Fast forward several years. I was serving in Iraq with the Army. I was proud that my Special Operations job allowed me to work in an advisory capacity with both the State Department and local NGOs. One day I opted to work from the base instead of going on the mission, only to find out that all the soldiers remaining behind needed to help with a special project: sandbag detail. When I tried to get out of it, my leader gave me a pretty healthy tongue-lashing and appointed me sandbag project leader for the day.

How did I get so mixed up about what was really important?

If I could go back, I’d give myself a little shoulder-shaking and a reminder about what service really looks like.

We All Serve a Purpose

It’s unfortunate how quickly we lose sight of the larger purpose of our efforts. For instance, why do grocery stores exist? (It’s not primarily to create a sense of self efficacy for 15 year-olds). They exist to provide food products to the local neighborhood and to earn a profit. To that extent, every function of the store, from straightening the shelves to cleaning the floors to bringing in carts helps the grocery store serve the customers. And in Iraq, there was a very real possibility that the sandbags I stacked would prevent a rocket from landing on my head at night. (The rockets didn’t care if I had “special skills”).

One of the major factors of disengagement is the inability (including by choice) to see how one’s job connects to the greater purpose. There is a significant difference between “laying track” and “building the first transcontinental railroad,” even if the job is the same. Sometimes a little perspective goes a long way.

The Purpose of Serving is Others

I remember another Army mission that started before 5 A.M. one day and lasted until late at night. Everything that could go wrong did. The next day, the battalion commander brought all the leaders into a room to take us to task. His main message was a poignant reminder: “If anyone here thinks you are too important to help one of the younger soldiers be successful, I’m here to tell you that you aren’t. And neither am I. So we’re not going to let this happen again.”

A former FBI executive once addressed our project team stating that successful leaders are the ones who “are good at making other people looking good.” In working with a Center of Excellence director at another company, we built a development model that helped identify future executives by significantly factoring in the success of their direct reports – even above their own individual performance. (After all, being a great individual contributor is never enough to succeed as an executive).

It’s interesting to hear the success stories of successful people. Nearly all of them point to individuals who went out of their way to show them the ropes – people who weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty together.

In his book The Advantage, Patrick Lencioni talks about an interaction with a CEO of a hugely successful company where he asked why the competition didn’t emulate their best practices. The CEO responded that he honestly thought the competition felt it was beneath them. What a waste!

Greatness is within reach, but it’s greatness through service. Find the greater purpose in the day-to-day tasks. (And by the way, if you believe there is none, it’s your responsibility from a continuous improvement standpoint to share your thoughts). And find others around you to serve in the process. When we do the little things like they are the big things, the bigger opportunities will start to come.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or   follow him on Twitter.

Forbes reported recently that as many as two million employees quit their jobs each month. One of the most significant reasons: they dislike their bosses.

It’s only fair to acknowledge that some managers earn their scorn. I should know, one of my jobs as an organizational development consultant is to help make bosses better bosses. I suppose if everyone was already excellent, I’d have less to do. But it’s only fair to give credit where it’s due. So let’s take a closer look at the great things bosses do.

Provide Direction

If you’ve ever been a newbie (and who hasn’t?), you probably remember the excitement at taking on a new opportunity. Unfortunately, it quickly turned into disillusionment when you realized how much you didn’t know about how to get the job done. Enter the boss. A little fog-clearing direction and you are on your way to making a meaningful contribution.

Share Knowledge & Experience

In many cases, bosses have been further down the road. That’s usually one of the reasons they’re in the role. Just one quick tip or tweak can save an incredible amount of time, effort and money (not to mention grief).

Help Us Develop

Not all bosses have a development mindset, but the good ones absolutely do. Whether it’s helping to complete an Individual Development Plan, evaluating a past project or designating development dollars in the department budget, every little bit counts.

Protect Us from Management

There are many bosses I served in the military with who I’ll never forget (for better or worse). One of the things I appreciated most about one former Army supervisor was his willingness to fight the bureaucracy on our collective behalf when in some cases it would’ve been easier to just go with the flow. The effort wasn’t lost on any of us regardless of the results.

Represent Us to Management

In recent times, a boss’s word was considered to be the “voice of God” in the organization. It’s not that cut and dried any more. Nevertheless, it is still extremely hard for good things to happen in the organization without a boss’s support. Bosses have the access to bring your name up when new opportunities are being discussed. Their vote can often get you much further than you could ever get on your own.

Solve Our Problems

If you’ve ever screwed things up royally, your boss may be the last person you want to face. Fortunately, he or she is usually the best person to help you make things right. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the time I sent $77 million to the wrong bank as a recent college grad. I was in a pickle and didn’t have much of a choice but to ask my boss for help before things got worse. Not only did my boss help me resolve the situation relatively quickly and painlessly, he helped me save face in the process by emphasizing the complexity of the situation rather than my own oversight. Thank God for bosses!

One final note – many people assume that if they could just work for themselves, they’d forever solve the boss problem. It’s not always true. In his book Creative Followership, Jimmy Collins recounts the realization of his own limitations as a self-employed individual. He finally made the decision to fire himself and find a better boss who could provide the opportunities and support he needed.

I hope you’ve got a great boss. Regardless, let’s give credit where it’s due. Bosses do so much for us. We’d be a lot worse off without them.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or   follow him on Twitter.

Automation has added enormous business efficiency over the years and will continue. But it’s important to keep in mind that whatever business we’re in, we’re ultimately in the people business. Since we can’t eliminate the human element (besides, would we really want to?), we’ll have to figure out how to capitalize on it.

Here are some of the ways each of us can win with people at work.

Built Trust with Results AND Relationships

Trust isn’t just a two-way street. It’s a converging superhighway. So many factors come into play. Here’s an example: what comes to mind when you think about a century old world-class financial institution? Large stone buildings with Corinthian columns? Dark suits? No nonsense serif fonts? All of those are just images. But what makes long-term trust possible are attention to both results and relationships. The results create confidence in future performance. The relationships enable commitment.

Trust is at the core of the human element – it’s intensely personal. Just ask someone who has had a trust broken (whether a person or brand). They usually aren’t happy. But trust isn’t a destination. It’s an ongoing process.

Use Stories to Connect

In my opinion, the world of advertising has taken some tremendous leaps in the last decade. Sure, there are still some television commercials that make us want to stab our eyes out, but for the most part, campaigns have shifted from “proving” that their product is the best to “telling” how it makes a difference. Social media has obviously played a role. And it’s not just advertising. Some of the most popular business books are written in fable form.

Stories are uniquely human – people connect with them. Facts and figures will always be important, but the power of narrative is as strong as it’s ever been. So find the story in the details and make it part of the advertising campaign, shareholder report, corporate policy or boardroom presentation.

Create Brand Ambassadors

People go from not knowing you to being acquainted enough to form an opinion. And that opinion can either be a great one or a terrible one. Here’s why you should care: you don’t just want customers – you want customers who will recruit (rather than repel) other customers on their own initiative. You don’t just want employee applicants – you want ones who already love your business. Have a strategy for your customer experience, employee engagement and community outreach that gives you an opportunity to deliver a good impression – in addition to the value your business creates in the day-to-day.

Find Creative Solutions

At a recent training event, we decided to let new managers work together to come up with solutions to problems they were facing. The risk was that they might come up with lousy ideas based on their limited experience so far. Instead, they generated many good ideas with several worth considering as we work to continuously improve the organizational system. It’s quicker, easier and cheaper to tell others what to do. But you’ll get more creative solutions (not to mention buy-in) when you make them part of the process.

Connect with Your Purpose

At the end of the day, we all serve a purpose. The tragedy is that both people and organization’s are often unsure exactly what it is. That’s why purpose statements are so important – ones that speak to the beliefs, the bottom line, the “why this even matters” that keeps people coming back each day. Unfortunately, corporate purpose statements can be extremely “corporate” and not very human at all. The silver lining is that it’s easy for the good ones to stand out. Think about it. No one wants to work only to create shareholder value. We want to make a difference in the process.

At the end of the day, people are here to stay. We’re not going anywhere. Our organizations, titles and roles may change, but we’ll still be around. So let’s win with people.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or   follow him on Twitter.

Now I was wide awake and ready to learn about Ancient Rome.

This story illustrates the effects drama can have on our words. Oftentimes, it’s not what we say, but how we say it that makes a difference. Here’s why:

A Picture Paints… a Lot of Words

When I was a graduate student, I frequently got the feedback that my PowerPoint presentations had great information but were terribly boring. My interpretation was that meant they were great presentations. When I graduate and joined a consulting firm, I quickly learned that boring presentations don’t make it in front of clients.

I don’t know if pictures are worth exactly 1,000 words, but I do know that busy people usually don’t prefer to read minute data points when a picture, graph or illustration can say the same thing.

We Live in the Days of Showmanship

Incidentally, “Dramatize Your Ideas” is Dale Carnegie‘s principle #11 for winning people to your way of thinking. Why is it so important? According to Carnegie, “we live in the days of showmanship.” It’s not enough to tell why your idea is best, you have to use flair. Think about the advertisements you see in print or on television. You don’t just see laundry detergent facts, you see dirty clothing transformed into spotless. You see the extreme inconvenience of losing cell phone coverage, how crash test dummies always manage to survive accidents in certain cars and that cheap American beer always leads to a big party.

When a man wants to propose to his lady, he doesn’t send her a text message. He gets down on a knee!

Whether you are selling a product or an idea, the experience in the delivery can often make or break the sale.

Drama Helps Your Audience “Find the Feeling”

In their book Switch, authors Dan and Chip Heath relay a story about an intern who thought his manufacturing employer could save $1 billion in over several years simply by controlling purchasing costs. Of course, he knew management would never embrace his ideas unless they believed them for themselves. So he decided to dramatize his ideas using one single item: work gloves. He collected a pair of every individual work gloves from every factory throughout the company and tagged it with the amount the company was paying for it. By the time he was finished, he had 424 different pairs of gloves from many different suppliers and at different negotiated costs. The intern piled all the gloves onto a conference room table and one by one invited all the division presidents to take a look.

When the presidents saw for themselves that some divisions were purchasing the same gloves at three times the price as other divisions, the intern’s point was made. We’ve got a real problem, the presidents thought and determined right away to address it.

Drama doesn’t change the facts. It personalizes them. Lack of drama can undermine your message, the way my boring presentation slides used to undermine my solutions.

So when you find yourself with a point you really need to make, think how you can infuse a little drama!

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

Back in the 1970s, Gordon Training International developed a learning model called “The Four Stages of Competence,” which has also been linked to Abraham Maslow’s work. There’s something helpful about breaking an idea or a challenge down into smaller parts, and competence is no different. If we can understand which stage both we and our followers are in, we’ll be much more useful. Here are the Four Stages of Competence:

Unconscious Incompetence

In this stage, an individual simply doesn’t know what they don’t know. Picture a new college graduate, an entry-level employee, a newly promoted supervisor (sometimes) or a clueless new business owner. In these situations, individuals can often be high on drive but low on actual ability. In other cases, individuals may be unmotivated as well as clueless as to their level of competence.

The bottom line is that people in this stage cannot progress to the next without an awareness of their own deficit. Whether they experience a reality check on the job, receive input from a supervisor or come to a realization on their own (or any number of interventions), the recognition itself is the key to future growth.

Conscious Incompetence

In this stage, an individual recognizes that a gap in their level of competence exists. They realize they lack the skills, knowledge or ability they need to be successful. For many people, engagement and motivation can drop significantly when this happens. Think about it: how would you respond if you thought you were good at something only to find you weren’t? To bridge the gap, they can benefit immensely from resources, coaching and the elbow room to learn from their mistakes. The time it takes to develop to competence depends on many of these factors.

Conscious Competence

In this stage, an individual is aware that they have acquired knowledge, skills or ability. However, they must still concentrate focused effort to be successful. Tasks may need to be broken down into steps in order to attain mastery, which generally requires practice. Still, this is one of the most rewarding stages since it represents significant growth.

Unconscious Competence

In this stage, an individual has demonstrated a skill to the extent that it has become “second nature.” It takes far less effort and focus than it once did. They can multitask and not see a drop in performance. Provided the individual learned correctly, they can teach others to acquire the same skill. Although unconscious competence is the goal, one of the dangers is that people in this group can be tempted to forget the fundamentals.

We invariably occupy each of these stages across all the skills we possess (or need to possess). The trick is to discover which we belong to. As a leader, it’s even more important to be able to assess the competence of those who follow us so that we can know how to best develop them.

Can you think of a time you crossed all four stages?

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

This may be how you feel about evaluation… unless you have a built-in evaluation plan. In that case, you’ll be ready to hand over the results of your training before management even asks for it.

So how do you evaluate learning programs? In this post, I’d like to summarize the Kirkpatrick Four Levels of Learning Evaluation.

Donald Kirkpatrick is the founder of training firm Kirkpatrick Partners and a past president of the American Society of Training & Development (ASTD). In 1954, Kirkpatrick developed what is now known as the Kirkpatrick Evaluation Model as part of his doctoral dissertation. The comprehensive guide is presented in his book Evaluation Training Programs: The Four Levels. Here are the four levels:

Level 1: Reaction

This level measures the initial reaction of training participants to the content and event. It focuses both on their thoughts and feelings. Were they actively engaged? Did it seem relevant to them? Did they get to participate in the learning process? The Level 1 evaluation is most easily conducted onsite at the conclusion of the learning event, or at least very soon afterward. A short form or survey is usually the easiest tool to use.

Level 2: Learning

This level measures the increase in knowledge or capability as it relates to the course’s content. The ultimate goal is for participants to learn the material, develop the necessary skills, believe it is worthwhile, and be both confident and committed to using what they’ve learned. Depending on the course subject, evaluating this level may be a bit tricky. To measure an increase, obviously there ought to be a pre-event and post-event assessment. One method is to have practical exercises at the conclusion of the training to measure learning. Another is to use a test or observe on the work site afterwards.

Level 3: Behavior

This level measures the application of the learning in the participants’ work roles over time. The crucial part of this level is that the course’s learning goals must to be supported by the organization’s infrastructure, processes & systems in order to provide the sustained motivation for application. In other words, it needs to be easy for the participants to practice what they’ve learned without interference, and there should be visible rewards. One way to measure this is to interview managers who have been encouraged to observe their teams’ behavior after the learning event has taken place. (This is one reason it’s so important to involve managers in the course development).

Level 4: Results

This level is the ultimate measure of learning effectiveness: improved business results, such as increased sales, decreased turnover, higher employee engagement, etc. The great thing about this level is that management already measures these business results. The important thing for you is to be able to link the training to the results it ought to affect. Next, identify the performance of the participants for the next time period. Then you’ll be able to report that, “the average training participant had a 30% sales increase in the year following the training” or “customer service satisfaction levels for participants were 20% higher than for non-participants.” The more you can measure results, the better a case you make for your learning program.

Learning evaluation can at times seem complicated but it can also be provide immense clarity. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be. If you aren’t currently doing any evaluation of your learning programs, simply pick one level and start with that. The feedback you get will let you know if you’re on the right track.

Which level do you focus on the most?

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

What I’d like to do in this post is show how the 34 StrengthsFinder themes neatly divide into four specific leadership styles – and I’ll explain what difference this makes for you and your team. In the next post, I’ll share some ideas for building a strengths-based leadership development program for your organization.

The 4 Distinct Strengths-Based Leadership Styles

In his follow-up book Strengths-Based Leadership, Gallup writer Tom Rath describes four distinct leadership styles that StrengthsFinder themes fall into.

Executing: Individuals with the majority of their strengths in the leadership style are adept at making things happen. They “catch” ideas easily and naturally make them a reality. They tend to be the ones who implement specific solutions.

Influencing: Individuals with influencing strengths help their teams reach a broader audience. They are the salespeople for a team’s ideas. Not only that, they naturally tend to “own” the responsibility for getting the message across.

Relationship Building: Individuals with relationship building strengths are the human glue that holds a team together. They take a group of individuals and create synergetic groups that work better together than they could apart.

Strategic Thinking: Individuals with strategic thinking strengths essentially keep everyone focused on what could – and should – be. They use information to help the team make informed decisions.

What Difference Do Leadership Styles Make?

At this point, you may be thinking that these distinctions sound nice but wonder how to determine which leadership style you lean toward as well as how it affects your team. I’d like to answer both questions using this table I created for a 20-person project team.

As we learned previously, the StrengthsFinder assessment gives each person a set of their Top 5 Signature Themes from list of 34 possibilities. You can see from this table which strengths fall under which themes. If two or more of your “Top 5” lie within one of these categories, you are likely strongest in that particular leadership style. Since this team was made up of 20 individuals, that means 100 strengths were represented in the sum of everyone’s Top 5. The totals for each theme are listed below.

Without knowing anything about the team itself, I’d like you to consider the following questions:

• What does this team likely tend to do well?
• What does this team probably tend to struggle with?
• How closely would you predict this team works together? With customers?
• In what areas would this team be most likely to enlist outside help?
• Given the profile, how might individuals with strengths in the “Influencing” theme best support the group?

None of the answers are cut and dried. Individual strengths reach their highest potential only when they are part of a collective group (tweet). There’s incredible value in taking StrengthsFinder 2.0 on your own to increase your personal insight and effectiveness. But the benefit multiples exponentially in a group context.

The good news is that you don’t have to come up with all the answers on your own. Each assessment comes with a Strengths Insight Guide to help understand your specific themes as well as an Action Planning Guide with tips on how to apply them. It even tells you how to work most effectively with people who have different strengths.

If you have not had the opportunity to complete the StrengthsFinder assessment, I suggest that you purchase the StrengthsFinder 2.0 book and use the code to complete the assessment online. If you have and it proved to be a valuable experience, invite your team to complete the assessment together. To increase the impact, many consultants, coaches and trainers (including myself) are available to facilitate a StrengthsFinder breakout session and build a team profile for you. I would be glad to help you find one – or you might even decide to give it a try on your own.

What is one way you know your team could benefit from a StrengthsFinder exercise? What types of leadership assessments has your team completed together in the past?

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or   follow him on Twitter.