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Leading at a Higher Level: Blanchard on Leadership and Creating High Performing Organizations
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Product Description
The definitive Blanchard on Leadership"25 years of breakthrough leadership insights in one extraordinary book!From The One Minute Manager to Raving Fans, Ken Blanchard's books have helped millions of people unleash their power and the potential of everyone around them. The Ken Blanchard Companies has helped thousands of organizations become more people-oriented, customer-centered, and performance-driven.
In Leading at a Higher Level, Blanchard and his colleagues have brought together all they've learned about world-class leadership. You'll discover how to create targets and visions based on the "triple bottom line"...and make sure people know who you are, where you're going, and the values that will guide your journey.
Blanchard extends his breakthrough work on delivering legendary customer service and creating "raving fans." You'll find the definitive discussion of the renowned Situational Leadership(r) II techniques for leading yourself, individuals, teams, and entire organizations. Most importantly, Leading at a Higher Level will help you dig deep within, discover the personal "leadership point of view" all great leaders possess-and apply it throughout your entire life.
For everyone who wants to become a better leader...
...in any company, any organization, any area of life
Set the right targets, follow the right vision
Focus on the "bottom lines" that really matter
Serve your customers at a higher level
Deliver your ideal customer experience, and create "raving fans"
Beyond ego: the way of the servant leader
Listen, praise, support, guide, and help your people win
Lead at a higher level. Lead your people to greatness as you create high performing organizations that make life better for everyone. This book will guide you, inspire you, provoke you, and be your touchstone.
Ken Blanchard (coauthor of The One Minute Manager(r)) and his colleagues have spent more than 25 years helping good leaders and organizations become great, and stay great. Now, for the first time, they've brought together everything they've learned about outstanding leadership.
Discover how to...
Go beyond the short term and zero in on the right target and vision
Deliver legendary, maniacal customer service, and earn raving fans
Truly empower your people and unleash their incredible potential
Ground your leadership in humility and focus on the greater good
For a long time, leaders have relied on Ken Blanchard's insight, wisdom, and practical techniques. Now, he and his colleagues have delivered the leadership classic for a new generation: Leading at a Higher Level.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #12365 in Books
- Published on: 2006-11-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 384 pages
Editorial Reviews
From the Back Cover
“Leading at a Higher Level translates decades of research and 25 years of global experience into simple, practical, and powerful strategies to equip leaders at every level to build organizations that produce bottom-line results. At Nissan, we have made these principles a core part of our leadership philosophy, better equipping our managers to bring out the great energies and talents of our employees.”
Jim Irvine, Vice President of Human Resources, Nissan North America
“At Southwest Airlines, we have always strived to lead at a higher level. We truly believe that profit is the applause you get for taking care of your internal and external customers. We have always insisted upon a happy, carefree, team-spirited—yes, even fun—working environment, which we think results in motivated employees who will do the right thing for their internal and external customers. Reading this book will make a positive difference in your organization.”
Colleen C. Barrett, President, Southwest Airlines
“If you want to have a great company, you don’t have a choice but to lead at a higher level. When you do that, you excite your people, they take care of your customers, and your cash register goes ca-ching.”
Horst Schulze, President and CEO, The West Paces Hotel Group, LLC; Founding and former President & COO, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, LLC
“Leading at a higher level is a must today if leaders are to rebuild trust and credibility, as we are doing at Tyco. This book will teach you how.”
Eric Pillmore, Senior Vice President of Corporate Governance, Tyco International
The definitive “Blanchard on Leadership”
25 years of breakthrough leadership insights in one extraordinary book!
From The One Minute Manager® to Raving Fans, Ken Blanchard’s books have helped millions of people unleash their power and the potential of everyone around them. The Ken Blanchard Companies has helped thousands of organizations become more people-oriented, customer-centered, and performance-driven.
In Leading at a Higher Level, Blanchard and his colleagues have brought together all they've learned about world-class leadership. You'll discover how to create targets and visions based on the “triple bottom line”...and make sure people know who you are, where you’re going, and the values that will guide your journey.
Blanchard extends his breakthrough work on delivering legendary customer service and creating “raving fans.” You’ll find the definitive discussion of the renowned Situational Leadership® II techniques for leading yourself, individuals, teams, and entire organizations. Most importantly, Leading at a Higher Level will help you dig deep within, discover the personal “leadership point of view” all great leaders possess—and apply it throughout your entire life.
For everyone who wants to become a better leader...
...in any company, any organization, any area of life
Set the right targets, follow the right vision
Focus on the “bottom lines” that really matter
Serve your customers at a higher level
Deliver your ideal customer experience, and create “raving fans”
Beyond ego: the way of the servant leader
Listen, praise, support, guide, and help your people win
Lead at a higher level. Lead your people to greatness as you create high performing organizations that make life better for everyone.
This book will guide you, inspire you, provoke you, and be your touchstone.
Ken Blanchard (coauthor of The One Minute Manager®) and his colleagues have spent more than 25 years helping good leaders and organizations become great, and stay great. Now, for the first time, they’ve brought together everything they’ve learned about outstanding leadership. Discover how to...
Go beyond the short term and zero in on the right target and vision
Deliver legendary, maniacal customer service, and earn raving fans
Truly empower your people and unleash their incredible potential
Ground your leadership in humility and focus on the greater good
For a long time, leaders have relied on Ken Blanchard’s insight, wisdom, and practical techniques. Now, he and his colleagues have delivered the leadership classic for a new generation: Leading at a Higher Level.
www.LeadingAtAHigherLevel.com
Contents
Introduction: Leading at a Higher Level—by Ken Blanchard xvii
Section I: Set Your Sights on the Right Target and Vision
Chapter 1 Is Your Organization High Performing? 3
Chapter 2 The Power of Vision 21
Section II: Treat Your Customers Right
Chapter 3 Serving Customers at a Higher Level 39
Section III: Treat Your People Right
Chapter 4 Empowerment Is the Key 67
Chapter 5 Situational Leadership® II: The Integrating Concept 87
Chapter 6 Self Leadership: The Power Behind Empowerment 103
Chapter 7 Partnering for Performance 117
Chapter 8 Essential Skills for Partnering for Performance: The One Minute Manager® 145
Chapter 9 Situational Team Leadership 167
Chapter 10 Organizational Leadership 195
Chapter 11 Strategies for Managing a Change 219
Section IV: Have the Right Kind of Leadership
Chapter 12 Servant Leadership 249
Chapter 13 Determining Your Leadership Point of View 277
Endnotes 297
Organizational Change Readiness Assessment 309
Acknowledgments and Praisings 313
About the Authors 317
Services Available 333
Index 335
About the Author
Ken Blanchard has had an extraordinary impact on the day-to-day management of millions of people and companies. His phenomenal bestseller, The One Minute Manager®, has sold 13,000,000 copies. He is Chief Spiritual Officer of The Ken Blanchard Companies, an international management training and consulting firm he co-founded in 1979.
This book contains indispensable contributions from The Ken Blanchard Companies’ founding associates—Margie Blanchard, Don Carew, Eunice Parisi-Carew, Fred Finch, Laurence Hawkins, Drea Zigarmi, and Pat Zigarmi—and consulting partners Alan Randolph, Jesse Stoner, Susan Fowler, Fay Kandarian, Judd Hoekstra, and Scott Blanchard.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Introduction
Leading at a Higher Level
Ken Blanchard
This past year, my wife, Margie, and I went on a safari in South Africa with some family and friends. Margie and I have been on a number of safaris over the past 20 years. This time I saw some things I'd seen before but never quite as vividly. What I observed is how vicious, competitive, and territorial the jungle is. If you've ever heard a lion roar, it brings chills up your back. When our long-time guide, Gary Clarke from Topeka, Kansas, imitates the roar, he shouts, "It's mine, mine, mine, mine!" That's because when the lion roars, what he's really saying is, "This is my territory. Don't mess with me." In fact, lions will kill their sons if they challenge their control over the father's territory.
The reason I saw this more vividly than ever before is that I had decided on this trip that I was going to find out as much as I possibly could about Nelson Mandela. We had been at a dinner party where people around the table were asked to share what person—of anyone in the world—they would love to have dinner with. It was a quick decision for me. I said, "Nelson Mandela. I would love to have dinner with a man who was in prison for 28 years and treated cruelly, yet came out of that experience full of love, compassion, and reconciliation." On the trip, I began to read Mandela's book Long Walk to Freedom.
When I compared what I saw in the jungle with how Mandela had reacted to his treatment, I realized that in many ways we as human beings are just intelligent animals. And being intelligent animals, we can choose between being self-serving and serving. The animals in the jungle can't make that choice. A rhino can't get up in the morning and say, "I'm going to make friends with the lion today." It's just not in their temperament. And yet, just as Mandela did, we can make choices to live and lead at a higher level. But when you look at the leaders around the world—whether they're running countries, businesses, churches, educational institutions, or what have you—too many people are choosing to be self-serving rather than serving. Why is that? Because they don't have a different leadership role model.
When I contemplated this dilemma, my thinking took me back to my days in graduate school, when I studied Paulo Freire, a revolutionary from Brazil. He wrote a fascinating book called The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire argued that the problem with oppression is that once the oppressed throw off the oppressor, the only leadership role models they have are the very people who oppressed them. Thus, the oppressed become the new oppressors. The ramifications of this are disheartening—not only for countries, but for every enterprise imaginable. This phenomenon creates a new breed of self-serving leaders overseeing a system where all the money, power, and recognition move up the hier-archy and away from the people the organization was established to serve.
I think the only answer to this recurring cycle is a different leadership role model. That's what this book is all about—helping individuals and organizations lead at a higher level.
Leading at a Higher Level
What is leadership? For years we defined leadership as an influence process. We believed that anytime you tried to influence the thoughts and actions of others toward goal accomplishment in either your personal or professional life, you were engaging in leadership. In recent years, we have changed our definition of leadership to the capacity to influence others by unleashing their power and potential to impact the greater good. We made this change for an important reason.
When the definition of leadership focuses on goal accomplishment, you can think that leadership is only about results. Yet when we talk about leading at a higher level, just focusing on goal accomplishment is not enough. The key phrase in our new definition is "the greater good"—what is best for all involved. We think leadership is a high calling. Leadership should not be done purely for personal gain or goal accomplishment; it should have a much higher purpose than that.
What is a higher purpose? It is not something as internally focused and self-centered as making money. As Matt Hayes and Jeff Stevens contend in The Heart of Business, when it becomes obvious that profit, which is a legitimate goal, is the driving reason for being in business, everyone—stockholders, top managers, employees, customers, suppliers, and the community—quickly becomes self-serving, with a focus on their own agenda and personal enrichment. Employee loyalty and passion often go out the window as the point of work becomes simply to get as much as you can for as little effort as possible.1
What is the answer to this dilemma? A higher purpose—a key element of what we will refer to throughout this book as a compelling vision. In Hayes and Stevens' terms, it is outwardly focused, must require sacrifice—in other words, it takes precedence over any short-term goal such as profit—and is intrinsically honorable.
Leaders can be successful in the short run if they emphasize only goal accomplishment. What tends to fall by the wayside is the condition of the human organization. Leaders don't always take morale and job satisfaction into consideration—only results count. They forget what the point is. They don't have a higher purpose. In business, with that kind of leadership, it is a short leap to thinking that the only reason to be in business is to make money. There is an either/or added to people and results. Leaders falsely believe that they can't focus on both at the same time.
When you are leading at a higher level, you have a both/and philosophy. The development of people—both customers and employees—is of equal importance to performance. As a result, the focus in leading at a higher level is on long-term results and human satisfaction. Leading at a higher level, therefore, is a pro-cess. We define it as the process of achieving worthwhile results while acting with respect, care, and fairness for the well-being of all involved. When that occurs, self-serving leadership is not possible. Why?
Self-serving leaders think that leadership is all about them and not about the best interests of those they serve. They forget about acting with respect, care, and fairness for all involved. Everything is about their own self-interest. It's only when you realize that it's not about you that you begin to lead at a higher level.
Why Are We Writing This Book?
We are writing this book for several reasons. First, our dream is that someday everyone will know someone who is leading at a higher level. Self-serving leaders will be a thing of the past, and leadership throughout the world will be composed of people who, as Robert Greenleaf said, "Serve first and lead second."2 We are writing this book to help make our dream a reality.
Second, the vision of The Ken Blanchard Companies is focused on leading at a higher level. This kind of leadership begins with a vision. Jesse Stoner and I wrote a book called Full Steam Ahead! about the power of visioning. To us, a compelling vision tells you who you are (your purpose), where you're going (your preferred picture of the future), and what will drive your journey (your values).
The purpose of The Ken Blanchard Companies is to help individuals and organizations lead at a higher level. Our mission statement reflects our new definition of leadership:
Unleash the power and potential of people and organizations for the greater good.
Our picture of the future is
- Everyone is trained to lead at a higher level.
- Every organization is led by people leading at a higher level.
- People are motivated to lead at a higher level by observing people who lead at a higher level.
Our operating values are
- Ethical—Doing the right thing
- Relationships—Developing mutual trust and respect
- Success—Operating a profitable and well-run organization
- Learning—Always growing, inquiring, and developing
These values are ordered by rank. In other words, we won't do anything to improve the profitability of the company that is unethical or that doesn't honor the relationships we have with our customers, our people, our suppliers, and our community. We realize that making money is not the higher purpose of our business.
You might say that this all sounds like Pollyanna—overly optimistic. That may be, but these are the standards we have set for ourselves. And these are the same high standards we want to help you and the people in your organization reach through this book. Helping individuals and organizations lead at a higher level is our passion, for both your organization and our own.
Finally, in many ways this book spells out our leadership point of view. Extensive research shows that effective leaders have a clear leadership point of view and are willing to share with others these beliefs about leading and motivating people. We hope reading this book will impact your leadership point of view.
How This Book Is Organized
Over the years, I have found that in organizations where leading at a higher level is the rule rather than the exception, people do four things well:
- They set their sights on the right target and vision.
- They treat their customers right.
- They treat their people right.
- They have the right kind of leadership.
This book is organized into four sections. Section I focuses on the right target and vis...
Customer Reviews
Putting It All Together
Leading at a Higher Level is an excellent book that really "puts it all together" related to leadership and Blanchard's principles. I highly recommend it for a comprehensive book about leadership. I am using the book with our management/administrative team. Each person is reading the book and then facilitating the discussion of one chapter. The website resources are an added bonus. I am very excited about the individual and team development possibilities. Thank you!
Required reading for everyone who wants to become a better leader
Ken Blanchard, co-author of The One Minute Manager, and his colleagues at The Ken Blanchard Companies have spent more than 25 years helping good leaders and organizations become great and stay great. In this book, they describe how leaders can empower people and unleash their incredible potential. This book must be required reading for everyone who wants to become a better leader.
A better definition of leadership, according to the author, is the capacity to influence others by unleashing the power and potential of people and organizations for the greater good. Leadership should not be done purely for personal gain or goal accomplishment: It should have a much higher purpose than that. Leadership can be defined as the process of achieving worthwhile results while acting with respect, care and fairness for the well-being of all involved. When that occurs, self-serving leadership is not possible. It's only when you realize that it's not about you that you begin to lead at a higher level.
Being a successful leader is not only about leading your organization, but your customers as well. According to the author, to keep your customers, you can't be content just to satisfy them; you have to create raving fans. Raving fans are customers who are so excited about the way you treat them that they want to tell everyone about you. A good example of how this works is Domo Gas, a full-service gasoline chain in Western Canada, cofounded by Sheldon Bowles. Back in the 1970s, when everybody was going to self-service gasoline stations, Bowles knew that if people had a choice, they would never go to a gas station. But people have to get gas, and they want to get in and out as quickly as possible. The customer service vision that Bowles and his co-founders imagined was an Indianapolis 500 pit stop. They dressed all their attendants in red jumpsuits. When a customer drove into one of Bowles' stations, two or three people ran out of the hut and raced toward the car. As quickly as possible, they looked under the hood, cleaned the windshield and pumped the gas (p. 42).
A successful leader must also have a workable vision, and be able to clearly communicate and share this vision with his organization. When Louis Gerstner Jr. took the helm of IBM in 1993-- amid turmoil and instability as the company's annual net losses reached a record $8 billion -- he was quoted as saying, "The last thing IBM needs is a vision." In an article in The New York Times two years later, Gerstner conceded that IBM had lost the war for the desktop operating system, acknowledging that the acquisition of Lotus signified that the company had failed to plan properly for its future. He admitted that he and his management team now "spent a lot of time thinking ahead." Once Gerstner understood the importance of vision, an incredible turnaround occurred. In 1995, delivering the keynote address at the computer industry trade show, Gerstner articulated IBM's new vision -- that network computing would drive the next phase of industry growth and would be the company's overarching strategy. That year, IBM began a series of acquisitions that positioned it to become the fastest-growing company in its segment, with growth at more than 20 percent per year. This extraordinary turnaround demonstrated that the most important thing IBM needed was a vision (p. 24-25).
Leaders must also know how to lead their workforce. Giving people too much or too little direction has a negative impact on people's development. Situational leadership is based on the belief that people can and want to develop, and there is no best leadership style to encourage that development. You should tailor leadership style to the situation. This is pretty much common sense. But leaders should also train their people in self leadership. For example, Bandag Manufacturing experienced the value of self leadership after a major equipment breakdown. Rather than laying off the affected work force, the company opted to train them in leadership. The company began holding their managers accountable and asking them to demonstrate their leadership capabilities. They were asking managers for direction and support and urging them to clarify goals and expectations. Suddenly, managers were studying up on rusty skills and working harder. When the plant's ramp-up time was compared to the company's other eight plants that had experienced similar breakdowns in the past, the California plant reached pre-breakdown production levels faster than any in history. The determining factor in the plant's successful rebound was primarily the proactive behavior of the workers, who were fully engaged and armed with the skill of self leadership (p. 104-105).
Leaders must also encourage team work, and be part of the team themselves. Teams provide a sense of worth, connection and meaning to the people involved in them. A study of 12,000 male Swedish workers over a 14-year period revealed that workers who felt isolated and had little influence over their jobs were 162 percent more likely to have a fatal heart attack than were those who had a lot of influence in decisions at work and who worked in teams. Data like this -- combined with the fact that teams can be far more productive than individuals functioning alone --provide a compelling argument for creating high involvement workplaces. Furthermore, according to a 2003 Gallup study, "actively disengaged" people -- workers who are fundamentally disconnected from their jobs -- are costing the U.S. economy between $292 billion and $355 billion a year. The Gallup survey found that 24.7 million workers (17 percent) are actively disengaged. These workers are absent from work 3.5 more days a year than other workers, or 86.5 million days in all. Statistics show an even less engaged work force worldwide.
When people lead at a higher level, they make the world a better place because their goals are focused on the greater good. Making the world a better place requires a special kind of leader: a servant leader. Robert Greenleaf first coined the term "servant leadership" in 1970 and published widely on the concept. Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela are examples of servant leaders. Servant leaders feel their role is to help people achieve their goals. They try to find out what their people need to be successful. They want to make a difference in the lives of their people and, in the process, impact the organization (p. 249).
Research shows that effective leaders have a clear, teachable leadership point of view and are willing to teach it to others, particularly the people they work with. If you can teach people your leadership point of view, they will not only have the benefit of understanding where you're coming from, but they'll also be clear on what you expect from them and what they can expect from you. They may also begin to solidify their own thinking about leadership so that they can teach others too. Some say that learning, teaching and leading should be inherent parts of everyone's job description.
The world needs more leaders who are leading at a higher level. Perhaps the day will come when self-serving leaders are history, and leaders serving others are the rule, not the exception.
Blanchard's 25-year cumulative definition of leadership
Dramatic changes have altered the workplace over the course of the past 25 years, but many executives stick to outdated scripts even as corporate directions shift. Fortunately, The One Minute Manager guru Ken Blanchard offers insightful coaching exercises that give leaders new ways to proceed. Using straightforward language, Blanchard provides templates, examples and guidelines for employee education, performance reviews and promotions. The reader may become impatient with the repetition of key points and with Blanchard's slightly jarring habit of referring to himself in the third person, but despite these minor annoyances, this book is an excellent primer about modern leadership roles. In fact, Blanchard says that it "pulls together the thinking from the Ken Blanchard Companies for the past 25 years." We recommend this leadership overview to managers, board members, team leaders and every employee in a cubicle who aspires to reach higher levels.
