If you’ve wondered this, I’ve got good news for you. It’s a lot easier than it sounds. And you can get started today. Here’s a game plan for you.

Start Collaborating Now

It’s hard to influence when you don’t have any visibility for one reason: people give more credibility to folks they recognize. But getting noticed can be tricky. No one likes a campaigner with an agenda. Instead, simply go out of your way to get to know the folks you work with – at various levels. Introduce yourself. Ask questions about their function (or use the three questions I always ask). Join lunch groups – or create your own. And volunteer for cross-functional work projects.

Understand the Big Picture

Having tunnel vision is the quickest way to limit your influence. Understand your role and your function’s objectives, but also make a point to understand the broader organizational priorities. Are you in a growth or profitability mode? What does this years’ strategic plan look like? What is most important to the other groups besides yours? It’s hard to influence in the right direction if you don’t understand what that direction is.

Be Proactive

Once you understand where the organization is headed, look for ways to take steps in that direction. Don’t see your job as a set of check boxes just within your role. See it as the responsibility to help the organization move forward. This means preparing for new projects that may come up, anticipating information other groups may need from you (and then providing it!) and looking for areas that could be improved.

Provide Options (and Recommendations!)

You’ve probably heard repeatedly that leaders “don’t find problems, they find solutions.” There’s an even better option than this. When I facilitated a college class on leadership, I repeatedly encouraged my students to “think like a consultant.” What I meant was: instead of sharing an opinion, come up with several viable options of ways to solve the problem at hand. Then take the opportunity to recommend the option you think is best and provide your reasoning. It is much easier for “management” to review your analysis and recommendations than to do all the work from scratch. If you do the work, don’t be surprised when your influence is accepted.

Offer to Do the Heavy Lifting

Once your ideas are accepted, be willing to do the work. When management says, “make it happen” – be ready to go, both for your ideas and others. I recently listened to a company president tell his success story. He said from the outset he accepted the jobs no one else wanted to do – and when he did them successfully, he was quickly given more. Eventually, his title was the highest in the organization.

You don’t need to wait for permission to influence your organization for the better. When you invest yourself in the success of the organization, the people in it and the people it serves, your influence can be an incredible gift, regardless of your level of authority.

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.

Just like in medicine, the last thing a change practitioner should do is prescribe before diagnosing. You don’t want to “fix” the wrong problem. That usually just makes things worse and hurts your credibility.

So how do you diagnose an organization?

Don’t worry, it’s not as complicated as you might think. While survey and data analysis have their place, the method I like to start with is the interview. I’ll identify the key leaders who make the management decisions (VPs, directors, managers, etc). Never just one, but several. Then I’ll schedule time with them to get their input.

The First Three Questions

As I’ve mentioned before, I have a set of three questions I always ask to leaders I meet with, whether I’m doing a diagnostic or not. It allows me to cut straight to the chase of how their organization is doing without being overly intrusive. Here they are:

• What excites you about your organization?
• What would you like to get to next if you could?
• What concerns do you have about your organization right now?

With these short questions, I’m able to quickly capture an overview of the passion, strategy and fear of the leader in a relatively pressure-free way. But if I will be responsible for proposing and/or delivering a solution, I don’t stop there.

In graduate school, I read the book How to OD…And Live to Tell About It by William Becker. In it is an organizational diagnostic I’ve come to really appreciate. Below is a sample of the most important questions from Becker that I use and you can use as well.

Culture

• What are people like and what seems to be important to them?
• What type of person succeeds here? Why?
• How are people professionally developed?

Strategy

• What is the organization’s mission?
• What are your key organizational goals?
• What do people perceive they are most rewarded and recognized for doing?
• What are the top three challenges facing your organization/industry now? Over the next 3-5 years?

Change History

• What are some of the recent (or current) change initiatives your organization has undergone on over the last few years?
• What was their purpose? What resulted and how has this impacted your organization today?
• What were some of the obstacles faced and how were they addressed?

Needs

• In your view, what is the most important thing your company needs to address?
• What do you want to take on right now? Why haven’t you?

Influence

• How is the executive team composed in your firm? What are they good at (as a team)?
• What seems to drive decisions here?

Preferences

• Are you looking for a pair of hands to tell them what to do, or an expert to tell you what is the problem and provide a solution, or are you looking for a collaborative effort where someone facilitates you and your stakeholder’s discovery of the problem and create solutions together?
• Is there anything else I should be aware of if I am to be helpful to your organization?

Once you’ve interviewed enough of the leaders to get an accurate assessment of the situation, you have will generally have the information you need to get started. Compile the results, highlight the major themes, and report them back to the leaders you interviewed. Include your recommendations for what needs to be done and how you propose to make it happen – along with their necessary involvement.

Congratulations, you’ve just completed step one – and what some consider the most important step – in the consulting process!

What other questions would you include? Keep in mind that most leaders don’t have time to answer all of your questions!

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.

“Well, I’m a consultant.”

“A consultant? But what do you actually do?”

This is a typical conversation whenever I meet anyone new – and not just me, but for most folks in my profession. I don’t know why, but it’s always been a little tricky to explain what, in fact, I do for a living. “I solve problems,” or “I help people clarify what they want,” or “I build management solutions” are typical responses. A past employer taught us to say, “I help clients move from issue to outcome, with pace, certainty and strategic agility.”

The truth is that I help management understand their needs and then help build solutions to meet those needs. Since my specialty is organizational and talent development, the types of needs I address are usually related to the people and leadership side of organizations. My colleagues in other specialties do the same thing, but with finance, marketing, customers, supply chains, technology or countless other areas.

Whether you are officially a “consultant” or are a specialist, program manager, project manager or just plain responsible for some type of organizational change, I’d like to introduce you to a basic consulting methodology. I often tell college students in a class I facilitate to “think like a consultant” and I believe this methodology can assist just about everyone. Here are the basic components with a basic synopsis for each one.

Analyze Phase

The first step with any new project is get the requirements. Whether your client or boss wants a new management program or a new software program, you need to figure out what specifications must be included. If you are tasked with building a new car, you need to know the requirements for fuel efficiency, safety features, speed, cost, and many other variables before you even think about beginning. For a people program, you need to know who will be a part of the program, budget, and desired outcomes of their experience – among other things. Once you get the requirements, you need to do what is referred to as “gap analysis” – which means you determine the current state and how it measures up with the desired future state. The solution will bridge the gap.

At this point, you’ll need to develop a basic approach plan that proposes such elements as options for potential solutions, steps you plan to take to build the solution, costs, timelines, and additional resources or people who will need to be involved. The main client will then provide input or make the necessary management decisions – and then you can proceed.

The penalties for skipping the Analyze phase are monumental: high probability of wasted effort, wasted time, wasted resources, rework, missed deadlines, broken promises, loss of engagement, cost overages and client (or customer) ire.

Design Phase

During the design phase, you essentially build an outline for the entire project. As with a writing project or presentation, you will likely begin with a rough outline from your basic plan and then progress to a detailed design outline for the project. When management wants to know what the solution will look like, you can show the design plans. Just like writing, it is much easier to make changes in the Design phase than down the road in the Develop phase.

Develop Phase

In the Develop phase, you take the design plans and start actually building out the content or application of the solution. If you are building a training course, you take the course outline and start building lesson plans. For a technology solution, you start writing actual code or building applications.

The Develop phase isn’t finished until the solution is essentially complete. Don’t forget to include user support materials, such as job aids, reference guides, manuals or online portals, as appropriate for the project.

Test Phase

Once the Develop phase is finished, the temptation is to rush to the Implement phase and finish up. But first, the solution needs to be tested. You wouldn’t want to own a smartphone that had never been tested before it was released to market. Your solution needs to be tested as well. For a learning solution or new management process, an appropriate test could be a pilot group. For a technology solution, it could be scenario testing with dummy (or real) data. Take the results from the tests to address outstanding issues so that you (and more importantly, your client) can have full confidence in a successful implementation.

Implement Phase

Implementation takes place when the solution is finally released. It can be referred to as “Delivery” or “Go-Live” as well. Once solutions are implemented, they can be extremely hard to change (depending on the type of solution). Depending on the type of solution, this phase may be a blanket switch or may be implemented in multiple degrees. Occasionally, consulting teams are not involved in delivery, which makes the transition process and reference materials that much more important.

Evaluation

Evaluation isn’t a stand-alone phase. It must be done for each step and on an ongoing basis. At the very least, you will want approval from your client to finish each phase, but there will likely be more evaluation than that. You’ll want to quantify the expected benefits before the solution and measure the actual benefits afterwards. Focus groups or validation by SMEs may be needed during the Design and Develop phases for large or complicated projects. For solutions that can be adjusted on an ongoing basis, continual feedback is helpful (that’s why we have customer surveys). For learning solutions, Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Evaluation is a good place to start.

An evaluation plan is usually created as a part of the Analyse phase.

I realize that many of my readers may not have an immediate need for a consulting methodology. But once you do, it’s here for a reference.

For those who have built new solutions, what would you add?

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 week, I’d like to share some ideas on how to build a strengths-based leadership development program for your organization. I realize that not everyone is in a position responsible for serving an entire organization in this way. However, at the very least, these ideas can shape how we think about the implications of organizational leadership. Here they are:

Use a Strengths Model Before a Competency Model

I’m a huge proponent of competency-based leadership programs, in part because I’ve helped build one before. But there’s another, more objective reason: your organization ought to know what you are looking for in your leaders. Most leadership competency models include the likes of communication, planning, problem solving, initiative, etc. But a competency model isn’t the best place to start.

Here’s the psychology: think back to when you were a kid bringing home your school report card. Your courses (i.e. “competencies”) were a pretty standard set. If you had one A, several passing grades, and a failing grade, which one got the most attention? The truth is that students who aren’t intrinsically drawn to math (and therefore don’t excel at it) will never become great accountants. But that won’t prevent them from become great lawyers, doctors, writers or salespeople.

The temptation with competency models is to attempt to turn everyone into an autonomous, standard issue leader. But even if this were possible (it’s not), the ultimate success would turn out to be the ultimate failure since everyone would be good, good would become average, and no one’s contribution would be unique or noteworthy. No one is rewarded for being average. We can all be remarkable if we focus on our natural strengths, and each strengths contributes to a distinct leadership style.

Competency models should establish a leadership baseline. Each leader ought to be able to score a passing grade. But priority should be given to maximizing and utilizing each employee’s strengths instead of over-managing their weaknesses.

Take a Strengths Assessment Corporately

It should come as no surprise that I advocate for the StrengthsFinder 2.0 strengths assessment. Depending on level of infiltration (either partial or full), here is the priority I suggest that it be administered to:

• HR Development staff (who will be responsible for building/managing the program)
• Executive sponsors (who will be the face of the initiative)
• Executive team who will need to practice what the organization preaches, not to mention play to each other’s strengths)
• Managers (who will need to demonstrate commitment to lower levels)
• Individual contributors
• New employees via New Employee Onboarding experience

Provide Interactive Training for Each Career Level

One way to ruin an otherwise good intervention is to provide information with no analysis, application or collaboration. Strengths training ought to include all three. Tell each audience the benefits of the assessment and of the program in general. Demonstrate specific instances in which their strengths awareness can and should be applied. Then provide open-ended discussions or scenarios for the group to engage together.

Depending on the organization, it might be just as effective to provide training team by team instead of by career level.

Offer Team-Specific Resources

As I discussed in the previous post, the team-level is the critical target for strengths-based leadership development. When it comes to strengths, individual effectiveness only goes so far. The greatest power comes in its application to teams. So go the extra mile by providing job aids, reference sheets and intranet resources. You might put together a discussion template to help teams map out a new project leveraging each one’s strengths. One resource that is a must is a Team Map so that anyone can see the team’s strength profile at a glance. (I’ve included a link to sample Team Map template here and StrengthsFinder also includes one in the resource section of their website).

Introduce Strengths-Specific Language in Visible Places

There’s no point in having core values if no one ever talks about them. It’s the same thing with strengths – especially if you are going to go the extra mile to include strengths in your leadership development program. This means the organization should refer to strengths in high profile communications, such as newsletters, emails or executive town hall events. Also, employees should be able to display their Top 5 Signature Themes visibly at their work spaces with a small certificate on their cubicles or a desktop artifact.

So there they are, some best practices for including strengths in your organization’s leadership development program. For additional assistance, I’m available to help your team build your own program, to deliver a StrengthsFinder workshop or coach through any step of the process. Visit my Consulting page for more information, or simply contact me.

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.

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.

You’ve probably heard the adage, “if you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail.” Strategic planning initiatives give organizational and departmental leaders the chance to define strategy, set direction and make key decisions. It breathes life into the vision and gives the existing motivation a track to run on. But a plan doesn’t inherently ensure success.

I recently spoke with my friend John Maloney of ASJ Consulting about why strategic planning fails. Whether you’re a one-man shop or a large organization, here are some of the main reasons we identified.

Lack of Buy-In

If the leaders of an organization or department don’t think it’s important to create a strategic plan – or that it’s a waste of time compared to their normal duties – it’ll be hard for them to invest their full attention and effort into the process. If the chief doesn’t buy in, it’s already over. Make sure to elicit the top leader’s buy-in for both the process and purpose – and use his or her influence to convince the rest to participate.

Misunderstanding the Difference Between a Strategy and a Plan

A strategy is not the same thing as a plan, and a plan is not the same thing as a strategy. The two are different. A strategy is a set of choices that clarify the organization’s competitive advantage, value proposition, target markets and essential capabilities. A plan is an actual list of goals, objectives and tasks that need to be accomplished. A plan becomes “strategic” when it is informed by the strategy. Without a strategy, a plan is simply an organized list of good ideas. Don’t just create a plan; do your homework before the event and come prepared to develop the plan together.

There’s “No Time” on the Calendar

Of course, every leader has the same amount of time on the calendar. Claiming there is no time indicates that planning is a low priority. If the leaders don’t see the value in spending time away from normal activities to plan for the future, they’ll opt for spending 1-2 hours discussing top of mind ideas instead of investing the 1-2 days required to create an effective plan together. Make sure strategic planning events make it on the calendar well in advance and have high priority. Conducting the session offsite can really help cut down on distractions.

Lack of Participation

If the leaders whose strategic insight is required to produce an effective plan can’t get on the same page, you may end up with a plan, but it won’t be the plan you need to win. If there is a high degree of fragmentation, politicking or if the departments operate in silos, leaders’ first priority may be vying more for budget and resources instead of open collaboration. Make sure both the chief and the facilitator elicit open and candid collaboration.

Complicated End Product

Many leaders assume strategic plans need to be completely comprehensive and addresses every concern and possibility. In some large organizations, higher leadership elements may mandate that strategic plans adhere to a certain format or length. But for the rest, large plans can actually create a disincentive for implementation simply because they are too detailed – especially for leaders who aren’t natural planners. It’s possible for a strategic plan to fit on a single page as long as you discipline your team to clarify which priorities are most important.

It Never Gets Implemented

This is one of the results of an overly-complicated plan. No one wants to deal with it! Make sure each task has an owner assigned. In addition, make sure the entire plan has an owner – someone who will follow up with the task owners and track the progress. If the chief leader isn’t the acting owner of the strategic plan, he should appoint (or the other leaders agree on) a “strategic plan czar” who will perform the follow-up duties.

Sticking to “the Plan”

You read that right. Sticking to the plan can actually get in the way of execution effectiveness. At the end of the day, a strategic plan is like a battle plan or a game plan. Once you get into the action, you’ll have to improvise. A strategic plan should be written in pencil. If it’s immune to any changes, your team won’t be able to make the necessary adjustments. Invest in period revisions.

Both John and I address all of these issues when we facilitate strategic planning sessions with clients. If you’ve never investing in a strategic planning process, or for more information, visit my Consulting page.

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.

Many leaders hire a coach when they want to gain clarity, explore future opportunities, form an action plan, or resolve a leadership challenge. They share conversations either on a regular or intermittent basis. Coaches are champions of the clients’ vision. But coaches aren’t saviors. Let’s take a look at some of the things a coach won’t do for you.

A Leadership Coach Won’t Solve Your Problems

In addition to the reasons listed above, leaders frequently hire a coach when they need help solving a problem. Here’s the bad news first: other types of professional relationships (consultants, trainers, counselors, etc.) may attempt to solve your leadership challenges for you. A leadership coach won’t. But here’s the good news. The coaching relationship is designed to keep you in the driver’s seat – meaning the coach’s role is to provide the framework and proactive support you need to identify root issues and generate solutions yourself as you work together. The next two points show how.

A Leadership Coach Won’t Tell You What to Do

Once again, many professional roles are built around the expertise of the provider – what they know that you need to know in order to succeed. When you hire them, you are buying their expertise and usually get some sort of knowledge download. Coaches have knowledge, but they a very reluctant to simply dole out advice. Instead, they ask powerful, open-ended questions and listen while you fill in the blanks. (For a sample list of questions a coach might ask, click here). In this way, coaches help get to the root of both the issue and the opportunity instead of superimposing a solution onto you. Even though a coach has expertise, they start with the expertise you already possess as the leader and expert of your situation. Even though a coach sometimes gives advice, for the good ones it is rare and never unsolicited.

A Leadership Coach Won’t Let You Off the Hook

What happens when a consultant delivers a solution that doesn’t work? Where does the blame rest? You’ll probably answer those questions differently depending on whether you are the consultant or the client! But a coach is upfront about whose responsibility the desired outcome lies with. (Here’s a hint: it’s with the client – not the coach.) This expectation allows the coach to partner with the client in custom-designing an action plan that the client will operate between (or after) coaching engagements. This plan then becomes the basis of future conversations.

If you would like to speak to a coach regarding any ideas or challenges related to leadership development, strategic thinking, change, talent management, teamwork, communication, learning programs, employee development or just to find out more about coaching, visit my Coaching page, or simply contact me.

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.