31 Days to Becoming a Better Leader

Everyone can learn to improve their skills to lead an organization or to fully utilize a vision and mission. Nothing happens without effective leadership. Many wrong ideas keep leaders from success. In this step-by-step series of podcasts, everyone can learn from Hugh Ballou’s 31 years of leadership work.

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Day #2: Personal Life Vision

A dream is the creative vision for your life in the future.– Denis Waitley

Set your personal life vision to protect yourself from getting sucked into the vortex of running an organization at the expense of quality of life.

Define the life you want first, and then develop the organization that will support your quality of life. We often think we can ultimately get to that quality of life if we work really, really hard…but all too often, we have developed such bad habits and have overfunctioned so much, that we seldom get to reap the rewards of those benefits.

Define your core values which are the fundamental beliefs guiding your thoughts and actions and attract like-minded people to you and to your work. Add values that, if those are missing, anything more is no deal.  Write those down and review them weekly. Alignment with values is crucial to your success.

In the next session, I will provide you with a process for thinking of values for your organization. You can use that same process for your own values and then teach that process to everyone in your organization. 

Core values are the foundation of your culture, however, they are single words that leave a lot open to interpretation. We tend to write them and then file them away and forget about them. Ideally, everything you do in life will reflect your personal core values.

Here are some areas to consider when developing your own personal list of core values:

• Religious beliefs affiliated with your religion;
• Being a good steward of resources of time, talent, and money
• The belief anchored in family and family values
• The value of relationships over outcomes
• Dedication to living a healthy life with diet, exercise, and sleep
• Discipline of managing priorities to balance life/work/play, etc.

Next, set up your plan for your life with your ultimate life goals…define life at some point in the future in writing. Read it daily and commit to making it happen. Focus on what you desire and not on what you fear.

Build on your personal values, and write out a vision for your life. Define what people will say about you at your memorial service after you are gone, or what’s inscribed on your tombstone. I do not think that it would say, “He regrets not working more days during his life.” Write your vision statement.

Write your mission statement defining how you will show up and what you will do in your life to bring value to everyone, especially to yourself.

Consider creating a journal. Write your values, vision, and mission statements, and then keep a journal of your life.

If your life has value, then write about that value.

Next: Day 3 Organizational Core Values

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Day #3: Organizational Core Values

Core values are the fundamental beliefs of a person or organization. These values dictate behavior and can help people understand the difference between right and wrong. Core values also help companies determine if they are on the right path and fulfilling their goals by creating an unwavering guide.

Take inventory of your personal values to be sure that you are in alignment with the organization’s core values.

This is also key for any team members – staff, boards, committees, volunteers, and other stakeholders. Developing the list of values using index cards or half sheets of copy paper (full sheets cut in half). Use a chart pad marker so the ink doesn’t bleed through. You can print core value statements on pieces of paper or index cards and sort them on a dining room table. If you have several people, I recommend purchasing “Storyboards” from an office supply company – that’s a report board, tri-fold 3×4 black surface. Purchase a can of repositionable spray mount and spray the boards until they are tacky enough to hold the papers. The boards are the focus of the group’s activity. You will use these boards again for other team planning sessions.

The advantage of using the boards over chart pads is huge. The person printing on a chart pad or whiteboard must turn around and write on those surfaces turning their back on the group. This creates a vacuum in activity an throughout a planning session amounts to a lot of unproductive, downtime, which sucks the energy out of the room.

If you use the half sheets of paper and the storyboards, then each person prints on the sheets. You place those sheets on the boards. They are repositionable, so they can be sorted for relevance or grouped by topic and positioned for priority. It’s a continually interactive process, which builds team synergy.

So, here is the routine for defining the core values of an organization.

• Don’t start with a list of values from a consultant or expert – those aren’t your values and might limit your ideas. Make your list and make it as long as you like
• Ask participants to define what values or beliefs attracted them to the organization and, inversely what values, if missing would be a deal breaker for their participation. Direct them to “Print” those values on the papers or cards
• Collect all the cards and place them on the storyboard
• Ask if there are duplicates or ideas similar enough to combine for strength
• Group value by relevance
• Give each group a name
• You have your core values, along with nuances defining those values more completely

Transcribe these onto a document and share with the group. This will then be a part of your overall strategy.

Building a high-performing culture is based on common values and decisions are based on guiding principles, which I cover in the next session.

Next session #4: Guiding Principles

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Day #4: Guiding Principles

It’s important to define our core values as we begin to plan for our future and the future of the enterprise we lead, however, these values are static. They might be single words or short phrases that are open to interpretation in different ways by different people. For example: Integrity is one. It’s a word. What do we do with it now? How do we apply that word to decision-making? Does the word mean different things to different people? 

Therefore it’s important to define how we’re going to utilize our core values. We put those values into statements of application, in other words, how will we apply the value of integrity?

One example is we treat all people with integrity. Another example would be all decisions are based on the integrity of our core values and the integrity of our organization.

Penn Mutual’s guiding principles: Penn Mutual is committed to maintaining a culture that produces a legacy based on respect, trust, and doing the right thing. 

Penn Mutual’s guiding principles lead with “Acting With Integrity, we have the conscious intention to do the right thing.” They stated, “Each of us has a personal responsibility to conduct our business honestly, ethically, and with respect.”

The full guiding principles are outlined below:

Acting With Integrity

We have the conscious intention to do the right thing.

Respecting One Another

We see each other’s distinctiveness as a valued asset.

Focusing on Relationships

We foster meaningful connections with others.

Sustaining Our Legacy

We are trusted guardians for what we promise.

A Shared Sense of Belonging

We evoke our place as part of a larger world that we influence and that influences us.

It is no coincidence that doing the right thing is at the core of Penn Mutual’s culture, the cornerstone on which they conduct each of their interactions.

In my work of Orchestrating Success in my coaching work for business or nonprofit leaders, I use these three fundamental principles for coaching:

My Guiding Principles as a Leadership Coach

• Coaching is 90% listening
• Coaching is responding with thoughtful questions
• Communication is based on relationships and not merely on information, so I’m always working on relationships.

I have other personal and organizational guiding principles as well. Each person representing the organization must be in alignment with values and principles. We all represent the brand identity.

Guiding Principles are the core of a high-functioning culture. Without them, leaders are setting up unnecessary conflict.

Next Day #5 Being clear on what we do and how we do it: Organizational Vision and Mission Statements.

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Day #5: Organizational Vision and Mission

Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.  – Jonathan Swift

An essential part of successful strategic planning was in creating our core values and guiding principles. Now everything we do must be in line with those.

Next in importance is the development of our Vision and Mission Statements. I realize that everyone teaching strategic planning is not on the same page with definitions of these, however concepts are similar.

Vision: the Concept

Define who you are and or what you are doing. Describe the reality of your organization in the future expressed in present tense. It should be short and memorable. Stakeholders can say the vision easily from memory.

Some Samples:

• Rise Against Hunger: We are eliminating hunger in our lifetime.
• Goodwill: Every person has the opportunity to achieve his/her fullest potential and participate in and contribute to all aspects of life.
• Oxfam: A just world without poverty 
• The Nature Conservancy: To leave a sustainable world for future generations. 
• Habitat for Humanity: A world where everyone has a decent place to live. 

Mission: the Application of the concept

Define how you will achieve the vision. This is a tactical statement so the listener or reader will understand the pathway to achieving the vision. This can be longer and even use bullet points if that’s good for highlighting steps in a process. 

Some Samples:

Rise Against Hungeris driven by the vision of a world without hunger. Our mission is to end hunger in our lifetime by providing food and life-changing aid to the world’s most vulnerable and creating a global commitment to mobilize the necessary resources.

American Museum Of Natural History: Discover, interpret, and disseminate   through scientific research and education – knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe.

Best Friends Animal Society: End the killing in America’s animal shelters and create a time when there are no more homeless pets. We do this by building community programs and partnerships all across the nation.

Steps for creating vision and mission statements:

1. Convene the stakeholders (board, staff, founders, and others passionate about the organization) and give each person a marker and half sheet of paper – listen to day 3 for using a storyboard. Allow everyone to have input to the creation of ideas and in the sorting process to follow.
2. Talk about the work we are doing or will be doing, basically its storytelling.., This will help people to remember why they have chosen to be a part of this mission. Ask them to capture key words or phrases on the papers – remember, print BIG, use fewer words and more than one word. Capture the concept.

3. Share all the ideas by placing them on the sticky storyboard. Then ask the group to highlight commonalities in the ideas.
4. Create a list of the key concepts in a new set of papers on a new board or new area in the same board. Fine-tune the language.
5. Assign at least 3 people to work on creating and wordsmithing a statement to bring back to the full group for review and approval

Tips: 

• Give it some time. Rest and time away from the project allows time for reflecting and thinking.
• Don’t consider stopping with the first to tenth draft. Consider revising it over a couple of months, if possible.
• Share the statement with others who are not a part of the organization and get their comments on clarity and purpose.
• Adopt a final version, but remain open to reviewing the statement annually.

Next: Day 6 Strategic Plan

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Day #6: Strategic Plan

Success is 20% skills and 80% strategy. You might know how to succeed, but more importantly, what’s your plan to succeed?  – Jim Rohn 

The words “Strategic Plan” strike fear into the hearts and minds of entrepreneurs. It sounds restrictive, cumbersome, time-consuming, and many other things. Many think that having a written strategic plan limits their creativity when the inverse is true. A strategic plan is a container for creativity. Once you have identified the roadmap, then the energy and creativity can focus on implementation, not struggling with what to do next.

It’s time to stop spinning our wheels, so to speak.

At SynerVision, we have created a proprietary road map that we call, the Solution Map.

It’s defining where we want to be at some point in the future (typically 3-5 years) and then defining how we will get there. 

In this series of podcast sessions, I will give you ideas on the various components of the road map. If you purchase the action guide for the program, then the outline will be yours in summary form. Consider purchasing the action guide. It’s a workbook with all this content and some forms for implementation.

You need a strategy for the following reasons:

• You stop spinning your wheels trying to figure out what to do next
• You have a clear pathway for implementation to share with your team
• You have a platform for team engagement
• You have organizational goals to share with team members responsible for areas of responsibility to create department or project goals in support of the organization’s goals
• Your investors, donors, sponsors, or customers understand that you have a plan that will create value with their money
• t is a reference for your financial team members to create a budget and spending plan that will support the work

• It clarifies the skills needed to accomplish the mission

• t provides a structure for the marketing team member to build a solid marketing plan to generate income

• It gives the leader (that’s you) a format for leading the people and getting results


 Pay the upfront cost. Spend time now to create the plan. It’s far less expensive than having to retrace steps and doing things over. If your work is important, then don’t waste time creating a structure for success.

Next: Day 7 Long-Term Objectives and Short-Term Goals

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Day #7: Long-Term Strategic Objectives and Short-Term Goals

Obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off of your goals. – Henry Ford

With each module in this podcast, we drill down into the parts of organizational leadership. It’s crucial that you, the leader, are focused on outcomes and not on activities.

• Without goals, there’s a lack of coordinated activity. 
• Goals allow each person to push the boat in the same direction.
• Too many goals may be detrimental and even cancel each other out.
• Once goals are written, the action plans can be developed.
• Rather than circular activity, we create a linear track that’s a lot more efficient.

Here are some definitions:

Long-Term Strategic Objectives

Definition of the long-term objectives for the organization:

• Three objectives are enough
• A future arrival point expressed in present tense
• The vision is for 3-5 years completion

Short-Term Goals

One major goal for each long-term objective:

• Also, a specific objective expressed in present tense
• The vision is for 12 months or less completion
• One goal for each equals 3 goals (one exception is that you might have 3 goals for the organization you lead and one personal goal)

Short-Term Objective/Benchmark/Milestones

A list of 30-day objectives (benchmarks) to accomplish the 12-month goal

Action Plan

A list of actions needed to accomplish each 30-day objective. There can be weekly action items that support each 30-day objective/benchmark/milestone.

Goals not written down are dreams that seldom are realized and certainly not realized to their ultimate effectiveness.

This process takes time, however it saves more time (and money) in the long term. It’s well worth it.

Next: Day #8 – Action Plans

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Day #8: Plans for Action

Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art.– Peter Drucker

This is where the “rubber hits the road,” as the saying goes. Once you complete your strategic plan and define your long-term objectives and short-term goals, what you have is simply a piece of paper with words. It’s a plan, for sure, but nothing happens without leadership.

Your vision is only as good as its implementation. Your implementation depends on you and the team you lead. Certainly, the leader can’t do it all, so it’s up to the leader to develop the skills to lead the team. Moving ideas into statements of accomplishments, and moving from the starting point to the desired outcomes, is where effective leaders stand out from everybody else.

Here’s what I know…when 100 people have an idea, only 3 of them do something about it. Out of those 3, about 10% will succeed. “Why?” you ask. My response is that most visionaries don’t reach out to get mentoring or coaching from an accomplished expert to ensure their success. Just because a visionary has an idea, even if it’s a great idea, there’s a gap between concept and performance. I call that leadership. It’s not something you read about in a book and then master on your own. It’s a well-rehearsed skill built over time with support from a mentor and/or coach.

I insert this sermon about leadership at this point because we are at a critical point in the process, in which there’s a 90% failure rate…right here…moving from concept to performance. In Day #12, the Personal Growth Plan, I’ll share ideas for building your skills for success and define the value of a mentor or coach. We can’t see our blind spots, so we need a skilled advisor to help identify and deal with those.

Action Plans are the key to manifesting ideas into results. There are three critical points to an action plan:

• Specific Action – to do something…start with “To”
• Champion – who will do it, or see that it’s done…a specific person
• Action Date – start date, next step date, completion date…accountability begins here. There might be several dates in the process.

The skilled leader defines the outcomes clearly (you’ve done this in creating goals) and then works with the team to identify the key steps to achieve the outcomes. In between the short-term goal of 1 year or less, and the action plan, are 30-day milestones. Break the annual goal into 30-day steps, and then define what will be done weekly to accomplish those milestones.

Too much work? The answer varies with the question: How successful do you want to be and how soon do you want success?

It’s up to you. Effective leaders work with a plan, so team members know what to do and how to be engaged. 

Next: Day #9 – The Performance Secret – DVDs

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Day #9: The Performance Secret – DVDs

Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment. – Jim Rohn

We define magnificent vision and mission with incredible objectives and powerful goals, and then we sit back and go, “Wow!” It seems so big that we feel overwhelmed.

We just defined how to begin breaking down those bigger results into achievable steps. Here’s the genealogy:

• Long-Term Objective – 3-5 years
• Short-Term Goals – 1-year or less
• Milestones – 30-day benchmarks
• Action Plans – Weekly to-do lists
• Now, the special secret – Hugh’s answer to feeling overwhelmed – the DVD

What’s a DVD, anyway? 

Daily ValueDeliverables 

• 3 baby steps per day
• Very small actions 
• Stated as accomplishments
• All related to the goals

This one step will ensure your success more than any other one. Just think…if you define three small accomplishments per day, that’s 15 per week and 60 per month.

If you completed 60 baby steps per month, how much would that impact your overall success?

What if you installed this system into the culture you are responsible for leading?

Do the math…60 completed DVDs per month times 10 team members…now you are leading a high-performing team!

Next: Day #10 – Accountabilities and Metrics

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Day #10: Accountabilities and Metrics

If you are building a culture where honest expectations are communicated and peer accountability is the norm, then the group will address poor performance and attitudes.

– Henry Cloud

As previously noted, having a plan is essential to the fulfillment of a vision; however, having a plan is not insurance for achieving the vision. As the old saying, in its corrected form states, “The proof of the pudding’ is in the eatin’.”

Here’s where good intentions get set aside and we set up standards for excellence. This begins with the leader (that’s you!). Transforming an idea into results means transforming interested individuals into a high-performing culture. The ultimate and most critical transformation begins and continues with the leader.

Let’s define what I mean by metrics and accountabilities.

Metrics 

This is a tool for measuring performance, for example, how many donor presentations have been made in a month, or what percentage of the people or organizations completed a donation versus those that did not donate. Metrics are broad measures of success. A KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is a deeper measure of who made a presentation to what type of person or organization, over what period, etc. Both of these are standard procedures in many, but not all businesses, and few, if any nonprofit organizations.

Accountabilities

Fundamentally, accountability is a willingness to accept responsibility for one’s actions as an individual or an organization. Nonprofit boards are accountable for the organization’s finances and governance. All decisions on contracts and budgets rest with the board. The staff is accountable to the board. I teach that board members, staff, and committee members are accountable to each other and ultimately to the board. Too many nonprofit leaders want to make all staff and volunteers accountable to them, when, in fact, it’s more productive if the groups share a mutual accountability and interface with the leader, who guides the process and sets the desired outcomes.

In organizational work, just like in corporations, much of the accountability process is empowered by face-to-face meetings. Members of any group share weekly or monthly deliverables with the group. Every member of the group realizes that even though they each are independent in responsibility for their deliverables, there is interdependence between all members of the group. If one falls behind or fails, then it impacts the work of others.

The action plans to reach monthly milestones for completing the annual goals are created in a team setting with transparency and interactivity, with each person understanding how their mutual effort impacts the success of each other. Team members make a commitment when setting deliverables to the others on the team. In the successive meetings, it becomes obvious who is making progress and who isn’t making progress.

It’s the leader’s role to interface with each team member between meetings to mentor, correct, encourage, or assist, as needed. Building relationships is key to this process.

Also, micromanaging anyone completely takes away the desire of those whom we lead to take responsibility for their work. The difference between network mentoring and micromanaging is 180º. They are exact opposites.

Define the desired outcome, allow the team members to create the action items under your guidance, stay in touch between meetings, and use regularly scheduled meetings as reporting sessions and not work sessions. You will need work sessions, just not all the time.

By the way, everyone looks to the leader to model accountability. Work on your plan more than that of others. Be sure that you set the standard and that the standard is high.

Next: Day #11 – Skills and Gaps

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