In the days before they had horses and rifles, ancient Americans successfully hunted the enormous and dangerous American Bison in a surprising way.  By taking advantage of its herd mentality, a few bold warriors were able to manipulate the actions of hundreds of buffalo.   As social animals ourselves, we can learn a lot from their tactics to help make us better leaders today.

Notes and Resources:

• Prefer to read?  Here’s the full post:  Herd Mentality: What We Can Learn About Leadership From Ancient Americans
• Find Robert Cialdini’s excellent Influence – the Psychology of Persuasion on Amazon
• Traits that make the American Bison vulnerable:  Eyes on the sides of their heads, heads low to the ground, strong herd instinct
   

Quotable: 

“In general, when we are unsure of ourselves, when the situation is unclear or ambiguous, when uncertainty reigns, we are most likely to look to and accept the actions of others as correct.”  - Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D.

“Social proof isn’t really proof at all.”  - Ken Downer

“In the end, it’s not really leading if all we’re doing is imitating those around us so that others will imitate us.”  - Ken Downer

Related posts: 

Visionary Leadership:  When Social Proof Fails

Restoring Faith in Humanity One Act at a Time

Leaders Go First:  The Surprising Impact of Making the First Move

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You’ve probably seen the “rocks in a jar” presentation about time management.  It’s great for visualizing the need to prioritize what’s important.  The problem is that I think there was a lot they left out.  Here are eleven things they didn’t mention about the concept that can make us even better at managing our time.

Notes and Resources:

• Prefer to read?  Here’s the full post:  Rocks in a Jar: 11 Things They Didn’t Tell You
• Read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People on Amazon for more helpful insights on time management.
• Here’s a short video explaining the original “Rocks in a Jar” concept.
  
  

Quotable: 

“People who know the value of time are always doing something valuable with their time.  – Sunday Adelaja

“If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority.”

“It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out; it is the grain of sand in your shoe.’”  - Anon

“Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.”  - Allen Saunders

Related posts: 

‘Set and Forget’ Leadership: How to Delegate So You Won’t Get Burned

Team Leadership: 4 Simple Steps to Getting Stuff Done
 
Leading Former Peers: 27 Tips, Tactics, and Techniques

Stay connected with Rapidstart Leadership

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No, this is not another post about the seven leadership lessons we can learn from geese.  Yes, it does come from watching geese, but it’s something that others have overlooked, and it has to do with leading through transition.  And as usual, a simple demonstration by mother nature carries powerful lessons for us about how to lead in chaotic, unsettled times.

Notes and Resources:

• Prefer to read?  Here’s the full post:  Leading Through Transition: Tips for Leaders in Times of Change
• According to The Cornell Lab, snow geese are possibly the noisiest of all water fowl.  The audio clip of a flock of snow geese comes from SoundBible (public domain); for best effect, set volume to 10!
• Especially in times of transition, it is critical to get out from behind the desk and go to where the team is; for more on what to do when you get there, read Getting Down in the Trenches:  Tips for Taking Over
   

Quotable: 

“When things are unsettled, people look for clues about what to do; we have to place ourselves where they look, or they’ll get their cues from someone else.”  - Ken Downer

“Follow me and do as I do.”  - Standing Order of the Infantry Fire Team Leader

“Leaders focus on the ‘doing’ not on the ‘not doing.’”  - Ken Downer  

“If hundreds of snow geese can manage the complex transition to flight just by honking, squawking, and flapping around, think what we could do with words.”  - Ken Downer

Related posts: 

Leaders Go First: The Surprising Impact of Making the First Move

Seeking Discomfort: 7 Ways to Embrace Uncomfortable Feedback

Leading Former Peers: 27 Tips, Tactics, and Techniques

Stay connected with Rapidstart Leadership

• Visit the site at https://www.rapidstartleadership.com/
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These days as we move from one unforeseeable event to the next, it might seem that any effort to plan is a waste of time.  Dwight Eisenhower would agree, at least in part, when he said, “Plans are worthless.” But here’s the rest of that great quote and what we can take from it to help us prepare for the next time the unimaginable happens.

Notes and Resources:

• Prefer to read?  Here’s the full post:  Plans are Worthless: Why We Should Plan Anyway
• For more on the idea of “Red Teams” check out Rapid Deliberation: 7 Ways to Hit the Target While Under Stress
• Here’s the full text of Eisenhower’s Speech.

Quotable: 

“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”  - Dwight D. Eisenhower

The primary reason for planning is to keep ourselves “steeped in the character of the problem that [we] may one day be called upon to solve.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower

Related posts: 

Planning to Be Lucky: Are We Betting on the Wrong Thing?

Visualization Techniques: 5 Simple Ways We Can Influence the Future

The Brilliant Planning Trick Lewis and Clark Used that Nobody Noticed

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As a rule, we tend to look down on sheep, but we have a lot more in common with them than we might want to admit.  In this post we’ll look at one would-be shepherd who learned the hard way that sheep are not the passive conformists we think they are, and we’ll build a list of nine ways to successfully lead sheep, no matter how many legs they happen to have.

Notes and Resources:

• Prefer to read?  Here’s the full post:  9 Secrets to Leading Sheep – No Matter How Many Legs They Have
• Check out the excellent On Trails by Robert Moor on Amazon
•  “Path Dependence” - When decisions presented to people are dependent on previous decisions or experiences made in the past

Quotable: 

“Sheep, like people, are ungovernable when hungry.”  - John Muir

“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”  - Dwight D. Eisenhower

“An anxious herder makes a lean flock.”  - Shepherding axiom

Related posts: 

Micromanagement: 7 Signs You’re a Micromanager and What to Do About It

Courage to Lead: Re-looking the Role of Courage in Leadership

Sharpen Your Thinking: 25 Ways to Hone Your Thinking Skills

Stay connected with Rapidstart Leadership

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Like an airplane ascending through the clouds in the early stages of a flight, we can expect some rough air when we first step into a new leadership role.  Our teammates are trying to see if we have what it takes to lead them well.  Pass the test and we earn their trust.  Fail it, and it’s going to be a long turbulent flight ahead.  Here’s what those leadership tests might look like, and some thoughts on how best to respond.

Notes and Resources:

• Prefer to read?  Here’s the full post:  Leadership Test: Will You Be Ready When the Challenge Comes?
• Check out “In the Heart of the Sea” by Nathaniel Philbrick on Amazon.  Note – the whaling disaster this book describes served as the inspiration for Moby Dick
• Leading former peers may be one of the hardest leadership challenges there is; here’s a link to 27 Tips, Tactics, and Techniques to make it a little easier.
• Ignoring something uncomfortable can lead to disaster; read the post Leading With a Blind Eye: Why You Can’t Ignore the Thing You Didn’t Want to See for more about this leadership hazard.
   

Quotable: 

“Leaders must learn to be uncomfortable.”  - Wally Bock, Three Star Leadership

“There is no faster way to lose the trust of our teammates than trying to hold them accountable to standards that we ourselves ignore.”  - Ken Downer  

“If the passive aggressive person senses that she has gotten under your skin, the balance of power is already shifted in her favor.” – Signe Whitson

“If we fail to set the ethical tone for our teams, someone else will.”  - Anon

Related posts: 

Leading Your Friends:  9 Ways to Lead Your Former Peers

Mind the Gap: 9 Ways to Close the Trust Gap on Your Team

Cornerstone of Leadership: What’s Yours?

Stay connected with Rapidstart Leadership

• Visit the site at https://www.rapidstartleadership.com/
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The words we use as leaders make a difference, but to be honest, some of the phrases we’re using in our attempts to lead are actually making things harder for us.  Here are three examples of these crutch phrases that we tend to rely on that don’t really give us the support we think they do.  Do any of these sound familiar?

Notes and Resources:

• Prefer to read?  Here’s the full post:  Crutch Phrases That Weaken Our Leadership
• See the post Establishing Trust:  Why the Details Matter for more on why it’s the little things that can be most important when it comes to trust.

Quotable: 

“Should our teammates just assume we are being less than honest if we don’t start by saying, ‘trust me’?”  - Ken Downer

“Bringing up the issue of trust at all signals that there may be some trust issue to consider.”  - Ken Downer  

“If we can’t say something respectfully as leaders, maybe we shouldn’t be saying it at all.” – Ken Downer

Related posts: 

Leaders and Con Men: Should We Follow Their Example?

Mind the Gap: 9 Ways to Close the Trust Gap on Your Team

Cornerstone of Leadership: What’s Yours?

Stay connected with Rapidstart Leadership

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Tomorrow he would lead his lead his army to retake Burma from the Japanese.  Today he had a chance to share with his soldiers the leadership philosophy that would make that monumental task possible.  He did it with a single short story.  Here’s what he said, and how it can help you and your team accomplish the impossible, too.

Notes and Resources:

• Prefer to read?  Here’s the full post:  Leadership Trust: The Secret to Achieving Impossible Things
• See the post Establishing Trust:  Why the Details Matter for more on why it’s the little things that can be most important when it comes to trust.
• The moment we put privileges ahead of the duties is the moment we start to lose the respect and loyalty of our teammates.
• Story Source:  Burma Star Memorial Fund

Quotable: 

“Officers are there to lead. I tell you, therefore, as officers, that you will neither eat, nor drink, nor sleep, nor smoke, nor even sit down until you have personally seen that your men have done those things.  If you will do this for them, they will follow you to the end of the world.  And, if you do not, I will break you.” – Field Marshal Slim

Related posts: 

Transformational Leadership: 5 Steps to a Brighter Future with Your Team

Mind the Gap: 9 Ways to Close the Trust Gap on Your Team

Cornerstone of Leadership: What’s Yours?

Stay connected with Rapidstart Leadership

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Thanks for listening, and Lead On!

Con Men work in the shadows and employ every trick in the book to get people to do what they want.  As leaders, we’re trying to get people to do things, too.  So, is there really much difference between leaders and con men?  Is there anything we can learn from these evil-doers that we can put to use for the good?

Notes and Resources:

• Prefer to read?  Here’s the full post:  Leaders and Con Men
• Influence:  The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini on Amazon
• Ways Con Men gain our trust:  Titles, Clothing, and Trappings
• “Enclothed Cognition” – the idea that the clothes we wear can put us in a different psychological state.
• For eight ways to convey a sense of authority in virtual meetings, check out Non-Verbal Skills for Virtual Team Leaders

Quotable: 

“Victims often raise a con artist’s fashion or style choices as a key part of how they formed sufficient trust to give away large sums of cash, keys to their apartments, and even love.”    – Sarah Treleaven

“We know the guy on TV trying to sell us medicine is not really a doctor, yet advertisers keep hanging stethoscopes around actor’s necks because it works.”  - Ken Downer

“There is a difference between leaders and con men.  Our purpose is to help others, not ‘help ourselves.’”  - Ken Downer 

Related posts: 

Crutch Phrases that Weaken our Leadership

Leadership Trust: The Secret to Achieving Impossible Things

Transformational Leadership: 5 Steps to a Brighter Future with Your Team

Stay connected with Rapidstart Leadership

• Visit the site at https://www.rapidstartleadership.com/
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Thanks for listening, and Lead On!

Burnout on the job is costing us millions of dollars annually, but the solutions leaders are putting into place to solve the problem are missing the point.  Here’s what you need to know about burnout, and three effective strategies we as leaders can take to deal with it when it arises, and even prevent it from appearing in the first place.

Notes and Resources:

• Prefer to read?  Here’s the full post:  Bosses and Burnout
• Beyond Burnout on Amazon
• Costs of burnout:
  •  Nearly 25% of international employees experience burnout “very often” or “always” 
  •  An estimated one million workers are absent every day due to job stress
  • Costs to larger companies can be $3.5 million a year 
• Three signs of burnout:
  • Feeling of energy depletion or exhaustion 
  • Increased mental distance from the job or feelings of cynicism 
  • Reduced professional efficacy

Quotable: 

Burnout is “chronic, sustained and long-term stress at work…when that feeling of drowning under work-related stress doesn’t subside.”   – Suzi McAlpine

“When our teammates exhibit signs of chronic exhaustion, increased cynicism, withdrawal from work, or a decrease in efficacy, there could be a problem.  If they manifest all three, it’s time to take action – that tire is about to blow.”  - Ken Downer 

“When we organize in ways that maximize our teammates’ say not only in what they do, but how they do it, we heighten their potential for motivation, and decrease the likelihood of costly burnout.”  - Ken Downer

Related posts: 

Demotivation: 7 Ways You Might Be Killing Your Team’s Spirit

Courage to Lead: Re-looking the Role of Courage in Leadership

9 Secrets to Leading Sheep – No Matter How Many Legs They Have

Stay connected with Rapidstart Leadership

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Thanks for listening, and Lead On!