E very year or two, Kevin Cashman moves to a higher level as a leader.

Just when he thinks he has found his proper work/life balance and got a handle on his strengths and weaknesses, something comes along that challenges him to move forward.

It’s a given for all leaders, says Cashman. “You either move to the next level, or you become overwhelmed by what you have to deal with,” he says.

On October 28, Cashman will speak in Calgary about personal leadership – how people, regardless of where they stand in their organization’s hierarchy, can grow personally in order to grow as leaders.

Business coach Kevin Cashman is coming to Calgary.

Cashman speaks from more than 25 years as a business leader and coach. He is the founder and CEO of Minneapolis-based Leader Source, an international coaching and leadership development firm that consults with large and medium-sized businesses worldwide.

An internationally renowned speaker, he is also the author of four books, including the best-selling Leadership from the Inside Out.

In Calgary, Cashman will walk his audience through an interactive exercise that will help people determine their strengths and weaknesses. It will allow them to understand the kind of leadership situations that they are open to, closed to, and their personal implications.

The foundation of the exercise is built on what he sees as the three common principles or traits that effective CEOs and managers embody to create effective, sustainable leadership. The common principles are authenticity, the ability to express oneself and the ability to create enhanced value and experiences (beyond financial value) for employees and customers.

The principles are derived from research and the experience his organization has gained while working with thousands of people.

“In Leadership from the Inside Out, we researched the most effective clients we’d coached over the years. We looked at their individual assessments, their 360 assessments, their business results over a three- to five-year period, and then extracted the most effective leaders.

“We found that the ones who had real sustainable value creation had these three things in common, even though they had very different styles and competency patterns. And they had very different personalities.”

Of the three traits, authenticity is the most important. It means that leaders most often tend to walk their talk. They align their behaviour to their values and principles, and tend to be further along in understanding their strengths and their vulnerabilities.

“Today, particularly in the U.S., though it’s happening more and more around the world, we’re starting to see the price we pay when we split off authenticity from results,” he says.

“Because of the incessant drive for financial results, we can unintentionally sacrifice everything on the altar of the bottom line. We slowly get disconnected from our personal values and some business principles, because what becomes important is generating only the financial results.”

Surrendering one’s purpose and principles for profit and performance runs counter to research that shows a leader’s authenticity is critical to the sustainable results of an organization.

Cashman says that the second principle for effectiveness revolves around the ability to communicate. Again, successful leaders differ in style – some are introverted, some extroverted. What they have in common is the ability to get across the message that is important, and do it in a way that helps people get to the next level.

Third, leaders can create value and experiences for employees and customers that go beyond the bottom line. It’s an important factor because these are the people who can sustain the business.

Many leaders don’t make the connection that their personal growth and capacity as a leader can inhibit or further the development of the organization. If leaders want to grow their organizations, they need to be open to personal growth as well, Cashman says.

A recent study of 6,000 managers and executives measured how many leaders would get to the 90th percentile of leadership effectiveness in their organizations, he notes.

The study showed that of the managers whose style was focused on results, only nine per cent would achieve the 90th percentile of leadership effectiveness. It also revealed that of the managers with strengths in dealing with people, 13 per cent of that group would achieve that same high level.

But when leaders combined a focus on results and a talent for interpersonal skills, 63 per cent of that group would reach the 90th percentile.

Personal growth is essential to survival in today’s increasingly stressful time, Cashman adds.

“What we see is that the people who are most resilient have an alignment of their time to their values,” he says. “When those things get out of sync, then the job of leadership, and the job of managing our life, becomes overwhelming.

“We say we care about our family, about our health, our spirituality, a lot of things – but then we put 99 per cent of our time into our career, and, well, things are going to break down.”

On a personal note, Cashman says he’s constantly recalibrating his own life to accommodate the time he spends at work with his other needs.

Many of the top organizations he works with do the same. They are successful and are always conscious of sustaining that success through personal growth.

“I see no limit to the personal growth that leaders can achieve,” he says, “and with that, the growth of their companies.”

* Note: Kevin Cashman speaks at the Telus Convention Centre, October 28, 7 - 9 p.m. To register, call Ticketmaster 777-0000. Cashman will also conduct an October 29 workshop. For details see www.calgarycoaches.com