Being Intentional About Your Growth

It starts with you.

The key is in being self-aware… to admit that you need to grow… to admit that you need some fresh perspective. You are the key to the growth of your team and organization, even your family.

Your growth depends on your desire to grow and on your commitment to grow. Desire and commitment together can do a lot in a person..

• Where is your desire to grow as a leader? Do you want to grow?

• What is your commitment to the process Are you willing to do what it takes to get to the next level?

• What is your plan? Do you have a regimen to help you become a great leader?

Please realize, I can’t give you desire, that is up to you. I can’t impact your commitment, either. Our company has developed a plan that helps people with their commitment. If you follow this plan it will give you the basic activities you need to get moving and start growing as a leader. You can always add other things into this plan. The plan is really a framework of growth that incorporates informal time (growth during drive time or exercise time) and formal times (events, retreats, book plans, etc.)

It is up to you to commit. Once you start, it will be pivotal to start your teams (those you lead), and your organization as well. Once people see your success they will ask what has gotten into you. That is when you get them moving toward growing as leaders. That is what it means to be intentional.

Growth happens by intentional focus on raising the level of leadership. Here is to your intentional success!

#GiANTworldwide #growth #commitment #plan #leadership

What Does Growth Require?

As I have grown in understanding myself to lead others, I recognize a tendency I have that is both a positive and a liability. In Myers Briggs language, I am a natural feeler. My gut reaction to others that are encountering difficulty is to support them through a high five, a pat on the back or a hand clap. All of these supportive gestures involves the “affirming” side of the hand. I am sure that anyone who has spent much time with me has felt a warm, friendly touch from my leadership style.

But the problem is, development requires not only the affirming side of the hand but the challenging side as well. To develop someone else to their full potential sometimes requires them to be challenged in a way that brings out a better effort or a higher level of performance. I know leaders who are naturally gifted at challenge, and it offers a strength and a threat to their leadership impact.

Since both sides of the hand are necessary to develop someone to their full potential, a liberating leader must learn how to do both. A self awareness of which style comes most naturally is the best place to start. The goal is never to replace ones natural style with the other, but rather to expand and enhance leadership impact by leveraging the natural tendency as you employ the less natural style.

Once I recognize my own tendency, I can intentionally offer feedback from the other side of the hand. For me, this means finding ways to challenge.

The good news is, you never have to be as good at the awkward side of the hand as you are with your preferred side. Because others have known me as an affirmer, when I do offer a challenge it tends to have a multiplied impact, even if I am a little hesitant in its delivery.

As I have grown in this skill myself, I have also seen the value of teaching others. The impact of learning to use both sides of the hand helps a leader transform from a protector or a dominator to one who is truly a liberator — -a leader worth following. The hand illustration can be a simple reminder with profound development results.

#GiANTworldwide #growth #lead #team #knowledge

The 2 Most Important Things I Look for in a Leader

When I spend time with any leader I intuitively look for two primary qualities or aspects.

1. Are they self-aware?

2. Are they responsive?

Picture what you look like when you wake up in the morning. For some of us that is scary. : ) As you stand over the bathroom sink looking at yourself this is the first opportunity to lead yourself in the morning. Do you notice your hair sticking up? Can you sense the morning breath? The mirror helps you as you become self-aware of yourself.

Once you become aware of your disheveled self, you have two choices — do absolutely nothing and go about your day or respond to what you see and fix what needs to be fixed. If you choose to clean up, straighten up and get ready for the day you have just become a responsive human being. You responded to what you saw needed to be changed.

Every leader has the same opportunity to become self-aware and to become responsive. The mirror for leaders can be the family or co-workers or those they lead. Every leader has the opportunity to be self-aware and the chance to respond to what they see.

When you hear the term “blind spot” that actually refers to a leader not being self-aware of an issue in their life. It is as if they woke up and went to work not realizing they hadn’t combed one side of their hair.

I value leaders who work hard to become aware of their areas of needed growth. Even more, I respect those leaders who do something with what they have found. These leaders are responsive to their issues and work to overcome, improve and change what needs to be changed.

Are you self-aware?
Are you responsive?

#GiANTworldwide #leader #leadership #leadyourself #awereness #growth

Is Corporate Training Working?

I became aware recently of a trend that appears to be the growing norm in corporate training. Most training these days seems to involve gifted, intelligent leaders putting their best thoughts into some sort of presentation and communicating how to do something to the audience. After a skilled trainer masters the basics of the content (s)he delivers, they are likely also to innovate and come up with new and sticky ways to communicate their target principles. The message gets better and better.

Or does it?

If the purpose of training is to bring another individual to a level of competence in any area, how can a trainer be sure that their content is actually being transferred? For training to bounce back and forth between instruction and innovation misses a key point in the process-imitation.

How can anyone be sure that the content is truly being transferred into a skill without a process of observed behaviors and feedback. A more productive model involves boots on the ground exercises using live ammunition in real life. This allows the one seeking to grow in competence by hearing the instruction, watching it applied, trying it out, and receiving valuable feedback and coaching. The best innovation occurs in this model, because the student and the leader can both engage in the dynamic of exploring better ways or methods in the context of a real situation. This can guard a culture from becoming eloquent in ineffective practices that sound great but do not truly build a competent leader.

#GiANTworldwide #ginconsultinggroup #employ #leadership #corporate #train

“Duct Tape Matrix”

I was speaking to a potential client this week and he asked me a pointed question: “How do you know when you’ve succeeded? I like what you say you are trying to do, and I think our company could use that outcome, but how do you know it’s really happening. You talk about “100X Teams” — an environment that fosters the growth of leaders worth following. That sounds nice; how do you measure it in a way my COO can put in a P and L?”

I swallowed and groped for a response, and as I did a picture flashed into my mind: a duct taped quadrant on the wall of a stocking room.

A week prior I’d visited a site of one of our other GiANT customers, Dahl Automotive in LaCrosse Wisconsin. I visited one of their dealerships and had a chance to meet with Tommy, their parts manager. Tommy took me into his domain, a meticulously maintained cathedral of shelved parts.

Tommy is so good at what he does that last year his inventory was off just a few dollars. They guy knows his stuff.

But Tommy also knows people. He’s truly a Liberating Leader.

As he showed me around his space he paused, “Oh, and look there.” He pointed to the wall. He’d duct taped a vertical “X” and written into the quadrants the principles of our “Support Challenge Matix” — Liberator, Abdicator, Dominator, Protector.

“I had everyone in my department tell me where they see me on that, and where they see themselves,” Tommy explained. And when I have to give a tough talk, I just point there and say, ‘Gotta challenge you, man, you can do better.’ Or sometimes I point and say, ‘What support do you need to do what I’ve asked of you?’ That picture does some of my hardest work for me… I get this and it’s good.”

I turned to the potential client, relayed my conversation with Tommy and added, “That’s how we know we’ve succeeded.

When Tommy duct tapes truth to the wall and that becomes the language they’re using in the parts department of an auto dealership. When that happens, stuff is changing. And if we can do that for you, we’re worth every dime of our fee.”

He nodded and gave me a verbal commitment that he wants to work with us… Gotta love Tommy!

#GiANTworldwide #goodleadership #badleadership #support #challenge

Steps for Transformational Leadership

Transformational Leadership is far from a linear process but it does have a number of reliable touchstones for leaders to imitate.

Step 1: Create an Inspiring Vision

Individuals need to feel compelled to follow. This is true for exercise routines, musical performers, a restaurant chain; everything! A compelling vision springs from an organization’s purpose and values while giving hope and confidence to those being served.

Step 2: Motivate Teams to Engage and Deliver Upon Vision

A leader’s call to action is to appeal to people’s personal values and to integrate these core beliefs within the “why” of the organization. The use of positive storytelling and sharing “real time” impact for your customers is important. Linking vision to individual goals, values, and tasks give it a real texture and context allowing others to more readily channel-in and contribute.

Step 3: Develop Clear Operational Strategies

A vision is of no use and falls pathetically short if it is only a high gloss token of memorabilia from an event but never internalized. It must become part of the water system and reinforced repeatedly. However, many leaders put most of their energy into the design of vision but not putting in the hard and often mundane work of operationalizing it. Warren Bennis says it succinctly: “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.”

Step 4: Build Strong, Relationship-Based Cultures

Transformational Leaders empower those they lead. They intentionally and deeply invest in their people and they work tirelessly to calibrate both high support and high challenge. If your job title hints that you are a leader, then tag: You’re it! Your ultimate duty of care is to build and maintain relationships, earn trust, and create opportunities that allow your team to grow and develop, which, in turn, builds teams worth following.

Transformational leaders inform when they must and inspire whenever they can. Inspiring great loyalty and trust is the leadership standard of excellence and significant in securing 100% team health, engagement and capacity.

#GiANTworldwide #loyalty #leadership #excellence #inspire #engage #develop #transform

The Linchpin of Leadership– Self-Awareness

“I’m working on it!” For anyone with teenagers, most likely you have been on the receiving end of this statement a time or two. For me, this is a natural household response anytime I inquire about messy rooms or unfinished homework. As leaders committed to continuous self-improvement, this refrain also rings true. We are all working on it right?

Leaders recognize that individual emotional and social intelligence competencies are more than niceties for teams and talent. This is a core skill underpinning highly effective performance of leaders worth following.

How does Emotional Intelligence Drive Performance?

The latest findings show that the capabilities generally used to define baseline employability are indeed common strengths and include:

• Achievement Orientation

• Teamwork

• Organizational Awareness

The Emotional Intelligence skills lagging in this comparative study included:

• Emotional Self-Awareness

• Influence

• Coaching and Mentoring

• Conflict Management

• Inspirational Leadership

So What? Why Does This Matter?

The Sobering News…One of the more profound learning points from this report comes in the distribution of related EI skills. Revealed was the fact that a leader who rarely demonstrated Emotional Self-Awareness is NOT likely to show strength in any of the other complementary Emotional Intelligence skills.

The Better News! A leader who demonstrates Emotional Self-Awareness consistently is likely to strongly display more than nine related Emotional Intelligence competencies.

This information is a bellwether trend lending significance to the notion that Self-Awareness lies at the heart of Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence lies within the core of leaders worth following.

The Jarring Impact…Without healthy Self Awareness, a leader’s chance of demonstrating strength in competencies of self-management, social awareness, and relationship management is low. On the contrary, with a solid understanding of “Knowing Yourself to Lead Yourself,” the leader is likely to shine successfully and progress healthy leadership culture caught across the organization.

A leader who rarely demonstrated Emotional Self-Awareness is not likely to show strength in any of the other complementary Emotional Intelligence skills

Impact Activated

Great leaders encourage, equip, and empower the success in others. These are the leaders who relentlessly focus and accelerate the growth of positive and robust organizational culture.

Five Attitudes — Liberating Self-Awareness

1. Long Life Learning — Make your personal learning a priority for life.

2. Contextualize Your Leadership — Life and leadership are not linear in nature. Leadership is rarely a technicality to master, rather a “craft in context” to the specific needs of those being served.

3. Play Nice — Most of the human race won’t slow down to support those they dislike. Leaders worth following are committed to the well-being of their teams and the relational health across the organization.

4. Let it Go — Leaders worth following have power and know how to wield it appropriately. Power “for me” creates a culture of overpowering, fear, and manipulation. Likewise self-centered power manifests a culture of disempowerment and passive aggression. Leaders who are committed to “power for others” create liberating cultures of empowerment, respect, and opportunity.

5. Unlearn — Shedding the layers of poorly observed behavior, emotional dysfunction, and intellectual baggage is a celebrated moment for leaders. Suspending the natural tendencies of holding on to unhealthy and/or questionable beliefs is difficult, yet essential for leadership growth. Bold and courageous are the leaders who are willing to peek from behind their walls of self-preservation in asking others to honestly reveal the goods and the gaps in answering the question, “What is it like to be on the other side of me?”

Becoming Self-Aware is a real time process of syncing gradual release AND human capacity building with humility as the spark igniting the potential of high leadership performance and influence.

#GiANTworldwide #KnowYourselfToLeadYourself #leadership #profitablegrowth #learn #grow #lead

Apprenticeship Squared II

Two years after I’d apprenticed our son Matt in the art of cleaning windows and about the time he started waving nice stacks of checks in the face of his little brother, Michael, that little brother asked Matt if he could wash windows too.

Seeing a business opportunity — to move from labor to management — Matt heartily agreed to teach Michael the ropes. I stepped back and watched, skeptical about how this would turn out.

The Next Apprentice?

It began well enough. Matt did what I had done for him: he took Mic to the back porch, wet the window and demonstrated the simple stroke of pulling a squeegee across the face of the window, turning the other direction, then turning again, right down the bottom. “It’s simple,” Matt assured him.

“Hmm,” I muttered. “Danger ahead.”

Matt handed Michael the tool, then picked up his cell phone and dialed his friend Nick. Mic took his first swipe. Disaster. Matt looked up, “NO!” he barked, still holding his phone for Nick to hear. “Like this…” And Matt demonstrated again, handed the knife back to Michael and promptly walked away, saying simply, “Practice,” as he left.

Michael stood for a moment, took one more look at the window, tossed down the squeegee and walked away.” This is going to be interesting,” I thought.

Five minutes later Hell in a water bucket broke loose. Matt and Mic were toe to toe though not nose to nose — at the time Matt was a foot taller. “But I hate this,” Mic insisted. “You said you wanted to learn,” Matt fired back. “I don’t!” Michael answered.

Telling vs. Apprenticeship

“Okay, time for a time out, guys,” I said. And the both aimed their arguments at me, appealing to the judge to arbitrate.

“Hold it… He’s how I see it, because I did see it,” I said. “Matt, you didn’t teach Mic your skills…” “I did too” he countered. “No, you showed him, then in essence walked away. Now what do you recall about the way I taught you the same thing?” Matt shrugged. “I’ll remind you…” And I did.

I took them both through the steps of the Apprenticeship Square using my lessons to Matt as the example. “But Matt, what you did with Mic was not apprenticeship: You showed him and walked away. Showing is the easy part. The heavy lifting of leadership is always in the second and third sides of the square. If you want someone to work the way you do, you have to BE WITH them while they learn. It may feel like a waste of your time, but if you want competence in your workforce, there’s no shortcut to your attentive presence.” My actual speech probably wasn’t that complete, but that was the idea.

In My Leadership

I’ve made Matt’s mistake many, many times in my leadership life. I’ve inspired and demonstrated, then walked way to other more pressing matters, somehow convinced that I’d done my part to train. Wrong. The true art of apprenticeship is the LOVE that it takes to stand alongside those we’re leading as they slog through the inevitable frustrations of conscious incompetence.

The boys worked it through and this last summer Mic did work for Matt in his window business. This summer, Mic will be working his own customers… And perhaps looking for someone to help him.

#GiANTworldwide #leadership #labor #apprentice

How to Work on Genuine Humility Part 1

Like the effects of an anesthetic, we are often unaware of our pride. The presence of pride repels while the presence of humility attracts. This is why leaders worth following must make reflective space to sort through pride and humility.

If you’re not intentionally thinking about or working on humility, we want to help to do that. Mary Alice Higbie, the owner of the incredible St. James Tearoom in Albuquerque sent me her thoughts on humility.

Mary Alice is a part of our Executive Core process and is a leader worth following. She exhibits tremendous humility and so I wasn’t surprised when I received her deep questions in response to my previous blog on humility on how she evaluates the presence of pride in her own life. Before we provide ways to work on genuine humility, let’s go a bit deeper and think through these questions from Mary Alice.

She writes:

How can I know if I am a humble person or arrogant one? How can I know the truth about myself? How do I evaluate?

Here are some practical, rubber meets the road ways that help me discern:

When things go wrong or don’t follow my plan, do I want to blame others? Do I take it as a personal affront?

Do I get my feelings hurt often?

Do I ever call anyone “stupid” or “fool” or “idiot”?

Do I have contempt for another person, party, or group?

Do I tend to dominate? In a conversation or a meeting, am I content to listen, ask sparing questions to lead others, or must I speak all my own illuminated thoughts?

Is it important to me that others understand me, look up to me, appreciate me, or even notice me? (Ouch, you nailed me on this one Mary Alice!)

Am I able to keep some things private, or must I blab everything, either to show how much I am in the know or create a black mark, a smear, on another (thus elevating myself?)

Do I think everything depends on me?

Do I think everything depends on everyone else, and the outcome I see has nothing to do with my own responsibility?

Must I work non-stop to be in control? Am I able to rest and allow others to take precedence, to get things done, to have their way? Must I control outcomes as well as people?

#GiANTworldwide #leadership #humility #responsibility

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 #relationship #connection