What’s Next? 3 Questions for Leaders Today

In my pursuit to grow and raise up Leaders Worth Following, something simply outstanding occurs with a select number of people in each group.

Upon completion of a workshop/program, I always have a few team members approach me and ask “What’s Next?”. It’s at this point, I know that these individuals are what GiANT calls “Humble, Hungry, and Smart.” They are taking personal responsibility for their own leadership journey by being eager to grow and develop themselves. They are not relying on their leadership team to assign them a class or give them a book to read. They are seeking out opportunities to grow and learn more about themselves so they can excel at leading others in the future.

These team members have potential for growth and will increase your company’s reach and impact on others.

Often, simply the act of delegating a task to an individual who is “Humble, Hungry, and Smart” is all it takes to ignite leadership development. Invest in these people and you’ll find not only will they grow, you and your organization will grow as well.

My Questions for Leaders Today:

1. Is your awareness level turned up?

2. Are you watching and listening for these “Hungry, Humble, and Smart” people in your organization?

3. Is your limited coaching time focused on these individuals?

#GiANTworldwide #leadership #leaderstoday #growth

Lead Yourself First

It is impossible to lead others with any longevity or excellence without first leading yourself.

Influence from a title will only last so long.

People will not follow leaders who do not lead themselves.

What does that mean? It means that whatever you expect of your team you must first expect of yourself.

Sadly, it’s something that is difficult for many leaders today. Why? I think it has to do with positional power. Perks usually lead to complacency and complacency leads to self-absorbed leadership.

To avoid these trappings, I must lead myself first and do so by:

• Keeping the proper mindset — attitude, perspective, positivity

• Maintaining inner health — spiritual maturity leads to personal maturity

• Staying focused on our mission — vision with action

• Developing personal health — working out helps everyone

• Eliminating personal blights — character affects everything

• Addressing blind spots — ask someone to help

My desire is to awaken leaders throughout the world to help them transform their style of leadership to becoming responsive, empowering, liberating leaders.

That can only happen if I lead myself first.

#GiANTworlwide #leadyourself # character #positivemindset #leadership

Say It or Do Something Else?

By reading this post, you will be challenged to do two things:

1. Don’t avoid tough situations that require you to “challenge” others

2. Be willing to spend the amount of time needed to foster growth

I recently received an e-mail after wrapping up a 1-to-1 session in which the participant was thankful for the encouragement I gave them to give directive feedback to their team members.

A task had been given to the team, but the deliverable that came back didn’t meet the standard necessary to move it forward. The leader was faced with the choice of fixing the product themselves because they had the knowledge and skills to do so or to go back to the team with direction and time to train them on how to better fulfill these kind of tasks moving forward. This is a common scenario when delegation and empowerment are present.

There will always be a need for training and walking with others to improve. As we processed this learning opportunity, the need to clearly communicate the correctives and train the team seemed to be the clearest option and the best one for the team and the longer term health of the organization. Does it take more time? Sure it does. The apprenticeship process always will, but it is worth it.

To not delay the tough conversation, but to communicate challenge and give feedback that individuals need to move forward with.

Do you tend to “say it” or do something else?

#GiANTworldwide #challenge #growth #leadership

Leadership and Influence…It is All About Relationships

True influence is the everyday commerce of leadership.

Once you get out of the transactional loop, you are free to enjoy the relationships of life that come with influence. Relationships then become the norm, not the exception.

Is there such a thing as a perfect relationship? “No,” you may argue, “nothing can be perfect.” While I agree with you, I will tell you that I believe it is possible to form strong bonds even in a world of greed, power, and corruption. These powerful relationships exist in business and in communities. How does this occur?

Once you free yourself by letting go of your own wants and needs and focusing on serving others, your vantage point changes. You will be free to serve and give without fear of losing. You will see other people’s needs as joyful opportunities for service. It is possible to have empowering relationships in all aspects of life.

The influence model is a tool that can be used to help leaders move from mediocrity to a life of lasting impact. The model is built, established, and run on trust.

Influence requires commitment. This is precisely why most people do not have much impact: it costs something. In fact, every influential person in my life has sacrificed either time, energy, or effort to influence me.

Leaders do not fully control their influence. Yet living a life of impact means that influence is possible all of the time.

#GiANTworldwide #leadership #influence #serve #relationship

Do You Suffer from Leadershock?

I’ve been captivated by a word I came across in an article by Robert Martin; leadershock. He used the word to describe the paralysis experienced by leaders who are overwhelmed with information and remain indecisive.

The formula for Leadershock:

Step #1

Read too many leadership books.

Step #2

Be apathetic, indecisive and uncertain because you read too many leadership books and have not formed concrete ideas of your own but merely marveled at the concepts of others.

Step #3

Second-guess everything and spin out of control.

It doesn’t matter if it’s paralysis from reading or some other reason, I suspect you can relate to being hesitant about taking action for one reason or another.

One of our clients recently described for me how he had applied a learning from a session with his team. It was something so simple; Ask the team how they were doing instead of jumping right into tasks as means of communicating value. This small simple action made a significant difference in his team. In fact, they were shocked! It reminded me that for all of our reading, theory, and tools there is no substitute for the pattern of learning and doing something quickly.

Here’s my advice for young or perhaps seasoned leaders who feel like they don’t know enough or are internal perfectionists who can’t act until what they deliver is flawless.

1. Stop the cycle.

2. Form convictions and do something.

3. Get some experiences and failures of your own as you are doing something.

#GiANTworlwide #leadership #leadershock #cycle

Learning My Role

At the time I was leading a not-for-profit organization and we had what I thought were big plans to make a big difference in the world. In order to fulfill our mission to make a difference in our city we needed some infrastructure improvements in our property, some additional staff, and some upgraded technology… a hefty reach for our budget but necessary for our purpose.

My Role

Like many leaders I have spent much of my energy dreaming up a worthy vision and trying to get others to join me in the chase. I want to do something significant, and I want to help others do the same. But what I’m discovering — finally in my fifth decade — is that my primary role as a leader is not to muster support for my vision, but to Love, which we define as:

Fighting for the highest possible good in the life of another.

#GiANTworldwide #leadership #learning #role

Presence and Understanding

Presence and Understanding

I believe one powerful tool that an engaged leader has to develop others is presence and understanding. A humble admittance that while some difficulties may be irrational, they can be understood and mastered together is a great gift of hope and courage to a teammate. It is the difference between an up-front talking head and the engaged developer of talent. The results can be truly remarkable.

Being present and understanding will not solve every leadership development issue, and sometimes people might not be capable of growth in an area that it is required. But it is worth the effort for what it produces in people and the culture of the organization to employ this approach.

It can be a game changer.

Which style of leadership comes most natural to you?

#GiANTworlwide #understanding #presence #leadership

Being Intentional with Time

There have been many great examples of maximizing time in my life. My family did not waste time. Formal time is the time when you are “on.” It is the time in front of customers, giving presentations, working on a projects, etc. Growing up with a strong work ethic gave me a good perspective on using our formal time wisely.

Time is the most consistent asset we all share. We all get up in the morning, normally drive somewhere, have lunch, work, drive home, have personal or family time, and then sleep. You may get up earlier or later, work at home instead of an office or do other responsibilities more than others, but the general commonality is that we consistently do the same things over and over again.

Yet there is another type of time that will impact your success more than any other. We call that time “Informal Time.” Informal time is typically your preparation time or down time… from what you do in the morning before you start work, to what you do in your car and the minutes before you sleep. The truth is that the informal time affects the formal time more than you can imagine.

How many times have we heard this, “I don’t care what you do on our own time. When you are at work I want to see you…”

That is exactly the problem. It is our down time that impacts the success of leaders. What goes in, comes out. The informal times are when most of the filling up occurs. The formal times are when most of what is in us comes out. That is why I am trying to make a strong case that your informal time will impact you far greater than your formal time. In fact, in a study we commissioned of 100 corporate leaders, we found that those who use their informal time are 75% more effective in their leadership ability.

It makes sense doesn’t it? Think about an athlete. Those who use the off-season to work out and strengthen are typically more productive over the long term on game day.

Informal time is considered exercise time, drive time, lunch time, starting time, personal and family time, etc. When you start to understand the importance of time I believe you will begin intentionally planning your activities more wisely. Here are some examples:

• Exercise Time — What are you listening to while you excercise? Mix up your listening portfolio to include leadership lessons.

• Drive Time — The average American travels 34 minutes to work one way (68 minutes round trip). If you are listening primarily to the news, you may start your day with a negative or cynical outlook. If you are consumed by talk radio, you may be ostericising 50% of your workforce because of our partisan society.

• Desk Time — When you start your day with email, you are on your way to a train wreck, especially if you get bad news to start the day out. Instead, start the day out with inspiration in a biography or reading of some sort. We created a program, called Everyday Leader, that gives leaders perspective as they begin their days.

• Family Time and so on

The point is to plan your informal time for growth and watch your success grow. This is very similar to watching what you eat and the portion sizes of your meals. You will see results as soon as you downsize instead of “supersize” and when you begin consuming more healthy materials.

Plan your downtime. 

Organize your informal time so that your formal leadership time will be more effective.

#GiANTworldwide #time #leadership #timemanagement

Make a Learning Resolution

What do you want to learn? What do you need to learn? The three pound brain that you’ve been given has incredible power to learn new things (literally as while you are awake your brain generates up to 25 watts of power, enough to illuminate a light bulb according to scientists).

Chris Lonsdale, who learned to speak Chinese inside of six months, has been captivated by the question of how we can learn faster.

He answers the same way we do at GiANT:

1. You look for people who can do it

2. You look for situations where it is already working

3. You identify the principles and apply them

He calls it modeling. We call it relational apprenticeship and we are passionate about it. We get fired up about teaching leaders how to learn.

Think back to learning to ride a bike when you were young. It was difficult at first to balance, steer, and pedal until eventually what happens is that neurons create a pathway so that what was difficult is second nature. The challenge is to stick through the learning process until you’ve really learned it.

I’ve known for a while that I am prone to go surface level with a lot of concepts, ideas, and thoughts without seeing my learning through to resolution. It’s something I still challenge myself with and if you are around me long enough these days, you’ll find index cards with scribbles, drawings, models, and ideas.

There are simple things you can do to learn more effectively such as being relaxed, drinking enough water, and reducing your sugar intake. My most important learning of this month about learning is to learn with resolution. Be specific about what you want to learn, find a person or model that works, and see the learning through.

#GiANTworldwide #learn #resolution #passion

Perfect Tendencies

Do you know someone who’s perfect? The way they act, communicate, handle pressure and conduct themselves is all in line with how you would like them to be all the time? They never annoy you. The only way someone could answer yes to this question is if they aren’t married and live alone in the woods with their dog. We all accept that everyone is different and true relationship is a give and take.

How About Leaders?

Have you ever worked for a perfect leader? Another impossibility. Think about the good and bad leaders in your life. What were the tendencies that they had, good and bad? Were they aware of these tendencies? I doubt it.

It is ok to go through life surrounding yourself with those who validate you but we all know you can’t do this if you are going to lead. You have to deal with those whom you would rather avoid. So how do you deal with them?

Here are 5 questions you need to consider:

1. Do you avoid situations that may lead to confrontation?

2. Do you sweep little quirks under the rug that are actually opportunities for development?

3. What is your communication like?

4. If you do confront, is your tendency to dominate? Is it short, and to the point so you can move on and get away?

5. What percentage of your engagement with those folks is over email so you don’t have to talk to them?

By the way, if you’re only thinking of these questions within a work context, think again. Leadership is influence. What other areas in your life do you have influence? How about your extended family? How about the PTA, your place of worship, the sports league or the neighborhood association? We are all dialed into how we would like others to change to fit us. But my question is…

Do you know how you might change to fit others?

#GiANTworldwide #leadership #communication #guide