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#Leadership : Why this CEO Makes his Executive Team Climb a Mountain that has Claimed more Lives than Everest…CEO Hiroshi “Mickey” Mikitani Has his Leadership Team do Something More Adventurous than Gathering at a Cushy Resort.

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Like a lot of big companies, the Japanese internet giant Rakutenused to host annual offsite retreats where all the executives would meet at a golf course to connect and talk strategy. About seven years ago, that tradition changed radically.  CEO Hiroshi “Mickey” Mikitani tells Business Insider that he now has his leadership team do something more adventurous than gathering at a cushy resort.

Rakuten Tanigawa 4

CEO Hiroshi “Mickey” Mikitani.

Instead, execs now meet on Mount Tanigawa every year, a Japanese mountain that hasclaimed the lives of more climbers than Mount Everest.

Despite that jarring death toll, Mikitani decided to change the company offsite after hiking the mountain with his young son. Although the climb is difficult, some trails, including the one Rakuten employees take, are less dangerous than others.

Mikitani sees the tradition as the perfect way for execs to get to know each other better through a non-conventional bonding experience. Even more importantly, the struggle to make it to the top altogether symbolizes the idea of working through company difficulties as a team.

Rakuten Tanigawa 3RakutenCompany executives climbing through the fog. “Rakuten always goes to the peak,” Mikitani grins.

 

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One other exec who has climbed Mount Tanigawa several times gleefully told Business Insider that he almost died last year when he started sliding on the rocks under his feet. He almost careened off the side of a cliff before managing to grab onto a rock. His teammates and their guide then threw him a rope he used to climb back onto the path.

Rakuten Tanigawa 2 (1)Rakuten

Although the offsite is all about team building and pushing boundaries, another exec jokes that it also acts as a good way for employees to stay in good physical condition through the year.

“The fear keeps you fit,” he laughs, saying that he would remind himself to go to the gym more often in the months leading up to the retreat.

Mikitani recalls one particularly memorable climb where he invited a journalist who planned to profile the company to join the expedition. After a grueling ascent and witnessing how execs continually pushed themselves and each other to the limit to make it to the top, the journalist, between his own tired gasps, apparently said, “Now I finally feel like I understand Rakuten.”

Rakuten Tanigawa 6Rakuten

 

Businessinsider.com | September 21, 2015 | 

 

#Leadership : 5 Leadership Fallacies To Dispel… Fallacy #3: “My #Leadership Style Worked Here, So it’ll Probably Work There.”

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It Never Ceases to Amaze Me the Many Different Definitions of Leadership. Working in executive coaching and leadership development affords me invaluable opportunities to meet with leaders and teams to learn about their challenges, their perspectives, their rationale for decision-making.

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There are as many interpretations for what constitutes an a “good leader” as there are ice-cream flavors because the value that leadership creates is so subjective.  At the same time, though, we all (well, many) know good leadership when we see it.

So what causes some people to have great definitions of leadership and others not? Probably the same reason for having different opinions, influences, and personal experiences.

To help identify the “good” it’s worthwhile sometimes to understand the “bad,” otherwise how will you know what “good” is? Here are five leadership fallacies to dispel: 

1. A good manager makes a good leader.

What defines effectiveness at one level will be the expectation at the next position higher, but not the responsibility. In other words, when our favorite fictitious character Joe or Sally get promoted from, say, a senior director to vice-presidential role, there’s a mental shift required to move from the tactical and operational perspective into one that is more strategic. Yet doing so isn’t easy because he or she has never been required to think strategically before. Mindy Hall, author of Leading With Intention, believes, “we still reward people for their specific expertise and then we attribute their skills to saying ‘Oh, they’ll be a great leader too.’ But just because you got great results as a marketing VP doesn’t mean you’ll get results as the a leader of an organization.”

 

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2. Effective leadership is unique to the industry.

Quite the opposite. Strong leadership is strong leadership no matter where it exists. Sure, tactics certainly differ according to the field in which you work but the defining principles that wield the pursuit of excellence remain the same: performance, adaptability, leadership. Here’s a quick breakdown of each (more on these elements here):

  • Performance: the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual capacities that compose the individual, such as habits, health (i.e. stress management), focus, self-talk, emotional intelligence, decision-making, communication.
  • Adaptability: the skill and will to learn and unlearn, presented through self-renewal and self-organization.
  • Leadership: decision-making, communication, authentic self-expression that instills value in others.

It’s at the crux of these three areas where effectiveness lay:

Image credit: www.adaptabilitycoach.com

3. “My leadership style worked here, so it’ll probably work there.”

Don’t be so myopic. The dynamics of personalities involved and the internal and external factors that influencing the circumstance vary from situation to situation. A command and control style, for instance, will work when there is significant pressure (i.e. time) or urgency to get the job done; when a decision as to be made and it has to happen now. However, try to employ dictatorial rule as an everyday leadership style and you’ll soon watch your followers follow somebody else.

4. Only leaders can make decisions.

Contrary to popular belief, it’s not the role of leadership to make all the decisions. There just simply isn’t enough time in the day to do so. What their role is, however, is to set the conditions for decision-making to occur. By conditions I’m referring to the left and right boundaries that define employee decision-making space, the process of communication from top down and bottom up, meeting flow, etc…

In the military we had something called critical information requirements (CIRs) that served as a decision-making threshold. Basically, the senior leader would identify the criteria that, if triggered, would warrant a decision to be escalated to his/her level; unless those conditions were met, direct reports were free to make their own decisions based on the common purpose understood by all. Something else this CIRs served allowed was freeing up the leader to focus on the business rather than on your business.

5. Leaders have very little time for anything else.

If I could drop an expletive here I would, but we’ll have to settle for its acronym: BS. People don’t manage time they manage their priorities, so when somebody says, “I don’t have time for that” what that person is really saying is, “That’s not important to me right now.” Steve Gilliland, author of Detour, recommends leaders “decide what’s important and never take it for granted. It’s not until you’re about to die do you realize the value of 30 minutes.”

Of course, these are my interpretations of leadership fallacies. Would you agree or disagree with any? Share your comments below.

Jeff is an executive coach, author, and former Navy SEAL.

 

Forbes.com | Aug 2, 2015 | Jeff Boss

 

#Leadership: Agile Leadership and the Manager/Entrepreneur…Remaining Flexible is One of the Most Important Traits a Leader can Possess–Especially Today.

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Over the last number of years, the word “agile” has been tossed around in numerous ways. The most common use has roots in the programming world, where “agile” is regarded as one step forward from “waterfall” as a means of making incremental improvements, to assure that the final product grows and is adjusted through the development process to be aligned with customer demand. In recent years, agile has emerged as “agile leadership.”

IMAGE: Getty Images

Some people have a rigorous notion of agile. Others prefer to use agile as a synonym for the ability to be flexible and responsive to a particular situation. Fortunately or unfortunately, the term itself is used in a non-concrete way.

What does agile leadership mean? At its core, my approach to agile leadership is predicated on the assumption that leadership is as much about how one adjusts one’s leadership style to a situation as it is on the embedded personality characteristics of the leader. Agile leadership, in this sense, implies contingency that how one leads is dependent on how one analyzes and views a particular situation.

For example, if the situation is one of stability, minimum uncertainty, and routinized expectations, then, as a leader, you lead in one way. If the opposite is true–unstable environment, high uncertainty, and ambiguous expectations–then, as a leader, you lead in another way.

Leading a manufacturing division is one thing; leading R&D is another. Leading when customer expectations are clear demands one kind of leadership; leading when customer expectations are not clear demands another.

 

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Agile leadership demands a mindful consideration of the context and an ability to adjust your leadership style appropriately. Agile leaders are able to vary their leadership style along a continuum. The question, of course, is what is this continuum?

The classic distinction is facilitative and directive leadership. The challenge for an agile leader is to balance their directive and facilitative style. Directive leadership sustains control by allocating resources, making expectations clear, defining goals, and establishing the parameters of success and failure. Facilitative leadership is based on giving individuals maximum flexibility and autonomy–giving them flexible goals, and letting them define and deal with parameters and constraints on their own.

In balancing these two leadership styles, an agile leader needs to be clear about which style is appropriate. During lean and difficult times, you may want to explicitly define goals, with the assumption that by delineating goals and specifying expectations will allow you to better control resources. In times of growth and abundance, you may want to define goals more broadly and give autonomy to be open to opportunities.

The challenge for an agile leader is to understand which style is appropriate at which type in time. The challenge is to balance leadership styles.

In these times, agile leadership is a special challenge for managers & entrepreneurs because they are caught on the horns of a dilemma. On the one had, they want to lead in such a fashion to give their organizations and teams the space to be innovative to assure the cutting edge. On the other hard, entrepreneurs have a short leash when it comes to resources and time. They have to be continuously accountable to assure a concrete ROI. The need to stimulate creativity and innovation may demand that the entrepreneur place a greater emphasis on their facilitative style while the shadow of ROI may demand that they emphasize their directive style. Agility is the capacity to juggle both styles as necessary. Entrepreneurial leaders need to get beyond blinders and personality and be aware of when one style suits the situation better than the other.

Even before “agile leadership” was in vogue, leaders of organizations of all sizes were well aware of it. The name may be a fad, but agile leadership has always been a core behavioral trait of successful managers & entrepreneurs.

#Leadership: 10 Tips For Better Business Writing…“Clarity is the Most Important Characteristic of Good Business Writing,” – Mignon Fogarty

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The ubiquity of e­mail means that everyone in business, from lords of finance to programmers who dream in code, needs to write intelligently. By using simple, clear, precise language, and following a few other basic writing rules, you can become a better communicator and improve the prospects for your career.

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“Clarity is the most important characteristic of good business writing,” says Mignon Fogarty, creator of the “Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing” podcast. “Often businesspeople will use big $10 words because they want to sound intelligent. Instead, they end up sounding like they’re trying too hard.”
Start by writing short, declarative sentences. Never use a long word where a short one will do. (No need to write “utilize” when “use” works just as well.) Be ruthless about self-­editing; if you don’t need a word, cut it. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or any kind of jargon if you can think of an English equivalent. Regardless of how many times your managers ask you to “circle back,” or “move the needle forward,” take a stance against tired business jargon. These expressions may sound important, and like the official language of a club you’d like to join, but you will express yourself more clearly if you say what you mean in plain language.

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When you’re composing an e­mail, make your point and move on. If your big idea isn’t in the first paragraph, put it there. If you can’t find it, rewrite. “Simplicity doesn’t mean simplicity of thought,” says Kara Blackburn, a lecturer in managerial communication at MIT Sloan School of Management. “Start by asking yourself what you want the person to do as a result of this email. Just asking yourself that question can make your communication much clearer.”

Be specific. Instead of mentioning “the current situation,” explain exactly what it is, whether it’s low company morale, or an SEC investigation.

Curb your enthusiasm. Avoid overusing exclamation points, regardless of how energized or friendly you might feel. Choose professional sign­-offs like “Best” and “Regards” over the too-­cute “xoxo.”

Whenever possible, use active instead of passive verbs. Active verbs help to energize your prose. Instead of writing, “The meeting was led by Tom,” write: “Tom led the meeting.” Use a straightforward sentence structure–subject, verb, object–that people can read quickly.

Choose pronouns wisely, and don’t be afraid to use “me.” “I often read versions of ‘Send the memo to Bob and myself,’” says Fogarty. “For some reason people think that ‘myself’ sounds more important or formal.” To avoid this mistake, Fogarty recommends thinking about how you would say the sentence if you removed mentions of other people. “Send the memo to me” sounds correct. If you add “Bob” to that clause, the “me” pronoun still works.

Beware of common grammatical mistakes. Know when to use “that” and “which.” “That” introduces essential information in what’s called a “restrictive clause.” “Which” introduces extra information in a “nonrestrictive clause.” Here’s an example: “I’m interested in speaking with you about our new product, which has the potential to increase sales.” The second clause provides extra information, and it isn’t essential to the first clause. Therefore, “which” is correct. In a sentence such as “Computers are the only products that we sell,” the clause “that we sell” is essential to the meaning of the sentence, so the correct word is “that.” You can’t remove the “that” clause without changing the meaning of the sentence.
Another common error is confusing “affect” and “effect.” Affect is a verb meaning “to influence.” “Effect” is a noun that means “result.” The weather affects our ability to travel, and it had a terrible effect on my flight to New York.

For more writing tips, consult classic books on writing and grammar, such as The Elements of Style, by William Strunk and E.B. White, The Associated Press Stylebook and The Chicago Manual of Style. On iTunes, download the “Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing” free podcast. Happy writing.

This is an update of a story written by Helen Coster.

Forbes.com | April 27, 2015 | Susan Adams