Black Belt Productivity

Due to some health issues in my family the last couple of weeks, I have not been able to post on Friday’s as I have been. Fortunately, everyone is getting better, and I will once again post my leadership columns this coming Friday.

Until then, here is a good read.

I often receive forwards from one of our executives from Dr. Alan Zimmerman. Last Tuesday’s tip hits particularly close to home for those who are into goal setting.

- Jason

Tip:

Lead Up Principle #8 in John C. Maxwell’s book The 360° Leader is about becoming a go-to player.

Often you hear people refer to athletes that perform well in the clutch as “go-to players”. This basically means that a player gets the job done when pressure is on. What separates the Michael Jordans, the David Ortizes, the Tiger Woodses and the Ronaldinos of the world from all other athletes?

There is a passion within them that refuses to give in to pressure. They manage to treat pressure packed situations with a calmness and skill that few possess.

One of the key pieces of wisdom that any leader from the middle can know is when to push buttons, and when to let things go.

In many cases, it may be a case of pushing the right buttons, but the timing is not good. That is just like pushing the wrong button.

John C. Maxwell addresses this in his book The 360° Leader. He gives us several tips to assist us with our judgment.

When Should I Push?

1. Do I know something my boss doesn’t but needs to?
2. Is time running out?

This week in John C. Maxwell’s book The 360 Degree Leader, I read about preparation for time with your leader.

Your leader’s time is very valuable. It is very important to make sure that you are properly prepared each time you take a leader’s time.

1. Invest 10X. Maxwell recommends that you prepare 10 minutes for each minute that you spend with your leader. I think this could vary based on your office’s culture. But if you were seeing Bill Gates, I would definitely say prep 10X.

As you have probably figured out by now, I am currently reading The 360 Degree Leader by John C. Maxwell. I have been approaching this book a chapter a week. Why? First because in my life, reading time is rather restricted (the by-product of having two young children). Second, I feel that it is appropriate to work on the principles in this book by implementing them over a week. So I work on changing a habit over a weeks time, then read the next chapter.

One of the things I have been giving a lot of thought to this week is leadership, and the communication skills that it requires.

You would be hard pressed to find a good leader who could not communicate well with others. One of the biggest prerequisites to leadership is being able to convince others to follow you. Part of that ability is directly tied to communication skills.

Let’s think for a moment about communication in leadership.

What do leaders communicate?

• Organizational vision
• Expectations
• Instructions
• Processes & Procedures
• (Hopefully) Encouragement
• Changes in status quo

In today’s installment on leadership, we will talk about the differences between management and leadership.

John C. Maxwell addresses this question by saying that the high level difference is the management deals with processes and leadership deals with people. Steven Covey often says that managers focus on climbing the tree, and leaders make sure we are climbing the right tree.

In his book, The 360 Degree Leader, John Maxwell gives us these ways to move from management to leadership.

Hello from a cubicle farm somewhere in North Alabama…

Recently Michael and I had a conversation about how GTD^® plays into leadership. Those who use GTD, for the most part, are natural leaders. So after some thought, we have decided that for the time being, we will dedicate Fridays to writing about leadership. Now some of you may say, “This is not a management blog”, and in saying that you would be right. But leadership is not just for management or executives anymore. As John C. Maxwell points out in The 360° Leader (which I am reading these days), one can exercise leadership from anywhere in an organization. So we write on leadership to assist in developing those skills for the GTDer in the workplace (and to be honest develop our own skills in that area as well).

If you are like me, you are a worker bee. You have a boss, who has a boss, who has a boss. You are somewhere lost in the bureaucracy of corporate America. Those of you who are in business for yourselves, feel fortunate. The lives of worker bees are dictated to them. You do not act. To a great extent, you are acted upon. And you are expected to react to whatever stimulus is driving them at that moment in time.