Upsize Your Leadership

We are born with personality. Character must be developed. And the quality of our character and our strength of character determine up to 85% of our success as leaders. Repeated studies over several decades have reached this conclusion.

In this episode we explore the linkage between character and leadership success. We examine the difference between personality and character and show why consistent character is more important for leaders today than ever before. A transcript of this program is available at https://www.LeaderPerfect/podcast/episodes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Historically, the concept of leadership began on ancient battlefields, where the leader had to be courageous, above all else. Courage is still the most vital leadership trait. Successful leaders, even those who are not particularly virtuous, must have the virtue of courage to attain their goals. This episode explores why leadership courage is essential, not just for those in life-or-death settings like battlefields, but even for leaders in the white-collar world of an office tower.

A PDF transcript of this episode is available at https://www.leaderperfect.com/podcasts/episodes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The fastest way for leaders to lose influence is to have their integrity called into question. Personal integrity is a paramount leadership virtue.

Unlike other leadership traits, integrity cannot be faked. The very pretense of faking it obliterates it. This episode examines the true meaning of integrity and the role of integrity in building trusted leadership. Download a PDF transcript of the podcast at https://www.leaderperfect.com/podcast/episodes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Words are the leader's primary tool for motivating people.  The right words inspire. The wrong words discourage. Wise leadership maintains highly motivated teams by choosing words which pack clout, even small three-letter words.

In this episode, Dr. Mike Armour looks at five small words, terms which we use every day, and shows leaders how to harness them to great motivational advantage. Download a transcript of this episode at https://www,leaderperfect.com/podcast/episodes.  You can also contact Mike by means of a link on that same page.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For trust to prevail in an organization, leaders must help every worker feel safe. In this episode, leadership coach Dr. Mike Armour (www.LeaderPerfect.com) examines how feeling unsafe leads to anxiety and fear and how these culprits usher in distrust.

He also identifies a dozen signs of distrust. And he underscores the urgency of maintaining trust when managing change or reorganization.

You can download a copy of today's program at LeaderPerfect.com/podcast. The page also provides a link to contact Mike personally. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Leaders are generally aware that they have a duty to articulate and promote their organization's core values. But identifying these values is often a challenge. That's because so many values are important to the organization. Which ones are core?

Complicating the issue, an organization's list of core values needs to be held to no more than seven values, preferably no more than five. Beyond that number, a list is too lengthy to be readily remembered. And people won't devote themselves to things which they can't easily remember.

Core values are vital to an organization. But not all vital values are core values. Some are strategic values. Others are operational values. This episode explores a method for identifying which vital values in an organization are indeed its core values. 

To download a PDF copy of today's podcast, go to www.LeaderPerfect.com/podcast. Choose this episode, then click on Download Scripts.

You can contact Dr. Mike's email contact is [email protected].

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What would it mean to your organization if you could increase worker engagement 20 per cent?

According to research done by Gallup, low worker engagement costs the global economy seven trillion dollars per year. While engagement is higher in North America than in many other parts of the world, only a third of American workers are truly engaged with their organization.

This does not mean that other workers are unproductive. They may indeed perform at an acceptable level. But they are somewhat indifferent toward the organization. They feel no particular passion for it, no great loyalty to it. It's just a place to earn a paycheck.

In today's podcast, Dr. Mike Armour provides a roadmap for turning this situation around. He offers practical advice on how leaders and managers can enhance worker engagement by pursuing four strategies.

First is to build connections with workers at a personal level. Second is to make collaborative communication between managers and workers commonplace. Third is to demonstrate caring commitment to workers individually and collectively. And fourth is to captivate workers with their leader's aspirations both for them and for the organization.

You can download a script of today's podcast at www.LeaderPerfect.com/podcast/.

Dr. Mike Armour is the managing principal of Strategic Leadership Development International in Dallas. Check out his broad array of leadership development services at www.LeaderPerfect.com.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While all leadership strives for behavioral change, most leadership scenarios do not require a change in identity, as well. That’s what sets transformational leadership apart.

Transformational leaders succeed only by changing the organization’s sense of identity – its sense of who it is and what it may become. And this change is not purely marginal or peripheral. It’s substantive.

To accomplish what they aim for, transformational leaders must do more than merely fiddle around the edges of organizational identity. They must change it markedly, so much so that the new identity spins off new patterns of behavior. This is why I describe transformational leadership as not your garden-variety leadership.

To download a transcript of this episode, go to www.LeaderPerfect.com/podcast and click on the link to Download Scripts.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At some point in corporate history, the words "manager" and "leader" came to be used synonymously, as though  leadership and management are one and the same. They are not. Leadership is uniquely people-centric in a way that management may or may not be.

For example, we speak of managing people and leading people. We also speak of managing budgets and managing inventories. But we would never speak of leading a budget or leading an inventory. We only lead people.

As a leadership coach, I've developed three questions which allow me to quickly determine whether a new client is indeed a leader or is simply functioning as a manager, but calling it leadership.

In this episode I take you through those three pivotal questions and invite you to assess your own leadership performance in light of them.

For a printed copy of this episode, go to LeaderPerfect.com/podcast/. and click on the link to Download Scripts..

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Leadership is one of the oldest roles in human society. Even the most primitive village needed leaders to assign duties and settle disputes..

From that starting point to the modern world, every advance in human society and technology has required leaders to master new leadership skills and techniques. For leadership, the challenge to learn and adapt to change is never-ending.

Great leaders are lifelong learners. But true lifelong learning is more than merely learning new things over a lifetime. It is an intentional, purposeful, structured approach to personal self-development.

I've had the privilege of coaching dozens of leaders, managers, and entrepreneurs who exemplified what lifelong learning is all about. They embrace it. They embody it. They make it their way of life.

In this episode I focus on four traits which are common to these exceptional men and women. For a printed copy of today's program, go to www.LeaderPerfect.com/podcast/. Or contact me on the same page.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices