LEADER

Aug

2022

Being Liked as A Leader?

When I sit across from leaders, we often discuss their interactions with the people they lead. Leadership is all about inspiring and getting the most out of people. Management is concerned with systems and processes.

I think of the Law of Buy-In from John Maxwell’s book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership which says:

“People Buy into the Leader, Then the Vision”

Let’s examine three ways people can buy into you as a leader. Each has its own value. Decide where you are strive to see your team.

Loved

When I’m saying loved I am not talking about this superstar, swooning type of perspective of you as a leader. I am thinking of the type of love that respects the leader and assumes their best intent.

Think of your children or another family member. Regardless of what has happened in life on some level you love that person. They may tick you off, but you know their heart is good and you assume the best from them. You don’t completely sever the relationship just because of a frustrating moment.

Leaders who love those they lead assume the best and respect them. The same is often returned to them as the leader.

Liked

Let me be honest. I love my wife of twenty-two years completely, but some days I don’t like her . . . and I am sure the feeling is mutual. 😊 When we are liked as a leader people want to spend time with us. I would suggest something draws people to us.

At first it may be charisma meaning our ability to connect with people. Over time as people get to know us, do they like spending time with us? There can be a limitation to being liked. If as a leader we value being liked too highly, we can’t lead.

As leaders we must make difficult decisions people will not like. If we are always trying to keep people happy or be their “friend” we will never gain their respect. Ultimately we will limit our leadership. Liking is a part of the equation, but cannot be the most important factor.

Trusted

If we are honest, as leaders we like to be in control. Maybe you started what you lead and feel a lot of ownership. Maybe you struggle to let go of a responsibility because you don’t think anyone can do it as good as you. As leaders our people need to trust us, and we need to trust them.

Jim Burke the former Chairman and CEO of Johnson & Johnson said:

“Trust is absolutely key to long-term success.”

I won’t go into how to build trust. That is for another day. For the sake of this blog, trust is when we are willing to completely let go of control and give a responsibility to another person with little compulsion to over manage. As a leader do we trust our people? Do your people know you trust them or do they feel you are always hovering over them?

Trust takes the most time to build and is quickly lost. The foundation of building that trust as the leader is consistency. Consistency in action, follow-through, and communication to start.

Evaluate these three areas and even question your team this week on how they see you. Do they love/respect you? Do they like being around you more often than not? Do they feel controlled or trusted by you? Need help thinking into this? Contact me for a powerful coaching session at no cost to you. Keep growing in these areas to help you lead from a healthy spot and lead a healthy team. Lead Well.

Sep

2021

Three Primary Roles of Business Leaders

Often when I am helping small business owners think into their business I have to help them think at the third of these three roles. Why? Because they may get stuck in the other two and fail to create time for the third.

Not long ago I re-read the book The E-myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. I will not go into the details of this book, but the following ideas are based largely on his thoughts. I have found whether a startup business leader, growing business leader, or an established organization all leaders go through these three phases. Depending on their role and the size of their company each of these hats may be worn at different times.

Technician

Whether you are a start-up business owner, solopreneur, or leader in a large organization you started here. We all are good at something and have expertise in a specific area. It may be engineering based, sales-based, service-oriented or something else, but you know that subject well. As a leader if we remain at the technician level we run into two problems.

Micromanagement. We think that the way we have done it should be done by everyone. This can lead to unintentionally disempowering those we lead.

Micro-focus. If we still love to provide the service, build the product, etc. then we struggle to see the bigger picture. If being the technician is your sweet spot, then get people around you who can help with the other roles or grow into the next two roles.

Manager

The manager role requires building systems and processes that make the business sustainable. A business cannot survive if one person does everything. Even successful solopreneurs realize they need to automate and create systems to accomplish everything. Whether a single person business or multinational company we all have to make this first shift in thinking.

This is the shift from being a diligent productive worker to thinking into more efficiently producing. We are raising our thinking to the first level of understanding how to work on the business. This is where we think how to accomplish the technical work and keep getting it done in the most efficient and effective manner possible.

Leader

You may be thinking these are the same. Yes and no. Yes in that both have to think beyond just doing the work, but when you put your leader hat on this requires, as leadership expert John Maxwell puts it, “seeing more before.” Leaders in start-ups and small businesses are the most prone to fail at this area unless it comes natural, but multinational organizational leaders get stuck at the second stage if they are not intentional.

When you are thinking like a leader you are working on the business as you see it in the future. Let me illustrate. If you have a team of one now, but want to see your company, department, team grow then think beyond what you see. What roles and responsibilities must exist for you to have a larger team, department, or organization? What systems and processes must you create? What is your vision? What are the values that will guide who you hire? These are just a few of the questions you need to think into when wearing your leader hat.

So where are you investing most of your time now? Where do you need to invest more time? I need others to help me think at the leader level. If you need help like, contact me and let’s set up a no cost to you thirty-minute thinking partner session to help you think into your results. I challenge you not to stay where you are, but raise your level of leadership thinking so you can improve your results. Lead Well.

Jun

2021

When A Leader Should Procrastinate

In preparing for a leadership institute I am creating for an organization I was planning the self-leadership session. The most difficult person for me to lead is myself and I have found people have a common struggle with time. May I suggest the struggle is about managing priorities and not time?

In a previous post I discussed the four quadrants tool to help prioritize time which was first brought forward by Charles Hummel in the 1960’s and later popularized through Steven Covey’s book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I won’t go into that idea now because you can learn about it here.

In my preparation I came across the book Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden. I will provide a brief overview on the concept and let you dig deeper on your own. I found combining Hummel’s framework with Vaden’s funnel gives us a process for deciding what priority a task should have. Below are some questions to help this process.

Where on the grid does this fit?

This is the question we are ultimately answering. A task or responsbility comes and we need to filter where this falls on the important/urgent grid. At times this can be challenging so we may need to filter through the following funnel Vaden created to give us a better idea.

Is this something that needs to be done?

The answer to this question or as Vaden puts it, “is this something that you can live without?” This answer determines whether we can completely remove it. As leaders we sometimes need to let go and kill the idea, task, or project.

Is this something that can be automated?

The second stage of Vaden’s funnel is what many leaders understand must occur to continue growth and progress. Is this a regularly occurring responsibility that could be systematized? For example, can you schedule your marketing so it occurs automatically? Maybe you are constantly playing e-mail schedule ping-pong with others and don’t have an assistant, but you could use a calendar service to automate scheduling.

Does someone else need to do this?

Let’s be honest, we are all control freaks on some level. Because of this tendency we get stuck in this part of the funnel. John Maxwell in his book Developing The Leader Within You 2.0 challenges us with three questions:

Is this required of me (am I the only person who should be doing this i.e. casting vision)?
Does this give me the greatest return?
Is this rewarding?

If you look at these and the answers are no and someone else can do it, then take the time to train them. I understand you may not always be able to answer John’s second and third question with a yes, but if the first question is a no then hand it off.

Do I focus or procrastinate?

Now that you have answered these three questions you are back to the important/urgent grid with the critical question. Do I purposely put this off because it will be more advantageous to wait? If the answer is no, then buckle down get it done because obviously this is an important/urgent matter that only you can do.

I only touched the surface of all the great content Vaden provides in this resource. I encourage you to look at your agenda and filter it through these two grids so you are focused on the priorities that will continue moving you and your team toward your purpose. If you need help thinking into this please contact me for a thirty-minute no cost to you thinking partner session. Lead Well!

Mar

2021

Technician, Manager or Leader?

I have been reading the book The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber for the second time. In this book he discusses three ways individuals approach running their business. I would suggest they are three hats that people wear. Each hat is necessary, but some leaders struggle wearing one of these hats enough.

Allow me to share my version of these three hats based on Gerber’s thinking.

Technician

Gerber discusses this as the stage where the technical expert realizes they excel at something and decide to go out on their own. This is the entrepreneurial experience. Within a larger organization this could be the individual contributor who now is in management. At home this is the parent of their first child.

All three of these individuals are an expert in something. A skill, a specific role, or as a parent in knowing their life. The technician is great at the work and enjoys doing the work. For example, a great cookie maker opens a cookie shop and begins to realize they own a job. They are making all the cookies and running the business.

Manager

I am going to drift a little from Gerber’s definition of a manager. According to Gerber the manager brings planning, order, and predictability. Each of us fulfills a manager role. In some area of work or home we plan and turn chaos into order. I would suggest the manager in us fights for structure and control.

Management is essential to create systems and processes to keep moving the business, team, or family forward. This is the area is where people get stuck. I have heard leaders in organizations say they are “in the weeds” too much. The overwhelming attention to details of the daily business activity creates a situation where the leader does all the work, the business owner owns a job, or becoming a hovering parent.

Leader

Gerber describes this level as the Entrepreneur. I am calling this the leader. This is the area many business owners fail to create time for. The business owner works on the business instead of or while working in the business. I will not go into detail on this as Gerber explains this well.

For the leader in an organization, this is when he or she has empowered and equipped the team well. As the team is equipped the leader is free to think into growing that area of the business and pursuing new initiatives for the team. For the parent, this is taking time to think of the important values for your family and what your family stands for.

The leader role requires time and initiative to think.

As you look at these three areas. Where are you spending most of your time? Have you created systems to effectively lead your team, organization, or family? Do you need help creating time to think into your business or team? Contact me for a free thirty-minute one on one thinking partner session. All three are required, but without leadership we limit our results so contact me to help you raise your leadership lid and improve your results. Lead Well.

Dec

2019

The Greatest Leader?

He had a unique birth and was raised in a service-oriented career. There was nothing special about his life and how he was raised.

As a young man he humbly obeyed his parents. One day they could not find him because he was learning from the older people around him. Instead of being a typical modern twelve-year-old, he explained what he was doing and obeyed his parents.

You may think how a person with this upbringing could do anything significant. He spent the last three years of his life serving people. While he traveled the country, he shared principles that were universally true and showed love and compassion to all those he encountered. He even had an “executive team” of twelve.

These twelve ordinary individuals were constantly mentored so they also could become great leaders. Some of them were hated because of their professional careers and others were in common careers like fishing or carpentry: respectable, but nothing glamorous.

His influence grew and he became a problem.

Was he trying to start a rebellion or political revolution?

No.

He questioned the established leaders of the day especially those in faith circles and exposed their hypocrisy. He modeled a different way of leading to those who followed him.

One day before eating he knelt down and took off his outer garment. He proceeded to go around the room and wash the dirty covered feet of each member of his inner circle. This was a visual example of his leadership and the kind of leadership he expected of others. He served before seeking to be served.

This man’s life touched at least 10,000 others, but that number shrunk significantly as no one was around when it looked like the end for him. He was killed, and then he was buried, but something happened.

Those who were with him. Those closest to him. They followed his example. Eleven of these twelve men modeled the following traits.

Boldness

These men who walked with this man continued sharing his message even though for many of them it cost their lives. They shared in front of those who could and would ultimately take their lives.

Service

These men modeled the same type of service they experienced. They did not shy from helping those in need regardless of who it was.

Sacrifice

To share this message of hope and a greater purpose was not free of difficulty. Surely, they had to leave those they cared the most about. Some of them gave up lucrative careers in order to spread the message.

In case you didn’t figure it out, this leader was none other than the meaning behind the Christmas season. Jesus.

Wherever you land on who Jesus is/was is not the point of this blog. But, as his life demonstrated, when a leader models the way and lives the way it becomes contagious. Our example as leaders at work and home will do more to develop leaders around and among us than any words we say. What needs to improve and grow in your example as a leader? Need help thinking into it? Contact me for a complimentary thinking partner session. Lead well.