All the notes were taken directly from the source mentioned!
– – –
At the higher levels of organizational life, all the leading players are technically skilled. They’re all smart. They’re all up to date on the technical aspects of their job.
For example, we assume our doctor knows medicine, so we judge him on “bedside manner” issues—how he tolerates our questions, how he delivers bad news, even how he apologizes for keeping us cooling our heels too long in his waiting room. None of this is taught in medical school.
How you come across to others
What’s wrong is that they have no idea how their behavior is coming across to the people who matter (their bosses, colleagues, subordinates, customers, and clients)
They think they have all the answers, but others see it as arrogance. They think they’re contributing to a situation with helpful comments, but others see it as butting in. They think they’re delegating effectively, but others see it as shirking responsibilities. They think they’re holding their tongue, but others see it as unresponsiveness. They think they’re letting people think for themselves, but others see it as ignoring them.
Conditioning by
(a) their past performance,
(b) their ability to influence their success (rather than just being lucky), (c) their optimistic belief that their success will continue in the future, and (d) their sense of control over their own destiny
Mental Distortions
• Overestimate our contribution to a project
• Take credit, partial or complete, for successes that truly belong to others • Have an elevated opinion of our professional skills and our standing among our peers
• Conveniently ignore the costly failures and time-consuming dead-ends we have created
• Exaggerate our projects’ impact on net profits because we discount the real and hidden costs built into them (the costs are someone else’s problems; the success is ours)
80 to 85 percent of them will rate themselves in the top 20 percent of their peer group—and 70 percent will rate themselves in the top 10 percent.
They see success for themselves and others as largely a function of people’s motivation and ability—not luck, random chance, or external factors. success is “earned” through an individual’s motivation and ability
Overcommitment can be as serious an obstacle to change as believing that you don’t need fixing or that your flaws are part of the reason you’re successful.
Changing Behavior
I can only help them get better at what they choose to change
“I behave this way, and I achieve results. Therefore, I must be achieving results because I behave this way.”
I’m talking about the difference between success that happens because of our behavior and the success that comes in spite of our behavior.
People will do something—including changing their behavior—only if it can be demonstrated that doing so is in their own best interests as defined by their own values.
If you know what matters to you, it’s easier to commit to change. If you can’t identify what matters to you, you won’t know when it’s being threatened.
Traps
It’s why we will claw and scratch for a raise (money), for a promotion (power), for a bigger title and office (status). It’s why so many of us have a burning need to be liked by everyone (popularity)
“We spend a lot of time teaching leaders what to do. We don’t spend enough time teaching leaders what to stop.” Peter Drucker
There is no system for honoring the avoidance of a bad decision or the cessation of bad behavior. Start your “To Stop” list.
People can handle one change in their interpersonal actions at a time.
Simpler way to achieve the goal of “being nicer” -> “stop being a jerk”
Bad Habits
- Winning too much: The need to win at all costs and in all situations—when it matters, when it doesn’t, and when it’s totally beside the point.
– When the issue is trivial, not worth our time and energy, we want to win. Ask yourself, “Am I achieving a task—and forgetting my organization’s mission?” Are you making money to support your family—and forgetting the family that you are trying to support? Are you on time to deliver a sermon to your staff—and forgetting to practice what you’re preaching? After all this effort and display of professional prowess, you don’t want to find yourself at a dead end, asking, “What have I done?”
- Adding too much value: The overwhelming desire to add our two cents to every discussion:
– The problem is, you may have improved the content of my idea by 5 percent, but you’ve reduced my commitment to executing it by 50 percent, because you’ve taken away my ownership of the idea.
– the higher up you go in the organization, the more you need to make other people winners and not make it about winning yourself. - Passing judgment: The need to rate others and impose our standards on them. Specifically when we ask people to voice their opinions about us.
– net result is that grading people’s answers—rather than just accepting them without comment makes people hesitant and defensive.
– before you speak, take a breath and ask yourself if what you’re about to say “is worth it?”
– No matter what you privately think of the suggestion, you must keep your thoughts to yourself, hear the person out, and say, “Thank you.”, “Thanks, I hadn’t considered that.” Or, “Thanks. You’ve given me something to think about.”
– people will gradually begin to see you as a much more agreeable person, even when you are not in fact agreeing with them. - Making destructive comments: The needless sarcasms and cutting remarks that we think make us sound sharp and witty.
– what happens to the quality of teamwork and cooperation when we stab our coworkers in the back in front of other people?
– The question is not, “Is it true?” but rather, “Is it worth it?”
– Will this comment help our customers? Will this comment help our company? Will this comment help the person I’m talking to? Will this comment help the person I’m talking about? - Starting with “No,” “But,” or “However”: The overuse of these negative qualifiers
- Telling the world how smart we are: The need to show people we’re smarter than they think we are.
We all have an overwhelming need to display and share what we know.
The problem here is not that we’re merely boasting about how much we know. We’re insulting the other person. What we are really saying is, “You really didn’t need to waste my time with that information. You think it’s an insight that I haven’t heard before. But I agree with you and totally understand what you are saying. You mistake me, the ever so wise and lovely me, for someone who needs to hear what you are saying right now. I am not that person. You are confused. You have no idea how smart I am.”
- Speaking when angry: Using emotional volatility as a management tool.
Once you get a reputation for emotional volatility, you are branded for life. It’s my job to show clients that anger is rarely someone else’s fault. It’s a flaw that’s solely our own.
A sage would say that the person making us so angry cannot help who he is. Getting mad at him for being who he is makes as much sense as getting mad at our desk for being a desk. If we had his parents, his genes, and his background, we would be him…. The lesson is simple. There is never anyone in the other boat. When we are angry, we are screaming at an empty vessel.
- Negativity, or “Let me explain why that won’t work”: The need to share our negative thoughts even when we weren’t asked.
what we say is a great indicator of what we’re doing to turn people off.
- Withholding information: The refusal to share information in order to maintain an advantage over others.
You may think you’re gaining an edge and consolidating power, but you’re actually breeding mistrust.
- Failing to give proper recognition: The inability to praise and reward.
People feel forgotten, ignored, pushed to the side. And they resent you for it.
First her made a list of all of the important groups of people in his life.
Then he wrote down the names of every important person in each group.
Third, Twice a week, on Wednesday morning and Friday afternoon, he would review the list of names and ask himself, “Did someone on this page do something that I should recognize?” - Claiming credit that we don’t deserve: The most annoying way to overestimate our contribution to any success.
Note the aggressive use of the first person singular pronoun. It’s a hallmark of successful people; they become great achievers because of their intense focus on themselves. Their career, their performance, their progress, their needs. But there’s a difference between being an achiever and a leader. Successful people become great leaders when they learn to shift the focus from themselves to others.
Once you’ve assembled the list, take apart each episode and ask yourself if it’s in any way possible that someone else might deserve the credit for “your” achievement.
If any of the other people involved in your episodes were looking at the situation, would they accord you as much credit as you are claiming for yourself? Or would they hand it out to someone else, perhaps even themselves?
- Making excuses: The need to reposition our annoying behavior as a permanent fixture so people excuse us for it.
When you hear yourself saying, “I’m sorry I’m late but the traffic was murder,” stop talking at the word “sorry.”
- Clinging to the past: The need to deflect blame away from ourselves and onto events and people from our past; a subset of blaming everyone else.
Our personal stereotyping may have its origins in stories that have been repeated for years—often from as far back as childhood. These stories may have no basis in fact. But they imprint themselves in our brains, and establish low expectations that become self-fulfilling prophecies.
The next time you hear yourself saying, “I’m just no good at . . . ,” ask yourself, “Why not?”
- Playing favorites: Failing to see that we are treating someone unfairly.
We can’t see in ourselves what we can see so clearly in others. Even though we may be able to deny our problems to ourselves, they may be very obvious to the people who are observing us.
You’re encouraging behavior that serves you, but not necessarily the best interests of the company. If everyone is fawning over the boss, who’s getting work done?
Leaders can stop encouraging this behavior by first admitting that we all have a tendency to favor those who favor us, even if we don’t mean to.
First, how much do they like me? (I know you can’t be sure. What matters is how much you think they like you. Effective suckups are good actors. That’s what fawning is: acting.)
Second, what is their contribution to the company and its customers? (In other words, are they A players, B, C, or worse?)
Third, how much positive personal recognition do I give them? - Refusing to express regret: The inability to take responsibility for our actions, admit we’re wrong, or recognize how our actions affect others.
“I can’t change the past. All I can say is I’m sorry for what I did wrong. I’m sorry it hurt you. There’s no excuse for it and I will try to do better in the future. I would like you to give me any ideas about how I can improve.”
Without the apology there is no recognition that mistakes have been made, there is no announcement to the world of the intention to change, and most important there is no emotional contract between you and the people you care about.
Don’t explain it. Don’t complicate it. Don’t qualify it. You only risk saying something that will dilute it.
- Not listening: The most passive-aggressive form of disrespect for colleagues.
You can’t listen if you’re talking or composing what we’re going to say next while the other person is still talking.
When you find yourself mentally or literally drumming your fingers while someone else is talking, stop the drumming. Stop demonstrating impatience when listening to someone.
Treat every piece of advice as a gift or a compliment and simply say, “Thank you.” No one expects you to act on every piece of advice. If you learn to listen—and act on the advice that makes sense—the people around you may be thrilled.
Asking “Is it worth it?” forces you to consider what the other person will feel after hearing your response. Otherwise, you’re orchestrating a comment that may annoy them, either because it misses the point, adds meaningless value to the discussion, or worst of all, injects a destructive tone into the mix. Rather that “What’s in it for me?” one step further to ask, “What’s in it for him?”
“Is it worth it?” engages you in thinking beyond the discussion to consider (a) how the other person regards you, (b) what that person will do afterwards, and (c) how that person will behave the next time you talk.
- Failing to express gratitude: The most basic form of bad manners.
What that means is when somebody makes a suggestion or gives you ideas, you’re either going to learn more or learn nothing. But you’re not going to learn less.
“Thank you. I had never considered that.” It’s almost irrelevant whether the boss gives the idea any further thought. The critical issue is that saying “thank you” keeps people talking to you. Failing to say “thank you” shuts them down.
- Punishing the messenger: The misguided need to attack the innocent who are usually only trying to help us.
If your goal is to stop people from giving you input—of all kinds—perfect your reputation for shooting the messenger.
- Passing the buck: The need to blame everyone but ourselves.
A leader who cannot shoulder the blame is not someone we will follow blindly into battle.
- An excessive need to be “me”: Exalting our faults as virtues simply because they’re who we are.
It’s a subtle art because, in effect, they are stereotyping themselves—as impatient, or hot-tempered, or disorganized—and using that stereotype to excuse otherwise inexcusable behavior.
Each of us has a pile of behavior which we define as “me.” It’s the chronic behavior, both positive and negative, that we think of as our inalterable essence.
Keep this in mind when you find yourself resisting change because you’re clinging to a false—or pointless—notion of “me.” It’s not about you. It’s about what other people think of you.
Bad habits can be cured by
(a) pointing them out,
(b) showing the havoc they cause among the people surrounding us, and
(c) demonstrating that with a slight behavioral tweak we can achieve a much more appealing effect.
Tom Wolfe has a theory he calls information compulsion. He says that people have an overwhelming need to tell you something that you don’t know, even when it’s not in their best interest.
When we add value, or pass judgment, or make destructive comments, or announce that we “already knew that,” or explain “why that won’t work” we are compulsively sharing information.
Information and emotion. We either share them or withhold them.
When sharing information or emotion, we have to ask is this appropriate and how much should I convey?
360-degree Feedback
Successful people in dominant positions don’t want to hear it (no matter what they say, bosses prefer praise to criticism) and that their subordinates rarely want to give it (criticizing the boss, no matter how ardently he or she tells you to “bring it on,” is rarely a great career move).
Feedback is very useful for telling us “where we are.”
What is my client doing right, what does my client need to change, and how my (already successful) client can get even better!
“I’m going to be working with my client for the next year or so. I don’t get paid if he doesn’t get better. ‘Better’ is not defined by me. It’s not defined by my client. ‘Better’ is defined by you and the other coworkers who will be involved in this process.”
The raters usually respond well to that. People like hearing that they are the customer and they have the power to determine if I get paid.
The Four Commitments when asking for feedback from coworkers and family of your client
1. Let go of the past.
“Forgiveness means letting go of the hope for a better past!”
2. Tell the truth.
3. Be supportive and helpful—not cynical or negative.
4. Pick something to improve yourself—so everyone is focused more on “improving” than “judging.”
Johari Window. It divides our self-awareness into four parts, based on what is known and unknown about us to other people and what is known and unknown about us to ourselves.
This is the simple wisdom of the Johari Window: What is unknown to us may be well-known to others. We can learn from that.
Three forms: Solicited, unsolicited, and observation.
Each of them works well, but not for everyone.
Solicited
Best solicited feedback is confidential feedback. It’s good because nobody gets embarrassed or defensive.
Pure unadulterated issue-free feedback that makes change possible has to:
(a) solicit advice rather than criticism,
(b) be directed towards the future rather than obsessed with the negative past, and
(c) be couched in a way that suggests you will act on it; that in fact you are trying to do better.
Where the boss is asking the bossed, “What do you think of me?” In a power relationship you have all kinds of issues that influence the answer—because the answer has consequences. You need an unbiased third party
In soliciting feedback for yourself, the only question that works—the only one!—must be phrased like this: “How can I do better?”“What can I do to be a better partner at home?” or, “What can I do to be a better colleague at work?” or, “What can I do to be a better leader of this group?”
Does the executive in question:
• Clearly communicate a vision.
• Treat people with respect.
• Solicit contrary opinions.
• Encourage other people’s ideas.
• Listen to other people in meetings.
Observation
Every day, people are giving us feedback, of a sort, with their eye contact, their body language, their response time.
1. Make a list of people’s casual remarks about you.
- When they’re in a team and starting to get bored, I ask them to pretend they’re watching a movie with the sound off. They can’t hear what anyone is saying. It’s an exercise in sensitizing themselves to their colleagues’ behavior. They must ask themselves what’s going on around them.
Turn the sound off and observe how people physically deal with you. Do they lean toward you or away? Do they listen when you have the floor or are they drumming their fingers waiting for you to finish? Are they trying to impress you or are they barely aware of your presence?
A variation on this drill is making sure you are the earliest person to arrive at a group meeting. Turn the sound off and observe how people respond to you as they enter. What they do is a clue about what they think of you.
When you make a list of people’s comments about you and rank them as negative or positive, you’re tuning in the world with two new weapons: Judgment and purpose.
When you turn off the sound, you’re increasing your sensitivity to others by counterintuitively eliminating the precious sense of hearing.
When you try the sentence completion technique, you’re using retrograde analysis—that is, seeing the end result and then identifiying the skill you’ll need to achieve it.
When you challenge the accuracy of your self-aggrandizing remarks, you’re flipping your world upside down—and seeing that you’re no different from anyone else.
Finally, when you check out how your behavior is working at home, you realize not only what you need to change but why it matters so much.
The logic behind these drills is simple: If you can see your world in a new way, perhaps you can see yourself anew as well.
After Receiving Feedback
Apologizing, advertising, listening, thanking, and following up
Telling the World, or Advertising: It’s not enough to tell everyone that you want to get better; you have to declare exactly in what area you plan to change. Ask everyone for ideas to help you get better. You have to drill it into people repeatedly, until they’ve internalized the concept.
Here’s how to start acting like your own press secretary. • Treat every day as if it were a press conference during which your colleagues are judging you, waiting to see you trip up. That mindset, where you know people are watching you closely, will boost your self-awareness just enough to remind you to stay on high alert.
• Behave as if every day is an opportunity to hit home your message—to remind people that you’re trying really hard. Every day that you fail to do so is a day that you lose a step or two. You’re backsliding on your promise to fix yourself.
• Treat every day as a chance to take on all challengers. There will be people who, privately or overtly, don’t want you to succeed. So shed the naiveté and be a little paranoid. If you’re alert to those who want you to fail, you’ll know how to handle them. • Think of the process as an election campaign. After all, you don’t elect yourself to the position of “new improved you.” Your colleagues do. They’re your constituency. Without their votes, you can never establish that you’ve changed.
• Think of the process in terms of weeks and months, not just day to day. The best press secretaries are adept at putting out the daily fires, but they’re also focused on a long-term agenda.
Try to employ the tiny tactics we’ve outlined here
• Listen. • Don’t interrupt. • Don’t finish the other person’s sentences. • Don’t say “I knew that.” • Don’t even agree with the other person (even if he praises you, just say, “Thank you”). • Don’t use the words “no,” “but,” and “however.” • Don’t be distracted. Don’t let your eyes or attention wander elsewhere while the other person is talking. • Maintain your end of the dialogue by asking intelligent questions that (a) show you’re paying attention, (b) move the conversation forward, and (c) require the other person to talk (while you listen). • Eliminate any striving to impress the other person with how smart or funny you are. Your only aim is to let the other person feel that he or she is accomplishing that.
Who are the people most responsible for your success? Write down the first 25 names that come to mind. Ask yourself, “Have I ever told them how grateful I am for their help?” Writing a thank you note forces you to confront the humbling fact that you have not achieved your success alone. You had help along the way.
Follow Up
Peter Drucker prediction that “the leader of the future will be a person who knows how to ask.”
“Last month I told you that I would try to get better at being more inclusive. You gave me some ideas and I would like to know if you think I have effectively put them into practice.”
Follow-up is how you measure your progress. Follow-up is how we remind people that we’re making an effort to change, and that they are helping us. Follow-up is how our efforts eventually get imprinted on our colleagues’ minds. Follow-up is how we erase our coworkers’ skepticism that we can change. Follow-up is how we acknowledge to ourselves and others that getting better is an ongoing process, not a temporary religious conversion.
Becoming a better leader (or a better person) is a process, not an event. The key, however, is that it involves another person besides me.
Having an informal coach
A friendly sympathetic human being whom, on the one hand, I do not want to disappoint (that’s human nature) and who, on the other hand, provides constant encouragement and input—brings it more in line with the follow-up process I’ve been describing here.
Your coach should be interested in your life and have your best interests at heart. You don’t want someone yawning through your checklist. Your coach can only ask the prescribed questions; he or she cannot judge your answers.
Everything Together
You’ve identified the interpersonal habit that’s holding you back. You’ve apologized for whatever errant behavior has annoyed the people who matter to you at work or at home. You’ve said, “I’m sorry. I’ll try to do better.” And they’ve accepted that. You’ve continued to advertise your intention to change your ways. You’ve remained in steady contact with the people who matter, regularly reminding them that you’re trying to do better. You do this by bringing up your objectives and asking point-blank, “How am I doing?” You have also mastered the essential skills of listening and thanking. You can now listen to people’s answers to your questions without judging, interrupting, disputing, or denying them. You do this by keeping your mouth shut except to say, “Thank you.” You’ve also learned how to be more diligent about follow-up, seeing the process as part of an ongoing, never-ending advertising campaign to (a) find out from others if you are, in fact, getting better and (b) remind people that you’re still trying, still trying.
Feedforward
Ask for two ideas; listen; say thank you.
Until you get everyone who is affected by your behavior on your side and working to help you change, you haven’t really begun to get better.
- Pick the one behavior that you would like to change which would make a significant, positive difference in your life.
- Describe this objective in a one-on-one dialogue with anyone you know.
Some of the truest advice can come from strangers. We are all human beings. We know what is true. And when a useful idea comes along, we don’t care who the source is. (If you think about it, a stranger—someone who has no past with you and who cannot possibly hold your past failings against you or, for that matter, even bring them up—may be your ideal feedforward “partner.”)
- Ask that person for two suggestions for the future that might help you achieve a positive change in your selected behavior
The only ground rule is that there can be no mention of the past. Everything is about the future.
Listen attentively to the suggestions. Take notes if you like. Your only ground rule: You are not allowed to judge, rate, or critique the suggestions in any way. You can’t even say something positive.
We can focus on hearing without having to worry about responding.
Sticking to the process
Rule 1. Be aware of how you treat feedback
You have to be careful with feedback. Conducted properly, feedback is not deceptive. It reveals what’s on people’s minds. But it can be misinterpeted (you see only what you want to see) or misread (you see something that isn’t there).
Feedback reveals a problem that’s one or two steps removed from anything that the individual is doing wrong. Be careful, then. You may be trying to fix something that isn’t broken, doesn’t need fixing, or can’t be fixed by you.
Rule 2. Pick the Right Thing to Change
Not every challenge needs to be addressed. Assuming that I have gotten an individual to commit to changing for the better and changing something, I often have a hard time convincing successful people that not everything needs improving. Maybe it’s our natural urge to take the path of least resistance, to start with an easy fix first. Maybe it’s just contrariness.
Rule 3. Don’t Hide from the Truth You Need to Hear
Rule 4. There Is No Ideal Behavior
Sometimes the desire for “perfect” can drive away “better.” No one is the best at everything. This isn’t a license for mediocrity. It’s a reality check. It’s your permission to deal in trade-offs and pick one thing to improve upon rather than everything.
“The list of what I don’t do could fill several dozen books. I can live with that, because I’ve chosen to try to be the best I can be in my admittedly narrow corner of the coaching fiefdom. If I’m shooting for the gold at this, I have to come to terms with the fact that I ain’t even stepping up to the starting blocks in everything else.”
Rule 5. If You Can Measure It, You Can Achieve It
Rule 6. Monetize the Result, Create a Solution
If you’re docked $10 for each incident of the bad habit you chose, you’ll soon feel the same pain you’ve been inflicting on others—and stop. When you actually have to pay for your mistakes, you notice them more acutely. You can monetize the punishment and end the problem. Or you can monetize the result and create a solution. Either way, it works.
Rule 7. The Best Time to Change Is Now
There is a good chance that tomorrow is going to be just as crazy as today. If you want to change anything about yourself, the best time to start is now. Ask yourself, “What am I willing to change now?”
Management Tips
Helping people be “right” is more productive than proving them “wrong.”
Writing a memo to staff on “How to Handle Me” is not only an admirable exercise in self-examination, but a surefire method for stimulating dialogue with the troops. But be careful. Your memo has to be brutally honest. Your employees have to believe it is accurate. And most important, they must believe it matters.
By all means, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But realize that it doesn’t apply in all instances in management. If you manage your people the way you’d want to be managed, you’re forgetting one thing: You’re not managing you.
Once you send out a message, you ask people the next day if they heard it. Then you ask if they understood it. Then a few days later, you ask if they did something about it. Believe me, if the first follow-up question doesn’t get their attention, the next one will, and so will the final one.
The prejudice against free agents takes many forms, but here are four that any of us can easily fall into.
1. I know what they want.
2. I know what they know.
The reason Peter Drucker said that the manager of the future will know how to ask rather than how to tell is because Drucker understood that knowledge workers would know more than any manager does.
3. I hate their selfishness.
4. I can always get someone else.
Are you responding to your employees with outdated biases? Or are you meeting the new free agent mindset on its own terms? In the context of this book, accepting the new terrain can make you a more successful boss—and quite possibly save your job. Your people are changing constantly and it’s right in front of your eyes. If you don’t change accordingly, you may as well be managing with your eyes wide shut.
Stop Trying to Coach People Who Shouldn’t Be Coached
Stop trying to change people who don’t think they have a problem.
Stop trying to help people who think everyone else is the problem.
Advice from the future
Imagine that you’re 95 years old and ready to die. Before taking your last breath, you’re given a great gift: The ability to travel back in time—the ability to talk to the person who is reading this page, the ability to help this person be a better professional and lead a better life. The 95-year-old you understands what was really important and what wasn’t, what mattered and what didn’t. What advice would this wise “old you” have for the “you” who is reading this page?
One recurring theme was to “reflect upon life, to find happiness and meaning now,” not next month or next year. The Great Western Disease lies in the phrase, I will be happy when . . . As in, I will be happy when I get that promotion, or I will be happy when I buy that house, or I will be happy when I get that money.
Global Leadership Inventory
Consider your own (or this person’s) effectiveness in the following areas. How satisfied are you with the way he or she (or you) . . .
Thinking Globally 1. Recognizes the impact of globalization on our business 2. Demonstrates the adaptability required to succeed in the global environment 3. Strives to gain the variety of experiences needed to conduct global business 4. Makes decisions that incorporate global considerations 5. Helps others understand the impact of globalization
Appreciating Diversity 6. Embraces the value of diversity in people (including culture, race, sex, or age) 7. Effectively motivates people from different cultures or backgrounds 8. Recognizes the value of diverse views and opinions 9. Helps others appreciate the value of diversity 10. Actively expands her/his knowledge of other cultures (through interactions, language study, travel, etc.)
Developing Technological Savvy 11. Strives to acquire the technological knowledge needed to succeed in tomorrow’s world 12. Successfully recruits people with needed technological expertise 13. Effectively manages the issue of technology to increase productivity
Building Partnerships 14. Treats coworkers as partners, not competitors 15. Unites his/her organization into an effective team 16. Builds effective partnerships across the company 17. Discourages destructive comments about other people or groups 18. Builds effective alliances with other organizations 19. Creates a network of relationships that help to get things done
Sharing Leadership 20. Willingly shares leadership with business partners 21. Defers to others when they have more expertise 22. Strives to arrive at an outcome with others (as opposed to for others) 23. Creates an environment where people focus on the larger good (avoids sub-optimization or “turfism”)
Creating a Shared Vision 24. Creates and communicates a clear vision for our organization 25. Effectively involves people in decision-making 26. Inspires people to commit to achieving the vision 27. Develops an effective strategy to achieve the vision 28. Clearly identifies priorities
Developing People 29. Consistently treats people with dignity 30. Asks people what they need to do their work better 31. Ensures that people receive the training they need to succeed 32. Provides effective coaching 33. Provides developmental feedback in a timely manner 34. Provides effective recognition for others’ achievements
Empowering People 35. Builds people’s confidence 36. Takes risks in letting others make decisions 37. Gives people the freedom they need to do their job well 38. Trusts people enough to let go (avoids micromanagement)
Achieving Personal Mastery 39. Deeply understands her/his own strengths and weaknesses 40. Invests in ongoing personal development 41. Involves people who do not have strengths that he/she does not possess 42. Demonstrates effective emotional responses in a variety of situations 43. Demonstrates self-confidence as a leader
Encouraging Constructive Dialogue 44. Asks people what he/she can do to improve 45. Genuinely listens to others 46. Accepts constructive feedback in a positive manner (avoids defensiveness) 47. Strives to understand the other person’s frame of reference 48. Encourages people to challenge the status quo
Demonstrates Integrity 49. Demonstrates honest, ethical behavior in all interactions 50. Ensures that the highest standards for ethical behavior are practiced throughout the organization 51. Avoids political or self-serving behavior 52. Courageously “stands up” for what she/he believes in 53. Is a role model for living our organization’s values (leads by example)
Leading Change 54. Sees change as an opportunity, not a problem 55. Challenges the system when change is needed 56. Thrives in ambiguous situations (demonstrates flexibility when needed) 57. Encourages creativity and innovation in others 58. Effectively translates creative ideas into business results
Anticipating Opportunities 59. Invests in learning about future trends 60. Effectively anticipates future opportunities 61. Inspires people to focus on future opportunities (not just present objectives) 62. Develops ideas to meet the needs of the new environment
Ensuring Customer Satisfaction 63. Inspires people to achieve high levels of customer satisfaction 64. Views business processes from the ultimate customer perspective (has an “end to end” perspective) 65. Regularly solicits input from customers 66. Consistently delivers on commitments to customers 67. Understands the competitive options available to her/his customers
Maintaining a Competitive Advantage 68. Communicates a positive, “can do” sense of urgency toward getting the job done 69. Holds people accountable for their results 70. Successfully eliminates waste and unneeded cost 71. Provides products/services that help our company have a clear competitive advantage 72. Achieves results that lead to long-term shareholder value
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