Behaviors that Lead to Exceptional Performance webinar

Today I listened to the recorded PMI IS Cop webinar called Behaviors that Lead to Exceptional Performance.

This was a Neal Whitten webinar; basically a top ten list on leadership.  The top ten:

• Think like a leader.  Great companies are great because of leadership.  I subscribe to his view that leaders do not believe in fatalism.  Nothing is scripted all the way to the end.
• Manage to your top three priorities/problems every day.  Leaders do not sweat the small stuff.  Leaders delegate to others the details.  Getting small thing done and skipping over the big stuff is a recipe for trouble.
• Never avoid necessary confrontation.  The keyword here is necessary.  No picking up fights for the sake of picking up fights and no appeasing from the sake of harmony.  Forming, storming, norming, and performing they say.  No storming equals no team.
• Check your ego at the door.  It’s not about you.  Making things personal will get you and you project in trouble
• Think for yourself.  That would not be leadership would it?  Listen to opinions from everyone and then make up your mind.  Also play you game, not someone else’s game.  Hold others to their commitments, for example delivery dates.
• Embrace integrity in all you do. It is all about trust.  If you do not act in a trustworthy way others won’t either.
• Don’t require the approval of others to function.  Don’t be an ass
• Live in your present moment.  I’m on the fence on this one; the past is the past but the future can be influenced.  A leader’s time is best spent looking in the distance for looming problems.  If you don’t consider the future, I think you will succumb to fatalism.
• Treat others as you’d like to be treated.  Again trust.  Also decency.
• Define who you choose to be.  I guess this is slightly repetitive since you should not require the approval of others and think for yourself.

The webinar can be seen as a motivational talk but that is OK, leadership is significantly about motivating people.

What do you think?  As always questions and comments are welcome.

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Comments

[Shim Marom]

Excellent summary and two comments:

1. Live in the present moment - what I think this was meant to address is possible fear of action due to things that might happen in the future. Leadership means acting now while taking the future into account, not waiting for the future to happen and then take an action.

2. Define who you choose to be - my take from this is that a leader needs to have a set of values that would guide his/her behavior.

Cheers, Shim.

[Patrick Richard]

Shim,

Thanks for adding your take to mine. Good points.