How do YOU show up?

If I can share anything that I have learned after 28 years navigating the waters within Corporate America, it is that success in life is more about how you show up than what you know or even who you know. 

I am not dismissing that what you know and who you know is not important, but I am stressing the essential of how you show up each day is the most important. 

I believe all would agree that the foundation for success in life starts with you. Your drive, your attitude, your behavior, your mindset, your commitment, your passion, your enthusiasm, your courage, your confidence, your conscious awareness of yourself provides this foundation. 

Leadership requires a conversation with self to understand who you are serving (God or self) which will answer why you are serving (servant or self).

Introspective 

Matthew 6:33 says that “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. And all these things shall be added to you.” If the leader is receiving counsel from Him through constant pray, biblical obedience and surrender, it will shape how they show up. 

When we start with ourselves, then and only then, can we learn, attract, and be our absolute best for ourselves… and then for others. 

I am drawn to the following quote from Lead Like Jesus, “Whenever you have an opportunity or responsibility to influence the thinking and the behavior of others, the first choice you are called to make is whether to be motivated by self-interest or by the benefit of those you are leading” (Blanchard, Ken & Hodges, Phil, 2005). 

While some may look at the focus on MY attitude, MY behavior, MY mindset, MY commitment, MY passion, MY enthusiasm, MY courage, MY confidence, MY awareness as too focused on self, but introspective work is important as it makes the leader be accountable for how they show up. And the leader must be able to say that MY [fill in the blank] answers for myself and others the leader’s motivation. 

Heart, Head, Hands and Habits 

Using Lead Like Jesus to evaluate MY motivation and if it is alignment with servant leadership, one could evaluate how they exhibit the four leadership domains: heart, head, hands, and habits. 

Leadership at its foundation is always a matter of the heart. If MY motivation is heart, I will demonstrate behaviors of kindness, love, and empathy. For example, I once assisted one of my direct managers overcome a weakness, I imagine at first it felt like micromanagement, but as we progressed, I was able to get them out of the weeds of constant execution to see the big picture. This skill aided them in talking with senior leadership who first want to know the vision and the big picture strategy before diving into how we are executing. by helping them work through a fatal flaw, that if not addressed would have ended their career. 

Assessing decisions and challenging your own belief system, is how a leader will demonstrate leading with their head. Showing the team that you research decisions and are thoughtful in your approach will build confidence in the team. Not that the leader needs to give the team reason for everything, but with transparency the team learns to trust the leader as a person who admits when they are wrong, challenges themselves and their thinking, but also confirms theories about leadership. 

Hands are the external confirmation that the leader’ motivation and beliefs are in alignment with their actions. In my owner leadership journey, I have been known as being someone who walks the talk. This is apparent as I am someone who does what must be done, no matter what. Jumping on a plane at a moment’s notice to give an impromptu presentation when a senior leader needs it or showing up in person to deliver a hard message. 

Rick Warren in Lead like Jesus says, “Your character is essentially the sum of your habits.” Being a leader who is consistent builds trust. Agree that how a leader shows up each day gives insight to their character. Character truly is, as Rick Warren says, the sum of the leaders’ habits. Preaching, practicing, repeat builds the company culture and gives team members someone to look up and model. This allows for goodness to seep into all levels of the company. 

Know Who, Why and How 

Knowing who I serve and why I service, impacts how I show up. How I show up and behave allows me to be my best self. My true authentic self. It is a powerful reminder that I while I am not in control (He is), He has given me the wisdom and the choice to show up as a servant leader. 

References 

Blanchard, Ken and Hodges, Phil. 2003. Lead Like Jesus. Thomas Nelson. 

Blanchard, Ken and Hodges, Phil. 2005. The Servant Leader. Thomas Nelson.

Extraordinary Leadership

Years ago, I wrote a message to my team that discussed how developing outstanding, ethical leaders was fundamental to the company I worked for. We were in the middle of a sales practice scandal where a few of our area managers did not follow the vision and values of our company. But the message on extraordinary leadership wasn’t just to address the need for ethical leadership. It was because strong leaders have a positive, profound, and measurable influence on making the company a great place to work, but more importantly strong leaders inspire commitment through demonstration of leadership in action. Outstanding leaders live their lives demonstrating exemplary leadership including living a life displaying integrity and honesty. Integrity and honesty are two of the main components of leadership. Afterall, we do not want our leaders to lie to us or deceive us. We want leaders who tell us the truth, even when the truth is hard to tell. Honesty is tightly bound to integrity. We want leaders who know right from wrong. We want to be led, not misled. We want victory, through hard work not through deceit. In the end, we want to work hard for someone who displays integrity and honesty, and we know that through their role modeling, we are motivated to practice integrity and honesty. In the book, Leadership Challenge, authors Kouzes and Posner surface five practices of for living an authentic life with integrity and honesty.They are: 1. Modeling the Way— Setting an example through your day-to-day actions. 2. Inspiring a Shared Vision—Passionately believing you can make a difference. 3. Challenging the Process—Searching for opportunities to change the status quo 4. Enabling Others to Act—Creating an environment of mutual respect where trust, authenticity and dignity are the most important tenets. 5. Encouraging the Heart—Keeping determination alive by rewarding peers for their efforts and celebrating accomplishments even the small ones. Following these five practices, my own leadership journey has included looking at the motivation of my heart and aligning it with my head and hands. I often think of Psalm 19:14, “May the words of my mouth and the mediations of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” Assessing my leadership journey also means challenging myself and honest self-assessment of how I am doing remaining focused servant leadership (not self-serving leadership). With my desire for servant leadership, I can focus on what matters, the people I work with and those within my direct span of control. There is something wonderful in helping those who choose to work with you take root, find their path, discover their own unique gift and then celebrating it. When I was little my mom recounted a conversation between a mighty oak tree and an acorn. The acorn was feeling undervalued and insignificant. The mighty oak urged the acorn to be patient, because with the right conditions the acorn would evolve into a mighty oak and be part of the larger ecosystem contributing shade, and housing and even food for forest inhabitants. And, when at last the oak was fully mature it would produce acorns. Acorns that would possess a spark of life to be passed on from one tree generation to the next. Even at a young age, my mom was promoting a life focused on living, not just leaving, an authentic leadership legacy. Thanks for letting me share, -srt References Kouzes, Jim and Posner, Barry. Leadership Challenge. http://www.leadershipchallenge.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-131053.html

Fostering a Culture of Productive Conflict

By Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Leadership by Design – August 2022

For my MBA, I have started work on my thesis which will focus on team dynamics and what makes for a high performing team.  It truly is a topic that is near and dear to my heart and so important in building high performing teams that trust each other to do the right thing every time.

This weekend, I started interviews with key leaders.  And the first interview was able to interview one of my favorite contrarians. This individual is a Tech Executive at Microsoft who manages a global team of 1000+ technology professionals.

She believes that high performing teams have the courage to challenge the status quo.  The way they do so is to encourage healthy debate. Her words, “Healthy debate improves outcomes and prevents bad outcome.”

Healthy debate or productive conflict also bring teams closer together.  It eliminates egos which can be walls and levels the playing field.

She provided an article (see below) that resonated with her and her approach with her global team at Microsoft.

The article is called Fostering a Culture of Productive Conflict and I tried to attach it with no luck, so I cut / pasted it instead.

Fostering a Culture of Productive Conflict 

It might come as a surprise to find that even in this era of polarization and rancorous discourse in all realms of society, it is increasingly difficult to have open and productive disagreements at work. Nearly 20% of surveyed tech employees say that they don’t speak up to their managers, at all. More often than not, even managers opt for inaction because change is uncomfortable or because taking action might get them into trouble; it’s safer to do nothing. So, it’s hard for senior leaders to get the full, unvarnished truth, and they can end up making big decisions based on half-truths or incomplete data.

They are missing opportunities to learn from the frontline about what is not working. Other reasons to encourage people to offer different points of view: Healthy debate amplifies innovation. And repressing alternative opinions hurts employee engagement and retention.

Here are ways to encourage healthy debate and create a culture of productive disagreement.

The Solution

01. ModelNew Norms - When it comes to nurturing a culture of productive disagreement, leaders can play a highly influential role. By integrating the concepts of openness and healthy debate into their language, they can institutionalize new norms. Their actions can help to further reset the rules of engagement by serving as a model for employees to follow. Leaders should incorporate the concept of productive debate into corporate value statements and the way they address colleagues, employees, and shareholders. They should also highlight—and repeat often—values such as “truth seeking” and “debate” as priorities when undertaking major initiatives and as part and parcel of the desired end state in transformation efforts.

02. Encourage two-way communication- Leaders make most, if not all, decisions and convey those decisions down through the ranks. Employees are expected to adopt new ways of working after “consuming” these communications. And they consume a lot of them: in the digital era, employees can be exposed to 2.3 million words and numbers over a three-month period; under these conditions, word-dense, one-directional messages about change efforts fall flat. But employees today want to take part in creating solutions—and they have good ideas. To create something more valuable through change, companies must tap into employees’ creative minds versus merely delivering orders.

03.   Use tools to instill the values of debate- To help promote a culture based in truth, leaders can evaluate the prevalence of debate in their organization’s culture and team dynamics. They can use checklists on a weekly or monthly basis to assess whether teams embody and actively instill the values of debate in their organization. Among the useful questions on those checklists: Is a broad set of voices engaged in developing our recent initiatives? Did you share a contrarian point of view? Do you get the truth from employees without resorting to anonymous surveys?

04. Create a sense of psychological safety- Psychological safety is the shared belief that it is safe to speak up in the workplace and take risks without fear of being blamed. It creates a climate of mutual trust and respect in which employees can test the status quo and challenge ideas. In a psychologically safe environment, employees are more likely to take risks, admit mistakes, and learn from failure. Psychological safety is essential to unlocking an individual’s potential. And a Google research project has found that psychological safety is the top driver of team success. 

05.    Encourage people to share bad news- Sharing bad news can break down barriers and expand the pool of contributors to problem solving. Energy otherwise spent saving face can be channeled into constructive use. But bad-news sharing will take root only if leaders practice it. Leaders can elicit candid responses. Instead of asking team members how they are doing (typical reply: fine!), they can ask what keeps them up at night or what their biggest challenges are. Others can share ways they have successfully overcome such challenges. Leaders deeper in the organization can ask the same questions of their teams. As a result, people will raise concerns and surface problems earlier.

What do you think about the article and about productive disagreements? 

Is it something you practice with your peers?  How about your leadership? 

This week, think about your views on the topic and let me know your thoughts.

Also, let me know how I can help in promoting and leading an environment that embraces productive disagreements and speaking up. 

Truthfully, I want your individual voices to be heard! 

Happy Saturday all,

-srt

How to be a better listener and why it matters

I am a big fan of podcasts. 

Little nuggets of gold that I can play and listen to when I run errands, workout or when I am stuck somewhere and need a distraction (like my recent visit to the DMV). 

I ran across a podcast called “In the Arena with Leah Smart”. The article introducing the podcast was on listening and how each of us can be a better listener. 

Smart says that many people struggle to sit silently and just listen. It’s an art often taken for granted. But listening well can positively impact our relationships within, and of course, far beyond work. 

And while we understand that listening (and being listened to) helps us feel more connected to the people around us, Smart believes it has become a “forgettable practice”. 

So much so that she is using the levels of listening by the Co-Active Training Institute to help her audience show up better in conversations. 

The Levels of Listening in a Nutshell: 

1. Level 1 – Internal Listening which can be described as listening to what someone else is saying in the context of your own experience and responding only through that lens or allowing a busy mind to distract you. 
2. Level 2 – Focused Listening which can be described active listening, questioning to understand. 
3. Level 3 – Global Listening which is deep connection and listening to take in information, digest it and participate in the conversation. 

There is a book called, You’re Not Listening by author Kate Murphy. In the book, Murphy sums up what listening truly is and why it matters more than we may realize, “To listen well is to figure out what’s on someone’s mind and demonstrate that you care enough to want to know. It’s what we all crave; to be understood as a person with thoughts, emotions, and intentions that are unique and valuable, and deserving of attention. Listening is not about teaching, shaping, critiquing, appraising, or showing how it should be done. Listening is about the experience of being experienced." 

To read the article, How to be a better listener and why it matters Leah Smart | Aug 29, 2022 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-better-listener-why-matters-leah-smart 

To listen to the podcast, Podcast — Leah Smart | Modern Self-Discovery + Development Check out August 22 – The Simple Act of Breathing 

Happy Thursday all, 

 -srt

Qualities of Leadership

John C. Maxwell, author of The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader, believes there are personal characteristics in leaders that make people want to follow them.  These characteristics once recognized can be developed and refined to be a truly effective leader. 

In the book, Maxwell shares the twenty-one qualities and why they are foundational in transforming oneself from understanding to practicing servant leadership. 

This paper will introduce the twenty-one qualities, dive deeper in three of the qualities and share how developing these qualities can help an individual with leading in a manner that brings Him glory. 

Twenty-One

Maxwell says that “everything rises and falls on leadership.  And leadership truly develops from the inside out.”  In assessing great leaders globally, Maxwell reports there were these twenty-one qualities that they had and modeled.  He believes these differentiate someone from understanding what leadership is and leading.

The twenty-one qualities are:

1.     Character

2.     Charisma

3.     Commitment

4.     Communication

5.     Competence

6.     Courage

7.     Discernment

8.     Focus

9.     Generosity

10.  Initiative

11.  Listening

12.  Passion

13.  Positive Attitude

14.  Problem Solving

15.  Relationships

16.  Responsibility

17.  Security

18.  Self-Discipline

19.  Servanthood

20.  Teachability

21.  Vision

Deep Dive:  Character

While each of the twenty-one characteristics are important, three align well with our weekly reading as it pertains to leading with our hearts, head, hands, and habits.

Character is the way that a leader shows up during good times and bad.  For many leaders’ character is revealed during times of adversity, where at the crossroad between character and compromise the individual chooses the one along with the consequence.  Character is what our heart leads us to do.  Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize winning author says, “The meaning of early existing lies, not as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul.”  Maxwell extends this thinking saying the heart of development is not only for leaders, but for every member of humanity (Maxwell, John. P.4). 

Maxwell also cautions against the pitfalls of authentic leadership which he calls the four A’s:  Arrogance, Aloneness, Adventure-Seeking and Adultery.  These pitfalls, he reports, are the result of weak character.  Talented individuals should build a bedrock character that can be tested, but that doesn’t crack under pressure.

Deep Dive:  Passion

Bill Cosby, comedian, said that “anyone can dabble, but once you’ve made that commitment, your blood has that particular thing in it and its very hard for people to stop you.”  What he is describing is passion. 

I am a firm believer that intelligence, experience, degrees are not what make a leader and while they may aid in obtaining followers, what really makes people excited about following is passion. 

Thinking of successful people who were passionate about their craft, I immediately think of individuals like Bill Gates (Technology), Steven Covey (Leadership), Mother Theresa (Peace), Gandhi (Human Rights), Harriett Tubman (Freedom) and many others.  These individuals were passionate about a topic and their desire created their destiny (Maxwell, John. P.84).

Passionate people do not compromise but understand that their passion has purpose.  Even if that purpose is to show the world how to make the impossible possible.

Deep Dive:  Servanthood

From Lead Like Jesus, we are reminded that servant leaders serve people.  The serve people even when it is not popular, even when it doesn’t impress, even when it doesn’t offer them position.  The quality of servanthood that John Maxwell discusses in his book follows the same thinking as Lead Like Jesus in that servanthood is all about people over position.

Maxwell reminds readers that putting others ahead of their own agenda is a key part of servanthood.  When we are aware of other people’s needs and can assist them, we are able to help them meet their goals and desires.  With service, we can model servant leadership and magnify His glory.

Conclusion

In the book, The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader, Maxwell describes twenty-one of the qualities that when practiced daily and modeled will draw people to the leader. 

As noted above, the twenty-one qualities draw people to the leader. While all align to Lead Like Jesus, the correlation with character, passion and servanthood are obvious as each require active modeling of servant leadership. Applying these qualities, Maxwell contends it will make people want to follow (Maxwell, John P. xi).  And, for a leader, when people follow there is nothing the leader will not be able to tackle.

References

Maxwell, John.  1999. The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader.  Thomas Nelson.