Author: Elisa Spain

Leadership Quote: The Art Of Being Wise….

July 28, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

This month’s leadership quote:

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

— William Jones

How many times do we notice something, point it out and then regret it later, wishing we had kept quiet. In our quest for excellence, sometimes we forget that perfection and excellence are not the same. Excellence sometimes is simply knowing what to accept as good enough and what to overlook.

Here’s an idea…

Today, instead of looking around your office, your plant, or the long to-do list and noticing what is missing:

What if you, instead, noticed a critical item that is working and gave someone specific positive feedback?
And, decided to overlook something less important, that may not be exactly what you wanted, but is really good enough?

Last Of The Series – Leadership View #13: Balance Your Life

July 21, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

I began this series as a tribute to my friend, Marsh Carter, whose leadership has been an inspiration to me for at least 25 of the 45+ years covered in his View of Leadership. As I have written these blogs each week, using Marsh’s topic lines, it has been interesting to me how relevant Marsh’s large company experience is to the entrepreneurs I work with each day.

For the final post in this series, I decided it is fitting that Marsh author the post, drawing this time from his experience rather than mine.

Leadership View #13: Balance your life – 3 legged stool analogy (balance between work, family and a strong outside interest for yourself)

Many people we’ve all known, including ourselves at times, have a tendency to regard our careers or jobs as the most important aspects of our life—this is especially true the last few years where hand held devices link us 24/7 to the office, our bosses, our employees and coworkers. It may be more necessary now than ever before to try to balance our lives—that is, maintain a balance between our work, our families, our religion, and for our own mental health – an outside interest that treats us as an individual.

Think of your life as a three or four legged stool….when one leg is gone it won’t balance and falls over. We can’t take the pressures of work and family and go back and forth between them alone….that’s what the third leg, a completely different activity that is our individual interest alone comes in. Your third leg may be jogging, sailing, running in marathons, coaching a child’s sport, skydiving, piloting airplanes, pottery making, yoga, stamp or coin collecting…..whatever you enjoy that’s separate from work and family.

At the height of World War 2 when the pressures were immense, President Roosevelt would escape to his stamp collection, for an hour or so doing something completely different. General George Marshall would ride horseback many mornings to relieve the pressures of his job building and leading an Army of 8 million men and women.

Think about it—

How do you personally, if only for a short period of time, balance the pressures of work and family?
What is your third stool leg to balance your life?

Leadership View #12: Watch For (Perhaps Unintentional) Malicious Obedience…

July 14, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Leadership View #12: Watch for (perhaps unintentional) malicious obedience…

Early in my career, I learned this valuable lesson. I had the opportunity to lead a transition of a client reporting group from a fully manual process to a fully automated process. This area was the last functional area to be automated in this company (guess that tells you how long ago this was). When the previous manager left in the middle of the systems conversion, I was asked to take over.

As those of you who have led systems conversions know, it is never a smooth process and there are many long hours that are just part of the process. On one of these long nights, the senior person on the team came up and asked me how to calculate a certain number. I didn’t know the answer, and I didn’t ask him if he knew the answer, I simply guessed. And, I ass-u-me-d, he would tell me if I was wrong. See previous post, What results when leaders Ass-u-me?

In this case the result was, every report, to every customer, went out wrong. Like, I said, I learned a valuable lesson.

Perhaps in this case the obedience was intentional. My sense is, it was not. Here was a man who was overwhelmed by change, his world was being completely turned upside down. He had never used a computer in his life and suddenly his work had to be done on one. It didn’t occur to him that how he had calculated this number before was the same way to do it on the automated system.

More importantly, I didn’t ask, I told. And, I didn’t lay the ground work for my being open to being questioned, I simply ass-u-me-d he would know.

I wonder, how many of the big disasters that we read about could have been avoided by the leader asking questions and making sure the team knows he/she wants to be challenged?

As you go through your day on Monday, I encourage you to pause and notice how you respond when someone on your team asks questions, and perhaps consider answering the question with a question of your own….

Vistage Confidence Index: CEO Optimism Grows In Q2 2013

July 7, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

The quarterly Vistage Confidence Index is now available.

CEOs held optimistic views about the overall economy as well as for their own firms in the Q2 2013 Vistage CEO Confidence Index. While there was a slight shift in their assessments of the economy, how CEOs viewed prospects for their own firms have been remarkably stable since the start of the year.

The Vistage CEO Confidence Index was 96.7 in the 2nd quarter 2013 survey, virtually unchanged from the 96.6 in the 1st quarter, and above the 92.8 in last year’s 2nd quarter.

Below are some key highlights from the Q2 2013 Vistage CEO Confidence Index (all members surveyed):

62% of CEOs see rising home prices as a positive sign of overall improvement in the economy.
30% of CEOs allow their staff to work from home at least one day a week.
53% of CEOs believe economic conditions in the U.S. have improved compared with a year ago, while only 33% believe conditions will improve in the next year.

Elisa K. Spain

Leadership Quote: Leadership Is Not Magnetic Personality…

June 30, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Once again, I am taking a brief pause from the Leadership View series for the monthly quote. The series will return next week with Leadership View #12.

This month’s leadership quote:

Leadership is not magnetic personality — that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not ‘making friends and influencing people’ — that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations — Peter F. Drucker

What a relief, this means EVERY leader has the potential to succeed…That is, if he or she wants to. For me, this quote means that to accomplish successful leadership, we must step outside of ourselves and focus on the people we are leading. We must identify what drives each individual on our team, identify their unique genius and coach them toward success. It is our job as leaders to inspire the people we lead to take the next step, to take the risk to achieve growth and as Drucker says, achieve beyond their limitations.

Perhaps the place to start is with identifying these same factors within ourselves…

Leadership View #11: Hardest Task

June 23, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Leadership View #11:

Hardest task – changing your leadership and management styles as your company grows or you go up the ladder.

I often hear entrepreneurs say, “I don’t want to lose the culture as I grow this company” or “We are like a family, I want to keep this feeling as we grow”. And yet as the company grows the culture inevitably changes and the owner no longer knows the name and the family of every employee.

And, what the company needs as it moves from “go-go” to “prime” (to quote Vistage speaker Gerry Faust) is for the leader to change.

In the go-go period, everyone is equal and it is all about getting the job done, getting the orders out, meeting the customer needs. Typically the owner is the chief sales officer and innovator. And, then as a company adds more people and moves to prime, management becomes necessary and terms like “building a leadership team” come into play.

Suddenly the owner is thrust into a role of CEO and has people reporting to him or her who are focused on their own career path. These key executives want the opportunity to innovate and have an impact themselves. And, the CEO while still expected to define the vision, must also become a coach and mentor, allowing others to grow and develop as leaders.

At the same time, the folks who came to the company as experts and doers are often expected to become managers. And those that came to “manage” are expected to become leaders. The best operations manager who succeeded because he or she can implement processes must learn to think like an owner and take a broad view. These new roles and new ways of thinking require new behaviors as well.

Those that are able to change are those rare few that build and lead the less than 1% of companies >$100mm in revenue.

Leadership View #10: Take The High Risk…

June 16, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Leadership View #10:

Take the higher risk / higher reward job.

Much like when choosing investments, the higher risk choices lead to higher returns. And much like with investments, intentionality is the key. If you truly want the higher reward (or greater leadership role) and are willing to take the risk to modify both your behavior and your choices, go for it. And, along the way, gather feedback from your manager, your peers, and your subordinates so you know where your blind spots are and the modifications you will need to make.

A great place to start is with Marshall Goldsmith’s book, What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There.

Leadership View #9: An Absolute Skill Of An Effective Leader…

June 9, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Leadership View #9:

An absolute skill of an effective leader is the ability to grow and adapt.

So often we find that what has made us successful in the past, is not working for us today.

From the entrepreneur who built a successful company what I hear is, “I got here because I know my product, and I know what my customers need. Along the way I added a team and now they need leadership and management and I don’t have any experience doing that.”

From the key executive I hear, “I got to this level on my business knowledge; I have always been the expert. Now, I know I need to develop the experts below me, how do I do that?”

For me the skill of an effective leader is first recognizing the need to grow and adapt and then finding resources to help us get there. Vistage members recognize this and look to their fellow members and chair to support them on this journey. Often members take the opportunity to share their challenges with other members who may be further along on the same journey.

And…those that take the risk of letting their teams know they are learning right along with the team are those that I observe adapt the fastest. Often it is the people who report to us that help us recognize the growth we need and teach us, by asking, what we need to do to be there for them.

After all, isn’t effective leadership really about taking care of our team so that they take care of the rest?

Leadership View #8: Merging Two Organizations…

June 2, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Leadership View #8:

Merging two organizations gives a leader an opportunity to form a new culture / leadership team / operating style. A common mistake is to adopt one or the other, thereby creating winners and losers.

This leadership view is actually a continuation of Leadership View #7 where I talked about getting buy-in during a merger. Once we have that buy-in from the early majority, the next question to answer is: what will be the culture, leadership and operating style of the combined group?

Remembering that a “merger” can mean combining two companies, two groups, or simply adding a significant number of new team members.

In my experience the culture bends. Last year, I added several new members to my Vistage CEO group and most of these new members came from other CEO groups where they had been members for some time. The groups they came from had their own culture, operating style and formal and informal leadership.

Here is what I learned from that experience.

First, the integration must be intentional. The people that were there first, feel a sense of ownership of the group. The new people want to add value. The challenge is creating situations that allow for both. The following steps worked for us:

-We form workgroups including members with various tenure and personality styles – sometimes the official leader was from the new group, sometimes from the old.

-New members were given the opportunity to showcase their expertise in a way that helped the group.

-We recognized that groups follow Bruce Tuckman’s model of forming, storming, norming, performing and they do it continuously. The merged group naturally moved through this process at it’s own pace.

The result: The group today is an integrated group with many of the same values as before, yet with updated norms and a new culture, well on its way to high performing.