Real Leaders Don’t Boss

Ritch Eich says that Real Leaders Don’t Boss. “Real leaders are rare in today’s fast-moving, financially driven world. In their place are fast-track wannabes and imposters, intent on instant gratification in the form of quick (and unsustainable) bottom-line results.”

As Eich observes, there are far too many bosses and not enough leaders. Bosses who are too narrowly focused, see employees as tools, are respecters of position, controls rather than empowers, and sets expectations for others that they wouldn’t wish on themselves.

Eich identifies and then dedicates a chapter to each of eight essentials of effective leadership:

1. Real leaders don’t boss. They are calm in their style, yet have zero tolerance for bullies, who, in any capacity, undermine performance and morale.
2. Real leaders have a central compass. They aspire to do what’s right and be a part of something bigger than themselves.
3. Real leaders communicate with clarity, honesty, and directness, and know how to listen.
4. Real leaders have a unique make-up. Their passion translates into a strong corporate culture.
5. Real leaders value and support everyone they lead, out front as well as behind the scenes.
6. Real leaders know when to get out of the way.
7. Real leaders are accessible. They are humble and easily approached.
8. Real leaders know the difference between character and integrity, and why it takes both to succeed.

These eight essentials are about treating people right. They also reflect an extended range of responses to people and situations that “bosses” either don’t possess or exercise.

“Real” leaders inspire others to lead wherever they find themselves in the organization. They help them to find meaning in their own lives.

Leadership isn’t something you are born with, it’s is something that is thoughtfully developed throughout life. Eich notes, “Most real leaders aren’t born with some innate ability transforming them into magnets that attract others to follow them. They may have expectations placed on them to rise above their present situation or environment; they may even have an inborn strong desire to serve others and accomplish something unique. In most cases, however, leadership skills are developed and honed in the battlefield of life, where leaders discover their drive, passion, and wisdom.” It is these opportunities to rise above our present situation and environment that we should be seeking out and providing for our children—the next generation of leaders.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:14 PM
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5 Leadership Lessons: The Leader as Strategist

The Strategist is not a book about strategy, but a book designed to equip and inspire you to be a strategist. Author Cynthia Montgomery, says we have reduced strategy to a right-brain exercise and have lost sight of what it takes to lead the effort. The essential component of the strategy-making process is the leader.

Leaders must not ignore or underestimate their crucial and ongoing role as a strategist. “Strategy is not a destination or a solution,” writes Montgomery. “It is not a problem to be solved and settled. It’s a journey. It needs continuous, not intermittent, leadership. It needs a strategist.”

  The myth of the super-manager—that a truly good manager can prevail regardless of the circumstances—is hard to let go. First, you must understand the competitive forces in your industry. How you respond to them is your strategy. Second, even if you understand your industry’s competitive forces, you must find a way to deal with them that is up to the challenge. Third, whatever you do, don’t underestimate the power of those forces.

  Strategy is about serving an unmet need, doing something unique or uniquely well for some set of stakeholders. Beating the competition is critical, to be sure, but it’s the result of finding and filling that need, not the goal.

  Nothing else is more important to the survival and success of a firm than why it exists, and what otherwise unmet needs it intends to fill. Every concept of strategy that has entered the conversation of business managers—sustainable competitive advantage, positioning, differentiation, added value, even the firm effect—flows from purpose.

  After you’ve identified your purpose, aligned your activities and resources, and tested the results—all internal working steps—you are ready to summarize your strategy in a statement you can use to communicate both inside and outside your firm…. Make every word real. Make every word count. Long sentences and vague language can obscure your effort to describe what’s really important. At best, they’re unhelpful; at worst, they’re potentially misleading and distracting.

  The most important thing is to understand that you are not a manager of strategy, or a functional specialist. Others can fill those roles. You are, first and foremost, a leader. Your goal is to build something that is not already there. To do so, you must confront the four basic questions you have already explored:

What does my organization bring to the world?
Does that difference matter?
Is something about it scarce and difficult to imitate?
Are we doing what we need to do in order to matter tomorrow?

As a leader, you must answer them.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 11:13 PM
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What Matters Now

What Matters Now by Gary Hamel is probably one of the most important books you could read this year. It is an invitation to rethink the fundamental assumptions we have about capitalism, management, institutions, and life at work. It is, as Hamel describes it, “a blueprint for creating organizations that are fit for the future and fit for human beings.”

The book is divided into five fundamental, make-or-break issues that will determine whether your organization thrives or dives in the years ahead: values, innovation, adaptability, passion and ideology. Here are some of his thoughts that become more powerful as they sink in:

Values Matter Now.

• What matters now is that managers embrace the responsibilities of stewardship.

• Every institution rests on moral footings, and there is no force that can erode those foundations more rapidly than a cataract of self-interest.

• I think corporate life is so manifestly profane, so mechanical, mundane, and materialistic, that any attempt to inject a spiritual note feels wildly out of place—the workplace equivalent of reading the Bible in a brothel.

Innovation Matters Now.

• Post these simple questions on your company’s idea wiki: First, what are the thoughtless little ways we irritate customers and what can we do to change that? And second, what are the small, unexpected delights we could deliver to our customers at virtually no additional cost?

• Whenever you identify a convergent belief, ask, does this rest on some inviolable law of physics, or is it simply an artifact of our devotion to precedent? By working systematically to surface these invisible dogmas, you can turn reactionaries into rebels.

• To innovate, you need to see your organization and the world around it as a portfolio of skills and assets than can be endlessly recombined into new products and businesses.

Adaptability Matters Now.

• To thrive in turbulent times, organizations must become a bit more disorganized and unmanaged—less structured, less hierarchical, and less routinized.

• There are only two things, I think, that can throw our habits into sharp relief: a crisis that brutally exposes our collective myopia, or a mission so compelling and preposterous that it forces us to rethink our time-worn practices.

• To put it bluntly, the conversation about “where we go next” should be dominated by individuals who have their emotional equity invested in the future rather than the past. It needs to be led by individuals who don’t feel the need to defend decisions that were taken ten or twenty years ago.

Passion Matters Now.

• It’s impossible to unleash human capabilities without first expanding the scope of employee autonomy. People need the freedom to challenge precedent, to “waste” time, to go outside of channels, to experiment, to take risks, and to follow their passions.

• How, many policies in your company exist only to preserve that fiction that the higher-ups really are in control? How many rules enforce standardization at the expense of initiative and passion, while delivering few if any performance benefits?

Ideology Matters Now.

• The creed of control reigns supreme. If you doubt this, ask yourself: Is your organization any less rules-driven than it was ten or twenty years ago? Do people on the front lines feel any less controlled? Are their freedoms any less abridged? And are little cogs any less obsesses with becoming big cogs?

• Give someone monarch-like authority, and sooner or later there will be a royal screw-up.

• We don’t have to content ourselves with an organizational model that was designed to serve the interests of ancient military commanders and smokestack-era CEOs.

It’s time to re-invent our leadership. This book will help in that process.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:54 PM
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Get Real. Get Outside.

In a print campaign directed at people immersed in the modern digital world for garden power tool company STIHL Australia, we are encouraged to discover the simple joys to be found outside. “Get Real. Get Outside.” It was developed by Whybin\TBWA\Tequila (Australia).

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:01 PM
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Stuck? Flip the Script

Flip the Script is about approaching everything in your life with a new mindset: you can’t control circumstances but you can manage them. Author Bill Wackermann says that the first step is to “embrace the notion that turning a situation around and creating new opportunities takes the desire to face yourself as you really are and a willingness to see the potential that could be hiding right in front of you.”

Wackermann believes that anything can be flipped—any expectation can be turned upside down. It is a skill that can be learned and developed through practice. The book is divided into three sections: understanding yourself, navigating how to build your flip, and winning, overcoming obstacles and putting it all together. All three steps are important, but the first section is the meat of the book and the one that requires the most attention because this is where we get in our own way most of the time.

Understanding yourself and your situation requires honesty. It doesn’t do any good to make excuses here; that only clouds the issues. “Designing your way around obstacles starts with a proper mind-set.” Begin by asking, “So what if …?” So what if there isn’t enough money? We are short on people? So what if they don’t come through? “So what if?” is a “mental tactic that allows you to force yourself to consider alternative viewpoints and plan for the worst.”

Taking responsibility for where you are in this moment, is crucial and once done can actually provide us with a great deal of freedom. Blaming others imprisons us. Wackermann suggests asking yourself:

1. What can I do right now to fix the situation I want to change? It can be a big or small action, but it has to be something.
2. What did I do that contributed to getting me to where I am?
3. What could I have done differently?

In conjunction with those questions, you might also ask yourself:

1. Do I blame others? Colleagues, clients, or family members? (E.g., “He never told me it was due today?”)
2. Do I make excuses to avoid responsibility? (E.g., “I couldn’t get to that email because I was traveling.”)
3. Do I ever apologize?
4. Do I complain rather than try to make a situation better? (E.g., “They really need to fix that.”)

Wackerman says blame is like candy; too much is unhealthful and will make you sick. “What’s standing between you and success right now is you. Not your folks, not your history, just you. I’m not suggesting that you deny your past, but I am advising that you refuse to live there because it just might kill your future.”

He covers common areas of self-sabotage like Know-It-All-Ism, My Boss Hates Me, Taking Things Personally, Perception is Reality, and Excusing Yourself. Wackermann leaves you with much to think about. Here are a few more ideas to keep in mind:

Flipping means managing all aspects of a situation, including the internal and external…A successful flip requires that we not confuse our motives with what the world sees. To move our goals forward, we have to be mature enough to recognize that perception, unfortunately, is reality. That is business, and our actions and behavior shape how others see us and see our potential for growth. The good news is that we can control in way both big and small how the world sees us.

You can borrow the best of what you like in others rather than fixating on their worst traits.

The behaviors you do robotically are the ones that are keeping you stuck in your current situation.

Actions must follow words. If you feel like other people are catching all the breaks, come in early, stay late, and volunteer for assignments that take you out of your job function. It’s called taking the initiative: you need to show your boss that side of you.

Flipping the script isn’t based on intelligence, rather it’s based on our ability to manage ourselves and control our urges.

Doing the right thing is so hard because it usually takes much more work, determination, willpower, and self-control than you’d expect.

To win at politics, don’t complain, and take five minutes a day to build alliances and stay focused on your end goals. Use the ROPE method: Have a good Role Model, Open yourself to change, Project confidence, and Express humility.

In the end, you can’t make people behave differently; all you can do is manage yourself.

Your success in flipping the script will be determined by how hard you are willing to look at yourself and your ability to deconstruct patterns of behavior that you’ve established over a lifetime.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:41 AM
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First Look: Leadership Books for May 2012

Here's a look at some of the best leadership books to be released in May.

  The 3 Power Values: How Commitment, Integrity, and Transparency Clear the Roadblocks to Performance by David Gebler
  Flip the Script: How to Turn the Tables and Win in Business and Life by Bill Wackermann
  Leading With Honor: Leadership Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton by Lee Ellis
  Adaptability: The Art of Winning In An Age of Uncertainty by Max McKeown
  It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership by Colin Powell



For bulk orders call 1-800-423-8273



Build your leadership library with these specials on over 120 titles. All titles are at least 40% off the list price and are available only in limited quantities.

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“You are the same today you’ll be five years from now except for the books you read and the people you meet.”

Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:01 AM
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LeadershipNow 140: April 2012 Compilation

Here are a selection of tweets from April 2012 that you might have missed:

• The Yin and Yang of Business by @TomAsacker
• @Leadershipfreak: If you know more than everyone on your team, you have a weak team. "8 Ways to Find Freedom"
• lead:ology - Leaders vs Managers: A False Dichotomy
• Choice Point: Do Not Let Your Culture Kill You by Robert Quinn @LeadWithLift
• @KevinEikenberry How Leaders Can Use Pinterest
• A Silent Leadership Killer by @mjasmus
• Read: Inspire People to Change by @greatleadership
• @Jim_Kouzes: People are most likely to be creative when intrinsically motivated say Teresa Amabile and Steve Kramer
• It’s time to diversify diversity. By @INSEAD @HalGregersen.
• The Steve Jobs Way Leaders can learn a lot from the late Apple CEO, but not all of it should be emulated. @stratandbiz
• Stedman Graham asks, “Would your behavior in working with others change if you knew in advance that your...
• @tom_peters: "Human Touch Saved JAL." Superb interview with interim CEO Kazuo Inamori. Key words: "Kind, gentle, caring."
• Read The Source Of Integrity? by @LollyDaskal
• @TheStyleGent: The true indicator of elegance is the way we act each and every day.
• To John W. Gardner, "Judgment" was the #1 attribute of a leader. By @DennyCoates
• The Surest Way to a Positive Attitude by @KevinEikenberry
• @johnmaeda: White paper on the future of learning by Lego folks.
• Give away which you most wish to receive by @LollyDaskal
• Who knew? A person's life span can be predicted by the size of their smile.
• a href="http://bit.ly/I2FVPv" target="_blank">The Myth of Potential by @mikemyatt Potential is unrealized attainment – nothing more and nothing less.
• Robert Fry, Chairman at McKinney Rogers in London wrote in a letter to the Financial Times, that “to be average...
• @wilsonquarterly: Thought-provoking read from Gertrude Himmelfarb on the decline of civil society
• Change versus Transformation. Change requires that you become more familiar with the current situation to make...
• The Experience of Being Coached by @mjasmus >How you can profit from it.
• FT: Make the most of dead time
• @Bill_George: Using True North Groups with patients Enhance healing in mind, body & spirit & reduce costs
• Good read from @tomasacker > A brand is energy made visible.
• TEDx Eugene Lee - Breathing Together - Leadership Lessons from Musical Ensembles
• Good read from @KateNasser >Leaders, Are We Accomplices to Passive Aggressive Team Members?
• Self Made? No. Self Created? Yes by @JamesStrock
• Is Goldman Sachs filled with rogue tribes? by @davelogan1
• @jamesstrock: To Best Serve Others, Keep Promises to Yourself
• How to Criticize — and Be Loved for it. By @workawesome
• @RosabethKanter: Doing nothing is easy. Acting requires courage - and it is courage that makes change possible
• Why Were You Not? by @LollyDaskal
• Why School Principals Need More Authority by Chester E. Finn Jr.from @TheAtlantic
• @Envisia: Download your free chapter of "Clueless: Coaching People Who Just Don't Get It"
• A Lesson on Doing Good Work by @wallybock
• Excuses . . . They Are Worse than You Think by @KevinEikenberry
• @TLCTalk: Leadership is not about I or me. It's about we and us.
• @wallybock: Boss's TOTD: Your pace is not their pace
• The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs - HBR

See more on Twitter.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 04:27 PM
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When Good Employees Do Bad: Six Surprising Behaviors that May Precede a Scandal

This is a guest post by David Gebler author of The 3 Power Values. Gebler believes that employees already embody the values needed to create a high-performing culture, so leaders need to remove the behavior-based roadblocks that keep people from being able to live their values at work. Commitment, integrity and transparency keep an organizations core values aligned with each other because they serve as counterweights to our human tendencies to go off-track. Here, he identifies some behavior roadblocks:

Good intentions can lead to bad outcomes in business. This is especially true in organizations that have toxic cultures in which leaders tout worthy values—and then put up roadblocks that prevent employees from living those values. For example, if a company claims it welcomes innovation and risk taking, but then only rewards employees who toe the company line and reinforce the status quo, sooner or later people will simply stop asking questions, innovating, and stretching themselves. Instead, they will conform in order to please their bosses. While the company's competitive edge plummets, leaders may be left wondering: What happened to our core value of innovation and risk taking?

When we look at companies that have faced scandals such as recalls, ethical violations, or crimes, the problem often comes down to employees whose surprisingly positive behavior was distorted by a toxic culture and clueless leaders. Here are six seemingly benign behaviors that may come back to bite a company if they become exaggerated and throw the organization out of alignment:

Commitment to meeting deadlines.
One would think that a company where employees are encouraged to meet deadlines and rewarded for doing so consistently would lead to super-productivity and efficiency. In fact, it can lead to disaster. At Johnson & Johnson, the understood directive to get product to market on tough deadlines created a culture of "Don't ask too many questions" and resulted in a series of dangerous drug recalls that badly sullied the company's reputation.

Excessive optimism.
When a person is sick, optimism can buoy his spirits and help healing. When a company is unhealthy, "Everything is going to be okay" is not what you need to hear from those in authority positions. Take David Myers, former controller of WorldCom. By his own account, he saw the problems of the now-defunct company through rose-colored glasses. He simply kept believing--and telling his frightened staff--that the problems would resolve themselves eventually. By the time he came to his senses, he was under arrest for accounting fraud.

Staying focused on a goal.
Telling employees to keep their eye on the prize is not intrinsically a bad thing. But when the goal becomes more important to management than the underlying values of the organization, it can lead to a dysfunctional culture. For example, in the 1990s, Sears gave its auto repair mechanics a mandatory sales goal of $147 per hour. It wasn't long before customers began to be overcharged or sold unnecessary repairs.

Having a competitive mindset.
Boeing is known for its highly competitive employees and work culture. That's a good thing, right? Not so in 1996, when the company lost billions in government contracts for ethics violations after an employee stole 25,000 pages of proprietary documents from Lockheed. Flash forward to 2005, when employees were still so competitive that their own work teams were known to keep useful information secret from other teams in the company to make sure they stayed on top. Too much competition can erode cultural values, leading to disaster.

Sticking to a budget.
Most managers would be thrilled if their employees were doggedly determined to stay on budget and not cost the company any unnecessary money. But a good intention can go bad when financial performance becomes the only metric that matters. That was the case, many believe, behind the fatal mistake made on the BP oil platform in the Gulf. Before the explosion in April 2012 caused by a safety shortcut, BP's Macondo project was more than $40 million over budget. You know the rest.

Wanting to please higher-ups.
What's more attractive than a hardworking employee who wants his bosses to approve of him, based on high performance and outstanding results? A lot, in the case of French trader Jérôme Kerviel at the Société Générale banking group. His need to be liked led to $4.9 billion in massive financial fraud by means of elaborate computer manipulations. Kerviel is thought not to have profited personally from his crimes. He said he was just working to increase the bank's profits and make his bosses happy.

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David Gebler is a sought-after speaker and panelist, and author of The 3 Power Values: How Commitment, Integrity, and Transparency Clear the Roadblocks to Performance (Jossey-Bass, 2012). He is founder and president of the Skout Group, which helps companies determine whether and how their organization's culture is costing them money, and what they can do to reduce risk and increase performance.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 02:57 PM
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Why Leaders Can NOT Procrastinate

This is a guest post by Jason Womack, author of Your best Just Got Better—a book designed to show you how to make your best even better, how to achieve more in work and life, and how to sustain those changes over time. Womack defines productivity as: “Doing what I said I would do, within the time that I promised.”

You're about to end a conference call, and someone says, "Great, we'll send you some materials right away." A day goes by, and then a week. What happens to your confidence in that person? Surely, you may continue to do business together, but you'll always wonder if they'll do what they said they'd do, in the time they promised.

So, now is the time to look in the mirror Are you putting something off? Because you forgot, or is it on purpose? Are you missing key resources? Are you waiting for key data before you can make the next decision? Or, are you procrastinating? Begin by exploring your own daily routines. When you understand HOW you work, you can get things done more effectively. Here's an activity you can experiment with this week.

Write down the approximate time you arrive and leave the office every day. This represents your “work-week.” (I call this the "window of professional productivity.") For each single hour you were working, you made choices about what to focus on as “priority.” You also chose what did not get done!

Here are three ways to get going and sustain an action-orientation to your own productivity:

1. Choose smaller verbs. One of the reasons that people don't do things as they think of them (especially entrepreneurs and senior leaders) is because of their skill at Visionary Thinking. Because they CAN think big, they do. Chunk your objectives into smaller markers along your path to success. Recently, I worked with a Managing Partner of a Fortune 500 company who realized that more important than managing time is her need to more effectively direct her focus within the small chunks of time she has to work.
2. Find, create, utilize and assess the extra time you have each day. Arrive to an off-site meeting somewhere early? Other people running late? Maybe you get a last-minute cancellation of an appointment you had scheduled. What can you do during that time? Get ready for 15-minute blocks of time (what I call "bonus time") throughout the day. Why 15 minutes? That window is long enough to actually "do" something and short enough to find!
3. Focus on what has happened. Regularly through the day (before lunch, and before you go home), take a moment and mentally check off what is complete. Oftentimes, there is so much going on, and so much you can think of that is UNDONE, you tend to forget how much is finished. This is your chance to recharge – as acknowledging completion is a quick way to get back on track. (Have you ever made a list of to-dos…after you’ve already done them?!)

Too often, long-range goals fall into the “important but not urgent” category of day-to-day workflow management. We put off doing the most important things while making start-and-stop progress. When this happens, the urgent – latest and loudest – clamors for our attention. Work smart, maximize short windows of time, and mark something as complete…it’s the best way to beat procrastination!

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Jason W. Womack, M.A., M. Ed., advises corporate boards and entrepreneurs on the topics of maximizing productivity and achieving a balanced lifestyle. Visit his website at www.womackcompany.com and share your questions and comments via twitter @JasonWomack.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:51 PM
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