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August 30, 2016 by lisa

The Leadership Strategy Most Successful CEOs Fail At Practicing

We all see the daily headlines: Mark Zuckerberg’s networth rises by additional millions as Facebook’s value increases, Arianna Huffington kickstarts a new “Thrive” venture, Bill Gates’ foundation makes a huge donation to a charity in need. Successful CEO’s are American heroes–we follow their path to top and hope to emulate their success in our own lives.

But many executives today–as well as managers, account executives, and many employees across the spectrum of the corporate ladder–often overlook the first, and often most powerful, leadership strategy: Personal leadership. As a result, they only obtain part of the equation for success. They earn the income but neglect to take care of themselves. Or they take care of themselves but forget to give to others. The result is a life of overwork streaked with a persistent sense of dissatisfaction and that nagging question, “Where am I going wrong?”

The key to success that includes the whole package–wealth, health, and meaning–is personal leadership.

Personal leadership is the leadership of the self. It involves developing a sense of ownership and responsibility for one’s own success–including leading positive change, overcoming challenges, and determining a career path that will be fulfilling on a personal level and impactful for the organization.

So, if these leaders are already successful, why do they need to hone their personal leadership skills? In my years of coaching experience and research for the Leadership Research Institute, I’ve found that when leaders learn and practice personal leadership, they gain a sense of empowerment. They feel more committed to their work and feel very energized about overachieving their goals and results.

If you’re a leader looking to feel fulfilled both professionally and personally, here are two ways to start on your path to refine your personal leadership skills:

Get clear on your vision. It sounds like something most successful C-level executives should already have, but many leaders don’t have a clear perspective on their vision. This isn’t the vision for your company, now–it’s the vision for yourself. What is the path to both your long-term and short-term goals? How do you answer that question both personally and professionally? Without a clear sense of vision, leaders can lose that sense of meaning, and so they get discouraged. They become stressed, burned out or exhausted. If they can’t resolve the situation, they fade out of leadership roles and may even leave the company.

When you do have a vision, it’s time to put it into words. A vision statement captures your future into one succinct statement. Done well, it gives you the language you need to refresh on the images you envision for your future and keep you on track toward that vision in day-to-day life. Unlike the vision statement for a company, your vision statement need not be pithy or profound. You don’t have to hang it on the wall or carve it in marble. What does help is to repeat the statement in your mind once a day to really lock it in.

Get a coach. Developing a vision is only part of the equation. The next part is achieving that vision, and here’s where a coach can be most helpful.

Executive coaches teach leaders the practices of personal leadership so they get clarity about their vision and goals, as well as their value to the organization.

  • Coaches help leaders become very focused on their priorities, so they can emphasize on the ones that have the greatest impact.
  • Coaches help leaders take clear, specific action to get results, with accountability and measurement.
  • Coaches help leaders fill in the gaps. Do you need to identify and leverage your strengths? Learn to maximize your time? Build a personal support team? Through coaching, leaders stop spinning their wheels and put into place the skills and strategies that will help them be successful.

As a result of coaching, leaders feel accomplished and supported at the same time–and that translates into a commitment to their goals, their organization, and their own personal success.

No matter where you are in your career path, you can make it a priority to advance your personal leadership skills. When you do, you’ll find yourself becoming more and more committed to the future you want, and the present you enjoy. You will develop even more clarity bit by bit about what the vision looks like in daily life. And you will achieve it.

 

The previous article appeared on Inc.com as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: annual review, business leaders, business leadership, ceo, inc, inc magazine, joelle jay, joelle k. jay, leadership, leadership development, leadership strategy, performance review, personal leadership

July 13, 2016 by AnnaPatrick

The Two-Step Formula To Articulate Your Value To Your Boss

No matter where you are in your career, you can seize the opportunity to take leadership of your own path to reach higher-level positions. So, when it comes to articulating your value to your manager to be promoted into these positions, this kind of verbal metric is a new way for leaders to think about owning their careers and advancing themselves

Being able to articulate your value is a key tool for success and advancement. Here are three ways to successfully do just that for your next review:

 

Start by asking yourself these questions: Are you able to gracefully, elegantly, and clearly articulate the value that you bring, the contribution that you make? If you feel that you’ve had difficulty answering these questions in the past, it’s likely not that you haven’t met expectations, but rather that you have not clearly articulated how you’ve met expectations.

When you sit down to answer these questions, give yourself permission to be formulated and robotic. First, just get your words on paper, and then you can practice saying those words so that they can become more natural. Then, look for the correct and appropriate context in which you layer them in to a larger statement.

 

Align your value to matrix and measures. What have you done to create those results, what role did you play, and how do you feel about that? This is when you pull exact numbers to support your case, or, as I often say to leaders I coach, these are your “concrete measureable results.”

The way you articulate concrete measurable results is to say something like: “As a result of my effort to do [identify your action], I have achieved [results] which provided the following specific benefits to the company, [fill in numerical data].

 

To give you an example of the two-step formula in action, I’ll use the story of a recent client who is an Executive Vice President in a Fortune 500 company. She felt that she should have a seat on the Executive Committee, and she had a meeting with the committee to make her case. Many of her bosses and managers agreed that she would be a good candidate, but not everyone saw that she had made concrete contributions. So, we sat down and we identified what she had done to earn that C-level title. She identified that as a result of her effort to think about the entire enterprise-wide contribution of their team to the end-goal results of their company, she was able to transform the organization and significantly improve their impact, including a figure that she could identify in real dollars in the seven-figure range. By being able to articulate the sentence: “As a result of doing this, I’ve achieved these results, with this specific benefit for the company,” she got clear and more confident about what she had actually achieved, and what she had led her team to do. Then she was able to look for appropriate ways to say to the executive committee members: “This is the team that started here, these are some of the things we’ve accomplished, here’s how we’ve benefited, and here’s how the company is moving forward–and I’d like to lead a discussion on where that actually takes us next.”

Remember, being able to articulate your value isn’t bragging–your statement is simply a fact put into context. Verbalizing your contributions for others in a way that deepens understanding of the bigger picture of what’s working for the company as a whole can be a real contribution to your organization as well.

 

The previous article appeared on Inc.com as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: annual review, business leaders, business leadership, ceo, inc, inc magazine, joelle jay, joelle k. jay, leadership, leadership development, leadership strategy, performance review, personal leadership

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.

 

Related: Why Leaders are Losing the Love and How to Get it Back: An Interview with Stephen M.R. Covey

 

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: ceo, joelle jay, joelle k. jay, leadership, leadership development, leadership strategy, overstock, overstock.com, patrick byrne

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