Personal CORE STRENGTH – Leadership
Pattern of the Successful Leader. Does management position, power in an organization equal leadership skill? If it does, how do the CEO’s of the Fortune 100 make into their roles before everyone in front of them dies or leaves? Most were promoted ahead and over peers and former bosses. Are their leadership skills substantially less at age 30 as a manager, or did the organization discover the asset and invested to grow their capabilities? One primary function of today’s HR group is to implement processes and tools to discover early the potential mega-leaders of tomorrow and begin that investment early, developing the CORE strength of the future leadership team. It is called loosely progression planning. How are you building, growing your LEADERSHIP CORE Strength? What “muscles” need to be conditioned and strengthened?

Self Emotional Core
Positive Confident Thoughts – Positive energy can have the highest level of impact on the success of many executives. Each day the internal voice speaks thoughts positive and negative. The voice can be trained. It is easy to listen to the negative. Be proactive and disciplined. Learn to be positive. In my career, all the executives I met in the C-Level or their direct reports saw the glass half full. It is the chicken or egg affect. What comes first, the confident positive energy or the promotions and success? You can choose to have positive energy. Positive energy attracts positive relationships.

Builds Trust – This may be the most precious asset of the Executive. It works somewhat like a bank account. Our words and actions accumulate trust in an account. A mistake can make a withdrawal, but if we confess and own our mistakes (avoid the blame game) the withdrawal is minimized. If we blame and cover up, when we are caught, the withdrawal is expanded. Each day we build or withdraw from the account. When the accounts gets low, even a tiny inconsequential mistake can be the catalyst for rejection of the leader.

Reliable Character – Seasoned executives are consistent and reliable. You can count on the Executive to deliver on their promises, follow through on their commitments, keep their word. The executive lives life through the lens of their values. Do they occasionally overlook a meeting, forget an assignment, fail to return a message? Yes, everyone is human. How can the Executive can climb the ladder of success beyond the capacity of their character? We may not agree with their values, their principles, but we know they stand for them. Their character is reliable.

Self Discipline – Seasoned executives have learned to leave excuses behind. They seek opportunities to challenge themselves. Goals and rewards for achievement are a common part of their personal and business activity. They measure daily activities with intention, priorities and values.

Truth – How often in business are we tempted to exaggerate facts? It is a part of the human condition that we see facts through the lens of our story. So any multiple individuals witnessing a significant event will witness through the lens of their life story and tell “Truth” from that point of view. How much complexity do we add with exaggeration, white lies, half-truths and hidden meanings? How has the use of these affecting the bank account of TRUST in your relationships? The consequence of Non-Truth is a withdrawal from the core of all our personal patterns, Positive Confidence, Integrity, Trust, Character and Self Discipline.

Relational Development Core
Accomplished Thinker – When do you subject your ideas, your vision, to the test of clarity and challenge? What are the traits of a Good Thinker? One is they expect to have great ideas that are successful. There are some common traits. They plan intentional time to think. They understand their pond of ideas must have input from an ocean of thought. They take input from other Thinkers. To expand their bank of knowledge, they read books and magazines, listen to media and they plug into the knowledge of other folks who are encouraged to challenge their thoughts. Once an idea hits them, they document it. Keep it in front. Prioritize time think it through. Once the idea has been analyzed in their own thought, grounded in the input of others and survived the process as a good idea, they take action.

Anyone can increase the thinking skill. You may be a Ph.D. or have a 6th grade education. You may be an Engineer or a maintenance superintendent. Your parents may have been poor, middle class or wealthy. You may have disabilities that require a wheel chair or run marathons. Accomplished Thinking is a skill that doesn’t have a boundary.

Listen & Expand their pond of knowledge – Have a great idea or vision for new ____? Who can give you insight, clarity on your ideas, challenge or issue? Fortune 500 executives have the benefit of peer executives to share ideas. They also have the benefit of budgets for world class consultants, industry groups, trade shows, local trade groups, continuing education and formal mentor programs.

Quiet Time – Each day is busy, sometimes hectic. Seasoned executives schedule quiet time in their day. Each individual invests the time in differing ways. Meditation, prayer, reading, music are examples of quiet time.

Play to Win – Executives in the Fortune 500 intend to win and play to win. Setbacks are just bumps along the path, an opportunity to make the plan even stronger… Risks are part of achieving the mission. They make a strong stand for their mission, their beliefs and their values.

Failures are Setbacks – Failures are an opportunity to listen and learn. Often what an individual might call a failure the executive sees as simply a set-back. The plan is recast and success is again in their future. They play to win.

Engage Conflict – Conflict is defined as being incompatible, clashing, at odds, sharp disagreement. Most leaders simply react to conflict with natural instinct. What is your personal approach? Can we learn to successful engage conflict to our advantage? A successful repeatable process is in aligning the What, How and Why of the individuals at conflict. As you learn our sales approach, you will see it also involves aligning the What, How and Why. The reality is competition is conflict. Developing relationships to increase our influences requires engaging in rough and tumble world of conflict, called competition. It is a core skill that enhances the strength of all the other relational core patterns.

Management Core
Effective Leader – How do you increase you capability as a leader? The higher you want to climb, the greater the skill as a leader is required. Leadership is impacted by skill. When the leadership skill is low, the effort to be effective is much higher. It is difficult to achieve success greater than the skill of the leader or the leadership team. To reach the highest level of effectiveness, the leader must increase skill faster/greater than the growth of the organization. Build a team. Empower key contributors to increase your capability. When leaders are trapped in the pond of their own knowledge, their business tends to find the ceiling of their skill and pull back from that point. If your team grows your capability, how might your company outgrow you? Consider, can we teach what we don’t know? Can you identify/recognize what you don’t know, don’t see? We must continue to grow our own skill. Just building the team is only part of the equation. You must grow to lead it also.Focus on the High Value priorities. Personal action items are part of the plan or they are high value and high impact tasks. Other tasks that creep onto their plate are appropriately delegated. One delegation theory ranks tasks to be completed in 4 quadrants by Value/Impact and frequency.

Keep To-Do list Short and Focused – Executives seldom get the benefit of fully focused days. More often, they get short periods to “get things done”. Keeping their own action list short and actionable is a key success factor on a daily busy routine. There is a theory that 20% of action produces 80% of results (Paredo affect). Can you identify the 20%?

Plan, Plan, Plan (keep it simple and short) – seasoned executives work from a plan. They work from tiered plans.
o   Life Vision – define where you plan to be at age 80 and work your way back
o   Strategic Plan – The business you operate needs a long term vision and action plan to achieve the vision. Do you plan to sell in 5 years? At what valuation? How will you achieve it?
o   Personal Long Term Plan – define results to achieve this year, quarter, month and define the action plan to achieve it. Items on this plan should be in support of the Strategic Plan.
o   Weekly/Daily Plan – What makes it on your current action list? What results requires immediate action? Develop a plan for the week, by day. Items should be in support of the Long Term Plan.

Prioritized Calendar – The calendar of an executive is proactively filled by intention. There is no question they will have meetings each day, each week. How do those meetings get planned? Does the executive doesn’t arrive at the office and react, wait to see who may show up. The calendar is managed for the success of the executive based on priority. It is seldom filled simply by the requests of others…. The executive proactively makes contact to meet the goals, objectives, results at hand. The executive dedicates time for thinking and planning. People are scheduled like investments of time direction, advise, input or challenge.

Delegate effectively – One person cannot accomplish all the demands of a business. The CEO should focus on High Value, High Impact tasks and be conscious of the times when low value tasks are on your to-do list. Effective delegation means assigning tasks to individuals that are appropriately skilled and trained to be successful. Trust but verify. $90 an hour tasks are not assigned to entry level college grads. $30 an hour tasks are not assigned to a seasoned analyst or executive. Make it appropriate. Delegate timely. Follow-up. Acknowledge success. Learn and train in shortcomings. Effective accountable organizations coordinate around a principal. One successful principal Plan, Do, Check, Act. A less successful principal is the find Fault and Blame Game. In baseball, if a player is blamed for striking out, dropping the throw to first, the fly ball. When the player becomes THE blame for failure, for loss, how well, will they perform in the next game? Their internal voice will transition from let’s play to don’t make a mistake. Don’t miss, don’t drop, don’t strike out. Guess what they are likely to do? Miss, Drop, strike out…. The “don’t message” will become their consistent reality. Positive thoughts lead to positive actions. We will work on positive energy as a key part of the End Zone Team.
See the Plan, Do, Check, Act explanation below.
For more on Positive Energy Link to Energy – Personal

Seasoned executives define a proactive delegation principal, delegate effectively, follow-up, gain status on progress and celebrate success of their team.

Plan, Act, Check, Do Principal
Plan = Define tasks to be accomplished and delegate
Act = Accomplish tasks in plan
Check = Follow-up, status progress, check on success
Do = recast plan based on findings in follow-up. Failures are learning lessons. Plan more training and move forward.

Paredo Affect
Consider how the Paredo theory can impact a business.
Leadership: 20% of people with make 80% of decisions
Time: 20% of time produces 80% of results
People Power: 20% of people produce 80% of return on investment
Products: 20% of products contribute to 80% of revenues
Presentation: 20% of speech produces 80% of impact
Meal: 20% of people will consume 80% of food
Training: 20% of training budget will produce 80% of improvement
To move the needle as a leader what if you
Time: Invest 80% of your time with the 20% who produce greater results
Training: Invest 80% of personal improvement budget on the 20% who produce results
Trainer: Ask the 20% who received training to train the next 20%. (Train the trainers)
People: Prioritize work tasks so the 80% are tasked with low impact, low value tasks and the 20% received High Value High Impact tasks

People: Prioritize work tasks so the 80% are tasked with low impact, low value tasks and the 20% received High Value High Impact tasks