Category — Leadership Articles

The history of Henry Ford and the Model T illustrates a fundamental truth about leadership: leaders never outgrow the need to change.

On his way to dominating the automotive market with the Model T, Henry Ford embodied innovation and progress. By pioneering the assembly line, Ford slashed the amount of time needed to manufacture an automobile.

He installed large conveyor belts in his factory, allowing workers to stay in one place rather than roaming around the factory floor. He also shortened the workday of his employees from nine hours to eight hours so that his factories could operate around the clock.

Leaders and managers spend a lot of time and effort figuring out how to develop their people’s talent, shape their performance, and motivate them to improve.

But when was the last time you focused on yourself? Specifically, how’s your credibility? Does it need some attention? Here are 10 ways to boost your credibility with associates, customers, and everyone else within your sphere of influence.

1. Demonstrate ownership and a sense of urgency. Your associates and customers want a quick turnaround when they have a problem or concern. Show them they matter.

In my years of studying leadership and evaluating leaders, I have stumbled across a leadership shortcoming that continually amazes me. Leaders will manage a team, work with the same individuals every day, yet they hardly know anything about their people! These leaders have never prioritized acquainting themselves with the dreams, thoughts, hopes, opinions and values of those they lead.

The best leaders are readers of people. They have the intuitive ability to understand others by discerning how they feel and recognizing what they sense.

In today’s challenging economic times, creative thinking is more valuable than ever. Not creative for creativity’s sake — creativity to solve real business problems. Many of the ideas of the past are no longer relevant. As a seasoned leader shared with me recently, “The half-life of ideas is decreasing rapidly.” So what’s our response? We need more and better ideas.

The good news: creating new, value-added ideas is what teams do best. However, creativity in a team environment is not automatic. There are some things that leaders can do to increase the creative output of their team. Here are a few ideas to get you started …

Today, I’m going to give a short, one-question quiz. Here’s the question: How do you rate as a leader?

I don’t ask this question flippantly. It is a question I’ve asked countless people at the leadership seminars we conduct.

As leaders, most people rank themselves as being very close to a minor deity or at least Mr. or Ms. Human Relations. Seldom do leaders give themselves low marks. Strangely enough, when the tables are turned and people are asked to rank their boss’s leadership style, we often find many supervisors graded as being adequate, merely OK, or at worst, office autocrats who depend heavily on the often-referenced “seagull management” technique as their sole line of attack — they leave their people alone until something goes wrong, and then they fly in, make a lot of noise, dump all over everyone, and fly out.

Some of you are Tim Tebow fans and some of you are not — got it. Regardless of your feelings, let’s not miss the chance to learn something here about leadership. Here are a few things I’ve observed watching Tebow this season that may help you on your leadership journey.

Leadership Matters — Team sports require leadership. In the NFL, there is an expectation that the quarterback will provide that leadership. Business, ministry, government and academia are all TEAM SPORTS. If you are going to win, someone must lead. Tim provided leadership for the Broncos.

You’ve seen it happen again and again.

A corrupt government is toppled by revolutionary forces, marshaling the will of the people, the dictators fall, happiness reigns once again … but then something weird happens. The revolutionaries start looking a lot like the tyrants they just deposed.

It happens in business, too. A fresh new leader comes along, an innovative start-up comes out with something brilliant that mixes up the marketplace, an organization galvanized by someone new at the helm leaps inspired into double-digit growth …

You’ve probably heard those talks, the ones where the speaker gets everyone all worked up to a fever pitch with an emotional story, and then rallies them like drunken sports fans around the corporate mission.

It’s a bit like a political stump speech. The idea, of course, is that the people in the audience will be inspired to greater and more productive action.

You’ve been in that audience. You’ve heard that speech. Heck, maybe you’ve given that speech. (We know we have.) How well did it work? How long did its effects last?

Leadership — genuine, influential, effective leadership — is a subtle thing. It’s not something that readily reduces to a cookie-cutter recipe or paint-by-numbers formula. We all know that. That’s why there have been a thousand good books on leadership, and will be a thousand more. But for all we describe it and study it, it still seems elusive — which is why it so often surprises us when a truly great leader appears in our midst.

Why so elusive? In part, because great leadership is shot through with contradiction.

Early in my career, a client requested I meet with a prospective merger partner in the financial services industry. The schedule was tight, so for a week I flew around in a private jet to various cities and at each location was whisked away to my meetings in a waiting limo. I stayed in beautiful hotels and generally had a bevy of people making sure that every detail of my trip ran smoothly.

By the end of the week, I was getting used to being treated like I was important and I drove home on Friday night a bit full of myself. Anne, my wife, greeted me at the door with her normal cheerfulness and then dropped the bombshell on me.