Category Archive: Leadership Development

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.

Categories: Career Development Servant Leader Staff Development | Comments Off on Community

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.

 

Categories: Core Values Marriage Pastoral Leadership Personal Leadership Servant Leader Work Life Integration | Comments Off on Family Matters

Resignation

Posted by on January 12, 2009

If you are an A player as defined by Jim Collins in Good to Great you are a character driven leader.  This means that you are willing to set aside any personal agenda for the good of the team and the organization.

It also means that as a leader you are by nature a change agent.  You want to deal with the brutal facts facing your team and find new solutions to old problems.

In some situations the people that you report to are not as open to change.  This is where your character must lead you to deal with this situation in the right way.

The right way is to approach you boss directly and openly share what you are recommending to do and why.  The absolute wrong way is to talk about your superiors to someone else in any negative way that would be disloyal.

If after a long period of respectful dialogue you are not sensing any openness to change within the culture of the organization then your decision is clear.  What you must not do is to try to change your boss, that is not in your job description.

A players realize one fundamental truth about organizational culture.  You will over time help be a part of a team effort that will change it for good or if you stay too long in the wrong culture it will change you.  That is an unacceptable price to pay and that is why it’s time to leave.

 

 

Categories: Pastoral Leadership Personal Leadership Staff Development | Comments Off on Resignation

People Skills

Posted by on December 20, 2008

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 latest 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.

 

 

Categories: Career Development Personal Leadership Staff Development | Comments Off on People Skills

Hire Winners

Posted by on December 18, 2008

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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Inbox

Posted by on December 8, 2008

Everyone knows that getting the important things done each and every day and walking away from everything else is the secret to success.  We all have to process tremendous amounts of information all the time and there are so many things we simply cannot fit into an already loaded schedule.

Sometimes we take relatively simple concepts and make them too complicated.  This is my conviction about the subject of personal productivity.  When something hits my “inbox”, regardless of its source: email, cell phone, mail, interruptions, there are only four possible things I am going to do.

DELETE—If it is not important, I immediately kill it as fast as possible.

DELAY—If if is not urgent that it be done now, I file it for later.

DELEGATE—If it is something someone else can do as well or better than I can, they own it.

DO—If the first three options do not work, then it has to fit into my daily plan.

I will admit this is a very simple process with the exception of one phrase:  IS IT IMPORTANT?

Technology  and productivity may increase your efficiency but they cannot tell you if what you are doing should be done at all.  Only your character and core values personally and professionally can do that.

 

 

 

Categories: Leadership Development Productivity | Comments Off on Inbox

Termination

Posted by on December 5, 2008

This is not a pleasant subject either for the person who needs to go or for the person who made the wrong decision to bring them on the team.  It requires courage and it must be done well or the moral of the entire organization can suffer.

I always feel to some degree as a leader that I have failed when we finally get to this point.  I want to make absolutely sure that I have given this person the right amount of leadership, specific feedback and the necessary resources and training to be successful.

After this due process, how do you know the timing is right?  The two questions that are listed in Good to Great offer some incredible perspective.

 The first is would you hire this person again?  If the clear answer is no, then you know it is time to act.  The second is if they were to go on their own would you be disappointed or relieved?  If the answer is relieved, then you know what you need to do.

Leaders must have the character to act and make the hard calls.  There is clearly one thing worse than  having to deal with an appropriate termination.  The later realization that your entire team had reached this  same conclusion six months ago and were beginning  to wonder why you could not see it.

 

 

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The Power of Vision

Posted by on December 3, 2008

My home town for all practical purposes is Tuscumbia, Alabama.  Our number one and only claim to fame is we are the birthplace of Helen Keller.  On CNN web site recently there was a story about researchers who had uncovered this rare photograph of a young Helen Keller with her teacher Anne Sullivan, nearly 120 years after it was taken on Cape Cod.

Helen was born blind and had to overcome many difficult obstacles in her life.  In spite of all the hardship she lived and very meaningful and rewarding life that impacted a lot of other people in a very positive way.

Helen was once asked, can you think of anything worse than being born blind?  Her immediate answer was, to have sight and yet lack vision for your life.  The overwhelming majority of people you know have physical sight but do they clearly see all the things that are really important in life.

What vision do you have for your life?  Please tell me it is more than going to work, coming home and watching T.V. and then going to bed.  There are so many important things to be done and hurting people that need to be touched.

Can you see them?

 

 

Categories: Career Development Core Values Leading Change Pastoral Leadership | Comments Off on The Power of Vision

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.

Categories: Marriage Pastoral Leadership Personal Leadership Servant Leader Work Life Integration | Comments Off on Marginless Living