The Quintessential Leader

Please take some some time to read the Quintessential Leadership article recommendations for the week of May 10, 2013 that are listed below.

In Josh Bersin’s article, he asks the valid and relevant question of whether the traditional – and unproductive and archaic – annual performance appraisal system that most organizations still use should be replaced with a different system. The traditional performance appraisal system is tied to monetary raises and is a once-a-year-event where team members hear – or read – what their supervisor liked and didn’t like about their past year’s job performances. Usually, the only outcome of this system is frustration because this is the first time team members are hearing about things they did that didn’t work, needed to change, or needed to improve. 

Lack of communication, which I believe is an intrinsic problem in all organizations, is inherent in this “hammer-over-the-head” method of evaluating team members. It does not produce positive results and often leads to attrition among the most gifted and talented team members an organization has. In my eBook, Building Teams for Performance, I give a detailed “what-it-looks-like-in-practice” guide to using performance evaluation systems the way that Josh Bersin correctly concludes they should be used.

Todd Smith gives a quintessential leadership trait in “Making Your Weaknesses Relevant,” by challenging all of us, as quintessential leaders, not to make excuses for our weaknesses – which we all have – but to face them and change them.

Does it ever seem like you’re in over your head? As quintessential leaders, we will have times that we are in over our heads, but Mike Myatt gives some very practical advice about how to be in over our heads without drowning.

In my post, “Quintessential Leadership News for Week Ending 3-15-13,” I challenged each of us, as quintessential leaders, to look into mirrors, not through windows as we examine ourselves and our path as quintessential leaders to make sure there’s a total match-up between what we say and what we do and are. John Baldoni offers an excellent followup to that post with this article.

In Michael McKinney’s article, Better Decision Making, he discusses the quintessential leadership balance between facts and feelings as being a key determinant in the quality of our decision-making. Feelings and emotions have their place, but they should never be the engine that drives us because they are transient and unreliable. Decisions made using feelings and emotions as the primary driving force often leave us in a worse position than if we had done nothing at all.

The Quintessential Leader blog routinely looks at why unquintessential leadership makes organizations dysfunctional. John Bossong rejoins this discussion with his article that looks at how we can identify unquintessential leadership through the signs of an unhealthy organizational culture.

The last article recommendation this week, written by Kristina Lacida, highlights, as “The Mysteries of Quintessential Leadership Revealed” discusses in detail, the differences between being a “boss” and being a “leader.” 

I hope all of us have had productive, forward-looking and forward-moving quintessential leadership weeks. I’m sure we’ve had our challenges, our missteps, and our failures. But each of those give us an opportunity to learn and to grow.

And, when it’s all said and done, we get back up and we recommit to our goal, our purpose, one step, one choice, one decision at a time. This, my friends, is a marathon, not a sprint.

May the distance we cover between now and the next time we get together be better in every way than the distance we’ve covered already.