Leadership in the workplace, where we all spend (or invest) most of our time, is critical. Whether you are a leader or manager in a business or someone working for a 'boss', I believe you will find this post informative.

   How do we define leadership in business? Is it different from leadership in general? The short answer is no. Leadership in the workplace is simply a combination of general leadership qualities and skills (as in my previous post) and sound business practices and approaches. Whether you are a leader or someone aspiring to be one, you can follow the steps below, each working with the other, toward the perfect management environment.

   Step one is to pick the right business. Not all businesses are created equal. The first step to leadership success is to own, manage, or work for the right business with the right economics working in its favour. This is how you get ahead from the start. Warren Buffet says that when a leader with an good reputation meets a business with a reputation for poor economics, it is usually the business’s reputation that remains intact. Therefore, when you are selling your most valuable, and rapidly depreciating, asset - your time - make sure you pick a company that will appreciate it in return while supporting you in reaching your dreams, potential and purpose. You want to be inspired and do what you love every day. So how do you pick the right company? You pick it just like someone planning to invest hard earned money would. In other words, you pick a company that is economically successful. See my Value Investment Blog posts to understand my thinking regarding how you achieve this.

   Step two is to pick the right people for the job. If you are not a manager then you can add these ideas to the previous point, i.e. pick the right business, because they will help you pick the right environment to work in. Finding the right people requires looking for integrity, intelligence, energy, and someone who loves the business (a passion for the business). Warren Buffett warns that without integrity someone's intelligence and energy will kill you (figuratively). John Demartini says that finding the right person for the job is all about finding the person who's values match the job description. When a potential employees' values match the job description, they will be self disciplined, focused, reliable, enthusiastic and productive in their position. Your greatest ally in picking the right people for the job is conversation. Through conversation you can understand the person's passions and dreams. If the person's dreams and long term goals match that of both the job and the company you have a winner. Ask the person how the job would fulfill their values and how the vision of the company would fulfill their dreams.  

   Step three is to delegate authority to the point of abdication. Delegation of authority is a requirement for many reasons, one being for your own sanity. Managing too many tasks will lead to too many balls in the air, and if you drop one, you drop them all. The second most important reason is to allow your people to run things in order for them to achieve. Your managers can focus on just one job and thus achieve mastery and success performing that job. Empowering them will leave them with a sense of pride and achievement which will make them happy, enthusiastic, inspired employees.

   Step four is to motivate your workforce. Once the excellent business is found, the right management is in place, and you have delegated authority, you have to start motivating your people to be all that they can be, so that the business, the manager, and the employees can be as productive as possible. If there is a single skill that a manager should be great at, it is motivating others to achieve. There are a number of tenets that will serve you well toward motivating others:

• Motivate people through leading by example. Provide people with a reputation and example to live up to and ensure that you serve your people. A serving leader is someone that focuses on their team rather than power, domination, or self-interest.
  
• Praise people for their achievements all the time. From the smallest to the biggest achievement, ensure that you praise people and ensure you do so on a grand scale.
• Be careful to criticize. Warren Buffett calls it: praise by name, criticize the category. When you have to criticize make sure that you criticize the category, not the person. And if ever you have to criticize a person be sure to precede the criticism with praise first.
• Don't try and win arguments. The wise leader knows that to win an argument you have to loose and argument.
• Encourage people to come up with solutions and ideas. When people have the opportunity to solve a problem, to rescue the situation, it motivates them to greatness and it will energize them for a long time to come.
• Be supportive of other peoples unique hierarchy of values. Don't try and force your wants and needs on other people. Take the time to understand theirs and support them in it. If its important to them it should be important to you. Support them and they will support you.
• Allow people to make mistakes, don't you make mistakes? Admit it, we all make mistakes so why would you not allow your employees to make mistakes. Mistakes can result from a lack of understanding, a lack of training, a lack of equipment, a lack of motivation, etc. These are all things that you can pay attention to and help resolve for your employees. 
• Use the magic words please and thank you, they will take you beyond were you thought possible.
• Be patient and take time to motivate. Use the fire them up before you fire them out mentality to always take the time to motivate more.

   Step five is to define a number of managerial axioms to serve you day to day. Over time we all develop a set of beliefs that serve us to achieve more and better things. Formalize your principles, write them down, print them out and stick them on your office wall. Some of these principles include:

• Learning every day. Benjamin Franklin said that the school of life is in session every day, so learn as much as you can.
• Manage yourself for inflation. Stay ahead of the curve, keep increasing your value by training and expanding your thinking.
• Don't tolerate dishonesty. Dishonesty and negativity will poison your entire team.
• Remember that everyone has a mission, everyone has a purpose and help them achieve it.  Peoples mission or purpose is an expression of their highest values or priorities. Identify what their hiearchy of values is, i.e. what is really important to them. Then help them set their goals and help them work congruent to that and watch how you automatically electrify and energize their lives.
• Communicate often about everything. Start by communicating your vision, your values, and how important people and their values are to the organisation. Don't stop communicating and praise while you communicate.

   Success in business and in life go hand in hand. Improve either one of the two, or preferably both, will improve your life drastically. I hope this post will help you improve your life management skills.

Be Extraordinary!
Myles 

Two little, yet powerful, words that can change your world. My mother always called please the magic word. Please is such a powerful word because it is an expression of respect toward other people. It shows that you value their time and energy and effort.

   To respect all people and all things is the number one value I teach my boy's. It is a fact that if someone feels respected they feel valued and when you show a person how much you value them they will be willing to show, in return, how much they value you. 

   The second power-word is thanks. Thanks shows appreciation for the effort or time that someone had to expend to benefit you. It shows that you acknowledge them and again is shows that you value them. Always remember that both gratitude and respect begets gratitude and respect.

    Valuing people and respecting them will foster good relations and strong bonds. The exceptional leader uses simple words like please and thank you to express this understanding. Be an exceptional leader and express your respect and gratitude toward other people and elevate and inspire them to greatness.  The more respect and gratitude you give, the more respect and gratitude you give.

Be inspired!
Myles Rennie

Leadership is not about titles, pride or being the star of the show. It does not have anything to do with your title or the size of your office. Leadership is a way of life, grown from within out. It’s a philosophy and attitude toward taking responsibility and making a better world. Each of us has the ability to grow into an exceptional leader. 

   Leadership and management, although related, are very different. Management is instructional and task orientated, whereas leadership is all about guidance, motivation and inspiration to transform the ordinary to the exceptional. Exceptional leaders don’t instruct but choose to guide, motivate and inspire using conversation, suggestion, and questioning (e.g. the Eureka! principle, which is the the process of guided self-discovery).

   Exceptional leaders love conversing. Conversation can only occur when there is no hidden agendas and when all the interaction is non-judgmental. Conversation aimed at reaching Eureka! implies an open, attention rich, honest, specific, and time-independent interaction, which provides information. This allows parties to discover actions and consequences and allows choices and mistakes to be made. Conversation is not communication (by the way, the world we live in loves communicating because its mostly too busy to converse). Conversation is intimate and bi-directional whereas communication is unidirectional and formal. Conversation comes in many forms, but an exceptional leader knows that a typical conversation has three parts or sections to it. They are:

• Conversation for relationship is about establishing rapport
  
• Conversation for understanding is about establishing a shared understanding of all perspectives
• Conversation for change is about establishing a guiding path forward and to inspire and motivate toward the change

   Leadership is therefore primarily concerned with allowing transformation and change toward excellence. Exceptional leaders understand that they deal with change constantly and that guiding, motivating and inspiring change is their primary objective. They use conversation as the method or vehicle in order to guide, motivate and inspire.


Be extraordinary!
Myles Rennie