Tag Leadership Actions

Leadership Intangibles 

Steve Keating 1 Comment

I was talking with a colleague a few days ago and they asked me about which of the “leadership intangibles” are most important to the success of a leader. I think my answer surprised them, it likely disappointed them as well. 

That’s because my answer was there are no leadership intangibles. None. Zip. Nada. 

Everything my colleague believed to be an intangible of leadership must in fact be vividly tangible. For instance, they believed that caring for their people was an intangible of effective leadership. 

It’s the exact opposite. Authentic Leaders stand ready to demonstrate, in every possible manner, that they care deeply about the people they lead. They live the principle that says, “you can care for people without leading them but you cannot lead them without caring for them.” While anyone in a leadership position can say they care about their people, Authentic Leaders have no need to say it, they are demonstrating it with every conversation and every interaction. 

Giving recognition was offered up as another intangible of leadership. It is not. Giving recognition is an intentional and very visible act. If your people don’t realize that you recognize their commitment and effort then it’s the same as not recognizing them at all. 

I literally recommend that leaders put reminders on their smart phones so that they don’t go a single day without providing recognition to at least one of their people. As publicly as possible. When a person in a leadership position tells me that can’t find a reason to recognize their people every day I suggest they look harder…or sometimes just look. Quality effort is waiting to be recognized and once it is, it becomes much more visible.

Leaders who are quick to publicly recognize their people also never publicly admonish them. They keep their constructive coaching private. That’s critical because their people know that if the leader will publicly throw one of their people under the bus they will likely throw any of them, or all of them, under the same bus. 

Integrity was suggested as the ultimate intangible of Authentic Leadership. I was particularly flummoxed with this suggestion. Integrity has been given many “definitions.” It is said to be doing the right thing even when no one is watching. It has been described as “acting in a way that benefits many people rather than yourself. 

I take no issue with most of the definitions I’ve seen for integrity. But here’s the thing, leaders lead by example whether they know it or not. Their people are always watching. One element of integrity is doing what you say you will do. When you said you would do it. How you said you would do it. EVERY single time. Authentic Leaders know that they either have integrity ALL THE TIME or they don’t have integrity any time. Their integrity is public, visible, intentional and very very tangible.

As an Authentic Leader you don’t get to have any “intangibles.” All your actions are on display for your people to see. They will eventually know your thoughts as well for those thoughts will become your actions sooner or later. 

You lead by example. You lead by example. You lead by example. Remember that, counting on “intangibles” to help you lead will result in very limited leadership. As a leader your qualities and characters are always on full display for your people to see. Make sure they are seeing your best ones. 

Want more of LeadToday? I’m changing things up on my Twitter feed for subscribers. Beginning March 2nd I’ll be publishing two videos each week focusing on an element of Authentic Leadership. I’ll post these videos each Tuesday and Thursday morning. They will be about 10 minutes long so we can get into the topic in a more meaningful way. The investment for subscribers in still only $5 a month. That’s for at least 80 MINUTES of quality video content on leadership a month. 

If you’re interested in taking a look just head on over to my Twitter profile page. If you’re not a follower yet just hit the follow button. It will change to a subscribe button and once you hit that you’re on your way. You can cancel at any time you’ve decided you have nothing left to learn about leading the people who you count on for your success. 🙂

Here’s the link to my Twitter… https://twitter.com/leadtoday 

Overcoming the Frustration Challenge

Steve Keating 1 Comment

It’s a fact that sometimes people are promoted into leadership positions when they have, shall we say, some shortcomings. At least some perceived shortcomings. 

How you react under those circumstances says a lot more about you than it says about the person in the leadership position. It is common for a person being “led” by someone they feel is unqualified to hold a leadership position to “resist” that person. 

Resisting the person means at best they become a disengaged employee. At worst they become actively disengaged. 

A disengaged employee is someone who does the bare minimum required to keep their job. They make the determination that doing more than the bare minimum isn’t going to be rewarded. So they put forth a “why bother” level of effort. 

An actively disengaged employee is actually putting forth more effort. The problem is that much of that effort is focusing on being a disruption to the the organization. And a disruption to their “leader” in particular. 

I have been very fortunate to nearly always work for leaders who actually led. Yes, some were more effective than others but I learned good stuff from all of them. They each, in their own way, made me better. 

But my first “leader” right out of college might have taught me the most. Unfortunately, I learned it years after he was no longer leading me. It didn’t take very long in my first job out of college to realize that my “leader” wasn’t the smartest guy in the room. In fact, to my absolute surprise I figured out quickly that he was illiterate. He could not read or write. 

Yet he was the boss of a team of people with Electrical Engineering degrees. I was 22 years old and I had no idea what to make of this situation. Most people I told found it hard to believe that someone at his level could be illiterate. But he was. 

I found it more than challenging to take any kind of direction from this guy. I assumed that his inability to read and write made him an idiot. Then I decided, for reasons I still don’t completely understand, to make his life a living hell. I must say I was pretty good at it. 

So good in fact that it didn’t take long to find myself sitting in a conference room with an HR Rep, my boss and his boss. They told us to “work it out” and get back to work. But the way I worked it out was to leave the company and head for greener pastures. 

Over the years I thought about that boss and what I had learned from that experience. The big thing I learned was that I was a terrible team member. I might have been the best engineer on the team but I was the worst team member. I disrupted everyone with my shenanigans which were all focused on proving how much smarter I was than the boss. 

One of the other big things I learned from that experience was that just because I failed to see the strengths of my boss it didn’t mean others couldn’t see them. He had worked his way up through the company and earned the respect of the owners. They were very loyal to him. He understood their goals and worked tirelessly to help them achieve each one. He was a good “people person,” even if I didn’t realize that until it was much too late. 

It would be years before I understood one of my roles in an organization was to make the people around me better. That included the people above me in the organization. It was never going to be my place to expose any weaknesses of the people above me. My role was to identify any gaps they may have and fill those gaps with my own experience and skills. And that was regardless of whether or not I received any credit for it. It was also my role whether or not they knew I was doing it. 

It would be several more years before I would realize that in the most successful organizations everyone has that same role. That role is to find and fill the gaps of the people around and above you. That role is also in addition to everything else in your job description, not instead of. The role is not to expose gaps for the sole purpose of complaining about them. 

If you’re currently working for a leader who frustrates you the first thing you need to realize is that being frustrated is a choice. You can choose to be frustrated or you can choose to be fascinated. I’d recommend you be fascinated and curious about how a seemingly unqualified person achieved a leadership position in the first place. By working to understand that person you may discover the strengths that earned them that position. 

It’s when you identify a person’s strengths that it becomes much more rewarding to fill their gaps. Filling the gaps of the people around you also makes you a much more valuable employee…and a great team member.

Do not allow anyone with shortcomings in your organization to frustrate you. You can’t control their actions or their weaknesses. So control what you can and that’s your attitude and the level of effort you’ll put forth to be the very best version of yourself. 

And one last thing…before you even think about criticizing someone else for their shortcomings you’d better be darn sure you don’t have any of your own.

Leadership Luck

Steve Keating 3 Comments

The title of this post is really a misnomer. That’s because I don’t believe luck has anything to do with leadership. Someone may luck their way into a leadership position but they must earn the opportunity to truly lead. They especially earn the level of influence they have with the people they lead.

One of the most Authentic Leaders I’ve ever known would tell you a lucky seat assignment on a plane changed the course of his career. As a young employee of a company he happened to find himself seated across the isle from the one of the best Authentic Servant Leaders ever. He also happened to be running the company the young man worked for. 

But that’s where any luck ended. The young man would grow into an Authentic Servant Leader himself and one day succeed that Authentic Servant Leader he once sat across from. But not because he lucked into a particular seat assignment. 

He earned everything he got. Clearly he had some help along the way but he made the most of that help. He didn’t luck into positions where he could succeed, he worked himself into positions where he could succeed. 

He learned and then he learned some more. He made sacrifices and many if not most of those sacrifices benefited others more than himself. Making sacrifices for the good of the many is what puts the “Authentic” in Authentic Leadership. 

I’ve seen like a gazillion people who have occupied leadership positions. The vast majority of them are far from being an actual leader. I’ve also been blessed to know several Level Five Leaders. Not a one of them lucked their way into Authentic Leadership. 

If you’re not sure what a Level Five Leader is let me explain it this way. If a leader has had a lasting positive impact on your life then it’s highly likely they are a Level Five Leader. If you haven’t seen or talked to them in years yet you remember the lessons they showed you, it’s highly likely they are a Level Five Leader. If you’re showing those lessons to others today, then that leader who impacted you all those years ago was certainly a Level Five Leader.

If you’re in a leadership position don’t expect to luck your way into Authentic Leadership. You’ll have to work your way there. You’ll have to learn. Yes, you need to learn about the business or organization you’re in. But more important than that, you need to learn about people. People in general for sure but especially about the people you lead. 

You’ll have to make some tough calls on your way to Authentic Leadership. As you make those calls you’ll need to keep in mind that it’s the people you lead who make you a leader. It’s not your title or position. You’ll need to demonstrate your understanding of that fact even while making decisions that may have short-term negative consequences for the people you lead. 

You need to show you care about the people you lead. Even when they screw up. Even when you’re mad at them. Even when it would be easier to just go scorched earth on them. 

Authentic Leaders have tremendous influence on their people. They are aware of that fact every day. They model successful behavior for their people. They celebrate the success of their people, as much or more than they celebrate their own success. 

It’s a ton of work to become an Authentic Leader. But I’ve never known one who would say it wasn’t worth it. But here’s one thing they would never say, they would never say they were an Authentic Leader. Their humility just won’t allow it. 

So when you see one, be sure to say it for them. 

Human Speed Bumps 

Steve Keating 2 Comments

Authentic Leadership can be complicated. It’s about people and every person you lead will have the own experiences, challenges and motivations. There is no “one size fits all” leadership approach. That’s what makes it so much harder (and rewarding) than managing. We manage things, stuff like budgets, buildings and equipment. None of those things are capable of adding emotions into the mix. Maybe one day a computer will tell you that you’ve hurt it’s feelings by yelling at it but that’s not a problem today. 

It most certainly can be a leadership issue when dealing with people. 

As complicated as Authentic Leadership can be, ineffective, unauthentic leadership is even more complicated. That’s because lesser leaders mess up leadership all the time. It’s easy to do but some lesser leaders seem to go out of their way to make it harder than it needs to be.

One of the biggest mistakes lesser leaders, poor leaders, leaders in name only, or whatever you want to call them make is they treat the people they are supposed to be leading like human speed bumps. 

They throw them under the bus at the first sign of trouble. 

These lesser leaders commonly use words like “fault” “blame” and “screw up.” They have their scapegoats all lined up before a mistake or failure happens. As they get older their index finger becomes crooked from so often pointing it at others. 

Authentic Leaders know that when a team member underperforms there are only two options. The first is that the team member is in the wrong role. The second is that they, the leader, did not give the team member the tools and training needed to be successful. Either way, it’s at least partially on the leader. 

Some of you will strongly disagree with that previous paragraph. You’ll say that you’re not responsible for growing your people. You’re not responsible for their poor attitudes. You’re not responsible for their lack of motivation. You’re not responsible that they can’t understand your directions. 

What you’re really saying when you’re saying those things is that you’re not responsible for anything. You’re saying that you are not an Authentic Leader. When you say those things often enough, people, especially the people you’re responsible for leading, will begin to believe it. 

Throwing your people under the bus is a massive failure of leadership. Not only will you have lost the commitment of the individual you’ve dumped on, the remainder of your team will just be waiting for their turn under the bus. 

You’ll have done that! You WILL be responsible for that, whether you’re willing to accept that responsibility or not. 

Authentic Leaders give most of the credit for success to the people they lead. They also accept a disproportionate amount of the responsibility for any shortcomings that may happen. They earn the commitment of their people by doing that. They minimize the chance of future shortcomings by doing that. They grow their people by modeling successful attitudes and actions. And they never, never, ever, use them as human speed bumps.

The Bubble of Ineffective Leadership 

Steve Keating 3 Comments

One of the challenges of being an ineffective leader is that being ineffective causes you to become even more ineffective over time. There is a definite downward spiral for all ineffective leaders and these ineffective leaders pick up speed on their way down. 

One reason that happens is because ineffective leaders either never knew, or have forgotten, that leadership is about people. They stop communicating on a regular basis with many of the people in their organizations. If they are a leader at the top of the organization their communications are primarily with their top lieutenants. Everything they hear and know is filtered through the lenses of those lieutenants. 

Ineffective leaders in essence “live” in a bubble that ordinary, everyday employees can’t penetrate. These employees can plainly see the bubble from the outside. The devastating thing about living in a bubble is that you can’t see it from the inside. The fact is that most ineffective leaders would tell you there is no such thing as a leadership bubble. That makes it doubly hard for them to escape it. 

They honestly, albeit foolishly, believe they are as plugged in and connected as anyone in the organization. This despite the fact that they may not have spoken face-to-face in the last year, or years, with more than a small handful of those ordinary, everyday people. 

They are comfortable hearing what they want to hear. Delivered from people who are adept at delivering information the way “the boss” wants to hear it. The information is frequently “cleansed” before they ever hear it. 

The challenge for ineffective leaders living in a bubble is that they not know what they don’t know. They also have no idea which of the things they think they “know” just ain’t so. These bubbles form around ineffective leaders over time. They become locked in without ever realizing it happened. 

If these “bubbled up” ineffective leaders ever did break free from their bubble the most likely thing they would hear from their people is “how can leadership be so clueless about what’s going on.” These bubbled up leaders would be shocked. 

Effective Authentic Leaders are aware of the dangers of these bubbles and work to make certain they are never trapped inside one of these formidable barriers. They make themselves highly visible to every member of the organization. They want their information unfiltered. They listen well and not only to the things they want to hear. They listen intently for, and to, the things they don’t want to hear. 

Authentic Leaders “walk slowly through the halls” making sure they are as assessable as they can be. Bubbles can’t form around an Authentic Leader because they allow ALL their people to get close to them. 

If you’re struggling to lead your team it’s very possible that you are in a bubble that you can’t see. Get out of the office and walk slowly around your organization. Talk to as many of your people as you can. Each one of those people are a “pin” poised to burst that bubble around you. 

All of those conversations will be a breath of fresh air, for you AND your entire organization. 

The Motivational Leader

Steve Keating 1 Comment

When I do Leadership presentations and workshops I’ll frequently make the statement that people are naturally motivated. Not some people, ALL people are naturally motivated. 

That gets as much pushback as almost anything I say. “Leaders” in the room will respond with silly comments like “you’ve never met some of my people.” Or “I’ve got people you couldn’t motivate with dynamite.” 

My response is always some variation of “sounds like a leadership problem to me.” I say it jokingly but I’m not joking. I ask who is responsible for motivating people in your organization? I generally get no response. That’s understandable because they just told me they have unmotivated people. To admit it’s their responsibility to motivate them would be admitting that they are not actually leading. 

But everyone in that room knows that one of the primary responsibilities of leadership is to motivate and encourage the people they lead. But, like almost everything else worth doing, that is easier said than done. 

Here’s the thing. No one wakes up in the morning hoping their day will suck. No one begins life with the desire to drag themselves through every day. Everyone wants to do something that matters. That’s how we all start off. But somewhere along the line many people lose that enthusiasm and motivation. It is most likely stolen from them by bosses who couldn’t lead or they caught the “unmotivated bug” from friends and family who have given up on their own dreams. But they want to be motivated, they just need a little push.

If you’re in a Leadership position and you want to help your people get and stay motivated the first step is to STOP complaining about unmotivated people on your team and start actually leading them towards greater motivation. 

Next, schedule consistent one-on-one time with them. Ask them how they would like to structure this time together. Remember, for this time to be productive it must benefit you AND your people. This is your time to set clear goals and expectations and to discuss how those expectations will be measured. People NEED to know what’s expected of them and how those expectations will be measured. 

This is their time to share ideas, suggestions, and issues. People value relationships with their leaders and these one-on-ones are all about building those relationships. 

Here’s a crazy idea for discovering how to motivate your people. During the one-on-one ask them directly what motivates them and how you can help them remain more motivated. Do you know the goals, aspirations, and interests of the people you lead? It becomes far easier to motivate someone when you know what motivates them. Here’s the caveat to this question…they may not know the answer. At least not off the top of their head. That’s fine, ask them to think about it. About where they want to be in five years. About what they want to accomplish. For some of your people they may have never considered those questions before. 

If you want your people to know you care for them as people then ask about them as people. Yes, “the job” is important but as a leader you cannot afford to forget that “the job” is done by people. Real live human beings. 

Once they know what motivates them, and you know what motivates them, you can work together towards that common motivating goal. Authentic Leadership is about making human connections and there isn’t anything more human then helping another person achieve their life goals. 

It is very possible the pursuit of those goals will require learning new skills. As a leader one of your other primary responsibilities is to help your people grow. Now you know where to help them grow. Their commitment to you and the organization strengthens as you help them grow. So does their motivation to improve. They are not only motivated to do a better job for themselves, they are motivated to do a better job for you. 

When your people have doubts about their ability to grow, SHOW your belief in them by giving them purposeful work. Show them how their work makes a difference for you, for the organization and especially for themselves. Trust them to do the work without micromanaging the motivation out of them. 

Your belief in them might be the exact nudge they need to remain motivated when obstacles appear. It’s even possible you’re the first person who has shown them that level of trust and belief. 

Above all, create a culture where motivation thrives. Where people are encouraged to excel. Where mistakes are accepted as part of the growth process. A culture where people feel they matter. 

When you do all that there is no question about your leadership because you’ll have demonstrated that you are in fact, an Authentic Leader. You’ll even be a Motivating Leader!

Everyone NEEDS to Feel Worthwhile

Steve Keating 1 Comment

Authentically leading can be very challenging. That’s because leadership is about people. People will frequently surprise you. If you asked 10 people what they liked best about working for a particular company you could well receive 10 different answers. At least a few of those answers would be surprising. 

It’s hard to find a room full of people who will agree on anything, especially these days. But one thing that we do know about people, ALL people, is that the have a basic human need to feel worthwhile. They need to know that they matter. 

Authentic Leaders show the people they lead that they matter. They show them how they matter, they show them how what they do impacts the organization and the lives of the other people who work there. Authentic Leaders make showing people they matter a priority. They make a big deal out of it. 

And it is indeed a big deal. 

It’s a big deal first because people really do matter. Authentic Leaders know that they don’t really run a business, they lead the people who run the business. They know that their most “expensive” employee is not the person who is paid the most. They understand their most expensive employee is the least engaged employee. 

When people know they matter they get engaged with their job and they stay engaged with the job and organization. They know their efforts are appreciated and they know exactly how their efforts contribute to the organization and the other people who work there. 

When people know that they matter and that what they do makes a difference, they do it better. They are more committed. They care more about the “outcomes” they produce. 

So let me ask you this…and your answer is more for you than for me. Actually, your answer is for the people you lead. What, SPECIFICALLY, have you done in the last 7 days to SHOW one of the people you lead that they matter? How have you shown one (or more) of your people where and how their efforts impact the organization? What actions have you taken to make sure your people know they matter. 

Authentic Leaders don’t assume their people know any of that. They intentionally and consistently make the effort to show them. It is one of their top leadership priorities. 

Think about that. Put reminders in your calendar to remind yourself that showing your people that they matter is a big deal. It will pay substantial dividends for your organization and it will be huge for your people. 

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Just click the purple “subscribe” button next to the regular follow button  on my Twitter profile page IN THE TWITTER APP or on a web browser. http://twitter.com/leadtoday Give it a try if you’re so inclined, and if you are, be sure to let me know how I’m doing and what topics you’d like to see me address.