• Add value by knowing your values. It doesn't take much time to think of recent business failures attributable to misplaced or unclear values. If you believe that leaders cast a great deal of influence on organizational activities, you want to lead by example. Successful executives live their values and appreciate organizational and personal events that add depth and meaning to their values. Have you recently identified your values? If you were to survey others, how would they describe your values? Short cuts from values-based leadership are costly.
• Do you know what direction you're headed? Members of ineffective groups and organizations frequently report uncharted and shifting direction. Plans do change because leaders operate in dynamic environments. However, successful leaders, and great leadership coalitions understand that they can exercise enormous influence on their environments.
• If no one is challenging you, it's time to re-think and to change your leadership style. Leadership comes with power and authority, and if you're using it wisely, you invite dialogue and feedback from others. I've met several CEOs who claim that the only feedback they receive is from mailroom employees. Now, that's a good source for feedback, but more is available if the authority and power are used in service of your goals and your organization's goals.
• When was the last time you got out of your rut? Many executives continue to practice what they learned in their late twenties and early thirties, and then live by repeating those early lessons about organizations. Get out and do something different. Great leaders discover even in routine situations. They experience a love of the process as much as they delight in hitting and exceeding the target.
• Empowerment seems to be a word that we don't hear much today. For some, the meaning associated with empowerment was so empty, that it never had energy to lift others to new vistas. It's essential for leaders to think about their own power and to use it effectively. We continue to struggle with the notions of power over and power with. This is no academic debate; rather the ideas of power play out everyday in organizational life. Use your power.
• Leadership is never a balancing act; rather, it's a blending act. After years of observing successful leaders, I'm convinced that there are no razor-sharp edges. Situations challenge us to differentiate and to integrate meaning and experience into leadership. If you always feel that leadership produces razor-sharp challenges, step back and explore your environment. You can be left with razor-sharp images of your situation and the possibilities of new pathways to change and to grow your leadership.
• The poet Guillaume Apollinaire wrote: "Come to the edge", he said. They said, "We are afraid." "Come to the edge," he said. They came. He pushed them...and they flew. Leaders understand the panic that can come with leading others through turbulence. Life gives many experiences that contribute to the lessons of leadership. Don't disown a piece of life as irrelevant without some reflection of the seeds for leadership renewal. The seeds might come from divorce, childbirth, death, or a marriage, among life's many transitions.

After watching many hours of the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics, many of us were witness to the competitive spirit. Each event delivered raw competition in both individual and team athletic sports. One event, the men's marathon, brought new meaning to stay in the race and to compete. Like many of you, I watched breathlessly as Brazilian Vanderlei de Lima was attacked with just three miles to go in the 26 mile marathon. With amazing endurance and grace, de Lima kept his cool and finished to win the bronze medal.

Like de Lima, leaders are often "hit" out of nowhere with new demands and unanticipated challenges. Those who are successful are able to use these new events and continue to compete and to stay in the organizational game. Our actions are not frequently played on the world's stage, as with the Men's Marathon, but they can have similar or greater stakes and consequences. When you're hit from out of nowhere, what happens with your competitive spirit - are you down and out for the count or are you a champion?

After the race, Lima stated, "I'm not going to cry forever about the incident, although it broke my concentration, but I managed to finish and the bronze medal in such a difficult marathon is also a great achievement." De Lima demonstrated the rare determination that enables penultimate performance. For leaders operating in circumstances and situations ranging from mundane to exotic, determination is fueled by commitment to values, vision, mission, and goals. Some never don the title of leader because they lack the determination to live out their goals. The circumstance of leaders can be similar to de Lima's trial in the Athens Olympics.

In the end, de Lima prevailed - and something greater than de Lima prevailed: the spirit of the Olympics. It's easy to imagine a different outcome to de Lima's experience, one filled with appeals and blame. Rather than falling into a blame frame, or blaming orientation, de Lima remained focused on the goal. The marathon is the distance event of running, yet, all of us remained amazed at the speed of the competition. We live fast and furious lives in organizations and those who are successful lead for the long-haul.

When you assess your leadership and leadership development challenges, compare and contrast competition and competitiveness. There are striking differences. Many of us have been witness to organizations and so-called leaders calling for an end to competition and the dawning of collaboration. Often these calls are empty. What if leaders brought the competitive spirit to their ideas regarding competition and collaboration with renewed competitiveness? Leadership development initiatives and efforts, if left unmanaged, can lead to destructive competition. We want to capture the competitive spirit and the determination that de Lima demonstrated during the event.

Commitment is required to make collaboration happen in an organization. If you want to instill collaboration, think about how you will reward the behaviors. Too often, the outcome of collaboration is diffused through competitive rewards, thereby altering the desired competitive spirit. If you've ever attend a community recreational sporting event, you can literally feel the difference between competitiveness and competition. In your organizational role, what results are you attaining? If people end the day or leave the organization feeling bitter, maybe it's time to rethink your ideas and behaviors regarding competition. Telling people that you want collaboration isn't enough and rewards are often short-sighted.

Leaders create work environments that provide inspiration, interest, and meaning. Now, if you're a leader of a warehouse, for example, where tasks are routine, what can you to do create these kinds of environments? Leaders too have to be conscious about the meaning they have from work. Your adjustments may be great or small but meaningless work always has zero value.

When we are successful at understanding our competitive spirit, and instilling it in others, we may receive additional recognition, similar in kind to that additionally awarded to de Lima. In the International Olympic Committee presented the Pierre de Coubertin (the founder of the modern Olympics) medal to de Lima that honors the principles of fair play and Olympic values. How do you think of your competitive spirit and how will you be remembered by others?

1. Schedule a meal with others who are different from you. Leaders celebrate diversity. On your next trip, have a meal with someone other than your usual crowd.
2. Check in daily with your office. Don't forget to let people know how you are and what you are doing.
3. Schedule time to email others and to respond to voice mail. Now, that you're on the road and not tied to the computer screen, don't forget to return those messages and calls. Email is the rising form of preferred communication in business, so to skip a day, can result in prolonged awkwardness.
4. Don't forget to take time to exercise. Get outside if you can, even for five minutes. Don't be intimidated by the unfamiliar exercise facilities at the hotel or on-the-road.
5. Say "no" to at least one cookie. The meetings that I attend are filled with sweets. To stay on my toes in front of others, I watch the sugar intake; it makes me sweeter with others!
6. Say goodbye to others. Don't treat your travel as just another humdrum event in your life. You are entering and exiting existing social systems and new relationships. Don't forget to acknowledge the time of others and to say goodbye to them.
7. Watch the stretch of the workday. Sometimes, business travel is a break from everything else, and the workaday clock never stops. Remember the adage, all work and no play makes for a dull person!
8. Is travel a chore? If it is, consider ways that might ignite your sense of the exotic! What is it about today's airport that differs from others? Is there something different about this city from others visited?
9. Use your time productively. Make good use of the airport lounges; your minimal investment may create the perfect oasis for returning those voice messages and emails.
10. Make technology work for you. With many options available today, choose methods that are reliable and consistent so that you can communicate with customers and employees. Is it worth your time finding the Wi-Fi connection or would it just be easier to plug-in at the hotel?

Leaders are important in organizations for any number of reasons, including setting the future course of the organization. For many, it's almost impossible to think about organization without thinking about leadership. The concepts of leadership and organization are intertwined. Many of us have heard the statement, "We have a shortage of leadership talent" over the years. There is a reason this statement doesn't seem to die - we need more leaders and more leadership!

Individuals, managers and organizations have a responsibility to develop leadership talent to provide value. That value may be expressed in earnings per share or some other outcome-based measurement. In the end, if we don't have a future pipeline of talent, we deny the promise we've made to our organizational stakeholders.

Among the many actors and participants in organizational life are certain individuals who have high or enhanced leadership potential. While we can debate the forces that contribute to that potential, it's important to do something with that group of individuals. If we leave leadership development in the hands of chance and fate, we squander the trust given to us by our stakeholders.

Many, if not all, leadership acts are activities and process of purpose. The task of developing the next generation of leaders for an organizational is intentional. It's not something to be left exclusively to one executive or one area of the organization. The process of leadership development requires engagement - the engagement of leaders and the prospect of learning.

You might choose to keep your high-potential development program under tight wraps, but why? Is leadership something to be afraid of in your organization? If you want to acknowledge leadership as a beneficial, if not crucial consideration, then let's talk about it. Let's not make an annual talent review an hour of joking in the boardroom - it may say something about how those at the top feel about competition and competitiveness!

The development of high-potential individuals for leadership positions creates opportunities for existing leadership cadres to put their values into action. High potential leadership development initiatives move the actions and processes from simply good ideas to an expression of what is valued in an organization. When we move from ideas to values, we reinforce organizational ideals and aspirations. Further, when we take the business of leadership development seriously, leaders in organizations deliver an important message regarding what it takes to win!

In all leadership development programs, we want to communicate that we are not "ashamed" of recognizing leadership and developing leaders. It's not something that we need to keep a secret from others, and in fact to do so, creates a disservice all the way around the organizational wheel. How are you making leadership development a focal point for your organization's expansion activities?