Avoiding a BIG Land Mine for Leaders

Leaders: Who are you accountable to?

1. Who speaks truth into your life? Your spouse? Your best friend? Your boss? Your co-workers? Your small group?

2. Who has the right to honestly tell you when you are wrong, and make sure you stay in touch with reality?

3. Who is asking you the difficult questions that everyone else around you may be thinking but don't want to bring up?

4. Do you have someone, or a group of people, who will challenge you, tell you when you are wrong, confront you on the tough issues, and make your aware of areas where you might be missing the mark?

If not, figure this out. Quick. If you are surrounded by only yes people, you're probably unaware of things that could be jeopardizing your leadership. This is a major land mine for leaders.

We all have dysfunctions. Every leader does. But our healthy response to our own dysfunctions depends on how much we let others "in" and give them full access to pushing back and kicking us in the tail if we are off base.

For many leaders, the greatest threat to our influence right now is our tendency to read our own press clippings, and continually put a "wall" up around us that protects us from any kind of honest feedback.

Don't do this. Avoid the temptation to "remove" yourself from healthy accountability. Refuse the impulse to start surrounding yourself with people who are there only to protect you from reality. Insulation itself is not bad, but too much of it will allow reality deprivation to set in, which can be costly.

We need people around us who will tell us what we don't want to hear, when we don't want to hear it. Identify these people in your life, and give them full access to keeping you in check.

So, my question to you.... who is this in your life?

Young Influencers List, July Edition

Here you go, the July edition of the Young Influencers List. You can see all the past month's lists here.

1. Allen and Ayaka Lu- San Francisco based founders of social enterprise Lev Made, and also most recently Allen produced the well known documentary Linsanity featuring NBA player Jeremy Lin.

2. d'Artagnan Crockett- RIO bound bronze medalist Olympic athlete, & world champion Judo wrestler, and amazing story of overcoming many obstacles, including losing his sight.

3. Harrison Conley- executive pastor of Cottonwood Church in LA.

4. Chad Cannon- Nashville based strategist and former VP of marketing at Thomas Nelson, and now founder of Chadwick Cannon Agency, a full service digital marketing firm.

5. Jacob Brooks- Colorado based artist and photog, founder of Brumley and Wells, a well respected Wedding Photography brand.

6. Will Bakke- award winning filmmaker, writer and director of Believe Me, and co-founder and managing partner of Riot Studios.

7. Eden Chen- LA based business, finance and investment guru, founder of Fishermen Labs, working on innovative tech and augmented reality futuristic stuff.

13 Key Points on Being an Authentic Leader

Here are 13 points on the importance and practice of being Authentic as a Leader. You might consider these "Authenticity Rules." And in today's leadership culture, it's true that "Authenticity does actually rule."

Some best practices I’ve found helpful:

1. Be real in all mediums. Digital age makes it easy to be inauthentic. Although we are always “on,” ultimately we can create a fake persona behind a profile on Facebook or a twitter account. It's easy to live a secondary life and feel like we are someone we aren’t. Have to be authentic across the board.

2. Constantly turn the rocks over in your life and in your leadership. Uncover the areas that need to be made clean. Big things are at stake. It’s exhausting to not be the real you. It's easier and less work to be who you really are.

3. The more successful you become, the less accessible you are. It’s reality. More people clamor for time with you, but it’s not possible to be available to everyone. Be wise and discerning, but also open to helping where you can. As Andy Stanley says “do for one what you wish you could do for many.”

4. Learn to open up. You can impress people more easily from a distance, so many leaders keep others at arms length. For example, we often prefer digital interaction to life-on-life exchanges. This insulates us and prevents others from uncovering our weaknesses and flaws. But it also reduces our ability to influence others.

5. Ask great questions. Great leaders I know solve problems and create solutions through the questions they ask. Questions many times reflect your values, and give value and dignity to the person you're asking the question of.

6. Invite direct reports to do a 360 degree review of you on a regular basis. It’s uncomfortable, but also helpful. As Rick Warren has said, “You can’t love people and influence them unless you are close to them. Up close means you can see my warts.”

7. Accept a better standard. The goal of every Christian is to become more like Christ, but often our standard becomes some “great” leader who we admire. When we exalt fellow influencers, we try to dress like them, talk like them, pray like them, tell jokes like them, and achieve like them, it's dangerous. By emulating them we hope to someday become like them. This never works, and a painful side effect is that deep down we end up feeling like a cheap knock-off.

8. Be interested over interesting. Start with leaning into others and caring about them vs. only worrying about yourself.

9. Be accountable to those who know you best. Know your blind spots in your leadership. We all have areas of weakness. Know what they are and give your team, your family and your friends permission to call you on them. Are you comfortable enough in your leadership that those around you have the freedom to tell you the truth without repercussions?

10. Make more of those around you, and less about yourself. Make others the center of the story. Authentic leaders are servant leaders, and willing to be less in order for others to be more. Authentic leaders seek to serve and understand the power of putting others first. And great leaders attract great people to their team. Like attracts like.

11. Actively build a Support Network. Beware of CEO disease, the temptation to surround yourself with people who only tell you what you want to hear. Keep honest people in your life so that you can stay grounded in the reality of your experiences. Don't ever think you've arrived. Don't take yourself so seriously. You're not a big deal. Seriously. I don't care who you are. Humility is way more attractive than arrogance.

12. Give others permission. Allow your team, your friends, your family and your community to continually have permission for pushing more towards the true you. Asking questions, pushing for clarity, pushing back, disagreeing, confronting, bringing new and different ideas to the table, and ultimately the ability and the freedom to push and pull.

13. Give yourself permission to be who you are. Authenticity requires true honesty, self awareness and a selfless approach to leading. One of the challenges in organizations today is actually creating space for leaders to admit and share their challenges. We need to create community where you can talk about the things you are dealing with without getting arrows in the back. Be willing to share your struggles. Create and find environments where we can deal with things and be honest and real.

15 Ways NOT to Lead Well

It's ultimately up to you to lead well. It's your responsibility to be the best leader you can be.

We see lists all the time of what makes a great leader, but what are some of the other sides of the equation, in terms of not leading well? 

How is your leadership dysfunctional? What stands out as areas to improve?

Here are a few key indicators of the kind of leadership and ultimately a leader that needs to reimagine, re-engage, and recommit. Look for these, and if they exist, be committed to change.

So here you go, examples of NOT LEADING well and consistent killers of momentum for leaders, their teams and organizations: 

1. Pointing fingers and blaming others. Blame is getting passed around like a bad virus. Trust is gone. Everyone is cordial but behind closed doors there is deep distrust, driven by fear and insecurity.

2. A focus on the wrong priorities. Not willing to confront the key areas, and a constant default to Sideways Energy. More energy in scheduling lunches than in bringing in new revenue. Spend more time on updating the employee handbook vs getting on the phone and finding new customers. More time on updating headshots on the website than working on the strategic plan for next year.

3. Bad decision making. Making decisions based on whoever pays you the most, whoever screams the loudest, and whoever requires the least amount of effort and pain. Everything starts to become about the lowest common denominator and the lowest barrier to entry.

4. Passing along the decision stick. Counting on someone else to make a decision, other than yourself. Putting things off so that someone else will have to fix them later. Kicking the can down the road as Maxwell says.

5. Allowing bureaucracy to be an excuse for getting nothing done. Here comes the "they" mentality. It becomes about "them" and "us."

6. Personal entitlement has taken over. Putting your own personal goals ahead of the team, or the greater cause at play. In this case, the good of the organization takes a backseat to you keeping your office or role or title. Your default is "how will this affect me" instead of "how will this affect the organization."

7. Arguing constantly, vs listening and looking to create collaboration and areas of common ground.

8. No one values each other and silos now exist everywhere. Staff meetings and leadership team meetings start getting cancelled on a regular basis. Lack of communication between key people and teams becomes normal. Cliques and gossip become rampant in the void of communication and trust.

9. Lack of empowerment. No one feels able to do anything about the situation.

10. Same old same ole. The work and environment is mundane. It's boring. Energy is non existent.

11. There is no accountability. People on your team just feel like they can do whatever they want, whenever they want. Everything is last minute and late. Nothing goes out on time, or gets scheduled on time. No one knows where everyone is and can't find anyone. This will drive your best team members crazy.

12. Not willing to confront the brutal facts. Loss of reality and not willing to confront what is really going on. The leader is living in hopa, hopa land and suffering from Reality Deprivation. A lack of self awareness is prevalent here as well.

13. Vision is gone. Lots of hype but very little true and authentic hope in the future. Lots of promises made but very few promises kept. The painting of a preferred future has turned into a hype machine that everyone sees through.

14. The buck stops here doesn't exist. No one is ultimately responsible. The responsibility tree has been chopped and split up so many times you can't really figure out who is driving what and who has responsibility for what.

15. Safe, secure and stable starts to drive the future instead of innovation, creativity, risk taking and courage. Holding on and control is the posture instead of giving, catch and release, generosity and big picture thinking. "Don't rock the boat" is the inspiration, which quickly becomes uninspiring.

What other things have you seen being acted out that remind you of how NOT to LEAD?

Ten Good Questions for Leaders to Ask Themselves

1. What's it like to be on the other side of me? Are others around me flourishing?

2. How can I improve?

3. Who currently has permission to call me out and say the hard things to me that I need to hear?

4. How do I respond in moments of crisis? Do I chew people out when something is not done right?

5. Am I truly self aware? Where/what are my blind spots in my leadership? Am I a secure confident leader?

6. Do I talk more than I listen?

7. What do I need to learn from my most recent failures?

8. How do I lead people way different than me?

9. Am I comfortable surrounding myself with people who are better at their jobs than I am?

10. Who else should I be learning from? Who is currently coaching or mentoring me?

BONUS: Who am I grooming/coaching to replace me in my current role?