The Gent's Cheat Sheet » Leadership

Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

Trey — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 03:16:37 +0000

Carmine Gallo is the author of ‘The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience.’

TED Conference Video – Tony Robbins on Motivations

Trey — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 05:56:38 +0000

If you haven’t taken the time to watch TED videos, they’re well worth the time. This one is from Tony Robbins and focuses on the things that motivate our actions.

Don’t Let Your Strength Become Your Weakness

Trey — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:47:40 +0000

Moderation is a quality that’s easily under-appreciated, especially for things that are generally accepted as desirable or good. Take positive character attributes—is it possible to have too much?

Gill Corkindale at the Harvard Business Blog argues that the answer is yes, because our biggest strengths can easily become our biggest weaknesses, often unexpectedly.

“There is always an optimal point: confidence that doesn’t border on arrogance, wit that doesn’t slide into sarcasm, and diligence that doesn’t become perfectionism. I have observed many leaders who have fallen into the strengths/weaknesses trap. Having been praised and rewarded for demonstrating particular strengths throughout their careers, they become blind to the shadow sides of these strengths. Often, this blind spot can derail a career.”

It makes sense that even a good thing can be taken too far, but most people probably don’t consider the possibility that their strongest traits could actually cause them harm. Citing a decade-long study of 18,000 UK leaders, Gill explains:

"They identified 11 derailers — strengths which turned into flaws under pressure. These include shrewd-mistrustful; charming-manipulative; vivacious-dramatic; and diligent-perfectionist. These "Dark Side Characteristics" were present in 85 percent of the leaders surveyed, with 16 percent having three dark-side characteristics."

Only by acknowledging potential “dark sides” of strengths can the need for moderation become apparent—if there aren’t any drawbacks, how could more NOT be better?

Check out Gill’s thoughts or the original study for more.

-Trey

How to Handle the Pessimist on Your Team

Trey — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 01:38:03 +0000

This past week the Harvard Business Blog shared an excellent article highlighting effective tips for mitigating the toxic (and sadly, often pervasive) influence of pessimists on a team. The article is worth reading in its entirety, so I won’t try to summarize the whole thing here.

As I know many of you know, pessimistic griping CAN have a role to play, and it certainly can help a team bond quickly in the face of a common enemy (good example: a basic training drill instructor). Overall though, it’s definitely a negative force that needs to be contained because of it’s contagious nature and propensity to spread quickly. Bad attitudes tend to breed more bad attitudes, and it’s much easier to prevent the downward spiral to begin with than to recover from an attitudinal tailspin. I’m all for healthy cynicism, but that’s a special breed of pessimism (or is it realism?) and the subject of a post for another day. So I’ll leave it there and share a few the key principles worth noting:

Principles to Remember
Do:

Find the source of the pessimism

Differentiate between the person and the behavior

Involve the whole team in setting norms for team behavior

Don’t:

Single someone out in front of the whole group

Allow negative comments to go unaddressed

Assume all pessimism is unproductive

What about you? Do you succumb to pessimism yourself? Are there other good techniques you’ve found for containing the spread?

-Trey

How to Handle the Pessimist on Your Team [The Harvard Business Blog]

Is Volume Really Equated With Competence?

briang — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 01:31:28 +0000

As we noted yesterday, the conventional wisdom of “less is more” in conversations certainly seems to work well for Ben Bernanke.

Here’s an opposing point of view from US News and World Report, which claimed today:

“Research shows that people who speak up more often in groups are viewed as more competent and more instrumental to a group’s overall success. Maybe they aren’t the smartest people in the room, and maybe what they have to say isn’t always 100 percent right on, but talkative people are perceived as more dominant. And, for better or for worse, dominant people are perceived as competent people.”

Can’t say I agree, but there’s definitely something to be said for remembering that silence at meetings can also be interpreted as irrelevance. No one remembers a wallflower who sat at the edge of a room and didn’t contribute anything.

So yes, it’s important to speak up at times—but the idea dominance and competence are synonymous seems a little misguided to me. In addition, even if talking more is perceived as dominance (or competence), it doesn’t mean that it’s a technique that a gentleman should strive for. Is it wrong to be important or influential in meetings? Of course not—but I believe the best way to achieve this is by bringing out the best in others—not domineering.

“It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” – Mark Twain

“Even a fool, when he keeps silent, is considered wise; When he closes his lips, he is considered prudent.” – Proverbs 17:28

How to Communicate Like Ben Bernanke

Trey — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 01:38:46 +0000

Leaders have a natural tendency to take charge, and during meetings this often means that they end up driving the conversation. In many cases this makes sense, especially when the intent is for send-receive (generally one way) communication. However, there are also many times when this isn’t the goal, and the conversation needs to focus on dialogue, brainstorming, and sharing ideas. What then? What’s a boss or leader to do?

According to the Harvard Business Review, the answer can be found in the approach of Ben Bernanke. Their idea is that leaders need to be comfortable and confident enough in their position that they’re willing to forgo the opportunity to speak their minds up front.

“Letting others take the lead in discussions when you’re the boss is not a sign of insecurity; it can be a sign that you are in control. You are not seeking to impose your will on discussion; you are facilitating alternative points of view. This is essential to establishing the trust necessary to broker agreements between parties who don’t agree.”

Bernanke, they say, models this approach very well. In contrast with Greenspan, he often lets other participants have their say before jumping in—something that works very well when working with groups that don’t see eye-to-eye.

Moderation in all things of course–they also note that decisive action and bold action are necessary at times, because the more legislative role of “facilitating discussions” (as opposed to executive decision making or dictating) is only one aspect of leadership.

So what’s the lesson? Not that it’s better to speak or not to speak, but that it’s not always necessary for a leader to drive the conversation right off the bat—especially in circumstances when mediation or reconciliation of divergent viewpoints is necessary.

-Trey

Original Article: How to Communicate Like Ben Bernanke

Concepts to Know: The Peter Principle

Trey — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:13:58 +0000

Have Your Reached Your Level of Incompetence?

A principle often heard in business environments, the Peter Principle was the title of a 1968 book by authors Dr. Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull. In it, they humorously explain the seemingly pervasive presence of incompetence in managerial ranks.

The principle states:

“In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.”

This, they explain, is primarily due to the fact that competent employees generally receive promotions until they reach a point at which they cannot do their job effectively–their level of incompetence. As a result, it’s only the individuals that are still moving up a hierarchy that can actually perform their assigned work effectively.

The Peter Principle is worth knowing because of both the frequency and the implications of its use. Asserting that something (or someone) is an example of the Peter Principle is another way of implying–not so indirectly–incompetence.

The Dilbert Principle is an extension of the Peter Principle. In it, Scott Adams (cartoonist of Dilbert fame) observes that managerial incompetence isn’t always an unintended side-effect of a system that otherwise promotes competence. He suggests that some managers are promoted not because they are competent, but specifically because they are incompetent. In promoting an incompetent person, senior managers are able to simultaneously avoid the hassle of letting someone go and remove someone from the tactical level in which they can do the most damage. Essentially, the thought is that a manager doesn’t have to actually DO anything that could cause harm–they only have to be able to handle the bureaucratic responsibility of overseeing those who can actually perform their jobs.

-tg

You can read more about the Peter Principle and the Dilbert Principle here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peter_Principle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dilbert_Principle

Great Quotes: Churchill on Strategy and Results

Trey — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:07:46 +0000

“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”

– Winston Churchill