Blanchard LeaderChat

“Growth is what separates living things from dying things,” explain Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller in their new book Great Leaders Grow: Becoming a Leader for Life. “Growth brings energy, vitality, life, and challenge. Without growth, we’re just going through the motions.”

In a recent article for Blanchard’s online newsletter, Ignite! the authors warn that if leaders are not continually growing and developing their skills, they run the risk of becoming stagnant. Once you are stagnant—or even perceived as stagnant—your influence erodes.

Growth should never be an optional activity

Still, many leaders do not grow. And it can happen at any stage in a leader’s career. It can be triggered by work-life balance issues, a reactive mindset, or it can be for organizational reasons, such as limited growth opportunities.

But the reality is that all of these challenges can be overcome. As Blanchard and Miller explain, “It is the decision to grow that makes the difference. The best leaders make a conscious decision to grow throughout their career and their life. This single decision is a game changer for leaders.”

8 questions to ask yourself

Wondering if you are growing—or dying—as a leader?  Here are some key questions to ask yourself based on Blanchard and Miller’s recommended first steps for leaders looking to grow (self-evaluation, honest feedback, and counsel from others.)  To what extent would you agree or disagree with each statement?

Self Evaluation:

• I know my own strengths and weaknesses.
• I constantly look for opportunities to grow at work.
• I consistently tell myself the truth regarding my leadership.

Honest Feedback:

• I actively seek feedback from those I know to be truth-tellers.
• I have mastered the art and discipline of asking profound questions.

Counsel from Others:

• I have a mentor(s) who helps me grow.
• I frequently share what I’m learning with others.
• I have a group of people I trust to give me counsel on important issues.

How did you do?  Did your answers surprise you?  It may have been a while since you even considered the subject of growth—especially if you’ve been focused on the short-term or if you’ve become comfortable, complacent, or resigned in your current role. All of these are potentially destructive attitudes.

“Great leaders go out of their way to expand their worlds both inside and outside of work,” explain Blanchard and Miller. “A willingness to grow allows leaders to take advantage of opportunities when they come their way.

“You cannot always control the circumstances of your career or work environment. However, you can control your readiness to lead and grow. Leaders who don’t are susceptible to pride, ego, and other destructive attitudes that can impede growth. As a result, they can become isolated and have a distorted sense of what’s going on.”

As Blanchard and Miller warn, “Be ready to face the next challenge, or you can end up as a leader who tries to apply yesterday’s solutions to today’s problems. That’s a recipe for failure.”

To read more of Blanchard and Miller’s thinking on the importance of growth, check out If You Want to Lead, You Have to Grow.  Also, take a look at the free webinar the authors will be conducting on February 23, Great Leaders Grow: The Four Keys to Becoming a Leader for Life, courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

If you’re not growing, you’re dying.  That’s the message that Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller have for leaders in their new book, Great Leaders Grow: Becoming a Leader for Life.  In a classic parable format, they tell the story of Blake Brown, a young 20-something, as he takes on his first leadership role.

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!

It’s the start of a new year and a great time to take stock of where you are and where you are going as a leader.  The ability to think clearly and make the best decisions is a key part of any leader’s role.  Yet, many leaders tend to fall into bad thinking patterns—especially after a couple of years on the job.  Here are three of the most common bad habits and what to do to avoid them.

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!

The average organization is losing an amount equal to $1 million dollars each year that better leadership practices could prevent according to recent white paper from The Ken Blanchard Companies.   So why isn’t there a greater sense of urgency to change things?  Of course, it’s different in different organizations, but here is one of the most overlooked reasons why organizational practices don’t change—even when there is evidence that it could have a strong financial benefit.

Sometimes knowing can seem like doing.

According to authors Jeffrey Pfeffer and Bob Sutton, organizational inaction can often be traced to a basic human propensity: the willingness to let talk substitute for action.  In their classic Harvard Business Review article, The Smart-Talk Trap authors Pfeffer and Sutton explain that in business, “When confronted with a problem, people act as if discussing it, formulating decisions, and hashing out plans for action are the same as actually fixing it.”

But the results can be disastrous for a company.  As Pfeffer and Sutton point out, “Brought to a standstill by inertia, their problems fester, their opportunities for growth are lost, and their best employees become frustrated and leave. If the inactivity continues, customers and investors react accordingly and take their money elsewhere.”

So how do companies get past this inertia?  In studying companies with a strong propensity for action, Pfeffer and Sutton have found five common characteristics:

• “They have leaders who know and do the work.”  Leaders in these organizations have either grown-up in the business or spend a good portion of their time managing by wandering around.
• “They have a bias for plain language and simple concepts.” Leaders focus their efforts on a few, straightforward concepts.  They consider “common sense” a compliment rather than an insult.
• “They frame the questions by asking ‘how’, not just ‘why’.” Leaders look for ways to get things done instead of looking for ammunition for assigning fault.
• “They have strong mechanisms for closing the loop.” Leaders make sure ideas turn into action.
• “They believe that experience is the best teacher ever.” Prototyping, testing, and feedback is encouraged.  People are expected to take risks, occasionally make mistakes, and keep learning.

How would you score your organization in these five areas?  Is your corporate culture more “talking” or “doing” by nature?  If it seems a little conversation-heavy, develop an attitude of action.  Understanding, planning, and deciding are just the first step.  Doing is what counts.  Take action today!

Ready to get started?  Join us for a webinar this Wednesday!

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The High Cost of Poor Leadership: The three performance gaps you have to address Wednesday, December 7, 2011, 9:00 a.m. Pacific, 12:00 p.m. Eastern, 5:00 p.m. UK and GMT

Poor leadership practices cost companies millions of dollars each year by negatively impacting employee retention, customer satisfaction, and overall employee productivity. In this Webinar, Blanchard Program Director David Witt helps you take a closer look at the effect that leadership has in each of these three areas and what you can do to improve performance.

You’ll learn that

• Less-than-optimal leadership practices cost the typical organization an amount equal to as much as 7% of their total annual sales
• At least 9% and possibly as much as 32% of an organization’s voluntary turnover can be avoided through better leadership skills
• Better leadership can generate a 3 to 4% improvement in customer satisfaction scores and a corresponding 1.5% increase in revenue growth
• Most organizations are operating with a 5 to 10% productivity drag that better leadership practices could eliminate

Drawing on proprietary original research, you’ll learn which management techniques generate the best results and also look at some of the common cultural roadblocks that keep companies from implementing them. You’ll also learn how to overcome these obstacles and make the shift from knowing to doing.

Organizations need to make sure that they are getting the best out of their people by providing strong, consistent, and inspiring leadership. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to evaluate and improve leadership practices throughout your organization.

Register today! http://www.webex.com/webinars/The-High-Cost-of-Poor-Leadership-The-three-performance-gaps-you-have-to-address

Get it right on the inside and you’ll get it right on the outside.  That’s good advice that is rarely followed in today’s management literature.  Instead there seems to be a focus on just getting it right on the outside.  This can work, but it’s probably leaving your direct reports feeling a little empty at best—or distrusting at worst.

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.

Join The Ken Blanchard Companies for a complimentary webinar and online chat beginning today at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time (12:00 noon Eastern).

Best-selling author and consultant Scott Blanchard will be sharing the results of five years of primary research which uncovers the motivational factors that bring out the natural motivation inherent in people, get employees up-to-speed quickly in new roles, and remove roadblocks to performance.
 

The webinar is free and seats are still available if you would like to join over 1,100 people expected to participate. Immediately after the webinar, Scott 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! Scott 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 to watch complete recording.

There is one aspect of a leader’s personality that is both their greatest asset and greatest potential liability at the same time.  And if it is not dealt with correctly, it has the ability to stop a promising career dead in its tracks.

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 webinar on 6 Keys to Creating Learning Experiences that Inspire and Engage, 76% of participants said that in their opinion, at least 60% of a person’s success on the job can be attributed to their ability to learn job specific skills. Yet only 9% identified that any company they had ever worked for used a mindful process when teaching people new skills.  For most of the webinar participants, learning a new skill was something they had to figure out for themselves while on the job.

If learning is important to success in today’s complex business environment, why don’t more organizations take the time to train people in the skills they need more effectively?

It’s because most managers and leaders are not trained how to teach according to Dr. Vicki Halsey, Vice President of Applied Learning at The Ken Blanchard Companies.   Most leaders are more accustomed to telling instead of teaching—and are often disappointed when they check back to see how people are doing with applying new skills.

If you want your people to pick up new skills more quickly, Halsey recommends addressing six areas when rolling out a new initiative.  Have you got a new program that you are getting ready to launch?  See if you you’ve covered these six basics to maximize learning and application.

1. Energize learners.  Set the context for learning before anyone steps into the classroom.  What can people do to get up-to-speed on this subject?  What can they read, or who can they talk with, to become as excited about this topic as you are?
2. Navigating the content.  Is the presentation learner friendly? Have you put together a good structure that includes breaking the content down into bite-sized chunks that people can easily digest?  Or have you designed this as a lecture type presentation where you will be doing all the talking and it will be a challenge just getting through the content—let alone actually retaining anything?
3. Generate meaning.  Have you connected the dots so people see why learning this new content is important?  People need to see why they should take the time to invest in learning new skills.  Your job as a leader is to provide that meaning.
4. Apply the learning.  What does this new skill look like in the real world?  Have you included some opportunities to practice the real life application of this new skill—or is that something you are leaving up to individual learners to figure out for themselves?
5. Gauge and celebrate.  How will you measure if people are really doing something different with the content?  Don’t be vague on this point.  What is the business metric you are looking to impact?  ROI is something you need address at the beginning of a new initiative—not after the fact.
6. Extend the learning.  How will you keep the initiative alive beyond the initial rollout?  New habits take time to develop and a lot of support in the early days.  What is your follow-up plan?  How will you ensure that skills learned in the classroom are applied back on the job?

A 2010 Bersin report shows that organizations that successfully create strong learning cultures are more likely to be strong innovators in their markets, more likely to get to market before competitors, and more likely to be a market-share leader.

Learning new skills is an important necessity in today’s work environment.  Don’t leave it to chance in your organization.  Take a proactive approach to teaching people new skills.

As a young college professor, best-selling business author Ken Blanchard constantly found himself in front of disapproving faculty boards. The reason?  His insistence on giving out the final exam to each of his students on the first day of the class he was teaching.

As soon as they found out, the board would call Blanchard in to explain himself.  As Ken describes it, the exchange usually went something like this:

Ken: “I’m confused.”

The Board: “You act like it.”

Ken: “I thought we are supposed to teach these kids.”

The Board: “You are, but don’t give them the exam ahead of time.”

Ken would never listen and would actually spend the entire semester teaching the students the answers to the questions.  Ken’s belief was that his main job was to teach students the content they needed to learn, as opposed to worrying about evaluating them properly with the final exam.

Dr. Vicki Halsey, VP of Applied Learning for The Ken Blanchard Companies uses a similar approach when it comes to teaching. Instead of using tests to identify what people don’t know at the end of leadership training, she uses tests to help people claim and celebrate what they do know.  A recent example is work she did with pharmaceutical representatives who needed to learn a new skill in collecting information from doctors.  Halsey’s approach helped the learners to feel confident in what they knew and successful when they walked out the door and returned to their jobs.

How do you want people feeling when they finish a class?  Do you want people focusing on what they don’t know, or ready to put into practice what they do know? It’s a subtle difference that makes all the difference.

You can read more about Halsey’s unique approach to adult learning at Leaders Need to Be Teachers.  Also check out Halsey’s free July 20 webinar on 6 Keys to Creating Learning Experiences that Inspire and Engage courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

A lot of leaders are disappointed these days. Even though they work hard to provide clear direction to their people, when they check in on progress at the end of the month, they often find that little has changed.

The problem, according to Dr. Vicki Halsey of The Ken Blanchard Companies is that leaders confuse telling with teaching.  In a recent article for the Blanchard Companies’ Ignite! newsletter, Halsey explains that, “If leaders want people to develop new behaviors, they have to become better teachers of what to do and how to do it.”

For leaders looking to get started, Halsey recommends three strategies:

1. Break Learning Down into Manageable Chunks

Leaders need to give people an opportunity to learn the new skills over time, using a variety of different modalities that go beyond a one-time exposure to the content.

2. Create Meaning to Embed Learning

Executives need to generate meaning for the new learning. They need to answer the question “Why is this important for me to learn?” Generating this meaning and connecting it to learning the new skill helps people retain the skill over the long term because now they can see the importance of the task.

3. Remember the 70/30 Rule

According to Halsey, “When people are getting ready for a presentation they focus 70 percent of their time on what they are going to say.” Halsey believes this time would be better spent thinking about how to create a learner-centered environment that helps people learn. As she explains, “Leaders need to shift their focus and spend only 30 percent of their time worrying about what they need to say and 70 percent on how to create the greatest transfer of learning to their participants.

According to Halsey, “The biggest thing is to teach, not tell. Very often leaders think that because they are telling people what they want them to do, people are turning around and doing it. We need to realize that teaching, not telling, is a discipline at which all leaders need to become effective—because the more you teach, the more people will learn and the more successful they will be.”

You can read more of Halsey’s advice to leaders at Leaders Need to Be Teachers.  Also check out Halsey’s free July 20 webinar on 6 Keys to Creating Learning Experiences that Inspire and Engage courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.