Bring it ALL and make it your BEST

There are so many books that tell us how to act and what to do to be successful at being leaders: The Servant shows us the wisdom of the principle behind leadership which is the interplay of responsibility, respect and care. Influencer teaches us that we can change virtually anything by bundling the right influence techniques with the right influence strategy. Gail Evans, in Play Like a Man, Win like a Women, says women need to understand and apply the rules of the men’s business game in order to get ahead. The Definitive Drucker teaches us how to strategize, compete and triumph over the long term. Made to Stick gives us many examples of how integrating six key qualities in an idea will make it stick. A Whole New Mind helps us see the “six essential aptitudes” as our way to manage the changes we are experiencing in the movement from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. This short list only scratches the surface.

All of these books are wonderful resources for us and offer great advice that can and do help us to be better leaders of ourselves and our organizations. Before we start using any of this advice in our lives as leaders, however, we need to be very clear about who we are and what talents and strengths we possess. If we bring less than who we are to our work, then using all of the advice above will still bring us up short of utilizing our full potential effectively.

When I ask leaders to describe themselves and tell me who they are, many say they know exactly who they are and what makes them tick. They then describe themselves in terms of titles, successes, achievements, community service involvement, whether they are married or single, their number of kids, and their religion. These are not who you are but things you do or have done. They’re nice, neat labels. When was the last time you peeled back the labels and really thought about what you believe, what your values are, what your life priorities are, what your talents are and how you best use them? Have you ever spent time thinking about these things? Even if you have thought about them, have you ever written them down?

Dawn Rider-Carter, the Director of Sales for a recruiting company, said, “I have spent the last six months working on understanding where I can reduce the conflict and stress in my life. The light bulb moment for me was finding that both of these things escalated when I was not living with integrity with and for myself. Integrity used to be something that I didn’t think about often – it was more about winning or getting the job done at all costs. Now I know that this is a short term fix to the issue at hand but a long term energy drain for me.”

If you do not spend time peeling back your own labels and defining your values and talents and how to best use them, then you can not truly be a “transparent’ leader, and those around you will be less inclined to follow you with commitment. I encourage you to spend the time to reflect and articulate those things that make up the “whole you” then bring it ALL to your leadership roles so you can truly do your BEST.

Using the Right Communications Style

Think about your communication style. Is it pink, blue or striped? In her book Pitch Like a Girl, Ronna Lichtenburg tells us that we all communicate in one of these styles, and although the book’s target audience is women, the concepts are not gender specific but style specific. There are men who speak pink, and women who speak blue.

What, then, is the message we need to take away? You need to be aware of your personal style as well as the style of others and adjust your communications accordingly. So, if you are a man whose style is pink, and your first instinct is to have a personal conversation to break the ice and catch up on the local sports news, but you are talking to your boss who is a very definite blue (get to the point and do it quickly), then adjusting means eliminating or at least limiting the small talk and focusing on the issue that needs to be discussed.

I worked with a woman whose sales skills were second to none. She could eliminate almost any objection and did not hesitate to tell her sales employees how and when to do this for their clients. You’ve probably already guessed that her communication style was blue. However, something strange happened on the way to her boss’s office. When she went to talk to him about the roadblocks she was experiencing inside the company, she sugarcoated the issues, she became emotional and wasn’t very concise in explaining what she needed from him. You can guess how he viewed her leadership skills: he didn’t feel she had any. After reviewing what and how she was communicating with her employees and her boss, we discussed switching her use of the pink and blue communications styles: use more pink with her employees and use more blue with her employer. In three short months her employees were growing in areas she hadn’t expected and her boss said he thought she was on top of her department and was pleased with the trend of creating more results faster. According to my client, her results were the same – still above expectations – but now he was able to see the results without wading through the emotional clutter.

When do you use pink communications style? When do you use blue communications style? What results are you getting from these communications? Could you change or tweak your style to drive results faster?

Improve Your People Development Skills

One of the top reasons executives look to a leadership advisor like me is for help in improving their people development skills. Like you, these executives have a strong desire to create a work environment that sets their employees up for success. They know that a healthy, productive environment leads to employees who are more focused on the success of the business.

But people development skills don't come easy -- even for the most astute leader.

My clients, regardless of team size, type or personnel issue, have one thing in common: They need help identifying how each employee (regardless of title or position) defines success, and they need a strategy for creating a professional development plan that gets results.

Step 1: Identify Success on their Terms
Many times my clients think that all their employees define success as money and promotion. Clearly, money and promotion are valued by employees, but why these things are valued above others is equally important. Here are some questions to ask that will help you understand individual employee needs and, more importantly, individual employee motivations.

• Is the employee looking for wealth, a certain quality of life or something else?
• Does the employee have family financial obligations that shape the way they view success?
• Does the employee desire to be promoted because their peers are being promoted, because they think it's "time," or because they feel they'll be challenged more in the new position?
• Is it the title or something else that gives the employee satisfaction and provides fulfillment?
• Ask probing questions like these until you uncover your employee's personal definition of success.

Step 2: Get Buy-In from the Employee
Once you know what motivates your employee, engage them in incorporating goals and tactics into their performance plan. That way the employee can clearly see when s/he has accomplished or deviated from the plan.

A jointly developed plan accomplishes two things. First, it leads my clients to better manage their employee's expectations. And second, it leads their employees to better manage themselves toward achieving the goals they now "own."

Success Breeds Success
Is this two-step process too simple to be truly valuable? Absolutely not! The reality of human nature is that personal contribution and ownership in a plan or an idea yields an exponentially higher opportunity for success. Ultimately, when employees are actively engaged in the creation of a personal development plan, they are much more likely to ensure that the company's interests and goals are met along with their own.

Additional Resources: Destination Success by Dwight Bain and Building a High Morale Workplace by Anne Bruce