1. Showing interest in people, respecting their contributions, and treating them well brings out the best in people, and greatly benefits the organization. Leaders who try to dominate and control are badly misguided.
2. Strong leaders are rooted in their values and are respected for standing on principles. This is their reference point during challenging times. Without it they are pushed and pulled by the opinions and pressures around them.
3. Senior leaders need to avoid the trap of becoming arrogant and egotistical. They are there to serve and better the organization.
4. A leader’s success is determined by their team. Smart leaders focus on building and facilitating great teams.
5. Good leaders bring value by finding the solutions and strategies their organization needs. They are often good problem solvers as individuals, but they learn to build teams and organizations that support and encourage innovative solutions.
6. Skilled leaders learn to tap into expertise inside and outside their organization.
7. Leaders are better prepared for the wide ranging discussion and decision making that happens at the executive level if they have a broad base of experience related to the organization and its operating context.
8. A critical function of the leader is focusing people on the challenges and tasks that really matter to the organization’s performance and future.
9. Leaders model high standards in personal work and have high expectations of others.
10. Skilled leaders seek to understand other people’s needs, motivations and priorities.
11. Most of a leader’s ability to get things done comes through their influence, the degree to which they are respected, and the processes they use to engage others, not through position power.
12. People thrive in jobs that are a good fit for their skills, and where their values and passions align with those of their leaders.
13. It is important for leaders to show their human side. Employees want to know that you care about them and the work. Letting people see how you think helps them align with you, and support you.
14. Encouraging challenging and provocative discussion brings out the best ideas and best solutions.
15. As you move up in an organization, it is important to become comfortable working with senior leaders who have aggressive or challenging styles.
16. There is sometimes emotional hardship associated with leadership that can be compounded by personal or family problems.
17. Organizational change is difficult and complex, and often harder than anticipated.
18. It is vital to be trusted by those above you, and to have the trust of those who work for you. When you lose trust, it is very hard to regain.

More and more organizations are tapping into this creative ability of small groups by rewarding individuals and small teams who come up with great new ideas without being told to do so. This is a matter of giving people time to chase things that they think are important. A person working on the front lines may well have a brilliant idea that takes them 100 hours to evolve and make practical. Why shouldn’t they, and perhaps one of their colleagues, be given the time to bring this benefit to the larger organization. Unfortunately, too many senior leaders do not trust their own people to use good judgment, and they only want people to work on what they’ve been told to work on. What a great loss of potential.

A senior executive recently expressed the view that small teams are also well suited to developing strategy. Once again, it is a matter of bringing together the right people with the right skill set. Often this means a combination of people who can think at the big picture level, while keeping front-line issues in full sight. It can also mean balancing the group so that both very adventurous people, and more risk averse people participate.

Some people worry that if you don’t consult everyone, the organization won’t support a major change or shift in strategy. That is not true. The real issue is whether or not the larger group will see the new direction as exciting and viable. So a small team developing strategy must understand this, and make sure that what they bring to the larger organization generates enthusiasm.

An even greater challenge is the point at which a middle manager steps up to manage a very large group of people. There can be real excitement in leading very big teams. Big teams have much greater impact on the future of the organization, and they need to be shaped and molded to embrace change and improvement. Now the trick is to learn how to work effectively with such large groups. A recent conversation with the top executive of a very large and complex organization revealed a few key things to keep in mind. Effectively working with big teams requires a) consistently and repeatedly communicating about the top values and priorities, b) finding ways to engage the input and energy of many people when it is time for important changes, and c) physically showing up at their meetings to show your passion, hear their views, and respect their input and ideas.

The need to learn is a byproduct of rapid change and the knowledge explosion. If you want to be a leader and a significant contributor to your organization, you have to realize that the knowledge base you have today will not serve you well in five years. In just five years you will be drifting towards out-of-date. Think about older employees. You can easily tell the difference between seasoned employees who are still staying on top of their field and those who have started winding down. Those who have one foot out the door towards retirement are no longer current, and they have lost their creativity. Leaders can fall into the same trap as they become caught up in the heavy work load often required of managers. When that happens, you are actually not a leader anymore. Leaders need leading ideas because an essential component of leadership is the ability to take people places that they wouldn’t go on their own. If your team can continue to move along without your new insights, new perspectives, and sense of new possibilities, you may be managing aspects of the operation but you are not leading.

I personally think that strong leaders need to be extraordinary learners driven by curiosity. What trends might be affecting our company? Is there a better way to run our team meetings? Who are the top thinkers in our field, and what are they thinking and doing? What can I learn to become a better communicator? Where can I get the best information on developing my health and fitness and reducing my stress so that I can come to work more energized? What are the leading edge technological developments that could affect our production, marketing and information handling? Who is taking our business or profession in a whole new direction? There are many important questions for leaders to consider. You don’t need the detail on all of them. That’s why you have employees who are technical and content experts. What you need is the big picture, and enough insight to make good decisions to improve and refocus your operation.

One of the best ways I know for leaders to stay current is to keep their whole team aware of leading-edge knowledge. One of my clients does this by working with their team to develop a list of topics that could impact their ability to lead their field. Each member of the team is responsible for reading in that area, and having expert knowledge of developments and trends. Twice a year each team member makes a presentation to their team and the leader to share their most significant learning. In between presentations, they routinely share great articles and ideas they find. In addition, leaders need to organize their days to incorporate reading, and I would encourage all leaders to learn how to use library services and professional databases to search for information on topics of interest. Most people have no idea how easy it is to do this given online library access, and if you don’t want to do it yourself, have your assistant or another staff member learn to do it for you.

The idea of leaders being coached is not new at all. What is relatively new is the idea of trained professional coaches, and the focus on studying how to coach. The idea that people in organizations need to be coached has been written about for decades. However, between 1940 and the 1980s the idea was that leaders themselves should learn how to do the coaching. So a leader learned how to be a better leader by being coached by his boss, and she in turn developed leaders reporting to her by coaching them. In this early literature, the comparison to sport and the arts shows up. If people who perform at high levels in these areas need coaches, why wouldn’t a corporate leader who is expected to perform at a high level need a coach?

Now we see in a lot of organizations training their leaders in coaching skills, and many of these organizations believe that they are doing something new. Clearly they are just picking up on an idea that has been written about for at least 70 years. What is new is our knowledge about the kinds of coaching that are effective.

Around the early 90s, there was a big shift in coaching related research and writing. People started to think hard about the coaching techniques used to accelerate development, and we saw more and more talk about coach training and the emergence of the professional leadership coach. The next big change came when the amount of research being done on coaching started to soar. That happened in the early 2000s, and now we have professional journals on coaching, graduate degrees in coaching, and even the evolution of a dedicated area of psychology called coaching psychology.

All of this is great. We are learning a lot about how to work with people to increase their skills, help them become more resilient problem solvers and strategists, and help them find success and happiness.

Both of these points involve seeing the issue through a fresh set of eyes, letting go of assumptions and being open to possibilities. I’d like to suggest that everyone build their ability to create these Aha moments. You can do it with or without a coach.

I was reminded of how important this is by a Masters thesis completed by a member of our local professional coaching association. Her study involved extensive interviews with a small group of executive coaching clients to explore what it was like to be in a coaching relationship. For these clients, key high points in coaching were the times when they transitioned from feeling unsure, stuck or pessimistic to feeling energized because they could see where they wanted to go and saw possibilities that they believed could get them there. This is a shift to optimism and a sense of control.

Earlier life experiences have taught me how important it was for people to learn to see beyond their current problems and believe in their ability to create solutions. Somewhere in my early study of psychology I came across the notion of internal and external locus of control. People who see the outcomes in their life as being controlled externally, i.e. by fate or other people, are less likely to seek out and work for their own solutions. Those who believe they can shape their own future see at least some of the control in their life as resting within themselves. This has always struck me as a important difference in how people approach life and improve their chances of success and happiness.

To be a resilient human being and a successful leader one has to believe that they can see beyond their current hurdles and difficulties, find solutions and influence the future through their own actions.

As a coach, I am excited by the idea of helping people become more resilient by helping them learn that they can be creative in the way that they define problems and find solutions. In the past few years books like The Art of Possibility (Zander and Zander, 2000) have inspired me to think about how creativity can be a tool for enhancing individual lives. By deliberately searching for new perspectives and possibilities a person discovers a world full of options rather than constraints. Books like The Big Book of Creativity Games (Epstein, 2000), Unstuck (Yamashita, 2004) and Thinkertoys (Michalko, 2006) have proposed a similar perspective to bring better problem solving and more innovation to organizations. As a coach, I am challenged to bring these ideas and techniques to my clients for both individual and organizational benefit.

Here is a great way to structure a business presentation. The focus is on the interests and needs of the audience, whether they are your colleagues, clients, employees, executive committee or board of directors. Your role is to give perspective and insight, and to facilitate a path forward.

I.  State the topic and why it is important to this specific audience.

• Example re: a concern – Today I have some new insights on changing market conditions that will help this executive committee turn around the falling demand for our products.
• Example re: opportunity – This morning I would like to talk about the new project and how it will boost the chances for each one of us to learn more and do some fascinating leading edge work.

II.  Give your point of view. (Don’t leave them searching for the big picture you already have.)

• Having examined the situation carefully, my perspective is that we are facing …
• I would like to suggest a new and useful way of looking at our challenge.
• The research suggests that there are three things that really matter as we move forward.

III.  Give supporting evidence.

• Let me highlight the key reasons this point of view makes sense.
• Here are the key supporting facts.
• There are also risks/weaknesses that also should be acknowledged.

IV.  Give a resolution, i.e. a plan, proposal or idea

• It appears that we can benefit by …
• There is an opportunity here for a win-win if we …
• You may wish to reduce the inherent risk by implementing a plan with these elements …

V.  Give or suggest the next step.

• If you agree that this should be implemented, the next step would be to …
• I would like to suggest that each team move forward by …

Let me continue with my challenge to encourage leaders to think about the essential components of their personal leadership.

Here is another very interesting leadership model that diverts significantly from the previous two. The MIT Leadership Center has created this picture of leadership. See http://mitleadership.mit.edu/r-dlm.php to learn more. They refer to it as “a pragmatic, research-based model of how successful leaders at every level actually work”. According to them leaders do the following things.

1.     Sensemaking: making sense of the world around us, coming to understand the context in which we are operating.

2.     Relating: developing key relationships within and across organizations.

3.     Visioning: creating a compelling picture of the future.

4.     Inventing: designing new ways of working together to realize the vision.

Sensemaking is the component in this model that strikes me as most unique compared to other views of the leader’s role. It also seems right on the money. We only have to look at the trauma caused by the current economic meltdown to see how much employees look to leaders to make sense of what is going on in the world, in the market place and in their company. Leaders who can provide insight, perspective and calm direction in any challenging time are valuable people indeed.

So how do you react to MIT’s take on leadership?

My last entry began a series that challenges leaders to think about the essential components of leadership. So what elements of leadership to you believe in?

Here is another great leadership model that is definitely worth some thought. It is called “Legacy Leadership”, and it was developed by Dr. Jeannine Sandstrom and Dr. Lee Smith. You can learn more at http://www.legacyleadership.com . They have an excellent book and a number of useful reference materials. Have a look, and consider how each of these areas of leadership skill could work for you and your team.

Based on a broad review of leadership research, Legacy Leadership identifies the following leadership traits as lasting aspects of leadership that endure beyond the fads that are the focus of so many trendy leadership books.

1.     Leaders hold, model and communicate vision and values to establish direction and commitment

2.     Leaders build and measure responsibility and accountability for execution and performance

3.     Leaders create innovation and collaboration by shaping the environment of working relationships

4.     Leaders inspire people and help them become leaders through the way they connect with others

5.     Leaders build a community that recognizes and values people’s differences

In a previous article, I suggested that leaders need to find their own leadership style. This is a matter of clarifying what you personally believe about the kind of leader you want, or need, to be. One way to do this is to reflect on a variety of leadership models that have been endorsed by researchers, authors and significant organizations. As you ponder these models think about a) what really makes people excited about coming to work in the morning, b) what it takes to produce innovative, exceptional results, and c) what would stretch your leadership skills but still be relatively comfortable for your personality.

The next few entries on this site will summarize a few models worth considering. Check them out further by going to the listed websites. To get started here’s a model that is pretty much a classic for contemporary students of leadership.

From The Leadership Challenge by James Kouzes & Barry Posner – Based on their long term research into the attributes of great leaders, they believe that exemplary leaders do the following.

Model the Way by clarifying their values and aligning action with those values

Inspire a Shared Vision by imagining exciting possibilities for the future and creating shared aspirations

Challenge the Process by searching for innovative ways to do things and by experimenting and taking risks

Enable Others to Act by fostering collaboration, building trust, and strengthening others by sharing power and discretion

Encourage the Heart by recognizing and appreciating others, celebrating values and victories, and crating a spirit of community

Which of the ideas in this model could make you a better leader? Learn more at www.leadershipchallenge.com or pick up a copy of the book.