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.

If you are a sucker for great leadership movies like I am — Invictus, Coach Carter and Moneyball just to name a few, it’s easy to assume that all leaders embody the same qualities as those in the movies.

Afterall, who hasn’t idealized business leaders to be strong, confident, make tough decisions and stand their ground no matter what?

While those leaders do exist, they are a minority.  In working with leaders for 30 years, I have found that the reality is shockingly different.

Most leaders take on their roles with the greatest of positive intentions.  Yet, along the way, they get lost.  Not by conscious choice.  Rather they are derailed by an underlying dysfunctional pattern called Codependency.

Codependency is a set of beliefs and behaviors that prevent individuals from having healthy, mutually beneficial relationships.  At first glance, the term “co-dependent leader” seems like an oxymoron, yet this dysfunctional behavioral pattern is rampant within the business world.

The question is …

Why does leadership codependency go undetected?

Let’s look at the top 3 reasons why.

1.     Codependent behaviors get masked by a company’s values and practices. 

The post Are You Addicted to Codependent Leadership? appeared first on The Empowered Business.

Has the obsession to create a happy, engaged workforce gone toxic in your company?

Is over-emphasizing positive thinking in your company’s culture, actually creating negativity without you even knowing it?

Is having 0% employee turnover actually a good thing to sing high praises about, or is it overshadowing another truth?

These are just a few examples of how companies, even with great cultures, can go to the dark side.

The REAL Truth About Your Company Culture & Its Hidden Shadow Side

Most great cultures are driven by handful of sacred values.  They have the clarity, discipline and consistency to make those values deeply embedded into their organizations, often outperforming in growth and profitability by  as much as 150%.

Yet many great cultures have also gone toxic AND the leaders don’t even realize it.  The factors that drive a company’s greatness – when taken to an extreme or at the expense of other factors – can actually become the organization’s hidden “shadow” side.  When that shadow is not brought to light, it can actually lead to the downward spiral or a company’s demise.

A past client company with a strong people-oriented culture – one that I deeply admired when I first started working with them – is one such example.  That strong people culture ignited rapid growth and became their competitive advantage in a high commodity industry.  However, when the recession hit, financial fear took over, its once strong culture went toxic and revenues and profits plummeted.

How is it possible for a great culture, like that, to go to the dark side and not realize it?

7 Blindspots That Can and Will Drive Your Company’s Culture to the Dark Side

Below are 7 blind spots and clues that your organization’s culture – no matter how successful in the past – is possibly headed in the wrong direction.  Be rigorously honest how these blind spots are relevant to your organization.  Otherwise, your company’s future could be in jeopardy.

Blindspot 1:  You fight for your espoused values at all costs, without realizing the unintended consequences on your organization and business results.

Any value taken to an extreme actually becomes a company liability.  A good example is the obsession with positive thinking within organizations.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am in favor of developing a mindset and culture that focuses on positivity, as long as it is authentic.

Yet being in blissful denial of the “real” emotional climate, politics or stress levels within your organization only creates a culture that hides its deepest worries and avoids the cold hard truth that can cost your company dearly.  Excessive positive thinking also results in artificial company behaviors and attitudes, triggering employee resentment, resistance and frustration.

Remember … any value – even the seemingly positive – taken to an extreme in your organization becomes your liability and “shadow” side.

Blindspot 2:  You focus mostly on the overt, tangible aspects of culture, while ignoring the covert drivers of your culture.

A company’s culture consists of overt and covert factors.   Overt factors involve what is tangible and observable – such as, strategic processes and behaviors within an organization.  Overt aspects of culture often utilize the reasoning, intellectual parts of our brain — the dominant focus of today’s leadership teams.

Covert aspects relate to the intangible, unconscious (ie., below your ordinary awareness) assumptions, social, emotional and political patterns, organizational taboos, etc.  Every organization has covert aspects driving its culture – such as, fears, insecurities, friendships, trust, jealousy, ambition and many more.

These hidden aspects of your company’s culture are driven by the emotional parts of our brain – that is, the underlying motivations, beliefs and “actual” values — determining your actual culture.

For example, one of my company clients has a strong “respect” value — an asset in many work relationships.  Taken it to an extreme, however, prevented them from speaking their truth and having honest conversations about critical organizational problems.

Their covert “agreed upon” behaviors for respect were translated into a belief that conflict or disagreement were to be avoided at all costs.  This covert aspect of their culture drove unintended behavioral consequences for which they paid a high price, till we eliminated the unhealthy aspects of this value.

Blindspot 3:  As a leader, you have a strong internal bias how well your culture is doing that does not match reality.

It has been found in behavior-related studies, that human beings think they are better than they really are.  This phenomenon is called in psychology a “self-serving bias.”

The same is true in the world of leadership and culture.  My term for this is “cultural inflation.”  There are many ways this self serving bias can blind you into thinking your culture is doing better than it is.

For example, when a company grows and changes, it is not unusual for its culture to erode at the bottom levels of the organization.   The leadership team is no longer involved lower levels and often becomes oblivious to the atrophy now monopolizing its culture.

Even when a leadership team recognizes issues within their culture, such leaders often don’t see themselves as “part of the problem.”  They don’t recognize that their actual behaviors, decision-making, communications, etc. are a major contributing factor to the dysfunctionality in their culture.

Blindspot 4:  Your strategy and culture are working at cross purposes with each other.

A common issue at a leadership level is not understanding the interplay between strategy and organizational culture.   As a company, you cannot sustain growth, profitability and your competitive edge without harmony and alignment between business strategy and culture.

So many companies fall short in their goals because they overemphasize strategy with little/no attention to the cultural aspects that drive it.  The most ingenious strategy in the world will never come to fruition without creating the right culture to drive it.

Strategy can be imitated by your competitors.  Your unique, well-entrenched culture cannot.

Blindspot 5:  You put too much weight on the strength of your company’s culture, not its fit.

There is the mistaken notion that great company cultures are the byproduct of its strength.  That is, the more entrenched an organization’s core values, the greater the culture.

While there are advantages to strong cultures over weak ones, the danger is assuming that it is the “right” culture, given your organization’s environment. 

The best cultures are those that continuously adapt to succeed in their market and competitive environments.

A manufacturing company in a price competitive environment may do best with an efficiency-based culture.  While a service business may do best with a people-oriented or customer service driven culture.

On the other hand, as your company’s environment experiences disruptive change, your culture must change accordingly to succeed.  When a company’s culture does not fit and/or adapt itself to its own environment, employees will have a hard time knowing how to respond to and serve the needs of its marketplace.

Ignoring the importance of culture fit and adaptability is one of the biggest reasons why great cultures go bad.

Blindspot 6:  Your organization is plagued with double binds, conflicting values and competing demands.

A hidden threat to great cultures are unresolved double binds and conflicting values.  A double bind, by definition, is an unresolved dilemma where the victim feels trapped, no matter the course of action.  That is, the victim deems the situation as lose-lose.

For example, a leader may be put into a double bind situation about the future status of a loyal, although under-performing, employee.  If he/she fires the employee, the leader is giving an unspoken message that loyalty is not valued.  If he/she keeps the employee, the unspoken message is that underperformance is tolerated, which impacts morale and demotivates your best performing employees.

Conflicting values are 2 or more values in conflict – perceived or real — with each other.  That is, either-or thinking. For example, growth driven companies often over-emphasize growth at the expense of other critical  factors, such as profitability.  A company will never be able to sustain growth until the underlying values and assumption conflicts are identified and resolved.

When either double binds or conflicting values go unresolved, the end result is paralysis, a polarized culture, victim thinking and compromised performance.

Blindspot 7:  You fail to assess the health and fit of your current culture and any possible signs of erosion or dysfunctionality … from the outside.

Because so many aspects of a company’s culture exist “below the radar screen,” it’s easy for business leaders to have a skewed perception about the health of their actual company culture.

Or they rely on their own internal assessment of culture which can be just as misleading.  In my experience of assessing company culture, employees rarely tell all for fear of consequences, so the real truth never fully comes out.

What are the alternatives?

• Use an outside culture assessment tested for high validity and significance … AND only use it as a starting point, not the end all.

• Find an outside consultant that can facilitate open-ended interviews and discovery processes to uncover a leadership team’s understanding of culture, its relationship to strategy and how well the two are aligned.  It is also important for the outside expert to observe your “culture in action” in meetings, everyday activities and through casual interaction with employees to uncover your actual culture.

Why such an indepth assessment?  Because company cultures, even the best, can become lulled by their past success and ignore the warning signs of a culture gone bad.  Some of the most once admired companies in history – Enron, Worldcomm and Arthur Andersen just to name a few – have been unfortunate proof that even purported great cultures can go to the dark side.

For low cost tools to assess your actual culture landscape, click here.

The key is not to fear or avoid the shadow or dark side of your company’s culture.  Rather to learn from it. Your culture’s shadow side actually holds the gift of transformation for your organization’s future growth, success and distinctive advantage in the marketplace.

What warning signs or blindspots do you need to heed from your culture’s shadow side?  What will it cost your organization if you don’t?

___________________________________

Denise Corcoran – CEO, The Empowered Business^TM – helps growth-seeking companies develop game-changing leadership teams and organizations that drive and sustain profitable growth by design.   Denise can be reached at denise@empoweredbusiness.com or www.empoweredbusiness.com.

The post When Great Company Cultures Go to the Dark Side appeared first on The Empowered Business.

In July of this past year, I had the honor of meeting Mike Gustafsen, CEO, Virident Systems Technology with seasoned experience in growth driven companies/divsions at the C-level.  His story as part of a panel discussion at a networking event – The Path to the C-Level – left such a strong impression that I asked him for an interview to share his secrets.

In my view, Mike embodies the essence of a great leader – a visionary, strategist, big thinker, leader of leaders, great team and culture builder, global thinker yet down to earth, authentic and the list goes on.  Prior to his current CEO position, Mike has worked as SVP & General Manager, Hitachi; CEO, BlueArc; and other senior executive positions at McData and IBM.

Leadership Defining Moments, Pitfalls and Triumphs:  What you will learn in this 30 minute audio

In this content rich, 30 minute audio interview, you will learn:

• Common themes and threads of his leadership storyline – including pivotal and defining moments in his leadership journey

• His sense of personal mission as a leader and the BIG WHY of his company, Virident Systems

• His C-level experience and lessons learned, including the pitfalls, during rapid company growth and his recommendations to other leaders of growth driven companies

• As CEO, how he has developed the leadership capacity to drive and sustain company growth

• How he and his leadership team have built a strong company culture and the role of culture in driving company growth

Caveat:  For some unknown technological reason, there was background noise on my end in the original recording of this interview.  Much of that noise has been edited out, although not completely.  We will be working on the sound quality in the future.

P.S.  Be on the lookout for future interviews with CEOs who, in their own way, have changed the game of leadership, growth and culture as their path to leadership greatness.  While many CEO interviews scrutinize strategic successes and fumbles, I have chosen to focus on personal qualities, inner drives, greatest learnings and toughest decisions as a leader in creating extraordinary organizations and companies.

___________________________________

Denise Corcoran – CEO, The Empowered Business^TM – helps growth-seeking companies develop game-changing leadership teams and organizations that drive and sustain profitable growth by design.   Denise can be reached at denise@empoweredbusiness.com or www.empoweredbusiness.com.

The post Leading the Way to Greatness and Growth appeared first on The Empowered Business.

The likelihood is, maybe, 1 in a million.

While I have always been a strong proponent of the concept of employee engagement, few authors rarely go into any specific nuts and bolts about how to achieve it.  Not only do I love the fact that this book is based on actual case studies of companies who have achieved a high level of employee engagement.

The authors take engagement to a whole new level — calling it employee entanglement — with a philosophy and system for cultivating employee responsibility, accountability and a leadership mindset that drives exceptional company performance.

That’s powerful stuff!

In Tom Walter’s words, “Like college athletes, engaged employees are valuable, but entangled employees, like Olympians, are the ones who take an organization to new heights. What makes these top-performing employees have such an impact on the success of each of their organizations? What encourages their sense of organizational ownership?

With deep insight into eight award-winning, market-leading companies, It’s My Company Too! explores how the highest-performing organizations entangle employees, systems, culture, and leadership into a unified drive for excellence. The entangled culture emerges from a unique synergy and magnetism within the organization that is the result of leaders:

– Doing extraordinary things

– Building an ethical organization

– Focusing human capital

– Using processes to guide performance

– Building self-efficacy and esteem

– Developing freedom and responsibility within a culture of discipline

– Hardwiring discretionary thinking and actions

– Guiding the transformational process

Through interviews and extensive field research, the authors analyze how companies across industries tackle internal and external challenges, constructing the pieces of the entanglement puzzle. Along the way, they show you how to develop motivated, involved, and entangled employees who embody an organization’s core values, vision, and mission–and succeed beyond imagination.”

Authors:  Thomas J. Walter, Kenneth R. Thompson, Raymond L. Benedetto, Molly Meyer

Buy the book at HERE!

The post Recommended Business Book: “It’s My Company Too!” appeared first on The Empowered Business.

Photo Credit: David Niblack

This final part of our accountable leader series addresses my top 10 leadership and culture practices for a strong accountability organization.

Keep in mind that the 6 internal drivers, addressed in parts 1 and parts 2, account for as much as 90% of your performance and results, including accountability.  Practices by themselves, can’t drive accountability.  They can only reinforce and support a healthy accountability mindset.

From Accountability to High Performance: Top 10 Leadership and Culture Practices To Make That Giant Leap

To build a high performance organization, a strong accountability mindset and practices must be embedded into your company’s DNA.  The two combined catalyze your organization to move from struggle to thriving, from crises to momentum, from inertia to growth.

Below are my top 10 most important leadership and culture practices necessary to make that leap.

1.  Set goals that truly motivate and excite your employees.The first step to a strong accountability culture is to set goals across the entire organization. However, nice sounding goals on paper does not guarantee achieving them.  Most leaders overlook the missing ingredient that drives achievement — MOTIVATION. Employees must be motivated to “want” to achieve their goals.

Below are a few ways to help your employees set goals that they want to achieve.

• Establish goals that challenge them.  Studies have shown that difficult goals result in higher levels of performance than easy goals.

• Elicit each employee’s personal goals and find a way to help them achieve personal aspirations in conjunction with their workplace goals.

• Help employees identify their jobs’ essence – ie: the higher purpose of why that role exists – to appeal to their fulfillment needs.
  

2.  Define outcome or results-based job descriptions that align with company goals.

‘Old style’ skills and competencies job descriptions are poor predictors (or motivators) of future success.  To truly drive results though your people, every leader and employee should have a results-driven job description that identifies their top 3 -5 outcomes, along with clearly defined success measures to be tracked throughout the year.

I also include a more comprehensive set of important factors, when working with leaders, such as: critical success factors; connection to company goals, resources needed; shared vs. sole responsibility; action plan; and what factors could derail achieving the outcomes.

3.  Hire for attitude and motivation; teach the skills.

A recent study showed that almost 50% of new hires left in the first 18 months.  Of those, 89% left because of ‘attitude fit’ issues, while only 11% left because of lack of skills.

The below table illustrates the tradeoff of hiring for motivations vs. competencies and the level of performance you can expect. Hiring for motivation and attitudes over skills is critical to build strong accountability and high performance.

                                         From Under-Performing to Top Performing:

                                         The Motivation vs. Competency Relationship

4.  Make sure your employees have the necessary skills/competencies, tools and resources to succeed in their role.

While the predominant drive of performance is motivation, having the necessary competencies and tools are essential for an employee to act on his/her motivation.

If a role is “too big” for an employee – ie: they lack the skills to succeed, then it is essential to teach, coach and train your employee so they can achieve their goals.

In your employee’s outcome based job description, identify the skills to succeed, where the gaps are and a development plan to eliminate those gaps.

5.   Set clear expectations that your employees understand and agree to.

While leaders often understand the need for clear expectations, many overrate their ability to deliver on the level of clarity needed.  Because of differences in perceptions, language and the meaning given to it, too often a leader’s intended communication is not received or interpreted by their employees in the same way. This is the #1 reason for unmet expectations.

To avoid such a breakdown, at a minimum,

• Communicate expectations in concrete terms – ie: answer all calls within 3 rings.

• Ask employees to repeat back what expectations they heard.

6.  Elicit employee’s emotional buy-in for trust and commitment.

For many leaders, developing a strong accountability organization can be harder than it seems.  The common blind spot is not getting your employees’ emotional buy-in about the importance of accountability.

Buy-in involves capturing the hearts and minds of your employees to take ownership of their roles AND to take ownership of company results.

According to a study done by Partners in Leadership, executives reported that …

…only 10% of their employees fell into the “Buy-in” category, while 84% were seen as either “Comply and concede” or “Exempt and excuse” in terms of owning organizational results.

When employees buy-in, they act as though your company is their company.  They go beyond the expectations of their role and do whatever it takes for the company to succeed.

How many of your employees would fall into the “Buy-in” category and take ownership of your company’s results?

7.  Reward your employees — on their terms — to increase motivation, drive and commitment.

There are 2 kinds of motivation – intrinsic and extrinsic.  Most companies attempt to motivate employees extrinsically – ie: compensation, bonuses and benefits.

Yet Herzberg – top motivation theory expert – found that extrinsic motivators fall into the category of “hygiene” factors and can only eliminate employee dissatisfaction.  They don’t increase motivation.

On the other hand, intrinsic motivators – such as, achievement, meaningful work and recognition – cost little and have the greatest impact on employee commitment.

As a leader, do you know what the intrinsic motivators for each of your employees are?  How much time do you focus on increasing those motivators?

8.   Be firm and let go of consistent under-performers. 

Consistent under-performers lower the entire organization’s performance. They become a de-motivating factor to other employees.  They consume more of a leader’s/manager’s time when it can be better spent on your high potentials and future leaders.

The first step to improving this situation is to realize that you, as a leader, are part of the problem by avoiding the truth. Do what you can for a defined period of time to coach your under-performers to achieve success.

If improvement is not achieved, the second step is to help the employee to transition to a better suited role or another employer.

9.  Create a daily environment and culture of self-responsibility, self leadership and self-learning.

Self-responsibility is the ultimate trait of a high performing organization.  You can’t have a strong accountability culture without every leader and employee taking responsibility for themselves, behaviors and outcomes.

Self-responsible people are the do-ers of the world, not the “done to.” They refuse to see themselves as victims. They believe that they are in charge of their own destiny.  They are the creators of opportunity, rather than believing they are entitled to it.

While it is beyond the scope of this article to go into “how,” to create a culture of self-responsibility, the 4 mindset and behavioral traits essential for self-responsibility are:

• Commitment – a willingness to do whatever it takes to succeed.

• Ownership — taking ownership for all your results.

• Resilience – ability to bounce back and rise above adversity, crises and failures

• Continuous learning – learning from past experiences and mistakes, always seeking to grow and evolve.

10.  Expand your internal locus of control to drive bigger and better outcomes.

A person has either an internal or external locus of control, depending on to whom or what they assign responsibility for what happens.

External locus equates to a “victim” mindset.  Such people believe that everything happens to them.  They are masters of blame, helplessness and low self esteem.  Nothing is their fault.

Internal locus equates to “the accountable person.”  Such people believe they can control or influence the outcomes in their lives.  Even when events are beyond their control, they know they have options how to respond to such events.  They have self-confidence and a learning mindset.

To increase your internal locus, recognize the fact you always have choice.  Brainstorm other options, take small actions and, most importantly, pay attention to and change your negative self talk.

Summary: 

The goal of this 3 part series is to increase your awareness about the one thing.  In this crazy busy world of business, I know the one thing that makes the biggest difference in you and your organization is the level of your game.

Becoming an accountable leader is the catalyst for transforming your untapped potential into hard-core business results. You can only change the level of your game if you are rigorously honest with yourself about the strength (or lack) of accountability, within your organization.

Use the principles and practices in this series to get started. For more personal feedback about building a strong accountability culture, request our complimentary Leadership Strategy Session to define next steps, given your goals and challenges.  However you proceed, take the next step now!

The post The Accountable Leader: Developing the Right Practices That Ignite Performance (Part 3) appeared first on The Empowered Business.

Purpose — different than a company’s mission — is the single most important factor driving intrinsic motivation in companies.  When your employees understand and align with THE reason why your business exists … your rallying cause … your contribution to the world that — above all else including salary, bonuses and perks — will catalyze top performance.

One of the best exercises I have seen for uncovering purpose, comes from Daniel Pink’s book, “Drive:  The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,”  called “What’s Your One Sentence?”  Watch this 2 minute video from Daniel Pink himself, offering sample “one sentence” purpose statements from grammar school kids to adults.  I was deeply moved with the power and simplicity that a single sentence — with meaning and purpose — can have.  Enjoy!

The post Catalyzing Company Performance With Purpose appeared first on The Empowered Business.

Let’s first summarize what you learned in Part 1.  Part 1 addressed:

• The top 3 reasons why your leaders are struggling with accountability and under-performing teams
• Why and how your “mindset” drives as much as 90% of your thoughts, feelings, behaviors, communications and, ultimately, results… in all areas of your leadership role, including accountability.
• How the first 3 mindset factors – namely, purpose/vision, values and beliefs – either strengthen or undermine your leadership capacity to drive results through healthy accountability.

To review Part 1 of t

his article series, click here.

Let’s now look at the remaining 3 mindset components of your inner leadership game for building strong accountability and a high performance organization.

Identity

Identity relates to your sense of who you are.  It includes your perceptions about yourself; your strengths and self-judgments; and your roles.  Your identity is mostly outside of your conscious awareness and is either your ally or foe in terms of how big of a game you play as a leader.

The language of identity is expressed through the words “I am …”  The words following “I am …” provide clues how you see yourself and what you most identify with mentally and emotionally.

Empowering Identities: “I am resilient, charismatic, valuable, a change agent, etc.”Let’s take a look at specific examples how your identity shows up in your language – either verbally or in your self-talk.

• Disempowering Identities: “I am a failure, unworthy, angry, inferior, etc.”

Having worked with hundreds of leaders, I have found that to what extent your identities either empower or disempower you in your role and your capacity to drive strong accountability, has to do with your relationship with power. 

To become a strong accountability leader, it is essential that you own your own personal power.  You must develop an “at cause” mindset for all the outcomes in your role.  You must develop a strong internal locus of control  – ie.,  see yourself as a person who can control (or influence) your own success and destiny (rather than your outcomes being determined by outside circumstances or people).

To assess your relationship with power, ask yourself:

• When you think of the word “power,” what negative associations do you have with that word?
• Do you equate power with force?  How might they be different?
• In your daily leadership role, do you find yourself on the “cause side” or “effects side” of your results equation?  Ie. do you feel like you can influence the outcomes in your life or that things and circumstances happen to you (aka Victim mentality)?

A leader’s relationship with power determines to what extent a leader has the capacity to drive results through people, teams and the organization as a whole. Without a healthy, empowering relationship with power, your leadership and organizational performance will suffer and your greatest asset — your people – will be severely under-utilized.

Motivation and Attitudinal Patterns

Every individual has their own unique internal motivation and attitudinal drivers. These drivers are the invisible forces that “pull” a person forward in a specific direction.

These drivers also mirror how you are “wired inside.”  That is, these patterns – uncovered through an online assessment – identify your thinking and decision making style, your primary motivators, your interest and focus filters, your relationship to time, change and even to norms and rules. These patterns predict as much as 70% of you, your team’s and your organization’s performance.

Below are 2 examples of motivation patterns that serve you as either assets or liabilities in driving strong accountability. Keep in mind that there are no “best” patterns. They each have their own strengths and pitfalls.

To keep it simple, the following tables cover only the pitfalls when an individual’s score is too high (not the pitfalls when a score is too low).

• Primary motivation drivers — Power vs Affiliation vs. Achievement

• Relationship to Norms/Rules – Assertive vs. Tolerant

When uncovering these patterns, the overall goal is to help a leader eliminate or minimize the liability patterns while creating more flexibility in thinking and behavior for optimum leadership results.

Any patterns that are too high or too low will undermine a leader’s ability to drive best results through people.

For more information about attitude and motivation patterns and their impact on leadership and organizational performance, go to:

www.empoweredbusiness.com/solutions/organizational-performance.

Emotions

Our emotions are powerful, often unconscious, triggers that drive our behaviors, communications and state. To what extent emotions in your workplace either fuel your organization or destroy the spirit and cohesiveness of your company depends on how you handle and master your emotions in your role.  First, a few basic principles about emotions important to increase your overall effectiveness as an accountable leader.

Every emotion – no matter how positive or negative — is a powerful teacher, catalyst and mirror about yourself that, when used for change and learning purposes, can ignite your leadership growth at lightening speed.

Denial or avoidance of your emotions does more harm to you as a leader than the actual emotions themselves.  The truth is denying and/or avoiding your emotions – like fear or anger – only amplifies the emotion, keeps you stuck in habitual reactiveness, shuts down your rational thinking and destroys your ability to influence and lead your employees.

The “golden ratio” in emotions can unleash leadership capabilities beyond what you can imagine.

New findings show that you perform at your peak when you experience the “golden ratio” in emotions – ie., a 3 to 1 ratio of positive vs negative emotions.  Not only is it unrealistic to try and be in a positive state all the time, it is detrimental to your leadership growth to not gain valuable lessons from negative emotions.

Let’s look at 2 negative emotions that often get triggered in the accountability process and what those emotions are trying to teach you.

Anger or frustration:

If either emotion gets triggered for you in the accountability process, ask yourself as a leader:

• Are you caught up in a blame mentality and not taking responsibility for your contribution to the breakdown?
• Are you a perfectionist and allow no room for employee mistakes or learning?
• Are you impatient or unrealistic in what an employee can achieve by a certain timeframe or given certain circumstances?

Anxiety or fear:

If you experience anxiety or fear in the accountability process, how might either emotion mirror the following about yourself?

• Do you suffer from negative self-perceptions or lack self-esteem?
• Do you lack key accountability skills, such as effective delegation, follow-up and coaching skills?
• When holding others accountable, do you fear conflict?  Does that fear drive you to take on the tasks yourself?
• Do you fear not being liked by your employees?

In part 1 and 2 of this article series, we covered the 6 mindset drivers – mission/vision, values, beliefs, identity, motivation drivers and emotions – that account for as much as 90% of your performance and results, including accountability

The ultimate goal in these 2 articles has been to increase your awareness how mindset factors are impacting your leadership effectiveness and your capacity to drive results through your organization.

Stay tuned for part 3 of this article series to learn my top 10 leadership and culture practices for a strong accountability organization. An article you don’t want to miss!

If you would like more details about your inner leadership game, I invite you to download a complimentary report: Wired to Win Big;  7 Inner Game Leadership Strategies for Rising to the Top and Staying There.

Denise Corcoran – CEO, The Empowered Business^TM – helps growth-seeking companies develop game-changing leadership teams and organizations that drive and sustain profitable growth by design.   Denise can be reached at denise@empoweredbusiness.com or www.empoweredbusiness.com.

The post The Accountable Leader: Developing the Right Mindset That Ignite Performance (Part 2) appeared first on The Empowered Business.

Accountable Leader

Today’s most successful companies all have one trait in common.  Their high performance organizations are driven by a strong accountability culture.  Yet despite many companies’ well-intentioned efforts to create strong accountability, leaders still struggle to make it a reality.  Mediocrity, lack of execution and operational breakdowns are hallmarks of poor accountability and an out of control, under-performing organization.

The REAL Truth Why Your Leaders are Struggling with Accountability and Under-performing Teams:

• As a leader, you can’t develop strong results-driven accountability with your team unless you have strong personal accountability with YOURSELF.  This capability is part of self leadership.  You can’t hold others accountable if you don’t take responsibility for your own actions, behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, choices and results.  Because employees model what leaders do, a leader’s weak personal accountability perpetuates a cycle of poor  organizational performance.
• As a leader, you lack critical “soft,” people skills — such as addressing interpersonal conflict, and engaging and motivating employees — that drive organizational accountability and performance.
 Employees follow you and are motivated to perform for their reasons, not yours.  For this reason, weak leadership “soft” skills cripple employee engagement and performance and is a costly epidemic in today’s business world.
• Most leaders lack the necessary mindset, capabilities and practices to drive strong accountability – a “must” for high achieving organizations.  Strong accountability starts first with the right mindset.  No performance system, set of metrics or people practices by themselves can make up for a lack of understanding what healthy accountability is and is not.  Lacking the right mindset perpetuates accountability breakdowns and a low performing organization.

The Accountability Mindset Your Leaders and Employees Need Instead to Drive Growth and Profitability

Your mindset is your mental map, cognitive filters and internal glasses that color your view of yourself and the world.   These mental filters drive your thoughts, feelings, motivations, behaviors, communications and, ultimately, results …  without your conscious awareness.

From a leadership standpoint, I call these mental filters your inner leadership game.   As a leader, the most important game you will ever play is the game within your mind. 

Let’s look at the components of your inner leadership game for building strong accountability and a high performance organization.

Grand Purpose/Vision

Often organizations treat accountability as an end in itself, rather than as a means to an end. Such organizations narrowly focus on the how of accountability and forget the why. 

Grand Mission

Accountability means more than achieving performance goals.  To motivate your employees to deliver results, accountability requires a profoundly deep understanding why and for whom your employees perform.

Zappos credits its multi-billion dollar success and organizational passion because every employee knows his/her significant role in keeping the Zappos vision alive.

• As a leader, for what grand purpose does your organization exist?  
• To what extent do your employees know that purpose?  
• To what extent are you reinforcing  each employee’s vital role to that purpose?

Values

Values are the qualities and principles you most value.  Your top 3 values drive 90% of our focus, decision-making, time usage, behaviors and outcomes.  If accountability is not amongst those, your attempts will be undermined and lack sustainability.

Important values considerations as a leader for cultivating a strong accountability culture  include:

•  Is accountability an explicit core or operational value for your organization?  is it a top personal value for you?
•  Do you have an agreed upon definition as to what healthy accountability is and what critical behaviors will drive it?
• Are there other values that are perceived by you or your employees as conflicting or competing with accountability in your organization?  If so, how will you resolve that conflict?

If any of the above are not addressed, accountability efforts will suffer.

Beliefs

Beliefs are thought patterns, convictions or judgments about yourself, others and the world around you.  They make up the boundary conditions of your thinking and the parameters of your inner game rule book. 

Most organizations struggle with accountability because of the unconscious negative beliefs their leaders and employees hold about accountability. Those beliefs are often the byproduct  of past negative experiences with accountability during upbringing, with a former employer, etc.  To assess the impact of these beliefs on accountability, ask yourself:

• When you think of  accountability, what associations, emotional reactions or thoughs come up?  Are these associations positive, negative or neutral? 
•  If any negative associations about accountability, how can you redefine it so there is emotional buy-in, organizational alignment and it motivates employees to drive their own results?

This article covered 3 out of the 6 factors of your inner game and its relationship to accountability.  Part 2 will cover the remaining 3 factors: your leadership identity, motivational patterns and emotional state.  Part 3 will cover leadership practices and culture changes critical for a strong accountability organization.

The single most important takeaway is to understand that your inner leadership games drives 90% of your performance and results, including accountability.

If you would like more details about your inner leadership game, I invite you to download a complimentary report:  Wired to Win Big;  7 Inner Game Leadership Strategies for Rising to the Top and Staying There.

Denise Corcoran – CEO, The Empowered Business^TM – helps growth-seeking companies develop game-changing leadership teams and organizations that drive and sustain profitable growth by design.   Denise can be reached at denise@empoweredbusiness.com orwww.empoweredbusiness.com.

The post The Accountable Leader: Developing the Right Mindset That Ignite Performance (Part 1) appeared first on The Empowered Business.