What is Going to Make YOU the Next Great Leader? What Will Take YOU to the Next Level?

As the workplace dynamics and life situations are rapidly evolving, there are multiple opportunities to assume leadership roles.  Circumstances whether in your job or in your community or even in your family may require you to step up and lead.   For example, I have seen one of the biggest and most consequential leadership roles that I have had to undertake was addressing the needs of my aging parents.  In our communities, we often see that individuals are standing up to fight for what they believe in or to seek justice.  In the workplace, organizations are moving more aggressively toward team management and project-based operations.  These settings have made it even more imperative that organizations invest in growing leaders that can step into management roles to execute their organizational.

So, what do the experts say makes a great leader?

•  Great leaders get straight “A’s” on their leadership test.  They exemplify authenticity, accountability, adaptability and appreciation.

• Great leaders cast a compelling vision about where they want to go and they have faith in their beliefs - they create lasting solutions to problems not just band aide fixes and they create a thriving organizational culture.

• Great leaders stay positive, exhibit confidence and have a sense of humor - they are clear about their goals and decisive in their decisions - they lead with courage, passion and humility.

• Great leaders handle controversial issues or crisis calmly and confidently - they embrace failures and manage setbacks while taking responsibility for their actions - they learn from their mistakes and make the hard choices when they have to.

• Great leaders embrace change and lead by example - they communicate effectively and are transparent in their actions.

These are what I call the brass ring objectives.  These tend to be the buzz words of leadership development.  These are the things that we often shoot for to become better leaders.  While these are all good intentions and yes great qualities to have as a leader, they tend to be taught as the flavor of the month but, in reality, nobody embodies all of these leadership qualities. While a finely tuned racecar looks great and will perform competitively on the racetrack it won’t be a winner when you need to bring the groceries home from the store; your SUV will do a better job at that.

So how are you going to become the next great leader?  What will get you prepared to step into a leadership role, willingly or unwillingly, and have the best chance to succeed?

We all take on leadership roles in very different ways.  Depending on our talents and strengths as well as knowing our limitations we all approach the responsibilities of leading in very different ways.  Through Gallup’s research, it was determined that the most effective leaders are always investing in strengths.  Without an awareness of your strengths, it is almost impossible for you to lead effectively.

“We believe that when the right talent meets the right opportunity in a company with the right philosophy, amazing transformation can happen.”  -- Reid Hoffman

In order to be an effective leader, you need to take stock of your personal characteristics and skill sets and assess your strengths and weaknesses.  Further education in leadership and management coupled with continued professional development of your skills are key.   In this age of digital enlightenment and rapidly evolving workplaces, the definition of effective leadership is constantly changing and to keep up, leaders need to continuously ask questions of themselves.

In the popular TV show, Game of Thrones – Peter Dinklage plays Tyrion Lannister a dwarf living in this fictional world where physical strength and the ability to engage in warfare are rewarded.  When asked why he reads so many books, his answer is to improve his already strong mind.  Knowing that because of his physical limitations, that he would never excel as a warrior, his best chance to lead and succeed was through his intellectual abilities.  He knew his strength was his intelligence and that by enhancing his strongest asset he could not only survive in a chaotic world but he would excel as a leader.

Knowing your strongest assets are your best chance to be a successful leader.  Understanding not only your strengths but those of your team and bringing those talents to bear in your leadership endeavors is your best path to being a great leader.  Knowing your strengths and those of your team is like having a blueprint of why you are or why your team members are the way that they are is like having a manual on how to make yourself or your team members function at optimal efficiency.

In my previous articles, I have been talking about knowing your strengths is understanding your “YUR”.  Why you tackle certain challenges the way you do; why you react the way you do; why you lead the way you do are all encompassed in how you use your strengths.  For example, if one of your strengths is communication you will lead best if you use this talent to influence others.  Empathizing easily with others will take you a long way in your leadership responsibilities by helping to build strong relationships.  Having strong analytical skills, will help you devise effective strategies while leading a team and if you are a person possessing an acute ability to focus then you will use this strength to lead your team in successfully executing their projects.

“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself.  When you become a leader, success is about growing others.”  – Jack Welch

As a person that has “Maximizer” as my top talent theme according to the Gallup StrenghtsFinder assessment, I understand that great leaders know that people are key to your success.  One of the keys to being a great leader, in my opinion, is being able to instill power within others.  Lifting others up, inspiring them to grow and bringing out the best in people is the best way to create more leaders.  A true leader is able to inspire their team to encourage them to go beyond excellence and accomplish far more than anyone expects them to – or they expect of themselves.  Great leaders earn their team’s respect.  They do this by getting to know their team by listening, providing productive feedback and they encourage cooperation over competition.

“You cannot have faith in people unless you take action to improve and develop them.”  -- Sumantra Ghoshal

The other side of the leadership equation is encompassed in why followers follow.  In the book written by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie, Strengths Based Leadership, Rath and Conchie outline how you can effectively lead using your unique strengths.  I highly recommend reading this book and with it you will get a code that will allow you to take Gallup’s StrengthsFinder Assessment.

If you are ready to find out what shapes your ability to be an effective leader and you are ready to maximize your “YUR” by discovering your talents, declaring your strengths and developing them into dynamic tools that will make you the next great leader V1H Consulting will help you to evolve your “YUR”.

“What great leaders have in common is that each truly knows his or her strengths – and can call on the right at the right time.”  --Tom Rath

“How You Do Anything is How You Do Everything”

A Strengths Based Approach

Martha Beck is credited with coining the quote, “How you do anything is how you do everything”.  This quotation has been widely used in a variety of training seminars, motivational talks and many books and periodicals.  It would suggest that how you manage most situations, challenges or other experiences in your life is probably a good indication of how you handle almost all of the occurrences in your life.  When I first heard this quote in a leadership seminar a few years ago, I wasn’t quite sure if this was really true and, if it was, how I would process this information.  Typically, statements that include words like anything or everything are usually very broad expressions and, quite frankly, I interpret them with guarded reservations.  For example, when I looked at the relationships that I have had in my life, or some of the actions that I have taken, I didn’t necessarily see a correlation to that statement.  My relationships varied widely and because I may procrastinate on doing yard work that didn’t necessarily mean that I procrastinated in doing other things, especially things that I enjoyed doing.  Also, while my desk may get a little messy, my car stays clean.  And, I certainly would not want to compare how I play basketball or sing, for example, with how I do other things in my life.  So, while I did see some things that fit in this model, my personal experiences didn’t seem to fit this doctrine consistently enough to solidify it in my consciousness.

Do you ever wonder why you make certain choices?  Why you do what you do?  Why you like certain things?  In my last article, titled “YUR” which talked about how your talents and strengths determine why you do what you do, leads to the connection between strengths and the do everything scenario. Under the concept of “YUR” I have suggested that the core of why you do what you do is driven by using your strengths.   As I viewed the do everything statement through the strengths lens, I could see a more definitive pattern that gave credence to this premise.  As I developed the “YUR” concept, as it relates to StrengthsFinder, I began to see a pattern that provided more credibility to the notion that “how you do anything is how you do everything”.  By looking at this quote in this new context, I saw it’s meaning in an entirely new perspective.

There are obviously some things we don’t do well.  Strengths psychology pioneer Dr. Donald O. Clifton asked the question, “What will happen when we think about what is right with people instead of fixating on what is wrong?” This philosophy dictates that it is better to focus on the things that we do well.  Why are we better at some things than others?  There is a reason:  It’s our talents.  Our talents help us to understand why you are the way you are – ergo, your “YUR”.  Knowing your talents helps us to understand how we naturally think and feel and they can shed light into our behaviors. Talents are aptitudes, personality traits and interpersonal characteristics like empathy, strategic thinking and assertiveness.  These are things that you are born with.  Infused with knowledge and the development of skills, these talents will become our strengths.  These are enduring qualities in each of us because they are basically hardwired in our brains. In short, they affect our ability to reach our goals and desired outcomes.  So, when you are using your talents and working in your strengths you can feel confident that when you do anything that you will find consistency in how you do everything and you can achieve the results that you desire when you know your talents and use your strengths to succeed.

When we look at others, such as, mentors, role models, leaders, etc. we look to them for inspiration and guidance but we also look to them to see if they do anything/everything consistently.  Those that we admire for their accomplishments and are at the top of their game in what they do are using their strengths at the highest levels.  Whether they are athletes, entertainers or in leadership positions they have discovered their talents and honed them to gain the maximum affect.  It is their dedication, tenacity and work ethic that are driven and supported by their strengths.  They repeat what has been working for them while enhancing their skills to improve outcomes.  For example, a basketball player uses his or her skills as a 3-point shooter to have maximum impact on the game, entertainers use their talents to regale their audiences and leaders use their strengths to influence others to initiate change.

Therefore, I have determined that this notion of how you do anything is how you do everything can be a good thing.  If you harness your talents and nurture them and ultimately make them your strengths, you too can use them to achieve your desired results. I encourage you commit to growing your strengths and use them to do everything.  When you master the art of unlocking your strengths and step into the version of yourself that uses your strengths to do anything, then you will find that how you do everything will result in more positive results.

Management expert, Peter Drucker says, “everyone ought to know what their strengths are’.  How you do anything is how you do everything when guided by your strengths creates patterns of success. Your strengths are your means of making positive contributions in the world. Your strengths are your inborn, hard-wired resources for good works. If you’re not making the most of your strengths, everyone's missing out. Start maximizing your strengths.

Discover, Declare and Develop your Strengths:

“If you are not focusing on your strengths then what are you focusing on?”

Because there’s a 1 in 33 million chance of you having the same top 5 talents in the same order as someone else, YOU are unique.  Be inspired to live in your strengths zone. Join us in the world of strengths. Focus on Your Strengths.

If you have any questions about anything that you have read in this article, or you’d like to talk to us about helping your team to understand the power of Strengths then connect with us today to see if we might be a good fit to help your team or organization build a Strengths Based culture.

Larry Hammond, Sr.

Start your Strengths Journey with our Basic Introduction Course

Unlock Your Strengths for Success, A Basic Introduction.

$97.00

Uncovering your Strengths…A Journey of Discovery

Ivanhoe Donaldson – “Hard but Fair”- Finding My Strengths through a Mentor

In my varying leadership roles over the years, I have worked to develop staff, managers and professionals to perform their best in their respective roles.  I have employed many techniques to extract the highest performance achievable in the administration of projects and programs.   Now, as a strengths consultant, I engage my clients in helping leaders to breakthrough performance barriers that have been holding them back from achieving optimal success.

While on my journey exploring the virtues of using strengths to bring out the best in yourself and others, I became drawn to how other people have helped me over the years to become the person that I am today.  Just recently, I heard that one of my mentors had passed away.  His name was Ivanhoe Donaldson, a civil rights activist and an astute political tactician who became a confidant of Marion Barry, the former Mayor of Washington, D.C.  In his early years, Ivanhoe assisted in voter-registration in the South where he became a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).  He worked with SNCC for a number of years as director of their New York office where he had an enduring association with Marion Barry who was the national chairman for SNCC.  He went on to manage Barry’s successful campaigns for the D.C. City Council and then later his upset victory to become mayor of the District of Columbia.  During Barry’s term as mayor, Ivanhoe was described as a combative but effective troubleshooter for the mayor where he served as Director of the Department of Employment Services and Deputy Mayor for Economic Development.

It was at the Department of Employment Services where I first met Ivanhoe.  I was just out of college and had begun my public service career with the Mayor’s Summer Youth Employment Program.  The summer youth program was the mayor’s signature project.  He had run his campaign on promising all young people in the city between the ages of 14 and 21 a summer job if they wanted to work.  This, to say the least, was a daunting task.  Registering, hiring, placing and paying over 30,000 youth for summer jobs proved to be too much for the system and the first year of this ambitious endeavor was dubbed a failure.  Kids got lost in the system, job placements were inadequate and, worst of all, many of the young people didn’t get paid on time or at all.  The mayor took full responsibility for the flop and insisted that the breakdown was due to his overzealous plan that overloaded the system.  While, not backing down on his promise to give all youth the opportunity to work, the mayor promised to dedicate the proper resources and leadership needed to fix the problems.  To do this, the mayor hired a new staff and called in Ivanhoe to oversee the program who was charged with ensuring its success.

I remember sitting in a room with newly hired staff waiting to meet the new director.  While I had heard of him, I had never seen of met him before.  When he came into the room, I remember him being much smaller than I had imagined.  He was very animated and moved around a lot.  He seemed a little nervous.  He was introduced to the team, an eclectic group of movers and shakers, who were fired up to get started.   Being from Bronx, Ivanhoe brought is distinctive New York accent to his persona.  He challenged the group to do their best and to be their best while noting the challenges that were before us.  He said that we needed to keep up with him and not to fall behind.  He said that, “I’m hard but I’m fair”.  This phrase stuck with me because I wasn’t quite sure what that meant.

After the meeting, the team members began to talk about our new boss and those that knew him began to add flavor to the hard but fair representation – “he’s kind of crazy you know” – “I’ve seen him make grown men cry” – “he will chop you off at the knees and won’t think anything of it”.  Well, I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect but I knew it would be an interesting ride.

The summer youth team had a standing meeting with Ivanhoe at 5:30 every day.  We would often wait in his conference room sometimes for up to an hour for him to arrive.  His mood would change depending on how his day had been going.  At these meetings, we had to give updated on the status of program operations.  In one of our first meetings, when he walked in he noticed that on of the participants had their chair pushed back a little too far and his head was touching one of the paintings on the wall.  Ivanhoe paused and glared over at the individual and in a stern tone said, “who in the hell do you think that you are?”  He went on to explain that the picture belonged to the tax payers of the city and that the staffer was defacing their property.  The meetings would often go on for several hours into the night including tense encounters especially when either information or substance from staff was deficient.  Ivanhoe did run a tight ship.  I admired his commitment and his tenacious spirit.  And yes, I did actually see him make a grown man cry in a meeting.  But all in all, he believed in us.  He believed that we could actually pull this off and make the program successful.

One evening, I was bringing some information to his office suite.  As I was about to leave, Ivanhoe called me into his office and told me to sit down.  He asked me how things were going and wanted to know what I thought we should do.  He told me that he saw me as up and coming and that he expected much me.  During this encounter he repeated to me that he “was hard but fair” and told me to never be afraid of that.  He seemed to know how others perceived him.

As time passed, tensions grew as the onset of summer was imminent.   Deadlines were nearing and in all big projects, some aspects program were going awry.  In one specific incident, in the Spring, Ivanhoe became dissatisfied with the contractor that was working on the payroll process for the youth.  In a surprising move, he abruptly fired the contractor and said that we would process the payroll in-house.  Needless to say, this was going to be a most daunting task.  Knowing that I had an affinity for computers and that I had an integral knowledge of the overall operations of the program, Ivanhoe directed me to work with the IT staff to design the payroll process.

Over the next 2 months, staff worked 24/7 to accomplish the task at hand.  It was during a very contentious status meeting were it looked like that we were not going to meet our deadline.  Of course this would have been a total disaster and was unacceptable.  Failure was not an option.  To my surprise, Ivanhoe pulled me aside after the meeting where he actually grabbed me by my shirt collar, held me against the wall and said “Larry, you can do this – I need you to make these IT people see this through.  Let me know what you need.  I am depending on you.”  Well, I was shocked.  First of all, I was probably the least senior member in the room that day and I wasn’t sure what I could do the influence the others on the team.

This experience challenged me to find my strengths.  Now that I have taken the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment I know what my strengths themes are today.  Upon reflection, I can see how I relied on these combination of talents to navigate this test.  I can see that early in my career these talents were manifested in my actions.  My top 5 strengths are: Maximizer, Arranger, Strategic, Analytical and Responsibility.  In this situation, I used each of my strengths to help the team make the summer program a success.  With many moving parts, I grew my talents and pushed my abilities in the realms of arranger and strategic.  I sharpened my skills in the ranges of maximizer and analytical.  And, I became grounded in scope of responsibility as I realized the magnitude of what we were trying to accomplish.

Yes, I grew considerably that year.  I was pushed by a mentor that I didn’t even know that I needed.  Ivanhoe Donaldson saw something in me that I didn’t know that I had – he saw my strengths before I saw my own.  I am eternally grateful to my mentor for spurring my growth and seeding my accomplishments.  But I am most thankful to him for helping me to find my strengths – It was “hard but fair”. 

If you want to reach your personal and leadership potential, then it requires maximizing your strengths.  This only happens if you develop and focus on the areas you are most talented and strong. Take a step back and assess your own strengths.  Understanding what influences you and how you make decisions.  It takes being disciplined and being intentional if you want to become the best in your strengths.  People often miss this opportunity because they never discovered their strengths or they spend more time focusing on and sharpening their weaknesses – they try to be well rounded and master many things and they lose sight of their passions and their dreams.  They fear risk and stay in their comfort zone while never moving past their successes or failures.  If you desire to begin maximizing your strengths and celebrating your gifts and talents, then begin by focusing on what you do well, your strengths and contributions.

Building on and developing strengths is a lifelong process.  It takes focus and tenacity to “Discover, Declare and Develop” your strengths, which is a tenant of the StrengthsFinder® movement.  Employing a strengths-based approach to fully engaging your strengths is the best way to create high performing teams and organizations of excellence.        Larry Hammond, Principal –V1H Consulting

To learn more about Larry Hammond, V1H Consulting or how to build on your or your team’s strengths visit us at: www.v1hconsulting.com

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