Unusually Excellent E-Book

John Hamm

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 382

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Master the fundamentals of leadership-at every stage in your career Often, when leaders experience trouble, they look to blame an outside source or expect a small tweak to right their ship. But many times they've actually lost their grip on the very basic foundation of leadership. The business environment may change, but no management trend can displace the core laws, proven over centuries, of excellent leadership. Unusually Excellent is an essential resource for leaders that brings these fundamentals together in a new and comprehensive way. This book will help leaders at any level keep their focus on the bedrock principles that will make them extraordinary.. * Thoroughly practical, day-to-day primer for achieving and maintaining their highest level of leadership, for today and for a lifetime * The author's Harvard Business Review articles are among the most highly read in the magazine's history * Written for all leaders who need to develop and renew their leadership skills Using a sports analogy, the author breaks the work of leaders into three parts: pregame: a matter of character; game day: a matter of competence; and postgame: a matter of consequence.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

More Praise for Unusually Excellent

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword by Geoffrey Moore

Introduction

The Five W's (and One H) of Leadership

Leaders Lead

The Three Games of Leadership

The Necessary Nine

Part One: Credibility: Earning the Right to Lead Through Character

Chapter One: Being Authentic: The Courage to Be Yourself

Tale of Two Leaders: Polar Opposites

Look at Life: Seeing Who You Are

Owning Your Past: The Sting of Failure

An Unexpectedly Bad Day

Share the Shame

Face Time

The Perception Gap

The Courage to Listen

Honest Feedback

Breathe and Be Yourself

Chapter Two: Being Trustworthy: The Consistency of Integrity

Poisoned Ground

Safely Successful

No Tricks Here; Just the Basics, Done Well

Implied Distrust

Should I Believe You?

A Better Place for All

A Culture of Trust Is a Culture of Truth

Bad News Doesn't Swim Upstream

A Culture of Trust Is a Culture of Innovation

A Culture of Trust Is a Culture of Performance

Take Your Pain Quickly and Acutely—and Move On

Chapter Three: Being Compelling: The Commitment to Winning

Choice and Obligation

Attracting the Best and Brightest

Keeping Your Best on Board

Cheerleader

Born-Again Employees

Tell Me the Truth

Keep Me Challenged

No Hard Feelings

Followers' Rights

Part Two: Competence: Leading on the Field With Skill

Chapter Four: Leading People: Talent to Teams

Seating Chart

People First

Get the Talent, Then Make the Plan

The E's of People Leadership

Retreat to Attack

Final Questions

Chapter Five: Leading Strategy: Ideas to Plans

Process to Plans

A TaylorMade Philosophy

The Process: Inclusive and Collaborative

Winnowing Out a Plan

The Plan: Realistic and Compelling

“Houston, We Have a Problem”

Stickiness

Chapter Six: Leading Execution: Action to Results

Solve the Hard Problems First

At the Edges

Leadership Leverage in Execution

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Focus, Commit, and Deliver

It Isn't Real If You Don't Measure It

Let the Dashboard Drive

It's Just Like Pinball: If You Win, You Get to Play Again

Part Three: Consequence: Creating A Culture, Leaving A Legacy of Values

Chapter Seven: A Leader's Communication: Open, Honest Dialogue

Talking Trust

Checklists and Guideposts

The Solitary Touch

Your 24 × 7 Job

Chapter Eight: A Leader's Decision Making: Values-Based Choices

Decision Structure

Don't Wait; Decide

Chasing Decisions

Chapter Nine: A Leader's Impact: The Transfer of Influence from Leader to Follower

Leader Taking the High Ground

Whisper Campaign

All You Leave Behind

Collective Memory

What to Do

Your Greatest Legacy

Another Perspective

Afterword

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Index

More Praise for Unusually Excellent

“There are many parallels between coaching a professional sports team and leading a business or civic organization. John hits the bulls eye of what is crucial to leading and winning in a high performance team environment. He lays out a model that any leader can put into action in a powerful way. This book will challenge your commitment to the disciplines that really work; but if you choose to follow these ideas, you'll be rewarded. Unusually Excellent belongs in every leader's office with the pages well worn from repeated readings.”

—Steve Mariucci, former head coach, San Francisco 49ers, Detroit Lions; analyst, NFL Network

“Unusually Excellent will call you to higher ground as a leader and give you the insights, context, and tools to get there. John Hamm's clear, sage advice and stark authenticity will inform your leadership decisions, large and small. And he reminds you, sometimes with a dose of tough love, of who you are at your core, and explains why some of what you do works and some doesn't. This book is a gift to my growth as a leader, and my new leadership reference manual.”

—Ted Mitchell, CEO, The NewSchools Venture Fund; president, California State Board of Education

“Finally! A compelling, cogent, back-to-basics book for leaders navigating the complex terrain of a global, interconnected, 24/7 world. In Unusually Excellent, John Hamm is an expert coach for leaders, prodding us to skip the latest fads and instead take a fresh look at the power of fundamentals, the necessary and timeless essentials of character, competence and consequence. There are dozens of immediately usable insights here-something for everyone. This book should be on every leader's bookshelf.”

—Linda Rottenberg, co-founder and CEO, Endeavor.Org

“I just love Unusually Excellent. It's classic Hamm-insightful, compelling, and actionable. I only wish I had read this when I was starting Military.com. It's impossible to read this book and not find lots of new and powerful ideas for leading your organization. I plan to give a copy to all the CEOs I know.”

—Chris Michel, CEO and founder, Military.Com and Affinity Labs (Monster); founder, Nautilus Ventures

“Unusually Excellent is simply an Unusually Excellent read. It just might be the missing piece of the leadership puzzle for you as a manager at any level of your organization. John brings together the nine essentials of leadership to show you that it's not about who you are, but rather how you think and what you do. It will help you understand what leadership really means and energize your passion for leading.”

—Michael Fitzpatrick, general partner, Seabury Ventures; former CEO, E-Tek Dynamics; former president and CEO Pacific Telesis

“This is a significant contribution to the field. This framework of effective leadership is energizing, prescriptive, and provides a holistic view which is a must read for young as well as experienced leaders in an ever more complex world of business.”

—Stefan Sjöström, General Manager, Public Sector, Microsoft Western Europe

Copyright © 2011 by John Hamm. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hamm, John, 1959–

Unusually excellent : the necessary nine skills required for the practice of great leadership / John Hamm.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-470-92843-1

1. Leadership. 2. Values. I. Title.

HD57.7.H3455 2011

658.4′092—dc22

2010045595

Printed in the United States of America

FIRST EDITION

HB Printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Joanna—

An Unusually Excellent wife and partner—

She lives the values of excellence

To our children—

Andie, Perry, Arthur, and Taylor—

They remind us of the important things in life

Foreword

Geoffrey Moore

Real leadership in daily practice is far from the commonly understood caricature of leadership. We don't really know what leadership means, in part because it never means quite the same thing twice. It does not always stand for great things by definition. Indeed, much of the time its most powerful acts pass unnoticed, even when we are looking for them. And although it is always demonstrated by our words and actions, those are so dependent on who we are at the time that they cannot be learned by example or by rule.

Emerson has a great line: “God is, not was.” The same is true of leadership. It is the performance in the moment, not the performance in the mind, that matters. Yes, there is preparation, and indeed, the more you prepare, the better your chances. But there is no script, or rather there are a myriad of scripts all potentially about to unfold, and you have to choose one, when you yourself are far from sure but, ideally, unwavering. And you must live with the inevitable fallibility of some of those choices, even as you can take pride in the successes of others.

To lead well, as this book makes deeply and powerfully clear, is first and foremost to know yourself, and second to put yourself in service to whatever you value most deeply. If you adopt that posture, whatever follows can be incorporated into making yourself a better leader. And it is the purpose of this book to help you do so.

There is a model provided herein-and, similar in nature to the framework I put forth in Crossing the Chasm, this structure allows you to locate yourself on the leadership playing field. Once you know where you are, you will see much more clearly your choices for action. In our strategy practice at TCG Advisors with clients worldwide, we frequently see the opportunity for leaders to use tools like this to support their work.

Like a good golf instructor (which he is, by the way), John Hamm teaches by situation, by principle, and by illustration, all in one. The stories he tells, the lessons he relates, the way he takes you through the details of a performance, the way he helps you think about it once it is over and done-it is all in service to showing you what good leadership looks and feels like, and what bad leadership looks and feels like. But as with coaching in any sport, it comes down to you taking personal ownership of the outcome: you taking the risk and responsibility of action, and you owning both your successes and your shortfalls.

You can treat this book as an easy read, for it is that, but that would be a waste. Treat it instead as a call to a great adventure-your adventure-and use John as a trusted guide. Work with him to develop yourself into a powerful leader in service to something deeply worthwhile. There is no higher calling, nor anything that the world needs more in our time.

Geoffrey Moore

September 2010

Introduction

As a leadership teacher and consultant—and as a scratch golfer—one of my most interesting—and favorite—clients is TaylorMade-adidas Golf, the world's leading manufacturer of performance golf equipment.

If you play golf, or at least follow the PGA Tour, you have probably heard of TaylorMade's Performance Center in Carlsbad, California—it's known as “The Kingdom.”

Each winter, many of the world's finest professional golfers visit The Kingdom, usually with their coaches in tow, ostensibly to get precisely fitted for professional-grade metal-woods, irons, wedges, and putters. And The Kingdom offers the latest, state-of-the-art equipment—high-speed digital cameras, launch monitors, lasers, and computers—to do just that. For that task, it is the best (and certainly the most beautiful) such facility on Earth.

But there is another story to The Kingdom—one that I learned only with insider access to watch and study these PGA and LPGA pros and their coaches in action. And what I learned there is the revelation that led to the writing of this book.

You see, these golfers are the very best in their field—professional, play-for-money, dog-eat-dog competitive golf. They are the sports equivalent of Fortune 500 CEOs. The best in their business. And often, when they arrive at The Kingdom, they are frustrated or perplexed with their recent performance. Something has gone wrong with their game, and it is showing up in their scores. This problem may represent only one or two strokes per round—but at the world-class level at which these athletes play this game, that can be the difference between victory and finishing out of the money. A year or two of these kinds of problems and they will lose their playing privileges on the professional Tour and their livelihood will have disappeared.