5 Top Leadership Articles for the Week of May 9, 2016

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Each week I read a number of leadership articles from various online resources and share them across social media. Here are the five articles readers found most valuable last week. I have added my comment about each article and would like to hear what you think, too.

Winning Well with Karin Hurt and David Dye by Dan Rockwell

Did you catch this? Easily the most popular by a wide margin, Dan Rockwell (aka The LeadershipFreak) interviewed us about Winning Well. Highlights from this video interview include:

00:35 – Leaders manage and managers lead.

2:10 – Confidence and humility.

4:22 – Results and relationships. How to avoid being a user or a pleaser.

7:45 – What’s winning well? Blending the bottom line with the human spirit.

9:03 – Leaving a legacy.

10:45 – Leaders work way too hard.

11:24 – Three steps to delegating where nothing falls through the cracks.

13:45 – Having tough conversations. The I.N.S.P.I.R.E. model.

Getting to the Other Side of Discouragement by Caitie Whelan at Lead Change Group

Let’s talk about discouragement, shall we? If you and I sifted through the dustbin of history, I bet we’d find a whole bunch of great books, ideas, companies, hopes that wound up there because someone got discouraged. I’d have some stuff in that dustbin. Maybe you would, too. And, you know, I think I’ve had enough of that. I’m done with being outdone by discouragement.

My Comment: If you’re human, you’re going to be discouraged at times. Everything won’t go your way. Your ideas won’t work the way you had hoped. Circumstances make things difficult for you. Whelan reminds us to have a process to help us get back up and carry on.

Think Positive and Achieve by Naphtali Hoff at SmartBlog on Leadership

One of the biggest challenges for leaders, particularly newer ones, is to remain positive in the face of inevitable setbacks. So many things happen that can derail us from what we are trying to achieve, such as changing market conditions, weak sales figures, low worker productivity or morale, and more.

Leaders who begin with great optimism and energy could easily lose the wind from their sails and spiral into a downward funk when they start to experience obstacles, setbacks and self-doubt. Compounding matters is that many of us can be overly harsh and unjust to ourselves, in a way that we would never be with others. This can cause stress and despondency, resulting in lower self-confidence.

My Comment: The impact of a sincere, positive leadership attitude is hard to overstate. In fact, the belief that together we can have a better tomorrow than today is at the core of leadership. Hoff shares several methods to help you maintain your positivity, even when things aren’t going your way.

Symbolic Leadership: What Do You Stand For or Where Do You Sit? By Julie Giulioni

Sandra described the past week of headaches associated with a systems conversion that took place in the call center in which she works as a customer service representative. She outlined the many hiccups and problems they encountered, the way data dropped out of fields and calls that were habitually misdirected. She described the 14-hour days that would likely go on for another week or so, the intensity of the customers’ expectations and management’s scrutiny. When I responded empathetically about how miserable it must have been, Sandra surprised me with her response: “No, it was awesome!” And she went on to explain why…

My Comment: Recently I spoke with some leaders who were frustrated that their executives kept talking about building a positive culture with healthy relationships, but then behaved as they always had (which wasn’t in line with this kind of culture.) Giulioni shares a great positive example of symbolic leadership – your words don’t matter if they’re not aligned with what you do.

Do Your Motivations Undermine Your Ability to Lead? By Mary Schaefer

The CEO’s comments described what motivated him, or other executives. He didn’t have a clue about what motivated the majority of employees. What’s the problem with that? The problem is this person and his compatriots made decisions that affected my life and the lives of tens of thousands of other people. He had no idea what we were about or what was important to us. His obliviousness or lack of concern for the impact of his decisions on employees eroded his credibility with me.

My Comment: Why do your employees do what they do? If you don’t know, it can severely curtail your credibility – especially if you claim to know and then insert your own motivations. Schaefer shares a very common scenario where her CEO demonstrated a clear disconnect from his employees by doing exactly this. The result is eroded trust.

David works with leaders to get results without losing their soul (or mind) in the process. Have David to speak at your next event or corporate training: Email today or call 303.898.7018!

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