A Spark to Guide to ReCalibrate Your Leadership

@jakubskafiriak

Listen closely to the guidance your mentors offer - their advice comes at a significant cost through hard-won experience and painful lessons learned along the way.

As a young entrepreneur, I've made and lost millions in opportunities and real money from mistakes over 25 years of running a business. I've also learned some wisdom that works. In my role today as a mentor and coach, I'm writing for my clients: Kara, Michael, Sarah, Josh, Brad, Kate, Stacey, Matt, Nancy, Laura, Jim, and more to come in the days ahead. However, I'm writing to my younger self - the leader I was hoping to become 20 years ago while giving my all yet still making missteps. Yet, turning the corner on 50, I'm still learning every day, and learning most often comes from evaluated experience. 

If you're running hard and not getting the results you're hoping to achieve, then Spark is written for you. 

"Spark" is a letter of guidance, written from the perspective of my current self to the fired-up but sometimes misguided young leader I once was. It captures the lessons, mindsets, and practices I wish I had embraced earlier in my journey. By sharing these insights, I can help reignite the passions and sharpen the focus of aspiring leaders - saving them from some of the self-inflicted hurdles I encountered. While the advice is directed inward, it is also intended to inspire and illuminate any leader committed to continuous growth and impact.

Spark will be a series of articles that guide you in recalibrating your leadership approach across four fundamental perspectives: purpose, performance, process, and people. It introduces 12 core practices and disciplines that allow you to fully evaluate and fine-tune how you lead to realizing your leadership potential.

The four perspectives are:

1. Purpose - Clearly define your "why" as a leader and align your efforts around an inspiring vision and meaningful impact.

2. Performance - Optimizing your productivity habits and driving peak performance from yourself and your team.

3. Process - Implementing systematic methodologies to streamline operations, enable innovation, and achieve consistent, high-quality results.

4. People - Develop strategies to unite, motivate, and empower your people to thrive individually and collectively.

Across these four areas, the 12 practices provide tangible tools for assessing your current proficiencies and identifying opportunities to elevate your leadership capabilities. From personal goal-setting to building high-trust team dynamics, implementing Agile processes to fostering a growth mindset culture - Spark equips you with a comprehensive framework.

The aim is to help you pinpoint potential blockers or leaks that may constrain your ability to inspire and lead effectively. By optimizing purpose, performance, processes, and your guidance of people, you can unlock new levels of motivation, collaboration, and impact.

Spark is a tuning manual for consistently calibrating your leadership across all dimensions. It provides a system for identifying areas that need adjustment and deploying targeted practices to get yourself, your team, and your overall leadership approach is firing on all cylinders.

Inspiration of Spark

It started in 2019, with bloody knuckles and greasy fingernails from working on my old truck engine. As I crawled under the hood of my Dodge Hemi V8, I realized that all 16 spark plugs needed to be working properly to get maximum power and performance. It was a simple yet profound lesson.

@sfkopstein

My truck sputtered down the road, clearly not running at its full potential. The diagnostics revealed one cylinder was misfiring badly. After years of supposed maintenance, I discovered that a spark plug in the back corner had never actually been replaced! This 15-year-old truck had essentially been running with a critical component neglected all this time. 

Could you imagine running a business or leading a team without ever reviewing, updating, or maintaining key processes and systems over such a long period? It would be disastrous.

From a young age, I was fascinated by how things are built and fit together - spending hours constructing with erector sets, landscaping yards, and eventually designing office furniture and corporate spaces. These experiences showed firsthand how synergy between people, processes, and physical spaces drives organizational success.

At its core, effective leadership is like a high-performance engine - it requires a "spark" to ignite the full potential of the team and organization. Just as a spark plug initiates combustion to propel a vehicle forward, an inspiring leader catalyzes motivation, innovation, and high performance in their people.

When leaders embody the "Spark," they energize their team with a shared passion and purpose, fostering collaboration, creativity, and peak productivity. Teams with this collective "spark" leverage their talents seamlessly to achieve ambitious goals.

At the organizational level, the leadership "Spark" drives a culture of excellence - fueling strategic initiatives, transformative change, and sustainable growth. A "sparked" organization becomes an industry force, attracting top talent and driving breakthrough innovation and results.

However, like a fouled spark plug, a leader's "spark" can become dampened by stress, burnout, or complacency - diminishing motivation, morale, and performance across the team and company. Reigniting the "Spark" requires leaders to prioritize self-care, self-leadership, peer mentoring, and professional coaching.

Self-care through physical, mental, and emotional practices gives leaders the resilience to inspire their teams. Self-leadership involves setting a vision, leading by example with a growth mindset, and inspiring others. Peer mentoring allows leaders to share insights, receive feedback, and support each other. Professional coaching helps identify strengths, growth areas, and strategies to cultivate self-awareness and refined leadership skills.

Ultimately, the "Spark" catalyzes exceptional leadership - helping people and organizations achieve their highest potential. By nurturing their own "Spark" through proven practices, leaders can reignite their passion, drive, and sense of purpose while inspiring those around them.

Conclusion

The metaphor of the "Spark" provides a powerful analogy for understanding the catalyzing role that effective leadership plays in igniting potential, driving performance, and achieving exceptional results within teams and organizations. Just as a spark plug is essential for combustion and propelling an engine forward, inspiring leadership is the Spark that ignites passion, innovation, and growth.

By prioritizing self-care, self-leadership, peer mentoring, and professional coaching, leaders can nurture their own inner "Spark," - allowing them to lead with more incredible energy, vision, and ability to empower others. When a leader's "Spark" is vital, it has a contagious effect of motivating the entire team and fostering a culture primed for success.

As you reflect on the leadership "Spark" within yourself and your organization, consider:

• What fuels your personal "Spark" as a leader? What depletes or diminishes it?

• How can you better nurture your "Spark" through self-care, goal-setting, mentoring, or coaching?

• In what ways are you effectively transferring your "Spark" to light a fire within your team?

• What processes or systems need revisiting to maintain high performance? Where might a fresh "Spark" be required?

• How can you fan the flames of your organizational "Spark" to drive innovation and growth?

Continuously reigniting the leadership "Spark" is essential for individuals and organizations striving to reach their highest potential. By nurturing this vital catalyst, you can propel your team's performance and accelerate towards ambitious goals.

Designing Your Leadership Team Retreat - 3 Planning Questions

I'm just returning from a time in the mountains. 

Breathing in the Colorado mountain air this week, I sat with an executive at a four-day leadership retreat. He exhaled after a full week he shared, "I know this will make me a stronger leader. " Then in an emotional moment he reflected, " I believe this will change my life as a human. It's making a difference from the inside out and who I want to become a better husband, father, and at work."

Coaching alongside this man I learned that ultimately he felt guilty about taking time away. I asked him a question I believe was at the heart of the issue. Where do you find joy in life? Once again with tears in his eyes, he told me about his three and seven-year-old sons. He's missing some of the memorable moments in their life. His love for hunting and fishing was evident as he talked about stories of getting outdoors. "When's the last time you did some of those things?" I asked. It has been over a year for fishing and three years for hunting. I want to get my boys out with me. Every year in January the HR director asked me about my vacation plans and I laugh because I feel guilty for taking time away from the duties of work. 

It turns out that he's not alone 54% of millions of Americans have unused vacation time because they feel that by leaving that reduce their value to the company and could be replaced even though their bosses encourage them to go. This executive specifically had some issues with the long-term impacts of chronic stress and how it was affecting his attitude expressed in anger among his team members. After my meeting with him, I could he see he was a good-natured and kind-hearted man. However, his 360 reviews showed some of the internal challenges that were beginning to wear him thin. I asked him how can you possibly deal with conflict and manage your stress if you're not getting time away to enjoy life. Then I discovered he has trouble sleeping and deals explicitly with issues of sleep apnea. The issues were catching up to him. 

17 years on the job he indeed has shown his commitment to the company and the work before him now the effects of not having healthy rest and recreation room crippling his effectiveness. Even though team members are encouraged to take a break and do the things they love for one reason or another it just doesn't happen. Sometimes a team leadership retreat gives the space in the conversations to focus on what truly matters most. Often, personal vacations are working weeks away from that we feel like we need a vacation from our vacation by the time we're back at work.

As a facilitator of team retreats, I've consistently observed that when you create space to talk about the issues of business as well as your health as an individual, it begins to form a mindset for change.

When you're team needs a breakthrough maybe what they need is a break.

It's these breakthrough moments that often come by getting out of the office on the mountainside or lakeside that is a joy to witness.

Whether it's summertime or your fall season, this is a great time to begin designing a time that meets the needs of your team.

I would encourage you today to examine...

1. What does your team need to thrive? 
2. What are barriers holding them back? 
3. What would be the impact of a healthy, unified, trusted team?

For most leaders and executive teams, this is new territory. When they take time to work on their business it's offsite including an agenda it leaves little room for discovery and development.

After years and hundreds of team engagements, I've observed the principle that Investing in your WHO (team) will make an exponential impact on the effectiveness of WHAT they do. 

Your first step might be a fun activity to celebrate some of the wins of your business. It could be a lunch to say thank you after working through a difficult season. It may be a half-day planning session somewhere outside of the office. Still, you may sense there is untapped potential, and you're not sure how to unlock your team members. It may be a four-day leadership retreat that will be the catalyst for new growth and connection for your organization. 

Wherever you find yourself today entering this summer a few minutes of creativity, planning, and scheduling a date will be well worth the investment building your team.

If you need help designing or executing your leadership team retreat we're here to serve you. 
 

Making the Right Move for Wrong Team Member…and the Cost if You Don’t! Part 1

The number one issue I have seen among leaders and the issue that carries the greatest emotional weight that often clouds objectivity is letting go of a key leader on your team. As an executive coach, I’ve had a front row seat to seeing the most brilliant strategists and effective leaders who have lost themselves under the emotional weight of losing someone who is critical to their team, or at least their role is critical to the team and the organization's success.

Most leaders know the enormous weight of the responsibility and need for patience when allowing a key leader to settle into their role. Yet, after an undefined appropriate amount of time, the key indicators are not trending positive, or projects are under performing, it becomes evident this is the wrong person for the position. Most often we hire somebody who performed with excellence and delivered exceptional results in their discipline in one or more organizational settings. For a variety of reasons they have failed to gain traction in our environment.

The weight of this issue for most leaders, more often than not, comes from the loss of confidence in the individual in whom they had personally placed so much trust and hope. Leaders hire people in the confidence that they have all that is needed to be successful in the position. Having been so persuaded, we adopt them into our corporate family, nurture them into the culture, and give them the tools and resources needed for success. We have personally sponsored the new hire into the organization. The idea of cutting ties with a member of your team brings a sense of personal loss. Facing the daunting task of replacing any high profile leader carries with it a heightened sensitivity to utilize an improved vetting and decision making process. The thought of having to find the replacement and start the process all over again with the prospect that the next person hired may not work out can be overwhelming.

I have found, in hundreds of hours of coaching and working with teams in off-site settings, a leader instinctively knows when it is time for a transition to happen. Certainly, there are protocols that determine the appropriate amount of time to allow for the individual’s performance to improve or for adjustments to be made to his or her role and/or responsibilities.  Yet, in the end, I have seen again and again, that leaders have an instinct for when it's time for a transition. The question becomes what will that leader do when they know what the right decision is and when will they take action?

When a leader delays in doing the right thing, the weight of the issue grows with each day, week, and month, making it harder to step forward and act objectively. This leads to our emotional malaise as leaders and allows the dysfunction within the organization to spread. Delay could also cost the organization critical leadership talent at the lower levels as those people lose confidence that the matter will be addressed. We can be confident in the fact that if we're seeing nonperformance, it has already been the subject of water cooler conversation in the organization. At some point, this emotional weight and lack of decisive action creates a toxicity that is felt throughout the culture of the organization.

If you are that leader who is in that place and know you need to let one of your key team members go, then let's get grounded. First we need to evaluate the cost of this decision or your indecision. As a leader, ask yourselves these questions:

• What is the cost of the emotional and mental energy that is likely preventing me from moving forward strategically in the department with the under performing leader?
• What is the cost for the rest of my team who is having to tiptoe around the issue rather than being engaged as a highly performing team?
• What is the cost within that specific department where that leader is not meeting their goals or objectives?

Take a Step in Right Direction

Take time to think! Spend a few minutes thinking through these things will bring clarity.  Writing down a note, even if it's on a napkin, gives you an opportunity to evaluate the time, money, and resources the delay in this decision is costing you. Find a person or peer group that is a safe place to verbally process and gain feedback .

After you've had to time to count the cost, seek clarity, and the perspective someone you trust you're ready for action. Part 2 of Making the Right Move will give 4 Steps towards a healthy transition. 

Stimulating Curiosity

Colorado is my home. It's the land of many colors.

Sunrises and big vistas inspire us with brilliant color. Color brings light, scope, and perspective to life. Color opens the eyes, the senses, even stirs the heart. Like the color in a breathtaking landscape so can it be with a colorful conversation in relationships...certainly among family and good friends but also in your work life as well.

If we're honest, many of our daily interactions have faded to grey. It's business as usual, predictable, and bottom line. Even in our meetings or worse team retreats they can feel almost black and white.

Curiosity stirs creativity, creativity stimulates interests, interests spark inspiration, inspiration ignites ideas, ideas fire conversation, and conversation spurs relationships. Then teams mature, culture grows, organizations move, customers join, products distribute, services deliver, profits yield, and curiosity impacts a market and society.

What's the cost of color? Maybe it's time to stimulate some curiosity. Bring some creative color to your work life. Let us know if we can help stimulate the conversation.

Join the Advance! Moving Missional Leaders Forward!