I think a great leader is somebody who realizes it's not about them, it's about the people that they're serving, that they're really other-directed rather than self- directed.
— Ken Blanchard
Patrick Lencioni, Spencer Johnson, and Stephen Covey are great communicators.
When you write a business fable, people get caught up in the story and don't get judgmental about what you're teaching them. If you're teaching a bunch of concepts, people get skeptical and say, 'Where'd you get that research?' But if you tell them a story, they get caught up in it while they learn.
Age is rarely a limitation to being a mentor.
As a leader, you absolutely must expend your energy engaging your frontline employees so that they will take care of customers, who will tell stories about how great your company is to other people, who will become new customers.
At my company, we have 300 employees spread across offices all over the world, and I send them all a voicemail each morning with a message from me about why our work is important and a reminder about one of our values. I call myself our company's 'chief spiritual officer.'
Many companies claim they have core values, but typically what they're referring to are generic beliefs: having integrity, making a profit, responding to customers and so on. These values only have meaning when they're defined in terms of how people behave and are ranked to set priorities.
The biggest obstacle that stalls leaders' growth is the human ego. When leaders start to think they know it all, they stop growing.
Some people are really good at the visionary role. They're like third grade teachers who tell people the vision and values over and over and over until they get it right, right, right. But they're not implementers. If they're good leaders, they gather people around them who can take the implementation role and move it forward.
I never use notes, they interfere with me.
Feedback is the breakfast of champions.
I absolutely believe in the power of tithing and giving back. My own experience about all the blessings I've had in my life is that the more I give away, the more that comes back. That is the way life works, and that is the way energy works.
People love to be appreciated.
'Lead with LUV' is the first book I've ever done that's just a pure conversation between my coauthor and me.
People will resist change when it's done to them, not with them.
It's been true in my life that when I've needed a mentor, the right person shows up.
If your employees are disengaged, and they don't take care of your customers, it doesn't matter how good your strategy is - your customers will still go somewhere else.
If people aren't clear on what business you're in, what you're trying to accomplish, your values, your goals, then shame on you. It doesn't mean you shouldn't involve them. It's just your responsibility to make sure that that's clear.
Values-based business behavior is no longer simply an interesting option - it's crucial to your survival. Once you understand your mission and values, you have a strong basis for evaluating your practices and aligning them accordingly.
Growing, for leaders, is like oxygen to a deep sea diver. Without learning and growing, leaders die in terms of their effectiveness.
The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.
For a manager to be perceived as a positive manager, they need a four to one positive to negative contact ratio.
Too many leaders act as if the sheep... their people... are there for the benefit of the shepherd, not that the shepherd has responsibility for the sheep.
Don't quack like a duck, soar like an eagle.
All good performance starts with clear goals.
A good business book teaches simple truths.
One of the topics I'm most passionate about is servant leadership - the greatest leaders recognize that they're here to serve, not to be served.
'One Minute Mentoring' is written in the parable style Spencer Johnson and I popularized in 'The One Minute Manager.' It's an entertaining story about the mentorship between a young salesperson, Josh, and a seasoned executive named Diane. As the characters learn about mentoring, so does the reader.
At Southwest, they're on a mission to democratize air travel. When they first started, the only people who could fly were relatively wealthy businesspeople, and Herb Kelleher's vision was to offer everyone the chance to visit a friend or relative during a happy and a sad time. That's a vision employees can get excited about.
Managing by values - not by profits - is a powerful process that will set your business on the path to becoming what I call a 'Fortunate 500' company.
Too often in business, only financial data is gathered - and then it is distributed only to management. Other key indicators that relate to performance areas also need to be tracked. Information on performance has to be made available to those people who can best use it - those doing the work.
Leadership is not about you; it's about investing in the growth of others.
The productivity of a work group seems to depend on how the group members see their own goals in relation to the goals of the organization.
People who produce good results feel good about themselves.
In the past a leader was a boss. Today's leaders must be partners with their people... they no longer can lead solely based on positional power.
