Part 1: Live the Values
Ultimately, our potential as leaders will be determined not by born leadership abilities, but by letting ourselves be crafted through circumstances, instruction, observations, reflection, failures, and renewed efforts. Leaders who make the greatest impact have spent years in the leadership development process themselves. Organizations rise and fall based on a firm set of values. And one of the most reliable ways to build credibility inside and outside our team is to Walk the Talk.
Part 5: Influencing Through Communication
Our message as leaders can very easily be lost through ineffective methods. For the sake of effectively conveying a message, vision, instruction, or word of correction, we leaders must strive to communicate verbally, vocally, and visually in a meaningful way that is memorable. People are watching, listening, and perceiving. Share your vision in ways that others can “hear” it through a variety of complementary modalities.
Lead Yourself in the New Year
As a runner at the start of a race, we toe the line, ready to dart forward into the new year. But, as you can imagine and have likely experienced, it becomes harder and harder to continue the race to achieve our goals as the weeks pass. Life is a great distractor. Have you been there?
A CEO For All Time
For two millennia, people around the world have been observing it with traditions and practices that are both religious and secular in nature. Popular customs include exchanging gifts, decorating Christmas trees, attending church, sharing meals with family and friends and, for some, waiting for Santa Claus to arrive. Perhaps your family traditions are like these.
Part 4: Communicate the Vision
It is important for us to remember that regardless of how wonderful a vision is, it is dead on arrival if we are unable to communicate it effectively. Replication should not be our priority. We can, however, enhance our own presentation skills by observing others’ style with the hope of adopting some qualitative elements to help us communicate our vision more clearly and effectively. You may want to pull up Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech as an inspirational refresher.
Part 3: Goals and Teamwork
Once you know your destination (vision) and have set guiding principles (strategies), you need to specify action steps for stakeholders to take. Your team should be clear on what their responsibilities are, how they are to do it, when they should be done, and how they know when they have been achieved. Here is a familiar and simple formula to help us remember how to define effective goals. They should be SMART.
Part 2: STRATEGIES ARE YOUR MAP
Vision, strategy, and goals are three very distinct components. They are all a part of the whole but stand alone in their function. To arrive at a specified location, you need a map (the strategy). They require thoughtfulness, teamwork, and developing specific action steps. While each part is important, no one element alone will help you realize your vision. Each is dependent on the other.
Part 1: Naming a Vision
We all have our own understanding of vision. Some may think that it is a pie-in-the-sky, abstract concept created by the folks in corner offices with giant glass windows, or maybe from those who interview focus groups in a think tank somewhere. Perhaps you see vision as something quaint to talk about, but not usually applicable to the throws of real life. That notion is completely understandable because if not understood and implemented correctly, that is what vision often becomes. So, what is vision? Simply put, vision is a statement that paints a picture of the desired end stated in such a way that people can see it, see themselves in it, and implement it.
OWN YOUR TEAM’S DEVELOPMENT
It is very important that we, as leaders, determine what developmental stage our team is in, not only for the purpose of knowing our responsibilities, but because your team needs to work its way through the elements of each phase. There are valuable formation skills that are attained through each stage. Wise leaders regularly reflect on those under their care, both individually and as a team.
Here’s to the veterans
Veterans day reminds us not only of the sacrifice of millions of military service men and women who served their country to preserve freedom across our national history. It also reminds us of the power of collective experiences and goals. The United States rallies around one common word on one day every year – “Veterans.” Likewise, be intentional to rally your team around that which is of greatest value to your organization.
NORMING & PERFORMING
After the first two stages of team development, the third stage is called norming – the time when the team is actively working together. During the norming stage, most teams have achieved an open climate where team members express emotions constructively, willingly and confidently contribute to the team, and demonstrate caring attitudes about the team and organization. In this third stage team members are consciously skilled. The final stage of team development is performing – the time when the team is fully functional as individual members and in collaboration with other team members. During this fourth stage, team members are unconsciously skilled. Consequently, team members comfortably reveal their true selves and self-identify as an integral member of the team.
FORMING & STORMING
We can learn from the past. Past leaders. Past events. Past lessons. Several years ago, the National Research Laboratories examined successful teams from World War II to determine if there were common dynamics that contributed to their success. Their research defined four stages of successful team development. The first stage for team development is forming – the time when a team first comes together. The second stage of team development is called storming – the time when team members struggle with identifying their place within the team.
Think Twice
Winston Churchill once said, “The price of greatness is responsibility.” Responsible use of resources directly impacts our credibility as an organization, our financial performance, and value. In short, give intentional thought to your stakeholders and your stewardship. The whole boat floats on those two components. Evaluating the current course of action and pivoting efforts with the backing of your team will ensure great impact and longer-lasting results.
Making Others Successful: Success Through Diversity
In organizations, diversity is typically celebrated—diversity of skin color, of experience, of dress, of cultural backgrounds, of perspectives, of giftedness, of personalities. It is wonderful to see a representative swath of people when walking through the halls of the workplace. Yet, the more underlining issues that diversity naturally brings are the ones that have potential to disrupt the team’s docile routine. And that is not necessarily a bad thing.
Making Others Successful: Success Through Feedback
An important aspect of the coaching process is performance feedback. This consists of the coach’s role in sharpening the skills of team members, closing the gaps, and expanding responsibilities. When team members consistently fall short in their performance, these types of conversations, although necessary, are sometimes uncomfortable and unnatural for us as leaders. This is the part of coaching that many of us tend to want to avoid. When we avoid constructive feedback, we also miss out on the opportunity to develop our team members, even if does take us a little outside our comfort zone.
COLUMBUS DAY
As a leader, you understand that Columbus’s attributes—the positive ones—also help you to be successful in your role: Courage to speak up and defend your ideas, conviction to maintain your position, perseverance to continue pursuing your purpose, faith that what you offer is beyond what others can imagine. Change Agents hold a weight on their souls, one which cannot be pressed down forever. You see a vision to improve an area of the organization and, thus far, it has not been executed successfully by another. You are the Change Agent for that purpose.
Making Others Successful: SUCCESS THROUGH COACHING
If you have ever played on a team, whether academic, athletic, or a hobby, you’ve experienced coaching. This individual who serves as “Coach” invests knowledge, understanding, know-how, personal experience, and study into making others more capable and successful in that specific field. Professionally, these individuals go by different names: supervisor, manager, director, trainer. But they all involve elements of coaching. Coaches prepare the team to successfully think through potential challenges, using the resources at hand to find solutions, and lead them into fruitful production and achieving goals.
Making others Successful: Servant Leadership
In the most basic terms, Servant Leadership is about meeting the highest priority needs of another person. As servant leaders, we must train ourselves to recognize our team members’ high priority needs and seek ways to meet them, but not their every whim. True servant leadership removes barriers and empowers people to get things done, while helping them grow. Leaders intentionally present opportunities as a means for growth to occur. These moments give team members a chance to rise to the occasion, while serving as environments to develop their own skills and leadership.
Fundraising: A Vegetable Parable
We sow seeds in others and water them over time through long-term relational investment. Highly fruitful fundraising, therefore, cannot be accomplished like pulling through the drive-thru of a fast-food restaurant or a brief stop at the grocery store. Harvesting a crop of 100-fold follow the discipline of patiently sowing seeds, nourishing the soil, and watering the plants.
Celebrating Labor Day
Labor Day pays tribute to the contributions and achievements of American workers and is traditionally observed on the first Monday in September. But, as with many positive modern constructs, this national holiday had dark origins. In the late 1800s, at the height of the Industrial Revolution in the United States, the average American worked 12-hour days for seven days a week in order to earn a basic living. Let us not speed through this holiday weekend without reflecting on the significant impact that strong leadership has on organizations—for good and for evil.