The Defining Moment: The Straw That Stirs The Drink Of Motivational Leadership (Part One)

Author: Brent Filson

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

Word count: 770

Summary: Motivation is a critical aspect of leadership. But most leaders fail to realize practical processes to motivate people consistently. Here is a motivational-leadership tool to greatly increase your leadership effectiveness.

The Defining Moment: The Straw That Stirs The Drink Of Motivational Leadership (Part One) by Brent Filson

Decades ago, as a rifle platoon commander in the Marines, I saw leaders who could motivate troops to do extraordinary things -- and leaders who couldn't get the troops to do much at all. I wondered what was the difference between the successful and unsuccessful leaders; and if that difference be taught.

Those two questions have stayed with me throughout my civilian life as I have worked with thousands of leaders worldwide for the past 21 years.

Now, at last, I can say I've answered those questions. I've cracked the code.

The difference between successful and unsuccessful leaders is the successful ones are able to engage in deep, human, emotional relationships with the people they lead, the unsuccessful ones don't. It's as simple as that, yet it's more complicated than you think.

The power of those relationships has been demonstrated since the dawn of history. In all cultures, whenever people needed to do great things, one thing had to take place: A leader had to gather those people together and speak from the heart. In other words, deep, human, emotional relationships had to be constituted for great things to be accomplished.

Look at it this way: Leaders themselves must be motivated, that's an absolute truth. If you're not motivated, you shouldn't be a leader. But the burning challenges in leadership are, Can you transfer your motivation to others so they are as motivated as you? And can you translate that motivation into great results? Great leaders successfully meet those challenges.

There are three ways to transfer your motivation to others. Give them information, make sense, and make your experience their experience.

The most powerful is the latter, having your experience become their experience. One way to make this happen is with the ""defining moment"" technique.

This entails having the leader's experience become the people's experience. It can be the most effective method of all, because when the speaker's experience becomes the audience's experience, a deep sharing of emotions and ideas, a communing, can take place.

Generally, people learn in two ways — through the intellect and through experience. In our school system, the former predominates, but it's the latter that is most powerful in terms of inducing a deep sharing of emotions and ideas, because our experiences, which can be life's teachings, often lead us to profound awareness and purposeful action.

Look back at your schooling. Which do you remember most, your book learning or your experiences, your interactions with teachers and students? In most cases, people say their experiences made the strongest impressions on them; they remembered them long after book knowledge had faded.

This is where the defining moment comes in. Its function is simple: to provide a communion of experience with you and the people you lead, so those people will be as motivated as you are to meet the challenges you face.

The process of developing a defining moment is simple, too: put a particular experience of yours, a defining moment, into sharp focus, and then transmit that focused experience into the hearts of the audience so they feel the experience as theirs. Out of that shared feeling they can be ardently motivated to take action for results. It's easy, and it's a game changer.

But if you don't get the defining moment right, it can backfire. In fact, you could wind up having people motivated against you. So follow carefully as I show you the precise steps in developing and transmitting defining moments.

Take the first step in mastering the defining moment. Review experiences from your past. Don't try to figure out how to use them or how they relate to developing and communicating a defining moment.

They needn't be wrenching, shattering experiences; everyday experiences will do. They don't need to have taken place recently; you might want to look back upon experiences from your youth. Finally, they don't need to have taken place in an organizational context. Look at every aspect of your life. Any of your experiences, at any time, anywhere, can make a good defining moment.

Make sure, however, that it is your experience (I'll say more about this in Part Two.) and be aware of the difference between personal and private experiences. Usually, our personal experiences are those we can share with others, and our private experiences are those we want to keep to ourselves. The dividing line between personal and private is embarrassment. If you would in any way be embarrassed talking about the experience with others — don't use it.

In Part Two, I will show you how to put together a defining moment to communicate.

About the author: 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 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 www.actionleadership.com

A Managerial PR System You Will Love

by Bob Kelly

It's a happy day indeed when business, non-profit, government agency or association managers end their preoccupation with (and reliance upon) the simple mechanics of press releases, broadcast plugs and special events. What they've decided is, they no longer wish to be denied the best public relations has to offer, preferring instead the quality public relations results they believe they deserve.

Thus they begin construction of a workable managerial PR system by putting in place a high-impact action plan designed to do something meaningful about the behaviors of those important outside audiences that MOST affect the departmental, divisional or subsidiary units they manage.

Inevitably, the new plan helps create the kind of external takeholder behavior change that leads directly to achieving their managerial objectives; in this case by persuading those key outside folks to the manager's way of thinking by helping move audience members to take actions that help the manager's unit succeed.

It rapidly becomes apparent to these managers that the good news implicit in PR's underlying premise is the reality that good public relations planning really CAN alter individual perception and result in changed behaviors among key outside audiences.

But what about PR's underlying premise? As a manager, see if you can live with it. People act on their own perception of the facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired-action the very people whose behaviors affect the organization the most, the public relations mission is usually accomplished.

With such an approach to public relations, an awful lot of warm and fuzzy end-products can appear: customers begin to make repeat purchases; new prospects actually start to do business with you; politicians and legislators begin looking at you as a key member of the business, non-profit or association communities; capital givers or specifying sources begin to look your way; welcome bounces in show room visits occur; community leaders begin to seek you out; new proposals for strategic alliances and joint ventures start showing up; and membership applications start to rise.

Of course, whether the PR people assigned to your unit come from an agency, parent company or are direct hires, they are already in the perception and behavior business. So look first to them to manage your data gathering activity. But be certain that they really accept why it's SO important to know how your most important outside audiences perceive your operations, products or services. In a word or two, be sure they believe that perceptions almost always result in behaviors that can help or hurt your operation.

Also spend some quality time with your PR people analyzingyour plans for monitoring and gathering perceptions by questioning members of your most important outside audiences. Suggest queries along these lines: how much do you know about our organization? Have you had prior contact with us and were you pleased with the interchange? Are you familiar with our services or products and employees? Have you experienced problems with our people or procedures?

Be aware that using a professional survey firm to do the opinion gathering work, can be an expensive alternative to using those PR folks of yours in that monitoring capacity. But whether it's your people or a survey firm asking the questions, the objective remains the same: identify untruths, false assumptions, unfounded rumors, inaccuracies, misconceptions and any other negative perception that might translate into hurtful behaviors.

This is when the establishment of a clearcut and realistic PR goal is necessary, one that calls for action on the most serious problem areas you uncovered during your key audience perception monitoring.

You may decide to straighten out that dangerous misconception, bring to an end that potentially painful rumor, or correct that awful inaccuracy.

Part and parcel of your public relations goal is the right, action-oriented strategy that shows how to get to where you're going. Actually, you have just three strategic options available to you when it comes to doing something about perception and opinion.

Change existing perception, create perception where there may be none, or reinforce it. Needless to say, the wrong strategy pick will taste like mushroom gravy on your sardines. So be sure your new strategy fits well with your new public relations goal. You certainly don't want to select "change" when the facts dictate a strategy of reinforcement.

Because you're going to have to prepare a persuasive message that will help move your key audience to your way of thinking, ask the best writer on your team to get ready to prepare a carefully-written message targeted directly at your key external audience. The writer must produce some really corrective language that is not merely compelling, persuasive and believable, but clear and factual if they are to shift perception/opinion towards your point of view and lead to the behaviors you have in mind.

Carefully selected communications tactics will carry your message to the attention of your target audience, and there are many such tactics available. From speeches, facility tours, emails and brochures to consumer briefings, media interviews, newsletters, personal meetings and many others. But be certain that the tactics you pick are known to reach folks just like your audience members.

Another reason to stay alert to the means you use to communicate a message is that its credibility is fragile and always suspect. Thus, you may wish initially to unveil your corrective message before smaller meetings rather than using higher profile news releases.

Demonstrating how far you've come compared to the starting point will highlight progress made. First,you'll be demonstrating, in the form of periodic progress reports, how the monies spent on public relations can pay off. But it's also an alert to start a second perception monitoring session with members of your external audience. Here, you'll use many of the same questions used in the benchmark interviews. Only difference now is, you will be on strict alert for signs that the bad news perception is being altered in your direction.

It's also possible that momentum could flag suggesting that adding more communications tactics, and/or increasing their frequencies, will adequately address that problem.

In brief, this is a management public relations system with a remarkable prognosis: as a manager, it will move you beyond preoccupation with communications tactics, freeing you to use the right PR system to alter the perceptions of your most important outside audiences, leading directly to achieving your managerial objectives.

About the author: Bob Kelly counsels and writes for business, non-profit and association managers about using the fundamental premise of public relations to achieve their operating objectives. He has published over 200 articles on the subject which are listed at EzineArticles.com, click Expert Author, click Robert A. Kelly. He has been DPR, Pepsi-Cola Co.; AGM-PR, Texaco Inc.; VP-PR, Olin Corp.; VP-PR, Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co.; director of communications, U.S. Department of the Interior, and deputy assistant press secretary, The White House. He holds a bachelor of science degree from Columbia University, major in public relations.

bobkelly@TNI.net Visit:www.PRCommentary.com

The Defining Moment: The Straw That Stirs The Drink Of Motivational Leadership (Part Two)

Author: Brent Filson

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

Word count: 1000

Summary: Motivation is a critical aspect of leadership. But most leaders fail to realize practical processes to motivate people consistently. Here is a motivational-leadership tool to greatly increase your leadership effectiveness.

The Defining Moment: The Straw That Stirs The Drink Of Motivational Leadership (Part Two) by Brent Filson

In Part One, I described the importance of establishing deep, human connections with people you lead. I said there were three ways to do that, by communicating information, by making sense, and by having your experience become their experiences. By far, the most important and most effective way, is the latter.

Now I'll show you how to make that happen by developing and communicating a defining moment.

Write down three to five of your EXPERIENCES that made a strong impression on you. Describe each in a few sentences or paragraphs. That's it. Do no more. The important thing now is to deliberately walk through the sequence of defining-moment development. It's easy to get off track, but once you take the trouble to go through the process, you'll have it for life.

For instance, an experience that defines much of what I do in leadership happened when my father lay on his deathbed. He and I had struggled for years over conflicting views of my career path, but when he got cancer, the terrible disease led to a healing in our relationship, and for the first time in years, we were able to talk with affection and no recriminations. During a long discussion one afternoon a few weeks before he died, I told him that I felt I had run out of opportunities in my life.

His thin hand, which had been so broad until he became ill (He came from a family of hulking carpenters.) closed around mine, and he said, ""Brent, how can you say that? Everyone has opportunities all the time. Look at me. Even me, here, on this bed — even I have opportunities!""

I didn't think much about what he said until after he died, and then his words kept coming back to me. Sort of breaking open in my mind like psychological time-release capsules and releasing bits of understanding. I came to understand what he really meant. And I took that understanding into my life and work.

Since then, I have never lacked for opportunities — simply because my father had me see that opportunities are never lacking — nor have I allowed the leaders I've worked with to lack opportunities.

""Even I have opportunities"" is a defining moment, an experience, one that led to profound awareness and purposeful action — not for my sake, but for the sake of the leaders I'm consulting with. For the defining moment's purpose is not to illuminate what you can do, but what they can do. Now that you've written down some defining experiences, you can begin to change them into defining moments. The experience is the raw material; the defining moment is the instrument, shaped from the raw experience, that enables you to reach into the hearts of the people you speak to and motivate them to take action to get results. 1. Select an audience to speak to. It can be one person or many. It can be someone at work, in your family, or in your social circle. This should be an important interaction. You don't simply want to communicate but to have a communion with the audience.

Don't expect the defining moment to automatically generate that communion. Often, it simply marks a small step you're taking in that direction. But that step is the very core of the right beginning.

2. Identify the needs of the audience. This is absolutely crucial to using the defining moment. The defining moment is all about human relationships, and you cannot have a rich relationship with someone unless and until you understand their needs.

3. Once you've chosen an audience and identified their needs, go back and select one of the EXPERIENCES you wrote about.

At this point, don't try to connect that experience to what you are going to say to your audience. We'll make that connection later. Many speakers try prematurely to make the connection. In doing so, they short-circuit the power of the defining moment. Hold off on making the connection until we've gone through a few more steps.

4. Take each experience and identify the physical facts that gave you the emotion. In my father's case, it was his hand squeezing mine and his smile and gentle words, ""... even I have opportunities.""

5. Have the experience be a solution to the needs of your audience. That solution lies in the lesson the defining moment teaches.

Here is the secret: The defining moment exists not for you to point out what you did, but for you to point out what the audience can do. In other words, your defining moment must become their defining moment. If it doesn't become their defining moment, it doesn't work. Take, for example, my defining moment with my father. All the leaders I've worked with need to get more results than they're presently getting. In fact, the leader who is satisfied with the results he or she is getting doesn't need my help. My methods are not for the satisfied leader. To an audience that needs to get more results, I talk about opportunity, the opportunity to get results. Results are limitless!

When I talk to audiences about such opportunities, I use that defining moment. I say, ""What I'm about to tell you isn't so much about me as it is about you and the unlimited opportunities to get results."" That introduction is vital. It confirms that our interaction is about them and not about me. When my father's words resonate with their deepest needs, the defining moment works. Otherwise, it's a waste of their time.

6. Speak to your audience about your defining moment. Make sure it holds a solution to their needs. Don't have your defining moment stick out awkwardly in your interaction. Have it be a spontaneous, seamless communication said in a natural, relaxed way.

As a leader, you do nothing more important than get results. And the best way for you to get results is not to have people respond to your orders but to motivate them to be your ardent cause leaders. We never know how good we are as leaders unless we are motivating people to be better than they think they are. The defining moment goes a long way in helping make that motivation possible.

2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

About the author: 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 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 www.actionleadership.com

The Leadership Imperative: Making Your Leadership Your Life

Author: Brent Filson

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

Word count: 468

Summary: The author describes a vision of leadership that you can use throughout your career. It's a vision that will also help enrich your life.

The Leadership Imperative: Making Your Leadership Your Life by Brent Filson

Nearly all leaders I've encountered are underachievers. They're getting a fraction of the results they are capable of. And in most cases, it's their fault. Their failures are the result of the choices they make. For the opportunities to consistently get more results are all around them all the time, theirs for the taking.

For instance, to start getting more results than you are accustomed to getting, you simply have to change your mind-set. You should aim to make your leadership your life and your life your leadership. If you don't, you diminish both your leadership and your life.

To have the change in mind-set really sink in so it changes you in a deep, fundamental way, you must cultivate two dynamics: a vision of the purpose of your leadership, and the dedication to realize that purpose.

The word ""vision"" has been used and misused ad nauseam. The trouble is that most leaders misunderstand it. When they think ""vision"", they look at themselves, at what they can do for themselves. To do well for yourself, an inward focus is the wrong place to look.

Here's a vision that you can carry with you for the rest of your career, for the rest of your life. I call it the Leadership Imperative.

I WILL LEAD PEOPLE IN SUCH A WAY THAT THEY NOT ONLY ACHIEVE THE RESULTS WE NEED BUT THEY ALSO BECOME BETTER AS PEOPLE AND AS LEADERS.

This vision has two parts: one is result-accomplishments and the other is the betterment of the people.

You are never more powerful as a leader as when, in getting results, you are helping others be better than they are -- even better than thought they could be. Guided by the Leadership Imperative, you'll find that the jobs you take on, the career(s) you have, will, in terms of your doing well by them, take care of themselves.

However, vision alone is not enough. You must be dedicated to realizing it. Realizing this vision means living not an easy life for ourselves but a hard life for others.

There are many ways to make such realization happen, and it should be our life's journey to find them and put them into action. The point is that when you turn the focus of your ambitions away from yourself and toward other people, when you become truly ambitious for their success, your success will take care of itself.

How do we really let our leadership sink deeply into our life and change it and shape it throughout our lives? By dedicating ourselves to passionately realizing the Leadership Imperative.

2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

About the author: 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 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 www.actionleadership.com

Leadership Success and Its Greatest Barrier: the Law of Administrivia

Author: Gerald Czarnecki

Years ago, a very wise, and often cynical boss of mine asked me for a definition of management. After reflecting on the question I proceeded to give him an intellectually careful and, I thought, accurate definition. He allowed me to complete the answer and then came back with his definition which was, "Management is just one darn thing after another." After having a good laugh, I thought about his remark and concluded that he had basically identified what makes life so challenging for those in leadership positions. The flow of "things to do" never seems to stop.

How often have you gone home at the end of a day feeling frustrated because you had accomplished far less than you had planned? How many times has your "To Do" list grown by more items in one day than you marked off in a whole week? For most of us, this has happened far too often.

The larger problem is that the "To Do" list we make for ourselves gets longer because somebody else adds to that list…more often than not, our boss. Frequently that list seems to be growing by an endless number of tasks that have more benefit to someone else, and very little benefit to getting our jobs done. While the list grows longer with these less critical items, our own list of critical, mission essential items seems to get more and more delinquent.

Most leaders are faced with conflicting priorities and almost invariably somebody else is making the decision as to what our priorities must be. It could be a boss, but it can also be a customer, a vendor or even an organizational peer. In short, demands on our time come from many places, and all too often those demands appear to be less essential than our own priorities. The real tragedy, however, is that most of us also opt to complete the priorities of others before we accomplish our own. This is not irrational, but it is often the wrong choice.

One of the long-standing principles in economics is called Gresham's law. It states that if two currencies are circulating in an economy—one a high-quality currency that everybody trusts and believes in and the other a poor-quality currency that everybody thinks has substantial risk—then "the bad currency will drive out the good currency." This means that everybody will want to hoard the good currency and give the bad to other people whenever they can.

In leading, the same principle applies. I call it "The Law of Administrivia." That Law postulates that… Required or less useful activity drives out desirable and useful activity. In other words, people will do the tasks that they think are easy, trivial, and required first, in order to get them out of the way. Then, with the time left over, they will do what is desirable or useful but not required. In short, people will do trivial administrative tasks (what I term "administrivia") first just to avoid trouble with the boss. Then they concentrate on that which they know to be useful. Unfortunately this creates a dilemma since the amount of administrivia grows once the boss concludes you are able to handle what you have already been given to accomplish. That boss continues to pile on the work.

Eventually you do less and less of what you want or need to do and much more of the administrative work. Worse still, since administrivia is usually easy work, while being a leader is hard work, guess which work you end up spending more time on? The easy jobs. After a while, all that gets done is the required, the trivial, and maybe even the useless.

Of course, not all administrative work is meaningless or trivial. Indeed, much of the success in an organization rests on process and process controls. The science of modern management demands that we have process wrapped around the technical work. From Frederick Taylor and his scientific management to Peter Drucker and his focus on management as a profession, we have been told that all that Planning, Organizing, Controlling stuff is essential to success.

The hierarchy of every company needs to know what is happening and how the business is running, so even in the smallest of companies there will be a seemingly endless string of reports. These reports range from volume counts, to process controls, to the financial plans, budgets and actual performance measurements. In any given day, it often seems that we could literally spend most of the day completing reports.

If reports and other administrivia activities are all that a work leader has time for, then they will ultimately hamper the leader's effectiveness. Every one of us who are responsible for "getting work accomplished" must spend time being a leader of the staff. This means spending "face time" with our associates, helping them understand what is expected of them and making certain that they are competent to achieve results. This is hard work and can be very time consuming, but it is essential work.

Bosses often forget how much time and energy real leadership really takes. Leaders who use planning, organization and control as effective tools to handle the work flow will have more time available for leader work. Those who allow the administrivia to consume their time and energy will have nothing left for leadership. If the administrative work is effective, then you will be free to lead. If it is not, then you will be a less effective leader.

Parts of the Law of Administrivia have been recognized for some time. Saul Gellerman wrote in 1968, "The simple fact is that most managerial jobs are already more than full-time jobs. The typical manager has more than enough to worry about. His typical solution is to arrange his problems in order of priority, deal with the ones he has time for, and just ignore the rest. In other words, that which is urgent gets done and that which is merely important frequently doesn't." What we are adding is that frequently the urgent is not essential to the mission but rather just easier to ask for or to accomplish.

Look at the activities you engage in and determine if they are critical to your efforts to succeed. If you are spending time doing tasks other than leadership actions, then you are wasting time. If your efforts to lead are frustrated because you are preoccupied with administrative tasks, then you need to find a way to break loose from the constraints of those activities. You will find leader actions need not be so time-consuming that you have no time for anything else. In fact, if you do the leader work well, you will have plenty of time for administrative tasks. The only way you are going to break loose is when you realize that leader work is the only way to achieve your goals and objectives. It is the "good work." You must fight the natural and destructive tendency to be ruled by "The Law of Administrivia." For more go to www.deltennium.com/articles.php

About the author: Mr. Czarnecki helps organizations achieve peak performance through effective leadership, focused strategy, effective organization and sound financial management. He also speaks and conducts seminars on corporate governance and his book, You're In Charge…What Now? provides work leaders with seven principles for peak performance, all of which tie to the simple to remember mnemonic "L.E.A.D.E.R.S." http://www.deltennium.com

Leadership For Deep Results: Without Them Are You Wasting Your Leadership And Your Life? (Part One)

Author: Brent Filson

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

Word count: 580

Summary: The author asserts there are two kinds of results leaders achieve, standard results and deep results. All leaders know what standard results are, but few leaders know what deep results are. In the long run, standard results, though necessary, are far less important than deep results.

Leadership For Deep Results: Without Them Are You Wasting Your Leadership And Your Life? (Part One) by Brent Filson

I've challenged all leaders I have worked with during the past two decades to achieve ""more results faster continually.""

They can get on track to start achieving such results not by working harder and longer but by slowing down and using Leadership Talks on a daily basis.

However, I also tell them that getting on the more-results-faster-continually track is not an end but a beginning. They must then begin focusing not just on the quantity and speed of results but the kind of results they aim to achieve.

There are roughly two kinds of results, standard results and deep results. Most leaders understand standard results but fail to come to grips with deep results. In fact, these leaders go through their entire careers getting the former, but they don't have a clue about the latter. Of course, standard results are necessary. But in the long run, they are far less important than deep results.

We know what standard results are. They are the results we must get in our jobs, such as: speed, productivity, operations efficiencies, sales closes, sales leads, sales to new customers, failure prevention, health and safety advancements, quality, training, quality control, logistics efficiencies, marketing targets, new revenue streams, sales erosion, price calibrations, cost reductions, demand flow activities and technologies, inventory turns, cycle time reductions, materials and parts management, etc.

Whereas achieving standard results enables us to do a better job and have a better career, deep results are different. Deep results are about being better leaders. Of course, being a better leader will have a positive impact on your job and your career. But there is something else involved: Being a better leader means being a better person. Who we are as a leader and who we are as a person should be the same thing. If they're not, we diminish both our leadership and the person we are.

Look at it this way: Standard results are about ""doing""; deep results are about ""being"". Our most important achievements as leaders are not just what we achieve but who we become in that achieving.

For instance, if we don't get standard results in our job, we fail in that job or at least in that particular aspect of the job.

But in the realm of deep results, such failure might lead to success if in that failure, we find a better way to lead, a better way to be better.

Here are some ways deep results differ from standard results.

--Deep results emerge over longer periods of time.

--Deep results encompass wider circles outside your job, usually impacting your family, friends, and relatives.

--Deep results are often not conventionally successful results. They can come in the guise of failure.

--Deep results can't be quantified. They're usually a quality of living or being.

--Deep results are often not immediately apparent. Usually, you become aware of them after they appear and sometimes long after they appear.

--Deep results are formed in your inner life and the choices you make over the things you control, your opinions, aspirations, and desires.

--Deep results shape, and are shaped by, character. How does one go about getting deep results? There are many paths up this mountain. But one path is straight and steep and clear. In Part Two, I'll show you that path and provide examples of deep results in action.

2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

About the author: 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 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 www.actionleadership.com

In Leadership, The Eight Ways Of Right Action. (Part 1)

Author: Brent Filson

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

Word count: 757

Summary: Results don't happen unless people take action. But there are right and wrong ways to take action. Here are eight ways of right action that every leader must challenge the people they lead to take.

In Leadership, The Eight Ways Of Right Action. (Part 1) by Brent Filson

The ancient Greeks had a saying: ""When Aschines speaks, the people say, 'How well he speaks,' but when Demosthenes speaks, the people say, 'Let's march against Philip!'"".

To get the best results as a leader, the people you lead should be saying in one way or the other after you speak, ""Let's march!""

When you speak to people as a leader, it's not what you say that's really important, what's important is the action people take after you have had your say. And if you are not having the people you lead take the right action, you're giving short shrift to your leadership, their trust in you, and their desire to take action for you.

Here are the 8 ways of right action to get people marching in the right way for the right purpose at the right time in the right direction.

I'll delineate the first four ways in part one of this two-part article then in part two, I'll describe the last four ways.

Action must be: (1) PHYSICAL. Action is not what the audience thinks or feels. It is what the audience actually does. Usually, the audience takes action with their feet and hands and tools. When thinking of what action you want your audience to take, imagine their actually doing something physical, and you are on track. Getting your audience to take right action involves challenging them to do one specific thing. When Ronald Reagan said in his speech at the Berlin Wall, ""Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"" he was delivering a call-to-action that was a stunning turning point in the Cold War. In your day to day leadership activities, you are probably not meeting such daunting challenges as winning a war, but you can use the principle to raise the effectiveness of your leadership to much higher levels.

(2) PURPOSEFUL. People who take action are useless to an organization. It is only those people who take action for results who are useful. Make sure their action has purpose. The secret of success is constancy of purpose. When your audience does take action, they should know exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it. Purpose in leadership talk has three aspects: reason, feeling and awareness. People should understand the rational justification for the action; they should have an emotional commitment to the action; and be fully mindful that they are taking action.

(3) HONEST. If you trick people into taking action or lie to get them to take action, you'll damage that element on which all motivation is based, trust. Afterward, you may be able to order them to do a job, but you will never motivate them. Be honest with yourself in developing your call-to-action. Marcus Aurelius said, ""Never esteem anything as an advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect."" Be honest with them in challenging them to act. I do not recommend this merely on trustworthy grounds but on eminently practical ones as well. After all, we do not know how good we are as leaders unless we are challenging the people to be better than they think they are. And they cannot be persuaded to accept that challenge if they think we're deceiving them or that you are deceiving yourself.

(4) MEANINGFUL. Action gives meaning to the emotion your audience feels. Emotion alone cannot get results. It's action that gets results. Action validates emotion, and vice versa.

Leaders who find little meaning in their jobs or the results associated with those jobs, shouldn't be leaders, or they should change jobs and/or results. Most leaders understand this. But few leaders understand that meaning also involves the jobs of the people they are leading and the attitudes of those people toward those jobs and the results the jobs aim for.

Your cause should be meaningful to the people who must carry it out. If it is only your cause and not their cause, the action they take will get insufficient results. Your cause will be meaningful to them when that actions they take to meet the challenges of that cause are solving the problems of THEIR needs. So, before you challenge them to take action, identify their needs and the problem solving actions.

2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

About the author: 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 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

In Leadership, The Eight Ways Of Right Action. (Part 2)

Author: Brent Filson

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

Word count: 687

Summary: Results don't happen unless people take action. But there are right and wrong ways to take action. Here are eight ways of right action that every leader must challenge the people they lead to take.

In Leadership, The Eight Ways Of Right Action. (Part 2) by Brent Filson

In Part 1, I said that leaders who can't have people take right action are ineffective, and I listed four of the eight ways of right action. In Part 2, I'll describe the remaining four ways.

Action must be: (5) LINKED TO NEED. The people's needs are their reality. If you are an order leader, you clearly do not have to know their needs. You simply exhibit a my-way-or-the-highway attitude. But if you want to motivate them to take action, you need to understand that reality. Because their motivation is not your choice, it's their choice. Your role is to communicate, their role is to motivate, to motivate themselves. It's their choice. It's not yours. So their needs are not only their reality, in the leadership equation, their needs are the only reality. They don't care about your needs. They don't care about your reality. They only care about their reality. Tie the action you want them to take to THEIR NEEDS, not yours. Which means of course that you have to clearly identify their needs.

(6) URGENT: Patience is a virtue, but it can also be a tender trap. Urgency is a results-multiplier. A Roman centurion said the secret to instilling urgency in the troops was summed up in two words, ""hit them."" His credo lives today in the order leader -- not necessarily in a physical sense but more importantly in a psychological sense. But trying to gain urgency through ""hit them"" is far less effective than having urgency come from the people's internal motivation. Here's a process to have people take urgent action: IDENTIFY THEIR NEEDS, SEE THE PROBLEMS IN THEIR NEEDS, AND HAVE THEIR TAKING ACTION PROVIDE SOLUTIONS TO THOSE PROBLEMS.

For instance, in a police academy, an instructor came into the room with a note that said CLEAR OUT THIS ROOM IMMEDIATELY. The first cadet ordered his colleagues out. A few cadets left but most stayed. The instructor handed the note to a second cadet who pleaded for his classmates to leave. Again, a few left but most stayed. Finally, the instructor gave the note to a third cadet. This cadet understood how to identify needs and have people take action to solve those needs. He said two words, which emptied the room. ""Lunch break!""

People are always willing to take ardent action to solve the problems of their needs. The question is can you identify those needs. Once you do, you hare half way home to getting them to take such action.

(7) DEADLINE: All action you have people take must have a deadline. Otherwise, it might become a low priority for them, and they will not be especially urged to take it. Be constantly monitoring yourself when motivating people to take action by asking, ""Have I a put a deadline to this action?"" If you haven't, do it.

(8) FED BACK: True motivation isn't what the people do in your sight. True motivation is what they do after they have left your sight. Many leaders get the ""head fake"" from the people they're leading -- their nodding their heads and saying, ""Yes,"" face-to-face with the leader; but inside saying, ""No."" When they leave your presence, they do what they want, not what you want. Make sure that the action you challenge them to take is fed back to you, so that you are aware -- and they are aware that you are aware -- of that action.

Leaders do nothing more important than get results, and results come from people taking action.

The trouble is, most leaders have people get a fraction of the potential results because these leaders misunderstand what action really is -- and in that misunderstanding misapply and misuse it.

When speaking to people, keep the eight ways of right action in mind so people take the right action to achieve the right results.

2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

About the author: 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 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

Is Your Leadership Is Effective?

Author: Michael Beck

In many ways, good leadership is hard to define. It can't be directly measured. There's no leadership ""score"" or report card. In fact often the measure of leadership is qualitative rather than quantitative - although quantitative results always follow. So, the questions remains, how can you tell if your leadership skills are effective?

Plain and simple, leadership is about getting others to take action. If leadership effectiveness is lacking, less than best effort is put forth. The better the leadership, the better the effort. Exceptional leadership inspires the best effort in others.

Effective leadership is a function of both individual competencies and organizational culture. What are some signs that leadership isn't as effective as it could be? There are a number of them. They are indications that something is missing in the leadership equation.

* Inability to Motivate People * Difficulty Attracting/Retaining the Right People * Low Productivity * Poor Customer Orientation * High Stress * Isolation * Declining Profits * Ineffective Delegation * Lack of Creativity * Lack of Initiative * Ineffective Teams * Poor Communications * Lack of Vision * Diminishing Revenues * High Turnover

What can be done to improve leadership effectiveness? The answer is simple to understand and yet not so simple to implement. It starts with understanding the foundations of what makes someone an effective leader and what kind of organizational culture is most effective.

Effective Personal Leadership

When I ask workshop participants about characteristics of both good and bad leaders, the list never includes issues of intelligence, technical skills, or effective decision-making! Instead, the list is full of people-related traits – good listener, respectful, good communicator, develops others, …

Effective personal leadership can be summarized as being competent in these skill sets:

* Becoming Influential * Facilitating Teamwork & Collaboration * Being a Catalyst for Change * Managing Conflict * Developing Others * Having & Communicating a Compelling Vision

Unfortunately, improving one's competency in these areas is often a challenge. Let me explain why… Unlike factual information, which gets processed in the neo-cortex of the brain, people-related skills are processed in part of the brain called the amygdala. This portion of the brain regulates emotional insights and responses rather than logical insights and responses. Improving the leadership skills set forth above require one to break old habits/responses and form new ones, and we aren't able to do this simply by learning and acquiring knowledge. That's the difference between the neo-cortex and the amygdala.

There are a couple of inherent challenges with this process. Pretty much everyone acknowledges that they have room for improvement. The first challenge is knowing which areas to improve. We all have blind spots. We're aware of some of our shortcomings, but usually not all of them. Secondly, breaking habits and forming new ones requires commitment, persistence, and time. It usually takes support from others – people who can point out when you've acted in a way contradictory to your intent. It's important to use a reliable assessment to identify areas of growth opportunity. From those results, we can develop a plan of development which bolsters weaker areas and leverages stronger areas. The final aspect of a successful personal development plan relies on having one or more people who can support you, give unbiased, non-judgmental feedback, and help you make course corrections.

Organizational Culture

The foundations of a strong organization are:

1. Developing a clear and compelling Purpose 2. Identifying the organization's Mission to achieve the Purpose 3. Agreeing on a set of Values by which to carry out the Mission 4. Adopting a Servant Leader attitude throughout the organization

An organization's Purpose is the ""Why"" of its existence. It's not what it does as much as what it is striving to accomplish. It is a statement of the greater good it is attempting to achieve. It answers the question: ""Why are we here?"" and helps give clarity and focus to each person in the organization. It is the yardstick by which decisions are measured.

An organization's Mission is the ""What"" of an organization. It is a definition of what the company does to achieve its stated Purpose. It begins to define the core proficiencies of a business and helps keep it focused on achieving its Purpose.

An organization's set of Values is the ""How"" of an organization. It defines what an organization most values in the execution of its Mission. It's not an all encompassing list of possible values as much as a statement of what the organization most values in its people and their conduct. It defines behaviors and culture within an organization. It helps set the guidelines of what is and is not acceptable.

At the core of Servant Leadership is the premise that the customer is the most important person to the organization. As a consequence of that premise, it only follows that the most important people to the customer are the frontline staff. They're the people who customers interact with on a daily basis. This understanding leads to the philosophy that the job of the manager of the frontline people is to make their jobs as easy and effective as possible so the customer has the best experience possible. The result is an organizational chart that looks like an inverted pyramid. This servant attitude focuses leaders on developing those around them. It leads to people working together in a collaborative, solution-oriented environment.

How does one go about developing Purpose, Mission, and Values? Falling back on our understanding of Servant Leadership and the importance of everyone in the organization, the creation of Purpose, Mission and Values requires input from people in all areas of the company. They (the Purpose, Mission, and Values) need to be relevant to all involved, they need to be consistent with one another, and they need to be used consistently as a yardstick for decisions and policies. There's nothing worse than developing Values and just paying them lip-service by not living them day-to-day. A practice like that lacks integrity and actually becomes a demoralizer.

In summary, when we combine personal competency in all areas of leadership skills with an organizational culture which supports people, their development, and their success, we end up with exceptional leadership which, in turn, inspires the best effort in others.

About the author: Written by Michael Beck, President of Exceptional Leadership, Inc. a firm which develops exceptional leaders through leadership enhancement and executive coaching. Michael can be reached at 877-977-8956 or mbeck@XLeaders.com , and you can learn more about the company and these ideas at www.XLeaders.com Permission to reprint with full attribution. © 2005 Exceptional Leadership, Inc.

Leadership For Deep Results: Without Them Are You Wasting Your Leadership And Your Life? (Part Two)

Author: Brent Filson

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

Word count: 811

Summary: The author asserts there are two kinds of results leaders achieve, standard results and deep results. All leaders know what standard results are, but few leaders know what deep results are. In the long run, standard results, though necessary, are far less important than deep results.

Leadership For Deep Results: Without Them Are You Wasting Your Leadership And Your Life? (Part Two) by Brent Filson

How does one go about getting deep results? There are many paths up this mountain. But one path is straight and steep and clear. That is the path of the Leadership Imperative.

I WILL LEAD PEOPLE IN SUCH A WAY THAT THEY NOT ONLY ACHIEVE THE RESULTS WE NEED BUT THEY ALSO BECOME BETTER AS LEADERS AND AS PEOPLE.

The Imperative has two parts: one is results-accomplishments and the other is self betterment.

You are never more powerful as a leader as when, in getting results, you are helping others be better than they are -- even better than thought they could be. Guided by the Leadership Imperative, you'll find yourself realizing deep results.

Deep results are not a measurement or a direction. They are not a central purpose. They are a process of being. They are not something achieved. They are an achieving — taking place not at a special place in a special time but at every place at all times.

You are deep results before you know that you are. Though deep results are easy, though often they do not come easily.

We are this mind/body in this space/time continuum. We know that. But to realize it, we must live it. To live it, we must seek it in our living. And that knowing and living and seeking is deep results.

The task that we shoulder reveals our heart to the world. Deep results show our soul to the world.

Examples of deep results:

--With the disasters of the Franco-Prussia War tumbling down upon Paris, a remarkable event took place, the word of which spread like wildfire through the city. The great author Victor Hugo, exiled for 19 years, had come back to Paris. Traveling through German lines, through the war-ravaged countryside, he had come into the city on virtually the last train. He had come to share the sufferings with the Parisians in their darkest hour when his arriving meant virtual imprisonment in the city. Throngs gathered at the station to applaud him. One man shouted over the crowd, ""If defeat brings us Victor Hugo, we couldn't be better rewarded!"" – deep results.

--Doug Collins, member of the '72 U.S. Olympic team that ultimately lost the gold medal on a disputed call to the Soviet Union, describes the dramatic moments at the end of the game. We're losing by one. The Soviets have the ball. The clock's running out. I hide behind the center, bait a guy into throwing a pass, knock it loose and grab it. A Russian goes under me as I'm going up for the lay-up. I'm KO'd for a second. The coaches run to me. John Bach, one of the assistants, says, 'We gotta get somebody to shoot the fouls."" But coach Hank Iba says, 'If Doug can walk, he'll shoot.' That electrified me. The coach believed in me. I can't even remember feeling any pressure. Three dribbles, spin the ball, toss it in, same as in my backyard. I hit 'em both and got the lead. I didn't know what I was made of until then."" –deep results.

--Herb Rammrath, a General Electric client of mine in the late 1980s, told me this. ""I was a young Naval officer reporting with many other new sailors aboard an aircraft carrier. The captain met us in a formation on the flight deck. He shook my hand and went down the line greeting many other sailors. I didn't think anything of it until several weeks later when he passed by me in a passageway. He said, 'Hi, Herb!' I never forgot that. He remembered my name despite the fact that he had met scores of new sailors that day. It's made a tremendous impact on me till this day."" –deep results.

--Seeing abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison dragged with a rope down a Boston Street, Wendell Phillips became so outraged that he joined the abolitionist movement and became one of its most effective activists. –deep results.

Many people go through their careers ignorant of deep results. But when you view your career as a whole, don't you think that the ultimate yardstick of your life should be deep results? Deep results are not about getting but giving, not about doing but becoming, not about material accumulation but about the enrichment of human relationships. From now on, when thinking about getting results in your jobs and your career, think too of the deep results you should achieve.

2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

About the author: 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 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 www.actionleadership.com

A New Time For Leadership

Author: Judi Singleton

In today's fast changing world the challenges presented for leadership are ever changing. Old methods are constantly changing and new leaders must change with them. These demands for leadership are changing so fast that there is now a lack of people to fill these positions. In this ever changing enviroment of global business reform is now definitely called for in doing business.

If organisations are to succeed in this changing enviroment leaders must be skilled at using their staffs to their full potential, giving the customer excellent care, have an ability to forsee and implement use of technology, and not least the ability to work cross culturally. What is needed today is leadership that are visionary.

They are first and formost dreamers. They can envision dreams and inspire others to blossom to their full potential by encouraging them to dream.

They are able to build global trust and use our diversities to dream beyond anything that has ever been known to man before this time.

The future CEO will be ask to balance broader social roles that companies are being ask to play all over the world. They will be asked to manage a diverse multicultural workforce and not the least of these talents will the future CEO will be ask to handle the painful ethical issues that arise out of the intersection of business and technology.

This new leader will use their understanding of trends in a dynamic environment to craft a sound strategic direction. They will create movement by motivating key players to overcome the obstacles they encounter along the way. These obstacles will be many and one of the biggest will be the CEO's themselves working with a diverse multicultural enviroment.

As we step into the future all who do global business will have to possess the ability to build alliances and business partnerships. In the International markets there is an overriding imperative to form alliances and partnerships. The new leader will have to be able to form and negotiate these partnerships. They will be have to be able to gain lower cost production through scale, and be able to know and navigate the regulatory enviroment of foreign countries.

Keeping others focused and working as a team in an enviroment that may be new to the leader as well as the team is especially challenging.

Being the mentor, coach, even communication can be difficult in an environment where cultural norms, symbols and values are all Also working where political, regulatory and business landscape can change quickly and without warning. Keeping up with these changes as well as motivating others in this kind of enviroment can certainly be challenging.

Leader who aspire to business leadership positions, particularly in globalising companies, must look and assess their talents and abilities in all the above areas. If they do not possess these qualities they must ask themselves how they will educate themselves in these areas. Many of these areas are not something one can obtain through education perhaps through mentoring, but one thing is solid in the evaluation of self for the new leadership position is it will take great sensitivity and the ability to be flexible. True leaders are born with a attitude of learning from others, learning as they go along, sensitivity, and respect. Their true education comes in experiences. There has always been and will always be a shortage of these kinds of leaders.

About the author: Judi Singleton is a free lance writer and publishers she publishes ten blogs a week if you would like to join one of her blogs go to http://www.motherearthpublishing.com

The Secret of High-Trust Leadership

Author: Joe DiSabatino

A good friend of mine, C, was the manager of the human factors group for a telecommunications software engineering company. Her boss called her aside one day. It turned out that the CEO of the company had noticed and complained that a number of her team members were regularly seen hanging around, small-talking in one office. That's not what he was paying them to do, the CEO complained. Didn't she notice what was happening? Her boss instructed C. to pass on the reprimand and see to it that the situation improved.

C. knew her team was a bright, highly productive group. They were also mostly new hires, just forming their sense of team and how they would work together. The timing for this type of reprimand was lousy. She didn't want to do it, but she knew she had to do something.

She called her group together, and began with, ""I know you're a great team and you've done everything I've asked you to do, oftentimes more."" She then described the issue to them without criticism, saying that there was a problem in how they were being perceived by the CEO, that it was serious, and that it needed to be cleared up immediately.

Instead of warning them, she asked them to come up with the best course of action to change their boss' perceptions, so he would get a more accurate picture of the hard work they ere actually doing. Rather than get defensive or hurt, the team took up the challenge and together they found a set of solutions that worked beautifully. The best part for C. was that a potential trust-damaging episode actually improved her credibility with her team. And in fact it improved her respect for them, as well.

After the success of her managerial experiment, she decided to relate to her team all the time in that way. ""Whether things are going well or not,"" she told me, ""I've let go of 'I know best, here's what you should do,' and instead I've embraced, 'You're excellent, I'm proud of you, and here's a problem we're facing, so let's brainstorm together'."" It wasn't always as directly spoken as that, but as a general place to come from, she found it very powerful.

Doing this had a strong impact on the quality of their work and productivity, she discovered. Enough to get noticed. A few months after C. started this form of trust-building with her team, her boss one day called her a ""natural manager,"" something he had never said to her before in five years with the company.

Some time later, when the telecommunications industry slid into decline, all thirty engineers and the entire support staff for her office were let go, leaving only her team left. ""We were absolutely stunned. They basically kept the office open just for the five of us to keep doing our work. Ordinarily an R&D group like ours would be let go first, yet here we were. I think it was because we listened, took challenging problems and came up with creative solutions for the company. It really wasn't me, it was them.""

There are some good lessons in this story about creating high-level trust. Trust, like all other worthwhile qualities, comes in degrees. My interest is helping leaders take their capacity for inspiring trust to the highest possible level. When C. said, ""...here's a problem we're facing, let's brainstorm together,"" she hit on a powerful source of inspired leadership. She had discovered that her unique gift as a leader was giving people the room to find their own greatness.

Every leader will have something different to offer. To get at your own version of what C. had hit on, ask yourself this question: what qualities do I bring to my leadership role that make me unique at what I do? These are the qualities that you feel are important to share. Sometimes they are the way you often wish others would treat you (rather than the way they do). They will nearly always also be the qualities that are responsible for your professional and economic success.

What do I mean by qualities? I'm talking about the particular life-enhancing virtues that you give to people at work when you are operating at your best as a leader. People will feel most inspired by your leadership guidance when you're simultaneously drawing on your personality strengths, your core values, and your expertise. For some leaders it is their sense of humor that inspires, for others it is caring, or thoroughness, poise under pressure, unflagging enthusiasm, or the ability to help people think creatively or to discover their greatness.

A good way to identify your unique leadership gift is to remember a specific time at work when you felt particularly good about what was happening between you and a person or team you manage, or between you and your boss. Try to identify the positive inner qualities these people were receiving from you at the time that met their needs and made them feel good about you.

Perhaps their confidence or peace of mind or ability to see light at the end of the tunnel went way up as a result of what you said and did. Is this something that people receive from you when you are at your best? If so, then that's your gift.

Keep this alive in as many ways as you can. So if you identified something like ""I'm great at supporting creative business people who want to turn their bold ideas into marketable products,"" then why not add that phrase to the way you think about your current job or position? ""As the Director of New Product Development I actually get paid to do what I love the most--helping a team of creative business people keep their confidence and vision alive through the difficult process of turning great ideas into marketable products.""

You see the difference? You are shining the light on the very thing that makes you great--the unique gift that people receive from you. Sometimes you just forget or lose sight of your gift in the daily grind. By reminding yourself what it is that you give people, you'll be able to use it more consciously and consistently.

But how often do we fail to recognize and acknowledge in ourselves this avenue to greatness? It's easy to take our unique strengths for granted--""well, that's no big deal, that's just who I am."" The next time someone asks you what you do, you might try replying with a variation of your leadership theme instead of giving your job title right off. ""You know how difficult it is to get a new product idea into the marketplace? Well, what I do is...""

When you fully and humbly and proudly take possession of your unique leadership gift and use it more and more intentionally, you may find that it's the key to your career success. As a result of promotions, your gift will ""naturally"" find wider and wider avenues for expression.

About the author: Joe DiSabatino helps companies turn aroud morale problems by building high-trust work environments with an emphasis on integrity and core values. For more information go to: www.phoenixleadership.com

Blueprint for Leadership - How to Be a Better Leader

Author: Steve Kaye

If you were to build a house, you would begin with a blueprint. This blueprint proves useful because it contains more than directions on how to build a house. It also describes the finished house.

So, what does this have to do with leadership?

Last month I asked an audience of leaders to tell me the characteristics of an ideal leader. Their answers were (in the order collected):

A good listener, enthusiasm, passion, shows appreciation, a visionary, role model, trusting, integrity, organized, knowledgeable, credibility, persuasive, charisma, team building, clarity of purpose, problem solver, attitude of service, leads by example, patience, willing to act without complete knowledge, understands followers, consistent, empowers other people, and adapts to change.

I'll add that this is essentially the same list that I receive from other audiences when I ask this question. From this comes some useful insights.

1) Notice what the list contains. All of these characteristics relate to the human side of leadership. That's interesting because I often hear people minimize this side of leadership with terms like ""soft"" or ""touchy feely."" Actually, applying these characteristics requires more strength than not.

2) Notice what the list excludes. Absent from this list (and all lists from other programs) are characteristics such as stern, mean, serious, short tempered, vindictive, tough, angry, harsh, punitive, controlling, violent, or ruthless. And that's interesting because many popular representations of leadership emphasize at least one of these ""hard"" characteristics. In fact, these characteristics are the refuge of those who lack the strength (or the skills) to apply the human side of leadership.

3) How about you? How would you rate yourself as a leader compared to the list of positive characteristics? If you were to survey the people who report to you, how would they describe your leadership? Would they list characteristics from the ""soft"" list or from the ""hard"" list? Could you become more effective by improving upon any of the ""soft"" characteristics? And how about the other leaders in your organization? Do they truly maximize human potential?

People want leaders who treat them with genuine compassion, courtesy, and respect. They want leaders who help them become more successful. They want leaders who inspire them with a vision for a better world and show them how to go there.

About the author: IAF Certified Professional Facilitator and author Steve Kaye works with leaders who want to hold effective meeting. His innovative workshops have informed and inspired people nationwide. His facilitation produces results that people will support. Call 714-528-1300 or visit his web site for over 100 pages of valuable ideas. Sign up for his free newsletter at http://www.stevekaye.com

Leadership

Author: Gary Glasscock

Copyright 2005 Gary Glasscock

Webster's defines leadership as : "1. the office of position of a leader, 2. capacity to lead, 3. the act of instance of leading, 4. LEADERS." Dale Carnegie, founder of the Dale Carnegie Institute and teacher of leadership skills, defines leadership as a mixture of traits and skills that can be learned and honed. John C. Maxwell, founder of INJOY and professional speaker on leadership, agrees with Carnegie, but further states that there are five levels of leadership with the highest level being attained by only a few people.

So what really determines leadership? Does the position or office determine the leader or is it the capacity to lead? Just because a person holds a certain position in a company or in government does not necessarily mean they can be a leader. We can look at out previous President and see that the office does not make the leader. Because a certain individual has been promoted to a leadership position with a company, does that make the person a leader? They are expected to be able to lead, but what truly makes a person a leader? Is it a skill that can be learned, practiced, and enhanced by qualities that we are born with?

Leadership is a combination of traits, qualities, and skills that not only learned and practiced, but are not necessarily inherent qualities that a person is born with. To develop leadership we must become students of human relations. The we can become goon communicators and listeners, offer genuine appreciation and praise to others, and show others the respect they deserve. WE then must learn not to be overly critical, to harness enthusiasm, give people a good reputation to live up to, and keep a sense of fun and balance in out lives. These are all good qualities that one must strive to obtain to become a leader of people. Not only will they then reap the rewards of being a leader, but they will also begin to develop others into leaders, thus expanding their influence as well as building up the organization they are associated with. Not only is that a trait of a good leader but also that is a responsibility the leader must live up to if they wish to become a great leader. In his book, "Developing the Leader Within You," John C. Maxwell lists the five levels of leadership as:

1.Position – the lowest level of leadership, based solely on title and position. 2.Permission – as relationships are developed with others, they give permission to the leader to be led beyond the limits of his/hers job description. 3.Production – as the group becomes more productive together, leadership is advanced. 4.People Development – developing people and assisting them to reach their potential. 5.Personhood – this requires a lifetime of developing others to their highest potential.

As we can see, the development of people into leaders is level four and wen a leader reaches this level, they indeed have become a great leader.

Why would anyone want to become a leader and exactly who can be seen as a leader? The obvious answers would be a boss, a pastor, a government official, a coach, and a corporate executive. There is another more important position that most people overlook when asked to list people that are leaders and that is teachers. Teachers should strive to reach level five more than anyone because due to their position they have the opportunity to influence the future of our country by influencing the minds of our children. Parents should also strive to become the best leaders they can so that they can positively influence their children and help to make our country, perhaps even our world, a better place as an end result. The latter definitely have been lacking in their duties as leaders for many years as can be seen by observing Generation Xers as they pass through our institutions of higher learning and ultimately into the work force of today. Most of these individuals have never been exposed to quality leadership in the home or at school; as a result, they not only lack the understanding of how important leadership qualities are, but fail to ever grasp the concept of leadership.

As parents and teachers we must develop the leaders without ourselves so that we can develop the leaders within our children and make a more positive impact on the lives of others and hopefully turn the situation we are now in around. WE have a responsibility, nay a duty, not only to our children, but also to our country and to the world we live in to do this. We must read the proper books written by quality leaders so that we can learn how to develop ourselves and "lead by example." When we ourselves learn what makes good leaders and practice these learned traits, we will find that in the end not only have we become better people for it, but we have helped our children to become better people as well.

About the author: Gary Glasscock provides qualtiy copywriting services to marketers and companies on an as needed basis. If you are in need of copywriting services, visit his website at www.gc-copywriting.com or contact Gary at gary@gc-copywriting.com

Two Leadership Traps: How To Avoid Them. How To Get Out Of them (Part 1)

Author: Brent Filson

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

Word count: 684

Summary: Most people fail in their careers because of leadership deficiencies. A key reason for their failure is they continually and unknowingly keep falling into two leadership traps. The author describes the traps and how to get out of them.

Two Leadership Traps: How To Avoid Them. How To Get Out Of them (Part 1) by Brent Filson

You've heard of the Peter Principle: ""People are promoted to their level of ultimate incompetence"". But what the Peter Principle doesn't tell you is the nature of the incompetence. For the most part, it's leadership incompetence.

A human resources director told me, ""Brent, we hire people for their skills and knowledge, but we fire them or fail to promote them or promote them for their leadership abilities -- or lack thereof.""

In other words, throughout their careers, people are promoted to take charge of bigger and bigger groups -- until they take over a group that's too big for their leadership abilities.

One main reason they come up short in abilities is they are constantly and unconsciously falling into two leadership traps.

I'll describe the traps, how to get out of them, and how not to get into them in the first place.

The traps can be particularly deadly because they are in many cases self-set -- and even self-triggered. What's worse: the vast majority of leaders who get into them don't have a clue they're caught. It's one thing to be in a trap and know you're in it: You try to get out. But it's a problem of another magnitude to be in a trap and not know you're in it. In that case, you'll stay there.

THE FIRST TRAP: ""I need ...""

A marketing leader in a major global company was stumbling. His team was failing to achieve the targeted results. He told me, ""The good news is they do what I tell them. The bad news is they do what I tell them -- ONLY what I tell them. Other than firing the worst of the bunch or transferring others out of the team, I can't figure out what to do. And if I don't do it soon, I'll be the one fired or transferred!""

I asked if I could sit in on a team meeting to scope out the situation. ""Be my guest,"" he said. ""But I don't see what good it'll do. The problem isn't in the meetings. Everybody agrees what needs to get done when they're in the meetings. The problem is the results after the meetings.""

The meeting had been going only for only a couple of minutes when I saw what was wrong. Afterwards, alone in his office, I told him: ""They're not the problem. YOU'RE the problem. You've fallen into two leadership traps.""

He looked at me incredulously. ""What traps?""

I explained that leaders often fall into traps that prevent them from getting the full measure of results they're capable of. And the deadliest traps are often the ones of their own making.

The first trap is the ""I need . . . "" trap.

Leaders fall into this trap when they say, ""I need you to hit the marketing targets, I need you to get more productive, I need you to (fill in the blank)"". I NEED ... I NEED ... I NEED ....

Why is this a trap? The answer: the Leader's Fallacy. The Leader's Fallacy is the mistaken belief by leaders that their own needs are automatically reciprocated by the needs of the people they lead. It's a fallacy because automatic reciprocity doesn't exist. But so many leaders go blithely along driven by the Fallacy and so fall into the ""I need . . . "" trap.

For instance, the marketing leader thought he was motivating people to get great results. However, during the meeting, he was constantly repeating, ""I need ... "". So, in reality, he was ordering people to get average results. Of course, leaders don't order people to get average results. But average results are usually the outcome of order leadership.

The order is the lowest form of motivation. The order leader's focus of my-way-or-the-highway can't get great results from people on a consistent basis simply because people usually can't be ordered to undertake extraordinary endeavors. They must choose to do so. When he said, ""The bad news is they ONLY do what I tell them."", he was unknowingly afflicting them. They were simply responding to an order then going into a kind of suspended animation (masked by busy work) until the next order came along.

In Part 2, I'll describe how to get out of this trap.

2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

About the author: 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 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

Benefits of Leadership Skill Training

Author: CMOE Development Team

DESCRIPTION

CMOE's Leadership Skill Training addresses a wide range of leadership development topics, based on the needs of the audience and scope of delivery. Leadership Skill Training for new leaders might be targeted to help them make the transition from individual contributor to effective leader. For more experienced or advanced audiences, Leadership Skills can address the situational decisions leaders face to either involve their team members in decisions, or to rely more on their own experience, expertise, and responsibility.

The Leadership Skill Training focuses also on strategic thinking skills for leaders at every level of the organization, delegation and communications skills, leadership styles, fundamentals of teamwork, and developing employees.

This "flexible leadership" approach also provides participants with the skills and models necessary to analyze individual situations, identify the relevant characteristics, and make the appropriate decision on the "involvement—sole decision" scale. Rather than always approaching problems or decisions in the same way, flexible leaders recognize that each situation requires an evaluation of several criteria to determine the level of involvement to apply to it. EXPECTED OUTCOMES - PARTICIPANTS INVOLVED IN LEADERSHIP SKILL TRAINING WILL: Understand the role of the effective leader in your organization Assess their own natural leadership style, and identify areas for development and improvement. Learn how to make decisions to involve team members to a lesser or greater degree, depending on the circumstances of each situation. Learn to communicate, delegate, and follow through effectively, to help the team deliver business results and develop group capacities and strengths. EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP SKILL TRAINING SHOULD INCLUDE HANDOUTS & MATERIALS: Comprehensive Participant Manual Full-color, easy-to-use models and tools for application Exercises, sustainability ideas, and practices, to ensure deep penetration of concepts, and implementation of new skills over time.

About the author:

To learn more about CMOE's Leadersh ip Skill Training and the success it is having around the world, visit their website . You can also speak with their Regional Managers at (801) 569-3444.

In Leadership, Dreams Are The Stuff That Great Results Are Made Of

Author: Brent Filson

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

Word count: 919

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

About the author: 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 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

Leadership Coaching at Gettysburg

Author: CMOE Development Team

The battle at Gettysburg is one of the most notable events in U.S. History. It is a battle where more lives were taken than in any other battle in North America. In this small farming community in 1863, George Meade's Union Army comprising of 90,000 troops met Robert Lee's Confederate Army of 75,000. We can read volumes of literature and accounts of heroes, leaders, front-line soldiers and others directly and indirectly impacted by the event. Certainly there are incredible leadership coaching and other lessons from the lives of these men and women and the strategic events which became the critical turning point in the Civil War.

On the morning of the first day of the three day battle, Colonel Joshua L. Chamberlain was faced with a coaching and influence opportunity. As the sun was coming over the horizon, Joshua L. Chamberlain stood before a group of tired soldiers from the Second Maine Brigade. At that point, these men had been participating in heavy battle for weeks and were seeking mutiny. However, due to the number of casualties prior to Gettysburg, their service at this time was desperately needed. Chamberlain explained that he had been instructed to "order" these men to join the brigade or they would be shot. Yet, he calmly informed the troops that he did not plan to follow this instruction. He recognized their suffering, and then explained the necessity of their military service and the role they could play. Chamberlain eloquently proceeded to instill a renewed purpose in these men, helping them to remember why they were involved and had originally enlisted. He referred to their fellow soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice. He sought their commitment to move forward with conviction. "If we lose you, we lose the war, if you join us, I will be grateful." To conclude, he proposed a powerful idea: "Join us," and if so, the situation (the mutiny) would not be revisited. If they chose not to join, he would seek fair treatment in their behalf. "We are moving out" he concluded, and gave them an opportunity to ponder and determine where their commitment would lie.

Shortly thereafter, as the brigade proceeded to Gettysburg Chamberlain wondered if the men would follow his leadership. As it turned out, one hundred and fourteen soldiers (who had originally planned to mutiny) followed this instrumental leader into battle. All but six men were awakened and made the commitment. The rest went on to make history in the crucial defense of "Little Round Top" at Gettysburg.

Effective leadership coaching and influence is not a fad. It is a proven technique that has stood the test of time. Although terminology and external environments may change, the concept is the same, people are a valuable resource and they can be influenced. Looking back at Chamberlain's experience, six men did not make the commitment, and in some situations leadership coaching may not always work perfectly. However, as we face modern crucial battles and attempt to build strong organizations, making the effort to coach is always worth the investment. There are many other instances in history where great leaders utilized some kind of coaching or influence. As leaders today, we face similar challenges that require commitment and sacrifice that only comes from a solid partnership with people. It is as true today as it was back then that "A leader can only achieve excellence through relationships with others."

About the author:

If you would like to learn more about leadership coaching and what thousands of managers have learned around the world over the past 25 years, please contact one of our Regional Managers. They can be reached at (801)569-3444 or visit our website.

Two Leadership Traps: How To Avoid Them. How To Get Out Of them (Part 2)

Author: Brent Filson

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

Word count: 619

Summary: Most people fail in their careers because of leadership deficiencies. A key reason for their failure is they continually and unknowingly keep falling into two leadership traps. The author describes the traps and how to get out of them.

Two Leadership Traps: How To Avoid Them. How To Get Out Of them (Part 2) by Brent Filson

Here's how to get out of, or avoid, the ""I need ... "" trap. It simply involves changing what you think and what you say in very simple ways.

In my working with leaders worldwide for more than two decades, I've noticed a character trait that the most successful share: They focus consistently on understanding and supporting the people whom they lead.

For instance, you could say, ""You need ..."" which is a good way out. Or, you could say, ""The team needs ... "" which is a better way out.

Or, you could say, ""Do you need? ..."" Which is the best way out, especially with a question mark attached. A corollary to this question is, ""What do you need from me to help you get the team to succeed?""

Asking a question rather than using a declarative is often more effective because it gets people reflecting upon their situation. After all, we can't motivate anyone to do anything. They have to motivate themselves. And they best motivate themselves when they reflect on their character and their situation.

A question can trigger such reflection and ultimately lead to their making the choice to be motivated to be your cause leader. You may not like the answer; but often their answer, no matter what it is, can better lead to more results being achieved than your declaration can.

Furthermore, asking questions like, ""What do you need for the team to succeed? ..."" works much better than saying ""I need ... "" because you are forging a ""critical confluence"" – the confluence of your or your organization's needs with their needs.

You may think I'm putting too fine a point on these changes; and to a degree, you'd be right. Making simply one change may not be important; but when you multiple the changes many times during the day, day in and day out, month in and month out, their aggregate can add up to tremendous change indeed. In fact, it can add up to job and career transformation.

So, the next time you are tempted to say, ""I need ... "", don't. Instead, say, ""Do you need? ..."" or ""What do you need? ... "" Over time, you'll forge great changes in how people relate to you and your leadership, changes that will lead to substantial increases in results.

However, watch out: In getting out of the ""I need ..."" trap, you may find yourself in another trap. Asking ""What do you need? ..."" might play right into their hands of people who don't' trust you or want to sabotage your leadership or use you to further their own ends. Such people want to lead you down their private rabbit hole. They want to get you exploring things that have nothing to do with your getting the results you need and everything to do with satisfying the needs of their ego or whatever agenda they have. ""Don't you think you need? ... "" could be their ticket to ride. Before you ask the question, be aware of the ride and how to get off.

THE SECOND TRAP. The ""You do ... "" trap. Most leaders miss a great opportunity that presents itself to them daily. Since leadership is all about having people take action that gets results, it's important to understand the kind of action people should take to get the best results. You can ensure it is the best kind of action by challenging people not simply to do a job but to take leadership of that job. After all, there's a big difference between people doing and leading; and when you are constantly saying, ""You do ... "" you are missing out on getting a lot more results.

Now that you know how to avoid two leadership traps, you'll find that your career will be boosted in many marvelous ways.

2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

About the author: 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 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