"Leadership is a 'glow' word on many lips. Politicians pretend it. Youth question it. The old yearn for it. Parents grasp for it. Children defy it. Police seek it. Armies impose it. Terrorists seize it. Executives claim it. Corporations exploit it. Scholars study it. Pundits pretend it. Sound bites impose it. Media announce it. Sycophants worship it. Religions bless it. Psychologists psych it. Autocrats manipulate it. Experts teach it. Conservatives defend it. Liberals suspect it. Ethicists critique it. Philosophers debate it. Theologians integrate it.

Those who love it, one suspects, should rarely be granted it; those who usurp it not allowed it; those who feel entitled to it not be trusted with it; only those who accept it as a trust- a service delegated by community and for community-deserve to serve in it."

David Augsburger, "Three Tasks of Leadership"

“Roughly 50 to 70 percent of how employees perceive their organization’s climate can be traced to the actions of one person: the leader. More than anyone else, the boss, creates the conditions that determine people’s ability to work well.”

“Primal Leadership (2002)” Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis & Annie McKee

Managing and Mentoring

Are you a mentor or a tormentor to your staff? Employees often talk about experiencing the latter and wishing they had the former. To be an effective manager you need to refine your coaching and tutoring skills. You need to make an effort to challenge and develop your staff to think for themselves and grow in their capabilities. This independence and growth allows them to perform to their best potential.

Here are ways NOT to Mentor and Tutor…are you guilty?

1. Telling Employees How to Do Their Jobs

2. Giving Employees Solutions without Getting Their Input

3. Making Decisions That Employees Could Make For Themselves

4. Jumping in to Handle Situations Your Employees Are Paid to Handle

5. Criticizing Your Employees For Their Mistakes

Besides creating dependency, the above common management behaviors discourage employees from taking action. They create a wait-and-don’t do approach. “Just wait till the boss tells you what to do – remember what happened last time you tried something and made a mistake?”

This is not what you want your troops to be thinking!

Land Mines and Management

Management has been compared to a mine field, one wrong step and you’ve lost your staff, one correct step and you’ve kept them to fight another day, all other steps require careful attention so you don’t take your last costly step. Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, authors of “First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently” write, “People leave managers. They don’t leave organizations.” Retention issues? Grab a mirror....

This theory is supported by research from the Society of Human Resource Management, the Saratoga Institute and the Gallup organization, which reveal that job satisfaction, productivity, and the choice to remain at a job are all determined to a great extent by employees’ relationships with their immediate supervisors.

A 2001 Corporate Leadership Council study, Voice of the Leader (administered to over 15,000 leaders, of which 8,000 responded), reveals that people management skills, outscore all other skills as most critical for effective leadership. The study also revealed that people management skills are the most important attribute of effective leadership, over strategic management, personal characteristics, and day-to-day business management. Is it better to be loved or feared. Research is inconclusive, but what we do know is that if your staff holds you in high regard, you are going to achieve almost twice as much.

These people management skills are defined as the skills and attributes associated with leading through others, clearly communicating expectations, inspiring others, holding people accountable, and effective use of reward and recognition. Not a bad list. Yeah, some may be better, others are certainly worse. But if you know what to focus on, that is half the battle, and hopefully then you’ll not have to worry so much about those hidden land mines.

Human Factor in Management

One of the most significant hindrances to effective leadership is EGO. Thomas Watson once said, "I believe the real difference between success and failure in a corporation can be very often traced to the question of how well the organization brings out the great energies and talents of its people." Sorry folks, unless you keep that ego under wraps, its never gonna happen. You'll alienate your people and you'll be rowing your own boat.

Management Guru and Professor Peter Drucker once stated in "New Realities":

The task of management is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant. This is what organization is all about, and it is the reason that management is the critical determining factor.

This week, compile a list of your employees’ strengths and natural talents and do the following:

• Determine activities and responsibilities that will fully optimize employee strengths and talents

• Let go of tasks and responsibilities that will help them develop

• Determine what others in the group can do and want to do

• Build people's skills to take over by involving them in the work

Forget about you, focus on your people...That is the lost secret of leadership.

Authentic Leadership

The leader who basically focuses on himself or herself is going to mislead. The leader who is dead set on the right techniques, will drown in a sea of self-inflicted narcissism. The three most charismatic leaders in this century inflicted more suffering on the human race than almost any other trio in history: Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. What matters is not the leader’s charisma. For leadership is not the magnetic personality — that can just as well be demagoguery. It is not “making friends and influencing people” — that is flattery. Leadership is the lifting of a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of an individual’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. Nothing better prepares the ground for such leadership than a spirit of management that confirms in the day-to-day practices of the organization strict principles of conduct and responsibility, high standards of performance, and respect for the individual and his or her work.

Will Your Leadership Stand? In Greek mythology, Icarus flew too close to the sun

Ever heard of Icarus? The ancients have much to teach us about leadership. In Greek Mythology, Icarus' father, Daedalus, a talented, remarkable craftsman, attempted to escape from his exile in the place of Crete, where he and his son were imprisoned at the hands of King Minos, the king for whom he had built the Labyrinth to imprison the Minotaur (half man, half bull).

Daedalus fashioned two pairs of wings out of wax and feathers for himself and his son. Before they took off from the island, Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, nor too close to the sea. Overcome by the giddiness that flying lent him, Icarus soared through the sky curiously, but in the process he came too close to the sun, which melted the wax. Icarus kept flapping his wings but soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms. And so, Icarus fell into the sea in the area which bears his name, the Icarian Sea near Icaria, an island southwest of Samos.

According to research, the average tenure of today's CEO is 18 months. The position of leadership is a tenuous one. Will your leadership stand? Are you taking the correct steps today to ensure your leadership legacy will be about achievement and results or will it be seasoned with a bucket of regret and a reputation of "has been?" - Check it out....

http://www.giantleadersexecutiveassessment.com/

Leadership Dysfunction 101

The single greatest leadership problem today is not "know how." It is that a majority of leaders think they are strong leaders, when in reality, they are not. What makes this especially critical is that leadership dictates success....and good leadership is more the exception than the rule.

Welcome to the world of One

The purpose of this site is to encourage you as you journey to One.