Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Leadership Development

Beyond Leadership is Horizon Point’s line of resources for managers of people. Managing ourselves is a distinct set of behaviors from managers the work of others, and we are here to help. Read stories in this category if you are ready to take the next step in your own leadership development (or if you’re looking for resources for someone else).

  • Get a Leadership Professional Development Game Plan

    Get a Leadership Professional Development Game Plan

    Leaders take control of their personal and professional development in order to continuously grow and maximize their contribution. As a leader do you have a professional development game plan? If you do, here are some good ideas to consider, and if not, here are some ideas to get you started:

            1. Read- Commit to reading a sampling of the following:

    • A book about leadership a month. For recommendations on books to start with, see our Top 10 Leadership book recommendations. Downloading the app Good Reads and selecting the “Business” category can help you select some good titles. Once you begin rating books you’ve read, it will recommend other titles for you.
    • A great business publication once a month. FastCompany is my go-to for this, but others prefer something a little less edgy and more news oriented like The Economist or The Wall Street Journal
    • An industry specific publication once a month. My go-to for HR related topics is Workforce Magazine (their online content is great too) and HR Magazine published by SHRM and for Career Development it is NCDA’sCareer Convergence that is online content once a month and Career Developments Magazine which is in print.
    • Something outside your industry once a month (Oftentimes reading a great business publication will cover this. For example, I’ve been enjoying reading about the fashion and ecommerce industry in the last severalFastCompany
    • Leadership blogs and blogs related to your industry. Subscribe to ones that are of interest to you and/or get a content mining and archiving app like Flipboard to find, organize and catalogue your info. Make sure you don’t miss out on the Leadership Carnival the first Monday of every month that features a compilation of posts from a variety of key leadership bloggers. Blogs I love in the HR/Career industry are Fistful of Talent,The HR Capitalist and UpStartHR
    • Take your reading a step further and write about leadership. Set a goal to get something published once a year and then quarter. Where should you start to try to get published? Start with the publications you are currently reading.

            2. Engage and Listen. To other experts in your field and those who are learning with you.

    • Attend conferences to hear from the best and network with your colleagues. Record your insights and connections while you are there. You can also do this through webinars and podcasts.
    • Find a thought leader in your field and schedule a time to meet with them regularly (at least quarterly) to discuss ideas, leadership challenges and insights in your field.
    • Volunteer with an organization in which you are passionate about and learn from those around you and from your experience.
    • Request a regular, standing time to meet with your boss (at least one a month) to discuss business challenges and opportunities and plans of action.

    3. Practice and Apply. The reading and the engaging and listening really doesn’t matter if you don’t apply any of it to your work and life. As you read and listen, make notes of things you can apply on the job and set a game plan to do so. A goal setting worksheet may help with this. Take the time to discuss this with your boss in the regularly scheduled meeting you have hopefully established and ask for assignments that help you apply your knowledge, practice what you’re learning and that aid the business in pursuit of success.

    What is your personal career and leadership development game plan?

  • 10 Books Leaders Need to be Reading

    10 Books Leaders Need to be Reading

    Leaders are readers. One of the easiest and cheapest ways to grow as a leader is to read about leadership and take the knowledge gained from your reading and apply it.

    When asked about the best leadership books out there, here are the ones I recommend.

    1. Great leaders lead themselves first. You can’t lead others if you can’t leader yourself through strong personal habits. The best personal leadership book I have found is Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.
    2. Leaders are influencers. For a timeless classic on influence, read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.
    3. Leaders are Empathetic. Read what I believe to be the best fiction ever written. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.   Even if you read it as a student, it’s a good one to re-read, with a particular focus on the leadership lessons to apply. Also check out The Way of the Shepherd: 7 Ancient Secrets to Managing Productive People by Kevin Leman
    4. A leader customizes his/her style based on whom he/she is leading. To understand situational leadership in order to customize, read The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard.
    5. Leaders understand how to run an organization. For insights on what makes an organization successful, read Good to Great by Jim Collins. For the entrepreneurial leader wanting to understand how to run a great start-up and/or scale and grow one, read Scale by Jeff Hoffman and David Finkel and EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey.
    6. Leaders know the most important decisions they make are people decisions. To know how to hire the best, read Who?: The A Method for Hiring by Geoff Smart and Randy Street.
    7. Leaders know that once they answer the Who question they need to be able to explain the Why to them. To understand the importance of Why, read Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek.
    8. Although answering Why? takes you a long way in motivating others, for more insights on motivation and building people and teams, read The Leadership Challenge byJames Kouzes and Barry Posner and Boundaries for Leaders by Henry Cloud.
    9. Leaders learn from the success and failures of others. Pick up a biography or memoir of a leader. Some good ones are: Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg and the biographies of different presidents and visionaries by David McCullough and Stephen Ambrose.
    10. Leaders have some good reference books to turn to when they need tools or templates to help them succeed.   Keep a copy of the The Successful Manager’s Handbook on your desk for this purpose.

    Which leadership books have had the most impact on you?

    Like this post? You may also like:

    Horizon Point Book Review 2014

    Horizon Point Book Review 2013

    Harvard Business Review: 11 Books Every Young Leader Must Read

  • Goal Setting – Feedback

    Goal Setting – Feedback

    I want to round out the goal setting discussion by focusing on the importance of feedback.  To illustrate, feedback has played a critical role in a current client business coaching engagement.  To begin the coaching process this past summer, we employed a 360° feedback mechanism to help set priorities for the client’s development.  Feedback was first necessary to set goals and priorities.

    Based on areas for improvement, we developed four questions that she asks herself each and every day.  These are all “yes” or “no” questions.  (As example, a question I ask myself every day is “Did I do something to develop new business today?”  because one of my goals for the year is revenue growth.)  She has them posted by her computer and we begin each session by going through those questions, regardless of the focus of that particular session.  This is a simple personal feedback mechanism that was set in place to hold herself accountable.

    Finally, providing feedback to her subordinates is important to this client’s development as a leader.  She is already good at providing feedback and motivation to her team, but her business has grown large enough that she needs (and desires) to have a process in place that helps her provide ongoing feedback for development and evaluation.

    At every step in the process, feedback has played a critical role in establishing success.

    What feedback mechanisms do you use to personally hold yourself accountable or those you lead accountable?

    For more insight, check out New Year’s Resolutions 101: Don’t Put The Cart Before The Horse.

    **This post originally appeared on Horizon Point Blogpost January 30, 2012.

  • 5 leadership lessons I learned in the Army that help me in the real world

    5 leadership lessons I learned in the Army that help me in the real world

    Davis Ozier is a perfect example of the value Veterans can bring to business. After serving in combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan in the Army as leader, he is now working on his MBA at the Darden School of Business to apply his leadership skills in the private sector.  Through his experiences, he can help us learn some very important lessons in dealing with real world problems.

    Here are 5 leadership lessons Davis learned through his service:

    1. Make the decision (or recommendation).  We will never have all of the information that we wish, but will still be forced to make the decision.  The Army did a wonderful job of forcing me as a junior officer to make an informed decision with the information I had at hand and then execute accordingly.   We will never be perfectly at ease in ambiguous and constantly shifting environments, but we can at least be comfortable with making a well thought out decision instead of suffering from paralysis of analysis.

    2. I have to work with others for the unit to be successful.  Contrary to popular belief, I could not simply issue an order and expect it to be carried out without opposition or voices of discontent.  Leaders in the private sector also recognize this and hopefully incorporate consensus building and collaboration into their managerial style.  This does not mean I have to accept every recommendation or cater to specific requests if I believe it isn’t in the best interest of the organization, but I do need to listen and incorporate feedback into my decision making process. This applies not only in the direct organizational hierarchy, but also with regard to working with adjacent departments and supporting functions.

    3. Work within the commander’s intent.  The boss doesn’t need to specify exactly what he wants me to do or not do.  It is my responsibility to listen to his vision, his plans for my role within the broader organization, and understand his priorities.  I should ask clarifying questions where appropriate, but I have the necessary information to make sound and independent decisions on a daily basis.  I can exercise initiative to support the boss’s vision and improve the organization.

    4. Deciding what I’m NOT going to do is just as important as what I am going to do.  Deciding where I am going to focus my energy and allocate resources is a constant struggle because I never have enough capacity to do everything I would like or that my boss has asked me to do.  In the Army, I realized I can continue to try to do it all with often mediocre results or I could prioritize and make informed decisions to assume risk in certain areas to ensure outstanding results in priority missions.  The latter always achieved better organizational and personal results than the former.  My bosses expected me to make tough decisions just as they had to do and when the situation prevented the successful completion of everything then I had to understand what the critical, no-fail objectives were and focus my energy and resources to be successful in those areas.

    5. Assume positive intent.  It was a personal wake-up call when someone interrupted my complaining one day to point out that the individual didn’t wake up this morning wanting to screw things up for me.  I stood there speechless.  What a great reminder that we are generally all doing what we think and hope is the right thing to do.  My outlook and attitude as a leader completely changed when I decided to assume that the soldiers under my command, the staff personnel supporting my unit, and the people at higher headquarters were all working to try to make the unit better just like I was.  I became more patient and understanding, and guess what?  The organization improved much more drastically than when I was sitting back and complaining.

     

    Davis Ozier served 8 years on active duty including combat tours to Iraq and Afghanistan and currently serves in the Army Reserves.  He is currently pursuing his MBA at the Darden School of Business at The University of Virginia.

  • Impacting the performance of employees when you just want them to show up, do their job and not complain

    Impacting the performance of employees when you just want them to show up, do their job and not complain

    “I just want them to show up and do their job and not complain,” said one burned-out manager to me not long ago.  He was struggling with how to motivate the performance of several members of his staff, and in his exhaustion to try to be a leader, had adopted a mindset of something far from leadership.

    So how do leaders influence and impact the performance of employees when sometimes we just want them to show up and do their job and not complain?

    1.  Adopt a Leadership Mindset. First, a mindset of leadership needs to be present.  Leadership is grounded in seeing people as assets and realizing that the greatest responsibility of the role is to invest in people to drive their performance.   This means spending most of our time as leaders with those we are trying to develop, not wishing they would disappear into the oblivion get their work done and not bother us.  My manager client is never going to be able to drive performance in his employees long-term if his mindset about what his role is doesn’t change to one of leadership.

    2.  Get over your own burn-out. You can’t motivate performance if you’re burned out yourself.  My client was tired.   On top of dealing with employee issues that were unpleasant, he was trying to run a business, meet client needs and juggle a never-ending myriad of tasks.    The personnel issues were just another thing that he was barely spending enough time on to be able to see any results, and his people know from his actions that they are being seen as just another annoyance in a never ending cycle of being hopelessly behind and burned-out.  If you aren’t working smarter, not harder, why would they?  Part of a leadership mindset is setting an example.  If you are burned out and annoyed, you’re probably complaining and that’s why they are complaining too.

    If you are burned out:

    1. Take some time to regroup; get away if you have to and unplug.
    2. Manage your time. Consider how you can kill two-birds with one stone by empowering your people through delegation.
    3.  Get rid of stuff that doesn’t matter- say no.  And saying no to investing time your employees shouldn’t be one of the no’s on your list.  Saying no to things that aren’t important leads you to be able to say yes to your employees, who are important.

    The bottom-line is leaders impact the performance of their employees by the example they create.   If you want people to show up, do their job and not complain, then do the same.  Adopt a leadership mindset and find ways to get over the burn-out and negativity you may be experiencing.   If you can’t, then maybe you’re in the wrong role.

    You’ll find that if you empower employees through your positive mindset and results, you’ll get much more than just a group of non-complainers who do their job.  You’ll get a group of people who are engaged in their work and drive productivity. Start with yourself and it will rub off on those you seek to lead.