Blanchard LeaderChat

It’s that time of year when many of us pause, look back, and reflect on the past twelve months.  One of the most powerful ways you can improve the performance of your company is by evaluating the quality of your leadership.  What can you do for this coming year?  Here’s some advice for leaders from bestselling author and management guru Ken Blanchard.

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.

Organizations around the world have been forced to change the way they do business. The worldwide recession, downsized workforces, and value-conscious customers have created a new set of expectations.

A new white paper from The Ken Blanchard Companies identifies key strategies for leading successfully in the new business reality. Here are four of my favorites to get you started on positioning your company for success in 2011.

• Change the organizational mindset. In many companies people have been focused on the short term for over two years. The emphasis has been on cutting costs, holding down expenses, and weathering the storm.  One thing that leaders can do now is share a vision for the road ahead, indicate that growth is a goal again, and let people know that they can try new things that have some risk involved.
• Give people behavioral examples. What does “try new things that have some risk involved” really mean? The best organizations define the values, attitudes, and practices they desire in clear behavioral terms. Make sure people are clear on what the desired behavior looks like and what they should be doing now. The more specific and granular the examples are, the better.
• Stay open to change. Constant adaptation is a key for thriving in the new business reality. As a leader, it’s important to be a role model when it comes to embracing new ways of thinking that can breathe new life into old practices and generate innovative new ideas.
• Involve everyone. Smart leaders look for good ideas everywhere. This means checking in with people who are informal leaders in the organization as well as the people who are in formal positions. By listening to everyone—including people with divergent points of view, you increase the odds that the organization will be more responsive, adaptive, and successful in the face of change.

Make 2011 your best year ever. To learn more ways to increase your organization’s ability to succeed in the coming year, be sure to check out the complete white paper, Thriving in the New Business Reality.

Do you think about the culture operating in your organization? Unless you’re employed in a human resource capacity, the answer is probably “no.”  In a new article entitled Creating a Culture That Works, senior consulting partners Chris Edmonds and Bob Glaser say that culture is usually poorly understood in most organizations even though it is a key factor that impacts employee satisfaction, engagement, and overall employee productivity. Considering the importance of a supportive and aligned culture, why is it under the radar for most senior executives?

• Part of the reason is that culture is hard to define in most organizations. It operates in the background while other, easier-to-measure aspects of corporate performance—like goals and tasks, preoccupy leadership discussions.
• Senior executives greatly underestimate the power of an organizational culture plus very few leaders have ever had any real experience in dealing with culture change.

For executives who know that their organization’s culture is not what it could be, Edmonds and Glaser recommend taking a three-step approach:

1. Examine the existing culture—look at the underlying beliefs and assumptions that are influencing people’s existing behavior. Especially look at getting senior leaders to examine their own personal beliefs about getting things done in the organization.
2. Define the desired behavior—don’t assume that everyone agrees what good behavior looks like.  Take the time to formally define values in behavioral terms. Gather input from employees and boil it down into clear, actionable items.
3. Hold people accountable for living the stated values—once the values and behaviors have been identified and defined, the final step to creating a culture that works is holding people accountable

A strong, working culture helps to create satisfied employees who feel cared for, trusted, and respected, which increases engagement and ultimately leads to better productivity. To read the entire article, click here.

In an article for Strategy + Business entitled The Promise (and Perils) of Open Collaboration, author Andrea Gabor identifies the challenges organizations face when they choose to adopt a collaborative work environment.   According to Gabor, the biggest obstacle for an organization is the deep change required in the way knowledge is controlled and shared — changes that have the potential to alter relationships both within the company and with its outside constituents. Anything short of total commitment, Gabor warns, is likely to lead to short-lived improvements and eventual failure.

For organizations considering open collaboration, Gabor recommends a clear-headed look at the challenges associated with the change and she identifies seven essential strategies to making it work including:

1. Creating a clear leadership message
2. Collaborating with customers
3. Building a culture of trust and open communication
4. Cultivating continuous improvement
5. Building a flexible innovation infrastructure
6. Preparing your organization for new skill sets
7. Aligning evaluations and rewards

The article points out that “open collaboration is a complex, all-embracing process, requiring genuine commitment from corporate leaders, a willingness to abandon many venerable corporate customs, and an appetite for unleashing and managing disruptive change across the organization.”  But Gabor also encourages organizations to move forward and continue to develop their approach to open collaboration, because for those that do there are great benefits as well.

Sometime today or tomorrow, be sure to read—or save, this article—it’s one of the best on collaboration that we’ve seen. 

And if you are looking for a little additional inspiration and insight on the subject, check out the on-demand webcast of Pass the Ball: The Power of Collaboration.  This is a presentation Ken Blanchard did together with Cisco WebEx in June as a part of their Pass the Ball initiative. Ken shares his thoughts on getting others involved, how a philosophy of “none of us is as smart as all of us” helps everyone accomplish more, and the difference between serving and self-serving behavior.

One of the primary reasons why change efforts fail is because leaders do not consider change from an employee’s perspective. If you’re considering a change initiative in your organization, make sure that you take into account the six predictable concerns that people have when they are asked to change. By addressing these concerns early, you can reduce resistance and build momentum for moving ahead.

1. Information Concerns—What is the change and why is it needed? Make sure that you’re telling instead of selling at this early stage. People want direct, honest answers instead of being “sold” on the change and why they should accept it.

2. Personal Concerns—How will the change impact me personally? Leaders need to create an atmosphere of trust and genuine concern for how the change will impact people personally.

3. Implementation Concerns—Once their first two concerns are out of the way (and not before) people are ready to hear about the details of the change process.  

4. Impact Concerns—At this stage people want to know about the impact that the change is having.  

5. Collaboration Concerns—Once people understand the benefits of the change, they are ready to spread the word and encourage others. At this stage, leaders need to shift roles and allow others to run with the ball.

6. Refinement Concerns—With the first stage of change successfully implemented, your role at this point is to encourage refinement and support further innovation.

Change Readiness Quiz

Change happens one person at a time. By taking the time to address the concerns that people naturally have when they are asked to change, leaders can surface these issues before they occur. Is your organization ready for change?  Take our Change Readiness Quiz and find out where you stand. (Please note that one-time registration at The Ken Blanchard Companies web site is required to see results.)

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 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.

70% of change efforts fail according to Pat Zigarmi, coauthor with Ken Blanchard, John Britt, and Judd Hoekstra of the new book Who Killed Change? out in bookstores now.   

In Zigarmi’s experience of working with clients on organizational change initiatives over the past 20 years, a couple of common mistakes keep popping up when organizations go about launching large scale change in their organizations.   

What causes change to fail in most organizations?  Here are three that Zigarmi recommends keeping an eye on: 

1. People leading the change think that announcing the change is the same as implementing it.  So much energy in organizations is spent preparing to communicate the change and the reasons behind it, but not nearly the same energy is spent planning for the successful execution and rollout of the change after the announcement.
2. People’s concerns with change are not surfaced or addressed. If leaders do not take the time to specifically address individuals’ needs and fears near the beginning of the change process, they will find themselves fighting an uphill battle later on in the process.
3. Those being asked to change are not involved in planning the change.  Leaders need to gain the buy-in and cooperation of the people who are being asked to change. Without that, resistance smolders. This is because people feel that change is being done to them rather than with them. 

Interested in learning more about Zigarmi’s thoughts on leading people through change in your organization?  Be sure to check out interviews with Pat in the May 2008 and May 2009 issues of Ignite or Pat’s webinar recordings on implementing change. 

To learn more about Who Killed Change? including access to the first chapter, follow this link, Who Killed Change?

What is the gap between current and desired performance, costing your organization on an annual basis?   A lot more than you might think going by the results of people who got a sneak peek of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ new Cost of Doing Nothing Calculator at the ASTD International Conference last week in Washington, DC.

In most cases, the size of this gap was over $1 million dollars in companies with 200 or more employees.

The Cost of Doing Nothing 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.

Are you interested in calculating what your current cost of doing nothing is?  Just click here and follow the easy 3-step process.  It’s free, it only takes minutes to complete, and you get access to a complete personalized report immediately.

The new book Who Killed Change?, co-authored by Ken Blanchard, John Britt, Pat Zigarmi, and Judd Hoekstra, hits bookstore shelves on May 26.   Written in a fun, who-done-it murder mystery style, the book follows the investigation of the death of Change in the large ACME organization.  Readers follow along as a hard-boiled detective (known only as Agent) questions each of the suspects including Budget, Sponsorship, and Aligned Leadership. 

Has a change initiative ever “died” in your organization?  Who would you point to as the likely suspects?  Take our poll below, and also leave a comment and let us know about the biggest killers of change you’ve experienced.