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    Uncommon Leadership
    Uncommon Leadership
    Uncommon Leadership
    Ebook167 pages2 hours

    Uncommon Leadership

    By Fred Kusch

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Uncommon Leadership is a down to earth read, full of practical wisdom that is sure to cause the leadership/management professional to reflect, think and act in new ways. Each contributor shares a lesson they wish they had not learned the hard way. Get insight from 20 leaders with real, in the trenches experience and apply these ideas, skills and methods to your professional style. A must read for new and veteran leaders and managers alike.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFred Kusch
    Release dateJan 31, 2012
    ISBN9780971102323
    Uncommon Leadership
    Author

    Fred Kusch

    Fred Kusch works with organizations who want to create a better work-life balance that will lead to healthier employees, workplaces and bottom lines. Fred serves as president of JFK Associates, Inc., an international consulting firm, which he founded in 1980. He is also CEO of The Growth Coach, the leader in business coaching; he opened the regional franchise office in 2005. His presentations and workshops will give you strategies and practical ideas to help managers become leaders, improve workplace communication and, ultimately better serve the customer. He consistently ranks as a favorite presenter with general business, healthcare and education audiences alike.

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      Book preview

      Uncommon Leadership - Fred Kusch

      Foreword

      LEADERSHIP continues to be a much misunderstood term just as it was when the first edition of this book was released.

      As the business editor of a regional newspaper, I meet a procession of people who consider themselves to be leaders. Many have been promoted beyond the level of their own incompetence and are actually doing damage to the companies they claim to be running. Others are less malignant, but their management style is uninspiring, so staff and customers alike are denied that all-important spark which turns mere satisfaction into delight.

      They would all benefit from reading Leadership Lessons, even if some would reject its basic premise and others, the more honest ones, would be uncomfortable with many of the points being made in the essays. I have the privilege of knowing some of the contributors, but I am most stuck by the thoughts of someone whose work is new to me. I warmly recommend a pithy contribution from Marilyn Levin entitled Staying Out Of Your Own Way, which is still reverberating in my own mind some days after first reading it.

      This book is typical of Fred, taking a subject we all think we understand and offering a totally new series of insights. Leadership, like common sense, is not very common, but hopefully Fred and his friends will help to shed extra light on this much misunderstood aspect of human behaviour.

      David Callam, Croydon Advertiser

      Surrey, United Kingdom

      Acknowledgments

      The new venture of eBook publishing is not to be taken for granted. It is new territory for me. Being a techno klutz, I am lucky to have been blessed with the personal and professional wisdom shared with me by top notch contributors. Once again Sheri Wert, with her encouragement, insight and project management skills, was a cornerstone to the endeavor. My special thanks go to the other cornerstone, our intern, Choua Vue, whose maturity beyond her years, hard work and technological savvy was THE driving force to take me into the world of eBook publishing. I can’t say enough about her work ethic, gentle prodding and good humor in the completion of the book. Finally Stephanie Severson’s creativity, technical skill and sense of humor make the cover of the book pleasing to the eye and inviting to the reader.

      Introduction

      I first became cognizant of real leadership as I watched my Mom and Dad step forward to take leadership in various civic and church activities. When my Dad saw the need for a fire department in our community, he became one of the founding fathers of the Wonder Lake Volunteer Fire Department. He lived out leadership by doing not just talking. Mom was no different. Whether at church or school functions she and Dad were always there to help make a difference in our small town.

      The influence of leadership, good and bad, was abundantly clear as it was demonstrated in the classroom, on the athletic field and in the community during my student years at McHenry Community High School in Illinois. Whether it was Lillian Angelse, my Latin teacher, Dick Rabbitt, my football coach, Dick Swantz, my history teacher or Cliff Fulton, my basketball coach, they all taught the importance of leadership in the school community. Paul Morenz, a senior and basketball team mate of mine when I was a freshman, was my high school hero and my role model for leadership on a peer level. I will never forget the lessons they all taught me. I learned about kindness, commitment and the need to fully use and share the gifts we have been given.

      Finally, Father James Vanderpool, our parish priest at Christ the King Catholic Church, taught me tolerance, forgiveness and how to give when others thought it better to receive. Our neighbor the Reverend Richard Wright added to those lessons with his kind words, love of children and willingness to fill in when we needed another player for touch football in Grandma Johnson’s front yard. With that knowledge in tow, I guess I was ready for anything, and, probably like you, I encountered many pretenders and too few real leaders.

      My father taught me my first real lesson in leadership when he said we live in a wonderful country that allows any of us to speak our mind and gives us the opportunity to take action and make a difference. He went on to say that too many folks just like to shoot off their mouths, to complain without any intent of doing much of anything and then complain again given the chance. He went on to admonish my siblings and me to first say what was on our minds, decide whether or not we wanted to back up the words with action and, if not, to sit down, stop complaining and let others make the decision. But he then would say, if you were smart you would take action and make a difference with those issues that fire your passion, go out and lead.

      This book is a tribute to all of those whose influence has formed me. It is a collection of common sense views on leadership from uncommon leaders. The essays that follow are front line views from people who don’t just philosophize and study leadership. These essays are first hand reflections on wisdom, power, resilience, courage and vision. The authors are real leaders, people who have made a difference in the lives of their followers. I invite you to read on and discover something that will make a difference in your work, your life, your thinking and your attitude.

      Enjoy, experience Uncommon Lessons and take a new common sense idea from an uncommon leader to express what you learn!

      Wisdom

      The Gift of Others

      Effective leaders understand that their greatest gift is to value the people around them.

      The human resource of colleagues, friends, employees and, yes, even our adversaries and the competition all draw out the best in each of us if we allow it.

      If we value people, we incrementally increase our own value and our potential for success.

      The Glorious Adventure of Learning

      Fred C. Kusch, Jr.

      Learning affects eternity. We can never fully realize the influence and impact of what we learn, or for that matter what we don’t learn. How leaders support their colleagues as lifelong learners will have a direct impact on their productivity, job satisfaction and perhaps more importantly, the quality of their lives at work and away from it.

      More than ever before, the statement, education is preparation for life is less meaningful and less significant. This old axiom has taught us, our employers and our society in general that education and learning is a one shot deal set in segmented, time ending frameworks like high school and college.

      Instead, we as leaders need to promote continuous learning and personal and professional growth as the essence of life itself! We must lead our colleagues and for that matter our communities into thinking that learning is a timeless, essential and vital part of living. To stop learning and growing is, in effect, to die–to die intellectually, relationally and spiritually. To learn continuously is to celebrate life and living. To truly learn is to embrace the notion that there are more questions than answers. It is to understand that there are many right answers instead of one.

      Helen Keller wrote, If life is not a glorious adventure, it is nothing at all. This perhaps catches the real essence of what learning is–an adventure, a glorious adventure! To learn is to embrace failure, mistakes, errors and the challenges of change. Who among us that embraces an adventurous approach to living and learning is not better prepared to deal with the chaos of change, adversity and disappointments that confront us? Better yet these lessons teach us the appreciation of sunsets, the laughter of children, the joy of a good book or the fellowship of stimulating conversation and dialogue.

      Learning begins with an internal commitment. It is not the responsibility of teachers; they are merely instruments of it. It is our responsibility as leaders to expect, if not demand, that our colleagues continue to be or become, Continuous Learning Professionals. For this to become a reality we as leaders must be committed to the growth of each other, the breaking down of organizational and personal barriers, to learning and to ultimately become Champions of Learning.

      John Cardinal Neuman’s writings inspire me to this final thought: To learn is to grow, to grow is to change, to learn and to grow together and do it often is to allow us to have a peek at heaven.

      May each of us and those we may inspire have a glorious adventure on our way to having that peek at heaven.

      Rx for a Stable Workforce

      Fred C. Kusch, Jr.

      As I have traveled and worked in different settings, the following employment practices seem to distinguish those businesses that have a stable workforce from those who don’t.

      The owner, CEO, and key managers:

      1) Support, recognize and reward top performers. If the top dogs care, it means more to the front-line supervisor as well as the rank and file employee.

      2) Recognize teams as well as individuals, especially where work teams are promoted by the leadership. Rarely does any one employee accomplish success by himself.

      3) Reward in a timely fashion. Celebration of the individual or team success should come soon after the moment of accomplishment.

      4) Share employees’ successes within and outside the company. If you are going to recognize and reward people, others ought to know as well. The chance to shine is fun at work and in the community. A note from a company leader to the family and/or children about Mom’s or Dad’s success is a nice touch.

      5) Give meaningful recognition or reward. This means you need to know the employee and what trips his trigger. This is a subtle value-added benefit to both the leader/manager and employee. There is nothing better than to be known personally by those in charge, particularly when success and accomplishments are involved.

      Adopt the Mindset of Optimization

      Fred C. Kusch, Jr.

      As a leader or manager, you need to elevate your mindset and obsess about getting more from your current resources and efforts. You must ask yourself and others better questions. You must start to ask yourself, How can our business get greater results from every action we take, every expenditure we make, every effort we expend, every relationship we have? Avoid status quo like a deadly virus. You must fully embrace the philosophies that, good enough never is and we can always do better.

      Optimization (also known as leverage) is a mindset of maximizing your results while simultaneously minimizing the amount of time, effort, risk, money and energy you

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