Horizon Point Consulting

Author: Mary Ila Ward

Want to be a millionaire? A Good Leader? Manage Your Time First
Want to be a good leader? How about a millionaire? Manage yourself and your time first.

What does it take to think like a millionaire? In reading The Millionaire Mind, I was struck by what seemed to first be a contradiction. Based on the study of almost 1000 millionaires, it was obvious these individuals as a group managed their expenses just as wisely, if not more, than their revenue generation. Most bought at discount retailers and had very small or non-existent mortgages by buying older homes that retained or appreciated in value.

Keeping costs low is a priority in the millionaire household, except with what the book described as “do it yourself” projects. Most millionaires captured in the study did not cut their own grass and if something broke in their house, they didn’t fix it, they called an expert.

At first glance, this doesn’t seem like a managing cost approach. However, upon further inspection, it is not a matter of keeping costs down, it is a matter how your time is best spent because time is money. If the cost equation involves devotion of ones time, especially for someone who has learned how to generate revenue (as most millionaires have) through their time, best to outsource those non-essential tasks to someone who can do them more effectively. Which actually saves money.

What does this have to do with leadership? Maybe leaders could learn a thing or two from the millionaire mindset. One thing I find that is a frequent area for tactical leadership coaching of what is really personal leadership (instead of actually leading others) and that is the issue of time management. It is difficult to lead and guide the work of others if, as a leader, we have difficulty managing our own work and time.

We’ve devoted several blog posts over the years to this topic that you can view here:

Personal Leadership on Purpose

A New Take on Time Management

5 Ways to Find Your Productivity Sweet Spot

Saying ‘No” to Something is Saying ‘Yes” to Something Else

Schedules Communicate Priorities

But what can you take from all of these, and what do we work with clients on helping them manage their time better? What does the millionaire mindset teach us? It’s pretty simple:
- Define Your Purpose see the mission statement and goal setting links in this post.
- Vet how you spend your time by that purpose. A helpful way to do this is by looking at Covey’s approach- is it urgent/not urgent, important/not important. The goal is to be in the green on this grid- or in Quadrant II by spending your time on tasks that are important, but not yet urgent. It’s simply being proactive. Notice that many of these items in Quadrant II deal with developing others – values clarification, relationship building, empowerment.
Image source: https://www.franklincovey.com/blog/manage-your-time-and-energy-effectively/
March 31, 2014
Decisions for Failure

The worst thing you can do while in high school is act without regard of what the consequences will be. Shortcuts and bad decisions are going to catch up with you eventually. If you take the easiest classes offered, college courses are going to be next to impossible to pass. Sneaking around doing things that you know you are not suppose to be doing are going to be hard to control when you are on your own and everyone else is doing the same thing.

When choosing easier classes, you are only procrastinating what you eventually will have to learn. Instead of waiting to take harder classes until college and having to learn how to study for three college courses while dealing with all your new responsibilities, try to take AP classes and get a head start for college. Taking AP classes ahead of time will help you be more familiar with the subjects and types of test you will see in college classes. Often students don’t want to put effort into their classes, they want to be able to make good grades without studying. This mindset hurts them when they begin college classes. If you don’t study in college you will flunk out.

If you are looking forward to college because it will let you escape from your parents rules or give you a chance to be able to do and get away with whatever you want, you will struggle. If you treat college as one big party, you will waste your money and most likely not make it to graduation.

Academics are important and it is why you are attending college, but it is also finding out who you are without your parents or lifelong friends around you. You won’t be held accountable to wait until 21 to drink or to not cheat on tests. How you act reflects your character and it is all up to you.

Surround yourself with friends that will hold you accountable for your actions and expect nothing else but your best. Don’t set yourself up to be a drop out your freshmen year. Take my advice from last week into consideration when navigating through high school.

March 27, 2014
All Leaders Need to Develop Others
Tactical leadership coaching should be customized based on the person being coached and his or her development needs. You waste your time trying to focus on areas that are not critical to the person’s success or aren’t about maximizing strengths or minimizing weaknesses when you cover the same topics for the same person regardless of the situation. This is why assessment and feedback seeking is so important, and it is also why, oftentimes, one-on-one coaching is more value-added than group training.

All that being said, though, a leaders’ primary role is to make more leaders. It doesn’t matter what industry a person is in, what skill sets they possess, or what job title they hold.

I’ve found that the Situational Leadership approach developed by Hersey and Blanchard provides an excellent framework for helping leaders think through people development and implement behavioral-based methods for developing others. The clutch of this approach is that you don’t develop everyone the same way. One-size does not fit all, or in other words, the most unfair thing in the world to do is to treat unequals as equals.

The approach (as illustrated here) is grounded in two dimensions of the person being developed:
1. Their competence level (I like to call this their “skill”)
2. Their commitment level (I like to call this their “will”)
(See more on skill vs. will)

Based on the combination of a person’s skill and will level, a leader then responds based on leading that person with a combination of a directive and/or supportive style to drive results.

Although a fairly simple model (compared to others out there), an example might help to illustrate how this approach would be applied.

Let’s say you have just hired a new college grad. He is an energetic, “eager beaver” so to speak. He’s ready to save the world, and he is ready to do it through your company and his job. High commitment or will. However, he lacks training on your company’s processes, does not have an understanding of your industry and lacks some level of confidence in dealing with others, whether co-workers or customers. Low competence or skill. He needs to develop his skills in order to be successful or his will/commitment will end up going out the window.

Based on looking at the model below, which style would this leader employ to develop his new employee? He would begin by being very directive with the employee. But what does being directive mean? What behaviors would the leader exhibit?

The leader would be best served by “providing specific direction (what to do, how to do it and when) and closely monitoring task performance” (italics mine) from Leadership and the One Minute Manager. This means training the employee thoroughly, meeting with him regular to monitor the accomplishment of tasks and providing very frequent feedback.

For new hires, having a training and development plan complete with tasks and measurements for those tasks is a great complement to directive leadership style that is usually needed at this stage in an employees’ tenure.

But you don’t do this forever. An employee should move through the progression of their competence and commitment level where both are high if the directive approach is implement correctly and timely. A leader employing the Situational Leadership approach, if done correctly, should help with this progression of growth and development and should know when to adapt their style based on the person’s skill and will level to help them continue to grow. Keep being directive forever and you will kill a person’s will too.

As a leader, how do you adapt your style to develop people?

If you want to learn more about Situation Leadership and how it is applied, take a look at Leadership and the One Minute Manager as well as the other One Minute Manager books. All are short and very easy to read and follow. You can skip the scholarly journals on the theory and go straight to the application of it in about a 30 minute read with these books.

Image source: http://www.12manage.com/images/picture_blanchard_situational_leadership.gif
March 24, 2014
High School Advice

With only a few months left in my high school career, I look back on my decisions and feel like I am college ready. In the past weeks, I have broken down how to be college ready for freshmen, sophomores,juniors, and seniors. Sadly this isn’t the case with all of my graduating class. Even though most of them will be accepted into college, most of them will not be able to keep up with the responsibilities of college.

If you plan on going to college, take AP courses. They will challenge you and your grades might not be as good, but AP classes will help you study like you will when you are in college. If you struggle through AP classes, try different ways to study, it is better for you to figure out what works best for you now than when the college courses begin and you are drowning in work. You can’t expect to be successful in college if you breeze through honors or regular classes with an easy A. Taking challenging courses will also help to increase your ACT and/or SAT scores.

A couple weeks ago I discussed the ACT and how it is important if you want a big scholarship. I stress this because most students rely on their GPA to get scholarships, but end up with next to nothing because they weren’t focused on the right area. Most of the scholarships at the schools I researched (mostly southern schools) had a minimum GPA that was as low as a 3.0. So a student that has a 3.0 with an ACT score of 28 will receive more scholarship than a student that has a 4.0 with an ACT score of 24. What level of scholarship you get is determined by your ACT score. I don’t agree with the system, but if you want to get a scholarship you will have to put effort into the ACT.

Be involved in as much as you can. You won’t ever have the opportunity to be involved in so many activities while in school. College clubs and sports take up a lot of time so you have to pick and choose what you are involved in. Savor your experience; I will miss going to games where I know everyone playing and the people in the stands. I won’t ever be able to have that again.

I speak from my experience and the experience of others in my position. Don’t wish away your high school years. They are important in getting you ready for your future. There are a lot of changes that have occurred in me since I was a freshman. I wish I had not cared what everyone else thought of me. When I was a freshman, I thought the seniors were so much older and wiser than me. It is so not true. Most people don’t mature until much later than high school. They might have high school figured out, but life is far from being figured out. Take this in consideration when dealing with others in high school by acting with empathy and helpfulness instead of judgment. This mindset will not only serve you well in high school but throughout your life.

March 20, 2014
The Top 10, Wait 9, Leadership Coaching Needs
What would you guess to be the Top 10 most common topics covered in leadership coaching? Maybe we can get Letterman to do a Top 10 list on leadership coaching needs (oh, what humor we could probably find, it wouldn’t take much creativity), but in all seriousness, by reviewing many, many 360° leadership evaluations and coaching individuals on maximizing and improving their performance, here is my list- and I could only get to nine:
1. Developing Others
2. Time Management
3. Delegation
4. Thinking Strategically
5. Managing Upwards
6. Communication
7. Planning/Organizing
8. Managing Conflict
9. Empowering/Motivating Others
I’d love to hear what would be in your Top 10 list of your needs for improvement as a leader, or better yet, what areas you think the person who leads you or manages you needs! Maybe by comparing my list to yours, we can get to 10. And better yet, send them to me in David Letterman style! How would he phrase them? Email me your list or post it to our Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter Feed.

Over the next several weeks, we’ll be writing on ways to address these common areas. We’ll phrase them in your Letterman style and add to our list based on your feedback. If we use one of your submissions, we’ll send you a $25 Visa Gift Card. Submit away!
March 17, 2014