We recently read a great article in the WSJ Weekend Edition called THE POWER TRIP. Jonah Lehrer wrote this and reflects quite accurately what happens to many leaders as they assume high-level positions.
Bill Caskey and Terry Sarbinoff addressed this in their recent Modern Leader Podcast.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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Bill Caskey, the Director of the Institute, describes the four beliefs in this video that a CEO must agree upon before he/she invests anymore time in his/her company.
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Bill Caskey and Terry Sarbinoff outline in this podcast five issues every leader should be aware when they look around at their team or department.
Terry illustrates using statistics on how times are changing in the corporate world and how the Modern Leader must be prepared for the future by noticing the red flags of his/her company.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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We’re forever talking about change in our organizations. And we know that change is happening rapidly.
But what are we as leaders to do if we don’t “do change well.” In other words, some of our personalities are just plain resistant to change. So then what?
The answer is to go deeper beyond the change part and look at your role as a leader. Hopefully, you’ve concluded that your role is to serve your constituents—your team—your employees–by providing them vision, strategy, coaching, cheerleading, inspiration…whatever it takes to get the ‘leadership job’ done.
So who cares if you don’t “do change” well? You shouldn’t. They don’t. No one does.
And if you can make that the center point of your attention–”how do I continue to serve my constituents in the midst of change,” you won’t be so spooked out by change.
So, when you are overwhelmed by the change that you feel is hoist upon you–ask the “Serve” question.
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The healthcare debate has reminded me a lot of sales processes gone wrong. We hear it all of the time.
Sales conversations always start with the right intent in mind (at least in my happy place they do)—figure out the problem, put a recommendation together, connect the dots so that my prospect believes in the value I will bring to the situation. Somewhere in that stream of events it seems that things go awry.
Our focus and intent goes away from helping our prospect. Suddenly, we’re more concerned about being right—concerned about beating the competition—concerned about getting our way—concerned about looking good to everyone BUT the prospect.
Who loses in this situation? Is it you, the competition, the opposing viewpoint? No. It’s the person that had the problem to begin with. When we lose our intent on fixing problems and instead focus on being right, the person we set out to help doesn’t get the best of us.
Remember what you’re “fighting” for. If you’re fighting to “get,” the majority of the time you’ll lose.
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I was invited to Omaha, NE this weekend to take part in the national Pork and Swine conference. The topic I spoke on was “thought leadership.” Many swine vets are in a squeeze between regulation, agriculture activists and the major swine producers (isn’t everybody in a squeeze of some kind?).
One of the things they have to be better at is “creating influence” within their niche. In other words, “getting a voice.” Yet, one thing that stops us all from taking that risk of being a thought leader is our “fear of of opinion.”
is exactly the time when you must innovate and step out to give voice to your ideas. It’s the paradox…the time I need to speak up is the time I feel afraid (so most don’t).
One answer is detachment. That’s the propensity you have to be unattached to the outcome or results.”
In other words, ‘put your ideas out there’ and care not whether anyone likes them or adopts them. Now, you must communicate those ideas in a way that people can consume them–but you can’t control whether someone falls in love with them or not.
Push into the fear–the very thing we are afraid of is the thing we should act into. If you’re afraid of putting forth your ideas, then that is probably the very thing you should work on today.
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On any given day, there are tens of thousands of sales organizations who sit around in their strategy rooms talking about how to target the next account, how to make a conquest list, how to “get the deal off of the street.”
But I often wonder what those conversations sound like in the customer’s strategy room. It’s probably not, How do we get a deal? How do we get the Smith Group to do business with us? How do we get the value that the Smith Group has in our organization? Their strategy rooms are probably filled with discussions about how to reduce cost, how to be better operationally, how to achieve and execute goals, etc.
So my question is, how are you inserting your conversation in their strategy room? And the answer is, you probably aren’t. And you’re not because you don’t have solutions to the problem they’re talking about. It’s just you’ve never thought about your solutions in the context of what they’ve discussed in their strategy sessions.
We have a client in Arizona who is an electrical contractor. They know that the conversations going on inside the General Contractor’s Office are:
• How do we get the job done faster?
• How do we reduce our cost?
• How to improve safety of the jobs?
• How do we satisfy our customer so that they hire us for more business?
So across town, my client needs to be having those exact conversations in their strategy session, and then figuring out a way to insert themselves in the customer’s room. One way we recommended, and they’ve had success at, is writing a series of articles about what we know to be the general contractor’s biggest problems on the job. In this case it was safety. So my client wrote a special white paper/report on the 10 Most Common Accidents on a general job site and how to prevent them, and they did a calculation on what a 10% decrease in job time loss equated to in the bottom line.
You don’t think that was important to the customer strategy?
Then they proceeded to print the article and send it to a couple dozen contractors who they knew were having those problems. Now when the contractor passes that out inside their next strategy session, my contractor’s name will be on that material and will be seen as a valued resource to them accomplishing their strategies, not as a vendor who sells products.
So what are you doing to get inside your customer’s strategy room? It’s not all that hard as long as you think about what problems you solve in doing what you do, and how the solving of those problems leads to the customer discussion of, How do we accomplish our goals? How do we meet our customer demands? How do we grow our business? If you can do that, you now have inserted yourself into their dialogue, and everyone wins.
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Every sales manager knows how difficult it is to lead, manage and motivate people. But did you know that many times you’re looking in the wrong place for answers? You knew I was going to say that, didn’t you?
Here’s the problem: You’re managing several people…
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I came across this video today of Bill George, a Professor of Management at Harvard Business School, who explains the importance of hiring people should be based now on their values.
He also mentions that now more than ever business owners must focus on the emotional intelligence of the company.
To fully understand the phenomenon of emotional intelligence and to create a successful business, Bill George suggests using assessments and 360 feedback on yourself as a leader and your employees.
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You’re hiring a new Vice President of Sales. Joe has all the qualifications, experiences, and best of all – he has a great personality. You hire Joe with the full intention that he will perform to your expectations. You spend hours, days, weeks, and even months to train him which costs you a lot of money and time.
Within three months and without an indication, Joe resigns from his position. You’re disappointed, but not shocked–why? Because Joe is the third person you hired for this position in the past year.
What will you do?
But before you do the same thing and expect different results, take into consideration:
So Mr./Ms.CEO, what does that mean to you?
Take a step back and analyze your performance as a leader and ask yourself one question: Is it them or is it me?
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