Brent Filson’s Action Leadership Report is a monthly e-zine helping leaders achieve more results, faster results, continually.
In this issue: THE FOUR GOLDEN LEADERSHIP ACTIONS. IF YOU WANT TO BE A GREAT LEADER, TAKE THESE ACTIONS DAILY.
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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. 3 Number 6 – June, 2005
Publisher: The Filson Leadership Group, Inc.
brent@actionleadership.com
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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 http://www.actionleadership.com and receive Brent Filson’s free report: 49 Tips On Using Action To Get Results.
IN THIS ISSUE:
SECTION 1: The Four Golden Leadership Actions. If You Want To Be A Great Leader, Take These Actions Daily.
SECTION 2: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
SECTION 3: Points of Light.
SECTION 4: Message from Brent Filson: In Leadership, Dreams Are The Stuff That Great Results Are Made Of.
SECTION 5: News.
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SECTION 1: The Four Golden Leadership Actions:
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Leadership is like a differential equation with one quantity being the leader and the other quantity being the people. “Solving” the equation means finding a rough accordance of thoughts and actions between the two quantities that achieves great results.
After all, it’s always about results. If you don’t get results, you won’t be a leader for long. But results don’t happen unless people take action.
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That’s why when you speak as a leader, it’s not so much what you say that’s important but what the people do after you’ve had your say.
However, there is another important focal point of action besides theirs. It’s YOUR action.
To complete the equation, to understand not only the action you want the people to take but the action you as a leader should be taking, let’s first look at a couple of leadership principles.
One is that the best way for leaders to get results is not to order the people but to motivate them to get results.
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Two is that people are more successful not when they are simply doing tasks but when they are taking leadership of those tasks.
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Understanding both of these principles is vital if you want to define what leadership actions you should be taking.
http://www.actionleadership.com/products/leadershiptalk.html
With the principles in mind, I submit that the most important actions you can take as a leader are the Four Golden Leadership Actions.
1. Remove obstacles to their success. At first blush, this seems to be rather obvious. But I’ve found that most leaders don’t rigorously think through the obstacles that prevent their people from succeeding.
Here is a process that will will give focus to your leadership actions: Identify/Agree/Select.
--Identify what you believe are the obstacles.
–Come to an agreement with them that they are truly obstacles.
–Select one of three options, keep/change/eliminate: Decide if you want to keep the obstacle, change it or eliminate it. There is no fourth option!
One of the best places to look for obstacles is not just in them but in you, not just in situation you face but in your own way of leading. What are you doing by omission or commission that may be preventing them from getting the results they’re capable of? Identifying what you yourself are doing is particularly effective; because you have total control over keep/change/eliminate.
2. Provide accelerators. One way to provide accelerators is to remove obstacles. But there are other ways, and one of the most important involves dealing with the people who are getting results.
21 years ago, when I started teaching my leadership methodologies, I never thought that I’d come upon this phenomenon. Yet I have, and it’s all too common. It’s this: A great many leaders whom I’ve worked go into a kind of panic when they start getting great results.
You’d think that since the success of their leadership is predicated on getting results, that the more results they get, the happier they’d be.
But I have found just the opposite to be true: the more results some leaders get, the more disconcerted they tend to be! Sure, leaders want to get great results, but if they move into getting a super-abundance of results, they panic and tend to pull back. They may be thinking a number of things: that they’re setting impossibly-high standards, that they did not truly deserve getting those results, that they’re setting themselves up for ultimate failure, etc.
So, the issue of accelerators is not simply getting more results, it’s getting more results consistently.
Clint Eastwood, arguably one of the most successful directors in Hollywood, was interviewed recently in Time Magazine and gave these tips on how a director (or one might say, “leader”) can provide accelerators:
“Actors can become very self-conscious. They have to walk out in front of a lot of people they don’t know and start performing something that may be kind of silly out of context. And even the most experienced ones come with a certain anxiety the first few days on a set. Also, directors can get in the way sometimes by just talking too goddam much. Most of the time they’re making up for their own insecurity, and it’s condescending because everybody really knows what the script is all about or else they wouldn’t be there. So I just come in being a nice host at the party. You get them very comfortable, set a certain attitude, a certain lack of hecticness, so they can get up and make fools of themselves not really feel foolish. I love it.”
You might say this is a combination of removing obstacles and providing accelerators, but if you think about it, it’s really an accelerator methodology, for Eastwood sets up an environment in which his actors feel safe about getting great results.
Notice the other thing Eastwood brings to the table: “I love it.” When you love what you do -- not so much for the benefit of your well-being but for the benefit of the well-being of the people you lead -- those people feel relatively safe even when you are challenging them to leap off cliffs and make their wings on the way down.
3. Provide tools/resources. Agree with them as to what they need in such things as training, equipment, organizational support, and career help.
4. Develop and evaluate leadership actions through the Leadership Contract. This is such a critical thing that I don’t want to paraphrase it. I detailed it in the February issue. Read it and apply it to your leadership actions.
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These are the Four Golden Leadership Actions, the most important actions you can take as a leader. 1. Remove Obstacles. 2. Provide accelerators. 3. Provide tools/resources. 4. Develop and evaluate leadership actions through the Leadership Contract. Do these instead of ordering people about and you will see a dramatic increase in your leadership effectiveness.
Motivated people are useless to an organization. Only those motivated people who get results are useful. The Four Golden Leadership Actions show you the way to help translate their motivation into great results, exponentially raising the power of the differential equation of leadership.
SECTION TWO: The Good. The Bad. The Ugly.
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The Good:
At the Constitutional Convention, James Madison, whose political wisdom would come to underlie much of the document, was given to becoming extremely agitated when giving a speech. Before one speech, he asked a friend who was sitting beside him to tweak his coattails if he started getting too emotional. Madison spoke heatedly and when he was finished, he asked his friend why he didn’t prompt him. “I’d as rather have laid my finger on lightning,” said the friend.
–When carrying out the Four Golden Leadership Actions, you may not evoke lightning. But I guarantee that from the people’s standpoint, you will be bringing a great deal of light into their jobs and their lives.
The Bad:
Joan of Arc was not French. She was born in 1412 in Domremy, which at the time was an autonomous state outside the jurisdiction of the French monarchy. Neither was she a heroine of France until the nineteen century. Her exploits had fallen into oblivion shortly after her death, Joan was at best a minor figure in French legend. On coming to power at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Napoleon needed a heroic symbol to help promote nationalism in France, and he hit upon Joan of Arc.
–Napoleon recognized that if you want to motivate people to commit themselves to an idea, you wrap that idea in a human being. In elevating Joan of Arc to mythical status, he created a defining moment for the French to rally around. You could say that Napoleon was using two of the four Golden Leadership Actions. Can you say which ones?
The Ugly:
The French statesman Richelieu was planning a military campaign. “We’ll cross the river here,” said one of his officers and put his finger on the map. “That’s fine,” said Richelieu, “but your finger is not a bridge.”
–The Four Golden Leadership Actions must work in the reality of the people’s needs, not on the map of one’s intentions.
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SECTION THREE: Points of Light.
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“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion. Bewilderment brings intuitive knowledge.” --Jaluddin Rumi
“Make sure our help is not an incumbrance.” –Brent Filson
“Self justification is worse than the original offense.” --Ziaudin
“We ourselves are our own biggest obstacles to becoming better leaders.” –Brent Filson
“We’d all like a reputation for generosity, and we’d all like to buy it cheap.” –Mignon McLaughlin
“Believing in the people you lead is the first step in really helping them.” –Brent Filson
“Take egotism out and you would castrate the benefactors.” –Emerson
“Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but few a generous thing.” --Pope
“The most important part of giving is a portion of what you are reluctant to give.” –Brent Filson
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SECTION FOUR: Message From Brent Filson:
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PERMISSION TO REPUBLISH: This article may be republished in newsletters and on web sites provided attribution is provided to the author, and it appears with the included copyright, resource box and live web site link. Email notice of intent to publish is appreciated but not required: mail to: brent@actionleadership.com
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Summary: The importance of motivation in leadership cannot be denied. But most leaders overlook a critical component of motivation, the human dream. The article describes what dreams really mean in the realm of leadership.
In Leadership, Dreams Are The Stuff That Great Results Are Made Of
by Brent Filson
Leadership is motivational or it’s stumbling in the dark. The best leaders don’t order people to do a job, the best leaders motivate people to want to do the job.
The trouble is the vast majority of leaders don’t delve into the deep aspects of human motivation and so are unable to motivate people effectively.
Drill down through goals and aims and aspirations and ambitions and you hit the bedrock of motivation, the dream. Many leaders fail to take it into account.
Dreams are not goals and aims. Goals are the results toward which efforts are directed. The realization of a dream might contain goals, which can be stepping stones on the way to the attaining dreams. But the attainment of a goal does not necessarily result in the attainment of a dream.
For instance, Martin Luther King did not say, “I have a goal.” Or “I have an aim.” The power of that speech was in the “I have a dream”.
Dreams are not aspirations and ambitions. Aspirations and ambitions are strong desires to achieve something. King didn’t say he had an aspiration or ambition that “ ....one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’” He said he had a dream.
If you are a leader speaking to people’s aspirations and ambitions, you are speaking to something that motivates them, yes; but you are not necessarily tapping into the heartwood of their motivation.
After all, one might aspire or be ambitious to achieve a dream. But one’s aspiration and ambition may also be connected to things of lesser importance than a dream.
A dream embraces our most cherished longings. It embodies our very identity. We often won’t feel fulfilled as human beings until we realize our dreams.
If leaders are avoiding people’s dreams, if leaders are simply setting goals (as important as goals are), they miss the best of opportunities to help those people take ardent action to achieve great results.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," he was writing about a dream. Not one European government at that time was a democracy. There had been few true democracies in the West since the fall of the Athenian democracy more than 2,000 thousand years before. But Jefferson's "dream" motivated people to take action. In fact, that dream motivates people to act around the world today.
Understand the dreams of the people you lead. People will not tell you what they dream until they trust you. They won't trust you until they feel that you can help them attain their dreams. Acquiring that understanding can cement a deep, emotional bond between you.
Dreams are not fantasies. Going to the mountain may be a dream. Standing on the mountain may be a dream. On the other hand, having the mountain come to us is a fantasy. Dreams can be realized, fantasies can't. Focus on dreams, on what is objectively achievable, not on fantasies.
Dreams are positive, uplifting. The Old English word “dream” means "joy, music, and noise-making." But that positive, inspirational quality can have negative effects on an organization.
Negative dreams can damage an organization. For instance, union/management issues are often particularly inflammatory because of conflicting dreams, of both sides seeing the other as "the enemy." Your audience wanting to go back to the "good old days" can be a negative dream. Only a trusted leader can help people reshape their dreams.
Most people have a dream for their life and work. Even people in abject circumstances, such as prisons and concentration camps, dream of a fulfilling existence beyond their present circumstances. If they lose their dreams, they lose an essential quality of their humanity.
People won't be transformed by your leadership if you have a low opinion of and low expectations for their dream and/or if they are convinced that you can't help them attain that dream.
Many people don't consciously realize what they dream. But that doesn't mean that they are not influenced by their subconscious dream. A subconscious dream can motivate people to act without their clearly understanding why they are acting. Have the people you lead be fully conscious of the content and meaning of their dream or risk having your organization's activities be impeded by a dimly perceived yet none-the-less potent dream.
Each dream has a price. It's one thing to think it. It's another thing to do it. Know the price people will have to pay to attain their dream. Have them understand the price.
As a leader, dream with the people! Without hitching our wagons to stars, the wagons and the stars lose their true meaning in our lives.
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.
Dreams are supreme reality. Dream graffiti on a Paris wall during the 1968 student rebellion said, "Be realistic: Do the impossible!"
2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
The author of 23 books, Brent Filson’s recent books are, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO GIVE GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS. He is founder and president of The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. – and for more than 20 years has been helping leaders of top companies worldwide get audacious results. Sign up for his free leadership e-zine and get a free white paper: “49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results,” at http://www.actionleadership.com
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SECTION FIVE: NEWS:
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Brent’s latest leadership books, The Leadership Talk: The Greatest Leadership Tool and 101 Ways To Give Great Leadership Talks , are available in bookstores. You can also purchase 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 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.
The Leadership Talk: The Greatest Leadership Tool is a national finalist in the career category of nonfiction books. The awards ceremony will be held at the BookExpo America on June 3.
Listen to Brent being interviewed: http://audiomotivation.com/go/brent-filson1204.htm
Brent has put together two great systems that will boost your leadership and your leadership communication abilities.
One is Brent Filson’s The Leadership Talk System: www.theleadershiptalk.com
The other is Brent Filson’s The CEO Public Speaking System: www.theceopublicspeakingsystem.com
Read Brent’s interview conducted by Alistair Craven in ManagementFirst, an international business magazine out of London. http://www.managementfirst.com/management_styles/index.htm
Brent’s article, Are You Sabotaging Your Career?” http://www.actionleadership.com/articles/0018.html has been translated into Mandarin and is featured in the May issue of the Chinese magazine, “Global Sources: Career Sources China.” http://csc.globalsources.com
In next month’s issue, catch Brent’s interview in an Australian human resources magazine. In it, he takes HR to task in a big way.
During the past few months, Brent has been interviewed on more than 125 radio shows – and many more are on the way. If you are 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 “media room” button.
The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. is putting together a CD collection of interviews with leaders, 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 spectrum of human endeavor to be represented. Don’t be surprised to find landscape contractors, 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: brent@actionleadership.com
COMMISSIONS can be earned selling Brent’s books and other products as well as helping him get booked for speaking and seminar engagements. Email Brent for more details.
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