Engineering Team Spirit Is An Essential Leadership Responsibility By Jonathan Farrington

A very good friend and ex-client of mine runs a highly successful information technology service in the South of England and his private-sector customers include many Times Top 100 companies.

We often exchange opinions and I recently asked his views on leadership, because I have always been impressed with his commitment to “people development”

He believes leadership is all about bringing out the best in the firm’s 1800 employees. “We have a very informal, non-hierarchical structure”, he says. “The task of our leaders is not simply to issue orders but to act as role models in providing our customers with what they want in terms of teamwork, friendliness, delivery and, in general, supplying a top-class service”.

Many of those who join the company are former customers. “We first of all put them through a programme which helps them to understand what we are trying to do, then a management team shows them how our ideas are put into practice”.

When trying to identify future leaders, he and his management colleagues adopt the premise that anyone possessing sufficient motivation can become a leader.

“But obviously some are better than others, and the best are likely to end up as managing directors”, he says. “I believe that leadership is something that can be taught, but that’s not a reason for trying to teach everybody everything.

We need good team players, and the leaders are those who enable them to give off their best”.

The ultimate test of a leader, he believes, is whether the individual can generate trust in others. “We are not one of those companies where self-interest is dominant”, he says.

He would not comment on the general quality of British management, often portrayed in a negative light in the media. “I don’t know whether we are ahead of other firms in our thinking, but we are certainly doing something different. I don’t know anywhere else where the staff can talk to the boss in the frank and informal way that they do here.

“I go around meeting each member of the staff individually twice a year to brief them on what’s going on and on our plans for the future. Because they know they are not going to be shot for speaking their minds, they’ll all have a go at it. It’s not just one-way communication”.

Very interesting and visionary thoughts, which go a long way in explaining the company’s success.

- Copyright Jonathan Farrington. All rights reserved.
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Jonathan Farrington is the CEO of Top Sales Associates and Chairman of The Sales Corporation - based in London and Paris. Jonathan's personal site The JF Consultancy, - JonathanFarrington.com - offers a superb range of unique and innovative sales solutions and you can also catch his hugely popular daily blog at The JF Blogit - http://www.thejfblogit.co.uk.

-What are some of the ways you, as a leader go about fostering and encouraging team spirit in your organization?

Sponsor: Dr. John C. Maxwell's Learning The 21 Irrefutable Laws Of Leadership DVD Training Curriculum - This powerful training resource is designed to meet your leadership training needs! Order your copy of this powerful leadership training program.

*brought to you by BusinessLeadershipAdvice.com

You've Gotta Let Somebody Else Drive By Kevin Eikenberry

I love to drive, and I always have. In fact, other than in a shuttle bus or a taxi, I am seldom a passenger. I probably got this from my Dad - he always loved to drive too. And, because driving is a skill that becomes subconscious for most of us, I typically drive on auto-pilot.

Recently, however, I became a passenger for an extended period of time as my son, Parker, took the wheel for a long drive on the interstate. He's been driving for several months, but this was the first long drive on the freeway. I sat in the passenger seat as his coach, and suddenly my skills weren't subconscious anymore.

In order to give him assistance, advice and coaching all the things I do from memory had to be converted into conscious thought.

I had to think about things like:

• Where to be looking
• Use of turn signals
• When to change lanes
• What to think about when using cruise control
• What speed to pick to drive
• Keeping a safety buffer around

As a driver, you get the idea. I realized on the return trip, when I was back in my familiar driver's seat again, that I was driving better and making better decisions than I was before I sat in the passenger seat.

This is critical in developing any skill, including leadership.

Three major things happened during my freeway experience:

• My perspective changed.
• I was teaching what I knew.
• My subconscious thoughts, ideas and habits were transferred into my conscious mind.

Let's look at each of these for a minute.

Changing Perspective...

When I was the passenger, I saw everything differently, and I looked at the task in a new way. I could explore new options. My mind wasn't locked in on the task itself, but rather on the process of the task. By looking at the task in a new way, I came to some deeper understandings and rationales for some changes to my existing thoughts and habits. I literally, by sitting in the passenger seat and thinking about the task of driving, learned new things about being a driver - something I've been doing for more than 30 years.

When's the last time you looked at your processes from your team's perspective? What does the 25-year production veteran know that you don't? What does a Customer really experience when interacting with your organization? As a leader, when you consider different perspectives, you give yourself the opportunity to learn at every turn.

Teach What You Know...

I end every teleseminar, and most all of the training sessions I lead, by encouraging participants to teach someone else what they've just learned. Doing this "learn, teach" model helps them remember what they've learned, but more importantly it helps them begin to really "own" the content. It's no longer something "learned" from me, but something they "know".

As a leader, you will often have opportunities to be a coach. The great news about coaching is that when approached in the proper way, you can learn as much from the coaching process as when you teach to others. But that will only be true if you apply this third lesson.

Be Conscious...

To get better at something/anything, you must move it from a current, subconscious habit and make it a conscious act again. Learning is a conscious act - and when it's a new skill you probably aren't very good consciously. As you progress in the skill and things become easier/routine, you seldom get back to a conscious level because your subconscious does all the work.

However until you bring it out, it's very difficult to tweak, improve and change. Once you've taken the time to take those skills you "already know" and reexamine them consciously, then you can send them back into your subconscious and lock in the improvements.

As a leader, it's up to you to encourage your team to consciously examine your processes, routines and subconscious actions to find those places that need to be tweaked, improved and changed.

That day on the road, I hope Parker learned some things that will make him a more confident, competent and safe driver. I know I did. Remember this when you want to improve any skill in your life. You need to be willing to get out of the task, teach someone (or yourself) about the task and do it all consciously. When you do that you will become more proficient, confident and effective.

Potential Pointer: To learn what you know at a deeper level, you must change your perspective. One of the best ways to do that is to teach others what you know.
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Kevin Eikenberry is a leadership expert and the Chief Potential Officer of The Kevin Eikenberry Group, a learning consulting company that helps Clients reach their potential through a variety of training, consulting and speaking services. You can contact him to learn more about how he can help you or your organization improve your skills and results.

-What are your thoughts on the ideas above? Think about some of the ways you can implement the ideas shared above into your organization.

*brought to you by BusinessLeadershipAdvice.com

What Leadership Was And What It Has Become By Jonathan Farrington

Leadership was once about hard skills such as planning, finance and business analysis.

When command and control ruled the corporate world, the leaders were heroic rationalists who moved people around like pawns and fought like stags. When they spoke, the company employees jumped.

Now, if the gurus and experts are right, leadership is increasingly concerned with soft skills – teamwork, communication and motivation.

The trouble is that for many executives, the soft skills remain the hardest to understand, let alone master. After all, hard skills have traditionally been the ones which enabled you to climb to the top of the corporate ladder.

The entire career system in some organisations is based on using hard functional skills to progress, but when executives reach the top of the organisation, many different skills are required.

Corporate leaders may find that although they can do the financial analysis and the strategic planning, they are poor at communicating ideas to employees or colleagues, or have little insight into how to motivate people.

The modern chief executive requires an array of skills.

Some suggest that we expect too much of leaders. Indeed, “renaissance” men and women are rare. Leadership in a modern organisation is highly complex and it is increasingly difficult – sometimes impossible – to find all the necessary traits in a single person.

Among the most crucial skills is the ability to capture your audience – you will be competing with lots of other people for their attention. Leaders of the future will also have to be emotionally efficient.

They will promote variation rather than promoting people in their own likeness. They will encourage experimentation and enable people to learn from failure. They will build and develop people.

Is it too much to expect of one person? I think it probably is: In the future, we will see leadership groups rather than individual leaders.

This change in emphasis from individuals towards groups was charted by the leadership guru Warren Bennis in his work “Organizing Genius” He concentrates on famous ground-breaking groups rather than individual leaders and focuses, for example, on the achievements of Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Centre, the group behind the 1992 Clinton campaign, and the Manhattan Project which delivered the atomic bomb. “None of us is as smart as all of us”, says Professor Bennis.

“The Lone Ranger is dead. Instead of the individual problem-solver, we have a new model for creative achievement. People like Steve Jobs or Walt Disney headed groups and found their own greatness in them”.

Professor Bennis provides a blueprint for the new model leader. “He or she is a pragmatic dreamer, a person with an original but attainable vision. Inevitably, the leader has to invent a style that suits the group.

The standard models, especially command and control, simply don’t work. The heads of groups have to act decisively, but never arbitrarily. They have to make decisions without limiting the perceived autonomy of the other participants.

Devising an atmosphere in which others can put a dent in the universe is the leader’s creative act”.

However, the role of the new model leader is ridden with contradictions. Paradox and uncertainty are increasingly at the heart of leading organisations.

A lot of leaders don’t like ambiguity so they try to shape the environment to resolve the ambiguity. This might involve collecting more data or narrowing things down. These may not be the best things to do.

The most effective leaders are flexible, responsive to new situations. If they are adept at hard skills, they surround themselves with people who are proficient with soft skills. They strike a balance.

While flexibility is important in this new leadership model, it should not be interpreted as weakness. The two most lauded corporate chiefs of the past decade, Percy Barnevik, of Asea Brown Boveri, and Jack Welch, of General Electric, dismantled bureaucratic structures using both soft and hard skills. They coach and cajole as well as command and control.

The “leader as coach” is yet another phrase more often seen in business books than in the real world. Acting as a coach to a colleague is not something that comes easily to many executives.

It is increasingly common for executives to need mentoring. They need to talk through decisions and to think through the impact of their behaviour on others in the organisation.

In the macho era, support was for failures, but now there is a growing realisation that leaders are human after all, and that leadership is as much a human art as a rational science.

Today’s leaders don’t follow rigid role models but prefer to nurture their own leadership style. They do not do people’s jobs for them or put their faith in developing a personality cult.

They regard leadership as drawing people and disparate parts of the organisation together in ways that makes individuals and the organisation more effective.

- Copyright Jonathan Farrington. All rights reserved.
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Jonathan Farrington is the CEO of Top Sales Associates and Chairman of The Sales Corporation - based in London and Paris. Jonathan's personal site The JF Consultancy, - JonathanFarrington.com - offers a superb range of unique and innovative sales solutions and you can also catch his hugely popular daily blog at The JF Blogit - www.thejfblogit.co.uk.

-In your opinion, what skills are essential to being a great leader?

*brought to you by BusinessLeadershipAdvice.com

Five Ways You Serve Others As a Leader By Kevin Eikenberry

Recently someone asked what I thought about "servant leadership."

My short answer was that using the word servant is redundant.

Don't misunderstand, I believe in the concept of servant leadership, and what you read or learn about leadership from that prism is extremely valuable.

It's just that I believe being of service is an underlying component of leadership.

Leaders, by definition, are trying to move towards a desired future - and hopefully a future that is desirable to those you are leading, Customers, and the community at large.

Taking actions to do those things is an act of service in itself - using your skills, knowledge, intellect and insights to create something greater than yourself.

As you read the suggestions below - consider how often you do, and how often you could, incorporate them into your leadership approach and style. Recognize too that they aren't merely tactics to be deployed to reach a destination.

If you apply these ideas without a clear and genuine intention to be of service, you will be disappointed in your results and will have, in fact, reduced your leadership effectiveness and damaged your reputation.

With this background and these caveats, read the following suggestions, consider my questions carefully and, most importantly, take action.

- Listen. So few of us really feel listened to on any given day - in every part of our life, not just at work. When we really listen to people we are: serving an important internal need, building our relationship with them, adding to the levels of trust, and learning information, perspective and ideas that can move us towards the goals we are trying to achieve.

How completely did you listen yesterday and how will you improve on that today?

- Respond. People want us to listen because they want to be heard. As a leader we are asked questions about processes and procedures, about ideas, about challenges, about resources and so much more. For others to feel heard, we must respond. Perhaps our answer may not always be the one they hoped for, but from a perspective of serving those we lead we must respond to their questions and requests.

Are you answering all questions and emails in a timely (as defined by the asker/sender) manner?

- Engage. Engaging could be considered adding listening and responding together, but I mean something much more than simple mathematics. This idea isn't about the important (but trendy) idea of engaging others. This is about looking in the mirror. Are you really engaging with those you lead? Do you share with them, have conversations with them and in general engage with them beyond the normal discourse of your work.

Are you proactively engaging with those you lead every day?

- Ask. Do you really want to know how people are feeling? Do you really want their ideas? Do you believe they have ways to influence greater results? If you do, when did you last ask? If you don't, rethink your answer. Still not convinced? How do you feel when someone asks you a question?

Who (and what) will you ask right now?

- Care. When you think of people serving others, wouldn't you say that underneath all of the behaviors and actions is a sense of caring? When we care about those we lead, we are serving them. When we care about who they are, their goals and aspirations, their values and their concerns, we are serving them.

This sort of caring doesn't mean we need to (or should) become everyone's best friend. It means that we care about them; person to person real caring. Done from the heart, acts of caring and kindness may make more of a difference in your overall results and productivity than any process map, Gantt chart or scoping document.

Do you care, and can others tell it from your actions?

While these may feel like "soft" or "touchy-feely" suggestions, that couldn't be further from the truth. When included as an authentic part of your leadership approach, these will make a huge difference in the lives of those you lead and any of the overall results you achieve.

Start serving today.
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Kevin Eikenberry is a leadership expert and the Chief Potential Officer of The Kevin Eikenberry Group, a learning consulting company that helps Clients reach their potential through a variety of training, consulting and speaking services. You can contact him to learn more about how he can help you or your organization improve your skills and results.

-In your opinion what skills make up the best leaders?

Sponsor: Dr. John C. Maxwell's Learning The 21 Irrefutable Laws Of Leadership DVD Training Curriculum - You and your team will get clear insight into timeless leadership principles and learn a process for continual growth in the life of your organization. Order your copy of this powerful leadership training program.

What is Your Leadership Style? By Mitch McCrimmon

Your leadership style depends on what you are trying to do. There are at least three possibilities:

1. You are in charge of a team and you want to know how best to make decisions.

2. You want to know how to motivate your subordinates to work harder or change direction.

3. You want to show leadership to people who don’t report to you.

Let’s consider each of these situations in turn:

1. The question of how best to make decisions is the classic leadership style situation. The original 3 leadership styles were: autocratic, participative and laissez-faire.

The autocrat makes decisions and simply tells team members what to do. The word “autocratic” suggests being dictatorial, but clear direction can be provided without being heavy-handed.

The idea is that leaders should be directive when time is of the essence, when subordinates don't know what to do, or they are not motivated. The participative leadership style is sometimes called democratic or consultative.

The key point is that subordinates are involved in making the decision rather than simply being told what to do.

Consultative leaders gather input from subordinates but still make the decision themselves. Being participative or democratic means that executives and team members make decisions together.

This style is useful when the executive recognizes that wider input will yield a better decision or when participation will enhance commitment to the decision. With the laissez faire style, executives let subordinates make their own decisions.

This style is also called empowering or delegative. The conventional term ''laissez-faire” has a lax implication, suggesting that employees are free to do whatever they want. But it is now more constructive to talk of empowerment so that there is no connotation of losing control.

2. You’re in charge and you need to motivate your team to work harder or change direction. This is generally seen as a job for the inspiring leader, someone who can paint a vision of a bright future and the place in it of all who are required to help the organization get there.

Ideally, you should be an orator along the lines of Martin Luther King or Winston Churchill. But how many leaders are this charismatic? Also, there is research that suggests dangerous downsides to being very charismatic.

Such people can be too convinced of their own infallibility and can lead blindly devoted followers over a cliff. So-called transformational leadership is closely related to the charismatic type.

In both cases the point is to inspire people with a cheerleader-like enthusiasm, creating the sort of awe in followers that is normally associated with rock stars. Realistically, very few people are like this and those that aren’t can’t transform their underlying personalities. However, you can move people with honest conviction and a well argued case.

3. Suppose you want to show leadership upwards or to colleagues. Maybe you don’t even have people reporting to you.

In this case, the classic leadership styles do not apply at all because you are trying to show informal leadership where you have no authority to make decisions for people who don’t report to you.

To get people on side who can take it or leave it, you need to show how your proposal appeals to their self-interest, how your idea will help them achieve their goals. This is a delicate balancing act.

On the one hand, you are trying to sell an idea that will be of great benefit to the organization but you need to enlist the support of skeptics, colleagues who may put their own interest ahead of the organization’s.

But if you go too far in catering to their needs, you may win them over, but your action is hard to classify as leadership. Buying votes is good salesmanship, but may not be considered leadership. We generally think that, when leadership is shown, people are persuaded to act for unselfish reasons, for the greater good.

Leadership style is really an old-fashioned idea, applicable only to how people in power make decisions for their teams.

Today, leadership is a much broader concept. It is taken for granted that managers need to be empowering – which is like laissez faire without letting people do whatever they want.

Leadership style today is really influencing style and it is not possible to identify one ideal way of influencing prospective followers. If you are in a high tech industry, for example, the key might be hard evidence.

In the medical profession, so-called evidence-based decision making is all the rage. To show leadership in this field, you need hard evidence for your proposals.

Whether you can present your proposals in an inspiring way or not is less important. The bottom line is that influencing style will always be a combination of your personality and the needs of the situation, what it takes to move your particular audience.

The best advice here is to do a trial run. Try out your ideas and approaches with a small number of prospective followers before you go live.
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See LeadersDirect.com for more information on this and related topics. Mitch McCrimmon's latest book, Burn! 7 Leadership Myths in Ashes was published in 2006. He is a business psychologist with over 30 years experience of leadership assessment and executive coaching.

-What are your thoughts on the ideas in the above article? Is there anything you would like to share that would be helpful?

Sponsor: Dr. John C. Maxwell's Learning The 21 Irrefutable Laws Of Leadership DVD Training Curriculum - You and your team will get clear insight into timeless leadership principles and learn a process for continual growth in the life of your organization.

Leadership Lesson: Conducting Appraisals - The Essential Skills By Jonathan Farrington

All managers expected to carry out performance appraisal should have some training.

Ideally this should not just be on the skills of performance appraisal – the ‘how’ to do it, but also on the reasons for performance appraisal the ‘why’ we do it.

Managers should understand how it fits into the wider strategic process of performance management and how the information and data generated contributes to understanding of the capacity of the human capital of the organisation to contribution to business strategy and value.

A basic requirement is that appraisers have the skills to carry out an effective appraisal as described above. This means they ask the right questions, listen actively and provide feedback.

Asking the right questions:

The two main issues are to ensure that appraisers ask open and probing questions.

Open questions are general rather than specific; they enable people to decide how they should be answered and encourage them to talk freely. Examples include:

• How do you feel things have been going?
• How do you see the job developing?
• How do you feel about that?
• Tell me, why do you think that happened?

Probing questions dig deeper for more specific information on what happened or shy. They can should support for the individual’s answer and encourage them to provide more information about their feelings and attitudes and they can also be used to reflect back to the individual and check information. Examples would be:

• That’s very interesting. Tell me more about ….?
• To what extent do you think that …?
• Have I got the right impression? Do you mean that ….?

Listening:

Good listeners:

• Concentrate on the speakers and are aware of behaviour, body language and nuances that supplement what is being said.
• Respond quickly when necessary but don’t interrupt.
• Ask relevant questions to clarify meaning.
• Comment on points to demonstrate understanding but keep them short and do not inhibit the flow of the speaker.

Giving feedback:

Feedback should be based on facts not subjective opinion and should always be backed up with evidence and examples.

The aim of feedback should be to promote the understanding of the individual so that they are aware of the impact of their actions and behaviour. It may require corrective action where the feedback indicates that something has gone wrong.

However, wherever possible feedback should be used positively to reinforce the good and identify opportunities for further positive action.

Giving feedback is a skill and those with no training should be discouraged from giving feedback.

Feedback will work best when the following conditions are met:

• Feedback is built in with individuals being given access to readily available information on their performance and progress.
• Feedback is related to actual events, observed behaviours or actions.
• Feedback describes events without judging them.
• Feedback is accompanies by questions soliciting the individual’s opinion why certain things happened.
• People are encouraged to come to their own conclusions about what happened and why.
• There is understanding about what things went wrong and an emphasis on putting them right rather than censuring past behaviour.

- Copyright Jonathan Farrington. All rights reserved.

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Jonathan Farrington is the CEO of Top Sales Associates and Chairman of The Sales Corporation - based in London and Paris. Jonathan's personal site The JF Consultancy, - JonathanFarrington.com - offers a superb range of unique and innovative sales solutions and you can also catch his daily blog at The JF Blogit - www.thejfblogit.co.uk.

-What questions do you think are most important to ask when doing a performance review?

Sponsor: Dr. John C. Maxwell's Learning The 21 Irrefutable Laws Of Leadership DVD Training Curriculum - You and your team will get clear insight into timeless leadership principles and learn a process for continual growth in the life of your organization.

*brought to you by BusinessLeadershipAdvice.com

Leadership Lesson: Motivation Or Inspiration - There is a Difference By Kevin Eikenberry

Often on airplanes people ask me, in casual conversation, what I do for a living. After explaining it in a few sentences, they often knowingly smile, and say:

"Oh, you're a motivational speaker."

Well, honestly, I believe that is not true; nor is it even possible. So I cringe internally, and then generally say a little bit more about our work and then move on.

After all, they will be my seat mate for at least the next hour or more.

The reality that I typically don`t share, but will share with you, is that it is really impossible to "motivate" anyone to do anything (for very long).

Why?

Because motivation is internal in nature - and it is always involves choices. Since we can`t choose for other people, all we can do is educate, inform, persuade and inspire them to make a choice that is in their best interest.

We can`t motivate, but we can inspire.

Once we recognize what we actually can do, we can begin to think about how to do it better, which is the goal of the rest of this article.

Seven Ways You Can Inspire Others...

... through your passion. We all make choices based on emotions, regardless of much we think it`s all facts and statistics. Even the most data driven person uses emotions, feelings and deeply held values to make decisions. If you want to inspire action in others, you must be willing to show your passion, beliefs and emotions.

... with great questions. Some of the most inspirational questions are those that require no audible answer, but simply encourage the receiver to reflect and answer internally. Inspirational people use questions in this way. They also use great questions to hear the answers and learn about what is impacting the choices others will make.

... through dialogue. You can`t inspire deeply or successfully solely with a great speech or monologue. Since inspiration is about helping others make choices they must be engaged in a conversation - and a dialogue is the most powerful and engaging type of conversation.

... with meaningful goals. Have you ever made a choice to do something new? It`s often easy to make that choice once, but it can get harder to continue to make those choices without a clear reason why. Goals themselves are important, but they are far more useful when they are meaningful. The why behind the goal will inspire more deeply and with greater impact.

... through guidance, support and encouragement. This is also known as coaching and/or mentoring. Perhaps you don`t think of coaching as all three of these things, but the best coaches do. And they realize it`s their role is to help their protégés make new choices - in other words, to inspire them.

... through your actions. This is obvious, but can`t be forgotten. You inspire people best through your actions. Your words and everything else on this list are important, but none will be as effective if your actions don`t align with your spoken messages.

... through consistency. Inspiration, by definition, is temporary. We all make new choices every day. So if you want people to make inspired choices you must continue to inspire them, remind them, encourage them, support them and more. Inspiration isn`t a one-time, once-a-week or occasional process. It is required day in and day out - and often more frequently than that.

Much more could be written about each of these approaches. I`m sure a long list of additional approaches could be included as well. Regardless, remember, none them will be perfected today or in one try.

Just as you must constantly think of how to inspire others, you must constantly improve your skills in these areas. But only if you want to become a more inspirational leader, teacher, coworker, spouse and parent.

That choice is up to you.
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Kevin Eikenberry is a leadership expert and the Chief Potential Officer of The Kevin Eikenberry Group, a learning consulting company that helps Clients reach their potential through a variety of training, consulting and speaking services. You can contact him to learn more about how he can help you or your organization improve your skills and results.

-As a leader, what are some of the ways you inspire others?

Sponsor: Dr. John C. Maxwell's Learning The 21 Irrefutable Laws Of Leadership DVD Training Curriculum - This powerful training resource is designed to meet your leadership training needs!

*brought to you by BusinessLeadershipAdvice.com