October 2010

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A Global Leadership Passport for The Flat World

October 29, 2010 in Change Leadership, L3 Leadership, Leadership Coaching, Leadership development by Marc Michaelson | 3 comments

This is the second post on Attaining An Organizational Passport, this post will move to the next level which is what is needed for a Global Leadership Passport for The Flat World.

The World Is Flat–and so are leadership competencies.

In his best selling book, The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman  noted that shifts in technology, transportation, communication, and market conditions are leveling the playing field for organizations around the globe. Once powerful regional advantages (or disadvantages) are becoming increasingly irrelevant as companies exercise their freedom to design, manufacture, and market their products and services from anywhere on the planet.  Due to globalization, a new type of corporate leader is emerging – the  “global leader”.

Who is a Global Leader?  A global leader is anyone having global responsibility over any business activity. Global leaders are individuals who have an extraordinary capacity to unify an international workforce around a vision through demonstration of personal mastery, creating global collaborative advantage, anticipating opportunities, and using shared leadership networks to get things done.

What characteristics define a successful global leader?  I have read all the major studies and books on this topic—the common attributes fall into these four clusters of skills and knowledge

1. Leadership Cluster: Personal Mastery, Integrity and Authenticity, Shared Vision, Empower People, Collaborative Context

2. Business Cluster: Anticipate Opportunity, Ensure Customer Satisfaction, Achieve Competitive Advantage, Build Global Team and Networks

3. National Cluster: Gain Cultural Knowledge, Appreciate Cultural Diversity

4. Global Cluster: Global Thinking, Leading Change, Technological Savvy, Unifying a Global Workforce

Today’s leaders are catalysts and facilitators of collective intelligence across teams, departments, business units, national and global business regions. This  requires the leader to blend the self-interests inherent within groups and cultures with a common purpose.   This gives a global leaders the capacity to become a cultural integrator.  They learn to see similarities and differences among people.  Global leaders accept that others may have different values than their own, they look for ways to discover those differences, break down the walls between them, and celebrate their commonalities.  They connect on some things and extract lessons from what’s different, always using the differences to build sturdier bridges.

When leaders achieve this balance they have attained what they need to earn their Global Leadership Passport for a Flat World.

Why You Must Attain An Organizational Passport

October 27, 2010 in Change Leadership, L3 Leadership, Leadership Coaching, Leadership development by Marc Michaelson | 1 comment

This is part one of a two part post:

Have you applied for — or received your Organizational Passport?

As today’s business challenges span across boundaries, so too must leadership. The ever-increasing complexity and interdependence of today’s world calls for a critical transformation in leadership from managing and protecting boundaries to boundary crossing and spanning.  The new call is for increased capability to create direction, alignment, and commitment across boundaries in an effort to build a vision of  of a higher goal. Goals  that cross organizational boundaries and bust the silos that are impeding progress in the new world of business.

The Center for Creative Leadership did a study in 2008 that reflected on this current challenge. They found that 86% of the senior executives believe it is “extremely important” for them to work effectively across boundaries in their current leadership role. Yet, only 7% of these executives believe they are currently “very effective” at doing so. Closing this gap is both a critical challenge and a transformative opportunity for leaders and organizations to survive and ultimately thrive in today’s business environment.

An “Organizational Passsport” offers you the opportunity to  establish direction, alignment, and commitment across boundaries in service of a collaborative vision and goal. The capability to do this resides within and across individuals, groups and teams, and larger organizations and systems.

More from the study: There is a mission critical gap in the ability of leadership to work across boundaries. When asked to rate managers in their organization, only 53% agreed that their peer group of senior executives were effective in working across boundaries. This percentage dropped to 19% for middle managers and fell to just 8% for entry level managers.

A block is created when middle managers fail to make the shift from a bounded, within-organization mindset to a boundary busting, cross group mindset. Our work with leaders has demonstrated that  the ability to collaborate across boundaries becomes more important as they moved from middle- to senior-level management. Failure to make this shift can be the difference between success and derailment as managers progress in their careers.

Effective organizational leadership occurs when groups collaborate across boundaries to achieve outcomes that are above and beyond what those groups could achieve on their own.

When senior executives recognize the potential for collaborative outcomes and in turn, role model these behaviors, their organizations start applying for the “Organizational Passport“, the permission to cross boundaries to build collaborative advantage.

To create direction, alignment, and commitment across boundaries, leaders need to work together across differences that traditionally divide them.

Spanning boundaries provides not only a challenge for leaders, but also a significant opportunity for new learning and development. In reaching across boundaries, leaders learn to broaden their perspectives, to practice new collaborative skills and to develop the behaviors needed to foster cross-organizational innovation and transformation.

Next post will cover what is needed to apply and receive and Organizational Passport!

Rethinking Performance Reviews: Utilize Your Coachable Moments!

October 23, 2010 in L3 Leadership, Leadership Coaching, Leadership development, Management Training by Marc Michaelson | 2 comments

Personal performance— beyond raw talent, relies on feedback, adjustments and practice.  Feedback, adjustments, practice?  This is what coaching is all about. And, it works best when it is a key element of the relationship a manager has with their direct reports.  When leaders and managers develop a “coaching relationship” with their reports, the opportunity to offer feedback for adjustments, a contract for making these adjustments, and a safe space to practice the changes–are all possible!

You may  or may not know this, but you miss out, or take advantage of coaching moments every day.

These moments, when taken advantage of add up over time,  are way more powerful than your formal annual or semi-annual performance reviews. Way more!

Try this, dedicate a portion of each of your one-on-one sessions with your directs to be focused developmental coaching .  By doing this you will create a means for open dialog and partnership for performance forward.   Make sure you create a joint vision for the positive outcomes of your partnering for success. This will transform the “reviews” to a collaborative coaching relationship vs. one way assessment.

Am I dreaming or is could this become a reality?

The Relationship Between Accountability and Responsibility

October 20, 2010 in Leadership development by Marc Michaelson | No comments

The Relationship between accountability and responsibility is an interesting one that has perplexed me for years.  Organizations and leaders are looking for accountability for performance.  I have always believed that accountability is assigned and responsibility is taken.   In order to be truly accountable, you must take personal responsibility. What do you think?

I have been reading an incredible book by Ira Challef, he nails this context for accountability and responsibility  in his book The Courageous Follower: Standing Up to and for Our Leaders:

“By assuming responsibility for our organization and its activities, we can develop a true partnership with our leader and sense of community with our group. This is how we maximize our own contribution to the common purpose. Assuming responsibility requires courage because we then become responsible for the outcomes – we can’t lay the blame for our action or inaction elsewhere. But before we can assume responsibility for the organization, we must assume responsibility for ourselves”

Assuming responsibility for ourselves?  Yes, individuals, teams, leaders, managers and organizations!   It all begins with each of us being accountable and responsible for our behaviors, actions, and decisions. The people I know who do more of this than less are my kind of people!  I want to  be led by them, I trust them!   It does take courage to be authentic, have high integrity and tell the truth!   When organizations place an emphasis on self development as means to high performance the dividends are always there. In fact, organizations that have a priority for creating a culture of self responsibility and accountability return more than 17% value to shareholders than those who do not.

Our work with leaders is based on this premise of self responsibility and accountability. Our L3 Leadership Process begins with L1 Total Life Leadership, which enables self discovery, reflection, assessment and personal planning to leverage self responsibility and personal accountability as means to high level performance at work and in life.

We have seen so many good things happen when leaders create a culture of accountability and responsibility.  Remember accountability is assigned, responsibility is a choice!   When you have a culture that understands this– very good things can happen.

Key Questions for Finding and Keeping Your Sweet Spot in Flow

October 14, 2010 in L3 Leadership, Leadership development by Marc Michaelson | No comments

Continuing on with our dialog on Leading From Your Sweet Spot and being in Flow: My last three posts have dug into these topics and how they can help us as leaders.

I have been think about what questions we might want to ask ourselves in order to keep our sweet spot tuned, as well as improve the odds that we will be in flow more often.

Here a some questions to ask yourself regularly:

How I View Myself: What am I known for?

My Purpose and Direction: Where am I going?

Relationships, Collaboration and Teamwork: Whom do I  engage and deliver with?

My Work Environment: How is my workspace/workplace contributing positively?

My Engagement/Challenge: What challenges, questions interest me?

Resilience and Learning: How do I learn from setbacks and successes?

Who can I count on to tell me the truth about my performance?: What adjustments must I make to align with others?

Remember, your Sweet Spot is the intersection of what you are passionate about and your top skills.  The questions above will help you make the most of these two.  Take the time to ask these questions once a month and see what it brings to you.  Working from your Sweet Spot and staying in Flow will bring great rewards to you and those who work with you!

When You Find Your Sweet Spot, You Also Find Flow!

October 13, 2010 in Leadership development by Marc Michaelson | No comments

Psychologist and author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has spent his career researching what have  been called “optimal experiences” that are described as having feelings of deep concentration and enjoyment. Studying the activities of tens of thousands of individuals from all walks of life, from all over the world, Csikszentmihalyi has developed an understanding of this phenomenon he calls “Flow”. This Flow state explains why some folks get enjoyment out of life and work, while others experience drudgery.

We all experience Flow from time to time, but it is those that seem to have figured out how to constantly find Flow that led Csikszentmihalyi to believe that there was something more here. That there had to be something common in these Flow experiences.

Understanding Flow (How Your Finding Your Sweet Spot Generates Flow)

Very simply put, Flow has been described best by athletes as being “in the zone”. We have all witnessed the athlete who has been “unconscious” as they played, not missing a shot or always with their head in the game. But Flow isn’t just something that athlete’s are able to experience. Based on the research that Csikszentmihalyi and others did over decades, Flow is something that we all have the opportunity to experience. In fact, many every day activities have the potential to become flow experiences.

According to Csikszentmihalyi, Flow experiences have certain characteristics.

The Goals for The Activity Are Clear: There is no ambiguity about the task at hand. What we hope to accomplish is very clear in our minds.

Feedback is Immediate: As we are performing the activity the feedback on our performance (what we are doing and how well) is instantaneous. We don’t have to wait for feedback, allowing us to promptly make corrections as we go and to continue with the activity.

There is a Balance between Skill and Challenge: We are able to perform at our best when our skills are equally matched with the task at hand.

Concentration Deepens: We are able to focus exclusively on the activity in which we are involved to the point that we are able to block out everything else around us.

Being In The Present Matters Most: As our concentration deepens and we focus exclusively on the task at hand any cares or worries about the future or past fall away as we live in the moment.

Our Sense of Time Is Altered:  The passage of time doesn’t seem to matter as we are so focused on the activity that hours can pass in what seems like minutes.

Failure is Not A Worry: When we are so deeply engrossed in an activity and everything seems “right with the world” we know, just know, that we are at our best and we can’t fail. This leads us to higher performance and growth because the fear of failure has diminished.

Ego is Put Aside: We are so deeply involved that we “lose ourselves” in the activity. The performance of the task becomes the most important thing, not how we are viewed by others.

As we have discussed in our earlier posts about the Finding Your Sweet Spot, this list of the characteristics of Flow are cultivated from the intersection of passion and your natural skill.

How sweet it is to find your Sweet Spot and get your Flow at the same time!

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How Sweet It Is! Life and Leadership Made Easy As 1-2-3

October 8, 2010 in Change Leadership, L3 Leadership, Leadership development by Marc Michaelson | 1 comment

Continuing with our discussion on Finding Your Leadership Sweet Spot.

As I discussed in my last post, your leadership sweet spot occurs at the confluence of the factors that intersect when you are at your best as a leader. The sweet spot is that moment in sports when effort and talent combine perfectly to produce smooth and successful execution. When baseball’s best hitters find the sweet spot, they can make the hardest task in sports look easy!

How can leaders find their sweet spots?   I talked about asking yourself two questions.  What am I passionate about?  What am I really good at?  This intersection is the first step in find your sweet spot.

Now I would like to dig a bit deeper into how we at Glowan are helping leaders at all levels find their sweet spots.

Thousands of studies have attempted to determine the perfect mix of leadership styles, skills, and personality traits that define great leaders.  While many leadership approaches have been derived from this research, most offer a “one-size fits all” prescription of skills, competencies, strengths or models.  Far too often, this cure-all approach neglects to take the individual into account, delivering disappointing results.  With this in mind we developed an approach to leadership development that works from the inside out.  Each individual begins by exploring their personal passions and unique skills in order to first find their personal leadership sweet spot.

This journey begins with assessing personal style and strengths, receiving 360 feedback/feedforward data  from colleagues, stakeholders, customers and direct reports concerning their leadership and behaviors across three key domains, L1 Total Life Leadership, L2 Creating Collaborative Advantage, and L3 Cultivating The Best Place To Work.

This is what we call Finding Your Leadership Sweet Spot.  A spot that is leveraged from an individual’s ability to lead “self” well with high levels of emotional intelligence-(L1), “lead with others” building collaborative advantage (L2), and then, ” lead others”,  co-creating a culture of high performance where everyone can do their best (L3), and have the opportunity to find their own sweet spot.

How sweet is that! And it is as easy as 1-2-3!

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What is Your Leadership Sweet Spot?

October 6, 2010 in Leadership development by Marc Michaelson | 1 comment

Most types of sports equipment like a golf club, a tennis racquet or a baseball bat have a certain spot that, if the ball hits it, will give the player the optimal result. Hitting this sweet spot yields a long drive down the fairway, a swift cross-court return or home run swing. Every sport has a sweet spot of some sort. If you have experienced it, you know when you hit the sweet spot, you barely feel it. The ball goes where you want it to go – even further and faster.

As leaders we are have the opportunity to utilize all of our talents, skills, tools and coaching to find and utilize our very own Sweet Spot.  Our ability to match our sweet spots to our leadership responsibilities is the best predictor of  success and, ultimately, of excellent performance. It all starts with knowing your passions and talents and aligning them to create your very own Sweet Spot.

Want to know an easy way to find your sweet spot? Look at the intersection of these two questions:

1. What am I absolutely passionate about?

2. Which tasks are very easy and natural for me to perform?

Most of us vividly remember the moment we found our professional sweet spot. Others told us we made it look easy, that we really excelled and we looked like we were having a ball. Think of the last time when others made these comments to you. What were you doing?

Take a few moments to evaluate how well your passions and and skills are intersecting, the more you can do to create the environment that leverages these two, the sweeter it will be to be a leader!