Are leaders born or made? One could argue for either position.

The real issue is that all leaders can improve. Whether you’re a seasoned executive or a high-potential team member, you can boost your performance in five crucial leadership areas.

More than half a million business books deal with leadership acumen, but studying the most respected experts’ ideas reveals a consensus on the foremost roles required for effectiveness. (photo courtesy renjith krishnan/FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

In The Leadership Code, Dave Ulrich, Norm Smallwood and Kate Sweetman have synthesized current thinking on leadership and developed a framework that blends idealism with realism. They’ve distilled leadership into five core rules, regardless of one’s industry or business environment:

Having a framework for the most essential leadership skills will help you avoid quick fixes and business-book fads. While the scope of leadership may seem overwhelming, five golden rules provide much-needed focus. It’s easy to get lost if you pursue the wrong priorities.

This article summarizes the five essential rules for leadership effectiveness and provides a framework that covers the entire leadership landscape, so that you can focus on the best ways to develop your talent.
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This is a brief synopsis of an 1800 & 950-word article and Article Nuggets*, suitable for consultants’ newsletters for executives and leaders in organizations. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

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• Five Golden Rules
• Rule 1: Shape the future
• Rule 2: Make things happen
• Rule 3: Engage today’s talent
• Rule 4: Build the next generation
• Rule 5: Invest in yourself
• A Review of Leadership Theories
• Understanding the Five Roles
• Personal Proficiency

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It doesn’t matter whether your goal is to lose 5 or 50 pounds, quit smoking or stop drinking. New Year’s resolutions and other goals are hard to keep beyond the first month. Change is hard.

Why? Because the brain is tricky. No matter how sincerely we want to break a habit, we have an inherent immunity to change.

This means we’re physiologically “lured” into doing what we’ve always done, no matter how strong our intentions. And yet, some people do succeed. We all know ex-smokers, ex-drinkers and former fatties.

You cannot fix an adaptive problem with a technical solution. A diet, for example, is a technical solution to being overweight: To lose weight, eat less and exercise more. But the problem is much more complex. Unless you change your mindset (an adaptive solution), you won’t sustain new habits.

Einstein said that how you formulate a problem is just as critical as how you solve it. One of the biggest mistakes goal-setters make is applying a technical solution to an adaptive problem. It doesn’t matter how much you change what you do. If you don’t shift the way you think, you’ll revert to doing things as you’ve always done them.

This is a brief synopsis of an 825-word article and Article Nuggets* suitable for consultants’ newsletters for executives and leaders in organizations. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

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What single quality differentiates high-potential leaders from ordinary contributors in an organization?

It’s their ability to be forward-looking and focus on the future. To become a better leader or distinguish yourself as someone primed for promotion, you’ll want to develop your capacity to envision the future.

Focusing on the future sets leaders apart. The capacity to imagine and articulate exciting future possibilities is a defining competency — perhaps the most important one, next to honesty.

Leaders must be able to answer the question, “Where are we going?” We look to our leaders to envision a future, figure out where the organization must go to succeed, evaluate ideas for pragmatism and determine if they fit the company’s core mission. Leaders focus on how people, money, resources and organizational capabilities will work together to move from the present to a desired future.

Top executives estimate they spend only about 3 percent of their time thinking about, and getting others on board with, the critical issues that will shape their business 10 or more years down the road. It’s simply not enough time.

To become a better leader, your thinking must be future-oriented. You’ll need to become intensely curious about trends, both inside and outside your organization’s field. You’ll need a systematic way of staying informed and tracking changes.

This is a brief synopsis of an 1600 & 900-word article suitable for consultants’ newsletters for executives and leaders in organizations. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

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• What People Want from Leaders
• How Far Can You See?
• How to Develop Future Focus
• Sparking Energy for What Really Matters
• 3 Ways to Grow Your Future-Focus
• Insight: Explore Your Past
• Outsight: Imagine the Possibilities
• Foresight: Survival of the Optimists
• You Can See Forever

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Why do we admire celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer and Bill Clinton?

They make you feel like you’re the most important person in the room.

They excel at listening—a skill that separates great personalities from the near-great. (photo courtesy Michal Marcol / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

When you meet Clinton for the first time, he says something positive to acknowledge you. His listening skills are laser-focused on the person he’s with. We spend 80 percent of our waking time on four communications tasks:

1. Reading
2. Writing
3. Speaking
4. Listening

While listening accounts for 50 percent of our communications, we pay little attention to this important process and tend to take it for granted. We erroneously assume that listening is a passive activity and that everyone knows how to listen.

In fact, most of us find it hard to maintain the prolonged concentration required for truly effective listening. To be a good listener, you need to adopt proactive habits.

This article provides suggestions on how to become a better listener.

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This is a brief synopsis of an 800-word article and Article Nuggets,*suitable for consultants’ newsletters for executives and leaders in organizations. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

The complete article includes these important concepts:

• Listening, but Not Hearing
• Why Don’t We Listen?
• Test Your Listening Skills
• 9 Keys to Better Listening

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“In a culture that sometimes equates work with suffering, it is revolutionary to suggest that the best inward sign of vocation is deep gladness—revolutionary but true.” ~ Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach

People prefer leisure to work—no surprise there. What is surprising is that they report more optimal feelings of being “in the zone” when engaged in work.

This strange, yet revealing, paradox may contribute to why many U.S. retirees experience depression and ultimately return to work.

While we clearly associate leisure with pleasure, we seem to have an unwarranted prejudice against work: We automatically associate it with pain. This belief is so deeply rooted that it distorts our perceptions of actual experiences. It’s a learned response that severely limits our potential for happiness at work.

To achieve professional satisfaction, you must experience—and consciously record—the positive emotions you feel on the job. When we fail to recognize pleasurable moments at work, focusing solely on the negative, we miss out on experiencing more happiness and satisfaction. Each of us must find ways to extract more meaning and fulfillment from the “daily grind.”

This article provides suggestions on how to make work more like play.

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This is a brief synopsis of a 800-word article and Article Nuggets*, suitable for consultants’ newsletters for executives and leaders in organizations. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

The complete article includes these important concepts:

•  Finding Flow
• Action Steps
• Lifelong Learning
• Making Work More Like Play

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(Photo by photostock, freedigitalphotos.net)

Baby Boomers are lingering in the workplace. Economic uncertainty has caused many to remain on the job.

The younger Gen X and Gen Y are growing impatient to ascend to leadership responsibilities, and new graduates are knocking at HR’s door in record numbers.

Until we see the inevitable changing of the guard over the next decade, the workplace will be inhabited by a multigenerational stew. Learning how to work, live and play together is crucial.

Baby Boomers occupy most positions of power and responsibility on organizational charts. Most of today’s corporate management practices still reflect the systems and values of their predecessors, the veterans.

Gen Xers and Millennials aren’t interested in “the way things have always been done.” Rather, they’re single-mindedly focused on what it takes to reach their perceived career destination.

This group shuns past definitions of success: climbing the company ladder and earning the rewards that come with greater responsibility. The company ladder, in their view, is irrelevant.

This article summarizes the four main ways generations differ at work, a must-read at any age.
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This is a brief synopsis of an 1800 & 900-word article suitable for consultants’ newsletters for executives and leaders in organizations. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

The complete 1800-word article includes these important concepts:

• Who Are the Generations?
• How Are They Different?
• Clash Point #1: How We View Work
• Clash Point #2: Communications
• Clash Point #3: Meetings
• Clash Point #4: Learning
• Issues You Can’t Ignore

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“We hear a great deal of talk about the midlife crisis of the executive. It is mostly boredom.” ~ Peter Drucker, management expert

At some point in your career, you may sense a creeping malaise. You’re no longer enthusiastic about the day ahead. Perhaps you’re experiencing a mid-career crisis—the sudden realization that you’re no longer a rising star.

After 20 years of all-too-familiar work, you’re good at your job, but you’re not learning or contributing as much. You seldom feel the challenge or particularly satisfied, yet bills must be paid, bosses remain unpleasant, projects fail, and work stagnates.

You try to focus on your true values and the reasons you initially chose your line of work. But the daily grind has somehow taken over, and your work life has been reduced to reports, data, meetings and managing difficult coworkers.

You may think about switching jobs, but this presents additional risks. A “grass is greener” mentality often leads to disappointments, similar to changing seats on the Titanic.

Welcome to the mid-career challenge. A new career may mean a loss of seniority, lower pay, a geographic move and a new set of problems that closely resemble those you’ve left behind. But staying in a job that seems to be going nowhere, filled with mind-numbing work, means resigning yourself to a lack of growth and meaning.

This article about mid-career challenge asks questions to explore your values and three key personal-development components with your coach or mentor, to rekindle your drive.

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This is a brief synopsis of a 900-word article suitable for consultants’ newsletters for executives and leaders in organizations. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

The complete article includes these important concepts:

• Before Jumping Ship…
• Values in Action
• Know and Manage Yourself
• Update Your Identity

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