Because leadership is more than a class we offer, it's a way of life.

Strength-Based Leadership
Team Leadership
Ethics in Leadership

Strength-Based Leadership
Problem
Because most companies don't know who or where their best-performing people are, they invariably assign team talent to problem areas and neglect business opportunities. Companies that frequently feed problems, eventually starve opportunities.

Solution
Opportunities produce results, growth and performance. Don't spend precious time working solely on your weaknesses, you'll only prevent failure. Dedicate time discovering and leveraging the talents of team and your individual strengths. A focus on developing strengths will bring you, your team and your company success.

Action
Read the book "Now Discover Your Strengths" by Marcus Buckingham & Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D.

This is an excellent book. The authors share how much more successful organizations are when they design programs that will enhance an employee's strengths rather than try to overcome weaknesses. It helps change an organization's outlook and team's perspective to one of 'leveraging your strengths'.

Application
"Most organizations take their employees' strengths for granted and focus on minimizing their weaknesses. They become expert in those areas where their employees struggle, delicately renaming these 'skill gaps' or 'areas of opportunity' and then packing the employees off to training classes so that the weaknesses can be fixed. This approach is occasionally necessary... but this isn't development, it is damage control. And by itself damage control is a poor strategy for elevating either employee or the organization to world-class performance."

" As long as an organization operates under the assumption of training to weaknesses, it will never capitalize on the strengths of each employee. To break out of the weakness spiral and to launch the "strengths revolution" in your own organization, you must change your assumptions about people. Start with the right assumptions, and everything else that follows from them - how you select, measure, train, and develop your people - will be right. These are the two assumptions that guide the world's best managers.

1. Each person's talents are enduring and unique.
2. Each person's greatest room for growth is in the areas of his or her greatest strength."

" These two assumptions are the foundation for everything they do with and for their people."
Excerpt taken from Now Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham & Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D.

Team Leadership
Problem
Hero worship is an outdated concept in the age of business today. Should leadership rest upon the shoulders of one individual? Many of the tasks that we need to perform in order to achieve success cannot be accomplished from just one person.

Solution
Leadership and performance is more about team than it is individual. Some people are, indeed, born leaders, and you can spot them a mile away. The trouble is, there simply aren't enough of them to go around. So, we need to find individuals with innate intelligence, an eagerness to learn, and a desire to work with others, and give them the tools, encouragement and support they need to be effective leaders, too. You rarely hear about them and they may never run the company, but they can make enormous contributions to the success of your organization.

Action
Read the book "Good to Great" by Jim Collins with an emphasis on Chapter 2 Level 5 Leadership (p.17-40). Important management lessons in this book include the most enduring leadership model known to top performing companies - Level 5 Leadership. According to Collins, "Level 5 refers to a five-level hierarchy of executive capabilities, with Level 5 at the top. Level 5 leaders embody a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will. They are ambitious, to be sure, but ambitious first and foremost for the company, not themselves."

Application
Which group of leaders are the most famous, well-known and successful - Jack Welch, Lee Iacocca and Al Dunlap or Darwin Smith, Colman Mockler and Alan Wurtzel? In America, reaching celebrity status as the former executives did has become synonymous with success. But Collins proves that, "Level 5 leadership cuts against the grain of conventional wisdom, especially the belief that we need larger-than-life saviors with big personalities to transform companies."

To substantiate the finding, Collins says, "Let me put it this way: If you had to choose between $1 invested in Circuit City or General Electric on the day that the legendary Jack Welch took over GE in 1981 and held to January 1, 2000, you would have been better off with Circuit City - by six times."

In the chapter on Level 5 Leadership (p.17-40), Collins outlines key tenets of enduring leadership. Humility + Will = Level 5; A Compelling Modesty; Unwavering Resolve to Do What Must Be Done; Ambition First and Foremost for the Company and Concern for its Success (rather than for one's own riches and personal renown); and Setting Up Successors for Success.

Collins uses personal antidotes like the "show horse and plow horse" to explain differences in personal characteristics between celebrity executives and Level 5 leaders who get the job done.

Collins and team also introduce a rock-solid concept referred to as "The Window and the Mirror", which is effectively used to explain credit and accountability. According to Collins, "Level 5 leaders look out the window to attribute success to factors other than themselves. When things go poorly, however, they look in the mirror and blame themselves, taking full responsibility."

This totally epitomizes what, both past and present, enduring leadership is all about.

Ethics in Leadership
Problem
In all walks of contemporary life, it seems that people are placing self-interest ahead of ethical values. Pick up almost any edition of the Wall Street Journal and you can read about ethical standards that have been compromised. Financial improprieties, price-fixing conspiracies and business collusion occur far more frequently than we care to acknowledge resulting in an erosion of credibility, trust and support. Bad judgements made daily by employees with lack of regard for ethics don't necessarily make headline news but have an even greater impact on a company's performance.

Solution
There is increasing evidence that shows positive correlations between responsible business behavior and employee satisfaction, loyalty, return-on-investment, stock price and consumer preferences. Ethics go beyond personal responsibility and are a function of the collective attitudes of people. Although a corporation must have a conscience, many companies have learned that they can't force ethical conduct. Spelling out a code of ethics and making your employees comply with rules of conduct can mire your company in paperwork; send insecure messages to employees showing a lack of trust and respect; and honestly won't keep your people from exercising poor judgements or making questionable decisions anyway. That's why a principle-based approach to ethics works best for many companies.

Action
One successful company we have profiled, Levi Strauss & Co., builds their framework around the following six ethical principles:
Honesty
Promise Keeping
Fairness
Respect for Others
Compassion
Integrity

Application
John Dewey, an American philosopher and educator, developed the following five-steps for ethical decision-making. He called this process "reflective morality." The steps typically work best when making decisions that have more of a direct relationship to your corporate culture. The value system of your corporate culture will guide employees without governing their day-to-day behaviors and as we know behaviors are the #1 predictor of performance. These five steps will help your team clarify responsibilities, eliminate misunderstandings, and conduct your business with the highest possible professional standards:

5-Steps for Making Ethical Decisions
Step 1: List all of your possible choices as well as the possible consequences of each choice.
Step 2: List all those who will be affected by your choices.
Step 3: Trade places. Try to put yourself in a position to understand how others will be affected by your choices. Minimize your needs and maximize their needs. How will their lives, their interests, and their futures be impacted by your choices?
Step 4: Compare and contrast the value of your cch as Pfizer and General Motors are so eager to bring on new leadership prospects that they're paying a premium for former military officers with MBAs. Salaries start at $100,000, compared with $75,000 for non-military MBAs. Business schools at Duke, Howard and University of Southern California are recruiting veterans, too. Not only do they bring experience to MBA programs, but they also have a high rate of job-placement success.

Most in demand are junior military officers. Typically in their twenties with four to six years of service, they may already have managed multimillion-dollar budgets and dozens of people. Greg Eisenbarth is executive director of Military MBA, which helps match affiliated business schools with prospective military students. Unlike the command-and-control style of elder military officers, says Eisenbarth, the younger generation expects to work collaboratively - a plus in today's workplace.

--Pat Mertz Esswein, Associate Editor