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Leadership Workshop (7 of 12) - Stimulate the Creative Flow

More than 40 percent of leaders surveyed said that they spend too little time working with individuals to unlock their creative energies. Asking yourself, “Have I found my own creative flow? Am I helping other people find their creative flow?”

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Leading at Light Speed is a groundbreaking leadership book by Eric Douglas describing the 10 Quantum Leaps which build trust, spark innovation, and create a high-performing organization. Chapter 6 is all about how to Stimulate the Creative Flow. On page 159-160, Eric discusses how recognizing success is critical.

Coaching, empowerment, and praise inspire flow. Micromanagement kills flow. To encourage flow, good managers need to make sure people are recognized early on for their success. Every success should be recognized, even if it is recognized in a small way. Rewards and praise should be distributed generously to all who were involved. At the same time, a special effort needs to be made to celebrate and recognize people who made special contributions.

I have a 10:1 rule about the balance between positive feedback and “constructive” feedback. People need to hear ten times more positive feedback than negative. Otherwise, they simply will not – or cannot – hear the constructive feedback. The portion of the feedback which is ‘constructive’ will be lost. By focusing on praise and encouragement, you can help prepare people for the day when they need to hear the constructive feedback.

Developing professionally is encouraged by rewarding success. As shown in Chapter 3 of Leading at Light Speed, the Performance Development Life Cycle illustrates the specific points in an individual’s development. An important step is creating an Individual Development Plan, in which you write down exactly what your career goals are and how you need to prepare yourself – the kinds of training, mentoring, job shadowing, and feedback you need. Encouraging creative flow means giving people the opportunity to reflect on and articulate their career aspirations, and later share their IDPs with people who can help them get there.

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Leadership Workshop (4 of 12) - Lead Through Others

Leading at Light Speed is an excellent leadership book by Eric Douglas showing you step-by-step how to implement 10 Quantum Leaps that build trust, spark innovation, and create a high-performing organization.

Quantum Leap #3 is all about Leading Through Others.

To maximize your impact, you have to lead through others. As a leader it is imperative to recruit and hire the right players, delegate responsibility to them, and make sure they have the tools to succeed. It also means getting rid of players who fail to adapt successfully. Each player on the court needs to elevate the others, especially in this technology driven environment. Taking to heart the habits of greatly successful teams is necessary. Effective leaders keep an eye on team dynamics, they bench players who refuse to progress, and give starting positions to those who come ready to play.

Giving the secret to her cooking, renowned chef Alice Waters often said, “always start with the right ingredients.” When asked why he liked combining one or two superstars with a bunch of younger, unknown players, L.A. Lakers basketball coach Phil Jackson said: “They elevate each other’s game.”

“Get the right people on the bus,” is how Jim Collins puts it. You can only lead successfully if you find the right people and give them what they need to do their jobs right. Admittedly that’s easy to say and hard to do. This chapter offers some of the tricks. It is about a shift in logic – from thinking about yourself to leading through others. Using the example of Wells Fargo and Bank of America, Jim Collins illustrates the dramatic difference.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Bank of America and Wells Fargo Bank had similar revenues and profit margins. Bank of America was directed by a leader who, by dint of his strong personality and commanding nature, had assembled a passive team of “yes men.” Ahead of the curve, Wells Fargo CEO, Dick Cooley, was able to gather together one of the most dynamic management teams in the industry. At Wells Fargo, people posed tough questions to one another and weren’t afraid to challenge the status quo. They felt free to challenge each other’s thinking. Better relationships are founded on mutual trust not with fear and intimidation.

In the early 1980s, banking deregulation took place, triggering a revolution in the industry. The industry’s established profit margins were in jeopardy. Wells Fargo’s management team saw the changes coming and focused on cutting costs. They recognized that banking was becoming a commodity business, with thinner profit margins than before. “Run it like you own it,” became their mantra. In contrast, BofA reacted slowly. The country club culture continued over time. Not one person challenged the status quo. The outcome? From 1983-1998, a fifteen-year period, Wells Fargo’s stock outdid BofA’s by 500%.

“We” leaders surround themselves with the right people. They have sense enough to pick good people and to know what needs to be done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it. We leaders aren’t focused on controlling every decision. Their goal is to delegate. When people are empowered, they feel free to engage and ask tough questions and air conflicting opinions. Good leaders have the perspective that such an environment is a positive sign of change, and welcome this kind of friction to cultivate new ideas.

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Leadership Workshop (3 of 12) - Sharpen the Focus

Leading at Light Speed is a groundbreaking leadership book by Eric Douglas describing the 10 Quantum Leaps which build trust, spark innovation, and create a high-performing organization. Quantum Leap #2 details ways to sharpen the Focus.

There is a preference for some leaders to shy away from fully focusing because they think that it hinders them from grasping opportunities. But when vision is fuzzy, trust goes in the tank. Major conflicts go unaddressed. Potentially, politics have the ability to replace output and results. Bureaucracy can trump innovation. Absence of true leadership will turn people away. Here’s one example:

For nearly 100 years, Sears Roebuck was the greatest catalog retailer in the world. The primary goals were the invention of new ideas and superb consumer service. As a result, its financial house was in order. Then in the early 1980s, Sears started to diversify into higher-margin, unrelated financial services in order to boost its stock price. Its vision became muddied. Was it to be the innovator in low price retailing? It has the potential to become a pioneer in catalog marketing - which will place it in a comfortable situation in e-commerce? No, its vision was to make more money.

Because its vision was primarily financial, Sears lost sight of its catalog and retail business. In rural areas, Wal-Mart and others aggressively marketed a different retail option. Through new strategic alterations, they discovered methods to enhance margins and generate significantly better profits. As soon as it happened, Sears’ boasted a mixture of service, quality, and pricing sharply declined. It fell to a place of mediocrity among retailers - and concurrently lost a significant amount of share value.

When the strategic focus is understood:

People embrace change and adapt their jobs accordingly.
People look at their successes in light of how well the whole team executes.
People spring into action.
People were not afraid to come forward with pressing issues and present them in a public forum.
High morale is connected to low turnover rates.

When the strategic focus is not understood:

People lack energy or motivation to change.
People measure themselves by achieving tasks – or not at all.
People are reactive.
People are reluctant to raise conflicts or sensitive issues.
The tendency for low morale and high turnover is prevalent.

Another example of fuzzy vision is America Online (AOL).In the initial stages, Steve Case, the founder of AOL, desired to alter the way people acquired and learned new information. In the early 1990s, the fight for dominance of the online information business were between AOL and its two main competitors Prodigy and CompuServe. The impending merge with Time-Warner was a distant seven years away. During the next six years, AOL shot up progressively in growth. Case built partnerships with information providers, grew subscribers, and extolled the importance of “content communities.” At the pinnacle of the first dot com boom in 2000, AOL bought Time-Warner. Steve Case became a billionaire.

But suddenly they fell from grace. Coincident with the merger with Time Warner, AOL lost its vision of being the best online information provider. It instead tried to build shareholder value through marketing partnerships. Its strategy to be a prominent online advertiser backfired because the advertising packages irritated subscribers and showed negligible value to customers and potential ad buyers.

When the hoped-for synergies with time Warner ’s traditional content failed to materialize, AOL’s focus became very fuzzy indeed. talented people came and went. the internet bubble burst. AOL came under a cloud for phony revenue reporting. the stock price declined dramatically. Case was forced out. The year 2009 marked the remaining chapter in one of history’s worst company mergers when Time-Warner detached from AOL - it served as a symbol of an ambiguous plan.

Is your organization implementing the practices of high performing organizations? Find out with this free work survey.

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Many people in affiliate programs seem to think that once the sale is made, their work is done. Remember, as an Affiliate, your success is dependent upon your downline’s success. The initial sale is not the end of your involvement, rather it is the beginning of a longer process of coaching and team-building.

People joining affiliate programs tend to have big goals, but sometimes they fail anyway.

Reasons Why People Fail to Become Successful Affiliates:

There are three main reasons why people fail to adapt to change, especially technological change:

1. Lack of Skills
2. Lack of Knowledge
3. Fear

Adopt the “Coach” Role & Mindset:

If you adopt the mindset of a “Coach,” you can dramatically improve your Downline’s performance along all three lines.

When someone joins an affiliate program there is generally a fairly big learning curve to overcome - new product(s) such as the just-released MaxPro System, new technology, and virtual relationships, all of which are especially problematic if your new recruit is a novice in the world of internet marketing (or marketing in general). Internet marketing, like any industry, has its own set of jargon, and the affiliate program will have its own set of tools and techniques to master.

All of this takes time and can be very frustrating to new recruits, if left to their own devices. If you allow your new recruits to become overly frustrated, they are likely to drop out and never become productive team members.

Wouldn’t you be a lot better off to spend a little time with your new Downline members helping them to get off to a good start. Take the initiative to help your recruits learn about your products, technical support and other resources available to them.

You’ll also need to spend time helping them learn how to market in this new Web 2.0 world of internet Blogs and Social Communities, which are new to many people.

Don’t just sit around waiting for your downline to contact you for help, take the initiative and offer them help, especially at the beginning of your relationship with them. Take the initiative to help your new recruits overcome their fear and buyer’s remorse.

If you have a positive attitude and a desire to help your new recruits learn the business, you can coach coupled with proactive behaviors on your part. When you invest in your downline, they’ll repay that investment many times over.

One superb place to start for picking up all the rest of the knowledge about internet marketing that they’ll need is to have them join the Online Success for Beginners classes.

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