Answer: I call this a terrorist! A terrorist is someone who knows what they have on you and they use it to hold you and everyone else in the company hostage to their behavior. I like to take my clients through an exercise of understanding the Goal, Position, and Strategy Questions to determine what actions need to be done.

The first question I ask is, “What is the goal around the problem?” This is to ensure that we are aiming at the right issue. What I invite my clients to do is to first reflect on the organization’s overall goal. Then link that to the current situation. This way what ever you do, you will be in total alignment with what is best for the business overall.

In this situation you have identified the fact that in order to make your business unit’s goals and the company’s, you need this employee. That is a big step and oftentimes leaders become so emotionally charged by such situations they act before they consider the goals and objectives of the company or the department. I commend you for your forethought. Typically leaders who do this are considered high in emotional intelligence. This has been shown to be one of the key components in assessing one’s long term success in their career.

The next step is to understand the position you and your company are in. Elevate to 50,000 foot level to see the whole situation. Go beyond yourself and ask, “How did this begin to happen? Sometimes we might find the root cause built into the culture of the organization. Is this type of behavior is tolerated here?

In the case of Enron when the CEO learned that two of the traders were stealing from the company he did nothing and then soon after said, ‘keep making us money.’ What they were stealing was minor compared to what they were making the company. He knew that if he took action, he would stop his revenue machine that he needed because it was his end goal. It also gave permission to the others that if they were that good at making money for the company they could steal from the company as well. It was the outcome they got, should not have been a surprise. This is the extreme case of the terrorist working for the company – and it was exaggerated by a lack of moral compass by the leadership. In the case you present, it is apparent that this behavior is contrary to what the leadership tolerates is searching for from a behavior.

Once you go up to the 50,000 foot level and see if the company has had complicity in the situation, then it is good to come down to 10,000 foot perspective and see if “you” have complicity in the situation. To be frank, and I hate doing this in a column where I can’t ask qualifying questions, but it is hard to imagine that you did not allow this to happen. It is not about absolving the terrorist from his behavior because that is wrong, however, if you had stopped the behavior cold, this would never have happened. I say this because the solution, whatever one you choose, will need to involve your being mentored or coached into creating boundaries for your team. Without these boundaries you will be faced with this issue again.

The third part of our position investigation is to go to ground level the situation itself. When we find ourselves in this type of situation with an employee we only have two choices, we can either fire or teach. If an employee makes a mistake, it is because we did not teach them correctly or because they are not capable to do the function. Ask three questions to determine what choice to make. The first, is the employee capable of learning? Secondly, does the organization or I have the time and resources available to train this employee? Lastly, is this employee motivated to learn and change? If you answer anyone of of these questions is NO, the decision is chosen, you need to let this person go. The decision is, as Donald Trump would say, You’re Fired!

It is unclear from your description if the employee has the capacity to change behavior, so I will assume that he is rather good at what he does for your organization and likely has the ability to change. It is clear that for your number one producer you should have the resources and time to help him come into alignment with the company. The bigger issue is that of motivation. Often times a terrorist does not feel the threat of what can happen to them if they don’t start falling in to line. They have become fat, and happy and arrogant! This arrogance is what blocks their ability to realize that they need to change. The company has reached a point where it can no longer tolerate this kind of behavior.

Unlike Donald’s TV Drama we live in the real world, and just letting him go is not a great first choice given the company’s dependence on his revenue.

In almost all other circumstances the move would surely be to fire, but because this employee mean so much to the organizations health as far as revenue.

The last part of understanding our position is to understand whose decision is it to make, and what needs to be done. If the consequences of your actions will compromise the strategic direction of the company, I would invite you to consider involving the senior team and that the responsibility is yours to deal with it, and the final decision may actually be the team’s or the CEO’s call, given its importance to the organization.

This is truly a strategic decision then, it is not simply letting one person go, it is letting many people go, if one presumes in a service firm, lower revenue means fewer employees needed to service the customers.

At this point I would coach you to have a conversation with your CEO and the rest of the strategic team and tell them the steps that you are considering and ask these strategic questions: At what point as an organization are we willing to take a principled stance on the issue over that of revenue? Are we clear what the outcome of this will be to our other employees? Will we need to do cost cutting to compensate for this move? What will the industry see from losing our most talented sales person? Will he go work for our competition? What impact will that have on your company? By working through these strategic issues as an organization and lifting this issue to its proper place the senior team – you will be aligning everyone to be part of the process and stop complaining about it.

By going through these questions the conclusion you may arrive at the end of this process is that you use a three pronged approach to dealing with this situation. Executing three plans simultaneously.

Plan “A” You will need to continue coaching the employee towards the behavior that is in alignment with the firm’s values, beliefs, and rules.

Plan “B”, at the same time I would highly recommend moving the rest of the sales team to a higher level to loose your dependence on this terrorist, and operationalize Plan “C” and start the recruiting process for the possible if not probable replacement of the employee.

It is important that the others on the senior team and your sales team know that you are coaching this employee in these areas of behavior and that it is not sitting OK with you. But no more information than that – it is inappropriate to say more than that in a public setting. It will build your credibility as a leader and not allow one persons behavior sink the culture the company wants to build.

Well, I haven’t found any magic diet programs, and I never saw a get-rich-quick program that really worked, but I do know one “magic” thing you can do to improve your results as a leader.

It doesn’t require any special equipment. You don’t have to take an expensive seminar. It won’t take you a long time to learn.

Here it is. Show up a lot.

Sounds simple, right? How could something so simple possibly produce an improvement in your leadership?

Show up a lot so your arrival won’t be an event. If you only show up to deliver big news, the people who work for you will erect their defensive shields as soon as you appear on the horizon.

Those defensive shields make communication tough. But if you show up a lot, then your appearance is just a normal part of how the world works. The shields stay down and communication can happen.

Show up a lot to learn about your people. Reports and statistics won’t get the job done. You need to see your people in action to understand them. Show up a lot and you’ll learn all about what they do well and poorly.

Show up a lot so your people can learn about you. The best way for them to do that is by seeing you in person.

Show up a lot so you can tell people what’s important. You should have crafted your one or two simple messages about the mission and your people’s part in achieving it. Show up a lot and you get more opportunities to share those messages.

Show up a lot so you can make small course corrections. Your life as a leader will be easier if you can make lots of small course corrections instead of a few big course corrections.

Remember, most effective supervision happens in the cracks in the system. Show up a lot and you’ve got lots of opportunities to make things right.

Show up a lot to learn about the real world. The real world doesn’t come to you in your office, neatly formatted into reports. If you want to get an unfiltered look at reality, get out of your office and around the people who work for you.

But how much is “a lot?” The best answer to that question is: “More than you’re doing right now.”

Make it a priority to get out among the people who work for you. Don’t just swoop in then swoop out, either.

To get benefits from showing up you have to stay and watch and listen and communicate. You have to take every encounter with someone who works for you as an opportunity to communicate, coach, encourage, and correct.

Don’t expect instant trust. If you haven’t been showing up much, your people will probably not trust you when you suddenly start acting different. It will take time for your behavior to change their expectations. Hang in there. The benefits are worth it.

Showing up a lot is an easy concept to grasp, but you have to turn it into a habit. That takes time, a month at least, but probably more. And it takes effort and attention. In the beginning, you’ll probably need to schedule your “showing up” time.

Showing up a lot won’t help you lose weight or turn you into a millionaire overnight. But it just might be the one “magic” behavior that will make you a better leader.

Establish Agreed Meetings Structure, by: informing and discussing proposed changes with all senior level stakeholders; agreeing and implementing the revised or new structure; providing training for new roles and approaches, where necessary. Changing the existing framework and format of senior level meetings will inevitably cause some disruption and possibly some conflict. However, it is essential that the organisation has structures and processes in place, at all levels, and in all areas of activity, that support and contribute to the strategic direction taken by the organisation. Meetings are a key part of the communication, information management, and decision making processes, and must therefore be shaped and managed to meet the needs of these functions. Any difficulties that change in this area brings, must be dealt with and overcome.

Planning for meetings for the leader, by: discussing and agreeing with colleagues, when appropriate, the purpose of the meeting; deciding on the purpose of the meeting; setting clear and precise objectives, as outcomes of the meeting; deciding on who should attend, though this might be a by-default list it is still necessary to review this regularly; set an appropriate date, time, and place for the meeting,again a default may apply, but should be reviewed regularly; issue an agenda to all participants and to all other stakeholders; issue supporting information in time for participants to become familiar with it; arrange pre-meeting discussions where necessary; ensure that necessary administrative arrangements will be made; complete personal participation preparation. Planning for meetings for the participants, by: ensuring that all participants are made aware of their obligations to prepare professionally for the meeting; ensuring that participants are provided with all necessary information to enable them to contribute to the meeting effectively; arranging for pre-meeting discussions with participants with particular concerns or needs regarding the meeting; adjusting the agenda to take into account legitimate specific needs of individual participants. In ensuring that each individual meeting is effective, planning is the most important stage. As with all key activities, appropriate preparation is the key to success. Even regularly scheduled meetings should be prepared for in the manner described above. The most common reason for regular meetings losing their credibility and influence is that each meeting is not given sufficient individual attention. The purpose, the desired outcomes, attendees, format, frequency, timing, location, should all be reviewed regularly. The leader must ensure that each meeting is managed professionally and that its purpose is not diluted by lack of preparation, not on the part of the leader, or chairperson, nor on the part of any of the attendees.

Chairing Meetings Effectively, by: being fully prepared, as described above; arriving in advance to oversee final preparations; welcoming participants as they arrive; starting the meeting at the agreed time; introducing new participants; summarising the format of the meeting; reiterating the purpose of the meeting; reiterating the agenda; shaping and controlling the nature and direction of discussion on each agenda item; ensuring that each participant is encouraged to contribute appropriately; remaining as objective as possible; summarising progress and decisions, at appropriate intervals; managing the time spent on each agenda item and overall; reviewing key discussion points and decisions made; confirming individual and collective follow-up actions; thanking participants for their contributions; reminding participants of the next scheduled meeting; formally close the meeting. When taking the role of Chair, the leader is highly visible, and the way in which they manage the meeting will be judged by the participants and add to or detract from their opinion of the leader’s capabilities. For this reason, the leader must ensure that when they personally chair meetings, they do this in a professional, firm but fair manner. Although some would argue that the Chair of a meeting should remain unbiased and act purely as a facilitator, this is not possible when the Chair is also the leader, or one of the leaders, of the organisation. Nevertheless, when acting as Chair, the leader should make every effort to facilitate effectively, whilst also presenting their own views when appropriate. A difficult role, but one that must be carried out well.

Follow Up Effectively, by: ensuring that all key discussion points, issues raised, decisions made, actions agreed, are recorded accurately; distributing the minutes of the meetings to participants; requesting action plans from participants who have agreed to take follow up actions; monitoring the progress on follow up actions; obtaining feedback from participants on their view of the effectiveness of the meeting; adjusting the approach to future meetings as necessary.

In Summary: although managing meetings at a senior level can appear to be technically straightforward, these meetings play a critical role in the strategic level communication process, and if ineffective will seriously damage the quality of this activity. In addition, poorly managed meetings can damage relationships between the leader(s) and the team and between team members. The objective of senior management meetings are to inform, discuss, make and confirm support for decisions, and agree continuing support for, or changes to, the strategic direction of the organisation. The role of the leader is to ensure that these meetings are planned and managed effectively, are productive in terms of outcomes, and contribute to maintaining the quality of communications at the senior level.

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The ancient Greeks had a saying: “When Aschines speaks, the people say, ‘How well he speaks,’ but when Demosthenes speaks, the people say, ‘Let’s march against Philip!’”.

To get the best results as a leader, the people you lead should be saying in one way or the other after you speak, “Let’s march!”

When you speak to people as a leader, it’s not what you say that’s really important, what’s important is the action people take after you have had your say. And if you are not having the people you lead take the right action, you’re giving short shrift to your leadership, their trust in you, and their desire to take action for you.

Here are the 8 ways of right action to get people marching in the right way for the right purpose at the right time in the right direction.

Action must be:

(1) PHYSICAL. Action is not what the audience thinks or feels. It is what the audience actually does. Usually, the audience takes action with their feet and hands and tools. When thinking of what action you want your audience to take, imagine their actually doing something physical, and you are on track. Getting your audience to take right action involves challenging them to do one specific thing. When Ronald Reagan said in his speech at the Berlin Wall, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” he was delivering a call-to-action that was a stunning turning point in the Cold War. In your day to day leadership activities, you are probably not meeting such daunting challenges as winning a war, but you can use the principle to raise the effectiveness of your leadership to much higher levels.

(2) PURPOSEFUL. People who take action are useless to an organization. It is only those people who take action for results who are useful. Make sure their action has purpose. The secret of success is constancy of purpose. When your audience does take action, they should know exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it. Purpose in leadership talk has three aspects: reason, feeling and awareness. People should understand the rational justification for the action; they should have an emotional commitment to the action; and be fully mindful that they are taking action.

(3) HONEST. If you trick people into taking action or lie to get them to take action, you’ll damage that element on which all motivation is based, trust. Afterward, you may be able to order them to do a job, but you will never motivate them. Be honest with yourself in developing your call-to-action. Marcus Aurelius said, “Never esteem anything as an advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.” Be honest with them in challenging them to act. I do not recommend this merely on trustworthy grounds but on eminently practical ones as well. After all, we do not know how good we are as leaders unless we are challenging the people to be better than they think they are. And they cannot be persuaded to accept that challenge if they think we’re deceiving them or that you are deceiving yourself.

(4) MEANINGFUL. Action gives meaning to the emotion your audience feels. Emotion alone cannot get results. It’s action that gets results. Action validates emotion, and vice versa.

Leaders who find little meaning in their jobs or the results associated with those jobs, shouldn’t be leaders, or they should change jobs and/or results. Most leaders understand this. But few leaders understand that meaning also involves the jobs of the people they are leading and the attitudes of those people toward those jobs and the results the jobs aim for.

Your cause should be meaningful to the people who must carry it out. If it is only your cause and not their cause, the action they take will get insufficient results. Your cause will be meaningful to them when that actions they take to meet the challenges of that cause are solving the problems of THEIR needs. So, before you challenge them to take action, identify their needs and the problem solving actions.

(5) LINKED TO NEED. The people’s needs are their reality. If you are an order leader, you clearly do not have to know their needs. You simply exhibit a my-way-or-the-highway attitude. But if you want to motivate them to take action, you need to understand that reality. Because their motivation is not your choice, it’s their choice. Your role is to communicate, their role is to motivate, to motivate themselves. It’s their choice. It’s not yours. So their needs are not only their reality, in the leadership equation, their needs are the only reality. They don’t care about your needs. They don’t care about your reality. They only care about their reality. Tie the action you want them to take to THEIR NEEDS, not yours. Which means of course that you have to clearly identify their needs.

(6) URGENT: Patience is a virtue, but it can also be a tender trap. Urgency is a results-multiplier. A Roman centurion said the secret to instilling urgency in the troops was summed up in two words, “hit them.” His credo lives today in the order leader — not necessarily in a physical sense but more importantly in a psychological sense. But trying to gain urgency through “hit them” is far less effective than having urgency come from the people’s internal motivation. Here’s a process to have people take urgent action: IDENTIFY THEIR NEEDS, SEE THE PROBLEMS IN THEIR NEEDS, AND HAVE THEIR TAKING ACTION PROVIDE SOLUTIONS TO THOSE PROBLEMS.

For instance, in a police academy, an instructor came into the room with a note that said CLEAR OUT THIS ROOM IMMEDIATELY. The first cadet ordered his colleagues out. A few cadets left but most stayed. The instructor handed the note to a second cadet who pleaded for his classmates to leave. Again, a few left but most stayed. Finally, the instructor gave the note to a third cadet. This cadet understood how to identify needs and have people take action to solve those needs. He said two words, which emptied the room. “Lunch break!”

People are always willing to take ardent action to solve the problems of their needs. The question is can you identify those needs. Once you do, you hare half way home to getting them to take such action.

(7) GIVEN A DEADLINE: All action you have people take must have a deadline. Otherwise, it might become a low priority for them, and they will not be especially urged to take it. Be constantly monitoring yourself when motivating people to take action by asking, “Have I a put a deadline to this action?” If you haven’t, do it.

(8) FED BACK: True motivation isn’t what the people do in your sight. True motivation is what they do after they have left your sight. Many leaders get the “head fake” from the people they’re leading — their nodding their heads and saying, “Yes,” face-to-face with the leader; but inside saying, “No.” When they leave your presence, they do what they want, not what you want. Make sure that the action you challenge them to take is fed back to you, so that you are aware — and they are aware that you are aware — of that action.

Leaders do nothing more important than get results, and results come from people taking action.

The trouble is, most leaders have people get a fraction of the potential results because these leaders misunderstand what action really is — and in that misunderstanding misapply and misuse it.

When speaking to people, keep the eight ways of right action in mind so people take the right action to achieve the right results.

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An extraordinary feature of the human heart is its capacity to be profoundly changed in an instant. Experiences that take place in the blink of an eye can propel individuals to radically alter their behavior and even the course of their lives.

Making use of this inherent quality of the heart can boost the effectiveness of your leadership. For it is in the realm of heartfelt words and actions that great leadership results accrue.

For the past 22 years, I’ve been teaching a process to leaders of all ranks and functions in top companies worldwide, a process that can help you take advantage of the heart’s great potential. It’s called The Leadership Talk.

The Leadership Talk is a way of making deep, emotional connections with the people for the purpose of achieving great results. Specifically, the Leadership Talk motivates people to choose to be your cause leaders. Only cause leaders can achieve great results consistently. To prompt people to take leadership for your cause, you must develop a special relationship with them. After all, one may do a task and get average results; but to get great results, one should take leadership of that task. Taking on leadership for your cause will require they embrace higher levels of expectations and achievements. So it is not a commitment people will make easily or lightly.

Your giving a Leadership Talk — i.e, saying those things that will motivate the people to help lead your cause – can take any length of time. I’ve seen people give a successful Talk in just a few minutes. I’ve seen people give a series of Talks over days and weeks before their audiences would make the choice. However, because of the heart’s extraordinary dynamics, a Leadership Talk can be done in a moment. Here are a few “instant Leadership Talks.” Note that sometimes no words were involved. Words are not absolutely necessary when it comes to giving Leadership Talks.

–Seeing abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison dragged with a rope down a Boston Street by a pro-slavery mob, Wendell Phillips became so outraged that he joined the abolitionist movement and became one of its most effective activists.

–When anti-French passions were sweeping England in the late 18th century, Voltaire who had been living in London for several years was set upon by an angry mob. “Hang the Frenchman! Hang him!” shouted the rabble.

Voltaire responded, “Men of England! You wish to hang me because I’m French? Isn’t NOT BEING BORN ENGLISH PUNISHMENT ENOUGH?” The crowd laughed and cheered and escorted him back to his quarters.

–Doug Collins, member of the ’72 U.S. Olympic team that ultimately lost the gold medal on a disputed call to the Soviet Union, describes the dramatic moments at the end of the game.
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“We’re losing by one. The Soviets have the ball. The clock’s running out. I hide behind the center, bait a guy into throwing a pass, knock it loose and grab it. A Russian goes under me as I’m going up for the lay-up. I’m KO’d for a second. The coaches run to me. John Bach, one of the assistants, says, ‘We gotta get somebody to shoot the fouls.” But coach Hank Iba says, ‘If Doug can walk, he’ll shoot.’ That electrified me. The coach believed in me. I can’t even remember feeling any pressure. Three dribbles, spin the ball, toss it in, same as in my backyard. I hit ‘em both and got the lead. I didn’t know what I was made of until then.”

–a General Electric client of mine told me this. “I was a young Naval officer reporting with many other new sailors aboard an aircraft carrier. The captain met us in a formation on the flight deck. He shook my hand and went down the line greeting many other sailors. I didn’t think anything of it until several weeks later when he passed by me in a passageway. He said, ‘Hi, Herb!’ I never forgot that. He remembered my name despite the fact that he had met scores of new sailors that day. It’s made a tremendous impact on me till this day.”

–In the first December of the first World War, Admiral Beatty received a radiogram from Sir George Warrender from his ship. “Scarborough being shelled. I am proceeding to Hull.” Lord Beatty replied, “Are you? I’m proceeding to Scarborough.”

–King Henry II and Thomas Becket, his archbishop of Canterbury, quarreled for years over the rights and powers of the church and the state. When Becket remained steadfast in his excommunication of Henry’s appointees, the Bishops of London and Salibury, Henry, celebrating Christmas in Normandy, raged, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” Four knights, members of his household, answered the question. They crossed the Channel, rode to the Cantebury Cathedral and killed Becket at the altar. Eventually, the Cantebury Cathedral became a shrine, Becket was canonized, and Henry was made to atone by walking barefoot in a sack-cloth through the streets of Cantebury being flogged by eight monks with branches.

–At a public meeting during which he was censuring the recently dead Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev was interrupted by a voice in the crowd. “You were one of Stalin’s colleagues, why didn’t you stop him?”

“Who said that?” Stalin roared. There was a painful silence in the room.

“Now,” Khruschev said, in a quiet voice, “you know why.”

-A year and a half after the battle of Yorktown, the Continental Army was becoming increasingly rebellious. Many of the troops hadn’t been paid in two years. Their promised pensions were not forthcoming. The troops and its officer corps contemplated overthrowing the Continental Congress and installing a military government. On the Ides of March in 1783, dozens of officers, representing every company in the army, met in a log hut to vote on taking this action when George Washington suddenly and unexpectedly walked in. He gave a speech denouncing the rebellious course they were on. But it wasn’t the speech that carried the day, it was the Leadership Talk at the end of the speech. Witnesses report that Washington’s speech left many officers unconvinced, and when he was finished, there was angry muttering among them. To bolster his case, the general pulled out a letter he recently received from a member of the Continental Congress. As he began reading, his usual confident air gave way to hesitancy. Then, unexpectedly, he drew out a spectacle case from his pocket. Few officers had ever seen him put on spectacles. Usually a severely formal man, he said, in a voice softened with apology: “Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country.”

The deep, human, emotional power of that moment electrified the officers. Here was their commander who had never taken a furlough during his eight years of command, who had faced storms of musketry fire, who through his daring and intelligence had kept the Army in tact in what most of the world thought was a lost cause, here was George Washington modestly asking his officers to bear with him in an all-too-human failing. It was an astonishing turning point.

As Maj. Samuel Shaw, who was present, put it in his journal, “There was something so natural, so unaffected in this appeal as rendered it superior to the most studied oratory. It forced its way to the heart, and you might see sensibility moisten every eye.”

After Washington left the hut, the officers unanimously voted to “continue to have unshaken confidence in the justice of the Congress and their country ….” The result was that the Continental Army disbanded without incident and thereby set in motion the relatively peaceful events that led to the creation of the Constitution.

There are countless more examples of a moment’s action or words having a great effect on people’s lives.

–Winston Churchill: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

–John Kennedy: “Ask not what your country can do for you ….”

- Muhammad Ali making history in 1967 at an Army recruiting station in Houston, Texas when he refused to take one step forward with a group of fellow inductees to indicate his willingness to be drafted, a refusal which led to his being stripped of his heavyweight championship title.

–Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in 1095 exhorting the knights of Europe to set off on the First Crusade to capture the Holy Land, ending one of the most important speeches in all of history with this rousing cry: “Deus vult!” (“God wills it!”)

–Ronald Reagan: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

–Samuel Alito’s wife fleeing the hearing room in tears and prompting the Democratic leaders to sheathe their critical knives and end their verbal assault on the judge, paving the way for his appointment to the Supreme Court.

I am not saying that every instant Leadership Talk will work. The time has to be right, the situation right, the speaker right, and the audience right. However, when the right things come together, all it takes to trigger great change may be — like a diamond cutter’s single blow precisely cleaving the gem — a momentary Leadership Talk. As we’ve seen, that Talk can be a few words, one word or no words at all.

Because of the heart’s capacity to be changed in an instant, the length of time you interact with someone to gain their heartfelt response is irrelevant. When you master The Leadership Talk, you can make that impact consistently with many people throughout your entire career.

This has become an epidemic in many places and organization. This fear shuts down communication,

creates more challenges and generally comes with a high price tag.
“But what if my decision cost me or the company?” are words I hear people say.
So they want to analyze everything almost to the death of the original choice.
The fear of being wrong can cripple them into never succeeding. Yet, it is ok to not get it right each time.

It is about learning and growth, just as you did as a child, It is ok.

I have seem organizations and governments hold off on decisions until they have taken the time to hire a committee to research, analyze and bring in data, even on smaller issues. I have also seen committees come back with, that the results were inconclusive. So they shelf the idea and the opportunity has passed them by.

Now I would in no way promote people being reckless and choosing blindly, but there needs to be a time where you stand up and decide and let the chips fall where they may.

Let’s look at how most successful entrepreneurs deal with decisions. They make them. And they make them as quick as possible, often without all of the information in front of them. Through experience, they have learned to trust their instincts and have learned to communicate with themselves on the issues.
How did they get the experience?

Through making decisions and learning from their mistakes. They often state that you need to “fall forward fast”, learn what works and doesn’t work, learn from your mistakes and move forward.

While others are waiting until everything is perfect, they are succeeding with a wealth of experience and understanding behind them.

Many successful corporations just got their product and service out there and fixed things along the way as they received the feedback from clients and customers.

There were others with similar products of a much higher quality, but they never succeeded because they waited for everything to be right, while the decision makers cornered the market.

It is important to remember that decision, create more decision. Once you decide something, it can lead you to make decisions that are more informed. It is the same principle as energy begets energy. Getting started is the hardest motion, but once you get going the momentum increases and most things get easier.

If decisions still scare you start with something small and practice, practice, practice. Don’t have regrets, just learn from them and move forward. It could be as simple as what to have for breakfast. Decide quickly and if it wasn’t the best decision, so what, you learned something. Another meal is soon approaching giving you more opportunities to decide. Then expand to more and more important issues, while you discover your inner power and control over your own life.
Remember, you are already on your way. After all you decided to read this.

In Part One, I described the Leadership Talk and how it is a much more effective leadership tool than presentations or speeches.

I also described two fundamental premises that the Leadership Talk is based on.

In Part Two, I will show you the purpose of the Leadership Talk. You won’t be able to give a Leadership Talk effectively on a consistent basis if you misunderstand its purpose.

Do not judge a book by its cover; so don’t just scan through this matter on leadership. read it thoroughly to judge its value and importance.

The Leadership Talk doesn’t drive purpose. Purpose drives the Leadership Talk. There is one and only one purpose of the Leadership Talk: that’s to motivate people to be your cause leaders in meeting the challenges you face.

This is important in understanding the difference between Leadership Talks and presentations/speeches.

You’re a leader. You have a task to complete. Do you want the people you lead to simply do the task? Or do you want those people to actually take leadership of accomplishing the task? For the difference between doing and leading in terms of accomplishment is stock car and a formula 1 racer.

Clearly, you can order them to accomplish the task; and if you’re in a position of authority, they will most likely carry out the order. But they might not do it with full commitment. Or they may resent being ordered. Or they may be inclined to do nothing unless ordered, and so after accomplishing the task, they do little else but wait for the next order.

It may take some time to comprehend the matter on leadership that we have listed here. However, it is only through it’s complete comprehension would you get the right picture of leadership.

However, their committing to take leadership involves your establishing a special relationship with them.

For instance, going back to the example I used in Part One, if one is a floor sweeper, one does the best floor sweeping, not simply by doing it but by taking leadership of floor sweeping.

Such leadership might entail: taking the initiative to order and manage supplies; evaluating the job results and raising those results to ever higher levels; having floor sweeping be an integral part of the general cleaning policy; hiring, training, developing other floor sweepers; instilling a “floor sweeping esprit”that can be manifested in training; special uniforms and insignias; behavior, etc.; setting floor sweeping strategy and goals.

We hope you develop a better understanding of leadership on completion of this article on leadership. Only if the article is understood is it’s benefit reached.

Otherwise, in a “doing” mode, one simply pushes a broom.

You may say, “Listen, Brent, a job is a job is a job. This leadership thing is making too much of not much!”

Could be. But my point is that applying leadership to a task changes the expectations of the task. It even changes the task itself. Think of it, when we ourselves are challenged to lead and not simply do, our world is, I submit, changed.

Furthermore, though you may order people to do a job, you can’t order anybody to take leadership of it. It’s their choice whether they take it or not.

After many hopeless endeavors to produce something worthwhile on leadership, this is what we have come up with. We are very hopeful about this!

The completion of this article on leadership was our prerogative since the past one month. However, we completed it within a matter of fifteen days!

This is where the Leadership Talk comes in. Using it, you set up the environment in which they make that choice.

The Leadership Talk is not only the most important way to get cause leaders; it is the only way to get them on a consistent basis.

So what is your verdict on this composition on leadership? Are there anymore unanswered questions about leadership in your mind?

Some people view time management as a list of rules that involves scheduling of appointments, goal settings, thorough planning, creating things to do lists and prioritizing. These are the core basics of time management that should be understood to develop an efficient personal time management skill. These basic skills can be fine tuned further to include the finer points of each skill that can give you that extra reserve to make the results you desire.

But there is more skills involved in time management than the core basics. Skills such as decision making, inherent abilities such as emotional intelligence and critical thinking are also essential to your personal growth.

Personal time management involves everything you do. No matter how big and no matter how small, everything counts. Each new knowledge you acquire, each new advice you consider, each new skill you develop should be taken into consideration.

Having a balanced life-style should be the key result in having personal time management. This is the main aspect that many practitioners of personal time management fail to grasp.

Time management is about getting results, not about being busy.

The six areas that personal time management seeks to improve in anyone’s life are physical, intellectual, social, career, emotional and spiritual.

The physical aspect involves having a healthy body, less stress and fatigue.

The intellectual aspect involves learning and other mental growth activities.

The social aspect involves developing personal or intimate relations and being an active contributor to society.

The career aspect involves school and work.

The emotional aspect involves appropriate feelings and desires and manifesting them.

The spiritual aspect involves a personal quest for meaning.

Thoroughly planning and having a set of things to do list for each of the key areas may not be very practical, but determining which area in your life is not being giving enough attention is part of time management. Each area creates the whole you, if you are ignoring one area then you are ignoring an important part of yourself.

Personal time management should not be so daunting a task. It is a very sensible and reasonable approach in solving problems big or small.

A great way of learning time management and improving your personal life is to follow several basic activities.

One of them is to review your goals whether it be immediate or long-term goals often.

A way to do this is to keep a list that is always accessible to you.

Always determine which task is necessary or not necessary in achieving your goals and which activities are helping you maintain a balanced life style.

Each and everyone of us has a peek time and a time when we slow down, these are our natural cycles. We should be able to tell when to do the difficult tasks when we are the sharpest.

Learning to say “No”. You actually see this advice often. Heed it even if it involves saying the word to family or friends.

Pat yourself at the back or just reward yourself in any manner for an effective time management result.

Try and get the cooperation from people around you who are actually benefiting from your efforts of time management.

Don’t procrastinate. Attend to necessary things immediately.

Have a positive attitude and set yourself up for success. But be realistic in your approach in achieving your goals.

Have a record or journal of all your activities. This will help you get things in their proper perspective.

These are the few steps you initially take in becoming a well rounded individual.

As the say personal time management is the art and science of building a better life.

From the moment you integrate into your life time management skills, you have opened several options that can provide a broad spectrum of solutions to your personal growth. It also creates more doors for opportunities to knock on.

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Your Ultimate Leadership Feedback Loop: Their Leadership
by Brent Filson

Life on our planet flourishes through feedback. If life forms don’t develop feedback loops and get good information about how well they are interacting with their world, the world eventually destroys them.

This holds true with leaders. Leaders must get feedback as to how they’re doing — otherwise they won’t be leaders for long.

One kind of feedback is results. After all, leaders do nothing more important than get results. You should understand the kinds of results you’re getting, if they are the right results, and if you are getting them in the right ways.

There is another kind of measurement that is as important, and sometimes more important, than results. It’s a measurement most leaders overlook. That measurement has to do not just with you but with the people you’re leading.

To explain what that measurement is, I’ll first describe a fundamental concept of how one goes about leading people to achieve results.

There’s a crucial difference between doing a task and taking leadership of that task that makes a world of difference in the task’s accomplishment.

For instance, if one is a floor sweeper, doesn’t one best accomplish one’s task not simply by doing floor sweeping but by taking leadership of floor sweeping?

Such leadership might entail:
— taking the initiative to order and manage supplies,
— evaluating the job results and raising those results to ever higher levels,
— having floor sweeping be an integral part of the general cleaning policy,
— hiring, training, developing other floor sweepers,
— instilling a “floor sweeping esprit”that can be manifested in training, special uniforms and insignias , behavior, etc.
— setting floor sweeping strategy and goals.

Otherwise, in a “doing” mode, one simply pushes a broom.

You may say, “Listen, Brent, a job is a job is a job. This leadership thing is making too much of not much!”

Could be. But my point is that applying leadership to a task changes the expectations of the task. It even changes the task itself. Think of it, when we ourselves are challenged to lead and not simply do, our world is, I submit, changed.

Whenever you need to lead people to accomplish a task, challenge them not to do that task but to take leadership of that task.

This gets back to the key measurement of your leadership. Your leadership should best be measured not by your leadership but by the leadership of the people you lead.

Now, in becoming leaders, they can’t simply do what they want. They must come to an agreement with you as to what leadership actions they will take. You can veto any of their proposed actions. However, use the veto sparingly. Cultivate your confidence and their confidence in their leadership.

When you evaluate the effectiveness of your leadership by the feedback loop connected to their leadership, you are assessing your world as it should be, and great results will follow.

2006

In spite of all the leadership texts, containing a veritable plethora of theories about leadership (each of which is THE KEY), leadership remains a very individual concept, exercised in many diverse yet successful ways. Indeed, successful application always results in leadership. Unsuccessful application is invariably counter-productive. So, is this another theory? No, but I will share with you some of my observations about where to look for leadership. It’s my belief that although we may not be able to define it very precisely, we can recognize it when we see it.

We know that there are people called “formal leaders” and “informal leaders” in some of the literature. I am not going to talk about those “formal leaders,” because they are by definition occupying positions of authority (i.e., a supervisory position) and that is their sole claim to leadership. “Informal leaders,” on the other hand, exercise leadership from positions not formally designated for leadership, thus causing a problem for the organization. How the informal leader arises is curious, but it can often be caused by the lack of leadership in the “formal” position. But that doesn’t mean that the “great man” theory takes place (that’s the one that says when a crisis occurs and there’s no one prepared to deal with it, someone will rise to the occasion and deal with it). Why is someone not in a leadership position given authority by the group in which they work to exercise leadership?

There are, of course, several answers to that question, so let’s examine some of them. It may be that the one who is the leader is a confident (at least confidently-acting) person with a bit of charisma, thus one who offers logical answers to questions from the group, and who may have the ability to demonstrate that they have good ideas. We often see this in groups that begin by discussing particular problems; if no one is specifically “in charge,” the leader who emerges is often the person who demonstrates the most passion about the topic.

Or, they may simply be someone who is impatient for action, and goads others into a particular action that appears to achieve some common goals. In this case, the group tends to rally behind the “visionary.” Sometimes, the visionary doesn’t have much of a vision, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of pursuing one (or of having one in the first place).

Another possibility is that one of this group recognizes that things can be done in a way to benefit everyone involved, much like the development of John Nash’s gaming theory (the basis for the movie, “A Beautiful Mind”). The concern is not for the betterment, enrichment or even recognition of the leader, rather for the achievement of group goals, including the entire organization.

When we find this leader of the latter sort, John Collins, in his book Good to Great, calls them “Level 5″ leaders. They are the ones who are passionate about achievement of the whole, not of themselves individually. These leaders aren’t heralded, because they don’t blow their own horns. They are too busy working toward meaningful goals to be distracted by something so counter-productive. Yet they do some particular things that we can see “proves” their leadership. Some of those things are where I’d like to focus this discussion.

Leaders who are passionate about their vision (they ALWAYS have a vision), are careful to make sure everyone in the organization knows what that vision is. They will indoctrinate everyone so that it is not simply a vision, but a tangible part of the environment, so much so that it will go home with employees at night. Everything that flows, then, is a reflection of that vision, because the vision becomes the beacon that guides the actions of everyone in the organization.

Those leaders know their people well: their personalities, their histories, their passions. The leader knows them because of the leadership involved in attracting and retaining the right people to “get the job done.” They reach back to the theory of W. Edwards Deming, not necessarily for Statistical Process Control techniques (although they are valuable), but for Deming’s “14 Points,” one of which is to insure adequate and continuous training. If the right people are in the job and they are given the resources to get the job done, cheerleading is a waste of time, because these workers already get out of bed in the morning excited about going to work. Motivation? It’s boiling inside each one of them, and they don’t need slogans or mantras, or group meetings to cheer about history, because the “self-actualized” person is also self-motivated. They know their jobs, they know what’s expected of them, and they know that they have a responsibility to the rest of the employees to do the best job they possibly can. One reason that happens is that the individual has been involved in development of their job and their responsibilities for that job, they’ve been informed about how their job fits into the overall scheme, and they are intimately involved in changes that occur in the company. Revolutionary? No, it’s been in the books for decades.

When leaders develop this kind of employee and the managers to supervise those employees, they are freed up to do the visionary tasks: keeping the goal in sight, and making the course corrections necessary when changing conditions require them. Tweaking is a skill these leaders have that is taught in no school, which makes it that much more valuable.

In my history is a ten-year stint as a division controller for a manufacturing firm. The division manager was a true visionary, who brought the division from a lackluster, poorly motivated, money losing operation to an energetic, proud organization that had attained ISO 9000 certification on its way to becoming profitable as well. Over those ten years, I watched that manager steadfastly steer the division in the direction his vision so clearly defined. Not all of his actions were exactly right, but that didn’t keep us from learning from them. And the division became a model for the corporation, while the division manager became a regional manager so his skills could be used in other divisions as well. He had learned that putting the team together was his biggest job, but once that was done, the team drove the progress. He simply got out of the way. His time was not spent showing what he’d done, it was spent in providing the tools to the team members so they could get where he wanted faster. If he needed to do something that should be done by one of the team members, that team member was, by definition, unnecessary, and was eliminated. That doesn’t mean that mistakes weren’t tolerated, nor that effort wasn’t made to insure the team member was adequately placed and trained. But when it became obvious that change was necessary, it occurred quickly and cleanly. It was truly a joy to work there, but especially to observe that unsung leadership in action.

There are some things we as individuals can do, if we want to develop our own leadership:

1. Keep focused on the primary goal for your company. Never let yourself be distracted from that.

2. Surround yourself not with those who only agree with you, but with the right people for the job you need done, then train them and provide them the tools to do the job.

3. Recognize the benefits of having different personalities around you. Not only do separate skill sets come with different personalities, but different approaches that are essential to your company’s success.

4. Having hired the right people, get out of their way. If you must micromanage them, you don’t need them. This is not a big problem, however, since they won’t stay anyway, if you treat them with so little respect.

5. Remember always to consult your feedback loop in all your processes, to make sure things are working as you expect, and that you can make appropriate changes timely. Failure to do this with hasten the failure of your organization in total. Recall that your feedback loop is only as valuable as the people from whom you get feedback. Listen to them.

6. Know when you have exceeded your limitations, and acknowledge it. Then get help to overcome it.

Each of us has the capability to be a leader. We will only become effective leaders, however, when we lose our fear of making mistakes, and share responsibility for achievement of the goals of the organization. If those goals are our individual measures of achievement, then the organization will work to succeed and achieve; if they are not, we will be the transient leader that gets things going, but fails by failing to share credit and push for only the good of the organization.

Dare to achieve.