I was waiting for my flight from Richmond, Virginia
after presenting “Leadership Made Simple” to 150 managers
of a large companionship headquartered there. That is when I
experienced impressive leadership in the midst of chaos.

It all started when United Airlines‘ “Simon” (an automated
message system) informed me via my cell phone that my flight
through Chicago was cancelled. After an hour wait on a priority
line, I knew there was a real problem of some kind. When I
irrevocably talked to United, I learned that snow in Chicago had
closed the airport and made major travel problems within the
entire United system, and no doubt, other airlines, too.

The only chance I had to get home the same day was if I could
make a flight to Washington Dulles that left in one hour flat. I did
the “OJ” dash to get to the airport and the gate, huffing and
puffing, only to find that the aircraft had not yet arrived. I was
really quite relieved.

The entire air travel system was in chaos, and there was a line
of dozens of people waiting to talk with Michael Quintel, the United
gate manager. Every person needed to share their problem -
concerned about connections mostly – with a gate agent who
really had small or no control over whatever thing .

I was sitting about 10 feet away from Michael’s podium, so I
heard everything. I was personally cool because my connecting
flight from Dulles to Denver was several hours away. I was in the
right state of mind to simply watch and listen how Michael handled
the situation.

This guy had the patience of Job! He listened to the same tale
over and over and over. Yet, every person was treated as if
THEIR tale was original. Michael was absolutely MASTERFUL
at having every party believe he was there for them and was
doing everything he could do for them. And he sincerely was! It’s
where he naturally came from. In every single case, the frustrated
and concerned passenger walked away more cool and confident
than before he talked with Michael.

What I realized was that Michael was able to stay
Forward Focused(TM) no matter what happened. What a model he
was for what I want to be like when I grow up. It is a model of
emotional maturity – and I am continually effective on mine.

If I were to try to make a simple model for what Michael did so
well, it might look like this. He stayed Forward Focused while he:

- Listened completely to each person, honoring them and their
situation.

- Shared exactly what the situation was – in terms of how the
situation unnatural that party – no matter how many times he
had to tell the same tale over Over again .

- Offered any options that he could find in his notebook , selection
them take responsibility for their own choice .

In every case, they walked away feeling surpass about their
quandary .

My hats off to Michael Quintel, United Airlines representative,
a proven leader in a challenging situation!

Best regards,

Ed Oakley

I had a delightful conversation with the Director of a substantial medical center. She and her team had been “beaten up” by corporate when they expected an admittedly abysmal 18% effectiveness rating in one of the 150 areas for which they are measured. Not surprisingly, it made a fantastic deal of frustration on the team, and opened up quite a change management opportunity for the Director.

Being a staunch believer in the essence of Enlightened Leadership and Leadership Made Simple, she knew the solution to the problem lied within the creativity of the people involved. She also knew that creativity would never surface if they stayed in their frustrated state.

To get past that frustration, she encouraged them to shift their focus to what was effective – not only in that specific area, but in other areas that might trigger insights for how to do this one another way .

Using that Forward Focus(TM) approach, the team came up with several thoughts they could immediately implement to improve the situation. As they got positive results from those early actions, they were energized to find more creative thoughts – which, of course, they had no problem generating!

They periodically got back together to build on their successes to continually improve that particular metric. It was an simple process – celebrating and analyzing successes and taking the resulting creative energy to come up with more improvement thoughts .

By the time the August numbers came out, they had improved the metric from 18% to 90% effectiveness in just 4 months. What an incredible performance improvement. This is what leading for results – the simple way – looks like!

Our acknowledgment and congratulations to the team!

There a many paths on the road to Business Leadership Development, in what ways have you experienced leading for results the simple way? We would like to hear – your solutions and your challenges

My colleague Eileen McDargh has just launched a new website with a very worthy purpose – to celebrate women leaders! Listen to her two minute explanation for why she built this site. The part about her Mom is exciting!

Now, go to lead-her-ship.com and be amazed each day this month with powerful examples of women leaders in history! And share your own story.

The Enlightened Leadership Team!

Simplicity is still an vital theme as we look around we still see marketers touting “simple” as a theme. Considering our book “Leadership Made Simple”, that is gratifying and, perhaps, validating. In rising leadership skills, simplicity also applies.

IBM i-Series computers has simplicity as it’s theme. They are advertising the importance of simple and simplicity as the heart of their message. They are even claiming that they have “simple pricing.” Just a few summary ago, I was glancing through a Business 2.0 magazine, and there was the headline of a VISA Business Card advertisement that read “Business Takes Simplicity” – whatever that means . Keep your eyes open, and I’ll bet you’ll notice this simplicity theme more and more. Let us know if you see it.

Perhaps people are getting tired of complexity, irrevocably realizing that complicated solutions seldom work. If we come up with complicated solutions to challenges in our companionship , I encourage us to keep looking. The right solution has not shown up yet. In my experience, effective solutions are ordinarily simple solutions. If you question a name to do something different, and what you are asking is complicated , they are unlikely to do it, because they expect it to be hard . If you question a name to do something different that is simple, they can at least imagine the possibility of getting it done. Simple does NOT automatically mean simple , but simple does mean there is at least a chance of making it work. Read More→

One of the the things we strongly encourage in Leadership Made Simple is analyzing successes your team is having ( we assume every leadership opportunity involves some team, group, or at least another party ). If you are appealing a group of people to question “what caused the successes” in a particular situation, some fascinating things tend to happen automatically.  

As the team drills down into the factors that caused the success, it nearly always comes down to what some specific people did well. “Linda did an outstanding job doing such and such,” or “Joe had a major breakthrough in such and such.” What will regularly happen when Linda or Joe are acknowledged is they will turn around and acknowledge others. “Well, thank you, but it wasn’t just me. So and so made a huge contribution in such and such area,” they might say.

When these acknowledgments happen, look who is providing them. It is their peers! Why is this so vital ? In our informal surveys over the years, we have found that peer acknowledgment is more vital to people than that from their boss in more than 8 of 10 suitcases . Reckon about it. You have some level of expectation that your boss is going to acknowledge you, but you have NO expectation that a peer will. So, it is much more special when you do get that acknowledgment from a peer.

Your leadership role, and a vital leadership skill,  is to encourage the team to question their successes. The peer acknowledgment is a natural side benefit of doing that. Try it!

Warm regards,

Ed

In July of 2006, Enlightened Leadership Solutions referenced a Cornell University study, as reported in FSB (Fortune Small Business) Magazine, suggesting that a key deterrent to organizational performance is “Letting Conflicts Fester.” This topic is still very relevant today and is an important part of business leadership development.

The article states, “Bringing tensions out into the open and then resolving them is one of a team leader’s most important jobs.” (We agree.) “The more creative a leader can be the more likely that conflict can be discussed and resolved,” they went on to say. We see that last sentence as the challenge. What does “being creative” look like in a particular situation? Almost by definition, being creative doesn’t have any particular structure. That makes it potentially complex and difficult. Success is way to dependent upon “being creative,” which has a lot of variability among people.

Our book, Making Managers into Leaders, provides a simple approach to dealing with this difficult challenge of conflict resolution. Here is an example from the book of the process being used. It begins on page 137 in chapter 11 of the book:
Conflict Resolution

Read More→

In this post, Enlightened Leadership provides the kind of video that is normally found only in our Making Managers into Leaders Institute – a private subscription site. Ed Oakley provides a thorough learning session on our Personal DNA™ tool.

Business leadership training is the heart and soul of ELS work, and this is a tool and concept that has made a significant difference to thousands of people developing their leadership skills in our workshops and seminars.

We’re offering this to give you an idea of the value of our Leadership Video Club, a weekly video subscription which includes handouts for group discussions, downloadable audio version for playing on your portable audio player, downloadable video that works on video iPods, as well as video to watch on your computer or project on a screen.

Enjoy and comment!

How did you relate to Personal DNA? Please comment below!

My friend Sam Silverstein is the best of the best when it comes to speaking and consulting on accountability. Listen to his brief description of his brand new book, “No More Excuses: The Five Accountabilities for Personal and Organizational Growth,” then I’d recommend you go buy it!

Buy the book at www.NoMoreExcuses.me or www.Amazon.com.

What did you think of Sam’s perspectives? How did you relate?

The Enlightened Leadership Team