The December Leadership Development Carnival is up!  This month’s host is Mark Stelzner of Inflexion Advisors.  I am honored to have my article “You will lead the same way you follow, so be careful how you follow,” included in the mix.  There are a lot of great articles on a wide variety of topics, so take some time to look around.

Great work on this, Mark – thanks!

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Please forgive the housekeeping, but I have to publish this claim code to for Technorati to find my blog.

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Today we went live with my new website, www.bretlsimmons.com I am very excited about this site!  I hope this site will allow me to meet new people and start new conversations about how to improve the places we work.

 I will no longer be posting to my old blog site http://bretsimmons.blogspot.com/ but I will continue here the work I started there.  This site will also allow me to expand into new topics as well (e.g. entrepreneurship and personal branding).

 I want to thank Josh and Kathy Zader of Atlas Web Development http://www.atlaswebdev.com/  I have enjoyed working with them and am very pleased with the work they have done.  If you are looking for professional web development, I highly recommend Josh and Kathy.

Ok, here we go! If you have any questions you want me to tackle in this blog, or if there is anything else I can do to help, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Yesterday, I posted my blog entry about the book The Go-Giver in the morning, and then at 11 am, I attended a presentation on campus by Bob Cialdini, author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Cialdini was of course excellent, and the talk got my wheels turning on a number of things, including my most recent blog post.

In my blog yesterday, I wrote that there is no research evidence to support The Five Laws of Stratospheric Success, but as I listened to Cialdini, I was reminded of his first “weapon of influence” – reciprocation. Cialdini’s rule of reciprocation is based on solid research and might indeed provide some related support for The Go-Giver’s principles of value, compensation, and influence.

The rule of reciprocation says that we will usually try to repay in kind what another person has provided us. This rule permeates all manner of exchanges across every human society.

While we feel a powerful sense of obligation to give to others that which we have received, it does not require us to ask for what we have received in order to feel obligated to repay (p.30). Furthermore, the rule of reciprocity is so strong that it overwhelms liking as a weapon of influence.

If we create situations where others are indebted to us, they will feel a strong obligation to reciprocate in kind that is not dependent on how well they know and like us.

This principle is supported by credible social science research.

When it comes to our relationships with others, what goes around really does come around. Do unto others, and they will do unto you in kind.

Imagine that.

I recently picked up an interesting little book called The Go-Giver. It is written in short story format, so it is a pretty fast read and well worth your time. If you like the concept of Servant Leadership, you will like this.

In it, the author identifies what he calls The Five Laws of Stratospheric Success. They are of course not “laws” at all, but I find them very appealing as principles for how we should conduct ourselves in business. The five “principles” are:

1. The Principle of Value: Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment. (For an example, see here)
2. The Principle of Compensation: Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them.
3. The Principle of Influence: Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first.
4. The Principle of Authenticity: The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.
5. The Principle of Receptivity: The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving.

There is no real evidence that if we practiced these principles as a system our success would be guaranteed. There is no simple formula or recipe for success – sorry. But all of us have some set of underlying principles guiding our behavior, even if we have never made the effort to identify what they are.

If you are not satisfied with how you are operating right now, and you are willing to do something about it, give these principles a try. You might not make a million bucks when you put these into practice, but I have a hard time seeing how your relationships with others would not end up significantly more enriched.

There are a lot of self-help and positive psychology books out there, and most of them are garbage. But not The How of Happiness. This one has value because it is based on real research.

Here is an excerpt from the book that we need to pay attention to:

…50 percent of individual differences in happiness are governed by genes, 10 percent by life circumstances, and the remaining 40 percent by what we do and how we think – that is our intentional activities and strategies. The secret of course lies in that 40 percent. If we observe genuinely happy people, we shall find that they do not just sit around being contented. They make things happen. They pursue new understandings, seek new achievements, and control their thoughts and feelings. In sum, our intentional, effortful activities have a powerful effect on how happy we are, over and above the effects of our set points and the circumstances in which we find ourselves. If an unhappy person wants to experience interest, enthusiasm, contentment, peace, and joy, he or she can make it happen by learning the habits of a happy person. (p. 64).

Happiness is a daily choice.

Do you work with any people that you consider consistently happy, day in and day out? Think not only of those that seem to be just over-the-top happy, but those that are simply content and at peace with themselves and those around them.

What are they doing different than anyone else? Can you find an explanation for their happiness? Consider simply asking them “what is your secret, why do you always appear to be so happy?”

In the coming days and weeks I’ll share with you some of the intentional activities from The How of Happiness that we can all practice to improve our 40 percent of the happiness pie.

Just ran across this quote from Robert Quinn’s book “Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within.” Love it

Most of us seek quantum leaps in our performance levels by pursuing a strategy of incremental investment. This strategy simply does not work. The land of excellence is safely guarded from unworthy intruders. At the gates stand two fearsome sentries – risk and learning. The keys to entry are faith and courage. (p.170)

Are you pursuing excellence or mediocrity in your personal and professional life? You don’t need to stand with your toes on the edge of the precipice to learn and grow, but you need to be close enough to feel the breeze on your face.

Imagine that tonight you will be honored as Leader of the Year. Hundreds of people will gather to pay tribute to your contributions to your family, your colleagues, your organization, or your community. Several people will make speeches describing your performance and your character.

What words or phrases would you most like to hear others say about you? How would you like to be remembered tonight? What descriptions would make you feel the proudest? If you could write these tributes to yourself, what would they say?

These descriptive adjectives and phrases may well be lofty and ideal. That’s OK. The greater the clarity of, belief in, and passion for our personal standards of excellence, the greater the probability we’ll act in concert with them.

If you have trouble writing your tribute, you might start by reflecting on your answers to some of these questions:

What do you stand for? Why?
What do you believe in? Why?
What are you discontented about? Why?
What are you passionate about? Why?
What keeps you awake at night? Why?
What’s grabbed hold of you and won’t let go? Why?
What do you want for your life? Why?
Just what is it you really care about? Why?

Write your brief tribute to yourself.

Show this tribute to 5 people you trust to give you honest feedback – a friend, colleague, or family member. Based on their feedback to you, revise your tribute.

Now, is there something missing from your tribute that you would like for others to be able to say about you? If so, what can you do to make it happen?

Adapted from Kouzes & Posner (2007). The Leadership Challenge

Ok, boss, let’s see if you know this one. I ask this question when I do my corporate training and when I teach my MBA class and it is very rare that anyone in the room knows the correct answer.

What is the single best predictor of work performance across many occupations studied in both the US and many different cultures?

The answer is general mental ability. It’s measured in a variety of ways, but the underlying factor is intelligence. (Pfeffer and Sutton, 2000)

So what are the implications of this?

Should our focus be the search for extraordinary people to do the job, or should our focus be designing the job so that ordinary people can excel?

I like the second option, especially when labor markets are tight.

Partner with others to build healthy, responsible organizations where everyone can thrive.

Stay tuned – sometime soon I’ll identify the #2 and #3 best predictors of work performance and we’ll see if the implications are similar or different.

Check out this blog by Peter Bergman . He identifies what he believes is the secret to excellent companies. It has everything to do with leadership, and his bottom line, the critical ingredient, is something I have blogged about previously.

His description of how his favored hotel is run is also a good description of The Principle of Value from the book “The Go-Giver”. I love this principle:

Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.

There is no substitute for genuine caring for others – it enriches all aspects of our personal porfolios.