How to Be a Leader, Not a Manager

The trick to being a master of both skill sets is understanding the nuances that distinguish true leadership.

 

By Ilya Pozin

Founder, Pluto.TV

Let's get something straight: manager and leader are not synonymous terms.

Manage implies maintaining the status quo. It's a manager's job to ensure that things go as planned and that the team meets expectations. Leading, on the other hand, has an inherent forward progression. Leaders encourage change and take us someplace new.

Now those semantic differences don't mean that being a manager and being a leader are mutually exclusive. But finding a great manager who is also leader, that's like finding a flying unicorn. The trick to being a master of both skill sets is understanding the nuances that distinguish true leadership.

These are the three things that separate a business leader from a manager:

1. You're paid for managerial duties, not leadership ones.
It's common to say that someone has been promoted to a "leadership role," but in reality they just become a manager. After all, their job title becomes "Senior Sales Manager" not "Sales Leader."

The sad truth is that, while leadership may be rewarded with occasional bonuses or just a pat on the back, very few people in the business world are paid to be leaders. A good manager makes sure their team has the tools they need, is there to answer questions, and fairly evaluates performance. Because that's what they're paid to do.

A manager who is also a leader goes further that. They focus on taking their team beyond what's expected of them and empowering them to be successful at whatever it is they're best at. And none of it for their own personal glory, but all for the good of the team and the organization. It's ideas and possibilities that motivate a leader every day, not a paycheck.

2. Leaders focus on and respect individual strengths.
The 2015 Gallup State of the American Manager report found some key differences in effective managerial leadership. One of the big ones was whether a manager focused on improving employees' weaknesses or on building their strengths. Comparing engaged and disengaged employees, 67 percent of employees who said their managers focused on strengths were engaged. Only 31 percent of employees whose managers focused on weaknesses were engaged.

A great leader knows that their team's strengths are their biggest advantage and they strive to let each employee make the most out of their skills. This means giving employees some autonomy when it comes to picking their own roles in different projects. It's then up to the leader to provide coaching and guidance for employees so they naturally pick up the tasks that are best suited for their strengths.

Take the company I founded, Coplex, for example. Every member of that team has a broad range of hard skills, soft skills, experiences and interests. These will even change and grow over time. We recently had a customer that joined us to build a yoga e-commerce app. One of our UX designers on the team has been a yoga junkie for years and was a big advocate of their brand. Naturally, she selected to join that product team. This allowed her to leverage her interests and brand history but also her hard skills and the work output has been incredible.

Leaders don't just view their employees within the confines of their job descriptions. They know and understand what each individual can offer on a deeper level and use that knowledge to set their team up for success.

3. Leadership requires accountability.
Many people shy away from accountability. They equate being held accountable for their actions as being punished for their mistakes. But a real leader knows that's not true. In fact, effective leadership relies on accountability.

There is no quicker way to lose the trust of your employees than passing the buck onto them. Aside from the ethical implications of blaming someone else, not holding yourself accountable sends the message that mistakes are unacceptable; that they're bad. On the contrary, mistakes can become great opportunities.

Leaders not only own up to their screw-ups but explore what went wrong and how to do better. If done effectively, this will trickle down to those you oversee. Employees will not only openly talk about their mistakes, but use them as a discussion that can help the entire team improve.

It might seem like it's a thin line between manager and business leader, but in reality it takes a lot to grow from one to the other. Becoming a leader means rethinking the way we conduct day-to-day business, as well as what we have to offer our employees. Being a leader means you're prepared to take your team forward.

What it takes to be a great leader

 

The world is full of leadership programs, but the best way to learn how to lead might be right under your nose. In this clear, candid talk, Roselinde Torres describes 25 years observing truly great leaders at work, and shares the three simple but crucial questions would-be company chiefs need to ask to thrive in the future.

Roselinde Torres

Leadership expert

BCG's Roselinde Torres studies what makes great leaders tick — and figures out how to teach others the same skills. Full bio

Great Leaders Don't set out to be leaders

Five steps to becoming a great leader

Are great leaders born with leadership capabilities or is leadership learned? Great leaders are learners. They are always learning, studying to be better at what they do. So, yes people can learn to be great leaders.

Mary Ann Kmetyk, of Applied Performance Strategies, who appeared as one of my guests on AHA Business Radio, introduced me to the book "The Leadership Challenge," by John Kouzes and Barry Posner. The book, first published in 1987, was the result of four years of case studies of what makes great leaders and should be in your library. The authors discovered that there are five practices of exemplary leadership:

• Model the way: A great leader does what he says. It is easy to tell people how to behave and what to do. True leaders set high standards and values and go beyond just talking about them. They lead by example.

• Inspire a shared vision: They understand why the organizations exists and set the vision for where it is going, inspiring others to follow their lead as they work to achieve the shared vision.

• Challenge the process: Great leaders recognize that staying status quo equals going backwards. They challenge the status quo and look for ways to experiment and innovate. They know the importance of taking risks and aren't afraid of the failures along the way. They learn from their failures. Without the risks, the breakthroughs and successes won't be there either.

• Enable others to act: They delegate responsibilities. They hire smart people. They encourage them to innovate, take risks, make mistakes and encourage growth and develop new skills. Great leaders build interactive cohesive teams and allow others to participate in planning and decision making.

• Encourage the heart: Great leaders celebrate and appreciate the accomplishments of others. They support and defend those working for them. When necessary, they publicly take responsibility for their employees' mistakes and coach those who made them to learn from those mistakes.

Allan Hirsh, an executive coach at Allan Hirsh Advisors and the host of AHA Business Radio on CBS Sports Radio 1300AM, can be reached atallan@allanhirshadvisors.com.

What People Look for in Great Leaders

As a long-time student on the subject of leadership, I feel privileged in my role at Lockheed Martin to have a front row seat in the world’s greatest leadership classroom: the U.S. Military. Our men and women in uniform are a disciplined force, united in purpose and values, selflessly answering America’s call to duty. Building, supporting and motivating such a magnificent organization clearly requires outstanding leaders—people who have the vision, the intellect, the energy and the emotional intelligence to move other people toward a goal.

Today, the U.S. military is facing a lot of change, including the drawdown of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, a shrinking defense budget, and the Department of Defense’s pivot to the Asia-Pacific region. Lockheed Martin is facing these same changes. With this in mind, I started wondering if times of great change require something different from leaders. Do the same qualities and characteristics of good leaders suffice in turbulent times, or is something new required?

My thoughts led me to some powerful research from the Gallup organization* that is especially relevant to leading through times of great change. The findings are instructive whether one is leading an aerospace and global security company or a branch of the military. The research focused specifically on the perspectives of followers, and asked them to describe what they want leaders to contribute to their lives.

Gallup found that individuals expect four things from leaders: stability, trust, compassion and hope.

The results, while fascinating, are not surprising. Let’s take a closer look at each: 

Stability
To ensure stability, it’s important that leaders look beyond today and consider what’s over the horizon. This means taking action early to shape the organization and equip it to respond and succeed in a new environment. These actions sometimes involve making very tough decisions that impact employees and their families. I’ve found that when these decisions are necessary, keeping employees informed is critical to stability. Information is empowering. When employees can anticipate change and plan accordingly, they are less worried, less distracted, and more engaged in creating a positive future. 

Trust
Trust is the basis of all positive relationships. The foundation for trust has to be earned every day by the high standards you set, the energy and enthusiasm you show, the steps you take to develop your people, and the sincerity you demonstrate through words and actions.

Again, communication is crucial. It’s important to communicate transparently, honestly and in a timely manner. Bad news doesn’t get better with age. In particular, I’m a fan of person-to-person communication. It enables employees to look you in the eyes, ask questions, and walk away with trust in your leadership and an understanding of your priorities and vision for the future. 

Compassion
Compassion is more than just treating people as you like to be treated. It’s about treating people as they like to be treated. To do that, you need to genuinely know your employees. You need to understand who they are and what matters in their lives. You need to actively listen when they share their concerns and respond with empathy.

Compassion isn’t just for tough times. It’s for all times.

When you build a culture of compassion, it flows in all directions. It reinforces the importance of confronting tough issues rather than shying away or insulating yourself. Leaders are always thinking about the well-being of those they lead, not themselves. 

Hope
In times of great change, leaders inspire hope. I believe you inspire hope by embarking on missions that matter with a vision that motivates. As a leader, you must help people see where change is heading, the ideal future state when change is successful, and the roles people will play going forward. In my experience, the result will be a fully engaged, committed, and hopeful workforce – and a stronger company – for having weathered the storm. 

Stability, trust, compassion, and hope. These are the qualities that people look for in great leaders, and they are crucial to leading through changing times. Simply put, people want their leaders to give them what they need to have confidence in the future. Whether you’re leading a small team, a branch of the U.S. military or a major corporation, being a great leader means understanding people and what they need from you.

How about you?

Posted by:Marillyn Hewson

Chairman and CEO at Lockheed Martin

What Are Your Core Values?

By Bruce Van Horn  

 

“It is more important to know who you are than where you are going, for where you are going will change as the world around you changes.” - James C. Collins

If you have not yet read Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by James C. Collins, you need to stop what you are doing right now, order it, block off next weekend, and read it from cover to cover!

In this timeless business book, Collins, demonstrates how great companies became great because their leaders were more concerned with the "Why" than they were the "How" or the "What." The founders of great companies often decided what their core values, the non-negotiables, would be even before they decided what products or services to create.

You see, truly great companies are, at their core, a reflection of the truly great men and women who lead them. 

Share this: Truly great companies understand the difference between what should never change and what should be open for change, between what is genuinely sacred and what is not.” Collins explores this concept in great detail with real examples from real companies, but that is not my concern here.

I'm not concerned with your company right now—I’m concerned with you. I'm not here to ask about your corporate core values, I am asking about your personal core values. You see, truly great companies are, at their core, a reflection of the truly great men and women who lead them. 

So I would like to rewrite Mr. Collins' phrase to read: “Truly great leaders understand the difference between what should never change and what is open for change...” What are your core values? What are your non-negotiables? 

I had lunch a few weeks ago with the owner of small but rapidly growing company. He contacted me, based on a referral, to talk about Executive/Life coaching. As we talked, he said a single sentence which made it clear to me that I was not the right person to coach him, or rather, he was not the right client for me. In describing his desire for success, he said “I'll do whatever it takes; everything is for sale!” The sad thing is, he really meant it. He was also shocked when I said I would not work with him because our values were not in alignment.

If your desire for success is so strong you are willing to do whatever it takes, then you will be willing to go in any direction to get it. If your desire for money is so strong you can say “everything is for sale,” then you will quickly run out of anything of value to offer. You may achieve some level of success for a time, but there is a strong likelihood your pursuit of the next great thing will lead you right off a cliff! “If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.” A cliché, I know, but it is true!

I am not going to tell you what your personal core values should be, but I am saying you need to have them and you need to stand firmly enough for them that everyone around you knows what they are. 

Share this: Your life will be more fulfilling when you surround yourself with people who hold similar values. Your leadership teams will work with more unity if comprised of people of similar values. Collins teaches that you cannot train people to adopt your values—you need to hire people who already hold your values. The problem is you cannot hire people with your values if you do not know what your values are!

Take some time to really think this through. What are your core values? Write them down. Ask your closest friends and colleagues what they think your core values are, to see if they agree with you. Examine your life, words, and actions. Are you living, speaking, acting and leading in alignment with your values?

Where you go and what you do may need to change with time and circumstance, but who you are, at the core, should never be open for negotiation!

How To Create Loyalty Within Your Team

James Caan

One of the best ways of judging the quality and ability of a leader is by looking at the levels of loyalty they inspire from their staff. Getting your team to follow you through the good times and even more importantly the tough times, is the hallmark of a great leader.

And to get people to follow you when things are not going well you have to make them want to stay with you on the journey. In other words you need your staff to be to totally loyal to the cause and to you as individual.

There are plenty of people out there who expect and demand loyalty from their employees at all times. They think that giving someone a job is enough of a reason to expect them to be completely loyal and totally committed.

However, true and lasting loyalty is not simply about giving someone a wage and then demanding they follow you through thick and thin.

The fact is that loyalty is something that has to be earned and comes as a result of a relationship that is built up over a long time.

Some people think that you can lead through fear and that all you have to do is tell an individual to do something without expecting to be questioned in any way. But to get the very best performance from people you have to have a mutual understanding and the kind of relationship where you can sit down and have an honest on open discussion.

Of course in a business, especially one in the early days of its life, there can only ever be one boss. In my experience trying to run a company by committee and as a democracy is always going to end in failure. I have invested in firms where this was initially the case, and decisions took too long to be made. There needs to be a clear decision maker - someone at the top of an organisation who makes the big decisions and takes the ultimate responsibility.

But as a company grows and expands, then there is a need for a clearly defined structured and a board of directors. When you get a situation when you have one individual micro-managing it can lead to paralysis.

However even as a business grows and the management team expands it is still important that the person at the very top commands respect and loyalty.

To do that you have to be prepared to give something back to your staff. You need to understand what makes them tick, when they need a word of advice and support and when they need to be encouraged to do better.

All of us as individuals like to feel appreciated and like to be told that we are doing a good job from time to time. Showing empathy and understanding as a leader does not means that you are a soft touch and it can be the best way to motivate members of the team.

Great leaders are able to give something back to everyone, no matter what their position is in the hierarchy.

 Posted by:James Caan

Great Leaders See, Say, and Do

Whether they involve politics, business, sports, education, science, or any other field of endeavor, the key headlines of 2014 will no doubt focus on leadership. And the defining moments won’t be about position or title. They will be about what real leaders see, say, and do. After all, clear vision, clear communication, and meaningful action are the hallmarks of effective leaders.

Dr. Kathryn D. Cramer is a licensed psychologist and executive consultant. Her previous book Change the Way You See Everything was a New York Times bestseller and landed her two spots on The Oprah Winfrey Show. In her latest book Lead Positive: What Highly Effective Leaders See, Say, and Do  (to be released in March) she shows how leaders can produce better results by shifting what they see, say, and do toward assets and possibilities. Her insights are well worth sharing.

 

You write that leaders build self-confidence and inspire allegiance by acting “intentionally” in key, defining moments. Can you offer some examples?

Let me first explain what I mean by “intention.” Highly effective leaders are always on the lookout for what is valuable, working, strong and possible – at every turn of the bend. In other words, they are actively and intentionally seeking the assets present that will bring them closer to their goals.

As your question suggests, there are key moments when searching for and acting on assets make a big difference in achieving important goals. I often use Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey framework to illuminate these key moments of transformational change. (For a little background, when well-known mythology professor Joseph Campbell conducted comparative research on the timeless stories of heroism found in all cultures, he found similar themes and patterns that he characterized as the Hero’s Journey.)

For example, the first milestone in the Hero’s Journey is “The Call.” It is a time when the leader (i.e., the “hero”) must get very clear about how his particular goals relate to his deepest desires and values, and most importantly, to his sense of purpose (i.e., his “call”). The leader’s internal assets are put front and center to strengthen his commitment and determination to see the entire change effort through.

The second milestone in the Hero’s Journey narrative is called “The Resistance.” Normally, we think of resistance as applying to followers. In this case, Campbell wisely points us again in the direction of the leader. Every leader on a mission is faced with internal resistance – his or her own initial qualms, concerns, and worries. Sometimes this internal anxiety mounts so high that he can talk himself out of pursuing his goals altogether. In Campbell’s model, leaders overcome the resistance by reaching out for support from mentors and guides. This support usually includes feedback that focuses on the leader’s strengths and capabilities, as well as the benefits of achieving the goal. Once leaders are shown how to leverage their own strengths to achieve their goals, the anxiety and the resistance goes away.

You talk a lot about Asset-Based Thinking, or ABT. Exactly what is ABT, and how can it help people be more effective? Asset-Based Thinking is a way of shining the spotlight of your attention on what is strong, valuable and possible in yourself, in other people, and in every situation – welcomed or unwelcome. It is an intentional effort to overcome the brain’s negativity bias, which makes us much more sensitive and reactive to problems, mistakes, and what’s missing than the things that are going right. This focus on the negative is what I call Deficit-Based Thinking (DBT). DBT leads to a “fix-it” mindset, which may be helpful in creating narrow solutions, but leaves a lot of opportunity on the table.

With Asset-Based Thinking, leaders identify and leverage the upside of what they themselves have to offer, what others can contribute, and how the situation can have wide-ranging benefits. This mindset opens you up to creative solutions that help you go further, faster.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani was widely praised for focusing his attention on the positive and the possible during the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. How can that kind of focus be helpful under more common circumstances like running a business?

There are three sources of transformational change: crisis, chance, or choice. Many businesses go through periods of crisis, for example, losing market share, customer complaints, or a disengaged workforce. If you look at crisis through an ABT mindset, you will find that it presents opportunities to come back even better than before. By shining the spotlight of attention on what is being done to redeem the crisis, you rally employees, customers, boards of directors, and other important stakeholders, motivating them to higher levels of performance. This is essentially what Rudi Giuliani did by making the acts of heroism more important than the acts of terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11. In any kind of crisis situation, I believe one of the jobs of the leader must be to make visible what employees and other stakeholders are doing to rise to the occasion.

You suggest that leaders can benefit from carefully analyzing the “return on investment” of a specific initiative or project. What do you have in mind?

It is typical for leaders and people at every level to focus on the quantitative metrics associated with achieving results. This is certainly important. But there are two other variables that are pertinent to the bottom line. The first is lessons learned: No matter if we achieve the results we seek, it is important to harvest the lessons. They are invaluable in replicating success or improving on failure.

The second but most neglected bottom-line variable is: What did we experience? Experience here refers to the emotional quotient of pursuing objectives. How did it feel? If individuals and teams achieve results but experience enormous amounts of stress and anxiety while doing so, there is cause to worry. Why are engagement, productivity and optimism suffering when people pursue tough challenges? In contrast, if the emotional quotient in the process of achieving important goals was positive (e.g., people felt inspired, experienced a high sense of solidarity with their team, and were satisfied with their performance), noting this effort can help build an even more competent and engaged culture.

My recommendation is that leaders think about all three of the bottom lines as they challenge their teams and organizations to reach important goals. The trifecta of achieving results, learning valuable lessons, and having the experience of a “great ride” is a formula for sustainable success.

You differentiate between leading by lightning and leading by listening. Give us examples of each, and tell us what you think of the implications.

I developed this leadership style dichotomy as I was studying the work of Chris Argyris, one of the first business theorists to study organization development, which focuses on the importance of having advocacy skills and inquiry skills to effective leadership.

In my system, leading by lightning is associated with being a strong advocate for a new idea. The new idea pops into the mind of the leader and he is then able to rush in and enroll others in their cause. In contrast, leading by listening is most closely associated with having the probing skills of advocacy. Leaders using this style listen deeply to others who are exchanging ideas, discussing options, and voicing opinions. He is then able to blend what he hears into a coherent picture of the future that takes into account multiple points of view.

In my work I have found that each leader has a home base tendency. By nature and nurture, they are more skilled in one style than the other. For example, being the first-born child in the family may cultivate strong leader by lightning tendencies. Then, other variables, such as personality, gender, peer group status, and leadership opportunities, converge to form one’s home base tendencies. A good balance of leading by lightning and leading by listening is the goal for optimal effectiveness.

In promoting something as seemingly pedestrian as performance improvement, how can a leader “say it with substance, sizzle, and soul” so it doesn’t come across as just another pep talk?
My colleagues and I at The Cramer Institute have created an ABT tool called “Courageous Conversations,” which is useful for giving people feedback about how they can improve their performance. This is a comprehensive process, but I always say, what starts well usually ends well – especially when it comes to feedback people might not want to hear.

The first step in Courageous Conversations is “Tell the Truth Fast.” The framework for this step involves giving people feedback using the following stem sentence …

“When you _________ (fill in the blank with the area for improvement, for example, procrastinate, are late, miss deadlines, etc.) then _________ (fill in the blank with the negative impact of the performance deficiency, for example, others feel left out and unimportant, the standards of the whole team are lowered, etc.).

Then you follow up with:
“I know you don’t want to impact the team’s performance or your own performance in a negative way. Would you be willing to talk to me about how you can change your behavior as well as your impact? I believe we can work this out together and improve your performance so that it is at a level you can proud of.”

In the example, there is plenty of substance around the specific behavior that has specific negative impacts. When it comes to sizzle, the person giving the feedback is doing so with an encouraging tone that is devoid of negative judgments. And perhaps the most soulful aspect of having a “Courageous Conversation” is revealed in the positive image of the future that the leader provides in the closing statements.

Rodger Dean Duncan is the bestselling author of CHANGE-friendly LEADERSHIP: How to Transform Good Intentions into Great Performance. 

5 Reasons CEOs Should Spend Time In The Trenches

As a leader at your company, you probably aren’t looking for more to add to your to-do list, but you should always be seeking ways to improve your leadership and your company. And while there are many benefits to working in and around management — like peer insight and guidance from mentors — the rest of your workforce has a lot to offer as well.

Here are five reasons why you need to spend time in the trenches with your employees: 

1. Gain Empathy
Great leaders are able to inspire and incentivize people to be their very best. This requires the ability to see the world through the eyes of your team members. Understanding their professional challenges and aspirations comes easier if you’ve “been there.”

A fantastic example of a leader who dove into the trenches to uncover the challenges facing different roles in his company is Frontier Airlines CEO Bryan Bedford, who appeared on an episode of “Undercover Boss.” While working in several low-level roles within the airline, he discovered huge flaws in the company’s operations, from employees having only seven minutes to clean an entire plane between flights to cross-utilization agents shifting between checking in patrons to manually loading luggage onto the plane in 104-degree heat.

Without having shared your team members’ experiences, or at least witnessed them, it’s hard to motivate them. You also gain respect by demonstrating your willingness to humble yourself, your motivation to learn from them and your ability to value their efforts for the company. 

2. Improve Leadership
If you want to direct an orchestra, you have to learn at least the basics of every kind of instrument. You can’t tell the string musicians how to make a sound you want if you don’t have a firm understanding of how they play their instruments.

It’s the same in business. You need to know the ins and outs of each department so you can direct them. Understanding what makes a sales professional successful allows a business leader to better mentor those in sales who need help. 

3. Grow in General Knowledge
Being a generalist means understanding what makes your company tick. Knowing a little bit about a lot of things enables you to know what results the company needs from each department or team member.

Great business leaders understand financial requirements, supply chain challenges, talent needs, marketing strategies, product development cycles, legal matters and market pressures. They then use that broad, general knowledge to connect the dots and successfully execute winning strategies. Spreading your time across multiple departments will give you more knowledge about many different parts of your company. 

4. Grow in Expertise
Most leaders “grow up” in one department before they’re elevated to management. They may have been great at sales or excelled as an attorney or software developer. There’s great value in being an expert, but once you attain a leadership position, you’ll likely run into situations that require expertise you don’t have.

It’s important to recognize this and reserve time and resources to expand your repertoire. In the book, “The Corporate Lattice,” Cathleen Benko and Molly Anderson discuss how careers are built by gaining new skills and explain that an “options-oriented” organizational approach lets professionals achieve better results. The best way to expand your expertise is to talk to another expert. 

5. Learn More about Interconnections
Businesses are complex machines with many moving parts. What happens in one department affects another department, and it’s your job to know what will result from every decision you make. The more you hone this skill, the better you can manage.

A strong leader understands how a last-minute “product design change” might influence costs, delivery dates, copyright law considerations, raw material requirements and marketing creative.

I’m not suggesting that you go all “Undercover Boss” and try to expose gaping issues within your company. But if you spend quality time with each department, you’ll gain essential knowledge and experience. While you may think you don’t have time to do this, you really can’t afford not to. Your job as a CEO depends on it.

Author: Michel Koopman

 

Bio: Michel Koopman is the CEO of getAbstract Inc. getAbstract’s mission is to find, expertly compress and provide universal access to critical business knowledge in a format that learners can absorb quickly and easily. This allows customers to stay current and competitive and to become leaders who can make better decisions. Today, their solutions include a library of more than 9,000 business book and TED Talk summaries, in text and audio format, which more than 10 million subscribers use, including 20 percent of Fortune 500 companies.

To be a leader, you need to be a teacher too

TIM CORK

Teaching is also the ultimate gift. Great teachers and leaders become experts and are able to elevate those around them.

Your leadership is defined by your ability to teach and your ability to help others. For example, goals are both defined and taught to people in your organization. Pretty well everything in life requires good teaching.

Teaching is a two-way process
When teaching, use straightforward language. Be concise and articulate and say exactly what you mean. You have to account for different aptitudes and attitudes and how you will be perceived. And don’t ever believe you can please all the people in the room. You need to observe the reactions of others and build from that.

In order to organize how you teach, break your material into logical and sequential building blocks, then build on each point. You need to encourage feedback questions and audience participation as well as use visual aids, stories, and humour.

Great teachers tell great stories. We learn from stories because they appeal to our emotions and stories are much easier to digest than straightforward information. Can you build what you want to say into a story?

Great leaders are great teachers
As a leader, you need to have an attitude of teaching, not telling. It’s up to you to maximize the potential of those you lead in order to best serve your organization. When you can make your people feel good about themselves, and when you recognize them for their efforts – that’s when the magic starts to happen.

Leaders must understand that the three key motivators are contribution, recognition, and financial reward.

Leaders are coaches and need coaches
Coaching enhances performance in organizations and it is a great way to teach at a deeper level. Leaders, therefore, must be good coaches. They also need coaches themselves.

I’m a big believer in providing a combination of team and individual coaching to companies. I believe it’s much more effective for people to be coached by external coaches. This enables them to share what’s really going on in their work and in the organization. Internal coaching, in contrast, is always influenced by departmental agendas and bias and competitiveness.

For executives today, the demands and pace of business life are increasing, creating a greater need for reliability, accountability, and authentic leadership. This is where coaching comes in. It can enable transformational change.

Coaching can provide a place for executives to calibrate their strategy and evaluate themselves and their performance. This may be one of the few ways they can get candid feedback, guidance, and the development they need in preparing for the future.

Executives and leaders have come to see the value of coaching, both for themselves and their organizations. In most companies, there is no longer any stigma to having a coach. In fact, being coached is now seen as a normal or even a high-prestige development activity.

Coaching provides an opportunity, in the face of relentless work demands, for reflection, evaluation, feedback and purposeful dialogue.

It gives leaders a rare breathing space, helping them be and become better leaders. Coaching also provides timely and targeted strategies for improving leaders’ less-developed sides and showing them how to use their strengths to their own advantage.

Tim Cork (@TimCork1) is the president of Straight A’s Inc., an international provider of leadership development, coaching and sales training. This column is adapted from his book G3: The Gift of You, Leadership and Netgiving.

5 Transitions Great Leaders Make That Average Leaders Don't

The secret to leadership is there aren’t any real secrets. The best leaders have simply gone to school on improving their tradecraft. While the capabilities possessed by the best leaders might seem otherworldly to many, they are merely the outcome of hard work, experience, perspective, and yes, a bit of luck. The best leaders have just learned to make certain transitions that less effective leaders curiously remain blind to.

Some leaders hit their stride early in their career, others find their path later in life, and regrettably, far too many leaders never seem to get their footing. Great leaders discover pivot points and transitions that create a certain rhythm and balance, while average leaders tend to be somewhat tone deaf and awkward. We all recognize great leadership when we see it, but many fail to see what it is that actually makes the leader great. Following are 5 key transitions great leaders make that average leaders do not.

The best leaders recognize a common purpose, shared values, and aligned vision are the hallmarks of any great organization. These three elements set the foundation for a sustainable culture. Leaderswho fail to bring people together around these three constructs sentence their company first to the chaos of mediocrity, and ultimately to the pain of obsolescence. Great leaders create culture by design, while average leaders allow culture to evolve by default.

A lesson lost on many is profit doesn’t drive purpose, but purpose certainly drives profit – great leaders understand this; average leaders do not. Leaders who are driven by profit will find they may be successful for a season, but they’ll eventually come to realize a pure profit agenda is not sustainable over the long haul. Great leaders make the transition from profit to purpose and are handsomely rewarded for doing so. A unified purpose can endure all things.

People First– Leaders are nothing without people. Put another way, people will make or break you as a leader. You’ll either treat them well, earn their trust, respect and loyalty, or you won’t. You’ll either see people as capital to be leveraged or humans to be developed and fulfilled. You’ll either view yourself as superior to your employees, or as one whose job it is to serve them, learn from them, and leave them be better off for being led by you.

The best leaders don’t put people in a box – they free them from boxes. Ultimately, a leaders job isn’t to create followers, but to strive for ubiquitous leadership. Average leaders spend time scaling processes, systems, and models – great leaders focus on scaling leadership.

Develop Awareness– Great leaders are self aware, organizationally aware, culturally aware, contextually aware, and emotionally aware. They value listening, engaging, observing, and learning over pontificating. They value sensitivity over insensitivity and humility over hubris.

Leaders who come across as if they know everything haven’t fooled anyone – except themselves. 

Great leaders avoid the traps, gaps, and blind spots average leaders so easily step into. Leaders who choose to live in the bubble of their own thinking rather than understanding the benefits of seeking others input and counsel make things harder on everyone. The willingness to allow your positions and opinions to be challenged is a sign of strength not weakness. I’ve often said the most powerful and overlooked aspect of learning is unlearning. Leaders never willing to change their mind ensure only one outcome – a lack of growth and development.

Shun Complexity– Complexity is a leader’s enemy not their friend. Great leaders live to eliminate or simplify the complex, while average leaders allow themselves and those they lead to be consumed by it. Complexity stifles innovation, slows development, gates progress, and adversely impacts culture.Complexity is expensive, inefficient, and ineffective.

I’m not minimizing the fact we live in a complex world, and I’m not suggesting that profit cannot be found in complexity. But great leaders understand opportunity and profits are extracted from complexity through simplification, not by adding to the complexity. While many think it was Einstein who said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,” the statement was actually borrowed from Leonardo de Vinci – both gentlemen were correct.

Get Personal– If I only had a nickel for every time I’ve heard someone say, “It’s not personal; it’s just business.” Great leaders understand nothing is more personal than leadership, and they engage accordingly. The best leaders understand a failure to engage is in fact a failure to lead. 

Average leaders remain aloof and distant – great leaders look to know and care for their people.

Average leaders are viewed as business executives, the best leaders are viewed as great human beings.The best leaders understand it’s not a weakness to get personal, to display empathy, kindness, and compassion – it’s the ultimate strength. Peak performance is never built on the backs of others, but by helping others become successful. Treat your people as if your life depends on it – it does.

The reality is anyone can lead, but very few lead well. Will you just show up for work and check the box, or will you lead well? Thoughts?


 

Mike Myatt,