Gifted Leaders

How Good Are Your Connections?

“Our ability to connect and create relationships triumphs many other factors when doing business. There is ample evidence to support the fact that people want to work with other people they like, sometimes selecting a likable person or company over one that actually has more qualifications or a superior product.” - Susanne Biro

A recent blog post by Susanne Biro of Bluepoint Leadership Development leads off with this premise, “A leader today is someone who sparks in us a desire to help.”  I agree with her that leading today is never as simple as just do this or don’t do that. It’s about making a connection, and this requires us to actually consider the other person – who they are, how they like to work, and what they will most appreciate.

If, as Biro contends, it’s true that, “What makes one a good leader is the ability to connect with others in a way that makes them want to help you,” then the question for each of us as leaders is “How good are my connections?”

Cultivating Accountability in the Workplace

“As a leader, I need to ask myself, 'What is it that I can do to engage with others so that they are willing to take the stance of accountability?' I can then hold them 'able' because they agreed to it. Great leadership is not about having to issue consequences but rather to stay in touch regularly with each person on your team in order to get results.” - Mardig Sheridan

Every great team has a special breed of leader. This new breed of “high-performance leader” is radically different from leaders in traditional, hierarchical organizations. These leaders have made the transition to a model where all team members - as well as the leader - are held equally accountable.

Accountability continues to be the single most powerful and desired characteristic of a successful work environment, yet why is it so misunderstood and so often mistaken for “resentful compliance?" How can leaders cultivate a culture that embraces accountability?

Check out this month’s edition of our e-Newsletter (August 2009) for answers  ...

Leading Your Team Part IV: Choose Commitment Over Compliance

"Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work." - Vince Lombardi

Transformation, growth and, ultimately, business success occurs through choice, not mandate. Effective leaders help people understand how their contributions fit into the broader vision and invite the team to work toward the greater good for each other and the organization. When people have an opportunity to "self-enroll" they exercise their freedom of choice which leads to a deeper level of ownership and commitment.

So Why Bother?

While paternalistic leadership only has room for one leader, collaborative community builders allow the leader in everyone to be brought forward. In today's challenging business climate we need to bring out the best in everyone to insure that we not only survive, but thrive.

So what's your choice? Frustrated parent or collaborative community builder? The former is likely to feel familiar but unfulfilling. The latter will require personal growth, hard work and perseverance - and allow you to leave a lasting legacy as a transformational leader.

Learn to step out of the role of benevolent parent, download our free e-Book: Leading Your Team: Making the Switch from Frustrated Parent to Collaborative Community Builder.

Leading Your Team Part III: Choose Engagement Over Manipulation

"Leaders should be the keepers of the what, not the masters of the how." - Bob Pittman

A leader is like a gardener.  The gardener doesn't have the power to force the plant to grow. Instead, he/she cultivates an optimal environment where the plant has the best opportunity to grow.

People best create that which they own, and co-creation is the bedrock of accountability. To choose engagement over manipulation is to take the other person seriously, to suspend judgment, and to see them as a colleague and partner.

Choosing engagement means:

• Having faith in the intelligence and goodwill of each person to contribute, instead of seeking techniques designed to shape their behavior and emotional responses.
• Using policies and procedures to encourage and inspire excellence and quality versus as a means to insure compliance and alignment.
• Involving everyone on the team in the process of creating a vision for change instead of relying on a top-down approach and authority to make things happen.

Engagement offers the potential for tapping into a wellspring of underutilized human capacity. In an empowered organization, employees bring their best ideas and initiatives to the workplace with a sense of excitement, ownership, and pride. In addition, they act with responsibility and put the best interests of the organization first.

Learn to step out of the role of benevolent parent, download our free e-Book: Leading Your Team: Making the Switch from Frustrated Parent to Collaborative Community Builder.

Leading Your Team Part II: Examine Your Underlying Beliefs about Leadership

"Your character becomes your destiny. Leadership behavior begins in your mind, gets expressed in words, and then gets translated into action. Over time, those actions become who you are." - James Kouzes, leadership consultant and author

Our beliefs have a great influence over the ways in which we interact with people. Considering that the vast majority of our experience in organizations has occurred within the context of a paternalistic approach to leading, it's easy to see how even well-intentioned people can readily adopt the role of "parent" and lead from that mindset. And, quite frankly, the paternal approach is appealing and often perpetuated for a number of reasons:

• Our egos become invested in the roles we play and in the trappings of our authority.
• It is concrete and easy to implement (as long as people do what you tell them).
• We believe that we have paid our dues and others should do the same.
• It is based on the premise that "someone else" needs to change (not the leader).
• We fear change, letting go of control, and the possibility of failure.

Besides the fact that "we've always done it this way," which is frequently an obstacle in the way of change, we are also prone to some basic misconceptions about "leadership".  The dominant belief is that the task of leadership is to set a vision, enroll others in it and hold people accountable through measurement and rewards. We try to create high performance through the centralization of power and control.

Becoming a collaborative community builder requires a different set of beliefs about people and about the task of leadership:

• Everyone wants to be exceptional.
• Employees support the changes and commitments they create.
• Leaders allow people to act on their own initiative and make important decisions.
• Adults prefer to be "led" rather than "managed".
• Leadership is about partnering, not parenting.

Learn to step out of the role of benevolent parent, download our free e-Book: Leading Your Team: Making the Switch from Frustrated Parent to Collaborative Community Builder.