December 2009

This Month's Features

+ FMI's 360 Feedback

Leadership Videos Online

+ Introduction to the Leadership Institute

+ An In Depth Look at the Leadership Institute

+ Leadership Institute Testimonials

FMI's Executive Coaching

Just as the best athletes have coaches, strong leaders often have coaches as well. In tough times, the need for coaching is even greater. Our FMI coaches bring more than 100 years of combined coaching experience, coupled with specialized industry knowledge, that can help you through these turbulent times.

Click here to learn more about FMI's Executive Coaching.

What FMI Executive Coaching clients are saying:

• "When you have the ability to make change and improvement to someone who affects your business, affects the growth of team members and affects your image – can you afford not to complete something like this? My answer is no!"

• "I already have made a greater contribution to this company as a result of coaching – both from a performance and a supervisory standpoint. In working with my group of a dozen people, they have their subordinates as well; I think it’s important how the impact transcends my group."

The "Practical Tools for Exceptional Leaders" booklet series is designed to help you learn and apply best-of-class leadership principles in your life and within your organization.
Click here to purchase

A Letter From Ron Magnus, Managing Director

As the holidays approach and bring with them a new year, leaders will reflect on a two-year stretch that many of us would rather forget. The years 2008-2009 featured a rapidly rising unemployment rate that now stands at over 10 percent, economic stimulus packages that ran into the trillions of dollars, new vocabulary words such as "toxic assets," and the end of independent investment banking as we once knew it. Leaders left to sort through the wreckage are finding unbelievable challenge mixed with periodic opportunity.

Leaders know all too well that their jobs are rarely easy, even during the best times. In challenging times, the load grows even heavier as leaders wrestle with decisions about who to keep and who to let go, how to keep staff inspired and how to fend off increasingly fierce competition. In the uncharted waters of our current economy, relying solely on the traditional management tools of cold-eyed quantitative analysis and financial management will take a leader only so far. One of the greatest mistakes a leader can make in the face of all this change and uncertainty is losing connection with his/her own inner compass. When making the hard decisions demanded by challenging times, leaders supplement their hard-edged abilities with a stable foundation built on personal purpose and core values. The leaders who will emerge from these trying times stronger and wiser are the ones who can lean on an unchanging set of internal principles. This issue of the Leadership e-Newsletter examines the critical competency of self-leadership.

Ron Magnus

Leadership 2.0: Building Trust: The Forgotton Application

Tim Tokarczyk

Trust is the fundamental tool leaders must use to increase the connection with their people, inspire them and to achieve remarkable business results.

The advent of new technologies in the late 20th and early 21st centuries has transformed the landscape of human interaction. The world is smaller now than ever before, and people are more connected than at any previous point in human history. Globalization, for example, has enabled us to outsource nonessential business functions overseas or to share resources within multinational corporations across borders. The proliferation of cell phones has connected us; workers can now communicate with each other almost instantaneously around the world at the click of a button.

Further, social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook have brought together millions of people into centralized locations, where access to their lives is open to all. These advances in technology have changed the way businesses operate, which provides both additional tools for leaders as well as newfound obstacles to developing trust with their people. To truly increase the speed and efficiency of their organizations, leaders must be careful not to overuse technology, but instead, to develop a trusting culture.

Read on to learn how the world will only continue to grow smaller as technology becomes more powerful, cheaper and more readily accessible.

Integrity in Tough Times

Ralph James

Bill leaned against his pickup, “You know, Tom, I don’t believe in integrity in construction, especially in these tough times.” A slow grin stole across Tom’s face, “At least you’re honest about it!”

Can we believe in integrity in construction, especially in hard times?

It depends on leadership.

If leaders have made promises based upon unwarranted market assumption, they may find themselves trapped by their own words. “The reason I promised no layoffs was my honest belief that the market would hold up.” But should leaders ever make promises based upon beliefs about future markets? Honest mistakes can still destroy trust.

The leadership opportunity in hard times, therefore, begins with killing off wishful thinking. This is the first step in protecting company integrity. Trust is the essential fabric of corporate culture.

Read on to learn the second step in protecting company integrity.