Various studies show that only about 10% of people really like their jobs.  The remaining 90% are at various levels of complacency or dissatisfaction.  A small fraction actually hates their job, but far more have just settled into a tolerable discomfort.  The people in the dis-comfort zone find it easier to just put up with the not-so-great situation versus face the greater demands of going to find another job.  I don’t know about you, but I either want to be in the 10% group that likes his/her job or headed for it.

See Amazon Kindle: Why Give 100%, I Just Work Here

Leadership capacity and development has always been a key concern for executives and senior HR professionals.  This concern has been heightened recently by increasing globalization and business complexity as well as the impending retirement of vast numbers of seasoned leaders.

Simply put, there are too few of Generation X to fill all the leadership spots that will be vacated by the Boomers.  Leadership development MUST be hastened.

A recent August 8th article in USA Today [At Work, No More Mr. Nice Guy] stated that rudeness and bad manners are rising amongst the employees.  They’ve got fluid job descriptions and less role clarity.  Work is becoming more toxic.  Younger people are seeing what work has done to their parents.

While this reality is true in lots of companies, it doesn’t have to derail groups or projects.  As a leaders, we have to be more sensitive to these issues.  Have periodic meetings with your people and talk openly about these realities.  Then have the group members offer suggestions on how to reduce these stresses.   Let it be their ideas.  Keeping everyone focused on the stress reduction and the workplace civility issue, will help improve the work environment.

Through reading and research, I realized that if I was going to find better opportunities, I had to improve my abilities and let others know about it.  So not satisfied with just a Mechanical Engineering Degree, I made a smart move to enter and complete the Executive MBA Program at the University of Houston.  This helped me quite a lot.  It especially helped me with the knowledge, but I still needed a good place to focus my knowledge.  I wanted to make a real difference in the business world.

That’s when I read an article on the value of a mentor (a business coach).   I wanted someone who was an “older me” helping the “younger me” – someone who was wiser & someone who really cared.  A mentor will listen to your story and listen to your dreams.  He/she will then likely say, “Let me show you a more efficient way.”  That is the point of this video.  A true expert can show you a few techniques that can get you on the right track.

As a coach and mentor, I get to witness first hand, the value I bring to individuals.  It is very gratifying.  Mentors can come in all shapes and sizes and from lots of different places.  You will not see them until you begin to look for them.  SEEK & YOU SHALL FIND.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAFcV7zuUDA

However some of the most important leadership is done at the lowest levels in an organization.  This is where one team member has to convince the other to step up and do the right thing or to do a job to a higher degree of quality.  This is much easier said than done, because that team member with the good intentions has no authority over the fellow team member – he/she cannot make the other person do something.  He/she can only convince the other person of why it is in every one’s best interest.  This can be selling at its finest (like we teach in the sales session, everyone is in sales).  One of the easiest ways to do it, is to Lead By Example.

The other extremely important place where leadership is conducted is between a supervisor and the front line worker.  Because this is where the bulk of the real work is done in the organization.  I just finished teaching some leadership courses to two different groups  at a company. The first group was 15 supervisors and the second group 15 managers.  The supervisor class argued that it was more important that they implement the leadership methods we were covering in the class (vs. their bosses – the management group) because the majority of the real work at the company was being done with the supervisors interfacing with the front line workers.

So we need leadership EVERYWHERE and we all need to LEAD BY EXAMPLE.