Leadership:- The Influencers: Change How You Change Minds

To improve results and solve the most pervasive, persistent and resistant problems, leaders must influence others to behave differently. In most cases, to get people to do things differently leaders must get them to think differently. Consequently, changing minds is one of the most important leadership challenges.

The challenge is not a difficult task if the change of mind is minor or not a strongly held belief. To change people’s minds around some issues, you only need a clever advertisement or a clearly worded e-mail. However, other changes of mind are very difficult indeed—like convincing the union leader that cutting jobs is the best course to follow or getting a hardened criminal to choose a different lifestyle.

When it comes to the toughest problems, there are three methods employed by leaders to change minds.

No. 1: Verbal Persuasion.
This is the method used by most leaders most of the time. And, ironically, it's also the least effective method. Verbal persuasion is using reason, logic, data and information to tell people why they should want to care. This tactic works when the change of mind is unimportant or insignificant. But when the change is profound, difficult or important, this approach doesn't perform. In fact, it usually creates boredom and indifference or worse, distance and defensiveness. It seldom changes minds.

No. 2: Actual Experience.
This is by far the most effective way to change minds. Let people learn for themselves the value of the change you are advocating. If you want to create a high-performance empowered change, send each person to work for a month on a high-performance empowered team. Let them see how an effective team works. Let them feel the excitement of achievement. Let them experience support and teamwork from their motivated co-workers. When they return, their minds will be changed about what’s possible and what they desire.

But the challenge with actual experience is the cost, the time and the difficulty of arranging these experiences for everyone who should have them. For example, the best way to change the minds of healthcare workers about patient service is to put them in a hospital bed for two weeks and experience the world of a patient. They return to their job with a complete understanding of common patient frustrations and a desire to provide much better service. Of course, logistically it's just not possible to give every hospital worker that two-week experience.

No. 3: Vicarious Experience.
Sometimes you can’t give folks an actual experience and you don't want to default to verbal persuasion. Can you choose an in-between strategy that's still effective? Sure. Let them have an experience with the change or the need to change vicariously through someone else.

There is a wide range of possibilities for creating vicarious experiences. Send several union leaders to visit a company using self-managing teams (Actual Experience) and have them return and report to their peers about what they learned (Vicarious Experience). Bring a customer to the manufacturing team meeting to talk about how they experienced benefit or difficulty by using the product manufactured by the team. Or, instead of dumping data and reports on your employees, share a well-told story about someone's experience to illustrate the point you're trying to make and to connect to human consequences and the personal values of the participants.

Consider a final example of the power of experience. The daughter of a close and personal friend of mine was diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes. The disease required her to take four finger pricks a day to monitor and modify her condition. The parents and the doctor explained to her the importance of these tests in managing her disease (Verbal Persuasion). After two weeks of four needle pricks a day, her fingers were covered with band-aids and she found it very difficult to play the piano, a favorite activity. The parents assumed everything was going fine when six months into the routine, their daughter's friend confided that the daughter had quit doing the tests.

What are the parent's options? They could sit her on a kitchen stool and lecture her on the necessity of the four-a-day needle pricks (Verbal Persuasion). They could not give her an actual experience with the effects of the unmanaged disease, which would not manifest themselves until 40 years down the road. However, they could design a vicarious experience to help change her mind.

One Saturday morning, the parents woke their daughter and announced, "We volunteered you to be a nurse's aid today." Over her mild protests they drove her to a dialysis center. She spent the day helping the nurses treat patients in the advanced stages of diabetes. She saw patients with wounds that would not heal. She saw patients who had become blind. She saw the pain and discomfort of dialysis. She talked to patients who expressed their regret that they had not managed their disease earlier. On the long ride home the daughter said nothing. But that evening she recommitted to the regimen of four blood tests a day and has seldom missed one since.

The Persuasion of Experience

Changing minds is one of the most important leadership challenges. Where possible, give people an actual experience with the advocated change or with the negative consequences of not making that change. When actual experience is not practical or possible, use vicarious experiences to help people understand the importance of changing behavior through the experiences of others. And above all else, never resort to the old, tired, ineffective strategy of verbal persuasion.

Motivational:- It's the Little Things

In life, the "little things" make all the difference. We like to pretend that at least the "big things" in life, like choosing a spouse or career or teaching our children, are the result of well-thought-out decisions, but it never works that way.

Careers grow out of conversations over coffee or lunch. They happen because we need a job or because a friend has a friend in the business. Marriages grow out of casual flirtations at a party or because a friend set us up. The BIG stuff never starts with a bang; it starts as something small and later we look back in astonishment at what mighty oaks grow from tiny acorns.

Both achievement and failure are like that.

Getting rich almost never requires "big" drama. It starts with the small decision to save a few dollars every week. Most people who end up "doing well" invest in safe, boring mutual funds, let compound interest work in their favor, and over time, it works out well. Unfortunately, going broke is just as easy. Make a few small decisions to buy one of those, and one of that, and pay the bill next month. Over time, there you go.

To gain weight, eat a few extra calories every day. A scoop of ice cream or an extra sandwich should do it. Fortunately, losing weight (for most people) is just as simple: Run or bike or hike a few minutes every day, skip desert, have a salad for lunch and there you go.

The keys to success are almost NEVER dramatic. High achievers might get up a few minutes earlier or make one more phone call every day, but that hardly qualifies as "dramatic," does it? Winners train slightly harder or slightly longer, but not so that anyone would notice.

Unfortunately, the path to mediocrity is just as ordinary. Henry Thoreau observed that "most people live lives of quiet desperation" not because they made big mistakes or fail any great test. They simply make the same small mistakes, over and over, day after day.

Here are some suggestions for small steps that create huge pay-offs over time:

1. Eliminate the Little Annoyances. Everyone has their personal list, and we tolerate them precisely because they seem so "little", but they rob us of energy, passion and confidence. It if annoys you, fix it.

2. Do One Good Thing for Yourself, Every Day. Read a good book or watch a video. Soak in the bath, or go for a run, but do something enriching and fulfilling, just for you, every day. It'll make you strong.

3. Take One Extra Step In the Direction You Want to Go. Rarely does "the good life" require courage or drama, but it does require that we move in the direction we want to go. Make one more sale, write a letter, make a call. Exercise or read or play with the kids. Every day, do one "little thing" that moves you toward success.

4. Invest In Your Relationships. "We get by with a little help from our friends," and the love of family and friends makes all the difference. And, once again, it's the little things! Give her a call, write him a note. Invite a friend to lunch, keep the friendship alive. These "little things" make life more fun!

Success and failure are the result of small steps, taken over time, one after another. Magnificent mansions are built of small, ordinary bricks, piled one on top of another. Marathons are completed one step at a time. What do you want? What sort of life would you prefer? You can have it, one day at a time. But you must walk in the direction you want to go.

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Quotes

"Inch by inch, anything's a cinch. Yard by yard, everything is hard."
-- Unknown

"The way we live our days, is the way we live our lives."
-- Annie Dillard

"A day will never be anymore than what you make of it. Practice being a ''doer!"
-- Josh S. Hinds

"If you can DREAM it, you can DO it."
-- Walt Disney

10 Qualities of a Good Manager By Bill Gates

RECENTLY I wrote about 10 qualities of a good employee, which prompted quite a few people to ask about the attributes of a good manager.

There isn't a magic formula for good management, of course, but if you're a manager, perhaps these tips will help you be more effective:

1 Choose a field thoughtfully. Make it one you enjoy. It's hard to be productive without enthusiasm. This is true whether you're a manager or employee;

2 Hire carefully and be willing to fire. You need a strong team, because a mediocre team gives mediocre results, no matter how well managed it is. One mistake is holding on to somebody who doesn't measure up. It's easy to keep this person on the job because he's not terrible at what he does. But a good manager will replace him or move him to where he can succeed unambiguously;

3 Create a productive environment. This is a particular challenge because it requires different approaches depending on the context. Sometimes you maximise productivity by giving everybody his or her own office. Sometimes you achieve it by moving everybody into open space. Sometimes you use financial incentives to stimulate productivity. A combination of approaches is usually required. One element that almost always increases productivity is providing an information system that empowers employees.

When I was building Microsoft, I set out to create an environment where software developers could thrive. I wanted a company where engineers liked to work. I wanted to create a culture that encouraged them to work together, share ideas and remain motivated. If I hadn't been a software engineer myself, there's no way I could have achieved my goal;

4 Define success. Make it clear to your employees what constitutes success and how they should measure their achievements. Goals must be realistic. Project schedules, for example, must be set by the people who do the work. People will accept a "bottoms-up" deadline they helped set, but they'll be cynical about a schedule imposed from the top that doesn't map to reality. Unachievable goals undermine an organisation. At my company, in addition to regular team meetings and one-on-one sessions between managers and employees, we use mass gatherings periodically and E-mail routinely to communicate what we expect from employees. If a reviewer or customer chooses another company's product, we analyse the situation. We say to our people, "The next time around we've got to win. What's needed?" The answers to these questions help us define success;

5 To be a good manager, you have to like people and be good at communicating. This is hard to fake. If you don't enjoy interacting with people, it'll be hard to manage them well. You must have a wide range of personal contacts within your organisation. You need relationships - not necessarily personal friendships - with a fair number of people, including your own employees. You must encourage these people to tell you what's going on and give you feedback about what people are thinking about the company and your role in it;

6 Develop your people to do their jobs better than you can. Transfer your skills to them. This is an exciting goal, but it can be threatening to a manager who worries that he's training his replacement. If you're concerned, ask your boss: "If I develop somebody who can do my job super well, does the company have some other challenge for me or not?" Many smart managers like to see their employees increase their responsibilities because it frees the managers to tackle new or undone tasks. There's no shortage of jobs for good managers. The world has an infinite amount of work to be done;

7 Build morale. Make it clear there's plenty of goodwill to go around and that it's not just you or some hotshot manager who's going to look good if things go well. Give people a sense of the importance of what they're working on - its importance to the company, its importance to customers;

8 Take on projects yourself. You need to do more than communicate. The last thing people want is a boss who just doles out stuff. From time to time, prove you can be hands-on by taking on one of the less attractive tasks and using it as an example of how your employees should meet challenges;

9 Don't make the same decision twice. Spend the time and thought to make a solid decision the first time so that you don't revisit the issue unnecessarily. If you're too willing to reopen issues, it interferes not only with your execution but also with your motivation to make a decision in the first place. People hate indecisive leadership; However, that doesn't mean you have to decide everything the moment it comes to your attention. Nor that you can't ever reconsider a decision.

10 Let people know whom to please. Maybe it's you, maybe it's your boss, and maybe it's somebody who works for you. You're in trouble and risking paralysis in your organisation when employees start saying to themselves: "Am I supposed to be making this person happy or this other person happy? They seem to have different priorities."

I don't pretend that these are the only 10 approaches a manager should keep in mind. There are lots of others. Just a month ago I encouraged leaders to demand bad news before good news from their employees. But these 10 ideas may help you manage well, and I hope they do.

Bill Gates
Reference : http://www.btimes.co.za/97/1102/tech/tech6.htm

10 Qualities of a Good Employee By Bill Gates

I'm often asked how to be a good manager, a topic I've taken on in this column more than once. Less often does anybody ask an equally important question: What makes a good employee?

Here are 10 of the qualities I find in the "best and brightest" employees, the people companies should attract and retain.

If you have all of these attributes, you're probably a terrific employee.

First, it's important to have a fundamental curiosity about the product or products of your company or group. You have to use the products yourself.

This can't be stressed enough in the computer world. It also carries special weight in other knowledge-based fields where technology and practices are advancing so fast that's it's very hard to keep up. If you don't have a fascination with the products, you can get out of date--and become ineffective--pretty quickly.

Second, you need a genuine interest in engaging customers in discussions about how they use products--what they like, what they don't like. You have to be a bit of an evangelist with customers, and yet be realistic about where your company's products are falling short and could be better.

Third, once you understand your customer's needs, you have to enjoy thinking through how a product can help. If you work in the software industry, for example, you might ask: "How can this product make work more interesting? How can it make learning more interesting? How can it be used in the home in more interesting ways?"

These first three points are related. Success comes from understanding and caring deeply about your products, your technology and your customers' needs.

Fourth, you as an individual employee should maintain the same type of long-term approach that a good company does. Employees need to focus on lifelong goals such as developing their own skills and those of the people they work with. This kind of self-motivation requires discipline, but it can be quite rewarding.

Management can also encourage motivation, of course. If you're in sales, quotas are important tools for measuring performance, and it's great when employees beat a quota. But if beating your sales quota or maximizing your next bonus or salary increase is all that motivates you, you're likely to miss out on the kind of teamwork and development that create success in the long term.

Fifth, you need to have specialized knowledge or skills while maintaining a broad perspective. Big companies, in particular, need employees who can learn specialties quickly. No one should assume that the expertise they have today will suffice tomorrow, so a willingness to learn is critical.

Sixth, you have to be flexible enough to take advantage of opportunities that can give you perspective. At Microsoft we try to offer a person lots of different jobs through the course of a career. Anyone interested in joining management is encouraged to work in different customer units, even if it means moving laterally within the organization or relocating to a different part of the world.

We try to move people from our product groups out into the field and move field people into the product groups. We have many people in our U.S. subsidiary from other countries, and we have many U.S. employees who work for subsidiaries in other nations. This helps us better understand world markets, and while we do a pretty good job of cross-pollination, there's still not quite as much of it as I would like.

Seventh, a good employee will want to learn the economics of the business. Why does a company do what it does? What are its business models? How does it make money?

I'm always surprised to learn of a company that doesn't educate its employees in the fundamental financial realities of its industry. Employees need to understand the "make or break" aspects of their industry so that they know what it is about their own job that really counts. Of course, employees have to be willing students who direct attention to the areas where it makes the biggest difference.

Eighth, you must focus on competitors. I like employees who think about what's going on in the marketplace. What are our competitors doing that's smart? What can we learn from them? How can we avoid their mistakes?

Ninth, you've got to use your head. Analyze problems but don't fall prey to "analysis paralysis." Understand the implications of potential tradeoffs of all kinds, including the tradeoff between acting sooner with less information and later with more.

Use your head in practical ways, too. Prioritize your time effectively. Think about how to give advice crisply to other groups.

Finally, don't overlook the obvious essentials such as being honest, ethical and hard working. These attributes are critical and go without saying.

The High Cost of Being a Workaholic

In a nation of overachievers, hard work is a virtue. If you work hard, you'll achieve your goals. If you work even harder, you'll achieve even more. Right?

Perhaps not. There are, in fact, several downsides to working too hard. Being the office workaholic can cost you coveted promotions, hurt your home life, and even turn friends into enemies. Evaluate yourself with the following five questions.

1. Are you busy ... or disorganized?

Are you constantly staying late and coming in early yet producing the same output as others? If so, your boss may come to view you as inefficient and possibly disorganized. Dave Cheng, an executive coach with Athena Coaching, says, "There are some people, type A's, who get a lot of satisfaction from doing lots of work, but the quality isn't necessarily superior."

Focus on getting your work done in a reasonable time frame. If you have perfectionism or time-management issues, ask your supervisor to help you prioritize things and learn when to let go of a task. Cheng says, "Just because you're working longer doesn't mean you're working better."

2. Are you delegating ... or hoarding?

If you have any aspirations at all to move into management, you must learn to delegate work. Again, tasks need to be completed in a timely fashion; if you're having trouble finishing a project, you must delegate to other team members, even if you happen to relish the task you're giving away.

Cheng, who has more than 12 years of experience in corporate human resources, reveals, "Some workers feel like if they do everything and they're the only one who knows how to do it, they're making themselves irreplaceable. However, sharing information and teaching others around you is a valued skill as far as management is concerned."

Focus on completion and quality and be generous enough to let a colleague learn and shine. If you lack sufficient support, ask your boss about expanding your group.

3. Are you hungry ... or is your plate full?

Once you've solidified your reputation as the office workaholic, you may find that when your dream project comes through the door, you aren't asked to work on it. Why? Your boss probably thinks you don't have the bandwidth to take on anything else. Always keep a bit of room in your schedule to sink your teeth into new challenges and opportunities.

Cheng reminds professionals, "Your ability to say no to certain things gives you the freedom to say yes to others."

4. Do you have friends ... or 'frenemies'?

Your workaholic ways are likely alienating once-valued associates. Above and beyond the obvious grumblings of, "You're making the rest of us look bad," your colleagues may dread collaborating on a project with you.

Lose the overly methodical approach, don't expect folks to come in early or stay late for meetings, and focus on process and outcome.

5. Do you work to live ... or live to work?

The best workers are well-rounded professionals with full lives, in and out of the office. Each year, new studies abound about the importance of vacations, hobbies, and enjoying your leisure time. But are you listening?

Your friends and family will be in your life a lot longer than you'll hold most jobs. Also, pursuing leisure activities you're passionate about can lead to a second career.

Cheng concludes, "Work-life balance is a choice. If you reflexively say yes to taking on extra work, you may live to regret it."

Reference:

By Caroline Levchuck, Yahoo! HotJobs

http://career-advice.tampabay.monster.com/in-the-office/work-life-balance/the-high-cost-of-being-a-workaholic-hot-jobs/article.aspx