3 Dynamic Techniques To Boost Your Executive Leadership!

Here's a really simple way to measure the strength ofyour executive leadership skills. Ask your people to name 3important reasons why they enjoy working with you.

Most leaders find it acceptable to be viewed as a "nice","friendly" or "clever" person.

Others prefer to be "hands-off" - you know the type of bosswho lets us do our work the way we choose to do it - theleader who wants our work done and doesn't care to bebothered with the hows or whys of our doing it.

Some or all of the above traits may fit into your patternsof leading but are those leadership attributes and stylesbeing fair to your people or helping your mission?

The real question is this: How is your leadership addingvalue to, improving the quality in and nurturing the growthof your organization?

Here are 3 potent steps you can take in your leadershippractice to become a value-oriented, quality-focused,growth-driven leader.

First Action-Step - How Do You Know?

As Professor Thomas Davenport points out, "...if you wantyour economy [or organization] to grow, your knowledgeworkers had better be doing a good job." If your people aredoing good work, how do you know that they are?

So your first leadership action is one of discovery - youmust explore ways to find out

=> How are your people performing their work

=> What tasks, activities, objectives and priorities arepeople working on

=> Why are people doing what they are doing

=> When are people doing their work, and

=> Where your people are focusing their best efforts duringthe performance of their duties.

When you take the time ask, challenge or inquire withquestions that demand open-ended answers, you will get aclearer picture of the value, quality and competence of yourgroup's actions.

"Approach each new problem not with a view of finding whatyou hope will be there, but to get the truth, the realitiesthat must be grappled with. You may not like what you find.In that case you are entitled to try to change it. But donot deceive yourself as to what you do find to be the factsof the situation."
- Bernard Baruch

Second Action-Step - What Do You Draw When You Picture YourMind's Eye?

"Everything you can imagine is real. I paint objects as Ithink them, not as I see them." - Pablo Picasso

Executive leadership constantly strives to envision, imagineand conceive images of what comes next - what many of uscall "tomorrow".

Give yourself permission to ask: "What kinds of futureoutcomes do we think will produce the best things for ours,yours and mine?"

In your visioning pursuits and statements, you may wish toinclude any and all of the following items:

=> Ways to inspire your people to seek higher ideals

=> Ways to unite your people in their efforts towards makingthe world a better place

=> Ways to encourage, empower or engage your people toconfidently and persistently act with integrity

=> Ways to reap the benefits of working in fellowship,harmony and peace with others

=> Ways to establish, expand and enhance your "frameworks ofpossibilities" [where meanings, visions and environments ofpossible outcomes are considered, spoken and practiced -adapted from "The Art of Possibility" by Rosamund S. andBenjamin Zander]

Third Action-Step - How Much Did We Create Today?

Innovation, ingenuity, invention are the new currencies inour highly competitive Knowledge Economy. Being creative forcreativity's sake is not the object of the exercise.

Rather, your creations should translate themselves intoproducts of greater efficiencies, effectiveness orresourcefulness.

One company's slogan is: "where do you want to go today?"Instead of that question, you might ask yourself: "where didour creativity lead us to today?"

Author Mark Twain [Samuel Clemens] observed: "A person witha new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds." Withoutputting your ideas into practice, your creative efforts willbe in vain.

Follow the lead of another Twainism: "Name the greatest ofall inventors. Accident."

Use your failures, missteps, mistakes and misunderstandingsto innovate, intuit or invent new approaches and moreappropriate solutions.

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"A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I mustsoon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What Ibegan by reading, I must finish by acting."
- Henry David Thoreau

If you take Thoreau's advice to heart, you will find ways toemploy this article's actions and suggestions in your dailyexercise of leadership.

After 35-years worth of grappling with InformationTechnology projects and operational challenges, I havediscovered one cardinal rule about leadership: learn how todo it better or resign yourself to getting lost!

So are you ready to begin your executive leadershipadventure? Will you commit your energies, ideas and heart tothe pursuit of excellence?

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.You can't just ask customers what they want and then try togive that to them. By the time you get it built, they'llwant something new." - Steve Jobs

Be the leader who pushes the bar higher while making itworthy of taking a "quantum leap" beyond its limits for goodof all your people.

Copyright © 2005, Mustard Seed Investments Inc.,
All rights reserved.

Bill Thomas energizes, empowers and enhances the leadership skills of thousands using in-depth, cost-effective, 100% guaranteed performance improvement workshops, programs, books, tools and educational services.Pick-up your free copy of his Leadership Power-Tips, online e-book and become the best leader you're willing to be.All-the-Tools-You-Need-to-Lead-&-Succeed!
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