www.danielharkavy.com » Leadership

You Must Decide (Increasing Your Leadership Capacity Series — Step 6 of 8)

Daniel Harkavy — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:42:51 +0000

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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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

Leadership Moment — 4 Essential Ingredients for Effective Meetings

Daniel Harkavy — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:00:37 +0000

Every organization has meetings — but are your meetings effective? Watch as Daniel shares four essential ingredients to help you get more out of your meetings.

You Need a Road Map (Increasing Your Leadership Capacity Series — Step 5 of 8)

Daniel Harkavy — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:53:06 +0000

One thing that hinders our ability to increase our leadership capacity is a lack of clarity. This lack of clarity can show itself in so many ways. We can lack clarity on our company’s purpose, our primary products, our key differentiators, who on our teams are best equipped to do what, where our strategic wins can be found, what plans we may have committed to in times past and who is doing what and when in order for us to execute with excellence. Sometimes leaders even have a lack of clarity around why in the heck they started leading this thing at some point in the past. Just typing this causes me angst! Note: This post is part of a series on Increasing Your Leadership Capacity. Click here for the previous step.

Now I don’t think that all leaders are struggling with confusion around everything I just listed, but I do know that I, along with many business leaders I have coached over the years, have found themselves not leading with excellence because we have lacked clarity on at least one of them at some point.

So what can you do if you find yourself stuck with very little time, energy and clarity as to how to build your and your team’s leadership capacity? Here are four specific musts do’s that can absolutely increase your level of passion and your direction which will enable you to continue to grow your capacity.

Take a good look at your Business Vision. As you read it, are you finding yourself excited and compelled to continue pushing forward and giving your all to the cause? If your vision does not compel you, then how can you expect it to compel those you lead to stretch and grow?
If it compels you, the next question you must ask is this: “can I plan from it?” If you vision is not clear, it will be very difficult to build plans and strategy from it. Your vision should help you to see who your customer is, what value you will bring to them, what problem your team, service or product will help solve. It should help you to see what your team will become and what you will build at some point in the future.
Now look at your Business Plans for the year and the quarter. Your desired outcomes, disciplines and improvements must be very clear. These three things should fit on one page and should truly direct your actions and impact your calendar.
And then finally, if you have done the previous three things and are still not seeing things clearly, you are wise to understand that self leadership always precedes team leadership. Your challenge might be deeper and bigger than what is happening vocationally. You could really benefit by spending a day reviewing or building your Life Plan. An effective plan is compelling and clear in how it directs your thinking, your actions and ultimately your results.

To your continued growth,

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

Be Hungry and Humble (Increasing Your Leadership Capacity Series — Step 4 of 8)

Daniel Harkavy — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:54:59 +0000

Increasing our leadership capacity requires more than just knowledge. It truly requires us to be fully engaged and passionate in the cause. We must change and grow, which means we must enter into the uncomfortable zone. As leaders, we need to always start with ourselves when we want to make an organization improve. The question of “how must I change or adapt in order for this initiative or improvement to take root” is a great starting point. Note: This post is part of a series on Increasing Your Leadership Capacity. Click here for the previous step.

This step comes from a lesson our Building Champions leadership team learned a few years back during a partner planning and connection session with our friends at Patrick Lencioni’s company, The Table Group. Patrick shared that one of their convictions was to be humble and hungry.

As I look at what is required to truly increase my leadership capacity (and then our team’s), I see that I must be humble and hungry. A while back I did a post titled “How Little I Know.” In it, I wrote about how the best leaders are really comfortable with acknowledging where they need help.

It feels so counterintuitive to most who have bought the old-school command and control leadership mindset. But when a leader is both humble and hungry, you have a leader who is best equipped to grow and to bring others along on the journey. This hunger is to not only learn, but to grow, to serve, to improve, to stretch, to impact others, and to create something of even greater significance.

Here are 5 practical tips for those of you who desire to grow your leadership capacity and see the opportunity to fully embrace humility and hunger as key steps in the process.

1. Ask more questions. Don’t worry about whether they will cause you to appear to not know it all. You don’t — and those around you already know this!

2. Truly listen to the answers and ask clarifying questions to make sure you really have what you need in order to grow. Often this means spending time asking the right questions and really listening to your customer-facing teammates (those on the front lines delivering your products or services), and then spending more time doing the same with your customers.

3. Slow down. Often times leaders believe that they must be the fastest movers on their teams. This is a huge mistake. We need to slow down so we can connect and listen if we want to see the things we would miss when we are moving too fast. This can look like scheduled margin time with nothing on your calendar other than time to respond, to think, and to be available. (This is one key area for me to grow in the year ahead.) We must remember that we leaders are more than thermometers; we are thermostats. Our pace and our interactions with those around us will impact our culture, our customer experience, and our results.

4. Think more — both alone and with those on your leadership team. A humble leader knows she doesn’t have all the answers and that her products or services could be improved, so she has intentional time to think alone and collaboratively with those on her leadership team.

5. Invite sharpening. Ask for those you respect and trust to call you out when your behaviors and actions don’t line up with who you are and your convictions. This can look like being okay and grateful when one of your teammates lets you know that your posture or words are coming across as defensive instead of hungry. (I will do another post on this tip in the weeks ahead.)

Growing means entering into the uncomfortable zone. But by being humble and hungry, the pain is far less severe than the pain and frustration of plateauing.

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

6 Steps to Improve Your Thinking (Increasing Your Leadership Capacity Series — Step 3 of 8)

Daniel Harkavy — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:00:10 +0000

As we work on how to best increase our leadership capacity, we must be aware of how our thinking either helps or hinders our leadership effectiveness. You see, our thinking impacts our beliefs, our beliefs impact our actions, and our actions impact our results. Note: This post is part of a series on Increasing Your Leadership Capacity. Click here for the previous step.

As an executive coach at Building Champions, I have seen countless breakthroughs with business leaders as the result of them working to improve how they think.
Here are 6 tips for you to improve your thinking.

Schedule your thinking time. At Building Champions, we call it ON time. Make sure you have ON time as a non-negotiable discipline in your business plan and your time block.
Have a thinking place. In John Maxwell’s book Thinking for a Change, he shares how his best thinking is done in his thinking chair. In fact, this is how John played a role in being our home decorator!
Watch less news and garbage. The media thrives by capturing our attention, and unfortunately what captures most of us these days is the negative. Limit yourself to no more than 10 minutes of the news per day and you will know what you need to know. And as far as TV goes, I am a fan of not watching it at all unless I’m watching a good movie from time to time.
Read the good stuff. What books will cause you to think and believe better? Read what will stretch your thinking, center you and equip you to live and lead better.
Ask those closest to you to call you out when they see you exhibiting bad thinking. This means you must trust a few in your life and on your team enough to be vulnerable with them and ask them for their input on your thinking and actions. This is good accountability.
Hire a good coach. I think that one of our greatest opportunities as coaches here at Building Champions is to challenge, encourage and to stretch the thinking of the business leaders who hire us. As I said above, a leader’s thinking directly impacts his leadership capacity.

To improved thinking in the year ahead!

Note: This post is part of a series on Increasing Your Leadership Capacity.
Step 1: Own Your Role
Step 2: Be Healthy

Be Healthy (Increasing Your Leadership Capacity Series — Step 2 of 8)

Daniel Harkavy — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 15:00:35 +0000

In order to increase our leadership capacity, we must truly believe that self leadership precedes our ability to effectively lead others. I am simply calling this step Be Healthy. Note: This post is part of a series on Increasing Your Leadership Capacity. Click here for the previous step.

A healthy leader replicates and attracts healthy followers. And the converse is true as well: an unhealthy leader replicates and attracts those who are unhealthy.
In order to be effective, we as leaders must be healthy in how we think, how we process, how we care for ourselves and those closest to us, how we treat our teams, how we deal with challenges and how we communicate.

Here are some questions to ask yourself to help you identify where you might be able to improve your health — and ultimately your ability to lead.

Do you have daily quiet time to reflect, think and meditate or pray?
Do you have margin in your day?
Do you regularly eat at your desk or in the car?
Do you feel at peace most of the time?
Would those around you say that you’re a healthy balance of both truth and grace?
6. Do you communicate in ways that cause others to feel that they must live or perform up to your expectations or do you help them to see what is possible? (Thank you, Ben Zander!)
Do you think before you react in times of challenge?
Do you bring a calming peace to those around you or do you cause them angst and nervousness?
Do you exercise at least three times a week?
Is water you drink of choice throughout the day?
Are you getting at least 7 hours of sleep per night?
Are you experiencing real relational intimacy with those closest to you?
Are you finding time to play and recreate?
Do you have time in your day where you can easily relax?
Do you have plans that you review regularly that help you stay on track and aware of what matters most in your business and your life?
Do you feel joy and passion more than you feel unrest and stress?
Do you live, love and lead from a foundation of looking for ways to give and add value to those around you more than looking for ways to further promote or protect yourself?

As we come to the close of another year, I challenge you to take time to reflect on these questions. What one or two areas can you identify opportunities to improve in?

Write them down, include them into your Life Plan or Business Plan and please share them with me by commenting on this post. I would love to know how you are going to take steps to being healthier in 2012. I will do the same and know that I have already identified some great opportunities to improve my own health as well.

That’s it for 2011! I wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and a super New Year!

Note: This post is part of a series on Increasing Your Leadership Capacity.
Step 1: Own Your Role

Cheers,

8 Steps to Increase Your Leadership Capacity (Series)

Daniel Harkavy — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 19:33:51 +0000

This topic is front and center for me right now as the CEO of Building Champions. I know that we must be very intentional with how we tap into and develop those that are on the team. They all have gifts, talents and passions that if intentionally developed will enable them to help the organization grow in the years ahead.

So many times, leaders will make the mistake of looking externally for this needed capacity before really examining who on the team has the potential to fit the need and already understands the DNA and lingo of their culture.

Over the next several weeks, I will share one step per post to help you grow your leadership capacity and expand your organization’s reach and effectiveness.

Step #1 — Own Your Role

Too often , leaders don’t fully understand their role. If you’re not crystal clear on this, you can find yourself filling large percentages of your calendar with activities that should not belong to you. By doing them, you are hindering some on your team from getting to do them and grow. You are also stunting the growth of the organization because you are not focusing on the activities that are truly the high pay off for you as a leader.

The analogy of digging ditches has helped me to understand this. Over the past few years of our economic challenges, all of us in leadership roles here at Building Champions have increased our personal books of business to help stabilize our firm. Digging our own ditches has worked very well for us, but we find ourselves today with limited time to best develop others on the team as well as new offerings and strategic enhancements to our business. It is now time for us to put our shovels down and to lead more.

As a leader, I need to help those on our team to improve how they shovel so that I can spend more time strategically thinking about how and where to best dig ditches in the future.

Now don’t get me wrong — leaders need to still use our shovels (and enjoy doing so), but we need to spend more time leading, developing and influencing. We need to own our roles and make sure we are doing what will truly add the most value to our organization, our team and to our customers.

As I shared with a CEO this week who is a great and humble leader, you must be the guy who is regularly talking about your company’s vision. He is not comfortable being that guy, but his team needs to hear this from him. He knows why they exist, he sees where they are going and he needs to remind his team of this constantly whether he likes doing it or not. He must own his role and so must you.

So what is it that you need to make sure you are doing regularly to lead and build your leadership capacity? It cannot be delegated, it will be difficult to outsource it and you are not only the best but the right person on your team to do it.

Figure it out and make sure it shows up on your calendar with regularity. We must do what we may not be comfortable with if we are going to grow our leadership capacity.

We must own our roles!

How Little I Know

Daniel Harkavy — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 19:16:55 +0000

I have really enjoyed this year. It has not come without its trials and challenges but the blessings have so outweighed any of the difficulties. There is just so much to be grateful for.

Now this may come as a surprise, but one of the things that I am most grateful for is a deeper awareness of just how little I know. If I leave it at this, many of you might be somewhat concerned. After all, you invest time in this blog looking for insights — not the ramblings of someone who knows nothing.

But this awareness of how little I know has been really freeing and exciting. The truth of the matter is that I am most likely more than halfway through this journey called life, and I still feel like so much of it is an experiment.

There are some things that I am quite confident in, but much of what I encounter day by day and moment by moment has a certain degree of risk or uncertainty to it. I don’t know for certain if what I say or do will lead to the outcome I hope for. I don’t know for certain if this decision or that decision will lead to fruitful results.

Here are some examples:

• Should we hire this coach?
• Take on more space?
• Write another book?
• Move this person in the company to this role?
• Advise my daughter this way?
• Share this thought with my son?
• Make this decision for my family?
• Invest in this project or opportunity?

In years past, I think I believed that I knew more than I actually do. And some of you might be saying, “Finally Harkavy, you are starting to get it, thank God!” But this new awareness of how much I still need to learn has caused me to observe leaders a bit differently.

Here are three big observations that might help you as well.

1. Many of the greatest leaders are the hungriest learners. Examples: Morris at 73 years old, very successful and taking copious notes in one of our recent workshops. Dom, a very seasoned CEO who just retired, and his deep life questions over our first glass of wine. One of my old mentors, Clem, with his constant questions about any and all topics. Questions, learning, listening — all three of them. They are never too proud, never concerned with how little they might know on a topic, always asking, always interested, always learning, always growing, and never posing. They are what I call Life-Long Learners.

2. Many of the greatest leaders move slowly. This has not been me! I have been called Taz in past years and for good reason. The faster I move, the more I get done. Well maybe for a while, but the faster I move, the more I miss. If I move too fast, I don’t give myself the chance to reflect and assess. How am I doing as a husband, father, friend, servant and leader? If I move too fast, I miss the opportunity to allow others to lead, serve and grow — and this stunts the organization’s growth.

Great leaders not only move slower, but they talk slower as well. If I am rushing my conversations, I miss the opportunities to really connect with those around me. I miss the opportunities to hear not only what is being said, but what is behind what is being said (or not said). And as a leader, the clarity of my communication is vital. This is true not only at work but at home as well. My pace of speech can either serve to calm and bring clarity and comfort or it can serve to create angst, confusion and even panic.

3. Many of the greatest leaders are disciplined thinkers. They see thinking time — or as we at Building Champions call it, ON time — as one of their most important disciplines. Not only do they have this thinking time scheduled daily, but they have regular larger blocks of time scheduled for just thinking.

A few of us coaches take what we call “Sabbath days.” I hate when I go for long periods without them because I am running too hard. When I do get them, settling into that quiet place to pray, reflect, assess, question, seek and learn — getting to that quiet state of mind — can be hard work. But I always walk away refreshed and a better leader because of it.

As many of you know, I am striving to live my life on the foundation of God’s Word. For me, it comes down to this: I must draw closer to Him so that I can better serve Him by using the gifts He has given to me to serve and love those around me. That happens when I make the time to slow down, to be still, to reflect, assess, question, challenge, seek, learn and connect.

As we approach the holiday season — which can pull us in many directions — I encourage you to carve some time out to reflect and assess where you are at. Slow down. Be intentional.

Taking time to invest in yourself may be the greatest gift you can give yourself and those you serve this year.

Leadership Moment: Meetings and Stewardship

Daniel Harkavy — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 23:38:33 +0000

Meetings cost money. In this Leadership Moment, Daniel encourages leaders to be good stewards and understand the financial cost of our meetings.

Leadership Moment: Be Extraordinary

Daniel Harkavy — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:06:15 +0000

When it comes to rewarding and thanking your employees, Building Champions CEO and Executive Coach Daniel Harkavy challenges you to bypass the ordinary to do something extraordinary.