LeaderLine

Problems Don't Get Better with Age!

Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson has shared his "Unwritten Rules of Management." Here's one rule worth putting in writing: "If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much. When someone assumes a position of responsibility for the first time, it's common to avoid decisions--and the risk of criticism. But that only creates different risks. Problems are not like wine and cheese; they don't get better with age."

If you ever worry about the criticism you may receive as a leader, remember that a president has trouble getting 50% of the citizens to support him at any given time. You want 100% approval, but if you're truly doing your job as a leader, you'll never get that. Well handled disagreements are not a problem; they're treasures that help you navigate the great game of change.

After all, conflict is built into the very fabric of life, and change just adds to it! Conflict can have tremendous value in shaping your personal and professional progress. It's the forge that can test the metal of your thinking and decision-making. The more conflict you can face and blend into your decision, the more likely you are to make the right move.   

With movement comes error; you're either slightly left or slightly right off of perfect direction. That is why you must keep checking your course in the midst of any change. Negative feedback, when provided in a timely fashion, allows for the needed course-corrections on your way to ultimate success. Don't silence it; value and invite it!

Just remember, hidden problems can become big problems. They are the kind of problems that can grow into crises that can sap the energy of teams and destroy the credibility of even good companies. Be known as a problem solver; not a problem evader. Give permission for people to disagree, invite conflict to be surfaced, but keep all conflict eyeball to eyeball. Don't talk about others; talk to them. Help everyone to disagree without being too disagreeable.   

What do you think?

(Source: Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson, Unwritten Rules of Management, "The CEO's Secret Handbook, Business 2.0, July 2005, pp.69-75.)

Leadership Truths One Story at a Time

Mark Sanborn, in his book You Don't Need a Title to Be a Leader, highlighted the importance of stories for today's leaders: "Stories are the coat pegs of the mind. They are where people hang their ideas. Once they have a memorable story to help them remember, they can recall whatever important moral or point you have to make."

Story is what penetrates. People remember stories more easily than they ever remember a numbing list of abstract teaching points. After all, when was the last data slide or graph that you remember as the highlight of a talk?

Take time to find stories from your life and work experience that communicate wisdom your people need to hear. Start giving your team the gift of story. All you have to say is "Let me tell you a story," and your people will be ready to listen and learn!

LEADERSHIP TRUTHS ONE STORY AT A TIME

Get the best of my stories in one book! This powerful collection of stories is often humorous but always insightful. They can help you make a difference as a leader. You'll learn how taking the blame and giving credit inspires loyalty and how to get results not revenge by turning enemies into allies one bridge at a time. You'll discover how asking "What's working for you?" leaves a lasting legacy of confidence and how "having tickets" helps make your calendar your creed. Like pilots, you'll learn how to use error as course-correction data on your way to opportunity and how one shared page of values can help you walk your talk! Learn how applying ingeniously simple lessons can energize those who report to you and effect an astonishing transformation in your workplace.

"This is a remarkable book ... Inspiring, thoughtful, substantive. Read it to learn, to grow, and to enjoy Dr. Paulson's storytelling genius." Nido R. Qubein, President of High Point University and Chairman, Great Harvest Bread Co.

No boring reading here-just compelling stories with practical leadership insights about the great game of business and life from one of America's top change leadership experts. What are you waiting for?Click here ( http://www.terrypaulson.com/leaderthiptruths/ ) to order your autographed copy of my new book, Leadership Truths One Story at a Time, in time for the holidays!

MAKE PERSONALIZED COPIES FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION!

For quantity premium orders, new print-on-demand technology allows us to make personalized copies of Leadership Truths One Story at a Time. Include one of your company's favorite stories or include a foreword by your organization's top executive. Contact our office directly to learn more by calling 800-521-6172.

(Source: Mark Sanborn, You Don't Need a Title to Be a Leader, Waterbrook Press, Colorado Springs, CO, 2006, p. 69)

Sanborn's You Don't Need a Title to Be a Leader

Here's a book on leadership that you may want to buyr, read and share with everyone on your team. We need leaders at every level to make change work!

Mark Sanborn’s new book, You Don’t Need a Title to be a Leader: How Anyone, Anywhere Can Make a Positive Difference, is now available. But there is more! As a friend of Mark’s, I’ve been authorized to extend an amazing package of gifts to you IF you order the new book at Amazon.com on

September 19, 2006

.  In addition to his powerful new book, You Don’t Need a Title to Be a Leader, you will receive a bundle of value-added resources from Mark including three eBooks, a recorded teleconference and a leadership impact model.

Marcus Buckingham, bestselling author of the multi-million seller, Now Discover Your Strengths, says, “If you want to learn to lead—or lead better—read this book.”

You Don’t Need A Title To Be a Leader is a compact read that impresses people with its powerful ideas laid out in a fresh and exciting perspective. What you’ll learn:

The six skills all leaders use to create results

A definition of leadership that inspires you and those around you

How leaders increase ROI: Relationships, Outcomes and Improvements

The keys to self-mastery and how to develop it

How to think like a leader

How to go beyond “telling” to “selling” and unlock the power of persuasion

How to use MVP (Most Valuable and Profitable) activities to improve your focus

Ways to instantly improve your IQ (and in this case it doesn’t stand for “intelligence quotient”)

The 3C’s of a leader’s credibility

What gives you “power with people” (so you won’t need “power over  people”)

More than 300,000 readers across the country discovered The Fred Factor in just two short years. It is

Mark Sanborn

’s unparalleled ability to explain fundamental business and leadership truths through simple stories and anecdotes that, like Fred, makes You Don’t Need a Title to be a Leader so effective.  Anyone who wants to take control of their life and make a positive difference should pick up this book…on September 19!

For your valued-added bundle of resources follow this simple process:

1.      order the book at Amazon.com on September 19^th ,then…

2.      forward the email receipt you receive from Amazon confirming your purchase to proofofpurchase@youdontneedatitle.com

You will receive a link by return email that provides you access to your package of powerful bonus resources. This book is a positive difference maker—whether or not you have a title—you’ll benefit from this new book. And remember, if you purchase the book through Amazon on September 19^th you’ll receive the valuable bonuses listed above. Mark is a great business thinker with an ability to get his message across in ways that make a difference. Act now to get this special deal!

Great Ideas Reunion Actual Spurs Some Keepers and Questions worth Pondering

It takes a catalyst to start anything worth doing. Thanks go to Jeanne Hartley for sending out the call into cyberspace for an old fashioned salon with some of her most thoughtful and influential colleagues.

We're not talking about hair styles here; I've got too little hair left for that to be fruitful. Here we are talking about a "salon" as a gathering place where the currency is ideas. When you know the people you are talking with, the community leads to real conversations and deeper relationships. In short, community is the word people often use to describe what happens when people connect around purposes and perspectives in a way that relates to their lives. That happened today.

Jeanne sent out the call, provided the location and got to enjoy the results. Last Sunday, her band of verbal and enlightened OD practitioners, trainers, speakers and otherwise interesting philosophers actual took an afternoon to ask questions and think.

Each person attending will have a different list of conversation highlights; let me share my own window, as limited as it will be!

It starts with an unsettling key question? Why has their been so little progress in change management and healthy organizational development after so many management consultants, OD practitioners, trainers, coaches, authors and speakers have spent so many years trying to make things better? It reminds me of the classic line, "Last year, after the introduction of 1,000 new diets and exercise plans, Americans lost collectively one pound." Lots of talk, academicians producing many theories, trainers training, and OD'ers OD'ing...but where are the results?

We confessed that we have struggled with outdated models of change that implied a static change process of unfreezing and freezing in a new state. We decided that change needed a little less refreezing and a little more comfort dealing with moldable slush. We need no happy change movies with easy answers; we need a change soap opera where change never ends. Our very models may have created roadblocks.

We realized that we lack research models to capture the impact of what we do. The complexity works against us. The more variables you try to include the more complexity and the less valuable the insights. By decreasing the variables we may learn more useful insights but their application will remain limited. Quick increases in result are not expected, practitioners and HR professionals need to work to establish meaningful metrics to measure key assumed benefits and to map longitudinal results. Over time, we would expect interventions to make a difference in the quality of the work life, associate satisfaction, stock value increases, retention, customer satisfaction and bottom-line profit. Perfect interventions don't exist, but we ought to be able to see improvement over time.

We also realized that we have had the luxury of having worked in an economy that truly is the best in the world. We may not be that great, just very lucky to have been born here. Called in by organizations and leaders looking for help, we see organizational effectiveness through our experiences with less than exceptional organizations or parts of organizations. Just as psychology has taken on the focus on positive psychology, our professions need to take a good look at those organizations who are functioning and changing well without us. There are great organizations and corporations out there; we need to study what they are doing and build on the positive deviants we find.  If you are policeman who spends her life dealing with criminals, criminals are all you see. We need to nurture our own hope and the hope of those we serve.

The world economy is expanding. Good things are happening, and much of the time that happens without us! Are we spending time with the laggers and missing those who soaring! There was a sense of humility in the meeting. There are many things that are happening in the environment our clients face that is more important to our clients than the interventions we initiate--no matter how grand. What if you are good at something no one no longer needs? What if you are blind-sided by international competition? What if pension and healthcare costs take so much capital organizations begin to collapse under the weight of excessive obligations?

We realized that our own need to care and help can make it hard for us to be the truth tellers clients may need to hear. We decided there were many elephants in the rooms of organizations that leaders are not dealing with. We as professionals have some of our own. Could it be that caring involves tough love in the home and on the job?

We talked about polarities and the importance of tension and dynamic spirals. I left with big picture perspectives, no easy answers, some great questions and a sense that I am not alone. I think we are making a difference; I've seen it even though it may be too expensive or challenging to have measured those results.

I think we all had a healthy appreciation for the challenges before us. We take hope in the fact that opportunity and economic growth are both on the move. We hope and pray that freedom and peace can expand a bit faster. We saw the importance of revisiting healthy systems that has the capacity to sustain constant change. These positive deviants are out there. We need help in finding them to keep our hopes alive. Since the true professionals out there are not into creating dependence, we again reaffirmed the impact of client leadership. They are the ones who truly make magic happen. We're there most often to get people back on track so they can take off again on their own.

Now, if you're operating in a healthy organization, you know it when you're in it. If you are, what is working for you? We want to know.

I'm sure we will meet again. But before I wrap up, no gathering like this would be complete without a few suggested readings. Want some summer reading on leadership and change? These are just some of the books suggested at salon:

Washington: The Indispensable Man (Paperback) by James Thomas Flexner
Building the Bridge As You Walk On It : A Guide for Leading Change (Hardcover) by Robert E. Quinn
Built to Change : How to Achieve Sustained Organizational Effectiveness: by Edward E. III Lawler,Chris Worley,Foreword by Jerry Porras
Creating We: Change I-Thinking to WE-Thinking & Build a Healthy, Thriving Organization, by Judith E. Glaser
Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change, Dr. Don Beck
Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, By Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Use Books to Support Lifelong Learning & Success

Joe Dudley, founder of Dudley Products, knows how to keep his people learning and achieving: "What made my company work? I sold people my mission-that they could be job-makers rather than job-takers. I called our office a `mental gymnasium': I washed out `I can't' and put in `I can.' People came from all walks of life and did very well. We had a sales meeting every morning. We still do. Volunteers meet at 6:30 a.m. to discuss books like the Bible, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, and Secrets of the Ages by Robert Collier. They said we were a cult. I said `Yes, we're a success cult.'"

As hope merchants for mission-directed change, you can't limit yourself to selling hope once and expect it to stick. In a world preoccupied with what's not possible and what's not working, building a successful team takes picking the right people and providing the positive ammunition needed to fuel their drive. First, take time in interviews to discuss what you stand for and what can be achieved. If you don't see a spark in their eyes as you talk about the opportunity they have, don't waste your time. Secondly, once you've found and hired your "gold," keep it polished. Nurture and refine the attitudes of your team by investing time in sharing and discussing best practices wherever and whenever they find them. What works for you and your team in maintaining a "success" culture? What is required at your "success" gymnasium to complete a needed workout?

(Source: Joe Dudley, founder of Dudley Products, Success, page 14, April 1996.)

Classic Drucker Worth Reading

At a time recent surveys Robert Half Management Resources suggest that 89% believe that it is more challenging to be a corporate leader in today's business environment, there is still wisdom to draw on to help guide the way.

We've lost Peter Drucker, the management guru who died last November, but we have not lost his wisdom. Harvard Business School Press has just published Classic Drucker: Essential Wisdom of Peter Drucker from the Pages of Harvard Business Review. After reaching 60 and joining the "over the hill" gang, I'm pleased to realize that 13 of the 15 articles included were written after he turned 65. The best may still be ahead of me. After reading some of my posts and e-zines, you may pray that to be true!

Don't forget to take responsibility of your own future Don't wait to retire when you can retread by refocusing and retooling for a new age. One Drucker quote about career planning lets you know how tough that will be: "The stepladder is gone, there's not even an implied structure of an industry's rope ladder. It's more like vines, and you bring your own machete."

You don't get stuck in a silo; you look for networking to capitalize on lateral moves and new experiences to add to your competency portfolio. You look for your passion and how it can make a difference. Live every day of your life on and off the job. Don't coast to retirement when you can be an explorer discovering new territories for fun and profit!

Thanks Peter Drucker for leaving your classic wisdom and for being a model we can emulate.

(USA Today Snapshots, "Tougher to be a leader", 1B, and Bruce Rosenstein, "40 years of advice in 1 handy, useful book," USA Today, 3-6-06, 9B)