The Idea of Thought Leadership

Just read through an Wikipedia article on Thought Leadership. Found a quote that I really liked by Elise Bauer.

It states that a thought leader is someone who has “the recognition from the outside world that the company deeply understands its business, the needs of its customers, and the broader marketplace in which it operates”.

Sounds like a pretty good thing to be a thought leader. The term thought leadership was obviously coined in 1994 by Joel Kurtzman while interviewing people for his magazine.

I guess just as the Wikipedia article states that thought leadership is an term that is ever increasingly present as the world of business changes faster.

Of course the quote above states some things that would be essential for any business to be successful, but I think thought leaders are even more sought after today as guides into a successful future in and out of business.

Taking Time for Management Development

There is a saying that I think applies to management development as well as it does to health. It says that if you do not invest in health care now you will have to invest in sick care later.

I would say that if you do not invest in management development now, you will need to invest in conflict resolution, career coaching or individual therapy later.

Being proactive is a trait for successful people, managers and others alike. Sometimes it might feel hard for you as a manager or leader to find the time, or rather take the time, out of a busy schedule to step out of doing and spend some time on growing.

It is essential though, as things are constantly changing. When it comes to change in management development int might be good to consider that almost all of the cells in our body are exchanged during the course of a year. So change is a natural state.

So stick with that change and create the time and space for some development of your management skills!

Four Squares to a Positive Self Image

I went to a seminar a couple of weeks back and learnt a new perspective on our self image and how we can create a positive self image. Or I guess it works for creating a negative one too, if one so desires…

She drew a square and then divided that square into four equal squares. Then she numbered and labelled them as follows:

1. My thoughts (or my self image) about myself
2. My behavior
3. The thoughts of others about me
4. The behavior of others around me

Then this whole section about creating a positive self image went like this; your thoughts about yourself influnce how you behave. Your behavior determines in large how others think about you and those thoughts in turn influence how they behave near and around you. Their behavior then largely determines how you see yourself.

So where to begin the change? Well, since it is hard to directly change others, best to start with yourself. Change that what affects how you behave, become the director of the movie called your life.

Somebody said “fake til you make it”. Lift your head a little higher, straighten your back a little more, even if you are just following directions here. That will inevitably to a smaller or larger extent affect how others see you and how they behave towards you.

And you guessed it, which will affect your self image and get you on the way to a more positive self image.

Change Leadership by Obama

The topic of change leadership has been heavily promoted by the elections last year in the U.S. Barack Obama got on stage and into many people spirits and hearts by talking about the time for change.

What can we learn from his approach? He promoted the phrase Yes We Can. In change leadership I think it is key to instill confidence into your team members that yes, they can. Giving them the information they need to handle changing times along with the tools to see the change through is essential.

Being charasmatic off course can help, but even more important I think is the message of unity, off trying to create unison rather than division.

Also I believe to be an effective in terms of leadership and change you need to be comfortable with your own changing processes. Someone, I think it might have been attributed to Dalai Lama, said that the amount of uncertainty you can handle is in direct proportion to how developed and mature you are as a person.

There are several good role models for excellent change leadership, you just need to find them out.

Sustainable Corporate Leadership

I have yet to find a training labeled Sustainable Corporate Leadership. Not saying it is not out there somewhere on the big, vast Internet, but I am not aware of it so far. However, I am convinced that it will be an imporatant part of developing corporate leadership skills to get good a the stewardship part of leading a corporation.

It is kind of hard to miss that there has been, and is, a lot of energy around environmental topics these days. Buildings are becoming more eco-friendly, car manufacturers are working on more efficient battery solutions for their vehicles and the climate changes have become an everyday discussion. More and more companies are also showing their active awareness in this arena and corporate leadership of course plays a vital part. 

So what those sustainable corporate leadership skills need to prosper in the long run and be a positive part both of the share holders portfolio as well as of the global nature. Well, for you leaders of corporations out there, here is Markus’ top four corporate leadership skills:

• Walk the talk. You can not come across as worth listening to when you talk about your companies environmental efforts if you do not recycle your own garbage at home. The old saying that goes for kids as well as most other people around you; they will not do what you say – they will do what you do.
• Let go of your need for instant gratification. It this sense of corporate leadership the rewards do not show up the same day, not even the next day most of time. Well, the good feeling inside of being part of a bigger scheme and doing good, comes pretty much instantenously to those who are willing to receive it, but the efforts of this kind of leadership might show up a year or two later.
• Put things in a larger context. Things get their meaning when we put them in a larger context. People around you will get motivated if you are able to show them the big picture. Where does your company fit into the whole and how does its contribution make a difference there. 
• Make the non-measurable into something measaruble. Goodwill is sometimes hard to measure, so adapt the measuring of your efforts so it is easy for the people in your company to see the difference they are making. For example, if you wish to have people recycle more of the office paper, you could assign somebody (or do it yourself) to contact a recycling organisation and get some numbers on the difference that makes in the amount of trees that need to be cut down.

The essence of sustainable corporate leadership skills is truly to allow yourself to care and to be able to hold both the bottom line in the financial report and the footprint your company leaves in this world.

Emotional recovery and mind relaxation for the giving

One often speaks of recovery after training and work out, but also as a form of relaxation in times of stress. To miss out on periods of mind relaxation is a trap that is readily available especially for you giving, caring souls out there. Those of you that really like to give of your time, your energy and your care. For you the art of emotional recovery is vital. 

One of my most valuable lessons when it comes to emotional recovery is something I experienced many years ago during a meeting with a manager at on of the largest non-profit organizations in Sweden. I had the illusion of these kinds of people as the height of altruism, giving and unselfishness. In the true meaning of the word people who always gave of themselves to help others. 

I had signed up as a volunteer with this organisation and when I received this lesson in relaxation I was about to drop my jaw to the floor. This person across from me who I idealized so much said: “next week I am headed to the south pacific for a two week relaxing vacation”.

I remember some of my first thoughts being something like, how can you leave all these needy people on their own and take off to go lay on a warm beach somewhere on the other side of the world?

What he said next was what made this conversation stick in my mind for years afterwards and work as a guiding star on emotional recovery ever since. He said: “if you do not take care of yourself first, you are not able to help others”. 

It is so simple and to the point. Today I think about this lesson every time I sit in an airplane and the person doing the safety instruction says “put your own oxygen mask on first before attempting to help others”.

Of course we talked some more about this afterwards, but the phrase above and this person become a mentor when it came to taking care of my own health in the midst of my desire to give to others. With good emotional recovery and mind relaxation in between the quality of giving becomes so much greater.

How To Develop Leadership Skills

The question is often raised how to best develop leadership skills. It is one of those how to questions that ranges across ages, across companies, across cultures. No matter where we turn there is leadership in the sense that leading is the action of influencing other people.

One of the trainings I have worked with for several years asks the question; do you wish to influence other people? then you wish to lead!

So back to how to develop leadership skills. Often I am asked this of people looking at an offering of different trainings and are not sure which path to choose for their further education as leaders. I usually advice these people to the best of my ability and after asking for their needs and desires in terms of leadership.

There is though a more simplistic view of this. That leading is an everyday activity and the best way to develop leadership skills is to:

• become aware and present in everyday moments with other people around,
• create the time and space to actively reflect on the experiences of these moments,
• ask others for feedback about how they perceive you.

It does not cost a penny, you do not need to travel to any fancy training centre and it is available in abundance. You might need develop leadership skills first though where you can learn the art of active reflection and how to effectively receive feedback.

Quality of Life Tool

What is Quality of Life? It can mean so many different things to so many different people of course, depending on who you ask. A Quality of Life tool that I learned in a training I participated in has really served me well over the years. 

It is not a real ranking or questionnaire in any sense, but an illustration and food for thought (and action). It is about a line that in many senses determine the very quality of your life. If you choose to place your primary focus above the line you are more likely to experience a higher quality of life then if you choose to live your life mainly below the line. 

So what is above and below the line in this qualite of life tool? Above is the word LEARN. Below is the word BLAME. You most likely have a pattern of behaviour that you usually use in this aspect in situations that you face in life.

If you choose to blame in situations then you search for something of someone to put the blame on. If you instead choose to learn you instead focus on developing by acquiring new knowledge from your experience. The blaming is directed backwards, meaning you focus on the past. The learning is forward oriented, meaning you strive to the future.

Maybe this can serve as a Quality of Life tool. To ask yourself in the moment next time and note whether you choose to learn or to blame, especially if the situation feels a bit (or a lot) challenging.

Corporate Team Building before it hits the fan

I have worked with corporate team building on several continents. I have delievered corporate team building activities to people of all ages and from all kinds of different companies. A common nominator is that a lot of the time companies do not invest in these kinds of activities until the, you know what, has hit the fan.

When things have gotten problematic, when conflict has arisen, that is usually when the phone rang and they wanted help through one or another corporate team building event. Rare were the occassions when somebody saw the great sense in investing in these trainings when all was well.  

When people are happy, when finances are good, that should be the time to use preventive teambuilding. To establish good relationship and sustainable norms that will carry the group and the company through the rough times. 

I think the so called financial crisis that is now major headlines around the world will also sort out the companies that have been preventive. Of course there are other factors that determine the success of a company in challenging times, but I have learned how corporate teambuilding has been used, or not been used, to be a strongly determining factor.

Conflict theory in the real world

A while back I came across the term conflict theory for the first time. Well, not the first time I heard those words, but in the sence of an actual term that people searched for online. 

For me the concept of conflict theory had always evolved about texts and books I have read about different ways of handling a conflict, like if your main focus in the conflict is the task/goal or the relationship, or a mix of the two, or possible not either of them. 

I have also facilitated several times using the the Strength Deployment Inventory, SDI, originally created by Elias Porter and based on his Relationship Awareness Theory. That has a lot of useful information that can help us handle conflict more effeciently by understanding our driving forces behind our behaviours.

I love using this tool and will continue using it. I have lately realized thought that the academic or scientific community do see there being enough research behind it, so it might not be a proper conflict theory in that sense. 

What I have found now is a new dimension of the words conflict theory that relates to for example what Karl Marx said about the conflict between different classes in society.

So much to learn, I guess I will have to get a few more books!