In a recent survey conducted by Development Dimensions International (DDI), a global human resource consulting firm, and Badbossology, a bad-boss protection resource site, workers offered insights on what makes a good leader and where their current boss falls short.

So what topped the list? Of 21 potential ‘leadership’ sins, respondents selected ‘being everyone’s friend’ as their number one choice with ‘micromanagement’ right behind it.

Male bosses rated high on ‘arrogance’ and female bosses were criticized for not delegating. And reinforcing the stereotype of men as thrill-seekers, male workers also found their bosses to be four times more risk averse than female workers.

What didn’t make the list? ‘Brown-noser,’ ‘defensive’ and ‘volatile’ were at the bottom of the list of sins for all respondents.

This Boss’s Day (Oct. 16th), DDI is giving workers around the world a chance to create a boss from scratch — with only the characteristics they want — and audition what they think could be the perfect boss. Build-A-Boss (www.ddiworld.com/buildaboss) is an interactive Web program that allows users to select four characteristics from a list of 25 positive and negative traits to build their current or ideal manager.

“People complain about their bosses endlessly and we’re challenging them to see if they can do better,” Rich Wellins Senior Vice President, DDI said. “We see the Build-A-Boss as an engaging way for employees to really get a handle on those traits they want in their ideal boss — or to use it to profile the strengths and weaknesses of their current boss.”

Build-A-Boss will let you try out a new boss by picking your favorite characteristics, honor your boss with a portrait of all their best traits or give your boss feedback on their management style in a less threatening forum. And the research showed that workers really had a lot of opinions on their boss’s performance.

Significant observations from the survey of more than 900 in the workplace include:

Trust is at the top of their wish list. If workers could give their boss a gift of a character trait this Boss’s Day, they would wrap up ‘trust in employees’ and ‘honesty and integrity’ and ‘team building skills’ as the three top choices. “Everyone wants to feel that they are trusted and valued in their jobs — these selections relate to these very fundamental human needs and how they transfer to the workplace,” Wellins said.

The stereotype of the male boss prevails for some. More than three-quarters of males would prefer to work for a male boss, while female workers are split down the middle in their preference. The majority of respondents (70 percent) between the ages of 34 and 45 said their ideal boss is male, showing that the more traditional view of ‘boss’ continues with this specific generation. “This helps to address why women are still having trouble breaking into the leadership ranks,” Wellins said. “This perception needs to change because women are equally competent in leadership roles.”

Older workers want to work for their peers. Workers 45 and up would prefer to work for a boss their own age, instead of an older or younger manager. However, nearly half of respondents in this group actually work for bosses younger than them. “With the expected mass retirement of the baby boomers, those older workers who want to hang around need to get used to younger bosses,” Wellins said.

Smarts matter for the boss. One in seven workers says their boss is just not smart, when asked if their boss had book smarts or street smarts. But not everyone saw their boss in a dunce cap — nearly half of respondents respect their boss’s intellect and think their boss has both book and street smarts.

Career development slows for older generations. While 35 percent of respondents gave a resounding ‘yes’ when asked about the boss advocating for career development and advancement, responses progressively decrease as employees get older and more advanced in their careers. “As workers get older and become more self-sufficient, it gives the impression that they needs less development, and managers focus more on 20-something workers,” Wellins said. “Some of this disparate focus makes sense, but at the same time, with a continued war for talent, we need to find ways to motivate our aging workforce.”

Leadership skills were the most serious deficit. Almost one third of bosses were considered bad because of ‘lack of leadership skills’, and more male bosses were criticized for their poor leadership skills. Females, on the other hand, were considered bad bosses because of their lack of ‘sound business judgment/acumen’ with 14 percent of the votes (male bosses had 9.6 percent).

About Badbossology.com: Difficult bosses are a costly problem, and surveys indicate that approximately 40% of employees have had to deal with a bad boss. Badbossology.com is a free resource site that provides news and resources on bad boss protection strategies to help both individuals and their companies. It takes a responsible balanced approach and references material from sources such as The Chicago Tribune, CNNMoney.com, Fast Company, The Harvard Business School, and US and international government sites. Visitors can raise questions, participate in discussion forums, and save key resources along with personal notes for fast future reference using the site’s secure repository. For further information, visit www.badbossology.com

About DDI: Since 1970, Development Dimensions International, a global human resources consulting firm, helps organizations close the gap between today’s talent capability and future talent needs. DDI’s expertise includes designing and implementing selection systems, and identifying and developing front-line to executive leadership talent. With more than 1,000 associates in 75 offices in 26 countries and headquarters in Pittsburgh, PA, the firm advises half of the Fortune 500. For more information go to http://www.ddiworld.com/aboutddi

Peter Drucker is a respected author and opinion leader (he invented the process of “management by business objectives”) and I’m positive he would agree that one notable way to get the best performance from “workers” and maximize their “productivity” is through coaching; an interactive communication process between members of an organization aimed at exerting a positive influence on performance.

Is coaching developing some momentum? At the 2003 ASTD Conference, President Tina Sung spoke of coaching skills as being one of the four emerging trends for the future. Type “coaching skills” into Google and you’ll find about 5 million entries. Graduate Schools of Management and the AIM run courses on it. Even my local suburban newspaper advertises coaching franchises. The AITD’s February meeting in Sydney featured Coaching and drew 85 participants. Who knows, we may soon be watching prime time TV and marvel at a cluster of coaches renovating a block of home units. Now that’s what you call acceptance!

Since coaching is something done with people, rather than to people, just how well prepared (both in skills and attitude) are managers to coach? Managers typically have an innate interpersonal technique, and so perhaps management’s perceived value of coaching can be indicated by how readily it’s being absorbed into business culture and put into practice.

Kate Farrelly reported in the Sydney Morning Herald (March 2003) that in “a study of 35,000 managers in Australia and New Zealand their leadership style is oriented towards fear of failure and denial of responsibility rather than pursuing the company’s goals and developing good staff relations.” The ASTD’s journal (T&D, March 2003) reports Mercer’s “Effective Management Practices Survey” that found “78% of employees surveyed said their managers routinely conduct annual performance reviews, (while only) 26% said managers routinely provide ongoing coaching and constructive performance feedback.” So, managers are either not coaching or the people they’re coaching don’t know when they are being coached! But this data indicates that coaching is one of the most avoided of all leadership tasks.

So why in some managers is there a disconnect between the manager’s ability and/or willingness to coach and their drive to achieve the organization’s goals?

Further to this disconnect, we need to make the distinction between “coaching skills” and “effective coaching”. Managers coach when they are willing and able to address the effective and efficient performance of tasks. If coaching occurs within an obvious context of a shared vision, corporate objectives, organizational values and performance indicators then what’s achieved is effective coaching.

Finding solutions to this disconnect provides trainers with an opportunity to develop a role as a performance consultant - someone who has a primary role of improving productivity, first through analysis of the cause of the issue and then, designing appropriate behavior change programs. Start by understanding how the managers think. What they do and don’t react to and where their focus is aimed when it comes to people. Stop using “training language” and start using “management language” to improve understanding. Find out what business processes and outcomes managers measure in order to determine productivity and profitability. From a selfish perspective, being an advocate for coaching and being able to communicate this business case for coaching places you in a position of higher value within the organization. You show yourself as someone who is on a similar wavelength as the managers in helping drive the business.

Some managers confuse coaching with simply giving advice. As Gore Vidal said, “There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.” The reality is often that, as Gordon Dickson noted, “some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it.” So, what is another alternative, a more effective approach?

There is an increasing need to improve involvement and engagement of all employees to achieve business outcomes. Managers are continually asked to improve productivity without additional resources. One option is to enhance behavior and performance through interactive communication and influence, such as coaching. Managers need to invite employees to participate as partners, develop trusting relationships and combine everyone’s best efforts into creating business solutions. Managers also need to use their coaching skills with people within (who don’t necessarily report to them) and outside their organization.

Typical business performance indicators include productivity, employee turnover, profitability and customer satisfaction. The Gallup Organization published a study that examined the relationship between employee perceptions and these performance indicators (Curt Coffman and Jim Harter, 1999). The study found that,

“within successful business units (with above average performance) employees have clear expectations, close relationships, can see how what they do relates to “something significant,” and have an ongoing opportunity to contribute to that “something significant” while learning and growing as individuals.”

Interestingly, coaching skills often is associated with leadership. Warren Bennis (an associate of Peter Drucker) has 4 characteristics of leadership:

1. commitment to a mission
2. communicating a vision
3. self confidence
4. personal integrity

The first two characteristics involve effective coaching and the last two are personal qualities of a leader. The first two address the performance indicators mentioned by Coffman and Harter above and deal with the question, “what standard or parameters do I coach to?” It’s difficult to coach people if you have little grasp of your team’s purpose or image of the future that they can attain. A workable vision should include milestones that indicate progression towards realization. Without these two, team members will have little guidance and will be left to their own devices as to what successful growth means. Therefore encouraging coaching fosters leadership as people acquire a mindset, communication skills and values that will help build partnerships and commitment to the organization’s goals. Aligning organization business outcomes with employee needs while addressing their performance imperfections, via the activity of coaching, gives leadership meaning and challenge.

Added to this, most organizations have company value statements that say something like “we value our people”. An effective coaching skills strategy that emphasizes collaboration and respect rather than control and faultfinding, adds a tangible aspect to this value. People can see an effort being expended in helping them do a good job and experiencing a sense of achievement.

Effective coaching skills, therefore, contributes to not only a “push” to achieving business outcomes, but also a “pull” towards effective leadership.

By using the CMOE eight step coaching skills model, rather than free form coaching, you introduce a systematic approach to improving performance. Typically, people judge themselves on the basis on their intentions and most managers are well intentioned, doing their best. But they also report that sometimes they achieve a performance improvement result and sometimes not, and don’t know why. Coaching effectively is not as simple as some models and writers would lead us to believe. There is a critical balance between being supportive and caring and being clear and direct. A systematic approach teamed with a collaborative attitude keeps the coaching process objective and focused on business outcomes. This facilitates giving feedback by reducing personal bias. Together with a shared vision, coaching will produce changes in skills that produce measurable results and not just random activity.

A systematic coaching approach is very helpful with the more “difficult” people. Kate Farrelly notes that most managers try to avoid conflict, almost at all costs. Conflict is usually the natural result of people pursuing different aims with resolution traditionally a contest of power or guile. Some managers avoid or deny the existence of the issue because they feel it may demotivate the person or the team, or maybe they feel they don’t have enough skills to coach this individual. The reality is that the aims of those in conflict are rarely clear or agreed. Conflict lessens when the coach and coachee can agree on the kind of future they both want; the way things should be - shared vision and shared expectations, boundaries and guidelines. In fact, if all coaches (within the organization, business unit, etc) use the same systematic approach/ model they talk a common language - it’s easy for them to share tips and techniques that work, especially on these more challenging people.

Managers, employees and established work practices are under pressure to change and achieve results never before asked of them. Effective coaching skills, while not being a resolution, can be a major contributor to the solutions. Effective systematic coaching is an opportunity to build meaningful partnerships between members of an organization who meet these challenges. Without effective coaching skills, progress is just that much harder.

Mark Twain said it all, “I’m all for progress, it’s change that I don’t like!”

About the Author

Mark Wayland works for The Center for Management and Organization Effectiveness, Inc. If you would like to learn more about CMOE’s coaching skills and discover what 100,000 managers have learned around the world, please contact a Regional Manager at (801) 569-3444.

In my working with leaders worldwide for more than two decades, I’ve noticed a character trait that the most successful share: They focus consistently on understanding and supporting the people whom they lead.

For instance, you could say, “You need …” which is a good way out. Or, you could say, “The team needs … ” which is a better way out.

Or, you could say, “Do you need? …” Which is the best way out, especially with a question mark attached. A corollary to this question is, “What do you need from me to help you get the team to succeed?”

Asking a question rather than using a declarative is often more effective because it gets people reflecting upon their situation. After all, we can’t motivate anyone to do anything. They have to motivate themselves. And they best motivate themselves when they reflect on their character and their situation.

A question can trigger such reflection and ultimately lead to their making the choice to be motivated to be your cause leader. You may not like the answer; but often their answer, no matter what it is, can better lead to more results being achieved than your declaration can.

Furthermore, asking questions like, “What do you need for the team to succeed? …” works much better than saying “I need … ” because you are forging a “critical confluence” - the confluence of your or your organization’s needs with their needs.

You may think I’m putting too fine a point on these changes; and to a degree, you’d be right. Making simply one change may not be important; but when you multiple the changes many times during the day, day in and day out, month in and month out, their aggregate can add up to tremendous change indeed. In fact, it can add up to job and career transformation.

So, the next time you are tempted to say, “I need … “, don’t. Instead, say, “Do you need? …” or “What do you need? … ” Over time, you’ll forge great changes in how people relate to you and your leadership, changes that will lead to substantial increases in results.

However, watch out: In getting out of the “I need …” trap, you may find yourself in another trap. Asking “What do you need? …” might play right into their hands of people who don’t’ trust you or want to sabotage your leadership or use you to further their own ends. Such people want to lead you down their private rabbit hole. They want to get you exploring things that have nothing to do with your getting the results you need and everything to do with satisfying the needs of their ego or whatever agenda they have. “Don’t you think you need? … ” could be their ticket to ride. Before you ask the question, be aware of the ride and how to get off.

THE SECOND TRAP. The “You do … ” trap. Most leaders miss a great opportunity that presents itself to them daily. Since leadership is all about having people take action that gets results, it’s important to understand the kind of action people should take to get the best results. You can ensure it is the best kind of action by challenging people not simply to do a job but to take leadership of that job. After all, there’s a big difference between people doing and leading; and when you are constantly saying, “You do … ” you are missing out on getting a lot more results.

Now that you know how to avoid two leadership traps, you’ll find that your career will be boosted in many marvelous ways.

About the Author

Brent Filson. The author of 23 books, Brent Filson’s recent books are, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO GIVE GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS. He has been helping leaders of top companies worldwide get audacious results. Sign up for his free leadership e-zine and get a free white paper: “49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results,” at http://www.actionleadership.com

A human resources director told me, “Brent, we hire people for their skills and knowledge, but we fire them or fail to promote them or promote them for their leadership abilities — or lack thereof.”

In other words, throughout their careers, people are promoted to take charge of bigger and bigger groups — until they take over a group that’s too big for their leadership abilities.

One main reason they come up short in abilities is they are constantly and unconsciously falling into two leadership traps.

I’ll describe the traps, how to get out of them, and how not to get into them in the first place.

The traps can be particularly deadly because they are in many cases self-set — and even self-triggered. What’s worse: the vast majority of leaders who get into them don’t have a clue they’re caught. It’s one thing to be in a trap and know you’re in it: You try to get out. But it’s a problem of another magnitude to be in a trap and not know you’re in it. In that case, you’ll stay there.

THE FIRST TRAP: “I need …”

A marketing leader in a major global company was stumbling. His team was failing to achieve the targeted results. He told me, “The good news is they do what I tell them. The bad news is they do what I tell them — ONLY what I tell them. Other than firing the worst of the bunch or transferring others out of the team, I can’t figure out what to do. And if I don’t do it soon, I’ll be the one fired or transferred!”

I asked if I could sit in on a team meeting to scope out the situation. “Be my guest,” he said. “But I don’t see what good it’ll do. The problem isn’t in the meetings. Everybody agrees what needs to get done when they’re in the meetings. The problem is the results after the meetings.”

The meeting had been going only for only a couple of minutes when I saw what was wrong. Afterwards, alone in his office, I told him: “They’re not the problem. YOU’RE the problem. You’ve fallen into two leadership traps.”

He looked at me incredulously. “What traps?”

I explained that leaders often fall into traps that prevent them from getting the full measure of results they’re capable of. And the deadliest traps are often the ones of their own making.

The first trap is the “I need . . . ” trap.

Leaders fall into this trap when they say, “I need you to hit the marketing targets, I need you to get more productive, I need you to (fill in the blank)”. I NEED … I NEED … I NEED ….

Why is this a trap? The answer: the Leader’s Fallacy. The Leader’s Fallacy is the mistaken belief by leaders that their own needs are automatically reciprocated by the needs of the people they lead. It’s a fallacy because automatic reciprocity doesn’t exist. But so many leaders go blithely along driven by the Fallacy and so fall into the “I need . . . ” trap.

For instance, the marketing leader thought he was motivating people to get great results. However, during the meeting, he was constantly repeating, “I need … “. So, in reality, he was ordering people to get average results. Of course, leaders don’t order people to get average results. But average results are usually the outcome of order leadership.

The order is the lowest form of motivation. The order leader’s focus of my-way-or-the-highway can’t get great results from people on a consistent basis simply because people usually can’t be ordered to undertake extraordinary endeavors. They must choose to do so. When he said, “The bad news is they ONLY do what I tell them.”, he was unknowingly afflicting them. They were simply responding to an order then going into a kind of suspended animation (masked by busy work) until the next order came along.

Tomorrow, in Part 2, I’ll describe how to get out of this trap.

About the Author

Brent Filson. The author of 23 books, Brent Filson’s recent books are, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO GIVE GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS. He has been helping leaders of top companies worldwide get audacious results. Sign up for his free leadership e-zine and get a free white paper: “49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results,” at http://www.actionleadership.com

To get the best results as a leader, the people you lead should be saying in one way or the other after you speak, “Let’s march!”

When you speak to people as a leader, it’s not what you say that’s really important, what’s important is the action people take after you have had your say. And if you are not having the people you lead take the right action, you’re giving short shrift to your leadership, their trust in you, and their desire to take action for you.

Here are the 8 ways of right action to get people marching in the right way for the right purpose at the right time in the right direction.

I’ll delineate the first four ways in part one of this two-part article then in part two, I’ll describe the last four ways.

Action must be:

1. PHYSICAL. Action is not what the audience thinks or feels. It is what the audience actually does. Usually, the audience takes action with their feet and hands and tools. When thinking of what action you want your audience to take, imagine their actually doing something physical, and you are on track. Getting your audience to take right action involves challenging them to do one specific thing. When Ronald Reagan said in his speech at the Berlin Wall, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” he was delivering a call-to-action that was a stunning turning point in the Cold War. In your day to day leadership activities, you are probably not meeting such daunting challenges as winning a war, but you can use the principle to raise the effectiveness of your leadership to much higher levels. 
2. PURPOSEFUL. People who take action are useless to an organization. It is only those people who take action for results who are useful. Make sure their action has purpose. The secret of success is constancy of purpose. When your audience does take action, they should know exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it. Purpose in leadership talk has three aspects: reason, feeling and awareness. People should understand the rational justification for the action; they should have an emotional commitment to the action; and be fully mindful that they are taking action.
3. HONEST. If you trick people into taking action or lie to get them to take action, you’ll damage that element on which all motivation is based, trust. Afterward, you may be able to order them to do a job, but you will never motivate them. Be honest with yourself in developing your call-to-action. Marcus Aurelius said, “Never esteem anything as an advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.” Be honest with them in challenging them to act. I do not recommend this merely on trustworthy grounds but on eminently practical ones as well. After all, we do not know how good we are as leaders unless we are challenging the people to be better than they think they are. And they cannot be persuaded to accept that challenge if they think we’re deceiving them or that you are deceiving yourself.
4. MEANINGFUL. Action gives meaning to the emotion your audience feels. Emotion alone cannot get results. It’s action that gets results. Action validates emotion, and vice versa.Leaders who find little meaning in their jobs or the results associated with those jobs, shouldn’t be leaders, or they should change jobs and/or results. Most leaders understand this. But few leaders understand that meaning also involves the jobs of the people they are leading and the attitudes of those people toward those jobs and the results the jobs aim for.

   Your cause should be meaningful to the people who must carry it out. If it is only your cause and not their cause, the action they take will get insufficient results. Your cause will be meaningful to them when that actions they take to meet the challenges of that cause are solving the problems of THEIR needs. So, before you challenge them to take action, identify their needs and the problem solving actions.

5. LINKED TO NEED. The people’s needs are their reality. If you are an order leader, you clearly do not have to know their needs. You simply exhibit a my-way-or-the-highway attitude. But if you want to motivate them to take action, you need to understand that reality. Because their motivation is not your choice, it’s their choice. Your role is to communicate, their role is to motivate, to motivate themselves. It’s their choice. It’s not yours. So their needs are not only their reality, in the leadership equation, their needs are the only reality. They don’t care about your needs. They don’t care about your reality. They only care about their reality. Tie the action you want them to take to THEIR NEEDS, not yours. Which means of course that you have to clearly identify their needs.
6. URGENT: Patience is a virtue, but it can also be a tender trap. Urgency is a results-multiplier. A Roman centurion said the secret to instilling urgency in the troops was summed up in two words, “hit them.” His credo lives today in the order leader — not necessarily in a physical sense but more importantly in a psychological sense. But trying to gain urgency through “hit them” is far less effective than having urgency come from the people’s internal motivation. Here’s a process to have people take urgent action: IDENTIFY THEIR NEEDS, SEE THE PROBLEMS IN THEIR NEEDS, AND HAVE THEIR TAKING ACTION PROVIDE SOLUTIONS TO THOSE PROBLEMS.

   For instance, in a police academy, an instructor came into the room with a note that said CLEAR OUT THIS ROOM IMMEDIATELY. The first cadet ordered his colleagues out. A few cadets left but most stayed. The instructor handed the note to a second cadet who pleaded for his classmates to leave. Again, a few left but most stayed. Finally, the instructor gave the note to a third cadet. This cadet understood how to identify needs and have people take action to solve those needs. He said two words, which emptied the room. “Lunch break!”

   People are always willing to take ardent action to solve the problems of their needs. The question is can you identify those needs. Once you do, you hare half way home to getting them to take such action.

7. DEADLINE: All action you have people take must have a deadline. Otherwise, it might become a low priority for them, and they will not be especially urged to take it. Be constantly monitoring yourself when motivating people to take action by asking, “Have I a put a deadline to this action?” If you haven’t, do it.
8. FED BACK: True motivation isn’t what the people do in your sight. True motivation is what they do after they have left your sight. Many leaders get the “head fake” from the people they’re leading — their nodding their heads and saying, “Yes,” face-to-face with the leader; but inside saying, “No.” When they leave your presence, they do what they want, not what you want. Make sure that the action you challenge them to take is fed back to you, so that you are aware — and they are aware that you are aware — of that action.  

Leaders do nothing more important than get results, and results come from people taking action.

The trouble is, most leaders have people get a fraction of the potential results because these leaders misunderstand what action really is — and in that misunderstanding misapply and misuse it.

When speaking to people, keep the eight ways of right action in mind so people take the right action to achieve the right results.

About the Author

Brent Filson. The author of 23 books, Brent Filson’s recent books are, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO GIVE GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS. He has been helping leaders of top companies worldwide get audacious results. Sign up for his free leadership e-zine and get a free white paper: “49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results,” at http://www.actionleadership.com

If ignorance is bliss then leaders going around blithely adhering to the Leader’s Fallacy have cornered the market on happiness.

The truth is, it’s more realistic to believe in INVERSE RECIPROCITY: i.e., whatever motivates you, “DE-motivates” the people.

That’s especially so for leaders who are trying to motivate people to meet extraordinary challenges.

You’ll never know how good you are as a leader unless you are motivating others to be better than they think they are. In that endeavor, you’ll inevitably get at least some of the people angry.

Most people are settled into a comfortable status quo and resist and resent being challenged to break out.

But if you aim to get great results, people not only have to be pushed but more importantly, they must be challenged to push themselves.

So, if you’re not getting some people angry with you over the pushing, you’re doing something wrong as a leader, you’re not challenging people enough.

This doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t have the people share in your enthusiasms. You must. That sharing is called CRITICAL CONFLUENCE, the joining of your enthusiasms and theirs so they are as enthusiastic as you about meeting the challenges you face. Until a critical confluence happens, you can’t get great results consistently.

The Leader’s Fallacy is an obstacle to the critical confluence. Don’t think the Critical Confluence will happen automatically. Know instead that you must work hard to achieve it.

After all, you yourself must be motivated about those challenges. If you’re not motivated, you shouldn’t be leading. But your motivation is irrelevant simply because it’s a given.

Here’s what’s relevant: Can you transfer your motivation to the people so they are as motivated as you are? And can you translate their motivation into action that achieves results?

Everyone has major needs that shape their thinking and their actions day in and day out. If you want those people to take ardent action for you, you must provide solutions to the problems of those needs so the action you have them take brings them closer to realizing those solutions.

By the way, the critical confluence is not “win/win”. It’s much deeper and richer. Unlike “win/win”, the critical confluence is an on-going relationship process from which flow mutually beneficial expectations and solutions.

Here are three steps you can take to help make a critical confluence happen.

1. Understand their needs.
2. Turn their needs into problems.
3. Have their commitment to your cause be a solution to their problems.

To get the best out of people, we must embrace the best in them. Whenever you need to lead people to tackle important challenges, recall the Leader’s Fallacy. Know that their commitment to your cause doesn’t come automatically. You have to earn it by embracing the best of who they are. When you take the trouble to build a critical convergence, you’ll see a significant jump in the results you have others achieve.

About the Author

Brent Filson. The author of 23 books, Brent Filson’s recent books are, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO GIVE GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS. He has been helping leaders of top companies worldwide get audacious results. Sign up for his free leadership e-zine and get a free white paper: “49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results,” at http://www.actionleadership.com

What’s not easy is getting the right results … to the right degree … at the right time … for the right purpose … in the right ways.

It’s been my experience consulting with thousands of leaders worldwide during the past two decades that the vast majority of leaders get the wrong results — or the right results in the wrong ways.
Here’s a tool to help you get the right results. It’s called the SAMMER Test, and you can use it continually throughout your career.

The SAMMER Test is simply a way of testing the results you intend to achieve, or the results you actually achieve, to insure they are the right results.

SAMMER is an acronym. Results should be:

S - Sizable. Whatever results you are getting now, you can always get more. Not only can you get more; but as a leader, you MUST CONTINUALLY STRIVE TO GET MORE. Sizable is not an option. Sizable is a necessity.

A - Achievable. Many leaders impose unrealistic expectations on people and so lose their trust and confidence. People must be challenged to do what they don’t think they can do, but they must also be able, ultimately, to do it.

Here’s a tip for making achievable happen in the realm of sizable. Say to whom you are challenging: “I know you don’t think you can meet the challenge I set for you. But I know you can, and I’m going to support you in every way possible.”

M - Meaningful. Leaders who find little meaning in their jobs or the results associated with those jobs, shouldn’t be leaders, or they should change jobs and/or results. Most leaders understand this. But few leaders understand that meaning also involves the jobs of the people they are leading and the attitudes of those people toward those jobs and the results the jobs aim to achieve. These leaders stumble on what I call the Leader’s Fallacy.

The Fallacy operates when leaders believe that their beliefs are automatically reciprocated by the people’s beliefs.

The fact is, because leadership is challenging people to do what they would not otherwise do, leaders’ belief is seldom reciprocated. Automatic reciprocity is an illusion. If it happens, great. But for the most part, leaders have to work at making reciprocity happen.

M - Measurable. There is no value in business without measurements. Measurements link disparate things, organize activities, and help unify those activities. Apply precise, meaningful measurements to the results we want before we challenge others to get them. Without measurements, we can’t make consistent improvements. Make sure your measurement system conforms to four attributes, that they are RELIABLE, REPEATABLE, ACHIEVABLE, and CONTROLLABLE.

E - Ethical. As a leader, you not only have to get results, but you have to get the right results. Results only happen when people take action. To get the right results, they must take right action. Ethics help promote right action.

Ethics, then, are not traffic lights, they’re running gears. Ethics shouldn’t impede your getting results, they should help you get more results.

R - Repeatable. Evaluate your leadership and the leadership of others not only on the results you achieve and don’t achieve but on the results that you REPEATEDLY achieve.

When we talk about repeatability, we must deal with process. A process is a series of mental or physical steps leading to results.

Often, results are not as important as the processes you develop in getting the results.

Repeatability is promoted when you identify the steps that helped you get those results then apply those steps as a process to get more results in that area or get additional results in other areas.

In that way, you make repeatability a driving force of your leadership.

Just because you’re getting results doesn’t mean you’re being successful. Success hinges on getting the right results in the right ways. Whenever you must lead people to achieve results, apply the SAMMER Test to clarify, prioritize, and give direction to the actions that must be taken to achieve right results.

About the Author

Brent Filson. The author of 23 books, Brent Filson’s recent books are, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO GIVE GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS. He has been helping leaders of top companies worldwide get audacious results. Sign up for his free leadership e-zine and get a free white paper: “49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results,” at http://www.actionleadership.com

Drill down through goals and aims and aspirations and ambitions of the people you lead, and you’ll hit the bedrock of human motivation, the dream.

For instance, Martin Luther King did not say, “I have a goal.” Or “I have an aim.” The power of that speech was in the “I have a dream”.

A dream embraces our most cherished longings. It embodies our very identity. We often won’t feel fulfilled as human beings until we realize our dreams.

If leaders are not tapping into the power of people’s dreams, if leaders are simply setting goals (as important as goals are), they miss the best of opportunities to help those people take ardent action to achieve great results.

But what do people dream? How can we discover their dreams? After all, people usually won’t tell you what they dream until they trust you. They won’t trust you until they feel that you can help them attain their dreams. Knowing and sharing their dream can cement a deep, emotional bond between you.

Here are three things you can do to get at what people dream. Be helpful. Be hopeful. Be scarce.

Be helpful. Follow the Leadership Imperative:

I WILL LEAD PEOPLE IN SUCH A WAY THAT THEY NOT ONLY ACHIEVE THE RESULTS WE NEED
BUT THEY ALSO BECOME BETTER AS PEOPLE AND AS LEADERS.

The relationships cultivated by the Imperative lend themselves to dream sharing and dream motivation.

Be hopeful: “Hope,” said Aristotle, “is a waking dream”. Nobody wants to be associated with a leader who thinks the job can’t get done.

In the face of dire circumstances, there is usually hope to find and communicate.

A great leader I knew who consistently had people get more results faster, continually, had a refrain: “You may think you can’t meet the goals I set for you. But I believe in you and I believe you can and I’ll support you in every way possible so you can.”

That hopeful refrain had the power of a dream; and in the relationships he established, he was able to identify and share in their dreams.

Be scarce: Cultivate the art of being scarce. In other words, give them space to get results.

Use this art the way a homeopath prepares medicine by diluting drugs which would produce in a healthy person symptoms similar to those of the full-blown disease.

The full-blown disease in this case is total scarcity — meaning the leader is never around. Not being there for the people can be a leadership pathology. After all, in the historical example, a leader had to GATHER PEOPLE TOGETHER — leader had to be with the people. Many leaders are absent without leave. One secretary described her seldom seen CEO as follows: “He’s like Elvis — There are rumors of sightings of him. The only time we know he’s around is when we smell is pipe smoke.”

But being with the people can be a fault, if the people resent it. They make think you’re trying to micro-manage them or are snooping around trying to get the goods on them.

The art of being scarce is predicated on your giving them the space to do well. The coach of a great Arkansas basketball team said, “I don’t want to hamper them by coaching them.” Likewise, don’t hamper the people you lead by leading them in a domineering way.

People’s dreams are pathways to their inner heart and their most ardent desires. However, most leaders don’t know how to go down those paths. Be helpful, be hopeful, be scarce will help you walk your talk, letting people get great results though the gift of their dreams.

About the Author

The author of 23 books, Brent Filson’s recent books are, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO GIVE GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS. He has been helping leaders of top companies worldwide get audacious results. Sign up for his free leadership e-zine and get a free white paper: “49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results,” at http://www.actionleadership.com

This quantitative data seems to support that the cornerstone of success lies in effective leadership coaching and diagnosing the needs of the Representatives. However, it is not simply a matter of being trained. Managers must overcome day to day hurdles to be an effective coach. It takes a knowledge of the skills plus the courage to open up sensitive and important topics with others.

It takes time, a precious commodity in a DM’s week. It takes self-control over our emotions when someone doesn’t measure up on an important mission that we, as Managers care about. When we coach, we run a risk of opening up conflict, differences, and misunderstandings that can create discomfort. In short, “coaching is easier said than done.” But the results will be worth it if we are consistent and rigorous at using coaching skills.
Some DM’s often ask us: “Is it Coaching Skills or Coaching Steps?” Clearly the heart of the Eight Step Coaching Model is composed of skills. The primary focus on skills and behaviors differentiates the Eight Step Coaching Model from other coaching training. For example, we call Step One, “Be Supportive,” and it depends on skillfully listening, giving recognition, and building collaboration. Likewise, Step Two, “Define the Topic and Needs,” requires the Manager to have good feedback skills, good questioning and inquiry skills, and the ability to define and clarify expectations.

The word “steps” simply means that there is a building process in progress when you coach. The word “steps” implies that there is a conceptual sequence. It doesn’t mean that every time you speak with a Representative you have to force yourself through every step. Sometimes you have to coach quickly. An example may be coaching in between physician calls and you want to help the Representative with their skills. In this example, you can coach “fast;” you can cut right to the topic and plan. In other situations, you want to cover more steps or more skills in order to orchestrate a successful coaching experience. If you want to speak with a Representative about a larger topic, such as teamwork, goal attainment, or participation in meetings, you will definitely need to reserve more time and pull in more skills or steps. The key is flexibility. You need to know the steps or skills thoroughly and then draw on the steps that are appropriate for each situation. As you practice the Eight Step Coaching Model and apply it often, you become more natural. The more you experience the Model, you hardly realize that you are even following the process.

We hope you are not confused by the term “steps.” Think of it as a process that contains certain elements or skills and don’t look at coaching as a rigid, formal process. In one study, we discovered that Managers were three times more likely to use the Eight Step Coaching Model in spontaneous and informal applications than in planned, formal, more lengthy discussions. When you are in a formal situation, we suggest you plan ahead, review the Model, and prepare yourself in advance. When a coaching moment emerges informally or unexpectedly, we suggest you pick and choose the skills or steps that you want to bring out at that moment. Remember coaching is a process, so follow up and fill in any gaps that are created when you are coaching informally or “on the spot.”

Coaching is a vital part of a DM’s job. We get results through the efforts of our Representatives. The most non-supportive thing we can do to a Representative is to “not coach.” Effective leadership coaching will lead to a healthy relationship with your Representative. A recent study indicated that a key reason why people leave companies is because of a poor relationship with their Supervisor. We need to retain our quality people in order to be competitive over the long-term.

About the Author

Steven J. Stowell, Ph.D., is the Co-Founder of the Center For Management and Organization Effectiveness, Inc.
If you would like to learn more about leadership coaching or other CMOE management training programs, please contact a Regional Manager at (801)569-3444.