Reactions to Article: The Fatal Flaw with 360 Surveys by Marcus Buckingham, Harvard Business Review Blog

Current Event: What’s going on in training and development?

Q&A: Jack and Joe answer your toughest questions, submitted on the Zenger Folkman website (www.zengerfolkman.com/podcast.html)

• Does senior management’s effectiveness affect the effectiveness of line management? Would you say each level of management is the foundation for the tent poles of the lower level management?
• How do we convince senior management that they need to listen to middle and front-line managers in order to improve processes and control rising costs?

1 Tip for Leaders at Full Strength: Jack and Joe will share one thing leaders can do today to increase their effectiveness to “full strength”.

You can get more updates from Jack, Joe and the rest of the ZF team by following us on Twitter, visiting our blog, or registering for our Leadership Resource Center! Enjoy the podcast, and be sure to join us for the next episode!

Reactions to Article: Strengths, the Double-Edged Sword by Madeleine Blanchard, Chief Learning Officer Magazine

Current Event: What’s going on in training and development?

Q&A: Jack answers your toughest questions, submitted on the Zenger Folkman website (www.zengerfolkman.com/podcast.html)

• I’ve heard that many organizations are dropping performance assessments in favor of ongoing developmental coaching. My organization is interested in doing this, but what are the elements needed to make sure the coaching initiative is successful?

• As a leader, I don’t have a lot of time to spend on developing multiple competencies. How can I prioritize my development to spend time on the competency that will make the most impact on my leadership effectiveness?

1 Tip for Leaders at Full Strength: Jack will share one thing leaders can do today to increase their effectiveness to “full strength”.

You can get more updates from Jack, Joe and the rest of the ZF team by following us on Twitter, visiting our blog, or registering for our Leadership Resource Center! Enjoy the podcast, and be sure to join us for the next episode!

Author of the article, Scott Edinger, will read actual excerpts from the HBR article and we’ll get Scott and Barbara to expound on the material. They’ll touch on the following topics:

• Why developing strengths is more important than fixing weaknesses
• How using “Competency Companions” can help leaders build strengths
• The non-linear process for developing strengths
• The best way to identify your strengths
• How developing strengths makes you “indispensable”
• Can you take a strength too far?

To learn the competency companions for a strength you’d like to develop, visit www.zengerfolkman.com/hbr. You can get more updates from Jack, Joe and the rest of the ZF team by following us on Twitter, visiting our blog, or registering for our Leadership Resource Center! Enjoy the podcast, and be sure to join us for the next episode, updating in October!

Reactions to Article: Why Cash Doesn’t Motivate by Lorri Freifeld, Training Magazine July 2011

Current Event: What’s going on in training and development?

Q&A: Scott and Barbara answer your toughest questions, submitted on the Zenger Folkman website (www.zengerfolkman.com/podcast.html)

• How can a structured leadership development program that encompasses management and non-management staff be developed and run effectively in a sales organization?

• We are considering implementing a leadership development 360 process in our organization, but want to ensure that development goals are set and achieved. What can an organization do to help increase the sustainability of a development initiative?

1 Tip for Leaders at Full Strength: Scott and Barbara share one thing leaders can do today to increase their effectiveness to “full strength”.

You can get more updates from Jack, Joe and the rest of the ZF team by following us on Twitter, visiting our blog, or registering for our Leadership Resource Center! Enjoy the podcast, and be sure to join us for the next episode, updating in September!

Reactions to Article: Leadership Development: What’s Evaluation Got to Do With It?; by Lisa Gabel, Kate Harker, and Ethan Sanders, T+D Magazine March 2011

Current Event: What’s going on in training and development?

Q&A: Jack Zenger answers your toughest questions, submitted on the Zenger Folkman website (www.zengerfolkman.com/podcast.html)

1. How do you get managers to engage in “management by walking around” when they are from another culture, such as Finnish, where this is not a normal practice?
2. Is it appropriate to push for innovation and creativity (for high engagement) in a highly regulated, procedure bound, system bound (i.e. Nuclear Power Electric Utility) and if so, how?

1 Tip for Leaders at Full Strength: Jack shares one thing leaders can do today to increase their effectiveness to “full strength”.

You can get more updates from Jack, Joe and the rest of the ZF team by following us on Twitter, visiting our blog, or registering for our Leadership Resource Center! Enjoy the podcast, and be sure to join us for the next episode, updating in July!

Reactions to Article: Are You a Good Boss or a Great One?; by Linda Hill & Kent Lineback, Harvard Business Review Jan/Feb 2011

Current Event: What’s going on in training and development?

Q&A: Jack and Joe answer your toughest questions, submitted on the Zenger Folkman website (www.zengerfolkman.com/podcast.html)

1. I’ve read that since the Baby Boomers are postponing retirement due to the bad economy, now is a good time to leverage them as senior mentors in leadership development programs. What is one way I could implement this idea, and quickly, before the economy turns around?
2. Based on your recent press release, turnover will be high once the job market starts opening up again. What can we do to help our employees be more engaged and committed to our organization and keep them when jobs become more readily available?

1 Tip for Leaders at Full Strength: Jack and Joe each share one thing leaders can do today to increase their effectiveness to “full strength”.

You can get more updates from Jack, Joe and the rest of the ZF team by following us on Twitter, visiting our blog, or registering for our Leadership Resource Center! Enjoy the podcast, and be sure to join us for the next episode, updating in April!

Reactions to Article: Learning from Each Other; by Randy Emelo, Chief Learning Officer Magazine Nov 2010

Current Event: What’s going on in training and development?

Q&A: Jack and Joe answer your toughest questions, submitted on the Zenger Folkman website (www.zengerfolkman.com/podcast.html)

1. You’ve done a lot of research on what constitutes great leadership. Doesn’t a leader have to believe in great leadership before s/he can become great? If so, how can an organization help its leaders embrace the value of great leadership?
2. What are some ways leaders can motivate employees in a company culture where there is low engagement and high resistance to change?

1 Tip for Leaders at Full Strength: Jack and Joe each share one thing leaders can do today to increase their effectiveness to “full strength”.

You can get more updates from Jack, Joe and the rest of the ZF team by visiting our blog or registering for our Leadership Resource Center! Enjoy the podcast, and be sure to join us for the next episode, updating in March!

Reactions to Article: You Have to Lead from Everywhere; an interview with Admiral Thad Allen by Scott Berinato, Harvard Business Review

Current Event: What’s going on in training and development?

Q&A: Jack and Joe answer your toughest questions, submitted on the Zenger Folkman website (www.zengerfolkman.com/podcast.html)

1. Please give us ten reasons why authoritarian, dictatorial leadership does not work.
2. In our organization the leadership development program is a highly selective process that is limited to individuals selected by senior management, thereby leaving out most individuals. In your recent blog post on the Leadership Ceiling, you talk about how leadership has to improve at all levels to bring up an organization. What can an organization do to help even individual contributors become better leaders?

1 Tip for Leaders at Full Strength: Jack and Joe each share one thing leaders can do today to increase their effectiveness to “full strength”.

You can get more updates from Jack, Joe and the rest of the ZF team by visiting our blog or registering for our Leadership Resource Center! Enjoy the podcast, and be sure to join us for the next episode, updating in February!

Reactions to Article: Doubling Your Strengths; Marshall Goldsmith & Psychologist Tommy Thomas, BusinessWeek

Current Event: What’s going on in training and development?

Q&A: Jack and Scott answer your toughest questions, submitted on the Zenger Folkman website (www.zengerfolkman.com/podcast.html)

1. How beneficial is “coaching” to an organization, really? If coaching is so effective and so many organizations do it, what kind of return on their investment are they seeing that helps them justify doing a coaching program that I’m not seeing? Further, how do they even measure the impact?

2. My organization takes an interesting approach to developing their high-potential employees. We let them spend some one-on-one time with our CEO to work on solving an organizational problem. While that’s always a neat experience, we’re not really seeing a return on our investment. Do you think that we’re not identifying the right people or should we expand our CEO outreach program to be more than just a few hours with the head of the company?

1 Tip for Leaders at Full Strength: Jack and Scott each share one thing leaders can do today to increase their effectiveness to “full strength”.

You can get more updates from Jack, Joe and the rest of the ZF team by visiting our blog or registering for our Leadership Resource Center! Enjoy the podcast, and be sure to join us for the next podcast episode, updating the end of October!

Reactions to Article: Managing Yourself: The Boss as the Human Shield; Robert Sutton, Harvard Business Review

Current Event: What’s going on in training and development?

Q&A: Jack and Scott answer your toughest questions, submitted on the Zenger Folkman website (www.zengerfolkman.com/podcast.html)

1. How do you, as an organization, sustain momentum in leadership development? What does an organization that is so focused on leadership development, do when the 360 is over?
2. How does my organization help the leaders in departments such as engineering and accounting understand and realize the importance of motivating their employees?

1 Tip for Leaders at Full Strength: Jack and Scott each share one thing leaders can do today to increase their effectiveness to “full strength”.

You can get more updates from Jack, Joe and the rest of the ZF team by visiting our blog or registering for our Leadership Resource Center! Enjoy the podcast, and be sure to join us for the next podcast episode, updating the end of October!

• With the dizzying speed of change, how can you prepare employees for redundancies without inadvertently implying that the employment relationship is uncertain , unreliable and short term?

• Is Coaching more effective if the coach is from the same industry as the coachee? (I.E. Are internal coaches better than external coaches?)

• How can we maintain a leadership development strategy in an organization, once we have started?

• We are facing quite a challenge in justifying the cost of doing a leadership program in our organization, in India. Being able to link it, directly, with increase in profits should have a very favorable impact on our efforts. What do you think are some of the best measures of the effectiveness of a development program?

• Does an organization’s culture have any affect on the sustainability of a leadership development program?

• Could you please outline some clear, practical methods for collecting ROI on the business impact of attending the Extraordinary Leader program, including the area of driving company profits.

• In your view, what part does organizational culture and values play in increasing performance and profits; and what part does effective leadership play in fostering values in action and a high performance work culture?

You can get more updates from Jack, Joe and the rest of the ZF team by visiting our blog or registering for our Leadership Resource Center! Enjoy the podcast, and be sure to join us for the next podcast episode, updating the end of September!

• Would a company in an industry (such as the restaurant industry) that has high employee turnover benefit from nurturing leaders to improve employee engagement? Or is it just the nature of the job description that makes people not want to stay?

• What are some specific ways to encourage managers to be inspirational, when they have worked for 20+ years being task-oriented?

• What can be done to help leaders retain the awareness and passion to improve that they receive in a leadership development program?

• What would you say to a naysayer who says that leaders can’t learn to be inspiring?

• In normal economic times, the task of motivating and inspiring staff (and clients/customers for that matter) is relatively straightforward but still a challenge. In these times, managers are at a loss to be inspiring leaders, so perhaps they need an even higher order of tips and techniques. It is as if the basics, well researched and presented by ZF, need another stage, phase, or layer to charge up and retain employees (and clients/customers) when there seems to be nothing but bad and worse news. What are some suggestions you have for getting people who are “down in the dumps” to see that there is hope for improvement?

• I manage a group of leaders that have been with the company a long time and have settled for “good” not “great” performance. It has been difficult to get them to see the importance of “going for great” and re-discovering their “passion” is so important to employee engagement. What is the most important thing, as a coach, that I should focus on to get them revved up again?

• We are almost 2 years into a merger of equals. We are building a new culture and building our Talent Development function and approach to creating leaders from scratch. What are the benefits of training people to become leaders, rather than just recruiting from outside the company? Can great leadership skills even be learned, or is it something we are born with?

You can get more updates from Jack, Joe and the rest of the ZF team by visiting our blog or registering for our Leadership Resource Center! Enjoy the podcast, and be sure to join us for the next podcast episode, updating the end of August!

• I find that many leaders are not really focused on leadership but more on management. How do you move their focus effectively from management to leadership?

• Recently leaders, particularly in financial services, have come under scrutiny and condemnation for unethical behavior. Has the widespread distrust of leadership increased the importance of inspiring leadership?
• In a 360 assessment, is it feasible to develop targeted questions for the behaviors that should be developed, or are there specific questions related to the 360 assessment you have done?

• What is your best advice for a newer leader? Should one attend classes or just keep learning by reading, trying and learning? If classes are a good option, what topics are essential/ where are good places for classes?
• If you have a fatal flaw, but make strides in correcting it, what can you do to help your subordinates realize and understand that you have changed? (People tend to hold to their first impressions)
• One of the challenges I’ve faced as an executive is balancing my execution between the strategic and the tactical. If I could somehow measure the effectiveness of my tactical activities with respect to whether they are reinforcing/advancing the company’s strategic goals, that would seem a good place to start. What do you think? How come a leader can be effective in one organization, move to another, and seem to fail miserably? What do you think can prevent this?
• Can you be a good manager, but not particularly a good leader? What are the differences between a good manager and a good leader?
• Do leaders need to be well-liked to be successful/inspirational? Why or why not?
• I have read that charisma is not essential to be an effective leader, and can even be detrimental to an organization. For example, there have been many charismatic leaders who lack other leadership characteristics and skills (e.g. integrity) and lead their followers into situations that turn out horribly — think political leaders such as Stalin, Hitler, and even business leaders (Enron). However, Zenger Folkman states that charisma is the key to extraordinary leadership. Why?
• Is there any differentiation between genders of who are the best/most inspiring leaders? Are there any trends in men or women toward certain emotional connection styles?
• Though our country is coming out of the recession, the downturn is still affecting my business. As a result, my employees have not had as much work to do and thus many have become less satisfied with their jobs and less productive. However, emplacement opportunities are low, so they do not want to leave and find they cannot get a job. What can I do to motivate them to perform and increase their engagement?

You can get more updates from Jack, Joe and the rest of the ZF team by visiting our blog or registering for our Leadership Resource Center! Enjoy the podcast, and be sure to join us for the next podcast episode, updating the end of July!

Leadership at Full Strength podcast answers today’s hottest questions on leadership issues. Jack Zenger answers the following questions in this episode:

• What have you found to be the best way to get the C-Suite’s to pay attention to the issue of Inspiring Leadership? Most of the time they glaze over - they don’t seem to get the power of human/leader growth and how it relates to key business outcomes.

• Does any of your research address the tool of “faking it until you make it”? Meaning should a leader pretend to be enthusiastic, emotionally connected, and people focused or does that always translate as being transparent?

• In the 6 approaches to emotional connection, were there any common combinations? Were some approaches used by leaders more frequently than others? If one of the approaches to emotional connection is a weakness for you, but you try to use it, does it become a detractor to your leadership effectiveness?

• What is the best way to learn to be an inspiring leader?

• If the employee knows the leader more closely, does that affect the leader’s effectiveness and ability to inspire?

• How does one get emotionally connected to a direct report when there might be HR concerns involved?

• With more and more companies leaning to a remote workforce (i.e. employees in home based office enviornments) - do you have any advice for leadership in this type of working model?

• Do you think that generations have different Passions for Leadership? How do we take that into consideration with the younger X and Y generations coming into the workplace?

• In my experience, business structures are managed quite top-down. Many leaders do not see any “need” to connect to their employees, even if it affects the business outcome. Having and using power seems to be a benefit by itself. What is your impression about that?

You can get more updates from Jack, Joe and the rest of the ZF team by visiting our blog or registering for our Leadership Resource Center! Enjoy the podcast, and be sure to join us for the next podcast episode, updating the end of June!

• I’ve been at my organization for six years and I’d like to move from my department to a one that interests me more. Do you have any suggestions on how to go about that?

• As a manager, where should I draw the line between providing rewards and incentives for employees and telling them they should just get their jobs done because that’s what they’re here for?

• When you manage in the trenches daily as a VP and Executive management preaches leadership and training and mentoring, why does it seem to escape them? It is easy for them to talk about, but all of us are in the trenches wondering why it doesn’t apply to senior management.

• I believe that working on strengths is vital to a leader’s ability to improve, but often times “Work on your strengths, not your weaknesses,” is thrown around as an end-all-fix-all. Are there certain follow-up activities that I can perform to ensure that my leaders and those I manage are actually working on strengths? In addition, what can I do after the training is over to renew their fire for wanting to develop their strengths and hopefully avoid the drop-off in development that comes a few days after they sit through that class?

• If management is coaching me, who coaches management? Is there a best practice to help someone like me who is in middle management act as an informal coaching role with my direct manager?

• My company is in quite a financial pinch, as I imagine most are right now. What would you say are some of the things my company can do development-wise to continue developing our employees without having to spend large amounts of money?

• Our organization has a lot of turnover in upper management. Every few years one of our major departments gets a new head or some C-level executive changes positions or leaves for another job at another company. Every time this happens it seems we have to rediscover how our current culture will fit in with the style each new manager. What can we do to stabilize our organization, regardless of who is leading us?

To get more updates from Jack, Joe and the rest of the ZF team by visiting our blog or registering for our Leadership Resource Center! Enjoy the podcast, and be sure to join us for the next podcast episode, updating the end of May!

• Is there such a thing as a perfect leader—regardless of situation? Or are there leaders better suited for certain jobs and industries over others? I work in the technology industry and would like to know if a specific type of leader would be better suited to my industry than another.
• What would you say to a person whose influence & respect within an organization is such that they could be a very good leader but does not have aspirations or desire to be a leader?
• Has leadership changed with the passing of time? Are leaders different today than say, 50 years ago? 25 years? 10 years?
• How can I use incentive programs & packages to help create a culture where going the extra mile and reaching for lofty goals is the norm?
• The culture where I work is specifically catered to certain types of leaders, and the only leaders who last are the ones that fit our organization’s “mold.” I don’t feel like I fit into that “mold” very well, but I don’t think I’m a bad leader…I just lead in a different way than my org. would like. What can I do to either change the way I lead (which I don’t want to do because it’s unnatural to me) or to get my company to respect the kind of leader that I am?
• In an organization rooted in “Tradition” and “This is the way it is,” how do I get people excited to jump on the ‘change’ bandwagon?
• I’ve been at my company for 6 years now and I have a lot of responsibility, but I’d like to move from my department to another area that interests me more. Any tips on how to approach a situation like that?
• You guys mention that we should work on our strengths, and for the most part I agree. But what about a situation where I am passionate about something and love doing it but am not necessarily good at doing it? In other words, it’s not a strength for me but it’s something that I’d like to develop and spend time at. Would I benefit more by focusing on something that I’m good at, or should I work on a passion that I’m not very competent in?

To get more updates from Jack, Joe and the rest of the ZF team by visiting our blog or registering for our Leadership Resource Center! Enjoy the podcast, and be sure to join us for the next podcast episode, updating the end of April!