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.
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]]>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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]]>A summary of things you should know about MOXIE: The Secret to Bold and Gutsy Leadership according to John Baldoni: Introduction In this episode, John Baldoni takes us on aRead More
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]]>In this episode, John Baldoni takes us on a deep dive into his book MOXIE, where he reveals the secrets to bold and gutsy leadership.
In his book, Baldoni shares the competence, credibility, and confidence that leaders, like Dolly Parton, Sergio Marchionne, Ben Hogan, and Nelson Mandela, use to succeed.
This book is perfect for the entrepreneur who understands leadership, but needs some help preparing to lead not only his or her self but also lead a team more effectively.
I’ve turned the word moxie into an acronym that contributes to the idea of moxie and leadership. Moxie stands for mindfulness, opportunity, x Factor, innovation and engagement. All of these things work together to prepare a leader to lead not only him or her but also lead their teams more effectively.
I would say at least read the prolog and then jump into the chapters that fits you best.
All of us have the ability to be resilient and to demonstrate determination. Don’t be swayed by obstacles in your way, look at obstacle’s as opportunity to succeed in your goals.
In the prolog I talk about moxie which is the guts, gumption and determination that leaders use to succeed. Good leaders have fire, drive and are resilient. Leaders have to have streets smarts and have real world experience.
There are three things that go into your sense of moxie which I call the three C’s – Competence, Credibility and Confidence. Leaders with moxie do all three.
The first chapter of the book is about mindfulness. In this chapter I talk about a hero of mine who is Nelson Mandela. Nelson exemplifies mindfulness which is a sense of being in the present but for a leader it’s not just enough to live in the moment. As a leader you have to be aware of your situation. As a mindful leader you want to know how your people are reacting, what to do to engage them and what the questions are that they are facing.
The second chapter is about opportunity and I begin with a story about Ben Hogan who was a famous golfer. Leaders need to be looking for what the next thing is going to be. In the book I had the opportunity to talk to Adam Grant who wrote Give and Take. Adam says that there are givers and takers and I think as a leader we must be more on the giver side of things. Leaders are those who create opportunities for others and that’s where that giving can nurture it.
The third chapter covers the X factor which is rooted in character. As my icon for X factor I chose to talk about Margaret Thatcher. She exhibits what it means to be grit and gritty. I talk about how it’s important for a leader to have compassion and empathy to understand others. It’s also important for a good leader to humorous, ambitious and curious.
The fourth chapter is about innovation. In this chapter my profile is on Sergio Marchionne who is the CEO of Fiat. I like to think of innovation as the application of creativity. We all have a chance to be creative but it’s what you do with those ideas that make sense. Sometimes we are intimidated of the word innovation because we think we have to hit a homerun with a new product but that’s not exactly what innovation is.
Our final chapter is about engagement which is how a leader gets out of his or her skin and interacts with the people around them. This chapter was a lot of fun to write because my profile was Dolly Parton. In this chapter I talk about how leaders reach across and understand the needs of their people and deliver on them.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 04:50
I am an executive coach and author. My brand new book Moxie is number 13 on my list. I am chair of leadership development at N2growth. My passion is instilling leadership in others and providing them pathways to success.
It came out of the financial crash of 2008 when we saw a lot of senior executives throw up their hands and say they’ve never seen things so bad before. These executives did not demonstrate any sense of resilience, perseverance or moxie. I wanted to talk about how leader’s gutsy gumption will help them and their teams succeed.
What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith
Buy MOXIE by John Baldoni on Amazon today
Visit JohnBaldoni.com to learn more about John and get in touch with him
Visit MoxieBook.com to learn more about the book and download the free tools
Follow John Baldoni on Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Leaders Open Doors by Bill Treasurer
Managing Whole People by Mark Herbert
The Prosperous Leader by Jacob Engel
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 Secret to Bold and Gutsy Leadership with John Baldoni appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
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