Horizon Time A free monthly newsletter from the Institute for Leadership Excellence & Development Inc. (I LEAD) |
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[Venus & Mars] [Special Offers] [Retrospectives] [Interview] [Links] [I LEAD Online] |
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Welcome!
Welcome to the June edition of Horizon Time!
I know many of you travel through the Chicago area for business. My office is a short distance from O'Hare airport, so if you find yourself heading through Chicago and have time for a cup of coffee or a meal, please let me know. If I am in town, I would love the opportunity to meet with you.
Have a great month! Andy Kaufman Speaker, Author, Coach President, Institute for Leadership Excellence & Development Inc. | ||
Customers are from Venus, Managers are from Mars By Andy Kaufman From a co-worker: "From the moment I met Tom, we hit it off." About a manager: "David is driving me crazy! If the guy would plan, say, a few seconds before he speaks, we'd be a lot better off! We're constantly having to do damage control after he walks through the halls!" From a boss: "Sam is a classic case of analysis paralysis in action--our should I say 'inaction'. He needs to stop planning and start moving!" From a CFO: "I don't trust Cindy in Marketing--you know, the one who is smiling all the time. I honestly don't think she understands how serious things are." As we go about our daily lives at work and home, there are people we just seem to click with. Somehow the way they go about things lines up well with our approach. Trust builds quickly and communication seems easy. Then there are the other people. Maybe it's the salesperson who keeps leaving those annoying voicemails. Or perhaps it is someone like David, Sam, or Cindy above that we have to deal with regularly, but annoy the daylights out of us in the process. A timeless principle of human relations is that people like people like themselves. Think about it. Whether in the workplace, at home, or in the community, we tend to most enjoy those people who are most like us. I was teaching this concept at a National Sales Conference. The Chief Technology Officer chimed in with his advice: "What I think we need to do is be much more technical in our sales presentations. We should be borderline arrogant about our technical knowledge as that will impress the customer that we know our stuff." Interesting approach. Why would this CTO make such a suggestion? Because he is very technical and borderline arrogant! That's what he wants in a sales call. A technical neophyte salesperson wouldn't have a chance with him. But this same approach could be absolutely disastrous with another customer because of the same principle: People like people like themselves. Another important principle is that we're all self-deceived! None of us see ourselves clearly for who we really are. If you've managed people, you've read your share of self-assessments in performance reviews. There are those who you might just get the impression that they think they can walk on water! Then there are those who always under-sell themselves. If you could hear the self-talk of most people, you would hear a lot of tearing down. I contend that none of us see ourselves as we are and would greatly benefit from a more clear understanding. Understanding how we're wired up--what motivates us, how we see the world around us, how we make decisions, what we value, etc.--is critically important for those who desire to grow in the leadership effectiveness. So, an important mission in our leadership development is to become students of others as well as ourselves. There are many models that can be used to help in this mission. Perhaps you have heard of DISC, the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), The Matrixx (or Real Colors) System, The Social Style Model, or the Enneagram. In this month's interview, you'll learn about an approach called Brain Types. There are countless models, each aiming in a unique way to provide a method and context for explaining behaviors and motivators. You may hear people say things like, "I'm an ENTJ" (MBTI and Brain Types), "I'm a Blue" (Matrixx), "I'm a High-C, High-S" (DISC), "I'm an Amiable" (Social Styles) or "I'm a Synthesizer" (Enneagram). Regardless of the model, you'll find that each personality type has it's strengths and challenges. Understanding our own helps us to leverage our strengths and work to avoid the challenge areas. From a leadership perspective, understanding how your personality type interacts with others will help you better know how to work most effectively with each person on your team. I once inherited a group of employees after an office relocation. As the former manager was debriefing me on each person, we came to Phil. "Now Andy, what Phil needs is for you to go in and kick his butt every 30 days or so. That will keep him producing." Not being a naturally butt-kicking kind of guy when it came to leadership style, I tried a number of different approaches in the coming months. Six months later, with marginal success getting Phil to deliver, I changed gears and started using the recommended approach. I would get in Phil's face with stern emotion and make it clear in no uncertain terms what was required by when. Guess what? Phil became a strong contributor. A month or two later, it was clear he needed another visit from the drill sergeant, and then he was good to go. In the real world we don't have the luxury of simply surrounding ourselves with people like us (even if we somehow could, the truth is it would not be a luxury after all). There will always be the cranky customer, unreasonable boss, and clueless co-worker. If you didn't better understand yourself and them, you might believe that they really are just cranky, unreasonable, and clueless. With some study, however, you might just learn how to interact with each in a way that maximizes your effectiveness. My friend Bill Henry once said that "every meeting has a member of the Wizard of Oz! There's someone without a brain, someone without a heart, someone who needs courage, and someone who just wants to go home!" Whether in meetings or in the course of day-to-day living and working, learning to understand the specific needs of those around you will be a key to your leadership success. Here's my June challenge for you. If you haven't recently taken one of the assessments I have mentioned above, invest time in the coming weeks to do so. Contact me and I can walk you through the process. In addition, use the Personal Application Exercise below to think through situations where knowledge of yourself and others may be helping or hindering you. Finally, I recommend that you use the Team Exercise below in a staff meeting context to introduce the principles and concepts of this article to start developing these skills in your team. Have a great month!
The Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator and MBTI are registered trademarks of Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc.
The Matrixx System is a product of the National Curriculum
and Training Institute, Incorporated. Personal
Application Exercise 1. Open your Internet browser and go to http://www.discinterconsult.com/disc/profiles.html. This online resource provides detailed descriptions for many of the DISC profiles. Browse through the different profile descriptions. Do any of them seem to be speaking about you? 2. Who is someone that really bothers you (could be someone at work, in the neighborhood, etc.)? How does that person differ from you in terms of how you go about a task, look at a problem, interact with others, handle challenges? What if it could be proven that the person is not really a jerk :) but that they were just wired up differently than you.... Would that change how you perceive them? 3. If you have taken a Meyers-Briggs or other assessment, see if you can dig up the results. Go to the Internet or find another resource to review what the strengths and challenges of your "type" are. Keep in mind that each instrument by definition has it's limitations in truly describing you, so don't take the descriptions as gospel! 4. For the people around you that are not as easy to get along with, take time in this next month to become a student of them. Intentionally watch how they interact with others, handle challenges, react under stress, etc. In particular, watch for the conditions where they seem to get along with someone very well. Can you create some of those conditions to improve your ability to interact with the person? Team Exercise 1. Personality styles and leadership styles are distinctly different areas of study, but both come into play for the aspiring leader. The best leaders are those who can adapt their styles to match their audience. For example, the leader who is naturally outgoing and fast-paced makes a point to slow down and speak softer when she's interacting with that type of person. Who comes to mind as doing a good job in this regard (could be someone within your organization, a customer, a leader in your industry)? 2. How well do you think we are doing in adapting our styles to the individual differences and capabilities of people? For example, do we have a strong bias towards the outspoken? Do we more highly value the unemotional analytical response? 3. As a team, consider this statement: "To be most effective, we need to allow room for a diversity of personality types." Do you agree with that? In what ways is it true? In what ways is it not? 4. What do we need to do differently because of this material?
Questions about personality or leadership styles? Any war stories? Click here to share your thoughts! Thanks!
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Special Offers from the Institute Powerful,
Practical
Insights for Leading During Hard Times
Hard times or not, being a great manager is a real challenge. Add in
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Help for When
There's More Work Than Hands to Do It!
"Scott, the next action item is yours. Leslie, can you take the next
one? Well, that wraps it up. Thanks for a good meeting,
everyone."
Perhaps you know this drill. Good ideas get surfaced in the meeting.
The ideas are turned into actions, and specific owners are assigned to each
action. Then the ball drops. Scott forgets his within minutes
of getting back to the firestorm he left before the meeting. Leslie
has good intentions, but two meetings later her already too full plate gets
another helping. Net result: balls drop, actions don't get done, and
things don't get better.
Corporate America, for the most part, is lousy at follow-up. I run
across people who are able to demonstrate visionary thinking, deliver
motivating speeches, and have good people skills. But my observation
is that most of corporate America is just plain terrible when it comes to
following up on assigned actions items, returning calls, keeping
commitments, etc.
Anyone come to mind? Perhaps your boss? Perhaps someone on your
team? Perhaps you?
I came to the point one day when I realized that I was lousy
at follow-up. Too many important things were slipping through the
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things that mattered to me--that I really wanted to do someday but just
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things I had signed up to do but just couldn't seem to figure out how to
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things that needed my attention but I was too distracted to even see them.
I had all sorts of excuses. Maybe you've heard yourself utter
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I'm just not wired up to be organized!
I don't have time to get this figured out--I just need to do it!
If that thing is so important it will raise it's ugly head somewhere down
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I eventually realized that life had scaled much faster than my ability to
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Your satisfaction is absolutely guaranteed! If you don't find this well worth your investment of only $29.95, just return the materials and I will refund your money--no questions asked. Click the "Buy Now" button below to place your order!
Need a Speaker for an Upcoming Event? If you have a need for a top quality speaker or trainer on a subject that I do not cover, I can still help! Contact me right away and I can connect you with some of the best communicators available today! A good way to save time finding a speaker for a particular topic is to work with my friends at the Speaker Resource Center. Click here to send an email to Nancy, Jenny, or Rob. These people do nothing but find the perfect speaker for your needs. Tell them Andy sent you!
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Leadership Tools: Retrospectives By Andy Kaufman The best leaders do two things: deliver results and build capability. If you don’t deliver results to your customers, you’re out of business eventually. If you deliver results but do not build the necessary capability to make it easier to deliver the next time, your delivery success will not be sustainable with increasing demand. A fundamental activity of leading organizations is to use a tool called project retrospectives (sometimes also called post-mortems or post-project reviews) to continually and incrementally improve their processes. Project retrospectives are all about helping you deliver results and build capability more reliably. The hard truth is that most projects are delivered late and over-budget. As bad as that is, even worse is the reality that the driving forces that lead to these failures are often repeated project after project. In my project management training, writing, and consulting, I challenge organizations to “Never get burned by the same problem twice”. This has two important implications. First, you will get burned! The real world business environment is too dynamic to avoid any problems or mistakes. Making a mistake is not the problem, which leads to the second implication: It’s possible to learn from our mistakes in a way that we can significantly reduce the odds of stumbling on them next time around. That’s where project retrospectives come in. They are a formal way to make learning a routine part of your project management process. Though these are often done as part of an Information Technology-oriented project, retrospectives can be highly valuable for any type of department at the end of any type of project. Here are some examples:
Are you regularly doing retrospectives at the end of your projects? If so, good for you! If not, you are likely destined to repeat the same problems next time. But you don’t have to! Contact me today to talk about how to make this leadership tool a normal part of doing business in your organization. You’ll be glad you did! Do you have a story of how a retrospective helped your organization? Would like more information on how to conduct one? Contact me today! | ||
Jonathan P. Niednagel (pronounced need-noggle) is the Director of the Brain Type Institute (www.braintypes.com). Jonathan is an expert in human analysis and the assessment of mental and physical aptitude from a neuroscientific and genetic perspective. NBC News Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Bob Arnot says Jonathan’s “approach to evaluating, developing, and motivating people, is simply stunning. I've found it the most important and helpful information in the last 20 years of human understanding and development. Those who fail to use Brain Types will be at a distinct disadvantage now and in the future." Jon’s focus at the Brain Type Institute is to help groups and individuals understand what has been called the "single greatest determinant for why people do what they do." As the founder of the Brain Type Institute, Jon has dedicated nearly three decades researching and refining his approach to evaluating people with the goal of helping others to understand how God has gifted them from an inborn and indelible point of view. I had the opportunity to catch up with Jon in early June for this interview. Jon’s focus at the Brain Type Institute is to help groups and individuals understand what has been called the "single greatest determinant for why people do what they do." As the founder of the Brain Type Institute, Jon has dedicated nearly three decades researching and refining his approach to evaluating people with the goal of helping others to understand how God has gifted them from an inborn and indelible point of view. I had the opportunity to catch up with Jon in early June for this interview. AK: First of all, thanks for taking time to share your expertise with us, Jon. You have studied and researched Brain Types© for nearly three decades and have worked with hundreds of athletes, executives, students, and even celebrities to help them understand and apply the concepts. What are Brain Types© and why should people interested in personal and leadership development care about them? JN: Brain Typing has become the world’s most accurate and sophisticated approach to understanding why people do what they do, whether in the workplace, at home, or on the field of athletic competition. Each person has only one of the 16 Brain Types, which gives them an inborn, genetically predisposed wiring that directly regulates both mental and motor skills. Each Brain Type not only has inherent and specific mental proficiencies (and deficiencies) but physical ones as well. These inborn traits are the greatest determinants for why people do what they do, excluding personal ethics and morality. The “why we should care” extends from this. As you point out in your earlier article, we are all self-deceived! Imagine if you had highly accurate insight into the predispositions that God wired into you. You could know—even as a youngster—what you’re best cut out to do in life, and how best to get there. It would make a difference in the career you pursue, the spouse you marry, the situations to avoid, the opportunities to seek. Many frustrations and wasted time could be eliminated. Quite literally it would influence nearly every non-trivial choice you make in life. Similarly, imagine if you could learn to more accurately understand other people. Your ability to interact with them and, in a leadership context, develop them would be unparalleled. Scientists and leaders in business and sports are marveling at the new understanding this revolutionary technique brings—and its far-reaching implications. A good understanding of this system will enable you to appreciate and develop others like never before. AK: How does your approach of typing differ from assessment tools such as Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®) or the DiSC profile?
JN: There are a lot of instruments out there. I initially went that route for a number of years trying to figure out if there was a good way to truly understand people. As I went, things intrigued me but as I closely scrutinized the approaches and the results, I found them unacceptably inaccurate. Let me illustrate with a story:
This silly story illustrates a point that is relevant when contrasting Brain Typing to assessments such as MBTI© or DISC. First, there’s no such thing as an accurate self-assessment. In the story, it’s clear that Bob doesn’t view himself as a poodle. Maybe he thinks poodles are wimps or he doesn’t like the curly hair thing—whatever. Whether or not he knew it, he answered the questions in a way that made him turn out a German Shepherd according to the MBTI-like instrument. There are numerous reasons for getting an incorrect reading of oneself on a self-evaluating psychological questionnaire. In 1996, temperament/typology guru David Kiersey, co-author of Please Understand Me, commented in the APT Western Region Newsletter: “My guess is that the various Jungian instruments—MBTI, [Keirsey Temperament] Sorter, Singer-Loomis, Gray-Wheelwright, MMTIC—are wrong about half the time, which is to say they misclassify about every other person.” This is not to say there isn’t value in the instruments. Those based upon Jung/Myers typology are at least on the right trail. They can get you 10 yards down the path, but with Brain Typing you can be 3 miles ahead. There is no such thing as accurate self-assessment. Brain Typing is the most accurate and applicable typology today. AK: An emphasis in your research is to find a way to do brain typing from DNA, either from a blood or a saliva test, implying we are “wired” at birth with a brain type. Assuming upbringing and environment have some influences on our personality, how do you resolve the “nature vs. nurture” issue?
JN: Up until 1980 or so, the prime thought has been related to nurture. Interestingly, studies of twins done at the University of Minnesota over the last couple decades have yielded some fascinating discoveries. Though raised apart from each other, inborn factors in twins manifested similar attributes. Subsequently, genetic studies that don’t even know about Brain Types are increasingly finding genetic predispositions. Nurture unquestionably has a role. It can set the conditions that send a predisposition down a more favorable or a more unfavorable path. For example, you won’t find one of the 16 types being “The Criminal!” However, there are types that, given the right set of conditions, are more predisposed to criminal behavior. There are similarities with addictions, etc. Bottom-line, nurture plays a role, but the inborn design that God wired into us is the single biggest determinant for why people do what they do.
AK: Much of your focus has been in the realm of professional sports, helping athletes, coaches, and team management to use Brain Types© to improve performance, evaluate talent, etc. Beyond sports and business, where else have you found Brain Types© to be particularly useful?
JN: As long as the situation is dealing with people, Brain Typing has tremendous application. Whether it be in business, academics, relationships, parenting, sports, spirituality, vocations or any other aspect of life that deals with people, Brain Types can offer unparalleled insight and strategies for optimizing personal success—based on one’s individual and unique design. I just returned from the NBA pre-draft camp in Chicago. Over the week there were 70 guys running up and down the court. Simply by observing their motor skills and interactions, and following up with interviews on a few of them, I was able to accurately type them. My consulting contracts generally are with one team per professional sports, since I try to avoid conflicts of interest. Though a number of teams were interested in employing my services, I assisted only one NBA club in Chicago with my Brain Typing draft predictions. I personally find using Brain Types with families and interpersonal relationships to be the most meaningful and rewarding. Families are disintegrating or warring based on a lack of understanding of one another, a lack of appreciation for the differences in people. Young people have no direction or motivation, not knowing where they fit in into this society.
AK: Jon, from my first exposure to your research I have been hungry for more, and I’m guessing that many of my readers are intrigued to learn more as well. What are some good next steps for readers who want to learn more about your work Brian Types© and how they can apply it in their lives?
JN: The best place to start would probably be to visit the Brain Type Institute web site at www.braintypes.com. There are a number of resources available there to help your readers learn more about Brain Types. Check out the links to “What are Brain Types?”, “Accuracy”, “Benefits”, and “Products”. As this century unfolds, Brain Typing is going to be an increasingly well known and broadly implemented technology. You can get ahead of the curve by learning more now. | ||
"Upend the Trend", by Brian Brim, Gallup Management Journal. Guess what? The longer your team members stay at your company, the more disengaged they get. Ouch. Read this insightful article from the Gallup folks to see how to upend that trend! "CIO Radio: Seth Godin", You may have read Seth Godin's works--here's an opportunity to listen to him. This 6 minute interview gives you a taste of his ideas on leadership and management. "How Wise Professionals Keep a Positive Attitude", by Bob Rosner, CareerJournal.com. Recent events at your company might make it a challenge for you to try and keep a good attitude. Here's some succinct advice for you. | ||
Horizon Time is written by Andy Kaufman and is available via e-mail or on the Web for free to all registered subscribers. You are invited to forward this newsletter to anyone interested in growing their leadership skills!
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You may by including the following credit line: This information cannot be used for resale in any manner. Special thanks to Paul Bibler and Bernie Ostrowsky for their insightful editorial review. Horizon Time contains hyperlinks to web sites operated by persons other than the Institute for Leadership Excellence & Development Inc. (I LEAD). Such hyperlinks are provided for your reference and convenience only, and I LEAD is not responsible for the content or operation of such web sites. A hyperlink from Horizon Time to another web site does not imply or mean that I LEAD endorses the content on that web site or the operator or operations of that site. You are solely responsible for determining the extent to which you may use any content at any other web sites to which you might link from Horizon Time.
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