Performance Miner^™ Getting the Most Out Of Your Business & Life A free monthly newsletter about running your business and enjoying life along the way. Click here to view past copies.

Copyright 2005 Sharon Youngblood. All rights reserved.

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Performance Miner^™ is in two sections this month:

In this issue:

1. Conscious Leadership
2. Life Business™ Tips

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1. Conscious Leadership

Do you have an employee who is a great-with-clients rainmaker but cannot get along with the office staff, cannot meet internal deadlines and in general is difficult to work with? How about the highly competent professional who knows her craft but does not understand financial information? As you read this, managers all over the world are signing their people up for training of one sort or another hoping that the knowledge will stick and solve some of their daunting challenges. When employees or executives complete the chosen training there is usually some improvement but often it is back to business as usual and the productivity drain continues unabated. There is a better way to develop your knowledge workers.

A better approach for leaders trying to develop people is to approach organizational development and people development from an aware, conscious point of view.

Any organization can accomplish their goals whether it is to assume a global marketing position, retain key clients, introduce new services, or improve leadership by choosing awareness as a powerful business model.

Awareness, presence, or conscious intention is what we call the state that produces a balanced, productive, profitable life – both personal and professional.

It is learning to be present so that one may make intelligent productive choices that deliver the results the individual and organization need.

Like most elegant physics or mathematics theorems, conscious awareness is a simple and yet powerful concept that is comprised of several key assumptions:

1. Individuals need to understand their capacity

2. Organizational development depends on strong business and personal foundations of people in the organization

3. Book knowledge, experiential knowledge, self knowledge and mentoring are necessary to develop leaders

4. People development can begin at any age and be of benefit no matter where the person is on the leadership continuum when they begin

5. Focus must be on the present skills, circumstances and needs

By completing an assessment and taking a realistic look at strengths and weakness, the individual and supervisor can, with support and assistance from the management team, development their individual plan to strengthen their leadership. Custom design your leadership program, focus on the present and the leadership capacity in your organization will increase.

Everyone has strengths. It is important to acknowledge and build on those strengths. There are core competencies in what we call the business foundations that every leader must acquire. These core competencies include things such as Financial Management, Production, and Marketing. Without the business core competencies, it is difficult to succeed. Therefore, we assess the individual and working with the supervisor, determine which core competencies need to strengthen.

Often the individual leader possesses many of the business core competencies and the focus moves to personal foundations. Technical people have little exposure to personal foundations. Yet, 25 years of experience and detailed national studies by the author indicate that the stronger the personal foundation, the stronger the leader. Personal foundations include the ability to consciously approach problem solving, time management, communication, emotional intelligence and a host of other skills including the important component of leadership development, self understanding and mastery.

The methodology chosen to work with an individual must be custom to their needs and level of familiarity with the concepts presented. Because research and experience shows that leadership is best developed with a combination of book learning, experiential learning, self-knowledge and mentoring, all of these methods need to be combined in a successful leadership development program.

2. Life Business™ Tips

• I went to high school in Texas and all 500 people in my class are still in touch. Can you imagine the uproar when an expatriate living in Vienna started emailing the list, talking about politics in a way that didn’t appeal to folks – telling them how much better things are handled in Europe than the U.S.? In these stressful times, just a reminder – religion and politics are best not discussed in a group whose function is not political or religious. You will not change any opinions and the stress you will feel when attacked is not worth it. Just ask my former classmate in Vienna.
   

• When people give you vague instructions and then complain that you aren’t doing what they asked you to, ask them: “What exactly would you like me to do?” When they answer vaguely, “Take care of the problem” – ask them specifically, “What is the outcome you are looking for?” Do not let them be vague and do not relent until you get a clear answer. The biggest inept leadership game going is for a leader to ask for something (they don’t know what) and criticize you for not accomplishing it. Better yet, head it off at the pass and do not accept assignments when you do not understand CLEARLY, what you are to do. You will cut a lot of stress out of your life by practicing this whenever you can.
   

• When was the last time you were embarrassed publicly? You know when you went home or back to your office and replayed events repeatedly in your mind? Really, how bad is it to blow a presentation or make a fool of yourself by something said? One thing that helps is to tell yourself, “its over.” Staying in the present is powerful – doing what can be done and then letting it go. Easier said than done but in this day of instant and unrelenting media, we can all be thankful that we are not the Martha Stewarts, Karl Roves and others that are embarrassed publicly on a massive scale. Most of our transgressions pale in comparison and it is not worth the toll on our health to dwell on them.

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Editor@youngbloodconsulting.com

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