Category Archives: Professional Growth

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How to Ensure Motivation Trickles From the Top Down

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Water Trickle

Motivation is considered to be one of the most important contributing factors to high levels of employee engagement and satisfaction.

However, as illustrated below, motivation must start from the top in order to be most effective.

Executive Engagement

Research shows that the modern work environment has drastically changed. To illustrate, workplaces are more complex, markets are more volatile and younger generations are more demanding. Therefore, executives must carefully manage their company culture.

Industry icons, such as Apple’s Steve Jobs, were famous for their charismatic ability to inspire employees and customers alike to seek excellence and pursue their dreams. Consequently, executives must play a regular, proactive role in communicating with employees.

Visionary executives who non-invasive methods to appeal to their employee’s emotions will enjoy higher levels of teamwork, production and employee satisfaction. Thus, executives must make constructive motivation a top priority for management.

Motivation from Management

Research from Gallup clearly shows that managers influence almost 70 percent of critical business variables such as productivity, performance and profitability. Even more disheartening, approximately 70 percent of employees are not engaged at work.

This means that the majority of employers are disengaged and indifferent to their work.

Managers play a key role in determining employee engagement and satisfaction levels. Gallup’s research shows that accurate and meaningful communication is extremely important to employees. A healthy business relationship will include daily face-to-face communication, not randomly vague emails.

Clearly, executives must set the expectation that management will invest time and energy into daily interaction with their subordinates. This will identify and resolve many problems before they become serious issues.

Proper Performance Management

Members of upper management rarely receive formal performance reviews like regular employees. Therefore, they often fail to understand how annual performance reviews can affect an employee’s motivation and job satisfaction. Annual performance reviews can create intense emotional pressure and apprehension.

Managers tend to view performance reviews as just another task to complete.

However, performance reviews are an important opportunity to review progress, set goals and get excited about work. Executives should model engaging and productive performance reviews through formally meeting with management and helping them to set their own goals.

Nevertheless, performance reviews are of little worth without quarterly follow-ups with employees. Regularly meeting with employees will reinforce their commitment to growth and the company.

Data Analytics

Executives need factual data in order to better understand their employees. Fortunately, there are excellent ways to glean insightful data about employees. For example, HR software programs can create customized reports that detail important employee metrics.

First, there are financial reports such as:

  • Cost per hire
  • Turnover cost
  • Training investment
  • Recruiting cost ratios

Turnover costs equal the total amount accrued through separation, vacancy, replacement and training. High turnover and hiring costs can financially weaken a company because every hire may cost between five to 10 thousand dollars.

There are other important metrics, such as turnover, absence and vacancy rates. Turnover rates exemplify the state of employee engagement and satisfaction. Executives should consider also performing quarterly employee satisfaction surveys.

Public Perks

Executives should consider unique employee appreciation ideas. While they do not have to be expensive, perks are an excellent way for upper management to demonstrate their commitment to employees.

For instance, flexibility is an abstract concept that matters a lot to employees, who may be single-parents or returning to school. Management should embrace flexible scheduling as a way to motivate employees to increase efficiency and production.

Once employees understand that they are empowered to manage their workload, they will be more responsible and willing to go the extra mile.

Motivation is a deciding factor between high employee engagement and high turnover rates. In order to properly increase motivation, executives should use customized reports created through HR software.

So, how are you as a leader allowing your strengths in motivating your followers work to influence them to motivate others? What are some of the steps you can take today or tomorrow to step back from your daily routine and think about how you can better increase you motivation for others to follow? I would love to hear your thoughts!

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———————
Robert Cordray

Robert Cordray is a freelance writer with over 20 years of business experience
He does the occasional business consult to help increase employee morale
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Web

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Leading in the Wrong Direction

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Wrong Way

Leadership is a gift given. It comes from the belief of others, in you.

It should be viewed as an honor and a privilege.

With it comes a responsibility to use that influence to move people, organizations and society forward. But sadly, we have far too many leaders who are leading in the wrong direction. One need only to listen to the rhetoric emanating from the political campaigns to understand what the misuse of leadership influence sounds like.

I want to be clear that is not a political commentary, rather it is a leadership commentary.

On Responsible Leadership

There are fundamental requirements to responsible leadership. Leaders should help people reach beyond their fears. They need to inspire and bring diverse people together.

Leaders should enable others to see the potential that they were blind too. They should work to open eyes, minds and hearts. Had not JFK helped us to see and believe in the potential, would we have put a man on the moon?

Leading Through Fear

Turn on the news, read the paper and it will quickly become obvious that our leaders are not honoring their responsibility.

They are leading people into their fears.

Rather than helping them overcome them, they are encouraging them to build walls around those fears. They are serving to solidifying them, making them more real and concrete. These same leaders aren’t expanding our vision; they are narrowing it.

They aren’t facilitating our ability to envision our true potential. Instead, they are aiding our retreat. They aren’t bringing us together; they are dividing us. We aren’t celebrating diversity; we are running from it and I for one, am disgusted. We should be revoking their leadership cards!

Going the Wrong Direction

Our politicians are an almost satirical example of leadership in the wrong direction. We should, however, use them as a reminder. We ought to be looking at ourselves in the mirror and asking, “Am I leading in the right direction?”

Hopefully, your business challenges aren’t as frightening or as daunting as those that we face geopolitically. But, we do face fears, and it can be difficult to keep that future potential in sight. The same leadership risks exist, albeit on a slightly different scale.

A Brave Future

We should be looking to see if we are actually encouraging our organization to circle the wagons or, if in fact we are pushing through that which scares us. We must be painting a picture and connecting the dots so that everyone, including ourselves, sees and believes in that future state.

We want to be sure to bring people together, encouraging diversity of thought, of beliefs and personality. We need to be expanding horizons, making people feel better about what they do and how they fit into the greater organization. We should inspire others to reach their full potential. If we do all of these things, we will be leading in the right direction.

Leading Responsibly

I am a realist. I recognize that the vitriolic and myopic nature of politicians is unlikely to change in the near future. Yet, I am also an optimist. I believe that if each one of us takes the personal responsibility to lead in the right direction, then just maybe in aggregate, we can inspire change.

To me, this is such an important conversation.

Social media gives us an unbelievable platform from which to have one. Please, use the comment section below to share your thoughts on leading in the right direction and what we can do to inspire change.

So what type of leader are you? Do you tend to rely on a fear-based approach, or do you lead your followers through fear and on to a better picture of tomorrow? What can do you to know the current obstacles and find better ways to lead in the right direction? I would love to hear your thoughts!

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———————–
Elliot Begoun

Elliot Begoun is the Principal Consultant of The Intertwine Group, LLC.
He works with companies to Deliver Tools that Enable Growth
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | GROW | Website

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You, The Truth and Nothing But Your Leadership!

Building Platforms for Converting Potential into Performance

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Platform Building

Is there anything new under the leadership sun?

Leadership Platforms

With the wealth of information available to us about leadership—the sheer numbers of which have been well-covered in other L2L blog posts and myriad other sources—it would seem easy to answer this question in the affirmative.

In fact, this post is yet another example and becomes inexorably part of the statistic.

Recognizing that, in writing this, it is impossible to avoid falling into that trap, I still want to caution all of us not to jump too easily toward an answer we believe is nothing more than a blinding flash of the obvious. We also shouldn’t assume away the question as rhetorical or disregard the question as some sort of trick.

Grappling with the Answer

Leadership certainly appears to be among the most overused terms of the 21st Century, so much so that it begins to suffer the death of a thousand qualifications—rendering the term almost meaningless. As I’ve written elsewhere:

This isn’t all that surprising. With the rarity of real leaders, the preponderance of imaginary leaders-in-position and the sheer amount of new information mentioned earlier, most now tune out at a mere mention of the word Leadership.”

We can get so overwhelmed in trying to understand what leadership “is” or “looks like” that we either get lost in the shuffle or simply start shuffling along with the lost. The natural but dangerous side effect of this is that we never begin defining, describing or developing it on a personal level. Continuing a thought from the previous quote:

[We’ve] already heard it all and have “had it up to here” with all the talk about leadership, so little effort is ever applied to defining it personally and little consensus is ever reached on how it should be defined organizationally.”

Yet, as you search farther backward to examine the etymology of leadership or further inward to get at the essence of leadership, it really comes down to a personal recognition of two things:

  1. The limitless capacity of “born-in” potential as human becomings
  2. The limiting tendency of “made-in” performance as human beings

We are all born with unlimited potential for learning, changing, growing and leading, but there are myriad tendencies that inhibit our capacity for improving performance. These include our orientations toward awareness, acceptance, action and achievement. But the most interesting thing about the debate around whether leaders are born or made is that they both relate to a person, not to an impersonal idea or abstract concept.

In fact, when questions of leadership are raised, they are either raised by a person or about a person. And the questions are considered legitimate only because people have intrinsic value. And herein lays the secret…the hidden TRUTH to anything new in leadership.

Building Your Platform

If you really want to create something new when it comes to leadership, try building (or refurbishing) your own leadership platform.

In fact, I’ve become convinced that the only way something new in leadership can truly emerge is when individuals—unique in time past, present and future—start answering the questions they are asking. If we really want to understand what Leadership looks like, we need to look in the mirror.

We need to honestly describe or define who we are as a leader, and be open to accept feedback from what others observe and feel when they evaluate our leadership. This is not easy, however, because as Ravi Zacharias puts it, in any interplay between a person and information, the first test is not the veracity of the information, but the truthfulness of the person.

Avoiding the Pitfalls

It’s easy to think that the “person” mentioned in the last statement is the one providing the feedback. While it may be true that some will not provide honest feedback due to their own hang-up’s, I’ve found that most will give you straight talk, but only if they believe you:

  1. Are genuinely interested in them and what they have to say,
  2. Have demonstrated that you are serious about getting better at who you are and what you do as a leader, and
  3. Will never hide, hurl, blame or retaliate—otherwise known as defensive misattribution of failure—when the uncomfortable information is presented, will give you straight talk

Indeed! There are a lot of conditions to whether or not you’ll get at the “new information” about your leadership that is yet to be written or revealed. But there is an even bigger danger lurking in the shadows, poised to jump out and stop-you-up-short when it comes to truly learning, changing or growing as a leader: defensive misattribution of success.

The defensive misattribution of success occurs when personal leadership success (e.g., how I got this job in the first place or why I’m the boss and you’re not) is attributed inappropriately to the very behaviors that are causing incredible damage through the persecution of people, process and profit, ultimately deteriorating long-term organizational performance.

Understanding the Implications

Robert Cooke and Janet Szumal, Human Synergistics International, include a great organization-level expansion and exposition for this unfortunate reality in their Chapter 9 contribution to the Handbook of Organizational Culture and Climate (Ashkanasy, Vilderom, Peterson; 2000).

They contend that the defensive misattribution of success occurs when organizational success is attributed to a Defensive culture when instead it is substantial resources and/or minimal demands that account for the success currently enjoyed by the organization.

Organizations with strong franchises, munificent environments, extensive patents and copyrights, and/or massive financial resources are likely to perform adequately, at least in the short term and possibly even over the long term, if environmental pressures for innovation, adaptation, or flexibility remain minimal.”

In such cases, they say that managers can “get away with” creating an Aggressive/Defensive and/or Passive/Defensive organizational culture. Worse yet, it is almost guaranteed—thanks to attribution theory and self-serving biases—that these managers will credit the Defensive culture that they created (or inadvertently allowed to emerge) as being the source of their organization’s effectiveness.

Sadly, this holds back anything new when it comes to the real creative potential of leadership and keeps the organization locked in yesterday. Cooke and Szumal conclude this section of the book as follows:

Although the impact of culture may be overshadowed by the impacts of resources and demands, Constructive norms would nevertheless enhance the performance of these organizations, increase their adaptability, and protect them from being blind-sided by forceful and unanticipated environmental changes.”

Breaking Free to Newness

The good news for all of us is that there is a way out. There is a means by which we can find newness in leadership. It is a simple but difficult journey for all who endeavor, but it will produce the kind of performance that all of us are after. All that is required is you, the truth and nothing but your leadership. Are you ready?

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——————–
Richard Dillard

Richard S. Dillard is Founder/ Managing Partner at Dillard Partners, LLC
Pursuing Success at the Speed of Leadership!
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | Web | Blog | Book

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On Leadership, Transparency and Breaching Confidentiality

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Confidentiality

What happens when a seasoned manager doesn’t know the difference between being transparent and breaching confidentiality?

In a nutshell, you get this: Distrust, demotivation, and an epic failure in leadership.

I am an Information Technology Manager at a Fortune 100 firm. We had made some significant changes in how our teams will get work done in 2015.  I was asked to objectively facilitate the many hours of work needed to get to a new organizational model.

I was thrilled at the opportunity to lead change and impact results!

Organization over Ego

When the work started on our new initiative, I was very impressed on the amount of sharing and openness our managers had toward making a major shift in software development.

Dialogue was open and people were engaged. The goal would to be less hierarchical and become more of a flat management structure.

With this new initiative, the change required moving people to co-located teams. This resulted in 30% of the employees having a new manager. And with this amount of change, you can expect that things didn’t always go smoothly.

Ego Takes Over

Unfortunately, when plans were on the drawing board and people were moved around on paper to new positions and reporting structures, the defensive walls started to build and lines of territory started to be drawn.

The professional maturity of each manager started to become clear. Some showed signs of professional maturity and dealt with things well, even if they felt inside that they had a big (and unfair) challenge ahead of them. While many others acted the opposite.

They were much less willing to work for a bigger picture and took a selfish stance.

 Organizational Nightmare

When the discussion moved to the skills and performance of the managers, senior staff sequestered for confidential discussions. The results from this was that we constructed the first hierarchy for the new organization.

And with the historic attitudes reigning, the new org-chart looked exactly like the current one.

  • We had one manager of managers
  • Several first line managers
  • And half a dozen senior individual contributors reporting to the director

What an OD nightmare!

Many members believed we could not get the change needed if we didn’t change the management structure so a flat, balanced organization model was recommended.

Maintaining the Status Quo

Believing that he was just being transparent, the manager with the majority of the organization under his control gave access of the confidential organizational structure options being considered to his first line managers.

This manager was too busy persuading people that his way was the right way that he failed to hear the recommendation was to flatten the organization; including his team.

He also shared with one of his direct reports a discussion that occurred during a closed meeting whether the manager was ready for the more complex role including the name of the staff member who raised the concern.

This was not being transparent. This was breaching confidentiality!

The Let Down

When it came down to the final staff meeting to finalize the new organization, the leader, in order to minimize thrash and too much change, kept the unbalanced organization model.

When the announcements started to roll out, managers who had seen the flat model and thought they would now be reporting directly to the leader of the organization were blindsided. The manager who was told of the confidential discussion confronted the senior staff member.

This not only destroyed the trust. but it also damaged the trust of the senior staff member with his peer. He believed he could raise a concern in a closed staff meeting and not have his confidence breached.

The Moral of the Story

Leaders are always more successful when they are transparent with the people they lead. When they provide the reason for change whether it be due to cost cutting, greater efficiency or because the industry has shifted and the organization needs to shift to remain successful.

However, breaching confidentiality to be transparent and not understanding the difference is a failure in leadership.

Sharing too much detail, including the details and hard discussions that have to happen for a decision to be made, is just poor judgement.

Leaders need to be aware of all of the conversations happening, not just focused on driving their own agenda. In this case, the miss and the failure resulted in several valuable people leaving the organization.

How important is transparency in your leadership practices and how do you groom your managers to clearly understand being transparent without breaching confidentiality?

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——————–
Cheryl Dilley

Cheryl Dilley is an Information Technology Manager at Intel Corporation
She is passionate about changing the game for women in the tech industry
Email | LinkedIn | Web| Facebook

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Charismatic Leadership: Give Unselfishly

Ways to Make the Season Brighter

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Christmas Tree

Merry Christmas 2015

The Holiday Season engenders feelings of empathy, kindness and tenderness, especially for those a little down on their luck.

On Giving and Generosity

Giving and generosity are defined as the transfer of something without the expectation of receiving something in return.

When expecting nothing in return, the benefits of giving are exponentially higher than if giving and expecting payback.

Generous giving ensues, making the season even brighter, certainly for the receiver of the kindness but more strangely and predictably, for the giver as well. What might be perceived as a loss or a deficit by the giver is quickly overshadowed by feelings of well-being.

Benefits of Giving

When considering the benefits of giving, the giver often benefits economically via tax breaks. If the giving is public, the gift builds the status of the giver by signaling to the community wealth, thus giving the giver status.

The famous industrialist John D. Rockefeller, said, “God gave me my money.”

In a book entitled, The Rockefeller Billions, by Jules Abels, Rockefeller’s philosophy is explained: He believed that if he stopped giving his money away in the right way, God would take his money away from him.

The Oprah Challenge

In 2006, Oprah Winfrey, a billionaire and one of the greatest black philanthropists in American history, gave 300 people in her audience $1000.00 and one week to spend the money on a good cause.

  • Many paid for groceries
  • One woman bought mittens and hats for kids
  • Another helped a paralyzed girl
  • Yet another woman purchased movie tickets for the homeless to see the Pursuit of Happiness with Will Smith – the message being that their present situation can be temporary.

Oprah’s challenge gave participants true joy, not just happiness.

On Giving, Joy, and Endorphins

Giving provides an unexplained euphoria that instantaneously spreads through your body. This euphoria, this sense of joy is different from the happiness of receiving a gift, even if the gift is a diamond necklace.

This feeling is an elation and elevation of the soul.

You forget your own problems for a small moment in time and focus on the peace and love found in helping another human being.

To achieve the good feelings, you do not have to spend money. Offering your time to a colleague to help finish a project, lending something as simple as your stapler, or merely spending time with someone who seems alone can make you feel satisfied.

Angels That Give

I was inspired by an anonymous woman who kicked off a giving-spree throughout the United States.

She wanted to honor her husband who recently passed away so she visited a local K-mart store and paid off the lay-away accounts for numerous people. As the AP story states:

Christmas Shopping CartOMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The young father stood in line at the Kmart layaway counter, wearing dirty clothes and worn-out boots. With him were three small children.

He asked to pay something on his bill because he knew he wouldn’t be able to afford it all before Christmas. Then a mysterious woman stepped up to the counter.

“She told him, ‘No, I’m paying for it,'” recalled Edna Deppe, assistant manager at the store in Indianapolis. “He just stood there and looked at her and then looked at me and asked if it was a joke. I told him it wasn’t, and that she was going to pay for him. And he just busted out in tears.”

On Wings and a Prayer

I have also been impressed by a nonprofit, Luke’s Wings.

Luke’s Wings is an organization dedicated to the support of military service members who have been wounded in battle. Luke’s Wings provides families with the airline tickets to visit their loved one in the hospital and to be with their service member during recovery and rehabilitation.

This year they have been making Christmas much brighter for many honorable service men and women. To learn more, visit www.lukeswings.org.

No matter when you choose to give, there are infinite opportunities in your world every day.

Giving and the Organization

So, we know how giving benefits you personally and benefits the people you help, but how does giving relate to charismatic leadership?

In an article entitled, Why Giving Matters, Arthur C. Brooks who is president of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, makes the case that if you want to be seen as a leader and if you want to be happier, then give more.

Brooks’ research shows that:

“If people see you as a giver, as someone who cooperates and serves others, they see you as a leader and they will want to follow you.”

Giving also makes individuals more productive. Because giving puts you in a positive mood, you are able to concentrate on your work, make decisions, get ideas to solve problems – you are more productive. This diagram illustrates the process.

3 T’s of Stewardship: Time, Treasure, and Talents

People who give, share of their resources, volunteer their time, show empathy, and help others in the countless opportunities presented each day are happier people.

The process of giving permits them to operate in a positive feedback loop – they give, they are happier, they give more, they are happier, etc.

Don’t take my word that giving makes a difference in your leadership stature. Make a New Year’s resolution to give this process a try. Model for your employees a giving spirit and extend your hand to help when appropriate.

Your employees are always watching you.

They will imitate your good works and our organization will flourish.

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Karla (Kofoed) Brandau
Karla Brandau, CEO of Workplace Power Institute, is a leadership and productivity firm
She crafts keynotes, workshops, and onsite training programs customized for your needs
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Web | Blog  | 770-923-0883

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On Leadership, Suffering and The Sacrificial Leader

Essential Elements of Right and Effective Leadership

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Helping Others

There is not one leader reading this that hasn’t struggled with the mystery of suffering or wrestled with the mastery of personal sacrifice.

These are universal and timeless concepts—regardless of background, education, economic status, etc. But what I’ve found over the past 30 years as a student of leadership is the selfless commitment to take pains with them is firmly embedded in the footings of every real leader’s platform.

Every real leader puts deliberate thought into how their commitment of the will in these areas is going to shape their behavior…their actions and the impact they have on others.”

The Case for Suffering & Leadership

Buried deep in the historicity of Leadership is this idea of suffering. Originally taking on the context of movement by appointment, the term ‘Leader’ began to take on additional association with words like passion and suffering as freedom-loving Gothic leaders stood against high taxes, Roman prejudice, and government corruption in the late 4th Century.

I love how Quint Studer covers this in Hardwiring Excellence:

At the heart of every success story is a person whose passion…has driven them to reach out in some extraordinary way to their fellow-man and make a true difference.”

Quint is really on to something here. This act of reaching out in some extraordinary way to our fellow-man in order to make a true difference requires sacrifice, and almost all sacrifice will cause suffering. There is no gain without pain in many areas of our experience, and real leadership is no exception.

Passion, Drive and Sacrifice

I see a lot of passion in today’s leaders (self-included), but not a lot that is driving us to make essential sacrifices or to suffer for and with others in order to get the right things done extremely well. And there’s good reason for this, according to Ronald White in A Short History of Progress:

In a progress trap, those in positions of authority are unwilling to make changes necessary for future survival. To do so they would need to sacrifice their current status and political power at the top of a hierarchy.”

Have we really become this enamored of status and power as leaders that we can’t make the changes—the sacrifices—necessary for our collective success? If we’re honest, an affirmative answer is not difficult. As I’ve written elsewhere, we can get so mired in past success (accumulated while climbing the corporate ladder) and trapped by a desire to maintain that position in the hierarchy that we don’t see the natural and negative consequences:

  • Empowerment to renew and improve dries up
  • Yesterday’s solutions become today’s problems
  • Low hanging fruit grows back
  • All upward and outward movement grinds to a halt

From Transactions to Transformation

In contrast, we could learn a lesson from A.J. Russell:

All sacrifice and suffering is redemptive. It is used to either teach the individual or to help others. Nothing is by chance.”

And herein lays a benefit that deserves repeating. Sacrifice and suffering are used either to teach (this is personal transformation) or to help others (this is organizational transformation).

There is really nothing in the world like the force multiplier created by sacrifice and suffering when it comes to breaking away from the daily leadership grind of transacting with others to produce short-term results. Approaching others and our work this way is a sure-fire way to stay trapped on the performance plateau.

By learning and helping others—by sacrifice and suffering–we begin transforming.

Are You Ready?

At the risk of stating the obvious, sacrifice is seldom easy. If it were, we’d see it happening far more frequently. As with other things in life, when it’s needed most it gets practiced least. But only those with a sincere wish to sacrifice—to put the needs of others before his/her own—can lead transformation, first for themselves and then for their organizations.

And there is no need to focus on the suffering, just commit to making essential sacrifices out of love for your fellow-man and you’ll find that suffering itself will take on a whole new meaning and have a completely different context that what you may otherwise be accustomed.

So, when was the last time you made sacrifices and suffered as a leader? What sacrifices can you make today that will kick-start transformation? Here’s an even tougher question: What sacrifices is your team, group, company willing to make today because of the authority of your example? I would love to hear your thoughts!

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Learn, Grow & Develop Other Leaders™
——————–
Richard Dillard

Richard S. Dillard is Founder/ Managing Partner at Dillard Partners, LLC
Pursuing Success at the Speed of Leadership!
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | Web | Blog | Book

Image Sources: tanveernaseer.com

 

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Mastering the Most Exciting Leadership Skill: Situational Awareness

Leadership Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton

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The Latest Coaching Article – “Mastering the Most Exciting Leadership Skill: Situational Awareness”

“Think or Die.” In our work, most of us would consider this statement to be pretty dramatic. But, coaching and training others on the skill of Situational Awareness (SA) is both rewarding and critical—and as close to the excitement of being a fighter pilot as I can get.

How can you coach yourself and others to be more situationally aware? See More

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Learn, Grow & Develop Other Leaders™
——————–
Lee Ellis

Lee Ellis is Founder & President of Leadership Freedom LLC & FreedomStar Media.
He is a leadership consultant and expert in teambuilding, executive development & assessments
Email | LinkedIn | Web | Blog | Book | Facebook | Twitter

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

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Leading Through Fear

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Fear is a Liar

It happens even to the best and most experienced leader – fear.

Facing Your Fear

It may be a fear of the ‘Great Recession,’ a fear that your position or career is in jeopardy, a fear that you personal life is suffering or the fear that you may have chosen the wrong profession.  The fear may be on your mind every day or it may be hidden in your subconscious.

Whatever your fear is and wherever it may lie, if you’re a leader, you still need to present a picture of strength to the people you lead.

So – how do you do it?

“As fear is based on something that we think may happen in the future, it is clearly a mental process which tries to predict the future – in that sense, the reason of fear is a projection of our mind.” View on Budhism

Leading through fear requires two basic things…

  1. Always presenting a strong and confident public persona
  2. Fully understanding, confronting, and moving past your fears.

Your Public Persona

Present a Strong and Confident Public Persona

ConfidenceAs a leader, you are looked at to provide direction, coaching, mentoring, vision, strategy, and many other things for your team.  For an inexperienced leader who is facing fear for the first time, providing the things your organization needs can be difficult or even impossible to accomplish some times.

Most young leaders who experience fear for the first time while leading either struggle with presenting a strong and confident persona and not feeling like they are lying to their team or revert to a controlling and almost dictatorial style of leadership.

What they don’t realize is that, internal struggles like those in option 1 can be paralyzing and cause them to be inefficient leaders and extreme measures like those in  option 2 can lead to them losing team members and possibly even their job.

Presenting a strong and confident persona while experience fear is neither lying nor being two-faced, it is in fact, a skill that every great leader must develop.  Great leaders aren’t the ones who avoid fear or never fear anything, they are the ones who feel fear, confront it, use it to push them to great decisions and pull their team through.

“Regardless of the route we choose, fear is a fact of life. Although many of us have been taught that fear is negative, fear can be a good emotion. It is like a warning signal to be aware, to be prepared. Managed effectively, fear can teach us to look out for ourselves and make decisions that are right for us.” Find a Mentor

When leading through fear, a leader must also avoid turning into a dictator and trying to control everything.  While this desire to control everything is a natural reaction to many fears, it can also lead to more conflicts and issues than it solves.  In short – while controlling things make us feel better, the feeling of being controlled by someone else is not a very good feeling for people around us.

Understand, Confront, Move Past Your Fears

First – determine if the fear is real or imagined.

This is sometimes difficult to accomplish – especially when it comes to a work situation.  For example, you hear about layoffs at the company where you work.  Your team hears the same rumors as you do and confronts you about them.  At the beginning, everyone is feeling the same fear – the fear of being laid off.  However, until you get conformation one way or another, you must present a confident persona to your team and give them the confidence they need to continue performing at a high level.

At this point, the fear of being laid off is technically real.

As time goes on, you are told by your direct manager that the layoff will not affect anyone in his/her group.  You hold meetings with your staff and let them know that you have been told that you’ve been told the layoffs will not affect them group.  As long as you have built trust within your group, they will believe you and their fear will subside.

More time passes and it’s announced that your division will be going through a re-organization and that, in a few weeks, you and your entire group will be working for another manager.  This is scheduled to happen after the layoffs are basically complete.

At this point, the fear of being laid off could be either real or imagined.

More time passes and the unfortunate happens, as the transition to the new group is in progress, someone is laid off.  This is bound to create tension in the group and leave people in a state of fear for their own jobs.  They also may begin to distrust management as the layoff for your group has become a reality.

Second – if the fear is real, confront in head on.

Now that the fear of someone in the group being laid off has become reality and that they group knows they may be next, a number of things must happen.

First, you must explain to the group why the layoff hit your group when you said it wouldn’t.  Everybody understands that things change. Everybody understands that business changes and sometimes deeper cuts are necessary.  Also, everybody understands if an organization is re-evaluated and found to be too heavy in one area or another.

The key here is to be open, honest and transparent.

Second, you must start to rebuild trust.  Maybe take the team out for lunch or host an offsite event.  Your team will need time away from the office in a non-threatening environment to voice their questions and concerns.  Possible even consider involving Human Resources or another third-party to ensure all fears, concerns, questions, and so forth come to light.

Only by acknowledging and confronting our fears can we move on.

So what is your experience with leading through fear? Do you have challenges at your organization when frightening news is rifling through your team’s psychological network? What do you do to calm fears and bring people down a calmer path? I would love to hear your thoughts!

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Chris M. Sprague
Chris Sprague is a Visionary Servant Leader
He strives to bring out the best in everyone
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Leaders, Turn Your Informed and Engaged Employees Into Advocates

Part 3 of 3

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Leading a team of informed and engaged employees is extremely rewarding .

Everyone seems to get along, people are motivated to do their jobs well, and your business appears to be running like a well-oiled machine. (For more on that, see my Part 1 of 3 or Part 2 of 3 in this series.)

But if you stop there, you’re doing yourself and your team a huge disservice.

You’re missing out on the key next step: creating advocates.

Employee Advocates as First Responders

As a leader, creating a team full of brand advocates is beneficial for a number of reasons. Most of all, it adds a human element to your public relations. When your employees are the ones promoting your brand, your audience is much more likely to listen.

In fact, 84 percent of people say they trust recommendations from their acquaintances over those that come through traditional advertising.

Employee advocates are also your first line of defense against those who may be uninformed about your brand (or unhappy with it). In a social media-driven world where people are digitally communicating 24/7, this is especially crucial.

In one study, 56 percent of employees said they’ve defended their company via a public platform — and raising this number is the ultimate goal of employee advocacy.

Acting as a Brand Megaphone

The best employee advocates are proud, vocal, savvy, and educated about what they do. They take their jobs seriously and understand the importance of their roles — both within their departments and for the company as a whole.

Advocates are driven and career-oriented, and they place a high value on their personal brands.

Their ability to be vocal creates enormous levels of engagement. Not only do they show their enthusiasm for their jobs internally, but they also want to share their appreciation with the world.

That said, a love for the job isn’t enough. To be effective advocates, they must also get the proper guidance, training, and tools to share their knowledge with their audience of followers and connections.

That’s where you, as a leader, come in.

Creating Employee Advocates

Here are five techniques that will help you create employee advocates:

1. Put Parameters in place

Informed, engaged employees need to know what they can and cannot say about their companies on public platforms. For instance, someone might be dying to celebrate the positive outcomes of a corporate rebrand, but he isn’t sure whether it’s OK to share that information with the public.

To avoid this, create and distribute a list of best practices for communicating about the company, as well as a social media policy. This might seem like a no-brainer, but one survey revealed that fewer than half of all companies currently have policies in place. Without clear parameters, employees will likely share too much or too little, causing their advocacy to be ineffective (or to backfire).

2. Collaborate to Identify Goals

As you build your advocacy program, be sure to include your employees in the process. They’re the ones who will carry it out, so work together to determine your goals and definition of success.

For instance, are you looking to improve HR and company culture? If so, your ambassador program should be more internally focused. But if you’re striving to improve social selling and lead generation, then your program will be largely social and built on employees’ existing connections.

Either way, your employees have a valuable perspective that should be factored into your plans.

3. Incorporate Technology

To ensure ease of use, simplicity, and adoption, implement technology that supports your advocacy goals. Studies show that employees’ usage of social media, smartphones, and after-hours Internet directly correlates with their performance as advocates.

In addition, employees of socially engaged companies are 57 percent more likely to align social media engagement with more sales leads.

4. Level the Playing Field

To encourage participation, you must give employees a reason to opt in — and an easy method for doing so. Some employees aren’t natural advocates and have no interest in participating; don’t force them. That will only lead to bad things for both of you.

Instead, recognize and reward employees who are talking about your organization and spreading your brand’s message.

Create toolkits for managers to share with their direct reports that detail your program, the opportunities it offers, and the benefits of joining. Announce it during all-hands meetings, share success stories, and give employees more than one chance to sign up.

5. Dive Into the Data

Once you’ve defined success, identified measurable goals, and launched your employee advocacy program, make sure to continuously gather and analyze data.

Over time, this information will uncover what’s working and what’s not, and it will allow you to make necessary adjustments down the road to maximize your program.

Creating Positive Impact

Informed and engaged employees are prime candidates for brand advocacy because they’re already intrinsically motivated to collaborate and make a difference for your company. They want to have an impact on both your culture and your bottom line.

Employee advocates can be your most valuable assets — but it’s up to you to provide them with the framework and tools to get there. For more on this, see my Part 1 of 3 or Part 2 of 3 in this series.

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Learn, Grow & Develop Other Leaders™
——————–
Russell Fradin

Russ Fradin is the founder and CEO of Dynamic Signal
He is a Digital Media industry veteran and an Angel Investor
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6 Steps to Creating a Leader-Focused Growth Plan

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Growth Arrow

Getting a new member on your staff can be extremely exciting. This new staff member can bring needed energy and enthusiasm to your team.

When you get a new staff member or employee, it is extremely important for you and the staff member to establish a growth plan within the company.

Engineering Success

Your company works hard to actively recruit people who want to grow and managers want to see that growth help the company, as well as the talent you have recruited. In order to ensure that your new employee is able to grow their talent and become better at their job, consider establishing a growth plan with him or her.

Establishing and following through on a high quality growth plan are critical not only for your retention rate, but for the success of your employee as well.

Creating a Winning Growth Plan

Here are simple steps to creating a winning growth plan.

1. Get to know your new team member

The first step should take place during the first week the employee is hired. You should meet with your new team member. Ask them why they want to be here and what they are hoping to accomplish with their time here.

Find out what goals they have for their future life, both professional and personal goals. This early conference is very much about finding out what your new employee values and finding out how you can both help each other.

2. Create goals

After the first meeting you should take about two weeks to think about what you learned from this meeting. Tell your new employee to think about some short and long-term goals that they would like to set. Prod them to open up about what they are truly interested in, if pay drives them, coach them on what’s a reasonable payroll.

You should also take some time to think about some potential goals for your employee as well. After the right amount of time you should sit down with your new employee and talk about the goals that you each want for the employee. Be sure to listen carefully for what the employee wants for themselves.

During this meeting, you will set up some goals for the coming months and for the next year. These goals will help you and your employee focus on his or her growth and give you something to work towards.

3. Observe what skills they already have

The next thing you need to do is to assess what skills your employee has. You have some data on your employee from his or her resume. Take some time to pay attention to the way your employee performs in the office. Develop a list of skills that you notice that your employee has. You should also develop a list of skills that your employee needs to develop as they continues to grow.

4. Take advantage of performance reviews

After about a month of observing your employee, you should sit down with your employee. Give them some time to reflect on how they have performed in the last month. Ask your employee what they feel their strengths and weaknesses are.

Based on your observations and your employees strengths and weaknesses, you should be able to set a list of skills you would like for your employee to work on. List out three different skills you feel that your employee could get better at and tell your employee that you plan on supporting him or her in their quest to become better at what they do.

5. Offer training

Next, support your employee in their ability to get more skills. Arrange some professional development and training for your employee. This may require you to schedule video conferencing for your employee with experts in each of these skills, or maybe send them to a conference.

Skill development is extremely important for your employee, so you should take your time to invest in professional development for your employee. Most importantly, be transparent with your employee. Tell them that you send them to training activities and conferences because you value them and want them to get as much out of it as they want to.

6. Reflection

The final step in developing your employee as a professional is to reflect. After a year, you and your employee should conference. Reflect on the goals you set a year ago and decide to what extent the employee was able to meet those goals.

If your employee was not able to meet the goals, then you should ask the employee what they felt kept them from meeting their goal. This will form the base of next years goals. You should also reflect on the professional development the employee has received over the last year.

Continued Development

This is also a great time to talk about new strengths and weaknesses. At the end of the meeting, discuss with your employee and establish new goals for the next year as well as new skills. This will allow your employee to develop continually.

Investing in the development of your employees is critical to the success of your business in the long-term as well as the success of your recruitment efforts. Start developing your employees today!

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Learn, Grow & Develop Other Leaders™
———————
Robert Cordray

Robert Cordray is a freelance writer with over 20 years of business experience
He does the occasional business consult to help increase employee morale
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