Leadership Momentum... session 6

Organizations and individuals alike are constantly implored to develop a competitive advantage. Paradoxically, what may give you a real edge is a well-honed capacity to collaborate. In an increasingly complex world, leaders are more likely to face the challenge of collaborative projects and partnerships - efforts that will require different professions or different organizations to work together, including endeavors that span business, nonprofit, and public sectors.

There is hardly a better competitive advantage than being comfortable and effective in working across boundaries to achieve mutually beneficial results. Collaboration is not for the faint of heart. The following outlines seven essential ingredients leaders should include to assure success in collaborative projects.



Try this MP3 version if the above doesn’t play on your computer

7 Ideas Coach is a weekly series of coaching sessions,
7 nuggets of insight in 7 minutes for busy leaders

read the summary leadership article on Leadership Momentum
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Leadership Momentum... session 5

Your network is the sum of connections you have with other people that might be used to share benefits. Networking is the intentional actions you take to build your network.

Networking is a lifelong endeavor, likely to play a vital role in making the achievements you desire a reality. There is no time like the present to take the initiative, and begin networking wisely. This session outlines seven fundamental principles of successful networking for long-term value.
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Leadership Momentum... session 4

Poor speaking is so tolerated as normal for business that perhaps no other skill gives as quick a payback for effort as learning to speak with clarity, brevity and energy. Small and basic improvements in speaking in front of others will typically elevate one well above the crowd. Plus effective speaking is one of the best tools for cultivating influence.
Acquiring the skills to improve speaking is not actually difficult to do, but takes time, practice and discipline. This session gives leaders seven key points to remember:
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Leadership Momentum... session 3

Effective leaders develop agility in understanding themselves, interacting with others, and managing their life endeavors by intentional development and application of specific modes of thinking. This coaching session outlines seven modes of thinking that are of particular importance to leaders.
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Leadership Momentum... session 2

If you truly are driven by escaping mediocrity and accelerating achievement, you have to resist what most people do, which is focus on weaknesses.

Most people have been introduced to the idea that they should emphasize building on their strengths. Even so, Individuals and companies alike still persist in approaching development and performance management by identifying relative weaknesses and then trying to shore them up. The trouble is, if you do everything generally well, you will probably avoid failing but certainly fail to achieve excellence. This session offers seven ideas to focus on strengths as a way to generate Leadership Momentum.
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Leadership Momentum... session 1

Credibility generates an assumption of capacity to accomplish objectives. Moreover, credibility generates trust, and trust automatically gains a leader the benefit of the doubt. People carry on with their efforts, look beyond mistakes, and work around annoyances and inconveniences.

Savvy leaders know that multiple credibility indicators are more compelling than any single credential or quality. The seven assets and qualities discussed in this session are not exhaustive, but certainly among the most likely to broadly gain leaders credibility.
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Change Leadership... session 7

Culture is what people do when the boss isn’t looking. It’s the behavior, attitude, and atmosphere that happen unconsciously.

Want a culture that embraces change and innovation? Then cultivate an appreciative culture.

I use the word appreciative to describe a company culture where people both contribute to a positive climate AND take care of the business. Appreciative cultures highly value competency, excellence, and results as much as feeling good about their workplace. Two meanings of appreciative fit: to recognize with gratitude, and to increase in value.

Appreciative cultures are resilient to change, not resistant. They seek and reward change that adds value. This session outlines seven actions leaders can take to encourage and reinforce a culture of change...


7 Ideas Coach is a weekly series of coaching sessions,
7 nuggets of insight in 7 minutes for busy leaders

see THINK leadership article on cultivating an appreciative culture
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Want all the ideas in this series at your fingertips?
Want in NOW? Available for instant download.... more info

Change Leadership... session 6

In the 21st century, increasing complexity is a hard fact for almost all organizations - whether large or small, or business, public, or non-profit.

The combination of knowledge-based work plus increased complexity calls for a different kind of action to move organizations forward, which in turn impacts what kind of leadership styles are most effective and what kind of leaders are needed for the future.

The ideas in this session explain 3 different kinds of complexity, as well as appropriate leadership responses to varying levels of complexity...
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Change Leadership... session 5

Too many change initiatives suffer from what preeminent executive coach Marshall Goldsmith calls the 1 2 3 7 problem - implementing change is a 7 step process, but leaders often leave out steps 4, 5, and 6.

To detail, leaders too often (1) Assess the Situation, (2) Identify Solutions, (3) Plan Action, but then leap to (7) Implement Changes - leaving out efforts to (4) Seek Buy-in Up, (5) Seek Buy-in Across, and (6) Seek Buy-in Down. Oops.

Effective leaders are intentional about creating buy-in for expected change. This podcast covers seven things leaders need to know...

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Change Leadership... session 4

There is fundamental paradox of effective leadership - people make their best effort only when they voluntarily choose to do so. Leading is the art of giving people a genuine choice to follow, while making the choice to follow irresistibly compelling.

A true act of leading is determined not by the “leader” but by the person who chooses to “follow”. Leading can be defined as the act of gaining willing followers for a course of action when the way forward is uncertain or unknown. At its core, leading is about creating conditions where people willingly change - this session reviews seven ways how...

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Change Leadership... session 3

What needs to stick, of course, is change in human behavior. Replace your office furniture and the change will stay put with no effort on your part. The same cannot be said for getting everyone to respond differently to customers, cooperate across functional lines, or implement those new quality measures. If you want organizational changes to stick, implement the leadership initiatives described in this week’s podcast...

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Change Leadership... session 2

Change is different from transition, and leaders ignore transition at their peril.

What’s the difference? Change is an observable event that often occurs very quickly – e.g. you sell your Hummer for a Prius. Transition is an inner state – how long it takes you to get used to driving the Prius. As noted in the previous session, transition is difficult because it requires new learning, new patterns of behavior, and emotional regrouping. This podcast outlines seven actions effective leaders can take to manage transitions.
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Change Leadership... session 1

Conventional wisdom is that people inherently resist change, automatically making organizational change difficult. This assumption can get in the way of effective change leadership. It’s worth thinking a little deeper.

What people resist isn’t necessarily change itself. What people resist is the pain, discomfort, fear, stress, loss, and expending of excess energy and attention that comes with some kinds of change. The ideas presented in this coaching podcast will help leaders understand the nuances of change and better prepare themselves to address real challenges.
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Bringing out the best brainpower and talent in meetings is expedited by a high level of energy. Does the energy level in your meetings slump the longer the meeting continues?
This last “coachcast” in the Meetings That Work series covers seven specific strategies that leaders can use immediately in meetings to maintain and increase energy, attention, and vitality.
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More than anything else, the capacity of people to have a meaningful dialogue is what adds value to meetings by drawing out the brainpower and tacit knowledge around the table. Rich discussion, dialogue, and debate differentiate meetings where work gets done from time wasters that keep people from their work.

This session outlines seven ways that effective leaders encourage meeting dialogue:
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What’s the purpose of your meeting? Simply to share information? Retrospective information can be useful, but in the most productive meetings participants focus on achieving outcomes that are prospective in nature: alignment, attunement, and action.

This session explores how to encourage alignment, attunement, and action in your meetings...and the traps to avoid!

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Jack Nicklaus said, "Learn the fundamentals of the game and stick to them. Band-Aid remedies never last."
The same can be said of meetings. If meetings in your organization need work, first ensure you routinely practice the seven basics covered in this podcast before working on anything else.
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Has your board or leadership team scheduled a planning retreat or meeting?

This 7 Ideas Coach audio “coachcast” reviews:

• 3 all-too-common errors that organizations make while creating their strategic or action plans;
• 3 best practices that will help a group avoid these mistakes;
• Plus the single most important thing to get right so everything else falls in place.

In short, 7 ideas that will help make your planning effort a success.
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Want to get everyone on the same page?
One of the best strategies is literally doing so - get your strategic plan refined to a one pager.
This coachcast discusses:

• Why one page is a great way to go to enhance your organization.
• Who can use a one page plan or strategy map. (Hint...businesses, non-profits, and public agencies.)
• Timing and triggers for one pagers.
• The four things every one pager should include.
• And three ways an organization can maximize benefit from a one page plan.
  

links to related resources
THINK! leadership article: One Page Way
About Strategy Maps
Article on Hillsborough’s use of Strategy Maps and Balanced Scorecard
One Page Way consulting and facilitation

If you liked this coachcast, you'll love the resource guide for productive meetings...

Communicating for Influence Coachcast Series



Leadership is about influencing others so they choose to follow. To become more skilled in the art of communicating for influence, one must first understand these essential and often counter-intuitive communication principles.

• One cannot not communicate
• The message intended is not necessarily the message received
• Communication is multi-channel
• We think in ‘clouds’ of associations, not words
• Emotions are always “on”
• Most thinking and behavior is unconscious
• Human interaction is more like a living ecology than a machine - think cultivate, not operate
  

Change and Transition Coachcast Series



In his book Solving Tough Problems, Adam Kahane identifies three types of complexity:

• Dynamic Complexity - how close cause and effect are together in space and time;
• Generative Complexity - how much the future is or is not like the past; and
• Social Complexity - how much people connected to an issue have common assumptions, values, objectives, experiences, and perceptions.
  

Implications for leaders…

• The Level of Complexity is Increasing for All Organizations Whether Large and Small or Business, Public, or Non-profit
• Increased Complexity Requires a Different Kind of Action
• Highly Complex Issues Require Increased Need for a Facilitative Leadership Style
• Increasing Complexity Impacts Personal and Organizational Leadership Development
  

Leaders who are exceptional, who transform organizations and make a difference in the world, will need to demonstrate a full range of character - courage to take bold action, humanity to connect with others, wisdom in understanding the world, and resilience to embrace creative change.

links:
related article: Complexity and Leadership Style
book review - Solving Tough Problems (coming soon)
assessing leadership style with Tilt360

Change and Transition Coachcast Series




Is your organization experiencing a big shift, or getting ready to? In this turbulent economic climate, many organizations are having change thrust upon them - while others are choosing to make bold changes to address new customer needs or take advantage of opportunities.

Here’s seven things to think about...

• Change is not necessarily difficult, or something that people resist.
• What trips up most people, and organizational change effort, is not change but transition.
• Transition requires new learning and new patterns of behavior.
• Transition requires emotional regrouping.
• Transitions typically take us away from a sense of routine into other states of ending, abeyance, or starting.
• Transition requires large energy and attention expenditures - loss of productivity is practically inevitable.
• Leaders and managers do well to give as much emphasis to planning how to manage transitions as they do to what change to make.
  

"Change" is different from "transition," and leaders ignore transition at their peril. This episode lays the groundwork for a new coachcast series on leading change and managing transition.

corresponding article: Worry About Transitions, Not Change

April Fools Edition




Are you up to your you know what in alligators, and tired of hearing about how the swamp needs draining?

For reason’s I won’t disclose, my cousin Tim is doing this week’s podcast and he is a master at animal metaphors. Just as the lead goose breaks wind for the rest of the flock, leaders will agree that this episode breaks wind.

Lead boldly, stand out, and make it a team effort - and remember that if you lie down with dogs you get fleas, an elephant always remembers you called him fat, and there's a fine line between being the cat’s meow and a nasty hairball.

PDF of quotations from this podcast

A study at Bell Labs found all their engineers performed their engineering functions the same way. What differentiated top engineers from the average? Top performers created relationships that measurably contributed to effectiveness, e.g. top performers had telephone calls returned in an average of 20 minutes, compared to 4 hours for less stellar peers.

I continue to hear a theme from clients, business leaders, and other colleagues, that as the world becomes more high tech, there will be a corresponding need for high touch. Many executives fear that high touch environments get in the way of goals, or else they simply waste resources and time. The evidence is compelling, however, that high touch environments accelerate success and add value. However high touch environments require more advanced and developed leadership talent to bring out that value.

Seven Ideas for Leaders - Play Well to Excel

• Ensure development opportunities for people competencies are readily available.
• Build in playing well into performance management system.
• Leadership sets the example.
• Celebrate milestones, create rituals for transitions, and debrief significant events.
• Help people use inherent talents and interests.
• Don’t let people get away with toxic behavior.
• Help people to find fun and humor in their work.

Play Well to Excel resource links:
Read the full leadership article
Power of Nice book review
No Asshole Rule book review

THINK! and 7 Ideas Coach subscribers receive free pdf versions of our leadership articles - subscribe today - it’s free, and we never give your email to anyone else

Tom Stevens (c)2004, 2009

Yesterday I heard a story that is repeated endlessly in organizations, although there’s a genuine effort from leadership to implement needed changes, nothing happens.

Change efforts often suffer from what preeminent executive coach Marshall Goldsmith calls the 1, 2, 3, 7 problem - implementing change is a 7 step process, but leaders often leave out steps 4, 5, and 6.

Seven Steps for Change

• Assess Situation
• Identify Solutions
• Plan Action
• Seek Buy-in Up
• Seek Buy-in Across
• Seek Buy-in Down
• Implement Changes

The notion of wooing up, across, and down makes sense from within hierarchical organizations. However many leaders seek changes in organizations that aren’t so clearly stratified. Think bout any kind of community change, consider how our President, or any leader, seeks to implement a change in our nation or the world for that matter. Steps 4, 5, and 6 could easily read:

• Seek Buy-in from Key Opinion Leaders
• Seek Buy-in from Constituent Groups
• Seek Buy-in from People Most Impacted

Remember these steps apply to personal change as well as organizational change. Whenever you are trying to change any habit - e.g. stop smoking, increase patience, speak confidently - the people around you can easily impede the change unless you include them in the process.

Resist the prevailing mood of doom and gloom, take charge of your attitude, but guard against denial. Here are seven ways how, from Mayor Tom’s recent State of the Town address.

• Master your attitude
• Face reality while keeping faith
• Stick to your knitting
• Diligently seek and seize opportunities
• Focus on action within our control
• Foster partnerships and collaborations
• Live with renewed intention

resources
complete leadership article and podcast on Resisting the Mood of Doom
About Stone Soup
Collaborations Across Boundaries
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Critical Questions About Increasing Your Top Line


Understand Customers
What extra steps are you taking to understand what your customer needs in today’s environment?

Seize Opportunities
Are you prepared to take advantage of opportunities this tough market offers? (e.g. to gain market share?)

Know Your Biz
Do you know your profit zone? (i.e. do you know which products and services actually add to your bottom line?)

Focus, Focus, Focus
Are you focusing efforts externally on your market or internally on your organization?

Align Everything
How aligned is your sales compensation plan with current realities, profitability, and positive cash generation?

Make Everything Count
How are you assessing what marketing efforts, people, processes, profit centers, even customers, are marginal? What are you going to do about it?

Excel at Leadership
How are you engaging employees so everyone in the company is a salesperson?

See panel presentation The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Doing Business In Today’s Economy: Increasing Your Top Line

What if meetings were something we bragged about? "Hey honey, we had the most awesome meeting at work today!"
All too often we brag about how bad they are. Stop complaining and start adding value. If you're in a leadership role teach others how to do the same. Here are seven ways how...

• Speak up but say something new.
• Learn to Summarize.
• Acknowledge Other People’s Contributions.
• Ask Good Questions.
• Check-in With the Group.
• Frame Issues for Results.
• Foster Accountability.
  

Article on Summarizing for Sharper Thinking

Seventy years ago MGM produced one of the best and most beloved movies of all time, based on L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The film is so well crafted it continues to enchant today - and it offers some unexpected leadership lessons.

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Just one of these simple tools helped Michigan Hospitals avoid $175 million in extra medical costs while saving hundreds of lives.
Use these simple, common, and under-appreciated tools to be more organized, think smarter, foster team alignment, and become a more influential leader.
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Trust is not neutral - trust will either accelerate or erode leadership capacity. This podcast outlines seven strategies effective leaders can use to constantly cultivate high levels of trust.

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Something a little different to start 7 Ideas Coach in the New Year!

This excerpt from the Tao Te Ching is the best advice for living life I have ever read, as valid today as some 2500 years ago when it was written.

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So what kind of personal change really has impact? One size does not fit all, so in this 7 Ideas Coach session you will find seven different types of change to consider, spanning from specific types of action to changing how you think about the world. If you diligently apply any one or more of these to your specific circumstances, you might be astonished at the impact in your work and in your life.
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Here are seven of the books I am most likely to recommend to my clients...

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Your team sits around a conference table. You need some creative thinking, ideas that are original, fresh, engaging.
You say, “Give me your best thinking on…” or “What is your most creative solution to…”
What are the changes you’ll get back pretty conventional stuff? ...or blank stares?
This podcast explores techniques you can use during brainstorming to generate off the wall ideas that on later analysis may trigger useful insights.
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Leaders under-utilize facilitation techniques. A few simple techniques, applied in the right circumstance can make meetings much more productive. These techniques are useful to bring balance to participation, to get meaningful input without taking a lot of time for discussion, and to separate what topics need deeper discussion from those that don’t.
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Are meeting where real work takes place, or something that keeps people from getting work done?
This 7 Ideas Coach session provides you with questions to assess how your meetings are doing. Your answers will inform you about where you need to use your influence accelerate results.

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This 7 Ideas Coach session discusses ways to show appreciation and say thank you to the people in your organization that make a difference.

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Optimism is about keeping the faith and staying in your circle of control. Optimism paired with courage to face hard reality is a formula for solid success.

Click for the latest 7 Ideas Coach podcast...
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Leadership ability is gained primarily by experience.
However to learn from experience, one must reflect on experience in a way that allows one to both to make changes as needed and to reinforce what is working well.
This 7 Ideas Coach podcast and article explores tools that can help you gain wisdom from your leadership experience.
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In the current financial turbulence, organizations find themselves trying to do two different things: one, to cut back, jettison anything nonessential, and become as efficient as possible; and two, use innovation to find new ways of operating that are more productive with fewer resources.
Here’s another level of challenge - these two efforts are diametrically opposed. Innovation by nature is chaotic and inefficient, and therefore can be jettisoned by companies just when it is most needed.
This 7 Ideas Coach podcast explores practices - i.e., repeated action grounded in the organization’s culture and values - that leaders will want to encourage strategically to keep innovation alive, even while making corresponding efforts toward efficiency. Read More...

The best working definition of company culture is what people do when the boss isn’t looking. In short, it’s the behavior, attitude, and atmosphere that happen unconsciously by default.
I use the word appreciative to describe a company culture where people both contribute to a positive climate AND take care of the business. Two meanings of appreciative fit: to recognize with gratitude, and to increase in value.
Here are some ways you can start cultivating an appreciative culture today!

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Because you have achieved success, it doesn’t mean you’ve mastered key skills and knowledge needed to sustain it. This 7 Ideas Coach podcast and article cover key categories where you will want to keep learning and developing.

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In addition to an executive coach, speaker, and leadership consultant, I happen to be a small town mayor - of Hillsborough, NC. My role as mayor provides a great lab to “practice what I preach” about leadership.
My experience as a small town mayor has certainly not prepared me for national office, or to be CEO of a global corporation, or any number of other occupations. However the leadership implications of being a small town mayor is illuminating, and this coachcast discusses seven leadership insights deeply reinforced by my civic experience.

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Weekly podcast of leadership inspiration and know-how, in about seven minutes.

Is there anything so valuable as the right question?
Mark Twain remarked that the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lighting and a lightening-bug. The same could be said about the right question.
This session reveals seven questions useful for networking, customer management, or teambuilding - questions that are useful for gaining insight and developing relationships.

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Weekly podcast of leadership inspiration and know-how, in about seven minutes.

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Weekly podcast of leadership inspiration and know-how, in about seven minutes.



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Weekly podcast of leadership inspiration and know-how, in less than seven minutes.

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Weekly podcast of leadership inspiration and know-how, in less than seven minutes.

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Weekly podcast of leadership inspiration and know-how, in less than seven minutes.
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