Leadership Forum

Do You Wish To Lead the World or Just the Amereican People?

2008-02-20T22:20:00.001+01:00

Do You Wish to Lead the World or Just the American People?
By: Michael D. Ringrose

When we think about Leaders, we generally tend to think about those who grace or occupy the world stage. Historically, Lincoln, Washington, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Churchill, Stalin, Nelson Mandela come to mind but there are many. Some political, some religious, some social, some in the world of sports and in the world of literature, music and art.

There are those who present themselves to the public to be chosen to lead. At present, we have, perhaps the world's best example of that process being acted out on the American Stage. America is presented with choice of future President. Will it be Hillary Clnton, JohnMcCain, Barak Obhama or Mike Huckabee who will be the benificiary of their preferences. It is an enormously onerous duty and responsibility they bear in making this choice because, of course, it effects not only the United States but it will also impact significantly on the rest of the world.

The "rest of the world", does not have a vote in the process. One might ask, if the person selected for the position of President of the United States, will be cast in the role of Leader of the Free World, then perhaps consideration ought to be given, at some future date, to allow those countries outside of the United States, who will, or maybe, affected by the result of the election, some way of exercising or expressing their preferences in the choice of President.

Of course, one can anticipate the contrary arguement. Why should countries or persons outside the jurisdiction of the United States or any other sovereign state, have the right to exerise a vote in internal elections? In perhaps all other countries, the Prime Ministers or Presidents do not normally purport to have a right to dictate how other countries behave. Such has been the position with the U S, and I hastely add, often at the behest of countries in Europe and elsewhere. Many countries have, in time of war or econimic crisis, requested or imposed on the US to come to the rescue.

Whatever the reasons, we are faced with a defacto recognition of its perceived status. In those circumstances, what are the characteristics now being sought in the candidates? What are the attributes that shape and inform those candidates? Leaving aside the fact that each and all of them will play to the particular audiences they meet in their thousands as they plead for support, what are the real values that drive and sustain them as persons? Where and how do they display their courage and how is it measured? How is their commitment to honesty portrayed? Outside of claiming to the omniscient in all things political, how do they demonstrate their capacity to be truly understanding of the human condition and offer wise counsel in dealing with complex situations.

Leaving aside the wonderful rhetoric and lyricism of the speechwriters, where is the demonstration and evidence of capacity to deal only with truth?

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Leadership Seeking Direction

2007-06-03T01:51:00.000+02:00

So you want to be a leader. What is stopping you?. What is it about leadership that attracts you. Are you influenced by the public profiles of those who grace the world stage, in the fields of politics, economics, religion? Are you more attracted by those who prove their physical prowess? Famous athletes, of one kind or another? Runners, boxers, basket-ball champions, baseball heroes, tennis champions, auto racing drivers? Are they leaders?
Often, it seems the title is loosely attached to individuals who are identified as the best in their particular field. Sometimes, those individuals are not capable of offering leadership to others. They are "loners", consumed in the pursuit of their own ambition. Sometimes picked and selected to posts requiring demonstrable leadership skills, experience and qualifications solely on the basis that they possess public profiles as being on top of their particular league. Delving deeper into their attributes and one may find a dearth of the necessary ingredients that enable and encourage others to follow.
So what is it that makes a difference? What is it that makes a leader? Are leaders born? Can they be shaped, crafted, formed and honed? Does this formation need to be external? Can one make oneself a leader or develop the necessary skills to allow one to grow into leadership. Is the drive to become a leader influenced by intrinsically good values, service of others, community, nation or is it driven by the desire or need to dominate, control, coerce?
Can we learn from the profiles and characteristics of world leaders? To what extent is the profile we see and hear on TV and radio, a managed, artificial product, occasionally fractured with glimpses of the human being behind the public face? World leaders include Ghandi, Hitler, Tito, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Clinton, Lincoln, Putin, Bush, Senator Mitchell, Jesus Christ, and a disparate selection of people who are described as either terrorist or hero and patriot, depending on what side of the value system one is viewing from.
So where is the compass that guides your journey to becoming a leader? Reflecting on the question adds its own value to the question. What guides us as individuals essentially are the values that we hold most precious in our lives. They vary from person to person and from community to community and are absorbed at various levels, as we progress on our development from children to adulthood. Some of those values are held in highest esteem when we are young, immature and have not sufficient understanding and maturity to take personal ownership of them. Others become more internalised as we grow through life and the choices we make assist in enshrining certain values deep into our personas. Whether that is due to conditioning or conscious selection is dependant on the opportunities we met or were deprived of along the way to develop a personal critical capacity that enables a distancing from our subjective judgements.
Opportunity and choice are part of the equasion that need to be factored in, coupled with the inate sense of importance one attaches to our value system. Do we wish to share it or coerce others to absorbe it? Is leadership imposed on us or do we subconsciously need to be lead? If we desire to be leaders, is that pushed by choice or obligation to others? Is it service or is it power?
Simfir
Additional Resources
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CEO Succession

2007-03-29T15:18:00.000+02:00

In 2006, Hay Group surveyed executives at more than 150 companies around the world about CEO succession. To avoid a succession crisis in case of an unplanned CEO or other top executive situation, boards of companies in the most admired group:

Are more likely than their peers to plan long term for CEO succession.
Have a stronger preference for internal candidates.
Are more likely to receive regular updates on potential candidates for potential top leadership positions.
Are more frequently given information and metrics related to human capital management.

(Source: Business Week, Eur ed., March 26, 2007, no. 5)

CEO Counseling

2005-09-09T17:05:00.000+02:00

If you are a management consultant or if you are currently working with one, the article from David A. Nadler in this month´s Harvard Business Review is a brilliant read. It is not very often that you see this kind of best practices being shared in the open.

But then Mr. Nadler is Chairman and CEO of Mercer Delta Consulting, and has over 25 years of high-level management consultancy experience, so he has plenty to share. And that is showing. His article is truly packed with gold nuggets.

Nadler differentiates between 6 dilemma's in 2 groups that makes CEO counseling so hard, but also so interesting to do:
A. Organizational and Political:

The Loyalty Dilemma. Is the advisor ultimately responsible to the CEO who hired him or to the company that pays the fees?
The Communication Dilemma. How much and what kind of information should the management consultant convey between employees and the CEO?
The Assessment Dilemma. Should the CEO counselor share his opinions about individual employees?

B. Relationships and Emotional Maturity of the Advisor:

The Overidentification Dilemma. The advisor must ensure he immerses himself in the view of his client, without making it his own.
The Ego Dilemma. An advisor should avoid to be known or perceived as the man behind the curtain, although this may be tempting sometimes.
The Friendship Dilemma. Can and should a management consultant become friends with her client?

One example of a nugget that keeps going through my mind is the remark: "My job is helping my client see the entire puzzle, not rushing upstairs every time I discover a stray piece".

I found it interesting the author refers to all of these complexities as "Dilemma's". I believe actually "Paradoxes" would be the better terminology. If you face a dilemma, you have to choose out of two opposite options. When you are dealing with a paradox, you must try to reconcile two seemingly contradicting options.

Anyway, I highly recommend to read the entire article to any management consultant, whether you are advising CEO's or haven't quite made it (yet) to this level ;-).

Are you a Manager or a Leader? Seven ways of leading

2005-04-09T17:28:00.000+02:00

I guess most of us would agree that being a good manager or being a good leader are two different things (although you see the terms mixed up in many books and articles).
In the Harvard Business Review of April, consultant David Rooke and professor William Torbert distinguish a spectrum of no less then seven ways of leading / managing, ranging from not the not very effective opportunist style to the superb "alchemist" style of leading:

Opportunist - Wins any way possible: Good in managing emergencies and sales.
Diplomat - Avoids overt conflict: Good in bringing people together.
Expert - Rules by logic and expertise: Good as individual contributor.
Achiever - Meets strategic goals: Good in managerial roles, action and goal oriented.
Individualist - Interweaves competing personal and company actions logics: Good in venture and consulting roles.
Strategist - Generates organizational and personal transformations: Good transformational leaders.
Alchemist - Generates social transformations: Good at leading society-wide transformations.

Your type of leading is determined according to Rooke and Torbert by your action logic (=ways in which you interpret your surroundings and react when your power or safety is challenged).

Most interestingly, it is possible to change from one type / stage of leading in the spectrum to the next stage. External events (promotion, organizational change) can cause a transformation from one stage to another, but it can also be done actively by recognizing the style you currently are exhibiting and actively wanting to change it.

For example moving from expert to achiever can be done by following an MBA program, which are apt to encourage the development of the more pragmatic Achievers by frustrating the perfectionist Experts. The heavy workloads, use of multidisciplinary and ambiguous case studies, and teamwork requirements all promote the development of Achievers. By contrast, MSc programs, in particular disciplines such as finance or marketing research, tend to reinforce the Expert perspective.

The article in the HBR contains more information about how you can go from one specific stage to the next. There exists also a book by the authors called: Action Inquiry: The secret of Timely and transforming Leadership (Berret-Koehler, 2004). If you have read the book, it would be nice if you add a review in the Comments.

No more heroes?

2005-03-26T11:45:00.000+01:00

A Dutch newspaper writes that the times of the almighty and heroic CEOs are over. After the many accounting scandals and failed acquisitions much more attention is being given to the optimal length a CEO must stay 'in charge'.
One experience that's clearly evolved in the mean time is that the longer a CEO rules, the bigger the chance becomes he makes mistakes.
What are typical warning signs that the Chief Executive Officer is loosing it? Here's the top-10 list.

Attends society events too often
Talks a lot in public about higher purposes in life
Is not happy with his rewards and keeps complaining about it
Continuously replaces senior executives
Accepts many side responsibilities
Changes his wife for a younger girlfriend
Is longing for a grand finale, such as a major acquisition
Refuses to make succession plans
Continuously wants to be in the spotlights
Surrounds himself with mediocre yes-men.

Multiple and combined occurrences of these 10 are particularly worrisome and you are well advised to sell your stocks as soon as possible.

What do you think, is this a typical Dutch story (never like people who stand out anyway) or is the heroic CEO coming to a global end? Drop a comment!

Three Factors of Leadership Motivation

2005-03-21T21:29:00.000+01:00

Here is an article published by Brent Filson. He is the author of more than 20 business and leadership books and the founder of The Filson Leadership Group. Enjoy the reading...

Leaders do nothing more important than get results. But you can't get results by yourself. You need others to help you do it. And the best way to have other people get results is not by ordering them but motivating them. Yet many leaders fail to motivate people to achieve results because those leaders misconstrue the concept and applications of motivation. To understand motivation and apply it daily, let's understand its three critical factors. Know these factors and put them into action to greatly enhance your abilities to lead for results.

1. Motivation is physical action.
"Motivation" has common roots with "motor," "momentum," "motion," "mobile," etc. .. all words that denote movement, physical action. An essential feature of motivation is physical action. Motivation isn't about what people think or feel but what they physically do. When motivating people to get results, challenge them to take those actions that will realize those results.
I counsel leaders who must motivate individuals and teams to get results not to deliver presentations but "leadership talks." Presentations communicate information.. But when you want to motivate people, you must do more than simply communicate information. You must have them believe in you and take action to follow you. A key outcome of every leadership talk must be physical action, physical action that leads to results.

For instance, I worked with the newly-appointed director of a large marketing department who wanted the department to achieve sizable increases in the results. However, the employees were a demoralized bunch who had been clocking tons of overtime under her predecessor and were feeling angry that their efforts were not being recognized by senior management.

She could have tried to order them to get the increased results. Many leaders do that. But order-leadership founders in today's highly competitive, rapidly changing markets. Organizations are far more competitive when their employees instead of being ordered to go from point A to point B want to go from point A to point B. So I suggested that she take a first step in getting the employees to increase results by motivating those employees to want to increase results. They would "want to" when they began to believe in her leadership. And the first step in enlisting that belief was for her to give a number of leadership talks to the employees.

One of her first talks that she planned was to the department employees in the company's auditorium. She told me, "I want them to know that I appreciate the work they are doing and that I believe that they can get the results I'm asking of them. I want them to feel good about themselves."

"Believing is not enough," I said. "Feeling good is not enough. Motivation must take place. Physical action must take place. Don't give the talk until you know what precise action you are going to have happen."

She got the idea of having the CEO come into the room after the talk, shake each employee's hand, and tell each how much he appreciated their hard work — physical action. She didn't stop there. After the CEO left, she challenged each employee to write down on a piece of paper three specific things that they needed from her to help them get the increases in results and then hand those pieces of paper to her personally — physical action.

Mind you, that leadership talk wasn't magic dust sprinkled on the employees to instantly motivate them. (To turn the department around so that it began achieving sizable increases in results, she had to give many leadership talks in the weeks and months ahead.) But it was a beginning. Most importantly, it was the right beginning.

2. Motivation is driven by emotion.
Emotion and motion come from the same Latin root meaning "to move". When you want to move people to take action, engage their emotions. An act of motivation is an act of emotion. In any strategic management endeavor, you must make sure that the people have a strong emotional commitment to realizing it.

When I explained this to the chief marketing officer of a worldwide services company, he said, "Now I know why we're not growing! We senior leaders developed our marketing strategy in a bunker! He showed me his "strategy" document. It was some 40 pages long, single-spaced. The points it made were logical, consistent, and comprehensive. It made perfect sense. That was the trouble. It made perfect, intellectual sense to the senior leaders. But it did not make experiential sense to middle management who had to carry it out. They had about as much in-put into the strategy as the window washers at corporate headquarters. So they sabotaged it in many innovative ways. Only when the middle managers were motivated — were emotionally committed to carrying out the strategy — did that strategy have a real chance to succeed.

3. Motivation is not what we do to others.
It is what others do to themselves. The English language does not accurately depict the psychological truth of motivation. The truth is that we cannot motivate anybody to do anything. The people we want to motivate can only motivate themselves. The motivator and the motivatee are always the same person. We as leaders communicate, they motivate. So our "motivating" others to get results really entails our creating an environment in which they motivate themselves to get those results.

For example: a commercial division leader almost faced a mutiny on his staff when in a planning session, he put next year's goals, numbers much higher than the previous year's, on the overhead. The staff all but had to be scrapped off the ceiling after they went ballistic. "We busted our tails to get these numbers last year. Now you want us to get much higher numbers? No way!" He told me. "We can hit those numbers. I just have to get people motivated!"

I gave him my "motivator-and-motivatee-are-the-same-person!" pitch. I suggested that he create an environment in which they could motivate themselves. So he had them assess what activities got results and what didn't. They discovered that they spent more than 60 percent of their time on work that had nothing to do with getting results. He then had them develop a plan to eliminate the unnecessary work. Put in charge of their own destiny, they got motivated! They developed a great plan and started to get great results.

Over the long run, your career success does not depend on what schools you went to and what degrees you have. That success depends instead on your ability to motivate individuals and teams to get results. Motivation is like a hig voltage cable lying at your feet. Use it the wrong way, and you'll get a serious shock. But apply motivation the right way by understanding and using the three factors, plug the cable in, as it were, and it will serve you well in many powerful ways throughout your career.

Should Wolfowitz become leader of World Bank?

2005-03-17T10:14:00.000+01:00

The United States has nominated Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to be the next president of the World Bank.
The current president, James Wolfensohn, is due to leave the development body on 1 June, as his second five-year term comes to an end.
The bank traditionally has had a US chief while its sister body, the International Monetary Fund, is usually headed by a European.
But Mr Wolfowitz is a controversial choice, with a reputation as a leading hawk and a leading architect of US policy in Iraq.

Some of the most intesting comments on Wolfowitz' nomination are:

Perhaps now the World Bank will be controlled to direct aid towards the vested interests of Bush & Co. Will we see large amounts of WB aid for the development of Iraq (i.e. the US multinationals profiting from the war and paying kickbacks to Bush)?
Vivek, Corvallis, US
Coupled with Under-Secretary of State John Bolton's recent appointment as UN Ambassador, the nomination of Paul Wolfowitz as the next president of the World Bank represents the latest assault by the Bush administration on the efficacy of the core institutions of the international system. As an American citizen I am appalled by the Bush administration's blatant contempt for international law and disregard for the sanctity of human life.
Emile Durette, Oakland, CA, USA
At the World Bank, it makes no difference whether Jesus or Mahatma Gandhi were the president for nothing would change. I think President's Bush selection of Paul Wolfowitz is the worst we could have hoped for. It is most infertile and repugnant as it can ever be.
John Sagala, Flagstaff, AZ, USA
A horrible choice, but typical. I hope the Europeans can block this bit of stupidity.
JC, USA
The right man, the right time, at the right job. God bless this man.
Donald Boone, Ahoskie, USA
The nomination of Paul Wolfowitz to a position which has global power and influence seems to be another attempt of the United States to extend its power to rubber stamp any move it makes.
Hans Lukiman, Melbourne
He will lead it for the USA's interest as they all do.
Al, Essex
Please, Europeans, stop the Bush machine and veto this misguided choice. We need to turn the tide on the hawks in power in the US, who are spreading their tunnel vision to the rest of the world.
Ellen, Mill Valley, USA
Wolfowitz is a bad choice. The World Bank needs the obvious - a respected international banker - not a narrow minded ideologue who will manipulate the World Bank's capital to promote a neo-con political agenda. He will bring to the World Bank the same sort of myopic world vision that has created the Iraq war disaster.
Jim A, Phoenix, USA

More comments on Wolfowitz nomination.

Changing Course not a bad Sign of Leadership?

2005-02-15T19:10:00.000+01:00

In a list of possible breakthrough ideas for 2005 in the Harvard Business Review, the number 1 spot is taken by "Flipping without Flopping".
In the 2004 US presedential campaign "flip-flop" was a dirty word. Particularly in times of crisis or opportunity, we expect our leaders to take swift, sure action and then remain steadfast.
According to Professor Kramer, great leaders understand that changing course is sometimes the best thing to do. And changing one's mind does not signal an inability to lead, but rather an ability to learn.
I would argue though that knowing and showing the right direction for the organization is one of the elements that distinguish a true leader from managers. Any human is allowed to make an erroneous judgement now and then, but being wrong about the strategy or course the organization should take is a mistake a true leader will never make.

Criteria to become CEO

2005-01-06T13:28:00.000+01:00

An article worth reading if you're almost there in becoming CEO is the one by Dan Ciampia (advisor on leadership transitions) in the HBR of Jan 05. In the article, Ciampa shares some of his rich experience and knowledge about how you can distinguished good CEO candidates from the ones that actually make it.

According to Ciampa the three most important criteria to become CEO are:

Management savvy (a. avoid jumping in personally to solve problems others can handle, b. make the right judgments about what to expend energy on, c. maintain control of the key decisions and a full pipeline of talented people, d. make people feel appreciated and stay loyal)
Political intelligence (a. don't be labeled "political", b. recognize how relationships are likely to affect early success, c. get peers and subordinates to go out of their way to help, d. don't seem self-serving)
Personal style (a. make success look effortless, b. allow others' performance to be recognized too, c. manage energy to stay on the 'rested edge' and to avoid the 'ragged edge', d. enable peers to improve their performance, e. stay grounded and make sure basic needs are met while mastering new concepts)

On top of that, Dan Ciampa recommends to make sure you 1. understand your boss's point of view [whether he is worth it or not :)], 2. know your limitations [don't dive in the deep too early], and you 3. manage the shadow organization [grasp the alliances and political realities that come with the top-level job].

Peter Drucker on leading large corporations

2005-01-05T11:11:00.000+01:00

The grandfather of management gurus has spoken one more time: be sure you don't miss the interview with the now 95 year old (!) Peter Drucker in Forbes on leading large corporations. Good stuff to help you think about your coming targets for 2005. It's a bit speaking in commonplaces, but hey: this is Drucker...
In the article, Drucker says successful leaders:

Make sure that things that make a difference get done, whether by themselves or by somebody else;
Check their performance against previously defined goals;
Are mission / purpose driven and say no to things that don't contribute;
Know early when to stop trying doing something that can't be done;
Organize their travel, leveraging new technology where possible;
Have a maximum of two organizational goals at the same time;
Make sure the people around them understand their priorities;
Build on their strengths and find strong people to do the other necessary tasks.

Read the rest of the article here.

Bestselling Leadership Books

2004-12-29T15:34:00.000+01:00

Corporate Leadership Development

2004-12-07T20:32:00.000+01:00

Douglas Ready says companies must nowadays synchronize the actions of business units and the goals of the enterprise as a whole more tightly than ever. As a result corporations need people capable of running business units AND who can focus on broader corporate goals at the same time (HBR Dec04).

However developing corporate leaders is far from easy. As soon as a company becomes large enough to offer multiple lines of business in various regions, it begins to face tensions regarding how to go to market, who has primary accountability for which customers, and how to factor revenue and profitability into performance measurement.

Growing corporate leaders takes a sustained effort, Business Unit - Enterprise tensions are quite real. Mr. Ready provides the following advice on how corporate leadershop development can be organized and how the tensions can be dealt with:

Air the tensions by communicating extensively about the tensions in the form of leadership dialogues, leaders exchanges, task forces. Aknowledge the tensions exist and open them up for discussion, practice how to deal with them)
Cross-fertilizing talent across unit boundaries (Executive job rotation)
Targeting rewards to shape performance (use both economic rewards and noneconomic rewards, such as rewards in the form of prestigious roles or placement in the task force)

Leadership and fame

2004-11-17T13:22:00.000+01:00

Fortune (Nov 2004) has an article by Nicholas Varchaver discussing how executives went from being virtually invisible to celebrity status back to being executives but remaining of significant reputational value.

Before Chrysler boss Lee Iacocca, the vast majority of corporate managers were virtually invisible, although entrepreneurs like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, and Thomas Watson loomed large in American mythology.
In the 1950s the business of America may have been business, but that hardly conferred glamour on big corporations.
The antiestablishment mood of the '60s only made that image worse.
Then came the economic doldrums of the '70s. Charismatic and straight-talking, Iacocca was a star. All of a sudden, you couldn't turn on your television without seeing a CEO.
Still, in the early '80s managers remained hesitant to be too visible. As the '80s wore on, the tone would begin to change. The rise of high-tech companies was focusing attention on another group of leaders.
By the mid-1990s, CEOs were praised for their decisiveness when they instituted layoffs. Where once stocks had fallen after such announcements, now they climbed. Just hiring a celebrity CEO made a stock spike.
Today, buffeted by scandals and the restrictions of the Sarbanes-Oxley law, CEO charisma is almost a liability.

Yet the new restraint may not last long: to the outside world a CEO still embodies his company. A recent survey suggests that 50% of a corporation's reputation is attributable to that of its CEO. Stock prices still routinely rise and fall with the news of a CEO hiring or firing.

Just enough L.

2004-11-01T13:33:00.000+01:00

Henry Mintzberg argues in HBR of November 2004 that in many companies there exists a cult of L. that is dragging business down. These companies embrace the notion of the single, isolated leader who is supposed to charge heroically ahead, formulating the grand strategies, making the tough decisions, pulling off the great mergers, while downsizing left and right.

That is not to say Mintzberg does not recognize the importance of being engaged. Leaders engage others by, above all, engaging themselves. But he says leaders should care a lot more than they cure, connect a lot more than they control, and demonstrate a lot more than they decide. He calls this "Just enough L." or appropriate L., supporting the direction setting of others. A participative L. style.

I believe many modern CEO's will sympathize towards Mintzberg's thinking of moving a bit more to the democratic side of the L. continuum. However a complication Mintzberg does not mention in his short article is that mass media and certain shareholder groups may push leaders into unwanted heroic L. roles. Leaders should consider once they give in to this, even in a specific situation, it might be difficult to assume a democratic role in other circumstances. Heroic L. works like Opium of the People.

A surprise from Michael Porter

2004-10-23T11:53:00.000+02:00

In this month's (Oct 2004) HBR Michael Porter once more set a milestone in top management, when he describes seven surprises new CEOs often are facing when starting in their new job. But be warned: after reading the article you might be a bit less enthusiastic about taking on such a role in the future!

Anyway, Porters seven most common surprises are:

You can't run the company.
Giving orders is very costly.
It is hard to know what is really going on.
You are always sending a message.
You are not the boss.
Pleasing shareholders is not the goal.
You are still only human.

I highly recommend this article written with Jay W. Lorsch and Nitin Nohria. It will prove worthwhile for CEOs who are not so new and for people who have not yet quite made it to the top as well ;-)

A further taste of the article can be found here: The Seven Surprises

Spiritual L.

2004-09-01T15:54:00.000+02:00

On first reading the title of this article, you may be thinking, why have I decided to go religious on you, however, I am not talking about religion or religious leaders. Non the less, here is my question;
Is there scope in a world that is fast succumbing to the sole gratification of materialistic success, an aura of extreme materialism, a community of self-mindedness, a society that is doing its best to forget the very essence of, “do on to other as you’d have them do on to you”. In a nation devoid of collective conscious, can we as leaders evolve to, spiritual L.?
As a martial artist, when I train and teach I look to develop and integrate, the body, mind, and spirit; I’d like to focus on the spiritual aspect of martial development. I don’t think or believe the martial art to be a religion, nor does it look to compete or carryout the roles and responsibilities of organised religion. Hence in my martial training I’ve often asked and being asked, what is the meaning of spirituality in martial art? My research into this area, has lead me to believe, that Spirituality in martial art, is about us identifying 3 things:
1. Where we fit in this universe?
2. What contribution we’d what to make here on earth?
3. What we can do, to help our brothers and sisters live a life of happiness and avoid suffering
To achieve the 3 points listed above, spirituality in martial arts provides us with the insight to conduct ourselves with the following values:
1. Love:
a. A deep feeling toward a person arising from kinship and a sense of underlying oneness
2. Compassion:
a. Deep awareness and understanding of the suffering of others and a wish to relieve it
3. Patient:
a. Bearing or enduring pain, difficulty, provocation, or annoyance with calmness
4. Tolerance:
a. The capacity for or the practice of recognising and respecting the belief or practice of others
5. Forgiveness:
a. The capacity to excuse a fault or and offense
6. Respect:
a. To avoid violation or interferences with another right to be happy and avoid suffering
It is these value that I refer to when talking about Spiritual L., as Leaders of industries, communities, organisation and families, I agree that we must exercise power and authority, however I believe that we should temper our steel with a hint of velvet, and lead our follower with, Love, Compassion, Patient, Tolerance, Forgiveness, and Respect.

I’d like to finish with a quote from His Holiness the Dalai Lama
“The Spiritual actions we undertake which are motivated not by narrow self-interest but out of our concern for others actually benefit ourselves.”
I believe that if we took the time and reflected on teachings of this quote, and challenged ourselves to shift our idea of headship to embrace the values of spirituality, and not only lead, better still, to live by them, it would pay us dividend in all area of our L, more then we could ever deemed possible.

Martial Art for Life L. & Life Management

2004-09-01T15:49:00.000+02:00

The Invisible Ceiling – The Sensei’s L. ability

As a Martial Artist, I’m strongly of the view that a student of the Way should be encouraged to pursue Arts outside their own dojo, by so doing this will exposed them to newer and different concepts thereby widening their own understanding of their chosen art. I say this because there is an invisible ceiling that is so overwhelming in today’s school of martial arts, school in which Sensei (Instructors) are so insistent on the fact that their style of martial arts is the best and for this reason student are discouraged to the point of emotional blackmail from broadening their knowledge, by not being permitted to study other martial arts.

I am of the view that strong Sensei’s, and by strong I am referring to strength of character and L. ability, are always open to the suggestion and do encourage their student to go and study other styles. My own rational for encouraging my students to study and master other martial arts, is two fold:

1. Firstly from a martial rational, is for them to seek out the weakness of their present style and hence look for the complementary systems that will help them on their journey to becoming a rounded martial artist

a. The high order teaching, the life principle being taught here in disguise to my students, is an appreciation for strength in diversity

2. Secondly for them to search for and seek out a style of martial arts that is best suited to their nature and personality, my thought process here is that I have provided them with the foundation, now they must find their own style

a. The high order teaching, the life principle being taught here to my students is that to realise and release our fullest potential we must discover that which we a uniquely good at, (our true purpose in life)

My current ethos on martial arts evolved because, 11 years ago I took a deeper look at the role of martial arts and realised that the true essence of Martial Arts or Martial Way is training towards life L. Life L. would be categorized by living a life that is centered and based on principles (natural laws of the universe). For me, to live a life that is centered and principle based means that we have to grow and synergies physically, mentally, emotionally, socially and spiritually, and the only vehicle that we have to do all this growing and synergies with, is our physical body, for this reason I viewed the martial arts[1] a system for getting ourselves integrated.

This being my summit I come to the realisation, understanding and acceptance that my role as a Sensei, as a Martial Arts Leader, is one of a coach for life L. & life management, further still I yielded to the truth that my students progression and success in life is either aided or hindered by my L. ability “the invisible ceiling”.

As a result I asked, what is L. ability?

To me L. ability, is all about knowing, the right principle, to apply at the right time, in the right situation and environment, and in the right way (people management style), and the Leaders job is to Inspire, Motivate and Empower

As a Marital Arts Sensei, Coach, Instructor, I asked what determines the effectiveness of a Sensei (Leader)? Their L. ability, what determines strong L. ability? Knowing universal laws of people management and how to apply them.

Takeda Shingen says “A warrior – leader must build a castle in the heart of everyone of his bushi (warriors) and this will be stronger than any material one”
Translated for the leaders of today I say,
‘An effective leader must build trust, loyalty and respect in the heart of everyone of his follower, and this will be stronger than any material incentive’.

L. for the future necessitates that we have a different mindset and definition of L. and leaders. I would to conclude by giving three universal laws (principle) on people management, principles that I use to leading myself and my students, principles that can be applied within any group or organisation. Principle that must impact in three different spheres of influence; The Leader (Sensei), The Followers (Student), and The Dynamics of the Situation (Kumita). L. for the future dictates that we as leaders lead with trust, loyalty and respect.

Freud and L.: Transference

2004-08-30T11:07:00.000+02:00

Normally you don't often see the name Sigmund Freud associated with leadership in management literature, where followers are described largely in terms of their leaders’ qualities.
In an article in this month's Harvard Business Review, Michael Maccoby interestingly turns this habit around, by delving into the unconscious recesses of followers’ minds. He looks closely at the often irrational tendency to relate to a leader as some important person from the past. A parent, a sibling, a close friend, or even a nanny. Sigmund Freud discovered this dynamic when working with his patients and called it “transference”.

Maccoby explains the most common types of transference: paternal, maternal, and sibling, and shows how they play out in the workplace. He notes that they have evolved as our family structures have changed. Whether followers perceive a leader as an all-knowing father figure, as an authoritative yet unconditionally loving mother figure, or as a brother or sister who isn’t necessarily a model of good behavior, the leader can manage transferential ties by bringing unconscious projections to light. Then debilitating resentment and animosity can give way to mutual understanding and productivity.

Believing one's own press

2004-08-06T12:24:00.000+02:00

"Welch has delivered extraordinary growth, increasing the market value of GE from just $12 billion in 1981 to about $280 billion today. No one, not even Microsoft's William H. Gates III or Intel's Andrew S. Grove, not Walt Disney's Michael D. Eisner or Berkshire Hathaway's Warren E. Buffet, not even the late Coca-Cola chieftain Roberto C. Goizueta or the late Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton has created more shareholder value than Jack Welch (Business Week, 1998)".
According to researchers Mathew Hayward, Violina Rindova and Timothy Pollock (Strategic Management Journal, July 2004), journalists systematically over-attribute a firm's actions and outcomes to it's CEO rather than to broader situational factors.
Even more interesting is their conclusion that a CEO who internalizes such celebrity will also tend to believe this over-attribution and become overconfident about the efficacy of his/her past actions and future abilities, underestimating the impact of situational factors in the external environment, especially the actions of competitors, on the firm's ability to realize its own strategies.
Hubris arises when CEO overconfidence results in problematic decisions, including undue persistence with actions that produce celebrity.
Hayward ea suggest that "The greater a CEO's celebrity, the more a CEO will commit to continuing the actions that are associated with the celebrity and the greater the strategic inertia of the firm".

L. example

2004-07-18T14:07:00.000+02:00

In an interview with biotechnology giant Amgen, CEO Kevin Sharer tells this remarkable anecdote of the moment it was just announced he was going to become CEO the following year: "I asked the top 150 people in the company to meet with me for an hour each—150 hours in total. And I gave each of them the same five questions, which they received in advance: What three things do you want to change? What three things do you want to keep? What are you most worried I might do? What do you want me to do? Is there anything else you want to talk about? And I just listened for an hour. Many of the people came in with stuff written down, and in the case of those who didn’t, I took notes. And then I tabulated all the responses, coming up with a pretty accurate and timely picture of what the top 150 leaders in the company wanted to do. I put all of this together and sent out a memo to the entire company summarizing my findings. These interviews gave me the mandate to do what I needed to do. It created a shared reality for the company and allowed people to begin aligning around a number of goals. The exercise was probably the single most important thing I did upon becoming CEO". -- Amen.

Ken Lay should go to jail !

2004-07-14T14:50:00.000+02:00

I believe Ken Lay, the former CEO of Enron should go to jail. Why?

Understand me correctly: this is no legal judgment. Everybody should be assumed innocent until proven guilty. And Of course Mr Lay will try to show that he didn't know anything about the financial fraud that was going on. Not that he will deny that is has been going on, because that is pretty obvious. But he'll try to prove he wasn't aware of it.

But even if he succeeds in actually proving he didn't know about it, I think he should have known and should still be put behind bars.

The reason is if he gets away with this, any CEO in the future will always be able to get away with fraud and plausible deniability will become a de facto standard in each boardroom. Provided you don't interfere at all with the financial matters of your corporation, you can then always escape prosecution in case of corporate fraud. And that seems to me unacceptable if we ever want to improve corporate responsibility.

Royal Dutch Shell bows to investor pressure on structure

2004-06-20T01:36:00.000+02:00

Royal Dutch Shell has been known for years for its outstanding top management.
- However, at January 9th, 2004, Shell had to announce that it's oil reserves were smaller than indicated for years in its annual reports. The company turned out not to own 19, but only 15 billion barrels of oil reserves.
- A number of top executives including the CEO (Mr Phil Watts) were dismissed and Mr Jeroen van der Veer took over as CEO.
- At the 31st of May, Van der Veer says Shell must become more modest and must win back the trust of investors and business partners, besides implementing procedural and accounting measures to prevent incorrect bookings of oil reserves.
- However, at the 10th of June, Calpers (a huge pension fund and major shareholder) demands that Royal Shell changes its top structure, and will allow shareholders to make proposals for topmanagers and board members.
- At the 17th of June 2004 and after some debate, Jeroen van der Veer announces an evaluation of the governance model of Shell. The results will be announed in November this year.
- The Financial Times writes about this on the next day: "Shell bows to investor pressure on structure - Royal Dutch/Shell yielded to shareholder pressure yesterday, signalling reform of its structure and committing itself to abandon one of the most controversial features of the way it is run. Royal Dutch, the dominant partner in the embattled Anglo-Dutch oil company, surprised and pleased investors by announcing that it would scrap its much-criticised priority shares, which carry extra voting rights controlled by the company's management. It also revealed that, as part of a review into its governance, the company would consider simplifying its complex dual-board structure".
What do you think about the Leadership Mr Van der Veer is showing so far? Do you believe his ideas on modesty which he seems to bring into practice himself will indeed bring back the trust of investors or would you recommend another leadership style?