“Take pride in what you do”. “Hard work brings success.” “Honesty is the best policy”.

These words of wisdom will undoubtedly sound familiar to anyone that has grown up in or around a family business. And at face value, they are all in fact sound pieces of advice. Interpreting them successfully in the context of your own present life, however, is a tricky business. As with all advice, you have to keep in mind that positive intention does not always necessarily guarantee blanket accuracy!
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Honesty & Justice 義

Be acutely honest throughout your dealings with all people. Believe in justice, not from other people, but from yourself. To the true Samurai, there are no shades of gray in the question of honesty & justice. There is only right and wrong.

Polite Courtesy　礼

Samurai have no reason to be cruel. They do not need to prove their strength. A Samurai is courteous even to his enemies. Without this outward show of respect, we are nothing more than animals.
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Leadership Development and ROI: inextricably linked, or mutually exclusive?

Unsung are the legions that have attempted to tread the middle ground between these two concepts, only to find themselves later mumbling incoherently in commiseration with some phantom associate: “I don’t understand…it should have worked!…”
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Part II of Leadership Development and ROI: inextricably linked, or mutually exclusive?

The second pitfall inherent in status quo approaches to Leadership Development:

Trying to avoid the risk of being politically incorrect – a.k.a. ‘Old School’ – by advocating 360-Degree Leadership under the auspices of being “egalitarian”.

Potential Consequences
Espousing the ideal that leadership is about accepting & executing responsibilities, every individual in the organization must inevitably find the amorphous responsibilities of being a ‘leader’ thrust upon them at one time or another. When everyone is leader, however, no-one is, so the responsibility for business performance will weigh heavily upon your staff. The resulting pressure to lead will create extreme tension & pressure among them, said pressure being transmitted back to the leadership in the form of either incompletely or unsuccessfully executed initiatives, low morale and the increasing incidence of unresolved conflicts.
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Part III of Leadership Development and ROI: inextricably linked, or mutually exclusive?

The third pitfall inherent in status quo approaches to Leadership Development:

Treating Leadership Development as a one-time event, rather than what is really is: a process.

Potential Consequences
Adopting Leadership Development as a one-time event puts tremendous expectations & pressures on your executives to both perform faultlessly and deliver extraordinary profitability immediately upon the completion of their Development training. Keenly aware of this pressure yet given insufficient processing time for their new skills to over-ride old habits, executives will do one of two things:

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Part IV of Leadership Development and ROI: inextricably linked, or mutually exclusive?

The Bottom Line:
“Can Leadership Development deliver real ROI?” Clearly, the definitive answer is a resounding “YES”… with the following proviso: you must be extremely vigilant to resist defaulting to outdated status quo definitions of the concepts that are critical to your success. Should you find yourself unable to do so, be prepared to experience an environment of which Dante himself would be proud.

The three key concept definitions which you must adopt are as follows: continue reading »