Listening – Maybe the most valuable leadership skill

by | Jul 7, 2012 | Leadership Development, Video

When I was out interviewing people, I asked a basic question: What was the most valuable skill you learned  to become an effective leader? I was surprised by the answer because I thought that they would reply with something like Delegation as that would have been my reply. What most of them identified as the most important leadership skill was Listening. James Standen did a great job of explaining why this was the case.

If you are getting this blog in an email, click on the link to the blog to be able to watch the video.

The ultimate in employee initiative

by | Jul 5, 2012 | Management

There’s a great story about a programmer named Ron Avitzur that was pointed out to me by my Director of Content Acquisition, Lachlan Plant (aka, my son). Ron was working for Apple on a project as a contractor when the project was canned and he was terminated, fired, canned, etc.

No big deal except that Ron was really keen about completing what he was working on. What he did about it was to keep working on the project, at Apple, by keeping his old pass for a while, by sneaking in at other times, by claiming office space and resources, some of it with the cooperation of Apple staff who knew what he was doing. He even got a friend who had been terminated to work on the project as well. They both claimed they worked for each other to make sure they weren’t discovered.

They both continued on working until the project was complete, tested, and bundled with a software release as Graphing Calculator 1.0, which Apple bundled with the original PowerPC computers.

Don’t you wish you had employees with that type of initiative. A perfect counterpoint to Milton Waddams from Office Space.

Initiative

by | Jul 3, 2012 | Exercises, Leaders

Many companies use a rating system for employees in performance appraisals that puts them in classes like A,B,C or 1,2,3. The As and 1s are reserved for the very best employees or as it is frequently put, those whose work exceeds expectations. The Bs or 2s are for people whose work meets expectations and the Cs or 3s are for those whose work does not meet expectations. Simple eh? The problem is that no on knows what Meets Expectations means when compared with Exceeds Expectations. Many employees think that when they are doing their job very well as described in their job description, they’ll get an Exceeds Expectations. Sorry, doesn’t happen.

The difference between Meeting Expectations and Exceeding them is Initiative

The secret to being an A employee, a 1, or an Exceeds Expectations and thereby getting a promotion, raise or bigger bonus means doing more than what was expected of you at work. That means you must do more than what was in your job description. If someone tells you to do something and you do it, even if you do it very well, you are still only Meeting Expectations. That is because you are expected to do what you are asked to do and you are expected to do it very well or you wouldn’t be working there very much longer.

To do more than what was expected of you at work, you need to use initiative. That means you must find something important that needs to be done and is not part of your regular job and do it. That’s all the difference between an A and a B, initiative.

Try this at work:

Find some small thing that people recognize is a problem and fix it. It could be as simple as finding a better way to deal with contact information, a better way to keep track of projects, a better way to get approval for expenditures.

Once you have picked this thing to improve, then fix it and let everyone know what you have done and why. This communication is not for tooting your own horn but to make sure the change is implemented by everyone. You might have to remind them several times.

After you’ve tried out this initiative once, keep doing it. Find something else to fix or start and start it. Keep doing small things that are outside the scope of your job and then start making those things bigger. Work up to major projects and pretty soon you’ll be noted for your initiative.

 

Self Confidence

by | Jun 25, 2012 | Emotional Intelligence, Exercises, Leadership Development

“Confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom.”

William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, 1766

You probably don’t even notice it happening. Do you remember the first time you tried to dive off a very high diving board? Do you remember the feeling? The hesitation, the butterflies. Now do you remember the second dive off the same high diving board, the third, the tenth, the 100th? Your changed feelings are the result of building confidence.

One day, you face a new situation, full of dread, nervous anticipation and excitement. The next you are treating the situation as old hat, developing confidence with every step.

Self confidence is one of the keys to successful leadership.

Can you imagine following a nervous leader, one who lacks self confidence? It doesn’t work does it. So, if you want to be a good leader, you need to develop a well justified aura of self confidence. Developing it is all about practice. Doing something time and time again (eventually successfully) will build your self confidence.

 

Try this at work:

Find some small thing in which you feel that you lack self confidence. Don’t make it something huge like speaking to a group of 100 people if that is one of your fears. Make it something small, perhaps like having a conversation with someone who is very senior to you, saying no to an unreasonable request, meeting new people at a networking event, or voicing your opinion at a meeting.

Once you have picked this thing to work on, set yourself an objective of repeating the behaviour ten times. Yes that’s right, ten times.

Let’s say you want to become more self confident about speaking up in a meeting. The next time you go to a meeting, make it an objective to speak up sometime in the meeting to voice your opinion. Write down how you felt before voicing your opinion and how you felt after that. Note also what happenned. Did anyone hit you, yell at you, belittle you or did they just hear your opinion and move on? Now do that nine more times, writing down your feelings and the results of the experiment.

After you have completed the experiment ask your self, do you feel more self confident? Chances are you have developed a useful technique to overcome fears.