Ethical Sales Leadership: Purpose (4 of 5)
In the previous posting, I listed some guidelines for leaders and sales teams committed to doing business and selling ethically.
As I read these guidelines, I’m thinking, “Easy enough, isn’t it?”
But according to Objective Management Group (OMG), in an assessment of over 500,000 people, the need for approval is the second most powerful and most common weakness affecting the way we do business and how we lead. It’s the belief that we must get approval from the significant people in our lives, including bosses and clients. Shockingly, it affects 45% of us in leadership and sales.
This blind spot has a disastrous impact on our ability to respond wisely and ethically to the myriad of critical leadership decisions. We end up making decisions based on the approval of others versus doing what’s right and earning their respect.
For example, according to author Daryl Green, some of the telltale signs that you are allowing your need for approval to negatively influence your capacity to lead in an ethical way are:
- Twisting critical information so people won’t be upset with you
- Taking personal credit for group accomplishments
- Not focusing on the common good of the organization
- Failing to get to the root of a situation for fear that you’ll hear bad news
- Fearful of taking personal accountability for the behaviors & results of your teams
Dr. Bill Lawrence of Leader Formation International examines the broad impact of the Need for Approval blind spot on leadership. He writes that this blind spot causes people to forfeit the purpose of the organization for fleeting things like position, people, and peace. Long-term respect is traded for short-term results.
How do you handle your need for approval? Where might it be impacting your purpose, your team’s purpose or your company’s purpose?
And what about those on your teams? Are there situations where they might need strengthening to be more energized by respect than approval?
Sales Growth Question: Where are some other places where the need for approval blind spot might be hiding?
Sales Growth Lesson: Focus on the purpose.
© Copyright 2012, Danita Bye Sales Growth Specialists, All Rights Reserved.
Ethical Sales Leadership: Guidelines (3 of 5)
After my inspirational lunch date with Ron James, CEO of the Center for Ethical Business Cultures, I decided to probe deeper into the
reasons that drive people to unethical business, leadership, and sales decisions.
To understand why people go off the track, I thought it would be a good idea to be clear on the right track for ethical business.
These are some guidelines that are applicable to all spheres of leadership, management, and selling.
Ethical Sales Leaders will:
• lead in a manner that respects the rights and dignity of all role players;
• demonstrate a level of integrity that will clearly establish them as trustworthy;
• be sensitive as to how their decisions affect others;
• use their social power to not be self-serving, but to take care of the needs of those around them;
• motivate their teams to put the needs or interests of the group ahead of their own;
• define a path for others to follow, and;
• inspire their teams to believe ethics is profitable
Interestingly, as I’m reworking Leadership Shift for launch later this year, I’m challenging myself to articulate what I learned about business values and ethics while growing up on the TTT Ranch. This “Code of the Old West” ties directly to today’s leadership:
• Respect yourself and others
• Accept responsibility for your life
• Be positive and cheerful
• Be a person of your word
• Be fair in all your dealings
• Be a good friend and neighbor
Sales Growth Question: What are the guidelines that help you lead and sell ethically?
Sales Growth Lesson: Leaders take responsibility for nurturing a culture of ethical business processes.
© Copyright 2012, Danita Bye Sales Growth Specialists, All Rights Reserved.
Ethical Sales Leadership: A Compass (2 of 5)
I recently had the honor of having lunch with Ron James, president and CEO of the Center for Ethical Business Cultures (CEBC). This
world-leading nonprofit organization is committed to helping business and sales leaders create ethical, values-based, and profitable business cultures.
As we’re talking, I realized that here is a man who’s truly committed to doing things the right way. Ron is intentional about pursuing ethics, both personally and professionally. In fact, he was recently honored by Twin Cities Business Award Ceremony as an Outstanding Director 2011. The passion and commitment that I saw in Ron caused me to question my own purposefulness in responding to the challenge from my business colleague to ‘raise the bar’ – to inspire people to lead, manage, and sell profitably – and to do it with integrity.
Ron also moderated the Twin Cities Ethical Leadership Forum with three veteran business executives, Marc Belton, Marti Morfitt and Kevin Rhein. Here are some of the important life lessons from their personal experiences that they shared with the audience:
- Be clear on your personal values before the storms come. Otherwise, the storms will dictate your response.
- Create alignment between your personal and organizational values.
- Serve all stakeholders of the business.
- Good guys can finish first.
- Born in relationship.
- Inspired by the belief that the future is open and can be changed.
- Generated by positive action.
- Set goals by making realistic assessments of their ability to attain a goal.
- Pursue goals with determination and energy.
- Generate more goals.
- Strive towards productive relationships with others where they can reach goals as a team.
- Experience less stress and are able to implement effective coping strategies when faced with unforeseen challenges.
What are some of your life lessons on the importance of ethical selling and leadership?
In our next posting I will tell you about a model for ethical sales business processes
Sales Growth Question: How are you inspiring your team to do ethical business, even under challenging financial conditions?
Sales Growth Lesson: Your example influences those you lead.
© Copyright 2012, Danita Bye Sales Growth Specialists, All Rights Reserved.
Ethical Sales Leadership: Raising the Bar (1 of 5)
“Beware of no one more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.” Charles Spurgeon, British Baptist Preacher. (1834 – 1892)
Over a decade ago, I launched Sales Growth Specialists. I was tentative about whether this was really the career where I wanted to
invest my life. I was leaving an industry I loved, the health care industry, which held intrinsic value for me. Why? Because I knew my work was contributing to helping grandparents who previously got frustrated at not being able to hear the high-pitched voices of their grandchildren. It gave me an indescribable internal buzz to know I was making a positive contribution to the passing on of values to the next generation.
I was discussing my trepidations with a new colleague in the sales force development field. Sensing my hesitancy and lack of enthusiasm in charging forward, he asked me to elaborate. Much to my own surprise, I heard myself saying, “I’m embarrassed to be in sales!” Being a good coach, he probed even deeper. I responded with, “I hate sales! It’s slimy, slippery and manipulative! And, that is not who I am!”
Then came the most life-impacting part of the conversation. He said, “Danita, that’s the very reason you need to be in the industry – to raise the bar, to call the industry to a higher standard.”
My lunch date with another friend a couple of weeks ago, reminded me of this conversation. In my next posting, I’ll tell you about the important lessons I learn over lunch.
Sales Growth Question: What are you doing to raise the bar for those you are leading with regards to ethical business processes?
Sales Growth Lesson: As transformational leaders, we can inspire and motivate others to nurture an ethical culture in our sales teams.
© Copyright 2012, Danita Bye Sales Growth Specialists, All Rights Reserved.
Hope is a Sales Leadership Strategy (2)
Definition of hope: an activating force that enables people, even when faced with the most overwhelming obstacles, to envision a promising future and to set and pursue goals.
We all watched in dismay on Friday, January 13, as 3000 tourists and 1000 crew members aboard the Costa Concordia, an Italian cruise ship, faced the nightmare. Their dream of a lifetime turns into a titantic-like disaster.
I’m amazed watching the news coverage about the tragedy. Initial reports are about the destruction and loss of life. But then miracles happen. People are rescued from their cabins; families are reunited – and these stories bring hope.
Susy Albertini, the mother of missing five-year-old Dayana Arlotti, was on the island and had planned to leave flowers at the wreck. But, she said, she could not go through with it while a glimmer of hope remained that her daughter might be found alive.
In the wake of the financial recession, negativity was also initially making up most of the headlines. But then, as with other disasters, stories of hope and heroism, start to filter through. The entrepreneurial energy of leaders kicks into gear.
How can you not be consumed by a feeling of hopelessness as you’re facing increasing higher goals with no expansion of resources? As a sales leader, how can you harness the true potential from hope and use it as a powerful sales tool?
Reading the article “Towards a deeper understanding of Hope and Leadership”, published in the Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies by Martha Helland and Bruce Winston, I learned about how Hope inspires you, as a sales leader, to make a mind shift – away from despair and towards a hopeful future. With your mental shift, you encourage your team to the innovation and tenacity that’s born in hope. Hope is:
High Hope Leaders have these characteristics:
As sales leaders, we have the responsibility – now more than ever before – to instill hope in our sales teams. I take courage from these words by Albert Einstein: “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.” And, we’re reminded of the power of real hope in I Cor. 13:13, “These three things remain, Faith, Hope and Love.”
SALES GROWTH QUESTION: What can you do to lead your team away from negative thinking towards hopeful thinking?
SALES GROWTH LESSON: Hope is an important virtue for sales leaders.
© Copyright 2012, Danita Bye Sales Growth Specialists, All Rights Reserved.
Hope is a Sales Leadership Strategy (1)
Some psychologists identify hope as an activating force that enables people, even when faced with the most overwhelming obstacles, to envision a promising future and to set and pursue goals.
College break is over and I’m sending two students back to the university. Over break, we had long discussions on the degrees they might pursue based on the needs of the continually shifting global economy and their unique set of gifts, talents and interests. There’s much uncertainty since most of the careers as we know them will be gone in the near future – phased out in favor of new ideas and technologies.
Hope - A Leadership Strategy
Even though many industries are reporting better-than-expected sales and there’s a general sense of hopefulness in small to mid-sized businesses, we know that we’re still facing challenging and uncertain times. The paradox that captures headlines every day is this – the only certainty we seem to be sure of, is that uncertainty has come to stay.
Interestingly, research in the field of Positive Psychology now supports the power of hope. Inspiring Hope actually is an important leadership skill in the New Normal.
Look at it this way – without hope, sales teams fall into a state of status quo. They believe they have no control over anything anymore and they should just wait it out until things get better, i.e. the economy gets better, the competition goes bankrupt or the company management finally gets their act together. Of course, these beliefs sabotage the energy and creativity needed to create a sales team that can consistently win more new accounts.
I can tell you for the lessons I have learned in business as well as growing up on a ranch in North Dakota, where uncertainty was part of our daily lives, ‘waiting for things to get better on its own’, was never an option.
Rather, I was taught a sense of hopeful realism – a reasonable expectation of a good end – neither a misleading hope nor a false despair.
With intentionality, hopeful realism can become a dominant attitude throughout your sales organization.
In our next posting, I’ll share some ideas on how you can harness the true potential from hope and use it as a powerful sales leadership strategy.
SALES GROWTH QUESTION: What are you doing as a Sales Leader, to make sure your team stays both realistic and hopeful at the same time?
SALES GROWTH LESSON: Hope does not sit around waiting for things to get better on its own. Hope takes action to make things happen.
© Copyright 2012, Danita Bye Sales Growth Specialists, All Rights Reserved.
Strategic Initiatives 2012
Strategic Sales Survey for 2012
Last December, I asked my readers to participate in a strategic sales survey. The response was impressive with over 250 business and sales leaders like you responding to that request. A year has past and it is time to gather benchmark data for 2012 strategic efforts. Please consider investing 3 to 5 minutes again this year to participate. Your insights are valuable.
What is in it for you? Like last year, participants receive a free summary of the data that you can use for your strategic sales initiatives. The report included last year’s sales results, next year’s growth projections and the strategic sales growth initiatives being planed.
Last years report was praised for the usable, real world, strategic benchmark data it provided (compared to the gloomy editorialized news we see daily).
Thanks in advance for your help.
PS: This is a confidential survey, your responses and participation will remain private.
PPS: Feel free to forward this link to business and sales leaders that would find it useful. http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/753646/Sales-Growth-Specialists-Strategic-Initiatives-Survey
© Copyright 2011, Danita Bye Sales Growth Specialists, All Rights Reserved.
Shift your Sales Focus to Serving First
This series of posting is part of a research project for my Masters program in Transformational Leadership. If you could participate in this short survey, it would be much appreciated. Here’s a quick, 15-second survey.
One of my own biggest sources of servant leadership inspiration was none other than St. Francis of Assisi. Now, St. Francis wasn’t a rich man, so you couldn’t measure him by that yardstick of success. In fact, I wanted to use St. Francis and his famous prayer as the centerpiece of my graduation speech, but was warned by my superintendent: “Danita, your job is to inspire people to be successful. St. Francis wasn’t successful. He was just a poor monk. To inspire people to success, you need a stronger image.” Those who know me well won’t be surprised to learn that I went ahead and used St. Francis’s example anyway!
I keep the Prayer of St. Francis on a wall in my office as a daily reminder of the higher calling to servant leadership in all of life, including business. For those who don’t know this prayer, here it is:
Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
Where there is sadness, joyO divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console
to be understood, as to understand
to be loved, as to love.
for it is in giving that we receive.
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned
and, it is in dying that we are born
to Eternal Life
Sales Growth Leadership Question: What reminders do you have in your life to remind you of your “higher calling”?
Sales Growth Leadership Lesson: Inspire your team on a daily basis to make a difference in at least one person’s life.
Sales Growth Leadership Action: Invite your sales team to work through Energize your Dreams in order to help them align their personal and professional lives.
In my next blog posting we’ll look at the 6th Paradox: A focus-forward-approach.
What are your thoughts? I invite you to a quick, 15-second survey, regarding your insights.
© Copyright 2011, Danita Bye Sales Growth Specialists, All Rights Reserved.
Servant Leadership for Sales Success
This series of posting is part of a research project for my Masters program in Transformational Leadership. If you could participate in this short survey, it would be much appreciated. Here’s a quick, 15-second survey.
During my first year in sales with Xerox Corporation, I attended a Zig Ziglar seminar in North Dakota. I’ll never forget one of Zig’s mantras: “You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.” You too can inspire this attitude in your organization. There are a few people who have inspired me over the years to realize that helping people get what they want can be a reward in its own right.
“Robert K. Greenleaf, in The Servant as a Leader, coined the term “servant-leadership”. According to Greenleaf, service leadership is a natural feeling that inspires one to serve first and only then make the conscious choice to lead based on that service.
A book that also helped me to grasp this concept fully is the excellent how-to book, Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership: Practicing the Wisdom of Leading by Serving by James W. Sipe.
Frances Hesselbein, former CEO of the Girl Scouts and now chairman of the Leader to Leader Institute describes leadership as “circular” and notes that its highest form consists of leaders embracing their organizations and everyone in them.
Or consider Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford and former CEO of Boeing. Leadership, according to Mulally, isn’t about oneself but the people one works with, all of them great in their own ways.
Finally, take the example of Jesus Christ, who in many eyes is the Leader of leaders. Yet he washed the feet of his disciples. More than that, his entire life was service.” – Leadership Shift Paradox #5 pp. 65
Paradoxically, the first becomes last, and the last becomes first. Management leaders who use their position to serve become greater leaders. Leaders who don’t serve don’t lead.
Sales Growth Leadership Question: Where do you build “serving” into your leadership practices?
Sales Growth Leadership Lesson: Make the act of serving others a part of your company’s business plan.
Sales Growth Leadership Action: Take the Revolution 360 to identify the strength of your leadership relationships, roles, responsibilities and results.
In the next section I’ll give you some tips to help you encourage this concept in your organization.
What are your thoughts? I invite you to a quick, 15-second survey, regarding your insights.
© Copyright 2011, Danita Bye Sales Growth Specialists, All Rights Reserved.
Commandments for Successful Sales Leadership
This series of posting is part of a research project for my Masters program in Transformational Leadership. If you could participate in this short survey, it would be much appreciated. Here’s a quick, 15-second survey.
In 1968, Kent M. Keith wrote the Paradoxical Commandments – so there is nothing new about the idea of paradoxical thinking.
“Optimism never hurts. Creativity works best in an atmosphere of complete freedom. Good leaders are self-sufficient and independent…
In one form or another, ideas like these have been handed down from one generation of business leaders to another. That’s understandable – these concepts just sound right. It’s all just common sense, right? The trouble with common sense, however, is that it’s often not sensible, no matter how common it is. When you look deeper into these widely held business truths, you find paradox. You find that optimism, pleasant as it feels, can blind you to real causes for hope. You find that creativity generates useful ideas only when it’s constrained. You find that the best leaders are also the most dependent.
Though there are probably hundreds, of common sense “truths” that are dragging businesses down every day, we’ll concentrate on seven of the most widespread that I see. Then, we’ll learn how to take advantage of the paradox – the “truth behind the truth,” giving you the insight and the tools you need to lead your business past unchallenged common sense to uncommon success.” – Leadership Shift
Until next time, enjoy these Paradoxical Commandments by Kent M. Keith:
The Paradoxical Commandments – by Kent M. Keith
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
- Love them anyway.If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
- Do good anyway.If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
- Succeed anyway.The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
- Do good anyway.Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
- Be honest and frank anyway.The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
- Think big anyway.People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
- Fight for a few underdogs anyway.What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
- Build anyway.People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
- Help people anyway.Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
- Give the world the best you have anyway.© Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, 2001, www.paradoxicalcommandments.com
In the next section we’ll discover how optimism can lead to depressing sales results and how a more realistic approach to hope can open your eyes to the bona fide opportunities that lie ahead.
Sales Growth Question: What do you think separate a salesperson that succeeds with one that cannot succeed?
Sales Growth Lesson: Belief in yourself; put your beliefs into action and receive results
What are your thoughts? I invite you to a quick, 15-second survey, regarding your insights.
© Copyright 2011, Danita Bye Sales Growth Specialists, All Rights Reserved.
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