Guest post written by Heather DeMore, VP of Sales & Marketing for DataComm Plus Heather is also a member of the Alliance Breakfast Club Committee, as well as one of our Ambassadors.

At 7 AM on a cold March morning it is hard to get motivated to do just about anything. However, on March 3rd at the Country Springs Hotel if you decided to sleep in you truly missed a fantastic event!  Kevin Eichner, President of Ottawa University, passionately spoke on the topic of “High Impact Leadership.”

Sometimes when you hear someone speak they talk about whatever topic they are speaking about from a mile high view. When the presentation is over and you get back to the office and reflect on what you just heard it is hard to implement any of the ideas. You feel they are unrelated to your business or simply it was a not so good presentation and you wish you would have stayed in your nice warm bed.

However, when Kevin spoke you could feel the passion of the topic and he brought it down to your level with real life experiences. Whether you were an owner, salesperson or office personnel, his topic resonated with everyone.

Some of my personal favorites were how he spoke of Servant Leaders. He talked about how there can be no leadership without followership. Servant leaders view the organization as the client. They truly understand that it is really more about giving than receiving. If you are truly a servant leader you will develop more followers than just your typical leader. This is done through giving everyone a crystal-clear vision of where you intend to go and the process to get there.

He also had some great quotes that I have now posted on my office wall:

1. “The one sure cure to poor motivation is to hire motivated people”.
2. “People can handle good news or bad news.  They struggle with no news.”
3. “The leader’s job is not to motivate, as I have said, it is to hire and well-deploy motivated people.”
4. “Uncertainty breeds doubt, which is the enemy of mastery, and therefore the enemy of morale.”

When Kevin spoke of becoming the Ottawa University president, he stated that some of the staff was looking back at the past instead of looking forward and being optimistic about the future. I loved his comment to them, “Don’t look back… we’re not going there!” I catch myself looking back every now and then but what I need to do is focus on the future.

A tool/visual that Kevin used was The Performance Mechanism (or Organism).  People-Individuals/Teams-Behavior equals results. If you are not getting the results that you want, start with the results and then work your way backwards. He spoke of the things within this visual that you can change and impact and things that you can’t. Things that you can impact are the vision, strategy, systems, processes and culture of your company. It is important as an owner to recognize that you aren’t going to be able to change someone’s attitude, values or beliefs. It is amazing how many of us think that we can. The only other one that we can affect is the skill or our employees, these are coachable.

Kevin – Thank you for your time and sharing your insight on High Impact Leadership and bringing it down so we could go back and implement/reflect on your presentation!

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Note from Carolyn: Don’t miss April’s Alliance Breakfast Club presentation! Mary Scheibel, Principal at Scheibel Halaska, will present “The Difference Maker: The Role of PR in Sales” on April 7.

We will also be offering a special program after that Alliance Breakfast Club. From 9:15-10 that morning we will present The Business Journal’s “Smart Reader Seminar”. Admission to the Smart Reader Seminar is included in your admission to Alliance Breakfast Club, so plan to stay for both great programs! Visit www.waukesha.org for the details and to sign up!