Brent Filson's Action LeadershipTM Report is a monthly e-zine helping leaders achieve more results, faster results, continually.

In this issue: THE LEADERSHIP STRATEGY (PART 2): IT'LL ROCK YOUR WORLD, BUT THEY DON'T TEACH THIS IN BUSINESS SCHOOL! AT THE END OF THIS MONTH, YOU'LL BE ABLE TO TURBO CHARGE ANY BUSINESS STRATEGY WITH A LEADERSHIP STRATEGY.

PLUS: BRENT FILSON CRITIQUES THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES, NOT THEIR POLITICS BUT THEIR LEADERSHIP COMMUNICATION SKILLS. "THEY DON'T GET IT!"

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"Authority is a poor excuse for leadership. Poor leaders order people to do a job. Action leaders have those people choose to be the cause leaders of that job -- for more results faster, continually." –Brent Filson

Vol. 2 Number 2 -- February, 2004

Publisher: The Filson Leadership Group, Inc.

brent@actionleadership.com

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(c) Copyright 2004 The Filson Leadership Group, Inc.

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Reprinted from "Brent Filson's Action Leadership Report," a free e-zine helping leaders get more results faster (continually). Subscribe at www.actionleadership.com and receive Brent Filson's free report: 49 Tips On Using Action To Get Results and the Quick Speech download.

IN THIS ISSUE: The Leadership Strategy (Continued).

SECTION 1: Brent Filson's Weekly Tips To Lead By.

Week 1: The Leadership Strategy (continued)

Week 2: Identify The Dream(s) Of Your Cause Leaders.

Week 3: Create The Shared Dream.

Week 4: Develop The Leadership Strategy With Your Shared Dream.

SECTION 2: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

SECTION 3: Guest Report: "My Strategy Is People!" Girard St. Hilaire.

SECTION 4: Message from Brent Filson: "They Don't Get It! The Democratic Candidates (Except One) Flunk Leadership Communication!."

SECTION 5: Points of Light.

SECTION 6: News.

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SECTION 1: Brent Filson's Tips To Lead By

(Apply these tips week by week throughout the month.)

================================

Week 1: The Leadership Strategy (Continued from the previous e-zine.)

During the Second World War, Winston Churchill had a framed inscription on his desk that said, "It's not enough to say we are doing our best. We must succeed in doing what is necessary."

The world demands results. Good intentions and promises are no use to it. And one of the best ways for any leader to get results is to employ a strategy, which is a plan, method or series of actions for obtaining a goal or specific outcome. It doesn't matter what job you have or how many people you are leading, if you don't come to grips with the challenges of developing and executing strategies, you're hamstringing your abilities to get results.

In a sense, strategies are promissory notes, payment due upon demand. One reason for their becoming less than worthy tender is they are not backed by a Leadership Strategy. We talked about a Leadership Strategy in last month's e-zine and how important it is to understand, develop and implement one. We differentiated between a business strategy and a "Leadership Strategy". (If you are new to this e-zine, please review last month's issue on our website.)

A business strategy seeks to marshal an organization's functions around central, organizing concepts.

A Leadership Strategy, on the other hand, seeks to obtain, organize, and direct the heartfelt commitment of the people who must carry out the strategy.

The business strategy is the sail, the Leadership Strategy the ballast. Without a Leadership Strategy, most business strategies capsize.

Last month, I explained the first step in developing a Leadership Strategy: identifying the needs of your cause leaders (those leaders who must execute the strategy) and linking those needs to the business strategy. This month you will become acquainted with how to develop and execute all the steps of a Leadership Strategy.

Here, then, are ALL THE STEPS you must take to develop a Leadership Strategy.

(1) Break your business strategy down into two, three or four essential components and see those components as solutions to the problems of your cause leaders.

(2) Identify the dream(s) of your cause leaders.

(3) Create a Shared Dream.

(4) Create a Shared Dream Action Plan.

Now let's take the process step by step.

IF YOU HAVE ALREADY DONE STEP 1 LAST MONTH, SKIP THIS STEP, WHICH IS IN BRACKETS, AND GO TO WEEK 2, STEP 2. OTHERWISE, BEGIN HERE.



[Step 1: Break your business strategy down into two, three or four essential components and see those components as solutions to the problems of your cause leaders.

For instance, one of the great business strategies of the past quarter decade was Jack Welch's for General Electric. When he first became CEO in the early 80s, he said that each GE business was going to be number one or number two in its marketplace. If not, that business will be fixed so it does become number one or two; or if it could not be fixed, it would be sold. It was a classic business strategy: simple, comprehensive, challenging.



Some might argue that it was a goal, not a strategy. But when you look more closely at it, it indeed was a true a strategy. Goals are what you want to attain. Strategies are how you will attain them. GE's goals, as I see them, were to be one of the most highly profitable major corporations in the world. In that regard, being number one or number two was a strategic means of achieving such profitability.

Let's take that strategy as a hypothetical. What I am about to teach you is not a vetting of Welch's strategy or GE's role or the leaders' implementation of it. I am using that strategy simply as an example to help you see how you can link a business strategy to needs.

Let's say the business strategy of your organization involves having each business in the organization be number one or two; and if it isn't, be fixed or sold. The essential components of the business strategy then are (a) being number one or two (b) getting fixed (c) being sold.

Now put yourself in the place of the people who have to make the strategy work, not just the senior leaders but the small-unit leaders and middle managers. What do they think about such a strategy?

You the senior leaders may welcome the strategy and believe it will make their organization more efficient and productive.

However, the small-unit leaders and middle managers may think it stinks! They may think it could be the worse thing that ever happened to them. They could see the strategy as the sharp edge of job cuts and their job is on the block. If they believe this, do you think they will be cause leaders for the strategy? Might they not be focused on making sure it doesn't succeed? Clearly, if these reactions are the case, a Leadership Strategy is needed here.

Your strategy might be similar to Welch's or it may be altogether different; but the fact is that unless you augment it with a Leadership Strategy, you'll be bucking strong headwinds. That's because most business strategies are a threat to the status quo (See the October e-zine) and the status quo will fight them. Just because it looks great on paper, just because analysts outside the organization bless it, doesn't mean that the very people who must implement it won't see it as a nuisance or even a mortal threat.

Staying with the example: to augment a business strategy that has the components of (a) being number one or two (b) getting fixed (c) being sold, you must have those components provide solutions to the problems of your cause leaders needs.

Let's say the needs of your cause leaders involve job security, financial security, and career advancement. Unless the components of the business strategy can provide solutions to the problems of their needs, you will not have ardent cause leaders. That's what happened to Welch: He had a great deal of difficulty initiating the strategy, mainly because of a consorted attack by GE's status quo, many of the supervisors and middle managers throughout the company passively resisting or struggling actively against implementing the strategy. (He needed a Leadership Strategy.) We know he persisted. During the two decades as GE's leader, the company expanded from a $13 billion maker of appliances and light bulbs to a $480 billion industrial conglomerate; and as it turned out, the components of his strategy became solutions to the needs of many leaders who stuck with him, needs such as job security (the company became a magnet for headhunters), financial security (many middle managers and supervisors became millionaires dues to GE stock options), and career advancement (being a GE leader had powerful cache in the job market.) Evidence that Welch would've been greatly helped with a Leadership Strategy.

The point is that because it looks great on paper, just because analysts outside the organization bless it, this doesn't mean that the very people who must implement it won't see it as a nuisance or even a mortal threat. Unless your components can be seen as solutions for the needs of your cause leaders, you won't have a successful business strategy, or you will have to spend an inordinate amount of time and resources and take a lot of trouble making it successful.

This week, accomplish Step 1: Identify the key components of your business strategy and have those components be solutions to the needs of your cause leaders.]

If you have gotten last month's e-zine and have already done this, go to Week 2, Step 2.

Week 2: Step 2: Identify The Dream(s) Of Your Cause Leaders.

Strategies fall apart for a number of reasons: They ignore the realities of their environment; they underestimate the resources needed to accomplish them; they are fundamentally flawed in coordination, judgment, purpose or timeliness; and lastly, and most importantly, they fail to persuade the people who must implement them to embrace the strategies' benefits.

In fact, an average strategy that has committed cause leaders is far more effective than a great strategy without such cause leaders. And a strategy will not have committed cause leaders unless it benefits them.

That's the WHAT of a Leadership Strategy. And I'm sure that most leaders will agree with that.

The real issue is HOW. HOW do you get committed cause leaders to execute the business strategy?

Here's an answer that you can apply to your Leadership Strategies for the rest of your career.

Use THE SHARED DREAM approach.

What I am about to show you now will bolster your leadership effectiveness and clearly set you apart from other leaders. So, go over this carefully.

Dreams are critical to leadership. If leaders are not tapping into the power of people's dreams, if those leaders are simply setting goals that have little or nothing to do with people's heartfelt convictions, i.e., convictions flowing from dreams, they miss the best of opportunities to achieve more results, faster results and "more, faster" continually; so let's briefly examine the nature of dreams and leadership before we delve into The Shared Dream and its role in a Leadership Strategy.

I'm not talking about sleeping dreams but waking dreams. "Hope," said Aristotle, "Is a waking dream." And the dreams I'm talking about are supercharged hope.

Such dreams are vital to human motivation. Most people have a dream for their life and work. Even people in abject circumstances, prisons and concentration camps, still dream of a better existence.

Dreams give meaning to emotion and purpose to action. People who believe they're living their dream see their jobs as part of a higher cause and will work accordingly. Conversely, people who see their jobs as antithetical to their dream, may see that work as oppressive; and they too will work accordingly.

Last week, I had you link the business strategy with your cause leaders needs. Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a useful template. Maslow studied some of the greatest people in history and detailed what he believed made them great. He offered his famous Hierarchy Of Needs. He used a pyramid, but I'll put it into a linear format.

Body needs => Security needs => Social needs => Ego needs => Self actualization

If, according to Maslow, the highest needs in the hierarchy are for self-actualization, then dreams are the very stuff that self-actualization is made of.

Martin Luther King's I-have-a-dream speech was a self-actualizing communication that has motivated millions of people around the world.

John F. Kennedy's ask-not-what-you-can-do-for-your-country .... was a self-actualizing message that also motivated millions of people to seek a higher cause in their life.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that your leadership communications must be on par with such high-minded speeches. The same principle of human motivation applies in your everyday, commonplace interactions with others; because everyone you encounter is in one way or another a walking dream. And that dream is not some esoteric wisp but the concrete reality of who they perceive themselves to be.

So, here's where we are in Week 2. In Week 1, you detailed a business strategy and have linked that strategy to the needs of your cause leaders by having components of that strategy provide solutions to the problems of their needs.

Now I'll give you a process for creating a Shared Dream. Get this right, and you'll be blessed for the rest of your career; for when a Shared Dream animates your Leadership Strategy, you'll be bookin'.

First, having pinpointed your cause leaders and their needs, begin to identify their dreams. You can't guess what they are. You've got to get out there and be with them and talk with them and help them and be interested in them.

Remember, this process works whether you lead two people or two thousand. So, if you just have a few potential cause leaders to deal with, you can do it yourself. But if you have many more, you need teams of people to help you. You need a systematic way of interacting with them.

In most cases, you'll not be asking them outright what they dream. Doing that may be rather awkward. Most people are not comfortable talking about their dreams, especially in a business environment.

To show you how to meet this challenge, I'll give you an anecdote, a lesson and some processes.

First, the anecdote: A CEO told me of when he first came to his company 30 years before. He was hired as a clerk; and the first week on the job, the owner of the company came into his cubicle, asked if he could sit down, and for an hour or so, chatted with him. The CEO said, "I talked about everything under the sun. Mainly, he focused on me, my dreams, my hopes. He seemed genuinely interested in me. I kept thinking he had the wrong person. Here I was a lowly clerk, and he's there spending his valuable time just getting to know me. That motivated the hell out of me for years. It still motivates me."

The lesson is clear: Be with the people and they'll be there for you.

The owner didn't do anything spectacular. (Though measured against some tyrannical bosses, just having a normal conversation was spectacular indeed!) He simply did the average thing. There was no hidden agendas, no probing, no pulling of rank. Take note: it's in the average things that great results happen through the Shared Dream.

Now the process: BE HELPFUL, BE INTERESTED, ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS.

(Read the guest column by Gerard St. Hilaire. Without being consciously aware of it, he's continuously creating a Shared Dream with his employees.)

BE HELPFUL to them -- by looking for opportunities to support them. When I was instructing a group General Electric six sigma team in Action Leadership, the team leader was an hour late for one of our morning sessions. He told me that he was delayed because he had to go home first to get cleaned up from helping one of his team members paint the interior of his house. "Are you moonlighting for extra cash?" I asked. "Oh, no," he replied. "I'm not charging him a cent. He just moved to town and needed help right away, and I was available."

BE INTERESTED in them -- and have your actions communicate that interest. The owner of the business didn't call for the young clerk to come to his office. He acted, he took the trouble to go to his office. The General Electric team leader didn't simply say that he was looking out for the welfare of his team members and their families. He acted, , he picked up a paint brush.

ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS. There's a difference between asking questions and being questioning. After all, you're building trust with your cause leaders. If they don't trust you, they won't tell you their dream. And if they believe you can't help them realize their dream, they won't trust you.



Here are two ways to ask the right questions.

A) Use Leadership Talks. The Leadership Talk is probably the most powerful results generator you'll ever use; and a key reason for this is it has you ask the right questions of your audience.

Mind you, you don't have to become a master at giving Leadership Talks. The Leadership Talk is relatively simply to learn but it takes years to master. But that doesn't mean you cannot start using it right away.

When trying to develop a Leadership Strategy, you just have to take a few of the Leadership Talk's basic processes and use them interacting with your potential cause leaders.

A quick use: Use the first trigger of the Three-trigger Motivational Process. When you interact with somebody, simply ask the Eight Needs Questions to find what out they need. 1. What is changing for them? 2. Who do they want speaking to them besides you? 3. What action do they want to take? 4. What do they feel? 5. What do they fear? 6. What is their major problem? 7. What makes them angry? 8. What do they dream?

Before you talk with people you can ask these questions to get an idea of what you think is happening with them. During your talk with them, you may use some or all of the questions as talking points. After you talk, you can reflect on the outcome using the answers as your framework.

You may ask, How can the Leadership Talk help identify their dreams? The answer lies in your experience using the Leadership Talk. The Leadership Talk is a way of relating to others so they become cause leaders, not for their cause but yours; for the Leadership Talk is more than you simply talking and others listening, it's a way of sharing ideas. Often, your most effective talk is when they give it to you.

In interacting with people through Leadership Talks, you have the best chance of that happening. In fact, don't go farther with the Leadership Strategy until you do understand and continually use Leadership Talks.

B) The other way to ask the right questions is read Ronald Gross' compelling book, SOCRATES WAY, (www.SocratesWay.com): Socrates' said, "My way toward the truth is to ask the right questions." Likewise, your way toward the truth of their desires, their dreams, is through asking the right questions.

Gross says: "Socrates certainly calls on us to lead others by asking questions that help us

understand their dreams. Socrates practiced three ways to do this: probing

the meanings of those ideas that inspire our actions; emulating great souls;

and seeking the soul of our work."

In his book, SOCRATES WAY, Gross outlines three things you can do yourself:

1) Ask those you would lead to share with you, and each other, their answers to what Gross calls ‘the Great Question': "What is SUCCESS in our work together?"

2) Ask who they most respect and admire, and discuss how those peoples' values and approaches could enrich their individual and team performance.

3) Ask them to explore "the soul of their work". Gross says, "Socrates sparked dialogues on what constituted the essential idea or virtue of each craft or profession from asking a potter what makes one pot better than another to inquiring into the soul of the good statesman."

If you are serious about developing Leadership Strategies, I suggest you get Gross' book and keep referring to it for months and years to come.

In SOCRATES WAY, Gross also suggests posing these questions: "What is our challenge here? Why is it worth tackling? How do we feel about it? Do we have the facts we need? Are we asking the right questions? What results are we really seeking? What's the worse thing that can happen? Why are we having this problem? Can you explain that further? What if we do nothing? Have we explored creative approaches? What do you propose? And what can I do to help?"

You may say, "I don't have time for this! I've got a business strategy, let's get on with that"! Sure, get on with it quickly -- if you want to do things the slow way. That's what most leaders do. They develop a business strategy and hurriedly try to put it into action, without a supporting Leadership Strategy. The result is that their haste causes them to get slowed down or stopped in their tracks simply for lack of cause leaders.

The fast way is to take the time to develop a Leadership Strategy using Leadership Talks to understand their dreams. The vast majority of leaders don't do this, and because they don't are not as successful as they can be. Your doing it even in a relatively hesitant way gives you an unmatched competitive advantage over other leaders and thus a competitive advantage in your career advancement.

This week, interact with the people whom you need to drive your Leadership Strategy. Find out their deepest needs by understanding what they dream.

Week 3, Step 3: Create a Shared Dream.

Once you understand their dream, and before you can transform it into a Shared Dream, you must decide if it is a negative or positive dream: in other words, does that dream hurt or help results?

After all, not all dreams are helpful to a Leadership Strategy. In fact, a negative dream held by people you want to be cause leaders of the Strategy can be a catastrophe.

For instance, many organizations that undergo radical change are hampered by the "good ole days" dream of some of its members, members who believe that their lives and work in the past were far more satisfying than today and that they want to have the "good ole days" return. People who are living that dream cannot be cause leaders for a forward looking the business strategy.

Decide if their dream is positive. Does it compliment and reinforce the business strategy and the vision it represents?



If your vision and their dream are Shared, you can call it a Shared Dream and skip the following. If they are not shared, you don"t have a Shared Dream. You must develop one. Here is a process to do so.

I've put the process in brackets so you can skip it if need be. However, keep it on hand. There will always be occasions when your business strategy's vision don't meet the dream of the people you want to be cause leaders. This is a great process for bringing it together.

[* Recognize. Recognize that the dream is an important part of your getting results and that you must achieve a Shared Dream. Without that shared recognition, they won't be committed to achieving a Shared Dream.

* Define. Define your vision in precise terms, i.e., We must go to the mountain. It's a precise mountain, and you want to get there in a precise way, e.g., measured marches. Next, have them define their dream in precise terms. Let's say it's: Sauntering to the hill.

* Test. Apply the price/value/rewards tests to your dream and theirs. That test is three pages over.

* List. List the benefits of your vision and their dream. You say that marching to the mountain will make us the most competitive organization in the industry. That competitiveness will be our security. On the other hand, they say that strolling to the hill will allow them to avoid dangerous and stressful exertions. At this stage, do not try to compare and evaluate the separate dreams and benefits. Simply list them clearly.

YOUR VISION'S BENEFITS:

_____________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________

THEIR DREAM'S BENEFITS:

_____________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________

.

* Prioritize. Have each person make a priority list of the benefits of the other person's dream. You list the benefits of going to the hill. They list the benefits of going to the mountain.

* Integrate. Find those benefits that you share a common need for, such as job security. Going to the mountain will enable you and them to have better job security -- going to the hill, less.

* Communicate. Persuade them of the overwhelming necessity of your benefits. Do that by showing the benefits as solutions to the problems of their major needs.

Tip: The Shared Dream can only be developed through common values and benefits. Don't try to integrate disparate dreams -- i.e., integrate the mountain and the hill -- instead, integrate the values and benefits, and the Shared Dream will naturally emerge. Clearly, you must go to the mountain. Yet the people whose dream was the hill can be motivated to go to the mountain only when they see that the benefits of the mountain-dream are much greater than the benefits of the hill-dream. That small change in perspective makes a big difference in people's commitment.]

Combine your vision and their dream. Write it down. Rework it until it is precise.

For instance, the Shared Dream of the "number one or number two" might be: By having every one of our businesses be one or number two in their markets, we will not only enrich our business and our customers but also the careers of our employees.

At first blush, this might seem simple-minded. After all, one might argue, isn't it obvious that if the business is going to be one or two that the customers and employees will benefit?

Ain't necessarily so. After all, as I said, the business strategy might look like, to many leaders who must implement it, a means by which they will be set up to fail and/or lose their jobs. That you are concerned about this issue must be made explicit in a Leadership Strategy. By coupling a business strategy with a Leadership Strategy, you are putting the business on record that you are also focusing on the needs of your cause leaders.

One might argue, as well, that a Leadership Strategy cannot focus on addressing all the needs of all the cause leaders, that there will be many cause leaders who do not relate to the Leadership Strategy.

The Leadership Strategy is meant not just to elicit action but to shape action. Clearly, you cannot meet the needs of all of your potential cause leaders. On one hand, you do not want to meet the needs of them all. If you try to or if you are, you are doing something wrong, you are not challenging them enough. On the other hand, there will always be some 20 percent of those cause leaders will refuse to follow a Leadership Strategy no matter how well it may be crafted. What you hope to do is meet the needs of most of those potentials so that they eventually will become "actuals". Finally, those whom you do not meet the needs of might find their abilities appreciated elsewhere.

This week, create a Shared Dream.

Week 4: Step 4: Develop A Leadership Strategy By Turning The Shared Dream Into An Action Plan.

Now that you have a Shared Dream, combining the business' vision with the Dream of the cause leaders, it's time to turn that Shared Dream into a Leadership Strategy.

After all, the Leadership Strategy will not turbo charge the business strategy just because you say so. It will only happen when you set up the right environment in which your cause leaders are making choices to take action for results.

So here is the key point that the vast majority of leaders fail to realize. The Leadership Strategy is the Shared Dream put into an action plan.

For instance, let's work with the hypothetical Shared Dream that having every one of our businesses be one or number two in their markets, we will not only enrich our business and our customers but also the careers of our employees.

Develop milestones that take you to the Shared Dream. The first milestone may be a comprehensive, rigorous identification of the needs of the cause leaders and how those needs dovetail into the business strategy. (Remember, you can use this process with any number of cause leaders. Just scale it up to the number you require.) To accomplish this identification, you may have all the cause leaders together in one place for a facilitation colloquium. Or if numbers of cause leaders and geographical reach are factors, you may have a number of such colloquiums. The point here is to bring them into process of furthering the business strategy. You may have facilitation skills or you may bring someone one in. It's important that you set timelines for this milestone, don't stretch it out, get it down and get onto the second milestone.

The second milestone may be to take action on what was agreed upon in the facilitation meeting(s).

The third milestone may be to evaluate the action taken.

With these three milestones, you have opportunities to integrate the Leadership Strategy with the business strategy. Look at it this way, almost all businesses don't have a Leadership Strategy, so just having even the filmiest of one gives you a great advantage.

This week, turn your Shared Dream into a Leadership Strategy action plan with milestones.

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SECTION TWO: The Good. The Bad. The Ugly.

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THE GOOD:

Jacqueline Dupres, renowned cellist, said, "When you have a particularly technically difficult run, don't concentrate so much on the technical aspects of the piece, concentrate instead on the musical aspects."

In leadership, when you have an organizational problem, don't just concentrate on the technical aspect of it, but also the people aspect. The people are the music.

THE BAD:

Napoleon is reported to have always had a corporal beside him at meetings with generals. When the generals proposed plans and strategies, Napoleon would ask the corporal if he understood. If he didn't, Napoleon would dump the proposals.

Don't waste your time on plans and strategies that are not simple enough to be understood by simple people.

THE UGLY:

Comedian George Carlin explained steps in some business' strategies.

* Can I cut corners in the design?

* Can it be shoddily built?

* Can I use cheap materials?

* Will I create hazards to workers?

* Can I evade the safety laws?

* Will children die from it?

* Can I over-price it?

* Can it be falsely advertised?

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SECTION THREE: Guest Report.

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My Strategy Is People

by Gerard St. Hilaire

Owner, Countryside Landscaping

countryside@adelphia.net

My business strategy is simple: I don't have a business strategy. Instead, I have a people strategy. I hire the best people, I train them well, I stick with them in good times and bad, and the business takes care of itself. I have 72 employees; and if they 're just showing up for work and going through the motions, I won't have a business.

My business has grown 30 percent a year for 10 years because of the people. You watch them and you can see they're special. The way they get off the trucks, the way they relate to the customers, the way they do their work, all of that is what the growth of the business is about. It seems simple, but it's not. To have special people, you have to work at it constantly.

Here are some of the things I've learned over the years to hire and keep special people so I don't have to think of my business as a business.

HIRING: I like to hire people with good personalities, people who are snappy, quick, filled with sunshine. I can read them right away when they come looking for a job, the way they shake my hand, their movements, their eye contact, the way they dress, the way they treat the receptionist.

I don't hire the cocky ones, the rude ones, the pushy ones, the ones who tell you what they want. One bad apple can put your business on the road to ruin. I can always train them to pick up skills, but you can't train personality. And it's the personalities of our people that make them special.

KEEPING: Sure, I have to train people, but I want to do something more. The make or break point of our business is that we have people out there working eight hours by themselves. So I try to make every employee a thinker. I'm constantly asking people to keep telling me how we can do things better, cheaper, faster, safer. I'm lower than whale crap in this business. We're all equal. I could buy a $40,000 truck, but instead I ride around in an old jeep. I don't want to seem better than anyone else, because I'm not better than anyone else. I could live in a big house, but I live in a small house on a simple street. There's nothing flashy about my life. I'm really a farmer at heart. I started this business out of the back of a car and no matter how big it gets, I'll always be that person hustling for work with that old car. People respond to that. Turnover in the landscape business is every 2 - 3 years. We've got many people here 9 and 10 years.

Another thing I've done: I've hung in there with people going through tough times. For instance, if somebody has a drinking problem, I'll pay for detox. Some of our hardest working people once had some difficult problems that we helped them work through. If somebody doesn't have the money to buy a $70 pair of boots, I'll tell them, "You buy the boots and send me the bill."

We do medical, 401s, Christmas parties, personal loans at no interest, a lot of paid time off, yearly bonuses of roughly $30,000 spread among all the people, Thanksgiving turkeys for all 72 employees, retreats where we go tubing and kayaking on a river near a camp we purchased. We have them feel like they're part of a family. I make them feel special, but I also tell them that they have to give me eight hours of work, anything less is like stealing.

If I have a problem employee, I'll get that person off by himself. I'll put my arm around him. I like to make contact with him. Look in his eyes. Talk to him respectfully. I don't like hollering. I tell people over and over that when you talk to me, talk as if I'm your mother. If you holler, you won't get anywhere with me. Tell him he has to change and how he has to change and what I expect. You gotta love this business, you gotta love trees and shrubs or don't work here. I'll leave it up him. Give him the choice, leave or stay. No hard feelings.

Money doesn't motivate people. Hollering at them doesn't motivate them. People love working in this company. It's physical labor, it's shoveling, it's being in rain and snow, it's lifting heavy things, it's being hot, it's being cold; yet people love it here because they're treated fairly, treated with respect, and because we're a family. Business strategy? I don't have a business strategy. I don't have to. My people are the strategy.

========================

SECTION FOUR: Message from Brent Filson:

=========================

"They Don't Get It! The Democratic Candidates (Except One) Flunk Leadership Communication!"

By Brent Filson

James Buchanan said, "I love the noise of democracy!" With the next presidential election cycle beginning, the noise is on the up-tick.

Considering alternative forms of government, all noise in a democracy is good noise. However, in election campaigns, some noise is more effective than other noise. The trouble is, if the coming presidential campaign is shaping up to be anything like recent ones, the noise we will be subjected to will be thunderously ineffective.

Many millions of dollars are being poured into the campaigns; yet the candidates haven't bought one penny's worth of insights into fundamental truths of human motivation and communication.

If I were giving them a course on Motivational Leadership 101, every candidate (except one) would flunk.

In the political arena, the message is not just the message. The message is also the messenger. Presentations communicate information, which is the message. If leadership communication was simply about putting out information, I'd have no problems with the candidates. The candidates are virtuosos at delivering presentation-like speeches. They can sure trumpet reams of information. However, leadership communication is more than presentation/speech delivery; it's more than being a walking, talking brochure; it's about establishing deep, emotional connections with voters. After all, you're asking people to take action for you – vote. And people won't take action unless their emotions are engaged. So the candidates have to connect with people in ways that presentations can't. Leadership talks do that. But none of the candidates seem to know what a leadership talk is all about.

The candidates' communication problems stem from their propensity to deliver communications which are more like presentations rather than what I call "leadership talks."

The leadership talk is simply a communication from the heart that makes a deep, emotional connection with the audience so they believe in and take ardent action for the speaker.

The leadership talk is the most powerful motivational tool of all. Events in history bear this out. Throughout history whenever a people needed to accomplish great things, whether in the realm of religion, military endeavors, political movements, human rights, etcetera, one thing had to happen: A leader had to gather them together and speak to them from the heart. That leader didn't give a presentation. He/she really didn't even give a speech as it is known by the candidates today. That leader gave a leadership talk. Of course, it wasn't called a leadership talk at the time; but when you look back on it, that's what it was. And that's what we're not getting from candidates.

Look at it this way: When a leader speaks, two questions hang in the air. Audiences always ask and answer those questions whether or not the speaker is aware of it. "Can you do your job, and why are you here?" The candidates make a big show of answering the first question. That's the information they communicate about what they will do as the president. But the other question they're not answering: Why are you here? If they don't believe that you are there for the right reasons, you'll lose them. That's what a leadership talk is all about, communicating in a motivational way why you are there. Clearly, with television and political rallies, people are gathering together. But aren't the cheering people the choir being preached to? No candidate has shown the communication ability to branch out from those people, to reach the hearts of most of the voters; and one main reason is that they haven't been connecting by consistently speaking from the heart.

Let's look at a few of them.

John Kerry: It was his to lose. He comes with a distinguished war record: three purple hearts, a bronze star, a silver star. He comes with 18 distinguished years in the U.S. Senate. And yet, in terms of the leadership talk, distinguished alone doesn't cut it. So, until Iowa, he been played catch up to Howard Dean. The reason: from a leadership talk stand point, I chalk it up to a lack of joy. He's got a hang dog look on his face as he rattles off all the problems in America. Sure, America has problems. Leadership isn't about running away from problems. It's about facing problems. But people respond to leaders who see the problems not, for instance, the way Jimmy Carter saw them in terms of a "national malaise" but the way Ronald Reagan did, "It's morning in America!" Joy enriches the connection between the leader and the audience especially in the most challenging times. It's a great motivator because it ratches up confidence to a sublime level. Hey, I know Kerry has joy. I've seen it when he's interacting with people one-on-one away from the podium and the mike. And in the last days of campaigning in Iowa, his back to the wall, fighting desperately not to be knocked out by Dean, he started to exhibit that joy when out in front of groups of people. He started giving hard hitting leadership talks. If he can keep at it, he'll be in good shape. The trouble is, does he know when he's giving leadership talks and when he's not. It's bad enough not to give a leadership talk but to give a leadership talk and not know that it's a leadership talk can be almost as bad as not giving one at all. More of this "Bring it on!" and "Don't let the door hit you on the way out!", and I'll change his grade.

Howard Dean: Spunky, smart, absolutely confident, impulsive, a refreshing outsider. But has he answered the second question? Who really is Howard Dean? He hasn't told us those defining moments that made him who he is and that brought him to this point. I know of one defining moment, and it's not good. He got out of the Viet Nam war because of a bad back and within a few weeks after he got his deferment went out to Colorado and was a ski bum for a year. Sure, he's angry about the direction the Bush administration has taken the country, and he's effectively communicated that anger. His angry has unified a certain segment of angry voters. In a leadership talk you can communicate anger; but you can't communicate deeply with people through anger alone. People want to know why you here. Right now, he is like a street movie set building façade, but what's behind it -- empty air and wall-props? Dean hasn't told us in a personal way -- only in an issue way; and until he does, he's hurting himself and his supporters, because a movie-set candidate from the Northeast will stumble big time in the South. Maybe that's why he comes across as rather cold -- angry and cold, a bad combination.

Wesley Clark: Like Clinton, he bootstrapped his way from Arkansas lower middle class. He was first in his class at West Point, a Rhodes Scholar, as a small-unit commander in Viet Nam, he was awarded a purple heart and silver star; a true "water walker" career path. But now that he has entered the race, he may very well be the Trojan horse of the Democratic Party. The Republican strategists may secretly desire his nomination.

Look at it this way: In terms of the leadership talk, he is playing catch up on both questions: First, can you do the job? Clearly, Clark has a quick, tough military mind, but his misjudgements of past years -- cozying up to and swapping general's-caps with suspected war criminal Ratko Mladic in the town of Banja Luka during the height of Bosnian civil war, almost igniting a Third World War by wanting to blunder into Russian troops at the Pristina airport during the Kosovo War, getting fired as Supreme NATO Commander, just to name a few of a long list -- make one wonder if he has the judgment for the job.

The second question, why are you here? To answer that question calls for strong belief. Strong belief is a hallmark of any leadership talk. But the issue isn't just that the leader must have strong belief, that's a given, but that leader must transfer that belief to the people. For a leadership talk to work, h/her belief must become the belief of the people. That transfer can't take place if people think the leader is communicating certain beliefs just to manipulate them. In fact, if they believe that, people will feel pretty cynical about the leader. And you can't have cynical people become your ardent cause leaders. If Clark is nominated, the Republicans can (No, they will!) show clips of his supporting Bush and Rumsfeld before the Armed Services Committee two weeks before Congress voted to give George Bush authority to wage war and contrast those with clips with his recent: "I'm very consistent. I've been against this war from the beginning. I was against it last summer. I was against it last fall. I was against it in the winter. I was against it in the spring. I'm against it now." Sure, his handlers can use the bromide that his support of Bush has been taken out of context and that a leader has a right to change his mind -- but in a tight election race, the fact that people wonder about Clark may be his and the Democrats undoing.

It takes a great war to produce a great general who will give great leadership talks. Clark never got his great war, and he played a suspect role in the war he got, so his uncertain answers to both questions may have him running the hundred yard dash of the race in concrete boots.

Joe Lieberman: He's been an effective senator. Connecticut should be proud. But that's his trouble: he's been a senator, one of the ol' boys club. Most of them wouldn't know a leadership talk from a hole in the ground. A decidedly "presentation" gang. Consequently, Lieberman is about as exciting a speaker as Star Treck's Spock -- without Spock's inverse charisma. The master of the sleep-inducing presentation, Lieberman suffers from the worst kind of ignorance about leadership communication: He doesn't know that he doesn't know! He seems to think presentations are the vehicle that will take him to the nomination. What a pity. He hasn't attracted a following much outside of insiders. And if he keeps giving his presentations, he won't attract much more than what little he's attracted.

John Edwards: At first blush, he looks hopeless! The guy's 50 and he looks 30, not the best look for a presidential candidate. His pretty boy looks have gotten him the moniker, "The Breck Girl" candidate. On top of what appears to be his youth and inexperience, he's saddled with having gotten obscenely rich as a personal injury lawyer. The kind of person people love to hate. Polls show that three-fifths of Americans think lawyers are greedy and three-quarters believe they charge too much. So what's he got going for him? One big thing: Unlike all the other candidates, the guy can give a leadership talk!

A leadership talk is not just about communication. Presentations do that. It's just not about connection. Some speeches do that. It's about a kind of communion between the leader and the people. Edwards proved he can give leadership talks in the 1998 senate campaign when he came out of nowhere (never having run for office before) to defeat a popular North Carolina incumbent. On top of that he ran as a centrist in a conservation state. And he ran with all the above mentioned baggage.

Edwards gives leadership talks because he comes to his talking situations fully prepared, he speaks from the heart in a low keyed, genuine way, and he doesn't talk to people, but with people. He'd smoke President Bush in a debate, unless Bush gets quickly up to speed on leadership talks. If the Democrats are truly serious about winning this election, they have to find a spot for Edwards on the ticket. If they do, you'll see the power of leadership talks.

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SECTION FIVE: Points of Light

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"Becoming an Action Leader is more than simply embracing a shift in ideas but a shift in our being. And continually applying the processes is critical for manifesting the latter, even though such application alone cannot make it happen." –Brent Filson

"The flashy exterior is less important than the simple, inner harmony." –Heraclitis

"A Leadership Strategy is not something you teach but something you incite like a riot." –Brent Filson

"Become like a flower yourself and the world will show you its beauty." Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka.

"Most leaders give the rest a bad name." –Brent Filson

"A zombie has no mind of its own and walks around without knowing where he's going or what he's doing. In business, they're called executives." –Bob Hope

"Lord grant that I may desire more than I can accomplish." --Michelangelo

"Leadership Strategies are like lightning strikes, each of which hits a place about the size of a half dollar but can be seen and heard for long distances." –Brent Filson

"No one knows the story of tomorrow's dawn." –African Proverb

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SECTION SIX: News.

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Quick Speech is up and running. If you have a speech to give, go to the Quick Speech button at www.actionleadership.com and download the template. Fill in the blanks, and you'll have a powerful speech. Quick Speech is the highly popular companion supplement to Brent's book, EXECUTIVE SPEECHES, 51 CEOS TELL YOU HOW TO DO YOURS. Quick Speech has sold thousands of copies, but now it is available to you for free. Remember, the speech is not an end in and of itself but the gateway to The Leadership Talk. Learn to give speeches Brent Filson's way and you'll be better grounded to give Leadership Talks later on.

Brent's latest book, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: MOTIVATING PEOPLE TO GET MORE RESULTS FASTER, CONTINUALLY has just been printed. A major library distributor has picked up the book. It is due for publication in the spring of ‘04. Prepublication copies are available now for bulk purchase.

Brent is booked in a number of speaking this winter and spring, bringing the methodologies of Action Leadership to ever widening audiences. In addition, he is being interviewed on radio and TV shows. Interested in having him on your show or at your meeting, go to the Action Leadership website and click on either the "meeting planner" button or the "press room" button.

Leaders Speak is on-line: www.actionleadership.com/leadersspeak/

Each interview can be downloaded for free. Individual CDs can be ordered at $14.95 each, including shipping and handling. Discounts are available on volume orders.

Brent says, "In the CD series, I'm looking to get at what really works and what doesn't for leaders. Listeners should take away great tips that they can use consistently. My plan is to interview leaders from every walk of life. You'll listen to gang leaders, horse trainers, sports coaches, as well as business and political leaders. Leadership is practiced by practically everyone, and we will bring it to you on the CDs in all the richness of human relationships."

For more information, call the F.L.G. headquarters, 413-458-4403 or email Brent at brent@actionleadership.com


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