MAKING THE GRADE
In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins contends that true leadership – the essence of what people long for and want desperately to follow – implies a certain humility that is appropriate and elicits the best response from people.
Collins found two characteristics that describe great leaders: will and humility. Will is the determination to follow through on a vision/mission/goal. Humility is the capacity to realize that leadership is not about the leader; it’s about the people and what they need.
Too many people think that who they are is their position and the power it gives them. This is what causes leaders to receive a failing grade! Power comes from the people whose lives you touch. You finally become a true leader when you realize that life is about what you give rather than what you get.
Effective leaders recognize that their jobs are to create and maintain cultures that turn on employees so they can turn on customers. Effective leaders look down the traditional hierarchy and say, “What can I do for you?” rather than having their people looking up the hierarchy and saying, “What can we do for you?” Leaders that receive high marks are constantly trying to find out what their people need to b successful.
Final Exam -- Application Questions: Are you a leader that possesses a passion for making a difference in the lives of your people, and in the process, positively impacting your organization?
When things go wrong, do you look for who to blame or do you ask yourself, “What could I have done differently that would have allowed my people to be as great as they could be?”
KEEPING SCORE
In his book The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, Stephen Covey speaks of four disciplines to execution. Those four disciplines include: Focus on the wildly important; create a compelling scoreboard; translate goals into specific actions; and, hold each other accountable – all of the time.
In the past 90-days, in conducting impromptu conversations with leadership clients, they’ve shared their greatest challenge among the four disciplines is in getting direct reports and mid-level managers to commit to creating a compelling scoreboard.
A few leaders even attempted to convince me not having a scoreboard hasn’t negatively affected their organization’s productivity. Folks, people play differently when they’re keeping score!
Have you ever watched a pick-up basketball game – when the players were not keeping score? Players tend to do whatever they want, the game stops for a few jokes, and the playing is not very focused. But when they start keeping score, things change. There’s a new intensity.
Huddles happen. Plays are improvised. Players adapt quickly to each new challenge. And the speed and tempo build dramatically.
The same thing happens at work. Without crystal-clear measures for success, people are not sure what the goal truly is. Without measures, the same goal is understood by a hundred different people in a hundred different ways. As a result, team members get off track doing things that might be urgent but less important. They work at an uncertain pace.
Application Questions: Do you have a scoreboard – an inescapable picture of reality? Do your plans adjust to it? Does timing adjust to it? Do you consistently update your scoreboard?
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