Merry Christmas… and may all your wishes come true.

As a major supporter, LMA was pleased to be actively involved in this excellent leadership event that drew a thousand attendees from across Australasia and abroad.

Representing LMA at the event were Steve Fairall and Wayne Bogart (pictured above with Muhammad Yunus), with Steve offering the following comments and observations:

Overall it was an extremely well produced leadership event driven by some truly inspirational speakers who shared many ideas and concepts aligned to what people learn from LMA

Martha Stewart – founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimendia, presented on The Business of Building a Brand.

Martha had inspirational parents who encouraged their children to learn and have a curiosity to investigate. She learned the basics of business as a young stockbroker from business leaders she interacted with.

She learned that to be successful you/your product(s) must appeal to the needs and wants people have. For her initially, the key was understanding that people were buying books and magazines so they could go home and have a better life – her books and magazines appeal to these aspirations. Aligned to this is to ensure that you never speak down to the customer. To ensure ongoing success Martha continually works to understand the needs, wants and desires of customers and potential customers. Technology and social media is allowing her to tap into these quickly, do effective quick research and keep people engaged.

Martha’s key to putting a high performance team together is to find like motivated/like inspired people and in fact, when you start to achieve this, the like motivated/like inspired people will find you.

Balance in life is key, and effective time management is central to achieving this. Martha’s driver in this is that she wants to save time so she can go and do the stuff that is important to her, e.g., plant a shrub, spend time with family.

Martha is an inspiring Baby Boomer with many Gen Y attributes.

Muhammad Yunus – CEO Grameen Bank and Nobel Peace Prize Winner, presented on Social Business: A New Kind of Capitalism.

Muhammad discovered a disconnect between economic theory and reality as an economics professor in Bangladesh. He saw injustice in how the ‘system’ was entrapping poor people in poverty and challenged himself as a human being to help another human being. One village became his ‘university’. 42 people had total borrowings of $27 and the negative impact that was having on their lives was significantly disproportionate to the $27. His solution became the Grameen Bank which today lends $1.5billion/yr solely from deposits, to 8.3 million borrowers, of which 97% are women. Muhammad’s approach in creating the rules for Grameen Bank was to look at conventional banks and do the opposite, i.e., lending to poor people, lending to women, not interested in the past of the person, only in their future. He was successful in stopping the cycle of poverty and illiteracy by changing the inputs.

As his borrowers became more prosperous they were able to educate their children. He found that the children were leaving the villages to take on jobs elsewhere. Muhammad challenged the children to never be a job seeker, but instead be only a job giver. Rather than looking for work to be employed by others, use their mother’s banks’ money to start a business of their own and then employ others.

Muhammad’s focus has been to create a business to solve a problem that has been encountered. Creativity will win every time. We should all use creativity to change the world – we have the power!!

A truly amazing man who spoke from his heart and had the audience in awe.

Russell Simmons – Chairman and CEO of Rush Communications and named one of the “Top 25 Most Influential People in the past 25 years”, presented on Authentic Leadership.

Russell’s philosophy is to live, be passionate, and go to work every day inspired. He found that industries are usually comfortable in their own space and do not see changes coming, and those in power usually cannot see the diversity out there. Transformation comes from having passion and finding/expressing it. Be honest – when you give an honest expression of yourself, people will buy into you. Give people the things you love and have faith in.

George Clooney – actor, activist, co-founder Not On Our Watch and Satellite Sentinel Project, presented on The Power of Collaboration.

George commented that you need to be prepared to capitalise on opportunities that come your way. In his experience, he said that he has been a failure so often he knows that success is a moment to savour. In life it is important to take your work seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously.

On leading, George commented that you need to be prepared to give away certain power and trust people. Paint the picture, share the vision, get participation and give people ownership. Instil confidence in your people by letting them do what they do best. As the leader it is critical to have a point of view, make decisions and get people to do what is required.

Jeff Taylor – founder of Monster.com and Eons.com, presented on Find and Keep: The Future of Human Capital

Jeff shared that when you are nervous, you learn. His philosophy is that we are all the CEOs of our own lives and we should be seeking F.A.M.E.:

Free Agent: the job description is the base of what is expected. What you do beyond that defines you.

Athlete (train like one): be prepared so you can work harder for yourself and the company.

Marketer (prepare like one): deliver the key messages, about yourself, your product, your company. What differentiates you?

Engage (like an entrepreneur): work on your ideas, when everyone around you thinks you are crazy, keep working on your ideas.

80% of success in life is showing up. When you consistently show up, it is amazing how much ‘luck’ you have!!  If you coast, you only coast one way!!

Michael Fertik – founder of Reputation.com, presented on Online & On-Guard: How to Build Brands & Protect Privacy.

Michael explained that reputation is bigger than brand. The internet is having a tremendous impact in determining reputations, both company and personal. In the near future as a result of developments in sophisticated analytics, there will be an explosion of tools that will numerically score reputations. We all need to prepare now as organisations and individuals. What information is currently freely available about our companies and us on the internet that would form the basis of a reputation score?

Consumers already rely on company reputations on the internet to make decisions. As a consequence CEOs in leading organisations are starting to manage reputation directly because the key components of shareholder value are the same as components of reputation. To be effective in managing reputation, CEOs have to trust employees and customers with more information.

We are each of the CEO of our self – we need to manage our personal reputation.  For example, 70% of employers have admitted to rejecting job candidates due to content they found on the internet. We can all (personal and company) prepare now by ensuring that things like the content appearing on the first page of a Google search is positive.

So how can you achieve success in 2012?

The best way is to develop your own self-confidence!  Develop supreme confidence in yourself and your own abilities.  Enter every activity in 2012 without giving mental recognition to the possibility of defeat.  Concentrate on your strengths rather than your weaknesses; on you powers rather than your problems and on your opportunities rather than your obstacles.

To develop supreme confidence in yourself and your ability to succeed, identify your goals for the year in all areas of life and then outline clear plans of action for each of them.  Nothing gives you more confidence than having clear-cut knowledge of the actions you plan to take and the order in which to take them.  The mere existence of a written plan of action contributes immeasurably to your self-assurance and self-confidence.  The most important source of self-confidence is knowing that you can take the actions and make the necessary internal changes that are needed for your goals to become reality.

Confidence in yourself enables you to deal honestly with your shortcomings and compels you to consistently make corrections.  Confidence comes from experience. Experience comes from know-how.  Know-how comes from having the courage to submit yourself to obstacles, situations and circumstances from which the average person shies away.

Self-confidence stimulates your creative imagination.  No matter what you undertake, you will never do it until you think you can.  You will never master it until you have the confidence in yourself to act first in your own mind.  Anything you undertake must be mentally accomplished before it can be materially accomplished.

The primary element at the beginning of any goal, the one factor which will guarantee its success, is confidence in the beginning that it can be done.  The major difference between high achievement and failure is confidence – confidence builds your self-image.  You either succeed at failure or you succeed at success.  Both of these results are outward expressions of the attitude you hold toward them.  You can either think lack or abundance, poverty or plenty, obstacles or opportunities.  The choice is yours!

The degree of success you achieve in 2012 will be governed by your level of self-confidence and the degree of determination you apply to achieving your goals.  Every time you say to yourself, “I can do it, and I will do it,” you are strengthening your determination and reinforcing your positive self- image.  You are forming a habit of thinking which will manifest itself in behaviour that generates success.  You begin to look for ways that things can be done instead of looking for reasons why they can’t be done.

Determine to be successful in all areas of your life in 2012.  Develop your confidence and take control over your future.

Grant Sexton
Executive Chairman
Leadership Management Australasia

LMA’s 5 Key New Year’s Resolutions to Increase Performance and Productivity

• Make the best use of the resources you have – most people harbour great ideas that can improve productivity. They’re just waiting to be asked to offer them. To drive performance and productivity, expect big things of your people in terms of them offering up their ideas, improvements and changes to make the workplace better. Look to make improvement conversations a regular feature of your interactions with the team.

• Get to know your people better – work out what makes each person tick and how you can best tap into their needs and motivations to drive performance and productivity by spending quality time with them. Work hard to understand the needs of different generations and look to create an environment that encourages engagement and commitment at all levels, not just your own.

• Lead everyone to focus on goal setting and High Payoff Activities (HPAs) – look to develop individual and team goals to drive performance and productivity. Build goal setting and goal reviewing activities into every aspect of your role, your department and the organisation as a whole. Make discussions about goals a regular feature of team meetings, work-in-progress discussions and toolbox meetings. Look for opportunities to celebrate the successful accomplishment of goals – be they big or small.  Additionally, develop an obsession with what LMA calls High Payoff Activities (HPAs), whereby you devote the bulk of your time to the key activities that generate the biggest return for you, your department and the organisation overall. Start the day with a plan and regularly check that you’re sticking to it. Regularly ask yourself “Is what I’m doing right now the best use of my time?” If you answer yes, keep doing it. If you answer no, stop and move onto something that delivers a higher payoff.

• Communicate, communicate, communicate – commit yourself to listening to your team more than talking to them. Make giving and receiving great feedback a key activity and look to communicate clearly and fully at all times. Recognise that communication is never-ending and unrelenting and is the lifeblood of effective managers. It must be developed, practised and honed to encourage personal and team performance and productivity.

• Eat the ‘elephant’ one bite-sized chunk at a time – break big challenges and issues (elephants) into smaller, more achievable tasks (chunks). Set about gaining momentum by completing a series of small steps on the way to achieving the big goal. Look to involve others at every step and take time to reflect on and celebrate the progress being made in order to drive further action.

In summary, LMA’s 5 Key New Year’s Resolutions to Increase Your Performance and Productivity are:

• Make the best use of the resources you have
• Get to know your people better
• Lead everyone to focus on goal setting and High Payoff Activities (HPAs)
• Communicate, communicate, communicate
• Eat the ‘elephant’ one bite-sized chunk at a time

Although many of us make big, elaborate New Year’s resolutions, so often we fail to live up to them or fulfil their potential. Why? Because we don’t follow three golden rules that almost guarantee our resolutions will become realities:

Rule 1 – Commit fully to your resolutions in the form of written goals
Rule 2 – Break big resolutions down into small bite-sized, achievable action steps
Rule 3 – Regularly review your goals and action steps to check your progress and that you are still on track

Applying these three simple rules to the 5 Key New Year’s Resolutions to Increase Your Performance and Productivity will enable you to generate better outcomes in your organisation in 2012. Don’t let another year of great but unfulfilled intentions go by…start now to set your goals for the New Year!

In 2011, through the L.E.A.D. Survey series, we have learned a great deal that can help with leaders and managers plan for 2012. Planning is widely considered the most critical function for leaders and managers. Planning relies heavily on reflection – on looking back to identify what has worked and what hasn’t.

Yet reflection is often a very low priority in the daily lives of leaders and managers. A myriad of demands from clients, customers and staff, together with uncertain national and international economic conditions all heavily impact on the time available for reflection, and can, in turn, significantly reduce effective planning time.

Through reflection achievements, successes and progress can be highlighted. Reflection can also identify setbacks and failures to help pinpoint the best ways forward and focus our time and talents in the most effective ways in the pursuit of success.

Based on the 2011 L.E.A.D. Survey Series, here are Five Big Issues that have surfaced most prominently in relation to leadership and management in 2011. Focusing on and addressing each of these issues is essential for success in 2012:

Five Key Issues for Leaders and Managers from LMA’s 2011 L.E.A.D Survey Series

Job Satisfaction

In 2011, almost 60% of the workforce either hate their jobs or have a ho-hum attitude towards work. Leaders and managers need to ask themselves a tough question – “Am I providing the work environment that my people want to be part of?” With only a third of employees and middle managers/supervisors (37%) feeling positive about their job satisfaction, the opportunity exists to create a more satisfying experience in the workplace – a huge opportunity that leaders and senior managers must work to maximize.

Staff Turnover

A lack of job satisfaction contributes directly and substantially to staff turnover. According to the 2011 L.E.A.D. Survey, half the workforce has considered looking a job elsewhere in the last six months and around one in eight have actually applied for a new job elsewhere. Better salary/pay, better opportunities for career development/growth and a more interesting/ challenging position/role/work are the key reasons for considering working elsewhere.

Take the time to get to know and understand the motivations of your team – what makes them tick, what influences their performance, what makes them want to stay and develop with the organisation rather than move. Identify what changes are needed to attract and retain your most important asset – your people.

Skills Shortages

The reality of skill shortages hit home in 2011. Around two-thirds of leaders (57%), managers (70%) and non-managerial employees (66%) in Australasian organisations currently recognise skills shortages in their organisations. Beyond technical skill gaps and shortages (which are largely industry-specific and therefore require specific industry-based training), disturbingly, two of the top six are the areas of leadership and management.

Clearly leaders and managers need to look closely at their own skill base and ensure their skills are up to scratch. Further they must look to potential future leadership and management successors in their organisations and identify and develop talent for succession and for future growth.

Generational Disharmony

In 2011, the L.E.A.D. Survey explored generational relationships in detail and discovered a very different picture of the interactions between generations. The relationships between and with Baby Boomers were shown to be far more fractious than those with and between Gen-Y, the traditional ‘problem children’ in the workplace.

Most in the Baby Boomer generation don’t want to work with (87%) or report to (59%) their own generation. The vast majority in other generations also don’t want to work with Baby Boomers (Gen-X 96%, Gen-Y 96%) or report to them (Gen-X 94%, Gen-Y 92%) in the future.

With Baby Boomers filling the majority of leadership and senior management positions in organisations for at least another decade, the implications of a workforce unwilling and uninterested in working with and being managed by Baby Boomers are profound.

Commenting, Grant Sexton, Executive Chairman of LMA said, “Gone are the days when the challenges of fulfilling the needs of different groups can simply be dismissed as one particular generation just being difficult or demanding. Understanding the needs, expectations and motivations of a given generation could be the difference between keeping and losing some of your best people in the long run.”

Human Resources (HR) Management

2011 saw a rise in the prominence and importance of HR management – the management of human resources in organisations. An impressive 93% of leaders and senior managers now regard HR departments/professionals seriously and support them in their work in organisations (up from 80% five years ago).

Many leaders and managers have only recently discovered that HR professionals can and will assist them to deal more effectively with all aspects of the management of their people. Yet there is still greater potential for HR to play a key role in collaboration with leaders and managers in critical areas including:

• Gathering input and feedback about employee needs and issues
• Recognising and rewarding employee performance and productivity
• Following-up and implementing initiatives to drive engagement

Pausing for reflection…

So with these Five Key Issues now clearly on the radar, the onus is squarely on leaders and managers to take a serious look at each issue, think deeply about the potential for the issue to impact on your organisation and develop specific plans to address each issue. Quite simply, failure to address these critical issues will have a detrimental effect on the success of your organisation in 2012.

So as you pause to reflect on these Five Key Issues, ask yourself…

• What is my plan in each of these areas?
• What can I personally do to address each of the issues?
• What will have changed and be better when I reflect on these issues at end of 2012?

As the saying goes “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Through reflection on the year just past, you’ll be in better shape to plan for the future and capitalise on the possibilities that are available to you in 2012.

Here’s hoping you’ve learnt something for 2012 by reflecting on 2011.

Grant Sexton, Executive Chairman of Leadership Management Australasia, responds, “The big challenge for Mr Shorten in his new workplace portfolio is to elevate training and skilling, as well as work-life balance. LMA’s L.E.A.D. Survey shows that employees say that flexible work hours for better work-life balance as well as opportunities for training and development are among the Top 5 most important criteria to be offered by a potential employer. He may not be able to make any difference about other criteria, like salary increases, career development and travel opportunities, but he sure can certainly address, promote and meet these other pressing needs in our workplace.”

Victorian Premier John Brumby recently made what to many was a shock announcement that he was cancelling all his public engagements and appearances until further notice. His desire to care for his ailing father brought him to make this uncharacteristic departure from his traditionally very public approach to his job as Victoria’s leading politician.

Over recent years, an increasing number of high profile public figures (including CEOs, MPs, sporting figures, celebrities and others) have elected to disengage from their daily activities to seek better balance or fulfil other commitments that have taken on greater significance in their lives – commitments often involving family, partners, children and friends.

The importance of balance in one’s life cannot be overstated. The adage, ‘all work and no play makes John a dull boy (or Jenny a dull girl)’ remains as relevant today as ever. But the notion of work-life balance is deeper than this simple saying suggests.

Balance provides the opportunity for individuals to analyse and review the extent to which they are a total person, a rounded individual, productive AND content.

To be able to make a decision like John Brumby has, and to have the organisation (in this case parliament and the Victorian public) accept it and provide the necessary support, speaks volumes about the changing nature and expectations of modern workers and organisations.

An understanding organisation, an empathic boss, a supportive co-worker – all are increasingly demonstrating that our workplace has changed forever in response to a very different view of work and what it means in our lives.

LMA courses explore the importance of work in the context of other aspects of our lives through the ‘Total Person Concept’ – a visual expression of the multi-dimensional but highly integrated elements of our lives. Through a guided activity, participants are able to prioritise what’s important to them, identify where they are spending insufficient time or focus in one or more of the important aspects of their lives, and set new goals to correct the imbalance.

Ultimately though, individuals must take charge of their own lives. It’s their choice whether or not to make work-life balance a priority for themselves.

Look out for the signs of a lack of balance in yourself, and your people, and be prepared to flex and provide support to meet the needs of those who are seeking greater balance in their lives.

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Yet many of our best and most effective leaders have served for much shorter and indeed much longer terms at the top. So how long is too long for a leader to lead?

There is no right or wrong answer to a question like this. Kennett suggests that when the effectiveness of the leader is called into question through a lack of innovation or the appearance of stagnation, the writing starts to appear on the wall and it becomes the leader’s duty and responsibility to prepare and hand the reigns to a successor who can take up the charge.

However many leaders are so far removed from reality that they fail to recognise the early signs that their effectiveness has begun to wane and they need to move on and move out. Kennett cites Australia’s current Prime Minister as one who has been elevated to a position of leadership but even from the early days has not exhibited one of the core qualities of a true leader – honesty. In backing away from very public decisions and positions and seemingly dancing to the tunes of others, she has undermined her impact as a leader and begun to raise rather than answer questions of her calibre and quality as a leader.

Examples of leadership like those discussed by Mr Kennett highlight to all current and aspiring leaders that they may well have a Best Before date (perhaps even a Use-By date) and must be regularly checking that they are still palatable and effective in their role as a leader.