Where to Now?

I will be presenting a seminar near Frankfurt, Germany on Wednesday, February 20, 2008. It is open to the public. It is described below: (Also, see the previous blog for the seminar "The Power of Personal Performance" presented on Monday February 18, 2008.)

Leadership for the 21st Century—Creating an Inclusive, High-Performance Organization


PERHAPS THE MOST CRUCIAL ELEMENT for professional success in the 21st century is leadership. I define leadership as the ability to influence others. Influence their

• commitment to achieving an objective (thinking)
• willingness to change (transformation)
• willingness to perform (behavior)

These competencies involve the combination of both cognitive (mind-set) and functional (performance) skills—thinking and behaving. The greatest challenge in combining these two skills for maximum performance is changing one’s mind-set and correspondingly, one’s way of thinking.

For example, the most important shift in thinking, necessary for success today, is expanding from cooperation to collaboration. I define cooperation as working together for a common purpose, benefit, or joint action driven mostly by necessity. Whereas, collaboration is working together out of commitment to maximize performance, where one’s individuality is secondary to team success. It involves trust, respect, and humility in addition to exceptional performance capability.

“Leading high performance in the 21st
century is synonymous with
leading collaboration.”

Several years ago, I attempted to bring to together seven different consulting firms to explore ways we might work together in a more collaborative way. We had already mastered using each other out of necessity, in terms of limited resources such as people and expertise for large projects. However, we had not learned to reduce our individuality sufficiently to engage a project that anticipated the future. As a group of seven different firms, with incredible energy, creativity, and talent, we were only partially successful in our collaborative efforts.

On the other hand, we did experience a series of successes from two or three firms working together. We learned that the intention to collaborate had to also involve recognizing one’s own critical skills and teaming with others to complement the other necessary components. In spite of the fact that we were all multi-talented as entrepreneurs, the central idea driving successful collaborations was to focus on one’s single-most extraordinary talent. We learned one partner was exceptional at networking (marketing), one partner was exceptional at design (creating new products and services), another was exceptional at production (scale level production), and the final element was delivery to the public and service (sales and customer service). These components are no different than the various divisions of a corporation. The key is learning how to balance individuality (which is crucial for success) with collaboration. The two are not mutually exclusive! Therefore, learning how to leverage the power of collaboration is a critical leadership skill for personal and organizational success.

The third critical element for leading high performance is inclusion. Inclusion is an environment where all employees experience equity of opportunity for success. It is an environment where everyone feels wanted, appreciated, and valued for his or her contribution to the organization’s success—irrespective of differences. The key word in the previous statement is differences; differences in sex, ethnicity, nationality, education, native language, position or title, or culture. It is estimated that 80% of the loss processes in producing a product or service is due to interpersonal difficulties resulting from differences. These difficulties include miscommunication, poor relationships, ethnocentrism, lack of collaboration, continual conflict, and control-oriented management. Each contributing to the underutilization of people and significant loss in performance, productivity, and profitability. Learning and implementing the leadership skills of inclusion is the key to creating “profitable environment of production.”

This seminar will provide highly interactive and experiential exercises for learning these three leadership skills:

• Leading high performance
• Leveraging the power of collaboration • Creating an inclusive environment

The site is Klosterberghalle, Langenselbold; kontakt@academy-of-new-life.com is the site for registration. Telepnoe number in Germany for Ulla Knoll:Germany 06055/937369