LeadershipNow 140: January 2009 Compilation

• The phrase leaders cast long shadows is used to draw attention to the fact that a leader’s actions are magnified far more than they imagine
• “You always have to eat humble pie at some point…. Every rejection is the fuel for what you will be.” Diane von Furstenberg in Feb 2009 T&C
• WN: A leader must summon citizens to rise above themselves, but without appearing preachy or contemptuous of their present state of mind
• Not what you’d expect him to say: Creativity flourishes at the edges of things. It needs boundaries and it needs constraints. P Ibbotson
• Without an effective infrastructure for learning – action reviews – a plan is just a plan. An idea is not reality.
• Chief speechwriter for George W. Bush, Marc Thiessen: History Will Remember Bush Well http://ow.ly/4GF
• FT said of Obama’s speech: “the performance of a born leader.” That really means he put the time in. You’re seeing the result.
• FT: Managers who see economic strife only as a threat are missing out on ideal opportunity to implement change and instill better practice.
• Kissinger: Occasionally an outsider may provide perspective; almost never does he have enough knowledge to advise soundly on tactical moves
• Think of leadership IN, not leadership OF. It's not position.
• To develop new leaders, existing leaders will have to give up control and empower emerging leaders to lead in new ways.
• In a downturn, set realistic goals and use shorter time horizons. Predictions are likely to be more accurate and relevant.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:36 PM
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Communication Crib Sheet for Crisis Times

IN AN excellent series of special reports on Managing in a Downturn produced by the Financial Times, Paul A. Argenti, professor of corporate communication at Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, observes that “many companies flail by failing to act or by taking the wrong kind of action when communicating with distressed stakeholders.” People are eager to listen and by acting quickly and thoughtfully, “a company can build reputational capital and weather the storm to come out on the other side perceived as a long-term leader.”

During a crisis, companies can uncover opportunity by adhering to a few simple guidelines when communicating with investors, employees, the press and the general public.

• Do not hide: not hearing from you will breed additional suspicion and mistrust among stakeholders
• Gather relevant information and stick to your story: be as informed as possible to reassure stakeholders that you are in control and in the know. Switching gears or waffling signals insecurity
• Communicate early and often: both internally and externally. Keeping employees well informed is a vital step to keeping your organization on message with all stakeholders
• Centralize communications: sending conflicting messages from different areas of a company signals disorganization and undermines stakeholder confidence
• Get inside the media’s head: anticipate how the press might spin first-hand or second-hand information
• Choose communication channels thoughtfully: how and where you say something is as crucial as what you are saying. During a period of distress, scrutiny of corporate communications is higher than ever as stakeholders clamor for information
• Communicate directly with affected constituencies: during times of instability and uncertainty, people want to be reassured by hearing information straight from the horse’s mouth
• Keep the business running: even in the face of upheaval, remind stakeholders that you have not taken your eye off your primary purpose as a for-profit corporation that drives returns for investors
• Keep values and character center-stage: in a period of crisis, maintaining trust is paramount. Adhering to corporate values, and using them as a navigational compass to guide corporate strategy and communications, will demonstrate stability and reliability, assuring stakeholders your head and heart are in the right place.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:45 AM
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Out of Context: What Will Leaders of the Future Look Like

• Less for what they say and more for what they deliver
• Less by their title and position and more by their expertise and competence
• Less by what they control and more by what they shape
• Less by goals they set and more by mind-sets they build
• Both for great personal credibility and for exceptional organizational capabilities

Posted by Michael McKinney at 05:05 PM
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Newswire: Presidential Regrets? GHW Bush and Clinton Speak Out

January 27, 2009 CNN Politics Presidential regrets? They have a few Today, at the National Automobile Dealers Association in New Orleans, former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton delivered remarks during the general session. When asked about his biggest regret after leaving office, Bush said he now wonders whether he should have tried to get Saddam Hussein to leave office at the end of the first Gulf War in 1991. CNN reports that he told the gathering, "I've thought a lot about it, but at the end of Desert Storm, the question was should we have kind of kept going on that road to death and all this slaughter until Saddam Hussein showed up and laid his sword on the table, surrendered. And the common wisdom was he wouldn't do that." But he said a conversation with an FBI agent who interrogated Saddam after he was captured has made him reconsider. Bush recalled their talk, "I said, 'What if we just say he has to come to surrender, would he have done it?' And this guy said, 'I'm absolutely convinced he would have.' My experts tell me he wouldn't have…. We ended it the way we said we would" as a military success, but noted a cleaner ending "would have been perfect." Clinton said that his number one regret is that he was not able to persuade Yasser Arafat to accept the peace plan he offered at the end of his presidency that the Israelis accepted. "If he had done that ... we had had seven years of progress toward peace. We had one year in 1998, the only year in the history of Israel where not a single soul was killed in a terrorist act. The Palestinians had more control over West Bank then than they do today," Clinton said. "And if he had taken that deal, we would have a Palestinian state and we would have had, I think now, normal peaceful relations with Israel and all of its Arab neighbors." Clinton also said he regretted not doing more to "stop the Rwandan genocide," and succeeding on a new health care plan. He added "presidents should share freely ... the mistakes they made" with historians, because it teaches lessons. He said he shared problems during the lunch with Obama and the four living presidents, saying, "You want each new president to make new mistakes, not the same ones .... all of us know if you make enough decisions, you're going to make a few of them aren't right." * * *

Posted by Michael McKinney at 02:12 PM
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You Can’t Order Change: Making Ethics and Compliance a Clear Competitive Advantage

WHEN Jim McNerney became CEO of Boeing in 2005, change wasn’t an option. It was mandated. In 2005 Boeing was facing investigations into illegal business practices, there was the sex scandal, revenue was down, and key people were jumping ship. In short, it wasn’t the place to work.

But even when everyone agrees that change is necessary – even vital – it doesn’t come easy. It still has to be approached in a careful and respectful way. You Can’t Order Change, by Peter Cohan, is about how McNerney brought about that change in Boeing. How he cleaned up the mess and changed the culture and revitalized the organization.

Probably the biggest task that faced him was the quagmire created by years of costly ethical problems. He had to settle a lawsuit with the government and create a culture of ethics and compliance. This has to be done by example and system changes that encourage ethical behavior and compliance.

He said in Boeing Frontiers, “I plan to make leadership development a focus across the company because I believe that as we strengthen our leadership capacities, we can have a positive impact on the company's overall performance. As I've said before, better leaders make better companies. And effective leadership, at all levels of an organization, is based on a foundation of trust, integrity, and escape-free compliance. As we turn up the gain in leadership-development training, we will embed in it an equal emphasis on how leaders can lead with ethics and integrity.”

Cohan writes that McNerney made sure that ethics wasn’t a passing fad, but a value that had teeth in it. If the leaders of the organization “have not been behaving in a way that’s consistent with Boeing’s values, he expects them to change their behavior. And if they don’t meet McNerney’s expectations, they lose their leadership roles.”

Step one for McNerney, of course, is getting the leaders to act ethically; to set the example. Cohan cites this statement from McNerney:

We also realize it all starts with leadership. If an organization’s leaders don’t model, encourage, expect and reward the right behaviors, why should anyone else in that organization exhibit those behaviors? Companies have to take the hugely important step of driving ethics and compliance through their core leadership and Human Resources processes. This must be … and must be seen to be … a central part of the whole system of training and developing leaders and of the whole process of evaluating and promoting people. This is the key.”

Critical also to this change is a system that supports and rewards people for getting results ethically and gets rid of people who don’t. Cohan writes, “McNerney let people know that he wanted them to discuss problems and not bury them.” If people didn’t talk about ethics and compliance, he would bring it up. “Ultimately, McNerney wants to avoid surprises about ethical problems that originate at lower levels. I know and you know … that one of the absolute perquisites for success in ethics and compliance is the belief that it is OK for people to question what happens around them.”

McNerney’s methods and approach to change have gotten him dramatic results and they are worth studying.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:35 PM
Permalink | Comments (0) | Change , Ethics , Human Resources , Management

Attributes of a Boeing Leader

WHEN Ginger Barnes spoke to employees at a leadership development program at the Boeing Leadership Center, she said:

Leadership is all about leaders teaching leaders and about relationships. We can execute the daylights out of anything, so “finds a way” and “delivers results” have always been strong traits. Where we need to improve is in the areas of “charts the course,” “sets high expectations” and “inspires others.”

That is the case just about anywhere you go. To strengthen the culture of leadership and accountability within the company, Boeing defined its expectations for leaders as:

A Boeing Leader:

• Charts the course
• Sets high expectations
• Inspires others
• Finds a way
• Lives the Boeing values
• Delivers results

Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:30 PM
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A Downturn Provides the Ideal Opportunity to Force Hard Choices

LONDON Business School professor Donald Sull writes in today’s Financial Times that we need to take advantage of the opportunities that are presented by the economic downturn:

Major change efforts are difficult in the best of times, and many executives worry that a downturn will halt future progress or reverse any gains made to date. Indeed, in a downturn, managers too often scurry from fighting one fire to the next and thereby lose sight of the longer transformation effort.

Large-scale change initiatives typically require eight to 10 years to complete and often run out of steam along the way. Downturns provide an ideal opportunity to re-invigorate an ongoing transformation. Managers can harness a downturn to renew a sense of urgency, justify unpopular decisions and overcome complacency or resistance to change.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 11:29 AM
Permalink | Comments (0) | Change , General Business

Step One: Reality Check

It would be unfortunate if the book’s heft – 474 pages – made it too intimidating to pick up because it’s full of great insights, clever thought, and often provocative ideas that will make you see things in a new way. I don’t recommend reading it from cover to cover. It’s not that kind of book. It’s more of a highly readable, reference tool that you’ll want to refer to again and again. Besides, unless you were born in this century, you’ll need some time to allow your brain to create some new circuitry.

There aren’t any shortcuts given here. Often life and especially entrepreneurship is about grinding it out; sticking to what you believe in until it works. It’s not about sticking to your competition either. It’s about focusing on what you can do to add value to your customers and the world. Frank Sinatra famously said, “The best revenge is massive success.” What drives your competition crazy is your success.

The 94 chapters are based on his highly regarded blog, How To Change the World. The topics cover everything from the start-up, maintaining, growing your business to communicating your message and surviving what comes your way.

Some takeaways:

• Postpone, or at least de-emphasize, touchy-feely goals. (The free cafeteria and laundry service is the reward not the catalyst.)
• Follow through on an issue until it is done or irrelevant.
• Establish a culture of execution and reward the achievers.
• The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. 10 Slides. 20 Minutes. 30-point Font.
• Be able to explain something in thirty seconds.
• The purpose of school is not to prepare for working but to prepare for living.
• Don’t coerce or dominate, reconcile conflicts, and give power to get power. That’s how to influence people.

There’s more, but it would take 474 pages. Better get the book.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:21 AM
Permalink | Comments (0) | General Business , Management , Marketing

Newswire: Warren Buffett on the Economy and Investing

Posted by Michael McKinney at 04:23 PM
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What to Look for in a Team of Advisors

Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:28 AM
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The Top 5 U.S. Inaugural Speeches

DAVID GREENBERG, a professor of history and of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University, offers his view of the five best inaugural speeches in the Wall Street Journal. “Over the decades, indeed, only a few have gained canonical status – for the sublimity of their prose, the eloquence of their delivery or the aptness of their message for a concurrent crisis.” I would place Lincoln’s short but powerful second inaugural address in 1865 as the best, but here is Greenburg’s list:

5. John F. Kennedy – 1961 “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

4. Thomas Jefferson – 1801 (First Inaugural Address) “But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”

3. Franklin D. Roosevelt – 1937 (Second Inaugural Address)

2. Abraham Lincoln – 1865 (Second Inaugural Address) “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

1. Franklin D. Roosevelt – 1933 (First Inaugural Address) “This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:08 PM
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The Presidential Inauguration: Firsts and Facts

SINCE 1901, all Inaugural ceremonies at the U.S. Capitol have been organized by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies (JCCIC). They have provided us with a list of firsts and interesting facts about U.S. Presidential Inaugurations.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:06 AM
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Hitting Your Goals by Knowing What Matters

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:21 AM
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Maybe What You Need is a Little Disruption

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 03:01 PM
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Jean-Marie Dru On Leadership

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:08 AM
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Living Within the Lie

BRITISH economist John Kay wrote in the Financial Times about the power of words to send us off into the wrong direction. More specifically, weasel words. There are some good thoughts here. Here is an excerpt:

In western liberal democracies, no one exhibits slogans calling on the workers to unite. But you see similar displays in reception areas of businesses and even in government offices. They urge us to pursue excellence, to delight our customers, to be wholehearted in our embrace of change. Employees place these exhortations on desks and walls with the same resignation as the Czech greengrocer. The modern analogue of the address to the party congress is the business speech, in which tired clichés relentlessly follow each other, to similarly sycophantic applause.

The objective of the patronising drivel emitted by politicians and business people is to drive out argument. Engaged debate is replaced by what Jack Welch, the former General Electric chief executive, memorably characterized as “superficial congeniality”. Apparent consensus is achieved by euphemism, by avoiding issues of substance, and by using slogans instead of analysis.

Mr. Welch saw that the opposite of superficial congeniality was “facing reality.” But the effect, and intention, of the tacit compliance involved in superficial congeniality, is to entrench a reality of power: to legitimise authority based only on the occupation of positions of authority.

Living within the lie, because it does not face reality, is the process by which great organisations fall into catastrophic errors – and through which they often fail to recognise these errors even after their consequences have become apparent. The self-deception of living within the lie is how banks fell victim to the credit crunch and the US came to be embroiled in Iraq…. Dishonesty of speech quickly leads to dishonesty in behaviour because the language we use governs all we do.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:33 AM
Permalink | Comments (0) | Communication , Thinking

lead:ology - Leadership: Whence It Came, Where It Went

King Solomon wisely remarked that there is nothing new under the sun. Leadership is relational and as such, has been a part of the human equation ever since two people first came together and found themselves responsible for and charged with making something of their world. And we have been doing it ever since. From the beginning, as it is today, it is and has been practiced both badly and remarkably well.

The earliest practitioners knew in principle what we know today. We aren’t the first to have learned how to lead, but in no other time have we tried to quantify it like we do today. Our scientific approach and thinking, while of great value, has really only added to our understanding of the why. Though we are drawn to binary reasoning and absolutes, leadership does not lend itself to that kind of thinking nor is it practiced that way. It is not rigid in nature.

In the study of leadership as in much else, complexity is used to hide the truth rather than reveal it. The general principles of human behavior are not complex and are available to everyone. For some, it seems only right that something so important should be shrouded in mystery. We would be well advised not to make the simple complex. Leadership creates ample opportunity for nuances of thought to be displayed in other ways. At the same time, while leadership is not complex, it isn’t easy. Make no mistake. Leadership is hard.

It is fashionable to raise leadership above the common man, yet it is in the common man that leadership resides and from the common man, that leadership must rise to meet the challenges of the time. Leadership is common to us all—men and women—if we will but choose it.

Where are all the leaders? This is a persistent question. Actually, leaders are all around us. More often the problem we are lamenting is the lack of character we need in our leaders; the need for selflessness. Leaders reflect the society from which they come. If we don’t like what we see, we have to grapple with the fact that we are rewarding, nourishing and displaying the wrong behaviors in our homes, our schools, and our churches. We need to take a hard look at these crucibles were our leaders are made. It is silly to endlessly attack what we have produced and do nothing about the source of the problem. We need to get the fundamentals right. Poor leadership is a self-inflicted wound.

At the same time, we as followers are a fickle lot. We don’t always feel we need leaders. When times are difficult and the choices not so clear, we clamor for someone to lead us. When times are easy, we are ambivalent towards leadership. We would prefer to have no one telling us what we should do, guiding us to make distinctions or inspiring us to be more than we are. We like things just the way they are. Nothing more consistently troubles the human mind than to be presented with a new direction when things are going well. This human tendency no doubt led Peter Drucker to observe that leadership is a foul-weather job. We want a leader to save us; to take away the discomfort. But a great leader never does. A great leader never does for people what they can and should do for themselves. A great leader guides, demonstrates direction, and provides encouragement.

If history teaches us anything, we learn that leadership is temporary and so it must be constantly renewed both individually and collectively. From history, we also see how the context of leadership changes and so then its form must also adapt.

Experiencing leadership is a lot easier than doing leadership. It’s more comfortable to push it off on someone else than to expose ourselves by taking up the task. But it is a task we all must embrace at some level if we are to create a future for ourselves and others. Find your future in your present and let your passion and the needs of those around you, be your guide.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:12 AM
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The Block of Wood That Became the First Sony Walkman

IN The Illusion of Leadership, Piers Ibbotson explains the difference between the creative and the managerial style of leadership. “Creative leadership thinks as it works. One of the fundamentals of the creative style is that you have a leader who can frame the task so that the led will be delighted to attack it and bring their imaginations with them as they do….you cannot define in detail the outcome.” He cites the following example of the development of the Sony Walkman:

The CEO goes down to the research labs where all the eggheads are working. He gathers them round and he pulls out of his shirt pocket a small block of wood. He holds it up and he says: “Make me a tape-player this big.” He puts it down on the table and he leaves.

This is good constraint. It is concrete and specific. The guys can pick it up and start measuring. They can respond immediately and the challenge focuses them immediately in the right direction.

But this is really such a good constraint because of what it not said:

• He did not say “Make me the smallest tape-recorder you can.” (They’d still be at it.)
• He did not say “Make me a small portable tape player.” (They might come up with something just to big to fit in your shirt pocket.)
• He did not say “Make something new and revolutionary that will let people play music wherever they want.” (No point in encouraging them to reinvent the wheel.)
• He did not email them a set of specifications. (How would they tell he cared about the outcome?)

He went there in person; he gave a controlled and gnomic performance in front of the people who would be doing the work. He left plenty of space for them to imagine, invent and innovate but within concrete and specific boundaries that he personally communicated. He had a partial vision of the desired outcome, but he had no idea how it would finally turn out.

He did not give them a target to hit; he gave them a field to play in.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:55 AM
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Leading for Creativity

IN A press release for Gosford Park, director Robert Altman explains, "The characters in Gosford Park had very few mandates. There are certain things that happen in the plot, and most actors will read the script and come prepared, but I don't say, 'This is the way to do it.' They have the whole sphere of their character in their head, and I don't want to cut it down to a little slice of pie. There are plenty of people [on a project] that keep track and see that we get through plot points, but if I'm just shooting to get that stuff in, then I'm looking for the wrong thing. What I really want to see from an actor is something I've never seen before, so, I can't tell them what it is.

We normally shoot a few takes, even if the first one was terrific because what I'm really hoping for is a 'mistake.' I think that most of the really great moments in my films were not planned. They were things that occurred and we thought, 'Wow, look at that - that's something we want to keep!'"

Because, Ibbotson believes, that people outside the arts generally misunderstand the creative process and the behaviors necessary to encourage creative teamwork, they don’t put a culture in place that promotes group creativity. It doesn’t come from competitive individualism and it needs boundaries and constraints. “The creative juices get going when you are up against a boundary, at the edge of what is acceptable, possible, or known.”

Ibbotson presents the leader as director. He explains how they release creativity and optimize innovation, how they give space to the creative drives of performers but still maintain an outcome that is true to the original vision and delivered on time and within budget. If the right culture is in place, innovation is not an issue.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:20 AM
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The Accountable Leader

BRIAN DIVE tells us in The Accountable Leader that many organizations have difficulty developing leaders and fostering effective leadership because they have never considered the context they must lead in. The organization must be structured, Dive contends, so that all leadership roles from top to bottom have well-defined decision rights. In other words, accountability needs to be structured into the very fiber of the organizational architecture at all levels. Accountability, organizational design, and leadership are three inextricably linked factors.

An organization is in flow, or in a state of equilibrium, when the required number of management layers (vertical architecture) matches the effective reach (or span of control) over the relevant resources that the organization needs in order to achieve its purpose.

After briefly explaining the problem and the key concepts used in correcting it, he begins to present the practical application of his ideas for creating accountability within an organization.

Beyond the useful correctives to organization architecture and accountability, Dive also makes an important distinction between Managerial leadership (operational in nature) and Strategic leadership (changing the organization) for leadership development. Each requires different abilities and approaches in decision-making style and accountability. “Operational accountability is ensuring that existing assets and resources continue to perform better. The resources are given. Problem-solving remains related to actual events, rather than the abstract.” With Strategic accountability, “problem-solving moves into the abstract domain. Solutions have to be found that require mental modeling, as they do not yet physically exist.”

On leadership development, Dive writes that “many organizations still confuse values, skills, and competencies” and “it is one of the main reasons why so many leadership development programs fail.” Here are several thoughts in this regard:

Although values and skills, especially technical skills, play an important role in who should work in an organization, they are not reliable guides for the assessment of potential and who should be promoted.

Values are badges of belonging. They should end the message: “If you do not share our values, you cannot be a member of our family.” But you do not promote people for demonstrating organizational values. The person at the front line should have as much integrity as the CEO, otherwise, neither should be in the organization.

Skills influence performance. They should not be confused with the concept of the potential to lead at the next level of accountability. Technical and professional skills increasingly give way to the importance of general skills. The best math teacher in a school is not necessarily the best candidate for the role of school principal.

But performance is about current leadership. Potential is about future leadership. This is a key distinction. The higher the progression into the upper reaches of an organization, the less relevant professional skills and performance become as predictors of future performance.

It is critical that the behaviors are linked to accountabilities. This is because different levels call for different qualities of decisions. It is important to identify the appropriate behaviors that align these. These aligned behaviors are called competencies in this context. They indicate who has the potential to move to a higher level and perform successfully. This is the basis of true leadership development.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:01 AM
Permalink | Comments (0) | Leadership Development , Management , Teamwork

One More Time: Resilience is Key

IN The Knack, a book for entrepreneurs, Norm Broadsky and Bo Burlingham respond to the question, “What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur?” The most important quality is resilience. “I’m talking about the ability to bounce back from failure, to turn around a bad situation, to profit from your mistakes. They continue:

That’s because everybody makes mistakes, plenty of them. What’s more, we keep making them as long as we’re in business. Sure, we like to think we’ll eventually get so smart we won’t make mistakes anymore. Forget about it. You’ll never stop making mistakes. Hopefully, the new ones won’t be the same as the old ones, but they’ll be equally painful. They’ll bug you just as much. They’ll make you just as mad. As upset as you get, however, it’s important to bear in mind that failure is still the best teacher around. You’ll do fine as long as you’re open to the lessons it’s trying to teach you.

And a concluding thought from an article in the New York Times, Innovation Should Mean More Jobs, Not Less. Geoffrey A. Moore, author of Dealing with Darwin, comments:

“America is probably the best culture in the world at failing,” he said. “We’re willing to navigate in a fog and keep moving forward. Our competitive advantage tends to be at the fuzzy front end of things when you’re still finding your way. Once the way has been found, we’re back at a disadvantage.”

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:29 AM
Permalink | Comments (0) | Entrepreneurship , Personal Development

Strengths Based Leadership

THE FACT IS, many leaders do not really know their strengths. Not only does this lack of self-awareness bring about unintended consequences to one’s behavior, but also it can lead to disengaged employees and undue stress in the workplace and beyond. Donald Clifton remarked:

What great leaders have in common is that each truly knows his or her strengths – and can call on the right strength at the right time. This explains why there is no definitive list of characteristics that describes all leaders.

Unique to this book is a study of 10,000 followers. When they asked them why they followed, four basic wants and needs emerged: trust, compassion, stability and hope. Once you have identified your strengths, they will give you specific suggestions for meeting those needs.

The idea of strengths-based leadership is not to ignore your weaknesses as some have mistakenly misunderstood. But the emphasis for any leader should be a deep understanding of what they bring to the table and not trying to be something they are not. Rath and Conchie write:

The most effective leaders know better than to try to be someone they are not. Whenever they spot an opportunity, they reinvest in their strengths…. Leaders stay true to who they are – and then make sure they have the right people around them. Those who surround themselves with similar personalities will always be at a disadvantage in the long run to those who are secure enough in themselves to enlist partners with complementary strengths.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 11:46 PM
Permalink | Comments (0) | Personal Development , Teamwork

First Look: Leadership Books January 2009

Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:03 AM
Permalink | Comments (0) | Books