Act with vision - the Vision of Quiet Leadership

Leadership requires vision. Theodore M. Hesburgh, the former president of Notre Dame University says, "The very essence of leadership is you have to have a vision."

My developing manifesto on Quiet Leadership encourages leaders to "Act with vision." In this context vision requires additional definition. How would a quiet leader define the vision required of leaders.

If you review the "textbook" definitions of vision no single definition seems to relate to leadership. Here are definitions courtesy of Merriam-Webster online:

• something seen in a dream, trance, or ecstasy


• a manifestation to the senses of something immaterial


• the act or power of seeing


• direct mystical awareness of the supernatural usually in visible form

So what is vision's link to leadership and how about quiet leadership?

I'd like to offer two views of leadership vision that that draw out the essential ingredients to "Act with vision." My two definitions are 1) forward-looking vision and 2) awareness.

Forward-looking Vision

Many authors and experts, when describing the link between vision and leadership, will refer to strategic or forward looking vision. A leader must be a visionary. A leader's role is to define a mission or cause. A leader must be forward looking.

Picture Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. calling out, "I have a dream" and this definition becomes clear. Stephen Covey in his book The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness talks about vision as "seeing with the minds' eye what is possible in people, in projects, in causes and in enterprises. Vision results when our minds joins need with possibility"

The research of Posner and Kouzes, as the basis for their best seller, The Leadership Challenge, 3rd Edition position this strategic "forward looking" vision as a key character that is universally expected of leaders. Forward looking vision is simply expected of leaders.

Forward-looking vision also links to a key skill of problems solvers, the ability to visualize solutions and models. Peter Senge in The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization describes this vision as the pictures or images that influence how we understand the word and how we take action.

In the book Einstein: His Life and Universe, author Walter Isaacson suggests that Einstein's ability to construct thought experiments might have been the key to his insight. Many of Einstein's theories were the result of thought experiments, that is, the production of Einstein's mental laboratory. Einstein's vision may represent the ultimate in problem-solving vision.

Problem-solving vision is also the type of vision that Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People proposes when he encourages effective people to "begin with the end in mind."

Awareness

My second view of vision for quiet leaders is awareness. I associate this form of vision as the vision that is described when a television football analyst suggests that a successful running back has good vision. This is interpreted to mean that the player has awareness of the position of teammates and defenders, and blocking opportunities. The running back has the ability to see emerging holes in the defense.

Leaders need the same type of awareness, i.e. an awareness of people, skills, processes, work, and opportunities that surround the leader. A good leader is mindful of the organizational relationships and politics. An effective leader should be aware and mindful of the world around.

In the book Resonant Leadership: Renewing Yourself and Connecting with Others Through Mindfulness, Hope, and Compassion, authors Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee state,

When we are mindful, we are more in control of ourselves and
situations simply because we see reality more clearly

Self awareness also applies. The ancient Greek aphorism, "Know Thyself" sets the stage for leadership. Leadership guru Warren Bennis starts his definition of leadership with "Leadership is a function of knowing yourself"

Act with Vision

The Lead Quietly manifesto (a work in progress) will propose that leaders should "Act with vision." In this context, leaders should act with forward looking purpose, act with awareness of events around and within and begin with the end in mind.

Thanks for reading. Act with vision. Please lead quietly

Don

Can you see it? Vision is key for leaders.

This past week I was pondering the role of vision for quiet leaders. I was prompted by the comment from leadership speaker and trainer Dan Stockdale on last week's post Quick Leadership Test - Are you a we or me leader?

In his comment Dan stated, "One of the other fundamental tenets for leaders is the ability for a leader to develop and instill a shared vision amongst their team."

The role of vision is not a new principle at the Lead Quietly blog. In Act with vision - the Vision of Quiet Leadership, I proposed that leaders need to Act with Vision, that is, leaders should act with forward looking purpose, act with awareness of events around finally, begin with the end in mind.

My continuing review of The Leadership Challenge by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner is the perfect platform for expanding our Quiet Leader notes on vision. Vision is an important tenet of their leadership principles. Here are some snippets.

The Kouzes and Posner definition:

Vision .... means an ideal and unique image of the future for the common good. It implies a choice of values and something that brings meaning and purpose to our lives.

Visions are about hopes, dreams, and aspirations. They're about our strong desire to achieve something great.....Visions necessarily stretch us to imagine exciting possibilities, breakthrough technologies, or revolutionary social change.

Kouzes and Posner describe the importance of a shared vision across a team or organization.

Remember that leadership is a dialogue, not a monologue. Leadership isn't about imposing the leader's solo dreams; it's about developing a shared sense of destiny.

Finally, I encountered an inhibitor to vision that I have experienced, that is, a situation where a vision can be prevented from taking hold. Kouzes and Posner cite,

Visions are not strategic plans. Strategic planning often spoils strategic thinking because it causes managers to believe that the manipulation of numbers creates imaginative insight into the future and vision.

The suggestion is that vision stacked against plans, budgets, and resource allocations, may not stand up. The standard tools of planning don't add insight or drive to a vision. In fact, my experience suggests that saddling a vision with standard management tools like plans, budgets, and reports may kill the vision.
Anyone else see this challenge?

Finally a closing quotation from Theodore M. Hesburgh, President Emeritus of the University of Notre Dame,

The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don

Lead like a statistician - without the math

If you are a fan and student of analytics and infographics, I hope you visit, subscribe and follow the work and discovereris of Nathan Yau and his Flowing Data blog. (Blog, Twitter) I am a data geek in my day job and appreciate the growing use of analytics and infographics as a means of communicating and making sense of data.

My interest in infographics brought me to the Flowing Data site and Nathan's collection of unique and informative visualizations. I'll share a couple of favorites before I get to the leadership message of this post.



A favorite blogosphere chuckle came with the post Data Underload #6 - Bed Head. Here is a snippet, check the post for the entire visualization.







In another clever application of infographics, Nathan represents familiar movie quotations in Data Underload #12 - Famous Movie Quotes. Visit the post to see the entire collection.









What about Leadership?

Nathan wrote a post on his Flowing Data blog entitled Think like a Statistician - without the math. In the post, Nathan describes informal and practical insights that he has learned about working and playing with data. He suggests that " the most important things I've learned are less formal."

The parallels to leadership struck me almost immediately. The Lead Quietly blog focuses on the informal, practical and "quiet" principles of leadership, collaboration, community, balance, and vision. One of my missions is to share the informal insights that I have discovered and validate those insights through links to other work in the leadership space.

Statistics and leadership both call for principled action and I found the overlap surprising. Let's review Nathan's five "statistical" principles with a leadership twist:

Attention to Detail
In data work, Nathan suggests that, "it's the little things that end up being the most important." You should be looking for outliers, missing data points, and inconsistencies.
In my view, the parallel leadership attribute is vision, the ability to sense and observe what is going on around you within your teams. I believe that as a leader you know the little details about the people around you. If you know about your colleagues children and spouses, this attention to detail will serve you well in building trust and community.

See the Big Picture
While attention to detail is important, statically speaking, Nathan encourages us to not get get "too caught up with individual data points or a tiny section in a really big dataset."

In leadership you also need vision to see the big picture. Leaders need big-picture vision to have an awareness of the of the people, skills, processes, and opportunities around you. I previously wrote about vision in Act with vision - the Vision of Quiet Leadership. See the Big Picture, it's a practical piece of advice for leaders and statisticians.

No Agendas
In statistics, Nathan describes the dangers of letting preconceived ideas influence the results of a study or experiment.
Leadership requires the same type of objectivity. There is a certain maturity required of good leaders that allows them to work without personal agenda. As I cited before in The Maturity and Balance of Quiet Leadership, maturity may be the basis for objectivity, patience, and humility exhibited by great leaders.

Look Outside the Data
To think like a statistician, Nathan proposes that the:

more you know about how the data was collected, where it came from, when it happened, and what was going on at the time, the more informative your results and the more confident you can be about your findings.

Whereas, he proposes context, context, context for better understanding of data, I couldn't help but think of mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness for a parallel concept in leadership. A quote from George Ambler from The Practice of Mindfulness on the Practice of Leadership blog proposes this context awareness:

When navigating through uncertainty, especially during times to rapid change, crisis or when facing novel situations the ability to be fully present is critical. This is because in these types of situations, “When faced with this kind of turbulence, mindfulness becomes even more important. You need more, rather than less, information, and it is generally more difficult to get. You need to leverage your strengths and find those people who are succeeding despite the disruptions. You need to stay calm.“

Mindfulness allows you to establish awareness of your surroundings and understand the context, context, context of your situation.

Ask Why
Nathan states, " this is the most important thing I've learned, always ask why." For a blip in a graph, you should wonder why it is there.

I equate "asking why" to curiosity. Curiosity links directly to learning and passion.

Curiosity is a measure of your passion. In Curiosity as a measure of passion, I quoted Steve Roesler of the All Things Workplace blog who stated,

successful employees of every ilk display a never-ending curiosity that emerges as "passion" in a meeting room filled with people.

Effective leaders recognize the value of curiosity. They are driven to ask why?

The important thing is not to stop questioning; never lose a holy curiosity.
- Albert Einstein

Principles as a Compass
Principles guide action and clearly statistics and leadership are principled genres. As Stephen Covey writes in Principle Centered Leadership,

Correct principles are like compasses: they are always pointing the way. And if we know how to read them, we won't get lost, confused, or fooled by conflicting voices and values.

Thanks for reading. Mesh. Lead quietly and like a statistician.
Don

It's a Shared Leadership World

Recently,  I wrote an leadership article for the BA Collective, a forum with a mission "to unite the Business Analysts in our community and provide a place where we all can share experiences and continually evolve our knowledge as our role as Business Analysts evolves."

Business Analysts provide a vital leadership role in our project teams.  A role that fits nicely in a shared leadership model.  In the article, I describe characteristics of shared leadership, a leadership model based on the premise that leadership is not a title but a decision that anyone can make.  

Here is the start of the article and a link to read the entire content.

With Opportunity and Leadership for All

Are you a leader? Certainly BAs have a leadership role on teams. But leadership can be intimidating. Consequently, your answer to the leader question might depend on your definition of leadership. It is reasonable to ask, "What you mean by leadership?" 

For many, the first vision that comes to our mind is the picture of a charismatic and heroic leader, a person in command who possesses great skill and authority. This vision of the heroic leader is classic. However, with this vision it is frankly hard for many of us to aspire to a leadership role. Speaking for myself, I am not heroic. Charismatic? Not my style. Can I be a leader and just be me?

There are other leadership approaches. This article will focus on the other end of the leadership spectrum where one finds a shared or distributed model where leadership is no longer the exclusive responsibility of a single person. It’s a model where anyone can be a leader. Under a shared model, leadership is cultivated at all levels of an organization. Leadership doesn’t require a title or authority. Leadership is a choice and as a BA, it is a choice that you can make. 

This article will explore the concept of shared leadership and provide insight and awareness. Second, this article will touch on some simple ideas that BAs or anyone can use to expand their leadership influence. Leadership is a choice. Anyone can lead.

Read the full article at BA Collective.

Thanks for reading.  Please lead quietly and share the lead.

Don

 

Brain Rules

This post is a second post for the week that commemorates Brain Awareness Week. The general message that I am promoting is that your brain is a tool that we must nurture and develop in order to learn and grow.

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by Dr. John Medina is a very interesting and captivating book that presents 12 brain rules for optimizing your .... brain.

I found the book pretty amazing. For a book that is based on substantive scientific research, it is a good page-turner. For those who want the twenty minute overview, I'd encourage you to visit the Brain Rules website for a complete list of rules. Additionally, you can can view fairly comprehensive videos at his site and also on You Tube.


There were several take-aways that resonated with me from the book. Here are some examples:

Exercise benefits muscles and the brain - we know that exercise is good for our bodies. It is incredibly good for the brain. How much? Active people have half the risk of Alzheimer's disease compared to sedentary people. Let's keep up the exercise. I think the crunches will be a little easier with this new information.

Impossible Multitasking - I consider myself to be a great multitasker. At work, colleagues can send me a dozen issues and I can alternate between attention and division to get the the tasks handled. But the reality is that the brain simply cannot multitask. Watch the You Tube video with John's rant about cell phone use in cars.



The Power of Sleep and Naps - Our brains are very active during sleep and continue to develop and rehearse while sleeping. The essential message is that good sleep lead to good brains. Additionally, there is research that suggests that our brain has a period during the day where the benefits of a nap are profound; a nap zone. Research by NASA shows that a 25 minute nap increase pilot performance by 34%. Not a bad return return. How do we convince our employers? A good nap requires a least a cot.

Vision Wins - Brain Rules provides evidence that when it comes to impact, vision wins. Recognition and memory are aided significantly by visual cues in your presentations and documents. When I need to be persuasive, I need to add vision to my presentation.

We are curious explorers - Research with babies suggests that we are natural explorers. Give a baby an object and you will discover the a baby methodically looks to understand. Curiosity is an incredible motivator for learning, growth and problem solving.

Enjoy the book. It is highly recommended. Now it's time for me to exercise and then a nap.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly. Brain rules.
Don

Be a good leader. Be incomplete. Don't be perfect, don't even try.

There is evidence that the best leaders are distinctly far from perfect and simply incomplete.

Woohoo. When I look at my personal skills, this is the best news I've heard in some time.

An article in the July 2007 volume of the Harvard Business Review caught my attention this past week as I continue my exploration of collaboration and leadership. In Praise of the Incomplete Leader, is the collaborative work of a group of authors MIT that includes Peter Senge, author of the previously cited business classic, The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization.

The article resonated with me from the first read of the summary tag line:

No leader is perfect. The best ones don’t try to be—they concentrate on honing their strengths and find others who can make up for their limitations.

The authors state that it is time to stop visualizing the complete leader as a person at the top who has all the answers. They go on to say that leaders shouldn't even try to fill the gap. As they say,

... the sooner leaders stop trying to be all things to all people, the better off their organizations will be. In today’s world, the executive’s job is no longer to command and control but to cultivate and coordinate the actions of others at all levels of the organization. Only when leaders come to see themselves as incomplete—as having both strengths and weaknesses—will they be able to make up for their missing skills by relying on others.

A quick summary of the author's findings suggests that a leader, although incomplete and imperfect, should focus on four essential capabilities:

• Sensemaking - trying to understand the contexts in which in which an organization and its people operate. Sensemaking is similar to creating a roadmap that the team can follow.
• Relating - building relationships within and across organizations. Building a community of confidants who can collaborate to solve problems.
• Visioning - creating a compelling picture of the future. A leader should be able to articulate what the team wants to create.
• Inventing - developing new ways to achieve the vision. Similar to the innovation skills required of entrepreneurs, this is more about execution than creativity.

These capabilities are very compatible with my principles of Quiet Leadership, i.e. community, vision, learning, and balance. I also couldn't help but relate the findings of this article to a previous HBR article I referenced in What Leaders Really Do where author John Kotter proposed distinct differences between leadership and managment.

Once again, we quiet leaders are going to disappoint people around us who feel that we should have all of the answers. In fact, I shouldn't even try. Instead we should focus on sensemaking, relating, visioning, and inventing.


One final thought for Quiet Leaders
You know how one might struggle in an employment interview when the question is, "What is your biggest weekness?"

The standard recommendation for this response was to either present a weakness that was inconsequential, e.g. I am addicted to brushing my teeth, or present a weakness that you could turn into a positive, e.g. I'm a workaholic.

Well, now quiet leaders have a response.

Hiring manager: "What is your biggest weakness?"

Quiet Leader: "I am imperfect and have given up trying to be perfect. Fortunately, there is research that says that I am a better leader because of it. I forces me to "cultivate and coordinate the actions of others."

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly and woohoo for imperfection.
Don

June 2008: I humbly ask for your support in the Best Leadership Blogs 2008 competition. Here are the top ten reasons why you should vote for Lead Quietly. Thank you.

The Maturity and Balance of Quiet Leadership

I describe balance as one of the key attributes of quiet leadership. As I wrote in Keep it balanced in 3D,

My vision of balance is multifaceted where balance applies to many elements of life, work and leadership. This includes, for example, the balance of work and personal life, the balance between individual needs and organizational needs, the balance of opinions that needs to occur within teams, the balance required to moderate disagreement.

I feel that maturity is also part of this vision of balance. This notion came clear this past week in reading Do You Recognize the 7 Ingredients of Maturity on the Dumb Little Man blog.

Lifestyle mentor, author and educator, David B. Bohl of Slow Down Fast, identifies the seven ingredients of maturity as:

• Maturity is the ability to control anger and settle differences without violence or destruction.
• Maturity is patience.
• Maturity is the capacity to face unpleasantness and frustration, discomfort and defeat, without complaint or collapse.
• Maturity is humility.
• Maturity is the ability to make a decision and follow through.
• Maturity means dependability and coming through in a crisis.
• Maturity is the art of living in peace.

The list resonated with me. Although you could probably add and adjust the ingredients as evidenced by some of the blog's comments, my takeaway thought after the reading the post, related to the value that employers and organizations place on maturity. I suspect that maturity is undervalued and under appreciated

Maturity as a personal attribute seems difficult to sell. Picture a hiring process where there are two candidates where the only difference between the two is that one candidate exudes energy and charisma and the other maturity and balance. Who gets hired?

Let me know that you think? How can we quiet leaders sell our balance and maturity?

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don

For the love of learning, you gotta love a good list.

Leadership and learning are an inseparable pair. As John F. Kennedy said, "Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other."

In today's environment, leaders require learning opportunities that are continuous, always accessible, and fast.

As Jack Stack writes in the forward of the book, 1001 Ways to Reward Employees

We like things fast, but we don't have time to study. The world is changing so rapidly that by the time we learn something, it has often changed in some way, shape, or form. We want information in small bites

Learning opportunities come in a variety of forms. Of course there is the classic class or seminar. However, I find that continuous learning is more likely to come from reading, life lessons, discovery, experience, and, a more recent revelation, a good list. For me, the discovery and review of a good list is a great learning opportunity. Let me explain more.

For example, I recently encountered "The Manager's Cheat Sheet: 101 Common-Sense Rules for Leaders" on the Inside CRM site. The Cheat Sheet is a list of tips for managers and leaders.

When you review the list, you might say, "been there, done that" for many of the items. In that case, the validation is useful and important in learning. It is good to know that a concept that you hold dear is validated and valued elsewhere. For example, take rule #8:

Always smile. Smiles are contagious and will make others feel positive when you're around.

I blogged on this idea in a post titled, It Begets It. The "Manager's Cheat Sheet" list validated an existing notion that I had. This is learning.

Other rules might put a new twist on an old concept. For example, rule #77:

Adopt a predictive managerial style. Don't wait for things to happen to make a move. Anticipate problems and provide contingency plans.

This rules reminds me of the quiet leadership definition of vision. The type of vision that gives you awareness of the events around you and serves the opportunity to be proactive. The rule put a new twist on another concept. Still, this is learning and it is fast.

A good list allows you to quickly discover and validate. For the love of learning, you gotta love a good list.

The Manager's Cheat Sheet is one of hundreds of good lists. Here are a couple more of my favorites:

Rosa Say: Twelve Rules of Self-Leadership
Slacker Manager: Guiding Principles
Nightingale-Conent: The 12 Characteristics of High Performance Teams
Tom Peters - Change this Manifesto: This I Believe

I'd love to learn about other lists readers have found useful. In the interest of learning, please comment with other lists that you appreciate. Remember it's all about learning.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don

Leadership Styles are Like Golf Clubs

I  recognize that different leadership styles are required for different situations. No one style is adequate for different people, groups or situations.  On the golf course, you pull a different club from your golf bag depending on your lie and distance needed, an effective leader should have a set of leadership styles in his leadership bag to most effectively lead in different situations.  A recent review of some work by author Daniel Goleman validated my thinking.  
Daniel Goleman is best known for his books on Emotional Intelligence.  His best selling work defined a set of skills and competencies that defines how people manage feelings, interact, and communicate on their way to success.
In his book Leadership: The Power of Emotional Intelligence, Goleman cites the leadership research of the consulting firm Hay/McBer that identified six distinct styles employed by leaders.  The best leaders do no rely on a single leadership style but use multiple styles and are able to move between them seamlessly and in different measure depending on the situation and people. 
He conveniently summarizes the six leadership styles and their application in a chart that I have reconstructed below.

Leadership Style	The leader’s approach	In a phrase	Best used when…	Impact on Climate
Coercive	Demands immediate compliance	"Do what I tell you."	In a crisis to kick start a turnaround	Negative
Authoritative	Mobilizes people toward a vision	"Come with me."	When changes require a new vision, or when a clear direction is needed	Most strongly positive
Affiliative	Creates harmony and builds emotional bonds	"People come first."	To heal rifts in a team or to motivate people during stressful circumstances	Positive
Democratic	Forges consensus through participation	“What do you think?”	To build buy in or consensus or to get input from valuable employees	Positive
Pacesetting	Sets high standards for performance	“Do as I do, now.”	To get quick results from a highly motivated and competent team	Negative
Coaching	Develops people for the future	“Try this.”	To help an employee improve performance or develop long-term strengths	Positive

You can access Goleman’s full description of the styles in the book, on in the original Harvard Business Review article Leadership that Get Results.  Please remember that you can access HBR articles from your local library’s online database. 

The Lead Quietly Takeaway

My takeaway from the article is that just like I have clubs in my golf bag that I avoid because I need more practice, there are leadership styles that require honing on my part to become the Phil Mickelson of the Leadership Tour.  Are you able to move and adjust your style as needed?
Thanks for reading.  Please lead quietly.
don 

Quiet Leader Presidents Rank Highly

My leadership study this past week found me pausing on a recent post on Michael McKinney's Leadership Now blog. What Makes a President Great was an terrific post where I encountered new leadership insight through Michael's review of the book The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn't): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game.

In the book, author Alvin S. Felzenberg devises new criteria and standards for ranking our former presidents. As Felzenberg described in an interview on National Review Online,

What I attempt to do in my book is to provide six criteria and assign each president a grade in each — just as educators do students on report cards. My categories are: character; vision; competence; management of the economy; handling of national security, defense, and foreign policy; and whether they extended or restricted liberty, especially at home.

As I read the Leadership Now post and reviewed the ranking of Felzenberg's top presidents, I was ecstatic to find three Quiet Leader "Hall of Fame" selections in the top 12 list. The Quiet Leader "Hall of Fame" represents my personal choices of quiet leaders who achieve greatness while exhibiting quiet leader attributes including humility, vision, balance, learning, and quiet purpose. The Quiet Leader "Hall of Fame" includes these top 12 presidents:

Rank	President/ Hall of Fame Selection
1	Abraham Lincoln
5	Dwight D Eisenhower
8	Ulysses S. Grant

A fourth president, Harry S. Truman, is ranked number 10 on the list and his nomination to the Quiet Leader Hall of Fame is currently under consideration.

Bottom line: Our quiet leader presidents rank highly and this causes me to reconsider,
In this age, could a Quiet Leader be elected president?

Read the Leadership Now post. It's very insightful in this presidential election time.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly and be presidentially humble.
Don

Quiet Strength, Quiet Leader, Quiet Winner

Tony Dungy, quiet leader, coach of the Indianapolis Colts and the winning coach of Super Bowl XLI, is the fifth leader to take a place in my personal Quiet Leader Hall of Fame.

With this profile, Coach Dungy joins a distinguished group of leaders that includes:

• U.S. Grant
• Abraham Lincoln
• Robert Greenleaf
• Dwight D Eisenhower

Granted, it feels like an unusual choice to me to propose a sports hero as a Quiet Leader of note. Nevertheless, I was moved by his leadership and approach when I read his autobiography, Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices, & Priorities of a Winning Life. He may be the ideal Quiet Leader role model, a contemporary figure who is very public about his quiet approach, his faith, and his success. I'm not alone in my admiration. Time Magazine in 2007 named Dungy to their list of "The 100 Most Influential People in the World."

In 1972, I was a student at the University of Minnesota when Tony arrived on campus to play football and basketball. As a member of the U of M Football Marching band, I watched from the sidelines as Dungy grew as the quarterback/leader of the Golden Gophers. I was a Dungy fan in those early days when I knew nothing of his leadership approach. I only knew that he was a winner.

Dungy reconnected with Minnesota in 1992 when he returned to become the defensive coordinator for the Minnesota Vikings. I remember thinking at the time as I enjoyed listening to Dungy on sports talk radio thinking how I would prefer Dungy to be the Vikings head coach. It wouldn't happen at Minnesota.

Dungy left Minnesota to become the head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and it was in this this role where his style, unique in the football world, become public and prominent. Let's explore his leadership from using snippets of his book.

On Vision
"The first step toward creating an improved future is developing the ability to envision it. Only vision allows us to transform dreams of greatness into the reality of achievement through human action."

On his quiet approach
I don't yell a lot. In fact yelling will be rare," ... if my voice at this level won't get your attention, and you believe you need someone to yell at you to correct you or motivate you, then we'll probably need to find you another team to play for so that you can play your best."

Accountability
"Take Ownership No excuses, no explanations."

Family Balance
In his book, Tony stresses the importance of family and life balance. He cites that football is only a game. But tells the team directly at the beginning of every season, " I want each guy to understand this his family is his first priority."

Albert Eienstein provides a quote that nicely underscores the Dungy approach,

Try not to become a man of success but rather a man of value.

A great summary of the quiet leadership style of Tony Dungy.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don

Quiet - It is Just a Label, Not a Description

I believe that the adjective "quiet" is not a great descriptor of the leadership style that I have tried to describe over the last 20 months of writing this blog.

I had a discussion this past week with some of my colleagues and again found that I had to explain that Quiet is really only a label and not really part of the substance. I almost feel that if someone focused on quiet, they might miss the real substance behind the leadership style.

There are better labels. Those more descriptive labels and the posts where I explored these more descriptive styles include:

Bill George - Authentic Leadership "Be Yourself"

Servant Leadership from Quiet Leader Hall of Famer Robert Greenleaf "Servant Leadership"

Leaderful Practice - Shared Leadership from Joe Raelin "We need to be Leaderful not Leaderless"

If you focus on quiet you might miss other concepts that I have tried to communicate. First and foremost are the leadership elements cited in my masthead including community, collaboration, learning, vision, and balance. These concepts have little to do with quiet.

Bottom line: Quiet is not very descriptive. It is however, the label and the brand around which I have blogged in my quest to identify leadership that is simply effective.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly err.... effectively.

Don

Reinventing Leadership In The Age of Collaboration - FP Posted

In his book, Leadershift, author Emmanual Gobillot, a consultant and speaker with a wide audience in Europe, describes how to adapt traditional leadership roles and a develop a new business model for success. Leadershift explores the world of mass collaboration--that is, the collective actions of large numbers of people working independently of organizations and institutions. Gobillot argues that social, collaborative and virtual networking have far deeper implications than just changing the way we work or do business. Mass participation makes business a social enterprise, and therefore changing the nature of roles within.

Gobillot argues that leadership during a mass participation era is linked to narrative (story telling) and contribution more than it is to power and prescribed roles. The real challenge with collaboration is that it needs to be implemented with tools that do not currently facilitate it. Engaging in conversations with people that help paint desired pictures of the future, or apply our knowledge of human behavior from brain science research is at odds with the kinds of structures and processes that currently exist in organizations.

via network.nationalpost.com

There are four trends that all suggest that individual experience, skill, effort and power are diminishing in importance in favor of collective experience, skill, and networks.

In this post I also appreciated the definitions of Leader and Ruler supplied by commenter rossbcan:

Leader: One we voluntarily follow because they expose a vision and a place / role for us that is in our self-interest

Ruler: Those we FEAR to cross.

Interesting concepts in new leadership.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.

Don

Posted via web from Intersectable

Balance like Obama - A Lesson in Leadership Balance

I don't intend to use this blog as a political platform. My mission has not changed since my first post when I wrote, "I am writing this blog to start conversation and sustain study about quiet leadership."


Nevertheless, I was enlightened this past week as I listened to Barack Obama talk about balance in his book The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.


Balance is one of the key elements of quiet leadership. As I write in Keep it balanced, in 3D:

The concept of Quiet Leadership includes the the notion of "balance." My vision of balance is multifaceted where balance applies to many elements of life, work and leadership. This includes, for example, the balance of work and personal life, the balance between individual needs and organizational needs, the balance of opinions that need to occur within teams, the balance required to moderate disagreement. A quiet leader strives to keep it balanced.

In his book, Obama describes balance in the same light. Search the book and you will find 15 references to "balance." Often his discussion describes the challenge of "finding the right balance." He describes that ordinary citizens are "waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism." He talks about finding the right balance between national security and individual rights. He recognizes that it is not easy, "finding the right balance in our competing values is difficult."

Perhaps the most insightful statement about balance and leadership is the leadership action of "maintaining within himself the balance between two contradictory ideas that we must talk and reach for common understandings."

On the other extreme,the opposite of balance, is absolutism. Obama cites the negative impact that absolutism, i.e. a lack of balance, has had in our current politics. Absolutism suggests that values combined with power, don't allow balance or compromise. Balance is lost when "ideological minorities seek to impose their own version of absolute truth"

What is balance? Somewhere between balance and absolutism is the place where both passion and reason exist. As a leader, you need to make sure that you hear and recognize the passion of the people around you and encourage reason in order to foster the moderation that can bring balance to your team's actions.

I find that the words of Khalil Gibran in The Prophet nicely emphasize the importance of balance between passion and reason.

Your reason and your passion are the rudder.. and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas. For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to it’s own destruction.

Once you recognize this place where passion and reason mingle, the real work begins for leaders. Often there is no easy answer. Balance is hard but the first step is to recognize the importance of balance. This may be the primary principle that I gleaned from Obama's book. That is not a political statement.

Comments are always welcome.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don

Four Simple "Shared" Ideas for Building Community

I'm into simple and concise ideas about leadership.

This even applies to more complex leadership challenges like community building where I have written previously on simple concepts for community building. For example:

Building Community - Trust Begets Trust
Cites the work of Kouzes and Posner in The Leadership Challenge where the authors identify trust as a foundation for community and teamwork.

Building Community: Thank you as a way of leading
Proposes gratitude as an easy and remarkably powerful step in building the type of community that is essential for successful teams.

Building Community with Giving
Suggests that giving and service are key ingredients to building community across teams.

Becky Robinson at the Mountain State University LeaderTalk recently posted four simple ideas for community building. Her ideas were both "simple" and accessible.

Here are her four points along with my comments and links to my previous posts:

Shared relationships. People feel part of a community when they are well connected in relationships... leaders facilitate this interconnectedness. The more people are interconnected, the more likely they are to have a sense of community.

Get to know the people around you. To me, it starts with knowing about their families and names of spouses and children; it allows you to connect quickly.

Sustain the interconnectedness with smiles and gratitude.

Shared experiences. When people participate in activities together, collaborating as a whole or working in small groups, relationships have a chance to grow. Even after the activity is over, shared memories with others can contribute to a sense of community.

Draw people into your plans and tasks. Collaboration doesn't have to be hard. But is starts best with questions and listening; not telling. Also, let's dispel the myths that collaboration takes longer or suggests that a leader is soft or weak.

Shared goals and purpose. As people rally around a shared cause or goal, a sense of community builds. People feel emboldened by others who are working toward the same purpose.

I have previously cited the work of Kouzes and Posner who describe the importance of a shared vision across a team or organization. They suggest in their work, "Remember that leadership is a dialogue, not a monologue.... it's about developing a shared sense of destiny. "

Shared achievement. People enjoy being a part of something bigger than themselves, knowing that their contribution makes a difference. Leaders who recognize a groups' effort build community.

I feel that celebration should be an important element of the gratitude shown by an organization. As I have written before Gratitude is Transformational.

Becky's community building list is a perfect way to remind leaders that building community doesn't have to be hard.

Thanks for David Zinger for his Tweet that shared this nice list.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly. Don

Posted via web from Intersectable

Keep it balanced, in 3D

The concept of Quiet Leadership includes the the notion of "balance." My vision of balance is multifaceted where balance applies to many elements of life, work and leadership. This includes, for example, the balance of work and personal life, the balance between individual needs and organizational needs, the balance of opinions that needs to occur within teams, the balance required to moderate disagreement. A quiet leader strives to keep it balanced.

Jim Bolt recently wrote about balance on the Fast Company site. The article, Developing The 3-Dimensional Leader, describes the common absence of balance in leaders and the need for three dimensional leaders. As he writes, "Too many leaders today are one-dimensional, narrowly focused on business results."

Bolt's three dimensional leadership implores leaders to strike a balance between business needs, leadership, and personal needs. Here is his description of the three dimensions:

The three-dimensional framework calls for the development of an individual’s business, leadership, and personal effectiveness skills:

• Business Dimension: Mind-sets and capabilities needed to identify and address critical business challenges
• Leadership Dimension: Fully developed leadership capacity needed to lead the organization confidently into the future
• Personal Dimension: Personal effectiveness skills needed to achieve excellence, balance and ongoing renewal

This three dimensional framework perfectly depicts the balance required of quiet leaders. Please read Bolt's article.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.

Don

Quiet Leadership and Service Lessons from "Fred"

I've been a "Fred" all my life. With a last name of Frederiksen, I've had several phases in my life where my nickname was Fred. My father was a Fred. My siblings have all been Freds. Even today, my son is known as Fred to the point where when we call him by his real name (as we do by habit) other parents don't know who we are talking about.

I've been a Fred all my life. However, authors, Mark Sanborn and John Kotter have raised the bar on being "Fred" with new leadership and service lessons.

First, I recommend the book The Fred Factor: How passion in your work and life can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. The Fred Factor, by Mark Sanborn is based on the service and style of his new letter carrier, Fred. Fred the Postman shows exemplary attitude and achievement in his job. His service is outstanding and remarkable. In the book, Sanborn offers Fred as a model for our actions and suggests that our actions should be based on four principles,

1. Everyone makes a difference.
2. Success is built on relationships.
3. You have to continually create value for others and it doesn't have to cost a penny.
4. You can reinvent yourself regularly.

The story of Fred is a parable of successful service and leadership. I recommend the book. However, students of leadership can also visit the Fred Factor web site to learn more. You can watch the Fred Factor video clip for summary insight into being "Fred."

Bottom line, we can learn much about service and leadership from Fred.

Another instance of "Fred" comes to us courtesy of Professor John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber in the book Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions. In Kotter's book, Fred is a penguin, a quiet penguin who was unusually curious and observant. In his study he notices that his iceberg is changing and his colony was in peril. Fred had no title. He had no authority. He was quiet Fred. Nevertheless, he felt compelled to take action. He picked another penguin, Alice, who had influence and authority and quietly convinced her of their colony's peril. The team of Alice and Fred convinced the Leadership Council that change had to occur or the colony would perish. In the end, the colony was spared.

Kotter's recipe for change includes an eight step process.

1. Create a sense of urgency
2. Pull together the guiding team
3. Develop the change vision and strategy
4. Communicate for understanding and buy in.
5. Empower others to act
6. Product short-term wins
7. Don't let up
8. Create a new culture

Thanks to the quiet leadership of Fred, the colony was spared. The fable of the penguins and their iceberg guides you to acting smarter, producing more, and staying in control through understanding of the events around you.

For students of leadership and change, Kotter's Iceberg Manifesto provides additional insight and tips to lead the change that will be needed to save your colony. For our penguins on the endangered iceberg, this change started with a quiet leader, Fred.


Bottom line, we can learn much about service and leadership from Fred.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly. Be a "Fred."

Don

Lead Like a Good Teacher - Be Principled

Good leadership is similar to good teaching. You can also say that good teaching is really good leadership.

I have used the last few posts at Lead Quietly to draw links between the critical behaviors of a teacher to critical behaviors of a good leader.

Here is the complete list of the critical teacher behaviors and the same behaviors applied to leadership:

Five Critical Behaviors of a Teacher	Five Critical Behaviors of a Leader
Teach to an objective	Lead to an objective. Have clarity in your misison.
SELECT an objective at the appropriate level of difficulty.	Put people in a position and role where they can succeed.Pursue clarity in roles.
MAINTAIN the focus of the learner on the learning.	MAINTAIN the focus on the follower.
USE without abuse the Principles of Learning (Active Participation, Motivation, Closure, Reinforcement)	USE without abuse the Principles of leadership (Active Participation, Motivation, Engagement, Trust)
MONITOR and adjust.	MONITOR and adjust.

Guiding Principles

In this post, I focus on the the fourth critical behavior of teachers and leaders, where success in either area requires use of core guiding principles.

I am a fan of guiding principles. In my day job in information management and business intelligence, the domain's guiding principles drive good practice and propose an appropriate course of action for most design and application decisions.

Principles of Learning

Madeline Hunter's Instructional Theory into Practice model for teaching mastery proposes four key principles of learning that should be used. The principles focus on active participation, motivation, closure and reinforcement. An exploration of these four principles are beyond the scope of this article. However, I would like to discussion reinforcement and describe a teacher trick that I frequently use when presenting to my team or other group.

Most of us understand the basic principles of reinforcement from our studies in psychology where we learned about B.F. Skinner and positive and negative reinforcement. We generally understand that positive reinforcement increases the probably of response while negative reinforcement will tend to supress response.

Now imagine that you are presenting to a group and you pose a question to the group. For the purpose of this discussion you pose the question, "What is two plus two?" The first response that you get is "five." Five is flat out a wrong answer. And if you as the presenter say, "Wrong", you may never get another response from that audience member. Negative reinforcement will suppress response. It's not possible for you to say "Good answer!" So how do you neutralize the wrong-answer response that you need to give?

The teacher trick is to convert every response to a right answer. So when the audience member responds with the wrong answer "five," you can convert that into a right answer by saying, "Thank you. If I had asked 'What is two plus three?' the answer would be five. However, I had asked 'What is two plus two?' so "four" is the answer."

In this simple response, you converted the wrong answer into a right answer for a new question and made better use of the principles of learning.

Use but do not Abuse the Principles of Leadership

For nearly four years, I have written at Lead Quietly, about topics that I consider to be the essential principles of leadership. Readers of this blog understand my passion for principles like learning, collaboration, engagement, communication, community, balance, vision, and trust. I do not intend to reintroduce these principles in this post.

However, I thought I would reuse a visual concept that I first used back in a 2008 post, Lead Quietly, Can you state that in 25 words or less? where I used Wordle to present a visualization of Quiet Leadership. Here is my new visualization about the principles of Quiet Leadership that you should use but not abuse so that you can lead like a teacher.

My hope is that the visualization presents a reminder about leadership principles that should be used but not abused.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly with principles.

don

The Quiet Leader Commandments - Without the Stone Tablets

Do you have a personal set of commandments? I do but I don't. I've feel like I try live my life with a set of principles, many of which I have identified in this blog. But I don't because I have never put them onto a list. I'm not envisioning a set of stone tablets; too difficult to modify, but there should be a list.

The whole notion of a personal set of commandments occurred to me when I Tweeted last week that I was impressed with the Twelve Commandments of author Gretchen Rubin on her Happiness Project blog. Hers is a simple list. So simple that you don't have to click through the hyperlink to get more information.

My goal is such a list. But I feel some intrinsic need to keep my list to ten. Here I go:

1. Always learning, always improving, always practicing.
2. Be humble.  (Added September 24, 2011 Link)
3. Stay balanced.
4. Be resourceful, be a problem solver.
5. Show vision.
6. Be nice, be decent, be fair.
7. Serve.
8. Show gratitude.
9. Communicate well.
10. Listen always.
11. The best answer is the honest answer.  (Edited September 24, 2011.  Link)

I'm always looking for feedback and comments. Please share your additions or modifications. Help me improve my list.

On a related note, check out Phil Gerbyshak's Ten Commandments of Management on Slacker Manager. Thanks Phil

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don

Newness Calls for Renewal of Principles and Values.

My current situation calls for renewal. Newness abounds.

I recently started a new job with a new company, new team, a new role, and new responsibilities. My daughter recently graduated from high school and planning and preparation for her new life at college is in full swing. My family's health is good, the best that it has been in years. That's a great new feeling. Finally, we just celebrated the first day of summer. The new season, and the newness of my current situation calls for renewal.

I'm not talking about major reconstruction. But it is a great time to revisit the values, rules, and guiding principles that I believe in. Some of these principles may have gotten lost during the recent busy and stressful season.

It could be a big task. However, I'd like to reach into my past and remind myself of my core principles through two of my previous posts.

Quiet Leader Commandments - a Redux

I originally presented this list of commandments as a simple list that requires no additional explanation. I believe the list still stands without elaboration.

1. Always learning, always improving, always practicing.
2. Stay balanced.
3. Be resourceful, be a problem solver.
4. Show vision.
5. Be nice, be decent, be fair.
6. Serve.
7. Show gratitude.
8. Communicate well.
9. Listen always.

In this I believe! I feel renewed already.


Learn to Distinguish Yourself in 9 Simple Steps!

Another great list for renewal is cited in 2008 comes courtesy of author, consultant, and entrepreneur, Raj Setty. Beyond Code: Learn to Distinguish Yourself in 9 Simple Steps!. The eBook is available for FREE from Setty's web site.

It is a great list of reminders about how to set yourself apart. If you are looking to distinguish yourself, just reading the table of contents provides a motivating list of suggestions and reminders.

1. Learn
   
2. Laugh
3. Look
4. Leave a Lasting Impression
5. Love
   
6. Leverage
7. Likability
   
8. Listen
9. Lead

As Raj explores each "l" item, he offers suggestions, insights, quotes, and an accountability assessment. Even if you feel that you have mastered the idea, Raj's reminders and assessment can bring new insight and renewal. The Amazon reviews on his printed book validate my sentiments; it is an overwhelming five-star selection. Did I mention that the ebook is FREE?

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly and renew with me.

don