The Biggest Leadership Problem Of All

If there is a one clear primary function and responsibility of authentic leaders, it is the job of minimizing, avoiding and eliminating “problems”.

 

While problem solving is a prerequisite core competency of leadership at every level of your organization, the biggest problem facing the vast majority of leaders … Is their glaring inadequacy when it comes to problem solving.

 

If you have yet to grasp the true magnitude of the problem solving “problem”, I would ask you to cite any type of leadership challenge that you have previously or currently face. Each and every leadership challenge ultimately comes down to a problem solving issue. No ifs … No ands … No buts.

 

Leadership issues that pertain to organizational culture, planning, human resources, talent acquisition, talent retention, day to day operations, fiscal management and every other matter of business … Are in the end, problems to be “solved”.

 

While you would fully expect leaders in mass to be talented and adept problem solvers, the overwhelming fact is that they are not. Competent problem solvers are fast becoming a rare breed of leaders. Although each leadership situation demands a very real solution, all too many leaders opt for the less than ideal solution which is both obvious and expedient.

 

To become an accomplished problem solver, your organization’s leaders must commit to the rigorous work of creating a highly engaging work environment and structural process for the development of exceptional solutions.

 

Sadly, all to many leaders aren’t even aware that they have a problem solving problem until their organizational cultures have become toxic, productivity impaired and highly negative. As an authentic leader, you need to become acutely aware that without exception … Every decision that you execute has potential “consequences”.

 

Moreover, your organization, your people and the customers that you serve are destined to bear the long term consequences of ineffective problem solving and poor decision making on the part of your leadership team.

Copyright © 2017 Developing Forward Leadership | Thomas H. Swank, CBC | All Rights Reserved.

Focusing On What Can Go Right In 2017

Happy New Year!

As you and your organization again turn the proverbial page on your desk calendar to January, just how prepared are you and your people to have unprecedented success in 2017?

 

This is a particularly valid question to pose, especially when you consider that researchers state that only 8% of people actually keep their New Year’s resolutions. It is a valid question simply because it begets the real question, which is … With such a small fractional number of individual people truly “living up to” their personal resolutions, how then can organizational leaders who are unsuccessful when it comes to their own New Year’s resolutions (goals) be in a viable position to successfully achieve your organization’s goals throughout the coming year?

 

Effectually stated, the analogies and actions simply don’t align. If an individual is proven incapable in one arena, he or she is clearly not going to be any more successful when required to perform at a higher-level endeavor.

 

This principle holds true because it has been proven time and again that “most people will focus on what is destined to go wrong … Rather than on what might possibly go right.”

 

During the course of facilitating our leadership development programs, I am on occasion questioned about the validity of this ascertain. My typical response is that given the understanding that any endeavor in life first requires a balanced approach, and then applying a football genre, will you be more successful if you have a “defense” mentality or an “offense” mentality?

 

Whatever the game of life or business may be … you ultimately have to put the numbers on the board.

 

So, let’s take a few moments to move from practical theory and analogy to a real-world example of that to which I speak. Ever since the dawn of our country’s space program, every time a scheduled mission takes place, our astronauts have undergone hundreds and hundreds of simulated launches, landings and every scenario in between launch and touchdown. Literally every aspect of the mission has been rigorously rehearsed and drilled to perfection.

 

During an interview, Veteran Astronaut Ron Garan openly shared that even with all of the time that was allocated to advance planning, technology and meticulous training that far more time was devoted to “what could go wrong” and cause the mission to fail.

 

There is perhaps no better story about being concerned about what could go wrong, than the story pertaining to space pioneer John Glenn. Following his recent death in December 2016, it was disclosed that following his monumental space flight in 1962, that President John Kennedy was so concerned about the well-being and preservation of the nation’s newest hero that he vetoed the return of John Glenn back into space.

 

Virtually every entrepreneur, business executive, organization or individual that has ever achieved a meaningful degree of success will emphatically state that their success would have never happened if they hadn’t been willing to take some “risks”.

 

Every arena of life is fraught with the potential for something to go wrong. Most successful people will also tell you that had they not also learned from their previous failures how to become successful, they would never have made it. As basketball legend Michael Jordan stated, “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

 

If your organization and its people are going to experience unprecedented success in 2017, then it is imperative for you to focus on what can go right while having a balanced approach in planning the organization’s goals that like NASA, includes the upfront identification of potential hurdles, obstacles and setbacks that you and your people could encounter.

 

As legendary radio personality Casey Kasem always said as he signed off at the end of each show, “Keep your feet on the ground … and keep reaching for the stars.”

 

Balancing clear goals with appropriate contingency plans will keep your organization focused on what can go right in 2017!

 

Copyright © 2017 Developing Forward Leadership | Thomas H. Swank, CBC | All Rights Reserved.