Archive for the ‘positive leadership’ Category
Friday, August 28th, 2009
By William Seidman
What creates courage? I go back to the work of Ron Riggio on transformational leadership. Commitment to a greater social good seems to be one of the keys to acting with courage.
Think about some of your favorite companies or people. Do they act courageously? The odds are good that they aren’t doing the same old safe thing year after year.
When you can get people to see something worthwhile that is beyond themselves they’ll take risks that might seem a little crazy - but that are brave.
More than ever, organizations need to be courageous. Can you honestly say that yours is?
Posted in business, leadership, management consulting, organizational change, organizational culture, positive leadership | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
By William Seidman
I’ve been asked to help develop a “change leadership” program. This seemed strange; so much is written about leadership and there are so many training and coaching programs. Why create a new one?
A new program may be essential because (1) most leadership programs are not specifically about leading through change and (2) most leadership programs don’t have enough impact.
I asked my network of friends, including many who teach leadership and are executive coaches, How could so much have been spent on leadership development and coaching and yet most organizations still have dismal leadership?
It’s not so puzzling when you know that most training and coaching programs aren’t about real world situations and so don’t apply.
What then is missing?
The answer is: a focus on being courageous. Leaders must have a confidence and willingness to take risks despite considerable uncertainty and resistance.
How do you teach someone to be courageous?
Posted in best practices, getting change to "stick", leadership, management consulting, organizational change, positive leadership | No Comments »
Friday, July 24th, 2009
By William Seidman
We live in a world of instant gratification. Twitter is a great example of this: 140 characters being fed constantly. There’s an expectation that almost anything (and anyone) we need can be found on the web instantly.
But what about the things that really do take time?
Imagine that I want to be an Olympic swimmer. I google “Olympic swimmer” and read a lot of articles on how to become an Olympic swimmer.
Am I ready to compete in the Olympics?
Obviously not, and it is almost silly to think that way. I have to have natural talent and must then put in a lot of work to get good enough to qualify - if I’m also lucky.
But if people are trying to learn a new business practice, daily pressures drive them to assume that they can learn it instantly, without study and without practicing. So often, we work with people who go to a training class or look something up in a knowledge management database and think they have got it, or at least are unwilling to allocate more time to learn it.
There is such a strong expectation for instant everything — people expect problems to be fixed or improved instantly, without much work.
But there are some things, like sophisticated business processes and business leadership, that can’t be learned instantly. Long term practice and development is needed.
There is this profound gap between an expectation for instant gratification and some areas where the capability cannot be developed instantaneously.
Posted in best practices, business, organizational change, positive leadership | No Comments »
Friday, July 3rd, 2009
By Rick Grbavac
Industry award-winner Jim Skinner has led McDonald’s to amazing performance over the past year using a formula that sounds identical to what we teach every day:
- Rebuild purpose
- Realign talent with a return to the company’s fundamental principles
- Focus on leadership development to strengthen internal talent
- Hands off management style, empower the people
- Set high expectations
- Demand accountability
- Be better, not just bigger
His simple assessment: “With 32,000 locations around the world, you need to have a good team aligned with a solid plan, with very simple expectations about what needs to get done.”
And here’s a refreshing idea: Skinner’s first goal was to set long term growth. Long term. I love to hear a CEO talk about long term vision and then actually execute a plan to achieve it. During the 5 years he has been CEO, McDonalds’s has experienced a compound average growth rate of 19.2% with an increasing operating margin.
CEOs can learn a lot from a close reading of Skinner’s methods and philosophy. He’s a straightforward and plainspoken leader who leads!
Tags: Jim Skinner, leadership development, long term growth, Management style, McDonald's
Posted in best practices, business, leadership, management consulting, positive leadership | No Comments »
Thursday, June 18th, 2009
By Michael McCauley
In her recent column, “How Questions Can Drive Leadership Success“ in the weekly of the National League of Cities , Dr. Barbara Mackoff posits that asking the right questions can drive municipal leadership success. I couldn’t agree more!
Dr. Mackoff seeks to encourage the use of the wisdom of positive deviants. Instead of asking, ”What’s wrong here?” she suggests that we ask, ”What do we want more of here?”
How refreshing!
I just finished reading Lee Brower’s new book, The Brower Quadrant . In it Lee supports Mackoff’s approach, saying, “To be true leaders we need to ask different questions. Asking different questions leads us to different answers. Different answers lead us to different, and often better, results.”
Next, Mackoff suggests that we look around and see who is already solving this problem. Again, this is a positive deviance approach. In any organization, there are people who consistently and systematically outperform everyone else. These are the people we should be focusing on. They are the ones that can help us with work through our challenges and adopt the successful behaviors they have made them so successful.
There are several additional suggestions that Mackoff provides in her column to help determine if the solution defined by the positive deviants is the right one for your particular city and to ensure that we get the most leverage possible.
Tags: Barbara Mackoff, leadership, Lee Brower, National League of Cities, positive deviance, The Brower Quadrant
Posted in best practices, leadership, management consulting, positive deviance, positive deviants, positive leadership | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
By William Seidman
We have observed that there is a noticeable change in the speed and quality of learning when people are feeling good about themselves. Kim Cameron in his book Positive Leadership: Strategies for Extraordinary Performance supports this.
Now there is more specific research that shows that a good mood makes learning more effective . A University of Toronto study by Drs. Taylor W. Schmitz, . Eve de Rosa, and Adam K. Anderson, “Opposing Influences of Affective State Valence on Visual Cortical Encoding,” strongly suggests that “seeing the world through rose-colored glasses is more biological reality than metaphor.”
The study team used functional magnetic resonance imaging to look at how the visual cortex processes information when the subject is in a good, bad, or neutral mood. Good moods enhance the size of the window through which we see the world. A bad mood shrinks creativity and productivity. This information is critical in terms of creating an organizational culture worth having.
For the good of your organization, learn to think positively!
Tags: Adam K. Anderson, creativity, Eve de Rosa, functional magnetic resonance imaging, Kim Cameron, organizational culture, positive leadership, positive thinking, productivity, rose-colored glasses, Taylor Schmitz
Posted in affirmations, business, management consulting, neuroleadership, neuroscience, organizational change, personal change, positive leadership | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
By William Seidman
Last week, the New York Times ran an interesting article on attention, specifically on Winfred Gallagher’s book Rapt: Attention on the Focused Life. Some conversations I subsequently had got me thinking about attention. One discussion I had was about a teaching technique that spends a lot of time focusing on what people are doing wrong. A reasonable challenge to that theory of learning is, “If you’re focussing on what you’re doing wrong, how will you learn to do it right?” A more complex and complete response has to do with the neuroscience of attention - which magicians/performance artists Penn and Teller know quite a bit about.
Are any of you golfers? Have you ever gone to the tee and said to yourself, “Don’t slice, don’t slice!” What do you immediately do? You slice. It is the same idea for a well-known expression: “Playing the game not to lose.” In sports, and, it turns out, in inherited wealth (check out Lee Brower’s work), when you play a game defensively, you usually lose.
Why is this? When you spend most of your mental resources on what’s wrong, you are getting better at the wrong thing. Instead, we need to focus on the positive - or, how to do the job right.
Tags: attention, attentiveness, defensive play, golf, inherited wealth, Lee Brower, neuroscience of attention, Penn and Teller, Winfred Gallagher
Posted in best practices, business, neuroscience, personal change, positive leadership | No Comments »
Monday, April 27th, 2009
By William Seidman
This year’s International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) annual meeting in Orlando was great.
No doubt due to the downturn, it was smaller than in the past — 500-600 people, but the energy level was high and my impression was that everyone who was there really wanted to be there.
Some of the highlights were the opening presentation by Don Peppers on leadership, particularly the need for leadership in these hard times. There were great presentations on Web 2.0 by Julia Bulkowski and Erika Grouell, both from Google, use of stories in training by Jon Revelos (Bank of America), and about the transition from classroom training to e-training - web-based training - by Allison Rossett (UCSD).
I presented on :Transcending Cultures: Change in Multi-Cultural, Multi-National Organizations and The Science of Cultural Change.
Were you there, or wish you were? Let me know what your thoughts.
Tags: Allison Rossett, Cultural Change, Don Peppers, Erika Grouell, International Society for Performance Improvement, Jon Revelos, Julia Bulkowski, organizational change, Orlando, Web 2.0
Posted in best practices, business, organizational change, positive leadership | No Comments »
Sunday, April 19th, 2009
By William Seidman
I’m back from the Transformational Leadership Gala in Chicago, sponsored in part by the Wright Institute for the Realization of Human Potential.
Judith Wright, Ed. D. and Bob Wright, Ed. D. did an amazing job organizing this for 350 participants.
I joined a discussion on leadership that transforms society for the better. At dinner I sat next to Ronald Riggio, author of Transformational Leadership and a great guy. His work examines the characteristics of what makes someone a transformational leader.
Our work was about how such a leader can touch hundreds or thousands at once, and we had much to talk about.
The keynote speaker was Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy, who gave a great speech about how he went from a “fat, long-haired hippy” managing a three-person video store to building Best Buy into a multi-billion-dollar company.
Anderson stressed that a key idea is to empower others to be creative, and to not overly-centralize decision-making.
It was clear in listening to him that he was simultaneously pretty humble and damn tough. He could be supportive and demanding at the same time - good combination!
Tags: Bob Wright, Judith Wright, Ronald Riggio, Wright Institute for the Realization of Human Potential
Posted in business, positive leadership | No Comments »
Thursday, April 16th, 2009
By William Seidman
Several interesting conferences are coming up, and I’m going:
My first stop is Friday, April 17th in Chicago for the Transformational Leadership Gala sponsored by the good folks at the Wright Institute for Transformational Leadership.
The main speaker will be Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy.
Should be very interesting. 300 people are expected - all involved with leadership.
My next stop is the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) Annual Meeting in Orlando.
I am presenting Monday, April 20th on Organizational Change in Multi-National, Multi-Cultural Organizations, and on Wednesday April 22nd on The Science of Organizational Change.
ISPI is mostly for people responsible for changing organizations, and there are always lots of good conversations there.
It should be a great week and weekend!
Tags: International Society for Performance Improvement, leadership, multi-culturalism, organizational change, performance improvement, science of organizational change, Transformational Leadership Gala, Wright Institute for Transformational Leadership
Posted in best practices, organizational change, positive leadership | No Comments »
