Focus

3 LEADERSHIP PRINCIPLES YOU MUST GET RIGHT

/ Denis Baker / Leave a comment

Like some of you, leadership has been a continual growth process for me. It seems that there are some who “get it” from the get-go. However, for me, it’s been a journey. I’ve struggled with resistance from individuals. As a safety professional, the most difficult thing to change in a program is the belief that “we’ve always done it this way,” or “we didn’t budget for that.” In the safety profession, influence is the key to success. The safety profession serves an essential purpose in the work field, but it does not produce a product or generate cash flow.

Consequently, we must be able to influence others to make the right decisions for the right reasons. Success in the safety field is determined through the reduction or elimination of injuries. Ultimately, the worker and their families benefit from our efforts. Over the past several years, three principles have emerged that have helped renew my energy and commitment to influencing those who make the decisions. These principles aren’t new, but I have become more intentional in my implementation. I am deliberate in focusing on each of these principles, and because of such, I have seen significant results.

“Principle-centered people are constantly educated by their experiences.”  – Steven Covey

I want to share these 3 principles with you. I believe that EACH leader should acquaint themselves with these truths to obtain powerful influence.

RIGHT PEOPLE
The first question to ask is “Am I influencing the right people?” Different people need to be influenced by various reasons and circumstances. For instance, does a production employee need to be influenced to purchase a new piece of equipment? No. The focus needs to be on finance and production leadership. However, the production employee does need to be influenced by the need to make appropriate behavior choices. If we are not influencing the right people for our current demand, then our time and effort become lost. The second question is “Do you have the right people on your team?” For leaders, the motto has been that people are your greatest asset, but that saying needs some fine-tuning. It’s not just people; it’s the right people. When you’re bringing someone aboard your leadership team, put forth ample time into the resume/interview process. Develop engaging interview questions and include other team members to ensure the person can become an effective team collaborator and has the right skillset to “fill in the holes.” A leader is only as good as his/her inner circle. These are the people that make the vision a reality. Sometimes organizations put excessive emphasis on the senior leader, when in fact it’s more than just one man.

Moreover, it’s not just whom we bring on, but also whom we hang onto. It’s hard to let an employee go or to tell a team leader that their season has come to an end. Ultimately, do what is best for the team and the overall organization.

Consider whom you are currently trying to influence, are they the right person for your needs? Do you have the right people on board and in the right positions? Focus on influencing the right people and ensure your inner circle consists of qualified, committed individuals and success will be achieved.

WELL-DEFINED MISSION
Second, it is vital to have a well-defined mission. A clear mission keeps us on track to complete critical tasks. You and your team must define a mission that supports your vision. Evaluate all the things you’re doing and make the difficult decision to cut out (even good things) that don’t fit within that defined mission. This pruning process will help you avoid “mission drift” and make your leadership more effective.

UNWAVERING FAITHFULNESS
So finally, when you have the right people and a well-defined mission, go after it with all your heart. Those who are passionate about what they want will be successful. Passion drives us through difficult times. In our ready-made culture, we want immediate results. The reality is that any constant endeavor, a marriage, business, or ministry takes time to build. I remind people that they’re embarking on an adventure that requires an investment of faithfulness. Be committed to putting the time and effort in; day by day, person-by-person, project by project.

You can contact Denis at dbaker@leaderinfluence.net for information on coaching, leadership, team and culture training, DISC Behavioral consulting, or to be an inspirational speaker at your next event.

PERSONALITY BASED GOAL SETTING

/ Denis Baker / 3 Comments

Our personality impacts everything we do; how we respond to pressure, how we network, socialize, and react when there is an emergency. Our personality is something that we cannot escape. When I reflect upon those who are successful, I see bold individuals who are assured within. They know what they are good at and they maximize upon those strengths. Successful people, regardless of their industry, are always boldly self-aware.

With the beginning of 2019, the New Year provides us with an opportunity to build upon the experiences and lessons learned from the previous year. I don’t believe we ever truly start over, instead; we build upon our achievements and/or the lessons learned from past failures and shortfalls. In retrospect, one of the things I’ve gleaned over the past couple of years is that our personality identifies our strengths and weaknesses. It directly affects our ability to achieve our goals and meet our objectives.

As a DISC Behavioral Consultant, I’ve learned to identify personality types through consultation, and help others develop goals that coincide with their character. In doing so, individuals maximize their opportunity for achievement.

These 3 actions will help individuals streamline their personal goals:

  • Tailor your conversation based on personality traits. This gives you the ability to make adjustments within the discussion to lead the path forward.
  • Generate goals that motivate the person to put in the necessary effort to achieve each one.
  • Identify areas to stretch the individual and achieve things that will take a focused effort.

By successfully implementing these 3 things into the development of goals, I believe we give people the ability to be successful and achieve more than they might expect.

So how do we set goals based upon a person’s personality? To answer this question, I will identify methods that reflect the DISC personality styles in general. I’ll use the behavioral traits and the typical strengths and weaknesses of each personality style. Let’s take a look at how to set goals for each personality style.

Dominant

People with dominant personalities are direct, decisive, problem solvers, risk takers, and self-starters. People with a strong dominant personality are hard-charging, get-it-done kind of people! I identify with this particular personality type. I tend to set very ambitious, lofty goals. However, if I don’t see immediate results, I’ll quickly lose motivation.

People you identify as having a dominant personality need to have goals that meet the following parameters;

  • Identify a few more than required. If you want 3-5 goals, a dominant person will set 7-10.
  • Make the majority of the goals short-term. This serves as motivation to accomplish many things.
  • Set a couple of long-term goals with the expectation to endure until the end.
  • Each goal must be clearly identified and the timeline for completion well established.
  • Establish regular one-on-one follow-ups and progress meetings.

When developing goals for a dominant personality consider the following:

POSITIVE CHARACTERISTICS

  1. Autocratic in teams and will rise to the top in a crisis
  2. Good at providing direction and leadership
  3. High assertiveness
  4. They have a clear idea of their ambitions and goals and will push hard for accomplishment
  5. Function well with heavy workloads
  6. Very competitive attitude
  7. Welcomes new challenges
  8. Tend to follow their own ideas

AREAS FOR GROWTH

  1. LEARN TO LISTEN MORE AND SPEAK LESS
  2. Gather consensus on decisions
  3. Don’t act alone
  4. Learn to answer the question “why” when asked about decisions and proposals
  5. Work on body language and tone of voice when dealing with frustration
  6. Focus on developing sincere personal relationships
  7. Can intimidate others
Influential

People with an influential personality are enthusiastic, trusting, optimistic, persuasive, talkative, impulsive and emotional. They are just pure FUN! They are the life of the party and are typically the ones we talk about after the Christmas party. They love to set goals and dream about the things they want to achieve.

These fun-loving social characters need to have goals that meet the following parameters:

  • Harness their enthusiasm when identifying goals
  • Identify goals that will move the company forward and acknowledge their value
  • Clearly define the steps to achieve each goal and have them focus on each stage before moving onto the next
  • Set smaller goals
  • Identify the timeline for each goal
  • Prioritize each goal for the company and the individual
  • Establish regular one-on-one meetings to verify progress and determine the next steps for successful performance

When developing goals for those with an influencing personality style, consider;

POSITIVE CHARACTERISTICS

  1. Great communicators who are both influential and inspirational
  2. Have the ability to motivate others
  3. Great advocates of change and deal well with change themselves
  4. People are drawn to them, thus creating a great opportunity to lead others
  5. Positive attitude
  6. Great at brainstorming and visionary projects

AREAS FOR GROWTH

  1. Impulsive in decision making
  2. Can be slow to action (a lot of talk, but little action)
  3. Need to exercise control over actions, words, and emotions
  4. Need to talk less and listen more
  5. Tends to over-promise
Steady

The steady personalities are good listeners, team players, possessive, steady and predictable. They are understanding and friendly relationship-based people. Goal setting usually means change is coming, which immediately causes tension for a steady personality—because they don’t like change.

If you see yourself as a person with a steady personality or will be working to set goals with someone described above, consider:

  • Goals that establish step by step directions with a clearly defined plan for achievement
  • Establish the benefit for achieving each goal
  • Needs more time to develop their goals
  • Set timelines for each goal and hold them to it

Consider the following when developing goals for the person with a steady personality:

POSITIVE CHARACTERISTICS

  1. Supportive and natural relationship builders
  2. Grounded in reality and common sense
  3. Talented multi-taskers
  4. Patient
  5. Loyal
  6. Even-tempered
  7. Peacemakers in groups and teams

AREAS FOR GROWTH

  1. Struggles with change and making adjustments
  2. Can be overly agreeable
  3. Tends to put other’s needs before theirs
  4. Need to be more direct in their interactions with others
  5. Their pace tends to be slow, thus causing them to miss deadlines
Compliant

A person with a compliant personality is accurate, analytical, conscientious, careful, precise, meticulous and systematic.  Those with a complaint personality are very focused on procedure and making sure things are done the right way. They don’t have a problem with setting goals, but they do need help prioritizing. A compliant personality wants to accomplish EVERYTHING!

To set effective goals, a person with a compliant personality must consider:

  • Start the process early!
  • Focusing on goals that are important to YOU!
  • Ensure each goal is practical and detailed
  • Create clear, identifiable goals that establish their role within the group, department, and organization
  • Establish data-driven goals that focus on details others may not see
  • Stretch the person by developing one or two visionary goals

As you consider developing goals for the compliant personality, consider the following:

POSITIVE CHARACTERISTICS

  1. Instinctive organizers
  2. Excellent at creating and maintaining systems and processes
  3. Consistent in their approach
  4. Will see projects through until completion
  5. Strive for a diplomatic approach
  6. Strive for a group and team consensus

AREAS FOR GROWTH

  1. Tend to be critical of others
  2. Consider other’s ideas and methods
  3. Need to speed up to help the team or group accomplish their goals
  4. Work on focusing more on building strong relationships
  5. Make faster-informed decisions
  6. Take more risks

Final Thoughts

Each one of us has a unique personality style. Sure, we can put people in “personality” buckets, but that only helps to identify our approach. As leaders, we must know our coworkers and ourselves well enough to understand what motivates them and how they react to different situations. Knowing a person’s personality style can proactively help you and your employees make adjustments. Consider the information presented and strive to achieve your personal best and the best from your employees in 2019!

Denis is an Executive Director at the John Maxwell Group, is a certified leadership coach, trainer, keynote speaker, and DISC Behavior, Consultant. He is a passionate person of influence committed to teaching and communicating practical and relevant influencing techniques.  His unique passionate and emotionally driven style resonates with many, creating a desire to become an effective leader.  

You can contact Denis at dbaker@leaderinfluence.net for information on coaching, training, DISC Behavioral consulting or to be an inspirational speaker at your next event.

Trust, The Glue That Bonds Relationships

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“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” ~Ernest Hemingway

According to Steven Covey, “Trust is the glue of life.  It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication.  It’s the foundational principle that upholds all relationships”. Trust is crucial in the leadership process.  In fact, trust is required for effective leadership.  Trust can be described simply by comparing it to pocket change.  Every right decision puts change in your pocket.  Every poor decision takes change from your pocket.  The key is to increase your pocket change, rather than always paying it out.  Sure we all make mistakes. And each mistake cost us some coins from our pocket.  However, employees are tolerant of mistakes as long as we are transparent, quick to humility and strive to regain their confidence.

In his book, Leadership 101, John Maxwell shares three qualities a leader must exhibit to gain trust; competence, connection and character.  Violate any one of these three qualities, and you will lose the trust of those who follow.  Trust is doing what’s right because it’s right.  Mackey and Sisodia state in their book, Conscious Capitalism; “the right actions undertaken for the right reasons generally lead to good outcomes over time.”  I don’t think anyone can remain a leader if he or she continues to make poor decisions and break the trust of employees.  When we break trust, we damage the relationship. Relationships can be repaired, but with much work and effort.

In fact, a leader can’t be a leader if there is no trust because trust leads to influence.  If people don’t trust you, you can’t have influence.  Without influence, you can’t lead.

Build sincere relationships and out of your sincerity, will come trust. Only then will you be able to influence and achieve effective leadership.

trust-fall

HOW TO REMAIN ENCOURAGED DURING DIFFICULT TIMES

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You remember the saying, “Let the good times roll.” Well, sometimes the good times turn bad. We enjoy the benefit of things going well and t’s easy to encourage others when they’re down. But sooner or later, we will enter into difficult times. It’s inevitable. As I said in my last post, “How to Remain Motivated and Influential During Difficult Times,” I stated that, “no one will escape difficulty in life.” The reality is, there will be times of discouragement. But discouragement doesn’t mean we have to fall apart or quit.

I look to the scriptures for my daily encouragement. When difficult times hit, I find it even more important to study and mediatiate. Here are five bible verses to encourage you during difficult times.

Psalms46_3_1to7

nahum1_7

Psalms62_6

2Timothy1_7

Isaiah41_10

READY, FIRE, AIM, The Initiative Concept for Leadership Abundance and Success

/ Denis Baker / Leave a comment

Ready Fire AimIf you know what to do, then just do it!  I could probably stop right there and have the shortest blog I’ve ever written.  But that would be boring.

As a leader, one of the most frustrating things is to have someone on my team not take the initiative to make things happen.  Instead they sit back and wait for direction, or constantly need my approval that their path or ideas are right.

I want people that are willing to take risks, learn from their mistakes and accomplish what they never thought could be done.  I encourage and expect my staff to embrace the idea of READY, FIRE, AIM!  A concept I learned years ago and I have refined recently.

Let me break the term down:

  • READY – Identify what needs to be accomplished and evaluate what it takes to fully and completely accomplish the task or idea.
  • FIRE – Go do it!  Don’t wait.  Be the swoosh in NIKE and “Just Do It.”  For my inner circle, there are very few times where this concept wouldn’t apply.
  • AIM – Once you “Do It”, then tweek as needed.  If you did your due diligence in the READY phase, there should be very little need to correct things.

These three simple words can create extreme success in your leadership and success in the workplace.

Here are three examples of people who embraced the concept of READY, FIRE, AIM:

  1. Elon Musk – When you make millions off of an internet company like PayPal, the world generally expects you to, well, create and make more millions off of another internet company. But Elon Musk’s dreams lay elsewhere: Rather than follow a more conventional career path, Musk took the money he had made at PayPal and invested it in two of his own highly innovative startups, SpaceX and Tesla. Though his attempt at operating these two ventures at once nearly sent both companies into bankruptcy, it seems to have ultimately paid off—today, both SpaceX and Tesla thrive.
  2. Sylvester Stallone – With a baby on the way and too little money to pay the rent on his Hollywood apartment, Sylvester Stallone sat down and wrote the screenplay for Rocky in less than four days. Producers loved it and offered him big bucks to bring the story to life—but Stallone, as down-and-out as he was, refused to take any offer if he wasn’t allowed to play the lead role in the film.  Rocky ultimately ended up pulling in millions of dollars and skyrocketing Sly into fame.
  3. Travis Kalanick: Uber – Travis is a great example of Ready, Fire, Aim.  If he become discouraged with failure, Uber wouldn’t exist.  Founded the company Scour Inc., a multimedia search engine, and Scour Exchange, a peer-to-peer file sharing service. Two years later, the company would come under fire from several big name music and film agencies for copyright infringement, forcing Scour to eventually succumb to bankruptcy.  In 2007, Kalanick and Garrett Camp founded Uber. After facing some early competition and funding concerns, the ridesharing app is now the most widely used app of its kind. Kalanick created three companies; one failed, but that did not stop him from taking the risk.

Taking initiative is an important part of most any job and is critical to increasing your influence and ultimately your leadership.  However, the reality is that not many of us will not end up as successful as Elton, Sylvester or Travis.  But I can say people who take initiative, are people I want in my inner circle.  And I bet that is the way many leaders feel.

I agree with Conrad Hilton said, “Success seems to be connected with action.  Successful people keep moving,.  They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.” 

Don’t keep talking about it, just “DO IT.”

swoosh

2017 GOALS, blah, blah, blah……

/ Denis Baker / Leave a comment

As 2017 swings into full gear, I’ve slowly been thinking about what I need to have as my professional and personal goals. My staff and I created a strategic plan, I’ve had each of them create a list of achievable and measurable goals. But for me, well I just can’t seem to get the motivation to generate a list. When I think about it, all I hear in my head are different songs or I’m thinking about what I need to be doing.

Goals…Blah, blah, blah………

He faces difficulties

Then it hit me!

I recently identified four focus areas that apply to my professional and personal life. I thought, why not use them as my goals? So that is exactly what I did!

So for 2017, I don’t have any professional or personal goals, but rather I have four areas of focus!

MAINTAIN PERSISTENCE

Jim Rohn said, If you are persistent, you will get it. If you are consistent you will keep it.” I tell professionals all the time, “in order to achieve behavior modification and ensure sustainable change, we must always be persistent in our expectations, regardless of who and what it is.”  It’s hard to be persistent everyday, every moment, every time. Some days, you simply want to act as if you never saw or heard it. However, persistence establishes expectations and I believe expectations will generate results. My focus is to be more persistent in what I believe is right. I won’t let personalities or politics dictate my actions, but rather find ways to persistently influence for performance.

BE MORE CONSISTENT

Bruce Lee said it so well, “Long term consistency, trumps short-term intensity.” Being consistent in what we do and how we do it, adds stability and expectation to those we lead. Employees need consistent leadership for consistent direction. When you integrate consistency into your life, you realize the reward comes as a result of a process. My focus is to show greater consistency in 2017. I’ll accomplish this by thinking before I speak, and not reacting to a situation. I want to be methodical in my decisions, interactions and actions. Consistency is essential to change and change is needed in my professional and personal life.

HAVE A GREATER SENSE OF URGENCY

Jim Rohn said, “Without a sense of urgency, desire losses its value.” When you know something has to be done, DO IT! A sense of urgency allows a person to accomplish more than others. When we realize our sense of urgency extends beyond our list of goals or projects, we generate results which create value. Value creates influence. When you can influence, you can lead anyone. The longer one waits to accomplish things, the less value one adds. I will accomplish more in 2017, in less time by having a greater sense of urgency to get more done, add more value and have more influence.

INCREASE MY PASSION

Zig Ziglar said, “Know your passion. Follow it. Dream it. Live it.”  I am constantly telling people, “ If you don’t love what you do, then go do something else.” Passion fuels results! It gives us purpose. It is what we believe in. It will turn your have-to’s into I want-to’s. Those with passion will be motivated to succeed, not settle. I have been told many times, that I am a passionate person. However, I want to increase my passion in 2017. I will do this by getting more excited, more engaged, thinking of better ways to do things, get more emotional when I don’t get the results I expected, take more risk, and dream bigger!

There you have it my focus areas for 2017. I believe these four areas will allow me to accomplish more and do it better.

focus

Consider identifying focus areas. I heard it said, “Effective leaders keep one eye one the compass and one eye on the clock.”  Commit to more focus in 2017 and become a more efficient and effective leader.

Denis is a certified Executive/Business Coach, Trainer and Keynote Speaker and owner of Leader Influence LLC. Possessing over 28 years of leadership experience in multiple industries, Denis has cultivated a unique teaching, coaching and speaking style that resonates with participants and attendees.  
He is a passionate influencer committed to teaching and communicating practical and relevant influencing techniques. His uniquely passionate and emotionally driven style resonates with many, planting a desire for change and to become a more effective leader.
Consider Denis for your leadership, personal development or team speaking, training or coaching needs.