There’s no doubt we are in tough times and bad news is that it’s not going to get any easier any time soon. People are worried really about the future. It’s now that real leadership is needed. In difficult situations people look for hope, possibility and inspiration.

I’m not talking about a company man standing up and giving a “rally the troops” speech about how great the future is. I’m talking about real authentic leadership.

Real leaders don’t need a title or a position in an organisational chart to make a difference, they just lead. Leadership is way of being it not something you do. By that I mean that how people behave day to day, how they see the world, how they communicate is more akin to leadership than the completion of tasks.

So how do real leaders behave?

I went back to a book I read many years ago that had a profound effect on me and the way I developed as a leader. Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of highly effective people has been a permanent fixture in my book collection for years. So people describe his work easy to understand but not so easy to apply. Below is my adaptation of some which I believe translates into practical behaviours for real leaders.

Be Proactive - It’s easy to get overwhelmed with information and the negative messages about the state of the economy but the real leader knows she cannot control all that. What she knows and understands is that she has a choice about these thing effect her. She has a choice about what her response is internally and towards others and she knows that is down to her. You cannot control everything in the world but you can control your relationship with it. For example if there is talk of cutbacks and redundancy, will you sit there worrying all day about it whether it will effect you or will you understand that you have no control other than to control how you go about your daily tasks? Which is more empowering to sit there as the victim waiting for something to happen or to be proactive and exercise choice? You may start looking for another job, update CV, you could start to think of plans and ideas you can put in place – none of them have to be executed yet but be ahead of the game.

Begin with the end in mind – Most people’s decision making is moment to moment. They’re a random collection of choices that may or may not help the person achieve what they want. First establishing the end game is critical to your success. If you know where you want to be then you can make better choice day to day. You’ll be more likely to be moving towards what you want rather than away from it. Think about it in terms of identifying cost savings and cuts. If would be easy to look down your departmental budget and pick out the big numbers to slash. This might win you some ground in the short term but what if those things that were cut are crucial to the long term success of your business? What if the very things that win you some space now are the cause of your demise later? Have a clear picture of what you want to achieve.

Put first things first. Whether your running you’re own business, working in fast paced corporate environment or soloprenuer, managing your time is one of the most important disciplines you can learn. It can be easy to be swept along and before you realise it discover that time is running out. Where as beginning with the end in mind was about the mental preparation and creation, putting first things first is about the physical creation. In a world of email, Twitter, Facebook and instant response you would find yourself being busy doing things all day, but are they the right things? Are they the most urgent or important? Or are you doing them because you like to do them? Email is a great example. How many of you have outloook or whatever mail client you have open and as soon as a message comes in, you have to respond to it? I bet you’re the same person that gets annoyed if you don’t get an immediate response, right? There are of course urgent emails to reply to but I bet if you really think about it very few actually need a response in seconds. So what are bog things you should be doing instead? If you don’t have a clear end game then how can you know? I never used to make time to read but know I understand that it’s one of my core activities.

Seek fist to understand and then to be understood. One of the greatest traits of leader is to listen…really listen. A lot people think they listen and will describe themselves as good listeners but in reality they can still be much better. In words of William Stringfellow – ‘Listening is a rare happening among human beings. You cannot listen to the word another is speaking if you are preoccupied with your own appearance or impressing another, or trying to decided what you are going to say when the other person stops speaking’. Truth be told most people when listening, cannot wait for their turn to speak and get their views across. I hear managers and leaders all the time saying “I understand where you are coming from but…” If you think about it in terms of proportion we have two ears and only one mouth, so what does that tell you? There will be difficult situations for many people, conversations about redundancy and restructure, about cost cutting and putting things on hold. If you approach these conversations with intent to understand and not to agree or disagree, but understand fully the other person, only then you will be more effective at creating the space to be understood.

Sharpen the saw – If you took an inventory of all of the things you know, all the knowledge you’ve gained from courses and books how long would the list be? If then asked you exactly how much of it you consistently practice, how much shorter would your list be. The real leader knows that practice is a constant. You will continually practice your skills in order to remain sharp and effective. If Tiger Woods, Roger Federer or Lionel Messi only applied their skills during game time, they wouldn’t be half as good as they are. The investment in practice is what helps them to step up their performance in live situations. Similarly, if you only practice listening in a conflict situation are you really going to be an effective listener? If you only put first things first on occasion how can you expect you plans to work?

The full seven habits are a great simple set of principles of life and business. I’m by no means perfect but these habits have had a positive influence on my life and I attribute much of my success to the practice of them. I hope that they will have an impact on you too.

I was doing my usual sweep of the web looking for new keynote speeches when I ended up watching a video clip on TED.com of David Logan talking about ‘Tribal Leadership’

In my corporate days I’d come across various psychometric testing tools such as Myers Briggs, Belbin and such like as well as the meta-programs in NLP, which are designed to give an insight in to how people think and operate. Listening to David, his theory added a further layer of looking at human behaviour from a group level and understanding how it manifests itself in organisational culture.

The basic premise is that we seek out people like us and form tribes based on how we see the world. In fact this is how society is formed.

David’s keynote explained that there are 5 key stages of tribes and tribe formation which help can helps understand them better.

Stage 1 Where people say “life sucks” – These are people see no hope for the world, they can see point in contribution and where they are cut off from or have cut themselves off from society. Examples here are prisoners, gangs and underground culture.

Stage 2 Where people say “My life sucks” – These are people who are unfulfilled with their own lives, the see no future for themselves, in terms of their job or career prospects – their job is a means to an end and a seen a just a cog an a system over which they have little influence. Think civil service, government agencies, public sector

Stage 3 Where people say “I’m great and you’re not” – The typical blue chip corporate culture. It’s about individuals out doing other individuals, the mantra is “We/I am better than you!.” To get ahead you have to be in competition with others, you are are pit against colleagues and measure against one another. Here politics are formed, motives are general about self preservation, it’s all about “what’s in it for me?”

Stage 4 Where people say “We’re great”. It’s where people come together for a greater purpose beyond themselves. It’s doesn’t have to be a humanitarian purpose – just a common goal that brings or unites the group. They see the value in collaboration, co-operation and sharing. This is where innovation thrives, where revolution is born, where transformation happens and revolutionaries exist.

Stage 5 Life is great – Leadership at the highest level, change the world kind of stuff. This is beyond the self, beyond the us and for good greater that the collective at much higher level.

In today’s ever competitive landscape where advances in technology and globalisation have transformed the way business is done and I believe that it is stage 4 tribes that will survive and prosper in this new economy. It is the organisations that embrace the need to move to a more collaborative approach to working and understand that harnessing the power of talent across functions, disciplines and responsibilities that will be most successful for the long term.

Stage 4 is where visionary, leading, cutting edge companies and organisations operate.

David’s team concluded that it is the ‘culture’ that drives the way the tribes behave and by culture I am talking about the ‘way in which things are done around here’.

Leadership in these businesses understand that it is them who drive culture. They know that when you take a group of people and unite them under one common goal which is greater than their own individual goals, interesting things begin to happen.

I was lucky enough to have been part of an organisation that did this really well in the UK. In 1998 a quirky bank called egg took on the giants of the credit card industry and promised to ‘revolutionise the experience of financial services for it’s customers through unleashing the power of people’

Rather than represent a ‘tick in the box’ for having a mission statement that so many other companies seem to do, the difference with egg was that this became part of it’s DNA. It wasn’t just a lofty ambition…it was the core purpose. It was the reason why people came to work. It was what drove the daily decisions made. It was what people referred to when needing direction. It was what the collective stood for.

When you have people from different ‘tribes’ and with such varying models of the world it becomes even more critical that the possibility being described was engaging enough for each stage of the tribes. Egg’s leadership team not only understood that their job was to give people that possibility to live into in a manner where they could then entrust them to deliver, but also once they moved people there to keep them there.

Few will argue that what they achieved in the UK market in such a short space of time was remarkable.

The approach to leadership at egg isn’t just reserved for big business…it’s just as and I would argue even more critical for smaller business to give their people a common purpose and possibility to live into. Think about it how much impact does one person not pulling in the same direction have in your business?

I invite you to find out what tribes exist in your business.

Start to observe people, I mean really observe people. How we see the world drives our behaviour and behaviour is simply the external evidence to what is really going on inside.

Ask ‘How do you people interact?’ ‘How do they react to change?’ ‘How do people get ahead in your company?’

Listen for how people communicate. What is their language saying? Do they speak “we” or “I”? Is “can’t” a commonly used word? How do they describe their prospects and they way they feel about their work?

In recent weeks the British people have seen a potentially defining moment in it’s political history as two opposing parties came together to form a coalition government as they take on the challenge of stabilising the country.

There are sceptics, doubters and experts that see nothing but failure. How can two parties with such opposing views really work together?

What I am wondering is would it make any difference if the two leaders were women?

Would the tactics have been the same? Would we be looking at the possibility of a successful government in a more positive light?  Come to think of it would we have voted any differently?

Before you answer, consider the following.

A few years ago I came across quote in Business week from Bruce Nussbaum who said “We are in the midst of a cultural shift that involves leadership shifting from the voice of authority to the voice of understanding. Listening, understanding, connecting and communicating are the key skills the business culture today and the essence of true leadership”

If we are to believe that this is the case, then when it comes to skills like listening, understanding and connecting women simply have the upper hand. They rock.

In her book  The First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They Are Changing The World, Dr. Helen Fisher argues that “The twenty-first century economic community are going to need the natural talents of women. …Women have many exceptional faculties bred deep in history: a talent for words; a capacity to read non-verbal cues; emotional sensitivity; empathy; patience; an ability to do and think several things simultaneously;…a penchant for long term planning; a gift for networking and negotiating; and a preference for cooperating, reaching consensus, and leading via egalitarian teams”

There are countless other books and pieces of research which bring out similar ideas.

Tom Peter’s author of the best seller “In search of excellence” describes in his later work that there is a set of attributes found more commonly in women than in men.

• Women practice improvisation skills with greater ease than men
• Women are more self determined and more trust sensitive than men
• Women appreciate and depend upon their intuition more than men do
• Women, unlike men, focus naturally on empowerment not on power
• Women develop relationships with greater facility than men.
• Women are far less rank conscious than men.

Men like structure. We like boundaries and rules which define or describe ‘our place.’ Which is why I commonly find that men relate to being a leader as a position that you hold as oppose to a behaviour you exhibit. Men see leadership is a task of tangible outcomes and not the emotive animal that it is.

So would the coalition government stand a greater chance of success if the leaders were women?

Well, I guess we will never know for sure but I do believe we could say that a female leadership team maybe better equipped to lead a collaborative team than their male counter parts. They would probably connect with greater ease and comfort than their male counter parts and listen far more.

There is one factor to consider above all of this that could pour cold water on to some of these arguments. The corporate world is still very male dominated and the danger would be that in order to get ahead women in more senior roles are having to take on the traits of their male counterparts, forced to operate in manner that is the opposite of what is required in the ‘new’ economy.

So what do you see in your organisations and businesses?

Do you see difference between male and female leaders? Do you agree that those differences exists and indeed are they important in today’s world?

Speaking - a critical skill

If you’ve ever managed people or tried to get a group of people to do something in business you’ll know how frustrating it can be when you don’t quiet get the results you wanted.

So who’s fault is that? Many  would look towards their people and make the assumption that “they didn’t listen” or perhaps “they just don’t get it”.

How interesting that we look to the capacity of others to understand the message we deliver but seldom question our own ability or effectiveness in conveying the message.

As a leader in business your job is to motivate, inspire and lead your people to execute your plan. It’s fair to say then that your speaking skills are critical to this process, after all if you can’t get them to listen, how can you expect them to follow through with actions?

Whether you’re speaking to your staff or your prospective customers, it’s your ability to capture their attention and imagination with your message that  is going to define your results. So really when you look at it in the cold light of day, the responsibility sits firmly with you.

It’s not that people don’t want to listen, it’s just that your message has to find it’s way through all their other distractions. It doesn’t matter if you’re speaking to one or many, whether it is a sales or conference call, a team meeting or a sales presentation; the truth is you have short window of opportunity to captivate the listener, create the desired impact and inspire them to take action. In a world where people are bombarded with more and more information, that window of opportunity is shrinking fast.

Refining, developing and learning speaking skills is a must, otherwise you’re just wasting time in front of an audience that’s not listening. Sure, they maybe there in body but are they off on a mental trip across the globe while you’re trying to share important information?

Communication experts across the world agree that it’s the speaker that makes the difference when it comes to engaging the audience. Don’t be fooled into thinking that it’s personality, charm or charisma that makes that difference either. The most charismatic of leaders can have their message fall on deaf ears. No, it’s to do with your presence, integrity and ability to connect with others that is the defining factor.

We’ve all been in presentations where your eyes glaze over or you start looking at your watch wondering when the break is. Is that the kind of impact you want to have on your audience?

So here are some tips to perk up your presentations.

• Make a point and tell a story – This phrase transformed by presentations. When you are trying to get into people’s mind the last they want is a bunch of numbers, statements and boring data. You have to bring what you are saying to life, make it interesting and make them take notice. Yes the data and information is important but in order to make it real share a story or personal experience that illustrates the point.

• Keep distractions to a minimum – In the business world we have become accustomed to using powerpoint slides and flip charts, but many of the speakers I come across end up using them as a prompt or worse still read from them word for word! If you are going to use props like powerpoint be careful to ensure that they don’t become the focal point. You are the messenger not the slides!

• People will forget 90% of what you say – If you think that everyone in the audience is hanging on your every word then you are sadly mistaken. Yes you may be passionate about your topic but they’re not. Your focus instead should be on stirring up emotions. Think about the best speeches you’ve ever heard, do you remember everything or a specific message because of the way it made you feel?

• Slow Down – One of the biggest mistakes in delivering a message is speaking or moving too fast. SLOW down…take a breath and pace yourself. The speed at which you speak is probably faster than you think and what you hear inside your head is probably much faster than what they hear!

• Say it, don’t read it. – The best messages are delivered when it doesn’t feel like a speech. It’s a conversation and should come across that way. If you write a speech out do so using the words you would use normally (obviously there are exceptions!) and not elaborate phrases. You should sound natural and not robotic or over rehearsed.

So, act now. Make the decision to upgrade one of the most important skills that you can posses in business. It make sense to invest in a skill which is universal and easily transferred no matter where your career path or business will take you.

As a business owner, leader, entrepreneur, consultant or coach speaking in public is one the most critical skills you should develop in order to bring you success.

Speaking in business means speaking at meetings, in interviews, with potential clients, colleagues, and customers. In today’s hi-tech world of video casting technology and the popularity of social media it now also includes video blogging, podcasting, teleconferencing, and making corporate videos or appearing in the national media.

Simply public speaking is anytime you need to deliver message and influence an audience through the spoken word.

It’s art that when mastered will improve your career prospects and your business results. Employers consistently rank speaking and communication skill as one of the key skills they look for. In fact both undergraduate and graduate Business school alumni who attended the University of Minnesota placed oral communication at the top of a list of skills that were relevant to overall job success

Being an effective leader requires the ability to communicate and inspire. Public speaking skills are a essential part of being able to communicate effectively. When you think about it, most problems in business are down to poor communication. Increasing your ability to get your message across means you will reduce the problems you experience and save valuable time in the long run.

You will increase your capability to express your ideas, influence your colleagues to explore options, work collaboratively with greater confidence.

There is also evidence that shows that people who good at speaking in public have higher levels of confidence and self esteem. If you can engage your audience with your message and do it with impact, integrity and credibility you will have a formula which all but guarantees you success.

Like all skills you learn the abilities you develop as a speaker will spill over in to other areas and bring about benefits in other areas of your life.

In short, speaking in public is a critical skill for anyone who is serious about their business or career.

This week I was delivering a leadership workshop with a partner company to a group of senior managers working within a large blue chip organisation.

One of the questions we asked the group to contemplate was “What is the leadership mindset?” The question drew out some interesting responses. Some described it as a set of beliefs, values and attitudes to empower people, whilst others talked about leaders being born not made and that the “mindset” was either there or not.

For me the mindset for leadership is a simple shift in thinking and in priorities which moves you focus from ‘you’ to ‘them’ and therefore I side with Robin Sharma when he says “leaders can be trained” as I believe leaders are made not born.

The glory in leadership comes not from what you achieve but from what you help others to accomplish. It’s a selfless journey into empowering your people to better themselves and perform to their greatest ability. The priority of a leader is to remove the interference that gets in the way and instead create pathways which lead to peak performance.

More than that though, leadership is about authenticity. It’s about being real.

The problem is that in many businesses and organisations ‘leadership’ is something people think that you do. Leaders are ticking boxes or carrying out a set of functions rather than actually leading. Why? Because as much as companies may demand that people be themselves at work, but the ‘unwritten rules’ in organisations stop that from happening.

People become fearful of being the real them and instead create a ‘persona’ which fits the bill and keeps them ‘safe’. Which then perpetuates a culture where people fail to be transparent and adopt strategies to look after themselves first.

The further you journey into the world of leadership the more you have to be real. People can spot a fake a mile off. I am sure you know or have known with people that claim to be one way but in reality are very different, if not look to the world of celebrities for countless examples. To lead you must be the same person ‘off stage’ as you are ‘on stage’ to truly win the hearts and minds of the people. Your teams will notice even the slightest of inconsistencies between what you say and what you do. This video from www.50lessons.com is a great example of who a CEO stood for one thing in all that he said but his actions failed to match.

As leader you drive the culture. It is your actions that define how people around you will behave and respond.  If you demand people have a particular stand but you fail to hold up that same standard then you lose credibility and you know how incredibly difficult  it is to win it back.

So ask yourself, how real are you as a leader? If you were in the audience with your people watching you, what inconsistencies might you see? Do actions match your words?

We attended a great event yesterday and met a great guy called Joel Roberts. Joel has work in the media in the US for a number of years and he specialises helping businesses use the principles of the media world to grab and keep our attention into how they communicate their business message.

What was interesting and why we’re writing this post was that Joel referred to a book called the “The World is Flat” by Thomas L. Friedman. The book is about globalisation and impact on the landscape for business.

Friedman got the idea for the book after he visited the CEO of Infosys in Bangalore – the Silicon Valley of India. Upon arriving he was taken to a huge room with great big screens that had live video streaming from London, New York, Jedda, Cape Town, LA to name but a few. What he had walked into was global conference being hosted from India in real time. The story goes that the CEO turned and with a smile said “The playing field has been levelled hasn’t it?”

So why is of relevance to you?

Well, as a result of this ‘levelling of the playing field’ your competitors are now not just on your local High Street. They are not even just in your Town or City, most probably not even in the same Country. Your fiercest competitor could now be sat any where in the world. Technology advances mean that the whole world is now connected.

Secondly, whilst technology has exported to the far reaches of the globe so has the attention span of the Western world. People’s attention spans are shorter now than ever before – we think in 30 second chunks!

So here’s the challenge for your businesses. You have to get your message to stand out from the thousands of competitors and capture the dwindling attention of the cyber generation.

Now that’s a challenge.

One of the first things you can do is to start thinking in terms of problems. There are 2 kinds of problems  - the ones you have and the ones you don’t. You are in the business of either solving the problems your customers have or help them see that they have the problem you want them to have..as Joel would say “You are in the problem distribution business”

To begin to clarify your message, ask yourself “What problem’s do your customers lay awake at night thinking about and how does what you have solve them?”

Yesterday I was at a networking meeting where a friend shared the results of an interesting study about the impact of mental conditioning on life expectancy. Before I tell you about that, I want to give you a little background.

He began talking about his recent trip to Australia’s Steve Irwin Zoo and how he witnessed a miracle in the tiger enclosure. He saw a young trainer swimming about in the man made pool with not just one but several tigers playing with her in the water.

I am assuming you have seen and appreciate how big tigers are. You really don’t want to be messing about with them!

So amazed was he that he asked one the other trainers how this was possible. “It’s all about attitude” he was told. “You have to have positive mental attitude because these amazing cats can smell fear.” He was told that the training team approach the tigers with love each morning and play with them and at night before they sleep the same happens. He was also told that if on any day any member of the team was not feeling 100% they were not allowed to interact with the tigers.

So what has all this go to do with business?

Well, isn’t it true that at times we feel like the people out there we do business with are like tigers on the prowl? Now, if you were to approach these people whether they are sales prospects, suppliers, debtors or partners with an mental attitude which was even just a little negative, what do you think happens?

Human’s can ‘smell’ that fear too. We can see when someone is not 100% confident. We get a gut instinct that tells us that something is not right. don’t we?

So a key to our success is adopting the a positive mental attitude. We have to think and act like a champion. I say act as well because just thinking it is not enough.

What happens when you try and sell when you’re not feeling 100% in your mind? What happens when you try and have those difficult conversation and don’t believe 100% in what you are doing? How much time do you spend giving yourself “love” or do you spend all day beating yourself up?

Mohammed Ali always told himself “I am the greatest” win, lose or draw. AND he acted like the greatest. He trained like the greatest, he spoke like the greatest, he walked like the greatest, he thought like the greatest, what did he become?

The Mayo clinic in the US did study that showed that optimists are healthier, recover fester and live long then their pessimist counterparts. It was calculated that on average some one who is an optimist will out live pessimist by 16 years!

Just by adopting a more positive attitude in life can increase your life expectancy, all you have to do is think about it!

Martin, Joseph & Vinay at NLP Meets the Secret in London

What a great night we had yesterday in London with one of our inspirations Joseph McClendon III.

Joseph has been in the personal development business for over 20 years and has been working with Tony Robbins for much of that. He is a great speaker, presenter and coach and if you haven’t seen him speak you really should check him out!

At the seminar last night, Joseph was talking about creating a successful life and he focused very much on one of our key principles and teachings which is all about understanding with absolute clarity what it is that you really want.

When he asked the audience of 700 people how many knew exactly what they wanted, only about 20 arms went up. Isn’t that amazing?

You see, knowing what you really want with specificity and clarity is the first step to living the life you want. We talk about the difference between destination and direction in the FREE e-book on our website (you can sign up for it by completing the box on the left!) and how just having direction is not enough for true fulfilment and success, you need to know the exact co-ordinates. When you focus on what you want, guess what? You have a greater chance of getting it!

The crazy thing is that most people spend most of their time focusing on what they don’t want. They don’t want debt, they don’t want to be over weight, they don’t want another failed relationship.

So do yourself some good. Get some pen and paper and start to write down ALL of the things you WANT.  Don’t just settle for what you think you can have but what is it that you REALLY want, exactly want in your life!

If it’s money, how much? A new car, which one? A house? What will it look like? A better body, what will you look like?

Be specific create your self a vivid picture in your mind’s eye and the let the journey begin!

Team Five Alive – Three Peaks Challenge 2009

My brother and his friends recently completed the Three Peaks Challenge which involves climbing the the three highest mountains in the UK over 24hr period. It’s no mean feat!

The boys did great, they completed the task and raised over £5000 for the Anthony Nolan Trust which I sure you will agree is a fantastic achievement.

I agreed to pick them up from Mount Snowdon after the last decent, though i didn’t bank on driving a mini bus full of very excited wives and girls friends – but that’s another story.

The luxury of today’s mod cons meant that we got regular updates and as we got close we learned that two of the lads had suffered set backs as they’re knees gave in after completing the second climb. They rest had gone on.

Here is the crazy thing, even though they had completed two of the highest peaks in the UK – over 6,500 ft – they still felt liked they’d failed.

Go figure that? Most people wouldn’t climb 1000 ft let alone 6500ft!

Isn’t it interesting that even after a such an achievement the focus goes on failure?

The group that went on to complete the third peak included my youngest brother. When he finally made it back, he talked about how he almost gave up after seeing the impact on his friends on the second mountain. So I asked him what kept him going and he told me that it was all about mental state. Even through his body was saying “no more” his mind and mental strength focusing on ‘why’ he was doing this carried him and the rest of the team through.

As one of my great teachers Steve Siebold says in his book ‘177 Mental Toughness secrets of the world class’

“When a performer begins to experience physical or emotional pain in the heat of the battle, the brain, whose primary role is self preservation, asks the question: “why must I suffer?”. The champion will answer the questions with the vision they have carefully constructed , and will continue to fight….”