People want an empathetic leader. Many managers strive to be one. But ask someone to define the term, and you’re likely to be met with silence.

Let’s start with the definition. According to Merriam-Webster, empathy means “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.”

The logical question is: why is being empathetic an important quality of a leader? It seems to have nothing in common with achieving tasks or succeeding in the workplace.

The importance of being an empathetic leader starts with the simple truth that leadership is about people. If you’re going to lead effectively, you must be attuned to your people’s thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. This translates into creating real partnerships rather than exerting power. It means walking alongside your team members and guiding them in the direction you need them to go.

Why Empathetic Leaders Are Needed Now

The topic of empathetic leadership has been getting a lot of press lately, mostly due to the adverse effects of the pandemic. COVID has bruised people in many ways: losing a loved one, losing a job, pay cuts, health problems, and on and on.

People are reevaluating their relationship with work in the wake of the pandemic. Some are deciding life’s too short to leave their spirit at the door and endure long workdays just to bring home a paycheck. They want an environment that nourishes them in a profound way.

The Empathy Deficit

Forbes says empathy is the most important leadership skill, but only 40% of people rate their leaders as being empathetic. It’s tricky to single out one skill as being the most important—anyone can argue that other skills deserve top billing. That qualifier aside, this statistic reveals a huge disconnect between what people want and what their leaders are providing.

But leading with empathy isn’t easy. If empathetic leadership were part of a college curriculum, it would be a 200-level class. It presumes that people have all the basics down—and many leaders don’t.

Leaders are often promoted to their roles based on their success as an individual contributor. But being a first-time manager requires a whole new set of skills—for example, emotional intelligence—that are more important than technical expertise. Many managers either haven’t had the opportunity to develop these skills, are resistant to doing so, or don’t have an interest in them.

When you add up all these reasons, it’s easy to see why we have an empathy deficit among leaders and their people.

Know Thyself

Becoming an empathetic leader starts with having excellent self-awareness. This requires doing inner work on understanding your motivators, your temperament, and your personality style. It also includes knowing your communication style, your reaction to feedback, and how your values shape your behavior.

The first step in your journey is investing in your own development. Once you are more self-aware, you can begin to adjust your leadership style to the needs of your people.

Senior executives play a pivotal role in this. They must put organizational resources behind self-awareness initiatives to show they are serious about developing empathetic leaders. Investing in training is an example. Just as important, they need to model the behaviors they want the organization’s leaders to demonstrate. They also should have caring conversations with managers who don’t appear to be growing into empathetic leaders.

Understand Others

The second part of empathetic leadership is striving for a good understanding of your team members. This includes improving your communication skills, such as being curious in conversations instead of being defensive or aggressive. It also includes learning how to eliminate fear in your interactions with your people—trust cannot survive if there is fear in a relationship.

Building trust with your people is essential if you’re to be an empathetic leader. They must know you are on their side and you mean them no harm. You must show them your role as a leader is to help them succeed. The better you understand your people, the better you’ll be able to serve them in a meaningful way.

Be Helpful

Finding practical ways to serve others is a concrete example of empathetic leadership. Our Self Leadership course teaches five points of power you can use to help your people succeed:

• Position Power: Having the title or authority to make certain decisions
• Task Power: Having control over a task or particular job
• Personal Power: Having interpersonal and leadership skills, passion, inspiration, or a personal vision of the future
• Relationship Power: Being connected or friendly with other people who have power
• Knowledge Power: Having relevant experience, expertise, or credentials

Empathetic leaders use these points of power to build up their people, help them feel safe and secure, and increase their confidence. When leaders do this, their people know they care about them. This opens many doors of possibility.

Be Compassionate

Empathetic leaders are compassionate and extend grace to others. They know how to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. But remember: organizations have goals that must be accomplished. Leaders must balance compassion with clear expectations that are understood by every team member.

Leaders who are empathetic place great importance on creating psychological safety—an environment where a person feels free to speak their mind, take risks, and admit mistakes without fear of being punished or reprimanded.

Empathetic leaders also balance great relationships with great results. Ken Blanchard and I share how to navigate this tricky intersection in our new book, Simple Truths of Leadership: 52 Ways to Be a Servant Leader and Build Trust. 

Simple Truth #1 in our book is “Servant leadership is the best way to achieve both great results and great relationships.” Many people have an either/or mindset when it comes to leadership—they focus on either achieving results or developing relationships. You can get both if you set a clear vision and direction for your people, then work side by side serving them in ways that help them accomplish their goals.

Set Boundaries

Empathetic leaders know how to set clear boundaries that benefit everyone, such as letting people know how many hours a day they’re supposed to work or that sending late-night emails is inappropriate.

When everyone has clarity on work boundaries—including rules and expectations—there is tremendous safety and freedom. Boundaries create a guardrail so people don’t unduly sacrifice themselves to accomplish something. Boundaries also promote autonomy. They let people know what they can and can’t do. 

An Empathetic Leader in Action

Seeing an empathetic leader in action turns philosophy into concrete reality. Try to imagine yourself as an empathetic leader who practices the following behaviors on a daily basis.

An empathetic leader:

• Asks rather than tells
• Listens rather than speaks
• Serves rather than commands
• Cares about people’s concerns
• Is receptive to feedback
• Doesn’t overact to people’s questions or concerns
• Doesn’t interpret concerns as resistance

When you demonstrate these behaviors, your people will be loyal to you. They’ll be engaged. They’ll give their best effort. They’ll be more innovative. And they’ll speak highly about your organization to their friends and colleagues.

Call to Action

At its core, empathetic leadership is about being an others-focused leader. It’s about leaders being in tune with the needs of their people and responding in tangible ways that demonstrate their care and concern. And how do people respond when their leaders act this way? They pledge their loyalty, trust, and commitment to that leader, which results in greater productivity, innovation, and creativity. Who wouldn’t want that?

When I listen to organizational sponsors express their needs for leadership development, it can be framed as a need to shift people from almost ready to ready NOW. Coaching is a significant way to develop high potentials into emerging leaders. Here are three ways a coach can help:

• Identifying strengths. Coaches can assist leaders in identifying and understanding how to leverage their unique gifts.
• Practicing new skills. Coaching creates an environment in which leaders can discuss and practice new skills and behaviors.
• Developing more advanced skills. Coaching causes leaders to mature and move past problem solving toward an increased ability to manage paradoxical situations.

Coaching provides a process for helping leaders deliver on their best intentions. Supporting a high potential manager with a coach creates a double impact: as the coach draws out information, ideas, solutions, and high level thinking from the emerging leader, the leader can, in turn, draw out information, ideas and higher level thinking from their people. Thus, the emerging leader encourages self-reliance and ownership of the work that’s being done by their direct reports.

Coaching has the potential to create an organizational cultural shift where future leaders continually develop future leaders.

About the Author

Mary Ellen Sailer, Ed.D., is a Coaching Solutions Partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team. Since 2000, Blanchard’s 120 coaches have worked with over 15,000 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services.

Eventually people get there—but it comes with a cost, says Ann Phillips, a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies.

“It’s one of the toughest types of issue to address because on the surface everyone’s putting on a brave face and pretending that everything is okay. But if you scratch a little underneath you’ll see the level of dissatisfaction that’s costing organizations billions of dollars in untapped productivity, creativity, and innovation.

The biggest problem getting in the way of managers delivering the direction and support people need is an overestimation of their current skills.  As Phillips explains, “Leaders often believe they are providing direction when they tell people to ‘Do this, and then do that, and be sure to get it done by this date,’ but that is only part of providing direction—and probably the lowest form of the behavior.”

The same is true when it comes to supportive behavior, says Phillips. “Managers feel as if they know what supportive behavior is and usually have their own ideas about what it looks like. But without instruction, most people default to behavior that consists mainly of encouragement.

“People are good at encouraging others with phrases such as, ‘You can do it. We’re glad you’re here. We believe in you. Use your best judgment.’ But they miss out on all of the other supportive behaviors that are just as important such as listening, sharing information, and facilitating self-directed problem solving.”

“So folks are good at telling people what to do and then cheerleading them on to accomplish the task. And that is the one-two, ‘I want you to do this, and I know you can handle it’ combination that most people are getting in terms of direction and support from their managers. On the surface this may seem reasonable, but it is a style that only works well for direct reports who are already accomplished at the task. For people who are new to a task or are running into problems or are unsure of themselves, it’s a style that actually hinders progress—and can be damaging to overall growth and development.”

For managers looking to increase their ability to offer direction and support for their people, Phillips has three key recommendations.

Recognize your own default settings. Most leaders are unaware that they have a default setting when it comes to leadership even though assessments show that 54% of managers use only one style when it comes to providing direction and support for their people—either Directing, Coaching, Supporting, or Delegating. Each of these styles is great if it is a match for what a direct report needs. Each is also a hindrance if it is the wrong style for the situation. 

Expand your repertoire of directive behaviors. Leaders need to think beyond just issuing directives and holding people accountable. Phillips encourages leaders to become more skillful at goal setting and putting in the time to provide day-to-day coaching as needed..

Expand your repertoire of supportive behaviors.   Leaders need to improve listening skills and be willing to share information to facilitate self-directed problem solving. This includes listening with the intent to learn, to be influenced, and to understand—not just respond. People recognize that information is power, yet many managers still try to maintain control by keeping information to themselves even though it undermines employee development.

Start today

Phillips notes that, “Managers have the ability to bring out so much more from their people. Find out where your people are at with their tasks. What do they need from you in terms of direction and support? Improve your skills in both of these areas and see what a difference it makes.”

You can learn more in the new Blanchard eBook, Why It’s Crucial for Your Leaders to Take a Situational Approach to Management. It’s available as a part of the Blanchard resource library for leadership, learning, and talent development professionals.

What good is building character only to have it erode due to a lack of maintenance?  Coaching enables people to gain clarity about who they are, what they are doing, why they are doing it, and where they want to go.

In a recent coaching call, a client described a situation where during weekly staff meetings, a leader had been allowing one of her team members to speak negatively about people in another department.  The leader saw team meetings as a place to vent—but over the weeks they had begun to morph into weekly gossip fests.

My client was concerned about the situation. I listened and probed to help illuminate the source of her concern.  Affording her the time and space to discuss the topic moved the issue from being someone else’s problem to solve to being an opportunity to assess her own character and maintain it.

A coach will challenge clients to conduct themselves according to who and what they say they are. The coach does this by listening, asking focused questions, reflecting, challenging, and acknowledging the client.

The business case for coaching is that it supports the development of self leadership—but coaching accomplishes much more than that.  I’d say the personal case for coaching is that it is “customized maintenance for a leader’s character.”

What have you noticed in others that could be a good reminder to you?  What’s your maintenance plan for the leaders in your organization? Consider how a coach could help!

About the Author

Mary Ellen Sailer, Ed.D., is a Coaching Solutions Partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team. Since 2000, Blanchard’s 120 coaches have worked with over 15,000 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services. And check out Coaching Tuesday every week at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

Blanchard points to research that shows most managers don’t receive that necessary training, however, until they are about ten years into their managerial career.

“The effects are damaging at both an individual and organizational level,” says Blanchard. “More than 60 percent of new managers underperform or fail in their first two years.  And those who survive without managerial training often find themselves with negative habits that are hard to break—which can hold them back for years to come.”

With over two million new people stepping up to leadership for the first time each year in the US alone, Blanchard believes organizations need to take management training a lot more seriously.

“It is very important that those responsible for organizational training put together an effective curriculum for developing people into trusted professional managers. As a professional manager, you are responsible for what your direct reports do, and to some degree, how they feel—especially the emotional connection they establish with their job and the company.”

While some people’s influence and communication skills come naturally, every manager can learn and develop the skills they need regardless of their starting point, says Blanchard.

“Some people naturally understand how to work with others collaboratively and how to build rapport, while others come to leadership from a less developed starting point. But you still need a system if you are going to succeed as a manager. It’s something everyone can benefit from.”

According to Blanchard, all great managers do four things:

“Great managers begin by establishing clarity for their people through clear goals, accountability, and personal responsibility.  Second, they intervene appropriately when things are going well—and when things aren’t going well. Third, they adapt their leadership style to what is needed by appropriately identifying a direct report’s development level on a task and then modifying their style to best serve the direct report at that stage.

“Finally, great managers know how to create long term, long lasting relationships that are evidenced by trust and engagement over time.  This results in people who stay with the organization, talk positively about the organization to others, and perform at high levels in a collaborative manner.”

Blanchard explains that effective managers connect the dots between the work of the person, the work of the unit, and the work of the organization as a whole. They understand the correlation of action, motivation, and commitment. They successfully manage both performance and employee satisfaction.

“Great managers help people see the bigger picture from whatever seat they occupy,” says Blanchard, “and that can be a challenge.  People’s careers rise and fall and managers need to be there with coaching skills to help people through the ups and downs—even when there isn’t a clear path forward.

“These powerful skills almost always have to be developed through training—and once learned, they can help people focus and find a way forward in any situation.”

Interested in learning more about designing a leadership development curriculum for the managers in your organization? Join us for a free webinar!

Creating an Effective Leadership Development Curriculum—3 Essential Components

Online—July 25, 2017 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time

Great managers aren’t born—they’re trained. In this webinar, best-selling business author and consultant Scott Blanchard identifies the essential ingredients of a comprehensive leadership development program, starting with a first-time manager curriculum and moving through intermediate and advanced skills managers need to bring out the best in people.

Drawing on his company’s experience successfully training hundreds of thousands of managers for more than thirty years, Blanchard will share:

• Four communication skills and four conversations new managers need to master
• Three goal setting, diagnosing, and matching skills intermediate level managers need to learn
• Four specialized coaching skills that help advanced managers cope with management situations that are shifting or otherwise uncertain

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to put together a proven leadership development program in your organization!

Register today!

Maybe it is the CEO of your company, the principal of your local high school, or the president of your alma mater.

If I asked you about the specific qualities that made them successful, you’d probably tell me about their hard skills—teachable abilities such as vision and strategic thinking.

But I’ll bet you’d also tell me about their soft skills—interpersonal abilities such as listening, collaborating, and endorsing others.

Yes, the hard skills matter, but in my experience it is soft skills that make a leader memorable—more than their title, degree, acquisitions, or accomplishments. Let me give you an example.

Twenty five years ago, when I was pregnant with my first child, I attended a presentation by the famous Boston Children’s Hospital pediatrician Dr. T. Berry Brazelton. After delivering his speech to a packed house, Dr. Brazelton took questions from the audience. One woman had a question about breastfeeding her three-year-old child.

A sizeable number of audience members started to murmur regarding the woman’s choice to nurse a child that age. The negative energy unsettled the mother and she paused in the middle of her question. The silence seemed to last forever, but Dr. Brazelton kept his compassionate gaze upon her. It was as if they were the only two people in the room. He nodded for her to continue and she tentatively resumed speaking. When she finished her question, he answered her. He then took the next question.

Why has this stayed with me for twenty-five years? In that moment, I saw Dr. Brazelton as an awesome leader because he didn’t do anything. He cared enough to wait. He held the space for her. The woman at the microphone felt his connection—and I did, too, as an observer. He didn’t play to the audience. He didn’t diminish the woman or her question. And by doing so, Dr. Brazelton allowed me to observe the transformational power of caring by truly listening. That evening, I learned so much from him—far beyond the topic of his speech.

Obviously, listening, caring, and creating a connection are important to me as a coach. It was not Dr. Brazelton’s education or professorships or thirty-page resume that affected me the evening I heard his speech. I was transformed by seeing a self-aware individual care to hear the question of another. It was powerful—and it remains powerful all these years later.

As the years have passed, I recall that night often and use it as a calibration in my own work by asking myself: In what ways am I creating connections like that?

How about you? Taking the opportunity to continually improve is essential to becoming a better, more self-aware leader. Unlike a hard skill, we’re never finished when it comes to improving our ability to listen, to be present, and to validate others. Consider how you can model both the hard and soft sides of leadership in your conversations. You’ll help yourself and others in working together more effectively—and isn’t that wonderful!

About the Author

Mary Ellen Sailer, Ed.D., is a Coaching Solutions Partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team. Since 2000, Blanchard’s 120 coaches have worked with over 15,000 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services. And check out Coaching Tuesday every week at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

Dear Madeleine

My question is: how does an organization scale their management team and keep skills sharp as they grow?  We are a software development services shop and we are growing fast—we currently have 30 people in management positions.

It’s getting more difficult each day to make sure everyone is managing from the same playbook.  We have seen many of our customers reach this stage and fail.  We don’t want this to happen to us.

Growing Fast

Dear Growing Fast,

Well, thanks so much for asking! How smart you are to notice the chaos out there and to be extremely intentional as you grow. I will try to keep this short because, honestly, the answer could be a Ph.D dissertation, and also because I need to keep this from being a long plug for everything we do here at The Ken Blanchard Companies.

Begin with the end in mind.  I have two words for you: Vision and Values.  Vision means that you know exactly where you are going and how you are going to get there.  The book to help you with this is Full Steam Ahead. Values means identifying what is most important to you in your culture and your employees.

A lot of lip service is given to values—but once an organization decides what they are and prints them up, they are generally forgotten. All you have to do to see what happens when organizations do this is to read the news. If you don’t want your employees writing blogs someday about what a nightmare it is to work for you, you can avoid it right now at the beginning of your journey.

The organizations that last and make it are the ones with values that are used to make decisions. You are still a small shop. You and the other founding leaders can get together and work to get crystal clear about where you are going and what is most important about how you’ll get there.

Next, you need absolutely solid operational leadership.  Jim Collins nailed it in his book Good to Great. Collins says you have to get the right people on the bus, in the right seats, and get the wrong people off the bus. This means keeping the people who can be aligned with the vision and values and who have the right skill sets and attitude to go the distance.  It sounds so stunningly simple, but I can assure you it is fiendishly difficult to achieve. It’s much easier to start with this idea rather than having to retrofit later.

Finally, you will want to absolutely bullet proof your day-to-day performance management—and I can say with confidence that our Situational Leadership® II model is what you need. Learn it and teach it to every manager in your organization, because it is a no-brainer.  Seriously, I managed people for a decade before I stumbled over it and thought, “OMG where has this been all my life?” I just can’t imagine how anyone manages people without it.  Well, actually, I take that back, you don’t have to imagine it—all you have to do is look around at all the terrible managing that is going on.

The fundamentals are:  it starts with crystal clear goals and tasks for each employee. Then the manager and employee work together to assess the employee’s competence and confidence on each task or goal.  From there the manager and employee identify the right mix of direction and support so the employee gets exactly what they need to win.  Finally, the manager and employee check in regularly to go over goals, tasks, and development needs so there is no confusion. As Ken Blanchard says, “Common sense, but not common practice!”

If you focus on these fundamentals, the good news is that you won’t have to be worried when it comes time for performance reviews.  As you probably know, many companies are getting rid of them—see our recent white paper here.

I suppose you were hoping for something a little less involved.  Sorry.  But if you have your company’s vision and values articulated in a way so that there can be no confusion, and if you have the right people in the right jobs and everyone actually knows what their job is, you will be ahead of the game.

The upside to getting all of this even kind of right is incalculable.  It will mean staying in business when your competitors flame out.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan-Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

In today’s rapidly changing world we are all learners. And our busy lifestyles can make it hard to find the time for development. Three people that can help you succeed with your development plans are your boss, a mentor, or your own professional coach if you know how to employ each properly.

Each of these relationships is different by nature and all have their pros and cons.

Your Boss: In an ideal world your boss facilitates your ongoing development, assisting you to be as self-reliant in your role as possible. Many leaders offer this type of support and since they interact with you fairly frequently they have a sense of your development needs.

Unfortunately learning goals often take a back seat to the more pressing day-to-day objectives. Even the most well-meaning managers have to balance your needs with the needs of the organization. This dual focus—either consciously or unconsciously—can prejudice where they ask you to spend your time. Feedback can be a problem as many leaders are hesitant to provide negative feedback when you need to make significant changes.  Additionally, you may be less than willing to identify personal weaknesses when you are concerned how it might negatively impact a performance review.

To make this a more effective growth relationship think about where you want to stretch and grow.  Then think about how that growth would benefit not only you but your manager, your team, and your organization.  Share all this with your boss and ask for his or her thoughts, help, and support.

A Mentor: Establishing a relationship with a mentor—someone other than your boss—can remove some of the previous obstacles. Where a boss has organizational objectives to balance with your development, a mentor is someone who is focused solely on providing help and advice based on their past experience. Mentors serve as counselors and guides.

In my work as a coach, I have heard  many of my clients share stories of the positive impact mentors have had in their lives.  The only regret these clients mention is that they often find themselves hesitant to ask for more as the mentor is “gifting” what time they do give.

Here’s how to get the most out of this relationship. Think about what you most want to develop and where you think your mentor’s wealth of knowledge might specifically help.  Focus on one or two areas. Having this focus will help you and your mentor know how to best utilize their gift of time.

A Professional Coach: So what about a coach?  As you can imagine I am somewhat bias toward what a coach can do. Where a boss is a stakeholder, and a mentor is gifting their time, a professional coach is neither.  A coach is completely in service of your development.  They are not looking for you to take any action or path except for one of your own choosing. This allows the coach to be very curious about who you are and what you truly want.

Coaching clients can candidly share their aspirations, limitations and fears.  They see that the sole purpose of the relation is their own growth and learning.

Here’s how to get the most out of a coaching relationship. Just as with your boss or a mentor, target what you want to learn and develop.  This will make the time spent with a coach more impactful. Coaching requires your commitment of money, time, effort, vulnerability, etc. so thinking ahead about the path you want to take will help you get the most from your investment.    

Multiply Your Abilities

Focused growth and development doesn’t happen without effort and it usually doesn’t happen nearly as effectively when done on your own.  When thinking about your own continuous path as a learner, consider where and how your boss, a mentor or coach—or maybe all three—can support you so you can “inherit the earth.”

About the Author

Joanne Maynard is a senior coach with The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 130 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services. And check out Coaching Tuesday every week at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

Leaders can find countless ways to serve the people they lead, and they should always be on the lookout for new and different ways to do this. However, there are at least five critical ways leaders must serve if they want to be as effective as possible.

1. See the Future. The ability to envision and communicate a compelling picture of a preferred future. Leaders must help the people they lead see the destination, as well as the advantages of going there. Everybody needs to see who they are, where they are going, and what will guide their journey.
2. Engage and Develop Others. Recruiting and selecting the right people for the right job while creating an environment where people wholeheartedly invest themselves in achieving the vision. Blanchard and Miller believe that engaging is a two-part proposition. The first part is to recruit and select the right people for the right job. That means to get the right players on the team. The second part is to do whatever it takes to engage the hearts and the heads of the people. Historically, the authors point out that many leaders have employed the hands and nothing else—and that’s probably where the term “hired hands” comes from. The best leaders engage the head and heart of their employees in addition to their hands.
3. Reinvent Continuously. To possess a never-ending focus on improvement. Blanchard and Miller believe a leader must be willing to reinvent on at least three levels. The first is personal. Some key questions they recommend asking are: How am I learning and growing as a leader? and What am I doing to encourage others in my group to constantly learn and reinvent themselves? The second level of reinvention is systems and processes: How are we doing the work? How can we do it better? and What changes would enhance our ability to serve our customers and each other? The third type of reinvention involves the structure of the organization. A recommended question to ask here is: What structural changes do we need to make to be more efficient and effective?
4. Value Results and Relationships. The ability to generate positive, measurable results AND cultivate great relationships with those you lead. Leading at a higher level includes both results and relationships. The authors encourage leaders to put equal emphasis on both.  According to Ken Blanchard, “We traditionally teach people the important skills they need to get results: problem solving, decision making, and so on. Leaders need to put an equal emphasis on building relationships and connecting with people.  It’s both/ and, not either/ or.”
5. Embody the Values. To live in a fashion consistent with your stated values. This is fundamental and ongoing, explain Blanchard and Miller. If a leader loses their credibility, their leadership potential will be greatly limited. Aspiring leaders must do more than articulate values—they must live their values every day.

How would you rate yourself in these five areas?  In your experience, which of these five attributes holds leaders back most often?

For the new 10^th anniversary edition, Blanchard and Miller have added a skills assessment and a special new section with their reflections on helping leaders develop these skills.  For new leaders looking to improve their ability to bring out the best in themselves and others, The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do provides an inspiring road map. You can learn more about the book, read an opening chapter, and access additional resources at this special book page.  To participate in a complimentary September 29 webinar that Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller are conducting on the key concepts of The Secret, click here!

In its own research into employee work passion, The Ken Blanchard Companies has found significant correlations between perceptions of leader behavior, employee affect, and subsequent intentions to stay with a company, endorse the organization as a good place to work, and perform at a high level.

So why don’t more organizations invest in developing their leaders? What keeps them from taking steps in the right direction?

“For a lot of organizations, it’s just not part of their founding DNA,” says consultant and author Scott Blanchard in the latest issue of Ignite. “Some companies don’t grow up with it.”

That can be a challenge for managers and individuals looking to grow and develop within those cultures. People who want to develop and grow will find themselves plateauing or hitting the wall early without a clear process for developing themselves and others.

For leaders looking to take some steps toward reinvigorating themselves and others, Blanchard recommends four areas to focus on—understanding yourself, building relationships, producing results, and charting careers.

Step 1. Understanding Yourself

Great leaders begin with a profound understanding of themselves. But Blanchard cautions that in order to get an accurate picture of yourself, you have to get input from others. Self-understanding can’t happen in a vacuum.

“The best leaders do 360s so they can compare their self-perception to the perception of people around them. Inevitably, poor leaders are ones who either don’t care or who have an inaccurate awareness of the way they’re coming across to others. And that’s what Dilbert and the pointy-haired boss are all about. Don’t be that guy. Nobody wants to be that guy.”

Step 2. Building Relationships

As a next step, Blanchard recommends developing and constantly improving your skill in building relationships with people. If there’s one thing to remember, it’s that fundamentally, the art of building relationships centers on serving people.

In Blanchard’s experience, the reason this is so important is the different way that people perceive the actions of leaders who are focused on others instead of solely focused on their own agenda. When people perceive that their leader is coming from the right place and then buy in to that person, they feel safe, they forgive a leader’s mistakes, and they are more willing to put themselves out, try a little harder, and achieve more.

Step 3. Producing Results

The first two steps set the foundation that allow a leader to push people toward better performance. The third step is to learn how to work together with others with the explicit intention of generating better results. And it is not in a manipulative way explains Blanchard. “Leadership is something you do with people—partnering with them in the accomplishment of goals—it’s not something you do to them.

“You’re looking to leverage that interpersonal capacity to produce better results. Great people want to perform at a high level. A leader’s job is to help them get there.”

Step 4.  Charting Careers

In today’s work environment the opportunity to grow is more important than ever before. Growth is the currency of this new economy. People recognize that their ability to grow and learn new things is what keeps them valuable. In this fourth and final step, you—as a leader—must ensure that this is a part of your skill set.

Your goal as a leader is to let them know that you are a partner in their career journey,” says Blanchard. “It’s finding ways that people can grow by giving them a chance to excel in their present job but also looking at what you can do to provide them with opportunities for the next leg of their career.”

It’s a journey that begins with a better understanding of yourself and then expands to include a better understanding of others and how to work together to achieve common goals. This will result in benefits for both the individual and the organization.

To learn about Blanchard’s approach check out Developing Yourself and Others , or join Blanchard for a free webinar on March 19, Leading Yourself and Others to Higher Levels of Performance: A Four-Fold Approach

Ever wonder why promising new managers end up becoming micro-managers?  The problem is often under-supervision. Many times, new managers don’t get the direction and support they need from their immediate boss to learn and gradually master their new role. After a basic orientation, it is assumed that they will figure out the nuances of the position on their own.

If you are like me, when left to your own devices, consciously or unconsciously you revert to what has worked in the past. Lacking specifics and encouragement in a new role the new manager may slip back into doing the jobs of their direct reports instead of providing direction and support. Ever had a leader take over a task or project you thought was yours? It leaves you with strange feelings of resentment and inadequacy.

Don’t be the under-supervised micro-manager! If you find yourself unclear about your new role and in need of some help yourself, it’s time to take action. Here are a few ideas:

• Make your leader lead. Ask for the specifics you need. Set up ongoing one-to-one meetings with your own boss. Let your leader know that you need more time, information, and support. Prepare an agenda and keep the meetings to thirty minutes.
• Organize your projects and resources. What is urgent? What can wait? Who can guide you? Which of your team members should be involved?
• Let leadership trickle down. Once you’ve seen the personal benefit of one-on-one meetings with your immediate manager, schedule ongoing meetings with your direct reports to be sure you are giving them what they need. Ask them for feedback.
• Trust your team members. If you are certain they have all the information they need, step out of the way and let them work. You can make adjustments later.

Even the most promising new managers need some help from time to time. It will take self-reflection, asking for what you need, and taking a chance on yourself and others. You will need guidance and feedback—and you will make mistakes. Ask for help and provide help.  It’s all part of the process and it’s all worth it.

About the author:

Cathy Huett is the Director of Professional Services at The Ken Blanchard Companies.  This is the sixth in a series of posts specifically geared toward new and emerging leaders. To read more, be sure to check out:

• Step Up As You Move Up: 3 tips for new managers
• Two Ways to Consider A New Manager Role
• Redirection Redefined – 5 Steps to Stay on Track
• When a Great Boss Says Goodbye – 5 Ideas to Salvage Support
• New Managers–Don’t Let The Job Steal Your Life

The question they were asking was, “How do we keep our people motivated?”  I asked why they think they have an employee motivation problem.  They explained that while same-store and company-wide performance has been terrific, it is slowing, and some employees are becoming less enthusiastic.   Those employees are becoming more frustrated when they do not delight a customer and earn a sale.

“What do you currently do when an employee gets upset that they did not fully satisfy a customer?” I asked.  One regional sales manager explained that they talk with the employee about things the employee could have been done better.  After all, I was told, “the employees need to be accountable for the results.”

The most important detail here is that the employee in that example works in a successful store, and is already disappointed to have not delighted a customer.  The sales associates—often in their late teens and early twenties, and highly skilled—take great personal pride in delighting customers.  The managers said they work hard to make the in-store experience fun for their child customers and their parents.  So, the motivational question here is: What are the best ways to help a salesperson (or any employee) who is already eager to delight a customer do it better in the future after they fail to meet a high standard held by both their organization and themselves?

First, let me say that the accountability approach is the last appeal you want to make.  No matter how skillfully we parse it, and no matter how sweetly we explain the situation, the accountability discussion is a thinly veiled form of control.  It says very clearly: You are responsible for this and I need you to really get that. Do you understand?  I have met very few employees who walk away from accountability discussions feeling good about themselves, their managers, and the company.  Instead, try using a less controlling, autonomy-supportive approach.

Here are some methods you might consider.  Research shows these approaches are much more likely to stimulate positive motivational responses than emphasizing accountability.

1. Take the employee’s perspective.  Listen carefully to the employee’s experience so you understand it deeply.  In this case, recognize that the employee is already disappointed and desires to do a great job.
2. Encourage initiative and choice.  Help the employee discover several new options for future action.  Be careful not to tell them everything they need to do.  Encouraging initiative means listening and guiding first and foremost, not pushing your formula.
3. Help the employee take on more challenge—but not too much.  One or two more challenging steps at a time will generally work well.
4. Provide a logical rationale for any direct requests you have.  They need to make their new actions their own.  The more you push the less likely they will experience optimal motivation. 
5. Minimize use of pressuring language and controlling tone of voice.  Dialing down fear, concern, and pressure is vital to tapping into the employee’s natural desire to improve, grow, and perform at high levels.

All of the above approaches have been shown to result in positive behavioral responses because they help people feel validated, safe, and free from unnecessary controls.  They are like honey to accountability’s vinegar.  After all, which would you prefer?  Honey or vinegar?

About the author:

The Motivation Guy  (also known as Dr. David Facer)  is one of the principal authors—together with Susan Fowler and Drea Zigarmi—of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ new Optimal Motivation process and workshop.

When the stars line up perfectly, you have a great boss and your growth and success seem assured.  You have a person who guides and directs you, supports you, listens to you, laughs with you, shares disappointments with you, and brainstorms solutions with you. You have a leader who sets your goals and career path, opens doors, shares insights, paints the future picture and provides hope.  As the country song goes, “You’re gonna miss this.”

What can you do when you learn you will lose your best boss? Here are some actions you can take to keep an element of control and keep your career on track.

Download. Proactively set up time to gather important information and advice from your boss. What is the big-picture plan? What are the important projects, steps, and details? Ask for career advice relative to your company. The short term left for your boss may create a safer space to share more openly and honestly.

Mine. I have always believed that there is opportunity in chaos and churn. With some digging you may uncover new ideas, vistas or needs. There may be a promotion for you in this wave of change.  Are there projects you can take over? Could a conversation be had about reorganizing your department? Discuss possibilities proactively with your boss’s boss.

Interview. Ask to be part of the interview process to find your next boss. Prepare a list of benefits to your being on the interview panel. For instance, you know the makeup of the team and the projects in process. You have a unique ability to gauge cultural fit.  You deserve to be part of the process. Believe it—and ask for it.

Stay positive. As a manager, it is your job to soften the blow of the news for your team. If you admired your boss, it is likely others did too. Steer the ship through this choppy sea. Model confidence in the future, keep people focused, and provide hope.

Emulate. If your boss is someone you will remember ask yourself what made her so special. What did she do or say that brought out the best in you? How did he navigate the system for the good of the team? How did she break through obstacles while maintaining positive relationships? What made him wise? Remember and emulate the impressive characteristics, habits, relationships and style your good boss had.  Notice, learn, emulate, repeat.

Losing a terrific leader can shake up anyone. If you accept and manage the new normal, you’ll survive, New Manager, and so will your team.

About the author:

Cathy Huett is Director, Professional Services at The Ken Blanchard Companies.  This is the fourth in a series of posts specifically geared toward new and emerging leaders.

The quick answer is:  It’s about both you and your team. There are two ways to look at your new role.

First, it’s about you. It’s about you in terms of your ability to show the way, provide hope, stay optimistic, and be a positive role model. It’s about your willingness to listen well to your people and hear their concerns and new ideas. It’s about you having the courage to say what needs to be said—to your people, your peers or your boss—on behalf of your team.  It’s about you using your corporate machete to create career paths for your people through your company’s jungle. It’s about teaching and explaining (again) and supporting and encouraging (always).  It’s about noticing the true condition of your most valuable corporate resource—the people under your care.

Second, it’s about them. Are your people’s roles and goals clear?  Do they have a voice and a forum with you to express themselves? Your direct reports are ambitious. They want to know they can trust you with their careers and that you have their best interests at heart. They want to know their time with you is well spent. They want to know the vision and the plan. They want to learn and grow. It’s about them and whether they stay—stay working for your company, stay with you in your department, stay loyal, stay engaged, stay positive, stay current, and stay successful.

No one says becoming a good manager is easy. But it’s not so tricky if you believe at your core that your job is to help others succeed and that, by so doing, you too will succeed. Ken Blanchard asks this question to those who aspire to leadership: “Are you here to serve or to be served?”  Your response to Ken’s question will set the tone for your new management career.

For new managers, there are many ways to leave a positive mark.  Look at what your people need from you and look inside yourself for ways to meet their needs. Ironically, meeting their needs will, in turn, meet your needs as a new manager.

About the author:

Cathy Huett is Director, Professional Services at The Ken Blanchard Companies.  This is the second in a series of posts specifically geared toward new and emerging leaders.

The Power of Autonomy

In complementary terms used in the Optimal Motivation program, when we experience high quality autonomy at work (as well as relatedness and competence), we are more likely to be more creative, more positively energetic (as opposed to relying on stress energy) and more easily focused on accomplishing any task or goal, no matter how short-term, tactical, and mundane—or long-term, strategic, and magnificent.  While leaders repeatedly report they want such creativity and focus from employees, employees repeatedly report how difficult leaders often make it for employees to feel those things.

For example, during a recent keynote presentation, several frustrated participants offered detailed examples of policies, procedures, and both overt and tacit cultural rules that make it difficult for them to feel free, creative, and positively energetic as persistently as the work demands.  Nonetheless, a traditional leader response to such frustration is to tell the employees to stop complaining and adjust in some way so they feel less frustrated.  Of course, by all means let’s all learn how to source our own sense of autonomy no matter what we are faced with.  As if on cue in that conversation, one participant made precisely that a point by citing Viktor Frankl’s experience in a concentration camp as evidence of the kind of transcendence that is possible even in the most extreme environments.  It’s a story to live by, to be sure.

Leaders Stepping Up

But, I think we also should be talking about the extent to which managers and executives actively step up to the challenges of changing policies and procedures—and organizational systems—that foment such frustration.  Too many executives take a “deal with it” stance, rather than a stance of “let’s look into how we can modify or change this so you don’t have to spend so much mental and emotional energy coping with it like that anymore.”

Willing executives could see such a response as adding moral substance to their leadership, since it would shift from focusing only on what the executives want from employees (to just deal with it and get on with the work) to focusing more on what they want for their employees (a work environment that makes it easy for employees to autonomously commit themselves to meaningful, high quality, and high volume work.)

Leader, Would You Like to Shift?

Blanchard research shows that employees generally respond positively to this leadership upgrade with greater intentions to work at above average levels, to endorse the organization, and to stay with the organization longer.  So, with such employee and organizational advantages, managers and executives, what have you got to lose?

About the author:

The Motivation Guy  (also known as Dr. David Facer)  is one of the principal authors—together with Susan Fowler and Drea Zigarmi—of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ new Optimal Motivation process and workshop.  Their posts appear on the first and third Monday of each month.

A young woman shared these words with me one week after being promoted to her first management position. I could see the look of controlled fear in her eyes, along with a fragile confidence. It’s a big step to move from supervisor to manager. The reality waits to sink in until after the initial joy, pride, and congratulations have had their due.

Perhaps the “gulp” is inevitable—but there are a few things aspiring and new managers can do to manage the move up.

1. Practice Before the Promotion

Savvy people identify their next position long before it is available. Like chess, it is important to think a few steps ahead. Where could my current position lead? What are the strategic plans of the company? Where will expansion likely happen? What skills do I need to be seriously considered for the next role I want?

Once the next role is identified, it’s time to act and behave as if you already have that role.

I received a great piece of corporate-world advice when I was in my 20s: If you want to be a vice president, think, act, and dress like a vice president. Act the future part, look the part, build the skills, take some risks, flex your thinking muscles. See how much you can lift.

2. Pause, Think, React

New managers can feel overwhelmed by the issues facing them and new expectations placed on them. A common mistake is to take action before thinking. New managers may fear what others will think, that their authority will be questioned, or that they may appear tentative or weak. It takes self control and maturity to pause and gather enough data to make informed, unemotional decisions. New managers who gather the facts, listen to others’ points of view, etc., before taking action will in the long run be considered wiser leaders. Expeditious and measured is better than quick and sloppy when it comes to ticklish issues. Who wants to follow—or promote—a leader who reacts prematurely with limited information? Strive to be wise.

3. Find Help

Along with the fancy new title and office come more complicated issues and projects. Smart new managers admit the need for help, guidance, mentoring, and information. Mentors can be found inside and outside the organization. Identify others who have been successful and tell them honestly what you don’t know or aren’t sure about, or if you are unclear of the corporate politics involved. Creating a network of respected and trusted people you can confide in will help you confidently step into your new management role.

Deep breath, new manager. You can do this!

About the author:

Cathy Huett is Director, Professional Services at The Ken Blanchard Companies.  This is the first in a series of posts specifically geared toward new and emerging leaders that will appear on the second Saturday of each month.

The total program included modules around personality, values, organization vision and alignment, leadership style, high performing teams, change management, and motivation—the gamut.

This final module consisted of five one-hour-long group presentations about various aspects of their learning journey and its impact on people, process, and results. We asked about personal insights, how they applied their learning to real work, and what the human and economic impacts were of such application. And finally, in terms of their development, we asked them what they wanted to do next.

In terms of roles, the “what’s next” question revealed an array of ambitions. One wants to be CEO within 10 years. Another wants to lead the expansion of engineering capabilities in the African subsidiaries. And a third sees a future in corporate strategy with the aim of improving how global change initiatives are conceived and executed.

What was most beautiful was not the ambitions themselves, although I often feel their gravitational pull compelling me to double-check my own goals and velocity toward them. Instead, the most heartening aspect of their ambitions was how they promised to approach them.

Reduce Pressure to Go Fast

Whereas in the past, on their way to greater roles and responsibilities, these executives would have passed the pressure they received from their bosses to others in direct proportion—or even amplify it—now they realize that pressure often does more harm than good. The motivation research shows that pressure is easily internalized as a form of control, which then undermines a person’s eagerness to perform an act voluntarily and with an optimistic sense of purpose. In other words, pressure creates a negative Motivational Outlook, which slows the pace and quality of work in the moment and in the long run.

These executives also described how they helped even very senior employees build additional competence faster than before, and how those employees then displayed increased confidence that they could handle even more-complex projects. It was nice to hear, too, how the quality of their relationships improved as a result.

Executives take a lot of heat—much of it deserved—for leading as if people do not matter much. So, I decided to share this with you because I wonder what you think when you read about executives who have dedicated themselves to leading in challenging times with boldness, grace, warmth, ever-increasing skill, and maturity. How does it inspire you or catalyze new thinking about how you lead?

It was a privilege to watch these leaders commit to a truly human—and humane—approach to leading others, and to see that by actually doing it things are already improving for them and everyone around them. Sometimes it is nice to take a break and simply enjoy watching people flower and shine right in front of our very eyes. I thought you might enjoy that, too.

About the author:

The Motivation Guy  (also known as Dr. David Facer)  is one of the principal authors—together  with Susan Fowler and Drea Zigarmi—of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ new Optimal Motivation process and workshop.  Their posts appear on the first and third Monday of each month.

Peter Drucker said the only valid purpose for a business is “to create a customer.” Yes, profits are necessary, but Drucker adds that “the customer is the foundation of a business and keeps it in existence. He alone gives employment.”

What does Wiki Answers say? According to Wiki, “the purpose of a business is to fill a need. Money comes after.”

These are all well and good. And yes, profits ARE necessary.

However, in Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol, the ghost of Jacob Marley warns Ebenezer Scrooge of the perils of focusing only on profits at the expense of his responsibility to others.  He tells Ebenezer:

“Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

So… what is the business of any leader? To make a difference in the lives of others– employees and their families, customers, suppliers, and even shareholders.  Yes, we need to ensure the organization is profitable AND do well by our fellow men and women.

During this holiday season, what can you do to demonstrate that mankind is your business? Let me know your ideas.

About the author:

John Hester is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies.  You can read John’s posts on the second Thursday of every month.

.

Join trust expert Randy Conley for a complimentary webinar and online chat beginning today at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time (12:00 noon Eastern).

In a special presentation on Building Trust: 3 Keys to Becoming a More Trustworthy Leader, Conley will be exploring how leaders can improve the levels of trust in their organization by identifying potential gaps that trip up even the best of leaders.

Participants will learn:

• How to get it right on the inside first
• The 4 leadership behaviors that build or destroy trust
• The 3 keys to creating trusting relationships

The webinar is free and seats are still available if you would like to join over 500 people expected to participate.

Immediately after the webinar, Randy will be answering follow-up questions here at LeaderChat for about 30 minutes.  To participate in the follow-up discussion, use these simple instructions.

Instructions for Participating in the Online Chat

• Click on the LEAVE A COMMENT link above
• Type in your question
• Push SUBMIT COMMENT

It’s as easy as that!  Randy will answer as many questions as possible in the order they are received.  Be sure to press F5 to refresh your screen occasionally to see the latest responses.

We hope you can join us later today for this special complimentary event courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.  Click here for more information on participating.

After the training was completed, Dr. Paul Leone, an OD expert within the American Express organization, measured the impact of the three delivery methods.  He found that the self-paced virtual model produced a 5% boost in productivity which was good, the traditional classroom produced a 10% boost in productivity which was better, and the blended approach produced a 12% boost in productivity which was best.

The one difference that made all the difference

In looking at why the blended approach produced the greatest impact, Leone discovered that it was because the blended approach built the training into the student’s work life by including the immediate manager in the process, tying the learning to real work, and providing a way for feedback along the way.  Leone’s conclusion was that it was these design factors that made all the difference.

Want greater ROI from your leadership training?

For years, instructional designers have known that adults learn best when they see how the learning impacts their work priorities and is in alignment with their work goals.  Without this, it can be difficult to find the time for training. Learning—especially in the context of a work setting—has to be relevant, impactful, and produce results.  If you don’t have that, people won’t find time in their schedules, and senior leaders won’t push for people to attend.  People have multiple priorities these days.  They have to focus on the things that help them get their work done.

Here are three ways to make sure that any new training you’re considering generates the bottom-line results you’re looking for.

Alignment—use impact maps to connect training to a student’s existing work goals.  Have the manager and student identify the student’s key areas and then map how the training will help the learner meet those goals.

Modularize content delivery—deliver the content in small, bite-sized chunks over time. This allows students to receive the information in manageable segments that are much more conducive to learning.  It also provides an opportunity for ongoing feedback.

Follow-up—involve immediate managers to check in on progress. Make sure immediate managers are on-board with the new behaviors and that they schedule time to interact and have discussions with learners as they begin to use their new skills.  Nothing demonstrates the importance of a new skill learned in class than a manager checking up on its adoption.

People learn best when the information they are learning is relevant to what they are working on, when they see how it will help them improve, and when someone is checking on their progress and encouraging them to adopt new behaviors.  Make sure that you are following these three steps to get the most out of your next training initiative!

Figure 1: Output increases associated with improved management practices. From Management Practice & Productivity—Exhibit 4.

The results are detailed in the white paper, Management Practice & Productivity: Why they matter.  The research team scored companies on 18 topics in three broad areas: performance management; talent management, and shop floor operations.

Surprising disconnect in most companies

The researchers were surprised to find that even though good management practices are well known and the correlation is clear, the reality is that many firms are still poorly managed.

To examine possible causes of this disconnect, respondents were asked to assess the overall management performance of their firm on a scale of one to five.  The researchers found that part of the problem was an inflated opinion of current management practices. In most cases, respondents over-estimated how they scored on the objective management measures.  This situation applied in all regions and across all firms.

The researchers found this lack of self-awareness striking. It suggested that, “…the majority of firms are making no attempt to compare their own management behaviour with accepted practices or even with that of other firms in their sector. As a consequence, many organizations are probably missing out on an opportunity for significant improvement because they simply do not recognize that their own management practices are so poor.”

How would you score the management practices in your company?

Here are three well-known manager behaviors essential to good performance.  Consider the degree to which these practices are used in your own company. Remember that the key is not knowing about these practices, but actually using them.  How would you score your organization when it comes to actually implementing these performance management basics?

1. Performance Planning: Employees have written goals that clearly identify their key responsibilities, goals, and tasks.
2. Performance Coaching: Employees meet with their supervisors on at least a twice per month basis to discuss progress, identify roadblocks, and get the direction and support they need to succeed.
3. Performance Evaluation: There are no surprises when it comes to annual reviews. Managers and direct reports are “in-synch” because performance against goals is being measured on a regular basis instead of once a year.

Don’t let an indifferent attitude toward implementing good management practices keep you and your organization from performing at a high level.  Take action today.  Good management matters!

To read the entire report, check out Management Practice & Productivity: Why they matter

That’s what Scott Blanchard, principal and EVP with The Ken Blanchard Companies, found out the hard way when his company lost a critical long-term account. An ongoing contract was terminated overnight when a new senior leader removed the entire learning and development department.

In a new article for Ignite! on Making the Business Case for Developing Your People Blanchard shares how that experience drove him to explore why some organizations see and believe the tangible value of investments in training while others don’t. He also shares how it provided the impetus to build a business case that would satisfy even the most hard-nosed of executives.

Understanding employee development

Blanchard discusses how the key was showing the correlation between leadership practices and employee development. He combines research that shows how strategic and operational leadership impacts organizational vitality together with some personal experience he’s had in making presentations to senior executives. In those presentations, Blanchard asks senior leaders to consider a typical employee in their organization and the key goals or critical tasks they are asked to perform as a part of their jobs.

In most healthy growing organizations, people are highly accomplished at some aspects of their job, decent in others, disillusioned with a few aspects, and just getting started with the new tasks.

Blanchard asks the group of leaders to self assess where their own people are at with the various tasks they are responsible for.  Once that’s completed, Blanchard puts together a group composite. The senior executives are surprised to see that the distribution is generally stacked up at the Disillusioned Learner or Capable, But Cautious, Performer levels. (See Figure One: Typical Task Development Levels.)

Typical Task Development Levels (Blanchard Ignite! Newsletter June 2012)

Blanchard goes on to explain that, “If you operate with 75% of your people at a Disillusioned Learner or only a Capable, But Cautious, Performer level, you are going to have very anemic financial performance and low levels of passion and engagement.

“This is exactly what we are seeing in today’s work environment. The result is an organization operating at 65 to 70% of potential. In our research into The High Cost of Doing Nothing, the impact of this untapped potential is costing the average organization over $1 million per year.”

Leverage development levels effectively

For senior leaders looking to develop their people more effectively, Blanchard has some recommendations.

•  “When people start off as Enthusiastic Beginners it’s important that you grab a hold of their momentum and enthusiasm and prepare them for the inevitable Disillusioned Learner stage. It will come, so it’s important to acknowledge it, make it OK, and help people push through it.”
• “When you get to the Capable, but Cautious, Performer stage remember that you can’t stop there—that will only get you lackluster financial performance. Instead, push through to a place where employees become Self-Reliant Achievers.”

What’s the development level of the people in your organization? 

The best companies invest in their employees, supervisors, and managers. They know that people are the key to bringing plans to life and creating a sustainable advantage for your organization. Take time to develop your people. It’s one of the best investments you can make!

To learn more, check out Making the Business Case for Developing Your People

.

Growth for a leader is like oxygen for a deep-sea diver. Without it – you die.

Leadership is a living process—and life means growth.

Join best-selling authors Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller today at 9:00 a.m. Pacific / 12:00 noon Eastern / 5:00 p.m. GMT for a free webinar on the four keys to increased influence, impact, and leadership effectiveness.  Drawing from their new book, Great Leaders Grow: Becoming a Leader for Life, you’ll learn how your capacity to grow determines your capacity to lead.

Using the acronym GROW, you’ll explore four strategies that leaders must use to challenge and stretch themselves—both on the job and off—to reach their highest potential.

To learn more about this free event and join the 1,500 people already registered to attend, click here.

Whether you’re a CEO or an entry-level employee, don’t miss this opportunity to take your first steps in designing your own long-term growth plan—a plan that can lead not only to continuing professional success, but to personal fulfillment as well.

LEARN MORE

With great power comes great responsibility.  In the unsettled atmosphere of the American Revolution between the victory at Yorktown in 1781 and the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, a movement arose from officers in the Continental Army to proclaim George Washington as King George I of America.

As incredible as it might sound today after 200 years of U.S. democracy, it was a very real possibility and opportunity for Washington.  As the military leader of the fledgling republic, he had the ability and the backing of the colonists who had put their faith and future in his hands.

And yet, Washington quickly dispelled the idea. Upon learning of the proposal, Washington sincerely and admonishingly responded to the officer who had written the original proposal saying that, “…if you have any regard for your Country, concern for yourself or posterity, or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from your Mind, and never communicate, as from yourself, or anyone else, a sentiment of the like Nature. “

For Washington, leadership was not about personal gain or ambition, but instead, service to a higher purpose and a greater good.  And to confirm his intentions eight years later, when the people wanted him to run for a third term—Washington  again voluntarily gave up his power when he refused to be nominated.

Why did George Washington do what he did? What was in the man’s mind? What can we learn from it during a time when egotistical self-serving leadership seems all to common? Those are the questions that Richard Archer explores in his post, The Spirit of Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Triumph of the Self.

Archer points to a couple of great resources for all of us to consider and reflect upon:

• In His Excellency, his heralded biography of Washington, Joseph J. Ellis underscores “the truly exceptional character” of Washington’s act. “Oliver Cromwell had not surrendered power after the English Revolution. Napoleon, Lenin, Mao, and Castro did not step aside to leave their respective revolutionary settlements to others in subsequent centuries. … Whereas Cromwell and later Napoleon made themselves synonymous with the revolution in order to justify the assumption of dictatorial power, Washington made himself synonymous with the American Revolution in order to declare that it was incompatible with dictatorial power.” Ellis thus reminds us that Washington, in relinquishing power — not just once, but twice — was bucking an imperialist pattern that stretched back to the days of the Roman and English republics, and which, sadly, continues to this day.
• Joseph Campbell might have called this pattern “ego imperialism,” “trying to impose your idea on the universe.” “That’s what’s got to go,” Campbell insisted in The Hero’s Journey. “Your ego is [only] your embodiment and your self is your potentiality and that’s what you listen to when you listen for the voice of inspiration and the voice of ‘What am I here for? What can I possibly make of myself?'” The great task of the hero, Campbell tells us, is “not to eliminate ego, it’s to turn ego and the judgment system of the moment into the servant of the self, not the dictator, but the vehicle for it to realize itself. It’s a very nice balance, a very delicate one.”
• Unfortunately, too many of us allow our egos unlimited rule. The tragic result, as Jung’s colleague Alfred Adler once warned us, is a life within “a self-centered world, a world in which one will never find true courage, self-confidence, communal sense, or understanding of common values.”
• In The American Soul, Jacob Needleman urges us to read Washington’s words as “referring to the need for both the nation and the individual self to turn within for strength, not to the egoistic impulses of one or another self-serving part of human nature, but to the inner self that represents the fountainhead of inner unity.”

In his words and actions, Washington’s beliefs were clear.  As Archer concludes, “… his words and actions in stepping down as commander of the army and as Commander in Chief show us the importance of taming our venal, egoistic ambitions, passions and prejudices in the service of a greater good.”

We’ve all seen the limitations and results of self-serving behavior.  On this U.S. observance of President’s Day, let’s consider what’s possible with leadership focused on serving others as exemplified by America’s first President.  For ideas and inspiration,  check out Archer’s complete post at Examiner.com

.

Sometimes, nothing is more damaging to a career than success.  It’s not always easy to see this at work in your own life, but you can certainly see it in others.  In the movie, The Artist, one of this year’s Oscar-nominated films, silent screen star George Valentin falls victim to this when his past success make him blind to changes in the industry.  His pride, success, and arrogance keep him from even experimenting with the new technology of “talkies” and it costs him everything as he sabotages his own career.  Fortunately for Valentin, rising star Peppy Miller never loses faith in him, and eventually she helps him grow, change, and adapt.

Has success made you resistant to growth?  Here are three places to look.

1. Have you lost sense of who you really are?  Success changes people.  After years of striving and hard work, when fame and fortune finally arrive, it’s easy to step into the success, immerse yourself, and completely believe what everyone is telling you about how great you are.  Yes, you do have great strengths, but don’t let them atrophy, or even worse, turn into weaknesses through overuse.  Take some time, now and then, for self-reflection.
2. Have you become isolated?  A lot of leaders will tell you that it is lonely at the top. One of the great things about rising up the ranks is that you always have colleagues and peers to share experiences or commiserate with.  Once you get to the top though, you’re on your own—at least in your own organization.  Who do you talk to now?  Make sure you still have mentors and friends that you can discuss things with.  Make an effort to reach out and connect again.
3. Do you keep trying to recreate the past?  In The Artist, George Valentin responds to the introduction of sound into movies by spending his own money to produce the world’s greatest silent film.  It’s a vain attempt to hold on to the past and it only ends up making him look foolish and dated.  The world is constantly evolving.  Make sure that you are evolving too.

Don’t let success in the past keep you from success in the future.  Follow the example of leaders who are still growing.  Gain an understanding of yourself, reach out to others, open your world, and step into your future.  Don’t wait until you’ve hit rock bottom to dust yourself off and take your first steps.  The new path is there.  Use your strengths and find it!  Get started today.

_______________________________________________________

PS: I’m just getting started watching this year’s Oscar nominated films.  Which ones have you seen?  Recommendations?  Any lessons you’ve learned?

.

Funny thing about the story, even though it is geared for people new to leadership and full of wisdom on how to get off to a fast start, the book may have a bigger impact on people already in leadership roles suffering from burnout.

I’m not sure if this is what Blanchard and Miller intended, but that was certainly my experience as I watched Blake encounter older executives in the company.  As Blake learned the lessons in the book: Gain knowledge, Reach out to others, Open your world, and Walk toward wisdom, I couldn’t help but be struck by how many of these leadership nutrients were missing in my own career.

Instead I felt more like the executive in the book who had fourteen years of experience–but very little learning and growth–because he had just repeated his first year of service fourteen times.  That’s a deathly mistake, explain Blanchard and Miller because, “If you get too busy with your job to grow, your influence and your leadership will stagnate and eventually evaporate.”

Are you too busy to grow?

If you’ve been working hard the past few years just trying to keep your head above water during these tough economic times, the answer is probably yes.  How has it impacted your influence as a leader?  You’ve probably done well in the short term, but not so good in the long term.  Don’t wait another day.  Start growing again.  Here are three ways to get started:

– Lift your nose from the grindstone and take a look around.  How long has it been since you pursued a growth opportunity?

– Identify some resources.  Here are two possibilities.  Read the first chapter of Great Leaders Grow online.  Sign up for the free webinar that Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller are conducting on February 23.

– Talk to others about their experience. Open up a conversation with peers.  How are they addressing growth issues?  If you use Twitter, let me know.  (Use the hashtag #GreatLeadersGrow and you’ll automatically be entered into a drawing for one of 12 first editions I have on my desk.  I’ll announce the winners here on Thursday.)

Don’t let your busyness get in the way of your growth.  If you’re not growing, you’re dying.  The best leaders combine a focus on both the long-term and the short-term.  Start growing today!

Great Leaders Grow Drawing Winners

Congratulations to @StuMcMullin, @auricresults, @pubgal, @thebrandcoach, @ogmarti, @christinewhyte, @chisobem, @nathancherry, @pivasys, @anitawongso, @jrbryson19, @staceyhartmann.  They are the winners of a free copy of Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller’s new book Great Leaders Grow.  Winners, to receive your book, please send me an email at david.witt@kenblanchard.com so I can find out where to ship your book!

1. Either-Or thinking

Executives are asked to make decisions—and they get more difficult the higher up you are.  People or profits?  Centralized or decentralized?  Frontline decision-making or command and control?  Leaders will often have to choose from among opposing viewpoints and the people supporting those viewpoints will be expecting and asking you to endorse either Plan A or Plan B.

Always consider a Plan C first.  While opposing camps argue for why their plan will work while the other point of view won’t, see if you can find a solution that incorporates the best of both proposals while minimizing the downsides.

For example, should we empower our frontline people to make decisions? Yes.  Is there the possibility that they will make mistakes if we do?  Yes.  Does that mean we have to choose between all decisions being made at the frontline, or all decisions being made at headquarters?  No.  There is a better decision that allows frontline decision-making and maintains accuracy and consistency.  Find it.

2. Confusing decision-making with taking action

As a leader, it is easy to think that your job is primarily to make decisions.  Decision-making is only the first step.  The purpose of leadership is to take action and move.  If five frogs are sitting on a log and one decides to jump, how many frogs are still sitting on the log?  The answer is five until the decision to jump is actually acted upon.  Don’t confuse decision-making for taking action.  Take action!

3. Making announcements with little follow-through

If good decision-making is hard—taking action is even more difficult.  The biggest trap for leaders is focusing too much time on getting things started and too little time on following through to achieve results.  Legendary former chairman of Herman Miller, Max De Pree once likened leadership to being a third-grade teacher when he said that it oftens means repeating things over, and over, and over again until people get it right, right, right.  As a leader you need to keep the vision alive—even after the newness wears off.  You also have to provide people with the tools and resources they need to get the job done.  Remember that there is a strategic and a tactical side to leadership.  To be effective, you have to be good at both.

Resources to help you get started

There are a lot of great resources available to help leaders get started or stay focused on making decisions and taking action.  Here are three that focus specifically on each of the points above.

• To help combat either-or thinking, check out Polarity Management by Barry Johnson.  It details a step-by-step process for finding the best solution when faced with seemingly opposite choices.
• Who Killed Change?  A great book which identifies the “usual suspects” that kill good ideas in companies and keeps decisions from turning into action.
• Helping People Win at Work  Identifies a clear, 3-step process for setting goals, providing resources, and following up effectively.

Make 2012 your best year ever.  Exercise your decision-making power.  Strive for the best solutions, take action, and follow-up.  You’ll be surprised at what you can achieve when you do!

When leaders focus only on their behaviors and outside appearances, they are presenting a thin veneer of leadership that can work for a short while, but which eventually breaks down—especially under pressure. 

Wondering how you can get it right on the inside instead of working so hard to act in a prescribed way on the outside?  Here are some ways to get started.  These are based on answers to the question, “Who was your best boss?” and “What made them so special?” that Blanchard consultants have been asking in classes and presentations over the years.

See people as assets to develop instead of liabilities to manage.  Good leadership begins with a fundamental belief in people and the value that they can bring to a company.  Where do you stand on this?  Do you focus on people’s strengths and how to maximize them, or do you tend to focus on weaknesses and how to correct them?  How does that impact your leadership behaviors?

Assume the best.  People have good days and bad days.  They make mistakes, exhibit poor judgment, and sometimes let you down.  How do you react to these situations?  What is the story that you are telling yourself about their actions?  Are you assuming they had good intentions and just fell short, or does this just go to show that you were right about them all along? Your resulting leadership behavior will be very different depending on your mindset.   

See yourself as a leader instead of as an evaluator.  Part of leadership is matching skill sets to the overall goals of the organization.  The ability to discern talent and apply it effectively is an important quality.  But don’t make that the sole focus of your leadership.  Instead, go beyond getting the right people in the right positions and actively work to help them succeed in their roles.  See their success as a partnership between you and them.  When people sense that you are on their side, helping them to succeed, they act and perform very differently than if they feel that you are primarily judging and evaluating them.

Beliefs and attitudes drive your behaviors.  In today’s open and connected world, you have to be genuine and authentic.  Leaders who get it right on the inside naturally display genuine behaviors on the outside that people respond to.  Take a look at your leadership beliefs.  Work on the inside first.

That element of human personality is ego, and its power is seductive.

Early in a leader’s career, it helps a young executive seek new innovations, stay the course when others would quit, and push through to higher levels of excellence where others would settle for less.  But if a leader does not channel their ego properly it can also lead to a willful disregard of reality, a lack of self awareness, and an unquenchable need to be the best.

When that happens, the results can be disastrous. In their book Egonomics, authors David Marcum and Steven Smith point to Ohio State research that shows

• Over one third of all fatal business decisions are driven by ego.
• Nearly 2/3 of executives never explore alternatives once they make up their mind.
• 81% of managers push their decisions through by persuasion or edict, and not by the value of their idea.

So how can you draw on the benefits of ego while avoiding the pitfalls?  How do you find the combination of intense professional will and extreme personal humility that Jim Collins describes in his best-selling book, Good To Great?  For Collins, part of the solution includes

1. Self-reflection
2. Conscious personal development
3. Help from a mentor

Madeleine Homan Blanchard, cofounder of Coaching Services at The Ken Blanchard Companies agrees and recommends a similar course of action.  In a recorded webinar on Leaders: Avoid These Fatal Flaws, Homan-Blanchard recommends that leaders keep their ego in check through three strategies.

Name it and claim it—Without self awareness there can be no restraint or modulation. Know your least desirable traits and own up to them. Learn what triggers you and leads you to engage in your worst behaviors.

Get feedback and commit to development—Ask questions. Sit down with direct reports and find out what you could do to be a more effective boss. Listen carefully and say, “Thank you,” when they offer feedback. Take action on trouble spots.

Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you—Be courageous when hiring. Make sure you have colleagues and direct reports who think differently from you. Also make sure you have at least one colleague you can count on for an honest opinion and who serves as your “truth teller.”

You can watch Homan-Blanchard’s complete recording of Leaders: Avoid These Fatal Flaws here courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.  Also be sure to see this week’s live webinar being conducted by Scott Blanchard on Cultivating Employee Work Passion: The New Rules of Engagement

In a recent article entitled Top Challenges for New Managers, Phillips explains that many people are promoted into managerial positions because they were great individual contributors. Because they had so much success with a certain way of working—be it strong planning or attention to detail or great execution skills—they may have a difficult time understanding that other people don’t necessarily work that way.

For these managers (and others who may be new to leading others) Phillips identifies three additional challenges:

Doing the work yourself. It’s not easy for new managers to let go and trust that the work will get done without their direct intervention. When things don’t work out as planned—or are taking longer than expected, new managers tend to step in and do the work themselves rather than work through the process and learn how to let others run with the ball.

Not setting clear roles and goals. This is especially challenging for new managers who have been promoted from a group of their peers.

“Managers need to walk a fine line,” explains Phillips. “You want to maintain the relationship, but you have to separate yourself so people see you no longer as a peer, but instead in your new role as a manager.

“All good performance begins with clear goals and all good relationships begin with clear roles. If a manager is promoted out of their peer group, they need to sit down with their former coworkers and talk about how their roles have changed. ‘Here is how I am going to behave differently and here is what I expect in return.’ Otherwise there are always misunderstandings and surprises.”

Balancing accountability and caring. Sometimes new managers think you have to choose between people and performance.  Phillips recommends that new managers balance high expectations with equally high levels of support and caring.

“People need to know that you have their best interests in mind, that you are setting them up to win, and that you mean them no harm. Things are always going to come up. When people know that you truly care, that can cover a lot of situations and people will forgive your mistakes and continue to follow you.”

To learn more about Phillips’ advice for new managers, read Top Challenges for New Managers here.  Also, check out a free webinar that Phillips is conducting on September 22, A Primer for New Managers: Respect, Trust, and Accountability. It’s a free event courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

All of us have a genuine leader inside of us.  To help you get started with discovering and communicating who you really are as a leader, here are six questions to ask yourself from Ken Blanchard’s book Leading at a Higher Level:

1. Who have been the leadership influencers in your life?  People often point to former bosses or other organizational leaders, but also consider other people who may have influenced you such as parents, grandparents, friends, coaches or teachers. What did you learn from these people about leadership?

2. What is your overall purpose, and what do you want to accomplish? The most important thing in life is to decide what’s most important. What are you trying to accomplish as a leader?

3. What are your core values? Values are beliefs you feel strongly about such as success, integrity, or honesty. You’ll probably start with a long list of values but fewer are better, particularly if you want your values to guide your behavior. You’ll also want to rank the order of your values. Why?  Because values are sometimes in conflict. For example, if you value financial success, but integrity is your core value, any activities that could lead to financial gain must first be checked against your integrity value.

4. What are your beliefs about leading and motivating people? This is about surfacing your personal beliefs and assumptions.  In your experience, what do people want from work? What do you believe motivates people to give their best?  What is a leader’s role? Answering these questions about your beliefs gives you insight into how you will subsequently act.

5. What can people expect from you as a leader? Letting people know what they can expect from you gets at the core of transparency. Given your purpose, values, and beliefs about people and leadership, what can people expect from you?

6. What do you expect from your people? People want and need clear expectations from their leaders.  Be upfront—it’s imperative that you let people know what you expect from them. It gives them their best chance to succeed.

Answering the questions above helps you understand a little bit more about yourself as a leader.  What did you learn?  What are your strengths?  What are potential pitfalls? As you take your first steps toward authenticity, don’t be too hard on yourself. This might be your first time thinking about your beliefs about leading and motivating people. Incorporate the ideas above and keep working at it. Have open and honest dialogues with those you lead and with those who lead you. The world needs genuine authentic leaders. Be a leader who makes a positive difference. People are counting on you—the real you!

How can a leader reinvent himself or herself? 

A. I think a leader reinvents himself or herself by constantly wanting to learn.  When you stop learning, you might as well lie down because you’re dead. I think every leader ought to set a personal goal each year about what will they be able to put on their resume next year that they didn’t have last year.  It might be learning a new language.  It could be learning a new computer program.  Constantly put yourself in a learning mode.

What does it take to be a good leader?

A. The biggest thing it takes to be a good leader is humility.  People with humility don’t think less of themselves—they just think about themselves less.  I think Rick Warren said it well in his book, The Purpose Driven Life.  The first sentence of that book is a whole leadership training program.  He said, “It’s not about you.”  We can accomplish that if we can get leaders to realize that they are there for the mission, for their clients, for their people, and not for themselves.

Can a leader also be a good coach?

 A. Yes, coaching is a definite part of leadership.  There are two parts of leadership.  One is the visionary direction part of leadership which is, “Where are we going?” and “What are we trying to accomplish?”  That has to be the responsibility of the traditional hierarchy.  It doesn’t mean that you don’t involve other people, but people look to the president, department chairman, and other traditional leaders to make sure that everybody knows where they are going.

The second part of leadership is implementation, which is “How do we live according to the vision, direction, and values that we have established?”  With that you have to turn the traditional hierarchy upside down.  So now the leaders who played a major role in setting the vision are at the bottom cheerleading, supporting, and coaching.

This is where the coaching process comes in because in developing your people there are three parts: Performance Planning where you are setting the goals and objectives; Day-to-Day Coaching when you are helping people win and accomplish their goals; and then there is Performance Evaluation.

In most companies, the majority of time is spent on performance evaluation with managers focused on judging people’s behavior.  Some companies do a pretty good job of goal setting but then they file the goals away until somebody says it is performance review time and then they run around looking for the goals. The thing that is least done is the day-to-day coaching, so coaching is a very important part of leadership.

What can you do from a personal leadership perspective to help your people and your organization perform at a higher level in 2011? 

Successful leaders recognize that profit is the applause you get for taking care of your customers and creating a motivating environment for your people.  What can you do to create that type of environment within your organization? The New Year is a great time to start!

PS: Ken Blanchard will be conducting a free webinar with Colleen Barrett, president emeritus of Southwest Airlines, on January 26.  It’s based on their new book, Lead with LUV.  To learn more, or to register, visit Lead with LUV: A Different Way to Create Real Success at the Blanchard website.

As Miller, a Master Certified Coach and Global Liaison for coaching explains, “It’s important that coaching is positioned as an investment in development and not as something punitive. You want executives to be looking forward to being tapped on the shoulder for coaching rather than fretting if they get that phone call that says, ‘Guess what, you have an executive coach who has been assigned to help you.’”

Miller also goes on to identify that it is important that a coaching initiative be coupled with sponsorship. This means having senior people in the organization who are in support of coaching and advocate for it as a part of executive development—but not necessarily mandate it. As Miller explains, “There needs to be buy-in by the participants. So, for example, if we find out that a leader is being required to use coaching instead of being invited to participate, it is a very subtle but very important difference. Executive coaches need to know how to work with this situation if it happens.”

Finally, Miller cautions that confidentiality must be in place and strictly enforced if executives are expected to share freely. If confidentiality is not in place, that news will spread like wildfire among participants which could prevent honest conversations from happening. Any breach of confidentiality will affect all of the coaching that is going on in the organization.

You can read more of Miller’s thoughts on executive coaching by accessing the complete Ignite article here.  Also be sure to check out a free webinar that Miller will be conducting on August 19 entitled Executive Development–How to Use Coaching Effectively

1. Bosses are, like everyone, self-deluding. All human beings tend to be poor judges of their own actions and accomplishments. Sutton points out that we all suffer from “self-enhancement bias,” where we believe that we are “better than the rest.” In one study he cites, for example, 90% of drivers reported that they had “above average” driving skills. In a US College Board survey of nearly a million high school seniors, 70% claimed “above average” leadership skills; only 2 % believed they were “below average.”

2. Bosses are naturally heedless of subordinates. When someone is put in a position of power, subordinate members of the group watch that individual very closely but the attention is not reciprocated. As Princeton psychologist Susan Fiske discovered in her workplace research (reported in American Psychologist), “Secretaries know more about their bosses than vice versa; graduate students know more about their advisors than vice versa.” Sutton calls this combination of overattentive subordinates and inattentive bosses “the toxic tandem.”

3. Bosses are insulated from reality. Drawing on research from his book Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense, (co-written with Jeff Pfeffer ) Sutton identifies that leaders in organizations routinely “shoot the messenger.” As Sutton explains, “Bearers of bad news, even when they aren’t responsible for it in any sense, tend to be blamed and to have negative feelings directed toward them. The result is the “Mum Effect”: subordinates with good survival instincts soften bad news to make it sound better, or avoid passing it along to their bosses at all.”

Sutton concludes that even when you consider just these three tendencies, you begin to appreciate how easy it is to be a terrible boss. At the same time, you get a glimpse at one of the keys to leading well—a clear sense of who you are and the impact your position has on the people around you.

To read the entire post, check out Some Bosses Live in a Fool’s Paradise here.  To see what else Bob is thinking on a regular basis, be sure to take a look at his blog Work Matters.

The key, according to Homan Blanchard, is to maintain a healthy self-awareness of the way you are perceived by others.  To help with that, Madeleine recommends four strategies.

1. Create an imaginary “self observation person” and place them on your left shoulder.  Give this imaginary advisor one important task.  Anytime you feel yourself about to speak or respond to someone and there is some extra emotion behind it, have this advisor check in to ask, “Is this about your need to be heard, or is this in the best interest of the other person and you are saying it because it absolutely needs to be said?”
2. Get feedback.  Homan Blanchard recommends that leaders check in with colleagues (and direct reports especially) every once in a while to get a reading on how they are doing.  Madeleine especially likes three classic questions and recommends executives keep them top of mind: What should I start doing to be more helpful to you as a leader? What should I stop doing? Is there anything you think I should know?
3. Surround yourself with people who aren’t afraid to challenge you. Let people know that you want to engage in useful debate. Encourage people to speak up when something you say doesn’t make sense or might not be the right way to go.
4. Consider working with a coach who can provide a reality check and keep you honest. It’s important to have someone who will call you out when you are deceiving yourself.

To read more about some of the ways that leaders inadvertently limit their effectiveness, be sure to check out the entire Ignite article here.  Also be sure to see the information about a free webinar that Homan Blanchard is conducting on June 16, Leaders: Avoid These Fatal Flaws

If you’re looking for some help in making the business case for a leadership development initiative in your organization, here are three resources that can help. Just click on the heading and you can access the information right away.

1. Whitepaper–The Leadership-Profit Chain 

In 2006, researchers from The Ken Blanchard Companies conducted a year-long study to identify the connections between leadership effectiveness, employee passion, customer devotion, and overall organizational vitality.  This resulting whitepaper identifies several correlations: 

• Effective operational leadership directly predicts positive employee passion
• Positive employee passion directly predicts customer devotion
• Customer devotion directly predicts organizational vitality 

2. Whitepaper–The High Cost of Doing Nothing 

In this white paper you’ll see why “good isn’t good enough” when it comes to the impact that leadership practices have on employee turnover, customer satisfaction, and employee productivity.  You’ll discover what your cost-of-doing nothing is in today’s dollars.  More importantly, you’ll learn a couple of ideas for identifying ways to recoup some of that untapped potential in your organization. 

3. Online Cost-of-Doing-Nothing Calculator 

This online calculator uses a couple of pieces of information—number of employees, annual sales, current turnover rate, and combines it with desired targets for customer satisfaction and employee productivity to generate a “cost of doing nothing” dollar amount.  It’s a great tool for identifying the impact of better leadership in an organization and also making the business case for a training initiative—especially leadership development.

To help with the transition, Homan-Blanchard recommends that new managers take a minute to catch their breath and then review a couple of the new changes in their life. Three things—getting comfortable with being a beginner again, scoring some early wins, and learning how to ask for help—can make the transition smoother.

1. Being a beginner again.  This is the first shock that many new managers experience and it can be a big one.  Making the shift from being a highly-competent individual contributor to a new life as a rookie manager can be a humbling experience.  The important thing is how you react to it.  If you respond by acting like you know it all, you’re going to be in trouble.  If you recognize that your new at this, and need a lot of direction and support, you’ll increase your chances of success.
2. Score some early wins.  New managers need to establish some credibility and confidence among the people they’re leading.  One good way to do this is by finding a relatively simple project, something small that can generate an early win.  Nothing builds confidence like success.
3. Ask for help. Sometimes new managers fall into a trap of thinking that they are supposed to have all the answers now.  Remember that you’re new at this.  If anything, you’ve probably got more to learn than ever before. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness.  Pretending you have all the answers, or stumbling ahead when you don’t, is.  Find someone in the organization you admire as a good leader and pursue a possible mentoring relationship.  (Not your new boss, by the way.)  Take them to lunch, pick their brain, and learn everything you can.

To read more about Homan-Blanchard’s thinking on how to start fast as a new manager, be sure to check out First Time Manager, It’s Not Just About You Anymore. You can also access a webinar that has even more advice on making your first year a good one.  Survival Skills for First-Year Managers webinar recording

That’s one of the messages that Ken Blanchard highlights in a short article entitled Setting a Leadership Point of View for Yourself and Your Organization.  In it, Blanchard underscores the idea that leadership transparency is a key element of success in today’s organizations. That’s because transparency gives employees a chance to see the “person behind the position” in their organization.  This willingness on the part of leaders to share a little bit of themselves helps to build trust and confidence in a powerful way.  It also encourages people to share a little bit more about themselves as well. The result is greater openness and stronger bonds throughout the organization.  For leaders looking to get started with being more transparent with their people, Blanchard recommends three steps:

1. Identify your beliefs about leading and managing people. Who are the people that have influenced you in your life?  Most people think about traditional and famous leaders first, but the reality is that parents, teachers, and other important people in our lives are the ones who have usually influenced our thinking the most. Given what you’ve learned from past leaders and your core values, what are your beliefs about leading and motivating people?
2. Share your “leadership point of view” with others. How can you communicate what you believe and how it influences your behavior?  By sharing your leadership point of view with the people who report to you, they will not only have the benefit of understanding where you’re coming from, but they’ll also understand what you expect from them and what they can expect from you.
3. Think through how you will set an example for your people. Your leadership point of view lets others know how you will set an example for the values and behaviors you are encouraging. But as most parents know, people learn from your behavior, not from your words. Leaders must walk their talk. Developing a leadership point of view creates a clear path for you to follow.  Now you need to walk it.

To read the entire article, check out Setting a Leadership Point of View for Yourself and Your Organization here.

In The Ken Blanchard Companies’ SLII® Model, managers are taught to modify the amount of direction and support they give to direct reports based on their skill and commitment levels for the task at hand.  To make this easier to understand, Blanchard uses four easy to remember descriptors to identify the four stages of development: Enthusiastic Beginner, Disillusioned Learner, Capable but Cautious Performer, and Self-Reliant Achiever.

• Enthusiastic Beginner–Can you remember when you first started to learn to ride a bicycle? You were so excited sometimes that you couldn’t even sleep at night, even though you didn’t have a clue how to actually ride a bike. You were a classic Enthusiastic Beginner who needed direction. At this point you had enthusiasm for the task but not a lot of experience. You needed someone to show you how—in a step-by-step process.
• Disillusioned Learner–Remember the first time you took a fall on your bike? As you were picking yourself up off the pavement, you might have wondered why you decided to learn to ride in the first place and whether you would ever really master it. Now you had reached the Disillusioned Learner stage, and you needed coaching. This is a combination of direction mixed in with a lot of support to help you get through this rough patch.
• Capable but Cautious Performer–Once you were able to ride your bike with your parent cheering you on, that confidence probably became shaky the first time you decided to take your bike out for a spin without your cheerleader and supporter close at hand. At this point, you were a Capable but Cautious Performer in need of support. You knew how to ride, you just needed some extra encouragement to keep going.
• Self-Reliant Achiever–Finally, you reached the stage where your bicycle seemed to be a part of you. You could ride it without even thinking about it. You were truly a Self-Reliant Achiever, and your parents could delegate to you the job of having fun on your bike. Just don’t let them see you jumping off of that ramp.

Developing More Effective Leaders

There are still people out there who think there is only one best way of leading people. Experienced managers know that this is not the case. Take a look in your own organization. Notice what the best managers in your company are doing. Chances are you will see them adjusting their management style to meet the needs of the people they are working with.

Effective leaders know that there is no one best way to manage people. Managers looking to improve their ability to lead people to higher levels of performance need to adapt their style to match the development level of the people they are managing. It is a proven approach that will help managers lead people to their best performance every time.

To learn more about taking a situational approach to leading and developing others, be sure to check out the free, on-demand webcast, Managing and Developing People to Be Their Best: The 3 Keys to Becoming a Smart, Flexible, and Successful Leader

This finding is based on survey data gathered from 520 business organizations in 17 countries designed to test if a CEO’s primary focus on profit maximization resulted in employees developing negative feelings toward the organization. The result? Employees in these companies tend to perceive the CEO as autocratic and focused on the short term, and they report being somewhat less willing to sacrifice for the company. Corporate performance is poorer as a result. 

But when the CEO makes it a priority to balance the concerns of customers, employees, and the community while also taking environmental impact into account, employees perceive him or her as visionary and participatory. And they report being more willing to exert extra effort, and corporate results improve. 

These results aren’t surprising. When the definition of leadership focuses only on profit what tends to fall by the wayside is the condition of the human organization. Leaders wrongly believe that they can’t focus on both at the same time. 

Nothing could be further from the truth.  As this research points out, organizations perform best when they balance financial goals with respect, care, and fairness for the well-being of everyone involved. 

The Four Keys to Better Leadership 

In looking at all of the great organizations that The Ken Blanchard Companies has worked with over the years, we have found one thing that sets these organizations apart from average organizations. The defining characteristic is leaders who maintain an equal focus on both results and people. In these organizations, leaders measure their success with people (customers and employees) as much as they measure their financial performance. 

In these organizations, leaders do four things well. 

1. They set their sights on the right target and vision. Great organizations focus on three bottom lines instead of just one. In addition to financial success, leaders at great organizations know that measuring their success with people–both customers and employees–is just as important as measuring the success of their financial bottom line. In these organizations, developing loyal customers and engaged employees are considered equal to good financial performance. Leaders at these companies know that in order to succeed they must create a motivating environment for employees, which results in better customer service, which leads to higher profits. 
2. They treat their customers right. To keep your customers today, you can’t be content just to satisfy them. Instead, you have to create raving fans–customers who are so excited about the way you treat them that they want to tell everyone about you. Companies that create raving fans routinely do the unexpected on behalf of their customers, and then enjoy the growth generated by customers bragging about them to prospective clients. 
3. They treat their people right. Without committed and empowered employees, you can never provide good service. You can’t treat your people poorly and expect them to treat your customers well. Treating your people right begins with good performance planning that gets things going in the right direction by letting direct reports know what they will be held accountable for–goals–and what good behavior looks like–performance standards. It continues with managers who provide the right amount of direction and support that each individual employee needs in order to achieve those goals and performance standards. 
4. They turn the organizational chart upside down. The most effective leaders realize that leadership is not about them and that they are only as good as the people they lead. These leaders seek to be serving leaders instead of self-serving leaders. In this model, once a vision has been set, leaders move themselves to the bottom of the hierarchy, acting as a cheerleader, supporter, and encourager to the people who report to them. 

The way to maximize your results as a leader is to have high expectations for both results and relationships. If leaders take care of the people who take care of their customers, profits and financial strength will follow. The result is an organization where people and profits both grow and thrive.

CCL surveyed 2,200 leaders from 15 companies for its Understanding the Leadership Gap study. Researchers asked executives and managers from an array of corporations and government agencies to consider a set of 20 leadership skills.

Respondents then ranked those skills in terms of how important they will be for success five years from now and how accomplished their colleagues are at them today.  The biggest gaps?  Executives in the U.S., India and Singapore identified the four most important leadership skills needing work as: 

1. Leading People–knowing how to hire, direct and motivate talented staff
2. Strategic Planning–translating vision into realistic business strategies
3. Inspiring Commitment–recognizing and rewarding employee accomplishments
4. Managing Change–dealing with resistance to change and involving colleagues in the design and implementation of change 

As you look into the future, what do you see?  Are these the biggest gaps for your organization?  More importantly, do you have a plan in place for addressing them?

• Providing reports with too much “helpful” advice.
• Trying to show confidence by refusing to admit weaknesses or mistakes.
• Missing the mark with recognition through overdone or meaningless kudos to staff.
• Working 12-hour days to complete all work individually, instead of delegating.

You can read the complete second posting—plus see up-to-date additional comments by readers, at Readers Diagnose “New Management Syndrome,” Offer Cures

For additional thoughts on the challenges new managers face and some of the ways to meet these challenges successfully, be sure to check out two past articles featuring The Ken Blanchard Companies Madeleine Homan-Blanchard.  Madeleine is co-founder of Coaching Services and she shares her thoughts on the challenges new managers face in an article entitled First Time Manager: It’s Not Just about You Anymore and is featured in a second article for new managers on Providing Feedback and Direction.