1. Clarity of Vision

Define your most powerful, engaging and compelling vision for the future. Unless you know where you’re going, why would anyone follow you?

80% of the world engages in new information when the have a visual perspective, whether it is metaphorical or pictorial, making it visible is essential.

2. Clarity of Purpose

Why should followers engage in your vision? How is their world positively impacted in the short and long term? How is their immediate and extended community benefited into the next generation?

Unless you are clear about why, how can anyone engage in making it real with you?

3. Shared Agreement of Approach

Who, how, when and at what cost (monetary and other wise) must all be clear and yet open to modification as more people engage and join the process. And as the process evolves, the approach must be informed by lessons that are learned, gains that are made and value that is created.

When the how is unclear your message is but a platitude. When the how is non-negotiable, it will never be shared by and owned by followers.

4. Speak of the Amazing Future

When leaders focus on the negative, they generate more negative. And the corollary is equally true. Placing time and energy on the problems that are currently true or were caused by someone else or you speculate could become an obstacle are NOT engaging. People are drawn to the amazing future they can participate in creating. And then they are engaged in creating it with you!

Consistently keeping possibility in the conversation keeps people engaged and moving forward and that moves the vision into reality.

5. Recognize, Reward, Refocus, Refresh, Respond, Re-energize

Wise leaders pay careful attention to the impact they are having on others and the responses that is generating. They respond vs react. They look for the attempts people make at change and reward those energies. They monitor for messages that have veered off course and refocus the energies. They consistently and gently re-direct.

Savvy leaders are in the business of creating a future not denigrating a present or a past. Great leaders never demean. They build up and energize.

What future is on your radar screen that is compelling enough to champion, rally the troops around and have them bring to fruition?

What change do you need to make in your approach to leading that will keep the work ever positive, ever green and ever more compelling to more and new followers?

http://www.hesselbeininstitute.org/knowledgecenter/journal.aspx?ArticleID=902

http://hive.slate.com/hive/invent-your-future/article/can-you-teach-entrepreneurship

The bad news: people often do not arrive in the workforce with the skill set. The good news: when leaders build a culture of critical thinking they teach the workforce to be critical thinkers.

Secret One: Tap into three unique but related intelligences: analytic (all the data lines up), intuitive (it makes great sense when you first hear it) and emotional (people generally feel good about / embraces the ideas).

Secret Two: Recognize the three intelligences create a conundrum: most people are good at two of the three but few are good at all three. Identify who is good at which ones and factor that information into decisions about who staffs what work teams so that all the intelligences are covered.

Secret Three: Require multiple solutions are considered when solving problems and that teams use the many ideas to shape hybrid solutions, making the most of each of the ideas.

Secret Four: Value conflict within teams – not knock-down, drag out fights of course, but genuine, passionate, heart-felt disagreements.  Teach teams how to engage in courageous, robust dialogue. Role model listening to all ideas. Show people how to check your pride at the door by backing down from your own idea when a truly better idea enters the conversation.

Secret Five: Reward risk taking and failure as frequently as you reward success. A failure-friendly culture is one that engages the workforce in challenging what is possible and creating the next cutting edge idea. Celebrating failure actually reinforces real-world requirements for big successes: taking risk, trying new skills or processes, sharing learnings from mistakes, working at the edge of what was previously possible, building on others’ ideas and learning from other industries.

http://tinyurl.com/42bexly

Despite the best of intentions, poor decisions are made in organizations every day. Leaders make decisions based on information that inherently arrives through a hierarchical chain. Each time information passes from one person to another, or one workgroup to another, the potential for miscommunication, misinterpretation, conflict avoidance and decision bias increases.  People consciously and unconsciously sanitize the information and position it to represent their own best interests.

The problem is not that these information filters exist. The real problem occurs when leaders fail to recognize them and how they disable great decisions. The solution lies in embedding decision rigor in the organization’s culture. Wise leaders systematize decision making and model the application of that system.

1. Use real time business issues to engage teams in strategic thinking and model respectful, but thorough, debate.
2. Disable multitasking during information evaluation and decision-making conversations; check smart phones at the door and turn off WiFi on the laptops.
3. Insist that decision assessment conversations occur separately from decision-making ones.
4. Require that decision debates include exploration of potential biases such as political correctness or entrenched historical approaches.
5. Require teams to debate multiple solutions during evaluative conversations.
6. Expect decision recommendations to be presented in contrasting ways. For example, the value of making decision X and problems associated with making that very same decision.
7. As decisions move up the organizational approval ladder, expect reports to  include a summary of decision processes, including disagreements and how they were managed.
8. When projects meet particular thresholds, for example financial, insist that recommendations and decisions are accompanied by timelines and accountabilities in advance of any action.
9. Require decision approvers to identify, chronicle and champion best practices and learning opportunities as they occur.
10. Publicly reward both efforts and successes in applying decision rigor.

http://tinyurl.com/3uq9wab

Check it out.

• What are the implications in your business?
• What are the challenges this brings for your leadership?

http://tinyurl.com/prtx93

Great leaders have vision for a future that is bigger and better than the present. Their stakeholders vary – a workforce, stockholders, a geographic region, etc. They articulate the vision and engage these stakeholders in the future they intend to create. And that often connects them into larger, more diverse communities as a compelling future unfolds.

Leaders challenge the status quo.

With followers engaged, the leader’s role becomes providing resources required to build out the future. They remove obstacles, encourage followers and reward hard work. Leaders and followers reap both satisfaction and tangible rewards by creating a greater good.

Politicians have a very different relationship with their followers. They articulate a position vs a vision and followers engage if the position benefits them. The followers engagement provides the politician with resources the politician requires.

This fundamental shift in who provides the resources creates a conundrum. In order to advance their position, their message becomes increasingly entrenched in the current state. If they challenge the status quo – fundamentally lead – they risk constraining their resource stream. So they remain on the same trajectory regardless of impact on the ultimate future.

The career politician is naturally averse to change because change interrupts the resource stream. Even when change will reap a brighter future, the status quo constrains them.

What do you think? Can politicians be successful they become world class leaders?

A few hours after the workshop, I received this eloquent and compelling note from a participant. It resonated with me. I share it with you – my guess is this note is one every leader can benefit from. I’ve changed the names to protect the innocent and will be curious about how it impacts you.

Flexibility, creative problem solving, making decisions on the fly, and working through people who don’t work for you is the framework for today’s leaders. At the end of each day if you haven’t delivered results or at least moved the ball down the field, you will be toast.

Leadership is a matter of accepting challenges that no one wants. It requires getting the right people in the right jobs and aligning their work objectives with the vision.

The folks who are struggling with underperforming employees and an exploding inbox likely grew up in a nourishing, collaborative, soft-sided environment. Now they find themselves in charge and expected to drive change within that same environment. The key for them is quickly getting some armor and making the right decisions regardless of if they are popular ones. That will move them a step closer to delivering on the vision.

Firing someone may be an extreme example of a task leaders are faced with, but if you can’t fire someone who is not performing, you will never make leader. To deliver, you need to have the best of the best employees. You can’t deliver results by coddling folks who aren’t committed to the vision.