Leadership Planning for 2013

As the new year approaches, leaders should be evaluating what changes they will implement.  Here are a few ideas.

Volunteer and Non-profit work:  Being a leader in the volunteer realm is much different than in the corportate world.  These role will expand your leadership talents.  Toastmasters International puts a lot of emphasis on developing as a leader, with connections to volunteer settings.

Leadership Training Course:  There are many great programs designed to help leaders improve their outlook and performance.  Dale Carnegie Training provide numerous courses across the county in leaders and team building.  Also check with your local university. 

Connect with the people you need to grow:  Will a mentor help you reflect on your decisions as a leader?  Can you attract someone who is a complement to your skills and strenghts?

Better communication:  Are you using all possible communication channels?  Not just for routine sharing of information, but also for building personal relations.  One of John Maxwell's law of leadership is to touch a heart before asking for a hand.  Have you made a sincere phone call or sent a handwritten note lately?  Is your first conversation with someone each day on a personal note or a professional matter? 

Start a weekly leadership journal:  Each week, reflect back on a decision you made.  Evaluated it from a leadership perspective.  Was that the best decision for the organization?  Was that the best decision for the long term?  Was that the best decision for thost peopel involved.  Most decisions have a down side; how was the downside address.  Did someone feel that they "lost"?

Barely know the leader exists--Lao Tzu

There is a good quote by Lao Tzu that reflects on some aspects of servant leadership.

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.

Some leaders like to be out in front and highly visible.  This approach works well in certain situations.  Steve Jobs at Apple took this role.  However, for every Steve Jobs, there are ten other leaders who do their jobs in an outstanding way from behind the curtain.  They help their teams prepare, execute, adjust, and grow.

Mentoring is a leadership role where success is measured by how someone else succeeds.  Someone else will take the reward and stand in the spotlight at the end of the day even though the mentor was critical to the development process.

Two Hats of a Quarterback: Robot and Artist--Cousins

Quite often a leader must wear two hats:  one of a leader and change manager, and another of a manager and system stabilizer.

Kirk Cousins, the backup quarterback for the Washington Redskins, recently applied these two roles to the game of football.

“One of the things I’ve learned about being a quarterback is that it’s a balance between being a robot and being an artist."

Quarterbacks, like other organizations leaders, put a lot of time into planning, preparation, practice, and review. Practicing the basics so that many plays are robotic.  They also know when to step out of the box, take a risk, and make a play that will be celebrated as artistic.  (Celebrated if it works.)

A link to the Public Radio comment is here:  http://www.npr.org/2012/12/16/167374520/college-footballs-coaching-carousel-in-full-effect

A link on NBC Sports to a discussion of Cousins's comment is here:   http://irish.nbcsports.com/2012/12/10/kellys-talking-points-translate-to-pro-football/

Remember the Fundamentals in Your Vision

When an organization is planning how to make progress towards their goals and vision, they often emphasize action items, deliverables, and metrics.  These are necessary to specify and use as the basis of the plan.

However, organizations are often hampered by weaknesses in fundamental areas.  It is important for leaders to remember to include these fundamentals in the plan.  Here a  few areas that could be incorporated in a business plan as areas for improvement.

• Leadership Growth
• Communication
• Relationship Building
• Accountability
• Community Involvement
• Training and Development

These areas are usually difficult to measure and often not of much interest to investors.  When these fundamental are improved, the impacts are often wide-ranging and long term.

Thoreau: Foundations under dreams

Some people have big dreams, but assume that since there is no foundation, they will remain only dreams.

"Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."
 --Henry David Thoreau

Using the cliche "it is never too later to start,"  a leader should take a vision or dream and start planning the building blocks to reach that dream.  This is often the most challenging.  The first steps on any project are difficult.  Plus many people will be doubtful.

The dream may be personal, such as the dream to get a promotion.  The first few steps may be improving your education.  The dream may be huge, such as John Kennedy's dream to go to the moon.  There were many initial steps by many people to create the foundation for this dream.

Once you have the dream solidified, start building the foundation.

Jasper Johns at Leslie Sacks Contemporary Gallery

Several works by Jasper Johns are on exhibit at Leslie Sacks Contemporary Gallery.  These include a couple of his small etchings of the American Flag done in the 1967 to 1969 period.

From the gallery's bigography of the artist:  Johns’ flag paintings are credited as key in the development of Minimal Art in that the focus of these pieces is on linearity and uniformity, thus de-emphasizing the unique creative talents of the artist. For Johns, major influences in the Minimalist style were his friendships with dancer Merce Cunningham, composer John Cage and fellow artist Robert Rauschenberg.

Leslie Sacks Contemporary is located at Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Avenue B6, Santa Monica California 90404.

Discipline is important

"Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment."
Jim Rohn

Discipline is a very important quality for leaders and managers. Quite often, good leaders have numerous interests and desires.  The want to help everyone and solve every problem, both big and small.  Discipline is needed to stay on track and make progress on the core tasks.

In his foreword to the biography** by Zack Greenburg, Steve Forbes compares Jay-Z to other business leaders such as Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates and their discipline. "Passion:  the knack for imagining what doesn't exist; and the iron-willed self-discipline to make that come into existence."  In his book Principle-Centered Leadership, Stephen Covey talks about how a good education should emphasize the development of self-discipline.



**Zack O'Malley Greenburg, Empire State of Mind:  How Jay-Z Went From Street Corner to Corner Office (Portfolio/Penguin, 2012).