I have found myself reading works by Napoleon Hill, an American author who was one of the earliest producers of the modern genre of personal success literature. In the early nineteen hundreds, Andrew Carnegie commissioned him to interview over 500 successful men and women in order to discover and publish their formula for success.
The Leadership Story
It had been almost three weeks since their last one-on-one, but having returned from India and with Angela's sudden departure, Steve was anxious to get the process started again. He reflected on how easy it was for pressing matters to get in the way of focusing on important things like coaching his people.
Ben was rushed and a bit frustrated that he had to attend this one on one. Especially today, it seemed there were so many deadlines waiting on his attention.
In my last blog post, I talked about a client I worked with in Fort Collins, Colorado and how important it is to have clarity about your senior leadership team's purpose.
But let me take a step back.
I recently worked with a team in Fort Collins, Colorado helping them build alignment and cohesion.
The CEO was a technologist. The Sales VP wanted to see a more sales-driven organization. The Engineering VP needed more engineers to meet the demands of a singificant customer contract. The CFO wanted to instill process and financial discipline. The HR VP was mostly focused on administration.
Each person came to the team with his/her own agenda and vision.
The team was a mess.
Performance reviews are right around the corner. This year, make them more meaningful using our Workplace Expectations Profile.
It's a simple and inexpensive tool that will help you understand your employees' work expectations, and help them understand yours.
I know that many of my clients here in Denver and Fort Collins are typically clear about expectations when it comes to salary and benefits, but other expectations often go unspoken.
You know what I am talking about.
All-staff meetings, Town Halls, Team Forums. They have many different names, and their original intent was good.
But, here's where they go wrong...
The CEO or senior leader stands in front of the group, tries to break the ice through a method in which no one responds, goes on to give an update on the business, then asks the question, "do you have any questions?"
And no one responds.
Thirty minutes of diatribe from the leader. Thirty minutes of silence from the audience.
I am excited about our upcoming webinar Laser Focused: 3 Keys to Getting Senior Leadership Teams Aligned for 2011.
When: December 9, 2010; 12:00 - 12:47 mountain time
This webinar is meant to be a practical program for senior leadership teams, giving them tools to increase team effectiveness. What I have found throughout my experience over the past 17 years working with senior leadership teams is that they deal with some unique challenges that often limit their productivity and cohesion.
This is strange, Angela thought. Ben had never requested to meet with her alone.
She grabbed her notebook, went to the kitchen for a quick cup of tea and then into her meeting with Ben. It was slightly past 9:30am, as was customary. But, as unusual as it was, Ben was already sitting at the conference table. Angela noticed a piece of paper lying in front of him. Hmmm, Ben’s not usually
this formal.
"Leading from good to great does not mean coming up with the answers and then motivating everyone to follow your messianic vision. It means having the humility to grasp the fact that you do not yet understand enough to have the answers and then to ask the questions that will lead to the best possible insights."
- Jim Collins, Good to Great
I was recently facilitating a strategic team building offsite for a senior leadership team in Colorado, and at the break one of the leaders approached me to talk about one of his team members. This particular team member was having a negative impact on the overall team, but the leader was having a difficult time putting his finger on what the team member was doing that was creating such a ripple effect.
