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Category Archive: Leadership Development

4 Things To Do When Your Team Is Smarter Than You

Posted by on April 9, 2016

So we have heard that leaders today don’t have to be able to answer all the questions. They hire smarter people and let the combined collaboration generate more effective results. So if you are the leader, then what is your role? Fast Company has a helpful post:

“If you think the boss should have all the answers, you might be confused about what it means to be a good leader. As a general rule of thumb, every person hired should be smarter than the manager at what they’ve been hired to do, says Ian Siegel, cofounder and CEO of the employment platform ZipRecruiter.”

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How To Disagree With Someone More Powerful Than You

Posted by on April 4, 2016

I have blown this one in every way possible. With that admission comes some degree of what works and what does not. I have to be able to say the right thing, the right way and most importantly at the right time to have a chance of being heard. This HBR post is excellent:

“Your boss proposes a new initiative you think won’t work. Your senior colleague outlines a project timeline you think is unrealistic. What do you say when you disagree with someone who has more power than you do? How do you decide whether it’s worth speaking up? And if you do, what exactly should you say?”

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How To Connect With Millennial Employees

Posted by on March 30, 2016

In my opinion millennial employees get a bad rap primarily because they are misunderstood not because they under perform. Situational leadership teaches us that we should lead every person differently based on the context and improve our communication where everyone can reach their potential. This Forbes post is very helpful:

“Is it any coincidence that the most loved consumer brands are also on millennial employees’ list of favorite places to work? And note that many of the companies that are the most-loved consumer brands have sustained economic returns to shareholders that far exceed their peers, too! What is the secret?

Company leadership that understands how to bypass generational differences in the workplace and create a shared culture that crosses boundaries.”

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Hire Winners Not Whiners

Posted by on March 28, 2016

In the old days of the Industrial Age model of leadership everything was pretty simple. The leaders made all of the decisions and the followers did all of the work. There were very clearly identified lines of authority and policies and procedures for everyone.

The major goal of the company culture at the end of the day was to prevent failure. Therefore if you had a problem with two people that were chronically taking too long for lunch breaks then you would design a system where everyone would have to sign out and sign back in.

Then it became some middle managers job assignment to monitor the system until it became a part of the new and improved culture for the company and that would solve the problem with lunch breaks. This cycle was repeated over and over again and the best people in the organization were always assigned the duty of cleaning up the mess produced by the worst ten percent of workforce.

Today you better have your best people working on your biggest opportunities or you competition will eat your lunch and you will not need to sign out and in anymore. You must move from a culture that tries to prevent failure to one that ensures success.

This means that you define success not by how the process is managed by what type of results your people are achieving. The leaders number one responsibility now is to hire great people and set the vision for the organization.

The winners will take care of the strategy and it will produce results but you will probably have to live without your weekly employee lunch report. You will not need it any more they fired the two people.

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The Target Has Changed For Churches

Posted by on March 17, 2016

Any time you talk about some group of people being your primary target most people in the church get offended. It is if they are concerned that because they are not in the target group their needs are not going to be met. This of course should not have to be the case at all.

For over fifty years at least the same target group has existed from a demographic and psychographic standpoint. They were the adults that made up the World War II and the Baby Boomer generations. We developed programs and services to meet their needs and they would bring their children to church with them.

A typical adult conversation on the way home would be how did you like the message, music and the lesson? If both adults had a good experience, then they would deal with whatever issues the children had and bring them back the next Sunday.

Today the overwhelming majority of adults under the age of forty are not coming to church any more. They have a different world view about God and the need for role of the church in their lives.

When they do come because someone has relationally connected with them at work or in the neighborhood the conversation on the way home has completely changed. Now the major thing that matters is what type of experience did their children have and do they want to come back again?

If the answer is yes, the adults are now willing to make the adjustments and they will be back. If the answer is no, then regardless of what happened to mom and dad they are not going to give you a second look.

If your preschool, children and student ministries are not world-class in your church then you cannot expect to reach families in today’s culture. The conversations on the way home have changed and your target group must change with it as well.

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To Stay Relevant You Must Keep Learning

Posted by on March 14, 2016

There is no doubt a part of me that knows far more than I am actually applying in my life. However, as a leader in every area of my life, I must become a life long learner or I will never reach my true potential. This post by Pat Wordes for the HBR drives home this important reality for all of us:

“It’s not about learning a set of skills and then being “prepared” for life. It’s about learning to continuously learn over the course of your whole career. As AT&T CEO and Chair Randall Stephenson, recently told the New York Times, “There is a need to retool yourself, and you should not expect to stop….People who do not spend five to 10 hours a week in online learning will obsolete themselves with the technology.”

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12 Habits Of The Most Productive People

Posted by on March 9, 2016

I am constantly reading and doing research to find any new way or tool to improve my personal productivity. After all, when you set your goals but you are not able to achieve them because you have no margin you have failed. This post from Fast Company reminds me of several key tactics that have helped me over the years along with a few new ideas:

“High performance starts with a mind-set that translates into things that you do. Once you’ve got the mind-set, you will have the behaviors, and then it will turn into action. Everyone can become a high performer,” Rulkens says. They know these 12 things.

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Great Leaders Practice Feedforward

Posted by on March 4, 2016

Almost every serious organization uses some form of feedback to evaluate the performance of their top leadership team. This usually works best in a 360 type environment where the person receives feedback from superiors, peers and subordinates as well.

The concept of feedforward was developed by Marshall Goldsmith in his best seller What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, which is about how to coach senior executives. He encourages every leader to identify core behaviors that need to change through feedback. Then apologize for your mistake and commit to change that character quality in the future.

The primary way he recommends to accomplish this is through the four disciplines in feedforward:

Identify Target Behavior—choose the one behavior that your colleagues have told you about that you consider to be at the top of your list for change. The number one issue among the thousands of people he has worked with is to be a better listener.
Enlist Accountability Partners—the key here is to secure a personal commitment from as many people as possible to help you in this particular area. This should include family members as well as various levels of people within the organization where you work. They will all commit to help you focus on this one specific area and help you with ongoing feedback.
Solicit Specific Suggestions—ask everyone in your accountability circle for at least two suggestions that might help you achieve a positive change in your selected behavior. The key ground rule here is that there should be no mention of mistakes in the past but every comment is about the future.
Practice Active Listening—take appropriate notes if necessary but make sure you are really listening to each and every suggestion to the point that you can put it into practice. Also it is very important regardless of the quality of the input to be sure to graciously thank everyone involved who will take the time and emotional risk of telling you what you really need to hear.

Instead of waiting six months for the next performance review cycle, get feedback when you need it so you can become a better leader.

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The Benefits Of Peer-To-Peer Praise At Work

Posted by on February 29, 2016

One of my biggest failures as a leader is making positive comments that encourage other people on an intentional ongoing basis. With performance metrics being driven more by collaborative relationships than directive responsibilities this is a fatal flaw that I must resolve. This HBR post takes the goal of praise and builds it into the ongoing organizational culture:

“In The Happiness Advantage, I describe an experience with a leader at a Fortune 100 company who told me, “We don’t need a happiness program, we pay people to be engaged.” This is a surprisingly common refrain from unenlightened leaders, an assumption based upon the belief that pay equals engagement.”

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3 Absolutes In Hiring The Right People

Posted by on February 26, 2016

I just finished writing a recommendation for someone on Linkedin that reminded me of what is absolutely critical when considering someone for your team. When I hire someone I am always looking for three major things that are very important to me. If any one of these is missing then I know no matter how qualified they may be in the other two areas it is still a no deal for me:

Character—According to all the research Jim Collins has done this qualification has moved to the top of the list. When someone has the right kind of character you will not have to worry about having to over manage them they are self motivated and will only settle for excellence in everything they do. Talk is cheap in this area and I want someone who has demonstrated over time they have the foundation that can withstand the problems that will surely come in the future.
Competency—There is no doubt that everyone you add to your team needs to be qualified to fill the positions you have available. The more technical and specialized the skill set the more demanding you must be in this area. However, in Collin’s research and my own personal experience, if I find the right person I will hire them first and figure out what they are going to do later.
Chemistry—The clear issue here is how well this person will fit into the team dynamic that is already in place. I always in the interview process find a way to get a person into a casual environment so I can observe them and see who they really are unscripted. I want people with a heavy dose of personal humility and equal amount of personal determination that do not care who gets the credit but will make sure it all gets done.

The people who are going to do great things in this new global environment are going to be the ones with the best people on their team. There is no greater responsibility for the leader than making sure you get the right people on the bus and the wrong ones off as quickly as possible.

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