Scott Eblin is an executive coach, a speaker, a blogger and the author of “The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success.” You can learn more about him and read his blog at Eblin Group. Or follow him on Twitter: @scotteblin.

This is the second post in a series exploring how to improve your leadership presence in 2012. Read the first post on how to get your New Year’s leadership resolutions back on track. To assess the state of your leadership skills, check out Eblin’s free leadership self-assessment, based on his book “The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success.”

A big part of my work as a coach involves working with high-potential leaders in workshops, keynotes and webinars. One of my favorite questions to ask these audiences is, “How many of you think of yourselves or have been referred to by others as the ‘go-to person?’ ” Usually, about every hand in the room goes up. I asked that question as a flash poll in a webinar recently, and 98% of the 400-plus managers and executives on the line affirmed that they are the go-to people.

It’s not surprising, really. Most people who end up in leadership roles have built a reputation for being go-to people.

So what’s wrong with that? Nothing at all when you’re on your way up. Being the person who’s known for getting stuff done is a great way to build your reputation and career. Chances are, though, that you’re eventually going to reach the point at which operating as the go-to person is simply no longer sustainable. The scope of work gets too broad and complex for one go-to person to take things over and heroically save the day.

To grow as a leader, you have to let go of being the go-to person and pick up the profile of being the person who builds a team of go-to people.

How do you do that? Here are some ideas. (read more…)

Kate Matsudaira is vice president of engineering at Decide, a technology startup focused on helping consumers make smarter purchases through science and data. She has extensive experience managing software teams at some of the top software companies, such as Amazon and Microsoft.

Almost every company focuses on hiring and recruiting star employees, but it is not enough to simply hire the best. To utilize all of that “rock star” potential, you must give them the culture and environment in which to prosper.

The inspiration for this blog post stems from a recent conversation with a colleague. He confided that he had a dilemma in which his best employees were doing a lot extra work (which was good), but their efforts didn’t align with the business goals. He said to me in frustration, “If they have extra time, why can’t they just do more on their projects and assignments?”

After talking a while, it became clear he had a team of driven, ambitious employees, but there was something missing — a framework encouraging such overachievers to produce work rewarding themselves and the company. I suffered, too, from not having such a framework early in my career.

In my first job out of college, I was frustrated by my first review — I was rated as average. But I was accustomed to being above average; I could get A’s in school only by completing the homework and doing well on tests. However, in the corporate world, doing only what’s expected, even well, gets you average. (read more…)

Ernie Rosenberg is president and CEO of the American Cleaning Institute, which represents producers of household, industrial and institutional cleaning products, their ingredients and finished packaging; oleochemical producers; and chemical distributors to the cleaning product industry. ACI’s The 2012 ACI Annual Meeting & Industry Convention is Jan. 30 to Feb. 4 in Orlando, Fla. Rosenberg recently discussed his leadership philosophy, the convention and what’s ahead for ACI and the industry.

Describe your leadership philosophy.

I believe in delegating, trusting and doing the right thing. If a leader has good people, he or she needs to let them assume responsibility which means they have to take the risks involved in their work within reason. If there is too much oversight of work in advance and the work is supervised too closely, it tends to reduce the ownership that people take in their jobs and projects.

As a leader, you have to take responsibility and balance the risks to your clients (members in our case) with allowing mistakes. Reasonable mistakes have to be tolerated and corrected constructively. Of course, as one of my bosses told me, “It’s OK to make a mistake. Take responsibility. Correct it. And don’t make the same dumb mistake twice.” And openly acknowledge successes, even small ones.

Doing the right thing and being seen as doing so is essential. People need to take pride in the organization. They need to have confidence that it is ethical and has a purpose in providing service beyond their day-to-day duties. They also need to know that the leader will support them and do the right thing by them. (read more…)

This guest post is by Shelly Alcorn, CAE, an association-management consultant. Reach her on Twitter @shellyalcorn, on LinkedIn or at the Association Subculture Blog.

This is the first in a series of three posts exploring critical skills association leaders will need to possess or develop in the next 10 years. These are taken from a recent report “Future Work Skills 2020,” produced by the Institute for the Future and the University of Phoenix Research Institute.

Association volunteer and staff leaders are continually faced with unique challenges in their operating environments. The development of skills to help navigate in disruptive environments is critical. In addition, association leaders need to hone in and amplify the strengths they naturally possess and decide which ones they, their staffs or their volunteers need to focus on.  Here are the first three of 10 areas to consider actively exploring when looking at allocating available professional development dollars.

Sense-making: Ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed.

In many cases, association executives are already pretty good at this, but over the next few years will need to get even better. The shift between humans doing repetitive, mechanized work to machines doing so has not been limited to the assembly lines. Every area of the employment landscape has been affected by mechanization and with advanced robotics the trend shows no sign of slowing.

The result is an urgent need to consistently do what only humans can do — use critical thinking and sense-making skills to help establish meaning and derive critical insights about programs, members and volunteers. (read more…)