Leadership Styles | All About Being "Emotionally Agile"

September 17, 2014

Wit & Wisdom from Midland County, TX

I love living in Texas. I usually tell people that I was born in way extreme far east Texas. [better known as Alexandria, Louisiana]. And you get wit & wisdom out of folks in Texas that you don’t seem to find in or around the Capital Beltway. I know, because I lived in that area for quite a while also.

I don’t often tackle politics in my writing. And I really am not trying to tackle politics right now. Instead I think there is a leadership lesson to be learned here. Consider if you will for just a moment Sheriff Gary Painter from Midland County in Texas. Recently he was interviewed on Fox News about the ISIS threat to the United States. Consistent with what he has been saying for at least 8 years he made the following statement. I am providing it below with advance apologies for some of his language as I never want to offend our readers. But here is his quote:

“If they show their ugly head in our area, we’ll send them to hell.
I think the United States needs to get busy and they need to bomb them.
They need to take them out. I would like for them to hit them so hard and so often that every time they hear a propeller on a plane or a jet aircraft engine that they urinate down both legs.”

Contrast that with our President who calls them the “JV squad” and who doesn’t have a plan to deal with them. And ask yourself for a moment, Continue reading “Wit & Wisdom from Midland County, TX”

August 18, 2014

Evaluating Leadership Talent

From the C-Suite to the first level supervisor, all leaders supervise someone. That is, all leaders are called upon to perform some sort of oversight function. And, in so doing, they need to ensure that their subordinates have the right resources, the opportunities, the capabilities, and the support necessary to have a fighting chance to do a good job.

But how do you measure whether someone is an effective leader when it comes to supervising others? Here are five supervisory skills you can use:

Ability to Analyze Strengths and Weaknesses: Have you had a situation where the leader was faced with a challenge and you were able to observe them close up? What about assigning tasks to subordinates? Consider how effective the leader was in these instances.

Effectiveness at Identifying and Providing Leadership Development for Their Team: Whether the job is highly technical or not, there will most likely be instances where all employees need some training. So consider whether the leader gives everyone an opportunity to participate in training. Do they just offer training to the chosen few, the high-potentials, or do they offer training opportunities to all who are wanting to learn and grow?

Opportunities to Exercise and Enhance Skills: It is one thing to provide training. It is quite another to Continue reading “Evaluating Leadership Talent”

August 8, 2014

Moving From Vision To Action

The process and the information contained in the book that I just released on Amazon had its genesis back in the mid 1990s. And I want to tell you a little bit about how it came to be.

Many years ago I was given the incredible opportunity to work very closely with some guys and to take a radical look at how leadership looked and worked in the local church environment. Not before, nor since then, have I had the opportunity to have such an impact.

I worked most closely with a young officer in the military. His name is Capt. David G. Woods. He and I are the same age and and at the time were at somewhat the same station in life. Albeit his station was military and mine was civilian. We had similar circumstances and views of leadership at the time. We were young. We were passionate. We were energetic. We had boundless energy. We had very little patience with those not exactly like us. We were foolish at times.

One of the things that we noted was that not everyone who has the ability to “see the big picture” can then execute a plan to accomplish the vision that is seen in the big picture. Strategic and tactical planning are leadership skills that are not often found in visionary leaders.

I did not consider myself to be a visionary leader at that time nearly 20 years ago. I was much more strategic and tactical. I have developed visionary skills as I have grown older. But neither of us had them at the time. I won’t speak completely for David, but I know that I had brief flashes of vision and I had an innate sense that things could be and should be different. But, I struggled to see that big picture.

David and I were very fortunate to have an older guy be a part of our little brain trust. His name was Robert Spalding and he was one of the FBI’s preeminent forensic experts. I will not go into his area of expertise because some may be a bit squeamish to learn of his expertise. But he was brilliant, analytical, steadfast, and had the respect of the rest of the leadership that worked alongside us.

Together we produced some evaluation tools and a methodology for helping that local church move from a great vision and begin to put together specific, actionable, and measurable steps that would take us to where we felt that we were called to go. Dave and I, especially, burnt gallons of “midnight oil” in the basement of my office building in a little office hovering over demographic data, membership data, leadership tools and together we developed the material that was introduced the to the rest of the leadership team and was later used at a leadership retreat. The result of all of that was a dramatic restructuring of the roles of the various leaders that enabled them to really focus on their areas of strength and really begin to accomplish the goals that so many of them had – building the church spiritually, numerically and financially.

The results did not come over night. But they did begin to come. Continue reading “Moving From Vision To Action”

July 28, 2014

Ignorance is Bliss – Except in Leadership

I don’t know very many folks who don’t know the cliché, “Ignorance is bliss.” But I am wondering today just how many know where where the phrase comes. It comes from a poem written in 1742 by Thomas Gray. The phrase is in the closing lines to his poem entitled, “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.” And the full sentence is:

Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.

There are many thoughts as to Gray’s purpose for ending his poem with such words. In those final lines he may be expressing thoughts on returning to his old school and there remembering the simplicity and innocence of his youth. It also appears that he is joining two worlds together in this line of the poem. He is joining a world that has not grown up yet with one that has. In a sense it is a world that shaped him into a man and perhaps, as with many, has beaten out those innocent aspirations of early life.

The modern day interpretation of the lines in the poem and the implications of the cliché are significant if examined in the light of leadership principles. The implications can be summed up in these two statements:

You are more comfortable if you don’t know something.
Lack of knowledge results in happiness.

Statement number one is pretty bad. I am never comfortable in the state of lack of knowledge. In fact it scares me and motivates me to seek after knowledge and understanding. Statement number 2 is downright ridiculous. Happiness is not a state of intellectual ascent. Rather, happiness is a conscious decision to maintain a positive and joyous outlook on life regardless of the circumstances.

So, what is the leadership principle here? Continue reading “Ignorance is Bliss – Except in Leadership”

June 27, 2014

The Importance of Perception

“It is more important to the rest of the world that your American president appear or be or be perceived to be a leader than for him to actually be a leader.”

This was a statement made by some colleagues at dinner the other night. I have been in Spain for most of this past week on a business trip. And all of my colleagues are not from the United States. One was from New Zealand, one was from Belgium, one was from the U.K., and the folks we were meeting were all from Spain. So, I tried to keep my mouth shut as much as possible lest I create an inter nation incident!

But I am struck by this question: What are the implications of this kind of thinking?

This was a painful thought for me to consider and it has been on my mind since the moment that one of them said it to me.

What does that mean about leadership? Is that a statement about political leadership in particular? Is any part of that sentiment true? What about your leadership role? Continue reading “The Importance of Perception”

March 19, 2014

Second Chair Leaders

There has been much that has been said recently in the area of “Leading from the Second Chair”. Although I have not yet read Bonem and Patterson’s book by that name, I have seen a lot of that type of leadership in my own life and in those who I admire greatly.

In fact, from a political perspective, one of the political leaders that I admire the most is Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee. His was the very first Presidential campaign that I worked on was as a volunteer. Unfortunately I was a part of his unsuccessful attempt to become President in 1979. I admire Sen. Baker on multiple levels. Others admired him as well. Known in Washington, D.C. as the “Great Conciliator”, Baker is often regarded as one of the most successful senators in terms of brokering compromises, enacting legislation, and maintaining civility across the aisle. A story is sometimes told of a reporter telling a senior Democratic senator that privately, a plurality of his Democratic colleagues would vote for Baker for President of the United States. Unfortunately, not enough Americans apparently shared that sentiment.

But the times during his career that I admired him the most were his days as White House Chief of Staff for Ronald Reagan, the man who defeated him early in the primary season and caused him to drop out after the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary.

Baker did not seek re-election in 1984. However, as a testament to Baker’s skill as a negotiator and honest and amiable broker, Reagan tapped him to serve as Chief of Staff during part of Reagan’s second term (1987–1988). Many saw this as a move by Reagan to mend relations with the Senate, which had deteriorated somewhat under the previous chief of staff, Donald Regan. (Baker had complained publicly and privately that Don Regan had become a too-powerful “Prime Minister” inside an increasingly complex imperial presidency.) It is interesting to note that in accepting this appointment, Baker chose to skip another bid for the White House in 1988. Who knows if he would have been successful? I, I for one would have loved to have seen him elected in 1988 over the alternative that year.

So what is the leadership principle that I admire in Sen. Baker? Well, I think it is for these two reasons. One is that he understood the power and responsibility to still lead even though you are not “The” one. He had ambitions to be “The” one. But ambition, skill, and aptitude did not translate into the Oval Office for Sen. Baker. So, he withdrew for the sake of the overall mission of his party and supported the ultimate candidate who went on to become President. He waited patiently for the second term of Ronald Reagan and began to make his own plans for another run for the White House. But “Duty” called and Continue reading “Second Chair Leaders”

February 5, 2014

Emotional Intelligence 2.0

I have not always been a “reader”. Most of my reading over the years has been to my children and grandchildren. It is only in the last several years that I acquired the taste for books. And my tastes in reading material vary widely. But recently, I had a book suggested to me by fellow leadership coach, Rodney Mills of Centrifuge Leadership. He recommended the book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves. I am using this book currently with one of my leadership coaching clients and I think it is worthy of sharing with the broader Leadership Voices audience.

The book has a foreword by Patrick Lencioni. Many of you will recognize him as the author of Five Dysfunctions of a Team and Death by Meeting. If you are into great titles, those are a couple of great ones. As Lencioni proclaims in the foreword, he’s no expert in this field, but he sees everyday how critical a skill it is to have and he’s so enthusiastic about this book because it’s the first he’s read that actually shows you how to increase your EQ and apply it in your personal and professional life.

The opening chapter deals with Emotional Intelligence (EI) and your Emotional Quotient (EQ) and compares and contrasts it to the more well-known “IQ”. The chapter describes what EQ is and what it isn’t. For example, a lot of people mistakenly think that EQ is a part of your personality. To the contrary EQ is separate from your personality, just as it is separate from your intellect, or IQ. It begins to build your understanding of emotions by showing what the five core emotions look like in varying degrees of intensity. Next the team of Bradberry and Greaves explain research studies that illustrate how important EQ is in daily living. They show how your EQ impacts things like your tolerance for change, how you manage stress, and even how much money you make.

What Emotional Intelligence Looks Like: Understanding the Four Skills

The book introduces and explains Daniel Goleman’s four EQ skills: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management. Beyond a conceptual description of the skills, the book provides detailed vignettes show examples of real people who are high or low in each of the skills.

To truly improve your ability in the four emotional intelligence skills, you need to better understand each skill and what it looks like in action. Continue reading “Emotional Intelligence 2.0”

December 19, 2013

Charge Ahead or Leave It Alone

Question: How do we determine when we are to charge ahead as leaders or leave it alone and deal with it another day?

We have all been taught in elementary school that we should not put off a kindness until tomorrow that we can do today. But what about a tough leadership decision? Is there ever a situation where we would want to put that off for another time down the road?

When is it right to charge ahead and take the bull by the horns and lead in the midst of a difficult situation? And when is it right to stand back and leave the issue alone and take a more relaxed and non-confrontational approach? These are legitimate questions that I put before our audience of leaders and readers. What are your thoughts? And how did you make the determination regarding the approach that you would take? Did you ever consider that taking the relaxed approach was a sign of weakness or indecision? Did it make the situation better or worse by your decision?

I am facing several interesting and difficult leadership challenges right now and I am seeking advice on how to approach these decisions and on the relative merits of each approach. I hope that you are gaining valuable insights from our many leaders and readers and I hope that you will share some of your own insights with us.

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