The Courage to Lead

Permission to Screw Up: How I Learned to Lead by Doing (Almost) Everything Wrong – Kristen Hadeed (Portfolio)

Hands down the question I get asked most often when conducting a leadership training or seminar is; “What are the most important skills a leader can possess or develop?” Since the focus of most of my seminars are focused on leadership communication I naturally peg the most important skillset as being communications skills.

A close second on the list is courage. Courage involves many facets of leadership, perhaps the most important being to admit that you don’t have all the answers and the ability to admit when you’ve made a mistake, a wrong choice or just flat out messed up. The most important superpower that leaders must possess is the ability to not only learn from their mistakes, but to harness the knowledge you gain and improve future outcomes.

That superpower is the focus of Kristen Hadeed’s debut business book, Permission to Screw Up: How I Learned to Lead by Doing (Almost) Everything Wrong. Hadeed is the seemingly accidental founder of Student Maid, a company that has hired hundreds of student to get down and dirty mopping floors and cleaning toilets. Hadeed admits that she stumbled along when the business got started and along the way discovered her leadership style/path and has succeeded in not only developing the courage to admit her errors, but to learn and build a company culture that scores amazing retention rates in an industry better known for its rate of turnover.

If you have been around business for any length of time you have crossed paths with those hard chargers bent on perfection who are doomed to fail. Hadeed seems to grasp the concept that it’s okay to not be perfect and spells out how you can be successful without being perfect. She does a nice job of imparting the knowledge she gained in a hard fought manner, in the trenches of business, which raises the value of the advice she shares.

Entrepreneurial Empowerment

The Startup Way: How Modern Companies Use Entrepreneurial Management to Transform Culture and Drive Long-Term Growth – Eric Ries (Currency)

Straight out of Penn State, my son took a position in IT with a HUGE multi-national, multi-division, multi-product line corporation that everybody knows. Being new to the work force, he was shocked at how slowly this gargantuan corporation seemed to plod along at a glacial pace when it came to expanding markets and introducing new products. With silos firmly entrenched in the management structure to say that inertia has set in would be an understatement. From their he accepted a position working for an institution of higher education and now he longs for the comparable light speed at which his former employers worked.

With so much media and business press focus on startups and high tech and sprint to market, you have to wonder how so many great business entities ever lost sight of that entrepreneurial spirit and drive, to become so bogged down. Over the course of time we have heard the rather timid rallying cry from business as the encourage their middle managers and frontline staff to “take ownership” and run with ideas; only to see those folks who take that thought process to heart, crushed under the thumb of a cumbersome management structure.

Enter Eric Ries, the brainchild behind and author of The Lean Startup. Ries found himself at the center of both the natural audience, those in various stages of the startup mode and in the unnatural position of being brought in by behemoth corporations to try to inject that lean startup spirit back into the way they do business. This truly was a take ownership moment; why couldn’t these huge business entities with all of their inherent tools and resources utilize the can do spirit of a startup.

By deconstructing not only the startup process, but by breaking down the silos and chains of command, which had turned into the shackles of command, Ries demonstrates how this process will work no matter where you are on the business scale. He takes the principles outlined in The Lean Startup, and takes a deeper process dive into fleshing out how this can scale to more established and entrenched businesses, while adding new tools to the belts of true startups.

Color My World

Color Index XL: More than 1,100 New Palettes with CMYK and RGB Formulas for Designers and Artists – Jim Krause (Watson – Guptill)

With the rapidly changing world of marketing and the integration of so many forms of visual content for creative folks to keep up they need to understand and speak the language of design. If you are a marketer who works with graphic design, web design or even event design, you need to understand how to integrate color into your marketing expression.

One handy tool to have within reach is veteran graphic designer Jim Krause’s newest edition of his color index series of books, Color Index XL: More than 1,100 New Palettes with CMYK and RGB Formulas for Designers and Artists. While previous editions have been more low key, pocket sized tomes, the new one is perfect for our predilection towards supersizing, with a larger format that is easier to use and will enhance your ability to visualize colors for any design project. Hence the XL.

For the uninitiated, CMYK refers to the color process that utilizes for inks in some color printing, the include: cyan, magenta, yellow and key (black). The RGB color model refers to the more obvious, red, green and blue.

Whether you are a graphic designer, and artists or someone who utilizes their services, Color Index XL, is a great tool that you will reach for again and again and I can almost guarantee you break the binding simply fro using it time and again.

It’s About Growth!

Profitable Podcasting: Grow Your Business, Expand Your Platform, and Build a Nation of True Fans – Stephen Woessner (AMACOM)

Nothing makes me more crazy than working with an entrepreneur or business owner who proclaims “I need to have a Facebook page, or a Twitter account, or be on Instagram, or have a blog or start a podcast.” When I ask the very simple question why? I usually get an answer that goes something like; “well this guys I know said I needed it,” or “my brother-in-law tried it and it worked for him.”

It’s what I call running from one end of the room to the other marketing syndrome! Whatever the new and shinny object is that catches a business owners eye, the newest must have that invariably DOES NOT WORK. This isn’t to say that any of these vehicles can’t help you grow your business, the problem is most folks never bother to take the time to, first understand their audience and second, develop a plan to best reach the folks that you are targeting with your product or service. Hence, the mad dash blindly around the room in search of business gold.

One of the newest entries in the category of books that will help you STOP running around the room in search of answers is Stephen Woessner’s Profitable Podcasting: Grow Your Business, Expand Your Platform, and Build a Nation of True Fans. Woessner, the founder and CEO of Predictive ROI and the host of the Onward Nation, a podcast for business owners; and the great thing about this book is it truly focused on getting to growth.

When it comes to podcasting, there are a multitude of shows, styles, platforms available that tackle a massive variety of topics. More often than not, podcasts tend to boil down to a couple categories; the wildly successful ones with great production values, and content and those that are quite frankly not done well and have little to no impact on growing business.

Woessner does a great job of not only talking about how to grow your business, he also talks about whether or not a podcast is right for you and your business. If it is, he gives you everything tools and resources-wise to help you plan and execute on a successful, business growing podcast. It’s not just about your business, it’s about how to develop and grow your audience and then convert that growth into growing your bottom line.

To borrow a line from Field of Dreams, podcasting is NOT build it and they will come; like any successful marketing strategy, it takes planning, planning and planning. Did I mention it’s best to have a plan? Woessner takes things down to a pretty granular level to make it a negotiable process no matter what your level of experience. There are plenty of podcasting books, but   Profitable Podcasting should be your go to choice when it comes to determining if podcasting will work for you and if it is, how to do it well.

Lessons in Leadership

There are literally a mountain of leadership books out there that offer a range of view points and ideas for how to successfully lead. A pair of new books offer some interesting insight and new perspective on the roles of leaders, but also on what leadership will look like in the future and how to be prepared to lead.

The New Leadership Literacies: Thriving in a Future of Extreme Disruption and Distributed Everything – Bob Johansen (Berrett-Kohler Publishers)

I have always been intrigued with by folks with the job title of futurist; it just sounds so big picture thinking. Bob Johansen is a futurist’s, futurist, plying his trade at Institute for the Future in Silicon Valley, which for all intents purpose is the hub of what the future will look like.

Johansen, authored Leader’s Make the Future, in which he offered a window to the ten skills that leaders will need and now with The New Leadership Literacies: Thriving in a Future of Extreme Disruption and Distributed Everything he offers up five new literacies that will link back to those skills.

When you spend some time thinking about how quickly the world as changed over the past decade, let alone the past couple of years, what are the leadership skillsets that a truly dynamic leader will need to master to adapt to the ever changing, disrupted workplace. Literally how we deliver products and services is dramatically changing the face of the workforce and leadership must rapidly adapt to those changes.

Those who stand still will be left behind, or run over. Johansen offers insight in to how to better anticipate, adapt and lead that change and remain viable in the dynamic shift.

How to Lead When You’re Not in Charge: Leveraging Influence When You Lack Authority – Clay Scroggins - (Zondervan)

So what makes you a leader? Is it being bestowed with a title that reflects a position of leadership that makes you a leader? Have you ever been in a situation where you saw an opportunity to take the lead and let it slide by, because you felt that you didn’t have a leadership title, so you couldn’t take a leadership role?

Well I am here to tell and Clay Scroggins new book How to Lead When You’re Not in Charge: Leveraging Influence When You Lack Authority, backs me up; leaders are not made by titles, leaders are made by a willingness to exert your influence over a situation. Clay’s book is a how to guide for earning and exerting your influence over a situation or people to take the leap into leadership.

I have often used a story of parental leadership based upon a sphere of influence. Like most good parents, my mother exerted a sphere of influence over me that extended well beyond her sightlines and being in her presence. 

Even when I was miles away from home, her leadership influence over me was clearly defined and palpable. You too can develop that kind of talk the talk walk the walk type of influence in your daily life.

What Scroggins really lays out in the pages of How to Lead When You’re Not in Charge, is how to break down the hesitation or fear of stepping out of your lane and using your earned level of influence to drive a situation or scenario to the positive outcome you desire. Breaking down that fear is a hurdle that can go a long way towards helping you break through the title barrier that is more often than not self-imposed.

Whether you are looking to lead in a work situation, a community role or church setting, Scroggins gives you a whole belt full of useful tools and examples that will help you break through. 

How To Side Hustle Like a Pro

Side Hustle: From Idea to Income in 27 Days – Chris Guillebeau (Crown Business)

Maybe it’s due to my choice of career path, 25 years in radio is not the most stable choice of careers, but I have always had what now has become dubbed a “side hustle.” There were times where I could ramp this up to cover my bills and other times, where the extra cash would just come in handy. Even now with a more steady career path, I still keep a couple of side gigs going because it has become a habit over the years.

Business guru and bestselling author Chris Guillebeau is out with a brand new book, Side Hustle: From Idea to Income in 27 Days, which serves as a guide for the uninitiated into the process for discovery, developing and executing on a side hustle. Guillebeau lays out a road map for developing an everything from an idea stream right through an income stream.

He also makes the case that starting a side hustle is very different from starting a business, all the while making it clear that if your side gig reaches the point where you can transition to a full time operation that you can set yourself up to make that step. He is absolutely right that while the side hustle takes some planning, the focus has to be on execution and launch. It’s better to get your hustle up and running and make your tweaks and tune ups on the fly, than it is to over think and focus your efforts on planning.

Guillebeau breaks things down into easy to understand and execute chunks that he spaces over the 27 days he references in the title. If you’ve never been down the side hustle road, he illustrates the process with a collection of great first hand stories from folks who have hit side hustle gold. Granted not every idea is going to be a home run and/or make you rich, but that’s the beauty of Side Hustle: From Idea to Income in 27 Days, he gives you the tools to have a bank of great ideas to pull the trigger on and before you know it you’ve either added another hustle or moved on to the next.

With the work world going through a shift, this is great stuff to help you build the future you want.

Business…Fueled By People

On an annual basis, business spends BILLIONS of dollars trying to not only engage their employees, but to measure just how engaged they are in the workplace. Just writing that sentence makes me think of my father and what his reaction would have been; probably something like, “you get a paycheck don’t you, should that keep you engaged?”

Despite all of the media reports about low unemployment rates, the fact of the matter is it is pretty difficult to get and hang onto a job; so is that a contributing factor to the dismal workplace engagement numbers we see reported over and over again? People who have jobs are just happy to go along to get along and keep the paycheck coming?

Trying to delve into the numbers, make sense of them and improve them has become a thriving business for consultants and business leadership development types. Here is a look at a pair of new books that offer not only insight into the issue, but could offer solutions on how to improve your results and in the process contribute to the growth of your bottom line.  

The Workplace Engagement Solution: Find a Common Mission, Vision and Purpose with All of Today’s Employees – David Harder (Career Press)

David Harder, the founder of Inspired Work, an organizational a career development company pegs the global employee engagement number at roughly 13%. That is flat out, a dismal number. It has become gospel that an engaged employee, someone who comes to work every day and driven to perform will help contribute to growing the businesses bottom line. So how does a CEO or business owner light a fire under his people and get them to perform at the highest levels of their ability?

Harder makes the case in his book, The Workplace Engagement Solution: Find a Common Mission, Vision and Purpose with All of Today’s Employees, that leaders have to set the tone for helping to drive change and build a culture that engages employees. For me the title says it all! If you don’t build the cornerstone of your business on a common mission, vision and purpose, and communicate, communicate and communicate those values over and over, then how can you attract the right people to come to work for you, and without the right people who can you ever hope to succeed?

Harder makes the case that it’s more difficult to find great, engaged employees than it is to build them. While the process of mentoring and developing skillsets is hard work and heavy lifting, at the end of the day the increased buy in makes it worth the effort.

You cannot over-communicate the mission; if your people don’t know what the company stands for, how can ever expect them to be engaged in the businesses success? Real engagement doesn’t happen if you put a bunch of flowery words on nice, framed posters to hang in the lobby; real engagement means you have to live up to those values and lead by example every day.

The Power of People Skills: How to Eliminate 90% of Your HR Problems and Dramatically Increase Team and Company Morale and Performance – Trevor Throness – (Career Press)

Talk to most business owners and ask them what their number one problem is and more often than not they will tell you something like “It’s hard (impossible) to find (retain) good people!” People are the problem; they make up the greatest part of business expenses and they chew through the bulk of a business owner/leaders time.

Veteran business coach Trevor Throness has narrowed down the problem to one very simple equation; great cultures insist on having star players in every key position and poor cultures are the one who continue to tolerate under performers.

Think about it, how often have you heard the old saw about 20% of the people doing 80% of the work? If you are among the 20%, how does having a boss who makes that comment make you feel? Does it feel something like this; Why the heck am I working so hard and allowing this jackass to continue to allow people to slack off and not carry their share of the load?

Poll after poll points out that good people leave their bosses, not their jobs and much of that can likely be traced back to putting up with rather than confronting those underperformers. Taking action, that most leaders know deep down they need to take, could be the most difficult thing a leader does. Throness offers some great tools to help leaders through that process. While it still won’t be easy, when handed the very simple question; “If I could do it all over again, would I hire this person?” That simple question offers a level of clarity and a connection to purpose that will give you as a leader a clear course of action.

Think about the best and the worst leaders you ever worked for and determine what it was that put them at one end or the other of that spectrum. More often than not it is people skills or a lack of them that was the dividing point. Developing strong people skills is a must have for any leaders toolbox and both of these books will make fine additions to helping you forge that skillset.