Tim Elmore 

If you want to get a little insight into the kind of leader you are, try this visualization technique devised by Tim Elmore, CEO of Growing Leaders, Inc., the Atlanta-based non-profit organization he founded to develop emerging leaders. The next time you walk into a meeting, ask yourself whether you are a thermometer or a thermostat. Picture their different purposes: a thermometer tells you what the climate is. A thermostat, on the other hand, actually sets the climate.

This is an example of one of Tim’s “habitudes,” which he made the subject of a book by the same name, Habitutes: Images that Form Leadership Habits and Attitudes, one of 37 books he has published. “We think in pictures,” explained Elmore. “So the premise is that if you can see it, you can feel it and then start talking about it, which invites you to do something about it — whatever it is.”

A former track and field competitor himself, Tim has helped sports powerhouses like Ohio State and LSU, and corporate juggernauts like Home Depot and Chick-fil-A, improve team performance by visualizing excellence while learning to embrace ideas that may seem contradictory at first but can lead to great insight.

“We live in an either/or world,” Tim observed. “It’s polarized right now. But when I studied leaders who were uncommonly effective, I noticed they actually combined ideas and practices that seemed contradictory or paradoxical.” For example, when they were in a meeting with a group of people, they needed to speak as if they believed they were right, but they listened to others as if they believed they might be wrong.

In this episode, Tim offers counter-intuitive paradoxes from his new book that, when practiced, enable today’s leaders to differentiate themselves and better connect with their team and customers.

You will learn:

•  5:00   Why we are hard-wired to take shortcuts.
•  8:00   The difference between rivers and floods and how it applies to building teams.
• 13:00  How to cross the discipline bridge, so you do not rely on luck.
• 15:00  How to be both confident and humble.
• 22:00  Why EQ impacts success more than IQ.
• 25:30  How to leverage your vision and blind spots.
• 30:00  How to develop bold and creative teams.
• 35:00  What Martin Luther King, Jr. teaches us about leading with absence and presence.

Resources:

• Get your copy of Tim’s new book The Eight Paradoxes of Great Leadership.
• Book Tim to speak.
• Follow Tim on Twiiter.
• More about Third Column Thinking method mentioned.