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Seven unique insights from Gettysburg to make the 2nd half of 2021 your best ever
Taking your business to new heights: Seven unique insights from Gettysburg to make the 2nd half of 2021 your best ever.
I use history, entrepreneurship, and perspective to help people grow their businesses. The combination is vital. When there’s too much nerding-out on the history, you get lost in trivia. All business with no context, on the other hand, creates spurious ideas. Without perspective, you are likely to overreact. Blending the three is an art.
If you don’t apply the experiences of others to your situation, you will miss analogous opportunities and repeat similar mistakes.
Join me on June 30th at 10:30 am U.S. Central for an interactive, hour-long Zoom session (which will be recorded and forwarded to everyone who registers), plus I’ll stick around for 30 minutes afterward to answer your questions. Among my topics:
- Action steps to put the right leaders on the scene and empower them to make decisions.
- How to help your subordinates achieve “leader-on-horseback” inspiration so that people have clear examples to follow.
- How to avoid common pitfalls when facing leader turnover.
- Ways to set up your new subordinates for success and keep them winning.
- Action steps that create clarity, buy-in, and accountability.
- Ways to let in fresh ideas and avoid smelling your own gunpowder.
- How to plan for success instead of simply hoping for success and planning for failure.
The fee for these is outcomes is $297. The first twenty to register by June 15th get 50% off. Use coupon code Members50 at checkout.
Register here or use this address: https://strategic-leaders-academy.teachable.com/p/taking-your-business-to-new-heights-gettysburg
The business boom is well underway, and the rising tide is lifting a lot of boats. Breakthrough success will come to those who advance from a secure base, defend their value, and innovate boldly.
PLUS: Did you know that Abraham Lincoln enjoyed champagne and probably had a sip or two of the bubbly after the Union victory at Gettysburg? Wine expert Nicole Kauss is going to give you exactly what you need to know to choose the right champagne to put a smile on your face and wow your guests.
The first twenty to register by June 15th get 50% off. Use coupon code Members50 at checkout. Register here or use this address: https://strategic-leaders-academy.teachable.com/p/taking-your-business-to-new-heights-gettysburg
| Accelerating Success FOCUSED is for leaders and entrepreneurs who want to create and sustain great teams that drive the business to new heights. Apply here. TAP. The Trusted Adviser Program is my most intensive 1-on-1 program. Within 90 days you’ll gain habits that create breakthrough success. Get the details here. Build your Strategy. This program is perfect for small business and nonprofit leaders who want to create a winning game plan without breaking the bank. Scholarships. If you want to apply for or sponsor someone for a scholarship, please email me at chris@strategicleadersacademy.com. |
4 Ways to stop unconscious bullying from damaging your team
The Leadership Podcast, co-hosted by Jan Rutherford and Jim Vaselopulos, is my go-to resource for leadership discussions.
They’ve got extraordinary episodes with some of the world’s most respected leaders.
I was gratified when they asked me to discuss ways that leaders can deal with workplace bullying and help their subordinates be the best versions of themselves.
One of my mentors, Michele Flournoy, connected us (thank you, Michele!).
As you know, bullies, predators, and jerks can ruin your team and peace of mind.
By the time they become managers, most of them have mastered the art of kiss-up and kick-down.
These creeps exist in the workplace. They are very intentional about what they are doing and are quite unlikely to change.
More common is behavior that is not intended to be bullying but is perceived that way.
This situation damages the trust, mutual respect, and morale that’s essential for your team’s success.
Turnover is the #1 indicator of this problem.
With the economy in such horrible shape, people are understandably reluctant to leave their jobs.
As the economy recovers, though, expect to see a mass exodus from toxic work environments.
Gallup reports that seventy-five percent of Americans who leave their jobs voluntarily do so to get away from their managers.
There are common-sense ways to deal with unconscious bullying.
First, make your values explicit. There’s a direct correlation between expectations and results.
Clear leader and employee behaviors for each value set important boundaries and will help you hold people accountable.
Second, discuss your values routinely at meetings and during your one-on-one counseling sessions.
Third, give people ways to disarm bullying behavior. Merely repeating back what a person said and asking for confirmation can be enough to correct the behavior.
Finally, coach your direct reports to be the best versions of themselves. Subconscious cloning – trying to turn people into mini-versions of you – damages your relationship and undermines performance.
The best gauge of success is when your most vulnerable employees feel that they can always contribute as their best and most authentic selves.
I was proud to discuss this issue with Jan and Jim on The Leadership Podcast.
P.S. Nailing your next 100 days gives you the escape velocity to launch, reboot, or scale your solo or small business. Check out the replay of this free masterclass on the 8 steps you need to take to achieve the escape velocity you need.
Schedule your strategy call today. We’ll discuss your goals and obstacles, and I’ll give you 2-3 specific action steps to take now to power through roadblocks and get you closer to your goals. No sales, no B.S.
Here’s what I learned about authenticity and service from being bullied and assaulted
I was burning out being whom I thought everyone expected me to be.
I tried to copy other leaders whom I respected because I did not believe that being me was good enough.
The inauthenticity affected my relationships and my peace of mind.
At work, I was good at being what I thought others wanted me to be.
It dawned on me that I could do even better by being the best version of my authentic self.
I came to that conclusion after being bullied by a general officer. It was the most toxic environment of my professional career.
He was all smiling in public; scathing and belittling in private.
He could not tolerate anyone being different from him.
He wanted abusive people around him, so he could maintain the good-guy image.
I was used to being the extroverted leader that I thought everyone expected me to be.
But becoming a clone of an abuser like him crossed a red line.
The rebellion led me to insist on being myself.
First, I had to confront the reason why I felt the need to copy others.
I was skinny and awkward in high-school. That made me a target.
The harder I tried to fit in, the more awkward I became, and the bullying got worse.
This situation did not escape the notice of some high school faculty.
One was an absolute angel. Whenever I get asked who was my favorite teacher of all time, I always mention Jeannie.
Two others were resident priests with different versions of the bait and switch.
Comfort and assault. One pawed and groped. The other was a voyeur.
They counted on silence.
The experiences were so disturbing, so beyond the pale, and so wrong that I did not have a way to process them or a language to discuss them.
I knew I never wanted to be in that situation again and that I wanted to prevent that from happening to others, too.
Accepting an appointment to West Point, I took on the toughest programs and assignments I could find in the military.
I could defend myself and others.
That was all to the good.
The downside was this sense that being myself was not good enough and that I needed to be like others I respected.
I made my share of mistakes along the way, too.
It took over three decades to begin talking about what happened in high school and to understand how I responded to it.
A loved one asked me why I began to speak openly. Wasn’t I embarrassed?
Silence is the great enabler.
The bullies and the predators count on people being silent, looking the other way, and burying their stories inside of them.
Some bullies are overt, like the groper.
Most, though, are subtle, like the general and voyeur. They smile in public and abuse in private. They want you to compromise yourself; guilt and shame are self-silencers.
I discussed authenticity and my challenges along the way with internationally renowned author Dr. Mark Goulston.
Maybe shining a light on bullying and sexual assault will deter the creeps.
Maybe it will help good people heal so that they can look forward and not worry about the rear-view mirror.
If you or someone you know has experienced abuse, I hope this story will help stop the kind of copycat behavior that nearly wiped me out.
Share this article and podcast with your employees and co-workers and have a conversation. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Most people, I’ve learned, have experienced some form of trauma and abuse.
You don’t have to be defined by bad or good experiences.
Define yourself by the value and impact you want to bring to the world.
Resources for you:
Here’s a very simple way to start being the best version of yourself. Begin with your authentic servant-leader archetype.
Authenticity gives you more energy at work and home, amplifies on your superpowers (your natural inclinations), and tells you who your need around you for cognitive diversity.
We’ll discuss these issues and more in my free on demand masterclass. Register here.
Focus: 4 action steps to regaining command of your time, talent, and energy
If you want to nail your next 100 days, you need to focus.
Get command of your time, talent, and energy, so that you have predictable times every week to work ON your business.
You can get so carried away meeting everyone else’s demands that you allow your priorities to gather dust.
You spend your time on email, social media, and in constant firefighting.
You find yourself at the end of the day wondering where all the time has gone.
You don’t have enough time for the fire-prevention tasks that allow you to grow sustainably.
I’ll get to it tomorrow. Rinse. Repeat.
Stop the madness.
Here are four action steps to get out of the spin cycle.
1. Set your priorities. Maintain a top 3 so you don’t diffuse your efforts.
2. Put good ideas on a Not-Now list, so you maintain visibility, but don’t get distracted.
3. Make your Not-To-Do list and outsource, delegate, or drop everything on it.
4. Weekly planning. Set aside chunks of time each week for you to work on your business. Make these the same days and times so that you build a natural rhythm and bring your best to these sessions.
Focus is part of the 8-step process so that you can nail the next 100 days, build momentum, and rack up wins, even in turbulence and uncertainty.
You will get this process during my free masterclass.
Yes, it’s free and takes only ten seconds to sign-up. There are no sales, no gimmicks, just value for you.
Sign up now while this article is in front of you. You are one decision away from your next level of success.
Get the peace of mind that you have made time to work ON your business.
What is your top takeaway from this article? Let me know: chris@strategicleadersacademy.com
Decide – stop these common errors from killing off your best moves
Decide’s Latin origin means to kill off or to sever.
To make a decision thus means to kill off the alternatives.
Common decision-making errors result in you killing off the better alternatives – they are short cuts to expensive failure
Here are two doozies.
Confirmation bias happens when leaders place excessive weight on data that confirms their pre-existing beliefs and discounts contrary information.
We are living this problem right now.
People on one side of the political spectrum highlight worst-case data on COVID-19. Their opponents emphasize opposite data.
So many “expert” assessments and statements by political leaders are tainted by confirmation bias that ordinary people like you and me lose faith in their credibility.
It’s not just a political problem.
I fell into the confirmation bias trap myself.
I wanted to take people on leadership trips to Normandy battlefields. I know the impact these experiences have on leaders and teams, and I’m very good at delivering them.
I wanted to do a lot of good for a lot of people, so I was eager to get going.
I believed that a good social media campaign could lead to mass interest.
A digital marketing agency I hired felt the same and suggested that Facebook ads would be a winner. They had had success with Facebook ads before, with a life-coach. They believed that they could replicate the outcomes.
We made a series of (really cool) videos, created a complicated sales funnel, and crafted the ads carefully.
We launched the ads. The videos were really popular and we saw superb engagement rates.
No prospects.
We needed to create enough volume, we told ourselves, and the ads would pay off. Even if only .1 percent were interested, one million views should lead to 1000 prospects.
We spent more.
We got nearly 2 million views and 300k “likes.”
No prospects. No buyers.
I finally shut off the ads.
It turns out that we had tapped into an audience that loved military history, but they were not leaders or buyers.
Most entrepreneurs and leaders go to Facebook to keep up with friends and family, not for business advice.
That was an expensive lesson.
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We will discuss decision-making and seven more steps to nailing your next 100-days during my free masterclass.
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Status quo bias, on the other hand, increases resistance to change, even if your situation sucks and your plan is failing.
Leaders perceive that the status quo is safe. After all, the executive team signed up for the approach at one time.
Board members or executives poke holes in alternatives, shoot-down proposals, and emphasize the risks of change.
Some resist change for fear of being “wrong” in adopting the current plan.
Others do not have an apples-to-apples comparison of risk, so they place more confidence in managing the challenges of the failing plan they know than in a proposed alternative that they don’t.
Solo-entrepreneurs and small business leaders with status quo bias make a decision one day and then talk themselves out of moving forward the next morning.
You get trapped in the hamster wheel.
Here are two action steps to deal with these problems.
First, assess your assumptions.
Ask “what must be true” for the plan to work. Those are your assumptions.
Do a sanity check on the validity of the assumptions.
Do the same with alternate plans.
This approach gives you an apples-to-apples comparison of the risks and opportunities.
It also helps you check your confirmation bias.
Second, use premortems.
A premortem is a story or two about how the plan failed so that you can identify the indicators and warnings.
Make those indicators and warnings part of your risk assessment.
When the indicators and warnings light up in the wrong direction, you know it’s time to make a change.
Red-teams or designated critics can be helpful, too, but I prefer the pre-mortems.
Leaders may rationalize away the former because they are supposed to point out problems.
They go with the plan anyway and lose the benefit of the premortem’s indicators and warnings.
The premortem is something the decision-makers own, so they are more likely to take them seriously.
We will discuss decision-making and seven more steps to nailing your next 100-days during my free masterclass.
Yes, it’s free and takes only ten seconds to sign-up. There are no sales, no gimmicks, just value for you.
Sign up now while this article is in front of you. You are one decision away from making even better decisions :0).
Get the peace of mind that you have decided to work ON your business.
What is your top takeaway from this article?
P.S. Do you want to nail your next 100 days? Of course, you do. Here’s the free training that will help you do exactly that. It’s perfect for solo-entrepreneurs, consultants, and micro-business owners.
You are one decision away from nailing your next 100 days.
Accountability
Accountability is a four-way intersection.
Accountability means being answerable to someone for something important.
When you lead with accountability, you keep your commitments to your vision and mission, your employees, your customers, and your partners.
Lack of accountability leads to neglect, poor performance, abuse, and backbiting.
When you uphold accountability fairly, you show that you are sincere, you set the example, and you don’t play favorites.
Accountability improves commitment to your vision, mission, goals, and values.
Accountability reduces your need to micromanage and spend energy on compliance.
Accountability is possible when you make your goals and expectations clear.
Accountability improves when you share your goals and expectations.
An accountability group accelerates your performance because you are sharing your goals with people who are committed to your success.
Accountability gives you the focus to work on your business.
Accountability strengthens your promise to sharpen yourself so you can lead to greater success.
Accountability puts you back in command.
There’s a direct line from accountability to success.
Only you can draw it.
Leadership is the art of inspiring people to contribute their best to your team’s success (check out the free Leading Well masterclass) – accountability builds commitment so that people do what’s right even when no one is watching.
What’s your top takeaway from this article? Write me at chris@strategicleadersacademy.com.
