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Sweet marketing music

Tanner Montague came to town from Seattle having never owned his own music venue before. He’s a musician himself, so he has a pretty good sense of good music, but he also wandered into a crowded music scene filled with concert venues large and small.But the owner of Green Room thinks he found a void in the market. It’s lacking, he says, in places serving between 200 and 500 people, a sweet spot he thinks could be a draw for both some national acts not quite big enough yet for arena gigs and local acts looking for a launching pad.“I felt that size would do well in the city to offer more options,” he says. “My goal was to A, bring another option for national acts but then, B, have a great spot for local bands to start.”Right or wrong, something seems to be working, he says. He’s got a full calendar of concerts booked out several months. How did he, as a newcomer to the market in an industry filled with competition, get the attention of the local concertgoer?

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by Martha Carlson
June - July 2012

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Management

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Circles of ‘mastery’ help to identify top-notch leaders

Once they get to the top, they’re done. They’ve made it, right? 

But any senior leader or business owner will tell you that the top office isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Change is hard to predict. Three-year plans must be revised annually if not monthly. Top talent and high potential talent are difficult to define. Ideas get stale. Customers are fickle. 

The most effective leaders have three foundational characteristics:

Maturity: self awareness and self management.

Versatility: understanding strengths, preferences and biases and developing complementary skills; matching style and approach to the needs of the individual and/or situation.

Relationships: developing, leveraging and sustaining positive relationships; collaborating with others; building and leading teams.

But this isn’t the whole picture for a high-performing leader. These characteristics are actually a subset of leadership mastery. I like the word ‘mastery’ as it conveys something beyond simple effectiveness or efficiency.

Leadership isn’t a climb; it’s a discipline.

Within the discipline of leadership mastery are three intersecting circles: Self Mastery, Managerial Mastery, and Organizational Mastery. Here is an explanation of what they are and why every high-performing leader today must pursue mastery in each of them. Are you one of them?

First, master thyself

Self mastery is an inside job. It includes the foundations of leadership: maturity, versatility and relationships. It also covers levels of emotional intelligence, motivation, communication and influence. It focuses on leading the self first.

Jane considered herself a fairly competent and engaged leader who worked well under pressure. Few things rattled her confidence. But when an angry vendor accused her of breach of contract and threatened to sue the company while making sure she was fired in the process, Jane had to call upon her discipline of self mastery. 

Rather than focusing on the emotions of the vendor – the name-calling and threats – Jane focused on the facts. She reviewed the contract. She thought about her own goals for the situation such as preserving the vendor relationship, avoiding a lawsuit for the company and keeping her integrity intact. She offered a meeting to the vendor to explain his situation to her and the shareholders, expressing her concern for his trouble and her desire to understand his needs. 

In the end, the vendor agreed to the meeting and explained the situation. Jane and the shareholders worked out a solution that saved face for the vendor and increased his trust for any future challenges. 

Self mastery requires stepping back from self interest and intentionally focusing on others. Emotions take a back seat to facts and solutions. Leaders who excel in self mastery are often called in to diffuse tense situations because they create an environment that focuses on the present and solutions rather than finger pointing and snap decisions.

Second, managerial mastery

This circle of mastery emphasizes goal setting, planning and administration, delegation and control. But it also addresses resource stewardship, performance management, problem solving and critical thinking. These are competencies that are essential for managing day-to-day operations and providing direction to others.

When a technical expert is promoted to a leadership position, there is often a transition period in which the new manager needs to let go of the task-based work he or she used to perform and begin the discipline of managerial mastery. 

Mark was very skilled as an engineer. As his company grew and added employees, Mark had trouble letting go of many of the tasks he enjoyed as an engineer; he would often work late nights to keep projects on schedule.

One morning when his alarm clock didn’t go off, Mark went into a panic about a deadline that day. He called on the resources of his team and delegated several tasks to them in order to make up for his late arrival at work. When he arrived and saw the collaboration happening, he realized that his role needed to change or his company would stagnate.

Managerial mastery does not ignore the importance of self mastery, but instead builds upon it as leaders learn to delegate, trust their talent and focus on mature communication and talent development. 

They also are constantly looking ahead to the next growth opportunity and what they will need in talent and resources to accomplish it, rather than simply the project at hand. Managerial mastery focuses on achieving results through others rather than exclusively through self.

Third, the organization

Organizational mastery covers the canvas of organizational effectiveness and includes things like establishing mission and vision, instilling values and creating culture, fostering accountability and navigating the political landscape.

In the discipline of organizational mastery, the leader sees the bigger vision for the company and aligns that bigger vision with every function in the organization, from operations to customer service to sales to talent development.

Barb’s IT company was growing very fast due to market demands. It seemed that her focus was always on putting out fires, but she sensed that employees were feeling burned out and disengaged. Mistakes were happening on projects and unlikely people were calling in sick.

At the next all-staff meeting, Barb passed out a worksheet and asked people to write down what they loved about the company as well as three of their biggest challenges. She talked about her vision for the company and then had the staff create a SWOT analysis around that vision. 

With this information, she spent time mapping out a best-in-class scenario. She worked with each department to find out what it would take to realize this vision. It was her first foray into strategic planning.

Organizational mastery taps managerial and self-mastery skills. High-performance leaders are inventors of the future with a focus on what needs doing now and an awareness of how their behavior will limit or expand results.