Winning Well gives leaders practical tools to achieve breakthrough results that last.

After training over 10,000 leaders in fourteen countries in our Winning Well practical leadership tools and human-centered approach to management, we’re often asked, “What was the inspiration for your Winning Well philosophy?”

As we celebrate the five-year anniversary of the release of Winning Well: A Manager’s Guide to Getting Results Without Losing Your Soul, that’s an easy answer: leaders like you are our first source of inspiration.

We’ve worked alongside so many leaders who care about achieving results and care about their people. Leaders who do the work. Who won’t settle for the way it was.

We’ve even met leaders around a mountain campfire at midnight who were enjoying a bachelor party – people who cared so much about leading well that when they found out what we do, they asked for an impromptu Winning Well training session.

(So far that’s our only bachelor party engagement – but if you’re in the market for a leadership-themed party, give us a call!)

It’s that passion to help leaders who want to achieve results without sacrificing their humanity that led to Winning Well. We both experienced too many leaders who lost their souls in pursuit of results – because they didn’t care or, more often, because they didn’t know how to take care of their work and their people. Too often, they’d end up bitter, burned out, and alone. And of course, we’ve even experienced a few jerks at work.

We’ve fought these battles ourselves and know firsthand the challenge of investing in results and relationships. So we wrote Winning Well to give leaders the same tools we used in our careers – and that have transformed the lives of leaders around the globe.

What is Winning Well?

If you’re new to Winning Well, you’re probably wondering what we mean by those two words. It’s the heart of our leadership philosophy and the source of every practical leadership tool we give leaders. But first, let’s take a look at what Winning Well is not:

Download a FREE chapter of Winning Well here.

That’s a description of what we call a Gamer Manager. They’re no fun to work with as they play their games to survive or build a reputation.

There are two other types of managers who aren’t yet winning well: the User and the Pleaser. User Managers get results, but they come at a high cost as they treat people like a means to an end. Pleaser Managers want people to like them more than they want breakthrough results. They can be fun to work with  – for a minute until they’re held accountable for their lacking results.

Learn More about the Four Types of Managers Here

If you recognize Gamer, User, and Pleaser Managers tendencies in yourself, you can become a leader who is winning well with a few key practices.

How to Win Well: Blending the Bottom Line with Human Spirit

If you’re wondering where to begin (or know a leader who could use a hand) we recommend you start with these Six Concepts You Can’t Lead Without. These are the leadership competencies that apply in every leadership role, in every industry, and in every business culture. That’s why they are the foundation of every leadership program we deliver.

1. Show up with confidence and humility
2. Focus on results and relationships
3. Mind the MIT (the most important thing)
4. Communicate consistently (5 times, 5 different ways)
5. Check for understanding (close the communication loop and know how your team feels)
6. Schedule the finish

Learn more about the fundamental Winning Well leadership skills here

Your Turn

As we celebrate the fifth anniversary of Winning Well‘s publication, we invite you to join the movement of leaders committed to human-centered results. To transform your team, your department, and your business into places that transform the world and the people who work there. Where results exceed expectations, people grow, and everyone feels good about the work they do and the way they do it.

In short, we invite you to be the leader you’d want your boss to be.

The post Winning Well: Be the Leader You Want Your Boss to Be (Videos) appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

We were just wrapping up the first session of a  leadership program when “Sal” raised his hand. “How do you help a new manager be more confident?”

He continued, “I mean it’s tricky to have a difficult conversation or run a great meeting when you’re not convinced you know what you’re doing. And the problem is, your lack of confidence makes your team question your competence. Which of course you can sense, which makes you feel even less adequate.

And then the whole thing just goes downhill from there. I want to get in front of this as fast as I can to help this new manager, what advice do you have?”

3 Ways to Help a New Manager Be More Confident

I’m so glad Sal asked that question because the struggle is real.

It’s tricky to show up confident when you’re not convinced you know what you’re doing. So, if you’re looking for ways to help a new manager (or yourself) show up with more confidence start here.

1. Train Them on The Fundamentals

This sounds obvious, but most managers we talk with tell us they wish they had received some fundamental leadership training when they first started their role.

By the time they land in one of our foundation programs they say, “Wow, I wish I had learned this ten years ago! It would have saved me so much heartache and frustration.”

If you want to help a new manager be successful, be sure they’ve received training on fundamentals like setting and reinforcing expectations, checking for understanding,  keeping the team focused on what matters most, building trust and connection, how to delegate, and building a cadence of accountability and celebration.

Be sure to pick a practical training program, that gives them ways to practice and reinforce what they’ve learned.

You don’t learn how to be a great leader by watching a video.

Be sure to ask these 5 questions before choosing a leadership development program.

2. Ask Confidence-Building Questions

When managers lack confidence, we often find that they have had one or two bad experiences that dominate their thinking.

“OMG one time I tried to give someone feedback and THEY CRIED!!!!”

“I tried to give my team recognition and no one seemed to care, so why bother…”

The truth is, sadly, our brains are wired to remember the bad experiences more than the good ones, which is not helpful. Confidence-building questions can help your new manager bring more positive memories to the forefront and balance their thinking.

Here are a few starters:

• What does your team love about your leadership? How does that help them to be successful?
• Can I do this? If so how?  HT to Dan Pink
• Tell me about a time you had an awesome _________ conversation. What made it so successful?
• How did you learn to do ____? What ideas do you have about how you could teach that to your team?
• (For a new manager promoted over their peers) What is one behavior that you know led to your success in your former role? WHY did that work? How can you help your team better understand the “why” and “how”?

3. Break it Down

When a new manager takes over a team for the first time, there is so much to learn and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Help them focus on one skill and outcome at a time.

Here’s an example (just to get you started …):

• Week one: Get to know your team by having a one-on-one with each team member (learn about who they are as people.)
• Week two: Establish your top MIT (Most Important Thing) priorities.
• Week three: Work with your team to communicate those priorities and check for understanding.
• Week four: Build your 5 x 5 communication plan. (How will you communicate those priorities five times, five different ways?)
• Week five: Help your team identify their most critical behaviors for achieving their MIT priorities
• Week six: Focus on recognition. Celebrate what’s going great. Where do you see the behaviors in action? How can you recognize these behaviors in ways that are specific, relevant and timely?

Just a start

So that’s a start. What would you add? What’s your best advice for helping a new manager build confidence and competence?

Other Resources You May Find Helpful

Winning Well: A Manager’s Guide to Getting Results Without Losing Your Soul

9 Ways to Teach Yourself to Be a More Confident Boss

10 Common Excuses That Silently Damage Manager’s Careers

Why To Be Over-Confident (every now and then)

How to Help Employees Have More Confidence

The post How to Help a New Manager Be More Confident appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

What do you do when you feel like you’re losing your leadership soul? You don’t like how you’re treating people. You’re not living up to your own values. Or you’re overwhelmed and not sure you can get the results you’re accountable to achieve.

Most leaders experience these feelings of isolation, bitterness, or burnout at some point in their career—but you don’t have to stay there. In this episode you’ll get practical ways to figure out why you feel like you’re losing your soul and what you can do to reclaim it. You can achieve breakthrough results—without sacrificing your humanity in the process.

Tools from this episode:

5 Stages of Manager Soul Loss pdf

The post What To Do When You’re Losing Your Soul appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

One of the biggest reasons, employees get frustrated and disengage is that they don’t understand the “why” behind what they are being asked to do. Why to explain why again.

Last week, we were wrapping up our final session of a six-month strategic management intensive with a group of engineering managers by helping them to synthesize what they’d learned.

In addition to a number of more mainstream techniques, we asked them to craft strategic stories to pass along their key messages to the next generation of managers coming behind them.

They picked a leadership priority or approach they wanted to reinforce, and then found a real story from their personal or work life to make the message more impactful and sticky.

As you can imagine, this is not the sort of exercise that is necessarily embraced with a gung-ho attitude by engineering types. Even with a formula, this process was a stretch (that’s why we saved it to the last session so we couldn’t get fired 😉

They nailed it.

Steve’s Story

“Steve” picked the Winning Well principle of connecting “What to Why” to ground his story.

“When I was 17, I worked at Ace Hardware. It was my job to keep track of the inventory in the back and sometimes I ran the register. My boss had made it perfectly clear about what you would call a “MIT (most important thing).” If a customer asked for something they couldn’t find, our only response should be “I’ll be happy to go in the back and check for you.”

But on this particular day, I KNEW the tool the customer had asked for was not in the back because I had just noticed the issue when I was working in the back. When the customer asked me to go in the back and double-check, I informed him that I was absolutely sure we were out and there was no reason to check.

My boss overheard me and when the customer left, he let me have it, and told me in no uncertain terms that if I ever told a customer we were out of something without going into the back to check, I would be fired.

I thought this was ridiculous, but I complied AND thought my boss was a jerk. I didn’t understand why we would have such a stupid policy—what a waste of time.

Fast forward 3 months

Fast forward a decade to a few months ago. I was neck-deep in renovating my house and I ran out of something I really needed to get the job done. My fiancé and I were really tired of all the mess and I just needed to get this done. I ran over to Ace and asked the kid at the counter for some help finding what I needed. “Oh no man, we’re out,” the kid shrugged and moved on.

And then, I found myself looking at this kid in disbelief and saying “Come on, can’t you at least go look in the back?”

And then it hit me.

The Why Revealed

That’s WHY my boss had that “stupid” policy. To make frustrated customers like me feel just a little bit better—that someone cares enough to go one more step. If only if he had explained why.

It’s tricky. We always make sense to us, and the “why” behind our intentions always seems so obvious–to us.  If your “why” really matters, why leave the understanding to chance?

Reinforce your “why” every chance you get.

4 Tips for Explaining Why

1. Check Your Gut. Be sure you know why you’re asking them to do what you’re asking them to do.
2. Reinforce. Share stories, dig for data, illuminate examples.
3. Check For Understanding. Ask strategic questions to help your team see what you see, or just ask them what they heard.
4. Repeat anything that’s important is worth communicating five times, five different ways.

Your turn. What are your favorite ways to explain why?

The post Why To Explain Why, Again appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

We first met Jonathan when he was introduced as the President of the Global Speaker’s Federation. He struck us then as a statesman and diplomat. A few months later, I (David) enjoyed a wonderful dinner with Jonathan as he traveled through Denver, Colorado. After trusting me to order for the table, our conversation ranged from our professions to our favorite foods, to how we can help those in need. Jonathan is also one of our hosts at the Asia HR Summit and Asian Professional Speakers Singapore Conference. He doesn’t just talk about the power of relationships and building customer loyalty – he lives it. 

Click on the image for more information about Jonathan’s book.

Winning Well Reflection

One of the things we love is when we can provide practical tools to help leaders succeed. Jonathan delivers in that vein with some very practical and helpful tools for leaders who are challenged to build relationships. For some people, this comes naturally, but for those who need to be more intentional, his suggestions, particularly scheduled ‘reach out’ time are so helpful.

Save

The post Winning Client’s Loyalty: The Power of Relationships (Jonathan Low) appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

I (David) first met Ilja when we both happened to be visiting Manhattan. He had just released his latest book on change and I was sharing a leadership keynote with a business headquartered in Long Island. On a chilly spring evening, we shared drinks on a roof-top patio overlooking the Empire State building and talked about his favorite places in Germany, changes in the world economy, and leadership. Ilja invited Karin and me to join him in Phoenix, AZ as his guests for the National Speaker’s Association Council of Peers Award for Excellence gala (it’s like the Academy Awards for professional speakers) and we look forward to reconnecting in Singapore where the three of us are presenting at the same conference. As an expert in change and change management, Ilja embodies his message with an energetic, upbeat, and positive response to whatever comes his way.

A while ago, I read an interview with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, where he made a fascinating observation. He said: “Today, mankind produces more information, data and ideas than from the stone age until the year 2003 together.“ And he nailed it with that statement. Because the changes around us are getting more and more intense. Everything changes. Permanently. The economy, the organizational structures in our companies, our very own working space. As a keynote speaker and change coach, I have the privilege of working with a lot of awesome organizations. And it doesn’t matter which industry I look at, whether it’s a big brand or a small company with just a hundred employees. There is one thing they all have in common: The rules have changed and constant change has become the new normal.

Click on the image for more information about Ilja’s book.

The Rules Have Changed

Especially disruptive technologies, the demographic trend and the digitalization are the main reasons that markets change dramatically and the customers are behaving completely different than they used to do just a few years ago. And that means that our ability to deal with this new complexity around us will be the most important factor if we will still be successful in the future or if we become obsolete. And just to be clear, I’m not talking about change for change’s sake, but about change with a purpose. Change with intention. Change to reach your goals, to become more profitable and to grow as a person. In the upcoming years, nothing will be more important, than to adapt to these new circumstances.

Use Your Mindset as Your #1 Asset

What does all that mean to your jobs as a leader? First, you need to quickly adapt to all of the changes going on around you and adjust your own mindset. Even more importantly, you need to lead the changes in your team. Organizations only change when the people change. And it is your job to make sure they do. Not by telling them or giving orders, but by reaching their hearts and leading with your actions. And believe me, I know what I am talking about. In my own career, I started out as the youngest store manager in Germany’s largest department store corporation and overall, I was responsible for ten different stores all over the country. Back then, not only did I have to deal with tough competition, changing markets and the upcoming phenomena of online shopping but also with a huge crisis within the company itself. Locations were shut down, profits were decreasing and thousands of employees were facing the fear of unemployment. During these tough times, I learned the biggest lesson of my life: Change is not what happens around you, but how you deal with it. It is your mindset that makes all the difference. Your attitude. And after all, the culture in your organization. Let me share one of my deepest beliefs with you: A company culture of openness, flexibility, and courage beats every sophisticated business strategy by far. Because there’s one thing you can be sure of: If you are good, your competition will copy everything. They will copy your products, your prices, maybe even your marketing. But they will never be able to copy your culture.

Create a Culture of Change in Your Company

In my book “Think it. Do it. Change it.”, I explained how to develop this special attitude of change. If you know how motivation really works, why the fear of going new ways is actually your best friend, and how to use your own uniqueness to lead the changes in your company, your community and most importantly, in your family, you will be able to make a huge difference. At the end of the day, dealing with change is a mindset. A certain way of thinking, deciding and taking action, that we have to adjust not only once, but on a daily basis. The more you use that special attitude, the sooner you will develop strong habits. And that’s important because changes never happen overnight. They are a process with successes and failures. With ups and downs. You have to work hard to make it happen every single day. Isn’t it true? It’s never the one with the best abilities who wins, but always the one who is well prepared, the one who takes massive action and changes actively. Because under the same circumstances it’s always the attitude, the mindset, the company culture that makes all the difference in the world. So dream big. Act bold. And you will get the results you want.

Winning Well Reflection

We were struck by Ilja’s observations that “organizations only change when people change.” As leaders, it’s all-too-easy to fall into the “they-game”e.g. I’ll lead well … when “they” get their act together… when “they” fix the problem … when “they” give us a better system. But that’s not leadership. Leaders take responsibility and create the change that needs to happen. We love the way Ilja reminds us that “change is a mindset” – you often don’t know what you’ll show up to – but you have 100% control over how you show up.

Save

Save

The post Let’s Talk about Change, Baby! How to Dream Big, Act Bold, and Get the Results You Want (Ilja Grzeskowitz) appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

I (David) first met Ilja when we both happened to be visiting Manhattan. He had just released his latest book on change and I was sharing a leadership keynote with a business headquartered in Long Island. On a chilly spring evening, we shared drinks on a roof-top patio overlooking the Empire State building and talked about his favorite places in Germany, changes in the world economy, and leadership. Ilja invited Karin and me to join him in Phoenix, AZ as his guests for the National Speaker’s Association Council of Peers Award for Excellence gala (it’s like the Academy Awards for professional speakers) and we look forward to reconnecting in Singapore where the three of us are presenting at the same conference. As an expert in change and change management, Ilja embodies his message with an energetic, upbeat, and positive response to whatever comes his way.

A while ago, I read an interview with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, where he made a fascinating observation. He said: “Today, mankind produces more information, data and ideas than from the stone age until the year 2003 together.“ And he nailed it with that statement. Because the changes around us are getting more and more intense. Everything changes. Permanently. The economy, the organizational structures in our companies, our very own working space. As a keynote speaker and change coach, I have the privilege of working with a lot of awesome organizations. And it doesn’t matter which industry I look at, whether it’s a big brand or a small company with just a hundred employees. There is one thing they all have in common: The rules have changed and constant change has become the new normal.

Click on the image for more information about Ilja’s book.

The Rules Have Changed

Especially disruptive technologies, the demographic trend and the digitalization are the main reasons that markets change dramatically and the customers are behaving completely different than they used to do just a few years ago. And that means that our ability to deal with this new complexity around us will be the most important factor if we will still be successful in the future or if we become obsolete. And just to be clear, I’m not talking about change for change’s sake, but about change with a purpose. Change with intention. Change to reach your goals, to become more profitable and to grow as a person. In the upcoming years, nothing will be more important, than to adapt to these new circumstances.

Use Your Mindset as Your #1 Asset

What does all that mean to your jobs as a leader? First, you need to quickly adapt to all of the changes going on around you and adjust your own mindset. Even more importantly, you need to lead the changes in your team. Organizations only change when the people change. And it is your job to make sure they do. Not by telling them or giving orders, but by reaching their hearts and leading with your actions. And believe me, I know what I am talking about. In my own career, I started out as the youngest store manager in Germany’s largest department store corporation and overall, I was responsible for ten different stores all over the country. Back then, not only did I have to deal with tough competition, changing markets and the upcoming phenomena of online shopping but also with a huge crisis within the company itself. Locations were shut down, profits were decreasing and thousands of employees were facing the fear of unemployment. During these tough times, I learned the biggest lesson of my life: Change is not what happens around you, but how you deal with it. It is your mindset that makes all the difference. Your attitude. And after all, the culture in your organization. Let me share one of my deepest beliefs with you: A company culture of openness, flexibility, and courage beats every sophisticated business strategy by far. Because there’s one thing you can be sure of: If you are good, your competition will copy everything. They will copy your products, your prices, maybe even your marketing. But they will never be able to copy your culture.

Create a Culture of Change in Your Company

In my book “Think it. Do it. Change it.”, I explained how to develop this special attitude of change. If you know how motivation really works, why the fear of going new ways is actually your best friend, and how to use your own uniqueness to lead the changes in your company, your community and most importantly, in your family, you will be able to make a huge difference. At the end of the day, dealing with change is a mindset. A certain way of thinking, deciding and taking action, that we have to adjust not only once, but on a daily basis. The more you use that special attitude, the sooner you will develop strong habits. And that’s important because changes never happen overnight. They are a process with successes and failures. With ups and downs. You have to work hard to make it happen every single day. Isn’t it true? It’s never the one with the best abilities who wins, but always the one who is well prepared, the one who takes massive action and changes actively. Because under the same circumstances it’s always the attitude, the mindset, the company culture that makes all the difference in the world. So dream big. Act bold. And you will get the results you want.

Winning Well Reflection

We were struck by Ilja’s observations that “organizations only change when people change.” As leaders, it’s all-too-easy to fall into the “they-game”e.g. I’ll lead well … when “they” get their act together… when “they” fix the problem … when “they” give us a better system. But that’s not leadership. Leaders take responsibility and create the change that needs to happen. We love the way Ilja reminds us that “change is a mindset” – you often don’t know what you’ll show up to – but you have 100% control over how you show up.

Save

Save

The post Let’s Talk about Change, Baby! How to Dream Big, Act Bold, and Get the Results You Want (Ilja Grzeskowitz) appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

We first met Cathy when she attended our workshop on how to co-author a book. Cathy is an amazing storyteller and story listener– and we enjoyed working with her audience to share our story in a recent webinar. Cathy lights up the room with her enthusiastic approach and warm spirit.

Why are stories so powerful?

I’ll answer that question by telling a story. In this tale we meet a student who is being taught by his teacher through stories. One day the student asks, “Teacher, why do you always instruct about truth by telling stories?”

Click the image for more information about Cathy’s book.

The teacher thinks for a moment, then replies, “Bring me water.”

The student finds a large brass bowl, fills it with water, and brings it to the teacher. “Here, teacher, is your water.”

To which the teacher responds: “Why do you bring me a brass bowl when all I asked for is water?”

And that’s how it is with storytelling. The story is the conveyance for truth. It helps us remember what is important, what is vital. Our stories hold life lessons.

So, why don’t YOU tell your stories? Why aren’t you speaking, training, and writing?

Many of you are doing amazing things. You are helping your organizations develop new products and services. You grow workers into leaders. You develop cultures that foster innovation. And you are touching the lives of your employees each day in meaningful ways.

So why don’t you tell your stories? Why isn’t the world benefiting from your wisdom and insights?

There is a wonderful story about Gandhi that applies here. As Gandhi was boarding a train that was leaving the station, his sandal fell off. Unable to rescue the sandal, he dropped the sandal from the other foot. When asked why, he said, “Now, the poor man who finds the first shoe will be able to have a use for the pair.”

By doing good work in your organization, you have dropped one shoe. By solving organizational challenges, you have dropped a shoe. By making teams more cohesive and by enabling change, you have dropped a single shoe. But now you must drop the other shoe. You must tell your story, you must share your truth—through writing, speaking, and training—so that others can use your wisdom and knowledge.

Does anybody want to read my story?

Some of you may still be hesitant about telling your story. I was meeting with a potential client who wanted to write her book, and toward the end of our conversation she turned to me and asked, “But does anybody really want to read my story?”

I responded, “Yes! Yes!” Why did I feel so convinced that her story was needed? I thought a lot about that, and I decided that I needed to write a blog about it. The result was “Cathy’s Credo” which I communicate on my website and is a tool I share with all my clients and audiences. And I’d like to share a shortened version of it with you here:

Remember, you were created with a purpose, and when you tell your stories you allow others to bear witness to the purpose of your life. Your stories are gifts to others: the gifts of joy, encouragement, insight, understanding, hope. Telling your story is holy work. You know, the world needs your story. We have not solved all the leadership problems in our world. We don’t have all the answers to how we create a better world.

Finally, I’d like to share my Writers’ Pledge with you. I developed this at the suggestion of one of my clients who has developed her own pledge. Here’s what mine says:

I pledge that I will use my power to make today a fantastic day. I will block writing time on my calendar, and I will honor that time commitment and hold it as sacred, creative time.

I pledge that I will not allow my negative voice to guide my thinking or stop my creative process. I will surround myself with people who love me and support my writing.

I pledge to tell my story—to share my experiences—with authenticity and without apology. I know that in telling my story I can provide others with the gifts of hope, wisdom, and joy.

I pledge that I will continue to work so that I gain clarity and focus for my readers, audiences, and clients so that I can continue to make the world a better place, one word at a time.

I believe that each of us can continue to make the world a better place, one word at a time. The world needs your story.

Tell your story.

Winning Well Reflection

One of the most effective ways to build a connection with your people and to help them understand what winning well looks like in your team and organization is through strategic story-telling. Cathy’s encouragement to share your stories will help you build trust, connection, and credibility as people see and feel what success looks like.

The post The World Needs Your Story (Cathy Fyock) appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

We first met Bill when he was publishing his first book– and I interviewed him to help share his message. Since then, we keep finding ourselves in the same leadership conversations and communities, and always enjoy connecting to share best practices. I love the way Bill taps into his own leadership experiences and stories to communicate the importance of confident humility.

The Starting Point of Good Leadership

Years ago I was coaching a young leader who was under a lot of self-imposed pressure. His dad was the second-generation owner of a $500-million-dollar construction company, and he had tapped his son as the eventual heir to the kingdom. But his son felt entirely unready for such an awesome responsibility. How would the company keep selling big projects to keep people working? How would he lead senior staff members, all of whom had more knowledge and experience than he? How would he, in short, live into his father’s footprints?

Complicating the matter was all the advice the young leader was getting. Everyone had a vested interest in having him succeed, so they were going out of their way to let him know what moves he should take. Though grateful, he was overwhelmed. “Bill,” he said, “I want to be a good leader, I really do. But people expect me to be tough, driven, and decisive, yet patient, friendly, and caring. I’m confused. Where do I start?”

You don’t have to be a CEO’s heir apparent to struggle with the same question. Leaders get a lot of mixed messages about what’s most important to followers. As a leader, you’re expected to be bold and calculated, passionate and reasonable, rational and emotional, driven and patient, principled and flexible, competitive and cooperative, strategic and tactical, and yes, confident and humble. Faced with all of these conflicting factors, is it any wonder new leaders scratch their heads and wonder, Where on earth do I start?

My advice to new leaders is this: if you want to be a good leader, start by being a good person. Leadership is an inside job. Before you can lead people outwardly, you have to lead yourself inwardly. Leadership starts with internal goodness, in other words, integrity. Goodness is not some pie-in-the-sky philosophical concept. It’s not some prudish, goody-two-shoes standard of stilted perfection. Goodness is practical. When you’re good, people trust you. They know you won’t cheat them, or violate their confidences, or mistreat them. They know you’ll consider their interests, listen deeply and share generously, and be respectful. They know you’ll never stop striving to do the next right thing.

Your goodness is the single most important determinant of whether followers will trust your leadership, and trust is crucial to good leadership. When people trust you, they’ll work harder on your behalf, they’ll have a higher tolerance for your idiosyncrasies, they’ll be loyal to you, and, most importantly, they’ll act with integrity too. Trust begets trust, and when you act with goodness it becomes an invitation for others to act with theirs, mutually strengthening the trust between you.

The good news is, when you focus on developing and strengthening your character, when you commit yourself to leading in a principled and honest way, and when you make serving others your primary leadership aim, you are exemplifying very essence of what my friends Karin Hurt and David Dye mean by the title of their essential leadership book, Winning Well. As a leader, you win well when your inner goodness informs all your leadership actions and decisions. You’re truly winning well as a leader when the best of you brings out the best in others. You want to be a good leader? Then start by being good.

Click on the image for more information about Bill’s book.

Winning Well Reflection

When confronted with the overwhelming number of leadership examples, much less the amount of advice, you’ll encounter, it can feel overwhelming. That’s why we so appreciate Bill’s straightforward reminder that all leadership begins with you. Be a good human being who people can trust. That is the foundation of Winning Well – and all the influence you’ll ever have.

The post The Starting Point of Good Leadership (Bill Treasurer) appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Tanveer Naseer about more ways to build trust and connection in remote teams on this special edition of Asking For a Friend.

Winning Well Connection

We’ve gotten to know Tanveer through his fantastic leadership writing and thought leadership over the years. He’s been a regular contributor to the Let’s Grow Leaders Frontline Festival the last few years and a kindred spirit on blending the bottom line with the human spirit.

Relationships For Complex Times

Leadership today has certainly become a complex endeavor. With an increasingly interconnected global market and growing demands on a leader’s time, attention, and resources, it can be challenging for leaders to ascertain where they need to be putting more of their focus and effort.

But if there’s one area that leaders should always be paying attention to, it’s how well they are building and nurturing strong relationships with those they lead. Although most leaders have come to realize that leading through influence is far more effective than leading by authority, the challenge still remains that we ensure that the measures we put in place are serving the best interests of our employees, as opposed to simply lessening the demands we face.

This is where the relationship building becomes critical to our ability to succeed at leadership. By focusing on building and sustaining successful relationships with our employees, we send a clear message that our focus is not simply on ourselves but on how we can help our team members to succeed and thrive under our leadership.

Relationship building also encourages us to be honest about our motivations and decisions because they are no longer simply transactional in nature. Instead, we become mindful of the impact our choices and decisions have on others and, consequently, how and what we should communicate to provide them with some context for why things are the way they are.

As I’ve written and spoken about through my work, the true function of leadership is not what you gain but what you give of yourself to help others. We do not use our role simply to improve ourselves; we help those under our care become that better version of who they can be.

That’s why people are drawn to work for some of today’s successful leaders – not because of the successes those leaders have achieved, but because of their outward focus on those around them. A focus to better understand their employees in terms of what matters to them, what inspires them to bring forth their best efforts, and how they can connect that to the shared purpose of the organization.

Interestingly, this paradigm shift from the traditional top-down, command-and-control leadership style to one based more on a collective interdependence offers a unique form of support for leaders that’s especially needed thanks to the faster pace at which we now have to operate. Namely, that by building relationships with those we lead, we permit ourselves as leaders to not have all the answers.

Indeed, given the increasing complexity of today’s workplace environments, leaders can’t know everything that’s going on, which is why delegation has become so critical to our collective ability to succeed and grow in the long term.

There’s no question that relationship-building requires intentional efforts on our part to create connections with people, but we must understand that it’s no longer required because it’s simply the ‘right thing to do.’ Rather, we need to appreciate how relationship-building skills have become a critical cornerstone to leadership success, if not also how we can ensure that we can inspire the best from those we have the responsibility to lead.

Winning Well Reflection

We appreciate Tanveer’s observation that by building relationships, you also give yourself the flexibility to be a leader who asks the right questions – as opposed to one who has to have all the right answers. In our executive leadership roles, we’ve both had employees come to us as we were stressed out, becoming overly directive, and they encouraged us to “Trust the team. We’ll find the answers together.” That’s an incredible power of relationship.

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