The best leaders are proactive and intentional with investing in their people. The greatest investment you can make is that of time to develop your direct reports. As I mentioned in an early post, famed CEO Jack Welch says that it is one of the leaders greatest responsibilities.

In my experience, one of the best ways to invest in your people is through one-on-one meetings. These meetings are the perfect time to pour into those you lead.

Here are a few suggestion to help you get the most from your one-on-ones.

• Schedule them monthly and do so for the remainder of the year.
• Be prepared in advance for each meeting and be on time.
• Be free from distractions, no interruptions, no email, no calls or texting.
• Make sure you are tuned in and present. Are you hearing what they are saying (and maybe what they are not saying)?
• Ask questions that are connected to their plans, both business and life. Make sure they are progressing, and, if not, work to find out what is holding them back.
• Suspend judgment when they are falling behind or missing the mark. Instead work to make sure the goals or plans were right and realistic. If so, work with them to help figure out how to close the gaps.
• Give them truthful feedback, even if hurts. They cannot improve if they are not aware.
• End with having them state any action items they are committing to with due dates.
• Be clear on what you need to do (and by when) in order to help them succeed.
• Do all you can to make the one-on-one a time of connection and real encouragement.

I hope at least one of the above help you to make a greater difference and realize a great return on your investment!

Note: This post is the second in a five-part series look­ing at 5 things lead­er­ship does.

One of the single most overlooked disciplines of today’s busy leaders is the discipline of walking the floor. Most of us know this is a must do. We have heard the best leadership thought leaders tell us it is a must do. We may even be able to look back on our own careers and see the value of doing it in times past.

But why aren’t more leaders disciplined with this today?

I think the answer is this: You have forgotten who does the work.

Don’t make the mistake of believing that the ongoing discipline of casually and slowly walking through your office and connecting with your teammates is not a high pay off activity. It truly is one of the most valuable things great leaders do. They walk, they ask, they listen, they share, they connect.

This is critical for us to do with members of our teams who work in all departments but is especially important with those who deal with our customers. Leaders must connect with those who connect with the people buying our services and products. What are they hearing? What is working? What is broken? What is challenging?

The best leaders are truly listening to and thinking about what they hear from their client-facing teammates. We can learn so much from them.

So here are three straightforward suggestions that will cost you. They will cost you time, but remember this is time very well invested.

1. When you arrive at your office daily, spend the first 15 minutes walking through the halls, the store or the floors and connect. No agenda required other than to find out how your troops are doing and how you can best serve them. And remember, they like knowing that you are real so be willing to share the lows and the highs of your weekends, nights or vacations. Don’t be afraid to be transparent.
2. If you lead teams in several different geographic locations, make sure that you are spending a good 25 to 50 percent of your days out in those locations. You must see, hear and sense how the work is being done. When you are out connecting, you will be more in tune with reality.
3. Eat in the lunchroom. I have several clients that place a very high value on eating lunch in their corporate cafeterias. They often report that some of their best ideas and insights come from the casual conversations that take place with people on the team that they would usually not have meetings with.

I know that many of you go to great lengths to build trust and culture in your organizations. What happens to many is that they spend all sorts of hours and dollars on the big team events that take place once a quarter and miss the opportunity to build unique cultures by building unique working relationships and getting unique results from walking the floor.

I would love to hear from you as to how you go about connecting with your teammates. I also encourage you to read our CEO Mentor and Coach Jerry Baker’s blog to learn more about leadership and connecting.

Note: This post is the first in a five-part series looking at 5 things leadership does.

Being a leader is about more than just a title or a position. Great leaders know that leadership is a verb. They put their thoughts and ideas in motion by taking action to truly motivate, inspire and lead their people, allowing them to get the best from those around them.

On Tuesday, March 19, I’ll be leading a Champion’s Edge Webinar on the 5 Things Leadership Does. You can register for it here.

Over the next few weeks, I will dive deeper into each of the five here in my blog. I will start each post off with a question. If you answer yes, then there is really no need for you to read any further. But if you respond with a no, then the post should help.

Here’s this week’s question: Are you sharing your vision with the regularity that your plan calls for?

Now this of course assumes that you have a plan in place for how you go about sharing and planning from your vision. Too many leaders make the huge investment of time to create their visions and then they may share what they see once — but that is it.

Often times when you see an organization that is accomplishing great results, has extraordinary culture, engaged and tenured teammates, you will see a leader who is sharing and planning from the vision all of the time.

Here are some ways I’ve seen leaders consistently and effectively share their vision.

1. Share a portion of your vision in your weekly team meetings.
2. Share your vision at the beginning of each strategic planning meeting.
3. Share an appropriate part of your vision when conducting one-on-one meetings with your direct reports.
4. Share it will all potential new hires to see if it resonates with them.
5. Read it all at corporate celebrations or a portion of it at larger team meetings.
6. Read it weekly yourself to ensure that you are not getting off track or losing steam but instead are laser focused on where you are leading your team and the why behind the plans the organization is executing.

There is room to improve with all of us. Pick one of the six above tips and own it. You and your team will reach new heights if you do.

Leverage has to do with force and strength. Leaders who are crystal clear on what force is behind their leadership have much greater influence — and influence is what leadership is all about.

This week I led a Champion’s Edge Webinar on Improving Your Self-Leadership. Using the analogy of going through a self-leadership physical, I walked participants through five “parts” of their leadership.

Here’s a quick overview.

• Your Head: This is where leadership begins. What we think about impacts our emotions, actions, attitudes, beliefs, perspectives and how we make others feel when we engage with them. What we spend time thinking about is really important.
• Your Heart: Great leaders have deep convictions. They stand for something and are crystal clear on their purpose, the mission ahead and what they will fight for. This impacts how they make decisions, and great leaders make great decisions and help those on their teams to do the same. Not only this, they truly care for those on their team and their customers.
• Your Eyes: The best leaders see more than just today’s reality. They see what is possible tomorrow. They can see what it is they are striving to build or accomplish. They have a vision for the future that is both inspiring and clear. So clear that they (and their teams) can build strategy and plans from what they see.
• Your Hands: Great leaders do the right work with great skill. This covers everything from what they work on to how they communicate. It includes how they lead meetings and coach their leaders. They fill their days with the right things.
• You: The best leaders understand that to truly leverage your leadership, you need to be a person that is worth following. They know that self-leadership precedes team leadership and that their teammates are watching and listening to them. They are the same guy or gal in the office as they are at the airport, in the cab or at home. They are one.

The number of registrants for the webinar and the feedback after the call told us that we have hit a hot topic. So in the weeks ahead I will be writing on the doing side of leadership and leverage and giving some very practical best practices to improve your leadership leverage.

So for today, I want to encourage you to watch the webinar and invest the 30 minutes to listen and assess how you are doing on the being side of your leadership.

On the call I also mentioned a new book coming out by my friend Dr. Henry Cloud, Boundaries For Leaders. I had the opportunity to read his manuscript, and it is a must read for leaders. He is leading a simulcast next month as well as offering some great resources around the book. You can get the details here.

Thanks for reading my stuff, for commenting and for sharing. If you have a topic you want me to address or any questions, please let me know.

I am grateful for you and hope that this helps you to improve your influence and leadership!

So many business professionals could learn a significant business-changing lesson from Ol’ Blue Eyes. I have used him as an example in many coaching sessions over the years with leaders who have not fully optimized their roles.

What I mean is that they spend too much time doing things that they have no business doing.

Hundreds of skilled and talented people were required to pull off a successful Frank Sinatra concert. There were the rows of talented musicians, the choreographers, those that promoted the event, transported the musicians and sound equipment, sold the tickets and handed out the programs (just to name a few).

All of them were required to execute their roles with skill in order for Frank to do what he did best — write and sing. And when he did that with excellence, the halls would fill, the records sell and the media would buzz.

So take a look at your days and weeks and assess how much time you are spending creating the marketing materials, loading the instruments, setting up the equipment or selling the tickets.

How much more value could you bring to the organization if you were more intentional with delegating what others on your team can do with more mastery, thereby freeing you up to spend more time singing and making the best music possible?

At Building Champions, we have a simple time tracking tool we use with our clients to help them identify where they are and are not filling their days with their highest payoff activities. We have them do this for two solid weeks to see what they need to delegate or change in order to bring their best to work.

I challenge you to do the same and then let me know what you learn. We are here to help you if we can.

Now, go focus on creating the best performance you can.

Get the Time Tracking Tool

I was on Facebook last summer when I saw a powerful diagram that was shared by Dave Rastovich, a professional surfer that I like to follow, and I shared it in a presentation I did at our Building Champions Experience.

I have seen this many times in my own life and have challenged countless clients and friends to break out of their comfort zones as well. By pushing ourselves out of our comfortable spaces into the unknown, we are definitely taking a risk. But often that is the only way to get to that special place where the magic happens, where we are able to create or build something truly special.

Just the other night, I was having dinner with my oldest daughter, Allie , and a dear friend of hers. Her friend has a dream to start her own restaurant and has a fantastic vision for it as well as a very compelling reason to start it.

Fear of failure is her enemy and is holding her back from taking the leap. I told these two wonderful entrepreneurs in the making that fear of failure has caused many great businesses, products, solutions and services to never come to life.

In all of my years of coaching top performing business professionals, I have observed a massive difference in how they view failure. It never defines them, detours them or holds them back. Instead, they acknowledge the risk of failure, they enter into the fear and they give it its rightful place.

Failure is a stepping stone on the journey to success. Failure is not to be avoided but instead welcomed as a learning opportunity.

All of the best leaders have been failures, the best athletes have been failures, the best teachers have been failures, the best in anything have failed in times past. We cannot fully learn if we are not stepping out of our comfort zones where failure is a possibility.

When I speak to corporate groups on this topic, I love to share this powerful Nike advertisement — “I have failed over and over and over in my life, and that is why I succeed.”

So break out of your comfy zone and drop the shackles of fear that hold you down. You have more to add, more to give and more to experience — you just have to have the courage to take the journey.

Many leaders have improved their leadership by reading about President Abraham Lincoln, and I am one of them. So, I was naturally excited to go see the new movie based on his life.

And while I may not be a movie critic, let me tell you that it was a 10. Steven Spielberg, Daniel Day-Lewis, Tommy Lee Jones, Sally Field — they all nailed it. I walked away feeling that every leader could learn from that movie and Lincoln’s story.

Last week, we welcomed 20 or so CEOs to our Building Champions/STRATMOR CEO Round Table in Portland. As part of our time together, we thought that taking this group of influential leaders to see the movie would be a great object lesson in leadership. The next morning we asked them to share the insights and lessons they gleaned from it.

Here are 10 of the things they had to share — lessons that could benefit all leaders.

1. Lincoln and others had to compromise on the little things in order to accomplish their primary objective.
2. He had tremendous courage under fire.
3. He was a man of deep compassion. There were so many scenes showing his empathy and connection, touching and reaching out to people.
4. He understood how to use his power. At times he was very direct and forceful and others calm and influencing.
5. He kept focused on his objective and repeated it constantly.
6. He had tremendous resolve.
7. He engaged people through story. He was a fantastic story teller.
8. He was funny! His sense of humor helped him to connect with people.
9. He was humble and confident in who he was.
10. A great courageous communicator not just by speaking but by listening. He respectfully listened to those who disagreed and opposed him.

These are only 10 of the countless lessons in the movie. I would encourage all of you to go see it and grow.

So many management challenges can be avoided when you hire for both heart and competency. The mistake is made when we focus solely on competency and performance.

Think about it, we have all suffered huge grief when we have hired people who have great knowledge and skill but they just don’t fit our culture.

I am working with two of our Executive Coaches this week as we co-lead an Executive Retreat with a great client. The CEO started the meeting off by sharing why he is so grateful to work with this top performing leadership team, one that is setting records while being recognized as one of the Top 10 places to work in their market.

He said it is because he knows the hearts of each of his leaders. He knows who they are and that they are people of character who fit in their culture.

If we hire for both heart and competency, train well, set clear expectations, provide just enough process or structure, equip with the best tools and communicate, communicate, communicate — then we too can lead organizations that are recognized for being the best in class as well as the best places to work.

Why settle for anything less?

I think much of the success or failure we experience in our days is directly connected to how we start our days.

What are the first 45 minutes of your day like?

1. Alarm goes off, and you snooze it a time or two. Check your email while still prone and see what those old high school friends of yours prepared for dinner last night by checking their FB statuses. Jump up and hurry to the shower before getting dressed to the morning TV update on everything bad that has happened since you went to bed. Grab some coffee on the go and maybe a bar or microwaved breakfast type product that you slam down as you rush to the office.
2. Alarm goes off and you throw on something comfortable and head to the den or living room. Drink some water and then drop to the ground to stretch, pray or meditate. Read something good for your mind and soul before moving slowly to the kitchen to prepare a healthy smoothie or omelet. Prepare for your meetings or calls as you eat. Make your way to the shower and then get dressed. Head to the office peacefully aligned and ready to proactively tackle your day.
3. You wake up on your own, long before the sun rises. Throw on your gym clothes or running gear and head out to get your heart going and blood pumping. Read something good for your mind and soul as you work out or maybe pray or meditate as you run. Come home and clean up before preparing a healthy meal. Review your day as you eat and head out to intentionally accomplish what the day brings your way.

Three pretty different starts to the day. And I am not telling you which way is best (although I do have my opinion).

I am just painting three not so extreme pictures of how many start their days here in America.

And I am challenging you to assess which of the three best depicts your AM routine.

If you are not feeling good or have a poor outlook and attitude, your relationships are flat, your performance is less than stellar and your results are lacking. If you find yourself feeling flat our crazed or empty, it might have to do with those precious first 45 minutes of your day.

Really think about it. Adjust if need be.

Things can improve.

Trust is the foundation for all relationships. If we trust each other, we are able to give each other the grace and truthful input required to make the relationship grow.

Grace is essential in any long-term relationship as there will be many opportunities for communication gaps, expectation gaps, performance gaps and all sorts of other relational hiccups that come over time. If we truly trust one another, we know each other’s hearts and feel safe in our relationships.

And truthful input is another critical requirement of a healthy relationship. We grow when there are people around us we trust who will care enough to sharpen us, teach us, correct us and encourage us. This is true both at home and at work.

So if you have followed me for any amount of time, you have probably heard me quote the many HR studies that tell us why people quit their jobs. One of the top reasons is that that employee had a poor relationship with their supervisor. Many employees don’t leave their jobs — they leave their bosses.

And on the flip side are the many studies that demonstrate that the healthiest and most productive work cultures have a very high degree of trust between teammates.

Take my friend and colleague Patrick Lencioni’s great work with the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team. He has trust as the foundation of a functioning team. I just came back from spending three great days with one of our clients that truly embraces this concept. They go to great lengths to measure trust as it relates to the effectiveness of a group of their key influencers.

And here is what they found. The more time spent communicating and being together, the greater the level of trust. (Imagine that! I wonder if it works for us with our spouses and kids as well. Okay, enough sarcasm.)

Here is my challenge for you. Are you so busy doing the good things that you are missing some of the great things?

Remember this — your team is your greatest asset. If you don’t invest the time into them, trust will diminish and your culture and results will suffer.

Be proactive and intentional with your time.