Don’t Spend Too Much Time with the Wrong People
Filed under: Decisions, Developing Others, Leadership Tip of the Day
The major “people mistakes” of my career have occurred as a result of investing too much time and effort in trying to change people.
As leaders, we can enable change. We can help people that want to change. But trying to change people on our own is ultimately a fool’s errand.
In one case, a talented, but mercurial individual simply flamed out after several years (yes, years) of coaching, training, disciplining, imploring and anything else that I could think of to strengthen his inter-personal skills. This was no simple inter-personal issue. He genuinely pissed people off to the boiling point, although it was always carefully wrapped in supporting business priorities.
In another case, I spent another several years (yes there’s that “Y” word again) helping this individual expand her skill-set through job rotation and preaching. It was never coaching, because she didn’t want any part of it.
She had a fierce sense of entitlement over being in charge of a group based on her seniority, yet to me, her skill-set was too narrow and her impact on others was typically negative. She showed no signs of leadership or managerial capabilities. Nonetheless, I counseled, coached and provided developmental experiences. When I finally had a promotion to offer, I awarded it to the most deserving candidate. In response to not gaining the promotion, this delightful individual left the company with no indication. She just never showed up again. A few weeks later, I was summoned to the CEO’s office where I was presented with a document indicating her lawsuit. It was dismissed as frivolous.
While two examples don’t make a career, I learned over time how to invest in those that actively pursued change and development over those that felt entitled or simply were discipline problems.
Give me a person that wants to grow, and I’ll move mountains to help him/her advance. Show me someone that feels entitled to a promotion or, engages in repeated aberrant behavior in spite of feedback and counseling, and I’ll move mountains to move them out.
Invest like crazy in those that want to grow and develop. Just don’t spend too much time with the wrong people.
Take Responsibility for Your Own Development
Filed under: Developing Yourself, Leadership & Career, Leadership Tip of the Day
In my not inconsiderable experience, too many people in business are in search of the proverbial silver bullet.
Unfortunately, there are no true silver bullets.
There are no quick fixes for any of: revenue shortfalls, product development problems, morale issues or disruptive competitors that have inconveniently changed the worth of your entire value proposition. The same holds true for your own professional development.
I’ve yet to figure out how to learn to lead without leading…and making mistakes. Can’t do it.
There are no courses or books that substitute for experience, although there are plenty to help you as you are gaining experience. Strategy doesn’t show up in a crystal ball, great execution doesn’t happen by accident and head-turning results that propel careers aren’t based on good luck.
If you are fortunate, some of your professional development will occur as a result of the feedback and guidance from an effective leader or mentor. For most however, it’s all up to you. You need to put the time in, read the books, apply the lessons, experiment, learn, fail, unlearn, relearn and then try some more.
At the end of the day, the reward and the rewards that you derive from your career are a function of what you put into it. The next time you attend a training class and say, “I’ve heard all of this before,” stop and recognize that it’s not hearing it that counts. It’s what you do with it.
July Issue of the Management Excellence e-Newsletter: Subscriber Only Content
Filed under: Developing Key Skills, Developing Others, Developing Yourself, Leadership & Career, Leadership Tip of the Day
Today’s “Leadership Tip of the Day” is for e-newsletter subscribers only. Of course, I would love to have you as a subscriber!
See the note below that I carried on my Management Excellence site. Also, you are more than welcome to subscribe via the Building Better Leaders site and the offer for copies of Practical Lessons in Leadership below stands for all subscribers, subject to the noted limits.
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The July issue of The Management Excellence e-Newsletter is out, with subscriber-only content.
The current issue includes content on:
- Improving Ideation & Creativity with Your Team
- Surviving and Thriving at the Dreaded Annual Strategy Off-Site
- Ideas for Jump-Starting Your Personal/Professional Development Program
- New Suggestions for the Management Excellence Reading List
- A tasteful promotion at the bottom of the newsletter outlining new beta test opportunities for upcoming Building Better Leaders programs and other services. (Hey, I am in business here!)
If you’re not a subscriber, please consider signing on and gaining access to content and opportunities not covered on my blogs. As always, I will guard your e-mail information with amazing ferocity!
As an incentive, I will send a free, signed copy of Practical Lessons in Leadership to the 1st, 10th and 25th new subscribers (and every 25th after that, until 500) after this post publishes today. This offer is good for 24 hours…and you must have a U.S. mailing address to participate.
You can subscribe at Management Excellence (http://artpetty.com) or Building Better Leaders (http://buildingbetterleaders.com) on the far right column under E-Newsletter Mailing List. And of course, new subscribers will receive a copy of the newsletter and very soon, access to all newsletter archives as well!
I look forward to sharing ideas for development and performance with you in our e-newsletter format!
Happy Reading!
-Art
Want to Lead? Answer These Questions! #6 of 7
Filed under: 7 Key Questions of Aspiring Leaders, Developing Key Skills, Developing Others, Developing Yourself
Note: the Seven Key Questions for Ambitious, Aspiring Leaders, are presented in the book, Practical Lessons in Leadership by Art Petty and Rich Petro. I’ll explore each question here at Building Better Leaders through individual “Leadership Tip of the Day” posts, offering ideas for investigation and discussion.
The first five questions in this series challenged you to think through issues that are both philosophical and powerfully practical:
- Why do you want to lead?
- Do you understand the true role of a leader?
- Do you understand that the skills that made you successful as an individual contributor are not the skills that will carry you forward?
- Are you prepared to give up your domain expertise as your foundation for results?
- What do you believe are the skills and personality traits that you need to succeed as a leader?
If you’ve made it through the investigation of questions 1-5, it’s time for you to consider your new world of accountability.
Number 6. Do you understand that you will be responsible for the output of your team members, and that you will be judged on this output?
One of the transition challenges that many first-time leaders face is recognizing and accepting the new found accountability for the results of others. You can look left and right, but at the end of the day, you need only look in the mirror to find the person responsible for the output of your team. This issue underscores your need to focus on talent selection and development, creating the effective working environment and doing everything in your power to knock down obstacles so that others can plow ahead on their endeavors. You’ve moved from a “me-centric” role to one that is completely “you-centric.”
Consider your responsibility and new-found accountability very carefully and remember that you will now live by the Coach’s Credo: “If we succeed, it’s because of the team and if we fail, it’s because of me.”
Want to Lead? What Skills Do I Need to Succeed? #5 of 7
Filed under: 7 Key Questions of Aspiring Leaders, Developing Key Skills, Developing Yourself, Leadership & Career, Leadership Tip of the Day
Note: the Seven Key Questions for Ambitious, Aspiring Leaders, are presented in the book, Practical Lessons in Leadership by Art Petty and Rich Petro. I’ll explore each question here at Building Better Leaders through individual “Leadership Tip of the Day” posts, offering ideas for investigation and discussion.
The first four questions in this series challenged you to think through issues that are both philosophical and powerfully practical:
- Why do you want to lead?
- Do you understand the true role of a leader?
- Do you understand that the skills that made you successful as an individual contributor are not the skills that will carry you forward?
- Are you prepared to give up your domain expertise as your foundation for results?
If you’ve made it through the investigation of questions 1-4, it’s time for you to focus in on what it takes to be successful as a leader.
5. What do you believe are the skills and personality traits that you need to succeed as a leader?
This question allows the manager and aspiring leader to dig deeper into the role of leadership and to raise awareness of distinct skills and traits essential for leadership success. One potential assignment is to ask the aspiring leader to think about leaders that he/she has admired and to describe what it was about these people that made them positive role models. And as always, I encourage aspiring leaders to sit down with experienced leaders and talk about the role and challenges. Chances are the answers to this question will sound a lot like: patience, fortitude, comfort in coaching and delivering feedback, ability to connect the big picture to day to day realities and so forth.
All of these questions are about building context for the role and life of a leader, and through studying others, the individual can think about their own skills and how they apply or where they need to be strengthened.
Lessons On Managing Oneself
Filed under: Developing Yourself, Leadership & Career, Leadership Tip of the Day
In his classic article, “Managing Oneself,” (HBR, 1999), the late, great management thinker, Peter Drucker, offered the following:
“We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity: if you’ve got ambition, drive and smarts, you can rise to the top of your profession-regardless of where you started out. But with opportunity comes responsibility. Companies today aren’t managing their knowledge workers’ careers. Rather, we must each be our own chief executive officer.”
The futurist, Alvin Toffler offered:
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”
Questions to Ask and Answer:
What are you doing to foster your ability to learn, unlearn and relearn?
Have you declared yourself CEO of your own career? What’s your strategy for success?
Want to Lead? #3 of 7-Your Individual Contributor Skills No Longer Count!
Filed under: 7 Key Questions of Aspiring Leaders, Developing Key Skills, Developing Others, Leadership Tip of the Day
Note: the Seven Key Questions for Ambitious, Aspiring Leaders, are presented in the book, Practical Lessons in Leadership by Art Petty and Rich Petro. I’ll explore each question here at Building Better Leaders through individual “Leadership Tip of the Day” posts, offering ideas for investigation and discussion.
The prior questions challenged you to ask and answer, “Why do you want to lead?” and “Do You Understand the Role of a Leader?” The third question focuses on the issue of skill sets. For too many early career leaders, it comes as a shock that the skills that brought them to the dance are not the skills that will help them win the contest.
Question number 3. Do you understand that the skills that make you successful as an individual contributor are not the skills you need to succeed as a leader?
I’ve noticed that new leaders on technical teams (software development, engineering, IT), often struggle with this issue. In part, the dilemma is created when senior leaders promote the best technicians into leadership roles, and then fail to provide the proper mentoring for the new role. This freshly minted leader is used to surviving and prospering on their technical prowess, and without proper context for their new priorities, they emphasize the technical topics over the issues of motivating, leading and guiding others.
One senior manager observing this repeated pattern, offered, “give a technical professional a choice between a technical or a people issue, and I guarantee which way they will go.”
While technical competence is important in many roles, the demands of leadership require that you shift your focus to priorities that emphasize forging an effective working environment and facilitating the development, coaching and achievement of others. Your job is to help create other technically adept team members, and to use your skills as a tool to cross-check on key decisions and encourage broader and bigger thinking.
Your value as an expert is now worth less than your value as someone that is responsible for creating experts. It’s critical that you focus on internalizing your new role and shift your focus to the people and teams in your environment.
Want to Lead? Answer These Questions! Number 1 of 7
Filed under: 7 Key Questions of Aspiring Leaders, Developing Others, Developing Yourself, Leadership Tip of the Day
Note: the Seven Key Questions for Ambitious, Aspiring Leaders are presented in Practical Lessons in Leadership by Art Petty and Rich Petro. I’ll explore each question here at Building Better Leaders through individual “Leadership Tip of the Day” posts, offering ideas for investigation.
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One of the fundamental tasks of any leader is to identify and develop his/her leadership bench strength.
In the ideal situation, the leader is watching her associates for signs of effective informal leadership skills, and then providing developmental assignments to those individuals interested in moving into more formal leadership roles. In this case, the aspiring leader gains valuable context for the role and challenges of leading and the manager is able to provide feedback and coaching.
Another scenario occurs when individual contributors or early career professionals recognize the potential benefits of a leadership role (usually it’s about money or title), and declare to their manager that they are ready to lead a team. Ask any experienced leader if they have been on the receiving end of someone walking into their office and making this declaration, and the leader will likely smile.
In either situation, the leader in charge can benefit from some simple but powerful questions to guide the ensuing discussions and activities.
The First Question:
1. Why do you want to lead other people?
This straightforward question can be disarming to the erstwhile leader. Often, well-intentioned professionals have not thought through what it is about leading others that they find appealing.
If the motivation is simply money, title or overall advancement (all reasonable desires), this question provides the opportunity to draw these objectives out and begin discussing the many ways that advancement can occur. Often, this question will clearly indicate that the individual does not have proper context for the true role of a leader, again opening the door for an important discussion.
The aspiring leader or coach/manager of the aspiring leader can use this simple question to encourage exploration and investigation into this heady topic. Try talking about the motivation to lead with other leaders of varying experience levels. A senior engineering manager offered to me that his motivation was very straight-forward: “I can contribute more to the firm by helping a group of engineers, than I can by working on my own.” Another people-savvy manager had discovered that one of her strengths was building coalitions across organizational silos. She found the ability to do this nearly-full time in support of helping people achieve their goals to be a rewarding experience and her primary motivation for leading.
Until the aspiring leader can plainly and genuinely articulate the answer to “Why?” they are unprepared to lead.
It’s Time to Confront Your Fear of Public Speaking
Filed under: Developing Key Skills, Developing Yourself, Leadership Tip of the Day
There are few skills that will take you further and help you more than developing your speaking skills. Your writing skills are a close second.
It’s time to confront your fear of speaking and make this critical skill a valuable part of who you are as a professional.
Leaders communicate. While listening and asking questions are core to a leader’s communications arsenal, when you talk, people listen. Make it count by being comfortable, confident and concise!
6 Tips for Improving Your Speaking Skills:
1. Practice! Seek out some easy opportunities to practice. Departmental or team updates can be fairly non-threatening. Alternatives include community events, classroom visits, or school committees.
2. Seek feedback. Ask your boss and peers for specific feedback on your speaking performance and effectiveness. What should you do more of? Where do you need to improve. Don’t settle for, “that was great!” No one gets better by being told they were great.
3. Practice some more… in a safe and constructive environment. Search on “Toastmasters” and find a local chapter and join!
4. Reference a good book. My favorite is: “The Exceptional Presenter” by Timothy Koegel.
5, Find a coach. While the price is often not cheap, the impact is priceless! Read the book, listen to your coach, practice and video record yourself. You’ll be shocked, but at least you will be seeing and hearing what everyone else is seeing and hearing.
6. Volunteer for other opportunities. Yep, you heard me. After a lifetime of dodging this bullet, you’ll find that embracing it is exhilarating.
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Don’t let a common but irrational fear get in the way of your success. Conquer this one and the world is yours!
5 Actions to Improve Leadership Development in Your Firm
Filed under: Developing Others, Developing Yourself, Leadership Tip of the Day
When it comes to leadership development, sweeping corporate mandates and expensive training initiatives are rarely as effective as consistent blocking and tackling.
Your own practices are capable of creating a new and next generation of professionals that carry the right approaches and ultimately innovate and improve upon your achievements.
5 Actions You Can Take Now To Start a Leadership Revolution in your Firm:
1. Always strive to set the the example of the effective leader. No one is perfect, but word travels fast through an organization when some one and some team is meeting and beating targets, innovating, problem solving and somehow becoming a magnet for talent from other areas.
2. Be a relentless developer of talent: your support of the development of others through coaching, feedback, a supply of increasingly more difficult challenges and your encouragement of risk-taking in pursuit of innovation are all powerful tools at your disposal. You don’t need a budget or a training program to do any of this.
3. Encourage your team members to branch out into the organization. The better a developer of talent and the more success that you have at propagating your former team members into roles around the organization, the more likely you are to see your best leadership practices popping up all over the place.
4. Work leadership development into the corporate conversation. Ensure that strategy discussions ultimately encompass talent discussions…because no strategy can be executed without the right talent in place. Once there is broader awareness, encourage your peers to engage in activities that promote discussions and that lead to actions. An example is the simple, low-cost “leadership book club” activity that I’ve seen work so successfully at the senior and front-line leadership levels. Tie development actions to lessons-learned from the reading activities.
5. Build leadership development accountability into the organization. Hold your managers accountable for proving that they get it and are living it in the prosecution of their jobs.
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NOTE: Don’t miss the latest Management Excellence newsletter with newsletter-only features on “Coping with Leadership Fatigue” and “A Summer of Ideas.” Register to receive the newsletter at either Building Better Leaders or at the Management Excellence blog. (Right column)
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