The Practice of Leadership

How leaders embed and transmit culture…

George Ambler — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:54:58 +0000

Culture is often defined as “the way we do things around here”. Organisational culture is the leaders responsibility as “culture is the shadow of the leader”. If this is true the question is how is the culture embedded and transmitted by leaders? Edgar Schein in his book “Organizational Culture and Leadership” provide some clues. In the book Edgar lists the following:

“Primary Embedding Mechanisms

What leaders pay attention to, measure, and control on a regular basis

How leaders react to critical incidents and organizational crises

How leaders allocate resources

Deliberate role modeling, teaching, and coaching

How leaders allocate rewards and status

How leaders recruit, select, promote and excommunicate

Secondary Articulation and Reinforcement Mechanisms

Organizational design and structure

Organizational systems and procedures

Rites and rituals of the organization

Design of physical space, facades, and buildings

Stories about important events and people

Formal statements of organizational philosophy, creeds, and charters”

As leaders we are responsible for our organisations and teams culture. We cannot blame others, we cannot blame the past, we must take responsibility to create a new future. Reflecting on the above lists what shadow are you casting?

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Management, Culture, Change, Business

Gary Hamel’s Nine Ways to Identify Natural Leaders

George Ambler — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:42:54 +0000

Gary Hamel’s “Nine Ways to Identify Natural Leaders” provides some insight into the age old question “How do you identify leaders?”

“The need to empower natural leaders isn’t an HR pipedream, it’s a competitive imperative. But before you can empower them, you have to find them. In most companies, the formal hierarchy is a matter of public record—it’s easy to discover who’s in charge of what. By contrast, natural leaders don’t appear on any organization chart. To hunt them down, you need to know . . .

Whose advice is sought most often on any particular topic?

Who responds most promptly to requests from peers?

Whose responses are judged most helpful?

Who is most likely to reach across organizational boundaries to aid a colleague?

Whose opinions are most valued, internally and externally?

Who gets the most kudos from customers?

Who’s the most densely connected to other employees?

Who’s generating the most buzz outside the company?

Who consistently demonstrates real thought leadership?

Who seems truly critical to key decisions?”

This is a great list to use in your leadership search efforts. Searching and selecting natural leadership is of critical importance in today’s competitive environment. Equally important is the need to create environments in which leadership thrives. Gary Hamel goes on to note that…

“One thing’s certain, though: we can’t invent Management 2.0 without inventing some new ways for people to accumulate and exercise authority. In the tempestuous seas of today’s creative economy, top-down leadership structures are fast becoming a liability. We need is a new currency of power—one based not on titles, but on every individual’s capacity to lead, every day….

“So here are some questions to ponder: How would you find the natural leaders in your company? And once found, how would you help them expand their influence? Can you imagine other alternatives to traditional power structures? If so, what might they be?”

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Selection, HR, Talent, Management, Business, Checklist

Leadership as ‘Intentional Influence’

George Ambler — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:41:18 +0000

The article “Leadership: Intentional Influence” from BusinessWeek provide an interesting discussion on the topic of leadership. Research by the company VitalSmarts uncovered the following key insights that help to understand why few leaders are able to exert influence.

Leaders act as if it’s not their job to address entrenched habits. “Most leaders put a great deal of time into crafting strategy, selecting winning products, and engaging with analysts, shareholders, and major customers. But few realize the success or failure of their grand schemes lies in influencing the behavior of the hundreds or thousands of people who will have to execute the big ideas—their employees.

Leaders lack a theory of influence. “Very few leaders can even answer the question, "How do you change the behavior of a large group of people?" And yet, this is what they’re ultimately paid to do. It isn’t just about making a decision; it’s about getting people aligned to execute the decision. And this means influence….”

Leaders confuse talking with influencing. “Many leaders think influence consists of little more than talking people into doing things… Anyone who’s ever tried to talk a smoker into quitting knows there’s a lot more to behavior change than words…”

Leaders believe in silver bullets. “When leaders actually attempt to influence new behavior, it’s common for them to look for quick fixes—to fall into the trap of thinking that deeply ingrained bad habits can be changed with a single technique. The failure mode is to rely on any single approach…”

You can learn more about the Influential Leader at www.vitalsmarts.com/influentialleader

Technorati Tags: Change Management, Change, Influence, Leadership, Management

Ten Fatal Flaws That Derail Leaders

George Ambler — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:40:10 +0000

The Harvard Business Review provide a list of the “Ten Fatal Flaws That Derail Leaders” as follows:

Lack energy and enthusiasm
Accept their own mediocre performance
Lack clear vision and direction
Have poor judgment
Don’t collaborate
Don’t walk the talk
Resist new ideas
Don’t learn from mistakes
Lack interpersonal skills
Fail to develop others

This makes a great “stop doing list” for leaders. Which one can you focus on improving over the next two weeks?

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Business, Management, Flaws, Leaders

How interruptions drain productivity

George Ambler — Sun, 17 May 2009 19:23:24 +0000

Photo by underminingme

Time is a leaders most valuable resource. The way a leader uses their time, demonstrates to the people around them what’s really important. The management of interruptions is critical to ensure you make effective use of this valuable resource. The article “Fighting a War Against Distraction” emphasise the devastating impact that interruptions have on our productivity:

“The average knowledge worker switches tasks every three minutes, and, once distracted, a worker takes nearly a half-hour to resume the original task, according to Gloria Mark, a leader in the new field of ‘interruption science.’

Interruptions and the requisite recovery time now consume 28 percent of a worker’s day, the business research firm Basex estimates. The risks are clear. As one top executive told me, ‘Knowledge work can’t be done in sound bites.’

Employees who are routinely interrupted and lack time to focus are more apt to feel frustrated, pressured and stressed, according to separate studies by Ms. Mark and the Families and Work Institute, a nonprofit group.

Under deadline pressure, workers produce creative work on days when they are focused, not when they are scattered and interrupted, a study published in the Harvard Business Review found.”

As leaders it’s therefore essential for us to manage our time and our interruptions carefully.

Technorati Tags: Getting Things Done, Time Management, Productivity, Interruption, Research, Lifehack

Successful leaders demonstrate courage, focus and engagement

George Ambler — Sun, 17 May 2009 19:19:22 +0000

“Leadership Matters: Appreciate GE’s Immelt” by Todd Thomas makes the following insightful observations after observing successful leaders such as Jeffrey Immelt CEO of General Electric, John Stumpf CEO of Wells Fargo and Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.

Courage: Each of these leaders, and those around them, exhibit the courage to make the decisions they feel they need to make regardless of the immediate and short-term reactions of the market, media or public. They know in their heart-of-hearts that they are making the right decisions for the right reasons based on the information they have available at the time.

Focus: Each of these leaders has also shown an ability to narrow their concern and their attention to a nearly single-minded focus. Whether it is integrating an acquisition, staying true to their roots, or forging a new corporate culture, each of these leaders knows what he is trying to accomplish and is not swayed from the overall future.

Engagement: The other interesting aspect of these leaders, and leaders like them, is that they are not going it alone. All three of the leaders mentioned above are known for their efforts to engage other leaders and employees in the future of their organization. Companies do not magically deliver results –the work of the employees within those companies makes the difference between success and failure. Effective leaders today do not leave out those who are below them in the hierarchy but depend on their involvement, ideas and engagement to make it in the future.

These three attributes of leadership are essential. Courage is necessary to bring about the change necessary to navigate the future, focus ensures that we keep our attention on what’s important for today to shape the future and engagement ensures that the change is sustainable over the long-term.

Decide what next bold action you need to take today.
Do you have a narrow focus on the few critical actions you need to take to shape the future?
Are you taking people on the journey with you?

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Focus, Courage, Engagement, Management, Business

Get The Practice of Leadership on your Kindle!

George Ambler — Sun, 17 May 2009 19:17:45 +0000

Did you know that you can now get “The Practice of Leadership” on your Kindle, simply by clicking here!

Leaders are self-made, practical learners

George Ambler — Sun, 17 May 2009 19:17:15 +0000

Photo by snappybex

Leaders are pragmatic learners. They take the time to reflect and learn as they go from life’s experiences. Consider the following description of leadership from Burt Nanus in his book Visionary Leadership.

“Look at the life story of a visionary leader and it is unlikely you will find much in the way of specific training for leadership. Thus far, most people who have succeeded as visionary leaders seem to have been self-selected and self-made. Bill Gates received no leadership education, nor did Ted Turner, Wayne Huizenga, Frances Hesselbein, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, or any of the others… And apart from an active curiosity , some basic intelligence, and the ability to learn from experience, they seem to have no remarkable genetic endowment predisposing them to leadership success. They are people who figured out for themselves how to dream dreams, enthuse others with their visions, and then make them happen.” –

Having a dream and the courage to act on it, is the first step on the leadership journey. The ability to learn from and adapt to the unfolding events and challenges on the journey is the key to success. Leadership creates action to shape the future and conditions of uncertainty the ability to learn as you go is what separates winners from losers.

Technorati Tags: Learning, Learn, Leadership, Management, Business, Vision, Change

No Communication = No Leadership

George Ambler — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 15:45:10 +0000

Photo by Downtown Pictures

Without effective communication you cannot lead… you end up talking a walk on your own.

Communication is essential to effective leadership. It’s often something we take for granted and not given the attention it deserves. Consider the this quote from Saul Alinsky’s book “Rules for Radicals”:

“One can lack any of the qualities of an organizer – with one exception – and still be effective and successful. That exception is the art of communication. It does not matter what you know about anything if you cannot communicate to your people. In that event you are not even a failure. You’re just no there. Communication with others takes place when they understand what you’re trying to get across to them. If they don’t understand, then you are not communicating regardless of your words, pictures or anything else. People only understand things in terms of their experience, which means that you must get within their experience.”

Communication underpins effective leadership. Leaders need to be conscious of how and what they communicate to other in word and deeds.

How effective is your communication? How do you know?
Is your communication relevant?
How do you get within their experience when your communicate?

Technorati Tags: Communication, Strategy, Leadership, Management, Business, Book

9 tactics to effectively communicate your vision

George Ambler — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 15:42:03 +0000

Photo by Carla216

It’s the leader’s job to communicate the vision to their organisation and team. The first step is to ensure that the content and substance of you vision is relevant to the community. Once you have a great vision the next step is to ensure that the vision is communicated effectively. The way you go about communicating your vision is critical, communication can make or break your vision. The article “How to Inspire Through Vision — Even in Rocky Times” from CCL proposes the following tactics as a means for communicating your vision:

Stories. When you tell a good story, you give life to a vision. The telling of stories creates trust, captures hearts and minds, and serves as a reminder of the vision. Plus, people find it easier to repeat a story than talk about a vision statement.

The elevator speech. Every leader needs to be able to communicate the vision in a clear, brief way. What compelling vision can you describe in the amount of time you have during a typical elevator ride? Be prepared to reinforce the vision in line at the cafeteria, when you visit the customer service department, and even walking through the parking lot at the end of the day.

Multiple media. The more channels of communication you use, the better your chance of creating an organization that "gets" the vision. Use meetings, memos, lunches, podcasts, e-mail, an internal Web site, and whatever else you can think of (Twitter, anyone?) that will keep the message in circulation.

Talk to me. Individualize the vision by engaging others in one-on-one conversations. Personal connections give leaders opportunities to transmit information, receive feedback, build support and create energy around the vision.

Draw a crowd. Identify key players, communicators, stakeholders and supporters throughout the organization who will motivate others to reflect on and be engaged with the vision.

Go outside. Communicate to external customers, partners and vendors with advertising and public relations campaigns, catalogs, announcements and other statements.

Make memories. Create metaphors, figures of speech and slogans and find creative ways to use them. Write a theme song or a memorable motto.

Guide the expedition. Use visual aids and updates to keep everyone aware of the progress you are making toward your vision. Create a vision GPS, but don’t just give out maps. Travel alongside, stay out in front, offer directions and point out guideposts.

Back it up. If you’re talking it up, be sure to back it up with actions and behaviors. If people see one thing and hear another, your credibility is shot and your vision is dead.

This is a good checklist that can be used as input to a communication strategy for your vision.

Have you give enough time and attention to how you’re communicating your vision?
How effectively has your vision been communicated? Do people understand it? Do they talk about it?
What two of the above tactics can you start using this week to improve the communication of your vision?

Technorati Tags: Communication, Vision, Purpose, Inspire, Inspiration, Motivation, Strategy

When goal-setting backfires

George Ambler — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 15:39:38 +0000

Photo by Anderaz

"A goal properly set is halfway reached." – Abraham Lincoln

“Ready, aim … fail” by Drake Bennett discusses research that found goals which are incorrectly set can have negative consequences. Goal-setting drives success and without clear goals we are for the most part unfocused and undisciplined.

“It is a given in American life that goals are inseparable from accomplishment. President Kennedy’s 1961 promise to put an American on the moon by the end of the decade is held up as an example of a world-changing goal, the kind of inspirational beacon needed to surmount immense societal challenges. Among psychologists, the link between setting goals and achievement is one of the clearest there is, with studies on everyone from woodworkers to CEOs showing that we concentrate better, work longer, and do more if we set specific, measurable goals for ourselves’ ‘When people are asked do their best, they don’t,’ says Locke, now an emeritus professor at the University of Maryland’s R.H. Smith School of Business. ‘It’s too vague. Giving people ambitious and specific goals directs their attention, energizes them, and keeps them engaged longer.’”

When Goal-Setting Fails

Goal-setting fails we we focus in the wrong goals or when we focus on a few goals at the expensive of the greater organisation. Issues and concerns outside of the scope of the set goals get neglected or worse they get ignored.

“The argument is not that goal setting doesn’t work – it does, just not always in the way we intend. ‘It can focus attention too much, or on the wrong things; it can lead to crazy behaviors to get people to achieve them,’ says Adam Galinsky, a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and co-author of ‘Goals Gone Wild,’ a paper in the current issue of a leading management journal” Narrow corporate goals can keep employees from asking important questions that they otherwise might. Take the notoriously combustible Ford Pinto. In the late 1960s, Ford CEO Lee Iacocca, determined to take back the market share the company was losing to smaller imports, announced a crash program to create a new car that would be under 2,000 pounds, under $2,000, and would go on sale in 1970. Desperate to meet the conditions and the deadline, company executives ignored and then played down questions about the safety of the car’s design. As a result, the Pinto, with a fuel tank just behind the rear axle, was uniquely prone to igniting upon impact, and 53 people died in such fires.”

The Solution

The article goes on to discusses some solutions to ineffective goal-setting.

“To combat this, Latham, among others, argues that what’s often required is a ‘learning goal’ – one where someone pledges to come up with, for example, five approaches to a thorny problem – rather than a performance goal that assumes that the problem will automatically be solved’ And whatever they are, goals need to be flexible when circumstances change. Francis Flynn, an organizational psychologist at Stanford, says he always tells his students that ‘the best goal you can have is to re-evaluate your goals, semi-annually or annually, to make sure they remain rational.’”

There are other solutions, this goal-setting error has been discussed before by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton who developed The Balanced Scorecard Method as a way to ensure organisations focus on a balanced set of goals. The Wikipedia entry describes the Balanced Scorecard rationale as follows:

“By focusing not only on financial outcomes but also on the operational, marketing and developmental inputs to these, the Balanced Scorecard helps provide a more comprehensive view of a business, which in turn helps organizations act in their best long-term interests.

Organizations were encouraged to measure, in addition to financial outputs, those factors which influenced the financial outputs. For example, process performance, market share / penetration, long term learning and skills development, and so on.

The underlying rationale is that organizations cannot directly influence financial outcomes, as these are "lag" measures, and that the use of financial measures alone to inform the strategic control of the firm is unwise. Organizations should instead also measure those areas where direct management intervention is possible. In so doing, the early versions of the Balanced Scorecard helped organizations achieve a degree of "balance" in selection of performance measures. In practice, early Scorecards achieved this balance by encouraging managers to select measures from three additional categories or perspectives: ‘Customer,’ ‘Internal Business Processes’ and ‘Learning and Growth.’”

As a leader who is striving to realise a vision and purpose everyday, have you set goals for your organisation and team? If you have, check that they are comprehensive and focus on a number of perspectives and that they do not too narrowly focus your organisation on one or two metrics at the expense of long-term effectiveness. Once you have a set of goals create some S.M.A.R.T objectives?

Technorati Tags: Goals, Objectives, Goal-Setting, Target, Balanced Scorecard, Strategy, Execution

How to Create Practical Checklists

George Ambler — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 07:29:44 +0000

Photo by Marcin Wichary

The humble checklist has been used for may years as a memory aid. Checklists help to ensure tasks are completed to the right quality and standards. The best example of a checklist is the daily “to do” list, a reminder of what needs to be accomplished this day. In some cases checklists are a literally a matter of life and death. The article “Checklist Reduces Deaths in Surgery” highlights the power of well designed checklists being used in hospitals with surprising results…

“’Surgical complications are a considerable cause of death and disability around the world,’ the researchers wrote in the online edition of The New England Journal of Medicine. ‘They are devastating to patients, costly to health care systems and often preventable.’

But a year after surgical teams at eight hospitals adopted a 19-item checklist, the average patient death rate fell more than 40 percent and the rate of complications fell by about a third, the researchers reported.”

Checklists turn out to be powerful leadership tools. Consider John Kotter’s widely used “checklist” for managing organisational change taken from his best seller Leading Change:

Establish a sense of urgency, leading to a shared need.
Create a guiding coalition, leading to accountability.
Develop a vision and strategy, leading to hope.
Communicate the change vision and strategy, leading to commitment.
Clear the way for broad-based action, leading to alignment.
Generate and recognizing small wins, leading to momentum.
Consolidate the small wins, leading to early successes.
Anchor the new approaches in the culture and systems, leading to sustainable change.

This checklist contains the most important aspects that you need to consider when introducing change.

Creating a Great Checklist

Some advice to guide you in the creating your own practical checklists.

Checklists are Small: Checklists are intended to be practical and usable tools. A long list of fifty or a hundred items makes the checklist difficult to use. To remain practical checklists need to be small, focused on results and those critical actions that bring about results. A small focused checklist is a practical checklist.
Checklists are Personal: The best checklists are created by you. To be effective you need a good understanding of the outcomes and activities to be performed for each point on the checklist. That understanding is best established when you create your own checklist. Taking another checklists without you understanding the context and purpose of their use can lead to failure. That being said, other people’s checklist are a great starting point to creating your own. Great checklists are usable because they’re your own.
Checklists are Outcome Based: As can be seen from the organisational change checklist above that leadership checklists describe the outcome and not just the activity to be performed. This helps to ensure that you don’t just blindly follow the activity describes without considering the results that you’re looking to achieve in each step.
Checklists are Evolving: Really great checklists don’t just happen overnight. Really useful checklists have evolved and been adjusted with feedback from their practice use. Checklists are tested in the everyday practice reality of getting results and they are changed and developed in the trenches.

Checklists are a great memory aid. A prompt is usually all that’s required to bring forward the relevant expertise and knowledge to a situation. They assists you in applying the right practices to a situation.

What three checklists do you need to develop that would increase leadership effectiveness?
What three checklists would make your team more effective?
Do you have any checklists to share with us? Why not add them in the comments of this post?

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Checklists, Lists, Practices, Leadership Tool, Management, Business, Getting Things Done, GTD, Execution, Lifehacks

Jim Collins Discusses How to Thrive in 2009

George Ambler — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 07:27:57 +0000

Photo by timsnell

As part of their 30th-anniversary issue, Inc. interviewed Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and Built to Last, discussing entrepreneurship in the article “Jim Collins: How to Thrive in 2009” by Bo Burlingham. I found the article contains some great ideas about entrepreneurship and leadership, the ones that caught my attention are:

Jim Collins describes entrepreneurship as a life concept… just like leadership is a life concept…

“How do you define entrepreneurship?

I take a broad view of it. The traditional definition — founding an entity designed to make money — is too narrow for me. I see entrepreneurship as more of a life concept. We all make choices about how we live our lives. You can take a paint-by-numbers approach, or you can start with a blank canvas. When you paint by numbers, the end result is guaranteed. You know what it’s going to be, and it might be good, but it will never be a masterpiece. Starting with a blank canvas is the only way to get a masterpiece, but you could also blow up. So, are you going to pick the paint-by-numbers kit or the blank canvas? That’s a life question, not a business question

It has to do with your ability to handle risk, no?

Not risk. Ambiguity. People confuse the two. My students used to come to me at Stanford and say, "I’d really like to do something on my own, but I’m just not ready to take that much risk. So I took the job with IBM." And I would say, "You’re not ready for risk? What’s the first thing you learn about investing? Never put all your eggs in one basket. You’ve just put all your eggs in one basket that is held by somebody else." As an entrepreneur, you know what the risks are. You see them. You understand them. You manage them. If you join someone else’s company, you may not know those risks, and not because they don’t exist. You just can’t see them, and so you can’t manage them. That’s a much more exposed position than the entrepreneur faces. But there’s lower ambiguity on the paint-by-numbers path: very clear but more risky. The entrepreneurial path: very ambiguous but less risk. Of course, the truth is that it’s all ambiguous, anyway. If you think you can predict the future, you’re crazy.”

It’s about Having a Larger Purpose in Mind…

“… think about the leading entrepreneurs of the past three decades: Steve Jobs, Ken Iverson, Herb Kelleher, Anita Roddick, Yvon Chouinard, Howard Schultz, Jeff Bezos. What jumps out at you as being consistent across all those people?

The larger purpose of what they were doing.

Right. They defined success on a very big scale. For Steve Jobs, it was about much more than selling computers. For Yvon Chouinard, more than clothing. For Anita Roddick, more than cosmetics. For Howard Schultz, more than coffee. For Jeff Bezos, more than online retailing. Wendy Kopp fits right in. We’re talking big — millions of kids, transforming society. The ambitions are huge.”

More and more having the right people, the right talent in the right place is what really matters…

“Steve Jobs was in the very first issue of Inc., back in April 1979. How have the basic skills required to build a great company changed from then to now?

I would say that the basic principles have largely not changed, but the skills are always changing. For example, nothing would suggest that the importance of the who has changed. If anything, our turbulence research reinforces the idea that the most important decisions are always who decisions. Whether you’re running a business in 1812, 1886, 1925, 1950, 1975, 2000, 2050, I see nothing to contradict the principle that who comes first and what comes second, for a very simple reason: If you cannot predict the what, you have to be able to do a good job with the who, because the what is going to be constantly shifting.

What exactly do you mean by doing a good job with the who?

Do you have a culture of people who A. share a set of values, B. have very clear responsibilities, and C. perform? Those who build a culture around those ideas are building upon something that is largely unchangeable.”

Ensure that you are continually learning… that you are managing your time and not your work…

“But what has changed if you’re building a business now, as opposed to 10, 20, or 30 years ago?

The skills. You need to be continually learning. For example, if you accept the idea that work is infinite and time is finite, you realize you have to manage your time and not your work. You need a laserlike focus on doing first things first. And that means having a ferocious understanding of what you are not going to do. The question used to be which phone call you wouldn’t take. Now, it’s the discipline not to have your e-mail on. The skill is knowing how to sift through the blizzard of information that hits you all the time. That’s a different skill from what you needed 50 years ago, but the fundamental principles don’t change.”

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Business, Management, Interview, Purpose, Jim Collins

Book Review: Strengths Based Leadership

George Ambler — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 07:26:04 +0000

In “Strengths-Based Leadership” the authors, Tom Rath and Barry Conchie examine the question “What are the keys to effective leadership?”. To answer this question a group of researchers were gathered to review data collected from Gallup on the topic, the research included 20,000 interviews with senior leaders, studies of more than one million work teams and 50 years of Gallup Polls of the world’s most admired leaders. Key findings from the research are as follows:

The most effective leaders are always investing in strengths.
The most effective leaders surround themselves with the right people and then maximize their team.
The most effective leaders understand their followers needs.

Investing in Your Strengths

Without understanding our strengths we a doomed to lead from mediocrity…

“If you spend your life trying to be good at everything, you will never be great at anything. While our society encourages us to be well-rounded, this approach inadvertently breeds mediocrity. Perhaps the greatest misconception of all is that of the well-rounded leader.”

It’s our differences that defines our success as leaders…

“I’ve never met an effective leader who wasn’t aware of his talents and working to sharpen them.” – Former NATO supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark, in the New York Times Magazine

The authors go on to make an interesting observation…

“If you look at great historical leaders such as Winston Churchill, Mahatma Ghandi, you might notice more differences than similarities – and it is the differences that defined them and led to their success.”

“Many political and business leaders have self concepts that are miles away from reality. They simply don’t know their strengths and weaknesses.”

The leadership researcher Donald O. Clifton started studying leadership in the 1960’s, conducting more than 20,000 interviews with various leaders across diverse industries, before his death in 2003, he was asked what was his greatest leadership discovery from the more than thirty years of research, he answered as follows:

“A leader needs to know his strengths as a carpenter knows his tools, or as a physician knows the instruments at her disposal. What great leaders have in common is that each truly knows his or her strengths – and can call on the right strength at the right time. This explains why there is no definitive list of characteristics that describes all leaders.”

Maximizing Your Team

“Effective people surround themselves with the right people and build upon each person’s strength. Yet in most cases, leadership teams are a product of circumstance more than design. among the executive teams we have studied, team members were selected or promoted based primarily upon knowledge or competence. So, the best sales person becomes the chief salesperson, even if he is not a great manager… Rarely are people recruited to an executive team because their strengths are the best complement to those of the existing team members.”

The research has identified four distinct domains of leadership strength that guide how different leaders contribute to their team.

“Although individuals need not be well rounded, teams should be.”

The four leadership domains as identified in the research are as follows:

Executing: Leaders who know how to make things happen.
Influencing: Leaders who help their teams reach a much broader audience.
Relationship Building: Leaders who are the glue that holds the team together.
Strategic Thinking: Leaders who keep us focused on what could be.

The four domains are supported by 34 themes that describes each leaders specific strengths. The book includes key that can be used to access the Gallup StrengthsFinder program, which allows you to complete the online assessment. The assessment analyses your strengths and provides a detailed report of each of leadership strengths and includes guidance on how to use your unique strengths to improve your leadership effectiveness.

In Summary

Effective leadership has it’s foundation in personal effectiveness, this requires a deep understanding of your unique strengths and weaknesses, resulting in greater self-awareness. Given the important of self-awareness to effective leadership, any tool that can assist a leader in gaining a better understanding of himself is worth the investment. This book is a great investment in your leadership development.

Technorati Tags: Strengths, Leadership, Management, Leader, Business, Talent, Book Review, Book, Assessment

Keeping your leadership focus

George Ambler — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 07:24:56 +0000

Photo by Jeff Kubina

“The hardest thing about the job is staying focused” – President Obama talking to Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes

“How the best bosses find focus” provides three great insights into how leaders keep their leadership focus:

Know what you’re not good at. “Over lunch last week, a senior executive at a top Fortune 500 company told me that when she’s interviewing candidates for jobs (yes, she’s actually hiring!), she notes whether the prospect knows what his or her talent is not. “Most people don’t know what they’re not good at,” she said. She generally turns away these folks and chooses the self-aware ones who know how to channel their energy.”
Know what not to do. “Anne Mulcahy, who brought Xerox (XRX) back from the brink and ranks No. 4 on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women list, told the New York Times on Sunday: ‘It’s sometimes hard to make choices about where you invest; it’s equally hard to make choices about where you don’t invest and what you eliminate.’”
Find a focus and stick with it. “No CEO is better at identifying, communicating, and sticking to a vision than A.G. Lafley, the CEO of Procter & Gamble. Besides his mantra, “the consumer is boss,” Lafley’s big idea is: Reach outside for ideas.… Do you realize that Lafley has been beating this drum since he took the helm at P&G nine years ago?”

Keeping focus is a constant leadership challenge. One that needs constant attention on a daily basis.

How do you keep your leadership focus?
What advice can you give to help others in keeping their leadership focus?

Technorati Tags: Focus, Execution, Management, Leadership, GTD, Getting Things Done, Lifehacks, Time Management

Where do you place your best people?

George Ambler — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 11:30:19 +0000

Photo by justneal

Jim Collins in his best selling book “Good to Great” discusses a powerful leadership principle…

“put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems”

Collins noted that:

“…failing to grasp the fact that managing your problems can only make you good, whereas building your opportunities is the only way to become great.”

Often leaders are overwhelmed by problems and it’s tempting to keep the best people on the big problems. The result of this is that people who have time on their hands (usually because they are not getting much done) get assigned to teams working on the next big opportunities. A big mistake, opportunities never get realised and the organisation remains trapped in it’s current situation.

Where have you placed your best people?
What is their focus?
Should this change?

Technorati Tags: Innovation, Success, People, HR, Talent, Vision, Execution, Action

Success Matters

George Ambler — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 11:28:54 +0000

Photo by matsukawa1971

“Until you ‘figure out what success means’ to you personally and to your organisation, leadership is an almost ‘pointless conversation’, Drucker Admonished, Success Built to Last

Leadership exists within the context of vision, purpose and goals. You cannot lead unless you know where you’re going. People will not follow someone who is unsure of where they are headed.

“Leaders must know where they are going if they expect others to willingly join them on the journey.” – Kouzes & Posner, The Leadership Challenge

Are you clear in your mind as to what success means to you?

Technorati Tags: Success, Leadership, Vision, Purpose, Goals, Management, Business

Tips from Tom Peters for Leading in Freaked-out Times

George Ambler — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 12:49:59 +0000

“Rule #3: Leadership Is Confusing As Hell” By Tom Peters provides a list ways of being a leader in freaked-out times. These are some of the leadership tips that caught my eye…

Leaders love the mess. “… There’s no mess — and no creativity, no energy, no inspired leadership.”

The leader is rarely — possibly never? — the best performer. “… Leaders get their kicks from orchestrating the work of others — not from doing it themselves.”

Leaders deliver. “If you’re aiming to be a real leader during the next five years, then you need to mimic the pizza man: You’d better deliver! For the past five years, ideas and cool have counted (which was important). What counts now? Performance. Results.”

Leaders create their own (peculiar?) destinies. “… During the next five years, there won’t be room for paper pushers. Only people who make personal determinations to be leaders will survive — and that holds true at all levels of all organizations (including entry level)… ”

Leaders win through logistics. “Vision, sure. Strategy, yes. But when you go to war, you need to have both toilet paper and bullets at the right place at the right time. In other words, you must win through superior logistics…”

Leaders groove on ambiguity. “…The next five years are going to be an economic roller-coaster ride. That means that business leaders are going to be challenged repeatedly not just to make fact-based decisions, but also to make some sense out of all of the conflicting and hard-to-detect signals that come through the fog and the noise. Leaders are the ones who can handle gobs and gobs of ambiguity.”

Leadership is an improvisational art. “The game — hey, the basic rule book — keeps changing. Competition keeps changing. So leaders need to change, to keep reinventing themselves. Leaders have to be ready to adapt, to move, to forget yesterday, to forgive, and to structure new roles and new relationships for themselves, their teams, and their ever-shifting portfolio of partners.”

Leaders trust their guts. "Intuition" is one of those good words that has gotten a bad rap. For some reason, intuition has become a "soft" notion. Garbage! Intuition is the new physics. It’s an Einsteinian, seven-sense, practical way to make tough decisions. Bottom line, circa 2001 to 2010: The crazier the times are, the more important it is for leaders to develop and to trust their intuition.

Leaders trust trust. “In a world gone nuts, we cry out for something or someone to rely on. To trust. The fearless leader may (make that, had better) change his or her mind with the times. But as a subordinate, I trust a leader who shows up, makes the tough calls, takes the heat, sleeps well amidst the furor, and then aggressively chomps into the next task in the morning with visible vitality.”

Leaders are good at forgetting. “Companies need to be forgetting organizations… Got an idea? Don’t dally. Go for it while it’s an original! Doesn’t work? Try something else. If that doesn’t work, fuhgeddaboutit!”

Leaders bring in different dudes. “…Winning leaders know that their organizations need to refresh the gene pool. That happens when leaders forget old practices and open up their minds to new ones. That also happens — and more effectively — when leaders bring in new people and new partners with new ideas. As a leader, do with your people what Cisco has done so effectively with technology: Acquire a new line of thinking by acquiring a new group of thinkers.”

Leaders make mistakes — and make no bones about it. “Nobody — repeat, nobody — gets it right the first time. Most of us don’t get it right the second, third, or fourth time either. Winston Churchill said it best: "Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm." Churchill blew one assignment after another — until he came up against the big one and saved the world. As times get crazier, you’re going to see more — and dumber — mistakes. When you make mistakes, you need to recognize them quickly, deal with them quickly, move on quickly — and make cooler mistakes tomorrow.”

Leaders love to work with other leaders. “… Leaders are known by the company they keep. If you work with people who are cool, pioneering leaders who have customers who are cool, pioneering leaders who source from suppliers who are cool, pioneering leaders — then you’ll stay on the leading edge for the next five years. Laggards work with laggards. Leaders work with leaders. It really is that simple.”

Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders. “Too many old-fashioned leaders measure their influence by the number of followers that they can claim. But the greatest leaders are those who don’t look for followers. Think of Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandas Gandhi, or Nelson Mandela. They were looking for more leaders in order to empower others to find and create their own destinies.”

Leaders honor the assassins in their own organizations. “There’s only one reason why any human being ever makes it into the history books: because he or she remorselessly overthrew the conventional wisdom. Those are leaders. But truly great leaders, the ones who aim to leave a legacy, go to the next level. They consistently seek out and honor the people in their own organizations who want to overthrow their conventional wisdom. Great leaders honor the people who want to depose them, the assassins in their midst. Real leaders, repeat after me: All hail Brutus!”

Leaders wear their passion on their sleeve. “There’s absolutely no question in my mind: Leaders dream in Technicolor. They see the world in brighter colors, sharper images, and higher resolution. Leadership, in the end, is all about having energy, creating energy, showing energy, and spreading energy. Leaders emote, they erupt, they flame, and they have boundless (nutty) enthusiasm. And why shouldn’t they? The cold logic of it is unassailable: If you do not love what you’re doing, if you do not go totally bonkers for your project, your team, your customers, and your company, then why in the world are you doing what you’re doing? And why in the world would you expect anybody to follow you?”

Leaders know: Energy begets energy. “Every successful company, every successful team, and every successful project runs on one thing: energy. It’s the leader’s job to be the energy source that others feed from… Benjamin Zander said it best: The job of the leader is to be a ‘dispenser of enthusiasm.’”

Leaders give respect. “… Care. Respect. Leaders care about connecting — because it moves mountains.”

Leadership is a performance. “According to HP big cheese Carly Fiorina, ‘Leadership is a performance. You have to be conscious about your behavior, because everyone else is.’ Leaders spend time leading — which means that they spend time and exert ceaseless effort making sure that they come across with the right message in the way that they walk, talk, dress, and stand. Leadership is not only about action. It’s also about acting.”

Technorati Tags: Tom Peters, Leadership, Management, Business, Leader

Leaders are not born, they’re made… leadership develops

George Ambler — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 17:42:08 +0000

Photo by plagal

There has been a debate for a number of years concerning the issue of what makes a great leader. This debate is usually summarized into two schools of thought. The one school proposes that leaders are a select few people who are born with the unique set of skill and have rare leadership abilities. The other school of thought proposes that leaders are made, that is they learn, grow and develop into great leaders through the books they read, the people they associate with and from their personal experiences.

My take on this discussion is that I believe that Leaders are made, and I am not the only one with this belief.

“…leaders are made, not born, and made more by themselves than by any external means. Second . . . that no leader sets out to be a leader per se, but rather to express himself freely and fully.” – Warren Bennis, On Becoming a Leader

The truth is the most people have the potential to become leaders. The real issue is that leadership takes time to develop…

People need time to figure out what they’re passionate about
People need time to understand their personal vision and purpose
People need time to learn how to express who they
People need time to learn how to use their unique strengths and skills
People need time to learn how to express their purpose in their own unique unique way.

As the saying goes…. the fighter does not win in the ring… he is only recognised there! You see leadership is not something you’re born with, it cannot be taught, it cannot be copied… it’s learnt!

“Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned.” – Harold Geneen

Leaders learn through life experience, by making room in our lives for lots of trial and error…

“Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal." – Vince Lombardi

Leaders are made when they understanding their purpose, their unique strengths and have a deep passion to make a difference by living out who they are in the real world.

“Leadership is an observable, learnable set of practices. Leadership is not something mystical and ethereal that cannot be understood by ordinary people. Given the opportunity for feedback and practice, those with the desire and persistence to lead can substantially improve their abilities to do so.” – James Kouzes and Barry Posner, The Leadership Challenge

Perhaps this real issue is that…

… only a few of us pay the price necessary to become a leader?
… only a few people take the time to understand their unique vision and purpose?
… only a few people take the time to understand who they are?
… only a few people take the time to learn how to express themselves?

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Made, Born, Management, Business, Theory, Experience, Learn, Learning

Leaders show the way

George Ambler — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 17:36:49 +0000

Leaders influence others through their actions. Example is critical to effective leadership. The power of example is best illustrated by an old poem by Edgar Guest…

A SERMON

I’d rather see a sermon than hear one any day;

I’d rather one should walk with me than merely show the way.

The eye’s a better pupil, and more willing than the ear;

Fine counsel is confusing, but example is always clear.

So I’d rather get my lesson by observing what you do;

It is not enough to preach it, you must live the sermon, too.

For I may misunderstand you and the high advice you give,

But there’s no misunderstanding how you act and how you live.

Reflecting on the above…

How would you evaluate your example over the past week?
Has your behaviour been aligned with what you say?
If I observed your behaviour would I see you living your vision and values?

Technorati Tags: Character, Leadership, Management, Values, Vision, Business, Action, Behaviour