The ONE thing every leader MUST DO before the New Year

If you’re normal there are probably a few things that will just not get done before the end of this year. There is one thing you must absolutely not put off until the New Year:

TAKE A BREAK!

Not just any break. Set aside at least two or three hours to just sit and reflect on the past year. Make sure you’re somewhere free from distractions. Take a walk if you need to or lock yourself in your office or a comfortable room.

You should be thinking about these questions:

• What successes did you have that you want to repeat or expand upon next year?
• What specific failures do never want to repeat or experience again?
• How have I become a better leader over the past year?
• What do I need to do to improve as a leader in the New Year?
• What leadership style did I use effectively over the past year?
• What style should I learn or expand upon?
• How did I best express compassion and empathy for the people I served last year?
• How can I be more compassionate?
• What new skills, talents and abilities do you want to learn or expand?
• In what situations were you caught unprepared and how can you change that for the future?
• Were there any situations in the past year where you were lacking in confidence?
• When were you the most confident?
• Could you have been more flexible or adaptable in handling any particular situation over the past year? If so, how?
• Were there any times when you communicated poorly or felt you were misunderstood?
• Were there any times when you knew with certainty that you got a message across loud and clear? How did you do it?
• Who did you mentor over the past year? How effective were you?
• Did you provide adequate training, mentoring and coaching to the people you serve––personally and professionally? If so, in what areas were you most effective? Where can you provide more?
• What material, emotional and spiritual resources do you have at your personal disposal right here and right now?
• Are you ending the year with adequate resources in each of these areas? A surplus? Are any of these resources depleted or inadequate for the coming year?
• Who did you meet or connect with over the past year that helped make you a better person or leader? How did they help and will you stay connected?
• Who do you want to meet or work with?
• Who should you part ways with––and why?
• What two or three things would you like to change in yourself over the next year?

And the most important question of all:

• How can you better serve the people who respect and trust your leadership?

Feel free to add to the list, but you should at least think about these items.

This is not about planning. That comes later. Notice there is nothing in these questions about how you’re going to change anything. This is just an exercise to help you take inventory––to identify what it is you’d like to change or do in the coming year.

Now you might not need two hours to answer these questions. You might get it done in ten minutes.

Take the two hours anyway––minimum.

This isn’t just about answering the questions, it involved thinking about your answers. Let it sink in. You may change your responses a few times.

If you’re comfortable with your answers before the two hours is up, just sit and think and let it all set in. You’re programming your mind for the coming year. You’re getting rid of some of the clutter.

After you finish your session, give yourself at least a couple of days before you start any serious planning. Give yourself some time to reflect and consider your responses and how you might best move forward.

That’s it.

Just give yourself a break, reflect on the past year, and start the New Year with a meaningful assessment of where you are––and where you want to go.

This may turn out to be the most productive two hours you’ve invested all year!

Happy New Year!

 

ASPIRING LEADERS: Focus on experience, not rewards

The following is an excerpt from Jim’s latest book, 8 STRATEGIES for ASPIRING LEADERS…

When I listen to leaders and managers today, they tell me that “entitlement mentality” is one of the biggest obstacles for aspiring leaders. Too often candidates freshly minted out of college show up at their first job interview with a pre-determined list of demands or a set idea of what they “deserve.”

You “deserve” nothing––until you prove your actual value––through performance.

One of my friends is a stock trader. When he started, the standard for hiring was a college diploma. His degree was not even in finance or business; he held a degree in English.

Times have changed. His firm now requires an MBA for consideration for entry level stock trading and broker positions. The degree is required just to qualify for the chance to train for those positions.

He asked me if I knew what “MBA” stands for. “Of course,” I said, “Master of Business Administration.”

“No,” he replied, “It means––might be acceptable!”

Aspiring leaders are competing for recognition and opportunities in a crowded market and employers in many domains have plenty of great candidates to choose from. If you really want to excel and exploit opportunities for advancement, it’s important to stop focusing on the rewards. You’re not there yet.

Focus on the experience.

This means taking full advantage of every opportunity to gain experience and on-the-job knowledge, no matter how insignificant or menial it might look at the time. The part-time job you take running the night shift at a burger joint to pay your student loans may be more valuable to you in the long run than taking a paper pushing job that promises higher pay and company expense account.

A couple of years ago I was doing a workshop for aspiring entrepreneurs. I asked each of them to give us a quick summary of what kind of business they were starting.

One guy said he was starting a restaurant.

He had a lot of his ducks in a row. He had a good business plan, he had a solid vision and had researched his market and competition.

As far as administrative skills were concerned, he knew what he was doing––he had been a corporate executive for years. He was starting over because he had been aged-out of the position he held for about 30 years. He even had strong financial backing from friends who had encouraged him––which led me to my next question.

“With all your experience in business, why are you going to open a restaurant?”

I already knew the answer––I’ve heard it a hundred times in these workshops: “Well, all my life people have told me what a great cook I am.”

“Have you ever worked in a restaurant?”

Again I knew the answer. For the record, he said no.

I told him the best advice I could give him right now was to go get a job in a restaurant. Not only did I tell him not to apply for a management position, but I told him he should start at the very bottom. “Wash dishes, mop floors, wait on tables––do anything to get you inside the restaurant business and learn it from the bottom up!”

I had to add, “The best thing you’re going to learn is that you either love it––or hate it! Either way, it’s better to find out now before you risk what you have left of your life savings!”

I don’t just pick on the restaurant business. This philosophy works for every business, martial arts included.

Nowhere was this experience gap wider than in the financial markets before the big meltdown of 2008. In his book, The Big Short, Michael Lewis describes an entire generation of eager young “executives” who earned big money, but did nothing but process forms and operate what amounted to a legal gambling scheme.

Few of these people became the business leaders of the future. Most of them were simply glorified high-tech assembly line workers, without the invaluable practical experience working with their hands would have provided.

As soon as the proverbial shit hit the fan, these young financial mercenaries were lost. They had no real skills; many in fact did not even understand the economic basics that made their short, albeit profitable careers possible. They didn’t understand the true functions of the mortgage market. They didn’t really know how the derivative markets worked or how to protect assets with real capital.

They were simply playing a high-stakes video game. Eventually they lost––and so did we.

What became of these people? Watch The Wolf of Wall Street and you’ll get a pretty good idea.

What if more of them had passed on the lucrative bonuses and fast paced lifestyle and instead focused on positions that would give them solid experience in building, growing and managing a business? What if they delayed instant financial gratification for sound leadership training?

What if, instead of ripping us all off, they turned their energies to providing real value?

And you’ll provide much more value and enjoy more substantive and lasting rewards if you focus on doing something with meaning and purpose.

Focus on doing something that excites you, something that brings you joy––

Not just something that builds the resume.

Consistent, effective leadership is no accident––it takes practice

Consistent, effective leadership is no accident. It’s the result of dedicated practice, evaluation, learning, growth and development.

An important part of any dedicated practice regimen is continual reinforcement. Or as I say in every workshop:

“Validation is just as important as education.”

This is especially true for experienced leaders at the highest positions. The importance of continual reinforcement and validation extends to all levels––so why do I emphasize it as a priority for veteran leaders?

To be blunt, it’s because sometimes you forget about it!

I know you’re busy and you’ve got lots of people to worry about, but it’s important to take care of yourself too. You’re not the best leader you can be if you’re not at your best.

First I want to be perfectly clear about what I mean when I say “validation.” When you already know or possess the traits and skills that make you an effective leader, the best way to maintain those traits and skills is to practice. This means exposing yourself to constant reminders of the traits, values and strategies that enable you to lead effectively.

When I conduct a workshop with genuine leaders, I’m usually not challenging their credentials, their quality or their conduct. These people are not usually looking for some new leadership method or some secret technique that guarantees performance.

Top leaders do my workshops because we’re singing in harmony––that is they know they need to keep their swords sharp.

Reinforcement and validation of best practices is the most effective way to maintain and encourage effective performance, support of core values and ethical behavior. Don’t just take my word for it––let’s check the science.

Ethisphere.com reported on some interesting research by noted Duke behavioral economist Dan Ariely:

In one of these experiments, a finding that could offer a suggestion for those charged with creating and maintaining an ethical culture emerged. When a simple moral reminder was added to the exercise – when a group of students was asked to recall the Ten Commandments prior to completing the exercise – no cheating was observed despite the fact that no one in the group was able to recall all ten.

“This result was very intriguing,” said Ariely. “It seemed that merely trying to recall moral standards was enough to improve moral behavior.”

Not only moral behavior. In 30 years of training martial artists, I learned that the most powerful technique for improving any type of performance was to remind students of expectations, then reinforce and validate positive action and results.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t correct and even, I have to admit, sometimes berate my students––all in good nature of course! I also found, however, that there were several things I could do as a leader to improve the performance of my students and reduce the need for correction:

#1 Identify specific expectations and express them clearly.

#2 Remind them of these expectations regularly and often.

#3 Validate all improvement, progress and good performance.

I don’t expect top leaders to learn anything new in my workshops. I’m not teaching anything new! What’s so new about the importance of a leader as a teacher and mentor? About the power of expressing yourself skillfully, openly and honestly? Are courage, compassion and wisdom new leadership traits?

No––genuine leaders understand that no matter how much experience we have, we all need to work on the basics. We all need reminders and we all need to pay attention to the fundamentals. I’m honored when they find my workshops and books validating for their leadership style and practice.

Aspiring leaders will often discover new ideas. That’s great too––but it’s not enough to learn leadership strategies and techniques. It’s critical to put those concepts into practice––and to practice them with commitment throughout your career.

It’s simply human nature––we sometimes prioritize functional tasks above personal and professional development. It’s easy to get caught up in the urgency of preparing a budget or responding to a critical change in the market.

That’s when we forget the basics––that an effective leader you must continually polish communication skills, be empathetic and accessible to the people you serve, to study and assimilate leadership techniques and maybe even most important, to continually improve yourself as a professional and as a person.

Bruce Lee famously said:

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

If you want to improve and maintain a high standard of excellence for the leaders you develop––and to improve and maintain the highest standard for yourself and your top leaders––practice.

That means reinforce, always––the basics.

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It’s time to reinforce the strength and quality of your culture––of your leaders––at all levels.

Don’t worry, it’s always time!

Book Jim for a half for full day workshop, or on an ongoing basis to help your people become better leaders––and to help your leaders become better people.

Or––start by giving everyone on your team access to Jim’s powerful leadership strategies and techniques through his books. Volume discounts of up to 70% on books, bundled packages and self-study programs! Discounts available on orders as few as 10 units!

CLICK HERE FOR FULL DETAILS or call 800-786-8502

8 STRATEGIES for EFFECTIVE LEADERS: #7 Be a dedicated teacher, coach and mentor

Great leaders are always effective teachers.

I believe with all my heart that the only way to be a great leader is to teach and mentor others—to help them become leaders too.

Tom Peters wrote, “Leaders don’t create followers—they create more leaders.”

You create leaders by being a dedicated teacher, coach, and mentor, by helping other people realize their true potential.

Is this a new paradigm in leadership? Charles Manz and Henry Sims seem to think so:

“In many modern situations, the most appropriate leader is one who can lead others to lead themselves. We call this powerful new kind of leadership, SuperLeadership.”

I agree with them! But this is NOT a NEW type of leadership!

About 2,500 years ago, Lao Tzu said:

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”

The idea of expanding one’s own effectiveness by empowering others is certainly not new, but it is an idea that deserves a revival.
I’m sure Manz and Sims would acknowledge Lao Tzu’s contributions—They continue:

“The SuperLeader becomes ‘Super’ through the talents and capabilities of others. As self-leadership is nurtured, the power for progress is unleashed.”

Manz and Sims may very well be black belts!

So why don’t more leaders embrace the role of teacher and mentor?

The Institute of Organization Development cited a Stanford University study that reveals a big problem in business leadership today:

“Another critical area of development for CEOs was ‘mentoring skills/developing internal talent …’”

ANOTHER critical area?

This may just be your most important role as a leader! —mentoring, teaching and developing the skills of the people in your care.

What happens when you don’t help people develop?

These days—they quit! They move on to better opportunities for growth and development.

One problem is that many leaders feel threatened when they develop the talents of others––especially people who can take their jobs!

The best Sensei measures his success by the student that surpasses his own skills, talents and abilities. In this transformational culture, there is always room for growth and development.

When the Sensei or leader plays an active role in mentoring and training someone to exceed his skills, there is no threat––There is respect.

I’ve trained many people who have become far better martial artists than I’ll ever be.

That’s not a threat—that’s my job!

A few years ago I noticed something very interesting was happening around me. I didn’t ask for it—it just started happening …

Before my students became Black Belts, they addressed me as Sensei. They still felt some sense of dependence and deference toward me.

As I promoted my first Black Belts, and then later as I recognized some of these students with higher ranks and recognized them for equaling or even surpassing my skills and abilities—

––those students started addressing me as “Master.”

As I promoted the student, the student elevated me.

As the student excels, my role shifts from simply teaching technique to mentoring and coaching that student to even higher levels of performance.

That’s how you cultivate a powerful organization.

Deliberately Developmental Leaders

There is an emerging model for business success: the Deliberately Developmental Organization.

From Harvard Business Review:

“These companies operate on the foundational assumptions that adults can grow; that not only is attention to the bottom line and the personal growth of all employees desirable, but the two are interdependent; that both profitability and individual development rely on structures that are built into every aspect of how the company operates; and that people grow through the proper combination of challenge and support, which includes recognizing and transcending their blind spots, limitations, and internal resistance to change.”

Personal development and professional performance are inseparable.

The article, “Making Business Personal” from the April 2014 edition highlights two remarkable companies that embrace this principle.

It’s time for more organizations to get on board…

Over my 25 plus years teaching martial arts and now nearly 10 years teaching Black Belt Mindset to business people, I’ve had countless people tell me that their practice of martial arts- or understanding of the philosophy, has opened new levels of performance and achievement.

Why?

It’s certainly not the kicking and punching. You can achieve the same results in any challenging, meaningful and worthwhile pursuit.

It’s the combination of “challenge and support” emphasized in the HBR piece. People grow in direct response to challenge. Abilities, skills, talents- confidence and competency grows in direct relationship to the challenges and opportunities available.

Those qualities grow exponentially with the right cultivation, development and nourishment!

People grow through the martial arts experience because it is challenging- and because they develop with the support and encouragement of the Sensei and their peers.

Supportive, nourishing leadership is essential to this process. You also need to develop a culture that encourages and supports development and rewards learning, growth and development at all levels.

The HBR article continues…

“Every job should be like a towrope, so that as you grab hold of the job, the very process of doing the work pulls you up the mountain.”

This means a culture where risk is encouraged- in the sense that you’re willing to expand your capabilities by embracing new challenges. The risk to the organization is that sometimes, despite their best efforts, people will fail…

…and some people will simply want to protect their reputations or their current standing.

That instinct toward self-protection, while natural, is counter-productive…if you’re trying to build an innovative, responsive and dynamic organization.

“To an extent that we ourselves are only beginning to appreciate, most people at work, even in high-performing organizations, divert considerable energy every day to a second job that no one has hired them to do: preserving their reputations, putting their best selves forward, and hiding their inadequacies from others and themselves…”

Pay close attention to this next statement:

“We believe this is the single biggest cause of wasted resources in nearly every company today.”

A Master is never finished- never satisfied. The process of Mastery demands:

• Constant introspection
• A willingness to be open to sincere and productive criticism
• An enthusiasm for accepting new challenges and opportunities for growth
• The courage to risk failures in pursuit of greater achievement

This mindset of Mastery is the key to creating a Deliberately Developmental Organization. You must cultivate this mindset for each individual, from leadership to the front lines, and collectively as part of your company culture.

Many years before Harvard Business Review studied the issue, Lao Tzu wrote:

Cultivate the inner self; Its Power becomes real.
Cultivate the community;
 Its Power becomes greater.
Cultivate the organization; Its Power becomes prolific.

Develop the individual- provide personal as well as professional development.

Make your people more powerful- they’ll make your business more powerful.

That’s how you build a Deliberately Developmental Organization!

#1 Never limit yourself to one leadership style –– from 8 STRATEGIES for EFFECTIVE LEADERS

How many Black Belts does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A hundred.

One to actually perform the operation, and 99 others to brag about how they would have it done it better.

Substitute leadership experts for black belts in this joke and you’ll need to multiply by 1,000.

The absolute last thing this world needs is another leadership style. We’ve got plenty of leadership experts, and it seems as if every few weeks, one of them develops a new style, method, or theory that every leader must adopt immediately—or they’re doomed.

Today’s leader cannot be limited by one style.

First of all, no one style works in every application.

You may be leading a group made up of individuals with a wide variety of cultural backgrounds and experiences.

Geert Hofstede, the founder of the Institute for Research on Intercultural Cooperation has studied the leadership styles in countries all over the world. If anyone would have the qualifications to identify a unified theory of leadership, it might be Hofstede, but he writes;

“I am not offering a solution; I only protest against a naive universalism that knows only one recipe for development.”

No—there is no unified theory in leadership. Today’s leader must be open minded, well informed and ready to integrate various styles and techniques to the task, and the people at hand.

The most effective martial artists are thieves. Leaders should be thieves, too …

… at least when it comes to adapting styles and techniques.

The best martial artists don’t rely on one particular style or method. We steal and adapt techniques whenever and wherever we can to become more powerful, effective and efficient fighters.

Bruce Lee had this advice for martial artists:

“In primary freedom, one utilizes all ways and is bound by none, and likewise uses any techniques or means which serves one’s end.”

Lee’s advice works just as well for leaders.

This means adapting your methodology to the particular situation at hand and being adaptable to the conditions and circumstances you face in any given moment.

The fastest way to find the technique that won’t work is to be inflexible or dogmatic, to limit yourself to one particular style or technique. In the dojo and in business, these limitations are often an unintended consequence of tradition.

I found this gem on LinkedIn:

“What is the greatest barrier to growth and progress?

“The words: We’ve always done it that way.”

Tradition is important, but tradition should inform, not limit our response to current circumstances and conditions.

Learn from past tradition and styles, but also be open to advancing those styles when you can, adapting them to new times, needs, and opportunities. Be willing to discard anything that just doesn’t work anymore.

You honor tradition by preserving the best of it, not by hanging yourself with it.

The metrics of training compassionate leaders

It’s difficult to measure the direct effect of teaching your leaders to be more compassionate—yet that which is not measured, seldom gets done.

From McKinsey Quarterly:

Half of those who responded to a McKinsey survey last year told us that they see organizational capability building as one of their top strategic priorities, but many said their companies could do better. When we asked respondents about their companies’ biggest challenge with training programs, we found that the lack of effective metrics appeared to be a growing concern.

The constant tug-of-war between soft and hard skills training makes the problem even more difficult.

If you see a need to improve process in a technical area like sales protocols or time management, that’s likely to be viewed as a higher priority than teaching your managers to be more empathetic.

It shouldn’t be.

The problem is not one of higher or lower value—both skills are critical to the success of your company; the problem is one of metrics. It’s easier to measure the return of hard skills training, especially in the short-term. Soft skills require a different, more qualitative and long-term assessment to understand their true value.

In one day I can come to your organization and teach your leaders how to be more compassionate. We’ll also talk about how to be more courageous and wise at the same time—but I wouldn’t expect to see a spike in sales or productivity at the end of your next quarter as a result.

You can measure the qualitative effects rather quickly. A few weeks after the workshop:

• Do people feel their supervisors are giving them the attention they need?
• Are managers more open to feedback?
• Are managers responsive to employee concerns?
• Are managers listening?
• Is there clear follow-up on promises?

Should all of this produce results on your profit and loss statement?

Well, yes—eventually.

Over the long haul you might see better employee retention. You might see a decline in lost or wasted time. You could experience a decline in employee complaints and an increase in overall levels of engagement.

Of course to really see the direct ROI for your training expenditure, you’ll still need to connect the dots with some kind of cause and result qualitative analysis. Or—you trust the overwhelming mass of data that says creating a more compassionate workplace produces all these benefits.

If you see a decline in production after soft-skills training—that may be a problem. That doesn’t necessarily mean you wasted your money, it may mean we stirred the hornet’s nest and simply made people aware that they’re working in an untenable environment.

Or—it could mean your leadership team is rotten to the core!

It’s no secret that people are not staying as long as they used to. It’s also no secret that people are disengaged in staggering percentages. Some experts have had a hard-time correlating those facts with a slight uptick in production—I haven’t.

Production is rising because of automation and technology. But how long can we sustain that curve and more important—how much more productive could we be if we improve retention and engagement?

That’s why investment in soft-skills training for your leaders is crucial. Companies that make this investment create a significant competitive advantage.

I can teach your leaders to be more compassionate, courageous and wise in one day. That one day will produce returns for years.