Next Level Blog

Join Me for a Conversation on Leading at the Next Level

I hope you and your colleagues will join me for a complimentary tele-seminar on Leading at the Next Level on Thursday, October 14 at 2:00 pm ET. It’s co-sponsored by the good folks at SmartBrief on Leadership. You can sign up for the conversation here. Here’s the scoop on what we’ll cover. 

About the Leading at the Next Level Tele-seminar

Based on the research behind the second edition of my book, The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success, I’ll share the highlights of a field tested roadmap of what high performing leaders pick up and let go of when they take on bigger roles.  In a fast paced 30 minute format (with brief Q&A following), I’ll share with you:

• Fresh insights from global executives on what it takes to succeed in today’s fast-paced, matrixed environment.
• Coachable Moments tips that hundreds of my clients have used to raise their leadership game.
• Data Points that highlight some of the vital leadership behaviors that my exclusive research shows rising leaders and executives must master.

Click here to register online now for the tele-seminar and take a few moments to pose a question you’d like for me to cover during the call.  It’s a complementary event and I invite you to join in with your entire team.  I’ll provide a recording of the call to all who register.

Register for the Leading at the Next Level Tele-seminar with Scott Eblin on Thursday, October 14 at 2pm ET.

What Don Draper and Gordon Gekko Have to Teach Us

Don Draper and Gordon Gekko are two guys who are making a lot of money.  While that statement may be true in the fictional realm, it’s definitely true in the literal realm. Over the past four years, Mad Men, with its lead character, advertising exec Don Draper, has become more and more popular as evidenced by ratings, buzz and marketing tie-ins. This past weekend, Gordon Gekko was back in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. It was number one at the box office.

What is it about these two guys that fascinates us so much? A lot of it can be summed up in a funny bit that actor Jon Hamm did in character for Saturday Night Live – Don Draper’s Guide to Picking Up Women. The secret, as Don says, is to have a great name, look fantastic in a suit, look fantastic in casual wear, be uncannily successful at your job and blow people away anytime you say anything.

All of that seems to work for Gordon Gekko as well – especially the part about blow people away anytime you say anything. My wife and I went to see Wall Street 2 over the weekend and loved it. One of the early scenes in the movie is Gekko giving a speech to promote his new book, Is Greed Good?, to a full house of business school students. Since this is a PG-13 rated blog, I won’t share his opening line but there are a lot of good ones such as, “You’re the NINJA generation – no income, no jobs, no assets.”  

So, what , if anything, can we learn from Draper and Gekko?

Special Opportunities for Fans of The Next Level

The 2nd edition of my book, The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success, 2nd Edition, will be released in late October. To celebrate the launch, my publisher is enabling us to extend, for the next week, a range of complementary Next Level leadership development opportunities for those who can pre-order copies of the book through Amazon or Barnes & Noble. The details follow, but first, here are the highlights of what’s the same and what’s new in the expanded 2nd edition of The Next Level.

What’s the Same –

• The same model and advice of what executive leaders need to pick up and let go of to meet the challenges of the next level.

What’s New –

• Nineteen Coachable Moment sidebars that provide proven context specific coaching tips for improving leadership effectiveness.
• Data Points that spotlight the vital leadership behaviors that our research shows rising leaders and executives must master.
• Fresh insights from global executives on what it takes to succeed in a competitive marketplace.
• An expansion of the popular Situation Solutions Guide appendix to provide tips on how to deal with more of the predictable situations that executives will face in their career.

Interested in the complementary leadership development opportunities we’re offering with the book launch?  Read on for more details:

Video Book Club: Anytime Coaching

Let me acknowledge a deeply held personal bias. Any leader who manages people needs to know how to coach for performance. In their book, Anytime Coaching, my colleagues Teresa Kloster and Wendy Swire provide the framework, tools, exercises and tips that you need to build or improve your coaching skills.

In addition to talking about why I like Anytime Coaching in this video clip, I actually show you why I like the book. It’s straightforward and easily accessible. If you’re interested in being a better coach, you should read it.

Leaders Need to Work the Diagonals

As I discuss in The Next Level, one of the key shifts that leaders have to make as they move into bigger roles is to pick up looking left and right as they lead and to let go of just looking up and down as they lead. What I mean by the picking up part is that higher level leadership requires getting out of your own lane and collaborating with peers to get meaningful things done. What I mean by the letting go part is that you have to expand your field of vision beyond the vertical axis of just focusing on what your boss wants and what your team needs. To be effective, you’ve got to go broader.

When I was doing the research for the second edition of The Next Level, I was reminded that your field of vision needs to extend even further – beyond left and right and up and down. You also need to work the diagonals.  So, that’s one of the changes I’ve made in the second edition. The advice from successful executive leaders is pick up looking left, right and diagonally as you lead and let go of primarily looking up and down as you lead.

One of the leaders I interviewed for the new edition was Avon’s Chief Information Officer, Donagh Herlihy.  Here’s some of what he said about his diagonal leadership strategy:

I’m very informal… I build relationships and trust with peers, but I also like to know their people up and down the organization… I have lots of different informal data points.  A lot of it is just when you bump into people and you know them, even though there are two levels of separation from you… Having a kind of richer data set in terms of informal feedback is very, very helpful.

So, how do you work the diagonals?  Here are three ideas for how to do it: