1. You Make a Difference. Before you lead you have to believe that you can have a positive impact on others. This is one of the first things I want to hear from anyone that wants to lead. I will be teaching a few New Manager classes over the rest of the year, I wonder how many times I will hear make a difference?
2. Credibility Is the Foundation of Leadership. If people don’t believe in you, they won’t willingly follow you. You must do what you say you are going to do. Actions speak much larger than words. Just think for every person that you have in your organization, multiply by 2… That is the number of eyes watching you.
3.  Values Drive Commitment. You need to know what you believe in because you can only fully commit to the organization or cause when there is a good fit between what you value and the organization values. Many companies have their own set of values that you should follow – that is always a good starting point.
4. Focusing on the Future Sets Leaders Apart. You have to be forward looking; it’s the quality that most differentiates leaders from individual contributors. You need to spend time reflecting on the future. Blocking time on your calendar for reflecting is critical. Leaders that just run from meeting to meeting – really are either in the day to day or worse – the past.
5. You Can’t Do It Alone. Leadership is a team sport, and you need to engage others in the cause. You need to enable others to be even better than they already are. Insuring that your team is built on many different strengths (and having the weaknesses of others covered) – will make the overall team powerful. Getting that power fully engaged  will be something to see.
6. Trust Rules. To enlist others, you need trust. Build mutual trust; you must trust others too. I had an experience, during a trust workshop that the orgs leader actually committed on I should not have to worry about this. Wow, that set a tone for me.
7. Challenge Is the Crucible of Greatness. Great achievements don’t happen when you keep things the same. Change invariably involves challenge, and challenge tests you. Most people just would rather have their teeth pulled than to change – one way to make change happen is to set challenging goals – make a game out of it. 
8. You Either Lead by Example or You Don’t Lead at All. You have to go first as a leader. That’s what it takes to get others to follow your lead. All eyes are on the leader – think of it as a mirror – what the leader projects’ will be what others do. Make sure you project the right image you want!
9. The Best Leaders Are the Best Learners. Learning is the master skill of leadership. Leaders are constant improvement fanatics. Never stop learning… The content has been around awhile – how you use it will be what is important. It is taking the learning’s and applying to action that counts.
10. Leadership Is an Affair of the Heart. Leaders love what they’re doing and those they lead. Leaders make others feel great themselves and are gracious in showing their appreciation. 

Looking back at the truths, these should be the motivation behind the right kinds of behaviors that go with good and sustainable leadership.

Another one of my reading list down!

About two weeks ago, I completed Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation, by Sally Hogshead. When my wife asked me what I was reading, she did a double take after I mentioned the title. After I explained the book, she just said another marketing read, I see. The research that went into this book is outstanding. She really took a hard look at what makes us fascinated.

Sally Hogshead  recognizes that for companies and their brands, it is simply not enough to offer quality, or even a unique product or service. If a brand is not fascinating to people, it will suffer low sales volume, and perhaps even complete business failure. No longer is a good idea or a good product enough. The company and its brands must be found fascinating and trigger at least one of the seven emotional triggers of fascination. Those seven triggers are:

• Lust – creates craving for sensory pleasure
• Mystique – lures with unanswered questions
• Alarm – threatens with negative consequences
• Power – commands and controls
• Vice – tempts with “forbidden fruits” causing us to rebel against norms
• Trust – comforts us with certainty and reliability
• Prestige- earns respect through symbols of achievement

For me, I enjoyed how Sally Hogshead combined her scientific research with real world examples to present her case. I am a sucker for the pairing of theory and practical ideas, for understanding the power of fascination in both our personal and professional lives. While reading I was visualizing how the concepts would work for both an individual and businesses. I would recommend this one highly!

Do you want to know your F-Score? Go ahead and check it out. I did and found out that my primary fascination is MYSTIQUE. My secondary trigger is POWER.

1. Doing the Right Things. Begin by identifying your strategic intent. What are you trying to accomplish and by when? We are accountable for understanding and identifying our strategic intent—and the activities that support it.
2. Managing Your Space. We are accountable to create the new space we need to grow and innovate in our own lives, which sometimes means taking space from something else that we’re doing. “Force of habit prevents us from giving ourselves the physical, mental, financial, or emotional space necessary to shake things up a little bit and put something new in our lives—something that could provide growth and improvement.”
3. Managing the Process. We are accountable for creatively making progress toward whatever it is we are trying to make happen even when we hit an obstacle. It means not throwing up our hands and saying, “If it’s not meant to be, it’s not meant to be.”
4. Establishing the Right Expectations. We are accountable for establishing the right expectations, that reflect our values, that are properly benchmarked, and are a bit of a stretch.
5. Contributing to Your Relationships. The success or failure of our relationships depends entirely on the contributions we make. We are accountable for giving to our relationships—without keeping track. “In fact, the quickest way to kill a relationship is to start keeping track of all the reasons it’s not your turn to give to it and support it.” Sam adds, “We should constantly be looking for ways to invest in the relationship and enhance the value of the relationship over time.”

For me, I worry that too many times accountability is passed off to others, rather than just assumed and accepted. If you truly give service (not lip service) to these 5 items, I bet your people will follow you anywhere. That they look up to you, as a mentor and coach. Over at his website SamSilverstein.com - he has all the contact information and free tools and exercises to help you implement the Five Accountabilities.

 Since Rawn works for IBM, he has much insight into a large enterprise and how they are using their social tools for overall collaboration for their employees, work teams and large innovated activities. He highlighted that collaboration can bring together skills and knowledge in more permutations than members might imagine. Drove home the point that social computing depends on the human factor. For me, I help out many teams or organizations with using our internal social tools to communicate and collaborate. The one point that really is hard for folks is using these tools is work. This is not Field of Dreams, just because it has been built, they will not come (back).

Rawn has broken his book into logical sections that if you are already engaged – you can skip to parts that you or company are struggling with.

• Overview of Social Computing
• Sharing the Social Experience
• Leadership in Social Environments
• Social Task (collaborating on ideas and creating and managing information)
• Social Ecosystem
• Building a Social Culture
• Engaging and Encouraging Members
• Community Management
• Measuring Social
• Social Computing Value

For me, the areas that really stood out are the Leadership, Engaging and Encouraging Members and the Community Management. Leadership is key to voerall success. Don’t let anyone fool you, without leadership in this space, nothing will work well. I have witnessed the struggles of teams and organizations due to overall minimal leadership when applying the tools. Engaging and encouraging members will always be a point of emphasis (from the start and throughout the community life-cycle). There are many ideas in this section to get the braincells moving. Lastly, the community management chapter was extremely helpful for me.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. Rawn Shah definitely got me thinking about my activities within the internal social teams I lead, participate in or just read from time to time. This book will be on my bookshelf in the office as a resource and reminder to me…

He first sets the stage on what is a tribe. They are groups of folks that have a shared interest and a way to communicate (with the Internet and social computing software – that has been made simple).  He further explains that shared interest or what gathers the tribe for their beliefs. There are three things that happen for solid outcome.

1. We all work a lot (well, most of us anyways). If we work on the stuff we believe in, it is much more satisfying than just getting a paycheck or waiting to get fired (or die).
2. Many organizations are realizing that the factory centric model of producing goods and services is not nearly as profitable as it used to be.
3. Many consumers have decided to spend their money differently. No more buying off the shelf – they really are looking for stuff with stories and things they believe in. For example of this – look at the focus on green rather than non-green goods.

The factory model mentioned early – is not really the heavy machinery and such – but look at it as an organization that cranks out products or services with measurable output and tries to reduce cost along the way. It also centers on the boss tells you what  to do and how to do it. The factory is not a bad thing. It comes with a very rich history. The converse is true as well, there are shortcomings. Just depends on which side you want to be on.  I use the question “How was your day?” as a gauge to where you feel you are at.

Godin also talks about something that I have written in one of my posts – a ways back. Leadership is not management. He dedicated a chapter on it. He points out some solid examples:

1. Managers manage a process they have seen before and they react to the outside world striving to make the process go as fast and as cheap as possible
2. Leadership is about creating change.

The book has plenty of examples of tribes and their leaders. Where I think it falls short is providing many of the how to’s and tips on turning this into reality. Maybe that was is the point that he is trying to make – that the how to’s depend on YOU!

Like I wrote earlier in the post, I enjoyed reading the book and it made me think about myself, my team and the tribes that I follow or lead. There is much more in the book!

I did get a few quotes or phrases that I enjoyed and share below.

1. “The secret of being wrong isn’t to avoid being wrong!”
2. “If your organization  requires success before commitment, it will never have either.”
3. “Stuck on Stupid” – have to explain this one a bit… Centers on the world changes, the rules change – if you are still following yesterday’s rules – you are stuck. “Stuck on Stupid”