Category Archives: Leaders

Career-Professionals, ebook, Employability, Employability Skills, Leaders, Leadership, Professional Development, students

Free Ebook – What Really Matters! Volume 2, Number 3, 2010 released

What Really Matters! Volume 2, Number 3, 2010 has just been released. It is a collection of the main articles on The Organisations That Matter Learning Network (which is hosted by Gary Ryan)  from July 1st 2010 through to September 30th 2010.

The ebook makes it a lot easier for you to reference your favourite articles, as well as providing you with an opportunity to provide a gift to a friend and/or colleague.

You can download the ebook here.

After downloading the ebook, please remember to click the ‘Back’ button to return to this site.

Please feel free to comment on the value that this ebook provides you.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Employability, Employability Skills, Leaders, Leadership, Leadership Insights Series, What Really Matters For Young Professionals

Leadership Insights Series – Cecilia Chan The LiTMUS Group

In the second of our Leadership Insights Series webinar recordings, Gary Ryan interviews Cecilia Chan, a young professional experienced in providing consulting services related to business process management, process design and analysis, process simulation and enterprise architecture.

In this 30 minute webinar you will learn about Cecilia’s strategies to progress her career throughout her first five years of employment. You will also learn about the benefits that volunteering provided Cecilia in enabling her to initially break into the workforce, as well as the benefits that can be gained from being a pro-active networker.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
AFL Grand Final Draw, Collingwood, Leaders, Leadership, Professionals, St Kilda

AFL Grand Final Draw Calls For Simple Leadership

As a guest of the AFL Coaches Association for their annual Awards Dinner during the week, little did I realise that I would hear some fateful words of advice for the 2010 AFL Grand Finalists.

Legendary coach Ron Barassi was being inducted into the AFL Coaches Association Hall of Fame. As part of his induction, premiership player (and later a coach in his own right) Stan Alves was delivering a speech regarding the special characteristics of his former coach.

Part of Alves’ speech focussed on the 1977 drawn Grand Final. Alves shared the absolute confusion that swept the players and officials immediately after the final siren sounded.

“We were spent. I was spent. None of us knew what we were supposed to do. It was absolute mayhem.”

Alves shared that when the players, officials and supporters made their way into their rooms, the confusion seemed more intense than out on the ground. Then Ron Barassi did what he did best. He focussed everyone on what needed to be done.

First Barassi asked the players to go into the meeting room and to sit in the order in which they had played.

“Henshaw, you were in the back pocket so you sit here, now everyone else sit in your playing positions.”

Club officials were then invited into the room and Barassi instructed that the meeting room door be left open so that all the supporters who had entered the rooms could hear what he was about to say.

Alves reported that this is what Barassi instructed his players to do.

“If you do the two things that I am about to tell you, and then you turn up to training in the morning, we will win the premiership. Number one, turn up to the club function tonight. Number two, go home at 10pm. Do these two things and we will win the premiership.”

Alves reported that immediately upon Barassi finishing his short speech, the sense of confusion evaporated.

Barassi was able to get everyone, players, officials and supporters to focus on some simple actions. Doing this enabled everyone to have clarity about what they needed to do. In many ways the simplicity of the actions enabled everyone to say to themselves, “Yeah, I can do those two things.”

Barassi’s actions highlight that keeping things simple and helping people to focus on what is doable are magnificent leadership traits in the face of confusion and uncertainty.

For those of you who don’t know, Barassi’s North Melbourne went on to win the Grand Final Replay the following week.

I wonder how St Kilda and Collingwood are coping with their current situation? Will similar leadership to Barassi’s example be present?

What are your examples of leadership that enabled people to focus on simple actions that helped them to cut through complexity and confusion?

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Ben Cousins, Creating a Plan for Personal Success, Leaders, Leadership, Life Balance, Personal Vision, Personal-Plan

Ben Cousins’ documentary highlights the importance of balance

Irrespective what you think about the content of the Ben Cousins documentary, a powerful message that the program highlighted related to the importance of balance as it relates to success.

Our society often applauds people for ‘making it’; whether that be as an elite sportsperson, a rock star, a movie star or in achieving a senior position in an organisation.

Success is defined purely by career success. Yet as Ben’s documentary highlighted, career success doesn’t necessarily mean that all other aspects of life are in balance.

As the attached illustration highlights, balance consists of a number of elements:

* health & fitness
* career
* education
* establishing a clear plan for personal success
* having the financial capacity to live the life that you desire
* establishing and maintaining relationships for enduring success

If any one of these key elements for success are not addressed, the individual is at risk of becoming stuck; much like the person in the background of the attached illustration. The outward appearance of being successful can be undermined by not having had a truly balanced approach to life.

Balance, in this context does not mean that all the key elements for success are equal. Rather, it means that an appropriate amount of focus is being applied to each key element for overall balance in the context of the life stage that the individual is experiencing. For example, university students will have a much larger focus on their education elements than other people, while graduate employees will have a much larger focus on their career activities than other people when they commence their first job. Likewise elite sports people will also have a much larger emphasis on their career element than the average person.

Where people lose balance is that they tend to completely neglect some of the key elements for success. So, while their career element is being addressed, poor health habits, such as taking drugs as highlighted by Ben’s documentary, can undermine their life balance and ultimately, negatively affect their career. For some people it is a complete focus on their career that causes them to neglect the key relationships in their life, resulting in relationships breaking down.

If you are interested in finding out how to create a Plan for Personal Success that includes a personalised approach to Life Balance, please email Gary at info@orgsthatmatter.com .

Gary Ryan has assisted over 500 people in creating a Plan For Personal Success. Gary’s clients have included elites sports people and coaches including Troy Simmonds (Richmond Tigers), Kane Johnson (Richmond Tigers) and Darren Harris (Carlton Blues).

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Customer Service, Employability, Employability Skills, Leaders, Leadership, Service Excellence

Service excellence guides resource allocation

Organisations that are clear about meeting and exceeding the expectations of their customers are also clear about where resources should be allocated. Maybe your organisation has discovered that it has a serious Service Delivery Gap. Where would you allocate resources if you discovered such a gap?

Clearly there is more than one answer to this question and the actions that may be taken and the resulting allocation of resources will be guided by the organisations overall business strategy and the level of importance of closing the Service Delivery Gap in the short term. In this example there may not be a long term future for the organisation if it does not address the short term Service Delivery Gap. In this context, a service focus enables short term decisions to be made in the context of achieving the organisation’s long term desired future.

Quote from a research participant
We’re a small operation. Just three of us operate the store. We know everyone who works on the larger site; it’s like we are one community. Rather than spend our money on marketing pamphlets etc we hired a student to work in the store with us. We targeted one who was well connected within the community. It’s amazing how much business she has brought in. It’s the smartest money we have ever spent and all our jobs are just that little bit more secure!

What are your experiences regarding organisational resource allocations?

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Customer Service, Leaders, Leadership, Service Excellence

Understanding expectations – it is where great service starts

This is the starting point for great service. If you don’t understand the expectations of your customers, then everything that you do is likely to contribute to failing to meet them. Customers will have expectations whether you understand them or not.

They usually consist of outcome factors and process factors and have a zone of tolerance for them to be acceptable. The outcome factors relate to the reliability of the service/product and determine whether the service/product meets the customers’ expectations. The process factors relate to the customers experience and will determine if the customers’ expectations have been exceeded or not.

Quote from a research participant
Once you realise that the starting point is understanding expectations, everything else becomes a whole lot easier. All you have to do is ask people what they want, and then do your best to deliver that to them.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Employability, Employability Skills, Leaders, Leadership, Leadership moments

How ‘Leadership moments’ can develop your capacity to lead

Recently in the article How ‘aware’ are you? I explained that awareness is a characteristic of Servant Leadership. Another benefit of being ‘aware’ is that it opens up the opportunities for you to develop your capacity to lead.

It is my view that too many people see leadership as only being in the realm of formal roles. In that context, many people don’t see themselves as leaders nor their own capacity to lead because they have never held a ‘formal’ leadership role. Of course this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and people who have this view of the world and themselves rarely become formal leaders.

I would also argue that these people also miss opportunities to ‘lead’ when ‘leadership moments’ arise. Proimarily because they just don’t see them.

What are, ‘Leadership moments’?

To me, a leadership moment is any time that a set of circumstances arise that are quietly asking, or sometimes screaming for someone to take action. Just today at my eldest son’s Under 10s football match a barbeque had been prepared by two of the parents at the conclusion of the game. Quickly a line formed as the children, their parents and family members queued for some food. One of the ‘cooks’ was called away due to an urgent issue. Suddenly there was only one person trying to cook and serve food. The ‘Leadership moment’, while only ‘visible’ to some appeared. What do you think that ‘Leadership moment’ was? Not everyone noticed. Would have you? Even if you did notice the opportunity, what would have done?

Stepping out of the queue and helping to cook the barbeque, or at least asking if this action would be helpful, was what this moment was asking to be done.

‘Leadership moments’ call for someone to take action. Strangely, this can also mean that you consciously choose not to take action (see How doing nothing can be an example of leadership).

Other examples of ‘Leadership moments’ include:
You may be at work with a colleague who has a presentation and they are expressing their concerns about the presentation to you. They express that they don’t think they are ‘up to it’ and you would do a far better job than them. Either you can be ‘caught’ in their negative self-talk or you can remind them of the good job that they have done in the past and support them through their presentation, and then remind them at the end that they had not only survived but done a great job. In this example it might be easier to do the presentation for them, but would that really help them in their development?

You might be in the foyer of your office building and you see someone who looks lost. What do you do?

You are out with your friends and you can see that one of them is drinking too much and is getting a bit rowdy. What do you do?

I am not suggesting that you should take action on every ‘Leadership moment’ that presents itself to you. That might in fact be selfish (others need to be able to take opportunities to develop too). I am saying that if you consciously raise your awareness of the ‘Leadership moments’ that are around you, and then you consciously decide to take action or consciously decide not to take action, both can be examples of developing your leadership.

After all, participants in the leadership programs that I facilitate often nominate helping, guiding, taking action. foresight etc. as characteristics of leadership.

What are your examples of ‘Leadership moments’? How have they helped you to develop?

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Customer Service, Employability, Employability Skills, Leaders, Leadership, OTM Service Strategy, Service Excellence

OTM Service Strategy TM

Over many years we have experimented and developed our own model for service excellence. Our model includes six re-enforcing elements. Like any re-enforcing model, when performed correctly the model creates a virtuous cycle (things get better and better).

On the flip side, if any of the elements are missing or not performed correctly, the model generates a vicious cycle, that is things get worse and worse.

The six elements of our model include Understanding Expectations, Service Standards, Develop & Recruit, Listen, Measure & Respond and Recognise, Reward & Celebrate. Each element includes a series of sub-elements, the contents of which provide the detail for implementing each of the six core elements.

At the highest level the model itself is a story.

In order to best serve your customers you need to understand their expectations. Once their expectations are understood the organisation can create appropriate service standards that will give the organisations the best possible chance to meet and/or exceed the expectations of its customers.

Existing staff need to be developed so that they have the capacity to meet/exceed customer expectations and the organisations recruitment processes musty give it the best possible chance to attract appropriate people to the organisation.

Everyone must listen. Management need to listen to staff, staff to management, everyone to their stakeholders, colleague to colleague, department to department and everyone to their customers.

The organisation must then be able to measure how it is performing against its service standards and be able to swiftly respond if it discovers that it is off course.

Finally, the organisation as a whole must be excellent at recognising, rewarding and celebrating great service. A culture that celebrates great service will re-enforce the importance of understanding expectations and the cycle continues.

The OTM Service Strategy is supported by a 50 point assessment tool that can be used to asses an organisation’s current practice of service excellence.

Please feel free to comment on this article or to share your approach to providing service excellence on a consistent basis.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
career, Employability, Employability Skills, Leaders, Leadership, Professionals, Servant Leadership, What Really Matters For Young Professionals

Are you prepared to be vulnerable?

Over the past few weeks I have conducted a number of teamwork programs. One of the activities that I enjoy facilitating is asking the participants to form small groups and to identify the characteristics of the effective and ineffective teams of which they have been members.

Examples can from from any team experience and I encourage participants to broader their thinking about their definition of a ‘team’. Some examples of this definition include:

  • A workplace
  • A family
  • A university study group
  • A sporting team
  • A community group
  • Travelling with friends or family

After providing the participants with enough time to share their stories, I collect the results.

An interesting characteristic that always comes up for effective teams is trust. Similarly, a lack of trust is always raised as a characteristic of ineffective teams.

Trust. Easy to say. Hard to give.

Why? It is my view that trust involves a willingness to be vulnerable. In a team concept, to trust your team members means that you have faith that they will do what they say they will do to the best of their ability. When I ask program participants to describe what it was like to be trusted, they say things like:

“He never looked over my shoulder. Even though it was the first time I was doing this task, he asked if I needed any further help and I said that I didn’t. He told me that I could contact him at any stage if my circumstances changed. If I were him I’m not sure that I could have trusted me like he did. And that was special. I think I actually did the job better because I was trusted. I found it really motivating.”

“She was the leader, there was no question about that. But when we allocated tasks and she was clear that we understood what needed to be done, she let us ‘go for it’. Her door was always open and we knew that, and from time to time we would go to her for assistance, either physically or via email or on the phone. She was always available when we needed her. But she never, ever behaved like she didn’t trust us. It never felt like she was looking over our shoulder making sure we did it exactly how she would. And this was an important project. And we knew that, and we respected that. That’s why we created such a wonderful result. We were a real team and she trusted us!”

You can’t fake trust. It is either genuine, or it isn’t. In today’s complex world it is nearly impossible to ‘go it alone’. Leaders have to trust their team members to do their job, even if the leader could do parts of the job ‘better’ on their own.

To trust, however, requires the leader to be okay with being vulnerable. Trust can’t be broken if it isn’t given. So, by nature genuinely trusting someone means that you are prepared for the possibility that they might break your trust, which in turn makes you vulnerable.

In our world of accountability and responsibility, trust can become very hard to ‘give’. If I’m the leader, the ‘buck stops with me.’ If this project fails, then it’s my fault. It’s complex, isn’t it.

I doubt there is any golden rule with regard to trust. I am a trusting person, but I am not prepared to trust ‘just anyone’. I use all my ‘three brains’ (I’ll explain what that term means in a future blog) to determine whether I will trust someone or not.

Each time I trust someone I am conscious of the choice that I have just made. Trust is behavioural, so saying, “I trust you” means nothing, if (in a work example) all I do is look over your shoulder every step of the way. Being prepared to be vulnerable is a tension leaders have to grapple with.

Are you prepared top be vulnerable?

What are your experiences of trust both as a team member and as a leader?

How have you managed the ‘vulnerability’ tension?

The chances are that if trust is not present then high performance will be a long way away. So what is the bigger risk, the preparedness to be vulnerable or the preparedness to under-perform?

Please share your experiences, thoughts and comments.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com