Watching the seminar footage, I couldn’t help but muse, “You just don’t see that every day….” It was just so… different. Contrast this with a scenario that played out a few years back on my team. I had received some feedback on a project that I didn’t agree with and had defended myself a little too aggressively. The next day, I decided I owed my team an apology. Even so, I remember pacing in my cubical for several minutes before I could muster up the will to admit I’d been wrong.

What is it about apologizing that is so difficult? And what makes it so important – in terms of cultural capital, influence and effectiveness?

Here are my observations.

Leaders Set the Standard

Gruenert & Whitaker wrote, “The culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate.” Sometimes the leader is the one with the bad behavior. Apologies acknowledge the standard for good behavior.

We All Have Room to Grow

Dale Carnegie said, “If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.” The bottom line is we all have room to grow, which means we’ll all make mistakes from time to time. It’s often not the mistakes themselves (both unintentional and poor behavior) but how we respond that provide the largest opportunity for growth.

Authenticity Matters

It’s been said that oftentimes our followers are more impressed with our weaknesses and failures than they are with our successes. For one thing, our struggles can seem more relate-able. When we apologize, we relate on a very human level. In doing so, we invite the people around us to view us not as their leaders but as their equals.

Lead By Example

When I was growing up, my parents would occasionally apologize to us kids. I can’t remember any specific occasions, but as I’ve gotten older, I wonder that it must’ve taken some serious willpower. I think they decided it was important to set the example that when we’re wrong, it’s our responsibility (even theirs) to make it right.

Improve Behavior, Improve Performance

In their book Thanks for the Feedback, Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen point out that when you are the problem in a given situation, you actually have the most control over improving the situation. When you change, the situation changes. When we recognize that we’ve been the problem – and apologize for it – not only does the situation improve but those who oppose us now have a reason to support us in following through.

Unhindered Teams Win

In his book Leading with the Heart, basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski talks about the effectiveness of teams built on trust and a radical commitment to the collective whole. In the sport of basketball, time is precious. The longer any one team member is wrong, the longer the whole team suffers. In most organizations, time can easily get away from us. The quicker we can make things right with our teammates, the quicker we can restore trust, cohesion and effectiveness. I truly believe that teamwork is the next great competitive advantage.

Admitting our faults is tough – there’s no way around it. But there’s usually no sense in hiding what others are probably already well aware of. Let’s push ourselves to continue to acknowledge where we’ve been the problem and ask for forgiveness. The entire organization stands to benefit.

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.

Come to Meetings with Recommendations

When you do this, you save time and effort from everyone involved. Instead of requiring everyone in the meeting to contextualize and determine next steps, your recommendations provide a frame of reference. Your recommendations aren’t mandatory, but they are a head start. Side benefit: if you keep up the initiative, your influence will grow as well.

Anticipate Information Needs

“Who needs the information our team possesses?” It’s an easy question to ask. The hard part is making others’ needs a priority. Unfortunately, many leaders aren’t very aware of the organizational priorities outside the team, which severely limits their influence. When you identify an information need, do everything you can to meet it before being asked.

Ask for Input from Key Stakeholders Before Planning Season

Failing to plan may equate to planning to fail. But failing to consider what your key stakeholders will need from you during planning sessions is almost as bad. Planning isn’t just about your goals. It’s about proactively meeting the needs of the organization as they occur (not afterward).

Play to Your Teammates’ Strengths

We all bring a unique set of strengths to the table. Gallup research shows when we work in our areas of strength, we are six times as likely to be highly engaged. But in order to help your teammates work in their areas of strength, you have to know what those strengths are. Invest in a strengths assessment, such as StrengthsFinder.

Understand Your Teammates’ Goals and Motivations

I’m familiar with my goals. But what about yours? What about the rest of the team’s? It’s a huge mistake to assume everyone is “in it” for the same reason. Take the time to understand what winning looks like for your teammates. Then help them get there.

Share Resources

What tools have you used that others could benefit from? A leadership book library? A project planning template? A list of helpful vendors? Let your team know what you have in your inventory and frequently offer to share with them.

Share Good Ideas

Many people share their good ideas at the water cooler, but few take the initiative to submit them through appropriate processes. If you see something, say something. Not all organizations will be receptive, but for some, your idea may make all the difference in the world.

Share Your Network

You don’t need to be a socialite to be a connector of people. It doesn’t cost anything to build a Rolodex. Don’t let it go stale. From time to time you’ll encounter someone who “needs a guy (or gal)” to help solve a problem. Offer to make the connection.

Share Key Learnings

It’s a shame how much investment goes into individual training for employees compared to the collective knowledge gained. Set the example by sharing what you’re learning from your coursework, conferences, books and on-the-job experiences. Ask for a few minutes to share in team meetings. Host a lunch and learn. Email links to helpful content.

Set Your Teammates Up in Big Meetings

No one wants to look stupid in meetings. That’s one reason why some people are so slow to speak up. Imagine the reaction when you allow a teammate to deliver the big punchline at a crucial meeting. You might shock them. Guess what: you don’t have to imagine it. You can do it if you’re willing to share the glory.

Provide Constructive Feedback

Not all feedback is constructive or helpful. In fact, unsolicited feedback can be risky. Ask permission to give feedback. Recently, I had the chance to provide feedback to several leadership teams before they presented project recommendations to a group of senior executives. My job wasn’t to try to correct them – it was to help them to look good in front of their bosses.

Remember, your words have power. Use them wisely – but use them.

By the way, if you need some, here’s how to get great feedback for yourself.

Give Public Credit

When we’ve achieved success, it can be tempting to hog the credit. Don’t give in! Share the praise. Highlight the contributions of others. Be good at making others look good.

I hope by now you’ve noticed all the incredible ways each of us has to influence not only our teams, but our organization as a whole. I’ve said many times that you don’t need to be especially skilled or qualified to be a leader. Just take the opportunities you already have in front of you. They’ll take you much further than you think.

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.

My first thought was that Coach K must have really messed up his black suit hugging a really sweaty guy (probably a sign that I’d make a terrible basketball coach). The second was how evident the bond between the leader and the followers was that day. It wasn’t an expression of victory, but one of commitment.

In case you didn’t know, “Coach K” is the winningest coach in Division 1 college basketball with over 1,000 wins. He played and coached under Bob Knight at West Point. He’s won four national championships at Duke University. And he’s coached several Team USA men’s basketball teams to Olympic gold.

But Coach K will be the first to tell you that winning it all is too shallow of a goal to play for. Instead, the focus should be on building teams that can consistently be in a position to perform at their very best. Coach K knows how to build winning teams. Here are just a few of his teamwork strategies.

Inclusive Language

According to Coach K, something sacred happens when our language changes from “I” to “we,” from “my” to “our,” and from “me” to “us.” All of a sudden, there’s no longer such a thing as “my” team; only “our” team. And if it’s “our” team, that means every part of the team is equal in value, regardless of the individual roles. The bottom line is this: teams win or lose together.

Collective Goals and Responsibility

At Leadercast 2013, Coach K shared his famous fist analogy which goes like this: any one fist can defeat any one finger. In other words, the best team can always defeat the best individual. That’s why individual goals only work in the context of overall team goals. Only a group mentality can create a team identity. When leaders take responsibility for their own actions and mistakes, it sets a powerful precedent for the team. But leaders need to take responsibility for the performance of the team as a whole – and own it collectively. At that point, commitment takes on a whole new meaning. “When you love your team and are committed to them, you can’t let them down. You might let yourself down, but you won’t let your team down.” The result? A shared confidence – one that is better than a confidence only in yourself.

Trust

We hear a lot about trust from most teamwork or relationship experts. According to Coach K, a team commitment has to be be based on trust, which in turn is based on telling the truth. The quicker teammates tell the truth to each other, the faster they can get and stay on track. When teams trust one another, confrontation is a constructive, not destructive, experience because it is based on the team’s commitment to their collective performance. True friends tell each other the truth, so why shouldn’t true teammates? Confrontation can’t break a relationship that is bonded by trust. Without trust, a team is defeated by within instead of by the competition.

Building Relationships

What stood out to me about the court-side hug between player and coach was that it was simply an expression of a relationship that had been established long ago. Coach K shared in his book Leading with the Heart that “the only way to lead people is to understand them. And the only way to understand them is to get to know them personally. That’s why you need to invest time with each person.” Why? Because people don’t follow a leader who has his own agenda or doesn’t ever show his “real” side. Too many leaders are afraid to show their real side, which is exactly what they need to show to connect with their teams.

Even though I don’t root for Duke, I root for what Coach K stands for. I want to be on a team like the ones he creates. I’d like to create those kinds of teams as well. Here’s the good news: it’s possible. What’s the next step for your team?

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.

Complexity is the enemy of clarity.

Andy Stanley opened by sharing that complexity is a natural part of growth, but it can also be the greatest barrier if we’re not prepared for it. To keep things simple, always revisit these three questions: What are we doing? Why are we doing it? and Where do I fit in? As leaders, simplicity in the midst of complexity is our responsibility, and it’s hard work!

People don’t need more time, they need room to think.

Getting Things Done author David Allen reminded us that we can only feel good about what we’re not doing if we know what it is. How much time does it take to have a good idea? Only moments, but we don’t have creative space when our minds are cluttered. We are most productive when we have room to make a mess, but if we start with a mess, we’ll always feel out of control and lack focus.

We can’t have new beginnings without new endings.

Author Henry Cloud used ideas from his books Necessary Endings and Boundaries for Leaders to show the benefits of pruning. Organizations, just like plants, have only so many available resources. Make sure the best opportunities have enough resources by putting an end to the merely “good” opportunities.

Leaders should be good at math.

Leadership guru John Maxwell says that leadership is simply influence. His four math tips for leadership are: 1) Add value every day, 2) Subtract leadership landmines, 3) Multiply your strengths by developing them, and 4) Divide your strengths by delegating them.

Trust is a team commitment.

Duke University and Team USA head basketball coach “Coach K” Mike Krzyzewski explained that trust is the essential element to any great team because “when you have trust, two is better than one because two does it as one.” When you have trust, you tell the truth and expect the truth in return. There is no need to look sideways, only forward.

Leaders simply must be optimists.

In an interview with John Maxwell, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pointed out that no one wants to follow a pessimist!

The one who fields the best team wins.

Former CEO of GE, Jack Welch, pointed out that “widgets” only last a short time. Good teams know where they’re going (vision), why they’re going there (mission) and how they’re going to get there (behaviors).

Values are always more important than performance.

When it comes to personnel moves, employees with high performance and high values should be put on the leadership track and low performers with low values should be cut loose. This is pretty much a no-brainer for everyone. What you do with the other two groups of people is crucial. According to Jack Welch, under-performers who model the organization’s values should be given second and third chances to get it right while high performers without the values should also be cut loose. Otherwise, they’ll ruin your culture.

If you don’t like people, leadership stinks!

Jack Welch said 70% of his role at GE was people development. There are teaching moments each day both for the positive and the negative. You have to be interested enough in people to use them! In Welch’s words, “you have no right calling yourself a manager if people don’t know where they stand with you!”

Invite your employees to be prepared to leave.

Of the many thoughts Jack Welch shared, this one was perhaps the most radical. Don’t invite your employees to leave if they can’t hack it – invite them to leave if YOU can’t hack it. Up the ante on yourself. If you aren’t giving your people the environment they need to succeed, tell them they owe it to themselves to have the self-confidence to find a better organization. Then work to make the job so good the people won’t want to leave.

Leadership is contagious.

Navy SEAL LCDR Roark Denver encouraged the audience to fight for every inch of improvement in an elite environment. Calm is contagious. In fact, everything is contagious, whether it’s calm, patience, even stupidity. If you do something well, your followers will do it better. Unfortunately if you do something poorly, your followers will do it worse.

Our country is worth it.

LCDR Roark Denver closed the event explaining what he called the unique covenant between our nation’s warriors and civilians. Our nation’s civilians give the military something worth fighting for, he said. Because of that, there ought to be as much interaction as possible for us to collaborate and learn from each other.

Of course there were many more teachable moments, but these were the biggest ones for me. To catch up on the social conversation, view #CFALeadercast on Twitter. (It was trending all day!). Next year’s event will take place on May 9, 2014. For more information, visit www.chick-fil-aleadercast.com.

For those who attended Leadercast (past or present), what were your biggest takeaways?

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.

Now replace my name with yours. How would you respond?

When was the last time someone asked you to identify your strengths? Was it in an interview or an application? Were you joining a new organization, team, project, school or program? Maybe you were about to accept a new promotion or a new role with a new set of people. What did you say? Do you answer the same way each time? Do your answers change based on your present circumstances?

If I could share a proven method to discover your strengths accurately, easily and in a quick and inexpensive manner, would that be good news?

Over the next three weeks, I will be sharing three separate posts addressing how strengths are crucial to individual and organization leadership success.

• An Introduction to Strengths
• Strengths-Based Leadership Styles
• How to Build a Strengths-Based Leadership Program

In 2007, Gallup released a strengths assessment called StrengthsFinder 2.0 and a small book by Tom Rath with the same title. Using data from 1.7 million survey inputs, 40 years of research and previous thought leadership by Don Clifton, the assessment features 34 distinct strength themes. By taking the assessment, each individual gets access to his or her Top 5 Signature Themes. In the past 6 years, over 8 million people have taken the StrengthsFinder assessment.

What are Strengths?

According to Gallup, strengths are made up of three key ingredients: talent, knowledge and experience.

Talent: Talent is a natural way of thinking, feeling or behaving that is innate. This means a person with a particular talent can be counted on to operate from this consistent basis, no matter what comes his or her way. Since it is intrinsic, talent never changes and it only grows.

Knowledge: Simply put, knowledge is the sum total of the amount a person knows about his or her talent and how it applies in any given situation.

Experience: Experience is the amount of time invested in developing a certain talent. Just because someone is inexperienced doesn’t mean a talent doesn’t exist, only that it has limited application.

When you combine talent, knowledge and experience together, you establish a strength, which Rath calls “the ability to consistently provide near-perfect performance.”

All the 34 StrengthsFinder themes can be found here. As an aside, my Top 5 Signature Themes are: futurist, maximizer, strategic, focus and relator.

What are the Benefits of Knowing Your Strengths?

Aside from being able to easily and consistently answer inquiries about your strengths, knowing your strengths has many individual and organization benefits. Here are a few of the most explicit:

Employee Engagement Skyrockets: Based on Gallup research, Rath quotes an astounding statistic that employees who have the chance to use their strengths at work everyday are six times as likely to have a high level of engagement at work.

Building on Your Strengths: For a talent to become a strength, knowledge and experience must be added. When you identify your talent, you are much more able to target your knowledge and experience priorities and become remarkable in those areas. In fact, the StrengthsFinder 2.0 book suggests many ideas for development with each individual theme.

Knowing How to Best Support Others: One of my favorite benefits of the StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment is that it introduces a common strengths language, not just for individuals, but also for teams. This means teams have the ability to communicate on a strengths basis and to adjust their words and actions based on how they can best support one another in a team environment. The level of synergy is often shocking. Once again, the StrengthsFinder 2.0 book includes suggestions for working with the strengths of others.

Identifying Team Gaps: Completing the StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment with your team will give you the ability to identify the gaps that exist on your team. Forewarned is forearmed. All of a sudden, team members with strengths that are in short supply become invaluable. Gaps can also play a strong role in recruitment considerations.

How Can I Discover My Strengths?

The easiest way to discover your strengths is to take the StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment for yourself. Simply purchase the book and use the access code at the end of the book to take the short assessment online.

For teams, I also offer a StrengthsFinder workshop through my consulting service. I’ll guide your team in completing the assessment and then give your unique team profile showing where your team strengths and gaps lie. I’ll give you suggestions for maximizing your strengths and facilitate a breakout session for team discussion. Contact me if you’d like to know more.

So who cares about your strengths? Do you? If so, I encourage you to invest in your own leadership development by completing the StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment just like 8 million individuals – including myself – have already done.

If you’ve already taken the StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment, what are your Top 5 Signature Themes?

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.