An internet marketing guru, Ron Mahabir, says, “Your online marketing strategy should be very niche to generate cost-effective traffic with a high conversion rate”. YES! (“but how and how easy/expensive?”)
He continues, “once you are confident on (your unique value proposition and your differentiation in terms of quality, delivery, pricing and other aspects), your website has to immediately convey the primary benefits and credibility of your service clearly enough for potential customers to pursue further” .

Does your website generate and convert leads like that?

The problem with website marketing is the sheer volume of your website content that has to be changed. Is it compelling enough to give their contact details? Does it get the numbers visiting and converting to sales? Is information distracting visitors from what they want to buy?  So how do you find those niche prospects, and get them to a website that appeals and doesn’t confuse?  A brilliant website and a brilliant lead generating page are 2 different things.

Over the last few months I’ve got involved with a terrific (free) group with Linchpin Academy that turns the tide on your internet marketing. We have fortnightly phone meetings, with top participants so far from UK-US-Egypt-Aust-NZ. Note, I only recommend invaluable opportunities for Small Business owner and Entrepreneurs.

Behind the fortnight phone meetings is a Membership group that delivers exceptional Benefits:

• Build lead-generating websites at leas than UK60 per website
• Mastermind group ( no more working in isolation) 
• Compelling and creative content know-how and support
• Multi media content know-how/support and copywriting support
• Social media know-how and support
• SEO know-how and support
• Website facility access (worth US$950!)

Here is a recent recording of a meeting, featuring one of our members who received powerful feedback from us all just a few weeks ago. He has since done something radically new and inexpensive without the exhaustive changes he would have to do otherwise on his company website.

Everything I have ever achieved has been through Paying Attention (focus, being present). I’ve had a good go at multitasking too, my mind is quick and loves stimulation. Multitasking feels good, it is addictive, but deceptive…read on…

I draw here on an excellent resource by Allan Goldstein, an experienced Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher. Goldstein states, “If you focus all of your attention on one task at a time it seems logical that the results would be better than if your attention is divided or distracted by other tasks”.

Contrary to a suggestion that our brains are evolving into multitasking machines, recent research in neuroscience shows that our brains are capable of forming new neural connections, known as neuroplasticity (see Norman Doidge’s masterful book, The Brain that Changes Itself).

Performance suffers as we shift our attention

“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.” (Thomas Edison)

Goldstein says, “Through my work in the field of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) I have come to regard, that what we commonly refer to as multitasking, does not exist, and that the level of our ability to perform tasks suffers as we shift our attention from one task to another. In fact the empirical data from studies in the field neuroscience is proving that there is no such thing as multitasking!”

Earl Miller, a Picower professor of neuroscience at MIT, says “that, for the most part, we simply can’t focus on more than one thing at a time. What we can do is shift our focus from one thing to the next with astonishing speed. Switching from task to task, you think you’re actually paying attention to everything around you at the same time when in fact you are not.”

In the PBS Frontline presentation, digital nation, Dr. Clifford Nass is interviewed about his studies at Stanford University, on the performance levels of extreme multitaskers (“these are kids who are doing 5, 6, or more things at once all the time”). Although most multitaskers think they are extremely good at it, the results of Nass’s first of its kind studies are troubling.

“It turns out multitaskers are terrible at every aspect of multitasking! They get distracted constantly. Their memory is very disorganized. Recent work we’ve done suggests that they’re worse at analytic reasoning. We worry that it may be we’re creating people who may not be able to think well, and clearly.” (Nass, Web)

Distracted workers suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers!

Contrary to some people’s argument that these studies are being done on extreme multitaskers and that most people can juggle two or three tasks at once, there is research showing the opposite in performance. In the Myth of Multitasking, Christine Rosen, writes, “In 2005, the BBC reported on a research study, funded by Hewlett-Packard, and conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London, that found, workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers”. (don’t you love that?)

Effect on learning

I used to regularly meet large numbers of people. I am hopeless learning lines – plays, poems, lyrics – yet after a single brief introduction I could recall at random up to 40 new people’s names at random. Actually my sales teams thought I was a legend for it! But all I did was pay attention – I was very present and focussed on the individual at hand.

“The best thing you can do to improve your memory is to pay attention to the things you want to remember. Our data support that. When distractions force you to pay less attention to what you are doing, you don’t learn as well as if you had paid full attention.” (Poldrack, Web)

Multitasking can negatively affect performance, and lead to increased levels of stress

In her blog article, ‘Beyond Simple Multi-Tasking: Continuous Partial Attention’, Linda Stone distinguishes between simple multitasking and what cognitive scientists refer to as complex multitasking, to explain her theory of Continuous Partial Attention (CPA).

1. In simple multitasking each task is given the same priority, e.g. a routine like stirring pasta while talking to our spouse. Here the driving force is to be more productive.
2. In complex multitasking “we’re motivated by a desire not to miss anything. We’re engaged in two activities that both demand cognition”.  One of these cognitive tasks may also seem more important than another, requiring our brains to be focused on it while remaining alert to the several other less important cognitive tasks requiring our attention. Stone continues, “When we do this, we may have the feeling that our brains process multiple activities in parallel. Researchers say that while we can rapidly shift between activities, our brains process serially”.

Stone’s CPA is the kind of attention we hold while we are complex multitasking. Keeping our attention in this state of hyper-vigilance is keeping our fight or flight response activated, in high alert. We are demanding multiple cognitively complex actions from ourselves.  We are reaching to keep a top priority in focus, while, at the same time, scanning the periphery to see if we are missing other opportunities. It is a constant activation of the fight or flight response. The complex multitasker is in a continuous state of overstimulation, with a perpetual feeling of lack of fulfillment that can lead to stress related diseases.

Research particularly in the field of neuroscience is compiling data that shows multitasking can negatively affect performance, and lead to increased levels of stress.

Managing yourself – bringing MINDFUL awareness

We can focus more on individual tasks by bringing a strong mindful awareness to our actions while performing them. By taking breaks and time outs we can shift our attention back to our senses.

MINDFULNESS

“The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will. No one is compos sui if he have it not. An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence.”  (William James, Principles of Psychology, 1890)

The link between depression, mental pathologies, and lack of mindfulness, is established and frightening.  But Mindfulness is at the essence of Emotional Intelligence.

Success, achievement, fulfilment, resilience, vitality, confidence…. these are the rewards of Mindfulness.

As a long term achiever in sales and leadership, sales revenue and high performing teams are close to my heart. Call on someone who knows what it is to carry risk and to achieve in a bad market.

Watch this space for information about a presentation we are planning on the Science of Mindfulness by a leading expert.

Or, are you like me, in pursuit of what makes people or companies great?

Let’s take a look at the process of going from good to great, referring extensively to Jim Collins’ excellent book. Note, Collins’ findings from his exhaustive research project is not limited to business context; the framework he identified is the physics of good-to-great, which you can apply to yourself or any organization.

I encourage you to examine the following in light of your own life. You can accurately personalize the concepts by replacing ‘company’ with ‘person’.

Good is the enemy of Great.
Good is the reason so little becomes great.

Jim Collins’, extraordinary curiosity resulted in a 5 year research project into the inner workings of companies that went from good to great. His key question was, “Can a good company (person) a great company (person) and if so, how?”

The rigorous project determined that you can turn a good organization into one that produces great sustained results.

Looking into the Good-to-Great process…there were four phases in the research

1. Search for companies
2. Doing the comparison set
3. Climbing in the ‘black box’ of good to great, figuring out what’s in there
4. Taking the chaos of tons of data and creating concepts out of it.

Phase 1 – Search for companies showing basic patterns

The criteria was 15 years of cumulative stock returns at or below the general market, punctuated by a transition point, then cumulative returns at least three times the market over the next 15 years.  Imagine, 15 years flat….transition point….up 15+years. They found 11.

Every company had to demonstrate a good-to-great pattern, independent of its industry. The project did not include subjective (e.g. social) results, to avoid introducing their own personal biases. Results showed you can turn a company from good to great in the most unlikely circumstances.

Phase 2 – Contrasting good-to-great companies to a comparison set

The critical question is not what they have in common, but “what do they have in common that sets them apart from the comparison company?”

The research team made two sets comparisons:  direct comparisons (companies almost clones of each other at the time of transition) and unsustained comparisons (mad a short term shift from good to great but failed to maintain the trajectory).

Phase 3 – Looking inside the ‘black box’

The research team made a complete list of companies, followed by deep analysis of each case. They included all articles written to 50 years back; interviewed the CEO’s of the time… doing qualitative and quantitative analyses.

The project took 10 ½ people-years of effort. The masses of data was like looking inside a giant black box. Instead of beginning with a theory and setting out to prove it, the team made empirical deductions directly from the data gathered.

The core of the method was a systematic process of contrasting good-to-great examples to contrast companies, asking “what’s different?”

Collins’ team took particular note of “dogs that did not bark”. Based on the classic book, Silverblade, where Sherlock Holmes identified the dog in the night time that didn’t bark as the key clue he was able to solve the mystery – the suspect was someone the dog knew. These ‘dogs that didn’t bark’ provided some of best clues, leaving the team astonished at what they didn’t see.

8 ‘dogs that did not bark’

1. 10 out of 11 good-to-great company leaders or CEOs came from the inside. They were not outsiders hired in to ‘save’ the company. They were either people who worked many years at the company or were members of the family who owned the company. The comparison companies tried outside CEO’s six times more often.
2. There was NO systematic pattern that linked specific forms of Executive compensation to the process of good-to-great. The idea that the structure of executive compensation is a key driver in corporate performance was not supported by data.
3. There was no evidence that great companies spent more time on strategy and long range strategic planning. They found, to begin the transition from good to great, the ‘stop doing’ list (what they decided to get rid of) counted more than the ‘to do’ list.
4. Technology and technology-driven change has virtually nothing to do with igniting a transformation from good to great. Technology can accelerate it, but it can never be the fundamental prime mover in a shift.
5. Mergers and acquisitions had virtually no role in igniting a transformation, i.e. they were not there at the beginning. Two big mediocrities joined together never make one great company. You can’t go from good to great by buying something.
6. Good-to-great companies paid little attention to managing change, motivating people, creating alignment. Under the right conditions, they learned these problems naturally take care of themselves.
7. Good to great transformations didn’t need any new name, tagline, launch event, or program to signify their transformation. Often the magnitude of the transformation only became clear in retrospect. The leap was in the performance results, not a revolutionary process.
8. All the good-to-great companies were not ‘in the right place at the right time or in a great industry’. Greatness is NOT a function of circumstance; it is largely a matter of conscious choice.

Phase 4 – from chaos to concept

The research team analysed the mass of chaotic data through an iterative, looping process, testing to break patterns till it all hung together.  Every primary concept in the final framework showed up as a change variable in 100% of good-to-great companies and in less than 30% of other companies in the pivotal 15 years.

The Framework  of good-to-great – the Flywheel concept

The process resembles pushing a giant, heavy flywheel in one direction, turn upon turn upon turn; building momentum till the point of a breakthrough and beyond.

1. Leadership - Self effacing, quiet, reserved, shy. A paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. More like Lincoln, Socrates than Patten, Caesar.
2. First who, then what – Didn’t they begin by setting new vision, strategy? No, they first got the right people on the bus and wrong people off, then set vision and strategy. People are not your best asset, the right people are your best assets.
3. Confronting the brutal facts but never losing faith – Every company embraced ‘the Stockdale Paradox’– they must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end  regardless of the difficulties, and at same time have the discipline to confront the brutal facts of your current reality whatever they might be and however unpleasant.
4. The ‘Hedgehog concept’ – gaining simplicity from seeing what is essential, and ignoring the rest.  Just because something has been your core business, doesn’t mean you can be the best in the world. If you can’t be the best in the world at your core business, then your core business cannot form the basis of a great company. It must be replaced with a simple (‘the hedgehog’) concept that reflects deep understanding about the intersection of the three circles:
1. What you can be best in the world at, realistically, and what you cannot be best in the world at
2. What drives your economic engine
3. What you are deeply passionate about

1. Building a culture of discipline - When you have disciplined people, you don’t need hierarchy; when you have disciplined thought, you don’t need bureaucracy; when you have disciplined action, don’t need excessive controls. When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great performance.
2. Technology Accelerators – Late in the process, after you’ve made a breakthrough. Good-great companies think differently about technology; they never use it as the primary means of igniting transformation. But they are pioneers in the application of carefully selected technology.

The over-arching Flywheel concept that wraps around most of the concepts, contrasts with the Doom Loop – those who launch revolutions, dramatic change programs, wrenching restructuring will almost certainly fail to make a sustained leap good-great. No matter how dramatic the transformations, great transformations never happened in one foul swoop.  There is no single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no lucky break, no miracle moment.

To then take a company with great results and turn it into an enduring company of iconic stature, requires core values and purpose beyond just making money, combined with the key dynamic preserve the core and stimulate progress.

Giant conclusion

Almost any organization can improve its stature and performance, become great, if it conscientiously applies this framework. Becoming great is a choice, not a function of circumstance. Are you satisfied with the results you or your company continue to produce?

Owning a Formula-1 vehicle doesn’t make you a racing driver. And having an Executive title doesn’t make you a leader. Leadership is not caught or inherited.

The quandary for many people in leadership positions is suspecting you need this development but thinking it is weakness to acknowledge. The opposite is true – it takes courage and self awareness to recognize and act on this.

Our instant gratification society thinks “if I get a leadership role I will do what leaders do, then I’ll be a great leader”. However the opposite is true!

Leadership begins in the mind with vision, purpose and commitment. It begins with a state of  being, a consciousness in the present. Only from there can you begin doing what leaders do, so that you get the influence a leader has.

Business and departments are overwhelmingly managed by titled followers rather than leaders who communicate a compelling vision and path forward. Symptoms include decisions deferred, plans not actioned, inertia, blame, excuses, denial, manipulation.

So when was the mob ever right?

Leadership is not a certain style or set of steps. But it is characterized by certain traits, which can be developed. These traits can be measured using the Integrity and Values Profile, which is then used to move leaders forward through coaching.

Leaders are Initiators

The highest leverage activity you can do is develop your capacity and skills to lead. Leadership is a lonely path, the hardest step leading yourself. I have walked this path also. But if you have this desire, it is up to you to initiate the first step to realizing your potential. Don’t wait for others. Act now.

Call us today for an exploratory chat about taking the next step into your future.

1. Does the person handling your recruiting grasp the strategy behind each role?
2. Does your recruiter really know the talents and motivations required for excellence in the role?
3. When we know it is attitude that makes or breaks a hire, is it worth risking this investment to gut instinct?

Your business’ attitude and standards around recruitment is closely linked to your return on hiring investment.

Keys for Superior Recruitment

1. Aligning roles with Board strategy
2. Defining which skills, knowledge and experience are negotiable and non-negotiable
3. Identifying the ‘hard-wired’ talents that will enable excellent performance in the role
4. Measuring attitudes  in short-listed candidates that give an inside view into how they will act under pressure

Liz brings over 20 years’ exceptional track record identifying, developing and retaining talent in a sales environment. As a business owner she understands what financial risk and productivity means. Liz’s 100% success rate for lasting placements in 4 years’ niche IT recruitment demonstrates her skills and insights in the process.

Checklist for Recruitment Excellence

• Outsource some of the recruitment process
• Ensure your role descriptions target the ideal candidate’s motivations and talents
• Make your advertisements targeted – requires solid marketing and writing skills
• Don’t rely solely on technology for applicant screening
• Thorough verbal Reference checks
• Measure attitude before you make a bad hire – ‘gut feeling’ can be costly
• Differentiate your company in the hiring experience – it’s free marketing

Noone is perfect. Recruitment is about assessing risk and getting the most important things right. An internal Human Resource recruiter has a vastly different set of motivations and skills than a quality Recruitment Consultant. The specialist Recruiter’s pace, drive and focus is on a different plane. Competitive organizations use both, either outsourcing parts or the entire process. strong

A December article in the Wall Street Journal reports on what books a group of business leaders make their must-read lists.

What I always find interesting is the way the mob of budding business leaders flock to popular titles. Not long back it was Blue Ocean Strategy: great analysis but did it do much to change my life? Most of my life developing and leading business I’ve been drawn to surprising titles that simply resonated. These have been my intellectual mainstay. I could never get interested in pop topics, including the books I purchased after hearing an inspiring speaker!

Instead, my hungry young business mind needed food for developing and understanding what makes people tick. I found myself powerfully drawn to unknowns that jumped off the shelf – Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, Doug Hall’s Jump Start Your Brain,  John Douglas’ Mind Hunter (the author of FBI Profiling),  and Principles of NLP &  NLP for Managers (what was it, it sounded interesting?) Not forgetting Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

My thinking has always been, it you want to stay ahead of the crowd, seek what inspires you, not what is touted by the marketing machine.

What is it that the Business Leaders featured in the Wall Street Journal are drawn to in their ‘must-read’ lists? Their favourites are not even business books but often philosophical – or spark formulative thinking. Don’t be fooled by the genre; a child’s book can infuse profound lessons that provide a guiding light throughout life.

What would a leader want to read? Include what moulds values, vision and deep insight into people. A few of the titles I chose include First Break All the Rules (Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman) , Thinking in Pictures (Temple Grandin), The Gift of Dyslexia (Ronald Davis), and Banker to the Poor (Mohammed Yusef).

Do you want your company or business environment to be led by the kind of people Jeffrey Pfeffer, organizational behaviour professor, Stanford Graduate School of Business, describes?…

“What is amazing is not just that people are greedy and prone to engage in ethically questionable activities; the big lesson is how people can reach unimaginable positions of power and essentially be (a) incompetent, and (b) not willing to do even the most mundane and trivial parts of their job.”

…Or prefer to live from “a beautiful parable for recent work in behavioral economics on various mechanisms for tying one’s own hands in the face of temptation” – compliments of Frog and Toad.

Powerful leadership begins in the mind, and it matters what philosophies provide the guiding light.

A Term Gaining More Attention today is ‘Emotional Intelligence’

“All learning has an emotional base” – Plato

Emotional Intelligence – or ‘EI’ – is described as “the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships”.[1] It describes abilities distinct from, but complementary to, academic intelligence, the purely cognitive capacities measured by IQ.

1.  500 Corporations, government agencies and nonprofit organizations have independently concluded that EI is critical to excellence in almost any job.
2. A recent survey of a Training and Development Study found that 80% of companies are promoting EI in their employees — through training, development, performance evaluations and hiring practices.
3. Human factors in the workplace are increasingly important as the pace of change and the knowledge explosion accelerate.
4. Several decades worth of research studies identify team building, adapting to change, being a change catalyst and leveraging diversity as critically important in today’s competitive environment.
5. The days of life-long employment and meritocracy are fading. Today, internal qualities such as resilience, initiative, optimism, and adaptability are increasingly required.
6. A national survey of employers revealed that, for entry-level workers, specific technical skills are less important than the ability to learn on the job. Next in importance were: listening and oral communication, adaptability and creative responses to setbacks and obstacles, personal management, confidence, motivation, initiative and pride in one’s accomplishments.
7. A similar study of corporations’ requirements for in-coming MBAs identified the three most desired capabilities as communication skills, interpersonal skills and initiative.
8. Harvard Business School identified empathy, perspective taking, rapport and cooperation as the most desirable qualities in their applicants.
9. The 12 key job capabilities are all based on self-mastery, initiative, trustworthiness, self-confidence, and achievement drive.
10. The 13 key relationship skills include: empathy, political awareness, leveraging diversity, team capabilities, and leadership.

None of the above bold attributes are IQ or technical-skill based.

Daniel Goleman, who in 1995 popularized several decades of Emotional Intelligence research, found that 80% of success comes from Emotional Intelligence. The context is, your IQ sets your capacity for career to a certain level, but once there (eg a CEO) you are among equal competition. Your opportunity or limitation for success is then due 80% to your skills in “the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions”[2].  For leadership that is almost everything.

The business case is compelling: companies that invest in developing their leaders’ emotional intelligence, position themselves to maximum competitive advantage. Just as rain follows accumulation of water vapour in clouds, profits ‘rain’ down from intensified Emotional Intelligence.

A leader’s ability to perceive, control and evaluate emotions cannot be extracted or transferred from technical prowess. Emotional Intelligence is a new set of skills, and being transformational, is most effectively developed through coaching.

If 2011 fell short of your goals or you want a new level of outcomes in 2012, this Key is for you.

Through 2011 I exercised an attitude of gratitude. It was also a tough year, not an ideal place to start from, but… actually the hard place is exactly the right place to practice gratitude.

I began with writing daily statements of gratitude, and reflecting on my blessings – material, emotional and spiritual resources. This transformed my energy and resilience levels. Gratitude is the mother of creativity and my creativity had taken a deep dive over several very difficult years.

So I focussed on what I had, not on what was missing, and gave thanks for abundance. My consciousness shifted to limitless supply from my Source and I began experiencing this as a perfect benevolent Father of infinite wisdom and resource. My part was to ask, and give thanks in confidence of resources being there at the right time.  That proved true for the entire year. Some business leaders already understand that what I was experiencing was faith, the language of the fourth dimension. Like it or not, life is of more than what you see.

The next challenge was turning my silent conversations and reflections into verbal expression. The fact I felt resistance to verbalizing told me this was intrinsic to creating a new future.

Have you felt the crushing diminishment from your partner’s cutting words? Or felt the life-giving breath of  hope and belief verbalized? “Life and death lie in the power of the tongue”, particularly when reinforced by repetition or emotion. It’s serious stuff to your bottom line.

Since you are responsible for your success, you must first take responsibility of your self talk. That can be quite nasty.  A regular stream of devaluing, critical thoughts towards anyone is a red alert for creating the most dangerous environment to a Sales team.

Here is where you insert gratitude. As you acknowledge, praise and give thanks for anything good – present, past and future – everyone’s sense of wellbeing rises.

Gratitude is the birthplace of hope, which is inexplicably tied with creativity.

Creativity with vision is the hotbed of Sales excellence.

The key to creating your new Sales success begins in the leader’s heart and mind. The commitments, claims and assumptions you make are directly prophetic to the outcome. To change the tide of 2011 and create a new future means consciously clarifying, envisioning and stroking new dreams and desires. Support this with verbalizing generously and you actually bring the future forward through the weight of words and intent you speak.

An update on a skit I jotted in Christmas ’08 amongst heavy, dense traffic – the Year of ‘Sex in the City’

Two young people trudging and tired…..a tanned young man and his sweet and heavily pregnant young wife. Joseph rocks up to hotel after hotel. The village is packed to the rafters, but this baby isn’t going to wait for The Mirage. …Not even a Backpackers; down to the final refusal…Joe waves his plastic currency, “but I have a card, what about my Frequent Camel points? My father saved these for us – and we travelled all this by Virgin Camel Freight.”

The sympathetic hotel manager rubs his smart goatie, “We are full, not a bed left….but I know an abandoned chook shed down the road. It’s not fit for humans but if it’s a roof you need, it is a roof (Mary holds her stomach in discomfort). You will have to shoo the pigeons, or don’t look up. I have heard stray animals also shelter there but isn’t life like a box of chocolates. (wets his finger and feels the air)…its not too cold. You don’t look like you’re glammed up for a big night out anyway”.

….After the birth some shepherds arrived, unusual to leave their sheep. Some local village folk are gathered behind them….oohs and aaahs at the wrinkled baby… They’re not sure what’s happening but something feels good.

By and by a caravan of grand Magi arrive: the dream-sayers and government-makers of old Babylon. With knowing looks they pay homage as if in a grand temple, their superlative gifts at odds with this straw-dust floor. It’s a bit weird that these seasoned sages humble themselves so.

Someone holds up the baby, revealing his crinkled newborn face, “You’re saying this is the Star of David? This is the king prophesied to save us from this Roman dictatorship? Do you know they are still refusing us welfare, there is no maternity leave, and we are excluded from the public baths! My parents pay so much tax, there’s going to be nothing left for me!…(he remembers the topic)… This baby couldn’t raise an elbow in an Irish Bar! This is no king!”

The Magi stroke their long beards, bowing low on their prayer mats 7 times. One declares, “Don’t be fooled, this is remarkable. For this babe the stars rearranged the skies, we’ve been beckoned by one across an entire continent….. (quizzically shakes head)…. His appearance is an everyday baby born to nobodies in a dirty barn with lowly animals (grunts, baa’s) ….and he is Jewish.”

A smartly dressed servant of the Magi’s pipes up, “The journey has taken so long I’ve had to trade camels along the way, check out this one’s shiny nose ring. Our journey has been so vast my pec’s have built up by getting up and down for prayers 5 times daily…on the upside my wife will love my new look” (takes his time flexing and admires his new forearms).

The oldest looking Magi summarizes the situation, “This is a remarkable event, beyond our mystic books and teachings. All our lives we’ve studied the scrolls of ancient wisdom yet without finding prophecy of the star that has beckoned us across an entire continent… We must consult their holy book”.

I trust your Christmas will be infused with meaning and unexpected joy. Merry Christmas everyone!

Is it your previous experiences, motivation to lead, educational background…or something else?

“The top reason for a leader’s failure is the inability or unwillingness to build relationships and a team environment”, according to global survey data released by Right Management.

A recent survey of 1,439 CEO’s and HR professionals from 707 companies globally explored leadership effectiveness and development across regions and cultures.

“What emerges from the survey analysis is that leadership success is increasingly dependent on getting along with others in the organization as well as with one’s own team. A leader must be able to connect, build relationships and be flexible enough to adapt to the corporate culture” (my italics), reported the article.

“Predictor of Leadership Success
(Frequency cited by respondents)

1. Fit with company values and culture
2. 68% Interpersonal skills 66%
3. Motivation to lead 62%
4. Previous experiences 57%
5. Lack of derailers 21%
6. Educational background 11%
7. Other 4%”

Are you surprised that all of these predictors line up with scales that measure emotional intelligence?

Ask yourself:

Personally – are you motivated?  adaptable? self aware? You have to want this.
And interpersonally – can you read others? do you know how to get along? are you a good team player? can you be a leader? You have to be motivated to do this.

All these depend on your emotional intelligence. You see, it takes a certain IQ to get to certain leadership levels. At school your IQ made a big difference because of the span of IQ levels. But once you reach that level of leadership, competition is tight because so has all your competition. So the only thing at that level that can make the difference for success is your emotional intelligence (EQ).

The good news

The good news is that the above qualities are learned competencies, e.g. staying calm under pressure, and how you listen is a key skill of empathy.

We all live by the habits we’ve learned long ago. What we have to do is practise these new habits till they become natural. It takes motivation and effort.

If you have a clear vision of what a bright future will look like and communicate that constantly, if your values align with company values and culture, and you build your interpersonal skills, then you have a good chance of successfully leading your team or company to that place.