On a recent LinkedIn Poll, I asked folks, just like you, "Which leadership characteristic was most effective in a job, project, or team you've been involved with?"

Definitions of each leadership style featured were:

Autocratic – Confidently issues directives, especially in urgent situations. An autocratic leader promptly and effectively issues strategy, procedures, and direction. This leader may praise personally but will just as easily criticize someone. They can be friendly or hostile putting a priority on the health of the organization. Example: Bill Belichick and Margaret Thatcher

Participative – The leaders gather input from team members for everyone to contribute to decision-making. The leader still decides but allows others to feel engaged in the outcome. They can spark creativity while remaining objective. Examples: Indra Nooyi, Walt Disney, and Nelson Mandela.

Laissez-faire – Don’t let the name fool you. They are far from a lazy leader. They empower employees without micromanagement. They provide feedback when asked, otherwise, they listen carefully and are expert delegators. At times, the team may not fully understand the organization’s mission or the leader’s expectations. Examples: Steve Jobs and Warren Buffet.

Transformational – Employees rally around their grand vision. With a team eager to evolve personally and professionally – they coalesce under a singular cause. Their qualities include encourager, communicator, visionary, and inspirational. While lines of communication are always open, burnout and some feeling left out of the big picture may occur. Examples: Meg Whitman and Jeff Bezos
                                                              and/or
Adaptive – This leader adapts as needed. They can be an autocrat when there’s chaos than a lassez-faire leader when necessary. They may democratize decisions, then be more proactive with transformational leadership. Examples: Cynt Marshall, Richard Branson, and Abraham Lincoln

Comments included: 

"When working with companies I use Transformational. that being said, I would say a good leadership style must be situational, so the answer would be Adaptive. Whereas when working on a new project and looking for innovation, might be participative, etc."

Dr. Karen Jacobson, CEO of Aligned Leadership

"I gravitate to transformational but I know it depends on the situation. I pilot who has lost three engines is probably not going to focus on inspiring the team. She'll be focused on a "pack mindset" where each member of the crew knows exactly what to do. BTW, Eric McNulty has some great thinking on this in the book, "You're It: Crisis, Change, and How to Lead When It Matters Most."

Dain Dunston, Founding Partner at Reservoir, LLC

"I choose laissez-faire. That worked for me as an often traveling CEO. I had great people execute the plans day to day!"

Dianna Booher, Hall of Fame Speaker - Bestselling Author

"In the words of the late Arte Johnson, "Verly Intelesting." On the more serious side, Vince, I would have to classify myself as adaptive. The biggest challenge to that characteristic is clear communication that connects with the audience."

Brian Kennedy - Small Business Leadership Consultant

"Love the breakdown of each leadership type. I think there are good attributes to each one of these leadership styles but at the end of the day we must be able to adapt to any scenario."

Chip Eichelberger, Certified Speaking Professional

Here's to good leadership that is required in times of uncertainty, opportunity, challenge, and triumph. 

#leadershipstyles #team #bestjobever #setbacktobreakthrough

How does beginner’s luck work when subsequent and more informed efforts are subpar? It all has to do with your elephant. 🐘

Credit Dr. Lee Pulos’ research: in one second, your conscious mind processes with 2,000 neurons while your subconscious utilizes 4 billion neurons. To remember this amazing ratio, it’s like an ant 🐜 who thinks it decides direction while riding on the back of an elephant. Who’s really in control of where they end up?

You make a decision to go west, get fit, meet the partner of your dreams, add a comma (or two) to your bank account, and sign up five new clients before month’s end. But, alas, you end up east, out of shape, dating a doofus, distracted by a scary bank balance, and no new clients within miles of the bookings board. It’s time to understand the mojo of beginner’s luck.

Simply put, your elephant doesn’t know what you don’t know. The ant is busy trying to figure out the top-line basics while the subconscious mind is given complete autonomy. Imagine 4 billion neurons’ only measure - is the outcome.

Hit the ball in the middle of the fairway. Close that sale your 1st time out. Get a Standing O your first time on stage.

You’ve started in flow. Non-thought. Your elephantine subconscious mind guides you without the annoying, fear-based part of the conscious mind interrupting with second guesses. After a few tries, you start to “think.”

Right? 🤔 No? 🤔 What the heck?

It gets worse. The ant screams down at the elephant.

What was I thinking? 😖 That was stupid. 😖 I suck!

Meanwhile, the elephant is listening and reacting.

Was I thinking wrong? 🤨 Am I stupid? 🤨 Did I let myself down again?”

Presto, a downward spiral of misalignment and negative patterns. It vortexes from bad to worse.

Bring that Beginner’s Luck Mojo back. Next time:

✅ Under-Think It
✅ Trust the Inherent Power of Your Elephant
✅ Relax, Step Forward, & Save Uncertainty for Another Day

You got this!

#beginnersluck #powerofsubconscious #antandelephant #setbacktobreakthrough

What if Maslow analyzed your hybrid workforce? The good, bad, and ugly side of work from home folks can be improved with Maslow’s ‘ol hierarchy of needs. Indeed, a hybrid employee’s basic needs may be met but there’s distinct deterioration as we ascend that staffer’s experience triangle. 

Working from home checks psychological and safety boxes. To many, comfort and peace of mind from working at home are profound. It feels good to feel good. Moreover, convenience leads directly to safety. Stay at home, have everything delivered, and your chance of getting in a life-altering car wreck drops to zero. Avoid those virus-carrying masses and you compound the feeling of security. That feels extra good. But this is where the good feelings are throttled.

To seek belonging is as natural as breathing. It’s an itch that needs to be scratched. At home, the TV may be flailing around that need. If it’s on one station, your belonging is reinforced but limited. The belonging isn’t tactile, it’s tribal. Zoom may be functional but it’s not profound. A two-dimensional screen is content-rich, and in-person interaction is rich in experience. If you were only to eat donuts from a donut factory, your human experience may feel full but you’ll be isolated from balanced nourishment. 

Climbing this hierarchy and esteem doesn’t stand a chance when your own bubble of thoughts makes up all sorts of narratives. Reality may land anywhere on the spectrum of:

Enlightenment  <—>  Doubt  <—>  Full-on Negativity

Left alone with our thoughts we lack the touchstone of a more comprehensive, broader awareness. 

Extended isolation without human interaction and self-actualization becomes as fleeting as a feather in the wind. It’s a fantasy to seek fulfillment when belonging and self-esteem are pushed aside. 

Remember, I’m on the front lines of this dynamic. I’m a communicator. A writer who is often asked to give virtual presentations. I live the hybrid life! But I won’t succumb and be limited by stopping at the basics of food, shelter, clothing, and security.

• Coaching speakers and executives have me actively going to them or welcoming a home visit.
• Presenting at local conferences or far-away locales is a priority.
• Helping meeting professionals climb the total human experience is more important than ever. 

Let’s talk. Better yet, let’s meet to build a personal sense of friendship, confidence, and creative problem-solving. Let’s bring Maslow to the party and see how we can bring life to that hybrid workforce of ours.  

 #coaching #experience #workfromhome #eventsindustry #setbacktobreakthrough

A self-serving bias can cut two ways. Avoid any form of self-destruction.

As you'll see in this video, if you take credit and say, "Those good things are due to me," then you have a self-serving bias. If you say, "Those bad things are not my fault, they happen to me because of someone or something else," then you have the other side-of-the-sword where you are playing the victim.

Basically, having these kinds of biases hobble your growth.

The solution is to let go. Let go of the credit. Let go of the victim language. Just let go of the bias altogether.

It all correlates to the versions of the truth. There's your truth. The other person's truth. Then theirs likely 'the truth.'

Having a bias may make you feel good. You may feel vindicated. You may feel 'right.' Your bias may launch you into, "The good fight." But if bias has anything to do with ego or fear, it is a bias that is on the road to dysfunction.

If you absolutely HAVE to HAVE bias, then have a bias for LOVE while you have a bias against hate.

As Martin Luther King said, "Hate is too great a burden to bear."

Look for ways you can observe without judgment. Look for opportunities to clarify someone's point of view. Challenge yourself to actively listen over silently formulating what you're going to say next. Self-serving biases diminish your relationships with others, and, get this, your self.

Breakthroughs in life happen when you are constantly in the solution loop of listening, not talking. Test out what you think and challenge your own beliefs. Be part of a conversation not a one-way stream of your biases. Being right is far less important than being happy.

Let go of the self-serving bias.

Here's your breakthrough for today. You'll gravitate to that which you believe to be true, so be the architect of that truth. Let me say that again, backwards. Be the architect of your truth so that you can gravitate towards that truth.

We could spend an hour on this topic and give you all sorts of good examples of celebrities that had a truth in their mind and they gravitated towards that, positive and negative. Gosh, the first person that comes to mind is Muhammad Ali.

He thought he was the greatest in the world, he told everybody he was the greatest in the world, and you know what? He probably was, in terms of boxing, the greatest in the world.

There are people that have a truth they are the architect of. There are some people, it just occurs to them. So be the person that chooses the truth that you want to gravitate towards. Be the architect of that truth, design it.

Now, how?

Well, repetition, repeating things over and over help. You keep telling somebody something, in some form or fashion it's gonna come true. Negatives can occur too.

If you're not conscious of your truth, negative things can occur because you may have a subconscious truth that's going to take you backwards.

So be the architect for maybe a positive truth, and really design that in a way that has not just repetition, but has emotion attached to it. When you think about it, you feel it inside, there's this buzz inside, you just go, oh, I would love to do that.

So when you establish that truth, you'll gravitate towards that.

You do that, well, we got this.

Today’s message has to do with not being so fixated on making the other side wrong.

Whether it has to do with business growth, overcoming obstacles, maintaining resilience or a simple conversation that finds itself on the topic of politics. 

I'm a DIY (Do It Yourself) kind of guy.

There are really two categories of people.

There are the "DIYs" or there's the “I don’t care how it works just fix it” kind of person.

Remember the book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It is a book from long ago that triggered a lot of us to say I want to figure out how this works and get after it. It did not trigger people that went I don't care how it works and quite frankly I'm going to pay somebody to figure out how to make it work because I got better things to do.

Those two categories of people are very different. But here we are. Two sides who don’t see eye to eye yet they coexist wonderfully.

They don't try and make the other one wrong and say, “Well you got it wrong. My way is the right way!”

They coexist. They get along.

So whatever category you find yourself in, we can get along with the other side.

In fact when it comes to getting along … we got this!

Coaching for Business Growth

Growing your business can be a challenge. Growing your business when employees are working from home can seem like an insurmountable challenge. We have found that coaching has a massive impact on employee engagement and keeping leaders happy.

The problems that exist with remote work environments is managers struggle to know if people are delivering on the work-time they've committed to. But the real focus should be on the results that the employees are producing.

This video is designed to have your people understand how to stay engaged and deliver those results that you're looking for. It's also designed for your employees to enjoy the message in a short, brief, and fun video.

If you're curious about how coaching (from an outside perspective) can improve team productivity or individual productivity, then give us a call. We hope you have a great day and enjoy this breakthrough video.

Deliver experiences that put everyone in the front row.

Whether your virtual event has 10,000 people on it or 100, follow these highly effective approaches to have maximum impact and lasting influence. I've been doing video production for years (starting with a vampire movie when I was 12 to documentaries to live feeds for World Championship Olympic Wrestling, etc). Couple that with me award-winning presentation skills and I know you'll benefit from this video. Meeting planners and C-Suite leaders agree that their most valuable asset, human capital, needs to be educated, entertained, and motivated for a successful online event. Watch this 1.5-minute video to make the most from your virtual meeting.

1. Go Spielberg, Not Fosse

Think production not theater. Use multiple cameras for a dynamic experience.

2. Hire a Production Host

Your IT Guy Aint' THE GUY. A Production Host knows Tech AND Production

3. Hire Presenters to Set Momentum and Tone

Pro Speakers Keep the Energy High. Execs Lead the Way.

 4. Assign Moderators for Optimum Flow

Ensure you have PreSet Polls, Q&A Plants and Meeting Rooms

5. Entertain, Educate and Motivate

Ensure each session has a healthy dose of each. 

6. Turn Your Panel into an Interview Festival

Assign 3 interviewers per panelist. Make your audience the hero.

7. Pre, During, Post Engagement Tools

Set the stage with Pre Event Materials that come-to-life during and after the event.

Everybody's running around trying to do what the competition's not doing, especially when there's chaos. Here's how to have a competitive advantage.

Instead of trying to do what the competition's not doing, imagine your competition is the highest performers, that person that does what you do, and instead of doing what that person's not doing, try this. Do what the competition is not willing to do. What is that high performer not willing to do?

Typically, those are the things you're not willing to do either. The biggest advantage of virtual presentations is we're creating a dialogue, people communicating better. The biggest mistake is we're taking a bucket of content and dumping it on people's head and hoping that it sticks. The only way content is gonna stick is through an experience, and it's especially true with virtual presentations.

For you, I've created a virtual presentation for you that accomplishes three things.

First, that it's ENTERTAINING. The people are engaged in the story because of storytelling. This recreational skier to Olympian in four years is also the motivational piece.

The second piece, being MOTIVATED to move forward and to be inspired by someone else's story that draws them in to that experience.

The third piece is the CONTENT, the content that gets inside their head that's both innovative and counterintuitive. The people go, "Okay, that's a great idea. "Hadn't thought of it that way." 

For example, use a gold dot is a trigger for your emotional buzz. I put them everywhere. On the back of my cell phone. On the odometer in my car. On the bathroom mirror. On my toothbrush. A gold dot triggers that emotional buzz of where you want to go.

When you have an emotional quotient attached to where you want to go, your people are going to get exceed their goals faster than you ever thought possible.

Listen, bring in a professional speaker. As an Olympian, a "New York Times" best-selling author, and Hall of Fame speaker, I'm able to take people on an unforgettable experience in a virtual presentation where they're engaged. It sticks for a lifetime. The best part of my virtual keynotes is they are interactive.

We had a comment the other day, the attendee said, "I felt like I was in the front row." Put your audience in the front row of this virtual presentation and given them an experience. We had zero people drop off the call. Zero. Zero people because they were entertained, educated, and motivated all at the same time.

Let's do those three things within your virtual presentation.