Where Can You Develop Leadership Skills?
By · CommentsWhere can you practice and develop leadership skills if you aren’t a manager? One excellent answer is your local Toastmasters Club. You thought it was only about standing up front and speaking? Well, it isn’t. You have the opportunity to practice and develop many crucial leadership skills through active participation in the Toastmasters process.
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Make your business team the best it can be
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Winning in the Major Leagues requires each role be fill by the team member with the best skills for the role
Far too often, I am introduced to executives who have talented teams, but fail to achieve their business objectives. Sometimes, a shortage of talent afflicts the team – and sometimes, the objectives are just set too high. But very often, it results from sub-optimal alignment of the team’s talent. That is a shame, because team alignment is usually is the most easily fixed of all problems.
Leadership Lessons from the Prankster Cat
By · CommentsHow well do you pay attention to your environment? Especially to the people who depend on you? It is far too easy to assume that you know what is going on with them – and that assumption can cost you dearly. This was brought home to me in a personal way just hours after my last posting. I’ve always prided myself in looking beyond the obvious, because that is how I have helped many leaders save their organization from calamities. And yet….
I should have paid attention to Jack
Wise leaders listen to and observe all who are around them. Even Jack, the Prankster Cat, can have something important to communicate.
On July 31, just a couple of hours after finishing my blog post, I was sitting in my office typing on my laptop when Jack, our orange prankster cat, dashed into my office. He glanced wildly around, jumped on top of the printer and dove behind my filing cabinet. I assumed this was one more nutty behavior by Jack and he would get stuck back there. So I focused on making sure he got out (he did, without my help).
It was another hour before I decided to go check for mail in our mailbox. When I opened the front door, I was shocked to see that a 24-inch diameter maple had fallen, just missing our master bedroom by about ten feet. I was shocked again when I walked up our driveway and saw the entrance was blocked by another fallen tree, a 16-inch diameter pine.
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Be Prepared – A Requirement for Successful Leadership
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I’ve never been a Boy Scout, but I’ve always been fascinated by the motto, “Be Prepared”. It’s a motto that all leaders should heed. How can you expect to last long as a leader if you are not prepared?
Being prepared has several dimensions: knowing what may happen, having the tools to respond to what does happen – and having the right network (employees and advisors) to leverage your leadership on your path to success.
Victorinox® has made an entire business out of “Be Prepared”, using the innovative ideas of a Swiss cutlery maker 125 years ago to provide the tools to handle many physical situations. Victorinox® makes the well-known “Swiss Army knife.” The Huntsman model, illustrated here, is supposed to provide practical solutions to many needs that you might have out in the woods. It isn’t the perfect solution for most of those needs, but in a pinch, it is much better than nothing, especially when you don’t have time to drive to a hardware or camping supplies store – or can’t carry an additional cubic foot of ideal tools. Read More→
Caution is Wise in Leading A Consolidated Organization
By · CommentsSo, you’ve just succeeded in being hired to lead a newly consolidated organization. Congratulations! You should celebrate your good luck – very briefly. The odds are that you are expected to create wonders in a very short time and you need to start making progress immediately. And it is highly likely that someone would like to limit your success. How will you deal with that?
Successful Hiring Requires Vision and Focus
By · CommentsWho you hire says volumes about how effectively you use your leadership skills. Unfortunately, what I’ve seen in many companies suggests that hiring the right people is not viewed as important. Far too often, the leader’s primary focus is on controlling cost. There seems to be little recognition that hiring the right employees can maximize bottom-line benefits and build a solid platform for future profitable growth. One way to maximize your probability of success in hiring new employees is to hired based upon your vision and mission.
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Leaders Discount Theory, Rely on Practice
By · Comments“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”
–Yogi Berra, Major League Baseball Manager
I can’t imagine a clearer statement of what has brought us into this deep recession. We want to believe that the experts are telling us something in which we can trust, yet as leaders, we need to be very cautious. We have recently seen a confluence of expert knowledge failures.
Leaders must be careful in picking which experts to listen to, especially when the experts make claims based on theories. In this last year, we’ve seen many failures result from blindly following the best theories experts could provide. We live in a world of practice, not theory:
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Dreaming of Chicken Eggs: Creating Vision and Mission
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Vision can turn common eggs into premium products that satisfy specific buyer needs
Can a powerful vision and mission statement be created for selling any commodity? Starbucks’ success with coffee is one example, but what about, say, chicken eggs?
One good way to open ourselves up to creating a powerful vision for a commodity is to look past the commodity itself and focus on what customers hope to gain from its purchase. Two examples come quickly to mind when thinking about chicken eggs: Egg Beaters and organic eggs.
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Leadership Success Comes from a Clear Vision
By · CommentsYour leadership depends upon you attracting followers and that requires that you have a vision of a better future. You make that vision seem attainable to your followers through the messages you deliver, including your mission. Recently, we looked at vision and mission in Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech and in the context of evangelical religions and the US manned space flight program. How about for your company or organization? Can you identify a moving vision and mission for it?
I have already presented my opinion that the real for-profit corporate mission is to “create wealth for the owners”, but let’s look at an example of how an operationally oriented “every day vision” can provide more purpose to the activities of the corporation.
Multi-Cultural is the new norm. What leadership challenges does this create for your virtual teams?
