Coaching Tip: The Leadership Blog

Leadership Unchained: Defy Conventional Wisdom for Breakthrough Performance

Sara Canaday: Leadership Unchained: Defy Conventional Wisdom for Breakthrough Performance

What if the leadership practices we've worked so hard to master are now getting in the way? In fact, what if they are actually holding us down and preventing us from leading for growth and innovation? Forget "what if." It's happening.

So what's the solution?

Unfortunately, it's not as simple as throwing out the old competencies and learning new ones. It's about recognizing which approach will maximize our performance in a particular situation.

We need to develop the insights to know when to follow the conventional leadership rules that still work---and when to defiantly break them.

Scaling Leadership

How do senior leaders, in their own words, describe the most effective leaders--the ones that get results, grow the business, enhance the culture, and leave in their wake a trail of other really effective leaders?

After surveying more than one million leaders worldwide, co-authors Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams have drawn on their research to define leadership that works, in their upcoming book SCALING LEADERSHIP.

Analyzing over 1,350 pages of written comments about leaders' strengths, skills, and challenges, Anderson and Adams' research team sorted the data into 77 categories of the most commonly mentioned themes comprised of 40 leadership strengths and 37 leadership liabilities.

With decades of experience enhancing leadership skills with clients ranging from Fortune 100, multi-national corporations to fast growth start-ups, the authors provide an innovative and efficient framework to help leaders.

Scaling Leadership: Building Organizational Capability and Capacity to Create Outcomes that Matter Most   

 Robert J. Anderson

Hidden Brilliance

"I can't go back to yesterday - because I was a different person then."  Lewis Carroll

We grow in tiny bursts of new awareness that push us forward until the next lesson comes along.  If we miss or ignore these lessons, we don't get to pass GO or collect $200.  We get the lesson served back to us by the universe until we master that level.

As you gain new awareness about yourself and how you placed inordinate value on accomplishment, you have a big "A-ha!" moment at first discovery.  But following that took many reminders of the same new idea as you adjusted to the new rule you were trying to create for yourself.

Those critical, tangible steps that you have taken to remain close to this new mindset, allow yourself the permission to not worry about "what if" for future days.

As you act, as if the things you really want to achieve were already happening, they do. 

Honor this new mindset, while acting accordingly, and true alignment will begin to matter most for you. 

Source:  Katie Rasoul: Hidden Brilliance: A High-Achieving Introvert's Guide to Self-Discovery, Leadership and Playing Big

Leadership Starts at the Bottom

When low can't go lower, eventually you hit a bottom, and bottoms, personally and professionally, are profoundly important.

Everything gets rearranged at the bottom: your hopes, your dreams, your memories, and most importantly, your ego. 

As lonely as the bottom is, you are not alone. 

You are with your two wolves. 

In the depths of the bottom, your truest nature, with all its complexities and contradictions, is revealed and you are left to grapple with yourself.

It's at this absolute bottom where you learn who you really are, and what you're truly made of.

Source:  Bill Treasurer: The Leadership Killer: Reclaiming Humility in an Age of Arrogance

 

 

 

 

Leadership Skills that Inspire!

Over his four decades focusing on high-level executives, Fred Halstead has come to recognize and understand the distinguishing traits of high-performing leaders.

In "Leadership Skills that Inspire Incredible Results", Halstead emphasizes the power and payoff of sharpening fundamental leadership abilities, including:

• Listening actively
• Asking more on-target
• Inspiring others
• Delegating wisely
• Developing a culture of accountability

"Leaders who truly want others to succeed are the ones who achieve the greatest personal success," Halstead notes.

Great listening leads to great questions. Great questions yield great thinking.  Great thinking leads to great solutions. 

Great solutions lead to higher performance and people inspired to achieve their best. 

The idea is to help others go from "I don't get it" to "I got it!"  

"I now think I have the best solutions, the timeline, and the ability to lead the execution of the plan." 

You will, as a result of your questions, guide them to expand their thinking and achieve what you believe is the best solution and timeline.

Leadership Skills that Inspire Incredible Results  Paperback by Fred Halstead (Author)

The Leadership Lab

Leaders schooled in rational, left-brained thinking need to adapt to changing political, social and technological forces.

This requires not only the ability to drill down into details, but to look across the horizon and make right-brained connections, say leadership experts Chris Lewis and Pippa Malmgren in The Leadership Lab: Understanding Leadership in the 21st Century.

Based on consultations and interviews with hundreds of global leaders from business and government, and highlighted with the authors' insights and thought leadership; the book holds that today's leaders need to develop 'situational fluency' with the technical, cultural, economic and geopolitical world in which they work.

Real leadership combines both logic and emotion, both short and long-term thinking.  There is a clear pattern to change and leaders can no longer lead by analyzing and trying to connect the dots separately.  They must learn to join them together.

"We can no longer analyze our way out of problems."

The Leadership Lab points out the dangers of over-reliance on analysis and extrapolation based on historic data.  It proposes a cyclical rather than linear model, which calls for less prediction of one outcome and greater preparation for many outcomes.  It highlights the importance of imagination to plan for contingencies and crises.

   Chris Lewis: The Leadership Lab: Understanding Leadership in the 21st Century (Kogan Page Inspire)

Moon Walkers

Damien Chazelle stood face to face with a chunk of the moon.  

The triangular moon rock was held in a vise, under glass: chicken-nugget-size and light gray, with glimmering specks of crystal. "That's really cool, Chazelle said, leaning in. 

He was in town to talk about his new film, "First Man," about Neil Armstrong's voyage to the moon.

He scanned an informational placard, which said that the rock was basalt, formed by cooling lava more than three billion years ago, and that it had been retrieved on August 1, 1971, by the Apollo 15 astronauts James Irwin and David Scott.  "Dave Scott--he flew with Neil Armstrong on Gemini 8," Chazelle said.

Chazelle went with an ashy monochrome, shooting his moon landing at a quarry outside Atlanta.  Astronaut Charles Duke's voice can be heard in "First Man"--in 1969, he was the guy communicating with the Apollo 11 astronauts from Mission Control. 

The night was overcast, the half-moon hidden: "I just find myself looking at it  more", Chazelle said, on the sidewalk.  "Or looking for it more. It's so beautiful.  Speaking of things we take for granted. It's not just the fact that people walked on the moon--it's the moon itself."

Written by Michael Schulman of THE NEW YORKER, October 22, 2018

Manager's Answer Book

Writing a book is a journey throughout our careers, where we have encountered situations and had experiences that have now been incorporated into the "The Manager's Answer Book".

There is always something new to learn in your work to become the best manager possible. 

For example, you're on the right track to see what can be done to maximize the time spent in meetings because they're a fact of life in today's collaborative workplaces.

Here are some ideas for making meetings more efficient and productive:

*Develop ground rules, such as, "Everyone has an equal voice in meetings."

*Invite the right people to your meeting.

*Always have an agenda and assign times to each topic.

*Assign a note-taker to write and share the minutes within an agreed upon time.

*Try some new meeting formats.

With a few changes like these, your organization can maximize the time spent in meetings...so give it a try.

Source:  The Manager's Answer Book: Powerful Tools to Build Trust and Teams, Maximize Your Impact and Influence, and Respond to Challenges 

How to Defend Your Position

What do you do when someone asks you a question?  If the words "answer it" formed in your head, you're WRONG!

"You should respond to a question," argues co-author James O. Pyle.

"Responding to a question is better than answering it. Your response to any questions can pack much more power and meaning if you start to 'see into' the question and better understand what information the other person wants."

In "CONTROL THE CONVERSATION" Pyle teams up with co-author Maryann Karinch to guide you in crafting responses that are multi-dimensional and include relevant and compelling information that goes beyond a mere answer to questions like: "What qualifies you for this job?"  "How did the meeting go? or "Where were you last night?"

Divided into two parts, "CONTROL THE CONVERSATION" first provides the mechanics of good responses, and how to get adept at separating questions into good ones and bad ones, easy ones and tough ones.  The authors include a close look at how to listen for and use keywords and how to read and use body language.

In the second half, Pyle and Karinch put the mechanics to use in various settings that are common in business environments and social situations--job interviews, negotiation and sales, meetings, media interviews, and dating and family interactions.

Source:  James O. Pyle: Control the Conversation: How to Charm, Deflect and Defend Your Position Through Any Line of Questioning

 

Both Sides of Leadership

One of the most difficult leadership positions in business today is also the most common: the "leader in the middle." 

If you lead people and answer to someone else--a boss, shareholder, customers--you are among the millions of "leaders in the middle."

"Leaders in the middle too often serve down to their people and defend up to their bosses, instead of serving up to their bosses and coaching down to their employees," says author Nathan Jamail, who has spent decades managing and coaching top performing teams.

"It's time challenge the traditional notions of servant leadership and learn to serve up to your bosses, serve out to your peers, and coach down to those you lead with humility, selflessness, and confidence."

In his newest book, "SERVE UP COACH DOWN", Jamail provides a playbook for leaders in the middle detailing just how powerful they are without pretending that their position doesn't require different skills.

 Nathan Jamail: Serve Up, Coach Down: Mastering the Middle and Both Sides of Leadership