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Category Archive: Leadership Development

The False Choice Between Top-Down And Bottom-Up Leadership

Posted by on February 22, 2016

Wow, this is the nail on the head for the tension between directive and collaborative leadership. It proves the case for situational leadership where the leader is constantly adjusting their leadership style based on the competency and commitment of their team. This is clearly not an either/or approach but a both/and:

“In management circles, leadership tends to get reduced to two opposing models: You’re either a traditional top-down leader who believes in the organizing power of clear chains of command, or you’re a collaborative, bottom-up leader who puts more faith in flat organizations, holocracies, and approaches that put leaders in more of a facilitator role. Advocates of either approach will tell you why theirs works best, and why the alternative is a disaster.”

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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.

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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.

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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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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?”

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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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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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Growth Barriers For Churches

Posted by on January 26, 2016

There are many things that can keep a church from growing and reaching its potential. The most obvious is for whatever reason God is not able to bless the work and all you are left with is human effort and nothing supernatural can happen.

The list of other real issues includes lack of resources in the areas of staffing, programming and facilities that will prevent you from reaching the next level. Oh by the way, every significant increase of 500 people creates an entirely new list of different challenges that must be addressed in all of these areas.

Sometimes the problem is that a church gets out of balance in any one of these areas to the detriment of all the others. The most obvious is over building your site and incurring too much debt that strangles everything else you are trying to accomplish.

The single most significant issue beyond the blessings of God is the constantly changing role of the pastor and the people. In most small churches the pastor does the ministry and the people run the church. For any church to reach its potential the pastor must do the leading and the people must be equipped to do the ministry.

In my experience far too many times when this ongoing transition breaks down the primary blame is placed on the people and their unwillingness to follow. The hard cold truth is the reason they are not following is there is not a leader in place that has the character and integrity to say clearly come follow me as I follow Christ.

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Leaders Effectiveness In Strategy Or Execution

Posted by on January 22, 2016

There are clearly two extremes in the leadership world today. Some leaders are incredibly creative and can translate that into a workable strategy. Others are wildly successful in getting the ball over the goal line and meeting expectations. This HBR post reveals some harsh reality about leaders that needs to be understood:

“In a 2013 survey of nearly 700 executives across a variety of industries, our firm asked respondents to rate the effectiveness of the top leaders of their companies. How many excelled at strategy? How many excelled at execution? The results are shown in the chart below.”

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5 Major Goal Setting Myths

Posted by on January 15, 2016

This post by Michael Hyatt reminded me of several mistakes I have made over the years in setting goals. The process we use many times is more of a hindrance to success than the challenge of the goals themselves. See if you find yourself in this post and lets get better at getting the important things accomplished:

When it comes to making progress towards what matters most in life, there are at least five major myths we need to avoid like quicksand.

Over the years, I’ve seen these rob countless people of happiness, success, and significance—me included. Have you fallen for any of these?

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