sereynolds

October 15, 2014 by sereynolds

My Q&A As “Superstar of the Week” On Business Superstar

The following is my interview with Business Superstar, where I am featured as this week’s “Superstar of the Week!” Read on as I speak with Phil about all things leadership, The Inner Edge, and more. You can see the original interview here.

Joelle K. Jay, Ph.D., is an executive coach specializing in leadership development. In addition to working with presidents, vice presidents, and C-level executives in Fortune 500 companies, she also authored The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership. Dr. Jay spoke with us about the distinctive characteristics that define a leader.

Q: What inspired you to write The Inner Edge? And what were your goals in creating this book?

Joelle Jay: What inspired me to write The Inner Edge was my own experience. There was a time in my life that I found myself becoming successful in my career as defined by external measures, but I wasn’t happy. All I could see was years of dissatisfaction ahead of me.

So I sat myself down, determined to redefine my course in the direction of happiness. I spent a year on this practice, applying a lot of the coaching techniques I applied to others to myself. After a year I didn’t want to go back to feeling unsatisfied, I wanted to honor the steps toward change I had made, so I wrote out the steps, the 10 practices of personal leadership, and The Inner Edge was born.

Q: In your professional opinion, what are the basic characteristics of a great business leader?

Joelle Jay: In addition to some of the more traditional characteristics, like being a visionary, a strategist, and having great people skills, I would add that great business leaders are extremely thoughtful people who are cognizant of who they are reaching and why. They create business structures not only to foster a successful business, but also to make employees happier and more engaged. A great business leader is a master of personal leadership both individually and applied to the whole organization.

Q: Do you believe that business leadership skills can be taught in schools? Or is it a trait that is part of a person’s existence?

Joelle Jay: Certainly there are people who are gifted with natural leadership abilities, who are compelling and visionary and inherently charismatic – the Martin Luther King Jr.’s of the World. But just as people can learn to be compassionate, thoughtful, and hardworking, they can learn to be leaders and practice the skills of leadership.

Q: Do you believe it is possible to create a new business in a rough economy (like the one we have today)?

Joelle Jay: Yes! The evidence is all around us. There are rising, thriving businesses, some of which would even question whether we truly live in a rough economy today. The success of a business isn’t solely dependent upon the market, but the vision of the leader and the capability of the leader to be creative in finding a way to serve their clients, customers, the general public, and employees.

When times are tough, the business landscape might look different, having the mindset that the economy will either make or break your business is a failure from the start. A better mindset would be a commitment to succeeding no matter what the economic outlook.

Q: What advice would you give to those who are eager to be their own boss, but don’t know how to achieve that goal?

Joelle Jay: You can use the 10 practices of personal leadership to figure out how to become your own boss, just like I did! First, learn to see yourself as the leader of your own life, as a leader creating a life for yourself. That small shift in perspective is the first test. Then, get clarity and find your vision for the career in which you are your own boss.

Next, find focus and identify the priorities to need to push to the forefront to make it happen. Then take action, go out and tackle your prioritized action items instead of just dreaming about it. You may be doing this while you’re still a fulltime employee at your current company, so you can take it one practice at a time. There are other practices of personal leadership: maximize your time, see the possibilities.

The next practices include: tapping into your brilliance and personal strengths, learning to truly feel fulfillment, maximizing your time, building your team, continuing to learn and grow, seeing possibility, and finally being able to balance all of it at once. Those are the practices I outline in The Inner Edge, and those are the practices I teach top executives.

To see the full interview, please visit Business-Superstar.com.

September 30, 2014 by sereynolds

My Leadership Q&A With Brian Null On BusinessInterviews.com

Happy to announce that my interview with Brian Null of BusinessInterviews.com went live today! We talked all things leadership, and discussed how leaders can use personal leadership practices to find that coveted work-life balance. If you want to see the full version from Business Interviews, please click here.

Here are a few highlights:

BusinessInterviews.com: Why do you believe that leaders never have to choose between success and happiness?

Dr. Jay: If you want to be truly successful, part of your success depends on being happy. The goal is to find personal success that also leads to business or financial success. For example, you may be someone who has been successful but hasn’t taken the time to enjoy the fruits of your labor. In that case, tapping into one of the practices of personal leadership I recommend, Feel Fulfillment, is a way to help you feel that what you’re doing matters, and give you the perspective you need to realign with your goals. You become more successful when you embrace that success and let yourself feel it. By doing so, connect to an internal source of vitality that leaders need in order to strive.

BusinessInterviews.com: How can leaders utilize personal leadership practices to prioritize work and life and maintain a healthy work-life balance?

Dr. Jay: The overarching goal of personal leadership is balance. The first practice, Get Clarity, is about getting the vision, seeing both the work pieces and personal pieces of your life in place. Getting the vision of what balance looks like is crucial. Then, the second practice, Find Focus, will help you to prioritize what is most important to you. The third practice, Take Action, will help sort out lower priority items from higher priority items and take a step toward success. The rest of the 10 practices of personal leadership, similarly, serve to help you follow through on that action even with even better results. I have coached leaders with these practices for years, and have found that because of the emphasis on personal structure “personal leadership” forms a more sustainable leadership model, because it is tailored to an individual’s strengths, priorities and interests.

BusinessInterviews.com: Why do you think that challenges arise with leadership development programs for women? What foundations need to be in place to set up female leaders for success?

Dr. Jay: As an executive coach working with senior leaders in Fortune 500 companies, I have seen a noticeable increase in these programs, and I’m happy to say that women are making great strides in the business world. Yet challenges arise with leadership development programs for women when they are seen as a panacea within a company. Sometimes they seem to “solve the problem,” but the culture of the company doesn’t change. So the program may be successful on a surface level, but if the structure or environment of the company doesn’t change with it, then the program has become only a temporary solution.
Strategies that have shown to be most effective in advancing women leaders are including sponsorship programs like mentors and employee networking groups, as well as including men in women’s leadership. In regards to the former, women must have opportunities to network with powerful leaders who can help them advance – not just other women or lower level leaders with good ideas but little influence. In regards to the latter, if programs to advance and retain women aren’t backed by action, particularly action that includes senior sponsors who hold leadership and management positions, then they will amount to little over time.

BusinessInterviews.com: What are some ways that leaders can redefine their professional and personal life through your personal leadership techniques, including how to track their progress?

Dr. Jay: It used to be that people drove toward one particular measure of success, like a specific business result. Instead you should track your progress via a dashboard, looking at multiple measurements at the same time, just like the dashboard of a car. It would an indication of a vehicular problem to have high RPMs but low MPH, but looking at those two numbers individually may not give you the same indication. So when it comes to tracking your results, conscious redefinition comes in: How do you track your results across both your career and your life? Look at how you define success. If you sacrifice success in one part of your life for success in the other you aren’t truly progressing.

BusinessInterviews.com: What’s a common misconception you encounter about leadership?

Dr. Jay: A common misconception is that leadership is about other people. In some ways that’s true, and of course in a business setting that’s true, whether you’re a thought leader hoping to gain a following or an executive looking to build your team. But with that said, leadership is equally about how you lead yourself. It’s not enough to be able to lead others at the sacrifice of your life force, because that is going to be the root for which business success grows or fails.

To see the full interview, please visit BusinessInterviews.com.

September 23, 2014 by sereynolds

Executive Women in Fortune 500 Companies Face Issues No One Else Does

No matter how talented you are, and no matter how high your position, it’s still a challenge for women to succeed in today’s business environment.

It’s bewildering. When someone as confident and accomplished as you seems unable to break through to the level of success you know you’ve earned, you start to ask yourself the Big Questions:

• “What should I be doing to excel in my role and show myself to be a leader?”
• “Am I really performing at my best – and is my best even good enough?”
• “Will I ever get ahead in this organization?”
• “Are women really valued in my organization? … And more importantly, am I?”

Reality starts to sink in when you start to wonder whether what you’re putting into your success is really worth what you’re getting out of it. You see other, less talented people getting promoted past you. You hear the glowing praise of your work but it never seems to be followed by the rewards. You rarely make it to the soccer games, the family dinners, or the date nights you used to love, or if you do you find yourself distracted and distant – pulled between the tug to be present and the persistent buzzing of the Blackberry in your bag. You feel heavy, weighed down. On the worst days you find it hard to breathe.

You don’t have to live this way. You can be successful in a way that works for you.

You can be a successful, overachieving, results-oriented business leader at the seniormost levels of your organization, and you can do it in a way that works for you . You can leverage your talents, stay aligned to your values, make the most of your time, and still have some of that time left over for you.

Imagine…

• You feel excited about your work again – committed, engaged, and leveraging your talents to the fullest – because you know you’re valuable and that you get the very best results.

• You finally do get the promotion you deserve.

• Your salary goes up, you earn more respect, and you feel the full power of your authority at work.

• Best of all, you get your life back. You become a mom again, a friend, a sister. You go to lunch with the girlfriends. Spend Saturday mornings with your kids. Your boundaries are clear. The guilt is gone.

• You feel focused. You feel lighter.

• You finally made it.

If it’s so easy (if it’s even possible) … Why haven’t women done this before?

There are multiple forces working against women’s ability to achieve the professional success they want along with the quality of life they deserve.

Few role models. For one thing, there are so few models of success that it’s hard for women to really see what’s possible. They can imagine it and strive for it, but they can’t see the models of truly powerful women who are successful in every way, including their work, their family and personal lives, their happiness, and their sense of peace and prosperity.

Busy lives. For another thing, women are just so busy! With husbands, partners, kids, clients, bosses, teams, homes, groceries, personal finance, fitness, and more, women often don’t have time to step back and breathe, much less to reflect on their lives and align them in a better way.

A secret lack of confidence. Surprisingly, many extraordinarily successful women harbor a secret – potentially even unconscious – lack of confidence. Compared to men, they opt in to the Big Opportunities less often and more slowly than men. They may not be sure of their ability to succeed in a bigger role and want to prove themselves first, or they’re waiting for the invitation or the nod from higher-ups to give them the signal to go for it.

Isolation. Even though women are known for their strong relationships, it’s lonely for women at the top. Even executive women they felt they could overcome the obstacles they face, in that effort they feel very alone.

A lack of information. This may surprise you, but we already know what makes women successful. We know the steps to the top of the ladder. The secrets are out. The problem is that the information is still hidden and struggling to reach real women in organizations. The good news is the solutions are out there; the bad news is no one seems to know it.

But there’s good news. You can reach the highest levels of leadership while achieving your personal goals and preserving your quality of life.
Here’s what women in highly successful leadership roles are learning about how to succeed:

• Get clear on your vision. Not just your vision for your organization or your role, but for yourself.

• Focus on the outcomes. Know what you want to achieve, with clear specificity.

• Capitalize on your strengths. Understand what it is that makes you so valuable, and learn to leverage it for a better result.

• Align to your values. Know what you love and want to protect, and put systems into place to preserve what matters most to you.

• Maximize your time. Learn to make more of every minute.

• Find your network. You will perform at your best and feel most supported when you surround yourself with the people who build you up, guide you, and give you opportunities.

• Learn the secrets. Despite the low numbers, women have made it to the top in some of the best and most admired companies of the world. They have learned how to do it, and their secrets are there to share with you.

Now it’s your turn!

If we haven’t already, let’s connect on Twitter and Facebook!

September 9, 2014 by sereynolds

Tips To Build Your Dream Team

Your dream personal support team is made up of leaders you admire who advance you, elevate you, and make it possible for you to do more/better/faster than you can do on your own.

Today I want to help you do just that. As an exercise for building your team, just follow the initials I.A.B.:

I: Imagine the people you most admire. Write down the names you would like to have at your table.

A: Ask your questions. If your imaginary advisers were sitting with you now, what would you ask them? record your ideas.

B: Be with them. Let their energy and wisdom remind you of who you are and who you want to become.

And remember, when you build your personal support team, you are no longer the solitary leader trying to go it alone. You are collecting an entourage. Together with your team, you are a veritable force.

From myself I am copper, through You, friend, I am gold. -Rumi

For more from The Inner Edge you can purchase the book here.

September 5, 2014 by sereynolds

Joelle Jay and “The Inner Edge” Featured In FastCompany

I’m happy to share some exciting news with you all this Friday: today I appeared on FastCompany! In my article, Why Most Leadership Development Programs For Women Fail and How to Change That, I discuss my experience with leaders of Fortune 500 companies and the challenges that arise with leadership development programs for women. I also share a few tips that, if implemented, would make these programs more successful.

From FastCompany:

When it comes to leadership development, a focus on women is all the rage.

As an executive coach working with senior leaders in Fortune 500 companies, I have seen a noticeable uptick in the interest in developing female leaders. Companies are boasting about their efforts to attract and retain women, and we see more and more female-centric lists popping up: the most powerful women, spotlights on up-and-coming women, and companies where women want to work.

Employee networking groups for women have also sprung up like wildflowers, and with them came websites, blogs, and special programs, all of them heralding the efforts being made to bring more women into leadership.

With all this hoopla, surely women are making great strides in the business world. Or are they?

Behind the veneer of enthusiasm, the numbers of women in the top leadership positions at most companies remain largely the same. In America’s top companies, only 4.6% of Fortune 500 CEO positions and 16.9% of corporate board positions are currently held by women–numbers that have barely moved in a decade.

Statistically speaking, men still have the upper hand:

They represent 80% of the executive suite and corporate boards
They hold 87% of line officer positions
They hold almost 70% of management and top management positions
They are twice as likely as women to advance and nearly four times as likely to make the jump to CEO
Meanwhile, women hold about 14% of executive officer positions, 17% of board seats, and only 3% to 4% of CEO positions.”
Mentoring programs and recruitment efforts notwithstanding, the real status of women in corporate America reflects the status quo at best. With such a track record, even the most well-intentioned corporate leaders risk inviting the cynical perspective that what they really want is a way to pretty up their image–to show off their efforts with women without really making a change.

Presumably, some companies really do want to balance their leadership teams with greater diversity. Here’s how they can get started:

1. START AND END WITH THE NUMBERS
This isn’t about quotas; it’s about data.

Companies with a poor track record of advancing women have logically been hesitant to reveal the truth about their (lack of) diversity. Companies that want to take advantage of the significant benefits of a balanced leadership team need to get the facts and track their progress: How many women are actually being advanced as a result of their leadership development and recruitment efforts? How is the face of the company changing year over year?

CEOs who would never stand for stagnant profits need to stop standing for a stagnant population of their leadership roles.

2. GIVE PROGRAMS TRACTION
An online forum for women does not a balanced company make. Leadership development programs that ostensibly prepare women for leadership roles without ever putting them into those roles merely raise the self-image of the companies that offer them–not the women themselves.

In sponsorship programs, the sponsors of women must take action to open doors for women. In employee networking groups, women must have opportunities to network with powerful leaders who can help them advance–not just other women or lower level leaders with good ideas but little influence.

3. INCLUDE MEN IN WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP
Recently at a leadership development program being kicked off by a large international company, the program’s sponsor proudly welcomed the women and engaged the participants in a sincere dialogue about the company’s desire to help women succeed. A woman in the front row raised her hand and asked, “I think it’s great our company is helping women to advance themselves. What are the efforts being made to include the men who hold leadership and management positions, so that they will also help to advance women?” Many companies wouldn’t have an answer.

The effect of programs to advance and retain women that aren’t backed by action amount to little more than the revving of an engine, with the parking break firmly engaged.

Having worked with many executives from wide-ranging companies–on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, from Times Square to the Las Vegas strip–I can say with confidence that many company leaders spearheading efforts to advance and retain women are intentional and sincere.

Results indicate that these steps will be worth the effort. Companies with more women in leadership have been shown to outperform their competition by more than a third. A strong representation of women leads to improved organizational health, global competitive advantage, responsiveness to stakeholders, and a better public image.

Perhaps instead of glorifying the efforts of companies trying to showcase their programs for women–the beauty contest approach to public relations–we should be spotlighting the companies that truly make a change.

Companies that don’t risk becoming dinosaurs in the eyes of their customers, who expect corporate leadership to step into the times. If companies don’t hold themselves accountable, the public will, as talented women choose to work elsewhere and consumers choose to work with companies that reflect a diverse and changing world. A focus on results will ensure companies’ efforts to promote women are not just a trend, but a transformation.

If we haven’t already, let’s connect on Twitter and Facebook!

August 26, 2014 by sereynolds

Best of the Blog: August Edition

As we move into the fall months, it’s important to maintain focus, channeling our drive and motivation to make our vision a reality. Fall is a time of change for many, so it’s the perfect time to take action and potentially shift to the right path that will help us reach our goals!

The three blog posts from the last month, highlighted below, reflect actions that can be taken to achieve just that: get clarity, use your imagination, and tap into your brilliance. When practiced in that order you can move forward with a course of action that highlights your strengths and creativity, as outlined in The Inner Edge.

Are you ready to embrace change and follow your new course of action? Let’s explore some the steps that can be taken, featured on this blog over the last month:

In Getting Clarity on Your Vision: An Interview with Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com I reveal my conversation with Patrick, and the insights he gives on how to refine your vision as we move into the last quarter of the year. Patrick is an inspiration for me, and words are something to keep close at hand if you’re having trouble narrowing your focus. When it comes to helping a vision materialize, he shared with me a powerful personal anecdote:

“But just as I have to help other people see that vision, I have to stay committed to it myself. In this role, I become the entrepreneur constantly reaching for that next horizon and driving toward it every day.

I’ve had cancer three times. Each time I recovered I took a bike ride across the states, from California to New York. As I was bicycling I used to think about the Atlantic Ocean. I’d think to myself, “As along as I’m pointed east and I’m still pedaling I have to be getting closer.”

In business, this same kind of ongoing commitment to following the right direction has to be a habit, a personal characteristic. We don’t have that same kind of concrete destination, but we do have a vision, and we have to keep moving towards it. Entrepreneurs have to overcome insurmountable obstacles. We have to keep on pushing ourselves. Once in awhile someone invents something that’s intrinsically a brilliant idea, but it really is the perspiration that makes it happen. It’s perspiration in the face of not knowing if you’re going to succeed. It’s not knowing how high the rock face is that you’re going to climb, but you’re going to keep climbing anyway.”

You can use imagination to refine your vision, and to develop creative ways to achieve it. In The Role of Imagination in Business: An Interview with Michael Gerber, founder of E-Myth Worldwide I shared a conversation I had with another CEO, Michael Geber, who founded E-Myth Worldwide. When discussing how imagination plays into leadership and business, Michael said: “The imagination, the spiritual self, has nothing to do with business, but it has everything to do with business. No one can expect to lead any venture or opportunity with any success to the degree they leave out the soul of the process. It’s the soul of the process that brings leadership to life.”

Now that you’ve isolated your vision and channeled your imagination, it’s time to understand your distinct natural attributes and be able to leverage them in the most powerful way. In Tap Into Your Brilliance Now: An Excerpt From “The Inner Edge” I give an excerpt and exercise from one of the practices in The Inner Edge. The philosophy behind the practice of tapping into your brilliance is that you are hardwired with certain characteristics that make you you – distinctly, irreplaceably, inimitably you. If you don’t know what those characteristics are, don’t worry. I also provide a quick exercise to help you “map your DNA,” or map a simple list of your strongest positive and negative attributes.

You can connect with Joelle on Twitter and Facebook.

August 22, 2014 by sereynolds

Tap Into Your Brilliance Now: An Excerpt From “The Inner Edge”

The following is an excerpt from The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership, and discusses the fourth practice – tap into your brilliance.

You are hardwired with certain characteristics that make you you – distinctly, irreplaceably, inimitably you. The way you live, the way you learn, and the way you lead – all of these are guided by the gifts you were given at birth and the ones you have collected in the course of your life. Knowing these attributes gives you tremendous power.

To be able to tap into your brilliance, you must answer the question “What makes you unique?” You need to discover your distinct natural attributes – your DNA. Your distinct natural attributes include personal characteristics like these:

Strengths
Weaknesses
Personality
Preferences
Virtues
Vulnerabilities
Style

Like your genetic DNA, your distinct natural attributes define what’s true about you. What’s genuinely true about you – the good and the bad – is also what’s great about you.

To tap into your brilliance, you need to understand your distinct natural attributes (your DNA) and be able to leverage them in the most powerful way.

Tapping into your brilliance involves three phases. First, you identify your distinct natural attributes. Second, you investigate those attributes so you see their full promise. Third, you learn to leverage your DNA to reach your vision and goals. Eventually, this process won’t feel like a process at all. It will be the way you look at who you are and what you can do.

THE BEST OF YOU AND THE REST OF YOU

The first step in tapping into your brilliance is to identify and map your DNA. Your DNA map is a simple list of your strongest positive and negative attributes. Your strengths and weaknesses. The best of you and the rest of you.

To map your DNA – at first, anyway – you write down characteristics you’ve discovered in yourself so you can see them at a glance. When you do this, you’ll want to include a mix of distinct natural attributes: your characteristics, behaviors, talents, learning styles, and so on. Other self-evaluation tools sometimes focus specifically on one aspect of your attributes – either your activities or your skills or your behaviors. For our purposes, that would be too narrow a view. We want to know it all. So we will take a very broad view of your attributes. Everything counts. Your talents, your activities, your character traits, the way you think, the way you behave – all of it is fair game at this stage for mapping your DNA.

You can get started identifying your DNA by using your own insight and self-awareness.

EXERCISE

Off the top of your head, write down what you believe to be a few of your positive and negative traits. This will give you a glimpse of the attributes you can leverage in the service of your vision and goals.

August 13, 2014 by sereynolds

The Role of Imagination in Business: An Interview with Michael Gerber, founder of E-Myth Worldwide

Are you familiar with The E-Myth?

The E-Myth is a term coined by Michael Gerber in 1985, when his bestselling book The E-Myth first came out. If it’s new to you, here’s a snippet from Wikipedia to catch you up:

E-Myth in the business vernacular refers to the Entrepreneurial Myth, and refers to the idea that most businesses fail because the founders are technicians that were inspired to start a business without knowledge of how successful businesses run.

The mythic and often disastrous assumption is that people who are experts regarding technical details of a product or service will also be expert at running that sort of business. Many small business owners eventually realize that just as they had to learn their technical skills, they have to learn business growth and management skills.

You may have encountered the challenge of the E-Myth in your work, and you don’t have to be an entrepreneur to come across it. The same “myth” applies to leaders in any field or organization who have been promoted into leadership positions based on their technical skills, then found themselves unprepared to lead in their new roles.

Much has been written about leadership skills, management, and career growth. But one element of success as a leader that Michael Gerber promotes may surprise you. It’s an aspect of leadership I think of as being part of the Ninth Practice of Personal Leadership: See Possibility. It’s called imagination.

Listen in as Michael Gerber and I talk about the role of imagination in business success:

Joelle Jay: One of the least concrete aspects of leadership I teach is what I call Seeing Possibility. It’s about being open to serendipity and learning to take advantage of opportunities – to let things happen instead of making them happen.

Michael Gerber: Most people don’t see the miracles.

JJ: Why is that?

MG: What I’ve noticed is that some people are open to possibilities and some people aren’t. Everything that we do, and everything that we create, is enriched, inspired, colored, and flavored by our deeper, more imaginative, more spiritual self. To the degree we’re disconnected by that we create and live in a very flat world.

JJ: Sometimes leadership development is detached from the spiritual self. Does that mean leaders are trained to perpetuate a “flat world?”

MG: The i magination, the spiritual self, has nothing to do with business, but it has everything to do with business. No one can expect to lead any venture or opportunity with any success to the degree they leave out the soul of the process. It’s the soul of the process that brings leadership to life.

JJ: I coach people to reach into the soul of their leadership, and I give them tools to find that deeper, more spiritual side. Some people are comfortable with it, and some people clearly aren’t!

MG: Talking about the soul of a leader is a difficult conversation. It’s bringing people to a level of openness and vulnerability and questioning that they typically don’t engage in, certainly not with each other in a company. It’s now time for that.

We’ve seen what happens in a world without soul. The world is in economic chaos. Leadership in all of the major industries – bank ing, financial services, and on and on – have in almost one moment in time failed us. It’s been a failure of imagination and a failure of soul.

They knew everything about their business and yet they knew nothing. The world is speaking to us as a product of our lack of imagination, and the imagination is the spirit of our soul.

What would it look like for you to bring more imagination to your work as a leader? How could imagination open you up to greater possibility?

In The Inner Edge, you will find a series of Invitations that are part of the Ninth Practice of Personal Leadership, See Possibility. Each one will help you explore more further what Michael calls “the soul” of leadership – the part of leadership that is so deeply and uniquely true to you that when you find it, the magic just seems to happen.

August 6, 2014 by sereynolds

Getting Clarity on Your Vision: An Interview with Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com

As we wind our way toward the end of summer my team and I have spent time working with leaders in defining their visions for the last quarter of this year. Since so many of you are continuing to think about your visions, I thought it would be a good time to revisit an interview I had with the CEO Overstock.com, Patrick Byrne. He’s an inspiration for me, and I hope he will be for you, too!

As the CEO of Overstock.com, a billion dollar business and the number one shopping destination online, Patrick Byrne is a leader with many different hats. He sees himself as a teacher and a student, a coach and also a player, the head of a major corporation and yet still an entrepreneur. I talked to Patrick about his views about these different roles to learn more about what it looks like for him to practice personal leadership.

Joelle Jay: How do you view your role as a leader?

Patrick Byrne: There are different modalities for being a leader. Good leaders can not only lead in different conditions, but they also change the kind of leaders they are under different conditions. For instance, in a perfect world I view my role as a coach. We have the right people in the right jobs, and I’m spending time with people to coach them and help them develop.

However, there are times when you come under stress where you have to step to the fore and get in the game yourself. You can’t be the coach at that moment. You have to be out on the playing field, grabbing the ball. You have to be able to show your players that you can step in and play different roles and do them well.

JJ: How does your view of the vision change as you take on these different roles?

PB: I remember Zig Ziglar once said, if you’re not clear about what your purpose is or what your target is you have no chance of hitting it. As the leader of a big organization, it’s up to me to know and communicate that target. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable to do that. Maybe the target seems impossible, or maybe people understand that it’s going to be costly and difficult to get there. As the leader of the company, I have to have almost a comfort with confrontation and with the challenges to the vision. The act of leadership means you’re going to demand that people strive.

But just as I have to help other people see that vision, I have to stay committed to it myself. In this role, I become the entrepreneur constantly reaching for that next horizon and driving toward it every day.

I’ve had cancer three times. Each time I recovered I took a bike ride across the states, from California to New York. As I was bicycling I used to think about the Atlantic Ocean. I’d think to myself, “As along as I’m pointed east and I’m still pedaling I have to be getting closer.”

In business, this same kind of ongoing commitment to following the right direction has to be a habit, a personal characteristic. We don’t have that same kind of concrete destination, but we do have a vision, and we have to keep moving towards it. Entrepreneurs have to overcome insurmountable obstacles. We have to keep on pushing ourselves. Once in awhile someone invents something that’s intrinsically a brilliant idea, but it really is the perspiration that makes it happen. It’s perspiration in the face of not knowing if you’re going to succeed. It’s not knowing how high the rock face is that you’re going to climb, but you’re going to keep climbing anyway.

JJ: How do you do that? How do you keep going with that kind of commitment when you can’t don’t even know how far away the destination is, or whether you can make it?

Patrick: I definitely think visualization is important. It’s a key ability, because if you can’t visualize what it is you’re working toward its hard to stay focused and driven.

I’ve used visualization in sports. Now I tend to visualize meetings and rehearse meetings in my head before I do them. In business, you’re on a high wire without a net. You’re not just following through on someone else’s vision. You have to create and follow through on your own.

Practicing visualization as Patrick describes it is one of the most powerful habits a leader can develop. As you can see from Patrick’s description, following through on that vision takes doggedness, commitment, and active ongoing participation.

That’s why getting clarity is such a vital part of personal leadership. You’ve got to get clear on your vision so you can head towards it, and you’ve got to get clear on it again and again on every step of the way. That can be tricky when, as Patrick points out, the role you play as a leader is constantly shifting.

Look at the different ways clarity can help you succeed in those roles:

As a business owner or president, are you clear about the direction of the business?

As an organizational leader, are you clear on about how to align people toward the vision?

As a coach, are you clear about what people need from you in order to be successful?

As an employee, are you clear about where you should be putting your efforts and when?

As an individual, are you clear about what you are doing right now and how it is getting you to the long term vision?

As a leader, you play all of these roles. Practicing the skill of getting clarity will help you succeed in every one.

You’ll find more strategies of visualization in The Inner Edge. Also, be sure to check back here for more practices, and three different audio visualization guides in the “Resources for Readers” section.

Lastly, feel free to connect with me on Twitter! Tweet your questions and comments to @JoelleKJay.

July 29, 2014 by sereynolds

Best of the Blog: July Edition

It’s always funny how fast the summer months fly by. Between work travel and family vacation it’s easy to blink and find yourself surrounded by fall! In the spirit of the first practice I outline in The Inner Edge, it’s important to get clarity before we transition into something new – in this case, August. By taking a look back at some of the lessons we’ve already learned we can fully process them and take them forward with us.

In the book I also note that in order to get clarity we first must explore the answers. Following that sentiment, let’s explore some of the answers we’ve discussed on this blog over the last month:

How to find what kind of gift you want to be. In “Leading on the Edge: A Quick ‘How To’” I offer a definition of what personal leadership is, and give a few quick tips on how to lead in a way that uses your own unique strengths, or “gifts.” Essentially, as a leader you have many gifts to offer. The real gift you have to give is yourself. What kind of a gift do you want to be?

Spreading your enthusiasm to your team. You’ve begun to tackle personal leadership, and you’re feeling more motivated than ever. So how do you spread that motivation to your team of employees? In “3 Ways to Extend Your Inspiration to the Rest of Your Team and Employees” I offer three unique ways to get the initiative going. The first method I mention is perfect for summer as we tackle summer reading lists: start a book club. If you’re reading a leadership book that’s inspiring you, why not invite your team to read a chapter with you each week? You can meet to discuss important takeaways and brainstorm on ways to apply what you’re reading. In The Inner Edge there are specific exercises included with each chapter – why not invite everyone to participate?

Learn from a leader, ways to be more engaged in your work. I shared an interview I conducted with the wonderful Stephen M.R. Covey, who says that there are direct economic rewards that go along with functioning in a “high trust environment.” Learn more about what he means, and how you can cultivate that kind of environment in the workplace, from Why Leaders are Losing the Love and How to Get it Back: An Interview with Stephen M.R. Covey.

I hope this exploration of June gives you the clarity you need to take on August! Check back weekly for more leadership practices, tips, and more.

You can connect with Joelle on Twitter and Facebook.