Business Leadership Advice

How to Evaluate Your Leadership Style By Ken Blanchard

Josh Hinds — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:13:46 +0000

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.

More often than not, we find that leaders lull themselves into thinking they are top-flight leaders because they think they use a supportive or coaching style, which someone told them are “good” leadership styles. Not too surprisingly, this isn’t the way they are seen by those in their department, office or store.

To get a true and accurate answer about the question above, it is necessary for you as a supervisor to honestly determine how your employees perceive your leadership style. These are the folks who know you best. They have first-hand experience with your leadership style and operate on their own perceptions about it. They are the best judges of your managerial effectiveness. However, getting an employee or subordinate to give his or her honest feedback on your leadership style is difficult. People fear being the messenger who will get shot for bearing bad news. Hence, they are naturally reluctant to be totally candid.

Employees are sharp observers. In the past, they may have gone to their leader and made an honest suggestion such as, “Ken, I think our Thursday afternoon meetings are a waste of time.” If the supervisor answers with an outburst by saying, “What do you mean a waste of time? Are you kidding? Those meetings are important,” it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that one thing the leader doesn’t want to hear is the truth.

It is important to remember that when people you supervise tell you what they honestly think about your style of leadership, they’re really giving you a gift. When someone gives you a gift, what is the first thing you should say? “Thank you,” of course! Then it’s a very good idea to follow up by saying, “Is there anything else you think I should know?” When a person learns that you won’t become defensive or hostile when he or she gives you an honest evaluation about your style, you’ll find that you’ll be given many nuggets of truth which are extremely valuable. My advice would be to encourage people to give (feedback) at the office, and to give often!

Just remember, what you think about your own leadership style really doesn’t matter. In addition, there is no one correct style, nor is there a “good” or a “bad” style. Rather, style is judged by those immediately influenced by it. It’s your people’s response to your style that matters. If you are getting the right response consistently — high productivity and morale — then you’re doing just fine. If not, then perhaps it’s your style that needs changing, not your employees.

* originally published on “How We Lead”

(c) 2012 Ken Blanchard, co-author of Great Leaders Grow: Becoming a Leader for Life
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Ken Blanchard, co-author of Great Leaders Grow: Becoming a Leader for Life, is cofounder and chief spiritual officer of the Ken Blanchard Companies. He is the author or coauthor of 50 books that have sold more than 20 million copies, including the iconic One Minute Manager®. Connect with Ken Blanchard at www.kenblanchard.com

- Share your thoughts on the advice above in the comments below. Your participation helps to create better leaders!

What Can Leaders Learn From Tim Tebow By Mark Miller

Josh Hinds — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:46:46 +0000

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.

Passion Matters — The intensity of the team is always a reflection of their leadership. If the leader is not passionate the team won’t be either. Tim gets this. This was a critical ingredient in 6 fourth quarter or overtime victories this season! How high is your passion for what you lead?

No Style Points on the Scoreboard — Winning is the ultimate measuring stick in the NFL. Pretty or ugly, it doesn’t matter. Tim knew the goal was winning – not his QB rating. What does a win look like for your team? Is everyone on the same page?

Leadership is a Platform for Influence — When you and I lead well, our influence will grow. What we do witth that influence matters. One of the things Tim does is host disabled young people to attend both home and away games. He says that it inspires HIM to see their courage and helps him keep the game in perspective. How will you steward your influence?

Skills Still Matter — Tim has a lot to learn as an NFL quarterback. His skills are not where they need to be. Heart, passion and drive are huge — but insufficient over the long haul without the skills. Tim knows that. That’s why he’s so excited about the off-season. He plans to grow before next year. What’s your plan to grow this year?

Tim Tebow is not perfect — as a football player or as a human being. However, I know he can teach me a lot about leadership. I look forward to learning from him for years to come.

(c) Mark Miller, all rights reserved
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Mark Miller, co-author of Great Leaders Grow: Becoming a Leader for Life, is vice president, training and development, for Chick-fil-A. During his career he has served in corporate communications, restaurant operations, quality and customer satisfaction, and numerous other leadership positions. He began his Chick-fil-A career in 1977 working as an hourly team member. He is the author of The Secret of Teams
and the coauthor of The Secret.

-what are your thoughts on the above article? What additional skills would you include in your list of great leadership attributes?

Leadership Lesson: You Are Not the Deal By Bob Burg and John David Mann

Josh Hinds — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 13:30:00 +0000

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 …

Until a few years later that new leadership starts resisting change, digging in its heels, and acting a lot like the old leadership.

What happened?

There are all sorts of academic insights and lessons visible in the succession of power. But at the root, quite often there is something personal and internal happening here, a process that blunts the edge and sabotages the positive influence of once-great leadership.

It happens to kings, presidents, heads of religious organizations and great corporations, leaders and people of influence in every domain. It can happen to anyone with a following of any size or number.

It is this: after a time, they start getting it backwards.

L E A D becomes D E A L.

As a leader, you become the container of others’ hopes. When we say people put their trust in you, that is not just a figure of speech. People place their hopes and dreams, trust and faith, even their fears, in your hands, because these things feel too fragile, too big, too important, too valuable to hold onto by themselves.

You become the trustee of their intangibles. You hold them, believe in them when they forget how to believe in themselves.

But — and here’s the key to it — you are not their dreams, you are only the steward of those dreams. And leaders too often get it backwards and start thinking they not only hold the best of others, but that they are that best.

After a time of absorbing all that trust and faith, the sense of all those people looking to them for guidance, inspiration and constancy, they confuse the container with the contents.

They start thinking they are the deal.

And the moment you begin thinking that it’s all about you, that you’re the deal, is the moment you begin losing your capacity to positively influence others’ lives.

In a word, to lead.

If you are in a position of influence, here is a simple way to avoid this classic tragedy of leadership: every day, remember what it’s about.

Great parenting is not about the parent. Great teaching is not about the teacher. And great leadership? You’ve already filled in that blank.
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Bob Burg and John David Mann are coauthors of the new release It’s Not About You. You can download two sample chapters at www.INAYBook.com.

Leadership Lesson: The Substance of Influence By Bob Burg and John David Mann

Josh Hinds — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 16:00:00 +0000

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?

There’s got to be a better way.

And there is: harnessing the substance of influence.

If you want to influence people, what is it you’re actually trying to create? In other words, what is influence? What is it made of? Or let’s ask it this way: what is the difference between convincing others to do something, and influencing them to do so?

Convince means “to overcome by argument.” It comes from the Latin word for “conquer.”

Dale Carnegie famously said, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” And is there really any other way to be convinced—conquered, overcome by argument—than against your will?

The word “influence” means “an unseen flow of power.” It was first used in the Middle Ages as an astrological term, from an old French word meaning “a streaming ethereal power from the stars acting upon our character or destiny.” By the fifteenth century, the word was being used to mean “an exercise of personal power by human beings.”

You could say, it describes how we exert gravitational force on each other. Like stars.

Influence is a flow, like air flow or the flow of a river. (Flow, flue, influence — they all come from the same root word.) So what creates that flow?

When water pours downstream, is there some force pushing it from above? No, it flows downstream because of the pull of gravity.

Imagine you have an ordinary window fan blowing air into your room. How far can it blow? Not very far at all. But reverse the fan’s position so it’s now blowing outward—and you can pull a column of air from a single open window clear on the other side of the house, from even hundreds of yards away.

Or think of it this way: How far can you push a rope?

That rah-rah speech given to rally the troops around the flag? That’s like blowing a column of air into a room. Yes, you’ll stir the air and create some movement. But how far does it go? And how long does its influence last?

Instead, turn the window fan around. That’s what great leaders do. They don’t seek to convince; instead, they utilize the substance of influence.

They listen more than talk. Rather than exhorting others to do those actions the organization most needs to move ahead, they personally do those actions themselves. They don’t push the troops toward a goal — they magnetically, gravitationally draw us toward that goal.

That’s what influence is made of. That’s what gravity does. That’s what stars do—they pull. That’s why we don’t talk about how much push we might have with someone, but rather, how much pull.

Pull is the substance of influence. Not push.
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Bob Burg and John David Mann are coauthors of the new release It’s Not About You. You can download two sample chapters at www.INAYBook.com.

Five Keys to Legendary Leadership By Bob Burg and John David Mann

Josh Hinds — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 21:05:33 +0000

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.

A great leader is selfless — and has a healthy ego. A great leader is by definition unitary, singular, unique — and somehow inspires thousands to emulate him or her. Great leaders have their heads in the clouds and their toes firmly in the dirt.

Here are five descriptions of what great leaders do, what we call “Five Keys to Legendary Leadership.” The first four are all essential — and are completely contradicted by the fifth. Yet somehow, the first four don’t seem to work without the fifth.

They are the four fingers and thumb of leadership.

Finger #1: Hold the Vision

Building a business takes skill, work, and capital resources. But those are details. More than anything else, building a business—really, building anything—is an act of faith. Because you’re creating something out of nothing. You are moving into the future on invisible wires, without a net.

It’s easy to say, “Hold a vision.” The hard part isn’t the vision. Anyone can come up with a vision. The hard part is the holding.

The single biggest challenge to any organization is the constant cloud of fear and doubt that swirls around the heads of the people involved. As a leader, your job is to hold fast to the big picture, to keep seeing in your mind’s eye, with crystal clarity, where it is you’re going—that place that right at this moment exists only in your mind’s eye. And to keep seeing that, even when nobody else does. Especially when nobody else does. Your people count on you to do this. It’s the biggest job you have.”

Finger #2: Build Your People

Time was, people in a business were often viewed as “workers,” as if, out of the entirety of a person’s being, that which was relevant to the business could be reduced to a single function. Not anymore. Increasingly we’ve come to realize that people are people, and every person in a business is a universe of talents, skills, and potential value. Good businesses look to hire competent employees. Great businesses hire people and then commit to bring out their latent greatness through continual investment.

Finger #3: Do the Work

Great leaders don’t expect anyone else to do anything they haven’t done themselves. They get dirt under their nails and mud on their boots. Abraham Lincoln knew law. He’d practiced it in freezing-cold, bare-floored small-town courtrooms. So did Gandhi.

They both emancipated millions—but only because they knew the feel of the craft in their hands. Before he was a great general or the nation’s first (and arguably greatest) president, George Washington worked as a land surveyor. He knew the land he would later govern. As a boy, Sam Walton milked the family cow and sold the surplus milk to neighbors. Bill Gates spent thousands of hours as a teenager programming computers.

This is one of most great leaders’ greatest success secrets: whatever field they are in, whatever business empire they run, the chances are excellent they have done it at some point with their own hands, learning it nuts and bolts, from the ground up.

Finger #4: Stand for Something

Leadership is not something you can put on and take off, like a set of clothes. Your capacity to influence is not something you can rehearse, like a speech in a play. People, contrary to popular belief, are not fools. No matter what front you put on, they will read you, consciously or unconsciously—the you behind the words.

It’s not that what you say isn’t important. It is. That’s just not where the source of your power lies. What you have to give, you offer least of all through what you say; in greater part through what you do; but in greatest part through who you are.

Competence counts—but character matters more. If you want people to follow you, they need to trust that you know what you’re doing. But that’s the smaller part of it. Competence is simply the baseline, the thing that puts you in the game. Character, though, is a precious gem, and anyone who possesses it is worth a great deal to the world around him.

You can lead only as far as you grow.

Thumb: Pass the Mantle

So there you have it. Leaders hold a vision. Leaders care about their people. Leaders get their hands dirty and their boots muddy, do the work and make the tough decisions. And leaders stand for something.

It’s about all those things. But at the same time, it isn’t about any of those things. Because you can hold the biggest vision, care about all your people, do all the work, and stand for something until the end of days — and it’s still you, you, you.

Here is the heart of the contradiction that is great leadership: great leadership isn’t a place you arrive, it is a place into which you disappear.

Great parenting is not about the parent; great teaching is not about the teacher. And great leadership? Whatever it truly is, it’s not about you.
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Bob Burg and John David Mann are coauthors of the new release It’s Not About You. You can download two sample chapters at www.INAYBook.com.

Leadership Lesson: The Compass of a Leader By Tim Irwin

Josh Hinds — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:50:00 +0000

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.

One of the toilets was clogged, and a plumber wanted a budget-busting amount of money for the repair. This was not the sort of clog that a plunger would take care of with a few well-aimed thrusts. A cloth diaper was lodged in a region of the toilet I didn’t know existed and required a hands-on approach to solve.

The sights, smells, and sensations were memorable. After several hours of immersion in the project, the toilet finally cleared. I felt like I needed to be taken to the nearest hazmat center and sprayed down from head to toe for exposure to germ warfare. I went to bed that night in a really foul mood.

The next morning, I woke up laughing. Immersion in the toilet was actually a perfect way to end the week and bring me back down to reality. The toilet was real life, not flying around in a private corporate jet, staying in expensive hotels. We all need a good “in the toilet experience” every now and then to remind us who we really are.

In my book, Derailed, Five Lessons Learned from Catastrophic Failures of Leadership, I studied a number of CEOs who had been fired by their boards in recent years. While these individuals often had performed brilliantly in the past, they failed catastrophically in the jobs from which they were fired.

They were like the engineers of huge freight trains who ignored critical warnings and went off the rails. Most of these individuals were ultimately fired, not because of a lack of competence, but rather a lack of character. A big lesson learned …“Arrogance is the mother of all derailers.”

One of the most revealing tests of a person’s character is power. We see in the six failed leader profiles in Derailed that power, in many cases, became self-serving. The “trappings” of power often tell a lot about character.

Bob Nardelli created a nine-car personal parking area for his cars underneath Home Depot’s corporate office. His private elevator went from his personal parking area straight to his private office on the top floor of the building without stopping on other floors.

While a failure of character can manifest itself in many ways, the most foundational and most self-destructive is arrogance. Just as humility seems to be at the epicenter of leadership effectiveness, arrogance is commonly at the root of a leader’s undoing … and ours.

The specific derailers that rendered the profiled leaders incapable of continuing in their positions varied, but there is an underlayment of arrogance in every one of their derailments.

Arrogance takes many forms. The most rudimentary is the self-centered focus that fosters a belief that I am central to the viability of the organization, the department or the team. The resulting dismissiveness of others’ contributions is inevitable.

When arrogance blossoms into hubris, a sense of entitlement results. “This place can’t function without me, and I deserve special perks.” Arrogant leaders also seem to eschew feedback so beneficial to any leader. They become “truth-starved.”

Nardelli became known for arrogance and an alienation of the people he needed most. Regardless of Nardelli’s vision for the company, how could he ever achieve his objectives without the alignment, commitment, and loyalty of the Home Depot employees?

The big lesson is that no matter how brilliant, charming, strategic, or commanding in presence a leader is, the consequences of a failed character are extraordinarily disabling and will bring down even the strongest among us.

Effective leaders must set direction, gain alignment among diverse constituencies, risk change, build high-performing teams, achieve results, go the extra mile and endure ungodly stress.

To be enthusiastically followed, leaders must also be guided by an inner compass that fosters trust on the part of their followers. That compass is character.
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Tim Irwin, Ph.D., is a speaker, author, and leading authority on leadership development, organizational effectiveness, and executive selection. He is the author of Derailed, Five Lessons Learned from Catastrophic Failures of Leadership. Visit him at www.drtimirwin.com

-what was the biggest lesson you learned from the above article?

Leadership Lesson: So What! By Gregg Gregory

Josh Hinds — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 11:26:17 +0000

Remember the Chicago Bulls of the ’90s? They won six NBA championships in eight seasons. When most people are asked who the leader of that team was, they respond with Michael Jordan. But that’s not entirely true; in reality, Phil Jackson was the coach and the official leader.

We all know that every team has a leader, and it is not always the person in the management position. While everyone wants to be a part of a successful project, not everyone is always willing to step up to the plate and take the lead.

While taking the lead is relatively simple, the thought of taking responsibility of the people, the project and the success or failure is not. One of the most common reasons people get their first leadership position is because they knew the tasks of the projects well. However, that does not always translate into knowing how to lead the people. Thus, one of the reasons leaders fail is their inability to work well with people.

Here are a few tips and tricks to consider when taking the lead on a task or project.

1. Be Inconspicuous

While you are taking on more responsibility, there are probably those on the team who do not feel you are the right one to take the lead on this task. If you are inconspicuous and subtle with your actions, the entire team will think of you as the leader without telling them you are the leader. One way to ensure this works is to get everyone’s ideas and work together to come up with an action plan.

2. Share All Successes

Bear Bryant used to say, “If anything goes wrong, I did it; if anything goes somewhat right, we did it; if anything goes just right, you did it.” Keep in mind the ultimate goal here is for the project to succeed, thus the team succeeds. As Marriott’s Ray Warren talked about in my article “How to Keep Employees Engaged,” good leadership teams are constantly watching for potential new and upcoming leaders; by helping the team to succeed, you will succeed.

3. Play to Everyone’s Strengths

If everyone on the team had the same skill sets, the team would go in circles and projects would stagnate. Take time to know the team members, learn what they “enjoy” doing and try to match their likes with their skills.

4. Be the Mediator

The likelihood that everyone on the team will agree with everyone all of the time is slim to none. Opposing views can be of significant benefit to the team. Always encourage new ideas and when opposing views arise, (and they will) you can mediate the discussions and debates to keep the project moving forward. This translates into the team setting new goals and objectives through discussion, and you are viewed as the decision maker and leader.

5. Be the Mediator

Remember, you are not the “supervisor” of this team and you cannot place an employee on a performance plan or write him or her a bad annual review. What you have available is much greater than that… you have the ability to inspire, recognize and praise employees in a way that makes them want to succeed. There’s the old adage that you can eat an elephant one bite at a time. Well, take the concept and break the task or project down into numerous smaller segments with attainable deadlines. Then, when an individual hits his or her deadline, you offer praise. Of course you would do the same when the entire team hits their goals as well.

One of the greatest things you can do as an aspiring leader is to volunteer for new tasks and assignments. This does two things:

2. It helps you grow and develop both professionally and personally.

3. It allows you to stand out to management so when a leadership position opens up, they may consider you.

You’ve heard the old expression – “All good things come to those who wait.” Well, I like adding a second part to that saying – “But only those things left behind by those who hustled.”
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Gregg Gregory helps organizations design cooperative teams that produce results and perform at peak levels. Through his interactive workshops and consulting, Gregg’s clients achieve greater team focus, cooperation, productivity, and impact. You can visit Gregg at TeamsRock.com.

-what are your thoughts on the ideas above?

Leadership Lesson: How Great Leaders Inspire Action By Simon Sinek

Josh Hinds — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 14:30:00 +0000

What follows is a presentation given by Simon Sinek. In the video presentation he shares a simple, yet powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?" He draws from examples which include the Wright brothers, and Apple computer among others.

Key points:

The golden circle is made up of three components:
1. why
2. how
3. what

* “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”

* “if you talk about what you believe, you will attract those who believe what you believe.”

* people don’t show up for you (or your idea) they show up for themselves.

-What are some of the key things you picked up? Share your thoughts and feedback in the comments below.

Tribal Leadership By Dave Logan

Josh Hinds — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 05:45:10 +0000

Every company is a tribe, or a network of tribes—groups of 20 to 150 people in which everyone knows everyone else, or at least knows of them. It’s a fact of life: birds flock, fish school, and people “tribe.” Tribes are more powerful than teams, strategies, or even superstar CEOs, and yet their key leverage points have not been mapped—until now.

Great leaders know they can’t instantly change the culture of 100,000 people, or even 50 people, with gimmicks or trendy initiatives. Successful executives focus on developing their culture one “tribe” at a time. The heart of leadership development is helping leaders to upgrade the effectiveness of their tribes, taking these groups from “adequate” to “outstanding.”

Tribal Leaders focus on building the tribe—or upgrading the tribal culture. If they succeed, the tribe recognizes them as the leader, giving them discretionary effort, cult-like loyalty, and a track record of success. Divisions and companies run by Tribal Leaders set the standard of performance in their industries, from productivity and profitability, to employee retention. They are talent magnets, with people so eager to work with the leader that they will take a pay cut. Their efforts seem effortless, leaving many people puzzled by how they do it.

Building a great tribe gets around the “buy in” problem that’s common in strategic planning. Great tribes want to win, and win big. Upgrade the tribe first, and strategic planning becomes a lot easier.

Now you can better own your role as a tribal leader, and develop other leaders.

Five Stages of Tribal Culture

Tribes come in five flavors, marked by differences in talk and behavior. Tribal Leader- ship starts with recognizing which stage you have, and doesn’t stop until you reach Stage 5.

Stage 1 runs the show in criminal clusters, like gangs, where the theme is “life sucks,” and people act out in despairingly hostile ways. This stage shows up in 2 percent of corporate tribes, but leaders need to be on guard, as this is the zone of criminal behavior and workplace violence. The best way for a leader to intervene is to get individual members out of the group and into another. Strategic planning is all but impossible in Stage 1.

Stage 2, the dominant culture in 25 percent of workplace tribes, says, in effect, “my life sucks,” and the mood is a cluster of apathetic victims. People in this stage are passively antagonistic, crossing their arms in judgment yet never getting interested enough to spark any passion. Their laughter is quietly sarcastic, resigned. Tribal leaders intervene in Stage 2 by finding those individuals who want things to be different, and mentor them—one at a time. Tell them that you think they have potential. Over time, some will start to talk the Stage 3 language. At that point, invite them to mentor another member of the tribe. Strategic planning fails far more often than it succeeds.

In Stage 3, the dominant culture in half of U.S. workplace tribes, the theme is “I’m great” or, more fully, “I’m great, and you’re not.” In this culture, knowledge is power, and so people hoard it, from client contacts to gossip People at this stage have to win, and winning is personal. They’ll out-work, think, and maneuver their competitors.

The mood that results is a collection of “lone warriors,” wanting help and support and being disappointed that others don’t have their ambition or skill. What holds people at Stage 3 is the “hit” they get from winning, besting others, being the smartest and most successful.

Tribal leaders intervene in Stage 3 by identifying people’s individual values and then seeing which cut across the tribe. Point out the values that unite people, and then construct initiatives that bring these values to life. In Stage 3, people often try to push new strategies on others, and it rarely works—because they have strategies of their own.

Stage 4 represents 22 percent of tribal cultures, where the theme is “we’re great,” and another group isn’t. Stage four is the zone of Tribal Leadership where the leader upgrades the tribe as the tribe embraces the leader. The leader transforms tribes of individuals into Stage 4 groups, and the tribal leaders in these groups focus people on their aspirations, and define measurable ways to make a worldwide impact. Get the tribe to Stage 4 first, and strategic planning is easy.

Stage 5 is the culture of 2 percent of the workforce tribes, where the theme is “life is great” and focuses on realizing potential by making history. Teams at Stage 5 have produced miraculous innovations. The team that produced the first Macintosh was Stage 5, and we’ve seen this mood at Amgen. This stage is pure leadership, vision, and inspiration.

Identify which of these five cultures dominates your tribe, and start bumping your tribe to the next stage by noticing the social groups that exist in your company. These are your tribes. Then listen to the way they talk. Is it “life sucks” (Stage 1), “my life sucks” (Stage 2), “I’m great” (Stage 3), “we’re great” (Stage 4) or “life is great” (Stage 5)? Move your tribes to the next stage, until reaching Stage 5. These steps will help you move from adequate to outstanding, and produce tribes that want to change the world.

* excerpted from Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization.
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Dave Logan is a New York Times best-selling author, management consultant, and USC faculty member. He is co-founder and senior partner of CultureSync, a management consulting firm specializing in the alignment of strategy and corporate culture. Dave is coauthor of four books, including Tribal Leadership. He has a Ph.D. in organizational communication from USC.

-what do you think of the ideas shared above? Your feedback is appreciated in the comments below.

Leadership Lesson: The Difference Between a Manager and a Leader By Ken Sundheim

Josh Hinds — Sat, 28 May 2011 05:10:21 +0000

There is a big difference between managers and leaders. Managers are those who come to work, make sure all subordinates are getting the necessary tasks done, then leave at 5:00, never to really make a difference.

Managers sustain. They fail to upgrade their teams. They see no return in helping those under them grow personally or professionally.

Leaders are the ones who form and grow a company. Leaders try as much as possible to kill any bureaucracy and allow each member of their team to speak their mind. Leaders know that collaboration keeps employees engaged. It makes them feel important.

The best persuasion skill to get someone to do something is to get them to want to do it. Leaders make employees want to come to work every day. They create a sense of urgency and execution within the group, thus making them industry leaders.

While managers are often afraid to make their teams better, carrying a thought process that one could take their job, leaders are afraid not to better their teams, since bettering the team prevents turnovers and moves an organization forward.

Managers will sit in a boardroom and waste time conversing about topics that have been beaten to death. Leaders know that this is a waste of time. Leaders are busy conveying their vision to those under them and getting them to buy into it.

Managers are afraid to be wrong, ever clinging onto their job and hiding in between cubicles, spending the day writing emails back and forth to other managers. There is no concrete action behind these emails, only ideas that never get implemented because they could result in negative attention on the management team.

When something goes wrong, managers are quick to point the finger and cultivate an organization full of “It Wasn’t Me” folks. There is always an answer why something went wrong and it is never them. Leaders take responsibility for their actions. They hold their subordinates accountable for their work and they are no exception to the rule.

Managers micromanage, overseeing every minute detail. Leaders allow for new ideas to be implemented and feel the reward is worth the risk. When a manager attempts to train, he or she is met with skepticism, as their subordinates feel that they are only it in for themselves.

Subordinates trust leaders. They know that the leader has their best interest at heart.

How do you know you’re working for a leader? Under his or her guidance, you’re slowly becoming a leader yourself.
__________
Ken Sundheim is the President and Founder of KAS Placement, a sales and marketing executive search firm based out of New York City. Ken’s writing has been featured or syndicated in most major news sources such as WSJ.com, Forbes.com, and many more. You can read more of Ken’s articles at his blog – KAS Write www.kaswrite.com

-what do you think of the ideas above? What are some other essential leadership skills?

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