Leadership

A write up from Henry J. Schumacher, Business World issued aug.27,2003

I used to manage an organization called Hoechst ; we had 500 people and three production units. Then I joined the European Chamber and we were just 30 people. The first company had a turnover of P1 billion; the second has revenues of about P50 million. Do the principles of leadership change when you move from a small company to a large organization? Of course not. Are the principles different when you run a country? Although nobody allowed me to do so, I assume, the same basic principles apply.

Leadership is a behavior, not a title. You are not a leader simply because your title says you are. A good leader consistently displays a set of behaviors that people can look up to and depend on. The following are some examples of those behaviors. Your main objective as a leader is to remove obstacles and barriers that prevent associates from doing their jobs; to communicate the expectations and then to get out of the way and let your teams make it happen.

Check your ego at the door. Great leaders do not have big egos. If your employees sense that you want them to excel in order to advance your own agenda, you will lose their respect and their commitment to excellence. You must take the approach that you are interested in their success because you are truly interested in them... and you must mean it! And you must stand by them in good days and in bad days Do not lead by intimidation and fear. Results from this type of management style are usually short-lived. The minute you step away, it inevitably begins to crumble. And you negatively impact creativity and internal communication via this method. The real key to leadership is to get people to do something not because you want them to or they have to, but because they want to, for the greater good of the organization. There must be no retribution toward anyone who brings issues to management's attention by voicing an opinion or recommending a different way of doing things. You are there to foster an environment of cooperation and open communication. Intimidation, retribution and micromanagement have no place in any organization. This is non-negotiable. Remember, you manage things and you lead people.

Leave the emotion out of disciplinary feedback. If you give feedback in a negative or confrontational way, it allows the individual the opportunity to avoid the real underlying issue at hand and focus on the emotion.

Communicate the facts; set the expectation for future behavior and then have them develop a plan to address the issues. Involve them in the solution so they take ownership of the process. Remember, it's their porblem, not yours. Don't take the monkey off their back.

Thank people... and mean it. Genuinely thank people for their contributions. It's simple, it doesn't cost anything and the payback is enormous. People too often only hear about what they've done wrong. Tell them what they've done right as well and that you appreciate them for doing it.

Get into the habit of transferring knowledge. Just doing something for someone doesn't help them understand or prepare them for how to do it in the future. Ask questions like: What do you think you should do? Get them to think on their own and to be comfortable doing it. Many times people know the answer but are afraid to make a decision. Put the ball back in their court. You don't want to create a dependency where they always have to depend on you for the answers.


Be solution-oriented. Think about how to solve the problem rather than just complain about it or give it to someone else to fix. Remember, you were hired by this company to be a problem solver. If you are not part of the solution, there is a possibility that you are a part of the problem.

Inspect what you expect. Your goal is to set expectations and then achieve them. If your employees know that you will be asking about or checking on the task or project you gave them, they will be much more apt to complete it. It also gives them a sense of priority. If you follow up on something, they get a better sense of its importance. Changing behaviors takes time and constant follow-up is a good way to change their current work habits.

Project a unified front as a leadership team. Present yourselves as a true team at all times. If people see cracks in the foundatin, it begins to erode the entire organization.

Challenge your employees. Good leaders constantly challenge their employees to greater heights. Your employees might not even know what they are capable of accomplishing. They might never have had anyone who cared enough about them to encourage, acknowledge and push them to new heights. They might even consider the process painful but they don't call it "growing pains" for nothing.

Put passion into what you do! Passion is contagious. Be energetic. Be excited. Love what you do. If you don't like what you do, you shouldn't be in the role. Your department's energy, happiness, dedication and the way they relate and communicate with each other will, over time, become a direct reflection of your leadership style. If you don't like what you see in your department, take a look inside yourself first.

Create a sense of urgency, but not a sense of panic. People need to kow that what they do is important to the company and that the company needs to constantly strive for excellence. Things need to get done and every piece of the puzzle is equally important. Remember Parkinson's Law: "Work expands to fill the time allotted." Keep your employees busy.

Constantly raise the bar. Work hard and play hard.

Develop leadership within your department. A great leader is not the one with the most employees but the one who creates the most leaders. Create a breeding ground for future company leadership by empowering them and allowing them to make decisions. Then back them up on their decisions.

Always take the high road. There is a natural tendency to go down to the level of the problem or disagreement. Leaders need to stay above the fray. Don't allow yourself to be dragged worn into a shouting match or unncessary argument, where your emotions can get the best of you. Bring them up to your level, don't go down to theirs.

Walk your talk! Whatever you say, back it up with your actions. Remember this saying: My walk talks.... and my talk talks. But my walk talks louder than my talk talks.

Remember: We are all leaders in any given situation in our work and service lives.... may these thoughts add some nourishment to enrich ourselves. Good day to all!

Oh, the places you can go

An Mercado Alcantara

WHEN we took up the advocacy for work-life balance, we didn't quite know where it would take us.

No one could have prepared us for the double surprise of the past week: we found ourselves speaking before an audience of two thousand and, the most wonderful surprise of all, in the home of a genteel lady who paints, plays the cello, dances, cooks a mean Bicol Express, and lives the dream of a balanced life.

Ways we can bring back passion at work.

Rekindling passion

Sometimes, you have to make the painful decision of leaving the comfort and security of what you do halfheartedly to jump into an unknown career path where your true passion lies. It is when we discover this happy path that a myriad of opportunities open to us, many of which we may not anticipate. When we find our true calling, the passion in our work, we are given the opportunity to be greater than ourselves.

Working moms have a gut feel for what will really make us happy. We often, however, don't have the courage to go for it. But several people in the audience shared their leap of faith. One accountant dropped out of a successful career to go into orchid growing. She started with one pot and has since expanded to 12 hectares of orchid farms! She followed her bliss and found success. Ask yourself today: are you following your bliss?

Harnessing creativity

Putting life back into our work could mean simply rekindling the creativity we all have within ourselves. We are all born creative but not all of us give our spirit the opportunity to bloom. Teresa suggested that by actively cultivating our creativity, our work would be transformed from humdrum to wow.

I particularly loved one idea she presented, a tool that working moms can take advantage of: she suggested keeping an ideas journal. Jot down your ideas, big or small, as they occur to you. Have a little notebook in your bag to record them in. By training yourself to be so aware of inspiration as it fleets and floats into our lives, we will be able to unleash the power of creativity.

Striving for balance

I spoke about the delicate balance required if you want to advance in your work without leaving your family behind. In particular, we discussed the phenomenon of the zigzag career: the deliberate shift from high to low gear in our career so that we can devote time for our family, and the shift back from low to high gear in our career when the kids are older and less dependent on us. By plotting out a zigzag career path instead of a career path that bulldozes forward at all cost, the working mom is able to get more out of life.

Living it

Our journey came full circle in the home of Dehlia Napay-Rebustillo. Even as we preached about passion, creativity, and balance, she lived it. After raising a brood of five kids--all grown up now, some with children of their own-she's thrown herself into pursuing her passions. She oil paints: jars with paint brushes line the stairs leading up to an upstairs hallway where she keeps her finished works, canvas after canvas of enchanting episodes in the legend of Mayon. She dances: choreographing traditional Philippine dances, chasing after authentic music and steps to give life to the rhythm she feels inside. She plays the cello: in her bedroom, a cello waits beside her dresser, anticipating the moment she will make her strings weep for joy.

Best of all, she tells stories: inspiring stories that humble and give hope to those of us who dream of more--more places to go before we sleep.

How to develop a positive attitude

Ernie O. Cecilia, FPM
INS

MOST things in this world are created twice--first mentally, then physically. Inventors, builders, artists and most other craftsmen start building physical things first in their mind. Most successful people started seeing the shape and smelling the scent of success in their minds before they actually realized success. As the vitamin supplement ad says, "What your mind can conceive, your body can achieve."

I have keenly observed and asked successful business and government leaders, media and entertainment icons, and even employees, students, and small entrepreneurs about the most important ingredient in their success.

Most of them seem to agree on one ingredient--a positive attitude. All throughout mankind's recorded history, a positive attitude emboldened sailors to sail uncharted waters, believing that there is land beyond the seas. It sustained scientists in their search for cures to seemingly incurable diseases. It gave inventors the impetus to go on with their experiments, knowing with each failure, what did not work and with each success, what worked.

To develop a positive attitude, try the following suggestions:

1. Realize that you're 'schizophrenic.' There are two distinct persons living inside your body. They are constantly at odds and in conflict with each other. One is a positive person who thinks in terms of health, wealth, success, harmonious relationships, personal achievement and other blessings.

The other person inside you thinks and lives in fear, doubt, poverty and ill health. If you cannot control your negative self, you will experience negative feelings. You become susceptible to receiving and believing negative messages. When you allow your negative self to be in control, negative messages will tend to guide your action and behavior.

Invariably, this leads to negative circumstances in your life that you'd rather not choose. When your positive self is in control, it allows positive, optimistic and stimulating thoughts and feelings to guide your actions. Your positive action will invariably produce positive results that usually translate into prosperity, sound health, harmony and happiness.

2. Want something. The moment you start wanting something, you begin a positive process that would likely lead to success. Most of us have been programmed to get only what we need. Want is usually beyond sufficiency. If you need a watch, you'll likely settle for an ordinary wristwatch with a plastic bracelet. But if you want a diamond-studded, 18-karat gold Swiss-made chronometer, you set into motion a powerful desire to own a luxurious timepiece. It sparks a desire in your mind and conditions your system to go after what you want.

Wanting something is the beginning of a positive process of attaining what you want in life. On the other hand, when you declare that you are contented with what you have, your mind tells you that you don't have to work hard for increments or changes for the better. It conditions you to accept mediocrity. You are bound to forego your dreams and settle with what you already have, no matter how meager it is.

Dr. Cherie Carter-Scott says, "When you experience the initial spark of desire, you set the game of success in motion."

3. Stop sabotaging yourself. Many of us don't need enemies or competition in our quest for a better life. We don't need external pressures to tell us how difficult it is to achieve what we want in life. There is always our negative self to remind us no end why things can't be done, why we don't have the skill or courage to do something. Since we don't have to do anything in order to fail, it is so easy to fail. We don't have to exert any effort or pay any price-we just have to listen to our negative self.

This is the best way we can sabotage and deny ourselves the abundance, health and great feelings we deserve. Henry Ford once said, "If you think you can do a thing, or think you can't do a thing, you're right." The choice is yours. Think negative and you fail. Have a positive attitude and you succeed.

4. Banish limiting beliefs. All through the years, we have accumulated several limiting beliefs that tend to tell us emphatically, "You can't do it!" Whenever you want to fail, you don't have to dig deep into your memory bank to remember how you stumbled when you were learning to walk, ride a bike, or how you flunked a quiz, an employment interview or missed a promotion. As humans, we have fond memories of our failures. In fact, as a nation, we celebrate more tragedies than victories--the Fall of Bataan, Corregidor, Tirad Pass or the Death March, etc.

Whenever confronted with opportunities to shine, we either turn them down or start off by apologizing, saying we're not good at it, we don't deserve it or we don't have what it takes. It is easy to fail, because "when you think you are beaten, you are!"

If you really want to succeed, banish those limiting beliefs. Accentuate the positive and psyche yourself up. You are best friend and ally.

5. Ignore critics. It is not surprising that sometimes, the people we expect to help us are the ones who stand in our way. Concerned that we don't get hurt by our failure, they dissuade us from attempting to reach our dreams. Others who measure their success by comparing themselves with us can show negative responses as we inch closer to our goals. In both cases, we tend to listen to their pleas for us to give up our dreams just to maintain our relationship with them.

Sometimes, it is easier to deal with known critics and enemies. We can simply ignore their howls and catcalls because we know that they don't want us to succeed. Our friends and relatives who convince us that our ambition is getting out of hand, or that our project is simply not feasible, may have the effect of a veiled concern for our safety. This is more difficult to deal with.

We must realize, however, that friend or foe alike can create mental roadblocks for us. When I am convinced about what I am doing, I simply close my eyes and ears to critics. What they say tells me more about them than about me.

A positive attitude is truly the first major step towards success.
Napoleon Hill considers it a "master key to riches." To build enormous fortunes, tycoons like Lucio Tan, John Gokongwei and Henry Sy did not start with small fortunes or great education. They all started with almost nothing but a positive mental attitude. With that master key, they opened a whole new world of opportunities for themselves. You can, too!

(Mr. Cecilia is the president and the CEo of EC Business Solutions and Career Center, a business and human resource consulting firm. He is a past president of the Personnel Management of the Philippines. You can e-mail him at erniec@edsamail.com.ph)