Leadership ConneXions - Issue 11

Welcome to Leadership ConneXions Issue 11 and welcome to all our new subscribers.

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Here at Leadership ConneXions, we take a broad view of leadership. The following article comes from one of the great Internet marketers, Dr. Joe Vitale. He is literally making a fortune from his web sites and is known as a guru of hypnotic marketing. This article is about the role of passion and knowledge in great marketing. However, as I read it, I noticed that these marketing lessons apply equally to leadership. Passion and knowledge, apart from selling a product or a service, are often exhibited by a good leader.

Evil Marketing? - What A Buffalo Rancher Taught Me About Selling

by Dr. Joe Vitale www.MrFire.com

Yesterday I met a rancher who raises buffalo and sells bison products. He clearly loves his job. He gushed facts.

For example, I didn't know buffalo never get cancer. Or that buffalo meat is leaner, healthier and better for you than any other red meat. I also didn't know that buffalo contains less calories than even chicken.

"Most people just don't know how to cook it," the rancher explained. "Since the meat is lean, it needs to be slowly cooked on a really low flame." He went on to add:

"People on the Paleo Diet, sometimes called the caveman diet, really love it. It helps them lose weight and get trim naturally," he said. "I eat one to two pounds of bison every day, some veggies, and I'm fit and strong."

Since I'm into wellness and just lost over 70 pounds, I was eager to hear all this. I was so taken by this new information that I placed a large order on the spot. But the rancher also had some opinions that made me curious.

"I'm just a rancher," he told me. "I run my ranch by myself and I work night and day, yet at the end of it all, I have to go out and market this stuff. I almost hate it."

"You hate marketing?" I asked.

"I just saw the actor Billy Bob Thornton on television and he said, 'Marketing is evil.'"

"That's interesting," I countered. "The reason Thornton is on television is he is marketing the latest movie he's in."

"Well, I don't like marketing," the rancher told me. "Maybe it's because I don't know how to do it."

At this point, Nerissa came out and met the rancher, too. He offered her a sample of the buffalo jerky he made. He held it out in front of her as he said:

"You'll eat this and you won't want anything else the rest of the day. This is the most filling and satisfying food you'll ever have," he said. "There are no preservatives and it's all natural."

Of course, at that point I wanted some jerky, too.

When the rancher went to write up our order, he pulled a beautiful notebook out of his truck.

He started to place it on the hood of my BMW Z3 sports car when I stopped him.

"I don't want it scratched," I said.

"Look at this," he said, rubbing the leather on the notebook. "Go ahead and touch it and see how smooth it is."

I did. The leather was melted butter soft.

The rancher then asked me something hypnotic: "Can you imagine walking into a meeting with one of these under your arm?"

Of course, that natural question activated the visual part of my brain and engaged my ego.

I instantly wanted the unusual product. "How can I get one of those?" I asked.

"I can have one made for you, if you want." I ordered one of the buffalo notebooks, too.

I then paid the rancher, shook his hand, and he got in his truck, still muttering that he didn't like marketing. He said he was so behind in learning marketing that he was prehistoric in his practices. "Guess you're doing Paleo Marketing," I offered. He laughed and drove off.

He didn't seem to notice that his "non-marketing" made a lot of sales that day. I bought meat, jerky, and a notebook. I also bought a case of honey, which I forgot to mention. None of it was cheap, either.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Marketing is simply engagingly informing the people most likely to be interested in your product or service that it's available. This is what I teach people in my Executive Mentoring Program. I'll repeat it:

"Marketing is simply engagingly informing the people most likely to be interested in your product or service that it's available."

It's not about manipulation. It's about information. The more passionately and sincerely you convey your information, the more hypnotic your marketing will be. But if you try to market your business to someone who has no interest in it, you may be considered evil.

That rancher was marketing, though he'd never admit it. His love for his product was apparent. He eats buffalo, wears buffalo, raises buffalo, and talks buffalo. He doesn't talk bull, he talks buffalo. And when he talks, if the people listening are at all interested in bison, they buy.

Marketing is only "evil" when you lie or mislead people to make a sale, or when your message isn't appropriate for the audience you reached. No one should ever do that sort of misguided marketing. Ever. There's no excuse for it.

If you're offering a product or service you believe in, then share your excitement for it to the right audience. (If you don't believe in your product or service, what are you doing trying to sell it?)

Said another way, if you have something that would truly benefit a certain group of people, and you don't tell them, aren't you doing them a disservice?

Again, marketing is basically sharing your love. Your passion. Your belief. When you share it with someone who welcomes it, more often than not it leads to a sale. Naturally. Easily. Effortlessly.

And that's no BS.

Hypnotic Marketing Inc.

121 Canyon Gap Rd

Wimberley TX 78676

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Leadership and Change

by Alan Sieler

Many questions have been asked about the issue of leadership, and many books and papers have been written addressing these questions. Amongst the many questions posed are and "What is leadership?" and "What makes someone an effective leader?"

Let’s look at the first question, "What is leadership?", and approach it through another question: "How do we know that someone is a leader?" Here we distinguish between being a leader in name (by virtue of occupying a position or role) and being leader by action. Two critical components need to be in place if someone is truly seen as a leader. Firstly, that they have a defined some precise outcomes they want to have accomplished and have been able to specify the means by which these can be brought about. The notion of a leader presupposes that there is somewhere for people to be lead to, and a means by which they are going to get there. This is typically regarded as having a clearly articulated vision and strategic means for realising the vision.

The second component is that there are people who want to join in and be part of moving towards the realisation of the vision, or at least, their perception of the vision. A leader is someone who takes people to where they otherwise would not have gone. This means that the vision is sufficiently inspirational for others to want to be part of bringing it about. What does this all mean?

We would claim that the notion of leadership, and effective leadership, does not live in the title of the leader, or in the ideas inherent within the vision. It does not matter how brilliant a leader thinks his or her vision is, without followers there is no leader. Leadership lives in the languaging and the emotioning of others. By this we mean that effective leadership is defined by the assessments of others and the emotions they experience in response to the vision and the communication and demeanour of a leader as they seek to make their vision a concrete reality. To put it another way, the leader and leadership exists in the eyes and ears, and also the emotions, of the beholders.

It is the continued existence of followers that defines the existence of a leader. By followers we do not mean being blindly loyal or forming part of a cult. Rather, we mean people who want to be part of the action to realise the vision, which may include contributing to reshaping the vision. Now why would anyone want to join in and be a follower? Becoming a follower carries risks, because it involves giving up part of ourselves, potentially making ourselves vulnerable and dependent on the actions of a leader. We run the risk of developing a form of blindness, of being exploited and, ultimately, very disappointed and disillusioned. So why would any of us place ourself at such risk?

In looking at this we begin to get the heart of what makes someone an effective leader. In considering this we need to look not only at the actions of the leader, but also what is going on in potential followers. Put simply, as followers we want to be part of future ideas, which have been created by someone else, because we perceive that those ideas will serve our interests, needs and concerns. We perceive that there is a future which will address a key question we continually ask ourselves in our relations with others: "What’s in it for me?" Now we can outline an indispensable consideration for effective leadership.

All of us are motivated - moved and inspired to action - by our needs, interests and concerns. These shape how we observe and respond to circumstances in our life, and how we come to define the sort of life we want to be leading personally and professionally. When someone’s ideas for a particular kind of future speak directly to our concerns (that is, what matters most to us) we can be captivated and engaged in being part of what they wish to create and bring about. Put another way, the speaking of someone else means that they become a leader for us when we perceive that their thoughts and actions generate a space of possibilities for us. We want to move with them into bringing about those possibilities.

Effective leaders are influential. "Influence" means to "flow into", and the ideas of a leader flow into us when they we assess that they can address what is most important for us. This can mean either that our current satisfactory situation in life is not threatened and/or we will be able to benefit from improved circumstances. So if we refer back to the previous newsletter issue on "The Art of Listening", we can see that a crucial component of effective leadership is listening to the concerns of those who it is important to have engaged in the realisation of the vision. If those concerns are not addressed in the articulation of the vision, then their willingness to "buy in" to a desired future will be nonexistent or limited.

Based on what we have said so far, one part of our interpretation of leadership is that it is not about having a particular set of characteristics. And leadership is not something "out there", which can be acquired. Leadership is about a way of being and of observing circumstances. What do we mean by this? Essentially that effective leadership is a way of being in language and emotion, as well as body.

Effective leaders are emotional leaders, who recognise and manage their own moods, as well as the moods of others. They recognise that leadership is about generating those emotions that inspire people to want to coordinate action with each other. Emotional leadership is an indispensable feature of effective leadership.

Leaders are also their conversational actions. They need to be highly proficient in their conversations, which means that their conversations contribute to producing new insights and generating actions which lead to positive results. This is conversational competence, and effective leaders are acute observers of the results and actions that flow from their listening, their moods and their speaking. They are astute in the timing of who they speak with, about what, the way they speak with them, how they listen to them, and in what contexts all this occurs.

What about the link between leadership and change, especially change that is imposed and can be seen as unwanted but necessary change? We can think of change as being confronted with different circumstances requiring different responses and behaviours on our part, which need to become ingrained ways of how we conduct ourselves. In other words, our old ways of responding and behaving are deemed to be no longer suited to changes in events and circumstances. Dealing effectively with change is essentially about being able to alter previous behaviour and develop different behavioural practices that are adequate for changed circumstances. This requires learning, which presupposes the development of different ways of observing and taking action.

Organisations need to be flexible and adaptable in being able to foresee and deal with change in order to stay competitive. When we speak of organisations being flexible and adaptable we are really speaking of the people in the organisation. The notion of the learning organisation was popularised a number of years ago, and what is required now are leaders and who are flexible and adaptable learners.

Organisations have been likened to living systems. Just as living systems need to adapt to changes in the environment in order to survive, so do people and the groups they are part of. Biologically it has been shown that adapting is about learning, about not remaining trapped in habitual ways of being and responding. The demands nowadays are for business leaders to be willing to become different observers of what is required; it is through observing differently that creative and innovative responses are generated.

But leaders are also required to do more than that. Their way of being, their ways of observing and acting, also need to be influential in shifting others as learners. To be able to move others out of their traditional ways of observing and learning without alienating them, so that the collective wisdom that resides with many organisational employees becomes an invaluable resource in dealing with the change process

Let’s conclude with a practical orientation. In your work setting:

· How clearly is there an articulated vision?

· Is there "buy in" to the vision and does it address the primary concerns of employees?

· How acutely are the leaders listening to others, and if they aren’t what are they missing?

· How do the moods of leaders affect the workplace?

· How do the leaders rate as learners? and

· To what extent do their conversational actions generate new insights, productive actions and positive results from others?

Alan is an Executive Coach and has been running coach training programs for more than ten years. Alan’s approach to coaching has been ground breaking. He has designed and leads the Asia-Pacific region’s most in-depth and comprehensive coach-training program, the Diploma of Ontological Coaching. Alan has articulated a methodology that not only has a holistic focus, but is also able to facilitate profound positive and lasting change for individuals and organisations.

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