This article was published by Leadership Skills Australia.

What is authentic leadership. Some say leaders who say what they actually think without worrying about how others may perceive them.

The same holds true for staff at work[1. See Northouse]. Research confirms that staff across the globe universally value openness and honesty in their leaders[2. See the GLOBE research by House and his colleagues].

Clearly, authenticity matters. But what does it mean to be an authentic leader? Our review of research and literature reveals 5 common themes:

1. Commit to the truth. Authentic leaders want to know what is really going on so they can respond accordingly. They surface and challenge unfounded assumptions. They name and deal with the unsaid truths that everyone knows about but conveniently ignores. More importantly, they have the courage to tell it like it is.
2. Know yourself well. Authentic leaders know what they stand for. They are clear about the values that are important to them. They capitalise on their unique strengths and tendencies to offer an original approach to leadership grounded on who they are as a person.
3. Show self-discipline. Authentic leaders consciously choose how they will act or react in any situation. They evaluate their options with questions. Does this option take me away from or closer to what I want to achieve and the leader that I want to be?
4. Show compassion. Authentic leaders are fueled by the belief that despite it being in an imperfect world, they can lead action to make it better. They care about people and causes beyond their own self-interest. This care is evident because they are open to understanding the world through the eyes of others and they are then moved to make it better.
5. Be genuine. Authentic leaders present their true selves to those they lead, in contextually appropriate ways. None of the other techniques will work if leaders are not being true to themselves and genuine in the way they interact with others. Conversely, a leader cannot be genuine without a commitment to truth, an accurate knowledge of oneself, the discipline to regulate one’s own behaviours and some degree of care for people other than oneself.

Being an authentic leader takes much experience and commitment. It is developed over time, often triggered by setbacks and major life events. Yet, authenticity is also something that you can choose to nurture at any time. I encourage you to give it go.

References

Avolio, B & Gardner, W. (2005), Authentic Leadership Development,Leadership Quarterly, 16, 315-338

B. & Steidlmeier, P. (1999), Ethics, Character & Authentic Transformational Leadership, Leadership Quarterly, 10, 181-217

Friedman, S. (2008), Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life, Harvard Business School Press

Gardner, W., Avolio, B. & Walumbwa, F. (2005), Authentic Leadership Theory & Practice, Elsevier Science

George, B. (2003), Authentic Leadership, Jossey-Bass; Bass

George, B. & Sims, P. (2007), True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership, Jossey-Bass

Goffee, R. & Jones, G. (2006), Why Should Anyone Be Led By You?Harvard Business School Press

Goffee, R. & Jones, G. (2005), Managing Authenticity, Harvard Business Review December Ed.

House, R. et.al. (2004), Culture, Leadership & Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies, Sage.

Northouse, P. (2010), Leadership: Theory & Practice, 5th ed., Sage.

Terry, R. (1993), Authentic Leadership: Courage In Action, Jossey-Bass

Walumbwa, F., Avolio, B., Gardner, W., Wernsing, T. & Person, S. (2008),Authentic Leadership: Development & Validation of a Theory-Based Measure, Journal of Management, 34, 89-126

Are you an Executive, a Business Owner, part of a Management Team or a Leader who wants to create an inspiring future for their business organisation and personal endeavours?
This challenge will engage participants in new levels of self awareness, create new thinking, new possibilities and horizons – your personal odyssey.

A fully integrated Executive Coaching and Leadership Adventure Achieve your Personal Best in 120 days.

From the first day to the last, Leadership Odyssey 120 will take you on a challenging change journey that will positively impact every area of your commercial and personal life. Designed to incorporate leading edge coaching competencies and aligned with International Coaching Foundation (ICF) standards, your personal executive coach will partner you each week to identify new possibilities, establish your vision and self awareness, set significant business and personal goals, identify new levels of personal performance and then fully implement.

The practical coaching continues on the 6 day wilderness trek in the Kimberley Region, with physical and learning exercises creating further change, all in an amazing environment.
Discover your absolute Best in Leadership, Skills Development and Personal Development.

The coaching series consists of 8 one-on-one Executive Coaching sessions, 6 Team and Group sessions (36 coaching hours) that are purpose built and scheduled as a lead up to and an implementation stage after the 6 day Kimberley wilderness trek.

The Pinnacle Event: A 6 Day Wilderness TREK into the KIMBERLEY
The experiential component of your leadership journey, a 6 day wilderness trek will be conducted on the traditional lands of the Woolahjee people. The Kimberley region of Australia
is considered by many to be one of the world’s last wilderness frontiers. After a traditional ceremony of “welcome to country”, you will spend the next 5 nights under a Kimberley sky traversing the landscape. You will discover some of the secrets of this remote region; unique rivers, rugged colourful ranges, rarely visited hidden gorges in an ancient land that retains strong cultural importance for the Woolahjee people.

Your morning trek commences early with the physical and mental application of achieving your days objective, negotiating 10 to 15 kms to a wilderness campsite. In the afternoon, time allows for personal reflection, coaching and group opportunities. Relax and explore your surroundings, fish for Barramundi in a nearby pristine river, meditate to the call of native birds or simply read a book. In the evening, share the camaraderie of fellow like-minded leaders around the campfire.
Leadership Odyssey 120’s wilderness trek will provide you with space and time away from the hot foundry of your current work place environment and will enable you to formulate
your pathway towards best performance leadership outcomes.

For more information or to register visit www.leadership120.com

Executive Coaching has gained recognition as being one of the most positive and powerful tools in the armoury of organisations which truly wish to ensure that their most importance resource, their people, are working to their potential.

Research indicates that the top reasons for utilising an executive coach include:

1) Sharpening the leadership skills of high-potential individuals (86 per cent);

2) Correcting management behaviour problems such as poor communication skills, failure to develop subordinates, or indecisiveness (72 per cent);

3) Ensuring the success, or decreasing the failure rate, of newly promoted managers (64 per cent);

4) Correcting employee relations problems such as poor interpersonal skills, disorganisation, demeaning or arrogant behaviour (59 per cent);

5) Providing the required management and leadership skills to technically oriented employees (58 per cent).

Executive Coaching is for all Talented Executives who want to develop their leadership capabilities thereby adding a more powerful edge to their leadership style.

You will already be working effectively, but may have become aware you could improve your core leadership talents.

The Executive Coaching Program will enable leaders to become truly amazing by learning to step back from the everyday and become highly effective at creating dramatic results by recognising and releasing the hidden potential of all members of their team.

We provide leaders with objective, unbiased and candid feedback and an objective perspective that executives can use to produce behavioural changes and in turn dramatically affect the organisations results.

Enhanced interpersonal skills will allow you to get the best performance out of your staff and a heightened self- awareness and self-discipline means these managers are easily able to inspire, positively influence and lead the staff around them.

Executive Coaching is not just goal setting, motivating people and giving feedback. Executive coaching involves unleashing and aligning the human body, mind and soul to  expand executive’s capacity  and bring about real change. This will bring about a new realm and therefore new opportunities and threads.

Feel free to give us a call on 1300 760 307 (in Australia) or 0061 8 93390013 (outside Australia)

We all know ‘born managers’ – people who, apparently effortlessly, facilitate us. Who seem stress-resistent yet dynamic and inspired. We also know how rare they are, and how difficult it is to put a finger on exactly how they do it.

Krauthammer Observatory is an annual research project. It makes the innate talent of so-called ‘born managers’ explicit – and replicable. You can find its topline findings below.

Topline findings

2 burning platforms
For 3 years, we have been asking employees about the behaviour they seek and experience from their managers. And each year, 2 practices rank top of the list – in this order:
1. Help me see things differently, say 95% of employees.
If they have difficulties in executing a task, their manager should analyse the problem together with them, helping them to look at it in a new light.

Obvious? Apparently not, since only 52% of managers generally take this approach. 25% make their own analysis and then present it to the employee for agreement. 12% dictate a course of action without any prior analysis or consultation, and 8% simply demand an immediate solution.

If one thing is in surplus in the current climate, it is task difficulty. And if only half of employees are getting constructive help, the quality and speed of their solutions, and possible feelings of isolation in a time when teaming up is vital, constitute a powerful call for change.

2. Own up, say 88% of employees.
If a manager has made a mistake, s/he should accept full responsibility – spontaneously.

Undeniable, especially now? Yet only 43% of employees – surveyed in May 2009 – say their manager spontaneously accepts full responsibility for mistakes. 22% of managers prefer to admit the “mistake has been made” – without assuming responsibility. 26% dismiss the importance of the mistake or justify themselves. And 7% shift the blame onto others.

Admitting mistakes is like a trip to the dentist. Act regularly and early, to avoid later loss of teeth, extensive repair work, and bills you find it difficult to pay. We trust the business analogy is crashingly obvious…

See for more information www.krauthammer.com

An article in The Human Capital Magazine shared the results of research done with nearly 5000 employers in Australia by Hudson. Here’s a short overview of the results;

Over half of Australia’s managers lack the skills to manage their people and businesses through a downturn, according to research released this week by Hudson.

The latest Hudson Report: HR Insights survey of 4,930 Australian employers reveals that 53% of Australia’s business leaders say they have no experience of leading in a downturn. Further, only 9% of employers offer any specific training to help managers lead through challenging economic times.

“Managers are clearly in need of better support from their organisations. Most of them have never been more challenged in their working lives than they have been over the past 12 months,” said Simon Moylan, general manager Hudson Talent Management. “It’s a delicate balancing act to implement cost cuts and redundancies whilst engaging remaining employees to keep productivity levels up.”

Almost every single respondent (98%) agreed that demands placed on leaders by this economic climate require a unique set of strengths and competencies. “Stress levels in leaders who are constantly confronted with situations that they are ill equipped to handle, will soar, and stressed leaders are likely to have stressed teams,” said Moylan. “As the market improves and more opportunities arise, both leaders and their employees might well be tempted to jump ship.”

For complete article go to http://www.hcamag.com/news/37577/details.aspx

Do you as a manager, business owner or CEO have the strategies, strenghts and competencies to lead?
What if executive coaching and mentoring would help you achieve that?

Wouldn’t that be priceless!

Two extremely powerful skills. Both originated from NLP. Do you know the difference and the power they behold?

Go to the power of knowing

This article deals with ways to stop self sabotage.

John Grinder, one of the co-developers of NLP, draws the distinction between what he called ‘first-order change’, ‘second-order change’ and ‘third order change’.  ‘First order’ change is giving a hungry person a fish. He defined change at the same level as the problem state, eg. acting on behaviour to obtain a change in behaviour. ‘Second-order’ change is a change at a different level than the problem state. It’s teaching people to catch a fish so they can eat. ‘Third order’ change involves changing the system. This is what we call evolutionary change. To continue the story of the fish; It’s teaching the hungry person how to teach other people to catch the fish so they can eat.

Both in ‘first order’ change, ‘second order’ change and ‘third order’ change you can encounter what my participant refers to as self sabotage.

…..Read more

The margin of victory between an Olympic gold medal and no medal at all is extremely small. In the 2004 Mens 800m race, the margin was 0.71 sec.

At the Indy 500 the average margin for victory for the past 10 years have been 1.54 sec.

At 211 degrees Fahrenheit water is extremely hot. At 212 degrees it’s boiling and with boiling water comes steam. And steam can power a locomotive. One extra degree can make all the difference. And that one extra degree of effort in business and in life…

separates

the good from the great!

Maybe it’s time to turn up the heat, because if you want to get what you have never had, you have to do what you have never done. One of the things that stand between a person and what he wants is the will to try it and the faith to believe it’s possible.

If you would like to know what would happen if you turned up your heat, feel free to give me a call on 1300 760 307 or +61 8 9339 0013 if you are outside of Australia.

You can also drop me a line at info@dynamiccreation.com.au

Wilbert Molenaar

The more questions you can answer yes to, the more likely you’re a good candidate for executive coaching.

Ask yourself . . . Yes  or No

1.         Do I have a strong desire to improve now?

2.         Do I have some idea of my coaching goals?

3.         Am I open to new ways of thinking and behaving?

4.         Can I be honest with myself about my strengths and weaknesses?

5.         Am I open to feedback, even when it’s mixed or negative?

6.         Can I be patient while awaiting the results of my coaching?

7.         Do I have time—or can I make time—in my schedule for coaching?

8.         Do I typically follow through on commitments and assignments?

Take care

Wilbert Molenaar

Ultimately it could be the biggest gift you give to yourself and those around you. Coming to grips with your blind spots requires courage but can be the biggest opportunity for your leadership transformation.

As Sir John Whitmore, author of the best selling “Coaching for Performance” puts it, we have a measure of choice and control over what we are aware of, but what we are unaware of controls us.”

Blind spots are those aspects of our behaviour, attitude and values and beliefs that we are not even aware that we are operating or living out of. Blind spots are what others can often so clearly see in us and yet we remain oblivion to.

Blind spots are the “pink elephants”, often staring straight at us but we don’t have the perspective or context to quite get it. At other times, the issue can be such a big, entrenched one that again it’s not so easy to grasp. One can literally feel “blindsided” by it.

The good news is that once we awaken to our blind spots, it can be our greatest opportunity for learning, growth and development. The awakening happens typically when we get given some feedback or feed forward from a colleague, coach, manager, team member or a loved one.

However, the transformative opportunities latent in the blind spots can only be realised if we acknowledge, take responsibility, and own the feedback and take appropriate action.

If you would like to receive some wisdom on how to use your blind spots and receive some FREE stuff just send me an email at info@dynamiccreation.com.au including your request.

“Successful leadership depends on the quality of attention and intention that the leader brings to any situation. Two leaders in the same circumstances doing the same thing can bring about completely different outcomes, depending on the inner place from which each operates.”

A lot has been written and researched about what leaders do and how they do it. But we know very little about the inner place, the source from which they operate.

If you would like to find out more about blind spots, have a discussion with Wilbert on coaching, please contact him on  08 9339 0013  or email – info@dynamiccreation.com.au