Get to the top by Leading from the bottom
When I’m not reading the internal revenue code or skimming slides for class, I sometimes squeeze in a real book. Right now the flavor is Jack Welch’s Winning. Sometimes I just can’t wait till the end of the book to post about a topic.
Towards the beginning Jack dives into his vision of a leader and the 8 roles they need to fulfill to be a success. Let’s review them:
1. Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach, and build self-confidence.
2. Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it.
3. Leaders get into every-one’s skin, exuding positive energy and optimism.
4. Leaders establish trust with candor, transparency, and credit.
5. Leaders have the courage to make unpopular decisions and gut calls.
6. Leaders probe and push with a curiosity that borders on skepticism, making sure their questions are answered with action.
7. Leaders inspire risk taking and learning by setting the example.
8. Leaders celebrate.
I don’t want just to repeat what he said or reiterate it, that would be boring. Instead, I see these rules and I can’t help but think, how are they of use to me?
I’m not in a true leadership position. In fact, I’m on the very bottom! But is there leading that can be done from my position? Of course there is! The key is to take Jack’s roles and find a way to practice them. But you have to practice them without offending those above you! That won’t make you friends.
Several of the roles cannot be done if your on the bottom, all your going to do is offend people. #1 for example. You start giving unsolicited coaching advice to peers, there will be resentment. Or #7 you start taking risks without permission, your boss will not be too happy.
But a few of these roles are easily done from the bottom and can make your leadership potential shine. Here is my short list of leadership roles for the bottom of the totempole.
- As an underlying, a peon if you will, you don’t have much say on how things go. But you do choose your attitude. Living the vision (#2) and exuding positive energy (#3) is the greatest way to lead from below. I can’t tell you how many late nights I helped our team get through roadblocks and accomplish a task just by staying positive when everyone else was down. Taking ownership and living the vision will impress your boss and inspire your co-workers.
- You’re probably not great friends with your boss. And for good reason, your boss has a job to do, and that needs to come first. A great way to show your boss you’re ready for the next level is exercise the same candor and transparency he/she does (#4). Be honest with your boss and your co-workers, tell them how it is (or at least how you think it is). You will get your boss’s respect, and eventually, your peers. Become known as a straight talker where people can go to for honest assessments.
- Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it will get you promoted! Attack every project with curiosity and skepticism (#6). Just because you are the workhorse, doesn’t mean you don’t need to know the economics of the project or the reason behind tasks. You may be afraid to ask your boss with what you feel are “pointless questions,” but if your boss is a true leader, he’ll appreciate your initiative and relish in the moment to teach. Bonus, if your peers don’t do the same, they have to come to you for the answers (which means power!, er, I mean leadership).
That is how I take Jack’s 8 rules for leadership and apply them to my non-leadership role. Of course, all of us leaders know there is no such thing as a non-leadership role because as leaders (sometimes called control freaks) we search for ways to lead in everything!
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5 Ways to Speed Through Bureaucracy at Work - US News
Newly Corporate was recently invited to join the US News and World Report Career Blog Network “Outside Voices“. This article is the first post written for the network blog. Each of the authors here at Newly Corporate will post on the blog in a rotating schedule, one post total each week.
We all have been through it at work. Some process or change you are driving requires sign off from what seems like every manager in your company. Even when your work is done, you have to chase people down (most often managers), process their feedback, and get them to click a button or sign on the line. Sometimes these processes just take time, people should talk things over and consider alternative options but, there are ways to speed up the feedback cycle and accelerate approvals. Here are three five I use to ensure quick approval and feedback processing:
1. Use a repeatable approval process. Yeah, I know this is basic, if your company already has one, great! If not, there is nothing more frustrating then getting to the end of your approvals and realizing you need to go to another approver or worse, add another document and go through the entire cycle again. Layout the process before you start, notify those involved and draw it out graphically without acronyms or abbreviations.
Read the rest of the post at Outside Voices…
Lonely? How to meet young professionals like yourself
As young professionals living the dream, making money and becoming successful is only half of the equation. What good is success if you don’t have someone special to share it with?
Let’s say you move to a new city to take up your dream job… where do you meet people? This often has a direct effect on your happiness. Besides love, where do you meet friends and people of similar interests? Internet dating works for some, but after hearing some horror stories (and a few tales of love) I’m a little wary of digital lovin’
Fortunately for me, I joined a company with a great leadership program with a bunch of college grads in the similar situation. This helped me quickly establish a group of friends after moving over a thousand miles away from my buddies and fam. For many people that aren’t so lucky, getting out and meeting people for the first time is tough! Even though I got lucky when I moved to Milwaukee, I can sympathize with troubles in meeting new people. I went to three high schools, believe me, it’s tough putting yourself out there.
After chatting with some friends who moved far away from their support networks, we came up with a few ideas on where you can meet new folks:
Volunteering
Volunteering is a great way to meet people. Whether you’re at the humane society or a hospice, it’s a great opportunity to meet non-selfish people while giving back at the same time. Double bonus. The best thing about volunteering, especially the more repetitive tasks like painting or cleaning, is that there is plenty of time to chat with fellow volunteers. One of my friends was actually hooked up on a blind date with a girl by the girl’s mom after she noticed what a nice guy he was to be volunteering his time during the weekend. How’s that for a recommendation? You may want to make sure the mom carries pictures though!
Facebook(I know the internet is cheating, but listen before you groan)
This is a tried and true method for meeting people, especially internationally. When I moved to Brussels, Belgium in 2006 I went to Facebook to seek out other expats from the University of Florida to watch the NCAA tournament with. I hooked up with a nice group of girls studying French at a local university and was immediately plugged into their social scene. It paid dividends later when the group of girls left, but I met up with the incoming group who I continued to hang out with for the remainder of the summer. My friend went to remote Umea, Sweden and also met a few nice ladies with the ‘I’m new in town routine’ on Facebook :) Easy to do, free and minimal effort. Score.
Young Professional Events
If you’re in any decent sized city, odds are the local chamber of commerce or similar government office, has set up a young professionals organization. While I’ve found these events to have some of the cheesiest business card trading I’ve even seen (as well as some NOT so young professionals) this thinly veiled meat/meet market is a great place to at least find some people your age in a similar situation. The nice thing is that alcohol is often available as a little social lubricant. A little liquid courage combined with the fact that the events are supposed to be networking opportunities means you can usually throw caution to the wind and approach anyone freely without feeling too self-conscious.
So, here are three basic ways for you to meet some newly corporate types besides a gym, bar or grocery store. While these aren’t the only places to meet new people, if you try one or two of these out you should at least have a decent starting point for making new friends or maybe even a date! I’m interested to hear about any success or disaster stories from my fellow NC readers.
Coincidentally, I’m always looking for new friends in the UK. If you’re newly corporate in London, drop me a line. We might even be able to set up a pub meet-up!
Are you enjoying the stimulus?
Last week I asked you: What would you do as a business owner when the stimulus checks arrive in your customers pockets? Well the checks have started and here is a great site to see where they are going: howispentmystimulus.com
As for mine, I put a post up, here it is.
What did you do or plan to do?
“Please turn off all electronic devices” - Why?
I am a frequent business traveler. I fly at least once a week and often times I’ll have three or four flights in a week. That adds up to eight times per week that I get hassled by a flight attendant to turn off my iPod. Sometimes I leave it on, and lo-and-behold the plane somehow manages to land. I always had my doubts about the technical merits of this request, so I decided to ask an embedded systems engineer about it. This is a guy who has to build the guts of electronic devices, so I consider him an expert on the topic.
According to him, the request has no technical merit whatsoever. Here’s the deal. When electronic devices are built, they go through what is called an emissions test. In order to get that FCC stamp, they must pass a test showing that they will not interfere with other electronic devices. Your iPod has this stamp. So the concern that your gadget will somehow “mess” with the plane’s systems is unfounded.
Secondly, all electronics (including the ones in the cockpit) have to pass an immunity test. This is a test designed to account for those rogue devices that don’t pass the emissions test. This means that the device will work even if there are other devices “messing” with its signal. So unless the planes are using technology that doesn’t pass the immunity test … we should be safe.
The engineer (who wished to remain anonymous) made one final point that really drives the message home:
Why don’t we make people turn off their pace makers? Or their watches?
I finished the interview asking about special cases. What about TVs or other devices that transmit or receive signals? Again, they shouldn’t matter because of the immunity and emissions tests, but also remember that television broadcast signals are everywhere. Turning off your pocket-TV won’t change that fact. The plane will be getting bombarded with those same signals anyway.
Here is another interesting article on the topic: http://www.airspacemag.com/need-to-know/16046567.html
Reel yourself back in - how to cope with stress
Do you ever have one of those days where you wake up to find your dog has chewed the white fuzzy balls off the top of your favorite slippers and then ralphed them up on your floor (sorry for the visual), you’re late for work and you start typing a post about stress to have your blog editing software erase the whole thing? For the sanity I mean sake of all of us, here are some helpful links for dealing with stress so it stays at home and out of the workplace.
and tips from those who know stress the best, CPAs.
Today is RSS Awareness Day
May 1 is RSS Awareness Day. The goal of RSS Awareness Day is to increase knowledge about RSS so the general public is more familiar with the concept. Organizers are hopeful that the exposure to RSS will increase the usage of feeds and Internet applications that support RSS.
For those not familiar with RSS, it stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” You can “subscribe” to a feed in a browser like Internet Explorer 7. If you have ever noticed an orange icon that highlights when you are on a blog, that page has a feed you can subscribe to. The benefits to subscribing are that you are notified of new content with out having to visit the page. If you are not an IE7 user, you can subscribe to feeds using Bloglines, Google Reader, or any other feed reader that you can find with a simple Google Search. Besides being able to subscribe to blogs, there are many sites that have RSS feeds including CNN and Flickr.
Give it a try. If you’re not sure if RSS is still for you, many websites, including this one, allow you to subscribe via email. Fresh content delivered to your mailbox– It’s Internet browsing made easier. Try it out, and while your at it you can subscribe to Newly Corporate as well!
Subscriber in a reader
