Committed to Achieve?

When I initially meet with my coaching clients, we complete an initial assessment.  Part of the assessment helps begin to uncover core issues for our future work together.  New clients  usually take great care to explain who they are.  However, because we have not yet built the trust required in a coaching relationship, these new clients are careful not to disclose anything too revealing, or damaging.  

True to form, it’s almost as if they have a scripted message they never tire of delivering.  I’ve heard it so many times.  If its a family business, they talk of their Grandfathers dedication and vision to build this company passed on through the generations.  

If not a family business, their self assessment initially focuses on their targeted education from a respected University, their rise from an entry level job, and their baby boomer work ethic that took them to the top.  

Bill told me about his rise to the top, but became agitated when speaking to his reason for seeking my help.  “No one here shares my passion for our mission, goals, and objectives...I seem to be the only one with the drive, and commitment to make certain we’re successful”  

I always find it interesting the burden some executives feel that they are alone in their quest for success.  They feel like the 3 handicap golfer always dragging the 15 handicapper in the 2 golfer best-ball tourney.  Bill’s shoulders were tired.

I decided to ask Bill’s permission to speak with some of the employees to gain their honest perspective...(This was something he had never done).  Focusing on Bills assumed solo ride on the “commitment train”, I discovered some valuable perspectives.  Some substantiated comments were;

• “Yeah, Bill’s pretty crazy about his wanting to win.”
• “Bill constantly complains in leadership meetings about the Team not getting on board...Frankly, I’m not certain what that means.  Bill’s all over the place with his goal of the week.”
• “That’s pretty funny actually.  Like last week when he was all over us, driving us, really angry, telling us we must not care...and then he decided at the last minute yesterday to go on some golf trip today with his buddies, and canceled our Team meeting.  This commitment thing comes and goes with him.”
• “Committed to his vision?  Committed to his goals?  Oh, yes, that’s Bill all right.  But to be honest, I’m not certain what this vision is, and what specific goals he has set.  How  am I supposed to join him if I don’t know what he really wants?”

As Bill and I spent more time together, we found that trust which is required to build the foundation of our work.  Eventually a more complete disclosure of “what keeps Bill awake at night” came through.  Over time, Bill discovered solutions to some bigger internal issues, enabling him to find confidence with himself and his Team.  

Bill found he was able to work with his Team to collaboratively discover the Company vision, and set a course of accountable actions to reach goals towards success.  This goal clarity enabled Bill and his Team to see the vision and goals together as partners, and share in the strategies and tactics.  

The shared accountability between Bill and his Team, and between the Team Members gave a new level of commitment and persistence towards achieving goals.  This persistence was fueled by a functional trusting Team, with a leader sharing and encouraging his commitment to achievement.  

As you think of your own Achievement Drive, answer these questions;

1. Are you considered “crazy” or “passionate” about your achievement drive?
2. Are you “consistent” with your Goals, or “flexible” as needed?  
3. Are you “committed”, or merely “participating” with high energy?
4. Are you a high achiever at providing clarity with your Team?
5. Are you driven by “goal clarity”?

If you want to learn more about the Rare Leader™ in you, 

or if you are interested in retaining Steve as your Executive Coach, 

Contact Steve Riege via: twitter, or his website.

But, Do I Have To Like People To Be A Leader?

We have concluded one of the twelve behaviors of the Rare Leader™ is to be high in “relationships”.  The quick response from some people has been...”so what you’re telling me, is that if I don’t like to be around people I can’t lead?”  

I’ve heard feedback on assessments when I review candidates for an Executive Leadership opportunity for a client...

• If my MBTI shows me to be an “E” rather than an “I”, am I doomed to be in the trenches, rather than leading the troops?  
• My DiSC profile shows me to be a lower “I”, should I see this as an indication I can not influence the people I lead?
• My Culture Index profile indicates I am a lower “B”.    Because I like to think and focus on the tasks at hand rather than socialize shouldn’t be interpreted that I can not lead.

Now what? 

While there is a great amount of reality that Leaders interact with people, and establish that mutual trust between them, it is not intended the “relationship” behavior of the Rare Leader™ be an emphasis on social skills and desires.

However, the Rare Leader™ is always dealing with people, displaying the ability to listen, to understand, and to respond.  The Rare Leader™ uses intuition to sense what people are feeling and thinking.  The Rare Leader™ is able to recognize different behavioral styles proving he or she can focus on others rather than themselves.

Sometimes, “E’s”, or higher “I’s”, or higher “B’s” struggle leading others.  Perhaps their personal focus is on the social side of working with others rather than actually leading.  

This high “sociability” might even mask their inability to establish a trusting relationship, disabling any intuitive skill to sense what motivates their Team, or to understand and appropriately respond to differing styles of behavior.  After all, the key to utilizing these assessment profiles is understanding how you can affect others, and how to sense and interact with others.

So let’s make a deal here...

1. Don’t take the popular assessment tools at face value as an indicator of Leadership.  We need to understand what they really mean.
2. Social Skills are not the same as “relationship” behaviors and abilities.
3. Consider these important questions;

• Do you have the ability to listen to people?
• Can you understand what others are trying to communicate to you?
• Are you able to respond effectively to others?
• Are your intuitive skills heightened?
• Can you sense what people are thinking or feeling?
• Can you recognize differing behavioral styles in people you lead?
• Do you focus on the success of others as well as your self?

Check back with us soon, to discover and share more about your answers to these questions.

If you want to learn more about the Rare Leader™ in you, 

or if you are interested in retaining Steve as your Executive Coach, 

Contact Steve Riege via: twitter, or his website.

I have people skills, I am good at dealing with people...

The Rare Leader™ is always interacting with people.  The Rare Leader™ is able to utilize intuition to sense what people are feeling and thinking.  The Rare Leader™ has the ability to interact positively, actively listening, understanding, and responding to different behavioral styles.  The Rare Leader naturally proves he or she can focus on others rather than self.

"Well, look, I already told you. I deal with the #*@#$% customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people! Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?!"... Tom Smykowski responding to Bob Slydel - Office Space

Tom was a leader of the Software Engineering Team at Initech, a company plagued by excessive management.  When pressed, Tom really felt his number one skill was “dealing with people”, because had “people skills”.  

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I think of people skills, unfortunately I think too many times about managers like Tom, who really do think their people skills are second to none.  Even though Tom is a fictional leader, from a fictional company, from a movie, it is in fact, rare to find real leaders from real companies with great people skills.  The reason Tom felt his people skills were so strong, is that he was so focused on himself, rather than the Team members he was leading.

Great relationships with people do start and end with the skills and behaviors you show in establishing powerful, long lasting, relationships of trust, collaboration, and shared success.  

Do you have great intuition?  Can you connect the dots of what you observe about the people you lead?  To properly observe, you need a keen ability going beyond what you might easily see, hear, or touch.  Intuition takes you inside the character of the people you lead, to sense and understand what they are thinking and feeling.  What does the connection tell you?  Connecting the dots and applying your intuition about people is similar to the skills you find as a visionary, using data and trends to see into the future.  Your intuition should enable you to see the future possibilities between yourself and other people.  

What is your ability to interact with others?  Are your active listening skills refined?  Does it come naturally to listen intently and be able to repeat what you heard...word for word?  

After listening, can you understand what the other person is really saying?  What is their hidden meaning?  What action are they seeking from you?  Do they desire you to offer a response full of ideas, suggestions and directives, or are they merely seeking a listener with empathy?  

What is your response?  Does your response come from truly caring about what they have to say?  Or, is your response quick, to the point, enabling you to move to your next agenda item of your day?

Perhaps the hidden challenge for the Rare Leader™ with relationships is adapting all of these skills to the “human factor”.  After all, like snowflakes, no two human beings are alike.  This gives you great opportunity to develop your intuition, interaction, listening skills, understanding, and response, to varying styles and diversity of people.  This adaption to diversity draws from the Core of your Character.  This adaption to diversity of behavior styles in your Team, is the test of the integrity of your Character.

In the end, your relationships with others have no grounding if you continue to focus on yourself first.  This was really Tom’s issue when self analyzing his number one skill at Initech.  I see this same issue when observing, assessing, and coaching leaders who fail at building positive relationships as a proven characteristic of becoming a Rare Leader™.  The core of these failings continue to look back at a narcissistic self involved, “me first” Leader.  

Who do you focus on?  What is your style?

1. Do you have great intuition?
2. What is your ability to interact with others?
3. Are your active listening skills refined?
4. Can you understand what the other person is really saying?
5. Does your response come from truly caring about what others have to say?
6. Can you prove you do focus on others rather than yourself?

If you want to learn more about the Rare Leader™ in you, 

or if you are interested in retaining Steve as your Executive Coach, 

Contact Steve Riege via: twitter, or his website.

Charisma builds Trust

“Beauty is but skin deep.”

When poet John Davies of Hereford wrote this now famous saying in 1616, he was actually referring to a murder involving Sir Thomas Overbury.  

We have taken this almost 400 year old phrase and excluded the remaining lines of the poem which include "Beauty is but skin deep, ugly lies the bone, Beauty dies and fades away, but ugly holds its own." 

Charisma too, can be skin deep.  In earlier postings we discussed the danger of your Charisma not being authentic.  One simple way to prove your Charisma is authentic, and not only skin deep, is to use it wisely.  As a Rare Leader™ you have a powerful tool to draw attention to yourself, and to make others want to like, respect, and emulate you.  

Patrick Lencioni writes in his book the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, the  importance of overcoming the absence of trust.  The fear of being vulnerable with your Team prevents the building of Trust within your Team.  When you use authentic Charisma in a positive way, you draw people close to you.  Using your heartfelt Charisma lets people see inside of you.  Making your Charisma personal, opens the door to vulnerability which is the secret key to building trust.

When your Charisma is positive, uplifting, true, from the heart, and personal, it reflects your Character.  In March we will explore the powerful behavior of Character in the Rare Leader™.  You will begin to see how the behaviors of the Rare Leader™ work together.  In our first three studied behaviors we find Character delivered through Charisma, helps others see your Vision.  Effective leadership requires the interaction of many qualities and behaviors simultaneously, and interdependent upon each other.  This is why we find many well intentioned people discover they can not lead.  However, the Rare Leader™ learns to live by, and use all 12 behaviors together.

When you think about how to use your Charisma, you can also be guided by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (not John Joyce) who first wrote,  “Laugh and the world laughs with you; Weep and you weep alone”.

Tell us...What can you do today to be Charismatic with others,  and to draw them into your trust?

If you want to learn more about the Rare Leader™ in you, 

or if you are interested in retaining Steve as your Executive Coach, 

Contact Steve Riege via: twitter, or his website.

Share Your Vision

I noticed a peculiar common thread running through many leaders and companies.  There seems to be a shroud of secrecy among the leadership team, a secrecy between each other as individuals, and most alarming, a secrecy from the rest of the employees and even customers.  (Building Trust between people and within Teams is another item in recipe for success, and we’ll talk about that later.)  

Is it true, that there is a right of passage giving an executive of a company the authority to withhold information from others?  So many times, when I have been in the Executive Office, or the Board Room, if I waited long enough, some one said...”remember, none of this leaves this room”.  Wow, thats pretty powerful.  What was discussed that is so important, that no one else should ever know about it?  (Until of course, we can surprise the affected parties and they’ll have no possibility of recourse.)  

I think that was also a good and effective strategy for some famous war leaders such as Admiral Spruance, a genius in military strategy and tactics particularly in the Battle of Midway, or General Eisenhower where his strategy for Normandy was brilliant. Or how about Admiral Yamamoto, of the  Japanese Imperial Navy?  Yes, his Pearl Harbor strategy proved to be very effective.  Their shroud of secrecy was so effective, the surprise in their attacks rendered their foes helpless in the end.

But, to make their plans effective, they also had to share them.  Obviously there was no intentional sharing with their competitors.  However, they had to trust their Team.  How could they possibly organize a large scale assault without carefully planning goals and action plans from a Vision?  What if General Eisenhower took his Vision of controlling Western Europe to begin the downfall of Germany and kept it a secret with only a few trusted officers.  How would they have planned?  How would they have prepared?  How would they have tested their theories?  But in reality, he did share his Vision.  He did share quite widely to assist in the preparations.  Forces were specially trained. Special vehicles were designed for the amphibious attack.  Practice missions were conducted.  Some planning failed, but tactical plans prepared them for these breaches of confidential details of their plans.  In the end, this shared Vision and leading people through a series of goal oriented projects with accountabilities and shared circumstances, led to the ultimate success.

Now, I am not asking you to prepare your company for battle in the same way as Eisenhower, Spruance, or Yamamoto.  But, if we take one lesson from them, what can we learn?  How effective can you be, operating within a cloud of secrecy and lack of trust?  I am well aware, there are some discussions of very confidential topics that take place for all the right reasons.  But in this context, we’re talking about sharing and trusting in your Vision.

Vision means nothing, if you can not share it with others in such a way, that you make everyone want to follow you to success.  Perhaps it’s your charisma.  Maybe it is how you plan.  Some tell me it is about being decisive and being driven to release their strong commitment and persistence to achieve.  These qualities of a Rare Leader will be imperative.  But first, you must share this Vision you have come to be so passionate about.  The Vision you believe in, the Vision that others did not see, was just another foggy day until you were able to open their eyes.  Your Team, your employees, and your customers depend on you for your  inspired Vision.  In short...If you see something that’s possible, it is not a Vision unless you share it with others and empower them to join you on the journey.

If you want to learn more about the Rare Leader™ in you, 

or if you are interested in retaining Steve as your Executive Coach, 

Contact Steve Riege via: twitter, or his website.