Leader's Beacon | The Leadership Experts

The culture of your organization will either ensure your long term success or potentially leave your organization vulnerable to external threats. An effective culture leads to innovation, agility, great customer service, higher profit margins and high employee engagement. A weak culture creates and reinforces resistance to change, erratic financial performance, high employee absenteeism and turnover, and poor customer service.

Most culture change takes years to take hold (if it ever does) because management is often reluctant to address the most significant obstacles. However it can be accelerated if you target three main areas. The suggestions below are based on observing the behaviors of senior leaders in various companies and locations, research on how manager and leader behavior impacts their departments and overall company culture scores using validated models.

1. Drive for results combined with high-touch

The most consistently outstanding financial performance, employee satisfaction and culture scores can be linked to leadership behaviors that combine tenacity and focus on results with strong positive relationships and interactions with employees. Using a combination of formal and informal communication along with a rigorous focus on standardized work and continuous improvement can create a great culture and a great organization. Think lean without the mean.

2. Screaming and disrespectful conduct is not tolerated

The organizations with the best culture scores and long term track record of success do not tolerate any abusive leadership behaviors including screaming or yelling at subordinates or treating them in a demeaning or disrespectful way. In our experience, managers and supervisors with these traits can change, however rebuilding trust is a long, difficult journey. Whether it is addressed through training, coaching, reassignment or termination, any tolerance of these behaviors will drag the culture lower and keep performance from reaching its full potential. And these behaviors cannot be tolerated between employees and colleagues because the resulting conflict and lack of trust will block teamwork and limit performance.

3. Communication is the secret sauce

The second highest ranked motivator identified by employees is feeling that they are included in what is going on. To feel like an important part of the team, the employee needs to receive communication and be asked for their input. Using a combination of formal communication (newsletters, town hall meetings, small group discussion) and informal communication (conversations with managers as they interact with employees) – employees are keenly interested in how the organization is doing and the outlook for the future. This takes time, and the best leaders make the time to do it. They either invest more of their time, or they get so good at delegating less important tasks to lower levels in order to free up their time to do this. Any leader who stays in his or her office instead of mingling with the troops will never have the depth of relationships that truly motivate employees.

How good do you have to be?

During some recent training on the linkage between a manager’s or leader’s behavior and the impact on his or her department it was quite a surprise. Simply being above average, say having a 4 or 5 in a 7-point scale, often caused an incredible impact on culture. Only managers and leaders scoring a 6 or 7 out of 7 had the kind of positive impact that creates exceptional culture. This is not meant to discourage – simply to reinforce that truly exceptional leadership is required to create exceptional results and the best culture.

Our culture sucks but we make lots of money!

Companies can make profits for lots of reasons – few competitors, superior negotiating skills, proprietary technology, economies of scale. And some companies can confuse cause and effect, thinking that their aggressive or passive culture has made them successful when in fact it was other factors. This usually becomes apparent when the winds of change start to blow and the company can’t respond quickly or effectively enough.

It can be a challenge to change the culture when things appear to be going well. The symptoms of dysfunction are often apparent but ignored because the bottom line is strong or sales are growing rapidly.

Putting Ideas into Action

If you a senior leader in your organization, evaluate yourself and your leaders on how effective they are in the three areas above. Admit to your own short comings and get the training or coaching you need to make improvements. You will start to see an impact right away.

If you are a middle or front line leader, work on your own behaviors first. It is possible to create a positive sub culture at a departmental or divisional level.

Think someone else in your organization needs to read this, please send it along.

We can help you in a number of ways – training, coaching, measuring. It starts with a conversation.

Other articles you might like:

• 3 Things I Learned from My Subordinates
• Fear of mistakes or search for success?
• Hiding in Plain Sight
• How Leadership Impacts Profitability
• Detoxing Your Corporate Culture

It being New Year’s time again, Bill George recently blogged about “Five Resolutions for Aspiring Leaders.” He talked about things you can do to develop yourself, beyond what you do in your direct job: such as finding a mentor, setting up a mastermind type group with other emerging and aspiring leaders,volunteering in the community in a leadership role, and traveling beyond your nation’s borders.

If you are serious about growing your leadership potential, these are all excellent ideas.

A mentor is like a scalpel, someone with whom you can address specific questions and problems you face.

What George calls a “leadership development group” provides you with an ongoing team of colleagues who will challenge you to risk and grow and hold your feet to the fire, all the while supporting you on your journey. (Note: Check out my Sept. 7/11 post, “Accelerate Your Growth with a Mastermind Group.”)

Civic and charitable organizations are always looking for people to volunteer for leadership roles on their board or on key initiatives. This is a great way to test your mettle at a higher level of responsibility than you may have in your current job. The learning you gain is totally transferrable to your career. Many municipalities and counties have community leadership organizations. For example, I have been active for years in Leadership Fairfax, Inc.

Travel, of course, forces you to deal with diversity and–if you opt to get around on your own, rather than through a charter tour company–function outside your comfort zone.

You don’t have to wait for your next promotion to grow your talents. How about making 2012 a year of continuous personal leadership development going on in the background.

Other articles you might like:

• Accelerate Your Growth with a Mastermind Group
• Praise their Process Over their Competence
• How Far Will Your Vision Take You?
• Leaders, Take A Slice of Humble Pie
• Boundaries

I ran across a recent posting from the Gallup Management Journal that made a point have I never thought about before:

“Raised through a childhood in which each new year brought novel opportunities, playing at ever more difficult levels of sports, growing physically, educated in a system of cleanly delineated grades — freshman, sophomore, junior, senior — many employees find themselves several years into their career wondering what happened to the momentum they used to enjoy. Being both conditioned and naturally wired to look forward to differences between seventh and eighth grade or high school and college, many workers are disappointed to discover there will be no dramatic difference between their experience as a 25-year-old employee and their experience as a 26-year-old employee.”

The full article talks about the plethora of studies that show what a powerful motivator is personal and professional growth, learning, and rising to a tough-but-attainable challenge.

So many people, in their jobs, no longer feel any sense of increasing their capacity and moving on to more challenging tasks. Each day is the same, each year essentially a clone of the last one. Clearly, one cause of this is structural. Some jobs, especially in manufacturing and straight forward service functions, are repetitive and have had any meaningful discretion engineered out of them.

But, in the vast number of jobs, this is not the case. Here it is incumbent upon managers to periodically ask what their employees have learned and how they have grown over the last year. Better still, however, let’s get out in front of the curve. At least once a year–perhaps at performance review time–ask each of your staff members,

“What do would like to learn/know/be able to do 12 months from today that you don’t know or can’t do today?”

I believe the best bosses are catalysts for the never-ending growth of every employee in their charge.

Other articles you might like:

• It’s Time For A Fresh Start
• Job Squeeze Is Real. Talk about it
• Three Things You Need to Know About Recognition
• Is Laziness a Powerful Motivator?
• Rest for the Weary

Whenever a leader is within the sightline of his or her employees, communication is occuring. What message is your face and body language communicating without you even having to open your mouth?

Communication continues to be a problem for virtually every organization. You would think that after recognizing the problem for this long we would have developed a solution. It seems that we have decided to treat communication like a seasonal cold – we put up with the symptoms without getting to a cure.

As a leader recognize that you are communicating whenever you are visible to your employees. They watch you from the time you arrive until the time you leave. They are watching for clues as to whether you are in a good mood, angry mood, stressed out or in control. If the leader appears to be in a bad mood, the entire workgroup will adopt that mood, often by lunchtime! And employees who sense that the leader is not in a good mood will tend to withhold information. This keeps the leader from being informed about what is going on.

Action Tips

• Make sure that you contribute to a happier workplace by managing your mood. Productivity and morale will be higher when you are in a more positive mood.
• Be conscious of the impression you are creating. Make every attempt to be seen as approachable.
• It is okay to show your emotion – just be strategic about what you are communicating and that it will have the desired effect.

By looking at yourself through the eyes of your employees you can create a more positive and productive workplace.

Other articles you might like:

• Accountability creates results and job satisfaction
• Employees who feel entitled
• When It Comes to Organizational Culture, What You See Is What You Get
• 5 Ways to Eliminate Misunderstandings
• 12 Most Common Mistakes Presenters Make

It’s been a smart idea for years. When good employees leave your organization for greener pastures and the departure is amicable, why not keep in contact? You never know, some may find that that grass isn’t, in fact, greener and that your firm was a pretty good place to work after all.

A recent WSJ article shares what some firms, especially the larger professional consulting firms, are doing to maintain a former employee “alumni network.” These can be elaborate initiatives involving message boards, news/blogs from your organization, jobs you post externally, features on former employee alumni, and even social gatherings.

The main benefits of this strategy are to:

• recruit former employees
• get referrals from them for other potential job candidates
• generate business with their new employer

You don’t have to get that elaborate or invest a lot in a fancy alumni network. But I think it would be wise to consider those individuals who have left over the past few years that would be worth getting–and keeping–in touch with and how you might do it.

Other articles you might like:

• Don’t Let HR Hire Salespeople
• 7 Ways to Build Stronger Teams
• Oh Yeah, That’s Why We Do This Work
• Every Manager a Coach
• Keep Your Customers Coming Back

Reading about Steve Jobs’ management style is like reading about exactly how you are not supposed to manage people. He openly and viciously criticized the work of employees and then would take some of those ideas and present them as his own. When he couldn’t persuade or seduce someone into doing what he wanted he would get emotional and cry. And he was famous for his reality distortion field… or lying. That’s right; he was known for dramatically bending the truth and exaggerating. That kind of behavior would have many people marching into HR and likely result in a termination. (Okay, that actually did happen when Jobs was ousted from Apple, a company he co-founded.)

Perhaps the ends justify the means? After all Jobs created the world’s most valuable company at Apple with a market value of $367 billion. And he turned an initial $10 million investment in Pixar into $7.9 billion when it was purchased by Disney.

As with any successful person, there were grim days like the failed NeXT computer company he started after leaving Apple the first time. And how he kept Apple from being more successful in the early days because of the ill will he fostered, the lack of teamwork and internal competition between various divisions of Apple.

In the biography, Isaacson shares how Jobs insisted that he tell it like it is. Jobs, knowing of his pending mortality wanted Isaacson to tell the whole story. Perhaps one of the reasons is that Steve Jobs wanted people to know the whole story – the good parts and the darkest parts.

Autocratic bosses often take comfort in knowing that several titans of industry have been known to have prickly, autocratic leadership styles. Even Jobs’ “frenemy” Bill Gates at Microsoft wasn’t known for his warmth.

When we explore the Autocratic management style in our leadership sessions we acknowledge that sometimes the autocratic style can work. Where the manager has a crystal clear vision, a tight time frame, a lot of personal knowledge and a lucrative opportunity, he or she can carry the day. Of course they will leave behind them a trail of defensive culture and damaged employees.

So as an aspiring manager, avoid the temptation to copy Steve Jobs’ management style, thinking it was the cause of his success. Upon further examination you will discover that he succeeded despite his approach, not because of it. In reality it was his revolutionary vision combined with good marketing skills and tenacity that truly defined his success. If anything his management style likely held back even greater success in the early days. Like many managers, his less publicized failures helped make him stronger.

Today’s Leadership Action Tip

• Reading about successful entrepreneurs and business leaders should always be taken in context. There are lessons to be learned from every story. Consider other factors that helped the person succeed including the operating environment, the profit margins they enjoyed, and the level of competition.
• Remember that for the relatively few examples of tyrannical managers enjoying awe-inspiring success there are many more examples of those types of managers ruining their companies, getting fired and destroying shareholder value.
• Focus on being constructive – setting ambitious and challenging goals, being curious about achieving fulfillment for yourself and others, encouraging the growth of others and being approachable. It has proven to be the winning strategy for far more managers, supervisors and business owners.

By the way, the book is a fascinating read and I highly recommend it!

Other articles you might like:

• Bringing It All Back Home
• Don’t be afraid; Do Something
• Commit or Omit?
• Perseverance is not just a cheesy motivational poster
• What Women Bring to Leadership

The BBC’s Katty Kay and ABC’s Claire Shipman co-authored a book a couple of years back called Womenomics. In it they cite, among other things, a number of companies where the presence of women in among top leadership had a positive effect on the firm’s financial success. For example:

• Accounting firm Ernst & Young’s research found that companies with more women in senior management make more money.
• McKinsey & Co. found that greater gender diversity in management of European firms led to higher-than-average stock performance.
• Pepperdine University found that Fortune 500 firms with the best records of putting women in top jobs were 18% to 69% more profitable than the median companies in their industries.

I think that the ways women tend to approach tasks and projects reflects the methods employed by the most effective leaders of either gender. The complexity of today’s work requires a more complex approach to doing that work. It calls for bringing to bear on our challenges a wider range of opinions and perspectives. It calls for a more collaborative approach and teamwork. It calls for genuinely wanting to bring out the best in our employees and helping them grow.

All three of these approaches coincide more closely with what women bring to the table of enterprise than what men bring. This is a generalization, of course, but it is surely what I have observed in teams and management groups with which I have worked.

That said, the most vibrant teams and the most engaged workshop classes I have experienced have had a healthy mix of males and females in them. I hate to say it but, from my experience, all-female classes are not sufficiently challenging of one another as they work the material presented and all-male groups have an excess of edginess and jockeying in their deliberations.

Give me the ol’ mixture of Yin & Yang any day.

Other articles you might like:

• Should you manage like Steve Jobs?
• Allow Team Members to Find Their Place
• Fear of mistakes or search for success?
• Can Trainers Guarantee Results?
• Accelerate your Career: 4-Eye’d Employee (pt 1)

There isn’t much news lately about the NBA, other than the whole lockout fiasco and I don’t feel like getting into that mess. However, I happened to read that Shaquille O’Neal is about to release his autobiography, and news outlets are buzzing about the fact that in the book Shaq revisits his feud with former teammate, Kobe Bryant. Apparently time does not heal all wounds.

If you’re not an NBA fan, or your memory needs refreshing, the disagreements between the superstars took place in the late ‘90s and early 2000s when they both played for the Los Angeles Lakers.  While these two were arguably (and I do mean arguably) at the top of their games at the time, they both had different approaches to basketball and extremely opposite personalities and work habits.

As a result, the two had plenty of issues and lots of public disputes. In fact, it was so heated, that O’Neal even slapped Bryant during a pickup game.  As you can image, the whole situation was fairly bizarre and unnecessarily dramatic.

Despite their obvious hatred for each other, the two did experience victories and were able to win three consecutive championships together.  However, personal differences and arguments over their respective roles became one of the reasons the LA Lakers management eventually sent O’Neal to the Miami Heat.

Alright, it’s obvious that an O’Neal/Bryant situation is not just limited to overpaid athletes. A study of middle and top-level executives revealed that the average manager spends about 20 percent of his or her time dealing with conflict, according to HR Magazine.

While we naively believe our high performers will naturally get along, unfortunately bruised egos can serve as a road block to success.

As I’m sure you are aware, a high performer is a talented worker who produces exceptional work with an abundance of motivation, and needs little assistance or guidance. On the surface they are a manager’s dream.

But don’t forget high performers are only human, and many are extremely competitive ones at that.  While a healthy amount of competition can spur others to work harder, sometimes it can cause extreme hostility.

What you don’t want is bickering among staff to escalate into an unresolvable situation.  Many times, frequent arguments among employees can cause an unwelcome distraction in productivity, produce turnovers, and in worst case scenarios, maybe even result in violence.

There is not a single solution in resolving conflict, but here are some of my suggestions on how to play referee at your workplace:

• When attempting to solve a dispute, first focus on common goals. Try to find an area of agreement before negotiating disagreement.

• Practice active listening skills to sort through the sources of conflict. When people feel heard, they are more likely to listen to another point of view.

• Discuss problem situations with all parties before determining the best course of action. Seek feedback from someone else on the proposed solution before instituting it. Look for win-win solutions.

• Examine your work processes or organizational structure to determine if reorganization might reduce stress and conflicts. Conflict is not always caused by interpersonal problems, but maybe the result of inherent structural problems.

If you as a manager take control of the situation, you might be able to get high performers to co-exist, even if they don’t personally like each other. At the very least, hopefully you won’t have to use your whistle to call a foul at the office.

Other articles you might like:

• The Unlikely Power of Unanimous Disagreement
• Give Way to Get Ahead
• Hiding behind your keyboard?
• This Year…What is Your “Edge for Development?”

Some of the organizations I work with are facing an interesting paradox: On the one hand the culture/satisfaction survey results aren’t where management would like to see them. On the other hand, the feedback I’m receiving says that employees care deeply about the organization and its success.

How can these two seemingly opposite data points co-exist? And what can management do to improve the situation?

The vast majority of employees care deeply about the success of the company they work for. Their personal identity is at least partially linked to their employer. Management often falls into the trap of thinking that employees only care about a paycheck when in fact most employees place a higher value on appreciation for their contribution, knowing what is going on in the organization and having their leader show some personal interest in them.

Organizations can systematically demotivate their staff by focusing only on negatives, withholding information and having supervisors and managers who are not personable and approachable.

Even when there are external pressures that are challenging the business, management has to fight the urge to hunker down, shut employees out and only focus on problems. There is a tendency for management to think that they have to shoulder the burden of soling all the problems when the employees want to be part of the solution.

In a future posting I will examine why managers and supervisors are shouldering more and more stress instead of holding employees accountable and empowering them to be part of the solution instead of being part of the problem.

Today’s Leadership Action Tip

• Share as much information as possible with employees. Instead of viewing information as “need to know basis only” share more and give employees a sense of the big picture.
  Insist that managers and supervisors be more friendly and approachable. Overly autocratic or overly easy going managers can give the impression that employees shouldn’t raise concerns or bring solutions to problems. Leadership training can help create the right tone.
• Focus on positives instead of always on negatives. Even when the pressure mounts, the best managers and supervisors maintain a positive spirit and build on successes. Employees want to see positive actions designed to make the organization more successful.
• Avoid letting a few negative bad apples spoil the overall mood of the workgroup. Only a small percentage of employees are really negative and critical. Deal with them appropriately and avoid allowing their influence to drive management into negative mode.

Because the majority of employees care and want to see your organization succeed, management can achieve more by listening and involving employees.

Other articles you might like:

• Learning Curve or Incompetence?
• The Practice of Appreciation
• Why Giving Thanks Matters
• Leaders, Take A Slice of Humble Pie
• Winning Well

In a perfect world, leaders take the blame, but share the credit. Too bad the world is far from perfect. Oftentimes leaders take more than their fair share of credit, but hardly any blame.

Why is that? Do leaders think they are invisible to blame but are always responsible for a company’s success?

Listen, just because you gained a leadership role doesn’t you mean you somehow become some sort of superhero who always makes the right moves. You’re still largely the same person you’ve always have been, with an added title and more responsibility.

Leaders are liable for everything on their watch, and if something goes awry, you have to take the potential blame, while still holding the appropriate employees accountable. Pointing the fingers at others will only make you look weak as a leader, along with disengaging your workforce.

Okay, let’s step away from potential work disasters, and take a closer look at why it’s an issue when leaders take all the credit for the company’s accomplishments. It’s no secret that people want to be recognized for their work. Let’s be realistic here, your employees are not volunteering, they are working to collect a paycheck and have that feeling of accomplishment, and they want to make sure their contributions are recognized.

Don’t forget your employees are keeping the company’s engine chugging day after day. If you fail to adequately acknowledge that your successes were achieved, at least in part, through the efforts of others, then how do you expect your employees to feel?  Taken advantage of?  Under appreciated? Yes to both. And, of course, as a result, morale may be low.

So, what’s a leader to do?  To recap, you need to shoulder the blame when something goes wrong but when an initiative is a success, you must give credit to the employees. Sounds fun, right? Well, it comes with the territory of being a leader, or at least a successful, respected, one.

Here are some tips to help ensure you are tuned into your workforce:

• In staff meetings, ask the group for their ideas instead of presenting a briefing. Invite ideas by asking: “What do you think about…?” or “What ideas do you have about…?” Allow silence after you ask a question. Don’t answer the question yourself. Solicit responses from people who seem reluctant to participate. Use your group’s ideas whenever possible.

• Reserve dates to review progress. Establish specific goals for each assignment and measure progress against these goals as the project unfolds.

• Write down skill strengths and the type of assignments each group member prefers. Consult this list before making new assignments.

• Ask your team to critique work plans they have developed in the past to determine if there are any patterns to problem areas.

• Schedule a casual lunch with your group. Introduce a topic for discussion, then step back and allow your group members to discuss it.

• Set aside a specific time during the week when you are available to discuss problems and concerns with group members. Notify others of this schedule, and listen carefully to what people say.

So, with Thanksgiving less than a month away, where pumpkin, apple, and pecan pies always steal the limelight, be sure and add a healthy portion of humble pie to your leadership diet. Unlike the aforementioned pies, you’ll have no post-indulgence regrets with the latter.

Other articles you might like:

• Find Your Executive Presence
• Develop Your Leadership Competence Asynchronously
• Employees Complain Because They Care
• Success Disguised
• Boundaries

Experience is the best teacher. Learning from your mistakes is powerful. Innovation requires taking risks. But how much tolerance should leaders have for repeated mistakes? What is the difference between someone on the learning curve versus an employee who is incompetent?

This subject came up when I was chatting with the senior leader at one of my clients. On the one hand the manager wants his organization to take calculated risks and on the other hand employees are reluctant to take chances and be punished for failure.

The senior leader’s definition of performance is an employee or manager who delivers on their commitments. An employee who repeatedly fails to deliver on commitments is demonstrating incompetence.

One way an employee reduces their risk is to avoid making commitments or soften their commitments. A new employee might not be experienced enough to make a realistic commitment. They might lack the knowledge of what is possible. They might under estimate resources or over estimate capabilities or they might want to tell the boss what he or she wants to hear instead of what is realistic. That said, the strongest commitments are those made by the employee, not imposed by the manager.

In real life however senior executives are known to impose “stretch” goals by requiring commitment to goals and timelines that might appear impossible to their direct reports. And frequently employees rise to this challenge and achieve what was perceived as impossible. The best blend is a negotiated commitment between the employee and manager.

As a side note, in a high-achieving organization there can be a tendency for managers to make ambitious commitments without thinking through how those commitments interact with one another and deliver overall value. In this case the senior leader needs to clarify the big picture so that managerial commitments can be made in the proper context.

When it becomes evident that the employee or manager is not able to deliver on their commitments, it is important to examine the circumstances. Inevitably their will be valid reasons why the results fell short. And yet high performers find a way to beat the odds and hit the numbers regardless of the circumstances.

Excuses, finger pointing and blame storming are examples of defensive behavior. Accountability requires owning the consequences (good or bad) from your actions. Therefore failing to deliver on commitments needs to be owned by the individual along with an explanation, a more realistic goal and a plan to reach the goal.

Today’s Leadership Action Tip

• Negotiate commitments that are both a “stretch” and can be owned by the employee.
• Be prepared to adjust the commitments to conditions and circumstances by adjusting resources, time lines or deliverables.
• Evaluate any failure to deliver results against the individual’s track record.
• Apply consequences – rewards and recognition for success and coaching and correction for failure.
• Examine repeated inability to deliver on commitments as incompetence.

Transparency between the leader and their direct reports will allow for an open dialogue about both commitments and results.

Other articles you might like:

• Fear of mistakes or search for success?
• Employees Complain Because They Care
• Want Greater ROI From Your Meetings?: Six Questions That Will Make The Difference
• Talent Magnets
• Praise their Process Over their Competence

Back in the 90′s the Royal Bank of Canada had a series of TV commercials touting the theme, “Building a Better Bank, One Customer at a Time.” The message, as I recall, was that RBC treats each customer as a unique individual and strives to win them over, one-at-a-time.

I frequently refer to this ad campaign in my management development workshops. The parallels are natural…

• RBC has customers, current and new. Managers have employees, current and newly hired.
• RBC seeks to understand the individual needs of each customer and then find a way to satisfy them. The best managers learn what their employees want from working and, in return for good performance, try hard to satisfy this.
• Customers who are treated as individuals and given good service will become customers that stay and continue to bring their business to the bank. Employees who feel cared about and whose needs are met from their job are employees who remain fully engaged and deliver solid performance.
• Finally, RBC customers who are treated this way will reinforce the message by telling other RBC customers and prospective customers. Employees who are treated this way will tell other employees and overall loyalty to the employer will go up.

The lesson for managers is to really get to know your staff, what they are looking for in their job, and what they aspire to down the road. Periodically, check in on how your people are doing, whether they are still satisfied and engaged, and if there is any way you (the manager) can help them be more successful in performing their job.

Your employees are different. They have different personalities. Each one is unique. Each responds to specific motivators and these shift over time.

The best bosses win their team members’ loyalty, engagement, and retentionone employee at at time!

Other articles you might like:

• How to Build Great Teams to Get the Job Done
• Team Process Makes All the Difference
• Teamwork requires conflict
• 7 Ways to Build Stronger Teams

Ah, Mark Zuckerberg. The brainchild behind the product that everyone wishes they created. Okay, when you think of a leader, Mark Zuckerberg is probably not the first person you would automatically draw inspiration from. He’s not the best speaker, wears t-shirts no matter the occasion, and gives mediocre interviews.

And as a result there are many leadership articles and blogs that criticize his appearance and behavior. But whether you believe it or not, Zuckerberg, in his own way, exhibits an executive presence.

Surprised by that statement? Well, I can understand why. If you’re not familiar with the term executive presence, it is a way to define the interpersonal skills that can contribute to success in a leadership role. Some say to have executive presence you must be decisive and assertive, can communicate clearly and concisely, and have a polished persona.

However, others state that is not so much about poise and sophistication, but the ability to present intelligence and passion for your role and the company.

I see both sides of the debate, and I personally believe that when it comes right down to it, executive presence is about self-confidence and building trust in others.

The reason why I used Zuckerberg as an example is because even though he comes off as a frumpy college kid, he obviously had confidence in himself and the product for him to become so successful and one of the world’s youngest billionaires.

Now keep in mind, I’m not saying that you should follow Zuckerberg’s lead in the clothing department. Obviously, you need to dress in a way that is appropriate for your company’s culture. But being a leader is not all about a fancy suit and the ability to captivate an audience with a plate full of jargon. The most successful leaders are confident in their own vision and are able to gain the trust of clients, colleagues, and direct reports. After all, a major key in inspiring others to follow your lead largely depends upon whether or not you are a person who is perceived to be reliable and trustworthy.

Whether you are a manager looking to join the upper management ranks, or you have your eyes on the top leadership position, remember that those with an executive presence come in all different shapes and sizes. No matter your leadership style, and whether you are an extrovert or introvert, you can develop an executive presence. Here are some tips to get you started:

Clear thinking

One of your primary responsibilities as a leader is to set standards for performance. Your expectation for others to perform at high levels should be matched by your own example. Effective leaders understand how the organization works and are able to use their political savvy to manage any sources of resistance to accomplishing tasks.

Manage relationships

Identify people who may not have the formal power but who are the “go-to” people to get anything accomplished. Make sure they are on your side before you move too far into a change initiative.  Expand your circle with people in other units or locations; attend their functions and get to know them personally. Then, when you need to work with someone in that unit, you will already have contacts, and this should help your work go much more smoothly.

Involve others

Your planning ability is greatly enhanced when you involve others in the process. By encouraging others to participate, you elicit more creative and innovative ideas for solving problems; with more ideas, you find the best solutions. Teams often make better decisions than any single person.

Gather feedback

Collect feedback from those around you, and use the feedback to clarify goals and track progress toward goals. Take the time to evaluate the information and consider specific actions for improvement.

Communicate effectively

Make sure your oral and written communications are clear and easily understood. Projects will move quicker when you set and communicate goals that are meaningful to others, as well as linked to the objectives of the organization.

Developing an executive presence won’t happen overnight. But with a little dedication on your part, your direct reports, colleagues and supervisors may view you in a different light.

Other articles you might like:

• Leaders, Take A Slice of Humble Pie
• 3 Things I Learned from My Subordinates
• Develop Your Leadership Competence Asynchronously
• Talent Magnets
• Perseverance is not just a cheesy motivational poster

Front line supervisors and managers can place employees in a prison of performance by affixing a label. Once the label is attached to the person it can prevent the leader from seeing the potential for the individual.

If the label is troublemaker, then the supervisor or manager might be reinforcing the very behaviour they would like to change.

What about if the label is justified? Even with a very good reason, the leader needs to turn the other cheek and maintain the relationship. This doesn’t mean that the supervisor can’t confront unacceptable behaviour and performance and apply consequences. The key is not to transform the performance problem into a personal grudge.

It is natural to spend more time with employees we like than employees we do not like. However, by ignoring poor performers it only tends to cause the poor performer to act out in order to get the leader’s attention. Even negative attention is seen as better than being ignored. So in effect, the leader is fostering the continuation of the very behavior he or she is trying to eliminate.

Today’s Leadership Action Tip

Consider removing an existing label you have attached to an employee even when it might be justified.
Spend time communicating with the person on a regular basis instead of ignoring them.
Watch for and positively reinforce positive, desirable behavior.

Reprogramming how you view employees can help you remain open minded as a leader and gives the employee an opportunity to change and meet your expectations.

Other articles you might like:

• Employee Performance: Terminate or Rehabilitate?
• Decision making waste?
• Helping or Harping?
• Leadership whack-a-mole?

When I say the word ‘ambitious,’ who is the first person that comes to mind? Is it the political leader who will stop at nothing to win an election? The CEO who aggressively pursues expansion plans, regardless of the economic climate? Maybe it makes you think of your favorite NFL quarterback whose competitiveness kept them in the game, broken rib and all, to make the game winning drive.

Or does it remind you of someone else entirely  – yourself?

You know, ambition is actually a complex quality; it can lead to both positive and negative behaviors.

In one sense, ambition serves as a motivational tool that can help one determine a course of action. Traditionally, great leaders have persistence, preparation, optimism, and clarity of purpose, which are all aspects of ambition.

Nevertheless, there is a reason why in his play Macbeth, Shakespeare suggested that ambition could lead to greed. After all, it is not uncommon for some ambitious people to sacrifice integrity and cut corners for their own personal gain.

This is why it is vital that one understands the difference between selfish ambition and selfless ambition. Let me draw up a distinction between the two.

Self-focused people tend to be overly ambitious and view their ambition as the key to power and self-accomplishment, and they will do whatever it takes to get to the top.

For example, say a new leader comes on board, and in order to prove his worth in a hurry, he will start by changing some aspect of the system without consulting with his colleagues and his team. He ignores suggestions, no matter how helpful they are. Long story short, he’ll eventually stretch the limits of work relationships, along with being perceived as abrasive and aggressive.

Now on the other hand, leaders with selfless ambition connect their personal objectives with fulfilling organizational objectives. This means they still have plenty of drive and focus to meet the goals, but they operate with a sense of humility and strive to make the decisions that are in the best interest of the company.

If you’re unsure of where you fall on the ambition scale, one-way to help you revaluate your goals is to create a written development plan. This plan can identify what you want to get better at, along with how you’re going to do it.

Here are some tips to help you get a head start on your development plan:

• Decide on a clear-cut, long-range goal for yourself. Then establish what you will need to do and what attributes you will need to have in order to achieve it.

• Put your action step(s) for your development goals on your daily “to do” list and make it the number-one priority. Do one thing every day, even if it is a small step, to move toward your goals.

• If you are overcommitted and expect to be great at everything, focus your energy on the most important areas and allow yourself to be average in less important matters. In other words, set realistic expectations.

• Remember the old adage, “choose your battles carefully” when deciding how best to spend your energies. You can’t possibly do everything, but it is especially critical for you to address the issues that get in the way of, or hinder the development of, your most important goals.

Ambition is a fine quality; just make sure you use it wisely.

Other articles you might like:

• Talent Magnets
• Three Keys to Exceptional Leadership
• Perseverance is not just a cheesy motivational poster
• Three Things You Need to Know About Recognition
• Leaders, Take A Slice of Humble Pie

When front line supervisors and managers are asked to share some of the characteristics of the best manager or supervisor they had ever worked for,  they will include “supportive” on that list. One participant was even more emphatic – his best boss was focused on “helping” not “harping”.

A boss who is constantly critical and focuses on problems without being willing to provide support and suggestions is not helping. In fact they may be demotivating the team. The resulting decline of morale and attitude will hamper long term performance.

Can you be too helpful?

Being helpful and supportive does not mean sheltering your team from challenges and set backs. Some leaders take back tasks at the first sign that an individual is struggling instead of taking the role of coach. As a coach you job is to empathize with the struggles, ask questions to help the person discover a solution and encourage them to persevere. You can also share suggestions and how you dealt with a similar challenge in the past.

Is there a time for “harping”?

In our book Employees Not Doing What You Expect by Irwin and I describe one of the reasons employees don’t meet expectations is because of mixed signals from the boss. The manager or supervisor might describe his or her expectations and then never follow-up. Employees get the message that it really can’t be that important. In this case it can be helpful for the manager to follow-up to demonstrate the importance of the task. This kind of constructive “harping” sends the signal to employees that the standard of performance is higher. An effective leader follows up on what she says and applies positive and negative consequences when expectations are met or not met.

Action tips to being a helpful manager or supervisor

• Clarify your expectations so that your employees can meet them.
• Help employees find solutions for themselves.
• Allow employees to learn from mistakes.
• Backup the decisions of employees and coach them privately.
• Coach by sharing personal stories, asking questions and challenging assumptions.

As a leader, focus on how you can support the people who work for you to achieve the expectations you have set. You might even be the manager or supervisor they think of when asked “Who is the best boss you have ever worked for?”

Other articles you might like:

• Leadership whack-a-mole?
• Decision making waste?
• Keep Your Customers Coming Back
• Labelling and Second Chances
• Negativity Saps Productivity