In the Woods

She was probably 10 years old wearing a sundress, flip flops, a camelback water system backpack, and riding a child sized mountain bike in the woods – and without a helmet.  She pulled off to the side of the trail to let me go by.  I asked if she was ok.  She said, “I am ok and I know what I am doing”.  Her story was that her dad was coming right behind her.  She was expecting to go to the beach but didn’t know their plans had changed until she was a picked up.   She had been to the park before and knew her way.  I offered to ride with her until her dad caught up to her, but she didn’t want any help.  I told her it might be a good idea to stop a little up the trail at a rest spot and wait until her dad caught up.

I got back on my bike and continued – but still was bothered that she was alone even though it was a popular trail that would loop back to the parking lot.  I talked to a couple of other faster riders were passing me and they had seen her as well.  They were going to make a second loop and check on her and look to see if there was a parent looking for their child. 

It had a happy ending, but not until a couple of riders went back out after finding her puzzled dad at the beginning of the trail.  Talking with the dad I found out the young girl had overestimated her skill and knowledge and assumed support was close.  The father assumed she would stay close and she was prepared (even though he underestimated the importance of a helmet, shoes, and tighter clothing).

Chances are that you have probably seen something similar to this in the workplace.  A new staff member starts, the supervisor makes some assumptions based on their past experiences, and the new person doesn’t want to ask questions or take advice.  Suddenly (or not so suddenly) a preventable situation occurs.  The new person feels embarrassed, the supervisor has a woulda-coulda-shoulda moment, and the ripple effect continues for a while.

How does a leader prevent something like this from happening?

1. Meet often with new team members.  It gives the opportunity to intentionally connect, build a relationship, establish trust, and facilitate conversation.
2. Be clear on objectives what success will look like when the job is done well.
3. Ask open ended questions.  Explore situations with them and have them assess what they see.  Ask them do describe their plans and what they will be doing next.  Ask them to assess the progress and what might need to be adjusted.  Ask questions that will help them sustain success they find.
4. Debrief tasks and projects and celebrate successes.  They need to know what when the target is hit.

REVIEW - Eat, Move, Sleep

While I don’t know Tom Rath, I think he has a passion for helping people be the best version of themselves that they can be.  His books “How Full is Your Bucket”, “”Strengthsfinder 2.0”, “Strengths Based Leadership”, “Vital Friends”, and “Well-Being” all offer challenges to grow and understand ourselves better and maximize who we are.

Tom has a new book coming out in October this year called “Eat, Move, Sleep” to challenge people to make small choices that can lead to big changes in their health.  He has taken his research and writing skills and applied them to a topic that that is front of mind with many people – being healthy. We all want to be able to do the things we are passionate about for as long as we can.  Unfortunately, the choices we make along the way in our eating habits, activity levels, and sleeping habits contribute to the obstacles we encounter along the way.  

"Eat, Move, Sleep" captures the research from the medical, psychology, and nutrition communities and packages it in 30 quick read chapters (think a chapter a day for a month) that each conclude with 3 action steps around eating, moving, and sleeping for you to consider implementing in your own life.  It is about making little changes in our habits and lifestyle that will have a ripple effect across the quality of life we experience as we become healthier. 

Have you heard some pieces of the information before?  Probably.
Have you ignored some of things you have been told?  Most Likely.

So what makes this different?  “Eat, Move, Sleep” will challenge you to rethink what you are doing in small steps rather than overwhelming you.

1. It shows the cause and effect relationship between the three areas of our lives.  Many people focus on just diet or exercise to change their life.
• Did you know that good sleep increases a digestive hormone that keeps you from eating too much and decreases another that boosts appetite?
2. Tom gives you just enough research in plain and simple terms to support his action steps at the end of each chapter.  
• A simple check-in with another person around activity levels nearly doubles a participant’s activity levels over the span of a year.
• A Harvard study with 100,000 people showed the quality of what you eat will influence your health more than calories.
3. Challenges are realistic.  You are challenged to do one of the three action steps each day for a month and try it to see what the result will be for you.  It’s doable.
• Identify a few healthy food options – buy them automatically so good choices are always available at home.
• When your brain is filled with new information to remember or when you need a burst of creativity, go for a walk.
• Eat the healthiest things on your plate first and end with the least healthy.

If you need a little inspiration, a nudge in the right direction, simple steps toward a goal, or some conversation starters to share with friends who you have health concerns for, this will be a great book to read.  Don't overlook this topic - or this book.  You will think differently about what you eat, how you move, and how you sleep – and if you implement just a handful of the action steps, you will be healthier and better prepared to lead. 

You can pre-order the book now at http://www.tomrath.org/exclusive-offer-for-early-adopters/ and get an electronic copy to read ahead of time!

Lead Where You Are…

The 2013 Global Leadership Summit (GLS) was last week.  Facilitated by Willow Creek Church in Illinois, the GLS is a two day leadership conference conducted live at Willow Creek and broadcast to 235 locations in the US with over 75,000 participants, and another 92 countries around the world (some live and some on DVD later in the fall).  It’s an open call to men and women to live out their Christian faith in the workplace and within their church developing and growing their capacity as leaders.

So what were the nuggets this year?  I started my list that is actually much longer, but here are the top 10 that made me pause and are still making me think this week.

Bill Hybels – Pastor

• Be strong and courageous because I am with you -  God to Joshua (Joshua 1:9, the Bible) 

Colin Powell - General

• Great leaders know how to connect the purpose of the organization to the role of each person.

Patrick Lencioni – Business Consultant and Author

• We can’t be Christ like servant leaders if we don’t help people connect the reason they work with how they work. To be relevant is to have a reason for doing what you do, and the job of a leader is to help employees find that reason.  Management is ministry.

Mark Burnett – TV and Movie Producer

• Choose your companions before you choose your road.  Hire the right people,  empower them,  get out of the way

Joseph Grenny – Business Consultant and Author

• If our faith experience isn’t translating into other habits and experiences, we aren’t leading.

Chris Brown – Pastor

• Never get caught up in the great things of leadership if it takes you away from the God things of leadership.

Bob Goff – Attorney and CEO

• What were you made to do?  God created us to do unique things.   Discover it and do it! Lead where you are!

Brene' Brown – Research Professor and Speaker

• “The 2 irreducible needs of men, women and children are love and belonging…In the absence of these, there is always suffering….Fitting in is different than belonging”

Oscar Muriu – Pastor in Kenya

• Reflect Jesus - never do ministry/lead alone. Keep budding leaders around you.   When you lead alone,  there is a missed opportunity for mentorship.  (When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. - Acts 4:13, the Bible)

Dr.  Henry Cloud – Psychologist and Author

• The people who thrive create a list of things they can absolutely do & forget about the things out of their control.

The challenge with any conference take-away is what do you so with them once you get back home. Here are three simple things:

1. Tell someone what you learned or what stuck out 
2. Revisit your notes within a week 
3. Decide on 1-3 things you are going to do and put them on the calendar and make them happen 

Save August 14-15 next year for two great days to blend leadership with your faith. Their website has a list of locations already as well as an early bird registration. 

Disconnected Message

I was driving past a fast food restaurant that has a marquee sign in just the right spot.  It was at a perfect place to attract attention to their best deals, their specialty, their strengths, or what makes them different on a corner with four other food choices surrounding them.  What was their sign promoting (and has been promoting for over a month!)?  Bags of ice only $1.29.

Maybe they are having a contest with the other roast beef places to see who can sell more ice, but I doubt it. However, I think someone forgot what they do well and store leaders forgot about the importance of reminding their team what they do well.  

Their message and identity are disconnected – and missing an opportunity to tell the customer what they do best and why they should choose them for a meal.

·         Do you remember what do well and what you are called to do?
·         Does your team know what you are called to do?
·         Are potential customers attracted to you for what you do best?

Spend time this month reviewing the messages you are sharing.  Do they align with your vision, mission, and priorities?  You can fix them now so you are not just selling ice.

3 Characteristics of Effective Managers

Was working with a group of newer managers last week on the topic of leadership. We were talking about the actions of leadership vs. management and the need for leaders to be effective managers as well.  One of the exercises involved identifying the top characteristics of effective managers.   The top three as determined by the group:

• Good communicator
• Sets a good example 
• Innovative - willing to explore different ways of doing things 

What made these stick out from the list of 25 they reviewed?   The group spent 2 days interacting and discussing ideas around being cause driven,  transitioning to a team leadership role,  hiring the right team, providing feedback,  and coaching for success.   Communication influences each topic and is critical for success in each area.   It involves sharing the cause that drives organization,  delegating tasks effectively,  listening to team members and prospective team members,  an clarifying goals,  expectations, and feedback. 

Setting a good example seems like an obvious "duh" moment.  I think it goes back to the fact that we want to follow and be led by leaders and managers that have their walk and talk align.  Trust develops when we experience this.   Without trust,  the relationship falters - the example we want to model is eroded.   This group recognized this in themselves and identified being a good example as a core competency to aspire. 

The final characteristic,  being innovative and open to new ways of doing things,  highlights the desire to develop people.   Giving our teams step by step instructions and not allowing them to create with the clear outcomes in mind only creates puppets - not future leaders who can think critically through a task.   There is a place and time for complete detail,  but the development of people requires effective managers to be open to new ways of doing things developed by their team. 

I think the group did a great job identifying the competencies for success.  Developing communication skills,  setting a good example  - walking the talk,  and exploring different ways of doing things will make a big difference in their organizations and in their teams.   How are you doing in these areas? 

Decisive – New book by the Heath Brothers

I just read Chip and Dan Heath’s new book “Decisive – How to make better choices in life and work”.  I don’t usually grab a new book as soon as it comes out, but after reading “Switch” I anticipated that it would provide some great ideas and tools for problem solving and decision making - and I am using the tools already personally and professionally.

“Decisive” delivers ideas, a plan, and stories that capture the essence of the acronym WRAP – Widening options, Reality testing assumptions, Attain distance before deciding, and Prepare to be wrong.  At the conclusion of each chapter is a one page summary that serves as a great tool to remember the concepts and key stories for each point made – a helpful tool when you need a quick reminder.

Chip and Dan address the “Villains of Decision Making” - the traps we fall into that cause a poor decision.

1. Narrow framing that results in limiting the options we pursue
2. Having a confirmation bias that leads us to find the information that supports our initial thoughts
3. Short term emotions that deliver a mountain top experience leading the decision making process
4. Overconfidence in our own prediction capabilities – remembering only the times we were right

While I walked away with several ideas from the book, there are five that resonate more than others for me.

• Widening options is about lighting the entire stage.  There is a tendency to let the spotlight be so intense that we only look in the lit area for our options and then miss out on the activity on the remainder of the stage. 
• “Ladder Up” – Climb the ladder for ideas and a broader/higher perspective.  Look for internal brightspots (a reference to Switch) that can be duplicated, look for external successes as benchmarks, and look for broader similar issues – maybe in a different field.
• Pre-mortem review.  Too many times we get to the end of a failure and ask what caused the failure or less than expected success.  Pre-mortem preview looks at the decision and asks, “What will cause this decision to not be wildly successful?” and then follows up with “Can these be overcome?” or “What needs to be done to overcome these?”.
• Enshrining core priorities.  Core values can be aligned with many of the decision we have.  Core priorities clarify what is important.  “Debt free” as a priority will change the type of car to buy for most people.  “Developing our own talent” as a priority may change the resources allocated to an intern program.
• Setting tripwires.  Tripwires provide guidelines to make secondary decisions and can be used to provide a safety net for risk taking.  If we are not at a certain enrollment by a date, we will re-evaluate; if we have hit a certain revenue level, we will add staff; if I haven’t heard anything by a certain date, I will switch vendors.

You may pull other ideas out the book depending where you are at right now personally and professionally.  Regardless, you will find that the Heath brothers have given you additional tools to use in your leadership toolbox – and who doesn’t appreciate a toolbox that is filled with useful and practical tools for their particular trade.

Time to Explore

Time Magazine listed Jesus in their top 100 most influential of all time.  Author Joel Stein stated, “If 3 billion people follow your teachings 2,000 years after you're dead, that's pretty influential.”  As a Christian approaching Easter, I would argue that “after you’re dead” should be substituted with “after you are resurrected and leave earth” but the point is Jesus’s influence is spread through all world..

Beyond his mission of restoring people back to God, he left a blueprint for leadership development  by how he developed his disciples and brought them on a journey with him.  He ushered them through three steps that changed their lives.  Although each one of his team progressed on his own time, he engaged them on a journey that still works today.

• Explore.  Jesus invited them to "come and see".  They followed along to see what Jesus was all about watching, learning, listening, and participating in his ministry.
• Grow and coach.  He challenged them to think and act in new ways. After spending time with him, he challenged them.   In Luke 9, he directs them to go out and minister, and Luke 10 he sends out another 72.  He gave them tasks to grow.  He asked them tough questions.
• Mentor/model.  After his resurrection, Jesus told them to go out and make disciples.  He helped them explore, learn, and grow.  They were told to replicate what he taught them creating even more followers and leaders.

What is overlooked many times is an intentional plan includes the explore stage.  Why?  Exploring takes time.  Impatience wants to move us fast and get straight to where we see more impact – and isn’t it great to delegate a task or feel like we are a mentor?

But exploring is learning. Its necessary. New leaders see what works and doesn’t work.  They see styles and situations without pressure.  They have a chance to think critically about the type of leader they want to be and how they want to make a difference.  Interning, interviewing leaders, career exploration sessions, shadowing, spending time with experienced leaders, and training opportunities all provide opportunities to explore.  It may feel less productive at times.  But it makes a difference and it will uncover the diamonds in the rough and give a foundation for future tasks and roles.

Jesus took common men and invited them to explore.  Empowered by their ongoing relationship with him after  resurrection -  they changed the world after exploring their calling, being challenged to grow, and mentoring others in the faith.  Who will you invite to explore that will be the next generation of leaders?