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

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.

1. Do you have daily quiet time to reflect, think and meditate or pray?
2. Do you have margin in your day?
3. Do you regularly eat at your desk or in the car?
4. Do you feel at peace most of the time?
5. Would those around you say that you’re a healthy balance of both truth and grace?
6. 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!)
7. Do you think before you react in times of challenge?
8. Do you bring a calming peace to those around you or do you cause them angst and nervousness?
9. Do you exercise at least three times a week?
10. Is water you drink of choice throughout the day?
11. Are you getting at least 7 hours of sleep per night?
12. Are you experiencing real relational intimacy with those closest to you?
13. Are you finding time to play and recreate?
14. Do you have time in your day where you can easily relax?
15. 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?
16. Do you feel joy and passion more than you feel unrest and stress?
17. 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,

I was with a great group of about 50 leaders yesterday and asked them to tell me who was the greatest leader they had ever met. Only a handful of them could share the name of a truly great leader. This tells me one of two things. Either there are not too many of them out there and/or we have such a high standard for what a truly great leader is.

They slowly shouted out the names of Rudy Giuliani, Lou Holtz, Ronald Reagan, John Wooden and others. My next request was for them to share what attributes those people possessed that made them great leaders. Their responses included:
• Character
• Integrity
• Humility
• Focus
• Passion
• Deep Convictions
• Clarity of Purpose
• Courage
• Care
• Great Decision making abilities in critical situations
• Vision

All great attributes that all of us leaders would love to have as our own. But what stands out to me when I read this list is that what makes these leaders great is not so much what they do but rather who they are. It comes down to their personhood. I think we leaders are wise to take inventory of our personhood.

Where are we compromising? Where are we a bit foggy with what we see or believe? How are we doing in the area of passion for the cause or mission we lead? What values are we communicating to our team not through our words but through our actions?

As we finish the year out, I would strongly encourage each of you to spend a day looking at your Life Plan, your Vision and your Business Plan for the year ahead. Then review your calendar and really assess your actions and commitments.

Are they lining up with what you see and who you want you and your organization to become? Have a few people that know you well speak into your life and leadership to make sure you are aligned. If you find that you are not, don’t fret, adjust. Don’t go into the year ahead without making the necessary adjustments.

Our personhood is a moment by moment thing. So is our leadership.

Recently, I facilitated their Executive Team retreat. Our time was focused on improving the health and performance of the team.

We spent the majority of our day reviewing how their behaviors impact one another. They know that their levels of trust and health impact the organization’s overall performance, and they want to continually improve.

What I observed must be taken to heart by all of us as leaders. They sharpened one another.

They genuinely wanted to hear both the good and the bad from their peers. While they all have much to be proud of, they didn’t allow their pride to cause a defensive posture. Instead, they asked for sincere input that will help them to improve. They sought it out so they could learn from it.

Accolades, praise, and affirmations have their place. They can make us feel good, but when this is all we hear, we will soon plateau and even regress as leaders and as people.

Regardless of where we are at today, we all need to realize that we have room to grow. We must hunger for critical feedback and desire healthy conflict. It may be painful at times, but it is the only way we can improve how we live and lead.

True sharpening is not common in most organizations, but it can be a real game changer. Not only can it help you with your professional relationships and performance, but it can help you at home as well. Wise leaders schedule time with their colleagues to share how their thinking, behavior, and performance impact each other.

A great process for improving how you function as a team is the Keep-Start-Stop model.  You can learn more about this model from my post, “A Thinking Process Every Leader Must Know.” It really is an excellent sharpening tool.

None of us have it all figured out!  So welcome it, hunger for it, and ask for it.

Make sharpening your friend,

I find I can push through the feeling by looking at the situation and answering logical questions that help me to see that my fear is irrational. When both of my feet are planted firmly on the sidewalk, I usually don’t fall over for no reason, right? So there is no reason to think I will topple over when I’m standing on a balcony 300 feet above that sidewalk.

Fear can keep us from doing many of the things in our life and business that we know we need to do or would truly enjoy. Where are you being held back by fear and limiting beliefs?

It could be you are not leading as confidently as you could. Perhaps you aren’t calling on high-end prospects, launching that new product or service, speaking more transparently with your spouse, or engaging in conversations with your teen.

If you are holding back, then you need to push through.

Ask yourself logical questions to determine if your fears are rational. Practice “Worst Case Thinking.”  Monitor your physical response to make sure you aren’t sabotaging your own efforts with low Emotional Intelligence.

This year I had the opportunity to go zip lining in South Africa with my family. I also did a ropes course in Canada with one of my sons. Both experiences were mentally challenging for me, but I was glad I didn’t let the fear hold me back.

Little victories like these can fuel confidence and improved results in other areas of your life and career.

What fears do you allow yourself to be victim of? Where are you holding back? Where do you need to push through in the year ahead?

Sure, there may be room for improvement in those around us. There may even be opportunities to help others grow. But first, we must take responsibility for how WE are thinking and behaving, instead of lamenting over the actions of others.

If I want a better marriage, I have to be a better husband first. If I want my relationship with my kids to get better, I have to be a better father first. If I want a better team or a better company, I have to be a better leader first.

As I type this, I am sitting in an airport after spending the last two days with an awesome group of people who make up the executive team of a national mortgage banking company. I have had the privilege of leading their last two executive retreats, and their team has seen wonderful growth and results.

Today, we went through an exercise that was really valuable for them. They have a long term goal to increase their company’s annual sales by more than 300%. Each of them took time to assess what would need to change in order to lead a company that was doing just 50% more than their current volume.

I asked them each to think about where they would personally need to grow the most. I had them assess their own knowledge, skills, disciplines, systems, team, relationships and thinking to identify where they would have the biggest points of risk or pain.

They spent a significant amount of time alone journaling their thoughts, and then shared their results with each other. Their teammates then spoke into them by affirming, questioning, challenging and adding to what they came up with. It was a time of great transparency and growth.

So what about you?

Do you have aggressive goals and plans for your business or for your life in the years ahead? If so, where do YOU need to grow and improve in order to accomplish what you have set before you?

Don’t sit back and wait for others to take the lead.

Me first!

One of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received was given to me about two decades ago by a friend named Todd Duncan. Todd introduced me to the concept of Life Planning. A few years later, I founded Building Champions, an executive and leadership coaching company. I took what I had learned from Todd and others, and created the Building Champions version of life planning.

Life planning is much more than goal setting. It requires you to dive deeper.

It means identifying each area of your life that is truly most important to you, casting a vision for your future, defining your purpose for each account and then identifying the activities that will enable you to have the highest probability of realizing your vision and living out your purpose. These activities enable you to accumulate real net worth.

I have seen this tool change lives.

For the last 14 years, my team and I have coached thousands of leaders through this process. The resulting plan almost always leads to improved decision making.

When you take the time to put a plan together for your life, it is much easier to make the right decisions each and every day. When you make better daily decisions, it leads to better weeks, months, and years. The right decisions in life lead to a better life.

With a Life Plan in place, you have the ability to truly manage your priorities because you are crystal clear on what they are and on how you want to invest in them.

Be one of the few with a plan. The Proverbs say “the plans of a man’s heart are deep waters; but a man of understanding draws them out.”

Be a man or woman of understanding and dive deep,

Wonderful, that is, once I arrived.

I will spare you the brunt of my travel woes, but my day involved cancelled planes, standby, and an arrival just 3 hours after the event started. Slightly stressed (or just a bit more than slightly), I made it to the site with just 15 minutes to spare before I was to speak on Coaching Leadership.

It was at this event that I learned about the term “reboundability”. After my presentation, I was talking to a few of our clients and I shared about my day’s mishaps. This is when our friend and client Melanie Nygren shared this idea of reboundabilty.

She said that the ability to rebound after a challenge or mishap is what makes people who they are. Those who have the ability to rebound quickly and completely are the people who enjoy the most success in life. And those who get stuck and cannot move forward have more challenges.

I think Melanie is right. Our ability to rebound after we encounter all that life can throw at us will determine how we live in the days ahead.

So here is to moving forward and through the challenges ahead. To our Reboundability!

Thank you for the insight and great word Melanie,

Worst Case Thinking is a process that can aid those of you who find yourselves unable to take healthy risks. This simple thinking model can help you to overcome the negative emotions that are birthed in illogical fear.

Over the years, this type of fear has come up countless times in coaching sessions. I’ve seen Worst Case Thinking help many in their lives and careers to risk more, experience more, impact more and grow more. Here is how it works.

The next time you find yourself not wanting to speak up in a group, or enter into a conversation with your spouse or teenage daughter, ask yourself this question: If I do this, what is the worst case scenario?

Challenge yourself to answer the question as logically as you can. Then test your answer. Could that really happen? Is it likely? And if that does happen, what does it mean for you? What will you learn or experience as a result of taking that risk?

What I have found is that you may need to ask the question multiple times to get to the real worst case. Then once you are there, you can logically assess the probability of that outcome happening. Most of the time, you will realize that the likelihood of that worst case outcome is pretty minuscule.

Now, ask yourself one final question: If the worst case does in fact happen, can you deal with it? If you honestly can’t, then don’t take the risk. If you can, and the risk appears to be wise and worth taking, you are now armed with more courage because you know you are prepared for any outcome.

Practicing Worst Case Thinking increases your discernment and your courage, and I have found it to be very helpful in all aspects of business and life.

Try it. What’s the worst that can happen?

Last week, I had a day that tested my EQ.  Actually, it began the night before.

I had planned to get to bed early, so I could get plenty of sleep before waking at 4am to catch a 6am flight with my boys.  We were on our way to Jackson Hole, Wyoming to join some of our great friends and teammates for four days of snow fun.

My wife and I got to bed early as planned, and then our phones started to ring at about 10:30pm.  Two hours later, we were on our way to see a family member who needed some urgent council.  It’s a blessing for us to be able to help, but my plan for a restful night was now shot.  By the time I got back to bed, I got maybe an hour of sleep before the alarm went off.

I was in a bit of a fog when our car arrived to take us to the airport.  I travel often enough that I figured I had timed the pick-up just right, but we hit a little fog on the drive in, and our driver actually obeyed the speed limit.  Once we arrived at the airport, we headed over to check in our bags.  We were traveling with our snowboards and lots of gear, so we had to reshuffle our bags to meet the weight requirements.

I was so totally sleep deprived that I hadn’t even looked at my watch.

The gal checking our bags asked when we were scheduled to depart.  When I told her, she freaked out, and yelled at me to check in immediately so we would make the 45 minute cut-off.  The boys kept working on the bags while I hurried to the kiosk.  You guessed it:  by the time I entered our information, we were one minute late.  Now the gate agent was frustrated, the bag weigh-in lady was frustrated, and as I watched my sons repacking our bags it dawned on me that all of my plans for the day were about to unravel.

My emotional state began to change.  If only the driver had driven just a bit faster than my great grandmother.….if only the bag weight police lady would have just let us proceed to the counter.….if the airline was not so cold and heartless as to tell me the computer system could not be overridden.

Blame, blame, blame.….and anger.

About that time, the lessons I’ve learned and taught about EQ kicked in.  I realized that the real “IF” was that if I had just paid more attention to the time, we would have made our flight and I would have been snowboarding in knee deep powder instead of sitting on a much later flight.   As soon as I was able to gain perspective and take responsibility for my misfortune, I was able to treat the ticket agent with respect and kindness instead of immature anger.

I find it fascinating how our minds and emotions can cause us to feel that a so-called crisis — no matter how big or small — is the end of the world.  If you find yourself feeling like this, breathe deep, pray if you are inclined, take a step back and change your thinking from pointing blame to finding solutions.  Once you understand the worst case scenario and create a few solutions, you will be in a much better position to treat those around you as they should be treated, and your stress level will drop immeasurably.

The bottom line is that very rarely are your circumstances as bad as they feel.  I know that by improving my EQ, the quality of my life and those around me improves as well.

There are a few resources that have helped me to better understand Emotional Intelligence.  Lindon Crow, President of Productive Learning and Leisure, has taught me a great deal.  Also, Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence:  Why it Can Matter More than IQ is one of the definitive works on the subject.

Here’s to improved perspective,