Work Life Balance (2 of 2) – MN Leadership Coach Shows How!

MN Business Owners - Can you be a Great Leader And Have A Life Too?

 

Work Life Balance Part 2 of 2

Years ago when I was in the IT field, I had just proposed a large nationwide email system implementation project to the CEO of a major construction company.  There were clear benefits to improving communication in his company, and at the time (late 90’s) the case for email had already been well proven, or so I had thought.

 

During the discussion the CEO hesitated.  When I inquired about his concerns, he told me something that I have found very insightful and eerily predictive of the way technology robs us of our time and distorts the supposed work life balance everyone seems to desperately crave.

 

Before I divulge what he said, I want to ask you if you’ve noticed manager level people with blackberries all text emailing back and forth.  If you ask them, as I have, who they are communicating with, it’s not their family, its their team.  Why?  It’s usually to keep informed on something that’s going on, or even in some cases, to make sure nothing is going on.  What does this say about that managers’ ability to have trust and confidence in their team?  What does this say about how they see their role in the company?  Are they a babysitter?

This CEO had commented that he wasn’t sure his company was ready for email, because he spent a lot of energy creating a company culture of self-reliance, of people who could be trusted and counted on to do their job and make the right decisions and were relied upon to do so.  His concern was that with email it’s far too easy to cc: your boss on any particular email. 

 

Once you start down that slippery slope as a company, you’re not too far away from getting the boss’s opinion before you make a decision.  From there, you’d better be waiting for the boss to get back to you on any decision.  So what do you do when the boss is away?  Whew!  Good thing someone invented Blackberries!  Now no matter where the boss is, home, family, flying, whatever, we can easily and confidently contact them. 

 

 

It would be better for us as a society and as companies that we have technology to instill backbones in our teams.  Then we’d have to change our focus from having strong leaders to having strong followers.  Perhaps we put autoresponders on all manager’s emails that say ‘I’m out of the office, you’re entrusted with this decision, what do you think is best? What do you believe I’d decide?”

 

Imagine a manager with a team that respects their family time on the weekend and does not interrupt them.  Imagine this team carefully considering what the manager would want in a particular decision and act accordingly.  What kind of powerful companies would we have then?

 

The essence of leadership is not an ability to make decisions.  Nor is it actions, nor is it vision, mission or influence.  The essence of leadership is to make leaders out of followers.  This is how leaders create balance, for themselves, their team, their customers, their company and their community.

 

Alan Hill is a business and executive leadership coach in Minneapolis, Minnesota with ActionCOACH, the world’s number one coaching company.  If you would like to learn more about him or to contact him for a private consultation, check out his website at http://actioncoach.com/alanhill 

Work Life Balance (1 of 2) – MN Leadership Coach Shows How!

MN Business Owners - Can you be a Great Leader And Have A Life Too?

Work Life Balance - Part one of two

 

In the recent BNET article/blog titled “Be a Great Leader – and Have a Life,” the author talks about the importance of the four domains: 1) Work, 2) Home, 3) Community, and 4) Self.

If you label yourself as a successful leader: how DO YOU DO IT? What works for you? The article may work in theory, but does it work in practice? 

 

I have a different perspective than most.

 

First it requires we forgo the notion that amount of time spent in each domain equates to balance. Perhaps a person is most beneficial to society by spending most of their time as a business leader because they are positively impacting many more lives than that of their family.  Or perhaps they are more impactful as a father teaching one person how to golf (Tiger Woods).  I believe our balance should be measured in contributions, not time.

 

When I was a corporate leader I did what was necessary to support my team. Many long hours were required. What came of that investment was a perpetual mentoring program that continues to give employees the opportunity work to promote themselves on a technical path.

 

My work life balance came in the lessons I learned and the mentor skills I developed as a result of that time invested. Now I am able to leverage that investment of time with many other businesses, just like a programmer writes a program once and people use it many times over.

 

I find it more beneficial to impact many more lives as a result of having spent what some consider an enormous amount of time to obtain an ability to quickly give benefit to many customers. Did I have balance then? Some would say no because I spent so much time at work and not at home. However, what if I write an ebook of my lessons and share that with the world? Would the time that others save in their work so they can be with their family be considered a part of my ‘balance’?

I submit that balance has to be considered in the scope of an entire life. Our tradition in America is to retire at age 65. Why wait so long? Why not develop a recurring revenue stream (or several) based upon our experiences, regardless of how much time we spent developing them?  Then we would be able to retire whenever we want.  Would this be considered balance because you’re taking away time from your family?    

As an example, Bill Gates does not have to work for a living, but he spent a bunch of time building a company that we all benefit from. When you consider the time he saved us (forget about buggy software for a moment) does that balance out the time he invested?  Consider that he is now in charge of a foundation that positively impacts lives around the world.  Does that balance out the countless hours he spent away from his family? 

Conclusion: When you measure work life balance, weigh in the amount of future return you and others will receive for the balance of your investment in your life’s work.  Considering the return will help you determine if this time is worth the investment.

 

Alan Hill is a business and executive leadership coach in Minneapolis, Minnesota with ActionCOACH, the world’s number one coaching company.  If you would like to learn more about him or to contact him for a private consultation, check out his website at http://actioncoach.com/alanhill 

Effective leaders create strong followers – MN Business Coach Shows You How

Are you a leader?  Are you a strong leader? Do you exhibit strong leadership?

That’s good.  My question is, ‘What’s better than a strong leader?”  If the opposite of strong leadership is weak leadership, my question is what do strong leaders create? 

 

Strong leaders often create weak followers.

 

Look at every strong leader through history.   From Alexander to Lee Iacocca, once the strong leader was out of the picture, who was equipped to take their place?  Who was capable?  Alexander lost the unity of his empire within a generation, which was about the same before Chrysler was bought by private investment firm.  Strong leadership – a trait too highly praised in America – promotes weak followers. 

 

Leaders, especially strong leaders, need followers.  More importantly, I have noticed that followers need leaders, the stronger the better.  I submit to you that as followers become weaker, they find fault with their current leader and begin to seek a different, even stronger leader.  Just like eyeglass prescriptions become stronger and stronger as our eyes grow weaker.  It’s not the fault of the glasses our eyesight has become weaker.  When the strong leader is gone, even temporarily, direction, vision and purpose cease to exist.  This is no way to create a business or organization that lives on beyond the leader.

 

Strong leaders are not bad, it’s just there’s something better.  Sustainable leadership.  Take a different approach and make the goal of an enterprise to create strong followers, not strong leaders.  Currently to find leaders one must ‘hunt’ them (headhunters, remember that term?).  You look for the mythical ‘right stuff’ and once you find it, entice them with golden handcuffs, not great metaphors or models for your business viability long term.   

 

Sustainable leaders create momentum by providing encouragement.

 

Imagine instead farming a field of strong followers, each growing up ready, willing able and equipped to lead/follow, able to do both simultaneously – at once, together.  Imagine leaders who do not need followers and followers who don’t need leaders.  This is not about empowerment, it’s about why empowerment didn’t work.  Weak followers do not WANT to be empowered.  First we must create the desire to be self-sustaining.

 

My purpose is to create sustainable leadership for a business, community, organization or country.  How?

 

By equipping followers to lead.  Not just giving them tools to make effective decisions but equipping them with the desire and inspiration to be strong, not looking externally for support.  Many leaders today lend their ‘strong leadership’ to an organization because that’s exactly what they were hired to do.  That promotes followers who are continually looking to someone else for their direction.  

 

Takeaway for you: Call it a lab exercise or experiment:  As a leader, REGARDLESS of your position in the organization, for 30 days, create momentum in your organization by simply providing one thing, encouragement and praise.  Use the words ‘That’s right!” or “you’re absolutely right” at least 10 times each day to different people.  Employees, managers, your boss, your customers, heck, even your competition.  Speak encouragement to their ideas, vision, desires, hopes and dreams.  What I want you to notice is how much momentum this creates for all the stuff that needs to get done and all the improvement that needs to happen.  You can doubt this will work, but you’ll never know it won’t work if you never take me up on this challenge. 

 

What I want is for you to respond with the changes that are made in your organization once you’ve tried this experiment. 

 

I invite you to notice how much stronger your organization’s followers will become.   

 

Alan Hill is a business and executive coach in Minneapolis, Minnesota with ActionCOACH, the world’s number one business coaching company.  If you would like to learn more about him or to contact him for a private consultation, check out his website at http://actioncoach.com/alanhill  

 

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MN Business Owners: Create leaders in your organization

How do you create leaders? 

 

Technicians are built on skills (Engineering, science, architecture, computer programming), Leadership is built on character (Integrity, Honesty, Virtue, Service) and the importance of relationships.

 

Are you born with character?  Can character be taught?  Can character be created?

Can character be measured?  Can leaders transfer character to technicians and employees?  Can leaders transfer character to other leaders?

 

Yes. By using the right systems to do it.

 

In our society, educational systems transfer skills (School, University, On-The-Job training) while families and religious institutions are for creating character, which they do through stories – about family experiences or religious stories. 

 

Leaders are always assessing people’s character.  They understand that relationships are built on character and business is built on relationships – therefore, it’s critical to be able to assess character in a potential new hire, vendor or customer.

 

Imagine using the systems for transferring skills to create and transfer character.  Go beyond simply discussing ethics in a classroom and create a “character creating” course, designed to transfer character like honesty, integrity and service. 

 

What would the course look like?  The same as for a skills based curriculum.  Lecture on concept and applications, do a lab exercise and then test.

 

For example: a class on “Service”. Teach the importance of service to others.  Explain the concept of creating more value than you are asking in return.  Explain how it applies to sales or customer service.  Do a lab exercise in the workplace where the student applies the concepts to their job.  Track and test the results.  Do customers buy more?  Does the customer satisfaction survey show higher customer retention? 

 

The first step is to determine what character you want in your business.  Make a list of all the values that are critical to the success of your business.  Then determine how it will be measured (increased sales, greater customer loyalty).  Now it’s just a simple matter of creating the class materials.

 

If you would like a jumpstart, contact me for a FREE list of character values at (612) 819-1803 or email alanhill@actioncoach.com.

 

Alan Hill is a business and executive coach in Minneapolis, Minnesota with ActionCOACH, the world’s number one business coaching company.  If you would like to learn more about him or to contact him for a private consultation, check out his website at http://actioncoach.com/alanhill