eLetter Issue 1
In this issue:
- Rules for Leaders
- Leader of the Future
- Listen up! What Distinguishes Great Leaders ...
- Resource Review: Jack: Straight From the Gut
What Makes Some Teams Great…
In our experience, one important thing differentiates high performing teams from teams that do not perform as well. 
Very simply, members of great teams share a clear sense of the future. Some might call this a vision - and a vision can be powerful - but that term sometimes feels a little fuzzy. Here's another way to look at it. We think there are three elements that support the creation of a shared perception of the future. They are intention, principles and goals.
A statement of intention - sometimes called core purpose - can be easily developed by a group who are asked to arrive at a consensus around their answers to the question: why we are in business? The second key element in creating a shared sense of the future are principles or, the values that the group agree are non-negotiable. The last thing needed to create a shared sense of the future are clear goals or milestones.
If you think of a ship. Purpose is it's direction, or the course it is steering. Principles are like the channel buoys outside of which the ship doesn't travel and goals are the distance markers along the channel. When a group of people are clear about their intention or purpose, their values and their goals, they have a foundation for exemplary performance.
Rules for Leaders
According to Tom Peters, if you think the past five years were nuts, you ain't seen nothin' yet!
It's only going to get weirder, tougher, and more turbulent. Which means that leadership will be more important than ever -- and more confusing.For the next five years, it's business as a high-stakes, high-risk, high-profile event that is filled with uncertainty and ambiguity. And clear-cut performance outcomes matter more than ever before.
Which means that we're going to see leadership emerge as the most important element of business -- the attribute that is highest in demand and shortest in supply. And that means that over the next five years, we're going to have to reckon with a new, unorthodox, untested, maybe just plain freaked-out list of leadership qualities. Peters provides you his 50 ways of being a leader in freaked-out times.
Click here for the full story...
The Leader of the Future
It's hard to imagine discussing "the leader of the future" without having a discussion with Ronald Heifetz -- one of the world's leading authorities on leadership.
Heifetz, 48, director of the Leadership Education Project at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, is a scholar, a teacher, and a consultant. His course at Harvard, "Exercising Leadership," is legendary for its popularity with students and for its impact on them. His students ( many of them in mid-career ) include leaders from all walks of life: business executives, generals, priests and rabbis, politicians. His clients have included senior executives at BellSouth, who brought him on to conduct a two-year program on leadership in a fast-changing world, and the president of Ecuador, who is struggling to lead that nation through tough economic times.
What makes Heifetz's approach to leadership so compelling is that he is so honest about what real leadership demands. In a series of conversations with Fast Company, Heifetz offered ideas, advice, and techniques for the leaders of the future.
The role of the leader is changing, Heifetz argues. The new role is "to help people face reality and to mobilize them to make change." And making change is painful: "Many people have a 'smiley face' view of what it means to lead. They get a rude awakening when they find themselves with a leadership opportunity. Exercising leadership generates resistance -- and pain. People are afraid that they will lose something that's worthwhile. They're afraid that they're going to have to give up something that they're comfortable with."
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Listen Up!
What distinguishes great leaders from the rest? The ability to listen.
John W. Rogers, an analyst with Forbes Global, states that when assessing a company today, he puts enormous weight on the quality of its leadership. And what distinguishes great leaders, whether in business or sports, from the rest? The ability to listen. Those who are wrapped up in themselves and unaware of the reality surrounding them will never produce success states Rogers. 
He recounts a point from the book Russell Rules by Bill Russell, the Hall of Fame center for the Boston Celtics who was also a distinguished coach. Russell drives home the point of listening, writing that "80% of people hear while only 20% really listen." Absorbing the right information, discerning the difference between what people say and what they mean, working well with others--these benefits of listening are present in the CEOs that Rogers admires and he describes some of the business all-stars whose acute ears help make their companies rewarding investments.
Click here for the full story...
Resource Review
Jack: Straight from the Gut
by Jack Welch, John A. Bryne
It's hard to think of a CEO that commands as much respect as Jack Welch. Under his leadership, General Electric reinvented itself several times over by integrating new and innovative practices into its many lines of business.
Some of Jack's principles include: putting people first, strategy second; stressing informality and maximizing your organizations intellect.
In Jack: Straight from the Gut, Welch, with the help of Business Week journalist John Byrne, recounts his career and the style of management that helped to make GE one of the most successful companies of the last century. Beginning with Welch's childhood in Salem, Massachusetts, the book quickly progresses from his first job in GE's plastics division to his ambitious rise up the GE corporate ladder, which culminated in 1981.
What comes across most in this autobiography is Welch's passion for business as well as his remarkable directness and intolerance of what he calls "superficial congeniality"--a dislike that would help earn him the nickname "Neutron Jack." In spite of its 496 pages, Jack: Straight from the Gut is a quick read that any student or manager would do well to consider.
It has lots of actionable ideas for those in small business,as well as those in corporate america.This is not a puff piece book. It is straight talk. A very worthwhile read for those who want to improve their business performance. Highly recommended.
