There was an interesting movie that came out last year called “The Adjustment Bureau” starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt. In it, Damon plays a rising young congressman named David Norris. He’s headed for a big victory in a campaign for the U.S. Senate until a picture comes out of him mooning his fraternity brothers at a college reunion. He loses big and starts giving his supporters the big, inspirational, we’ll-be-back concession speech. He says things like, “Where I grew up, it wasn’t that you got knocked down, it was about what you did when you got back up.”

The crowd initially cheers loudly, but then settles down when Norris tells them what he just said was total BS. They didn’t say that in his neighborhood. His pollsters told him it would play well. Same thing with the striped tie he was wearing and even the amount of scuffing he had on his dress shoes. He pulled back the curtain on how the game was played. It was about learning how to fake being real.

As we enter the height of the political season in the U.S., that speech comes to mind. All of the candidate debates and speeches seem to offer a symposium in how to fake being real. Here are three common habits I’ve noticed so far:

• Put your game face mask on. When you enter the debate arena or step up to make that big speech, never let them see you sweat. Get that alpha dog body language going and smile so they see all your teeth. Above all else, don’t show any vulnerability.

• Stick to the poll research. Touch all the bases that appeal to the base. Cover so many things that nothing means anything.

• Follow the formula. There’s an accepted and expected formula for giving the big speech, so stick to it. At this point, you’ve done it so many times you could do it in your sleep. Of course, there’s a pretty good chance that your audience is asleep with their eyes open. If you’re lucky.

Needless to say, I’m not seriously advocating those techniques. I do, however, see a lot of them showing up in leadership settings outside of politics. Here are three ways to avoid showing up as a leader who’s only pretending to be real:

• Say how you really feel. Try honesty. It can be so rare that it will set you apart. I’m not arguing for unchecked volcanic eruptions or depth-of-depression soliloquies, but you should share your take on the truth.

• Draw on your life experience. Stay away from fake or clichéd stories and tell some of your own stories. Tell real stories about real people you know who have overcome challenges, done great work or inspire you in some way. Make a connection that people can relate to.

• Explain the behaviors behind the clichés. There are lot of clichés that show up in organizational mission statements and values lists. They’re so bland and familiar that they often don’t mean anything and feel fake. Don’t just stop with ”Excellence” or “Commitment.” Share what those words mean to you in terms of real life behavior and outcomes.

What’s your take on leaders who fake being real? How do you see them doing it? Better yet, what tells you a leader is really real?

This past weekend, I watched one of the more moving and inspirational videos I've seen in awhile. It's this two minute announcement from Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords that she is resigning from Congress this week. It's been just over a year since a gunman shot Giffords in the head and almost killed her at a constituent meet and greet outside an Arizona supermarket. Since then, her recovery has been beyond remarkable.

The video clearly shows how far she's come.

As reported in the Washington Post, there was a lot of speculation and hope that Giffords would run for reelection or perhaps even run for the Senate. Her fundraising was strong and the polling suggested she could have easily kept her seat in Congress.

She sorted through all that and concluded that her ongoing recovery was her first and most important priority. She had the courage to say no and the wisdom to step back from short term opportunities to devote her time and attention to the longer term. When you watch the video, it's clear that she intends to return to public life at some point. I hope she does. For now, though, I have enormous admiration and respect for a leader with remarkable courage and the wisdom to act on her priorities.

A new year brings with it the promise of change, but desire quickly gets crowded out by reality. Lists of resolutions are made and then fade.

Part of the problem is the length of the lists themselves. When it comes to making meaningful change in how you show up as a leader this year, less is more.

You can improve your odds of success by reducing the number of items on your leadership improvement list down to the one or two things that would make the biggest difference. For now, forget about the other eight or nine things that might have been on your list. Practice what the Japanese call kaizen - continuous improvement through small steps. Or as the great basketball coach John Wooden said, "When you do little things each day, eventually big things occur."

How do you decide what you should focus on?

One way to get started is to complete the free leadership self assessment based on my book The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success. The self-assessment will take you a little over five minutes to complete and will give you a picture of how you stack up on the three key components of leadership presence - personal presence, team presence and organizational presence.

Once you've taken the self assessment, take a look at this video coaching segment from the Complete Next Level Self Assessment Report. In it, I'll tell you how to focus your improvement efforts on the vital things that are relatively easy to do and highly likely to make a big difference.

Over the next two months, I'll be sharing more ideas and video coaching segments about how to become a better leader in 2012 by taking little steps that make a big difference.

On this Martin Luther King Day, I'm going into The Next Level Blog archives for this post on what we can learn from the speaking virtuosity of this great leader.

Several years ago I was given the gift of the recordings of the sermons and speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. The sermon set is called "A Knock at Midnight," and the speeches set is titled "A Call to Conscience." There are companion books of the same title for each set. Over the course of a couple of weeks, I listened to every sermon and speech in the recordings. I learned a lot about King from that experience and came to some conclusions about what made him an effective speaker.

As we take today to recognize King's life and its impact on the world, I thought I'd share six qualities in his speaking that I think all leaders should emulate. If you're pressed for time as you read this, you can skip ahead to the list. If you have a few minutes more, watch the You Tube clip of King's "I Have a Dream” Speech. Most of the six qualities that I identified in listening to his recordings are illustrated in this clip.

Here's a quick synopsis of some of the qualities that King had as a speaker along with some questions to get you thinking about your own opportunities to be a more effective communicator.

Cadence - Because we usually only see King in 30 second clips of him at the climax of his speeches, we tend to think him of as a very forceful and passionate speaker. Clearly, he was that, but he was more than that. When you listen to the entirety of his speeches, you'll hear that he almost always started out at a slow, measured conversational pace and, over time, increased his pace and his volume as he drew the audience in. How can you use cadence to bring your audience along when you speak?

Context - King was a master of establishing the historical context for his message. He regularly started with stories from the Old Testament and modern history to make the point that the people in his movement were part of the broad sweep of history. That imbued them with a sense of mission. What do you need to say to establish the context for your audience and help them understand how they fit in it?

Authenticity - In his book, Leading Minds, Howard Gardner writes that all great leaders have two things in common. They have an overarching story and their life embodies that story. King clearly met that definition of leadership. When he spoke, he told that story. Everyone in the audience knew that he was living that story before and after the speech. What's your story? Can people see that you're living it?

Practice - It's well known that King delivered most of the "I Have a Dream" speech without any notes and that he improvised much of it on the spot. What's not as well known is that he had been working with much of the content of that speech in other addresses he gave months and years before the March on Washington. He took the time and opportunity to get very comfortable with his content and experimented with what worked and didn't work in venues that weren't as prominent as the National Mall. How much practice and preparation are you doing before you speak?

Repetition - King was also a master of using a simple, yet key phrase like "I have a dream," again and again in his speeches. That kind of repetitive structure enabled him to clearly make his main point and at the same time make it easy for the audience to come along with him. What's the essence of the message that you need to repeat again and again?

Connection - In his speaking, King allowed himself to have an almost symbiotic connection with his audience. They drew their energy from each other and he was very tuned into the level of energy in the room. That connection made the event more than a speech. It made it an experience that moved people to act. When you speak are you present enough to tune into the energy of the audience?

I'll be the first to acknowledge that very few leaders (certainly including me) are going to speak with the power of Martin Luther King, Jr. However, just because he set a high bar doesn't mean that we can't learn and improve ourselves from the way he practiced his craft.

Of the lessons I noted above, which ones would serve you and your organization the most if you were to practice it in your own presentations? What other lessons can we learn from King as a speaker that I haven't mentioned here?

You may have missed the story with all of the coverage on the New Hampshire primary, but White House chief of staff, Bill Daley, resigned this week after just about a year on the job. Daley is a high profile example of the oft cited statistic that anywhere between 25% and 40% of newly hired or promoted executives don't last in their jobs for more than 18 months.

As it happens, a senior executive friend of mine recently let me know that she had left a new job less than three weeks after accepting it. Now, that's fast! Intrigued by her news, I asked her if I could interview her for the Next Level Blog to learn more about what she thinks she missed during the hiring process, how she figured out so quickly that she had taken the wrong job and how she gracefully extracted herself from it.

Obviously, to protect her confidentiality I'm not going to get into all of the details of her situation, but there are some good lessons here for any manager or executive who's considering taking a new job:

What to Watch for During the Recruiting Process

1. Use Your Head and Gut in Equal Measures - My friend had some very specific career objectives that she wanted to accomplish in her next job. The position she was being recruited for seemed to match all of those. Her head told her it was the right move. Meanwhile, her gut was picking up on some things that she now realizes she should have paid more attention to.

2. Ask "Who's Selling to Who?" - In retrospect, my friend realizes that the hiring company was selling itself harder to her than she was selling herself to it. There was an air of desperation that she overlooked because the logic (the head analysis) of taking the job matched up against her career growth criteria.

3. Pay Attention to Customs and Artifacts - Looking back on it, my friend realizes that there were some things that the hiring company did during the recruiting and offer process that were just plain weird. These turned out to be clues to the culture that she was signing up for. As Edgar Schein points out in The Corporate Culture Survival Guide, it helps to assume the role of an anthropologist when evaluating an organization. What do the customs and artifacts tell you about the true culture of a company vs. the stated culture?

How to Get Out Gracefully

1. Rip the Band Aid Off Quickly - Once she was in the office and had her feet on the ground, my friend quickly realized she was in the wrong place. She knew she had to get out. It was just a question of when and how. The metaphor I use in situations like this is that you can rip the band aid off quickly or you can peel it off slowly so you feel every little hair getting pulled up with the adhesive backing. It's going to hurt either way, so why not do it quickly?

2. Focus on the Facts - My friend handled her departure so gracefully that it really didn't hurt that much. She did so by focusing on the facts she had learned in her first couple of weeks on the job. She realized that the future she had been sold in the recruiting process did not square up with the actual resources of the company. She asked for a meeting with one of the top executives and laid out her conclusions and decision to leave. He was surprised but respected her analysis and the way she presented it.

3. Respect Yourself. Respect Them. - In the end, neither side is served by dragging things out when an executive concludes they've taken the wrong job. It's not fair to either party to drag it out. The executive would just be spending their time looking for their next gig and likely damage their reputation in the process. The company would not be getting the performance they thought they'd be getting and would still end up having to conduct another search. Respecting yourself and the other party by making the tough but honest call is the right thing for everyone.

So, there you go. Real life lessons from a real life situation.

What about you? Have you ever taken a job that you regretted taking almost immediately? How did you know and how did you handle it?

Other than the basic requirements – food, shelter, healthcare – on the hierarchy of needs, what do people really want from their jobs?

Last week I attended a presentation from Peter Cappelli, a Wharton professor and thought leader on talent management, where he addressed that question. Based on a study he cited, these are the top five things that a large group of people say they want from their work:

1. Friendly environment
2. Chance to use my skills
3. Chance to do something worthwhile
4. Feeling respected by coworkers
5. The opportunity to learn something new

Is there anything on the list that's really that surprising? If you stop and think about it, you probably want those things from your own work.

Here's the catch on the data that Cappelli shared. He presented it in the content of a talk on managing the older generation of workers and the data comes from a study that AARP conducted on what older workers want.

Is the list really that different that what workers of any age would want? My experience and observations tell me no. People want to work in an environment where they feel respected and appreciated, where they can learn and do their best work.

What does your experience tell you? What's on your short list of the most important things that leaders can do to create a place where people want to work?

A senior executive friend of mine spends a lot of time listening to presentations. A few weeks ago, he sent me an email from a two day conference he was attending. After 10 or 12 hours of bad presentations, he began to take out his frustration by using his iPad to write a set of rules for presenters. He then sent it to me for a sanity check.

The good news is he's totally sane. His rules make a lot of sense and can serve as a list of resolutions for presenters who want to improve their craft in 2012 (or any year for that matter).

I asked him if he wanted to byline a guest post on this blog, but he concluded that probably wasn't his best career move right now. He was OK, however, with me sharing his plaintive pleas for presenters.

Here's the list:

1. Use an economy of words. Be ruthlessly efficient in the words you use, and speak quickly. Hold my attention by challenging me to keep up with you.

2. Proper tone and volume. Come at me with energy, a positive attitude and sufficient volume.

3. Fewer words, fewer slides. Don’t feed me PowerPoint. Use the slides as you must to guide you in talking with me, not using the slides to communicate for you.

4. Show videos. A good one will reinforce your point.

5. Tell stories. I’ll forget data but remember a story.

6. Know the audience and communicate appropriately. Start with me. What do you want me to know?

7. Believe what you’re selling. If you don’t passionately believe it, don’t expect me to.

8. Tell me to do something. Give me a call to action.

9. Don’t slouch. It’s a podium not a park bench.

10. It's not about what you know; it's about what I need to know. Don’t feed me everything you know, but work backward and leave me with what I need to know.

That's one senior executive's list of what he expects from presenters.

What are your favorites? What would you add?

If you're someone who regularly makes presentations, what are your resolutions to raise your level of performance this year?

I was away for a few weeks over the holidays. It was a nice break and it's good to be back. One of the good things about being back is reconnecting with friends I haven't seen in awhile. One of those is a friend from yoga. We gave each other a hug hello at class the other night and she said, "Well, here we are." My response was, "Yeah, 2012, it's the only year we've got." (Unless, of course, the physicists at CERN figure out time travel this year.)

So, for now, this is the only year you've got. What do you want to do with it? I don't have any idea what your answer is or should be. Only you do.

What I can offer is three questions to guide you this year that have worked for me, my family, friends and clients over the past 15 years. They make up the core of a personal planning model that my wife, Diane, and I developed for ourselves called the Life GPS®. Each of us complete a new Life GPS® every year around this time. Like the GPS app on your smart phone or the GPS system in your car, the Life GPS® is a great tool for setting a destination and making the adjustments along the way that you'll need to get there.

Using the Life GPS® will be the subject of a book I'm writing this year. You can also read more about it in the chapter on Picking Up Regular Renewal of Your Energy and Perspective and Letting Go of Running Flat Out Until You Crash from my first book, The Next Level.

For now, though, here are the three questions that comprise the core of the Life GPS®. Before things get absolutely bananas for you this year, I encourage you to take a little time to consider these questions and write down your answers on a single sheet of paper. If you refer to that sheet on a regular basis this year, I think you'll like the results you get.

Here are the questions:

1. How are you at your best? - To answer this question, think of a recent time when everything was in the groove for you. What are the words or short phrases that describe how you were operating then? If you can't think of a recent time when you felt like you were in the zone, think for a moment about all of the externalities that are dragging you down. If you could magically get rid of all that, how would you feel? The words or phrases that describe how you'd feel are your preferred state of being. Write those down.

2. What are the routines that would make it more likely that you'd show up at your best or move you closer to your preferred state of being? - If you've read my blog for very long or have worked with me, you know that one of my favorites quotes is the line from Aristotle, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." What are the habits that, if practiced on a regular basis, would be likely to help you show up at your best or move you a little closer to your preferred state of being? Those habits will likely fall into one or more of four domains - mental, physical, relational and spiritual. Don't stress yourself out by coming up with a list of 15 or 20 routines that you need to pursue. Pick one or two that are easy to get started and likely to make a difference. The idea is to get some momentum going and build on that. Write your ideas down on the same sheet of paper that you used to answer the first question.

3. What outcomes would you hope or expect to see if you were operating at your best or from your preferred state of being? - So, if you were clear about how you are at your best and practicing routines that reinforce that kind of performance, what outcomes would you hope or expect to see in the three big arenas of life - your life at home, your life at work and your life in the community? Write down the three to five outcomes in each arena that come most quickly to mind. They're the ones that matter to you the most.

So, when you have all of your answers on one sheet of paper, you have a guide for your year. Will everything ever all be perfect at once? Unlikely. Will you have a better sense of the direction you're trying to go and the adjustments you need to make to go there? Highly likely.

I hope you'll give the Life GPS® a try in 2012. I also hope you'll let me know how it's working for you. Also if you have any questions or comments about how to use the Life GPS®, I hope you'll leave a comment or email at scott@eblingroup.com.

Happy new year!

Wow, what a year this has been for good, bad, maddening and inspiring examples of leadership. In his column today, the Washington Post's David Ignatius makes the case that historians will look back on 2011 as a "hinge" - a year in which momentous events set the stage for major changes in the future.  The challenge in writing an end of year recap on the leadership lessons to be learned for a year like this is deciding what not to write about.

On the list of things I've written about this year but won't be writing about today are the reaction to the shooting of Representative Gabby Giffords and other victims in January, the killing of Bin Laden in May, the scandals at Ohio State and Penn State, the end of Anthony Weiner's career in Congress, the News of the World phone hacking scandal and the death of Steve Jobs.  When stories like those don't make the final list, you know it's been a big news year.

What's on my mind most on this penultimate day of 2011 is what's behind Time magazine naming the Protestor its person of the year.   As the year unfolded, the Arab Spring spread from Tunisia to Egypt to Yemen to Libya to Bahrain to Syria.   In the late Summer and early Fall, the Occupy Wall Street movement spread from Zucotti Park to cities around the U.S. and the world. As the year drew to a close, more than 50,000 Muscovites rallied in the streets to protest Vladimir Putin's intent to name himself president of Russia for another decade or so.

2011 has been a rough year for autocrats and plutocrats.  It's been the year when followers have banded together and organized themselves to shout out, "Enough!"   One of the images from this year that sticks with me most is an Egyptian in Tahrir Square holding up a sign that simply said, "I Am a Man."  This was the year when hundreds of thousands organized themselves to be heard and acknowledged as human beings.  The technology of the smart phone, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have enabled these movements to grow and spread at breathtaking speed.

As the customer relations debacle at Netflix earlier this year showed, this desire and ability of people to be heard as never before has implications for leaders across the board.  Perhaps the biggest of these is that if you're in a leadership role you have to listen and pay attention. The demonstrated lack of that is likely why most Americans are so disgusted with Congress.  Taking the country to the brink time and again as illustrated in the debt ceiling debacle shows a leadership class that doesn't get it.

If 2011 has anything to teach leaders,  it's that if you don't pay attention to what matters most, the people will make sure that you do and either vote with their feet or replace you if you don't. There's an old quote that's been attributed to a number of people including Gandhi that seems to apply as never before.  "There go my people.I must follow them for I am their leader."

It will be fascinating to see where the people lead their leaders in 2012 and how the leaders respond.

What are your predictions?

Last Thursday night, I had the opportunity to moderate a panel discussion on leadership at a celebratory dinner for Eagle Scouts past and present. The panelists were all accomplished people and had a lot of interesting reflections and insights to share.

One comment from the dinner that I've kept thinking about came from retired Rear Admiral John Butler who's now an executive with Lockheed Martin. The last question I asked the panel was, "What do you think has changed in the practice of leadership over the past 10 years? What changes do you predict in how leadership will be practiced in the next ten years?"

Looking back at the past ten years, Butler has noticed the emergence of what he calls a "kinder, gentler" approach to leadership. His recollection of the 1980's and 90's was that it wasn't uncommon for leadership to be about how loud you could yell and how close you could get to somebody's face while you were doing it. He's noticed that the practice of leadership has become much more collaborative over the past ten years and believes that's a good thing. (See Tom Friedman's recent column in the New York Times for a similar point of view.)

Looking ahead to the next ten years, Butler is concerned about a lack of human connection in the practice of leadership. While text messaging is the preferred form of communication for millennials (replacing the email that Gen X and Baby Boomers have preferred), it's not a great leadership tool. As Butler said, you're not going to convince a young soldier to lead a dangerous assault through a text message. Or, for that matter, you're not going to get a team fired up and committed to do something challenging at work through a text either. Leadership in both situations requires voice if not face. To do difficult things, followers need to hear and, preferably, see the credibility and commitment that their leader is bringing to the table.

If I were to sum up the Admiral's points on his look back and look ahead about leadership, the common denominator is connection. The practice of leadership is evolving from the top down, do it because I tell you to do it model to an approach that engages followers (collaborators may be a better word) mentally and emotionally. You can't do that through a text message.

What about you? What do you think has changed about leadership in the last 10 years? What do you predict about the practice of leadership in the next 10 years?