because they have nothing left for spouse or children.

Someone has well said that the person who cannot see the ultimate always becomes a slave to the immediate.  Meaningful relationships with family and bottom line professional results are not mutually exclusive but you must be willing to pay personal leadership price to have both.

 

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Leadership 21st Century

Posted by on January 16, 2009

There has been a tremendous amount of change in the area of leadership over the last twenty years.  We have moved from an industrial age to an information age to the present idea age.

People in the industrial age were primarily paid for what they did.  In the information age they will be primarily paid for what they know and in the idea age how well they think.

Add to this mix the power of technology and the rise of the ever changing and highly competitive global economy and you get the new realities for leaders in the 21st century.

The real tragedy is that most corporate cultures today are still leading and managing from an old positional leadership model rather than a new participative one.  Under this model the leaders at the top make all of the decisions and the followers at every level simply carry out their instructions.

These old models are designed around preventing failure rather than ensuring success.  The process is trusted and valued more than the people within the organization.

This core belief about leadership results in trying to manage people with a carrot and stick mentality instead of leading them as the most valuable part of your team.

All effective leaders in the 21st century will prioritize hiring great people and then empowering them to make decisions and take risks or they will absolutely fail in this new global economy.

 

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Marginless Living

Posted by on December 2, 2008

In yesterday’s blog I talked about the need to create margin in our lives.  Margin is the space that used to exist in all of our lives between all the physical, emotional and mental pressures of every day and our capacity to respond in a meaningful way to all of the people and circumstances that we must address.

The lack of margin is exactly the opposite when we have too many demands and not enough resources.  For most of us the public parts of our lives centered around our work life demands its percentage first.  I know people who can make million dollar decisions all day long at the office only to be so spent by the end of the day they can’t even decide if they want pizza or hamburgers for dinner.

They put other people first all day whether they are customers or co-workers only to come home with nothing left for a lonely spouse or stressed out children.  We may feel successful at times because of all the public praise that comes with making your numbers but at the end of the day we know something is terribly wrong.

Whatever it takes all of us must find the courage to stake out some core values that are non-negotiable.  This will allow us maybe for the first time in our lives to have the margin we need to live the life we want rather than the one someone else has scripted for us.

You have the capacity to write your own script, so take out your pen and start writing.

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