What Is Authentic Leadership?

It continues to surprise me how many leaders attempt to be one way at work, while their “true” personality emerges outside of work. Once a CEO reminded me, “Leadership is acting.” And it surprises me when these same leaders seem shocked or confused when their employees don’t trust them, don’t like them, and can’t really wait to work elsewhere.

Authenticity has been explored throughout history, from Greek philosophers to the work of Shakespeare  (“To thy own self be true.” –Polonius, Hamlet). Authentic leadership has been explored sporadically as part of modern management science, but found its highest levels of acceptance since

But what is authentic leadership?

While different theorists have different slants on the concept, most agree that:


1. Authentic leaders are self-aware and genuine. Authentic leaders are self-actualized individuals who are aware of their strengths, their limitations, and their emotions. They also show their real selves to their followers. They do not act one way in private and another in public; they don’t hide their mistakes or weaknesses out of fear of looking weak. They also realize that being self-actualized is an endless journey, never complete.


2. Authentic leaders are mission driven and focused on results. They are able to put the mission and the goals of the organization ahead of their own self-interest. They do the job in pursuit of results, not for their own power, money or ego.


3. Authentic leaders lead with their heart, not just their minds. They are not afraid to show their emotions, their vulnerability and to connect with their employees. This does not mean authentic leaders are “soft.” In fact communicating in a direct manner is critical to successful outcomes, but it’s done with empathy; directness without empathy is cruel.


4. Authentic leaders focus on the long-term. A key tenet in Bill George’s model is the company leaders are focused on long-term shareholder value, not in just beating quarterly estimates. Just as George did as CEO of Medtronic, and as Bezos has done for years at Amazon, leaders realize that to nurture individuals and to nurture a company requires hard work and patience, but the approach pays large dividends over time.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2013/05/12/what-is-authentic-leadership/

Self Esteem Improvement: Ways to Boost Your Confidence and Self Worth

We often encounter the word self esteem in psychology discussions but sometimes the meaning of the term is rather unclear to us. What we really know about self-esteem is that it has something to do with confidence. That is quite true, but confidence is just one aspect in self-esteem. What self-esteem really means is that it is an emotion or trait we exhibit when we have pride. Self-esteem is associated with how we value ourselves or how we see our overall self-worth.

Self Esteem Further Defined

We all have a clear picture of ourselves in our head. The projection we make is based on how others perceive us according to our own belief. This includes how we are accepted, valued, and loved by the people in our surroundings like family, friends, and acquaintances. We also have a mental image of us as to how we accept, value, and love ourselves. If all of these elements are positive then one can say that you are happy and you feel very good because the response you get from other people and yourself are in harmony. This is the reason why a person who is accomplished in his own right and is well liked in the community exhibits a positive trait of confidence and pride.

When can a Person have Low Self Esteem?

A person is said to have a low self esteem if he or she feels unwanted, underappreciated, and not loved by the people in his or her surroundings. The individual will also exhibit low self-esteem if he or she doesn’t feel good about his physical image and attitude. In addition, a person who doesn’t love himself and doesn’t know how to value his self worth is also said to possess a low self-esteem.

We all experience this at certain periods in our lives. Remember the time when our action led to a mistake and people in our lives were disappointed and saddened by our deed. Remember the time when you were in an embarrassing situation and people around you were laughing until you felt mortified and humiliated. These scenarios are some examples where your self-esteem turns into a negative trait because you feel that your identity has been compromised and people no longer appreciate or accept you. This also leads to a feeling of depreciation or devaluation in your part.

How to Improve Self Esteem

Sure you have been humiliated in the past or you felt you were the unpopular kid in your school but the good thing is that self esteem improvement is possible and it is always aimed towards our advantage. The awkward situations we have been to are just phases which we could leave in the past. We could leave our bad experiences to be able to change our trait so that we can face the things that lie ahead of us with our heads held up high.

Usually, improving self esteem can be challenging especially if the people, things, or events that put us down are still present in our lives. We can address the problem by confronting the source itself. For instance if you were constantly bullied, you can confront the person by yourself or with the help of a friend, family, or authority. If you feel underappreciated by your mom or dad, you can talk about it by arranging a meaningful discussion. Addressing the situation will help you achieve your goal towards an improved self esteem. Here are other techniques on how to value and feel good about you.

• Stop putting yourself down. One of the sources of our low self-esteem is how we poorly treat ourselves. You can be a contributor to your low self-image if you continue to perceive things around you in a negative manner. Over thinking and over criticizing can lead to poor appreciation. What you need to do is discard this negative outlook of yourself and start adapting a positive one. Instead of seeing the negative things, starts by listing down things, which make you, feel good about yourself.


• Mistakes are opportunities too. Mistakes can really put us down but there is no need to mull about it for months. Do not allow your mistakes to control you; instead view it as a learning opportunity so you can be a good person next time. Bounce back from your mistakes. Ponder about what happened but never allow it to control you.


• Set realistic goals and expectations and not perfections. It is okay to strive perfection but once the idea controls you, it will eventually ruin your life. Being perfect can sometimes ruin your self-image. For instance, you view yourself as obese when in fact you are just slightly chubby can lead to lost opportunities. Similarly if you set the bar too high, you will be depressed if you fail to achieve your goals. What you need to do is be real and learn to accept that you can set goals, which you think you can really achieve even if it is a small one.


• Make new friends. As discussed earlier, our self worth is also based on how people treat us or accept us. Making new friends can help boost our self-esteem. Befriending people who share your ideas, goals, interest, and likes will definitely leave you feeling wanted, appreciated, and loved. Stay away from people who know nothing but put you down. It is okay to be criticized as long as it is done in a good taste but being criticized because the person simply hates you for no reason at all is definitely a no-no. You can confront the person if you wish to or you can simply walk away. Instead surround yourself with people that genuinely care about you.

A positive self-esteem is what we truly need in our life. It is a very uplifting trait, which is why we should constantly strive to remain positive. Remember that there is nothing wrong with feeling down as long as we would never allow it to dictate our actions. We could always improve low self-esteem through acceptance and taking positive actions that would appreciate our self-worth.

http://selfhelptoday.org/61/self-esteem-improvement-ways-to-boost-your-confidence-and-self-worth

Is Your Job Driving You Nuts?

Be a team player but focus on your job.

Take risks but don´t fail.

Think out of the box but follow procedure.

Tell me the truth but don´t bring me problems.

Value employees but fire average performers.

Help customers but spend less time with them.

Work more hours but mind your home life.

Organizational contradictions can drive you crazy. To maintain your sanity you need to recognize and dissolve them. In this post, I will help you recognize them; in the next one, dissolve them.

 

Hard Choices

The contradictions arise from a denial of logical or material limitations.

For a given technology and a given amount of resources, there is a limit to the number of goods that can be produced or goals that can be attained. In economics, this is called a “production possibilities frontier,” or PPF. Along the PPF it is impossible to produce more of one good without producing less of the other, since resources have to be transferred from the latter to the former.

For example, a person can devote her time to work on her project, or to help a colleague. The time used in one task is not available for the other. Thus, unless one is idle, or using her time inefficiently (as in point “C” in the graph below), there is a trade-off or “opportunity cost.”



When you spend some of your time on your project (X) and the rest of your time helping your colleague (Y), you will reach a certain progress (Xa,Ya) in each project. This is point “A” on the curve. You could spend less time helping your colleague, more time on your project, and reach point “B” (Xb, Yb). Any point on the PPF is a feasible combination of progress for both projects.

The problem is that the instruction, “Be a team player but focus on your job,” seems to require you to attain point D, which is out of the PPF, and therefore not feasible! Your manager seems to say, “Devote all your time to your project,” and at the same time, “Devote all your time to support your colleague.” This is clearly impossible. And that is why crazy-making managers hate clarity. 

To get away with this, these managers use abstractions, innuendo, mixed messages and confusion. Like vampires, they loathe the light of reason. Telling them the truth, that is, that you don´t know how to attain their desired outcome with your skills and resources will produce a fit of rage.

Perhaps your manager thinks that you have free time or are working inefficiently (as in point C). Or perhaps he thinks that there is a way to expand the PPF through additional resources or an improvement in technology that would allow you to reach point D. It may be possible to make point D feasible, but you and your manager would have to rationally discuss how to make it so.

Going Crazy

When Harvard Business School professor Chris Argyris asked managers how they behave, they claimed to follow values such as humility, honesty and respect corresponding to the mutual learning model.

Argyris's extensive research found that the way managers claimed to behave is quite different from the way they actually behaved. In real life, managers followed values such as control, manipulation and easing-in corresponding to the unilateral control model .

If your manager’s behavior as a controller contradicts his self-image as a learner he must keep the contradiction hidden. Once exposed, it becomes unsustainable.

When you combine unattainable goals with contradictory managers you get double binds, those emotionally distressing dilemmas that can cause schizophrenia. Argyris found double binds of the following kind in every organization he studied:

1. The manager gives a contradictory order.
2. The manager makes the contradiction un-discussable.
3. The manager makes the un-discussibility un-discussable.

For instance, a supervisor tells a worker that whenever he detects a defect, he must immediately stop the production line and report it. The following day, the supervisor tells the worker that when there is a rush, he should report any defects but shouldn’t stop the line. If there is no clear standard of when “there is a rush,” the worker is trapped: If he stops the line, he will get in trouble; if he doesn’t stop the line, he will also get in trouble. If he tries to get his supervisors to resolve the contradiction, he will also get in trouble. “We are too busy to solve your problems. Deal with it!”

In a double bind not only you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. You are also damned if you tell your boss you are stuck!

Individuals aren’t the only ones with un-discussable contradictions. Business scholars Manfred Kets de Vries and Danny Miller present some of the most common corporate ones. “We are good citizens of this community” (while we pollute the town’s lake). “Our workers have autonomy” (while we fire anyone who questions authority). “Quality is paramount” (while we sell defective products). “People are our most important asset” (while 50% of our employees leave every year).

Schi·zor·ga·ni·za·tion: The absence of organization, systematic arrangement, or unity. Condition characterized by withdrawal from reality, illogical patterns of thinking, delusions, and hallucinations, and accompanied in varying degrees by other emotional, behavioral, or intellectual disturbances. A situation that results from the coexistence of disparate or antagonistic qualities, identities, or activities. Organizational behavior motivated by contradictory or conflicting principles.

How to Avoid the Straight Jacket

Inconsistencies and misunderstandings are inevitable. Organizational life is too complex to avoid apparent contradictions. The good news is that inconsistencies are necessary, but not sufficient to create double binds. The condition for craziness is un-discussability.

Consequently, the best strategy to dissolve double binds is to make them discussable. A culture of mutual learning, in which people are open to discussing dilemmas, is the best antidote.

In my next post, I will give you some practical suggestions on how to dissolve double binds. Till then, I hope that understanding their logical structure can keep you sane.

Fred Kofman

https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130506143905-36052017-is-your-job-driving-you-nuts

EDIT: I will update this blog entry when the second article is published by the author

Curing the Common Cold of Leadership: Poor Listening

Leaders today are beset by overwhelming demands – scheduled every 15 minutes through the day, with an incoming barrage of messages via phone, email, texts, and knocks on the door. Who has time to pay full attention to the person you’re with?

And yet it is in the moments of total attention that interpersonal chemistry occurs. This is when what we say has the most impact, when we can come up with the most fruitful ideas and collaborations, when negotiations and brainstorms are most productive.

And it all starts with listening, turning our attention fully to the person we are with. It’s not just leaders, of course. We’re all besieged by distractions, falling behind on our to-do lists, multi-tasking.

A classic study of doctors and patients asked people in the physician’s waiting room how many questions they had for their doctor. The average was around four. The number of questions they actually asked during that visit with their doctor turned out to be about one-and-a-half. The reason? Once the patient started talking, an average of 16 seconds or so the doctor would cut them off and take over the conversation.

That’s a good analog for what happens in offices everywhere. We’re too busy (we think) to take the time to listen fully.

This leads to the common cold of the workplace: Tuning out of what that person is saying before we fully understand – and telling them what we think too soon. Real listening means hearing the person out and then responding, in a mutual dialogue.

So there you have a bad habit to replace – poor listening – and a positive alternative to practice instead.

People are notoriously poor at changing habits. Neuroscience findings make clear why: habits operate from the basal ganglia, in the unconscious part of the mind. They are automatic and most often invisible, even as they drive what we do.

This arrangement works well, for the most part. The basal ganglia’s repertoire of unconscious habits includes everything from how to operate your smartphone (once you’ve mastered the details) to how to brush your teeth. We don’t want to have to think about these routines – and our brain doesn’t want to waste on them the mental energy that would take.

But when it comes to our unhelpful habits, that arrangement creates a barrier to changing them for the better. We don’t notice them, and so have no control. We need to become consciously aware of the habit, which transfers control to the brain’s executive centers in the prefrontal area. This offers us a choice we did not have before.

The key is being mindful of those moments in your day when you have a naturally occurring opportunity to practice good listening. Most often those moments go by unnoticed and we launch into our old, bad habits.

Once you notice the moment is here, there’s another task for mindfulness: to remind you of the better habit. In this case, you would intentionally put aside what you’re doing, ignore your phone and email, stop your own train of thought – and pay full attention to the person in front of you.

Mindfulness is the secret ingredient in successful habit change. There are several resources to help you mindfully shift patterns:

- Mirabai Bush, a key contributor to Google’s Search Inside Yourself course, developed a new CD called Working with Mindfulness. It includes a guided exercise on how to be a more mindful listener.

- Tara Bennett-Goleman’s new book, Mind Whispering: A New Map to Freedom from Self-Defeating Emotional Habit, combines principles and practices from mindfulness and Buddhist psychology, the neuroscience of habit change, and cognitive therapy to offer a new lens on repatterning our emotional habits.

- Clear communication – and good listening skills – is key for managing virtual teams and connecting with long-distance clients. The CD Socially Intelligent Computing by professor and Internet theorist, Clay Shirky, offers ways to apply social intelligence for group interactions online.

Daniel Goleman

https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130502140433-117825785-curing-the-common-cold-of-leadership-poor-listening

Succeed Now and in Any Economy: The 7 Forces of Business Mastery - Tony Robbins

While these are challenging times, they are also times of opportunity. In fact, the best companies have always excelled in the most difficult eras. More than half of the Fortune 500 were birthed in an “economic winter”—a recession or a depression. Companies like Disney, Apple, Exxon, Microsoft and FedEx were launched when the rest of the business world was licking its wounds.

If you can learn, as they did, not only to become more efficient, but to also optimize sales in this environment, you’ll be able to dominate in any economy. Whether you’re an army of one or a multi-billion dollar corporation, there are principles and strategies that you must understand and master to take your business to the next level. The 7 Forces of Business Mastery are about creating a system that improves your business by empowering you with the skills and tactics you need to gain an invincible advantage—in any environment.

1. An Effective Business Map

The only true competitive advantage in today’s changing market is not just having a business plan, but also a business map that can take you from where you are to where you want to be in the shortest amount of time.

2. Constant & Strategic Innovation

As a leader in your industry, you have to strategically innovate. You must be constantly looking for ways to create something more, new or better than what currently exists. Consumers are no longer impressed with any one new feature or service for very long—they expect a constant evolution of improvement or they will go elsewhere.

3. World-Class Marketing

Have you ever seen a business that has inferior quality products or services, and yet they dominated the market? It’s because the business knows who its customers are, what they want and need, and how to tell the business story in a way that compels prospective customers to buy.

4. Sales Mastery Systems

Marketing makes people want to do business with you, but sales is what you get paid for. You must create multiple channels to capture, convert and close sales.

5. Financial & Legal Analysis

Do you know where your company is spending its money? It’s easy to lose sight of the key measurements that can predict our progress or demise. Being able to measure where your
business is, where it’s going, and being able to see the blind spots that could get you into trouble are factors that are paramount for any business.

6. Optimization

Sometimes, the biggest growth opportunities don’t come from new initiatives, but rather from taking the core processes the business is already doing and executing them more effectively. A small incremental improvement made in a few key areas can result in geometric growth to the business as a whole.

7. Raving Fan Customers

You must understand, anticipate and consistently fulfill the deepest needs of your clients. The more value you are able to add to your customer, the more you’ll dominate the marketplace.

https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130307230225-101706366-succeed-now-and-in-any-economy-the-7-forces-of-business-mastery?_mSplash=1&rs=false

Does Appreciation Make People Uncomfortable?

Here is an interesting blog post by  Dr. Raymond Jewell that clearly illustrates the Power of Gratitude.

I recently met with a person who I sent a Gratitude greeting card to, and she said to me, " I want to share something with you, the card you sent made me uncomfortable." My comment to her was "I am sorry that it made you uncomfortable, that was not the intention." She was much older than I and she said "if I didn't know you I would have thought you were trying to pick me up."

I said to her, "The intention is to send gratitude and appreciation to people who are not expecting it. But sending out appreciation and gratitude to people is counter intuitive to our culture and sometimes it might make people uncomfortable. We are always expecting something in return from people so Giving to Give is many times a foreign thought. "

She said " Now that I know why you sent it, I will be open to when you do it again." WOW! She is expecting me to send more Gratitude cards to her. Amazing how that changed her way of looking at what I did. Feeling the power of Gratitude is something that everyone in the world should experience. YOU can experience it for yourselves by simply clicking on the video to right of this article. Go ahead and see for your self!

Gratitude and Appreciation to you,
Dr. Raymond Jewell

http://showgratitudechallenge.com/article/does-appreciation-make-people-uncomfortable?highview&goback=.mid_I488962029*417_*1.gmp_4621839

Are You A Leader Who Can Be Led?

The other day I was having a conversation with a friend and we began to discuss the danger of being a leader who cannot be easily led.  I have continued to ponder this.

What does this leader look like?  What is at risk?  What is their legacy?

My observation is that this is a trait that can go largely unnoticed-until someone loses their leadership position.  In other words, as long as a leader is climbing the ladder and being lauded for their performance they can appear to be a pretty benevolent, well functioning leader.  But once they lose their title to someone better or because of lethargy, the cracks begin to show.  They can become really stubborn and defensive.  They can become the toxic team member of the next group they are not leading.

The leader who cannot be led is a leader who is focused solely on self.

 

The question a leader must constantly ask is, “Why do I lead?”

Do I lead primarily for the sake of others or mainly for myself?  I’m pretty sure that a leader focused solely on self will eventually lack compassion for those they lead, will constantly be creating their own agendas without regard for the organization, and will only raise up more leaders like themselves.

The prophet Zechariah in the Bible reveals some characteristics of these types of leaders.  In Zechariah 7:11 we read that there are three things these leaders readily exhibit: they refuse to pay attention, they turn a stubborn shoulder, and they stop their ears.  At first glance these terms may not seem to carry much meaning-but in context they are quite weighty.  The prophet was referring to the religious leaders of Israel before the exile.

To “refuse to pay attention” meant that these religious leaders had lost their concentration on God above them and lost their focus of observant care for those beneath them.

To “turn a stubborn shoulder” was an agricultural image.  It’s the picture of a pair of oxen being used to plow a field-but one of them “turns the shoulder” not willing to be under the harness of the master.  An ox which refuses to be under the harness is of little benefit to the farmer.  Literally they cannot be led for the purpose in which they had been employed.

To “stop their ears” meant that these religious leaders could no longer hear the warning cries of where they were headed as a result of their self centeredness.  They were moving down their own path regardless of the consequences and could not be stopped.  I think this has implications for all of us, whether we are leading spiritual entities or secular ones.

The leader who can be led will exhibit the opposite of these traits.

They do pay close attention to those above them and those they lead.  They willingly put their shoulder to the harness for a greater purpose.  And they listen, and even invite, the input of others who might be in a position to tell them where they may be off track.

Read all of Zechariah 7 for a fuller, more complete picture of what this type of leader looks like.

Let’s call these leaders “7-11 Leaders” and let’s make a commitment to not be one. Lead well!

http://garyrunn.com/2011/01/20/are-you-a-leader-who-can-be-led/