Blanchard LeaderChat

It’s been 12 months since the American investment banking system collapsed, starting a domino-like financial crisis that eventually spread around the world.  The good news is that the worst appears to be over.  The bad news is that the hard work of rebuilding your business still lies ahead.  This shift from immediate survival to planning for next steps is creating a new set of challenges for leaders according to Dr. Dick Ruhe, Senior Consulting Partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies and co-author of the business book Know Can Do!  

“People have spent the last twelve months thinking about, “what if?”  What if they lop off my part of our organization? Or what if they cut out my product line? Or worse case, what if the entire organization goes under?”

Leaders have to deal with that by making the shift from survival to growth.  Now instead of stopping the red ink by reducing expenses, organizations have to shift to getting back in the black by setting new directions.  

That’s the focus of an August 11 webinar where Dr. Ruhe is the featured speaker.  It’s complimentary and it’s just been posted on The Ken Blanchard Companies web site.  To learn more, check out We’re Still Here… Now What?

The research showing the connection between leadership and the bottom line continues to strengthen. Most recently, researchers Jack Zenger, Joe Folkman and Scott K. Edinger analyzed a database of 300,000 feedback reports on approximately 30,000 managers to answer six questions: 

• How does leadership drive profit?
• How do organizations and leaders maximize, if not double, profit opportunity?
• How do we capitalize on leadership as a means to profit and growth?
• What issues can leaders impact that will most effectively drive profit?
• What data supports the claim that extraordinary leaders double profits?
• How do we identify and develop extraordinary leaders?

Publishing their results in an article entitled How Extraordinary Leaders Double Profits, the authors identified concrete performance metrics that allowed them to compare measurable business results with leadership effectiveness. Using the data they were able to show the performance difference between business units with good leaders versus those identified as having poor leaders and to also identify the leadership behaviors that separated the two groups. 

Be sure to check out this article to learn more about the ways that leaders impact performance. 

If you would like to explore some of the ways that leader behavior is impacting performance specifically in your own organization and what the costs or ignoring it are, take a look at a Cost of Doing Nothing Calculator on The Ken Blanchard Companies web site.  It uses some of the same source material referenced by the authors of this article to help you calculate the impact of better leadership in your own organization.

I was surfing various leadership blogs the other day and ran across an interesting post from Tony Morgan on 4 stages of leadership. Rather than looking at a leader moving through various stages in his/her career, I prefer to look at it as various “hats” that a leader has to wear, given the context and need of the situation.

The first hat of leadership is self leadership. This is a hat for all seasons! Self leadership involves developing the skills and abilities to set goals for yourself, to recognize the points of power you have to help you accomplish your goals and influence others, and to recognize and move beyond the assumed constraints, or self-limiting beliefs, that you’ve created for yourself over the years. Self leadership is independent of any formal position of leadership. If you can breathe, you can be a self leader!

The second hat of leadership is leading others. This hat utilizes various styles of leadership to influence others in order to help them accomplish their individual goals or the goals of the organization. This hat is often used when a leader is in a formal position of authority with direct reports, but it can also be worn by an individual contributor who has to collaborate with and accomplish work through others. A leader in this context needs to flex his or her style to meet the developmental needs of the followers. A second hat leader uses a combination of directive and supportive behaviors to bring out the best in his or her people.

Leading teams is the third hat of leadership. When two or more people are mutually dependent and accountable for achieving a particular goal, you have a team. Wearing the hat of team leadership involves not only using second hat leadership in your 1 to 1 interactions with team members, it involves managing the productivity and morale of the team as a whole. The team leader has to monitor team dynamics and modify his or her leadership style to keep the team moving to higher levels of performance.

The fourth hat is leading organizations. Leaders in this context have to be acutely aware of their own leadership points of view, setting the vision/mission of the organization, the nuances of managing other leaders, and how to implement and manage change within the organization. Competencies of fourth hat leadership involve strategic thinking, innovation, creativity, and having a global mindset.

Any one particular type of hat isn’t appropriate for every social situation. Nor is any one particular type of leadership appropriate for every organizational context. You wouldn’t wear a top hat to a baseball game would you? No! A baseball cap would be much more appropriate. The same is true with the hats of leadership in organizations. You have to develop the skills and abilities of each of the leadership hats so that you can quickly switch between them as the situation demands.

So which hat are you wearing? Is it the right one?

Join WD-40 CEO Garry Ridge, co-author of the new book Helping People Win at Work right here on LeaderChat beginning at 10:05 a.m. Pacific Time for a 30-minute Q&A session.  

Garry will be stopping by right after he finishes his WebEx sponsored webinar on Helping People Win at Work.  In this special event, Garry will be sharing some of the key concepts from his book that he has used successfully at WD-40 to triple sales and elevate employee engagement levels to 93%!  Over 700 people will be participating in the webinar and most will be gathering here to ask follow-up questions. 

If you have a question that you would like to ask Garry, just click on the COMMENTS hyperlink above.  Once you’ve typed in your comment hit SUBMIT COMMENT.  Garry will answer as many questions as possible until he has to leave at 10:30 a.m. Pacific. 

And if you can’t stay, be sure to stop by later and see all the questions that were asked.  Or better yet, use the RSS FEED button on the right-hand column to receive updates on a weekly basis.

Join The Ken Blanchard Companies for a free webinar.  Garry Ridge, CEO of WD-40, and coauthor together with Ken Blanchard of the new book, Helping People Win at Work: A Business Philosophy Called ‘Don’t Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A” will be sharing  the real life strategies that he has used successfully at WD-40 to triple sales and elevate employee engagement levels to 93%!

Drawing on his extensive experience leading a successful public company for over ten years, Garry Ridge will show you how to:

• Establish an effective performance management system
• Build an engaging, performance-based culture
• Share your leadership point of view
• Partner with your people

Garry will also be conducting a special after-webinar question & answer session here at LeaderChat immediately afterward starting at 10:05 a.m. Pacific Time.

Don’t miss this opportunity to improve retention, productivity and creativity in your organization by creating an engaging work environment with a strong sense of belonging. Too many companies still employ a performance management system that doesn’t help people because the process is more focused on judgment and evaluation than on coaching, supporting and helping people win.

Learn more about free webinar.

With the cutbacks in travel budgets, more companies are looking to technology as a medium for training their employees.  Each day, people are writing about effective methods for keeping learners engaged inside of the virtual classroom.  Most of us are becoming familiar with these techniques, but there’s still a piece of the puzzle that’s missing…

Where is your sidekick?!

I’m talking about someone who is there with you to ensure that the technology won’t get in the way of learning.  I’ve seen too many virtual classroom sessions where learners can’t join the teleconference, are unable to view presentation slides, they can’t annotate, etc…  Some of these sessions were even cancelled because the trainer could not get the technology to cooperate!

Even if the technical problems aren’t that bad, the trainer is usually too busy teaching to help the learner resolve some of the smaller issues, so the learner gets left behind in the wonderful world of multitasking because they cannot resolve the problem.

As someone who has been in this sidekick role, here’s why I recommend using a virtual classroom “Producer”:

• You can spend your time actually training, instead of troubleshooting.  I can help learners with their technical challenges without being a distraction to the rest of the group.
• It adds a second voice to the training.  Most people can stand one voice over a phone line for a limited period of time.  I act as the technology “liaison” and tell your learners how to use the functions of the virtual classroom to add some variety.
• I handle some of the more complicated features of the virtual classroom behind the scenes.  This eliminates some of the lag time between speaking and sending documents to the learners through the virtual classroom, as an example.  This also helps to provide smoother transitions between activities.

These are all reasons I label my role as a sidekick, “Producer.”  I handle “producing” the training while you can concentrate on the most import part…the material.

What about you?  What’s your worst virtual training horror story in regards to a technical glitch and how did you go about resolving the problem?  Click Here To Leave A Comment

My friend Jim Ballard wanted me to forward this question on to all of you:

Dear blogger:  As a writer of fables, to me the current explosion of social networking begs a fable. A fable provides a fictitious world and whimsical characters that are fun to read about, while conveying some lesson or simple truth. I want readers to say, “Thanks, I needed that. It’s something I tend to lose sight of when I’m Twittering and blogging and Facebooking.” So I am requesting your help as a participant in this online community-building world. If you would kindly take the time to respond to the following 4 questions, you will furnish me with insights and guidance. Thank you in advance. -Jim

a.  How has social networking helped you be more connected to people?
b.  Less connected?
c.  What are the biggest benefits?
d.  What are the biggest pitfalls?

Dr. Margie Blanchard, past President of The Ken Blanchard Companies who currently heads up the company’s Office of the Future, loves real work problems.  That’s because when you work on real issues instead of hypothetical ones, it really sharpens the process. 

You also solve a problem along the way. 

That’s why we have included real work action learning projects into the leadership development programs we have been building for our clients looking to develop their high potential executives.  By incorporating a real work issue into the process, we’ve found that it increases learning, promotes camaraderie and collaboration, and yields cost-effective results. 

You can get a feel for how this might work in your organization by checking out a recent article in Chief Learning Officer magazine.  The article describes how Dr. Bea Carson led three action learning teams and the results they achieved. 

You can learn more about Blanchard’s approach to leadership development and how we build real work scenarios into the curriculum by checking out the work being done at Skanska, where action learning helped a group of high potential executives grow together while simultaneously solving real work issues that saved their company money and increased revenue along the way.

Join Dr. Pat Zigarmi, co-author of the new book, Who Killed Change? right here on LeaderChat beginning at 10:05 a.m. Pacific Time for a 30-minute Q&A session.  

Pat will be stopping by right after she finishes her WebEx sponsored webinar on Leading People Through Change.  This is a special government-focused webinar that looks at the unique challenges encountered when leading change in a government setting. Over 200 people will be participating in the webinar and most will be gathering here to ask follow-up questions. 

If you have a question that you would like to ask Pat, just enter this thread or click on the COMMENTS hyperlink near the title of this post.  Type in your question in the space provided and hit SUBMIT COMMENT.  Pat will answer as many questions as possible until she has to leave at 10:30 a.m. Pacific. 

And if you can’t stay, be sure to stop by later and see all the questions that were asked.  Or better yet, hit the RSS FEED button on the right-hand column and receive updates on a weekly basis.

65% of North American workers reported that they were not recognized at work during the past year according to the authors of The Carrot Principle, Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton. That’s a shame because recognition supercharges the basics of good management according to the authors.  Here’s how 

• Goal Setting—once you set goals, use timely recognition to identify progress towards those goals.  For example, if the goal is greater efficiency—recognize employee who are the most efficient—if it is accuracy—recognize the employees who make the fewest mistakes. 
• Communication—add recognition as an agenda item to all individual and weekly staff meetings.  It’s also a good way to communicate company values and culture on an ongoing basis.  
• Trust—recognizing the contributions of others shows direct reports that you care and appreciate their efforts.  It also lets people know that everyone will be recognized for their contribution on a project.  That goes a long way towards building trust. 
• Accountability—recognizing good behavior shows that you are paying attention to goals and progress.  It’s also a positive way to let people know that behavior is being tracked.

What’s your organization’s approach to reward and recognition?  You can learn more about The Carrot Principle by checking out this short video at BNET, one of our recommended web sites.