Business expert shares workplace insights in latest book

 “Titleless leaders have the courage to shine, and their modeling encourages others to bring their own gifts to this challenging world.”

— From “The Titleless Leader” by Nan S. Russell

Nan Russell has taken her own advice in sharing her gifts — most notably her abilities and expertise in navigating the business world.

The Whitefish woman wrote her most recent book, “The Titleless Leader: How To Get Things Done When You’re Not In Charge,” to help answer the increasing number of questions she had been receiving about new dynamics in the workplace.

“I kept being asked to talk about how the workplace has changed,” she said. “People were being asked to make things happen and get things done with different generations and with people that were remote to them.

“So I started talking about uncommon behaviors that enable you to, no matter what you do, to get followers and people who want to work with you and help you.”

“The Titleless Leader” was released in May by Career Press; it is Russell’s third book. She also wrote “Hitting Your Stride: Your Work, Your Way” and “Nibble Your Way To Success: 56 Winning Tips for Taking Charge of Your Career.”

Russell, 62, spent more than 20 years in management, most recently as vice president with home-shopping network QVC. She left the corporate world to move to Montana 10 years ago, and has been busy sharing her insights into the workplace ever since through writing, workshops and speaking engagements throughout the country.

She blogs for Psychology Today on the topic of trust, and is a job-loss recovery expert for job-hunt.org. Her column, “Winning at Working” is carried in more than 90 publications. Mentoring people in their career lives one of Russell’s latest pursuits.

She’ll be speaking locally in the next month at two forums. At Flathead Valley Community College on Oct. 30, she’ll cover “How to Get Results When You’re Not In Charge” for a two-hour continuing education class. On Nov. 14, she offers “It Doesn’t Come With a Title: Uncommon-Practice Leadership” for the Brown Bag series sponsored by the Flathead Job Service.

The Oct. 30 event is more of a “how to” workshop, Russell said, while the Brown Bag series talk will look at the concepts and philosophies behind the “The Titleless Leader.”

“I love doing these workshops, it’s where I get a lot of ideas, but more importantly, you get the reality of it and connecting with people,” Russell said. “They [attendees] can hopefully walk out and feel that they can make a difference.”

“The Titleless Leader” is not necessarily aimed at management, but is for anyone working with a team who wants to generate results. The book offers simple behavior changes that get results, and “are doable for anybody,” Russell said. “You don’t have to go to a class, it’s just shifting simple kinds of behaviors.”

 Russell believes effective leadership requires the elimination of ego-driven behaviors, and focusing on what makes work better for others.

“We often get it backwards, we try to make it easier for us,” she said. “We should ask ‘how do I make it easier for you?’ How do we look at the person we’re trying to work with and say ‘how do I clear the path for them?’”

For example, Russell said, “some people like to text, some people like voice mail, some people like to meet in person. You should do it the way the other person likes it, not the way you like it. People help people who help them.”

Operating with trust “in an era of distrust” helps create a climate for accomplishment, even when a person is not in charge by rank or title, Russell said.

In an Oct. 8 blog post on www.nanrussell.com, Russell covers a typical situation in which she believes her philosophy would serve a company well. She and her husband had recently witnessed a new rental-car company employee having trouble solving a customer-service issue at a check-in counter, and after her boss helped resolve the problem, left her to deal with those waiting in the long line that had developed.

“I’m amazed that someone who leads a customer-focused operation would walk away from so many customers,” she wrote. “If he’d been a titleless leader, operating with an ego-detached attitude of contribution and service, the impressions he left would have been positive, not negative ones.”

Reporter Heidi Gaiser may be reached at 758-4449 or by email at hgaiser@dailyinterlake.com.