Tough-Minded Leadership
Joe D. Batten
Key Summary Notes
Contents of this Summary
Chapter 1: The Next Decade Beckons
Are you a Leader?
Chapter 2: The Anatomy of Leadership
Strong Leadership Enhances Productivity; The Core of Tough-Minded Leadership
Chapter 3: High Performance: The Possible Dream
Build Corporate Cultures from Your “P” Pyramid; How to be Tough: A Case Study
Chapter 4: Reverse the G Forces – Pivotal Leadership
Positive and Negative G Forces; Cybernetic Circle of Leadership
Chapter 5: A New “Systems” Approach to Management
MBE: Management by Expectations; A System of Expective Leadership
Chapter 6: Masters of Strengths Deployment
An Exercise for Identifying Strengths; Building Team Synergy
Chapter 7: Great Changemasters are Great Communicators
Face-to-Face Communication Tools
Chapter 8: The New Entrepreneur
Action Steps for Entrepreneurial Success; Your Tough-Minded Business Plan
Chapter 9: Leadership and Power
New Definitions of Power and Control; The True Nature of Power
Chapter 10: Enhancing Innovation
Innovation Starts at the Top; Innovation in Action; How to Squelch Innovation
Chapter 11: Nuts and Bolts of Innovation and Productivity
Moving to the Next Level: Possibility Teams
Chapter 12: Build and Motivate Your Team
Attitude is Everything; The Team Concept; The Truth about Motivation; A Journey of Self-Discovery
Chapter 13: Leadership in the Twenty-First Century
Integrity that Pervades and Suffuses; Lead and Manage Change; Values Manifesto for Tough-Minded Leaders
Chapter 14: Leadership by Renewal
The Need for Significance; The Seven Phases of the System; Beyond Organisational Development to Organisational Renewal; A Renewing Philosophy
Chapter 15: Lead by Example
The Power of Transcendent Goals; Love – Is it too Big for You?
Chapter 16: The G Forces of the Future
Headlamps for Tomorrow’s Mines; Some Thoughts about the Future
Chapter 17: Tooling for Change
Thirty-Five Tough-Minded Conversions
Chapter 18: The Power of Passionate Leadership
The Cybernetic Circle of Expective Growth; Lead with Passion; Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, the G Forces Beckon
Appendices
Appendix A: Situational Assessment Guide – From Macro to Micro
Appendix B: The Tough-Minded Leader – Five Positive G Forces
Appendix C: Putting It All Together – The Positive G-Force Climate
Glossary of Tough-Minded Terms
Ten Commandments of Expective Leadership
I will tell no one. But I will expect much.
The truth is the only thing that sets you free.
I will diligently expect to be what I expect of others.
I will unleash, unshackle, and be proud of my enthusiasm.
I will search for some positive strengths in every person. I will expect each person’s best.
I will share life, love, and laughter with my team.
I know that expectations are the key to all happenings.
I know that the best control is a clearly and mutually understood expectation.
I will sculpt a vision and plan boldly.
I will live my plan. I will lead my team!
I see myself as an instrument of human progress.
Chapter 1: The Next Decade Beckons
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate for the stormy present and future. As our circumstances are new, we must think anew, and act anew. – Abraham Lincoln
Are You a Leader?
Leaders of the future should ask themselves these questions:
Am I just listening to my people, or do I really hear? Real communication involves shared meaning and shared understanding.
What is primary here, people or technology?
How effectively could I lead if I had no organisational authority? Would they follow me and do what I ask if I had to depend on the quality of my ideas expressed through my example?
Am I really committed to discovering the liberating and synergistic power of love? When Vince Lombardi was asked the secret of the Green Bay Packers’ success, he replied, “These guys love each other!”
Do I fully understand the enormous difference between hard-mindedness and tough-mindedness?
The new leaders will be transformers, changers. The new leaders will dare to dream – and then put muscle into those dreams.
Thomas R. Horton: “… they also hold themselves fully accountable for the consequences of their own decisions.”
Chapter 2: The Anatomy of Leadership
The leader who expects his people to perform their best will achieve the greatest results.
Strong Leadership Enhances Productivity
Eight Steps to Increasing Team Productivity:
Identify the strengths that all team members show in work situations. Ask them to list their own. Tie strengths directly to job contributions.
Classify these strengths in three categories: decision-making or evaluation, problem solving or analysis, and communications or “people” skills. Rate proficiency in each area. Where is more training needed?
Develop these strengths through challenging assignments that stretch, combined with outside courses.
Assign strengths where they will benefit the company the most. Do not be boxed in by traditional roles. First look at your goals, then decide who can best help you meet them. Move decisively to establish a computerised strengths bank.
Set high expectations through performance objectives, mutually agreed to, and hold each person accountable for results. Blend personal goals with corporate goals to achieve a synergistic effect.
Measure strengths and monitor progress made toward goals. Recognise improvement, no matter how small.
Use feedback and self-control by each person to keep performance levels high. Compensate people directly for the results they produce.
Give complete primacy to strong and focussed minds.
Eleven Practical Building Blocks:
Research, develop, and clearly communicate the company’s vision, philosophy, mission, goals, and objectives. Involvement of the team is crucial, or commitment will be lacking.
Use computers to create a “strengths bank” containing the key strengths of all team members.
Work with each person to develop stretching performance standards based on results.
Establish accountability for results in all key jobs and require lean, clear progress reports.
Regularly evaluate the worth of every department, position, and person in the organisation in terms of measurable contribution to agreed-upon results. Relate all compensation and prerequisites directly to performance.
Establish the philosophy that excellent management is the development and optimal leadership of people, not the direction of things. Assign a high priority to whole-person development.
Make sure all key personnel receive in-depth training in cutting-edge techniques of empowering people so that so that they exhibit optimal performance.
Provide for motivation components that include:
Fulfilling basic needs for security, opportunity, recognition, belonging, and, above all, significance
Empowering optimal performance, expecting the best
Positive, open listening and hearing
Building on strengths
Develop the realisation that stretching, innovation-fed work is a pleasant and rewarding part of life.
Establish and exemplify the belief that integrity is the most important ingredient in all human activity. Popularise the phrase “leadership by integrity” within your organisation.
Establish a companywide program of physical, mental, and spiritual fitness.
The Core of Tough-Minded Leadership
A summary of some basic beliefs of the tough-minded leader:
Pervasive flexibility in all elements of the culture.
Performance is all that matters.
Optimal service through optimum development of people.
Expectations that stretch rather than directives that compress.
Intuitive, sensing management.
Clear, no-nonsense accountability for results.
Build on strengths; don’t dwell on weaknesses.
Vision and strategy fuelled by a tough, growing mind.
Commitment to transcendent and growing, changing dreams.
Ethical behaviour, in the deepest sense.
Hard and dedicated work.
The Cybernetic Circle of Becoming:
At the Centre: Innovation
Circle Closest to the Centre: Involvement > Commitment > Conviction > Involvement > …
Next Innermost Circle: Examine your strengths > Care > Listen actively > Find others’ strengths > Provide positive reinforcement > Obtain involvement > Lead by example > Ensure rewards > Provide stretch > Expect excellence > Examine your strengths, …
Outermost Circle: Know thyself > Define your dream > Set goals > Develop action plans > Standards > Timetable > Work and discipline > Faith > Hope > Love > Gratitude > Wonder > Vulnerability > Truth and beauty > Care, share, and forgive > Ask > Know thyself, …
Chapter 3: High Performance: The Possible Dream
One of the most consistent characteristics among high-performance people is the ability to take a hit in stride and bounce back.
The “P” Pyramid:
Level I (Base Level): Philosophy (Principles)
Level II: Policies (Programs)
Level III: Procedures (Processes)
Level IV: Practices (Projects)
Level V (Top Level): Profit, and Other Measures of Achievement (Purpose)
Build Corporate Cultures from Your “P” Pyramid
An example of a tough-minded mission statement:
We will provide the best customer service in the world. All decisions, all rewards, and all accountability will be conditioned by that commitment.
It is a particular joy – and it is all too rare – to walk into an organisation and hear enlightened answers to questions like these:
Why does the company do what it does?
What does it really believe in?
What is the fundamental purpose of your job?
Do you know the what, where, when, who, how, and why of your job?
What are the organisation’s strengths?
What are your strengths?
Do you know what excellence really means?
Do you really feel a significant part of things here?
Are people doing things for each other or to each other?
Is renewal going on at all levels of the organisation?
How to be Tough: A Case Study
What “Tough” Really Means:
If I place two pieces of material the same size, shape and form on an anvil, and one is made of granite, the other of leather, and then hit each with a hammer, what will happen? The granite will shatter into pieces, precisely because it is hard. It is rigid, brittle, and weak. The leather is barely dented, precisely because it is not hard. It is flexible, malleable, resilient, elastic, durable, and supple – and it is tough!
Chapter 4: Reverse the G Forces – Pivotal Leadership
Old habits have tremendous pull. Breaking deeply imbedded habits of procrastination, criticism, overeating or oversleeping involves more than a little will power. We may be dealing with basic character issues and need achieve some basic reorientation or transformation. – Stephen R. Covey, Owner and Publisher, ‘Executive Excellence’
Positive and Negative G Forces
“G” stands for gravity. Here, the term is used figuratively, and in this figurative sense there are both negative and positive G forces. Negative G forces are the self-defeating habits of the past – passivity, focus on weaknesses, “driving” attitudes; they only pull us down. Positive G forces of the future are the passionate attitudes and practices that energise us. In a sense, these positive G forces pull us up. This chapter – indeed, this entire book – is about how to release yourself from the negative G forces of the past and plug into the positive G forces of the future.
Negative G Forces of the Past:
(Passivity)
Value Driven: Push, Drive, Direct, Compress, Focus on Weaknesses
Stereotypical Management
Positive G Forces of the Future:
(Passion)
Value Led: Ask, Listen, Hear, Expect, Stretch, Build on Strengths
Leadership
Crystal-Clear Mission
Cybernetic Circle of Leadership
Step 1: Clarify purpose and direction
Step 2: Ask, listen, hear
Step 3: Enable involvement and participation
Step 4: Set clear expectations and goals
Step 5: Provide consistent interaction
Step 6: Affirm and optimise strengths
Step 7: Establish measurements
Step 8: Monitor performance
Step 9: Provide developmental counsel
Step 10: Establish accountability
Step 11: Make tough-minded decisions
Step 12: Expect excellence
What the mind of man can conceive, the dedicated and focussed energy of man can achieve.
Step 1: Clarify Purpose and Direction:
In “Tapping Into the New Sources of Power”, Alan Posner and Barry Randolph wrote: “Leaders are expected to be forward-looking, to have a sense of direction, and to be concerned about the future of the enterprise. Followers want to have a feeling for the destination that the leader has in mind.”
Where are we going? What will it be like there? The leader’s clarity about the target objectives is akin to the magnetic pull of a compass.”
It is difficult to overemphasize the practicality, the sheer necessity, of a dream that provides lift, stretch, clarity, focus, and pull. A dream gives voltage, vitality, focus, and joy to our days. It is the stuff of high achievement.
Leaders must have followers, and no one can truly follow a person who has no dream. Such a “leader” must constantly improvise directives and orders – G forces of the past. The true leader provides shared purpose and direction fuelled by shared values and energy.
The leader’s role is to clarify the philosophy of an organisation and state it succinctly and powerfully.
Company philosophy provides:
Vision – a grand design
Identification
Stretch – a quickening of the pulse
Integration of the values of the organisation
Motives
A spirit that lifts
Positivism
Hope
Harry Emerson Fosdick: “No life ever grows great until it is focussed, dedicated, disciplined.” Paraphrased: “No organisation ever grows great until it is focussed, dedicated, disciplined.”
Step 4: Set Clear Expectations and Goals:
The goals of the company – what it is expected to achieve – are the responsibility of its leader. Do you know the answers to these questions?
What are the expectations of your customers, publics, or constituencies?
Where do they expect their needs to be met? Where do you expect to fulfil them?
Who is your market? Have you truly assessed your consumer motivations and expectations?
How should these constituencies be best served? Have you mobilised the best data and ideas from your staff?
Why are you in business? Do you actually know precisely the basic utility you are ostensibly organised to serve? What is it?
When, at what targeted intervals, will these questions be addressed and resolved?
In a very real sense, the leader’s expectations determine the future of the organisation. People tend to deliver what is expected of them – be it good or bad. If you encountered a team member in the shop, factory, or office, and that person asked, “What do you expect from me?” would you have an answer? Now suppose that person also asked, “What do you expect from your job? What do you expect from the future?” Could you explain your goals?
Step 5: Provide Consistent Interaction:
Study and use expective words and you replace and displace directive words.
Step 6: Affirm and Optimise Strengths:
Leadership: Development of a clear and complete set of expectations in order to identify, evoke, and use the strengths of all resources in the organisation – the most important of which is people.
Organisations should create and develop a computerised strengths bank that can be accessed in a great variety of situations.
Step 9: Provide Development Counsel:
Tough-minded leaders view performance appraisals as a rich opportunity for teaching and counselling. Here are seven rules for conducting an effective appraisal:
Give feedback. Frequent communication ensures that there will be no surprises! Frequent communication and feedback on the job help overcome fear during the actual performance appraisal.
Evaluate your own performance before you evaluate the team member’s performance. Are you responsible for his or her good or bad performance?
Schedule a warm-up period:
Take time to develop rapport and discuss the advantage of the appraisal.
Review the information on hand to measure the team member’s performance.
Be candid and specific. Get right to the point in discussing a team member’s performance on the job. Honesty, candour, and responsiveness will result in a big payoff for you and the team member.
Build on strengths. This tough-minded approach enables team members to work towards their greatest potential.
Be a positive listener. Listen with ears, eyes, heart, and your entire being. Non-verbal communication often says more than words.
Evaluate and appraise performance, not the person. Evaluate the team member’s performance and end results. Don’t judge the person. Judgements come from a focus on weaknesses. Evaluations are based on identifying and enhancing strengths – the stuff of empowerment.
Step 10: Establish Accountability:
In “Tapping Into the New Sources of Power”, Alan Posner and Barry Randolph wrote: “Coercive power is based on the perception that another person has the ability to punish or withhold valued resources. Effective executives avoid using coercive power except when absolutely necessary because its use creates resentment and erodes their personal power base. With coercion, there is no chance of gaining commitment.”
Before considering termination or demotion, you will make sure you have provided the team member with:
The right example.
The what, where, when, who, how, and why of his or her job expectations.
The information, training, materials, and resources needed.
Clear insight into his or her present and potential strengths – congenial facts.
A clear assessment of his or her possibilities.
Enhanced understanding of his or her uniqueness or value.
Above, warm clarity of expectation.
Clearly communicated agreement as to the time frame involved in shaping up or shipping out.
Step 11: Make Tough-Minded Decisions:
Tough-minded leaders of the future believe in and practice consultive decision making. That means they:
Provide excellent training and example for team members, so that they know the what, where, when, who, how, and why of their jobs and the organisation.
Expect completed staff work. Team members do not bring their problems to managers. Rather, they do the research, thinking, and preparation they are paid for, and then present the manager with appropriate proposals and recommendations. In this way, leaders can truly manage by expectation and can make full use of the skills for which team members are paid. Of course, the managers are in a position to reject, modify, or accept the proposal.
Listen carefully, solicit the best input and suggestions from appropriate team members, and make the decision only if it is inappropriate for the team member to do so.
Make the decision (if they should) with full awareness of their accountability for its success.
Strive always to push decisions down the level where they should most properly be made. Unit leaders strive to back the decisions of their team members firmly, consistently, and fairly. They expect team members to provide the same type of support to them.
Step 12: Expect Excellence and Reinforce It:
Do you care enough about you and your team to put some muscle into your dreams?
Do you care enough to gradually build up reserves and emotional files – mental and spiritual stamina?
Do you care enough to define yourself?
Do you care enough to confront your hopes?
Do you care enough to ask much from your life and from your team?
Do you care enough to build “forgiving” relationships?
Do you care enough to seek strengths in all things?
Do you care enough to replace cynicism with wonder?
Do you care enough to eliminate words like can’t, don’t, and won’t from your vocabulary?
Do you care enough to share the real you with others?
Do you care enough to distinguish between tranquillity (the bland leading the bland) and real happiness: passionate confrontation of life’s possibilities?
Do you care enough to lead?
Do you care enough to expect the best?
Remember, the size of your dream will determine the size of the person you will become.
Chapter 5: A New “Systems” Approach to Management
The key to success in the Integrated Planning Process lies in getting the involvement and commitment of everyone in the organisation. Remember, the purpose of planning is not to produce plans; it is to produce results, and this requires total organisation and commitment. – George L. Morrisey, ‘The Executive Guide to Strategic Planning’
MBE: Management by Expectations
For outstanding involvement, commitment, and conviction to become reality, you must make sure all team members feel:
Significant
Listened to and heard
Empowered and valued
Consistently informed
Rewarded in all suitable ways
Like winners
Above all, you must create a climate where all team members experience shared meaning, shared understanding, shared vision, and shared values.
A System of Expective Leadership
Base all your plans directly or indirectly on a well-research fund of data, a never-ending hunger, about what the consumers want, where they want it, when they want it, who they are, how they want it, and – above all – why they want it.
For team members to experience a positive and developmental coaching experience, it is important that they:
Perceive the what, where, when, who, how, and why of their present and expected performance. It is particularly important that team members understand the why – the stuff of real motivation.
Feel a strong identification with overall goals, objectives, and standards. Without such a feeling, nothing approaching optimum coaching and coordination will take place.
Believe that their strengths are what you value about them.
You are the sum of your strengths.
You are the sum of your values.
You are the sum of your expectations.
AND
They are indivisible!
To overemphasize the weaknesses of people is to shackle them with a miserable self-image. On the other hand, to strive diligently and truthfully and very consistently to help them know, understand, and use their strengths is to set them free.
The relatively obsolete manager manages data. The new leader leads people.
Chapter 6: Masters of Strengths Deployment
The strengths of an organisation can be no stronger than the strengths of the personal relationships, the quality of the minds, and the strength of the shared values within it.
An Exercise for Identifying Strengths
I have had the privilege of seeing some truly productive and beautiful things happen in client organisations to teams of all kinds and sizes when they begin to understand and practice systematic methods of strengths building. There are several methods for making this work; here’s one I have used:
Seat your group in a circle (don’t have more than 20 people).
Have them all (working individually) write down ten strengths they have identified in themselves.
Ask each person to look at each member of the group one at a time and mentally identify one significant strength in each person.
Starting at any point in the circle, choose the first subject. Ask the person on his or her left to name one significant strength about that person. Then proceed on around the circle until everyone has shared a strength-oriented perception of that person.
Move on to the second subject, then the third, and so on until everyone has had a turn. Provide whatever guidance is needed to keep the remarks totally positive and strength based. No negatives of any kind are permitted.
Every single person in a group of 20 hears 19 strength-based comments about himself or herself from 19 different personalities in 19 different ways. Many people of even mature years may hear, for the first time, the kind of affirmation and reassurance most of us are hungry and thirsty for.
Another important bonus is that this is usually the first time people have ever been asked to identify, perceive, and articulate strengths – and only strengths – in anyone else. Now they are asked to do so 19 times, and their minds literally start to reroute brain circuits. A vital process of renewal is underway.
This kind of group experience provides special, important benefits to a team. For instance:
High levels of confidence and self-esteem; liberating knowledge of self.
New insights into the wants, needs, and possibilities of team leaders, customers, and clients.
Improved capacity to spring back resiliently from disappointments and setbacks.
Much greater capacity for longer workdays and other manifestations of stamina. When the body is basically healthy, most fatigue is caused by an orientation to weaknesses.
Building Team Synergy
Be sure to teach and exemplify that a question is infinitely more powerful than a declarative statement in practical persuasiveness.
The forces that work against building strong teams are rampant. Some common ones include:
Team members not understanding the what, where, when, who, how, and above all the why of their jobs and their organisation.
Leaders who live, talk, and work in terms of what they are against instead of what they are for.
To instil the kind of vitality needed to fuel the vision, we need:
Clear and stretching expectations. This is one of the best possible ways to express your dedication and commitment to your team. I believe that when you care enough about a person to find out his or her best qualities, encourage these qualities, and expect commitment and conviction, you are demonstrating dedication, respect, and genuine affection.
Chapter 7: Great Changemasters are Great Communicators
We rule the world by our words. – Napoleon Bonaparte
In literally hundreds of seminars and workshops, and in hundreds of private counselling sessions with managers, my colleagues and I have sought to determine what is really at the core of the management job. After innumerable discussions, and after reviewing the results of numerous surveys, I have concluded that the total effectiveness of leaders rises or falls in direct proportion to their face-to-face communication skills – their interpersonal insights and actions.
Communication: shared meaning, shared understanding.
Face-to-Face Communication Tools
The tough, elusive elements that are found in truly effective one-to-one relationships are:
Vulnerability
Openness
Positive listening
Kinesics
High expectations
Avoiding judgements
Reinforcement
Caring
Integrity
Vulnerability:
Who grows when they flee? Who grows when they defend? Who grows when they covet safety and comfort? A fundamental requirement of the leader who seeks this new, stretching attitude is a high measure of self-esteem.
Positive Listening:
We define negative listening as “the tendency to hear the other person out and then say what you were going to say anyway.”
Batten’s Law of Communication:
When the communicatee does not understand what the communicator intended, the responsibility remains that of the communicator.
High Expectations:
Perhaps the quickest and most effective way to destroy effective communication is to create a vacuum of recognition, a situation where the other person feels ignored and insignificant.
Central to all human needs is this one imperative: to feel in some way significant as a person.
Some Key Elements Involved in Real Communication:
A discussion of weaknesses usually raises defences. The only valid reason for identifying weaknesses is to determine what additional strengths are needed or what is needed to further develop existing strengths.
When we feel threatened by a weakness-oriented approach, we become defensive whether we really want to or not.
Only dialogue and monologue can seep through such defences. Shared meaning and share understanding – the essence of communication – can happen only when these defences are dissolved by a focus on strengths.
It is very difficult to be open and vulnerable (necessary conditions for real communication) if approached in a weakness-oriented way.
It is relatively easy to begin to dissolve your defences and really perceive, feel, and hear what the strength-oriented person is attempting to communicate.
It is reassuring and reaffirming to learn more about our present and potential strengths. We become able to exchange and share intentions, goals, and expectations.
If we dwell on others’ weaknesses, we’ll never truly get to know one another.
If we steadily search for – and expect to find – an ever-increasing number of strengths in others, we can come to truly know one another.
Chapter 8: The New Entrepreneur
The wave of the future in American business, it seems to me, is with the entrepreneurs! The day of the true entrepreneur seems to have arrived. – Harold Geneen, Former Chairman ITT in ‘Managing’
Action Steps for Entrepreneurial Success
Establish a company philosophy that reflects your vision of the possible and that stresses integrity, service, quality, constant change, and other tough-minded components. The vision lives in the intensity, focus, and overall example of you, the leader.
Find a market niche, a gap, a unique want, need, or possibility.
Incessantly and hungrily seek to learn more and more about the need and wants of your market. Ask, listen, hear. Survey, research, analyse, and evaluate.
Recognise that your people are the be-all and end-all, the alpha and the omega.
Provide and lead them through thorough, imaginative, and ongoing training. Train, train, train!
Tie compensation directly to customer-related performance.
Give them part of the action and generate entrepreneurial excitement.
Be generous with wages, salaries, profit sharing, benefits, and imaginative new perquisites – and tie them directly to performance. I cannot overemphasize the importance of this.
Develop an error-free system of reporting. Before finalising your management information system, make the effort to research and determine precisely what kind of information you and your team need, how much you need, and when you need it. Stress progress reports, not activity reports.
Develop a strategy and specific tactics dedicated to the growth, fulfilment, and profit of your customer. Devote all appropriate training sessions, mentoring sessions, staff meeting agenda, and action plans to this. Make sure that all team members know this is the number-one priority for every job and reward.
Even as you build a “climate for mistakes” and encourage creativity, innovation, risk taking, and boldness, endeavour to establish a system to detect mistakes as early and consistently as possible.
If you lose customers, pursue them, woo them, and win them again.
Recognise the paramount and ever-present need for tenacity, resilience, and responsiveness. Anxiety-producing events come with the territory. This is why I continually stress the need for a total lifestyle as a tough-minded leader rather than simply a workweek businessperson. Mental, physical, and spiritual health are crucial to the energetic example required constantly of the passionate leader.
Dare to dream! Envision your company as national or international rather than local or regional. Let your mind soar as you keep both feet on the ground. Help your team members develop excitement, scope, reach, and stretch.
Integrity is the most crucial of all the traits of the tough-minded entrepreneur.
Aim constantly to become the best company in your industry.
Be very careful about diversifying beyond your area of known expertise.
Obtain excellent tax and legal counsel, and listen to them.
Sell your business only if and when you are no longer excited and turned on by what you do.
See economic slumps for opportunities for growth.
Come to work each day willing to fail, and never give up – never, never, never.
Your Tough-Minded Business Plan
Key Elements to Consider:
Clear and concise table of contents, a road map for locating specific items of information
Description of your company
What business are you in?
What are your principal products, markets, services, and consumer applications?
What is unique about you and your organisation?
What is your greatest area of competence?
Marketing and market analysis
What is your market?
What is happening in your market? What will happen?
Who are your customers?
What are the major mistakes commonly made in your market? What are you going to do about them?
Have you clearly defined the specificity and possible uniqueness of your products or services?
Who is your competition?
Have you talked to and researched prospective customers? What is their reaction?
Have you determined your marketing strategy? Promotion? Distribution? Pricing? Service? Support? Others?
Have you defined your sales strategy and tactics?
Research and development
Is your idea patentable or copyrightable? Have you done this?
Do your plans provide for constant innovation and creativity?
Manufacturing and operations
What production or operating advantage do you have?
Do you or will you have a precise knowledge of standard costs for production at various volume levels?
Ownership and management
What is your need for key people?
How will you compensate them?
What knowledge and skills must they have?
What results have they achieved in your area?
Do you have a short-range, an intermediate, and a long-range staffing plan?
Do you have your stock structure? Have you consulted expert legal counsel?
Organisation of human resources
Have you a developed a short-range and long-range organisational chart? Job descriptions? Personnel handbook or manual?
What benefits will you provide?
Money needed and how to use it
How much money will you need?
How much are you budgeting for the next three years? Five years?
Have you prepared a breakeven chart?
Do you plan to go public? If so, the elements in this brief outline must be thoroughly and thoughtfully fleshed out. If you intend to attract an investment banker, a business plan is not only desirable – it is essential.
Financial information
Be sure you are working with paying attention to an excellent accounting firm.
Ask them to help you develop a financial statement.
Clarify and write down your dream. Convert it to specific goals and objectives. Carefully determine all external and internal resources needed. Develop your action plan. And then, take action!
Chapter 9: Leadership and Power
Causes, communication, commitment, and courage. These are the seminal seeds or power.
New Definitions of Power and Control
The concept of control must change from the obsolete notion of “direct command” to the awareness shared by the great leaders, the ones who are pulling their companies into the future. They believe the best controls are clearly understood expectations, crystal-clear accountability standards, and their own exemplification of values and beliefs that attract followers because they can identify with them. Control in the new tough-minded leadership environment may be defined as:
Control: User-friendly information and examples provided to pull an organisation into the future and measure the performance of people, money, materials, time, and space in achieving mutually predetermined objectives.
The True Nature of Power
All the truly great leaders of history were masters of the art of clarifying and communicating expectations.
Leaders who can accomplish profound changes in our land and in our people must be comfortable and skilled in the use of power – in the deepest, purest sense of the word. And that requires:
Purpose and direction
Vulnerability to positive insights
Growth
Wonder
Caring
Excellence of example
Excellent work habits
Inspiration
Constant credibility
Dignity
Integrity
Judgement
Wisdom
Faith
Love
Courage
Hope
Vision
Chapter 10: Enhancing Innovation
There is much more opportunity than there are people to see it. – Thomas Edison
Innovation Starts at the Top
Take note of the three essentials: encourage, support, and reward.
All criteria in the organisation should contain intrinsic components of innovation.
Innovation in Action
To make the climate of innovation a reality, leaders must be willing to dig in and work. Here are some suggestions:
Schedule brainstorming sessions.
As tough-minded leadership pervades the climate of the organisation, there is a keen awareness that the only resources for innovation are the organisation’s strengths. Thus, the focus of these brainstorming sessions is the search for strengths in the people – how to identify them, how to use them better.
In all ideation sessions, any mention of weaknesses, any use of apostrophe-t’s – “didn’t”, “couldn’t”, “shouldn’t”, “can’t”, “won’t”, “didn’t” – is out of bounds. The possible is the focus. Better service and profit through innovation is the ever-present goal.
How to Break Down Barriers to Innovation:
Publicly applaud at least one past failure.
Reward at least one act of constructive defiance.
Knock down at least one seemingly trivial barrier in a team’s way.
Perform at least one small facilitating act.
And insist that each of your subordinate managers do the same.
Tom Peters, Thriving on Chaos (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987)
Institute computerised strengths banks.
Launch pilot projects in profusion.
Build confidence to liberate creative talent.
When people know their strengths are recognised and valued, they have the confidence to move away from timidity towards innovation.
Look for the simple answers.
Give generous recognition and rewards.
Take steps to ensure the number of hours or volume of activity have no relationship to compensation – only performance does. If your performance-based compensation system is right, the more money your team earns, the more you should rejoice.Encourage winners.
“Motivate them, train them, care about them, and make winners out of them. You have to treat people fairly, and you have to treat them as if they’re your most important assets, because they are. The competitive edge in this business is people. I’m trying to communicate that I care and that the role they play in the organisation is an extremely vital one. I’m trying to drive out fear. No manager can be fired unless he or she has been warned in writing three times. In performance reviews we applaud strengths, pinpoint areas that need improvement, and determine what assistance is needed.” - “Ten Million Chances to Excel Each Day”, April 1986. J.W. Marriot, Jr.Create a climate for mistakes.
Build words like boldness, risk, energy, and calculated vulnerability into the entire infrastructure of your organisation.
Do you have the courage to fail your way to success?
Obtain online feedback from major customers.
How to Squelch Innovation
Here are some negative ways to ensure that you’ll evolve into or remain a sterile, drifting, non-innovative organisation:
Be defensive and cautious at all times.
Require documentation and proof of everything proposed.
Require total compliance and conformance from your team.
React to symptoms rather than seeking causes.
Be pre-occupied with weaknesses and apostrophe-t’s.
Base compensation on seniority, activity, education, colour, race, and personal flattery.
Look out for number one – yourself – at all times.
Let people know what you’re against.
Engage in negative listening. Here them out and then say what you were going to say anyway.
Withhold praise at all times.
Make sure your people know you are a “knower” rather than a “learner”.
Encourage your people to compete with each other rather than with their own self-generated goals.
Require rigid compliance with all forms of organisational protocol.
Go by the book.
Chapter 11: Nuts and Bolts of Innovation and Productivity
Whether called “task forces”, “quality circles”, “problem-solving groups”, or “shared-responsibility teams”, such vehicles for greater participation at all levels are an important part of an innovating company. – Rosabeth Moss Kanter, ‘The Change Masters’
Moving to the Next Level: Possibility Teams
The conceptual foundation for possibility teams is built on four key premises.
Significance – the deepest and most consistent of human needs, both on and off the job. The need to feel significant as a person is best met when team members can understand and experience:
Clear and meaningful expectations – the finest gift one person can give another.
A growing understanding of current and potential strengths.
Involvement in formulating the commitments they are expected to fulfil.
Quality of work – and concomitant productivity – is greatly enhanced when significance, clear expectations, strengths enhancement, and involvement are clearly and skilfully integrated into the company’s “P” pyramid.
The unending challenge is to search for, identify, stimulate, and build on the strengths of all resources in the organisation. This will positively affect the quality of work life, and therefore innovation and productivity, in the most direct way possible.
The logical deployment of strengths determines the answers to familiar questions of span of control, unity of command, and logical assignment. The fusion of strengths to achieve objectives is, in the final analysis, what organisation is all about. From this perspective, the pragmatic questions become:
What is controlled?
What should function with unity?
What should be logically assigned (deployed)?
Chapter 12: Build and Motivate Your Team
To build a winning team, you must first of all develop a winning attitude. – Lou Holtz, Head Football Coach, Notre Dame
Attitude is Everything
Ten tough-minded attitudes characterise great leaders and team builders. These qualities remain the same, no matter what area of business, no matter what time period. They are:
Expect the best.
Develop an action plan.
Share, care, and dare to be aware.
Think through and write down your dream.
Prospect for gold.
Incessantly seek knowledge and growth.
Provide unusual and unparalleled service.
Believe in the magic of believing.
Radiate energy, joy, and upness.
Harness the power of love.
The Team Concept
The excellent team has tempo (the speed with which an organisation identifies problems and opportunities and makes and implements decisions). But a real team has much, much more:
A trust relationship among members of the team.
An attitude that is flexible, durable, open, growing, questing, vulnerable, and expective.
Clear, properly developed goals, objectives, and expectations.
A focus on strengths, the only tools an organisation or an individual has.
A readiness to take on new and different challenges, problems, and opportunities.
Caring: the capacity, the desire to relate to people.
Accountability: feeling truly answerable for one’s actions as a leader and team member.
Significance: uniqueness; realness
Symbiosis: positive interaction conducive to synergy
Synergy: the capacity to compound resources for positive results
Candour, applied integrity
Communication: shared meaning, shared understanding
The Growth Path:
Goals, vision, dreams, basic beliefs, and values
Realistic assessment of strengths – individually and organisationally
Openness and vulnerability
Wonder, a sense of
Tough-minded expectations
Hope
The Truth about Motivation
We must get rid of the old idea that a leader can give motivation. All motivation is self-motivation. We simply cannot, and should not want to, install motivation externally. The excellent leader goes all out to provide the climate, the stimuli, and the example, but all real motivation is self-generated.
An essential truth for leaders and team builders to grasp is this: We can know and lead others only when we are progressively learning how to know and lead ourselves.
A Journey of Self-Discovery
The Cybernetic Circle of Motivation:
Examine Your Strengths
Care
Listen Actively
Find Others’ Strengths
Provide Positive Reinforcement
Obtain Involvement
Lead By Example
Ensure Rewards
Provide Stretch
Expect Excellence
You must know and like yourself before you can know and like others. And you must be able to lead yourself before you can lead others. I urge you to actually complete every question below. The rewards can be enormous. Only through self-discovery can be progress onto self-fulfilment, self-actualisation, and co-actualisation. The person who follows such a growth path tremendously increases in ability to lead and to evoke the best from others. To do less is to fail to confront your possibilities.
We’ll start with a list of some strengths to help you start thinking about your own. Of course, this is not an all-inclusive list. You will undoubtedly be able to think of other strengths unique to you once you start completing the sections.
Visionary Emotional stamina
Affectionate Humble
Hard-working Thoughtful
Happy Compassionate
Forgiving Attractive
Disciplined Diligent
Energetic Tenacious
Fit Sense of humour
Committed Helpful
Tolerant Outgoing
Cheerful Resilient
Serene Intelligent
Sincere Emotionally stable
Focussed Self-starting
Question 1: Who am I?
Five of my inner strengths are …
I can improve these strengths by …
I would like to add these strengths:
Why?What five needs do I most want to fulfil? (List in order of importance.)
Write a short paragraph describing: This is the person I think I am.
Look back to the answers you gave to items 1 to 4; then item 5. Do you find in item 5 the strengths you listed in items 1 to 4?
If not, why?[Note: Before answering the next three questions, please be aware that the term “love” does not refer to physical love. To love yourself is not egotistical or conceited. It essentially means being able to accept and like yourself as you are, being aware of your potential, as well as your limitations. It means emotional resilience, suppleness, and constancy of purpose.]
How do I feel about myself when I’m happy and when I’m sad?
Why?Do I love myself?
Why?How do I feel about answering item 8?
Why?
10. Why do I feel it might be important to love myself?
Question 2: Why should I care?
Should I be a caring person?
Why?If I had to sacrifice something I felt was extremely important for the happiness of one of the following, would I?
Parents Friends
Children Business associates
Spouse Acquaintances
Other relatives StrangersWhy would I be willing to sacrifice or open myself to some of them and not others?
What would I be willing to do for someone I really cared about? [List several things.]
What would I not be willing to do?
Below is a list of traits. Which ones are found in a caring person?
Love Openness and expectations
Sharing Sincerity
Vulnerability Helpfulness
Self-sacrificing HumilityHow many traits did I check?
Which ones didn’t I check?
Why not?[Take another look at the traits in item 6. All these traits are needed if a person is to really care. Perhaps you’re not able to feel all these traits operating with everyone.] I have looked back at the list in item 2, and I can see all these traits in …
How can I show my team members that I am a caring person? [List five ways.]
I have chosen one team member and one of the items I listed in item 9 just above. The person is ………………………… and the method is ………………………… For one week I tried to show this person I care by using that method. These were the results:
Question 3: I listen, but …
Why do I feel it is important to really listen and hear what people say?
Here are five things that can make it difficult for me to listen:
Really hearing and understanding what a person says involves more than listening. I think these other things are also involved:
Are there some people I don’t listen to? [Name two and tell why.]
When I listen to someone, what should I be looking for?
What can I do to help myself become a better listener? [List three things.]
Feedback is one tool I can use to help me become a better listener. It involves the listener repeating back to the speaker the essence of what was said. Here is a recent incident or conversation when I used feedback, or could have:
Do I settle for “dialogue” (two or more people engaged in monologues) or go for communication (shared meaning, shared understanding)?
Question 4: How can finding and reinforcing other people’s strengths help me?
Do I find it easy to see strengths in other people?
Why?I have chosen a team member (a co-worker or someone I lead). Here are five of that person’s strengths [use skills or personality traits]:
Here are five of that person’s unique talents or abilities (things he or she can do that I can’t):
Did I have difficulty completing items 2 and 3?
If so, I might consider getting to know that person better. How might I do this?I will try following questions 2, 3, and 4 for other people at work and at home. Here’s a list of the people and their strengths:
After a month, I will take another look at how I view them.
Question 5: Why do I need to reinforce those strengths?
How do I feel about giving people earned praise?
How do people react to my praise and compliments?
I tried complimenting the person I initially picked in question 4 above. This is the response I received:
I then tried complimenting the second group of people I listed in question 4 above, the others at work and at home. Which of their strengths did I compliment?
How did they respond?
After a month, how do I feel about these same people?
(You may note some changes in their attitudes, and yours, that will surprise you.)[Take another look at your list of people you selected for compliments and positive reinforcements. Consider the following and find examples of each.]
How does caring about others help me?
How does listening help me?
How do finding and reinforcing others’ strengths help me?
Question 6: Why get involved?
[Note: Involved means sharing, caring, relating, being vulnerable, asking, listening, hearing, suggesting.]
[Think about the last cause or project you were associated with and answer the following question]: Why did I get involved? [List the reasons.]
Could I be called an “involved” person?
Why or why not?This is how I would describe someone I know who is an “involved” person:
Would I like to be more like the person I described?
Why?[Imagine you are given responsibility for a major project at work. Consider this question]: How would I go about getting my other project members involved? [List the steps. Be sure to refer to your answers to item 1.]
Could I use positive reinforcement to obtain someone’s involvement?
What kinds of reinforcement could I use?Does my company give performance appraisals to let people know how they are doing?
If so, how could these performance appraisals involve positive reinforcement? [List three ways.]How could my team members as well as management personnel be involved in performance appraisals?
How could the following serve as an aid to positive reinforcement and involvement for my people?
Compensation
Incentives (a bonus plan, for instance)
Company newsletter
Promotion
Other (something unique to your organisation)
Question 7: Me? Lead by example?
Every day someone is influenced to follow my example, good or bad. Today, in this particular situation someone followed my lead. [Describe the incident.]
Do I really want to be a leader?
Why?What kind of example do I set for those around me? [List some of your traits that other people have said they admired or disliked.]
Am I happy with the way people see me?
If I could add or delete only one thing from the traits listed in item 3, what would it be?
Why did I choose this one particular trait?
I am imagining that I have only one week to live. I’m thinking of one person who looks to me for leadership, and these are the things I would like this person to remember about me:
I think I would like to make some changes in my leadership image, and I’ll start with the person I picked in the preceding question. For one week, I’ll make a conscious effort to be the person I described. [At the end of the week, refer to your list again; for each point, note whether you feel you succeeded and why.]
Question 8: Are rewards necessary?
Are rewards and positive reinforcement the same?
I think a valid reward for the following might be:
Meeting a stretching expectation
Earning a promotion
Excessive absence from work
Stealing
What happens when a person is not rewarded promptly for either good or poor performance?
These five rewards are most meaningful to me:
What do I feel a team member’s compensation should be based upon?
Do people in my organisation know why they do or don’t receive a raise?
Why should they know?How can I help ensure that my team members receive valid rewards for their work?
Question 9: Why do I need stretch?
Would I be satisfied to remain exactly as I am today for the rest of my life?
What does the word growth mean to me?
Is continuous personal growth necessary?
Why?Here are five ways in which I feel I have grown or stretched in the past year:
How can personal goals or future plans help me grow?
Here are some of the adjectives I would use to describe what a goal should be:
There are two types of goals: short-term and long-range. Here is an example of each:
I would like to achieve these three goals in the next year:
I would like to have achieved these three goals in the next five years:
I choose to concentrate on this one short-term goal:
These are the things I must do to accomplish it, and the time limit I set for each step:At the end of a year, I accomplished these short-term goals:
[If you didn’t reach any of those listed, list the reasons.]Now I will set these new goals:
Have I helped my people set goals for their work?
Why might doing so help me?Do I feel my organisation should help its employees with career planning?
Why?How would I go about helping one of my team members who has come to me for help and advice on career planning and personal growth?
Question 10: The best I can be…
What does excellence mean to me?
How do I know I am doing my best?
Why is it important to do my best?
What happens when someone expects me to do my best?
What happens when I expect others to do their best?
What happens when someone expects my worst or second best?
What positive G forces stimulate me the most?
The key to greater personal motivation lies within you. It cannot be handed to you by any other person.
Continue to provide room for stretch in your life and in the lives of those around you. You will be surprised to discover new and exciting things about who you are and can be. This will make it possible for you to reach out and help others discover possibilities that will enable them to grow also.
This is one of the finest tributes you can give another person: the ability to see who the person is and who he or she can be.
Chapter 13: Leadership in the Twenty-First Century
How can we preserve our aspirations and at the same time develop the toughness of mind and spirit to face the fact that there are no easy victories? One is a tough-minded recognition that the fight for a better world is a long one. – John Gardner, ‘No Easy Victories’
At a premium are leaders with vision, courage, integrity, tenacity, energy, and insight into the exciting and revolutionary possibilities of the future. One of the greatest needs for today’s leaders is the need to anticipate change and prepare for the future rather than fight it.
Integrity that Pervades and Suffuses
Real men and women who want to lead real and renewing lives will be guided by these principles:
Serve much.
Care much.
Dare much.
Share much.
Stretch much.
Expect much.
Give much.
Live much.
Love much.
Grow much.
Empower and renew much.
Experiment much.
Seek challenges and obstacles.
Have a sense of wonder.
Have a specific program of physical, mental, and spiritual fitness.
Make the quantum leap from judging others on the basis of their weaknesses to evaluating them according to their current and potential strengths.
How can the leader achieve personal tooling for integrity? Find the effective, self-disciplined practitioner and you will likely find a person who:
Meets commitments and gives loyalty
Follows a realistic schedule
Is physically, mentally, and spiritually fit
Understands and feels good about self
Is a strong individual (integrity and strength mean the same)
Operates by results, not activity
Scrupulously insists on the truth
Conducts a periodic self-inventory and maximises own strengths
Knows true creativity is impossible without hard work and follow-through
Develops pace, tempo, and stamina
Can identify and eliminate trivia
Has happy domestic relations
Usually achieves empathy
Shuns political infighting
Fosters, exemplifies, and builds communicative networking
Does not tolerate continued flabby methods in others
Confronts difficulties squarely
Lead and Manage Change
Tough-minded leaders know that changes in business and the world in general are inevitable, and they relish them! They anticipate the unfolding of the future, plan for it, and set trends. They require and encourage a climate conducive to innovation in all facets of the business. Above all, they are change agents. They recognise that a positive G-force culture depends on certain pivotal changes:
Relate compensation to performance.
Generate enthusiasm.
Be not deterred by small people.
Build on strengths.
Remember that expectations are everything.
Remain goal oriented.
Practice leadership.
Foster significance.
Believe in intuition.
Values Manifesto for Tough-Minded Leaders
These are some things that real leaders believe in and practice every day of their lives:
Openness and emotional vulnerability
Warmth
Consistency
Unity
Caring
Positive listening
Unsatisfaction
Flexibility
Giving
Involvement
Tolerance of mistakes
Values
Psychological wages
Simplicity
Time
The winning formula
An open mind
Development of people
Self-discipline
Physical fitness
Enjoyment of life
Board perspective
Faith in self and others
Vision
Positive thinking
Desire to learn
Enjoyment of work
Enrichment of others
Integrity
Results, not activity
Candour
Management by example
A clear philosophy
Accountability
Purpose and direction
Expectations of excellence
Laser-like focus
Vision + Focus + Action = The G Forces of the Future
Chapter 14: Leadership by Renewal
The central purpose of managing by renewal is to make effective use of the strengths of the organisation to fulfil organisational dreams. Computerised strengths banks can facilitate mind-boggling innovations during the turbulent decade ahead.
The Need for Significance
In the on-the-job sense, the usual undesirable indices – such as turnover, absenteeism, and low morale – would be vastly reduced if all team members felt more significant and useful.
Paul “Bear” Bryant, the legendary football coach at the University of Alabama, said there are five things that winning team members need to know:
Tell me what you expect from me.
Give me an opportunity to perform.
Let me know how I’m getting along.
Give me guidance where I need it.
Reward me according to my contribution.
The Seven Phases of the System
Phase 1: Strengths Identification >
Phase 2: Strengths Classification >
Phase 3: Strengths Development >
Phase 4: Assignment of Strengths >
Phase 5: Synergy and Expectations >
Phase 6: Strengths Measurement >
Phase 7: Control of Strengths >
Phase 1: Strengths Identification >
…
Phase 1. Strengths Identification:
Complete individual inventories of all members of the team. Search for real and demonstrated strengths as well as those hoped for.
List “victories” – past experiences where people achieved a measure of what they hoped for.
List individual objectives and relate them to job objectives. These should indicate strengths that can contribute directly to job results.
Phase 2. Strengths Classification:
Prepare anecdotal records listing key strengths of your team members. A primary step here is to ask the group to provide you with a list of their strengths classified according to their own priorities.
Categorise and computerise the inventories for practical and applied use. Look for:
Decision-making strengths: evaluation skills
Problem-solving strengths: analytical skills
Face-to-face strengths: communication skills
List degrees of strengths, from major to minor. It is important to know weaknesses so that you can determine what additional strengths are needed or what is needed to develop existing strengths further.
Develop strengths software.
Phase 3. Strengths Development:
Prepare and disseminate a companywide philosophy stressing strengths development.
Conduct research to determine training and development needs and specific requirements.
Prepare a thoughtful strengths-development plan.
Implement the plan. For example, you might set up:
Computerised strength banks and strengths-access software
Specifically designed modules
Assessment centres
Career path planning
Carefully designed assignment of position and job content
Provision of specific strengths-actualisation information
Personnel planning
Phase 4. Assignment of Strengths:
Making the right hiring decisions can mean the difference between success and failure of the company. The challenge is to find people whose strengths you need and put them in positions where they can use them. You’re looking for three different kinds of strengths:
Demonstrated and tested strengths. In actuality, this is what people are paid for. This is performance! Use these strengths where they will be the most effective in helping both the individual and the company meet goals.
Suspected strengths. These can be verified and rewarded only by stretching assignments.
Expected strengths. These help employees discover who they are, what they can be, and what they can do; this is one practical way to describe and understand the process of leadership.
Phase 5. Synergy and Expectations:
True synergy is invariably the product of a wise blend of strengths.
Here are three suggestions for developing your expectation instruments, thus bringing your team members together:
Positive accountability provisions
Results expected
Performance standards
Here you will be involved in training and counselling your human resources. Some key requirements of effective coaching are:
Positive listening
Vulnerability and openness
Flexibility and versatility
In this phase, the principle of high expectations comes alive. In all your interactions with your team members, remember these guidelines:
Express caring
Motivate
Clarify
Stretch
Build teamwork and real self-esteem
Phase 6. Strengths Measurement:
Measure the strengths of people, money, materials, time, and space by overhauling all policies, procedures, processes, practices, and programs to reflect strengths emphasis. This emphasis should be incorporated into the following:
Annual reports
Budgets and forecasts
Profit plans
Policy manuals
Progress reports
Strength audits
Manpower inventories
Visual inspection
Memoranda
Committees
Individual service standards
Phase 7. Control of Strengths:
Control need not even be remotely coercive, repressive, or stultifying. Rather, it must derive from focus, stretch, expectiveness, and other elements that follow:
Positive listening
Compensation
Performance appraisal
Many fine organisations are beginning to exemplify this strengths paradigm in a preliminary way. In his book, People Power (1988), John Noe describes the system he is employing in his company, Industrial Housekeeping Management Systems, Inc.:
The first step was to analyse every position in terms of strengths needed and arrive at a profile of the person who would be successful in the position. Then, we began to systematically evaluate each applicant through the use of resume, employment application, personality assessment tools, interviews with questions targeted at the applicant’s weaknesses, and references, and to determine how the individual would complement those who were already employees or who would be members of the newly formed team. We selected our management employees based on the known probability that they would succeed.
Beyond Organisational Development to Organisational Renewal
If you still have any doubts about the power of expectation, you may be interested in this fascinating experiment, described by consultant Harold McAlindon, a long-time colleague:
Organisation actualisation [renewal] builds and extends the principles of organisation development. A climate of high expectations, for example, is established in the actualising organisation.
The importance of high expectations in achieving a person’s potential was demonstrated at one school. There, teachers were advised that a unique test had been devised, one that could spot a youngster who was about to “bloom” intellectually. In reality, no such test existed. The fake test was called the Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition, but it was actually an unfamiliar and little-used standardised test of intelligence.
The teachers were asked to give the test and were advised that the top 20% would be the children about ready to surge ahead, regardless of their development to date. The teachers did not see the actual scores, which were irrelevant anyway. Instead, they were given the names of the top 20% group and told to expect rapid intellectual growth and development. In reality, the names were chosen by random selection.
A year later, the same children were tested. The results were interesting. Dramatic increases on test scores were found in the 20% group. Simply because teachers were told to expect progress with certain children, progress took place. Gains in I.Q. scores were as great as 50% in a single year. No special techniques were given the teachers to influence this change. No special tools or materials were provided. The only difference was in the attitude of the teacher. The teacher expected growth and improvement and got it.
A Renewing Philosophy
The Employee Bill of Rights of Saga Administrative Corporation guarantees team members:
The right to give and receive feedback.
The right of fair treatment in every area of work experience.
The right to basic dignity, respect, and personal identity as a human being.
The right to a style of management that enhances self-esteem and dignity as a person.
The right to have the opportunity for a meaningful job for which they are qualified.
The right to be consulted and involved in those decisions that relate to the employee’s job.
The right to be involved in social action programs.
The right to set their own work goals.
The right to set their own lifestyle.
The right to be creative in the performance of the task and in the fulfilment of the daily goals.
The right to fair compensation for their efforts.
The right to work hard to develop in a way that enables them to meet new challenges.
The right to be coached, assisted, and helped in the achievement of their goals.
The right to an optimistic, trusting, caring relationship in their work environment.
Chapter 15: Lead by Example
The leader is the evangelist for the dream. – Dave Patterson, Apple Computer
The last thing organisations need is leaders who are diffident, tentative, hesitant, or submissive. They need leaders who will confront tough issues and tough challenges. When your team members look at you, what do they see? Are you enjoying life? Do you radiate vitality, well-being, and excitement? Are you a walking example of these leadership traits?
Impatience for results.
A sense of purpose. Leaders know what they are for, what they want to get done. Their priorities are vision, focus, action.
A positive approach to problems.
The feeling that a problem can be solved until proved otherwise.
Practical judgement. They see the balance among people, money, materials, time, and space.
Familiarity with the “six honest serving men”: what, where, when, who, how, and why.
Courage and candour.
A knowledge that all people need recognition, belonging, security, opportunity, and significance.
Acceptance of the fact that all projects of any significance involve planning, organisation, coordination, direction, and control.
A tough, durable mind that refuses to dissipate mental, physical, and emotional energy on negative thinking.
A continuous search for strengths.
A zest for life, love, and wholeness.
A style that gives team members in the organisation power to initiate and sustain efforts based on the integrity of an idea.
Probability thinking at all levels.
Belief in intuition – gut feelings – and follow-through.
The Power of Transcendent Goals
No team ever finishes ahead of its leader.
Idealism or Realism?
“I think I’ve got it figured out. There’s nothing more impractical than an idealist with impractical ideas, but there is nothing more practical than an idealist with practical ideas.”
Corporate Example:
We Believe in the Dignity of the Individual
However large or complex a business may be, its work is still done by people. Each person involved is a unique human being, with pride, needs, values and innate personal worth. For us to succeed we must operate in a climate of openness and trust, in which each of us freely grants others the same respect, cooperation and decency we seek for ourselves.
Borg-Warner Corporation
Love – Is it too Big for You?
Leadership is an example! Effective leaders deliberately set an example of what they expect and want from team members. If quality and service are truly important to you, exemplify quality and service in all you say, do, and are.
Action Plan for Expective Living:
Major Goal: … Why?
Key Result Area: … Why?
In a table format, list:
Action Steps; then for each Action Step:
Resource Requirements (Skills, Money, Training, Relationships);
Specific Tasks;
Target Dates (Beginning, Completion)
Weekly Planning Control Sheet:
In a table format, list:
Specific Task; then for each Specific Task:
Completed?;
Not Completed?;
Alternative Action (If Not Completed)
“I began to discover the real pleasure of helping people build their confidence. Maybe the most important thing of all was that I really began to understand that an excellent way to show love and respect for people was to expect them to use their strengths to meet objectives we’d worked out together.”
Chapter 16: The G Forces of the Future
We must dare to confront our possibilities.
Headlamps for Tomorrow’s Mines
G Forces of the Future:
Mental vision
Courage
Hope
Mental health
Healthy businesses
Economic success
Service
Integrity
Energy
Brightness
Positiveness
Love
Significance
Faith
Vitality and high energy
Did you know consultants find that the most common denominator in the organisation that has failed, is mediocre, or is about to fail, is – call it what you will – procrastination, finger-pointing, blame fixing, reacting to symptoms rather than to causes? Whatever the label, this tendency represents the dominance of a set of negative and expedient values. Such behaviour is always associated with a static or rigid mind.
Many psychiatrists believe that the principal cause of fatigue in America today is a person’s failure to have something bigger and more important than self to live for.
Thought is the most productive form of labour.
What do you know about what your team members really think? Conduct attitude surveys regularly and develop a consistent pattern of listening and mentoring sessions. Listen, listen, listen to the people who do the work!
Two principal concepts represent within themselves a whole armamentarium of tough-minded values:
Management by example
High expectations
Both depend on the principle that we become what we think.
We do not enhance the dignity of people when we expect less than the best from them in commitment, talent, and effort. They come to know their strengths, their significance, their relevance when they are required to reach deep into their reservoir of strength, skill, and courage to confront the high expectations to which they have given their commitment. Clear and stretching expectations are, indeed, a gift and a lift. They pull people into the future.
Some Thoughts about the Future
Education for Human Optimisation:
It is absolutely vital that our schools of business, particularly myopic MBA programs, undertake the value system described in this book. What about comprehensive courses, even college majors, in positive reinforcement? What about massive educational efforts to study the causes of joy, health, achievement, and success rather than the causes of gloom, depression, sickness, and failure?
Chapter 17: Tooling for Change
Change will be the one constant for the rest of your life. You will never find the ideal management process or culture. – Lawrence Miller, President of L. M. Miller & Company, in ‘Executive Excellence’
My colleague, Donald Kirkpatrick, professor emeritus from the University of Wisconsin, says the three keys to managing change are:
Empathy
Communication
Participation
Thirty-Five Tough-Minded Conversions
My colleagues and I have put together a list of thirty-five conversions, changes we believe are essential. They are a distillation of the ideas discussed throughout this book. I recommend it to all dedicated leaders as a working tool kit as you confront the need for change, innovation, and new dimensions of creativity.
From G Forces of the Past >>> To G Forces of the Future
Role orientation >>> Goal orientation
“Importance” >>> Significance
Insecurity >>> Significance
Programs >>> System
Vague, adequate expectations >>> Clear, stretching expectations
Defensiveness >>> Open, war, thoughtful candour
Activity documents and reports >>> Progress documents and reports
Hunch and guess >>> Disciplined decisions
Inconsistency >>> Consistency
Conformity >>> Individuality
Competing with others >>> Competing with self
Complexity >>> Simplicity
Avoidance of problems and needs >>> Confrontation of problems and needs
Dialogue >>> Communication
Crises and fire fighting >>> “Early warning systems”
Office politics >>> Team synergy
Blurred, expedient morality >>> Tough, stretching moral climate
Reaction related to symptoms >>> Action related to causes
Disparate, dissonant actions and procedures >>> Unity
Compensation based on actions and personal characteristics >>> Compensation based on positive performance
Fragmentation >>> Purpose and direction
Getting >>> Giving
Preoccupation with weaknesses >>> Building on strengths
Commitment to self only >>> Commitment to goals and objectives that transcend self
Benign neglect >>> Caring
Negative listening >>> Positive listening
Dissatisfaction (past-oriented) >>> Unsatisfaction (future-oriented)
Gamesmanship >>> Accountability for results
Superficial preoccupation with behavioural science jargon >>> Analysis, evaluation, synthesis, and synergy of tough-minded possibilities
Affirmative-action jargon and dialogue >>> Evaluating all people on the basis of performance
Uncertainty >>> Self-confidence
Confusion >>> Viable personal faith beyond self
Physical adequacy >>> Physical fitness
Grimness >>> Buoyancy
Passive erosion >>> Passionate renewal
Conversion 1: Role Orientation to Goal Orientation:
To leave this orientation behind, it is vital that each person be encouraged, aided, and trained to formulate specific personal goals that are meaningfully related to organisational and work goals.
Conversion 2: “Importance” to Significance:
Policies, procedures, and practices must actually reflect the belief that while importance may be enhanced by compliments and benefits, the true feelings of significance, dignity, worth, and individuality come from an organisation-wide focus on strengths and clear, stretching expectations.
Conversion 7: Activity Documents and Reports to Progress Documents and Reports:
In the positive G force climate, three things must be clearly understood:
Compensation is directly related to performance.
Performance and results are the only criteria for promotions and prerequisites.
All decisions and assessments are based on performance progress.
Conversion 10: Conformity to Individuality:
If the units of an organisation are to function in coordinated, synchro meshed fashion, the individuals in the team must feel a consistent heightened awareness of:
Present and potential strengths
Involvement in plans and performance standards
Being valued as persons
Being listened to
Clarity of expectations
Compensation tailored to individual results
Conversion 11: Competing with Others to Competing with Self:
When we compete with others, we have a considerable number of built-in copouts. It is so easy to see something in others that can lull us into relative complacency and mediocrity. To compete with our own internally generated goals or objectives is to potentially experience our finest hour, to confront our possibilities.
Conversion 12: Complexity to Simplicity:
In our culture, all too often we confuse complexity with difficulty. We are inclined to feel virtuous when we avoid the simple and do the complicated. But in reality, the complicated is easy; it is tough to reduce down to simplicity. We must somehow blast the notion that sophistication requires greater intellect and commitment than mastering the basic truths needed to arrive at lean, clean, and clear solutions. The more complex the problem, the greater the need for clear thinking to achieve the simplest (best) solution.
Conversion 15: Crises and Fire Fighting to “Early Warning Systems”:
Make sure your employees always know in advance what is expected of them in the way of conduct and performance on the job.
Conversion 17: Blurred, Expedient Morality to Tough, Stretching Moral Climate:
A searching study of the rise and fall of past civilisations of the world reveals irrefutably that the viability and vitality of each was closely paralleled by the rise and decline of morality. Studies of great corporations that have risen and fallen revealed precisely the same patterns.
Conversion 19: Disparate, Dissonant Actions and Procedures to Unity:
Modern leaders can learn something from sheepherders. Studies have shown that there is a distinct difference in the quality of the wool of flocks that are driven by the shepherd and flocks that follow the shepherd. Those that were driven were apparently in a constant state of confusion, ran to-and-fro, and required constant surveillance. They didn’t eat well, didn’t sleep well, and probably didn’t even feel well. Any of this sound familiar? Those that followed a leader could perceive an object – a person – ahead, focus on him with much higher measure of relaxation and, I venture to say, purpose and direction. They could devote their energies to what sheep do best: eating, grazing, sleeping, and becoming fat, fit, and profitable. Is there a parallel here for you?
Conversion 21: Fragmentation to Purpose and Direction:
Purpose and direction are fundamental to the tough-minded expective company and its tough-minded team. Ideally, all people on the payroll understand:
The macro vision, the dream.
The mission, philosophy, goals, and objectives of the company.
The objectives, standards, and action plans of their own organisational units.
The specific authority, responsibility, and, particularly, accountability provisions of and for their own job.
That all rewards and prerequisites are based on performance and results.
That doing everything possible to fulfil these multiple expectations will benefit all.
Conversion 22: Getting to Giving:
Old axiom: “The more you give, the more you get.”
Conversion 24: Commitment to Self Only to Commitment to Goals and Objectives that Transcend Self:
Research, experience, and deep reflection will reveal to the manager that high levels of motivation are created and built only when members of a team are committed to beliefs that transcend their own wants and needs.
We denigrate people’s dignity when we assume they do not want to give, build, create, and, yes, to a very real extent, sacrifice.
In reality, there is a deep human need to grow, change, give, and build. But people need leadership to effectively do so.
Conversion 25: Benign Neglect to Caring:
Many business organisations stultify the possibilities of their people with paternalism and directiveness. Real compassion requires involvement, listening, building on strengths, clear and stretching expectations. As you study and overhaul your philosophy, policies, practices, and programs, use this tough-minded maxim as a template:
I will not be my brother’s keeper unless he cannot keep himself. Rather, I want to be my brother’s brother and help him keep himself.
Conversion 26: Negative Listening to Positive Listening:
It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of this conversion. The success of all the instruments in this book depends on it. Possibly nothing can make people feel more ignored, hostile, diffident, or resistant than listening without hearing. Positive and active listening requires listening with mind, heart, and soul – really hearing.
Conversion 29: Superficial Preoccupation with Behavioural Science Jargon to Analysis, Evaluation, Synthesis, and Synergy and Tough-Minded Possibilities:
We not only become what we think, we become what we say. Research has clearly indicated the productive and stimulating power of crisp, emotive, evocative, precise language. When the leader begins to master the art of lean, clean, and meaningful words, followership grows, and this is what leadership is all about.
Conversion 30: Affirmative-Action Jargon and Dialogue to Evaluating All People on the Basis of Performance:
This again relates to the need for all levels of our society, including government, business, unions, and all our institutions, to understand the implication of:
I will not be my brother’s keeper unless he cannot keep himself. Rather, I want to be my brother’s brother and help him keep himself.
Conversion 31: Uncertainty to Self-Confidence:
High productivity and profitability will always elude the uncertain organisation that operates with diffidence, defensiveness, procrastination, and diffusion of effort. Philosophy, mission, goals, objectives, action plans, performance standards, building on strengths, compensation based on performance, and all the positive G forces in this book build the self-confidence necessary for profitability and high productivity.
Conversion 32: Confusion to Viable Personal Faith Beyond Self:
It is basic to the human being to give, to build, to contribute, to believe, and to expect. Therein lies hope, and hope is the universal nourishment of all human beings.
Conversion 35: Passive Erosion to Passionate Renewal:
Real in-depth commitment to passionate renewal in every dimension of your life – and thus in your team members – requires that since no one can live in neutral, you resolve to use every thought, word, and action to enhance people rather than diminish them. This requires discipline, courage, and love – all renewing ingredients.
The whole point of this chapter is that if you want to change organisational habits, change the people. If you want to change people, make sure that the right nutrients are provided for their minds.
Chapter 18: The Power of Passionate Leadership
By using their ambitions, talents and capacity, these leaders have identified true calling, as it were, and fulfilled their own genius, their visions of excellence through the application of passion, energy, and focus. – Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus in ‘Leaders’
People must feel that they are excellent before doing excellent work.
The Cybernetic Circle of Expective Growth
In the centre of the circle is You, connected to all the elements:
Self-Knowledge. Know what you can and will expect from you.
Dream. Let yourself perceive all your possibilities.
Goals. Determine specific components of your dream.
Action Plan. Decide on what, where, when, who, how, and why of what you want to be and do.
Standards. Determine how well the goals can and must be realised.
Timetable. Schedule, prioritise, develop your “life calendar”.
Work and Discipline. Apply your mind and skills diligently.
Faith. Believe in you, in others, and in your own higher power. Believe others are right unless proved wrong.
Hope. Believe in your experiences.
Love. Love is the central source of energy that makes it all happen.
Gratitude. The highest form of mental and spiritual health.
Wonder. Let life in. Seek, quest, appreciate, enjoy.
Vulnerability. Dissolve your emotional defences.
Truth and Beauty. Savour the flavour of each passing “now”.
Caring, Sharing, Forgiving. A sure guarantee of growth, change, and fulfilment.
Asking. Perhaps this is the finest way to express all the other portions of the circle.
Challenge No. 1: Self-Knowledge:
The only reality of a person is his or her strengths. We cannot understand a weakness, because a weakness is only an absence, a fault, a zero, a vacuum, a nothing. We can understand and acquire only strengths. Once this is fully perceived and understood, once we realise that the only tools, the only building material, the only fuel we possess are our present and potential strengths, we can begin to focus intently on:
What is rather than what isn’t.
What can rather than what can’t.
What will rather than what won’t.
What does rather than what doesn’t.
What has rather than what hasn’t.
Please begin an all-out quest for greater awareness and use of all your current and potential strengths.
Challenge No. 7: Work and Discipline:
All the great achievers see work as a privilege, an opportunity, a gift.
The sheer practicality of faith on a deep and pervasive level is enormous. Faith and belief, after all, mean the same. And there is practically no limit to what you and I can do if our belief in ourselves, our fellow person, and our own perception of a higher power are strong and constant. In short, faith and success as a total person, a significant person, are totally synonymous.
Challenge No. 9: Hope:
I believe hope is the universal nourishment of the human being, and expectations are steps on the pathway of hope. When we get out of bed in the morning, without hope there would be no reason to do anything at all.
Challenge No. 10: Love:
Perhaps the greatest single breakthrough in the enrichment of the human condition will be the widespread realisation that love, fuelled and completed by faith and hope and synergised by gratitude, is the most practical thing in the world.
Challenge No. 13: Vulnerability:
A major breakthrough becomes possible when we equate emotional vulnerability with courage and strength. What happens to a physical muscle when it encounters no stress or resistance? What happens to a mental muscle when it encounters no stress or resistance? Do you begin to see the self-destructiveness of a lifestyle rooted in defensiveness, safety, and invulnerability?
Can your team develop unity, synergy, esprit de corps without undertaking some tough and stretching objectives – and winning?
Challenge No. 16: Asking:
Most people are unaware that a question is almost always a stronger and more effective approach than a declarative, directive, or commanding statement. Thoughtful, clear, firm, and tough expectives get better results, and allow the other person to retain self-respect and dignity. In the future, telling will be accurately perceived as obsolete, and asking will be understood as a real power instrument.
Lead with Passion
In his fine book, Unlimited Power (1986), Anthony Robbins says that there are seven basic character traits of leaders who consistently produce positive results:
Passion
Belief
Energy
Strategy
Clear values
Bonding power
Mastery of communication
Passion is indeed powerful stuff and must be used by the pivotal leader in a disciplined, focussed, and mentally tough way. The real leader of tomorrow is, above all, a thinker who acts with passion.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, the G Forces Beckon
The sheer practicality of asking and expecting yourself and others to work harder and smarter in a cause greater than self has been tested through the centuries.
Will you dare to dream? Will you etch out your personal vision?
Will you dare to articulate high hopes?
Will you dare to put muscle into those dreams?
Will you constantly pursue positive possibilities?
Will you expect the best?
Will you dare to become all you can be?
Will you do it?
Appendices
Appendix A: Situational Assessment Guide – From Macro to Micro
G-Forces Analysis:
Policies:
Do they accurately reflect the philosophy and grand design of the company?
Planning:
Have company objectives and standards been thoroughly defined for:
Productivity
Innovation
Physical and financial resources
Marketing
Manager performance and development
Worker performance and attitude
Public responsibility
Profitability
With a view to profit maximisation, has the company implemented routine, scheduled visits to other plants in both related and unrelated industries to examine and evaluate their policies, equipment, methods, and systems with a view to adaptation and application to the company?
Operations:
With regard to product/service analysis, do you analyse the allocation of the company’s resources with respect to its sources of greatest profit?
General Control:
Are controls dynamic instruments for profit maximisation?
Human Relations:
What are people doing to each other?
What are people doing for each other?
Do members believe in the purpose of the organisation?
Do they believe in their leadership?
Do they believe in each other?
Do they communicate and participate with each other effectively?
Do they feel free to express their views?
Do they believe in the company?
Is the executive group cohesive?
Who helps whom?
Who goes to whom?
Which executives appear to be only partially accepted? Why?
What kinds of personal adjustment problems are there?
Are “bosses” too busy to see their people?
Are “subordinates” afraid of their “bosses”?
What kinds of friction are there? Why?
Organisation Structure:
Is the organisation structure simple and flexible? Or is it inflexible and complex?
Management Effectiveness:
Do all team members feel empowered to innovate?
Quality of Personnel Practices:
Have supervisors and executives been selected for their leadership ability?
General Administration:
Are adequate notes kept of all group discussions and decisions?
Are promotions made in accordance with ability, loyalty, cooperation, and total contribution to the company?
Is there continuous analysis by division and department heads to eliminate unnecessary functions, jobs, procedures, paperwork, reports, and duplication of effort?
Are there incentives for every employee? (This includes department heads and all sub-executives, as well as technical and clerical personnel.)
Is a computerised strengths bank in operation?
Are you Harnessing Technology for Optimum Information Reporting?:
Computer Network Centre Controls:
General Considerations:
Do you have strategic computer plans for handling the company’s future growth?
Organisational Considerations:
Are all program changes immediately documented, including the reason for the change?
Input Controls:
General Considerations:
Are input controls reviewed periodically by an independent third party (consultants or auditors) to make sure that they serve the purpose for which they were intended?
Programmed Controls:
Computer Control Totals:
Are all halts, excluding end-of-job, recorded and retained for audit?
Finally, are all computer resources subjected to:
Constant scrutiny?
Constant change?
Constant improvement?
Appendix B: The Tough-Minded Leader – Five Positive G Forces
A tough-minded leader provides transcendent or macro vision and magnetic lift and pull, like a compass. A tough-minded leader provides purpose and direction.
A tough-minded leader provides a crystal-clear focus of all strengths in the organisation. Knowing that our strengths are our tools, a tough-minded leader expects and reinforces the best.
A tough-minded leader is committed to people, service, innovation, and quality. A leader believes this commitment is liberating and enriching to all.
A tough-minded leader leads by example that is focussed, stretching, and positive. A leader is motive led and value fed.
A tough-minded leader ensures that all compensation is related to positive performance and expects total integrity. A leader is guided in all decisions by these two components.
The problem is not the competitor.
The problem, the challenge, is the person in the mirror.
And the solution is the person in the mirror.
Appendix C: Putting It All Together – The Positive G-Force Climate
The relationship of and the flow between phases:
Phase 1: Study of Present Climate >>
Philosophy (Principles) [Implementation]
Phase 2: Development of Corporate Policy >>
Policies and Procedures [Implementation]
Phase 3: Development of Objectives >>
Programs [Implementation]
Phase 4: Development of Organisation and Design >>
Processes and Projects [Implementation]
Phase 5: Performance Planning and Results Requirements >>
Practices [Implementation]
Phase 6: Organisational Development >>
All Ps Pervasively [Implementation]
Phase 7: Control >>
Purpose/Profit [Implementation]
Phase 1: Study of Present Climate >>
Philosophy (Principles) [Implementation]
…
Glossary of Tough-Minded Terms
builder: The CEO who stands tall is, above all, a builder. Committed to vision, stretch, empowerment, synergy, responsiveness, flexibility – toughness of mind – a builder ensures that all dimensions of each P in the pyramid are intensely focussed on creation, growth, and building.
climate for mistakes: An environment that calls for and reinforces constant experimentation, creativity, innovation, and change. Encourages the practice of “failing forward”. Mistakes within reason are rewarded rather than penalised.
coach: To help others develop insights and actions to achieve mutually understood goals. This pertains particularly to helping one identify, surface, fuse, and focus one’s present and potential strengths.
criticise: To evaluate the results of analyses and identify the value or strengths therein. To build on those strengths in seeking to improve the situation, person, or thing.
dignity: The worth, significance, and uniqueness of a person; an awareness of intrinsic worth. Clear, consistent expectations and a constant search for and focus on strengths affirm this dignity.
discipline: Training and development that builds, moulds, and strengthens; lean, clean, focussed behaviour.
dream: A deeply felt hope of the possible. Dreams lift and move individuals and organisations to the highest levels of performance.
empower: To create and foster a relationship in which the other person or persons understand their significance, possibilities, and strengths. People who are empowered have a clear understanding of their authority, responsibility, accountability, and valued role in the team, and they have autonomy that is symbiotic with others.
incident file: A document in which key episodes (both positive and negative) are recorded. To be used for developmental coaching and counselling.
innovation: Newness in action. Ever-searching, ever-changing concepts, methods, research, and application.
integrity: Strength, reality, authenticity, toughness.
leadership: The exercise of a system of expectations – an ever-changing, ever-dynamic gestalt of interacting minds – designed to mobilise and maximise the most effective use of strengths to achieve objectives.
leadership by renewal: The consistent practice of the principles and methods in this book with primacy given to the belief that all team members are more productive and actualised when they are reaching, growing, involved, empowered, and discovering new feelings of individual significance. It is a tough-minded axiom that a leader must first become this kind of person in order to provide true leadership by renewal.
love: A feeling of brotherhood and good will towards other people. Tough-minded leaders express love via a disciplined commitment to build rather than to destroy, to enhance rather than to diminish, all associates and team members through every thought, word, and action. Although it is an ideal, the tough-minded leader seeks to build this emphasis on enhancement pervasively throughout the organisation’s “P” pyramid.
mission: A stretching, guiding, and reinforcing statement of intent and commitment.
nice guy: One who is affected, self-deprecating, insincere, overly subtle; hence, evasive and untrustworthy. Used in this context to mean a person who chooses the easier alternative and rationalises this action with “nice” clichés. One who retreats from the requirements of demanding self-discipline.
strengths bank: A computerised data base contain the salient strengths of all relevant personnel. This bank is accessed regularly to truly practice the logical deployment of strengths. All major assignments are made and decisions are conditioned by such deployment. Since strengths are indeed the only reality in a person, the strengths bank enables an organisation to move forward on the basis of total reality. Weaknesses are regarded merely as missing strengths or insufficiently developed strengths.
tough: The integrity of a substance, person, place, thing, or feeling. Characterised by tenacity, resilience, flexibility, durability, and suppleness.
tough-minded: Open, resilient, growing, changing, questing, stretching quality of mind. Having an infinite capacity for growth and change. See tough and tough-minded leader.
tough-minded leader: The kind of leader who, much like a compass, provides direction and, figuratively, magnetic pull. The tough-minded leader “walks in front of the flock” and exemplifies the system of values and practices that this book is all about.
warmth: Emotion and caring, flowing towards others, that transmits feelings of affirmation, reassurance, and love. Overt evidence of a desire to build and give to another, reflected in tone of voice, facial expression, and the free expression of positive emotion.