Leaders …Let Go!

March 5, 2012 by

LeadersMany days run together in business and as a leader our job is to separate out what we do and what others can do for us …or with us.  The way to do this is to let go.  Not something that comes easy to leaders; most of whom like the control that comes with the title, especially if it is your name on the outside of the building.

Letting go is hard.  Letting go takes courage. Letting go means planning and following up.  Are you prepared to do this?  It is easier said than done!  What if the task is not done the way you want it? What if the time-lines are not met?  What if they do it better than you do?  Well, so what?  Think about that for a minute; new ideas, new perspectives, new solutions, the chance to develop someone else – could you ask for more?  And yes – it may take longer to let go and delegate the first few.  The fact is, in order to let go, you need to have the instructions, the explanations,  and the planning come out of your head and into someone else’s.  Eventually, they will get what you mean.  As time goes along, you will find that the follow up becomes more important and providing feedback and recognition is really where the growth comes in.

The benefits of letting go far outweigh potential issues that can arise.  Let’s look at just a few of the benefits of letting go:

  • Helps develop your team
  • Helps build morale
  • Helps build team spirit
  • Helps improve your delegation and follow up skills
  • Opens up time to reflect and plan what to let go of next
  • Shows your leadership in action

Letting go and empowering others will give you a sense of release and build morale on your team.  This is an opportunity to look at your team and help them develop personally and professionally.  By letting go, you are also setting the example that it can be done, and perhaps your team can look at what they are holding on to and find ways to do the same.  Leaders surround themselves with smart people who often have the skills and expertise they may lack.  Smart Leaders use the talent of letting go to function at full capacity.

Here is an exercise I do with my clients because the phrase I hear quite often is, “it is just easier if I do it.  It would take longer to delegate”.  Take 5 minutes today and think about all the ‘things’ you do as a leader.  What are you doing simply because it would be faster/better if you did not pass it on?  Who can you let that go to with the correct explanation and follow-up?  It may not be exactly how you would do it, but a new twist and perspective may create a very unexpected and positive result.

Go on …let go!

How are you going to let go? Please comment below to keep the conversation going.

Connect with Lora Crestan: Website |  Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook

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Belief: The Underpants Gnomes Method of Leadership

March 4, 2012 by

Belief & LeadershipThe primary function of a leader in any organization is to believe. A leader is someone who must carry the torch in the darkness and light the path towards the desired end goal. They must have unwavering belief in their cause, their mission, their people and their ability to achieve what may at first appear impossible or in some cases outright ridiculous.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Emmy Award winning cartoon series “South Park,” which explores current events in an often satirical way, addresses the concept and philosophy of business several times, but none with such clarity and resonance with the business community as the 1998 episode “Gnomes.”

In “Gnomes,” one of the 4th graders claims his underpants are suspiciously disappearing. What he discovers is a race of gnomes are stealing his underpants as part of a business plan wherein “Phase 1” is simply “Collect Underpants” and “Phase 3” is “Profit.” The immediate question becomes, “What is Phase 2?”—which the gnomes cannot answer. This episode has been used to illustrate folly in both business and politics in the New York Times, Business Week, and the Wall Street Journal …to name a few. However, I believe these periodicals are missing the point.

Leaders inspire their people, their countries and their organizations to do impossible things for extraordinary results, but they do not always have the details of how exactly those results are going to be achieved.

John F. Kennedy inspired a nation with his 1962 “We Choose the Moon” speech in which he said: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

The “Underpants Gnome” version of his plan may have looked like this:

  • Phase 1: Make speech
  • Phase 2: ?
  • Phase 3: Beat Russians to the moon

Which does not inspire the most confidence, as at that very moment no one in the world knew how to successfully travel and land on the moon or if it was actually possible. There was a lot of theory and potential, but no road-map for “Phase 2.” JFK believed that the nation could achieve this incredible task and do it before the end of the 1960s. Without such extraordinary and unshakable belief, the US and Russia may have never achieved the scientific, environmental and financial gains of harnessing the power of space which continue to benefit the world now almost 50 years later.

There is a veritable ton of business literature available to train you how to manage your team, sell your product or service and how to engage your customer to create a successful enterprise. You can learn every mechanical “Phase 2” process and best practice in the world but true leadership is not about process, it is about belief. Leadership is creating a big hairy audacious goal and inspiring the people around you to believe in that goal …and more importantly in their ability to achieve it and make the impossible, possible.

So don’t worry about having all the answers—history is full of stories like the Space Race and of people making incredible and seemingly absurd goals based on shaky premises. If you truly believe in your idea, hold on to it and you will find a way to realize those dreams while inspiring everyone else around you. And when they ask you how you did it—just tell them you learned everything you need to know about leadership from the Underpants Gnomes.

Please leave a comment below to keep the conversation flowing.

Connect with Colleen Jolly: Website (US) |  Website (UK) | Twitter | LinkedIn

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Lessons of Leadership & Culture From Kenya

March 3, 2012 by

Leadership is CultureA few weeks ago, our three children taught me a valuable lesson during a trip to the national public library in Kenya to attend a children’s club. The first activity of the day was poetry, and the club’s coordinator asked for a child volunteer to teach the others a poem. There was a poignant unease as none of the children wanted to go up on stage.

Suddenly, a hand shot up. It was our precious six-year old daughter. My lovely wife nearly fell off her seat in fright! She wondered what our daughter could possibly teach her peers. Before my wife could react, our daughter bounced onto the stage. In a clear, confident voice, and without skipping a beat, she let forth the words:

“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
a peck of picked peppers Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a pipe of pickled peppers,
where is the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?”

Like clockwork, all the children chimed in together and asked to learn the piece. At the end of it, there were many smiling, albeit tongue-tied children. Curious to know what drove her to volunteer, I asked her and she responded, “It was the right thing to do!” She had this funny look on her that seemed to suggest that I might be growing a little soft in the head.

Then it struck me, unbeknownst to her, she was already honing her leadership skills. Without fear of failure, she took the initiative, and taught her peers. Immediately, it took me back to a poem I read on Todd Nielsen’s blog, “The Leadership / Parenting Analogy”. Four lines from “Children Learn What They Live” by Dorothy Law Nolte, Ph.D especially stood out…

If children live with encouragement, they learn confidence.
If children live with acceptance, they learn to love.
If children live with sharing, they learn generosity.
If children live with security, they learn to have faith in themselves and in those about them.

Then I fully appreciated our daughter’s response. My wife and I have sung, spoken and read to our three children from when they were snug in their mother’s belly. In there, a culture was incubated… one of care, reading, love, and sharing. No one taught our daughter the tongue twister she recited that morning. Her mother had written it out on a card and posted it on a door at home.

From a very tender age we have encouraged our children to read wholesome literature. We read to them, bought them books, and spurred them to explore the joys of the written word. My wife and I also read a lot. Reading has become an odyssey into new worlds. At six years, our first-born daughter is exploring Greek mythology, presenting me with a mind-boggling account of Greek leaders and their conquests and failure. She is already engaging us in debates, trying to link historical events to present reality.

As parents, we have been very deliberate and actively present in our children’s lives. We have been able to practice what Lyn Boyer refers to as ‘Affective Leadership’, the ability to connect with and influence other people to achieve common goals through strong and genuine relationships and emotional attachments.

As we have developed the culture of our family, so the culture of organizations needs to be developed. A primary function of leadership is to develop culture. For the right culture to emerge, deliberate and careful nurturing is required. In Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell notes that people don’t rise from nothing. “[People] are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.”

Furthermore, Brent Harris said, “You can’t teach culture. You have to live it. You have to experience it. You have to share it. And most importantly…you have to show it.”

As leaders I hope that we can all take heed of the lessons all around us, including in our family, that teach us how to develop and improve the cultures that we are responsible for.

Please leave a comment below.

Connect with Kimunya Mugo: Website | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook

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Leaders in Beta: Testing What Works

March 2, 2012 by

Leadership BetaLeaders in Beta: Most likely as a leader, you use one or more online services that are ‘in beta’: the service is available for use whilst still in development. These user experiences during the beta phase provides invaluable feedback for the developers to improve the product, and further enhance the user’s experience. They test what works, and then build from there, and continue to improve the product.

Authors like Seth Godin, Hugh MacLeod and Derek Sivers have also embraced this idea from a marketing perspective, i.e. not waiting to ‘ship’ creative ideas until the final version, but they start small and continuously improve upon the feedback from their fans.

Due to the complex challenges we face in the world right now, leaders would benefit tremendously by embracing a ‘beta mindset’ by not only having a clear, long-term vision of where they want to go, but also being able to adapt quickly, by continually collaborating with those that are affected by their leadership.

Lessons From Generation Y Leaders

The idea of leaders being in ‘beta’ is already being practiced globally by a breed of young leaders. Millennials, also called Generation Y, are accustomed to continuously getting immediate feedbackby being tuned in to their social network. These young leaders bring this outlook on life with them in their professional and entrepreneurial endeavors. They seem to have embraced a natural beta mindset .

This generation has a strong faith in their own skills while still being open -even eager- to receive feedback from others for improvement. They collaborate  easily with others, because they understand that is the only way to reach their big goals. The do this without a need to protect position or status. These leaders have a vivid imagination of a better future, whilst presently taking baby steps and doing the work that needs to be done at the moment. They know, in the end, it is not about themselves, but about the impact of their actions on the people they serve.

Keys to Creating a ‘Leaders in Beta’ Mindset

Leaders in beta is a mixture of ambition with humility. For the leader, it requires the understanding that it is ok not to know everything. That it is a great gift to get honest feedback because it helps you to improve your performance. It starts with accepting that you yourself, as a leader, are in perpetual beta mode. Everyday, there’s a new you, ready to do what is necessary while pursuing the long term perspective.

For many of those online services we use every day, we accept their beta status. We don’t mind paying for the service, and we accept a responsibility for improving the product as long as we get enough added value for the fee we pay.

In the current context, accepting the beta status for leaders is imperative for change. There’s an urgent need for a complete re-design of society, of the economy, institutions and communities, to better serve the common good. This challenge needs inclusive and collaborative leaders, ambitious, and humble enough to see their main task to test what does work and what does not, on our way to a better future.

It doesn’t stop there. As we follow those other leaders, it’s our responsibility to provide feedback whilst following their leadership. The time of “consumption only” is gone, which is a good thing; deep down, we all want to have a meaningful contribution to the world around us …that’s human nature. Talking about nature, nature itself is built around the beta concept, it’s called evolution. Life on this planet as we know it has always been in beta status. It’s the species most adaptable to change that survive, and the leaders living the beta mindset that thrive. There is no need for radical changes, we must start small, step by step – testing what works, and making changes.

Lets keep the conversation going. What “updates” will you install today to enhance your internal operating system? What user feedback offers valuable insights for your performance? How can your leadership service get better by embracing collaboration with your users? Are you ready to launch yourself as a leader in beta?

Please leave a comment below.

Connect with Hans Balmaekers: Website | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook

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Leadership Re-Imagined – Why the lessons of the Past Are Not Enough!

March 2, 2012 by

Leadership Re-ImaginedLeadership Re-Imagined: The traditional barriers to entry in nearly every industry have fallen. Even brilliantly innovative ideas, products, and services – no longer secure a company’s competitive advantage. This is the reality of information diffusion and global commoditization. The new competitive edge is neither a product nor a service; it is the people who make them. While innovations can be replicated …innovators cannot.

The new barrier to entry is a cadre of leaders in an organization who inspire innovation as a way of life at every level and who can develop more leaders like them. To develop such a cadre of leaders, companies need to adopt three specific leadership tenets:

  • The ratio of leaders to employees has inverted
  • Old skills and competencies are insufficient for leadership effectiveness
  • Traditional programs for leadership development have become irrelevant

The ratio of leaders to employees has inverted

Let’s assume the following:

  • You define a leader in an organization as:  any individual who can further that organization’s objectives by influencing the behavior of others.
  • Many, if not most, activities that do not involve the influencing of human behavior can be performed by technology.

Those being true, then most of the people in your organization are capable, in some way or another, of furthering the organization’s objectives by influencing the behavior of others. The majority of your employees then, should be developed and managed as if they were leaders.

No longer are your leaders restricted to the C-suite or even the top 200 or 500. The majority of employees are probably leaders and can further your company’s objectives by influencing others whether internally or externally. Apple gets this, many other companies do as well – but not all.

Microsoft’s attempt to emulate Apple’s wildly successful retail stores didn’t seem to be working all that well when I took a walk through the Century City Shopping Mall in Los Angeles last week. The Apple store was teaming with excited shoppers; Microsoft’s attractive, large new store was empty except for its team of assistants standing by, waiting. Microsoft staffs its stores with competent salespeople, I am sure. But Apple staffs its stores with inspired leaders who know they are expected to further Apple’s objectives by influencing the behavior of others. These objectives go beyond “the next sale;” they are more about growing the Apple brand and co-opting new Apple fans. Appreciating the ratio of leaders to employees in your company is key to its growth.

Professor Bill George of Harvard Business School writes in his insightful February 17th article, A New Era For Global Leadership Development, that: “Rather than concentrating on the top 50 leaders, global companies need to develop hundreds, even thousands, of leaders comfortable operating in a variety of cultures…. IBM’s former chief learning officer recently estimated that IBM will need 50,000 leaders in the future.”

Skills and competencies are insufficient for leadership effectiveness

Traditional leadership competencies do not equip leaders for a global environment of accelerated change. Today’s leaders manage in paradox and for this they need agility, tenacity and unwavering values. They need the stature to connect with and challenge people simultaneously, inspire trust; and ignite innovation.

Great leaders won’t cut it any more. We need great human beings in leadership positions.

Some of the leadership paradoxes to optimizing existing operations while preparing for a future even they cannot imagine are:

  •  A business-unit focus …with an enterprise vision.
  • Authentic self-insight …with the cultural intelligence to adapt to different cultures and generations.
  • Inspiring innovation …while driving efficiencies.
  • Manage traditional lines of accountability …while embracing complex multinational, multi-functional and multi-cultural matrices.

Traditional methods of leadership development have become irrelevant

We need new thinking about leadership development. We need to grow people’s characters not just their competencies and help them achieve results by using their personal stature more than their positional status. Above all, if most of our employees are to be developed and managed as leaders, our training must produce leaders who know how to develop and manage other leaders – many of them – leaders of different generations and of different cultures.

Hours of classroom training yield limited returns. Exposing leaders to best practice and current thought leadership at best makes them as good as others. Business simulations sharpen leaders’ minds but do nothing for their stature and character.  Your leadership development architecture should be as innovative as your product development and indigenous to your own culture. It should focus on character not on competencies;  it is only through growing leadership character that you build leadership prowess.

Audit your current thinking on leadership development by asking yourself and your team 5 questions:

  • How do we define a leader in our organization?
  • What ratio of leaders to employees do we consider our company to have?
  • Is the way we develop our leaders as innovative as the way we develop our products and services?
  • Is our leadership development now, radically different from our older paradigms of thought?  How different is it from the programs of our competitors and peers?
  • Can our leadership development architecture become our competitive advantage going forward, and how easy would it be for others to copy us?

You might have a unique opportunity now to re-imagine your philosophy of leadership, re-engineer your leadership development, and forever set your company apart from its competitors.

Lets keep the conversation flowing. What do think about these new paradigms of leadership and the importance of innovation in leadership? Please leave a comment below.

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Does Your Leadership Style Need To Change When Leading Internationally?

March 1, 2012 by

International LeadershipLeading Internationally: There are not too many books about leading internationally and the majority of books on leadership are written by individuals with either an American or British background. Built into many of these books is an assumption that leadership is the same wherever the culture of those being led are located. While there is considerable overlap in what different geographic cultures regard as good leadership, when leading internationally you need to verify that your leadership style fits the cultural expectations of those you are leading.

Six Questions To Ask When Leading Internationally

There are often no clear cut answers on the type of culture to expect when leading internationally; however, you can adapt your leadership style as you become more aware of different cultural interpretations of leadership. The following six questions will help you to become more aware of the leadership style you should adopt when leading internationally.

Question One to Leading Internationally:
Which comes first – personal relationships or fairness?

In Anglo-Saxon cultures the fair application of universal rules, irrespective of the relationship you have with the individual, is regarded as creditable. However in other cultures the relationship you have with the individual is regarded as paramount. For example, in the culture you operate in, if a mother reported her criminal son to the police, would this be regarded as a positive or a negative thing? Which comes first, the rule or the relationship? What impact will that have on your leadership style?

Question Two to Leading Internationally:
Where are they looking – the future or the past?

American culture is generally very future orientated, while in other cultures like in the Middle East, the past has greater resonance. For leaders this is a key question, as a vision that resonates with past glories will have greater traction with a past-orientated culture. Your exhortations for a bright future need to be recognizable within the organization’s history.

Question Three to Leading Internationally:
How do they feel about risk – exciting or a threat?

Not all cultures feel the same way about risk. Many people are risk adverse, whatever the culture, but in some cultures, change as an opportunity is a hard sell as they are strongly risk adverse. As a leader, you need to understand their risk appetite and stress the continuity of the change (we are already doing it, we just need to do it a bit more) rather than the benefits of a new way of working.

Question Four to Leading Internationally:
How do they see relationships – open or localized?

This is a common challenge for expatriate managers – where do work relations end and private ones begin. Inviting your team to your house for a BBQ may go down well in some cultures but in many others this would be at best inappropriate or at worst sheer torture. Where do work relationships end? This issue includes calling people at home or at the weekend. This may be acceptable in one culture but an invasion of privacy in others.

Question Five to Leading Internationally: 
How do they see hierarchy – flat or with clear differentials?

Failing to understand the accepted culture can create difficulties for you as a leader. Some cultures do not discriminate between hierarchy – no special parking places, no separate lunch facilities. In others, there is a clear distinction. Breaking what is expected of you can lead to a loss of respect that is hard to undo. Demanding a different treatment in a non-hierarchical culture may result in tension. Similarly, being one of the team when you are expected to be separate may lose you respect. What is their approach to hierarchy?

Question Six to Leading Internationally:
Which do they prioritize – the individual or the group?

I once tried to bring in an individual bonus scheme into a culture which prioritized the group. However, everyone was given the same rating by the managers and therefore the same relative bonus. What is most important to your team? Individual recognition or the success of the team? This can affect numerous decisions including promotions, salary structure and public announcements of success. Many cultures are not comfortable with western-style individualism and the team can actively or passively undermine initiatives that do not prioritize the team.

Leading Internationally: Summary

Remember, there is no right answer with cultural questions, especially when leading internationally. Culture is merely “the way we do things round here.” However, the biggest driver for change is contact with other cultures (that means you!). Ask yourself these questions, or even better, discuss them openly with your team. Avoid generalizations based on nationality (what culture does a French manager with an MBA from the US working in Singapore have?) but base your understanding on observation and discussion. 99% of all cultural clashes can be resolved through discussion. Be open, observe, discuss and adapt your leadership style to the culture you are working in.

Lets keep the conversation flowing. What hints and advice do you have to leading internationally? Please leave a comment below.

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