Six Essential Leadership Skills

Six Essential Leadership Skills

There are 6 categories of skills that make or break a leader:

1. Strategic Formulation

2. Customer Orientation

3. Business Strategy Implementation

4. Being a Team Player

5. Leadership

6. Personal Traits

Understanding these skills will help you to recognize your opportunities.

Elizabeth Xu, sample content from the to be published book.

Christmas Memories
My Mom was the Queen of Christmas. To this day, I remember the beautiful
decorations, wonderful foods, joyous music and, of course, the gifts. Although
money was never plentiful in our home, she found ways to make memories that linger
in her daughters’ minds forever. All four of us have tried to pick up from where she left off.

We made red and green chains out of construction paper and homemade paste. She hung these in the doorways to decorate the house. She hung the wonderful Christmas cards received from loved ones around the doorways. We all joined in the decorating of the tree. Favorite ornaments would be hung in a prominent place. Mom liked each piece of tinsel hung separately not flung at the tree.

This is the season of love and family. Mom would bake cookies while we were at
school. When we came home, the whole family would frost and decorate them. We
felt so proud when she served our “works of art” to friends and relatives or
when we took a tray of our “homemade wonders” to neighbors.

We took part in the Christmas program at church all
practicing our speeches until we could repeat them from memory. We received an orange and a bag of hard candy for our hard work. We sang in the choir or chorus at church and school performing in the annual holiday concerts. I still
remember words of songs I sang when I was nine years old:

“Snowy flakes are falling softly
Clothing all the world in white.
High above the stars are shining
Twinkling through the wintry night.
Was it just like this we wonder
Starry bright and crispy cold
On that Christmas night of old.”

Music has always been a very important part of the
celebration of this season.

Today I take the little ones to one of the many musical events in our town. Perhaps it is the lighting of the city’s Christmas tree or to the philharmonic concert. Ice
skating is always fun for the children too…or skiing if you have access to the snow-capped mountains.

There were always lots and lots of packages under
the tree. In lean years, they may have been socks and underwear, but they were beautifully wrapped and received with joy.

Whatever you do this time of year, include children. Make memories that they will
think of in their old age…and smile.

Happy Holidays to you all.

---PatZimmerman

Money, Time and Relationships

When we were at college, money was the most important element of my life. We needed it to pay bills and buy things we liked.  Many of us worked many not so glamor jobs, exchanged time for money.  We learned tremendously from that life experience. We treasured money.

After a few years of stable jobs, we earned more money. But money was never enough for us to feel secure.  We work more. We work day and night.   Some of us have to make appointments with our spouses just to spend some time alone.  We became smarter over time,  we now use money to buy time:  we pay for cooks, cleaning services, baby sitters; we pay drivers to drive our kids around, we get 1-1 private classes for our children at home. When we sit next to our children, we check our messages, reply to our boss’ emails at all hours.  One of my friend’s son one day yelled at her: “ You love your phone more than your love me!”  We are physically with our family but our minds drift away to our work.  We are never with our family 100%.

One Sunday morning this past summer, I opened my laptop as usual to work on some projects.  A newspaper cartoon clip was on my screen: ”Are you more available to your devices than to your family? Are you sure? Then why is this message taped to your computer?”  My son signed his name on the newspaper.

I turned around, my son looked at me with a big smile. I closed my laptop, spent a memorable Sunday with my family at the beach.

While sitting on the beach watching a beautiful sunset, I realized a funny circle I went through: 

Using time to earn money when we don’t have money, then using money to buy time when we run short on time.   However, time and money become insignificant when our most important relationships are hurting.   
How much time and money do you invest in your most important relationships?  What are you going to do differently in the coming days and years?

Elizabeth Xu on Thanksgiving Day

WIn, Win, Win

I heard the term “location, location, location” for the very first time when I was hunting for my first house. No surprise at all, because I didn’t grow up in the United States and had no clue about how to select a house.

What does this expression using three “locations” really mean? A curious person as I have always been, asked many realtors and got many interesting answers. Most of them told me that three repeating locations mean that location is very important. My interpretation from my house hunting experience is:

1) Location: which city you want to grow your family and what kind of life style it provides
2) Location: What street you want to live on, small court close to highway or close to school, what kind of convenience it provides to your daily life
3) Location: the orientation/direction of your house, facing east, south, floor plan, size of the lot, plus some other consideration depending on your culture and the comfort level it provides

When I had these three locations in mind, my decision was much easier. We “won the war” of buying our first house and we are proud of our decision.

When it come to the career, many people hear “win, win, win” the very first time. Win-win is well understood: two parties try to construct a business solution beneficial to both parties.

What’s “win, win, win”?
1) Win: Your company wins, your decisions and solutions must support your company’s vision and strategy, help to execute it flawlessly.
2) Win: Your boss wins, you have to be a team player to support your boss’ goals, working well with your peers and his/her peers to make your boss’s team successful.
3) Win: Your people win! Provide leadership, build trust and give credits to your people, you need to enable them to win as a team

Of course, you help all three parties win legally and also never compromise your personal integrity and value. When all three parties win, you will win the war of the successful career and will be proud of your career decisions and actions.

Let me know what your thoughts using comments.

Elizabeth Xu

Your are too Serious!

John came to me at noon time. He opened our meeting with serious business topics talking professionally about projects and resources. After our discussion, he relaxed and smiled at me: “Elizabeth, would you please give me some feedback?”

I smiled back at John, “I would like to pass on feedback I once received from one of my mentors.”

Harry, the Executive Chairman I worked for, had a productive meeting about software global resource strategy with me. At end of the meeting, I asked for his feedback. Harry looked at me with a serious face: “Elizabeth, you are too serious, and you are too scary!” Then he laughed.

What an astonishing remark! I was too serious and too scary! I viewed myself as a nice, flexible and resourceful professional. I knew for fact that I was not outwardly humorous. However, I was not boring either! What could I do to correct that impression?

Solutions appeared. A few days later, my husband came home with a tip on effective communication with executives. He picked this up from his SVP, Mark, at a manager’s meeting at Cisco. Mark demanded answers to these three questions at all his meetings:

1) What are you trying to tell me?
2) What do you want me to do?
3) How do you want me to feel?

Question number three never crossed my mind. I assumed that executives are super beings, with superior business acumen and judgment. I never assumed that their feelings were in the equation!

When we brief senior executives with facts and problems, we set the stage for solutions, prepare the senior executive to make decisions and let him know what you wish him to do.
However seldom, do we consider how we want our executive to feel.

We forget executives hold stressful jobs and they hear problems with and without solutions constantly throughout the day. They are people too. They have feelings and their feelings influence their decisions. We sometimes pass on our amplified stress at the end of a long day without thinking explicitly about how they will feel.

Once I started treating executives as human beings, respecting their time and feelings while providing suggested solutions with problems presented, I am no longer that super goal-oriented, laser-focused, scary and deadly serious person.

Now, when I talk to my teams, I asked the same three questions. Especially the 3rd one, how do you want your team to feel?

Elizabeth Xu
Register Stanford Class at: https://continuingstudies.stanford.edu/courses/course.php?cid=20111_WSP+229

Elizabeth and Pat teaching at Stanford

WSP 229 Registration at Stanford University starts on Aug 22, 2011

Here is the link

https://continuingstudies.stanford.edu/courses/course.php?cid=20111_WSP+229


Stanford Class WSP 229: Ten Steps to a Successful Career:

Elizabeth Xu and her mentor of 20+ years Ms. Pat Zimmerman, Jefferson Award and the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Award winner, (bio at: http://www.blogger.com/profile/12719189363354248427) will co-teach this class at Stanford. We will provide you with tools and practical steps to help you build a solid successful career. We will help you go through a paradigm shift in how you see yourself and how you approach your career and life. We will help you to discover your burning desire and goals, and help you to build attitude and plans to realize these goals, build a sound professional brand and broad network and support system.


WSP 229 Course Description:

Your career development has become your own responsibility in this ever-changing talent market. Global corporations are no longer providing in-depth career development programs. Instead, they are recruiting talent from each other. In this course, you will learn how to build a successful career across multiple companies and industries, achieving your goals and advancing your position in this super competitive global talent war.

The course provides you with ten systematic steps extracted from great leaders in the industry. These actionable steps will assist in refining your career vision—building realistic goals, developing feasible plans, and executing them flawlessly. We will also discuss how to create an effective professional brand and network, how to collaborate and influence, as well as how to build and lead a successful team. These ten steps will help you to develop a heightened business understanding and refine important leadership skills. This course is designed for professionals and entrepreneurs who want to grow as leaders and bring themselves and their organizations to the next level.

Oct 29: We will go over the first 5 steps to the successful career

Nov 6, We will go over the last 5 steps to the successful career

Life long learning

When you stop learning, you start dying.

Pat Zimmerman