On Wednesday this week, I’ll have the opportunity to be the guest on Willow Creek Association’s monthly webcast. I’m excited for the opportunity! The program will be webcast live Wednesday October 17th, 11:30 – 12:30 central daylight time. Here’s the link. My topic this week will be: The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do.
What shaped you as a leader? Regardless of the natural talents, gifts and abilities you were born with, people, events and circumstances were involved in a silent conspiracy, all contributing to the leader you are today.
In Great Leaders GROW, Ken Blanchard and I outlined four strategies for leadership growth. I’ve always believed that each of the strategies adds huge value and recommend a healthy diet of all four. However, for me, Open Your World is the most fun – to stay with the diet metaphor – it represents the dessert.
A couple of months ago, Ken Blanchard hosted a virtual conference. The topic was this: What do you do with people who quit but stay on your payroll? He asked me to create a short video to share my point-of-view on this topic.
Almost 10 years ago, I had the privilege to co-author The Secret with Ken Blanchard, a book about Chick-fil-A’s point of view on leadership. It was a lot of fun doing the book with Ken and even more fun talking to groups all over the world about leadership. What I didn’t expect was the question that I received over and over again… “We’ve read The Secret, what’s next?”
For more than a decade, I’ve used the metaphor of an iceberg to talk about leadership – the 10% above the water line represents the skills of the leader and the 90% below represents their character. The Secret, a book I co-authored with Ken Blanchard, outlines what we believe great leaders do – the skills part of the picture. However, the question I have gotten consistently ever since we started using the iceberg illustration is this, “What are the character traits of great leaders?”
Think about the best performance review you’ve ever had – what made it great? I’m guessing it was not a stand alone event. Let me explain… Ken Blanchard taught me years ago that rarely will an isolated review of performance pay huge dividends. Only when it is part of a larger process does it (the review) add maximum value. What could that process look like? I’ll suggest five components to a solid Performance Management System.
Growth for a leader is like oxygen for a deep-sea diver. Without it – you die. Ken Blanchard and I have been working on a book on this topic entitled, Great Leaders GROW. To most of you reading this, the idea of growth for a leader makes perfect sense. However, many leaders still see personal growth as extracurricular at best; it is something to do if you find extra time, energy and resources.
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’m excited about the new book that Ken Blanchard and I have just released, Great Leaders GROW. This post is a quick summary of the four growth strategies leaders can employ to become a leader for life. I’ll go deeper on each one in the days ahead.
I’m excited about a new book Ken Blanchard and I have written entitled, Great Leaders GROW. Here’s a quick promo video (1:42) we produced for Amazon…