The Leadership GPS

Great leaders look at people’s potential greatness

committed to their successAs leaders we are not creating other great leaders.  We are encouraging others to realize that they already have the potential to become great inside of them, and assisting them on that journey.  Our job is to see where they can go and open the right doors for them to pass through.  Our job is to focus on what is there – their strengths – and remove the focus on weakness – what is not there.

Michelangelo said, “A great statue already exists inside a block of stone. The sculptor’s role is to uncover it.”

If you want to achieve success as a leader, you have to intentionally focus your leadership efforts on unleashing the greatness inside of everyone you influence. Once your team knows you are committed to their success, they will commit to our vision.

In my book, The Leadership GPS, we read the story of Brian Alden, whose potential is unleashed by his grandfather. In turn, Brian opens the doors of success for his new team and many others.

Do you remember who recognized greatness in you?  Who told you that you could be anything you set your mind to? Was it a parent, grandparent, teacher, coach, pastor, boss?

The Three Phases of Leadership

Relationship quoteIn 1965 the American folk rock band The Byrds recorded the song Turn! Turn! Turn!  The message of the song is, to quote from one line, “There is a time to every purpose under heaven.” We can all think of examples of this timing:

  • – The phases of the moon always move in the same order from new moon to new moon.
  • – The farmer has to till before planting and water before harvesting.
  • – The seasons always come in order – spring, summer, fall, and winter.

In my book The Leadership GPS, Brian Alden learns that leadership also has a time to its purpose; it’s called the Three Phases of Leadership.

Relationship – Through the forming of a trusting relationship, the team will follow as the leader shows them how to be successful.

  • Understanding – By modeling after the leader’s example, the team will understand how to achieve their own success.
  • Knowledge – Through mentoring, the team will gain the knowledge of when to apply what is understood.

For your leadership journey to be successful, follow the Three Phases of Leadership Development with every team.

The picture of a wise mentor.

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I have had several great mentors in my life, and I have tried to be a great mentor to others. The mentors I remember the most poured their wisdom into me in the hope that I would go further and accomplish more than they themselves did. I learned in this process that only the most confident of leaders can help their team shine brighter than themselves.

If you have a mentor, how can you be sure you are receiving wise counsel? If you are a mentor to someone else, how can you be sure you are giving wise counsel?

In my book, The Leadership GPS, Brian Alden is in just this situation. He needs someone to mentor him in his new leadership role, and there are people in his life that need a mentor. Brian looks to his grandfather, Michael Tennyson, for a solution to each of these needs.

How could Brian be sure he would receive wise counsel in this situation from his grandfather?

– Brian and his grandfather had common principles – honesty, integrity, respect. Most importantly they believed in helping others succeed.

– Michael Tennyson was a successful business man who had started and grown many companies in his career. He was a mentor to each leader in his organizations.

– Brian’s grandfather knew first-hand the pitfalls of mistakes he had made. These mistakes became lessons for his next choices and for others he would mentor.

– The wisdom of the generations was not lost on Michael Tennyson. He was a student of historical leaders and could apply their experience to his own and to others’ situations.

How could Brian be sure he was giving wise counsel to those he mentored?

– One rule: Pass on the wisdom he receives from those like his grandfather who have earned his trust through their example.

Whenever Possible, Follow the Road More Traveled

GPS and MentorI have traveled quite a bit in my adult life.  Some for family vacation and a lot for business.  I have also moved often over my career.  I am telling you this to explain why I rarely get into a car (mine or a rental) without having the GPS on.  I am in so many different cities over the span of a few years, that it just isn’t possible for me to memorize every street and every set of directions I need to navigate to appointments, hotels, or in some cases my new home when I have recently moved.

What I really like about the GPS systems is that I don’t a have to memorize all of the directions – I don’t have to figure it all out on my own.  Someone already mapped out all the possible ways to get from where I am to where I want to go, and programmed them into my GPS.

“Keep on the outlook for novel and interesting ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you are currently working on.” I was surprised that this quote came from Thomas Edison. Yes the same Thomas Edison that is the holder of 1,093 United States patents.  It gave me comfort in my use of the GPS when I drive because it explained what I was doing – using someone else’s ideas and adapting them to my current situation.

As an executive leader, I applied the thought of the GPS to leadership. So many times leaders feel they need to blaze their own trail; which is sometimes the right answer, but sometimes not. “Why couldn’t I simply follow the path of successful leaders who traveled before me?” I thought.  Well I did, and it brought me great success.  So much so that I wrote a book titled The Leadership GPS to share what I had learned.

In my book, Michael Tennyson is mentoring his grandson Brian Alden, a new leader.  He says “In my many years of business I discovered that most people are genuinely convinced that their situations are so unique and so difficult that no one has faced quite the same circumstances before, let alone found a way to solve them.  In some way I think it is a bit of pride in the human condition that makes people want a difficult solution for their difficult problems.  But it doesn’t need to be difficult.  Eighty percent of most problems have been solved before; the other twenty percent is taking the initiative to accept the solution given to you and implement it.”

If you want to learn more about the many leaders who traveled across history and built successful teams and how you can follow this same path, The Leadership GPS is the answer.

 

The prodigal employee – it’s all about the right goals.

20130619-170211.jpgMany people mistakenly believe prodigal means lost, wayward, or not achieving up to one’s potential. This notion comes from the Bible story named the Prodigal Son in which a son leaves the family and is welcomed back upon his return. The word prodigal actually means extravagant, extremely generous and overly free in giving away valuables. If you further study the Prodigal Son parable, you will see that it is about a son who asks his living father for his inheritance so he can leave the family and spend lavishly on himself and his friends. He does return, but only when he has spent all of his riches and has nothing to show for it.

How does that lead us to a prodigal employee?
All employees are given resources like money, training, equipment, and sometimes a team of their own to lead. These resources are an investment from their owner intended to fulfill the goals of the company. A prodigal employee therefore is not one that is lost, or wayward, or not living up to their potential. No, like the parable, a prodigal employee is spending the resources that were provided in areas that don’t generate the expected return for the team or the company.

How do you handle the prodigal employee?
If you find that one of your team members is fully using every resource that you have provided but not generating the success that was expected, they are focused on the wrong goals. From the surface it often appears that they ignored the goals that you had for them and pursued other goals that achieved individual success but did not accomplish the purpose of your team.

Before you settle on the easy conclusion that the prodigals only care about themselves, I suggest you follow the advice from Jim Collins, author of Good to Great. In essence he said, “In times of success great leaders look out the window to credit others, and in times of trouble great leaders look in the mirror to evaluate what they could have done better.”

You see, prodigals are very capable of generating success when provided adequate resources. Your job as the leader is to focus your team’s strengths on successfully accomplishing the vision of the team.

Here are four questions to review with a prodigal employee:
Once you review these four questions with the prodigal employee, then it is up to them to turn their focus to the right goals.

1) Does the prodigal employee understand the purpose of the team?

If you have not fully defined the purpose of the team, your team has two choices; operate with no purpose or define their own purpose. Absent a clear purpose, the prodigal employee, who is geared to success, will have chosen their own purpose. You are responsible for defining the purpose of the team so each employee will seek to accomplish the same end.

“You have to know where you’re going. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never know if you’ve arrived.” – Denis G. McLaughlin, The Leadership GPS

2) Does the prodigal employee understand how your vision achieves the purpose?

Even if you have a clearly defined purpose for your team, there are many ways to achieve it. Your vision sets the route your team will take to reach its purpose. If you don’t over communicate how your team will achieve it’s purpose than you aren’t communicating enough. Left undefined, the prodigal employee will define their own vision.

“The very essence of leadership is that you have a vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.”
– Theodore Hesburgh, as quoted in The Leadership GPS

3) Does the prodigal employee understand how what they do fits into the vision?

Ok, so you have a clearly defined purpose and vision for your team. There is one more level of understanding you must focus on: taking the vision down to the employee level. The prodigal employee may struggle in seeing the connection between their individual goals and the larger vision and purpose of the team. Remember, the prodigal employee is success driven, without this connection they will instead focus on what they think will help achieve the teams goals.

“Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who…offer a solution everybody can understand.”
– Colin Powell, as quoted in The Leadership GPS

4) Does the prodigal employee obtain personal success in accomplishing the success of the team?

Each person is looking for personal satisfaction in their life and in their job, the prodigal employee is no exception. For your vision to be effective you have to set it in motion and it must have an immediate impact on your team members. With each success, they need to feel that their job satisfaction is improving, along with the purpose of the team being accomplished.

“Successfully achieving your team’s purpose comes through a vision that consistently delivers small successes for each team member.” – Denis G. McLaughlin, The Leadership GPS.

Before you say “I can’t”, you pass by “I can.” – Part 2

In my last blog I discussed believing in yourself and choosing “I can if,” and not “I can’t because,” when faced with struggles or doubt.

Sometimes it isn’t enough to be the only one who believes in yourself – what do you do then? 

“The success of a journey often depends more on who you are with than where you are going.”
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