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Home | What makes an excellent leader? About the trillion dollar coach – the late Bill Campbell

For decades, Bill Campbell, a former football coach turned C-suit executive counseled the biggest leaders like Jonathan Rosenberg, Eric Schmidt, Sheryl Sandberg and Steve Jobs in Silicon Valley.
Campbell was interested in raising leaders who produce better results and builds an ethical culture in the workplace.
Years after his death, three of his mentees Jonathan Rosenberg, Eric Schmidt, and Alan Eagle wrote the Trillion Dollar Coach: the Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell, to pass his message across to future generations.

Here are 7 leadership lessons from the book :
• Coach only the coachable: Campbell understood that it was irrelevant and a waste of time and energy to coach someone who isn’t interested and that is why he admonishes good leaders to coach people who have bigger dreams and work towards realizing those dreams. According to him, good leaders grow with time and look for candidates who are willing to work, honest and continuously open to learning new things.
• Listen actively to your employees: Campbell believes that the primary key to being an effective leader is being an active listener. Every leader must be present when talking to people at work, and not just replying their emails or speaking to them through the window. In addition, effective leaders must adopt the Socratic approach of asking important questions after carefully listening to what his employees have to say.
• Never tell people what to do: Campbell believes that good leaders are not supposed to tell their staffs what to do. Instead, they listen carefully, ask questions and develop stories that relate to the topic while allowing employees to draw conclusions from such stories. He believes that once people can understand where you are coming from, they connect the dots and figure out what to do.
• Adopt performance oriented goals: Campbell agrees that teams which adopt performance oriented techniques like targeting, incentives, and monitoring perform better than those that don’t.
• Do not demand respect: Campbell believes that respect should be accrued and not demanded. Effective leaders accrue respect by projecting humble behaviors. He also agrees that employees dislike working with a dictator who does not care about their welfare, work culture, and future outcome.
• Honesty is key: Campbell believes that every good leader must be honest. According to him, good leaders allow employees to air out their opinion even when it is conflicting and heating the environment. He also agrees that complex problems at the workplace must be dealt with honestly and openly before it degenerates.
• Care about your employees: Campbell believes that every good leader must establish a deep level of connection with his or her employees. There is nothing wrong with showing up for them, caring about them, getting to know their families and showing them true love.
Finally, it is vital for people in leadership positions to imbibe all the qualities listed above if they want to create a great work environment where employees are allowed to air their opinion and put in the best in producing the right result.

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Home | HOW TO BE A GREAT LEADER

“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” John C. Maxwell

Anyone can be a boss but only few master the art of becoming a true leader. When you’re offered leadership, or you become the first-in-line of the chain of command, your employees who used to be your co-workers before, get this “instinct” of fear. They’ll have to obey your orders or do as told by you or else there’ll be consequences. As a business leader, you have the power to change this mindset of your employees by your actions that you’re not here to rule on them but to lead them towards success.

But the findings over the past decade reveal that almost 82 percent of front line leaders are rated as incompetent in skills and capabilities as leaders while 80 percent of them are dissatisfied with handling the reigns of the organization. The reason for this is because business leaders are not given any sort of formal training before getting the job. There is no coursework in education institutions that teaches “leadership”. You only learn by experience from your predecessors or your own mistakes.

Without being too hard on yourself and failing in your initial days, there are some of the practices that you can adopt to become or at least try to become a good business leader.

Carol Dweck states in her book Mindset that there are two principal mindsets bosses and business leaders are surrounded by. First is a fixed mindset, which makes people believe that only their innate abilities, intellect, talent and hard work will lead them towards success. They have to learn everything beforehand in order to be better than everyone else. Second one is a growth mindset and people having this believe that mistakes are not failure but a lifelong experience. They think their skills can be developed with time through learning, training and determination.

Research clearly demonstrates that leaders with a growth mindset are much better off and valued by their employees than leaders with a fixed mindset. You can change your mindset as a business leader and your relationship with your employees in the following ways.

• As a leader your organization’s success “as a whole” is much more important than just your personal recognition. So, focus more on the words like “WE” and “US” than “I” in your verbal communications and even business proposals to some client. Phrases like “My team has presented this” or “We all have worked together very hard” really boost up the morale of your employees and encourage them to do better.
• Be approachable enough that your employees can come to you for help when really in the time of need but not “too friendly”, that someone can take advantage of you and not recognize your authority. Whether you are a project manager or the head of the IT department, be clear about everyone’s role no matter if it’s your best work buddy or a new employee.
• Leave behind your “I-know-it-better” attitude. As we said earlier, have a growth mindset. You don’t want to be that boss that doesn’t even listen to what any of his employees have to say about a certain project. Encourage your staff to speak up their minds during business meetings even when they’re wrong. Show them that you’ve trust in them by delegating authority among competent employees. This way they’ll work hard and increase their productivity to get your recognition which would eventually be beneficial for the organization.
• Fairness is a key to become a good business leader. But it doesn’t always mean equality. Treating people differently is okay as long as you treat all of them fairly. Giving advantages to everyone in your team because there are people with whom you’ve good relations in your personal life, even though some of them didn’t perform up to their ability would be unfair to people who really worked hard, resulting in incompetent employees and a dysfunctional working environment.

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Home | How Do Leaders Become Self-Aware?

Self awareness is understanding your own strengths and weaknesses as a person. The idea that self awareness is important to true success isn’t new; Dale Carnegie said as much in his 1936 bestseller “How To Win Friends and Influence People” when he wrote that one should talk about one’s own mistakes before criticizing another person. The key issue is how to become more self aware. Here are three keys from Anthony K. Tjan’s recent article in Harvard Business Review:

Test and Know Yourself Better. Personality tests like Myers-Briggs, Predictive Index, and Strengths Finder have gained popularity in recent years, for good reason. The tests are not perfect measures or predictors, but they facilitate self-reflection, which leads to better self-awareness.

Watch Yourself and Learn. In the classic Harvard Business Review article, “Managing Oneself,” Peter Drucker wrote, “Whenever you make a decision… write down what you expect will happen. 9 or 12 months later, compare the results with what you expected.” Drucker called this self-reflection process feedback analysis and said it was the “only way to discover your strengths.” Many successful people follow similar practices: Warren Buffett, for example, has made it a habit for years to write down the reasons why he is making an investment decision and later look back to see what went right or wrong.

Be Aware of Others, too. Self-awareness is crucial when building a team. Knowing your natural strengths and weaknesses makes you a better leader. But you also must be an acute observer of others’ strengths and weaknesses. Effective teams are made up of people who both understand and complement each other.

You cannot be good at every skill needed for success. Knowing your own strengths and weaknesses enables you to capitalize on your strengths and improve on your weak areas, and also helps you have empathy for others – an essential component of emotional intelligence

Home | 5 Dimensions of Authentic Leadership

Five Dimensions of Authentic Leadership

1.Pursuing purpose with a passion. Without a real sense of purpose, you are at the mercy of your ego and narcissistic vulnerabilities.

2.Practicing solid values. Leaders are defined by their values, and values are personal; they cannot be externally imposed.

3.Leading with heart. Authentic leaders lead with their hearts as well as with their heads.

4. Establishing enduring relationships. The ability to develop enduring relationships is one of the hallmarks of authentic leaders.

5. Demonstrating self discipline. Success takes a consistently high level of self discipline.

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