Leadership Archives - Page 65 of 89

Smart Leadership: Four Simple Choices to Scale Your Leadership

New Book Giveaway!

35 copies available!!

Leave a comment on this guest post by Mark Miller to become eligible for one of 35 complimentary copies of his new book, “Smart Leadership: Four Simple Choices to Scale Your Impact.”

Deadline for eligibility is 1/15/2022. International winners will receive electronic version.

Are you struggling with busyness, distractions, complexity, and any number of other challenges? Join the club! Leaders around the world are literally battling for their lives – trying to maintain their influence, improve their quality of life, and increase their impact. The impediments are too numerous to count!

I’ve chosen to label this toxic mix… quicksand.

Choices:

When we find ourselves in quicksand, we have only three options:

Sink:

This is what happens when we give up. Our hopes, dreams, aspirations, and influence are extinguished.

Swim:

The fundamental problem with swimming in quicksand is that it is not an effective nor sustainable strategy.

Escape:

This is the strategy of Smart Leaders. These women and men have figured out how to move to higher, solid ground.

Our team spent the last couple of years trying to figure out how Smart Leaders orchestrated their escape. The good news for all of us: the path to increased impact is paved with four simple choices.

Smart Leaders:

Confront Reality to stay grounded in truth and lead from a position of strength.

Grow Capacity to meet the demands of the moment and the challenges of the future.

Fuel Curiosity to maintain relevance and vitality in a changing world.

Create Change today to ensure a better tomorrow.

Imagine:

What specific tactics do Smart Leaders employ? This question is beyond the scope of this post. However, I encourage you to use your imagination!

If you make these choices and commit to freeing yourself from the quicksand limiting your influence, you will discover ample tangible ways to bring your choices to life. Start by confronting reality regarding your leadership.

Virtuous Cycle:

These four choices create a virtuous cycle, each choice enabling and propelling the next. These choices, made consistently, unleash tremendous power… the power to change your world.

Be smart!

What is your current reality? What is your quicksand?

Note: All Mark’s books are great reads. “Smart Leaders,” is my personal favorite!

Watch my interview with Mark Miller. We discuss a leader’s trajectory, the four choices, and much more. (If you would like to connect with Mark, he gives his cell number in the video.)

Mark Miller is a business leader, best-selling author, and communicator. He is currently serving as the Vice President of High Performance Leadership for Chick-fil-A, Inc. Beyond chicken, Mark’s global influence continues to grow. Today, there are over a million copies of his books in print, in twenty-five languages. Smart Leadership is his tenth title with more…

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15 Questions that Change the Way People Think

Life begins to change when you change the way you think.

Change the way you think about yourself to extend your potential.
Change the way you think about others to increase your impact.
Change the way you think about managing to achieve new results.
Change the way you think about the future to clarify purpose.

Delayed resistance:

The discomfort of new behaviors drives you to eventually return to familiar habits.

Change feels good – at the beginning – because you haven’t felt the pain of letting go.

It feels good to choose a new direction when you haven’t taken the first step. Eventually, change feels like shoes that don’t fit. Rather than pushing through, we lace up old shoes.

Returning to old habits is circling back to familiar discomforts.

15 Questions that Change the Way People Think

Questions that challenge assumptions change the way people think.

When they say … you ask:

I’m falling short… What didn’t you do to get here?
I don’t like them… How might you be like them?
I can’t… If you could?
I don’t know… If you did know?
They screwed up… What if you screwed up?
They’re wrong… How so?
I don’t think so… What if you thought so?
No, you can’t do that… What happens if you say yes?
I need help… What have you tried?
It won’t work… What do you want?
I’m afraid… What’s the bravest thing you can do?
I’m nervous… If you had confidence, what would you do next?
There’s too much to do… What are your priorities?
I plan to do X… How will that help you accomplish your goal?
Life is out of balance… What does a balanced life look like?

Pushing through is better than retreat, even if it hurts.

What helps people change the way they think?

What’s your favorite question in the above list?

Management Rules During Constant Crisis

In the past you wondered when the next crisis would hit. You don’t wonder that today.

Crisis-mode used to mean canceling appointments, working late, drinking too much coffee, and eating pizza late at night. You assumed you would get enough rest and head back to the gym when the crisis passed. That assumption will kill you today.

5 Management rules during constant crisis:

#1. Crisis-mode will continue for the foreseeable future.

You live in constant turbulence, persistent disruptions, and seductive distraction.

The things you could neglect during past crisis you can’t neglect today because in the past you neglected things with the assumption that the crisis would pass.

It’s not just COVID. Technology obliterates old rules. Expectations shift and collide like drifting icebergs.

#2. Confront reality.

The thing that concerns me most about leaders today is the decisions they’re making that are based on assumptions that aren’t true anymore.

The assumption that turbulence is going away is deadly. In the past, crisis-mode meant you focused on solving the crisis.

Stop using crisis-mode as an excuse to neglect self-care and self-development.

You won’t get by if all you do is try to get by.

#3. Make back-to-back meetings illegal.

If a meeting is typically one hour, make it 50 minutes. If it’s 30 minutes, make it 20. My experience shows that a little margin between meetings elevates energy and increases efficiency.

#4. Focus on high-return activities.

Stop pouring energy into low return activities. Your team would love to hear you say, “This isn’t working. What else might we try.”

#5. Time off isn’t the answer.

You need time off, but it’s more important to learn new rules for work.

“When the way you’re living and leading isn’t working, all the time off in the world won’t fix it.” Carey Nieuwhof

Tip: Don’t make every new challenge a crisis.

What new management rules might you suggest?

When People Think Differently About Themselves

Over the years, I’ve asked leaders to tell me about a tipping point in their lives. They typically give me the same answer. The question goes something like, “Tell me about a time when someone said something to you that caused you to think differently about yourself.”

Yesterday I asked the director of West Point’s Performance Psychology Program, Dr. Nate Zinsser, the tipping-point-question.

Trajectory:

Words are rudders. Conversations have trajectory.

Words cause us to think differently about ourselves.

Someone said something to you that sucked the life out of you. You felt devalued. Maybe, on the inside, you waved the white flag.

You’re less than you could be when you allow vampire words to suck the life out of you.

Admiration is better than complaint when it comes to transformation.

Something good:

Life-givers notice our strengths. Vampires notice our weaknesses.

Dr. Zinsser told me that his High School principal said he had more drive than anyone he had ever seen. That conversation is a lifetime away, but Dr. Zinsser still smiles when he remembers it.

Conversations that give life are about your talent.

Admiration lengthens your stride.

Negative magnetism:

It’s normal to notice people’s weaknesses, failures, and frailties. That’s why gossip is pervasive.

In order to energize people, you have to overcome the natural tendency to focus on things they can’t do.

The same answer:

10 years ago, I asked Bob Herbold the tipping point question. He found out he was smart. Bob grew up in a working-class family and became the COO of the largest software company in the world, Microsoft.

Someone believed in him.

Who spoke life into you?

How might you encourage people to think differently about themselves?

HPU: A Case Study in the Extraordinary

How does a sleepy backwater college that few have heard of quadruple enrollment in 15 years? Furthermore, what enables a school to expand the size of the campus from 91 acres to 520 acres, while attaining a 98% placement rate?

The short answer is intentional leadership. The longer version is that an intentional leader revolutionized the academic institution of High Point University with powerful and practical business principles, which often received sharp criticism but ultimately proved to be wildly successful. It turns out that academia, like most professions and industries, values the status quo.

Originally founded as High Point College in 1924, this private liberal arts university has grown from 22 to 120+ buildings. There are now 1,800 positions, and they hire 12 to 20 more people each month. These employees act to support the students drawn in from nearly 50 countries and all 50 states. In fall 2021, HPU’s freshman class was larger than the entire student body was in 2005 and will have access to 62 majors and 64 minors.

Even more astonishing? This growth occurred without borrowing any money, a distinct anomaly in higher education.

And here is the brand promise that drives it all: At High Point University, every student receives an extraordinary education in an inspiring environment with caring people.

Nido R. Qubein, an alumnus of High Point University, became the seventh president of this 94-year-old institution in 2005. After a successful career in publishing, consulting, speaking, and business, he was approached by the board to help resurrect the institution. Always open to new challenges, he seized the opportunity to lead a university with facilities that were a bit long in the tooth and that lacked any signs of innovating in the future.

Similar to what we learn from physics, a system at rest stays at rest, and Qubein had to challenge the existing mindset and behavior of faculty and staff who were mired in outdated education methods. He made it a goal to provide life preparation for students to take their place in society after graduation. As Roger Clodfelter, Senior V.P. of Communications, puts it: “Our job is to prepare students for the world that will be, not as it is or as it was.”

So how did he meet the challenge of changing the staid academic culture to one that is today unique and innovative? Again, the short answer is hard work. But the longer answer is hard work informed by visionary strategy.

When Qubein took the leadership role, the university’s culture wasn’t defined. It just existed, the culmination of former leadership—the good, the bad and everything in between.

The first item of business was to change the existing mindset. With all of the importance placed on higher institutions, people sometimes forget that while colleges and universities do not function quite like most businesses, they still have clients. Students, either by loans or scholarship, exchange money for a service—and they can certainly choose to get this service from a different establishment.