7 Strategies All High Impact Leaders Employ
If high impact – positive leadership – was easy there’d be more of it. Your work-place would be invigorating and supportive rather than defeating and cut-throat. The world would be a better place.
High impact is hard because:
- Leaders with power attract people who want power. Relationships become smokescreens.
- Leaders with resources have “friends.”
- Inept leaders mold people into who they want them to be.
- Expediency replaces honesty in many vertical relationships. Enemy-leaders tell you what you want to hear. They may seem truthful but convenience not honesty drives them.
- Selfishness is easy.
7 Principles of high impact leadership:
- Focus on adding value rather than being influential. The path to influence is the value you add. The more value – the more influence.
- Speak to progress. Fuel progress by focusing on progress. Avoid incessant corrections.
- Maximize difficulties while expressing confidence. The bigger the challenges the more useful encouragement. Never minimize the problems people face – embrace difficulties with confidence. Minimizing challenges makes people feel insignificant and disrespected.
- Seek the highest good. The truest test of leadership is noble intent and selfless motivation. Leaders ask, “What’s best for you? What’s best for the organization?” Enemies ask, “What’s best for me?”
- Bring truth and compassion together. Some can be tough. Many, on the other hand, can be tender. Few bring tough and tender together. Toughness by itself points out failure from a distance. Compassion gets dirty.
- Breathe wind into people’s sails. Leave people with more vitality not less. Ask yourself, “How do I make people feel?” Are you making life richer?
- Persistently drive toward positive outcomes. Build up more than tear down.
Which high impact principle is most relevant to you?
What high impact principles can you add to the list?
Principle number 4 is most important to me; but why stop at what is good for the organisation? Customers can be sold things they don’t need; but what eventually happens next? Look to the financial services industry (among others) for an answer to that. In the UK, insurance mis-selling has cost banks serious money. It doesn’t stop there. One needs to actively seek the public good over the long-term. A suite of legal cases against cigarette companies speaks up on that one. Our grandchildren might see what the legal and financial implications of “climate change” are in due course: Baker & McKenzie pursue “group action” case on behalf of residents of the Maldives and other low-lying real-estate? Who knows? Maybe it’ll be NASA getting the brunt of legal attention for negligently neglecting our planet’s defence against threats from beyond our atmosphere? Overall, I love your first list best, however. In the near-term, teachers will be looking to their students’ current (and, importantly, potential future) aspirations as well as those of any one government administration (children tend to outlast a few Presidential and Congressional and Parliamentary terms). Childrens’ literature reference: “The Lorax”. Grown-up: Plato on “the good” and a few other philosophers too [some equate the universal “good” with the universal “God”].
Hi Ben,
Thanks for putting a punch behind #4. I placed in the center of the list because I think it’s central.
You’re right. Why stop with the questions or constituents I identified.
Have a great week.
Best,
Dan
Dan, thank you to you and everyone. This, Easter, weekend you’ve got me onto value and Shakespeare: how to be a better leader than Macbeth (who learned to fear “dead wood” that disguised very good and real life) and King Lear (who removed a key female advisor) when faced with similar situations. Does Shakespeare’s work count as something of long-term value to more than the immediate client-base?
Thanks for another great post, Ben. I think if you are working hard to do number 4, you are probably doing a lot toward fulfilling the rest. It’s difficult to work for a greater good without encompassing the other six principles. The operative word in number 4 is “good.” Sometimes that is beyond the organization or the industry. The highest good, as you articulate well, the noble and selfless causes.
Hey RL…,
So true on the key being “good”… what it is and who defines it.
Thanks for adding value to the conversation.
Best,
Dan
Lately I have been trying to figure out why some high performing employees turn out not to be good leaders. Very often it seems that high performing employees don’t understand what their leaders have given to them. The result is a misunderstanding of what it takes to be a good leader. I think ideas of value vs. influence and truth with compassion are great examples of ways that new leaders can misunderstand their role in the organization.
Great post Dan. I especially like the reminder of traps that leaders can fall in to when they are under pressure. This chimes well with one of my recent posts http://gyroconsulting.com/2012/04/06/commitment-v-compliance-whats-the-difference/ which warns against the danger of taking the short-cut of going for compliance rather than putting in the effort to build commitment.
Absolutely great post Dan. I also gravitate towards no. 4 as it chimes the songs and tunes of the others as been suggested. The caveat with no. 4 is assuring that “good” reflects what is good for others , for the organization, and for the world not necessarily for us. Truth and compassion resonate with me as well. The high impact leader has the capability of a good coach: able to motivate and urge the team to focus on goals and execute with determination. The really great coaches always defer greatness to the team and model inherent traits such as honesty, integrity, and humility. The truly high impact leaders impact not only the team’s work but their lives as well and they do this impercitably, without fanfare, or commotion. The high impact Leader’s rewards come from others’ success and joy and from knowing their contribution lifted some one else’s spirit. The high impact leader lives to serve and elevate the community he/she calls “home.” Leaving a legacy is never as important as living one.
Your consistency is so drawing. I so appreciate your passion to deliver informative and engaging content every day. The blog is always a daily vitamin to my life and organization.
Thank you for contributing and the courage to find the main gift that is a life-source to others.
Pastor Tom McDaniels
Not jumping on the #4 bandwagon too much, Ben W covered it, what is best for the customer and the organization.
#2 rings true here…would add, to recognize that progress, have solid data behind it, not intuition. Twofold benefit–you instill the value stream of data->information->knowledge->wisdom with an underpinning of valuing learning AND when there is not progress, but regress, you have a foundation to (re)build from. Better yet, if attuned and a plateau is reached, before regress, you take action to regain the climb.
For me, #1 and #6 go together in a big way, and turn on the outcomes we hope to achieve. A couple weekends ago I went to see the comedian Michael Jr. (http://michaeljr.com/), and he said his approach to comedy changed when he decided to focus on what he could _give_ rather than what he might _get_: in his case, rather than worrying about _getting_ laughs, he started focusing on _giving_ people the opportunity to laugh. Likewise, I’m trying to focus on what I can give, more than on what I might get.
Anyway, enjoyed the post very much: a great encapsulation of a lot of good things. (And I shared it with several folks here at the Industrial Extension Service.)
Thanks!
G
I think that #1 is a great lesson. When leaders are focusing on their influence and power, they tend to deviate from their goals. By focusing on adding value, through the work they do and their encouragement of others, the influence will be there, as will the change.
Great post, Dan,
I like #1 and #5 – but I find these easy to do. Thanks for the reminder that I need to work on #6 more.
Dan, there is something large in your soul. Thanks for sharing. I needed #3 today.
#5 is the one which challenges me most.
Really enjoy your posts very beneficial.
Thanks,
Excellent post thank you
Reblogged this on willowcreeksa.
Good post Dan. For me, the key to leading people to the highest possible performance was to meet their needs to the highest possible level. The five basic needs of all people are to be heard, to be respected and to have competence, autonomy and relatedness (purpose), these last three from the research of Edward Deci and Richard Ryan.
The extent to which management meets these needs dictates the level of performance or engagement of employees. Your seven strategies are all part of meeting employee needs. The how is to listen to employees to find out how to provide the very best tangible and intangible support to them, these being management’s responsibities vis a vis producing products and services for customers.
My own managerial experience indicates that meeting employee needs causes the vast majority of them to become fully engaged and at least 300% more productive than if poorly engaged and literally loving to come to work.
Best regards, Ben Simonton
http://www.bensimonton.com
Dear Dan,
Points No. 1 & 7 are quite appealing to me and are complimentary to each other. Value addtions by positive acts, strong character, communication and driving the force with required direction and guidance can certainly ensure positive outcomes.
I would like to add the principle of creativity and innovation in execution process to achieve planned goals. This can bring in good encouragement to all those who shall work with ownership attitude with high level of commitment.
#5 is key for me… just did a blog on “truth matters”, http://maturitascafe.com/2012/04/09/truth-matters/, speaking to myself about the benefit/blessing of truth… compassion without truth is just license and does not promote growth… thanks for the encouragement!
To lead you really have to take some big risks, your points are all very good and I would like to add that when leading you must have your team understand that the risk is with you as you are the leader.
They are being asked to follow you and you take the risk, that is the role you play.
Step out and put the team on notice that they and you will take the ball down the field.
Gregory
gregoryodonnell.tumblr.com