Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

Blog

How Solid is Your Core?

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Be sure to watch the bonus footage in today’s On-Purpose Minute for a visual analogy about the cost of having a hollow core versus a solid core.

Core Strength is at the Heart of Leadership

Inner strength lies at the core of our being. Your 2-word purpose provides the strongest defense you have when you come under attack. Like any strength, however, it must be nourished and developed or it will dwindle and decay.

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Pre-orders close this Thursday, June 30, 2016. Click here or on the book cover to be one of the first to get it when it is released.

Your core is also the source for going boldly into the world. If you’re frustrated, disheartened, or disappointed, then chances are your core is suffering. Pain is inevitable. The difference between this hurt crushing us in defeat or stirring us to rise to the challenge is our core.

In my upcoming book, Chief Leadership Officer, one of the key messages is personal leadership precedes leadership of others. Who wants to follow a jerk? Leading one’s life requires us to resist the natural gravity of decay. Leadership requires thoughtful upkeep and exercise to avoid becoming weak and rotting. You are the only true caretaker of your core. Others may feed it and some may deplete it, but only you control it.

A solid core is the source of inner strength that enables us to withstand the harsh forces that would come against us. This isn’t to say that fears, doubts, and concerns don’t creep into our lives. They do. The difference is when they do creep in, do they find an unguarded home to invade? Or do you have the presence of your purpose in the heart of your heart to resist the assault of your soul?

Be On-Purpose!

Kevin

Leaders: How Is Your View of People?

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In Chief Leadership Officer, you’ll be introduced to “The Complete Competence Model” which is the next generation of “The 3 Views of People” model shared in this On-Purpose Business Minute.

Click on the image to pre-order Chief Leadership Officer until June 30, 2016 and get bonus rewards.
Click on the image to pre-order Chief Leadership Officer until June 30, 2016 and get bonus rewards.

How Is Your View of People?

Your response reveals your preferred place for leading. It tends to reveal how you view others as being competent. Until we learn otherwise, many who lead teams will project their preferred perspective onto others. It is a subtle form of, Why can’t they be more like me? Setting yourself as the standard sets everyone else up to fail which undermines the business performance.

Each person is unique and can bring a measure of unique contribution to even the most routine of work.

For example, On-Purpose Partners ships books and products from the Winter Park, FL Post Office branch. At the counter is a postal clerk named James. He resembles the comedian Joe Piscopo. James is literally a stand-up clerk offering ongoing entertaining commentary and laughter all day long. He brings out the best in his peer counter clerks as the banter between them all keeps things moving along. By the way, when the other clerks have a problem it is James they turn to. He knows his post office stuff. Many a postmaster might try to make James conform to a more “professional” decorum. Instead, he makes the wait tolerable and the service more than acceptable.

There are 3 Views of People:

  1. Expert — aspires to technical proficiency and sees the world through tasks to be done
  2. Manager — organizes teams of people and sees the world through projects
  3. Leader — sets culture and sees the world through results

Purpose informs all three points of view. This is one of the many reasons why The On-Purpose Principle is the essential basis for unifying people.

Few of us fully reside in a single view. Rather we’re a blend of all. Knowing your dominant preference, however, provides insights to job satisfaction, performance, and even future advancement. 

This speaks to the nature of fit. As a business advisor for over 3 decades, I’ve come across all kinds of challenges in organizations. One of the best disguised is this problem of poor fit between a person’s view of people and their role and responsibilities on the job. It is an often overlooked dimension that can create disasters or delights.

Years ago when I worked at a company, I was part of the hiring process for a property manager. When I asked this woman what she thought was her weakness she bluntly stated, “I don’t like people.” I shared my concerns with the hiring manager who hired her anyway. She was a good property manager (technical), but wreaked havoc in the office relationships and with tenants (manager). She so fouled the workplace that no one wanted to work with or for her (leadership). Even vendors complained.

The Complete Competency Model isn’t just a makeover of the Peter Principle which states that people eventually rise to their highest level of incompetency. People view may be one of the underlying causes of poor job performance and fit.

When there’s good alignment or fit between the person and the work, people view melts away and can often be taken for granted. Like good health, when we have it we’re prone to forget about it. But once we’re sick or injured we so appreciate what we used to have.

After watching this On-Purpose Business Minute, assess your people view with your job fit. What you discover about yourself could be very enlightening and rewarding to your long-term health, job satisfaction, and earning capacity. Coming to terms with this, however, may be another matter all together.

Having worked with business leaders and CEOs over my career, I’ve seen firsthand the price that is paid by a person and an organization when there is a clash of people view and the requirements of a job. Because my work is most often in the C-Suite, I’m especially alarmed when I find a “leader” who is really put off or bothered by people. They may be respected experts in their field, but they have little to no aptitude for leading and managing. That’s fine, but why have them lead? (When I raise this matter, it often gets tenderly complicated for me, the business advisor, when the misfit is the managing director, owner, or CEO of the enterprise. In some cases, however, this brings a sense of relief for the person because they better understand who they are and we can develop a plan of improvement or a workaround.)

On the other hand, the best leaders love and care for people, are effective at managing, and have mastered tasks sufficiently to have paid their dues and risen through the ranks to have the respect of their reports. Ultimately, it is their people skills that create the separation from good to great leadership.

True leaders are culture creators by design, not by default. Typically, they’re not the go-to expert in various fields, disciplines, or technologies. Their currency comes in denominations of their presence, decisions, manner, and tone. They get people working together. Leaders press the flesh and are visible. This isn’t out of ceremonial duty, but from a genuine love and respect for the people who follow their lead. Leaders are often reflective and thoughtful, and they know how to set healthy boundaries to avoid burnout and bitterness for others and themselves.

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Chief Leadership Officer will rock your leadership perspective for good! Click the cover to learn more.

Do yourself a favor and take today’s message to heart. Where are you? Where would you like to be? If you need help creating your culture so it is on-purpose, then email us to consider some On-Purpose Executive or Personal Coaching. 

What Is Personal Leadership?

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Leadership is a broad term that, like beauty, is often described as “being in the eye of the beholder.” Ask ten people to define leadership and you’ll likely get ten facets of this brilliant diamond. Most can agree that leadership involves other people but that’s an incomplete understanding.

Whereas leadership involves working with others, personal leadership is about working with yourself. You can’t delegate this responsibility nor should you miss this opportunity to better your body, mind, and spirit. Here is the only place in the world where you possess a significant measure of control through choice. The power of choosing can be exercised and strengthened or avoided and diminished.  

Ask yourself the following personal leadership questions:

  • What am I feeding my mind, my body, my heart, and my spirit to be a better person?
  • Am I reading books, articles, blog posts, and other content that inspire me?
  • Who in my life uplifts and calls upon me to rise above my problems?
  • Am I investing my time in healthy exercise, eating, and behaviors?
  • Do I have a plan to learn something new in the next 30 days … or the next year?
  • What is one thing I can start doing today to make my life better?

Self-care is not selfish; it is essential. The more you develop as a person, the more others are willing to follow your lead. The better you know yourself, the stronger your leadership potential will increase. In other words, as you win in your inner life, then your outer life is likely to thrive.

CLO Personal Leadership
Pre-Order Chief Leadership Officer by June 30, 2016 by clicking the image above.

In this On-Purpose Minute, personal leadership is defined as “The proactive process of meaningfully aligning and integrating your life around what matters most.” As this On-Purpose Minute briefly explains, there’s more here than meets the eye. You hold the key to the ignition to start the process. Be thoughtful and intentional about exploring possibilities to think about how best to align and integrate your decisions to produce alignment and integration about what truly counts.

Here’s where a personal 2-word purpose statement pays dividends. When you know your purpose, you have a personal, universally applicable point of reference for alignment and integration. Life becomes simpler because you’re aware of who you are, and you have a growing appreciation for what’s right for you. 

The sooner you decide to be the leader of your life, the better off we all are. That, by the way, is true prosperity—everyone profits.

Personal Leadership involves the person you see in the mirror. Most of us will readily admit we have different “voices” within us competing for our “best” interest. No one escapes temptation. The following expressions offer insightful evidence of our inner demons of discontent and the desire for a more integrated life:

  • “I have my own demons to battle,” a la Flip Wilson‘s famous line, “The Devil made me do it.”
  • “I must not be in my right mind.”
  • “I’m torn. My head says one thing, my heart another.”
  • “I need some time to get my head together.”
  • “I can’t seem to get my act together.”
  • “Why am I so easily distracted?”

Get started leading your life right now! Not tomorrow. Not next week. Right now!

Not sure where to start? Write down what you want. The Discovery Guide can help you sort it out simply, quickly, and meaningfully. Download the free preview with instructions and the forms you need to take the next step toward being an on-purpose person in creation, being the Chief Leadership Officer of your life!CLO hard book cover open

Pre-Order Chief Leadership Officer today!

Download the Opening Chapters here.

 

CLO: When the Company & People Lead Alike

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In 1994, I sat in the corporate headquarters lobby of Tupperware in Kissimmee, FL waiting to see my appointment. On the table was a pamphlet that touched on a bit of the history of Tupperware.

Brownie Wise was the woman who took Earl Tupper’s products from the retail hardware store shelves (where it wasn’t selling) to the direct sales party plan model of business. She built an empire that today spans over 100 countries and over $2 billion in annual income.

At that point The On-Purpose Person was relatively newly released from 1992. The On-Purpose Business Person was in development stages. I had created The On-Purpose Principle years before either book was written. I used this guiding principle to help my client companies create healthy, sustainable growth that allowed them to do right by the business and people.

Brownie Wise QuoteWithin the pamphlet the following quote jumped off the page! Brownie Wise said, “If you want to build the business, build the people.” What a brilliantly simple way of keeping the priorities straight for leading a business. Brownie’s words breathed readily understood life into The On-Purpose Principle.

Her quote opens Chapter 8 of The On-Purpose Business Person. Clients hear me say it often. We’re all so susceptible to getting lost in the operational and financial details of running a business that we forget that without people to serve and to be served the business has no sustainable reason for existing.

As prior blogs posts have stated, the Chief Leadership Officer is charged with two primary responsibilities:

These simple, yet powerful two sides of the same coin are inextricably essential to the success of the enterprise. A Chief Leadership Officer can not achieve one without the other for the organization to be a true success. A business can be a leader in its chosen field, but if it burns and churns people, it will not sustain its leadership position. On the other hand, a business does need a myriad of disciplines and activities to integrate strategically and structurally into a productive whole.

This duality of positioning is a bit like the age old question, “Which came first? The chicken or the egg?” Except in their instance we know beyond a doubt that the people come first.

CLOs welcome this duality of leadership because they understand that one without the other inevitably creates a false positive success. Peter Drucker said, “The executive who works at making strengths productive–his own as well as those of others–works at making organizational performance compatible with personal achievement.”

While CLO may seem similar to CEO, they are only as similar as your current smartphone is to the flip phone you had a decade ago. It has some similar features and functions but it is so much more — a new category of leadership available to all.

Preorder Chief Leadership Officer

CLO: People as Leaders

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Will you rise to the challenge?

The Chief Leadership Officer is charged with two primary responsibilities:

In both responsibilities the role begins with positioning.

Today, let’s explore the second of these two charges. Positioning people to lead involves two aspects of their:

  • Life
  • Job

The prevailing “wisdom” of the Industrial Revolution was to compartmentalize your life and work. Keeping them separated reflected this era of efficiency and specialization of work. In essence, Corporate America was built on this notion. What a convenient rationale for the dehumanization of people as units of the production process. Think about it. Where do you think the term “human resources” came from? It was good for business to treat people badly.

Such poor treatment of people eventually gave rise to Labor Unions and strikes to counteract the negative effects of man’s inhumanity to man. Working conditions may have improved, but the dehumanization simply went underground and emerged whitewashed as “human resources departments,” a pejorative, yet accurate term if you really think about it.

For example, today human resources departments take great pride in the snake oil notion of work-life balance. This notion is simply the modern beat of the work-life separation song sung since the original pace of Taylor’s time motion studies. There’s cover when the company can shift the burden of blame or responsibility onto the workers for achieving work-life balance.

“We’re doing our part offering our Work-Life Balance Program,” says the well intended, yet misguided HR professional. In fact, they’re an unwitting accomplice to an archaic CEO-led system built upon people as things not souls.

Look around! Such objectification of life legitimizes the distancing of our thinking to the consequences of our behaviors and decisions. “In the name of business,” becomes a sacred altar for human sacrifice. We’re convinced our personal sacrifice on the job is a necessary evil for our resume building and career promotions–all in the name of doing it for our family or some other outside cause. Mastery of winning within a dysfunctional system has too often meant that we’ve lost our true selves in the process–a high price for a “cost of living” pay raise.

Have you read Gallup’s Report on the sorry state of Employee Engagement? Over two-thirds of employees are disengaged in their work. Of course they are. For generations, we’ve been schooled to disengage and deny our heart’s desire as frivolity. Denial of our destiny leaves us burned out and bummed out consuming a dulling drug of our choice ranging from chocolates to wines to entertainment to illegal substances. Our first-world problems will only get worse until we decide to get better.

Thanks to Chief Leadership Officer, the book and the CLO™ leadership style along with On-Purpose®, let’s close this experiment in history. Chief Leadership Officer is an upbeat awakening to those who feel called to lead a business, a department, a team, or even a family. The On-Purpose Person and My On-Purpose Folder are two simple, yet powerful resources for humans to become better leaders of their lives.

People who are more successful at leading their lives bring far less baggage, confusion, and disruption into the workplace. They’re also far more likely to be trusted and respected by their peers so they emerge as leaders with or without the formal title. The carry authority because they’re authentic.

On-the-job skills or technical training is the easy part! Mentoring toward leadership is difficult because few of us have had mentors or true leaders worth following. We’ve become such a specialized society that few can see the forest and the trees with appropriately accurate clarity.

Why do companies now want employee engagement? The power of the whole person — body, mind, and spirit — engaged in the purpose of the organization can move mountains. Treating people rightly is a return to our humanity. And it is good for business. It always has but it is back in fashion.

We’re not wired to live our lives in such neat, tidy boxes of personal indifference. Our lives matter. We want to make a positive contribution. The inherent value of people is the next frontier of business. CLOs, not CEOs, will lead us there in the decades to come.

CLO: Positioning the Business to Lead

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Pre-order Chief Leadership Officer

The Chief Leadership Officer is charged with two primary responsibilities:

  • Positioning the business to lead in its chosen field
  • Positioning people to lead in their lives and work

In both responsibilities the role begins with positioning.

Today, let’s explore the first of these two charges. Positioning strategy is an essential duty for the CLO. If the organization is not in the position to do business, then it won’t remain in business. The CLO needs to have the business acumen and people savvy to place the business in an opportunity to win at its game.

The term, “chosen field” applies to businesses large and small, even teams or departments. CLO-led top performers have a chosen field, a place where he or she can do more of what you do best more profitably. For businesses, there are many dimensions and options for deciding this. As this video offers, there’s the strategic aspects of the heart, head, hands, and honor or purpose, vision, mission, and values respectively. Think of it as a place where one is making a mark, a position of ownership and top of mind dominance for its selected customers.

Earning such an esteemed position in the hearts and minds of customers demands every bit of hustle, heart, thinking, soul, and sweat available. Decide on your chosen field, even if it is just an aspiration today. It will focus and align every aspect of your business.

For example, in most urban areas there are probably 30 pizza or Italian restaurants within a 5-mile radius of your work or home. How does one stand out from the other? This often translates into a tagline for customers but it is rooted in The On-Purpose Business Plan. For example

  • The best cannoli (or tiramisu) this side of Italy
  • Fresh family cooked Italian for your family
  • Deep dish pizza in the Deep South

Positioning your business to be a leader in the chosen field will demand every skill and talent you have. It will also be rewarding by every measure.

Chief Leadership Officer: The Story Line

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Say Hello to CLO

CLO Business DifferentlyChief Leadership Officer is a fast-reading narrative of a sage 100-year-old great-grandfather and his unsettled Millennial great-grandchild, the CEO of a 5-year-old tech firm. Together they launch a hero’s journey to discover a better way to lead in business. First, they must discover the precepts, promise, and purpose of a new manner and mindset for being in business. Chief Leadership Officer, as a person’s title, becomes the embodiment of their work and wraps around the role of a CEO for a more satisfying profit-making venture.

Preorder this game-changing book here: www.CLOnow.com

Read the opening chapters here. CLOSampleChapters

 

Chapter 1+ of Chief Leadership Officer

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CLO hard book cover openChief Leadership Officer promises to be a most positive organizational development and business leadership disruptor. This message and method of leadership anticipates where business is headed and where you want to be regardless of your position in the company.  Below, dig into the Prologue and Chapter 1.

Prologue

Step into the future. You’re running or maybe starting a business. Aside from the normal challenges and opportunities of business ownership and development, you’re as unsettled as you are excited.

Aware of your situation, a business colleague introduces you to the first-known Chief Leadership Officer. A conversation ensues. Questions are asked and answered. A story centuries in the making is told. A relationship is built. An informed decision needs to be made:

Will you be a Chief Leadership Officer?

Chapter 1

Why Chief Leadership Officer?

The task of the executive is not to change human beings. Rather, as the Bible tells us in the parable of talents, the task is to multiply the performance capacity of the whole by putting to use whatever strength, whatever health, whatever aspiration there is in individuals.

Peter F. Drucker

The Effective Executive

1967

“Being a Chief Executive Officer is wrong for my business … and wrong for me!”

I remember the exact moment I first put voice to this proclamation. It was at the 100th birthday celebration of Pops, my great-grandfather. At the time I was twenty-five. I couldn’t tell you why being a CEO felt antiquated and dysfunctional for my business and me. It just did.

There was something beyond my youth leaving a bad taste in my mouth for saying I was an “executive,” as in Chief Executive Officer. Disdain had slowly welled inside me for what the position and my employees were requiring, dare I say, expecting of me. My CEO trajectory was rich with opportunity but seemingly marred with compromise to what I most treasured in my life and person. At some level, it creeped me out to realize who I was becoming as the CEO.

Today, at thirty-five, I can and will tell you why I am a Chief Leadership Officer, and how I got to this title. It took two years of investigation to psych out this more meaningful and satisfying way of being in life and in business. Now I’ve lived it for eight years. The precepts I’ll share are just that—guidelines, not directives or a formula. You’ll need to decide what’s right for you.

Each and every business is different. Yet, there are commonalities and markers indicative of an organization led by a CLO, just as there are for CEO-led businesses.

I’m often asked, “What’s the difference between a CEO and a CLO?”

Let’s be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong or evil with a CEO-run business. In fact, many CEO-run businesses exhibit characteristics of CEO-led companies. This traditional system and style of management has been around for over a century. That’s both its advantage and its disadvantage. It was tried and true in its day, but, for a variety of reasons, the sun is setting on that day.

The fundamental difference is in orientation. CEOs manage and “execute” a company by driving its people to make a profit for shareholders. CLOs call upon people to be leaders and profit makers—serving the greater good of stakeholders. As Robert Frost might say, “And that has made all the difference.”

A Chief Leadership Officer commits to meaningfully and profitably integrating the following two broad missions:

  1. Position people to be leaders in their lives and work
  2. Position the business to lead in its chosen field

A CLO has a decidedly different posture from a CEO. A CLO has the head for profit of a business, the heart for service of a not-for-profit organization, the fortitude for commitment of the military, and the moral imperative of the church. The charge for “everyone profits” calls for mastery of management and leadership to integrate and produce such an abundantly positive outcome.

My story and the CLO precepts are meant to open your eyes, literally and figuratively, to an alternative way of leading an organization. So regardless of whether you currently run a business or aspire to lead one, you’ll have ample grist for the mental mill to grind as you decide if you want to be a person who runs or leads.

I never set out to be a business iconoclast. I knew there had to be a healthier, more whole way than operating as a CEO. I just wanted to benefit others and care for myself by doing right and by doing good while producing a fair financial profit.

In retrospect, I chose wisely. In the early days, I was a forerunner of a CLO. Now I am one of many CLOs. Individually and collectively, we’re becoming known as men and women who are a consistent force for good.

Perhaps you’ll want to join us?

How did this CLO approach come about? Remarkably, it was Pops, my then 100-year-old great-grandfather who guided me. During the last two years of his life he cajoled and coached me to blaze a trail into the frontier of leadership.