SOME LEADERSHIP LESSONS 1. Let people talk in meetings: otherwise, why do you need these people. Meetings are a great forum for observing who can make decisions and who can contribute. 2. If you want to break down business silos, tie a meaningful part of leadership compensation to enterprise performance. Everything else works only partially. 3. If you promise to follow-up with someone, do it, and do so in a timely manner: lack of follow-up or taking more then 72 hours, signals how unimportant someone is to you 4. Organization culture is a direct reflection of leadership behaviour. Sure, you can implement all sorts of programs; however, I’ve yet to see a culture which drives strategic behaviour where the leaders aren’t walking the talk. 5. If you don’t know the answer, say you don’t know the answer: too many senior- most executives feel the need to be the smartest person in the room. When you provide incorrect direction, you clearly lose credibility. 6. You cannot hurry time: urgency is valuable, particularly to create motivation and drive change, but “patience can be a virtue” particularly when negotiating or taking time to align people to a strategy or vision; the other adage which comes to mind is that “you need to go slow to go fast” 7. Communication is not the most important thing. It’s the only thing. Leaders need to get out of their offices, be visible, listen, remind people of the vision, strategy, and listen again. And, oh yes, do the same with your customers and clients. 8. Don’t delegate senior hire recruitment. Ask questions like, why do you want to work at our company, tell me how you motivate people, provide examples of work relationships which have gone south, describe a difficult people issue and how you handled it, describe a major change initiative which you led, your approach and why it succeeded or didn’t, what is the biggest business challenge you’ve had and how did you handle it. Be honest about your own work environment and the job. Remember, more then 50% of executives flame out in the first two years….likely due to ineffective recruiting.