Give or Receive ... Receive my best wishes for 2013

Would you say you're more of a giver or a receiver?


Generally do you rather give or receive?


What do others say about you?

A dicton says
Do not complain about what you're getting ...Look more carefully at what you're giving ...!

For these holiday greetings and for 2013 ...
Don’t keep for yourself the love you have in you, for life, for others ...
Share it! Offer it! Multiply it!

With all my heart I wish you

a MERRY CHRISTMAS 

and a
HAPPY and GENEROUS NEW YEAR 2013!

Do you take the time necessary to make it work?

I see a lot of very dynamic and flexible companies where people run like headless chickens to react and respond to clients, colleagues, challenges, to the market, to competition...

There is a lack of clarity about what is really important, what is key to the business, what’s strategic... Some confusion between what is urgent and what is important....

When you don’t put the focus on what’s important, it becomes urgent.
Then everything becomes urgent.
And everybody reacts to urgency...

In that context, are you sure your company is performing at its best?
Do you have the necessary visibility? 
Do you adequately monitor progress and performance?
When appropriate, can you step back, review and adapt what needs to be?

How can you be proactive and not only reactive?
How can you put some structure in the company’s management?

How do you handle it?

Tao of Leadership : Force and Conflict

Leadership: Force & Conflict

The leader who understands how process unfolds uses as little force as possible and runs the group without pressuring people.

When force is used, conflict and argument follow. The group field degenerates. The climate is hostile, neither open nor nourishing.

The wise leader runs the group without fighting to have things a certain way. The leader's touch is light. The leader neither defends nor attacks.

Remember that consciousness, not selfishness, is both the means of teaching and the teaching itself.

Group members will challenge the ego of one who leads egocentrically. But one who leads selflessly and harmoniously will grow and endure.


The Tao of Leadership. by Lao Tsu

Uncertainty

Uncertainty

How do you perceive uncertainty ?
Like a pond filled with crocodiles ready to eat you ? Like an infinity of potential dramas and disasters about to take place ?
Or like a sea of ​​possibilities, of encounters, of exciting opportunities to learn, to experience, enjoy, fail, move on and grow ?

Do you have confidence in what surrounds you ?
How much do you trust yourself ?
Do you take permission to be yourself ?
Do you accept that uncertainty, that the unexpected may feed you, teach you, change you ....?

Are you flexible with what's going on ?
May be you'd rather have everything well controlled, well kept, in its place ... and you get worried when things change, when contexts evolve, when new challenges appear ...

Everything is uncertain. Life is uncertain.

Taking command of your life is about accepting and playing with uncertainty . It's accepting that you can find yourself in uncomfortable situations, facing difficulties or failures... and that you will also live intense moments of joy, happiness and success.

Be flexible.
Learn to accept uncertainty, play with it, enjoy yourself, and the things that need to happen... actually will ...

Accept you may be wrong. Dare. Play. Fall down. Get up. With humour and love.
Accept you don't know everything and trust your intuition, your guts, your heart, they will show you the way.

Trust, get moving, act. It will make things happen.

What do you make of it?

Can you ask for help?

Leaders also ask for help

"I can manage by myself. I've always done so... I'm not going to change at my age ..."

The culture in Latin countries has taught people that mature adults must be able to lead, drive and be in control of their life ...by themselves.

Needing help or support is like showing weakness, disability, vulnerability. It's like being incomplete, immature, unprofessional, not serious, not credible ... or senile.

Do you want more in your life?
Could you ask for help?

Change is challenging.
Changing is a struggle because it requires unlearning, letting go, being open, flowing and learning again.
Change is life ...

Asking for help to get what you want is to be confident in yourself, in the other, in life.

Asking for help is not believing in the routine, not falling into the trap of fear, of stillness, scarcity, rigidity.
It's trusting yourself, your abilities. It's believing in abundance. It's wanting to move, to be agile, flexible and complete.

Open the door to the unknown, to doubt, to all possibilities.
It may be the price to pay to get the changes you really want to achieve in your life ...

  Would you be able to ask for help to initiate change? 

Are you in a context of flexibility and development? In your business? In your life?

In what context are you?

In companies the rules and routines that slowly build up tend to limit the behaviours and attitudes to standardized styles and patterns.

Rigidity builds up at all levels. On the way people are, relate to each other or organize as teams. The consequence is that critical business issues may never be brought to discussion, even less addressed...

As if an important part of the company's reality was not perceived ... as if the organization was partially blind...

In your team, is there a context that makes it possible to raise new, innovative, unexpected topics or issues?.. A context where it's possible to doubt of things that up to then were considered certainties?

The capacity to be flexible and reinvent depends on the context that a person, a team or an executive committee are able to create ... their ability to question any established aspect that does not contribute to business objectives..

In your business are you in a context of flexibility and development?
And in your life? In what context are you?

Are you willing to create this context?
In your company? For you?
Are you willing to have faith and dare do so?

The Roots of Authentic Leadership

Where are you stuck?

With what models and perspective you define your environment, your situation?
Where are you blocked?
What makes you prisoner?

We grow and build our beliefs.
Thanks to them, in the past we have survived, we have achieved goals, we have succeeded.
From there we have built our opinions, our references, our logic. We have defined what we think, how we think, how we do things, what we should or should not do ...

Do these beliefs work for you today? Or is it time to review and renew them?

Which of your knowledge, skills and beliefs are still useful to you?
Which no longer help?
Which do you need to unlearn and forget? Which do you need to strengthen or initiate?

How to take away these rigidities that have grown on you and no longer serve you?
Would you accept getting rid of them? 
Do you dare?

Is it important for you to be right?

Sometimes, at personal or professional level, we get involved in endless discussions where each one just wants one thing: be right!

These situations may have no limits as everyone sticks to his/her own vision, perception and opinion of the subject... and just doesn't listen.

Gradually the volume levels rise, there is anger, tension, stress ...
The interlocutors enter in fight mode ... they speed up, get nervous, defensive, aggressive, tense ...
It becomes vital that everybody recognize THEY are right.
What battle is this? A fight for what?
A battle to continue to exist?
A struggle to validate their beliefs? Their opinions?

During our life and experiences we gradually learn that these fights are futile. They are things you need to let go.

Wanting to absolutely be right is having a stuck, stiff, smug posture. A victim stance.
The dream of a victim is to convince of their opinion, is to sell their justifications. Their justifications to stay as they are...If others don't buy these nor agree with them, it can only be because they don't understand anything...

On the contrary, when you're responsible, when you're in charge, being right is secondary. The important thing is to get results, to learn, be flexible, be open and get closer to your goal ... Accepting that it's not important just being right.

Actually... isn't it when you finally understand you were wrong that you grow the most as a person?

Do you think I'm right? What do you think?

Is your organization totally focused on getting results?

Is your team fully focused on results?

The collaborators and different departments of an organization are indispensable and complementary in delivering high quality and best in class services to their customers.

Between them, at any moment, discrepancies on objectives or malfunctions in communication, management or quality can affect delivery standards.

All departments in organizations have their own vision, their own objectives and difficulties. But they struggle to perceive the neighbours'. They don't see the other departments' issues. They  don't understand what happens there ... Or don't want to make the effort to understand ...

When trouble or difficulties arise, everyone has an opinion or a solution. And tends to put responsibilities on the others, outside.

How do you make different teams come together and focus on superior goals and objectives that are beyond their "local" needs and issues?

In your company, on what do people focus?.

On blame? On being right? On looking good and showing they did it well?

Or on resolving the global issues. On facing difficulties, taking initiatives and risks to achieve results.

Is your organization fully focused on getting results?

How long should you insist?

As Einstein said, "do not expect things to change if you continue doing the same thing."

If it's not working, is it necessary to persist in doing what you're doing?

When you are in situations of doubt, in search, unstable, you tend to look for solutions outside. You study the markets, the industries, the offerings, the opportunities. You tend to develop a contact network without much sense or much logic.

It may be quite efficient if, in doing so, you are being flexible with what is going on and if you are able to learn from it.

It's okay if you are not forgetting yourself in the process.
You are what really matters here: you, what you want, what motivates, challenges, engages you, what you are willing to learn, to achieve, to go back for more.

It's great if you are connected with your intuition, if you respect yourself in your strategies and choices, without judging yourself.

Are you being consistent and aligned with who you are?
Aren't you misled by useless schemes or beliefs?


Step back for a minute  and look at your strategies and tactics ... How are you feeling about them?
Beyond the rational and logical aspects, what is your intuition telling you? What are your guts longing for?
Are you on track? Are you going your way?

Or are you insisting?
Are you persisting with something you don't totally believe in?

What would you change to make it work? To feel coherent with yourself?

Change Management vs. Change Leadership -- That's the Difference

Change Management vs. Change Leadership -- That's the Difference
John Kotter

I am often asked about the difference between “change management” and “change leadership,” and whether it’s just a matter of semantics. These terms are not interchangeable. The distinction between the two is actually quite significant. Change management, which is the term most everyone uses, refers to a set of basic tools or structures intended to keep any change effort under control. The goal is often to minimize the distractions and impacts of the change. Change leadership, on the other hand, concerns the driving forces, visions and processes that fuel large-scale transformation. In this video, I delve a little deeper into the differences between the two concepts, and highlight why we need more change leadership today.


http://vimeo.com/20000373

A full transcription of this video post is below:

There is a difference that is very fundamental, and it’s very big, between what is known today as “change management” and what we have been calling for some time “change leadership.” The world basically uses change management, which is a set of processes and a set of tools and a set of mechanisms that are designed to make sure that when you do try to make some changes, A, it doesn’t get out of control, and B, the number of problems associated with it—you know, rebellion among the ranks, bleeding of cash that you can’t afford–doesn’t happen. So it is a way of making a big change and keeping it, in a sense, under control. Change leadership is much more associated with putting an engine on the whole change process, and making it go faster, smarter, more efficiently. It’s more associated, therefore, with large scale changes. Change management tends to be more associated—at least, when it works well—with smaller changes.

If you look around the world right now and just talk to people, it’s not just semantics. Everybody talks about managing change and change management, because that’s what they do. If you look at all of the tools, they’re trying to push things along, but it’s trying to minimize disruptions, i.e., keep things under control. It’s trying to make sure change is done efficiently in the sense of you don’t go over budget—another control piece. It’s done with little change management groups inside corporations, sometimes external consultants that are good at that, training in change management. It’s done with task forces that are basically given the whole goal of push this thing along, but keep it under control. It’s done with various kinds of relationships that are given names like “executive sponsors,” where the executive sponsor watches over this thing to make sure that it proceeds in an orderly way.

And change leadership is just fundamentally different—it’s an engine. It’s more about urgency. It’s more about masses of people who want to make something happen. It’s more about big visions. It’s more about empowering lots and lots of people. Change leadership has the potential to get things a little bit out of control. You don’t have the same degree of making sure that everything happens in a way you want at a time you want when you have the 1,000 horsepower engine. What you want to do, of course, is have a highly skilled driver and a heck of a car, which will make sure your risks are minimum. But it is fundamentally different.

The world, as we all know right now, talks about, thinks about, and does change management. The world, as we all know, doesn’t do much change leadership, since change leadership is associated with the bigger leaps that we have to make, associated with windows of opportunity that are coming at us faster, staying open less time, bigger hazards and bullets coming at us faster, so you really have to make a larger leap at a faster speed. Change leadership is going to be the big challenge in the future, and the fact that almost nobody is very good at it is—well, it’s obviously a big deal.

John Kotter

Leadership : Do you accept to show your vulnerability?

Leadership is commonly linked with power, strength, commitment, security, authority, discipline...

These qualities are key to drive industries where the objectives are productivity, quality and efficiency.
They may however be inadequate or insufficient in less automated areas where the capacity to be flexible, agile, innovative is key to the business...

Energy, strength, commitment are crucial.
But a leadership that is based on authority, security and discipline may well have a negative impact. It can create routine, generate rigidity, lack of flexibility to listen, adapt, respond...

In industries requiring constant renewal and creativity, a culture of commitment and freedom is needed to challenge teams, to promote initiative and pro-activity. A context where employees are free, engaged, impatient, passionate. Where they act as entrepreneurs.
To get that, people need to have the right to be themselves, vulnerable and imperfect...

The leader who accepts to be vulnerable ...acts as a role model, is an example that imperfection and vulnerability are OK...

Don't you think?
Would you accept to be vulnerable?

Are you having a sensation of chaos?

You just never stop. you have too much to do, so many to-does, tasks, plans to prepare, manage, execute, so many people to see, so many conversations to have, so much information to gather, so many inquiries to do you feel like you're not controlling your day any more ...

You feel in a chaos. Trapped. You're not managing your agenda. Your agenda's dominating you.

You start some task, are distracted by another one, a third one comes up, you're interrupted by a fourth, you jump onto a fifth, a phone call gets your mind back to a sixth ..... You spend your day going from one thing to another, with a feeling of not delving into anything, of staying on the surface .... aimlessly, meaninglessly ...

Tell me ..... what do you want? Do you have a vision? A direction?

In everything you do, which jobs or tasks serve your purpose? Which serve your goals?
And which ones you just have to do but definitely don't contribute to your vision? Which are contaminating your days and taking you away from your path?

Do you know where to go?
When you get clear and remember your vision, when you connect with your goals,
Doesn't it seem like chaos just fades away? ...
When you are who you want to be, everything just starts to make sense again ...Don't you think?

What is important for you? What makes sense?

Management: why are emotions useful?

We are affective, emotional, social creatures. 

Companies strive to be objective and automated...They are driven by facts, data, by systems ...

Relationships inside companies are modelled on appearances, stereotypes, references that define what is success and failure. They tend to be cold, distant, inhuman ...

If at any moment a collaborator feels destabilized, uncomfortable, fragile, he will have to hide it not to be considered weak, inoperative, inefficient, incompetent ...

Any team member, however competent, can experience moments or times of insecurity, doubt, discomfort ... These periods, however short they may be, will leave a mark, like a wound in his/her motivation and energy ...

When will executives and managers look beyond and accept everything there is in a person?
Not only the rational, factual, competency based aspects.
But also the doubts, dissatisfaction, discomfort, uncertainty, sadness they may experience or feel ...

Do not fear in giving space to human feelings! It will not open the door to incompetence or indecency ... Creating intimacy with people does not make you vulnerable ... It does not decrease your influence, leadership or authority ...
It's actually the opposite: it opens the door to new possibilities, to more genuine and closer relationships, to higher motivation and commitment.
Because what limited the person has been said, expressed and taken into account with care, respect and confidentiality.

Accepting, taking into account and managing the emotions unleash the potential of individuals, teams, companies ...
It allows teams to better integrate. It creates coherence and gives sense.

Open the door to emotions.
Don't be afraid ..
Accept the small discomfort it may create in you.
You'll also learn from it.
After all, aren't you vulnerable too?

Will you? Will you dare?

What do you think?

What labels do you put on people?

Lately, during meetings, one of your employees, partners or colleagues has shown to be lacking enthusiasm or dynamism. He has not responded to your schemes or expectations at any given time, has remained sceptical to an initiative you wanted to launch...

Since then you've put a label on him... You see him as passive, disengaged.... he lacks energy, liveliness. Something is wrong ....

As a proactive and hands on leader, you then tell him to wake up, get on to it, you raise the bar, put some pressure, over-communicate your expectations ...

No reaction, it doesn't works ... To the labels you had set at the beginning you're adding new one ... Now you see him as unreceptive, inflexible, unprofessional ...

How about you?
In this relationship, is there something you missed?
How did your labels influence your attitude?
Are you sure you've tried to understand what was happening?
Do you know where your partner really stands? How he is?
Do you want to know?

If you step back and think about what's actually happening, is your partner really as you labelled him. Are you sure he is?

What would happen if you got away from all these labels?
What could come out of your communication, from your exchanges?
How would your conversation change?

These labels we put on people limit the other, limit you, limit your possibilities and your potential as a team.
Do you want to set aside these labels from your mind?
Do you dare to try?

What do you think?

Do you have a personal strategy? A professional strategy?

Personal Dream and Professional Strategy 

Even if it may be unclear in our youth, along our life we slowly identify our passions, interests, values​​, desires...

What gets you moving?
What are you passionate about?
What do you want to develop? To grow?
How do you want to contribute? To people? To your market? To Society?

With its rules, its discipline, its objectives, requirements and routine, the workplace and corporate environment lead us to forget what we have inside, the things that really put us on the move.

Do you feel comfortable with doing what you do?
Are your role and mission aligned with your desires? Are they coherent with your interests and personal goals?

If you are looking for new challenges, are you seeking in areas that really interest you?
Or do you go for it in all directions?

Do you have a personal strategy?
Do you have a professional strategy that defines where you want to go?

Demanding or Excellence driven?

These two words are opposite for me.

Being demanding connects me with perfectionism, always wanting more, comparing to others, never being satisfied.
It's effort, endeavor, force, rigidity, tension, authority, fear.

Excellence connects me to passion, overcoming, to doing your best, the desire to go further, to do better, the satisfaction of work well done, outperforming.
It's energy, it's about flowing, flexibility, ambition, leadership, love.

Being demanding limits results to established expectations.
It's negative. It comes from distrust, emptiness, disbelief. From scarcity.
It is based on discipline and control.
Being demanding holds down, imprisons. Is meaningless.

Excellence has no limits.
It's positive. It comes out of trust, fullness, confidence. Of abundance.
It is based on inspiration and support.
Excellence releases, unleashes. It brings sense.

Which of the two have you chosen for your life? 
For yourself?
With your environment?
In your company?
Demanding Excellence driven? Which do you choose to be?

Are you cheating yourself?

Nowadays the need to renew and reinvent ourselves may be higher than ever... At all levels: personal, organizational, national, international ...

Our education and training models make us prisoners of established paradigms, visions and interpretations of the world. It's hard for people to be flexible or creative, and to connect with new ideas, perceptions or visions. On a personal basis people also struggle to be themselves, evolve as individuals and be faithful to who they are.

Strangely, "The school has taught us how to cheat"

At school we learn to deliver to the system what is required from us. We learn to respond to its expectations, to its models and references. To pass and be accepted...

Over the years we continue to respond to the requirements of our environment. We gradually move away from whatever made us unique and different, from our most valuable and original potential...
We turn away from who we are in essence. We focus on what we think the outside world wants of us. Doing so we slowly become unable to hear what comes from inside ...

We lose much of our originality and uniqueness in trying to fit into predefined boxes and criteria in which we want to excel ...

As adults, we continue seeking answers outside. We give the greatest importance to what others think ... We look outside to see how we should do things ... To find references and role models.

With these attitudes...
How can we possibly be creative and innovative?
How can we find our own answers when we are trapped inside?

How to stop cheating?
How can you be the best version of yourself?
How to adapt without cheating yourself?

Tao of Leadership: Materialism

The wise leader leads a quiet and meditative life. But most people are busy getting as many possessions they can.

The quiet path leads toward a more conscious existence. The busy path creates an exaggerated materialism.

Becoming more conscious leads toward God and a sense of the unity of all creation. But excessive consumption is only possible by exploiting someone.

The world's goods are unevenly distributed. Some have a great deal. Most have very little. We are running out of enough resources to go around. Everyone knows that.

Yet those who are already encumbered by possessions get more and more. They even brag about how much they have. Don't they know what stealing is?

Owning lots of possessions does not come from god. People get it by manipulating other people.

Tao of Leadership - Lao Tzu

What do you accept submitting to ?

From an early age we learn to adapt to what others want from us.
To be recognized, cherished, loved.
We may even become smart monkeys to please them, be liked or admired by them. 
To exist.

As adults we don't always 100 percent choose the opportunities that present to us. We learn to adapt and make the most of them.
And gradually, if we are not careful, we may end up accepting things that are not part of our most intimate goals or values.

What about you?
What do you accept in your life? And do not accept?
What you agree on submitting to?
What do you undergo?
Is it okay with you? Are you sure?

What do you want to hear? What don't you accept to hear?

People in a management role directly influence the way their employees communicate or not, results, facts, data.

The manager's business vision, his management style and expectations tend to guide and limit the type and nature of  messages that are shared by collaborators.

Especially if the manager struggles to be open to everything around him and to connect with everybody working with him, if he has trouble hearing other people's views or ways of doing that are different from his, or if it's hard for him to accept results not complying with his goals.

The risk then is that,  to avoid tensions or problems, employees may well end up "serving" more of the same to the director in order to meet his expectations, to please him, to give him what he expects.

What a shame! So many opportunities may be lost by not raising information, issues and topics that are useful for the business!

And how dangerous! How risky for the company when teams show indicators and results that are aligned with the Executive managers' expectations but are too optimistic and totally out of touch!

What about you? What don't you want to hear?
And your boss? What does he not want to hear? What do you "serve" him then?

Where do you want to take your team to?

In an organization, the way a team interacts and works is a direct consequence of years of activity, practice and experience.
The specific characteristics of the team have slowly being defining and building: shared criteria, beliefs, judgments, accepted roles, common behaviours, attitudes.
Up to the unique style of communication, exchange, collaboration and work environment that exist today in the company.

There comes a time when it may be important to clarify and renew these practices and update the objectives, references, values ​​and behaviours of the team.
And it's not easy to do so from inside, because you are part of the system.

To change and improve team efficiency and results, coaching and mentoring can be interesting tools for the manager in that they allow to reflect on what is happening on a day to day basis.
Reflect on how it is being experienced by the executive.
Reflect on how it is being experienced by the team.

The coaching process allows to clarify where the executives and their teams are doing well and where perhaps they may need to adapt, change, improve their interactions and relationships.

Coaching accompanies executives in defining their vision, what they want for them and for their team, where they want to take it to...
 It facilitates the change and renewal processes of the team.
 It facilitates the executive's change and renewal process.
What about you?
Are you satisfied with your team?
How do you see it? Its motivation? What results is it achieving?

What do you want? Where do you want to take your team to?

Are conflicts acceptable?

  We generally think that harmony is desirable in any organization:
- The atmosphere is friendly, it's more comfortable for employees, there are no direct and open confrontations
- Managers' authority is not challenged, based on the idea that if you have no conflicts, leadership and command are being respected by the teams.
Avoiding conflict is basically positive...Up to a point...
It becomes a real problem when potentially important business issues, tensions or information that could be revealed, raised, debated, actually remain unspoken, silenced, and never subject to discussion ...
Then the corporate culture is one of superficial harmony...
In such a context, who might be willing to raise a hand, ask a question, raise an issue?

The company is paralysed by inertia and routine ....
What are the consequences or costs for the organization?
What critical commercial, operational, strategic, organizational issues remain in silence? And never appear in the light of day?
A somewhat political environment, a rigid management, a misconception confusing leadership with authority can shut people up and silence many ideas or initiatives of interest ... 
Businesses today cannot afford missing new development, improvement or innovation opportunities ...
As an entrepreneur or manager...
Say No to the sterile personal and political conflicts  ....
But say Yes to open debate, promote lively and productive discussions for the good of the company
...Even if they may create conflict!
How do you see it? Do you agree?
How do you handle conflict in your business?

Leadership: Are you enjoying yourself?

Working a lot with executives, I often wonder about Leadership...

What’s the difference between a manager and a leader?
How does it work? What’s so magical about it?

Of course, to act and have impact as leaders, entrepreneurs and managers need to have personal qualities and abilities, they need to have values, drive, ambition...
But beyond that, for me, there is definitely one common and indispensable condition for a true and powerful leadership to happen: 
Leaders have to enjoy being where they are.

Can you inspire people if you’re not enjoying being around with them?
Can you motivate them if you’re not yourself having fun and being ambitious about what you’re doing and achieving?

And it’s not just about having fun.
Enjoying being there means being aligned with your values, being coherent with yourself... it means caring about the others, the team, the customers...It means contributing to the world in a way that is totally yours, in a unique way.

And when you are really and ambitiously enjoying yourself, you are creating a context, a link, an energy, a space where people can feel inspired, attracted, motivated, energized... where people are able  to take risks, to go the extra mile...
Then you’re demonstrating leadership.

How are you in your current position? 
Are you enjoying yourself? Are you inspiring and motivating others?

Wise Leadership: The paradox of pushing

Too much force will backfire. Constant interventions and instigations will not make a good group. They will spoil the group.

The best group process is delicate. It cannot be pushed around. It cannot be argued over or won in a fight.
The leader who tries to control the group through force does not understand group process. Force will cost you the support of the members.

Leaders who push think they are facilitating process, when in fact they are blocking process.

They think that they are building a good group field when in fact they are destroying its coherence and creating factions.
They think that their constant interventions are a measure of ability, when in fact such interventions are crude and inappropriate.
They think that their leadership position gives them absolute authority, when in fact their behaviour diminishes respect.

The wise leader stays centered and grounded and uses the least force required to act effectively. The leader avoids egocentricity and emphasizes being rather than doing.

Lao Tsu: The Tao of Leadership