10 Winston Churchill Leadership Lessons

WSC, Personifying British Defiance (Karsh, 1941)

One layer [of Churchill’s character and personality] was certainly seventeenth century. The eighteenth century in him is obvious. There was the nineteenth century, and a large slice, of course, of the twentieth century; and another, curious layer which may possibly have been the twenty-first.  –Clement Attlee

The 50th anniversary of the death of Sir Winston Churchill is a compelling occasion for reflection.

In a textbook case of projection, a preening popinjay, a BBC news personality called Paxman recently dismissed Churchill as a “ruthless egotist, a chancer, and a charlatan.”

Paxman and many others have speculated that Churchill could not be elected today.

These and other observations imply that Churchill’s leadership example is of limited value in our time. His life and work may provide anecdotes and entertainment, but little elucidation about things that matter.

This is surely wrong.

Winston Churchill’s storied, spectacular career holds numerous lessons for 21st century leaders.

10 Churchill Leadership Lessons for 21st Century Leaders

Among the lessons of Churchill’s leadership:

1. Leaders Are Self-Created. Winston Churchill was anything but a “self-made man.” He was born to the aristocracy at Blenheim Palace. Nonetheless, as much as anyone could be, he was self-created. He transcended numerous limitations–from an unprepossessing physical endowment to a distracting speech impediment–transforming himself into the heroic mold conjured in his romantic imagination.

This process of self-creation never ended. He was continually evolving in significant ways, not held back by the needs for predictability and consistency that limit so many others. This also enabled him to recover from setbacks that most would have accepted as career-ending.

[Churchill] was, to a marked extent, forcing himself to go against his own inner nature: a man who was neither naturally strong, nor naturally particularly courageous, but who made himself both in spite of his temperamental and physical endowment. The more one examines Winston Churchill as a person, the more one is forced to the conclusion that his aggressiveness, his courage, and his dominance were not rooted in his inheritance, but were the product of deliberate decision and iron will.  –Anthony Storr

2. Courage is the First Virtue. If people were asked to describe Churchill in one word, who can doubt that courage would be the anticipated response?

In common with many other effective leaders, he exhibited courage in numerous ways. His career intertwined service as a soldier, a writer, and a politician. The disparate strands were braided tightly in his ultimate contribution, as warlord of the British Empire in the Second World War. His courage continued through his final premiership, in the 1950s, when he sought to broker improved relations between the United States and Soviet Union.

All of his accomplishments can be comprehended as arising from a shared root of courage–advanced through a related trait: audacity.

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all others. –Churchill

Jenny Jerome Churchill, with sons Jack and Winston

3. Vision Can be Transmitted Faithfully through a Romantic Lens. From youth, Churchill experienced the world as a cavalcade of heroes and heroines, of pageantry and ritual, of bright colors and vivid renderings. Some of this doubtless arose from the great loneliness he experienced, feeling neglected if not abandoned by a beautiful, vivacious mother and a mercurial, doomed father.

My mother made the same brilliant impression upon my childhood’s eye. She shone for me like the Evening Star. I loved her dearly — but at a distance. My nurse was my confidante. Mrs. Everest it was who looked after me and tended all my wants. It was to her I poured out my many troubles, both now and in my schooldays.  –Churchill

His romantic inclinations are also seen in his description of his marriage to the formidable Clementine Hozier Churchill.

[My marriage] was much the most fortunate and joyous event which happened to me in the whole of my life, for what can be more glorious than to be united in one’s walk through life with a being incapable of an ignoble thought?  –Churchill

Clementine and Winston

Churchill’s romantic conceptions also framed his statecraft.

Mr. Churchill sees history—and life—as a great Renaissance pageant: when he thinks of France or Italy, Germany or the Low Countries, Russia, India, Africa, the Arab lands, he sees vivid historical images— something between Victorian illustrations in a book of history and the great procession painted by Benozzo Gozzoli in the Riccardi Palace. His eye is never that of the neatly classifying sociologist, the careful psychological analyst, the plodding antiquary, the patient historical scholar. His poetry has not that anatomical vision which sees the naked bone beneath the flesh, skulls and skeletons and the omnipresence of decay and death beneath the flow of life. The units out of which his world is constructed are simpler and larger than life, the patterns vivid and repetitive like those of an epic poet, or at times like those of a dramatist who sees persons and situations as timeless symbols and embodiments of eternal, shining principles. The whole is a series of symmetrically formed and somewhat stylized compositions, either suffused with bright light or cast in darkest shadow, like a legend by Carpaccio, with scarcely any nuance, painted in primary colors with no half tones, nothing intangible, nothing impalpable, nothing half spoken or hinted or whispered: the voice does not alter in pitch or timbre.  –Sir Isaiah Berlin

4. Insight is Superior to Intellect. Winston Churchill stands as an irrefutable monument to the power of Albert Einstein’s dictum:

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

Churchill was not university educated. He was nonetheless highly learned, largely self-directed. As a result, his thought processes were not limited by convention. His boundless curiosity and capacity for fascination were not wrested into compliance and conventionality by pedants.

He was notably gifted with insight. His variety of worldly experiences expanded it. His temperament, fortified with the assurance of an aristocrat who reached adulthood during the apogee of the British Empire, impelled him to express his often unexpected points of view.

Judgment is a fine thing: but it is not all that uncommon. Deep insight is much rarer. Churchill had flashes of that kind of insight, dug up form his own nature, independent of influences, owing nothing to anyone outside himself. Sometimes it is a better guide than judgment: in the ultimate crisis when he came to power, there were times when judgment itself could, though it did not need to, become a source of weakness.

When Hitler came to power Churchill did not use judgment but one of his deep insights. This was absolute danger, there was no easy way round. That was what we needed. It was a unique occasion in our history. It had to be grasped by a nationalist leader. Plenty of people on the left could see the danger: but they did not know how the country had to be seized and unified.  –C.P. Snow

Inevitably, the same qualities and independence of thought in the face of received opinion lured Churchill into dubious enterprises and understandings. Notable examples include his obdurate, dead-end stance against dominion status for India, and his misguided defense of King Edward VIII amid the crisis prompted by his relationship with Wallis Simpson. Such unreliable judgments reinforced his political isolation in the 1930s. Tragically, they surely undercut the credibility of his early warnings against the gathering storm in Nazi Germany.

When Winston’s right, he’s right. When he’s wrong, well, my God. –Birkenhead

Churchill with David Lloyd George

5. Apply History to Illuminate the Present and Future.  Like Theodore Roosevelt (whom he resembled in many ways), Churchill was obsessed with history. He frequently turned to historical events and characters as if they were at his side. In fact, one might well say that they were at his side, coursing through the currents of his preternaturally active mind and imagination. Even as the emerging destiny of Churchill’s political project–protecting the survival of the British Empire–stirred his forebodings, his immersion in history enabled him to see far into the future. It made him relentlessly adaptive and innovative–qualities not generally associated with a fundamentally conservative vision.

History, for Churchill, was not a subject like geography or mathematics. It was a part of his temperament, as much a part of his being as his social class and, indeed, closely allied to it.  –J.H. Plumb

Mr. Churchill’s dominant category, the single, central, organizing principle of the moral and intellectual universe, is an historical imagination so strong, so comprehensive, as to encase the whole of the present and the whole of the future in a framework of a rich and multicolored past. Such an approach is dominated by a desire–and a capacity–to find fixed moral and intellectual bearings to give shape and character, color and direction and coherence, to the stream of events.  –Sir Isaiah Berlin

Everyone can recognize history when it happens. Everyone can recognize history after it has happened; but it is only the wise person who knows at the moment what is vital and permanent, what is lasting and memorable. –Churchill

History will be kind for me, for I intend to write it.  –Churchill [attributed]

6. Master the Written Word. Churchill’s early encounters with formal education were in large part unsatisfactory. Nonetheless, it soon emerged that he had gifts of memorization and writing–when his interest and passion were engaged.

His project of self-education included exposure to great English writers. Echoes of Macaulay and Gibbon ring throughout his highly crafted books, essays, and speeches.

Churchill’s recognizable writing style at once reflected his thinking, refined it–and, at times, may have hijacked it toward unexpected destinations.

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.  –Churchill

If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them–peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.  –Churchill

7. Master the Spoken Word. It is as a speaker that Churchill achieved his greatest leadership influence. As President Kennedy said, Churchill “mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”

Churchill acknowledged that he was not an orator. He meant that he was not a speaker, such as David Lloyd George, who could connect deeply with a live audience, receiving and responding to their rising emotions. One wonders if this was a lingering result of his hard-earned triumph over a distracting lisp and the concomitant self-consciousness it inevitably engendered.

By contrast, Churchill prepared extensively, speaking to his audiences with methodically crafted ideas and writing. Many of his legendary witticisms turn out, on inspection, to have been premeditated rather than impromptu. The value was created largely in the interplay of Churchill’s evolving thoughts and words as he drafted the speech, rather than in the interplay of his relationship with an audience during presentation.

He customarily dictated his writing. He referred to this as living “from mouth to hand.”

It was my ambition, all my life, to be a master of the spoken word. That was my only ambition.  –Churchill

Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory. He who enjoys it wields a power more durable than that of a great king. He is an independent force in the world. Abandoned by his party, betrayed by his friends, stripped of his offices, whoever can command this power is still formidable.  –Churchill

Mr. Churchill’s carefully composed attitudes as he sits at the corner of the gangway and makes beautiful inflections with his hands when talking to his neighbor tell of the dramatic artist who has nearly ruined a statesman.  –Harry Boardman

Not only was the content of his speeches wise and right but the were prepared with that infinite capacity for taking pains which is said to be genius. So was his appearance; his attitudes and gestures, his use of all the artifices to get his way, from wooing and cajolery, through powerful advocacy, to bluff bullying–all were carefully adjusted to the need. To call this acting is quite inadequate. What we are speaking of is transformation, a growth and permanent change of personality.  –Dean Acheson

8. Summon Unconquerable Grit in Oneself–as a Prelude to Inspiring Others.  One might be think of resilience as a notable aspect of Churchill’s life and work,  though one imagines that he might incline toward a simple, clear, onomatopoetic descriptor such as grit.

Churchill’s journey of self-creation and self-assertion was marked by ever-greater examples of determination against all odds, against polite and expert opinion–sometimes in the face of rationality itself. The trials and errors might well have been viewed as constituting a failed career–had not fate summoned him to formal leadership in the struggle against Hitler in 1940.

If you’re going through hell, keep going.  –Churchill

Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.  –Churchill

Continuous effort—not strength or intelligence—is the key to unlocking our potential.  –Churchill

Never, never, give up.  –Churchill

[T]he House should prepare itself for hard and heavy tidings. I have only to add that nothing which may happen in this battle can in any way relieve us of our duty to defend the world cause to which we have vowed ourselves; nor should it destroy our confidence in our power to make our way, as on former occasions in our history, through disaster and through grief to the ultimate defeat of our enemies. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.  –Churchill

William Orpen’s Portrait (1916)

9. Embrace Exuberance. Churchill battled depressive episodes throughout his life. According to Anthony Storr and others, this was an impetus for his ceaseless activity. Idleness was to be avoided at all costs. So, too, it may lay behind other personality traits, such as his predilection for stimulating company–even as it rendered him vulnerable to mountebanks in his midst.

He embraced exuberance as a fuel for his enthusiasm, which could then be transmitted to others.

In the struggle against Hitler, Churchill was able to combine the bracing realism of the pessimist with the indomitable optimism required to rouse the dispirited, demoralized people he served. His was not the easy optimism of one who had never known failure or misfortune. Rather, it was the hard-earned optimism of one who had proven that he could take a devastating punch–and, against all odds, pull himself off the mat.

A change is as good as a rest.  –Churchill

Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong; and a boy deprived of his father’s care often develops, if he escapes the perils of youth, an independence and vigor of thought which may restore in after life the heavy loss of early days.   –Churchill

You and I think of Winston as self-indulgent; he has never denied himself anything, but when a mere boy he deliberately set out to change his nature, to be tough and full of rude spirits.

It has not been easy for him….Winston has always been a ‘despairer.’ Orpen, who painted him before the Dardanelles, used to speak of the misery in his face. He called him the man of misery….Winston has always been wretched unless he was occupied.  –Brendan Bracken

Bottlescape, by WSC

10. Live and Lead as an Artist. Churchill epitomizes the leader as performance artist. He strode the world stage with others who were consciously artistic in their approach, including Franklin Roosevelt, de Gaulle, and Hitler.

According to some, his writing may have been, in part, an artistic response to his tendency to depression. Whatever the wellsprings, the results were spectacular. Late in life, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In mid-life, he took up painting.

I cannot pretend to feel impartial about the colors. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns. When I go to heaven I mean to spend a considerable portion of my first million years in painting, and so to get to the bottom of the subject. But then I shall require a still gayer palette than I get here below. I expect orange and vermilion will be the darkest, dullest colors upon it, and beyond them there will be a whole range of wonderful new colors which will delight the celestial eye.  –Churchill

Churchill Uniquely Passed the Ultimate Leadership Test

There is an ultimate test of leadership: would events have turned out differently but for their service?

Churchill is one of the rare leaders of history who undoubtedly passes this demanding test. The history of England, the history of Europe—indeed, the history of the world would have turned out differently but for his individual contribution of service in 1940-41.

That is not to say he was always right. He could be disastrously wrong and wrong-headed.

That is not to say he was uniformly successful. By any serious reckoning–including his own–he was not. The means required to save Britain and defeat the Axis powers ensured that many of the arrangements of Churchill’s world would be swiftly swept away. Contrary to some of the condescending revisionists of recent years, the gravity and contradiction of these circumstances were not lost on Churchill himself.

WSC, Momentarily Out of Character (Karsh, 1941)

The Inquest of History

Geoffrey Best, one of Churchill’s most effective recent biographers, concludes:

By the time Churchill died, Britain was fast turning into a land in which such a man as he was could never again find room to flourish, with a popular culture increasingly inimical to his values and likely therefore not to notice or properly appreciate his achievements….In the years 1940 and 1941 he was indeed the savior of the nation. His achievements, taken all in all, justify his title to be known as the greatest Englishman of his age. I am persuaded that, in this later time, we are diminished if, admitting Churchill’s failings and failures, we can no longer appreciate his virtues and victories.

The notable Cambridge scholar, Sir Geoffrey Elton, put it succinctly:

There are times when I incline to judge all historians by their opinion of Winston Churchill–whether they can see that no matter how much better the details, often damaging, of man and career become known, he still remains, quite simply, a great man.

Read more; http://ht.ly/HUNFd 

What Does Uncoachable (and Unchangeable) Look Like?

Even if you are the best coach in the world, if the person you are coaching shouldn't be coached, the coaching isn't going to work. The good news is that the "uncoachables" are easier than you think to spot.

How do you know when someone is uncoachable? How do you detect a lost cause? Following are four indicators that you are dealing with one of these people:

1. She doesn't think she has a problem.

This successful adult has no interest in changing. Her behavior is working fine for her. If she doesn't care to change, you are wasting your time! Let me give you an example of a nice woman who didn't think she had a problem. My mother, a lovely woman and much-admired first-grade teacher, was so dedicated to her craft that she didn't draw the line between inside and outside the classroom. She talked to all of us, including my father, in the same slow, patient manner, using the same simple vocabulary that she used with her six-year-olds every day. One day as she graciously and methodically corrected his grammar for the millionth time, he looked at her, sighed, and said, "Honey, I'm 70 years old. Let it go." My father had absolutely no interest in changing. He didn't perceive a problem. So no matter how much, how hard, or how diligently she coached, he wasn't going to change.

2. He is pursuing the wrong strategy for the organization.

If this guy is already going in the wrong direction, all you're going to do with your coaching is help him get there faster.

3. They're in the wrong job.

Sometimes people feel that they're in the wrong job with the wrong company. They may believe they're meant to be doing something else or that their skills are being misused. Here's a good way to determine if you're working with one of these people. Ask them, "If we shut down the company today, would you be relieved, surprised, or sad?" If you hear 'relieved,' you've got yourself a live one. Send them packing. You can't change the behavior of unhappy people so that they become happy: You can only fix behavior that's making people around them unhappy.

4. They think everyone else is the problem.

A long time ago I had a client who, after a few high-profile employee departures, was concerned about employee morale. He had a fun, successful company and people liked the work, but feedback said that the boss played favorites in the way he compensated people. When I reported this feedback to my client, he completely surprised me. He said he agreed with the charge and thought he was right to do so. First off, I'm not a compensation strategist and so I wasn't equipped to deal with this problem, but then he surprised me again. He hadn't called me to help him change; he wanted me to fix his employees. It's times like these that I find the nearest exit. It's hard to help people who don't think they have a problem. It's impossible to fix people who think someone else is the problem.

My suggestion in cases like these? Save time, skip the heroic measures, and move on. These are arguments you can never win!

See The Marshall Goldsmith Thinkers50 Video Blog for companion video

Photo: Carlos Yudica / Shutterstock

Read more; https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140902180851-2022319-what-does-uncoachable-and-unchangeable-look-like

Why We Fail At Leadership

When it comes to studying leadership, the natural tendency is to focus on those leaders whose successes and achievements continue to inspire us and drive so many to emulate them in the hopes of replicating their accomplishments.

Of course, as much as it’s important for us to see what we can learn from those who understand what it takes to succeed at leadership, it’s also valuable for us to examine and consider what causes others to fail in the role of leading people towards a common goal or shared purpose.

To that end, I’d like to share the story of one leader whose example I hope will help us to appreciate one of the key challenges leaders need to address if they are to succeed in this role in today’s fast-changing, global environment.

When Albert* was promoted to head the division he had spent the past few years working for, he naturally jumped into the opportunity with a lot of enthusiasm and ideas of how he’d like the department to operate under his leadership.

Given how Albert was career-driven and had his eyes on playing a bigger role in the organization, he was determined to not only prove his ability to lead this department, but to get his former colleagues to view him as ‘executive material’, in order to support his efforts to move up in the organization.

In no time, Albert was sending out memos detailing new approaches he wanted his former colleagues to employ in order to ‘make things more efficient’ or to ‘make efforts more aligned with corporate policy’ as a way to prove his technical prowess.

He used team meetings to inform his direct reports of his interactions with various groups of executives and VPs to highlight his growing familiarity with those at the executive level in order to prove his comfort level with ‘playing in the big leagues’.

Of course, in his zeal to prove his ability to lead and step up into the executive circle, Albert ended up making a number of missteps which, though seemingly minor, spoke more about the nature of his leadership than those actions he often tried to put in the limelight.

For example, Albert became so focused on building his ‘rising star’ status that when one of his team members expressed concern about the growing number of delays in getting vital data from him to complete their work, he dismissed their concerns because it wasn’t a ‘high visibility’ issue that those in senior management would care about.

He also challenged data findings his team members presented at department meetings – results the senior VPs had already signed off on – as a way to publicly demonstrate that he wasn’t letting anything get overlooked on his watch.

Unfortunately for Albert, he didn’t understand that in his quest to demonstrate his authority in leading this department, he was also showing his team how little he trusted their ability to understand what matters, not to mention their ability to do things right.

In light of these and several other missteps, it’s not surprising that Albert lasted a little over a year in this leadership role, leaving behind a team that was now suffering from decreased productivity levels, a recent history of missed deadlines and mistakes, and crumbling lines of communication between the various team members.

When these moments of leadership failure happen, it’s natural for us to look for some lightening rod moment – some specific event that clearly denotes that critical moment when things began to fall apart. Just as with those who succeed at leadership, when people in leadership roles fail, we want to unravel the specific steps they took to let us know what we need to avoid to prevent a similar fate.

Unfortunately, the reality is that leadership failures are rarely defined by a singular event, like that infamous moment when former BP CEO Tony Hayward expressed his frustration over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico by blurting out “I’d like my life back”.

And yet, while these two leaders may differ in having that sense of clarity for when their ability to lead fell apart, Hayward’s words and Albert’s actions do share something in common. In both cases, they demonstrated what really mattered the most to them in terms of how they approached their responsibilities and obligations to those under their care.

In Albert’s case, he was so focused on proving how valuable his leadership could be to the organization that he failed to show his team the value he was helping them to achieve as their leader.

It became very clear to everyone in Albert’s department that he viewed leadership as something one achieves because of your title or position. That he expected people to throw their full support behind him simply because of the sign that adorned his office door.

What he failed to understand, though, is that leadership is not dependent on your title, but on your ability to inspire people to follow you. [Share on Twitter] That people believe in your ability to chart a course and guide them to create something of value; something that matters not just to those in charge, but to all involved.

It’s important to note, too, that Albert’s time in this leadership role was short-lived not because he made drastic mistakes like Hayward did. Rather, it was because his actions and behaviour had revealed that his focus was not on how he could bring out the best in those under his care, but on how he could make his own star shine brighter within the organization.

Albert’s story is an important reminder for all of us that if we allow ourselves to get caught up in the busyness of today’s noisy world – or like in Albert’s case, to focus mostly on ourselves and what we personally want to achieve – we can very quickly find ourselves losing touch with how to engage and empower those we’ve accepted the responsibility to guide and to help to succeed in their collective efforts.

As much as we might like to assume that there’s an event we can point to and say that’s when things flew off the rails, more often than not, people fail at leadership in those small, everyday moments. In those moments where they fail to demonstrate to those they lead that they matter; that their contributions and efforts are valuable and important, and that we care about their successes.

To put it simply, leadership is not found in grand gestures, but in those moments where we reveal what we care about. [Share on Twitter] 

And that’s why I wanted to share Albert’s story because leadership is about those little moments, those conversations where we have the opportunity to build relationships with those under our care. To learn and better understand what matters to them, what excites them and makes them feel like they’re making a difference, and then connecting that to the shared purpose that defines our organization.

We need to approach leadership as an opportunity to not simply better ourselves, but to help those we lead become better as well. [Share on Twitter]

Sure, there are many examples of leaders who fall under the weight of their own hubris, caught up in the narrative of their own leadership that they soon forgot their raison d’être – the reason why people rally behind them and willingly follow their lead going forward.

But as with those leadership luminaries we look up to, these fallen-from-grace leaders also have lessons to teach us about what causes people to fail and end up on the other side of that leadership spectrum.

And perhaps the biggest lesson they can teach us all is why we need to be mindful for how we show up in our role as a leader. That we never forget that leadership is not about you – it’s about those who step forward to follow your lead. [Share on Twitter]

*Name changed.

Read more; http://ht.ly/HNCHU

Guidelines to Create a Compelling Vision

A compelling vision helps you make choices about where to focus your energy. Without vision, you are in danger of trying to be all things to all people, scattered or adrift.

In our book, Full Steam Ahead! Unleash the Power of Vision, Ken Blanchard and I explain:

“Vision is knowing who you are, where you’re going, and what will guide the journey.”

Who you are is your purpose. Where you’re going is your picture of the future. What will guide your journey are your values.

Vision is about being great 

A noble purpose is inspiring and helps you stay committed when times are hard.

A compelling vision is not about beating the competition or expressed simply in numbers. It’s about being the best you can be. Being “number one” might be a goal, but where do you go from there? Your vision will continue to guide you by answering, “what’s next?” as each goal is achieved.

Vision is clear and specific. It’s not just “positive thinking.”  It shows you a picture of what “being great” looks like for you.

3 Guidelines to Surface Your Vision

1. Relax and have fun. 

To create a vision, you must first connect with what you care most deeply about. Suspend your internal judge and critic. Dig below the surface and see what arises. Be creative and playful. Give yourself permission to explore, to dream.

Do not let your fears and concerns limit your thinking. A vision can overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. If you have any doubts about this, consider the story of Terry Fox.

You can use the logical part of your brain later to shape your vision, but first reach for your deepest dreams.

2. Be proactive, not reactive. Focus on what you desire, not what you want to get rid of.

There is more power in focusing on what you desire than on removing a problem. If you are are focused primarily on what you don’t want, you might remove a specific problem, but you are likely to move simply from one crisis to another – because you’re not focused on where you’re going.

If you you must focus on removing a problem, pair it with a proactive focus.  For example, if you want to lose weight, you need to eat less. However, if you are frequently thinking about the chocolate you are not eating, it’s difficult to maintain motivation over the long term.  Try also picturing what you’ll look like in your new jeans. Or if you’re quitting smoking, imagine yourself in your old age taking a hike or reading a book to your grandchildren.

3. Focus on the end result, not the process to get there.

The power of vision comes from creating an image of the end result. The process for achieving it, the path, will not necessarily be clear.

In the late 1970’s, the technique of “mental rehearsal’” became popular in sports training – where the athlete visualized his or her performance during the competition. Over the years, sports trainers discovered that the real power was in visualizing the end result— celebrating the victory or seeing yourself standing on the podium receiving the gold medal.

Imagine that the future is just as you wished it would be. What is actually happening? See vivid images that show what your purpose is, what your values are, and what you are doing.

Read more; http://ht.ly/HJXNT

You’re the boss. Make a difference.

Bosses: You’ve got the power

“The upshot of these and so many other studies and stories is that bosses pack a wallop, especially on their direct reports. Bosses shape how people spend their days and whether they experience joy or despair, perform well or badly, or are healthy or sick.”

That’s from Bob Sutton’s great book, Good Boss, Bad Boss. If you are a boss, you’re the single most important factor in determining the morale and productivity of your team.

Make your team a great place to work

There are companies that are great places to work. But for most people, most of the time, the boss does more to determine whether where their work experience is great or not. Their experience working on the team is the most important reality.

I’ve seen wretched companies where some people loved coming to work because of their boss. And I’ve watched awful bosses make working for a great place to work company more like working at a penal colony.

Yes, the company has an impact

There are things you can’t control. You don’t determine whether the company pays a living wage. You don’t have a say in what’s in the policy manual or the process of getting expenses paid or vacation approved. But that’s no excuse

You affect most of the important things

You can help your people grow and develop, and you should. That’s your job. You can treat people fairly, like responsible adults. You can say “good job” or “great effort” or “you’re making progress” even if your company doesn’t seem to care. You can help team members build on their strengths and make their weakness irrelevant. You can take the blame when things go bad and hand out credit freely when they go well. In other words, you can make a difference.

How you make a positive difference

Start by getting to know your people and their work and help them get to know you. Show up a lot. Have conversations. They’re the way relationships grow and grow strong.

Look for legitimate reasons to praise team members. Praise achievement, progress, and effort. Praise honest attempts to do something different, even if the outcome isn’t so great.

Imagine yourself as team enabler. Help people do better. Help them work together better. Remove impediments that get in the way of good work or high morale.

Boss’s Bottom Line

You have the biggest impact on the productivity and morale of the team. Use that power for good.

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How Do Trustworthy Leaders Behave?

Pixar and Disney Animation president Ed Catmull (left) has instituted workshops designed to educate colleagues about how the company views trustworthiness. | Reuters/Regis Duvignau

It can be easy to trust too quickly, especially when a leader is affable, has an impressive résumé, and tells you what you want to hear. In 30 years of surveying senior executives, social psychologist Roderick Kramer has found that 8 out of 10 report being burned at least once because they trusted too much or put their faith in the wrong person at some point in their careers.

It’s important for an organization to build trust among workers for several reasons, says Kramer. Employees who know they can trust their leaders are happy workers who believe in what they are doing. Creating this trust from within can also lead to public trust. “A lot of leaders talk about public trust, then they focus on the impression-management side of things,” says Kramer, “it’s much more important to establish genuine trust within your organization, which leads to trustworthy performance, which then builds over time into a public reputation of being trustworthy.”

With surveys from Edelman, Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership, and others reporting public trust in business and government leaders at near historic lows, Kramer says it’s a good time for leaders to build a trustworthy reputation. “People are looking for leaders they can trust, and so there’s a lot of capital sitting on the table for leaders who can get the equation right.” So how do truly trustworthy leaders behave?

They project confidence, competence, and benevolence.

Research shows that trustworthy leaders demonstrate that they have the skills and knowledge to steer the organization, that they don’t shy from straight talk, and that they are acting in the best interests of the organization, rather than in their own best interests.

“These things sound obvious, but still it’s important to look for ways to communicate them,” says Kramer. “Several people have written about the importance of leading by walking around — being present, accessible. Leaders like this leave a good impression as tangible, real people.”

They say — and show — that trust is an important company value.

In a way, good leaders are trust teachers, says Kramer. “They talk about the importance of trust, so that people know the leader values it, and that there will be consequences if that trust is violated.” He notes that at Pixar, a company known for creating animated films that kids love and parents can trust, CEO Ed Catmull has instituted workshops specifically to educate colleagues about how the company views trustworthiness.

As an example of demonstrating trust in employees, Kramer cites Whole Foods CEO John Mackey and his policy whereby employees directly hire new people to work on their teams, rather than relying on a system of centralized hiring through HR. “He’s pushing the decision-making process from the top down to the people who are going to have to live with the consequences of those decisions, and that doesn’t happen in many organizations,” says Kramer.

They establish clear roles and systems to speed trust.

While one leader’s behavior can set a tone of trustworthiness, the entire company needs to have rules that enable trust to permeate a group’s culture, Kramer has found in his research. “When people know what they’re supposed to do, and they know what other people are supposed to do, then they trust that system of roles to work.”

He points to Pixar’s “Braintrust,” which Catmull describes in his book, Creativity, Inc., the process by which the company’s top minds relentlessly vet creative ideas and identify a project’s problems. Because the system is so rigorous and well defined, it engenders trust in the ideas that are deemed good enough to move forward. “And once you’ve had a history of success with that culture of rules, it becomes a background expectation,” says Kramer, a state he calls presumptive trust, which in turn leads to trustworthy performance.

They share the credit, and they take the blame.

Because leaders are highly visible, people both within an organization and outside the organization tend to overweight their responsibility for successes and failures, a phenomenon the late Harvard scholar Richard Hackman called the “leader attribution error.” For example, look at the success of the late Steve Jobs, says Kramer. “Many creative minds at Apple contributed to the development of the iPhone, but in the mainstream Jobs got the credit.”

Leaders can beneficially exploit this phenomenon to build trust by being out in front of the organization’s decisions, says Kramer, so that when good things happen, people recognize that the leader was in charge of the process, even though he or she might share the credit. “And there’s a little bit of evidence that suggests that when leaders are generous at sharing credit, they actually are more trusted,” he says. “It shows that they are fully confident.” Likewise, demonstrating confidence by admitting full responsibility when something goes wrong — even if the leader wasn’t fully responsible — can in some cases enhance a leader’s reputation.

They don’t mask a crisis.

"One of the fatal mistakes many organizational leaders make is not the initial misstep that causes the crisis; it’s the cover-up — the attempt to spin it or mask the problem,” he says. People quickly lose confidence in leaders who do this, says Kramer, pointing to bankers during and following the 2008 financial crisis. “I think some of the disenchantment with Wall Street was that leaders didn’t really take responsibility for their errors,” he says. “They blamed the system, or imprecise regulation — and people don’t like that because it’s a dodge.”

Instead, Kramer suggests, acknowledge the problem quickly, take swift and decisive action to address it, and put in place measures to prevent its reoccurrence. If the problem involves a defective product, recall it “and make a very public display of the new safeguards or policies that will prevent it from happening again.” In a recent book with Todd Pittinsky, Restoring Trust in Organizations and Leaders, Kramer suggests it is possible for leaders and organizations to regain the public’s trust, but it isn’t easy.

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