While watching the Patriots chew up Miami in the first game of the NFL season, one of the announcers commented on the work of ethic of Patriots team leader, star quarterback and seemingly great guy, Tom Brady. His words were something to the effect, of, I watched Tom in practice this week, and no matter what he was doing, it seemed like he did it with purpose. He brings the same intensity to practice that he does to game situations. You read and hear a lot of things about leaders, but he had me at “PURPOSE!”

No Timeouts in The Life of a Leader:

You don’t get time off from your role as a leader. There are no timeouts, no after hours hang-up-your-hat and become one of the gang situations.  I’ve attended too many company after-hours events where the boss made an ass of himself or herself to know that NO ONE really wants to see the boss take a timeout.

The most effective leaders I’ve worked for, with and now coach, understand that every encounter, from the greeting in the parking lot to the hallway conversation to lunch to participation in meetings, represents an opportunity to do something positive for someone or some group.

Prepare Your Mind to Lead Effectively-Before You Walk in the Door:

One of my favorite examples is the senior manager who spends a few extra moments “prepping” for the day in her car in the parking lot before walking into the office.  She’s not putting on makeup or fixing her hair. She’s preparing her mind to engage, to lead, and to remember that her focus is on others and helping them solve problems in pursuit of their priorities.  This professional engages with purpose every single minute of her day.

Seven ways You Can Engage with Purpose Everyday:

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I have been in the training industry since 1976, and there’s something I know that you may or may not know: Most training fails!

Far too often training makes no difference. It adds no value, creates no change—and in the end, is a cost rather than an investment. Why? Because both buyers and sellers make mistakes.  And in the current economy, we can’t afford mistakes nor can we afford not to train existing staff.

On the “selling” side, more often than not, the training rep is anxious to make the sale so he or she caves to the request of the buyer. This leads to the seller selling the client the wrong training, just to make a sale. Many years ago, a major retailer purchased a customized retail sales program from me. Why? Their CEO wanted one! What they really needed was a Leadership course. They had just gone through a major turn around and even the President of their apparel group said it takes a different mindset to lead a company than it does to turned it around. He was right, and I knew it but the CEO was demanding it, so I sold the custom sales course. It failed and it was my fault because I failed them.

Also, some training suppliers don’t just sell the wrong product, they sell a bad product. There’s a lot of junk on the training market, and when it doesn’t work, it gives the industry a well-deserved lousy reputation—and is a waste of the customer’s time, energy, and money. Often it is simply hype or motivational and does not build the skills people need to succeed.

On the buying side, even when clients purchase really great content, they too can make really big mistakes. Once I sold a substantial amount of needed training to a company who a year later had lost it and never implemented it.  This wasn’t just about misplacing paper and plastic, this was also about changing priorities. Their business was doing well and they were simply too busy succeeding to implement the training they paid for. Today, that struggling company needs the training, but “can’t afford it.” A buyer’s mistake!

To make training worthwhile, here are several “Do” and “Do Not” recommendations.

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Every Leader has two jobs. Simply put the job is to help the team succeed by believing in their company and its mission. The other part of the job is helping your team members succeed, too. “Succeed” means do a good job, develop skills, earn autonomy, grow, and much more. Unfortunately, nether part gets much attention!

Both jobs are equally important and here are some other tips to think about.

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“Thirteen Fatal Errors Managers Make…..And How You Can Avoid Them”

By: W. Steven Brown, Chairman The Fortune Group International, Inc.

This is a synopsis of this former best selling book that has been published in 8 languages. The errors are:

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Why is Sales Management so hard? Sales Managers bear 100% of the responsibility for the performance of their sales team yet receive little glory for their efforts.

In many cases even the best sales managers earn less than their top salespeople. Yet, the best sales managers work longer hours, endure more stress, and have greater responsibility than the salespeople they manage.

Making things worse is the fact that salespeople are harder to lead and manage than any other employee. They are emotional and often irrational people who demand attention. Because salespeople are essentially in jobs where rejection is the norm, sales managers are often called upon to be coaches, mentors, mothers, fathers, and even amateur psychologists in order to keep their troops motivated, focused, and delivering on sales goals.

If this isn’t hard enough sales managers are often put in the position of shielding their salespeople from others who have absolutely no understanding of the psychology of salespeople.

It is a wonder why any sane human being would voluntarily choose to be a sales manager. Though each year thousands of sales professionals give up their sales roles and accept the promotion. They move into their new office and proudly stare at their newly printed business cards – with little understanding of what it takes to actually lead salespeople. Not prepared to perform the job of sales manager a high percentage of these newly minted sales leaders are promptly demoted or fired. In many cases they have done so much damage to the sales team (and their own career) that it takes years to repair.

The sales profession is a graveyard littered with the corpses of failed sales managers.

Who is to blame?

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Have you ever read a Scott Adams’ “Dilbert” cartoon about the pointy-haired manager and felt that Adams was describing your boss and your company? If so, you are not alone. Even though most managers want to be competent managers, ineffective management practices are common in the workplace.

Nothing can be more frustrating to an employee than a new manager who hasn’t a clue how to deal with people. Even experienced managers make mistakes, which lower morale and productivity.

Why are management skills so important? Why don’t managers know how to manage? How can training help?

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Training is Too Expensive!-We frequently hear that training is too expensive. The real question is this: What is the real cost of not training your employees? Objectives get pushed back, causing costly delays in every department.

“An investment in education always pays the highest returns.”—Ben Franklin

Franklin knew this to be true 250 years ago. Too many companies view training as an expense rather than as an investment. All jobs have a specific deadlines, revenue and service expectations. When missed, what is the real cost? Customers are frustrated and leave us. It immediately creates more time in meetings with managers to discuss the situation, provide updates and set new deadlines.

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With the rise of globalization in terms of the knowledge economy businesses need to improve their bottom-line to stay competitive. Technology is the cause for this due to its rapid growth across all specters. The reality is job skill set becomes absolute everyday as technology increases.

Why it is important for workers to become a life-long learner?

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Since delegating work plays such an important role for successful
 Leaders, why are most of them not doing it, or not doing enough? Why do we see Leaders attending to routine low-level tasks? There are 
various reasons why we – Leaders and managers – avoid
 delegating tasks and responsibility mainly because they see their job as a problem solver and not a problem giver.

You rate a Leader not based on how badly their people need them but what can their people do with them! Additionally, here are some of the traps that prohibit effective delegation and how to avoid them.

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Ben Franklin said; tell me and I’ll forget, teach me, and I may remember, involve me and I’ll learn.

I mention that to say rather than simply give the answers, the Leader’s role should be to help their people find the answers for themselves. While giving the answers is better than giving no help at all, helping people to find the answers for themselves provides far more effective mentoring. This process enables so much more for the people in terms of their learning experience.

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