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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” »

Helpful tip: if you have a long to-do list today, remember that you can always bookmark this page and come back to it.

We are three weeks into 2012, and the year is off to a solid start. For many of us, we’ve made (and most likely already broken), some great resolutions for the New Year, like: “When the pace slows down, I’m finally going to take a vacation.” “When I can make time, I’m definitely going to spend more time with the family this year.” And for most of us, “If only I could save some time, I could devote more time to myself and get back into shape.”

Yep. It’s that time of year: a time for positive visions, goals and hope. While we are optimists, and hate to burst your bubble, we must tell you the truth related to time: It is impossible to make time, save time, or find time. Each of us are gifted with the exact same number of minutes to use each day: 1440, to be exact. The only way to reach our goals is to use the time we are allotted differently, or to not waste the time we have been given.

So, if we can’t give you time, we can at least expose some of the biggest time wasters in hopes that you can identify where your time is going and how you might want to use your allotted minutes differently. The time wasters that follow are in no particular order, as how we waste our time is unique and personal.

Continue reading “Biggest Time Wasters at Work” »

Every day we are each faced with problems to solve: the large problems can be intimidating and the small problems can be mind-numbing. Either way, there is no avoiding problems. You are in your leadership position, title or not, because you have the reputation for spotting and solving important problems while rallying others, and yourself, to action. However, every now and then a problem sneaks past even the best leaders and causes a stir. Where do you begin and how can you help deter the issue from becoming an even bigger problem?

The best outcomes usually come from problems that are dealt with early on. Problems can be identified in the early stages if you make it a habit to frequently ask peers and team members how things are going and what challenges, if any, they are facing. Encourage others to provide information on problems as soon as they arise. Be open to their input and suggested solutions, and thank people for bringing issues to your attention and allowing you the opportunity to address and resolve their concerns. Be sure to follow-through, or people will become reluctant to provide information as they may assume nothing will change.

Problem solving requires a high level of information about the issues and the needs of employees. This requires open communication. In order to become an effective problem solver, remember that this skill requires all parties to share control over the emerging solution. By using the following problem-solving model, you will generate a number of alternative solutions and increase the probability that the final solution will be the best one.

Continue reading “9 Steps to Effective Problem Solving” »

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” »

Sometimes, despite your best effort, things just don’t go as planned. You experience challenges, setbacks and outright failures. You look back at your life and begin to count the few failures, losing sight of your many successes. What you forget is that so many success stories have resulted from failure to accept failure as an end result. If everyone gave up at their first failure, no one would learn how to ride a bike, read or tie their shoes. Accomplished people realize that failure is just a part of the path to success. Here are few examples of famous individuals who had a taste of failure before succeeding:

Continue reading “The Beauty of Failure” »

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” »

“He’s so driven and absolutely clueless as to how he comes across.”

“She is overly sensitive and takes everything so personally.”

“He might be able to solve the problem, but by the time he comes up with a solution, we’ll be out of business.”

In our consulting business, we routinely hear comments like those above, typically followed by: “He (or she) just doesn’t fit here. This person is not a good match for our culture.”

Often, when probing further, it becomes apparent that the team member being described is a square peg in a round whole when it comes to this organization. He or she just doesn’t think or act the same way as the majority of the rest of the team, which makes him or her stand out as being different.

Often this person is perceived to be a roadblock in terms of effectively contributing to the success of the team and organization. In other words, this person’s way of thinking, or approach to work, is radically different than that of the majority of the other team members.

Although the different approach may be challenging for some team members, it is important to remember that in building a highly effective team, different is good.

Continue reading “Managing a Team of Different Personalities” »

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” »

Wherever you turn, there are prolific naysayers and doomsday makers telling us how bad things are today. Not only are things dismal now, they are going to get worse in the future. If you took all you hear about how bad things are seriously, you’d get seriously depressed. Don’t go there. There’s no payoff for wallowing in despair. Instead, exercise your choice. Choose a positive approach and look for the humor in your situation.

Make it fun. The people left on the front lines have survived the worst recession in modern times. They are burned out. They are tired of doing more, with less, for the good of the company. They have given their all, are grateful for the job, but enough is enough. Morale is down.

While you don’t have any control over marketplace factors that impact your workplace, you do have control over how you react to them. Look for the humor in even the most difficult circumstances. Fun, humor and laughter make work more enjoyable by reducing stress and improving morale. They not only help the team deal with the frustrations in a positive manner, they help put challenges into perspective. While we can’t control the stressors, we can control how we react to them.

Using humor and laughter in the workplace helps achieve the following positive outcomes:

Continue reading “Humor in the Workplace” »

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” »

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

Managing multiple priorities, taming the email beast, and achieving work-life balance are all contemporary buzz terms for learning how to stay on top of our demanding jobs and schedules. Whatever you call the approach, the aim is always to help us improve our efficiency, achieve our goals, and feel good about ourselves and the outcome. In this Quest, we are going to tackle just one aspect of time management… how to stay on top of your email.

According to Pingdom, (an Internet company that monitors and troubleshoots websites and servers), in 2010 approximately 107 trillion email messages were sent globally, with an average of 294 billion messages being sent daily. It is hard to envision what 294 billion even looks like, but we know for sure, based on what we hear from leaders in our seminars, that email overload is both rampant and toxic today.

Leaders are telling us that they routinely receive hundreds of emails each day, and feel buried under a continuous stream of important and not so important messages. Last week, one frustrated manager confided in us and said, “I’ve got messages in my inbox that are more than a year old and, I still haven’t taken action.”

Continue reading “Take Control of Your Email Inbox” »