Want to improve your leadership skills, one step at a time? In the Principle-Driven Leadership Podcast, Seth Dobbs, (published presenter, trainer, and author) shares insights and leadership advice based on his years as a C-suite executive and leadership coach.

These insights center around three core principles of leadership:

• Leaders Provide Vision
• Leaders Resolve Problems
• Leaders Create More Leaders

Applying these principles and other support concepts will help you grow and develop your own authentic leadership. Each episode will provide a few insights and takeaways to help you improve your skills in small ways each week.

“To the person who does not know where they want to go there is no favorable wind.” -Seneca

“Leaders Provide Vision” is the first core principle of leadership. To be clear, a Vision is more than a pithy vision statement .

A Vision:

1. Gives a strong sense of purpose to unite teams in making clear decisions
2. Has enough information to provide clarity on what you want to achieve
3. In combining those two, provides the ability to inspire forward motion.

Without this clarity, teams and organizations have no “favorable winds” and struggle to make meaningful progress.

Are you working with a Vision that meets the three criteria above? If not, what can you do today to start changing that?

Simply taking a bunch of actions can add up to nothing…or worse! Actions without outcomes can take you in the wrong direction.

The enabling principle “Bias to Outcome > Bias to Action” centers your focus on what needs to be achieved. A bias to outcome helps align and filter actions in service of achieving meaningful results.

It’s difficult to get alignment if everyone is focused solely on “doing” and checking tasks off of lists. Forward motion towards realizing a vision requires a bias to outcome.

Are you talking to your team about *tasks* or *outcomes*? If you're talking only about tasks, how can you start changing the dialog?

As you start focusing more on outcomes, is your team working on tasks that aren't aligned with those outcomes? How can you change that?

Trying to *do* too much can actually lead to you *achieving* fewer things than you’d like.

The enabling principle “Doing Less Lets You Achieve More” reminds you to focus first on what you want to achieve and to limit the energy spent on what you “do” to laser focus on your goals.

While some might think that saying “yes” to every opportunity will help you succeed, that can often lead to you being overwhelmed. Filtering what you commit to based on what you want and need to achieve will help ensure your success.

Are you and your team accomplishing the things you need to achieve? Write down all the things that you and your team have on your plate right now and then ask yourself "why are you doing each one?" Is it aligned with your Vision or is it a distraction?

It’s impossible for you as a leader to instruct everyone you lead every day in what to do and how to do. Trying to will leave your team uninspired and unmotivated.

The enabling principle “People Thrive When They Own Their Work” helps unlock the power of a clear Vision. Giving the people you lead enough clarity in what you’re trying to achieve and the space to achieve it helps them to:

• Feel connected to bigger results
• See how they have the ability to apply and perhaps even grow their expertise
• Bring joy and pride into their every day

It’s challenging to develop this kind of motivation without the true sense of ownership that comes from bringing your expertise to bear on meaningful challenges.

It can feel natural to lead by telling, but you won’t inspire true forward motion without encouraging a strong sense of ownership.

How are you talking about the work your team is doing?

Have you made connections between each of their individual jobs and how that contributes to their growth, to the team’s growth, to positive impacts on the entire organization?

How can you make those outcomes clearer to them in a way that allows them to take on ownership and move things forward?

Meetings are an essential part of a leader’s day yet so many of us hate them. So many of them could just be an email. Your time is precious, so getting good at meetings right will improve your overall impact and help you keep a more positive mental state.

There’s a lot of meeting advice out there that centers on the agenda. I think agendas are good, but they’ve been elevated to a stature that far exceeds their actual use. I’ve attended plenty of meetings where a dogmatic adherence to the agenda is actually what made them bad meetings.

To make your meetings better, I offer the following five steps:

1. Define the desired outcomes and impacts that should result from the meeting

2. Identify possible participants based on what value they provide and/or what value they receive

3. Size the meeting appropriately - based on who provides and receives value, pare the list to what is needed to meet the desired outcomes

4. Set the duration to reach the objectives, have a plan. and end the meeting when objectives are reached

5. Make sure all attendees are truly present

Getting this right will bring much more clarity to everyone involved and make it easier to actually make your time together truly valuable.

What are you going to change for meetings you've scheduled tomorrow?

How will you encourage others to clean up?

What meetings shouldn't you attend this week?

“Leaders Resolve Problems” is the second core principle of leadership.

Every team and organization has problems. The measure of a successful organization is not an absence of problems, but rather how well team members rally to resolve them.

“Leaders Resolve Problems” doesn’t mean fixing everything that comes your way as a leader, but rather ensuring your team is in an environment that can effectively deal with the unexpected and/or undesired.

Key to creating this environment is the ability to face reality, no matter how unpleasant it might be. There are many reasons that individuals and teams may not be willing to face, or at least give voice to, reality: blame throwing culture, fear of punishment, fear of seeming inept, fear of appearing too negative, and more.

Leaders need to create the space for people to feel comfortable raising issues. Fostering a spirit of problem resolution throughout your team is essential for creating a healthy environment where the people you lead can collectively handle adversity and remain effectively focused on getting to the right results

What do you think is preventing your team from raising a hand and pointing out problems?

What is preventing you from addressing problems when the team does raise a hand?

What can you do to help change that culture and build trust?

One of the most insidious forces in an organization is the slow erosion of principles and values.

It typically starts small and subtly and there’s usually a “good reason” to make exceptions “just this one time”. But over time this creates new norms regardless of what values you have posted on the office walls.

The enabling principle of Course Correct Early is a leadership drive to hold true to your vision, your principles, and your values. It’s not that exceptions can’t be made, but rather understanding the precedent your team is creating.

This principle involves striking a balance - It’s impossible to prevent every bad thing from happening, and sometimes the desire to do so can lead us to over-engineer and over-process to the point of also having a negative impact. On the other hand letting things go too far moves us from incidental problems to more systemic challenges.

We need to be vigilant - ready and willing to recognize when something is getting in the way of achieving our desires and not let it rot away at our organization. This is what your principles are for - to give you the guidance on what you should be vigilant for so that you can course correct early.

What problems are you letting slide now for expediency or any other reason?

Is this a one-time occurrence that makes sense as an exception? Or is it the start of a downward slide? Or does it mean you don’t have the right principles and values in place?