Category: Leadership

Nov 23

My NASCAR Experience as Driver at the Phoenix International Raceway

Ok, so for a little fun I registered for a NASCAR racing experience to complete a bucket list item. This Rusty Wallace Racing Experience was held at the Phoenix International Raceway where just one week earlier the professionals competed in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. The experience was exhilarating except for a few bottlenecks caused by drivers a little uneasy about the acceleration and speed achieved by the cars during the race. While, I could mark the bucket list item as completed, I think I will leave this one open for another time in the near future.

As leaders, we need to address our fears and hone our focus. An experience, such as this helps to achieve both objectives.

Permanent link to this article: http://darrylpendergrass.com/Blog/my-nascar-experience-as-driver-at-the-phoenix-international-raceway/

Oct 04

16 – The Law of the Big Mo

Momentum is a Leaders Best Friend

In John C. Maxwell’s book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You (2007), John shares the law of buy-in.

So what happens when you have developed a compelling vision that you are passionate about and gathered the right people but you can not get the team moving in the right direction? You need to leverage the law of momentum. I used this law to my advantage before ever reading about the law in a formalized way like that by John Maxwell.

In 2003, I worked on a team that supported an enterprise-wide project management suite. Business teams often beat our team to the punch, delivering applications needed by the business. The business teams were unencumbered by information technology processes and focused only the needs of a specific business. Unfortunately, the business specific applications failed to satisfy the needs of other corporate businesses so duplication was the norm. We were faced with a challenge to deliver the ability to report on a specific business metric with charting capability using data stored in the project management system. I made a bold statement to my supervisor and department manager, “give me one business expert and one software developer and we will deliver the needed functionality in 30 days.”

Despite some doubt and apprehension, the management agreed to test my boast. The business expert interfaced with the businesses to understand their needs and the developer and I built the software components to deliver on those needs. We met frequently throughout each day to design just enough to begin software coding and to integrate developed code. Every Friday, we demonstrated our progress to business representatives to ensure we were meeting their reporting needs and used the feedback to make course corrections the following week. After a grueling month, the team delivered functional software that provided the most important features desired by the business representatives. The success and momentum of the first month proved the team could deliver as promised and garnered additional funding for three additional months to address emerging customer needs. A few months later we learned about a process called scrum that felt very similar to our process used in this project. I completed scrum master training and implemented the process within our extended team. Scrum is integral to our team’s development process even today.

When on a roll, everything seems to go just right, but when in a slump even the most simple tasks seem impossible. Leaders try to control momentum because momentum has such a great impact on success. Momentum changes the way people look at leaders. People tend to overlook small leadership issues, when overall the leader is on a roll. People desire to associate themselves with leaders that win. Leaders that build momentum in an organization discover that people find motivation and inspiration that drive them to higher levels of performance and achievement.

Gaining momentum is more difficult than maintaining momentum. Every leadership situation is different, but the leader must find ways to gain wins early, even if those wins are small. I have witnessed far too many projects waste opportunities in the early phases of the project to make the small wins that build momentum. Creating momentum takes a leader with vision and the ability to motivate other people. The leader’s passion, enthusiasm, and energy is motivational and leads to the small wins that build momentum.

I wish you well on your personal growth journey. I appreciate your additional insight, so feel free to comment to share your thoughts and experiences.

Links
Links to other posts in this discussion on the laws of leadership.
Mind map of the 21 laws of leadership.
Introduction to the leadership laws | 1 – The Law of the Lid | 2 – The Law of Influence | 3 – The Law of Process | 4 – The Law of Navigation | 5 – The Law of Addition | 6 – The Law of Solid Ground | 7 – The Law of Respect | 8 – The Law of Intuition | 9 – The Law of Magnetism | 10 – The Law of Connection | 11 – The Law of the Inner Circle | 12 – The Law of Empowerment | 13 – The Law of The Picture | 14 – The Law of Buy-in | 15 – The Law of Victory

Reference
Maxwell, John. (2007). The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership: Follow them and people will follow you. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Permanent link to this article: http://darrylpendergrass.com/Blog/16-the-law-of-the-big-mo/

Aug 23

14 – The Law of Buy-in

"People Buy into the Leader, then the Vision"

In John C. Maxwell’s book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You (2007), John shares the law of buy-in.

Idea

Many people with a good idea are often stunned to discover that they have difficulty selling the idea to other people. It is not necessarily that the idea is not good but that people have not bought into the person selling the idea. Good leaders understand that people must buy into them first before buying into their vision. This concept is readily observable but for some seems contrary to what many believe should happen.

Several years ago, I saw this leadership law in action. An acquaintance had an idea for a robbery deterrent system targeted at high-risk businesses like gas stations and convenience stores. His idea as actually quite good and he had spend a considerable amount of time molding the vision to convince investors to fund initial prototypes. Many of the investors knew the inventor quite well and recognized his limited leadership influence, which created high-risk from an investment point of view. The bottom line – the inventor failed to comply with the law of buy in.

The law of buy in causes people to take one of four actions.

1. People look for another leader when they do not buy into the leader or the leader’s vision.

2. People look for another leader when they do not buy into the leader but do buy into the vision.

3. People seek to change the vision when they buy into the leader but not into the vision.

4. People support the leader and the vision when they buy into both.

Getting support for your ideas, vision, and strategy requires that people buy into you first. This often takes time. To build credibility with people develop relationships with them, earn their trust by displaying character, integrity, and honesty, hold yourself to high standards, set good examples, help people do their jobs better, help people reach their goals, and develop people as leaders. When you add value to your relationships your credibility with other people increases and builds the foundation for people to buy into you and your ideas.

I wish you well on your personal growth journey. I appreciate your additional insight, so feel free to comment to share your thoughts and experiences.

Links
Links to other posts in this discussion on the laws of leadership.
Mind map of the 21 laws of leadership.
Introduction to the leadership laws | 1 – The Law of the Lid | 2 – The Law of Influence | 3 – The Law of Process | 4 – The Law of Navigation | 5 – The Law of Addition | 6 – The Law of Solid Ground | 7 – The Law of Respect | 8 – The Law of Intuition | 9 – The Law of Magnetism | 10 – The Law of Connection | 11 – The Law of the Inner Circle | 12 – The Law of Empowerment | 13 – The Law of The Picture

Reference
Maxwell, John. (2007). The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership: Follow them and people will follow you. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Permanent link to this article: http://darrylpendergrass.com/Blog/14-the-law-of-buy-in/

Jul 27

7 Traits Great Leaders Share that Enable Empowering Others

Leaders that excel at the law of empowerment recognize seven important factors and comply with those seven factors to build strong capabilities in those they lead.
Team Empowerment


7 Factors Needed to Empower Those You Lead

1. Value people. Leaders that truly value people and appreciate the benefits received through teams that demonstrate thought and skill diversity are more prone to empower others.
2. Share Vision – people flourish in environments where they feel they are part of something bigger than themselves. Leaders that share their vision focus their teams to pursue a common direction and empower them to work towards a common goal and purpose.
3. Communicate. Leaders that communicate the direction and provide clear objectives build a mental model or picture that guides their team toward success.
4. Trust people. Leaders that trust people to make the right choices find following the empowerment law much easier than those leaders reluctant to trust. I find that most people want to do the right thing. Leaders that model good leadership behaviors discover that others will also learn and model those behaviors.
5. Enable effective decision-making. Leaders that empower effectively provide the information necessary for team members to make decisions. Poor leaders shy away from the effort to create the environment for others to make decisions opting instead to withhold the decision-making authority for themselves. This simply creates bottlenecks, limits capacity, and prevents growing other strong leaders.
6. Delegate. Leaders must learn to delegate in order to empower people. Many leaders consider delegation a lose of their own power. But leaders that delegate effectively find that building other strong leaders earns them even more power and influence. Effective delegation requires delegation of authority and establishing accountability. See article Improve your Capacity with Effective Delegation for additional information.
7. Recognize and reward positive empowered behaviors. Behaviors that get rewarded get repeated. Great leaders recognize the power of genuine and well-timed praise and rewards.

I wish you well on your personal growth journey. I appreciate your additional insight, so feel free to comment to share your thoughts and experiences.

Links
12 – The Law of Empowerment
Improve your Capacity with Effective Delegation

Permanent link to this article: http://darrylpendergrass.com/Blog/7-traits-great-leaders-share-that-enable-empowering-others/

Jul 25

12 – The Law of Empowerment

“A Leader’s Potential Is Determined by Those Closest to Him”

In John C. Maxwell’s book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You (2007), John shares the law of empowerment.
Team Empowerment

Contrary to popular belief, leadership power is not a finite resource. Many act as if leadership power is a finite resource in short supply. This mindset causes one to protect their leadership power rather than distribute their power to others, which actually grows their influence and enables producing even greater results. Managers that leverage only their positional power create barriers that prevent groups and organizations from flourishing. If the barriers persist long enough, high-performing people will seek environments that enable them grow.

John shares three predominate reasons that explain the reluctance of people to share their power.

1. Job Security. As mentioned in several previous articles, many mistakenly believe that hoarding knowledge and skills ensures job security. I have personally witnessed far too many people that found the demand for their long-held knowledge and skills diminish due to shifting business needs. Hoarding knowledge and skills only serves to prevent personal growth.

2. Resistant to Change. Empowering people causes them to grow. Empowerment encourages constant change because people do not stagnate but tend to look for new ways to accomplish objectives. Innovation by definition includes the concept of change. Progress occurs by challenging the status quo resulting in constant change. As creatures of habit, people often find change difficult to embrace. Leaders must learn to embrace change and even encourage change. Great leaders by definition are change agents, the catalyst and support of change.

3. Lack of Self-Worth or Low Self-Esteem. This barrier prevents people from becoming effective leaders because they tend to be self-conscious or acutely aware and concerned about what others think about them, how they look, or whether people like them. People with low self-worth give power and control over their own lives to other people leaving little to no power left for them to empower others. On the other hand, people with a healthy sense of self-worth believe they can make a difference and actively empower other people to increase their capacity, performance, and achievement.

If you find one or more of these barriers restricting your ability to empower others, refer to the article 3 – The Law of Process for a discussion about leveraging a development process for your continued growth.

I wish you well on your personal growth journey. I appreciate your additional insight, so feel free to comment to share your thoughts and experiences.

Links
Links to other posts in this discussion on the laws of leadership.
Mind map of the 21 laws of leadership.
Introduction to the leadership laws | 1 – The Law of the Lid | 2 – The Law of Influence | 3 – The Law of Process | 4 – The Law of Navigation | 5 – The Law of Addition | 6 – The Law of Solid Ground | 7 – The Law of Respect | 8 – The Law of Intuition | 9 – The Law of Magnetism | 10 – The Law of Connection | 11 – The Law of the Inner Circle

Reference
Maxwell, John. (2007). The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership: Follow them and people will follow you. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Permanent link to this article: http://darrylpendergrass.com/Blog/12-the-law-of-empowerment/