A few years ago I heard Jack Welch say that one of a CEO’s top priorities is to develop the organization’s future leaders. This makes so much sense yet I see so many leaders treat this as an afterthought or only address it in the context of succession planning as their career draws to a close. Yet having an intentional plan to develop future leaders at all levels can have a profound impact on the long-term success of your organization.

Think about it this way — if something were to happen to you, would the rest of the organization be in danger? Who would lead? Are they equipped? Most of the clients we coach who lead larger organizations are very intentional with this.

Some mandate that every executive must identify and intentionally develop their No. 2. They will often move their future leaders from role to role for periods of time to increase their overall understanding of the business. They invest heavily in educating and coaching these leaders.

There are few companies or departments that are too small for this. Decades fly by faster than most of us want to admit. We do ourselves, those we serve and those we lead well by making the development of our future leaders a real priority.

And the real benefit that comes from this is that when those we lead grow, it frees us up to grow and enables us to become even more effective leaders.

When I coach executive teams, I notice one common opportunity many of them share to improve how they execute — get rid of meeting ambiguity. Too many teams waste too much time in meetings that do not drive projects or the organization ahead. They simply don’t deliver results. The most effective leaders and teams are committed to getting the most out of their meetings.

Here are seven common best practices that if regularly implemented will improve your meetings — and your team’s effectiveness.

1. They establish the purpose and desired end result of the meeting up front.
2. They expect each team member to show up ready to give a status on any projects they are responsible for.
3. They encourage healthy debate and conflict.
4. They look for and call out naysayers or those that are not engaging in the dialogue necessary for excellent execution.
5. They have each team member end with stating what they are doing by when — as well as what needs to be communicated to others in the organization.
6. They have a team member take notes and distribute to everyone at the end of the meeting for future use.
7. They schedule any one-on-one follow up necessary to support the team with what they have committed to.

For more direction on how to improve your team’s health and effectiveness, read my friend Patrick Lencioni’s new book, The Advantage. You can also listen to an interview I did with him about his book on a recent Champion’s Edge call.

Most of you know the above. The question is, where can you improve with any of these seven steps?

I know you are slammed. Your schedule is packed, your Inbox overflowing and the big project is due tomorrow. And I want to add one more thing to your schedule — time to just focus in and think.

Focused thinking is a foreign concept for too many professionals today, and I want to encourage you to make it a daily non-negotiable discipline. Most of the time, we have the answers to our questions and the solutions to our problems, but we struggle to find them because we just don’t have the time to think about them.

Here are four tips to improve your thinking.

1. Find your thinking spot. I have two chairs in my home that are great for this. For longer times of thinking, I enjoy a getaway place at the coast. Thank you John Maxwell for this tip in your great book, Thinking for a Change.
2. Force yourself to think about just ONE issue. It could be a meeting, a challenge, an opportunity or a project. Keeping a notepad or recorder close by is helpful. If you get thoughts that are off topic, write them down or record them and focus in again on the ONE issue.
3. Journal what you came up with. You can do this either during or after you’re done with your Thinking Time. Capture the new thoughts, ideas, possibilities, questions to be answered or solutions.
4. Share what you learned with whomever you need to in order to build momentum if appropriate. Does the solution need the attention of your sales manager? Does the challenge need some thinking from your CFO? Or does the idea need more of your thinking time? If so, schedule that time.

The world is not slowing down. It has access to us every moment of every day. At our Executive Coaching Company, Building Champions, we call this thinking time On Time. Carving out this incredibly valuable time is not easy, but it is so necessary if we are going to become the leaders we need to be in the years ahead.

Here’s to realizing that it’s time to think. Good Luck!

We often find our calendars filled with good activities — but are we setting time aside for the great activities? Watch as Daniel talks about the importance of being intentional with your calendar so you can focus on the high payoff activities that will have the greatest impact in your business and life.

If you want to increase your leadership capacity, you need to know the three to five things you do for your organization that are truly the most valuable. More often than not, most leaders don’t have the answer to this question. If we don’t clearly see this, chances are that our days will be filled with all sorts of good activities that prevent us from doing the truly great things required to grow and develop our business. Note: This post is part of a series on Increas­ing Your Lead­er­ship Capac­ity. Click here for the pre­vi­ous step.

To make sure that you see your handful of high payoff activities clearly, run the question by a few of your teammates who know you, as well as where the company or your department is headed. Getting this type of input from a few others on your team, your coach or members of your board can be really helpful.

Once you are clear on your handful, then take it to the next level by making sure that you have the appropriate time regularly scheduled in your week to devote to the three to five high payoff activities you identified. This could be time scheduled for coaching and developing your direct reports, meeting with key partners, thinking and working on strategy, or maybe reviewing your teams progress on their strategic plans.

And finally, make sure you have a method in place to review your progress, effectiveness and results. Too often, it is us leaders that are holding our organizations back. If we are not working on our own leadership capacity by fine tuning what we say yes and no to, we will be neglecting the activities that are the most critical for us to focus on in order for our organizations to grow into what we see in our vision.

Note: This post is part of a series on Increas­ing Your Lead­er­ship Capac­ity.
Step 1: Own Your Role
Step 2: Be Healthy
Step 3: 6 Steps to Improve Your Thinking
Step 4: Be Hungry and Humble
Step 5: You Need a Road Map
Step 6: You Must Decide
Step 7: Get Rid of Your Job

As a parent, you need to have an intentional plan about how you are going to raise your kids — especially when they hit the teenage years. Watch as Daniel gives some advice on how to talk to your teenagers.

So many times in our work here at Building Champions, we coaches help our clients gain clarity on their “why” — their “why” being the real why or value offered by the products they create or services they provide. We have to know and believe in our “why” if we are going to lead something meaningful.

In September of this year, our entire Building Champions team will join 225 business professionals from many industries in Sunriver, Oregon, for the Building Champions Experience. This will be our 5th year of creating this very unique 3.5-day coaching experience.

It is an amazing time to reflect, plan and connect with other like-minded professionals who seriously want to improve how they lead, serve and live. I absolutely believe that these 3.5 days in Central Oregon with us will make a significant difference for those who attend by changing how they lead and live. I believe this because for many who have attended in the past 4 years, it has.

I don’t normally use this blog to openly promote or sell Building Champions, but I truly believe that this Experience can have a lasting impact in the way you lead your business and life. We often tell our clients that if they don’t know their why, if they don’t think what they do or sell will truly make a difference, then they shouldn’t sell it.

I truly believe in our Experience and hope that you consider joining us in September.

Our special Early Bird Pricing ends this Friday, February 24. Hope to connect with you all in Sunriver

As a leader, simply having a vision isn’t enough. Watch as Daniel encourages leaders to regularly share their vision with their teams — and how it can increase your leadership.

If you give it some thought, it just makes sense. There is no way to increase our leadership capacity if our days are only filled with the activities required to simply manage today’s business. Now my assumption is that you are like most leaders that we coach at Building Champions with your schedules being filled beyond 100 percent. If this is so, then how and when can any of us increase our leadership capacity? One solution: we must get rid of our jobs. Note: This post is part of a series on Increas­ing Your Lead­er­ship Capac­ity. Click here for the pre­vi­ous step.

Here are 6 specific steps you can take that are guaranteed to free you up so you and your team can grow.

1. Do a Team Assessment. As leaders, we need to be regularly assessing everyone on our team to make sure we have them in the right roles. Often times, what we need most in order to grow our leadership capacity are more leaders on our teams. When looking to grow, many leaders make the mistake of overlooking those on their teams who already fit the culture, understand the business and are passionate about the mission. Many of them have the skills that with some development could enable them to be the right leader for you to delegate a portion of your job to.

   One of our largest corporate clients, Chick-fil-A, does a great job of this. They are constantly moving leaders from department to department and from function to function. All of this to build future leadership capacity and to make sure they have their teammates in the right roles. In my book, Becoming a Coaching Leader, I walk the reader through a Team Assessment Process. You can download a tool to help with this process here.

2. Create a written plan to develop each team member. After you have completed the team assessment, it will be easy for you to identify each teammate’s areas of strength and weakness. Give thought to how you can best leverage their strengths and develop their areas of weakness, if needed, in order to develop their leadership capacity. Remember, the goal of doing this is to identify and intentionally develop people on your team who have the ability and desire to grow and will do so by taking on some of the functions and responsibilities that you currently own.
3. Schedule your one-on-one coaching sessions monthly. Make sure that you have these meetings scheduled so that you can invest the time required to help your teammates to grow. Simply hoping and wishing for them to grow is a strategy that holds many leaders back.
4. Follow a coaching process for these one-on-one meetings. Be prepared for these meetings by knowing what projects your teammates have been working on. Be clear on how you will challenge and encourage them in the coaching session and in the weeks ahead. And make sure you end each coaching session with clarity and agreement on their plans, as well as how they are going to report their progress and results back to you.
5. Create a Solutions Culture. No more coming to you for solutions to their challenges. So much time is wasted when leaders are the only ones with the keys to the answer vault. Those who are serious about growing leadership capacity know that teaching their leaders to think and to be resourceful when the daily challenges arise is a must. Let your teammates know that you believe in them. Set the expectation that when issues arise you are going to need them to spend the time required to come up with two or three solutions for each issue and to be prepared to make their recommendation as well. You will see far less interruptions and crisis in the future if you master this. You also will have a team that will feel much better about themselves as you further empower and develop their decision and leadership capacity. A good rule of thumb is that this should work 80 percent of the time. There will still be times where your perspective and knowledge is required, but you will find yourself with a lot more time to grow yourself by having them create their own solutions 8 out of 10 times.
6. Delegate with clarity. Be clear with what you are delegating, why you are delegating it and what doing it right will look like. Then observe them doing it and coach them in the weeks ahead until they can demonstrate mastery of the function. They have to know how to win in this new role or with taking on this new function. Don’t leave any of it open for interpretation.

I know these are simple and pretty straightforward. None of them are new to most of you so my hope is that this post serves as a reminder that causes you to take action on at least one of the steps.

Growing our leadership capacity is an all the time thing. We continually need to make the little adjustments to how we think and how we execute in order to best position ourselves and the organizations we serve to grow.

To getting rid of your job!

Note: This post is part of a series on Increas­ing Your Lead­er­ship Capac­ity.
Step 1: Own Your Role
Step 2: Be Healthy
Step 3: 6 Steps to Improve Your Thinking
Step 4: Be Hungry and Humble
Step 5: You Need a Road Map
Step 6: You Must Decide

One thing that will hold a leader and his leadership team back is the inability to make sound and timely decisions. We will not only suffer professionally but the emotional drain and stress that comes from having too many decisions pending can really take its toll on us. Note: This post is part of a series on Increas­ing Your Lead­er­ship Capac­ity. Click here for the pre­vi­ous step.

A few years back, our past COO and Executive Coach, Dan Meub, shared a great analogy with me. He said that I needed to envision that I was sitting in the middle of an octagon shaped room. Each wall had a door, and each door was open. Each of those open doors allowed for the heat in the room to escape — my energy was escaping out all of the doors. He coached me that I needed to close the doors in a more timely fashion. The lesson stuck and since that time I have coached many leaders to improve their decision making ability by “closing the doors.”

Here are 5 steps to help you make better and more timely decisions.

1. Always know what problem you are trying to solve. Often times, we can lose track of the real issue, opportunity or problem. Fight to gain real clarity on the issue so that you are prepared to gather the right data and input to solve that problem.
2. Get just enough data. Too many times leaders fail to make the right decisions in the necessary time frames because they think they need more data. The truth of the matter is that most of the time, more data will not cause our decision to change. Leaders need to trust their gut and rely on enough data and be comfortable with their past experiences, their wisdom and their intuition to pull the trigger at the right time. This is true for leadership teams as well.
3. Get enough input from the right people. Don’t over-complicate the process by thinking that getting more people’s thoughts will bring you clarity. Often times, leaders will find themselves further paralyzed by getting too many opinions and perspectives.
4. Use your road maps. When making life decisions, take a good look at your Life Plan. When looking at taking a risk or making a big decisions with your company or team, take a good look at your Business Vision and Business Plan. If the problem or opportunity does not line up with your guiding documents, then chances are they will take you off track. You put a lot of thought and time into your road maps. and this is precisely what they are for — to help you make the best proactive and intentional decisions.
5. Know that there is always a certain degree of risk in most big decisions. If you knew the outcome with complete certainty, then the energy door would be easy to close, the decision easy to make. The best leaders are okay with the possibility of failing if they have done the above and have a track record of making the right decisions. So here is a key: the more right and timely decisions we make, the more confidence we have. Use this confidence (and the steps above) to help you continue to make better and more timely decisions.

Following these steps will help you to close the doors in a timely manner with the outcomes you desire. Ultimately this will enable you to have more time to think about the future and execute the plans to get you there.

Note: This post is part of a series on Increas­ing Your Lead­er­ship Capac­ity.
Step 1: Own Your Role
Step 2: Be Healthy
Step 3: 6 Steps to Improve Your Thinking
Step 4: Be Hungry and Humble
Step 5: You Need a Road Map