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09.2013Essentials of leadership

development, managerial effectiveness,

and organizational productivity

Vol.30 No. 9

The Standard of Global Leadership Development

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0807 New War on Talent

By Andre MartinTo win, keep your top talent longer.

Leader LikabilityBy Jack ZengerI’m the boss! Why should I care?

Cumulative LeaderBy Irving H. BuchenThe whole is greater than the parts.

Leadership PowerBy James O’TooleWhat will ensure good governance?

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Features

EGO Vs. EQAs leaders climb the corporate ladder, the risk of falling into ego traps increases, which can hurt business and threaten hard-won successes. PG23

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Vol.30 No. 9


Presented By

$9.99 a month

4 Beyond Money: A Taste of Honey Ken Shelton

5 Human Capital Leader Doug Williamson

7 New War on Talent Andre Martin

8 Cumulative Leader Irving H. Buchen

9 Leader Likability Jack Zenger

9 Leadership Power James O’Toole

10 Talent Management Curtis L. Odom

11 Culture of Influence B. Kim Barnes

13 Being Right Judith E. Glaser

14 Flexible Leaders Ann Herrmann-Nehdi

15 Buoyant Leaders Kevin Allen

16 Your Culture Tony Kubica and Sara LaForest

17 Soft Side Leaders Roy E. Alston

18 Lead Positive Change David Maxfield

19 SuperSTAR Model Rick Conlow

21 Looking Within Richard Metheny

22 People and Results Tasha Eurich

23 Complexity & Change Linda Moerschell

24 EGO Vs. EQ Jen Shirkani

25 Employee Engagement Phillip Roark

26 How Leaders Are Made Michael R. Notaro

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0807 New War on Talent

By Andre MartinTo win, keep your top talent longer.

Leader LikabilityBy Jack ZengerI’m the boss! Why should I care?

Cumulative LeaderBy Irving H. BuchenThe whole is greater than the parts.

Leadership PowerBy James O’TooleWhat will ensure good governance?

0909

I note that Honey-Nut Cheerios (General Mills) is American’s #1 breakfast cereal, and General Mills’ Kevin Wilde is our #1 leadership development expert. I visited with Kevin recently when he spoke at the Zenger-Folkman Extraordinary Leader Summit in Park City, Utah on the having best of both worlds: Leaders who are both Bold and Wise—Nuts and Honey (having your Cheerios and eating them, too).

Kevin spoke of hiking the Grand Canyon in one day as a metaphor for accelerating the traverse of the Great Gulf (like the national debt) between the rims of before and after, here and there, between High-Pos

and Real Pros. Is Kevin nuts, off his (Betty) Crocker? Has Wilde gone wild? I don’t think so. You don’t become extraordinary by rote or vote—rather by Cote and by Core. Honeywell’s Cote, CEO of the Year Chief Executive magazine announced that David Cote, Chairman and CEO of Honeywell, was named “2013 CEO of the Year,” nominated and selected by a group of his peers. During Cote’s tenure, Honeywell stock has risen +223.5%, compared to rises of +52.8% and +57.1% for the S&P 500 and DJIA. Also under Cote’s leadership, Honeywell has shed non-core assets and focused its efforts around global macro-trends with strong future prospects, including safety, security, energy efficiency, energy generation, globalization, and customer productivity. Cote was appointed by President Obama to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform and is a leading voice on the Campaign to Fix the Debt.

“David exemplifies everything as it relates to being a leading CEO, from performance internally to statesmanship externally,” said Jeff Sonnenfeld, CEO of The Yale Chief Ex-ecutive Leadership Institute at The Yale School of Management. “David has mastered the talent of being able to strategize and execute to make things happen,” said David Novak, CEO of Yum Brands and 2012

CEO of the Year. Despite overseeing more than 80 acquisitions, “he’s incorporated them into one seamless culture that’s working and reinforces performance.” “Wealth creation, long term results—a remark-able turnaround,” added Christine Jacobs, chair-man and CEO of Theragenics. “Cote exemplifies qualities needed to sustain a valued US brand, and shepherd it through an economic downturn.” “At a time when American manufacturing is making a comeback, David personifies func-tional and leadership excellence,” commented Fred Hassan, Chairman of Bausch & Lomb and Partner at Warberg Pincus. “He’s also a very good person.” Visit www.honeywellnow.com or email [email protected] Leadership Development Trends Today’s training and development professionals must navigate a milieu of technological advances, globalization, demographic shifts, and political instability as they identify top talent to cultivate and fill their leadership pipeline, according to a study conducted by Leadership Research Institute and the AMA with support from ASTD. Participants rated 14 drivers of change that leaders must address. Making the top five are: focus on the customer (63 percent), product/service quality (42 percent), need for innova-tion (38 percent), talent retention (38 percent), operating efficiency (36 percent). Managers must navigate a patchwork of people and culture to lead effectively in a global context. Although traditional skills of leaders, such as communication and strategy develop-ment, were deemed keys for success, interna-tional experience (16 percent) and dealing with ambiguity (9 percent) also were identified as necessary attributes. The study not only examined managers and leaders, but also the training and development professionals tasked with developing them to pin-point how best to create cultures that support the identification and development of global leaders. First and foremost, respondents agreed that there needs to be genuine organization support—only then will conditions be ripe for building a strong bench of leaders. Essential elements for creating this environment include valuing diversity and setting clear goals for leadership development. In addition, organizations need to invest in technol-ogy to enhance the connectivity of virtual teams and identify future capabilities and support that with a multifaceted approach to development that employs action learning and coaching. LE

Use it to make people well. By Ken Shelton

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Vol.30 No. 9$9.99 a month

Beyond Money: A Taste of Honey

Ken SheltonEditor since 1984

editors note

We’ve seen dramatic changes in the role of Chief Human Resources Officers (CHROs) as strategic stewards of human capital. Unfortunately, more employers are failing to keep pace with the new competitive standards in attracting, incenting, leveraging and retaining human capital. All leaders and managers must understand the changing role of the CHRO and shift its focus from administration to strategy. It’s time to set and meet higher standards in people practices and to be held accountable by sharehold-ers. It begins with raising the enlighten-ment of leaders, redefining the mandate of CHROs, and implementing public disclosure requirements on human capital practices. Having quality talent represents a huge competitive advantage. Free and ready access to human capital has become a barrier to growth and competitiveness. Many leaders haven’t recognized the basic changes in the people market. They operate with a naive belief an adequate pool of trained employ-ees will forever be available, not recog-nizing the supply and demand equation has changed. We have a gross imbalance between what we need, in terms of qualified, talented em-ployees, and the conditions we create that enable them to thrive. Employers have lost their relative power—silently, it has passed to employees who will exercise different options going forward. This isn’t appreciated because we believe higher unemployment means excess supply. However, the dilemma is in the mix of talent, not the sheer size of the available pool. If you’re not up on your view of human capital, and the role of your CHRO, you’re in trouble! Many executives have the wrong mindset regarding HCM. As individuals who have achieved disproportionate success in climb-ing the ladder, they believe that success could be achieved by anyone, if only they had the same drive and determination. While you could traditionally buy or lease all the talent you might need on the open market, the market has changed, and securing future access will be more problematic and com-petitive. The expectations and attitudes of employees are changing—they want to be treated as other investors. They need to see an adequate return on their social in-

vestment, and they’ll look carefully at the climate and conditions offered by employ-ers who try to attract them. Human capital will flow to where the best conditions exist. Today, financial and human capital flow to places of greatest opportunity. Leaders of the future don’t see working for a large, multi-layered corporate bureau-cracy as the paved road to success, prosper-ity and retirement. In fact, among them-selves they mock institutional life. When they talk to those who are 10 years or more older, and who work in management jobs, all they hear about are dumb bosses, mind-numbing routines and compliance rules. The youth of today (employees of tomor-row) are motivated by different factors. The ambition of a nice house in the suburbs has been replaced by a thirst for adventure, spon-taneity, and freedom from routine, rules and restrictions.New Organizational Model The implications of these silent forces are game changing for employers who will find themselves in talent competition guided by new conditions and circumstances. In the future, there will be three primary classes of employees: 1) Creatives—a premium will be placed on those who earn their keep through imagination, innova-tion, and design thinking; 2) Craftsmen—younger people will follow their passion

and perfect their employment proposition as highly skilled, self-employed individuals, providing high-value services to an eager wealthy class; 3) Contractors—those who won’t seek full time employment, but will rove, balancing the need for income with the need for freedom, travel and joie de vive. The net result of this will be the rise of another class of employee—those who do the basic jobs but who are not deemed worthy by a rising and entitled middle class generation and who fall to a largely immigrant population. A talent revolution is brewing. The only reason we haven’t been hit harder is because of the economic downturn. However, tradi-tional enterprises will be hit just as things are getting back to normal. The problem is—the new normal is different! CHROs will have to deal with all of this—and more. The implications are huge. Payroll and benefits, hiring and firing, engagement and empowerment will make up the base-line transactional skill set in which there is no competitive advantage. CHROs will be required to: Strategize when it comes to future talent, skill and competency needs; Plan how to perfect the optimal mix of emerg-ing talent, and Monitor changing condi-tions dynamically. These competencies don’t come naturally to current HROs.Tomor-row, CHROs will work alongside CFOs and CIOs, as top leaders ask the piercing ques-

By Doug Williamson

Defining the ones for tomorrow

Human Capital Leader Interactive

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5leadership excellence essentials presented by HR.com | 08.2013

tions to address HCM issues. Those who fail to engage in workforce strategy, not workforce planning, will die a slow death of competitive disadvantage. Maestro of organizational effectiveness. Many organizations are led by finance, opera-tions, marketing or sales. In the future, the room for strategic advantage in those fields will be reduced to table stakes. As a result, the 50-year war on process improvement and efficiency will end, as there’ll be no more gains to be had by tweaking (or re-engineering) the corporate engine. The baton will pass to the human chal-lenges! Leaders will realize the performance improvements that come from the effective harnessing of human capital and potential far outweigh those gained through the poli-cies, practices and programs aimed at oiling operational efficiency. In our hearts, we’ve known for some time that people make a huge difference and great people make all the difference. The problem is—people are prob-lematic, unpredictable—not open to stan-dardization and programmatic solutions aimed at eliminating random events that disturb the equilibrium and distress those who live in the land of safe and secure. We can’t avoid the tough challenge of people and deal instead with process—and the CHRO will lead the charge. Conscience of employee brand. Every-where, brand guides our decisions. The search for brand harmony is core to how we sell our products and services, and whether we buy or deny. Yet, the impact on brand of the way we manage people has taken a back seat. That day is ending! In the future, the CHRO will have as much voice when it comes to brand as the CMO. The way we go about our busi-ness, behind the walls of public scrutiny, and the behaviours, values and beliefs of the work-force impact the brand in many ways. Someone other than the CEO needs to be responsible when it comes to the conscience of the internal brand proposition. As Em-ployee Brand Impact becomes the critical metric, the VP/HR will be reborn as the CHRO and become the executive owner of the governance and brand agenda. Delivering better solutions. To ensure performance and financial effectiveness, current HROs are expected keep budgets down, outsource when it is cheaper, and become the kings and queens of the RFP to validate the worthiness of the services they need. The trouble is, they commit to a com-modity-based solution in a world where value is the economic multiplier. If CHROs can’t determine value and fair market price on their

own, they shouldn’t hide behind the shield of tendering for the services attached to HCM. This predisposition reveals a lack of judgment, andshifts accountability to the process, rather than the best decision. In the future, the CHRO will be asked by the CEO and Board to take a more coura-geous stand and to make real business de-cisions, based on real business disciplines, rather than let vendors do the bidding. In a world of value, only smart partnerships will provide what is needed to be competi-tive. The CHRO must be a business person first—taking a business stand on what is in the best interest of the organization, balancing both equally, and making the bold, strategic, differentiating decisions demanded of leaders. Steps to Take, Actions to Consider The cosmic collision occurring at the nexus of the global marketplace, the advent of a changing workplace, and the changing values and priorities of an emerging gen-eration, require the CHRO to move from behind the desk to a front seat at the strategy table. This urgent priority is directly con-nected to competitiveness and performance. Here are six actions you can take now: •Crown the king or queen. Reformulate CHRO responsibilities through a bolder, more progressive lens. Imagine the CHRO as the talent scout, soothsayer, psychologist, and performance enhancer. •Reposition the position. We value people and positions through our experiences, which are often distorted. Once the mandate of the HR function has been re-crafted, the CEO will need to position the new role and socialize it. •Model the future. Have a dynamic model of how the workforce will change, and the impact on skill sets, competencies, and busi-ness drivers. If advantage comes through

innovation and service excellence, both will be driven by people—better different people. •Emphasize social studies and demo-graphics. Leaders must study people and the social environment at work. The black hole of understanding will need to be filled by a CHRO who acts more like a forecasting economist than a kindergarten teacher. •Work on the brand. Brand is vital today. The hypercompetitive organization of the future will be in a dog fight for good talent in an environment where the em-ployment offer is much different than it is today. The human capital brand will have a big impact on the brand of the enterprise, and those who can’t make the link won’t attract A players. •Fix the intake valve. Culture can be a quagmire for those leaders who don’t see that culture arises from the way people choose to act and interact with each other. In the talent market of the future, attract-ing the right talent will be part of risk management and risk mitigation. Hence, we all need to improve how we recruit and orient people. LE

Human Capital Leader

Doug Williamson is CEO of The Beacon Group and author of the book Straight Talk on Leadership. He specializes in orga-nizational and leadership transformation, working with senior executives, their teams and their organizations around the world.You can reach Doug at [email protected] or visit his web sitewww.dougwilliamson.ca

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Crisis. War. Shortage. Void. These are the words dominating conversations re-garding today’s talent. As we look toward the future, we have less idea about what to expect. The last five years have proven that our strategy development processes, innova-tion initiatives, and traditional leadership programs are short-term in their impact. The only way to prepare for the unknown of to-morrow is to fill our conference rooms and cubicles with the best and brightest talent of today. Talent is the key to remaining relevant and agile over time; it’s the only true constant. For the last decade, the challenge was finding talent. Everyone agreed that there was a war, and recruitment went digital, offices became campuses, and benefits packages ballooned to include everything from telecommuting to gym memberships and corporate I Phones. Everything was about getting the best and brightest to walk through the door. In our haste to solve the talent challenge, we focused on the wrong question. It was never simply, “How do we attract the best and brightest?” As long as there are business schools and ambition, there will be talent. The true question is, How do we help unleash our talent to realize future value? Though many leaders focus on talent, few master the com-plexity of the need. Some are great at induct-ing talent into the culture while others are magical in their ability to develop skills over time. However, the new battleground is in the whitespace between initiatives— where talent, development, strategy and future chal-lenges meet, and where the outcome of our efforts serves the organization more than the individual leaders. So, how must we respond to survive the new war on talent? Make the Top 200 a clear priority. The top 5 percent is central in determining how much future value is realized. These indi-viduals are the creators of culture and the designers of future strategy. They’ll decide if your values and business philosophies survive. If they are not an organized and engaged, long-term success is impossible. We must align talent management and development to ensure that growth of the organization and individual leaders (our top-caliber talent). Developmental initiatives must be more than aligned—they must be fully integrated and

created with the present and future enabling strategies in mind. When this group is to-gether, the conversations should target the challenges. By altering our focus, we can ensure a consistent return on future value. Adjust to the changing profile. The profile of high-caliber talent is changing. The leaders of tomorrow are asking different questions, assessing fit on unique markers, and making unexpected demands. The modern career is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. Leaders are looking for a career that connects to their dreams. They want to experience ad-vancement in the space where their passions and skills meet organizational needs. Family, geography, quality of life, and happiness are no longer unspeakables. Top talent is less willing to give up alignment with their life

for achievement in their jobs. They demand their cake and want to be home with their family to eat it. To meet these demands, we should build clear legacy plans and assess the skills strengths and gaps in a compelling way. Such legacy planning sends the message that we are investing in our leaders—not just using them as a means to an end. Mine the gap between recruitment and retirement. The new war on talent will be fought in the gap between recruitment and retirement. Organizations that can keep their

top talent longest will win. We must look at our succession planning process as more than just a tool to fill mission-critical roles. It must be used to drive leader development and boost engagement and commitment by providing our leaders with the right challenge at the right time for the right reasons. We must look toward a time where our ultimate goal is creating talent portfolios that show-case a leader’s potential legacy, career path, greatest achievements, challenge expertise, and developmental strengths and gaps. By doing this with all of our top talent, we’ll have a clear idea of our collective strengths, individual needs, and resident expertise around key challenges. We need leaders who are committed to pushing through the hard times, agile enough to shift gears with changing industry dynamics, and knowledge-able enough about the culture and values to keep the essence of an organization alive through constant upheaval. Organizations that meet this goal will have the best chance of remaining relevant. The war on talent is just beginning. LE

By Andre Martin

To win, keep your top talent longer.New War on Talent

“Top talent is less willing to give up alignment with their life for achievement in their jobs.”

Andre Martin is Chief Learning Officer at Mars Inc. [email protected]

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Readers are not all of a piece; nor have they been put together piece instantly and certainly not permanently. Leaders are fluxy creatures—always unfinished, rou-tinely unsatisfied. Why? Because leader-ship is more becoming than being; more a place ahead than one here and now; more the best is yet to be than what already is. Not surprisingly then when we look at how leaders are shaped and come to be, we often find that the past not only has been kept alive in the present but also unexpectedly influences or drives present decisions. In other words, the way the past plays or plagues us is the focus here; but not as some glib or rapid cause-and effect therapy but tracing the tyran-nical time factors of our evolution as leaders. 1. Childhood. For those who endorse the claim that leaders are born to the calling, childhood is the inevitable source. The ar-chetype is the little Dutch boy who on his way to school discovered a small hole in the dike. Too knowledgeable about how little holes quickly become bigger, and too un-certain that any adult would come along to help, he did what he could do—he stuck his finger into the hole and stemmed the flow. In the literature of childhood, our hero has come to be known as one of a series of little leaders. That role is not limited to Holland or fixed in any one century but has over time been transformed to include a number of other born leaders and the varied occasions of their starting and standing out. Nor does it remain in the pas but reaches out to remind adult leaders that they are always rescuers—that one of their recur-rent tasks it to plug holes in leaking dikes. Dikes and holes are part of the past of all leaders and when hearkened to, it marks the point when the little leader grows up and deals with bigger but no les threatening dikes. Size and degree may change but not the need for intervention. 2. Adolescence. At this stage, our embry-onic leader is absorbed by his dreams and imagination. His aspirations are grandiose and noble: making a fortune and wiping out hunger in Somalia. But after a while the fan-tasies of greatness take on a specific, concrete and recurrent form replete with a desper-ate cast of characters waiting to be saved. Played again and again with great pleasure, sometimes details are changed to up the ante

and raise the level of excitement and rescue. These imaginative adventures are never forgotten or discarded. They remain as deep-seated playbooks or scripts waiting for the right moment to surface intact and eager to save the day. And minus the trumpets and heroics, they often do; as note in many candid executive memoirs. Recently reinforcement of such reincar-nations unexpectedly came from a pilot who made a split second decision to abort a landing on top of another plane on the same runway. Praised by the passengers who marveled at his composure and decisiveness, the pilot simply replied “I have been practic-ing that in my head for the last 20 years.” 3. Academics. Except for some wacky adventures and life long chums (the two often are tied together), we tend to give short shrift to academic studies as a formative factor. And yet many real and tough executive situ-ations with smart outcomes read like a text book case. Indeed, except for success that situation could easily become a case study. The case study literature is a history of busi-ness blunders or near blunders, but rescued just in time.—but where? At the university—How? By savvy and knowledgeable analy-sis—By whom? Future leaders enrolled in executive development programs. Protests or minimizing notwithstanding, academics influence and play a pivotal role in alerting current leaders that they are approaching the rocks of past case blunderers. 4. First Job. What are the lessons that every leader learns in the first year of work? Many are negative: co-workers as back stabbers, cut throat plotters and attention grabbers. In addi-tion, there is also the perennial sucking up and the cynical attachment to whose ox is gored. And what about the lessons learned about oneself? There is a big difference between being smart and smart-alechy—being too pushy for your own good—being a know-it-all and an alarmist citing case studies of impending doom; taking liberties with chain of command and skipping steps even though you have been warned that no step will ever forgive you for skipping it. All this and more becomes for emerg-ing executives the central challenge of their future leadership: the ability to create a company-wide wide culture that avoids or sublimates such negativity and creates instead an environment of mutuality and

reciprocity—motivated by the age-old, familiar and flawed determination not to raise your kids the way you were raised. 5. First managerial promotion. What is luck but being in the right place at the right time—and then stepping up. “The team leader’s plane was grounded in a snow storm, and he would not be back in time to run the morning meeting. I went to see the VP of the division: “I would like to volunteer. I’m scheduled to give an update report and that will take up most of the meeting time.” He looked me over, adjusted his glasses to read my name tag, turned away, and dis-missed me with a barely audible “Okay.” The first time at the helm—who can forget its heady electricity—being a little tipsy even giddy—thanking the fates for arranging the situation; and congratulating yourself for stepping up to the plate and for pulling it off. And how many times later when a CEO is beleaguered and besieged and ready to cash it all in, is he rescued and steadied by the recollection of being in charge for the first time and running things well with purpose and style and recognizing that this is the best job in the world. Of course, the particulars may vary, and the time frames may not be so neat, but the fact remains: leaders are composites—cumu-lative repositories of embryonic versions of what they will become. But their predictive power is contingent on being comfortable and open to the way and why you have came to be; and how it is still all alive and con-tinuous with who you are; and standing by and always available for bolstering and oc-casionally rescuing. That way the whole can be both greater than the sum of all its parts as well as the cumulative composite of all the roles you play—and that happily still play you. LE

By Irving H. Buchen

Cumulative Leaders The whole is greater than the parts.

Irving H. Buchen is at Capella University, St Clements University Group. Email [email protected].

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Many people assume that it’s possible for a person to be an effective leader without being likable. That is technically true, but you may not like the odds. In a study of 51,836 leaders, we found just 27 (one out of 2,000) who were rated at the bottom quartile in terms of likability but in the top quartile in terms of leadership effectiveness. Our likability index, based on data from 360 assessments, measures a broad set of behaviors that go far beyond smiling and having a pleasant personality. To see the com-plete list, and take a self-assess-ment of your personal likability, email me. Likability sounds like an immutable trait — something people either have or don’t. But our experience in working with thousands of leaders suggests otherwise. Our 360 data from these 50,000+ leaders highlighted ex-ecutives can take to substantially increase their likability.Seven Key Steps • Increase positive emotional connec-tions with others. Just like the flu or a cold, emotions are contagious. If a leader is angry or frustrated, those feelings will spread to others. Conversely, if a leader is positive and optimistic, those emotions also spread. Be aware of your emotional state and work to spread the positive emotions. • Display rock solid integrity. Do others trust you to keep your commitments and promises? Are others confident that you will be fair and do the right thing? We like leaders we trust; we dislike those we distrust. • Cooperate with others. Some leaders believe that they are in competition with others in the organization but the purpose of an organization is to unite employees to work together in a common purpose. • Be a coach, mentor, and teacher. Think about someone who has helped you develop or learn a new skill. How do you feel about that person? Most people have fond and positive memories of coaches and mentors. Helping others develop is a gift that is never forgotten. • Be an inspiration. Most leaders know very well how to drive for results. They demand excellence. They insist that em-ployees achieve stretch targets. In other words they push. And the best bosses do this as

well. But that’s not all they do. The most successful leaders are also effective at pulling. They roll up their sleeves when necessary and pitch in with the team. They communicate powerfully. Inspiring leaders, as you might expect, are more likeable. • Be visionary and future focused. When employees do not clearly understand where they’re headed and how they’ll get there, they become frustrated and dissatisfied, feeling like passengers with no control and few options except complaining. Sharing a vision of the future and helping team members understand how to get there inspires confi-

dence: It’s hard to like a leader who’s lost in the wilderness. • Ask for feedback and make an effort to change. Our 360 data show clearly that most people rate themselves more

likable than their bosses, peers, and direct reports do. How can you bridge that gap? We find a strong correlation between a leaders’ likability and the extent to which they ask for and respond to feedback from others. Feedback from others helps leaders to understand the impact (posi-tive or negative) that they have on others. Leaders who ask for feedback are better liked ad more effective than those who don’t. You can be more likeable. Identify two of the actions from the list above that would most help you in your current situation. A great way to start would be to ask for feed-back and ask team members to identify which activities would have the most value to them. Make a plan, identifying some specific steps you will take to improve, and then stick to it. Ask others for feedback on your progress. And, oh by the way, if you are a man, this is even more important for you to consider, because in all probability, you are less liked than your female counterparts, and that’s hindering your effectiveness as a leader. LE

Jack Zenger is CEO of Zenger-Folkman and coauthor of The Inspiring Leader and The Extraordinary Leader. Email [email protected] with permission from articlefirst published in Harvard Business Review.

By Jack Zenger

Leader LikabilityI’m the boss! Why should I care?

Why worry about reining in executive power? Plato proposed that an all-powerful leader would be more effective than a weak one—if that leader was the wisest, most self-less, and incorruptible individual in a city or state. Given human nature, that is one big if. As Abraham Lincoln said, “If you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Since the wisdom of any group seldom resides in one virtuous person, Aristotle con-cluded his teacher’s utopia was most likely to end up a dysfunctional state, if not an autoc-racy. Indeed, the abuse of power is a recurring theme in the writings of great thinkers. Many monarchs depicted in Shakespeare’s plays became tyrants as, in fact, did most caesars, kings, tsars and emperors—even those who had been virtuous before gaining power. Lord Acton warned that “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely,” which is why Locke and Rousseau argued that a just society requires limits on the power of rulers, a concern America’s founders addressed when they institutionalized Constitutional checks and balances. But it isn’t just politicians who abuse power. John Stuart Mill showed that most slave holders—even those who were good Christians—eventually brutalized their

Leadership PowerWhat will ensure good governance?

By James O’Toole

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human chattel, and Mill’s wife Harriet Taylor argued that, during the Victorian era when women had few rights, many men abused their wives simply because they had the power to do so. And contemporary scandals involving pedophilia among the clergy are, at base, also examples of the abuse of power. In sum, experience shows that unchecked power greatly increases the risk that power will be exercised inappropriately, if not excessively, and that every group is better off when each of its members is accountable to someone else—even leaders who are understandably impatient with limits on their ability to act decisively. The crux of the problem is human nature: no matter how thoughtful or moral we are, few of us can restrain ourselves when it comes to making use of what power we have at hand. In fact, it is unnatural for us abstain from using whatever resources are available

to meet challenges we face. When a CEO is confronted with s problem that threatens the performance of his company, the reflex response is to do whatever it takes to solve it, even if that action may have untoward consequences. Since few subordinates have the courage to question the boss when the man in charge has made up his mind to act, good governance requires effective boards. Having board chairs who see their roles as mentors, sounding boards, voices of experi-ence, independent counselors, and—as last resort—ultimate guardians of purpose and protector of the interests of all stakeholders, starting (but not ending) with the share-holders who elect the board. Ideally, board chairs should not be involved in managing or try o overrule (or publicly second-guess) executive decisions; instead, they should play a role similar to an emergency brake

on a car. Seldom does anyone ever use that brake—and it may not even work in an emergency—yet you wouldn’t want to be without one. Risk reduction is the main role of a board chair. The ancient Anglo-Saxons understood their king needed a national council of wise men, called the witenagemot, a body of expe-rienced elder sages who advised their leader but didn’t rule themselves. The proper func-tion of all useful boards ever since has been to continually ask questions of management: Have you thought of this or that? Why are you doing this and not that? Have you con-sidered the long term and indirect financial and ethical consequences of your proposed action? Answering such questions in no way limits the proper execution of executive power. Instead, the exercise helps executives become more effective leaders. When CEO’s need to make the effort to win the support of their boards they typically end up having more authority and credibility than executives who exercise unchecked power because, in that deliberative process, they will have added moral authority to that derived from their positional power. With a well-functioning board, this questioning process is far from adversarial—rather, it is a safety check before taking risky action. The potential value of that final check is absent when the chairman is also CEO. Requirements imposed by Sarbanes-Ox-ley have hindered the effectiveness of many boards. By requiring more members to have narrow accounting skills, boards today too often act in the role of auditors rather than the senior advisors with the wisdom and leadership experience needed to give CEOs the support they need. LE

James O’Toole is a senior fellow in business ethics at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and the author of 17 books, including The Executive’s Compass and Leading Change. Visit his blog at www.strategy-business.com.

To be effective in their roles, leaders need to master one core competency–connecting with people—by knowing their capabilities and addressing their concerns. Without connection to people, what is a leader? Leaders today face many challenges: expanding global competition, a surge in loss of intellectual resources with the wave of coming Boomer retirements, and a work-force with different generational values. To lead effectively you have to understand those you lead. And to do that best, I offer 5 keys to ef-fective leadership that connect to the 5Rs of talent management—as expressed by Cynthia Trudell of PepsiCo. She noted that although HR at PepsiCo was doing many things well—they set their sights on helping their businesses achieve the Five Rs: having the right people in the right place at the right time doing the right work the right way. In my 5 Rs, I sub-stitute the last R in PepsiCo’s Right Way with Right Cost.

Right People: Coach and mentor to cultural fit, not to job function. Develop-ing and sustaining a positive and productive culture requires that people fit. It’s not just about talent or experience alone—you must ensure that person align with the culture. Right Roles: Be agile, not fragile. You have to be flexible and willing to learn in order to be an effective leader. If you are intoler-ant—brittle with those you lead and can’t see your way to make the right decisions because you’re unwilling to learn and adapt—then your leadership will fracture. And you can’t build a growing organization on a cracked foundation.

Talent Management Leaders need to master the 5Rs.

By Curtis L. Odom

“The proper function of all use-ful boards ever since has been to continually ask questions of management: Have you thought of this or that? Why are you doing this and not that? Have you considered the long term and indirect financial and ethical consequences of your proposed action?

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Right Skills: Make professional develop-ment a contact sport. Education is good. Training is good. Real world experience is better. When developing yourself and/or your organization—look to the benefits that come from actual work in the field—getting your hands dirty—seeing what it’s like in the trenches. You’ll come away a stronger leader and will build a more effective and productive work force with that understanding. What you (and your people) can do is much more

important than any other aspect of business. Right Time: Conduct stay interviews often. Understand why people want to stay with your company rather than fixate on why some choose to go. This ties back to the impact the leader or organization make at the employee level. Odds are if it’s unfavor-able, at some point that person will leave and few of their answers will be of importance. Leaders and organizations are better served if they try to find out what makes people enjoy working for them or for the company. It’s a reinforcement of the positives that eliminates the need for retroactive fixes of someone’s perceived negatives regarding a leader or company and in the long run proves to be far more important. Right Cost: Accept change as a frequent visitor. There are always problems and issues to deal with, is that change is constant. In dealing with change you can make mistakes and these are often caused by internal poli-tics, generational differences and miscom-munication. Everything in business comes down to cost. And cost is directly linked to key performance indicators, which can be used to measure current and future success. That last item also holds the key to mini-mizing and mitigating missteps—leaders must communicate clearly when it comes to expectations and execution of policies within the organization. Be a leader who places more importance on the individual performance and less on their title. And, treat yourself the same way. Don’t get puffed up because of your title or position; instead, show everyone that you earned respect by who you are and what you do as opposed to what’s on your business card. Make these action items the center of your preparation and mastery as a leader. Seek to influence and inspire, not to drive and direct. If you do, you will connect with your people in a way to unlock your own door to being a more effective leader. LE

As leaders, we don’t know everything and can’t do everything by ourselves. We hire people with the knowledge and talent to accomplish great things – but sometimes we don’t see the desired results. Change is slow; resistance is high to anything new. People keep on doing what is within their comfort zone. Innovation is rare. There is a murmur of complaints; morale is low. Results are disappointing. You wonder whether you’re dealing with people who have no good ideas or who are focused on their lives outside of work – or looking for their next job, rather than contributing value to the organization. If you face this situation, your organiza-tion may not be seen as influence-friend-ly. Many good ideas walk out the door between the ears of employees, perhaps because people think that their ideas are not welcome or that they are not in a posi-tion to be heard. Or they may be fearful of the career or political consequences. Maybe they have tried to influence others on their team or across boundaries to no avail. And maybe they think that you and other leaders are not open to influence. So, how can you as a leader create and sustain a climate in which ideas flow freely; where people com-municate directly; where disagreement leads to better ideas rather than interper-sonal conflict; where common wisdom is challenged and innovation encouraged. Seven simple leadership practices en-courage influencing in all directions: 1. Be clear with your team about ends; invite them to develop means. Leaders who are clear with people about the goals and leave it to them to figure out how to do it are likely to gain the team’s engagement and ownership in the project. When working with knowl-edge workers, you won’t be the only one with the knowledge and experience to achieve the goal. Professionals don’t like to waste their time as a pair of hands doing work that the boss has ordered. Anyone who takes pride in his or her ability to figure things out and apply brain power to the task at hand will appreciate the respect and trust implied by your leaving the approach up to them. Of course, your team members should know that you’ll be available to discuss or even critique their thinking and that you’ll expect

Culture of Influence How you create and sustain one.

By B. Kim Barnes

“Be a leader who places more importance on the individual performance and less on their title. And, treat yourself the same way. Don’t get puffed up because of your title or position; instead, show everyone that you earned respect by who you are and what you do as opposed to what’s on your business card.”

Talent Management

Curtis L. Odom, Ed.D., is Principal and Managing Partner of Prescient Strategists, focusing on cultural integration and change management, and author of Generation X Approved: Top 20 Keys to Effective Leader-ship. Visit www.doctorcurtisodom.com

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to be informed about progress. The opposite of micromanaging is not absence—it’s of-fering trust and support but staying out of the way. 2. State plainly when you can and cannot be influenced about a decision. Many years ago, the idea of involving team members in decision-making became popular – consul-tants touted the value of participatory leader-ship, and many organizations ran their leaders through workshops reminding them that employee involvement led to commitment and results. Unfortunately, many leaders and managers misunderstood the principles and invited team members to contribute ideas only to shoot them down—with the inten-tion of getting them to see that the leader’s plan or decision was the best approach. Often the decisions had already been made by the leader or manager (no chance to influence it). This approach leads to cynicism, reluctance to share ideas, and, sadly, reinforcement of the idea that team members don’t have any-thing worthwhile to contribute. Leaders who state clearly where they can and cannot be influenced gain real trust and involvement. 3. Use receptive influence – questioning and listening – when you want involve-ment, commitment, and/or new ideas. Maybe the great idea you’re looking for exists in the mind of someone who doesn’t know you’re interested. You might assume that if your team members have an idea, they’ll say so. But there may be differences in level, in cultural attitudes toward hierarchy, or the ideas might relate to other areas where the team member has no connection. Creating opportunities for two-way influence is vital under conditions of change. When large-scale change or major technology or process shifts occur, fear-based resistance is common. People drag their feet, productivity drops. Part of resistance is the sense of helplessness that people feel about influencing the change in any way. When leaders communicate their interest in hearing from people by asking thoughtful questions and then listening to the responses and implementing some ideas dis-cussed, passive resistance can become active engagement. Suddenly people have something to gain by change that succeeds because of their active involvement. 4. Challenge your assumptions and invite and support others in challenging yours and one another’s. We say the eye cannot see itself and the fish doesn’t know it’s in water to remind ourselves that we live, without awareness, inside assumptions that we rarely question or move beyond. Assump-tions make our lives easier, but also blind us to possibilities that lie outside of these

structures. As long as there is a politically correct or seemingly obvious way of under-standing a problem or opportunity, we tend to operate under confirmation bias and focus on information and solutions that fit our definition of the problem. When we limit ourselves in this way, we inevitably miss in-teresting, creative, out-of-the-box ideas. As a leader, you’re in position to model the prac-tice of identifying and questioning assump-tions, especially if you begin with your own. 5. Invite and encourage disagreement and ask for a broad range of options before making important decisions. Rather than going with the first decent idea that comes up, ask the team to develop several alternative solutions or approaches. Withhold judgment until many ideas are on the table; then apply criteria to all of them and narrow to a few interesting options. Avoid positive as well as negative evaluation of ideas early in the process—your approval can unduly influence the direction of the conversation, even though you don’t intend to do so. Ask what would have

to be true in order to make each of the options the best choice. Consider what unintended consequences might arise from each. Adding even one more option to your range of choices increases the quality of decisions. Broaden-ing options also allows many people to say something about decisions and gives them a chance to influence one another and you. 6. Level the playing field in a conscious way when you want to encourage two-way influence. There are times when it pays to step out of your formal role as leader. In some organizations, this will require repetition and consistency. In flatter, more innovative organizations it may simply require a state-ment as to which hat you’re wearing at the moment. You might have explicit norms in meetings where everyone is supposed to be on the same level – for example, “Speak up if you sense any direct or indirect power plays.” 7. Let your team members know how best to influence you and encourage them

to do the same with one another. Influence is a two-way process. Within a team, effective influence behavior enhances collaboration and efficiency. Unlike manipulation, influence is done in the open, and all parties are aware that it’s going on. Everyone has preferences about how he or she prefers to be influenced. As a leader, you can begin a discussion about

team influence by saying what works best for you; what makes it more likely that others can gain your support. Perhaps you like to read and think about ideas and suggestions before you meet with a team member. Or you like a free-wheeling conversation with solid pro and con arguments. Or you prefer a more formal meeting with two or three summary slides. Maybe you want to hear about the vision of success before you will consider the means for getting there. Some leaders are best influenced by hearing good questions; then having a chance to consider and respond to them. Some just want to hear a proposal or suggestion and the data that supports it. Whatever your preference, it’s fair both to others and to yourself to share it. This makes it easier for influence conver-sations to take place and it can make them more productive. Leaders who make it easier for people to influence one another across levels and boundaries stimulate and enhance their or-ganization’s ability to innovate successfully. They take advantage of the knowledge and talent throughout the organization and create a culture of active engagement, energy, and commitment. LE

“Leaders who state clearly where they can and cannot be influenced gain real trust and involvement.”

B. Kim Barnes is CEO of Barnes and Conti. Email [email protected]

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Being RightWhy is it always the hardest part?

Imagine: You’re in a tense team meeting trying to defend your position on a big project and start to feel yourself losing ground. Your voice gets louder. You talk over one of your colleagues and correct his point of view. He pushes back, so you go into overdrive to convince everyone you’re right. It feels like an out of body experience – and in many ways it is. In terms of its neurochemistry, your brain has been hijacked. In situations of high stress, fear or distrust, the hormone and neurotransmitter cortisol floods the brain. Executive functions that help us with advanced thought processes like strategy, trust building, and compassion shut down. And the amygdala, our instinctive brain, takes over. The body makes a chemical choice about how best to protect itself from the shame and loss of power associated with being wrong; hence, it is unable to regulate its emo-tions or handle the gaps between expectations and reality. So we default to one of four respons-es: fight (keep arguing the point), flight (revert to – and hide behind – group con-sensus), freeze (disengage from the argu-ment by shutting up) or appease (make nice with your adversary by simply agreeing with him). All are harmful because they prevent the honest and productive sharing of information and opinion. As a consultant who has spent decades working with executives on their communication skills, I can tell you that the fight response is the most damaging to col-legial relationships. Sadly, it’s also the most common, partly due to another neurochemi-cal process. When you argue and win, your brain floods with different hormones—adrenalin—that makes you feel dominant, even invincible (the fight hormone), and dopamine, con-sidered a reward hormone, so you feel good about winning. Since it’s a feeling we wish to replicate, the next time we’re in a tense situation we fight again. We get addicted to being right. I’ve coached dozens of successful leaders who suffer from this addiction. They are extremely good at fighting for their point of view (which is often right), yet they are completely unaware of the dampening impact their behavior has on people around them. If one person is getting high off his or her

dominance, others are being drummed into submission, experiencing the fight, flight, freeze or appease response, which diminishes their collaborative impulses. Luckily, another hormone, oxytocin, can feel just as good as adrenalin. Activated by human connection, it opens up the networks in our brain, or prefrontal cortex, further in-creasing our ability to trust and open ourselves to sharing. Your goal as a leader should be to spur the production of oxytocin in yourself and others, while avoiding (at least in the context of communication) those spikes of cortisol and adrenalin. Here are three exercises to help your (and others’) addiction to being right. Exercise 1: Set rules of engagement. If you’re heading into a meeting that could get testy, start with rules of engagement. Have everyone suggest ways to make it a produc-tive, inclusive conversation and write the ideas down for everyone to see. For example, you might agree to give people extra time to explain their ideas and to listen without judgment. These practices will counteract the tendency to fall into harmful conversational patterns. At the end of the meeting, consider see how you did. Exercise 2: Listen with empathy. In one-on-one conversations, make a conscious effort to speak less and listen more. The more you learn about other peoples’ perspectives, the more likely you are to feel empathy for them.

And when you do that for others, they’ll want to do it for you, creating a virtuous circle. Exercise 3: Plan who speaks. In situa-tions when you know one person is likely to dominate a group, create an opportunity for everyone to speak. Ask all parties to identify who in the room has important information, perspectives, or ideas to share. List them and the areas they should speak about on a flip chart and use that as your agenda, opening the floor to different speakers, asking open-ended questions and taking notes. Connecting and bonding with others trumps conflict. I find that even the best fighters—the proverbial smartest guys in the room—can break their addiction to being right by getting hooked on oxytocin-inducing behavior instead. LE

Judith E. Glaser is CEO of Benchmark Communications, Chairman of the Creat-ing WE Institute, and author Conversation-al Intelligence, Creating We and The DNA of Leadership, www.conversationalintelligence.com [email protected]

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Flexible Leaders Why and how they stay ahead.

Some things never change; however, the business environment isn’t one of them. While a new research project, Far Out, is exploring ways to predict where you’ll be “285 days from now at 2 p.m.,” guaranteed predictability is a rarity with most individuals, teams, and organizations today. No wonder, then, that for the third year in a row, participants in the Global Lead-ership Development Survey (conducted by the American Management Association, i4cp and Training magazine) reported that Managing Change is the top compe-tency included in their global leadership development programs. Managing through unpredictability, un-certainty, and complexity are everyday reali-ties, with rapid internal and external changes requiring more leadership attention even as the need to plan for the future becomes more critical. How can leaders stay flexible and adaptable, able to allocate attention in the most productive way? Start with thinking. Agile, Whole Brain® Thinking is what helps managers deconstruct the complexities and put the right resources to work. In the Whole Brain® Business Book, Ned Herrmann referred to this manage-ment imperative as a need to become more situational. He wrote: “There is something to be said about consistency, but manag-ing in only one style can be limiting if the situation requires shifting to a style that is more effective.” He continues: “Consider an individual whose work requires effective management behavior in a budgetary situation with finance, a design review session with engineer-ing, deciding on appropriation requests from manufacturing, reaching a decision on the architectural plan for the new headquarters building, responding to the recommendations of the art selection committee for the main lobby, and conducting the annual employee utilization review with the human resources representatives from each of the major func-tions. These multiple events are scheduled to take place over a three-day period. Now consider for a moment the range of manage-ment styles that could be applied to maximize the success of each separate event. Now think about a single situation that could benefit from the ability to flex your style—coaching or mentoring. When you

understand and adapt to the styles of the person you are coaching or mentoring, you’ll be able to connect more quickly and work together in a way that ensures both you and the other person are really heard, understood, and focusing your time and energy where it matters most.

The advantage of style flexibility is clear whether the position is that of a plant manager, head of a multifunctional division, or the CEO. Being situational is similar to rising to the oc-casion as the situation demands, even though the experience base is not equally distributed, and even though the preference for managing your way through each unique event is not equally high. Being able to switch back and forth between styles eventually allows for the acquisition of the competencies to meet each different need.

If you are developing leaders, here are four steps to consider for integrating thinking agility into your development plans: Step 1: What goals and business outcome are you focused on (list all that apply)? Focus on purpose. Step 2: Why is this relevant for the strategic needs of the organization? Focus on possibilities. Step 3: Who is/are your customer(s)? Who will you need to engage, support and ask for help? Focus on people. Step 4: How, when and what resources do you need to develop a plan to execute and measure your outcomes? Focus on process. Thinking style flexibility has never been more essential for leaders at all levels, espe-cially as the work environment gets noisier, more distracting, and more demanding. Thinking agility provides improved ROI: Return on Intelligence. LE

Ann Herrmann-Nehdi is CEO of Her-rmann International. Email Jennifer Lyons [email protected]

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When I was promoted to my first manage-ment role at Marriott International, one of my best mentors said, “Well, kid, welcome to the club—you’re now dinner conversation.” This meant that everything I said and did would be the topic of discussion among my team. These conversations can go one of two ways. People can be groaning, “Do you know what he said to us today?” or saying with excite-ment, “Guess what we did today!” The differ-ence lies in reaching people on an authentic emotional level. In my 36 years as a leader—from my days at Marriott to my time as MasterCard “Price-less” pitchman, to advising the team that led Rudy Giuliani’s mayoral election—I’ve re-alized that the way to achieve something great is not just to manage, but to ignite passion in those you lead. Leadership is an act of human empathy and generosity of spirit. People don’t follow you because of in-timidation or fear but because of who you are, and because you connect with them to create a culture and common cause that they believe in. When people sense that you understand their hopes and desires and believe that to-gether they can get there, they’ll follow you anywhere, and make you float. For decades, companies were run using a time-tested leadership method of command-and-control hierarchy in a supply economy. Directives flowed downward and the only acceptable response was, Yes, sir. Advance-ments in technology and a new generation of workers, are bringing about a democratization of the consumer marketplace, leading to a new demand economy where individuals are in charge. If crispness of orders and rigor of command chain were buzzwords for leadership in the supply economy, then empathy is the word of the demand economy where the best organizations are no longer rigid hierarchies but communities of like-minded people mo-bilized through shared values, culture and a collective desire. This new era demands buoyant leaders. Becoming buoyant. As a buoyant leader, you float because the people you inspired believe that you should based on a dedication to and focus on their well being and growth. People decide to make you buoyant when they’ve assessed your authenticity, empathy, and connection with them. They reward your belief in them—and your ability to galvanize the team around a common purpose—with their belief in you. They will compensate for

your weaknesses and shore up your strengths. And they do so when they see that there’s an urgency, that there’s much at stake, and that they have a stake in making that happen, because you’ve created a culture where they can flourish. Buoyancy starts with a special quest—a real ambition, a desire to create something good. It is the engine of any endeavor, the picture of an exciting future that will mobilize followers. It is not a hope for, but rather a will be. For example, I was involved with Rudy Giuliani’s quest for the mayor’s office and for a safer city. His real ambition, “We will make the city safe again,” sounded preposterous at a time of staggering crime and a pervasive cultural belief that nothing could be done about it. But such audacity and language were key to his campaign. Every strategy, plan and element led back to this objective, and every city employee believed that they were working with Mayor Giuliani’s real ambition. It’s a fine example of what a real ambition can achieve. At your firm, ask: What is the group’s higher calling? What real ambition do they seek? Catalyzing your team. To build a cohesive team, identify your catalysts and resisters. Cat-

alysts are forward leaning people who become your spokespeople and stalwart defenders. Identify them, and you’ll create a chain reaction towards buoyancy. Also, identify resisters who can derail your agenda and swing the tide

of followers their way. Their concerns may be valid; and if you address them, they may turn into catalysts. Staying buoyant. In your journey toward your real ambition, you’ll experience set-backs—an integral part of the process. En-listing a team around your real ambition is all about certainty. Your job isn’t to prevent crazy things from happening, but to engender con-fidence, even when you lack it. When setbacks occur, your team will take extraordinary steps to make you buoyant when you need it most. Being made buoyant is one thing—staying afloat is another. Staying buoyant is about maintaining readiness, always challenging the status quo, listening carefully, and rethinking your assumptions, while keeping a careful vigil over the desires of your people. When you succeed, start over! With change comes opportunities—the means by which you and your team can reach your real ambition. LE

Kevin Allen is an expert in business development, masterful pitchman, keynote speaker, and author of The Hidden Agenda and The Buoyant Leader: A Leadership Course for the Rising Star. Email [email protected]

By Kevin Allen

Buoyant LeadersThey don’t dictate—they inspire.

Culture is often misunderstood or over-looked in building and growing businesses. It is viewed as the soft stuff—pampering of people, while business owners and leaders prefer to focus on accomplishing real work—the hard matters of business and measures such as revenue, gross profit, and market share. Yet, culture is a critical driver for organizational effectiveness. If you, as a leader, are not actively attend-ing to your culture, you’re likely experienc-ing: difficulty recruiting good talent, poor retention/high turnover, disengaged and un-derperforming staff, silo behavior between individuals and departments (territoriality vs. cooperation, and customer complaints and defection).

A strong culture holds an organiza-tion together—it creates the stickiness factor for employees and customers. The

ROI of a strong culture includes: improved retention and reduced turnover, interest by more qualified candidates. We call this talent gravity. Strong culture will help you attract and keep top talent, ensure delivery on your brand promise, and keep customers coming back and referring new business. Instilling and reinforcing a robust culture requires active attention by the leadership team. It is a func-tion that leaders can’t delegate. As a leader, do you know what culture is, recognize how culture impacts your people, know how to assess your culture, use an approach and techniques that help build and reinforce a performance-based culture? Your brand and your culture have an in-terdependent relationship. Brand serves the promise of what you do; culture enables you to deliver on that promise. If you don’t have a handle on your culture, hold off on a market-ing and sales campaign. Otherwise, you will promise something you can’t deliver, at least not for long. What is culture? At its core, culture is the way work is done around here. It reflects shared values, beliefs, and attitudes, as evident in the day-to-day behavior of your employees. Culture is grounded in the common practices

YourCultureHow’s it working for you?

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around mission, vision, and values. It drives how decisions are made and responsibility is assumed. It also determines your behavior in front of customers and in your group. It is re-flected in the standards and consistency with which you deliver your product or service. So, culture either fosters or hinders your goals and outcomes. What can you do about your culture? Here are eight steps you can take to build a strong, performance-based culture. 1. Ensure you have a meaningful and relevant vision, mission, and values to build shared attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that drive performance and outcomes. Integrate corporate values in and across the organiza-tion, ensuring values are included in hiring for cultural fit, on-boarding for swift integration, performance appraisal processes, day-to-day operating policy and procedures, incentives and rewards, and promotion and succession candidate readiness. 2. Ensure active (ongoing) communi-cation of these messages and how well the business demonstrates the values, achieving the goals and the priorities to align efforts in written and verbal form. More informal and frequent communication (dialogue) trumps formal monologues. 3. Practice active inquiry (annually or

amid big change initiatives) to assess whether your culture is supporting or impeding growth: Ask and listen to your customers. Conduct a customer satisfaction survey as an external measure of feedback about their satisfaction. Conduct an employee opinion (or perception or satisfaction) survey to de-termine the current pulse and employees’ experience and perceptions to get a snapshot of the current state of the culture. 4. Identify what you need your culture to be to deliver your brand promise. 5. Based on survey findings, identify key actions that will help you bridge the gap between where you are now and where you need to be to ensure consistency in delivery on your brand promise. 6. Communicate this to members of the organization. Follow-up and transparency are critical to help employees feel you care and are acting on their feedback. 7. Demonstrate commitment by action in addressing findings from the surveys. Don’t try to boil the ocean. Choose 3-5 most critical items to take action on. This should consider both low hanging fruit (easy to implement) and more complex items to move you forward. 8. Use developmental tools to strength-en key components that contribute to culture, such as, supervisory training (to improve the quality of supervisory re-

lationship building and effectiveness), new manager transition support, and leadership development for existing and emerging leaders. Culture develops whether you nurture it or not. It evolves out of the nature of your group dynamics—standards, relationships, and norms (behavior). The quality and strength of your culture will either help attract and retain customers and top talent—and outrun your competition—or it won’t. How’s your culture working for you? LE

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Your Culture

Tony Kubica and Sara LaForest are partners of Kubica LaFor-est Consulting, and coauthors of Organizational Gravity: A Guide to Strategically Growing Your Company’s Brand, Culture and Talent. www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com

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Most leaders are strong in technical skills—trained and tested on processes, procedures, and competencies—but weak in the softer side people skills—to effec-tively influence their teams and achieve optimal results. Why refine your people skills? Effective leaders cultivate productive relationships with all stakeholders while meeting objectives, overseeing training, boosting morale, staying focused on the mission, and being guided by a set of core values. Those things require well-developed soft skills. Even in law enforce-ment, it takes more than rank to establish authority—results are driven by setting clear standards, communicating effectively and believing that a team is only as good as its people. Leaders with few soft skills—those who make no effort to accommodate the needs and preferences of other officers, make incon-siderate and demoralizing comments to subor-dinates, are dictatorial and punitive, and have unclear standards—do not positively impact morale or maximize the team’s potential. In fact, they often disillusion people and make them miserable. My mission is to help leaders to master 10 soft skills of leadership to ensure that their people are motivated, effective, and focused on the right goals: 1. Professionalism. This includes conduct-ing yourself with responsibility, integrity, accountability, and excellence. These elements are foundational. Without them, your culture will be toxic and self-destructive. You see a lack of professionalism in action when leaders cut corners, take responsibility only for posi-tive results, distance themselves from people who make mistakes, point fingers, and throw team members under the bus for personal gain. If you have been chosen to lead, you must hold yourself (and by extension, your team) to a high, unwavering standard. You can’t be afraid to make tough calls when right and wrong are at stake, even if it means pun-ishing someone you like. Being a leader also means that you alone are responsible for your team’s failures as well as their successes. When a team member makes a mistake or fails to follow a procedure, it may be your fault. Your team should feel comfortable admitting both missteps and successes to you, and be aware that you accept nothing less than their—and your—best.

2. Concern for others. Leaders don’t have to care about their people, except in a pro-fessional capacity. They’re not required to learn about their personal situations, their likes and dislikes, their families, or how they feel about what happens during their shifts. But a smart leader makes an effort to ask about all of these things, and more. When your team knows that you care about them as individuals, they’ll be more moti-vated and willing to go the extra mile. Be a whole-package leader by showing your team that you care about their lives. Make sure they know they can talk to you if they’re

having a problem. They can’t always separate what’s going on in their personal lives with what’s happening at work. At times, they may become preoccupied. Having someone to talk to can help them stay focused. Plus, those discussions will enable you to learn more about them—their strengths, weaknesses, and true potential. 3. Clear and effective communication skills. Many well-meaning leaders get poor results, not because they don’t know their stuff or because their teams can’t do the work, but because of a breakdown in communica-tion. Think back over your career. You know how frustrating and limiting it can be to work for a manager who thinks that people can read minds, who spends too much or too little time explaining concepts, or who can’t clearly articulate ideas, instructions, and preferences. You can know all there is to know about the business, but unless you can translate that knowledge in a way your people can understand and act on, you won’t be an effective leader. When honing com-munication skills, talk to a mentor and ask him to tell you what works and what doesn’t. 4. Problem solving. Some leaders are stymied by problems that aren’t covered in

rulebooks and procedures manuals; others can’t complete difficult tasks. Chances are, these individuals weren’t respected by (and may have been resented by) their teams, since everyone knew they were on their own if the going got tough. It’s also likely that the same mistakes were made over and over because root causes were never addressed. As a leader, you can’t ignore something goes wrong, whether it’s a personnel issue, a task you aren’t sure how to complete, a mistake you need to correct. You must address the issue and figure out how to resolve it, whether that involves educating yourself, writing out a plan, bringing in others for help, or solicit-ing advice. It’s up to you—the leader—to make sure your team learns from what they experience. Pull everyone together after an incident. First, acknowledge that you hold yourself accountable, then work together to figure out what happened and why—and how to ensure the mistake doesn’t happen again. After all, those experiences are valuable only if everyone learns from them. 5. Team building. If that phrase conjures up images of weekend retreats involving ropes courses, trust exercises, and awkward con-versations about relationships and feelings, think again. When Alston mentions “team building,” he’s referring to a leader’s ability to take a disparate group of individuals and turn them into a focused, capable unit with shared values, mutual trust, and common goals. (taking an “every man for himself” culture and transforming it into a well-oiled machine that’s greater than the sum of its parts.) Effective team building improves morale, efficiency, productivity, and more. Team building starts with getting to know each individual member and placing the right person in the right job. You have to know what motivates each individual and how to reach them on a personal level so that you can maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses in relationship to one another. Ask team members about their personal and professionals goals, and help them reach their goals and move forward. When everyone is working in their sweet spots, you’ll be amazed by what synergy can achieve. 6. Mentoring and developing others. When people succeed at their work, it makes them happy. But keeping people in one area with no chance to move, or excluding other people because you don’t want to take the time for them to learn, those are bad ideas.

Soft Side Leaders Why refine your people skills?

By Roy Alston

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You’ve got to find a balance between putting people where they’ll succeed and helping stretch their capabilities a bit. Development motivates individuals and improves the team. Yes, ensuring that each team mem-ber’s strengths are being used while he or she is also being challenged will take some extra effort on your part, but it’s worth it. With each individual, you need to figure out how much guidance to give. Inexperienced team members require more; others less. Give each person just enough help so that they’re always challenged. Set tasks just beyond their grasp, so they have to stretch for it. That’s how people learn and grow. When people feel stuck, they lose interest, and that’s when productivity and morale start to decline. 7. The ability to motivate. Some profes-sions don’t always reward employees based on ability and performance. A careless person gets paid the same as the best officer, and might even make more than a good officer if he or she plays the overtime game right. Or a sergeant never comments on his officer’s performances, reasoning that “I don’t need to pat them on the back for doing what they’re paid to accomplish.” Unfortunately, these situations can lead to frustration, a will-ingness to do only the bare minimum, and low morale in high performers. To prevent this from happening, use recognition and autonomy as tools to reward and motivate your officers. People rank recognition and autonomy above pay when asked what makes them happy at work! To lead effectively: Point out a job well done—ideally in public. Try to let your people have autonomy over what they do by allowing them to figure out the details of how to complete each task whenever possible. This sense of control will let them know that you trust and respect them, and they will take more pride in their work. 8. The ability to work with subordi-nates. You’ve likely worked with a leader who held him or herself aloof from the team and relied on a command-and-control strategy. This leader probably didn’t solicit advice from you, and likely saw ideas and suggestions as threats to his or her authority or competence. If that leadership profile sounds familiar, then you know that it creates resentment and fosters a us-versus-them mentality (not conducive to boosting morale or achieving goals). More can be achieved when everyone understands and works toward the same objectives. To get your people on board, let them know that while the buck stops with you, your work together is not all about you. Tell them that you want their advice, their help in anticipating and solving problems,

and their ideas. Then, take their contributions seriously. This will help to create mission buy-in and boost morale. Plus, when your responses show that you have really heard what your officers have to say, they’ll be motivated to continue helping. 9. Conflict resolution. If conflicts aren’t handled competently, decisively, and with sensitivity, they can halt progress and tank morale. You initial reluctance to confront a person’s unorthodox behavior looks like favoritism to others, which causes discord and resentment. A hands-off approach isn’t working: sweeping a conflict with one manager under the rug has a negative impact on every team member. Resolving conflict is a two-pronged skill. First, you need to recognize conflict when it’s present. Usually, this is fairly simple if you’re already working to maintain open, caring relationships with people. Team members will come to you with concerns, and you can tell when dynamics have changed. Second, you have to use the appropriate conflict resolution strategy to get team members to focus on organizational goals, not just personal goals. Don’t become too comfortable with a particular conflict resolution strategy as you deal with calls for service—using the same go-to strategy for all conflicts can have disastrous results. 10. Adaptability. Today leaders need to be creative, innovative, and resilient to be effective. The way you’ve always done things might not cut it anymore. You must think of effective ways to solve new problems and encourage your teams to do likewise. Adapt-ability is about moving outside your comfort zone, using mistakes as learning experiences, and emphasizing proactive leadership, fluent interpersonal skills, and collaboration. At first, this will feel uncomfortable if you are used to how things really work: doing the minimum you can get away with, keeping your head down and your nose clean, and moving up at the prescribed pace. Teamwork is replacing the old paramilitary hierarchy form of control. If you don’t jump on board, you’ll be left behind. Soft skills differentiate true leaders from supervisors. It takes such skills to motivate people, to recognize and manage conflict, to make the tough calls, and to draw out a team’s collective potential. The better a leader protects and serves his team members, the more equipped they’ll be to protect and serve the public. LE

We recently asked leaders to identify the most harmful behaviors that compromise organizational results. We found that the most common and costly behaviors were gossiping, shifting blame, and turfism. In fact, three out of four organizations are infected with one or more of these harmful behaviors. What’s worse is that infected organizations experience dismal results across the board: decreased pro-ductivity, quality, safety, customer satisfaction, employee morale and high turnover. For example, organizations suffering from one or more of the most common infections are nearly twice as likely to experience quality problems. Here is how one respondent de-scribed turfism: “Two departments are respon-sible for quality. Each created their own way of being compliant, as a way of protecting their silo. As a result, employees don’t know which process to follow, and quality has worsened.” Such common and costly infections are also highly resistant to change. Only six percent of leaders surveyed said they have rooted out these behavioral problems. In fact, 94 percent reported that these bad behaviors persisted for a year or longer, and a third reported the problem had persisted for more than 10 years. Solutions are possible. The six percent who succeeded used the same approach—they targeted the problem with multiple strategies aimed at personal, social and environmen-tal influences. The leaders who failed relied on a single strategy, such as incentives or verbal persuasion. The key to success is combining multiple sources of influence into a potent solution. The amount of time leaders spend on rooting out bad behaviors has little impact on their success; but how they spend their time, includ-ing the number of sources of influence they apply, has a huge impact. Here are five tips to help you enlist multiple sources of influence in leading positive change. 1. Focus on behavior. Leaders who simply repeat vague values drive little change. Those who identify concrete and clear behaviors they hope people will enact are far more effective influencers. For example, five million people were spared from AIDS in Thailand when one leader moved beyond vague awareness cam-

Lead Positive ChangeFive steps for struggling leaders.

By David Maxfield

Soft Side Leaders

Roy E. Alston, PhD, Lieutenant of Police, Dallas Police Department, is coauthor with Dennis Haley of The Leader’s Compass for Law Enforcement Professionals. Visit www.academyleadership.com.

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People want to be great and achieve amazing results. If they don’t, often their leader is the obstacle. The role of leaders is to show their people all of the possibilities for astounding performances and to bring out the best in each person. For example,

Erik Weihenmayer, a blind man, climbed Mount Everest! Mackenzie Brown, a young girl, pitched a perfect game in boy’s base-ball, striking out 18 players! Cliff Miedl survived 30,000 volts and became an Olympic athlete! Cliff Young, a 61-year-old farmer, won the world’s ultra marathon! I am often asked by managers: How do I motivate my people? If employees aren’t mo-tivated, their productivity suffers. Employee morale today is down; in fact, more employees are unhappy with their jobs—and over 70 percent are looking for a different job. Em-ployees report that they get little recognition and appreciation, and many don’t like their boss. Such cultures don’t inspire employ-ees to deliver their best. To the contrary, these attitudes lead to more sick time, more worker compensation claims, more on-the-job accidents, fewer sales, lower productivity, and poorer quality and customer service. After studying 100,000 managers, we identified nine key strategies that distin-guish SuperSTAR leaders and designed a three dimensional model. 1. Clear goals and expectations. All great performance starts with clear goals and plans. Current practice leads to three problems: 1) much work is put into strategic plans, but rarely are they updated or re-viewed; 2) few goals reach every manager and employee (two-thirds of managers don’t set goals or plans with employees, but employees need to know WIFM (What’s in it for me?),

since challenging work and job recognition motivate employees the most; and 3) when goals are identified, managers often lack the ongoing commitment and reinforcement needed to sustain the progress. 2. Training. When services, technology and products are so similar, people are the primary differentiator. For employees to be at the top of their game, they need ongoing, engaging learning and interactive and rel-evant training. If done consistently, training will increase productivity. We believe man-agers are the best trainers because they are closest to the employee. To master training methodology and delivery, most managers need to learn adult-learning principles and professional training techniques. Most can learn how to reinforce skills, techniques, and attitudes through coaching. 3. Communicate, Communicate, Com-municate. Be positive, helpful, and mo-tivating (without yelling, screaming and threatening). Employees want to do well. By communicating about goals, plans, out-comes and problems, we can work together as a team to do better. One company did an employee survey and found one department had poor communication scores. Further review revealed that what employees wanted to know was quite simple: vacation schedules in advance, meeting notices in advance, and a more timely receipt of customer-survey data. Daniel Goleman coined the term Emotional Intelligence, which is defined in terms of social and personal competence; needless to say, it’s a powerful indicator of success in business. Social competence includes the ability to relate to people and to communicate effectively with people. Positive communication es-tablishes trust, and if you give trust to your team, oftentimes, your employees will go the extra mile and treat customers better. 4. Coaching. The rewards of passionate and diligent coaching are increased produc-tivity, higher sales and better service! Manag-ers who make the time reap the best results, and leverage their time to its fullest poten-tial. Effective coaching is when a manager conducts a one-on-one meeting with each employee. It should be a positive process of mutual dialogue, rather than a silo-driven monologue. Managers must build rapport, make the time, follow through, ask ques-tions, give advice and genuinely be helpful.

By Rick Conlow

SuperSTAR ModelHow to revolutionize performance!

paigns and focused on 100 percent condom use in the sex trade. 2. Connect to values. Use potent stories and direct experiences to make change a moral and human issue. New York restaurateur Danny Meyer helps employees connect to the value of “hospitality” rather than just “customer service” by repeatedly sharing powerful stories of meaningful guest experiences their col-leagues create. 3. Invest in skills. Most leaders see influ-ence as a matter of motivation. Influencers invest more in building ability than simply motivating the masses. For example, healthcare CEO Matt Van Vranken influenced massive increases in hand hygiene habits in his nearly 20,000-employee hospital system by helping employees develop skills for speaking up when they saw a colleague violate hygiene standards. 4. Leverage peer pressure. Social influence is the most potent force for change. Research shows that if people believe bad behavior is normal, they are far more likely to follow suit. A Ghanaian gold mine reduced vehicle acci-dents by engaging respected drivers in training other drivers in proper safety practices. Peers were far more effective at gaining compliance than either staff professionals or senior leaders had ever been. 5. Change the environment. Use tools, technology, information and surroundings to make people conscious of the need to change and enabled to make better choices. For example, software entrepreneur Rich Sheridan cut employees’ time fixing errors from 40 percent of working time to no time by putting code writers in teams of two, sharing one computer. This change greatly increased employee productivity and morale. Again, the key is to combine strategies. Cherry picking one or two won’t work. With resistant strains of behavioral infections, the cure requires multiple sources of influence. LE

Lead Positive Change

David Maxfield is VP of research at Vital-Smarts, specializes in corporate training and organizational performance, co-author of Influencer. Visit the Crucial Skills blog at www.crucialskills.com.

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A good coach ensures that each team member receives regular feedback and understands specific areas of performance efficiencies and deficiencies. According to research, ongoing coaching dramatically influences results. 5. Leadership flexibility. Each person is unique. You don’t rubberstamp great per-formance; you treat each employee as an individual by finding his or her hot buttons. Top performers need challenging and creative options. The performers that are struggling the most need specific technique direction and adequate role models. Some employees are single, others are married with five kids; some love books, others are into sports – the point? Know your team. The better you know your team, the more insight you will gain into their inner motivations and desires. Flexible management involves two questions: What is the employee’s skill level? What is the em-ployee’s will level? Your answer for each person will help you tailor your approach. Someone with little skill needs on-the-job training. Highly skilled employees that deliver poor results need coaching to build their commit-ment levels, so that they feel they have more ownership over their goals. It’s about adjust-ing your approach to enhance their abilities. 6. Recognition. 80 percent of performance problems are related to a lack of clear goals and expectations and a lack of recognition. Many managers avoid this easy fix. Every time you communicate with employees is an opportunity to recognize them. Do it informally and often; for example, “Pete, great job completing your report on time and under budget!” And do it formally, “Let’s all give Dave a round of applause for exceeding his top priorities. Dave, please accept this gift card for your accomplishment.” Recognition works when it is done consistently because

it demonstrates to employees that they are valuable and important. It also drives their inner spirit to keep striving for new heights and performance goals. Employees don’t need recognition for every little thing, but they do need to be appreciated for the right things. 7. Promotions and incentives. “Always have something going on!” This is the mantra of a highly successful manager in the Midwest. His team performs three times better than his competition. He is always creating contests for his team. Why? He wants to change their routine, in order to keep things interesting and exciting. He also hopes to fan their com-petitive spirit. While not every manager can execute contests or have the budget for it, any manager with a little creativity can boost the work environment. One company made chart visuals to track this year’s progress versus last year’s; for every month they outperformed the previous year, they held a luncheon. Another manager personalized awards in Microsoft Word, and she distributed them to deserv-ing team members on a regular basis. All in all, incentives are incredible resources, but you must first lead enthusiastically, execute consistently, and generate energy, in order to really maximize the potential benefits of incentives and promotions. 8. Continuous improvement. The best managers and leaders remain students of the game. Good can always become better, which can become the best – and great leaders believe this. They don’t stop learning, de-veloping or pursuing the better way to do something. Improvement is not optional—it’s essential just to keep pace. A SWOT analysis is a helpful tool that we recommend managers use to maximize their strengths, minimize their weaknesses, explore their opportunities and deconstruct their threats. Other ways to

continually improve include problem solving, innovating, creating and brainstorming. All of these require a manager to take initiative and to think outside the box, both are vital if managers want to be great leaders. 9. Recruit and hire winners. Your success as a manager is inevitably (for better or worse) tied to those you hire and recruit. Not all managers have control over the hiring process, but if you do, you must take advantage of that position; and if you don’t, you must make the best of it. Spend a lot of time on the hiring process because it will reap its own rewards, time and time again, if you hire right. Research can-didates thoroughly, prepare for a pro-fessional interview, evaluate candi-dates objectively, and create a positive working environment. What are your strengths? What can you do even better? What can you learn from others? How can you be more consistent and passionate while executing these strategies? To answer these questions, see our free assessment (visit www.wcwpartners.com).

To be all you can be, you must dream of being more. Fire up! Challenge your pride! Dare to reach higher to sustain revolutionary performance results! These nine strategies work in tandem. It’s not a menu to pick from. Managers fail when they only use bits and pieces of these strategies. Superb results require consistent and passionate execution. When leaders execute these nine strategies with consistency, passion, integrity, and a genuine team orientation, they quickly realize and experience what separates the SuperSTAR leaders from other managers. And, they soon achieve dramatic performance gains in their personal and team performance. LE

“Leaders who state clearly where they can and cannot be influenced gain real trust and involvement.”

SuperStar Model

Rick Conlow is the CEO and Senior Con-sultant of WCW Partners, a performance-improvement company and coauthor with Doug Watsabaugh, COO, of SuperSTAR Leadership: A 31-Day Plan to Motivate People, Communicate Positively, and Get Everyone On Your Side. Visit www.wcwpartners.com. E-mail: [email protected].

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Looking WithinGood leaders know themselves.

While coaching executives, I look for what I call well-cultivated self-awareness. Successful leadership is often a by-product of a height-ened sense of self. Leaders need to have a deep understanding of who they truly are—and how their traits and abilities either serve or inhibit them in achieving desired results. People in top leadership positions often have low self-awareness. They can easily get caught up in the task at hand or day-to-day distrac-tions and pay little attention to themselves and their impact on others—often until it is too late. History is littered with tales of fallen heroes and disgraced executives who lacked both introspection and sensitivity to those around them. The higher a leader rises, the more rar-efied the air. Hence, top leaders rarely seek or receive constructive feedback. Though they may be open to it, who will provide it? Who will stand up to them, challenge them, or suggest that they have room for improvement? Leaders can develop their ability to look within, cultivate self-awareness and get counsel from others to better understand themselves. Here are seven suggestions for how it can be done. 1. Make time. The top obstacle to success-ful career development is insufficient time. To be self-aware, you need to schedule time to: work with coaches and mentors; conduct self- and leadership-assessment activities; solicit meaningful feedback from colleagues; and reflect on your successes and failures. 2. Don’t avoid the negative. Look at pleasant and unpleasant things. If you’ve ex-perienced a major setback—a failed project, a blown budget, or even a demotion or firing—eventually you’ll need to face it head on and acknowledge your part in what happened. Even the little things—your tendency to show up five minutes late for meetings, for example—are worthy of consideration and improvement. 3. Embrace modern self-assessment methods. Anyone who’s ever taken even the most basic personality test knows how eye-opening it can be to put yourself under an objective microscope. Afterwards, you can’t help but ask: Am I really that kind of person? The methods we use today to assess job candidates or incumbent leaders are designed to explore nearly every facet of your personality and ability to lead. This

includes what we call “derailers” or “dark-side” indicators. These methodologies are brutally honest, but the idea of such intense analysis is self-awareness and growth rather than raising red flags to a current or potential employer. Many leaders don’t know their own demons much less their minor flaws—today’s evaluation tools overcome this and provide the basis for growth and leadership development. Conversely, many leaders don’t know what makes them outstanding and unique—putting a finger on exact strengths allows you to do more of the same, and more often. 4. Put good leadership in context. Yes, some people are more innate leaders. However, many leadership skills are not always trans-ferable across industries, organizations, and cultures. General Patton might not have been the best corporate CEO or college president had he gone that route. In whatever indus-try or context you work, study up on what specific competencies and leadership quali-ties are tried and true. Keep current on your reading—leadership needs change as indus-tries shift—and look to leadership assessment tools tailored to your type of business or role. 5. Embrace performance feedback and peer consultation. Surround yourself with trusted advisors who shoot straight. Ask for feedback from colleagues, direct reports, and clients in a way that fosters a thoughtful re-sponse: “When I am at my best, what am I

doing”; and “To be even more effective, what can I do?” Feedback from others can be the foundation for understanding yourself better. 6. Rethink career development and success. Many top executives still measure success using outdated paradigms: Am I working hard enough? Am I making enough money for myself and my company? These are questions that can’t be ignored, but they shouldn’t overshadow others that lead to self-awareness and increase the likelihood of true success. A few good measuring sticks: Are you feeling in control? Are you getting something out of every day or every project? Are you having a good time? Being in touch with your emotional side and its role in defining success can go a long way towards being a better leader. 7. Maintain. Self-awareness builds upon itself. Stay conscious of your abilities and continue to devote time and energy to un-derstanding how you lead. LE

Richard Metheny is chief people officer and leader of the Solutions for Exceptional Leadership practice at the executive search firm Witt/Kieffer. His talent management experience spans Fortune 50 public and Top 20 private companies. Email [email protected].

By Richard Metheny

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You already know how to build a budget, negotiate a deal, read a financial statement, and build a capital expenditure case. But does that make you a good leader? You may be a top performer, but do you know how to: create a high-performing team? Get the most out of them? Make people feel fulfilled in their jobs? Get employees to listen? Inspire and motivate them while still driving strong financial results? These questions make you feel anxious, perhaps because you spend much time and money on technical training but invest little in teaching people to lead. Senior leaders may feel as overwhelmed as you do—hoping that if they simply hire good people, everyone will magically follow their example. This is a passive approach. Employee engagement is strongly linked to financial success. For every five-point in-crease in employee engagement, customer satisfaction tends to increase 1.3 percent, which then boosts revenue by 0.5 percent. In a company with $50 million in revenue, that means a $250,000 increase to the bottom line! And what creates employee engagement? Leadership! In a study, Zenger-Folkman re-searchers divided leaders at a Fortune 500 commercial bank into three groups: excellent leaders (top 10 percent), average leaders (middle 80 percent), and poor leaders (bottom 10 percent). They found that leadership ef-fectiveness clearly impacted the bottom line: The poor leaders’ departments had a net loss of $1.2 million, while the departments of the excellent leaders had a total net income of $4.5 million. Good leaders create prosperity for all them-selves, their teams, and organization. Prosper-ity is not entirely about financial viability. True prosperity means thriving through a combination of achievement, happiness, health, and wealth. So, who wouldn’t want to be a great leader? But as any disgruntled employee will attest, exceptional leadership is uncommon; in fact, half of managers are considered ineffective. The good news is that the traits of good leadership can be acquired (70 percent of leadership is learned). Leaders Must Master Two Behaviors Effective leaders master two behaviors: 1) they show consideration, displaying support, compassion, and friendliness to their team;

and 2) they initiate structure, clearly defining the role that each employee plays and drives their performance so they achieve their goals. I call these behaviors Results and People. You may be strong in one, both, or neither. You may experience tension between the two: you must build relationships by connecting with your team, earning trust and motivating them to perform—and you must drive top-and bottom line results through your team’s performance and productivity. Many leaders think: I can either drive my people to perform, or I can be their friend: Depending on your upbringing, tem-perament, culture, and role models, you might leverage each outcome to support the other, favor one over the other, or lead at one extreme. For example, left-side leaders act like the Cool Parent. Focusing on the happiness of their team at all costs, they don’t set expectations, give honest feedback, or make tough decisions. Working for left-side leaders might feel pleasant, at first. But as soon as you need tough—true—feedback, they would freeze. Right-side leaders drive results so aggressively that they leave a trail of dead bodies. These leaders require grueling hours, are never satisfied, and withhold rec-ognition lest employees become complacent. Though they may help you “up your game” initially, in the long-term you suffer both physically (from over-work) and mentally (from lack of appreciation). The best leaders focus on both people and results. These bankable leaders create prosperity in the form of achievement, health, happiness, and wealth for themselves, their teams and organizations. Bankable leaders seek to achieve four things: 1) Be human (care for and understand team members) AND set aggressive perfor-mance targets (drive performance); 1) Be helpful (help team members succeed) AND

drive responsibility (expect responsibility for successes and failures); 3) Be grateful/provide recognition AND push for continuous im-provement; and 4) Be happy (help you enjoy your job) AND drive productivity (ensure everyone maximally contributes). You might have looked at that manager and thought: Leadership is so easy for them! Why is it so hard for me? But never lose faith—with focus and commitment, anyone can become a more effective leader. Daily commitment will make you a better—and more bankable. An effective leader inspires people, drives results, and has the power to turn around a struggling organization. How do you learn these leadership skills? How c a n you k e ep p e op l e h appy without sacrificing team performance and bottom-line results? You were probably promoted because you’re a competent technical professional. You know how to build a bridge, negotiate a deal, or justify a capital expenditure. But your tech-nical skills usually won’t help you be a better leader. You may wonder: Why won’t my em-ployees just do what I tell them? Why am I struggling to motivate my team? Why aren’t they giving me the performance I need? Sadly, your company probably isn’t doing much to help you. First, they probably use the wrong criteria to select leaders by focusing on tech-nical—rather than leadership—skills. Second, they invest precious little to develop leaders, and training is often an isolated, one-size-fits-all event. Without follow-up, 90% of information from training programs disappears after three months! Without organizational support, leaders wanting to improve are left to their own devices. But sink or swim is not a plan. when they search on Amazon for “leadership books,” they’re assaulted with more than 100,000 options! No wonder leadership feels so complex and impossible. Luckily, there’s good news. Leadership is an acquirable skill—most of leadership is learned, meaning anyone can learn to become an effective leader. To become more bankable, take these three actions: 1. Gather the facts. Just like you can’t start a weight-loss program without getting on a scale, you must begin your journey by learning the truth about yourself. We’re often the worst evaluators of our behavior. You may have placed yourself in the middle of the

By Tasha Eurich

People and Results Bankable leaders deliver both.

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Leaders today are navigating a turbulent sea of change—bombarded with complex-ity. What are they to do? First, their mental models of reality must be flexible. Second, They need to let go of comfort and stability and forget about prediction and control—and

become improvisational and innovative, look for solutions in unexpected places, and sur-round themselves with associates who accept ambiguity, urgency, and flexibility. Finally, They must accept the inevitability of Peter Vaill’s insight of “permanent white water” as the new normal. Here are the eight insights for this new normal: 1. The leader’s mental models of the change process must match the complex-ity of change. In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge described 5 disciplines—one being mental models. Each of us has, based on our experiences, devised mental models of reality to help us cope with circumstances of the present. The problem, of course, is that the past does not always represent the present. In fact, the perception of the present rarely matches the reality of the present because of our language ability. Flexibility in our mental models is a key to leadership success because the leader is operating in the now moment. 2. Close attention must be paid to the individual’s cognitive potential so that the areas of thinking, perceiving, and respond-ing may be continually activated. Rejuve-nation of the mind can be sparked by various motivators when we are emotionally filled, intellectually-challenged, and even spiritually un-fulfilled. Individual actions and reactions are motivated by various impulses that are not immediately evident to others and the

self in everyday situations. To spark cogni-tive awareness, we need to find meaningful ways to live our lives in co-existence with others. Our sense of interconnectedness with others can be uplifting—and frustrating. Our minds respond to the complexity of life. Instead of being burdened by the daily minutia of complex events, we need to pick and choose a single event that could bring fulfillment and joy into our life. We need to open our minds and hearts to situations that spark our intellectual capacity so we can contribute to the world. We must re-awaken the intellectual being within us so our minds, thoughts, attitudes, and actions can perform to their full capacity. We need to find ways to create meaning by being meaningful to others. We can change, and thus change others, in our desire to utilize our abilities. We can exude potential and greatness by internal-izing our capacity to make a difference. With the right motivation and resources, leaders can troubleshoot environments of complexity and change. 3. Since organizations behave in dynamic, unpredictable, and unstable patterns, accept and adapt to instability rather than seeking stability. In Manag-ing as a Performing Art, Peter Vaill writes about the need for managers to accept and adapt to instability. His work was prescient. Stability is a long-lost feature of our external environment. And, in his classic Beyond Bureaucracy, Warren Bennis argued that the top-down bureaucratic form is unsuited for these times of constant change. Yet, the form persists because we still live in the mythology of prediction and control. We long for the good old days when things were more stable. Those days are gone forever, and effective leaders must learn the skill of dancing on moving floors! 4. Navigate chaotic conditions through exposure to rapid response decision-mak-ing moments. Chaos is the default environ-ment and often has a negative connotation. Yet in this environment, innovation, spon-taneous creativity, and situational awareness peak. There is no room for complacency; employees without energy and a sense of urgency won’t last long. Leaders are cata-lysts to attract rather than repel crisis expe-riences. As David Snowden, chief scientist for the Cognitive Edge Network suggests,

By Linda Moerschell, David K. Banner, Teresa Lao, and Thea Singer

Complexity & Change Here are eight leadership insights.

continuum, believing you place an equal emphasis on People and Results—but your team might say, “Are you kidding? You’re a total slave driver!” Use your resources and gather the facts, whether it’s through an as-sessment or feedback in the form of conversa-tions. 2. Be laser-focused. For executive teams, t as their quantity of goals increases, revenue declines. Similarly, leaders often choose too many development goals. Give yourself the greatest chance for victory by developing one thing at a time. It is far better to make progress in one area than to make little or none in five! 3. Practice daily. It’s likely that you’ve had a development plan before—one that gathered dust in a drawer. You were probably engaging in Delusional Development: the futile hope that just by wanting to get better at something and knowing enough to be dangerous, you’ll show improvement. The amount of deliberate practice you choose will be proportionate to your improvement. The journey to Bankable Leadership is like learn-ing a violin concerto: You have to learn the concepts (reading music) and behaviors (playing the violin). Then you practice every day to create beautiful music. Bankable Leadership happens day by day. From music to science to athletics, people with average talent have achieved extraordi-nary things. Scientists used to think that superior athletes achieved greatness because of biological differences. Now we now know that the best marathon runners, for example, simply train more in the weeks leading up to the event. The same is true for exceptional leaders. That’s why the “I just wasn’t born to be a leader” excuse doesn’t hold water. A person may not want to be a leader, but with focus and commitment, anyone can become a more effective leader. The daily commitment will make you a more bankable leader, guaranteed. LE

People and Results

Tasha Eurich is leadership geek, executive coach, speaker, and author of Bankable Leadership: Happy People, Bottom-Line Results, and the Power to Deliver Both. www.tashaeurich.com/book. [email protected]

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a crisis that creates a sense of urgency is a positive force with leaders who can navigate and exploit chaotic conditions. 5. Look to more than one source, es-pecially unlikely areas, for solutions. A leader’s instinct, intuition, and moral core come into play when faced with challenging decisions. But keep going! The data that is readily available may not be enough to satisfy the decision process. Since adaptive leader-ship thinking is integrative, interconnected, and interdisciplinary solutions may arise from unlikely sources. These connections may be found in the sciences including biology, psychology, meteorology, and paleontology. Also look to the arts, religion, sports, any-where really. The root of this approach is in systems theory, often associated with Ludwig Von Bertalanffy, a biologist and the father of systems theory. 6. Embrace a changing vision that keeps pace with changing conditions. Many great organizations are strong values-driven com-panies with a stable mission or reason for being. That reason for existing capitalizes on the unique strengths of core staff and processes. Within that stable base, however, much else is changing. Previously unfore-seen opportunities or unrequested (and often unwelcome) shifts in the environment chal-lenges the status quo and beg for the most appropriate actions and reactions. Leaders at great companies evolve their vision regularly. Those who seek and absorb these shifts and integrate them with stored cognitive data regarding patterns, can rapidly innovate new products and services. Those leaders who seek, identify, and store patterns and chal-lenge themselves to then recall and make sense of and use those patterns, assist their organization to succeed. 7. Create a close network of individuals who accept ambiguity, and improvise as needed. Leaders need to depend on individu-als who can transform, direct, and influence the culture. They must be selective in creat-ing a team of individuals who are optimistic about the future. Because of the complexity of the change process, not all individuals may be up to task in supporting the leader’s vision and goals. The leader must instill fear-lessness and demonstrate it in such a way that others are selflessly motivated to move forward and follow the unknown. Those who are afraid to implement any change process or think creatively of new ideas cannot be part of the team. Everyone in the team has to contribute something meaningful that will elevate the status of the leader. Settling on satisfactory performance is not enough.

Leaders of positive transformation must take their own calculated risks—with the intent of bringing positive change. In return, the leader must support the actions and ideas of these individuals to promote intellectual and emotional growth from within. When a leader accepts that failures and threats can occur in this developmental process, the individuals involved could cultivate their potential to one day lead the organization to a place better than the one they initially helped develop. 8. Create excitement and positivity within a chaotic environment. Keeping an organization poised at maximum productiv-ity while also enabling appropriate creativity, takes great leaders who live at the edge of their comfort zone, and help other staff to do so as well. That is an art, and essentially means getting accustomed to dancing on moving floors. Many experts have used the thermostat analogy to describe the actions of highly effective leaders who know when and how much to turn the heat up or down. It’s difficult to maintain a climate of continual heat without risking burnout. At the other extreme, the risk is a laissez faire attitude in which employees don’t question the status quo or look for better ways of doing things and better ideas. The answer is simple but far from easy to execute: creating a culture in which people have fun challenging current ideas and methods and also know when to let go of that creativity and hunker down to get the job done. This is a combination of cognitive and attitudinal approaches that leadership can adopt. Tapping into this untapped potential is a leadership art much as a science and may be best suited within leadership teams. These insights may not be new - but that begs the question. . . why are most leaders - including you - hanging on to the old way of thinking?LE

As leaders climb the corporate ladder, the risk of falling into ego traps increas-es, which can hurt business and threaten hard-won successes. How can leaders avoid self-sabotaging, ego-driven behav-iors and boost their emotional intelligence (EQ)—and ultimately, the bottom line? Ego, while often helpful in reaching the top, can become a hindrance if not managed, ulti-mately sabotaging success. Corporate scandals and PR issues are symptoms of ego run amuck, whether due to the kind of poor judgment that says skinny dipping at a company event is okay or allows the release of a harmful product to consumers when no one challenges corporate practice. Due to the nature of leadership, you are set up to give in to ego, either from the burden of power that comes with the territory or the natural push and pull dynamics between leaders and followers. So, if you are now a leader, how do you avoid the ego pitfalls that cause so many leaders to lose their jobs and fail?

Identifying Ego Blind Spots From my experience as an executive coach, I identified the common traps that set leaders up for failure. As a leader, you’re always subject to factors you can’t control, so it makes sense to pay attention to what is in your control—your behaviors. By honing your EQ, you can avoid the common snares. Here are eight common ego traps nearly every leader will face at the helm, along with identifiers to help you recog-nize which ones you fall into most often. Ego Trap 1: Ignoring feedback you don’t like. You assume, without testing, that if your team is honest with you about operational

EGO Vs. EQ Five steps for struggling leaders.

By Jen Shirkani

Linda Moerschell, MBA, PhD State University of New York at Potsdam & Kaplan University; David K. Banner, PhD Walden University Teresa Lao, PhD, Walden University & Kaplan University; and Thea Singer, PhD, Critical Change. Email Linda [email protected]. This article evolved from Complexity Change Theory: Improvisational Leader-ship for Complex and Chaotic Environments, Leadership and Organizational Management Journal 2013.

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issues that they can also be relied upon to give you candid feedback about how you are doing as a leader. You may also secretly think to yourself: “If they don’t like what I’m doing, they can go get a job somewhere else!” Or you take the fact that you don’t receive much negative or constructive feed-back as a sign that you are doing your job as a leader really well and don’t need to focus on your own leadership development. Ego Trap 2: Believing your technical skills trump your leadership skills. You consider being a subject-matter expert enough to make you a great leader and feel this excuses you from wasting your time by accommodating people. You listen in meetings for chances to jump in and share your expertise or to catch others in a mistake rather than letting them work through the issue at their own pace and hon-oring their process, knowledge and creativity. Ego Trap 3: Surrounding yourself with more of you. You don’t have anyone in your inner circle who has a work or communica-tion style opposite of your own. Decisions made among the executive team are made quickly with minimal challenging viewpoints. Or your executive leadership team is made up of one gender, race and/or age group. Ego Trap 4: Not letting go of control. You have more than ten direct reports. You cannot help but get involved in seemingly minor details “just for peace of mind.” You spend much of your time focused inward, on company operations, and very little looking outward at the industry or business landscape. Ego Trap 5: Being blind to your down-stream impact. You routinely ask people to help you with a task, though it isn’t their job, because you know they will get it done. You never hear “No” in answer to a request and are rarely asked to negotiate a deadline. You call last minute-meetings, assuming that everyone will clear their calendar for you, and they all show up. Ego Trap 6: Underestimating how much you’re being watched. At a company func-tion you sit with your small circle of peers or direct reports instead of using it as an opportunity to meet employees you don’t know. You believe it’s okay to behave like everyone else at company meetings because it makes you “one of the guys.” Ego Trap 7: Losing touch with the front-line experience. You have employees come to your office for a meeting instead of going to theirs. You don’t periodically spend time working alongside employees for a day in the life experience. Ego Trap 8: Relapsing back to your old ways. You find yourself operating on

autopilot, not making mindful choices in interactions with others. You see certain audiences as worthy of your best efforts while others, in your view, are not. Whether it is employee disengagement, lowered morale, increased turnover or de-creased motivation, the effects of falling into the ego traps are costly. Leaders who fall into the ego traps diminish their cred-ibility and make life difficult for followers. EQ is the demonstration of sensibility. It is a set of skills that includes the ability to recognize your own impulses and moods, read situations and others accurately and respond most appropriately, depending on the situation or person involved. Leaders with high EQ can communicate with others effec-tively, provide balanced feedback, lead others through times of ambiguity, read and respond to the emotional needs of others and remains optimistic even in the face of difficulty. These leaders can emotionally and mentally plug into others and can read the situation at hand and behave accordingly to get the best results for everyone. In contrast, ego refers to the part of you that is concerned with the self. When properly balanced with EQ, ego can be a pillar to success in the form of self-confidence, assuredness and conviction. But leaders op-erating on too much ego will only do things for themselves, meet their needs first and expect everyone else to adjust to their ways. You can find a balance between ego and EQ and overcome these traps. Even with all of the change and uncertainty, your behavior is within your control. You can boost your EQ to seize the opportunities – without losing your identity, values, or mission. LE

We hear the talk about actively disengaged employees. What about organizations that actively resist providing an environment for engagement? Beyond proving meaningful work, em-ployers should be addressing employee engagement from two directions: 1) the conditions they can actively provide their employees to engage them; and 2) the con-ditions they passively expect their employ-ees to engage, in addition to their work. When people talk about employee engage-ment, they tend to talk in terms of what they can actively offer their employees to increase engagement—from benefits packages to recognition to empowerment. But these efforts aren’t working: Employee engage-ment is down another point to 63%.(Aon Hewitt); 70% of employees aren’t working to their full potential, and 18% of those are actively disengaged (Gallup, 2013); 67% of employees are either disengaged or underen-gaged (Modern Survey); $720 million per year is spent on employee engagement (Bersin); and Employee disengagement costs the US economy $350 billion per year (Gallup). We can’t afford to ignore a $350 billion loss—and we’re not. According to Google Trends, employee engagement has risen in popularity, both in keywords searched and literature produced. But while we see a rise in awareness and interest in employ-ee engagement, we see a decrease in actual engagement. Despite millions of dollars in-vested, the numbers are going down? Why is there no ROI? What are we doing wrong? Clearly, engagement is a problem—one we struggle to address, even amid the array of lit-erature on the subject. The problem, however, may be how we look at the problem—we’re not asking employees to engage in behaviors that are inherently beneficial to them. That’s the root of the problem. Employees are invested in their organization’s well being because their well-being depends on it. But if your culture is disengaging, or actively resistant to engage-ment, they may un-invest. For example, if your culture is affected by cutbacks, downsizing, racism, sexism, or ho-mophobia—or is resistant to hiring and pro-moting talent in the interest of saving the costs

EGO Vs. EQ

EmployeeEngagementIs your company actively resisting it?

By Phillip Roark

Jen Shirkani has 20-years of coaching and consulting experience with the Fortune 500. She has previously held learning and devel-opment roles at Nordstrom, Select Comfort and Bergen Brunswig. She is author of EGO VS. EQ: How Top Leaders Beat 8 Ego Traps with Emotional Intelligence (bibliomotion).

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of recruitment and growing salaries—you are asking your employees to engage in the belief that they are not talented, or they are not worth (or worthy of) what they are being paid. It’s tough to participate in your own de-personalization, discrimination, or under-valuing. Disengaging from this belief also means disengaging from the organization that perpetuates it—resulting in a loss of real talent and a lack of leadership pipe-line.Activity and Employee Engagement Depersonalization, discrimination, or undervaluing stunt growth because they resist change. However, change will come regardless of the risks averted; and in the interest of preventing negative change, it’s necessary to be proactive for the good – and betterment – of you, your organiza-tion, and employees. Again, disengagement is caused by failing to provide behaviors that are beneficial to employees: Behav-iors that benefit employees lead to em-ployee engagement, which leads to growth. This also calls for leaders to promote career development, growth and engagement even when times are bad. Examples of targeted career development initiatives include: En-gaging diverse employees in higher/more active roles; Leadership development and suc-cession planning; Filling specific knowledge and role gaps; Raising employee sense of own-ership/responsibility; Encouraging lateral (as well as upward) movement; Increasing loyalty and retention; and Improving company and employer brand by improving the culture. For example, one of our clients, a leading pro-fessional services firm, became more trans-parent about career paths for all positions, strengthened its career development offer-ings, and fostered networking. This resulted in increased retention of top talent, savings in turnover and recruitment costs, and higher engagement and productivity. Offering career development to your employees almost guar-antees an increase in employee engagement. I encourage you to think in terms of a Career Continuum. People’s lives change and move in more than one direction, and their careers reflect that. Yet when we talk about the length and progression of a per-son’s career, we talk about it in terms of the employee lifecycle. This way of thinking has its limits: It implies movement and progression in only one direction – forward. It fails to realize that the direction of an individual’s personal life can change the course of a career. The Continuum is not limited to movement in a single direction—it allows for progres-sion and development in all directions. When

people view their career path as a continuum, their options are flexible. They can move and progress as they want or need. When organi-zations view an employee’s career path as a continuum, they open up more possibilities. Of course, everyone has limits. But there’s a difference between limits that you naturally possess and those imposed on you by yourself, others, or an organization. We need to start looking at those limits and removing them, since they limit growth. Career movement is driven by a person’s desire to change their career path, or work-life balance. Things change. People’s lives change. As they do, so do their careers. Whether an employee wants to change careers or take care of a sick parent, providing them with career development options will help them make that transition, helping them stay engaged. The Career Continuum is all about the in-dividual’s mobility. An organization can facilitate its employees’ mobility by keeping employees engaged through development opportunities while giving them the space to breathe in their careers – and not locking them into a one-way career path. How do you do this? Provide employ-ees with the tools and resources they need to move, grow, and develop. This includes: mentoring for onboarding and knowledge transfer; coaching for performance and skill development; and tools and a networking environment to promote internal career mo-bility, and increase retention, cross pollina-tion, engagement, and knowledge-sharing. On average, organizations are losing 10 to 30 percent of their employees per year – and with them, talent and knowledge capital. So, you want to make sure that the right people are leaving. You want to retain your top talent, but you can’t afford to suffocate them by failing to give them options to move and develop. That only leads to them under-performing and disengaging. The solution? Create a fluid environment that allows your employees to move internally and give them the tools to know how to do it, keeping them engaged and thinking about their next move. Just remember: their next move depends entirely upon the opportunities and how well your employees can see them. LE

Our world is crying out for effective leaders. The downfall of many high profile executives reveals the glaring need for com-petent, caring and committed leaders. The most pressing public problems require a new generation of leaders who move outside of themselves to engage, empower and inspire the world. We need leaders who find their authentic voice, connect hearts and minds, and impact the world in a positive way. But great leaders are hard to find. Few people develop their latent leader-ship abilities. Yes, all of us have leadership qualities, but great leaders are cultivated in the crucible of human experience, refined by trials, tribulations and adversity. Leader-ship development is a process, not an event, and every wannabe leader needs a support system to grow, flourish and develop. More than just a weekend seminar, book or video, a support system provides real-world coaching and support within the context of working relationships. An effective leadership support system should contain three crucial elements: 1) like-minded associates open to influence and change 2) escalating leadership opportu-nities that grow as the leader develops and 3) a culture that highlights achievement through Appreciation, Recognition, and Celebration (ARC). Leadership was the last thing on my mind in spring 1985. I was a shy student in my last semester at UC/Berkeley. After a class, I saw a flyer posted on campus that read: “Stand up and Speak out! Join the CAL Toastmasters!” My interest was piqued. I needed help with upcoming job interviews and a graduation speech, so I visited the club and joined, hoping to overcome my fear of public speaking and move on. I grossly underestimated the impact, value and influence of Toastmasters. Over 28 years as a Toastmaster, I moved from a fledgling collegiate member to International President. Public speaking was the draw, but leadership was the final product. That first Toastmasters club provided me with a supportive, positive place to develop my oral communication skills, forming a base for leadership growth. Supportive fellow members encouraged, nurtured and moti-vated me. Feeling the love, I volunteered

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for leadership positions at my club, division, and district level. In my early days, I gave a lot of bad speeches, but I gave them with passion! John Wesley, co-founder of Method-ism, said “Catch on fire with enthusiasm, and people will come for miles to watch you burn.” Indeed, many Toastmasters jumped onto my leadership team just to see what I would say and do. Through it all, I kept listening, learning and growing as I motivated other Toastmasters through my transformation. The essence of Toastmasters is the club meeting. Members develop their skills, rotat-ing regularly through various roles: prepared speaker, impromptu speaker, master of cer-

emonies, club officer and various evaluation positions. Members learn that communica-tion and leadership are inseparable skills. It is impossible to be an effective leader without having high-level communication skills, and aspiring leaders ignore communications skills at their own peril. Toastmasters’ training facilitates a change in lifestyle that refines why you communicate and how you communicate. Communication is more than an art; it is the language of the heart. Authentic communication touches fol-lowers and moves them to action. But every leader knows the most important commu-nication skill is not speaking; it is listening. We spend more time listening at an average Toastmasters meeting than speaking. Those who listen learn the motives, needs and desires of followers. When listening leaders connect

heart to heart with followers, there is deep resonance that makes leadership authentic and powerful. Leadership sway often springs from the style of the leader. Some leaders are charis-matic, others more subdued, but the unmis-takable call of the leader is the confident, resonant voice that is uniquely you. Toast-masters helps you find your voice, your vocal calling card. Finding your voice magnifies and accelerates your leadership persona. As you become more comfortable in your own voice, you become more successful in the minds of those you attract. You get noticed in a good way and your leadership influence compounds exponentially. Leaders can’t give to others what they lack, so leaders must commit to personal growth. This occurs when you step outside of your comfort zone, face fear and expand your abilities and skills. As a Toastmaster, I stretched myself by challenging members to dream more, believe more and achieve more. I learned to embrace change, not fear it, and make it attractive to our members. The person who changed the most was me, as I moved through four growth phases: 1. Self-awareness. Speaking at Toastmas-ters events regularly made me sensitive to how my thoughts, beliefs and emotions played out in the audience. Practice taught me to check inward to project outward. My internal compass naturally pushed me to authenticity, passion and power. Leadership is more than just connecting dots or reading a script. It is connecting with people at a deeper level to move them to action. Leaders with refined self-awareness expand their breadth of appeal and depth of influence. 2. Self-discovery. Self-awareness triggers self-discovery. “Michael, you are not as good a speaker as you think you are.” Those honest words from an early Toastmasters evalua-

tion launched me on a 28-year journey of self-discovery. Why is my speech not good? How could I improve it? Self-discovery is a learning process that never stops. Former Toastmasters Golden Gavel award recipient Cavett Robert once said, “School is never out for the pro.” Every role in a Toastmasters meeting receives an evaluation, and every evaluation provides fertile ground for self-discovery, self-correction and life change that makes better leaders. 3. Self-confidence. Self-confidence is an intangible differentiator that is everything for the leader, a byproduct of dedication to Toastmasters. Confidence is finding your voice—the voice of leadership, influence and passion. This is the resounding, respected voice that moves others to action and makes the leader. Self-limiting beliefs dissolve as you rise to put your best foot forward with poise and assurance. Great leaders make it look easy, but it requires a lifetime of preparation at Toastmasters International, the ultimate confidence builder. 4. Self-mastery. Self-mastery is the con-summate performance skill, the pinnacle of communication and leadership excellence. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell estimates that success in any field is the result of practicing a specific task for 10,000 hours. Mastery is a habit that grows from a lifetime of prepara-tion to reach the perfect balance of personal and public, logic and emotion, heavy and light, funny and serious, loud and soft. If we’re lucky, we may experience interludes of leadership excellence that feel like a natural high. Like a graceful swan gliding across the water—the beauty above the water contrasts with furious paddling beneath. Leadership growth requires a deliberate and intentional commitment to a personal development program. It’s not enough to have talent, good ideas and passion. When the voice of the leader is muddled, followers are apathetic and confused, regardless of your expertise or talent. People won’t follow you until they know you, trust you and believe you are leading them in the right direction. Communication is the magic elixir that engages followers, sparks action and galva-nizes a movement. Find your voice—the clear, concise, confident voice of leadership—and watch your life flourish. LE

“When listening leaders connect heart to heart with followers, there is deep resonance that makes leadership authentic and powerful.”

Michael Notaro, Esq., DTM, was 2011-2012 International President of Toastmasters International and principal in Notaro Law Group, a law firm representing commercial real estate owners and investors in Northern and Central California. Email [email protected]: Improve your leadership through public speaking.

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HR.com/Leadership Excellence also services organizations by creating custom monthly editions for organizational use. Our leadership resources are designed to supplement and complement your current leadership development program – or stand alone as an extremely cost-effective plan.

All of our leadership resources can be customized for organizational use by design, content, packaging, and delivery based on your development needs.

Phone: 1.877.472.6648 Email: [email protected]

Leadership Excellence Essentials - Monthly Interactive Learning JournalWatch as this monthly interactive learning experience captures key metrics, actionable items and keeps you focused on developing yourself and corporation as top leaders.

Leadership Excellence Certificate Program (5 hours) A Certificate in Leadership Excellence with the Institute for Human Resources (IHR) makes you credible, marketable, and shows your dedication to your profession.

Leadership Excellence Expert Certification Program (40 hours) Work towards the ultimate credential for education. Showcase your expertise with Expert Certification in the Leadership Domain and learn how to bring the right leadership programs into your organization and make them impactful. The program offers credit courses on topics related to the quality of leadership within an individual or organization, the difference between leader development and leadership development, and the latest leadership solutions and strategies.

Leadership Excellence Top 500 AwardsApril 9 – 11, 2014, Vail Cascade Resort & Spa, Vail, ColoradoThe esteemed Leadership Excellence awards to be presented at the Leadership Excellence Forum in Vail will recognize companies that excel in offering top Leadership Development programs globally.

Leadership Excellence Community Join 150,000+ HR.com members with a similar interest and focus on Leadership and specific Leadership Development topics. Share content and download white papers, blogs, and articles, network, and “follow” peers and have them “follow” you in a social network platform to communicate regularly and stay on top of the latest updates. The well established Leadership Excellence Community is an invaluable resource for any HR professional, leadership coach or executive.

Leadership Excellence ForumApril 9 – 11, 2014, Vail Cascade Resort & Spa, Vail, ColoradoThe Leadership Excellence Forum will bring together top Leadership experts and Chief Leadership Officers from around the world. Also included will be recognition of the Top 500 Leaders earning this year’s Leadership Excellence Awards. Keynote Speakers including Dr. Marshall Goldsmith - Best selling author and world authority in helping successful leaders.

Use these resources today! Contact us now to inquire about organizational customization, individual or organizational pricing!“Leadership exceLLence is an exceptionaL

way to Learn and then appLy the best and Latest ideas in the fieLd of Leadership.”

—warren bennis, author and usc professor of management

Kerry PattersonVitalSmartsCo-Founder




Vol.30 No. 8


Presented By

$9.99 a month

06

Crucial AccountabilityBy Kerry PattersonConfront slackers

Preparing LeadersBy Elaine VarelasDevelop the next generation now

Purpose of PowerBy Gary Hamel It gets things done

Developing LeadersBy Jack Zenger, KurtSandholtz, Joe FolkmanApply five insights

2422

“The quintessential memoir on leadership…”

—ANNE MULCAHY, former chairman and CEO, Xerox Corporation

“A magnificent and mesmeriz-ing account of his life. There’s enough wisdom here to fill the world’s largest library.”

—TOM PETERS, coauthor, In Search of Excellence

“As a wonderfully honest reporter, Warren does not hesitate to discuss his disappointments and his mistakes, personal as well as professional. Yet this book has an excitement, an energy, a joie de vivre that is inspiring.”—HOWARD GARDNER

The Washington Post

“[A] must-read memoir. Each chapter in his fascinating life draws him inexorably toward becoming the father of leadership.”

—BILL GEORGE, professor,Harvard Business School; former chairman and CEO, Medtronic

978-0-470-43238-9

Available wherever books and e-books are sold. For more information, visit warrenbennis.com

Presented By - International Leadership Association › members › directory › downloads › LE...

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