The Leadership Skill of DEVELOPMENT

Let’s continue this week with our examination of leadership skills. The last 2 weeks, I’ve shared articles to reinforce the three concepts that we discussed during our “Introduction to Leadership” on the December 8^th airing of The Leader’s Edge.

We’ve covered the topics of Listening and Action. So, that leaves us with Development. The development of your employees and leaders is paramount to the success of your organization! Not only to make them as effective in their roles as possible (whether it’s technical or “people skills” training), but also to show them that you care about them and their contributions to your organization. The more opportunities you offer your employees to develop themselves and to then utilize those skills, the more likely they are to trust you and be loyal to you, in good times and bad.

Indeed, that reflects the title of a blog post which Dave published a couple of years ago, “Great Leaders Develop Good People - Even in Bad Times”. The topic of that article is certainly relevant to our current discussion:

Whenever the economy turns bad, and that seems to happen on a regular basis, many companies start looking for ways to cut their costs. One of the very first things that some companies cut are any costs associated with human development. Coaching, training classes, and even brown-bag lunches are viewed as a “soft cost” that have no direct impact on the bottom line.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

On the surface, wringing out any excess costs seems to make a lot of sense. But great leaders know that wringing out all the costs might also mean wringing out all of the energy, excitement and creativity from a company as well. And, when things are tough, you need your team to crank up the energy and creativity, not bury it under a blanket.

Imagine a scenario where one of your top customers places a big order that is going to require the very best from your team to complete the delivery. Your team, suffering the blahs after having their overtime cut, all of the plants removed from the office, the coffee service removed from the office, and all personal development eliminated, can’t figure out how to deliver this order on time with the correct content.

Of course, Jack could have led his team to get this done, but Jack left 6 weeks ago to join a competitor. Sally was another manager who could probably have pulled it off as well, but she left about 3 months ago and changed careers entirely. Their replacements came from in house and, while they are excellent technically, they lack the skills to lead the team on a project of this size.

You meant to develop more managers with the appropriate team leadership skills, but with times being tight, you cut back on hiring, stopped training both your technicians and your managers and hunkered down to wait out the downturn.

Now that downturn may last much longer than expected. And you may lose your best client for screwing up this order. But that’s ok because you were able to wring out all of those excess costs that don’t really add to the bottom line.

Great leaders understand the difference between unnecessary costs and the costs of keeping your managers and staff excited, motivated, and most importantly, on your team. Great leaders understand that developing people is not an unnecessary cost, but an investment in the business itself. Staff development can have the very same payoff and ROI that an investment in new equipment can have. And an investment in your staff has the added incentive of making your team more valuable over time.

And that can get you through a lot of tough times.

I hope this article has inspired you to think about additional ways that you can offer development opportunities to your team. We’d love to hear some of your thoughts on development and any unique development opportunities that you may have tried or are considering.


At ECI Learning Systems LLC we are dedicated to improving productivity and profitability by creating engaged organizations. Our unique combination of training and personalized coaching, combined with our expertise in assessments allow us to create a development plan tailored for your success.


Until next time….

Laurie Valaer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ECILearning.com

The Leadership Skill of ACTION

Last week, I shared a blog that we had previously posted on the art of “Listening”. Listening is one of the key leadership skills that Dave and I discussed recently on The Leader’s Edge, where we introduced Leadership as one aspect of our Fusion Model of organizational and employee engagement.

It seemed fitting to repost the Listening blog to help reinforce the 4 secrets that will make you a good listener. This week, let’s continue the theme of leadership skills and take a closer look at the second concept we discussed during our Leadership introduction: Action.

A team is always a direct reflection of their leader. The energy of the leader turns into the energy of the team. The priorities and values of the leader should be shared by the team. In those cases where the leader and the team members don't share the same values and priorities, something must change. Either the leader will replace the team members, or the members will replace the team leader.

Show me the leader and I will know his men. Show me the men and I will know their leader. – Arthur Newcomb

Knowing how teams reflect their leader, we are always surprised to encounter a leader who states that his team does not share his values. Frankly, it’s not possible for a high functioning team to NOT share the values of the leader. When we encounter these situations, we often find that the team is, indeed, following the leader. But they are following his actions, not his words.

So many leaders have learned the right words or catch-phrases to parrot to their team. The message that “the customer is number 1” is trumpeted loudly, although slightly out of tune. Or they espouse “Our people are our top priority,” while cutting training dollars and hours, forcing unpaid overtime, and raising production quotas, giving no thought to the impact on the employees or the customers.

Actions speak louder than words and team members look past the words of the leader and take their queues from his actions. While the leader espouses the platitudes learned from the latest management conference they attended, the team members see the actions of their leader and KNOW the actions reflect where the leader’s heart really lies.

We have always found that team members are much more observant than they are given credit for. They can readily detect the incongruence between the words and the actions of the boss and they follow the lead set by those actions. It doesn’t matter if the issue is customer service, how you treat your employees, or how punctual you are for work and meetings. Where you lead, they will follow.

If your goal is for your team to treat your customers like gold, then you need to demonstrate, in both word and actions, that the customers ARE gold. If you believe your employees are the key to your success (and we certainly hope you do), then you need to treat them with the respect they deserve.

When you really begin to care about your customers, your employees, and your results, as shown by your actions as well as your words, you will see that all of your team members care about those things as well.

The above article excerpt (the original of which is published on our website) reiterates the point that, as a leader, your actions will speak louder than your words. Your employees will be watching you closely to determine whether or not you “walk your talk”….both so that they know now to act themselves AND to determine if/how much they can trust you and the organization. Therefore, as you can imagine, ensuring that your actions match your words can have great implications for the future success of your organization.


At ECI Learning Systems LLC we are dedicated to improving productivity and profitability by creating engaged organizations. Our unique combination of training and personalized coaching, combined with our expertise in assessments allow us to create a development plan tailored for your success.


Until next time….

Laurie Valaer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ECILearning.com

The Leadership Skill of LISTENING

On last week’s radio show (The Leader’s Edge), we discussed the concept of Leadership and how important Leadership Styles are to creating engagement and energy in your organization. We reviewed 10 Key Leadership Skills (discussed in last week’s blog) and then focused our discussion on 3 skills that are not always covered in the latest leadership blogs, books, and classes: listening, action, and development.

Over the next three weeks, I’d like to repost / share some blogs and articles that we have written over the last couple of years to reiterate and reinforce the concepts that we discussed on last week’s “The Leader’s Edge”. So, let’s start with Listening….

I’m sure that many of you are aware of Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habit’s of Highly Effective People.” If you are not, it’s a book you should read. Habit number 5 is “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” It’s a valuable habit that we should all study and practice.

But how exactly do we do this?

What is the secret of understanding?

Well, it’s not exactly a secret that two monologues do not make a dialogue, yet too often that is exactly the way our discussions are treated.

Listening is something that most of us say that we do well, but few actually do. I’m sure there was a time in the history of man when people really listened to each other, but I’d be hard pressed to tell you when the time was, or why people stopped listening to each other. However, I can tell you some secrets to good listening that the best listeners employ and that make them “great conversationalists.”

The secrets themselves are not complex and do not involve a lot of deep psychological understanding to employ. But, while they are simple to discuss, they are much more difficult to implement because they are “uncomfortable” and require a lot of thought. If you practice the techniques below, I promise you that you will be a better listener and that people will interact with you differently on a day to day basis.

Secret Number 1: Clear your mind

Just like Stephen Covey wrote in his groundbreaking book, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” you must first seek to understand, and then to be understood.

When listening to another person, clear your mind of all thoughts and focus your attention 100% on the other person. Put aside your own perspective on the issue, or your feelings about the other person and make your mind a blank slate to be filled by the other person’s words.

Secret Number 2: Don’t anticipate the conversation

As the conversation starts, resist the temptation to leap ahead in the discussion to its “obvious conclusion.” Don’t try and guess what they will say next. Instead, let their words come to you in the way that they had intended. When we anticipate where the discussion is going, we often miss key points the other person is trying to make.

Secret Number 3: Don’t multi-task

Study after study has proven that multi-tasking doesn’t work. Although many of us feel that we can do two things at one time, the truth is that when we try and do two things at once, neither task gets the attention it deserves. This is especially true when we are trying to listen to someone else. When you are engaged in a conversation, give the other person your undivided attention. Not only will you hear more, but the other person will appreciate your efforts as well.

Secret Number 4: Pause before responding

Normally, when we are engaged in a conversation we develop our response while the other person is still speaking. Sometimes we key in on a word or phrase that they used, and sometimes we anticipate what they are going to say (see number 2 above). In either event, we begin crafting our response while they are speaking, and in doing so we tune them out, carefully picking the words in our response for maximum impact.

Instead, try letting the other person finish their statements and then pause before you respond. In reality it will only take you about 2 seconds to determine the perfect response, because of the quality of your listening. At first, this might seem like the longest 2 seconds of your life, as pauses in conversations tend to be rare these days. But after a little practice, this will become natural for you and for your listeners as well.

At first glance, it might appear that following these guidelines for listening could lengthen your conversations, taking up more of your valuable time. In reality, you will find that you will save time overall because the conversations will be more meaningful, you will reach resolution quicker, and you won’t have repeat conversations because of items left unresolved.

What are some of the rules that you engage in listening? Do you have secrets to share that make you an effective listener? If so, we’d love to hear them.


At ECI Learning Systems LLC we are dedicated to improving productivity and profitability by creating engaged organizations. Our unique combination of training and personalized coaching, combined with our expertise in assessments allow us to create a development plan tailored for your success.


Until next time….

Laurie Valaer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ECILearning.com

10 Things Every Leader Should Know – Revisited

If you’ve visited the ECI website or if you’ve been following the discussions on our radio show (The Leader’s Edge), you’ll have seen (or heard) about a model that we call Fusion™. This model is based on the idea that your organization will be the most engaged and your employees will have the most creative energy when three important aspects of your organization are in alignment. Those aspects are your Corporate Culture, the Expectations of your Employees, and the Leadership Styles of your executive team.

Over the last few months, we’ve blogged a lot about Corporate Culture and we’ve talked about it with several of our radio show guests. While Corporate Culture is very important to the success of your organization, the other aspects play a key role as well. So, this week on “The Leader’s Edge”, we’ll introduce the topic of Leadership Styles. And, we’ll follow that in the weeks to come with several guests discussing their own personal Leadership Styles; how they developed them, how/if they must adapt them over time, and what those styles mean to their organizations.

Since we’ll be sharing various aspects of Leadership and Leadership styles this week, I thought it was appropriate to reprint a blog that Dave wrote some time ago called “The 10 Things Every Leader Should Know”:

Whether you are a new or an experienced leader, there are some key things that every leader should know and understand to ensure their success. While some people are natural born leaders, others learn through trial and error. But whether you are a natural leader or someone who has learned leadership the hard way, there are a few things every leader should know. Below are 10 items that you should apply every day to ensure your success as a leader.

1. Vision - Your team is looking to you for hope. As a leader it is your responsibility to tell the truth, but to also provide a clear vision and hope for the future.

2. Communication - It’s not enough to have a clear vision for the future if no one knows what that vision is. Communicate that vision continually to all levels of your organization.

3. Action - People will follow what they see more quickly than what they hear. Don’t just communicate your vision but live it through your actions.

4. People - The best way to show how smart you are is to hire people that are even smarter than you are. Your success will be defined by those around you. Surround yourself with the smartest people you can find at all levels of your organization.

5. Listen - All around you there are wonderful ideas floating around. But you can’t hear them if you are too busy talking. You hired those smart people, now listen to them.

6. Motivation - You can’t motivate anyone because motivation comes from within. But you can provide an environment that encourages people and allows them to stretch to their limits and beyond.

7. Talent - Everyone has talent; something they can do better than almost anyone else. Identifying people’s talents and utilizing those talents in an organization means that you can get the best from every employee.

8. Trust – Great teams are built on the foundation of great leadership. Great leadership is built on the foundation of great trust. Start building trust on day one and never let up.

9. Development – In good times and bad you want to be able to do more with less. That means spending the time and the money to develop the talent on your team. It’s this development that will help your team survive and thrive when you need them most.

10. Energy - Workplace energy means that your team is fully engaged at all levels of the organization. Workplace energy happens when the company’s culture, the management's style and the employees' expectations overlap and create a synergy that propels the entire organization forward.

We hope you can join us on MileHiRadio.com for our upcoming series on Leadership Styles (Thursdays at 3pm Mountain Time – just click the “Listen Live” link) and that you will join in the discussion on our show’s facebook page. We’d love to hear your thoughts and insights!


At ECI Learning Systems LLC we are dedicated to improving productivity and profitability by creating engaged organizations. Our unique combination of training and personalized coaching, combined with our expertise in assessments allow us to create a development plan tailored for your success.


Until next time….

Laurie Valaer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ECILearning.com