Tag: leadership

The Big Question – by Bill Treasurer

This is a guest post by my good friend Bill Treasurer, who's latest book Leaders Open Doors makes its big time release this week!  Over to Bill...

If you’re a leader, there’s an important question on the minds of the people you lead. They may not say it directly, but it is the core question that defines the relationship between you and the people you lead. When people believe the answer is “yes,” they will be more committed to their work … and to you. But when they think the answer is “no,” their commitment to their jobs and their loyalty to you will suffer. The question is: Do you care about me?

Do you care about me?

The answer shows up in your treatment of people. You may say that you care about people, but if you never smile, constantly move up deadlines, rarely ask for their opinions or use their input, take credit for their good work, set unrealistic goals, and don’t say “thank you” for their hard work, then you don’t really care about them. And they know it.

To be a leader means to get results. But when the drive for results monopolizes a leader’s attention, people become a lesser priority. When a leader cares more about the “ends” (results) and less about the “means” (people), the leader becomes susceptible to treating people like objects. A single-minded focus on results often leads directly to treating people poorly. The drive to achieve results becomes the leader’s excuse for toughness, saying things like, “Sure, I’m tough. We’re under relentless pressure from our competitors, and margins are tight. Being tough creates urgency and motivates people to work hard. My boss is tough on me, so why shouldn’t I be tough on the people who work for me?”

To be sure, results matter. But people achieve those results, and when you treat people poorly you’ll get poor results. Answering “yes” to the core do-you-care-about-me question means taking a deep and genuine interest in those you are leading. Caring, in this sense, is obliging. For when you care about people, you give them more of your time, attention, and active support. A wise leader treats people as more important than results, because strong people produce those results. Period.

So what does caring look like? When you care about people, you:

  • take an interest in their career aspirations
  • seek, value, and apply their ideas
  • acknowledge people’s contributions and say “thank you” generously.

As a practical matter, it’s a good idea to care about your people. Here’s why: when they know you care about them, they will care about you … and your success.

In fact, you’ll know that you are truly a leader who cares when the people you lead start seeking and valuing your input, when they take an interest in your career aspirations, and when they are actively supportive of you. And when your people care about you, they’ll help you get better results.

About Bill Treasurer

Bill Treasurer is the Chief Encouragement Officer of Giant Leap Consulting and author of Leaders Open Doors, which focuses on how leaders create growth through opportunity. 100% of the book’s royalties are being donated to programs that support children with special needs. Bill is also the author of Courage Goes to Work, Right Risk, and Courageous Leadership, and has led courage-building workshops across the world for NASA, Accenture, CNN, PNC Bank, SPANX, Hugo Boss, Saks Fifth Avenue, and the US Department of Veterans Affairs, and many others. Contact Bill at btreasurer@giantleapconsulting.com, or on Twitter at @btreasurer.

The Ten Golden Rules of Leadership

I have just been scanning the book The Ten Golden Rules of Leadership.

In the words of the authors: “Leadership is not the same as management.  Not everyone can be a leader. what distinguishes the real leader from a mere administrator is a unique series of perspectives and values.”

The authors of this book (Michael Soupios and Panos Mourdoukoutas) are philosophy professors who share 10 ancient sayings from the Greek sages as a basis for quality leadership today.

  1. Know thyself
  2. The office shows the person
  3. Nurture community at the workplace
  4. Do not waste energy on things you cannot change
  5. Always embrace the truth
  6. Let competition reveal talent
  7. Live life by a higher code
  8. Always evaluate information with a critical eye
  9. Never underestimate the power of personal integrity
  10. Character is destiny

The authors say that “True leadership begins with a philosophy of life.”  You must decide what type of person you wish to be.  Leadership cannot be done by the numbers.

IESE Speaking Gurus Interview Series

This is a series of 10 interviews with the expert coaches during the IESE EMBA Intensive week 2013.  (If you are viewing via rss, video on the blog here).  The Expert Contributors are:

  • Tony Anagor ([twitter-follow screen_name=’lifestyledmc’])
  • Florian Mueck ([twitter-follow screen_name=’the7minutestar’])
  • Conor Neill (Me!) ([twitter-follow screen_name=’cuchullainn’])
  • Tobias Rodrigues ([twitter-follow screen_name=’conflictmentor’])
  • John Zimmer ([twitter-follow screen_name=’zimmerjohn’])

The Speaking Guru Interviews

Questions from You

What questions do you have for next year’s set of expert interviews?

What does Leadership mean to you?

Nitin Nohria, Dean of Harvard Business School will be speaking at IESE Business School in Barcelona next Monday 13th.

“It is my desire to inspire people of all ages and social demographics to think about leadership on a broad level, contemplate what it means to them and what individual impact they can have when it comes to leading,” Nitin Nohria.

What does Leadership mean to you?

As a simple reflection, I share 2 short poems:

The Serenity Prayer

(paraphrased by me…)

Give me the strength to change the things I can change;
The patience to accept the things I cannot change
and the wisdom to tell the difference.

Author: Reinhold Niebuhr, 1943

“I Wanted To Change The World”

When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world.

I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation.

When I found I couldn’t change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn’t change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family.

Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.

Author: Unknown Monk 1100 A.D.

Event Information

As the Harvard-IESE Committee celebrates its 50th Anniversary, IESE welcomes Harvard Business School Dean, Nitin Nohria, to speak to alumni at an exclusive session on January 13, 2014. Entitled, “Innovative Leadership: Learning from Asian Companies,” the session will be held at IESE’s Barcelona campus and organized by the Alumni Association. Registration is here.

Intentionality and Defiance

As I grow ever older, staying fit requires ever greater intention.  I sometimes wish to myself that it might be a little easier, but then quickly realise that this is my inner saboteur distracting me.

If you are going uphill then you are going towards success.  I so often want writing to become easier.  I live with the hope that if I really work at my fitness, at my writing: I will find that they become easier.  It does not work this way.  Eka told me that the better I get at something, the better my inner saboteur becomes.  I am wise enough to see through the excuses of 10 years ago, but now I have new, more sophisticated, more subtle, more dangerous excuses.

Photo Credit: DanieleCivello via Compfight cc

John Maxwell shares a story of a tree in a garden.  He says “if I take up my axe and swing at the tree, will I chop it down?”  Not in one blow, unless it is a very small tree.  In 5 blows? maybe?  If I go out every day and swing the axe at the tree, will the tree fall?  Yes.  When?  eventually.  Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow… but if I keep on chopping, the tree will fall.  It could be a Californian Sequoia, it could be a towering British Oak: if I keep on chopping, the tree will fall.  It doesn’t matter the quality of the blows, it doesn’t matter the strength in my arms: if I keep on chopping, the tree will fall.

If you want to be successful: do what you have to do to be successful.  Not what you want to do, not what you wish you could do, not what you feel like doing…  what you have to do.

What are the 5 things you have to do to be successful?  You don’t need a PhD to figure these out.

“If you are not growing, you are dying” Jim Rohn

If I don’t have a plan for growth, the natural is not to stay in good fit shape.  If you are not moving forward, it is likely that you are being left behind.

I do have a plan for growth.  I have a plan for health, a plan for writing, a plan for teaching.  However, in the last few weeks I have grown comfortable.  I have stopped doing what is hard and only done what is easy.  I have allowed my inner saboteur to move me off the uphill path.  I was hoping for some automation, some easing of the uphill journey.  My friend Florian says “only dead fish swim with the flow”.  To be alive, is to swim against the natural flow.

“The only thing automatic in life is death” John Maxwell

Life is simple.  We live for a short moment, and then we die.  It is easy to be hopeless in the face of this simple equation.  It is easy for me to tell myself that anything I do is meaningless.  It is easy for me to excuse myself from the hard work.  In the face of the equation of life, there is only one heroic response.

The heroic response to challenge: Defiance.

Defiance in the Face of Difficulty

I cannot control the external forces of my life.  I cannot control whether people read my writing or like my writing or learn from my writing.  I cannot control when I get ill.  I cannot control when those that I love suffer, get ill.

I can always control my reaction.  To react is to give up the heroic response.  To respond in a way that resonates with the best version of myself, to be defiant in the face of difficulty: this is the heroic response.

If you want to grow, you have to be intentional.  What’s your plan for growth? What do you do every day to ensure that you are growing?

Most people live their entire life and never plan to intentionally grow.

There are no secrets to success: You don’t have to do it all day.  You do have to do it every day.  The 20 mile march, daily progress.  I don’t get to brush my teeth 7 times on a Sunday to make up for not brushing Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday…

(PS You may have already guessed: the read audience for this post is myself, to make myself go for a run today)

70% of Organisational Change Efforts Fail. 8 Steps for Leading Change.

Photo Credit: John of Dublin via Compfight cc

70% of organisation change efforts fail.

John Kotter has an 8 step process that can reduce the likelihood that your project of organisational change (and all leadership projects mean some form of change the the existing status quo).

A big source of failure is starting action before you have put together a solid base of support and understanding before acting.

The 8-Step Process for Leading Change

  1. Establishing a Sense of Urgency – Help others see the need for change and they will be convinced of the importance of acting immediately.
  2. Creating the Guiding Coalition – Assemble a group with enough power to lead the change effort, and encourage the group to work as a team.
  3. Developing a Change Vision – Create a vision to help direct the change effort, and develop strategies for achieving that vision.
  4. Communicating the Vision for Buy-in – Make sure as many as possible understand and accept the vision and the strategy.
  5. Empowering Broad-based Action – Remove obstacles to change, change systems or structures that seriously undermine the vision, and encourage risk-taking and nontraditional ideas, activities, and actions.
  6. Generating Short-term Wins – Plan for achievements that can easily be made visible, follow-through with those achievements and recognize and reward employees who were involved.
  7. Never Letting Up – Use increased credibility to change systems, structures, and policies that don’t fit the vision, also hire, promote, and develop employees who can implement the vision, and finally reinvigorate the process with new projects, themes, and change agents.
  8. Incorporating Changes into the Culture – Articulate the connections between the new behaviors and organizational success, and develop the means to ensure leadership development and succession.

There is an excellent resource that goes into more detail for each stage at John Kotter’s website.

Leaders Go First. The First Steps on Learning Leadership.

Leadership: You Have to Go First.

I love this little Dilbert storyline from Scott Adams:

Employee: “I find it rather demotivating that you never praise me for a job well done.”
Boss: “You’ve never done a job well.”
Employee: “That’s because I’m demotivated.”
Boss: “You have to go first.”
Employee: “Wouldn’t that make me the Leader?”

The 1-minute Leader

Ken Blanchard’s popular and accesible book The One Minute Manager suggests that a leader does 3 things, in the following order:

  1. 1-Minute Praising: Hunt for something the person does well, and publicly praise them – immediate and specific positive praising on actions.  Praise the Person.
  2. 1-Minute Goal-Setting: Agree on goals (no more than 5) with staff. Make sure each goal is clearly written on a separate piece of paper and kept visible daily. Keep Goals limited and focussed.
  3. 1-Minute Reprimand: If the person has the skills to do something right, and it is not done right – in private let them know “I know you are a great person, but this behaviour/result is not up to your talent. Reprimand the Behaviour.

The 4 Most Important Traits of Leaders

Jim Kouzes has spent over 30 years asking millions of people “what do you admire in the leaders that inspire you?”.  He has compiled the information over many years into his bestselling book: The Leadership Challenge.

The top 4 traits that followers seek in leaders are:

  1. Honesty
  2. Competence
  3. Inspiring
  4. Forward Looking

Work harder on honesty

Honesty is 3 times more important than the rest of the top 4 traits combined.  There is no point in working on competence, inspiration or forward looking if people don’t now perceive you as honest, as trustworthy (Read: What is Trust?).  People hate it when a leader doesn’t play it straight with them.  People hate it when a leader doesn’t have the courage to speak the honest truth about their performance, about the state of the organization, about what is going on in the team.

Credibility is the Base

The traits honesty, competence and inspiring are really about perception more than any absolute.  It is not enough to just be honest, you need to be perceived as honesty by the group.  It is not enough to be competent, you need to be perceived as competent by the group.  It is not enough to spray out messages that you think are inspiring, you really need to be perceived as inspiring by others.

Forward Looking is the Leadership Differentiator

Credibility gives you the permission, but that alone does not make the leader.  You need to build an ability to create a shared vision of the future, a forward looking but real-feeling sense of direction for the group.  How can you do this?

There are 3 aspects to being able to share a forward looking vision.

  1. WIIFM: I show others how their long term interests can be realised
  2. Connect: I appeal to others to share an exciting dream
  3. Storytelling: I describe a compelling image of what our future could be like

The key here is not the ability to see the future, it is the ability to communicate it meaningfully and tangibly to the people around you.  The crystal ball is not as valuable as the ability to communicate persuasively.   (My free online course “Speak as A Leader” can help http://bit.ly/practicespeak )

Getting Started on Vision

How can you get started on the path to a better visionary leader?  If you do nothing more than go around you asking people these 4 questions you will become clear on what you can do to contribute.

4 questions for people around you:

  1. What’s working?
  2. What’s not working?
  3. What can be done?
  4. What else is on your mind?

If you do nothing more than ask these 4 questions repeatedly and reflect the answers back to the group, you will be leading.

Further Reading:

4 Great Posts on Communication and Leadership

How to Give a Killer Presentation

Chris Anderson, Owner of TED
Presentations rise or fall on the quality of the idea, the narrative, and the passion of the speaker. It’s about substance, not speaking style or multimedia pyrotechnics. It’s fairly easy to “coach out” the problems in a talk, but there’s no way to “coach in” the basic story—the presenter has to have the raw material. If you have something to say, you can build a great talk. But if the central theme isn’t there, you’re better off not speaking. Decline the invitation. Go back to work, and wait until you have a compelling idea that’s really worth sharing.  Read More

 

The Inconvienient Truth about Change Management –

McKinsey & Company
Conventional change management approaches have done little to change the fact that most change  programs fail. The odds can be greatly improved by a number of counterintuitive insights that take into account the irrational but predictable nature of how employees interpret their environment and choose to act.  Read More

 

11 Simple Concepts to Become a Better Leader

Dave Kerpen
All 11 concepts are simple, and yet, perhaps in the name of revenues or the bottom line, we often lose sight of the simple things – things that not only make us human, but can actually help us become more successful. Read More

 

5 Models for Leading Change

Tristan Wember
In this article we introduce five models for leading change. No single model isright. However, they all have something valuable on offer and can help us to navigate our way through complex organisational situations or circumstances.  Read More

3 Leadership Lessons from Carlos Ghosn

In the last issue of IESE Insight magazine, Carlos Ghosn offered three key lessons he has learned during his career.

Carlos Ghosn at IESE
  1. First, he said, “Every problem has a solution,” but business leaders have to be prepared to pay the personal or collective price that will come with a given solution.
  2. Second, things have to get worse before they get better. “It’s easier to improve a company in trouble than a company with an average performance,” he said.
  3. His third lesson was that “you learn management by doing” and nothing is as instructive as highly stressful situations. When faced with adversity, often “you cannot sleep, you cannot eat,” he said, but in the end, such situations are often what teach managers the most.

What lessons have you learnt?

What would you share?

Thanks to Sergio C. for alerting me to these wise words from Carlos Ghosn.

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