teams

Effective Leadership Trait 2 – Puts People First

What do highly effective leaders do? They put people first. They help others meet their highest priority development needs. It seems counterintuitive, but the data prove that putting other people first makes an organization more profitable. An effective leader puts people first by:

· Displaying a servant’s heart

· Mentoring

· Showing care and concern

Servant’s Heart: A servant leader cares deeply how their decisions and actions will affect others – they want others to benefit. So they don’t make decisions purely on financial grounds. They realize that for a company to thrive, the communities in which it operates must also thrive. They inherently use a win-win rather than a zero-sum win-lose model for making decisions and operating. Example: the executives of Burgerville volunteer an hour a week reading to local elementary schoolchildren, because they know that if a child is not reading by the 3rd grade, that child is destined for a life of struggle and poverty. In fact, the slogan of Burgerville, a privately-held for profit organization, is “serve with love”. They don’t talk about “customers” – they talk about “guests”.

Mentoring: I was grateful to have a mentor as I was starting my career – he was more than just a “boss”. I would like to have had more mentors as I changed fields and professions. I’ve found that mentoring others is truly rewarding. Even (especially?) if you didn’t have a mentor, becoming one provides benefits to both you and the mentee. It’s a great way to pay it forward. Everybody wins!

Showing Care and Concern: This concept is countercultural, even revolutionary. Competition is so engrained in American culture that we don’t even consider its cost. Competition for the promotion; competition for the raise; competition for the customer. Negotiating to get the best possible deal for me, or for my company. But when we were children, our mothers taught us to care for others; they taught us to share. Every well-established religion has care for others as one of its foundations. Our companies, and our society, cannot survive, let alone thrive, if we do not actively care for others. Care for others expresses itself in win-win, instead of win-lose.

Next week: Skilled Communicator

Comments? Feedback? I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Gary Langenwalter

Crock Pot Leadership

I learned 3 important things about leadership from our crock pot.

1. We need the right ingredients. If we’re going to make vegetable soup, we need vegetables. In leadership terms, Jim Collins tells us to “get the right people on the bus.” Accountants have many skills, but a strategic planning meeting with only accountants in the room will usually not generate a well-balanced strategic plan. “Right ingredients” also requires the right amount of each ingredient. When making chocolate chip cookies, too much salt will ruin the cookies. (Of course, extra chocolate chips will only make them better!) Teams need the right mix of the right people.

2. We need to omit ingredients that are not in the recipe. Clams are great in clam chowder, but not welcome in a beef stew. In leadership terms, we need to insure that a team is free of people who will neutralize or destroy it from within.

3. Finally, and possibly most important, we need to define the process and then trust it. If we lift the lid on a crock pot every 10 minutes to see how it’s doing, we ruin the meal by releasing heat such that it will not cook properly. In leadership, we provide the resources the team needs, and then trust them to do their work within the prescribed process. Constantly looking over their shoulders, second-guessing their decisions (or lack thereof), or otherwise micro-managing is like lifting the lid off a crock pot – it guarantees that the result will not be what we want.

I hope you enjoy your holiday meals. And remember, leave the lid on the crock pot until the recipe says the meal is cooked!

Gary Langenwalter