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3 Dynamic Techniques To Boost Your Executive Leadership Power

Written by: Bill Thomas

Article Overview: How are your executive leadership skills, actions and beliefs adding value to, improving the quality in and nurturing the growth of your organization? Here are 3 powerful techniques you can employ to energize the value-oriented, quality-focused, growth-driven effectiveness of your executive leadership performances.

3 Dynamic Techniques To Boost Your Executive Leadership Power

Here's a really simple way to measure the strength of

your executive leadership power. Ask your people to name 3

important reasons why they enjoy working with you.

Many leaders find it acceptable to be seen as a "nice",

"friendly" or "clever" person.

Others prefer to be "hands-off" - you know, the type of boss

who wants us to work the way we were told to do it - the

leader who wants our work done, and who doesn't care to be

bothered with the hows or whys of our getting it done.

Some or all of the above attitudes may fit into your patterns

of leading but are those leadership practices, traits and

styles empowering your employees or propelling your mission?

And what is executive leadership power?

It is your ability to make the organization effective.

Therefore, you could evaluate your own power in this way,

how well do your people effectively perform their tasks - do

their knowledge, emotions and skills produce desirable results?

So the really correct question you have to ask yourself is this:

How are your executive leadership actions enabling you to

effectively add value to, improve the quality in and nurture

the growth of your organization?

Here are 3 very powerful techniques you can use everyday, in

your executive leadership practice, to become a value-oriented,

quality-focused, growth-driven leader.

Executive Leadership Power Technique Number One:

How Do You Know?

As Professor Thomas Davenport points out, "...if you want

your economy [or your organization] to grow, your knowledge

workers had better be doing a good job."

If your people are doing good work, how do you know that they

are doing the kinds of work that will produce your intended results?

Your first executive leadership action is one of discovery - you

must explore, examine and evaluate the best ways to find out

• How, and how well are your people performing their work?
• Which tasks, activities, objectives and priorities are
  
  your people working on?
• Why are people doing what they are doing?
• When, and with whom are your people doing their work?
• Where are your people focusing their attention during
  
  the performance of their duties?

When you take the time to ask, challenge or inquire people with

questions which demand open-ended answers, you will get a

clearer picture of the value, quality and competence being

contributed to the organization by their efforts and endeavors.

"Approach each new problem not with a view of finding what

you hope will be there, but to get the truth, the realities

that must be grappled with.

You may not like what you find.

In that case you are entitled to try to change it. But do

not deceive yourself as to what you do find to be the facts

of the situation." - Bernard Baruch

Executive Leadership Power Technique Number Two:

What Do You Paint When You Picture Your Mind's Eye?

"Everything you can imagine is real. I paint objects as I

think them, not as I see them." - Pablo Picasso, artist

Executive leadership constantly strives to envision, imagine

and conceive images of what comes next - what many of us

call "tomorrow", or "our dream", or "my destiny".

Give yourself permission to ask: "What kinds of future

outcomes do we think will produce the best things for ours,

yours and mine?"

In your visioning quests, pursuits and statements, you may wish to

include any and all of these following pathways:

• Ways to inspire your people to seek or aspire to higher ideals
• Ways to unite your people in their efforts towards making
  
  the world a better place
• Ways to encourage, empower and engage your people to
  
  confidently and persistently act with integrity
• Ways to reap the benefits of working in fellowship,
  
  harmony and peace with others
• Ways to establish, expand and enhance your "frameworks of
  
  possibilities" [where meanings, visions and shared beliefs of
  
  possible outcomes are considered, talked about and practiced -
  
  adapted from "The Art of Possibility" by Rosamund S. and
  
  Benjamin Zander]

Executive Leadership Power Technique Number Three:

How Much Did We Create, Innovate or Evolve Today?

Innovation, ingenuity, invention are the new currencies in

our highly competitive Knowledge Economy. But being creative

for creativity's sake is not the object of this exercise.

Rather, your creations should be transformations into

products of greater efficiencies, effectiveness or

resourcefulness.

One company's slogan is: "where do you want to go today?"

Instead of that question, you might ask yourself: "where did

our creativity lead us to today?"

Author Mark Twain [Samuel Clemens] observed: "A person with

a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds." Without

putting your ideas into practice, your creative efforts will

be in vain.

Follow the lead of another Twainism: "Name the greatest of

all inventors. Accident."

Use your failures, missteps, mistakes and misunderstandings

to innovate, intuit or invent new approaches and more

appropriate solutions.

How did you apply your executive leadership skills to help your employees:

1. Create something that is new?
2. Innovate something that is better?
3. Evolve something that will make things better?

------------------------------------------------------------

"A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must

soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I

began by reading, I must finish by acting."

- Henry David Thoreau

If you take Thoreau's advice to heart, you will find ways to

employ the actions, ideas and suggestions described in this article

as you perform your daily executive leadership duties and tasks.

I have discovered one cardinal rule about executive leadership, during my

35-years of leading managers, consultants and other knowledge

professionals engaged in complex technology systems, projects and

related operational challenges: you better learn how to do it a little bit better

everyday or you can resign yourself to being a completely ineffective leader

and losing the power of your executive leadership!

So are you ready to begin your executive leadership development

adventure? Will you commit your energies, apply your expertise and

devote your heart to the pursuit of excellence?

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to

give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll

want something new."

- Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple Computers, whose executive leadership skills

helped create the iPod, iPhone & iPad

Executive leadership "pushes the envelope" beyond its limits while making

the journey worthwhile, noble and successful.

Use your executive leadership skills to empower others to take a

"quantum leap" towards the next stage of possibility - do it for the good, the

development and the prosperity of your organization and all your people.

Copyright © 2010, Mustard Seed Investments Inc.,

All rights reserved.

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Article Tags: effective leadership, executive leadership, leadership skills



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