A summary of things you should know about No-Drama Leadership according to Marlene Chism: Introduction In this episode Marlene Chism takes a deep dive into her book, No-Drama Leadership, whereRead More
The post TEL 231: No-Drama Leadership with Marlene Chism appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>In this episode Marlene Chism takes a deep dive into her book, No-Drama Leadership, where she discusses how enlightened leaders transform culture in the workplace.
In her book Chism provides you with the practical skills to become a more enlightened leader through real-time examples, case studies, and checklists from some of the most successful leaders in the world. The goal of the book is to teach you how to improve your leadership effectiveness, establish accountability in any workplace, communicate strategically, and increase employee engagement.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who manage a team of employees and are having trouble keeping their emotions aside when it comes to making hasty leadership decisions.
We start to work as leaders with the environment to change the identity of those even in the first level (Supervisors, new leaders) so that they more easily identified with being a leader. I think another differentiator is that I am a female writing about leadership, not from a feminine perspective, but rather from a universal perspective. At the core, leadership is as much about a way of being and not just a way of doing, especially in the world in which we are living today.
You can jump in to any chapter but I have designed it where it all works together and so there are a lot of different ways for a reader to engage with this book.
I want the readers to have the understanding that if today’s leadership, if it’s about anything, it’s about alignment.
The book is divided into three sections. The sections are The Will to Be, The Eyes to See, and The Power to Create.
In The Will to Be, the first section, I’m making the statement that the enlightened leader has the will to be aligned, aware, and accountable. In this section I talk a lot about will verses willingness, desire and so on because what I have learned is that you can’t want something for someone that they don’t want for themselves. If there is no desire to be a certain way, if a leader does not claim their values, there’s really nothing to align to. So alignment, awareness, and accountability all work together. Alignment being a major component that threads throughout the entire book with the understanding that before alignment comes clarity. I make the framework for awareness in a way that is really easy to grasp and divided it into four different types of awareness. The four types are self-awareness, other awareness, cultural awareness, and spiritual awareness. I make a big distinguish in this book between responsibility and accountability with the understanding that, until there’s real ownership, accountability just serves as a way for people to cheat and skew the numbers. When people truly accept ownership through responsibility, accountability becomes a wonderful tool to course correct quickly.
In section two, Eyes to See, the idea is that enlightened leaders have a sixth sense about how to see things and so they see communication differently. These leaders are very committed to their communication, they see it as a critical skill and they see it as a strategy understanding that from the bigger perspective it’s better to get along with people and be upfront about your intentions.
The last section is The Power to Create and the understanding here is that enlightened leaders see themselves as co-creators or creators. Enlightened leaders see other people that way as well so they work collectively to create the right environment, the right engagement, and the right empowerment.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 06:22
“If the company sees the employ as a cog in the wheel the employ sees the company as a paycheck.” – Marlene Chism
I am a consultant, an international speaker, and the author of three books which two have been commercially published, STOP Workplace Drama and No-Drama Leadership.
The inspiration came from my first book, STOP Workplace Drama, and the success of it. I was inspired to write this book for the upper level executives and business owners, not only for their own development but to see from the mountaintop why we need to change the definition of leadership.
The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
Buy No-Drama Leadership by Marlene Chism on Amazon today
Visit MarleneChism.com to learn more about Marlene and her book
Follow Marlene Chism on Facebook and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
The Discomfort Zone by Marcia Reynolds
The Front-Line Leader by Chris Van Gorder
The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make by Hans Finzel
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 TEL 231: No-Drama Leadership with Marlene Chism 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
The post A Preview of The Prosperous Leader with Jacob Engel appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>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
The post A Preview of Winning The Long Game with Steven Krupp appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>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
The post 5 Characteristics of A Great Leader appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>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
The post 5 Characteristics of A Great Leader appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>A summary of things you should know about The Best Place To Work according to Ron Friedman: Introduction In this episode Ron Friedman shares his book, The Best Place toRead More
The post A Preview of The Best Place To Work with Ron Friedman appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>In this episode Ron Friedman shares his book, The Best Place to Work, where he offers game-changing advice for working smarter and turning any organization into an extraordinary workplace.
In his book, Friedman explains how to effectively diffuse a workplace argument, elevate your thinking, and reach smarter decisions. The goal of the book is to provide you with scientifically-proven techniques to help you promote smarter thinking, greater innovation, and stronger performance.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs or business executives who are looking to turn an average, low performing work atmosphere into an effective and extraordinary environment.
I recognize what it’s like to be an entrepreneur because I’m an entrepreneur myself and I wanted to write a user’s guide for someone who is busy. I realize entrepreneurs need action items and this book is really stocked with action items both for managers and for employees.
Every chapter in the book is focused on a different aspect of the workplace. It’s a variety of different topics and not one that you have to read in a linear fashion.
One of the takeaways is that psychological needs are at the heart of employee engagement. If you are looking to create an engaged workforce you need to provide people with psychologically fulfilling experiences.
The second takeaway is that organizations are a lot more successful when they address rather than ignore the limits of both the mind and the body.
The third key takeaway is that rather than encouraging employees to find work life balance, organizations can be a lot more successful by allowing employees to integrate the two aspects of their life in an active way.
This book is a journey of different topics of the psychology of the workplace and summarizing all of this in a short amount of time can be a little bit of a challenge. I am going to explain the top three gaps that I saw in the workplace.
The first gap was how organizations hire. If you are looking to grow a business you are going to be during some hiring and regardless of how well you structure your workplace if you don’t get the right people in your organization it won’t be affective. One of the critical pieces of hiring is the in person interview. As it turns out there is plenty of research showing that these interviewers are not a very effective tool for predicting how good someone is going to be in a particular position. The reason is because we have all of these cognitive biases that prevent us from actually measuring someone’s effectiveness for the role we are looking to fill. I talk in the book about research showing that we tend to favor good looking people because we assume that they are also competent. Another biased is tall people because tall people tend to be viewed as having greater leadership potential. Deep voice candidates are viewed as more trustworthy. All of these impressions affect not just the way that we view that candidate but also the questions that we ask as a result. I talk about all the biases and then I talk about ways that entrepreneurs can correct those biases.
The second gap is how managers motivate. In the book I present a completely different frame for thinking about engagement in a section on what videogames teach us about creating an extraordinary workplace. If you think about your own experience playing videogames you get sucked in doing a whole host of behaviors that you would normally avoid. What’s fascinating about videogames is we spend so much of our personal time doing these activities that we aren’t getting paid for. I think the reason we find these games as enjoyable as we do is because they deliver the very experiences that we seek in our workplace. For examples we have a clear set of goals and we get recognized and rewarded for our work. The key takeaway here is that engagement is not about the actual job; it’s about the conditions that we build around it.
The third gap that I wanted to highlight is the gap in workplace design. Within the book I survey all the research on office design and the psychology of how our minds react differently to different environments and what I argue is that there is a connection between space and innovation. What I mean by that is where we are affects the way we think. There is research that I cover in the book looking at how the ceiling height of a room affects our ability to think abstractly. The rooms’ layout communicates the type of interaction that is expected. I discuss all the ways that companies can leverage a lot of these insights to deliver a better working environment.
“When your attempt rate is high each individual failure becomes a lot less significant.” – Ron Friedman
I am a social psychologist and I specialize in human motivation. I have taught at the University of Rochester, Nazareth College, Hobart and William Smith, and I write for the Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Forbes. I’ve also founded a company called ignite80 that helps smart leaders build extraordinary work places and the way we do that is via speaking, workshops and occasionally consulting. If you are wondering about the name of that company it’s because 80% of employees worldwide have been found to be disengaged at work so we look to correct that.
One of the things I talk about in the book is that the book really happened by accident. I spent years in academics studying human motivation and teaching human psychology courses and my goal was to become a full-time professor. Eventually I achieved that goal and I got a full-time teaching job and when I got there I found myself itching for a new challenge. If you got in to academics for the reasons I did, it was to learn new things and as a professor you are covering the same material again and again.
I wanted that new challenge so I decided to go off into the corporate world where I was hired to work as a pollster. When I got to the corporate world I noticed a lot of the things that I took for granted as a professor. But when I got to the corporate world I witnessed a real disconnect from everything from the way that companies hire and the ways that managers motivate to the design and layout of the modern office. I got to meet a lot of these business owners and a lot of entrepreneurs who are really interested in building great workplaces but just don’t have the tools for doing that.
Getting Things Done by David Allen
The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry
Buy The Best Place to Work by Ron Friedman on Amazon today
Visit Ignite80.com to learn more about Ron’s research and sign up for his mailing list
Follow Ron Friedman on Twitter and LinkedIn
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Leaders Open Doors by Bill Treasurer | Scrum – The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland | The Front-Line Leader by Chris Van Gorder
Relevant advice and tips: 5 Steps to Promote Innovation in the Workplace
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
The post A Preview of The Best Place To Work with Ron Friedman appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>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
The post A Preview of Lead To Succeed with Chris Roebuck appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>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.
The post A Preview of Lead To Succeed with Chris Roebuck appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>A summary of things you should know about The Front-Line Leader according to Chris Van Gorder Introduction In this episode Chris Van Gorder gives a deep dive of his book,Read More
The post A Preview of The Front-Line Leader with Chris Van Gorder appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>A summary of things you should know about The Front-Line Leader according to Chris Van Gorder
In this episode Chris Van Gorder gives a deep dive of his book, The Front-Line Leader where he shares his story, from cop to CEO, and the leadership philosophy that drives all of his decisions.
In his book Chris Van Gorder outlines tactics you can use to take responsibility, inspire others, and achieve breakout results for your organization. The goal of the book is to help you chart a path to better leadership and a more engaged, higher-performing organization.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are looking for actionable tips on increasing employee engagement and performance while creating a culture of high accountability.
Usually the books out there are written by academics and not necessarily by the people that live through a down turn, up swing and complete turnaround of an organization. I wrote this book so that it would be quick and easy to read and it’s in some ways based on many case studies.
This is a book that you can read from beginning to end but it’s also one that you skip from different chapters if you want.
You have to balance your caring for your people with strict accountability. If you don’t hold people accountable you’re not going to be successful as an organization and if you’re not successful as an organization you won’t be able to care for your people.
The first chapter of The Front-Line Leader is titled Know Your People. This chapter is really about the heart of front-line leadership. I tell a story about when I was a young Vice President and running support service areas and to be honest with you I didn’t know how they did their work so I went down and actually started running the floor buffers with them. I wanted them to know that what they were doing was important and that I cared about their work. I had no idea at the time that this kind of engagement was something they had never seen before. This chapter is all about the importance of knowing your employees if you are going to be a good leader.
Chapter two is called Get Outside of Yourself and this is where I tell my story about being injured in the line of duty and the fact that I had to start all over again. We all don’t get to choose our ultimate direction in life and I found all along, even in my senior leadership roles, that it’s good to think of myself as a trainee and recruit again.
The next chapter is called the Credibility chapter and that talks about gaining or regaining corporate credibility.
Chapter for is about telling stories. I tell a story about a group of information services employees I was with one day that were feeling very frustrated because they weren’t getting blamed for an install that they had no real responsibility for the things that were going wrong. I told them about a young lady who came in to deliver her baby and ended up having seizures when 27 doctors, nurses and technicians that rushed in to ultimately save her life. All the equipment that they used to help save this lady and her baby’s life was the systems that these information services employees maintained. I reminded them that even though they weren’t in the room if the systems that they maintained had failed this young lady and her baby would have died.
The next chapter is called Create a Culture of Advocacy and this is really about taking care of your people and how you do that is by asking them questions. We use the Great Place To Work survey and I get over 27 hundred pages of single line comments every year and I read every single one of them. And what we do from there is develop programs from scripts to meet the needs of our people. This chapter speaks about all the different kinds of systems of ways we can get information and the programs we can build to help be the advocates for our people.
The chapter after that is called Take Care of Me. One of the fundamental principles I’ve always believed in is that it’s all about me. Everyone kind of laughs when I say that but the reality is that everyone’s number one responsibility is to care for themselves and their family. Usually work is second and fourth somewhere down the line. If people are insecure, employees are insecure and worrying about the “me” they will not be focused on taking care of the welfare of the company. The whole idea of this chapter is that we need to take the “me” out of the equation. If we can developed the systems and the since of security that our employees need then they will take care of the company.
The next chapter is building loyalty and engagement from the middle and that speaks to building corporate culture from the middle. CEO can’t write a memo and change culture because front-line employees would have a very difficult time doing that. My philosophy has always been that if I can build it from the middle we can actually build a robust culture. In this chapter I speak about programs we have developed to continually educate and build trust with our middle management group. And that in turn has changed the culture of our organization to make it as successful as we are today.
The ninth chapter is Bring People Together and that speaks to the systems that we build, our physician leadership cabinet and our horizontal management. I speak to the different systems that we put in place to take more than three hundred and twenty million dollars of operating cost out of the system over the last four years without a single layoff.
And the last chapter is Ask What If and it speaks to contingency planning. Unfortunately many managers and leaders don’t build contingency plans and as a result when something unexpectedly happens they have to react and it usually cost people their jobs.
“To succeed as a leader borrow this simple lesson from me a former cop…Protect and serve your people.” – Chris Van Gorder
I am the CEO for Scripps Health 2.6 billion dollar integrated healthcare delivery system in San Diego California. I started here 15 years ago of the Chief Operating Officer and found myself bolted in to the position of Chief Executive six months after I arrived when the company was kind of going under in many ways. I’ve been in healthcare for more than 30 year all in California. I started my career as a police officer in LA County when I was injured in the line of duty and was in and out of hospitals for the next year. The city retired me and the hospital that took care of me ultimately hired me as a department director. I eventually went back to graduate school and ended up in healthcare administration. I also volunteer back in law enforcement today and am the Reserved Assistant Sheriff with the San Diego County Sheriffs Department responsible for the law enforcement and search and rescue reserves.
Our organization has been rated as a top 100 employer by Fortune Magazine for the last seven years. In March of 2013 the Fortune Magazine ran a story on me that was spotted by a literary agent who contacted me and encouraged me to write this book. I thought about it and felt like I didn’t have the time to do so but he convinced me otherwise and with the support of the organization I decided to write a book.
The Trust Worthy Leader by Amy Lyman
Buy The Front-Line Leader by Chris Van Gorder on Amazon today
Visit Scripps.org to learn more about Chris and his organization
Visit Wiley.com to find more information about the book
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Conversational Intelligence by Judith E. Glaser | The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver | Patients Come Second by Paul Spiegelman
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
The post A Preview of The Front-Line Leader with Chris Van Gorder appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>