Posts from — July 2007

What would happen if we eliminated all the drama out of a sales organization?

Let’s fantasize for a moment… that happy place in corporate la-la land.

What if a sale’s manager’s job was not managing people? What if his or her sole focus was just on improving sales. No damage control on who hurt who’s feelings, no fragile egos running to the managers office to complain about stuff, an entire office of people 100% accountable for their actions and results.

Instead of managing people, the sales manager would entirely concentrate on improve sales.

In a sense, everyone is a leader. You lead every time you influence others to do what you want. It’s a skill that starts at birth (doesn’t a newborn baby run her house?). As a smart adult, you have refined your natural leadership skills in order to influence others to willingly do what you want.

Here is a list of 10 smart ways leaders can bring out the best in others. See how well developed your leadership skills are. Give yourself 1 point for each that you already do.

1. Instead of SAYING you care, SHOW them.

As you prepare yourself to take on more responsibility in your organization, it is important to track the changing skill sets that are going to be required for senior positions.

Technology, a global market, security and a renewed emphasis on ethics and honesty in corporations, due to increased corporate governance, are creating a need for C’s with multiple talents. A “C” can be a: CEO, COO, CIO (Chief Information Officer), CFO (Chief Financial Officer), CAO (Chief Accounting Officer), and the list goes on.

April 2007
Leadership Excellence
www.eep.com

All leaders want their people to grow and develop on the job. When you work hard to improve yourself, you encourage the people around you to do the same thing.

Listen to what General Mills CEO Steve Sanger recently told 90 of his colleagues: “As you all know, last year my team told me that I needed to do a better job of coaching my direct reports. I just reviewed my 360-degree feedback. I have been working on becoming a better coach for the past year or so. I’m still not doing as well as I want, but I’m getting a lot better. My coworkers have been helping me improve. I’m pleased that my scores on ‘effectively responds to feedback’ are higher this year.”

Lets face it, no one enjoys rejection. But the reality is, a new idea starts getting negative assaults within three seconds and thirty percent of people will readily oppose a new idea without even taking sufficient time to find out if the new idea is good or not.

Whether your idea is convincing your friends to try a new place for lunch or getting the advertising budget doubled, it can be an uphill battle.

As a knee-jerk response, its normal for people to say: that’s dumb, we tried that, it costs too much; it will never work, you don’t understand, etcetera!

Imagine David Letterman is on the streets of New York City with a microphone in hand. He has one question to ask those who happen to pass by, “What is the purpose of being in business?” What do you think the most common response will be? I would guess that almost everyone, if not everyone, will answer that the purpose of being in business is to make money.

I’m going to suggest a different way of looking at this question. Imagine for a moment that the purpose of being in business was to Grow People! What would be different? How about, everything would be different and you would make more money as well!

The Key Leadership Abilities
Your ability to negotiate, communicate, influence, and persuade others to do things is absolutely indispensable to everything you accomplish in life.

The most effective men and women in every area are those who can quite competently organize the cooperation and assistance of other people toward the accomplishment of important goals and objectives.

Everyone Is Different
Of course, everyone you meet has different values, opinions, attitudes, beliefs, cultural values, work habits, goals, ambitions, and dreams. Because of this incredible diversity of human resources, it has never been more difficult and yet more necessary for diplomatic leaders to emerge and form these people into high-performing teams.

Donald Trump, paragon of the real estate world, files for bankruptcy. Richard Nixon, 37th U.S. President, resigns the presidency over the Watergate scandal. Jennifer Capriati, rising tennis star, enters a rehabilitation center for drug addicts. Jim Bakker, renowned televangelist, is convicted of fraud.

In the recent past, we’ve witnessed the public downfall of leaders from almost every area of endeavor — business, politics, religion, and sports. One day they’re on top of the heap, the next, the heap’s on top of them.