In this issue: THE INITIATIVE STRATEGY: A LEADERSHIP BLUEPRINT FOR CAREER ADVANCEMENT (PART 2)
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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 7, July 2004
Published by The Filson Leadership Group, Inc.
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IN THIS ISSUE:
The Initiative Strategy: A Leadership Blueprint For Career Advancement (Part 2)
SECTION 1: Brent Filson's Weekly Tips to Lead By
Week 1: Make your boss and your boss's boss aware of what you're doing
Week 2: Enlist cause leaders in your initiative
Week 3: Validate the results in terms of money — money saved and money earned — and communicate your successes throughout your organization
Week 4: Be humble, be helpful. Repeat this process throughout your career
SECTION 2: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
SECTION 3: Guest Report
SECTION 4 Points of Light
SECTION 5: Message from Brent Filson
SECTION 6: News
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SECTION 1: Brent Filson's Tips to Lead By
Apply these throughout the month.
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Week 1: Let Your Boss Know, and Enlist Cause Leaders
This is the second part of a two-part series on the Initiative Strategy that I introduced last month. It goes right to the heart of three questions that define the careers of most people. (1) How can I get paid more? (2) How can I continually be promoted? (3) How can I find satisfaction in my work?
If you diligently and consistently apply the Initiative Strategy, you can find positive answers to each of those questions. The Leadership Strategy is one of the most effective career boosters I know of. You can use it continually throughout your career, whatever career you have. It will help you enhance your leadership skills and provide an ongoing showcase for those skills. It will help you provide great added value for your organization. It will enable you forge bonds with others and help them progress in their careers. It will open new opportunities for career advancement.
To review:
The 9-step Initiative Strategy
(1) Identify the results your organization needs to achieve and the results your unit in the organization needs to achieve.
(2) Identify an initiative that will help get more results than are now being achieved.
(3) Test the results using the SAMMER test.
(4) Identify the cause leaders you need to achieve the results.
(5) Make your boss and your boss's boss aware of what you're doing.
(6) Enlist cause leaders in your Initiative.
(7) Validate the results in terms of money saved and money earned.
(8) Be humble, be helpful.
(9) Repeat this process throughout your career.
Last month, we went through the first four steps of the process; this month, we'll do the remaining five.
Step 5: Make Your Boss and Your Boss's Boss Aware of What You're Doing
If you stumble at this step, you could negate the great benefits of the Initiative Strategy. Many leaders fail because they try to accomplish the initiative by themselves and for themselves, without communicating to key people in their organization what they're doing.
Of course, in some cases — such as classic skunk-works — taking an isolated approach is imperative, because the status quo of an organization might try to strangle the initiative at birth.
(I wrote about such an approach in my book RESULTS!RESULTS!RESULTS! GETTING MORE FASTER. For another take on the status quo, look at my November 2003 issue, "Results Are Limitless."
http://www.actionleadership.com/ezine/v1n4.html)
In most cases, however, initiatives should take place within the structure, culture, and network of the organization.
So, divulging your plans to your boss is a necessity, but HOW you do it is an art. Don't simply dump the news on the unsuspecting; think through not only the initiative, but also how you'll communicate that initiative to your boss.
Here are some reasons why your boss might be motivated to kill your initiative — or at least withhold the support it needs:
* Wrong results. Your boss determines that the initiative doesn't square with established organizational results.
* Wrong timing. Your boss says the results may be right, but the timing for achieving them is wrong.
* Status quo. Your boss simply doesn't want to rock the boat. Initiatives generally focus on getting more results, faster, continually, and that scares the hell out of some people. A safe, known status quo is more appealing to some leaders than the unknowns of going after great results.
* Jealousy. I've known many leaders whose careers have stalled because their bosses felt threatened by, and jealous of, their talents. These bosses might not have overtly tried to curtail their advancement, but they certainly weren't cause leaders for it, and wouldn't go out of their way to make it happen.
* Selfishness. Your boss needs you — to your detriment. You're doing so well that he or she doesn't want you to take on tasks that will raise your profile in the organization and quite possibly get you promoted out of the unit.
* Personality conflicts. You have a contentious relationship with your boss due in no small part to a clashing of personalities.
The art of approaching your boss involves employing The Leadership Talk. Readers of this e-zine know the importance of The Leadership Talk in their jobs and careers. If you don't know much about The Leadership Talk, or would like to review it, you can go to the December '04 issue, http://www.actionleadership.com/ezine/v1n6.html, which was devoted to the subject, or buy my book, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: The Greatest Leadership Tool.
In addition to being available in bookstores, you can purchase it by calling 800-403-5368. Read the "News" section of this e-zine to see how you can get a special offer with your purchase of THE LEADERSHIP TALK.
Using The Leadership Talk is critical when communicating with your boss. You want her not just to give your initiative the green light, but, if possible, to become a cause leader for the initiative. Bosses support an initiative when they see its outcome as important to their self-interest.
This week, inform your boss of the initiative. The first step in doing this is to review and apply the Three-trigger Motivational Process of the Leadership Talk:
* What are her/his needs?
* What deep belief can you bring to your communication of the initiative?
* What action can you have your boss take?
Given this, you might frame your approach with a FIVE-PARAGRAPH letter. This is something you can write down and give to your boss, or you can use it as a template for talking points.
Here are the five paragraphs:
Describe the fact that you want to accomplish an initiative to achieve an increase in results in a specific area. (This entails Need — make sure those results provide solutions to your boss's needs; that is, they're in the boss's self-interest.)
Describe the initiative's aim and the general way you'll go about achieving that aim. (This entails Belief — communicate your deep belief here.)
Describe the specific results you intend to achieve, and how you'll measure those results.
Describe how the initiative is linked to your organizational objectives.
Describe the first initiative action to be taken. (This entails Action — try to have your boss take LEADERSHIP ACTION to support your initiative.)
Do not go forward with your initiative unless you have your boss's support, preferably, though not necessarily, leadership support.
Week 2: Enlist Cause Leaders in Your Initiative
Your initiative isn't just about what you say; it's about what people do AFTER you've had your say. Once you inform your boss of the initiative and get her/his agreement that it should be instituted, you're ready to get cause leaders to carry out the initiative.
Remember: your initiative isn't something you do by yourself; you need cause leaders. You might have one or many. You might elect to form one or more teams to accomplish the results. The point is, in doing the initiative, you're not only getting more results, faster, continually, but you're also learning to motivate people and form teams to make it happen. Many careers top off because leaders reach a point where they're unable to have increasingly large teams get the needed results. Using a team approach with all your initiatives will help ensure that you continually hone your team-building motivational leadership skills.
One of your cause leaders should be your boss. His/her leadership in helping you carry out the initiative will be far more helpful than simple consent. But whether it's your boss or other cause leaders, the process involves drawing up a leadership contract.
A leadership contract is an unwritten or written agreement, usually informal, between you and your cause leader(s), detailing the specific leadership actions they'll take to achieve more results, faster, continually.
Here are the steps in putting together a cause-leader leadership contract.
* Have the cause leader propose what leadership actions should be taken to accomplish the results. Protocol is important here: don't lay demands, or even suggestions, on your cause leaders; give them the opportunity to describe, without your initial input, the leadership actions they'll take. Afterward, you can work out mutually agreeable actions.
* Come to an agreement as to what those actions will be, how you'll support that leadership, and how the actions will be evaluated and monitored.
* Apply a testing method such as the SAMMER test (which we discussed last month) to the results.
This week, approach the potential cause leaders you identified when you drew a cause-leader map during last month's activities. (A cause-leader map is a wheel with spokes — the wheel is the initiative, and the spokes are the cause leaders you need to carry it out.)
Since it's unlikely that every one of your potentials will choose to be a cause leader, you should identify a backup for each potential cause leader you target.
To summarize: You get, keep, and direct cause leaders by applying The Leadership Talk and following it up with the leadership contract.
The purpose of The Leadership Talk is to have people sign on to become cause leaders.
The purpose of the leadership contract is to define the leadership actions they'll take, declare how you'll support those actions, and affirm how you'll monitor and evaluate the actions.
You can't apply the leadership contract until people agree to be your cause leaders. The contract is not for people who are simply doing a task.
Week 3: Validate the Results
If you follow the initiative steps, you will get results, but simply getting results isn't the be all and end all of initiatives. You must do one more thing: you have to validate the results you get, which means confirm that they exist. Results don't exist in a vacuum. Unless others know that you've gotten the results, you haven't really gotten them.
The Latin roots of both "validate" and "confirm" mean "to strengthen," so when you're validating results, you're not only demonstrating that they exist, but actually strengthening them. The strength of the results is fully realized in other people's awareness of them.
My experience in working with countless initiatives developed by leaders of all levels and functions during the past decade confirms that it's best to commit the validation of results to writing. Doing so sharpens your thinking, creates an all-important paper trail, and promotes communication of the initiative to others in the organization.
The following is a template that you and your cause leaders can use for most of your initiatives. In validating results, try to have those results tied to that all-important driver of most organizations, money (money saved, money earned). You won't be able to do so for every initiative, but such tie-ins will work in roughly 80 percent of initiatives.
The Results-Validation Report
Name:______________________________________________ Date_____________
Unit:_______________________________________________
The purpose of this report is to document the results you've achieved through your Increased-results Initiative. You will be asked to identify, validate, and translate those results.
Describe your initiative:
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
If you didn't complete an initiative, please explain why.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
Date begun:__________ Date completed (or to be completed): ___________
Cause Leaders:
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Teams:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
Identification
What were the results that your initiative identified?
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
What increases in results did your initiative aim to achieve, beyond what you would have gotten without using Action LeadershipTM?
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Validation
What results did you actually achieve?
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Did the results meet the SAMMER test? Were they:
Sizable? Yes___ No___
Measurable? Yes___ No___
Achievable? Yes ___ No ___
Ethical? Yes___ No___
Meaningful? Yes___ No___
Repeatable? Yes___ No___
Comments:
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
Translation
If possible, translate results to money.
Money earned:
______________________________________________________________________________
Money saved:
______________________________________________________________________________
This week, bring added clarity to your initiative by focusing on how you'll validate the results you're aiming for. Validation should begin at the beginning, so that, at the close of the initiative, the results you've achieved flow naturally from the effort it took to achieve them.
At the beginning, come to an agreement with your cause leaders as to what constitutes validation and how you'll accomplish it. Show them the Validation Report. Get their agreement to use it — or to devise another. Throughout the initiative, keep reviewing validation with them.
Week 4: Be Humble, Be helpful. Repeat This Process Throughout Your Career
Every organization has two faces: an outward focus, on its products and services, etc., and an inward focus, on its members vying for power, privilege, pay, and promotion. To be successful in the second, you must not only do well in your job, but must also be able to have your superiors and your colleagues perceive that you do well -- and to a great extent support you in doing well.
Perception, however, cuts two ways. Some people may admire you and the results you get, and want to support you and be part of your circle, but others may feel threatened by your success, might not wish you particularly well, and might even unite against you.
Here's a way to overcome the challenges of the latter.
Humility may seem like a slim reed to hang a career on. After all, you've probably seen many successful people who were self-centered and self-indulgent, but my experience in working directly with hundreds of CEOs and other top leaders shows that most of them are rather humble (at least outwardly) and make a habit of looking out for other people.
They've had success in their careers not in spite of these character traits, but because of them.
Humility has many benefits. Let's focus on one: it's eminently practical, especially when humility and the Initiative Strategy go hand in hand. The fact is, you will get results when you use the Initiative Strategy, and you'll get more results than if you hadn't used it. And, you'll get those results consistently throughout your career.
If your successes look at all self-serving, jealous colleagues could torpedo them. Don't take credit for the results. Instead, credit your team members. Furthermore, make your successes help your team members in their jobs and careers.
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SECTION TWO: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
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The Good:
Race driver Wilbur Shaw (1902 --54) didn't win his first Indianapolis 500 until he was thirty-five — and then it took a spontaneous, in-race strategy to make it happen. He was leading the runner-up, Ralph Hepburn, by three miles with thirty-five laps left, when his engine sprang an oil leak. Learning from his pit crew that he was one minute, fourteen seconds ahead of Hepburn, Shaw calculated how much he could slow down to conserve his dwindling oil and still finish ahead. He slowed drastically. On the last lap, Hepburn caught him and nosed ahead. Shaw took a chance. He floored it. His engine quit just as he crossed the finish line, barely ahead of Hepburn.
Some Initiative Strategies can and must be done on the fly.
The Bad:
The famous British barrister, F. E. Smith (1872 --1930) was arguing a complicated case before a rather dull-witted judge. As the case drew to a close, the judge said that he was confused about some of the key issues, whereupon Smith summed up the case clearly and briefly. "I'm still afraid I'm none the wiser," said the judge. Smith replied, "Possibly, Milord, but you are better informed."
Your Initiative Strategies must inform your cause leaders before they can inspire them.
The Ugly:
In the first December of World War I, Admiral Beatty received a message from Sir George Warrender, who radioed from his ship: "Scarborough being shelled. I am proceeding to Hull."
Lord Beatty replied, "Are you? I'm proceeding to Scarborough."
Your Initiative Strategies should always be proceeding not to Hull but Scarborough.
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SECTION THREE: Points of Light
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"People will listen a great deal more patiently while you explain your mistakes than when you explain your successes." -- Wilbur Nesbit
"The average action plans created by your cause leaders are far better than the great action plans you may impose upon them. -- Brent Filson
"If three people tell you you're an ass, put on a bridle." -- Spanish proverb
"Optimists do not wait for improvement. They achieve it." -- Paul von Keppler
"I'm an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else." -- Winston Churchill
"In the long run, it's better for a man to see things as they are than to be ignorant of them."
-- A.E. Houseman
"Leadership is seeing hope in any reality." -- Brent Filson
"Set up as an ideal the facing of reality as honestly and as cheerfully as possible."
-- Dr. Karl A. Menninger
Don't simply help others. More importantly, help others help themselves." -- Brent Filson
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(SECTION FOUR: Message from Brent Filson)
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The Hierarchy of Verbal Motivation
Leadership is motivational or else it's stumbling in the dark. Of course, as leaders, we can't motivate anyone to do anything. We communicate; the people motivate. They motivate themselves. It's their choice, not ours, to be motivated or not. All we can do is set up an environment in which they make the right choice.
A key way to set up such an environment is by speaking to the people. There are three tools for us to speak in such a way that we create that environment of choice. They represent what I call "The Hierarchy of Verbal Motivation."
At the lowest (least effective) level, is the presentation. A presentation communicates information, but it doesn't necessarily make an emotional connection with the people.
At the next level up is the speech, which, as we know, is an utterance to an audience for a given purpose. Sometimes, speeches go beyond giving out information, and make an emotional connection with the audience.
At the highest level is The Leadership Talk, which is superior to presentations and speeches, because it combines information with deep emotional bonding, to have the speaker commune with the audience.
The Hierarchy Of Verbal Motivation:
The Leadership Talk (commune), The Speech (connect), The Presentation (communicate)
If you're an order leader, you don't need to give Leadership Talks, but if you're an Action Leader who needs to get more results, faster, continually, Leadership Talks are the way to go.
This is not to say that, when you speak, your communication won't contain aspects of presentations or speeches. The point is to make sure that the great majority of your communication is accomplished through Leadership Talks.
How do you learn how to prepare and deliver Leadership Talks? There's only one tried-and-true way: read my book, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: The Greatest Leadership Tool, and put it into action daily for the rest of your career.
To order, see below.
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SECTION FIVE: NEWS
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Brent's latest leadership book, The Leadership Talk: The Greatest Leadership Tool, will be available in bookstores this fall. You can purchase advance copies by calling 800-403-5368. Mention this e-zine and you'll receive a free wallet card with the Leadership Talk processes. If you purchase the hardcover book, you'll receive a free copy of Brent's 101 Ways To Give Great Leadership Talks. In addition, you'll be eligible to receive a set of Brent's previously published books at half price.
QuickSpeech is up and running. If you have a speech to give, go to the QuickSpeech button at www.actionleadership.com and download the template. Fill in the blanks, and you'll have a powerful speech. QuickS peech is the highly popular companion supplement to Brent's book, EXECUTIVE SPEECHES, 51 CEOs Tell You How To Do Yours. QuickSpeech 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 has been interviewed on a number of radio shows. He is shooting for at least 150 radio and TV interviews before the fall election. If you're 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.
The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. is creating a CD collection of interviews with leaders. It's called the "Leaders Speak Series." It will begin this month and can be found on the Action Leadership website — click on "Leaders Speak CD Series."
Brent says, "I want to interview leaders from a broad representative spectrum of endeavor. Don't be surprised to find landscape contractors, gang leaders, horse trainers, and 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 e-mail Brent at brent@actionleadership.com
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