How to Develop Great leadership

In an interview with Fast Company, GE's CEO Jeff Immelt reveals his own leadership checklist which often shares with up and coming leaders at the company's famous management-development center.

1. Personal Responsibility."Enron and 9/11 marked the end of an era of individual freedom and the beginning of personal responsibility. You lead today by building teams and placing others first. It's not about you."

2. Simplify Constantly. "I always use Jack [Welch] as my example here. Every leader needs to clearly explain the top three things the organization is working on. If you can't, then you're not leading well."

3. Understand Breadth, Depth, and Context."Its really important to understand how your organisation fits in with the world and how you respond to it."

4. The importance of alignment and time management."There is no real magic to being a good leader. But at the end of every week, you have to spend your time around the things that are really important: setting priorities, measuring outcomes, and rewarding them."

5. Leaders learn constantly and also have to learn how to teach. "A leader's primary role is to teach. People who work with you don't have to agree with you, but they have to feel you're willing to share what you've learned."

6. Stay true to your own style."Leadership is an intense journey into yourself. You can use your own style to get anything done. It's about being self-aware. Every morning, I look in the mirror and say, 'I could have done three things better yesterday.' "

7. Manage by setting boundaries with freedom in the middle."The boundaries are commitment, passion, trust, and teamwork. Within those guidelines, there's plenty of freedom. But no one can cross those four boundaries."

8. Stay disciplined and detailed."Good leaders are never afraid to intervene personally on things that are important. Michael Dell can tell you how many computers were shipped from Singapore yesterday."

9. Leave a few things unsaid."I may know an answer, but I'll often let the team find its own way. Sometimes, being an active listener is much more effective than ending a meeting with me enumerating 17 actions."

10. Like people."Today, it's employment at will. Nobody's here who doesn't want to be here. So it's critical to understand people, to always be fair, and to want the best in them. And when it doesn't work, they need to know it's not personal."

Stop that email!

I took a day off work only to come back to over 70 emails in my inbox. I found my self only following up on messages that managed to catch my attention within the first few seconds of viewing it.

This experience underscored the need to be relevant to an audience. Is this relevant to you? The LMC course which you have either attended or been referred to provides the skills to be relevant to your respective audiences. The training alliance through a series of media including this, hope to encourage you on your path to relevance.

Seth Godin wrote an excellent post on his blog about communication through speeches or talk. He writes about the dynamics of speech: “Speech is both linear and unpaceable. You can’t skip around and you can’t speed it up. When the speaker covers something you know, you are bored. When he quickly covers something you don’t understand, you are lost.” This is both the advantage and the challenge of speech.

A speech has always been a platform to sell ideas, but we often forget that and just drone on presenting what perhaps is important to us (often the audience can’t tell) without regard to our listeners. Godin adds, “If marketing is the art of spreading ideas, then teaching is a kind of marketing. And teaching to groups verbally is broken, perhaps beyond repair. Consumers of information won’t stand for it. We’re learning less every time we are confronted with this technique, because we’ve been spoiled by the remote control and the web.”

Godin suggests, “If you teach - teach anything - you need to start by acknowledging that there’s a need to sell your ideas emotionally. So you need to use whatever tools are available to you—an evocative PowerPoint image, say, or a truly impassioned speech.” Speech isn’t broken; we just don’t take the time to do it well. A well crafted speech has the potential to cut through the clutter and hold your attention more intimately than nearly any other form of communication.

In my opinion the above doesn't just apply to speeches but to all forms of communication.

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How To Gain Humility Through Success

Is it wrong to pray for God to make me more successful so that I can be more humble?

Paul writes: "We know that 'We all possess knowledge.' But knowledge puffs up while love builds up." (I Corinthians 8:1b, Today's NIV). If "knowledge puffs up," then we as professionals are in ever-present danger of having elephantine egos.

A decade ago, U.S. News & World Report found evidence in academia of Paul's observation: "A poll of university professors found that 94% of the respondents thought that they were better at their jobs than their average colleague" (16 Dec 1996).

I have a natural inclination to puffiness. What's a “gifted intellect” like me supposed to do? My ego likes the world to believe that I am a super successful professional and am really smart. But "don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God?" (James 4:4b).

Blaise Pascal (1623-62), one of the greatest scientists of the 17th century, voiced the proper perspective on the matter. Pascal invented the first computer, studied vacuums and was a gifted mathematician. The metric unit of pressure bears his name. (I'm hesitant to admit it, but his intellect probably exceeded mine.)

On Monday, Nov 23, 1654, Pascal had a life-changing conversion encounter with Jesus Christ. We know these details because, upon Pascal's death, personal notes about his conversion were found in the lining of his coat. He wrote the following prayer:

"Almighty God, who gave your servant Blaise Pascal a great intellect that he might explore the mysteries of your creation, and who kindled in his heart a love for you and a devotion to your service - mercifully give us your servants, according to our various callings, gifts of excellence in body, mind, and will, and the grace to use them diligently and to your glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever."

Pascal had it right. I am to celebrate my intellect as a gift from God, and when rejoicing in any accomplishments, do it before Him in thanksgiving. This is such an obvious directive.

Solomon also addresses this dilemma, and gives argument-settling advice to people like myself with debating egos. "Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body. Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandment, for this is the whole [duty] of man." (Eccl 12:12b-13).

Critical Key to Empowered Leadership

In recent times there seems to be a dearth of trust between people in different circumstances be at home, in business, politic etc. Trust is a word with which we are truly familiar. Yet, it is difficult to define in a truly comprehensive way. You may not know that it is a word of Scandinavian origin. It connects “agreement,” “pact,” and “faith”—all wrapped into one. Webster notes two definitions: first, “a confident dependence on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something”; second, “something committed or entrusted to one to be used or cared for in the interest of another.” The first definition is commonplace and correlates with our grade-school interpretation. But, the latter definition embraces the transcendent qualities of the word.

Trust, in its fullest sense, extends beyond simply having great confidence in a person, or faith that a task will be performed. It manifests itself when one becomes committed to the protection and care of someone else—he is entrusted to that person, who holds his faith in trust.

The Founding Fathers of the United States were very concerned about trust and mutual respect and the leadership of the country they had just created. In fact Baron Charles de Montesquieu’s seminal work, The Spirit of Laws, was closely referred to.

The concept of the separation of powers, developed here and influenced by the work of the Greek historian Polybius, surely formed the basis of the Constitution.
Montesquieu explored this relationship which must exist between a people and their government – between leaders and followers – without which they could not survive. He weighed the advantages and disadvantages of dictatorships, monarchies and republics, describing the cohesive forces of each. Although he felt that the free republic was the most desirous form of government, he stated that it was the most fragile because it depends on a virtuous people. The framers of the Constitution took that to mean those that could sacrifice their private concerns for the good of the country. Of this quality of being they had grave concerns. Washington concluded, that “the few, therefore, who act upon Principles of disinterestedness are, comparatively speaking, no more that a drop in the Ocean.”

Any good leaders should feel an obligation to not only consider their personal well being but also that of others as well. When this implicit commitment is broken – when the leader only considers their own well being – there is no basis for leadership and the leader cannot be trusted.

Suspicion not trust is the operative word today. Trust, however, is an essential ingredient of the leader follower relationship. An ingredient that is in short supply. Trust of course, involves a vulnerability on our part, due to some form of ignorance or basic uncertainty as to the other person’s motives. This is a leap of faith that many of us today, are not willing to make. But a leap we must make because leadership doesn’t and can’t happen in a vacuum.

8 Principles to Lead Innovation

One of the biggest challenges to organisations and untapped resources are its employees ideas and innovations. To this day most organizations still share the following barriers to innovation:

• Lack of language. Organizations don't have effective ways to talk about the innovation process.
  
  
• Limited scope. Existing innovation processes often encourage small, incremental changes rather than new products, breakthrough ideas or unusual concepts.
  
  
• Isolation. Departments and groups may be isolated, creating subcultures that are different from the rest of the organization and limiting exchange of ideas and information.
  
  
• Comfort with the status quo. People are often dependent on the familiar, leaving little room or tolerance for anyone with wildly different ideas and behaviors.
  
  
• A deficit of trust. Innovation requires structures that are supported by bonds of trust, confidence and respect for those involved.

Bob Rosenfeld author of Making the Invisible Visible: The Human Principles for Sustaining Innovation, says that all ideas come from people, but it requires innovation leaders to stimulate, motivate and encourage people in specific ways."

This combined with the sustained commitment from a high-level within the organization are crucial elements for ideas and innovation to come forth. Leaders need to look beyond the mechanics, techniques and results of innovation to the unseen principles of innovation.

He describes eight principles that underlie the human aspect of innovation:

1. Innovation starts when people convert problems into ideas.
   
2. Innovation needs a system.
   
3. Passion is the fuel, and pain is the hidden ingredient.
   
4. Co-locating drives effective exchange.
   
   
5. Differences should be leveraged.



6. The elements of destruction are present at creation.
   
7. Soft values drive the organization.
   
8. Trust is the means and love the unspoken word.