Lead Where You Are - From the Boardroom to the Mailroom
For decades, leadership was reserved for a select few individuals in any organization. Top-down decision making and command and control management created a performance environment of employee compliance, focused on task completion.
However, an evolution in performance is rapidly occurring. With disruption and globalization impacting nearly every industry and organization, the top-down, command and control performance and leadership models of the past are proving to be too slow and increasingly ineffective.
For decades, leadership was reserved for a select few individuals in any organization. Top-down decision making and command and control management created a performance environment of employee compliance, focused on task completion.
However, an evolution in performance is rapidly occurring. With disruption and globalization impacting nearly every industry and organization, the top-down, command and control performance and leadership models of the past are proving to be too slow and increasingly ineffective.
Expecting and developing core leadership traits and behaviors in every employee regardless of title, position or tenure provides a key competitive advantage for any organization. Leading personal and team performance actions and activities, creating and cultivating an environment of personal change and accountability and developing authentic relationships that are aligned to a clear and compelling purpose ensures top-tier employee engagement, not command and control compliance.
This new, lead where you are, no matter where you are culture creates a positive, powerful and differentiated employee experience. So, whether your role resides on the executive floor, the shipping and receiving dock or somewhere in-between, leading where you are is truly the future of performance. Don’t get left behind.
To aid in your progress of leading where you are, check out our new book, Lead Where You Are, available today on Amazon. And we have decided to give everyone the opportunity to download the eBook version for free until January 18th! So don’t miss out, go download it today!
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Lead Where You Are - 2020: A Career Year
It’s now December 31, 2020 and another year has just flown by! You are at a New Year’s party with family and friends, reflecting on this past year and the start of a new decade. You mentioned to the group that 2020 was by far the best year, professionally, you have had. They asked, “What made the difference over other years?” You told them that you make a conscious decision last January that 2020 was going to be different; that you were going to take more control of your career, your performance and the impact you would make.
It’s now December 31, 2020 and another year has just flown by! You are at a New Year’s party with family and friends, reflecting on this past year and the start of a new decade. You mentioned to the group that 2020 was by far the best year, professionally, you have had. They asked, “What made the difference over other years?” You told them that you make a conscious decision last January that 2020 was going to be different; that you were going to take more control of your career, your performance and the impact you would make.
You decided to lead where you are, not wait for others to manage you and your activities. You listened to the direction of the organization and you proactively asked your manager what success would look like in 2020. You aligned your personal plan and worked with renewed purpose to achieve that success. You set expectations with your manager and each month connected on your results and your planned actions for the next month. In other words, you reviewed your performance each month, not your manager reviewing your performance at the end of the year. You took control of your performance, good, bad or other wise, and did something about it each month.
Instead of waiting for change to happen to you or trying to “manage” it, you led it. You saw possibilities for change, not obstacles and barriers. You viewed your work differently and acted with urgency to make the change happen by creating options and making proactive recommendations.
You led with personal accountability no matter the circumstance. No excuses, no blame, no justification, you just did what was right. You cultivated more authentic relationships by getting out of your daily world to understand others’ view of success, their obstacles and barriers, so you could align your actions and activities to better achieve team success.
Bottom line, you stepped up and intentionally made a difference in 2020. Making a decision to lead where you are, not waiting for things to happen, but making things happen made all the difference.
Now back to January 2020. Are you ready to try something different to make a difference?
To aid in your progress of leading where you are, check out our new book, Lead Where You Are, available on Amazon for pre-order now and release on January 13th!
If you would like to get the ebook for free, head to the book page from January 13-18 and download the book for free!
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Lead Where You Are - Making Greater Impact Through Purpose
Make it your task each day to achieve a purpose. A sneak peek from the Leading With Purpose chapter of our new book, Lead Where You Are, due to be released on January 13th, 2020.
WORK YOUR DAILY TASKS WITH MEANING AND PURPOSE EVEN IF THEY SEEM MENIAL TO YOU OR OTHERS.
While each of us has our tasks to do no matter where we are in an organization, deliver those tasks with a greater purpose. If things in your department are drifting, step up with a purpose to make a positive difference this week. Intervene in the drift with options and suggestions for improvement. Most importantly, get more in touch with what drives you from day to day. What energizes you? Is it connecting with others? Contributing to a team? Organizing company events? Whatever it is that energizes you, focus on doing more of that. Make it your task to achieve a purpose each day.
FIND PURPOSE IN THE TASKS YOU COMPLETE AND WATCH THE IMPACT YOU MAKE GROW.
In our book, Lead Where You Are, we explore how purpose creates meaning in our work and extends the impact we can create. We discuss how in today’s workplace performance environment, matching unique individual talents to unique opportunities creates an undeniable competitive advantage against those organizations who rely solely on title and position to delve out tasks. And we discuss how individuals can create purpose in an environment lacking of purpose.
Here’s an excerpt from the Leading With Purpose chapter:
MATCHING TALENT TO OPPORTUNITY
Creating a sense of purpose starts by connecting what you do to the impact you are having. Martin Luther King Jr. said it best. “If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures. Sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”
Our ability to match our talents with our opportunities and to create a lasting impact on our customers, co-workers and family energizes us and in return energizes those around us. Purpose inspires and it rouses us to be better today than we were yesterday and better tomorrow than we are today.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Lead Where You Are - Cultivating Authentic Relationships
In this excerpt from our new ebook, Lead Where You Are, due to be released on January 13th, 2020, we discuss how we can regain the art of cultivating relationships and move past just ‘bits and bytes’ communication.
It is incredible to think how developing, cultivating, maintaining, and leveraging personal relationships has dramatically changed just in the last decade. The ease of communicating is replacing the fine art of relating. Our ability to communicate anywhere, anytime is the new norm no matter your generation, gender, work environment or position in life or work. It is easy to lose the art and practice of developing relationships and rely strictly on communicating.
In our upcoming book, Lead Where You Are we explore three key types of business relationships and how we can lead our way back to developing and maintaining impactful connections with others, moving past the “bits and bytes” of communicating to actually building something lasting. We learn that all relationships are not created equal and with little time to devote to cultivating relationships, it is important to recognize the differences and the strengths and the pitfalls of each. And finally, we discuss how to utilize your sphere of influence.
Here’s an excerpt from the Leading Relationships chapter:
PROPERLY INVESTING YOUR TIME
Let’s begin by defining what is a relationship. Depending on which dictionary you grab or website you navigate to, they will all give you something to the tune of “Noun. The way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected, or the state of being connected.” In today’s fast-paced and complex world, the time available to establish and cultivate relationships is near zero. To effectively lead and influence where we are, we must get back to developing and, more importantly, investing in authentic, personal relationships each day. As stated before, not all relationships are created equal, so not every interaction will be an investment in authenticity. However, it is important to develop your personal awareness and skill set for identifying the interactions that require a proactive investment from those which are more transient and transactional in nature and impact. With limited time, and that limited time ever-fleeting, we obviously can’t invest the same time and effort in every relationship. Think back on your interactions with others over the past day, week and month and you will likely see a startling pattern. It is highly likely that 80 percent of your impact and value has come from only 20 percent of the relationships and interactions you engage with in a given timeframe. Yes, that’s correct, only 20 percent of your relationships will account for an overwhelming percentage of your personal impact and effectiveness! We call these our Critical 20. This is precisely why it is so imperative that we know how and where to spend our relationship investment efforts.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Lead Where You Are - Pursuing Your Own Performance
In this excerpt from our new ebook, Lead Where You Are, due to be released January 2020, we highlight a model for pursuing your own performance, not having it managed.
2020 Performance Clarity
How is my performance management process working to enhance my personal performance? Many, many, MANY employee often ask that same question.
Have you or anyone you’ve known ever been surprised at your end of year performance review rating? In your performance review meetings or coaching sessions, who does most of the talking? You? Your manager?
In our new eBook, Lead Where Are, due to be released in just a few short weeks, has a chapter on leading performance. As you look to your 2020 (and beyond) performance aspirations don’t have your performance managed any longer! Turn performance management in a personal performance pursuit. Step up and take control of YOUR performance and YOUR career. Here is an except from the Leading Performance chapter that will assist in taking control of your performance success.
THE TRUE MEASURE
The true measure of any organization and its people are the consistent results they deliver and how those results are achieved. It creates an opportunity to shift the old performance model to one where we are leading our own performance. It is your performance, your impact, your career, in your control. Shifting to proactively accepting more responsibility, actively pursuing personal and team performance, and taking control of performance activities and results may not completely eliminate surprises, but it certainly allows you to lead the conversation, control the development activities, and take more ownership of the results.
Making the shift to leading your own performance versus performance that is leader managed or just annually reviewed sounds great, but how do we get there? By proactively leading where you are and developing a personal blueprint for your personal performance actions and behaviors that are aligned to your team’s and organization’s culture, direction and priorities.
This blueprint starts with establishing a foundation of greater personal and organizational awareness. From there, you create a framework for focused development that assists in enhancing your professional eligibility, suitability and viability. Then ongoing reinforcement and continual enhancements allow you to reach your full potential while increasing your organizational value and relevance.
Once the foundation, framework, and enhancements have been set, establishing an ongoing “performance connection” is the key to evolving and shifting the performance model from leader-directed, mid-year and end-of-year performance reviews to employee-led performance connections that pursue performance.
These regularly scheduled connections are designed to establish clarity and alignment to the department’s and organization’s purpose and priorities as well as establish personal accountability for goals, activities and behaviors through an environment that you create of constant feedback and development.
Your monthly performance connections will set the ongoing performance environment and feedback loop to personally grow and develop the skills and behaviors that lead to delivering consistent and sustainable top-tier results with no performance surprises. Your performance, your career, are now in your control.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Lead Where You Are - Getting Out in Front of Change
In this excerpt from our new ebook, Lead Where You Are, due to be released January 2020, we highlight a model for leading change.
We wont spend time talking about the amount or pace of change, everyone knows change is constant and the pace is only accelerating. So rather than resisting change or trying to manage it, what’s the best strategy?
Constantly get out in front of it. Become an agent of change and lead it. Don’t wait for it to happen to you, make change happen for you. In this excerpt from our new ebook, Lead Where You Are, due to be released January 2020, we highlight a model for leading change.
See the Possibilities in Everything
All around us are possibilities for change. We often miss these opportunities because we are too busy trying to navigate the change happening to us, which ends up draining our energy and enthusiasm, while creating a negative impact on our results. Just sit and think for a moment of all the possibilities for change around you right now in both your personal and work life. These changes don’t need to be anything monumental, sometimes small changes can make the biggest differences. When we are leading change, we are not sitting around waiting for things to happen to us, we are always thinking and imagining how we can challenge current and past thinking, actions and behaviors.
NARRATIVE CASE STUDY
Remember the Blockbuster example before? They failed to adapt and see possibilities in their own industry. So why does a company named Family Video still have hundreds of locations with thousands of employees? As the sole-surviving video rental chain, how have they been able to keep their doors open? By seeing possibilities. For starters, they own their own real estate instead of renting, which has helped avoid poor lease negotiations. That is certainly a wise business decision, but that doesn’t explain why people still keep coming into the stores to rent videos. People keep coming in and keep renting videos because they have created a different atmosphere for the customer. The focus is on creating an experience for the customer when they walk in. People enjoy walking into the store. Family Video has also partnered with a pizza chain to open up locations right next door. You can call to order a pizza and a movie and have the delivery person deliver both right to your door. They also decided to purchase all their movies instead of participating in the standard revenue-sharing model, which allows them to keep all profits. In an industry where almost all of the competition has shut down, Family Video chose to see different possibilities.
THINK INCREMENTAL, NOT MONUMENTAL
As we said earlier, change does not have to be monumental. Incremental changes can be just as effective, and sometimes even more so. We have to remember that our focus should be on the things we can control, things like our attitude and behaviors, enhancing our relationships (more on this later), and looking for service and product enhancements for both our internal and external customers. There truly is possibility in nearly every aspect of our lives and businesses. The key is just to practice and cultivate your ability to recognize the change as an opportunity and not as a barrier or obstacle to our success.
“You’ve done it before and you can do it now. See the positive possibilities. Redirect the substantial energy of your frustration and turn it into positive, effective, unstoppable determination.”
– Ralph Marston