There's a Cat on my Head

Starting Again

2009-10-27T05:53:00.001-07:00

Think I will start writing again. Maybe an update on my life to where I've been. Officially a University graduate now. Got my Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Alberta in Canada. Immediately decided to try something different away from the standard life. I went to teach English in South Korea. And here I am, in a suburb of the second largest metropolitan in the world. With North Korea looming and H1N1 terror sweeping through my school.

This will give me a new perspective on leadership that I hope I can write more about and get some feed back. Hopefully get a half decent following as well.

The culture here is so different I know it offers me more information I can use.

Expert Leadership

2009-04-06T15:25:00.000-07:00

I like to think I've read lots of books on leadership. Not as many as I could without a doubt, but I've dipped and dabbled. I've also seen lots of successful leaders and some less successful.

I always remember reading about the leader who is an expert. They are at the top of their game and have great knowledge on a subject, task, or industry. They are easy to follow; it just comes naturally when they can answer any question you throw their way. I find expert leaders take years to make or exude an amazing amount of confidence.

I began to wonder whether they truly are good leaders or just experts, and whether these go hand in hand. I believe they are good leaders, and being an expert is just part of their intelligence. My guess would come from social and emotional intelligence. Most wouldn't be leaders if they didn't express any social intelligence as you need to communicate effectively and manage the emotions around you to be taken seriously and followed. Then emotional intelligence, how they perceive their emotions and avoid the pitfalls associated with negative emotions. Not yelling when someone gives you bad news is good emotional intelligence.

Intelligence is definitely required by a leader in order to move the organization ahead. I believe an expert leader is someone who has great intelligence on a subject, but really has the foundations of social and emotional intelligence as well. Leadership is all encompassing and only being an expert is not something which will drive you forward. Being able to manage your own emotions and the emotions around you is vital to success.

The whole package is the best, while being an expert is nice.

Talent Management

2009-03-29T13:20:00.000-07:00

Talent Management is an interesting case. Being a leader is about talent management and how you will help bring the best out of your people. This is seen from sports to corporations to government.... well maybe not government, but I'll stay optimistic and keep it in there.

A good generalization most believe is when you see the best and the brightest be taken under arm, taught, trained, and given every opportunity available. Well, many companies acclaim they are going to be missing talent in the future. Isn't it obvious to see why you will be missing talent? Isn't there a big disconnect between fostering the talents in the best and bringing them up in the organization while leaving the worst at the bottom to learn from one another? Obviously a good mentorship program can bridge this gap, but is everyone motivated to move up? Well that's a great question. Hopefully leadership can create motivation to let people achieve and improve themselves.

Talent management is key to this. Strong leaders should be kept on the lower levels who can really get the frontline workers to produce effectively. Isn't that counterintuitive? Well yes it is, for some reason it is always seen talent should progress to the top of organizations. Of course we also know, if you fire the executives the company will still turn a profit in the at least the short-term. most sales come from the frontline staff, shouldn't this be where the leadership is focused?

Just a thought.

Leading Diversity

2009-03-17T19:41:00.001-07:00

Being a leader in today's society is definitely more demanding than ever before. Every company complains of how leasdrship will be the hardest thing to find in the future. For leaders the challenge will be leading the diversity of those around them.

"When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary." - William Wrigley Jr.

I hope most people agree with the above statements as a generalization of course. Diversity in the workplace is one of the greatest assets ensuring companies have enough normal people, crazy people, creative people, science people, political people, etc. Without diversity your organization will happily stagnate. Constructive discussion and brain storming are where new ideas and innovation are created.

As a leader how can you lead each person who is very different in lifestyle, goals, style, emotion, sex, attitude, and every other facet I could spending writing pages on. Well the difference between being a manager and a leader really break off at this point. Engaging each one and ensuring they are dedicated and motivated in their work is difficult.

A leader can take all of these individual preferences and goals to balance them to achieve a goal and achieve it with spectacular results. Unfortunately there is no cut and dry answer to how a leader achieves this. That's leadership style. Finding your leadership style is hard, you may need to micromanage each person until you find it. Or trial and error on how to inspire the people around you.

Remembering the diversity is important as leaders sometimes get tunnel vision and forget their interests and goals do not align with everyone. Understand the stakeholders and get their engagement and take their goals into acccount.

I got the idea for this from David Zinger's Article: http://www.davidzinger.com/engage-twitter-a-definition-2421/

Did I say I was going to do that?

2009-03-15T08:56:00.002-07:00

Have you ever been in the situation where someone says they're going to do something for you, and never do? For example, I'll call you tomorrow or when a relative says, "you should come out to the cabin one of these Summers" and never invites you? It's weird how different messages can be taken different ways. You really need to remember what you say is your promise.

Every word has to be upheld. This is where your reputation is built over time and torn down with one action. It is much better saying no, than making promises or plans that can't be upheld.

Failure

2009-03-13T16:08:00.000-07:00

I didn't feel like writing much, but know this is important. I’ll make a better one later. I’ve failed in a lot of aspects, but am getting better at succeeding.

“Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.” -John Keats (1795 - 1821)

"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." -Winston Churchill

“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” -Thomas A. Edison (1847 - 1931)

“Success isn't permanent, and failure isn't fatal.” -Mike Ditka (1939 - )

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/10/failure-as-an-e.html

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/03/nothing.html

I truly hate failing, which includes coming second. Especially when my business plan is first place material. I realized from not everyone knows what you know. Now I'm shortlisted in a much bigger competition, with bigger prizes. The team that won first probably isn't anywhere. I've got sixth in some of these competitons, and I've come in first as well.

I'd like to hear about some of your failures and what you learned from them.

Building Trust

2009-03-13T08:36:00.000-07:00

I was checking out some more blogs on leadership and ran into this one. http://www.sayleadershipcoaching.com/talkingstory/2009/03/how-to-better-honor-past-histories.html

Rosa Say briefly explains how to earn trust when entering an organization for mid or senior management. Although I feel it applies to anyone entering an organization. Building trust has it's obvious place in leadership, which I will spare reiteration today.

She discusses before starting to suggesting new ideas; typically, you need to earn trust for them to have a weight in the eyes of your peers, subordinates, or management. One of the best ways she stated to do this was solve an old problem and learn the company's true values. Solving an old problem is great, as that immediately brings you into a level playing field instead of the 'new person'.

Learning the companies true values let's you see what the company was like, is like, and where it should be. Rosa talks of learning the company’s stories of the past and current times.

She didn't mention that I think the journey of learning these values is where trust is built. To learn them you must talk with co-workers and learn about them and their experiences. Each person will have different values, strengths, weaknesses, that need to be understood before they will let you lead them. Ask about their lives outside of work and what their goals are. Not only showing interest in their long-term goals, but dedicated to their long-term goals will earn you trust. If you have to, write it down and record it. Remember their spouses and children’s names; if you’re in sales, you probably try to do it for your customers. Aren’t your employees more important?

One of my professors who taught me a leadership course talked about a great story. He has one manager who went around at least once a week to every employee and asked how they were doing. He didn’t just do the polite, how are you doing? He gently and happily asked about their lives and wanted to know. Each employee knew he did this with everyone else too, but his true care really brought it home. Happy employees are productive employees, but this applies outside of work environment too.

Pry into your friends and acquaintances lives, see where it gets you.

Lead by Example

2009-03-11T21:13:00.001-07:00

I think one the largest things people forget is to lead by example. I was reading this blog: http://www.leadershipnow.com/leadingblog/2009/03/strategic_presence_the_power_t.html And it made me realize some things. You need to do everything you want your followers to do and more. Leading isn't about persuading, dictating, or manipulating to get what you want. It is really about motivating.

I really like the basics of motivation, hence Herzberg's Two Factor Theory. Hygiene factors stop a person from quitting and motivators get an employee working hard. Leaders and managers forget money is a hygiene factor that doesn't do much beyond ensuring employee don't quit. The motivators really are achievement, recognition, responsibility, growth, and one more I can't remember. Leaders need to integrate these in to their day to day activities along with some passion. Passion will be that little extra Herzberg couldn't quantify in his process, in my opinion anyway.

At this HR conference on the weekend one of the speakers, Bruce Baker. http://eacusource.com/ talked about how management believes 80% of employees quit for more money and employees quit 12% of the time for more money. Just a little fact to not forget.

Cheers!

Communication

2009-03-09T17:32:00.000-07:00

Communication is such an important part of leadership. Remembering to keep open lines of communciation between the staff below you and above you is essential. Social intellignece is huge and each member of the team should feel they are in the loop and their comments are important. An interesting experiment is to go around and ask opinions of people within your office. Not everyone for every instance, but ensure that you try to ask everyone their opinion on something.

The best part is that most times they will gladly give their input and it will also boost your image in their minds. I love when people ask for my opinion, it makes you feel great. It really has to be done honestly and if their advice is good, use it. When you begin to move into a management and leadership position this will ensure you make decisions that are in the best interest of your team and ensure they all respect and enjoy you.

Lots more on communication to come. Leave some opinions behind.

First Post

2009-03-08T09:16:00.001-07:00

I'd like to thank everyone for coming my leadership blog. I'll come up with the first topic tomorrow.