Linked 2 Leadership

June 2013
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On Leadership, Humility and Authentic Spiritual Leadership

Posted on June 17, 2013 by Leonard Doohan

Corruption, greed, and addiction to power and control over others ooze from the pseudo-leadership of so many contemporary leaders.

Adding insult to injury is that most of these people actually think they are virtuous. But everyone else around knows differently.

Authentic Spiritual Leadership

And yet, it is clear to anyone who studies authentic spiritual leadership that it is not based on power but on humility. This is a new model, a totally different way of thinking about leadership. This is the leadership of those who are aware of their vocation—they know they have not earned their leadership; it has been given to them.

Unfortunately, so many go through life today convinced that leadership is power.

Such superficial people fail to grasp the ultimate meaning of life or their own true destiny within the context of human development. There is no role in leadership today for arrogant, narcissistic people who emphasize their own self-importance, status, prestige, and power. One great mistake is at the root of all failed leadership—pride, and its constant focusing on self.

Leading With Honor

It is frequently the case that a leader has a place of honor in community, and he or she usually exceeds followers in many areas of organizational life with its interpersonal and task oriented skills. ‘

But such leaders should not exaggerate their own importance but rather insist on the importance of others and their gifts.

Leadership ultimately implies self-surrender, interpreting one’s meaning in life in the broader context of human development. Being able to appreciate the mystery of life and leadership as gifts helps one to be humble, to be one’s authentic self, to honestly know one’s strengths and weaknesses, and to engender genuine respect for others and their gifts.

Humility in Leadership

Humility in leadership is a recognition of one’s humanity and place in community. We are not in this world for our personal enhancement but to live and grow in solidarity with others. We are all struggling and striving to grow, and equally share in a spirituality of failure just as much as in one of mutual enrichment.

Even in our personal journey of spiritual leadership we can give ourselves permission to be less than perfect, as we experience insecurity, failure, and poverty.

Humility gives us the ability to bounce back, try again, experiment with fresh ideas, and stand up to resistance.

Humility helps us have faith, hope, and love in others, and especially in ourselves. Often there is more wisdom and courage in dealing humbly with failure than in expecting success all the time. Moreover, we learn so much in our humility that can help us in dealing with others. This is the paradox of leadership that our failures become successes, our weaknesses become strengths, and our own pain can teach us how to heal others.

Really Appreciating Others

Humility will teach us to appreciate others, to be more accountable, to keep a just perspective on efforts and results. It teaches us never to judge others without first judging ourselves. Humility reminds us not to belittle others, or criticize them, or to fail to give others our undivided attention. It insists we should not be pre-occupied with ourselves, to play favorites with others, to make distinctions based on status, or to embarrass people around us.

Above all humility teaches us to trust others, to practice integrity, to be open to improvement, and to be sincere in everything we do.

From the very start of one’s leadership of others one must be ready to live with an honest vulnerability. The leader recognizes that leadership is a gift and is always aware of his or her own weak and lonely experience of self. He or she knows there is strength in discipline but also in honest vulnerability.

Not About Power

Leadership is not a way to power over others but a call to nurture the gifts of others. It means letting go of the desire to be always right, or to always have the answers. Successful leaders who admit their mistakes clearly earn more respect from their followers than do those who unsuccessfully try to hide them.

Some mistakes cause pain to others, but a good leader can acknowledge wrongdoing and genuinely apologize.

However, the leader also experiences the pain of failure without becoming insecure, and he or she can bounce back from suffering with an appreciation of how other people feel in times of hardship. Each one must ask if he or she is comfortable or afraid to let others see his or her leadership weaknesses. Of course, if a leader cannot accept his or her own limitations, he or she will probably have more difficulty accepting the limitations of others.

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Learn, Grow & Develop Other Leaders™

——————–

Dr. Leonard Doohan is an author and workshop presenter
He focuses on issues of spiritual leadership
Email | LinkedIn | Web | Blog

Image Sources: media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com

Leadership Begins With Humility (graemeo28librarianbiker.wordpress.com)
Authentic leadership – just for saints? (angelasabinexecutivelifecoaching.wordpress.com)
the power of humility (awakenedleadership.wordpress.com)

Filed under: Authentic Leadership, Life Balance, Servant Leadership, Values-Based Leadership | Tagged: business, failure, Humility, leadership, Management | Leave a Comment »

Hey Leaders: People Are People

Posted on June 13, 2013 by Rich Bishop

It’s important to see that people are people. Sounds like an easy concept, doesn’t it?

But it’s not!

On Leadership And Empathy

Viewing people as people means that we understand that others have feelings, we care for them, and we understand that they have needs. When you feel great about your relationships, you intuitively know these things, don’t you?

Your wife has feelings, you love her with all your heart, and you do what you can to meet her needs. You take out the trash like you’re supposed to, you buy flowers for her birthday… you pour yourself into her. It’s pretty obvious that you truly do see her as a special person.

So the other day on your way to work, how did you look at the guy who cut you off in traffic? Chances are pretty good that he may have been on the receiving end of your horn, a selective finger or two, and a few choice four-letter words.

Did you see him as a person? I doubt it.

I bet that you saw him:

As an obstacle to what you had to do for the day
As a jerk
As an idiot
As as a danger
As anything but a person who has feelings, issues, troubles, and needs, didn’t you?

It’s ok to admit it… it happens to me too.

The reality is that we see the people closest to us as the special people that they are. But the people that we don’t necessarily have a tie to can become just a “thing” in our minds. Other people tend to become a tool that we measure whether they are helping us achieving our goals, preventing us from achieving our goals, or just noise in the background.

However, these “things” are special people with their own set of issues, feelings, and agendas.

What Are Their Intentions?

What if you knew that man who cut you off was rushing to see his wife in the hospital because she was in a serious accident? Would that change your mind about him cutting you off? Maybe you would have even let him go? You see, we all have our own agendas near and dear to our hearts, but we tend to forget that other people do too.

We will often view people based on how they fit our agenda – if they fit, then we care for them; if they don’t, they’re just getting in our way.

We are all guilty of judging people by their actions and not by their intentions. Those actions can hurt us or let us down. However, we tend to judge ourselves based on our intentions. How many times have you said, “I didn’t mean to do that. What I was trying to do was…”?

If we truly want to be judged by our intentions, we have to start judging others by theirs.

No One is “Below” You

We are also guilty of fitting people into some sort of an importance hierarchy. Depending on where we see ourselves, our hierarchy may look something like this:

Level 7: The President
Level 6: Me
Level 5: Executives
Level 4: Clerks and assistants
Level 3: Those pesky teenagers in the neighborhood
Level 2: Labor workers
Level 1: The homeless

It seems somewhat absurd when it’s written out that way, doesn’t it? But I know that I’m not the only one that has looked at people with this in my heart. This is exactly what happens when we look at people as “things” in our lives or pieces that fit our agendas.

No one is below you! And, for that matter, no one is above you!

Every single person on that list is a person. There is not a single one on that list that deserves to be placed in the box that we’ve put them in.

It’s About What’s in Your Heart

What is in your heart is what determines how you will see the people around you. If you truly love people, you will naturally see them on a level playing field with yourself, no matter where they may fall in someone else’s pecking order.

Their job doesn’t matter
Their income doesn’t matter
Their looks don’t matter

But what does matter is that they are people. They are just as special as you are, with their own talents and treasures to offer the world. Having the compassion to see people as they really are can make the difference between being a leader of people and just being productive with your own to-do list.

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Image Source: dudu.com

Are These the 7 Key Difference Between Effective and Ineffective Leaders? (business2community.com)
Servant Leader 101 (projecteve.com)
5 Ways We Disappoint as Servant Leaders (and Disengage the People We Want to Serve) (servetransformlead.wordpress.com)

Filed under: Emotionally Intelligent Leadership, Practical Steps to Influence, Servant Leadership, Values-Based Leadership | Tagged: business, leadership, Management, soft skills, trust | 6 Comments »

On Leadership and The Lifecycle of Mentoring

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Madan Mewari

Mentoring is an enormously effective and an irreplaceable way to grow people, teams, and organizational health. If done poorly, it can be a waste of time. But if done properly, it can be one of your organization’s most effective and least expensive training tools.

The key to an effective mentoring undertaking is to understand the lifecycle of mentoring.

Mentoring: The Big Picture

The lifecycle of a mentor/mentee relationship is this: Reaching a state when both the parties are ‘mentors’ in a mutually beneficial mentorship bond.

men·tor·ing [ méntəring ]

According to Wikipedia:

“Mentoring is a process for the informal transmission of knowledge, social capital, and the psychosocial support perceived by the recipient as relevant to work, career, or professional development; mentoring entails informal communication, usually face-to-face and during a sustained period of time, between a person who is perceived to have greater relevant knowledge, wisdom, or experience (the mentor) and a person who is perceived to have less (the protégé)”.

I am a big believer of the well-known quote from Benjamin Franklin:

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”

In my opinion, mentorship is among the best ways to groom the talent where mentor identifies the strengths of the mentee and provides guidance, support & motivation and also works as a critic appropriately.

Personal Experience

I have been part of some very successful mentor-mentee relationships where I have played the role of mentor in some cases and of mentee in some other cases. These experiences have helped me to learn a lot about mentor-mentee relationship and to become a better professional.

From two of the very successful mentor-mentee relationships, one is going on for over six years and other for over four years; I have observed a sequence in interactions and activities that looks like the lifecycle of a successful mentor-mentee relationship.

Lifecycle of Mentoring Relationship

Awareness

This stage is generally led by the mentor and lot many questions are asked for assessing the professional background of mentee, skills, aspirations, any known strengths and improvement areas related to professional experience area or related to human behavior.

Mentor shares his/her experience and expertise summary, also talks about couple of success stories where ‘someone’ similar to the mentee was primary contributor.

This continues for couple of more sessions. Focus is on ‘knowing each other.’

Sharing

Mentor shares more information (e.g. URLs, documents, books), connects the mentee with relevant people. Mentor also uncovers unknown (i.e. not stated by the mentee) strengths and improvement areas and shares with mentee.

Guidance is limited to specific areas mentee wants to know about. Focus is on ‘knowledge’ or ‘building the knowledge of the mentee.’

Planning

At this stage, mentor also discovers the interest areas of the mentee. Mentee seeks guidance from mentor for aligning interest areas, strengths and professional career. Long term goals get discussed and planned. Scope of discussion is much larger that the limited scope of assignment mentee is working on.

One of the examples I am quoting, where my mentee was working in a role without direct customer interaction.

She was doing quite well in her role, but was interested in playing a role requiring direct customer interaction and she had the capability.
I recommended her to move to a new role that was in ‘consulting’ area and required the candidate to work directly with customers but also required her to learn some ‘niche’ skills.
I shared some documents with her to understand what is needed in ‘consulting’ role and provided some guidance on how to switch into the new role.
She took up the role as a challenge and was very successful.

Interaction

Mentee takes over the communication and starts asking questions related to completeness, quality and effectiveness of the plan made during last stage. Planning moves from tactical to strategic points.

Both of them learn number of new things by researching and continuous interactions. Scope of discussion is beyond defined subjects. Mentor is confident in involving the mentee to strategic and larger goals of the organization and aspirations of mentee and self.

I want to share one of the experiences where I had involved my mentee in working on a business plan for a strategic unit.

I spent a couple of hours over 2-3 days to guide her and explain what is needed, what are sources for inputs, process etc.
I was surprised to see the first output after a week. It was of great quality.
Output got better and better over next few weeks and finally became the essential part of the business plan.

This was her first experience of working on a business plan and she did an outstanding job. Sometime later I asked her the question – what made her come up with such a wonderful plan?

She told me that she got a new perspective while understanding the alignment of our business plan with the strategy of the organization. She was highly motivated to do a great job.

She contributed to my business plan for next 3 years and every time she surprised me with the output.

Role-Reversal

Time comes when mentor learns more from mentee. Mentor learns from how mentee is performing the activities because mentee is primarily executing the plan and faces new situations and challenges every day.

Mentee shares experiences and mentor questions both for self-learning as well as to guide the mentee further.

Mentee is prepared to play the role of mentor for others as well as for the mentor. Mentor starts recommending mentee as mentor for other people.

Engaging

This is the stage when mentor and mentee graduate to a level where they start discussing and discovering lot of new areas that result into innovation. They come up with new ideas and theories and experiment. There is a lot of learning for both the parties at this stage.

Engaging is a continuous process. Focus is on ‘innovation.’

Modeling Mentorship

This lifecycle is not like a waterfall, but mentor and mentee keep on jumping into different stages based on the context and the expected outcome.

I like to call this model as ‘ASPIRE’ that stands for Awareness, Sharing, Planning, Interaction, Role-reversal & Engaging.

Aspire means directing one’s hopes or ambitions toward achieving something difficult and higher. Since mentoring requires mentor to help mentee be successful in achieving challenging goals, ‘ASPIRE’ as the name of model fits quite well here.

I am keen to explore this model further with the help of inputs coming from other leaders. Have you experienced similar or different lifecycle in other successful mentor-mentee relationships? Please do share your thoughts and experiences.

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———————
Madan Mewari is the Global Head for Delivery and Operations of eDynamic LLC
He has a wealth of experience in Building Large & High Performance Teams
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Web

Image Sources: digitalmarketingmentor.co.uk

Building a Mentor-Mentee Relationship (realworldmentors.wordpress.com)
Mentoring Best Practices (luminadvantage.wordpress.com)

Filed under: Coaching Corner, Leadership Lessons Learned, Leading & Developing Other Leaders, Professional Development | Tagged: leadership, mentee, mentor, Mentorship, organizational development, Talent Management | 4 Comments »

Edward Snowden: Courageous Leader, or Lack of Morals and Accountability?

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Lee Ellis

Edward Snowden

As a former POW in the camps of North Vietnam, I think my comrades and I saw the purest example of leadership possible. Our senior leaders put their country and their teammates above their own well-being to fulfill their obligations under the law and their sacred trust of being a leader.

In the camps, life and death were at stake, but all leaders hold sway over the destiny of others.

It seems as though we’re seeing the opposite example of pure leaders (poor leadership) highlighted in the media right now, and most of it relates to the government sector.

On Leadership and Accountability

The disclosures of Edward Snowden raise so many issues of leadership and accountability that it’s hard to know where to start.

First and foremost, leadership requires wisdom and honor—wisdom to know what’s right and then the courage to do the right and honorable thing.

At first glance, it would appear that there was a lack of wisdom and accountability on all sides.

Snowden clearly did not figure out a good way to handle what may have been a legitimate concern. A wise and courageous mentor could have helped him figure out a legal and proper way to address his concerns. Now, he will most likely be found to have broken the law and some accountability must come, less “every man will begin to do what is right in his own eyes.”

Governmental Oversteps

On the other hand, it appears that our government has found yet another way to overstep its legal and ethical bounds—the means justifying someone’s desired personal end for gaining more power.

When this begins to happen toward our external enemies, it’s just a matter of time until it gets out of control internally and someone takes advantage of their power to try to wipe out their internal political opponents.

Witness the ongoing IRS scandal. It doesn’t take an honest political scientist long to project what kind of country we will soon be if the party that comes to power decides to use government to minimize their political opponents. Corrupt uses of power most likely will very quickly turn our “fruited plain” into a “banana republic.” ClickToTweetThis

“We need honorable leaders, committed to doing their sworn duty of upholding the constitution, including not just the letter of the law, but the intent of the law.”

Honorable Leadership: ONLY

We need honorable leaders, committed to doing their sworn duty of upholding the constitution, including not just the letter of the law, but the intent of the law.

We need civil servants and political leaders who are committed to serving their country first, above their personal politics and personal ambitions. We need business and community leaders who will do the same in their spheres of work and influence.

Who will stand up and be counted? I’m standing, and hope that in the days ahead you will stand with me.

It begins by being accountable ourselves. It’s not easy or even possible without the help of others who can help us see wisdom. Do you have a team to help you clarify and then do the right thing to fulfill your responsibilities and duties in your job and as a citizen? Will you help me promote the message that we must do the “right” thing and that begins with obeying the laws of the land and putting our country first, and others before selfish goals and ambitions?

Article Source: Edward Snowden: the Whistleblower Behind the NSA Surveillance Revelations

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——————–

His latest book is called Leading with Honor: Leadership Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton.

Image Sources: cadenaser.com

#IStandWithEdwardSnowden: hero or traitor? (storify.com)
A Courageous American Who Deserves Our Gratitude: NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden Reveals Himself (sgtreport.com)
Edward Snowden: Saving Us From The United Stasi Of America by Daniel Ellsberg (zcommunications.org)

Filed under: Authentic Leadership, Leadership Lessons Learned, Organizational Health, Values-Based Leadership | Tagged: business, edward snowden, leadership, training | 3 Comments »

Leading in HR: The Power of a Professional Conduct Policy

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Monica Wofford

There’s not much in the way of employee behavior that would surprise an experienced Human Resource Manager.

What is far more surprising is the amount of time a leader will put up with behavior that makes them need HR in the first place.

At times, it’s the policies in place that prevent any other viable option. However, there is one policy that will keep you more out of HR than in it.

Addressing Workplace Issues

In most companies a policy exists for everything from punctuality to the use of profanity. The Federal Government even dictates break times to maternity leave. With all clear policies, measurement of performance and termination is made easy and they usually started as merely good guidelines.

When guidelines are not made into policies and clear guidelines don’t exist, managing performance is a real problem.

Managing the attitude about the problem is even worse.

In fact, the number one problem new leaders seem to face is how to address those subtle challenges such as:

Attitude
“Milking the system”
Doing just enough to stay employed
Gossiping
Backstabbing
“Stirring the pot”
Or even “quitting,” but forgetting to tell anyone…

Professionalism, Defined.

Address those subtle or not-so-subtle issues with what is called a Professional Conduct Policy. Enumerate how one would successfully conduct themselves on the team you lead or in the office you manage.

Perhaps it will not be the policy that, when broken, is a key firing factor, but it sure beats assuming they know how to behave based on the guidelines you live by that usually remain in your head.

Creating a Professional Conduct Policy

Here is what the mere creation of a Professional Conduct Policy can do for you and the team and their performance.

Allows for Low-Level Intervention

This is a term used in training classes that refers to participants managing each other. For example when two people are talking while the instructor talks and another student “shushes” them, you’ve just seen Low-Level Intervention.

The instructor didn’t have to say a word.

The same will happen on the team you lead when you invite all to participate in the creation of the Professional Conduct Policies. Spend a staff meeting coming up with these “rules” or “housekeeping guidelines” or “Rules that Guide our Behavior with Each Other and our Customers.”

What you call it is not as important as the discussion that will occur when you are creating the list. Magical dynamics are when colleagues all mutually agree on the “rules.” As none of us argue with our own data, so to speak, allowing each team member to have input will help them to own the rules.

The rules they own will be ones they agree to and want to abide by and will thus, defend, when others break the rules. You may create situations in which fellow employees begin to manage each other to some extent and thus, take some of that burden off of the leader.

This doesn’t mean you get to now be “hands off”, but it will be a nice benefit of having spent the time to make the list of behaviors.

Provides a Metric for Behavior

When given the choices of attitude, behavior, or performance problems, participants in our leadership training courses repeatedly rank attitude problems as the most challenging to resolve and address. These are followed closely by behavior issues that are not tied to some quota or performance review objective.

The reason for both being more difficult than performance is that neither is readily measurable by the average company.

Most managers assume far too much of the way others will behave. Then the managers are surprised when someone acts unethically or has lesser initiative or has no issue at all with showing up to the meetings but doing nothing in the way of making progress on a team project.

These are each behaviors that can be part of the Professional Conduct Policy. For example, look at these:

Always do your best
Follow up within 24 hours
Make ten minutes early your “on time” mark
Maintain confidentiality of anything that could be considered gossip

Once they’re written down, they become measurable.

Provides Clarity in Coaching

If a leader wants to address a behavior not listed on that team member’s performance review, and there are no consequences for the behavior, other than talking with the boss, little change occurs.

With a Professional Conduct Policy, created by their peers, coaching to the policy can now include the consequence of letting down their peers. It also gives you a reference point in history when they agreed to abide by the behaviors listed.

Not only are you able to be clear about which policy has been “broken”, but you now have precedent, previous conversations, and a frame of reference from which to coach for improvement.

Asking questions like:

“Was this not something you really agreed with when we came up with these in our meeting?”

“Is there something that has caused you to change your mind on the importance of this behavior to our work?”

will help you get to the heart of the matter.

Any of this kind of detail is more effective in a coaching scenario than the leader saying “Would you just cut it out?”, which is what happens when one doesn’t have much to go on.

Moving Beyond Policy

Once you create it, consider hanging your Professional Conduct Policy next to the Mission Statement and Values Declaration. Just remember that much like those other documents, the work that it took to create them is far more valuable than the space they take up on the wall.

And if all you want is for people to look at the list, the last thing on your list needs to say “buy frame.” If you want them to actually abide by these guidelines, “buy frame” gets delegated and your first two “to-dos” are coach them when they don’t and reward them when they do.

So, do you have clear, concise, and open access to a professional code of conduct policy booklet? Or is your just informal and not well documented? When issues arrive, is your policy guidelines booklet referenced properly and professionally, or does your management team need training in this arena? I would love to hear your thoughts!

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Learn, Grow & Develop Other Leaders™

——————–

Monica Wofford, CSP, is CEO of Contagious Companies, Inc.
She serves her clients by getting business results and ROI for training functions
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Web | Office 1.866.382.0121

Image Source: ehowcdn.com

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Codes of Conduct Can Protect Employees From Bullying (bullyinworkplace.com)
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Filed under: Authentic Leadership, Leading Change | 2 Comments »

On Leaders and Accountability (Part 5): 6 Tips to Celebrating the Big Payoff

Posted on June 6, 2013 by Lee Ellis

Celebrating a Win

Think about this scenario: A momentous payoff has just occurred in your team as you’ve applied the guidance in this ongoing series of articles on accountability.

Your direct report has successfully accomplished their goal(s)! Things have gone well. As their leader, your expectations have been met and possibly exceeded.

So what do you do now?
How do you celebrate?
How do you affirm success?

So What’s Next?

This is the time for you to come through by being accountable in your role as the chief motivator and affirmer in the organization. Although you may not innately be a motivator and affirmer, you know that it’s a critical element of team success.

6 Tips to Celebrating the Big Payoff

Here are some tips to help you succeed in this area.

1) Be Specific in Your Praise

Your goal is to be very specific in your affirmation; so before speaking, take time to reflect on what went well and what steps in the process made the work successful. Remember you want to recognize and “call out” what worked well so that you can reinforce the mindsets, behaviors, and attributes that you know will yield success again in the future.

“It’s been said that communications are 20% verbal and 80% non-verbal, so your energy, tone and body language are all going to play a big role in communicating genuine satisfaction.”

2) Be Enthusiastic in Your Demeanor

It’s been said that communications are 20% verbal and 80% non-verbal, so your energy, tone and body language are all going to play a big role in communicating genuine satisfaction. It’s true—some people are naturally more expressive than others; so if being low-key is part of your personality, then you’ll need to stretch your energy and emotions a bit.

This may be your courage challenge and one you don’t want to fail. Regardless of where your natural level of enthusiasm falls, you will need to punch it up a notch to show your pleasure at the way things have turned out. A big smile, high fives, and good words of affirmation communicate positive emotions that inspire others with energy for the next challenge.

3) Debrief the Mission

Set aside a few minutes to discuss what went right, what was learned, and what lessons can be used in the next challenging assignment. This is also a good time for you to ask for feedback on how helpful you were and what you might do in the future to better lead and manage your people and processes.

Finally, be sure to listen for insights into the challenges your people are facing. You’ll want to reflect on those and see if there are organizational barriers or trends that you and your manager need to know about.

“Always keep in mind that one of your important leadership responsibilities is to develop your people.”

4) Consider the Next Challenge

Successful people are generally looking for their next challenge so be ready with a challenging assignment for the next step. Always keep in mind that one of your important leadership responsibilities is to develop your people.

Be thinking about their next steps in their careers and how you can be preparing them for higher levels of responsibility.

5) Be Fair and Consistent in Your Affirmation

We humans have very sensitive egos and people notice what you are doing for others. They expect you to be at least as excited about their success as those of others. The way to nip office politics in the bud is to take care of the needs of each person individually as you work with them.

Almost everyone is searching for validation at a very deep level to confirm that “My work has meaning; I’m valued; and I’m worth something.”

Great leaders help people become successful and that means recognizing individual differences, helping people become successful and providing affirmation of their unique contribution.

“…some folks don’t want to celebrate because they are afraid—yes, afraid that if they celebrate people will quit working hard and lower the standards. I say don’t let your fear take you out.”

6) Evaluate Your Situation

Celebration is in a sad and pitiful state in many organizations. Many leaders are so busy they just knock down one goal and head on to the next one without taking time to celebrate.

That’s an energy drain for the leader and the team.

Also, some folks don’t want to celebrate because they are afraid—yes, afraid that if they celebrate people will quit working hard and lower the standards. I say don’t let your fear take you out.

Have the courage (and wisdom) to celebrate and see what happens. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised and that’s a nice thought, isn’t it?

So where are you now? Are you providing affirmation and enthusiastic positive feedback to your folks as they achieve their goals? Are you willing to ask your folks to give objective feedback on how well you are doing in this area? If you stop and reflect on this, what could you be doing to better affirm and value your people?

**********

Never miss an issue of Linked 2 Leadership, subscribe today here!
Learn, Grow & Develop Other Leaders™

——————–

His latest book is called Leading with Honor: Leadership Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton.

Image Sources: acnemind.com

The Challenge of Leadership – Take Control (theleadershiplamplight.com)
Be the Boss: Managing Your Business, Your Employees and Your Time (staples.com)
On Using Affirmations (galuri85.wordpress.com)

Filed under: Authentic Leadership, Coaching Corner, Leading & Developing Other Leaders, Organizational Health, Servant Leadership | Tagged: business, leadership, resilience, Team development, training | Leave a Comment »

Developing Employees – The Role of Personality

Posted on June 5, 2013 by Katrin Kaehler

Personalities at Work

One day when I was working as Learning & Development Manager in a German corporation, an executive approached me to talk about a manager on his team who was seen as difficult to deal with.

The man was not focused at work, he sometimes missing deadlines, and he was not a clear communicator.

However, he had been working for the company for many years, and his manager wanted to keep him on board. Many previous attempts to correct his behavior had not worked out. This manager was in his late 40′s and the executive asked me this question:

“Do you think we can still change his personality?”

Answering the Question

Do people change personality?
Can they change to “become someone else?”
Are people stuck with what they have become when we meet them?

Here is Another Scenario

My husband was working with a programmer who was being groomed for a career as a top-notch specialist. He was excellent at his job, yet his management did not consider him for a leadership position because they felt “that’s just not who he is”.

These examples lead to an interesting question:

Is our personality carved in stone?

Can People Change?

I am a psychologist with a career in employee learning and development, so it is not surprising that I fundamentally believe that people can change.

But what does research say?

In the early days of personality research, psychologists came up with many different models to measure people’s personalities. Most of them had one thing in common:

They measured personality traits
Supposedly anchored in the brain structure
Have a stable starting in early adulthood

Nowadays, science is leaning more towards a fluid and contextual understanding of personality. The situation in which a person displays a certain behavior has an influence on how the person reacts.

Personality Traits

In leadership training, models that assess personality traits (MBTI, DISC etc.) are widely used. Most of these models understand personality traits as relatively stable. I like using these models for example as a tool to get a quick assessment of your team’s personalities.

With the information provided in these assessments, leaders can quickly understand how to approach individual team members, adjust their leadership style and distribute tasks according to personal styles of employees.

The risk in extensively using these models is that they lead to assume that personality is carved in stone. I believe that focusing too much on personality traits takes responsibility away from yourself: As an individual, you’re not actively trying to be your best self.

As a leader, you might not give your employees your best effort to develop and coach them.

A Smart Approach

In reality, there is ample research evidence to support both approaches. And at this point in time, it is not possible to say which one is correct.

In the end, I believe that it doesn’t really matter for you as a leader.

Instead of musing about personality, focus on behavior instead. If an employee is not performing on the level you expect her to perform, ask yourself what the reason might be. Does the employee lack skills and knowledge to do the job, or is it maybe a question of self-confidence and motivation?

Adapting Your Leadership Style

Adapt your leadership style according to the needs of your employee. Agree on SMART goals with your employee in order to measure performance, and review progress regularly. Give your employee regular and timely feedback on her behavior. Be specific, e.g. by pointing out that she showed good leadership when facilitating a meeting.

In my experience, the most relevant factor to learning and changing behavior is the will to do so, open-mindedness, and a commitment to continuous improvement.

The programmer I mentioned before received continuous feedback and coaching from his manager. He was highly motivated to develop towards a leadership role and worked hard to improve his skills.

He is now considered a high-potential within the company and will be definitely be considered for a management position in the future.

So, how are you doing in understanding the best ways to use personality and personality profiles in leading your people? Have you been giving people “a pass” for poor performance because you simply “accept their personality?” Or have you been effective in coach/training beyond personality? I would love to hear your thoughts!

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Katrin Kaehler steers Organizational Learning and Development
Before moving to the US, she worked in International Roles in Europe
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Web

Image Sources: success.com

Cheerful women are not associated with leadership qualities — but proud ones are (eurekalert.org)
5 Leadership Styles that Help You Build a High Performance Team (lifehack.org)
Your employees ARE NOT your employees (leadershipmints.com)

Filed under: Authentic Leadership, Coaching Corner, Emotionally Intelligent Leadership, Leadership Lessons Learned, Servant Leadership | Tagged: development, leadership, learning, Management, personality, Personality types | 6 Comments »

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