New Year’s Resolutions for Leaders in 2012

With the New Year just days away, many expect the same-old-same-old just like the last few years. Business leaders are a bit more optimistic than that. Some leaders are looking to reinvent themselves and their organizations. This is due to the economic climate as these leaders want to sustain and maintain their presence as they grow their organization and move forward with creative and innovative products and services.  
As you think about your resolutions for the New Year, reflect on what you can do to enhance your role as a leader and the contributions of those who “follow” you. What lessons did you learn in 2011 that can help you in 2012? Think of these resolutions as you to accomplish.
 
Start the New Year by reassessing your plans and goals. Here are some things you can do to help you get started in the New Year.
 
Let’s start with a few things to think about first.
 
Ask yourself “What did I Accomplishment?” What did you feel good about? Did you do a good job in your position? What can you improve on?
 
What Did I Learn in 2011? The past year has been a valuable source of information about how to succeed this next year. Ask yourself: What worked and what did not work? What would have worked better?

1.      Put Time on Your Calendar

 
Set purposeful stretch goals to help you improve your performance. Learn something new or fine-tune an existing skill. These should help push you to the next level of your success. Set 3 goals at a time. When you complete 3 goals, add 3 new goals, stretching each time you add more to your accomplishments.

2.      Create a More Conducive Climate

 
Evaluate your own personal contributions to the organization. Improving at least one thing even if it is a relationship with people you do not see eye-to-eye with can smooth things with regard to performance may go a long way. 
 
Listen better to others ideas, thoughts, opinions and feedback that can improve your leadership and/or the organization.

3.      Working Smarter in the New Year

 
This is often times better than working harder. Find three ways you make yourself irreplaceable in the company. What unique ways do you have about you that no one else in the organization has, besides being the leader that you can improve on?

4.      Succession Planning

 
Too many leaders have not written out a succession plan just in case a situation occurs that may incapacitate them for some time period. Write yours out where you do not have to name names, unless you feel comfortable in doing so of who would move into what positions.

5.      Open-Door Policy 

It is up to you whether you have an open door policy or not. If you tell your employees that you have one, then make it real without anyone getting revenge on anyone else. Having a real open-door policy allows others to talk with you and you’re allowing them to do so.

Finally, how can you make sure you achieve your top ten goals for the year? Keep them visible and review them each day. Set up a system of weekly and monthly goals to create progress towards completing them. Focus on your initiatives and bringing new perspectives to existing priorities can give you greater opportunities.
 
So, what are your 2012 New Year’s Resolution Goals? Think carefully and write them down so they stay on your mind. It is up to you to write some detail of what you want from your goals as well as how you expect to achieve them.

Happy New Year & Best Wishes for 2012.

Keys to Ignite Your Leadership

Igniting the power within your organization starts with your leadership. Every great leader is focused on a vision, engages others with this vision and communicates it clearly. How charismatic and inspiring you are helps your leadership move your employees and organization forward to your vision and expectations.

The following keys help ignite your leadership to the next level of your success. You may already have these and may need to take advantage of an additional 5-10 percent more of igniting your employees within your leadership.

Creating Your Vision

After writing your vision, you need to walk your talk. Leaders and managers say they want change and continuous improvement but their actions do not match their words. Start to match and do what you say. In order to get your employees more engaged with their work, get to know them and interact with a few of them on a daily basis. Ask them their opinion of their work and what they feel would help improve what they do. Be open about this, and do not get angry by what they may say.

Confidence

Leaders must be confident in themselves. This includes being confident when you give speeches or presentations, make competent decisions and not constantly second guess what you think, and be able to interact well with the confidence and competence to know what you are talking about as well as understand others.

Employee Engagement is Key to Business Results

When employees are engaged in their jobs, they drive innovation, perform at consistently high levels, and many remain loyal to their companies, these same engaged employees are able to make decisions using their critical thinking skills. The result is that employees take personal ownership of their responsibilities and teams work together to produce bottom-line results.

Studies identify engaged employees as more productive and outperform disengaged employees. Educate and empower frontline managers as they need to know what engagement looks like and be able to model it themselves.

Facing Daily Challenges

Everything that happens in an organization is the direct or indirect result of that organization's culture, philosophy and core beliefs. Whether you are faced with minor or major or unexpected situations, the best way to handle them is not to react immediately to them. If you do, the decision you make too hastily may backfire on you. Instead, take a few minutes and either turn the situation into an opportunity or proceed using a proactive approach. Break down each challenge into small pieces and work through each step. Use your critical thinking skills to feel comfortable with the result you have.

Passion

Passion is a competitive advantage that all organizations can leverage. Stimulate others with your vision. This helps you and your employees. Employees need to know the “big picture” – and how their tasks fit in the greater scheme of things. Passionate people have discovered work that excites them. Passionate people are always learning, reinventing themselves, and exploring new things. Risk is an important part of living passionately.

Keep your passion pointed in a precise and positive direction. Activate your imagination everyday: Sometimes it can be easy to become uninspired when we get stuck in the often less-than-glamorous daily routines of living out our vision. Do something every day to keep your creative juices flowing so they don’t get stagnant and you don’t get stale.

People Skills

Whether you are an introvert or an extrovert, as a leader one of your responsibilities is that of interacting with other company leaders inside and outside of your organization. During networking events, ask questions of the other person(s) and retain as much about them as you can. This helps in your follow up with them or the next interaction you have with them to ask about the specifics of what you spoke about previously.

Remember: Employees want to be motivated, performance driven, appreciated, recognized and to feel important for what they do.

Make Opportunities Happen

Some People Make Things Happen, Some Watch Things Happen, while Others Sit around and Wonder What Happened.

Everyone heard about the person who is “in the right place at the right time.” Be aware of the opportunities around you. Take advantage of them but first think carefully of how you and your organization will benefit most from them.

If you recognize that you are feeling burned out and no longer find excitement or joy in leading your business, the best thing you can do for yourself is to step away from it.

For many, the name of the game is to stay ahead of their competition, and they do so. Others do not take the action to jump ahead of the crowd, so they get left behind. Active management of employee engagement is a critical aspect of sustaining a competitive advantage. With the help of your employees prepare for the next level – don’t wait for it. Each one of us has the choice and the responsibility to take leadership into our own hands. I hope that these keys will help you wake up and ignite the leadership spirit within you!

High Voltage Energized Leaders

You know motivating energy when you see it. When people see you getting closer to achieving a tough goal, this unleashes collective energy that drives performance to a whole new level.

Leadership is how you interact with everyone, as you are visible to everyone. Energized leaders develop a personal effective style of leadership that positively influences and changes not only yourself, but those with whom you work and interact, as well as your organization as a whole.

You have probably witnessed first-hand how low personal energy can prevent you and your team from being as productive as you would like to be. Even highly motivated and hard working executives are not immune from the negatively affects of low person energy levels. These can leave you feeling mentally and physically tired as you struggle to keep up with your work. Studies have shown that 1 out of every 2 executives (2009) report that their low energy levels prevent them from being effective and productive as they need to be in their work. There are an alarming number of executives who struggle to keep on top of their work each day.

There is a critical distinction between someone who has a high-energy personality and someone who is a leader whose style in influencing others sparks ingenuity and infuses energy. Which one are you?

You know motivating energy when you see it. Energized leaders generate inspiring company-wide performance, where employees help each other tap into creative innovation because they want to. While you can find driven people everywhere, high-octane environments are fertile grounds for teams to create extraordinary results. Research shows the key to outstanding performance is ENERGY (the ability to reach and achieve your full potential).

In keeping pace with organizational changes and sky-rocketing workloads, you need to:

• Stay fresh and focused in stressful work situations.

• Concentrate and stay focused on your work more easily.

• Use your higher personal energy levels more productively.

• Give yourself an energy boost whenever you feel yourself getting rundown. (no energy drinks).

• Completely unwind and release your tension and stress at the end of each day.

• Create energizing, productive and positive relations at work and at home.

• Avert burnout and stay on top of your work.

• Be resilient and creative under stressful conditions so that you can respond quickly and easily to unanticipated crises as they arise.

“High energy creates the context for possibility”, says Thomas Ebeling, pharmaceuticals CEO at Novartis. “If you intend to unleash the energy of your people, you must start with great purpose and then set ambitious targets… as a leader, you put time and energy into optimizing the blend of people – not just based on expertise, but based on what sparks their best work.”

Without energy, the wheels of your leadership and organization come to a screeching halt. Your employees will become less productive as well. Employees who are enthusiastic and know their contributions are valued are more likely to be self-motivated and propose innovative ideas.

Successful organizations have energetic employees. Nothing energizes them more than public praise and recognition for their accomplishments. Try giving incentives to employees for the ideas and work they do.

Start a New Trend – Random Celebrations

As leader, it is your responsibility to keep your employees motivated and to keep productivity high. Both of these are enormous challenges. Keep the champagne on ice and non-alcoholic champagne too and celebrate with your employees from time-to-time.

As you celebrate the wins, recognize your employees who made contributions to the win itself. Whether you give a certificate, a gift card, or a meal to your employees, make sure everyone is recognized for something they did.

Know where and how to direct energy in your organization. To get the extraordinary results you want, get your people to see their areas and expertise in new ways. Pay close attention to what really matters. While sparking your people to ratchet up their day-to-day decisions and actions, you still need to monitor where they are in the work they are doing.

Unleash energy that drives a whole new level of performance. Incorporate an individual’s values with their desires to make a difference. Include the idea that each person works better by using their personality preferences (their actual strengths) and the results are being more effective and productive in getting work completed. Unleashing energy is not about creating something new--it's about unblocking this enormous natural energy that already exists.

Remember: You cannot inspire and energize people with memos, mission statements, data and analysis, charts, goals and objectives, measurements, systems, or processes. Try something new.

Leaders with Confidence

Self-confidence is one of the most admired attitudes in a person. Employers want self-confident employees because they usually get the work done even in tight situations. Self-Confident people are open to new ideas and are willing to discuss them even if the new idea is opposed to their own. They are willing to acknowledge their mistakes and then move on to finish the job.

Have you ever wondered that 2 people can read the same books, get the same leadership training and end up with 2 different results? If the training is the same, then the difference has to be with the person. Most of the time that difference is confidence. Confidence is what allows us to take action.

“Self-confidence is rocket fuel for leaders. Used carefully and ignited under the proper conditions, it propels you and those around you to remarkable heights.” (Leadership Caffeine: Is Your Self-Confidence In Danger of Burning Out of Control? August 30, 2009 by Art Petty)

It is all very well know what you need to do as a leader but if you lack confidence, for whatever reason, it may be hard to deliver. Self-confidence- You won't get to the top without it. While confidence in the economy is down, confidence in leadership, their teams, their ability to execute on their vision, organizations have the right people and skills to move themselves forward. As a leader, you need to cultivate your team’s confidence. Your team should have confidence in what they do as well as confidence in your leadership skills.

Much of a leader’s confidence is from experience. Self-confidence is the fundamental basis from which leadership grows. Confidence is the cornerstone of leadership. Do not confuse confidence with self esteem. The latter relates to how you see yourself fundamentally and how you value yourself. Self esteem is more about how you want others to react to you to raise your self worth - you want people to like you.

Not only does confidence allow you to make the tough decisions that people expect from a strong leader but it's reassuring to your employees. It allows you to lead meetings with authority, to accept candor and open communication, and the greater they perceive your force of will, the more faith they will have in your company and its mission. As a leader, consider how well you deliver a company speech. If you deliver it with confidence it inspires your team as intended, but the same speech delivered with doubt becomes a point of mockery.

How confident are you when speaking to your employees and delivering a presentation that sets the company direction for the future? Are they rallying behind you or can they see through your lack of certainty? This is the difference between a confident leader and one who goes through the motions while lacking core convictions.

You can see confidence in leaders who know what they want. They are decisive. They don't mull long over an issue, but they don't rush to snap judgments either. To most people, a leader always seems like he or she knows what to do, regardless of whether a choice is right or wrong.

Passion is the other characteristic of confidence. Passion comes when you find something you love—the job that inspires you to live. Passion will have all your conversations relating back to your love. It will keep you awake, as you mull the perfect solution. With this passion comes confidence, and when people feel this passion in you—and they will—they'll follow you to the goal.

Confidence or “executive presence” involves the ability to enter a room and instantly take charge, through your strong presence, while forging quick, personal connections with the other members of the team. Leaders with confidence or “executive presence” will always command respect and attention when they speak; and their determination and conviction inspires and motivates those around them.

Confidence is the expectation of success. When you expect success, you are willing to put in the effort to achieve it. It's confidence that attracts investment--not just money but time, energy loyalty and commitment. Ultimately what makes a difference in performance is whether people put in the effort--and often the extra effort--to sustain success. When people have confidence they are willing to invest and it is the investment that leads to action that creates high performance. So confidence is a critical missing link. The reason I love sports so much is that you can see it clearly in games. The winner is often behind… they sometimes fumble… they sometimes lose the ball… they sometimes miss a shot and they keep going. They persist, they learn from their mistakes, they learn from their experience, and that is what confidence makes possible.

When you think of the word confident, what comes to mind? One who is confident is a person who can move ahead in a direction that is new with little hesitation. It may take time to make that initial move, but confidence must be present in order for movement to occur. Without confidence, change and action are invisible. Now take this vision to leadership and visualize this: Organizations and people will stay stagnant or in their “rut” unless acted upon by an outside force, also known as a leader. The leader who acts upon an organization requires confidence in his/her ideas or ability in order to take the first steps to make this action. I think you can now see the importance of confidence.

Confidence in leadership is essential. Leaders effect change and they cannot make the changes needed without some level of confidence in their abilities. Be confident and take action based on your confidence level. Have the willingness to take action that gets the results you want. Now go out there: Be decisive, be passionate, and lead away!

Work with Your Enthusiasm

"Nothing great has been achieved without enthusiasm."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Two people with virtually the same amount of skill and talent can differ vastly in the amount of success they achieve. If you have noticed that employee enthusiasm takes a nose dive shortly after new hires start work with your company, you are not alone. In fact, there is a disturbing and significant decline in employees’ overall job satisfaction after they have been with their employer for six months or more, according to research conducted by Sirota Consulting.

A person can succeed at anything for which there is enthusiasm.
-Charles M. Schwab

What would your company be like if your employees showed up with passion and boundless enthusiasm each day?

Enthusiasm is one of your most important assets. Enthusiasm is one of the key ingredients to making your business work. Before you lay out a business plan, make sure you are going where your passion leads you, as you will need this enthusiasm to keep you going through the rough times. Visualize your goals and where you want to be in two or three years. Also use positive affirmations to help keep your attitude up.

Employees cannot be expected to be enthusiastic about an organization that is not enthusiastic about them.

Not all jobs are exciting or glamorous; in fact, most involve rather mundane tasks being performed again and again

Passionate employees are more effective. They’re more fun to work with. They get more done on a daily basis. They work with greater accuracy and they inspire excellence in others. Passionate employees directly affect the bottom line and influence the company culture in a positive way. So how do we tap into the passion our employees possess?

What's the difference between enthusiasm and gasoline? Maybe, there's not much difference between the two. They both provide the power to drive us forward. (Enthusiasm: The Key to Productivity and Innovation By Don Doman)

Enthusiasm in the workplace, properly ignited, can propel your business into success. Motivated employees work harder. They'll even come with ideas to improve the product or service. Motivated and enthusiastic employees are the best kind of employees to have.

Here are ways you can fire up unmotivated and under enthusiastic workers:

THE TIME IS NOWWhen you see someone doing a good job, the time to tell them about it is right then. Don't wait for tomorrow or next week. Who knows? You might forget about it. If you tell someone they are doing a good job, they won't forget about it.

LET YOUR FEELINGS SHOWDon't be an old stone face. Everyone has feelings. Show yours. If your workers are doing a great job, then shouldn't you be excited? Shouldn't you be proud? Let those emotions show on your face. Share your enthusiastic feelings. Your feelings will boost moral and encourage the same feeling among your workers.

GIVE A PAT ON THE BACKNothing builds enthusiasm like trust. When you give someone a task to accomplish it shows that you believe in them. If you believe in them, can they believe any less? You don't even have to make encouraging statements. The task alone speaks volumes.

“Courage is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” -Winston Churchill

You have the opportunity to choose enthusiasm every moment of the day. Rekindle your Enthusiasm and Ignite your spark for reaching your potential and success.

Twelve Keys to Successful Leadership

The effectiveness of the leadership within your organization determines to a great extent the degree to which that leadership will succeed. What makes for strong leadership? We all know it when we see it; the trick is to articulate what the key ingredients are. Here are 12 key elements that I believe form the common denominator among successful leaders in any industry. From the lessons on leadership, we know leaders can be developed. These 12 key components to leadership that are demonstrated by effective leaders provide guidelines for developing an environment that fosters the principles and practices critical to organizational success.

1. Your Self-Esteem: As with effective management, the first key is to strengthen your self-esteem. The more value you see within yourself, the greater will be your ability to influence other people.

2. Attitude is the key to organizational performance: A leader needs to have a positive attitude even when things are not going his/her way.

3. Begin with yourself: Successful leadership begins with the individual. Successful leaders share a set of traits or principles, including a high degree of integrity, authenticity, courage, and curiosity. Effective leaders are congruent. They know what they stand for and they have the courage to convey it and the consistency to live it. Their followers can trust them, as they know who they are and what they stand for.

4. Goal Setting; the Path to Your Focus: By setting goals on a routine basis you decide what you want to achieve, and then move step-by-step towards achieving these goals.

5. Commitment: The key to completing goals and subsequently achieving our life’s focus is commitment. Success often starts with the mere existence of the commitment to change and improve. By committing ourselves to accomplishing the goals that we have determined, we take that first step to the achievement of excellence. Commitment is what transforms promises and hopes into reality. This also puts the leader in the position of having integrity – doing what you say you will do.

6. Communication: When you communicate your vision, your mission, and your goals, be clear and concise for all to understand what you want to accomplish. Think before you speak: As a leader, tailor your messages enough for your audience to see a clear picture of the message you are presenting.

7. Listen Well: Listening to what others have to say and their understanding of what you have said. Listen for more than what’s being said; pay attention to what’s not being said and try to spot unspoken expectations that are not clearly communicated verbally or in writing. It’s about picking up on what people are thinking, how they are acting and what they are not necessarily verbalizing. When ideas are fresh and positive, profits and productivity soars. Communicating and listening complement each other for good leaders.

8. Progression of Achievement: Excellence is best achieved in small steps that encompass a greater whole. A productive and reinforcing method of goal setting involves the breaking of any large task (or our overall focus) into manageable segments, with the easiest parts to be accomplished first. By actually achieving success after success, we begin to establish a repetitive pattern of achievement that leads to even greater accomplishment. Success, like failure, tends to be a trend. Continued successes encourage continued successes. Enough successes eventually comprise ultimate excellence.

9. Leaders must walk the talk. Leaders not only make the rules, they follow those rules. This is harder than you think. Take sales, for example. Most business leaders are good salespeople, and good salespeople often break the rules. But you earn your team’s heightened respect when you make a deliberate effort to creatively accomplish your goals without violating or corrupting policies you put into place.

10. Leaders take responsibility for poor performance. In being a leader, you take on the responsibility of accountability. Leaders also understand that most underperforming employees are the product of a poor hiring decision or poor training. Most managers retain underperforming employees too long because they set unrealistic expectations and lack objective ways to evaluate performance. Good leaders understand that retaining an employee under these circumstances works against the employee’s interest as well as the company’s.

11. Motivation: This involves influencing your people to make more long-term efforts in accomplishing goals. It is not the idea of simply giving orders or making suggestions, but the ability to make someone truly want to achieve the desired goals. It starts with motivating yourself and ends with leading the team all going in the same direction.

12. Having a Vision: Leaders know where their organization is headed, and they constantly communicate that vision to their team. If the vision is strong enough, a good leader can delegate its implementation without having to micromanage the details. With this, having the tenacity to stay the course until the established objective is achieved is part of the key of leadership excellence as well.

Taking this one step farther, navigating with this vision is also important to effective leadership and those at the helm who try to lead without a vision are seriously crippled. Organizational members need to know where the organization is going. Without direction, they flounder. To have direction, motivation, and congruence, employees must see the big picture. Employees need a vivid sense of the future that compels them to action. When they are committed to the vision and align it with their personal objectives, a synergy is created that lifts, fuels, and propels them forward.

Successful leaders are willing to take risks with visibility and vulnerability. They demonstrate and build courage through this willingness. Leaders learn to take complete responsibility for their decisions and actions, while sharing credit. Masterful leaders learn, live by, and communicate these principles. They create confidence, respect, and loyalty by operating with integrity and authenticity.

Good leadership is not just the result of hard work. It also stems from having a clear vision of where you want the organization to go. It results from having a solid knowledge of bringing out the best in the people you are leading.