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Research has conclusively shown that engaged employees are more productive and satisfied. John Maxwell, America’s noted authority on leadership, said, “An organization cannot rise above its level of leadership.” This means that leaders’ attitudes set the tone for those who follow them. Therefore, if you find that many of your employees are not motivated, it’s time to do some self-reflection. Employees will not thrive under negative leadership. Now, we don’t know anyone who would refer to themselves as negative, but people who would be considered negative often call themselves realists. These self-proclaimed realists seldom have many motivated people following them.

On the flip side, employees don’t want a Pollyanna who ignores reality and believes that despite all the evidence, everything will turn out just fine.

Whether you describe yourself as a realist or an optimist, leaders today need to be positive, self-confident, have high-expectations, take initiative, be resilient and accountable. Most employees want to work for a leader who truly believes that tomorrow is going to be even better than it was today, and is taking the necessary actions to turn those beliefs into a reality.

The following are nine keys that will help you become a more positive leader; a leader who makes even the realists excited about tomorrow.

Continue reading “The Secret to Inspiring Others? Optimism” »

Change Brings Discomfort – Even to Leaders

I have a challenge for you today. Take your watch off the wrist on which you normally wear it, place it on the other arm and leave it there for the rest of the day. How does this feel? Count how many times during the day you look at the arm where you normally wear your watch, only to find that it is no longer there. Even this most simple of changes is uncomfortable to fully incorporate into your life. Since you’re reading this, you probably realize how difficult change can be on a scale much larger than wrist watches.

Change is not possible without discomfort, and because of this, great leaders keep their people uncomfortable. The most successful leaders also keep themselves uncomfortable. It is the job of the leader to improve the condition of their organization or the causes for which they are working. Improving something means creating change. Whether it is improving a process, implementing a new idea, lowering costs, improving quality or taking customer service to a level that challenges just about everyone in the organization, change is uncomfortable.

Before leaders can be successful at improving organizations, they must first take a look at themselves and identify ways in which they must change. The following 6 tips will help you become more comfortable with the discomfort caused by realizing that in order to lead change, you must first be able to change yourself.

Continue reading “Keep Yourself Uncomfortable” »

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A quick search for introvert on Thesaurus.com retrieves synonyms such as brooder, egoist, loner, self-observer, solitary and wallflower, while the synonyms for extrovert include character, gregarious person, life of the party, show-off and showboat. Neither of these references paint a completely positive or accurate picture of either preference but perpetuate the overall misconceptions floating around about introverts and extroverts.

This explains the question I have been asked on several occasions: “Can introverts make great leaders?”

My response? “Yes!” Introverts and extroverts can both make great leaders, but for introverts, leading others requires more effort towards adapting their natural style.

In a recent poll of executives who are our clients, approximately 40 percent described themselves as introverts. Are you an introvert? If you can answer “yes” to the majority of the statements listed below, there is a good chance you are an introvert:

Continue reading “The Case for Introverted Leaders” »

From the December 2011 Quest for Leadership Excellence Newsletter (sign up)

Are you a leader or are you the boss, supervisor, manager, director, general manager, vice president or president of a group of people?

What’s the difference?

Supervisors, managers, directors, vice presidents and CEOs all have a title and a place on the organizational chart that gives them permission to tell a group of people what needs to be done. A leader may or may not have a title, but they always have a relationship where people make a conscious decision to follow them.

When did you realize you are a leader and not just a boss? For me, it happened in 1985. Between 1981 and 1990, I co-owned Photomation West, a commercial printing company. We had 17 employees and specialized in printing high quality brochures and fliers. I was 27-years-old and because I had no technical expertise in printing, everyone on the operational side of the business had very little respect for me. To be blunt, no one listened to me and seldom did people do what I asked them to do…even though I was the owner. If I wanted something done, I had to go ask my business partner – Paul Cartwright, who, to this day, remains one of my great friends – to go tell the people in operations what I needed them to do. You might be asking, “What value did Peter bring to the business?” I was an expert in sales, marketing, developing and bringing new clients into our company.

Continue reading “How I Went from Being a Boss to a Leader” »

Basic to leaders gaining followership are two critical leadership components: humility and transparency.

When you think of humility as a leadership attribute, it can connote a lack of toughness and resolve. You many think of a humble leader as a weak leader. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Humble leaders set their ego aside to best serve the good of the team. They are assertive, but not aggressive. They are confident, but not arrogant. They admit their faults and freely acknowledge that they don’t know it all. Consistently, they have the ability to set aside their ego and self-aggrandizement in the best interests for the success of the team, rather than the promotion of themselves.

Humble leaders lead with an unpretentious, outer focus. Over time, they find themselves surrounded by followers who clearly align themselves with the leader and contribute freely for the good of the team. These humble leaders are role models for we and not me or I.

Continue reading “Transparent Leadership” »

From the November 2011 Quest for Leadership Excellence Newsletter (sign up)

Vacation. There, I said it. Many US workers treat this term as a bad word that must be avoided. What most people don’t realize is that long hours at work and mountains of unused vacation time are not synonymous with results. In fact, it is safe to say that the exact opposite is true.

On a recent trip abroad, I met a couple who truly knew the value of vacations. The husband worked a demanding job that came with a high amount of stress and a reputation for causing heart attacks. He managed a team of employees in an organization where working 60 hours a week was the norm and the main priority in life was the next promotion. When his wife was diagnosed with bone cancer in her mid forties, he took time off to care for her, and, once her cancer went into remission, they made it their goal in life to see the world. Ever year they take time off to travel and, so far, have been to over twenty different countries. While he’s gone, he still has to check into work every now and then, but taking time off has put his problems at work into perspective, lowered his work-related stress incredibly and shown his team that there is life outside of work. To get the benefits of vacation, we don’t all have to be world travelers, we just need to take time off to relax, do things we’ve been wanting to do and maybe even take in some different scenery.

As a leader, you most likely see the value in your employees taking vacations, but do you allow yourself the same privilege? If not, why is that? Are you worried that your team will encounter problems while you’re gone? Or, are you really worried that work will go on as usual while you’re away? Sometimes, that is the hardest one to admit. By taking time off, you show your employees that you trust them.

Here are other reasons that show us why vacations are paramount, especially for leaders:

Continue reading “Take Time Off Work – Your Success Depends on It” »

To be a successful leader, it is equally important to know when to say ‘yes,’ as it is when to say ‘no.’ In life, there are times when you have to successfully tell people ‘no’ in a way that builds a relationship even stronger. The challenge is that for some managers, the word ‘no’ is the equivalent of a four letter word. The managers who don’t like the word ‘no’ believe that telling someone a resounding ‘no’ could cause the relationship to deteriorate to the point that others on the team or in the organization will not like or support her as a leader.

A portion of your success as a leader is in telling people ‘no.’ The following are examples where it is most likely in your best interest to tell others ‘no.’

Continue reading “Successfully Saying ‘No’” »

We live in exciting times. The speed of innovation is moving so fast that no one can afford to be complacent. Sitting on the sidelines will guarantee only one thing . . . obsolescence. To keep your business at the forefront, thriving amongst a sea of competitors, you need creative, innovative team members.

Truly creative employees have been described as:

• Self-confident
• Optimistic
• Enthusiastic
• Risk takers
• Uncompromising
• Having an unusual ability to concentrate
• Intensely absorbed in their work
• Comfortable with ambiguity
• Above average in intelligence
• Averse being bossed or policed

Continue reading “5 Tips for Managing Creative Employees” »

From the October 2011 Quest for Leadership Excellence Newsletter (sign up)

For nearly thirty years, executives, managers and employees alike have marveled at Steve Jobs’ ability to innovate. After all, Jobs did not only foresee the future of technology (and music, and animation), he created it. It’s clear that Jobs was one of the most visionary leaders of our times. But, what most people don’t realize is that if it were not for his dedication to communication, the way we interact with technology today would be vastly different. His excitement when introducing new products mesmerized customers. His commitment to specifically communicating what he envisioned motivated employees at all levels and made revolutionary products and services possible.

With poor marketing and ineffective organizational communication, his visions would have remained just that: visions.

Looking at the way that Jobs’ visions were turned into reality serves as a reminder of the importance of communication. The picture he had in his mind for the future was brought to life by his ability to trickle communication of his vision down to all levels within his organizations. It is difficult, if not impossible, for employees to arrive at their destination if you, their boss, are not crystal clear in providing them with the directions and road map detailing their journey.

Steve Jobs’ clear communication of his vision is also consistent with what we have found in our employee opinion survey results.

Continue reading “How to Communicate Your Vision Like Steve Jobs and the Best-of-the-Best” »

As a leader, you have two important goals. First, you need to build relationships where people want to follow you and help you accomplish the mission, vision and goals of your team or organization. Second, you want to develop future leaders.

If building relationships where people were motivated to follow was easy, then every manager would be a leader. Most managers are not leaders. Direct reports do what they are told to do because the manager or boss said to do it. If another job came along somewhere else in the organization, even at the same pay rate, these employees would gladly move because they have no relationship with a leader. One of life’s great leadership examples is when a manager leaves one company, joins another, and then offers that employees from his old organization take a job at the new company for less money than they currently make. When employees make the decision to join their old manager at the new company, is it clear that manager has risen to the status of leader. These employees had a choice to make, and they choose to follow the leader.

Continue reading “How to Communicate When Under Stress” »

You Don’t Always Need a Formal Education to be a Success

Throughout your primary education, how many times were you told that your success in life, or in business at the very least, was tied to going to college? 10? 50? Lost track? Us too. Looking at unemployment statistics, we see that as of July 2011, the unemployment rate for High School graduates was at 9.5%, while the unemployment rate for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher was 4.4%. These figures speak about the importance of a higher education, but don’t necessarily prove that higher education is a prerequisite for great success.

Would you say that Steve Jobs, Rachel Ray, Richard Bronson, Glenn Beck, Mark Zuckerberg, Coco Chanel, Jay Van Andel and Joel Osteen are succesful? Each of the people above has achieved great success in their career without ever graduating from college. And they certainly are not counted in the unemployment rate.

Continue reading “The Great College Myth” »

Is the latest management strategy a trend that will help your organization, or is it just a passing fad?

Seth Godin says it best: “You can’t stand out if you fit in all the way.”

Since we began our careers as consultants, we have watched leaders who feel like they have to follow the latest management trend, struggle to figure out how to apply it to their organization. While I admit that there are some good management trends that we can apply to our teams and organizations, it’s difficult to see the amount of resources that go into implementing the newest trends when they don’t seem to be benefiting the organization. Those resources could have been better spent in hiring the right people, inventing new products, improving the customer experience, shortening delivering times, lowering costs, increasing sales and improving profits.

What are some of the more well known management strategies that we have experienced?

• Quality Circles
• Management by Objectives (MBO)
• Management by Walking Around (MBWA)
• Total Quality Management
• Re-Engineering
• Lean Manufacturing
• One Minute Management
• Empowerment
• Accountability
• Competencies
• Six Sigma
• Learning Organization
• Peak Performance
• Right Sizing
• Employees Are Our Most Valued Asset
• Dilbert (We had to add one for the cynics)

Continue reading “Management Fads” »

The Coaching Discussion Model

On Tuesday, we shared some tips on how to address employee issues when they occur. Our goal was to help you get the employee to acknowledge inappropriate behaviors and come up with a plan for what he/she will do differently in the future. Today, we’ll give you some guidelines for addressing more challenging, reoccurring behaviors . . . issues that you have addressed in the past, but the problem hasn’t been resolved. This is where the coaching discussion comes in.

The purpose of the coaching discussion is to redirect the employee’s behavior. You want the employee to stop the inappropriate behavior and start demonstrating appropriate behavior. It is a two-way process, a discussion. The intended purpose is for the employee to be engaged in the discussion as well. In fact, the employee should be talking more than the supervisor or the manager. Using the following six steps of the Coaching Discussion Model will make your coaching discussions effective.

Continue reading “Coaching Employees” »

If you are a leader, chances are good that you have had at least one employee in your career who has caused you to lose sleep. Maybe the employee is frequently late, is participating in gossip or is making reoccurring mistakes. Our advice for difficult behaviors in employees is to train them, coach them and if that still doesn’t work, share them with a competitor.

When you address the issue appropriately, it may even shed light on a behavior that employee wasn’t aware that was an issue. Open up the lines of communication through the following actions:

Remain calm. If you have ever driven home from work saying, “Now, why did I say that?” chances are you may have regretted giving feedback to an employee when you were mad. If you are angry or emotional, postpone the discussion until you are feeling more in control. Remember, communication is permanent. Do not lose control of the discussion or say something that may later come back to haunt you.

Continue reading “How to Handle a Difficult Employee” »

How to Get Leaders on Board with a Change

There is no such thing as organizational change. Organizations don’t change. The only thing that does change in an organization are the people within it: when enough people have bought into the change, we then see the changes happening.

Any change that impacts our life is uncomfortable. If you don’t believe that, just move your watch for one day to the opposite arm. Most of us like the comfort of predictability. When organizational change impacts us personally, it rocks our status quo. If given a choice, we’d typically rather keep on doing it the way we’ve always done it.

How do organizations successfully lead organizational change? They don’t, until their leaders champion the change. Organizational leaders have the power to lead the change, or sabotage it. Employees grow immune to the flavor of the month when it comes to accepting change and will look closely at their leaders to see if they are walking the talk when it comes to buying into the change being mandated.

The following tips will help ensure that your organization’s leaders are role models for leading the change being proposed.

Continue reading “Getting Leadership Buy-In” »

From the August 2011 Quest for Leadership Excellence Newsletter (sign up)

Today’s successful organizations are led by talented leaders who have high expectations for their organization, their employees and most importantly, for themselves. In many cases, long before they received their title, these leaders were demonstrating their leadership capacity by leading themselves. What do we mean when we talk about leading yourself? When you are a successful self-leader, you typically achieve the following:

A Compelling, Positive Vision:

There are three types of vision:

• A positive vision: Today is good and tomorrow will be even better.
• A status quo vision: I hope tomorrow is as good as today.
• A negative vision: If you think today is bad, just wait until tomorrow when…

Before you lead others, you need to have a compelling, positive mental vision of where you are going. What are your goals with your organization, your team and yourself? The only leadership vision that energizes a team is a positive vision that paints a picture of the intended destination and focuses individual effort on team outcomes.

Continue reading “To Lead Others, Start with Yourself” »

In Good Times and Bad

Depending on which business analysts you listen to and believe, the recession is over (or not) and business projections for the coming year are improving, (or not). Although the experts cannot agree on the future of our global economy, there is no disagreement that most businesses and industries have experienced significant blows to what was business as usual.

While most of our clients are cautiously optimistic about the future, many are still dealing with lingering pain points, including keeping morale up during difficult times. In a recent survey conducted by Express Employment Professionals, 19,000 companies were questioned about their hiring plans for the second quarter of 2011. In addition to identifying what sectors anticipated hiring, the survey also found that 62% of the respondents were concerned, or highly concerned, about morale in the workplace. Respondents identified reasons for low morale, including:

• Fear of lay-offs or general job security
• Employees feeling undervalued
• Poor communication
• Lack of confidence in management

Continue reading “Keeping Employee Morale Up” »

Great leaders have the confidence to hire smart talent and then get out of the way, letting people do what they do best. They surround themselves with people who not only have the necessary technical expertise, but are as passionate and excited about the success of the business as they are.

These leaders hire people with a can do, take charge attitude; people who know how to get things done, even when the boss is not around. These talented contributors not only get things done, they challenge the status quo, sharing recommendations that no one had ever thought of before. They are thinkers, not just doers. In some cases, they are smarter than the boss . . . at least in their area of expertise.

However, some leaders, fearful for their job security, strive to be the brightest star and hire accordingly. If you find yourself working long hours, putting out daily spot fires and herding cats to ensure that that things consistently turn out right, we challenge you to think about hiring someone smarter than you are . . . at least in a particular area of expertise.

Continue reading “Hire Smart” »

12 Leadership Traits That Are Guaranteed to Sabotage Your Team and Lower Morale | Quest for Leadership Excellence Newsletter (sign up)

We have spent the last 20 years identifying the traits that make leaders successful. This has led us to strongly believe that there is a significant difference between leaders and managers. Managers always have a title and a formal position on the organizational chart. Leaders may or may not have a title but they always have a relationship with people who make a conscious decision to follow them.

Over the past several weeks, we have conducted executive coaching for leaders who were in jeopardy of losing their jobs. Our prediction is that they will lose their jobs… it is just a matter of time. Based on our work with leaders, here are 12 leadership actions we have found that undermine a leader’s ability to build relationships where people are highly motivated to help the leader accomplish goals:

Continue reading “How to Sabotage Your Team” »

What is a distinguishing characteristic of a great leader?

Great leaders make sure that team members have the tools and skills necessary to get their jobs done. Being a phenomenal leader is a lot easier when you’ve got great team members. An exemplary employee is one who communicates their goals and what they need from the leader to maximize their success.

These employees are:

Thinkers: They are constantly thinking about ways they can improve their work, the business, help their leader become even stronger or improve the service they provide to customers.

Confident: They go into the job motivated because they deeply believe they can make a positive difference.

Empowered: Many people believe that empowerment starts with the boss. Great employees tend to make good decisions, take action and keep their boss in the loop each step of the way so there are no surprises.

Continue reading “What Employees Need to Shine” »