Radical innovation is going to be a critical component in a leader’s toolkit in the future, and this does not mean that you “try to innovate” over a week-end brainstorming retreat. True innovation happens by disrupting the current environment, challenging old assumptions and even turning the culture upside down so that you can take a creative idea, turn it into a product or service and successfully move it to the marketplace.Each day I meet business leaders, and one of the first questions I ask is “On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being super sticky, how stuck are you?” Most people laugh, and they usually respond by saying “I’m a 20 or a 25!” So, when you are stuck, you have to break up the pattern . . . turn a table upside down and figure out a way to still use the table as an eating surface, roll out of bed on the other side, shave with the hand you don’t normally use . . . do something to be disruptive. This is the same for companies. What would happen if you do the opposite of what you’ve always done? What would you do if you totally destroyed your most profitable item and had to start from scratch? Or, how would an artist, physician or scientist suggest that you change your products or services?

When I coach business leaders on the topic of innovation, we usually start with the following questions.

What have you done in the last year to get engaged with your imagination and the imagination of others?

Being stuck in a rut won’t get you very far when it comes to innovation. Get out there and get your brain turbo-charged with creativity. Art houses, skateboarding events, movies, food, music and travel can serve as catalysts to get you thinking more creatively.

What is the pain being experienced in the marketplace?

People usually buy to address a pain or to solve a problem. Don’t assume you know what pains people are feeling. Ask your clients and perform as many interviews and surveys as possible to discover repeating patterns of struggle.

What are people searching for online?

By using a keyword suggestion tool such as http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com, you can discover current, relevant and popular keywords which can help you consider where to go next in the marketplace. If people are searching for it, that means they will most probably buy it.

What tasks can be achieved more efficiently and effectively in business?

Business leaders are constantly asking “What can we do now to improve our efficiency and be more productive right now?” If your product or service can help answer this question through your next product or service, you can help fill the productivity void.

If you were to take your business and merge it with a business that is completely different than your own, what products and services would emerge?

If you are a financial consultant, and you merge your business with a physician, what products or services would you develop? If you are an ice cream shop owner, and you married your business with a law firm, what products and services would you design? While these questions may seem far-fetched, they can stretch your mind into new territory and right into a new idea for your business.

What are the political pundits arguing about?

You only need to turn on CNN or Fox News for one hour a day to learn what the big debates are around the world. Debate creates a craving for a solution, and your next big idea might just be the answer to the current great debate.

What seems to be constantly breaking, and how can you fix it?

People are sick and tired of complexity and things not working. Broken technology gets in our way and sucks up our energy, time and resources. People will buy a new product or service that if they know it’s going to work and if their buying experience is hassle free.

Who are the most creative people you know?

When great minds mix together, the perfect innovation storm happens. Look closely at your network, and bring together the smartest, most wildly creative people you know for a few hours of fun discussion about the next big, cool opportunity.

If you could change the world with the resources you have in your life (including people, knowledge, money and time), what product or service would you develop?

This is a question that most people hedge on by saying “Well, my resources are really limited.” That is just ridiculous. Some of the best ideas have been born by people with no money, sitting in a garage with a friend and a $300.00 Best Buy computer. Sit down with a few friends, and answer this question and by all means, don’t censor yourself. Every idea is fodder for discussion.

Who is going out of business and why?

Doors to businesses are closing right and left, and the question is “Why?” Something obviously went wrong, or plans were changed, or something in the global economy is going awry. Get out there and find out what shifts are happening in business. Your next product or service may just help business owners keep their doors open.

If you like these questions, I encourage you to join us for our upcoming teleclass in July:  The Future of Business from the Minds of Ten Top Professionals. 

Teleclass: EDGE: A Leadership Story: The Future of Business From the Minds of Ten Top Professionals

Date: Monday, July 14

Time: 7:00 P.M. Eastern

What happens when you get ten top professionals on a call together to discuss the future of business and leadership? You walk away inspired to change the way you think, live and operate in business. Join Bea Fields as she shares this open call with her partners from EDGE: A Leadership Story for a call you don’t want to miss. Fields will be joined by Michael Gerber, Michael Port, Corey Blake, Dave Buck, Carol Dickson-Carr, Roger Dewitt, Eva Silva-Travers, Kimberly George, and Roger Dewitt. Each professional will be asked a question they have never been asked before about the future of business, and you don’t want to miss their answers. This is BIG!

Register Here Today

Listed with Conference Call University

About the Presenters:

Bea Fields, Co-Author: EDGE! A Leadership Story

Bea Fields is the President of Bea Fields Companies, Inc. and the Founder of Five Star Leader Coaching and Training, a leadership consulting firm currently serving over 800 clients world-wide.

Her latest book, co-authored with Scott Wilder, Jim Bunch and Rob Newbold, Millennial Leaders: Success Stories From Today’s Most Brilliant Generation Y Leaders is now on sale through Barnes & Noble and Amazon. The new book explores and analyzes Generation Y - the young adults currently between the ages of 18 and 30 - from a socio-economic standpoint. The book highlights 25 members of this generation who have already made a name for themselves, and provides crucial insights for business and political leaders seeking to tap into this demographic. Along with Corey Blake and Eva Silva Travers, Fields is also the author of Edge: A Leadership Story (Writers of the Round Table Press: May: 2008). http://BeaFields.com

Corey Blake, Co-Author: EDGE! A Leadership Story

With more than a dozen national commercial campaigns including Mountain Dew, Pepsi, McDonalds, Wrigley’s, Hasbro, and Mitsubishi under his belt and appearances on popular T.V. shows like The Shield, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Diagnosis Murder, VIP, and Fastlane, Corey Blake put an end to his lucrative commercial and television acting career to pursue his passion for writing. In 2000, he founded Elevation 9000 Films and went on to spearhead the original Elevation 9000 Film Lab that eventually inspired the motion picture production company LA Film Lab Entertainment and Writers of the Round Table Inc. http://WritersoftheRoundTable.com

Eva Silva Travers, Co-Author: EDGE! A Leadership Story

Eva Silva Travers holds an Associate of Arts Degree in Radio and Television and a Bachelor of Arts in Literature and Writing Studies. With roots in both print and broadcast media, Eva is a writer with a broad scope of experience. In the corporate world, she has enjoyed success as a writer, producer and digital editor for several production companies and as a radio newscaster/announcer. Her real passion, though, thrives in the creative world. Eva has been involved with the creation of numerous scripts, screenplays and treatments for major production companies and is co-author of Edge! A Leadership Story with Bea Fields and Corey Blake. She devotes most of her energy to growing the Creative Department for Writers of the Round Table, both as a writer and a project manager. Prior to finding “The Table”, Eva sold a screenplay to internationally recognized Graz Entertainment after winning a Student Emmy Award for a documentary on teenage alcoholism while in college. In addition, she speaks and facilitates workshops in schools and public forums on the creation of engaging characters and successful manuscripts. She is an active member of the Los Angeles Writers Group. http://WritersoftheRoundTable.com

Michael Gerber, Author of The E-Myth Books

Michael Gerber has focused his career on inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs with his unique solutions to small business growth, effectiveness, and efficiency. He has established his revolutionary perspective as the gold standard for small business development, becoming what Inc. Magazine called “the world’s #1 small business guru” and one of Business Week’s bestselling authors of the past decades. Michael is the author of seven E-Myth books, including The E-Myth Revisited, which has sold more than three million copies worldwide, making it the most successful small business guide ever written. In 1977, he founded E-Myth Worldwide®, a business that has coached, trained, and educated over 60,000 small business clients in 145 countries. Now 70 years young, Michael Gerber lives with his wife, Luz Delia, in Petaluma, California, where they are intentionally and joyously pursuing their shared vision for transforming the world one small business owner at a time through their most recent venture, “In the Dreaming Room.” http://inthedreamingroom.com/

Michael Port, Author of Book Yourself Solid and Beyond Booked Solid

Michael Port Called a “marketing guru” by the Wall Street Journal, Michael Port, has lectured, trained, inspired, and provided coaching and consulting services to over 20,000 business owners in the last two years alone. As a speaker, he has headlined events with leaders like Brian Tracy and Tony Robbins. Michael is the author of the national bestselling Book Yourself Solid, The Fastest, Easiest and Most Reliable System For Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even If You Hate Marketing And Selling and the soon to be released Beyond Booked Solid: Now, Build a Bigger, Better Business By Leveraging the Power of People and Processes to Make More Money While Working Less. http://www.bookyourselfsolid.com

Andy Wibbels, Author of Blogwild!

Andy Wibbels is an award-winning blogger and author of the book Blogwild! A Guide for Small Business Blogging . He has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Entrepreneur and other media as a recognized expert in blogging and related technologies. Andy has helped businesses all over the world leverage new media to build visibility and increase sales. Andy Wibbels is an award-winning blogger and author of the book Blogwild! A Guide for Small Business Blogging . He has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Entrepreneur and other media as a recognized expert in blogging and related technologies. Andy has helped businesses all over the world leverage new media to build visibility and increase sales. http://andywibbels.com

Dave Buck, CEO of CoachVille.com.

Dave Buck MCC, MBA is the CEO of CoachVille, the largest and fastest growing business and personal coaching organization in the world. The CoachVille vision is to unleash the greatness in all people everywhere through coaching. He worked with Thomas Leonard to found CoachVille in 2001 and has delivered coach training programs to thousands of coaches.

Dave’s coaching career is diverse. He began coaching as the assistant coach for the Seton Hall University Men’s Soccer Team in 1995 and coached for 10 seasons. He began life coaching in 1997 and over the last 9 years has coached close to 1,000 individuals. Dave is a Master Certified Coach (MCC) with the International Coach Federation.

Dave has revolutionized the coaching profession by creating Pattern Language Coaching™ – a coaching method that dramatically reduces the time required to become a masterful coach.

In 2004 Dave was awarded the first annual International Coach Federation (ICF) Peace Maker award for bringing CoachVille and the ICF together.

Dave taught an MBA program for the Seton Hall Stillman School of Business called “The Joy of Business”, based on the 28 Principles of Attraction by Thomas Leonard. http://www.CoachVille.com

Kim George, Author of Coaching Into Greatness

Kim George is the author of Coaching Into Greatness: 4 Steps to Success in Business and Life, published by Wiley & Sons. The book introduces Kim’s groundbreaking work around the concept of AQ, Abundance IntelligenceT, and how people can eliminate the barriers that keep them from doing what they can do.

Kim is the Founder and CEO of The AQ Institute, a coaching, consulting and training community focused on bringing Abundance IntelligenceT to the world. www.AQInstitute.com

Carol Dickson-Carr, CEO of Power-Ed Solutions and Managing Personal Resources

Carol Dickson-Carr is a productivity coach for entrepreneurial spirits and helps them make money using their creativity as she does in her own business. She has taught in community and business colleges, at the university level, and in private consultations to provide both academic knowledge and practical strategies for creating a fulfilling life.

Other areas of her expertise include: productivity, creativity, communication skills, audio production, time management, and self-discovery through personal assessment tools–particularly the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Carol is also the creator of the interview audio series, Master Your Time and Live Your Dreams: Conversations with Coaches and Creatives Who Get It Done! and is also co- author to the book, A Guide to Getting It: Purpose & Passion. http://power-edsolutionsinc.com
http://www.managingpersonalresources.com

Roger DeWitt, CEO of Coaching NYC, Inc.

As a Business and Life Coach, Roger DeWitt comes to the coaching table with many years of business experience both as an entrepreneur and in organizations and over 20 years of experience as a successful and working actor. Approximately 50% of Roger’s clients are business and community leaders and professionals from a variety of backgrounds and 50% are working performers and creative professionals. His expertise in presentation skills and voice combined with his business savvy make Roger an exceptional marketing, prospecting and sales coach. His mix of talents provides his clients with a very unique edge in all aspects of business and life…from sales to business development to interpersonal communication. He finds that he is particularly adept at helping the “professionally creative” start and run their own thriving business by harnessing the power of their natural creativity and building both personal and business confidence in the process.

In addition to his coaching business, Roger has been and continues to live his second passion of being an actor. He has been seen on television, film and the Broadway stage. Around the country on tour and on Broadway, Roger has been seen in such shows as The Phantom of the Opera, Jekyll and Hyde, Ragtime, The Woman in White and on TV in shows like The Snorks, The Jetsons, Law and Order and Rescue Me.

Roger has a BA in psychology from Loyola Marymount University and is a Certified Graduate of Coach University. He holds the designation of Associate Certified Coach (ACC) with the International Coach Federation.

http://coachingnyc.com/

Register Here Today

You’ll see from a few posts ago that we were having major issues with our online shopping cart. Our design division director was working hard to learn what he needed to learn to create a working shopping cart that enforced our brand. Try as he did, programming is not his focus by profession. He is a good programmer, but his heart lies in design. Persistent and wanting to get it right, he continued to bang his head against the wall, going round and round to solve problems that kept popping up. When it began affecting our clients, we had to stop playing around and resolve the issue. A little bit of investigating opened our eyes to the variety of shopping cart software available on the market. We solved all of our problems in one fell swoop and even added several features we had not considered. And, to boot, it was highly cost effective. Here we were so blinded by trying to get it right, that we failed to just raise our heads high enough to look around and realize that there were other companies out there completely devoted to solving our problem. How funny that we were being stubborn and trying to figure it out ourselves. Sometimes, leadership is the ability to pick your head out of the trench and look for an alternative solution.

The buck stops with the leader. Ultimately, they are accountable for the performance of the entire system.  When something is not working, people often make excuses or  avoid taking responsibility and just try to push through, typically leading to further delays in productivity and to results. This is not a luxury the leader has. So to maintain the integrity of the system, a leader often has to point out the company’s standards that are not being met and enforce a solution, or at least motivate another leader within the system to generate a solution and be accountable to the results. When a system is in overwhelm, standards often tend to decline rather quickly as people rush through their processes, and it is imperative that the leader step in, assist with solving the overwhelm and then reset the standards and a new course of action. Recognizing that standards are dropping and engaging staff in the conversation about solutions happens from the top down.

Where do you set your standards?

How do you hold your team accountable?

Do you step in when you see standards not being upheld?

What is your process to resolve such an issue?

Teleclass: EDGE: A Leadership Story: The Future of Business From the Minds of Ten Top Professionals

Date: Monday, July 14

Time: 7:00 P.M. Eastern

What happens when you get ten top professionals on a call together to discuss the future of business and leadership? You walk away inspired to change the way you think, live and operate in business. Join Bea Fields as she shares this open call with her partners from EDGE: A Leadership Story for a call you don’t want to miss. Fields will be joined by Michael Gerber, Michael Port, Corey Blake, Dave Buck, Carol Dickson-Carr, Eva Silva-Travers, Kimberly George, and Roger Dewitt. Each professional will be asked a question they have never been asked before about the future of business, and you don’t want to miss their answers. This is BIG!

Register Here Today

Listed with Conference Call University 

About the Presenters:

Bea Fields, Co-Author: EDGE! A Leadership Story

Bea Fields is the President of Bea Fields Companies, Inc. and the Founder of Five Star Leader Coaching and Training, a leadership consulting firm currently serving over 800 clients world-wide.

Her latest book, co-authored with Scott Wilder, Jim Bunch and Rob Newbold, Millennial Leaders: Success Stories From Today’s Most Brilliant Generation Y Leaders is now on sale through Barnes & Noble and Amazon. The new book explores and analyzes Generation Y - the young adults currently between the ages of 18 and 30 - from a socio-economic standpoint. The book highlights 25 members of this generation who have already made a name for themselves, and provides crucial insights for business and political leaders seeking to tap into this demographic. Along with Corey Blake and Eva Silva Travers, Fields is also the author of Edge: A Leadership Story (Writers of the Round Table Press: May: 2008). http://BeaFields.com

Corey Blake, Co-Author: EDGE! A Leadership Story

With more than a dozen national commercial campaigns including Mountain Dew, Pepsi, McDonalds, Wrigley’s, Hasbro, and Mitsubishi under his belt and appearances on popular T.V. shows like The Shield, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Diagnosis Murder, VIP, and Fastlane, Corey Blake put an end to his lucrative commercial and television acting career to pursue his passion for writing. In 2000, he founded Elevation 9000 Films and went on to spearhead the original Elevation 9000 Film Lab that eventually inspired the motion picture production company LA Film Lab Entertainment and Writers of the Round Table Inc. http://WritersoftheRoundTable.com

Eva Silva Travers, Co-Author: EDGE! A Leadership Story

Eva Silva Travers holds an Associate of Arts Degree in Radio and Television and a Bachelor of Arts in Literature and Writing Studies. With roots in both print and broadcast media, Eva is a writer with a broad scope of experience. In the corporate world, she has enjoyed success as a writer, producer and digital editor for several production companies and as a radio newscaster/announcer. Her real passion, though, thrives in the creative world. Eva has been involved with the creation of numerous scripts, screenplays and treatments for major production companies and is co-author of Edge! A Leadership Story with Bea Fields and Corey Blake. She devotes most of her energy to growing the Creative Department for Writers of the Round Table, both as a writer and a project manager. Prior to finding “The Table”, Eva sold a screenplay to internationally recognized Graz Entertainment after winning a Student Emmy Award for a documentary on teenage alcoholism while in college. In addition, she speaks and facilitates workshops in schools and public forums on the creation of engaging characters and successful manuscripts. She is an active member of the Los Angeles Writers Group. http://WritersoftheRoundTable.com

Michael Gerber, Author of The E-Myth Books

Michael Gerber has focused his career on inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs with his unique solutions to small business growth, effectiveness, and efficiency. He has established his revolutionary perspective as the gold standard for small business development, becoming what Inc. Magazine called “the world’s #1 small business guru” and one of Business Week’s bestselling authors of the past decades. Michael is the author of seven E-Myth books, including The E-Myth Revisited, which has sold more than three million copies worldwide, making it the most successful small business guide ever written. In 1977, he founded E-Myth Worldwide®, a business that has coached, trained, and educated over 60,000 small business clients in 145 countries. Now 70 years young, Michael Gerber lives with his wife, Luz Delia, in Petaluma, California, where they are intentionally and joyously pursuing their shared vision for transforming the world one small business owner at a time through their most recent venture, “In the Dreaming Room.” http://inthedreamingroom.com/

Michael Port, Author of Book Yourself Solid and Beyond Booked Solid

Michael Port Called a “marketing guru” by the Wall Street Journal, Michael Port, has lectured, trained, inspired, and provided coaching and consulting services to over 20,000 business owners in the last two years alone. As a speaker, he has headlined events with leaders like Brian Tracy and Tony Robbins. Michael is the author of the national bestselling Book Yourself Solid, The Fastest, Easiest and Most Reliable System For Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even If You Hate Marketing And Selling and the soon to be released Beyond Booked Solid: Now, Build a Bigger, Better Business By Leveraging the Power of People and Processes to Make More Money While Working Less. http://www.bookyourselfsolid.com

Andy Wibbels, Author of Blogwild!

Andy Wibbels is an award-winning blogger and author of the book Blogwild! A Guide for Small Business Blogging . He has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Entrepreneur and other media as a recognized expert in blogging and related technologies. Andy has helped businesses all over the world leverage new media to build visibility and increase sales. Andy Wibbels is an award-winning blogger and author of the book Blogwild! A Guide for Small Business Blogging . He has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Entrepreneur and other media as a recognized expert in blogging and related technologies. Andy has helped businesses all over the world leverage new media to build visibility and increase sales. http://andywibbels.com

Dave Buck, CEO of CoachVille.com.

Dave Buck MCC, MBA is the CEO of CoachVille, the largest and fastest growing business and personal coaching organization in the world. The CoachVille vision is to unleash the greatness in all people everywhere through coaching. He worked with Thomas Leonard to found CoachVille in 2001 and has delivered coach training programs to thousands of coaches.

Dave’s coaching career is diverse. He began coaching as the assistant coach for the Seton Hall University Men’s Soccer Team in 1995 and coached for 10 seasons. He began life coaching in 1997 and over the last 9 years has coached close to 1,000 individuals. Dave is a Master Certified Coach (MCC) with the International Coach Federation.

Dave has revolutionized the coaching profession by creating Pattern Language Coaching™ – a coaching method that dramatically reduces the time required to become a masterful coach.

In 2004 Dave was awarded the first annual International Coach Federation (ICF) Peace Maker award for bringing CoachVille and the ICF together.

Dave taught an MBA program for the Seton Hall Stillman School of Business called “The Joy of Business”, based on the 28 Principles of Attraction by Thomas Leonard. http://www.CoachVille.com

Kim George, Author of Coaching Into Greatness

Kim George is the author of Coaching Into Greatness: 4 Steps to Success in Business and Life, published by Wiley & Sons. The book introduces Kim’s groundbreaking work around the concept of AQ, Abundance IntelligenceT, and how people can eliminate the barriers that keep them from doing what they can do.

Kim is the Founder and CEO of The AQ Institute, a coaching, consulting and training community focused on bringing Abundance IntelligenceT to the world. www.AQInstitute.com

Carol Dickson-Carr, CEO of Power-Ed Solutions and Managing Personal Resources

Carol Dickson-Carr is a productivity coach for entrepreneurial spirits and helps them make money using their creativity as she does in her own business. She has taught in community and business colleges, at the university level, and in private consultations to provide both academic knowledge and practical strategies for creating a fulfilling life.

Other areas of her expertise include: productivity, creativity, communication skills, audio production, time management, and self-discovery through personal assessment tools–particularly the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Carol is also the creator of the interview audio series, Master Your Time and Live Your Dreams: Conversations with Coaches and Creatives Who Get It Done! and is also co- author to the book, A Guide to Getting It: Purpose & Passion. http://power-edsolutionsinc.com
http://www.managingpersonalresources.com

Roger DeWitt, CEO of Coaching NYC, Inc.

As a Business and Life Coach, Roger DeWitt comes to the coaching table with many years of business experience both as an entrepreneur and in organizations and over 20 years of experience as a successful and working actor. Approximately 50% of Roger’s clients are business and community leaders and professionals from a variety of backgrounds and 50% are working performers and creative professionals. His expertise in presentation skills and voice combined with his business savvy make Roger an exceptional marketing, prospecting and sales coach. His mix of talents provides his clients with a very unique edge in all aspects of business and life…from sales to business development to interpersonal communication. He finds that he is particularly adept at helping the “professionally creative” start and run their own thriving business by harnessing the power of their natural creativity and building both personal and business confidence in the process.

In addition to his coaching business, Roger has been and continues to live his second passion of being an actor. He has been seen on television, film and the Broadway stage. Around the country on tour and on Broadway, Roger has been seen in such shows as The Phantom of the Opera, Jekyll and Hyde, Ragtime, The Woman in White and on TV in shows like The Snorks, The Jetsons, Law and Order and Rescue Me.

Roger has a BA in psychology from Loyola Marymount University and is a Certified Graduate of Coach University. He holds the designation of Associate Certified Coach (ACC) with the International Coach Federation.

http://coachingnyc.com/

Register Here Today

Person Roger Dewitt

Right click for SmartMenu shortcuts

My wonderful coach, Roger Dewitt pressed me the other day. Now that my business is working and the divisions of the company are growing, I have realized that I need to control less. The insanity of getting the business off the ground has lessened and I found myself actually feeling a bit depressed, a bit unnecessary at times even. I had thrived so long on spinning so many plates and now we have plates spinning left and right that do not require my attention. So where do I fit in?

That was the subject of my conversation with Roger. And what he asked me to was to dream again. To dream of what I wanted, not just for my business, but for my life. 1) what do I want for my company? 2) What do I want for myself as the president of the company? 3) What do I want for myself as a person?

Building a successful business is about taking care of everyone else - clients, empoyees, vendors, freelancers, investors, etc. But what about the leader? I am feeling that this is a big jumping off point for me.  I have to find new inspiration and feeding my own needs and taking care of the individual that I am and what fills my “emotional well” will inevitably help the business to continue to grow and thrive. This has been on my mind quite a bit since I talked with Roger last Thursday and while focusing on myself is not easy and I can only do it for a short while each day before I start into my old habitual patterns, I think there is something profound here for me to find. I’m honoring the recommendation and though I have no idea where this will lead, keeping these questions alive feels good. I’ll let you know what I come up with.

Trina Roach has a great blog: Creating Tomorrow. I just love the name!

She has a particularly good post from June 7 on exit interviews.

This is an area where I find most leaders and managers struggle. They say that they just don’t want to hear the bad news. I always wonder if this is more about a leadership or personality trait…the employee leaves because they have been working for a difficult boss, and to hear anything negative is unnerving. Yet as Trina points out, the exit interview can provide you a gold mine of information.

If you are reading this blog post today, I challenge you to consider the last time when someone left your company. While your employee may have told you he/she was moving on for another career opportunity, what other reasons caused them to leave? What about your leadership style created the desire for talent to walk out the door?  And…how can you get to the root of the situation during an exit interview so that you grow as a leader?  It will take guts for you to hear it, but the risk is so worth the reward.

Check out Trina’s post today…great stuff!

Most modern leaders share this concern. In a day and age where everything is public or can become public in a matter of minutes, they always want to ask how they can be true to who they are and maintain the respect, dignity and credibility they need to influence the people who are following them.

I want to say that authenticity, in my opninon, is probably one of the most important if not the most important leadership skills our future leaders will be asked to address. Our new workforce known as Generation Y places a very high value on their leaders living authentically, and they can smell a fake a mile away, so not being authentic is what will damage a leader’s credibility in the future.

Many leaders shy away from talking about authenticity, because the word often conjures up images of a leader being weak or soft or touchy-feely or airing their dirty laundry to the public or exposing their problems openly to employees or constituents. They immediately equate authenticity with the image of lying on a therapist’s couch “bearing it all” and a fear of their secrets being exposed. But this is not what authenticity is about.

Being an authentic leader means having a true passion for your life story and being able to inspire people by telling it. It means being proud of your family and never forgetting where you came from and not being ashamed of your roots or your childhood. It means knowing your values and standing by those values, even if it means making a decision which is unpopular. It means being vulnerable, admitting when you make a mistake and apologizing openly to your followers when you slip and fall. It means taking an unconventional path, even when risky. It means leading from that place which honors who you are and not trying to mimic another leader. While a leader can certainly adopt a few best practices from an admired leader, when you try to imitate someone else is when your leadership starts heading south.

Today, as you are reading this blog post, I want to encourage you to revisit those parts of your life, past and family history which you have seemed to have conveniently “left out” of your leadership. Those parts of your life are possibly the most important traits you need to lead your company into the future.

I have to give credit to Hillary Clinton for dictating her own path. She has never allowed her campaign to be ruled by what the media or the public think she should do; she has always called her own shots.  Not such an easy task with so many opinions flying around. Last night her and Barack Obama had what is being called a secret meeting, determining yet again that they will determine their own fate and lead according to what they believe is necessary.

I find this to be a wonderful example of leadership.  With so much pressure on these two, they alluded the media so that they could get together, hear one another out personally, and dictate their destinies. Leadership is not about reacting to what the market, the media, the public, your clients, or employees are screaming about. Strong leadership is about looking beneath all of that and diagnosing the bigger issues and solving those. Great leaders appear unpredictable because they are looking at the big picture from such a place of height and depth that their moves seem unexpected. This is because they are solving issues that others are not focused on.  People within the system want you to osolve their immediate pains, and while there is importance to do so, the system needs to be taking care of those issues  so that the leader can address the pains that the people have yet to identify. Look deeper. Find the root of the problem.  As opposed to reacting to the side effects, cure the disease. Be a diagnostician and lead from a place of action.

I have to say that lately, myself and my staff are loving that we all work from home. We have nearly two dozen people who freelance for our company and they do some from the confines of their own residence. As I was watching the news this morning, I see that companies are starting to talk about possible four day work weeks to combat the high price of gas. Typically four 10 hour days that would replace the standard five 8 hour days. As I was watching that, I felt suddenly blessed. With the flattening of the world, has come the ability to run a business virtually. We work from three time zones, make our own schedules and no one has to spend a dime on gas to get to their job. Lucky indeed as we watch those around us really getting hit hard by these current times. Can some or all of your staff work from home? Consider the pain they are feeling at the pump and see if you might be able to solve some of that for them by trusting them to be accountable from home. Leading is about creating solutions to problems, and this is a problem that is affecting everyone right now. Step up and be part of the solution.