David Chinsky & Associates

February 2009

The Leadership Fit® Newsletter is written and mailed monthly to leaders seeking the

clarity, confidence, effectiveness and vitality

necessary for achieving their highest level of leadership fitness™.

IN THIS ISSUE

The 100 Faces of Leadership

Crowdsourcing

One More Thing

Forward to a Friend

The 100 Faces of Leadership

I have asked thousands of participants in my leadership workshops to define the activities of effective leaders. Many point to the leader as the key visionary for the organization, while others point to leaders as motivators, risk takers, delegators, communicators and about 95 other vital roles of today's effective leader. I am working on an article (and perhaps a book) on the 100 Faces of Leadership.

Here is a short selection of some of the more common answers I get when asking my clients about the role of leaders in their organizations.

Leaders Do the Right Thing

Faced with multiple choices, leaders do what they believe is the right thing. They are confident in the direction they and the rest of the organization have set and they do not take short cuts to achieving the end goal. They stay focused on desired outcomes and choose courses of action that consistently support the strategies and intentions of the organization. When mid-course corrections are warranted, leaders move quickly to adapt and adjust and give little thought to selfishly protecting their initial positions.

Leaders are Good Listeners

Knowing that effective communication is a balance between both sending and receiving messages, leaders hone their ability to hear competing positions and create environments where others can trust that their ideas and opinions are appreciated and valued. Leaders encourage others to contribute to decision making by demonstrating their openness to a diversity of perspectives. When leaders do choose their preferred course of action, they recognize the level of engagement and the quality of the input they receive, thereby promoting more of the same the next time a decision has to be made.

Leaders Work at Developing Other Leaders

Leaders invest time in identifying successors and create opportunities for others to increase their level of contribution to the organization. Focusing on long-term value, leaders ensure the impact they are making is sustainable over time by devoting ample amounts of time to developing high potentials and high performers.

What are the top ten activities you perform as a leader? Share your faces of leadership with us by emailing your top ten to info@theleadershipfit.com.

One More Thing

In our Institute for Leadership Fitness™, we have a learning module called "The Power of Feeling Your Best". In this section of our training, we focus on how balance, nutrition and exercise contribute to leaders becoming fit.

Here is a link to a video we show as a follow-up to one of our vitality modules that reinforces the learning around the impact of some of the foods we eat. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpoAtwVyzZI

If you enjoyed reading this issue of The Leadership Fit® Newsletter, we invite you to forward it on to a friend or colleague by clicking on the above link.

Should you wish to reprint any part of this newsletter, please go ahead.

We ask, though, that you include the following attribution: "© 2009 All Rights Reserved by David Chinsky & Associates, a management development and executive coaching company. Visit them at www.theleadershipfit.com."

Crowdsourcing

Each month, we review a book selected to both engage and challenge leaders as they seek to make a difference in their organizations.

Our pick this month is Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business by Jeff Howe.

Over the last few years, a number of authors have explored the intelligence of groups.

In The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki argues that groups are "remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them."

In Crowdsourcing, Howe describes a shadow workforce available to any company with a complex or thorny problem they are having difficulty solving. This workforce comprises individuals who have knowledge in areas outside of their traditional 9 to 5 jobs and who often lack the professional certifications, the credentials or even the training most people would expect is necessary to come up with workable solutions.

This worldwide set of resources, connected by the Internet, represents individuals willing to work in their spare time on problems that interest them even though they spend most of their waking hours doing something else professionally.

The book provides numerous examples of companies leveraging this powerful set of resources, including iStock which depends on "amateur" photographers for their growing collection of stock photos, and Procter and Gamble who from time to time reaches out to the crowdsourcing community for solutions not readily available from their own talented and specialized workforce.

Many are discovering the power of diversity in solving problems, both corporate and governmental. Crowdsourcing in an emerging asset for organizations and their leaders who recognize that "the people you'd least expect to solve a problem [are] exactly the ones most likely to crack it".

For our current reading list, please click here.