Leadership Challenge

Barry Posner, Keynote Day 2, Leadership Educators and Developers Focus

Live Blogging from the Keynote:

As leadership educators and developers, whether in colleges or corporations, focus on: 

1.  Focus on finding your voice--who you are and what you are about.

This is the very first step if you are going to make a difference.  Leadership is not a position or a place within an organization, it is about the person.  It happens throughout the campus.

2. Focus on the future
At Santa Clara University, I have meetings with the kids and the parents and I thank the parents for all they have done preparing their kids for college.  Some parents are ready for their kids to leave and their kids are ready to leave.  Kids think that their parents are stupid.  I promise them that in the next four years, we'll do your children no harm and one of the things that will happen is that you'll become smarter in their eyes.  Kids will learn that they are part of something bigger, that they will impact the world, but you are part of it.

Reasons that gen Y millennials ask why?
They want the big picture. I was thinking about this in a session yesterday.  A foreman at Cessna took the workers when they were putting together a small part across the street to the plant to see where that small part fit on the airplane and that has made a difference about the plane flying or not flying.  This made a huge difference, not just for young people.  Young people are asking the questions that we have all been asking but haven't vocalized it.

3. Focus on relationships
How can I use myself to make the world a better place?  Relationships-you don't get to the top in an organization without building relationships.  You are dependent upon others to make you look good.  While I may be the dean, I can't teach all the courses all the time.  They do their job well and that way we all look good in the process.

4.  Focus on credibility
Let's clap our hands. [room clapping] Now let's get the whole group to clap together in perfect unison on 3.  1, 2 [barry looks like he's going to  clap, everyone claps],  3 [Barry claps].  What we model is far more important than what we say.

5. Focus on learning
This can also can be called focus on practice.  Those who try are more successful than those who don't.
Karl Thompson: "The biggest lesson I learned from my personal best, is that you will never know if something will work if you don't try it."

--posted by Deb Nasitka

Barry Posner, Keynote Day 2, Millennial Generation

Live Blogging from the Keynote:

Message to Millennials:
Be smart - you are special.
Leave no one behind.
Connect 24/7.
Achieve now!
Serve your community.

Millennials are described as:
Busy and prefer structure
High-achieving
Team-oriented
More affluent than Baby Boomer
Willing to follow rules
Joiners (teams and groups)
Likely to participate in collective action
Optimistic
Sociable
Capable of multi-tasking
Easily bored!

Bruce Simoneaux: "Coming of age in a multitasking milieu and now entering a work world flush with inter-departmental teams and projects, the millennial generation may have an advantage over their colleagues:  a natural inclination to keep in touch with others, communicate and collaborate."

Jordan Kaplan: "Generation Y is much less likely to respond to the traditional command-and-control type of management still popular in much of today's workforce . . . They've grown up questioning their parents, and now they're questioning their employers. They don't know how to shut up, which is great, but that's aggravating to the 50-year-old manager who says, 'Do it and do it now.'"
Millennials have a strong need to know that they are valued.
My own parents would tell me what I needed to do and when I asked why? They said, because I am the father and that was the end of the argument. How I wish I could make that same argument to my daughter.

Millennials at Work
1. People are different, what does all this mean for us?
2. Prefer to work with positive people.
3. Want to learn new skills.
4. Expect flexibility in their schedules.
5. Enjoy a friendly environment.
6. Learn best through teamwork, technology, structure, and experiential learning.

What Millennials want from a job
1. To work with positive people.
2. To be challenged.
3. To be treated respectfully.
4. To learn new knowledge and skills.
5. To work in friendly environments.
6. To have flexible schedules.
7. To be paid well.

Frequent request by millennials:
1. You be the leader.
2. Involve me.
3. Challenge me.
4. Let me work with friends.
5. Let's have fun.

Let's gather some data here now.  Take a look at this list for a moment and let me know if this applies to you.  If you are under 32 raise your hand, under 45, under 80 . . . how old do you have to be to say that this is something special?  These wants are no different than what the rest of us want from our workplace.

We want the same things, but the millenials are asking for it.  The things millennials want ARE the five practices.

Show me what you want (Model the Way), give me a chance to do something I haven't done (Challenge the Process), put me together with other people (Enable Others to Act) and let's have some fun in all this (Encourage the Heart).

We need to recognize the fact that everyone is different and everyone is the same.

--posted by Deb Nasitka

Barry Posner, Keynote Day 2, Leadership for the Young: What Does That Mean?

LiveBlogging from the Keynote

I was reminded in putting these remarks together of a refrain from Bye, Bye Birdie. "Kids.  I don't know what's wrong with these kids today. Why can't they be like we were, Perfect in every way? What's the matter with kids today?"

Every generation has wondered and worried about whether or not the next generation will be ready and able to handle the demands, challenges, and opportunities they will be leaving behind.

Carole MacNeil: "I would suggest that there are significant differences in the needs, styles, and practices of leaders, depending upon a host of cultural or identity factors (including age).  But age does not stand alone; youth, like adults, are unique combinations of age, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, life experience, and other factors."

LPI sample base involves:
Total respondents: 950,000
Self respondents: 80,000 leaders
Observers: 870,000
25% give us demographics. There is no reason to suspect that the 75% are different than the 25% in a meaningful way. 

We started measuring impact, by using 10 different questions:
1. My work group has a strong sense of team spirit.
2. I am proud to tell others that I work for this organization.
3. Two years from now I would like to be working for this organization.
4. I would work harder and for longer hours if the job demanded it.
5. I am highly productive in my job.
6. I am clear about what is expected of me in my job.
7. I feel that my organization values my work.
8. I am effective in meeting the demands of my job.
9. Around my workplace, people seem to trust the management.
10. I feel like I am making a difference in this organization.

What is the impact of leadership on my feelings about these 10 dimensions? The correlation between impact and each leadership practice between .4 and .43 which makes it statistically significant.
How can I explain it?  25% of the variance around how I am feeling in my organization can be explained by the 5 leadership practices. This may not sound like much, but what else can make that much impact/difference?  What happens when we take into account individual differences, gender, hierarchical position, length of time, organization, ethnicity, ago, organizational size? When considered all together they explain very very little. They make very little difference to how people feel about their organizations:

Age doesn't explain much about leadership practices/behaviors.
Age makes very little difference in assessing the impact of leadership.
Young people can learn to lead.

--posted by Deb Nasitka

DU Pioneer Leadership Program

Whenever I talk about university students and leadership development I get chills of excitement. What an amazing population to work with when considering the future of our democracy and the health of our society. The Pioneer Leadership Program (PLP) at the University of Denver focuses on undergraduate leadership education with an eye toward the future. If we want to have a future worth living, we need to envision it and plan for it, just as companies plan for succession.  And just like it takes a village to raise a child, it takes all sectors to develop our young adult emerging leaders to step into our communities for leadership.

One question I was asked during the Q & A time was, "Can you tell us a story about a student who inspired you?”  Oh my goodness. Every day I am so inspired by our students.  I told a story in my answer about a Community Change Initiative that involved a local Denver Public School and our student's involvement in coaching middle schoolers to find their own voice and passions and to create change.  It resulted in a new playground for their younger siblings at the school.  Their vision and tenacity to see an idea through despite others' naysaying (including mine) was inspiring.

Another story that comes to mind from this past year comes out of my Self as Leader class for first-year students.  In this class, a small group of students decided that those who clean their residence hall and care for the grounds and facilities around it are people who are unnoticed and underappreciated. As a simple way to acknowledge their service, the students invited all of the workers to a special celebration-of-service luncheon complete with linen table cloths, personally purchased catered food, and a special care package of items as recognition for the hard work they do.  The facilities workers, many of whom are recent immigrants to the US and Denver, were quite touched by the overture and a few tears were shed during the event.  These employees had never had students pamper them in this way; the students specifically told the employees how much they appreciated their work, their gracious service attitude, and their commitment to the campus through their work.  The students themselves were stunned at the impact of this encouragement through appreciation.

It's a great privilege to work with undergraduates at this time!  Students rock.

For more information on the Pioneer Leadership Program at the University of Denver, be sure to visit our website (soon to be revised!): http://www.du.edu/leadership/index.html

The video shown during my presentation can be viewed on the PLP homepage. 

--posted by Linda Olsen

Developing Leaders in Healthcare

I was invited to join the panel today entitled "But My Leaders are Different" by Sharon Landes who will be moderating and emailed panelists a series of excellent questions to consider.

The first question was: What challenges me? . . . ahh the challenge question is always one that requires reflection and yet again, it stimulated many thoughts for me . . . the most significant one is that this work challenges me to always consider how to more effectively share the fact that Leadership is Everyone's Business. In healthcare, this means finding ways to spread the word broader and deeper into systems so that when we are successful, every clinician, health professional, support worker, every manager and administrator will see leadership as a key component of their everyday work. And not something that is only considered at a training session.

What excites me is knowing that leadership in clinical care can significantly impact people's lives at a time when they are at their most vulnerable.

There is talk in the healthcare world about the importance of care for the caregiver--the idea that if caregivers feel cared for, respected, enabled, encouraged they can provide for others more effectively and compassionately.

One of Sharon's questions asked us to consider how leaders in our industry are different. In healthcare, nursing for example is a 24/7 operation. When nurses are taken out for leadership learning replacement costs make the process far more expensive.

Healthcare, like many other industries, is in the process of transforming from old hierarchical, command and control structures built originally on religious and military foundations, to cultures that engage, inspire, recruit and retain. Some of the critical issues are workload--most health professionals are working in organizations that are very tightly staffed. New communication and diagnostic technologies demand a lot of energy and attention.  Patient's knowledge--both accurate and inaccurate--is largely drawn from the Internet and expectations are growing by leaps and bounds.

At the same time, clinicians are passing the torch to a new generation who hold different values and approaches and have high expectations to be able to use the same communication technologies they have come to depend on in their personal lives.

In sum, there is a tremendous need for leadership at all levels--role models, inspiring visionaries, people who can engage and encourage themselves, their colleagues, and their direct reports. Healthcare especially requires leaders who can challenge the process because there is a tremendous need for innovation and transformation.

--Beverley Simpson

The Secret to Success in Life, Jim Kouzes, Keynote, The Leadership Challenge Forum 2008

LiveBlogging from the Keynote
This is not the same secret as the book "The Secret". "When it comes to choosing a life path, you should do what you love--because if you don't love it, you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very good." -K. Anders Ericsson.

You have to ask: Do you love it enough to get really good at it? If they don't say yes, then don't bother. You'll be working harder than they will. As General Eric Shinseki says, "You must love those who lead before you can be an effective leader. You can certainly command without that sense of commitment, but you cannot lead without it . . ."

How do we develop better leaders at a university or army or corporate or educational institution: Whenever anyone asks me that question, tell them the secret to success in life: "Stay in Love." I don't know any other thing or any other fire more than love. The people who are the best they can be: it is not an affair of the head, it is an affair of the heart.

One final message: Love 'em and Lead 'em.

I hope we've done a bit to challenge how you think about leadership.

--posted by Deb Nasitka

Deliberate practice, Jim Kouzes, Keynote, The Leadership Challenge Forum 2008

LiveBlogging from the Keynote

Deliberate practice:
1. Setting specific goals
2. Engaging in designed activities
3. Getting immediate feedback
4. Concentrate on technique as well as outcome

Anyone take music lesson?  Piano?  What did your music teacher have you do, practice, practice, practice.  Don't move on until you have it down.  What do we do in leadership development: dabble in this, dabble in that . . . strategic leadership, team building, dabble in something else.  How often do we focus on one thing until people can repeat it over and over again successfully?  Most of us do not spend that kind of time.  Clients don't have the time.

My wife's son, Nicolas, he's been playing tennis for over 10-years.  Recruited to play college tennis, we went to talk to a lot of coaches.  We went to Princeton, how long do you practice? Glenn Michibata: "Two hours per day if you want to stay the same. More if you want to get better." 

How much time do you need to practice to get better? 10 years, 10,000 hours.  Divide 10 years by 10,000 hours the number is 2.7 hours per day.  How many of us practice deliberately 3 hours a day to get better a day at leading?  How many of our clients do this?  How many have clients in leadership development who practice 2.7 hours per day?  How many hours a day do you think Nicolas practices per day? 3 hours.  To get better.

We don't consider the work we do with our clients as an amateur sport, let alone professional.  My latest thing, my hot-button, is the 4-hour work week.  It is not possible to become an expert at anything in 4-hours a week.  Society today wants quick results.  There are no quick results.  We will do a disservice to our clients if we let them believe they can be good leaders in a 2-day workshop once per year.  This creates amateurs.  2 hours per day to stay as you are, more to get better.  Design activities to do this, or we will continue to be led by amateurs and not professionals. 

We can get creative about this.  What can we do?  How can we use this data to create better learning activities?

We can turn meetings, one-on-ones into practice opportunities.  Let's not think about LC as events, but we need to take a step beyond and what those 2 hours every day look like if we are going to move from amateur to professional.

We just finished "The Student Leadership Challenge," we need to begin developing leaders at a much younger age.  Not just what can we do to find the talented people, but what can we do to develop leadership talent at a much earlier age.

Benjamin Bloom's Superior Performers
1. Practiced intensively.
2. Studied with devoted teachers
3. Supported enthusiastically by family
4. Quantity and quality of practice mattered.

Who are your role models [audience response]:
20 business leaders
10 - 12 church leaders, community leaders
0 entertainer
50 family member
5 political leader
2 professional athlete
25 teacher or coach

What do you think people age 18 - 30 would say:
40% Family members
26% Teacher or coach
11% Community leader
7% Business leaders
4% Political leaders

Why do we wait until people get a job to start working on leadership?  How many of you are family members? 100%.  You have the potential to be a leadership role model for somebody in your life.  This changes the discussion about how we develop leaders.  Supportive family and caring coaches--when they get to us they already have leadership knowledge.

When you play sports at a high-level, those coaches will give you very strong negative feedback.  I know that they need it.  It is not for the faint hearted.  Join the voyage of discovery.  Some may like it, others may not.  Work at what you "can't do!"  You cannot lead by only leading from your strengths.  Focus on your strengths, delegate or hire people to handle what you aren't good at-that will NEVER MAKE ANYONE AN EXPERT.  We have to make people work on their weaknesses and what they cannot do. Have to be driven to become better than you are.  Becoming the expert is not about happiness. 

Feedback is an important part of becoming an expert:
Lowest scoring item on LPI: #16 I ask for feedback on how my actions affect other people's performance.

Leadership is in the moment.  Michele Goins, "what makes a difference between being a leader is how you respond in the moment." 

3 minutes and 5 seconds is the amount of concentrated time on a day-to-day basis we have before we are interrupted.   Email, cell phone, people in the office.  Think about interventions that are 3 minutes in length.  Get the message out, affect other people, and move on.  3 minutes 5 seconds to influence someone.  You have a total of 12 minutes.  We need to frame these types of practice activities throughout the day.  This is not impossible.  How long is the "I have a Dream" speech?  Not the whole thing, but the "I have a Dream" part?  5 minutes.  We can greatly influence people in a short period of time.

Small opportunities everyday to influence, coach better, listen better, say thank you more often. This can all be done in 3 minutes, 5 seconds. 

--posted by Deb Nasitka

The Talent Myth, Jim Kouzes, Keynote, The Leadership Challenge Forum 2008

LiveBlogging from the Keynote

"The trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated", Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, Freakonomics.  I've been thinking about this a lot.  I've become uneasy with the talent message: find the right person for the right job and all of us will be saved.  I am concerned about it.  With shows like "America's Got Talent" and "American Idol" we have turned the selection and recruitment of people into a contest.  People watch and then phone in a vote we've selected the people.  I've starting looking more into this idea of talent.

I'd like to start with a training activity:  Think for a moment about yourself--something that you consider yourself to be an expert at, something you are consistently good at: knitting, sport, coaching, training . . . what did it take to get to this level of expertise?  Think for about 60 seconds or so and turn to the person next to you for a couple of minutes and talk with each other about that list.  What did it take for you to become experts?

What was on the list?  Practice, failure, observation, life-long learning, encouragement, opportunity to try, trial and error, caring, making mistakes, role model, stubbornness, value of activity, desire, innate ability, and some talent.

What might be learned from this conversation:  There is some pattern to this. How about the question: were you born to do this or did this develop?  It is a journey, you have some talent and innate ability, but was that enough? NO.

[Picture of Tiger Woods image on screen, swinging golf club at 3-years old.] What do people assume? Child prodigy.  Obsessive parents.  Mozart at 7.  What do they assume? Prodigy?  His father was musician and music teacher.  We see pictures of these people, most people say "talent" and "I couldn't do it".  "The first major conclusion is that nobody is great without work.  It is nice to believe that if you find the field where you're naturally gifted, you'll be great one day, but it doesn't happen."

Talent does not equal expertise.

Just because you are born with something, does it make you and expert?  No. People can be in jobs, roles for 25 years and never become an expert.  You may know some of them. Why is that? Here's an example: How many of you drive a car?  Are you an expert?  How about if you get out in the Indy 500? Suddenly you don't know what you are doing.  You haven't had the training and development . . .

No learning style contributes more than another to being an effective leader.  All type of learning can lead to becoming an effective leader. The more you engage in learning the more effective you become.  Duh!  Apply this to the notion of talent. 

Santa Clara University students have to go through leadership development.  They were then compared to students who did not 4 years later--they scored higher on LPI than those who had not been through a leadership program.  Students in college.  Same is true for executives in business.

Leadership or surgery or nursing or playing chess or any other kind of sport, the finding is in every instance is not depended up natural gifts or IQ--it is about engaging in deliberate practice.

--posted by Deb Nasitka 

Introduction of Keynote by Denise Sullivan: Welcome to the Leadership Challenge Forum 2008

LiveBlogging from the Keynote: Denise Sullivan: Emcee of Event:

How did we get here today?  How did we come up with the Leadership Challenge Forum?  We've had other events in the past with certified facilitators and affiliates and higher education people as well.  At these events, you could feel the energy and how much people love the Leadership Challenge.  What if we get them together to connect and network? And created a conference?  And here we are today. 

Then it dawned on us: we are publishers, not event coordinators.  In early meetings we talked about how many people we wanted to show up. Wanted to have a cross-section of people, but still wanted it to be intimate.  We came up with 200 people. Let's do it. I am very excited about it.

200 people is a lot of people.  Someone asked: What is the backup plan if it doesn't work?  What if we can't get 200 people?  There is always someone who likes to consider themselves a realist—I consider them a buzz-kill. 

Then we opened registration. Every day I am getting emails and then more and more registrations.  It was like "It's a Wonderful Life" every day for me--every registration was like when an angel gets it wings.

It is amazing all the international people that found the conference.  International people please stand up.  [Round of applause] 

Staples, Wells Fargo, UCSB, Stanford, Florida State, Parkview Medical . . . many companies and organizations.  I am getting nervous about this conference.  Who's going to take care of you when you are here?  US Army and Homeland Security are here in case you are worried. We also have the Social Security Administration here.  How many did we get?  200 with 25 on the waiting list.  Next year we are planning 300. 

This is not a lecture series, we want this to be interactive.  Speakout rooms and roundtables--talk to us about what you'd like to be talking about and that will inform tomorrow's agenda.

Robert Thompson will be reading from "The Offsite" at lunch.  [Please stand up Robert.] Look for him today.

Denise introduces Lisa Shannon. Lisa Shannon: I'm not going to talk about the history of the Leadership Challenge.  What I ran into the airport bookstore was a book called "The Management Gurus" by Chris Lauer and on the cover is the Leadership Challenge.  Reads from book about Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner and The Leadership Challenge: "Offering a detailed map . . . that describes how to use wisdom, courage, compassion to create a positive difference."  That is what the conference is about: connecting at the human level.  There is nothing like getting together and getting to know each other.  Thank you for coming, now I'd like to turn it over to Jim for the keynote.

--posted by Deb Nasitka

The Leadership Challenge Forum 2008

The Leadership Challenge Forum 2008 has been officially kicked-off for the Certified Leadership Challenge Facilitators.  Certified facilitators benefited from Jim and Barry's usually insightful comments this afternoon.  Barry shared the latest and greatest LPI data.  More data than many of us ever thought we could absorb, but nonetheless it continues to be very valuable to our work.  Jim shared with us his insights into global leadership (Hint: Credibility is still the foundation of leadership regardless of where you live).  Stay tuned for his key points. 

Currently the facilitators are meeting to discuss possibilities for innovating the Leadership Challenge, each table is working through a series of four questions.

1. What should we keep?

2. What could be better?

3. What should we delete from the program?

4. What new stuff should we include in the program?

We want your input; post your comment with suggestions on making the Leadership Challenge a more impactful program.

Daren Blonski

Sonoma Learning Systems