RSSLeadership Involves Helping Others Decide
Feb 8, 2010 Sales Related
Tomorrow I do a webinar with the Business Management Institute called Executive Decision Making: Influencing with Integrity. How does my focus on a buyer’s decision making parallel with decision making in general? For me, it’s all the same: I believe that every choice, every new concept, every new action demands a decision to allow in something new and and supplement what’s already there.
So whether a buyer seeks a new solution and must get buy-in from the relevant people, or a user needs to use the new software, or an initiative needs agreement from the relevant team members to move forward, or a person may want to donate to one charity rather than another, new decisions are necessary or change won’t happen.
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Tags: beliefs, Business Management Institute, choice, criteria, decision making, influencing, integrity, leadership
Dancing Together
Jan 12, 2010 Sales Related
As many of you know, I’m a dancer. I began dancing when I was 8, standing on my father’s toes as we (my mother was relegated to dancing with the instructor) learned Latin dancing. When I was 10 took ballroom dancing classes, and at age 11 I was a ‘regular’ on Connecticut Bandstand (I even got fan letters!).
At different times in my life I taught Cha Cha (!) and became the dance partner of a pro during the Disco/Hustle era. I studied Argentine Tango for 5 years and even spent some weeks studying with a professional in Buenos Aires. I can follow just about any lead in any dance category, and I also like to dance in the middle of the room when my favorite Keb Mo is playing. Dancing fills and soothes my soul. There: you now have all of my secrets.
Since dancing is such an integral part of my life, I dance even as I travel so such places as Perth (THE place in the world for ballroom dancing) or Oslo (where I once did an inadvertent exhibition dance in a very darkly lit nightclub with an apparently famous investigative journalist) or Lubbock (this upcoming Wednesday at Last Chance). But my very very favorite dancing experience is with my local ‘Dancing Together’ group that meets several times a week.
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Tags: body choir, dancing, decision making, five rhythms, flow, gabrielle roth, leadership, webinar
Leadership and Decision Making
Dec 15, 2009 Sales Related
What, exactly, is a leader?
The definition used in Tango is my favorite: If you notice the leader, he’s not doing a very good job. The job of the leader is to get the best out of his follower and get out of the way: He opens the door, the follower goes through exhibiting her best, and then the leader follows. I believe that it’s a leader’s job to help followers - colleagues, staff, partners, teammates - make the decisions they need to make to achieve excellence.
Of course we all know many leaders who believe it’s their job to make the decisions and get their followers to do their bidding. They call that Influencing, and there are many methods and models that teach this. But doing it this way often comes back to haunt: when people are not part of the decision making process and haven’t bought in to the proposed change, they may go through their own brand of sabatoge, acting out, forgetfulness, or misinterpretation en route to following orders. Their knowledge of the environment, of the day-to-day working conditions, and their creative ideas, are ignored. We see this frequently with tech implementations. Indeed, requests made by senior people for ‘underlings’ to do their bidding are often met with failure.
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Tags: Buy-In, decision making, leadership
Changing Behaviors With Attainment
Jul 29, 2009 Favorite URLs
How do you ensure your staff change behaviors – and keep the change?
Tery Tenant, a colleague in the change management and leadership industry, is a committed change agent. He teaches, writes about, communicates about, being a Servant Leader – a term I’ve been using for myself for over 20 years so I’ve got a bit of a bias going here. His company, Attainment Inc., is a franchise of Leadership Mmanagement International, and has been leading change for 21 years with his wife Linda.
Their stuff is really cool: they teach people how to be aware of what they want to change, and then gives them the tools to change. Tery says his job, ultimately, is to ”work ourselves out of a job, as the client grows and can do these things for themselves.” Refreshing!
At the core of their process is facilitating behavior change. They work toward achieving measurable behavior-change results. Attainment says, ”What you are doing differently and the new habits you are forming is as important as what you are learning. We use a two track process. One track provides awareness, ideas and tools. The second track focuses on applying the ideas on the job and achieving small goals weekly.”
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Tags: Attainment, awareness, behavior change, change management, leadership, Linda Tenant, LMI, servant leadership, Tery Tenant
Business Practices for Managers
Jun 10, 2009 Decisioning & Change Management
I recently discovered the site of Good Practice, an Edinburgh-based company that specializes in creating very easy to use material for middle managers. When the CEO Peter Casebow gave me access to the management section of the site, I found it quite easy to use, and with several options to make the material accessible in any way that would work for me. The material was crisp, easy to read and understand, and covered every aspect of management – from simple decision making ideas, to managing people, to learning how to effectively manage your resources – financials, sustainability, process management. It’s kind of a simplified How-To/Hands-On MBA.
Tags: decision making, leadership, management tools, new skills, organizational culture, systems
