by Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Leadership Solutions, Inc.®

“Enlightened leadership: Contrasts itself from traditional management by exploring all the ways we can fully engage our people to be as productive as possible. Where management focuses on systems thinking and leadership focuses on people thinking.”

    As a current people leader-manager, you are constantly challenged to stimulate your people to be as productive and profit producing as is possible. Alternatively, you may be leading a non-profit entity, so your emphasis shifts to encouraging your people to be as cost effective as possible. Either way, these objectives are intertwined with allowing team members to really thrive and maximize their contribution at every turn.

Executives tend to roll their eyes at such statements because they believe they’re already doing their level best to accomplish them. However, too often they sense that successful people-motivation is at times a thankless task. So, getting straight to the point: “managing” people is frequently a thankless task because it runs counter to human nature. Most people prefer to be led rather than managed.

Now this is where enlightened leadership comes to the fore. Once it is properly practiced by executives, either at team or organizational levels; it is more enjoyable, people respond to it more favorably, and all outcome-results will make everyone much happier. It’s founded upon a five phase recipe: Decision Clarity, Enlightened Pathfinding, Enlightened People Engagement, Enlightened Teamwork, and Enlightened Momentum Building. Let’s take each in their turn.

» Decision Clarity – Today’s management decision techniques rely on a variety of deductive practices that involve numbers and data. However, even traditional economists are breaking away from their totally rational, numerical view as they embrace behavioral economics. This latter, growing discipline factors-in a considerable range of human behaviors that are necessary to make high quality business and people-oriented decisions.

Even so, they still haven’t found the proper interplay between our rational and intuitive capabilities when making optimum decisions. Leadership Solutions has discovered such an approach called option solving that facilitates the use of both faculties, thereby producing greater decision clarity. Such a technique also inspires clever solutions when making more complex strategic decisions. You can discover more about this at www.optionsolving.com.

» Enlightened Pathfinding – Our traditional strategic planning methods are outdated and more often focused on pure bottom-line results; rather than how to engage people to a higher order. Enlightened pathfinding, on the other hand, introduces executives to ways to tap human-talent and commitment like never before; hence increasing bottom-line performance through the use of strategic and operational framing.

These two approaches are designed to draw workplace teams into the envisioning and implementing phases much more, consequently adding at least 20% to the bottom-line when applied properly. (NOTE: Most organizations are at least underperforming by this amount with the use of prevailing management techniques.)

Using these tools are a major step forward in producing higher people-performance: through providing a compelling vision, vital know-how and resources, and focusing on the right people-performance outcomes. You can discover more about these four factors through contacting peter@ileadershipsolutions.com.

» Enlightened People Engagement – Currently we tend to rely upon extrinsic motivators to compel our people to perform. They include – competition, incentives, goals, fear, accountability and measurement. Countless articles and practical examples point toward showing that, other than the right set of circumstances, such motivators become counterproductive when utilized over sustained periods of time.

Alternatively, we should rely much more upon intrinsic motivators to inspire our people to perform to their maximum capacity. These include – a compelling Purpose; being treated Equally, fairly and inclusively; experiencing a sense of Achievement and accomplishment; sensing a good degree of Camaraderie in their workplace; feeling degrees of Autonomy, trust and empowerment; and believing they have Mastery of their domain to produce optimal performance. The synergy of these six key components creates the acronym PEACAM …contact peter@ ileadershipsolutions.com for more details as to where your team sits with these factors.

» Enlightened Teamwork – Traditionally, we have relied upon individual performance and success, even though we’ve seen countless daily examples of extraordinary success through heightened teamwork in sports, commerce, organization life, and in the political world. What works against this reality is that many executives are not educated in the art of orchestrating teamwork. Most have got to where they are through individual heroics, so they support that model.

Leadership Solutions has created a number of leadership tools that can facilitate teamwork. Two in particular come to the fore. Firstly, its competence staircases for leaders at every level. Such staircases show how by applying the acronym LEADER, they can strengthen their leadership competence through: Lighting fires within people; Engaging–hiring talented people; Advancing their people’s skill sets; encouraging Deeper collaboration; finding an Enduring pathway; and being perceived as a Remarkable leader. Leader competences like these facilitate teamwork.

Secondarily, is LSI’s quick and insightful leader survey that enables executives and team members to clarify their communication preferences. Once these are shared among team members, their new-found awareness enables them to work more competently together as a team. Again, contact peter@ileadershipsolutions.com for more details.

» Enlightened Momentum Building – Time and again, executives stumble in their efforts to generate higher performance because they lose their way during the implementation phase. Enlightened momentum building allows them to discover priority streaming, where they can build a simple picture of their unit’s fundamental drivers of future performance – based upon using the prior principles of enlightened leadership – and thereby sustain focus.

Once executives can master priority streaming, they can properly orchestrate a flow of events that will expedite and facilitate implementation. Again, contact peter@ileadershipsolutions.com for further details.

This last and fifth phase of enlightened leadership then returns executives to their starting point within the cycle; namely Decision Clarity. By the time they return to this initial component, they will have considerably more team and/or organizational insights to competently address a fresh round of advantageous decision clarity, pathfinding, people engagement, teamwork and momentum building. And so the cycle of enlightened leadership perpetuates itself.

Why don’t you invest due time into the Five Phases of Enlightened Leadership and place your team or organization on track to, at the very least, enhance its overall performance by 20%? We are available to answer any questions you may have about our tools and know-how for you to benefit from this powerful alternative approach.

To learn more about Enlightened Leadership, talk with: