Category Archive: Leadership Development

The Number One Priority In Hiring

Posted by on September 28, 2016

I have hired a lot of people over the years from working in the corporate world to being involved with several different non-profits.  I ultimately take all of the factors involved and put them into one of two major categories, character or competency.

Competency is the possession of the skill set, experience or aptitude to do a particular job with excellence.  This can be accessed through a variety of performance evaluation tools and talking with references.

Character is the sum total of the moral and ethical qualities of an individual that is based on their core beliefs about life.  This takes quite a bit longer to evaluate and many times references will give you only one side of the story.

I make sure I am able to spend a lot of informal time with the person so that I can eventually move beyond the interview script and hear their heart.  I also never hire a key person without meeting their spouse.

The priority of evaluating this part of the person must take first place over all other qualifications.  As a matter of fact, character has moved to the top of the list in the corporate world.

The first test in hiring anyone at General Electric under the leadership of Jack Welch was the character quality of integrity.  He wrote, “people with integrity tell the truth and they keep their word.  They take responsibility for past actions, admit mistakes, and fix them.”

Someone has well said, your ability may help get you to the top but it will be your character that will keep you there.

6 Habits Of Trustworthy Leaders

Posted by on September 26, 2016

Trust is a hot topic and for all the right reasons.  If you and your team have it, great things can be accomplished.  Without it nothing gets done well.  There are clearly things you can do to make deposits into your trust accounts and this Fast Company post lists some key ones:

“Do the people in your office trust you? Maybe not as much as you think they do.   Consulting firm EY released its Global Generations 3.0 research which found that less than half of full-time workers between the ages of 19 and 68 place a “great deal of trust” in their employer, boss, or colleagues. Another recent survey from Globoforce’s WorkHuman Research Institute found that 80% of employees trust their colleagues, but only 65% trust senior leaders in their companies.”

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5 Ways Effective Leaders Manage Their Emotions

Posted by on September 19, 2016

I try to assess situations based on facts not feelings.  However, there is not a week that goes by that emotions don’t win and the negative results sometimes can be devastating.  It hurts the team and it clearly causes me to loose trust as a leader.  This post by Fast Company is well worth the read:

“Soft skills have garnered increasing attention in the workplace over the last 20 years. In fact, emotional intelligence is one of the fastest growing job skills, according to a report by the World Economic Forum.

Ironically, those are the very skills hiring managers say the latest crop of college graduates lacks as they’ve focused on honing their technological prowess. Yet managing our emotions effectively in the workplace is a major component of success for all of us.”

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How To Decide Every Day What’s Next?

Posted by on September 16, 2016

This phrase became the mantra on the award winning series The West Wing.  After every serious issue that had to be dealt with no matter how long the conversation or difficult the task the president would always ask what’s next?

That is a very good question that all of us have to answer each and every day regardless of whether we realize it or not.  Inherent within the question is the intention to find the most important things on our must do list and place them at the top.

Most of us allocate a considerable amount of time to plan our weeks and certainly each individual day with pre-determined goals and priorities.  However, in today’s wired culture we are constantly receiving new information throughout the day that must be processed.

David Allen is recognized as one of the nation’s leading experts on time management and personal productivity.  In his book Getting Things Done he list four key criteria about processing new information that help him to answer the what’s next question:

  1.  Context—A few actions can be done anywhere but most require a specific location or having some productivity tool at hand, such as a phone or a computer.  These are the first factors that limit your choices about what you can do in the moment.
  2. Time available—When do you have to do something else?  Having a meeting in five minutes would prevent doing many actions that require more time.
  3. Energy available—How much energy do you have?  Some actions you have to do require a reservoir of fresh, creative mental energy while others need more physical horsepower.
  4. Priority—Given your context, time, and energy available, what actions will give you the highest payoff?  This is where you need to access your intuition and begin to rely on your judgment call in the moment.

How To Know When To Quit Or Keep Trying

Posted by on September 9, 2016

A good friend of mine exposed me to the writings of Seth Godin.  He is an expert on new marketing and the use of the internet with one of the most read blogs on the web.

The Dip is a book about knowing when to quit and on the other hand when to stick it out.  Every new project, job, relationship and hobby start out exciting and fun but at some point the newness wears off and the reality of how hard it really is sinks in.

A Dip is a temporary setback that you can overcome if you stick it out and do not quit.  The other extreme is a cul-de-sac which is a situation that you should quit as soon as you know this is not what you need to be doing.

How do you know the difference?  Great question.  The key to me involves passion and excellence.

If you are not passionate about what you are doing then that is a clear sign that you are probably in a cul-de-sac.  To be able to break through all the problems we all face everyday requires a burning desire to do something you know that really makes a difference.

The other criteria require a total transparent honesty with self.  You must evaluate if the product you are offering to the market is the quality that would make people want to participate in what you are doing.

If it is, then you have every reason to hope that over time other people will hear about what you are doing and will buy in and even tell their network about your services.  The book is all about knowing when to quit the wrong stuff and stick it out with the right.

Finding Real Meaning At Work

Posted by on September 5, 2016

Having the right definition of the word success is critical to living a meaningful life.  A significant part of our time is spent at work and if it’s just a paycheck then surely thats not success in anyone’s book.  This Forbes post by Paolo Gallo asks some great questions:

“First, let’s start with one over-arching question: What is a successful career? It’s time to move away from the idea of success defined by an organization or your supervisor, to significance defined by us. Relentlessly grasping after the next rung of the ladder doesn’t work, for the following three reasons.

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How To Maintain The Right Perspective

Posted by on August 19, 2016

Ultimately everything we do outwardly is driven by all of our inner attitudes about what is important and what is not.  If our actions are not what they should be we must first change what we believe to be true before we can see bad habits broken and new good ones take their place.

I think the most important attitude you must draw from everyday is gratitude.  The media is almost totally focused on all that we are losing in this election cycle.  The pain is real and there are significant problems that must be solved.  However, almost all of us still have plenty to eat, a nice place to sleep and friends and family that care about us.  Think about what is really important today and be grateful.

The second important thing to me is hope.  As we deal with the reality of lost jobs and endless bad news we must have a picture of a better day ahead.  Hope fuels a positive attitude about life when the majority of people are negative.  We may not be able to change the global economy or Wall Street but we can change ourselves.

Finally, we must be people who are committed.  Your passion about life is what will move you beyond the pain of the present.  The promises we make and keep to ourselves and the people we care about the most is the sum total of who you really are as a person.  If what you say you believe is not moving you to act everyday, then you really did not believe it after all.

Remember the old saying, what you do speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say.

Follow Up Or Fail

Posted by on August 12, 2016

I cannot tell you how many people I have worked with over the years that are great at getting something started but totally ineffective in finishing the task with excellence.  They get very excited in the creative planning stages of something but when it gets down to execution they lose interest and allow performance to deteriorate.

Keith Ferrazzi in his great book Never Eat Alone says that good follow up alone elevates you above 95% of your peers in every area of your life.  In his opinion it is the absolute key to success in any field.

In the area of networking he makes sure that he makes contact with any new person he meets within twelve to twenty-four hours after they have initially met.  He says why go to all the trouble of meeting new people if you’re not going to work on making them a part of your life?

This same discipline applies to phone conversations and meetings where commitments have been make for some future action.  It is extremely important to get all assignments down in writing and distribution made for all involved giving what is expected, who is responsible and when the project should be completed.

Many times great decisions have been made only to see the idea or project fail not because of poor initial planning but simply not paying attention to all the details involved in implementation.  Creativity alone can produce a lot of excitement but follow up alone is what produces sustainable excellence.

8 Unrealistic Expectations That Will Ruin You

Posted by on August 8, 2016

One of the most significant responsibilities of leadership is the setting and managing of expectations.  If they are unrealistic, no matter how hard your team works you will still fail.  If they are realistic, then everyone feels this is doable and gives their best effort.  This post by Travis Bradberry is great:

“Your expectations, more than anything else in life, determine your reality. When it comes to achieving your goals, if you don’t believe you’ll succeed, you won’t.  The tricky thing about your expectations is that they impact other people too. As far back as the 1960s, Harvard research demonstrated the power of our beliefs in swaying other people’s behavior. ”

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The Value Of Character

Posted by on July 27, 2016

Simply put everything you eventually accomplish in life will be based upon you personal leadership DNA.  What you do is based upon who you are.

Someone has well said:  ability may get you to the top but it takes character to keep you there.  If you do not believe that then just ask the former chairman of the DNC.

I had to learn the importance of this lesson very early in my career.  I changed jobs four times in five years right out of college because I did not realize that the major problem was not the company I was working for or the supervisor that I had, the problem was me.

All I did was move from company to company and take all of my unresolved character problems with me expecting different results.  I learned the hard way that if you are consistently failing where you are there is no real reason to believe that you will be successful somewhere else.

However, if you learn how to be successful where you are regardless of your circumstances and become an A Player then there is every reason to believe that you can be successful anywhere.