What is the leadership test in tough times?

1. To stay clear, cool and centered, and to focus on what matters most.
2. To recognize and assimilate the situation you are in, without being overwhelmed.
3. To free your people to engage in the most essential tasks and to help them create your organization’s future.
4. To uphold your core values and principles, while being ready to adapt in a shape-shifting situation.
5. To resist the downward spiral of diminishing returns and defeat.
6. To identify and frame opportunities amid fear and uncertainty.
7. To stay open minded and at the same time execute your strategy.
8. To invest in creativity and innovation.
9. To build confidence and trust.
10. To create a vision that rallies all stake holders

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.27.2008 :: Leadership, Tough Times :: 1 Comment »

In their BusinessWeek What Change Agents Are Made Of, Jack & Suzie Welch focus on four traits: power, vision, bravery, and support. The Welchway says that “…change is made by people with some sort of authority. It’s driven by managers who have a platform to advocate for a new direction and the ability to hire, promote, and reward those who embrace it. Change agents in business, in other words, have to be leaders.”

We agree that power, vision, bravery and support are key traits of change agents. We have three caveats.
First, authority is never the beginning of leadership power. Authority comes later, after you have been a leader without a title.

Second, being an adaptive learner is as critical as having vision and bravery. You have to be able to assimilate feedback, to change, course-correct and adapt.

Third, we need to redefine power. The greatest power in the world is not power over others – it is knowledge of self. True leaders and agents of change have deep self insight. They understand their strengths and vulnerabilities, and find their authentic voice. The foundation of power, charisma, vision, bravery, support and the ability to learn and adapt is the knowledge of self. It is also the key to renewal and the ability to see and lead oneself and others into a shape-shifting future.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.16.2008 :: Leadership :: No Comments »

The greatest tax increase is neither in McCain’s programs, nor in Obama’s plans.

The greatest tax increase is in the breakdown of communication and civil discourse, the breakdown of trust and the ability to work through differences to find optimal solutions. Breakdown of trust and leadership is going to cost individuals, families, organizations and the economy as a whole, and the consequences will be greater than any tax change we will see under either presidential candidate.

The arts of conversation, of trust building, of open collaboration and of true leadership bring the greatest gains. These are the kind of gains the government cannot penalize. Developing the Three Pillars of Trust and collaboration is the ultimate leverage – it produces dividends that cannot be taxed.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.10.2008 :: Leadership, Money & Market Behavior, Organizational Development :: No Comments »

To the Toronto Blue Belt Top Talent participants of 2008 – Thank you for the opportunity to work together and be on this discovery journey with you. Here are my notes from our last mornings briefing:

1. You are the most important person in this world! The people you serve and work for, the people you support and help, the people to whom you bring a smile and who you make laugh, your loved ones – they can all only have the benefits of your time, energy, talent and wisdom because of who you are!  Your good health, knowledge, experience and wisdom provides you with something to give. What you do and bring to them, the way you help, serve and give are extensions of what you are – of your being.

2. Always seek to be in your optimal zone! You are always better, more efficient and to the point when you come out of optimal energy. When you drop below your “90V” you are less effective and less productive. When you drop below “70V” you tend to be ineffective and produce negative results. Below “60V” you are susceptible to illness. (You can find more about how this works in our Emerald Keys.)

3. Practice learn-ability! Develop and practice the ability to learn from every situation and experience. Learn-ability is your top competency in times of rapid change. Debrief, harvest and apply your learning.

4. Develop communication and framing skills! Your second critical skill is the ability to frame ideas and the communication and influencing frameworks and skill-set we practiced at the Blue Belt. By practicing these regularly you get one percent better every day - the compounding result of which is getting 100% better in 70 days!

5. Separate “musts” from “wants”! Be clear about the difference between “Musts” and “Wants”. Do not confuse “I want this” for “I must have this”. Be clear about your priorities. Let top priorities guide your actions.

6. Align short and long terms! Work on your long-term aims and goals with a practical and pragmatic mindset by creating step by step progress. Bring to your short-term endeavors the energy and conviction of your long term intentionality.

7. Invest in your growth and development! Along with your career goals, set internal goals for yourself. Never work solely for an outer goal. Balance and complete the outer goal together with an internal goal. Your internal goals are not about what you will have or what you will do – they are about the person you are becoming and what you will be. Develop a “Being” goal for every “Having” and “Doing” one.
Examples for “Being” goals:
A. “I am becoming a more patient and understanding leader.”
B. “To be happy and grateful.”
C. “I am clear in mind and conscience.”
D. “I develop an energized presence.”

8. Be a tool maker! Go beyond problem solving and into tool making. Be the tool maker of progress, growth and innovation.

9.  Be confident! Everything big started small. Do not be intimated by others however brilliant they may be. You are brilliant in your own way. Be sure and confident about the contribution you can make. Success is not about perfection, it is about always taking the next step forward. Take the next step confidently.

10. Find glory in the inglorious! Find the little noticed or ordinary places and attend to them with special care. Give yourself and those around you small moments of recognition when it’s least expected. Allow for quiet moments of peace inside a crowded life. Look to make something right even when no one else sees or knows what you did, simply for it to be right. Find glory in the inglorious!

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.07.2008 :: Consultant Journal, Leadership, Personal Growth :: 1 Comment »

The greatest leadership act in the world is growing and developing new leaders and then empowering and releasing them to lead.

Leadership development and the management training field have seen many formulas: ‘the 5 steps…’; ‘the six ways…’; ‘the seven, the nine and the twelve of something else’. All these frameworks are good, and they all carry wisdom and powerful teaching, but there are two problems:
The first is that all maps are only an extrapolation of reality.
The second is the formulaic and prescriptive proposition they make.

True, we all have maps in our mind. Even when you say “I don’t have a map,” it only means you don’t have a clear map, you’re not aware of your map, or your map isn’t working or is confusing. That’s the point of downloading new maps. It is a great learning experience. What then is the problem or danger with maps?

It’s called - forcing the map onto the landscape. That is what I did one night when we learned to navigate: I had made a thorough study of the topographic map. I memorized how many steps I’d have to count to the first fork, to then go around the first and second hill and climb the third hill that would appear on my left. It was all in the detailed topographic map.

It was a summer evening and off we went, each leaving for their solo navigation on their own. In the beginning it all looked clear. But then something happened. The turn I was looking for in between two hills did not look exactly how I expected it to look from my study of the map. But then I looked at it again and found a way to justify the landscape, and of course got lost. It’s called forcing the map onto the landscape. We do this all the time. We fight situations by trying to coerce onto them our mental map, and it brings to us grief and distress.  I had to trace back to the point where I started, by which time it was nearly morning. But first I had to let go of the fixation of forcing the map onto the ground reality.

As a leader, maps can help you a lot, but you need something even more important than maps—You need your own compass. You need to know yourself and have the capacity to enter an unknown terrain that has not been mapped, where you draw the map as you walk the terrain. This is the nature of leadership. You find a path forward in a place you have not travelled before. “To lead is to take the next step, to go where you have never gone, to open a way forward into the unknown and the uncharted.”

The best and most impactful leadership programs help leaders find and develop their own compass, sense of vision and direction and offer tools to draw the map as you walk the terrain. In our leadership summits and retreats we take the view that you are unique. Your strengths and success formulas are unique. While all formulas and maps carry helpful teachings, the greater reward is in discovering yourself, and understanding your values, areas of passion, personal capabilities, learning inclinations, energy cycles, and your own way of creating and achieving success. Successful leaders first lead themselves.

The greatest leadership programs are those that help you lead yourself and then help you get on the path of developing leaders around you.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Aug.10.2008 :: Leadership, Organizational Development :: 1 Comment »

To lead is to go where you have never gone before, to open a way forward into unknown, uncharted possibilities. Then it is to encourage, coach and help others release their greater capacity to achieve the seemingly impossible, to realize a potential beyond their self-concept.

The first breakthrough is inside, in your capacity to reframe reality and lead your own life. Coaching others into their self-discovery and leadership is the natural next step.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Jun.01.2008 :: Coaching, Leadership :: No Comments »

Time Magazine article, The Rage to Engage, says that “Engagement is an amorphous concept, but as anyone who ever worked on a team can tell you, it’s critical—the unengaged undermine—even if it’s tough to pin down.”

At the end of a recent “Blue Belt Top Talent” program we gathered with the management team for lunch. People exchanged impressions about their experience and learning and there was a lively feeling around. One of the participants stood up to tell the executives how much she valued the opportunity and what she learned through the program. She concluded by saying: “It is very inspiring to know that the organization in which I make a living is so committed to ensuring that I make a life.”

In a few short days we created a community of purpose, wherein people were energized and committed to act on their values in life and at work. The theory we have been successfully testing for many years with very consistent feedback is that reclaiming our humanness in the work place is good for business; that happier and healthier teams are more resilient and agile, faster to adapt to change and more effective in delivering on goals.  We continue to hear from participants, years after they complete the program, that it feels different to go to work and meet their colleagues, that they are more engaged.

Here are 15 points you can use to assess your own engagement and the engagement of your team. You can evaluate these 15 points to identify strengths and opportunity gaps in the Anatomy of Engagement as it applies to your team. Ask them to grade each of the 15 statements below on the scale from (1) to (10) — (10) representing “very much so” or “always” and (1) representing – “hardly” or “never”.

1. I enjoy open communication with my manager
2. I have a clear understanding of objectives - I know what success looks like
3. My activities are organized to support and deliver on the objectives
4. I see how my work helps the organizational strategy
5. We create trusting relationships at work
6. My job offers me opportunities to express my talent
7. There are great role models in our organization that I try to emulate
8. I am evaluated on how well I deliver on the objectives
9. I am incentivized to deliver great results
10. My job provides me opportunity to grow and learn new skills
11. I have the tools I need to support my work
12. I receive feedback on how my efforts and performance help the company achieve success
13. I value my team members and their individual contributions to our work
14. I am proud of the work we do and how we make the world a better place
15. I enjoy and get energized when I see the people I work with

Ask your team to respond to these statements. You can then discuss this engagement anatomy profile with each person independently or with the team as a whole if appropriate. Here are a few questions you can use to get the debriefing conversation going:
1. Which of the points above got the highest score? What can we learn from these?
2. Where are the lowest scores? What can we learn from these items?
3. What are the differences in how we see our organization and how can we bridge the engagement gaps?
4. What opportunities do we have to improve and cultivate an even greater engagement?
5. What other new ideas can we think about to help strengthen our own engagement as well as the engagement of other stakeholders?
6. If we focus and take one or two things into action - which will have the most impact?

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: May.19.2008 :: Leadership, Organizational Development :: 1 Comment »

Each seminar, each group, each strategy session brings forward lessons, insights and new articulation and power. This is the hallmark of transformational work. You are made anew in the process. You clarify your goals, connect with a sense of purpose and step into a more authentic place. If we are not blessed by this kind of energy it means we are failing to step into greater authenticity and are not transformational.

Summoning to authenticity the people you meet will give them permission to spread their wings to soar. It is then that they realize their power and ready themselves to join in and realize a greater universe of possibilities.

This week in Toronto I am with a group of insightful and energetic managers. On day two of this 4-day program we explored the power of Adaptive Leadership—adapting your management approach to the needs and the readiness you meet. Here are two essential values we focused on:

First, to be an Adaptive Leader you must be diagnostic about the people you work with, their needs and development path. You envision for them and with them their continued growth. You facilitate and enable their next realization and development. This means you care. You are genuinely interested. You work toward making a real difference for them, a sustainable difference. You champion their best. You create a legacy of breakthroughs.

Second, a classic “sin” of many managers is having a blind-spot about their top performers. Too often they forget that ‘Top Talents’ are a goldmine. It is too easy to take your top performers for granted. Yes, you want to empower them, to delegate to them. But assuming that their rare ability will always come through and deliver doesn’t give you permission to carelessly dump new pressures on them. Delegating is not dumping. Delegating is transferring responsibility and thereby entrusting another with power to enhance their capabilities and growth.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Apr.04.2008 :: Consultant Journal, Leadership :: No Comments »

The corpus callosum is the largest bundle of nerves in the human body. It connects the two halves of your brain. It helps the right and the left hemispheres of the brain to communicate and coordinate their activity.
As with your brain so is the case with your organization. Certain parts represent and are more inclined to “left brain” functions and other parts are by a greater degree “right brain” inclined. The question is, do they talk to each other? Do they communicate and coordinate well?
It was the surgeon, Joe Bogen and the psychologist, Michael Gazzaniga who discovered that the left and right brain hemispheres have distinct functions. Bogen was trying to help people with epileptic seizures by cutting the corpus callosum. Seizures tend to begin in one spot and spread by chain reaction to the surrounding areas. His idea was to prevent the seizure from spreading to the other side of the brain by severing the corpus callosum. Gazzaniga’s job was to discover the after-effects of a “split-brain”. As with many other great discoveries, the right and left brain localized functions were discovered by accident.
Organizations can suffer epileptic seizures too. It happens when communication breaks down, when finance and R&D, marketing and supply chain, sales and logistics don’t communicate well with other. If the organizational corpus callosum is severed or not functioning and the different functions are fighting each other instead of serving a joint purpose, the organizations can suffer an epileptic arrest.
Your task as a leader is to enable the collaboration and integration of these functions and groups. Here is the leadership challenge:

Are you the corpus callosum of your organization? Do you help and enable the left and right hemispheres to communicate and integrate with each other? Do you facilitate a whole brain organization, where the output is greater than the sum of the individual parts?

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Mar.13.2008 :: Leadership, Organizational Development :: No Comments »

Jordan is a young manager. From the start, he has been very effective in solving problems and was quickly promoted to a management position and responsibility. His approach to solving problems has always been aggressive. Show him a problem and he is all over it. Jordan takes great pride in fixing problems. When he walks into a room, Jordan enjoys hearing people say, “Mr. Fixer is back.”

For four months Jordan had nine account managers in his team and now six of them resent him. When I interviewed them they said they admire Jordan, and that he is phenomenal, but they are afraid of him and his temper. When inquiring further I discovered that there was some suppressed resentment against Jordan underneath the fear. “Jordan has a big huge blind spot” one manager on his team told me.”He micro-manages us and wants to know in detail about every deal in the works. He doesn’t trust us and it says more about his insecurity and paranoia than about his capability. He is so used to being the superstar that he reduces all of us on his team to be less than we can be. He takes the job and the pride of success away from us. My guess is, if we don’t see a change very soon half of his team is not going to be here in a couple of months.”

The art of leadership is as much about “what you don’t do” as it is about “what you do”. You’ve got to know when to resist the “fixing itch”; when to delegate and trust the other person to find the solution. It’s about learning to resist yourself. Great leaders are capable of resisting the “let me fix it” reflex. The surest and fastest way to cause resentment around you is to point out every detail of what is going wrong and then attempt to fix it for everybody. I see a relief in managers when they begin to discover the art of coaching. They realize they can use coaching strategies to help their people unleash their own talents.

Jordan experienced an epiphany in our MC class (The Manager Coach). He had always thought of himself as being firmly in control. As we practiced the coaching conversation and the tactic of stepping back from “fixing” to “open ended questions”, Jordan was surprised to discover he was not in control. His fixing habit, Mr. Fixer’s pride and self image were in charge of him. Once he realized these issues, he was ready to step back and then make a leap toward letting go of trying to control a multitude of details. He was ready to empower his team and their capabilities. There was a big smile on his face when he recognized the greater freedom and versatility that become available in asking open ended questions and in trusting the people around him to find answers. It was as if a great weight fell off his shoulders. When I visited with his team six weeks later, I was told, “Jordan is a different person. It’s as if a light was turned on.”

There is a profound change that takes place when you shift from “fixing” to “coaching”. You change your language, your focus and even your posture and energy. It’s a bit like discovering the second floor above the basement you have lived in for years. Jordan suddenly discovered the Manager Coach floor, where natural light comes through the window and there is a view that was never available in the basement.  Breaking through his own limitations, and seeing clearly the things that control him rather than what he chose and aspired for, opened his eyes to the greater light of shared experience and collaboration. It made him a stronger leader. His team was prepared to rally around his own transformation as they recognized the new opportunity. Their results quickly improved and exceeded everyone’s expectations.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Feb.10.2008 :: Coaching, Leadership, Organizational Development :: No Comments »