BEST BOSS EVER March Newsletter

Discover how to fight the Great Resignation with extraordinary leadership skills.

A record thirty-eight million Americans resigned in 2021. The BEST BOSS EVER Newsletter exposes ideas, mindsets, and behaviors extraordinary leaders use to win hearts and minds. Lead yourself, others, and teams more effectively.

Last month’s three key points:

1.?????Your purpose in life matters to those you lead. If your singular purpose is not about making the team and the organization better, others will quickly find out. Effective leadership is about helping others. Define your life’s purpose. Often a leader’s purpose is some form of making others the best version of themselves.?

2.?????Being good at leadership is underwhelming. Being a great leader is worthy to strive for. The impact we make on our teams and organizations is exponential when we reach “extraordinary.” Don’t play ‘small’ – do everything you can to become the best leader possible – it matters greatly! Leaders rated at or above the 80th percentile, outperform the ‘average’ leader six-fold!?

3.?????Find a mentor or coach to help you get there. The journey is complex and challenging. If you can make the journey faster, you would take that ‘route.’ Find someone you trust will help you. Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams in Mastering Leadership wrote:?

“The Leadership Imperative is simply this: The development of leadership effectiveness must, at a minimum, keep pace with the rate of change and the rate of escalating complexity.”

Point # 1 –?If you want to be the kind of leader that people rave about – the ones that people tell their friends that they work for the best boss ever, you need to know what leadership is and what it isn’t. If you misconstrue leadership as management, you will struggle. If you think leadership means you make the decisions and solve the problems on your own, you will fail. Imagine everyone who works for you is a volunteer – it’s not about you and it’s not about authority. So, what is leadership??

Jim Collins created the idea of a “Level Five Leader” in 2011. His team of researchers showed how 11 CEOs transformed their companies with a unique blend of humility and fierce resolve. These companies led their industries and generated returns greater than three times the market over a 15-year period.

I love Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner’s definition of leadership they offered in The Leadership Challenge:

The art of mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspirations.

On the surface, leadership looks like it is all about?mobilizing others. But that by itself is not what the authors consider effective leadership. Most people can dangle a carrot or use a stick to accomplish a result. The person who has the ability to help others “want to” struggle and sacrifice for shared aspirations, is the real leader.

Zenger Folkman has the best leadership 360-degree assessment in the world - research based and over 125,000 leaders in the normative database. They assess nineteen?differentiating?leadership competencies because these are the only nineteen things that statistically differentiate. ‘Want to’ comes from leaders who utilize leadership strengths in an authentic manner to help their followers be successful. If you want to know where your strengths lie, use Zenger Folkman’s “tent poles” (categories) to assess your Character, Personal Capability, Focus on Results, Interpersonal Skills, and Leading Change.?

There is so much to learn about leadership but the most important thing to learn is how you could leverage your skills to the highest level and make the greatest impact. If you are not intentional about learning the things that will make the greatest impact, you could be wasting your time learning things about leadership that don’t really matter. Leadership is complex, like Kouzes and Posner said, it’s an “art.” Be choiceful and determine the best way for you to be the best leader you can be. In most cases, this means getting feedback from a 360-degree assessment.

Point # 2 –?Leading yourself looks easier than it really is. I wonder how many super talented people can’t lead others well because they can’t lead themselves effectively. Anderson and Adams said it this way:?“The inner game runs the outer game.”?To effectively lead ourselves we must be aware of and consistently manage our values, beliefs, mental models, assumptions about who we are, our psychology, and emotional intelligence. If you want to lead yourself well, you have to be able to manage yourself well, and to do that, you must have self-awareness. Learning to see your biggest personal challenges and rewiring yourself to act differently is essential. This is the heavy lifting of leadership development.

Leaders who are intentionally reflective, meditate, ask for feedback, journal to better understand why they do what they do, will always outperform other leaders who do not. Your job as a leader is to minimize the noise and drag from your negative personal attributes & psychology. Level 5 leaders were not the person on the ‘front page’, demanding the attention or trying to be the smartest person in the room. Because they managed themselves well, they led with humility, taking blame for mistakes, and giving away praise to their team.?

You must get yourself out of the way for others to choose to follow you.

Point # 3 –?What do you want in a leader? It’s the same thing as your people. The 2022 Workplace Belonging Study by Ipsos showed almost 50% of us are contemplating leaving our company. We are missing something! Almost everyone I know has a strong need to be trusted. Rebecca Ryan, founder of Next Generation Consulting Inc. said: “The level of trust you have for your manager is directly correlated to retention.” She’s absolutely right. A great leader knows if they frequently use their authority, they will not engage their team. They realize the best way to lead others to “want to struggle for shared aspirations” is through influence.

Influence comes from strong relationships, which come from people who feel trusted and respected.

Use any four-box model of personality or behavioral styles to determine that your comfort zone is the way you like to do things. It just feels right. Recognize you resonate with 25% of the people naturally. A great leader has to adapt their style at least temporarily to the 75% of people who are unlike them. If the leader doesn’t adapt to other’s preferences, those other styles don’t experience a high level of trust and respect. Your ability to generate high levels of trust & respect is related to how well you authentically adapt to other styles. This skill was called “versatility” by David Merrill and Roger Reid when they created the Social Styles model.

How much your team trusts you is dependent on the quality of the relationship you have with them,??and relationships are dependent on how much versatility you demonstrate.

Great leaders recognize that the pandemic has put more stress and anxiety on people than ever before. They will do everything they can to be compassionate and understanding about their people’s situation. Their empathy is incredibly strong, and they demonstrate that empathy. One great leader knew his report was worried about their dog and even though it was the last thing he wanted to do; he went out of his way to check on the dog. Great leaders lead with compassion and love. They accept their team for who they are and genuinely appreciate what they do. At the same time, they learn how to inspire and motivate their employees so that they can continually become a better version of themselves.

Finally, great leaders are vulnerable. Brene Brown does an excellent job talking about The Power of Vulnerability - listen to her TED talk if you have not done so (17 million views). Patrick Lencioni coined the term Vulnerability Based Trust, to talk about the kind of trust that great teams have. Most of us are frightened of the thought of being vulnerable and that might be why we resonate with a leader who is willing to show their imperfections and weaknesses. A leader with a high degree of trust often has displayed a great deal of vulnerability to their people.

Three Reflection Questions:

1.?????How good are you as a leader? How could you get meaningful feedback?

2.?????In what ways do your habits and personality get in the way of leading others effectively?

3.?????How much versatility do you have? How can you validate if other styles feel trusted and respected?

Three Things to Read to Go Deeper:

1.?????The Leadership Challenge?by James Kouzes and Barry Posner

2.?????Mastering Leadership?– An integrated framework for breakthrough performance and extraordinary business results by??Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams

3.?????The Social Styles Handbook?– Adapt your style to win trust by Tom Kramlinger

Interested in quick and easy leadership assessment?

Zenger Folkman’s?8-Minute Strengths Assessment?is a self-assessment tool that you can use if you don’t have the ability to do a 360-degree assessment. Go to:?https://zengerfolkman.com/8-minute-strengths-assessment/