Driving profitable growth is at the top of every leader’s priority list. Yet, according to Bain and Company, only 10% succeed in achieving sustainable profitable growth.

While growth is the life-blood of every business, at some point, your company will experience the double edge sword of growth.

Either your company will grow faster than your internal capacity to handle it. Chaos, breakdowns and burnout are the result.

OR

Your company hits a wall and growth flattens. As a result, panic often sets in and leaders make rash decisions – either prolonging the stall or causing the company to spiral downward.

Unfortunately, there are no alarms to warn you of either impending challenge. Growth does not follow a linear path. It can be unpredictable and erratic. Growth walls often catch leaders by surprise.

Some companies don’t survive growth walls. They either go out of business or stay in “no man’s land.”

The focus of this article is to address the latter issue – ie., growth walls. While many leaders see growth walls as a revenues issue. The truth is that flat numbers are the byproduct — not the cause — of stalled growth.

The good news is that there are predictable pitfalls and signals that leaders need to heed to scale their companies. This article focuses on 7 of those growth pitfalls.

 7 Pitfalls That Stall Your Company Growth

1. Running After Growth in all the Wrong Places

Initially, growth is critical for survival. However, as your company scales, not all growth is healthy or good.

How, as a leader, do you distinguish between good and bad growth? Healthy vs. unhealthy growth? 

What % of your new business is coming from your core competencies? What % requires capabilities beyond your core?

Do all your new revenues provide healthy margins? If not, is it a market issue, a competitive issue, a behavioral issue or something else preventing you?

According to Bain, companies leave significant money on table because they are not fully leveraging their core.

Tim Cook (Apple’s CEO) says it best …”At Apple we say ‘no’ to great ideas every day in order to do one or two things very well.”

How much of your new growth focuses on what you do best?

2. Success Blind Spots 

Companies that hit a wall have experienced past successful growth.  They are meeting or exceeding revenue goals. Their leaders and employees are proud and rightfully so.

However, success often creates cognitive or psychological leadership blind spots.  Below are 2 examples how.

• Blind Optimism

You make unconscious assumptions that company growth will continue on the same trajectory if you keep on the path you have been. However, markets change and so must your path to future growth.

• Over-Confidence

Past success can exaggerate your ability to control events. And you over-estimate your company’s capabilities.

When over-confident, leaders tend to take on risky opportunities, not ask for help and believe they can handle it all.

Whose unbiased perspective can you access to right-size your decisions and perceptions?

3. Crashing into the Leadership Glass Ceiling

In my extensive experience with growth companies, the number one reason why companies hit the wall is because their leadership team has hit a wall.

Organically grown leaders don’t know what they need to know to get to the next level. As a result, they keep on doing what they have always done – only working harder — expecting a different result. Yes … that’s called insanity :))!

As a company scales, leadership roles also scale and change dramatically at each growth level. To avoid the leadership ceiling, CEOs must ask themselves —

Are you willing to make a major investment in growing your leadership team to the next level?

Does it serve the greater good of your company to be loyal to long time leaders whose roles have outgrown their capabilities and capacities? 

Is it time to hire outside seasoned passionate leaders who have been there and can help you grow?

Both options – ie., cultivating your leaders from within or hiring from the outside – have their upsides and downsides.

If your leadership team has hit a ceiling, get outside help in evaluating the options. Doing nothing will keep your company stuck at the wall.

4. External Oblivion

As a company scales, significant focus is spent on building internal infrastructure. As a result, leaders lose sight of changes in their external environment.

A once fringe competitor may now emerge as a looming threat to your company. Your customers’ needs may have changed without you realizing it.   New disruptive technologies may displace your products/services as alternative solutions to your markets.

Successful growth leaders who break through the wall anticipate the unexpected and turn the unexpected into the profitable.

Are you overly focused on internal superiority that you are missing the cues of external changes?

How are you proactively anticipating and responding to external changes?

5. Hiring for current skills, not long term capabilities

As a company grows, the tendency is to hire employees with current needed skills by your organization.   When small, hiring for the short term is necessary as your resource needs are not always clear.

Once a company hits the $10 – $20 million milestone, hiring people with capabilities to grow your company in next 2 – 3 years is crucial.

What capabilities do you need to hire today to achieve your desired growth for next 3 years?

6. Culture Meltdown

When a company has less than 20 employees, rarely is culture a dominant issue. As the company scales in size, structure and complexity, culture becomes the heart and soul of its growth success.

What causes a culture meltdown as a company scales?

It’s not one thing. It’s multitude of factors that amplify with scale, such as …

• Not Scaling Culture

Some leaders will argue that company culture cannot scale. I both agree and disagree :)).

Your company culture cannot scale if you perceive culture as fixed, unchangeable and static. However, the culture your company needs at $20 million will be different than the culture you need at $50 – $100 million

As you add new people to your organization, as well as your markets evolve, so must your culture evolve.

How are you adapting your culture to the changing needs of your organization and those of your customers?

• Core Values Without Success Measures

While your company’s culture may seem intangible and elusive at times, you can make the intangible tangible and measurable.

The key is to define an abstract value into an operational, measurable success outcome.

I have one client with a core value of excellent customer service. Their measure of success is a customer excellence rating of 25:1. For every 25 customers that rate their service as excellent, only 1 or less customers will rate it as non-excellent.

How do you measure success for each value?

• Healthy Values Gone Bad

Every positive value also has a dark, unhealthy side. However, most leaders are not aware when their values have crossed that line.

A value of excellence, in the extreme, can become perfectionism. Acceptance, at its extreme, can become (unhealthy) tolerance. Customer service, to the extreme, can cost you significant profits.

It’s good to set the bar high. At the other end, know when your values become your Achilles heel, especially as you scale.

7. Mediocrity Sets In

The final danger as companies scale is backsliding into complacency or mediocrity.

Success is a lousy teacher. Complacency often sets in as your company loses its drive and hunger. Nothing will kill growth faster than losing your sense of urgency.

High growth companies should celebrate success. If your company has hit a wall, however, it’s time to take stock.

Has your success morphed into over-comfort and contentment? 

If it has, it’s time to raise your bar, set new sights and refuel your organization’s fire.   Commit to scaling not only in size. Commit also to scaling big WHY and purpose.

Getting Back on the Growth Track: Initial Steps

• Educate yourself about your company’s growth life cycle and the common pitfalls at different growth stages.

• Get your leaders out of day to day operations.

By the time you hit $15 – $20 million in revenues, your leaders should spend about 80% time leading – building teams, delegating, creating strong culture, focusing on long term goals/projects, etc. – and only 20% on daily operations.

To prepare for the transition, ask yourself:

Do your leaders know how to think strategically?

Are their brains wired for big picture, future-orientation, goals/results thinking?

Do they have strong delegation skills to get out of the weeds?

Remember … not all leaders will be able to make the leap to the next level.

• Invest in infrastructure and systems that provide built-in capacity for growth.

• Get outside perspectives

An advisory board or board of directors … visits to “friendly” competitors to see how they do things … hiring a consultant with experience in growth companies. These are all ways to get beyond your blind spots and tap into expertise that may be missing in your organization.

• Invest in scaling your company culture

Continuously communicate your company’s vision and purpose. Entrench your values and behavior norms at all levels of organization. Change your culture as needed.

• Download our complimentary handout — Developing Leaders of Growth: 5 Critical Factors for Driving Double/Triple Digit Growth

The post 7 Leadership Pitfalls That Sabotage Company Growth appeared first on The Empowered Business.

Have you ever experienced in a meeting where a seasoned leader listened intently and then, with exquisite timing, asked one question that shifted the direction, focus and thinking of the entire team?

That is the magic and power of questions!

To move the needle in your organization in 2016, the first place to start is by asking thought-provoking questions.   The 7 questions below are by no means exhaustive. They serve as a starting point to stimulate your own questions.

These (or comparable) questions can make the difference between a successful 2016 and a disappointing one.

Let’s dig in!

7 Leadership Questions That Will Move The Needle in 2016

QUESTION 1: What is your BHAG?

BHAG stands for Big Hairy Audacious Goal, a concept introduced by Jim Collins in his book, “Built to Last.” It is one of the characteristics that distinguishes great companies from mediocre ones.

The best definition that I seen is that a BHAG is a statement of strategic intent. A bigger, bolder, more powerful outcome than goals with a target timeframe of 10 – 30 years from now. It’s your ambitious Mount Everest that you want to climb.

Example …

Starbuck’s BHAG is to overtake Coke as the world’s leading brand.

While asking yourself the question … What is our BHAG? … may sound simple, it’s not always easy to answer.

To learn how to develop and test your BHAG, refer to Collin’s book, Built to Last.

QUESTION 2: For what purpose ….?

When I work with leaders, one of the first things I want to know is the underlying motivation for a particular goal, decision, behavior or even emotion.

This question can help uncover those motivations in 3 powerful ways:

• It forces you to chunk up, get out of the weeds and see your situation with a wider lens from a higher elevation.
• It can uncover your unconscious beliefs about cause and effect relationships which may or may not be true.
• It can uncover whether the underlying reasons for your goals/decisions are for healthy or unhealthy reasons.

With each 2016 goal, ask yourself … For what purpose do you want to achieve that goal?  With each response, ask … for what purpose? … again.   It will help shed light on the following.

• Are you choosing right goals for right reasons?
• If they are the right goals, are they for healthy or unhealthy reasons?
• Are there better goals for better reasons?

Oftentimes when companies decide on new goals, strategies or initiatives, they ASSUME they are the right ones. Challenge that with this question.

QUESTION 3: Is your ladder against the right wall?

“If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.”      Stephen Covey

This is one of my favorite questions to ask at least once a year to make sure my goals, decisions and actions are always aligned with my greater purpose.

How do you know if your leadership ladder is against the right or wrong wall?

pixaby

Here’s some questions to ask:

• Do you wake up in the morning excited about your 2016 goals?

• Are your leadership and organizational goals primarily focused on moving up the ladder or do they also serve a greater good?

• What comes first when making leadership decisions – profits or purpose?

• What difference do you want to make in your role? Are you realizing that difference?

If you or your company are experiencing success without a sense of significance, it’s time to put your ladder against a different wall.

QUESTION 4: What’s at stake?

Defining your leadership or company goals is the easy part. Sustainable focus and drive to achieve them – no matter the challenges – is the hard part.

Goal success (or failure) depends predominantly on one thing:

Motivation

By continually asking the question — what’s at stake? – you will..

• Refuel your motivation when the going gets tough
• Create urgency for you and your employees
• Uncover what potentially can be at risk if you do achieve your goals

Below are specific variations of this powerful question to get you started.

What’s at stake …

• … to your company if you don’t achieve your goal this year?

• … to other stakeholders if you don’t achieve your goal?
  • Customers?
  • Employees?
  • Investors?
  • Yourself?
  • The world at large 

• … to your company culture/values if you do achieve your goal?
  • Will your culture possibly be compromised?
  • Will your goals compromise other company priorities?

QUESTION 5: Are you solving the right problem?

A problem well defined is half solved.        Charles Kettering

As a leader, you probably spend considerable time solving problems. Perhaps to the point where you get nothing else done.

Because leaders are action-oriented, the tendency is to jump right to a solution, ASSUMING you are solving the right problem. Yet doing so could cost your company significant resources, time and money. Plus you most likely have not solved the real problem.

I learned this invaluable lesson when I was an executive at US Sprint in the early 1980’s. The company was growing 200% for 5 consecutive years. I got a monthly report of all the key problem areas across the company.

One of the key metrics — # of customer complaints – was sharply increasing. The customer service department wanted to hire more customer service reps.

Yet after digging deeper and asking the question – what’s the real problem, it became clear that engineering’s challenge to install enough transmission capacity to meet the dramatic growth in demand was the real problem.

Next time a problem arises within your organization, take 5 minutes and ask …

Am I solving the right problem?

QUESTION 6: Is your timing correct?

Timing is EVERYTHING in business.

Timing can be the difference between success and failure. It can make or break a product launch, change initiative, new technology or even growing your company.

Yet, for even the best leaders, timing is often an afterthought.   I see it happen often.

Be honest with yourself. For this year’s projects, goals, decisions or initiatives, have you asked yourself … Is this the right timing?

• What will happen if you waited 6 months or a year?
• What opportunity will you miss if you don’t implement now?
• Might you be too early or too late?

If you want to learn more about how to discern right business timing, I recommend William Duggan’s book Strategic Intuition and Sun Tzu’s book, The Are of War. Both should be in every executive’s bookcase!

QUESTION 7: What are your blind spots? What are you missing?

Every one of us has blind spots. Our brains filter out over 99% of outside information because of its limited processing capacity. Such brain limitations create distortions in your thinking and perceptions.

At a leadership and company level, blind spots are costly and sometimes catastrophic. Even the best leaders are challenged by unconscious persistent blind spots.

Below are common blind spots from my work with leaders and organizations. Check how many of these blind spots are or could be true for you. Remember: You may have a blind spot about your blind spots :)).

Leadership (self) blind spots: beliefs and behaviors

• Not seeing your impact on others
• Unaware of your negative beliefs and how they are driving your decisions and behaviors
• Not learning from your past failures and recreating those mistakes over and over
• Assuming that your communications to another is interpreted as you intended

Team & organizational blind spots

• Believing your “once healthy” company culture is still healthy when in fact it is eroding as you scale
• Tolerating (and rationalizing away) mediocre or poor performance
• Avoiding conflicts and tough conversations
• Unconscious, unchallenged (and often erroneous) assumptions driving your goals and strategic plan
• Being overly optimistic

Environmental/external blind spots

• Missing emerging market trends and opportunities
• Assuming you know why your customers buy from you when they actually buy for different reasons
• Perceiving smaller competitors as a non-threat
• Not adjusting your company’s strategies to changing conditions in your industry or environment

BONUS QUESTION: What is YOUR overarching question for the new year?

Now it’s your turn.

What one question – if you asked daily — will help YOU move the needle in a key area within yourself and/or your organization?

For example, if you want to increase your personal productivity, perhaps the question is …

What do I need to stop doing?

Or if you want to increase company revenues, you may ask …

What values drive our customers’ buying decisions?

How can we craft our products/services to those values, thus creating repeat customers?

Questions are the ultimate leadership tool for moving the needle, regardless of the goal or challenge. Now it’s your turn to develop your own list of powerful questions.

Drop me an email if you have questions about how to develop powerful questions :)).

For other articles relating to the power of questions :

• The One Question Every Leader Needs to Ask
• 12 Strategic Thinking Questions That Yield Big Results

The post 7 Leadership Questions That Will Move Your Needle in 2016 appeared first on The Empowered Business.

The Secret Groundwork to an Extraordinary 2016

A new year is just around the corner.  Another year is about to end.

Be honest with yourself …

·      Are you feeling tired, stressed or depressed?

·      Are you feeling disconnected from what really matters to you?

·      Are you feeling like you have lost your way, not even realizing it?

In my experience, when December hits, many leaders are burned out and depleted.  They are running on empty.

And understandably so.  The demands on a leader’s energy and attention throughout the year are endless.   I’ve been there myself.  I know.

Since that time, I have learned to make December a transition month.  Not only to prepare for the new year.  Also to revitalize my spirit and reconnect to the fire within.

This article provides you with 3 critical leadership steps for transitioning from the end of this year to 2016.   Let’s first address what are transitions.

What Are Transitions?  Why Are They Important to Leadership Growth?

Think of a transition like the period at the end of sentence.  It’s a pause.  It ends one sentence and creates a bridge to the next sentence.

Transitions are a natural important part of leadership growth, whether you realize it or not.  Some are by choice.  Some come from natural endings – like the end of a year, the end of a project, etc.

The problem is that leaders are often such doers, high initiative individuals, that they ignore or avoid transition periods, even though they are essential to your next level of growth.

Leadership breakthroughs can only happen in the pauses.   In transition periods.

These periods …

·      Provide the needed space for defining new directions in your leadership role.

·      Can revitalize your spirit and leadership fire

·      Reground you to what really matters.

·      Clears out the internal/external clutter that holds you back

3 Steps for Preparing for an Extraordinary 2016

Step 1:  Closures, Completions and Letting Go

Imagine a blackboard cluttered everywhere with writing. Not only will it be impossible to decipher the contents.  There will be little room for anything new.

The same is true with yourself and your organization.   Many leaders start the new year with excessive “energetic clutter” that will hold them back, if not addressed.

Below are 3 leadership areas for decluttering prior to the new year.

1.    Get closure on “unfinished business.”

“Unfinished business” is those items that consume your physical, mental and emotional energy and require closure to free up your wasted energy. For example,

·      What projects or goals have you started this year that you neither completed nor are working on?

·      What communications have you not delivered that needs to be completed– whether it be to a peer, employee, customer, etc.?

·      What clutter do you need to get rid of or file from your desk, office or email box?

2.    Eliminate “energy drains”

“Energy drains” are people, places, activities or procedures that undermine your effectiveness, violate your integrity standards or “cost” you or your company in some fashion.  For example,

·      What boundaries do you need to set with difficult customers costing you excessive time, your values (or company values) or resources?

·      What actions or projects do you need to stop doing and/or delegate to others?

·      Where are you tolerating underperformance or violations in behavior norms that needs to be dealt with?

3.    “What’s wrong with this picture?”

These areas include where you are out of integrity with yourself, your desires or your sense of fulfillment.  For example,

·      What strategies, behaviors, attitudes and/or beliefs that created success in the past are now obsolete and blocking your future leadership growth?

·      What things this year did you want to be that you’re not being?

·      What things did you want to do or start that you’re not doing?

·      What things did you want to change that you’re not changing?

·      What things have you done yet not acknowledged yourself for doing them?

December is a natural transition time to complete, eliminate or take inventory and action around current leadership “clutter” areas.

Whether you realize it or not, the unresolved past will not only weigh you down and undermine your leadership performance.  It is also the biggest contributor of your current stresses, internal conflicts and lack of motivation.

Whether it’s 20 minutes a day till end of the year or taking larger blocks of time away from the office, answer the above questions to start the new year clear, rejuvenated and at the top of your game.

Step 2:  Imagining a New Compelling Leadership Story

With each new year, leaders take time to look at their individual and organizational goals and visions.  There are many positive benefits to doing so.

Where most such efforts fail or are ineffective, however, is in 2 areas.

1.    Visions and goals are often extrapolated from the past and/or present (the known), rather than created from the future (the unknown).

2.    Developing visions and goals is often a forced intellectual exercise, rather than a creative, passionate and emerging exploration of new possibilities.

You will know you are ready for Step 2 when you feel connected to the part of yourself that knows your destiny.  When your mind’s eye starts to give you images, sounds and feelings of the leader you are about to become.

True visions emerge.  They pull your energy forward.  They are neither forced nor what you expect.

Your old way of being as a leader will simply seem wrong.  You are giving birth to a new vision of yourself as a leader.

To get your imagination going, fill out the matrix below for the new year as sequenced as follows.  Think in terms of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, qualities, accomplishments or whatever else is important to you for the new year.

Lower Left Quadrant:  What you don’t want and don’t have

These are your non-negotiables.

Example:  You don’t want to unethical and you currently are not unethical.

 Lower Right Quadrant:  What you don’t want yet have.

These are the things you want to eliminate or let go of.

The trick with this quadrant is to convert all the “don’t wants yet haves” to their opposites (or what you do want instead).  Why?

Because the brain reinforces the very thing you no longer want.  The brain is unable to process the word not.

Example:  You don’t want stress yet you have it.

So what’s the opposite of not wanting stress?  That is, what do you want instead.  Peace?  Calmness?  Focus?  Centeredness?

Incorporate these opposites into the last quadrant (want/don’t have).

Upper Right Quadrant:  What you want and have.

These are the things you want to keep/preserve.  This is your gratitude list.

Example:  I want to start my day with a plan and am currently starting my day with a plan.

Upper Left Quadrant:  What you want yet don’t have.

These are your desires.  Your BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals).

Example:  I want to have strong accountability in my organization yet don’t currently have it.

Once you have filled out this matrix fully, imagine what your days will be like in the new year, having what you want (and eliminating what you don’t want).

This is a critical step.   Write out your new leadership story in present tense.

It should start with the words … “It is now December 30, 2016.  I am/have … (then write your new leadership narrative).

Step 3:  Testing for 100% Congruency.

At this point, you have completed all your unfinished business from the past year and have written a new leadership vision for 2016.

However, you are NOT done yet.  In my experience of working with leaders, Step 3 is the most critical (to realize your new goals and vision) yet rarely done.

The #1 reason why you did not realize your goals and vision this year is because you were not 100% congruent (on an unconscious level).  You wanted the goals yet …

You had your foot on the brake and accelerator at the same time. 

Denise Corcoran

Below are some questions to test for 100% congruency.

·      What might you lose if you achieve your vision or goals?

·      What are the possible benefits or secondary gains of not realizing your vision?

·      What might achieving your vision cost you?  Is it worth the cost?

·      On a scale of 1-10, how strong is your belief that you will achieve your vision?   Or that you have the capabilities to achieve it?

·      Do your new leadership goals conflict with other goals in your life?

·      When, where and with whom do you want to achieve your new goals?  (For example, if you want to be more assertive as a leader, is it ecological to do that in all situations and with all people?)

Without 100% congruency, your leadership vision will not only NOT be compelling.  You will unconsciously sabotage yourself from not achieving it.   Is that what you really want?

Bottomline:  Take time in December to follow these 3 steps to prepare for a groundbreaking new year in your leadership growth.

If you find yourself stuck in the process, click on the box in the right margin and sign up for a complimentary Leadership Strategy Session.  I have only 3 openings in December.  Sign up before it’s too late!

The post Re-Igniting Your Leadership Fire appeared first on The Empowered Business.

Your company is growing and has gained recognition and success.  Your culture and employees are thriving and you are so proud of everyone’s accomplishments.

Yet …

you feel something is missing.  You can’t put your finger on what.  After all, it’s been a challenging journey.  In many ways, you and your organization have arrived at its desired destination.

How could something be missing?

Guess what?

You are not alone.

That gnawing feeling of something missing is a positive thing.  It’s a sign your soul is stirring …

To something greater than your role and your company.  To a grander purpose.

You are becoming an awakener.

In today’s ever increasing complexity and change, you are being called to operate at a new level of consciousness.  To transcend your mission statement, competition and engagement practices.

Are ready to make that leap?

What Is a Leadership Awakener?

I am not a teacher, but an awakener.

Robert Frost

Most leaders’ roles and identities evolve.  Let’s take a look at one natural progression of a leader’s role.  Every role is important.

1.   Coach

Traditional coaching focuses on behavior.  The goal of a leader as coach is to improve the behavior of his/her team.

When leaders assume the role of coach, they are observing and giving feedback.  For example – coaching someone how to communicate more respectfully to teammates.

2.   Teacher

Teaching focuses on cognitive skills and capabilities.

A leader wearing the hat of teacher focuses on building  competencies and thinking capabilities – such as how to read a P&L statement or presentation skills.

3.   Mentor

Coaches and teachers focus on the external aspects of performance.  Mentors, however, focus on the internal aspects – ie., employees’ beliefs and values.

A leader wearing the hat of mentor focuses on influencing a person’s beliefs and values in a positive way – such as, believing in him/herself.

4.   Awakener

While awakening is definitely not a common term within organizations, leaders who operate at a high level of consciousness and being are the awakeners in the business world.

A leader as an awakener operates at the level of spirit or Higher Self.   Such leaders have the capacity to transcend their own mental maps (beliefs, values, identity) and connect with a greater Force within themselves and others.

Leadership Awakeners are the Game Changers of the World.

Are you ready to make the leap?

Leadership awakeners think differently. Perceive differently.  Decide differently.  Here are 3 (among many) distinctions.

As an awakener …

You View the Organization as a Hologram

What the heck is a hologram?!

A hologram is a 3 dimensional representation created with the use of a laser using a process called holography.

The fascinating property of holograms is that you can cut it up in tiny pieces and actually create the whole from a single part.

Not only does the whole contain all the parts.  Every part contains information about the whole.

WOW!!  Isn’t that mind blowing?!

The implications to an organization are huge!   The concept of a hologram says that every function … every product/service … every employee contains within it information about your entire company.

Nelson Mandela used this principle in transforming South Africa. He knew that the greatest chance of unifying the country was not through a top-down approach of sweeping changes.

Rather, that unity (the whole) would come from his relentless support of the country’s all white rugby team (a part) in the World Cup.  He rightly assumed that victory would unify the country.  The rest is history.

Applying the holographic property can accelerate success within your company.  Let’s look at 2 examples.

If you are like most leaders, you use a top-down approach in planning or envisioning your future.  That is, you take the whole and you break it into parts.  That approach has merit in certain contexts.

What if … with your next strategic plan, you instead take a bottoms up approach, using the holographic principle?

What if … you were to improve the weakest link in your organization (eg., competencies or efficiencies) and made that the focus of your strategic plan?

How would that one small change impact the performance of the entire organization?

How about applying the holographic principle to problem-solving?

What if … the next time your team solves a customer service or process problem, you focus on solving the bigger organizational issue – such as lack of cohesive teams? 

What would that do to your profitability, productivity and quality?

You See Competition as an Illusion

In our Western culture, we obsess about beating our competition and becoming the best.

That obsession shows in our love for “Best ____” lists and awards.  Fortune’s Top 100 Companies, 50 Best Places to Work for, Inc. 500/5000 and Top 40 Under 40 to name a few.

While competition can be a blessing, fueling higher standards and innovation.   It can equally be a curse.

It conditions you to think in terms of winning and losing or a zero sum game.  Those leaders who operate from a win/lose paradigm can’t see another way.

The truth is …

Competition is an illusion.

You will never win long term with this paradigm.  However, there is a more optimal paradigm from which leaders can operate.

John Nash –- behavioral economist and Nobel Prize recipient – is best known for advancing game theory and the equilibrium principle.

In simple terms, his work showed that …

the best result comes when everyone in a group (team, market, etc.) does what’s best for themselves and for the group.

His findings say that when your company works TOGETHER with — not against – your “competitors,” you ALL will be better off than if you worked at cross-purposes with each other.

Example:  Toyota and BMW have collaborated to create an environmentally friendly luxury car.  They shared costs and knowledge for electric car battery research.  BMW supplied diesel engines to Toyota.  Everybody won, especially the customer.

How might collaborating with a competitor reduce delivery times and costs, open up new markets or strengthen your position rather than weaken it?

Below are additional resources and examples to delve further about collaborating with competitors.

Collaborate with Your Competitors … and Win, 

Friendly Competition:  Competitors Collaborate  (video)

You Know That Perceived Limitations Are Wake-Up Calls

Stop for a moment.  Take inventory of ways you and/or your organization …

·      Struggle or effort

·      Feel fear when your customers or the economy slow down

·      Have hit a ceiling in growth, profits or performance

·      Don’t have money or time for critical projects

Your perceived limitations are your own creation.  Not consciously though.  You are stuck in the limiting confines of your own thinking.

Attribution: Canstock.com

When you hit such limits, you tend to panic at the edge between the known and unknown.  You fight for certainty and control.  Yet more knowledge, analyses and busyness are NOT the answer.

To transcend these limitations, you must awaken to another reality.  The world of Potentiality.  The world of unbounded possibilities.

In this new awakened state, you tap into a greater Force within yourself and beyond yourself.  You fear no challenge.  You are immune to criticism.  Self-power – or knowledge of Self — becomes your true source of power.

The question is … how do you awaken that part?

Here are 2 ways:

1.  Practice “not knowing”

Exploring the unknown opens the door to unlimited creativity and possibilities.

Start with a question or concern.  Let go of all knowledge, assumptions and ready answers.  Adopt a beginner’s mind.  Openness, curiosity, inquiry, reflection and learning are essential.  Take time to explore what you don’t know.  What new possibilities emerge from “not knowing?”

When practicing “not knowing,” you transcend fear of the unknown and engage in new possibilities.  You are excited about opportunities the unknown presents.

2.  Transcend your own mental maps

Your mental map are unconscious filters – beliefs, values, identity, etc. – that drive focus and perception.  These maps ARE the boundary conditions of your thinking.

When I work with leaders, my first goal is to uncover their mental maps.  Then change them to expand possibilities within themselves and then within others.  Because there is no set procedure, there are no steps I can give you for that change.

However, even if it is for a few brief moments initially, you can learn to transcend your mental maps.

Get quiet.   Go to that place within yourself where there are no fears.   No limiting beliefs.  No internal conflicts.  Trust your higher Self to take you there.  You will know you are there because you feel a sense of peace and ultimately pure silence.  It’s from that place new possibilities emerge.

Summary

The ultimate calling of a leader is to awaken the grander purpose and possibilities within themselves and then their employees.

Becoming a leadership awakener is the highest level of consciousness from which you can lead.  You transcend the mental maps, knowledge and expertise that limit your potential.  You lead from a level of spirit that knows no boundaries.

Life and work take on new meaning.  Struggles become a thing of the past.  You are at peace even in the midst of turmoil.

The question is …

Are ready to make that leap?

The post Real Leaders Become Awakeners appeared first on The Empowered Business.

How are you?

Busy? Relaxed? Energized? Tired?

I notice a pattern in modern life. I’m going too fast and packing too much in my days. I’m hunting for stimuli – or at least I’m distracted by them. I notice restlessness when I’m already tired. I see most people around me living by schedules that don’t leave space to slow down and to be mindfully aware of what really happens. How do you wake up to the present?

I’m lucky, though. Since I am self-employed, I can schedule time for contemplation. I know that I need some time for silence – to be my best self again when I work with clients. When I’m going too fast – I am less awake, less present in the moment.

So I’ve started an experiment. My intention is to follow my energy as much as possible – what do I feel like doing now? What gives me pleasure? What do I need at this moment?

Let’s wise up and go with the flow.

Let’s see if and how my experiences and results change when I give more attention to what I’m doing right now, with mindfulness. What emerges if I let go of attachment to outcomes and SMART goals?

For instance, my intention is to create something new (it’s been stewing and brewing for a while) but I’m not going to translate that into a target up front, like: “Finish my next book by the summer”.

Trust this moment

I’m going to BE with whatever is present – instead of only focusing on everything I must DO. I’m going to trust that things will work out – instead of fearing that I won’t get enough done when I follow my energy and needs.

I’m curious to see what emerges, or what important clues I get (that I may have missed in my busy-doing mindset) when I’ll be more mindful. It feels like an adventurous journey – in a way it’s letting go of (the illusion of) planning and control. I’m tired of trying to force reality into my mould according to schedules and goals.

Can you BE present instead of focusing on everything you must DO? 

What if I was more open and trusting toward reality? I have my intentions – but let’s see what happens when I travel in that direction: listening, feeling, sensing, checking, learning whether I’m aligned with what is present.

Let’s “wise up” and go with the flow – if there is any. Or wait ashore, if there is no flow, temporarily. The tide will eventually rise again – and until it does – why not enjoy your quiet time at the beach?

How do you satisfy your need for introversion, contemplation, quiet time?

People don’t learn from experience. We learn from reflection on experience. Regarding going too fast, consider this: There are three times to wake up: never, afterwards or while it is happening. As Eckhart Tolle says:

“Don’t ask, how long can I stay awake?
Rather count how many times you woke up.”

• How do you help yourself to wake up?
• How are you? What’s your energy and needs at this moment?
• How does your day change when you acknowledge them?

Marcella Bremer co-founded this Leadership & Change Blog and OCAI-online.com. She’s an author and culture & change consultant.  Check out Marcella’s digital magazine issues, white papers, videos, interviews and articles about positive leadership, culture, change and new organizations.  http://www.leadershipandchangemagazine.com

The post Are You Awake? appeared first on The Empowered Business.

Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities.   Gloria Steinem

When I was a little girl, my mother encouraged me to dream. She would often tell me … “Dream big dreams. It does not cost anything to dream.”

So as a child, I would imagine myself becoming …

possibility thinking

… A gold Olympic ice skater on one day.

… The first woman astronaut on another day.

… Then it was a toss up between a princess, a cowgirl or a Mickey Mouse musketeer on the other days.

Nobody ever told me that anything was impossible. I am grateful for those early days that shaped me to thrive possibilities.

Now that I work with leaders, I find the art of possibility thinking extinct in many companies. If you are a leader that …

• Rarely challenges the boundary conditions of your thinking
• Struggles in creating new visions that fire up you and your organization
• Freezes at opportunities and problems with no precedence,

it is time to thrive in possibilities again.

Before addressing the what and how of possibility thinking, let’s look at how over-focus on accountability is preventing possibility thinking in your organization.

Is Too Much Accountability Stifling Your Organization?

While accountability is absolutely essential to the health of your organization, from a brain perspective, it drives your focus and thinking in an opposite direction to possibility thinking.

Why?

Accountability is all about …

• Discipline
• Control
• Order
• Measurement and metrics
• Limit in focus
• Here and now
• Excellence in execution
• What is
• Stability
• Norms

Accountability actually trains your brain to think in terms of boundaries … to stay in the box … to limit your focus. That’s a good thing to a point. You need accountability to achieve your company goals.

However, for many organizations, over-emphasis on accountability stifles creative thinking, innovation and visioning. The key for leaders is to know how to intersect and integrate possibility with accountability.

If you are like many leaders, the likelihood is that possibility thinking is the weaker muscle. Let’s look at how you can change that.

What is Possibility Thinking?

The only limits to the possibilities in your life tomorrow are the ‘buts’ you use today.     Les Brown

Interact with a child and you will know what possibility thinking is. For them, the world is filled with new things to discover. Their curious minds want to explore everything around them. Their imaginations fire up as they pretend to be their favorite heroes and villains.

As we mature as adults, we lose that creative spark. We lose our inquisitive thinking. We forget how to create the world around us.   We get stuck in our sense of reality and don’t dare new horizons.

We’ve stopped believing in what is possible.

From my experience, possibility thinking …

• Is a mindset in which, as a leader, you think beyond limits (yours and your company’s).

• Asks possibility questions.

• Thinks BIG

• Challenges status quo

• Creates breakthrough solutions

If you want to see possibility thinking in action, watch this inspiring 90 second video clip.

Noah Galloway – an army veteran who lost both his right arm and leg in the Iraq War – was a contestant on last season’s Dancing with the Stars. He defied the odds in both what he could accomplish (with a metal leg and a missing arm) and how far he could go in the contest.

It’s a must watch video.   It will inspire you to eliminate excuses and reach new heights.

7 Ways to Cultivate Your Possibility Thinking

What we can do or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of true capability.  It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are.  Anthony Robbins

Possibility thinking is a brain muscle. If you let yours get flabby, it needs to be strengthened again. Here’s 7 ways how.

Ask Possibility Questions

Possibility questions are critical in your leadership role because they break through the boundary conditions of your (or some else’s) thinking. They transform disempowering beliefs to empowering ones.

Here are examples of possibility questions to get you started.

• What if you could achieve ‘x’ (a seemingly impossible) goal, what would be the first step you would take?

• What leader inspires you the most? What would they do in this situation?

• How do we need to lead differently to double our growth in the next year?

• How do you know “that” (such as belief) is true? Are there any other possibilities?

• What is the ideal outcome you seek?

Find Who and What Inspires You

In NLP, one of the foundational principles is — if one person can do something, anyone can do it (through modeling).

Find the leader who inspires you. Someone whose success and excellence you would like to model. As Isaac Newton said,

“The reason I see so far is because I stand on the tall shoulders of those who have come before me.”

Once you have identified someone, the next question is: what specifically about this person would you like to model?

Externally, it could be his/her behaviors, habits, physiology, etc.  Internally it could be his/her beliefs, values, character traits and more.

For example, if Richard Branson inspires you, you might want to model his beliefs (such as, business is fun) or personality traits (such as, resilience) or values (such as, adventure). The person you pick can be someone you know or don’t know, someone alive or dead.

In a future article, I will address the process of modeling at greater length. The first step is to decide who and what to model.

Creative Destruction 

In 1942 Austrian economist and ardent capitalist, Joseph Schumpeter coined the phrase creative destruction – his theory about what drives busts and booms in the economy.

Creative destruction is the process in which new technologies, new kinds of products, new production methods, etc. made old ones obsolete, forcing existing companies to adapt or fail. Kodak is a good example of a company that failed because of creative destruction.

Given the pace of change in today’s business world, modern leadership must learn to embrace the concept of creative destruction within their companies to create new possibilities. Such as:

• What ways of thinking from your past should you obliterate to make room for a brand new future?

• What systems and structures should you destroy to keep up with change?

• How must you destructively and disruptively instigate change (before needed) to stay ahead of the competition?

“Dream One Size Bigger”

In his book, How Successful People Think, John Maxwell addresses 6 ways that possibility thinkers think. One of those ways is to dream one size bigger.

Are you a leader that tends to dream small? Do your visions and goals fall well below who you can be and what you can achieve?

Challenge yourself to dream more expansively. Push your team to set bigger goals. Ask your peers every time that you get trapped in impossibility or “realistic” thinking to step up your game. Get into the habit of dreaming one size bigger.

Change Your Beliefs

The biggest obstacle blocking your possibility thinking is your beliefs.

• Beliefs about what’s possible
• Beliefs about yourself and your capabilities
• Beliefs about the effort required
• Beliefs about the risks

and more.

Because I have covered the topic of beliefs in great detail in other articles, I recommend that you check out:

• How Leaders Break Through Sabotaging Beliefs … Rapidly
• The Secret to Rapid Leadership Breakthroughs
• Real Truths That Fuel Real Leaders

Cultivate “Out of the Box” or Lateral Thinking

My favorite expert on creative, “out of the box” thinking is Edward de Bono.

My two favorite tools of de Bono are:

• His book, Whack on the Side of the Head
• His creative brainstorming deck of cards, Creative Whack Pack.

Next time you get stuck in your thinking, I recommend the above resources to recharge your creative juices to a whole new level. They are always my “go to” tools for out of the box thinking.

DECIDE Your Leadership Future

While you may not fully embrace this one truth yet,

you are the creator of your leadership future.

 The clearer you are about who you want to become and what difference you want to make in your future, the more power you have to achieve it.

However, knowing what you want is not enough. Deciding your future – even without knowing how – is the catalyst that transforms bold dreams into reality.

Are you ready to give up your old stories that say you can’t?

Are you ready to decide your future story?

In Summary

While possibility without accountability is wishful thinking. Accountability without possibility is a dead end street.

The new frontier in leadership is knowing how to intersect the two.

What are you doing to make that leadership leap?

If you’ve enjoyed this post, I’d be grateful if you’d share it with your friends and network on Linkedin, Twitter or Facebook. Thank you!

The post Accountability to Possibility: The Next Frontier in Leadership Growth appeared first on The Empowered Business.

• You could easily predict the performance of your leaders, your teams and your organization?
• You could gain access to the underlying motivators that drive a leader or employee to do their best work?
• You could eliminate costly hiring mistakes and determine in advance to what extent a candidate will perform well in a role?

Such a solution exists and can unleash the potential and performance within your organization.

It’s called motivational profiling.  Your underlying (and often unconscious) attitudes and motivations determine what you pay attention to and focus on in your leadership role.

These deep motivation and attitudinal patterns  (MAPs) ultimately drive – yours and others’ –

• Behaviors
• Decision making style
• Requirements for change and variety
• Dominant motivation driver
• Levels of strategic and visionary thinking
• Relationship to norms/rules
• Orientation toward innovation and creativity
• And much more

Drawing on recent evolutions in cognitive science research, motivational profiling is a state-of-the-art assessment tool that provides a window into yours and your employees’ intrinsic motivations and attitudes at work.

These intrinsic motivations are the invisible forces that pull you and your organization in a certain direction.   By uncovering these patterns, you can unlock the motivational code for improving engagement, productivity and performance in your workplace.

Before delving into 7 key leadership motivation patterns, let’s first look at 3 often-missed truths about performance.

3 truths every leader needs to know about performance

1.  Most companies mistakenly believe that competencies are the #1 driver of performance.  

Not true!  Just because you have a certain capability doesn’t mean that you are motivated to use it.  We all know people who are highly educated and/or talented, yet just get by in their work role.  As Zig Ziglar said,

“Attitude, not Aptitude, determines Altitude.”

Competency accounts for, at best, 20% of performance.  Yet companies continue to invest in skills development only to be disappointed by little or no difference in performance.

The truth is your motivation patterns account for as much as 60% of performance.  Motivation patterns reflect whether you want to do something, NOT whether you can do it.

2.  Different leadership roles require different motivation patterns for high performance in that role.

While there are certain patterns important to all leaders – such as, a high people interest, specific leadership roles may require different motivational patterns to be successful.

For example,

A successful CFO is likely to have such MAPs (Motivation and Attitudinal patterns) as — strong motivation toward procedures over options; a preference for solving problems over focus on goals; and a high past time orientation that drives focus on traditions, past experience and benchmarks.

A successful CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) is likely to have such MAPs as – strong motivation toward options (ie., how to do something faster, better or cheaper) over procedures; high motivation toward goals, rather than avoiding problems; and high future time orientation with a focus on long term strategies, future customer needs and environmental changes.

Motivational profiling can help you put the best individuals into a specific leadership roles with the best chances of success.  Not only will motivational profiling tell you if an individual is naturally wired to be a successful leader.  It will also tell you for a given leadership role, if he/she is likely to excel.

3.  All behavior is motivated. If you want to change a leader’s behavior, change the motive underlying the behavior.

Common company practices tend to focus on behavioral changes to increase performance.  However, your behavior is a symptom or byproduct of your underlying motives.

Changing just behavior is at best temporary.  For permanent behavioral change, you must change the underlying motivation.

Identify the motive and you will understand the behavior.  Satisfy the motive and you will manage the behavior.

7 motivational patterns of high performance leadership

Since 2002, Carl Harshman — Founder, Institute for Work Attitude and Motivation –  has studied hundreds of business leaders’ MAPs.  He found the following 7 strong (high score) motivation patterns as key drivers of leadership effectiveness and performance.

Goal Orientation

Goal orientation is one of 2 patterns that reflect your direction motivation.  With a high goal orientation score, you are motivated to move toward goals, pleasure or something positive.

Its companion MAP — Problem Solving – reflects to what extent you are motivated to move away from pain, problems or risk.

High performing leaders tend to score high on goal orientation.  They want to focus on and pursue goals more than avoiding problems.

Breadth

The Breadth pattern reflects to what extent a leader focuses on the “big picture.”  It also reflects a leader’s cognitive style to think in broad, large chunks of information.  Like seeing a landscape from 10,000 feet above.

Its companion pattern is Depth – ie.,, thinking in small chunks of information and focusing on details.  Effective managers are typically more oriented toward details, as are functions like quality control and accounting.

Future Orientation

There are 3 Time Orientation patterns – Past, Present and Future.  This set of patterns influences your focus, decision making and thinking style.

High performance leaders tend to think from the future.  They want to pay more attention to a long term, rather than short term, view.  Effective managers, on the other hand, are more Present time oriented to deal with daily activities.

Power

In the context of MAPs assessment, the Power pattern reflects to what extent a leader wants to be in charge.  It is one of three core motivational drivers identified by McClelland.  The other two motivation drivers are Affiliation and Achievement.

High performing leaders score in the healthy range of Power – neither overly strong nor weak.  Too high and the leader becomes domineering.  Too weak and the leader shrinks from being in charge and their own personal power.

People and Group

There are two individual, yet highly related, patterns that high performing leaders tend to score high (or at least normal range) on each.

The People pattern is an interest filter.  A high score means the leader wants to deal with people as part of their role.  Other interest filters are oriented around things, such as systems, tools, money, activity, etc.

The Group pattern is an indication to what extent a leader wants to have contact with people as part of their role.

Evolution

This is one of three patterns that relates to a leader’s relationship with change.  A high Evolution score is typical of high performing leaders and indicates a motivation for planned, incremental change.  The Evolution pattern is synonymous with “continuous improvement.”

The other 2 change patterns are Sameness and Differences.  For different industries, these 2 patterns may play a more important role for leaders.

Shared Responsibility

This pattern and its companion pattern (Sole Responsibility) indicate a leader’s motivation as it relates to responsibility.

High performing leaders tend to have a high Shared Responsibility score.  It indicates that they are motivated to be great team players and delegators.  They want to collaborate and share responsibility.

By no means, are these the only motivation patterns that can impact your leadership performance.  They serve, however, as a starting point to help you identify to what extent you focus on (or motivated by) these 7 areas.

Real stories … real breakthroughs

When I assess leaders’ motivational patterns, I am looking at both 48 distinct motivational patterns, as well as combination of patterns, as clues about what is hindering or can enhance a leader’s performance.

I now have the luxury of accessing these patterns through an online tool.  It has opened the door to deep insights for many leaders, teams and organizations.

Not only has performance improved, leaders and teams rise to the top of their game, more engaged and motivated.  Below are 2 examples.

1.    Within 6 months, low performers became high performers.  Increased revenues – 33%.

Through motivation profiling and Models of Excellence tools, the motivation patterns of high performers within a call center were identified.  Under-performers were trained to replicate motivation patterns of high performers.  Results: 33% increase in revenues in 6 months;  a motivation profile of high performers also served as a recruiting tool for hiring top talent.

2.    Improved leadership teamwork, cohesiveness and performance.

A common leadership issue is being in sync and working as a team.  While some skills come into play for stronger teamwork, the bigger, often missed, issue is the differences in motivation patterns across the leadership team.

The key for this company was to train each leader in their own motivation patterns, as well as those of the other leaders.  When leaders were able to understand each other on a deep motivation level and how their differences were sources of team brilliance (rather than team breakdowns), team communication improved and performance increased.

Check out these free resources for more information:

• iWAM:  Mapping the New Landscape of Human Performance  (PPT download)
• Talent Management:  A Focus on Excellence (free 93 page ebook)

Email me with any questions.

The post Deep Motivations, Not Competencies, Drive Leadership Performance. appeared first on The Empowered Business.

Picture this, you’re 12 years old and you fly into the house after school. “Mom, Dad, guess what I decided today? I’m gonna be a doctor!”

Mom is always encouraging. “Honey, that’s great! Doctors are well respected. You’ll make good money, have a nice spouse and a nice house. I’m so glad you’re going to be a doctor.”

In contrast, how might Dad respond? “A doctor? Are you kidding me? Do you know how many years you have to go to school to become a doctor? Do you know how much money it costs? And you’ll be working with sick people all day. And malpractice insurance…” And on and on and on he goes.

These two parents are revealing their decision-making processes. Mom likes good things, benefits. Dad sees a world of problems and pain.

If you’re a sales pro, this is something you’ll want to recognize in your buyers. Some of them are quite positive. They move toward your offerings. Others seem negative, disagreeable, moving away from ideas you offer.

In psychology we call this “direction.” Its origins? A 19^th century philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer. He is credited with recognizing that people are motivated by their direction. Some seek to attain good things and move toward them. Others want to avoid problems, so they move away.

This has been adopted in Educational Psychology where students, teachers, administrators and parents are recognized by these two motivational categories.

What’s in this for you? Insights that will help you increase sales. The selling world was influenced to only offer benefits to buyers, beginning in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 80s, it was popular to sell by identifying a buyer’s “pain.”

Pain-based selling is still the rage. The problem is both approaches are right and wrong, depending on whether you recognize which buyer you’re dealing with. Great sales pros know exactly how to influence either type, because they ask a powerful question that tells which person is sitting in front of them (or on the phone). In a word, great salespeople know how to speak a buyers “dialect.” The seller matches language to the direction revealed by the buyer.

So how do we know which type of buyer we’re dealing with?

You ask a powerful question that reveals the buyer’s type. You ask this question, as early as possible, in a conversation. You then utilize your newly discovered verbal agility to speak their dialect.

First you get the question. Then you’ll learn how to build two distinct sales presentations – one for Pain and one for Gain-based buyers.

What’s important to you about… X?

X is your service or product offering. How to use this? I’ll give you real examples from a sales training program I recently designed for a major financial services firm. They learned to ask the question in a couple different ways;

What’s important to you about a financial services rep?

OR

What’s important to you about a financial product?

The answers give you great insight into your buyer for one simple reason.

The buyers respond by sharing a story.

It’s a good story: “we really want at least a 10% return, so we can go on a Mediterranean cruise this fall.”

OR

It’s a bad story: “The last guy who managed our money lost 40% of our portfolio. So we couldn’t afford to go on a Mediterranean cruise we planned.”

Now you know exactly what type of decision-maker you’re speaking to. So you know exactly what language you’ll use to reach them. TIP: If their answer is a bit vague (“We just want a better rep”), dig deeper “Okay, please tell me more about that.” and you’ll get their direction soon enough.

Once you know, you’ll need to be prepared to have some bullet points to use, Gain-based and Pain-based language to use during the sales call.

The following example comes from coaching a Mazda/ VW automotive dealership sales team.

CAR CHART EXAMPLE

You get the picture. This is clear, simple to build and you’ll sound so much more convincing when you’re connecting with potential clients.

Build this chart now with your sales team. If you don’t have a team, brainstorm it with a networking group or fellow entrepreneurs. Just get this language down, because it’s critical to connecting with your buyers.

You now know whether to use Pain or Gain to best motivate buyers to buy.

If you’d like, I have a gift for you. It’s a Cheat Sheet of Pain and Gain-based language to use in constructing your chart. Send me an email and I’ll get it to you right way. Dan@GotInfluenceInc.com.

 Byline

Dan Seidman was recognized as the International Sales Training Leader of the Year in 2013 for his work designing and re-designing existing sales training, in order to significantly increase sales team performance.  

His body of work can be found in The Ultimate Guide to Sales Training (Pfeiffer, 2012), a 600 page encyclopedia of best-practices. Dan is also the author of 5 books, including the #1 business best-seller, Sales Autopsy (Kaplan, 2006).  For training, coaching or consulting contact Dan today at 1-847-359-7860 or Dan@GotInfluenceInc.com.

The post Pain VS Gain: How to Best Motivate Buyers to Buy appeared first on The Empowered Business.

Fears keeping you small

All leaders have fears.  However, not all your fears are created equal.

Some may manifest as low level anxieties.  Some are life paralyzing phobias.  Some may be triggered only by certain events – like fear of public speaking.  Others may be life-long fears.

Then there are the “big guns.”  These are the core unconscious leadership  fears from which all other fears come.  They override every aspect of your being.

In this article you will learn 7 unconscious leadership fears that keep you small.  First, it’s important to understand the nature of fear.

3 Truths About Fear Every Leader Needs to Know

1.     Fear is indestructible. 

Your brain is wired for fear. It is essential for your physical survival.  You want fear to send you signals when you are in danger, in an unsafe situation or about to make a high stakes mistake. Fear is your friend in those circumstances.

2.     Fear comes from a mental construct. 

Fear is a byproduct of your thoughts.  Your fear thoughts are mental constructs – meaning they have no basis in reality. As the saying goes, fear is “false evidence appearing real.”

The emotion of fear is real.  The content of your fear — your thoughts — is not real.  In your mind, though, you believe that your fear thoughts are reality.

To free yourself of such fear, you need to dislodge the mental constructs which drive fear.  Fear thoughts are of your own making and they can be unmade.

3.     Fearlessness does not exist.

Are you a leader that fantasizes about the day when you will be free of all fear?

Guess what?  It’s not going to happen.  Buying into the belief of fearlessness is a trap.  It’s an impossible goal to reach!  Even those who have achieved extraordinary feats have fear.

Your goal should not be to eliminate all fear.  Rather it should be, as one author wrote, to feel the fear and do it anyway.

Below are 7 core unconscious leadership fears you want to know about.  They are hijacking your leadership success and potential.

7 Unconscious Leadership Fears That Keep You Small

As a leader, you will be plagued by thousands of fears in your role.  You will have surface fears – such as fear of public speaking or holding employees accountable.

Then there are the deep unconscious leadership fears that enslave you until you break free.

1.     Fear of fear itself

Being a leader is demanding, high stakes work.  It stretches every ounce of your being.  It tests your strength of courage, perseverance and resilience.

The demands can be so great and the fear so paralyzing that the only way of getting relief is to put your head in the sand and pretend fear does not exist.  In those circumstances, your dominating fear is of fear itself.

In the short term, pretending you have no fear to move forward with your goals and actions can actually be a healthy choice.

In the long term, however, the fears you are avoiding will sabotage your every attempt to play a bigger leadership game.

2.     Fear of (owning your) power

All leaders are powerful yet few know how powerful they really are.  True personal power (or lack of it) determines whether you show up on the cause or effects side of your outcomes equation.

Being at the effects side means you believe that things happen to you.  That you have little or no control on your outcomes.

When you own your leadership power, you believe that …

You are at cause for all the results in your life.

If you fear power, it is because you are conflicted about it.  You have negative associations or beliefs about what power means.

The truth is that you can’t fully contribute your leadership gifts and talents if you fear owning your own leadership power.

3.     Fear of “being found out”

Within every person, there are 3 selves — a Pretend Self, a Feared Self and an Authentic Self.  Your Pretend Self  is that part of you that feels a need to hide behind an imaginary mask.

You don’t want others to know that you feel inadequate in your leadership role.  You don’t feel as though you’re smart enough, experienced enough, confident enough (fill in the blank) to be in your leadership role.

You take on other personas out of fear of being “found out.”  You put on a strong face – pretending to have it all together – when deep inside you feel like a fraud.

When you pretend to be someone you are not, you can never be your authentic powerful self.

4.     Fear of sharing your power

The world of leadership is filled with paradoxes.  One of those paradoxes is about power.

To be an exceptional leader, you must own your personal power (as addressed in #2).  Doing so allows you to take charge of your own individual outcomes and be an example to others.

However, once a leader owns their power, he/she tends to hoard it – such as making all the decisions, resolving all conflicts, leading all meetings, etc.  You hoard power because you fear loss of importance and lack of control if you share it.

Yet for a company to flourish, power must be distributed and shared throughout the organization.  This means developing employees as personal leaders within their own roles and teams.  Allowing them to make decisions within their own scope.  Giving them the tools and know-how to resolve their own conflicts.

5.     Fear of Truth

Reality is truth.  Yet our brains are not capable of knowing 100% reality.  The reason … your brain can only process less than 1%  all the sensory data at any moment of time.

Your sense of reality — or perceived reality – comes from your beliefs, your sense of identity, your model of the world and so forth.  You become so attached to your own sense of reality, that you avoid new information (truth) that conflicts with your current (limited) thinking.

By no means is fear of truth exclusive to leaders.  However, avoidance of  truth can have dire consequences to leaders and their organizations. Your actions and decisions are driven by cognitive biases and those biases can be costly.

For example, success often blinds leaders and prevents them from seeing the truth of a looming future ahead.

6.     Fear of losing the known

For your company to grow, leaders must move into foreign territories where they have no prior experience.  In those situations, you don’t have a mental flashlight to guide you.  That can be scary.

In reality, it’s NOT your fear of the unknown that stops you.  After all, how can you fear something you don’t even know about?!

What you really fear is …

Fear of losing (or letting go) of the known

As you grow to new leadership levels, the new possibilities can be endless.  Yet seldom does your mind see these new changes as amazing opportunities.  Instead, you …

·      Fear losing your sense of safety when making a leap

·      Fear letting go of current routines and habits that give you predictability

·      Fear letting go of who you are for who you can be

7.     Fear of your own brilliance

While it is a rare leader who hasn’t dreamed of standing on the shoulders of giants, boldly stepping out and realizing your own greatness is a scary proposition.

Yes, the majority of leaders fear their own brilliance.

How do I know?

I observe it in such behaviors as …

·      Getting caught up in distractions – such as, always looking at your cell phone

·      Mindless activities

·      Chasing the externals to make you feel good about yourself.

Being visible in the world … rising above mediocrity … standing in the light of your authentic self, that takes radical courage.

Fear does not have rule you.  The key is to know how to dislodge it.

Dislodge Your Unconscious Leadership Fears in 5 Minutes 

Step1:  Name your fear.

To break the hold of your fear, first name it.  Boil it down to a single word – like SeenAsFake.

Step 2:  Personify your fear.

For example, if you fear fear itself, perhaps you personify it as a big black monster.  If you fear power, perhaps you imagine it as Hitler or mean sergeant.

Step 3:  ID visual and auditory associations with your fear persona (identified in #2).

When you think of your fear persona …

·      What’s the characteristics of the picture?  Black and white or colored?  Large or small?  Near or far?

·      What does he/she/it sound like?  Deep or high voice?   Fast or slow pace?  Loud or soft?

Step 4:  Change the identified associations above to their opposites to transform your fear. 

For example,

·      If your fear picture is black/white, large and near, change it to color, small and far.

·      If your fear voice has a low pitch, loud volume and slow pace, change it to high pitch, low volume and fast pace.

That’s it!  With this simple 4 step process, your fear will transform from a roar to a whisper.

Want to know more secrets how to rise to the top of your leadership game? 

Sign up for our free report below — Wired to Win Big:  7 Inner Game Leadership Strategies to Rise to the Top and Stay There.  The only game you ever need to win is the game within your mind!

The post 7 Unconscious Leadership Fears That Keep You Small appeared first on The Empowered Business.

Even though I did strategy development for billion dollar corporations in the early days of my business 30 years ago, I had no idea that there were 3 different approaches to strategic planning.  I learned alot from this article.  I know you will too!

Time is Money: The 3 Different Approaches to Strategic Planning

“The marvelous thing about lack of planning is that failure comes as a complete and utter surprise.”
– Peter Green

One of the biggest challenges organizations face is making the commitment to develop a well thought out strategic plan. “Are you kidding me!” they’ll say. “Who has the time do a strategic plan with so much work to do?” Instead they wander into the work place and react to crises. And ironically, most crises are a result of their failure to plan! So why don’t more organizations engage in strategic planning? Lack of time is one reason. Another may be confusion over the strategic planning process itself.

Even if your business commits the time to develop a strategic plan, you may be unaware that there are different approaches to Strategic Planning. Depending on the size of your organization and the desired outcomes for the planning process, there is a strategic planning process that is right for you.

“Strategic planning is the strategic thinking process whose outcome is clarifying the purpose of the business, where the business wants to be in the future and the choices the business will make to get there.”
– Najera Consulting

What exactly is Strategic Planning?

While there are countless definitions as to what strategic planning is, Najera Consulting defines strategic planning as the strategic thinking process whose outcome is clarifying the purpose of the business, where the business wants to be in the future and the choices the business will make to get there.

The following are the 3 most common approaches for Strategic Planning, ranked in order from least to most strategic:

• Goals focused
• Issues focused
• Systems focused

Goals Focused Approach to Strategic Planning

This approach is the most common form of strategic planning. It is also the least strategic of the three common approaches to business planning. This approach calls for a heavy emphasis on establishing clear business goals. Action plans are then developed to achieve these goals.

A Goals Focused Approach is Right for You, if….

• You are confident on how your business creates, delivers and captures value.
• You are confident that you can identify goals into the future.
• Your business has very limited resources in terms of people, time and money to devote to a more comprehensive strategic planning process.
• You have established clear mission, vision and values statements that are understood by your entire business team.
• There are very few, if any, critical issues facing your business.
• The internal and external environment of your business is somewhat stable.
• Decisions are made often in a top-down, hierarchical fashion.
• Your business has successfully implemented a strategic plan within the last two years.

Issues Focused Approach to Strategic Planning

This approach is sometimes referred to as Critical Issues Planning and is somewhat more strategic than the Goals Focused Approach. This approach places a heavy emphasis on a situational analysis of the business.

It then moves on to identifying issues impacting the business. Action plans are then developed to address said issues. The organization’s mission, vision and values might be developed afterwards, however it’s not the main focus of this planning process. Future business goals and strategies may be established, but only after issues are identified and addressed.

A Issues Focused Approach is Right for You, if….

• You are confident on how your business creates, delivers and captures value.
• Your business faces several critical issues that need further clarity.
• Your business has very limited resources in terms of people, time and money to devote to a more comprehensive strategic planning process.
• You expect or foresee major changes in the internal and/or external environment of your business sector over the next year or so.
• Your management team struggles to identify and reach consensus on key issues and clear goals for the future.

Systems Focused Approach to Strategic Planning

This is the most strategic and comprehensive form of Strategic Planning. It is also the approach most used by our clients. This is a non-linear, organic, iterative, intuitive approach to strategic planning that is best suited to entrepreneurial minded organizations.

The value of this approach is that it provides the business a big-picture perspective cause and effect relationship of its business model. In this approach an equal emphasis is placed on the business’s mission, business model, situational analysis, current and potential customer base and the business’s core value proposition. The resulting strategies are viewed as the highest-level organizing principles for the business.

A Systems Focused Approach is Right for You, if….

• You would like clarity on how your business creates, delivers and captures value.
• You would like more clarity on your mission, vision, and values statements before attempting to make major decisions impacting the financial future of your business.
• You have struggle conform to any type of strategic planning process.
• You are unsure of your desired competitive position and/or social impact.
• The external environment of your business is constantly changing.
• Decisions are made often in a bottoms-up, organic fashion.
• You have struggled in the past to adhere to any type of business planning process.
• Your business has never before developed and implemented a complete strategic planning process.

Some of us may think we’re too tight on time and money to start on any course of strategic planning. But according to The Law of Planning by Brain Tracy, every minute spent in planning saves ten minutes in execution. And if you believe in the saying that “time is money,” according to my calculations this is a 1,000 percent Return on Investment!

Who can pass this up?

Written by Gabriel Najera, Founder, Najera Consulting Group

Gabriel Najera is president & founder of the Najera Consulting Group. The Najera Consulting Group assists corporate and nonprofit organizations in developing, clarifying and implementing high objective strategies that will allow them to outperform their competitors. Gabriel is a frequent speaker to organizations. And, is a highly sought after advisor to corporate and nonprofit executives looking to develop a strategic thinking mindset.

The post Are You Aware Of The 3 Approaches to Strategic Planning? appeared first on The Empowered Business.