It's Not Them It's You. How To Develop Courage and Overcome "I Don't Deserve It" Patterns That Destroy

Faith is the catalyst of all belief. 

Healthy self-esteem means thinking as highly of yourself as you think of your friends and peers. We are so used to negative feedback that we are more aware of our weaknesses than our strengths. We are often taught we will "fail," so it is often hard to enjoy success, no matter how small each "success" might be. We are likewise taught that humility is thinking less of ourselves and more highly of others. 

Self esteem is believing one is worthy of happiness. 

 

 

Almost all negative thinking and depression are the result of low self esteem. This significantly impacts our career, relationships and health. When we are depressed we invariably believe we are worthless. The deeper the depression the greater the fatigue of hopelessness. Ultimately this transforms into self-dislike causing one to feel deficient in all the qualities we value such as: intelligence, achievement, popularity, attractiveness, health and strength. Until ones reality is frequented by tremendous weighted feelings that one is defeated, defective, deserted, unloved, unwanted, and deprived.  There is more to this in my seminars and coaching.

Try these steps for greater self esteem: 

1. Celebrate your strengths and achievements.
2. Forgive yourself for your mistakes.
3. Don't dwell on your weaknesses; every human has them.
4. Change the way you talk to yourself--stop putting yourself down!
5. Be sure that you are not judging yourself against unreasonable standards.
6. Berating yourself for your weaknesses is self-defeating. Use that energy for positive thoughts about you.

People With High Self-Esteem Are:.

1. Accept and learn from thier own mistakes.
2. Confident without being obnoxious or conceited.
3. Not devastated by criticism.
4. Not overly defensive when questioned.
5. Not easily defeated by setbacks and obstacles.
6. Unlikely to feel a need to put others down.
7. Open and assertive in communicating their needs.
8. Not overly worried about failing or looking foolish.
9. Not harshly or destructively critical of themselves.
10. Not aggressively driven to prove themselves.
11. Able to laugh at themselves, not taking themselves too seriously.

 

Need one on one coaching or a speaker? Contact Jim to discuss how he can help you. 

Jim Woods is principal and founder of InnoThink Group. Jim is a business turnaround expert. His story is riveting. He has worked with government, U.S. Army, MITRE Corporation, Pitney Bowes, Whirlpool, and 3M. Jim’s business experiences, extensive research on competitive strategy and innovation have given him a fresh perspective on improving individual and organizational performance. Jim is a prolific speaker on strategic innovation, creative leadership, uncertainty and competitive strategy. Speak with us for consulting or speaking engagements call 719-266-6703 or click here for more information. Follow Jim on Twitter. Follow Jim on Facebook.  

 

 

Tags » How to be courageous How to overcome fear Jim Woods Jim Woods Motivational speaker and coach Life coach Personal coach self esteem

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Dear leader: You’re in for one heck of a ride - Jim Woods Leadership and Strategy

With the exception of a few extremists, most of us don’t want to be in serious survival situations. Yet, in every respect, today’s businesses are in a battle for their lives. And things are going to get excruciatingly worse.  

 

Are you thinking you’ve seen enough? Well Buttercup buckle up! You aint seen nothing yet. It’s going to be cold, hard, bitter, and more weirder. So what? Meaning leadership is more important than ever. Still wondering so what? If you don’t get meaner, more remarkable at what you’re good at….your face will be on the back of milk cartons.

 

From now, on the new normal is going to force-feed leaders and managers a whacked out freaky business climate based strictly on unconventional wisdom. You are going to have to move hastily from creativity to innovation creating products that customers lust for. And you are going to sprint faster than &(%$ to deliver it.  

The ambitious companies with nimble strategies manage to hone skills, build stamina, and learn from the mistakes and fortunes of themselves and competitors. However, occasionally something remarkable develops. The really GREAT companies do well even in lean times because they hire leaders who do more than envision. They hire leaders and managers who execute.

How do you do it? By making the complex simple:

 

• Remove weak performers in every capacity.
• Be sure to place your own head on the chopping block first. You’re part of the reason for their ineptness.
• Significantly tighten control systems. Make products people will buy. And then find ways to make them better.

 

Well, reach for the heavy coat and the chicken soup…good luck and pass the butter. Because, you are going to need it more than you do today. 

 

Jim Woods is principal and founder of InnoThink Group. Jim is a business turnaround expert. His story is riveting. He has worked with government, U.S. Army, MITRE Corporation, Pitney Bowes, Whirlpool, and 3M. Jim’s business experiences, extensive research on competitive strategy and innovation have given him a fresh perspective on improving individual and organizational performance. Jim is a prolific speaker on strategic innovation, creative leadership, uncertainty and competitive strategy. Speak with us for consulting or speaking engagements call 719-266-6703 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting FREE 719-266-6703end_of_the_skype_highlighting or click here for more information. Follow Jim on Twitter. Follow Jim on Facebook.  

Tags » Business Denver Management Consulting Firms Economy Innovation Leadership

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Five Self-Defeating Behaviors that Ruin Companies and Careers - Rosabeth Moss Kanter

In turbulent times, it's hard enough to deal with external problems. But too often people and companies exacerbate their troubles by their own actions. Self-defeating behaviors can make any situation worse. Put these five on the what-not-to-do list.

Demanding a bigger share of a shrinking pie
Leaders defeat themselves when they seek gain when others suffer, for example, raising prices in a time of high unemployment when consumers have less to spend, to ensure profits when sales are down. McDonald's raised prices three percent in early 2012 and by the third quarter, faced the first drop in same-store sales in nine years. The executive responsible for that strategy was replaced.

At bankrupt Hostess Brands, bakery workers refused to make concessions (though the Teamsters did), thereby forcing the company to liquidate, eliminating 18,000 jobs. By trying to grab too much, the bakery union could lose everything.

This happens to executives too. A manager in a retail company demanded a promotion during the recession, because he was "indispensable," he said. The CEO, who had cut her own pay to save jobs, fired him instead. Greed makes a bad situation worse.

Getting angry
Anger and blame are unproductive emotions. Post-U.S. election, defeated Mitt Romney blamed his defeat on "gifts" that "bought" the votes of young people, women, African-Americans, and Latinos for President Obama. Losing the Presidency is a big defeat, but Romney further defeated future electoral prospects with public bitterness and insults. History might remember the bitterness, not his gracious concession speech.

Anger hurts companies too, especially if misplaced. Years after a tragic explosion on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010 in which 11 people lost their lives, BP was back in the news with a record fine and criminal charges. Former CEO Tony Hayward defeated himself and damaged the company in the public mind by issuing bitter statements about how unfair this was.

Angry words leave a long trail. An employee in another company who threw a temper tantrum over a denied proposal was surprised that this episode was still recalled two years later, overwhelming his accomplishments. He was the first terminated in a reorganization. Bitterness turns everything sour.

Giving in to mission creep
Sometimes self-perpetuated decline occurs more slowly, through taking core strengths for granted while chasing the greener grass. I can't say that this is happening to Google, a company I admire, but I do see potholes ahead — although driverless cars are an extension of mapping software close to Google's core strength in search. But should Google expand its territory to be a device maker and communications network provider, building a fiber-optics and mobile network? This could be mission creep. Perhaps Google should focus on improving Googling.

Trying to become something you are not while there's plenty of value in who you are can be self-defeating. For professionals, this can mean branching out into new fields while falling behind in the latest knowledge in the field that made their reputation. People can get caught in the middle — not yet good enough to compete in the new area, while losing strength in the old area.

Adding without subtracting
A related form of self-defeat is to allow bloat. Adding new items without subtracting old ones is how closets get cluttered, bureaucracies expand, workloads grow out of control, national budgets go into deficit, and people get fat. It takes discipline to cut or consolidate some things for every one added. Too often that discipline is missing.

A technology company tacked on acquisitions without integration, which made acquired companies happy. But one consequence was 17 warring R&D groups and the lowest R&D in the industry. Bankruptcy followed. Growing without pruning is bad for gardens and for business.

Thinking you'll get away with it
Whatever "it" is — lying, cheating, foreign corrupt practices, or swallowing extra bites of chocolate — lapses cannot remain secret for long in the digital age. Believing otherwise is delusional. The mistake will show up somewhere — in routine audits, unrelated FBI investigations, smartphone photos by strangers, or the bathroom scale. In the ultimate example of self-defeating behavior, too many otherwise-intelligent politicians, military leaders, and CEOs think with their zippers, thereby jeopardizing companies, countries, and careers.

Happily, there's a cure for self-defeating behavior: Get over yourself.

Humility prevents self-defeat. A desire to serve others, an emphasis on values and purpose, a sense of responsibility for long-term consequences, and knowledge of both strengths and limitations can make it easier to avoid these traps. Google has enjoyed outstanding success, but that doesn't mean it will succeed at everything. The bakery union that fought Hostess into liquidation had solidarity, but perhaps it, too, should have eaten a little humble pie. via blogs.hbr.org

Jim Woods is principal and founder of InnoThink Group. Jim is a business turnaround expert. His story is riveting. He has worked with government, U.S. Army, MITRE Corporation, Pitney Bowes, Whirlpool, and 3M. Jim’s business experiences, extensive research on competitive strategy and innovation have given him a fresh perspective on improving individual and organizational performance. Jim is a prolific speaker on strategic innovation, creative leadership, uncertainty and competitive strategy. Speak with us for consulting or speaking engagements call 719-266-6703 or click here for more information. Follow Jim on Twitter. Follow Jim on Facebook.  

How Culture of Ben and Jerry's Trumped Size

In April 2000, when Unilever, the then-$45 billion Dutch-English consumer products giant, announced its acquisition of Ben & Jerry’s, the socially conscious, touchy-feely, Vermont-based ice cream maker, the general response was predictable.

“Ben & Jerry’s Sells Out” was a typical business section headline in the morning papers and on the Internet. “Everyone, it turns out, has a price,” lamented Wired magazine, while pointing out that Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the “hippies” who founded the popular brand in 1978, really didn’t want to make the deal. As the new millennium approached, giant corporate vultures were hovering above the publicly traded, under-performing Vermont institution with hungry eyes and a takeover seemed inevitable. Inside there was turmoil as some wanted to sell and others did not. Cohen and Greenfield tried to orchestrate their own buyout but could not generate an offer high enough to prevent Unilever from prevailing.

More ideas on innovation and leadership 

Cohen released a statement trying to put a positive spin on the deal. “While I would have preferred for Ben & Jerry’s to remain independent, I’m excited about the next chapter,” he said and then quoted the above Grateful Dead lyrics.

The consensus seemed to be that the deal would signal the end of Ben & Jerry’s well-established and respected triple bottom line: “Make Great Products, Deliver Solid Profitability, and Work Towards Progressive Social Change.” This was a company that donated 7.5 percent of its profits to charity, paid living wages and offered better benefits, supported local farmers and growers in Third World countries who produced some of its ingredients, and believed that its progressive social mission was as important as its profits.

Surely a conglomerate as big as Unilever had other ideas and it would undoubtedly swallow the brand, remake the culture and transform Ben & Jerry’s into a profit-driven marketing engine that would eventually become unrecognizable to its legions of fans.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the inevitable makeover. A dozen years after Unilever plunked down $326 million for the Ben & Jerry’s brand, the progressive, activist, socially responsible culture that was Ben & Jerry’s is alive, well and spreading its version of caring capitalism all over the world. And rather than crush the spirit out Ben & Jerry’s, Unilever, a $58 billion global powerhouse with more than 400 brands and 165,000 employees, has remade its own corporate mission to reflect the socially conscious ideas that Ben & Jerry’s was built upon. The very profitable tail, in this case, is wagging the extremely satisfied dog.

The Price for Sustainability 

In a departure from what happens in most acquisitions, Ben & Jerry’s was able to negotiate an agreement with Unilever that included the retention of the smaller company’s board of directors. The board’s mandate was to preserve and protect Ben & Jerry’s triple bottom line while Unilever tended to the business end of things. Granting such independence in perpetuity to an acquired company is not simply unusual, it is nearly unheard of. Even with that, the acquisition was hardly smooth, and the first eight or nine years were fraught with the usual trauma — customer dismay, layoffs, culture clashes — that wreaks havoc on most such acquisitions. Despite the pain, and with Jostein Solheim, a Unilever veteran and now Ben & Jerry’s third CEO in 10 years firmly in place, the two organizations survived most of the distress of these often-daunting couplings. Both have benefitted from the marriage.

 

“It definitely took time for the two companies to get used to each other,” said Kevin Havelock, president of Unilever’s Refreshment division, “For Ben & Jerry’s, a small company making great ice cream in Vermont, to suddenly be part of a very big company with different processes and business systems and results, it was uncomfortable at first. For Unilever, acquiring an organization that was more intuitive, more gut-feel to the way it approached things and with very strong positions on values, it wasn’t always easy. It was an up-and-down relationship, but it has held together because the social mission provided a glue, and there was good success rolling out new products and new innovations. But it’s been a real two-way learning.”

In fact, Ben and Jerry’s is not the only socially responsible player acquired by a giant company. As the global marketplace, over the past decade, has come to value companies with sustainable, green, organic, socially proactive bona fides, a long list of acquisitions have been completed with varying degrees of success. Among those acquired: Stonyfield Farm by Groupe Danone in France, Honest Tea by Coca-Cola, Tom’s of Maine by Colgate-Palmolive, Zappos by Amazon, The Body Shop by L’Oreal, cereal maker Kashi by Kellogg, Iams pet food by Procter & Gamble, Cascadian Farms by General Mills and more each year.

And what has become clear as these deals have multiplied is that success — as measured in enhanced financial results and marketplace perception — is generally based on how clearly and thoughtfully the acquiring company has considered why it is making the deal. Though this is the case in any successful merger or acquisition, it is particularly pertinent in the realm of caring capitalism.

“You have to understand what you are buying,” said Philip H. Mirvis, senior fellow at the Social Innovation Lab at Babson College and an expert on mergers and acquisitions in the CSR (corporate social responsibility) space. “You are not only buying a brand, but an organizational way of making the brand authentic. You are delivering not only a socially responsible product but one that is really good. If you don’t understand those pieces and manage that as part of the integration, you risk losing and ultimately undermining the brand.”

If a corporate giant is simply seeking a shortcut to a halo of social responsibility, these deals will inevitably be troubled. “There are plenty of companies presenting themselves as caring capitalists,” Mirvis said. “But if it is not rooted in how they make and source the product and how they really do business, then it is just a phony advertising campaign.”

Acquisitions happen for lots of reasons: quick access to new geographical markets, extensions to product lines, new technologies, scalability, enhanced revenue streams, added girth. Companies that make these kinds of CSR acquisitions are clearly looking for the profitable bump they hope to generate from consumers who are more and more often making buying decisions related to socially conscious considerations. Numerous surveys over the past decade have confirmed that a brand’s social content makes a significant difference in consumers’ purchasing decisions and that if aligned, those attributes can lead to powerful brand loyalty and increased sales. According to the Natural Marketing Institute, the LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) market was nearly $300 billion in 2008, and as the global economy continues to stir back to life, that number can only grow.

“Identifying trends and brands of the future is an amalgamation of science, art and serendipity,” said Deryck Van Rensburg, president and general manager of Venturing and Emerging Brands (VEB) at Coca-Cola. “It starts with a research-based understanding of what the consumer is looking for, as well as a point of view about where consumers are likely to be in the future. We recognize through these trends that many of our consumers’ identities are no longer defined by gender, age or geography, but by lifestyles and values. Consumers are demanding that brands go beyond benefits. They want to know how it will impact their life, community and environment.”

For many corporate giants, the lure of a fast-growing, widely admired smaller entity is too good to pass up. “There are good businesses with strong market niches and in some cases, a huge number of brand fans,” Mirvis said, “So it’s logical for companies to use these to expand their product lines and maybe even do some R&D in the socially responsible consumer space. And there is the potential that such an acquisition will somehow teach the larger company about socially responsible business and add to its reputational cachet.”

Not surprising, such corporate marriages are fraught with perils well beyond the usual M&A concerns. Most of these “do well by doing good” players prefer to remain independent and step to the beat of their own drummer. Socially responsible entrepreneurs build companies with passionate employees and a serious commitment to the triple-bottom line philosophy, and the best performers generally reflect the most committed of entrepreneurial teams. Selling the company is generally a last option in the quest for growth, scalability, broader distribution and the cash to keep building the dream.

“These are not people just looking for money,” said Gary Hirshberg, founder and chairman of Stonyfield Farm, who sold an 85 percent stake in the organic yogurt company in 2001 to giant Groupe Danone in France. “These are entrepreneurs looking to make a difference, and an acquirer has to show respect and that it understands that.” The article contiues at kornferryinstitute.com. Thank you. 

Jim Woods is about helping companies and people engage innovate and grow in all the areas important to them. Jim is a professional speaker, author, coach, and strategy consultant based in Colorado Springs, Co. Follow Jim on Twitter @innothinkgroup, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/InnoThink Group or check out his company website http://innothinkgroup.com for more tips and strategies effective leadership, engaged employees, increase growth, and customer effectiveness through innovation. To arrange for Jim to consult or speak at your event email Jim.

How Great Leaders Inspire Legendary Results

As lifelong students of leadership, we are fascinated with the notion of what makes a leader. Why is it that certain people seem to naturally inspire confidence, loyalty, and hard work, while others (who may have just as much vision and smarts) stumble, again and again? It’s a timeless question, and there’s no simple answer. But we have come to believe it has something to do with the different ways that people deal with adversity. Indeed, our recent research has led us to conclude that one of the most reliable indicators and predictors of true leadership is an individual’s ability to find meaning in negative events and to learn from even the most trying circumstances. Put another way, the skills required to conquer adversity and emerge stronger and more committed than ever are the same ones that make for extraordinary leaders.

The skills required to conquer adversity and emerge stronger and more committed than ever are the same ones that make for extraordinary leaders.

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Take Sidney Harman. Thirty-four years ago, the then-48-year-old businessman was holding down two executive positions. He was the chief executive of Harman Kardon (now Harman International), the audio components company he had cofounded, and he was serving as president of Friends World College, now Friends World Program, an experimental Quaker school on Long Island whose essential philosophy is that students, not their teachers, are responsible for their education. Juggling the two jobs, Harman was living what he calls a “bifurcated life,” changing clothes in his car and eating lunch as he drove between Harman Kardon offices and plants and the Friends World campus. One day while at the college, he was told his company’s factory in Bolivar, Tennessee, was having a crisis.

He immediately rushed to the Bolivar factory, a facility that was, as Harman now recalls, “raw, ugly, and, in many ways, demeaning.” The problem, he found, had erupted in the polish and buff department, where a crew of a dozen workers, mostly African-Americans, did the dull, hard work of polishing mirrors and other parts, often under unhealthy conditions. The men on the night shift were supposed to get a coffee break at 10 pm. When the buzzer that announced the workers’ break went on the fritz, management arbitrarily decided to postpone the break for ten minutes, when another buzzer was scheduled to sound. But one worker, “an old black man with an almost biblical name, Noah B. Cross,” had “an epiphany,” as Harman describes it. “He said, literally, to his fellow workers, ‘I don’t work for no buzzer. The buzzer works for me. It’s my job to tell me when it’s ten o’clock. I got me a watch. I’m not waiting another ten minutes. I’m going on my coffee break.’ And all 12 guys took their coffee break, and, of course, all hell broke loose.”

The worker’s principled rebellion—his refusal to be cowed by management’s senseless rule—was, in turn, a revelation to Harman: “The technology is there to serve the men, not the reverse,” he remembers realizing. “I suddenly had this awakening that everything I was doing at the college had appropriate applications in business.” In the ensuing years, Harman revamped the factory and its workings, turning it into a kind of campus—offering classes on the premises, including piano lessons, and encouraging the workers to take most of the responsibility for running their workplace. Further, he created an environment where dissent was not only tolerated but also encouraged. The plant’s lively independent newspaper, the Bolivar Mirror, gave workers a creative and emotional outlet—and they enthusiastically skewered Harman in its pages.

Harman had, unexpectedly, become a pioneer of participative management, a movement that continues to influence the shape of workplaces around the world. The concept wasn’t a grand idea conceived in the CEO’s office and imposed on the plant, Harman says. It grew organically out of his going down to Bolivar to, in his words, “put out this fire.” Harman’s transformation was, above all, a creative one. He had connected two seemingly unrelated ideas and created a radically different approach to management that recognized both the economic and humane benefits of a more collegial workplace. Harman went on to accomplish far more during his career. In addition to founding Harman International, he served as the deputy secretary of commerce under Jimmy Carter. But he always looked back on the incident in Bolivar as the formative event in his professional life, the moment he came into his own as a leader.

The details of Harman’s story are unique, but their significance is not. In interviewing more than 40 top leaders in business and the public sector over the past three years, we were surprised to find that all of them—young and old—were able to point to intense, often traumatic, always unplanned experiences that had transformed them and had become the sources of their distinctive leadership abilities.

We came to call the experiences that shape leaders “crucibles,” after the vessels medieval alchemists used in their attempts to turn base metals into gold. For the leaders we interviewed, the crucible experience was a trial and a test, a point of deep self-reflection that forced them to question who they were and what mattered to them. It required them to examine their values, question their assumptions, hone their judgment. And, invariably, they emerged from the crucible stronger and more sure of themselves and their purpose—changed in some fundamental way.

Leadership crucibles can take many forms. Some are violent, life-threatening events. Others are more prosaic episodes of self-doubt. But whatever the crucible’s nature, the people we spoke with were able, like Harman, to create a narrative around it, a story of how they were challenged, met the challenge, and became better leaders. As we studied these stories, we found that they not only told us how individual leaders are shaped but also pointed to some characteristics that seem common to all leaders—characteristics that were formed, or at least exposed, in the crucible. via hbr.org

 

Jim Woods is about helping companies and people engage innovate and grow in all the areas important to them. Jim is a professional speaker, author, coach, and strategy consultant based in Colorado Springs, Co. Follow Jim on Twitter @innothinkgroup, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/InnoThink Group or check out his company website http://innothinkgroup.com for more tips and strategies effective leadership, engaged employees, increase growth, and customer effectiveness through innovation. To arrange for Jim to consult or speak at your event email Jim. 

 

Why Leaders Fail - The Case for Effective Leadership - Mark Sanborn

Donald Trump, paragon of the real estate world, files for bankruptcy. Richard Nixon, 37th U.S. President, resigns the presidency over the Watergate scandal. Jennifer Capriati, rising tennis star, enters a rehabilitation center for drug addicts. Jim Bakker, renowned televangelist, is convicted of fraud.

In the recent past, we've witnessed the public downfall of leaders from almost every area of endeavor—business, politics, religion, and sports. One day they're on top of the heap, the next, the heap's on top of them.

Of course, we think that such catastrophic failure could never happen to us. We've worked hard to achieve our well-deserved positions of leadership—and we won't give them up for anything! The bad news is: the distance between beloved leader and despised failure is shorter than we think.

Ken Maupin, a practicing psychotherapist and colleague, has built his practice on working with high-performance personalities, including leaders in business, religion, and sports. Ken and I have often discussed why leaders fail. Our discussions have led to the following "warning signs" of impending failure.

WARNING SIGN #1: A Shift in Focus

This shift can occur in several ways. Often, leaders simply lose sight of what's important. The laser-like focus that catapulted them to the top disappears, and they become distracted by the trappings of leadership, such as wealth and notoriety.

Leaders are usually distinguished by their ability to "think big." But when their focus shifts, they suddenly start thinking small. They micro manage, they get caught up in details better left to others, they become consumed with the trivial and unimportant. And to make matters worse, this tendency can be exacerbated by an inclination toward perfectionism.

A more subtle leadership derailer is an obsession with "doing" rather than "becoming." The good work of leadership is usually a result of who the leader is. What the leader does then flows naturally from inner vision and character. It is possible for a leader to become too action oriented and, in the process, lose touch with the more important development of self.

What is your primary focus right now? If you can't write it on the back of your business card, then it's a sure bet that your leadership is suffering from a lack of clarity. Take the time necessary to get your focus back on what's important.

Further, would you describe your thinking as expansive or contractive? Of course, you always should be willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done, but try never to take on what others can do as well as you. In short, make sure that your focus is on leading rather than doing.

WARNING SIGN #2: Poor Communication

A lack of focus and its resulting disorientation typically lead to poor communication. Followers can't possibly understand a leader's intent when the leader him- or herself isn't sure what it is! And when leaders are unclear about their own purpose, they often hide their confusion and uncertainty in ambiguous communication.

Sometimes, leaders fall into the clairvoyance trap. In other words, they begin to believe that truly committed followers automatically sense their goals and know what they want without being told. Misunderstanding is seen by such managers as a lack of effort (or commitment) on the listener's part, rather than their own communication negligence.

"Say what you mean, and mean what you say" is timeless advice, but it must be preceded by knowing what you mean! An underlying clarity of purpose is the starting point for all effective communication. It's only when you're absolutely clear about what you want to convey that the hard work of communicating pays dividends.

WARNING SIGN #3: Risk Aversion

Third, leaders at risk often begin to be driven by a fear of failure rather than the desire to succeed. Past successes create pressure for leaders: "Will I be able to sustain outstanding performance?" "What will I do for an encore?" In fact, the longer a leader is successful, the higher his or her perceived cost of failure.

When driven by the fear of failure, leaders are unable to take reasonable risks. They want to do only the tried and proven; attempts at innovation—typically a key to their initial success—diminish and eventually disappear.

Which is more important to you: the attempt or the outcome? Are you still taking reasonable risks?  Prudent leadership never takes reckless chances that risk the destruction of what has been achieved, but neither is it paralyzed by fear. Often the dance of leadership is two steps forward, one step back.

WARNING SIGN #4: Ethics Slip

A leader's credibility is the result of two aspects:  what he or she does (competency) and who he or she is (character). A discrepancy between these two aspects creates an integrity problem.

The highest principle of leadership is integrity. When integrity ceases to be a leader's top priority, when a compromise of ethics is rationalized away as necessary for the "greater good," when achieving results becomes more important than the means to their achievement—that is the moment when a leader steps onto the slippery slop of failure.

Often such leaders see their followers as pawns, a mere means to an end, thus confusing manipulation with leadership. These leaders lose empathy. They cease to be people "perceivers" and become people "pleasers," using popularity to ease the guilt of lapsed integrity.

It is imperative to your leadership that you constantly subject your life and work to the highest scrutiny. Are there areas of conflict between what you believe and how you behave? Has compromise crept into your operational tool kit? One way to find out is to ask the people you depend on if they ever feel used or taken for granted.

WARNING SIGN #5: Poor Self Management

Tragically, if a leader doesn't take care of him- or herself, no one else will. Unless a leader is blessed to be surrounded by more-sensitive-than-normal followers, nobody will pick up on the signs of fatigue and stress. Leaders are often perceived to be superhuman, running on unlimited energy.

While leadership is invigorating, it is also tiring. Leaders who fail to take care of their physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual needs are headed for disaster. Think of having a gauge for each of these four areas of your life—and check them often! When a gauge reaches the "empty" point, make time for refreshment and replenishment. Clear your schedule and take care of yourself—it's absolutely vital to your leadership that you continue to grow and develop, a task that can be accomplished only when your tanks are full.

WARNING SIGN #6: Lost Love

The last warning sign of impending disaster that leaders need to heed is a move away from their first love and dream. Paradoxically, the hard work of leadership should be fulfilling and even fun. But when leaders lose sight of the dream that compelled them to accept the responsibility of leadership, they can find themselves working for causes that mean little to them. They must stick to what they love, what motivated them at the first, to maintain the fulfillment of leadership.

To make sure that you stay on the track of following your first love, frequently ask yourself these three questions: Why did I initially assume leadership? Have those reasons changed? Do I still want to lead?

The warning signs in life—from stop lights to prescription labels—are there for our good. They protect us from disaster, and we would be foolish to ignore them. As you consider the six warning signs of leadership failure, don't be afraid to take an honest look at yourself. If any of the warnings ring true, take action today! The good news is: by paying attention to these signs and heeding their warnings, you can avoid disaster and sustain the kind of leadership that is healthy and fulfilling for both yourself and your followers. via leadershipnow.com

Jim Woods is about helping companies and people engage innovate and grow in all the areas important to them. Jim is a professional speaker, author, coach, and strategy consultant based in Colorado Springs, Co. Follow Jim on Twitter @innothinkgroup, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/InnoThink Group or check out his company website http://innothinkgroup.com for more tips and strategies effective leadership, engaged employees, increase growth, and customer effectiveness through innovation. To arrange for Jim to consult or speak at your event email Jim.

To Find Your Infinite Possibilities - Sprout Some Wings - Jim Woods

Brother Lawrence, the 17th-century Christian monk, was asked how he’d been able to maintain such a heightened state of awareness of his oneness with God. He replied, “I gave up all that was not he [meaning God] and I began to live in the world as if only he and I existed. As if only God and I existed.” He could say this because he was consciously choosing to live in such a way, and he exerted the spiritual discipline to enter that state of consciousness, a consciousness of oneness with God. Court that kind of awakening in your own life. Know that it is possible to live in this world as if only God exists, because it’s true. God exists as you. God exists as the people around you. God exists as opportunities that open up for you. You can choose not to see anything other than this. Let it speak to you throughout your day, then it will be present in your dream stage, it will pour out through your poetry, your song, your dance, your every movement.

As the Buddha described, once you hear the truth, it’s not going to go away. You’ve heard the truth and, one way or another, at one time or another, you will fully awaken to the awareness that your life is the life of the divine, that you are already an enlightened being.

You may resist this truth, you may deny it for a while, but it’s going to keep working on you, keep revolving within you, just as it is in this very moment, whether you are aware of it or not. Whatever has brought you to the point of awareness in which you find yourself today is the same thing that seeks to express itself in, through, and as you fully and completely. It’s emerging now, and soon you will sprout some wings and fly into the undiscovered region of your infinite potential.

Breathe into that awareness, feeling yourself connected to and blessed by it. The grace of God is pouring over you. Sometimes we don’t even know how blessed we are. There are blessings happening in your life that you don’t even know about yet.

Sometimes blessings come disguised and we say, “Oh no! I don’t want that! That isn’t what I’ve been praying for!” But right within that disguised blessing is something our soul is prepared to welcome or it wouldn’t have arrived at the threshold of our life, of our awareness.

So begin to count not only the blessings you can see, of which you are aware, but also give thanks for those you can’t yet see. Say to yourself, “My life is magnificent in every way—the good, the harmony, the love, the creativity, the joy, the harmony—are beyond my imagining! I am so humbly grateful for life, and to Life itself!”

This is your life on God. This is your brain on love. This is your mind on peace. This is your being on creativity. This is your body temple on vibrant health. All of this and more is who and what you are. via  Heal Your Life

 

Jim Woods is about helping companies and people engage innovate and grow in all the areas important to them. Jim is a professional speaker, author, coach, and strategy consultant based in Colorado Springs, Co. Follow Jim on Twitter @innothinkgroup, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/InnoThink Group or check out his company website http://innothinkgroup.com for more tips and strategies effective leadership, engaged employees, increase growth, and customer effectiveness through innovation. To arrange for Jim to consult or speak at your event email Jim.

 

How Apple, Samsung and Google Take Different Approaches to Innovation - Max Nisen

image credit: Business Insider

When people think of the most innovative companies, they think of ones that are coming out with new and amazing technology. The push for self-driving cars or augmented reality glasses can be a more compelling story than, say, a smaller iPad.

But one thing highlighted in the Booz & Co. Innovation 1000 study and our conversation with co-author Barry Jaruzelski is that pushing technological boundaries is just one of the three successful paths to innovation. Each is as difficult to execute, requires as much innovation in the research and development (R&D) process, and has as much potential as the next.

Here's how Jaruzelski describes them: 

1. Need seekers (think Apple)

"...these are companies who's innovation strategy is essentially around knowing customers better than themselves, identifying unarticulated needs, and then being the first to market with a product that addresses those needs. It's very heavily reliant on direct customer observation rather than market research. It is people telling you what they want, watching customers, seeing how they interact with the product or competitors' products, and observing opportunities in the problems that they're having."

Apple didn't invent the touch screen. But it's made vastly more money than anyone else on it by focusing on how people use it, and being better than anyone else at delivering that experience.

2. Market readers (think Samsung)

"...a market reader is sort of the classic fast follower, it doesn't mean they ignore their customers, but they're very attuned to what competitors are doing and what other people are bringing to market first and observing what seems to be gaining traction, then very rapidly coming up with their own version of that innovation. You can think about the companies set up as almost a massive coiled spring to basically pop out and copy an idea, not reverse engineer it necessarily, but, looking at innovation and coming up with their own version very rapidly to get their share. It's very much rooted in competitive intelligence, classic market research kinds of activities in terms of the front end."

Samsung wouldn't have jumped five spots in three years on the ranking of the world's most innovative companies delivering bad copies of an iPhone. It creates compelling new versions of products, times them well, and adds to them. Pulling that off is an innovative and difficult strategy in its own right. 

3. Tech drivers (think Google)

"The third category is what we call technology drivers. This is much more the traditional technology push kind of model, where the pendulum hasn't swung completely away from customers and markets, but it's much more oriented towards leveraging the technology base, seeing what you can push out, seeing where there might be applications for the technology."

This is the model that's traditionally defined innovation, but being the first to come up with something and the best at making money off of it are very different.

Every company listed here is successful and approaches R&D in a completely different way. The narrative that calls only the last group innovative may be appealing, but it's not what investors or R&D executives care about.

This story originally appeared on Business Insider

via entrepreneur.com

We’re about helping companies of all sizes grow. Follow me on Twitter @innothinkgroup, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/Center-for-Creative-Leadership-and-Strategy, or check out my website http://innothinkgroup.com for more tips and strategies effective leadership, engaged employees, increase growth, and customer effectiveness through innovation. To consult or speak at your event email me.