Posts Tagged ‘leadership skills’

A Checklist for Changing Me to Change Them

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.

 

The 7 Lies of Limiting Leadership

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!

 

Team Leadership - Lead Your Team, Don’t Manage It

Posted in Leadership, Management, Strategies, Team on 11/18/2009 03:09 pm by Kairology

Introduction by Ian Williams

Here’s a good article that has some good, simple hints and tips in leading teams. What often causes leadership to fail is allowing teamwork to go stale. It needs constant rejuvenation to keep motivation alive, and new thinking and ideas flowing.

Ian

Team Leadership -  Lead Your Team, Don’t Manage It by Andrew Gowans

Team management in the context of setting tasks, prioritizing, monitoring progress, agreeing and setting performance measures is all relatively straightforward.

If you don’t agree - get help now!

Let’s talk about your true value added, let’s talk about Leadership, Development, Empowerment and Having Fun

Being responsible for a team, large or small, is a serious business. Getting the best out of people takes creativity, guidance and perseverance.  If our team members lose focus, fail to achieve the group’s goals and objectives, we should be held accountable.  What am I saying?  You knew that when you took on the job.  Didn’t you?

Only you know your team (Or at least you should).

This article cannot comment on a special team situation you may have.  However, what it can do is focus on maximizing the benefit you get every time you get together with your team(s).

Examples of Spending Time Together:

Departmental Meetings

Task Force Special Project Team Training Session Workshops Team Briefing Product Review Customer Visits Focused Improvement Group

I’m sure you can add more.  However, you’ve guessed it - any setting where there is a sense of purpose, common goals, and a desire to achieve success by being part of your particular team.

Any of the above examples can be highly motivating, rewarding, and productive.  They can also be time consuming and costly.  Have you ever measured how much time you spend in a ‘team setting’?  Have you ever calculated the cost to the business?

Wasting time and resources is definitely one of my pet hates. And, yet, I’m probably as guilty as the next person  - losing focus, digressing, being reactive instead of proactive - even simply just having a bad day.

However, let’s keep things in perspective.

As a team, be single minded in achieving the common goals through that shared sense of Purpose and Direction, through that shared Vision BUT don’t get boring in the process.

For me, a key attribute of good leadership is having team members who

Enjoy being part of your team Have a strong desire to contribute Believe their contribution is valued Want to develop the team not just themselves Are recognized outside the team for their achievement Have fun

All of that isn’t as daunting as it may seem.

So, again, in the context of leadership and maximizing the value and benefit to be gained from a team setting, what are some of the positive things we can do as team leaders?

Suggestions

Publish agendas or session flows in advance with enough time for team members (including yourself) to prepare for that team session.  Why not invite inclusions to the agenda.

If the session is going to be a long one, break it up into manageable sections, take breaks.  Be creative, have some fun, do some exercises.  I personally would not go more than 50 minutes, an hour, before taking a break.

Introduce quick 15-20 minute training sessions any meaningful and contextual topic or theme. e.g. Giving and Receiving Feedback, Brainstorming, Setting S.M.A.R.T. Objectives. Empower team members by a) Have each team member prepare and deliver the training session and b) Have another team member facilitate the training session.

Deliberately have a non-context topic or theme on the agenda but, again, one that will add value and benefit participants - e.g. invite a technical expert or different functional / departmental head to give a 15-20 minute presentation on what and why they do what they do (This can be as good as having an actual break).

Before the formal session starts, get each team member to ‘dump’ - get rid of all the stuff in their head that’s going to prevent them from focusing on the task(s) in hand. Caution team members need to feel safe and comfortable to do this.  It also needs to be carefully led so it does not get out of control.  Most importantly, it needs to comply with the team’s agreed ground rules that were set at the formation of the team.

Continually develop individuals - give others the opportunity to prepare and publish the agenda for the next team session, empower them to lead and facilitate the session and to write the follow-up review afterwards (apart from anything else, it gives you a rest! ).  Further development can be achieved by inviting other team members to provide constructive feedback - with the knowledge that they too will be given the same developmental opportunity and will also be receiving ‘constructive’ feedback.

Have fun and celebrate successes.  Take time out, have a bbq, have a picnic, supply the supper when the team session’s a late one.

Lead by example at all times. Show the team that your business, their business is a serious one with specific goals and expected results BUT the best way to achieve success is through ongoing individual and team development, empowering others to succeed and having fun along the way.

*****

Andrew has over 20 years experience providing personal and business coaching specialising in strategic planning, continuous improvement, personal development and lifelong learning.

Providing a focused problem solving approach through our personal and business coaching (especially to small businesses). Our primary theme and overriding goal is to provide you with the right choices that fit your needs, solve your problems.

Want to discuss any of these articles further - no problem.

The quickest way to contact Andrew is to visit his internet marketing website, http://www.youraffiliatecoach.com and click on the “Your Request Form” button on the navbar.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?Team-Leadership—-Lead-Your-Team,-Dont-Manage-It&id=223864

 

Twelve Strategic Leadership Actions To Fire Up Your Employees During Change

Posted in Leadership, Strategies, Team Building on 04/03/2009 07:38 am by Kairology

By Glenn Ebersole

Many people and their companies they work for fear and resist change.  Some literally detest any change.  It is very important to realize that with the application of some solid strategic thinking, change can be a catalyst to energize and fire up your employees.  One needs to recognize that change has the ability to open doors, hears and minds that otherwise may remain closed and/or locked forever.

After reading the first paragraph I imagine some of the readers thinking, “that is easier said than done.”  So, what is the key to leveraging the dynamic of change into a charged up workforce?  One of the most important keys is to find out people’s point of need during change and that build a burning desire of commitment from them because you are meeting those needs.

Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach is a change agent and has learned many lessons from coaching through change.  After reviewing those lessons learned from the business coaching experience, here are 12 strategic leadership actions recommended to fire up your employees during change.

  • Strategic Leadership Action #1:  Be a strategic thinker and use the power of strategic thinking to identify the needs of your employees during change.
  • Strategic Leadership Action #2:  Develop a Strategic Action Plan for the changes and share it with your employees.
  • Strategic Leadership Action #3:  Engage the power and advice of a business coach, mentor or other outside trusted advisor.
  • Strategic Leadership Action #4:  Display passion in your commitment to the change.  You must “walk the talk” and exhibit the passion every day.
  • Strategic Leadership Action #5:  Facilitate and celebrate achievements.  Leaders need to be engaged in facilitating the change and also be consistent promoters of celebrating the success of achievement throughout the change process.
  • Strategic Leadership Action #6:  Honor and acknowledge everyone’s value to your business.  This should be done verbally and in writing.  And it should also be done in public and in private, as appropriate.
  • Strategic Leadership Action #7:  Empower each employee to do his or her work and provide everyone with some leadership responsibility over a segment of the change.
  • Strategic Leadership Action #8:  Promote the inclusion, rather than exclusion, of employees so they gain a sense of really belonging to the team and to the company.
  • Strategic Leadership Action #9:  Always focus on achieving measurable goals that will provide proof of accomplishments and will build momentum to reaching the next goal.
  • Strategic Leadership Action #10:  Create an environment that fosters a spirit of “we” rather than “me.”
  • Strategic Leadership Action #11:  Create performance based compensation systems so employees can “get a piece of the action” and gain a sense of ownership.
  • Strategic Leadership Action #12:  Develop a zero tolerance for an attitude of no commitment or even a weak commitment to agreed to expectations.

Your strategic thinking business coach encourages you to fully realize the benefits of business coaching to strategically lead and manage change in your business.  If you would like to learn more about how a strategic thinking business coach can facilitate and guide you in that endeavor, please contact Glenn Ebersole today through his website at www.businesscoach4u.com or by email at jgecoach@aol.com

Glenn Ebersole, Jr. is a multi-faceted professional, who is recognized as a visionary, guide and facilitator in the fields of business coaching, marketing, public relations, management, strategic planning and engineering.  Glenn is the Founder and Chief Executive of two Lancaster, PA based consulting practices:  The Renaissance Group, a creative marketing, public relations, strategic planning and business development consulting firm  and J. G. Ebersole Associates, an independent professional engineering, marketing, and management consulting firm. He is a Certified Facilitator and serves as a business coach and a strategic planning facilitator and consultant  to a diverse list of clients.   Glenn is also the author of a monthly newsletter, “Glenn’s Guiding Lines – Thoughts From Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach” and has published more than 240 articles on business.

To find out more about the benefits & rewards of effectively working with a strategic thinking business coach, please contact Glenn Ebersole through his web site at http://www.businesscoach4u.com or  jgecoach@aol.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?Twelve-Strategic-Leadership-Actions-To-Fire-Up-Your-Employees-During-Change&id=595564

 

How To Focus Your Mind For Success!

Posted in Leadership, Mind Management, Personality & Style on 03/29/2009 12:07 pm by Kairology

by Steve Betsworth

Success

Success is what everyone wants, but how can you get it. There are three key strategies to ensure your road to success. You first need to acknowledge that as the cliché states, ‘Success doesn’t happen overnight.” Success is a process and not a singular event in time, so you must embrace the journey of discovery that is the finding your own personal recipe for success, success is something that once you think you have obtained, you can go on developing, so it is also not a destination. Success is about growing as a person, so you need to go through that process, which may take time and patience. Acquiring skills and traits that attract success is part of the process and expanding your skills base will only lead to personal and even spiritual growth. Prepare yourself for success. You must be ready to travel the road. As long you recognise that it is a process then you can better adjust for disappointments along the way, which there will be. But once you start seeing the benefits of your personal investment, you will recognise that you are starting to success in attaining your goals.

Leadership 

By fine tuning your leadership skills you stand a significantly increased chance of achieving tangible success in the workplace. Here are a few tips on how to improve your personal leadership attributes. There are always lessons to be learned from every situation, and if you can focus on those learned form previous experiences the next time something happens, then your personal performance will improve each time. Sharpen the performance of your people. People are the most important part of any organisation and time spent maximising their potential is time that is rarely wasted. An employee who feels valued will work harder for you and the company. Clear communication is the key to maximising time and performance. If people know what you want then they will deliver a better produce, mixed messages make for an unpleasant atmosphere is uncertainty. Clearer communication will improve the self-confidence of those around you to perform better. 

Attraction is important

If you want other people, employees and clients, to like you, then you have to begin to like yourself first. Being liked is important no matter what you think. You are less likely to get the contract if they people on the other side of the desk don’t like you. This does not mean pander to them and appear weak, it means being genuinely self-confident in your reflections on your own self. The key to success here is reading the other people and treating them as you would like to be treated yourself. As you build self confidence in this area, you will see your success increasing proportionally. Don’t think that all people will like you, all of the time, this simply won’t happen. If someone appears not to like you, it may have nothing to do with you as a person; it may merely be a misconception of the environment you are working in. Focus on the positives and make them work for you.

About the Author

Steve Betsworth is an Internet Marketer who runs a website which currently offers a free five day e-course and an introductory video which explains not only the principles in this article in more detail, but more methods of finding success. The website is wealthmindmap.com