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.

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.

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?

1. Begin a new hiring process because maybe the “fourth time is the charm”
2. Try a new approach by seeking help to determine (1) the real cause on why people are quitting, (2) make appropriate changes, (3) and then hire the “right” person for the job

But before you do the same thing and expect different results, take into consideration:

• 75% of working adults report the most stressful aspect of their job is their immediate boss
• 65% of managers that people have had they would NOT work for again

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?

I chose the top ten tips that I think leaders should know in order to inspire their team:

• Tip#1:  Share your principals and live by them. People want to know what you stand for and that you are guided by your values and beliefs.

• Tip #2: Notice the little things that people do for you and say “Thank you.” Send personal notes of congratulations, condolence, encouragement, and appreciation to your people as often as possible. We have discussed in this high-tech, low-touch world it is sometimes very hard for you to to stand out as a caring, devoted, leader with heart. Believe me you will be acknowledged for your kindness (leveraging our virtues)

• Tip#3:  Acknowledge birthdays,  weddings, anniversaries, promotions, awards, and community service. People feel they belong when they are recognized and remembered.This kind of attention keeps them with you or more available to you when you need them the most. Think about this: 65% of those we test have  ”Recognition” as a motivator and major driver.

• Tip #4:  Express your concern when something sad happens to a person at your company. Showing your heart goes a long way in today’s fast- paced , no time for touch culture. This will demonstrate “empathy” don’t forget 85% of us have deficits relating to our empathetic skills.

• Tip #5: Try something difficult and very challenging for you. Get help if you need it.  This is a useful and effective exercise to feel the pressure that we often put on others.  It helps us in improving our empathetic competencies.

• Tip #6: Remember and reflect on the process you used when you accomplished previous successes. Reapply it. You and your team can and should repeat previous accomplishments.

• Tip #7: Run participatory, well planned, purposeful meetings. All the people at your company that you interact with want to be involved and to have their time respected. 97% of upper management want and are determined to contribute during a meeting. 75% feel they do not get the opportunity to do so.

• Tip #8: Support your ideas with 3 points. Mention 3 facts, 3 reasons, 3 benefits, or 3 examples. This helps others remember your points and to attract them to your way of thinking. Try it,  it works! Advertisers and Marketing experts say that 80% of us have to hear the same message three times for it to resonate once! Clarity is important.

• Tip #9: Sometimes, be happy and satisfied with less than perfect. If we wait and time passes for the perfect opportunity another team will get there first.  Dr. Hogan explained this by stating, “We may stall and never get where we need to be.”

• Tip # 10: Squelch rumors, Kill the grapevine. People have enough to worry about. Think about this: 5 out of 6 of those we have tested using the Hogan have anxiety issues they deal with everyday.

We hear it daily–in the car, at home, during work, and even at church.

The U.S is in a recession.

According to the United States Department of Labor, in July 2009, the unemployment rate was 9.4%.

An article from www.management-issues.com by Dan Bobinski states, “When unemployment numbers rise, the truth starts to ring home.  All jobs are temporary and people can be let go at any moment.  People suddenly realize that neither the government nor corporate America can truly look out for their best interests 24/7, so they step up to make things happen on their own.”

What does this mean to you as a leader?  One simple word: Determination.

 It’s making sure that you’re being the best leader you can be and looking at the U.S economy as a glass half full.

The first step in being a Determined leader is to educate yourself on ways to help your business and employees grow. The Leadership Institute’s co-founders have recently written a White Paper titled: The Painful Truth About the Uninspiring Leader-How Leadership Deficits Lead to Disengaged Employees.

The paper offers insights on becoming how to be a more inspirational leader, as well as alarming statistics that will make you more motivated to be the best you can be.

Click here access this complimentary copy of the Leadership White Paper. Within minutes, you will be on your way to becoming the Determined Leader your company needs.

A low intent–where all of your energy is created around ‘how can I win in this?’ – produces low results.

In the NY Times this weekend, there was an article about businesses who are changing course in order to save it. Restaurants who are adding new items to their menu, manufacturers who are changing their lines to make other stuff and services pros who are adding more items to their offerings.

Rarely does this work, UNLESS THERE IS A CHANGE IN INTENT.

If you are making moves in this economy simply to make more money, your constituents (employees and customers) will see thru that quickly. If your “intent” is wrapped up in YOU, and not your customer, then you’ll fail.

I always laugh at the big Conseco acquisition of Greentree finanical. It failed one year after it was hailed as a brilliant move. Why? Because Greentree’s mission was customer oriented (financing for mobile homes). Conseco’s goal when they bought it, was purely about Conseco…about revenue…about profit. It had nothing to do with the customer.

So, as you look at your business, don’t kid yourself into thinking your clients don’t have a sixth sense. They know what you’re doing. I’m not recommending not to change–but make sure you when you do change, your intent is right.

We use the Hogan Assessment. It tells us a lot about a person–I mean ALOT. And as we look at the results of these assessments, we see trends in values, personalities and derailers. But those have been present forever. And as a leader, you need to know what your teams’ major derailers are.

Jobs Have Changed.

One hundred years ago, all labor was physical–factory labor. But now, so much of labor is intellectual in nature.…that’s the Coin of the Realm. So “how people think” will continue to be vital for your team.

If you’re over 50 (full disclosure: I’m 52), then you must get rid of the idea that business today is done the same as it was 20 years ago. In so many areas, business is intellectual–it requires thinking, and planning and very different competencies than it did 25 years ago. 

GenY’rs Are Looking To Be Developed

I recently had dinner with a bright, aggressive 28-year old. He’s had four jobs since graduating from a Big Ten school. Says I, “You seem to be job hopping a little. What’s the matter?” Says he, “I want a company who sees my value, who shows how much I matter to them by investing in training and development. And so far, I’ve not found one.”

A Lesson For Non-Fortune 1000 Companies

You <$250 million companies have an enormous opportunity to attract the brightest minds today because not all of them want to work for the super-companies. In fact, I suggest the entrepreneurial companies are much more attractive.

But you have to give them something. I would suggest you pay them a little less and put more resources into developing them. 

The skeptical among you will say, “Hell, they’ll just leave and take that knowledge with them. I’ll waste my money.”

To which I say, “Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?”

Adlai Stevenson:
“It’s hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.”

Albert Einstein:
“Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.”

Carl Sagan:
“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower:
“You do not lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not leadership.”

Edwin H. Friedman:
“Leadership can be thought of as a capacity to define oneself to others in a way that clarifies and expands a vision of the future.”

Elizabeth Dole:
“What you always do before you make a decision is consult. The best public policy is made when you are listening to people who are going to be impacted. Then, once policy is determined, you call on them to help you sell it.”

Eric Hoffer:
“In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”

Ernest Becker:
“It is not so much that man is a herd animal, said Freud, but that he is a horde animal led by a chief.”

Eugene V. Debs:
“I never had much faith in leaders. I am willing to be charged with almost anything, rather than to be charged with being a leader. I am suspicious of leaders, and especially of the intellectual variety. Give me the rank and file every day in the week. If you go to the city of Washington, and you examine the pages of the Congressional Directory, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of Congress, and mis-representatives of the masses — you will find that almost all of them claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks.”

Everett Dirksen:
“I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.”

H. Ross Perot:
“Inventories can be managed, but people must be led.”

Henrik Ibsen:
“A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.”

Herbert B. Swope:
“I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: which is: Try to please everybody.”

Isaac Newton:
“If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants.”

James Callaghan:
“A leader must have the courage to act against an expert’s advice.”

James Kouzes and Barry Posner:
“There’s nothing more demoralizing than a leader who can’t clearly articulate why we’re doing what we’re doing.”

“You must unite your constituents around a common cause and connect with them as human beings.”

Jawaharlal Nehru:
“A leader or a man of action in a crisis almost always acts subconsciously and then thinks of the reasons for his action.”

John Gardner:
“Pity the leader caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers.”

“Most important, leaders can conceive and articulate goals that lift people out of their petty preoccupations and unite them in pursuit of objectives worthy of their best efforts.”

John Naisbitt:
“Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it.”

John Quincy Adams:
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

Kenneth Blanchard:
The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.

Margaret Chase Smith:
“Leadership is not manifested by coercion, even against the resented. Greatness is not manifested by unlimited pragmatism, which places such a high premium on the end justifying any means and any measures.”

Margaret J. Wheatley:
“When leaders take back power, when they act as heroes and saviors, they end up exhausted, overwhelmed, and deeply stressed.”

Mohandas K. Gandhi:
“I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.”

Peter Drucker:
“What is the managers job? It is to direct the resources and the efforts of the business toward opportunities for economically significant results. This sounds trite — and it is. But every analysis of actual allocation of resources and efforts in business that I have ever seen or made showed clearly that the bulk of time, work, attention, and money first goes to problems rather than to opportunities, and, secondly, to areas where even extraordinarily successful performance will have minimal impact on results.”

“The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say “I.” And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say “I.” They don’t think “I.” They think “we”; they think “team.” They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but “we” gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.”

“Leaders shouldn’t attach moral significance to their ideas: Do that, and you can’t compromise.”

Peter Senge:
“Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static “snapshots.” It is a set of general principles — distilled over the course of the twentieth century, spanning fields as diverse as the physical and social sciences, engineering, and management…. During the last thirty years, these tools have been applied to understand a wide range of corporate, urban, regional, economic, political, ecological, and even psychological systems. And systems thinking is a sensibility — for the subtle interconnectedness that gives living systems their unique character.”

Plato:
“A tyrant is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.”

Ralph Nader:
“I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.”

Robert Coles:
“Abraham Lincoln did not go to Gettysburg having commissioned a poll to find out what would sell in Gettysburg. There were no people with percentages for him, cautioning him about this group or that group or what they found in exit polls a year earlier. When will we have the courage of Lincoln?”

Robert Greenleaf:
“Good leaders must first become good servants.”

Robert Louis Stevenson:
“Keep your fears to yourself, but share your inspiration with others.”

Rosabeth Moss Kantor:
“Leaders are more powerful role models when they learn than when they teach.”

Rosalynn Carter:
“A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be.”

Napoleon Bonaparte:
“A leader is a dealer in hope.”

Benjamin Disraeli:
“I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?”

Elaine Agather:
“The leadership instinct you are born with is the backbone. You develop the funny bone and the wishbone that go with it.”

Groucho Marx:
“Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men — the other 999 follow women.”

Theodore M. Hesburgh:
“The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.”

Theodore Roosevelt:
“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.”

Ben Stein:
“The indispensable first step in getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.”

Scott Adams (Dilbert Cartoonist):
“For every manager learning how to be a better leader, there are 10 employees trying to figure out how to make it stop.”

Colette Bowe:
“No letters after your name are ever going to be a total guarantee of competence any more than they are a guarantee against fraud. Improving competence involves continuing professional development…That is the really crucial thing, not just passing an examination.”

James Baldwin:
“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Warren G. Bennis:
“Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led.”

“Good leaders make people feel that they’re at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens people feel centered and that gives their work meaning.”

“Leaders keep their eyes on the horizon, not just on the bottom line.”

“The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born-that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.”

Andrew Carnegie:
“No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.”

Winston Churchill:
“The price of greatness is responsibility.”

“Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.”

James Crook:
“The man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

John C. Maxwell:
“A big man is one who makes us feel bigger when we are with him.”

Lao Tzu:
“The leader is best,
When people are hardly aware of his existence,
Not so good when people praise his government,
Less good when people stand in fear,
Worst, when people are contemptuous.
Fail to honor people, and they will fail to honor you.
But of a good leader, who speaks little,
When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
The people say, ‘We did it ourselves.’”

Donald H. McGannon:
“Leadership is action, not position.”