I’m not a gifted sportsman, in fact even ‘competent’ is a stretch most of the time. But one sport I picked up quickly was snowboarding. There’s something exhilarating about hurtling down the side of a mountain strapped to a snowboard with trees and rocks all around you that heightens the senses and reminds you that life is short (and could be even shorter if you don’t take up a different hobby).

Every instinct in my body led me to believe that leaning back in a defensive posture was the way to stay safe. Yet ironically, keeping your weight on your back foot is in fact about the surest way to fall. My breakthrough came when I got out of my defensive stance and shifted my weight to my front foot. My instincts told me that this was dangerous, that I would fall and hurt myself, that this was risky. The reality was that I fell less often and then relaxed and enjoyed myself. Those defensive instincts had actually caused much of my pain.

Leaders have to learn to favour their front foot. Aware of the dangers all around them and sometimes still hurting from the last fall, the leader must choose to override defensive posturing and get on the offense. Their default setting must become action not inaction. To press forward not lean backward. To push through pain and go again. In other words they lead with “front foot favouritism”.

So why don’t more leaders do it? Well for one thing it often goes against our instincts. Unless you have a natural inclination towards risk and action, it tends to be a difficult choice at first to contravene what seems like self-preservation and get on the front foot. But with time and success you slowly form a new neural pathway in your brain until eventually “front foot = self-preservation”. The other reason that leaders stay on the back foot is that once in a while that hesitation and passivity actually pays off and saves them from making a “wrong” choice. But what they don’t tend to see is the enormous opportunity cost – all the times they missed out on real wins while they played it “safe”.

The conservative perfectionist part of me can worry about making the wrong choice. The problem is that it’s often better in the long run to make more decisions, even if a few of them are wrong, than to make only a few decisions but get nearly all of them right. In the scheme of things the decisive leader actually makes many more right decisions than the conservative leader does. And the momentum from all that forward motion enables them to take a few mistakes in their stride.

So what is your default setting? The front foot or the back foot? Of course there are times when it’s appropriate to pause and assess the situation or to wait a crisis out. But for leaders those moments should be by choice, and not by default.

I’d love to hear your comments and feedback
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I flew into New York City for the first time last week and was stunned by the impact that city can make on you, even from the sky. I was in awe, taking photo after photo. Our week there only confirmed that first impression. But I thought about articles I’ve read lately on ‘making a good first impression’ on people that focused only on superficial attributes, as if people somehow fly over you from a distance. One stressed that new employees should have a neat desk, another that you should wear ‘strong’ colours. But is that really how we make an impression on people?

I’d contend that nine times out of ten it’s the quality of our interaction that leaves a lasting impression. Sure, dressing well is ok. But the most powerful impressions, for better or worse, usually come down to how the other person perceives you are relating to them. Did they seem rude? Easy to talk to? Preoccupied? Insincere? Confident?

Too often while we’re focusing on looking the part or saying the right things, the other person is thinking to themselves, “You lost me at hello”. So let’s get beyond dressing for success and harness the power of quality conversations to make not just an impression, but a connection.

1. Be Interested

It doesn’t get more fundamental than this and I must confess it’s an area I’ve had to work on. What I excused as just part of my ‘focused’ personality type for many years actually left people feeling like I was uninterested in them. Ouch. The truth is… people are interesting. But the choice to truly engage in those opening moments of a conversation can make or break all that follows.

2. Ask Questions

If the best you’ve got is “So, what do you do?” then you’ve got work ahead. If your questions can be answered with cookie-cutter clichés then you aren’t asking quality questions. Remember the goal is to create a connection, not just a forgettable conversation. Where might questions like “What’s your background?” or “What do you find most rewarding about your work?” lead a conversation?

3. Listen Intently

As executive coaches we’re trained to listen not only for what is said, but also for what is not said. For many of us, listening is a discipline we need to work on. It’s much more than being quiet while thinking about what to say next. Truly listening to another human being is a way of placing value on them. And if you’re in sales or service you can guarantee that the inability to listen will cost you dearly.

4. Be Genuine

I met some people recently who wanted to know more about what I do. I shared first and after I discussed my values one of them said, “You mentioned authenticity. What does that mean for you?” I answered that it was what I had just done- freely talking about who I am, what I’m about and what I do… before I know whether that’s what they are looking for.

5. Be Interesting

I personally believe that every person is interesting, but we do ourselves a real disservice when we don’t consider what other people might find intriguing about us. Instead of rattling off the same old stuff in conversations why not take it up a gear. “Actually, what I’m really passionate about is…” (insert cause/ problem/ solution/ dream here).

This week… hone the skills of memorable first conversations.

I’d love to hear your comments and feedback

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I was talking with one of the senior team at Gloria Jeans Coffees last week and she made a memorable statement as we discussed the different ways leaders can view the challenges facing their teams. Sadly it’s something many organisations don’t seem to understand- “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. I couldn’t agree more.

Now, I’m not one of these leaders that describes themselves as being a “big picture person” in an attempt to gloss over a lack of attention to detail. In fact, I love strategy. I enjoy problem solving. I care about scoring every point I can, not just winning the game.

But if I had to choose between culture and strategy as my primary weapon there is no contest. I will choose culture in a heartbeat.

1. Culture Is Soil

The culture of every organisation is to its team what soil is to the plants that depend upon it. Focusing on strategy without addressing culture is rather like planting a palm tree in a swamp. No matter how good your strategic initiatives may be in their own right, the likelihood of their sustained success comes down to culture more than just about any other single factor. I’m no horticulturalist, but it’s common sense that unsuitable, barren or toxic soil will eventually kill even the best plants. The leader that ignores culture is often the same person who rants about the ineffectiveness of their team, blames HR for poor hiring, moans about “Gen Y”. Their team are stunted, fruitless and impotent. And culture is their silent killer.

• So what’s the true condition of your soil?

2. Culture Is Life Blood

The culture of your team is its life supply. Its essential role, like blood in your body, is to bring life to every area and to carry away the toxins that would otherwise destroy it. For better or worse, when a team is injured they bleed the true culture. Who we are when things go against us says everything about our actual values, regardless of what mission statement we put on our website. A healthy organisation has potent culture pumping through its veins, mostly unseen yet nourishing every part. No hardened managers blocking arteries. No internal bleeding quietly draining life away.

• So do you need a blood test?

3. Culture Is Ideology

If we elevate strategy without giving attention to culture, we’ll win the battle but lose the war. Down through history the empires that have truly altered the world as we know it were those who ideas, world view and beliefs impacted the cultures that came into contact with them. The best teams have a pervasive passion about them. They get the big “why”, and as a result “what” and “how” tend to flow quite naturally. When we live our values its easier to develop people because everything we do and say is part of their training. Great ideology creates a contagious culture.

• So what’s your infectious ideology?

I’d love to hear your comments and feedback
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I learned to drive in an automatic V8 Holden in the early 90’s, it was a powerful and thirsty beast with a novice at the helm. One day as I was driving with my Dad I approached an intersection and at the last moment the light turned orange. I should have kept going, but instead I jumped on the brakes. And then something strange happened; we didn’t stop. We slowed down, but the harder I braked the louder the engine roared. Instead of sailing easily through we crawled across the intersection after the red light, cars honking around me with Dad pleading “Go mate, just go!” It was then that I looked down and saw the problem. In the rush I had put my foot across both pedals… I was braking and accelerating at the same time.

Often leaders do the same thing. They brake and accelerate at the same time. On the one hand they say to their teams “We need to increase new business” but then the marketing budget is the first one to get slashed. They talk about growth but their actions tell their team another story. I wonder if you’ve done that lately? Have you run a muddled strategy that’s neither offence nor defence and ended up crawling through the intersection with everybody frustrated?

Instead of pressing even harder on the accelerator maybe it’s time to check if your foot is also on the brake-

• What are you saying, doing or believing that is slowing your team down? Think about that, honestly.
• To what extent is your own leadership creating obstacles to your team’s momentum?
• Perhaps the breakthrough you’ve been hoping for is less about increasing results, and more about decreasing inertia.

So if acceleration is what you really want, remove whatever you can that works against it.

• Make it your mission to remove the obstacles to faster decision making, initiative and progress.
• Get ruthless with the burdens of bureaucracy that punish those who try to move things forward.
• Be clear on your strategy – are we on the offence or the defence right now? There are times for both, but running them both at once doesn’t work any better in business than it does in sport.

The rabbit in the headlights only has so much time to choose left or right before either option would have been better than indecision. At the end of the day it’s the leaders role to choose the strategy. Sometimes you’ve just got to make the decision and then back yourself.

“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision” Peter F Drucker

Please add your comments…

My friend Mark is an Optical Engineer in the Australian Army and amongst other things he calibrates scopes for snipers. You know you’re passionate about leadership when even talking about weapon calibration gets you thinking about leadership principles! One statement he made really stuck with me “Just a 1mm adjustment of a screw slightly bigger than a pinhead can cause the firer to miss their target by more than 2 metres when firing from the common distance of one kilometre. Such a small change made in the wrong direction can have catastrophic consequences”.

So when did you last fine tune your vision as a leader? In the long run maintaining the right strategic focus for you and your business will be the difference between hitting your target or experiencing potentially catastrophic consequences.

Every leader must master three aspects of visionary sight –
1.    Hindsight: The ability to reflect and learn from the past
2.    Insight: The ability to interpret and respond to the present
3.    Foresight: The ability to predict and prepare for the future

But while every leader must operate in all three aspects of vision, which focus they rely on most will have far-reaching implications for the organisations they build.

Which focus do you favour?

Hindsight Leadership: Tends to emphasise the value of experience and evidence. They look at the future through the eyes of the past. Like a lawyer they tend to look for a precedent for every decision. They’re hoping it’s true that “history repeats itself”. Although we absolutely must reflect on the past and learn the lessons it offers us, we cannot afford to become overly focused on the past in our leadership any more than we can afford to drive whilst staring in the rear vision mirror.

Insight Leadership: Tends to emphasise the value of tactics and reality. They look at the future as an extrapolation of current events and trends. Finely tuned to what is happening around them, they hope that by responding correctly now they will experience success in the future. Although they’re not spending a lot of time looking backwards, they’re also not spending much time looking ahead. The focus becomes about where we are now and what step we could take next. For this leader the old adage not to “climb the ladder only to find it’s leaning across the wrong wall” contains an important warning.

Foresight Leadership: Tends to emphasise possibilities and innovation. They look at the future as uncharted territory or a clean slate. Although they reflect on the past and respond to the present, they are much more concerned with preparing for the future. They drive their organisations with glances in the rear vision mirror and awareness of their surroundings but more than anything else they have clear focus on where they are going and what’s coming up on the road ahead.

Leaders should consider what Mark reminds himself every time he checks a weapon, “In my line of work, making fine adjustments to a sniper’s sighting system can either improve their accuracy or severely hamper them from achieving their mission”.

•    So is it time to readjust your focus or recalibrate your team’s vision?
•    Or is your leadership allowing a “Ready… Fire… Aim” approach?
•    It’s mission critical to maintain the right direction and a future focus, especially in challenging economic times.

Your comments and feedback are appreciated
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Leaders often get it backwards. “We need to be more creative”, someone says so we brainstorm ways we can “get people to come up with ideas” to make things better. Let’s have a suggestions box. Conduct an anonymous survey. Make our meetings more fun. Of course in the right environment these can be useful strategies. But too often as leaders we fail to ask whether the culture of our team and the style of our personal leadership is helping or hindering those around us bringing their best concepts.

Culture is to ideas what soil is to seed. What kind of soil is your leadership? Remember, leaders are ultimately responsible for the culture of their team. Don’t just blame the plants for the poor harvest, check the soil. What if it’s not about getting people to “have more ideas”? What if it’s really about how you can “stop stopping” your team from being the innovators they already are?

So here are 7 Inhibitors of Innovation – bad soil for good ideas

Three leadership styles inhibit innovation-

1. Stealers. One of the fastest ways to stop people from contributing great concepts is to steal their ideas. Do you hijack things your team members initiated? Do you take more than your share of credit when ideas succeed? Are you secure enough as a leader to allow others to own their own achievements?
2. Shamers. Another leadership style that kills ideas before they bear fruit is the leader who makes people feel foolish for making a suggestion. Fearful of being embarrassed, most people will play it safe and keep their ideas to themselves. Passive shamers might allow people to run with an idea, but then shame them if it doesn’t succeed.
3. Stiflers. The stifler makes their team feel like the only good idea is the boss’s idea. They challenge every possibility with a problem. They suck all the creativity out of the atmosphere by making the bar so high that no-one would be so foolish as to suggest something new.

And four team cultures are toxic soil for creativity too-

1. Silos. As organisations grow it’s only natural that departments and specialisations appear. But when these groups become separated, insular, competitive and self-centred then a key advantage is lost. Many of the best innovations come from the cross-pollination of teams and the collaboration of diverse groups around common goals.
2. Superficiality. Does your culture allow the team to address the challenges that really matter, or is their forum limited to the trivial and window-dressing? Our best efforts tend to be reserved for the things that really matter. Are you seeking input on the superficial issues or the critical ones?
3. Stereotyping. Few people want to be labelled ‘creative’ if that title is used to box people or marginalise. Is creativity the job of a creative department or a certain type of person on your team? Remove the stereotype and you’ll find we’re all creative; it’s just expressed in different ways.
4. Swamps. The final culture that kills innovation is the swamp. In a swamp water goes in but nothing comes out. So is your team an idea swamp – all input, no output. People give ideas but nothing ever seems to happen with them. Remember that what you actually do as a result of feedback governs how likely people are to contribute again in the future.

So ask yourself honestly-
•    Do you need to “stop stopping” innovation and ideas?
•    How do your leadership style and the culture that’s developed around you need to change?
•    What are you going to do about it this week?

I write this edition from the Middle East where I’ve been training leaders in Qatar. Last week I was working with Catholic school principals to assist them in becoming coaches to their staff. Both of these diverse groups expressed the same challenge to acting on their priorities (one that I believe is common to leaders in most industries and cultures)… that there always seems to be more to do than time to get it done.

I don’t mind being busy up to a point if all that activity is in line with my priorities. The problem with our busyness though is that too often we use it as a smokescreen, a distraction from the real issue. The problem is not that we’re busy, it’s that we’re not focusing on what’s really important.

It’s very tempting to point to the aspects of my workload that I can’t control in order to let myself of the hook. People say things like, “Everything around here is urgent, it’s only a question of how urgent” or “My job involves lots of surprises and problems that I have to respond to straight away”. And that’s legitimate for many people. But it can also become an alibi for ineffectiveness – I blame those areas where I have little choice so I can draw attention away from what I do with the rest of my week. Are you ready to get honest with yourself?

Show me what you do with your discretionary time at work and I’ll show you what your real focus is. For all of our well-meaning explanations about how busyness is keeping us from being effective the truth is that nothing gives a clearer picture of your true priorities than what you do with those windows of time where you have a choice. How do you invest those opportunities? Is it something mindless or menial? Or do you pounce on those moments and invest them in what really matters?

For the next week why don’t you put yourself to the “Spare Time Test”?

• Where does your time go when it’s up to you?
• How much of your week is lost to the mindless and the menial?
• Has being busy become an alibi for being ineffective?
• What could you do to keep your priorities in sight when opportunity knocks?

Have a great week!

In an executive coaching session with a very successful business leader last week I hit on an idea for overcoming a challenge we all face once we’ve been in a leadership role for a while. No matter how well we start, sooner or later there comes a point when we realise we’ve lost perspective on the changes we wanted to make and the opportunities we saw so clearly when we first stepped into our role.

Inertia begins to take its toll. Things we intended to fix now just blend into the landscape. We get busy and lose perspective. Our momentum and energy fade as maintenance mode takes over. As the old cliché goes we start to realise we ‘can’t see the forest for the trees’ anymore.

My client had turned around his business when he first took over the leadership a few years ago, but now what? Grow stale? Incremental improvement? Look for a challenge somewhere else? No, the answer was simple. “Imagine you’ve been fired, and the person replacing you… is you.”

Think like your successor would. Wipe the slate clean. No assumptions. No limits. No baggage. No weariness. No excuses.

If you’ve been in your role more than six months, ask yourself these questions-

• If you were starting in this job today, what would your high priority agenda be?
• What would you being unwilling to tolerate that has been accepted until now?
• What audacious goals and strategies would you set that the ‘old leader’ didn’t think were possible?
• What limitations would you challenge that the ‘last team’ had chosen to believe?
• What would you ruthlessly get rid of that’s unproductive/ outdated/ mediocre?
• What opportunities would you be excited to capitalise on that the ‘previous team’ had squandered?

Go on. Steal your own job. You’ll do a better job than the old leader did anyway.

Conflict is a fact of life when you lead teams. It can be addressed in a way that minimises the pain that conflict creates for people, leaving the team intact and the focus on the future. On the other hand we’ve probably all experienced the devastating damage that teams are plagued by when they handle issues between them poorly.

Without what I sometimes call “The Rules of Engagement” a simple misunderstanding or a minor disagreement can quickly spiral downwards into heated and bitter arguments, spawning gossip and innuendo, becoming excessively personal, embroiling a whole team in the mess, and ultimately making the workplace a really unpleasant place to be.

One simple solution that I’ve witnessed begin the healing process in some wounded teams is a formula I use called “Get It Right”. When teams Get It Right they keep each other responsible for communicating in a way that’s healthier for the team. If we have an issue with another member of the team here’s a way to Get It Right…
1.    Right Time
2.    Right Place
3.    Right Heart

Right Time – Before I launch into my response, I stop to consider if this is the right time. For instance is the other person so busy or emotional right now that they’re unlikely to be receptive? Does this need to be addressed right now or is there a better time? There’s a lot of truth in the saying that ‘timing is everything’ and many disagreements would be resolved sooner if people considered timing instead of simply reacting.

Right Place – If it’s the right time, where is the right place to take this on? The right place has to start with the person I have a disagreement with. Not gossiping with other members of the team, or bypassing the person to complain to their boss. I’d also consider the best location for the conversation. It’s almost always going to be somewhere that others won’t overhear it. Immature teams just ‘have it out’ in front of everybody, dragging others into the damage.

Right Heart – Lastly if it’s the right time and place, is my heart right? Do I need to address my own motives or emotional baggage here? We tend to believe that the other person is simply wrong, but often conflict really says more about ourselves that we’d like to admit. Do I just need to be a bigger person? Would this discussion be better after I’ve given myself a day to cool down and get a little perspective back? That’s a mark of maturity. When we argue with someone and our own heart is not right, all too often they dismiss the truth in what we say because it comes loaded with our personal agenda.

Imagine what it would be like to build that sort of culture in your team. Molehills wouldn’t become mountains. Disagreements wouldn’t destroy teams.  Instead we’d remind each other to Get It Right for the sake of the group. That sounds like a great team to work with.

What does it take to make a New Year truly “new”? Besides the date ending with 09 instead of 08 what have you personally brought to this year that is different/ fresh/ bold/ exciting?

Why not take a quick inventory right now of the following key areas as a leader, and ask yourself this one question – “What is NEW this year?”

• New Strategies (what’s new about my strategies… for business, leadership, life)
• New Resources (like people, products, or equipment)
• New Ideas (level of thinking, creativity, possibility)
• New Convictions (shaking off limitations, negativity, poor attitudes)
• New Goals (vision, direction, values)
• New Priorities (what will I focus on, and what will I let go?)

Across the world many people brought their fears and nervousness about the state of the world’s economies into 2009… aftershocks of their experiences in 2008. I certainly don’t pretend to predict what the future holds. But I think you’d have good reason to be fearful and nervous if you weren’t being or doing anything new, while still wishing for a better outcome this time around.

On the other hand, doing something new is a natural high. It is motivating. It expands who we are and what we know. It pushes us beyond our comfort zone. In fact how much we grow and change as individuals has its roots in our willingness to embrace “the new”.

Don’t let this year be a re-run of last year. Seize the day and get passionate about pursuing new things for your life and your leadership. Take the time you need to think about your direction and get clear on priorities. Carve out the space to think bigger, to set potent goals, and to get creative around your strategies.

If it’s not really a new year for you yet, there’s no better time to change that than right now.

Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul; the blueprints of your ultimate achievements (Napoleon Hill)