The Business of Giving

Posted on by Real Leaders

A Good Card is a gift card for charity that you can redeem for any charity in the United States. An idea that came to Bill Strathmann ten years ago was inspired by two concepts. The First was an idea that you could ‘give’ the ‘gift’ of charity to someone, and the second was that you could put a new twist on traditional gifting by making gifts more socially relevant. This was something already pioneered by organizations such as Heifer International which brings your donation to life by allocating a llama, cow or chicken to an impoverished family to promote sustainable living.

But now, instead of receiving a card for your birthday which says, “I got you a llama for your birthday, but I sent it to a poor family that needs it more,” you can simply add cash to a credit card, to be spent on any of the 1 million charities Network for Good now has listed, after ten years of existence.

They’ve also processed a staggering US$700 million over this period. “We basically joined the two ideas of giving charity and direct gifting to come up with the idea of the Good Card,” says Strathmann. He’s had a few insightful moments, too, on his journey to help unlock generosity on a massive scale. For instance, a non-profit organization once complained that the Network for Good donation button on its website was not getting any hits. After explaining to the organization’s director that it was not a magic button, Network For Good went on to launch a massive online training program which taught non-profits how to raise money online.

Network for Good now provides kits and training to more than 200,000 non-profit professionals, which includes webinars, where well-known personalities give an hour of their time to offer advice. “Realizing our clients needed more than just the fishing rod, we taught them how to fish, too,” Strathmann explains. It’s worked so well that companies are starting to adopt the idea by giving it to their employees as a reward, rather than cheesy, meaningless corporate gifts.

Whereas before you might have been given a Clinique ‘Happy’ cosmetic bag for the holidays with a US$10 charity voucher inside, you can now brand a Good Card for your business for year-round giving. The entertainment factor of receiving a Good Card is also important in helping turn wasted consumption dollars into dollars that are helping resolve social causes.

Next time you’re about to turn your company assistant loose on a gift-buying spree, for Yahoo towels or hats with your logo, which inevitably end up in a spare drawer, think of how much more appreciated this purchase might be if put to work in society. “Saying to someone that you care about what they care about makes this gift all the more personal and meaningful,” explains Strathmann.

“We view charitable giving as a utility, we don’t pick favorite charities or choose sides when it comes to charities we support. As far as I’m concerned, any charity that is in good standing with the IRS should be able to receive a charitable donation, either online or digitally.” While Network for Good is U.S.-focused for now, international donations can be done via U.S.-based charities who work globally. With the company’s revenue growing more than 35 percent a year, the business of giving has become a healthy venture, despite the recessionary years since 2007, which interestingly had no effect at all on this growth.

While the credit card format of Good Cards is novel and certainly fits into a recognizable way of consumer spending, the organization also enables donations through social media, mobile and websites, such as Capital One’s website where you can redeem your credit card rewards for charity. With an array of channels to choose from, there’s now no excuse for not giving.

Of the US$300 billion Americans pledge to charity every year only 5 percent, or US$15 billion, is actually done digitally. “We’re starting to see a massive migration to digital payments, much like we’re seeing with music. The paperwork involved in sending checks is cumbersome for both the donor and the charity and we’re hoping to see the end of this payment method in the future.”

With Network for Good now a sustainable business model, it no longer requires charitable dollars to fund itself. Run like a mainstream business, it has earned the revenue that ensures long-term survival. Most donors have modest expectation when it comes to an acknowledgement of their donation or how their money is being spent, but unfortunately many charities cannot even meet these modest expectations.

Some sense of tangibility is also important, where someone can grasp the detail of their giving. The reason the Heifer International model works so well is because a donor can say, “Oh, I bought a llama for a family, I get it.” They can actually see the result of their donation. Network for Good automatically sends a thank you to donors, something charities often forget about.

“We’re very aware of delivering both the tangibility factor and the thank you message to donors. This results in  the ‘helpers high’ syndrome, always good for return business. There’s a very good reason why our motto is ‘Do good, feel good.’ But most importantly, if you can solve a social problem with a market-based solution, you should take this approach,” says Strathmann.

 

Have You Met Yourself?

Posted on by Will Marre

Do you know what you are especially good at? Do you know why people especially value your work or your personality? Do you know that whatever secret faults you have they are not secrets to anyone else? It’s no surprise that findings of a recent study by the Hay group on differences between male and female leaders showed that no matter which gender you are we’re mostly clueless about ourselves. Of the critical drivers of human effectiveness men and women ranked dead last on the same trait. That trait is self-awareness. That’s not good.

Decades of research confirms that emotional intelligence is the most hair-on-fire critical element of effective leadership, management, as well as just plain getting along with others. Research, using 50,000 360-degree surveys shows that supervisors and subordinates most often agree on the strengths and weaknesses of a particular manager. The person who has the most distorted view is the manager himself or herself! That’s you and me. We simply don’t know how we come across to others. In fact, we are terrible at it. It’s not our fault really.

Our brains are constantly conducting a crazy inner dialogue that provides a personal color commentary on everything that’s going on in our lives minute to minute. We mistake this color commentary for reality. So we think others actually understand our thoughts, motives, and intentions.

But except for a very, very few of our closest loved ones, they don’t. It’s true. Most of us cruise through life thinking others hold us in higher or lower esteem than they actually do. Most of us have a very foggy idea of our impact on others. The result is that our influence, effectiveness, and genuine human connections are smaller than they could be.  A lot smaller. That’s what happens when you experience yourself through your intentions and others through their behavior. I learned this the hard way.

After years of success and failure I discovered that many people viewed me as a bulldozer. What they experienced was arrogance. What I was feeling was confidence. What they experienced was commanding. What I was feeling was urgency. Some small adjustments caused me to actively seek contrary points of view, which led to big improvements.

The point is, I just didn’t have a clue. The following is how I advise people. First, realize you are not normal. We are all quirky as hell. What’s normal to you is, well, abnormal to nearly everyone else.  Second, ask others who know you well, the four questions below. I’ve found it’s best to do this by urgent email. Tell people you mail it to that you’re having an interview tomorrow morning so need an immediate, off-top-of-their-head’s response. If you don’t create a burning fuse your friends and colleagues will put responding off indefinitely.

Here are the questions:

1. What do you most value about me?

2. What do you think I am best at?

3. If I were going to invest a lot of time to learn and master something, what do you think I might do?

4. If you could wish that I stop doing one thing that’s holding me back, what is it?

You don’t need a 360-survey or even a coach to start a journey of self-awareness, that could change your life. You only need an email account.  Go ahead… give it a rip.

 

The Challenge of the future: A letter to an unborn son

Posted on by Real Leaders

There are now over 7 billion people on the planet. If we are to survive as a species, then innovative and brave solutions must be found. 

As expectant father, Markus Dietrich of the Philippines faces the questions that millions of other soon-to-be parents are asking, he writes a letter to his unborn son…

Dear Son, As your mother Suncheon and I eagerly await your arrival on earth, we are heading towards exciting times which will turn our lives upside down. That’s at least what everybody’s promising us. So before you take over our days and nights, I have sat down quietly to reflect on your childhood and what kind of leader you might become. I look forward to sitting down with you one day, once you have grown up and taken on leadership roles yourself, and have a conversation to compare notes.

Looking back at my own childhood I’ve come to realize that even back then I already had the attributes of a leader. This was not because I was special in any way, but rather through the attitude I had towards life. All children have this within them. Without any learning and studying, all children are born with empathy, creativity, unreason, curiosity and an eagerness to explore new and ever-changing worlds. In today’s management and leadership language we call it “emotional intelligence,” “innovation strategies,” “lifelong learning” or “blue oceans” – and we pay dearly for regaining them later in life.

So how do we lose this natural leadership along the way? Thinking back to where this loss occurred, I remember a few events distinctly, yet their importance is only obvious to me now. “Now they destroyed your creativity,” my father exclaimed, as I proudly presented to him my latest piece of school artwork, a watercolour painting of a balloon flying over a rural landscape. I didn’t understand what he meant, as I had just received my highest grade ever from the teacher. “But dad, look at the minute details in my painting, it looks just like a photo,” I pleaded. He pointed sadly towards my wild, free-flowing drawings from the past and said, “This is what I meant.”

As well as being one of my favourite bands from the 90s, Curiosity Killed the Cat is also an adage that being too curious can be dangerous. As a child, I asked my parents hundreds of questions around “what?,” “why?,” “how?” of life, the universe and everything else. I only learned later that the answer (according to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) is “42,” but at that time my parents patiently gave me answers I was looking for. I lost this unbridled curiosity during my adult life, too busy managing day-to-day business, while innovation was outsourced to the research and  development department.

It was only at age 40, after much soul-searching, that I realized what I had lost and have since worked hard to regain it. I now consider curiosity to be one of the most important drivers in my personal and business life. When I learned about Chinese culture as a teenager, I became fascinated by the ancient Chinese proverb: “May you live in interesting times.” Thinking this was a blessing, I went around telling all my relatives and friends that I hoped they lived in interesting times. I was sternly reprimanded and told that this phrase is actually a curse, as peace and tranquillity is preferred over upheaval and change.

But is change really a curse? For most children, tranquillity is not really an option and change is a given. Furthermore, we all live in interesting times nowadays, so this proverb has come true for all of us. As a leader in a prominent position, I am confronted with change all the time. I even generate it myself through disruptive innovations.

The darker side of the proverb become obvious to me when I experienced the loss of my first marriage and job within a few days. Embracing change in those moments was much more difficult and painful. However, it can also be much more rewarding, as profound change has turned out to be a blessing for me. I’ve always prided myself in an  ability to adapt as it’s helped me tremendously in achieving success in international business.

Only during the last three years, working in social entrepreneurship and at the base of the pyramid, have I discovered that an ability to adapt has some major drawbacks. It made me “reasonable” and  accepting of a situation, which worked best within my framework. However, being “unreasonable” is a major driver in my quest for social innovation and better suits uncharted territories which need to be conquered and where other approaches have failed before.

Over the last few years I have unlearned “reason” and now embrace my childhood genius of “unreason.” So, dear son, what took me 43 years to realize is – becoming a leader is to stay a child. I had to unlearn many things to reveal my buried childhood abilities. That is not to say you shouldn’t learn, your mother is a teacher and she will make sure you learn!

I will rather encourage you to nurture your natural childhood leadership so that you may carry this over into your adult life.

PS: While researching the origins of the Chinese proverb mentioned above, I discovered that none exist that correspond to the English phrase. I traced it back to 1930s England, from where the ‘curse’ spread to become a household phrase. Lesson: Don’t take anything at face value.

Don’t Be Stupid… Work Like a Genius

Posted on by Will Marre

What if the worst thing you could do for your personal capability is exactly what you are doing?

You probably are. We all are. Brain scientists have confirmed that multitasking makes us stupid. No I am not exaggerating. If we define practical intelligence as our ability to learn, solve problems, and create new solutions then we are making ourselves mentally challenged. Here’s why. Our brains are designed for efficiency.

They quickly create patterns of thought called Brain Activity Patterns that connect sets of facts, experiences, and reasoning ability into useful knowledge clusters. The faster these clusters of knowledge connect the faster we learn, solve problems, and invent solutions. The fuel for fast thinking is focus and oxygen.

When we don’t focus and when we sit too long we literally run out of gas. And it seems the worst thing we can do for our brain is to try to put our attention on more than one thing at a time. True multitasking is essentially impossible. Research is showing that no amount of video games or texting while driving trains our brain to think about two things at once. Instead we just scramble our brains.

A decade of testing by the military and scores of universities confirms that multitasking leads to more errors and lengthens the total time it takes to complete a series of tasks. But that’s not all. Multitasking prevents our brain from forming important Brain Activity Patterns that are necessary for mastery and expertise. It’s like this. Picture traffic moving through a chaotic, over stuffed city in an under-developed country. Motorcycles, trucks, bicycles, and cars driving in a frenzy where traffic laws are ignored and fatal accidents abound.

Compare that to a new multilane freeway system at 11 am with a few cars and trucks moving safely at high speed to their designated off ramp. Those two scenarios describe the difference between a multitasking chaotic brain filled with random thoughts constantly assaulted by new data, new requests, and new problems, and one that is focused on one important opportunity or relationship at a time.

Yes, it makes a big difference. In a recent study of the work habits of 150 geniuses, from Edison to Einstein, researchers found that these geniuses have work habits 180 degrees opposite of what you may be doing. Here’s their pattern: They get up early, sometimes very early, and work in a state of focused concentration until their noon meal. And yes, they drink lots of coffee and eat breakfast.

After lunch they take a long break – up to two hours – and either walk, nap, or pursue a creative hobby like music or art. In the mid-afternoon they refocus on work, often with colleagues, to keep projects, inventions, or organizations moving. At night they eat, often socialize with friends or loved ones, and then go to bed early.​Of course the complete lifestyles of many extraordinary geniuses are plenty quirky so I am not suggesting every excessive habit should be copied.

Rather, I’m suggesting that there seems to be a clear pattern of work that leads to extraordinary achievement. The pattern is based on long periods of intense focus followed by some engaging form of refreshment and recovery, followed by working with others that leverages all the smart things done in the morning.

What greatness clearly doesn’t look like is a crazy mental pinball game of responding to texts and email while “half-brain” attending an endless series of meetings and conference calls. So why not try this new pattern for a week or two? Imagine what might happen. Imagine what breakthrough you might have.

Just imagine.

 

Don’t Be Stupid… Work Like a Genius

Posted on by Real Leaders Inc.

What if the worst thing you could do for your personal capability is exactly what you are doing?

You probably are. We all are. Brain scientists have confirmed that multitasking makes us stupid. No I am not exaggerating. If we define practical intelligence as our ability to learn, solve problems, and create new solutions then we are making ourselves mentally challenged. Here’s why. Our brains are designed for efficiency.

They quickly create patterns of thought called Brain Activity Patterns that connect sets of facts, experiences, and reasoning ability into useful knowledge clusters. The faster these clusters of knowledge connect the faster we learn, solve problems, and invent solutions. The fuel for fast thinking is focus and oxygen.

When we don’t focus and when we sit too long we literally run out of gas. And it seems the worst thing we can do for our brain is to try to put our attention on more than one thing at a time. True multitasking is essentially impossible. Research is showing that no amount of video games or texting while driving trains our brain to think about two things at once. Instead we just scramble our brains.

A decade of testing by the military and scores of universities confirms that multitasking leads to more errors and lengthens the total time it takes to complete a series of tasks. But that’s not all. Multitasking prevents our brain from forming important Brain Activity Patterns that are necessary for mastery and expertise. It’s like this. Picture traffic moving through a chaotic, over stuffed city in an under-developed country. Motorcycles, trucks, bicycles, and cars driving in a frenzy where traffic laws are ignored and fatal accidents abound.

Compare that to a new multilane freeway system at 11 am with a few cars and trucks moving safely at high speed to their designated off ramp. Those two scenarios describe the difference between a multitasking chaotic brain filled with random thoughts constantly assaulted by new data, new requests, and new problems, and one that is focused on one important opportunity or relationship at a time.

Yes, it makes a big difference. In a recent study of the work habits of 150 geniuses, from Edison to Einstein, researchers found that these geniuses have work habits 180 degrees opposite of what you may be doing. Here’s their pattern: They get up early, sometimes very early, and work in a state of focused concentration until their noon meal. And yes, they drink lots of coffee and eat breakfast.

After lunch they take a long break – up to two hours – and either walk, nap, or pursue a creative hobby like music or art. In the mid-afternoon they refocus on work, often with colleagues, to keep projects, inventions, or organizations moving. At night they eat, often socialize with friends or loved ones, and then go to bed early.​Of course the complete lifestyles of many extraordinary geniuses are plenty quirky so I am not suggesting every excessive habit should be copied.

Rather, I’m suggesting that there seems to be a clear pattern of work that leads to extraordinary achievement. The pattern is based on long periods of intense focus followed by some engaging form of refreshment and recovery, followed by working with others that leverages all the smart things done in the morning.

What greatness clearly doesn’t look like is a crazy mental pinball game of responding to texts and email while “half-brain” attending an endless series of meetings and conference calls. So why not try this new pattern for a week or two? Imagine what might happen. Imagine what breakthrough you might have.

Just imagine.

 

Planting Corporate Seeds for Social Good

Posted on by Real Leaders

Over the past few decades, many corporations have learned to tap into the expertise of social workers by creating roles for them within the corporate hierarchy. The infographic below shows how social work plants the seeds for corporate good and describes the varied roles that social workers fill within corporations.

Some companies have initiated CSR programs of their own, such as Target’s Bullseye Gives program or Pepsi’s Refresh Project, while others partner with nonprofit organizations like Habitat for Humanity or No Kid Hungry. This graphic brought to you by USC School of Social Work.

Social Work: Planting Corporate Seeds for Social Good infographic

7 Ways to Read More of What Can Help You Lead

Posted on by Steve Leveen

When I ask friends if they’ve read anything good lately, I usually get a pained expression and a comment like, “Oh, man, I wish I had more time to read!”

Given the pressures of business and family, along with the urgent reading we must do during the course of a day, it’s difficult to find the time to read books that may make us better leaders and potentially even change our lives.

Yet it’s not as difficult as you might think to be a real reader. As the CEO of a company that caters to readers, I’ve had the opportunity to ask hundreds of busy people over the years what tips they have for actually getting those life-changing books into their lives and running on their fuel. Here are seven proven techniques particularly relevant to busy CEOs:

1. Be willing to give up on a book.

Practice the 50-page rule: if a book hasn’t grabbed you by page 50, give it the heave-ho. There are lots more books on the shelf, virtual and otherwise, beckoning. In my experience, the more seasoned the readers, the more likely they are to practice this rule, and thereby find more books suited to them.

2. Read with family members.

Right now my wife, Lori, and our two sons are reading Conscious Capitalism so that we can discuss it as a family. Reading with family members is like having a built-in book club, with a bonus: you get to spend more time with your family.

3. Read with colleagues.

Ask the colleagues you respect what they’re reading and why. Reading the same book at the same time as a colleague means you can compare notes as you go, gain more from your reading, and strengthen bonds of friendship. Try it with a forum member, or your whole forum as an exercise.

4. Read with your ears. In recent years audiobooks have become a powerhouse format, with many truly great narrators and thousands of captivating books that will keep you glued in your car after you’ve reached your destination. Don’t be snagged by the fading prejudice that listening is cheating and not real reading. Remember that all stories and learning used to be oral and that reading, especially silent reading to one’s self, is a relatively recent phenomenon.

Ironically, digital files on your smartphone have unleashed the power of oral storytelling to millions of learners. I find that audiobooks are particularly well suited to narratives like biographies and histories, which can be some of the best business books of all. Check out AudioFile Magazine for the latest releases, along with informed reviews. Visit Audible and iTunes to browse thousands of audiobooks you can download.

5. See your way into books. Today the power of video magnifies the benefits of reading. I loved Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. Jump start your reading by watching her TED video, which 3.5 million introverts have already quietly done.

See or hear the brilliant Steven Pinker explain his masterpiece, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, as he presents his Long Now Foundation SALT talk in San Francisco. Before reading Sherry Turkle’s rewarding book Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, watch her uplifting interview with Stephen Colbert. Thinking about reading Warren Buffett’s newest? Start with six minutes of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

6. Build your Library of Candidates.

More than a list of what you might like to read, a Library of Candidates is a repository for the books themselves. Having the actual print book ensures that you’ll choose new books from an enriched assortment you’ve already vetted, and increases the likelihood you’ll love your next book. I devote physical bookcases to my Library of Candidates, and do the same with a virtual library of e-book downloads.

7. Build on your success. As in business, so with reading: success breeds success. Once you’re reading a book that you can’t put down, you’ll want to repeat that exhilaration. Don’t worry about not having read all the classics (no one has) or this or that “indispensable” book. Try, instead, to always be reading a book you love. Do that and you’ll be living your own well-read life, which is the only one worth living.

Are you ready to get more books in your life and more life from your books? Try at least one of these techniques in the next two weeks and see how you do. Then, share the results with us below.

 

Refuse To Be Domesticated

Posted on by Will Marre

Too many of us have become domesticated. We are so persistently taught how to figure out how to please others to get what they tell us we should want that… we lose track of ourselves. We never learn what we deeply want.

I have found this to be profoundly true for leaders. They are always focusing on what their investors want, analysts want, or bankers want.

They listen constantly to what their own senior team wants, their employees want, and what their customers want. But simply bundling up this huge pile of wants into a business that you could actually run is prescription for relentless stress and mediocre results. The leaders we most admire are clear on what they want and single-mindedly pursue it. I know, that could sound selfish and willful, which is exactly the kind of leader we don’t admire. So what do I mean exactly? Well, I am defining deep intrinsic desires as wants.

I am referring to enriching and improving the lives of people by making a valued difference. The difference perhaps only you can make. What your banker or investors want is to make a lot of money. Your employees want generous pay and few demands. Your customers want a deal. What leader can become great listening to those wants? Instead ask yourself, “What is the greatest thing I could do?” Walt Disney famously said, “I don’t make movies to make money; I make money to make movies.” That says it all.

His leadership had a purpose derived from his deepest desire to create extraordinary experiences to make people happy. This Disney style, purpose driven leadership is what we all admire. When Blake Mycoskie started TOMS shoes in order to put shoes on barefoot children, most people though he would fail. Instead he has sold over 20 million pairs of shoes so he could give away an equal number.

When Howard Schultz wanted to unite humanitarian values to a five-dollar latte, everyone thought he was foolish. When Richard Branson wanted to start hundreds of companies to disrupt hundreds of markets, true professionals thought he was insane. When Zappos’ Tony Hsieh started selling happiness in the form of a transaction to buy shoes, he was ridiculed. It’s interesting, isn’t it?

These business leaders are household names. These are leaders we admire. Meanwhile the army of technocrats and financial engineers that run most companies are invisible. Many of them operate like robots playing with PowerPoints and spreadsheets as if they were all the mattered. These hard changing people aren’t bad, but they are often disconnected from their own healthy desire to really do something that matters. Do something you believe in so deeply you are willing to do whatever it takes to succeed so you can make your difference.

You don’t have to be a leader to fall into the trap of living someone else’s life. All you need to do to lose your own way is not look inside and notice what you are doing, saying, and learning when you are most alive. What the world needs most is not a better, cheaper version of what we already have.

What the world truly needs from you is to show up every day and do what you are uniquely designed to do and make it extraordinary. What the world needs for each of us is to invest ourselves in our most worthy purpose and not quit. For Walt Disney it was making movies. What is it for you?

 

Free download: Guide to Understanding Sustainability

Posted on by Real Leaders

Download our free guide to sustainability and understand the origins of this crucial concept, how it creates and maintains the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony and how a sustainably-minded future can help fulfill the social and economic requirements of present and future generations.

Click on the link below for your free download:

The Real Leaders Guide to Understanding Sustainability

 

 

The Leadership Chain

Posted on by Keith Merron

My purpose for writing this on-going column about conscious leadership is nothing less than to promote a shift in the thoughts and mindsets of leaders; ensuring organizations are run more effectively. By that I mean that organization becomes more fluid and productive in the long run, and that it contributes to a healthy, sustainable planet (socially as well as environmentally).

The shift requires that leaders fully understand a simple yet profound chain of logic, that if embraced to the full extent of its meaning, points to the type of leadership that will make a difference in organizational life and more importantly, on the planet. It’s based on a huge and growing amount of research around each element of the leadership chain. Each piece of research cannot stand on its own, and yet the totality of the research is both profound and compelling.

It tells us there is, irrefutably, a direct linkage between a leader’s mindset and an organization and its results. It tells us, in effect, that the leader casts a wide shadow – she leaves an enormous impact in her wake, whether she is aware of it or not. In other words, the quality of the culture is a reflection of the consciousness of the leader. It is the leader’s shadow reflecting back the best and worst of whom he or she is as a leader. This means that the attitudes, beliefs, personalities and inner paradigms that the leaders hold will inevitably show up in the organization and its culture and ultimately shape its dynamics. You can see it in almost all organizations.

Steve Jobs was brash, bold and creative and so, too, is Apple. Bill Gates is brilliantly strategic and aggressive and so, too, is Microsoft. Herb Kelleher is quite playful while his COO, Colleen Barrett, is quite organized; Southwest Airlines is a rare combination of the two. The chain of logic is simply this. What you want as a leader is extraordinary and sustainable results. While many factors contribute to this outcome such as market timing, strategy, product excellence, operational efficiency, the quality of people you hire, and luck, the biggest factor that contributes to your long term results is the quality of your culture.

And while many different factors contribute to your culture such as geography, history, the industry in which you reside, etc., by far, the single greatest factor that contributes to your organizations culture is your leadership behavior and that of your leadership team. In fact, research shows unequivocally that as much as 50% of an organization’s culture is directly a result of the quality of the leadership of that organization.

Without a doubt the environment affects one’s behavior, as does good old fashioned training and know-how, yet the biggest factor affecting a leader’s behavior is his or her mindset — beliefs, attitudes, perceptions, and ways of seeing and being. As a consultant to businesses, I’ve been asked by leaders to fix some part of their organization. “Those folks aren’t working hard enough,” or “they’re confused,” or “we just don’t hire the right people.” They might say to me, for example, “Keith, I’m troubled by how so many people don’t take initiative. Would you help me create an organization guided by a greater sense of personal responsibility?”

What they often don’t understand is that the dynamics they seek to change are a reflection of their own leadership patterns — more often than not toward a command-and-control style of management where their micromanagement tendencies snuff the life force out of the very culture they want to change. They create organizations centered on themselves and wonder why people don’t take more initiative.

Or consider the charismatic leader filled with vision and wonderful ideas:   underneath the organization’s brilliant marketing machine is a culture of scattered initiatives where so much falls through the cracks and a lack of coordination runs rampant. Simply put, it’s the mindset of the leader that profoundly affects the culture and ultimately its results, for good or for bad.

Take a moment to consider a problem you might have in your organization. Be sure to pick a problem that appears to be impervious to change. Now consider how this problem may be a reflection of you. In other words, look in the mirror and ask yourself, how do my leadership traits and I cause this? What don’t I see that may cause this problem? If nothing comes to mind, ask some trusted members of your team. You know, the ones who’re not afraid to tell you the truth about you!

As difficult and painful as it might be, all leaders would benefit from looking in the mirror when they feel frustrated with their organization, the results or its counterproductive patterns. This is what conscious leaders do. This column, The Conscious Leader, is dedicated to stories, ideas, research and insights to pique the imagination and help cultivate the great leader inside.

In this column, I will share what I know and what I believe to be true about remarkable leadership. Having worked with well over 350 companies and leaders of all types, and having coached literally hundreds of top level executives, I seek to share the stories and observations I encounter along the way. All this is done in the interest of supporting an ongoing examination of the most important variable to your organization’s success, or lack thereof — YOU!