Unlock your Leadership Genius by Making the Cut to Take Your Business to the Next Level

What I have observed is that a successful leader has a simple formula that works like magic until it doesn’t: have a great idea, a stellar work ethic, and enthusiasm for your craft. Then one day, they realize they have plateaued. The formula for their success seems to have broken. Their impulse to continue to apply their formula with even more gusto, translates to longer days, later nights, and a heaping dose of frustration when the ‘results’ part of the equation doesn’t move an inch.

Over the course of thirty years of professional life spanning multiple industries, including as an executive for a Fortune 500 company, and now as the owner of my own coaching practice, I’ve come to identify six simple keys for creating independent, accountable teams that share your organization’s vision, communicate effectively with one other, and solve their own problems.

Leader’s Cut: The Ken Kilday Coaching Experience

Before sharing what I’ve come to learn about using these keys to unlock what I’ve coined as Leadership Genius, I’d like you to know how our team came to describe the work, effort, and outcomes we are writing and talking about. In 2019 during the first year of launching a coaching practice, we underwent a rebranding, including revamping the entire website.

My Marketing Firm interviewed past and present clients, asking them to describe our effort and journey together to help them move beyond the plateau they were encountering, solve the issues causing frustration, and build a solid strategy that reflected their vision. We came to call the company, Leader’s Cut, as a shoutout to the ‘Director’s Cut’ of a movie; that version that uses depth, nuance, and completeness to share a rich story without holding back.

We then added my name to the brand, as that is how clients experienced coaching – adding unique and specific elements that my style brought to their results. Working together was simultaneously described as being challenged while also knowing that my unconditional support was paired with the expectation of effort. Thus, Leader’s Cut: The Ken Kilday Coaching Experience was born.

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What is Making the Cut?

If you have seen me at a desk, in a conference room, or on video, you already know that I am a prolific note-taker. Therefore you will not be surprised to know that I have decades of journals and notebooks capturing my own leadership journey, the techniques that have worked, and more than a few ways that have fallen short of producing results. 

In the three years since launching, those dozens of journals have been distilled into six keys that any business owner or executive leader can use to organize, customize, and execute their own personal vision of success.

We call this structure “Making the Cut” because working to elevate your organization to an elite level requires effort uncommon to the average. Like the 206 bones present in every single human body (absent injury or illness), this is a framework that works because it allows customization and judgement: you add the flesh & bones that represent your unique Mission, Values, and Purpose on the strength of a skeleton that supports the entirety of your business strategy.

Coaching Leads to Results

There are a great many fantastic books on the market that will speak to implementing various systems; we have likely all read the most popular titles. In fact, a number of companies use much of the material to help their businesses; but what I hear from leaders that reach out to me is that the ‘change’ they thought they implemented seems to work for a few weeks, at best, and then they revert right back to mean, as they say. This never surprises me as there is ample evidence that this, the most human of behaviors, shows up in all types of environments.

Yet, what really moves the dial, yielding lasting change that produces enduring results, is to add coaching.

Think of it this way: there are countless books, apps, and sites that will guide you to getting in the best shape of your life. However, if you consider every elite athlete, whether playing in a team or individual sport, that seeks to stand out, win championships, and play over the course of a long career, all use coaching to excel at their craft.

Business coaching works exactly the same way and produces results in exactly the same circumstances. Business owners and executive leaders that value objective advice & observation, create an action plan toward improvement, and leverage their natural Leadership Genius, bring themselves, their teams, and their organizations to new heights of success and perform in any economic environment. Structure, feedback, practice, implementation, evaluation, and adaption is the modality when coaching both individuals and teams in business.

Elevate your LinkedIn Presence: It’s Business, Not Social

The segment of Leader’s Cut that initially surprises people the most is our expertise in the LinkedIn ecosystem and our Mission to help executive leaders and business owners elevate their presence there. It’s often initially dismissed as, ‘“Ugh. LinkedIn. Sure I have a profile, but I just don’t do social media.” Or even, “I am so tired of hearing sales pitches on LinkedIn.” And also, “I’m active on LinkedIn”. What we see are incomplete or dated profiles, low or no activity, and rarely a strategy specific to LinkedIn.

Here’s the argument for a professional presence on the platform for both you and your organization. LinkedIn is absolutely the largest network of professionals on the planet, boasting over half a billion active members. They are notably an affluent group that actively uses the space to promote, network, connect, recruit, and seek job opportunities, not to mention the process of vetting and verifying against information on your own website. Furthermore, if you spend time networking in both private and public groups, ask yourself this question: can I interact with only a subset of professionals? An example: you are looking for a new head of marketing, would like a background in your industry, want them to have an MBA, and are region agnostic. You can perform that search on LinkedIn, but you cannot segregate those contacts when you are networking at your Chamber of Commerce, nor anyplace else. The reality is that, as a leader, you will be sought out; the choice is in building a strategy so that you’re ‘found’ by the right audience.

LinkedIn advertises their launch date as May 5th, 2003; my “member since” date is October 7th, 2003, which makes me member number 30,467. Granted, duration alone does not make me an expert, however consistently growing my expertise throughout the evolution of the platform, culminating as the first licensed partner of Intero Advisory, the industry leader in LinkedIn training and enablement demonstrates my commitment to LinkedIn. Combining my background in leadership, coaching ability, and the Intero method, It’s Business, Not Social Leader’s Cut elevates our clients’ Leadership Genius by helping them stand out on LinkedIn.

Conclusion

As a former Fortune 500 Executive Leader and now a Business Strategist, Executive Coach, and LinkedIn Expert, I’ve discovered there are six easy keys for creating independent, accountable teams that share your organization’s vision, communicate effectively with one other, and solve their own problems. These keys are based on proven, workable strategies that my clients and I have used to develop successful self-running organizations and teams that move beyond any plateau. If you’re interested in a deeper understanding of these six keys, join us for a private, complimentary webinar called, Leadership Genius LIVE! You can also schedule a meet-and-greet, for a no-strings digital handshake.

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