Three Ways to Behave Yourself to Better Leadership

• By Scott Eblin
• December 7, 2012
• comments

The late Stephen Covey was fond of saying, “You can’t talk yourself out of a problem you behaved yourself into.” He definitely had a way with a phrase.

I’ve been thinking about Covey’s line lately because I’ve been teaching leadership coaching to students at Georgetownand to executives in a few different companies in the past month. One of the things we’ve been talking about is establishing behavioral practices that lead to more effective leadership.

A behavioral practice is something you commit to doing on a regular basis that, if adopted as a habit, would make you a better leader. A simple example would be recruiting colleagues to give you a signal when you’re interrupting people in conversation. If they play and you follow through by cutting down on interrupting when they give you the signal, you’ll become a better listener. That, in turn, will help you to be a more effective leader.

Want to give behavioral practices a try? Here are three ways to put them into practice and, in the process, behave your way to better leadership:

1. Pick something that’s easy to do and likely to make a difference. Don ...

More Leadership Lessons from Yoga

• By Scott Eblin
• November 30, 2012
• comments

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been in one yoga class or another five or six days a week on average. That might sound like a lot, but it’s pretty much the only form of exercise I do anymore so it’s a good way for me to keep the lights on. As I’ve written here several times, I’ve made a number of connections between what I learn on the yoga mat and leadership development in general. This week, I’ve been thinking about another one. It’s the benefits of staying in the room.

When I’m in Northern Virginia, I go to a place called Down Dog Yoga. The studio is heated to around 96 degrees and humidified to about 50 percent. Needless to say, you sweat a lot in a 90 minute class in those conditions. It’s not exactly comfortable. Invariably, at the beginning of every class, the instructor will ask everyone to stay in the room for the full 90 minutes. She’ll remind you to take a break whenever you need one but to stay in the room as you take it. And, invariably, there will always be people ...

Three Ways to Keep Your Meetings From Leaking

• By Scott Eblin
• November 29, 2012
• comments

So, let me begin by explaining what I’m not talking about in the title of this post. I’m not talking about plugging leaks of confidential information. What I am talking about is the leakage of productivity that too often occurs in meetings.

With 15 years of management experience and 12 years of executive coaching in my rear view mirror, I have no idea how many meetings I’ve been in. It’s definitely one of those, “wish I had a dollar for” situations. It’s been a whole lot of meetings. Unfortunately, a lot of those meetings have leaked productivity like helium out of a cheap balloon.

No doubt, you know what it looks like because you’ve sat through (or, heaven forbid, have led) meetings that leak. You know them when you see them because a lot of people are sitting around not really contributing. The conversation meanders from one topic to the next. No one is really sure what happened or what the next steps are when the meeting ends.

Here are three ideas to keep your meetings from leaking. My goal is to get the conversation started here. Please contribute by leaving your best idea ...

How to Stay Out of the Weeds with Your Boss

• By Scott Eblin
• November 21, 2012
• comments

The big idea behind my book, The Next Level, is that to get different results, leaders take to different actions. That usually involves picking up some new skills and mindsets and letting go of others even if they used to work for you in the past. For instance, one of the nine pick up and let go distinctions in the book is pick up accountability for many results and let go of responsibility for a few results. It’s the difference between owning it and doing it.

A lot of leaders struggle with this one because it calls for letting go of a personal mastery of all the details and focusing instead on putting the systems and processes in place that allow them to monitor progress without being deep into all the weeds themselves.

A question I often get from the high potentials in our Next Level Leadership® group coaching program is “I’d like to let go of the details, but my boss is always asking for them. How do I handle it?” The answer, like so many things in life, is it depends. Last week, while conducting a panel discussion for a client company, I had the opportunity ...

Some Encouraging Leadership from a Marine

• By Scott Eblin
• November 14, 2012
• comments

As the scandal around former CIA director General David Petraeus unfolds, it’s hard to find anyone who has covered themselves in glory. It’s all pretty discouraging.

Earlier this year, I wrote a post on how leaders need to have a strategy to deal with the temptations they’ll undoubtedly encounter. It says everything I would have to say about the Petraeus story. A retired general once told me that there’s an old Army maxim that the further up the flag pole you go, the more your rear end shows. It’s sad and frustrating to see that play out in the news this week.

In case you can’t tell, I’m kind of bummed out by all of this. As I was thinking about it last night, I recalled a conversation I had last weekend on a cross country flight. My seatmate turned out to be a 16 year U.S. Marine named Hector. He was a great guy and we talked off and on as we travelled from DC to LA. In the interest of offering an encouraging story from a quiet leader who’s making a difference, here’s his story.

Hector grew up ...