Walking the Walk: Leadership Lessons of the World's Greatest Leader is a work in progress, but I have drafted a list of the lessons learned from the Gospel of Luke. Each of the lessons will be explained in a separate post over the next few months, along with additional business stories and analysis from the leadership literature. The first lesson and introduction were posted earlier, the entire list follows:
The Lessons:
1. Visionary leaders have a vision before they begin.
2. Visionary leaders make some people angry, especially those who are "loyal defenders of the present".
3. Visionary leaders don't waste time trying to convince the un-persuadable,they move on to those who want to listen.
4. Visionary leaders are forthright, confident, and authoritative.
5. Visionary leaders avoid personal celebrity that would interfere with their mission.
6. Visionary leaders recruit loyal followers by giving them a purpose that's essential to enabling the vision, and confidence to step out on a new path.
7. Visionary leaders work with those who want to learn and be changed.
8. Visionary leaders form relationships with other leaders who have different values.
9. Visionary leaders have a sense of urgency.
10. Visionary leaders lead by telling stories with a message (parables).
11. Visionary leaders defend their followers from attacks from the "loyal defenders of the present".
12. Visionary leaders reinterpret the old truths and give them a new twist consistent with the new vision.
13. Visionary leaders, after careful contemplation, select a small core-leadership team that is diverse and committed to the vision.
14. Visionary leaders clearly articulate the values that they believe.
15. Visionary leaders publicly praise and reward those who exemplify the visionary values in action.
16. Visionary leaders rely on the support of their followers.
17. Visionary leaders mentor their leadership team and answer their questions about how to lead.
18. Visionary leaders act on their vision but when the change they bring frightens people, visionary leaders don't struggle to overcome the opposition, they move on and leave a follower to carry the message.
19. Visionary leaders, after a period of mentoring, give their leadership team a mission at a formal ceremony, including the authority to carry out the mission, a set of values to live up to as leaders as they work to further the vision.
20. Visionary leaders promote action learning; after a period of time in action, leadership teams return to their leader to report and for a leadership retreat.
21. Visionary leaders retreat from daily distractions to have conversations with their leadership team about their understanding of the vision, mission, purpose and values.
22. Visionary leaders keep their followers focused on the vision and the mission not the past or other distractions.
23. Visionary leaders select future leaders, give them partners, and send them out with a clear mission in service of the vision.
24. Visionary leaders keep their focus on their vision and the core leadership team that will make it happen, reinforcing the message at every opportunity.
25. Visionary leaders sometimes take dramatic action to demonstrate their core values in action and continue to reinforce the message about the vision, purpose, and values.
26. Visionary leaders refuse to be suckered into pointless debates with those opposed to the vision.
27. Visionary leaders follow through with their vision and carry out their mission regardless of the personal cost.
28. Visionary leaders empower the core leadership team to carry on with the vision and mission after they leave.
Copyright 2009 Kevin Karlson JD PhD
All rights reserved.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Monday, November 2, 2009
Law Firm Leadership: How Vision and Communication Create Greater ROI
Only two business challenges make law firm management into a daily headache: ineffective communication and mediocre leadership. I firmly believe that neither is necessary nor inevitable, and and I have seen for myself how some relatively simple strategies and tools can have a huge impact on the people and organizations now hampered by these very common challenges. Ironically, law firms seem to have the greatest difficulty with these two tasks, even though the organizations are full of smart people with above average communication skills.
That "vision thing"... the ROI is huge!
It is now generally accepted that a lack of a clearly articulated, shared vision for the future of an organization leads to results that are at least 30% below the performance of a comparable organization with a well-understood, shared, vision for the future in a typical year. In fact, Kotter and Heskett, two Harvard Business School profs found the difference in corporate performance between businesses with a clear and well understood vision and those without one was more than 900% over a 10 period for Fortune 500 companies that they studied! Here's a link to the book at Amazon; http://www.amazon.com/Corporate-Culture-Performance-John-Kotter/dp/0029184673 Vision matters.
Vision + Communication = Leadership
And how does a dream become a shared vision? Through open, constant, repeated, talking and listening-effective communication. The most effective leaders in any domain-business, government, the military, the church-all share this important leadership skill. These leaders have a personal vision for the organization, they have a story, and they tell it over and over again. This inspirational story-telling is always balanced by an equally well-developed ability to listen, not just to the words they hear, but to the emotional themes they sense in the undercurrents of these interactions. Vision and communication create corporate culture.
Being in a position with formal authority does not automatically make the position-holder a leader-a manager, perhaps; an autocrat, far too often; an authority, certainly; a leader, only rarely-when vision and communication come together. This seldom happens by accident, and to be sustained, requires planning, persistence, and purpose.
Send me your stories and questions
For more than 30 years, I have been involved in helping people learn to communicate more effectively-as a therapist, leadership coach, management consultant, litgation consultant, and professor in law, psychology, and business communication. I have had the privilege to learn from many inspirational and insightful people, and some of them were experts, like Peter Senge, while most of them were clients, students, and colleagues. Those generous souls with the courage to talk about both their victories and defeats have taught me the most, and this space is my way of sharing that generosity.
Lead on!
That "vision thing"... the ROI is huge!
It is now generally accepted that a lack of a clearly articulated, shared vision for the future of an organization leads to results that are at least 30% below the performance of a comparable organization with a well-understood, shared, vision for the future in a typical year. In fact, Kotter and Heskett, two Harvard Business School profs found the difference in corporate performance between businesses with a clear and well understood vision and those without one was more than 900% over a 10 period for Fortune 500 companies that they studied! Here's a link to the book at Amazon; http://www.amazon.com/Corporate-Culture-Performance-John-Kotter/dp/0029184673 Vision matters.
Vision + Communication = Leadership
And how does a dream become a shared vision? Through open, constant, repeated, talking and listening-effective communication. The most effective leaders in any domain-business, government, the military, the church-all share this important leadership skill. These leaders have a personal vision for the organization, they have a story, and they tell it over and over again. This inspirational story-telling is always balanced by an equally well-developed ability to listen, not just to the words they hear, but to the emotional themes they sense in the undercurrents of these interactions. Vision and communication create corporate culture.
Being in a position with formal authority does not automatically make the position-holder a leader-a manager, perhaps; an autocrat, far too often; an authority, certainly; a leader, only rarely-when vision and communication come together. This seldom happens by accident, and to be sustained, requires planning, persistence, and purpose.
Send me your stories and questions
For more than 30 years, I have been involved in helping people learn to communicate more effectively-as a therapist, leadership coach, management consultant, litgation consultant, and professor in law, psychology, and business communication. I have had the privilege to learn from many inspirational and insightful people, and some of them were experts, like Peter Senge, while most of them were clients, students, and colleagues. Those generous souls with the courage to talk about both their victories and defeats have taught me the most, and this space is my way of sharing that generosity.
Lead on!
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