Want to Lead? Consider These Questions: #7 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 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 six 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?
- Do you understand that you will be judged by the output of your team and held accountable for this output?
If you’ve made it through the investigation of questions 1-6, it’s time for you to consider what your daily work life will be like as a leader.
7. What do you imagine your workday life to be like as a leader?
For those accustomed to having some semblance of autonomy over their daily lives, the transition to a role as a leader can shock the system. This move from a “me-centric” daily routine to “everyone but me” focus has caught many an early leader by surprise. The “day in the life” discussion fostered by this question will help clarify what a leader does everyday and how it differs from the role of individual contributor. One suggestion is to allow aspiring leaders the opportunity to shadow you from time to time, as a means of understanding just how unglamorous leading can be. Another suggestion is to have the aspiring leader spend a little bit of time with other leaders and interview them about their daily and weekly activities.
The Takeaway from The 7 Questions:
The Seven Key Questions for the Ambitious Aspiring Leader are powerful conversation starters to support a manager’s leadership development activities. They are not intended to be delivered in machine-gun style, but rather to be used in concert with an approach to helping individuals discover and explore the profession of leadership. Not everyone should lead, yet someone motivated by advancement might believe that leadership is the best or only way to achieve this goal. An effective mutual discovery process is the leader’s best friend in helping identify leadership talent and in helping individuals come to their own conclusion on whether leading is a good choice for their own careers.
Starting Fast as a Leader With Your New Team
The “start-up” phase with a new team is challenging for even the most experienced of leaders. If you’re an “all new” leader…someone hired from outside or at least outside of the team, there’s an inherent degree of uncertainty and apprehension about you. No one knows your style or your agenda, and frankly, while you have authority and respect conferred by title, you have not earned credibility or trust.
One of the fastest ways to ramp up and help people develop some early comfort with you is to sit down and listen to them. Notice that I didn’t say talk. This is an exercise in listening, paying attention, gaining insights and discovering your true situation with your team members. You’ll have ample opportunity to talk in the future, but, start-up is a time for listening.
Set Up Face-to Face Meetings with Your Team Members:
One of the first things that I do in a new leadership role is publicly indicate that I’m going to meet privately with all direct team members. I’ve extended this to indirect team members as well, and I advise including them, unless the size of the group makes this step prohibitive. I indicate that I will pre-publish the agenda, provide everyone with a few days for people to think through their thoughts, and then I will reach out to schedule the meetings.
The public indication is good for morale and pre-publishing the agenda helps people to frame their thoughts and ideas. Of course, to earn credibility here, you’ve got to keep to your commitment, so once public, there’s no backing down.
The Agenda-3 Questions:
- What’s working?
- What’s not?
- How can I help you help our business?
These 3 simple questions provide the participants with a broad degree of freedom to offer company and departmental criticism, identify areas to strengthen and improve, and share insights on the obstacles that they see keeping them from contributing at greater level. I’ve yet to attend one of these sessions that wasn’t rich in input and much needed context for me in my new leadership role. Of course, people feel good that they’ve had a chance to share, and that you cared enough to listen.
What’s Next?
Take good notes, follow-up each session with a personal thank you note (or e-mail), and take care to live up to any commitments that you made during the discussion. Invariably, there are some easy to resolve issues that you can and should commit to fixing. For the more strategic items, acknowledge the input and promise to consider it as you deliberate or pursue broader team discussions on the issue.
I also like to roll-up the broader business and departmental input (not personal or personnel) and hold a larger team meeting where I share the feedback. Much of this content can help to define priorities for improvement or action.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
I can’t take credit for originating these questions or even this approach. I read about it somewhere, jotted it down and have used it for years, while long since forgetting the original source. It’s never failed to help “break the ice” for all parties, and get the discussion focused on the business of the business and off of the fact that there’s a new leader in charge. Use it in good health.
8 Quick Tips to Improve Your Effectiveness with Feedback
Filed under: Developing Key Skills, Leadership Tip of the Day
Leaders at all levels struggle with this most important of performance tools: feedback. We delay delivering it, we water it down, we sandwich it in praise and obscure the message or, we avoid it altogether.
Like anything else, practice makes perfect, and a few simple suggestions can help ease your concerns and usher in more “practice time” in your workplace.
Suggestions for Improving Your Comfort and Use of Feedback:
1. Frequency and timeliness count! Your job is to deliver feedback everyday….not just at the performance review. In fact, that’s a horrible time for it.
2. Always base feedback on observable behaviors.
3. Link the behavior in question to business issues. Don’t make it personal.
4. Describe the appropriate behavior or in the case of positive feedback, specify the good behavior. Tell a person, “nice presentation,” and while they feel good, they have no idea what they did right.
5. Keep the discussion simple…focus on one behavior, not everything that you can think of for the past three months.
7. Actions and outcomes count! Create an action plan to change the behavior. Ideally, the target of the feedback creates the action plan.
8. Observe, coach and provide on-going feedback.
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Bonus Tip 1: Take a few minutes before your feedback discussion to jot down your opening statement and plan your conversation. Use the above as a check-list to make certain that you’ve incorporated all of the key elements.
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? #4 of 7. It’s Time to Ask and Answer a Difficult Question
Filed under: 7 Key Questions of Aspiring Leaders, Decisions, 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 three 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?
The next question in the series builds on #3 by asking you to consider whether you are truly willing to let go of some of that expertise as part of your transformation as a leader.
#4: Are you prepared to give up domain expertise as your foundation for results?
Consider the cases of the brilliant surgeon that takes on the role as Chief of Staff, or, the skilled tradesperson that becomes a superintendent. Add in the successful teacher that becomes a school principal and the successful law enforcement officer that is promoted to ride a desk. While prior experience and long-developed skills will prove valuable in the new pursuits, a very different set of skills are required for success.
The new skills focus more on supporting and serving others through teaching, mentoring and guiding. Instead of being the expert, the newly minted leader is now in charge of helping others develop expertise. For many moving from the role of individual contributor or knowledge worker to the role of leader, this loss of sense of self and the need to reinvent prove traumatic.
For good or bad, we tend to identify not only with our jobs but with the work and skills that others acknowledge us for in our daily lives. Thoroughly investigating and forming answers for questions 1-3 is a critical first step. Once you’ve progressed through those important questions, it’s time to stare in the mirror and ask and answer question #4. If you conclude that you cannot let go…that your skills are who you are, then say no. If you are OK with the notion of reinventing yourself, then keep moving forward.
The only mistake is to not ask and answer these questions honestly.
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! #2 of 7
Filed under: 7 Key Questions of Aspiring Leaders, Developing Others, 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 prior question challenged you to ask and answer, “Why do you want to lead?” This question focused on motivation, while our question today goes to understanding of the role of a leader. Clear answers for both are essential for making an informed decision on whether a role as a leader is proper for you.
The Second Question: “What do you think the true role of a leader is?“
This is a good open-ended question that can ferret out whether the ambitious professional has proper context for the role and purpose of a leader or whether he is preoccupied with advancement and perceives this as the best and fastest way.
I encourage people to talk to experienced leaders that seem to enjoy their work. Let them know that you are interested in pursuing a leadership role. Ask them the following questions:
- How would you describe your role as a leader?
- How has your view on this role changed over your career?
- Last and not least, what are your leadership priorities?
I have a sneaking suspicion that you will very quickly hear words and phrases like: developing others; coaching, providing feedback, clearing a path by knocking down obstacles and helping set goals.
Take good notes and think long and hard about whether the priority tasks described by experienced leaders fit well with your interest in leading. If yes, you’re on your way to building a solid foundation for your leadership career.
Oh, and for my two-cents worth on the role of a leader, check out my post at Management Excellence, “Leader, What’s Your Charter?”
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