Champion Leadership Tip #39 - 3 Reasons Why Your Employees Are Not Taking Initiative In Their Roles!

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Champion Leadership Tip #39 - 3 Reasons Why Your Employees Are Not Taking Initiative In Their Roles!

Below are three areas to look at regarding how you and your managers are communicating to them (and with them) and to identify what type of messages you are sending, and/or they are receiving (sometimes communication from managers and leaders in organizations sends mixed signals, causing confusion for employees keeping them from being more motivated and proactive in their roles. In some organizations the mixed signals equate to a labyrinth):

Some Employee Recognition Programs Kill Motivation, Here Are Some Ideas to Do It Right

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This may seem like common sense but, again, as I wrote in Monday's blog post, it ain't all that common!

Feel free to leave your comments on this topic below. What are your most frightening employee recognition stories and your best?

Champion Leadership Tip #37 - A Simple Strategy to Improve Employee Motivation

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Champion Leadership Tip #37: A Simple Strategy to Improve Employee Motivation

Just this past Friday I was inspired by a Twitter Tweet posted someone I'm following who always shares great leadership quotes.

Steve Keating  (who can be followed on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/leadtoday) posted:

"Average leaders make their people perspire while great leaders make them inspired."

His post inspired me that afternoon to create what I am now calling the "Employee Motivation Equation - A Recipe for Team and Organization Success" .

Click the image above to go to a page that explains in more detail each of the components of the equation and why they are important.

Along with this equation I've also created a "Leadership & Employee Motivation Assessment" tool. It is a simple 21-statement checklist you can work through to see how many things you are doing well to motivate your employees and team members, and the areas you need to do better.

To get access to the assessment, complete this form:

If you were consistently apply the above Employee Motivation Equation, worked through the 21-Point Assessment and  combined it with "The Secret 6-Step Formula for Creating a High-Performing Business Team that Gets Champion Level Results," you will succeed in creating a highly-motivated team that could achieve outstanding results.

Check out the Employee Motivation Equation and let me know what you think.

'til next time, make it a great week!

Champion Leadership Tip #35 - A Quote from Leadership Expert John Maxwell

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Champion Leadership Tip #35 - A Quote from Leadership Expert John Maxwell

A few weeks ago a colleague gave me an audio CD copy of a keynote address by leadership expert John Maxwell. On a drive over this past holiday weekend I listened to it and found in his opening remarks a couple of great points I thought would work well within my Champion Leadership Tips.

Below is a summary of Maxwell's quote which I think has great value for all aspiring and experienced leaders:

"One of the first things you will realize as a leader is how disappointed you will get. Disappointed of the people you thought that would that don't, the people that could but can't. You're gonna get real disappointed...

Leadership isn't for the faint hearted.  I'm gonna tell you something, if you've got a very big dream with a Mt. Everest type of goal there will be an amazing amount fo casualties along the way. And it will take its toll on you.

The fine line in leadership is the ability to love people that hurt you without being cynical about people. To keep that spirit of caring and empathy and unconditional love when in reality you want to smack someone!"

I know many of my clients prior to us working together often times act out on their desire to smack someone, usually not literally but figuratively and most often times with their language and communication style.

That's why I wrote the white paper "The 7 Deadly Sins of Organizational Leadership Communication."

If you haven't read it yet, I strongly recommend getting the white paper available as a free download at www.HowToImproveOrganizationalLeadershipCommunication.com

'til next time,

How to Lead Like Apple's Steve Jobs and Create Significant Market Differentiation for Your Company

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How to Lead Like Apple's Steve Jobs and Create Significant Market Differentiation for Your Company

I don't normally offer other articles for you to read but yesterday I read this article on Apple and its CEO Steve Jobs.

The article at FastCompany.com provides outstanding insights into Apple's resurgence and Jobs' unique leadership approach that has made Apple the company to catch in the high-tech world.

Business leaders at all size companies, in all industries and even leaders of non-profit organizations can learn things in this article to lead their organizations in ways that can differentiate them from their competition in the marketplace.

You can enjoy the article, "Invincible Apple: 10 Lessons From the Coolest Company Anywhere" at this link.

Make it a great weekend!

Champion Leadership Tip #33 - Two Resources to Help Leaders Develop the Habit of Humility

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Champion Leadership Tip #33 - Two Resources to Help Leaders Develop the Habit of Humility

Those of you who have followed these Champion Leadership Tips over the past 33 weeks know I believe that one of the 5 Traits of a Champion Leader is "humility." (see Champion Leaderships Tip #11).

When I coach business leaders this is one of the most challenging transformations I have to help them make, as it is initiailly mis-understood. They often see it as being soft. But as I argue in Tip #11 it is actually a sign of strength.

Because I believe it is so important for leaders to develop and nurture the habit of humility I thought I would take this week's post to offer two resources to help.

The resources are two excellent books I've recently read that are outstanding at reinforcing the fact that leaders often are the cause of their team members failing to meet performance, behavior and attitude expectations.

The two books are:

"What Got You Here, Won't Get You There" by Marshall Goldsmith - this book provides case studies of Goldsmith's work with his high-level CEO clients as well as personal anecdotes of how he has applied the strategies to improve his own business and family relationships. In the book Goldsmith offers specific communication exercises that leaders can practice to improve the relationships with those they work with to transform the results they get through other people.

"Leadership & Self-Deception" by The Arbinger Institute -I was very impressed with this book. It offers tremendous insight into how our own internal thought process and communication style often times creates a belief system that causes us to see others through a filter. It is this filter which gets in the way of our perception of others to create a self-fulfilling prophecy of how we expect them to be.

The premise of the book is that leaders often times decieve themselves because of this filtered perception and communicate with people as if they are objects and not "people." In failing to see people as "people" with thoughts, feelings, and desires much like ourselves we dehmanize them, and then communicate at them in a way that causes them to behave in a way that supports our perception of them. This creates a downward and recurring spiral of behavior that reinforces our belief and destroys a relationship and a potentially high quality contributor to our life and business.

Read and apply the strategies in both books and you will significantly improve the results and satisfaction you get from both your personal and professional relationships.

These two books are great resources for leaders who are ready to embrace humility and look inside themselves so they can elevate their approach to truly become a Champion Leader.

'Til next time, make it a great week!

 

 

 

Champion Leadership Tip #26 -Build Trust to Improve Teamwork, Pt. 2

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Champion Leadership Tip #26 - Build Trust to Improve Teamwork, Pt. 2

Last week I defined "trust" in the workplace and provided an exercise to get started on evaluating the level of trust on your team and in your organization.

This week I want to identify a couple of key ways to begin building or re-building trust to improve results.

Leaders must take the lead in building trust throughout their organization and in individual teams.

Trust starts with clarity. Without clarity neither side in a relationship has confidence in where they stand. This means each person in the team relationship must be committed to specific and clear communication, otherwise, mis-understandings will occur causing a breakdown in trust.

One area leaders need to invest time in is ensuring specific communication is an expectation in their organization and is one of its core values against which performance is measured.

The place to start is to define "specific communication." What does it sound like? How will team members know they've been communicated to with specificity and when they are being specific.

This is vital and it is a very elusive communication challenge. Many times, even when we believe we are being specific we may not be. Other times leaders because of low self-esteem purposely communication with a lack of specificity, thus creating their own negative, low morale, low motivation workplace.

I recently published two articles that provide examples of how elusive specific communication can be and some suggestions to begin communicating with greater specificity.

You can find those articles here.

For Part 1 of  "Building Trust to Improve Teamwork" go here

As Aspiring Champions We Have to "Sweat the Small Stuff!"

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As Aspiring Champions We Have to "Sweat the Small Stuff!"

I had to go to Barnes & Noble tonight to pick up the Sports Illustrated 2010 Major League Baseball Preview edition because a colleague suggested I read the story about the Philadelphia Phillies' Roy Halladay.  It was suggested because Halladay's story, I was told, fits with my Champion metaphor for business (I'll write more about that at a later time).

On the way out of the store I noticed a display of books in the "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" brand, which has a slew of versions of "Small Stuff" books.

The sub-title of the original "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" book is "And It's All Small Stuff."

Now I have to admit I've never read any of the books, and also admit I probably should because on the surface its a much needed life philosophy since soooooooo many people make mountains out of molehills and disaster fantasize to the point of complete dysfunction.

However, I also believe that it is counter to my philosophy of being a Champion in business and life.  Champions sweat the small stuff. Champions become Champions by focusing on and sweating the fundamentals. It's all about attention to detail and diligently following through on the details.

But, as with most things in life its all about balance. Too much of a good thing or too much sweating the small stuff leads to dysfunction.

It is one of the great paradoxes of success in all aspects of life and business. And, the Champions in business and in life will be the ones that can effectively navigate those paradoxes.

So, to add to the 'small stuff' that we all have to sweat are those paradoxes.

Those that excel at mastering the paradoxes of life (this is just one of them, another is balancing the old paradoxical adages "look before you leap," but "he who hesitates is lost.") raise the likelihood of becoming Champions!

Are you sweating the small stuff to create a Champion Organization with the right balance so as to not drive your team members crazy?

Champion Leadership Tip #24 - Do Not Treat Everyone Equally

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Champion Leadership Tip #24 - Do Not Treat Everyone Equally

                                                                                                            One summer during my stint at baseball camp in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, the

home of Little League Baseball, the coach of our team developed a complicated spreadsheet on a legal pad on which he calculated every kids playing time over our two weeks at the camp. He used that spreadsheet to ensure each player received equal playing time.

This made sense as all kids were at the camp to learn and play to improve their skills, plus all had paid similar fees to attend. Not only did he treat all players equally, but in this situation it was also fairly.

The approach was both equal and fair, but also sacrificed overall team performance. Our team did not do well in the camp tournament the second week of the session. Likewise, if business and organization leaders treat their team members both equal and fair, it too will likely negatively impact the performance of the organization.

This baseball camp example may be the only time in my life when equal and fair made sense. On most teams and in most organizations individuals contribute at different levels of value and to treat everyone equally would be unfair.

In business, organization leaders need to be careful if they believe that treating everyone on their team equally is also fair. I've found this approach usually creates an atmosphere counter to what the leader desires. The approach builds animosity and resentment, not motivation and employee engagement.

Equal and fair are not necessarily two sides of the same coin. 

Those that have more experience, skill and talent who apply it to contribute at a high level should be rewarded and compensated accordingly. This includes salary, bonuses, time off, schedule flexibility, etc. 

It is fair to compensate individuals based on their value and contribution to the organization. I doubt that many leaders would say everyone in their organization contributes at an equal level. Therefore, it would not be fair to treat them equally with regard to the time, attention provided to them and their compensation and benefits package.

The challenge in most organizations is that leaders do not have effective tools to adequately measure a team member's contribution. So, they fall back on trying to treat everyone equally, but this too fails achieve desired results. 

This and many other strategies is what is included in my May 14th workshop, "How to Create and Lead a Championship Team." If you are considering attending this program, register today at the early registration discount -

'Til next time, make it a great week,

 

Champion Leadership Tip #23 - 3 Ways to Gain the Commitment of Your Employees

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Champion Leadership Tip #23 - 3 Ways to Gain the Commitment of Your Employees

On athletic teams, the vision is clear.  Get to the Championship Game!

Whether it be the Super Bowl, World Series, Stanley Cup Finals, The World Cup Soccer Finals, the Final Four in college basketball, the first day of training camp all team members know the desired destination.

But, knowing the destination or vision is different that being committed to contributing one's all to achieving that vision. I believe there are three key factors that athletic teams do extremely well on their path to the championship game, which company leaders need to better apply so that they can bring employees to the level where they commit to helping the organization fulfill its vision. 

You'll find it no surprise that all three factors involve clear, specific communication, on the following:

1) The organization's Vision and Purpose:

This seems like a "no-brainer." Yet, few organizational leaders do it well. How many individuals in your organization, including yourself, know its succinct vision and purpose? Many mission statements are usually long, drawn out and verbose statements. I prefer shorter, focused and concise one sentence statements for both the Vision and Purpose of an organization that allow everyone to memorize it and have it on the tip of their tongue.

2) The individual team member's role and it's importance:

On athletic teams roles are clearly defined, as are the expected contribution from each particular role. The individuals fulfilling the roles know what is expected of them, how their role fits in to the 'bigger picture,' and how fulfilling that role at that level makes a difference to the team getting to the championship game. Companies and organizations need to do the same for each employee. (ex., street sweepers at Disneyland are not viewed as just street sweepers but are seen as part of "the show.")

3) The parameters team members have to creatively fulfill their individual roles

On the field of play athletes are trusted to apply their skills and talents in a way that contributes to the team's success. They have been "hired" because of those skills and talents and are given a clearly defined role, but within that role while the game is being played out, the athlete is given the freedom to take action, and create and fulfill opportunities as they decide in the heat of the action. Employees should be given the same type of freedom. (the reason why this works on athletic teams and not so well in organizations is that athletic teams have consistent feedback systems around "Performance Management," and many business and non-profit organizations do not.)

To learn more on this topic you may want to download my free report titled, "The 3 Strategies of Champion Organizations."

'Til next time, make it a great week,