Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Beyond Leadership

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 into people leadership (or if you’re looking for articles to send someone else…).

Are you doer who is destined to be a leader?
Are you currently thriving in a position and considering transitioning into a leadership role? If you’re not sure, consider the following:

Are you praised for displaying company values and known for always delivering?

Are you a good communicator?

Do others come to you with problems or to get your advice?

Do you enjoy the role of leading/encouraging your co-workers?

If you answered “yes” to the above question, you should definitely consider a role in leadership. So how do you transition from being a “doer” to a “leader”? Tips to Ensure a Smooth Transition into a Leadership Role suggests the following:
- To start, be sure you know exactly what your supervisor expects from you in terms of performance and as a leader.
- Once you know what success means in your new role, get to work on becoming a good leader.
- It will likely be helpful to start by meeting with each of your direct reports individually and it may be a good idea to take the meeting off-site.
- Finally, remember, to earn respect, you need to be respectful. Don’t show favoritism to any employee, don’t participate in office gossip, and follow through on the things you say you’ll do.
“Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.” Sheryl Sandberg

If leadership opportunities are not available with your current employer and you are considering a move, how do you market your transferrable skills? According to The Top Transferrable Skills Every Manager Should Have, communication and empathy are two key skills for leaders. Update your resume to include your transferrable skills. For more about transferrable skills, read How to Identify Your Transferrable Skills. If you happen to be in an administrative role, read this month’s career spotlight: Front Line Leaders of Administrative Personnel.

Are you ready to be a leader? Check out 10 Books Leaders Need to Be Reading for more insight.
May 19, 2015
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?
May 12, 2015
The Best Way to Thank Employees is to Make it Personal
I’m working with a client now where the one of the company’s core values is relationships. The value they place on relationships, with their employees and their customers, leads to a competitive advantage for the company. But I don’t think they do it because it creates a competitive advantage. They do it because it is just the right thing to do.

One thing I’ve learned from them is how this value actually plays out in the way that they recognize and reward employees.

As an outsider looking in they:
1. Get to know their people as people, not just as workers
2. Set clear expectations for everyone in the company
3. Reward people in a personal way when expectations are met. They are able to do this because they did step number one.
Because they reward people in a personal way, their employees are more loyal, work harder and continue to met and exceed the clear expectations that are set.

For example, they have a high performing engineer. The guy loves anything to do with planes and flying. He did a great job last year. His bonus was flying lessons (and in case you didn’t know, flying lessons are not cheap).

I have a book sitting on my shelf in my office that is titled 1501 Ways To Reward Employees by Bob Nelson. It is a good little book to get you thinking. It lists things like “provide a free makeover, give a full-day pass to a spa, give passes for bungee jumping, skydiving, hot-air balloon ride, whitewater rafting, provide lessons: golf, scuba, flying, rafting, tennis, horseback riding, cooking, painting…” and so on and so forth.

All these things are cool, but if you give someone who is scared of heights skydiving lessons, that isn’t rewarding, that is scary to them.   I’d love a pass to the spa, but would my husband? Nope. And if you gave him a pass to the spa thanking him for a job well done, I think his first thought would be, you don’t even know me at all do you? Taking the time to know people on a personal level communicates to them that they matter and you care.

If you are going to reward people, make sure what you are doing is actually rewarding. This means that giving the same reward to everyone company wide, is oftentimes not rewarding to most.   A ham at Christmas is nice, but do all your employees like ham?

And before you go saying, well money is rewarding to everyone, just give everyone money as bonus, stop and think about that for a minute. I just had a conversation with someone that is willing to take a pay cut for more flexibility at her job. Money isn’t rewarding to her, the flexibility is.   She will work harder for the boss that gives her more flexibility in getting her work done than she will the boss that pays her more.

How do you personalize your rewards? When you do, what results do you see?
May 7, 2015
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
May 5, 2015
Leaders Start with Gratitude
We have a bedtime ritual with our four year old:
1. Brush teeth
2. Practice letters/numbers
3. Read a book
4. Say one thing we are thankful for from that day
5. Prayer
Although all of them are important for various reasons, number 4 seems to be the one that never gets left out. Sometimes we are all tired and don’t want to practice letters or numbers or read a book. Sometimes we even forget to brush our teeth (maybe that goes back to being too tired) and even pray, but regardless of where we are, what time it is, or how long of a day it has been, our 4 year old will not let anyone go to bed without us all answering the question “What are you thankful for?”

This ritual started out one November, when giving thanks was on the brain and we had a Thanksgiving countdown calendar hung in his room where we decided to fill out a thankfulness card every day. The concept stuck. And although the answer to the question “What are you thankful for?” vary, we’ve seen from the lense of a pre-schooler that expressing thankfulness or gratitude is just about the best way to end a day.

I wonder how often leaders stop and think, “What am I thankful for today?” Taking the concept a step further, how many leaders express that gratitude to others? We often find that our thankfulness list isn’t made up of things or events (although our little one does throw in a thankfulness plug to his new Paw Patrol toy or his trip to the ice cream store every once in a while), it is usually people or something a person did.

As a personal leadership habit, I’d like to challenge us all to do two simple things everyday:
1. Identify one thing/person/event you are thankful for
2. If a person is tied to what you are thankful for, tell them that day that you are grateful for them and why and consider how you might uniquely express your gratitude based on what holds value to them.
Just like any good behavior, if we do it often enough to make it a habit, it ends up rubbing off on others. You can’t make members of your team or those you lead establish an attitude of gratitude, but you can do it yourself. And when you establish this personal leadership habit, I’d venture to guess others around you will start doing it too.

Our four year old won’t let my husband and I go to bed without ending the day by saying what we’re thankful for and it is all because he won’t let himself go to bed either without expressing his gratitude too.

What are you thankful for today?
April 21, 2015