Strategy is an interesting topic and certainly not an uncommon one in business when it comes to planning, decisions and organizational leadership.  I am going to explore some pieces of strategy, how to develop and utilize a strategy and also extend that to other walks of life.

Timing Strategy

Strategy is all about the future and planning for things to come.  Or is it?  Well, I think it is more than that.  Strategy certainly has the future in mind but much of strategy is about executing a plan and the methods behind executing that as well.  It is about timing and controlling decisions to follow a plan at the right points.  The timing of strategic maneuvers is often the most important point of strategic plan and unfortunately, timing is also the thing that gets in the way the most of following a strategy successfully.  Things come up, issues occur, crisis hits and needs to be tended to, there just always seems to be another urgent thing requiring your attention and time before you can get to delivering on that strategy.

Strategy often seems like its counter-intuitive with urgent day to day ongoing work.  If that is the case, I say then you have either the wrong strategy or the wrong work.  Strategy shouldn’t be something that requires alignment of the planets to find the time to work on, it should be built into your day, your tasks and a regular part of your time spent.

Developing a Strategy

In order to develop strategy so that it is timed as part of your regular tasks instead of a wishful “nice to have” then you need to develop it so it aligns with expectations and so you can align your focus at least in some part to that strategic work.

Developing a strategy requires that you step back from these all too common urgent fires and things you seem to “have to do” and look at where you want to develop yourself, your relationship, your business and career.  It requires you to look at plans from a future perspective and to consider the aspirations you have and what are the steps and plans needed to get there.  Once of the tools I’ve learned at a recent conference for strategic planning is called SOAR analysis.  It stands for:

• Strengths
• Opportunities
• Aspirations
• Results

Developing a strategic plans works well by examining each of these to ensure they are included.  Stop and ask yourself questions about each of these areas in your work or life and contemplate the answers so they can be used to formulate a plan.

Strengths

Utilize the strengths you have to ensure you are involved in areas you are competent and able.  I certainly don’t mean to limit yourself, as there is always value in stepping out of your comfort zone but strategy should be based on the strengths you have as that is your most likely area to advance the furthest as well.

Opportunities

This areas is to examine where there is a chance to progress and excel at.  These areas might be to expand existing strengths into new areas or markets and they might be to branch into new research or areas in life that are not yet ventured into.  An opportunity will offer some promise of success at the cost of some challenge to get there and is often what a strategy is formulated on.

Aspirations

Or as Jim Collins put it in his classic, Good to Great , big harry audacious goals.  These are the areas that help formulate a strategy from some dream or vision of a more idealistic situation that is desirable and sought after.  Aspirations don’t need to be future minded, they simply need to into account the dreams and ideas of what a better picture looks like, or the perfect situation for your life and career and company. They are the things you wish to happen and don’t need to be realistic or even reasonable.  They help to steer you in a direction when developing a strategic plan and to not loose sight of the dream.

Results

This area is often over-looked and it specifically helps to focus on what exactly would be going on in the way of deliverables, results and achievements if you were already in the position of the dream or visions behind a strategic plan being in place.  What is happening and what results you expect when you execute the strategic plan and successfully achieve it.  These results set the stage to include specifics in a plan so it can be more easily measured and tracked.  The results are also a promise of what is to come if you accomplish the plan.  Results are best if they are ongoing results as well, not time limited.  You don’t want a strategic initiative to immediately end when you achieve the results.  You want to envision and expect that you will continue to get those results.

Simplify Your Strategy

One of the things that often is the doom of a strategic plan is that it isn’t realistic and broken down into simple actions.  It’s often described or outlined as some lofty ambition that seems impossible to achieve and there is no obvious way to attach to the plan and become a part of it.  This is why simplifying it necessary so it can easily be understood, accepted and engaged into.  Strategy needs to become a part of normal tasks and it definitely needs to simplified so that it won’t suffer the urgent distractions offset that so easily kill strategy and meaningful tasks.  A simple strategy is one that becomes regular, easy and constantly makes visible the value and progress towards that strategic endpoint.  This may be by describing it in a way that connects it with your existing work or by making known the advantages of putting meaningful work before mundane and urgent tasks that occur.

Changing your mindset to follow a more strategic set of maneuvers can be very difficult.  For that, you must simplify it down to easier tasks and smaller pieces so that you’re not overwhelmed.

Strategy Day by Day

With a well understood strategy and having it broken down into smaller pieces you can then examine how to build strategic tasks into each and every day.  Strategy should not be separated as a seldom activity or event, it needs to fit into regular day to day actions so it becomes natural.  Strategy in business needs to involve all employees in some way and engage them by being part of their work.  For your own strategy in life or career, you need to ensure you have work that fits in some way your strategic plan so that you are working toward that accomplishment on a regular basis.

If your strategic actions are truly most important, its really a good idea to do them first.  Work away at them before anything else and put off the urgent fires until you have done something towards your strategic goals.

Strategy Answers Tough Questions

This section goes hand in hand with fitting strategy in day by day but it specially about controlling and responding to questions with your strategy in mind.  Distractions are going to come up, fires will never go away completely but you can respond to them differently.  What if you use your strategy to provide the answers to tough questions on actions plans, firefighting and urgent requests.  Use the strategy to respond to others when they request your time or service.  Ask them or for their help to decide if it is really more important than your critically important strategic plans and why it is more important that that work if something seems urgent.

I’ve personally learned that nearly nothing is as urgent as it seems and I’ve been lucky to develop a habit of analyzing requests with a longer term mindset.  I’m a product architect, researcher and product development manager in my day job and those areas tie in heavily with strategic plans so I’ve been able to adopt a strategy first attitude and response system.  I rarely put attention to urgent requests because my main work strategies are about the quality products I’m involved in building and quality never comes fast or without solid planning.  Obviously not everyone has this same strategy and some may actually have a strategy around responding quickly in their role so then responses and expectations change but it can still be done with a strategic factor in answering those tough questions of what and when to do things.  The short answer for any of these tough questions when a well drafted strategic plan exists is to always put the things that align best with a strategy before other new or urgent items.  This can only be done when a solid strategy exists, it is well understood and you are willing to execute it consistently, instead of just making it and not then actually following it.

Posted by Mike King under Business | 11 Comments »

Podcast Management Tip – Enabling Other’s Suggestions

Nick was kind enough to invite me to do a management tip as a podcast with him on his blog.  It’s my first podcast and I think a useful tip for managing and leading others which has a been a strong topic here lately so may as well continue it!

Management Tip – Enabling Other’s Suggestions (9 mins)

Nick has a lot of other great tips at his blog and of course in his book as well.  For those that haven’t seen it, here is my review of his book, “Lead Well and Prosper,” or you can order it from his site for your own copy.

Posted by Mike King under Business | 6 Comments »

This is the final part of a whole series on leadership.  Check the leadership introduction here for all articles in the series.

To me, leadership is often thought or even taught that it requires a person to be very pushy, aggressive and  must stand out amongst any possible competition. I’ve focused this series on looking at how leadership fits an individual, not how an individual has to fit leadership.  This is contrary since many still believe leadership needs that commanding, loud, direct personality with the best track record, skills and talents to make things happen.  Well I say, "Bah!!!"  That isn’t what leadership is at all!  A leader is not necessarily any better, smarter, or more skilled than others.  A leader does however, have influence and impact with others.  This unique capability doesn’t have to be a trade off for a compassionate personality or a label of someone with an "ego".  Leadership can be done with great humility and I believe it requires humility to truly be a great leader.  You don’t have to give up any bit of your personality to be leader, you can be a leader in your own way.  The problem is, it’s easy to lose your humility in achievement so this final topic on leadership is about staying humble with leadership.

"What should it profit a man if he would gain the whole world yet lose his soul." (Mark 8:36)

Humble Leadership

I’ve written several times about humble leadership both looking at what humility is and what I think it means to truly lead.  You might want to check out these previous articles for more on that.Being Humble: Leadership and Why Bothering to Be Humble? (or as Being Humble Series PDF download from the free resources page).

Even if you’ve read those before I’ll explore a little more what this humility means from the leadership perspective.

There are many leaders that think being a leader is about taking charge, having authority or a position to tell others what to do or to win influence over others because of self accomplishment.  That isn’t leadership, it’s power and they are two very different things.  If you want to be seen as a leader, stand out or emerge as a leader in your work or life, then likely that stems more from the desire of power than it does from leadership.  Leadership is nothing about you, it’s about others.

Humility is when you can remove the status and personal gains from what you do as a leader and begin to look only at what you accomplish in the lives of those who follow you.  You know that any accomplishment or changes come about through those you lead and without them, you are nothing. It’s about recognizing others before yourself and taking a far step away from any ego and closer to a compassionate and genuine concern to make others around you better and able to do more.  That is humble leadership my friends.

Blending Willpower and Humility

Willpower is a massive part of being a leader and having a strong will to improve things and change is what shapes the role of many leaders.  They can use that will through difficult times, to get through impossible situations and to inspire others like no one could ever hope to accomplish without the same willpower.  Blending that together with humility that a leader should have from knowing he needs others to accomplish anything will enable them as a much stronger leader.  Putting willpower at work towards the people being led progresses things even faster creating a much more loyal group of followers.  All of a leader’s efforts and willpower should be spent and shared with others to ensure they experience it first hand and are empowered by it themselves.  The blend of these abilities allows a leader to instil their own extreme level of will to all their followers.  Having a strong will without humility can easily (without even intending it), build on a leader’s ego and be a very negative influence to others.

I learned this first hand several years ago in dealing with what I considered (at the time) people who couldn’t get the job done right.  I had the will power to want to do it faster and push the deadlines, but doing this by either saying or demonstrating (I made the mistake of doing both) that I could in fact do it faster did nothing to help me emerge as a leader of people.  It made me look strong in my skills, yes, but the people I had to work with didn’t see this as helpful or as leading them in any way.  Instead, it was very intimidating and quite a negative impact on them.  The damage that this has done is obvious now that I have learned from that experience.  I now see this in others as well and know better than to put my willpower to work for myself, because it does nothing.  Instead, when I put my willpower to empowering others, encouraging them, and working to help and convince them that our plans will work, are achievable and that we will all succeed, I can take them much further without ever a mention of my own abilities.  Blending humility with willpower is one of those areas that makes a difference between good leaders and great leaders.

Willpower is very useful for facing difficult situations, such as:

• to drive through low standards
• face mediocrity with a helping hand
• eliminate failure

Staying ambitious among a team and organization as a leader while remaining modest and non-boastful is what humble leadership is all about.  I dare say it’s the highest level of leadership, the most rewarding and it makes the biggest most lasting impact a leader can make.

Build Others

Leadership will always be about others and a great leader puts much attention towards that.  Whether it is for skill development, filling a gap, enhancing areas for even better results or for succession planning, building others is done best by humble leaders.  People want to learn from someone that doesn’t think they know it all or are better than you.  Staying humble while training and giving advice is an easy way to ensure they stay interested and lets you not only build their leadership skills, but also their confidence.  That’s because a humble leader will also encourage a person and credit them often.  They can encourage a person to realize that they have their own talents and skills within their capabilities and that the teacher (humble leader) just helps to surface and release those skills. Compare that to a egotistic style sounding like this, "Just do what I tell you to do, I’ve been there and already know best how to do it!".  Would you want to learn from someone like that?  Would it give you much self confidence?  I doubt it.

Leadership should also ensure that there is some level of succession planning.  The things that the leader does on their own should be eliminated, as it is a single point of failure among a group.  To get the best results from any team, there should not be a single point of failure and there should be built in through skills an inherent flexibility when it comes to resources.  The leader should look to build others’ with leadership skills the particular areas they do themselves so that ultimately they could be replaced.  Many fear this approach as they think it can put other candidates in place for their role and put themselves as risk.  It does in some ways, but from a leadership perspective, not really.  First of all, the best thing that a great leader could possible accomplish is to lead a group to be self contained and able to produce the amazing results and drive for accomplishment on their own.  A leader who can do this is extremely valuable, as they are a producer of leaders themselves.  You can lead anywhere if you have the ability to produce more leaders in doing so.  Listing that kind of value on your resume and portfolio has impact!

Servant Leadership

Finally I come to servant leadership. It’s foundation is humility and means that you put others first, above yourself consistently.  You’ll end up doing the things you don’t want to do and you’ll take any consequences away from others to relieve them.  These could be things like taking blame, sacrifice of work hours or giving up credit even when it is due.  And this isn’t done when convenient, it’s consistent!

There are many ways that servant leaders lead, and it is usually obvious in their humility.  Here are just a few:

• Will always take someone else’s suggestion or idea over their own
• They don’t ever need to get their own way
• They never argue to be right about something, they immediately close it and say, "you may be right"
• They hold their own opinion and let other’s share first
• Want and query the opinion of others often
• Appreciate what they have and are given
• Never make excuses, they simply accept responsibility (even if it isn’t theirs to accept)
• Will carry out any task, no matter how tedious
• Are happy to help others with anything

Servant leadership is based on love and help to others.  A servant leader demonstrates this in every action they do, which is how they lead, by doing.  I personally believe this is not only a noble way to lead, but a godly one.  It was taught by the only perfect servant leader, Jesus Christ and is a powerful humbling way to lead.  Learning this takes life experience (often the hard way by learning what NOT to do) and by studying and reflecting on other humble leaders.  What makes them humble, how do you measure or judge someone’s humility.  How far would you take things to be humble and for who?

Learning to be more humble requires great attention and a change in your character traits to relate more closely to human relationships and lasting endeavors in life that includes others.  Look to read more on servant leadership from leaders who have made great sacrifices and lead by love.  They are not the typical top CEOs or the celebrity leaders that get the most publicity, they are the quiet, graceful and often missed leaders that leave the greatest impact of the hearts of many once they are gone.

Please add your comments, please add your thoughts and I’d love to hear what you have to say about this article as the last in this series and the series as a whole.  Hold nothing back.  What did you love, what did you hate?  What was missing?  I appreciate any comments you have to offer!  And if you read this far and liked the article or series, please add a stumble review to help share it for me.  Thanks!

Posted by Mike King under Success | 22 Comments »

Learn From Your Mistakes

Mistakes are unavoidable in life and leaders certainly make their share of them.  Any time you look to break new ground or technologies or whatever it is you are leading, you open up many new avenues for mistakes and they are inevitable with change. You can’t have one without the other and so learning to use mistakes well is an important leadership trait.  The first point about mistakes is that a great leader learns from their own mistakes.  They know when they make it and will quickly look at what can be salvaged or gained from the mistake as to avoid it in the future or to streamline some action or process to improve it next time.  This makes no difference if the mistake is big or small, there is always something to be learned from it and mistakes offer an immediate piece of feedback to anyone who is wise enough to learn from it.

Mistakes are the usual bridge between inexperience and wisdom. (Phyllis Therous)

Another point of learning from mistakes is to also be a leader in this area and actually admit your own mistakes.  Admit when you were wrong, and emphasize what you have learned from it and what your next steps are work around that mishap.  If you encourage and set the example of owning up to mistakes quickly and working past them, you can quickly inspire your followers to do the same and look at the value of the mistakes instead of hiding from them.

Leave Room for Mistakes to Happen

If you have done the first part and owned up and admitted your own mistakes you have done a great service to those following you.  You have proven that you are OK with mistakes happening as long as they are learned from.  You must do the same for others.  That is, give them room to make mistakes, make sure they know that and don’t reprimand mistakes, instead simply follow up on what they have learned and that they have put in place things to ensure it doesn’t repeat itself.  If you make sure people know that they have some room to try new things, innovate, be creative and take some risks, then the fear of making mistakes is greatly reduced.  Of course you don’t want to encourage mistakes to happen when they are avoidable, but if you give people some extra time, room and allowance to do their own steps and learn in the process, they will be much more likely to learn from them as well.  A previous article I wrote here called The Power of Making Mistakes should add some details if you are interested.

Sometime as a leader there is value is leaving a decision or process up to someone else for them to learn from it.  Even if you know the best method or the result of some idea, there is great value in promoting others’ ideas and seeing it though, even if there is a mistake bound to happen because of it.  Adopting the ideas of others and letting the mistakes guide things beyond it will quickly grow all those involved and gain a lot of trust and respect of the leader when the mistakes are OK and not constantly punished.  This fear of making mistakes is a huge contributer why people fear change, fear risk and don’t step up to their full potential, so eliminating that fear of mistakes, eliminates much of that other baggage as well.

Show me a person who has never made a mistake and I’ll show you somebody who has never achieved much. (Joan Collins)

Don’t Dwell on Mistakes, Look Beyond and Move Forward

Learning from mistakes clearly needs some analysis of the mistake itself to gain value from it.  This is certainly true and there are a few steps to use to analyze a mistake quickly and efficiently:

1. Accept that it happened and can’t be changed.
2. Know there is always something to learn from it.
3. Look to understand it and the factors that caused it.
4. How could you have recognized the mistake earlier?
5. How can you avoid the mistake next time?
6. Are there similar things that might have a related mistake to avoid?
7. What has changed now to ensure that mistake doesn’t reoccur?
8. Who else should know about this and learn from it?

So, once you have done this initial analysis of the mistake, its time to move on.  No matter how big the mistake was, just let it go and move on.  Make the changes needed to avoid it next time and make sure that everything you spend time on now in accepting the mistake is with the future in mind, not the past.  Put your focus on what you can do for next time, not what you should have done.  Ask what individuals are doing now or in the future to ensure it won’t repeat itself and remind people to think of ways to avoid the similar event.  All these actions will move you forward and enable you to quickly adapt and deal with similar situations in the future even better and hopefully you will never make the same mistake again!

Accepting Mistakes – Move On

Photo Credit: hellophotokitty @ flickr

When you focus on the improvements and lessons learned from a mistake you reinforce the ability to make mistakes part of the process and something that is accepted as long as it improves things.  There is no value in worrying about the mistake or dwelling on it after it is done.  So, move on!

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. (Elbert Hubbard)

Mistakes to Avoid as a Leader

So, while all this encouraging of mistakes and learning from them are important as a leader to make some room for, they obviously need to be balanced and still minimized whenever possible ahead of time, especially when the risks are high.  There are also some mistakes that will immediately set you back as a leader if you make them so knowing these and avoiding them is a big help in leadership.  Here are my top 10 mistakes you can make as a leader so definitely areas to!

1. Pull the power or authority card
2. Do the work yourself because you are faster or better
3. Point the blame finger
4. Focus on tasks instead of results
5. Avoid change
6. Don’t listen to or accept others’ ideas
7. Complain or be negative
8. Hoard everything for job security
9. Claim or take any credit
10. Not showing appreciation

Posted by Mike King under Success | 28 Comments »

Leadership always requires some level of risk taking.  Risks are necessary to make changes happen and there will always be both personal risk, risk to followers as well as to the organization or group involved.  The areas where risks are the most important to a leader are what I’ll outline below.

Comfort Zones

Comfort zones are really the perfect opposite or risks.  They are the decisions and ways of doing things that have the least risks, the least unknowns and are easy for you to do.  They do NOT have any risk.  These are bad for leaders and a leader should never let these comfort zones dominate them.  Having a willingness to take on risks means also to have a willingness to step outside your comfort zone .  Anyone who is too afraid to step outside their comfort zone is also too afraid to take the risks that are often needed as a leader.  This is an important point as at least in this aspect, leadership is something to easily test for and I think this is often missed when employers or groups look for leaders.  If an individual is give up comforts and ease to move towards and tackle the next challenge, they surely show great signs of leadership.

Comfort zones are everything from an individual’s daily routine, to their lifestyle, to their work environment and habits or roles in their life and job.  All of these things that are repetitive and lasting become comfortable and only the new things in life really make things change over time.

Challenge

Challenge is the next component when examining how to take risks.  Challenge is really the part of any risk that keeps us from it.  It is what makes it difficult and what steers most people away from it.  However, challenge is the whole point of taking risks.  It’s the challenge itself that you learn from, develop skills from and improve not only yourself as a leader but all the people you lead through the challenge as well. There isn’t any point to making things a challenge for no good reason so it’s about taking on the right challenges and calculating risks to a point that justifies them when compared to the challenge that is faced to accomplish them.  If there are ways to reduce the risk, avoid the risk or make the challenge less with the same outcome, then that is absolutely the path to lead people down.  However, sometimes the willingness to take a risk even when the challenge is great, is exactly what a leader needs to do to show courage and ability to get through a difficult situation.

Taking Risks

These decisions by a leader as to when to take a challenge on or not and accept the risks is a cue that followers will carefully assess themselves.  The emotions of the decision maker, the reasoning behind it and the considerations they take involving others are what followers are learning from when facing any challenge.  A great leader makes these decisions transparent and does it with a moral basis, emotional attachment and passion to drive past the problem.

Innovation

Taking risks is done with some purpose in mind as well.  There isn’t any point in taking risks that don’t pay off.  There are however, hundreds of things that require risks in order to make them happen.  Innovation is a big one of those.  Innovation is when you look for new ways of doing things, building things or perhaps new ideas being realized as a product.  This requires breaking new ground that no one has done before and so there are always risks involved. People and companies who are unwilling to take risks will become stagnant with no ability to innovate or change.  In the forever changing world we live in today, innovation is required to lead people well.  It enables change and opens opportunities that were impossible to see before the change occurred.

Innovation is not the job only of the leader.  For innovation to happen at all levels and from followers as well, a leader must look to steer what is needed for a change or direction, but should never limit how to come about doing that.  The adversity that exists in a team is far greater than any leader will ever have and so the possibilities and ideas generated from the whole group are always more than the leader could generate on their own.  For this reason, it is especially important for a leader to not only allow innovation at all levels, but encourage and promote it as well.  This will bring forth more ideas, more possibilities and enable more people amongst the followers to start having practice and interest in the decisions, risks and change as well.  That personal interest that a leader generates among any followers is key to enabling a lasting improvement system or continuous change system.

Confidence

Confidence is huge for a leader to not only have but also to demonstrate. Building up confidence to make difficult decisions requires some history or track record of decision making as well.  A great leader looks at all the decisions they have made and either learns from the ones that were mistakes or reinforces the factors that contributed to the good ones.  This gives them confidence that they are making the best decision they can at the time.  This fact alone that it is about the best decision possible at that time is what enables that confidence to be utilized.  It is not that the decision has to turn out to be the best in the end.  Often, more information or progress through a challenge, will reveal a different decision to be best and it’s not until this point that that can really be evaluated.

Many people fear making that initial decision with the fear that it may be wrong so they need to evaluate and attempt to consider all possible options without ever making a decision.  There is always more information available and it is easy to get stuck in information paralysis where you do nothing and just continually analyze the possibilities.  A leader needs to have confidence that an early decision can progress things faster, even if that decision is wrong or needs to be changed later on.  The risks can still be minimized by having option, alternate paths and a reasonable level of consideration, but the decision does need to be made and a leader must be confident in it to lead others toward that path as well.  Others will likely have their own doubts about an early decision and many would prefer to spend more time before deciding on a route to follow.  A leader must show their confidence in an obvious way to convince these people who are still waffling about the decision that it is OK to proceed with it now.  This is the kind of confidence necessary.

Confidence has it’s drawbacks as well so needs to be shown carefully.  A leader definitely should not show confidence that comes across as arrogance.  Be confident in the ability to get through problems, to make the change happen and in your ability to lead.  Do not show the confidence that you are right about the decisions or that you will not fail.  Failure is just a quick way to learn and so a leader should be quick to change when a decision is wrong, be open about it and abmit the mistake and then turn around and again be confident that you can immediately use that mistake to move forward in a better direction and that you will in fact still achieve the results desired.  Great confidence in the process, your followers and your ability to change quickly are what will enable you to take on risks willingly and be a strong leader.

Posted by Mike King under Success | 19 Comments »

This is one part of a whole series on leadership.  Check the leadership introduction here for all articles in the series.

It’s impossible to cover the topic of leadership without focusing on people.  You can learn about leadership , understand yourself , develop your leadership skills and have all the right things in place to be a leader, but it’s all for nothing without remembering that leadership is all about people.  It’s about having influence with others and about the relationships and connections you build as a leader.  These skills are the people skills needed for leadership and there are five major areas I’ve learned that make up those people skills.  I hope you’ll go back in this series and read the previous 4 articles if you’ve missed any and please do sign up for my RSS feed or by email to get the next articles in the series if you haven’t yet signed up.

1. Awareness

Wake up!  You need to be aware of things around you as a leader.  You need to be more alert to opportunities, to easily see change and to recognizing solutions easier than the next guy. These will enable you to be thinking and discovering just ahead of your likely followers and gives others that perception of being first.  Little things here can make a big difference.  Just putting more attention to things can easily bring the small percentage increase on a consistent basis that will help you deliver more and more ideas and content before others.  Presenting your thoughts first, offering to take on new challenges and noticing change before others will not only have you demonstrating your willingness to lead but it will give you opportunities that others miss out on that you can further develop and prove your skills with.

Leadership is About People

Not only is being aware of opportunities important but also the interactions with others.  Being aware of when others need help, are struggling or feeling left behind is the best time to show leadership by helping, waiting or encouraging them to continue.  This capacity to see what is going on with the people around you demonstrates great leadership.  Look for times you can give decision or choices to others or even hold your own ideas to ensure those presented by others feel more important.  Often a few simple steps here can gain long term followers as they begin to respect you without seeing you in their way.  You can still lead people without slowing them down and by being aware of these signals with others ensures you do not step outside the boundaries of good leadership.

2. Impactful

This can be the most difficult people skill to develop as a leader as it is often counter to what is first believed.  I’m suggesting here that you need to have impact with others without authority, without position power and without necessarily having the respect or experience to immediately convince someone.  Impact is about earning respect but doing it in a way that you demonstrate your values and leadership characteristics.  Some of those techniques are:

• Trusting others

You must build trust as a leader.  Do this with honesty and sincerity with others.  Offer trust before it is deserved whenever possible as this will gain favor in return that far outweighs the negative impacts from not trusting others as a leader.  Look for places to trust others, tell them you trust them and then show them by accepting their ideas and accepting the consequences without blame.

• Welcome good conflict

Conflict can easily be a bad thing if it becomes personal or in any way an attach (physical, verbal or mental).  However, it can also be a huge team builder if done well and it quickly lets a leader demonstrate their ability to work on difficult problems with others no matter what.  Conflict in this sense is as simple as disagreeing on decisions or methods to use and it sparks discussion.  Look to draw out both sides and seriously weigh the pros and cons of each side of a conflict before trying to move ahead.  Get people to think of all consequences and thank people for participating in any disagreements.

• Be dependable

If you want to have impact on people, you must be dependable on what you say you will do.  Be ruthless in completing any commitments you make and make yourself available to help as often as you can.  This lets others depend on you and proves that you can deliver what you say.  Be careful not be make commitments you cannot keep and don’t ever make commitments for others unless they are involved.

• Show confidence AND openness

As a leader, you want to have impact on others by stepping ahead and having them trust you and depend on you to steer things forward.  You must have confidence in those decisions to convince others to come along and you must also balance this while remaining open minded enough to ensure you are not going down a path, dragging others with you that leads nowhere.

3. Recognize Behavior Patterns

I considered whether this section should be on it’s own or otherwise part of adapting and communicating but I thought it deserves it’s own attention, especially when covering leadership from the people perspective.  I love examining others from the perspective of behavior instead of my own interpretations or opinions.  Behavior is real and is always something you can see or hear from someone else.  It is about what they did or said and not a personal character judgment.  There is no value in judging others and will never help you as a leader so it’s much wiser to use behavior as a foundation for examining others instead of any personal opinions.  Look at what they did and consider that, instead of what you might "think" or  "imply".   Judging others is very dangerous and will completely destroy your ability to lead.  It will blind you, guide you by prejudice and create voids in relationships that are difficult to ever close back up.  By using behavior, you can look at something as a single action, not a flaw or personality problem and get past it.  This is not only with others, but yourself as well.  If you put judgments on yourself, you will find you impose the same limitations on yourself.

Here are a couple of previous articles I’ve written about judgments and the dangers of it.

• Happiness Suffers from Self Judgments!
• Don’t Judge Others, Be Helpful Instead!

Understanding others of course requires awareness like the section above but it’s much more than that.  There should be a deep understanding of people in order to enable that awareness and allow communication.  I highly recommend learning the DiSC behavior model and seeing how it fits into understanding other people better.  It’s made a huge impact to me as a leader and I find it far easier to apply than other personality types.  Seeing real things with real behaviors is a key step to finding change as a leader and to then work on changing those behaviors.  Remember, you can’t change someone’s personality, but you can certainly change some of their behaviors.  Plus it is a whole lot easier and more enjoyable since behavior is easy to see.

4. Communicate Meaningfully

Since leadership is really about people, you have to look closely at communication to be a great leader.  Some think there is a specific type of communication style or method that is best for leadership, but I really don’t think that is necessary or required.  I think that communicating well simply means to get through to other people in a way that you impact them and can build the trust and relationship needed for you to successfully lead them.  If that is happening, I don’t think there is a right or wrong way to make that happen, I think it depends on the individual as a leader and any followers.  Everyone communicates in their own way and so being genuine and personal is the important points here.  Does it help to be regularly communicating, laying out direction, having clarity and to be a good well voiced speaker?  Sure, but I don’t think it limits you to not be those things either.  Put attention to communicate your meaning, involve followers, give them the communication they want and that works for them and don’t worry about how you communicate, it just doesn’t matter that much.

5. Adapt

The last section I have about leadership from the people perspective is about a leader’s ability to adapt.  Not only are circumstances always changing that you need to adapt to, but so are the people you are leading.  They will grow themselves, challenge you as a leader both positively and negatively and continually change. You must be able to adapt to these people changes as well.  All the above pieces can assist in adapting and they will continue to need changes as long as you hope to lead.  Leadership really is all about change so if you cannot adapt to the people you want to lead, you will never successfully lead them.

Expect people to change that you lead.  Some people will come, some will go, others will follow you for ages, and some will hope to or even pass you in leadership skills in a short time.  You must enable this, encourage it, allow it, and welcome it as a leader.  Know the changes will occur, don’t get discourages by them and certainly don’t hold back anyone else to quickly adapt, even if it’s faster than you can as the leader.  There are ways to adapt yourself, demonstrate this and then use it to lead others as well by showing the results of it.  Look to teach others to adapt and adapt them into your own leadership to take the journey with you.  If you can adapt with the people you lead, instead of only adapting yourself, you can enable a large following to not only deeply believe in you and have trust and respect for you as a leader, but you will develop more leaders and yourself along the way.  Now, that is leadership with people my friends!

Examples of Leading When It’s About People

I have a few points listed here to help illustrate examples of some of these ideas and what it might look like to lead with people more than simply leading them.  I’d love to read your stories and examples of leadership, so please comment them below…

• Integrity – hold your values strong and don’t sell out for anything
• Always give (or at least include) your followers the credit for your successes
• Take the responsibility and blame for your follower’s mistakes
• Do not self-promote, learn to be a humble leader
• Give decisions to your followers or at least include them
• Regularly ask for others’ views and never judge them
• Share your vulnerabilities
• Help your followers anytime they need it
• Be fair and treat everyone equally
• Do what you say and hold others accountable for the same
• Encouraging your people to grow, to learn and to take on as much as they want to, at a pace they can handle
• Show compassion for others and what they share with you
• Be confident and positive in all your actions
• Read good books in your field and always encourage learning
• Be a storyteller
• Smile, have fun and be passionate about your goals!

Posted by Mike King under Success | 26 Comments »