How are we doing this?

We’re giving away our powerful proprietary leadership tool, the Framework for (Enlightened) Leadership™ Worksheet and a 20-minute video on how to use it effectively.

Our goal is to give it away one million times and to invite people to duplicate it, watch the video, and use it all they want. You might be personally familiar with the power of the Framework for:

- turning around struggling projects or groups

-leading organizational change

-aligning dissenting groups toward common goals

-innovative problem-solving

-resolving challenging conflicts

-engaging employees for new levels of effectiveness

-inspiring performance reviews(organizational and individual)

-continuous empowered improvement

-breakthrough negotiation in tough situations

How can you help?

You can help by giving it away physically or by emailing it to key people throughout your organization, to friends who own or manage businesses/organizations, to your associations, to the leadership team of your place of worship, etc. It won’t cost you anything and it can make a big difference when someone gets the power of the tool.

The Framework Worksheet is attached as a pdf file on this blog post. Just click here to download it onto your computer. It will open in a new window.

To access the accompanying video, simply go the web address on the Worksheet, or click HERE.

We’ve got a long ways to go to reach one million giveaways, so we’d appreciate your sending the PDF file or the link (http://budurl.com/framework251) to at least TEN PEOPLE who could use it. Or you could duplicate and pass out the hardcopy Framework Worksheet. Whatever is easier for you.

We’re grateful for your help, and we’re excited to giveaway one of the most powerful leadership tools we know!

Here’s to making a difference in 2011,

Ed Oakley and the Enlightened Leadership Solutions team.

Download the Offer Overview

Listen to the MMIL AUDIO that can change your life.

Please leave comments below.

Ed Oakley & the Enlightened Leadership team

Today I led a webinar for over 400 people in one industry that was the first in a series of 5 called Turning Managers into Leaders(The client preferred that over our trademarked Making Managers into Leaders).

We started out the webinar in a way that I’ve never done before, and it was a big hit – very empowering. It was called “Seeing Yourself and Leadership Differently.”

It reminded me of just how powerful this particular learning segment is.

So, I got to thinking as we’re close to announcing our special offer for new memberships that you might really appreciate experiencing the content that was so well received. This content has been a huge impact for so many people, just like it was for me personally decades ago when Kurt Wright of Clear Purpose Management introduced it to me. I’ve never seen it anywhere else.

We’ve pulled an audio segment of it right out of our Making Managers into Leaders paid membership files to share with you.

This process and concept can change your life and WILL be empowering. It will be worth far more than the 25 minute you’ll investment to listen to it. Our members can even download this and all our other content to their iPods or other mp3 players.

Take advantage of it now – while it’s here. No guarantee we’ll leave it up.

Listen to the audio now. Share it with your team members.

Helping you bring out the best in yourself,

Ed Oakley & the Enlightened Leadership team

ps: please share your comments below.

pps: we appreciate you!

First, Ed Oakley will share one more important aspect of effective leadership skill development.

Then, we will share one of our weekly learning videos, that you can use with your team as a team-based learning opportunity. Think about the value of every team member, one at a time, getting this kind of feedback. Talking about a team-building exercise!

IMPORTANT: Because the following video is in our “members only” area, you will need a password to watch the 8.5 minute video. The password is  “feedback360” without the quotes.

Watch: “Getting Awesome Feedback without Costly 360 Assessments” now.

You’ll need a password. It is …    feedback360

As always, we’d appreciate comments.

Ed Oakley and the Enlightened Leadership team

This video addresses the importance of very deliberately focusing the team effort on what the greatest opportunity is – and how to determine that opportunity.

Please share your comments below!

Ed Oakley & the Enlightened Leadership team

Transcription
Hi, it’s Ed Oakley. In my last video, I discussed both the importance of developing and mastering your leadership skills – especially right now with all the changes and everything going on with the economy – and doing so as a team. If you haven’t seen that video, I encourage you to watch it – it might even be better if you watched that one first, as this video builds on the learnings of that first one. You’ll find the link just beneath the video.

Today, I want to talk about an important aspect of team-based learning that will make a big difference in your level of success. I want to talk about how to FOCUS your team-based learning to make sure it is practical and addressing your most important team issues and needs…

…not just short-term actions that might not contribute significantly to the long-term performance of the team and the real leadership skill development of the team members.

We know from experience that if a team works together on developing their team and it’s team members, with proper guidance, they can find effective solutions to whatever challenges they face. But what really are YOUR team’s 80-20 issues?

The Pareto principle says 80% of the impact will come from 20% of the effort, or said another way, 20% of your issues are causing 80% of your problems. But which ones are they?

By knowing those factors, including leadership factors, that are keeping your team from being a truly high-performing team, can you see how that knowledge would provide the perfect focus for learning and development, as well as building your team’s effectiveness.

Imagine the value to everyone if they were part of a team that TRANSFORMED from a mediocre team to a recognized high-performance team. Imagine the personal learning and development that would occur DURING the experience.

To develop your team and people, you need clear direction for your efforts, and just maybe, the best possible direction would be toward becoming a high-performance team.

Well, what would that look like, you might be asking yourself?

To really know OBJECTIVELY what that direction would look like, you need to be able to effectively and honestly assess your team for it’s strengths and limitations.

And wouldn’t it be enlightening and valuable to compare your team to recognized high performing teams, as well as to norms or averages or standards for hundreds of other teams?

This a very important aspect of team-based learning and development, so let me introduce an exciting new tool -

- our highly validated Team Excellence assessment that rates your team in 8 dimensions of excellence.

We are very excited about introducing this assessment into our team-based leadership and team development processes. Let me share some of its background.

My friend, Dr Carl Larson of the Univ of Denver, and Dr Frank LaFasto, identified 40 exceptional teams from all over the world and extensively interviewed all the team members.

Included on the list were a successful Mt Everest summit team, a famous Cardiac transplant team, a highly innovative product team, several championship women & men’s sports teams, extraordinary business teams, exceptional government teams, etc. – quite a variety – but ALL recognized as exceptionally performing teams.

In their extensive research, they determined 8 consistent dimensions of excellence that DISTINGUISHED those exceptional teams from other teams. These eight dimensions are:

Clear, Elevating Goal
Results-driven structure
Competent Team Members
Unified Commitment
Collaborative Climate
Standards of Excellence
External Support & Recognition
Effective Leadership

Bottom-line, if your team rates well above the mean in all these dimensions, you ARE a high-performing team!

The assessment itself has 46 questions and takes each team member  about 15 minutes to take. Our contribution to this was first obtaining rights to use it, but then putting the assessment ONLINE, so the individual inputs are completely confidential.

When it was done on paper, some people were a bit concerned about turning in their worksheet to someone in their own organization. We’ve solved that problem!

The research and validation work that Carl and Frank and their research team did was so extensive that they published two excellent books about it: first – TeamWork: What Must Go Right/What Can Go Wrong and 2nd – When Teams Work Best: 6,000 Team Members and Leaders Tell What It Takes to Succeed.

Those two books, expensive because they’re published by a textbook company, continue to be my all-time favorites for research-based, validated guidelines for building high-performing teams.

Do you see the value of knowing if your team rated itself average to high on most factors, but well below the mean on say Results-Driven Structure and Collaborative Climate.

You’d know exactly where to put your attention, wouldn’t  you – in fact where to put the TEAM’s attention. That would be your team’s 20% that would make the 80% difference.

Significant improvement in those two dimensions would make a major difference in your team’s overall performance. Along the way, your people, AND YOU, naturally grow and develop your leadership and team abilities through the experience of creating a high-performance team.

Here’s what happened with one of our clients:

A mid-sized manufacturing division of a huge company in the Pacific Northwest was losing money and facing an expiring union contract six months away. They were in a bit of trouble.

They were especially nervous about the union contract because negotiations had been so difficult for the last one.

By doing the Team Excellence assessment – back when it was a paper version, they were able to see their areas of strength, and the gaps that were most limiting their performance.

By focusing on the greatest opportunities for improvement through team-based learning, they became profitable again that same year and had the smoothest union contract negotiation in their 28-year history.

A key factor was their clarity of their strengths and their limiting factors in the eight dimensions of team excellence. It gave them clear focus goals for the learning and development work, which was totally team-based. It also gave them confidence that they already had a lot going for them.

So, as the team worked together to improve, using new leadership concepts, tools and perspectives to do so, they all experienced the value of the changes they were making as they were making them. Buy-in was high each step of the way, but never perfect – it never is.

Each one of those team members gained great clarity on how to solve performance issues, how to create a collaborative climate, how to create a results-driven structure, etc. In short, how to create and lead high-performing teams.

They not only learned it in our workshops, but experienced it in their work as a team. A lot of mastery was achieved in the process.

So, let’s summarize where we are so far.

In the first video about problems with leadership development approaches, we recognized the importance of developing your leadership skills – critical to your long-term success and security. Leaders are ALWAYS in demand- pretty much regardless of the economy.

We further realized that developing your leadership skills on your own is tough. Frankly, most people aren’t effective in doing it. You might learn a lot intellectually, book knowledge if you will, but making it real through implementation is quite challenging when we’re trying to do it solo.

However, developing your leadership skills and team effectiveness is much easier and even FUN if you work on it together as a whole team.

This approach completely changes the game, because you’re learning together, and have some common, unifying goals. In the process you’re taking advantage of a key truth: The Answers Are in the Room! – which happens to be the title of the second chapter in our latest book, Making Managers into Leaders: A Five-Step Framework for Breakthrough Results.

Your team does have the answers if you just know the right questions to ask. Ask the wrong questions, and you’ll make the situation worse.

Then we introduced the idea of assessing your team at the beginning of the learning process to provide valuable focus on your greatest areas of need. Focus on improving the greatest gaps and watch the team jump in it’s performance.

And it just occurs to me that you might want to have your team retake the Team Excellence assessment 12 months later to identify your specific successes and next steps in transforming your team and your people.

Let’s take a specific example of the Team Excellence assessment. Let’s pick Clear, Elevating Goal. That’s really important for a high-performing team, and you might have some questions like,…

“Yeah, but what if our goal is not really that elevating?”

Well, I want to address that, but first let’s look at the assessment questions around the Clear, Elevating Goal dimension.

Each of these questions is rated by team members as:

True
More true than false
More false than true
or False

The report then provides the average score for the team for each question on a scale of 1 to 4, as well as the mean score for hundreds of other teams who’ve taken the assessment.

Here are the questions for Clear, Elevating Goal:

1.  There is a clearly defined need – a goal to be achieved or a purpose to be served – which justifies the existence of our team.

2.  Our purpose is noble and worthwhile.

3.  Our goal represents an opportunity for an exceptional level of achievement.

4.  Our goal challenges individual limits and abilities.

5.  There are clear consequences connected with our team’s success or failure in achieving our goal.

6.  Our goal is compelling enough that I can derive a worthwhile sense of identity from it.

Now, aren’t those thought-provoking questions!

What do you think your team would say about them?

Just for kicks… let’s say you’re not so sure your team would say their purpose is particularly noble, or even worthwhile.

Then, I would say to you that you need to have your team change the goal or purpose so it IS noble and worthwhile.

For example, suppose your team is doing some relatively mundane work in an organization that keeps downsizing (excuse me – RIGHT-sizing) every few months.

Can you imagine that they might not be feeling that their work is all that important? I sure can.

So, what would be a clear, elevating goal for a team in that situation – that would be noble and worthwhile?

Well, how about a goal of being so measurably off-the-scale productive that you’re recognized as a high-performing team and the company would never imagine outsourcing or downsizing you!

Do you think that might be powerful in certain situations?

Here is the point I’m trying to make:

If you’re going to be a high-performing team, you must have a Clear, Elevating Goal. That’s one of the distinguishing factors of high-performing teams.

So, if that’s an issue for your team, it’s one of the 20-80 areas to address.

And can you even imagine the power of the process of your team coming up with what their REAL… Clear, Elevating Goal is? I mean one that they fully OWN? (and YES, we’ll teach you how to do that – it’s a key leadership skill).

What an opportunity — if and only if that happens to be a dimension where your team has a significant gap. It might not be that one. Your greatest gaps might be in some of the other 7 dimensions. But you need to have the information to make the greatest difference in your performance and your learning – both individually and team.

Now, I have a feeling that this is making pretty good sense to most of you watching this video (or reading the transcription). But I have to admit, I cheated a bit to figure that out.

See, we recently asked our subscribers to complete a survey about “What they would see as being the most important components of an outstanding team-based learning and development system?”

Well, 84.8% of the people said that it would be Important or Very Important to have QUOTE an online validated team assessment to identify your team’s strengths and gaps in 8 dimensions of team excellence. CLOSE QUOTE

Yeah, I did kinda cheat, but that was very validating for my own sense of the importance of the Team Excellence assessment.

So, you’ve probably figured out by now that if this Team Excellence assessment is so important to your team and leadership development, that it’s going to have to be part of any learning system with Enlightened Leadership’s name on it …

In summary, with the Team Excellence assessment, you’ll learn your team’s strengths and gaps based on the confidential input of all team members, including the team leader. The gaps are the opportunities to improve – to move closer and closer to a true high performance team. It provides the focus for the team, as well as individual learning and development.

So, we are moving closer and closer to a learning and development solution for enhancing the effectiveness of your whole team while developing the leadership skills of all team members in small chunks of time and for the investment of only one person’s training.

I think I’m starting to get nervous. That was a big statement. We better sharpen our pencils for the math.

Ok, that’s enough for now. In a few days we’ll release another video that adds one more important dimension to this whole discussion of what’s really important in effectively developing leadership skills and effective teams — and what’s missing in so many leadership development efforts.

Thanks for watching today, and feel free to share these videos with others.

So, how are you relating to all this? We appreciate your comments, and we WILL respond. Just find the comments section below.

You might also want to read the comments from the first video. Again, the link for the first video is below.

We’ll talk soon. Make it a great day!

It is also important that you begin to consider solutions for you and your organization. Feel free to share the video with your colleagues, and please leave your comments below:

Please share your perspectives below!

To the total health of you and your team,

Ed Oakley and the Enlightened Leadership team

TRANSCRIPTION
Hi it’s Ed Oakley. We’ve discovered some significant problems with leadership development that impact your ability to develop and grow leadership throughout your organization – something critical to your success. And, I’m excited to share with you over several brief videos the breakthroughs we’ve had in the process of dealing with those problems

You know that the soft skills side of your job, the people side, the leadership side, is very important to your success and your security in your career. You do know though that people who aren’t good at the people side are vulnerable. Their jobs are vulnerable. They are at risk in their roles.

The so-called “hard part of the job”, the “technical aspects,” the parts we’ve put most of our education and experience hours into, can more and more be outsourced. That’s bad news. The good news is that the leadership part can NOT be outsourced. And, it is in high demand. So the soft side, the leadership side is critical to ensuring your success in the future — more so than ever before. If you didn’t realize that, you probably wouldn’t be watching this video.

There’s a problem with that however. It is very challenging to learn and really implement leadership on your own. It’s difficult to read a book or go to a seminar or watch a webinar all on your own and be successful in actually implementing it.

Now, it’s not impossible. But it is challenging. Think about the many things you’ve learned intellectually, but have never actually implemented. There’s a lot you “KNOW,” but you haven’t actually mastered, because you haven’t done it. Knowing and doing are very different. Can you relate to that? A doctor who knows how to do a surgery, but has not actually done it yet, is not someone I want operating on me.

Let me share an interesting story around this. I was working with a major pharmaceutical company that had an internal two-week management development process. They sent quite a few people through this management development program, and I and EL was a key part of the training process.

They also sent a few select people to a $35,000 summer executive program at a major Eastern University. Once a number of executives had attended both the executive University program and the internal program where they learned together as teams, a facilitator went out and interviewed all the executives. He asked a question, “what has been the value of each of these two programs?”

The responses were very telling. Consistently, they said that the $35,000 University Summer executive program was a lot of fun, they met a lot of interesting people, and probably made some friends that will be lifetime friends. They also learned a lot about themselves. From a practical perspective, however, the internal team-oriented management development program was far more valuable and more effective. That was consistent. In those internal sessions, they learned a lot more about how to be more effective leaders, as well as team players.

See it is extremely challenging to go off on your own and learn to be a better leader. How many times have you taken something you’ve read about back to your team – because you thought it was a good idea — and the reception was like a deer in the headlights.

It is much easier, more effective, and far more fun to learn, develop and implement as a team. Because when you do it as a team, you’ve got the opportunity to focus on specific organizational objectives and goals. When you have everyone on the team aligned on accomplishing the same goals while they’re learning leadership abilities, and how to achieve those goals, it’s easy and fun to do. There’s a supportive group focused on the entire team’s success. And there’s far more accountability.

And that was the difference in the internal management development program. it was team-based.

Now having said this, if you can afford to bring us to your site and do a face-to-face seminar or workshop, then I suggest you stop watching this video, pick up the phone and call us, and make plans for doing that team and leadership development solution-oriented workshop.

However, if you’re resource limited, either time or money or both, keep watching because we have a solution for you that changes the game and makes our work — the work of enlightened leadership solutions — proven with some 50,000 people from 67 countries over the last 23 years, accessible to a whole new group of people, teams and organizations. We’re changing some old paradigms in the learning and development industry. Stay tuned!

Let me share an accidental example of this team-based learning in action. In this case, administrative management and executives of a major West Coast University were going through a year-long leadership development program led by our company. I personally facilitated one of the sessions on-site there at the University, and several people made comments that they were getting a lot of value out of the weekly videos that they were receiving from us as part of this year-long learning process. I was, of course, pleased, because I personally created a number of the videos. But I certainly wanted to know more. “How are you using the learning videos?” I asked.

Without exception, the people who went out of their way to acknowledge the value they were receiving from the weekly videos said it was because they were sharing the videos with their team and discussing the concepts in the video, including what made sense about it, how they could use it on their own teams, challenges, solutions, and especially how the ideas, concepts and tools could be useful in accomplishing their challenging goals.

Do you see what they were doing? They were creating their own team-based learning by taking advantage of our weekly video series , and it wasn’t part of the requirement of their learning process. The best managers just saw the opportunity and jumped all over it.

Think about what happens. When you focus on your own team goals and objectives, you’ve got the whole team working with you, and you hold each other accountable for accomplishing those objectives – while you’re all learning to be better leaders – and yes, leadership can and should come from anyone and everyone on the team – when it is appropriate for them to do so.

Now, when we talk about the idea of having your whole team involved in a learning and development environment, do you automatically think,”oh geez, the cost of learning just went up!” Did you think that? Well… you’d be wrong.

We, ELS, are completely changing the paradigm of pricing in learning and development – at a time when leadership development at all levels of organizations is so critical. Imagine developing your whole team and all it’s members for the price of training just one person. More on that in an upcoming video.

Ok, that’s enough for now. In the next video – coming in a few days – we don’t want to bombard you with too much – we’ll talk about another key aspect of developing your leadership skills that is very important for you to know and understand. I’m excited about the breakthrough this new piece represents.

Now, please do me a favor. Make any comments: positive comments, negative comments, or any questions, concerns, anything that’s on your mind about any of this, please make your comments below. I would love to see them.

We’ll talk again soon. Thanks for watching.

This morning’s The Denver Post came with a front-page article titled, “Thinking Like a Factory Helps Heal Hospital’s Bottom Line.” It was an excellent article about how the Denver Health Medical Center has saved many jobs and much money by asking the right questions, a critical leadership skill. They asked two questions:

What are the things that keep you from working efficiently?
Are there things you see happening to patients that shouldn’t?

These two excellent questions demonstrate “enlightened leadership” and address efficiency/effectiveness and patient safety/satisfaction. The answers were definitely “in the room,” as was indicated by some of the data. The overall process they were using is lean conversion, which respects people and their value, while using their talent to address process issues.

Peg Burnette, chief financial officer, said that since its Lean conversion (process started) in 2005, the city’s public health system has benefited to the tune of $54 million in increased revenue, money not spent, and expenses cut.

Our people DO have the solutions we need to deal with the challenges we face! Enlightened Leadership Solutions has lots of online tools to help you ask the right questions and deal with the challenges and perspectives of greatly enhancing the effectiveness of your organization.

Hats off to the DHMC leadership team! They are making a difference. And doing so in a tough environment.

The Enlightened Leadership Team

What are your thoughts about this? Please comment below.

The Enlightened Leadership Team

Technorati Tags: DIFFICULT TIMES, leading change, SOFT PART

Employee Engagement practices can be quite important in your leadership skill development. Please share your thoughts about what is important to you in keeping YOU engaged. Share your disappointments and your gratitude below (comments).

Our best,

The Enlightened Leadership Team

We’ve all taken various Time Management courses over the years – we
make lists, we prioritize A, B, & C; we plan to do important things not
just urgent things first. Yet the companies that we work for
unintentionally thwart our best attempts to do the right things at the
right time.

I’ve polled many of my executive friends and clients to see what they
say are the biggest obstacles to productivity. Here they are in order of
frustration:
Planned Meetings (this actually takes the blue, red & white ribbons)
Email overload
Informal “doorway meetings”
Incoming phone calls
Of course the culprit in all of this is just way too much to do in too
little time (And the company dares to list work/life balance as one of the
objectives!)

Here are some ideas we’ve come up with so that the organization can
support you in managing your time better. We’ll start with the topic of
meetings and get to the other categories in later articles. Of course, some
of these ideas will need to be modified to fit a particular workplace, but
you can get the drift.

MEETINGS
Have you seen the poster that says: “We’re going to keep on having
these meetings until we can figure out why nothing is getting done around
here”?

Meeting Periods
Remember college? Classes were often 50 minutes with a 10-minute passing
period. Woe to the professor who tried to keep you late. You were perfectly
within your rights to load up your backpack and leave. Remember too, that
they managed to get a lot packed into those 50-minute periods?
Suggestion: Have all meetings start promptly on the hour and end promptly
50 minutes later unless they are specified as a 2-perriod or 3-period
meeting. (3period meetings should be pretty rare).

Blackout Times
We can’t have work/life balance at 7am or 4:30pm if we offer flex items
and continue to schedule meetings. If you’re serious about allowing
employees to have a life, all meetings should be scheduled between 10 am
and 4pm. The reason we say no meetings before 10 is that every employee
deserves to have the first hour of the day to get organized and get a few
pressing things accomplished before they are called away.

Project Wednesdays
How many times do we feel forced to procrastinate an important project
because we just don’t have 3 or 4 hours of uninterrupted time to work on
it? Here’s the deal! Wednesdays are project days: No meetings, no
expectation that phone calls will be returned or emails answered. The
office door is closed. If you need information from someone for
Wednesdays’ project, you’d better get it handled on Tuesday. The
project day is the day you work on your “big rocks”. It only works if
it is held sacred by the entire organization or at least a department. Just
think of what you could plan to get done if you had a whole day every week
to work on something without distraction!

Meeting Productivity
Some companies require the person calling a meeting to email out or P.A.L.
to everyone at least 2 days before the meeting. The P.A.L. clearly
specified
Purpose
Agenda Items
Length
This helps keep meetings finite and to the point. Promptness must become a
cultural norm. A 10-minute late start in a meeting with 12 people is 2
Executive hours wasted, kaput, down the drain… For fun, we sometimes
throw paper wads at latecomers. It’s light-hearted, but it works.
If the meeting honcho can’t clearly state the purpose and some agenda
items, then it’s not likely to be the best use of your time. This brings
us to the next point, a radical idea…

Meetings Optional
Having Mandatory gatherings sometimes allows us to be sloppy in managing
the tightness and effectiveness of a meeting; people are there because they
have to be there. What if we trusted our employees to know what’s the
very best use of their time? If we ran informative, decisive, well-directed
meetings, that given their job priorities, people would choose to show up.

FORWARD FOCUSED MEETINGS
One of the reasons we have so many meetings is that they’re often so
awful that nothing actually gets done. Forward Focus™ completely changes the dynamic!

Jonette Crowley and the Enlightened Leadership Team