21 December 2009

Revisiting Leadership: Get Out In Front

The last of the Dr. William Cohen’s Eight Universal Laws of Leadership is to Get Out In Front. This law is probably the simplest and yet, the most difficult to follow. Getting Out In Front is the simplest law because as a leader you are already expected to be the first one to greet your employees and be the last one to say goodbye at the end of the day. In between the leader is fully present not just in the moment, but her finger is on the pulse of what is happening. Having your finger on the pulse of what is happening does not mean being a micro-manager, it means being aware of what your people are doing and standing ready to assist, teach, guide or just let them do the job they were hired to do. Checking the pulse every once in a while will tell you whether something is seriously wrong or not.

Getting Out In Front is also the most difficult leadership law to follow, as there will always be a stigma associated with putting yourself out front. The point man, the first person to arrive, the last person to leave, the one that everyone sees all the time makes you the responsible one. If you are the first person that management, peers, and subordinates see everyday then you are the person they will associate with being the one that knows what’s going on and ultimately, the responsible party (good or bad).

While there is nothing wrong with being the responsible one or the “go-to” person there will be instances when being that person is not a good thing. This may be where the stigma, of being out front is a bad thing, took root and from it the dark side of getting out front was born. Making matters worse there are plenty of adages that add fuel to that fire such as “the nail that stands up will be pounded down.” Don’t let those that believe such things drag you down, they will poison your way of thinking what a leader is and ultimately, you will never want to get out in front or it will be that much more difficult to take the first step.

Good or bad, being out front is the best way to not only get noticed by your superiors within the organization, but by really knowing your stuff it is the best way to become a recognized leader in your field. Then, it is not so bad being out front. Thus the sooner you let go of the feeling that being out front means that you are the first volunteer to put your head in the guillotine, the better off you will be. Another advantage to being out front is that those you lead will not be afraid to step up and take the lead when their time comes.

Never forget that along the way there will be critics. There will always be critics just as there will always be bad situations that occur when someone steps up. You and your followers will recognize that the bad situations will happen to those that are just not ready to be out front or lack the skills that they will need to successfully and continuously lead through the path they will be finding.

Lastly, being a leader is not just about pulling your subordinates up and along but giving them a clear path that will lead them to ultimately go and blaze their own trail.

Thank you for your time.


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15 December 2009

Get into the thick of it

There are three things you can do when it comes being/becoming a leader. You can get into the thick of it, you can stand back and watch others get into the thick of it, or you can be one those that wonder what happened and how did everyone get into the thick of it. What I mean by the thick of it, it is what you do (your job, your career, or your studies).

You can breeze through your job or school and get by with just enough but all that will get you is a paycheck or a degree. Then what? If you are one of those foolhardy individuals that thinks that because you have a degree or a cool job title you are automatically a leader, well got another thing coming.

No matter, how long you have been working or have been in school it is not too late to get involved with your organization and with what it is doing. Once you get involved, it will be that much easier to move to the front or the top. It may not be instant move up, remember you will have to pay your dues. The only way to pay those dues will be to get up and get into the thick of it.


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14 December 2009

Revisiting Leadership: Put Duty Before Self

The leadership law of Putting Duty Before Self is probably the most difficult of all the laws. Today, unfortunately we live in a time that is about survival and survival of the fittest. The economy dictates that you must be the best you can be and don’t worry about the other guy. It is understandable when the other guy is worried about how he is going to feed his family, pay his bills, and stay one step ahead of foreclosure.

Thus the economy is creating a generation that reinforces that self is more important than the team, the group, or the organization. Therefore, changing that mindset requires the individual to more than just want to change but to truly believe that the paradigm, that is their life, must and will be shifted in a direction that makes looking at things that are bigger than him with better perspective.

Classic examples of the ability to put duty before self can be found through US military history. In World War II, every soldier that landed on Normandy on D-Day was certainly putting duty before self. They knew that the mission was going to be difficult and deadly but they left the relative safety of the Higgins Boats and ran into the wall of bullets and bombs anyway. They knew that the only way that Europe was going to be liberated from oppression was to walk out onto the hell that was being unleashed that June morning in 1944.

In November 1965 in Vietnam, there was LTC. Harold Moore and approximately 450 U.S. soldiers that were dropped into a small clearing in the Ia Drang Valley by helicopter. The 1st of the 7th Cavalry troops were soon surrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese Army soldiers and over the course of 48 hours the US soldiers took on a force that was on its home turf. At one point during the action the US soldiers knew that re-supply and reinforcements were not going to be arriving anytime soon. Yet, instead of giving up these soldiers fought even when their commanding officer ordered an artillery strike on their own position.

These two along with countless other examples show that people when faced with overwhelming odds will choose what best serves the cause as “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one.”

Sure the soldiers in these examples have been trained to wage war and act under adverse conditions, as a leader you are also trained to act under adverse conditions and change as conditions change in order to ensure that mission is successfully completed. Hopefully, your organization will never find itself conducting an amphibious landing on some hostile beachhead or lands its helicopters into a hot LZ but if it does trust in the organization’s mission and executing to deliver on that mission and vision is what a leader does.

In order to be a success within the organization the leader must not only take care of her people but she must genuinely do so with an emphasis on meeting the directives, mission, and vision of the organization. This means shedding one’s old “Me, Me, Me” attitude and shifting to an attitude that calls on doing what is best for the organization in order to achieve what the leader can to get the company to where it needs to be. Remember, putting duty before yourself is really the best thing you can do for yourself and your career with the organization. This then makes it truly the only way to survive in the modern workplace.



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06 December 2009

The Check Engine Light

Early this past week, I was having a conversation with a friend. My friend is a manager of a rather large department within the organization he works for. We were talking about how things were going and he told me that he was having an issue on how to address a problem with a member of the staff that he is responsible for.

Long story short: The employee has a problem doing his job. He completes his assignments but instead of putting 100% effort into it, he gives 80% in everything he does. Then the employee has a tendency to do extra work for members of other departments. While the employee’s primary work does not actually suffer it just isn’t to the level the manager was expecting. The manager, my friend, expects that the employee commit to the department he works for and keep outside work to a minimum especially from 8 to 5 and wants to really do what he can to get the employee back on track. The manager then told me about an incident that occurred a week prior.

It was one of those days that key individuals were going to be out for some reason or another. The employee was the first one to be scheduled to be out on Monday. Another co-worker had an emergency at home that carried over from the previous week and a third co-worker was coming in at noon due to a personal reason. The employee in question telephoned the manager, bright and early on Monday morning and offered to come in, on his scheduled day off, because of the others not being available. The manager while shocked to receive this very considerate phone call told the employee that he was originally scheduled to be off, he should not worry, go about his business, and everything would be fine.

The dilemma that my friend had was that how could he counsel the employee about his work ethic, commitment to his work, and minimize the need to do work for other individuals from different department after receiving such an unselfish, “do it for the team” phone call?

I offered this scenario to help guide my friend:

Congratulations you have just won a store raffle. The payout is one brand new SUV with the works (DVD player, Surround sound, individual viewing stations, GPS navigation, on call phone support, seat warmers, you name it its in there) and a year’s worth of gasoline at your disposal. After paying the taxes that SUV is yours. You have never had a vehicle that was yours outright, without having to finance it. You are one happy camper.

Then one day soon after you get your brand new SUV in your driveway the check engine light comes on. You are worried, as you are about call your local dealer to get the SUV in to be looked at, the check engine light turns off. All is good with the world. The horn works, all the lights turn off and on. The vehicle starts with no problem; the on-board Satellite TV still gets video and the surround sound plays your favorite tunes as if you were right there in the recording studio.

So you forget about that minor incident and for the next month or so all is good until the Check Engine light comes on, again. This time you are cruising down a highway and there is no sign of civilization for at least another 20 minutes or so. Then just as you enter the next town the light mysteriously turns off. For the next couple of months this same scenario repeats itself, light on and light off. When that light comes on you stress about what it might or might not be and when it turns off you feel fine, so you live with it as the light is off longer than it is on, thus so long as the car keeps moving everything is good.

Deep in the back of your mind you know there is a reason the light keeps turning on. In the end, that issue will have to be addressed before the Check Engine light stays on and you find yourself stranded miles from nowhere.








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04 December 2009

Who are your travel companions?

Would you rather go on that journey with someone who is eager to join your adventures? Or would you prefer to travel with someone who always wants to stop because you never get to your destination? Would it be one who whines and complains about how bumpy the road is or one that experiences everything with eyes wide open? I don’t know about you but give me a wide-eyed eager companion every time.

They say that life is a journey and not a destination. I agree 100%. It is a journey that all of us have to take. However, we have to choose for ourselves who accompanies us on that journey. We can make life a great and happy journey if we surround ourselves with people that motivate us, inspire us, and make us want more for ourselves and in return you motive, inspire, and make them want more for themselves.

Surrounding yourself with people that bring you down, question your actions or counter your decisions is not going to make for a pleasant journey. There is never room for people that are going to weigh you down, slow you down, and hold you back. There is no excuse for tolerating that kind of behavior, yet many of us do. We allow that behavior to kill a good time. By allowing that behavior to continue we encourage its growth, so much that it grows into something so bitter and ugly that the only way to eradicate it is by doing something radical.

It may be by radically cutting loose all those that are dragging you down, no matter how close they have grown to you.

It may be difficult but in order to travel through life’s journey you best serve yourself and those you choose to travel with by not bringing any dead weight along. Realize that in doing this you will have to be stronger than the negativity. If you want to travel into a world that is full of richness and wonder and not in a world that dwells in bitterness, jealousy, disdain, and contempt your inner strength will have to be rock solid.

Of course, there will be hurt feelings. There are always hurt feelings but in this case by casting off those that bring you down you, the only hurt feelings will be of those that recognize that you are no longer giving them a place for their behavior to fester.

It will be difficult but if you don’t sooner rather than later, you will never do it.

Bon Voyage
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02 December 2009

Revisiting Leadership: Take Care of Your People

The leadership law of taking care of your people obviously is one that is rooted in common sense. As a leader, you will have already found out or will soon find out you have to take care of your people and they will take care of you. Fail this and the opposite is just as true.

As I mentioned in the previous blog post when you are expecting positive results you must be prepared to deliver positive results. Now let’s that this one step ahead and give it a human dimension and the need to take care of your people is born. What this means is that you have to ensure that you will be there for your people no matter what.

In a military situation, taking care of your people takes on a whole different meaning than in the modern workplace. In the military, a leader is responsible not just for her people from 8 to 5 but a full 24-7-365. Yes, the full-time health, morale, welfare, and readiness of the Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine is the responsibility of the leader. While in the civilian workplace, most leaders that have never experienced the military kind of responsibility will have the extra level of responsibility of ensuring that all the staff members attend the company picnic. Of course, I embellish here but in the civilian world I have not truly been able to find anything that comes close to the military example of taking care of your people.

There have been many times that I have seen where the manager appears to care about a subordinate and it may be genuine. However, there have been just as many times that the moment a subordinate does something wrong the manager is nowhere to be found and the subordinate is left to alone to defend his actions. What does that say about the manager?

It says that the manager is happy so long as things are going good and is enjoying the success the employee is bringing to the department and the organization. The manager gets the praises and all is good with the world. Then the manager will certainly act like he genuinely cares about the morale and welfare of the employee that is driving the success. Then when the house crumbles the manager is anything but caring.

I am not saying that this is wrong, what I am saying is that this is VERY WRONG. As a leader it is for you to understand that you cannot have it both ways. Either you genuinely care about them or you don’t but you cannot fake your way. People will read you like a book the moment you feign a smile or look past them when they talk to you. Heaven help you if start playing favorites with one or two employees over the others.

So what does this have to do with taking care of your people? Simple. Be authentic about showing that you really true care about the people that will make you a success. Be there for them when they succeed but most importantly be there when they fail, even if it was their fault. It shows that they matter and that no matter what the outcome of that failure the future will be brighter. Therefore, as a leader it is your job to ensure that you make all things possible for those you lead. Be there for them when they need you and when they don’t. Be visible because, as I have tried to make clear, your success depends on their success just as your failure means you failed them. The sooner you know this, rather than later, the better off you and those you lead will be.



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