We challenge people to look at the kind of leadership they provide, with the knowledge that others in the organization are watching them and taking cues from them about what is important and valued, based on the behaviors they observe. Without integrity, an organization is eventually doomed to failure–karma, if you will.

In these dramatically changing times, individuals with integrity are beginning to step up as courageous leaders to challenge the direction of their firms.  An example is the recent exposé of Goldman Sachs by Greg Smith, in his op-ed to the New York Times called, “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs.”

Our personal integrity (or lack thereof) has a trickle-down or trickle-up effect on many people. How we do or do not demonstrate integrity sends a message about who we are. How does the lack of integrity affect us as individuals? That’s our focus today.

I had an example of low integrity this weekend that really got me thinking about this. It turned out to be a real gift, even though that was not my first reaction.

As my 11- and 12-year-old nephews have shown interest in snow ski racing through a fun, family-oriented organization called NASTAR, I reengaged in the sport primarily to support and coach them. Any parent can imagine the thrills I’ve experienced while watching their performance breakthroughs.

Well, a funny thing happened along the way. I managed to qualify myselffor the NASTAR National Championships to be held here in Colorado, much to my excitement. It reignited my competitive spirit and I began to race more to prepare for the championships, which I saw as both challenging and fun. Besides, my nephews qualified too, so we could make it a family event.

Because NASTAR is so family-oriented at the ski resort level, it never crossed my mind that the game would change at the national level. I was in for a rude awakening. (And, no, I haven’t forgotten that we’re discussing integrity.)  I discovered this weekend that I could go online and find out who has registered to race at the nationals and see their race results. Cool!

Now, lest you get the impression that I am some great skier, let me put this into perspective. Males and females are put into age categories and also into divisions based on their capability. For example, I am in the “male, age 60–64, silver” division. There are bronze, silver, gold and platinum divisions for each age group. My silver division is for men whose calculated handicaps based on ability are between 31–45. The next level is gold division for handicaps 17-30. Platinum is 16 or better.

What division you’re in is based on a somewhat complicated formula that puts people in the appropriate division based on their capability. I just discovered that at the national championship level, some people choose to cheat the system so they can win, because they understand the formula. Are we understanding that “cheat the system” means “out of integrity”?

It shocked me, and frankly, it initially took the fun out of competing. A man in my division only “officially” raced one day before the deadline for national qualifications. Understanding the “system,” he managed to ski slow enough to average a 39.45 handicap, which put him in the middle of the silver division–my division.

Then, with the qualifying deadline past, this same man raced some 58 more times over the next three weeks or so. You have to be serious to race that many times! That’s probably close to the number of races I’ve done in my lifetime!

Here’s the interesting part: his average handicap over those 58 races was 19.29, dramatically lower than his average of 39.45 in his nationals qualifying races. His 19.29 average puts him solidly in the BEST of the gold division.  Yet because he chose to “play the system,” he will compete against considerably less capable skiiers in the silver division.

Part of the issue, of course, is with the NASTAR rules. Something this blatant should not be allowed and the system doesn’t handle it.

For our discussion, though, think about the integrity issue. This man will win the “male, 60-64, silver” division with ease, as long as he simply skis his average race.  But what is the cost to him?

How will he feel standing on the silver podium, knowing that he beat other men who are not even in his ability class? How will it affect his own self-esteem in the end? What loss of respect will there be from family, friends, business associates, and fellow racers who know what he did? How will their trust in him be affected? Will it be worth it for the bragging rights? I don’t know his answer…but I do know mine and I thank him for helping me get clear.

The quality of our leadership is directly related to the quality of our integrity. How people trust us is directly related to the quality of our integrity. People all around us are watching our behaviors. What kind of integrity and leadership are we demonstrating?

This is a great lesson for me. You can bet that the next time I’m tempted to “cheat just a little” on something, I’ll remember the costs to this man.

And while I was initially discouraged about competing in NASTAR nationals, I now have it all back into perspective…and I’m grateful for that. I will do my best to be a positive role model for my nephews, in terms of how I handle this situation.  I will go out and do my best in the races–and yes, I will have fun!

Technorati Tags: integrity, leadership, trust

Logo on Seth Godin's blog

but especially those people who depend upon manufacturing for jobs.

Because we’re in the middle of a shift to a connected society, manufacturing can happen anywhere. Anyone can virtually design, have manufactured cheaply and sell products from wherever they happen to be. They no longer need to be associated with the factory. More and more, we won’t need the factories. Sorry, but I think he is right.

So, what’s the opportunity? Develop yourself into a linchpin for whatever you’re doing or want to do. That’s Seth’s terminology. To me, a linchpin is a leader. The best thing you can do for yourself is to develop your leadership. Leadership is about bringing out the best in individuals, teams and organizations. That is and will always be in very high demand.

It doesn’t matter the industry or business. Good leadership is desperately needed. Furthermore, leadership is not rocket science, and has absolutely nothing to do with position.

There are fundamental factors associated with trusted leadership, and Enlightened Leadership Solutions prides itself on developing leaders at all levels of organizations and getting breakthrough results in the process.

Here is a good and free learning video that moves you in the right direction.

You can read Seth’s full blog post here.

Is this courage or what!

leadership research I’ve been doing over the last six months.

Have you heard of the Map of Consciousness? I doubt it. It’s not exactly mainstream, yet it is quite profound. And it has a huge impact on personal behaviors and performance. Therefore, it relates to a huge leadership issue and opportunity.

Dr. David Hawkins, MD, wrote Power vs Force: the Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior in 1995, and introduced the Map of Consciousness in it. I’ll call it MOC.

The MOC is a logarithmic scale 1 to 1,000 that defines levels of consciousness and the characteristics of each level. Depending upon your current level of consciousness, your behaviors and performance–both supportive and limiting–will follow.

FYI: your MOC number can be measured. How? We’ll discuss that in another post.

Do you remember our model of Personal DNA™? It stands for Decide, Notice, and Acknowledge. It is a model of self-fulfilling prophecy. Once we make a decision, we automatically look for indications it is true. When we spot evidence that supports the decision, we acknowledge our decision, and the decision is even more solidified.

So, if your decision is “limiting,” the natural process will work to prove your limiting decision is correct. If you say, for example, “I’m so forgetful,” the mind will support your decision by looking for and finding indications that your decision is true. And when it spots an indication, it points it out, and you say, “See there? I knew was forgetful.” This is a no-win game. You don’t even notice the times you DID remember, because that wasn’t your decision.

If you made a “supportive” decision instead, like “I have a good memory,” your mind will look for and find indications that is true. It will spot and point out an example of your memory being good and you’ll acknowledge, “See there? I knew my memory was good.” That supportive decision supports you in continuing to improve your memory.

Folks, this is very real. You can spiral downward with a limiting decision or spiral upward to develop your strengths with a supportive decision. I invite you to correct those decisions that you’ve made which are holding you back. Here is a video we did on Personal DNA.

Now, back to MOC. It’s amazing how Personal DNA and MOC align. There are supportive MOC levels and limiting MOC levels. If we want people to contribute more and disturb less, we need to look at this from a leadership perspective.

For this series of posts, I’m only going to look at the MOC between 0 and 600, because above 600 is Enlightenment, and not too many people I know will relate to that. To put it in perspective, Jesus Christ and Buddha calibrate at 1,000. Other historical spiritual/religious leaders calibrate between 600 and 1,000.

So, let’s look at the lower part of the scale:

“0″ on the scale represents Death. No human consciousness.

For today’s discussion, I’m going to focus up to the level of 250, which is defined as Neutral, the point above which consciousness shifts to supportive, reinforcing, positive, etc.

Below the Neutral band is negative, energy-draining, “what’s wrong”-oriented consciousness. This is exactly like a limiting decision in Personal DNA.

Above Neutral is positive, energy-adding, “what’s right”-oriented consciousness. This is exactly like a supportive decision in Personal DNA.

There’s good news and bad news.

The bad news first. According to Dr. Hawkins, the average person never changes their Map of Consciousness number by more than five points in a lifetime. That’s scary – unless you happened to be born with a high MOC level.

The good news. You CAN change your MOC # rather dramatically(e.g., 100 point improvement) by deciding to do so, then focusing attention on doing what it takes. I’ve personally seen this happen.

Now, before this post gets too long, let’s look at some of the levels below 250, the Neutral point of MOC – just to give you something to think about.

• Death – 0
• Shame – 20
• Guilt – 30
• Apathy – 50
• Grief – 75
• Fear – 100
• Desire – 125
• Anger – 150
• Pride – 175
• Courage – 200 (This is a crucial point. Neutral actually begins here and stays until level 250. When we reach the courage level, we’ve made a major shift for the better. There is also much more energy at this level than at the Anger level of 150.)
• Neutrality 250.  At 251, you’re in the supportive, positive territory!

Now, don’t panic when you see this list. You’ve been very angry, so you wonder if you’re at 150? Not likely. I, too, have been very angry, and when I was in that anger, I WAS at 150. But once through the anger and out the other side, I moved back to my “normal” consciousness level.

The thing I’m working on is how to spend less and less of my time at levels below 250, and certainly below 200! And, of course, spending more and more time at levels above these.

Ok, that’s enough for now. This will be a short series of posts if this is of interest. Would love to have comments from you about whether this is interesting or not?

Best wishes to the Enlightened Leader in you!

Ed

The truth is that there is no quick fix to poor communication skills, or any other soft skills, but knowing specific strategies to improve them can make a big difference.

The reality is that communication skills are developed slowly and with deliberate effort, and even the most gifted speakers may feel that there is at least …
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We would love to have your feedback about this ebook on communication skill, a critical soft skill for a good leader. Please let us know what you think. How clear is it? How effective are the communication tools and strategies? Would you recommend it to others? If so, what specific levels of leadership?

Click here to visit the original source of this post

Yes, Enlightened Leadership: Getting to the Heart of Change, which has sold nearly 250,000 copies as a hard book, is now available instantly as an ebook. No shipping costs. Not another book needing space on a shelf!

Though we’ve written other books, this one still stands out as the one that has made the greatest difference in the lives of people and the success of organizations. Twenty years after the original writing, it is now available as an ebook.

Enlightened Leadership on Kindle – Only $5.95

We want people all over the world to have easy access to the book that has already made a difference to so many. At this price, just download it as a reference book – even if you own the paper version.

Go HERE to see and buy it on Amazon.com.

Remember the quote on the back of Enlightened Leadership by one of the greatest authors of all time, Og Mandino? He said, “To be a great leader in the years to come, one must learn and apply the powerful principles in this great book … or perish.”

Get Enlightened Leadership on Kindle now!

How are we doing this?

We’re giving away our powerful proprietary leadership tool, the Framework for (Enlightened) Leadership™ Worksheet and a 20-minute video on how to use it effectively.

Our goal is to give it away one million times and to invite people to duplicate it, watch the video, and use it all they want. You might be personally familiar with the power of the Framework for:

- turning around struggling projects or groups

-leading organizational change

-aligning dissenting groups toward common goals

-innovative problem-solving

-resolving challenging conflicts

-engaging employees for new levels of effectiveness

-inspiring performance reviews(organizational and individual)

-continuous empowered improvement

-breakthrough negotiation in tough situations

How can you help?

You can help by giving it away physically or by emailing it to key people throughout your organization, to friends who own or manage businesses/organizations, to your associations, to the leadership team of your place of worship, etc. It won’t cost you anything and it can make a big difference when someone gets the power of the tool.

The Framework Worksheet is attached as a pdf file on this blog post. Just click here to download it onto your computer. It will open in a new window.

To access the accompanying video, simply go the web address on the Worksheet, or click HERE.

We’ve got a long ways to go to reach one million giveaways, so we’d appreciate your sending the PDF file or the link (http://budurl.com/framework251) to at least TEN PEOPLE who could use it. Or you could duplicate and pass out the hardcopy Framework Worksheet. Whatever is easier for you.

We’re grateful for your help, and we’re excited to giveaway one of the most powerful leadership tools we know!

Here’s to making a difference in 2011,

Ed Oakley and the Enlightened Leadership Solutions team.

The quality of the program is excellent. I recommend it for any important goal you might have.

Check out the video to see if this might help you excel over the most important 100 days of the new year – the FIRST ones! It’s so important to get a great start. It defines the entire year!

If it sounds interesting to you, get more information by clicking here.

Either way, may your first 100 days of 2011 be an awesome start to your greatest year yet.

The Enlightened Leadership Team

So I took time over several sittings, using our Framework for Review and Planning, to do just that. The process was so inspiring and mind-clearing that I thought I should suggest it to you.

Now I realize that you’ve already done review and planning with your key team and this does not replace that. What this does is completes the past year in your own mind, in such a way that is encouraging and inspiring—regardless of how your year went. It also clarifies new year strategies and tactics in a way that clears your mind and readies you for specific action.

One more comment before sharing the process: you might want to do this separately for different parts of your life: business, personal, relational, etc.

So, here is the process:

1. Think about “What worked or is working” from this past year. I went back through my 2010 calendar to remind myself of some of the activities over the year. From those, I was reminded of successes, small and large, that I then captured onto my list. This list will be long and encouraging. Seldom do we give ourselves enough credit for our successes. I actually did this process over two days. Sleeping on my initial list allowed for some additional processing and insights overnight. I probably spent a total of an hour during this step.
2. As I captured each success, I often realized the next steps in order to take advantage of the initial success.  Then I would scroll down on the page (on the computer for editing ease), create a Step 5, which is “What can I do more, better, or differently to move closer to my objectives?” Whenever I had an insight about additional steps, I captured it right away. This is incredibly freeing for the mind, as I knew I wasn’t going to lose those insights. By time I finished my long list of successes, I had an accompanying long list of action steps—many of which were, “Plan how to utilize XYZ success.”
3. While I could have stopped the process right there and still received a great deal of value, I knew a bit more work would go a long way towards achieving my goals. So I went to Step 3: “What are my primary objectives for 2011?” Again, I already knew these objectives, but there is a special value in revisiting them from the standpoint of successes I had had over previous months. Sure enough, the creativity that was opened up by remembering a lot of successes in a short period of time gave me fresh insights about 2011 objectives. Those new insights were particularly inspiring.
4. Step 3 was so useful that I decided to spend a few additional minutes on Step 4, which is “What are the benefits to all stakeholders for accomplishing the objectives?” In my case, there was nothing earth-shaking here, but worth reflecting about.
5. That brings us again to Step 5, which is mostly complete. Nevertheless, I reflected again, based on new clarity of the objectives, “What can I do more, better or different to move closer to those objectives?” New action steps came up, several of which required some additional thought and planning. Even though the action list was long and a bit daunting, how freeing it was to get it down on paper, thus freeing my mind to enjoy my family time, knowing I was ready and excited to launch into the new year.

This didn’t feel like work to me. It was quite encouraging, inspiring, and energizing. I encourage you to give yourself this gift. It likely won’t take more than an hour or two over a couple of days. If it takes more time than that, it will be because you’re so engaged that you want to put more time into it! Enjoy the process.

We are so grateful for our subscribers and we wish you the most joy-filled and prosperous 2011.

Well, guess what? You can find out quickly and easily. You see, my friend Dr. Carl Larson of Denver University and Dr. Frank M. J. Lafasto teamed up to study world-class teams of all kinds and discovered eight consistent Dimensions of Team Excellence that distinguished dozens of super high performance teams. The eight dimensions they discovered are:

•    Clear Elevating Goals
•    Results-Driven Structure
•    Competent Team Members
•    Unified Commitment
•    Collaborative Climate
•    Standards of Excellence
•    External Support and Recognition
•    Principled Leadership

They then developed and formally validated a Team Excellence Assessment that works similar to a 360-degree assessment, but it’s for the team and its designated leader.

The study and validation were so valuable, they published two books about it: Team Works: What Must Go Right/What Can Go Wrong and When Teams Work Best: 6,000 Team members and Leaders Tell What It Takes to Succeed.

Enlightened Leadership Solutions used the assessment with our clients for years, and it was an amazing team diagnostic tool. Unfortunately, managing the paper, the data entry, the spreadsheets, the calculations and printing the reports was a nightmare so we stopped using it.

Well, good news! We’ve now obtained the rights to use the assessment and put it online to simplify the data capture and the report generation. Each team member takes it online, and it is strictly confidential—just like the report for a 360-degree assessment.

The report compares the team average scores to that of a national mean of thousands of teams, as well as the team leader’s input.

DESCRIPTION

Think of it as a 360-degree assessment for teams. So, the designated team leader and each of the team members takes a 15-minute online assessment independently and confidentially.

Forty of the questions have multiple choice answers like: True, More True Than False, More False Than True, and False - which correspond to numbers 1 through 4. Six of the questions require open-ended perspectives.

The system combines and averages all the answers (as well as all the textual information) and provides a report on how the team assessed itself in each of the eight categories compared to the mean of thousands of teams that have already taken it.  If your team rates itself well above the mean for all eight factors, that suggests a high-performance team, indeed.

TO GET STARTED

Contact our office (Kelli) at 303-729-0540 or contactus@enleadership.com for information about how to register your team.