What Options Do We Have?

2 January, 2012 By Leave a Comment

People take more ownership in delivering their own ideas than the ideas of others, and successful leaders know this.

Instead of just giving the answer (the solution), they ask their people for what they think the answer should be.  However, how a leader asks for the answer is important in having their people keep the ownership.

Some leaders often ask, “what do you think we should do?” or “what’s the best thing to do?”.   When you only ask for one thing, and you don’t happen to like it, you then need to convince your people to do something different.  Now, the answer is no longer their answer, but yours – the leader’s; and they will have less ownership in your answer than theirs.

The best way to ask “what options do we have?“.   Now, you get to coach your people towards what could be the best answer and they keep the ownership, as the source of the answer was theirs.

 

Filed Under: Blog, Influence, Ownership, Solutions

Your Most Important Weakness

28 December, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Your strengths make you successful, so most of your development should be focused on making your strengths even stronger.  However, many people take the opposite approach, and focus too much of their development on their weaknesses.

Basically, there are two types of weaknesses:  1) Those weaknesses that impact you using your strengths better, and 2) Those weaknesses that have no impact on you using your strengths.

For number 2, the focus should be on surrounding yourself with people who have strengths on those weaknesses.

For number 1, it’s all about picking that ONE most important weakness that impacts you using your strengths and giving your development focus to that one weakness.

If you consider the 80/20 rule…you grow faster when you devote 80% of your development to growing your strengths, and 20% to working on that ONE most important weakness.

 

 

Filed Under: Blog

Follow-up to Influence Behaviours

4 December, 2011 By Leave a Comment

For every leader, following-up with their people is key to the success of the organisation.  Leaders follow-up in all different ways, as they know that follow-up is key to influence the right behaviours in their people.

Some people take ownership of both what needs to be achieved and their own behaviour, and they need less following-up than others.  However, there are those in your organisations who don’t take that ownership, and need more follow-up to influence what they achieve and their behaviours in the right way.

Successful leaders reinforce this ownership both by explaining why what they are achieving is important and following-up that it gets achieved shows it is important.

 

 

Filed Under: Blog, Influence

Plant Seeds & Water

13 November, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Leadership is all about influence, and that influence is gained in many different ways.  One way leaders influence their people (especially across distances & cultures) is to plant seeds and then continually water them.

Successful leaders know that people take in information at different speeds and in different ways.  These leaders have found that if they plant seeds (something to think and feel about) first, and then come back and continually water (adding more information and emotion) matching the person’s speed;  they will gain stronger influence and often in a shorter overall time.

Influence is about growing a way of thinking and feeling about something in others, and planting seeds and continually watering them can build the right thinking and feeling to create both powerful and long-lasting influence.

Filed Under: Blog, Communication, Influence

Develop Pride

30 October, 2011 By Leave a Comment

People who have pride in what they do, will do it well; and also continually search for ways to do it better.  Now in today’s world, PRIDE often gets a bad name.  Why?…because pride is often confused with EGO.

Pride without humility is ego.  However… Pride + Humility = MAGIC

When you instil pride in your people and throughout your organisation, they will truly deliver magical performance for you.  Do your people feel the pride in what they do?

The most successful leaders understand the power in developing pride, and focus as one of their priorities creating and maintaining pride in their people (especially their key people who influence others).

Just think about the difference in both your thinking and action when you have pride in what you are doing (and proud of what you have accomplished).

Filed Under: Blog

Lead Successful Flexible Working

17 October, 2011 By Leave a Comment

First:  Build Trust
When leading people at a distance, the foundation of good relationships is trust.   People need to trust each other, and that means getting to know each other.  If you are successful at building trust, you will have people across your organisation always willing to “pick up the phone” whenever they need information or need to discuss a problem with someone else.

Also, it is important to use whatever face-to-face time you have with your people in ways that will get everyone learning more about each other.  Too often companies just have meetings with PowerPoint presentations (one after the other!), instead of organising ways for their people to discuss/debate key topics and get to know each other better. Remember:  Success is having people feeling comfortable enough to contact each other straight away when any opportunities or issues arise.

Second:  Delegate Outcomes
Leaders must move away from managing activities to leading based on outcomes.   When you are leading people at a distance, it is difficult to manage activities.  You are just not close enough to your people to manage them on an activity level.  What’s important is to delegate and manage outcomes that your people can “own”, and then coach them on the activities to complete them.  It takes some up-front thinking to define the right outcomes for your people to “own”, but saves a great deal of time later in not having to manage all the activities.

Next, “Follow-up” is key, as it reinforces the right behaviours; but more importantly, it sends the signal that the “Outcomes” they are delivering are important.  In your people’s minds: Follow-up = Important;  No Follow-up = Not Important.

Third:  Provide Access to Information
For everyone to feel involved at the same level, everyone needs access to the “Same Information”.  Information is one of the key drivers of organisations, and having everyone with the information they need to do their job effectively is important.  In the “Virtual” world, you can’t just go around the corner and get a question answered.

The “virtual/flexible” world really requires information to be accessible from anywhere, and this is driving the need for information databases or Internet applications to provide easy access to the information wherever your people are located.

Filed Under: Communication, Discipline, Trust

Keeping Perspective

16 October, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Keeping a Perspective on everything in our lives can be one of the greatest factors impacting our happiness.  If keeping perspective can be that important, then how best can we gain it and keep it?

You really have two ways to gain and keep your perspective:  Breaking Away and Rising Up

Breaking Away
We break away from the daily pressures of our lives by doing some type of activity that takes our mind away from those pressures.  This can be some type of sports or exercise, or can even be dinner out with friends.  Each of us has our best ways to “break away” and take our minds away from those daily problems and challenges.  When you find the ways that work best for you, just make them part of your daily and weekly habits.  These “break away” activities help you gain that perspective and by making them habits (into your routine) you keep that perspective on life.

Rising Up
Ask any successful person and they will say that their self-development is one of the keys to their success.  That self-development is helping them address the bigger problems and challenges they face as they go after those bold goals they have set.  What they are really doing is “rising up” and growing past their current problems and challenges.  In this way, they are always looking at their daily problems and challenges with a different perspective; because they are growing past them every day with the self-development they do.

Create the habits of “Breaking Away” and “Rising Up” to keep your perspective.

Filed Under: Blog, Perspective

Change the Game

6 October, 2011 By 1 Comment

Steve Jobs is in our thoughts today.

I think the most important leadership principle from Steve Jobs is to change the game. He did that with the iPhone (changing the phone from just a telephone to much more), and at the same time he changed the relationships with the mobile companies too.

When you change the game you automatically bring something new or you could also bring the same thing in a new way.  It is very motivating for a company’s people when they are changing the game or how the game is played.

To gain a competitive advantage and a motivating workforce, either change the game or play it in a new way.

Filed Under: Blog, Change, Innovation
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