Gifted Leaders

Don’t Let Your Ego Get In The Way

"None of us is as smart as all of us. This really means that one plus one is a lot bigger than two." - Ken Blanchard

What’s one of the biggest barriers to people working together effectively? It’s the human ego according to best-selling business author Ken Blanchard. In his June 2009 Ignite! e-Newsletter Blanchard explains that when people get caught up in their ego - a combination of false pride and self-doubt - it erodes their effectiveness.  Blanchard’s advice:

1. Recognize that it’s not about you. The first way to recalibrate an overactive ego if through humility. As a leader, it’s not about you, it’s about the people you serve.
2. Be a learner. You need to be open to learn from other people and to listen to them.
3. Find a partner. Find people who have the talents, skills, and energy to compliment whatever it is that you bring to the table. Think collaboration, not competition.
4. Build a shared purpose. Rally people around a shared vision - something bigger than themselves. When everyone shares a clear sense of purpose, process, and practice, it’s amazing what can be accomplished.

In what ways is your ego limiting your effectiveness? How can you choose humility more consistently in your interactions with others?

Improving Your Relationships

"Today we are faced with the pre-eminent fact that if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships, the ability of peoples of all kinds to live together and to work together in the same world at peace." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

These words, spoken by President Roosevelt over 50 years ago, are as true today as when he first uttered them. As individuals, as organizations, and as nations, we still struggle with "cultivating the science of human relationships."

Here are fifteen actions you can consider taking today to improve your relationships and collaborative influence.  Which one will you commit to focusing on this week?

1. Tell your truth. Don’t be afraid to let yourself and others know what’s important to you..
2. Realize that you choose. Eagerly accept responsibility for what is happening in your life. Accept that you are responsible for your own happiness and wholeness.
3. Seek deeper self-awareness. Reflect, read, discuss, meditate or involve yourself in any activity that aids your awareness of your old paradigms and deeper levels of being.
4. Respond emotionally. Allow yourself to “feel.” Own your feelings rather than letting your feelings own you, or numbing out. Realize that all emotions are acceptable, but not all actions are acceptable.
5. Give up blame and postpone judgment. We’re all trying our best to get by. Seek to understand what is happening and how you contributed to that. Attempt to listen and clarify one another’s viewpoints and interests before defending yourself or making others wrong.
6. Seek not to consciously hurt others. Assuming an adversarial stance causes others pain and takes a severe toll on the quality of our own life. Maintaining collaborative intention and respecting others adds to our lives.
7. Take time to envision yourself as you want to be. Motivate yourself by thinking about your future, rather than letting yourself be shoved through life by your past. Start being who you want to be … today.
8. Consciously change your limiting beliefs. Don’t wait for experience to change them for you.
9. Assert yourself. Be aware of your boundaries and stand up for yourself. If you don’t, who will?
10. Be as sincere and as vulnerable as possible. Explore being “present” rather than being “right.”
11. Be in touch with your body and its wisdom. Seek alignment and connection with your head, heart, and “gut”. They have much to tell you if you listen.
12. Seek a higher meaning or purpose in your life. Explore ways to collaborate with others by doing something you are passionate about, in the service of others.
13. Treat your personal growth with respect, excitement and patience, rather than judgment. Personal growth is a lifelong job.  It requires commitment and compassion. Focus each day on becoming your best cheerleader rather than your worst critic.
14. Give to give. Give yourself away daily to purpose, people, places and things you love. Stop waiting for others to love first, accept you, or make it safe for you.
15. Laugh a little. Some things are much too important to be taken seriously.

Source: Improving Your Relationships by Jim Tamm and Ron Luyet

See the June 2009 edition of the Gifted Leaders e-Newsletter for more info on improving your relationships and collaborative influence ...

Increasing Your Collaborative Influence

"True collaboration begins inside the individual and works its way out into the organization. By developing five essential skills, you will not only increase your own personal effectiveness, you will positively influence your team or organization." - Jim Tamm and Ron Luyet, authors of Radical Collaboration

Here are the five skills identified by Tamm and Luyet:

1. Collaborative Intention: Maintaining a non-defensive presence and making a conscious personal commitment to seeking mutual gains in your relationships.
2. Truthfulness: Committing to both speak and listen to the truth, and the ability to create an atmosphere where it feels safe enough to raise difficult issues.
3. Self-Accountability: Taking responsibility for the full range of choices we make, either through action or inaction, and taking responsibility for both the intended and unintended or unforeseen consequences of those choices.
4. Self-Awareness and Awareness of Others: Committing to know yourself deeply and showing a willingness to deal with difficult interpersonal issues.
5. Solving Problems and Negotiating: Skillfully negotiating your way through the conflict that is inevitable in any long-term relationship.

See the June 2009 edition of the Gifted Leaders e-Newsletter for more info ...

There is no better way to improve relationships than to jump in and practice these skills. How can you take a few small steps towards increasing your collaborative influence today?

Only the Optimists Survive

"Good organizations and good leaders, especially in our tense and uncertain moment in history, have the capacity to bounce back; to adapt as necessary; to persevere with an expectation of success; and to engage others in a shared sense of purpose; and to win a reputation for integrity through these other qualities." - Warren Bennis

This is a quote from a recent feature on The Case for Optimism on the BusinessWeek web site.  Bennis contends that, in the current and the future business climate, optimism is not merely a recipe for good cheer, its a blueprint for survival. In the article he highlights some of the benefits of optimism:

• Optimists have a sixth sense for possibilities that realists can't or won't see. That gives the optimist the ability to "define reality" for others in a compelling way - which is the first task of a leader, as author Max DePree has observed. This is not sentimentalism: It is the essence of creative pragmatism.
• The exemplar of optimism is Franklin Roosevelt. In study after study, the Rooseveltian trait of "hardiness" has been found to be crucial in determining whether good women and men with talent will make a difference. Psychologist Martin Seligman illustrated a yawning chasm between social animals who react to roadblocks with a sense of futility and those who react with a steely determination to master their destiny (again, hardiness). "Learned optimism" is Seligman's term for a person's capacity to join the latter group.
• Adaptability is the hallmark of leaders of substance.

How adaptable are you right now? What is your capacity for "hardiness"? What would it take to develop more capacity?

Motivating Your Team

"Leadership is the lifting of a man's vision to higher sights, the raising of a man's performance to a higher standard, the building of a man's personality beyond normal limitations." - Peter Drucker

Kelly Ann McKnight, a certified trainer with The Leadership Challenge, shares how to accomplish what Drucker is talking about in the April 2009 Ask the Expert column on the Leadership Challenge web site.

It seems that the art of motivating people to "want to struggle for shared aspirations" is really about taking the time to get to know who people are - as individuals. If you are the 'bus driver' of your team, you need to know:

1. Who are these people on my bus?
2. How did they get here?
3. Why are they still here or what keeps them here?
4. Where are they hoping the bus will take them?

Once you can answer these questions you can make sure that your route includes the stops required by everyone on your team. When each individual can see that their personal needs are being met, they can overcome obstacles and work together to achieve extraordinary results.

Who’s on your bus? What makes them tick? What are you currently doing to motivate your team to want to struggle toward shared aspirations?