Tag: Leadership

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Orchestrate Life and Leadership

As a leader, do you practice leadership?

I use the phrases get clear for you, set the stage, be clear for others, and create a rhythm to describe how leaders continuously orchestrating change for their organizations. Because there will always be change required and it is you, the leader, who ensures that an ability and willingness to always be moving smartly forward is natural in your organization; it’s simply what everyone knows is expected there, and they are committed to do their part.

Choose whichever words or phrases remind you of your practice, and continue support your ability perform and to orchestrate change. Know that holding the position of leader does not mean you are practicing leadership. Consider what your current leadership practice is, and what about your business, role, workplace or life that is not yet aligned with what you really want. Now consider what can be with an effective leadership practice in place.

Your performance requires a personal practice

Continue reading “Orchestrate Life and Leadership”

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Your perspective is a choice.

How are you looking at your life, leadership and business – and all that is in your world?

There is the world and there is the world as you perceive it, and the perspective – your point of view – you associate with it. You are not in control of the world. You are in control of your perspective, which creates your world. And so, you are in control of your world.

Your world encompasses you and everyone in your circle. Further, as a leader, your circle creates many circles with many people touched by the ripple resulting from your actions and words.

How you show up, and what you say and do, are driven by your perspective. You create a context, at work and in every place you lead …

Leaders, you can’t change a person but you can change the context you create at work and in every place you lead.

… You can choose to change your perspective.

Continue reading “Your perspective is a choice.”
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It is always the right time for better leadership

Leadership, Alignment
Lead for Alignment

It is never too late to lead better. Lead for alignment.

Only with alignment and momentum are performance breakthroughs possible.

Only with Aligned Momentum can a business be vibrant: Valuable, Relevant, and a Great Place to Work.

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader. ~John Quincy Adams

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Think Differently. Be Clear.

For teams to execute strategy brilliantly, a leader must be clear. Clear about the vision (the direction). Clear about the strategy (the way to move closer toward the vision) in a way that each person can understand the role they play to brilliantly execute that strategy. Clear about the purpose (why the company exists) and how the strategy aligns with this purpose.

One leader who inspired others, and connected to them with his communication in an actionable way, was Steve Jobs former CEO of Apple.

Steve Jobs Think different 1997

Continue reading “Think Differently. Be Clear.”

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Leadership today: Balance masculine and feminine traits

PIVOT, leadership, masculine, feminine
PIVOT to a more balanced way of leading

Input about how to BE as a “Leader” is plentiful. There are also books on management, which is part of the issue in our lack of leadership, which I’ll discuss briefly later.

Should you be more competitive and guided by The 48 Laws of Power or should you be more empathetic and guided by Emotional Intelligence? Answer? Be aware of both and be authentic to who you really are and why you are on this earth doing what you do. This is about balance.

First, envision how you want to BE, as a leader. Then, become aware of how you are BEING now (you’ll need to search inside and ask others whom you trust). And then, determine your best next steps to Pivot from the you right now to the you that you intend to be.

Here is one scenario to help you get clear about how a possible imbalance of your own masculine and feminine traits may be holding you back from being a great leader, or from meeting the expectations of a work role. I encourage you to collaborate with trusted others to understand how you are BEING so that you can then determine how you might change. Continue reading “Leadership today: Balance masculine and feminine traits”

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Agile, Lean, and The Pivot

Nimble, Agile, Lean, The Pivot, Aligned Momemtum
Nimble: Agile Lean Pivot

As a leader, you are positioned to orchestrate change. You may have teams already working together in a nimble way, and a way in which change comes naturally. Bridge these styles (and often unique languages) together, and you will find that leading – and orchestrating change – throughout the organization comes more naturally.

  • Familiar with Lean? You will recognize the phrase “working together.”
  • Or with Agile? You will recognize “collaboration.”
  • Top leadership? You will recognize those phrases and “strategic alignment.”

    (When there is alignment and engagement and empowerment, you’ve reached a state of Aligned Momentum)

    • It is only in the state of Aligned Momentum that performance breakthroughs are possible.

    It’s up to you, the leader, to ensure that all players come together to make one enchanting sound. Make communication and clarity a top priority.

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    3 unintended consequences from not speaking out when your gut says it’s wrong

    The Pivot
    Create a culture where every person feels safe to speak out

    It’s subtle. Yet it is powerful. That is: The internal pull to do what fits in – what doesn’t stir things up – because speaking out would be too uncomfortable. What is uncomfortable feels risky.

    Yet by not speaking up you are also taking a risk, and perhaps a bigger risk than if you spoke up.

    Every time we choose we are telling our brains that this is what we want.

    Continue reading “3 unintended consequences from not speaking out when your gut says it’s wrong”

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    Empower others to initiate change. Leaders orchestrate.

    Employee Engagement-41pct Disengaged

    Those of you who know me or are getting to know me… understand that I am all about business vibrancy. In my terms, that translates to a nimble organization, continuously building its business value, and a great place to work. An organization with these traits has what I call “Aligned Momentum,” which I show in the visual above this post and write about in my book (you can find an excerpt here).

    For over 20 years the average results from employee engagement surveys have shown a rate of disengagement at over 30%. Aon’s recent 2017 Trends in Global Employee Engagement reports that 41% of employees are disengaged and feel undervalued.

    What this reflects, at least in part, is a lack of empowering employees to initiate change – a critical step in a Pivot toward Aligned Momentum.

    Continue reading “Empower others to initiate change. Leaders orchestrate.”

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    As a leader you can’t change a person but you can change their context.

    Culture and Brilliant Execution
    You Can Create a Workplace Context Where People Thrive, and Execute Brilliantly

    A critical part of a leader’s role is to build others up. Great leaders are highly skilled at this. Good leaders sometimes give up because they are not yet skilled in communicating in a way that empowers and inspires others. This is a skill worth developing.

    “You cannot change a person, but you can change their context.”

    ~Lori Michele Leavitt, The Pivot: Orchestrating Extraordinary Business Momentum

    You can create a safe place in which you and others become aware of how you each see the world. You can adjust how you communicate so that there is understanding of what you say, in the way you intended it, and that you care.

    My intention is to speak to leaders, developing leaders and those who support leaders. My intention in sharing this video is not political (given our country’s turmoil from miscommunications and hate, I need to make clear that I am not speaking directly to this). Please watch and listen to JFK in the video below, perhaps more than once, and consider how your own communications might combine power and caring, as he does:

    Continue reading “As a leader you can’t change a person but you can change their context.”