By Ian A. Williams
I’m not absolutely sure who said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. (According to Wikipedia the saying is thought to have originated with St Bernard of Clairvaux), but I’m sure there’s truth in it, provided of course that hell is a place you don’t want to be. Intentions are of course driven by ideas and thinking, and sometimes by our heartfelt desires. But very often they stop there, and never become a reality in the actions we take. When life goes awry, or something surprising happens, we need to stop and think. Why did that happen? Why did I say something that hurt someone else? It’s not what I intended! In those circumstances, we need to work backwards: OK so that was the effect……..how did I behave?………is that what I intended?
Intentions are worth nothing unless they are translated in how we behave, and to the effect or result we want to see. It boils down to your purpose, and the commitments you make to live that purpose. Winners in life often check out that what they are committed to actually works through into reality, and when things go wrong they work out why. Losers in life don’t bother, but tend to just muddle through injuring themselves and others in the process. They may be innocently oblivious to it all, or perhaps they just don’t care! But either way, there’s plenty of mayhem to see, when and if they bother to look over their shoulder at the results.
So what and who are you really committed to? How are your commitments related to your purpose in life, and how is all of that evident in your day to day life? These are small questions that require big answers. That’s why working on your personal leadership is so challenging!
Why not make 2012 the year in which you begin to consciously look at how your commitments translate, and the impact you have in life. Use the 7 of Hearts simple tool contained in the Kairology programme. This card takes you through commitment and you’ll be amazed at the results. As a taster here are some coaching questions to help your thinking and change:
Posted in Leadership, Mind Management, Personal Development on 06/09/2010 10:29 am by Kairology
Introduction by Ian Williams
I recently came across this very challenging checklist in an article, but could not find who wrote it. If anyone knows, please tell me! Whoever it was has really given us all some interesting things to think about. I have just purchased a new business in the hospitality industry, taking on a new team of about 15 people, plus my own three sons! In setting up a family business, including non-family employees, it will an interesting time for me to demonstrate as a leader what I expect of other leaders! See how you measure up on this lot!
Ian
A Checklist for Changing Me to Change Them
“The cruelest lies are often told in silence.” Robert Lewis Stevenson, 19th century Scottish poet, novelist, and essayist
We can’t build a team or organization that’s different from us. We can’t make them into something we’re not. Failing to follow this principle is the single biggest reason that so many team and organization change and improvement efforts flounder or fail. The changes and improvements we try to make to others must ring true to the changes and improvements we’re also trying to make to ourselves. The following is a checklist:
Are You Trying to Make Your Organization or Team Into Something You’re Not?
To What Extent am I:
- Attempting to change my organization or team without changing myself?
- Prodding my organization to be more people (customer/partner) focused when I am a Technomanager (driven by management systems and technology)?
- Driving for industry or market leadership when I am afflicted with the Pessimism Plague and/or Victimitis Virus?
- Striving to stimulate and energize others when I am not passionate about my own role and life’s work?
- Promoting organization or team vision, values, and mission when my own picture of my preferred future, principles, and purpose aren’t clear and/or well aligned with where I am trying to lead others.
- Pushing for a customer-driven organization while controlling and dominating, rather than serving (servant-leadership)?
- Aspiring to develop new markets and fill unmet needs while spending limited time with customers, partners, or those serving them?
- Trying to build a learning organization when my own rate of personal growth and development is low?
- Declaring the urgency of higher levels of innovation while I stick to familiar personal methods and traditional command and control management approaches?
- Aiming for disciplined organization or team goal and priority setting when I am not well organized, a poor personal time manager, and fuzzy about my own goals and priorities?
- Setting organization improvement plans without an improvement process of my own?
- Promoting teamwork and a team-based organization without providing a personal model of team leadership and team effectiveness in action?
- Supporting high levels of skill development for everyone else?
- Forcing accountability, performance appraisal, and measurement on others while I defend, avoid, or half-heartedly gather personal feedback?
- Proclaiming empowerment and involvement while controlling and limiting people with a centralized structure and systems that constrain rather than support?
- Talking about the need for better communications without becoming a strong and compelling communicator?
- Establishing formal reward and recognition programs when my personal habits of giving sincere recognition and showing genuine appreciation are weak?
- Espousing support for change champions while suppressing “off the wall” behaviour and pushing people to follow my plans and stay within in my established system?
- Advocating reviews and assessments while doing little personal reflection and contemplation?
What do my answers tell me about my leadership? Does this exercise help explain the positive, negative, or so-so results of the team and organization improvement efforts I lead? My reflections are important, but an even better source of feedback are the people on my team or those in my organization who know my leadership behaviour well enough to give me some feedback. Ironically (and tragically), managers who need it most the weakest leaders are the least likely to ask for this kind of feedback.
Posted in Ian’s Articles, Personal Development, Personality & Style on 02/23/2010 08:50 am by Kairology
Last month I left you with some thoughts about the common lies around leadership, and how they impact on people and business. As promised, here is the other side of the coin – the truths that underpin good leadership.
The 7 Truths of Liberating Leadership by Ian A. Williams
This article was published in NZ Business Magazine Jan/Feb 2010
In business and life, we are always on the lookout for key information to help us with leadership. I believe is keeping this simple rather than looking for over-complex solutions to relatively simple issues. My passion for good leadership often leads me to observe and reflect on what happens in the workplace for individuals and teams. I listen out for success, quality and enjoyment, and have collected some common threads of successful leadership, which I have summarised as the seven truths of liberating leadership.
1. The focus of leadership comes from the heart
While management comes primarily from intellect and thinking, leadership is governed from the heart – using the head of course! Leadership is driven from values and spiritual core, and from real self. Emotional intelligence is also more akin to leadership, while IQ more akin with management thinking. You carry in your heart what drives your head, and carry in your head what drives the heart. Both are important and need exercise. Using both demonstrates balance.
2. The drive for results is often the wrong focus
While results and outcomes are essential, the route to reaching them can often be misunderstood. Task focus will keep minds on the goal, but without ‘people-thinking’ a dead horse is being flogged! What really gets results is focus on the individuals and team; people are the route to achieving anything. It seems obvious, so why do so many leaders and managers overlook it constantly. John Adair’s action-centred leadership model demands the need for balance between task, team and individual. This provides the integrity for success.
3. Leadership is a journey, not simply a skill set for the individual and the team
The word leadership is derived from an ancient word associated with taking a journey. Ancient people used this work in connection with planning a route over land, or a course across the seas. This implies heading for what was unknown territory, with a mysterious adventure to be had. That required huge vision, imagination and faith. That’s the excitement and terror that leadership can produce.
4. Calm, humble, servant leadership is king
When you really think hard about the best leaders you’ve ever known or heard of, who did good things for the planet, a nation, a cause, or just a damn good job, you will find they are all likely to have one thing in common. That is a sense of humility and calm in their leadership. The best leadership role models are likely to be those serving others, and serving their cause. That’s how they get people on board, and that’s how they become loved and respected. It’s a key part of what we now call engagement. Calmness of spirit in a leader promotes trust and confidence in followers. They make leadership look so natural that they create leaders from their followers. Being calm is not always being quiet; good communication is always key but calm leaders are often inspirational in a way that followers think they thought of an idea themselves. The humility of the leader lets them carry on thinking they did!
5. Leadership needs to be simple and common
As one of the most sought after qualities in humanity, leadership is a big subject. The Google statistics for leadership, and aspect of it, are vast. It’s so big a subject that people are often baffled by it, and fearful of aspiring to leadership. The good news is that leadership can be very simple, and is for everyone. Many who aspire to leadership forget that they are already leading themselves, and those closest to them. And if they are not, they should be! Leading yourself is the only safe place to practice, and practice makes perfect! Let’s get out of denial, and out of limiting ourselves. Lead yourself as if you were leading someone else – with respect and tolerance. Everyone leading themselves and others (if only by example) makes leadership a very common activity – and so it should be!
6. What people carry with them from childhood and teens is always with them, and surfaces in crisis and pressure
Adults are just children who grew up – some more than others. And while we think we left our happy and sad memories and experiences behind, we carry them with us constantly and unconsciously, in who we are, what we do, and how we respond. The best thing we can do with all that stuff is to let go what needs letting go, and face up to what has to stay. And whether it’s happy or sad, or whatever emotion it raises, let’s use it positively in our leadership now. Let’s also recognise that everyone else is carrying stuff too, so give them some room. If you want to be an exceptional leader, and a great human being, take no interest in who people are, and especially if you’d like them to follow you.
7. The heart of one person determines a whole culture
This is the responsibility that comes with leadership. Whether a leader of a huge organisation, a few dozen people, your family, or even just yourself, recognise that the heart that drives the blood through your body is the heart that drives your spirit. How you lead your thinking, your responses and your outcomes has a ripple effect on everyone else. So do it all with care. Everyone in an organisation or family has an impact on culture, but the one person at the top – on whom everyone else is focused – will have the biggest stone and make the biggest ripple. The ripple response in responsibility!
These seven aspects of leadership are contagious. If you lead an organisation or team, or even yourself, with these characteristics being evident, congratulate yourself for being exceptional, and go all out for continuous improvement. If this doesn’t sound like your experience, start work on these aspects now, and look forward to reaping the benefits. Happy people make happy and productive teams.
©Kairos Development Ltd. 2009 - All rights reserved
Posted in Ian’s Articles, Leadership, Personal Development on 01/07/2010 03:40 pm by Kairology
This month, I’m looking at the common lies around leadership, and how they impact on people and business. Next month I’ll be publishing the related truths of good leadership.
The 7 Lies of Limiting Leadership by Ian A Williams
This article was published in NZ Business Magazine Jan/Feb 2010
Too many people fall short of their potential in the leadership game, and also fail to enable or enhance the leadership of others. Ian Williams provides an interesting insight into some of the barriers to great leadership. In this issue, Ian shares with us his belief about some of the common lies about leadership, and in the next issue we follow this up with his account of the seven truths.
My passion for good leadership often leads me to observe and reflect on what happens in the workplace for individuals and teams. I listen out for comments and frustrations, and have concluded that there are some common misunderstandings about leadership issues, which I have summarised as the seven lies of leadership.
1. I’m not a leader
The person who thinks they are not a leader is in denial, and has missed the point about leadership. Everyone is leading someone - whether or not they know it, recognise it or want it. Even if we are on the same level, we lead our colleagues in some respects. We may lead projects, team tasks, or even a staff outing! We also lead our children and others among our families and friends. At the very least, we leave ourselves - or at least we should! Our only limit on personal leadership is what we put in place for ourselves, or how we allow others to limit us.
2. They (or I) have been trained
The magic land of training is where organisations send people for a few days, and expect them to come back as leaders. A whole host of courses and events, or any kind of qualification, doesn’t make a leader. Training and development will inspire people, inform them, give them practice, provide experiential learning, build confidence, build competence and skills - but all of this will not produce a leader. Too often I go into organisations, and they struggle to understand why their trained leaders are not leading effectively, despite the huge investment made. No human being can be fully trained in leadership, because it comes from within, and needs to be drawn out by line managers and others who are willing to coach people and give them the space to lead. As part of one-to-one coaching, they build experience and confidence and nurture the leader.
3. There’s a personality clash
This is one of the most wonderful leadership cop outs. While personalities do clash to some extent, and ‘problem people’ do exist, the challenge is to deal with it, rather than use it as an excuse for effective leadership. Leaders are accountable for their own relationships, and the relationships around them. They need to rise to that challenge and find strategies for having people work together. Too much time and money is wasted in avoidance, and in living with the consequences of poor relationships. Get people focused back on the goals, find specific reasons to their difficulties, and facilitate finding and implementing the solutions. If necessary get some help, but making work, rather than listen to excuses.
4. They won’t step up
This is often the concern of senior managers who feel that either their people will not step up to lead, or that they fail to step up to strategic leadership from operational. The key to this one is identifying the blocks. Is it a question of won’t or can’t? Are they willing? Are they capable? Are they confident? In my experience the ‘won’t’ part of this question is the lie. If the block is about skills, abilities, and/or confidence, it falls back on the senior leader to coach. Sometimes, it’s a case of making clear to people what you see as strategic versus operational. Ironically, the most common cause for people not stepping up is senior people holding them down. They too often hold on to strategic issues for themselves, tell people what the decision is, and then wonder why everyone is frustrated! If you want to grow strategic leaders, involve them in strategic leadership.
5. Not a people person
How does anyone walk the earth and deny being a people person. People are everywhere, and we can’t avoid them. And if we want to get anywhere with anyone, getting along with people isn’t a luxury but a necessity. So unless you’re a hermit, or you’re in denial of your leadership role, you have to get on with people. You have to employ others who do this too. If someone is described as not a people person, they need to be given the feedback and required to do something about it, in order to lead themselves and other people. The key here is identifying the specific behaviour that causes the person to think this of themselves, or for it to be attributed to them. Then they need to do some self coaching will be coached. There are three aspects to balanced leadership: task, team and individual. If the leader is not a people person, they are missing two-thirds of their job; so in fact, they are not a leader but a person who just does jobs.
6. It’s not my style
We read about and experience all sorts of leadership styles. There is no right or wrong, they are just different. Any leadership style becomes inappropriate if it is used in the wrong way, in the wrong circumstances, or at the wrong time. That is of course the essence of situational leadership. An effective leader is able to use a range of styles appropriately. They fool themselves, and everyone else suffers, when they are attached to one favourite style, come what may. You will have met the constant bully, the habitual delegator, and the absentee. Adopting just one style is simply me centred, and the leader has to listen, learn and adjust if they are to motivate people and achieve tasks. They need to model a range of styles, so that others are learning from how they operate practically. After all, what is at stake if you have a leader who is not leading effectively?
7. Know it all, done it all
We’ve all met the magic leaders who have made it! We had better sit and listen to them, and sit back while they either do it themselves or give the orders! Who are they fooling with this lie? Individuals and teams are always different. Situations, resources, tasks and circumstances are always different. No season is the same; there is no constancy but there is always change. We all bring our experience and knowledge, we bring the benefit of wisdom, but we still need a refreshing quantity and quality of ideas, and the excitement of discovering something new together. It’s this sense of contribution to creativity and synergy that keeps people engaged. No one has the monopoly on knowledge, wisdom, ideas and solutions. The know-it-all leader is living a lie and fools no one but themselves. Don’t stand for their robbery.
I hope that some of these resonate with your own experience, and that you have found some ways to overcome the lies, and to stand up for the truths. Let’s stop kidding ourselves with all the hype about leadership, and get some of the simple things sorted out for ourselves and those we influence!
