2022: Chris Kolenda’s Influential Book list for Leaders and Consultants

I put together this 2022 influential book list to shorten your path to success and avoid wasting time on faddish nonsense or hyped-up drivel. 

book

Here is a QR code to the booklist for leaders and consultants.

No one ever learned to drive a car solely by reading a book. You’ve got to get behind the wheel and practice.

Reading and learning from mentors make practice more successful. You learn the signs and rules of the road, ways to increase fuel efficiency, proper maintenance practices, and how to lower risk.

Imagine the opposite — learning to drive solely by practice. Traffic accidents, injuries, and fatalities would skyrocket, impaired driving would be endemic, people would waste more fuel, and burn out more engines and transmissions. If you’ve ever driven in places like Afghanistan, you know what I mean.

Experience is the most influential teacher of leadership. You have to be in the arena. Relying on experience alone, though, puts you in the school of hard knocks, where the tuition is painful for you and the people you are supposed to lead.

The rules of the road are relatively fixed. Once you learn good driving practices, you are good to go. Leadership is different because your marketplace is constantly evolving, so your application of sound leadership habits needs to grow, too.

People look to leaders to anticipate the future and figure out how to succeed in the face of new and unexpected situations. These challenges are where leaders tend to make the biggest mistakes, which happen even faster when growing or facing competition.

Having trusted advisors that guide you, and reading about the experiences of others who faced analogous situations during other times or contexts, improves your practice and builds your imagination to lead your team successfully.

My mission is to help successful people like you gain new heights by being the best version of yourself and inspiring people to contribute their best and most authentic selves to your team’s success.

Here’s a link to one of the books I have on my list:

Alan Weiss, Your Legacy is Now

Create meaning that delivers worth and impact.

 

Three Ways To Help Your New Leaders Maintain Passion and Joy in Their Job

Invest in the Proper Leadership Training to Insure Promoted Leaders can Succeed and Thrive

You just promoted one of your best workers into a leadership position. They are rocking it. They are putting in the time, arriving first and leaving last, getting the job done, and the energy seems to never cease. Are you worried? Perhaps you should be.

Like all new things, there is a honeymoon period—a time when the grass couldn’t be greener. Relationships are new and exciting, the new leader is powering through, making decisions, and learning the ropes.

But then someone doesn’t agree with their idea, a plan didn’t go as planned, or there is an interpersonal conflict. The long days soon catch up with them. Their kids are growing up before their eyes but they’ve missed many special moments because they were too engrossed in the work. The new leader grows resentful and starts to burn out.

Is it too late to change course, to start coming in later and leave a little earlier, to downshift on their new initiatives? How can they get the energy, drive, passion, zest, and commitment back? We’ve all heard that in today’s stressful world we need to “slow down,” and “take care of ourselves.”

Hiring a new leader is an investment. It can cost up to 200% of their annual salary to replace an employee. If their salary is $100,000 a year and they decide to leave, you could lose up to $200,000 in order to replace them. What business can afford to waste this much money? What could you do with $200,000 to grow your business?

Make sure you invest in the proper leadership training so that your newly promoted leaders can succeed and thrive within your organization. Additionally, how do you, as a leader of leaders, model the slow and steady approach and convey the message that being a leader is more of a marathon than a sprint. What kind of conversations are you having with your new leader to help them take care of themselves?

Help your newly promoted leaders maintain passion and joy with these simple action steps:

  • Meet with your new leaders often. Once a week is a great timeline. Use our weekly check-in method to keep the conversation on the right track. Ask them the tough questions to find out how they’re doing and provide support when needed. Celebrate their wins and compliment their successes.
  • Model, model, model. Show them how to lead in tough situations, role-play crucial conversations, display an appropriate amount of work/life balance, and exhibit your own joy in passion for the work—it’s contagious!
  • Create clear expectations that go both ways. Make the relationship one of respect and reciprocity and the communication lines will remain open and honest.

The bottom line: Set your leaders up for success. If you think I might be a good fit to help with this then here are some options:

  1. The Trusted Advisor Program is my most intensive 1-on-1 program. Within 90 days you’ll gain habits that create breakthrough success. You get personalized coaching and support, relentless accountability, and commonsense action steps that get results.
  1. Lead Well: For Newly Promoted Leaders is an 8-week program that will help your newly promoted leaders thrive as they move from peer status to power status. The next program begins at the beginning of February. There are only 8 spaces available. Click here to download the one-pager. Are you a good fit for this program? SIGN UP NOW! Book a 30-minute appointment with Laura to make sure this is the best fit for you.

Additional Offerings:
Join our central Wisconsin in-person or online Impactful Leadership Lunch. Join like-minded leaders during this monthly mastermind lunch group to improve your business efficiency, boost employee retention, and get you focused on doing what gives you joy.

Looking for a Keynote Speaker at your next event? I use my past experiences and knowledge to show you how to be the best version of yourself, surround yourself with the right people, and build highly productive teams.

laura.colbert@strategicleadersacademy.com

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Sign up for a free quick coaching session here to see if we’re a good fit.

Humility

Humility: It Makes the Holidays Happy 2021

The holiday season has a lot of meaning. Humility is one of its most enduring themes.

Humility is the conviction that others have value. It’s not self-abnegation. When you have humility, you listen to learn from others — their experiences, insights, points of view, and beliefs. You observe and look at the facts. When you have humility, you are willing to change your opinions and conclusions in the face of new evidence.

Hubris is the belief that only your views matter and that others are evidence of ignorance or evil. When you have hubris, you seek only information that confirms your pre-existing beliefs, and you reject everything else. Totalitarian ideologies, historical and present, seek to impose their views by force — berating, coercing, canceling. Negligence is hubris without conviction. You go along to get along.

The holiday season has a lot of meaning. Humility is one of its most enduring themes.

I’m grateful for 2021 — the people I’ve met and served, all of you in this community, my failures and successes, and the opportunities to learn, get better, pay it forward, and help people be their best selves and realize their dreams.

I’m grateful as 2022 approaches. At the end of that year, too, I’ll look back and realize how ignorant I was at the start of it.

Humility is the foundation of all virtues. Confucius.

What action steps will you take to make 2022 your best year?

https://strategicleadersacademy.com/

The Great Resignation

Understanding the Great Resignation of 2021: What Leaders and Consultants are Getting Wrong

Some Americans are resigning to find new careers. For the most part, people are moving within industries or roles. The Great Resignation is The Great Reshuffling.

Joe bragged about berating a hotel desk agent for a problem with his room. “He was worthless to me. I yelled at him. He yelled back at me and then walked out — quit on the spot.” He won’t be worthless to any more customers, joked Joe.

“I don’t care about employee turnover,” Lisa, a restaurant owner, told me, “There’s always another body waiting to fill the job. I’m a tough employer with high standards. If they can’t hack it, I’m happy to show them the door.”

Joe and Lisa are otherwise decent people whose sense of entitlement and inability to handle chronic stress have made them into monsters. It’s no wonder that roughly 46 million Americans left their jobs in 2021 — the so-called Great Resignation.

The Great Resignation

Some Americans are resigning to find new careers. For the most part, people are moving within industries or roles. The Great Resignation is The Great Reshuffling.

Employee turnover plus high inflation are going to eviscerate small businesses in 2022. Turnover can cost up to 2X an employee’s annual salary. Replacing one $50k employee is likely to cost you at least that much due to factors such as recruiting, time costs, lost momentum, and rebuilding relationships, among others.

If you lost ten such employees per year, you’ve just thrown $500k or more down the drain.

People don’t leave their jobs; they leave their managers. COVID has lowered people’s tolerance for bad bosses and crappy work environments. They vote with their feet more quickly to find a better place. Hence, The Great Reshuffle.

The Great Resignation

Add in the inflation costs, and you can see why low-margin businesses with high employee turnover rates are at high-risk next year.

Employers are turning to workplace gimmicks to attract and keep employees. No one ever stayed with a rotten boss for a bag of trail mix or a free yoga mat.

What can you do to keep your top talent engaged and on the job?

1. Custom-fit roles to people’s natural strengths (a.k.a. affinities or superpowers). The skill-fixation has perverted the hiring process and locked people into high-skill, low-superpower roles. Their energy drains faster, leading to frustration, burnout, and the need to find more challenging work. For a great starting point to identifying your superpowers, take our PROM (TM) Leader Archetype quiz. You may be surprised at your results.

2. Train your first-line leaders and middle managers. Most companies have programs for senior leaders but neglect their junior leaders, creating a trust gap at the employee-management interface. Very few junior and mid-level leaders have had good exemplars. Too many companies are on quicksand. Jeff Marquez and Laura Colbert help you strengthen these vital foundations. Junior and mid-level leader training rank among the best low-cost, high-payoff actions you can take in 2022.

3. Increase front-line agency. Give people the latitude and resources to solve problems at the lowest possible levels. This practice lowers the probability of unhappy, stressed-out customers like Joe taking it out on your employees and damaging their emotional well-being. The serotonin boost they get from solving problems will put them on an emotional high. Joe might even become less of a jerk.

In the musical chairs game of the Great Reshuffle, the best employees will find the best-led teams. You will get the virtuous cycle of the top talent coming to and staying with your company.

Are you leading at your very best?

What action steps will you take to make 2022 your best year?

https://strategicleadersacademy.com/

Trusted Advisor

WHO ARE YOU GOING TO CALL: WHY WE ALL NEED A TRUSTED ADVISOR

A trusted advisor can use their prior experience to help your new leaders understand what to do and what NOT to do.

You’re having a rough week. You are not getting applicants for an important job opening within your organization, your team hit an impasse on a difficult decision and they aren’t getting along, you’re working too many hours and feel inadequate when it comes to being a good parent and/or significant other, your housework is getting behind, and it’s been months since you took any time for yourself. Who are you going to call?

According to a recent LinkedIn Poll, 43% will call a trusted advisor and 43% will reach out to their peer network. Let me ask you this, do you have a trusted advisor or a reliable peer network? Perhaps you do, but what about your newly promoted leaders? How are they doing? To whom are they reaching out? Have you set them up for success when they have a difficult day, week, month, or year? How are you creating resiliency within your leadership team?

A trusted advisor can use their prior experience to help your new leaders understand what to do and what NOT to do. Many times, leaders reach for immediate action. It’s in the fiber of our beings and lets our employees know that we get things done. Sometimes, however, this is not what needs to be done and only prior experience can give us the wherewithal to make this kind of calculated decision.

Additionally, a trusted advisor provides advice, pushes innovation, offers clarity, and presents a variety of perspectives. Notice in the diagram below that the chaos zone looks chaotic because sometimes we are so entrenched in our work that we do not see how the dots connect. Therefore, most leaders stay in their comfort zone. A trusted adviser helps you to connect the dots so that you can transition into the progress zone.

Trusted Advisor

Set your newly promoted leaders up for success with these simple action steps:

  • Hire a trusted advisor to help them through their difficult moments.
  • Provide networking opportunities to expand their newfound peer group.
  • Be there when your leaders need you. Give them grace and understanding as they discover their leadership potential.

The bottom line: Seek out advisors that you trust to help your first-line leaders. If you think I might be a good fit then here are some options:

  1. The Trusted Advisor Program is my most intensive 1-on-1 program. Within 90 days you’ll gain habits that create breakthrough success. You get personalized coaching and support, relentless accountability, and commonsense action steps that get results.
  1. Lead Well: For Newly Promoted Leaders is an 8-week program that will help your newly promoted leaders thrive as they move from peer status to power status. The next program begins at the beginning of February there are only eight spaces available. Click here for more information. Call or email to apply.

Additional Offerings:
Join our central Wisconsin in-person or online Impactful Leadership Lunch. Join like-minded leaders during this monthly mastermind lunch group to improve your business efficiency, boost employee retention, and get you focused on doing what gives you joy.

Looking for a Keynote Speaker at your next event? I use my past experiences and knowledge to show you how to be the best version of yourself, surround yourself with the right people, and build highly productive teams.

laura.colbert@strategicleadersacademy.com

Consultants

Powerful Forecasts: 2022 and Beyond for Consultants, Experts, and Leaders

I Focused my Forecasts for 2022 and Beyond on Trends most Relevant for Small Businesses, Consultants, and Experts.

I’ll host an 8-week mastermind group in January to discuss the implications of these forecasts and others so that you can provide vital thought leadership to your clients and anticipate the future for your business.

1. The Inflation bubble bursts. Due to employee turnover and inflation, small businesses will fail at a historic rate. COVID has decreased tolerance of bad bosses and poor work environments. Inflation rises to 4% if BBB fails and 6% if BBB passes, forcing many poorly-led, low-margin small businesses to close. High-margin solo and expert businesses will thrive.

Consultant

2. Landgrabs. Russia and China seek to time moves against Ukraine and Taiwan, respectively, on signals that President Biden’s health fails. Iran and North Korea will do the same with their nuclear weapons and missile programs. A gulf state reveals its atomic weapons program in response to Iran’s.

3. Change for a BitCoin? Countries will begin to adopt crypto as alternate reserve currencies in response to America’s increasing weaponization of the dollar; investors will add crypto to their portfolios to hedge against inflation.

4. Trades strike back. Companies will lose confidence in supply chains that include overseas vendors. Local manufacturing and storage will rebound. Elite snobbery that the only road to a dignified professional life is an expensive 4-year degree will reduce. More people will enter trades and find substantial prosperity, independence, and joy.

5. Waking up to Woke. Businesses stop hiring consultants who pedal revenge racism and begin hiring people who improve teamwork. The best companies will hold CEOs and line managers responsible for diversity and inclusion; women and non-whites will gain a more significant share of P&L roles.

6. 280 characters fewer. Trust in conventional news outlets, experts, and punditry will continue declining, forcing at least one primary news channel, newspaper, and social media platform to close. People will turn increasingly to trusted advisers for perspective.

7. Revenge of the Nerds. Zillow Offers is the tip of an iceberg. Businesses that rely on AI platforms for customer relations and marketing will face significant setbacks because they act as a blunt instrument when customers expect concierge service. Hackers will learn to spoof AI decision-making tools by acting more like humans and luring machine decisions into unproductive corners.
  
8. AC Anyone? Climate change debates will shift towards alleviating the effects of rising sea levels and warmer temperatures. Wisconsin’s climate by 2040 will be like Tennessee’s in 2010.

9. Rolling Green-outs. Fossil fuels and nuclear power will make a comeback as a reliable base for energy supply. During extreme weather events, cities that rely on renewables will face significant power outages. Global predators will intensify cyberattacks against vulnerable power grids.

10. The open office is dead. Hybrid workplaces are here to stay. The most innovative companies will create in-office requirements based on need rather than arbitrary percentages. The most talented will seek jobs with those companies.

11. COVID theater closes. Companies will reduce wasteful activities that do little or nothing to stop the spread of COVID. The major media will reduce COVID-hype. The vaccinated will begin to revolt against COVID-control mandates because the virus is spread overwhelmingly by the unvaccinated and the vaccinated are tired of feeling punished. More businesses will require proof of vaccination or infection within the past six months for entry and employment. Vaccine boosters will be annual as COVID becomes endemic.

12. Big Red Resurgence. The Nebraska Cornhuskers football team will go to the BIG 10 championship game in 2022.

The Innovation Mindset Group is an 8-week mastermind that examines these trends and others for implications to small business leaders, consultants, and experts. We’ll meet for 90-minutes each week and develop unique thought leadership that will help you anticipate the needs of your businesses and clients. Your investment will pay for itself in a single sale. I’m limiting the group to 8. $4500 if you enroll by December 31, then the fee goes to $5500. Click here  https://bit.ly/3DTcL6C and scroll to the bottom to register to learn more about this limited time offer.

Small Business Failure

2022 Prediction: Small Businesses will Fail at Historic Rates

The Pressures of Low or Negative Margins and Employee Turnover will Create a Downward Spiral for Many Small Businesses

Small Business Failure

The combination of inflation, poor first-line leadership, and expensive mistakes spell trouble for low-margin small businesses. I think we will see small businesses fail at historically high rates in 2022.

Inflation of 4 percent or higher will persist due to supply chain challenges and demands for higher wages. The Biden administration’s Build Back Better initiative, if it passes, will heighten inflation even as it invests in (hopefully) high-payoff programs. Inflationary pressures are going to reduce margins. In some cases, small businesses could find themselves completing projects and selling products at a loss.

The so-called great resignation will continue because COVID has reduced people’s tolerance for poor leadership, toxic work environments, and poor work conditions. Some people are leaving their jobs to upgrade their skills and enter new lines of work. Most seem to be switching jobs within their current industries.

The best talent will find their way to companies that have good leadership, healthy cultures, and quality work environments. Provided that these companies can innovate successfully to outpace inflation and higher costs, they will thrive in an upward spiral of better talent, higher quality products and services, and greater continuity.

Business Failure
Small Business Failure

The pressures of low or negative margins and employee turnover will create a downward spiral for many small businesses. CEOs will work longer hours and get consumed in problem-solving, which heightens the risks of expensive mistakes. They’ll lack the bandwidth to innovate, so the margins will continue shrinking until the business is no longer sustainable.

You cannot do much about inflation (except raise their prices), but you can take these steps:
1. Fire managers who are driving employees away,
2. Invest in leader development so that you attract and retain great talent,
3. Reduce the likelihood of expensive mistakes by having trusted advisers who will help you avoid falling in love with your own plans and getting high from your own fumes, and
4. Innovate to create higher-margin products and services.

Programs that Accelerate Success

CEO Mastermind group is for Milwaukee-area small business leaders and consultants who want to accelerate their growth in 2022. We meet monthly for lunch, and you get unlimited access to me. I’m limiting the group to 8. Six places are remaining.

FOCUSED is my 8-week mastery program for small business leaders and consultants to put the action plans in place to make 2022 their best year ever. The next program begins in late January; there are only eight spaces available. Click here for more information and to apply.

Innovation Mindset is a new 8-week program for consultants and small business leaders that I intend to launch in January, based on interest. This program gives you the tools to address (and help your clients address) the challenges facing small businesses in 2022 so that you can create an upward spiral that propels your business to new heights. Please reply to this email if you are interested.

The Trusted Adviser Program is my most intensive 1-on-1 program. Within 90 days, you’ll gain habits that create breakthrough success. You get personalized coaching and support, strict accountability, and commonsense action steps that get results. Get the details here.

Exclusive Events

The next Antietam & Gettysburg exclusive event takes place March 15-18. This program is for seven leaders and consultants who want to turbocharge 2022 with innovations. We use critical points on the battlefield to discuss decision-making, gaining buy-in, improving agency and initiative, and how to avoid getting high off the smell of your own gunpowder. We finish with an innovation workshop where you will develop action steps to gain decisive competitive advantages. There are four spaces left.

Books

LEADERSHIP: THE WARRIOR’S ART, second edition, is on the streets. We expect leaders to anticipate and shape the future so that your team can succeed. To do so, you need imagination grounded in a  practical perspective. That’s what you get with this book, which is why it’s been in print for over 20 years.

Zero-Sum Victory: What We’re Getting Wrong About War is my latest book about strategic decision-making. I use the disasters in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq to give you the tools and mental models to avoid the traps and own goals that have created quagmires for the United States. You’ll gain ways to improve agency, bridge silos, pivot smartly, avoid breathing your own exhaust, and many other outcomes.

Authenticity: What it Really Means

Our instincts draw us towards authentic individuals.

Think about one of your most amusing, real, and charismatic friends. I conjure up Sarah with her red curly hair, her robust laugher, her ability to find joy and wit in every interaction, and her unflappable ability to be her true self regardless of audience and pressure. I used to envy her ability to step outside of the quintessential stereotype and into the world of uniqueness. Is this authenticity in its purest form?

I used to think so until I recently read “The Modern Trusted Advisor” by Alan Weiss and Dr. Nancy MacKay. Their definition stopped me in my tracks. They describe authenticity as “Owning our own feelings and being accountable, understanding the impact of our actions on others, and being honest about what we need versus what we want.” Merriam-Webster describes authentic as “real or genuine,” and “true and accurate.” It’s as though Weiss and MacKay took the bones of Merriam-Webster’s definition and put some meat on it.

Our instincts draw us towards authentic individuals. It’s as though we have this gravitational pull toward their realness. The spurious individuals put up immediate red flags with their “commission breath” and “sleazy sales.” We can almost see them compromising their true self to make a deal or create a connection, albeit, a fake one. Realness breeds trusting relationships and fakeness breeds ill-suited relationships that often end badly. What team do you want to be on?

Action steps to practicing and reaping authenticity:

  1. Stop the mini-me syndrome – Diversity and uniqueness build strong, high-functioning teams. Hire people with different skills and abilities. Be aware of whether or not you’re trying to change the individuals to be like you. Honor all varieties of voices and perspectives. Conflict is ok. The key is making sure it is a productive conflict.
  1. Reflect on your interactions to assess if you were compromising your true self – Did you uphold your core values and your organization’s mission? Did you try to fit into the other person’s mold or stick with your own?
  1. Eliminate imposter syndrome – You―yes, you―deserve all the good that this world has to offer. You are not a fraud. Get rid of self-doubt. Never put yourself down for succeeding. In the words of Stewart Smalley from Saturday Night Live, “You’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and doggone it, people like you.”
  1. Choose real, not games – You’ll attract more of the right-fit people when you are yourself. The faker you are, the shallower your pond.
  1. Do your best, be yourself, and be satisfied – Sticking to who you are, your core values, and upholding them as best as you can, will give you more peace of mind. Peace of mind leads to better sleep, less guilt, and more integrity

Additional Offerings:

Are you looking for a Keynote Speaker at your next event? I use my past experiences and knowledge to show you how to be the best version of yourself, surround yourself with the right people, and build highly productive teams.

Book:
Sirens: How to Pee Standing Up – An alarming memoir of combat and coming back him. This book depicts the time of war and its aftermath. It seamlessly bridges the civilian and military divide and offers clarity to moral injury and post-traumatic stress.

laura.colbert@strategicleadersacademy.com

Get this newsletter delivered to your inbox. Click Here.

Sign up for a free quick coaching session here to see if we’re a good fit.

Blessings to you all and Thanks to all the Veterans in my Life

The veteran community is robust, passionate, gritty, funny, caring, empathetic, resourceful, and tough as nails – These are my people

Yup, that’s me in the photo—the one with hair. I’m not sharing the picture to boast or brag, but rather to extend a heartfelt THANK YOU! I’m bursting with gratitude as I write this. Gratitude to be surrounded by so many other wonderful veterans, so many civilians that care, and for a country that honors its heroes. I have had the utmost privilege of meeting many outstanding service members since my return home, and especially since I’ve changed careers in July.

My life is deeply impacted by these brothers and sisters in arms. The kindred spirit flows through our interwoven relationships and the unspoken bond strengthens with every interaction. The veteran community is robust, passionate, gritty, funny, caring, empathetic, resourceful, and tough as nails. Our go-to answer is, “yes” and then we figure out how to do it. Work ethic and gumption ooze out of every pore. These are my people.
Please know that every thank you and Veterans Day acknowledgment means the world to me/us and it fills my heart with joy and gratitude.

I had to share this outstanding drawing that a 6th grader gave me this morning. Her talent is out of this world and it almost brought me to tears.
Originally, this article was meant to create awareness about Veterans. However, as the day unfolds, and the love continues to grow, I simply want to say, “Thank you!” And if you haven’t reached out to a veteran today, perhaps think about the positive impact of that interaction.
Blessings to you all and thanks to all the Veterans in my life.

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blessings