Blanchard LeaderChat

Join The Ken Blanchard Companies for a special complimentary webinar and online chat beginning today at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time (12:00 noon Eastern).  Best-selling author and consultant Ken Blanchard will be joined by Southwest Airlines president emeritus Colleen Barrett to present the key concepts from their new book Lead with LUV: A Different Way to Create Real Success.  The webinar is free and seats are still available if you would like to join over 1,500 people expected to participate.

Immediately after the webinar, Ken 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 

1. Click on the LEAVE A COMMENT link above
2. Type in your question
3. Push SUBMIT COMMENT

It’s as easy as that!  Ken 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.

“If you seek long continued success for your business organization, treat your People as family and LEAD WITH LOVE.” 

That is the advice that Herb Kelleher, legendary founder of Southwest Airlines, offers readers in the foreword of a new book, Lead with LUV: A Different Way to Create Real Success that looks at the leadership practices that have made Southwest a benchmark for great management.

As Kelleher explains, “…an infusion of love is an essential, but oft overlooked, ingredient in any business organization that wants to be superlative for a long period of time, rather than just “successful” for a limited time.

“Most people are looking not only for monetary security but also for psychic satisfaction in their work. That satisfaction is provided in our personal lives by the love and affection of family and friends. Why shouldn’t a business simply be an enlargement of our circle of family and friends?”

A large part of Southwest’s success is the servant leader attitude of its top executives as well as leaders through all levels of the organization.  And a great example of that philosophy in action is Colleen Barrett, president emeritus and coauthor of the book. 

“For more than forty years,” says Kelleher, “in her relationships with the People of Southwest Airlines, Colleen Barrett has ensured that no grief goes unattended; that no joy goes unshared; that each achievement is celebrated; and that those requiring help receive it.”

The result has been a corporate culture where Southwest’s employees feel the love and in turn, share the love, with customers.  And customers have responded with Southwest generating the same types of legendary customer service stories in their industry that Nordstrom’s generates in retailing.

Where does love fit in your organizational culture?  Do your people feel that someone has their best interest at heart—or are they just another cog in the machine?  Try a little caring.  You might be surprised at the difference it makes!

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To learn more about how Southwest has made love a part of their operating system, download the first chapter of Lead with LUV here.  And if you know of an organization that exemplifies love in action when it comes to treating employees and customers right, be sure to let others know at Spread the LUV –a special blog site for success stories.

PS: On January 26, Colleen Barrett will be presenting a free webinar together with Ken Blanchard, her coauthor on Lead with LUV.  The event is free and over 2,000 people have already registered, but there is still room for others to attend.  To learn more visit http://www.webex.com/webinars/Lead-with-LUV-A-Different-Way-to-Create-Real-Success

Once, while sharing her thoughts on leadership, Colleen Barrett, president emeritus of Southwest Airlines (stock symbol LUV), was asked if she was worried that competitors would now be able to steal her management ideas—like writing thousands of thank you notes to employees.  She said “no” because the real magic wasn’t in knowing the concepts, it was in doing the work.

For Barrett, doing the work is a key ingredient to the success that Southwest has enjoyed in the tough airline industry over the past forty years.  It’s also one of the reasons why best-selling business author Ken Blanchard wanted to work with Barrett on a new book that captures the real-life leadership examples that have made Southwest Airlines a model of good management. Titled Lead with LUV: A Different Way to Create Real Success, it’s just out in bookstores this month.

 “She does the things I write about,” says Blanchard. “The stuff that I’ve learned and taught over the years, it’s all in there with a real person who did it.”

And one of the things that Blanchard writes about often is the importance of celebrating both people and results.

As Barrett explains, “What’s important is the fact that you’re honoring people and acknowledging that what they do makes a positive difference. In the process, you are making heroes out of them. You are letting them know that you love them for their efforts and you want everybody to celebrate their success.”

But it does require doing the work.  And at Southwest, this means that officers hand-write notes to thousands of employees each year.

As Barrett explains, “Besides being loving, we know this is meaningful to our people, because we hear from them if we miss something significant in their lives, like the high school graduation of one of their kids. We just believe in accentuating the positive and celebrating people’s successes.”

You can learn more about the ways that Southwest Airlines takes the time to stop and recognize their people by accessing the first chapter of Lead with LUV: A Different Way to Create Real Success here.

Also, don’t miss a complimentary webinar that Colleen Barrett and Ken Blanchard will be conducting on January 26.  Hosted by Cisco WebEx, click here to find out more about this free Lead with LUV event.

Most workers do not feel that their employee performance reviews are valuable. That is what Garry Ridge, CEO of WD-40 Company, discovered when he surveyed students in a business course he teaches at the University of San Diego.

The problem, according to Ridge, is that most performance systems are used for the wrong reasons. They are either arbitrary, conducted out of habit, or they are used just in case it is ever necessary to document evidence to fire someone. Ridge thinks that performance reviews should be used to develop people—not to evaluate them.

It’s a philosophy he shares with Ken Blanchard and which they wrote about in their book Helping People Win at Work: A Business Philosophy Called “Don’t Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A.”

According to Blanchard and Ridge, managers need to move away from evaluating people and instead focus on coaching and helping people get A’s.  For managers ready to embrace coaching instead of evaluating, the two authors recommend the following three steps:

1. Set clear goals. All good performance starts with clear goals. Make sure that objectives and performance standards are established.
2. Provide day-to-day coaching. This is where a manager observes and monitors the performance of his or her people, praising progress and redirecting where necessary.
3. No surprises at the annual review. The biggest difference in the Helping People Win at Work approach is that the annual review is not used as an end-of-the-year evaluation tool. Instead, it is used throughout the year as a guide to how managers and direct reports work together to help employees get A’s.

When you help people win at work, both the organization and the employees benefit.

As Ridge explains, “When employees have clear expectations, meaningful work, and day-to-day support, it impacts their level of engagement. At WD-40, our engagement number is 93%, which I believe is three times the average. It means that people come to work doing things that mean something to them, that they feel is making a difference in the world today, and that is developing them internally as well.

Download Free eBook version of Helping People Win at Work!

Between now and November 13, you can download a free Kindle copy of Helping People Win At Work from Amazon.com.  Just click on the link above to see how you can download a free copy to your computer or mobile device.

What keeps companies from acting on what they know?  Seven culture issues according to Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton.  In their classic business book, The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action, Pfeffer and Sutton point out that the problem in most organizations isn’t knowing what to do—but actually doing it.

See if any of these bad habits are present in your organization:

1. Mimicking best practices instead of underlying values.  Organizations looking to learn from best-in-class companies often move immediately to copy the best practices of a leading company instead of taking a moment to understand the concept behind the practice.  Don’t substitute copying for thinking.  It’s not the foosball table that makes it a great place to work—it’s the corporate value that makes buying a foosball table a good idea that is the real best practice.
2. Staying conceptual instead of getting practical.  Theories and models have their place for understanding and organizing content, but they are no substitute for working on real business issues.  It isn’t until people put concepts into practice, with real consequences, that learning takes place. 
3. Planning and deciding instead of doing.  A slightly more sophisticated version of staying conceptual that only seems more action-oriented.  Remember the question, “If five frogs are sitting on a log, and one decides to jump, how many frogs are left on the log?”  (The answer is five until the frog actually jumps.)  Never mistake planning and decision-making with doing.  They are two different activities.
4. Punishing failure instead of encouraging initiative.  When people stretch and take action, it often ends up in failure—even under the best of circumstances.  How does your company react to failure?  Is it seen as a chance to learn and adjust, or is it time to punish and reprimand?  If you want your organization to have a bias for action, people need to have the freedom to fail occasionally.
5. Setting a poor example at the top.  People know to watch for actions instead of announcements when it comes to trying to figure out where senior leadership really stands on an issue.  Don’t announce an open-door policy: simply leave your door open.  Demonstrate desired behaviors through your own actions.  Nothing speaks louder.
6. Creating a competitive internal environment.  People need and want to collaborate but organizations often set up structures, policies, and incentives that create internal competition.  Encourage teamwork by designing policies that promote collaboration instead of competition.
7. Poor measurement and tracking.  What gets measured is what gets managed.  Be picky in deciding which key metrics to focus on.  Some organizations measure everything, or leave it to individual departments to decide what is measured.  This can lead to “siloed” thinking and a focus on departmental goals instead of the big picture.  Think overall and organization-wide when it comes to measurement.

Develop an attitude of action.  Understanding, planning, and deciding are just the first step.  Doing is what counts.  Take action today!

What are the characteristics of a high-performing organization?  How does leadership contribute (or detract) from that process?  These are the questions answered in the new second edition of Leading at a Higher Level, released earlier this year from FT Press.  In it, best-selling business author Ken Blanchard identifies–together with the consultants and founding associates of The Ken Blanchard Companies–four key traits common to successful organizations.  In these organizations, leaders do four things well.  Read more…

“Love” as the key ingredient to business success?  Ken Blanchard and Colleen Barrett make a convincing case in their new book, Lead with LUV: A Different Way to Create Real Success.  I received an early manuscript of this new book (due out in January) after attending Barrett’s keynote address at The Ken Blanchard Companies annual client summit in San Diego last month.  Their basic formula is simple: Southwest succeeds because it treats employees with respect, practices The Golden Rule, and loves people for who they are.  In return, the company asks employees to treat customers in a similar manner.

It’s an approach that allows Southwest’s leadership to expect more—and receive more—from their people than other airlines.  Because employees know that leadership is on their side, leaders can confidently challenge and hold people accountable for meeting expectations.  It’s a business version of tough love that only works when employees know you care.

Interested in trying a little leadership love at your organization?  Here are three tips for getting started:

1. Communicate your organizational mission and vision. Barrett explains that at Southwest, they are first and foremost in the customer service business—they just happen to express that service by providing airline transportation.
2. Define the values that will guide behavior. At Southwest values start with safety and practicing the golden rule–treating people as you would like to be treated–as a foundation.  Three additional values of Warrior Spirit, Servant’s Heart, and a Fun-LUVing Attitude guide employee behavior on a day-to-day basis.
3. Combine caring with high expectations. Leaders at Southwest treat their people with respect, strive to bring out their best, and love their people for who they are.  In return, employees are expected to buy into the company’s mission, and to practice the company’s values with each other and customers.

What’s the level of leadership love in your organization?  Do employees know that leaders truly care about them?  It’s an essential ingredient at Southwest that has helped to create long-term success and a fun-loving culture in a challenging industry.  What could it do for you?

Win an Advance Copy of Ken and Colleen’s New Book!

Would you like to get a sneak peek at the unbound manuscript version of Bringing LUV to Leadership?  Rarely made public, we have a small number of extra copies from the proofing and review process that we are giving away this Friday.  To be entered into the drawing, just sign on as a fan at Ken Blanchard’s new Facebook Fan Page by 12 noon Pacific Time, Friday, April 9.  Everyone who is signed up as a fan by that time will automatically be entered into the drawing.  Good luck!

Today’s nominees in our top leaders survey/contest are beginning to push the edges of what many of us might consider a traditional leader.  In addition to leaders from business and government, today’s nominees included 24-year-old Daily Beast columnist Meghan McCain and 30-year-old Doc Hendley, the founder and president of Wine to Water.

McCain is part of a young generation of writers and columnists covering everything from current events to the latest in entertainment and fashion. She first began to receive media attention when she documented life on the campaign trail with her father Senator John McCain.  You can read McCain’s latest posts at The Daily Beast.

Hendley is a great example of a young man who, beginning at the age of 25, travelled to Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda and Cambodia, working with local communities to build clean water wells and sanitation systems.  Upon coming home and returning to school, Hendley continued working for clean water in developing nations through fund-raising at bars where he worked. By hosting wine tastings and providing information about the clean water crisis in other less-developed parts of the world, Hendley was able to later launch Wine to Water, Hendley’s organization that provides clean water to people in developing countries.  You can learn more about Hendley and Wine to Water at www.winetowater.org

Who are other examples of non-traditional leaders that you would like to highlight?

Let us know by posting your nominee on Twitter.  When you do, you’ll also be entered into our drawing for a specially chosen selection of Ken Blanchard best-sellers and new releases.

To participate, go to Twitter.com and “tweet” the name of the person you think is today’s top leader.  In order for us to know who your selection is specifically for this contest, just include “@kenblanchard” in your Tweet.

For example, your Tweet could read: “Today’s top leader @kenblanchard: John Smith

We’ll keep posting the latest nominees and keeping the survey/ book raffle open until October 13 when two random winners will be chosen from among all of the people who have participated.

Join us in this opportunity to recognize leaders who are making a difference .  Also, be sure to check back every day for updates, and to see who people are talking about!

We’ve received a bunch of new nominations in addition to yesterday’s initial response to our Twitter survey/contest for a gift basket of Ken Blanchard books.  (See details below.) Some of the new nominees are:

• Leadership expert and author, John Maxwell
• Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh
• Oprah Winfrey
• Ford Motor CEO Alan Mulally
• Molecular Biologist and 2009 Nobel Prize winner, Elizabeth Blackburn

As you look over today’s nominees and think about others who should be included, what are the traits that make each leader special.  Is it authenticity, humility, foresight, perserverance or something else?  How are these traits exhibited by the people listed above?  As you think about the great leaders you’ve known, what makes them stand out in your mind?

Survey/Contest Details

LeaderChat is partnering with Ken Blanchard on Twitter to conduct a fun and interesting survey/contest.  Through October 13th, we’d like you to Tweet the name of the person you think is today’s top leader.  In order for us to know who your selection is specifically for this contest, just include “@kenblanchard” in your Tweet.

For example, your Tweet could read: “Today’s top leader @kenblanchard: John Smith”

By doing that, you will be entered into our Twitter contest. After October 13th, we will randomly select two submissions for this contest on Twitter, and we’ll send each of these winners a gift pack of 7 of Ken’s best books, including best-sellers together with some of his newest releases. If you win, Ken will send you a direct Tweet to get your contact info, and we’ll also post the winners here.

We want to know who you think today’s top leader is, and why. LeaderChat is partnering with Ken Blanchard on Twitter to conduct a fun and interesting survey/contest.  Starting today, and going through October 13th, we’d like you to Tweet the name of the person you think is today’s top leader.  In order for us to know who your selection is specifically for this contest, just include “@kenblanchard” in your Tweet.

For example, your Tweet could read: “Today’s top leader @kenblanchard: David Witt”

Okay, that may be a stretch… but pretty simple, huh?  By doing that, you will be entered into our Twitter contest. After October 13th, we will randomly select two submissions for this contest on Twitter, and we’ll send each of these winners a gift pack of 7 of Ken’s best books, including best-sellers together with some of his newest releases. You can read them all, you can give some away as gifts, whatever you like! If you win, Ken will send you a direct Tweet to get your contact info, and we’ll also post the winners here.

The second phase of this LeaderChat/Twitter partnership is right back here at LeaderChat. Each day, I’ll be posting some of the latest Tweet suggestions. Then, we can discuss here on the blog why those people are top leaders (or why you think they aren’t).

What is the criteria for a “top leader?” It’s whatever you think it should be… it could be your parents, a teacher, a local business owner, a sports star, a politician, etc. Really, its about what YOU think makes a top leader. Stop back here each day to talk about some of the Tweet suggestions, and the factors that are important about that particular person and leaders in general.

So start right now and go to Twitter, or directly to Ken’s Twitter page at www.twitter.com/kenblanchard, Tweet out your top leader suggestion with “@kenblanchard” included in your message, and come back here to discuss.

I think it’s going to be a lot of fun… check back tomorrow to see what leaders come up!