Skip to main content

How To Discover Balance As A Leader

 

In his highly authentic, sincere and personal new book, Balancing Act, author Dr. Andrew Temte, CFA, shares candid insights and timely lessons about the balance needed to succeed as a leader.

“I wrote this book in the hope that others will learn from my triumphs and failures. Those who can recover more rapidly from periods of imbalance will have an advantage over those cannot,” says Temte.

He firmly believes that leaders who strive toward balance can more readily identify and curtail organizational entropy, facilitate a culture of trust, and foster diverse organizations and cultures that inspire everyone to bring their “whole sell” to work.

“Success without balance is often more disastrous than failure with balance,” explains Temte. “When the unbalanced achieve victory, it often serves to further destructive habits. When the balanced suffer defeat, resilience and perseverance grow.”

Tempte further explains that leaders today often struggle for balance between:

  • Strength and vulnerability
  • Confidence and selflessness
  • Passion and measure
  • Single-mindedness and inclusivity
  • Determination and curiosity
  • Leadership and followership

As you read Temte’s personal journey in finding his balance, you’ll discover how to apply his lessons learned to find your proper balance to lead effectively, Temte also shows you how to teach, coach, mentor and inspire in your leadership role.

Some of the key takeaways for me from the book are:

Tempe’s four key competencies he believes everyone needs in order to work effectively across departments, understand how their individual contributions fit into the bigger picture, and ultimately thrive in a future of increasingly advanced technology are:

  1. Financial acumen
  2. Data literacy
  3. Commercial acumen
  4. Human skills

  • When in doubt, pick up the phone.
  • Businesses are made up of people, and the success of businesses relies on how those people interact, communicate, and collaborate with each other.
  • Moving forward, one of the most difficult tasks of a leader will be to embrace the personalities of individual team members and to provide the space necessary for free expression and creativity.

Successful leaders:

  • Teach, coach, mentor, and inspire.
  • Set and execute strategy (level appropriate).
  • Create and communicate clarity.
  • Establish and monitor relevant key performance indicators.
  • Fight entropy.
  • Remove obstacles and help teams focus.
  • Act as a brand ambassador.

Finally, Temte devotes an insightful section in his book on organizational trust and returning to the office after COVID-19, by offering advice for how to do so strategically, compassionately and by changing how we think about a new norm.

Dr. Andrew Temte, CFA

Today, Temte answered the following questions for me:

Question: Your book is very personal and candid. Why did you choose this writing approach for Balancing Act? 

Temte: A main theme of the book is to stress the importance of constructive vulnerability (as opposed to dramatic vulnerability) as a leadership trait. Leadership pundits are talking a lot about vulnerability, but seldom reflect on what that means in practice. I felt it was important for readers to see directly that leaders are not exempt from life's challenges and that learning from one's missteps is how we discover and build that next best version of ourselves. We need to lead by example for our teams to show them that it's ok to fail and fall down, because we've done it ourselves. Leadership bookshelves are stacked with books that provide formulas for success where the author is talking at the reader, claiming that by following a particular rubric, success will follow. I believe life is much more nuanced and that success can only come by looking hard at the whole self - not just through the evaluation of the work self. 

Question: Do you believe some leaders will be viewed more negatively by their employees post-pandemic because of how the leader led during the pandemic, and if so, why? 

Temte: Absolutely. The pandemic has been a phenomenal social experiment in how to maintain and grow organizational trust, or on how to destroy it. Those leaders who have used the pandemic to build their emotional intelligence muscles by recognizing the unique stressors each team member is dealing with will fare much better relative to those who treat people like coin-operated cogs in a gigantic corporate wheel. Leaders who find new ways to communicate organizational goals and invest in building their colleagues through learning will have established an environment where trust can flourish. Organizations that are not built on a solid foundation of trust will struggle to compete against those that have consciously invested in fostering trust within and across teams. 

Question: During the pandemic some leaders struggled to balance sharing bad news with employees while also not wanting to discourage employees. What is your best advice for sharing bad news in the workplace? 

Temte: In my experience, leaders who struggle to share bad news are hiding or obfuscating a more deep-seated challenge with their own managerial competence. The world of today is filled with challenging news and an ever-shifting business and political landscape. My advice is to be transparent and up front with challenging news because holding it back will simply serve to prime the pump of watercooler conversations and unproductive speculation. Transparency comes with an obligation to put the right tools in place to help team members build their resilience and effectively navigate through change. Simply dumping bad news on teams without appropriate support mechanisms in place is as bad, or possibly worse, than feigning that the business is covered in rainbows and puppy dogs. 

Question: If a leader's bandwidth allows excelling in only one of these three -- teacher, coach, mentor -- which one do you recommend they choose to emphasize? 

Temte: I would say that coaching is the most important. True mentorship relationships are rare and can seldom be forced. Teaching should be used judiciously to ensure it's done in the right moments, supports the goals of the business, and is grounded in fact. Coaching, if done well, helps lead team members to a decision or conclusion and is deployed much more frequently. Coaching is fundamental to the skill set of all leaders and is foundational to the manager/employee relationship. Managers who find themselves routinely "telling and yelling" are really holding their people back from growth opportunities.

Thank you to the book's publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Three Essential Parts Of A Mission Statement

A lot of companies struggle when creating their mission statement. Author  Peter F. Drucker  provides the following good advice in one of my favorite book's of his,  The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization : Every mission statement has to reflect three things : Opportunities Competence Commitment In other words, he explains: What is our purpose? Why do we do what we do? What, in the end, do we want to be remembered for? How well does your mission statement meet Drucker's recommended three requirements?

Effective Listening: Do's And Don'ts

Here are some great tips from Michelle Tillis Lederman's book, The 11 Laws of Likability .  They are all about: what to do and what not to do to be a leader who's an effective listener : Do : Maintain eye contact Limit your talking Focus on the speaker Ask questions Manage your emotions Listen with your eyes and ears Listen for ideas and opportunities Remain open to the conversation Confirm understanding, paraphrase Give nonverbal messages that you are listening (nod, smile) Ignore distractions Don't : Interrupt Show signs of impatience Judge or argue mentally Multitask during a conversation Project your ideas Think about what to say next Have expectations or preconceived ideas Become defensive or assume you are being attacked Use condescending, aggressive, or closed body language Listen with biases or closed to new ideas Jump to conclusions or finish someone's sentences

6 Ways To Seek Feedback To Improve Your Performance In The Workplace

Getting feedback is an important way to improve performance at work. But sometimes, it can be hard to seek out, and even harder to hear.  “Feedback is all around you. Your job is to find it, both through asking directly and observing it,” says David L. Van Rooy, author of the new book,  Trajectory: 7 Career Strategies to Take You From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be . As today's guest post, Van Rooy offers these  six tips for how to get the feedback you need to improve performance at work . Guest Post By David L. Van Rooy 1.       Don’t forget to as k :  One of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming things are going perfectly (until they make a catastrophic mistake). By not asking, you’re missing out on opportunities for deep feedback: the difficult, critical feedback that gives you constructive ways to improve. 2.       Make sure you listen :  Remember, getting feedback is about improving your performance, not turning it into a “you versus the

10 Quotes From The 5 Levels Of Leadership -- John C. Maxwell

Soon I'll post my full review of John C. Maxwell's latest book, The 5 Levels of Leadership .  In the meantime, here are some of my favorites quotes from the book that I believe should become a must-read book by any workplace/organizational leader: Good leadership isn't about advancing yourself.  It's about advancing your team. Leaders become great, not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others. Leadership is action, not position. When people feel liked, cared for, included, valued, and trusted, they begin to work together with their leader and each other. If you have integrity with people, you develop trust.  The more trust you develop, the stronger the relationship becomes.  In times of difficulty, relationships are a shelter.  In times of opportunity, they are a launching pad. Good leaders must embrace both care and candor. People buy into the leader, then the vision. Bringing out the best in a person is often a catalyst for

5 Tips For Generating Ideas From Employees

Your employees have lots of ideas.  So, be sure you provide the forums and mechanisms for your employees to share their ideas with you.  Hold at least a few brainstorming sessions each year, as well. And, when you are brainstorming with your employees, try these five tips: Encourage ALL ideas.  Don't evaluate or criticize ideas when they are first suggested. Ask for wild ideas.  Often, the craziest ideas end up being the most useful. Shoot for quantity not quality during brainstorming. Encourage everyone to offer new combinations and improvements of old ideas.

3 Things Your Mission Statement Must Have

A lot of companies struggle when creating their mission statement. Author Peter F. Drucker provides the following good advice in one of my favorite book's of his, The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization :" Every mission statement has to reflect three things : Opportunities Competence Commitment In other words, he explains: What is our purpose? Why do we do what we do? What, in the end, do we want to be remembered for? How well does your mission statement meet Drucker's recommended three requirements?

How To Survive And Then Reset To Ultimately Thrive

“Uncertainty is here to stay. Rather than seeing it as an obstacle to overcome, integrate it into your strategic approach to invigorate your high-growth potential and outperform competition under any market condition,” explains Rebecca Homkes , author of the new book, Survive, Reset, Thrive .   “Most books aren’t honest enough about how hard it is to reset ,” adds Homkes. Yet, resetting and leaning into change is essential. “If you are ready to embrace change as a central element of your growth strategy, this book is for you.” Homkes’ book is a timely, comprehensive, and essential read for business leaders looking to take the next step toward ensuring high growth for their companies. The book brings together more than 15 years of Homkes working directly with high-growth companies of all sizes and across a wide variety of industries.   Survive, Reset, Thrive (SRT) is a practical and innovative interconnected three-mode approach :   Survive : Stabilizing your business when

3 Coaching And Mentoring Tips

Here are three great tips from the book, The Everything Coaching and Mentoring Book : Coaches do not motivate their employees; they inspire them to motivate themselves.  This is best accomplished by allowing employees to see clearly where they stand in the organization versus where they want to be in their careers.  That is, what are their self-interests versus what the company can offer them. A mentor always exercises the power of suggestion. That is, wise mentors offer up plenty of suggestions to their mentees. They pose alternatives.  But they refrain, as much as possible, from telling their mentees what to do. Mentoring is all about sharing experiences.  It is about mentors imparting the multiple lessons that they've learned to their mentees and helping them better navigate through their own careers.  By absorbing these lessons--of mentors' mistakes and successes--mentees are better prepared to move forward with knowledge and confidence.

Use A Board Of Advisors

David Burkus often provides valuable comments to my various Blog postings, and he's a person who effectively uses a board of advisors, instead of mentors, to help him achieve success. "I've found that in my life, it was easier and more effective to set up a board of advisors," said Burkus, the editor of LeaderLab . "This is a group of people, three to five, that have rotated into my life at various times and that speak into it and help me grow. I benefit from the variety of experience these people have." LeaderLab is an online community of resources dedicated to promoting the practice of leadership theory. Its contributors include consultants and professors who present leadership theory in a practitioner-friendly format that provides easy-to-follow explanations on how to apply the best of leadership theory. Community users can download a variety of research reports and presentations about leadership and leadership versus management. For example, a pr

How To Avoid 8 Common Performance Evaluation Pitfalls

As the year comes to a close it's likely time for many business leaders to tackle the annual performance appraisal process. So, here is a good reminder from author Sharon Armstrong about how to avoid eight performance evaluation pitfalls .  These are in what I consider is the best chapter of the book The Essential HR Handbook , that she co-authored with Barbara Mitchell. 1.  Clustering everyone in the middle performance-rating categories 2.  Overlooking flaws or exaggerating the achievements of favored employees 3.  Excusing substandard performance or behavior because it is widespread 4.  Letting one characteristic - positive or negative - affect your overall assessment 5.  Rating someone based on the company he or she keeps 6.  Rating someone based on a grudge you are holding 7.  Rating someone based on a short time period instead of the entire evaluation period 8.  Rating everyone high, to make you look good There's other great information in this 250-page book th