So how then can we relate more effectively as leaders? Here are seven simple steps for improving your ability to do so:

1. Express genuine care and concern. Odds are, unless you are some kind of misanthrope (in which case I am surprised you are reading this article), you have some level of care and concern for those you work with. Expressing that professionally will help you relate well. Ask “What are the issues you are facing with this assignment?” and then listen attentively to the answer. Asking questions about the impact of something and focusing intently on the answer is one of your best methods for developing quality relationships.
2. Establish high standards. When you set expectations with those you work with and establish that your criteria for success are at a level of excellence, you communicate value. Belief in someone’s ability to produce quality output will forge a connection based on performance. Think about a time when someone expressed a belief in you to achieve at a high level.
3. Bring in the perspective of others. Ask people what their opinion is and share your interest in the views of others. This will allow you to increase the opportunity of others to contribute to discussion and provide value. This is particularly helpful if someone is shy or reticent to share their opinions, and does wonders for developing a participative team dynamic.
4. Share relevant information. Give people the information they need to perform their job better. That may be information about how to complete a task or it may be as simple as sharing new information about an upcoming project that will affect them. I’ve never worked with an organization where I heard that people are kept “too informed.” Go out of your way to transparently share information that affects those around you.
5. Role model the behaviors you want to see. You may wonder how this affects your ability to relate to others, but as a leader, you are always being watched. People will pay close attention to what you do, as it will establish a standard for behavior and interaction. This has a lot to do with how people will relate to you. If you want to have a culture where everyone works hard, show a strong work ethic. If you want customer focus to be a priority, behave in ways that highlight customer centricity.
6. Clarify your understanding. We have all been misunderstood enough to know it feels bad when it happens. One of the most important contributions you make as a leader is to prevent misunderstandings, and you do this by clarifying and confirming. This also allows others the opportunity to thoroughly express their thoughts to you, which further enhances relationships. Checking for understanding by paraphrasing or summarizing ensures that you have a clear and complete picture of what is being communicated.
7. Provide your reactions and candid opinions. People appreciate feedback, and withholding your approval or disapproval comes across as a lack of engagement. Help others to see that you are in fact engaged with them by responding to what they say, even non-verbally. As you provide your reactions candidly, support those you agree with and be appropriately candid about those you do not. People may not be thrilled when you disagree with them but you will establish great rapport by sharing your real reactions with people.

I should highlight that while these ideas may be simple, that doesn’t mean any of them are easy to do. The right behaviors are frequently filled with common sense, yet that doesn’t mean they are common practice. In the same way I completely understand how to swing a golf club, but am borderline incompetent when I have to actually do it. Consistent effort and attention to relating will improve your skill.

• Credibility. Prove your authority by demonstrating technical expertise in a specific area, which helps convince people that you know what you’re talking about. If you can’t do that, display integrity and character, which convinces them that you’re not going to lie to them.
• Emotional connection. People need to believe that what you’re saying will matter to them. Connect by giving them your undivided attention and linking your message to something they care about.
• Logic. All the authority and empathy in the world won’t help you if people don’t understand your basic idea or how you came to your conclusions. Make a clear argument that people can follow and use data and analysis to back up your points.

I’ve had the luxury to work with some of the best companies in the world and when I have witnessed strong cultures these are the elements I see at play.

• There are high levels of employee engagement. Employees express confidence and a belief that the organization will be successful in achieving its strategic objectives. There is a willingness to “go the extra mile” for the organization, and give the discretionary or extra effort needed to complete priority projects and serve clients. In short, commitment to the organization and its goals are strong, and you can tell by the energy and determination produced by members of your team. High levels of employee engagement have been correlated with greater productivity, revenue growth, customer satisfaction, profitability and even earnings per share.
• Leaders walk their talk, and also talk their walk. The importance of having good role models can’t be understated because they set the pace for work and establish the tone of the organization. We’ve all heard that leaders need to walk their talk, but as exemplars, they need to also talk their walk. That is, they need to promote and advocate the behaviors they model verbally as well, and let people know what is expected of them and the standards everyone will be held to. Then they need to follow suit.
• Coaching and development are the norm. Perhaps the most overused term in business today is that “people are our most important asset.” While it is true, too often it is only given lip service. In cultures where that phrase is not just a platitude, people are routinely given balanced feedback that helps them to perform better. Done well, this comes from their manager as a coach or an independent third party. The only way organizations get better is if their people consistently improve, and the most effective way to do that is by investing time and resources in their growth.
• Focus is on output, not input. The organization is all about results and outcomes, versus strict adherence to process at all costs. That is not to say that there is no process whatsoever; rather, the priority is always what needs to happen, not how it needs to happen. Process or input exists only to create outcomes. In high performance cultures, it is totally acceptable to push back on processes that don’t support an outcome, or worse, hinder an outcome, without being a renegade. This is especially true when it comes to end user or customer focus, where productivity is so vital to success.
• Recognition and reward are in large supply. One of the most frequent complaints of employees who rank low in engagement is they feel underappreciated. A hallmark of a great culture is that it is standard to recognize exceptional performance. Further, recognizing great efforts and improvements in performance are customary as well. This is done best by leaders who are able to highlight the specifics of a job well done, the characteristics of the person who did it and the impact it had on the organization. Having a forum for this kind of recognition is useful, but don’t underestimate the power of impromptu crediting and acknowledgement of good work. When it comes to reward, think both financial and non-financial. High performers, in particular, value the incentives of autonomy, degrees of freedom and stretch assignments that further demonstrate their value.
• Values are visible. The organizations’ values are not simply platitudes that are distributed to employees and hung in frames on the walls. They are observable in the behaviors everyone sees and experiences in their interactions with fellow employees and their managers. Employees will only judge the authenticity of your values by how they feel treated, not by the plaques that espouse them. Getting everyone in an organization to behave in accordance with your values so they are noticeable through interactions is no easy task, but the payoff is huge.

The powerful thing about all of these elements of a winning culture is they tend to build on one another. As leaders serve as role models, they can be role modeling key behaviors from your values you feel are critically important to your success. As you recognize great performance, recognize and reward employees who are results-focused and achieve great outcomes. Doing all of these things helps to create a culture of engaged employees. You may be doing some of these things but not others, so start by prioritizing one or two elements and make them a part of your culture.

All organizations have a culture of some kind. Is yours intentional and purposed or has it just sort of happened over time? And of course, the most important question for you to answer is, “how good is your culture?”

If you are like many sales leaders I’ve worked with your first impulse will be to try to clone yourself — that is to inject some of your star power into as many sales calls as you can.

Soon (if you’re lucky) and rather a bit too late if you’re not, you’ll see this for the micromanagement it is (or at the least admit that you simply don’t have the time to go on every sales call yourself).

It’s time to set some rules of engagement — not for your team but for yourself.

Don’t go for the sake of going. One of my clients talks about the considerable cost of the “four- and six-legged sales calls” in which everybody and their brother and sister tags along, including you. But you should confine yourself to going on only those calls in which you are essential — where only you can gain access to the right people, owing to your position, your special industry expertise, your extensive product knowledge, or some useful connections. Sure, you probably could always make a difference on every call — you were not a star for nothing. But your job now is to open doors for, back up, and develop your future stars; not to outshine them (or do their work for them).

Don’t go it alone. And while we’re on that subject, an easy rule of thumb is this: Never get involved with a client unless you are accompanied by the salesperson. There are few things more de-credentialing, for both you and your sales team, than to do an end-run around your own staff (what, you don’t believe in them?) and step into an account without their involvement. At the very least, you’ll waste time having to relay all the relevant information from the meeting to the rep who should have been there to begin with. Worse, it starts a vicious, time-sucking cycle in which that initial direct connection leads to your presence on follow-up calls and your responding to minor customer issues that should be handled by the rep. The only possible exception here is in interim periods when you’re making a change in your representation, because then there’s no salesperson to undermine. Otherwise, as we are taught at the beach, use the buddy system.

Have an exit strategy. Who wouldn’t want to deal with the top guy? When clients have the opportunity to work with leaders from an organization, they understandably want to keep on working with them. This might be necessary in certain short-term instances (recovering from a service mishap, correcting a serious problem, launching a new initiative). But stay involved too long, and you just become a third wheel, doing the same job as your rep. To avoid that, you need to have an exit strategy at the outset. By all means, help with the problem at hand. But make sure the salesperson is the one actually making things happen for the client, so that when the crisis is over, the rep remains the main point of contact.

Do your homework. All that being said, I will admit that joint calls can be incredibly valuable for both client and sellers. But they require coordinated effort. Planning too often consists of “Where are we meeting and at what time?” But in addition, you should both be clear beforehand about who is going to cover what topics, what questions each one of you will ask the client, and what you are doing here — are you playing a coaching or selling role? This is critical because it’s almost impossible to sell and coach at the same time, since coaching requires observation and not participation. If you are going to be there in a selling role, you both need to be clear about who will be leading at any point on the call.

Don’t be a closer. I’m guessing that this will be the hardest rule to follow. What, after all, made you a star, if not your ability to close business? This is one of the most frequent mistakes I’ve seen sales leaders make — focusing too much time on closing opportunities. But by the end of the sales cycle, it’s getting too late for sales leaders make a profound difference in the outcome. At that point you should be putting your effort on the front end of the next sales cycle, focusing on expanding opportunities, helping clients to see additional needs, and offering solutions not previously considered.

These are tough criteria to be objective about because most sales leaders have been great salespeople and are still inexorably drawn to making as many sales calls as possible. The best leaders carefully consider these criteria for getting involved in sales cycles and, as a result, make the most significant impact when they do.

Here are a few of my key takeaways from the book.

• You already have a brand, and in order to take control of it, you need to fully understand what it is. That’s easier said than done, because we’re all inside our own heads 24/7 – so you need to enlist key allies to help you gain perspective. Dorie suggests conducting your own “360 interviews” to get the perspective of your colleagues, boss, and employees to understand your strengths and where you can grow. She also proposes a fascinating concept – doing your own “focus group,” where the focus is on you. You can recruit a friend to moderate, and then invite 8-10 people over to talk about how they see you and what they can envision for you; you’re only allowed to listen and ask clarifying questions. That’s the kind of perspective it might take you years to learn on your own.

• You don’t need to – and shouldn’t – jump into a “reinvention” without planning, but there are ways to minimize your risk. Dorie profiles people who served on nonprofit boards and gained new skills that allowed them to change careers, and provides case studies about professionals who cleverly expanded the definition of their current job to stretch their boundaries and move into new areas that fascinated them. That’s something we should all ask ourselves: what can I donow to make my current job more fulfilling and interesting?

• Creating your “narrative” is critical to the reinvention process. If left to their own devices, most people will continue to think of you the way they always have, meaning their perceptions are often erroneous or out-of-date. After all, you’ve been learning and growing in the intervening years, but they may simply not have noticed. So you’ll need to create a narrative that explains, clearly and succinctly, where you’ve been and the value only you can offer. With creative examples like a poet who became a management consultant, and an Army helicopter pilot who transitioned into corporate America, Dorie makes this point eloquently and shows us how we can all do it.

• You have to “demonstrate your value.” Whether it’s taking a leadership role in professional organizations or creating online content (like blogs or podcasts), it’s essential to show others how you think and what you can do. As knowledge workers, there’s no other way for them to get a sense of our abilities. And if you’re the one creating intellectual property, you’re able to set the agenda – and others will soon be talking about, and citing, you.

Defining and developing a personal brand is no easy task but Dorie Clark’s writing brings the process to life and makes it accessible to all of us. A brand is a promise of uniform quality and performance. What promises are you making? Read Reinventing You to get clear on those promises, and learn to do what is needed to deliver on them.

Communication is a leadership skill that can be used in multiple ways, verbally, non-verbally, and in written form, so if you want to get better at this critical skill, here are some strategies to pay attention to.

Combine your communication skill with other leadership traits. I have written before about the power of combinations in developing leadership skills, and communication ability is nearly always highly correlated with success in other competencies. If you are in a technical environment, consider how to simplify or illustrate concepts with creative language. If you are striving to innovate, spend time considering how to best explain your new ideas, or better yet, the outcomes of those ideas. Developing your strength in communication will bolster your performance in other areas, because no matter how much knowledge on a given topic you possess, if you can’t communicate it well, you won’t be able to bring it to bear for the benefit of the organization.

Make your communication two-way. Ask more questions and seek feedback. In every communication there is a sender and a receiver (often multiple receivers,) but too often leaders function only in sending mode. Receiving communication is just as important. Most of us are able to listen to others when we need to, so asking questions puts you in an active role as a receiver. So make questions a part of your repertoire as a leader. Ask people how they feel about a given topic, or what they think should be done about a change. Ultimately, your goal should be to strike a comfortable balance between talking, asking, and listening in order to ensure that your communication flows freely both ways.

Repeat your messages. Don’t expect people to remember each element of a strategy or every key point that you make just because you told them once. People forget things or sometimes don’t take in every detail. Be prepared for that reality and review the critical themes of your messages whenever you have the chance and the forum to do so. Jack Welch has said that the key to communication is “simplicity, consistency, and repetition.”  Max DePree has written about lavish communication and sharing detailed information over and over again.

You needn’t sound like a broken record, but you can repeat your highest priority messages in an effort to make sure they are absorbed.

Use stories to help people remember.  We tend to be persuaded by stories much more than we do facts and figures. So tell stories to illustrate the points that you wish to make. I was working with a leader and reviewing some of the feedback she’d received from members of her team. They rated her communication ability quite high and the written comments from her team revealed that she excelled in telling effective stories that translated her ideas into tangible examples.

Even if you are not a gifted public speaker, you can become more effective in this important leadership trait. Excelling in communication is a common denominator of great leaders. Think of most leaders you admire. Odds are, they are at a minimum, pretty good at communicating. And it is likely they do these things quite well.

In the simple economics 101 definition, value equals benefits minus cost: V=B-C. If you follow the logic of that equation, then, selling value means creating some benefit through the sales process beyond that provided by the product or service itself. My former boss and sales guru Neil Rackham has a simple test for this: He asks, “Would your customer write you a check for the sales call?” That is, did your salespeople do something on the call valuable enough for your customers to pay you for?

If they didn’t, the only way you can profit from your sales operation is by reducing costs. That’s why all my efforts to make sales teams more effective have focused on increasing not just the value of the offering but the value of the sales call itself. To do that I encourage them to move down the continuum from transactional to consultative relationships. Here’s how:

Help clients see issues they hadn’t considered. The best salespeople I’ve worked with do an extraordinary job of this. And they don’t do it simply by lecturing the client about the problems they see. They do it through a process of mutual diagnosis. In these instances, the seller leads a dialogue with the client about her business, offering diagnoses as the conversation progresses.

Help clients examine issues they thought were benign, but aren’t. When I interview clients about their sales relationships, they frequently tell me that they greatly value the ability of their reps to help them make a case for change. They do that by helping clients see the effect of a problem on the organization. A seller may help a client to see that a morale problem, for instance, which right now is only causing modest employee turnover, is having a tremendously negative impact on recruitment and productivity that will eventually become highly problematic. Again, this is not done through lecturing, but rather through the course of conversations in which seller and buyer explore the impact of a given situation together to determine the implications for the business.

Help clients see opportunities they’d missed. Sales-training programs rightly focus on finding clients’ “pain points.” But great salespeople also know there’s value in pointing out successes waiting to be exploited. Surely, creating value in the sales process is as much about raising the bar as it is about solving problems. In fact, untapped opportunity may be even more important as organizations seek to grow in this perpetually tough economic environment. Jointly discovering such opportunities through the course of back-and-forth conversation makes it less likely that a client will react defensively to something he perhaps should have already known and more likely that he will embrace both the opportunities — and the messenger that helped to uncover them.

Help clients address problems with solutions they hadn’t considered. Of course, at some point your, products and services have to come into the picture. When they do, the best sellers position them, not as a series of features and benefits, but as solutions that address the expressed needs of the client. Positioning products and services as a solution is not a new idea by any stretch, but the key to creating value is to do so in a way that the client has not considered. I bought a new air-conditioning system last year. I hadn’t considered upgrading the heat pump in my system. But with the help of the representative, I came to realize that the new system wouldn’t lower my winter heating bills without one. The power of the a-ha moment here can’t be understated when the client says, “I hadn’t thought about it that way!” Few clients will know everything your offering can do or all its potential applications, so finding a way to uniquely address their expressed need is a powerful thing indeed.

Help clients connect with additional support resources. As the old saying goes, “When you sell hammers, every problem looks like a nail.” But you can’t win ‘em all; not every client will actually be a good match with what you’re offering right now. Still, that doesn’t mean that you can’t create additional value for them. Perhaps you can provide connections to others in your organization that could help a client think through a complex issue, or make referrals to outsiders who can get her what she truly needs. You’ll still get the credit for helping the client — and this can help both of you over time.

At the end of the day, selling is about improving the client’s condition with your organization’s products and services. The sales professionals who understand how to do that — who help buyers find real value through the selling process using these methods — sell more and command a premium for their offerings.

• Focus on others. Don’t concentrate on what you need and want. Understand what others care about. The more you relate on a human level the better.
• Put yourself out there. Seek out and engage others. Be upbeat whenever possible so others feel the same way.
• Communicate you care. Charismatic leaders are verbally expressive. Tell stories. Use concrete examples. Talk about your feelings. All of these things will invoke common ground in an audience.

1. Create useful successful metrics that create progress.
2. Provide visionary leadership.
3. Develop talent and coach relentlessly.
4. Pay close attention to selling roles.
5. Focus on creating value in the sales process.
6. Forecast with an understanding of where the customer is in the buying process.
7. Motivate by using recognition and reward.

Have you ever worked with someone who seemed to have a different set of goals than you did? Or perhaps you have had someone on your team who did not share the same performance objectives as others.

It’s is kind of like a crew team that has people rowing at different cadences — the boat just doesn’t move as fast as it can or should.

That’s why it is so vitally important that leaders focus a good deal of their energy and effort on helping their teams become more aligned, like the coxswain of the boat who ensures that everyone keeps the same rhythm and produces the optimal speed.

Here is how to do it.

Make sure everyone shares the same definition of success. Ask most groups in an organization to tell you what the definition of success is for a project they are working on and you will get wildly different answers. When I do strategic planning with organizations this happens regularly, and the downside is that without a common vision for the outcomes of an initiative there is little chance to succeed. Take the time to ensure that everyone has the same understanding of the problem to be solved, the implications of the problem and the definition of a successful outcome. It sounds simple, but it is not easy and this alone will increase your likelihood of productive results.

Help people see their role in the outcome. Once people have a clear and complete picture of a successful outcome, they need to understand their roles in producing that result. Draw a clear line of sight from the responsibilities that each individual plays on your team to the desired outcome. Translate those overall contributions to the tactical and practical day-to-day activities for each person, so they understand the importance of behaving strategically and in alignment with the goals for any given objective.

If the aim is growth-focused, make sure they see the connectivity of their actions to customer results.

If the focus is on getting leaner as an organization, the link from specific behaviors to the bottom line needs to be illustrated. Get granular and help people see their part in the achieving success.

Align your performance drivers. In every organization there are systems that support the achievement of objectives but those systems, if not aligned, can become barriers to the attainment of your goals. Pay attention to things like infrastructure, compensation, staffing, career development, and even how cross-functional collaboration.

All of these drivers of performance will have some kind of impact on how well your organization performs. Make sure they are reinforcing the right behaviors that will make your initiative or strategy produce the intended results.

Focus on commitment not compliance. At the end of the day what you are driving for is a sense of commitment to the organization and its objectives. While motivation for most comes from within, great leaders are able to create an environment that makes people want to go the extra mile. Help people gain a sense of ownership of the organizations direction and goals.

Too often managers settle for compliant action and don’t push further for the kind of commitment that produces great results. In order for this to occur, leaders need to be the exemplars and avatars of that commitment and demonstrate it with their actions, work ethic and care and concern for the organization’s people.

Alignment is a powerful competitive advantage for organizations that choose to use it. When these elements are in place, commitment flows through the organization at all levels, and that can be a benefit that produces great value.

In my blog about the keys to sales leadership, I noted that visionary leadership is particularly important in the sales function. While working with sales leaders over the last two decades, I have found six areas of strength in the best of them:

1. Driving for results is the top priority. Nearly every sales leader I have had the opportunity to work with has had a relentless focus on achieving “the number.” That is, the revenue number for their team or organization. A vital component of the vision for a sales organization is the achievement of the top (and often, bottom) line growth objective.

2. Coaching and developing others is the cultural norm. These leaders posses a clear perspective on the importance of onboarding and inculcating new members of the team, as well as developing their existing talent. This vision includes a recognition that sales is one of the few disciplines in which professionals gain the majority of their knowledge and experience from peers and managers. There are few college degrees in sales.

3. Strategy is the name of the game. A strategy comes to life during the interaction between an organization and its clients. Most often, this happens with the sales organization in the acquisition and management of clients. As a result, the actions of everyone in the sales organization need to be carefully aligned to support that strategy. And the vision for the sales organization must express that strategy clearly.

4. Working as a team makes the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. I have seen few selling efforts succeed on the hard work of a sales professional alone (though in fairness I have seen some.) More often than not there is a team of support professionals from marketing, product development, and service that have helped to make for a successful client experience. Sales professionals are frequently in a position of leading that team, which requires cross-functional collaboration to be a part of that vision.

5. Motivating to action is the objective. A sales leader’s vision ought to inspire and create confidence in order to achieve the organizational goals. By its nature a powerful vision expresses a hopeful future about what your organization will be. That envisioned future state ought to provide a level of excitement about where you are headed and inspire people to carry out the actions required to achieve it. Further, as a sales leader, you are the message, so your behaviors must show that you are the exemplar of these characteristics.

6. Effective communication is the foundation. A terrific vision for a sales leader that is not well-communicated will lie fallow. This is more than just eloquent speaking ability – it has everything to do with conveying value. Not just talking about a vision, but also listening, and asking questions that provoke interest and uncover needs.

Visionary leadership is frequently discussed in theoretical or fuzzy terms. When sales teams in particular look to their leaders, they expect vision in practical, sometimes even tactical terms. They want that vision to be clear and unequivocal, and to be guided by that vision. Using these guidelines to help you craft a vision for your sales organization or team, you can create a pithy and concise vision that compels them to action.

In my nearly 20 years of work in organization development, I’ve never heard anyone say that a leader communicated too much or too well. On the contrary, the most common improvement suggestion I’ve seen offered up on the thousands of 360 evaluations I’ve reviewed over the years is that it would be better if the subject in question learned to communicate more effectively.

What makes someone a good communicator? There’s no mystery here, not since Aristotle identified the three critical elements — ethos, pathos, and logos. — thousands of years ago.

Ethos is essentially your credibility — that is, the reason people should believe what you’re saying. In writing this blog I made an effort to demonstrate my ethos in the introduction, and here I’ll just add that I have a degree in communication studies (emphasis in rhetoric for those who want the details) for good measure. In some cases, ethos comes merely from your rank within an organization. More commonly, though, today’s leaders build ethos most effectively by demonstrating technical expertise in a specific area (which helps convince people that you know what you’re talking about), and by displaying strong levels of integrity and character (which convinces them that you’re not going to lie to them even though, since you know more than they do, you might get away with it).

Pathos is making an emotional connection — essentially, the reason people believe that what you’re saying will matter to them. I’ve written here before about the importance and the power of making emotional bonds (more ethos?) and why I believe this to be a critical area of competence for present-day leaders. Giving people your undivided attention, taking an active interest in your team members’ career development, and being enthusiastic about both the organization’s progress and the individuals who enable it are ways that leaders do this well. At the end of the day, pathos has the greatest influence on followers’ perception of their leader’s effectiveness as a communicator.

But all the authority and empathy in the world won’t really help you if people don’t understand what you’re talking about or how you came to your conclusions. Logos is your mode for appealing to others’ sense of reason, ergo the term logic. Employing strengths in strategic thinking, problem solving, and analytical skills are how today’s leaders express logical ideas in clear and compelling enough terms to influence outcomes. While some people can get by on gut feel, as Steve Jobs famously tried to convince us he did, most leaders are required to provide some kind of analysis to make clear their decisions. This is where many leaders feel on the firmest ground — when assembling and analyzing data to address organizational problems. A caveat, though — assembling facts is not the same as presenting them clearly (here talking in complete sentences helps a lot), or marshaling them expressly to demonstrate the merits of a course of action. Facts do not speak for themselves, which is sad, since it would save so much time if they did. Effective leaders know the effort and time spent making explicit the connections they’re drawing from the data to the analysis to their conclusion are well worth it.

These three elements of communication reinforce one another. You may rely heavily on data and analysis (logos) to make a point and in so doing create a perception of expertise and authority on a topic (ethos). And while all three are necessary to excellent communication, improving your ability to do any one of them will help you become a better communicator and so a better leader. Combining them is the path to achieving the greatest success.

• Give your undivided attention. This sounds simple, but it’s easy to overlook when you are overloaded with ringing phones and packed inboxes. In conversations, put everything down and focus exclusively on what’s being said.
• Remember emotions are contagious. If you’re feeling particularly anxious or negative, make an effort to quarantine yourself. When you’re feeling especially buoyant, go to more meetings and spend more time with others.

Get out there. Even if you’re an introvert, reach out to people, engage them in discussion, and actively provide feedback. You can’t connect from behind a closed office door.

So here are Nine things that you can resolve to do in order to become a better leader.

1. Don’t forget your strengths. We tend to think of making improvements by correcting weaknesses, yet the best leaders stand out with the presence of great strengths. That is not to say that correcting a weakness or fixing a flaw isn’t useful, but think about the best leaders you have worked with and odds are, they were excellent because of something they did profoundly well. Consider your strong points and how to leverage and build on them. If you don’t know them, ask a colleague or two that you trust or even think about using a 360-degree feedback instrument.

2. Stop multi tasking when engaging with another person. Having multiple windows open while working on a computer doesn’t offend other open windows. Yet doing the same when people are involved has the effect of leaving them feeling they are less important. When engaging with other people, don’t email, text, or pay attention to someone else. Provide your undivided attention. If you must take another call, apologize and if appropriate, reschedule your time together. Don’t keep them waiting for you.

3. Communicate more powerfully. Unless you are crafting something with your hands, your primary tool in business is language. Use examples and metaphors from other elements of business, literature, or current events to illustrate your points. Improve your vocabulary and integrate new words and phrases as you become more interesting and even exciting to listen to. Don’t forget your tone, emphasis and non-verbal communication as well. It all plays a part in how powerfully you are received.

4. Assert yourself. Leaders need to step up and be visible. Whether you are advocating a new point of view, supporting a customer, or sponsoring an employee for a promotion a little bit of extra assertiveness can help all leaders. Don’t worry about being pushy. Be polite. State your position and be firm. I am frequently surprised by how many leaders I work with default to a deferential position when working with superiors and even peers. That doesn’t mean to not allow for other perspectives, but it does mean to actively promote your own.

5. Be the role model of key behaviors. You are being watched. All the time. Everything you do. No, it is not big brother; it is the reality of being a leader. People are paying close attention to your behaviors to determine what is acceptable and what is not. Regardless of the corporate values banners that hang on the walls in many organizations, employees will do as you do, not as the posters say. Make sure when they imitate your behavior that it is healthy for the organization.

6. Spend more time thinking strategically. Most leaders I work with get mired in tasks and too often forget why they are even being done. The quick litmus test is whether you are focused on what to do or how something should be done. Strategy is about what to do and tactics are about how to do it. Carve out a little time each week to think about what needs to be done and why instead of evaluating alternatives.

7. Manage your own energy levels to keep them high. Emotions have a contagion effect and your energy levels do as well. While you don’t need to be fired up at all times, having a high positive energy level will increase the influence you have on others and promote stronger levels of engagement from your team. You will also find that this increases your productivity and has a variety of additional salutary effects.

8. Take a leadership role in a change effort. Take some initiative, take the reins, and be in charge of something that institutes a change. Nothing says great leadership like leading a positive intentional change for an organization that results in some kind of improved condition. The term change agent is a bit overused for a reason. That’s because there is not a great deal of leadership required to maintain the status quote. Taking a role of significance in a change effort will provide you with the platform to do your best work this year.

9. Demonstrate care and concern for others. Leadership is after all about improving organizations. It is hard to lead effectively if people do not sense that you care so you should be mindful in 2013 to go out of your way to demonstrate this. Leadership is a relational skill and it depends entirely on how others interact with you. Whether they interact with you through others, or directly, look for opportunities to show that you care.

Resolving to become a better leader this year will yield great results for you in both the short and long term. Not all of these resolutions may be for you, but perhaps you can find one or two that will make the difference this year. Happy New Year!

A Fortune 50 technology organization, wanted to identify those senior leaders who were evaluated to be the most innovative in the organizations they led. Through interviews and meetings, there was only modest discussion about brainstorming, generating ideas, prototyping, and the like—the kind of things most of us think about when we consider institutionalizing innovation. Instead, what emerged were excellent practices for leadership of any kind. My one sentence conclusion for the CEO who wants a more innovative organization is this: Excellence in leading innovation has far less to do with the leader having innovative ideas; it has everything to do with how that leader creates a culture where innovation and creativity thrives in every corner. Here are a few examples:

A culture that supports innovation from all levels

A consumer promotions agency that relies on creative ideas to support their client’s objectives has set aside a physical area known as the innovation center. They use the area frequently for brainstorming and visioning for product launches and consumer campaigns. In the innovation center participation is encouraged from everyone and the underlying philosophy is that great ideas can come from anyone, not just a managing director or the president of the agency. The focus is always on the outcomes that a given idea may produce for a client. The environment is set up with couches, interesting décor, and plenty of flipcharts to capture the ideas that are inspired by everyone involved with projects.

A focus on outcomes

A telecommunications company was facing a problem in the billing department that dealt with customer dissatisfaction because of blind transfers. The President of the division knew this had to stop for both the sake of efficiency and customer service, but she didn’t precisely have the answer to the issue. She created a task force to create a solution to the problem and the many unintended consequences that arose from blind transfers. When interviewed, one of the members of the task force said this about the president; “She painted a clear picture of the destination and then we all worked together to figure out the best way to get there.”

The president did not have the solution to the issue, which turned out to be a series of simple but non-obvious decisions that needed to be made in order to fix the problem. But she did have a vision of what success looked like and kept the task force focused on those issues as they worked backward to solve the problem.

So if that is the conclusion, then what are the things that leaders must do, short of having the single breathtaking idea or discovering the wheel, that foster innovation? Here are four strategies that make a profound difference.

1. They focus exclusively on outcomes

Senior executives put a great deal of effort into clearly envisioning and talking about the outcomes in a given scenario, rather than directing how those outcomes would be achieved. They did not micromanage, nor did they abdicate. Rather they painted a picture of the future and held their teams accountable for how to get there. By focusing on outcomes and results these leaders free up a lot of energy for the creative process of making it happen.

2. They develop reciprocal trust

Not the garden varieties of trust, but complete and shared confidence in one another. I use the term “reciprocal trust” in these instances because it was very clear that this was not simply confidence that someone could be counted on to do a good job–there was a much more palpable sense of trust that permeated the relationships. Direct reports and close colleagues often described their leaders as protectors and I frequently heard the comment, “he/she covered my back.”

3. They are inspiring

“For innovation to exist you have to feel inspired!” said one person. Based on the research in the book I co-authored, The Inspiring Leader, (McGraw Hill 2009) I was not shocked to hear so many comments related to this topic, because most of the data indicate that no other leadership competency influences productivity and engagement more profoundly. Similarly, when people feel inspired by a leader they are more inclined to give more effort and go the extra mile on a project. That extra effort and commitment is often what produces innovation.

4. They get buy in to stretch goals

If the goal is easy to achieve, there is not much need to innovate. Another trend that I observed was that these leaders set stretch goals that were very difficult to achieve. Moreover, they were able to get members of their team bought in to the power of achieving those goals. The goals set within these innovative groups required entirely new approaches in order for the goal to be achieved. The combination of need to innovate and commitment to the goal fueled the innovation for these teams

So the next time you are wracking your brain doing everything you can to come up with the idea that will save the day, the innovative solution to your problems, or just a better way to do something, put your efforts into doing the things that foster and promote innovation within your organization. If you do that then you will be creating a culture where innovation thrives which is exponentially more valuable than you as the CEO saving the day with a single great idea. Then who knows where your next great idea will come from?

Lagging indicators tend to be efficiency oriented, measuring things like number of sales calls, opportunities in the pipeline, forecast values, and even reporting of historical financial data. Leading indicators are often more effectiveness driven, because they are frequently related to performance with a client or something in an account that portends success. A marker of excellence in this area is the ability to balance both sets of metrics to get a clear picture of sales performance, and make sound decisions for the business. Further, there does not need to be a great many leading indicators to equalize a great many lagging indicators. A little goes a long way.

In order to strike the right balance, sales leaders need to do the following:

• Avoid pushing too hard on lagging indicators as a means to drive productivity. In an effort to improve sales results, many a leader has insisted on increasing the number of sales calls or driven up the requirements for new opportunities in the pipeline. While there is nothing inherently wrong with more of these, what happens all too often is that, absent qualitative leading indicators, these measures increase with no increased output. What gets measured gets done, and sales professionals learn this lesson fast when it comes to reporting requirements. Again, nothing against lagging indicators, but if you are overly focused on these kinds of measures of efficiency and inputs, then you will get a lot of it without necessarily improving the outputs or results.

• Know the few inflection points that make the greatest difference in your sales cycle progression. Understand what happens in your sales process that enables buyers to move ahead, because customer behavior is the most valuable clue for leading indicators. Consider the difference between measuring the number of “proposals submitted” (a lagging indicator) versus “customers requesting proposals to jointly review.” While subtle, the former is a simple activity measure and the latter is a measure of customer commitment to move forward with joint accountabilities. If you have a good understanding of the key elements in your sales process that make the greatest difference in whether or not the customer is going to move forward, you can then create metrics around this momentum so that you can measure your effectiveness.

• Incorporate the language of leading and lagging measures in your daily interactions with sales professionals. Regardless of what you call these measures, be sure to engage your sales team in the discussion about how they relate to performance on a daily basis. Not weekly, not monthly, but daily. Sales professionals have to understand how their territory or book of business is evaluated so that they are able to bring those measures to life in the field. Only your client-facing personnel have the chance to influence those leading indicators through their performance when they engage with customers. By involving them regularly in the discussion, there is a much higher likelihood that they will be able to execute on the leading indicators you need them to. It also provides a unique opportunity for coaching, because you have a few clear conditions regarding what will make the greatest difference, and that informs where a sales leader spends their development time.

Many of the organizations I have worked with measure only monthly revenue and profit along with total pipeline value. While that is critical business information, these financial metrics don’t provide enough qualitative and predictive data about the health of the organization’s pipeline. It may take a few iterations to arrive at a set of metrics that give you the right balance of leading and lagging indicators to measure your efficiency and effectiveness.

The good news for all sales leaders is that a few metrics go a long way, and you needn’t create 38-row spreadsheets tracking everything your sales team does with customers. Just like your car, you don’t need a mechanics diagnostic unit to successfully drive down the road. If you know how full the gas tank is, your rpms and your miles per hour and a few other things, odds are you will make it to your destination just fine. And in the case of the sales leader, that destination is a predictable and healthy sales pipeline.

External factors like competition and market forces, all beyond your control, have an impact on the performance of your organization. But if you want a lever to push on that will help you to drive business results, focus on your leadership behaviors. They hold the key to improving engagement, commitment, and productivity—an elite trifecta when it comes to improving business results.

Organizations with high levels of engagement, commitment and productivity outperform their counterparts that score low in those areas. Studies by Gallup and others have shown a clear line of sight between these tangible measures of leadership impact and business outcomes like revenue, profit, earnings per share and customer loyalty. And with so many Tampa Bay organizations seeking growth and development in these areas we have a remarkable opportunity to improve.

So what are the keys to getting this performance as shown by the best leaders in the world?

Exemplars and avatars: Being a role model is a critical component of leadership strength and it is vital for the success of any organization. People will emulate the behaviors of key leaders and pay much more attention to what they do than to any mission or values statements. If your leaders are not walking their talk and exemplifying how the corporate values are exhibited, then you have a problem, as few things are as de-motivating than a leader who does not do as they ask others to do.

If fiscal responsibility is a value, then leaders better not stay at five star hotels. Leaders behaviors proliferate. Make sure they are the right ones.

Talking the walk: In addition to walking the talk, as role models, leaders need to talk their walk. That is they have to be talking, at every opportunity, about the objectives, goals and strategies for the enterprise. You can’t make the assumption that just because you said it once that everyone retained the ideas perfectly. Leaders have to reinforce the objectives and goals in every interaction.

Jack Welch, of General Electric fame, highly regarded as a management guru, used to say that leaders needed to translate their ideas into simple bite size pieces and use “simplicity, consistency, and repetition,” in order to ensure their messages were absorbed. If you are going to err, err on the side of over communicating. As an aside, I’ve never heard that about any leader.

Making an emotional connection: I am not talking about wild displays of emotion. Rather, this is about connecting with people beyond a job, or task, or output, but as people.

Most people I have worked with want to do well for those who they respect and who show them the same respect.

I wrote an article for Harvard Business Review on the importance of these kinds of connections and the response was overwhelmingly positive regarding how motivated people were when the boss connected with them as a human being. Few things will inspire or motivate employees to go the extra mile more than a leader who is able to connect emotionally with individuals and teams.

Clear strategy and outcome focus: We love the focus that comes with clarity because it helps to address the uncertainty that exists in any business or organization. While leaders can’t predict the future, they can paint a picture of what it could like with a clear strategy. That strategy can be how to address change and keep people focused on the outcomes that are critical for success.

The outcomes are so important since tactics and operational objectives regarding how to achieve those outcomes may change, but the target remains the same. That is the essence of maintaining a clear strategy and it is a powerful tool in building confidence toward the achievement of the organizations goals.

Those leadership characteristics are among the most powerful when it comes to producing the engagement, commitment, and productivity that fuels results. The best part about using leadership improvement, as one of your tools to improve performance is that you will have only a modest incremental cost.

You are already paying for managers to lead. Now it is a matter of getting them to lead more effectively to drive these results.

Article published on: Tampa Bay Business Journal

Here they are:

1. Interpersonal communication skills. More and more knowledge work requires that we work effectively with others. It is not just about playing nice on the playground, but rather how do you interact with others, what is your impact on them, and how do you work as a team?
2. Results focus. Organizations today are about producing outcomes. It is not about the input. It is about the output and what happens with the results that you create. I once heard that bureaucracy is the triumph of means over ends and when you hear that, when you see bureaucracy in an organization it is a total lack of results focus.
3. Integrity and honesty. Now this one might seem like a no-brainer, because of course, everybody needs these traits as a sort of table stakes for just being in the game. But I am not talking about the sort of not lying, not cheating, not stealing types of character issues. Rather do you say the same thing up the chain as you do down the chain of command? Are you consistent in your approach in dealing with issues? Those are the sort of characteristics that really manifest integrity and honesty.
4. Technical expertise. I am not talking about the IT kind of technical expertise, though in some instances it very well may be. Instead, that each individual in an organization needs to have some area of discipline that they are an expert with (whether that is sales, product knowledge, process specialty,) that they know inside and out. Having some kind of expertise that you are one of the best at is a critical attribute.
5. Customer, client, or end-user focus. If it is an association then it is members. If it is a not-for-profit then it is your constituency. It is obvious for business that the clients are the ones who pay the bills. But it is shocking how often we lose focus on them. Maintaining a focus on the end user or customer is one way to lead by positive example, regardless of level in an organization.

As I have said, leadership is not always connected to position. In fact many of my clients have key staff members that have an unbelievable influence on teams and on the entire organization but they don’t have a manager title. They are individual contributors. They are individual contributors with great leadership skills and they are exemplars of these traits. It isn’t about your spot on the org chart, it is about is what you do every day.

1. They define the strategy and form the plans to achieve that strategy. The best leaders have a strategy. Now, if you don’t have a strategy and you are a leader then it is the business equivalent of going on a date and saying, “I don’t know. What do you want for dinner?” It’s kind of lame. Clear      strategy is “the what” and the plans to achieve that strategy provide “the how”. Great leaders need to have both. Now they don’t need to be the only ones who create it. They can involve others, and in fact the best leaders frequently do involve other, but they make sure that a strategy and a plan is in place, and leaders have to lead that process.

2. They get alignment in their organization. They get the organization galvanized around a cause because they have created a clear line of sight where everybody knows what needs to be accomplished, what their role is in accomplishing those objectives is, and their responsibility for doing so. It is called by some, goal congruence sometimes and it makes delegation quite easy. Southwest Airlines is a great example of goal congruence and alignment because, Herb Kelleher and members of the leadership team in that organization, has made it clear what behaviors are appropriate for that organization and they cascade throughout the business.

3. They inspire and motivate. Now of course, I had to include that because I co-authored a book a couple of years ago called The Inspiring Leader.  The reason it is so critical is that this leadership trait was the one that separated the best leaders from their average and poor counterparts – the ability to inspire and motivate. It also happens to be the competency or skill set that is most often described by subordinates as the one thing that would have the greatest impact on their leader’s effectiveness.  And it also has the highest correlations to employee engagement of any other leadership skill. That engagement is of course, the fuel for productivity – productivity that drives innovation, productivity that drives profit, customer satisfaction, and a host of other business objectives. So when you start to think about the impact that leaders have on outcomes it comes back to engagement and these are the ways that leaders drive engagement.

I want you to take a moment to think about a time when you were on a team that was not particularly aligned with a strategy for the organization and think about what that was like and what that team produced. Then I would ask you to think about a time when you were on a team that was very engaged and very aligned with the strategy for the organization. Consider the differences in the kind of results that those teams produced. When you have that answer it is easy to see how leaders impact business outcomes.  After all, it is the leader of any team, division, or organization who is responsible for these three things.

He started talking about the importance of being nimble and leading change effectively because as he said, “It is always about the next generation” and “the next double.” How would the company double in size? Their history was that they had doubled in size a couple of times and his point was to be seeking the change that would lead them to the next generation—and ostensibly the next double. As he made his point, he even told a funny story with a bunch of twenty-something’s in the room, expressing that the business was founded using Lotus 123 as one of the main tools for research support, and that most of them had only read about Lotus 123 in history books.  Though it wasn’t’ that long ago, and I too remember the Lotus suite.

Some people will refer to leading change as being an agent of change. I don’t love that term as it sounds a little too James Bond-ish for me but you get the idea.  There needs to be a leader, a model, a champion to be the advocate for change in an organization, if any change effort is to be successful, and it is vital to great leadership. Now, unfortunately most of the professional literature suggests that somewhere between two-thirds, even 75% of change initiatives fail to meet their stated objectives in an organization. So when I work with clients and identify those who manage change well and who are effective with leading change, they do these four things exceedingly well.

1. They define the change. What are we going to do? Why are we doing it? And they are able to articulate that change message in a powerful and a compelling way and painting a picture of the outcomes to get there. Indra Nooyi the CEO of PepsiCo is a great example of this. They defined a huge change at PepsiCo. Remember, PepsiCo is an organization founded on soda and chips and a few years ago she led a strategic shift, stating that over 50% of their revenue would come from healthy products, products like Gatorade and Quaker Oats. Now that is a soda company but Wall Street has rewarded that change and here you see a real clear picture of defining change.

2. The second issue is for leaders to manage the tension of change. There is an old saying that “everybody wants progress but nobody wants change.” The fact of the matter is that during change things can get tense and stressful. So look at Netflix today, and if you are a subscriber to Netflix (I am a customer of Netflix as are millions of others,) they have made some major changes in their strategy. As soon as they announced those changes there was quite the rebellion about what was happening and what was changing for people. So whether or not that strategy was the right strategy, Reed Hastings and the leaders at Netflix had to (and still have to,) do a lot to manage the tension of that change.  We will see what actually happens but if you pay attention to their actions, some conciliatory and others not, you know they’re actively managing the tension.

3. The third thing I see for leaders who successfully lead change – they stay committed to the outcomes of the change process. Now if you look back a couple decades to George Bush Sr., regardless of your political preferences, he made the notion of stay the course very powerful. Certainly coming off the success of the Reagan years (again regardless of your politics,) that notion of staying the course and staying committed to the outcomes of change became really powerful. While some of the tactics may change modestly, there is power in  seeing through a course of action.

4. Finally, the best leaders of change celebrate the success along the way. Getting from Point A to Point B is of course the objective in any change initiative, but celebrating the small successes along the way makes a huge difference. I have had the chance in the last six months to work with Lenovo (you know them as the manufacturer of the ThinkPad) and they are the number two PC manufacturer in the world and I believe they are well on their way to being number one. I was working with some of their leaders as part of a transformation effort, and what I noted with a lot of interest, was that they were taking time to reflect, to celebrate, and to refuel. Leaders of change find a way to add a good bit of celebration of the successes along the way.

So I would ask you a few questions. What are you doing to lead change? What are the things you do to bring about the “next generation,” as Phil Hadley, the CEO at FactSet would say, or the “next double?” Are you doing these four things in a way that is mindful with any kind of frequency? And if not, well that may be a change that you want to make.

Scott was recently quoted in SmartBrief on Leadership. Click here to view Scott Edinger in SmartBrief on Leadership.

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In the early 1990s I was a Human Resources Associate in the firm of Coopers & Lybrand (now pricewaterhousecoopers.) I got into HR because I was interested in the elements of improving human performance.

Some veteran HR pros will remember this as a time when we bristled at being referred to as the “personnel people.” Human resource management was supposed to be something quite different.

The problem: It wasn’t. And still isn’t.

Simply semantics

The change turned out to be more semantics than anything else. HR departments failed to deliver on the promise of organizational transformation efforts — more often than not, the only real change was the sign on the door.

As further evidence that HR has been more of an appendage to organizations than an integral part of their growth, just look at the proliferation of the job title “HR business partner.” What other function in an organization needs to label itself a business partner in order to be taken seriously?

Now we see a terminology shift to what is commonly called Talent Management. TM applies much of the hope and message of that HR change of the 1990s, to parse out the transformational elements of what HR was supposed to accomplish.

Four clear objectives

But if Talent Management is to be successful as a discipline, it has to do four things.

Before delving into those four things, it is useful to get a clear understanding of what Talent Management actually is. (This is part of the challenge to begin with. How many times do you have to define, sales, finance, manufacturing, IT, or operations?)

Talent Management, put simply and without buzzwords, is a structure designed to:

• get people in the right positions
• provide them with the development tools to do their jobs well, and
• manage their performance. Done well, this is the job of the line leader – using the tools and resources the TM process provides them.

Here, then, are the four overarching goals TM must achieve:

1. It must create value for the organization. Not the kind of value that comes from benefits administration but value that helps to grow a business.
   That value has to help line leaders do a better job of proactively identifying the right kinds of people for jobs and making sure they’re in those jobs.
   Effective TM means providing development and growth opportunities as a means to improving job performance. It also requires being an active part of aligning the organization’s strategy with the human performance.
   Too often, Talent Management has devolved to a series of projects in support of an executive mandate rather than a strategic function that helps to grow the business.
2. Speed has to become a priority. I met last week with the division leader of a financial services firm that is going through a major transition and reorganization.
   At her request I also met with the Director of Talent Management, who informed me that the next 18-24 months would consist of focusing on developing a plan for the future and assessing their needs.
   Seriously? Almost two years to create a plan and assess needs? The division leader expressed a sense of urgency in getting results — and Talent Management is going to be getting their act together over the next couple of years.
   Nothing is ever perfect in business (or in life). An intensive, short-term analysis us likely to be just as effective as a long- drawn-out exhaustive study. TM pros need to seek results, not perfection. Drag your feet too long, and priorities will likely have changed.
   (A quick aside: When I shared the TM director’s time frame with the  division leader, she was aghast at the chasm of difference in priority and speed.)
3. Integration with the business is a must. The best TM professionals I have worked with are as knowledgeable about the business as other functional leaders—maybe even more so. Unfortunately, they are the exceptions that tend to prove the rule.
   Too often Talent Management professionals are steeped in theory and don’t have a clear view of the day-to-day operations of the business. Elaborate reporting structures of shared services with dotted line relationships don’t seem to provide the same value as business unit integration with a clear line of sight to the organization’s objectives.
4. Focus on results and output, not input. Processes are important, as are procedures and guidelines. But what matters most: outcomes and results.
   Too frequently, Talent Management is put in a position of administering the process versus actively contributing to the value or results of that process.
   I was just involved in a succession planning process where the VP of HR and Talent Management (they combine the title in his organization) was no more than a clearinghouse for assembling the information that functional leaders had created.
   Instead of actively contributing with insights based on observed behavior or offering developmental opportunities, he became the administrator of the process.
   As a result, his contribution to the results achieved in the succession planning engagement was minimal — because his focus was on completion of tasks and inputs versus adding insight to the process.

I’ve formulated these four characteristics after working with some of the best HR and Talent Management professionals in the country.  They are the avatars of what TM can be.
Sadly, I have encountered them far less frequently than those TM people lacking these traits.
Talent Management can be a catalyst for great change in organizations and contribute to the success of many a company if it takes into account these four principles. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen that happen too often.

What makes a leader inspiring? By far, the most common answer I hear from the thousands of leaders I’ve spoken with on the topic is “charisma.”

And who would argue? When they hear that answer, people typically nod knowingly; we all seem to recognize the power of charisma to motivate. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, recently wrote on this site about its importance.The sociologist Max Weber described it as being endowed with supernatural, superhuman, and exceptional powers.

As a practical matter though, what does one do with this information? The advice, “Go be charismatic” is about as useful as “Go be inspiring.” So what does it actually mean to be charismatic as a leader? From my experience observing and coaching hundreds of leaders, and analyzing data on thousands more, here is what I’d suggest is the constellation of qualities that constitutes charismatic leadership.

Charismatic people focus on you, not themselves. Leadership effectiveness is contextual — what works for one group doesn’t necessarily work for another. So in order to be charismatic you simply have to understand and relate to others. And the more you relate on a human level the better. Regardless of your politics it is hard to argue that Bill Clinton is nothing if not charismatic. Even people who have had the briefest of encounters with him come away feeling like they were the most important person in the room.

They tend to be extraverts. I recognize that this will be an unpopular conclusion with the introverts reading this, but the fact is charismatic leaders are people who put themselves out there. They actively seek out and engage others. They tend to be upbeat and make us feel that way, too. We all know people who can “light up a room.” This is not to say that introverts can’t be charismatic. But they do have to work harder at it, since many find social situations draining, rather than energizing.

Like all good leaders, charismatic leaders are skilled communicators. Communication is critical to any kind of management of course, but charismatic leaders are particularly expressive in their verbal communication. They are skilled and entertaining conversationalists. They tell stories. They use concrete examples. They talk about their feelings. They look for ways to invoke common ground in an audience. These skills come naturally to many, but they can certainly be learned, and improved.

They feel your pain, really. You can be good at sizing people up, engaging with them, paying attention to them, and communicating with them and still not be charismatic. Beyond all of these skills, truly charismatic leaders possess that little something extra. Empathy. They genuinely care — and people can tell. It’s what Aristotle called ethos, as it relates to your disposition or character. The most effective leaders I’ve worked with display charisma by making a genuine emotional connection forged by words and deeds that demonstrate that they understand — and really have — your best interests at heart.

The word charisma comes from the word Greek charis, meaning gift or grace. But it’s not so much a grace we’re born with as a skill that can be cultivated and, ultimately, a gift to be shared with others.

1. Get the correct leaders involved
2. Use a rational process to determine the highest priorities
3. Stay focused

1. Understand the impact that it has on you
2. Confront the behavior, not the person
3. Plan a course of action that is commensurate with the foul
4. Move on

Scott was recently quoted in Crain’s Cleveland Business by SCOTT SUTTELL. Click here to view Scott Edinger in Crain’s Cleveland Business.

I was reminded of the importance of this kind of enterprise and some of the tenets of making it effective during my work with the Cleveland HeartLab, a biomedical diagnostic lab that sprang from the Cleveland Clinic.

They are in high-growth mode, having just received a new round of funding because of their unique ability to identify the true risk of a heart attack or stroke. Our work together provided a rare opportunity for the Senior Team to take a moment to lift their heads from the daily and hourly management of the business, and stop to think about what was important for the coming year. Here are some keys we used to make strategic planning effective.

It begins with trust and candor. Designing strategies and making plans as a team doesn’t work if leaders can’t or won’t speak their mind. If leaders aren’t transparent with the information you are using to plan and make decisions, then you build a strategy on incomplete information and points of view. At the start of our session each leader privately gave the group a candor score from 1-10, with 1 being no candor at all and 10 being pure transparency, even if it is blunt. We looked at the aggregate score—which was quite high—and discussed the implications of being anything less than 10. That discussion raised the level of candor in the room even higher.

Getting alignment on clear definitions of success is paramount. It’s harder than it sounds, too, to get a group of leaders to share the same vision of success on a given topic. I’m not just talking about listing a topic like, “maintain a high-quality lab” or “expand the sales organization.” You need to get granular and answer questions like, “In a year from now we will be successful if_________ ,” or “What does success look like?” Your answers ought to be specific and observable if not measurable. This clarity will ensure everyone is looking in the same direction.

Accountability makes the strategy go. It is amazing to watch the level of engagement of leaders when they have accountability for formulating and executing strategy. Assigning roles and responsibility is critical for each element of your strategy. There is incredible power in putting someone’s name in ink next to a topic on the flipchart.

Get away. You don’t have to go to a resort. We used a conference room at a neighboring company. What was important was that we had no other distractions and the issues that came up could be dealt with during breaks as we had the key decision makers in one place. Getting away also allowed us to have some meals together and celebrate a few of the company successes. We were still having productive conversations well into the evening over dinner.

Identify the critical issues to achieving your strategy. Just because you write it on a flipchart or present it in PowerPoint does not make it so. You don’t achieve your strategic intent by declaration. Make sure you can list the critical issues that need to be addressed in order for the strategy to be effective. And of course, don’t forget the accountabilities.

Stay out of the weeds but don’t ignore the details. This is a hard balance to strike. You inevitably have digressions when all the key leaders are in one place because of the interdependence of so many functions. Those digressions can be healthy and useful, particularly when they involve topics and details that impact the main discussion. But sooner rather than later, your facilitator needs to be responsible for getting and staying on track or you won’t complete your objectives for the session.

It’s not over when it’s over. Just because your event is over does not mean that the strategy work can sit on a shelf until next year. If strategy is an “event,” then by its very nature it will fail. Strategy is organic in that it continues to evolve and guide the daily work and decisions of an organization. Implementing strategy is the pivotal role of the senior executive, and refining and working with your department and teams to create detailed action plans at the divisional level is what will ultimately bring that strategy to life.

The Cleveland HeartLab has many things going for them: strong funding, a new management team, and a great product. But they also realize that there are plenty of organizations with a lot going for them that don’t meet their objectives. It is a clear strategy, well executed, that makes the difference. Follow these tenets for making your strategic planning process fruitful, and you will reap the rewards of a strategy that guides effectively.

Part of the issue is that strategies always succeed in the boardroom, prepared by senior executives and displayed in impressive PowerPoint decks. It is at the front lines of organizations, that hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars are earned or lost, by the decisions that are made about how those strategies are to be implemented. As a Result, successful execution of strategy must be the focus of every person in the organization. Easier said than done, right? So in order to effectively implement strategy leaders should pay attention to the following steps.

• Clarify and Communicate Your Strategy: People have to understand the strategy in order to carry it out but frequently strategies are expressed as high-level statements that resonate with board and executive levels yet fall flat with mid-level and frontline personnel. So the first step is to get clear about what your strategy is in terms that everyone can understand it. Your strategy should provide a framework that guides the choices people make about their work and it should be clear that the actions they take every day are in support of or in conflict with the strategy. So if your strategy is about growth (which is the case for many of you reading this article,) then that needs to be clarified at each level of the organization, so that decisions employees make are always in support of that strategic objective. Clarifying and communicating the strategy is one of the vital responsibilities of strategic leaders as you translate your strategic objectives so that they are understandable and connect to the work of every person in the business.

• Identify and Resolve Your Critical Issues: If strategy is “what” you do then tactics are “how” you do it. And if you want your strategy implemented well, you need to identify and resolve the critical issues that stand in your way. Begin by addressing the practical and tactical components of people’s jobs every day. That is, what specifically are the obstacles to achieving this strategy and how will we address them. This is at the heart of implementation planning and, done well, involves key managers in the process of thinking through the implications of choices you make. This allows you to create an agenda of the major issues involved in implementing your strategy as well as the next actions required to address them successfully. Add to this the key milestones to track your progress against them and you are well on your way to an effective implementation.

• Implement Your Strategy: Now the work begins. Making the process improvements come to life, engaging with clients in a new way, team meetings and one on one coaching to improve performance, and carrying out your updated responses to the market. All these actions coordinated in alignment with your strategy will create a tremendous impact on the organization and the customers it serves.

Effective implementation of strategy can be a source of competitive advantage for those who take it seriously. It is simple to understand but not easy to do. With the right focus and effort, your organization can thrive and outflank your competition. Not just because your strategy was superior (which it may be,) but also because you execute it well by focusing on implementation. After all, if success is about execution then this is a leaders pivotal role.

Reprinted from the Tampa Bay Business Journal (October 19, 2012)

http://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/print-edition/2012/10/19/when-it-comes-to-strategy-it-is-all.html

1. Be intentional in your outreach to your employees
2. Make good use of tools such as video conferencing, instant messaging, telephone, etc
3. Maximize time with your employees, including social events

1. Get clear agreement on what the problem is that needs to be addressed.
2. Ask the question “what does success look like” from everybody in the room.
3. Assign responsibilities.

1. Have the ability to see the vision
2. Commit to customers
3. Be innovative
4. Communicate well
5. Be good at driving results
6. Emotionally connect with co-workers
7. Develop other and coach
8. Be a role model

1. Create useful success metrics that mark progress, not just report results. Most sales leadership jobs demand a series of metrics that indicate results that have been achieved. Revenue and profit contribution are classic examples of these very important measures. But there is another side of the metric scale which includes those measures that are indicative of progress toward those goals—successful sales calls, implementation planning meetings, and the like are examples. The key difference is creating a balance of those that are backward-looking or lagging indicators, and others that are forward-looking, or leading indicators. Having both is vital to success.

2. Provide visionary leadership. There are few audiences more cynical than sales professionals (I have found lawyers and accountants to come close), so providing clear and definitive leadership is critical. Since most sales organizations serve as the nosecone of the business, as customer and product or service issues impact them first, they benefit greatly from having a vision for the entire team. The sales leader must be the exemplar of that vision, as the team will be watching. Pithy and concise are the themes for your sales team’s vision, which should dovetail with the organization’s vision.

3. Develop talent and coach relentlessly. Many a sales leader has risen through the ranks as a great seller to a sales leadership position. One of the problems I frequently hear about sales leaders is that they were great individual contributors but they haven’t quite taken hold of what it means to be a sales leader. Most of the time, the fundamental issue is a lack of coaching and development of talent. All too often they are narrowly focused on the role of super closer in an effort to drive business instead of building sales capability across a team.

4. Pay close attention to your selling roles and understand how you get involved in sales cycles. I have seen four distinct roles that sales leaders take on: Model—you run the call, Observer—you observe only with an intent to coach following the call, Teammate— you engage in joint selling with clearly defined responsibilities to take on specific topics during the call, and Strategist—you provide pre-call planning guidance and post-call support. Each of these selling roles has a unique purpose and impact, so it is imperative that the sales leader is intentional about what role they are playing as they support business development efforts.

5. Focus on creating value in the sales process. For many, success in selling is far less about what they are selling and increasingly about how they sell. Said simply, it’s about how, not what. That how is creating value in the sales process, and sales leaders can engineer the sales experience of customers to be one that is worth paying for. The litmus test for this is, as sales guru and a former boss of mine, Neil Rackham, has said is: “Would the customer write you a check for the sales call?” A sales call worth paying for is the pinnacle of value creation, and those interactions provide insights, new approaches and ideas for solving problems, and innovative opportunities to capitalize on, instead of simply a description of products and services.

6. Forecast with an understanding of where the customer is in the buying process. By and large, forecasting tools are centered on a series of tasks that sellers perform during the course of a sales cycle. What they too often lack is the perspective of the buyer and where the buyer is in the decision process. One of my mentors, John Hoskins, often said “if you want to learn how to sell, learn how buyers buy.” When forecasting, include milestones of customer behavior and joint accountabilities like “mutually reviewing a proposal together” versus “proposal sent” to have a considerable impact on forecast accuracy.

7. Motivate with recognition and rewards. I’ve said before that sales professionals have a reputation for being prima donnas, and, having spent my career in sales, I think the stereotype is correct. (It takes one to know one, right?!) That means a good sales leader has the opportunity to use this to their advantage and develop a strong rewards and recognition program. Rewards and recognition ought to be timely and relevant, and while an annual awards banquet is great, in order to reinforce behaviors it needs to be more frequent. Top performers value financial rewards for certain, but they also crave regular feedback on performance, autonomy, and degrees of freedom. Consider the myriad ways to reward and recognize in non-monetary form and you have a good recipe for an important element of sales team motivation.

Scott’s recent blog post in Forbes.com, Linked below:

Seven Keys To Sales Leadership

Chris Abramson excelled in one of the most important — and most misunderstood — of leadership skills: making an emotional connection.

Leadership has everything to do with how you relate to others and the quality and texture of those relationships. The higher up you go in an organization, the less important your technical skills become and the more your interpersonal skills matter. I’ve seen this confirmed in my work with hundreds of leaders and in reviews of 360-degree feedback data on thousands more.

The ability to make an emotional connection is so often misunderstood because it’s not about being emotional or showing emotion. It’s about making a human connection — one person to another. Chris Abramson had the ability to connect on that level with me, with teams, with an entire office of over 600 associates — to show us how important we all were to him and that there was more to our relationship than just the job at hand.

He was a natural, but there are some things the rest of us might do to forge these kinds of connections.

1. Like Chris, give people your undivided attention. This sounds simple, but it’s easy to lose sight of. When I feel overloaded in the midst of ringing phones, e-mails by the hundreds, and a gazillion other things to do, I’ll sometimes think about how Chris unfailingly engaged with people in this way, and the energy he brought to and created in those interactions as a result. He made us want to do more because we didn’t want to let him down.
2. Be aware that emotions are contagious. Research has shown that a person’s mood can be affected even by three degrees of separation from people they don’t even know. So imagine your impact in the workplace on those who report to you directly. Whether positive or negative, your emotional state has a significant influence on those you work with, especially when you’re the boss. We all have our bad days, but we don’t have to multiply their ill effects. If you’re feeling particularly anxious or negative, make an effort to quarantine yourself — do more of your administrative tasks, avoid situations that might trigger even more stress, take the afternoon off (you may do more harm staying on the job). On the other hand, when you’re feeling especially buoyant, make an effort to spend more time with direct reports, go to more meetings, reach out to others in the organization. Use this time to your advantage and multiply your positive emotions.
3. Develop your sense of extraversion. Make no mistake, this is easier said (or written) than done, especially if you’re naturally an introvert. But if you’re a leader, you simply have to develop the ability to reach out to others, engage them in discussion, and actively provide feedback. You’re the one who has to be out in front, taking the lead in developing these relationships. Even introverts can muster the energy to do these things and relate to others. (And then, when you’re exhausted from it, you can sit quietly with a book.)

As leaders, by definition, we do our work through other people, and yet how easy it is to lose sight of that, to focus on the amount of work — the tasks, the output, the jobs to be completed. The irony is, the more you focus on the quality of those connections, the greater your quantity of output is likely to be.

Scott’s recent blog post in Harvard Business Review, Linked below:

Three Ways Leaders Make Emotional Connections

1. Build a strong implementation team
2. Define the gap
3. Create the plan
4. Communicate the plan
5. Solidify your gains

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Why a Flexible Workplace Makes Sense

1. Role models
2. Communication
3. Involvement
4. Innovation
5. On-boarding
6. Accountability
7. Consistency

Remote possibilities: The curious case of remote workers who work better than office workers

• They focus on results. Because they concentrate on the outcomes rather than the process, they know when to break rules — and it’s not to be rebellious
• They have strong interpersonal skills. Despite their junior titles, these stars lead through influence. And they gain that sway by connecting with others.

They demonstrate high integrity. They are consistent in their actions and words. When conflicts arise, others look to them over formal leaders for guidance.

Reprinted from Harvard Business Review – Management Tip of the Day (August 30, 2012)

If your employees come into the office each day, it’s natural to think that they’re engaged and well-connected with one another. But that’s a misperception, according to a recent blog post from the Harvard Business Review.

Scott Edinger, founder of Tampa-based Edinger Consulting Group, wrote that the physical proximity of an office gives the illusion that co-workers are communicative and working together efficiently. The opposite is true, however. Remote workers are actually more engaged and committed to their team, Edinger wrote. 

One reason for this, Edinger pointed out, could be that members of virtual teams feel the physical distance between them makes interactions more valuable.

When people do not sit at adjacent desks, they try hard to connect with one another and maximize what little time they do spend speaking with one another.

He wrote: “What’s more, because they have to make an effort to make contact, these leaders can be much more concentrated in their attention to each person and tend to be more conscious of the way they express their authority.”

Sharing the same workplace, however, causes workers to be complacement and take face-to-face communication for granted, he said.

Edinger also argued that the media used to manage a virtual team–video conferencing, instant messaging, email, and phone calls–make bosses more well-versed in technological tools, and thus, better leaders.

Reprinted from Inc.com, August 24, 2012.

http://www.inc.com/john-mcdermott/report-remote-workers-more-engaged-committed.html

A. People who work in the office
B. People who work remotely

If you picked A, you might be as surprised as the investment firm I worked with recently, which found in reviewing results of a 360-degree feedback process that the answer was, in fact, B.

The team members who were not in the same location with their leaders were more engaged and committed — and rated the same leader higher — than team members sitting right nearby. While the differences were not enormous (a couple of tenths of a point in both categories), they were enough to provoke some interesting speculations as to why this might be happening.

It made perfect sense to me, though. Here is why:

Proximity breeds complacency. I’ve worked with leaders who sit in the same office with those they manage but go for weeks without having any substantive face-time with them. In fact they may use e-mail as their primary source of communication when they sit less than 50 feet away. It’s even worse if they sit in different parts of a building — or all the way on another floor. This is not to say that these leaders are in any way lazy — just that because the possibility of communicating is so easy, it is so often taken for granted.

Absence makes people try harder to connect. When I managed a team of professionals in nine different locations, I made a point of deliberately reaching out to each of them by phone at least once a week, and frequently more often. I’m not an anomaly here. Most leaders I work with make an extra effort to stay connected to those they don’t ordinarily run into. They can see that taking even a few minutes to talk about what’s happening in their respective worlds before addressing the tasks at hand makes a difference in maintaining the connection with a colleague. What’s more, because they have to make an effort to make contact, these leaders can be much more concentrated in their attention to each person and tend to be more conscious of the way they express their authority.

Leaders of virtual teams make a better use of tools. Because leaders of far-flung teams have to use videoconferencing, instant messaging, e-mail, voicemail, and yes, the telephone, to make contact, they become proficient in multiple forms of communication, an advantage in leadership that their traditional counterparts could well develop but not so automatically.

Leaders of far-flung teams maximize the time their teams spend together. Having had to make such an effort to get the team together, these leaders naturally want to make the best use of their precious time. They take care to filter out as many distractions as possible so they can focus on the work to be done together. They also typically spend more than an ordinary work day together, socializing at planned luncheons, dinners, and activities. This level of focused attention is hard to replicate day to day. I’ve heard from some employees who work near their bosses on teams whose other members work elsewhere that the most time they spend with their leader is when the others come in for such meetings.

None of this is to say that working remotely is better than coming to the office. Or that virtual teams are better than traditional ones. On the contrary, I’m suggesting that they are exactly the same this regard: Someone working in the same office with their leader needs just as much effective communication as someone located in a different office. It’s just that, ironically, they’re less likely to get it.

1. Provide access to company resources that help them move faster
2. Give degrees of freedom.
3. Provide immediate feedback on areas of weakness and offer additional training in areas of strength.
4. Send a note of thanks for effort.
5. Offer new and challenging assignments.
6. Publicly recognize an achievement and what it took to get that result.
7. Give them a mentor to help them to grow.
8. Provide excellent development opportunities.
9. Illustrate a career path.
10. Ask the people that you are trying to motivate what they want.

1. Have a vision for the sales team that puts them as the value creation engine for the business.
2. Use metrics that support value creation from the customers stand point.
3. Meet with feasibility buyers that help create value.
4. Ask, in the customers terms, what “value” is from their perspective.
5. Create a forecasting tool that is outcome based, not input oriented.
6. Coach and develop value creation skills.
7. Learn how to position products and solutions that were not considered previously.
8. Focus customers on innovation
9. Reward and recognize value creation within the organization.

1. Relationships no longer rely on good friendships.
2. Sales people need to create and show what the value is for the customer.
3. Help clients understand and deal with their problems in new and different ways.
4. Support customers and help them to arrive at solutions.
5. Show customers opportunities for growth.
6. Be the advocate for the client within your own organization.

To successfully execute an organization’s strategy, it must be the focus of every person in that organization. It is up to the leaders to create, monitor, and reward that focus as it is expressed. So how then do you provide the leadership required to implement strategies in a way that allows them to come to life in each corner of an organization? I offer that if you pay attention to the Three Cs of strategy, you will be well on your way to success in this endeavor. 

Clarify your strategy: All too often, strategies are expressed as high-level statements that resonate with board and executive levels but fall flat with mid-level and frontline personnel. Unfortunately, if people don’t understand the strategy, they are unable to connect with it. So the first step is to clarify your strategy in a way that people in your organization can rally to support its implementation. Done well, this strategy will tie together your goals and objectives and clearly explain what you intend to do. In their book “Top Management Strategy”, Ben Tregoe and John Zimmerman offer a very useful definition of strategy, calling it, “the framework which guides those choices that determine the nature and direction of an organization.” Most importantly, try to stay away from “corporate speak,” or “bureaucratize,” which Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines calls “difficult to understand and boring.”

Communicate your strategy: I’ve never encountered an organization where I heard from people that we communicate too often or with plenty of clarity. So then, communication is the second C. Powerfully communicating the essence of your strategy at every level of the organization using multiple mediums is the key here. (Don’t expect the posters you had made up to do the job.) Use internal blogs and message boards, brown bag luncheons, podcasts, and department meetings to communicate what the strategy is and how everybody’s work is informed by that strategy. Discussions need to occur at each level, translating the organization’s strategy to understandable and contextualized sound bites, which connect to the work of individuals. In short, communicating the strategy provides the “connective tissue” throughout the organization that helps people understand the big picture. 

Cascade your strategy: If strategy is “what” you do then tactics are “how” you do it. And if you want your strategy implemented well, you need to cascade it throughout the organization and get to the practical and tactical components of people’s jobs every day. Ideally, you will involve your managers in this process, and they will help to translate the elements of the strategy for your organization to their own functional areas. Doing this allows them to develop and own the process of cascading the strategy and designing implementation plans with high likelihood of execution. Cascading strategy is the proverbial rubber hitting the road. The bulk of the work in implementing strategy is done at this stage. It is the team meetings, the one-on-one coaching, the process improvements, the customer meetings, and the responses to the market that, in alignment with an organization’s strategy, can make a tremendous difference for an organization.

The pace of business shows no signs of slowing down and the competition in any sector isn’t getting easier. But effectively implementing strategy can be a source of competitive advantage. Try these Three Cs and see if they help. Leaders from Fortune 500 companies to small not-for-profits must be armed with the ability to effectively implement the strategies of their organization, all while juggling 100s of emails and voice mails, and addressing the exigencies of the day.  Because implementing strategy is not additive work for the leader. It is, in fact, their pivotal job.

Reprinted from Forbes (August 7, 2012)

This podcast is also available as an article: Results Focused Organizations And Their Teams

This podcast is also available as an article: Reverse Leadership

Consider the contrast between the most successful financial executives and the average or even poor ones. An executive’s success likely has little to do with just technical or financial expertise. Most financial leaders, by the time they reach a level of significant responsibility, are….Read more

Reprinted from Financial Executive Magazine

This podcast is also available as an article: Vision, Mission and Core Values

How then does a banker compete effectively in today’s market? The answer is that it is entirely about how you interact with the client and far less about what you offer in terms of product or service. Said another way, it is about how you sell that creates value—not what you are selling.

1. Stop talking about products and services and start talking about client objectives. In my work with financial institutions, I have sat in on many a client meeting where a banker quite eloquently described the banks myriad offerings using vivid expressions and excellent language. The problem was that the client did not care because it had nothing to do with their unique needs and objectives. Beyond simple questioning techniques that are a staple of many bankers, you need to involve the client in the discussion of their objectives—personal and professional, to gain a clear and complete understanding of what they are trying to achieve. To be effective, this must be more of a mutual dialogue than the Q&A session that too often occurs.

2. Position your products and services as solutions to those objectives. Odds are that while a client may need credit, sweep services, or leasing solutions, they are not thinking about solutions in those terms. More likely, they are wondering if their assets are being used to maximum effectiveness, or if they are being as efficient as possible with their transactions. The banks products and services are means to an end, which is defined by the client. There may be situations in which you need to access the expertise of others in the organization to serve a client, which allows you to demonstrate your ability to bring to bear all the resources your bank has to offer for the benefit of the client.  Position your offerings as the solution to achieve those stated objectives, and you will dramatically increase your odds of earning more of the client’s trust, and in turn business.

3. Highlight the value of addressing the client’s objectives. While addressing the client’s objectives is an important part of the equation, it is the value of doing so that solidifies the benefit of working with you. The value of your work together can be described as the resultant effect of addressing objectives. Having confidence that my cash is being utilized optimally or that I am protecting my estate for the benefit of my family are examples of the value generated by specific products and services, but they are in terms of the value the client places on them. If you have engaged in a mutual dialogue about the value of addressing objectives this will be a logical next step to cementing the benefits of working with you. 

4. Remember the greatest value is in the unique relationship with you, the banker. Products and services are as easy to replicate as they have ever been, and competing on rates and fees is a recipe for losing business unless you are the absolute cheapest provider. We are in an age where the banker has the opportunity to become the distinguishing feature of the relationship with a financial institution. This is done by creating value in how you sell versus what you are selling and making sure each of your interactions with clients and potential clients highlights that value.

Bankers who do these things and use their experience and expertise to create value for clients rather than relying on products and services to do so, put themselves in a great position to earn trust, respect, and more business. Whether in a first discussion, or over the course of a relationship, these methods to create value provide a path to differentiation. Focus on the value you create in your relationship with clients instead of the value created by products and services alone and both you and your client’s will reap the benefits.

Reprinted from the Tampa Bay Business Journal (July 27, 2012)

http://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/print-edition/2012/07/27/how-bankers-create-value-for-clients.html

This podcast is also available as an article: Implementing Your Strategy

This podcast is also available as an article: Obtaining Buy-In From All Levels

• What are my strengths? Have them start by thinking in broad buckets such as character, getting results, or leading change. Then have them identify specific traits.
• What are my fatal flaws? Ask them to identify which traits could cause you to fail in your current position.
• Which of my strengths is most important for the company? Inquire as to which of your abilities— if it was truly outstanding— would have the biggest impact on your company.
• What works best for you? Ask each person which strengths they value most.

Reprinted from Harvard Business Review – Management Tip of the Day (July 20, 2012)

This podcast is also available as an article: Traps During Strategy Formulation

It happens every day. A stellar performer is promoted from team member or individual contributor to manager of a team. And nearly every day, that new manager struggles. They struggle because the job they are now doing is vastly different from the job they were doing, even though they stayed on the same team.

I recently read a Wall Street Journal article about Michael Jordan, arguably the best player in the history of basketball, and his absolutely abysmal performance as a General Manager in the NBA. Stunning isn’t it? How could someone so gifted and expert in the game be so poor at leading and managing a team playing the same game?

From finance, to IT, to sales and marketing, it is a phenomenon that repeats itself over and over again. The reason for this is simple in theory and hard in practice. That is, the job is different. There, simple in theory. But who else in an organization would be appropriate to step up and lead a team in a function? Certainly, people who are top performers in that function make ideal candidates. Right, hard in practice.

So to make that practice easier to implement,  follow these five keys to ensuring that your top individual contributors develop into great leaders.

1.     Recognize that leadership and individual contributor expertise require different and often mutually exclusive skills. While success in the “player” role comes from deep expertise in a specific area and from independent performance, the “coach” or leader role is quite different. Success in this role involves a great deal of interdependence. It is predicated on making sure that members of a team work well together and that all members of a team perform to their greatest potential. It is the job of the leader to bring out optimal performance of each individual, and leverage the talents of the group to achieve results greater than each could on their own. That is quite different than one person doing an incredible job on the assignments they are solely responsible for.

 2.     Get them ready for leadership before they are leading. All of us at one time or another have looked at the boss’s job and said, “I can do that.” Of course, we may not have known all that “that” entailed. Give people the chance to take on leadership roles and temporary supervisory opportunities to see how they react. Observe where they do well and where they struggle. When I worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers, it was common to take on the position of acting manager of a single engagement while serving as an associate on all of your other engagements. This practice provided the chance to receive mentoring and guidance as well as to understand the challenges from the inside out, before ever stepping up to the promotion.

 3.     Provide proper development and coaching. “Congratulations on your promotion, now get to work.” Many leaders I have had the chance to work with received an introduction to their new management job that sounded much like that. Even with a lot of familiarity with job content, leadership and management skills need to be honed. That takes developmental experiences, coaching, and time. I have always believed that if you want to know how to lead, ask those who are led. Either through a formal 360 degree instrument or informal conversations, it is important to get feedback on areas of strength and developmental opportunities for a new leader, and provide the training needed to enhance their performance. Any new manager needs some level of coaching support to sustain new skills, and reinforce new behaviors.

 4.     Incentivize leadership behavior, not just team success. Plenty of research has been done to indicate that rewards and recognition, both monetary and non-monetary, play a significant role in getting the behaviors you want out of people. That being the case, be sure you have effective incentives in place to motivate and drive the kind of behavior you need from leaders. Don’t make the mistake of incentivizing only cumulative results of a team—too frequently that will just drive a leader to behave as another team member. Think of the sales manager who steps in and just sells as an individual, or the software team leader who simply steps in and does the programming for a project. Incentivize and recognize the leadership behaviors that make a qualitative difference in performance, as well as quantitative results achieved. Leaders will take notice of what is valued and rewarded.

 5.     Give the space to grow in to the role. I’ve commented before that there is no easy leadership job, and one of the most trying periods for any leader is just after they have been promoted. In addition to the tools and resources that you provide for them, they need, above all, space. Few leaders can be truly excellent right out of the gate, so giving a leader some time to grow into their role is critical. That is not to say that they don’t need to perform effectively from the start, or that you should give someone who is well below standards more chances than necessary. But giving leaders cycles of learning and the chance to continuously improve their abilities is probably the most predictable success factor of all.

What else have you seen work when a star individual contributor is promoted to a leadership position?

Reprinted from Forbes (July 16, 2012)

This podcast is also available as an article: Key Steps To Formulating A Strategy

• Fostering teamwork: Teams thrive when their members are able to express not-always-popular points of view. Use your self-confidence to set a tone that allows other people to speak up.
• Leading change: Constructive change requires bold moves. Be assertive and break through the resistance that often arises during a change effort.
• Acting with integrity: When coupled with honesty, assertiveness gives you the courage to stand up for what you know is right.

Reprinted from Harvard Business Review – Management Tip of the Day (July 3, 2012)

Having just returned from vacation with a very manageable reentry to work, I offer the following angles and protective gear to keep you from burning up as you hit the sometimes cruel atmosphere of Monday morning following your vacation.

1. Clear the decks. At least a week before you ever leave, take steps to ready all your commitments for your absence, so you really can be away while you’re gone. My friend and productivity expert David Allen calls this “having clean edges to your commitments.” This should go without saying but nevertheless let me say it: Let key people know you will be on vacation. Make sure that all your projects are paused or can continue on to the next step without your involvement. And here’s the kicker: Get your e-mail and voice-mail inboxes down to zero messages. I don’t mean everything has to be done (that never happens). Simply that you’ve put all of your messages in some proper place so that they’re ready for action upon your return.
2. Allow yourself to check in. This may sound like it will defeat the purpose of taking a break, but hear me out. I’m not suggesting that you work throughout your vacation, but rather that you check in with the office in a limited and orderly way — say, 30 minutes in the early morning or late evening. Don’t get sucked into anything. Simply do a scan of critical topics, reply with a short e-mail or quick call if need be, and let people know you’ll address the matter as soon as you return. Screening e-mails in this way will make the reentry process so much smoother without taking any substantive time from vacation (though if you’re traveling with children as I do, getting this done a half hour before they awaken or after they go to bed will ensure that you are not “that parent” glued to your smartphone). Sure, some things could potentially arise that occupy your mental shelf space. But that’s probably unavoidable at any rate, if you’re the kind of person who reflects on your professional life or career during some parts of your vacation. At least in this way, you’ll take control over the situation. Taking an occasional brief call during a vacation is easy on your traveling companions if you’re focused and in the moment the rest of the time. As a mentor of mine, Alan Weiss, has always said: You don’t have a work life and a personal life –you have one life. All parts are integrated, especially in today’s environment. Use that to your advantage to make your return that much easier.
3. Unpack from your trip as soon as you get home. Letting your bags linger about creates mental clutter, and adds one more thing you have to do. Unpacking and putting your things away is an important physical step in getting back into a groove and operating smoothly. So unless you are a road warrior and live out of a suitcase, put your stuff away, even if you arrive home in the evening. Then, when you get back home on Monday evening, you can relax.
4. Don’t schedule meetings for the first half day. If you can come back a day early to unpack, get the laundry done, and clean out your e-mail, all the better. But most of us want to extract as much time as possible from a vacation and arrive home on Sunday. So at a minimum, do your best not to schedule any meetings between 8:00 a.m. and noon on your first day back. You’re going to need that time to deal with any emergent situations and simply catch up on the backlog of the prior week.
5. Bring part of your vacation back with you. I’m not talking about souvenirs, though there is absolutely nothing wrong with stuff you buy on vacation. I’m talking about the feeling of being on vacation. If it helps, look at your pictures before or after dinner on your first day back. Talk about the experiences you had with your family, colleagues, and friends, and relive the highlights. I talk with too many leaders within a day or two of their vacations who say “It seems like weeks-ago already since I went away” because they didn’t do anything to cement the experience. You’ll have time for this if you do step number three.
6. Have your next vacation already planned. Or if not entirely planned, at least have the time blocked off on your calendar already. Or at the very least have a sense of where you’re going next and some timetable for doing so. Part of the reentry burn comes from the feeling we have that something good has ended. Take the edge off by giving yourself something to look forward to.

Do these things and, by dinner time of your first day back at work, you can be basking in the afterglow of a great vacation instead of being singed by the afterburn of a bad reentry.

Reprinted from Harvard Business Review – HBR Blog Network (June 27, 2012)

We see this locally as well as business leaders in every sector from medical services to high tech looking for ways to be innovative as a means to growth.  In last year’s Mayoral election each candidate spoke about the importance of innovation as a means to job creation and one of the candidates used the phrase “unleashing innovation” as part of an election campaign.

One of my clients, A Fortune 50 technology services organization, asked me to help them identify the best practices of their leaders who were evaluated to be the most innovative in the organization.  There was only a little bit of discussion about brainstorming, generating ideas, prototyping, and the like—the kind of things most of us think about when we consider institutionalizing innovation.  Instead, this is what I heard most from leaders and their teams.

1.       They have a vision for outcomes

One of most common refrains of team members was that the leader of these teams put a great deal of effort into clearly envisioning and talking about the outcomes in a given scenario, rather than directing how those outcomes would be achieved.  Clearly, one of the ways that innovation is cultivated is by having leaders that make sure everyone involved knows the outcome and strategic goals of any objective and then create opportunities to determine how to get there.

2.      They cultivate reciprocal trust

One of the most striking characteristics observed was the two-way trust between leader and subordinates.  The direct reports often describe their leaders as protectors.   Dozens of times I heard the comment, “he/she covered my back.”  I am using the term “reciprocal trust” in these instances because it was very clear that this was not simply confidence that someone could be counted on to do a good job–there was a much more palpable sense of trust that permeated the relationships.

3.      They challenge the status quo and push back on hierarchy.

These leaders are by no means rebels, but we did hear in many cases that they are “fearless.”  They possess a willingness to take on difficult issues even when it means expressing disagreement with higher levels in the organization.  They are able to disagree, without being disagreeable and do so in a way that cultivates tremendous respect from their colleagues.  One peer in particular used the term “healthy creative tension” when describing the atmosphere of meetings led by the innovator.

4.      They are inspiring and motivate their teams

One staff member I met with said it best, “For innovation to exist you have to feel inspired!”  Based on the research in the book I co-authored, The Inspiring Leader, (McGraw Hill 2009) I was not shocked to hear so many comments related to this topic, because the most of the data indicates that no other leadership competency influences productivity and engagement more profoundly.

5.      They establish stretch goals  

There is not much need to innovate if the goal is easy to achieve.  Another trend that emerged was that these leaders set stretch goals that were very difficult to achieve.  The goals set within these innovative groups went far beyond working harder to achieve incremental progress; they required entirely new approaches in order for the goal to be achieved.  

Steve Jobs will continue to be remembered and recognized as an exemplar for innovation and deservedly so.  No one has done it better.  Yet for most leaders, the challenge to create a culture where innovation thrives has many factors that are at first glance, not always directly about innovation as you can tell from my findings.  They comprise some of the straightforward elements of great leadership and an indirect path toward creating an organization where innovation thrives.  That has exponentially more value than having one or even a few people who are “the innovative ones.”   If you can do these things well, then who knows where your next great idea will come from?

Reprinted from the Tampa Bay Business Journal (June 15, 2012)

http://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/print-edition/2012/06/15/creating-a-culture-of-innovation.html

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Some people handle these setbacks well. Others not so well. In my work, I’ve observed several common themes among those leaders who tend to cope particularly effectively with the inescapable.

Acknowledge the failure and put it in perspective. You can’t begin to bounce back from a mistake if you don’t admit you’ve made it. As obvious as it sounds, it’s clearly not always easy to do. Research shows that owning up to their mistakes is the key factor separating those who handle failure well from those who don’t. Those who were derailed perseverated and didn’t talk to others about it. They made little attempt to rectify the consequences. Those who weren’t derailed did the opposite: They admitted their mistakes, accepted responsibility, and then took steps to fix the problem. And afterwards, they proceeded to forget about it and move on.

Look for causes, not blame. If you’ve caused a problem, the good news is that you have control over that cause. By focusing on finding the cause(s), rather than assigning blame (with all the value judgments that go with that), you take control and move to prevent similar failures from happening again. Thinking in terms of causes rather than blame is similar to adopting what Carol Dweck describes as a “growth-oriented” rather than a “fixed” mind-set. A fixed mind-set tends to leave us helpless and ready to wilt in the face of a challenge. A growth mind-set puts us in a position to press on toward success.

Before you wrack your brain to think up an appropriate response, take a break. Get away from the task at hand for a while and let your brain refocus. None of us is designed to work 24/7, but in the wake of failure, it’s often hard to stop thinking about what’s happened. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, this is probably the last thing you should do. Engage in other pursuits. Spend time with loved ones, read, or simply get some rest. Physical activity is a plus (we’re all familiar with the effects of endorphins on brain activity). It doesn’t matter how long of a break you take: five minutes, five hours, five days. The point is to let your mind wander. You’ll be amazed at what you come up with.

Get some help. Feeling down is normal. Prolonged periods of depression and despair are not. If you find you can’t get into that growth-oriented mind-set no matter how much of a break you take, find some way to express your feelings in the company of someone you trust. That could be a friend, a colleague, a mentor, or a therapist. There’s no shame in seeking help when you’ve suffered a setback. And therapy no longer carries the stigma of being damaged that it used to. To prove that, I’ll admit here that I’ve gone to therapy at times in my life when I’ve felt particularly down, and it has helped immensely. See, no stigma.

Refocus your efforts and take action. Nothing will make you feel quite as good as taking action and finding even a modicum of success in that action. It may take some time to reach that success, but you certainly won’t have any until you start trying. One of the ways we feel better is to exert influence and control over a situation, and creating a plan of the actions we intend to take is a surefire way to start feeling that control. Create your plan and get specific about what you’ll do to reach your new goals. While you can’t change what’s happened, you have options for the future, and as you refocus your efforts, think about what would be best from this point forward.

No matter how you dice it, failing is a drag, and none of us likes it. Yet we all have to face it sometime. If you prepare yourself, and know how you will deal with it when you do fail, you’ll be able to bounce back that much faster.

Reprinted from Harvard Business Review – HBR Blog Network (June 4, 2012)

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In the spirit of

You’ve likely seen reverse leadership in action. It happens when someone not in a formal leadership role demonstrates great leadership ability: when a field service agent steps up with a solution to a persistent problem, for example; when a customer service rep inspires her colleagues through her exemplary customer-centric behavior. When someone on an account team improves dramatically after being constructively coached by a fellow team member.

Reverse leadership doesn’t replace regular leadership. Nor is it a sign that the official leaders in an organization are doing a bad job. Quite the contrary. Rarely does strong leadership ability show up at lower levels in the hierarchy if senior leaders aren’t very effective in their roles.

Some reverse leaders are people quite content to remain individual contributors, like the scientist who has no interest in managing a team but cares deeply about the company’s mission. Others are young employees just approaching or on the first rungs of the formal leadership track. Still others have some leadership abilities but lack some vital element of leadership, like the sales professional who excels in creating strategy but doesn’t yet have the skills needed to manage a sales team.

In my work with focus groups, interviews with leaders, and reviews of frontline employees’ performance appraisals, I’m seeing more and more of these reverse leaders. But I’m not seeing many organizations able to recognize them — or cultivate their talents to gain a competitive advantage. What are the characteristics you should be looking for to spot your reverse leaders?

1. They’re the ones with strong interpersonal skills born of self-awareness. Reverse leaders lead through influence, not authority, and they gain that influence by making strong interpersonal connections. To do that they must be self-aware enough to understand the effect their words and actions have on other people. As more and more knowledge work requires people to work effectively with peers, the example of the way these people treat their team members becomes increasingly important to organizational effectiveness for all leaders, formal and informal.
2. They focus more on results than on process. Anyone can follow the process, as the old saying goes, but it takes leadership to know when to break from it. Reverse leaders don’t break rules simply to be rebellious. They break them because they’re focused on the outcomes rather than the process for producing outcomes. In this regard, reverse leaders can be particularly helpful to savvy leaders in formal positions who are wise enough to encourage their reverse leaders to point out when means are being prioritized over ends — and then to listen to them when they suggest ways to address the issue.
3. They exhibit particularly high degrees of integrity. To lead by example requires integrity of character. People who have a choice would rather follow those who say the same thing up the chain as they do with their peers, those who are consistent in their approach in dealing with problems in different circumstances. While this is essential to reverse leaders, it’s an important model for all leaders, regardless of where their authority comes from.
4. They have deep professional expertise in at least one discipline vital to the organization. Whether that deep knowledge is in sales, products, finance, technology, or some area that creates important value for the organization, reverse leaders need to have a specialty. This expertise serves as a source for their authority, giving them the credibility to be taken seriously when they highlight unrecognized problems or propose unanticipated solutions.
5. They maintain an unswerving customer focus. Maintaining a focus on the customer is one way to lead by positive example, and an advantage reverse leaders may have over formal leaders, since they tend to be found further down the organization and by extension closer to the customer. Reverse leaders can be the exemplars of customer-focused behaviors in ways that leaders in formal roles — with their broader responsibilities — can’t. And such focus can have tremendous value to any organization, if properly recognized and encouraged.

Some of these reverse leaders will move up the ladder and progress, as we would expect. Others will need to wait until they develop additional skills. And others will be content to contribute right where they are. But organizations that can recognize them, cultivate them, and learn from their example will be a step ahead of those competitors that don’t and instead squander the services of the unrecognized talent in their midst.

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First of all, in most cases, its members are spread out physically all over the place, since sellers tend to stay close to customers, not to headquarters. Not being all together makes substantive interactions among members and between staff and leader difficult.

Second, there’s no standard educational path, or shared body of knowledge, for sales professionals. Accounting leaders can look to the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Manufacturing leaders can look to Six Sigma and other well-defined processes. Human Resource practice is bound by regulations and case law stipulating what is acceptable and what is not. But sales professionals have, well, the experience of other sales professionals and a lot of books to choose from in the marketplace. Few of them have university degrees in sales, since so few institutions of higher learning even offer one. They come to the job with backgrounds in everything from philosophy to physics, each with its own outlook and ways of thinking. That makes training part art, part science, and all on the job.

Finally sales professionals tend to be prima donnas. I’m not saying that’s bad, particularly (I’ve spent a large part of my career leading sales organizations), but if you’ve worked with sales professionals, you’ll recognize the pattern of their typical strengths. They have a tendency to challenge authority. They’re very driven toward results, and they have strong preferences for how those results are achieved. And of course more often than not, they have extravert personalities.

I’ve had the luxury during the last decade to work with many great sales leaders, and the best of them tend to share a common set of traits and practices. In no particular order, this is what marks them out:

• They lead with metrics. Everyone knows that the ultimate measures of success in sales are revenue and profit. But while critical, they are lagging indicators. The best sales leaders focus on leading indicators, as well — metrics like “key milestones in a long sales process” and “increases in the value of a pipeline,” which are predictive of success or failure while there’s still time to adjust. When your interactions with your staff are limited, few things are more powerful than having the right balance of both of these kinds of metrics.
• They coach and develop talent. Coaching has been in vogue for a number of years, but it’s particularly critical for people learning most of their job on the job. That means that sales leaders need to put a premium on developing the capabilities of their staff. Gallup research indicates that having the right manager can improve a seller’s performance by 20%. Too many sales leaders are promoted because they were great at selling but then fail to devote enough attention to teaching their staffs to do what they (used to) do. But the best sales leaders make coaching a priority. After all, even prima donnas want to improve their craft, be more successful, and earn more.
• They provide strategic guidance. I have rarely seen a competitive strategy that did not look terrific in a PowerPoint presentation in a boardroom or conference center. But I’ve also rarely seen such strategies translated into specific actions for the members of a sales team. It is up to the sales leader to make it clear how their teams are expected to implement those plans so that the strategy is carried out effectively.
• They keep the focus on value creation. I’m not talking about the value of the company’s offerings; I’m talking about the value created by sellers in the selling process. Sales leaders must continually draw the focus of their teams away from simply discussing features and functions and toward the value they can create by helping clients define their needs, establish success measures, and meet their objectives with the company’s products and services. When a sales staff guides customers to see needs they hadn’t considered, helps them understand the impact of those needs, and introduces them to solutions or configurations they were unaware of, the chances for differentiation are far greater. And so is the likelihood that your company will earn the clients’ business.

I don’t want to imply, of course, that just because leading sales is hard other leadership jobs are easy. I doubt there’s an easy leadership job anywhere. But if there are few schools that teach sales, there are even fewer (are there any?) that teach sales leadership — it’s entirely learned as you go along, while the top line of the company is resting on your organization. But, no pressure….

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Assertiveness gets a bad rap when people equate it with being pushy and annoying. But that shouldn’t stop you from learning to apply it productively (that is — in service to your strengths). More harm is done when people aren’t assertive enough than by being too assertive. At least you know what pushy people think, but those who don’t assert themselves can be keeping vital ideas hidden and useless when they don’t speak up or speak too softly. So I’d assert that when you are able to balance this critical skill with your other leadership abilities, you greatly amplify your power and impact.

Here are some specific ways in which assertiveness complements a wide range of the critical leadership skills you may already have:

• Creating a culture of innovation: A couple of years ago I conducted a study to determine the characteristics of the most innovative leaders in one of the largest companies in the world. One of their most powerful traits, their peers and direct reports told me, was their ability to push back on the hierarchy. These leaders were by no means rebels; rather, they were perceived to be fearless. Coupling assertiveness with their ability to foster innovation enabled them to take on difficult issues — to fight for resources for new projects or openly disagree with more senior managers about policy changes that could have severe unintended consequences. Being challenged required people to think more deeply to justify a course of action, which frequently produced much better ideas.

• Being customer focused: We typically think of service or business development professionals as being good at, and focused on, building relationships. But the most successful sales professionals, as Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson point out in their blog and their book, The Challenger Sale, are not the ones who build relationships. They’re the ones who push back, challenging their clients to see problems they hadn’t anticipated. Essentially, Dixon and Adamson’s research finds, assertiveness creates more value for clients than conciliatory relationship building does.

• Fostering teamwork and collaboration: It might seem like assertiveness has little to do with the skills you need to be a team player. But teams thrive when their members are able to express their not-always-popular points of view. Excellent team players (who generally are already inclusive and able to defer to others) would improve considerably by learning when to assert such views. And team leaders who are assertive in creating a safe environment for less-popular opinions will make their teams all the stronger by increasing all team members’ ability to participate fully.

• Leading change: Constructive change rarely happens passively. Change requires the leaders to challenge the status quo and find new ways of doing things to further organizational goals. It’s nearly impossible to lead change without some measure of assertiveness because in most cases, even when change is generally viewed as positive, some kind of resistance still needs to be addressed.

• Acting with integrity: There are plenty of highly principled people who are too timid to speak up in meetings — to question a decision that appears to violate a corporate value or is otherwise not in the best interests of the organization. Assertiveness doesn’t cause honesty or vice-versa, but when the two operate together they give people the courage not only to know what is right but to stand up for it as well.

• Creating a safe environment: This might seem self-evident — there are times when it’s vital to speak up in the face of danger. And yet there are so many times when people don’t, even in cases of life and death. The National Transportation Safety Board, for instance, has traced the cause of some plane crashes to co-pilots who were so deferential to their pilot in an emergency that they made suggestions too subtly. While most of us are not faced with life or death decisions each day, plenty of leaders are responsible for the safety of those they lead.

• Communicating effectively: Assertiveness adds power and conviction to a message and enables a leader’s voice to be heard. You can clearly tell the difference between a message communicated with passion and vigor as a leader asserts his or her point of view and one that lacks the energy of conviction. Assertive leaders also tend to communicate more often, as their passion leads them to capitalize on every opportunity they can find to deliver a message.

Many leaders (though certainly not all) struggle with being assertive enough, whether through self-doubt, a lack of confidence, a fear of not being liked, or a host of other reasons. Most people who know me personally would probably say that I possess a reasonably strong level of assertiveness. Yet there are times (like when I’m with people whom I admire or whose opinion is particularly important to me) that I become relatively timid and less likely to assert my point of view. Ironically, when I review those situations, I recognize that they may be some of the most important times for me to speak up.

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As part of the process, I was using a 360-degree feedback instrument to provide insights on the strengths of each leader, which in this context provided something of a cross-cultural view into how employees feel about their leaders’ effectiveness. I was surprised to find that, in the aggregate, leaders in the East outperformed leaders from the West in every category of the assessment — which is to say, the Chinese participants judged their bosses better than their Western counterparts did at focusing on results, communicating, innovating, building relationships, employing technical expertise, and a host of other leadership abilities. That was surprising because when I’ve conducted a similar (though to be fair, not exact,) analysis with our broader database of companies and employees, Western leaders outpaced their Eastern counterparts. What to make of these seemingly contradictory results?

As I rested sore legs from hiking The Great Wall, I gave this a lot of thought. Several people have suggested to me that perhaps the Eastern responders to the 360 survey were not as candid as their Western colleagues or that they were more concerned about the possibility of retribution should they give low ratings. But the scores in most cases were very close — in some measures only a difference of two hundredths of a percent. If either of these possibilities were the case, I’d expect the differences to be far greater. And there was a third party managing the 360 process so the feedback was anonymous and about as protected as one can get.

So perhaps there are other reasons. Joe Folkman, one of the world’s leading psychometricians, suggested to me that maybe superior recruiting in Eastern markets was what made the difference. The company is very popular in Asia — kind of like working for Google in the U.S. So it may be that the company attracts superior talent in the Asian markets. Or the Chinese leaders’ scores might be higher for the same reason that women tend to score higher on 360s than men the world over: Because they frequently feel they need to be seen to be working harder. Being perceived to work hard often contributes to strong leadership scores, since it’s viewed as a sign of commitment.

There are other factors to consider as well — time in a job (the longer people work together the higher they tend to score their leaders, provided leaders don’t get complacent), the success of a unit (successful units tend to view their leaders as successful), and so forth. And of course, this is just one organization.

But, then, an entirely different thought came to me. What if I was asking the wrong question? What if the important thing wasn’t which group scored better but the fact that the scores were so close? Granted that Western leadership skills were at one time considered superior, what if that advantage, perceived or real, no longer exists? From atop the Wall, it looked to me like the similarities mattered far more than the differences. In fact, the list of commonalities was long. Here are just a few:

1. The direct reports of both groups felt that the ability to inspire and motivate was a critical attribute of great leaders in general — and something they all wanted from their own. In all my work, inspiring and motivating is the attribute most strongly associated with the highest leadership scores (and the best company performance). The world over, I would argue, everyone prefers leaders who bring out the best in us and inspire us to be better than we ever thought we could be on our own.

2. The leadership attribute managers in both groups valued most, though, was the drive for results. Isn’t that just like a senior executive — Just get the job done! Leaders always have to produce results no matter where in the world they are, of course — that’s the point of leading. But I’d say that when leaders, East or West, can combine their focus on results with an ability to inspire, they have the magic bullet for managing up and down the organization.

3. Both groups were equally interested in improving their own leadership skills. No complacency here, despite what so many leaders of change initiatives might have you believe. No matter their background, few people show up to work each day intending to do a lousy job. Most want to do good work and to feel good about the work they are doing. When leaders can harness that natural inclination and cultivate it, it becomes passion, which can make all the difference in performance.

4. Nearly everyone who had done some kind of leadership development in the last two years had been focused on remediation of some weakness area. The world over, no matter what culture we grow up in, it seems we are inexorably drawn to fixing our weaknesses when we think of making improvements. While I can easily show you why raising the bar and building on strength is a far more valuable route, nowhere is that intuitively obvious, it would appear.

5. When it came to developing a strength, the initial reaction from both groups was to do more of the same. That works to a point but, as I have previously discussed, there is great power in developing different but complementary skills that can magnify our strengths. And yet, despite Eastern Yin Yang traditions, using complementary skills to make a strength more effective was no more obvious to the Chinese participants than it was to their Western colleagues.

I’m not saying that cultural differences don’t exist or don’t matter (I really did not enjoy the jelly fish or Yak tendons that I ate, for instance). The client kept focusing on them, as well. But in the end perhaps this matters more: We are more similar, even as leaders, than we had ever thought.

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Have you, for instance, vowed to get more exercise and eat less this year to become physically fitter? I wouldn’t be surprised if many of your other resolutions came in pairs as well: engaging more in acts of service and kindness for spirituality; pursuing new hobbies and carving out more family time for renewal; and reading more and watching less TV for intellectual growth. We choose more than one way to reach our goals because we intuitively understand that the interaction between different approaches will give us a greater chance of success. The same is true with leadership resolutions.

Say your goal is to improve your technical expertise so that you can contribute to a product development initiative. Just reading or learning about more technical ideas isn’t nearly as effective as combining your new technical knowledge with improved communication skills. Improving your ability to communicate won’t make you more technically savvy but it can help you bring those technical ideas to life and to share them with peers.

If that sounds unlikely, in many ways, that’s the point. If you think about it, there’s no necessary or obvious relationship between diet and exercise — or between running and weight training, a common cross-training combination But they work better together than alone to improve overall fitness and conditioning. The same is true in developing your leadership skills. Some skills are particularly powerful magnifiers of other leadership skills.

Which combinations are most powerful? Ultimately, the answer is “that depends.” You won’t shore up a weakness by bolstering it with another. So you have to start with yourself — with your own particular strengths. Still, if you’re looking to bolster a strength, some combinations work far, far better than others. Here’s a list of some of the most powerful pairs I’ve seen, both in research with Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman, as well as in practice:

1. If you want to become even more effective in reaching stretch goals, work on your ability to inspire and motivate others: Inspiring and motivating is itself the most powerful competency for extraordinary leaders. When people are inspired and motivated to achieve a result that seems beyond their grasp, the likelihood of achieving that stretch goal is far greater.

2. If you want to take your ability to think strategically to new heights, work on your communication skills: Do you know of any organizations with a good strategy that no one really understands? Or worse, one with a great strategy that no one knows about? Neither do I.

3. Make more of your ability to be customer focused by becoming more proficient in connecting your group to the outside: Exposure to varied experiences, new metaphors, and different ways of thinking helps you conceive of additional applications for your company’s offerings that may help you chart a more effective strategic plan.

4. Take your ability to solve problems further by strengthening your approach to fostering diversity and inclusion. Leaders who can understand the experience of different parties can make more-informed decisions.

5. If you want to become even more effective an innovator, work on your ability to champion change: There’s not as much value in innovation when the objective is to maintain the status quo. Put these two together and you have a recipe for great ideas that propel organizations in a new direction.

6. Make your natural process orientation more effective by improving your interpersonal skills: If you can infuse your quest to implement efficiencies with higher levels of commitment from your staff, you will raise the likelihood that people will actually stick to those processes and make them work.

7. Bolster your efforts to create a safe environment by learning to be more assertive: Safety continues to be a top priority for many organizations. Safety-conscious leaders who learn to be more assertive will have the courage to speak up or push back when they need to in order to keep people safe.

You may have noticed that many of these pairs combine some kind of technical expertise with an interpersonal skill. That’s not a coincidence. It frequently is our interpersonal skills that allow our more technical abilities to spring to life. And since January 1st has just past, now might be the perfect time to consider what leadership combinations will help you achieve your 2012 goals.

Reprinted from Harvard Business Review – Management Tip of the Day (December 7, 2011)

“To create a reliable 360 survey,” Marcus Buckingham concludes in his recent blog on this site, “The Fatal Flaws With 360 Surveys,” all you need do is…ask the rater to evaluate himself on his own feelings.” Since you are an expert on your own feelings, your responses have to be solid.

That seems logical, and yet I could not disagree more with this conclusion. In an effort to give equal time to the other side of the story, and to clarify some misconceptions, let me share with you the reasons why not getting 360-degree feedback may actually be fatal. (But here’s hoping that in the course of this debate there are no fatalities.)

Leadership effectiveness is in the eye of those who are led. “Rate me on ‘Marcus is a good listener’ and we learn whether I am a better listener than you,” Buckingham writes. But in my work with Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman analyzing the 360-degree feedback from tens of thousands of leaders, that’s not been our experience. What we find is: ask me to rate “Marcus is a good listener,” and we discover whether I think Marcus is listening to me. That’s certainly not objective data. But it doesn’t have to be. If Marcus is my boss and I think he’s not listening to me, that certainly plays into how effective he is as a leader, no matter how subjective my judgment is.

Subjective 360 data can correlate to objective business results. What I think about my boss wouldn’t matter if it had no relation to business success. But our analysis of the data from those thousands of 360s shows that it does, empirically. We have correlated the leadership-effectiveness scores we’ve collected with a variety of business outcomes — profitability, turnover, employee engagement, customer satisfaction — you name it, we probably studied it. What we’ve seen is that 360 data are an incredibly reliable measure of business success, frequently showing a lock-step correlation between the effectiveness of a company’s leaders, as measured by those subjective 360s, and the company’s objective business results.

You don’t have to be great at everything. “Most 360s are built on a logical non-sequitur,” Buckingham suggests, “namely that since a particular group of exemplary leaders possesses all the competencies measured by the 360, therefore the best individual leader is she who possesses all of them.” I agree that’s a non-sequitur, and that would be a problem if you used the full range of leadership skills on the assessment as a one-size-fits-all definition of the perfect leader. But our research suggests that’s not necessary at all, even if it were possible. When we analyze the most effective leaders in the world, we find that the truly extraordinary ones need only excel at a relatively small number of competencies — three to five. For us, the purpose of taking the 360 is not to see which leadership skills you lack so you can complete the set. Rather, it’s to find your best self — that is, the particular leadership skills you should focus on to become uniquely extraordinary.

You are not the best judge of you. Several years ago, while working on my first project with Joe Folkman, I asked him what was the most interesting finding he’d seen in his years of studying 360s. He responded, with a wry smile, “The average leaders don’t think they are.” Thus we, too, find leaders subject to “benevolent distortion.” But we don’t find it that benevolent. Our data show not just a gap — but something closer to a canyon — between people’s perceptions of themselves and how other people see them. “How could that be?” you might ask: After all, you are the only one there for everything! No doubt. And yet, our data tell us that you are a notoriously bad predictor of your own leadership abilities because it is so difficult to consistently know what impact you are having on others. In that regard, other people are experts at knowing how they feel about your effect on them. Ironically, we find, the best leaders in our database frequently rate their performance lower than their peers, bosses, and direct reports. From the perspective of inner strength and psychological health, it’s terrific to have confidence in your own views and convictions. But when considering your strength as a leader, doing so in isolation is, from where we sit, downright, fatal.

I’ll be the first to agree that a 360 assessment is no panacea and that the tool can be over-, miss-, and incorrectly used. But in my experience, there’s simply no substitute for getting feedback from the people who are the most influenced and affected by your actions, talents, and skills. Applied creatively, a 360-degree feedback process can be an incredibly powerful tool to help you identify your strengths, grant you insight into how you can make them even more effective, and alert you to any behavior that might be severely detracting from your effectiveness. Are the 360 data objective? No. But even so they can help leaders create an objective, personal plan of development. And they’re certainly more effective than just asking yourself.

But about 20% of the time, I encounter a person whose flaws are so deep that no strengths can make up for them.

I’m not talking about run-of-the-mill, we’re-all-human, flaws. These are fatal, career-ending flaws. I have, for instance, seen individuals squander extraordinary technical strengths because of a complete inability to communicate their expertise to anyone. I have seen people who have rendered moot an outstanding ability to deliver results and solve problems because they focus entirely on details and utterly fail to develop a strategic perspective. I have known brilliant innovators crippled because their people don’t trust them.

This sounds dire — and it is, if unaddressed. But fixing flaws is a simpler matter than capitalizing on strengths. It may be too lofty to say you can turn so significant a problem area into a strong suit, but in most cases I’ve observed, a fatal flaw can be defused. And the path could not be more straightforward.

It’s so simple, in fact, that we can take a page from my favorite Seinfeld character, George Costanza, a man with hilarious and obvious fatal flaws. In one particular episode, while reflecting on his many failures in life, George has a moment of poignant self-awareness and says to Jerry, Elaine, and Kramer, “It became very clear to me sitting out there today that every decision I’ve ever made in my entire life has been wrong. My life is the opposite of everything I want it to be. Every instinct I have, in every part of my life, be it something to wear, something to eat…. It’s all been wrong.” So George sets out to do the opposite of what he’d normally do at every turn. And what happens? He gets a great job with the New York Yankees. He finds that women are suddenly attracted to him. All of his fortunes are reversed.

This is not quite as far-fetched as it seems. The answer to addressing fatal flaws really is to do what George did — the opposite of what you’d normally do. But if the path is simple, mustering the will to follow through consistently often is not. Like a novice first starting to train as a runner, you will get better by simply going from being sedentary to starting to run, and then running longer and longer distances — but only if you do keep running longer and longer distances. And even so, you won’t win any marathons that way. You won’t become a champion, but you can go from bad to pretty good, which is all that’s required on the path to becoming an outstanding leader.

Here are some specific examples of “doing the opposite” for some of the most common fatal flaws I’ve encountered with leaders. If your fatal flaw is…..
• Listening effectively: Stop talking and pay attention to what others are saying
• Integrity: Do what you said you would do and don’t make promises you can’t or won’t keep
• Interpersonal skills and relationships: Stop thinking just about tasks and outcomes and start focusing on your effect on others
• Strategic perspective: Stop thinking about immediate concerns and consider the long-term implications of your decisions
• Collaboration and teamwork: Focus less on yourself and your team and more on your division and the needs of the organization.

These are broad examples, but you get the idea. Identify exactly what you’re doing that’s unacceptable and do the opposite. That won’t make you a superstar in those areas, but you don’t have to be. The idea is to reach the point where your weaknesses are not so glaring that they can’t be outshined by your strengths.

When fatal flaws have been addressed, then you can turn to developing your unique strengths, but not a moment sooner. Because until then, it simply won’t matter.

When you brought your report card home in high school did your parents:

A) zero in on the C’s and say, “What’s the matter here?”

B) focus the A-minuses, pat you on the back, and say, “Great job, now let’s push these up to A’s”?

If you’re typical of the high-potential leaders I work with, you experienced A. And I suspect that wasn’t only your parent’s reaction, it was yours as well — and not just for your report cards but for your performance reviews. And why not? The point of a progress report is to point out where you need to make progress. And certainly that means shoring up your weaknesses, doesn’t it?

Not if you want to be an extraordinary leader. As humans we all have our inherent weaknesses. But leadership-development research we’ve conducted with data from thousands of executives from all over the world points unmistakably to the conclusion that it’s the presence of a few truly profound areas of strength that distinguishes us in an organization — the things you’re so good at that people forgive (or don’t even think about) your weaknesses.

The importance of strengths is hardly a new idea. Peter Drucker was writing about it nearly 50 years ago, and over the last decade it has come back in vogue. Yet the practical application of that idea remains elusive. How do you get better at what you’re already good at?

Improving weaknesses is intuitive and straightforward. To display greater honesty or integrity, for instance, is a matter of following through on commitments, leading by example, demonstrating ethical resolve in adverse circumstances. Developing weak technical skills is a matter of attending training classes, reading relevant publications, taking on job assignments in which you can hone your expertise, and so on. But what if you’re already strong in these areas? Taking more classes won’t really help someone who is already a tech wiz become an extraordinary leader. And what should an honest person do: act more honestly?

Creating any profound leadership strength requires a more thoughtful approach. At a very broad level, here are three principles to focus on as you work to develop strengths:

1. Developing strengths requires a different approach than fixing weaknesses. We analyzed tens of thousands of leaders to determine which strengths set them apart as leaders, and what we found is that leadership behaviors and competencies tend to cluster together in consistent patterns. Extraordinary leaders with strong technical skills are frequently also good at developing others, building relationships, and communicating powerfully, for instance. Extraordinary leaders known for exceptional integrity also tend to be decisive, assertive, and optimistic. While assertiveness doesn’t make you more honest, it can magnify that trait. That’s called an interaction effect. In the same way that Michael Phelps might improve as a swimmer, not through swimming more laps but by developing complementary strengths such as weight training, running, and other cross-training activities, people can improve leadership strengths by straightforward development of strongly correlated companion skills and behaviors.
2. It works because it follows your interests. Working on weaknesses is a drag. It’s drudgery bordering on misery to move from slightly below average to slightly above. One of my weaker areas of leadership has always been finance. Over the last decade I’ve put a great deal of painful effort into moving from below average in this area to reasonable competence. Reasonable I say, because while it’s no longer a problem area for me, it will likely never be an area of strength either, and I work with many colleagues who run circles around me in this regard and always will. I find great enjoyment, on the other hand, in creating strategy, developing our clients and others on my team, putting teams on the right track, and leading growth. These happen to be among my strongest areas of performance.
3. Don’t worry about too much of a good thing. Have you ever worked with a leader who possessed too much character? Was too strategic? Overly effective in interpersonal relationships? I doubt it. There are times when leaders can become one-dimensional in their application of a strength area — driving so hard for a result, for instance, that they fail to consider their impact on others. But that failing is not a result of overly developing a strength. It’s a lack of attention to related leadership characteristics. The answer is not to reduce focus on results but rather to increase attention to companion skills like giving clear feedback, developing the talents of direct reports, and providing recognition. To return to Michael Phelps, no one would suggest he stop trying to improve as a swimmer, just that he won’t get there merely by doing more and more laps.

Of course, there are times to work on weaknesses when they really get in your way. I’m not against that at all. It’s why I still take an occasional finance course. But if you really want to make a difference to your company, it’s your strengths that will lead the way. Give them the attention they deserve.