by D. Kevin Berchelmann | Mar 11, 2015 | Brazen Leader, Executive Improvement
Leaders–born or made?
I get this a lot. And though it seems like “the question of the ages,” it’s really not.
Leaders are made, not born.
I believe this with all my being, and have evidence of perpetual non-leaders “turning a corner” in their professional lives and developing the leadership presence that many only dream of.
I believe they are made because I’ve seen them made.
Having said that… I’ve been playing golf for 30 some-odd years. I’m a solid “business-golfer,” never embarrassing myself completely (well, there was this one time…), and also never being eligible for a U.S. Open run. I play to a 12-15 handicap, and enjoy the game. Others pick up the sticks, get a few pointers, and then display an immediate proclivity to the game, joining the single-digit ranks in less than a year. I try and run ’em over with my golf cart… wait, did I write that out loud?
Anyway, these “12-month-wonders” weren’t born knowing how to golf. They didn’t grow in the womb with spikes and a leather glove, knowing then that a downhill lie requires a closed clubface. They were, however, born with the propensity to learn the game that I was not. They picked it up faster–it fit their physicality, their mental grasp, even their character or persona.
Here, then, are your born leaders. They knew nothing of active listening, feedback and decision-making during their mom’s first ultrasound; they simply pick up the principles and applications so much faster than we mortals that they appear–like the irritating golfers above–to have been “born” with those traits.
They weren’t. They just learned ’em faster than most of us.
I also think that the “born, not made” mantra is promoted mostly by (a) those who weren’t born with that propensity mentioned above and need some emotional salve to keep their ego whole, or (b) those who were born with that propensity, and can’t understand why others don’t “get it.”
A bigger question, to me, is what can we do to identify those innate leadership learners sooner, rather than later?
But that’s just me…
by D. Kevin Berchelmann | Feb 23, 2015 | Brazen Leader, Executive Improvement, Uncategorized
In this and 4 subsequent blog entries, I’m expanding on the “5 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership” I outlined in my most popular article.
This first law is based on decision-making; one of the most significant things we must do, as leaders, is to make decisions. Some will be good, some require further decision-making.
So without further ado…
Law #1: Never delay or abrogate a decision that must be made. Make it and move on. You may have to immediately make another decision; this doesn’t mean your first one was wrong, merely that your second one had the benefit of additional knowledge.
Let me share a story…
I used to work for a 30-year USAF General, a war veteran with a chest full of medals, ribbons, and other colorful accoutrements. Great guy, razor sharp, did not suffer fools lightly. His name was Brigadier General Lawrence Bose.
General Bose was a fighter pilot (F-4) in Vietnam, most notably during Operation Linebacker (the push-back after the Tet Offensive). As it seems with many battle-hardened leaders (military and corporate), he was known to say some pretty profound things. The sorts of things you would tell yourself, “Hey, I need to remember that one…” Some actually stuck, which for me, is nothing short of miraculous. One, in particular…
“Shirt,” he would say (“Shirt” was slang for “First Sergeant” in the USAF–the reason is fodder for another story), “Leaders don’t really make good decisions or bad; they just make decisions. If they’ve done their job correctly, the people working for them make the results of those decisions good.”
Now, never mind whether you agree that decisions are never classified as “good” or “bad.” Set that part aside… more important is the leadership genius behind the comment. Our jobs as leaders is to make decisions. We’ve heard this a hundred times, so here’s a hundred and one: A mediocre decision made promptly and unequivocally trumps a really good decision delayed and hesitant.
Another fairly well known General, George S. Patton, put it this way: “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”
Consider this: If we’ve managed our talent appropriately, and developed our staffs as we should, most of our decisions will result in unmitigated success — those people working with us will make sure of it.
Just make the damned decision…
by D. Kevin Berchelmann | Oct 29, 2014 | Brazen Leader, Executive Improvement, Kevin Berchelmann, Organizational Effectiveness
Recently, when discussing the details of succession planning (uh, oh, here he goes again…!) I was asked the following by a colleague:
What general competencies, skills, attributes or potentials should we be seeking in someone worthy of developmental efforts, and how do we determine them in candidates? Are those things different for potential departmental/functional heads versus those being considered for C-level responsibilities?
My shorter version: “Who the hell do I develop?”
(more…)
by D. Kevin Berchelmann | Oct 10, 2014 | Brazen Leader, Executive Improvement
Big egos are have been the death of many a senior executive. It’s such a waste, and it doesn’t need to be that way.
Enter Microsoft’s Satya Nadella.
During a recent conference, speaking to a group of women, Nadella said they should wait for pay raises to come when an organization recognizes them. Please note–he didn’t say women should wait, or that women should do anything different than men. He just happened to be speaking to a women’s group, and social media began flogging Nadella for his comments.
In context, his comments were fine. Taken out of context–the world in which public figures live, like it or not–his words sucked. At best, he misspoke (current political favorite); at worst, he screwed up.
Either way, he fixed it. It’s never the first mistake or bad decision that gets us in trouble; it’s the second–the one we make after we realize the first one was wrong. Nadella knocked that second one out of the park.
No qualifications, no equivocations… he just apologized. “I screwed up, I’m sorry.”
It’s that easy, folks. Take notes.
But that’s just me…
by D. Kevin Berchelmann | Sep 24, 2014 | Brazen Leader, Organizational Effectiveness
Self-improvement gurus often look at productivity from a
“time management” perspective. Absolute malarkey. BS. Balderdash. Pure
unadulterated bunk.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Productivity isn’t
about managing time, it’s a about discerning among options. In short, it’s
about prioritization, not time.
Here are 3 productivity techniques I drill into my
stretched-too-thin executive coaching clients :
- Decide in advance what’s important, but don’t build a list out of concrete. I know that sounds like a paradox, but we need to know, in calm times, what we believe is important—let’s identify that. But don’t be such a slave to your list that you cannot adapt opportunistically. Needing to read some staff-driven emails may be momentarily important, but don’t close your door when a highly-engaged, usually productive asks “do you have a minute?”
- If it isn’t important enough for a calendar, it’s not important enough to do. Deep-six the countless, burgeoning lists that inevitably create a monument for failure at the end of the day. If something needs to be done, put it on your calendar. Then, of course, pay attention to deadlines.
- My quote above from Star Wars’ Yoda is appropriate for individual productivity, particularly as it relates to procrastinating. Either do it, and do it now, or DON’T do it, and either do something else or give yourself permission to just relax, surf the web, or stare at the ceiling. Worrying incessantly about something you’re “supposed” to be—but not—doing is simply a time-sucker and entirely unproductive.
Identify and focus on what’s important, let your calendar
then drive your day, and don’t beat yourself up when you can’t (or simply
won’t) get to something. As a friend of mine is fond of saying, “sometimes it’s
ok to delay… if you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute.”
But that’s just me…
by D. Kevin Berchelmann | Aug 21, 2014 | Brazen Leader, Organizational Effectiveness
I mean really…
You only have 2 kinds of employee turnover: Involuntary (we whack ’em; this is a good thing) and Voluntary.
With Voluntary turnover, we then have Uncontrollable (planned relocations, illnesses, things like that, nothing we can do) and Controllable.
Controllable, the purview of leadership, has still 2 more categories: Inconsequential (no heartache here, good riddance, “see-ya,” “Don’t let the door hit you on the butt”) and Consequential (Oh, crap, what do we do now??).
The only issue, from a turnover perspective, is the Consequentials. Losing those people we truly do not want to lose, and whose loss will significantly impact our organization. How big is that percentage?
I’d argue fairly small. It had better be small, or our organization’s survival is in jeopardy. The rest of the turnover is fundamentally a hiring/sourcing/recruitment issue…
I mentioned in an earlier At C-Level that we needed to hire more “A” – players and fewer “C” – players. If we’re losing “C” employees, good riddance. If we lose even ONE “A” player, we need to find out what went wrong and do something different. “A” employees are too difficult to recruit and hire – their loss is clearly Consequential.
So, don’t just blindly track “Turnover” as this holy grail of a metric. Track the turnover that matters. Another clear example of “measurement is easy; understanding those measures is hard.” We have way too many measures and an insufficient understanding of how those measures translate into something actionable. But that’s for another edition of At C-Level…
