Merits of Servant Leadership

Many leadership experts believe that in today’s knowledge based economy the principles of servant leadership better position you and your organization for success than autocratic methods of leading.

The basic premise of the servant-leader is that they share power, put the needs of others first and help people develop and perform as highly as possible. 

The concept of servant leadership is far from new. Lao-Tzu wrote about servant leadership in the fifth-century BC: 

“The highest type of ruler is one of whose existence the people are barely aware…. The Sage is self-effacing and scanty of words. When his task is accomplished and things have been completed, all the people say, ‘We ourselves have achieved it!’”

Whether you are a proponent of servant leadership or not there are some wonderful principles that servant leader scholars generally agree are key to the development of an effective servant leader.  All of these principles are supported in and through the use of imapMyTeam®

· Awareness: A servant leader understands his or her own values and feelings, strengths and weaknesses.

· Commitment to the growth of people: Is responsible for serving the need of others. 

· Empathy: the need to understand others' feelings and perspectives.

· Building community:  Helps create a sense of community among people.

· Stewardship: Holds an organization's resources in trust for the greater good.

Use of imapMyTeam certainly builds self-awareness and, whether you are a leader now or aspire to be one in the future, the lessons of commitment to the growth of people, empathy and building community [teams] is critical to business success.

Take time this week to consider how adopting the mindset of a servant-leader might help you be more effective in achieving the results that are critical to your success as well as that of the team.

Mental Traffic Jam; 70,000 per day

The first step in the imapMyTeam success process is self-awareness. Once self-awareness is achieved you can begin to make choices that will allow you to effectively manage yourself. Those two parts of the success process are internal to you and set you up for the external steps three and four: successfully managing relationships and achieving your defined success.

I reconsidered the self-awareness/self-management connection again this weekend after I started reading [yet another] book about the human brain.

It is estimated that we generate a minimum of 50,000 thoughts per day and most likely closer to 70,000 thoughts per day. That is A LOT of processing and thinking. Assuming 16 hours per day of awake time, between 50,000-70,000 thoughts means you are generating up to 72 thoughts per minute.

It is a mental traffic jam of epic proportions.

That is also a lot of internalization because there is no way that you are communicating or in any way sharing the vast majority of what you are processing. Some of that is good of course, we think about things we shouldn’t share – but we are also missing out on many important thoughts that ought to be shared.Can all this thinking and non-sharing lead to us losing touch with ourselves and others? Maybe.

So how is this important to you as an imapMyTeam® user?

Technology is great. Having an important report in less than a minute that helps you understand yourself or someone else is incredibly powerful. The ability to read reports is a great way to understand yourself [self-awareness] and stimulates ideas of how you can more effectively manage yourself [self-management]. Technology itself however can lead to further isolation. Spending hours in front of a monitor, laptop, tablet, or smartphone can further our separation or remoteness from others.

Remember the third step in the model is managing relationships. Focus on the relationship part.

Just don’t read reports; talk about them.

Get a cup of coffee or tea or have lunch and start a dialogue and actively engage and discuss and share your reports with your colleagues. Make it an active rather than a passive exercise.

imapMyTeam® will help you harness the power of some of those 70,000 thoughts so you can be more productive.

Positive Returns on your Meeting Investment

Meetings are inevitable. They are also an investment. If you are in charge of leading a meeting, you invest time and other resources before, during and after the meeting. The same may be true for those attending as well.

Since meetings are costly, it’s critical they be highly effective. Much has been written about the keys to successful meetings; having a clearly stated purpose, starting with everyone present and on time, focusing on action items rather than recaps, balanced participation and the best meetings of course, end early.

Wouldn’t it be great if knowing and considering all of this was enough? Unfortunately, it’s not.

The realities of the work world set in and take their toll. So it’s really important that when you are charged to lead or take the initiative to lead that meeting, you are well prepared. To ensure that even when you have all the ‘best practices’ of leading meetings in place, you not only use your strengths in facilitating, but recognize when it’s necessary for you to adapt those strengths to meet participant needs.

The ‘Managing Meetings’ report found in the pull-down menu on your imapMyTeam home page, describes various strengths you have and where those strengths are helpful to getting results in meetings. The report then takes you another step. It suggests ways in which you will need to modify that strength when what you are doing isn’t getting the results you want.

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Learn to incorporate imapMyTeam as part of your ‘best practices’ for effective meeting regimen and make sure your time yields a positive return on your meeting investment. 

Back to School…Back to Business

No Reason to Sing the ‘Back to Work’ Blues

“Labor Day Weekend” has long been associated with our final fling with summer before turning our attention back to school and business. Now that we’ve put away the bathing suits and flip flops, it’s time to diagram our personal strategy for the 2014 stretch run.

Whether September brings us new challenges, or we’re looking for a strong finish to an existing project; or both- it’s time to get focused, get organized, and get busy.

Where to begin? Let’s face it, just getting refocused after summer can be challenging for many so, a great place to start is by rallying around what is easy for you.

When you are working on the things you love and enjoy most, and you are able to use the strengths that come to you naturally, you’ll be on the way to doing your best work right out of the gate. The same thing is true for your direct reports.

For you and your team to ‘get focused, get organized, and get busy,’ use imapMyTeam to help you figure it out quickly.

For yourself, check out your “Team Player” report. The descriptions provided on the interests page will help direct your focus to activities currently on your plate that you’ll easily dig into and want to get busy working on. You will find the same information for your direct reports in their “Team Player” report located in the lower left corner of the box. These will help you get back to business and on track for a great end to the year.

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