leverage Archives - Dennis E. Gilbert

28
Aug 20
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Leadership Leverage, Are You Using It Properly?

Tags : artful leadership leverage psychology of work teams

When you need to move a big or heavy object, leverage will help. For the human side of your organization, leadership leverage may be the difference between movement or staying stuck.

Do you have leverage? Are you using it appropriately?

People often confuse a formal position or authority with leverage.

Do what I say, when and how I say it, and everything will be fine.

This is sort of like moving an egg across your yard or down the street with a bulldozer. This isn’t the kind of leverage you should use.

Leadership is not really about formal authority. Formal authority helps, yet the best leverage will come from being more artful and less commanding.

Decades ago, perhaps a half-century or more, formal authority made the biggest impact. Today, the formal authority should be the backup plan, not the primary method of operating.

Society has shaped and shifted to a different understanding of what it means to work. The psychology of work has changed. Understanding it matters now more than ever.

Leadership Leverage

Leadership leverage means that you can utilize the strengths of the individual or team to get more accomplished. Ideally, it means doing it more efficiently with fewer required resources.

Consider that strategy may be the biggest friend of leverage. Tactical approaches always matter and mission objectives are completed by the appropriate use of tactics. Yet, you shouldn’t confuse tactics with strategy.

Fighting metaphorical fires in the workplace is tactical, not strategic.

Leadership leverage develops through strategy, purpose, and persistence. It also happens through teamwork, relationships, and inspiration.

You probably wouldn’t bring a bulldozer to the Easter Egg hunt.

Much of the workforce won’t respond well to commands. They want to be part of something, respected and inspired.

Leverage is a gentle giant.

It gives more, and takes less.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

22
May 18
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Do You Leverage Your Busy Strategy?

Tags : leverage plans strategy tactics

Ask someone how things are going and they may simply say, “Busy.” Do you have a busy strategy? Is your intent to do a lot of things, keep the engine turning, and get to the next milestone?

Great Plans

Strategy is not just a schematic on a cocktail napkin. It shouldn’t be about that finely tuned ten-page document that hasn’t been accessed in your digital folder in the past eight months.

While both of those things may matter a great deal, the best plan is only a plan without proper execution.

Your daily tactical approach to accomplishing work will condition what happens next and more importantly how soon. Being busy is typically considered to be a good sign. The thought is, “Yes, I’m busy, and that means I’m making things happen.”

Going Places

Being busy reminds me of a metaphorical expression I once heard. Something like, “Busy is like a rocking chair, lots of movement but you really aren’t going anywhere.” A busy strategy has activity and motion, does it get you anywhere?

If you have a busy strategy you may be knocking things off the to-do list and that certainly may be an accomplishment. Do those things really matter? Your daily habits of do this, do that, and check the box, are they productive?

Most people would quickly agree we are living in a fast-paced, never slow down, World. A thriving service-oriented economy has service-oriented businesses popping up like weeds in grandpa’s vegetable garden.

Are you providing value? Are you leveraging your work?

Busy Strategy

One of the best questions to ask yourself when you are busy is, “Does this effort produce outcomes that can be leveraged to support the long-term plan?”

When the answer is, “Yes.” Then you should be considering how you are making that leverage a reality. Unused leverage doesn’t really have much value.

Building the spreadsheet, attending the meeting, or checking email may get something knocked off the to-do list but it also may be movement that isn’t getting you anywhere.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+

24
Apr 18
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Is Attitude Everything or Just Something?

Tags : attitude career leverage promotion skills

Recently someone asked me what makes an employee special. The conversation was centered on a particular employee known to both of us and how he, or why he, was promoted. My suggestion was that his attitude made the difference. Is attitude everything or just something?

Skills and Attitude

Skills are important and nearly everyone focuses on skill building. Is attitude a skill? We know that hammering a nail requires a little skill and a little energy and there is labor involved. The same is true about attitude. We often just don’t understand the aspects of emotional labor.

Most jobs require specific skill. Therefore, nearly everyone has demonstrated that they have acquired the skills necessary to do the job. You don’t have to look far to find someone who has more experience, a different or better education, and perhaps even some natural talent that sets them apart.

Leverage and Labor

Recently, I was asked to speak to a small group about entrepreneurship. One of the underlying principles of my talk was about leverage. In my business, leverage is everything. Most of the work, the marketing, and the building of intellectual property, it is all leveraged.

Leverage and your emotional labor are what sets most people apart.

People pursue the degree, not a bad choice.

People work hard and for great lengths of time, which is reputable, respected.

In the workplace, people with the wrong attitude are seldom promoted.

Your knowledge, skills, and abilities are only the minimum requirements. Consider the decisions and choices that people make throughout the day, for many days, for the time that some people will call a career, this is what makes the difference.

Is Attitude Everything

When you endure the emotional labor, you’ll create something.

Prove you have the ability to navigate the political currents, adjust your habits, set your ego aside, and work to help not just to finish. Most of all, when you bring your energy, demonstrate resilience, and show up better than the rest you’ll have leverage.

Is attitude everything? Your attitude is not just something. When attitude is what you stand for, you’ll stand out.

– DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+

11
Apr 18
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Fresh Start and Leveraging The Boundary

Tags : clean slate fresh start leverage new beginning

People sometimes ask for a do over. The idea is that if we throw away the mistake, the failed project, or the effort that we feel we wasted we can do better in our next attempt. Are you looking for a fresh start?

Clean Slate

The baby boomer with his or her yellow pad just rips the page off, crumbles it, and uses the nearest trashcan for a basket. The millennial highlights all the text, and then cuts it. Regardless of our generation, we often feel there is something magical about a fresh start.

We seem convinced in our fresh start that we will develop some newfound creativity. It is a clean white board, a new document in our word processor, or staring at the “What’s on your mind?” prompt.

For years, we’ve been told to color outside the lines, think outside of the box, and know no boundaries. The problem often is that no matter how hard we try we still face limitations, a framework that we believe we need to operate within.

Sometimes our frame is too small and our ideas are also limited. In other cases, our frame is too big. We can’t see a clear path for problem definition and most of all, problem resolution.

Leverage

Operating within our frame, our clean sheet, or a blank screen, still has value. The frame may not be our worst obstacle. Our worst obstacle may be discovering how we leverage everything on the edges of the boundary.

It may be the right turn on red at the traffic light, asking boss at just the right moment, or calling the client when they have just discovered more room in the budget. At any other time, we would have been stopped and feel forced to operate within the boundary.

Fresh Start

Your next fresh start may feel like it begins with a clean slate, but instead of diving into the middle or upper left hand corner to get started think about working from the edges.

It may be the leverage of the boundary that holds the most value.

– DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+

18
Sep 17
-

Does Your Best Work Happen In a Vacuum?

Tags : communication leadership leverage motivation vacuum

How do you create your best work, alone or with help? Certainly, sometimes a lack of interruptions equates to more productivity, but for most, the real work comes about from collectively working with others. Would you create more success or less by working in a vacuum?

Less Interference and More Productivity

Doing it all is a large task, and one that probably will lack efficiency, insight, and will only fulfill the needs of the few. Employees sometimes argue that they could accomplish more with fewer meetings, fewer interruptions of their work, and by cutting back on their reporting requirements.

Different but somehow similar, employees might wish their inbound email would decrease. They may wish the questions from others wouldn’t be so silly, and even that their phone would stop ringing.

Still there is more, there are the employees who just want to sell, the ones who only want to design, and the ones who just want to count the money.

Certainly, capitalizing on the true talents and interests of each employee is valuable. Depending on the job, time set aside to concentrate and think about what you are doing might help to create some great work. Getting away from unproductive meetings and compiling unread reports may help too.

In a Vacuum

Chances are great though that your best work doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It doesn’t happen without help, influence, and the trial and error that involves others. It doesn’t happen without good communication, or with no communication at all.

Your best work may come from combining the insights from others, even when you disagree, even when you believe there is a different path, and especially when you’ve hit a few stumbling blocks.

One person may be great at marketing and another great at sales. There are also those who are great at design and some that are exceptional at the build. Still some will be the best with money management and others thrive with keeping everyone accountable to the plan.

Best Work

The ones who figure this out early and understand that they need more input, more thoughts, and more capabilities will usually achieve more.

The best way to move a heavy object is with leverage. It works for big success too.

– DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+

Tag Archives: leverage

Aug 20

-

Leadership Leverage

May 18

-

Great Plans

Going Places

Busy Strategy

Apr 18

-

Skills and Attitude

Leverage and Labor

Is Attitude Everything

Apr 18

-

Clean Slate

Leverage

Fresh Start

Sep 17

-

Less Interference and More Productivity

In a Vacuum

Best Work

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