Here’s a gift of 5 actions you can start right now in service of strengthening your Leadership capabilities!

1. Build greater trust. You do this by ensuring that you follow up when you say you will. Lack of follow up, putting promises on the back burner because your busyness is the priority, or dismissing the promise to follow up as not really that important can dramatically erode trust. Instead of espousing intentions to follow up, commit to doing so and DO IT, whether you are managing up or down.
2. Put on your big set of listening ears. People want to be listened to, they want to know that you care. Practice harnessing your energy that hungrily wants to take over every conversation and anxiously move things into action. Just decompress for a moment a really listen to your staff, customers, peers, team members . . . hell, even your boss. If you want to develop high contributors, they need space to be heard and acknowledged . . . by you!
3. Increase your self-awareness. How are you showing up for others as a leader? Don’t know! Contact your Human Resources people, Organization Development professionals or your RWBA executive coach to be in service of your finding out what processes, instruments or other support might be available to help you understand yourself better and leverage that knowledge into stronger top and bottom lines!
4. Be a better relationship builder. Vertically, horizontally, and diagonally . . . throughout the organization.
5. Model great leadership to others. You’ve got to walk the talk. Your direct and indirect reports emulate the leadership that they experience with you. Are you proud of everything that you do? If you had to pick one leadership behavior to work on, what would that be? How can you assure you can successfully change that behavior?

Most importantly, have fun with these thoughts and enjoy yourself!

Jake Jacobs is a wonderful friend and one of the most talented and leading organization change thinkers out there today. A pioneer in the area of large-scale real-time strategic change, Jake is the go to person if you’re at all interested in assuring the strategic success of your organization, no matter what size, in these times of unprecedented white-water change.

Jake teamed up with Dick and Emily Exelrod, and Julie Beedon to write a short powerful book, ‘You Don’t Have to Do It Alone: How to Involve Others To Get Things Done’. This book is a must for any executive serious about the success of their organization’s future bottom and top lines. The New York Times claims that it is “The best of the current crop of books on this topic…a complete blueprint for involving others.”

Berret Koehler, the publisher, summarizes it beautifully by declaring:

“You Don’t Have to Do It Alone: How to Involve Others to Get Things Done” provides a simple, straightforward approach, known as “Pragmatic Involvement,” in order to bring people together to get big things done. Most people in organizations tend to manage projects either as “Realists” or “Humanists.” Realists focus on getting things done. They pride themselves on their no-nonsense attitude. However, they often ignore the human factors that profoundly affect the success of a project. On the other hand, humanists are concerned about people. They care about others and their feelings. Unfortunately, they often overlook practical considerations, such as deadlines and budgets.

You Don’t Have to Do It Alone brings together the practical view of the realist and the people oriented view of the humanist, combining the best of both approaches into one role—the “Pragmatic Involver.” As the authors note, “The question is not ‘whether to involve or not to involve.’ The question is how to do it well.” This book will show you how to avoid wasting valuable time and talents in order to truly work with others to get things done.

You Don’t Have to Do It Alone is organized around a series of five questions that are asked by Pragmatic Involvers whenever they tackle a new challenge:

• What Kind of Involvement Is Needed?
• How Do I Know Who to Include?
• How Do I Invite People to Become Involved?
• How Do I Keep People Involved?
• How Do I Finish the Job?

This book is the Swiss Army Knife of involvement—a set of tools that can be used in any setting to get you the help you need. You will learn to involve others in a way that will actually make your work easier, that will result in less stress, better ideas, and more successful outcomes. The lessons that you learn will apply whether you are working at a multinational corporation, an inner-city hospital, or at the community bake sale.

Check out Jake, Dick and Emily discussing their book and its potential on Youtube. Jake Jacobs is President of Robert W. Jacobs Consulting, Inc., and the author of Real Time Strategic Change and was a contributor to The Change Handbook and The Conscious Consultant. His clients include Marriott, The Home Depot, and the City of New York. Go to Jake’s Winds of Change Group website if you are interested in exploring the creation of more potential for your organization’s future strategic success. 

If you have read this book, I would enjoy hearing what you thought and felt about it. Just go to the comments below and, as Larry the Cable Guy would say, ‘Gitt’er Done!’.

Here’s a fascinating blog by one of the world’s leaders in large-scale real-time organization change, Jake Jacobs with some profound lessons for us all that I just have to share with you. Enjoy!

“My buddy and colleague Bob Benwick recently posted a blog entry about a talk he had many years ago with my mentor Kathie Dannemiller. We were at an EDS large scale event and Bob walked up to Kathie and asked her whether the group was where we expected them to be at some point during the event. As was her loveable (and point blank) style, Kathie turned to Bob and said, “…they are exactly where they should be! It’s irrelevant where we think they should be! It’s where they are now that we need to work with. They will move forward at a speed that works for them. So what’s your next question?”

Bob says he learned a valuable lesson that day. Having worked with Kathie for a while, I had learned the same lesson years earlier. There’s a joke I heard years ago. The consultant shows up at the wrong venue, works the entire day with the wrong client….and never knows the difference!

That’s an extreme case. But how often do we get caught up with whether we’re “on track” with the agenda? After 20-plus years of doing this work I can’t ever remember actually being on time. A while back I was facilitating a meeting with a colleague. We were two hours behind on the agenda with one hour left in the meeting. My colleague was a little worried. She asked, “What are we going to do to catch up?” I looked at her somewhat puzzled and responded, “What do you mean?” Now she REALLY looked worried! I imagine she was thinking, “So first this guy can’t follow an agenda. Now he can’t even tell time!”

She was looking down at the typed agenda, back at me, and then at her watch. She actually had to do this several times (I’ll admit it took me a short while to figure out what was going on), then I realized, she was measuring our progress against the written agenda, not what was happening in the group. Having learned my lesson from Kathie long ago, I wasn’t worried at all. We were two hours behind and I was able to tell time (a relief to both my colleague, me, and any other clients I’ll ever work with!). The two hours we were behind were only “real” when compared to what we had typed up as the agenda a couple of weeks earlier. The group was right on track with the work they needed to be doing. In fact (possibly miraculously) we even ended the meeting 15 minutes early.

Barbara Bunker, another mentor of mine, put this same lesson a different way. She used to say, “Structure is helpful. It gives you something to deviate from.” The lesson in all of this? Make sure you have a solid structure for any meeting you’re leading. At the same time remember the purpose you’re aiming to achieve. And most of all, pay attention to the group you’re working with. As Kathie said, “….they (always) are where they should be!”

Thank you Jake. Clearly Kathy and Barbara have had a profound impact on all those who have had the wonderful opportunity to connect with these two giants in the field of organization development, be they clients or OD consultants. A simple question I’ll leave with you is “Do you know the difference?”

I’m quite excited to share a recent newletter created by Jake Jacobs, a global leader in the field of organization development, specifically in the area of large-scale, real-time system change. It’s a pleasure to share with you his comments on ‘Collaborating to Create More Value: Leadership Coaching and Large Scale Change’. Enjoy!

“Given my focus on collaboration, I wanted to share with you one way in which my clients and I have benefited from partnering with others. I have known Bob Benwick for 15 years. We first worked together on a Real Time Strategic Change effort at a bank where he was the senior HR executive. Now he and his wife Bev have a global corporate coaching practice based out of Vancouver.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Bob and Bev to talk about synergies between their coaching practice and my large-scale change work.  Bob, Bev and I share the same goal: people and organizations achieving their full potential. The difference is in how we do it.  Bob and Bev (and other coaches) focus on individual leaders’ development. I (and other large-scale change consultants) focus on the overall organization’s development. When we partner, our clients get the best of both worlds.

Bob explains, “I had exposure to the RTSC approach many years ago. It helps businesses that need to turn on a dime (competitively) like the bank I worked at. It is absolutely crystal clear to me how much coaching and large-scale change complement each other.”

Bev continues, “A goal of our coaching is for leaders to bring greater depth to their relationships. Organizations that use us a lot want to make big changes and make them fast. We often get asked to help leaders work together across departments.”

It’s tough to tell whether Bev is talking about her coaching practice or my large-scale change work.

Bob adds, “We contract with leaders for a minimum of six months. There has to be serious commitment or it won’t work. Leaders (and all of us) have taken years to develop our current habits. It will take time to change them. The more people change, the easier and faster it is for the system they work in to change.”

My take on Bob’s comment: the more the system changes, the easier and faster it is for the people in it to change.

Putting leadership coaching and large-scale change together is a “win-win-win.” Leaders can make big changes happen faster – and sustain them over time. And we do a better job for them than either of us could do  alone. “

Jake Jacobs is co-founder and partner of Winds of Change Group — a consulting firm specializing in fast and lasting change.

What are your feelings about change and coaching? What intrigues you the most about Jake’s comments?  What are the possibilities?

I happen to be at what is referred to as a ‘Real Time Large Scale’ change event that EDS was engaged in. They had brought together their top 400 leaders within their global operations a number of years ago to meet over a two day period to gain a collective understanding where they were at strategically, obtain a clear picture of what better would look like, agreement as to what they needed to do to move forward and achieve what it was they wanted, and to work on initial plans to develop their capability to successfully make it happen. 

As the Vice President-Human Resources & Organization Development of a large financial firm at the time, I had brought with me the CEO and the Vice President-Finance of the organization. The objective was to provide my associates with the opportunity to watch a large-scale event happen first hand and then decide whether to bring this particular approach to our own organization.

The experience absolutely bowled my associates over when they experienced first hand the enormous level of collaboration, the open sharing of thoughts, feelings and wants by all participants in a way that was designed to fully engage their hearts and minds. The level of positive high energy, caring, and openness was palpable in a very large meeting room organized specifically for this unique event.

At one of the breaks on the second day of the event I approached the two Organization Development consultants who had been contracted to lead the design and delivery of this amazing event. They were Kathy Dannemiller and Jake Jacobs. Both global leaders in the field of organization development, and in particular, the facilitation of large-scale real-time strategic change events such as this one. These events range from facilitating anywhere between a couple of hundred up to thousands of organizational participants at a time. Both are remarkable people. Unfortunately Kathy is no longer with us, but is key to my next experience.

I walked up to both of them and asked. “So how do you think the process is going? Are the participants . . . the organization . . . where you think they should be?” I thought this was a pretty mundane question that would beget a simple response. But that didn’t happen. Instead I received a very perfunctory comment from Kathy that literally made me step back. Learning doesn’t always come in pleasant doses. She turned around and simply said to me, “Listen my friend (we knew each other relatively well), they are exactly where they should be! It ‘s irrelevant where we think they should be! It’s where they are now that we need to work with. They will move forward at a speed that works for them. So what’s your next question.” Jake was sitting to the side and just smirked. This was Kathy-forthright, authentic, completely honest and tended not to pull punches. That’s why anyone who was open to truly learning and growing loved her. She was always free in the gift of her skills, knowledge and experience and never hesitated to be there for you and give when asked. She never hesitated to cut to the quick and call a ‘spade a spade’ as they say.

From this I developed a profound understanding of what it takes to ‘be’ with clients and work with them at their readiness level. Even if you want them to be two light years ahead of where you think they should be, it’s where they are ‘now’ that is most important. It’s about them and not you. When that happens, it takes enormous pressure off you as an agent of change whether you are a leader, manager, consultant or coach. Work where with where your clients, staff, boss, customers, etc. are at.

I’ve found this gold nugget has paid off huge dividends. Does this experience resonate with yours? What’s in working with others’ readiness for you? When you honor this, what’s in the payoff? If you ignore this, what are the consequences? Where might this be of value ‘back at the ranch’? I would love to hear your thoughts and feelings?