leadership

Posted by Ken Dropiewski

5 Shackleton Leadership Principles

Sir Earnest Shackleton was described as “The greatest leader that ever came on God’s earth, bar none.”

He led his team of 27 men to safety after they were “lost at sea” for two years. Shackleton can teach today’s business owners and managers a great deal about leadership. He summed effective leadership up in five words.

1. Comradeship

“Do something big for the other chap” was a hugely important element of leadership for him. For two years his men survived on an Antarctic ice flow eating penguins, dogs and fish. Had they not all done “big things” for their comrades, they would all have perished.

Today’s business world is fraught with danger; keeping the team together, and focused on the future – by doing big things for each other – can overcome those dangers, and see everyone through to a successful result.

2. Optimism

Shackleton believed that optimism is not simply looking on the bright side, not just encouraging others to “stay calm and carry on,” or wearing a smile all day. He believed that optimism is the equivalent of moral courage.

Believing you will take your team to the future you envision enables leaders to see beyond the present obstacles and as far forward as imagination allows. Moral courage is a powerful energy to have and to exhibit.

3. Courage

Leaders are courageous. Shackleton said that “a man must shape himself to a new mark directly the old one goes to ground.” In his day, men went out into the world to explore, to discover and to succeed. Today women and men go out into the business world to create new markets or to dominate an existing market.

The markets change, as competitors develop improved processes and create new products. Leaders must respond to these changes by “shaping themselves to new marks.” Markets will always change, technology will quickly make an existing process obsolete, and new products will leapfrog existing products to meet customer demand. It takes courage to overcome those challenges, to capitalize on the change, and to keep succeeding.

4. Loyalty

Leaders and their teams must trust each other if they are going to keep moving forward, and if they are to overcome today’s obstacles. Shackleton considered loyalty to be more than comradeship, more than mutual respect, more than providing support to those in need. He considered loyalty to be “a sacred trust.” Leaders must exhibit this trust in others, and others must be able to trust their leader. Trust builds loyalty.

5. Consistency

Leaders are followed. It is easier for a team to follow when they believe in the goal and the direction they are being asked to take to achieve it. When they see consistency to purpose in their leader, they become loyal followers.

The Take-Away

Few business leaders will ever be responsible for literally saving the lives of their team, but they are all responsible for saving their team’s careers, the company’s earnings, and the stock-holders’ investments.

These five principles that Shackleton relied on to keep himself and his team alive for two whole years, will not only keep a business alive but will see it excel, and achieve greatness. Finding men and women who display, and who live by, these principles will take a company forward.

Our strategy focuses on enabling our clients to recruit the right people for the structure in which they will perform. Please contact us to learn more about our expertise in Executive Search for Commercial Leadership positions in Medical Device and Biotechnology; including Marketing, Strategy, Sales Leadership, Training, Development, etc. We look forward to the opportunity to help you consistently improve your performance and your business!

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Posted by Ken Dropiewski

Curiosity Makes the Leader

From a young age you learn through curiosity. You develop this curiosity so that you can discover new things and learn more about the world around you. Unfortunately, for many, curiosity is just that; something that you will eventually outgrow. However, curiosity is also a fantastic trait for any leader to have and will help you develop further.

Curiosity and Leadership

It is through curiosity that you will have the drive to become a better leader. It is also what gives you the desire to learn more about what a great business structure looks like as well as the reasons your team may struggle with adopting the new skills. In turn, it teaches them how their customers respond to new products and services that your company provides.

How to Foster Personal and Professional Curiosity

Developing curiosity is an important part of leadership. Challenging yourself with projects that will cause you to have questions is a great first step. Leaders should also work develop new skills so that you are open to new experiences. It also helps to have a mindset that allows you to actually enjoy learning and experiencing new things.

Assess Your Knowledge and Embrace Diversity

Connecting what you are learning to what is already known also helps to make you more curious about the subject or project. Above all, be diverse in the areas that are developing throughout the company. This is one of the best ways to bring out your curiosity in and will help you create new possibilities both personally and professionally.

There is always a better, faster and more efficient way of doing things and curiosity is one trait that can help businesses to discover these new and uncharted territories. With this new found curiosity, you will be able to find new and exciting directions in which to lead your team, company, and industry.

Follow me on Twitter @PrimeCoreSearch.

Posted by Ken Dropiewski

Four Essential Leadership Traits

Leaders on the silver screen are resolute, skilled, stoic, single-minded – and they always succeed. They often have one drawback, epic failure or accident to overcome, but overcome they do. Scripts are marvelous things. Real life is different, but every leader has planned, tried, failed, tried again, and succeeded. Leaders show certain personality traits that indicate how they formulate the future they want, how they will respond to failure, and how they will stay on track so they ultimately succeed – repeatedly. Those traits carry them – and those they lead – onward. What are the four powerful leadership traits that successful leaders exhibit?

Passion

They feel it so bad, they can taste it. Some people want to build a company, be the best sales professional in the business, create and manage the best marketing campaign, develop the greatest cure, or build the clearest system for analyzing protein structure. The goal does not matter, the leader’s style is less important, but the passion they have for what they do, how they do it, and how they deal with each stage is paramount. Leaders are passionate about succeeding.

Patience

Anger and frustration may be OK when you are alone, but getting angry or showing frustration with team members when things go wrong, does not encourage them to do their best, it encourages them to avoid the anger and frustration they just experienced. Failure is corrected or avoided by attention to detail. Patience is a supportive trait that encourages “trying again to get it right.” Patience is the slow-burning fuel of long-term success.

Stoicism

Stoicism is about self-control and inner fortitude to see beyond the bad present, and to overcome the current problems. Not all problems are self-induced, some are the fall-out from a competitor’s scientific advance or their great new marketing campaign. Stoicism helps leaders stay true to themselves, their goals and their team members. Problems and setbacks come continually, not just once like they do in an action film, and this trait also fuels a leader.

Decisiveness

Leaders make decisions. They make them and act on them. Benjamin Franklin’s famous quote “Well done is better than well said” is as true in the world of medical devices and biotechnology as it was in the Revolutionary War. Leaders know their vision of the future, they have established the standards everyone will work to, they have agreed the goals everyone will work towards. These are the beacon and the guide on their path to greatness. Stoicism keeps them on that path.

The Take-Away

Knowing the right destination and how to get there is critical to success. Passion, patience, stoicism and decisiveness are essential to keeping leaders on the path.

Follow me on Twitter @PrimeCoreSearch.

Posted by Ken Dropiewski

Leadership and Personal Development: Making a Success of Failure

There is no more difficult situation in your leadership and personal development journey than the moment you must face a personal mistake that has derailed your climb to the top. Failure becomes a defining moment — do you walk away from the issue, persevere, or look for a different path that may eventually lead you to the same goal? A genuine definition of success is intimately interwoven with our response to these situations.

Failing Doesn’t Always Mean FAILURE

Successful people universally look back upon their perceived failures as beneficial events. The learning process can be treacherous, painful, and seemingly impossible at times, but sticking to your goals through that process becomes the marker of the ultimately successful. People who succeed in business, personal relationships, and other areas of life are those who take the lessons of their failures and turn them into a positive. Can you really call it a failure if you have genuinely learned something from the experience? Or is it really just another step on the path that leads to your desired goal?

Rock bottom makes for a pretty solid foundation, but you can’t build much down there.

Most businesses will struggle and falter at some point. Most relationships will decay, dissolve, or break apart. It is impossible to go through life without experiencing a fall, a disappointment, or an unexpected result. And when you hit the proverbial bottom of the barrel there are only two choices — to stay at the bottom or to climb out again.

It is often tempting, especially in the initial hours and days, to just wallow at the bottom, to want to give up and just stay there. Climbing is hard, and the fall was painful. But success doesn’t come from the bottom. You have to find the will and courage to begin that climb again.

Successful people are the climbers that look ahead and remember what caused their fall in the first place. If you don’t learn, you will just end up on the bottom again.

Forgive Yourself, but Don’t Forget!

Always remember how it felt, but don’t allow yourself to wallow in self-recrimination — it isn’t productive. Failure never feels good, but that doesn’t mean it can’t do you good. Forgive yourself, and others, who may have brought you down, but always keep in mind how it happened. If one of your business partners was unable to fulfill their function, perhaps it is time to find a new partner or find a new responsibility for the existing partner that is better aligned to their talents and abilities. If you were so overwhelmed that you dropped the ball, perhaps learning to delegate and prioritize more efficiently is the key.

Real success is defined by our reactions to failure, both our own and the perceived failures of others. Those who stand up, brush themselves off, and keep climbing while maintaining the lessons of their past mistakes firmly in mind, will eventually become successful leaders in their businesses and personal lives.

Follow me on Twitter @PrimeCoreSearch.

Posted by Ken Dropiewski

C-Suite Reading List: 9 Leadership Books You Need to Be Reading

What does it take to be a great leader? How can you invoke your team’s best qualities? How can you create the best team for your organization? We have a few ideas to help you get started! Here’s a list of amazing books on leadership, from this year alone, that will cultivate your skills.

1. Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace By Christine Porath

Christine Porath, a Georgetown MBA professor, based her book on research and explains how you can be a more effective leader. She details the precise daily events that chip away at the heart of a team. The book teaches leaders on how to identify and put an end to destructive trends and become the leader your team needs to be its most productive.

2. Option B By Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant

Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook co-authored this book with Adam Grant a Wharton professor. It’s unclear who does the heavy lifting, as it speaks as a single voice. Option B tackles the hardships many leaders face. The stress of leadership can be grueling, but how do you overcome it? This book is your answer, to staying a leader despite the stresses you face.

3. Radical Candor By Kim Scott

Kim Scott, a former Google executive is currently a CEO coach in Silicon Valley. She believes we should be using candor when evaluating performance. In her book, she expresses the idea of a sweet spot between being an aggressive leader and a nice leader.

4. The Power of Positive Leadership by Jon Gordon

What is the best approach to being a great leader? What does it take? In this book, Jon Gordon explains you can untie your team through adversity with positive leadership and create a better company culture. Read this book to see how you can employ these tactics to your team.

5. The Captain Class: The Driving Force Behind the World’s Greatest Teams By Sam Walker

This book employs the ideas on how great sports team operate. No one can argue that sports definitely create an environment for great teamwork. What leadership qualities create an environment to get more from your team and improve the cooperation of its members? This book touches on unconventional methods that you can use for your leadership arsenal.

6. The Leadership Gap: What Gets Between You And Your Greatness by Lolly Daskal

In this book, Daskal shares patterns of powerful leaders and their obstacles to achieving greatness. Find out what your leadership archetype is, and discover incredible insights shared in the book about industry leaders, board room meetings. Apply her system for proven business results.

7. Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t by Simon Sinek

Sinek is no stranger to leadership, as evidenced by his critically acclaimed books and TED Talks all on the subject of leadership. In his latest book, Sinek explains how great leaders inspire action within their teams by building an atmosphere of group cohesion.

8. Leadership: The 100 Best Ways To Be A Great Leader by Ace McCloud

This book is perfect for those searching for real ways to learn about being a great leader. McCloud’s book will help you discover your strengths and work on your weaknesses to become a more effective leader. The strategies, tips, and best practices highlighted by this book will work their way into your life through hard work and practice.

9. POWER OVER THE PILLOW: 7 SECRETS TO MASTER YOUR GOALS, ACHIEVE SUCCESS AND BECOME UNSTOPPABLE: Create More Time, Develop Habits and Systems That Win by Stephen Toroni

Toroni’s book is great for creating strategic plans to achieve your goals and improve your leadership skills. Complete activities and learn step-by-step ways to accomplish your goals and take control over your outcomes. Don’t let the All-Caps title scare you, Toroni isn’t mad, he just writes that way!

These, of course, are not all the great leadership books of 2017, especially since we haven’t even finished the year. This is just a collection of the best books out this year to help hone your skills and to create a better year for your company and your career. Have I missed any?

Follow me on Twitter @PrimeCoreSearch.

5 Shackleton Leadership Principles

Curiosity Makes the Leader

Four Essential Leadership Traits

Leadership and Personal Development: Making a Success of Failure

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