Leader To Leader

• Authenticity: You have to be yourself.  You cannot portray yourself as something that you are not.
• Some people think that they get a certain job and they have to behave a certain way.  They are not true to who they are.
• Energy: You have to energize people around you. Energize them around a vision.
  • How do you energize?  It is not hyping them.  It is getting them to feel the vision, to feel where you are going.  That has to come from the leader.
  • One job of a leader is to raise the intellectual level of those around you.  That is why you higher people that are smarter than you.  If you don’t higher people smarter than you, you will not get any smarter.
• Candor: People need to be able to say what they think.
• Differentiation: He rated employees at his organization.  20% are game changers. 70% are team players and vital.  10% are really dead weight.  People are compensated on the basis of where they are at in the percentages.
  • Candor allows for differentiation.
  • People spend more time fixing the bottom 10%.  They cannot get better.  They need to go to another organization where they will succeed.
  • Attitude and behavior of the top 20%: filled with energy, excite people, good values and they have a gene of wanting to see people grow.  They are not afraid to have great people around them.
  • The vital 70%: Smart, hard working. Necessary and vital.
  • The bottom 10%: not a team player, not hard workers, negative.
  • Disrupters and boss haters are different.  They need to be listened to.  They have some brains.
  • The hallway whisperer is more dangerous than the person with candor.
  • You do all you can for the top 20%.  Raises, conferences, etc.
• Nonprofit does not mean non-performance.  (Many work as if it does!)
• Most leaders wait to long to make the change needed.
• Hiring is hard.  Succession is brutal.
• Leaders need to learn to celebrate the small victories.