Articles by John Anderson

We’ve been posting recently about our L3 Leadership Development process and our belief that leadership is really a “state of being”.  Our client work has validated this belief and it has made a genuine difference in how we approach our development and coaching.  Here is a bit more on the subject of the L1 portion, Leading Self or achieving Personal Mastery.

Leadership does not depend on pay or position. It depends on character, integrity, authenticity, and above all, belief in oneself.

Life and work are fundamentally interrelated—human beings not only “work to live” but also, given the right conditions and opportunities, will “live to work.” In other words, how you spend most of your working hours, and create the resources to sustain yourself and your family, can be—ought to be—an activity which expresses your values, gives meaning to your life, and brings you enduring satisfaction.

If you picture “You, Inc.” from a previous post (your personal organization chart), you can see that this organization is headed by your top management team:

Physical Health and Energy

Emotional Intelligence

Values and Beliefs

Areas—that make up your You, Inc. organization’s “natural resources.” If this team isn’t operating effectively, the whole organization suffers from lack of drive and motivation, poor productivity, and insufficient energy.

The five departments reporting to You, Inc.’s top management team are:

Learning

Family

Social

Career

Financial

If any of these departments is operating below par, the organization as a whole won’t operate smoothly or optimally. So, as you can see,  “You, Inc.” shows us how important the different “departments” of life are and illustrates the relationships between them.

Leadership begins with an internal sense of self-confidence, emotional intelligence and balance that brings forth an authentic leadership presence.

We invite your comments and participation in the dialog.

It’s not uncommon for an organization’s senior executives to call themselves the “Leadership Team.” Yet frequently divisional self-interests drive their actions more so than teamwork—a lower-performing model for people at all levels of the enterprise. In contrast, members of high performing leadership teams watch out for each other, share resources and knowledge, trust each other, are brutally honest, embrace healthy conflict, and are committed to / accountable for results, individually and collectively. If this seems too good to be true, you probably have some work to do with your senior executive group. Assess the situation, identify changes that need to be made, and don’t settle for less. Doing so will increase the likelihood that your executives will achieve sustainable results, and set a most engaging example for everyone in the organization.

• Taking a hard look at your leadership “team”—and considering the elements described above, to what extent is your group operating as a high-performing team?
• If the self-interests of your executives tend to override the greater good of the leadership team as a whole, what factors are contributing to that pattern?
• Determine what help you may need to assess more thoroughly the leverage-able strengths, and tackle the key development areas of your leaders. Measure progress, and build mutual accountability into the process.

Continuing our theme of “Leading Self”, we all know a successful business needs a plan in order to succeed. Similarly, in order to manage the

Multiple demands in our personal and professional lives, we as individuals need a “business plan”— a Personal Life Plan.

This Personal Life Plan, or Total Life Leadership Plan as we commonly refer to it, addresses every aspect of your life and, when properly implemented and monitored can bring great success and joy to your life.

Another way of interpreting the various elements of our work and life can best be described in the wheel of life. The wheel is made up of the basic elements of the average person’s life. Each of these elements demands your attention, time, and energy. In order to feel you are living a fulfilling life, you need to be satisfied with how things are going in the areas that are most important to you. We show the Wheel as being made up of an inner “hub” and an outer “ring.” In the hub are your natural resources.

Mind

Body

Spirit/Values

Or in other words, our Body, Mind and Spirit. How well you maintain these vital resources largely determines what you achieve in your life.

In the outer ring are our choices and challenges. Again, what decisions are you making to “manage” these vital areas of life?

Money

Family

Learning

Social

Career

What can be done to ensure our “natural resources” are well maintained and our choices and challenges reflect our values and our natural talents?

Continuing our dialog about creating the Best Place To Work, looking at Leadership may be a good place to begin.

What to Leaders do?

Set the tone? Craft strategy? Rouse & inspire people? Create & reinforce a clear vision? Identify opportunities? Protect the people and the organization from harm?

They do all these things and more. Our L3 Leadership Model is based on the fact that leadership begins with you — each and every human being and that personal leadership is a “state of being. It is who you are, what you believe, and how you behave.

The L3 model of Leadership explores three critical attributes of effective leaders.

These three attributes of L3 are:

L1 Leading Self:

Total Life Leadership. Achieving personal mastery and work/life integration.

L2 Leading With Others:

Creating and sustaining Collaborative Advantage.

L3 Leading Others:

Cultivating the Best Place to work: Creating a culture of high engagement, retention, performance and productivity.

While all these things seem to be true in leaders, isn’t the real function of leadership to create followership?

How much responsibility do you bear for setting the leadership tone in your organization? Do you believe in leadership at all levels?

Chan

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Do you ever “Wonder” what it would be like to work in an organization that felt like and indeed was a great place to work?   What would it be like to work with a highly engaged and productive workforce?

What if your leaders at all levels were aligned with the organization’s vision, mission and values?

What if leaders, managers, employees, partners and customers were consciously building collaborative advantage?

What if all employees were engaged and motivated to reach their highest potential?

Do you ever “Wonder” about a place where people lead themselves well, build high performance teams 
and create the very best place to work?

At Glowan, we are dedicated to facilitating new leadership thinking for individuals, teams and the organization!

Let’s “wonder” together and discover what people are thinking and doing to build a great place to work.