Well I am happy to report that the leaders of this firm stated this was by far, the best leadership event they had ever had. Bullseye! Here is what took place that created the magic for this company.

First, we started off with a review of the vision. Your team needs to share a common vision of what you are trying to build. A compelling vision (easily communicated to others) is one of the most powerful tools a leader has to motivate his team and help drive them toward future success.

Like many management teams, this group came into the meeting a bit fatigued and frustrated by the pounding of outside forces and the resulting ups, downs and general uncertainty caused by the current financial challenges. Helping them to re-focus on their vision — and the things they could control — provided the perfect starting point.

Next, we had the participants (about fifty managers who don’t normally work together as they have the same jobs in different geographic areas) identify everything they needed to keep, start and stop doing in order to become the company they all wanted to belong to.
After the exercise, we focused just on the strategies the group thought the company needed to start, and narrowed the huge list of dozens of possible ideas to the most critical five strategies.

We then created a group for each of those five strategies and commissioned them with the task of creating a winning plan that when executed would move the organization forward with great momentum. We coached them through the process, constantly encouraging them to think like strategic leaders in order to create solutions that would have the greatest value to the organization.

Finally, each group made their presentation to the CEO, the VP and to Steve and myself. What they came up with was truly brilliant. Each group mapped out why the strategy was needed, what resources would be required, broke down each of the critical steps and identified potential obstacles (along with plans to overcome them).

One thing that amazed me was that every team stated that the improvements they identified would need to begin with them and the teams they led. No finger pointing. No pissing and moaning about “you people in the corporate office.” They each showed such high levels of leadership maturity by owning the solutions and by acknowledging how they and their teams would need to change and improve in order for the company to become the company they so badly wanted to create.

At the end of the day, there was such a huge change in the attitudes and energy of these leaders. They were heard, felt valued and were able to play a real role in helping the company improve. Next month, the executive team and I will go away for their semi-annual retreat and much of what we will focus on will be the strategies that came out of this conference.

Too many times, those in the C-Suite are investing countless hours working to create solutions for street level, customer-oriented challenges only to find their solutions later being rejected by those who need to carry them out. If this is you, stop this now!

Instead, tap into your talent, have them identify the organization’s challenges and then, don’t stop there — have them think like leaders, work together and own the solutions.

You will be light years ahead when it comes to executing the changes if they own the strategies.

I am in the midst of this right now with one of the organizations I help to lead. As I am dealing with the pain from the change and the excitement about what can come, I am benefiting from these seven steps. I thought they might help you should you find yourself in an unexpected (yet opportunistic) transition.

1. Define Reality. Assess the downside first. What are your real risks and costs? Then identify the opportunities in this change. What good can come from it? Where is there opportunity in this new reality? You are wise to have a conversation with your coach, board, team and spouse to gain their perspective on this.

2. Ask for Help. Everyone wants to help and make a difference, especially when they see how they can use their gifts and talents in a time of crisis. Now is not a time for you to play superhero leader.

3. Decision Filters. What non-negotiable decision filters will you commit to? By doing so, you will be much better positioned to make the right decisions in a timely fashion. Here are some real life examples.

• Do what’s best for the client.
• Be a wise steward of the organization.
• Honor the teammate.

4. Clear Your Calendar. Postpone or delegate whatever is not mission critical. This means you will need to put off needed and good meetings, events, calls and projects. Set a time limit for this season and stick to it. This will enable you to get back to your normal routine ASAP.

5. Over Communicate. Let the right people know what is happening. Who needs to know what? If you are not sharing, they will come to their own conclusions, right or wrong. This is never good, so lean toward over communicating even when you don’t have the answers. Being transparent while keeping focused on your vision will help you and the team settle down and confidently do what is needed to get through the transition. So let them know what is going well and not so well. Let them know when they are doing a good job and really helping.

6. Listen. This is a critical time for you to listen to your team, your clients and your gut. Check in often. Take the time to sit down and check on them. How are they doing? Are they moving forward or paralyzed? Listen to them to learn, not defend. Their perspective is their reality, and you need to know it if you are going to help lead them through this change.

7. Think Gates. Looking at all that must be done can be very overwhelming if you don’t break it into manageable steps. What is the first thing that must be done? This is gate 1. When will you go through it? Think about the next two things you need to do (gates 2 and 3). When will you go through each of them? Like a downhill slalom skier, focus on the gate ahead. As you knock them down, you will gain momentum and clarity.

Hard, Energizing, Scary and Tiring. Yup, there is a good chance this unexpected change will be all of these and more! This is a time for vision. Read it daily, share it daily and adjust it if need be but don’t lose sight of it.

It has been said that every great leader will go through at least a few near deaths. The difficult changes bring about the greatest opportunities for learning so don’t shy away from them. Hit them head on and keep your eyes and ears open. Not only will there be blue sky on the other side, but there will be lots of learning opportunities.

To the unplanned,

Unable to view the video? Click here.

When you don’t “close the loop” in meetings, you and your teammates will wind up investing precious time trying to recreate what was already discussed but left open-ended. What was the final decision? Who was the project owner? What were the next steps?

As an Executive Coach, I have witnessed millions of dollars and countless hours wasted each year as a result of poor meeting processes. This lack of clarity not only wastes time but can lead to unmet expectations, finger-pointing, and frustration within the team.

Here are 8 steps to help you improve your team’s results in meetings:

1. Send out the agenda and any information that is critical to be reviewed prior to the meeting so everyone can attend prepared.
2. Start the meeting by stating the desired outcome of the meeting. You can do this best by clearly defining what problem we are trying to solve, what decision we must make, or what opportunity we must create a plan for.
3. Be realistic about the amount of time you allocate to the meeting.
4. Allow time for all key leaders to speak into the situation. As my friend Patrick Lencioni says in his bestselling book Death by Meeting, “if people don’t weigh in, they won’t buy in.”
5. End the meeting by recapping what was decided, what the next steps are, who owns the steps, and when the actions are to be completed by. Leave the meeting without ambiguity.
6. If input is needed from other team members or topic experts who are not present, identify who will get the information from them and by when.
7. Have the meeting recap documented in writing and sent out to all participants.
8. Review past decisions and follow up on your team’s status regularly.

By following these straightforward steps, you will close the loops and improve your team’s health and execution. You might even find people enjoying your meetings a bit more.

Close the Loops,

These are times of uncertainty. As I look back, I see that this is a message that I have delivered more than once since August of 2007 when much of this began. Earlier this week, I addressed the topic again on our monthly Champion’s Edge Conference Call, because I believe it’s a message we still need to hear.

Difficult and uncertain times take their toll on us humans. When we live in this uncertainty for extended periods, we can lose our way or lose perspective.

What we need in times like these are leaders who can keep a level head, seeing things both as they are and as they can be. We need leaders who have the conviction and courage to do what is right, even if it hurts. We need leaders who are living and leading intentionally instead of reactively.

Are you ready to be that kind of leader?

Here are 11 tips that will help you to live and lead proactively and intentionally:

1. Surround yourself with wise counsel. The old saying “misery loves company” may be true, but if we stay stuck in the mud with others for too long, we lose heart. The Hebrew Scriptures say that “plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisors they succeed.” You will need your best thinking now more than ever, so you need positive, creative, honest, trusted advisors around you.

2. Have a plan for your life. Your life story is written by compiling all of the little decisions you make each and every day, and it’s bigger than just your career. Your life is much too important to live it reactively and without purpose.

3. Take care of yourself. Eat well, exercise, sleep, relax, play, and care for those most important to you. If you must compromise in any way, then define and bookend this season.

4. See a better future. We business leaders must know what we stand for, what our purpose is, and exactly what it will be like when we accomplish what is ahead. And we must have that future in writing, so we can review it frequently.

5. Share what you see, and share it often. Really often. We must repeat our vision all of the time.

6. Plan from what you see. 90-day plans are very powerful tools during uncertain times. What will you and your team accomplish to get one step closer to the vision? What disciplines will you commit to and make non negotiable? What improvements will you make to your business in the quarter ahead?

7. Review your plans daily. Put this discipline onto your calendar.

8. Practice transparent and vision-oriented communication. The best leaders share their concerns, knowing that reality is best dealt with head-on. As my fellow Coach Steve Scanlon talks about on his blog and in his new book, we must address the reality of today while maintaining our hope for the future. We must communicate both, and then listen to what is being said within our teams.

9. Know your numbers. Have a dashboard and read it weekly.

10. Have a “Worst Case” file. Build the plan for the worst-case scenario, know your metrics, and then put the plan away. If you drop to those numbers, you’ll be ready to execute quickly. In the meantime, the burden of the worst will be off your mind.

11. Spend the majority of your time working on top line activity. Focus on revenue generation – deal-making, meeting with partners, developing your team. There are still plenty of opportunities out there for those who are diligently seeking them.

Now, here is one more “bonus” tip:

12. Have faith. It’s tempting to evaluate our current reality in sound bites. For me, I am a Christian, and my faith gives me a perspective that is much longer term. It enables me to view life much differently than simply focusing on the challenge of the day.

As they say, this too shall pass. But then what? There is very little in life that is guaranteed, even in the best of times.

We would all do well to live by these principles, no matter how certain or uncertain we are about today.

To proactive and intentional leading and living,

Our standard method of organizational thinking is often adversarial. Everyone wants to have their own thoughts heard, often at the expense of others.

Recently, I had the privilege of facilitating a meeting with the leadership team of one of our corporate clients. They are a very seasoned team of 30 leaders who run several different facets of the organization. They are from different parts of the world and speak several different first languages.

Even so, we were able to create, agree upon, and map out a fundamental piece of the organization’s vision for the next 10 to 20 years….in just one day! We were able to accomplish this thanks to the work of Dr. Edward de Bono.

Dr. de Bono is the creator of one of the most brilliant thinking and communication models we Executive Coaches at Building Champions have come across. It’s called the Six Thinking Hats, and it is incredibly simple to deploy.

This model leads us to think in a parallel. It is very effective when communicating one on one with a teammate and even more so with a larger group.

Each of the six different colored hats represents a different kind of thinking, from the creative to the negative to the emotional. By calling out these different styles for what they are, you can more quickly and safely move from one to another. This enables you to cover all important aspects of a topic, allowing everyone to be heard in a thorough and efficient way.

I love when somebody takes the complex and makes it simple! And that is exactly what Dr. de Bono has done. He has given us a model that helps us to all think together in unison instead of our typical ways of thinking and working together, which are so much less effective and so much more time consuming.

If you want to hear more about the Six Thinking Hats and how we apply it, I recently led a Champion’s Edge Call on the subject:  Listen Online

Here’s to more effective thinking for better results!

I don’t think it is ever a wise idea to work through conflicts and challenges via email. We can’t read tone and too often we take liberties behind the keyboard that we would not take if we were face-to-face or on the phone.

The next time you question the sender’s tone or sense they are upset as you read a message from them, don’t email your response. Instead, walk over to their office, pick up the phone, or if need be, reply stating you got their message and want to find a convenient time to talk.

I promise you less drama and wasted time if you follow this bit of advice.

To improved communication!