A summary of things you should know about The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make according to Hans Finzel: Introduction In this episode Hans Finzel takes a deep dive into hisRead More
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]]>In this episode Hans Finzel takes a deep dive into his book, The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make, where he shares the common mistakes leaders need to overcome.
In his book Finzel provides newly updated stories and strategies from very successful leaders who have once made continuous mistakes when it comes to effectively leading others. The goal of the book is to teach you what effective leadership looks like, how to overcome typical bad habits that come with being a leader, and how to take your leadership skills to the next level.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are emerging leaders and wish to prevent or improve upon common bad habits that many leaders continue to struggle with.
I think one of the biggest differences is that I have done leadership for 30 years and so I write from experience. This book is very practical, simple, and useable.
You can easily jump in and jump out. Each of the ten chapters are standalone ideas.
The one principle action item that I would want the reader to take away is to learn to be a servant leader, not a top down leader. A servant leader puts the good of the team in front of their own selfish desires.
Firstly, I want the reader to know that I have personally made all 10 of these mistakes and learned from them all. I chose these top 10 because as I went on my journey as a CEO of a 35 million dollar international nonprofit and I began to conclude that these were the top 10 of all the mistakes that I see leaders make.
Of all the leadership sins the number one mistake leaders make is the top down attitude. Most think that they are on top because they are the smartest, they founded the company, and they know best. This is the worst mistake a leader can make and I talk to people all the time that work under these leaders and they get very, very frustrated.
The second mistake is putting paperwork before people work. 90% of effectiveness in leadership is people skills, the software of working well with people. But the higher you go into leadership there is more paperwork and technology that stands in the way of giving yourself to people.
The third mistake is the absence of affirmation. What could be better than a pay raise? It’s been proven that people praise affirmation and sometimes this is a blind spot for leaders. People desperately need affirmation and it’s a huge piece of leadership.
The fourth mistake is that there is no room for mavericks. A leader makes a mistake if they don’t allow mavericks to thrive and a maverick is just an entrepreneur that doesn’t follow rules. This chapter will show you how to cultivate people who think outside the box.
Chapter five covers dictatorship and decision making, Getting Beyond I Know All the Answers. This whole idea of being a dictator in decision making frustrates people so much because they want to have a part in the big decisions of the company.
Chapter six is what I call Dirty Delegation, Refusing to Relax and Let Go. When I ask an audience what is it the most that frustrates them about their boss, I get this response all the time. In this chapter I go into all the reasons why really gifted and high power leaders don’t delegate well.
Chapter seven is Communication Chaos and this is just about clear lines and clarity in the organization.
Chapter eight covers missing the clues of corporate culture and a leader has to understand this if they are going to lead through it.
Chapter nine is Success without a Successor, Planning Your Departure the Day You Start. One of the final acts of great leadership is to cultivate the people who will replace you. I don’t think you should see that at a threat but a really great leader can go on vacation because they have trained other people to step in. If you can never go on vacation because the place will fall apart without you, you’re not cultivating successors.
Finally, Chapter 10 is Failure to Focus on The Future. We have to be listeners and learners because the future where we are going to sell our business is so very different from the past or the present.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 05:20
“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men and women to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” –Theodore Roosevelt
I was born and raised in Huntsville Alabama. My father was a rocket scientist and a part of NASA. I have spent my career mostly in the nonprofit world and became more and more interested in leadership after 20 years as a CEO of one of the nonprofits. I eventually left to start my own work fulltime helping leaders and managers do a better job. My passion is to really help leaders take their leadership to the next level. Today I do a lot of podcasting on leadership and I keep turning out books because I love to write about leadership. Lastly, I am a father of four kids and married to a wonderful wife.
The inspiration came after working under a bad leader. I worked for a guy that just totally frustrated me and stood in the way of my visions and dreams for what I wanted to do. He crushed my spirit to the point where I lost respect and finally left. When I became a leader I wanted to study how to be a good leader, not a bad leader and how to empower people instead of frustrating people.
Good to Great by Jim Collins
Buy The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make by Hans Finzel on Amazon today
Visit HansFinzel.com to learn more about Hans and his books
Follow Hans Finzel on Facebook and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Make It Matter by Scott Mautz
Everybody Paddles by Charles Archer
The Culture Engine by Chris Edmonds
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.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Managing Whole People according to Mark Herbert: Introduction In this episode Mark Herbert shares his book, Managing Whole People where he givesRead More
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]]>In this episode Mark Herbert shares his book, Managing Whole People where he gives you 30 years of mistakes, experimentation, and learnings from the personal journey of an HR director and a senior consultant.
In his book, Herbert provides you with a guide to the true leadership of managing people based on his 5 basic elements of respect, responsibility, information, rewards, and loyalty.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs and business owners who assume a role in managing employees and are having trouble building the proper relationships to increase productivity.
I tried to incorporate over 30 years of experience including the mistakes I made, the things that I learned and the positive outcomes that came out of my experiments.
If there is a particular issue you want to focus on you can skip to that part of the book or you can just read it straight through.
The most important thing that I want the reader to walk away with is you manage whole people, you don’t just manage their intellectual intelligence, their emotional intelligence but you manage it all. Leadership is a gift that is given to you by people who choose to follow you.
The first part of the book talks about a guy who was around a bunch of years ago who came up with something called the human resources pyramid. This pyramid still speaks to me in a very compelling way even 30 years later. He says that every employee and organization asks a series of six questions and they ask them in a particular order. The six questions are…
What is my job?
How am I doing?
Does anybody care?
What are we doing, what is our organizational mission?
How are we doing?
How can I help?
What I have found as an executive and HR person is that we spent an enormous amount of time answering the last three questions but what we did not create a sense of alignment for people. In this book I tried to answer these six questions. What is interesting now is, 15 years ago we didn’t talk about employee engagement. What they call employee engagement today I call moving from compliance to commitment.
My model is based on five very basic elements. The first element that I talk about is the element of respect. We need to recognize that we don’t manage human capital we manage people. The second element is the idea of responsibility. Responsibility says that I give you an idea of the context of where you fit into the organization and I give you the autonomy in order to complete that work and do it well. The third element is the context of information. The fourth element is the area of rewards. When I talk about rewards I am talking about time off, compensation, acknowledgement and recognition. The last element is the concept of loyalty. When I talk about loyalty in my compliance to commitment model I am talking about mutual loyalty. You cannot get more loyalty from people than you are willing to give.
In the next part of the book I talk about my experimentation while working in situations beginning in a copper mine in Arizona working through a financial services organization. Seeing that by actually putting my model to the test we really could see enormous improvements in performance. By following that model through and doing it consistently we would get the kind of gain so that there is something in that for us. The tough part is it’s not a human resource system, it’s a culture. The nice part about it is it doesn’t have to be in one culture. I would also submit that this model most often works in any setting.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 04:35
“Culture eats strategy every time.” – Mark Herbert
My original corporate training was in the human resources area. I have since evolved from that into some C- level responsibilities and operations. And for the last 15 years I have operated as a management consultant working with organizations around their relationships ranging from fortune 100’s to small entrepreneurial businesses.
The big inspiration for me was coming up through a time where the whole idea of human resources management and leadership was not held at high esteem. A number of different conflicting philosophies out there were to communicate to people that when we were managing people, we managed them one at a time and we managed the entirety of who they are.
Why This Horse Won’t Drink by Ken Matejka
It’s Your Ship by D. Michael Abrashoff
Buy Managing Whole People by Mark Herbert on Amazon today
Visit NewParadigmsLLC.com to learn more about Mark and his blog
Visit BestThinking.com to read more articles by Mark
Follow Mark Herbert on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
The Discomfort Zone by Marcia Reynolds
Lead to Succeed by Chris Roebuck
The Front-Line Leader by Chris Van Gorder
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 Managing Whole People with Mark Herbert appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
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