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June 25 - July 16, 2018
Honest, competent, inspiring, and forward-looking are the essential characteristics people want in a leader, someone whose direction they would willingly follow.
The Kouzes-Posner First Law of Leadership: If you don't believe in the messenger, you won't believe the message.
Kouzes-Posner Second Law of Leadership: DWYSYWD: Do What You Say You Will Do
Model the Way Clarify values by finding your voice and affirming shared values. Set the example by aligning actions with shared values.
Shared values are the result of listening, appreciating, building consensus, and resolving conflicts. For people to understand the values and come to agree with them, they must participate in the process. Unity is forged, not forced.
In order to Set the Example you need to: Live the shared values Teach others to model the values
John Michel, author of The Art of Positive Leadership
team's feedback from the Leadership Practices Inventory to be incredibly valuable.
Paul Smith, former director of consumer and communications research at Procter & Gamble, and author of Lead with a Story, explains why telling stories is so important for leaders:
A. Newberg and M. R. Waldman, Words Can Change Your Brain: 12 Conversation Strategies to Build Trust, Resolve Conflict, and Increase Intimacy (New York: Penguin, 2012), 7.
see P. Smith, Lead with a Story: A Guide to Crafting Business Narratives that Captivate, Convince, and Inspire (New York: AMACOM, 2012).
For a detailed blueprint you can use to create and reinforce a culture based on shared values, see A. Rhoades, Built on Values: Creating a Culture That Outperforms the Competition (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011).
You have to get off automatic pilot, believing that you know everything you need to know, viewing the world through pre-established categories, and not noticing what's going on around you.
People desire Integrity: Pursuing values and goals congruent with their own Purpose: Making a significant difference in the lives of others Challenge: Doing innovative work Growth: Learning and developing professionally and personally Belonging: Engaging in close and positive relationships Autonomy: Determining the course of their own lives Significance: Feeling trusted and validated
To Inspire a Shared Vision, you must envision the future by imagining exciting and ennobling possibilities. This means you must: Determine what drives you and where your passions lie in order to identify what you care enough about to imagine how it could be better in the future, compelling you forward. Reflect on your experiences, looking for the major themes in your life and understanding what you find worthwhile. Stop, look, and listen to what is going on right now—the important trends, major topics of conversation, and social discontents. Spend a higher percentage of your time focused on
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By showing others how their work connects to a larger purpose, and by aligning individual aspirations with organizational ones, you can get people to see how they belong and inspire them to work together toward a common goal.
Leaders like Cheryl embrace the power of symbolic language to communicate a shared identity and give life to visions. They use metaphors and analogies. They give examples, tell stories, and relate anecdotes. They draw word pictures, and they offer quotations and recite slogans. They enable constituents to picture the possibilities—to hear them, to sense them, to recognize them.
Challenge the Process Search for opportunities by seizing the initiative and looking outward for innovative ways to improve. Experiment and take risks by consistently generating small wins and learning from experience.
new jobs and new assignments are ideal opportunities for asking probing questions and challenging the way you do things. They are the times when you're expected to ask, “Why do we do this?” However, don't just ask this when you're new to the job. Make it a routine part of your leadership.
To break out of this pattern, she created a new forum that met after every event to brainstorm on how they could do things better for the next event. In these forums, she invited the team to give their opinions and suggestions for the improvement of their program and encouraged them to share what they might have read about or experienced at other events.
To Challenge the Process, you must search for opportunities by seizing the initiative and look outward for innovative ways to improve. This means you must: Do something each day so that you are better than you were the day before. Seek firsthand experiences outside your comfort zone and skill set. Always be asking, “What's new? What's next? What's better?” and not just for yourself but also for those around you. Find a significant purpose for addressing your challenging and most difficult assignments. Ask questions, seek advice, and listen to diverse perspectives. Be adventurous; don't let
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To achieve the extraordinary, you have to be willing, like Cathryn, to do things that have never been done before. Every single Personal-Best Leadership Experience case speaks to the need to take risks with bold ideas. You can't achieve anything new or extraordinary by doing things the way you've always done them. You have to test unproven strategies. You have to break out of the norms that box you in, venture beyond the limitations you usually place on yourself and others, try new things, and take chances.
While there is a very real human tendency to focus on the negative, you need to concentrate on progress—not on the gap between aspirations and reality, but on how much you have advanced. Negativity can quickly become pervasive and contagious, stifling performance.
To Challenge the Process, you must experiment and take risks by constantly generating small wins and learning from experience. This means you must: Create opportunities for small wins, promoting meaningful progress. Set incremental goals and milestones, breaking big projects down into achievable steps. Keep people focused on what they can control in their work and commit to in their lives.
Make it safe for people to experiment and take risks by promoting learning from experience, debriefing successes and failures, capturing lessons learned and disseminating them broadly. Emphasize how personal fulfillment results from constantly challenging oneself to improve. Continuously experiment with new ideas through small bets.
Silicon Valley author and global strategist Nilofer Merchant echoes this observation: “Everyone is better off when they know why decisions are made with as much accuracy as possible. It gives them an understanding of what matters and provides information on which to base the trade-offs being made constantly at every level. When reasons behind decisions are not shared, the decisions seem arbitrary and possibly self-serving.”13
All exemplary leaders make the commitment to Recognize Contributions. They do it because people need encouragement to function at their best and continue to persist over time when the hours are long, the work is hard, and the task is daunting. Getting to the finish line of any demanding journey demands energy and commitment. People need emotional fuel to replenish their spirits.
In a series of studies, psychologists showed that by starting with the statement “I'm giving you these comments because I have very high expectations, and I know that you can reach them,” the feedback they provided proved to be 40 percent more effective in subsequently changing targeted behaviors.2
it's about being friendly, positive, supportive, and encouraging. Offer positive reinforcement, share lots of information, listen deeply to their input, provide resources sufficient to do their jobs, give them increasingly challenging assignments, and lend your support and assistance.
“Thanking people lets them know what leaders feel are the core triggers that drive performance.”
“Life is too short to be miserable,” says Charles Ambelang. “You want to have a work experience that allows you to engage with others, share a laugh, see the humor in a situation, and thank people for doing a good job.”
When leaders bring people together, rejoice in collective successes, and directly display their gratitude, they reinforce the essence of community. Being personally involved makes it clear that everyone is committed to making extraordinary things happen.
Employees with a best friend at work are seven times more likely to engage fully in their work than those reporting no such friendships.
In setting up celebrations, you first need to decide which organizational values, events of historical significance, or singular successes are of such importance that they warrant a special ritual, ceremony, or festivity.
You don't have to look up for leadership. You don't have to look out for leadership. You only have to look inward.
Research has found that taking the time each day—even as little as ten to fifteen minutes—to reflect on what you have learned from your experiences significantly improves your subsequent performance.9
Leadership is not an affair of the head. Leadership is an affair of the heart.
