Becky Robinson's Blog, page 47

Are You Producing a Book in 2017?

The experience of being an author has dramatically changed in recent years. On the plus side, easy access to publishing, editing, and online marketing have allowed so many talented voices to share their messages with diverse audiences in an unprecedented way.

However, as the options for independent authors have increased tenfold, so has the confusion. Many authors find themselves with manuscripts or plans for manuscripts, but no idea of how to navigate the publication process.

Lori Weidert, our Book Production Editor, answered some frequently asked questions about the book production process:

What is the difference between design and typesetting?

The word “typesetter” conjures up images of metal letters and a giant press to most people, and the word “compositor” draws a complete blank. I’ve taken to explaining it with an analogy: the Designer works as the “architect” of the project, mapping out the appearance and the beautiful elements; and the typesetter is the engineer, or construction worker–building the book to the specifications in that “blueprint.”

Typesetting involves ensuring that every word or paragraph has a proper appearance–a head, a bullet, or a graphic; that spacing around elements is correct; that word, line, and page breaks are proper.

A good book designer and typesetter will always keep the reader in mind–it should be aesthetically pleasing, and assembled so as not to break a reader’s stride.

What are the biggest challenges in self-publishing? Benefits?

Marketing and sales are most challenging in self-publishing. An individual author, and often very small companies, do not have the resources to thoroughly reach out to their target audience. It can be expensive and an exorbitant amount of work–websites, emails, advertising can require an entire team of people to carry out. Distribution is always a difficult decision, also–do you fill your garage with copies of your book and sell them yourself, or hire a third party to take care of collecting fees, shipping, and delivering? These are the details that Weaving Influence helps with the most.

The benefits include more control over the process, a smaller barrier to entry, a larger profit on individual books sold, and allow all of the decisions about the book to be made by the author.

How long does it usually take a book to move from manuscript to published?

This depends on the nature of the book. The content and length of the manuscript varies from book to book. Books that contain heads and straight text can be produced quickly. Those with many elements–tables, boxes, graphics, extracts, quotes, etc.–take a bit longer, as each of those items have to be assembled, and then “fit” into the text in a logical manner.

The normal production stages are:

Typeset
Proofread
Correct/Revise
Proofread again
Correct Again
Print

If everything goes smoothly, 8-10 weeks is a very comfortable schedule. That timeline can be condensed and rushed, or spread out for rewrites and take several months, or a year or more.

Weaving Influence is proud to have produced a number of books—from start to finish—for our partners. We would love to be your guide in answering the above questions and more, with the ultimate goal of bringing your book to publication!

We offer a wide range of book production services, including:

Professional editing
Book cover design
Interior design
Typesetting
Design for Kindle conversion through Amazon
Createspace and Amazon support
Marketing strategy and support

Some examples of recent book production projects include:

Lilac Dreams: My Journey From a Sewer Drain to the Boardroom by Bonnie Hathcock
The Servant Leadership Journal: An 18 Week Journey to Transform You and Your Organization  by Art Barter
Leading Jesus’ Way by Mark Deterding

We would love to partner with you to bring your book to life! Send us an email to get the conversation going.

Featured on Friday: Stop Guessing by Nat Greene

We all suffer from hard problems that seem unsolvable. They exist in every home, every business, every community. They keep you awake at night, waste your time and money, chase away your dreams, and eat away at your confidence. Our normal attempts to tackle those challenges might include following our heart, losing hours in research before narrowing down the best option, waffling between choices until you’re forced to make a decision, or ignoring the problem until things the situation explodes like a mushroom cloud.

Even after all those attempts, sometimes your final decision comes down to simply guessing at the best option. But what if there was a better way?

Today’s featured author wants to see you bypass all that stress and become the best problem-solver you can be! He’s pinpointed nine specific behaviors that can stop wasting time and money (and sleep) and give you confidence to solve the hard problems, build alignment to implement the right solution, identify more important and valuable opportunities that are being ignored, and even help others to be better problem‐solvers.

Meet the Author — Nat Greene

Nat Greene is a business leader, author, and champion of great problem-solving. He helps smart people make radically better decisions, and all his activities and interests are tied to this mission. Nat helped found and run Stroud international and is the author of two books: Wedged is a look into some of the drivers behind political dysfunction in the US, and Stop Guessing explores the behaviors of great problem-solvers.

Nat’s upbringing ingrained an intense drive to help people develop an Abundant Thinking mindset, understanding that more is always possible. He was born and raised in Hong Kong during a period of immense growth in social mobility, influenced by not only dreamers but also by those looking to push educational and professional boundaries. His father, a professor of material science, taught him about problem-solving at a young age by taking him around the city and helping him to explore what was broken and why.

Nat remains inspired by the belief that anything is possible, and has chosen to dedicate his life to productively challenging the conventional limits of the status quo. He takes an approach that is hands-on, data-driven, and follows a rigorous process to break constraints. He always delivers results–a model Stroud follows. Nat’s curiosity, determination, and passion extends beyond his work to every corner of his life. He enjoys spending time with his family, and learns a great deal from his children, who are not bound by the same pre-conceived notions and experiences that constrain many adults. Nat, his wife, and four children reside in Marblehead, Massachusetts, by the ocean, a symbol of infinite possibility that inspires him.

Nat has a Masters of Engineering from Oxford University and studied design, manufacturing and management at Cambridge University, in addition to executive education coursework in Harvard Business School’s Owner/President Management program.

Want to connect with Nat? Visit his website, find him on LinkedIn, or send him an email.

Discover the Book — Stop Guessing

Bad problem solving costs individuals and society incalculable amounts of time, money, and sanity. Great problem-solvers, however, are armed with a set of behaviors, not just a methodical approach, that allows them to avoid guessing. They consistently solve hard problems to root cause in a way that can seem magical to most people. In this book, Nat Greene—who’s been solving hard problems professionally for over twenty years—shares nine behaviors anyone can adopt to find solutions to even the most seemingly intractable problems.

The problem with most problem solving, Greene says, is that it’s not problem solving at all: it’s guessing. We have an idea of what might work and we try it out. If that doesn’t work, we try something else. And so on. It’s inefficient at best, and with really hard problems there are simply too many variables for guessing to work. Greene shows you how to adopt the behaviors great problem solvers use to arrive at solutions efficiently—without guessing. He illustrates them with examples ranging from everyday issues like fixing a malfunctioning garage door to stopping frequent breakdowns at a chemical plant (saving millions of dollars) to addressing the scourge of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. So stop guessing and start solving today!

Intrigued? Visit the book site, add it to your Goodreads shelf, or buy a copy on Amazon.

What People Are Saying

“It’s a great book for both advanced and novice problem solvers – all you need is a curious mind and a desire to get dramatically better at solving the toughest problems around you, including those that many organizations have accepted to be unsolvable.”

— Pat Sullivan, 5-star Amazon review

“This book can teach you how to pick the right approach and solve hard problems. It’s not a big book. It doesn’t take a long time to get through it. Without a doubt though, if you apply the tools in this book you will become a better problem solver.”

— R. McConaughy, 5-star Amazon review

“Problem solving methodologies abound in the marketplace, but all of them will fail if not approached with the right behaviors. That is where this book focuses. It is an easy read with each of the 9 behaviors clearly defined and explained. The author does a great job of illustrating them with real examples that bring the behaviors to light.”

— Charles Milner, 5-star Amazon review

“Nat Greene shows us how we should approach problems differently. He offers numerous engaging real-life stories to illustrate how we can change our problem-solving mindset and provides tools that can be used by anyone for any problem. ‘Stop Guessing’ is an easy read that seamlessly flows from chapter to chapter and Nat builds on the principles that he shares.”

— Lisa Kosak, 5-star Amazon review

“Nat Greene has taken problem solving to a new level in his ‘Stop Guessing.’ Filled with lots of examples and anecdotes, I learned quite a bit while reading the book. . . . This is a good book that would be a nice addition to just about anyone’s library.”

— Rebecca Henderson, 5-star Amazon review

Learn More

Visit StopGuessingBook.com to learn more about great problem-solving, watch the book trailer, and read some of Nat’s recent guest articles. While there, you can also take this online quiz to learn your greatest problem-solving strengths. Or stop by Nat’s website to read his blog and learn about his latest projects.

Twitter Update: @Username Replies No Longer Count in 140-Characters

Twitter announced last week that “when you reply to someone or a group, those @usernames won’t count toward your Tweet’s 140 characters.” So for instance, if a client tweets a question at you, instead of your 140-character response including the number of characters in @weaveinfluence or @Forbes or @RealDonaldTrmp, etc., it looks like this:

In the above example, we tweeted at three users with handles of total of 32 characters. With the updated replies, those 32 characters no longer count against us.

If you’ll remember from years previous, the direct messages, photo and video URLs, GIFs, polls, and quoted tweets all counted toward the 140-character limit. In August 2015, Twitter lifted the limit on direct messages; and in September 2016, they stopped counting the characters in the rest.

This new update seems like a positive change, right? As with all changes to any social media interface, people love it . . . and they hate it. There’s been quite the backlash. However, the executives behind Twitter know that if they want to keep their heads above water, they have to keep coming up with new and better ways to be, well, new and better.

So what does this mean for us?

For starters, it makes Twitter conversations that are between more than two people a whole lot easier to respond to. With the characters in the @username no longer counting, you can theoretically @reply to a whole group of Twitter users and use all 140 characters for your thoughts, instead of wasting precious letters toward their lengthy handles.

But of course, with every upside there is also a downside. Being able to @reply to a group of people also makes it a lot easier to be spammed with notifications about conversations you have no interest being in.

Overall, we’re pretty enthused about this new update. Even the ability to have just slightly longer conversations with clients and followers on Twitter means we are able to go an extra step and pour into the people who count on us. For us, that’s a win.

Cheers to you, Twitter!

Featured on Friday: Servant Leadership Journal by @Art_Barter

Changing your behavior is hard — especially if you’ve been doing things a particular way for years or even decades. It requires reflecting on your current behaviors, understanding what needs to change, educating yourself and planning how to do things differently, and applying those plans on a daily basis. It’s a lengthy, challenging process, especially in our hectic, “always on” world — but there are tools to help!

For instance, consider those times in your day when your hands are busy, but your mind is left free to wander — such as during your commute, while you exercise, as you do housework, etc. Those are great times to reflect on your current behaviors and evaluate their effectiveness. Another great tool is journaling. Simply writing down your thoughts, emotions, challenges, and experiences can help focus your mind on what’s important or what needs to change. It’s even more effective when you journal about a particular aspect of life, such as your leadership journey.

Today’s featured author utilizes both of those tools in powerful ways. He began years ago using his commute to reflect on “behaving his talk” as a leader, focusing particularly on the principles of servant leadership, framing his mind to consider how to add value as a servant leader throughout that particular day. Eventually, he began focusing on nine behaviors key to growing as a servant leader, and created an 18-week journal focused on transforming personal leadership — a tool you can use to transform your leadership journey one day at a time.

Meet the Author — Art Barter

From compassionate leader to caring friend, Art Barter has also been committed to the principles of excellence related to the workplace. In 2004, his world changed dramatically. As vice president of finance within Datron World Communications, Art was given an opportunity to purchase the company. With little money and a big vision, a miracle happened through several circumstances that allowed Art and Lori Barter to become owners of a $10 million communications company.

Art will tell you the transformation took place because of his commitment to turn the organization from a traditional model of leadership to a servant leadership model. As chief executive officer, he also sees himself as cultural architect within Datron. The recent book, The Art of Servant Leadership, explains his story of success. Art is committed to sharing his Datron story with as many corporate leaders as possible, so that they too can move from “good, to great, to even greater impact” for the sake of others.

Art Barter holds two bachelor’s degrees in business and finance. Prior to joining Datron in 1999, he spent eight years working with the Disney Corporation and over 25 years in manufacturing companies.  In 2004, Art purchased Datron from The Titan Corporation and began serving in his current position as Datron’s CEO.

Want to connect with Art? Visit his website or find him on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook.

Discover the Book — The Servant Leadership Journal

Servant leadership is a form of leadership that turns the traditional organization chart upside down; the leader exists to serve the people he leads. In The Servant Leadership Journal, author and servant leadership implementer Art Barter teaches nine behaviors necessary to grow into a servant leader. Through the journaling process, these behaviors will change your mindset about leading in your personal life and your organization, thus changing your leadership behaviors and allowing you to reap rewards you never thought possible.

There are four distinct steps that are key to effective journaling: educate yourself on the meaning of each behavior; understand where you are with each behavior; be courageous to see the real you; and apply what you are learning to your life. What specific areas do you want to improve? Reflect by recording the results of your journey. Let’s change that old, worn out saying, “Walk the talk” to “Behave your talk.”™ Show others you are serious about becoming a different type of leader—one who can be trusted to act the same way you talk.

Intrigued? Visit the book page, add it to your Goodreads shelf, or buy a copy on Amazon.

What People Are Saying

“I loved how practical the steps in this book are. The author did a great job at at setting up everything that you need to start working toward being the type of leader that not only will your followers want to follow but that you will want to be!”

— Dad of Divas, 5-star Amazon review

“Writing about your experiences, feelings, challenges, and goals will help you understand the new actions you are choosing to take. . . . Throughout, you’ll find quotations from fellow servant leaders, to help support your journey. Living your life for others has been shown to result in happiness, resilience, friendship, success, and more.”

— R.McConaughy, 5-star Amazon review

“Recently read ‘Farmer Able’ and loved how Art succinctly wove the Servant Leadership principles through the book. As I’ve thumbed through this journal I’m excited to have another tool to help me SERVE my organization better!”

— Troy Slezak, 5-star Amazon review

“As an adjunct to the book ‘Farmer Able,’ Art Barter has published ‘The Servant Leadership Journal’ where . . . you will learn a better leadership philosophy, learn about yourself, and make changes to become a leader people want to follow.”

— Neal Woodson, 4-star Amazon review

Learn More

Visit ServantLeadershipInstitute.com to learn more about the book and find beautiful graphics and tweets to share with your coworkers and friends, or visit ArtBarterSpeaks.com to learn more about the author. Also, if you missed our recent webinar with Art, where he shared more about his philosophy of servant leadership, you can watch the replay here.

Lessons from the Rice Chefs of Morimoto Asia

When my daughter, her friend, and I dined at Morimoto Asia in Disney Springs recently, we did a few things backwards.

As our server, Roberto, prepared to give me the bill, we asked if we could have the warm, wet cloths that the diners adjacent to us had received for cleaning their hands. “Yes,” he said, “you can, but in the Japanese tradition it is more typical to use the warm cloths to clean your hands as you prepare to eat sushi.”

We had followed the lead of the diners adjacent to us, who had seen the diners next to them get towels, and asked for their own. Apparently none of us fully understood the Japanese tradition of oshibori (but we still enjoyed the warm towels).

Our mis-timed request for the towels was not the only thing we didn’t fully understand that evening.

Behind The Scenes

After he had cleared our plates, Roberto asked me about one other component of my meal.

Roberto to me: “Did you notice anything different about the rice?”

Me: “It was brown instead of white?” (I didn’t think that was the case — I had noticed the option on the menu to order brown rice sushi instead of white rice sushi, and had not chosen the brown rice option.)

Roberto: “No.”

Stumped, I gave up.

Roberto began an explanation that held me spellbound and left me thinking as much about a team player I had never seen as I had thought about the server, the restaurant’s greeters, or the manager who paid a visit to our table.

He explained that Morimoto puts a priority on how its rice is prepared and specially polished, that the rice is the first matter of business each day.

The first position a Morimoto food preparer has is “rice.” Just rice. The people who prepare the rice spend roughly two years in the role, making sure the rice that is incorporated into the establishment’s sushi is high quality, and polished to perfection.

Once someone has proven themselves by competently handling their responsibilities for rice, the next step is to cut fish. At this step in a cook’s career, they are not within sight of the restaurant’s patrons at all. Having proven themselves with their proficiency at rice, they are given additional responsibilities to prepare the fish which will be used to create sushi.

After another period of one to two years, the cook is allowed to work within sight of the patrons, preparing sushi. However, they are not allowed to interact with the patrons at all.

The highest level of responsibility is to work at the sushi bar, in a capacity that encourages interacting with the patrons.

The Efforts We Don’t Recognize

After we paid our bill and moved on to our next destination (which, let’s be honest, was dessert — we were at Disney after all!), I couldn’t help thinking of how nonchalantly I had sent the remainder of my meal, undoubtedly with uneaten grains of rice, back to the kitchen.

It is not uncommon to send some partial meal remnants back to the kitchen, and I don’t mean I am remiss for not having scarfed up every single grain of rice; but at the same time, I sort of felt like I had discounted some aspiring cook’s hard work and ambitions.

I was also reminded of efforts I have made, whether at work, at home, or in my community, that felt exquisitely meaningful to me but either didn’t have the results I intended or had outcomes which remained a mystery.

Petals Of Love

I have a friend who makes exquisite fabric flowers. Although her techniques have changed a bit over the years and she has acquired some machinery that helps her produce her beautiful creations less labor-intensively, she used to shape every single petal by holding the fabric just the right distance from an open flame to create the slightest curl to each petal.

My friend shared once about making a large quantity of her flowers for a community event. After all the hours of hand-shaping petals, the flowers were barely noticed among the other swag, some left behind on the dining tables or ignored. The event’s attendees didn’t know how much painstaking work had gone into creating each bloom. I have to think they would have taken more care if they had understood the love and passion with which they were created.

Who Is Making a Difference For You Behind the Scenes?

Has someone in your world quietly, passionately, lovingly committed themselves to creating a quality product or experience?

Have you wondered if the care you take with the responsibilities and people entrusted to you matters?

Just like the custodians of the rice at Morimoto, renewing our attention to the small details unlocks potential: for us to see ourselves making a greater contribution and for others to appreciate how something as small as a grain of rice can represent so much more.

 

Featured on Friday: Awakening Compassion at Work by @MonicaWorline

What if there was one thing you could bring to your organization — be it corporate, ministry, or non-profit — that would be guaranteed to lower blood pressure, strengthen immune systems, fuel innovation, improve service quality, foster adaptability, and increase retention?

Sound like an impossible dream?

Today’s featured author would disagree. She believes that compassion is a vital and powerful tool that every organization should be wielding. People are under enough stress these days, from physical suffering and relational discord, to national and global conflict, and the workplace does not need to add its own contribution to the list. Nurturing a compassionate atmosphere among employees — not only noticing others’ suffering but actually taking action to alleviate the pain — can ease tension, short-circuit stressors, and boost success rates for individuals and the organization as a whole.

Meet the Author — Monica Worline

Monica C. Worline, Ph.D., is founder and CEO of EnlivenWork, an innovation organization that teaches businesses and others how to tap into courageous thinking, compassionate leadership, and the curiosity to bring their best work to life. She is a research scientist at Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, where she engages in action research projects with organizations seeking to activate their social architecture of compassion. She loves working with “compassion architects” — the people in organizations who understand the power of connection and care and spread it wherever they can.

Monica is also the Executive Director of CompassionLab, the world’s leading research collaboratory focused on compassion at work. CompassionLab was co-founded with Jane Dutton, Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan, and the late Peter Frost of University of British Columbia. With a home base at the University of Michigan, they draw compassion and organization researchers from around the world into dialogue about creating more compassionate workplaces.

Monica holds a lectureship at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, and is affiliate faculty at the Center for Positive Organizations. She is one of the lead instructors for an innovative immersion learning course entitled “Magnify,” which helps undergraduates interested in business and organizations see how to magnify the potential for excellence in any system.

Want to connect with Monica? Find her on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or send her an email.

Discover the Book — Awakening Compassion at Work

Suffering in the workplace can rob us of humanity, dignity, and motivation. Often silent and left unaddressed, suffering is a costly drain on organization productivity and potential. Marshaling evidence from two decades of research with organizations in a variety of industries and sectors, scholars and consultants Monica Worline and Jane Dutton show us how small actions can have big effects. Offering a view of compassion that is grounded in the best of social science research and the new science of compassion, this book teaches four ways that anyone, regardless of position or role, can bring more compassion to their work lives.

Going beyond each individual’s role in awakening compassion at work, Monica and Jane also reveal how managers, leaders, and change agents can diagnose the social architecture for compassion in their organizations. This work belongs on every organization’s strategic agenda, because creating conditions that draw out our capacity for compassion at work confers measurable competitive advantages in areas like innovation, collaboration, service quality, talent attraction and retention, and adaptability. Ultimately, as Monica and Jane write, “Compassion is an irreplaceable dimension of excellence for any organization that wants to make the most of its human capabilities.”

Intrigued? Visit the book site to download a free chapter, add it to your Goodreads shelf, or buy a copy on Amazon.

What People Are Saying

“‘Awakening Compassion at Work’ is a more than just a collection of stories – it is a moving reminder that all workplaces can thrive when people are intentionally aware of others.”

— Sean Glaze, 5-star Amazon review

“This book opened up my eyes to what we need to work every day along with empathy, empowerment, leadership or any other elements that you hold dear in a company culture.”

— Lisa Kosak, 5-star Amazon review

“This book is a welcome breath of hope and fresh air for fostering workplaces that uplift and nurture instead of tear down and drain.”

— N. Monson, 5-star Amazon review

“Reading this book not only makes me aspire to be a more compassionate person but also shows me how to do it!”

— Gretchen Spreitzer, 5-star Amazon review

“This book is an incredibly powerful response to suffering in the world. . . . If you want to be a candle against the darkness of our times, read this book.”

— Robert Stocking, 5-star Amazon review

Learn More

Visit AwakeningCompassion.com to learn more about the book and its authors, or download a free sample chapter. While there, you can also join the community of compassion architects, read the blog for compassion wisdom, or share your story of compassion in the workplace.

What It’s Like to Pitch You

Pitching story ideas to reporters is a funny business. It’s part sales, part journalism, and can be super frustrating and super rewarding by turns. That’s why you’ve hired Weaving Influence to do it for you!

I’ve sent pitches for clients and employers, received pitches as a freelancer, and for a while even worked as a publicist for a news network. Talk about meta. Having been on the receiving end of successful pitches as well as having sent them, here’s my process for taking your PR strategy and putting it to work!

First—I need to fully understand your message. If I haven’t already read your book or blog in preparation for writing your press release, I’ll do that first thing. You never know what fun anecdotes might pop out that could be used later in a pitch, or could provide an otherwise unknown connection to a journalist.

Second—I need to fully understand your goals. If your dream is to get into the Wall Street Journal, reach the pharmaceutical industry, or give a TED talk, that will drastically affect my pitching plan. Weaving Influence has established relationships with a number of business reporters, leadership bloggers, and career-focused podcasters who are usually happy to hear from us, and that helps a lot. But if there’s a special audience you want to reach, let me know what it is—and how it will help you.

Then, the hardest part—deciding where to start. Cision, the comprehensive media database we use for press release distribution and some of our research, lists almost 4,000 media contacts under the subject of “books and literature” alone! This is why it’s so helpful to have your goals in mind before the process starts; by narrowing down the top-priority outlets, we can save a lot of time weeding out the ones you don’t really care to get into anyway.

Once I have a good list of 10-20 outlets, I’ll pick one and really dive in. And this is the really important part: picking the writer to pitch. Using Cision, Weaving Influence records & colleagues, and good old fashioned Google, I examine staff lists to see who covers what. I check out a reporter’s latest writing to make sure they’re still current with the publication. If they’re on Twitter, I spend time reading their tweets to get a feel for what’s on their mind. I’m looking for the perfect match between their topic interests and your message.

By now it’s pretty easy to draw the connection between the writer and you. I’ll send the reporter a quick note, often mentioning a recent story they’ve written, and why a story on your topic might make an interesting follow-up for their readers. I’ll attach our carefully crafted materials about you—a press release or press kit, maybe—or just offer up a copy of the book, when that’s more appropriate. If I’m pitching a podcaster or TV producer, I might link to a YouTube video of you speaking, just so they can see what an elegant communicator you are!

Basically, whatever the writer or interviewer’s role—blogger, book reviewer, editor, segment booker, freelancer—I take into account, so that what I’m offering them is crystal clear, something they can use, and mentioned high up in the email as well as repeated at the bottom.

The whole process can take quite a while per pitch—but it’s well worth the effort. We track everything on a spreadsheet that you have access to. I and some of my colleagues highlight wins in yellow. Then we share links with you and others on the WI team when these go live so that our social teams can spread them far and wide. And there’s nothing more satisfying than a long spreadsheet with lots and lots of yellow!

Interested in learning more about our PR services? Send us an email with your questions or to schedule a time to chat!

 

Featured on Friday: Leaders Made Here by Mark Miller

It doesn’t matter whether you work at a Fortune 500 company, a non-profit, or something in between: one area that is critical to the health of your organization is leadership — specifically, modeling “good” leadership and training leaders for the future. Creating and maintaining an effective leadership culture matters whether you’re part of a business, church, sports team, social committee, town hall, or something else. What does that mean exactly?

Today’s featured author explains what a “leadership culture” involves and how to create it — with ideas like defining, training, practicing, and measuring — in his newest book, Leaders Made Here. He believes that people want more than a paycheck and basic benefits from their job, and that most people do want to grow, though they may need a little encouragement to combat complacency. In his words, “the best leaders are always learners.”

Meet the Author — Mark Miller

Mark Miller began writing over decade ago when he teamed up with Ken Blanchard on The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do. In 2011, he released The Secret of Teams, outlining the key principles that enable some teams to outperform the all the rest. Great Leaders Grow: Becoming a Leader for Life came next in 2012, followed by The Heart of Leadership in October 2013, the 10th Anniversary Edition of The Secret in September 2014, Chess Not Checkers: Elevate Your Leadership Game in April 2016, and Leaders Made Here in March 2017. With more than 700,000 books in print, Mark has been surprised by the response and delighted to serve leaders through his writing.

In addition to writing, he really loves speaking to leaders. Over the years, he’s traveled extensively around the world teaching for numerous international organizations. His theme is always the same: encouraging and equipping leaders.

He also sells chicken. Mark started his Chick-fil-A career working as an hourly team member back in 1977. In 1978, he joined the corporate staff working in the warehouse and mail room. Since then, he’s provided leadership for Corporate Communications, Field Operations, Quality and Customer Satisfaction, Training and Development, and Organizational Effectiveness. Today he serves as the Vice President of High Performance Leadership. During his time with Chick-fil-A, annual sales have grown to over $5 billion, and the company now has more than 1,700 restaurants in 39 states and the District of Columbia.

He’s been married to his high school sweetheart, Donna, for more than 30 years, and they have two sons, a daughter-in-law, and a beautiful granddaughter. He keep a full schedule and lives an active life. He works hard to stay fit — but he also has a weak spot for Starbucks — specifically, Venti two-pump soy mochas with no whip. He also loves photography. He’s had the privilege to shoot in some of the world’s hardest-to-reach places, including Mount Kilimanjaro, Everest Base Camp, Antarctica, and the jungles of Rwanda.

Want to connect with Mark? Find him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Discover the Book — Leaders Made Here

Every organization dreams of having enough leaders. Yet most take a haphazard or inconsistent approach to leadership development. They either assume they can find new leaders when they need them, or they believe leaders are born, they can’t be made. The consequences of this thinking are devastating, creating a perpetual shortfall of high caliber leaders; yet without them, no organization can thrive. The good news: this problem is solvable.

Bestselling author and Chick-fil-A executive Mark Miller describes how any organization can create a culture in which leaders are routinely and systematically developed, resulting in a surplus of leaders. Miller details how to nurture leaders throughout the organization, from the front lines to the executive ranks. He provides a game plan for organizations to create a deep and effective leadership bench.

To bring his ideas to life, Miller uses the story of Blake, a new CEO, and Charles, and old friend and colleague, as they search for best practices from around the world to ensure a continuous supply of their most precious asset leaders. Blake and his team then translate their findings into a practical plan that any organization can use to create a leadership culture that will ensure a sustainable competitive advantage and long-term success.

Intrigued? Visit the book site to download a free chapter, add it to your Goodreads shelf, or buy a copy on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

What People Are Saying

“Mark Miller tells stories. He tells them with engagement and purpose. This book is no exception. The book is not extensive in writing, consisting of 144 pages (according to the publisher; the actual story is 130 pages) of easy reading. Even the format – font and layout – are conducive to making this a quick read. However, this small book can make an impressive impact on a leader. As straight-forward as the principles are, they could take a career to implement.”

— Roy Wallen, 5-star Amazon review

“Mark doesn’t just throw ideas, tools, and examples at us. Mark visually leads us down the leadership process by telling us a story. Who doesn’t love a great story where we can join the characters in learning?”

— Lisa Korsak, 5-star Amazon review

“This is a great resource not only for human resource professionals but for leadership teams as well. I would encourage churches, denominations, and faith-based institutions to study Miller’s model for building leadership cultures in their settings as well.”

— Ircel Harrison, 5-star Amazon review

“[Mark’s] concepts are deep but explained in short & simple ideas (not overly theoretical). He presents a comprehensive framework and a preview of the realistic challenges. The process and examples are easy to follow. You don’t need a masters degree to get started, I believe any business leader can involve themselves in a similar process – at least on some scale.”

— Nathan Magnuson, 5-star Amazon review

“One of the things that I love about Mark Miller’s book is that he not just a leadership theorist but is an actual practitioner of leadership in a dynamic and well respected company. His books are fun to read and his guidance is action oriented and he provides a pragmatic and purposeful approach to helping build leaders.”

— Leslie Gornig, 5-star Amazon review

Learn More

Stop by the book site to learn more about Leaders Made Here, find tweets and graphics to share with your friends and coworkers, and read some of Mark’s recent guest articles.

Stop Giving Employee Empowerment a Bad Name

This post is part of our 2017 Team Buzz Builder Guest Blogger series. Today we are pleased to introduce you to executive coach and leadership expert, Josh Ploch.

Employee Empowerment is one of the most popular buzz words of the last few years.

We see it thrown around for everything from morale, to the new hip thing, to the best way to deal with millennials. Employee empowerment is often cited as a key way to gain competitive advantage in increasingly competitive markets. Unfortunately, the name is starting to get watered-down, and we are losing the true meaning of what empowerment in the workplace is and how we can impact it.

Let’s break it down.

What is the meaning of employee empowerment?

Generally, empowerment refers to a few key areas:

Employees are allowed to increase their scope of job duties by proactively engaging in work not spelled out in their job description or scope.
Employees are given greater control or flexibility in the decision-making of their job.
Employees are involved in key decision-making steps early in the process.
Employees and managers work together on goal setting and expectations.

What is the relationship between job satisfaction and employee empowerment?

There are a few key areas that are often referenced as improving in environments where empowerment is a focus:

Support and encouragement.
Freedom to complete the job with some form of self-direction.
Allowing employees to aid in defining the outcomes.

Where have we gone wrong?

The challenge that we have is that most leaders are starting the empowerment journey at the wrong point. We add employee empowerment as an afterthought, or a way to fix something that we perceive as a current issue in our workforce. We need to start the empowerment journey much earlier in our process, specifically during the hiring and onboarding process.

The key ingredient for success is your organization is finding, hiring, developing, and empowering the right people. Too many leaders are too focused on finding the right strategy – when they should be focused on finding the right people.

Once we have those people, we develop them by providing two things – Trust and Clarity.

Trust

We cast vision and let everyone know where we want to go. What is the vision? We say, “Here is the WHAT, here is the WHERE, here are the GUARDRAILS, and you figure out the HOW.” Many leaders struggle with the physical act of giving up control. There is no secret formula for this, although I have seen many tactics. The only way to really find out if you can trust someone is to actually trust them.

“Clarity without trust produces fear and inaction, Trust without clarity produces work without direction.” Craig Groeschel

If you explain the vision without following it up with trust, you produce an environment of fear. If you explain the vision, then jump in and do the task yourself, you create an environment of fear.

Clarity

The other challenge leaders often face while taking this journey is to offer trust but not follow it up with clarity. This fosters an environment where people are filling their time with tasks and duties that aren’t moving the vision forward. They are “busy” and working, but without clarity they don’t know what to work on, or if their work is moving toward the goal that you as a leader wants them to move toward.

How do we improve?

Here are some action steps that can help you improve your team in this area:

Identify where you need to improve – is it clarity or trust?
Identify some specific steps you can take to improve this area. Is it being more clear with the vision? Is it having one on one meetings with your team to define their roles? Is it giving more flexibility or responsibility to help them stretch? All of these can be key steps on the road to empowerment.
Pick one important goal. Identify a key area you want to impact change. Don’t be overly ambitious with change. Start with one key metric or goal.
Delegate authority and decision making instead of tasks. Most leaders delegate tasks, great leaders delegate decisions.

 

Never Stop Learning

I didn’t hate school, but I didn’t love it, either. I was always kind of middle-of-the-road, grade wise. Nothing came naturally to me, so I had to work really hard in order to get decent grades. Consequently, by the time college graduation came around, my 3.2 grade point average and I were tired of learning and excited to be done with school forever.

What I didn’t fully expect shortly after being on my own in the real world, though, was how much I’d miss always learning something new. I was bored to tears in my job and felt like I was just going through the motions. There was no challenge and I hated that. So I made the decision to become curious and start learning again. I taught myself how to basket weave, I learned the art of canvas-painting, I took an online class on coding, I watched documentaries about things like Scientology and the O.J. Simpson and Sommeliers, I started learning the basics of German, I took a course to become certified in TEFL.

I quit math, science, and aesthetics when I graduated; but it turns out, I never quit learning. And while the skills I’ve spent my time on probably aren’t going to directly impact my career, I fully believe I’m a better employee because I refuse to let myself quit being curious about the way things work.

Why is learning and curiosity so crucial to success in work?

You’ll never grow bored. There are so many new and interesting skills and ideas in this world, that it’s impossible to ever learn everything, especially if you want to gain any kind of mastery over it. If you commit to always learning something new, boredom becomes impossible.
You’ll stay humble. Again, there are so many skills to be learned and ideas to be thought about that it’s impossible to learn them all. There will always be something you don’t know, and when you’re aware of that fact, it’s pretty easy to stay humble.
You’ll become indispensable to your team. When you commit to learning, you’ll get good at it. You’ll become quicker at picking up new tasks, and you’ll eventually become indispensable to your team. They’ll know that they can come to you and, even if you don’t know how to do what they need, you’ll learn it.

Staying curious and constantly committing to learning new things is an asset that will make you a better employee in general, not just with the stuff you enjoy doing, but also with the monotonous, day-to-day, busy work that you could do without.

In a recent study done by the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), one of the co-authors, Dr. Matthias Gruber, said this of curiosity: “Curiosity puts the brain in a state that allows it to learn and retain any kind of information, like a vortex that sucks in what you are motivated to learn, and also everything around it.”

Not only will a commitment to learning and curiosity make your life more interesting, it will rewire your brain to retain even the most boring of information. In turn, you’ll get better and better at your job and become an invaluable member of any team you’re on. There is no downside.