I’ve never watched American Idol, Survivor or Oprah, but I love the CSIs (not Miami), NCIS (both) and especially Bones. The main character is a forensic anthropologist and one of her lines really resonated with me.
Anthropology tells us that the Alpha male is the one with the crown, the most shiny baubles, the fanciest plumage, but I learned that the real alpha male is often in the shadows because he is busy shining the light on others.
I think that applies to leaders, whether male or female.
It does not apply to those who lurk in the shadows manipulating others to do their bidding.
So when you are deciding whom to follow, who’s vision to trust, skip the shiny baubles and silken words and look to see who keeps turning the spotlight on others.
Do you use stories automatically in discussions and conversations? I do and have for years.
Brain research has proven that stories get your point across better and it is remembered longer.
Many cognitive scientists believe stories are so accessible because they’re the way we make sense of the human world. … Stories grab our attention because there is nothing of more interest to us than the actions of other people.
While people are often the bane of managers, their growth, triumphs and ah-ha! moments, small and large, provide much of the joy found in performing a management role well and stories are one way to increase the joy.
Stories increase the joy because they boost management success; simple enough.
How do you know which story to tell?
By taking the time to know your audience and choosing a story that will resonate with them—even if you have to take a little creative license.
For example, if your audience is comprised of mostly twenty-somethings and the main character in your story is sixty-something they may focus on the age and dismiss the important part. So update the story with slight changes that makes it feel more relevant.
Of course, if their eyes glaze over during the telling you can be pretty sure you chose the wrong story. Rather than continue to the bitter end, break it off and come back to the subject from a different point and at a different time.
How do you know if the story worked?
The same way you know if any of your efforts work—watch the results.
Eleven thousand business books are published every year. Amazon currently lists more than 60 thousand books on leadership alone. There are also magazines, web sites, e-books, audiobooks, podcasts, and blogs. They all offer ideas on what to do. (Thanks to Wally Bock for the great stats.)
Much of what is written is anecdotal.
Much of what is written is more for self-aggrandizement as pointed out in this post by Jim Stroup.
And too much is garbage, pure and simple.
What it all has in common is the idea that if you do what the author did, or says to do, then you will become a leader whatever the situation, circumstances or your experience.
Obviously, this is poppycock. Nobody would even think of suggesting this kind of ‘do it my way and succeed’ approach to an athlete or entertainer, so why think that leadership, or managing, for the matter, is any different?
Little of what’s out there involves the rigorous kind of research that forms the basis of most subjects.
According to professor Rakesh Khurana “If we look at the leading research universities and at the business schools within them, the topic of leadership has been actually given fairly short shrift. … What we tried to incorporate in the Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice is how each different perspective illuminates key elements such as similarities and differences in leadership across task, culture, and identity.
Khurana also says that “Leadership just wasn’t tractable by large databases.” No surprise there, much of what involves human MAP isn’t.
But it was this comment that resonated loudest with me.
“There is no single “best” style of leadership nor one set of attributes in all situations.”
In conjunction with the effort to increase serious research, HBR is running a blog for just six weeks called Imagining the Future of Leadership. The articles are, in general, excellent and the comments interesting. Check it out and add your own thoughts.
I don’t believe that Harvard is the last word, but it is encouraging that a serious and respected institution agrees that the subject is complex, doesn’t fit neatly into a specific field and sees the need for much more than is currently available.
If you were considering purchasing stock in a large corporation or a large bequest to a major non-profit and read the following comments about the CEO from people with firsthand knowledge of him would you buy the stock or donate the money?
He was never interested in bureaucratic stuff because he did not want to work as a manager.
He would be the first to concede he was much more interested in the life of the mind than the nuts and bolts of administrative work.
Last year when I wrote that bad managers didn’t make good leaders Mike Chitty responded, “I think you can lead if you are lousy manager. You just need good managers to cover your back. Teamwork you see.”
I disagreed then and I haven’t seen any reason to change my opinion—in fact, just the opposite. Right now the largest leader vs. manager mess is playing out on a global stage.
In a commenttwo years agoNick McCormick said, “Leadership and management are very tightly intertwined. Ignoring characteristics of one is done at the expense of the other.”
According to a NY Times article, The church said the decision to allow the priest to resume his duties in 1980 was made solely by Cardinal Ratzinger’s top aide at the time, but church officials also said the future pope was sent a memo about the reassignment.
Obviously, leaders focus on visions and managers read memos.
The Catholic Church is the largest and probably the richest multinational in the world, so there are many business lessons to be learned from what is going on.
The two most obvious that I’ve noticed are
protect the brand no matter what, and, more recently,
The first Monday of the month is the signal for another Leadership Development Carnival, but don’t be fooled, it covers management and other associated topics. It is hosted this month by Sharlyn Lauby at HR Bartender and written by some of the most talented folks in the blogsphere.
It’s an extensive selection, enough to keep you going all month.
In putting together today’s carnival, I thought it might be fun to ask how long people have been blogging – their blogging “anniversary” if you will. It was interesting to hear their answers. On one hand, blogging has been around for a long time. Dave Winer, author of Scripting News, has one of the oldest weblogs and it was established in 1997. But notice the number of posts from bloggers who have been writing two years or less. It’s very cool to see engagement from people who have been blogging for years along with the excitement of people who have been blogging for months.
10+ YearsEven if you’re not a woman or managing a non-profit, there are some classic management tips in Wild Woman Fundraising’s post Advanced Fundraising: Managing Others.
Over at Ep!c Living blog, Eric Pennington says It’s Almost Never About You and describes the dangers of making clients second and the importance of leaving “self” behind.
Miki Saxon at MAPping Company Success explains in her post, Leadership’s Future: To Hire and Hold (Millennials), that if you want a happy workforce, you need to provide the same things that make for a happy family.
At Joe and Wanda on Management, we learn the three most important words in business and how to create and environment of mutual support in the post, Checking Six.
Persistence pays! is the message by Leader Business blog. Author Karl Marlantes endeavored for 32 years to get his book published. Blogger Tom Magness asks us how hard we are willing to work toward achieving our goals.
Instead of squeezing more stuff into the day, the Monevator shares with us a new killer method for better time management in the post, Personal Time Management for Fun and Profit.
Music plays a critical role in jumping folk’s spirits. Check out EzineArticles.com’s Coping with Colleague’s Stress at Work to find out how background music can increase workplace productivity.
The very dapper host of HR Happy Hour, Steve Boese, shares with us how the best leaders are not afraid to coach and mentor their top performers in The Wisdom of Jeff Van Gundy – Part II. If you didn’t catch Part I of this post, you can check it out here.
The i4cp blog suggests succession planning is not just a flawed term but a flawed paradigm. They recommend to organizations Don’t Plan Succession, Manage It.
Michael Lee Stallard at E Pluribus Partners explains that task excellence along isn’t enough. The answer lies in The Science of Employee Engagement.
Forbes said good leaders recognize when patterns change. Anne Perschel over at Germane Insights Blog writes they were wrong. Good leaders SEE INTO the FUTURE.
In order to understand ourselves, we need to Explore Life Purpose. Mike King at Learn This takes us on the journey.
Bob Lieberman talks about organizational survival in his post The Need for Nerve.
Being a good project manager is an important skill for the future. Take a look at the Project Management Interview Questions and Answers to see if you have what it takes to manage the important task of making sure projects are on-time, within quality standards and at budget.
A key skill for any leader is public speaking. Matt Eventoff at Communications 3.0 coaches us on effective speeches in Clash of the Titans, Public Speaking and Chris Christie. Good tips for anyone who presents information.
1 Year
Jennifer V. Miller of The People Equation cautions organizations about encouraging “fearlessness”. See how leaders can stay on the “light side” of the force in her post the Boundaries of Fearlessness.
Over at The Bloom Blog, Lisa Ann Edwards explains leadership in terms such as Gemstones and Spark and shares wonderful stories of people who possess those qualities.
Mike Henry at Lead Change Group reminds us that our friends and the people we associate with set the boundaries of our future. He suggests socializing with high-caliber leaders to become one in his post, Your Friends and Your Future.
Confronting someone is never a favorite task, but sometimes necessary to manage performance. The Thriving Small Business blog shows us How to Confront Negative Employee Behaviors.
David Burkus from The Leader Lab explains Situational Leadership theory and why you should care about it in the post Path-Goal Theory.
According to The SALT & Pepper Group, there are seven core leadership styles. In their series wrap up, titled The 8th Leader, they share a specific classification system of leadership.
Timeless?
Some of our contributors have either been blogging so long they’ve forgotten or not long enough to keep track. Regardless, their posts are worthy of a visit.
Leadership is one of those things that everybody talks about, lots of people write about and some do it. My preference is to focus on those who have performed as leaders.
Although leadership doesn’t always equate to being in the top position, the links today refer to positional leaders who do a superb job leading.
Let’s start with an interview with Kip Tindell, chief executive of the Container Store, who talks about the principles underlying the culture, communications, hiring execs and a very interesting concept called the size of your wake.
Most people’s wake is much, much, much larger than they can ever imagine. We all can’t imagine that we have as much impact on the people and the world around us as we really do.
Next is David Hauser, co-founder and CTO of Grasshopper, a virtual phone system specifically for entrepreneurs. Started when he was still in school it reached profitability quickly; like most entrepreneurs Hauser wears many hats, including the company’s culture.
When we started we did not clearly articulate the values at all and that was a big mistake and today we talk about it all the time.
If you read books on great companies, they usually leave out a dirty little secret. It doesn’t make for good public relations — like talking about how you “empower people” or how your “greatest assets” are your people. Both of these well-worn clichés are true. What is also true is that it’s hard to build a great company with the wrong people.
Instead of unhappy, I probably should have said disrespectful (to others, not me), incompetent, unreasonable, undependable, irresponsible, unproductive, dysfunctional (I did say that one), angry, whiny or mean — and beyond a manager’s ability to repair.
When I finally got a management position, I found out how hard it is to lead and manage people. The warm, fuzzy stuff is hard. The quantitative stuff is easy…
Saturday I recommended spending some of your valuable time on TED, so I thought I’d offer a sample of it that I really liked.
Derek Sivers received a standing ovation for his 3 minute talk on leadership using the video below.
Too often people over focus on the moving pictures, so be sure to pay full attention to what Sivers is saying in conjunction with what is happening in the video.
Because the words are so important you can read a transcript at Siver’s site (along with other good stuff). I hope you take a moment to do so.
I’m not backing down on my contention that leadership is for all, but I completely agree that everyone can’t be leaders simultaneously and that following is just as important, if not more so.
Leadership is over-glorified.
Yes it started with the shirtless guy, and he’ll get all the credit, but you saw what really happened:
It was the first follower that transformed a lone nut into a leader.
There is no movement without the first follower.
We’re told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective.
The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.
When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.
I’m not a sports fan so I rarely read sports articles, but this one from ESPN’s Mike Reiss caught my eye. Although he was talking about the Patriots, I believe it is applicable on a much wider stage.
Have we gone leadership crazy? …
In an instant, got-to-have-it-now society, the knee-jerk conclusion that the Patriots lacked leadership seemed to be one that many rallied around. … But to lay the season’s struggles on that is overlooking the more important issues: The Patriots need more playmakers, management needs to be sharper in identifying and keeping that talent, and coaches need to be better at cultivating, scheming, and communicating with players when their situations get sticky… Start there, then factor in the importance of better locker-room chemistry, and you’ll have a more accurate reflection of what went wrong in 2009 and what steps the club needs to take in 2010 to improve.
No matter where you look, business or politics, you’ll find that most commentary focuses on the lack of/need for better leadership, especially when it comes to Washington.
Just think what a difference if our national political scene included
more playmakers,
managers who were sharper identifying and keeping talent,
everybody better at cultivating and communicating, instead of scheming, and
better locker-room chemistry.
Notice that the most important is listed last.
What a difference it would make in their ability to find viable solutions, instead of ideological posturing.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
I’ve never watched American Idol, Survivor or Oprah, but I love the CSIs (not Miami), NCIS (both) and especially Bones. The main character is a forensic anthropologist and one of her lines really resonated with me.
Do you use stories automatically in discussions and conversations? I do and have for years.
That lack is starting to be 
The leader in question is Pope Benedict and the 
In putting together today’s carnival, I thought it might be fun to ask how long people have been blogging – their blogging “anniversary” if you will. It was interesting to hear their answers. On one hand, blogging has been around for a long time. 
Is there someone in your world who you consider your leader?
I’m not a sports fan so I rarely read sports articles, but this one from 
