More Than Virtual Action!

Dear Managers and Leaders!

Have you noticed how the Internet can be a good place for discussion? With all the social sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or other virtual communities, it is really easy to spend days and nights just staring at a computer reading or discussing with virtual friends. This is all good, but I find that what is missing from all these sites is action. It is so easy to live inside our brain, sharing ideas, photos, and telling people what is going on in our life in 140 characters or less that we often forget to do something!

Social sites bring together people with enormous possibilities! But the sad thing is that this potential rarely translates into actions that are beneficial to the real world. It is not true of all the sites and what I want to do today is to highlight an exceptional event that happened on 09/09/09. I announced this leadership webathon on this blog last Tuesday. Can you imagine 21 consecutive webinars about leadership delivered in 21 hours? Isn’t it INCREDIBLE? It was incredible! The special thing about this webathon is that its organizer, Kwai Yu, and all presenters are part of 2 related virtual communities.

The first of these communities is the Leaders Cafe Foundation that has a virtual presence as a very active group on LinkedIn. You can find it here. The second one is the Differencemakers virtual community led by Ian Berry. It can be found here.

So, if you want to join virtual communities that are doing more than just chatting on the net, you should definitely consider joining these two special communities. I am certainly glad and proud I am part of them. They are dynamic communities, dedicated to DOING something to make this world a better place.

Until next time,

Remi Cote

PS: If you find these postings interesting and would like to learn more about what I can do for you and your team, then please visit www.innovachron.com or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.

Invitation to Attend a Leadership Webathon!

Dear Managers and Leaders,

today, I will not give you new contents to read, but I will invite you to a very big international event that is hapening on 09/09/09. Starting at 7am GMT, leadership specialists members of the Leaders Cafe Foundation (LCF) will give 21 free webinars! 21 FREE WEBINARS from leadership specialists coming from 6 different countries. You have never seen so much contents delivered in a single event, I'm sure!

Note that I will give two hours of presentation, the first at 23h GMT (7pm EDT) and the second one right after at midnight GMT (8pm EDT). I hope you will all join me for these two presentations. The first one is explaining 3 complementary models of a team and the other one will talk about some symptoms a leader cannot overlook. The latter is inspired from the series of posts I did on this blog.

The link to attend all webinars is

http://webmeeting.dimdim.com/portal/JoinForm.action?meetingRoomName=leaderscafe

The official communication with a lot more information now follows. I really hope you can join me and attend these presentations!

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WEBATHON - CELEBRATING THE WORLD DAY OF INTERCONNECTEDNESS ON 090909 THROUGH LEADERSHIP

On 9th September 2009 Leaders Cafe Foundation group and differencemakers community will celebrate World Day of Interconnectedness with a 24 hour webathon (all free). There will be a leadership webinar starting every hour with a great line up of presenters from 6 countries.

The probable program is listed below. Final program will be updated at

http://leaderscafefoundation.webs.com/wdi090909.htm

Fellow LCF member, Ian Berry has the honour of kicking off the webathon at 8 am London time 090909 (07:00 GMT)

All times listed are GMT (EDT.

07:00 Ian Berry from Australia What Real Leaders Do and fake ones don't

08:00 Heather Davis from Australia "Taking it personally: Small ‘l' leadership"

09:00 Krishna Kumar from Australia You've planned your holiday but have you planned your life?

10:00 Sangeeth Varghese from India Defining moments that can change your life

11:00 Krishna Kumar Growing Roses and Chrysanthemums

12:00 Don Dunoon from Australia Leadership mode: Leadership as grounded in learning and relational work

13:00 Gino Federici Harmonious Oneness

14:00 Rhea D'Souza from India Leadership through storytelling

15:00 Rhea D'Souza At the edge of innovation

16:00 Kwai Yu from United Kingdom Why Should Anyone Be Led By You

17:00 Kwai Yu Finding Purpose

18:00 Kellie Frazier from USA Speak and Write With Intention

19:00 Joel Graham-Blake United Kingdom To Be Announced

20:00 Richard Norris from Scotland 7 Steps To Success

21:00 Ian Berry Standing out from the crowd - how to do today what others will be thinking about tomorrow

22:00 Ian Berry Differencemakers - how doing good is great for your life and work

23:00 Remi Cote from Canada 3 complimentary models of a team

00:00 Remi Cote Symptoms a leader cannot overlook

01:00 Jane Chin from Los Angeles Leaders Cafe Foundation launch in LA

02:00 Jane Chin Personal Branding including the launch of the ebook Who am I? the power of a personal brand by Ian Berry, Jane Chin, Remi Cote, Shelley Dunstone, Joel Graham-Blake, Pat Nautin, Leo Sonneveld, and Kwai Yu.

All participants in these webinars receive a copy of this ebook.

03:00 Jane Chin Personal Branding

You can participate in any of these free webinars by clicking on the following URL at the appropriate time

http://webmeeting.dimdim.com/portal/JoinForm.action?meetingRoomName=leaderscafe

For more on the World Day of Interconnectedness visit http://www.interconnectedness090909.org/

Your Vision in 7 Quotes

Dear Managers and Leaders!

We already discussed a few times the importance for a team leader to have a clear vision and to share that vision with his entire team. Today, I want to share a few quotes about vision with you. Some of these quotes are taken from the book "The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork" written by John C. Maxwell.

I hope these quotes will inspire you to define a clear and articulated vision, to broadcast it around you, and to live it fully.

"To have a vision gives motivation and assurance to team members."

- John Maxwell

"Every soldier must know, before he goes into battle, how the little battle he is to fight fits into the larger picture, and how the success of his fighting will influence the battle as a whole."

- Bernard Montgomery

"Leaders do not need to be visionaries themselves. The vision can come from anyone."

- Ezra Earl Jones

"I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

- Henry David Thoreau

"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it."

- Michelangelo

"The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps - we must step up the stairs."

- Vance Havner

"You must have long-range goals to keep you from being frustrated by short-range failures."

- Charles C. Noble

I hope you enjoyed reading these quotes and found some wisdom in them.

I also want to invite you to a free webinar I'll give on 09/09/09 from 7pm until 9pm EDT. This is part of a larger event hosted by the Leaders Cafe Foundation for the World Day of Interconnectedness. I will present two different topics:

• 3 Complementary Models of a Team
• Symptoms Leaders Cannot Overlook

But the event is a 21-hour leadership presentation marathon If you want to join me or learn more about the other sessions, send me an email at remi@innovachron.com and I'll send you all the details.

Remi Cote

4 Ways to Improve Your Team

Dear Managers and Leaders!

I am reading a very good book from John C. Maxwell titled “The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork”. In this book, John Maxwell emphasizes the fact that as a team leader, you must ensure that your team meets the highest performance standards possible. Your team must perform or it is bound to fail. You do not want your team to be caught underperforming because at that point, you will lose control over your team. Someone above you is likely to overtake your team and do what is necessary to correct the situation. At that point, it usually requires some serious actions that could even mean lay-offs of team members or even the elimination of the entire team. You really want to notice that situation before someone else detects it so that you keep control and do what you decide to do to correct the performance problem yourself.

To help you with improving your team, Maxwell suggests 4 ways to improve your team’s performance. I’ll share them with you here.

• Improve the performance of your team members – If you see that your team does not perform as well as it should, the first thing that you need to check is whether the team members can be trained to perform better. You must always look for ways to train and improve the people forming your teams. Note that you also must not forget to improve yourself in the process!
• Add competent people to your team – Sometimes, your team members are performing well, but you discover that you will not succeed with the current team as it stands. Maybe you lack some specific competences. Maybe it is just the sheer number of people that is insufficient to do everything that needs to be done. In those cases, you will find that you need to adjoin more competent people to help you achieve what you need to achieve. You need to grow your team!
• Change the leader – When a team is composed of the right people but still does not progress, maybe it is time to look for a new leader! Or maybe some people on your team would be better suited to lead certain aspects of the project. This is tougher to do when you are the team leader yourself. You have to look at your delegation skills and see how you can use some better suited people to help you with leadership. You can keep the control of the overall project, but delegate the leadership responsibilities of certain parts to someone else if you feel it will be better for the project.
• Remove inefficient members – Finally, sometimes you need to remove inefficient members from a non-performing team. A single member can change a winning team into a losing team! In that case, you have to put the interests of the team first and remove that person from your team. For you as the leader, the team is what counts. You need to compose the best possible team and this should be your focus.

Those are the four elements that Maxwell suggests in his book. I would add things around processes and relationship myself. We might look at those in some future posts!

What about you dear leaders? Do you always focus on your team’s interests first? Do you have your own suggestions as to how team performance can be improved? Please add your comments below. I’m always happy to see them coming!

Until next time,

Remi Cote

PS: If you find these postings interesting and would like to learn more about what I can do for you and your team, then please visit www.innovachron.com or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.

The Leadership Cycle

Dear Managers and Leaders!

I feel starting a company, even the smallest solo company, is pure leadership. You need to create and clarify your vision, define your mission, set clear objectives, plan for action, and then take action. This can be a very stressful situation if you try to do everything at once. It can be overwhelming at times, since you feel responsible for everything. Observing myself as I start my solo company, I came up with a crude, back-to-basics description of the leadership process to help me focus on the right things. It can be summarized as follows:

• Set your objectives
• Plan for actions
• Advance according to your plan for a while
• Assess where you are
• Correct course
• Advance according to your new plan for a while
• Assess where you are
• Correct course
• Advance a bit more
• ...

As you can see, this process is a cycle that repeats itself until you reach your objectives. As you assess where you are, you also need to evaluate whether the objectives you are pursuing are still valid. Things change rapidly and you must have an open mind towards changing your destination.

The time between the planning phase and the assessment can vary greatly from one individual to the next, between one methodology and another. For instance, the Agile software development methodology says that this “action time” must be very short. Other software development methodologies are not asking the same pace for assessing projects. I personally favour short action time periods because it is more forgiving. It allows you to correct course before the deadline is reached!

To assess where you are, you need to be able to measure where you are. Qualitative objectives must be turned into measurable goals to ensure that you know when you reach the objectives or when you go astray. This is essential to the success of any enterprise. If you cannot measure when you meet your objectives, when will you be able to celebrate your successes?

The one thing that this leadership cycle breaks is the illusion that everything must always be perfect for you to succeed. You can always correct course and repair your mistakes as you advance in your project. Of course, some mistakes will be tougher to correct than others, but until the deadline, you still stand a chance to succeed. Your success will be better measured by your resilience than by the amount of mistakes and problems that you encountered in your journey. I would even say that mistakes are not that important; how you, as a leader, respond to the challenges encountered is what really counts. I personally feel that this thought is reassuring and allows me to take action despite my fear of doing something wrong.

What about you dear leaders? Have you ever noticed this leadership cycle in your practice? Are you accepting mistakes and correcting course as you go? Let us know what you think by adding your comments below.

Until next time,

Remi Cote

PS: If you find these postings interesting and would like to learn more about what I can do for you and your team, then please visit www.innovachron.com or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.

Authenticity

Dear Managers and Leaders!

As a leader, you are asked to get in front of the pack, to distinguish yourself by your ideas, actions, and energy. This has the potential to impact your current life and change yourself in many ways. Tackling a leadership position also means that you are responsible for the work and life of a number of people. So you cannot only think about yourself anymore. Other people are now part of your life. It is somewhat similar to raising kids. You are responsible for the people you lead just like you are responsible for the kids you raise.

Because of this high impact on you and others, the decision to tackle a leadership role should not be taken lightly. It needs to be done for good reasons. It should not be done simply to get a promotion or to get a higher pay check. Neither should it be done to impress your family or your friends. Those types of motives based on image and social standing will likely lead you and your team to disappointment, loss of purpose, failure, or even burn out! People would also see through those motives and would not really be ready to follow you in your endeavours. As Kevin Cashman is writing in his book “Leadership from the Inside Out”, the question is “Do you want to look good or do you want to make a difference?”

Genuine, authentic motivations are essential to succeed in leadership. Leadership must come from inside yourself and be authentic. It should not be guided by external desire. Leadership for leadership leads to nothing. To be effective, leadership must be grounded in reality and needs to originate from an internal movement towards an external change.

What about you dear leaders? Why are you leading? Why are you putting yourself in a riskier position? Is it to get more recognition or because you have a profound desire to make a difference? Please share your thoughts with the other readers by adding a comment below.

Until next time,

Remi Cote

PS: If you find these postings interesting and would like to learn more about what I can do for you and your team, then please visit www.innovachron.com or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.

Questions as Leadership Tools: Being Asked Questions

Dear Managers and Leaders!

In my last four posts, I classified questions into the two broad categories of open and closed questions and then looked at a list of open questions to clarify a vision. I also looked at implicit and explicit questions to say that implicit questions can be dangerous for leaders and urged you to be as explicit as possible with your requests. I then talked about constructive questions. Today I conclude my journey into the world of questions as leadership tools by looking at questions from a different angle: people asking you questions!

So far in our analysis of questions as leadership tools, we have only looked at one side of the coin. We only looked at the leader asking questions to various people, in various formats. But is the questioning supposed to go in a single direction? Should it always be the leader asking questions? I personally feel that it is crucial for a leader to be constantly questioned, challenged. A good leader should be open to comments because being questioned and challenged means that the resulting ideas or plans will be stronger, better thought out.

A good leader is not there to win an argument or to crush his opponents. A good leader exists to achieve his purpose in the best way possible. He welcomes, even invites, constructive feedback, critiques, and challenges from everyone to reinforce his ideas, to fine-tune his plans.

Some leaders feel threatened when being questioned by their teams. However, I feel that it is quite re-assuring when your ideas are questioned by your team or others. Having multiple people discussing the best way to attack a problem always leads to a better solution, one that encompasses a broader spectrum of possibilities. A team questioning what is happening also shows a lot of interest and concerns. This is huge for a leader! You should be grateful when it happens.

What about you dear leader, do you feel good when being questioned by your teams and others? Is your commitment to your purpose and mission so strong that you openly accept input from everyone? Please question my thoughts by adding comments below.

This concludes our series on questions as powerful leadership tools. I hope you enjoyed the last five posts on that topic. Thanks for following!

Until next time,

Remi Cote

PS: If you find these postings interesting and would like to learn more about what I can do for you and your team, then please visit www.innovachron.com or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.