Saturday, November 7, 2009

Leadership Development Book List - The 10 Leadership Books you must read ASAP

As part of our coaching engagement, we will require that you grow through education and reading. Below is an ordered list of must read books for Leadership growth and development:

1. Leadership and Self Deception - Arbinger Institute

This is a journey every leader must wrestle with - that of understanding the failings of self deception. As Leadership is about Leading through others, we must first learn to understand and change ourselves, our strengths, issues and challenges. Only then can we hope to become more authentic and congruent and ultimately more influencial with her people.



2. The Anatomy of Peace - Arbinger Institute

Continuing the journey from Leadership and Self Deception, every Leader must learn to understand and deal with conflict - therefore facilitating better communication.



3. The E-Myth Revisited - Michael Gerber

Understanding the role of a Leader and Entrepreneur in an organisation. Michael Gerber is at the forefront of thinking about the impact of Leadership on business.



4. The Leadership Challenge - Kouzes and Posner

A broad and deep text on what Leadership really is. An outstanding reference guide with wonderful metaphors and stories. Heavily research based.



5. Mastering the Rockerfeller Habits - Verne Harnish

Masterful simplification of the keys to Leadership and Business success. Harnish is very talented at simplifying the complexity of business success.



6. Selling With Integrity - Sharon Drew Morgan

The new paradigm of sales and change - Morgan is a genius.



7. Dirty Little Secrets - Why Buyers Can't Buy and Sellers Can't Sell - Sharon Drew Morgan

Morgan has gone further in this book to look at how change occurs through the buying process. An extraordinary piece and literature that every Leader must read.



8. Bonds That Make us Free - Terry Warner

Warner is one of the Co-Founders of the Arbinger Institute. This book is an essential for the Leader in helping create meaningful relationships with their people (followers).



9. The Art of Possibility - Rosamund Zander

The new paradigm of Leadership - Leading through inspiring, enabling, awakening and empowering others - YOU MUST READ this book if you are in any type of Leadership position.



10. Generation Y - Peter Sheahan

An Australian author writing on thriving and surviving with Generation Y. A must read for any Leader dealing with 18 - 35 year old staff. This book will help you understand and awaken this generation from a Meta-perspective (Values/Thinking Patterns/Beliefs etc.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Leadership and Executive Coaching; The New Leadership Paradigm

The second of 2 videos on Leadership by Ben Zander, author of The Art of Possibility; an exceptional book on the new paradigm of Leadership. This video looks at Leadership from a completely new perspective. This is an example of the new Leadership paradigm in action.



Leadership and Executive Coaching in action

Leadership Coaching - The Art of Possibility

Below is a video showcasing a simple and yet very effective metaphor for Leadership. This video features Benjamin Zander and his new paradigm for Leadership Coaching - The Art of Possibility. It is well worth the watch and just may have a profound effect on your Leadership potential.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Leadership Development - Maintaining Balance Between Leading and Managing - A Leader's Article

Maintaining Balance Between Leading and Managing

by Dr. Mike Armour

It's increasingly common for companies to refer to everyone in management as a leader -- whether they genuinely function as leaders or not. In our last issue we looked at this trend and outlined a three-point litmus test to determine whether someone is truly a leader or merely a rechristened manager.

As we noted in that issue, we cannot fully separate leadership and management. Truly great leadership always includes a certain element of solid management. But from my experience and observation, it's a relatively easy matter for the management task to consume the leadership task. That is, we end up spending so much time on management that we no longer act as leaders.

The "Gotta Know" Test

So how do we avoid this pitfall? How do we keep from subverting the leadership task by spending too much time on the management task? And similarly, how do we keep from subverting the leadership task by spending too much time on the wrong management tasks?

The answer, obviously, is to maintain the proper balance between time given to management and time given to leadership. For me, finding that balance begins with this question: "How much do I feel compelled to be 'in the know' about everything that happens in my organization?"

The more intensely I feel a need to be 'in the know,' the more likely I am to devote too much of my energy to management functions. I will be spending too much time with my fingers in the pie. I will slowly gravitate from being a leader, because my focus is on management.

At lower levels of leadership it may be possible to lead well while also staying fully versed on what's happening below you. But the higher we climb on the leadership ladder, the less time we have to stay fully informed. This happens in part because our responsibility is so much broader that expanded duties simply take more time.

But there are also other contributing factors. Most of them relate to three decision-making realities that change as we move higher in leadership.

First, our decisions must focus on longer time horizons. Lower level managers rarely need to look more than a few weeks or a few months down the road. Upper management, however, must constantly anticipate what lies several years down the road.

Second, this longer time horizon means greater ambiguity in the data on which we base decisions. We must often rely as much on forecasts and estimates as on solid data, which adds to the difficulty of confident decision-making.

And third, our decisions have far greater collateral impact on people and corporate processes. We must develop a keen instinct for anticipating this impact and factoring it into our decisions.

The Leader's Management Priorities

All three of these changes greatly reduce the amount of time we have to be "fully up to date" on the details within the organization we head. Learning to feel comfortable without being fully "in the know" is the most difficult stretch for many leaders aspiring to senior executive positions. I work regularly with executives who are struggling with this very challenge. Here's what I tell them.

To begin with, your management energy should center almost entirely on three concerns:
Having the right processes in place.
Having the right controls on the processes.
Having the right people in charge of the controls.
Once you satisfy these three criteria, you can trust your organization to do the right thing and to do it consistently. Trust is the key. An obsessive need to be "in the know" usually points to deep-seated distrust. When we can trust the processes, the controls, and the people responsible for those controls, we can be at ease, even if we are not completely "in the know."

Which then leads to a corollary. When things go wrong, our management duty as leaders is not to fix the problem. If we have the right people in place, they have the know-how to fix the problem.

No, our task is to determine where the breakdown occurred. Was it a breakdown in one or more processes? Was it a breakdown in control? Or was there a miscue on the part of those who manage the controls? These should be our primary management concerns as leaders.

And again, once we have determined the nature of the breakdown, it's best if we let our people design and implement the fix. There are exceptions to this rule, to be sure, particularly where the fix entails personnel changes. But to the degree that we get drawn into fixing problems that others can handle, we are sacrificing precious time we need for the leadership task.

Reviewing the 'To-Do" List

Our first priority, then, is to put the proper processes, controls, and people in place. The second is to "stay out of the way." A massive list of "to do's" is often an indicator that we are becoming a bottle neck. When my to-do list starts mushrooming, I have to ask whether I'm injecting myself too deeply into the process. It's easy to do.

And it often happens insiduously, incrementally, over time. It may begin innocently enough with the identification of a problem and the guidance we give for overcoming it. The guidance should build around desired outcomes, not instruction on how to fix the problem. Too much "how-to" guidance is a step toward injecting ourselves into the process.

But another subtle trap is lurking at this point. Once we empower our people to find solutions to a problem, it's almost natural to say, "Just keep me informed." As leaders, of course, we need to be informed on the progress toward resolving problems in processes, controls, or interpersonal relationships.

But from "keep me informed" we typically move next to "run your solution by me before you put it in place," which easily turns into "be sure I sign off on the key steps before you implement them." Little by little, with the best of intentions, and always under the guise of having "empowered my people" to solve problems, we put ourselves in the middle of the process.

Sometimes, when the problem is considerably complex, when the solutions stretch our people to the outer limites of their experience or competence, or when the economic or political consequences are extremely high, we need to have "sign-off" as leaders. But when "my sign-off" becomes a routine part of a process, "my sign-off" is soon likely to be routine in multiple processes. I'm on the way to becoming a bottle neck.

So the key is to minimize the number of issues that need our sign-off, then ridding the process of my sign-off requirement as quickly as possible. Remember, one of our three critical tasks as a leader is to design good processes. And execessive dependence on "my sign-off" is carte blanche evidence that either our process is not good or that we do not have confidence in the controls and people we've put in place.

Copyright 2007 - Dr Mike Armour
Used with permission and respect.

Leadership Development and Executive Coaching

Leadership Coaching Article - In the Absence of Vision - A Leadership Article

In the Absence of Vision

by Dr. Mike Armour

Books on leadership inevitably place a priority on developing a compelling corporate vision. But articulating a compelling vision is a challenging task. Just ask anyone who has ever taken a stab at it.

So what do you do if you can't come up with a strong statement of vision for your organization? As a consultant and coach, I'm increasingly asked this question by clients. Oh, they have a general, well-conceived notion of where they want to take their people. But they are stymied when it comes to reducing these intuitions to crisp, compelling language, visionary enough to guide the organization for years to come.

It's not that these men and women lack the imagination, creativity, or insight to develop a well-formed vision. No, the villain is most commonly the relentless pace of change. These leaders find themselves in settings where vision statements are outmoded almost as soon as they are finished.

This is especially the case in industries where marketplace realities change color more quickly than a chameleon. In technology-related businesses, for example, product obsolescence is often measured in months, not years. It's not uncommon for market conditions to compel companies to rethink their entire business model in relatively short-term cycles.

A Heretical Notion.

In circumstances like this, how can you develop a long-range, sustaining vision? The truth is, it's often nigh unto impossible. You fundamentally have three choices.

First,you can forego a vision statement altogether. A second alternative is to develop a vision statement in precise, engaging language, simply accepting the fact that it is likely to be quickly outdated. Yet this goes against the principle that vision statements should provide consistent, long-term definitions of direction.

The third option is to offer a vision statement that is so generalized that it can weather periodic wholesale redefinitions of the core business. When they are this generalized, however, vision statements typically sacrifice the precision to be motivational and compelling.

Thinking about this problem recently, I've begun to toy with a bit of a heretical notion. Namely, vision may not always be as necessary for success as our management theories make it out to be. In particular, if you have a set of core values that are well-conceived, precisely-stated, and consistently-pursued, your organization may be able to do quite well based on these orienting values alone.

The power of vision is that it gives people a common focus and a common sense of direction, while also serving to inspire them to superior performance. Well-stated core values have the same potential. True, values do not give us as much focus as a compelling, well-articulated vision. But it seems to me that (in the absence of a clear sense of vision) corporate values which are carefully-enunciated, constantly promoted, and consistently followed can afford us much of the benefit of leadership vision.

A Values-Shaped Company

I had been toying with this concept for several months when I came across a book that seems to illustrate the power of values to shape a company's destiny. The book is Kirk Kizaniian's Exceeding Customer Expectations, a study of Enterprise Rent-A-Car and how it rose from obscurity to be the number one rental car company in the world.

Founded by Andrew Taylor, who fifty years later is still its Chairman and CEO, Enterprise began as a car leasing business. It started in two rooms (actually converted service bays) at a Cadillac dealership in St. Louis. Taylor had no vision of becoming a dominant player in the car rental business. In fact, he made a reasoned, purposeful decision to stay out of the car rental business. He felt the car rental industry was cluttered with too many players, which made margins too thin for sustained profitability.

From the outset, Taylor set out to build his automobile leasing company around a handful of orchestrating values. His first and foremost value was to exceed customer expectations and to do so consistently. Another value was to make it easy for customers to do business with his company. Still a third value was to provide a fun place for people to work and to give employees every opportunity to grow and advance both personally and professionally. Only satisfied workers, he believed, would rise to the performance standards to meet his customer satisfaction expectations.

Responding to Values

Without making this newsletter interminably long, let me quickly summarize how Enterprise went from ignoring the rental car business to being the industry's front-runner. Taylor's leasing customers kept asking him if he had a car that they could rent for a few days. Usually this was because they needed extra wheels for guests from out of town or because their own vehicle was out of commission for repairs. In the early years Taylor said, "No, we don't offer short-term car rentals."

But then he concluded that his failure to accommodate these request violated his value of exceeding customer expectations. So he added a few "loaner" cars that could be rented on a short-term basis by preferred customers. Slowly the rental car side of the business grew and expanded. Soon it was operating out of several locations.

But to honor another of his values -- making it easy for customers to do business with him -- he located his rental agencies in residential neighborhoods, not at some remote airport, as other companies did. This same core value led to another innovation which became his company's hallmark, the famous "We pick you up" policy.

Next, because customers needed a rental car so often in the wake of an accident, he pioneered arrangements with insurance companies to provide Enterprise vehicles to policy holders who had cars in a body shop. And to make things even more convenient for customers, Enterprise today offers rentals at body shops themselves.

At each step of the way, this progression of expanded services resulted from a commitment to exceed customer expections and to make it easy for customers to do business with Enterprise. None of these innovations occurred because Taylor had a vision of revolutionizing the car rental business. To the contrary, his innovations all came about because he kept his eye on his orchestrating values. Had he not given himself so thoroughly to exceeding the expectations of his leasing customers, he might well have never entered the rental car industry.

Values as Substitutes for Vision

If Taylor had a genuine vision early on, it was apparently to build a company that was true to his orchestrating values. Then, as unexpected opportunities came along, he opted to capitalize on them, not on the basis of a compelling vision, but on the basis of their alignment with his most critical values.

This, then, takes me back to the observation at the outset. A crisp, well-articulated vision may not always be essential if, in its stead, a proper values-structure is in place. Now, I'm not suggesting that just any set of values will suffice. From what I can tell, the values that best serve in lieu of a vision are those that embody the essence of the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."


Moreover, the primary, orchestrating values need to be few in number. Perhaps no more than three or four. Otherwise it's difficult to maintain consistent focus on the critical values over the long haul. And these values must be the determining factor in who gets raises, who gets promotions, and who gets celebrated as a hero within the corporate culture. Only then will employees take the values seriously enough for these orchestrating values to exercise their full potential to shape the organization.

So strive for vision. There is no substitute for a precise, inspiring, compelling vision statement. But absent a vision statement (or the ability to create one), capitalize on a central core of appropriate values. Talk about the constantly. Relate every element of your business plan to them. Embody them personally yourself as the leader. Let them serve as marker buoys to keep you moving in the direction of whatever success the future holds out to you and your people.

Copyright 2007 - Dr Mike Armour
Used with permission and respect.


Leadership Development
and Executive Coaching