A summary of things you should know about Fairness is Overrated according to Tim Stevens: Introduction In this episode Tim Stevens takes a deep dive into his book, Fairness isRead More
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]]>In this episode Tim Stevens takes a deep dive into his book, Fairness is Overrated, where he shares over 50 leadership principles that will revolutionize any workplace.
In his book Stevens provides you with a manual of tools, practical lessons, real truths, and relevant case studies that discuss the effective pillars of leadership that very successful leaders display. The goal of the book is to teach you how to increase your integrity, surround yourself with successful people, effectively manage a crisis, and develop a culture of true leadership at your organization.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are building a public figure persona or manage a team of people at an organization and want to take their leadership to a stronger, empowering level.
One thing that makes this book different is that it’s highly practical. I tried to make this book very reachable and easy to implement.
This book can be read from front to back or you could use it as a reference.
It’s possible to be a leader of any kind and not be an ego driven narcissistic leader. It’s possible to be a humble leader and to be very effective.
I broke my book down into four big categories and these are big categories because they are the huge portions of what is involved in leadership.
The first section is Being a Leader Worth Following and to me that’s where it starts. Because if you don’t have a place of character of integrity from which you lead then good chances are it’s going to unravel. In this section I talk about living a life with margins, just making sure that you build space in. I talk about being a lifelong learner and not getting to a place where you stop learning and stop growing. I talk about guarding your family, paying attention to your marriage, and your children. I think great leaders are those who not can manage their work life but also have a great marriage and manage their family life.
The second section is about finding the right people. The first chapter in this section is called A Resume is Worthless, and I break down and talk about the fact that resumes contain very little of what is important to me when I am hiring staff. One thing I don’t think employers use enough is social media. This is where you take advantage of their ‘social media scrub’ and looking for things that are important that will determine their future productivity as an employee.
Section three goes into building a healthy culture. You can have the right people but if you don’t pay attention and keep your eye on culture it can become toxic very quickly. As so there are 10-14 topics on building a healthy culture that I think are really important. One is as a leader you have to make a commitment to believe the best about your employees. Another one is that you have to let your leaders lead. You can just give them responsibility; you have to give them authority too. A lot of times, as leaders, we want them to do the work but we don’t want them to make the decision, and that’s dis-empowering.
The final section in the book is called Leading Confidently Through a Crisis. How we lead in those times is going to make concrete how we are remembered as a leader and how people follow us. So in this section I talk about dealing with resignation and how to let people go when they aren’t right for the company. I talk about what to do when you have e-mails flying back and forth and you are upset and how to back down from that. I talk about the pain of growth and the stages of failure that we can go through.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 05:29
“The success of a leader will rise or fall on the decisions that he or she makes about the people around him or her.” – Tim Stevens
I spent my first nine years of my adult life working for a nonprofit organization and was able to stretch my leadership skills there. From there I went into a very small startup local church that had just began going and was meeting in rented space. I was able to jump on the team with five others and see it grow over the next 20 years. Most recently I have joined an organization called the Vanderbloemen Search Group and we get to come along side churches and nonprofit organizations and help them find staff.
One of the inspirations behind writing this book was my own leadership growth. Being able to pass along some principles that had served me well over the years that someone along the way passed to me. Secondly I wanted to help people address startups and adventures while maintaining their personal values and integrity. That is a tough thing to do and I don’t see a lot of people writing on that particular subject.
Multipliers by Liz Wiseman and Greg Mckeown
Buy Fairness is Overrated by Tim Stevens on Amazon today
Visit FairnessIsOverrated.com to learn more about Tim and his book
Follow Tim Stevens on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Lead to Succeed by Chris Roebuck
The Prosperous Leader by Jacob Engel
Winning The Long Game by Steven Krupp
Relevant advice and tips:
5 Characteristics of a Great Leader
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
The post A Preview of Fairness Is Overrated with Tim Stevens appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>A summary of things you should know about The Prosperous Leader according to Jacob Engel: Introduction In this episode Jacob Engel reveals all the insights on his book, The ProsperousRead More
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]]>In this episode Jacob Engel reveals all the insights on his book, The Prosperous Leader, where he provides a comprehensive look into how smart people can achieve success independently.
In his book Engel gives you 24 simple, actionable steps to realistically analyze your personal strengths and weaknesses so you can create your own path to economic success. The goal of the book is to help you maximize your strengths while developing the actual skills you need to strengthen your own leadership and management abilities.
This book is perfect for aspiring entrepreneurs who are having trouble cultivating their own unique abilities and need help maximizing their strengths to become effective leaders and smart managers.
I would say what I bring to the table is a few different things. Number one I’ve ran a business myself and been involved in growth so I’ve got the practical experience. The other thing is that everything in my book is practical, useful, and step by step doable for the reader.
Every chapter stands on its own so you can jump around.
If you did not make it through college or didn’t make the A/B grades don’t despair! Read!
One of the greatest challenges that I see with entrepreneurs and business owners is that they seem to be going around and around in circles. Meaning they start a business, have a good concept, they build on it, and then all of the sudden things start to fall apart and they are back to square one. Many entrepreneurs have not figured out what it is that makes them successful or prosperous.
In the beginning of the book I write about the foundations that a person needs in order to build a successful enterprise or organization. I start off with the concept that you have got to know yourself and understand your strengths, abilities, and weaknesses.
The second chapter that I go into is nature vs nurture. Are we nature or do we learn and acquire things as we go through life? What I argue here is that there is a third component and that is called choice. I try to define the different choices that a person can make.
In the third chapter I move over to effective communications. I walk through the three types of communicators which are passive, aggressive, and assertive and each one has its own issues. What you really want to achieve is assertive and effective communication.
In chapter four I talk about emotional intelligence and what that means is when you hire people there a two parts to the hire. There are technical skills and then there are the soft skills. And as a business owner you must know how both of those work.
In chapter six I talk about time management. Time management is a challenge for almost everybody and it’s a great tool for effectively managing your time for yourself and others.
Chapter seven I discuss smartphones and if they are really smart in the work place.
In chapter eight I speak about a very interesting subject which is known today as ADD/ADHD. Many business owners have it; some of them realize it and other don’t. I help coach business owners and managers through the issues of ADD.
In chapter 10 I talk a lot about goals and creating them.
Chapter 11 I speak about critical thinking and how people don’t like to think too much.
I also cover how to be the right type of boss, why every business owner needs a coach, and how to build trust with your people.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 08:57
I was born in Brooklyn New York and still live in New York. My father came to this country with no family, money or language and was lucky enough to find a job in a little spice shop. My dad eventually moved to Brooklyn to open up his own spice shop in 1955. I joined the business in 1975 and we were doing about 10 million dollars in sales which was very significant at the time. My dad passed away in 1995 when the business was doing over a hundred million and eventually the business grew close to two hundred million. I realized that I was in the people business and that intrigued me. Entrepreneurs have great advantages but it also comes with disadvantages and I figured out how to build on our strengths and how to mitigate our weaknesses. And that’s how I got into understanding everything about starting a business, running a business, and building a business.
I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d be a writer or a speaker. I was really motivated and inspired by my mentor who is probably one of the greatest people that studied and understands entrepreneurs. He told me to write a book and share my experiences and tips. So I spent about two years writing and rewriting.
Buy The Prosperous Leader by Jacob Engel on Amazon today
Visit TheProsperousLeader.com to learn more about Jacob and his book
Follow Jacob Engel on Facebook and Twitter
For questions contact Jacob via email here
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Lead to Succeed by Chris Roebuck
The Front-Line Leader by Chris Van Gorder
Winning the Long Game by Steve Krupp
Relevant advice and tips:
5 Characteristics of A Great Leader
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
The post A Preview of The Prosperous Leader with Jacob Engel appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>A summary of things you should know about Winning The Long Game according to Steven Krupp: Introduction In this episode Steven Krupp takes a deep dive into his book, WinningRead More
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]]>In this episode Steven Krupp takes a deep dive into his book, Winning The Long Game, where he profiles the strategic leadership tactics of very successful and well-known business leaders.
In his book, Steven takes a creates vivid insights into the leadership discipline by contrasting successful leaders such as Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, and Pope Francis with others who are either mediocre or outright failures. The goal of the book is to teach you how to develop the discipline of strategic leadership in a world of growing uncertainty.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurial managers seeking to become more strategic in order to create sustainable value and inspirational fuel to keep their business running.
I think what makes it different is that we are really looking at the intersection of strategy and leadership. There are countless books on strategy and quite a few on leadership but very few that really look at that intersection. Another way that makes this book different is that we have taken this fuzzy idea of strategic leadership and thinking and we’ve turned it into very concrete tangible behaviors. We also give very specific tools and techniques that leaders can take to become more strategic.
This book can be read from front to back or you can jump in and out as needed.
The big takeaway for me is that everyone can be strategic. There are tips and tools that we can all use to look out further, to challenge assumptions, to make more sense of the data around us, that each of us can apply every day.
One of the things that is interesting about the book is that we start with a story about a fictitious character named Jane. Jane is in the middle of a performance review and has got a lot of positive feedback at the beginning of her review. But then the interview takes a strange turn and Jane learns that she has got some issues and her boss tells her that she’s not strategic enough. The premise of the book is how Jane can become more strategic.
After the opening chapter the book is organized around six disciplines you’ll need. The six disciplines are anticipate, challenge, interpret, decide, align, and learn. The discipline of anticipation is about being able to see sooner and scan wider. In this chapter we give successful stories of different people who have anticipated well and also stories of ones who haven’t.
The next chapter we talk about the discipline of challenge and we start with an unlikely leader for a business book which is Pope Francis. Pope Francis practices two components that we think are the essence of the challenge discipline. He opens the window to let in fresh thinking, fresh ideas, and fresh points of view.
The third discipline is interpretation and that’s about amplifying signals and connecting dots between them.
The next discipline we get into is decisions. There are two things that we think are critical for deciding. One is exploring your options and making sure you don’t rush into a decision and the other important thing is having the courage to make tough choices.
The fifth disciple and the next chapter is about align and that’s really about how to rally people together so that they are on board with you. And also how to bridge differences because there will be miss alignment and competing issues to deal with.
The sixth and final discipline chapter is about the learn discipline which is about experimenting, trying new things, and then diving deep to learn from those.
We bring it all together around one very well-known leader Nelson Mandela. We should how Nelson applies all these six disciplines in his vision of transformation in South Africa.
At the end of each chapter we take a step back and ask ourselves what Jane would do in each of these situations. We give very practical tips, tools, and techniques that people can use to get better at any or all of these disciplines.
“My gift was not knowing.” – Sara Blakely
I am currently the CEO of Decision Strategies International. I have professionally been a psychologist and did a lot of work throughout my career helping organizations become more effective. I have a wife, three kids, and a number of animals.
There are a couple of sources of inspiration. About five years ago I was doing a lot of work with boards on CEO and top executive succession and the issue that came up over and over again was that leaders are going to need to be more strategic. However, having heard that over and over again, what I also learned was that very few people had much of a definition of what it meant to be more strategic. They didn’t have a clear guideline of what that is, how to define it, how to access it, and how to develop it. So the lack of definition and clarity around building this capability combined with the great need were the two sources of inspiration for writing this book.
Abundance by Steven Kotler and Peter Diamandis
Buy Winning The Long Game by Steven Krupp on Amazon today
Visit DecisionStrat.com to learn more about Steven and his book
Follow Steven Krupp on LinkedIn and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Lead To Succeed by Chris Roebuck
The Front-Line Leader by Chris Van Gorder
MOXIE: The Secret to Bold and Gutsy Leadership by John Baldoni
Relevant advice and tips:
5 Characteristics of a Great Leader
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
The post A Preview of Winning The Long Game with Steven Krupp appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>What are the characteristics of a great leader? Exceptional leaders should have exceptional qualities because ordinary traits are not going to help them achieve greatness in one way or theRead More
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]]>Exceptional leaders should have exceptional qualities because ordinary traits are not going to help them achieve greatness in one way or the other. You can easily find many competent leaders, but only few of them eventually qualify as exceptional leaders. Of course, there are leaders who seem to have great ideas, but when you ask them to execute them in real life, they fail miserably. One might look like a great leader in ordinary circumstances, but once you get them out of their comfort zone, you will get to see who they really are. When the going gets tough, when the money is tight or the stakes are high, it is only the great leaders that live up to the expectation; ordinary people just quit it.
So, if you want to separate great leaders from ordinary leaders, you need to have a detailed understanding of the qualities that a great leader possesses.
Sometimes, it just happens that we have great ideas in our head, but when we try to communicate those ideas to the people who are going to implement them, we face the inconvenient truth that they are not getting it. Most leaders met with a blank expression from people when they try to communicate their ideas.
The ideas may seem great on paper, but making people act on it depends much on how you are communicating it. So, if you wish to be a great leader, you need to have great communication skill. There is no way around it.
How on earth the team is going to achieve its goal if the leader fails to communicate his ideas in plain and simple English.
A great leader should encourage fun at workplace because nobody wants to work in a dull and boring environment. It is important to keep your head high even when things are going wrong. There will be times when things will go horribly wrong like the funds may run dry, the client may stop responding or the company may incur heavy loss; but you need to take them as challenges without pressing the panic button.
As a leader, you have to accept the challenges as they come along; try to use humor to inspire other people to face the challenges. People make mistakes, but rather than crying a river over those mistakes, you need to face them with a smile in your face. This will create a positive vibe in the workplace and all you have to do is to encourage it.
Honesty is certainly one of the main characteristics of a great leader. Since everybody around you follows your order blindly, you need to be honest and straightforward. A leader needs to accept his faults if there are any; blaming others for your fault can demoralize people working with your team. Moreover, you will lose all the love and respect of employees working with your team. You should not do anything that can make people doubt your integrity.
If you want every member of your team to work really hard, you need to set an example first. Preach what you practice. You simply can’t expect people, working under you, to arrive at the office early if you are a late comer on a regular basis. There is nothing in the world that motivates the workers than seeing their leader working hard alongside. By showing your commitment towards the company, you will be able to earn the respect of the team members and also will be able to encourage them to deliver their best.
Sometimes, you will have to deal with problems that demand a different kind of solution. No, not the usual approach is not going to help here anymore. You will need to take some drastically different decisions to deal with those problems. This is exactly where the importance of creative decision making comes into play. A great leader needs to think outside the box, otherwise he will never be able to offer cool and creative solutions to complex problems.
The Front-Line Leader by Chris Van Gorder | Click here for a detailed summary according to Chris Van Gorder
Leaders Open Doors by Bill Treasurer | Click here for a detailed summary according to Bill Treasurer
MOXIE – The Secret to Bold and Gutsy Leadership by John Baldoni | Click here for a detailed summary according to John Baldoni
The Best Place To Work by Ron Friedman | Click here for a detailed summary according to Ron Friedman
Lead To Succeed by Chris Roebuck | Click here for a detailed summary according to Chris Roebuck
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Lead To Succeed according to Chris Roebuck Introduction In this episode Chris Roebuck takes a deep dive into his book, Lead ToRead More
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Lead To Succeed according to Chris Roebuck
In this episode Chris Roebuck takes a deep dive into his book, Lead To Succeed, where he gives you a guide for leading people and organizations at the speed of sound.
In his book, Roebuck delivers a roadmap for 12st century leadership with real life examples and practical advice for being successful. The goal of the book is to help you and your teams significantly improve performance quickly, simply, and effectively.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who need help creating a new leading edge system that improves work performance individually or as a whole team with no cost and little time.
I tried to do something new and something different. If you look at a lot of leadership books they tend to fall into two categories. You need to have both categories in line because when we are in organizations to some degree we are a bit of both. We have our people who report to us but there are others who we have to influence. It’s the group of leaders to leaders who is nearly always forgotten in other leadership books. I believe so passionately that we have overcomplicated leadership and I wanted a book that was so utterly simple anybody could take those ideas in any size organization and make them work straight away.
Just go out there, inspire your people to give you their best and then focus that on what really matters.
The principle of Lead to Succeed is about how to get the best from our people and how do we then focus that onto what really matters to drive our organizations forward and service our customers.
The chapters flow by looking at yourself and how to get the best from your people as an individual leader. And if you are in a small or large organization you need to figure the things that you need to tweak to make that work for everybody, not just your own people.
I think the key is that people have lost track about what leadership is about. They have made it too complicated and we need to get back to the real basics how we make leadership work so it inspires people. To get our organizations of any size working well we have to accept that the world has moved on from where it was before the financial crisis. In many organizations there are fewer people having to do the same work due to job cuts. The complexity of the work that we exist in as leaders has dramatically changed. What that means is that we have to get every single ounce of effort out of the people who work for us through inspiration and leadership.
In the book I have a self-assessment for the leader to assess their work, see how they are doing and search for improvement. Once the leader does these things I give you the correct tools to help you with your assessment.
We know that if every leader in every organization told their people how what they do fits in to the bigger picture it could improve performance by over 30% in those people. If they are given day to day feedback on how they are doing that can improve performance by up to 39%. And if you just show you care that can have an impact of increasing performance by up to 25%.
The conclusion of the book is that if you get your people to really care about your organization by showing you really care about them they will do whatever is necessary to make you a success. If you show through inspirational leadership that you believe in them they will believe in you.
“Leadership is about making a difference and transforming people’s lives.” – Chris Roebuck
I started off training as a Chartered Accountant in the UK and decided that wasn’t the most exciting thing in life. I spent five years in the British Army as an officer then came out and set up my own business as an entrepreneur. From there I did an MBA and got involved with larger organizations such as London Underground, UBS and KPMG. Since finishing that role I’ve worked as an advisor for organizations as diverse as the UK National Health Service, investment banks and I speak around the world.
Over the 30 years or so that I’ve been experiencing organizations one of the things I’ve noticed is that there is a lot of people out who aren’t really able to live up to the potential to do their best work. They aren’t necessarily inspired to go to work but just doing it because they have to. It’s only a fortunate few who are inspired by what they do.
Lone Walk To Freedom by Nelson Mandela
Buy Lead To Succeed by Chris Roebuck today
Visit Chrisroebuck.co to learn more about Chris and download the extract
Follow Chris Roebuck on Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Leaders Open Doors by Bill Treasurer | MOXIE – The Secret to Bold and Gutsy Leadership by John Baldoni | The Front-Line Leader by Chris Van Gorder
Relevant advice and tips: 5 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Overcome Business Failure
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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