Tag Archives: leadership

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Exploring Integrity

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Integrity is defined as the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.

Morale principles are defined as the principles of right and wrong that are accepted by an individual or a social group.  The practice of honesty lies in a refusal to lie, steal, or deceive in any way.

Put it together, What does it mean?

Determining if someones behaviour is honest can be a relatively objective measure.   In most cases, an act of lying, stealing or deceiving  are agreed by consensus.

That is, a randomly selected group would most likely easily achieve consensus and agree that a lie, theft or deceit occurred.

However, that is  not necessarily the case relative to identification of the perpretrator of said action, which is why we have our court/trial system, to enable the fair judgement of guilt.

For moral behaviour it is a very objective judgement, that can be individual or group specific,  as to what constitutes moral behaviour. This makes determination of whether an action was moral very difficult.

How can I be sure to act with integrity?

While honesty can be determined with little debate, this is not the case when it comes to qualifying what constitutes moral behaviour. This can create a dilemma when you want to act with integrity.

The question arises, what does it mean to be moral?   I recently participated in a discussion with that question at it’s center.  Basically, “I want to do this action, but is it ethical?”

Unfortunately the determination of ethicality contained a large subjective component around the moral correctness, not the truthfulness.

In these cases, my own approach is to apply my personal philosophy for the way to live your life.  The action is okay and ethical as long as it gives me pleasure while not detracting from the pleasure of others.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Inspiration

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Simply put, inspiration is the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.  For me, inspiration hit  almost two years ago when I was inspired to write a blog.

I acted on that  inspiration (as regular readers know) and four or five time a week I post about a top of mind topic.  These are selected at random and derived from, well, anywhere and everywhere.

More specifically, anywhere and everywhere could be the result of discussions with friends, colleagues or acquaintances.  It could be from news or other communication sources like web or social media.  It be from dreams, hallucinations and so on.

And the posts continue

The results of inspiration are not always successful, and sometimes we choose not to act on our inspiration.  When the action derived from the inspiration does work a great feeling of accomplisment can result.

Some personal filtering is helpful to avoid acting every time inspiration hits you.  My own experience has been the best and most effective inspirations are not the ones I seek or urge onto myself but rather those that are simply organic in nature.

Desired Outcome – Personal Satisfaction

Ultimately when you act on an inspiration both the acting on what inspired you and the end results will be satisfying more often than not.  Occassionally it might make sense to ignore a sudden unbidden inspiration  but as a general rule acting on your inspirations will be a good thing.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Changing Approach

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Sometimes we get stuck on a path .  Our personal values and experiences drive our behaviours and changing course can be one of the most difficult tasks you will encounter.

A foundational trait of strong leaders is the practice of empathy.  This is not simply the ability to understand and share the feelings of others but in the context of leadership it is the ability to leverage that understanding.  To change approach accordingly.

Collaborating

Your own preconceived understanding of how to act is often very difficult to alter but doing so has a high likelyhood of leading to the best path to achieving a goal.

Recognizing the wants and needs of others, understanding how they are feeling and using your analysis of this information together with your own thoughts will most likely result in better outcomes.

My Way

Practicing empathy requires openness on your part.  That is receptivity to others ideas and ways of thinking.  Ultimately the key value to this approach is the ability to accept that your way is not neccessarily always the best.

Your Way

Acceptance that other better approaches exist is fundemental to creating a culture of openness.  The result will be higher group performance as the strengths and weaknesses of everyone are blended together.

It is an old saying, but carries a lot of wisdom, “the sum of the whole is far more powerful than each of the individual parts alone”.

 

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Adversarial Conduct

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Adversarial discussions are characterized by conflict or opposition and lurking  beneath the covers, probably some hostility.  Too often, these conversations stem from assumptions of intention.

It may start with some innocent questions for clarification.  The other stakeholder assumes you are against what they are trying to achieve and the adversarial dance begins.

Sadly!

A simple misinterpretation of intentions can derail a potential productive interaction which should have gold at the end of the rainbow.  Even clarifying intentions often won’t put it back on track.

Sadly this type of behavior occurs regularly in most organizations.  It is of course exacerbated by cultural bias, but it is not unusual to see the dance occur, regardless of culture.

To my amusement, often I observe  those who are actually in violent agreement (based on what they are saying) but appear to be just the opposite (i.e., violent disagreement).

Just Listen

The root cause of this type of adversarial discussions lies with  misunderstood intentions.  These stem from listening skills.  That is not just hearing the words but rather the message.

For me as I watch the head butting, or even when I am the object of head butting it never ceases to amaze how agreement is manipulated into disagreement.

Don’t Get Hooked

The way out of these situations is to ensure you are not “hooked” by the others.  That is often the intention of the other party.  They believe if they can just get the hook firmly embedded in your throat they can hall you in.

Unfortunately the result is usually dissatisfaction to all which is of course really unfortunate since the whole situation was actually on the brink of a great collaboration.

Ah, to behave like a human – we are just animals after all.

 

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

What would you Do?

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Yesterdays post was about two key measures used to identify leaders.  Intellectual skills and behaviour skills.  These two measures have been labled EQ and IQ.

In essence these measures are just predictors of how a person will behave.  That is, what would you do if…..?

How it works

For example if you saw an obnoxious drunk bother patrons in a public place you would:

  1. call security
  2. confront the drunk
  3. ignore the situation
  4. gather more data before deciding what to do
  5. leave

Persons with behaviour characteristics high in empathy or motivation would most likely take action 1 or 2.  Intellectually focused would take 4 or possibly 5 ( depending on the results of 4.  )

Those with average or low leadership tendencies probably go with the default.   Do nothing.

Many psychology experments have been conducted using tests to acertain IQ and EQ and then used scenarios to determine what the testee’s do.  In some cases rather than scenarios some of these studies used past behaviours.

Consistently, the behaviour you would expect intuitively based on the IQ and EQ measures  (  like the example above) was confirmed.

Think about it

A very powerful technique for improving your EQ  consists of walking yourself through significant scenarios you participated in over the last month and remembering how you behaved.

Were your objectives met.  Or if met was it efficient and pleasant?  What EQ characteristic behaviours could you have used for a better result.  Did others consider your actions kindly and effective?

Use the outcomes from these key experiences to drive improvement in the way you behave.  That is identifying what could be down better and what personal behaviours you need to change for that to become reality.

You can be a great leader, make it so.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Emotional Intelligence

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Today I got into a discussion with some colleagues about leadership behaviours.  The question arose what is more important for a leader, a high IQ (i.e., smart) or strong ability to interact with others (i.e., charismatic)

In his 1995 milestone book, American pyschologist Daniel Goleman proposed that while IQ probably represented the price of entry for great leaders(you needed at least some minimum IQ to succeed)  more important and a key determiner of success  was how you behaved.

He labled the measure of this ability to interract with others your emotional intelligence (EQ).  Goldman also developed a framework of five elements that can be measured to define your level of emotional intelligence.

An interesting side to this is the belief EQ can be developed and improved while many believe your IQ is what you were born with and cannot be developed.

Goldmans EI model has a great following in the by organizations around the world and has been adopted in various iterations by many companies.

Goldmans 5 Characteristics

Below are drastically  edited versions of Goldman’s 5 behavioural characteristics (for simplicity) taken from this website.  This just to give a flavour of what he considered behaviours that contributed to a high EQ..  For me, a high EQ equals a powerful and effective leader.

1) Self-Awareness – Self-aware people understand their emotions, and because of this, they don’t let their feelings rule them. They’re confident – because they trust their intuition and don’t let their emotions get out of control.  Many people believe that this self-awareness is the most important part of EI.

2) Self-Regulation – This is the ability to control emotions.  People who self-regulate typically don’t allow themselves to become too angry or jealous, and they don’t make impulsive, careless decisions.
3) Motivation – Motivated people are willing to defer immediate results for long-term success. They’re highly productive, love a challenge, and are very effective in whatever they do.
4) Empathy – This is the second-most important behaviour. Simply put, it is the ability to identify with and understand the wants, needs, and viewpoints of those around you.
5) Social Skills – Those with strong social skills are typically team players. Rather than focus on their own success first, they help others develop and shine.

Curious What Your EQ is?

There are numerous EQ test available on the internet that will provide you with an estimationof your EQ and an idea of areas you might to focus on to improve your EQ and so your leadership capability.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Am I as good as I think I am?

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Asking if you are as good as you think you are, is not necessarily questioning your level of self-confidence, rather it could be philosophical (what is good, who am I, etc) or it could be part of a continuous self  awareness check.

Switch it Around

Am I only as good as other people think I am?  Of course this begs the question “What do other people think of me?”  That question can be hard to answer truly objectively.

I have been fortunate enough to have past employers pay for a confidential survey of myself, colleagues, subordinates and supervisors, on several occasions.

This feedback is fabulous for capturing what you think of your own interpersonal behaviour skills and what others think.  It is anonymous, so theoretically the input should be objective.

The results could reinforce what you think (e.g., I work well with others and they agree) or could be the opposite (e.g., others don’t think I work well with them).

Of course this kind of deedback can go beyond whether you work well with others but can include how confident you are percieved to be, honesty, ability to motivate and so on.

If you can organize it, I strongly recommend these feedback tools as a great way to find out how what you think about yourself maps to what others think.

Could someone else do better?

When you move on from a situation, role or assignment it is always interesting to consider if your sucessor did better than you?  That is , am I so good there is no one better.

It is probably comforting to believe this may be true, but don’t forget the old saying “Anyone can be replaced”.  It might be truer than you think.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Behaviour and Motivation

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Everthing a person does can be classified as behaviour.   Simply put behaviour is the way in which one acts or conducts oneself.  It’s probably safe to assume there is some motivation for your behaviour.

Why do you behave the way you do?

However you act, most likely the ultimate motive is self serving.  Cynically speaking even a charitable behaviour could be motivated by a personal need to be viewed as a caring and thoughtful person.

However, while a persons actions are exclusively self controlled the motivation (and therefore the resulting behaviour) could be influenced or impacted by others.

For example when you exclaim “you made me mad” to someone , it is an acknowledgement of their influence on you. To be correct though, only you could choose to be mad, regardless of the level or force or influence the other might have exercised.

Typically though, the influence of others can be a key motivator to our behaviour at any given time.

Leaders and Behaviour Motivation

A key leadership skill is to be able to behave in a way that results in the actions of others leading to positive outcomes.

A critical skill leaders can use to influence others is through awareness of the impact their behaviour is having .  That is the leader needs to do a real time assessment of the impacts they are having and changing focus accordingly, if needed.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

What state are you in?

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Regardless of what you do every day (e.g., work for money, pleasure, charity, retired etc) you can classify how you feel about the surrounding culture/ environment into one or more of four categories.

Each category defines your behaviour and motivates your actions. These are:

  1. unsatisfying/ does not meet your needs
  2. a good match that inspires you
  3. not perfect for you but presents an opportunity to influence change
  4. not to your liking but you accept it

Recognizing your environmental category is an important skill (self awareness) .  It helps you conciously act on the unconcious behavior drivers associated with the culture you are emeshed in.

Self awareness is an empowering skill that allows you to ensure your behaviour is appropriate to the circumstances.  That is, control how you act separate from how you feel, to ensure positive outcomes.

Unsatisfying

Typically you would be motivated to leave this environment as soon as feasible.  This is not usually a happy place for you.  Don’t let your feelings drive bad (inappropriate ) behaviour.

Good Match

Embrace the environment.  That is, embrace how things are and thrive.  Should not be hard.  In this case, you are fully comfortable with the culture.

Not Perfect

There is a real opportunity here to create an environment you would consider a good match and it’s worth trying to do so.  Impact and influence behaviours are key.  Have fun with it.

Not to your liking

This situation is the hardest to take and can morph into deciding to leave.  Normally there is some real motivation to stay (e.g., need the money and cannot readily find a replacement).  Usually you feel trapped, unhappy and stressed.  This is a category you want to move away from as quickly as possible.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Getting Better All the Time

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One aspect of leadership I have not specifically posted about in the past is the continual strive for improvement.  Strong leaders continously pay attention to the results of their behaviour.

Like the optimistically titled song from the Beatles Sargent Pepper Lonley Hearts Club album, leaders need to make sure- “It’s getting better” all the time.

Why Bother?

Ongoing improvement starts with identification of opportunities to do so.  The key underpinning and base quality of an exceptional leader is acceptance that there is always a way to make things better.

Champion athletes are a shining example of this.  Winning first place, setting a record, beating the toughest opponent findable is only the start for star competitors.

For them another challenge, a peak to conquer, a record to break is their lifeblood.  As for great athletes, or great anything, continuosly striving for the best is a critical underlying attribute.

How is it done?

It all starts with awareness.  That is self awareness.  As a leader you need to be able to accurately assess the answer to the simple question, how am I doing?

Not just once in a while but continuously.  Improvment, striving to be the best, can never stop if you truly desire to achieve greatness.  This is not about being the best at any moment, but more uniquely being the best all the time.

Coupled with your ongoing assessment of how you are doing comes ongoing behaviour changes.  This changes cause the results of your leadership (i.e., the results of your behaviours) to be better than the last assessment.