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What are Your 2015 Leadership Development Goals?

November 14, 2014 By Sam Palazzolo, Managing Director

The Point: You have been called to lead a company that is planning to expand nationwide or globally. You have the responsibility of leading a new team, keeping costs in check, and also to select the best people from the headquarters to lead those other offices. You will obviously need communication skills and financial know-how to achieve these goals. But this doesn’t end here, because leadership development is intimately linked with an individual’s personal development. The following are some of most crucial leadership development goals that you can set for yourself… Enjoy!

#5 Be More Open

Success leads to self-confidence, and self-confidence (many times) leads to arrogance. Many CEOs consider themselves intellectually superior to others, and thus, they don’t feel the need to listen to what people have to say. In fact, we have seen some really snobbish ‘leaders’ who don’t mind cutting off a person when contradicted. But what this does is stop people from sharing their ideas with you, and you will never get any honest feedback on any professional decision that you take. This, my friends, is the ultimate recipe for corporate disaster. Try to be more open to what other people are saying for the simple reason that you don’t know everything, and exposing yourself to a variety of viewpoints only leads to your intellectual growth.

#4 Listen Like you Mean It

Following from the previous point, being open doesn’t mean that you just sit like a dummy when people are talking. , waiting patiently for their turn to get over so that you can correct or enlighten them with your knowledge. This is not the way to go. Instead, when you ask for other people’s opinions, do listen carefully. Turn towards them, look them in the eye, and continue nodding from time to time. Even if you don’t agree to what is being said, your employees and colleagues will still feel respected by these small gestures.

#3 Take Command Over your Emotions

When times are rough and the economy is in shambles, your organization will look up to for directions. Even when you don’t have all the answers, your confidence and self-assurance can help calm them down. Consider the example of Winston Churchill. His personal emotional downturns and bouts of depression are well-documented, but he was always managed to assure the people around him and give them hope even in times as horrible as the Second World War. So learn to keep your emotions under your control.

#2 Health is Wealth

The corporate world is slowly accepting the wisdom behind this adage. As a leader, you are supposed to energize and mobilize your workforce. But how you can you do that, as you are on the verge of burnout due to lack of sleep, unhealthy eating, and excessively long work hours?. Not to mention, workplace stress is on the rise. To counter all this and to ensure your long-term success as a leader, start taking care of yourself. Learn to work smart and delegate more often. Go home, spend time with family, meditate, and get a good night’s sleep.

#1 Keep Yourself Informed

Finally, a trait of successful leaders is that they are constantly learning. This is a key attribute that will help you in the face of changing business conditions. Read voraciously, blogs, trade journals, and books. Teddy Roosevelt used to read at least one book per day when he was President. I think you can manage one a every week.!

In addition, attend seminars and trade shows to meet like-minded professionals. Best of all, consider taking on a mentor to help you with leadership development.

Summary

To sum up, while corporate training and financial wisdom helps you rise the ranks to become CEO, maintaining your effectiveness as a leader depends on personal development as well, especially in terms of how you engage with people and manage your physical/emotional health.

If you’d like more information about Tip of the Spear’s Business Advisory Services, consisting of Centered Executive Coaching, Leadership Development through ‘The Leadership Challenge’ methodology, and Communication Skills Training for Leaders use the CONTACT US page of this website.

So You Want to Create a Leadership Development Program? 5 Tips!

November 13, 2014 By Sam Palazzolo, Managing Director

The Point: If you have a started a company and want to expand in the next couple of years, then you need to understand the way American work demographics are changing. As more than 10,000 employees have already reached 65, the typical job scenario where there were hundreds and thousands of applicants for a limited number of positions is about to change. Hence, if you need to talent to drive your company forward, it most probably has to come from within. In this article, we list down 5 tips to create a leadership development program that fulfills this purpose… Enjoy!

#5 List Down the Leadership Challenge(s) That Needs to be Addressed

To start off, the very first thing you need to do is prepare a list of essential leadership challenge(s) that need to be tackled in the development program. For instance, you need to have a rough idea of what kind of leadership team you want to run your organization, and the crucial talent and abilities should they posses.

#4 Honestly Evaluate Where Your Team Stands Now

Now that you have listed the goals for the leadership development programNext, you have to indentify the strengths and weakness of your team to determine how close or far away they are from achieving those goals. Ask yourself:

Is my team organized?
Can they motivate their subordinates?
Are they organized?
Do they communicate effectively?
Do they exemplify ethics and gravitas?
Can they resolve conflicts? (Also see which team member actually causes the conflicts)

It will be better than your list down the goals and the answers to the above questions side-by-side. Leave some space in between to write down the solutions required to fill the gap.

#3 Take your Team On-Board

Once the ‘paperwork’ is complete, you need to interview the strongest leadership candidates in your firm to determine the best practices for applying those skills. Since they are the ones being trained, the feedback of your team is highly important, especially when it comes to assessing factors like:

The most rewarding (and challenging) aspects of the job
The best strategies for employee motivation and conflict resolution
The best strategies for measuring success
The ways in which the company should hire and coach new employees

#2 Choose the Best Training Method

If you are dealing with multiple employees and managers that need to be trained for future leadership positions, then you should look for a variety for training methods. Encourage them to take on online courses and improve their reading. There is a great wealth of unearthed leadership literature, plus new webinars and podcasts that they should stay vary of. Plus there are seminars, retreats, presentations, and personal mentoring. The method you choose depends on:

The skills that are need for leadership development
The accuracy of gauging feedback of that method
The time you want the effects of the training to last

#1 Hire a Leadership Coach

While the above-mentioned training methods are highly effective, there is much benefit in hiring a leadership coach. A leadership coach can help in the following ways:

By easing your transition from a specialist to a all-round leader
By acting as your sounding board and offering you valuable insights for self-improvement
By brining additional expertise to the table
By focusing on a key leadership challengebehavioral (such as the inability to confront bad employees)

Summary

If you want to secure the future of your organization, you need to invest in your existing talent to become the leaders of tomorrow, and this can only be achieved with a robust leadership development program.

Leadership Development Around The World

November 12, 2014 By Sam Palazzolo, Managing Director

The Point: Maya Angelou once wrote that …‘what is true anywhere is true everywhere’. While the later author had a different context in mind, herThis quote is relevant to the world of business, especially when we talk about leadership development. Latest research shows that business leaders around the world face uncertainties as we head into 2015. In this article, we discuss the major leadership challenge(s) organizations across the globe face… Enjoy!

#5 Efficient Management

So much to do and so little time to do it is a major leadership challenge, not only in America but in countries like India and China as well. It should also be added that along with time, personal health and stamina are also valuable commodities that a leader cannot afford to spend excessively. So before a leader starts to manage a business, he needs to learn how to manage his own time and energy. This calls for prioritization, strategic thinking, and more delegation. This is especially true when you also have to manage the internal politics and act as mediator between the various stakeholders to avoid conflict.\

#4 Employee Development

When we talk about a greater need of delegation, we first need to have talented employees that can be trusted with important organizational tasks. Not only is the modern leader responsible for hiring people that have the potential to serve as future leaders in the firm, but he must also mentor and coach them. Employee development is a pressing need for businesses that are struggling with a lack of skilled applicants, especially in Egypt.

#3 Motivating the Workforce

It is not enough for the senior management to verbally tell the employees how valued they are to the organization. Actively inspiring and motivating others to ensure both operational efficiency and job satisfaction is also part of developing a company’s human material. Economies like Singapore are increasingly researching ways on how keep employees motivated.

#2 Team Management

It is not enough to hire and nurture skilled employees. As a leader, you also need to bring all these people on the same page as team and facilitate their individual and collective growth. One of the best ways to lead a team is to hire an executive coach for the entire group. That way, the workforce development becomes streamlined. Spanish and British companies especially need to pay attention to their leaders’ team management skills, and so do organizations at home.

#1 The Leader as Change Master

Finally and most importantly, leaders need to understand that they operate in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment. This means that no matter how hard you work to create an innovative, efficient, and healthy organizational, both internal and externals factors will continue to disturb this stability. This environment can only be tackled by leaders that are flexible and open to change. Surprisingly, countries like England list receptivity resistance to chance as a top leadership challenge.

Summary

To sum up, the modern leader faces common challenges regardless of the country s/he works in. They are responsible for not only supervising, but training and motivating diverse groups of people to make the workplace more efficient and to achieve company objectives. Now that these common challenges have been identified, finding effective strategies to counter them will help leaders of tomorrow to run profitable companies, even in uncertain economic conditions.

Is Leadership Development a Waste of Time?

November 11, 2014 By Sam Palazzolo, Managing Director

The Point: Less than 10% of all employees trust their leaders. Only 40% of leaders have a high view of their organizational leadership, while only 1 in 4 people in HR are satisfied with its company’s senior management. Meanwhile, investments in leadership development continue to be rolled out in billions. But since we are not seeing the necessary results, many question the very need of paying for leadership development. So we thought we’d ask… Is leadership development a waste of time? Unequivocally we can say that we don’t agree, and here are three reasons why… Enjoy!

A Leader Connects the Dots

Taking an example of sports entertainment, the demise of World Championship Wrestling (WCW) serves as the perfect example of how a lack of leadership can bring a multi-billion dollar corporation to the ground, even when they have all the right tools in place. WCW hired the top wrestling talent and executives not only from its rival promotion, but from international companies as well. It had wrestling stars that actually made sports entertainment popular in the 80s. Then there were celebrities like Jay Leno and KISS who made frequent appearances on the company’s shows. Most importantly, WCW has the backing of a media giant.

So what went wrong? To start off, no one knew who the boss was. Decisions were made at the last minutes, and no one was there to control the inflated egos (and inflated paychecks) of the top stars. In the end, the company was acquired by a rival promotion which WCW had outrun in TV ratings for a better half of the late 90s. The difference: this other company was run by an innovative leader.

A Leader Motivates

When only 7% of employees trust the top executives in their company, we have a serious issue of workplace motivation. Yes, good paychecks, job security, and employee benefits go a long way in motivating people to bring out their best for a company, but let us not forget the role of a leader in maintaining job satisfaction in his team.

We can relate this from personal experience how many people resign on the spot when they hear about a senior manager leaving the company. While they may not admit it when given job satisfaction surveys, the reasons that employees give for resenting work boils down to leadership. They will use words like ‘low morale’ and ‘poor communication’, they are obviously talking about the quality of leadership in the company.

Once again, even if all pieces of the puzzle are in place, employees will still feel de-motivated if there is no genuine leadership above themto guide them.

A Leader Gives Direction

Finally and most importantly, a leader plays the same role as an editor of a major publication. You see, no matter how many great writers contribute to The Chicago Tribune or The New Yorker, what makes a publication stand out is its unique voice that resonates through every piece of content in its pages, even the ads. A typical newspaper editor has to sift through millions of words everyday to bring out the best articles and stories that stick true to the publication’s overall theme.

This is exactly what a leader does. Using robust communication skills, he instills the company’s vision into each of his employees so that everyone works towards a common goal. He spots the best talent, and deals with the bad seeds effectively. But while an editor may work in anonymity, CEOs and other business leaders are constantly being monitored, both by their team and the industry at large.

So, considering how important leaders are, the cost of not paying for their coaching and development is too significant to be expressed in numbers.

Summary

There is a definite dearth of effective leadership in corporations across the globe, which is why we cannot disregard the importance of leadership development. At the same time, unless such programs are tweaked to take these challenges into account, we are not going to see radical changes in the way things are run.

As a Leader Do Your Presentation Communication Skills Suck?

November 7, 2014 By Sam Palazzolo, Managing Director

The Point: While this might not be the main criteria on an executive’s job description, giving presentations is a regular feature of your C-Suite career. Most CEOs think that their position in the organization will ensure that everyone will listen to what they present and accept it wholeheartedly. But when it comes to long-term success as a leader, this is not the best strategy to follow… In other words, it’s not a given! Following are some effective leadership development skills that will help you give great presentations… Enjoy!

#4 Have Technical Command Over Your Material

Preparation is key. If the audience gets the slightest impression that you are speaking impromptu (see next point), then they will not take your presentations seriously or perhaps take it too lightly. Any future endeavor in this regard will just be a waste of time. So even if you are an expert in the topic you will speak on, you should still develop a logical outline on paper.

#3 Speak, Don’t Read

While you have prepared notes and PowerPoint slides, you should NOT read off them. Your presentation should be like a conversation, not a robotic repetition of facts and figures. You have to develop a nice balance of intense preparation and impromptu speaking to make your presentation as natural as possible. For instance, you can choose to include some humor or comment on a recent cultural event to increase the audience’s interest in what you have to say at the opening, middle or closing (It’s complicated, right?)

#2 Command Attention

As mentioned at the outset, you simply cannot expect people to pay you complete attention simply because you’re a C-Suite executive. Instead, you have to make sure you’re using the right body language and gestures to ensure that your audience is really listening. Stand upright, and maintain eye contact with the audience are two examples of proper presentation body language.

#1 Be Concise

Writing or speaking more is not considered authoritative any more. Consider what Winston Churchill had to say on the length of the speech:

‘If you want me to speak for two minutes, it will take me three weeks of preparation, it will take me a week to prepare. If you want me to speak for an hour, I am ready now.’

There is much wisdom in this quote. You have to respect people’s time and get straight to the point. When you are clear and succinct in your presentations, your audience will not resent it (but actually anticipate it).

Summary

Presentations being a vital part of leadership communication skills, you have to use the tips given above to boost the quality of your presentations. Pay special attention to the general mood of the audience, and based on that, use a mix of preparation and casual conversation, all the while using body language to command their attention.

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