When I was getting ready to write this article, I wondered what the title should be. The nature of the article is one where I would be deeply disappointed if a “leader” were to have done something like this. Perhaps you can decide after you have read this, is this something that a leader would do? Is this something a manager would do?

Let me create the situation for you!

You are an excellent worker in your organization. You complete all your tasks ahead of time, you put in extra time to make sure the organization is meeting the needs of clients. You care about the employees in the organization and try to provide opportunities to recognize and reward employees to management. You are the type of employee that most organizations are looking for – a high performer.

The culture that you work in is one that I guess is best described as somewhat old school. People in positions of authority demand respect having placed themselves on a pedestal. Employees are a commodity rather than a valued contributor to the organization.

It is the start of a new fiscal year for your company and it is time for the annual performance bonus. You get called in to your manager’s office with little if any notice to discuss your performance bonus. There is little discussion about your accomplishments over the past year and your manager cuts to the chase and makes a statement, “I worked really hard to get you this!” A number of negative thoughts race through your mind as to what does this actually mean. Was my performance that bad that my manager had to fight to get me this bonus? All this time I had thought I was doing a good job. Then your manager makes the statement that you have done a great job all year and to keep up the good work.

What is your take away from this conversation? Do you know, other than in your own mind, how you have performed over the year? Does this send the message to you that you are being appreciated for what you bring to the organization? It is so important for us to know; “what to say, how to say it and when to say it.”

Do you have thoughts racing through your mind as do I, that perhaps it is now time to start a job hunting campaign?

As I tried to rationalize this situation I found this table which certainly speaks to the difference between a leader and a manager. In this particular case I would suggest that it truly is a manager that was dealing with this employee.

What do you want to be – a leader or a manager?

References:

1.       Leadership versus Management Chart – http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/articles/manager_leader.htm

You are sitting in front of the television where you live today and are attempting to watch your favourite show. That’s right, attempting as your mind keeps wandering to a conversation you had with some friends. That conversation was around what you wanted to do with your life? You were trying to plan the university classes that you would take and you were just not sure what to do or if you did make a decision, where it would take you.

As you continued to discuss the challenges that you are facing with your friends the topic of starting your own business came up. As you allowed your thoughts to wander on how awesome that would be to be your own boss, you also had some fear that perhaps you would not be successful. What then?

Perhaps I can be of some assistance! Becoming an entrepreneur and providing a solution/product to a business problem can be a huge adrenalin rush. The journey that you will go on is one that you will remember for the rest of your life. There will be good days and there will be bad days. There will be days where you are not sure where your money to survive is going to come from. Through all of this the true spirit of an entrepreneur will emerge. It is that spirit that will make you the best that you can be.

You must first ask yourself while you are sitting on the couch in front of the television, do I have the “passion” to be successful and the passion for life. If you are passionate then let the journey begin.  You then need to decide am I a positive or negative person. If you are a negative person then you need to read no further. Positive people will see challenges as opportunities. If you are a negative person how many people are going to want to invest in your product or solution or work with you? You need to stay focused and stay positive. Remember we can turn a good dream into a nightmare very quickly!

You need to make sure that you are adaptable. All aspects of the entrepreneurial journey require that you are adaptable – consistently looking for ways to improve what you are doing and responding to your client’s needs and their feedback. Without them, you will not be successful.

Now is the time to demonstrate your leadership skills. You need to show your enthusiasm, that you are a team player and that you are a great teacher – someone that asks questions rather than giving the answers as you want to see your colleagues grow personally and professionally. You are a future leader of tomorrow, so let’s show them what we can do!

Finally you need to have the ambition to make the dream a reality. Because it really is you that controls what the outcome is going to be. There will undoubtedly be some things that are outside your control, but if you tackle those as opportunities rather than issues or problems you will have a rewarding journey.

So perhaps you still feel that you are on an island by yourself. Do not despair as there are many that have walked in your shoes before and who are willing to help you be successful. Reach out to those people and let them provide guidance as you make your dream a reality.

You are an entrepreneur who has been asked to present to investors to secure funding to move your business ahead. You have done lots of presentations before, but none that have such an impact on your future as this one. Fast forward a couple of months to a time where you have been given the opportunity to present to a larger group of investors – more so for the purpose of perfecting your pitch than actually securing funding.

Two situations that require proper preparation to present the best opportunity to the investors that you can. How will you undertake to prepare for these challenges?

One technique that is often overlooked is the concept of mental preparation and the use of visual imagery to prepare for a situation. This is a technique that is often used by athletes to prepare for a competitive event or to assist in correcting performance deficiencies. The suggestion being that the more times you do something it becomes learned behaviour and your memory remembers the way that you did something the last time – which can be good or it can be bad!

Let’s get back to our investor presentation situation. In the first situation, mental preparation techniques were employed. We would visualize giving the presentation and it going very well. We would also visualize responding to various questions and see us actually giving answers to some very tough questions.

With the second situation we did very little if any mental preparation forgetting that one must use the same preparation techniques each and every time. Lack of proper planning is setting one up for failure.

I think I have painted a good picture of what the outcomes were in each of these situations. I am a firm believer that we can use mental preparation techniques which includes imagery not only in the sports arena, but in the business world. Imagine the possibilities! Visualizing a job interview and responding to questions, preparing for an important meeting with key executives, dealing with a confrontational situation with an employee and the list goes on.

As you look forward and see challenges that you must prepare for, remember that this is a good technique to use. If you are unsure of how to use this tool then seek assistance from someone who has experience in teaching mental preparation – it will be time well spent.

References:

1.       “Miller’s Bolt” – Thomas Stirr

“Like many industrialized nations, Canada is in the midst of a major demographic shift that will see the number of people over the age of 60 – by far the fastest growing age-segment of the population – soar from a little less than a fifth of Canada’s total population in 2009 to a little under a third by the middle of the next decade. Our fertility rate is one of the lowest in the world, falling behind industrialized countries such as the United Kingdom, France and the United States.”

Failure to address these challenges will have a huge economic and social impact on organizations globally. “It will result in declining economic growth, lower per-capita output and a lesser quality of life for all. It will place a heavy fiscal burden on younger generations called to sustain quality public services and benefits for an aging demographics.”

One of the major challenges that we will have is to make sure that we have provided our younger generations – our future leaders of tomorrow, with all the tools that they require in order to be prepared, and to take on global challenges such as this. The preparation for the future begins at a very early stage in their life. There are a number of stakeholders in this venture and all have a responsibility to ensure we have done our part. Parents, Government officials, educators and even the younger generations themselves must commit to the future.

When we look at some of the recent studies that have been done on the education platform we see that there is indeed some room for improvement. What appears to be missing is the need to move from our traditional curriculum to one that works more on developing critical thinking skills. This actually reflects back on a previous article I wrote on “asking questions versus giving answers”. We need to shift the curriculum to one that asks questions rather than an information dump with no relation to real world situations. Sure you can provide some information in a manner similar to what we do now, but do you ask the questions that get the younger generations thinking? Stimulation of the mind and the critical thinking skills will better prepare them for the challenges they will face as they lead us into the future.

As I look into organizations today, I see that leaders and managers are required to develop those skills in those that they may be succession planning into key roles as they have not been afforded the opportunity earlier in life. This is a failure that we all need to share responsibility for.

Now is the time to take a step back and see what we need to do to help our future leaders be better prepared for the challenges of tomorrow. Step back, develop an action plan and act!

References:

1.       Canada’s Demographic Crunch – The Canadian Chamber of Commerce

As a manager, have you thanked those employees who have helped you be successful? You know the ones that always seem to give that extra. They are the behind the scenes people that get the job done no matter what the obstacles are. They are the ones that pick up the dropped pieces from others on the team to make sure you are successful.

All too often I have heard the statement, “that’s their job”, or “that’s what we hired them for”, or “those tasks are in their job description so that is what we expect of them.”

How would you feel if you were an employee and those same words were made about your work after you gave 150% to get a project completed? I guess if you are one of the people that have made those statements, then I am likely asking you the wrong questions!

I have known some managers that have taken the time to acknowledge their team when they have gone the extra mile and have helped them be successful. Most of those managers have given credit to their team for doing the work – which is an admirable thing to do, and I might add the right thing to do.

What irritates me is that we still have managers out there that are still old school and expect the extra of their employees without acknowledging the effort that they have put forward. I don’t mind giving the extra if I know that it is appreciated. Does it take a lot of effort to acknowledge your employees and to do so on a frequent basis? How nice is it to be told that you are appreciated a couple of times a week. How nice is it to be formally acknowledged when you have gone that extra mile on a project.

As our work force continues to evolve and our future leaders become more predominant in our organizations the need for proper recognition and feedback will become even more important.

So the choices are yours, a simple THANK YOU for a job well done, or continue on the way you are and watch good people leave your organization for better opportunities.

I am a firm believer in the use of questions versus providing answers. There is of course a time and place for giving the answers rather than continuing to ask questions. In all the work that I do with job coaching, mentoring and in leadership and management roles, the approach of asking questions versus giving the answers has always worked well. The people that I have worked with have developed those critical thinking skills which have prepared them for bigger challenges throughout their career.

As a manager, mentor, or leader do you ask the question or give the answer? Which would you prefer? I suppose if you were rushing around, and who isn’t today, you would prefer to be given the answer and then you can move on to the next problem or task. I guess that makes some sense, but what did you learn from that experience.

As a child you were likely full of questions and wanted to know the answers to many things. More than likely you were discouraged from seeking those answers as questioning adults was seen as rude or disrespectful behaviour. As you went to school to seek answers, you were taught to put up your hand to ask a question and to give the right answer. Sometimes you were chastised for giving the wrong answer.

Leaders often feel that if someone comes to them with a problem it is their responsibility to solve it with a correct answer. They believe deep down that not having an answer, correct or not, would mean that the people they work with would lose respect for them as a person and a leader. When leaders do ask questions they are typically focused on specific issues or problems. They don’t use questions as a means to develop new insights into work processes or to encourage thinking outside the box by others.

Questioning leads to an exchange of information between parties and may spark new ideas, processes or better ways of doing things. Asking questions shows that leaders, managers or mentors value the knowledge of others and are open to new ideas. This helps in the building of trusted, respectful relationships. Leadership questioning serves as a role model to let staff know that asking questions is not a sign of weakness but an opportunity for learning. Asking the right questions can also develop critical thinking skills.

Peter Drucker once said, “The leader of the past was a person who knew how to tell. The leader of the future will be a person who knows how to ask.” Good leaders are willing to be vulnerable and they ask the questions that others may not want to.

Let’s put this into a realistic perspective! You are working for an organization and have been assigned a task that you have completed, but it was done poorly and caused problems for some of your clients. Your manager comes to you to discuss it. Would you rather have Option “A” or Option “B”?

Option “A”: Your manager tells you what is wrong and how to fix it.

Option “B”: Your manager asks you questions, rather than telling you the answers. Your manager may ask questions such as, “What is the impact on other people as a result of this work?”, or “What could we have done differently to improve the quality of this work?”

Think of what your motivation factor will be in Option “A” versus Option “B”. In which situation do you think you will have a greater commitment level to taking ownership of the issue and making it better? How will that change your behaviour for future situations?

Asking questions versus giving answers, what is your choice?

References:

1.       Peter Drucker

2.       Why Ask Questions to Kick Butt? – James Brava

3.       Thomson Learning Inc. – 2008.

“Leadership is in the eyes of other people; it is they who proclaim you as a leader.” (Carrie Gilstrap, Hewlett-Packard)

Leaders don’t get extraordinary things done all by themselves. What leaders say they do is one thing, what the people they are leading say they want and how well a leader meets those expectations is another. Leadership is a reciprocal process between the leader and those they lead. This relationship is critical to the success of the leader.

What do people want from someone whose direction they would be willing to follow? In order to better answer that question let’s look at the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership and the behaviours that form the Ten Commitments of Leadership outlined by Kouzes and Posner in “The Leadership Challenge – 4^th Edition”:

The Leadership Challenge, 4^th Edition; Kouzes and Posner

As I look at all of those that have inspired me to be who I am today, I see a variety of leadership styles that have their positives and even some negatives. What you need to be able to do is take the best of the best and add that to whom you wish to become. I can remember being told when I was very young and just started out, “You are going to work with a number of different bosses over the course of your career. Learn to pick out their strengths and then add those strengths to your personal tool kit to be the best that you can be.”

Kouzes and Posner have done a great job at identifying the attributes that we need to have as part of that personal tool kit.

Far too often I hear from the many people that I have worked with over the years the daunting question of who makes a good leader. The question is always asked, “is that a quality that you are born with, or is that something that can be learned?” What do you think?

I believe that learned behavior plays a strong part in answering this question, but I also believe that not all of us are cut out to be leaders. We may be a manager, or a boss, but we are not leaders.

I found this quote from Russell H. Ewing and I feel that it more than adequately paints a good picture of what we all need to aspire to if we want to be considered a leader. What do you think?

“A Boss creates fear, a leader confidence. A boss fixes blame, a leader corrects mistakes. A boss knows all, a leader asks questions. A boss makes work drudgery, a leader makes it interesting. A boss is interested in himself or herself, a leader is interested in the group.”  Russell H. Ewing