Leadership Requires Change

Posted on January 30, 2012 by amanda

Chances are if you run a business, there are some things occurring in your business that aren’t working for you.  Things that you wished were different. Whether it’s the amount of time you are spending working, or a difficult employee.  Maybe it’s an overwhelming feeling of being unsure where the business is going, or how to motivate your employees to give their fullest effort.  Whatever it may be there is one thing that is certain…if you want it to change, then someone or something has to change.leadership and change

We love change, right?  Especially when someone else changes, I am all for that! If that employee would change his attitude, there would be so much less stress here.  If the economy would just improve, we would be thriving.  If my team would be more productive, I could spend more time at home enjoying my family. How many times have you caught yourself saying those things?

So if it’s not about the other person changing, then what does that leave?  It’s a no brainer, ME!  Each of us has to be willing to change in those situations when something is not working.  Change our thinking, change our habits or routines, change our communication style, change our belief system, etc.  We could wait for another person to change, but we could be waiting forever.  And that doesn’t have us in the driver’s seat in life.

Fear of change is a common fear in life, one that we resist over and over again. We can spend our entire career waiting for something else to change.  We can spend years in our relationship wanting the other person to change. Can you relate to that?

Life is actually pretty simple.  Now I didn’t say easy, I said simple.  It comes down to this.  If it’s working, keep doing it.  If it’s not working, change and do something different.  Think about it.  How great is that?  How simple is that?

Sometimes it takes a lot of courage to change what’s not working. True.  But having faith that it will all work out perfectly, and taking that leap is what great leadership is all about.

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Executive Leadership Tip: Embark on a Journey of Change

Posted on January 26, 2012 by scotthunter

Over the past two weeks, we have covered what a paradigm is and how to apply it to our life.  Let’s set a goal that we will shine a beacon on the existing paradigm to remove it from the realm of the invisible. We will see it for what it is and understand how it causes us to think and act as human beings. This exercise will make it immediately apparent why our companies, and indeed our world, are in the poor shape they are in. We will then propose an alternative paradigm – another possible way of being – that will enable us to create cooperation, caring, cohesiveness, trust, respect, and most important for company leaders, satisfaction, fulfillment, harmony, creativity and productivity.

Once we do this and commit to this new way of being, everything will flow with ease. Set up the field with a diamond, bases and a pitcher’s mound and it’s easy to play baseball. All that’s left to do is to practice the new way of being until you get good at it, which shouldn’t take long if you’re willing to commit yourself to it. It’s time to take off the shackles and give yourself the freedom to lead your organization anywhere you want to take it and truly experience the extraordinary.leaderdship styles photo

Sound too good to be true? It isn’t…as long as you’re willing to tell the truth and do the work, which is the biggest challenge of all. As we will discuss over the next few weeks, people don’t want to change. They don’t want to admit that they don’t know everything. Most people want to be right. They will blame everyone else for their problems and failures.

If you’re willing to move beyond that, the results can be both extraordinary and amazing.Here’s the best news of all: after years of studying our nature as human beings, I’m convinced that life isn’t that complicated. Most of the time we have two choices, “A” and “B.” There aren’t many shades of gray. Two choices, A or B. As you will see, unconsciously we choose A. More accurately, it chooses us.  Stick with us, as over the next few months, you’ll see what both A and B are. Your job will be to learn to stay conscious and choose B. Simple, not so easy.

Here are two action items to help you as you start to examine and change the paradigms in your life:

  1. Start noticing what you believe to be the “truth.” Be willing to challenge your most deeply held beliefs.
  2. Ask what life would be like for you if what you believe was not the truth? Or what would life be like if just the opposite was the truth?

For the full experience of Unshackled Leadership grab a copy of my book. Hardcover or kindle version are both available.

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Executive Leadership: Beyond Being Smart

Posted on January 24, 2012 by scotthunter

One of the things I’m noticing in the many organizations I work with is that I run into a lot of really smart people. While I guess there’s no harm in being smart, in fact, it may be a good thing, it does present an interesting challenge. So if you’re smart, read on.leadership theories photo

Here’s the problem with many smart people: they think they know. I mean, talk to them about anything and they know. They listen to see if they agree with you or not or, they don’t listen at all, because you know what, they already know.

But here’s the problem: there’s a distinction between being smart and being enlightened. Being smart will get you so far in life and in business. Being enlightened is necessary to get you the rest of the way.

What’s the difference? When you’re smart, you have a lot of information about a lot of things or maybe about just some things. If I was going to have brain surgery, I would want a doctor who knew everything about the brain, the body, surgery, and on and on. But there are a lot of smart people who run businesses who know everything about their product or service but don’t have a clue about how to run a business successfully.

What does it mean to be enlightened? It means you understand, first, how life works, then you understand how people work, and then you understand how to use that information to empower people, build a team, and create an extraordinary organization. For now, and I will elaborate on this a lot further, being enlightened means you know the difference between the voice of your higher consciousness and the voice of your ego and you’re effective in managing yourself from the former and not the later.

As I’ve written about before, life and business are actually pretty simple games, if you understand the rules. And why they are simple games is that the rules are simple: choose which voice you listen to. When you listen to the voice of the ego, you’re fundamentally afraid, you never see things clearly, you make bad decision and things tend not to turn out well.

When you listen to the voice of your higher consciousness, you’re happy, you see things clearly, you make good decisions and things tend to turn out well. And here’s the best news of all, while your ego lives in your head, your higher consciousness lives in your heart. So to be enlightened, stay in your heart! Tough sell to smart people.

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Motivational Leadership: Embracing the Paradigm

Posted on January 19, 2012 by scotthunter

Last week we examined the concept of a paradigm. This week we will consider what the value of shifting our paradigm is.leadership styles change photo

We learned a paradigm acts as an information filter that determines what we perceive as reality. What may be perfectly obvious to people with one paradigm may be completely invisible to people with a different paradigm.

Finally, and most important, our paradigm determines what we can and cannot accomplish. For example, if you take a piece of land measuring one hundred yards, mark off lines every ten yards, put goal posts at opposite ends, and then give everyone baseball gloves and bats, they will find it difficult to play baseball because the field isn’t set up for that game.

So it is in life. It’s important to understand that we live in a particular paradigm. It’s neither good nor bad, neither right nor wrong. It is what it is. Yet the paradigm you and I live in today has as much impact on us as the 1400s paradigm had on the people who lived then. The current paradigm makes us be and act in a particular way. Like water to a fish, we can’t even see it!

Let me ask you a question: Are you clear that you have many beliefs? By the way, a belief is a thought you repeat to yourself over and over because you think it’s the truth. Have you ever asked yourself: how come I believe what I believe? Probably not. To drive home the point, you didn’t even decide to believe almost everything you believe!

You were born into a paradigm that had an already existing set of beliefs and you bought into virtually every one of them without any thought as to their validity or usefulness. If that’s not bad enough, the vast majority of what society trained you to believe either isn’t the truth or isn’t very useful, which is why for so many leaders, life is like looking for downtown Chicago with a street map of Detroit. It is why ninety percent of all businesses that start each year fail within the first ten years. It is why leaders often feel like they have shackles on as they attempt to lead their organizations into the future.

So neither you nor I are responsible for our world being the way it is. It was that way when we arrived and, just like everyone else, we were trained to operate in it. As we will discuss more fully as we proceed, the existing paradigm, the one we live in here and now, is not set up to create enthusiastic, confident, optimistic, appreciative and happy people working together on behalf of a future they have all committed themselves to. On the contrary, it’s designed to create pettiness, gossip, competition, conflict, arguments and righteousness. How do I know that? Because that’s precisely what we all too frequently have!

If we keep operating in the existing paradigm as we have in the past, we’ll keep getting more of what we already have. Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again while thinking we’ll get a different result.

Consider this story. A man was walking down a dark street late one evening. As he approached a lamppost, he saw a second man frantically searching for something on the ground. Not seeing anything, the first man said to the second, “Excuse me sir, did you lose something?” The second man replied, “Yes, I lost my keys.” The first man joined the search. After a time he said, “I don’t see anything. Are you sure you lost them here?” The second man replied, “Actually, no. I think I lost them down the street.” Bewildered, the first man asked, “Well then, why are you looking here?” The second man answered, “Because this is where the light is!”

The same thing happens in life. Even though we don’t find the joy, aliveness, fun and team spirit we want at work, we keep looking for it in the same place we’ve always looked.

What you need to do as you lead your organization into the future: Initiate a great change in the fundamental constitution of your thinking. Anything less is like putting a bandage on a broken arm. It might look good but it won’t get the job done. Forget the bandage solutions! It’s time to understand that if we stay as we are, we’ll only get more of what we’ve got

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Time to Wake Up!

Posted on January 18, 2012 by scotthunter

In a blog last week, I commented the results discussed in the annual report by Workplace Dynamics analyzing what is important to workers in Orange County, California. Since I have no reason not to assume the information they assembled is likely true across the country, and perhaps across the world, I offered some of their conclusions for your consideration.

executive leadership photo

I would like to comment on some of the additional findings. The study looked at statements workers made to reach the conclusions that were stated about what’s important to workers. At least 50% of respondents made the following statements:

“My manager makes it easier to do my job well; my manager helps me learn and grow; my manager listens to me; I have confidence in my manager; I feel well-informed about important decisions at this company; and new ideas are encouraged at this company.”

As I stated last week, why this is so critical is because workplace satisfaction is the biggest barrier that exists today to having a successful company.  Job satisfaction in the US is at an all time low.  Fifty-five percent (55%) of workers are unhappy at work. But here’s what’s often missed. It’s not that people hate their jobs, although that is surely the case with some. And it’s not even that people hate the company they work for, although that too is surely the case with some.

Exit interviews consistently show that when people leave it’s because they hated the person they worked for! People who are unhappy at work or leave their companies never say about their managers what is quoted above. It’s almost amazing to us, in this day and age, that so many managers still have the attitude: you should be happy you have a job! Or, if you don’t like it here, go find another job! Why is it so difficult for some to understand that all people need to be treated with dignity and respect and that people are a company’s most valuable asset.

I know many of you reading this understand this very clearly and wish your manager did. Send it to them anonymously and maybe it will make a difference. Or, if you’re the manager reading this and you still don’t get it, it really is time to step up and be an Unshackled Leader!

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Motivational Leadership: Examining a Paradigm

Posted on January 12, 2012 by scotthunter

In 2012 we will take an in-depth look at the 15 step process that enables business leaders to achieve breakthrough outcomes and extraordinary performance.  The concept of Unshackled Leadership starts with understanding and accepting that there is an existing paradigm.leadership theories paradigm

The simplest definition of a paradigm is a shared set of assumptions or beliefs. An assumption is information we take for granted. If we take a set of beliefs for granted and all share that set of beliefs, we have a paradigm. The fact that people thought the earth was flat in the 1400s is a perfect example. Since everyone took this “fact” for granted, it became the dominant paradigm of the day.

A paradigm is the way we perceive the world; like water to a fish. A paradigm explains the world to us and helps us to predict its behavior. When we are in the middle of a paradigm, it is hard to imagine any other paradigm.

The analogy of a paradigm being like “water to the fish” is interesting because in order for a fish to know that an environment other than water exists, it would need to come out of the water. Unless that happens, the fish is as blind to the fact that it is swimming in water as a bird is to the fact that it is flying in air.

Because we think what we believe is “the truth,” when you are in the middle of a paradigm, and that paradigm is all you know, it’s hard to imagine any other way to think!

Armed with those definitions, it is clear that at all times we live in a paradigm that impacts our everyday lives. We need to understand this for several reasons. The paradigm we live in is invisible yet it’s as present as the air we breathe.

Because it shapes our thinking, values and actions, it literally uses our lives. It tells us what we can and cannot think, what we can and cannot do and what we will and will not believe.

For example, let’s take the fifteenth century idea that the earth was flat. It’s not that people in the 1400s believed the earth was flat. To them, the earth was flat. It’s doubtful that one person said to another, “I believe the earth is flat. What do you believe?” The belief just was. What don’t you do when the earth is flat? Sail close to the edge! Therefore people in those days didn’t.

Here’s an example from the early 1950s which also shows how a paradigm shapes our thinking. Back then, conventional wisdom said, “It’s impossible for a human being to run a four-minute mile. You try to run that fast, your heart will explode.” Wow! What don’t you do when a task is impossible? Try! Was it impossible? Of course not. However, if you think it’s impossible or that your heart will explode if you try, that thought, true or not, shapes your actions. When Roger Bannister finally ran a mile in under four minutes, it didn’t take long for dozens of others to do the same. Today, the accomplishment is commonplace.

In the next blog entry, we will focus on how we can embrace the concept of a paradigm in our life.

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Management Leadership Tip: Importance of Workplace Factors

Posted on January 10, 2012 by scotthunter

I once again read with great interest the annual report by Workplace Dynamics analyzing what is important to workers in Orange County, California. Since I have no reason not to assume the information they assembled is likely true across the country, and perhaps across the world, I offer their conclusions for your consideration.management-leadership-survey

The questions that were asked fell into six categories: pay and benefits, managers, execution, careers, conditions and direction. What is most important is that if you ask most executive leadership or managers what they think workers care about the most, the almost universal answer is pay and benefits. But once again, it was the least important workplace factor. Only 45% of respondents rated it most important and only 29% said they were happy because their benefit package is good compared to others in the industry.

This is so important to understand. For those of you who still think people are motivated by money, please learn from these findings and think again.

What I found most interesting is what workers found most important, namely direction. 74% of workers said that was most important to them followed by 71% who focused on workplace conditions, and 69% who found execution and career opportunities to be most important. The study looked at the statements workers made to reach those conclusions. The statements that received the highest scores were:

I believe this company is going in the right direction; I am confident about my future at this company; I feel genuinely appreciated at this company; I have confidence in the leader of this company; I am happy with my career opportunities at this company; and my job makes me feel like I am part of something meaningful.

What’s the lesson to be learned? Create a company with solid management leadership, with a clear sense of direction and career opportunities, and you’ll have a company that workers can be proud of and excited to be a part of. You will then have the fundamental requirement for a successful company: a happy, satisfied workforce aligned on a direction for the future

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Strategizing is a Waste of Time

Posted on December 27, 2011 by scotthunter

If you are a company owner, president, CEO, COO or any other senior level manager, do you know that it’s very likely that you spend 98 or more % of your time focusing on the wrong thing? Think about it. What do you spend most of your time doing? Strategizing, solving, fixing, planning, acting, directing? Did I leave anything out?leadership styles for success

And why do you do those things? Because you don’t trust that left alone, things will work out just fine. You think it’s actually your job to make things happen, rather than just allowing things to happen. For you, life is like a board game and you have to develop the strategy in order to win.

There are so many problems with this approach. First, you are only so smart. Even if you are really really smart, your intelligence is finite as compared to the infinite intelligence available in the universe. So by definition, you trying to figure things out is playing with a limited deck of cards.

Secondly, all of that frantic doing is almost always fear based. You try so hard to make things happen because at some level, you’re terrified that if you don’t, everything will just fall apart. But the problem is that when you come from fear, the law of attraction, which is indeed a law in the universe, just attracts to you events and circumstances to have you be fearful.

Is there a better approach? Absolutely! Here’s the short version:

  1. Get clear about your company or personal vision
  2. From that vision, create, in detail and on paper, a clear picture of what your company will look like in 5 years.
  3. Create an organizational structure to run the company as it will look then.
  4. Start operating as if you are the president not of your company as it exists today but of your company as it will be in 5 years. And make sure it will be at least twice the size as it is today.
  5. Pay attention and follow your intuition. Your subconscious mind will immediately begin to figure out how to get you from here to there and all you have to do is pay attention and do what shows up in front of you to do.

This approach really does work. Try it and see. If you want to read the long version, it’s laid out in Chapter 19 of Unshackled Leadership. You can get your copy here!

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Leadership Strategy Tip: Goal Setting

Posted on December 7, 2011 by scotthunter

I attended a meeting this past week where the speaker was Mark LeBlanc. Mark has been a professional speaker since he was 21 and rose to be the president of the National Speakers Association a number of years ago. Mark shared an idea that I found so profound I want to share it with you.leadership theories goal setting

The preface of the idea is that we are mostly all good, on December 31st of each year, at wiping the slate clean and starting the New Year with a fresh slate. We set goals and create objectives for the year and we’re off and running. I must admit that this is exactly what I have always done.

But there are two problems with this approach, ones we all know about, but don’t have a solution for, until now. Problem number one is that many people find it hard to keep their commitments (lose 10 pounds, start going to the gym, etc.) and as soon as they break them a couple of times, they give up and that’s that for the year.

Problem number two is that we get to September or October, maybe sooner or later, and we’re so far behind on our goals or objectives, we give up and wait for January 1 to start over. Both of these problems are solved by Mark’s leadership strategy.

Here it is: After you create your goals and objectives for the year, break them all down into monthly goals and objectives. Then, at the end of each month, complete the month, celebrate your accomplishments, reset the counter to zero and start year over. No plus or minus carryover. On the first day of each month, the year starts anew.

Can you see the brilliance of this? It solves both problems one and two and every month, you get to start over, no matter how badly you did the last month. I’m so impressed with this I have taken all of my yearly goals and turned them all into monthly ones and I’m excited to start anew 12 times a year instead of once.

His final suggestion was: Every morning, ask yourself: what am I going to do today to reach my monthly goal? Every night, ask yourself: what did I do today to reach my monthly goal? Work your plan, stay in action, and have a great month of December.

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Leadership Tip: Enjoy a Happy Holiday Season

Posted on November 30, 2011 by scotthunter

Now that December is about to be here and the “holiday season” is upon us, I offer the following thoughts so you can make it safely and healthily to the new year.

Leadership Styles Holiday Photo

First, do you know why this has become the “flu season?” We have an immune system that is designed to protect us and keep us healthy and as long as we take care of that system, it will do just that. But the number one factor that compromises our immune system is stress. Number two is diet and life style. So what happens at this time of year is that all of the pressures of the season cause us lots of stress and, to make matters worse, we eat too much of too many unhealthy things. While I’m not going to lecture you on the later issue, here’s what you can do to minimize the stress.

First, you have to understand what stress is and where it comes from. Like most things in life as we see it, the answer is simple. All stress, 100% of it, comes from resisting what is. What does that mean? We all seem to have a picture of how everything and everyone should be. If you look, I’m sure you’ll see how true this is. Then, we compare how it is and how people are to this picture and invariably they don’t match. If we just noticed that and let it go, there would be no stress. But we don’t. We either try to figure out how to get how it is to be how we want it to be or we suffer because we can’t. That’s what I mean by resisting what is.

The solution is simple, not so easy. If you want to have a stress free holiday season, just allow things and people to be exactly the way it and they are. Let go of your pictures, things are the way they are. Nobody told you when you arrived that you would get to have everything be the way you want it to be. Stop complaining that life isn’t fair. It isn’t and was never intended to be.

Instead of trying to figure out how to get them and it to be the way you want them and it to be, which all goes on in your head, stay in your heart and focus on what you appreciate about everything and everybody. While nothing is perfect, there are always things about everything and everybody that is wonderful and worthy of your appreciation. Now more than ever, learn to cultivate an attitude of gratitude. Focusing on what you have to be grateful for is the perfect antidote to stress. And if you do that, you might just eat in a healthy way and continue to exercise because you won’t have to try and pacify yourself to deal with the stress.

During the Holiday Season more than ever, our thoughts turn gratefully to those who have made our progress possible. And in that spirit we say, simply but sincerely, Thank You and Best Wishes for the Holiday Season and a Happy New Year!

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