How to make yourself more confident

Is there anything you do that wouldn't benefit from having more confidence? Even if showing confidence doesn't make a difference, at least having the option to show it helps. Have you noticed that people with more confidence can't do that much more than people without it? They can't lift heavier weights or solve more difficult problems. The guy at the gym who lifts the heaviest weights probably isn't the most confident person there. Alternatively, you can lift weights all you want -- that alone won't make you more confident. So what does? A friend just wrote me that she didn't…

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You’re always emotional, not only when you’re angry or excited

People often look at someone acting with intense emotions -- like when they're excited, angry, enraged, passionate, etc -- and say that they are "emotional" at times like that. They misunderstand emotions. Understanding emotions is one of the most important parts of self-awareness and therefore leadership of yourself and others. Emotions motivate you. As long as you're awake you feel motivation. Everyone is always emotional all the time. Calmness is an emotion. Just because you aren't running around yelling or losing control doesn't mean you aren't feeling emotions. You could just as well call someone serenely under control and relaxing…

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Social challenges can be harder than technical

When I was younger and studied physics when I thought of the Egyptian pyramids I would wonder at how they overcame the engineering challenges -- how did they get the big rocks to the top, how did they measure the angles accurately enough, and so on. As I got older, worked in larger teams with more intricate teamwork, and led teams my sense of marvel shifted from overcoming engineering challenges to overcoming social challenges. Learning leadership and management while getting the MBA illuminated the challenges on the social side too. The engineering challenges, while big, I imagine I could solve…

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Know your self-talk, lead others

The past few posts talked about using self-talk to lead yourself. Today I'll mention a few things about leading others by influencing their self-talk. To me, influencing someone's self-talk feels easier than changing their beliefs, but the effect is roughly the same. Trying to change other people's beliefs sounds hard, especially if you can't change your own beliefs. It's easier when you realize some simple things about how others have influenced your beliefs. I'll keep it brief because I haven't studied it much, though I remember hearing from friends about it in a class I didn't take in business school…

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Know your self-talk, know yourself, part 2

Knowing your self-talk lets you change how you perceive and influence your world more than almost anything. That knowledge helps you understand and influence how your team members, peers, bosses, and so on perceive their worlds. It's a powerful lever. Your beliefs affect how you perceive your world. Everything you observe gets filtered through your beliefs. If you think Bob is a jerk, you will filter everything you see about him through your beliefs. If you believe you can't do something, like you have a dead-end job and can't do anything about it, or you're no good at meeting people,…

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You can connect with anyone

I had a leadership class at Columbia with a famous professor. He wrote a bestselling book after working as a high-level executive at one of the world's most valuable companies. His class at Columbia was among the school's most popular ones. People knew he taught well and cared about his students but he could be intimidating. You knew to do the work and never slack. Once I spoke to him after class. Since I had kept up with all the readings -- mostly his book -- and participated in class I figured I was in good shape. I just wanted…

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Protected: Starting a leadership school

The project I am starting a school for leadership. I have a business plan and early seed funding. My first goal is to create an online presence. I have started other successful businesses before. The project is driven by the large demand for leaders and lack of supply. The main institutions teaching leadership are business schools, military schools, and corporations (only to their employees). While successful and effective, they focus on areas useful only to large corporations and the military. This leadership school will teach aspects of leadership common to all applications, without focusing on banking, finance, consulting, war, etc.…

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You show me the best leader in a room and I’ll show you the one who works the hardest

Today's post is simple. You show me the best leader in a room and I'll show you the one who works the hardest. Leadership comes from hard work and preparation. You don't just get up and give the "I have a dream" speech. You develop skills and experience over a decade or so. Then you probably don't look forward to giving the speech so much as feel you have to because no one else can. You don't just write the Declaration of Independence. You develop skills and experience over decades, then find yourself in a position where a job needs…

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Coaching highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students: Review

I'm sure I'll continue it with other thoughts soon, but for now I'm wrapping up the series on highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students with a review of the major point from it, particularly on 360-degree feedback reports. First, I commend Columbia for offering coaching to all MBA candidates. When I went there we got the reports and reviewed them overall in class but didn't get personalized coaching. Giving them coaching adds tremendously to understanding the feedback process, how to read the reports, and how to use them to improve their leadership skills. Especially for students who don't choose…

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Coaching highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students: Shortcomings of 360-degree feedback reports

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] In the context of the lessons from coaching Columbia Business School students in leadership, I've mostly written about the value of 360-degree feedback processes and reports and how to use them. Their shortcomings, costs, and problems are mostly obvious, but I'll cover them anyway since I've covered so much about them. I'll include ones that don't apply…

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Coaching highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students: Weaknesses are often strengths misapplied

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Today I'll cover one of the most encouraging perspectives for many students and clients whose reports show they underperform in a few areas. For example, this student's ability to influence appears low (see my earlier post on these charts can help you understand them) ... in both perspectives ... Anybody would say this chart says this person…

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Coaching highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students: foreseeing challenges

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Learning leadership and developing leadership skills isn't like learning history or any other academic subject. Learning leadership and developing leadership skills means learning about yourself and other people, understanding your and their motivations, changing how you view the world, for starters. Well, you can learn to lead without those things, but you'll limit yourself without them. While…

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Coaching highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students: Focus on the client

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Effective coaching means focusing on the client's interests and progress, not the coach's. I like working with clients, especially students where I used to go to school, so it's easy to think about my interests. But I know that in the long term, a client telling me they got out of our interaction everything they wanted and…

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Coaching highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students: Use Feedforward

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] If I talk about coaching, especially in limited times with very talented people, I have to talk about Feedforward. I refer to my previous post on it for a thorough description of it. It's one of the best tools for finding out what about yourself to improve and how. If you don't have access to a 360-degree…

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Coaching highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students: Create accountability for yourself

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Adding accountability to your transformation increases its chances of working and the quality of your work. I hope I've written this idea in many other posts. I say it to nearly every Columbia Business School student I coach. It's a fundamental part of my role with coaching clients. We all know we get done what we're accountable…

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Coaching highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students: find a relevant exercise

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] No matter what you want to improve about yourself, no matter how important the insight of feedback, and no matter how much you can learn from books, ultimately you have to practice to improve meaningfully. Find an exercise I think one of the greatest values a coach can add, especially in a short session, is to give…

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Coaching highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students: figuring out what to start with

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] When your 360-degree feedback report features this chart and you want to start improving something, what do you start with? Keep in mind, you don't need a 360-degree feedback report to have to decide what to work on. Today's post applies to any time you want to pick something to improve yourself. You know from two days…

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Coaching highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students: Personal development skills

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Leaders learn and push themselves to develop personally constantly and consistently. They don't see it as a burden, just something they do. Nor do they feel compelled from outside to do it. They enjoy learning. Nor do they feel like they need to accomplish some goal. They just enjoy doing things better. At least that's what I've…

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Coaching highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students: Improve one thing at a time

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] A lot of students see the dots on the charts in their reports and decide they want to improve a few. In this chart, for example, they'll look at all the dots below the line, think "Uh oh, I'm behind my peers in everything," and decide to work on everything at once, or at least a few…

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INSEAD leadership seminar

When I met Jose Gaztelu, my business school classmate and friend who did the bulk of the organizing for this weekend's INSEAD leadership seminar in Singapore, at the hotel Friday, he asked how many people I thought were signed up. When my flight had taken off that morning from Shanghai it was ten or twelve so I guessed about a dozen. "Thirty-two" So the attendees filled the room -- a great group. They were attentive, asked great questions, and started applying the material before the seminar ended. When I mentioned burpees, they wanted to get me to do a few…

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A sample 360-degree feedback report: qualitative feedback

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Any feedback report has to include qualitative feedback -- that is, free form feedback that describes how the subject performs and how to improve. In my experience the feedback I've seen hasn't been as useful as feedforward. It's been more feedback, which generally means evaluation of an unchangeable u, but feedback can still be useful. In any…

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A sample 360-degree feedback report: more detail

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Yesterday's post covered what for most people are the highlights of a 360-degree review -- charts comparing how your leadership skills compare to others'. Those charts summarize most of the information in a 360-degree feedback report. One should always remember they summarize. They don't present all the information. Sometimes details tell a different story but get lost…

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Leadership lessons from 360-degree feedback charts

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Just the structure of yesterday's charts teaches a lot about leadership. They emerged as main tools for communicating leadership ability and guiding improvement so even if you're never the subject of one, you can still benefit from knowing about them. Let's see a few reasons why. Let's look at one again. The chart breaks leadership into sub-skills…

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A sample 360-degree feedback: Overview charts

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Let's look at part of a sample 360-degree feedback report. Today I'll show the highlights -- the summary of all the questions. Even if you've never had a 360-feedback for yourself, just knowing how they work can help you. Understanding their structure alone can help you figure out how to improve your leadership skills. First I'll explain…

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Coaching highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students: 360-degree feedbacks

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Before going into the details of looking at a 360-degree feedback report, I want to talk about the structure of the 360-degree feedback process and what it tells you about leadership. What is a 360-degree feedback? 360-degree feedbacks are usually done in corporate and bureaucratic environments as review processes, both to help evaluate performance and to help…

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