LeadershipNow 140: August 2015 Compilation

Here are a selection of tweets from August 2015 that you might have missed:

• 90 Powerful Ways to Become a Highly Successful Leader by @LollyDaskal
• 3 Situations Where Leaders Should Keep Their Mouth Shut by AJ Agrawal via @Inc
• Words that Heal, Words that Steal by @JeremieKubicek
• Why People Are Drawn to Narcissists Like Donald Trump by Michael Maccoby via @HarvardBiz
• Fake It Til You Make It? Not So Fast via @KelloggSchool
• Stuck In The Middle With Me by @StratLearner
• From @JohnBaldoni Does It Take Courage To Run For President?
• Dynamic Duos: How Introverts and Extroverts Create Breakthrough Results by @JesseLynStoner
• Mind the trap: three mistakes managers should avoid via @lbs
• What Business Leaders Can Learn from Generals from @INSEADKnowledge
• Trust From the Inside Out by djgreer
• Do you want a “bruising” workplace? by @scedmonds
• 5 Approaches To Connecting Your People by @paul_larue
• People Challenges Can Sink Startups via @StanfordBiz
• 20 Practices Of Leaders Who Become Cautionary Tales by @BrianKDodd
• 60 Resources for Getting the Career You Want via @KentStateCOBA
• 20 Ways to Know If You Are a Leader by @pauljsohn
• 7 Questions to Improve Your Team’s Communication by Karin Hurt
• Cultivating A Constructive Response to Momentary Failure by @artpetty
• Four Ways to Stimulate Growth in Others by Mark Miller @LeadersServe
• The Surprising Benefits of Being More Fully Present at Work by @ScottEblin
• The Key to Greater Impact by Mark Miller @LeadersServe

See more on Twitter.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:34 AM
Permalink | Comments (0) | LeadershipNow 140

Fairness is Overrated

Fairness is Overrated is a solid leadership primer on what it takes to create a healthy culture day-in and day-out. Tim Stevens comes from a Church leadership perspective. However, his 52 principles are applicable anywhere because people are people with the same issues—only the peer pressure changes (unfortunately).

The 52 principles are organized around four key areas: Be a leader worth following, Find the right people, Build a healthy culture and Lead confidently through a crisis.

Stevens begins with “live a life with margins” and ends with the “five stages of failure.” Living a life with margin structured in not only helps all of the other leadership principles discussed here but it helps you move through the five stages of failure faster. So it’s a foundational principle.

A leader worth following has integrity. It’s about character. Knowing yourself and disconnecting is an important way to maintain integrity. You need to build space for what’s important.

Finding the right people—finding and developing leaders—is the most important thing his did as an executive pastor. “Here is what I believe to my core: the success of leaders will rise or fall based on the decisions they make about the people around them.”

When hiring people Stevens recommends not going solo. Get others involved. Chemistry is more important than skills, experience, or education. Use social media to “get to know” the people you are considering. Look for how they treat people they disagree with. Hiring too quickly leads to problems. Pay well. “You don’t want staff to join because of money. You don’t want staff to stay because of money. You don’t want staff to leave because of money.”

If you have a healthy culture, people are waiting in line to join your organization. A healthy culture is led by a leader who is not insecure about others succeeding. Gossip is not tolerated. Employees do life together; it’s not just a job.

In a healthy culture a leader turns over authority to others. Let your leaders lead. “No organization, church, government, or company can have a healthy culture and be run by a dictator, monarch, or single personality.” You need a strong team running the organization.

What Stevens is talking about here is humility. A toxic culture cannot be changed without it.

Leading confidently through a crisis means trusting the people you have in place to figure it out. A confident leader is not one that says, “I can figure it out” but one that says, “We can figure it out.” Having a great team in place is critical here. If you have found the right people and developed a healthy culture, then it becomes easier to lead confidently in a crisis.

These 52 principles are easier to implement if you have people who will speak truth to you. Again, humility is key here.

There is a lot to be considered in this book. It is well-written (a bit of a page turner) and you will want to go back again and again to see how you measure up.

And by the way, fairness is overrated. “Don’t confuse fairness with justice. Justice is about doing what is right. Fairness means everyone gets exactly the same thing.” It's about priorities.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:03 AM
Permalink | Comments (0) | Human Resources , Leadership , Management

What Are Your Hidden Strengths?

Your strengths will get you in the door, but to make progress you are going to have to become more of who you are and draw on your hidden strengths.

Hidden strengths are not weaknesses. They are capacities you have that have yet to be recognized, developed and utilized. They become your Learned Strengths.

Your strengths and weaknesses need to be managed. Strengths need to be managed so that they are not overused or overbearing. Weaknesses need to be managed so that they don’t derail you. Often they can be delegated. But the area between the two—your hidden strengths—not only provide a deep pool of strengths to draw on but they will help you to smooth out your rough edges and bring into balance your natural strengths.

Hidden Strengths, authors Thuy and Milo Sindell have identified 28 skills in four categories and made available a free Hidden Strengths Assessment at HiddenStrengths.com. The four categories are: Leading Self, Leading Others, Leading the Organization, and Leading Implementation.

Once you have identified your hidden strengths you can identify areas to focus on developing that would nullify a weakness or contribute to your success without directly attacking areas where you struggle. For example, Barry lacked emotional control and it was hurting his leadership capacity. He did have hidden strengths in the areas of resilience and flexibility. So instead of attacking his weakness, he developed his resilience and flexibility. In doing so he did not get so fired up that he lost control of his emotions. The authors note that “if he prepared ahead of time for meetings by formulating his ideas and alternatives, it make him more flexible when he listened to others’ ideas, and everyone would feel heard and understood.”

You are more than what naturally comes to you. There is much more that can be developed. “With awareness and dedication, you can leverage these Hidden Strengths to continually reach new levels of performance and success.”

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:54 PM
Permalink | Comments (0) | Personal Development

First Look: Leadership Books for August 2015

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

  Humans Are Underrated: What High Achievers Know That Brilliant Machines Never Will by Geoff Colvin
  Unthinkable: The Culture and Politics of Getting Innovation Wrong by Tom Hopkins
  Louder than Words: Harness the Power of Your Authentic Voice by Todd Henry
  Leading Continuous Change: Navigating Churn in the Real World by Bill Pasmore
  Rising Strong by Brené Brown



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Build your leadership library with these specials on over 100 titles. All titles are at least 40% off the list price and are available only in limited quantities.


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“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of the past centuries.”

Posted by Michael McKinney at 04:28 AM
Permalink | Comments (0) | Books