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.

• 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.

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.

Influence is not something tangible, physical or material.  Yet it’s real.  You know when you are in the presence of it.  Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Steve Jobs just to name a few.

The Power of Words

There is no leadership without influence. You can have a leadership title, yet have no  influence.  How influential are you?  Does your team listen to your every word with attention, openness and trust?  Is your team inspired to take action simply by what you say and do?

Influence comes from the latin root “influere” meaning to flow in.  When you are an influential leader, your words and intentions flow into another’s unconscious mind without resistance.  Your words are not just accepted.  Your words motivate.  Your words change minds, attitudes and behaviors.

The BIG question is … How do you develop and increase your leadership influence?

This big question has a big answer.  In this first of 3 articles on this topic, let’s look at the easiest and quickest way to increase your leadership influence.

The Power of Language and Influence

What makes certain words or language particularly persuasive or influential?

Influential words bypass the reasoning or critical mind and into a person’s unconscious mind.  When using these words, you avoid a person’s resistance or defenses to what you are communicating.  You are speaking directly to the part of the brain that houses his/her memories, emotions and creativity.

When you gain such powerful access to one’s mind, you can lead people to where you want them to go.  Because of such power, these words should be used only for positive intentions and never for manipulative reasons.  Use these words wisely and only to help a person change and grow.

Given that caveat, let’s take a look of 5 power words that can change your capacity to lead.

1.  “IMAGINE …”

Anyone who has ever worked with me knows I use the word “imagine” often to help my clients achieve breakthroughs that once seemed impossible or improbable.

As children, we lived our lives through our imaginations.  And it all seemed so real.

Whether we wanted to be a monkey, or fly to Paris, or find hidden treasures of gold, our imaginations could create a whole new world in our minds in a single moment.  A world where there were no limits.  A world where we could be or do anything we wanted.  A world where the possibilities were endless.

When I use the word imagine with my clients, my intent is to take them beyond the boundary conditions of their thinking and create new realities, new possibilities that are not accessible through the conscious mind.

Leaders who know how to tap into the imaginations of others can move mountains in their organizations without much effort.  The more you tap into others’ imaginations, the more successful you and they become.

Are you ready to increase your leadership influence … right now?

Then close your eyes and …

Imagine how good it feels as you tap into your employees’ imagination, creativity and inspiration with one simple word … imagine.

Imagine how good you will feel as you prove to yourself that you can be an influential leader simply with practice of one simple word … imagine.

Don’t wait till tomorrow.  Start using this one powerful word now.  Have fun with it!

2.  “BECAUSE”

Think back to those times when you were a child and you attempted to negotiate with your parents for extra money, or to stay out later, or to have a snack before meals.  Do you remember what mom or dad said?

After 2-3 times of your mother/father turning you down, you probably said in a pleading tone …

But why, mom?

To which your mother said …

Because  I said so.

If you were like me as a kid, you backed down after that.  Why?

The word because assumes a cause effect relationship.  For this reason, when the critical factor of your mind hears that word, it treats it as a cue to let the speaker through to your unconscious mind.

It’s been found in various studies that when you make a request followed by the word because (with a phrase), doing so will increase responsiveness to your request by as much as 50%.

That has huge implications to the business world In sales, negotiations, customer relations and, most of all, leadership.  Let’s take a look at a few scenarios.

Delivering Corrective Feedback

Most leaders when giving corrective feedback simply make a request for a new behavior, like …

“Tom, you need to turn your cell phone off during meetings.”

Some employees will adhere.  Others will resist, rebel or ignore.  Let’s replay the conversation.  This time using word because.

“Tom, you need to turn off your cell phone during meetings because others find it disruptive and a distraction. Please watch it going forward.”

Explaining why the behavior needs to be changed (because) causes the recipient of the feedback to see the damage caused.

Goal Buy-in

“Our goal is to answer all customer calls within 60 minutes.”

VS.

“We will always answer all customer calls within 60 minutes because we have found that doing so, increases customer retention and that will increase the frequency of bonuses.”

That is persuasive. Just stating your goals does little for employee motivation.  Helping employees to see the why behind the goal – for them and the company – does.

Motivation

“We’re going to have an awesome month, team!”

VS.

“We’re going to have an awesome month because we have the best company culture in the industry, our customer returns are at an all time low, and our sales team is on the fast track to closing more business.”

It’s great to believe in people.  It’s more motivating, however, to tell them why you believe in them.

3.  “AND”
(always use in place of “but”)

And – when used with intention – is one of the most powerful, persuasive words in the English language.

Let’s look at one specific leadership application of this word that can eliminate all resistance, even in the toughest of conversations with your employees.  That application is using and in place of the word but.

It’s a leader’s responsibility to give honest feedback – even corrective feedback – to its employees.  Unfortunately, many leaders use the word but in delivering their corrective feedback.

“You did a great job with this report, but it was filled with many misspellings.”

But is one of the most dangerous words to use in any conversation.  It negates everything you said before the word but.  In the above examples, it means – you did not really think that person did a great job.

Now eliminate the word but and replace it with and.  Notice the difference in tone, the ability to receive the feedback without resistance, as well as the ability to add a follow-on.

“You did a great job with this report and it was filled with many misspellings.  So let’s get started in cleaning up those misspellings to make it even better.”

4.  “AWARE”

This is one of my personal favorite power words because simply saying the word will cause the listener to mentally process what you brought up.  Aware … and related words like realize or experience … are important additions to your influence arsenal because everything that follows those words is presupposed to be true.

Let’s take a look at some powerful leadership examples.

“You are probably already aware of the fact that when you practice our company value of respect, you will create comradery with your teammates.”

“Are you starting to experience  how easily you can use these words to become a more influential leader?”

5.  “NOW”

With the word now, you direct one’s thinking and focus to the present time.  In your leadership role, let’s look at some examples where you are implanting, at the unconscious level, a thought of positive change in the here and now.

“As you take a few minutes to collect your thoughts, notice how effortlessly solutions come to you NOW.”

“By NOW, you may be wondering what other changes can you make with the power of words.”

While, by no means, are these the only power words that leaders can use to influence.  The above words, however, are unique in their ability to bypass resistance and create positive change easily and naturally.

The most influential people know how to use words and language intentionally to inspire, motivate and win the hearts and minds of others, even their biggest opponents.

The next time you give feedback to your employee … the next time you want to inspire your team to follow your vision … the next time you negotiate a big deal with a potential customer, imagine how good you will feel because you used your power words and achieved your desired outcome.  You can start experiencing those good feelings now.

In part 2 of this article series, we will look at 3 little known, yet powerful techniques to unleash your influential leadership potential, even before you speak a word.  A must read!

_________________________

Denise Corcoran helps growth-seeking companies develop game-changing leadership teams and organizations that drive double and triple digit growth … by design. Her company — The Empowered BusinessTM — is one of the few companies providing whole brain, strategic solutions for unleashing leadership and organizational potential that conventional methods can’t achieve. Learn how to master your Inner Game of Leadership, by downloading our free report – Wired to Win Big. Connect with Denise at her Blog, LinkedIn, Twitter or contact her via email.

The post How to Unlock Your Leadership Influence Instantly appeared first on The Empowered Business.

I learned growing up, however, that not lying is NOT the same thing as admitting and telling the truth.  The former prevents us from making false statements; the latter has the generative power to change individuals and organizations.

In my decades of working with business leaders, I have found that there is one trait — above all others – that transforms mediocre leaders to extraordinary ones.   That one trait is …

Rigorous truth-telling

Real leaders have backbone.  They admit the uncomfortable truth that others are not willing to even see.  They have a passion to want the truth and confront reality head-on.

It’s not just the responsibility of a leader to see and tell the truth.  It is part of their soul, their moral fiber.  Any compromise destroys trust, respect and credibility with themselves and from others.

The most important person to tell the truth is to Yourself.

We often think about the importance for leaders to tell the truth to others within their organizations.  Yet the most important, yet hardest, aspect of leadership truth telling is being rigorously honest with yourself.

Why?

It takes guts, personal awareness and humility to tell the truth about yourself to yourself.

When I work with leaders, my first goal is to help them get rigorously honest with themselves.  I have found that when leaders are willing to look at how they they avoid or deny the truth, that mirror of truth will liberate them to become the authentic, powerful leader they are meant to be.

Not sure how to uncover your truth as a leader?   Take inventory of the following 7 truths to get real about the present and to fuel your leadership changes in the future.

7 Real Truths That Fuel Real Leaders

Truth 1:  Either you are fighting for reasons or fighting for results. 

As a leader, there is no middle ground in what you stand for. You can stand for reasons or you can stand for results.  You CAN”T stand for both.

Real leaders fight for the results they want.  They are bold, committed and persistent about their desired outcomes.

Mediocre leaders fight for reasons why they don’t achieve them. When they say “yes” to reasons, they are essentially saying “no” to results.

Which are you fighting for right now?

Ask these questions to reveal your truth:

• Are you tolerating under-performance?
• When you lead a meeting, to what extent do team members give reasons why they did not keep their commitments or reach their goals?
• Have you created an organizational culture of strong accountability?

Truth 2:  Either you are creating your future or reacting to it. 

Real leaders are masters at creating their future because they are internally driven and decisive about what they want.   They take responsibility for all their outcomes and see themselves as the doers of the world.

Mediocre leaders are externally driven and at the effects of their environment.  They believe that they have little control over their outcomes and that things happen to them.

Ask these questions to reveal your truth:

• Does your organization find itself in perpetual crises?
• When a negative event happens – like loss of a major customer, do you find yourself in panic or do you seek new options to achieve your goals?
• Does your organization have a clear vision in which every employee knows how he/she contributes?

Truth 3:  Either you are playing to win or playing not to lose.

Underlying this truth, there is a pivotal assumption that realleaders get and mediocre leaders don’t.

What is that pivotal assumption?

It is that you have a clear understanding of what winning is.  Mediocre leaders never even ask themselves questions like … where do we want to win?  Where can we win?  What does winning look like?  

Once you have a clear concept of winning, how do you know if you are playing to win vs. playing not to lose?

The answer is: your identity.

Ask these questions to reveal your truth:

• Do you see yourself as a winner even when you fail?
• Does the thought of risking to win trigger fear in you?
• Do you have a winning strategy to reach your company’s goals?

Truth 4:  Either you are growing or you are stagnating.

For your company to grow, you must grow as a leader.  When you stagnate, so will your company.  It’s that simple.

Real leaders do the things that others think they cannot do.   They continuously “push the envelope” in what is possible.

Mediocre leaders avoid discomfort.  I mean really avoid it.  Discomfort for them triggers fear and threatens their sense of safety and survival.

Ask these questions to reveal your truth:

• Do you push yourself out of your comfort zone daily?
• Are you comfortable with discomfort?
• Do you thrive on challenges or shrink from them?

Truth 5:  Either you embrace conflict or you avoid it.

Conflict has become a dirty word in the business world.

Mediocre leaders avoid conflict at all costs.  It’s viewed as painful, scary and a win/lose situation at best.  As a result, their organizations become homogenous and filled with “yes” people.

As Jim Collins, author, Good to Great, concluded from his extensive research, the #1 difference between good and great companies is that the leaders of great companies fostered healthy conflict to set direction and create innovative solutions for the future.

Ask these questions to reveal your truth:

• Do your employees ever disagree with your decisions or viewpoints?
• Is there pseudo-harmony within your team?
• Do you tend to placate others whose viewpoints are different than yours?

Truth 6:  Either your actions are moving you “toward” or “away from” your goals. 

All behavior is self-motivated.  Your actions are motivated either to move toward something positive or away from something negative/painful.

Real leaders are “toward” motivated.  There is always the next horizon to reach.  Mediocre leaders tend to be “away from” motivated, driven by negative beliefs or secondary gains.  Their primary focus is on what they don’t want, rather than on what they want.

Ask these questions to reveal your truth:

• Are your actions mainly focused on reaching your goals or eliminating problems?
• Are any of your actions (such as, checking emails, going to certain meetings, etc.) really a distraction and taking you off-course?
• Are you focused more on what you want or what you don’t want?

Truth 7:  Either you are truly leading or merely following.

Real leaders understand that leadership is a way of thinking and a way of engaging with others.  They take bold steps into the future and hold themselves and others to high standards.    They see themselves as a leader of leaders and their job is to develop other leaders.

Mediocre leaders seek recognition from their team over respect, decide through consensus and deflect responsibility for results and problems to others.

Ask these questions to reveal your truth:

• Do you tend to focus on solutions or problems?
• To what extent are your employees “rowing the boat in the same direction?”
• Is most of your day spent on completing tasks or growing your people?
  

The Greatest Truth of All

The greatest truth of all … is that,

Truth is power.

I know that admitting the truth about yourself can sting in the moment.  And avoiding the truth may seem like the easier route.

In reality, hiding from the truth is like having a 10,000 lb. weight on your shoulders that drags you down.  It holds you and your organization back.  It keeps you in stress and struggle.

Are you ready to dump the baggage?

Start by using the above 7 truths to get honest with yourself:

Are you …

• fighting for results?
• focused on creating the future?
• playing to win?
• growing and getting out of your comfort zone?
• leveraging conflict to create innovative solutions?
• taking actions that move you “toward” our goals?
• truly leading?

Only when you admit reality can you seize your true leadership power and take charge of yours/your organization’s fate.

Which of these leadership truths is holding you back the most?  What support do you need to have a breakthrough?

The post Real Truths That Fuel Real Leaders 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.

Today’s companies have it all backwards.  Leaders have a thirst and drive for answers to their biggest challenges.

Thousands of leadership books are published yearly to feed that thirst.  Buying those books to find the right answers for your company is where leaders make their biggest mistake.

 

Leadership is NOT about having the right answers.  It’s about asking the right questions.

If you’ve read my article “12 Strategic Thinking Questions That Yield Big Results,” you know why questions are so powerful and how they can change organizational results … overnight.  If you have not,  click here.

The Make-or-Break Question Critical to Your Business Future

There is one question though, above all others, that smart leaders ask … not just once, but everyday.  This one question has the power to:

• Create sustainable company growth and profitability
• Rise above your competition
• Make you an innovative leader in your marketplace
• Accelerate organizational and culture change
• Increase employee engagement and performance

This one question has equal relevance to both your external and internal environments.   What is that one question?

Where can we win?

Why This One Question?

How many times …

• have you spent great effort and resources on goals and strategies that were never worth your time to begin with?
• has your company pursued markets and customers that actually took you further from your goals, not closer?
• has your company spread itself thin with too many organizational changes, initiatives or diverse priorities?

The truth is …

“There are many battles in business not worth winning.   Worst still is to LOSE such a battle you should have never fought to begin with.”     Denise Corcoran

 Know which strategies and plans will lead you to your goals and which will not.  Distinguish those that create gain and those that create loss.  As the saying goes,

“Measure twice, cut once.”

The Secret to Winning in Your Marketplace

To succeed in today’s rapidly changing marketplace, it is critical for leaders to ask daily …

Where can we win?

And equally important …

Where can we not win?

Where you are winning today is not where you can win tomorrow.  To best answer these questions more deeply requires three steps.

Step 1:  Pause and take a REALITY check.  Challenge every assumption about your current goals and plans.

Take a look at your revenue and profit goals and ask yourself:

• Will your current customers (or desired customers) really get you to your goals?
• What makes you think your plan and expected outcomes are reasonable?
• Did you make up those outcomes and hope that you would reach them?

Remember …

“Hope is not a strategy.”

Step 2:  Dig deeper.  The real truth about where you can win is below the surface.

Even if you think your goals and plans are reasonable, dig deeper.  You will find real answers to your revenue or profit challenges below the surface. 

For example, do you tend to target customers based on their ability to pay your price?  While that is a good start, there are deeper questions you need to ask.  Such as …

• Are they willing to pay you your price?
• Are there competitors driving price resistance?  Are those competitors lowering customer demand for your products/services?
• How do you adapt your plans to this new reality?

If you have hit a ceiling in revenues and/or profits, you need to dig deeper to get the truth about your company’s reality.

Step 3:  Utilize the power of peripheral vision to detect early (often subtle) warning signs that your business needs to shift. 

In today’s rapidly changing world, smart leaders have systems to detect early warning signs that the positioning of their business may need to change. Even if realistic today, your strategies and plans may not be valid tomorrow.

What are examples of early warning signs that your company may need to re-position itself?

• Pressure on profit margins
• Decline in customer satisfaction
• Appearance of new competitors
• Loss of market share in key segments
• Surprises by outside high impact events in the last few years

The key to detecting early warning signs that your environment is shifting is to develop your leadership peripheral vision.

In a literal sense, peripheral vision is an expansion of your normal attention to what’s happening at the edges – the periphery – of your field of vision. You are often in peripheral vision, for example, when driving on a highway, assuming you are not engaging in any distractions.  Your vision expands to see cars in all directions in order to respond in a moment’s notice, if needed.

In the business world, leaders are mostly engaged in their foveal vision — critical for focus on goals and critical tasks of the organization.  However, foveal vision also creates serious tunnel vision to big picture strategic issues and the ever-changing environment in which it operates.

Leaders must train their minds to continually monitor the periphery or edges of their environment for subtle and early shifts. Here’s why.

Peripheral vision …

• Helps you detect emerging opportunities in your marketplace before your competitors
• Gives you early signals regarding outside threats to your growth – such as, new alternative substitutes that can satisfy your customers’ needs
• Helps you anticipate and respond to future unmet customer needs not even their radar screen today
• Slows down your negative internal dialogue that drives ineffective leadership decisions and actions 

NOTE:  To learn about how to develop your peripheral vision as a leader, fill out my contact form and I am happy to pass on resources.

Bottomline:  If your company has hit a growth ceiling … has been on a vicious profit rollercoaster ride … or in perpetual crisis mode, then STOP.

Pause and ask yourself the ONE question that determines the extent your company survives vs. thrive in the future.

Where can we win?

And, if you are feeling bold and confident,

Where will we win?

Ready to get off the profitability and/or revenue roller coaster ride?   Click here to sign up for our 90 minute, complimentary Leadership Edge Strategy Session to develop a leadership strategy to achieve your goals and desired breakthroughs.

Other Related Links

12 StrategicThinking Questions That Yield Big Results.  

How Great Strategic Thinkers Think. 

___________________________________

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 ONE Question Every Leader Needs To Ask appeared first on The Empowered Business.

Does any of these sound familiar?

• You aspire to achieve great things, yet stay “small” for fear of failing.

• What about the thousands of dollars you’ve invested in leadership books and training, yet still find yourself stuck in the same rut and don’t know how to get out?

• Are you continuously swamped by the endless hours that your role demands, yet get diminishing returns from all your efforts?

You are not alone.   Most leaders harbor fears, negative thoughts and emotions that seriously undermine their achievements.  Here is one such story.

How One High Performing Leader Was Sabotaging His Own Potential 

About 10 years ago, I worked with a leader being groomed to become President of a fast growing company.  He was ambitious, smart and a quick learner.  He thrived on achieving big goals and was the high performing potential that every CEO dies for.

From outside appearances, there was nothing stopping him to take the company to the next level.  Or was there?

The CEO asked me to coach this new leader around becoming a team player.  His behaviors at executive meetings gave the appearance that his personal agenda was more important than the team/company agenda.

The truth was …  his personal agenda was more important at that time. In his mind, sacrificing his desires for team goals meant not achieving personal success.  He was stuck in “either-or” thinking and that was preventing him from gaining the trust and credibility of his team.

While your limiting leadership beliefs may be different, what you do have in common is that nothing will change unless you change on the inside first. External change by itself – ie., behaviors, actions or skills/knowledge — is never the solution.

While change is a multilevel complex process, this leader needed to change on the belief level to realize a rapid breakthrough. 

Because beliefs are powerful thought patterns that drive your emotions, behaviors and action, this article will focus on belief change, although it’s not the only type of change that may be needed.

No leadership or organizational goal can be achieved without the right beliefs in place.   First, let’s take a quick look at the basics of the inner change.

A Simple (but not easy) Formula for Leadership Change

When addressing limited beliefs, the goal is to move you from your present state (problem) to your desired state (goal).  However, inner interference – your internal terrorists — hijack your best efforts to achieve your desired outcome.

Present (Problem) State  +  Resource  =  Desired Change

  ↑   ↑   ↑

Interference

                               (Limited Beliefs or Inner Conflicts)

For you to achieve your desired state/change, the following conditions must be present:

• You must want to change.  

This condition relates to desirability and confidence.  You must be 100% congruent with the change or goal you are seeking.

• You must know how to change.

You must believe that you have the capability to produce desired results.

• You must believe it is possible for you to achieve your desired state and that you deserve to achieve it.

You need to be willing to give yourself time for the change to happen and to integrate the learnings.   You must also believe you are worthy of achieving this outcome.

When these 3 conditions are present, leadership breakthroughs can happen … in an instant.  When one or more conditions are absent, then  you must change some aspect of your mental map to achieve a breakthrough.  That’s where belief work comes in.

How Changing Your Leaders’ Beliefs Changes Company Results

Beliefs are not innocent things.  They are unconscious strongly held convictions that you believe are true and fact, yet they are neither.  They are judgments about yourself, about others and about the world.  They are the lens through which you view everything.  They …

• Influence your perception
• Skew your perspective and decision making in positive and negative ways
• Direct an/or limit your actions
• Shape your character in effective and ineffective ways
• Create the boundary conditions of your thinking
• Drive all behaviors, emotions and subjective experiences

“If you want to uncover your beliefs, just look at your results. “

Your leadership beliefs are the power source for your company’s results and for the culture you’ve created in the present. 

The question is: are those the results and culture you really want?

You say you have a compelling vision.   Do you believe it is possible?

You say you have core values.   Do you have beliefs conflicting with those values that drive different choices and actions?

You say employees matter.  Do you make them feel appreciated, recognized and heard?

You say that you put customers first.  Do they believe it?

 Are your results matching what you say you want?   If not, it may have nothing to do with the words you are saying; it could be that your employees may not believe them.

In the end, you have one of two choices.

Either you can keep going as you are and live with your current problems OR you can kick those sabotaging beliefs to the curb for good.  If you chose the later, read on.

Types of Beliefs Every Leader Needs to Know About

All beliefs can be categorized into one of three types.  Knowing how each type effects you and your organization is crucial to the change process.

1. Beliefs about Cause

We all have beliefs about cause.  They are reflected in your goals, plans, actions and decisions.

Beliefs about cause are implied in the form … “X” causes “y.”  Let’s take a look at examples.

What do you believe …

• Are the traits of great leaders?
• Drives high performance in an organization?
• Motivates employees?
• Is the reason for your unrealized goals?
• Makes your company successful or not successful?

Whether you realize it or not, these are all beliefs.  Not facts.  Not truth.  Simply beliefs. 

They may not even be your beliefs.  Many of your leadership beliefs, especially about cause, come from books, workshops, other leaders, etc.   Taking on those beliefs may or may not serve you and the results you want.

The point is … as a leader, you must challenge every belief about “what causes what” to realize different outcomes.

2.  Beliefs about Meaning

Our brains are meaning-making machines.  We give meaning to past and current experiences, behaviors (ours and others’), communications (words and non-verbal), etc.

Beliefs about meaning are implied in the form … “x” means “y.”  Let’s take a look at examples.

• What does it mean that your profits have declined for the last 3 months?
• Does it mean you have to cut staff?
• Does it mean you’ve failed?
• What does it mean that an employee has not met your expectations?
• Does it mean they are unmotivated?
• Does it mean you did not communicate clearly?

Beliefs about meaning result in behaviors congruent with that belief.  For example, if profits fell and you believe it was from a bad decision, you will hold back in future decisions or taking necessary risks.

3.  Beliefs about Identity

Beliefs about identity include cause, meaning and boundaries.  When you change beliefs about your identity, it means that somehow you are/will be a different person.

Changing beliefs at the identity level is one of the most profound breakthroughs you can experience. It transforms who you are at your core and every aspect of your life.

Let’s look at examples.

• What causes you to do something as a leader?
• Do you see yourself as competent leader?
• Do you believe you don’t deserve to succeed?
• To hold your employees accountable, do you believe you have to become a dictator or control freak?
• Do you fear that you won’t be liked by your employees if you take tough actions or make tough decisions.

To summarize … beliefs may be beliefs of cause, meaning or identity.  They may be about the world around you (eg., experiences or other people) or about yourself and your identity.

Beliefs are unconscious habitual thought processes that either undermine you or enhance you and your desired outcomes.

Nest step … Read the companion article — How Leaders Breakthrough Sabotaging Beliefs … With Velocity –  to learn how to detect limiting beliefs and simple ways for changing them to experience a rapid leadership breakthrough.

The post The Secret to Rapid Leadership Breakthroughs appeared first on The Empowered Business.

I know this statement may sound harsh at first.  I ask you to hold your judgment until after you’ve finished the article to understand why.

For example, when a company is stuck or has plateaued, I often hear reasons like …

• Our company did not grow because of the economy.
• We need more knowledge or technology to beat our competition.
• We have to seize every revenue opportunity as it comes our way or we won’t survive.
• The marketplace is an unfriendly place.

Do any of these sound familiar in your company?

The GRAND illusion is … those outside factors are NEVER the reason.   As soon as you justify outside factors for lack of growth, profitability and/or performance, you are lying to yourself.  You are buying into your own story.

That is not to dismiss the importance of knowledge, systems, the timing of opportunities and other factors that leaders believe with all their hearts are the reasons for their success or failure.

The Real Problem Is Your Leadership “Map.”

I don’t mean the kind of map you stick in the glove box of your car or get from your GPS system.  I am talking about a different kind of map.

In the 1930’s, Alford Korzybski, in his book “Science and Sanity,” made a profound statement about human nature.  A statement still widely used in many contexts, including management.  That is …

The map is not the territory.

This statement says it all … how and why your mind plays “dirty” tricks on you.  That is, your perception of reality is never reality itself.  Rather it is your version or internal representation of reality (or mental map).

100% of your experience of the world is being generated by your mind, not outside events.

Due to your brain’s limited processing capabilities, your mental maps filter out over 99% of external information coming from your five senses.  Your mind attempts to fill in the massive information gap with its own “spin,” story or interpretation about what it perceives.

Not only is your conscious awareness limited.  You also filter every experience through your own learned behaviors, experiences, beliefs, values, interests and states.  As a result, this filtering process distorts, deletes and generalizes your sense of reality.

How Can Your Mental Maps Cause BIG Trouble to Your Organization?

The distortion in thinking and perceptions –based on mental maps – creates over 80% of the problems at a leadership and organizational level.  While your leadership mental maps can actually create many problems in your organization, let’s look at 2 common examples.

Mind Trick #1:  You rationalize away outside circumstances (or your perceptions of those circumstances) as the reason for your organizational failures or lack of results.

Projecting outside circumstances (eg., the economy) as the cause for companies’ lack of results is so rampant in today’s business world.  Yet this one mistake alone is costing companies billions in lost revenues, profits and new opportunities … and leaders don’t even realize it!

The truth is … you either fight for reasons OR you fight for results.  Your brain is not capable of holding two opposing thoughts at the same time.

You can’t fight for growth and fight for the reasons for lack of growth at the same time.  When you focus on the latter, you are reinforcing in your brain why you can’t have growth.

Doing so has a domino effect.  On your attitudes, you become a victim.  On your beliefs, you convince yourself again that “outside circumstances drive your fate.”  On your behaviors, you focus your actions on survival, and ultimately, all this drives results or more lack of growth

Do you see how your perceptions of reality (your mental maps) determine your outcomes?

How is it that at times you become prisoner to your own reasons (and don’t realize it)?  What are the telltale signs?

Level of believability:  Your reasons seem plausible. 

So much so, you perceive your reasons or beliefs as true … as facts.  Those reasons then drive your focus and preclude you from seeing other possibilities.

Because blaming the economy for company failures or lack of results is a common rationalization, let’s use that as an example. 

You speak that rationalization, think it, believe it, feel it, and act consistently with it and then have evidence to back it up that it’s true. You are so identified with your mental map or mind that to you it is not your mind at all, it is the unvarnished truth.  In this case, you believe that the economy is the reason.

Consensus:  Your team, industry peers, the media, etc. all validate your reason. 

They buy into the same reason.  “Of course, the economy is to blame.”   Consensus grows and resignation becomes contagious within your company and industry.  This meme  …. aka thought virus … becomes the norm and goes viral.  Your thinking is infected and you can’t see causes within your control or other possibilities for a different outcome.

That one thought (or mental map) is the real cause for lack of results, not the economy.

That’s not to negate that economic downturns exist and can impact how a company operates and grows.   Your response to a down economy is completely within your control however.

It’s within your control to look for market segments or industries still in a growth mode.  It’s within your control to identify new strategies for seizing opportunities. It’s within your control to focus on your most profitable offerings during downturns.

You get to choose.  Are you going to fight for reasons or fight for results?

Mind Trick  #2:  You believe/assume that your plans and strategies, as long as followed,  (“the map”) will take your company to its desired destination (“the territory”).

Developing strategies and plans is a healthy practice for leaders to do.

However …. and this is a BIG “however” … it is often assumed that if you follow your strategies and plans (“the map”), you will successfully navigate the path (“the territory”) to get to your company’s destination.

There’s something to be said about staying the course and sticking to your strategies.  Yet your strategies often create blind spots that underestimate the impact of external changes on your business.

The issue is not about the content of your strategies and plans.  The issue is the unconscious belief or assumption that you have the right roadmap.  That one belief will cause you to filter critical external information and cues that may be signaling you have the wrong roadmap or you need to change it.

Example: A common blind spot is to overestimate your company’s strengths and capabilities.  If you perceive customer service as a strength, you are apt to assume that “strength” as the basis of your strategy and your differentiator.  That blind spot, however, may cause you to miss other emerging competitors who are better able to service your customers and are threatening your business.

• Where are you missing critical external cues that your strategies (maps) need to be changed?  
• Where are you over-estimating your business capabilities and strengths?  
• To what extent are you attached to your own strategies as being correct that you cannot perceive better ways of reaching your destination?

The above are 2 manifestations of the grand leadership illusion that can sink organizations and performance.  Your mental maps are driving your outcomes, not external circumstances.  The more you understand as a leader how your mind works, the less trapped you will be by your own thoughts and mental paradigms.

Changing Your Leadership “Maps” Can Change Your Results & Performance … At Lightning Speed.

Let’s take a moment to summarize what you need to remember from this article.

Key Points Summary

• The map is not the territory.
• Your mental maps of reality are NOT 100% accurate.  Your mental maps distort reality through your brain processing and filtering systems.
• We react to our own mental maps, not reality. Our maps are affected by our own interpretation about what is happening.  Your negative interpretation of the same event can be another person’s optimism.
• Your territory is constantly changing, so don’t overlay today’s experiences with what happened yesterday. After all, the surroundings were different.  Just because sales slowed or profit margins declined last month does not mean your growth or profitability can’t be stellar this month.
• No two maps are the same. Everyone creates their own maps, each is unique and no two are the same. (Your map is not the same as other leaders on your team.  In fact your maps may be opposite of each other.)

The good news is … your mental maps can be changed.  New mental maps can catalyze your company to its next level of success, just as much as the old ones can keep you stuck in molasses.

The first step to change is to question everything.  Challenge every thought, assumption, belief (disguised as fact) and point of view with which you currently identify.  Especially the ones you believe are right :)).

In future articles, I will be addressing the concept of constrictive minds and their impact on your leadership and organizational performance.  To be notified of those and other articles, sign up for our monthly newsletter and free report at Wired to Win BIG.

The post The One GRAND Leadership Illusion That Sinks Organizations appeared first on The Empowered Business.

At the end of every year, I take a personal private retreat to clear my mind, take inventory of the past year and create a new vision for the new year.  Knowing the power of questions, at the start of each retreat, I ask myself …

What are the 10 most important questions to ask myself in this retreat to take my business (and life) to a more meaningful, impactful and prospering level in the new year?

For 3-4 days, I spend time by the ocean simply reflecting, letting go of any goals, plans or expectations.  I simply allow myself to just be.   To be a blank canvass upon which new insights, penetrating questions and inner promptings begin to emerge.

Every year I walk away with powerful questions that, simply by asking them, transform my thinking, direction and excitement for the future.

I share that with you for one reason only.  To embrace and utilize the power of questions within yourself and your organization on a daily basis.

“The one who asks questions doesn’t lose his way.”   African Proverb

Why Focus on Questions, NOT Answers? 

Our greatest shifts and changes in business and in life come NOT from answers, rather from powerful provocative questions.  Questions have the power to:

• Transform
• Open up conversations
• Solve problems creatively
• Shake up your thinking
• Build critical thinking
• Shift your focus
• Inspire new direction
• Shatter your assumptions
• Unleash potential
• Keep you aligned with your sense of identity, purpose and vision

… and much more.

In keeping with this month’s theme of building your strategic thinking muscle, below are 12 provocative strategic questions to create a new future for you and your company.

12 Provocative Strategic Thinking Questions You Need to Be Asking

Vision, Goals and Strategies

• As you envision where you want your company to be in 10 years, what BHAGs (big hairy audacious goals) do you see your company achieving?
• In order to achieve your BHAGs, what innovative ideas and strategies did you have to come up with?
• What “enemies” (external or internal) will you have to defeat along the way to achieve your BHAGs?

Markets, Competitors and Customers

• Imagine it’s 5 years from now.  What are your competitors envying the most about your company?
• What do your competitors respect the most about your company?
• What do you envision the future needs of our customers to be in 5– 10 years and how do you expect to meet them?
• What is your company the “best of” in your field or industry?
• When it comes to customers, how is your organization shifting from a “how many” to “who is our most profitable customer” focus?
• How are you staying on top of changing global, competitive, market, economic and technology trends to uncover hidden opportunities?

Changing the Inner Game 

• How are you breaking down big change in your organization into pieces too inconsequential to fail?
• How would you change if you HAD TO get 10x better/ bigger in the next 12 months?
• What do you have to do less of, to achieve more in your company?

Bonus Question

“For true success ask yourself these four questions:

Why?

Why not?

Why not me?

Why not now?”

James Allen

By no means are the above questions exhaustive.  In fact, they barely scratch the surface.

What provocative questions can you ask within your organization to build stronger strategic thinking capacity?

Share your own provocative strategic thinking questions and we will add them to this list with your name.

The post 12 Strategic Thinking Questions That Yield Big Results. appeared first on The Empowered Business.