Category Archives: Inspiration

Values Based Leadership: It’s NOT About You

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GEN Shelton emphasizes that all values based leaders have an obligation to give back. It doesn’t matter whether you are a student or a working professional, you have an obligation to work to make your corner of the world a better place.  He urges us to “be bigger than ourselves, to give back to our community, and to our state, and even to our nation.” He reminds us that there are multiple opportunities to do this in small and large ways.  Corporations and nonprofits mutually benefit from these partnerships.  Corporations reputations are enhanced by their corporate giving back to the community. Nonprofits, by their very existence, are known for their mission-driven programs to the community.

One of our signature programs at the Shelton Leadership Center is the Shelton Challenge.  The Shelton Challenge has selfless service  as a key program component .  Our Shelton Scholars  volunteer twice a year (in addition to their other volunteer efforts), to go to a particular town for a Weekend of Service, where they partner with local civic organizations to build handicap ramps, clean up a blighted area, or help in other ways. We partner with NC State’s CSLEPS to support them in their student service learning and leadership efforts. I’ve been in awe of high school students who volunteer to help those with disabilities in and out of school.

I’m not highlighting these to boast about different Shelton programs are doing  (although I am incredibly humbled and impressed with our tireless staff , students, our Board, and the many students who are a part of the Shelton Leadership Center and how each lives out this cornerstone daily ).  I’m emphasizing that there are lots of ways to give and give back in a community.  As GEN Shelton prompts us, “…that is a part of what each and every one of us from the corporate level right down to the individual should be doing.”

Values based leadership-It’s not about you.

 What situations have you found where giving back to the community gives you an even greater gift?

Secrets of Success: Ed Gore

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This is a short snippet (P. 51) of a reflection by Dr. Ed Gore, one of the Shelton Leadership Center  Board of Advisors.  You can find more reflections in the book, Secrets of Success.

“My father had so many of the skills that make an excellent leader.  He was congenial, liked by people, but what I saw and carried over into my career was his work ethic and the willingness to seize the moment.  As a father and partner, he talked to me about sad family legacies and how there were so many of these wealthy upper-class people who had opportunities but never built on their parents’ and grandparents’ dreams.  But he’d look at it all in the light of the values-based leadership rules that he lived by and that Ive tried to live by, which is exemplified by the Four-Way Test of the Rotary:

  1. Is it the truth?
  2. Is it fair to all concerned?
  3. Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
  4. Will it be beneficial to all concerned?”

 

 

The Great Repeatable Business Model

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As budgets contract while missions expand, one way to accomplish the mission might be to look at how businesses innovate their expertise to grow and become more successful.  Zook and Allen offer some insights below:

  1. Most very successful organizations do not reinvent themselves through periodic “binges and purges”.  Instead, they focus relentlessly on their fundamental strengths, and moving from strength to strength.
  2. Successful organizations learn to deliver their differentiation to the front line, creating an organization that lives and breathes its strategic advantages day in and day out, and sustaining it through constant adaptation from the market.

Four actions you can employ to sustain your competitive advantage:

  1. Ensure  you and your management team agree on differentiation NOW and in the future-ask your top team: what do our end users see as our advantages over others? How do we know?
  2. Ask the same question to those who are on the front lines interacting with end users, customers, and partners. Are the advantages similar?
  3. Write your strategy on an index card-does it include and center on key sources of differentiation?
  4. Translate strategy into a few non-negotiables. Can you describe the simple principles that drive key behaviors, beliefs, values?  Are they adhered to on a daily basis?

The article also has some key categories you can use with your team to describe and distill areas of strategic advantage and innovation.

 (Source: 2011, Zook and Allen, Harvard Business Review)

Avoiding the “One More Time” Syndrome

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“The Army doesn’t give medals for missing your kid’s first step, or Little League games.” GEN Shelton relates this nugget that he heard as a young officer from one of his commanding officers, Lieutenant Colonel Old.  As GEN Shelton relates, LT COL Old helped him remember that one of the most critical decisions you make is one as part of a family and as a parent and spouse.  LT COL Old continued, “But the thing  you have to watch out for is the one more time syndrome.  I know you love those kids. But the night the CG (Commanding General) is due to drop by and you tell yourself, ‘Just this one time I’ve got to stay late because it’s so important’- or when you’re about to walk out that door and you get word the Coast Guard got deployed and you’ve got no boats for the next morning’s exercise-those are the ones that’ll sneak up on you.” (page 117 of Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior)

As I think about GEN Shelton’s illustration,  I think that integrity in decision making is made up of the hundreds of different decisions, large and small that occur in our daily lives.  It’s not just the big decisions that demand integrity and alignment with our priorities, it’s the multiple small decisions, like bringing work home late or missing family events that can degrade integrity in one’s personal life.

Secrets of Success: Dr. Catherine Gordon

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This is a segment in a series of profiles of values based leaders in all walks of life.  It is part of GEN Shelton’s book, Secrets of Success.  This post focuses on Dr. Catherine Gordon, a highly acclaimed medical researcher in the Boston area.

  • Over the years I’ve realized what an important role leadership plays in my work.  I was blessed by some wonderful mentors and, for young scientists, a mentor is so important.  So part of my mission is to coach young scientists the way I’ve been coached, taking the time to give them both positive and negative feedback.  As academic doctors, we are so busy in the hospital; there’s always a sick patient, a class to teach, a grant due.  There’s no room for error with patients, so it’s easy to forget to take the time to give your team positive feedback.  But I try to remember to mix the positive feedback with the negative, that good leaders will always take the time to discuss what’s going well and why.