In an interview, comedian Joan Rivers was asked how she stayed so thin and trim and the interviewer said, “Do you do a lot of exercising?” “Oh, my Lord no,” said Rivers. “If God had intended me to bend over, He would have put diamonds on the ground.”

When actress and screen writer, Mae West, was asked about dieting she said, “I never worry about diets. The only carrots I’m interested in are the carats in a diamond.”

Hungarian born American film and stage actress, Zsa Zsa Gabor said that she never hated a man enough to give him back his diamonds. And she received diamonds from 9 husbands.

Diamonds have been considered precious for centuries. Geologists say diamonds were formed billions of years ago deep inside the earth by tremendous heat and pressure. They have literally been around since the beginning of time and they will last through eternity. As the title to a popular James Bond movie states, Diamonds Are Forever, literally.

Even though they have been around forever, diamonds are rare and they are hard to find. They come to the surface of the earth during volcanic eruptions in a bluish substance called kimberlite.

To find these rough diamonds, you can search in the marshes, ponds, streams and lakes near volcanos that have erupted, or you can dig deep mines to find rough diamonds still inside the earth. However, you have to process about 22 to 100 tons of kimberlite to find one diamond. This makes a diamond very precious.

Each stone is unique and it takes a skilled technician to cut and polish the rough stone into the beautiful diamond that sells for thousands, even millions of dollars.

Application for the Charismatic Leader 

Charismatic and savvy business leaders are rare. They are hard to find. Charismatic leaders are unique, each having their own facets of strength. They are precious because of the value they add to organizations. They become skilled technicians as they form, develop, and polish people into productive teams.

The four qualities of diamond you can put into your life to become a more charismatic leader are: 

1) Diamond Hardness:  Diamond is the hardest natural substance in nature. It is four times harder than the next hardest substance. It can cut through any other natural substance so it is used extensively in industry for drilling and polishing.

As a charismatic leader: When I ask you to emulate the hardness of diamonds, I DO NOT want you to be hard to get along with, I DO NOT want you to be hard on people; I DO NOT want you to be hard on yourself.

I do want you to equate the hardness of a diamond with being HARDY – self-determining and self-reliant. And TOUGH – tough enough not to fracture and break from the economic pressures faced in organizations today; tough enough to tell the truth; tough enough to cut through problems to solutions.

2) Diamond Clarity: Diamond has greater clarity or transparency than any other solid or liquid substance. The greater clarity in a diamond, the greater the value.

As a charismatic leader: We are going to translate this into clarity of purpose. The clearer you are on the goals of your organization, your own department or team, the greater impact you’ll have on daily productivity because work will be tied directly to results. Daily efforts bring you and your employees closer to successfully executing your organizational stewardship. 

Clarity for your organization, department, unit or team comes from goals setting and time management processes. Do not feel this work is insignificant but give it the time it deserves.

3) Diamond Melting Point: Diamond has the highest melting point of any natural substance: 6422 degrees Fahrenheit.

As a charismatic leader: When it comes to relationships, have a high melting point and give others the benefit of a doubt. Work to raise the melting point of discussions and disagreements. Model for your employees the ability to Pause, Think, and then ACT. Not the reverse order: Act (often inappropriately), then pause and think. Your goal is to replace meltdowns with dialog.

4) Diamond Conductivity:  Diamond conducts heat better than anything – five times better than the second best element that conducts heat, silver.

As a charismatic leader: The “heat” you need to conduct is positive energy and a belief in the future. On a daily basis I encourage you to be the conductor of optimism and hope. If you can be a positive leader, you will be as a beacon of light in the darkness.

These four qualities of the element diamond are fundamental for you to emulate in your leadership career. Master them, and your employees will WANT to follow you as they give you discretionary effort, a prize to be cherished by any leader.

About the author:

Karla Brandau is CEO of Workplace Power Institute. The Workplace Power Institute helps organizations be more competitive in the global marketplace by removing blocks to organizational productivity and improving collaboration.  For more program information visit the web site: www.WorkplacePowerInstitute.com

This material is copyright protected. No part of this document may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without permission from weLEAD Incorporated. Copyright waiver may be acquired from the weLEAD website.

Remember your very first day on the job?  Your shoes had a shine like the tiles on the Space Shuttle and the crease in your slacks could have diced celery.  The air was somehow fresher, the birds chirpier.  You had been hired.  You'd been given a chance to excel, a chance to make a difference.

Now contrast that with this morning.

Are you motivated to wake up every morning and go to your job with full enthusiasm?

After a while, most people end up making one compromise after another until they've resigned themselves to mediocrity.  It's darned hard to keep that first-day buzz going. 

BUT…there's no reason you can't choose to recover a good measure of that first-day feeling. You can motivate yourself to strive for excellence, and put it to good use in the service of everyone whose lives you touch on a daily basis. And, you can love your job again.

It's all about making the choice to do it.

Why You Need to Get Motivated, Find Your Enthusiasm, and Love Your Job Again

Have you ever met a two-year-old who wasn't enthusiastic?  We come prepackaged with it.  And then…

What happens to us?

What happens is that we make a choice.  Some of us choose to make the effort to stay in touch with our inner enthusiasm and love our jobs.  Others find reasons to lose touch with it--boredom, responsibilities, challenges, fatigue.

But here's the problem:  Enthusiasm is the lifeblood of all success.  Without it, nothing great happens.  If you choose to lose touch with your inner enthusiasm, you are choosing mediocrity.  It's really that simple.

Sure, there are plenty of reasons to curb your enthusiasm.  But there are just as many reasons to find it again including celebrating your incredible good fortune. In the process you can make that fortune even better.

Here's How to Find Your Enthusiasm

Step 1: Start with the fact that you're not dead yet, that you were born at all, that you have a job, and that compared to a lot of folks, you have a pretty darn good job.

Step 2: Now take a close look at the circumstances of this good job you have.  Write down your five biggest complaints and spin them into positives.  For example, "My boss micromanages me" can be reframed as "My boss cares enough about me to step into my work when I need help."

If you've truly committed to finding your first-day buzz again, you should be an awful lot closer to it now than you were ten minutes ago. 

All this rethinking and reframing has removed a HUGE energy drain from your life--one you were probably unaware of.  It takes massive amounts of energy to continually reinforce your own sense of victimhood.  Excellence is MUCH less expensive.  Now that you feel lucky instead, what on Earth are you going to do with all that energy?

How about playing the Big Game you signed up for?

Now, you just filled yourself up with a lion's share of this precious thing called the human spirit, and it will not invest in mediocrity.  So play the meaningful, bighearted game you always dreamed of playing, and leave the mediocrity to others. Get motivated and start loving your job again.

 About the author:

Roxanne Emmerich is renowned for her ability to transform the "ho-hum" attitudes of leaders, executives, business owners and entrepreneurs just like you into massive results-oriented "bring-it-on" attitudes. To discover how you can get motivated and love your job again, check out her new book – Thank God it's Monday.
at: http://www.thankgoditsmonday.com

 This material is copyright protected. No part of this document may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without permission from weLEAD Incorporated. Copyright waiver may be acquired from the weLEAD website.

Burnout. Too many priorities to tackle. Insufficient resources. Difficulty motivating volunteers or staff. These are the challenges facing executives and managers of non-profit organizations and agencies. Non-profits are having the same problems as for-profit corporations, such as concerns of recruiting and retaining excellent staff, with the added difficulty of fewer resources to execute tasks and to attract employees. In addition, those organizations receiving grantor funding must provide greater assurance that they will be able to deliver on the funded project goals. The work of non-profit organizations is vital to our society, but how do we inspire, motivate, and support the leaders of these important agencies? One of the most proven and cost-effective methods for enhancing loyalty, retention, and the accomplishment of goals is Coaching.

According to Daniel Goleman (2006), psychologist and award-winning author of Emotional Intelligence (EI) says, nonprofit leaders can incorporate different leadership styles in their relationships with employees. The leadership style used least by nonprofit leaders is the Coaching style. In a nutshell, Coaching leaders encourage employees to establish long-term development goals and help them conceptualize a plan for attaining them. The ongoing dialogue in a coaching relationship ensures that employees know what is expected of them, and how their work fits into a larger vision of where the organization is going. Coaching is a relatively new and promising tool for leadership development for non profit leaders who find themselves in an increasingly challenged and often isolated role, according to a national study of nonprofit executive leadership conducted by Compass Point (Wolfred, Belland Moyers, 2001). Statistical surveys and anecdotal evidence alike support Coaching as a great instrument for advancing nonprofit leadership and improving nonprofit organizational effectiveness. Leadership Coaching requires exceptional leadership and questioning skills to be effective. At no point is leadership more important than in assisting others in defining their performance issues and identifying the underlying causes. This Situational Leadership style provides the needed structure to guide leaders in working with their clients.

The underlying principle in Situational Leadership is that Executive Coaches should adjust their leadership styles to their client’s readiness level (ability and willingness) to perform a given task. Leadership is the amount of task behavior (direction) and relationship behavior (support) given by a leader. To be effective the Coach must adjust the way in which they lead their clients based on their level of readiness for each task that they are expected to perform. Leadership coaching is a unique application of the principles of Situational Leadership that guides leader coaches as they work with their clients.

The Situational Leadership method from Kenneth Blanchard and Paul Hersey holds that managers must use different leadership styles depending on the situation. The model allows you to analyze the needs of the situation you’re in, and then use the most appropriate leadership style. Depending on employees’ competences in their task areas and commitment to their tasks, your leadership style should vary from one person to another. You may even lead the same person one way sometimes, and another way at other times.

Blanchard and Hersey (1985) characterized leadership style in terms of the amount of direction and of support that the leader gives to his or her followers, and so created a simple matrix.

The lowest readiness level (D1) for an individual or group is described as not willing and not able to do a given task. The appropriate leadership style (SI) is that of providing high amounts of task behavior (direction) and low amounts of relationship behavior (support). The next readiness level (D2) is described as willing but not able. The appropriate leadership style (S2) is that of high amounts of both task and relationship behavior.

The next readiness level (D3) is described as able but unwilling in that the individual lacks confidence or commitment. The appropriate leadership style (S3) is that of high amounts of relationship behavior and low amounts of task behavior. The highest readiness level for a group or individual to do a given task is willing and able (D4). The appropriate leadership style is that of low amounts of both relationship and task behavior.

Within the learning organization there is a focus on developing new ways of thinking and working (Senge, 1999). A coaching culture is the framework of any learning organization. These organizations are characterized by relationships of trust, collaboration, insightful guidance, and a focus on assisting people to maximize their potential. Learning organizations differ from others in that they have shifted from a focus on performance to an emphasis on sustainable growth. People are given the opportunity to enhance and strengthen the concept of ongoing learning and development by creating a culture where coaching thrives. 

Regardless of which enterprise the Coach is engaged in, he or she requires a solid knowledge of the organization.  The coach has to be aware of its climate and culture, the current challenges it faces, its current learning and development programs and its people management programs and philosophy. Although the importance and usefulness of conducting a Coaching Needs Analysis  alone is not sufficient for the Coach to embark upon working in an organization. In the same way, neither process knowledge or proven ability to work with personal mastery skills will equip the Coach to work effectively in an organization.

The Coach has to be familiar with various models of organizational change and the model or framework, either explicit or implicit, within which the particular organization operates. If a Coach chooses to work within an organizational environment, it is recommended that he or she adopt a systemic approach, that is, one that recognizes, acknowledges and can work with both internal and external factors that impact on the organization and its individuals. The Coach’s role may be to focus on human processes in the organization, on organizational design, developing and enhancing job competencies, or on coaching individuals through technology change programs.

The Coach as change agent is a person who is formally conducting a change effort. The change agent is involved in all steps of the process of change. Coaches are required to both change the level and standard of personal and professional skills sets, attitudes, thinking, beliefs, values, motivation of an individual or group, in order to help them (and their organization) perform even better and derive greater satisfaction from their everyday work life and their careers. Coaching is fundamentally about achieving behavioral change (what people do and say).

Coaching Leadership works well when employees want to advance and achieve their potential. This type of leadership doesn't work as well when employees are resistant to learning or changing their ways. In such situations, nonprofit leaders have to dig below the surface to understand what's causing the resistance. They will often discover that the resistance stems from a misunderstanding of the process: unlike many so-called "performance improvement plans," which are thinly disguised warnings to improve one's performance or face some undesirable consequence, the professional development plan with its clearly defined milestones and measures of success is designed to help employees succeed.

Coaching can occur one-on-one or in groups, on the telephone or in-person. When considering the cost of replacing and training key staff members, volunteers, and leaders, it is one of the most proven and cost-effective methods for enhancing loyalty and retention, the accomplishment of goals, and the power to transform organizations and their communities.In her article, “The Case for a Coach,” in Association Management, April 2001, Sheila

Maher outlines some of the advantages of coaching for non-profit leaders, managers, and volunteers. Maher’s experience coaching key staff officers at various associations has demonstrated that coaching provides:

• The ability to lead with vision rather than just manage day-to-day activities

• Reduction of over-commitment and stress

• Continued strategic thinking even when pulled in many directions

• Maximized staff effectiveness rather than micro-managing

• Using time more effectively

• Improved interpersonal skills in dealing with difficult people

Mary Beth Bos, CFRE, in her article “Leading on the Frontlines with a Coach on the Sidelines,” Customer Development Solutions, quotes a social services executive, a human services executive director, a foundation CEO, and an arts executive director on what they obtained from coaching. Their descriptions can be summarized as:

• Feeling “heard” and being self-expressed

• Establishing a vision, encouraging ownership, fostering partnership, and improving pacing

• Improved ability to be pro-active, accessible and open to staff

• Building cooperation and team-spirit, increased respect from others, and a stronger ability to handle issues before they reach a crisis stage

In addition, the non-profit leader--whether board member, volunteer, executive, or department manager--benefits personally with improved health and well-being, greater life balance, less stress, and greater productivity. The organization benefits from a more well-rounded, loyal, and dedicated leader with a clear vision, better strategies to reach goals, improved relationships with and outside the organization, improved morale, and a more successful plan of work. They are also more efficient and work in a manner consistent with the agency’s goals and plans. Even the volunteer leadership of a non-profit organization can benefit from coaching when it affects one’s individual career.

References

Blanchard, K.H. & Hersey, P. (1985). SLII: A situational approach to managing people. Escondido, CA: Blanchard Training and Development.

Goleman, D. (2006). Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. Bantam Books.

Goldsmith, M. & Lyon, L. (2006).Coaching for leadership (2^nd Ed). San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Peters, J. and Wolfred, T. (2001)   CompassPoint Nonprofit Services, San Francisco. See also Teirney, T. (2006) The Nonprofit Sector’s Leadership Deficit. The Bridgespan Group; and Bell, J, Moyers, R. and T. Wolfred (2006) Daring to Lead 2006: A National study of Nonprofit Executive Leadership.CompassPoint/Meyer Foundation.

Senge (1999). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. Currency-Doubleday.

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In today's economy business leaders can't afford to accept under-performing personnel in their companies. Yet, in a recent survey 44% of them reported being unhappy with the performance results of their employees.

In order to solve a problem such as this, employers need to first identify the cause and then create viable options for applicable solutions. There can be many reasons why employees under-perform and some leaders may point to poor attitudes, low motivation and individuals' inability to work with others, or accept and adapt to change.

Although those reasons may be absolutely valid on the surface, there are always underlying issues that have led to the causes identified by the business leader.

There are only two aspects to evaluate with under-performing employees. It's either due to an individual's:

 1) ability, or

2) their attitude.

In either instance, the employee is not at fault.

There are three primary mistakes business leaders make that prevent employees from being engaged in their workplace and contributing at higher levels.

1) The organization has not given the employee a reason to be engaged and motivated, or to contribute more than minimum effort.

2) The organization has created an environment that is actually de-motivating and dis-engaging.

3) The employer failed to hire the right person for the job or to ensure the person hired is working in a role that fits their talents, skills and interests. 

Business Leader Mistake #1 - Not Giving Employees a Reason to be Engaged, Motivated & Contribute 

Many business leaders mistakenly believe that providing someone the privilege of a steady income and certain quality of life via a paycheck should be enough to create a motivated employee. 

Yet, studies continue to show that salary and benefits, although important for providing base levels of motivation, is not enough to generate higher levels of engagement. 

Many managers and leaders say they are frustrated with the feeling they have to continually find ways to light a fire under their people to get them to do what needs to be done. Instead they should be investing energy in connecting to their employees on a personal level to instead find ways to light a fire within them.

One extremely effective way to do this is to apply the Employee Motivation Equation.

The Employee Motivation Equation begins with creating an inspiring vision for the company that employees at all levels will be excited to contribute to. Daniel Pink, in his 2010 book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us identified "Purpose" as one of the key motivating components for a 21st Century workforce. 

Business Leader Mistake #2 - Creating a De-Motivating Environment

In any new relationship there is always a honeymoon period where all the parties involved have good feelings about the possibilities moving forward. It's the same when a new hire joins a company.

Unfortunately, a survey of about 1.2 million employees at mostly Fortune 1000 companies in the early part of this century conducted by Sirota Survey Intelligence, and revealed in 2005 that in 85% of companies, employee morale sharply declines after an employee's first six months on the job, and continues to fade in ensuring years.

In a significant number of companies, as this Sirota research shows, something is occurring in these work environments that causes an enthusiastic and engaged employee to change their attitude.

Many factors can be attributed to this drop off, some of which include:

a) Poorly communicated job descriptions and responsibilities causing uncertain performance expectations for the individual,

b) Inequity in managers addressing inappropriate behaviors and poor performance of co-workers,

c) Managers that play favorites and communicate disrespectfully in the workplace,

d) Lack of positive feedback for contributions made

Business Leader Mistake #3 - Making a Wrong Hiring Choice

In the haste to fill positions, often those making the hiring decisions fail to invest enough time in making sure the new hire is a good fit for the position. A "good fit' includes assessing skills, talent and job experience perspective, plus checking into the potential new hire's personality, including beliefs, attitudes and motivations.

Additionally, sometimes due to unforeseen circumstances employees are asked to fill roles not originally intended, and for which their skills and talents are not the best fit.

In these situations, despite the employees best efforts they are unable to meet desired performance expectations, and both the employee and the employer become disenchanted with the relationship. Yet, the onus must be on the employer to get it right when inviting someone into his or her work culture.

Before proclaiming employees are unmotivated, and/or unwilling, to perform to expectations and bring positive attitudes to the work environment start evaluating these three workforce mistakes from an organizational leadership and communication perspective to see if there is room for improvement.

About the author:

Skip Weisman is The Leadership & Workplace Communication Expert. Skip works with the leaders and teams in small to medium sized businesses and not-for-profits to improve communication, collaboration and teamwork in a way that delivers champion level results. You can find out more about Skip’s work at www.HowToImproveLeadershipCommunication.com .

This material is copyright protected. No part of this document may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without permission from weLEAD Incorporated. Copyright waiver may be acquired from the weLEAD website.

Because of thunder storms in Atlanta, the flight from Dallas to Atlanta had been delayed twice. On the third attempt, we were boarding and I felt hopeful of actually getting off the ground. My hopes faded fast when the tired-looking flight attendant came down the aisle quietly announcing that if we were not permitted to take off in the next 15 minutes, the crew would have exceeded their 16-hour work day and we would have to taxi back to the terminal and await another flight.

We were not given permission to take off, the crew's time expired and as we taxied back to the terminal I felt mixed emotions. I kept thinking, "But we were right there ready to take off. How could 1-1/2 more hours matter?"

Just as airlines are concerned about overworked pilots and flight attendants, employers should be concerned about overworked employees. Why? Errors, accidents, and low productivity for a start.

My mixed emotions as we taxied back to the terminal are similar to the signals our culture sends today about long work hours. In one breath we agree with employees having a pity party about how hard they work and with the other breath, we award employees a "red badge of courage" for having the guts to go the extra mile.

A study by the Families and Work Institute concludes that overworked employees should be taken seriously. Employees who are overworked are more likely to exhibit anxiety, make mistakes at work, harbor angry feelings about their employer for expecting them to be on the job for long hours and resent coworkers who don't pull their share of the load. The study documents that nearly half of employees who feel overworked report that their health is poor and 8 percent of employees who are not overworked experience symptoms of clinical depression compared with 21 percent of those who are highly overworked.

Helping Employees Feel Less Overwhelmed

What can the organization do to help employees feel less overworked while still finishing their tasks in a given day? Using time efficiently at work is an individual and an organizational issue. On the organizational side, managers can help employees reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed by:

• Training employees in time management principles
• Discouraging the practice of eating at the desk and working through lunch
• Insisting employees taking vacation time
• Permitting flexible work hours when appropriate
• Encouraging non-interrupt zones in the day when workers can focus on their tasks
• Assigning tasks well in advance of the drop dead date
• Helping Employees Be More Effective 

A tried and true principle states that to be efficient, you must first be effective. For instance, the maker of buggy whips might be highly efficient in manufacturing techniques, but if no one buys the buggy whips, the process is not effective.

To encourage efficiency and effectiveness, managers can:

• Have clearly stated goals with built in deadlines
• Insist employees make a daily "to do" list
• Make certain equipment works properly
• Supply the necessary materials for job completion
• Train employees on software packages that enable more efficient work

Ensuring the above items are taken care of is essential to help employees leverage their time while in the office and be more productive. 

Realizing a Productivity Culture Change

Managers should make a concerted effort to grease the wheels of productivity, and not be the stick that gets caught in the tire spokes, catapulting the rider from the trail. By attending to these issues, managers can help workers feel less overwhelmed and enable them do more in less time. You'll like the results.

About the author:

Karla Brandau is CEO of Workplace Power Institute. She offers keynotes, workshops, and retreats to move your organization forward in the chaotic environment of the 21^st Century. You can contact Karla at karla@workplacepowerinstitute.com visit her blog at www.FromTheDeskofKarlaBrandau.com

 This material is copyright protected. No part of this document may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without permission from weLEAD Incorporated. Copyright waiver may be acquired from the weLEAD website.

The greatest victory any leader can enjoy is mission or task accomplishment. That is what we are here for and the standard by which we will be measured but before we achieve that lofty goal, before we get to celebrate that success, we have to do something toward getting our people to do the things we want them to do. That, of course, is what leadership is all about but too often that is where the seeds of failure are sewn and where we miss the opportunity to assure a complete and overwhelming success.

For good or for ill our people are a reflection of our leadership and if marginal successes and marginal victories are what we are celebrating and what we are accepting, I can promise you the paradigm will hold true and that staggering collapse across the finish line that you use to mark the successful completion of a task or project, will show itself in how your people mark their own milestones and wins. Not begrudging any success but aiming just a little higher, pushing just a little further, both assures the win and sets a standard for something just a little better. Excellence is nothing more or less than our not accepting the norm or commonplace and holding out for something better. As leaders we get to define success, though too often we are not taking that time or insisting on anything beyond the ordinary. If you are asking for ordinary I am guessing that is just what you will get. I am suggesting that as long as we’re asking, we might as well ask for something better.

One of the scariest and most challenging things any leader will ever face is putting the fate of a task or project in the hands of another human being. As leaders we are tasked with delivering results every day,  in every task, project or mission we take on and in the final analysis we are either effective leaders and deliver the goods, or we are something else. Our success or failure will always be tied to how effectively we lead, empower and motivate our staff. If we are finding ourselves in that “something else” category, maybe it is time to take a look at how we lead.

The very best staff member you could ever ask for is one who will do all the things you would ask, with the initiative to go one better and do the extra things that would assure a quality result delivered ahead of our expectations. There is no doubt that this is a rare bird in most work places but that is more a reflection on our failures as leaders than it is testament to the rarity of the species. Our people are what we make them. Behaviors like initiative only occur in work places that support and empower their staff members. Initiative only exists where it is encouraged and when there is enough confidence to act and to step beyond what is expected. It is not the responsibility of a staff member to show initiative, it is our responsibility as leaders to encourage and reward this type of behavior when it occurs. Extraordinary is always the result of leadership that empowers people toward something better, with the confidence to act.

In our setting expectations for something better, it is very important that we paint that picture for our people. In training, in planning and in communicating, we do everything possible to support their efforts toward this new frontier, correcting our course as necessary and celebrating our victories along the way. George Patton once said “Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results”. Initiative and the courage to act we had talked about only comes in an environment that encourages innovation and imagination in finding solutions. There is a risk in delegating responsibilities to other staff members. To whatever degree we are able to train them, to whatever degree we are able to communicate our expectations, we mitigate that risk and create an environment that goes beyond what is expected, assuring success, time and time again. A side benefit to our empowering our staff members is in their confidence. A confident worker is one who displays that initiative we had talked about and one who will make suggestions and share ideas and grow and learn and become more productive. There is no doubt that there are risks through all of this but that journey from good to great is never without challenge or setbacks but it is always worth the effort. Effective leadership is the key.

In staff surveys I have seen over the years and in productivity studies I have participated in, I am amazed and astounded at how often I run into whole populations of staff members who don’t know what is expected of them. Nearly as often I hear from business owners and senior managers that they are frustrated with the lack of initiative and willingness to act they observe from their staff members. As a leader it is easy to blame your staff when things are going wrong but if you are failing to set expectations for excellence and if you are failing to train and encourage their efforts, any shortfalls or failures rest squarely on your shoulders. If you, as the leader, are not defining success, how can you reasonably expect your people to deliver the results that you were looking for? When I ask this question I am nearly always presented with a “common sense” argument that seems to say that our people should know what is expected and that ‘we shouldn’t have to babysit them’. Really?

I am one of those old dogs that happen to believe in people. I believe that if we do a good job in defining our expectations for our staff members and if we train them in such a way as to assure their ability to perform the things we are asking of them and encourage them and celebrate their successes, most people will go beyond what you had wanted and deliver that high end success we should all be looking for. There are exceptions; those rare and misguided individuals that, despite the explanations and training and encouragement, just don’t ever seem to get it. Another important aspect of leadership is in our recognizing those among us who are not willing or not capable of delivering on the tasks and responsibilities we have laid in front of them. As painful as it might be, they have to go. I would tell you to be patient and give them every reasonable chance to succeed but if they are not contributing to your success, for whatever the reason, then they are hindering it and you need to move on. Remember, the leader’s greatest responsibility is task or mission accomplishment. Nothing or no one can stand in the way of that. People always need to be given the opportunity to do the right thing and if you have helped them define that, they might just surprise you.

In ‘Leading Change’ John Kotter said “Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there; they cause change. They motivate and inspire others to go in the right direction and they, along with everyone else, sacrifice to get there.”

Who have you motivated or inspired today?

 About the author:

Brian Canning is a regular contributor to weLEAD and a business analyst working in the federal sector. For the past thirty years he has worked in the automotive repair industry, most recently as a leadership and management coach with the Automotive Training Institute in Savage, Maryland. After serving as a tank commander with the 1st Armored Division in Europe, he started his career as a Goodyear service manager in suburban Washington D.C., moving on to oversee several stores and later a sales region. He also has been a retail sales manager for a large auto parts distributor, run a large fleet operation and headed a large multi-state sales territory for an independent manufacturer of auto parts. His passions are history, leadership and writing.

This material is copyright protected. No part of this document may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without permission from weLEAD Incorporated. Copyright waiver may be acquired from the weLEAD website.

The frequency at which the word "engagement" appears in any discussion about employee communication has begun to make me wonder whether we clearly understand what the term means. More importantly, do we understand what it means to our clients, particularly CEOs, when they talk about engagement? We have engagement tools, but can we really say that these tools actually engage employees in the process of change? Or are employees merely engaged with the tool itself?

There is only one question that you need ask yourself to find out whether your employee communication strategies are going to engage employees, rather than simply inform. That question is: Can you establish whether the tools and methods you are using to communicate with employees are changing attitudes and behavior or providing information?

Employee engagement is a shared understanding of the issues that affect the business, and that understanding leads to changes in employees' attitudes and behaviors. Unless employees truly understand the issues and make a meaningful connection between their jobs and those issues, their attitudes and behaviors will not change. To achieve engagement, three things have to happen: The business issue has to mean something to the employee personally, the employee has to understand the issue (and I mean truly understand it, not just read about why it is an issue), and most important, each employee must be made to feel a part of the change process.

As communicators we have the opportunity to become creative in how we communicate and engage employees. The ultimate aim in employee communication has to be to create the "Aha!" moment. This is the moment when employees have the necessary information and can say, "Now it makes sense," "Now I understand, " "Now I can do something about it."

Tools are important in this process but generally they just communicate information. What we need to strive for are creative communication methods to engage employees in the process of change.

There are five steps for identifying what the "Aha" moment is and they include the following:

1.  Focus group research. Ask employees about their thoughts on the organization and its competitors.

2.  Identify the largest gap between what customers think and what employees think customers think.

3.  What would create a paradigm shift in employee's thinking?

4.  Can you measure the impact of the change in thinking?

5.  How significant is it to achieving the business objectives?

So let's look at an example that would be familiar to communicators: the annual report announcement. Typically an online annual report would be made available to employees via the intranet. Some employees read it, but most tend to scroll down to the last pages to check the annual salaries of the senior executive staff and then close the document.

Let's imagine that the results in this annual report are very poor and the CEO is determined that employees understand the issues surrounding the poor results and become fully engaged to help turn the company around. Here's how one organization accomplished this.

The company held four brown bag lunch meetings over four weeks where employees could attend for free for one hour and hear from an outside professional about how to invest in the share market. Importantly, there was no obvious link between the meeting topic and the organization the employees worked for. At week three, they were analyzing annual reports and generally deciding whether they would invest in a particular company based on the information contained in the report. By the fourth week they were given another annual report and asked the same question, "would you invest in this company?" The answer was overwhelmingly no. And of course this last company was the one they all worked for, which brought them to the "Aha!" moment. Now the organization's employees understood and were engaged and ready to become involved in turning the company around through teamwork and new initiatives.

Here are some steps you can follow to ensure that you can come up with creative ways to communicate with employees and engage them in the process of change.

To challenge beliefs that your employees have about your organization, you need to have facts. The marketing department is an excellent source of facts about the business, with research on brand image, customer satisfaction, customer and non- customer views on competitors and information about market segments. Each of these areas provide valuable information on opportunities to link employees with business issues that can be measured. For example, the organization should have facts about how customers feel about the service provided by the organization's call centre. Employees will also have an opinion about how the believe customers perceive their service. By taking the results of the customer feedback and presenting it to staff this often creates an "Aha moment" because customer feedback is typically better than what employees anticipate. Once you have shared this information, the objective is to then explore ways that employees can become engaged in further improving that customer feedback. Focus groups are another excellent way to find out what employees think about different aspects of these areas and how their beliefs can be challenged as you need to help them better understand the issues that affect the business.

Key sources of business data are customer experience data, business results by product or service stream, competitor customer feedback, and measures of the attributes of your brand. These are sources of data that you can use as a measure of improvement as a result of your employee engagement strategy.

When selecting business outcomes as a measure for your employee communication strategy, you need to be quite certain that the strategy you implement can actually affect the business outcomes you have decided to focus on.

Finally, when it comes to any employee engagement strategy, whether it be total transformation of a business or improvement in one aspect, you can rarely go it alone. Partnering with other areas of your organization including marketing and human resources will ensure that the optimum outcome is achieved for your organization.

About the author:

Marcia Xenitelis is a recognized authority on the subject on change management and has spoken at conferences around the world.  For access to case studies and more information on the types of strategies you can implement to engage employees visit http://www.communicationatwork.com for a wealth of free informative articles and resources.

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If the organization provides safety and security for employees, then employees will provide the organization with their brawn. But what about the brain? That is a different issue.

Money buys employees’ brawn: at least you can see them at their desk by 8:00 a.m. and see them leave at 5:00 p.m. You observe them walking the halls with papers in hand, working at their computers, talking on the telephone, and in other ways physically doing their jobs. They appear to be working hard and the employer pays for the fundamental tasks the employee was hired to do. But, is the employee’s brain engaged? Is he satisfied with his current level of production and on autopilot? Is she just going through the motions to get a paycheck?

In production jobs where people are hired for their brawn, brain engagement is not a major issue. However, it is a different story for people with information jobs. People who are paid to think need reasons to keep their brain engaged and keep it from wandering into La-La Land: thinking about the weekend, plotting how to get even with the person in the next cubicle, or surfing the Internet for wakeboards. Brain engagement of employees is a clear leadership challenge.

The brain has many levels of intellectual and emotional involvement and employees decide on an hourly basis how much of their brain they will share at work, how much creativity they will give to solving problems, and how much they will flex to get along with co-workers.  The amount of brain effort they choose to give is called discretionary effort.

Some employees only engage their brains to do their jobs just to the level so they won’t get fired. Little if any discretionary effort comes from these employees and they may never choose to change their engagement preference. However, if an organization increases the invitation to be engaged, most employees will respond in a positive way.

To better engage employees, organizations can employ a variety of methods such as offering monetary rewards, giving opportunities for personal development and education, recognizing employees for outstanding accomplishments and achievements, extending the leadership of a team assigned to a plumb project, etc. The ideas for engagement are numerous and once the organization has matched their method with the employee, the level of an employee's intellectual engagement and the amount of discretionary effort they choose to give will increase.

Discretionary effort equates with energy at work. There is a difference in the level of effort and energy one is capable of bringing to an activity or a task, and the effort required only to get by or make do, which requires little discretionary effort. It is the difference between the minimum acceptable versus the maximum level of energy and discretionary effort an individual is capable of giving and is related to the integrity and trust between an employee and the organization. 

This places the level of employee engagement and discretionary effort squarely on the shoulders of leadership. To engage your employees and earn discretionary effort, use this checklist:

Give your employees stimulating tasks. This gives them positive expectation and a sense of excitement to come to work. It engages their creativity, improves their brain activity and increases the pleasure of working.

Assign employees to find answers to tough problems. This honors them by showing you believe in them and their abilities. Human nature will make them knuckle-down and bring you solutions.

Make employees accountable with deadlines and midpoints. Just like a teenager secretly appreciates the enforcement of rules, deep inside people feel good when they meet deadlines with integrity.

Explain the organizational vision and mission and ask them if they can align personally with the objectives and goals. Just like in a sales process, you can uncover and overcome their objections to business strategy and in the process and discussions, make them a more loyal employee.

Take note of their completed tasks in their performance review and see if their completed responsibilities support the goals and objectives of the department. This audit will help you determine if they have inadvertently veered off target.

Provide team building activities and relationship training so employees can intelligently solve problems, resolve minor conflicts and understand how to collaborate.

Reward them and recognize them for their contributions. Rewards and recognition give employees a sense of self-esteem and individual pride increases when they are thanked for their contributions in front of their peers.  

Teach managers how to be relevant to the employees. Relevance means you matter. Because some managers underperform, they do not matter to the employee and worse yet, get in the way of employees performing at high levels.

The fundamental building block to effective work production and customer satisfaction is employees who are engaged and excited about their jobs. Their brains are fully engaged and they willingly give discretionary effort.  Their energy is directed toward task completion, solving complex problems in innovative ways, and ensuring happy customers.

They seldom visit La La Land.

About the author:

Karla Brandau is CEO of Workplace Power Institute. She offers keynotes, workshops, and retreats to move your organization forward in the chaotic environment of the 21^st Century. You can contact Karla at karla@workplacepowerinstitute.com visit her blog at www.FromTheDeskofKarlaBrandau.com

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“This is boring,” Ty muttered as he sat through yet another management training session. “I could be showing my new team member, Jeff, how to do the social networking piece of our project,” he mused. Happily ignoring the trainer, Ty thought, “Now THAT would help the company, not to mention Jeff. And, I want to learn that new technology—this session needs to hurry up and end.”

The 1980’s brought about radical organizational transformation. According to Breda Bova, Associate Dean, University of New Mexico, and Consultant Michael Kroth, the traditional organizations our fathers worked for were going “haywire with corporate downsizing and massive layoffs.” Careers began to transition from working a lifelong job in one establishment to continuously changing jobs to learn new skills. Due to this fundamental change, some organizations today are at a loss for how to retain and develop top talent for taking over the business. Succession planning is definitely impacted by this seismic organizational shift.

Succession planning in today’s organizations includes retaining and developing the next generational leaders—Generation X and Generation Y. Gen X and Gen Y pose unique challenges for organizations’ older generational leaders: they ask questions; remain independent; and readily change jobs for personal and professional skills development. Richard Sayers, Director at CABAL Human Resources Group, believes they act as free agents characterized by a desire to have a “portable career…and even greater degrees of personal flexibility, professional satisfaction and immediacy.” If organizations acknowledge these characterizations, there is an opportunity for retaining and developing this next set of knowledgeable leaders by offering access to credible sources who know relevant information.

Many Gen X and Gen Y’s are technology-adept individuals who live and breathe constant access to global and cultural information. They are interested in accessing people, whether leaders, peers, subordinates, gurus, or techno geeks, to learn and apply new and relevant information that advances their skills and knowledge base. According to Sayers, they are “motivated by a desire to enhance professional skills and thus marketability to future employers.” It is an ongoing learning process known as “continuous learning”—a motivator and way of life for Gen X and Gen Y.

For an organization, cultivating a continuous learning environment in order to develop the next generational leaders includes designing programs that embrace both appropriate learning styles and accessibility to leaders in the organization.

There are three types of applicable learning styles according to Bova and Kroth:

1) Action learning: Learning by doing;

2) Incidental learning: Spontaneous learning with no specific outcomes; and,

3) Formal training: learning in a classroom setting.

For Gen X and Gen Y, action learning is attractive because it deals with real problems and solutions and implementing actions. Incidental learning is also powerful due to some of the possible outcomes of “increased competence, increased self-knowledge, and improved life skills” as noted by learning theorist Craig Mealman. However, formal training is not as attractive to Leadership Next because of their time and space orientation. 

Cultivating a continuous learning environment for Leadership Next also requires accessibility to leaders in the organization—people who know information, have applicable job skills and portray leadership traits. As mentors, teachers and even “disciplors,” these are leaders with the ability to transfer leadership learning to Gen X and Gen Y. According to author Chip Bell, mentoring is “a process where one person helps another become successful by providing understanding of the informal systems involved in an organization. Mentoring is not about power, it’s about learning.” Shelly Cunningham from the Talbot School of Theology defines discipling as “the process of following another person or way of life while submitting to the group leaders’ discipline; also the adoption of the philosophies, practices, and ways of life of the teacher.”

Why would Leadership Next agree to mentoring and discipling in a leader-follower context?

They may not, unless today’s leaders mentor and disciple based on action and incidental learning techniques. If leaders apply innovative learning techniques and provide relevant skills training, Generation Next may very likely be enticed to stay and build their professional repertoire. If leaders do it right, protégés will carry on the organization’s legacy. David Clutterbuck, mentoring consultant, suggests a sponsorship approach; “The modern version of a sponsor is an informed senior manager, who takes on the long-term responsibility for balancing the career needs of talented individuals against the evolving needs of the business.”

How do you start a Mentoring and Discipling Program?

• Prepare: 

Do not be “mind-boggled” with the amount of knowledge your protégé knows and can instantly access. Keep an open mind, value what they know, but challenge their thinking. As confident as they appear due to facts, introducing inter-personal or real-world scenarios helps them expand their horizons and value new insights. Michael Shenkman, Founder of the Arch of Leadership, suggests “a mentor has to be willing to risk the hurt, the insult, even the parting of ways in order to bring to prominence the kinds of attitudes and orientations that go into creative leading.”

• Develop the plan together and provide a network of experienced leaders:

They know what they want; they don’t always know what they don’t know. Gen X and Gen Y like collaboration, transparency and openness. Plan together, and make the plan relevant, personalized, challenging, and rewarding. Stand in the gap between what they need to know and who they need to get it from by having a network of mentors or senior leaders available for introductions as needed. With these introductions, be prepared to transition your protégé to the next mentor or “disciplor” as they soak up leadership knowledge and experience. As Shenkman says, “the mentor lets the protégé experience the full force of leading, even to the point of failure.”

• Create an innovative learning experience:

Try e-Mentoring: e-Mentoring provides tools and technology to help bridge the relationship between mentors and mentorees in distant locations. Search on “e-Mentoring” and several website links are returned targeting specific industries or age groups. According to Sayer, Gen X and Gen Y “want the flexibility and freedom to access professional development on their terms; when and where they require it.”

Build a virtual community: Gen-X and Gen-Y live in a virtual world and community acceptance is important.  Developing a virtual community for your organization could be a “learning incubator” for new protégés. Think about allowing a team of Gen-X and Gen-Y’s to work with advisors and subject matter experts to design and develop it. Klaus Nielson of the University of Aarhus in Denmark believes “collaborative learning…in the workplace plays a significant role in learning transfer.”

Think entrepreneurial: Get creative and be innovative by having the Gen X and Gen Y’s help develop a rotating internship program across the organization. Create discovery programs and social learning practices rich in media and knowledge. Bova & Kroth quote Davenport as saying “organizations are becoming increasingly sophisticated in creating and utilizing knowledge management repositories, supporting communities of practice, and facilitating the transfer of learning.”

Are you ready for Leadership Next?

About the author:

LISA R. FOURNIER is a doctoral student in the Doctor of Strategic Leadership (DSL) program with the School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship at Regent University, Virginia Beach, Virginia. Lisa, an entrepreneur and innovator with over 20 years of start-up experience, also works with Idea Evolutions LLC, a coaching and consulting company serving entrepreneurial leaders. Lisa’s email is lisafou@regent.edu

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This material is copyright protected. No part of this document may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without permission from weLEAD Incorporated. Copyright waiver may be acquired from the weLEAD website.

Mainly because a great many among us continue to misunderstand the far reaching implications of effective leadership, I find myself amazed at the number of middle and senior level managers who are dying and desperate for results and through poor planning and time management,  find themselves too busy to lead. That leadership is one of the most valuable assets any manager could bring to the table would seem lost on a mentality that looks upon leadership as little more than a word and with the enthusiasm that most of us reserve for a dental appointment or a colonoscopy.

The obvious and immediate human concerns that would arise out of this reluctance to engage and challenge staff members aside, the very real business impact is tangible and decidedly negative. If you can imagine a boat in the middle of a stormy ocean without a compass, you can visualize a business or organization lost, floundering and at risk of disaster. Leadership is the compass for any business or organization and as such provides direction toward that safe port in a storm or, more hopefully, allows us to plot a course toward strength and prosperity.

I have worked for more than one organization that goes to great lengths to engage senior managers in all aspects of the business, which should be a great thing but when hours and days are taken up with meetings and the preparation of reports and discussions of strategy, forecasting and results, there is no time left to engage staff members, check progress or verify the great and wonderful things we had thought were being done were actually taking place and more importantly, there is no time to lead.

 Human beings are highly complex creatures, who at their best can astound you with their initiative and ingenuity but at their worst can thwart your best intentions and frustrate you with their failings and unpredictability. They are just very needy as compared to a printer or a web site and this in particular if you are not there to lead them.

A former client of mine, not one I would describe as entirely successful, once described leadership to me as his creating a new policy and his posting it on the wall. As far as he was concerned the very second he tacked a policy on the wall, his job was done and it was up to his staff members to follow the policy or get out. I would tell you that over time an awful lot of his staff members chose to get out and when I suggested to this business owner that his approach might be the problem, he told me that to him it was obvious that he had hired the wrong people and he just needed better people. He maintained that attitude until the day he sold the business, never once entertaining the idea that it was his lack of leadership that kept his policies from being fully implemented and his unwillingness to engage his people that led to constant turmoil and staffing turnover. People need to know what is expected of them, they need to know that their efforts matter and they need to be encouraged along the way. In short, people need to be led.

Organizationally the greatest threat to effective leadership is too many senior level meetings, discussions, demonstrations, brainstorming sessions and policy round tables. It doesn’t matter the quality and urgency of these events, if they are consistently pulling managers away from their teams and consistently creating a separation between the task at hand, the team members and the leader, they are a detriment to the tasks we are performing and a threat to the success of the organization.

Standards should never be arbitrary, quality and excellence never just happen and productivity is much more than the perfect process. Leadership and the oversight it provides assures our standards are met, verifies the quality and guarantees our process. If our leadership is buried in meeting on top of meeting, our leadership is absent and unable to deliver the excellence we had expected and had been looking for. Leadership is that critical ingredient in moving us from good to great. If it a choice between meetings and success, fewer but better meetings might be the more prudent choice.

Leadership is a very intimate interaction between us as leaders and our staff, giving us the opportunity to reinforce the many good things we are doing toward accomplishing our goals but also giving us the opportunity for mid-course corrections toward that same end. Plans and projects rarely go entirely as conceived and an important aspect of leadership lies in our taking counsel and adjusting the things we are doing to assure success and our hitting our goal. In the same way, the meetings, discussions, brainstorming sessions and round table discussions are designed to review progress and communicate where we are to our various stakeholders but when this gets in the way of effective leadership, we have to make a choice between talking about what and how we are doing something and actually leading us toward doing something and accomplishing something. Without the leadership, accomplishment becomes a less likely outcome of our efforts, no matter how good the plan or process, no matter how good our staff. Visible leadership is that important.

Action in the absence of leadership may or may not be supportive of our organizational goals but more often than not, it occurs out of confusion over what is or is not expected and ignorance about what we are trying to accomplish. It cannot rightly be called initiative or going above and beyond what was expected because the leadership has not been around to set those expectations. In too many of these cases we have no idea of what is wanted or where we are going. Too often it is a sign of a motivated staff, all dressed up with nowhere to go. Quality leadership would provide that direction and move us toward accomplishment.

In the end leadership is not about the perfect plan or process. It is not about the latest analysis or the most up to date intelligence. It is taking the people assigned to you, letting them know what is expected and when and letting them know what success looks like. It doesn’t matter that you accomplish this in a huddle around the coffee maker in your office or in a teleconference covering three time zones and two territories but you need to connect, you need to expect and you need to inspire.

As Colin Powell said “Leadership is solving problems. The day your people stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership”.

Not being there is a great way to show that you don’t care and an ever better way to lose your people’s confidence. Maybe we should have a meeting to discuss all of this. Or maybe not…

Leadership is about accomplishment and being there for your staff. It’s not about meeting, it’s about leading!  

 About the author:

Brian Canning is a regular contributor to weLEAD and a business analyst working in the federal sector. For the past thirty years he has worked in the automotive repair industry, most recently as a leadership and management coach with the Automotive Training Institute in Savage, Maryland. After serving as a tank commander with the 1st Armored Division in Europe, he started his career as a Goodyear service manager in suburban Washington D.C., moving on to oversee several stores and later a sales region. He also has been a retail sales manager for a large auto parts distributor, run a large fleet operation and headed a large multi-state sales territory for an independent manufacturer of auto parts. His passions are history, leadership and writing.

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This material is copyright protected. No part of this document may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without permission from weLEAD Incorporated. Copyright waiver may be acquired from the weLEAD website.