Three Brain Synergy Blog

Here is the recording from the December 17th telephone seminar on Mutual Coaching.

Leadership Question of the week of October 05, 2009

How can a leader facilitate the process of getting people to work and collaborate better together even though they may not necessarily like each other?

Answer:

It is often difficult to avoid assigning people who dislike each other to a team that needs to work together in the achievement of a specific objective.

It is evident that people in a team who dislike each other will cause the teams to perform below the level of success of a more compatible team, let alone a dream team. The degree of inferior performance will depend essentially on two factors, namely:

1)      the number of persons disliked in a team

2)      the degree of existing dislike

The challenge for the leader who works with the team is to get the team to overcome disliking each other. This may be more or less difficult to achieve. It may be less difficult when the leader can substitute some persons. It will be more difficult when substitution is not possible for any reason, such as the need to keep a person on the team because he is the only expert available for the particular situation.

Whatever the particular situation, the better qualified the leader is as a facilitator the more effective is he going to be in getting a team to improve individual as well as collective performance.

Good listening skills are essential for good leadership and to develop teamwork in a department and across services. According to Fritz Glaus everyone can develop good listening skills but the challenge may be different for various types of people and leaders.

Here is the leadership and team development question for the week of September 14, 2009

 ''How does active listening differ from just good listening skills?''

Last week’s leadership and team development question was

How do listening skills affect the quality of leadership?

Here is the answer from Fritz Glaus along with a video of more in-depth answer.

Leaders who possess good listening skills are capable of practicing participative leadership and of developing highly motivated teams which consistently demonstrate outstanding productivity, initiative, and creativity. 

Discussion 

As discussed on another occasion, it is unfortunate that only a small minority of leaders are good listeners. You will recall that the reason for this is that most persons in leadership positions are put there not because they have a participative leadership style but because, first, they are able to make quick decisions and second, they direct their managers and other persons in their organization to carry out their decisions. In other words, they have a directive style of leadership, or an action style, which is a style that unfortunately develops ‘’yes men’’ and ‘’yes women’’ who only give the impression of having initiative and of being decisive themselves, when in reality they are self-protective, always making sure they don’t do anything their boss might dislike. 

Fortunately, there is a growing minority of directive style leaders who have discovered the concept of participative leadership and who realize that by cultivating the habit of listening to others they can develop teams of increasing productivity, initiative, and creativity. These leaders aim to free themselves increasingly from the drudgery of being in charge of all operational details and of having to continually check up on others to make sure they are doing as they are told. 

ThreeBrainSynergy has developed ways to help leaders who want to become better listeners and to practice a more participative leadership style; in short who want to enable themselves to create more effective teamwork in their organization. 

ThreeBrainSynergy e-learning provides tools designed for this purpose, showing both how to sensitize others towards the concept of participative leadership and how to coach them as required

FREE TELE-SEMINAR SEPTEMBER 24TH

 This month’s tele-seminar on Active Listening – What it is and how to use it to prevent people problems is Thursday September 24^th at 2:00 PM EST. Register for free now.

You can improve your understanding of participative leadership by joining in the discussion of the leadership and team development question of the week. Perhaps you want to know what participative leadership is and why it is so important to drive high performance in organizations.

Real teamwork in organizations where people are highly engaged in their work and take initiative to solve problems is driven by a participative leadership style.

This leader who uses a participative style of leadership involves his team members in most decisions or entrusts them to make decisions on their own. This can only happen if the leader develops his direct reports to do their job autonomously and solve problems on their own.

Each week we are providing a question and answer of the week regarding participative leadership and team development. By participating in the discussion you will further your understanding of participative leadership, team development and types of people.

Here is the leadership and team development question for the week of September 8, 2009.

How do listening skills affect the quality of leadership?

Join the discussion by posting your answer here or better still in our Basic Members forum. Register as a basic member for free now and enjoy all the benefits including the Three Brain Synergy know-yourself e-learning introduction program.

Here is the answer to last week’s (August 31, 2009) question by Fritz Glaus which was;

How does one implement a participative leadership style when s/he is just new in the position, the relationships have not been developed, and business needs to keep moving forward ?

Answer

Implementing a participative leadership style is something that can only be done over time. The person who is new in a position needs first to familiarize her/himself with the state of participative leadership practice and awareness in the new context and second  to gradually cultivate her/his new relationships, both with the persons who will be reporting to her/him and with her/his superior.

You can also view a video interview with Fritz answering the question here.

ThreeBrainSynergy e-learning provides tools designed for this purpose, showing both how to sensitize others towards the concept of participative leadership and how to coach them as required

This month’s tele-seminar on Active Listening – What it is and how to use it to prevent people problems is Thursday September 24^th at 2:00 PM EST. Register for free now.

Here is Friz Glaus' answer to last weeks leadership question along with a video interview with Fritz  sharing his views on the subject. Watch the video on You Tube

Leadership question of the week of August 17th 2009:

What type of person and what style of leadership are required in a leader intent on developing a team of managers and/or vice-presidents reporting directly to him who are self-directed and fully autonomous?

I would like to deal with this question in relation to a specific group of business people rather than to leaders in general. The basic leadership  requirement will be the same, but I would like to focus on the specific business leaders that ThreeBrainSynergy is addressing, namely company owners (Presidents or CEO’s) whose innate style of leadership is that of quick action. They decide and act quickly themselves and they expect quick action from the vice-presidents and other executives who report directly to them. They also expect their direct reports to be able to carry out such action without the need for detailed explanations.

When we observe the quick action business leader at work, we notice that he often complains about his direct reports’ failure to act with the effectiveness he expects of them. He usually ignores the real reason for their ineffectivenss (his brusque and overly directive leadership style), complaining that they show a lack of interest in their job, lack of commitment to a goal, pre-occupation with their personal problems, etc. He doesn’t realize that the main reason that his expectations of them are not being met is his own leadership style. He fails to see that the autonomy and independence he expects from his direct reports cannot be obtained through highly directive leadership. In other words, he fails to see the contradiction inherent in his leadership style. A leader needs to embrace the participative style of leadership if he wants to grow direct reports who show autonomy and independence. One cannot expect to develop autonomy and independence in direct reports who are strongly directed what to do. Unfortunately, the directive leader is not usually interested in changing his style, unless he has some acceptance of the fact that he could get better results if he were less directive.

Therefore, unless the action type business owner realizes himself that he needs to develop a more participative leadership style, he will not be interested in joining ThreeBrainSynergy. He will only be ready to join once he has learned somehow that there is more to life than investing all one’s time and energy into running a company and that it is possible to WORK LESS yet EARN MORE. Perhaps he has heard Ricardo Semler speak about his company, SEMCO, a highly successful Brazilian enterprise which is run entirely by Mr. Semler’s previous direct reports while he is making speeches all around the world explaining to business leaders how they can achieve similar results with their own direct reports.

Fortunately, the number of action oriented business leaders who see the need to change their leadership style is on the increase, due in large part to the Internet, as nowadays most business leaders, regardless of their leadership style, routinely consult the Internet in connection with their business.

Getting back to our leadership question of the week, the obvious answer to the question is that since it is being increasingly recognized that the companies with the highest productivity are those that are focused on teamwork, the leadership style required today is the participative one rather than the directive one. The participative style alone can ensure the development of  effective teams which, after all, are composed of fully participating, engaged and motivated team members.

It should be noted though, that even in the case of CEO’s who want to change their style to participative leadership, the ACTIVE LISTENING that this requires will not be easy for them, since they are normally ACTION types (body types) who are in the habit of requiring that others listen to THEM and do what THEY tell them to do.

Fritz Glaus

Know-yourself, learn your type & improve your effectiveness.

Watch the video  

Three Brain Synergy is about creating personal balance in yourself and helping others in your organization to do the same. This leads to greater mutual understanding, which makes teamwork and the process of managing performance much easier.

 In fact Three Brain Synergy provides a process for developing people to work as a team, solve problems on their own and become fully autonomous.

 But of course every business and organization has many processes that need developed, implemented and managed to be successful. However, many business owners fail to recognize and understand how important this actually is. It could also be directly related to their personal style of leadership that is dependent on a tendency of their type. That is why self-knowledge of your type and the inherent tendencies is such a powerful tool and why we base the foundation of our development program on knowing yourself and others through our types of people system.

 Here is a link to a newsletter from Wayne Vanwick, president of the Achievement Center who, along with his authors share some valuable insight into the importance of processes in business.

Good articles on business process & success.  A must read

Strong leadership and team development is more crucial now than ever before for your organization if it is to make it through rough waters and to ride the tides of good fortune.

Leadership that drives high performance in an organization does not just happen but is a decision that comes from understanding what motivates and drives people to perform. To help you remove any ambiguity in your thinking about what makes for great leadership we are offering you to participate in our leadership and team development question of the week.

This weeks question is:

What type of person and what style of  leadership are required in a leader intent on developing a team of managers and/or vice-presidents  reporting directly to him who are self-directed and fully autonomous?

You can post your answer in the public forum on the Three Brain Synergy website. To access the forum, register for FREE as a Basic Member and then log in to the basic membership area and click on Forum. You will see the question, and you can post your answer right there.

We are offering a prize of our complete Know-Yourself e-learning to the first person to post the correct answer i.e. an answer that agrees with the TBS philosophy. This is a value of $197.00. We will post the answer next Monday on August 24th on the forum.

Participating in this discussion will help you to clarify in your own mind what kind of attitude it takes to be the leader of a high performance organization.

Stephen Goldberg

www.threebrainsynergy.com

Although there are several blog entries viewable here we actually just launched the live version of our website on July 16, 2009.

The mission of the website is to coach business owners and leaders on developing themselves and the members of their  management team to become leaders who inspire people and teams to produce outstanding results autonomously.

The reason for this is so that you the business owner and leader can free yourself to work on what you  do best or not work at all. This gives you the choice to innovate, work on personal projects, help others or do whatever things you would like to do. The goal is to be free of managing the day to day tasks of your business or organization.

When you learn to develop the style of leadership that provides the freedom you need, you automatically provide a rich environment for others to grow, do what they enjoy and excel at and for teamwork and collaboration to become the norm.

Our mission at ThreeBrainSynergy is to provide a platform for leaders and business owners to develop this style of leadership over time and share their experience with other leaders through our online membership program. What sets this program apart is the unique approach to leadership and team development through our types of people system of knowledge of self and others. This system empowers people to understand themselves better by becoming conscious of the qualities and tendencies relative to their type. It is a self-discovery process that people in the team share and use with each other to build stronger working relationships. As explained in the link Know Thyself, this process  is something to be experienced before it can be fully appreciated. It is the primary workshop that our members go through. The workshop is facilitated by the President or CEO to create a fully autonomous team of direct reports who run the Company on his behalf.

We invite you to explore our website and discover for yourself how this unique and powerful approach can help you free yourself to innovate, work less, earn more and enjoy life!

Stephen Goldberg

co-founder, ThreeBrainSynergy.com